Isaac Abarbanel's Stance Toward Tradition: Defense, Dissent, and Dialogue

Chapter 1 Life and Contexts

鵻 9 鵼 Chapter 1 鵻 Life and Contexts 鵼 I n a letter that he sent to the Cretan scholar Saul Hakohen Ashkenazi a few years prior to his death, Isaac Abarbanel observed that he had written all of his “commentaries and compilations” after I left my homeland (’ereខ s moladeti); for all of the days that I was in the courts and palaces of kings occupied in their service I had no time to study and looked at no book but squandered my days in vanity and years in futile pursuit so that wealth and honor would be mine; yet the wealth was lost by evil adventure and “honor is departed from Israel” [1 Sam. 4:21]. Only after wandering to and fro over the earth from one kingdom to another . . . did I “seek out the book of the Lord” [Isa. 34:16].1 This personal retrospective, stark even after allowances are made for its imprecision and an autobiographical topos that it reflects,2 alludes to major foci of Abarbanel’s life. He engaged in large-scale commercial and financial endeavors . He held positions at three leading European courts. He was a broad scholar who authored a multifaceted literary corpus comprising a variety of fullbodied exegetical tomes and theological tracts. And during roughly the last third of his life, in consequence of Spain’s expulsion of its Jews in 1492, his existence was characterized by itinerancy, often in isolation from family and scholarly peers. Situate these themes and their cognates on a wider historical, cultural, and intellectual canvas, and the result is a rich tableau at the center of which stands an ambitious seeker of power, prestige, and wealth who ardently cultivated the intellectual life and its vocations as exegete, theologian, and writer. Isaac son of Judah Abarbanel (Abravanel, Bravanel, Barbanel, Habravanel)3 was born in Portugal to an illustrious Ibero-Jewish family that, beyond its venerable roots in Spain, traced its origins to the royal Davidic house.4 Abarbanel’s grandfather, an acclaimed figure at the courts of three Castilian kings, came to prominence during the 1360s, a decade that saw a Castilian-Aragonese war 10 鵼 Isaac Abarbanel’s Stance Toward Tradition and Castilian succession struggles that brought “devastation and ruin” to Castile ’s Jewish communities.5 The only contemporary description of Samuel Abarbanel comes from Menahem ben Zerah, rabbi in Alcalá de Henares, who became indebted to Samuel for material assistance that he desperately required due to the Castilian civil strife. He described Abarbanel’s grandfather as his “reviver” and told of “a patron of scholars who, when the turbulence of the times abates, desires to delve into the books of writers and discoursers.”6 Yet Menahem felt compelled to add that the involvement of Castile’s Jewish courtiers in the vicissitudes of the political fray were such that these courtiers displayed “vacillation” in their observance of “obligatory commandments” like prayer, recitation of blessings, avoidance of forbidden foods, and Sabbath and festival observance.7 It does not occasion complete surprise, then, that Samuel Abarbanel received baptism, taking as his Christian name Juan Sánchez de Sevilla, even as it is somewhat startling to learn that this event very likely occurred prior to the anti-Jewish riots that swept through Spain in 1391–92, leaving thousands of Jews dead and tens of thousands of others as forced converts to Christianity. Samuel’s grandson would emulate his family’s longstanding tradition of engagement in Jewish communal endeavor and assiduous service to non-Jewish royalty but would never mention in writing his grandfather ’s conversion, which Samuel may never have renounced.8 If Samuel Abarbanel remained a Christian, taking some sons along with him, several other sons deviated from his spiritual path, including Judah Abarbanel , who eventually established himself in Lisbon as a merchant and tax farmer with ties to Portuguese royalty and nobility. Most notably, Judah served as financier to Fernando, the son of Portugal’s King Duarte. In 1437, this prince set out on a conquest of Tangiers with his famous brother Henry, who was later dubbed “the Navigator” in recognition of his pioneering contributions to Portuguese maritime exploration. When, after the expedition’s dismal failure and nearly a dozen years in slavery, Fernando finally breathed his last, his will specified repayment of a huge debt to “the Jew [Judah] Abarbanel, resident of Lisbon.”9 The year of Fernando’s Tangiers expedition saw the birth to Judah of a second son, Isaac. The year following saw Duarte’s death and the...