Meir Crescas

Meir ben Netanel Crescas was a Sephardic merchant who brought the responsa of Simeon bar Tsemaḥ Duran (1361–1444) to press in the 1730s. Crescas grew up in Algiers in a scholarly family, and several of his relatives are documented as poets, kabbalists, and rabbinic authorities. The family name Crescas (derived from the Romance crescans, used as an equivalent of the Hebrew name Tsemaḥ, meaning “plant”) testifies to their origins in Catalonia or Provence. After working in Mediterranean maritime trade, he decided in the early 1730s to bring a manuscript of Duran’s responsa to be printed, and spent the next decade traveling throughout the Mediterranean and northern Europe in pursuit of that goal. Sefer ha-tashbets was finally printed in Amsterdam in 1739. In the introduction, Crescas describes his journeys from North Africa to Europe raising money in support of his project; whether he ever returned to Algeria is unknown.