II · Rashi · melange

Rashi · Chapter 19II

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The ideal Jew combines virtue with knowledge, and tradition ascribes to Rashi universal knowledge. In the first place he was a polyglot. Popular admiration of him, based upon the myth concerning his travels and upon a superficial reading of this works, assigned to him the old miracle of the Apostles. The languages he was supposed to know were Latin, Greek, Arabic, and Persian. He was also said to be acquainted with astronomy, and even with the Kabbalah, of which, according to the Kabbalists, he was an ardent adept. After his death, they say, he appeared to his grandson Samuel to teach him the true pronunciation of the Ineffable Name. Medical knowledge was also attributed to Rashi, and a medical work ascribed to his authorship. One scholar went so far as to call him a calligrapher.[32] From his infancy, it was declared, he astonished the world by his learning and by his memory; and when, toward the end of his life, he went to Barcelona, he awakened every one's admiration by his varied yet profound knowledge.

These errors, invented, or merely repeated, but, at all events, given credence by the Jewish chroniclers and the Christian bibliographers, cannot hold out against the assaults of criticism. To give only one example of Rashi's geographical knowledge, it will suffice to recall how he represented the configuration of Palestine and Babylonia, or rather how he tried to guess it from the texts.[33] His ignorance of geography is apparent in his commentaries, which contain a rather large number of mistakes. In addition, Rashi was not always familiar with natural products, or with the creations of art, or with the customs and usages of distant countries. Still less was a rabbi of the eleventh century likely to have an idea of what even Maimonides was unacquainted with, the local color and the spirit of dead civilizations. Rashi-to exemplify this ignoranceexplained Biblical expressions by customs obtaining in his own day: "to put into possession," the Hebrew of which is "to fill the hand," he thinks he explains by comparing it with a feudal ceremony and discovering in it something analagous [analogous sic] to the act of putting on gauntlets. In general, the authors of Rashi's time, paying little regard to historic setting, explained ancient texts by popular legends, or by Christian or feudal customs. Therefore, one need not scruple to point out this defect in Rashi's knowledge. Like his compatriots he did not know the profane branches of learning. He was subject to the same limitations as nearly the entire body of clergy of his day. While the Arabs so eagerly and successfully cultivated philosophy, medicine, astronomy, and physics, Christian Europe was practically ignorant of these sciences. Finally, one will judge still less severely of Rashi's knowledge-or lack of knowledge-if one remembers what science was in the Christian world of the middle ages-it was childish, tinged with superstition, extravagantly absurd, and fantastically naive. Rashi believed that the Nile flooded its banks once every forty years; but Joinville, who lived two centuries later, and who was in Egypt, tells even more astonishing things than this about the marvellous [marvelous sic] river, which has its source in the terrestrial Paradise.

Besides French, the only profane language Rashi knew was German. The explanations he gives according to the Greek, the Arabic, and the Persian, he obtains from secondary sources. Indeed, they are sometimes faulty, and they reveal the ignorance of the man who reproduced without comprehending them. No great interest attaches to the mention of his chronological mistakes and his confusion of historical facts. His astronomic knowledge is very slight, and resolves itself into what he borrowed from the Italian Sabbatai Donnolo, of Oria (about 950).

But limited as his knowledge was to Biblical, Talmudic, and Rabbinical literature, it was for that reason all the greater in the province he had explored in its inmost recesses. This is shown by his numerous citations, the sureness of his touch, and his mastery of all the subjects of which he treats.

Thanks to the citations, we can definitely ascertain what we might call his library.

Needless to say, the first place was held by the Bible, which, as will be seen, he knew perfectly. He wrote commentaries upon the Bible almost in its entirety, besides frequently referring to it in his Talmudic commentaries. His favorite guide for the explanation of the Pentateuch is the Aramaic version by Onkelos. For the Prophets he used the Targum of Jonathan ben Uzziel.[34] He was entirely ignorant of the Apocryphal books. The Wisdom of Ben Sira, for instance, like the Megillat Taanit, or Roll of Fasts,[35] were known to him only through the citations of the Talmud.

