Rashi (3 page)

Rabbenu Tam had a dramatic and even tragic life, enduring periods of danger and suffering. At forty-seven, he was assaulted by hate-filled Crusaders and sustained five head wounds. “You are Israel’s greatest,” the aggressors yelled. “So we will take revenge on you for our crucified Lord. We will wound you the way you wounded our Lord!” He was already old when the Jewish community in Blois was accused of ritual murder; the rabbi ordered all the Jews of France to observe a day of fasting in solidarity for their endangered brothers and sisters; thirty-one of them lost their lives.

In general, Rashi’s disciples, and they were numerous and prolific, identified themselves by the teaching “received from his mouth.” If, with time, a true Teacher is defined by the quality of his disciples, Rashi is among the greatest.

Let us recall some of them: Rabbi Shmaya worked at putting his Teacher’s notes in order. From him we know that a Christian owed Rashi money and maintained that he had already reimbursed him. Rashi demanded that he make this statement under oath in church. Rabbi Yosef Kara, the
author of important books on the Prophets. Rabbi Simhah ben Shmuel of Vitry, who was especially interested in the litanies and prayers written by Rashi. It is thought, without being confirmed, that several of these reflect Rashi’s grief and pain at the atrocities committed by the Crusaders. As for his two sons-in-law, cited above, they always refer to his interpretations.

How old was he when he took up his duties as Troyes’ official rabbi? By then he was already a respected member of the rabbinical court. No precise date was found in the historical records. The only thing we are certain of is that he was already well known and that his reputation had extended beyond this little city. Before his arrival, the notables went to see outside authorities to settle their differences. Once he became their rabbi, this custom ended. All the problems were brought to him. Questions were sent to him from faraway countries. And his decisions, made with humility but firmly, were never disputed. At the end of his life, often sick and bedridden, he dictated his answers to his correspondents. And he explained the reasons for his decisions.

In his superb book on Rashi, Avraham Grossman, one of his best biographers and a fine essayist, puts forward a captivating idea: Rashi’s success and popularity, in all the strata of the Jewish population for a thousand years, cannot be
explained by his commentaries alone but are due to his personality as well.

He lists five character traits that have to be taken into account if we are to grasp the reason why his immense work had so much impact: humility and simplicity, the pursuit of the truth, respect for his fellow man, confidence in his own creative inspiration, and the feeling of accomplishing the mission of a community leader.

Was his humility unconscious? Opinion is divided. On the one hand, can authentic modesty not be authentic? On the other, if exaggerated, wouldn’t modesty get in the way of courageous research, deny the mind the right to take on an adventure whose goal is to break through the wall and create an opening to renewal?

In studying him tirelessly, we find no trace of arrogance or conceit in Rashi. Exaggerated susceptibility of any kind seems alien to him. Self-confidence, yes, so long as it is not boundless. He sometimes admits to making a mistake on a specific issue. Sometimes—and we’ll return to this below—he simply confesses to ignorance. No other Sage did this as frankly and as frequently. The expression is “eini yoden.”

Hence his courteous and respectful attitude in his relationships with others. With his enemies and opponents—for he did have some—he betrays no impatience, no irritation. He also becomes a kind of ideal address for his peers and disciples: their queries and problems come to him by the hundreds,
from Italy, Germany, and France; they concern trade, marriage and the ritual. His answers form part of his work. Why does he forbid the sick from reciting daily prayers? Is it because, being ill, they are unable to concentrate on the very soul of prayer? Or is it so the sick won’t feel guilty that they aren’t well enough to recite the required prayer? He showed such an affectionate understanding for others that all assumptions are permitted.

But what about the Christians? What was Rashi’s attitude toward them? We will come to that later. For the moment, let us just mention that he viewed their business relationships with the Jews in a favorable light. Did he consider them inevitable? He also made a point of saying that, after all, they were not pagans.

One day he noticed that a Christian with whom he had business dealings didn’t really care about his own Christian faith; he was too casual about it. Rashi refused to see him again.

