Shem-Ṭob b. Abraham

Shem Tov ben Abraham ibn Gaon (1283-ca. 1330) (Hebrew: שם טוב בן אברהם אבן גאון) was a Spanish Talmudist and kabbalist.

Shem-Ṭob was born at Soria, Spain. From his genealogy given in the preface to his Keter Shem-Ṭob, Azulai (Shem ha-Gedolim, ii., s.v. Keter Shem-Ṭob) concluded that "Gaon" must have been the proper name of one of Shem-Ṭob's ancestors. Zunz (in his Zeitschrift für die Wissenschaft des Judenthums, p. 137) and Geiger (Jüd. Zeit. v. 397), however, suppose "Gaon" to be the Hebrew transliteration of "Jaén", indicating that Shem-Ṭob's family originally came from that Spanish city. After he had studied Talmud under Solomon ben Adret and Kabbala under Isaac ben Todros (RIBaṬ, which is the abbreviation, David Conforte declares in his Ḳore ha-Dorot, p. 24b, of "R. Joseph b. Tobiah"), Shem-Ṭob betook himself to Palestine in the hope of finding in the Holy Land a more suitable place for kabbalistic meditation. He sojourned for some time in Jerusalem, and then settled at Safed.

At Safed Shem-Ṭob wrote the following works, of which only the first two have been published:

The Keter-Shem-Ṭob is a supercommentary on and continuation of Nahmanides' commentary (particularly on the kabalistic part) on the Pentateuch, from whose interpretations those of Shem-Ṭob differ in many places. Shem-Ṭob says in his preface that at first he had entitled his work "Sitre Setarim", and that he then revised it and gave it the title "Keter Shem-Ṭob", the work having been completed at Safed in 1315. Isaac ben Samuel of Acre, in his Me'irat 'Enayim, violently attacks the Keter Shem-Ṭob, saying that most of the author's theories are not those of the older cabalists, but are simply his own inventions. This work is printed at the end of Judah Koriat's Ma'or wa-Shemesh (Leghorn, 1839), where it is entitled Perush Sodot ha-Torah; and the preface has been published in Jehiel Ashkenazi's Hekal Adonai (Venice, n.d.) under the title Perush Liḳḳuṭim.

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