Rashi: A Portrait (Jewish Encounters Series) - Hardcover

Buch 17 von 17: Jewish Encounters Series

Wiesel, Elie

 
9780805242546: Rashi: A Portrait (Jewish Encounters Series)
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0805242546 ISBN 13: 9780805242546
Verlag: Schocken, 2009

Inhaltsangabe

Part of the Jewish Encounter series

From Elie Wiesel, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, comes a magical book that introduces us to the towering figure of Rashi—Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki—the great biblical and Talmudic commentator of the Middle Ages.

Wiesel brilliantly evokes the world of medieval European Jewry, a world of profound scholars and closed communities ravaged by outbursts of anti-Semitism and decimated by the Crusades. The incomparable scholar Rashi, whose phrase-by-phrase explication of the oral law has been included in every printing of the Talmud since the fifteenth century, was also a spiritual and religious leader: His perspective, encompassing both the mundane and the profound, is timeless.

Wiesel’s Rashi is a heartbroken witness to the suffering of his people, and through his responses to major religious questions of the day we see still another side of this greatest of all interpreters of the sacred writings.

Both beginners and advanced students of the Bible rely on Rashi’s groundbreaking commentary for simple text explanations and Midrashic interpretations. Wiesel, a descendant of Rashi, proves an incomparable guide who enables us to appreciate both the lucidity of Rashi’s writings and the milieu in which they were formed.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

ELIE WIESEL was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. The author of more than fifty internationally acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction, he was Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and University Professor at Boston University for forty years. Wiesel died in 2016.

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Chapter 1

Impressions

I stroll around the new and old streets of the city of Troyes, in Champagne. It still vibrates with medieval history. I am shown the Hôtel-Dieu at the corner of the rue de la Cité and the quai des Comptes: this is where the Porte de la Juiverie, the old gateway to the Jewish neighborhood, was located. And what about the fairs where the Jews from the nearby cities met to discuss business and the rules of ritual? As always, these are to be found in books.

Cited by Irving Agus and again by Gérard Nahon, the Hebraic name of Troyes (or Troyias) first appears in a document written by Yosef bar Shmuel Tov-elem of Limoges in the eleventh century: “Concerning our brothers in Rheims who used to go to the fair in Troyes and whom an enemy lord captured (or persecuted).”

Who were these Jews? What enemy is he referring to? We know there used to be a synagogue here (there is even a street named after it), and there used to be a street of the Jews, a rue des Juifs (now gone as well). There were rabbis, hence students. There were leaders, Jewish families loyal to the Law of Moses, who fought against the outside enemy and the poverty in their midst, helped the poor, and did everything they could to pay the ransom and free their co- religionists when they were taken as hostages. In spite of distances, there were deep contacts between the communities: their right to intervene in one another’s affairs was recognized by the competent rabbinical authorities. After all, didn’t they share a common destiny?

As for me, today, I am looking for the traces of a man whose learning still influences my life, as it does the lives of all those who have a thirst for study.

Houses, large and small, stores, gardens. The man I am looking for must have walked here, dreamed here, shed tears here over the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, comforted broken hearts, counseled those who had gone astray, taught them to overcome fear and hope for the arrival of the Messiah.

I remember: as a child, his cursive script frightened me; more than that of the Bible, it suggested a world that was doubtless complex and probably mysterious, where only adults had the right and competence to enter.

Later, with the years, in the heder or yeshiva, before the candles on the table, every time someone asked, “What does Rashi say?” I rushed to look at his countless commentaries. Whenever I couldn’t grasp the meaning of a word, it was he, the Teacher of my Teachers, who rescued me. An intimate relationship, from child to elderly man, person to person. He said to me, as if confidentially: look, my child; fear nothing, everything must be grasped and conveyed with simplicity. Strange words stand in the way like obstacles? Start all

over again with me. It happened to me too. I started all over again. You just have to break through the shell of a word, a sentence, an expression. Everything is inside them. Everything is waiting for you.

