Who is Rashi? — Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki

The facts

Name

RaSHI = Rabbi SHlomo Yitzchaki

Born

1040, Troyes, France

Studied

The yeshivot of Worms and Mainz, Germany

Wrote

Commentary on the whole Tanach and almost all of the Babylonian Talmud

Family

Three daughters; his grandsons Rashbam and Rabbeinu Tam led the Tosafists

Died

1105, Troyes

Overview

Rashi is the most read Jewish teacher of the last thousand years. His name is an acronym of RAbbi SHlomo Yitzchaki, Rabbi Shlomo son of Yitzchak, and he lived from 1040 to 1105 in Troyes, a market town in the Champagne region of northern France. He wrote a running commentary on almost the entire Hebrew Bible and on nearly all of the Babylonian Talmud. Nine centuries later, his words are still printed beside the text on almost every page a Jew learns from: open any Chumash and Rashi is there; open any page of Gemara and his commentary runs down the inside column.

What made Rashi different was not that he knew more than everyone else, although he knew a great deal. It was that he wrote for the person sitting alone with the text and getting stuck. He anticipated the question a beginner would ask, answered it in a line or two, and moved on. Generations of students have learned to read Torah by learning to read Rashi. In the yeshiva world, "What is bothering Rashi?" is the first question a teacher asks about almost any comment.

On Six1Trey we call him one of the OGz, the originals. Every time a parasha video stops to explain a verse with Rashi, this page is where you come to meet the man behind the comment.

Name and titles

Hebrew writers often shorten a great rabbi's name to an acronym, and "Rashi" (רש״י) is the most famous of them. Inside his own commentaries his students and later readers simply call him "our teacher" or "the commentator". He is also known by the title Parshandata, a play on words: Parshandata is the name of one of Haman's sons in the Book of Esther (9:7), but read as two words it sounds like parshan data, "the interpreter of the law". Later generations used it as an affectionate nickname for the greatest interpreter of them all.

Rashi wrote in Hebrew and Aramaic, but he lived in a French-speaking town. When a Hebrew word had no simple explanation, he sometimes gave the Old French word for it, spelled in Hebrew letters. These glosses are called la'azim. There are hundreds of them across his commentaries, and they have become an important source for scholars of medieval French, because they record how ordinary people in Champagne spoke around the year 1100.

Early life and family

Rashi was born in Troyes in 1040. Very little is known for certain about his parents. His father was named Yitzchak, and according to family tradition his mother was a sister of Rabbi Shimon the Elder, a leading scholar of Mainz. Later legends filled the gaps. One well-known story says that when his mother was pregnant with him in the city of Worms, a carriage came racing down a narrow street and the wall behind her miraculously opened to protect her. Visitors to Worms are still shown a niche in the old synagogue wall said to mark the spot. Another tradition traces Rashi's family back to the sage Rabbi Yochanan HaSandlar and through him to King David. These are traditions, not documented history, and serious biographers present them as such.

What we do know is that Rashi married young, had three daughters and no sons, and spent most of his life in Troyes. The town hosted two of the great Champagne fairs each year, where merchants from all over Europe traded cloth, spices and wine. That world of trade, travel and many languages shows up in his commentary, which explains coins, weights, tools, crafts and farming with the confidence of someone who knew how people actually worked.

Education in Worms and Mainz

As a young man Rashi left Troyes to study in the Rhineland, in the yeshivot of Mainz and Worms in what is now Germany. These were the most important centres of Torah learning in northern Europe, built on the legacy of Rabbeinu Gershom Meor HaGolah ("the Light of the Exile"), who had taught in Mainz a generation earlier.

In Mainz his main teacher was Rabbi Yaakov ben Yakar, whom Rashi later described with deep love and reverence. After Rabbi Yaakov's death he continued with Rabbi Yitzchak ben Yehuda. In Worms he studied with Rabbi Yitzchak ben Elazar HaLevi. From them he absorbed not only the content of the Talmud but the careful notes and oral explanations that each generation of teachers handed down. Much of what we read as "Rashi" is the distilled tradition of these Rhineland academies, sorted, checked and written down by a student who refused to let it be lost.

