Alegre, Abraham ben Solomon

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ALEGRE, ABRAHAM BEN SOLOMON

ALEGRE, ABRAHAM BEN SOLOMON (1560–1652), rabbi and scholar of Constantinople. Ḥayyim *Alfandari in his Maggid me-Reshit records Alegre's controversy on a halakhic issue (responsa 4, 5). His own responsa were published together with those of Jacob Shalem Ashkenazi (Sephardi emissary of Jerusalem), in Salonika in 1793. Alegre is more widely known by the title of his extensive commentary on Maimonides' Sefer ha-Mitzvot, Lev Sameʾaḥ, (Constantinople, 1652), printed in the Israeli edition of the Mishneh Torah (vol. 1, 1962). In this work, which took 40 years to complete, Alegre analyzes the 14 principles defined by Maimonides in the introduction to his Sefer ha-Mitzvot and those on which he based the enumeration and classification of the mitzvot. He particularly justifies Maimonides against the strictures of Naḥmanides on the Sefer ha-Mitzvot. His son-in-law, Levi Teglio, in a foreword to the Lev Sameʾaḥ. states that Alegre wrote a homiletical work and a book of responsa.

bibliography:

Azulai, s.v. Abraham Alegre; Michael, Or, no. 238; Rosanes, Togarmah, 3 (1938), 128; Fuenn, Keneset, 10.

[Abraham Hirsch Rabinowitz]

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Alegre, Abraham ben Solomon

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