Thanks to his life, his erudition, his work, his generosity, he remains the spring from which we all drink. Without him, my thirst would never have been quenched. Without him, I would have gone astray more than once in the gigantic labyrinth that is the Babylonian Talmud.

Yet he doesn’t try to impress us with his learning, his vast religious and secular culture, his originality, or even his inventive mind. He confines himself to quoting the ancients or his precursors, sometimes his peers, and even his own disciples.

Rashi or the celebration of commentary? Better yet: Rashi or the celebration of memory, and of fraternity too. The danger lies in oblivion. Were I to forget where I come from, my life would become barren and sterile. Were I to forget whom I am the descendant of, I would be doomed to despair.

I loved him. I couldn’t make headway without him. Of course, I explored other approaches, other commentaries: those of Abrabanel, Sforno, Radak, Or ha-Hayim, Ibn Ezra, but Rashi’s are unique, different, indispensable. He radiates warmth and friendship. And simplicity. He is great because he remains faithful to the text, and to its literal meaning. He never uses his learning to make things complicated but to simplify. He never flaunts his erudition to impress students with the originality of his reasoning. Reconciling two words, two sentences, two verses is enough for him. To those who are timid he seems to be saying, Don’t be afraid, I am here by your side.

Sometimes, in my small town, it seemed to me that Rashi had been sent to earth primarily to help Jewish children overcome loneliness.

And fear.

Under a cloudless blue sky, alone with my thoughts, and my nostalgia, I wander through the back streets of Troyes.

Where was his house? No one can tell me. His vineyard? Again, no one knows. His grave in the Jewish cemetery? His parents’ graves or his wife’s? The graves of his three daughters? Are there any remains of his house or his school?

I find none.

I try to use my imagination.

The father and his three daughters during the grape harvest. Their Sabbath dinners. The discussions with his students. His solitude as he bent over his worktable, consulting books and ancient documents, and writing his oeuvre whose immensity never ceases to surprise us— his commentary on the Bible and the Talmud, and his vast body of responsa,

the answers he furnished to questions posed from faraway rabbis.

Yes, we need imagination in order to write about him.

In those days, the Jewish communities in the provinces along the Rhine lived between fear and hope. At times the former dominated as though attracted by unfathomable gloom, at times the latter, making the dawning sun shine bright.

Often bound to one another through religious study and commerce, they flourished at the whim or self-interest of the church authorities and political sovereigns.

At the center of the Talmudic schools, the last in the Gaonic period, was Rabbenu, our Teacher, Gershom, Meor ha-Golah, the Light of the Exile, the uncontested leader of Jewish life. In dealing with complicated questions concerning the interpretation of the Law and doubts about matters of faith, it was to him that they flocked from all over the Diaspora.

We think he died in 1040, but we’re not absolutely positive. We like to think this because that was the year of Rabbi Shlomo’s birth—Rabbi Shlomo, son of Yitzhak, known by his initials, Rashi. According to Rabbi Shlomo Luria, this coincidence proves the validity of the verse in Ecclesiastes, “The sun also arises, and the sun goeth down”: in the world of men, as soon as a spiritual sun sets, another rises. It is simple: humanity could not survive, not even temporarily, in darkness.

Actually, other more reliable sources refer to 1028 as the date of the Gaon’s death. Let us leave it up to medieval historians to decide. On the other hand, most agree on the date of Rashi’s birth, 1040, and all on the date of his death, 1105.

At the time, the Jews in France lived more or less normal lives, depending on the disposition of the Church, and the mood and interest of the Capetian kings Hugh, Henry I, Philip I, Louis VI, and Louis VII. When the Jews were needed, they were left in peace. Afterward, they were disposed of.

In France, the Jewish communities considered themselves well established because they dated from ancient times. They were already there in Roman times, at first in certain specific areas, particularly near the Mediterranean coast. A rue des Juifs could be found everywhere and, in some cities, can still be found today: the stones are a testament to

history.

Did the first Jews arrive as war prisoners with the victorious Roman legions?...

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Verlag
Schocken
Erscheinungsdatum
2009
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0805242546
ISBN 13 
9780805242546
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
128
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