On the other hand Rashi was thoroughly conversant with the whole field of Talmudic literature-first of all the treatises on religious jurisprudence, the Mishnah,[36] Tosefta,[37] the Babylonian and, in part, the Palestinian Gemara;[36] then, the Halakic Midrashim, such as the Mekilta, the Sifra, the Sifre,[38] and Haggadic compilations, such as the Rabbot,[39] the Midrash on the Song of Songs, on Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, the Psalms, and Samuel, the Pesikta,[40] the Tanhuma,[41] and the Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer.[42]

According to tradition, Rashi has set the Talmudic period as the date of composition of two works which modern criticism has placed in the period of the Geonim. These works are the historic chronicle Seder Olam[43] and the gnostic or mystic treatise on the Creation, the Sefer Yezirah; the forerunner of the Kabbalah. Besides these anonymous works, Rashi knew the Responsa of the Geonim, which he frequently cites, notably those of Sherira[44] and his son Hai,[45] the Sheeltot of R. Aha,[46] and the Halakot Gedolot, attributed by the French school to Yehudai Gaon.[47] In the same period must be placed two other writers concerning whom we are not wholly enlightened, Eleazar ha-Kalir and the author of the Jewish chronicle entitled Yosippon. Eleazar, who lived in the eighth or ninth century, was one of the first liturgical poets both as to time and as to merit. The author of the Yosippon undoubtedly lived in Italy in the tenth century. Rashi, like all his contemporaries, confounded the two respectively with the Tanna R. Eleazar and the celebrated Josephus. They were considered authorities by all the rabbis of the middle ages, the first for his language and his Midrashic traditions, the second for his historical knowledge.[48]

So far as the literature contemporary, or nearly contemporary, with Rashi is concerned, it must be stated that Rashi had read all the works written in Hebrew, while the whole of Arabic literature was inaccessible to him. Without doubt he knew the grammarian Judah Ibn Koreish[49] only by the citations from him. On the other hand he made much use of the works of the two Spanish grammarians, Menahem ben Saruk and Dunash ben Labrat,[50] likewise the works of Moses haDarshan, of Narbonne. Naturally, he was still better versed in all the rabbinical literature of Northern France and of Germany. He frequently cites R. Gershom, whom he once called "Father and Light of the Captivity," as well as his contemporaries Joseph Tob Elem, Eliezer the Great, and Meshullam ben Kalonymos, of Mayence. I have already mentioned-and will repeat further on how much he owed his teachers.

For the sake of completeness, it is necessary to add to this list all the contemporaries from whom Rashi learned either directly or indirectly. For information concerning the Talmud, Isaac ben Menahem the Great, of Orleans, may be mentioned among these; and for information concerning the Bible, Menahem ben Helbo, whom Rashi probably cited through the medium of one of his pupils or his writings, for he himself was not known to Rashi, his younger contemporary.

If one also takes into consideration the less important and the anonymous persons whose books or oral teachings Rashi cited, one will be convinced that he had what is called a well-stocked brain, and that his knowledge in his special domain was as vast as it was profound, since it embraced the entire field of knowledge which the Jews of Northern France of that time could possibly cultivate. His learning was not universal; far from it; but he was master of all the knowledge his countrymen possessed.

Thanks to this erudition, he could fill, at least in part, the gaps in his scientific education. In fact, an understanding of Talmudic law presupposes a certain amount of information-geometry and botany for questions concerning land, astronomy for the fixation of the calendar, zoology for dietary laws, and so on. Rashi's knowledge, then, was less frequently defective than one is led to suppose, although sometimes he lagged behind the Talmud itself. It has been noted that of 127 or 128 French glosses bearing upon the names of plants, 62 are absolutely correct. In history Rashi preserved some traditions which we can no longer verify, but which seem to be derived from sources worthy of confidence; and if it had not been for Rashi, we would not have become acquainted with them.

What he knew, therefore, he knew chiefly through reading and through the instruction of his teachers, to whom he often appealed; for he possessed that most precious quality in a scholar, conscience, scientific probity. One example will suffice to give an idea of his method. Once, when he was searching for a text in his copy of the Talmud, he found it corrected. But he did not remember if he himself or his teacher had made the correction. So he consulted a manuscript in which he had noted down the variants of his teacher Isaac of Mayence. Not being able to determine from this, he begged his correspondent to look up the manuscript of Isaac and to let him know the reading.

This characteristic leads us back to a consideration of Rashi's nature, upon which one likes to dwell, because it makes him a sage in the most beautiful and the largest meaning of the word, because it makes him one of the most sympathetic personalities in all Jewish history. If Rashi had left nothing but the remembrance of an exemplary life and of spotless virtue, his name would have merited immortality.

But Rashi bequeathed more than this to posterity; he left one, nay, two monuments to awaken admiration and call forth gratitude. They assure him fame based on a solid foundation. What matter if we Jews fail to honor our great men with statues of marble and bronze, if they themselves establish their glory on pedestals that defy the ravages of time? Statues raised by the hand of man are perishable as man himself; the works constructed by a genius are immortal as the genius himself.