Pirkei Avot - Ethics of the Fathers [Jewish Ethical]

Pirkei Avot

Ethics of the Fathers [Jewish Ethical]

Rabbeinu Yonah Gerondi

Jonah son of Avraham the Gironan, also known as Jonah of Girona and Rabbeinu Yonah רבינו יונה was a Catalan rabbi and moralist, cousin of Nahmanides. He is most famous for his ethical work The Gates of Repentance and interpretation on Pirkei Avot- The Ethics of our Fathers.

Much of what is known about his life comes from a responsum by Solomon ben Simon Duran, one of his descendants.

Rabbeinu Jonah Gerondi Z"L came from Girona, in Catalonia (present-day Spain). He was the most prominent pupil of Solomon ben Avraham of Montpellier, the leader of the opponents of Maimonides' philosophical works, and was one of the signers of the ban proclaimed in 1233 against The Guide for the Perplexed and the Sefer ha-Madda.

According to his pupil, Hillel ben Samuel, Gerondi was the instigator of the public burning of Maimonides writings by order of the authorities at Paris in 1233, and the indignation which this aroused among all classes of Jews was mainly directed against him. Subsequently, not forty days afterward, as a tradition has it, but in 1242 when twenty-four wagon-loads of Talmuds were burned at the same place where the philosophical writings of Maimonides had been destroyed, Rabbeinu Yonah saw the folly and danger of appealing to Christian ecclesiastical authorities on questions of Jewish doctrine, and publicly admitted in the synagogue of Montpellier that he had been wrong in all his acts against the works and fame of Maimonides.

As an act of repentance, he vowed to travel to Israel and prostrate himself on Maimonides' grave and implore his pardon in the presence of ten men for seven consecutive days. He left France with that intention, but was detained, first in Barcelona and later in Toledo. He remained in Toledo, and became one of the great Talmudical teachers of his time. In all his lectures he made a point of quoting from Maimonides, always mentioning his name with great reverence. Rabbeinu Yonah's sudden death from a rare disease was considered by many as a penalty for not having carried out the plan of his journey to the grave of Maimonides. However, some believe this was only a myth created by the followers of Maimonides. He died in Toledo in the Kingdom of Castile in November 1263. The text of his tombstone was later transcribed by Samuel David Luzzatto, with the month and possibly the day of his death being readable.