Having said this, it is surprising to note that Rashi didn’t take part in the virulent polemics with the Christians on what separates our religious traditions. He could not have been unaware of them. Word of these polemics reached the most remote corners of his region and far beyond. And Rashi, for one, surely understood their possible effects on the community: they often ended badly. Hence his hostility toward Christendom. For him, it symbolized Esau. What he thought of the Christians is what he says about Esau. He
shows some understanding, though not completely wholehearted, for Isaac’s brother Ishmael, but none for Jacob’s brother. He goes very far in his choice of words in describing the latter’s secret thoughts and evil intentions. But of the two brothers, wasn’t Jacob the one who, with the help of his mother, Rebecca, deceived his blind father in order to receive the blessings intended for the eldest? No, says Rashi. The lies came from Esau who, being a hypocrite, did everything to please his father so he could be the first blessed.

Another example: the biblical text tells us that on that day Esau returned from the fields tired and famished. Why tired? We could suppose that he had just done some strenuous work. For Rashi the reason is completely different: he was tired of killing. Worse still: Rashi is convinced that Esau was guilty of the three worst transgressions: idolatry, adultery, and murder. In general, he uses Esau—or Edom—as a symbol of everything evil and wicked surrounding Israel.

Often, indeed very often, this animosity is not in the text itself, but in many Midrashic commentaries Rashi cites. But Rashi sets about making a personal choice to support his hypothesis. Since Israel has and will have an enemy, this enemy must be named; it is Christianity, which, in Esau, existed well before the common era.

Grossman stresses this point. According to him, Esau is not the only person Rashi presents in a negative light. He sees other protagonists as having negative traits as well: for him, Lot, Abraham’s nephew, did nothing commendable. If
he lived in the sinful city of Sodom, it was because he felt comfortable among the impious.

Ishmael? Not attractive either. He kept company with brigands and imitated their habits. Idolatrous and violent, he was not really loved by his father.

How are we to explain these seemingly unjust allegories if not by the more or less hostile political, social, and religious environment of the period? Weren’t the people of Israel assailed, threatened, attacked, and tormented by both Christians and Muslims?

A general rule: whenever he can, Rashi chooses passages in the Midrash that can be interpreted as arguments against “the other nations.” Why? There again, let us draw on Grossman who attributes Rashi’s animosity to theological pressures to which were added the horrendous persecutions Christendom inflicted on the Jews in that part of Europe.

The forced “disputations” in the royal courts and cathedrals, the violent anti-Semitic propaganda that resulted from these, the preparations for the first Crusade whose victims included Rashi’s disciples and friends, surely influenced his conception of the world. Was it his reaction to those events that were to leave traces of fire and blood in the Jewish memory forever after?

Did he ever forgive Esau whose descendents—in Rome, according to him—bore down on the Jews whose tragic destiny was supposed to be proof that God had changed his chosen people?

One should read Rashi’s commentary on the Song of Songs, a cry of distress and a song of love. It reflects the suffering of the Jews in exile. And so do some of the Psalms. For Rashi, King David predicts the martyrdom of the Righteous who sacrificed themselves in order to sanctify the Name of God.

But let us return to the Scriptures:

Rashi, as opposed to other great interpreters and sages, seems to favor the patriarchs exclusively: although the Talmud never hesitates to describe them as deeply human and mentions their failings and errors, Rashi depicts them as Righteous Men if not absolute saints. No misdemeanor, no blunder, never an ethical shortcoming when it comes to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God is proud of them for all eternity and so is he.

And yet.

Throughout his work, usually what counts most for Rashi is the concern for truth. Revealing the deep, hidden meaning of a biblical verse or a Talmudic statement, the very meaning that our distant precursors had bequeathed to their descendants—that’s the ultimate objective of his approach.

An approach that calls for a great deal of daring. Breaking down closed doors, disputing standard interpretations,
going beyond the superficial, beyond what meets the eye, reaching higher and higher and delving deep down: courage is needed to aspire to this and consent to it. Rashi has courage, and he shares it with his pupils. In some instances he almost goes too far. Concerning the person of Flavius Josephus, for example.

