  Crescas was born in Barcelona to a revered family of merchants and rabbis around 1340. In the first period of his life (i.e. before 1391) Crescas lived in Aragon during a relatively quiet period for the Jews. He learned in the yeshiva (Jewish academy) of the town, which was headed by Rabbi Nissim of Gerondi. In this yeshiva, Crescas learned not only the traditional Jewish corpus of Bible, Talmud, and the other parts of the Oral Law, but also Kabbala, science, and philosophy, including the Jewish philosophy of Maimonides and his followers as well as classical philosophy and perhaps even Christian  scholastics.[2]