Isaac Campantón, el maestro de maestros

Vía Destino Sefarad

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Centro Campantón invites proposals for our 14th International Conference, this year with the theme: Transmission, Recuperation and Conservation of the Jewish Legacy in Spain, Portugal and Ibero America in the 21^st Century.

This year conference will take place from July 1 to 3 at the Colegio Universitario of Zamora, Spain, from 10 to 14hrs.

Suggested subjects, but not limited to:

Emerging Jewish Communities in the 21^st century

Associations/Institutes/Academic Programs/Museums/ Cultural Centers/Hebrew Language

Publications/Press/Media/Social Networks/Influencers

Genealogy and Jewish ancestry

Memory of the Holocaust and fight against antisemitism

Jewish Archeology (Puente Castro, Lorca, Girona, Juliantla, and others)

Tourism (Festivals/Concerts/Routes and others)

Submissions to centrocampanton@gmail.com until June 1^st, and they should include: 250 words summary, name(s) and last names, institutions/association/independent researcher, email and phone number.

Like every year, we will have pre and post conference activities. Please, visit this page to keep updated.

Registration is Free, but Required (click HERE)        

Sponsors 

 

On Isaac Campanton (1360 - 1463)

 

"Against the backdrop of the decline of Torah in the last century of Jewish existence in Spain, a figure of great brilliance stood out--Rabbi Yitzhak Canpanton (1360-1463). Canpanton's hermeneutic was based on the insight that a close inner affinity existed between medieval semantics and Talmudic reasoning and argumentation. Thus, it was possible to achieve a synthesis of the two and formulate a rigorous methodology of Talmudic study both 'fit' with the Talmudic suggiyot themselves--and completely justifiable on the basis of general semantic theory. His revolutionary approach restored to the study of Talmud a sense of intellectual novelty, profoundness, and challenge, unmatched perhaps since the heyday of Tosafist innovation in twelfth-century France. His four major disciples formed a vanguard that 'conquered' the world of Sephardic Talmudic study [the MahaRITaTS, the Maharashdam, Moses Almosnino, the Beth Yoseph]; their own disciples were the great scholars of the sixteenth-century Sephardic dispersion."

Zvi Zohar, Sephardic & Mizrahi Jewry, New York University Press, NY, 2005, Chapter 9, 167

Relevant entries on Zamora in the Jewish Encyclopedia (1906 edition)

 Understanding  medieval Spain and Portugal (Sefarad in the context of Jewish History) requires familiarity with geography, maps and timeline. The map above helps to locate referred populations and historical figures in the two entries of the Jewish Encyclopedia of 1906, which are relevant to Zamora. In the second entry Castile includes León since these two kingdoms were historically connected since the early 11th century

 ***

"In the former Kingdom of León (the presence of Jews) was much larger, among the most prominent communities being those of Zamora, Valladolid, Mayorga, Medina del Campo, Salamanca, Ponferrada, Bobadilla and Ciudad Rodrigo"

Section "The Spread of the Jews in Spain" under Spain entry

***  

"The last Rabinnical authority of Castile (and León), likewise its last Gaon, was Isaac Campanton, among whose pupils were Isaac de León, Isaac Aboab (referring to the II) and Samuel Al Valensi. The last preachers of renown were the religious philosopher Joseph ibn Shem-Tob, Joseph Albo, and Isaac Arama".

Section "The Karaites in Spain" under Spain entry (1)

                          ***                           

The number of immigrants amounted to nearly 100,000. From Castile alone more than 3,000 persons embarked at Benevento for Bragança; at Zamora, more than 30,000 for Miranda; from Ciudad-Rodrigo for Villar, more than 35,000; from Alcantara for Marvão, more than 15,000; and from Badajoz for Elvas, more than 10,000—in all more than 93,000 persons (Bernaldez, in A. de Castro, "Historia de los Judios en España," p. 143).

Section Under John II in Portugal Entry.


                                   *** 
Notas

1- It is not clear why the Encyplopedia authors decided adding this information in this section. Campanton and its pupils were known for applying Torah, Talmud and Kabbalah to interpretations of the Scriptures.

