Isaac Abravanel – författare

Moses Maimonides was the first medieval Jewish thinker to posit a set of dogmas for Judaism, his ‘Thirteen Principles of Faith’. His statement initiated an extensive discussion among other medieval Jewish thinkers on the subject of dogma, which had an important impact on subsequent Jewish thought. The reaction to Maimonides’ innovation was complex: some scholars accepted his position without reservation; others accepted the idea that Jewish beliefs could be reduced to a creed but disagreed with Maimonides’ formulation; still others rejected the project of creed formulation in Judaism altogether. The locus classicus of this last position is the Rosh Amanah of Isaac Abranavel (1437–1508).Abravanel’s ostensible aim in writing Rosh Amanah was to defend Maimonides’ creed from the attacks of its critics, notably Hasdai Crescas and Joseph Albo, and it contains the most exhaustive and systematic analysis of the Thirteen Principles ever written. After twenty-two chapters of sustained and zealous defence of Maimonides, however, Abravanel seems to contradict himself, arguing at the end of his book that in fact Judaism has no dogmas whatsoever and that all its beliefs are equally valid, fundamental, and precious.This is the first complete English translation of Abravanel’s classic work, and includes a comprehensive introduction and notes.

Almost five hundred years after his death, Don Isaac Abravanel (1437-1508) remains a legendary figure of Sephardic history, and above all of the Expulsion of 1492. There are numerous “portraits” that have been painted of him by pre-modern and modern scholars. And still we hesitate and cannot discern which is the true one. This first critical edition of Abravanel’s Portuguese and Hebrew letters opens a unique window on a complex cultural process of assimilation and dissimulation of humanism among the fifteenth-century Jewish elite. On the one hand, it establishes Abravanel’s assimilation of Iberian humanism and of major aspects of the Petrarchian consolatio; on the other hand, it points at the strategies used by him to dissimulate and adapt humanism to Jewish leadership. The duality of Jewish humanists like Don Isaac was obviously a great richness, but it indicated as well their difficulty in expressing themselves coherently and comprehensively in one of the two agoras - Jewish or Christian – in which they were involved as literati and writers. The present edition and study of Abravanel’s Portuguese and Hebrew letters sheds a new light on the complexity of this new figure of the Jewish humanist.