Nachmanides

(Rabbi Moses ben-Nachman, known as Ramban)

(1194–1270)

   Spanish rabbi and scholar, Nachmanides, whose Spanish name was Bonastrug da Porta, directed a rabbinical academy in his home town of Gerona and may have been chief rabbi of Catalonia from 1264. He became recognized as the leader of Spanish Jewry and the outstanding Jewish scholar of his day. In 1263, on the command of King James I of Aragon, Nachmanides participated in a public debate in Barcelona on the merits of Judaism and Christianity. The only Jew opposing a group of 250 Christians, Nachmanides defended his thesis so well that the king declared him the victor and presented him with a prize of 300 dinars. Urged to do so by the bishop of Gerona, Nachmanides summed up his arguments in a book, Sefer ha-Vikuach (The Book of the Debate’). Yet the Dominican friars who had organized the dispute brought Nachmanides to trial for blasphemy. His right to free speech in the disputation was upheld by the king, so the angry Dominicans turned to the pope. When the latter directed the king to punish Nachmanides, the Jewish scholar fled to Palestine, arriving at the port of Acre in the summer of 1267. Here too his spiritual authority was acknowledged. His place of burial is unknown. About fifty of his many works are still extant, and show his great talmudic learning, his knowledge of the newly emerging mystical science (the Cabbala) and his grasp of general sciences. His writings on the interpretation of the Torah and on the Cabbala strongly influenced succeeding scholars and Cabbalists.