Gedaliah Ibn Yahya on Isaac Campantón

The great rabbi R. Isaac Campanton, known as the Gaon of Castile (including Leon), of Spain, son of the great rabbi R. Jacob, and R. Israel Ashkenazi received the traditions from their fathers and our rabbis of previous generations in about 5120 (1360). R. Isaac Campanton spread Torah widely and had many students. He lived a long life, dying in the year 5223 (1463). He had a regal appearance. R. Isaac de Leon, one of his students, was knowledgeable in miracles, and died at the age of seventy. R. Isaac Aboab (refereeing to the second), a great sage and one of his students, died in Portugal in the year 5253 (1493), about seven months after the exile from Spain. He was sixty years old at his death, and was one of the students of the above-named R. Isaac Campanton (...)

Gedaliah Ibn Yahya (1515-1587)

“The chain of tradition”, included in David Raphael, The Expulsión 1492 Chronicles, Carmi House Press, 1992, pp. 178-79. 

Picture of a drawing by Manuel Castellano (1846-1880). Title: Attire. It is specified in the note on the upper right hand that it refers to Jewish clothing in the 14th century.  

Auschwitz, by León Felipe (Tábara, Zamora, 1884 – Mexico City, 1968)

To all Jews in the world, my friends, my brethren

Those infernal poets,

Dante, Blake, Rimbaud…

keep it quiet…

don’t play so loud…

Shut up!

Any inhabitant of Earth today

knows more about Hell

than those three poets together.

I am sure Dante plays his violin very well

Oh, what a virtuoso!...

But he shouldn’t pretend now,

with his wonderful tercets, 

and his perfect hendecasyllables,

to scare that Jewish boy who has been ripped

from his parents;

he is alone.

Alone!

waiting for his turn

in the crematories of Auschwitz.

Dante… you descended deep into the Inferno

guided by Virgil’s hand 

(Virgil, “Gran Cicerone”),

your Divine Comedy was a funny adventure

of music and tourism.

This is different… something else.

How should I explain it?  

if you don’t have imagination!

You… don’t have any imagination,

remember, in your Inferno

there is not a single boy

and the one you see there…

is alone.

He is alone! With no Cicerone…

waiting for the gates of Hell to open, 

a hell that you, poor Florentine,

could not have even imagined it.

This is different, let me explain. 

Look! This is a place where nobody

can play a violin;

all the violin strings in the world will break here. 

Do you understand that, Infernal Poets?

Virgil, Dante, Blake, Rimbaud…

keep it quite!

Don’t play so loud... Shh!...

Shut up!

I am also a great violinist

and I have played in Hell many times…

But now, here

I break my violin… and remain silent.  

  

Listen to the poem read in Spanish by León Felipe (click here)

Translation into English: Jesús Jambrina

Touchstone, Art & Literature Magazine, Vol. 82

Viterbo University, La Crosse, Wisconsin, USA

León Felipe (Zamora, 1884 – Mexico City, 1968) is considered one of the major poets of the Spanish language in the twentieth century. He was also a playwright, and translator of American writers Walt Whitman and Waldo Frank. He graduated from Pharmacy, which brought him a nomadic life by working in different cities and towns. In 1920 León Felipe published his first poetry book in Madrid, titled The Walker’s Verses and Prayers. Soon after, he traveled to Equatorial Guinea to work at a hospital, and in 1922 he went for the first time to Mexico from where he visited the United States, and Panama. 

In 1936, León Felipe returned to Spain to fight in favor of the Spanish Republic against Francisco Franco’s fascist insurrection. In 1939, after a brief visit to France and Cuba, he returned to Mexico where he lived in exile until his death in 1968. 

León Felipe’s literary style was strongly prophetic with Biblical and Whitmanian influences, meaning a strong humanistic orientation. His writings delve deep into historical thinking as a call for a hopeful and socially just world. Since the arrival of democracy to Spain in 1975, León Felipe’s poetry has been valued as a testimony of the exiles during the Spanish Civil War; many of his poems have been musicalized,  and are greatly appreciated in both sides of the Atlantic as part of the Spanish American literary tradition.

 In 2002, the Zamora City Council in Spain acquired León Felipe’s original manuscripts, including many unpublished works, as the foundation for a future center of studies that will have his name. In 2010 the prestigious Spanish press Visor put in circulation the–so far–most complete collection of his poems. “Auschwitz” is included in the book Oh! This Old and Broken Violin(1965). 

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