ר' יהודה אבן תיבון

Rav Yehuda ibn Tibbon (4880/1120–c. 4950/1190), called avi hama’atikim — the father of the translators — was the rishon who clothed the great sefarim of Sefarad in Hebrew for the Jews of Europe. Born in Granada, he left Spain around 4910/1150, when the Almohad conquerors decreed against the Jews, and settled in Lunel in Provence. There he practiced as a physician of standing — when Rav Binyamin of Tudela passed through Lunel he found among its chachamim “Rav Yehuda the doctor, ben Tibbon, the Sefardi” — and he learned in the yeshiva that stood under the wing of the city’s leader, Rav Meshulam ben Yaakov of Lunel. He was bound in close friendship to the Raavad of Posquières and to Rav Zerachiah HaLevi, the Baal HaMaor, whom he freely acknowledged as the greater talmid chacham.

For some twenty-five years he labored at translation, turning the classics of Jewish thought from Arabic into Hebrew. At the urging of Rav Meshulam and his son Asher he rendered the first sha’ar of Rabbeinu Bachya ibn Pakuda‘s Chovot HaLevavot in 4921/1161, and completed the work at the wish of the Raavad; his is the version in which the sefer is learned to this day. After it came Rav Yehuda HaLevi‘s Kuzari (4927/1167), Rav Saadia Gaon‘s Emunot V’Deot (4946/1186), Rav Shlomo ibn Gabirol‘s Tikkun Middot HaNefesh and Mivchar HaPeninim, and the two pillars of Hebrew grammar by Rav Yonah ibn Janach — the Sefer HaRikmah and the dictionary Sefer HaShorashim, which earlier translators had carried only as far as the letter lamed and he finished in 4931/1171. In his prefaces he set down his principles of the translator’s art.

After his wife’s petirah he raised his sons and daughters alone, refusing to give them into another’s care. To his son Shmuel — himself a scholar and translator — he left the tzava’ah Musar Av, among the warmest and frankest documents of its kind: guidance in fixed Torah study and the sciences, guarded speech, clean parnassa and yirat Shamayim, counsel in the practice of medicine, and loving instructions for the great library he had gathered so that his son need never borrow a book — to look over the Hebrew sefarim every month, keep a list of every shelf, and guard the books, his “best treasure,” from water and from mice. He was niftar after 4950/1190 and was buried in Lunel.