Rashi was already married while he studied, and the years away from home were not easy. Like many students before and since, he chose learning over comfort. That decision is part of why he is an OG: he did the work when nobody was watching, and the world has been learning from it ever since.

Return to Troyes and the yeshiva

At around the age of twenty-five Rashi returned to Troyes. The local community was small, but he opened a school there that drew students from across France and beyond. As far as we know he did not take a paid position as the town's rabbi; he taught, answered questions of Jewish law sent to him by letter, and wrote.

How did he support his family? Many historians have said that Rashi made his living from vineyards and wine, which would fit Champagne perfectly, and his commentary does contain detailed knowledge of grapes, presses and barrels. Other historians think the evidence is thinner than the popular story suggests. Either way, Rashi was not an ivory-tower scholar. He lived among farmers and merchants, and he wrote for them.

Commentary on the Torah

Rashi's commentary on the Five Books of Moses is the work that made him a household name. It is short, clear and selective. He does not comment on every verse. He comments where a careful reader would stumble: an unusual word, a missing piece of information, an apparent contradiction, a repetition that seems unnecessary.

He explained his own method in a famous line in his comment on Genesis 3:8: "I have come only for the plain meaning of Scripture, and for the aggadah that settles the words of Scripture, each word in its proper way." The Hebrew term for the plain meaning is peshat. Rashi brings midrash, the rabbis' interpretive stories and teachings, but he chooses them carefully. If a midrash helps the verse make sense, he uses it. If it does not, he leaves it out, even when it is beautiful.

He was also honest about the limits of what he knew. On Genesis 28:5 he writes simply: "I do not know what this teaches us." A teacher who can say "I don't know" is a teacher you can trust when he says he does.

His Torah commentary became so central that Jewish law gives it a special status. The weekly practice of reading the parasha twice in Hebrew and once in the Aramaic translation (Targum) is codified in the Shulchan Aruch, and there the Shulchan Aruch rules that one may read Rashi's commentary in place of the Targum, because Rashi explains the text so well. Many people do both.

Rashi also wrote commentaries on the Prophets and the Writings. His commentary on Psalms, the Song of Songs and the books of the Prophets are standard to this day, although for a few books, such as Chronicles, the commentary printed under his name was written by someone else.

Commentary on the Talmud

If the Torah commentary made Rashi beloved, the Talmud commentary made him indispensable. The Babylonian Talmud is written in compressed Aramaic, with no punctuation and very few explanations. Before Rashi, a student needed a teacher at his side to get through a page. After Rashi, a student with patience could work through it alone.

Rashi's commentary on the Talmud, often called simply Kuntres ("the notebook") by later scholars, covers almost every tractate. It explains the flow of the argument, defines difficult terms, identifies who is speaking, and quietly corrects copyist errors in the text. Today it is printed on the inner column of every standard page of the Vilna Talmud, opposite the Tosafot, the commentaries written by his own grandsons and their students.

A few tractates were completed by others. Rashi died before finishing tractate Bava Batra; from folio 29a the commentary is by his grandson, Rabbi Shmuel ben Meir (the Rashbam). In tractate Makkot the commentary from folio 19b is by his son-in-law, Rabbi Yehuda ben Natan (the Rivan). In a few other tractates, such as Nedarim, the commentary printed as "Rashi" is not actually his. Scholars have spent centuries sorting this out, which is itself a sign of how much his words are worth.

Responsa, prayers and other works

Rashi answered questions of Jewish law from communities near and far, and many of these responsa (teshuvot) survive. They show a practical, humane judge who cared about the people in front of him as much as about the law.

His students collected his rulings and customs on prayer, Shabbat, festivals and kashrut into several works, including Siddur Rashi, Sefer HaPardes and Sefer HaOrah. The Machzor Vitry, compiled by his student Rabbi Simcha of Vitry, preserves much of the liturgy and practice of Rashi's circle. Rashi also wrote several selichot, penitential poems, some of them in the shadow of the persecutions of his last years.