Flavius Josephus is too demanding of the Jews besieged in Jerusalem. He asks them to resign themselves and accept defeat. He finishes his life as a patrician, near Rome. It is hardly surprising that the Jewish tradition kept its distance from the work of Flavius Josephus, Jewish historian. For centuries, the writer was treated as a marginal figure in the religious literature of the Jewish people. Too moderate, too conciliatory, too weak with regard to the besieging Romans: he was regarded with genuine antipathy. But apparently not by Rashi, who admires his work
The War of the Jews
for having served as the basis for the history book
Yosiphon
by Yosef ben Gurion ha-Cohen.

Rashi’s commentaries on the ancient texts are numerous, varied, infinitely original, and sometimes personal; they are found in various contemporaneous and later manuscripts; they include the Torah, the Prophets, the Writings (Proverbs, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Psalms, book of Job—except for the very last chapters, which he did not finish), and, naturally, almost all of the Talmud. One of the most ancient manuscripts, if not the most ancient, is of the Pentateuch, the first of its kind, written by Makir, a renowned thirteenthcentury
scribe who scrupulously copied the texts written by Rashi himself and corrected by Rabbi Shmaya. Rashi often relies on his precursors; for the Torah, the Aramaic translation by the convert Onkelos, for the Prophets, that of Yonatan ben Uziel; but above all he relies on the Midrash texts, not in order to contradict them, but in order to deepen them by adding his own knowledge. Nevertheless, in some rare instances he makes a point of disagreeing with his own Teachers. But even then he does so with a student’s respect for those whose teaching is a legacy. Just to illustrate Rashi’s fondness for simplicity, remember the tragedy that befell Aaron’s sons Nadav and Avihu who lost their lives because they introduced “an alien fire,” says Rashi. “They were drunk.”

Let us note that Rashi’s commentary on the Bible was the first Hebrew book to be printed: around 1470. It is hardly surprising that it rapidly crossed frontiers and the seas and made its way to the furthermost reaches of Jewish community life in the Diaspora. No other work was so widely circulated. The same is true of his writings on the Babylonian Talmud. Maimonides’ commentaries on the Talmud were criticized, often unjustly and sometimes too harshly, but Rashi’s were not. His acceptance by nearly all the Jewish thinkers and their disciples remains just about unique. Christian scholars benefited from his commentaries each in his own way—among them the illustrious Nicholas of Lyra, in the thirteenth century, who translated his work into
Latin. He cited Rashi so frequently that a certain Jean Mercier, at the Collège Royal of Paris, nicknamed him Simius Solomnis, Solomon’s (Shlomo’s) ape.

Through Nicholas of Lyra, Rashi had a powerful influence on Martin Luther, whose German translation of the Bible owes much to him.

In subsequent pages, we will speak about his inexhaustible curiosity, his inventive genius, his touching humility in the presence of texts and their interpreters: he, the most illustrious of scholars, who mastered both sacred texts and secular ones (he had a knowledge of the sciences, and of French, Greek, and Arabic), was never embarrassed to admit that he couldn’t grasp the true meaning of a text, that a literal or hermeneutic translation escaped him or just seemed obscure. And in that case, it had to be elucidated at all costs. What is unclear initially will become clear the second time around. What is hidden will be revealed. For him, everything must remain open, comprehensible. A decision maker, he adapts the Law to present needs.

According to some, he was also a mystic (a staunch believer in miracles—and not just the biblical ones of the past—he believed that at the advent of the Messianic era, the Third Temple would descend from heaven). But he was in many ways a scientific rationalist, making accessible and familiar things that are not. Nothing is meant to remain
complicated forever. The Torah is not up in the heavens, unchanging, among the angels and seraphs, but here down below. It is up to men to interpret it and reinterpret it anew each day.

A linguist and grammarian, if he finds the Aramaic or Hebrew insufficient, Rashi resorts to German and particularly to French or “Belaaz” in gloss, or the tongue of the Gentiles; and Rashi uses the latter abundantly: we find more than a thousand French words in his works. Scholars still study him today for the light he sheds on the French language in the early Middle Ages: some terms aren’t found anywhere else.

In general, intent on finding the right word and the suitable literary style to explain a biblical or Talmudic expression or law, when he is free to choose among different approaches, he opts for the simplest, most reasonable, most accessible one.