Obadiah Ben Abraham - Literary Activity

Literary Activity

Bertinoro is usually known as the best commentator of the Mishnah; the importance of his commentary is illustrated by the fact that since its appearance (Venice, 1549) hardly an edition of the Mishnah has been printed without it. The commentary is based mainly on Rashi and the Rambam.

Bertinoro is also the author of a supercommentary upon Rashi's Torah commentary (published under the title Amar Neké, Pisa, 1810; reprinted in the collective work Rabbotenu Ba'ale ha-Tosafot, Warsaw, 1889).

Some liturgical productions by Bertinoro exist in manuscript in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (numbers 1061; 2266, 6; in the first the name of his father is mentioned). He also wrote descriptions of his travels; and his letters to his relations in Italy, although intended only as private communications, are of great historical value. Most interesting in these letters (first published by S. Sachs in the Jahrbuch für Geschichte der Juden 1863; 3:195-224) is the fund of information concerning the social and intellectual conditions of the Jews in Greece, Egypt, and Palestine. He shows himself not only a close observer, but a conscientious and unprejudiced chronicler. For example, he studied attentively the conditions of the Karaites in Alexandria, and did not hesitate to praise them for the possession of the very virtues which the Rabbinites denied to them, such as generosity and liberality (l.c. p. 208; the text is to be emended according to the manuscript mentioned in Steinschneider, Hebr. Bibl. vi.131). His description of the Samaritans in Egypt (l.c., pp. 206–208) is one of the most valuable and reliable of medieval times.