Rabbenu Sa‘adia’s Tafsir

One of the most influential works ever written in Judeo-Arabic is the Torah translation, or Tafsir, of Rabbi Sa‘adia Gaon (d. 942). This work was groundbreaking – it gave Jewish communities a way to read the Torah in their everyday language and set the model for how Arabic could be written in Hebrew letters. In this session, we’ll meet Sa‘adya himself, explore his Tafsir, and place it alongside his other writings and the world in which he lived.