Rashi (2 page)

Did the first Jews arrive as war prisoners with the victorious Roman legions? So it is believed. They wound up in ancient settlements like Marseilles and Narbonne. They were found scattered in other places—in Paris, Avignon,
Orléans, Metz. Protected by Roman law, they survived thanks to trade in wines and spices, travel, and what was called usury.

With the accession of the kings of Gaul, things changed. The Jews were no longer “citizens.” During the sinister apocalyptic mood that prevailed around the year 1000—further inflamed by the appearance of a fiery comet in 1014 and the solar eclipse in 1033—they were unprotected. They were not even tolerated. They were singled out, here and there, and accused of causing the scourges that befell superstitious inhabitants. Forced conversions, arbitrary arrests, threats of expulsion; it seemed these invariably followed the same logic of a cruel implacable destiny. Occasionally, with a bit of luck and a lot of money, the ruler or bishop deigned to change his mind and a reprieve was granted.

The year 1017: King Robert the Pious orders the Jews to convert; when they refuse, he sets fire to synagogues and Jewish homes. In the same period, in Limoges, the Jews, loyal to their ancestral faith, are expelled. A contemporary chronicler, Adhémar de Chabanne, writes: “There were some among them who slit their own throats with their swords rather than accept baptism.” In November 1012, the Jews were expelled from Mainz; in January 1013, they were back. Sometimes the Vatican itself was persuaded to intervene. Then, in 1095, in Clermont, the bloody, deadly explosion took place: Pope Urban II preached in favor of the Crusade. Destination: Palestine. The goal: to save Christianity’s holy
sites. Along the road, says one witness, in Rouen, the Crusaders locked the Jews in a church and ordered them to convert, then massacred them with two-edged swords, men, women, and children. Moreover, Godfrey of Bouillon declared publicly that he “wouldn’t set off except if he had avenged the blood of the crucified in the blood of Israel and not let a single person with a Jewish name survive.”

These atrocities, and others, were committed wherever the Crusaders of Christendom made their appearance, including in the province of Champagne, not far from Troyes.

Here and there, living in fear of the next day, the Jewish communities that were directly concerned sent messengers to their neighboring communities warning them of the imminent danger.

In most cases, they did so in vain.

However, in the area of education and culture, the situation of the Jews seems rather enviable. There was a Jewish religious culture in France well before Rashi. Several centers were well known for the distinction of their teachers. Indeed this was the period in the history of European cultural and religious thought that saw the birth of Jewish learning in France. So that as a youth Rashi knew where to go to complete his biblical and Talmudic studies. Many scholars came from Italy and settled in the Rhineland and France. Mainz, Speyer, Vitry Worms, and Limoges attracted the best students. Among them, Shlomo, son of Yitzhak.

Who was this father? We know very little about him. Some believe he was a very erudite man. It is thought that Rashi himself asserts it. He does so by paying him a great compliment, which is this:

His impressive commentary of the Bible starts with a question asked by a Rabbi Yitzhak: why does the Bible begin with the description of the genesis of the world rather than with the first law, which concerns the calendar? We will return to this question. For the time being, let us just recall that for some exegetes, this Rabbi Yitzhak is none other than the author’s father.

If this assumption is correct, it would mean that we know at least one thing about Rashi’s father: he was himself a rabbi who posed questions worthy of contemplation. But beyond the fact that he was the father of one the greatest scholars of the biblical and Talmudic literature, we know very little.

Nothing more? No, not much more. We’re not even sure of the basic facts of his biography. Did he have other children, a brother perhaps (just one?), who was also a
talmid hakham, a
Talmudic scholar? How old was he when he died? Was he a martyr? One source intimates as much by calling him
kadosh
, or holy, but can’t this term also describe a moral life devoted to the Lord? How old was Rashi when he became an orphan? In one place, Rashi quotes him and calls his father
“Avi mori,”
my father and my teacher. Does this mean he studied the Torah with him and maybe also the Babylonian
Talmud? Rabbi Haim David Azulai writes that he was a true Talmudist.

Strange: we know so many things about so many individuals thanks to Rashi, and so little about the man who gave him life. And even less about his mother.

Why Rashi? The intials of Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki, Shlomo son of Itzhak, or, just as simply, Rabbi Shlomo sheyihyheh (may he have a long life)? The illustrious Rabbi Hayim ben Attar has his own interpretation: the name comes from the initial letters in Rabban Shel Israel, Teacher of all Israel. Rabbi Nahman of Bratzlav calls him “the brother of the Torah.” The Torah and his commentary are inseparable. But the title that suits him best is simply “ha-Moreh ha-Gadol,” the Great Teacher.

