הרב יוסף אלבו

Rav Yosef Albo (c. 5140/1380–c. 5204/1444) was a rav and philosopher of Spain, the author of the Sefer HaIkkarim — the classic work on the foundations of emunah — and among the defenders of the faith in its darkest Spanish hour. A talmid of Rav Chasdai Crescas, author of the Ohr Hashem, he served in the rabbanut of communities in Aragon and Castile, and in 5173–74 stood as the delegate of Monreal at the infamous Disputation of Tortosa, defending the Talmud and the emunah before a hostile crowd in the generation after the gezeirot of 5151, when conversion had thinned the people’s ranks.

From that crucible came his sefer, completed in Soria in 5185/1425: a work written to fortify a battered generation by distilling what a Jew must hold. Where the Rambam counted thirteen ikkarim, Rav Albo — disputing not their truth but their classification — reduced the foundations to three: the existence of Hashem, Torah from Heaven, and reward and punishment; the rest, he held, are branches of these roots. His framework of the divine, the conventional and the natural law shaped Jewish thought for centuries, and his gentler rulings became famous — that one who errs in his understanding of the foundations through honest inquiry is a sinner in need of teshuvah, but no kofer. His omission of Mashiach from the ikkarim drew criticism, though he affirmed the belief itself without reservation.

The Sefer HaIkkarim became one of the most learned works of machshavah in the Jewish library — a bridge, too, between philosophy and kabbalah, for he cites the Zohar and counsels that the hidden wisdom be received only from a chacham mekubal, as its name demands. He has been called the last philosopher of Spanish Jewry, and his sefer is learned to this day.