Ben-Joseph Todros Ha-Levi Abulafia
Ben-Joseph Todros Ha-Levi Abulafia [1]
a celebrated Cabalist, was born in 1234 at Toledo, and died about 1305. He occupied a high position as physician and financier in the court of Sancho IV, king of Castile, and was a great favorite of queen Maria de Molina. When this royal pair met Philip IV, the Fair, king of France, in Bayonne (1290), he formed one of the cortege; and his advocacy of his theosophy secured for the doctrines of the Cabala a kindly reception from the French Jews. His writings on the Cabala are, An Exposition of the Talmudic Hagadoth, entitled הכבוד אוצר : — A Commentary On Psalms 119 : — A Commentary on the Pentateuch, in which he propounds the tenets of the Cabala. These works, however, have not yet been published. See Gr Ä tz, Gesch. d. Juden, 7:204 sq.; Steinschneider, Catal. Libr. Hebr. in Bibl. Bodl. 26772680; De'Rossi, Dizionario Storico, p. 315 (Germ. transl.); Ginsburg, The Kabbalah, p. 111; First, Bibl. Jud. 3, 428. (B. P.)
