Talk:Isaac Abarbanel

Curse
I have removed:
 * His scathing letter to the crown became the source of the Jewish curse against Spain, forbidding Jews to even set foot on Spanish soil until Franco abolished the Inquisition.

Jews were forbidden by Spanish law. It was repelled somewhen in the 19th century. The Inquisition had no jurisdiction on Jews but on Judaizants. --Error 23:30, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

There is no such word as Judaizants. Tomer TALK 23:35, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)


 * I meant false Conversos. It seems that Judaizers is not exactly the word either. --Error 00:06, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * I was pretty sure I knew what you meant already. :-p Tomer TALK  00:17, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)

The part about Franco is incorrect and is the only part that should have been removed. Consequently, I'm putting the rest of it back in. Tomer TALK 23:35, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)
 * Actually, I see that it hasn't been removed. As for Franco's rôle, there are more posqim who regard the abolition of the Inquisition (in 1834, not earlier by Napoléon) as the end of the curse against Spain, than who date it to Franco's repeal of laws that didn't grant Jews in Spain full citizenship rights.  Tomer TALK  23:44, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)


 * Wasn't Miguel Primo de Rivera or even earlier 19th century governments who offered citizenship to Sephardim? --Error 00:06, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * This is muddy in my mind. I'm researching it even now, and will return soon, hopefully, with some useful information.  I'm not sure how much of it will be germane to this article, most of it will probably more properly belong in Jews in Spain.  Tomer TALK  00:17, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)

Sources on this subject
from http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=992&letter=S&search=Spain (1906):

This info bears sifting thru as well: http://wais.stanford.edu/Spain/spain_sephardicjewsunderfranco112302.html

Tomer TALK 00:29, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)

Commentary on sources
So...it appears the edict was repealed in 1858, 24 years after the abolition of the Inquisition in Spain. (Keep in mind, that quotation above is from 1906.) Franco, for whatever reason, or set of reasons, set about to reëstablish a functional Jewish presence in Spain, about a century after the abolition of the Inquisition, somewhat more successfully it would appear, than General Prim and H. Guedalla's efforts, as there are presently over 10k Jews in Spain.

Do you have a proposal for how to include this info into the article? Error? Anyone? It strikes me that some of it should be included in Jews in Spain as I said earlier, since it seems that that article implies there were no more Jews in Spain after the Expulsion. Tomer TALK 00:34, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)

Link suggestions
An automated Wikipedia link suggester has some possible wiki link suggestions for the Isaac_Abrabanel article, and they have been placed in a handy list for your convenience. &mdash; 203.134.197.133 23:15, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: moved as requested, per the discussion below. Dekimasu よ! 04:22, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Isaac Abrabanel → Isaac Abravanel – Abravanel (and even Abarbanel) are far more widely used and recognized spellings of the subject's last name. Rxtreme (talk) 06:22, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

The Jewish Encyclopedia and Columbia Encyclopedia both have Abravanel, as does the title of historian Benzion Netanyahu's biography. A Google search for "Isaac Abravanel" returns 141,000 results vs. 48,000 for Abarbanel and 38,000 for Abrabanel. Google Ngram results have 25.8%, 2.8% and 5.3% respectively (scaled for readability), as of 2000. Additionally, other Wikipedia pages (including the Spanish Inquisition page) link to this one with the name Abravanel. Rxtreme (talk) 06:22, 4 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Support I think it likely that the current English presentation may indicate a crass ignorance of Hebrew pronunciation to any Hebrew speaker. In the case of any borderline decision I think we should go with the root language renditions.  Gregkaye  ✍ ♪  05:34, 6 December 2014 (UTC)
 * This was merged the other way previously, so the histories should be flipped if this move takes place. Dekimasu よ! 17:27, 10 December 2014 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Abarbanel
I think mention should be made of the pronunciation/spelling "Abarbanel" esp. since that is the universal (I think) traditional pronunciation among Jews. Additionally, there is scholarly support for this pronunciation. This is from a paper by Dr. Sid Leiman:

Although modern scholarship (via GRAETZ and BAER) has adopted the spelling Abravanel, the traditional pronunciation and spelling, Abarbanel, has been preferred throughout this discussion. Cf. B. NETANYAHU, Don Isaac Abravanel (Philadelphia, 1953), appendix A, p. 261, who admits that Don Isaac's son Judah "seems to have insisted on the form Abarbanel".

See here: http://leimanlibrary.com/texts_of_publications/2.%20Abarbanel%20and%20the%20Censor.pdf (page 1 note 1) where he adduces more support for this pronunciation. I will further point out that on the article page itself there is an image of a title page of a book from 1642 that spells his name "ABARBANEL" in Latin characters. MosheEmes (talk) 15:48, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Brion Davis quote
I don't fully understand/know how to edit pages properly. So, I am posting this here to see if someone else wants to take it. The page falsely claims that Brion Davis wrote that Abravanel was responsible for underpinning ideas of Black Slavery. 1. There is a wealth of information that Islamic theologians in the 7th century originated those ideas. 2. I looked up the alleged source for the claim on the page. Page 55 of Inhuman Bondage by Brion Davis is the source. But, he doesn't say Abravanel was responsible, he says Aristotle was responsible. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.170.193.176 (talk) 01:39, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Here is the text of the quote: "It is significant that Aristotle’s theory of slavery formed the framework for the momentous debate in Spain, in 1550–51, between Juan Ginés Sepúlveda and Bartolomé de Las Casas, on whether American Indians had been created to be natural slaves (with Las Casas attacking that conclusion but not Aristotle’s basic premises). Fifty-two years earlier, the great Jewish philosopher and statesman Isaac ben Abravanel, having seen many black slaves both in his native Portugal and in Spain, merged Aristotle’s theory of natural slaves with the belief that the biblical Noah had cursed and condemned to slavery both his son Ham and his young grandson Canaan. Abravanel concluded that the servitude of animalistic black Africans should be perpetual.[24] And while it would be absurd to blame Aristotle for all the uses to which his writings have been put, he did eventually provide the conceptual basis for much nineteenth-century Southern proslavery ideology and scientific theories of racial inferiority." I will now try to look and see if the article reflects this accurately... Ar2332 (talk) 14:08, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

