Shalshelet ha-kabbalah (The Chain of Tradition): On Spirits

A versatile Renaissance rabbinic scholar, Gedaliah ben Joseph Ibn Yaḥya was born in Imola, in northern Italy, to a distinguished family of Portuguese Jews. He studied in prominent Italian yeshivas, lived in a number of the peninsula’s cities, and—displaced and dispossessed in 1569 by Pope Pius V’s expulsion of Jews from papal lands—died in Alessandria, in Italy’s Piedmont region. His short treatise “In Praise of Women” belongs to a long-standing literary debate over women’s inherent characteristics. He is best known as the author of Shalshelet ha-kabalah (The Chain of Tradition), which presents a history of the Jews, as well as a general history, and includes an assortment of short scientific tractates. Begun in 1549, Shalshelet ha-kabalah was concluded several decades later, close to Ibn Yaḥya’s death. Most of his other works have been lost.