Iggeres Haramban

If one had to make a short list of the greatest of the classic medieval commentators, Ramban, or Nachmanides, would be near the top of the list. Rav Moshe ben Nachman was born in Spain in 1194/4934, and was the crown of that country’s golden age of Jewish scholarship for his whole lifetime, until he was forced into exile because of his spirited and intellectually successful battle against the strenuous efforts of the Catholic Church to convert Spain’s Jews.

He spent the last years of his enormously productive life writing his monumental commentary on the Chumash, beginning it in Spain and completing it in Eretz Yisrael. Another gem of those final years was Iggeres HaRamban, the letter in which Ramban set forth eloquently and pithily the ethical principles by which his son should conduct himself. Just as Ramban’s voluminous works have made us all his students, so his Letter has made us all his children. Through the centuries, countless Jews have made it their practice to study Iggeres HaRamban regularly: some read it and contemplate upon it every day; others do so every week or every month.

In this book, one of those students, Rabbi Avraham Chaim Feuer, shares with us what Ramban’s Letter has taught him, for, like all the works of the master, its every word and thought lends itself to introspection and insight, to situations that face us every day in our personal and public lives. Beginning with a user-friendly interlinear translation, the author goes on to comment on the Letter, and then gives a broad selection of beautiful and thought-provoking insights drawn from the millennia-long riches of rabbinic literature.

By sharing with us what Ramban has taught him and the road map of conduct upon which the Letter has led him, Rabbi Feuer becomes a guide and inspiration to the countless sons and daughters in all generations to whom Ramban’s Letter is addressed.