I also find this questionable. Although I've read one of Davis' works and he does seem to believe that Abarbanel references a curse on Ham and his black descendants, in Black and Slave: The Origins And History of the Curse Of Ham Goldenberg concludes that Abarbanel is drawing a comparison between the Jew as perpetual slave and forms of perpetual slavery in Judaism and among his Muslim contemporaries, not lending his support to the notion. On page 114 he says "Even if Abarbanel believed that Kushite enslavement derived from Noah's curse, there is no indication he believed blackness to be part of the Curse." Moreover he says elsewhere that there is no reference anywhere in rabbinic literature to Ham having been directly cursed instead of or in addition to Canaan with respect to slavery. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.122.119.215 (talk) 22:01, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

Assesment of his works
The section "Assessment of his works" was apparently written by a two year old. 16:27, 28 July 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2604:2000:9085:B800:9C49:859F:BC09:FED9 (talk)

Requested move 5 April 2017

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: Moved &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:31, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

Isaac Abravanel → Isaac Abarbanel – Sid Leiman's article (see above) marshals impressive proofs that this is the correct pronunciation. Additionally, in all Orthodox circles this is the comon pronunciation. Abravanel is an invention of Academia. Zeke921 (talk) 18:16, 5 April 2017 (UTC) --Relisting. TonyBallioni (talk) 16:15, 14 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Support as nominated. Debresser (talk) 22:52, 6 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Note, it is the spelling (written word), not pronunciation (spoken word) that matters. I presume that was the intention - Nabla (talk) 10:55, 8 April 2017 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Reply to question at my talkpage
From User_talk:Gråbergs_Gråa_Sång:

"Benjamin Ashburn suggested I write. Why did you choose to use that photo of the Abarbanel gravestone. The photo I sent was clearer. And why not say an Abarbanel descendant took the photo and notified us that his gravesite was no longer unknown. Abarbaneledit (talk) 02:47, 20 February 2023 (UTC)"

@Abarbaneledit, I'll reply here since the article talkpage is generally the (first) place to discuss article issues. I don't know who Benjamin Ashburn is.

On the image, what is "best" is often subjective and reasonable people can disagree. The pic you uploaded is higher resolution, this is clear. What I prefer about the current one is that there are no people which clutters the picture, and IMO the surroundings in the current picture make it more clear that this is at a cemetery, which I consider a plus. Fwiw, he-WP use the same picture.

My understanding of the discussion at Help_desk/Archives/2022_December_8 is that despite this marker, Abarbanel's gravesite is indeed unknown, the marker says so. If there are published WP:RS that says otherwise, I haven't seen them. There is generally no need to write in a WP-article who took a particular photo, and how can WP-editors know that "an Abarbanel descendant took the photo and notified us that his gravesite was no longer unknown."?

Ping to @Lemonaka, @Cullen328 and @Wasell, if you wish to comment. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:22, 20 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Photo of the gravemarker.jpg Abarbaneledit (talk) 18:57, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
 * See the photo i just uploaded. Benjamin Ashburn wrote me from wikipedia.
 * Wikipedia Volunteer Response Team
 * Sun, Feb 19, 5:30 PM (17 hours ago)
 * Dear Alice Abarbanel,
 * Footnote 7 does cite to your picture. I'm not sure why the other editor chose to have a different image displayed in the article; you could ask him, if you wish: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Gr%C3%A5bergs_Gr%C3%A5a_S%C3%A5ng
 * Yours sincerely,
 * Benjamin Ashburn Abarbaneledit (talk) 19:06, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I see. Doesn't matter (who Benjamin Ashburn is). In my view, the current image is still preferable. The surroundings, and the new one has an odd "tilt". I'll see if I can get some more opinions this way. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:19, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Tried: Help_desk. We'll see what happens. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:26, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I concur with opinion. The original picture is better than the other two, in my view too. Thank you, warshy (¥¥)  20:44, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree with the above two, barely. There is a bit of a contrast issue. Honestly, the image is not very important, more the text on the gravestone. So I don't really care. Sungodtemple (talk &#8226; contribs) 22:50, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The greyer photo is more respectful. The yellower photos are easier to read; but the greyer is also easy to read if you click on it to get a larger version. I have a mild preference for the greyer photo. Maproom (talk) 23:19, 20 February 2023 (UTC)


 * The text may be slightly easier to read from the yellowy images. As I can't read the Hebrew alphabet (let alone Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino, etc), I can't judge with complete confidence; however, what's written in the Roman lettering is easy to read from the greyish image, so I'd be surprised if the Hebrew lettering weren't easy to read as well. The greyish image has more atmosphere to it than does either of the others. Its wider angle of view and lower contrast help. (I think that its contrast is a little too low, and I'm tempted to use GIMP to increase it slightly. But as doing so would unnecessarily complicate this discussion, I refrain.) -- Hoary (talk) 07:18, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

‎Maʿyānei haYəshuʿāh
In the transliteration‎ "Maʿyānei haYəshuʿāh", the first word seems quite wrong, and should be corrected in accordance with Isa. 12:3. This inconsistency is particularly glaring, given that an academic rather than popular transliteration style has been employed. Toddcs (talk) 13:10, 14 April 2024 (UTC)