Torah commentary, Kabbalah and thought
His commentary on the Torah, Tzror HaMor, joins plain sense, homiletics and Kabbalah in a single exposition. It is also a personal testimony to the Expulsion from Spain and the forced conversion in Portugal: in the portion Vayetze Saba recounts his hardships in the booklet Tiferet Banim.
A rabbi, kabbalist and commentator of the generation of the Expulsion from Spain, born in Castile and a disciple of Rabbi Yitzchak de Leon. In the decrees of forced conversion in Portugal in 1497 his two children were seized and baptised, and he himself was imprisoned and tortured and escaped to Fez in Morocco. He buried his books in Portugal and rewrote them from memory, among them Tzror HaMor on the Torah and Eshkol HaKofer on Ruth and Esther; he died on his way to Italy in 1508.
The writings of Abraham Saba can be read on Sefaria, a free library of Jewish texts. A title opens the text itself.
Content from Sefaria (sefaria.org) and Wikimedia projects, non-profit projects.
The archive doesn’t yet record Rabbi Avraham Saba’s teachers, so the road to Sinai can’t be drawn yet.