Isaac Abravanel 1437 – 1508

Don Isaac ben Judah Abravanel was a Portuguese Jewish philosopher, biblical exegete, and statesman whose life spanned the upheavals of the Iberian Jewish communities at the end of the Middle Ages. He served as treasurer to Afonso V of Portugal and to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain before going into exile in 1492 with the rest of the Spanish Jewish community. His commentaries on the Hebrew Bible and on the major medieval Jewish philosophers, together with his treatises on messianism, provided one of the great late medieval Jewish responses to philosophical and political calamity. He died in Venice.