Joseph ibn Abitur was a Spanish

rabbi A rabbi () is a spiritual leader or religious teacher in Judaism. One becomes a rabbi by being ordained by another rabbi – known as ''semikha'' – following a course of study of Jewish history and texts such as the Talmud. The basic form of ...

of around the 10th century. He was a student of

Moses ben Hanoch Moses ben Hanoch or Moses ben Enoch (in he, משה בן חנוך, ''Moshe ben Hanoch'') was a medieval rabbi who inadvertently became the preeminent Talmudic scholar of Spain. He died about 965. Moses was one of the four scholars who went from S ...

. Abitur was from a very prestigious Spanish family from the city of Mérida. His great great grandfather was a communal and Rabbinic leader. Besides being a great

Torah The Torah (; hbo, ''Tōrā'', "Instruction", "Teaching" or "Law") is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. In that sense, Torah means the ...

scholar, Abitur was also a paytan of note. He also wrote a commentary on

the Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

. When Moses ben Hanoch's son Hanoch was chosen to succeed his father, Abitur felt compelled to leave Spain and travel to the

Yeshiva A yeshiva (; he, ישיבה, , sitting; pl. , or ) is a traditional Jewish educational institution focused on the study of Rabbinic literature, primarily the Talmud and halacha (Jewish law), while Torah and Jewish philosophy are st ...

s in Babel. On his way he stopped in

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medit ...

before arriving in

Baghdad Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon. I ...

. He eventually went to Damascus, where he died. He wrote many

Teshuva Repentance ( he, תשובה, literally, "return", pronounced ''tshuva'' or ''teshuva'') is one element of atoning for sin in Judaism. Judaism recognizes that everybody sins on occasion, but that people can stop or minimize those occasions in th ...

s, some of which are extant. According to the history book

Sefer ha-Qabbalah ''Sefer ha-Qabbalah'' (Hebrew: ספר הקבלה, "Book of Tradition") was a book written by Abraham ibn Daud around 1160–1161. The book is a response to Karaitic attacks against the historical legitimacy of Rabbinic Judaism, and contains, amon ...

, during his stay in Egypt, Ibn Abitur produced an

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

translation of the

Talmud The Talmud (; he, , Talmūḏ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law ('' halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the ce ...

for the

Fatimid The Fatimid Caliphate was an Ismaili Shi'a caliphate extant from the tenth to the twelfth centuries AD. Spanning a large area of North Africa, it ranged from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Red Sea in the east. The Fatimids, a dyna ...

Caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Llah. Most of Ibn Abitur's poems remain unpublished. In 2021, Dr. Yehoshua Granat published a monograph on Psalms and the poetry of Ibn Abitur, which includes an edition of 34 poetic compositions by Ibn Abitur, some of them massive works of hundreds of lines. Even this just begins to scratch the surface of publishing Ibn Abitur's poems, which number over a thousand.Yehoshua Granat, ''Psalms Recalled: Scriptural Psalms in the Liturgical Poetry of Yoseph Ibn Abitur'' (Hebrew: אזכרה מזמור: מזמורי תהילים בפיוטי יוסף אבן אביתור), Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2021.

References

Sources

{{DEFAULTSORT:Abitur, Joseph Ibn Year of birth unknown Year of death unknown Bible commentators Jewish poets 10th-century rabbis of Al-Andalus 11th-century rabbis of Al-Andalus People from Mérida, Spain