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Isaac Abarbanel was the grandson of Moshe Abarbanel, who in 1391, during the great pogrom, fled and came to Portugal. He was forced to convert to Christianity, but he raised all of his children to be devout Jews.
Don Isaac Abarbanel was a Renaissance man. He combined within himself philosophy, great Torah knowledge, financial acumen, diplomacy, and linguistic abilities. It was a remarkable person. He served for a period of time as the Minister of Finance for Portugal, and then later he was brought to Spain, first by a type of head hunting, if you want, taken from the king of Portugal and brought to Spain. He was the minister of the treasury of Ferdinand and Isabella. In fact, the two leading financial advisors to the Spanish kings were Jews: Abraham Senior and Don Isaac Abarbanel. Senior, interestingly enough, was the catalyst for financing the voyages of Christopher Columbus and the discovery of the New World. Columbus himself came from a Jewish family that, again in 1391, converted to Christianity. They moved to Italy, to Genoa, and Columbus himself has many hints of his Jewish background in his writings, and even in the log that he kept of his journey to the New World. He had real Jews as part of his crew that came to the New World to discover America and the islands, etc.
In any event, Abarbanel was so valuable to the Spanish kings that they offered him an exemption. He didn't have to convert; he and his family would be protected and could live as Jews. Abarbanel chose to go into exile with his brethren, not to benefit from the exemption given him by the king and queen, and he left in 1492. He later became a financial adviser to the king of Naples. But in his older years he threw away all of these secular accomplishments and devoted himself to writing a great commentary on the Bible, the Torah, and the Prophets. That is how he is remembered in the Jewish world: not so much for his greatness in finance, but for his greatness in Torah study and in explaining the Bible both philosophically and traditionally. He was a person of broad knowledge but also of deep faith, and he remains one of the heroes in the Jewish world.
Thanks for watching. I'm Barry Wiz. For more on Jewish history, go to jewishhistorydotorg.