We don’t know the precise date of his birth in 1040—or perhaps 1041. On the other hand, his date of death in 1105 is well established: the twenty-ninth day of the month of Tammuz, hence a Thursday in the middle of the summer. This date can be seen on the Parma de Rossi parchment written by one of his disciples and transcribed in 1305: “the holy ark, the holiest of holiest, the great Teacher Rabbenu Shlomo blessed in memory as righteous, son of the martyr Rabbi Yitzhak the Frenchman, was taken from us on Thursday, the twenty-ninth day of the month of Tammuz in the year 4865, aged sixty-five, and called back to the yeshiva above.”

That’s very scanty biographical information, is it not?
In Rashi’s day, about a hundred Jewish families lived in the beautiful city of Troyes. They lived modestly and experienced no great upheavals. These occurred only in the thirteenth century. In 1288, to be exact.

It was the old story of ritual murder—stupid, ridiculous, but oh so deadly. It is mentioned in
The Lamentation of Troyes
by Yaakov ben Yehuda of Lorraine. Hate-filled fanatics put the corpse of a Christian child in the house of a Jewish notable, Isaac Chatelain. Arrested along with his whole family, interrogated, they all suffered the abuse and torture that was usual at the time. They all chose
Kiddush ha-Shem
, a martyr’s death, the supreme sacrifice in the sanctification of God’s name.

Dark times spawn legends of hope, dreams of a hero, which for Jews in those times meant not a soldier but a scholar, an interpreter of God’s word. Several legends surround Rashi’s birth. They say his parents owned a precious gem that was so luminous and sparkled so brilliantly that the Church dearly wished to acquire it for ritual use. They were offered astronomical sums and substantial benefits. Fearing both the possible temptation and the probable intimidation, they took the gem and threw it into the sea. Heaven rewarded them by giving them a son whose beneficial light was more exceptional and dazzling than that of the precious gem.

Another legend: one day Rashi’s mother, in the late stage of pregnancy, was walking down a narrow, dark alley when
an elegant coach coming in the opposite direction almost ran her over. A miracle occurred: she pressed her belly against the wall and the wall curved inward. They say the trace of this mysterious occurrence can still be seen today: a rounded niche in the stones.

And still another legend: fearing that he would be unable to assemble a minyan, a quorum of ten men, for his son’s circumcision, Rabbi Yitzhak, the father of the future Rashi, had the surprise and joy of welcoming as his last visitor, a latecomer, the first circumcised Jew in history, the patriarch Abraham, or, according to another source, the prophet Elijah.

According to other legends, invented by hagiographers, he spoke every existing language, mastered all the sciences, religious and secular, and had journeyed to faraway lands. He was said to have visited the great poet and thinker Rabbi Yehuda ha-Levi in Spain and the Duke of Prague in his castle. He is purported to have hosted Godfrey of Bouillon, who came to consult him before leaving on the Crusade to liberate Jerusalem’s holy places.

In the Hasidic literature, he is called “the holy Rashi” for his immense oeuvre was said to be inspired from the Holy Spirit, the
Shekhinah:
otherwise, as a mere human, he would never have been able to accomplish so many things in so many areas.

One Hasidic text goes so far as to imagine that Rashi did not die a natural death: that he actually never died at all but
went up to heaven alive, immortal like the prophet Elijah. Which would explain why no one knows where his grave is located.

Rabbi Yitzhak Eizik of Ziditchov’s commentary: When God, blessed be His Name, decided to put an end to Abraham’s trials on Mount Moriah and to spare the life of his son Isaac, Abraham initially refused to hear the angel who handed down the celestial command. He gave in only when God promised him that one of Isaac’s descendants would be Shlomo, son of Isaac of Troyes.

At that point Abraham had no choice.

Rashi was a precocious student, that is a fact.

We know Rashi studied—for how many years?—with his maternal uncle, Rabbi Shimon bar Yitzhak the Ancient, Rabbenu Gershom’s disciple. At eighteen or twenty, he went to Mainz in Germany to study at the yeshiva founded by the aforementioned Rabbenu Gershom, where under the latter’s authority, several great Sages assisted the students. In this way, the young Rashi had access to Talmudic manuscripts written by the ancients and by Rabbenu Gershom himself, a rare privilege. According to one legend, Rashi had the good fortune and pleasure of holding in his hands the
Sefer Torah
, the holy scrolls, that his Teacher used during the service.

