Isaac II. Aboab

Isaac II Aboab (also Abuab ; * around 1433 in Toledo ; † 1493 in Porto ) was a Castilian rabbi and was considered the "last Gaon of Castile".

Life

Isaac Aboab attended the Talmud school of Isaac Campanton (1360-1463) and took over its leadership from him as his successor. A few months before the Jews were expelled from the Spanish crown area as a result of the Alhambra Edict of 1492, he obtained permission from King John II of Portugal for himself and 29 fellow believers to settle in Portugal with their families. Shortly after moving to Porto, where the city gave them thirty houses and a synagogue on rua de San Miguel by order of the king, he died in the month of Adar in 1493.

Works

In his youth he wrote a work Nehar Pischon named after the Paradise River Pischon to explain difficult passages in the Pentateuch , which was printed by Eliezer Soncino in Constantinople in 1538 at the instigation of his son Jakob .

There is also a super commentary on Nachmanides , an explanation of difficult passages from his Pentateuch commentary, which was also printed in Constantinople in 1525 on the initiative of his son and was reprinted several times in the following period (Venice 1548, Krakow 1587, Wilhermsdorf 1783).

An as yet unprinted super commentary on Raschi's Pentateuch commentary and other writings are preserved in manuscripts in Oxford and Cambridge.

His authorship of the Menorat ha-Manor ("Lichtspendender Leuchter"), an extremely frequently printed and translated ethical-didactic treatise, which was first ascribed to him in the 16th century by Gedalja Jachia, but, according to Leopold Zunz , by his ancestor Isaac, is questionable I. Aboab was written at the beginning of the 14th century.

literature

• Leopold Löwenstein : The Aboab family. In: Monthly for the history and science of Judaism NF 12 (1904), pp. 661–701.
• Denis Aboab: La saga des Aboab . Maisonneuve & Larose, Paris 2005, ISBN 2-7068-1837-9 .
• Purificación Albarral Albarral: Una cala en la literatura religiosa sefardí: La Almenara de la Luz . Universidad de Granada, Granada 2001, ISBN 84-338-2779-0 .
• Angel Sáenz-Badillos; Judit Targarona Borrás: Yiṣḥaq 'Aboab. In: Diccionario de autores judios (Sefarad. Siglos X-XV). El Almendro, Córdoba 1988 (Estudios de Cultura Hebrea, Volume 10), p. 146. ISBN 84-86077-69-9 .