Rashi

by Elie Wiesel, Catherine Temerson (Translator)

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 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.

Genres: Jewish, Judaism, Religion, Nonfiction, Biography, Judaica, History

107 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel was a Romanian-born American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust survivor. He authored 57 books, written mostly in French and English, including Night, a work based on his experiences as a Jewish prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps.
In his political activities Wiesel became a regular speaker on the subject of the Holocaust and remained a strong defender of human rights during his lifetime. He also advocated for many other causes like the state of Israel and against Hamas and victims of oppression including Soviet and Ethiopian Jews, the apartheid in South Africa, the Bosnian genocide, Sudan, the Kurds and the Armenian genocide, Argentina's Desaparecidos or Nicaragua's Miskito people.
He was a professor of the humanities at Boston University, which created the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies in his honor. He was involved with Jewish causes and human rights causes and helped establish the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
Wiesel was awarded various prestigious awards including the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. He was a founding board member of the New York Human Rights Foundation and remained active in it throughout his life.

Reviews

[Paul Sánchez Keighley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well… it’s not very good. This book is not so much an essay as a half-baked biography with a bunch of stuffing, and if I wanted to read the biography of a figure as obscure as Rashi’s I would rather read one written by a historian who at the very least dedicated some years to researching him.

Honestly, it feels like the Jewish Encounters editor, Jonathan Rosen, just wanted a big, fat, famous Jewish name to slap on the cover, and Elie Wiesel saw the job as some easy extra income so why not.

Even Wiesel seems a bit befuddled by the incongruity of this commission landing on his lap, as the opening lines of the book - and I swear this is true - are:

Why Rashi?
And why me?

For those of you who haven’t made his acquaintance, Rashi, or rabbi Shlomo ben Yitzhak, is one of Judaism’s most, if not the most, important biblical and talmudic commentators. It’s not just that his comments are often helpful, imaginative and insightful, but a significant number of his apprentices went on to become great scholars in turn, which says something about the quality of the teacher.

The trouble is he lived in 11th-century France and we don’t know almost anything about him.

Wiesel definitely did some homework to put this booklet together (hey, it has a bibliography), but most of the information presented is generally unhelpful. When explaining that Rashi’s foreign students used to live in his house and eat at his table, he says:

We have no idea how he managed to feed so many people, but apparently he did. More precisely: there is no evidence in any source of anyone complaining.

I’m sorry Wiesel, blessed by your memory, but what a stupid thing to write.

One of the strangest parts is when he dedicates no less than 30 pages (in a 90-page book! That’s ⅓ of the book!) to go over the whole book of Genesis while highlighting some of his favourite Rashi comments.

On paper this sounds promising, but he doesn’t bother to tell us what makes these comments valuable, important, insightful… Just copies them verbatim and leaves them hanging in the air. Sure, it makes you turn them around in your mind, but I could have done that just by picking up my trusty Chumash. I call out padding. Padding in a meagre 90-page book. For shame, Wiesel. For shame!

[Debbie Zapata · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aug 30, 745am ~~ Review asap.

945am ~~ One of my reading project authors for 2023 was Chaim Potok. In most of his books I read about the way Talmud is studied, and I was intrigued by the mention of various famous scholars, especially the man known as Rashi, who lived in France during the Middle Ages, passing away at age 65 in the year 1105.

I was curious about the scholar but I'm afraid I was a little disappointed in this book, which feels to me more like a very basic introduction to the man and his thinking. I had chosen it because of name recognition of the author, and I can appreciate many aspects of the text, but I finished it not really knowing much more about Rashi than I had already seen at Wiki.

Of course that is understandable, considering the fact that the author himself admits: there is simply not a great deal of personal information about Rashi. He lives through his commentary, and while there are some interesting examples included here, I think I need a book that goes into the topic in more depth before I can sit back and saw 'oh, I understand now'. (If such a thought could even really be possible!)

[Beda Warrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.0 Stars. This book is about Rashi, the most important commentator on the Jewish scriptures, the Talmud, and other important items. He lived in the Middle Ages in France and while not a tremendous amount is known about him personally past the most basic personal facts, his reputation as s scholar is unmatched in Judaism. I purchased a commentary by him several months ago and when I saw this introductory text, it was intriguing. I had it in my Amazon basket for months but the price never went down, so I finally decided on the audiobook at less than half the cost.

