רמב"ן

Rav Moshe ben Nachman (4954/1194–c. 5030/1270), the Ramban, known in the nations’ books as Nachmanides and in the Catalan of his birthplace as Bonastruc ça Porta, was among the greatest of the rishonim of Sefarad — posek, mekubal, physician, and author of the classic peirush on the Torah. Born in Girona, he learned under Rav Yehuda bar Yakar, from whom he received the Torah of the Baalei HaTosafot, and under Rav Natan ben Meir; Rabbeinu Yonah Gerondi was his cousin. His talmid the Rashba testifies that he supported himself as a physician. At about seventeen he wrote completions to the halachot of the Rif — nedarim, bechorot, and challah — and in Milchamot Hashem he stood in the Rif’s defense against the hasagot of the Baal HaMaor.

When machloket erupted over the Rambam‘s Sefer HaMada and Moreh Nevuchim, and the chachamim of northern Tzarfat placed those works under cherem, the Ramban — then nearing forty — took up the role of peacemaker. In his letter to the chachamei Tzarfat he bowed before them at length and then defended the Rambam’s honor: the Moreh, he wrote, was composed not for the firm of faith but for those already swept up in philosophy, and the Mishneh Torah, far from leniency, tends to stringency in its rulings. He proposed that the Moreh be learned privately rather than publicly and asked that the cherem be lifted; the compromise was accepted by neither side.

In 5023/1263 King James I of Aragon compelled him to a public disputation in Barcelona with the mumar Pablo Christiani, held over four days before the king and the heads of the Dominicans. Granted unusual freedom of speech, the Ramban dismantled his opponent’s attempts to prove the Christian claims from divrei Chazal, and on the Shabbat afterward answered the king himself in the great beit knesset of Barcelona; the king sent him home with three hundred dinars and the words “return to your city, to life and to peace.” But church pressure over his written account of the vikuach mounted, the Pope demanded he be punished, and in 5027/1267 he left Sefarad for Eretz Yisrael. Landing at Akko, he went up to Yerushalayim, found her desolate, gathered her Jews into a kehillah, and established a beit knesset; he visited Chevron, and back in Akko delivered his great derashah for Rosh Hashanah and, by tradition, headed a yeshiva. He was niftar in Eretz Yisrael about 5030/1270.

His peirush on the Torah was his final work: a commentary built on careful peshat that engages Rashi throughout, weaves in aggadah, and alludes to the hidden Torah, “for in the Torah are hidden every wonder and every mystery.” Beside it stand Torat HaAdam on aveilut, closing with the Shaar HaGemul on reward and punishment, and the famous iggeret of mussar he sent to his son Nachman. His talmidim the Rashba and the Ra’ah carried his derech — the union of the Tosafists’ Torah with the mesorah of Sefarad — into the generations that followed, and it fills the sefarim of Rabbeinu Bachya, the Ritva, the Ran, and the Nimukei Yosef. In the Jewish Quarter of Yerushalayim, the Beit Knesset HaRamban carries his name to this day.