Background
Hasdai Ben Abraham Crescas was born in about 1340 in Barcelona, Spain.
Hasdai Ben Abraham Crescas was born in about 1340 in Barcelona, Spain.
When Hasdai Ben Abraham Crescas was twenty-seven, he was imprisoned together with his teacher, Rabbi Nissim Gerondi, and other colleagues on a false charge of desecrating the host, but they remained steadfast and were eventually vindicated and released. Most of his colleagues then moved away from the city, leaving Crescas as the outstanding scholar in Barcelona. He was soon regarded as a leader of all Spanish Jewry and frequently intervened at court on behalf of his fellow-Jews.
In 1389 he moved to Saragossa, where he served as rabbi. The following year, he was appointed by the queen of Aragon as judge of cases of Jewish informers throughout the kingdom, with authority to impose even capital punishment. This was a unique example of the appointment of a Jewish official with nationwide jurisdiction. In the document of his appointment he was described as superior to all other Jews of the kingdom “not only in knowledge of the Mosaic law but in his power of reasoning.”
In 1391, thousands of Spanish Jews were killed in mob massacres, and one of the victims in Barcelona was Crescas’s only son. A letter from the queen asking the authorities to protect members of the Crescas family arrived too late. Hasdai Crescas himself became the focus of all attempts to rescue and restore the broken Jewish communities. The king and queen, who were interested in the rehabilitation of the Jewish communities, backed him in his work, which he executed with energy, dedication, and wisdom. He issued a series of regulations that, although modified by the queen, set the tone for the restructuring of Jewish life.
Crescas also wrote a polemical anti-Christian work in Catalan.
Hasdai Ben Abraham Crescas refused to base Judaism on speculative philosophy alone; there was a deep emotional side to his thought. Thus he based Judaism on love, not on knowledge; love was the bond between God and man, and man's fundamental duty was love as expressed in obedience to God's will.
Crescas’ major philosophical work is "Or Adonai" (“Light of the Lord”), a critique of Aristotelianism especially as represented in Jewish thought by Moses Maimonides. His aim was to replace external influences by internal Jewish sources and understandings. He starts with the three roots of the Torah: (1) God’s existence, (2) God’s unity, and (3) God’s incorporeality.
Then follow six fundamental dogmas: (1) God’s omniscience, (2) His providence, (3) His omnipotence, (4) prophecy, (5) human choice, and (6) the purposefulness of the Law.
To these he adds beliefs which are obligatory but not fundamental, the denial of which would not constitute heresy: God’s creation of the world ex nihilo; the immortality of the soul; reward and punishment (corporeal and spiritual); resurrection of the dead (for the elect); the eternity of the Torah; the superiority of Moses over other prophets; the high priest’s oracular powers based on the Urim and Thummin; the coming of the Messiah; the efficacy of prayer and of repentance; and the special nature of the Jewish holidays.