About This Text

Author: Ra'avad

Composed: Provence, France, c.1135 – c.1195 CE

Katuv Sham (“It Is Written There”) is a work composed by Rabbi Abraham ben David of Posquières, known as the Ra’avad III, in 12th-century Provence, France. In this book, he defends the Rif (Rabbi Isaac Alfasi) against the critiques of the author of Sefer HaMaor. Rabbi Abraham served as the head of the yeshiva in the city of Posquières in Provence and was both a Talmud commentator and a kabbalist. He is especially famous for his Hasagot (critical glosses) on the Mishneh Torah, in which he challenges many of Maimonides’ legal rulings, at times in particularly sharp language. The Ra’avad himself authored several critiques of the Rif’s rulings, but in those works he expressed his disagreements with exceptional restraint, out of the profound respect he held for the Rif. He tended to criticize the dialectical pilpul of the Tosafists and what he viewed as the excessive innovativeness of scholars such as the author of Sefer HaMaor, preferring the received interpretive tradition over their approaches.

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