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Rashi's Choice Rashi’s CHOICE: THE HUMASH COMMENTARY AS REWRITTEN MIDRASH* Ivan G. Marcus Although many have written supercommentaries, essays, and even books about Rashi as a biblical or Talmudic exegete, until recently few have looked at him as an original medieval Jewish thinker, let alone as a historical source reflective of northern European Jewish mentalité. And yet no medieval Jew shaped the collective identity of Ashkenazic and even Sefardic Jewry more than this remarkable figure, whose genealogy is obscure but who is often compared to and contrasted with his Sefardic analogue, Maimonides, whose genealogy was long and distinguished. Could Rashi have been so widely accepted as “the” interpreter of biblical-talmudic Judaism for all times had he himself not been a person of his own time as well as a refashioner of it?1 The master exegete, Rashi of Troyes (c. 1040–1105), proposed Jew- ish core values to his readers, especially in his Humash commentary. He did not write a treatise; his biblical commentaries were rather in the form of a selective editing of rabbinical lore. Even when he did * The original version of this article was published in Midrash Unbound: Transfor- mations and Innovations edited by Michael Fishbane and Joanna Weinberg (Oxford and Portland, Oregon: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization 2013). 1 Among the many studies that have been written on Rashi, see Eliezer Meir Lip- schuetz, “Rashi” in idem, Ketavim (Jerusalem, 1947), 1: 9–196; Benjamin J. Gelles, Peshat and Derash in the Exegesis of Rashi (Leiden, 1981); Esra Shereshevsky, Rashi: The Man and His World (New York, 1982); Sarah Kamin, Rashi: Peshuto shel mikra u-midrasho shel mikra (Jerusalem, 1988); Dov Rappel, Rashi: Temunat olamo ha-yehu- dit (Jerusalem, 1995); Abraham Grossman, Hachmei tsarefat ha-rishonim (Jerusalem, 1995), chapters 4, 6; Moshe Ahrend, “L’adaptation des commentaires du midrash par Rashi et ses disciples à leur exégèse biblique,” Revue des études juives 156 (1997): 275–88; Abraham Grossman, Rashi (Jerusalem, 2006); Daniel Krochmalnik, Hanna Liss, and Ronen Reichman, eds., Raschi und sein Erbe (Heidelberg, 2007); Abraham Grossman, Emunot ve-de’ot be-olamo shel Rashi (Elon Shevut, 2008). Several impor- tant studies are in Abraham Grossman and Sara Japhet, eds., Rashi: Demuto vi-ytsirato (Jerusalem, 2008). On Rashi’s supercommentaries, see Eric Lawee, “From Sepharad to Ashkenaz: A Case Study in the Rashi Supercommentary Tradition,” AJS Review 30 (2006): 393–425. 30 ivan g. marcus not interpret narrative biblical irregularities, he wrote what I would call “rewritten midrash.”2 Readers have been divided over what Rashi did as a commentator. Religious educators saw him as a master teacher who sought to incul- cate specific Jewish values. Although some anthologized his comments according to their own lights, others, like Eliezer Lipschuetz and the renowned Bible teacher Nechama Leibowitz, taught that Rashi’s values were always answers to textual difficulties and not freely offered words of his own wisdom.3 Academic Bible scholars shifted the focus to Rashi as a literal or literary exegete who should be studied as a transition figure leading to later northern French exegetes—like his grandson, Rashbam; R. Eliezer of Beaugency; R. Joseph Qara; R. Joseph Bekhor Shor—and as being more traditional and less grammatically up to date than the Sefardi commentator, R. Abraham Ibn Ezra. Since the nine- teenth century, modern scholars have been biased in favor of appre- ciating a strict philological style of biblical interpretation in medieval Spain and northern France under the lure of “the Sephardic Mystique.” Consequently, they have seen Rashi as a transitional figure between ancient midrash and literal or so-called plain-style commentaries.4 Precisely because Rashi’s Humash commentary is an enigmatic mixture of more midrash than philology, Bible scholars have tended to emphasize Rashi’s method, including the idea that Rashi used midrash 2 This notion draws on and extends to medieval figures the idea of understanding some midrashic texts as “rewritten Bible.” See, for example, Steven Fraade, “Rewritten Bible and Rabbinic Midrash as Commentary” in Carol Bakhos, ed., Current Trends in the Study of Midrash (Leiden, 2006), pp. 59–78. 3 See Lipschuetz, Rashi, pp. 93–95. On Leibowitz, see Grossman, Rashi, pp. 88–89, quoting Leibowitz’s reliance on Rashi’s methodological dictum on Gen. 3:8. Leibowitz believed Rashi quoted a midrash only when commenting on textual problems, but Grossman notes correctly that Rashi did not adhere to this practice. A text- centered view of Rashi is also found in Moshe Greenberg’s comparison of Rashi and his grandson, Rashbam. See Moshe Greenberg, “Ha-yahas bein peirush Rashi le-feirush Rashbam la-torah,” in Yair Zakovitch and Alexander Rofe, eds., Sefer Yitzhak Arieh Zeligman (Jerusalem, 1983), pp. 559–67 (Hebrew vol.); Moshe Greenberg, “Parshanei Zarfat,” [in Moshe Greenberg, ed., Parshanut ha-mikra ha-yehudit: Pirkei mavo (Jeru- salem, 1985), pp. 70–75, 77–79. See also Ed Greenstein, “Sensitivity to Language in Rashi’s Commentary to the Torah,” in Mayer I. Gruber, ed., The Solomon Goldman Lectures (Chicago, 1993), 6: 51–71. 4 On the northern French school, see Abraham Grossman, “The School of Lit- eral Jewish Exegesis in Northern France,” in Magne Saebø, ed., Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation (Göttingen, 2000), pp. 321–71. For two statements of the “Sephardic Mystique,” see Ivan G. Marcus, “Beyond the Sephardic Mystique,” Orim 1 (1985): 35–53; Ismar Schorsch, “The Myth of Sephardic Suprem- acy,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 34 (1989): 47–66..
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