The First Crusade (1096)

In the spring of 1096 crowds gathering for the First Crusade turned on the Jewish communities of the Rhineland. In Speyer, Worms and Mainz, the very cities where Rashi had studied, thousands of Jews were murdered, and many others were forced to accept baptism at sword point. Jewish memory calls these events Gezeirot Tatnu, the decrees of the year 4856.

Rashi was in his late fifties. His teachers' academies were destroyed, and many of the people he had learned with were killed. He kept teaching. Some of his responsa from this period deal with Jews who had been forced to convert and later wanted to come back. Rashi's position was clear and generous: those who were forced should be welcomed home, not shamed. For a site called Six1Trey, built on the story of a man who came back from the streets to the Torah, that ruling says everything. The door back is open.

Rashi's commentary also carries the memory of that time. When he explains why the Torah begins with the creation of the world, he is speaking to a Jewish people who were being called thieves and outsiders in the lands where they lived. You can read that comment in full in the Bereshit section below.

His daughters and the Tosafists

Rashi had three daughters, Yocheved, Miriam and Rachel, and through them his family became the backbone of Jewish scholarship in France for the next two centuries.

Yocheved married Rabbi Meir ben Shmuel. Their sons included the Rashbam, known for his bold commitment to the plain meaning of the Torah, and Rabbeinu Tam (Rabbi Yaakov ben Meir), the greatest Talmudist of his generation, whose name lives on in the "Rabbeinu Tam tefillin" that many people wear today. Miriam married Rabbi Yehuda ben Natan, who completed Rashi's commentary on Makkot. Rachel, sometimes called Bellassez, married a scholar named Eliezer; the marriage ended in divorce.

Rashi's grandsons and their students became the Tosafists, the "adders", whose questions and answers appear on the outer column of every Talmud page. In a real sense, the standard Talmud page is a conversation between Rashi and his family.

Popular books sometimes say that Rashi's daughters wore tefillin or studied Talmud at his side. There is no reliable early source for this; it is a modern legend. What the sources do show is that his daughters married scholars and raised the next generation of the greatest Torah minds in Europe.

Death and legacy

Rashi died in Troyes on 29 Tammuz 4865, in the summer of 1105. His influence only grew after his death.

When Hebrew printing began, Rashi was there first. The first dated printed Hebrew book was Rashi's commentary on the Torah, printed in Reggio di Calabria in southern Italy in 1475. Printers set his commentary in a special semi-cursive typeface, and that typeface is still called "Rashi script", even though Rashi himself never wrote in it. If you have ever seen a Chumash with a second, curly-looking Hebrew font in the margin, that is Rashi script.

Hundreds of later scholars wrote commentaries on his commentary, called supercommentaries. Among the best known are the work of Rabbi Eliyahu Mizrachi in sixteenth-century Constantinople, the Gur Aryeh of the Maharal of Prague, and the Siftei Chachamim of Rabbi Shabbetai Bass, which is printed in many Chumashim today. Studying "what is bothering Rashi" became a discipline of its own.

Rashi's influence reached beyond the Jewish world. The fourteenth-century Christian scholar Nicholas of Lyra relied on him so heavily that critics nicknamed Lyra "Rashi's ape". Through Lyra, Rashi's explanations reached Christian Bible translators in later centuries.

In Worms, the synagogue associated with Rashi was destroyed by the Nazis on Kristallnacht in 1938 and rebuilt after the war, where it still stands. In Troyes today there is a Rashi monument and a university institute that bears his name. But his real monument is on the bookshelf: every Chumash and every Talmud printed since the fifteenth century.

Rashi in Parashat Bereshit

Parashat Bereshit (Genesis 1:1–6:8) is where most people meet Rashi for the first time. Here are five of his comments that we read in the Six1Trey Bereshit video, each linked to the full text on Sefaria.

