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Polemical work on the baleful influence of philosophy and its deleterious effect on Spanish Jewry by R. Joseph ben Hayyim Jabez. The title page has a decorative border and states that the author has “Girded his loins like a mighty man” (cf. Job 38:3) to fight the wars of the Lord against the philosophers in their books, heretical works, “lying vanities” (Jonah 2:9, Psalms 31:7), to lead astray our people from the holy Torah and the mitzvot told to Moses at Sinai, in writing and orally, and the words of our rabbis. It notes that Or ha-Hayyim was printed previously in 1597 but that edition is not readable due to its disorder (many errors) besides which it is not to be found. Therefore for the public good, that they should not fall into the traps of those sinners, this work is being reprinted in a well edited edition. The verso of the title page has an approbation from R. Saul Löwenstam of the Ashkenaz community.
R. Joseph ben Hayyim Jabez (d. 1507) Hebrew homilist and exegete appears, from the prefaces to some of his works, to have traveled after the expulsion from Spain in 1492, to Lisbon, to Sicily, and then to northern Italy, after a brief stay in Naples, arriving in 1493 or 1494 in Mantua, one of the largest and most cultured Italian-Jewish communities. There he remained and was honorably accepted as part of that community, apparently as its official preacher. Both in his travels and in Mantua, he preached about the meaning of the catastrophe that had befallen Spanish Jewry. Among his published works, in addition to Or ha-Hayyim, most of which were written after the expulsion, are three other theological-homiletic compositions, which treat three main questions: Hasdei ha-Shem (Constantinople, 1533), on the Diaspora and messianic expectations; and two short treatises (published with the first edition of Or ha-Hayyim), Ma’amar ha-Ahdut (Ferrara, 1554) and Yesod ha-Emunah (appended to Ma’amar ha-Ahdut), on the ikkarim, the dogmas of Judaism. In asserting that philosophical rationalism was to blame for the choice by so many Spanish Jews of conversion rather than exile and suffering, he expressed the feeling of many of his contemporaries. Jabez - who hated philosophy - maintained that the philosophical intellectuals did not consider the observance of the commandments as the most important aspect of religious life, and therefore were not prepared to sacrifice themselves for that observance. He did not attack Maimonides directly, but accused Maimonides' pupils and followers of distorting his views and thus of bringing the religious catastrophe upon Spanish Jewry. Besides theological works, all he also wrote a commentary on the tractate Avot, on Psalms, and many other works still in manuscript. |
