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Don Isaac Abravanel: A Sephardic saga
Isaac Abravanel is considered to be the personification of Spanish Jewry’s splendor, wealth and strength
Noa Raz
Don Isaac Abravanel was born and raised in Portugal, where he earned fame and fortune as a senior advisor to the king. However, as a Jew with close ties to a powerful aristocratic family, he made enemies and was forced to flee to neighboring Spain.
His prosperity and power only increased in Spain, but, in the end, his lofty position and connections did not help him. Unable to foresee in advance the terrible calamity that was to befall Spanish Jewry, his efforts to prevent it were for naught.
As a result, he was expelled from his adopted land, together with the rest of his brethren. He wandered through several Italian republics, including Naples, Monopoli, and Venice, before finally settling down.
Today, Don Isaac Abravanel is considered to be the personification of Spanish Jewry’s splendor, wealth and strength. In his every deed and action, he was able to integrate his political-economic outlook, his uncompromising loyalty to his persecuted Jewish brothers, and his glowing messianic-prophetic belief in Judaism and G-d.
Faith-based views
Abravanel’s religious, scientific, and political worldviews were all faith-based. A complete and total devotion to G-d and His Torah was the leitmotif of Abravanel’s multifaceted life.
Nowhere is this approach more evident than in his numerous writings, which include both Biblical commentary (mainly discussing the Prophets) and messianic-mystical essays, which, in our own times, would surely merit an honored place on the New Age shelves of contemporary bookstores.
Thus, scholars have been endlessly fascinated by Abravanel. For instance, how did this man, who believed until his dying day that history, down to the most minor event, is directed by G-d, reconcile his faith with the expulsion of Spanish Jewry?
How did this illustrious statesman, who walked the corridors of power, deal with the onslaught of persecution endured by the conversos and their descendants? What thoughts went through his mind onboard the ship, as he sailed away from Spain before rebuilding his life for the third time?
Rise and fall
Noted historian Ben Zion Netanyahu manages to expertly flesh out Abravanel’s larger than life image, which represents the glorious rise and fall of Spanish Jewry. Netanyahu opens his book with a description of the assorted stages of Abravanel’s life. The biography’s second part is dedicated to a discussion of Abravanel’s religious, mystical, historical, and political worldviews.
Abravanel’s life story provides the wide eyed reader with a fascinating glimpse at medieval Spanish and Portuguese Jewries’ incredible physical and spiritual wealth, the likes of which is virtually nonexistent today.
His personal tragedy, as he was forced to rebuild his life time after time, while relying on a faith so fierce that it allowed him to remain almost detached from reality, is the perfect indicator of those communities’ slow and gradual decline.
Don Isaac Abravanel (Fifth Edition), Ben Zion Netanyahu, Schocken Publishing
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