Adret, Solomon ben-Abraham (Rashba)

(c. 1235–1310)

   Spanish rabbi and scholar. Adret studied under Rabbi Moses NAHMANIDES, and after some years of business activity was appointed rabbi of his native city, Barcelona, a post he held for forty years. He was known as Rashba from the initials of his name in Hebrew, Rabbi Shlomo ben-Abraham. He was regarded as the foremost Jewish scholar and personality in Spain, respected by the secular authorities and esteemed by the royal House of Aragon. His opinions were sought from all over the Jewish world. As well as over three thousand replies to Jewish communities seeking his advice, Adret wrote a number of manuals on such subjects as ceremonial law to be observed in the home, commentaries on talmudic tractates, a book dealing with the laws of the Sabbath, and a polemic against Islam. Adret is mentioned regularly in the secular archives of the Kingdom of Aragon from 1263. Like many Spanish Jewish scholars of his day, he was a wealthy financier who made loans to non-Jews and occasionally to the royal treasury. The notes in the archives refer to such loans, and sometimes also allude to his conducting the defence of Jews in the civil courts, which indicates that he was fluent in Latin and well-versed in secular as well as Jewish law. Adret was also a student of the Cabbala (Jewish mysticism), but opposed to the ecstatic type of mysticism, and in this respect severely condemned Abraham ABULAFIA and his ‘prophetic Cabbalism’.

   Such a widely recognized scholar could hardly escape being embroiled in the chief Jewish controversy of the time, the dispute over the philosophic works of MAIMONIDES. Adret came to the latter’s defence after 1280 when a group of European rabbis attempted to ban his works. Finally, however, he agreed to a cherem (‘ban’) being placed on the study before the age of twenty-five of ‘Greek’ works of science and metaphysics (except medicine). In effect, philosophy should not be begun until after a thorough study of the Torah and Talmud. In Adret’s time, the traditional prestige in the community of learning was being challenged by an emerging class of rich and aristocratic Spanish Jews. The form of communal leadership Adret favoured was a scholarly autocracy, with leaders chosen from members of the old families who were both wealthy and pious.