Rabbi Yitzchak Arama—Akedat Yitzchak רבי יצחק עראמה — עקדת יצחק
the last great expositor of Spain before the expulsion
Rabbi Yitzchak Arama served as rabbi in Zamora, Tarragona and Calatayud—in the last decades of Spanish Jewry, when one had to preach to communities from which people were leaving for baptism, and answer the sermons of those who urged them to go.
From this his book grew. Akedat Yitzchak is not a verse-by-verse commentary but a hundred and five "gates" by weekly portion: each opens with the analysis of a question, then comes the exposition of the portion, and the question is resolved out of it. Philosophy here serves the Torah and not the other way round—and Arama argues openly with those who, in his phrase, "set Aristotle to judge Moshe".
In 1492 he left with the exiles for Naples and died there two years later. The book was read and quoted by preachers of every community for another four hundred years; Abarbanel, his younger contemporary, knew it closely.
On the timeline
Places
Related
Sources
Rishonim
- Akedat Yitzchak of Rabbi Yitzchak Arama — the structure of the book and his argument with the philosophers
Scholarship
- The standard reference works and encyclopedias — his service in Aragon, the expulsion of 1492, his death in Naples in 1494
Basis: documents and evidence.