Johanan ben Aaron ben Nathanael Luria was an
Alsatian Talmudist. He lived successively at Niedernheim and
Strasburg at the end of the fifteenth century and in the beginning of the sixteenth. After having studied for many years in German
yeshivot, he returned to
Alsace and settled in Strasburg, where he founded a
yeshiva by permission of the government. Luria was the author of an
ethical work entitled "
Hadrakah" (
Cracow, c. 1579) and of "
Meshibat Nefesh" (
Neubauer, "
Catalogue of the Hebrew MSS. in the Bodleian Library" No. 257), an
aggadic and
mystical commentary on the
Pentateuch, founded on
Rashi. To this commentary was appended a
dissertation in which Luria refuted the arguments advanced by Christians against Judaism.