ZERAHIAH BEN ISAAC HA-LEVI
- ZERAHIAH BEN ISAAC HA-LEVI
- ZERAHIAH BEN ISAAC HA-LEVI (known as Ferrarius
Saladi; late 14th–early 15th century), rabbi
of Saragossa and of all the communities of Aragon. A disciple of
Ḥasdai Crescas , he distinguished himself as a talmudist,
preacher, physician, and translator, and was one of the leading Jewish
participants in the disputation of tortosa . During his teacher's
lifetime Zerahiah had already begun in his sermons to attack the
rationalists who disagreed with R. Ḥasdai. While in Tortosa, he preached
to the Jewish disputants in the synagogue. There is an account of this
by Solomon ibn Verga: "The opening of his sermon was: 'the similar into
the similar is healthy as is the opposite into the opposite' (a saying
of Aristotelian origin), on which he delivered an excellent commentary
(probably strongly anti-Christian) which can only be understood if
heard directly. He completed his sermon with a prayer and supplication"
(Shevet Yehudah, ed. by A. Shoḥat (1947), 97). During the
disputation Zerahiah proved one of the most systematic, incisive, and
trenchant of the debators. His comprehensive disquisitions there have
been preserved in the Latin protocol of the disputation. This records
that on March 16, 1414, Zerahiah presented the conclusions of the Jews
on the dogmatic validity of the aggadot in which he concluded
that the principles of the religion (articuli legis) come to
the believer by way of faith and tradition alone and do not require any
proof, whereas Scripture, as well as the teachings of the Talmud, have
to be explained according to these principles; the Christians had also
adopted this method. For the Jew, anticipation of the Messiah remains
one of the fundamentals of his faith so long as the Jews continue in
exile and without a king, and so long as many other conditions have not
been fulfilled. Through this methodical and dogmatic approach,
structured according to the system of Thomas Aquinas on the subject of
the principles of faith, Zerahiah tried to remove the christological
interpretation of talmudic aggadot from the Christian armory
and to exclude the messianic principle of faith from the discussion.
-BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Baer, Spain, index; A. Pacios Lopez, La disputa de Tortosa, 2
(1957), index; He-Ḥalutz, 7 (1865), 96–101, 118–9.
(Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson)
Encyclopedia Judaica.
1971.
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