Don Isaac Abravanel: Statesman and Philosopher Book

This book really is two books in one. The first half is a biography of Abravenel, who was exiled from Portugal to Spain to Italy, and was a financier and adviser to kings in all three places. The second half focuses on Abravenel's Torah scholarship. I learned something from both of them.

In the first half, Netanyahu suggests that the oppression of Jews was not solely a matter of clerical fanaticism. The rising middle class saw the Jews as competitors, and the king saw that he could gain their support and get lots of short term wealth by confiscating their property; Netanyahu sees their Christian piety as a scam designed to hide their economic interests.

In the second half, Netanyahu discussed Abravenel's philosophy and theology. He suggests that Abravenel was far more important in the centuries after his death than he is today; his willingness to discuss Christian commentators and his detailed rebuttal of Christian faith claims caused him to get lots of attention from Christian commentators (especially Protestants inspired by his interest in messianism). And because Abravenel creatively interpreted the Book of Daniel to suggest that the Messiah was coming soon, he may have inspired Jewish messianists of the 16th and 17th century.

On the other hand, Abravenel was not at all a rationalist: he assumed the literal truth of the Hebrew Bible, rather than trying to explain its miracles as natural phenomena. Like the medieval scholastics, his reasoning was limited by restricted dogma. Thus, he isn't really as influential today. More liberal Jews ignore him because he's not so relevant to a post-Enlightenment world, and haredim prefer Rashi, who was pithier and less interested in philosophy.

One other reason Abravenel is less relevant today is that, like medieval Christians, he doesn't really believe in human progress. While some Jews believe the story of history is that of the Ascent of Man, he believes in the Fall of Man- not in one fell swoop (unlike Christian believers in Original Sin) but gradually, as man went from the spirituality of Adam to being "corrupted by the pursuit of the artificial." For example, Abravenel explains the Tower of Babel story as an out growth of this: when people used natural things, they had the same name for everything. But the more they invented, more confusion they created as each family gave new objects a different name.

Abravenel also wrote about politics; while other Jewish thinkers thought the Torah commanded monarchy, Abravenel viewed the ideal government as a Sanhedrin, a theocratic government of the best (who of course would be clerics as well, since in the Middle Ages the most learned people in arts and sciences were clergy). Abravenel's hostility to monarchy may have arisen from personal experience; he probably would have been executed by the king of Portgual had he not fled to Spain, and was then exiled by the kingof Spain for refusing to convert to Christianity. On the other hand he opposed rebellion against kings, because the first Biblical kings were appointed by prophets and thus ruled by Divine right.