The Sforno was clear that worldly achievement was just a means to a loftier end

Even as Western Europe slowly emerged from the Dark Ages in the late 15th century, the Christian world was determined the Jews be the last to see the light. Like the plagues that intermittently swept the continent, a pandemic of expulsions spread from one country to another in those years. Already locked out of England and France, and barely tolerated elsewhere, Jews were expelled from a rash of cities and principalities across Germany and Italy in the decades before the Spanish Expulsion of 1492.

Amid this ocean of bigotry, Renaissance Italy was a dazzling exception. In the land of strict Catholic dogma, a new flourishing of culture and learning had begun. Its broad horizons sprang from a spirit of humanism in which Jews and their scholarship began to find acceptance.

In this island of tolerance, in about 1470, was born one of the most intriguing figures of medieval Jewish history. Rav Ovadiah Sforno was a giant in many walks of life. He was at once a brilliant Torah scholar and halachic authority whose concise commentary graces every mikraos gedolos Chumash; a renowned physician and for a time a banker; a philosopher, and teacher of one the era’s foremost Christian thinkers.

This résumé would seem to classify the “Sforno,” as he’s known to Jewish posterity, as the Jewish world’s version of the “Renaissance Man” — a polymath with expertise in many diffuse areas. In line with this notion, the Sforno is commonly compared to the Rambam, another acclaimed Torah scholar who was active as a physician.

But the Sforno is more enigmatic than simple parallels suggest; much about his life and impact remains a mystery. Rabbi Moshe Kravetz, a scholar who has dedicated his life to exploring the Sforno and his works, has managed to dispel at least some of the murkiness.

While the common narrative depicts an advocate for a synthesis of Torah and science, in his writings and personal records Rabbi Kravetz found that the Sforno was no advocate of unconditional openness. Unlike the Rambam, the Sforno downplays the need for knowledge of philosophy and directly opposes the Aristotelianism that was highly regarded by the Rambam.

The ensuing portrait does not paint a liberal Renaissance Man, but rather a Torah scholar who held traditionally conservative positions on the utility of philosophy and the place of non-Torah studies. It seems that the Sforno was in fact a staunch defender of traditional Jewish values who emphasized in his commentary on Pirkei Avos that Torah study alone carries all the answers needed to combat heretical notions.