Ḥasdai Crescas

This chapter turns to Rabbi Don Ḥasdai Crescas. He was one of the most prominent religious and communal leaders of Aragonese Jewry in the latter part of the fourteenth century. Crescas's many communal activities left him little time for writing, but he was able to produce his philosophic/dogmatic treatise, Or Adonai (Light of the Lord). The Or Adonai was intended to be the first part of a comprehensive philosophic and halakhic work, Ner Elohim. In planning a work which combined both dogmatic and halakhic elements, Crescas adopted the model of Moses Maimonides, who began his halakhic compendium, the Mishneh Torah, with ‘Laws of the Foundations of the Torah’. Crescas's Or Adonai is structured according to its author's dogmatic system. Hence, the chapter shows how Crescas presents what may be called a multi-tiered, hierarchical system of dogma.