Rashi Read Online Free Page B

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 thirteenthcenturyscribe 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 intoLatin. 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 remaincomplicated 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