Rabbi Sadyah Ibn Danan: In Defense Of The Converso Jew

Rabbi Sadyah ben Maimon ibn Danan was born in Granada, Spain in the middle of the 15th century and lived there until 1492 when the Jews were expelled. He relocated to Algeria where he spent the remainder of his life.

Rabbi Sadyah ibn Danan was a noted Talmudist, liturgist, grammarian, and historian. Among his works are Maamar al Seder ha-Doros, an important work which contains a historical overview of the Jewish people from Adam ha-Rishon until the lifetime of the Rambam. This work was first published by Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Edelman in Chemdah Genuzah in 1856. There is also a work on Hebrew grammar that was originally written in Arabic, but partially translated into Hebrew by Rabbi Sadyah himself upon his students’ request, as well as a commentary on Sefer Yeshaya.

Rabbi Sadyah ibn Danan followed in the footsteps of the Rambam and took a more lenient position regarding the status of converso Jews. In a responsum printed in Chemdah Genuzah, he writes as follows:

“Finally, there is no wise man among the sages of Israel who calls the Conversos as gentiles or wicked people because their crime was forced onto them and even those who may have lifted the yoke of Torah off their necks of their own free will and desire were not called goyim gamurim.” 

The bottom line is that no scholar among the scholars of Israel considers the “generations of forced conversion” complete gentiles and evildoers because their sins were originally committed in a state of coercion. Even the apostates who violated and rejected the yoke of Torah from upon their necks by choice should not be considered complete gentiles.

Rabbi Sadyah ibn Danan was the first writer to compare Hebrew meter with its Arabic counterpart. n

Nosson Wiggins (@jewishhistorysheimhagedolim) is the author of two books on the subject of Jewish history, “The Tannaim & Amoraim” and “The Rishonim” (Judaica Press). He researches Jewish History at the Klau Library, HUC-JIR in his hometown of Cincinnati and leads tours of Klau’s Rare Book Room. He is a passionate enthusiast of Jewish history and when he’s not in the hospital working as a nurse, he can be found researching and writing posts for his Substack, “Jewish History—Sheim Hagedolim.”