Rashi, Biblical Interpretation, and Latin Learning in Medieval Europe

Introduction Rabbi Solomon Yitzhaqi (1040-1105), known as Rashi, is perhaps the most influential Jewish Bible interpreter of all time. A native of Troyes in the French county of Champagne, Rashi traveled in his youth to study for a decade in the Rhineland talmudic academies (yeshivot) of Mainz and Worms, then the intellectual center of the Ashkenazic (Franco-German) Jewish world.1 He returned to Troyes c. 1070 and established a vibrant school of Jewish learning that ultimately drew from the best and brightest students of the Ashkenazic community, who would, in turn, become its leading rabbinic figures in the twelfth century.2 Rashi's literary output centers on two major works: his Talmud commentary and his Bible commentary, each monumental in its own right.3 Drawing upon his training in the Rhineland academies by the disciples of the renowned Rabbenu (our rabbi/master") Gershom ben Judah (c.960-1028), known as the "luminary of the diaspora," Rashi composed a line-by-line commentary on virtually the entire Talmud, the central rabbinic work that embodies the halakhah (Jewish law). Continually perfected throughout his lifetime, Rashi's Talmud commentary is comprised of lemmas and gloss-type notes that elucidate this highly complex and cryptic multi-volumerabbinic legal work"--