Why start with creation? (Genesis 1:1). Rashi asks why the Torah, a book of commandments, does not begin with the first commandment given to Israel. His answer: so that if the nations ever say to Israel, "You are robbers, because you took the lands of the seven nations of Canaan", Israel can answer, "All the earth belongs to the Holy One, blessed be He; He created it and gave it to whom He pleased." The very first comment is about a people being called thieves and standing on its right to exist.

"Let us make man" (Genesis 1:26). Why the plural? Rashi teaches that we learn the humility of the Holy One from here: because man would resemble the angels, Hashem took counsel with His heavenly court before creating him. Even the One who needs no advice asked for it, to teach us to ask.

"It is not good for man to be alone" (Genesis 2:18). Hashem made a partner for Adam, Rashi explains, so that people would not say there are two gods: one alone in heaven and one alone on earth. Only Hashem is truly One; human beings are made to need each other.

"Your brother's bloods" (Genesis 4:10). After Cain kills Hevel, the verse says literally that Hevel's bloods cry out from the ground. Rashi explains the plural: his blood and the blood of all the descendants he would have had. One killing destroys a whole world of future people. Anyone who has lost a friend to the streets knows exactly what that means.

Hashem "regretted" (Genesis 6:6). The verse says Hashem regretted making man. Rashi reads the word as comfort as well as regret: it was a consolation that man was made on earth and not among the heavenly beings, where he would have led them astray too.

For our full parasha breakdown, read Parashat Bereshit on the Six1Trey blog and watch the reading on the Torah page.

Why Rashi is an OG

On the street, an OG is the one who was there first, who paid the price, and whose word still carries weight long after he is gone. Rashi is exactly that. He studied in poverty far from home. He watched the communities that taught him get wiped out, and he kept writing. He opened the door for Jews who had been forced away and wanted to come back. And he made the Torah readable for the person who walks in with no background at all.

That last part is personal for us. Six1Trey exists because a man who came up in the streets of Queens and Bogotá found his way to the Torah, and Rashi was one of the first teachers waiting for him there. That story is told in G2G: From Gangster to Ger. If you are starting your own journey, start where everyone starts: open a Chumash, read a verse, and ask what is bothering Rashi.

Explore the rest of the Jewish OGz, or go deeper in the books below.

Books about Rashi

• Rashi — Avraham Grossman. Littman Library of Jewish Civilization (English translation of the Hebrew original). The standard modern scholarly biography: his life, his teachers, his methods and his world.
• Rashi — Elie Wiesel. Nextbook / Schocken, Jewish Encounters series, 2009. A short, personal portrait by the Nobel laureate, who grew up learning Rashi in Sighet.
• Rashi — Maurice Liber. Jewish Publication Society of America, 1906. A classic early biography, now in the public domain and free to read online.
• Rashi: The Man and His World — Esra Shereshevsky. Sepher-Hermon Press, 1982. Daily life in Troyes through Rashi's own words: farming, trade, family and community.
• Rashi — Chaim Pearl. Jewish Thinkers series, Halban / Grove Press, 1988. A clear introduction to his commentaries and how to read them.
• Rashi and the Christian Scholars — Herman Hailperin. University of Pittsburgh Press, 1963. How Rashi's explanations reached Christian scholars like Nicholas of Lyra.
• Rashi's Daughters — Maggie Anton. Historical novel trilogy, 2005–2009. Fiction, not history, but a vivid way into the world of Troyes. Read it as a novel.

Sources

1. Rashi on the Torah, full text in Hebrew and English (Sefaria)
2. Rashi on Genesis 3:8, "I have come only for the plain meaning" (Sefaria)
3. Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chayim 285:2 (Sefaria)
4. Rashi (Wikipedia)
5. Rashi, Jewish Encyclopedia (1906)

Keep learning

• Read Rashi on Bereshit 1:1 (Sefaria)
• G2G: From Gangster to Ger — the book
• Torah on Six1Trey