Sepher ha-Emunoth.

Anti-Maimonidean work of philosophy. Shem Tov has been maligned as a fanatic opponent of rationalist philosophy. One of his choice remarks is: “The opinions of the rabbi [Maimonides] are even worse than the opinions of Aristotle, because he is a Jew” (Sepher ha-Emunoth, 15b, 112a). Shem Tov meant by this that common Jews would be led astray by Maimonides’ views whereas there was no such danger vis-`a-vis those of Aristotle. Freud would have had a field day psychoanalyzing the Shem Tov Family. Both sons of the somewhat notorious anti-Maimonidean penned complimentary commentaries to Maimonides’ philosophic work, Guide of the Perplexed, while his grandson Shem Tov ben Joseph ben Shem Tov ibn Shem Tov wrote the commentary “Shem Tov” still printed in the standard Hebrew editions of the Guide to this day! See EJ, Vol. 8, cols.1195-1199. Shem Tov would replace Maimonides’ cosmology with the sephirotic world of the Kabbalah. Shem Tov restores the demons (shedim) to the universe after Maimonides denied their existence (Part V); argues for reincarnation (gilgul) (Part VII); and makes a case for astrology (Part IX). The folllowing year (1557) the same printer Abraham Usque of Ferrara would publish the Hasagot or animadversions of Rabbi Moses Alashkar to Sepher ha-Emunoth, in defense of Maimonides. Abraham Usque aka Duarte Pinel was a Marrano who escaped from Portugal to Italy. According to David Amram, his printer’s mark reflects his marranic past: “The motto that is entwined around his printer’s mark, taken from the 130th psalm, might well express his thought when he was abiding in Portugal, waiting for the happy day when he might publicly avow the faith of his fathers: ‘I wait for the Lord; my soul doth wait, and in His word do I hope.”…He preserved the memory of the seafaring prowess of his native Portugal in his printer’s mark, where a globe encircled by the ecliptic and zodiacal marks is supported by an anchor. His initials A.U. defiantly seem to proclaim his release from the tyranny of the personality of Duarte Pinel, whom he had shaken off.” David Amram, The Makers of Hebrew Books in Italy, p. 282.