We also know that Rabbi Hayon lead a selected group of students to whom he taught the More Nebukhim, Maimonides’ Guide of Perplexed, a book that requires, beyond mastery of Biblical and rabbinical literature, a vast knowledge of philosophy, language and science. Among his students in that circle was the celebrate Rabbi Don Isaac Abarbanel (1437-1508)
Rabbi Hayon wrote commentaries on most Biblical books. But most of those books are not extant today. What we do have in its entirety is his commentary on Pirqe Abot, written in 1470 .
Some of the personal characteristic of Rabbi Hayon might be learned from his commentaries about the ideal Tora Scholar.
Rabbi Hayon says (p. 163, Venezia Edition): “If a Tora scholar wants to have many students, he has to be a role model. If the teacher’s personal actions do not reflect his wisdom and his moral teachings, he will not have students”.
When a Tora scholar teaches or speaks (p. 104), “he has to use few words with rich meaning, and not many words with little meaning… long discourses are not easy to digest for the students”
A rabbi (p.281) “cannot loss his temper, not just with his students but with every person, because anger and wisdom exclude each other (כי הכעס מעלים חכמה). On the contrary , the rabbi has to be friendly with all those who come to learn from him. This attitude is what will allow students to getting closer to the rabbi”.
