הרב עובדיה ספורנו

Rav Ovadiah Sforno (c. 5230/1470–5309/1549), the Sforno, known in English sources as Obadiah Sforno, was an Italian rav, physician, and parshan whose beiur on the Torah — brief, lucid, and built on the peshat — became his most widespread work. Born in Cesena to Rav Yaakov Sforno, who is mentioned in the teshuvot of the Maharik, he acquired Torah together with philosophy, mathematics, grammar, and medicine, commanding Latin and Arabic, and went to Rome to complete his studies in medicine. There his standing among the chachamim was such that when the German scholar Johann Reuchlin sought to perfect his Hebrew during his stay in Rome in 1498–1500, Cardinal Grimani directed him to Rav Ovadiah, who taught him for two years. Chachamim turned to him in halachah — Rav Meir Katzenellenbogen, the Maharam Padua, consulted him — and in 5279/1519, at the request of Rav Yisrael Ashkenazi, rav of Rome, he issued a psak in the case of the daughter of Shmuel Sarfati, physician to the Pope.

Around 5285/1525 he left Rome and wandered among the cities of Italy in straitened circumstances, as appears from his letters to his brother Chananel, until he settled beside him in Bologna. There he founded a yeshiva that he led to the end of his days, practiced as a physician, established a Hebrew printing press, and answered she’elot from all over Italy, including from the chachamim of nearby Ferrara. His name reached the court of Henri II of France, to whom he dedicated his philosophical work Or Amim and sent his peirush on Kohelet.

His beiur on the Torah, printed in Venice in 5327/1567 with its introduction Kavanot HaTorah on the structure of the Torah and the reasons of the mitzvot, draws with discernment on Rashi, the Ibn Ezra, the Rashbam, and the Ramban while adding original peshat of his own, in language short and clear that keeps far from kabbalistic derush. Beside it stand his peirushim on Tehillim, Shir HaShirim, and Kohelet, Mishpat Tzedek on Iyov, peirushim on Yonah, Chavakuk, and Zechariah, and a philosophical peirush on Pirkei Avot printed in the machzor of Bnei Roma (Bologna 1540). In Or Amim (Bologna 5297/1537) he set out to answer Aristotle on the eternity of matter, Hashem’s knowledge of particulars, and the nature of the soul — noting in his introduction that even the Rambam had granted Aristotle’s account of the world beneath the moon — and he himself put the sefer into Latin, printed in 1548. He also rendered Euclid into Hebrew. He was niftar in Bologna in 5309/1549; his house there, on the Piazza Santo Stefano, stands to this day.