A number of legal decisions are attributed, rightly or wrongly, to Rabbenu Gershom. Two are famous: on bigamy
and on the repudiation of a wife against her will. A third forbids opening another person’s mail.

When Rashi arrived in his yeshiva, Rabbenu Gershom was no longer alive. Rashi studied with his successors Rabbi Yaakov ben Yakar, whom he admired and loved more than anyone in the world, David ha-Levi, and Yitzhak ben Yehuda. He was closest to the first, whom he loved for his great modesty and who first made him aware of some rare manuscripts of the Talmud and their Midrashic and other commentators without which it is impossible to study the Talmud in depth. “I owe him everything I know,” he wrote, “my understanding, my comprehension, and my heart.” Occasionally he accompanied him on his trips to nearby communities and beyond.

After Mainz he went to Worms where there was a large, thriving yeshiva supervised by Rabbi Yitzhak ha-Levi. He stayed there for several years. The reason is clear: at the time, the most renowned centers of higher Jewish learning were in the German Rhineland, though there were also a few in Italy. France became a center only after Rashi’s return. By then he was not even thirty years old. He married—but whom? We don’t know. We don’t even know his wife’s name. The couple had three daughters: Miriam, Yokheved, and Rachel. We’re equally unsure as to whether they had a fourth daughter; several sources hint that they did, adding that she may have died in infancy.

Did his wife and daughters help Rashi in his vineyards?
No doubt they did …
if he
was a wine grower, which has never been fully confirmed. Did he have other sources of income? Nothing is less certain. One legend claims he lived from trade with the Gentiles. There is a letter of Rashi’s revealing that he didn’t have the means to support his family: he couldn’t afford to buy bread and clothes.

As for the daughters, they are believed to have been erudite. It seems that, sometimes, they were consulted regarding customs and practices in matters of food and family life.

Miriam’s husband, Rabbi Yehuda ben Nathan, was a great scholar. And so was Yokheved’s husband, Rabbi Meir ben Shmuel. Rachel must have been known for her beauty, for she was nicknamed
“Belle-assez,”
“rather beautiful.” Her husband, a certain Eliezer, divorced her. Why? We don’t know. If she remarried, we don’t know whom she married.

On the other hand, we know that Rashi, though married and perhaps already a father, returned to Worms and stayed there several years. Was it because he wasn’t ready to found his own yeshiva? As soon as he returned to Troyes, he did found one. His contemporaries are known for their learning: Rabbi Eliyahu ben Menahem the Elder of Mans and Rabbi Yosef bar Shmuel Tov-elem of Limoges.

Why does he hardly mention his wife and daughters? Who ran the household? Who kept house for him? Who accompanied him on trips? Could it be that, like other Talmud Sages, his disciples meant more to him than his close family members?

Rashi’s influence can be explained by his knowledge of a range of disciplines—the Bible and the Talmud, mathematics and wine growing, astronomy and zoology.

How did he earn his living? Solely from the produce of his vineyard—there again, if he had one? He did write a lot about wines. He had no salary (in those days, rabbis were not paid), and his students received free instruction. In addition, some of his students, who were more or less destitute, requested financial assistance from him for their everyday needs. His foreign students lived in his house. And ate at his table. When one of them married, Rashi organized the wedding in his house.

Here again, we have no idea how he managed to feed so many people, but apparently he did. More precisely: there is no evidence in any source of anyone complaining.

His students, all of them thirsting for knowledge, flocked to him from everywhere, from the provinces and beyond. There were some students who came from Germany and Eastern Europe.

Among his disciples, we find some of the greatest scholars, including his two sons-in-law who became illustrious French Tosafists, as the commentators of the generations after Rashi were known, from the word for “additional.” Indeed, he brought them in as collaborators in his work, as consultants, copyists, or proofreaders of manuscripts. Rabbi Yehuda excelled in his way of commenting on the Talmud following Rashi’s original approach. After his father-in-law’s
death, it is he who completed Rashi’s commentary of Tractate Makkot (punishments) of the Talmud. Yehuda’s son, Rabbi Shmuel (the Rashbam), became a Sage in turn. But the most famous and admired of Rashi’s grandsons was Rabbi Meir’s son, Yaakov (Jacob), better known as Rabbenu Tam. The same adjective is attributed to the patriarch Jacob in the Scriptures.
Tam
means “complete piety.” When he was born, Rashi was nearly sixty.