The book is pretty good as an introduction, which is its intent. . It is one volume from a large series of books about famous Jewish people. I’ve seen volumes on everyone from Moses to the Marx Brothers, but I’m mostly interested in teachers like Rashi and early Israeli politicians like David Ben Gurion, etc.

The only problem with this book was the narrator. He did a fantastic job narrating the book; that’s not the problem. The problem for me is that he sounds EXACTLY like Brent Spiner and it’s very distracting. Not a problem for most, I suppose, but for any Jewish Star Trek fans it’s a problem.

I mean he sounds EXACTLY like him. Seriously. Look the book up on Audible and sample it. I’m not joking. 😂

[Philippe Malzieu · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a small book. A bracket in work of Wiesel. Why to interest in a commentator of the Bible living in Champagne in XI ° century? After reading it, we understand.
At first the interpretations of Rashi will influence everybody including the Christians. They seem simple obvious, full of common sense.
There is a profound humanity at Rashi such as describes him Wiesel. But what strikes me, it is that he lives a terrible period of progrom. The question is : is it not derisory to comment on the Bible when his friends and his families are massacred. The remark applies to Levinas.
The answer is easy: only the culture can fight against the inhumanity. I am not Jewish but the messages of Rashi and Levinas has an universal reach.
Notice the translation of chaos in belaazi is lightheadedness. It reminds me apocalypse which etymologically means revelation in Greek. Small philosophic reflection....
Last thing: Rashi was a wine grower in Champagne, it was really a nice person.

[Hermien · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating and informative. I became interested in Rashi after reading the beautiful trilogy about Rashi's daughters written by Maggie Anton. Well worth checking out.

[[Name Redacted] · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful meditation on Rabbi Shlomo ben Yitzakh (RaShI), concerned primarily with Wiesel's own personal relationship to Rashi's work and Rashi's place in Rabbinic Jewish tradition.

If you're seeking historiography, you're unlikely to find much of use here -- rather, it is a combination of hagiography and reflection on intimate human connections to the great scholars and teachers and artists who make the world in which we find ourselves born.

[Dennis Fischman · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Of course, technically he is commenting on ancient, biblical times, but we can guess that he is actually describing his own times.” What Wiesel says here about Rashi, I say about Wiesel. In this slim book, the author’s observations about the sage are most acute when he ponders the questions: How do Jews respond to devastating violence against them? How is it possible to keep faith with the ancestors in an age of skepticism? And, how does a student acknowledge his teacher?

If you liked Wiesel’s handling of the Hasidic tales, you will probably like his selected quotes from Rashi on the Torah. I found them a little too cryptic and a little disconnected one from the next. But in a couple of hours, I got a taste of the great commentator that made me want to read more, and that’s something to be thankful for.

[Phoebe Kinkaid · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting portrait of Rashi, if not as in depth as I would have liked. Although, from my understanding, we know very little of the man so what is there to do.

Will definitely keep as a resource for future study.

[Nathan Albright · Rating 4 out of 5]

I must admit to having profound mixed feelings about this work.  Of course, Rashi is a figure I have some awareness of because of his importance as a commentator on the Midrash and Mishnah from medieval France, and the author claims ancestry from him through two lines as well as the desire to write about his work and his life and times.  The work is short, at around 100 pages, and is easy enough to read, but the way the book is written leaves me with a deeply ambivalent feeling, in fact, several related ambivalent feelings, and the sort of reflections about the relationship of Judaism and Christianity and the proper bounds of biblical interpretations are worth getting.  Even if someone isn't a Jew but is someone who has an interest in the history of the Jewish people as well as the history of Jewish interpretation of the Tanakh, this book will be of interest, because it not only says a lot about Rashi that is worth knowing about but it also says a great deal about Elie Wiesel and his own views about the relationship between Jews and Christians in the Middle Ages and even today.

At around 100 pages (if you include the pointed chronology and glossary of terms), this book is a short one.  The author begins with a Preface that seeks to justify his interest in this sort of work, given that writing about Rashi would seem to require a reason.  AFter that the author gives various impressions about Rashi (1), including some speculation about his ancestry and the lack of information that is known about his parents.  After that there is a discussion about the biblical commentaries that Rashi wrote, and which make a great deal of the work worth reading and of interest, whether or not one agrees with the perspective shown in the material (2).  After this comes a look at the relationship between Rashi and the people and land of Israel as well as the author's thoughts about forced conversions (3) as well as his poetry and responsa.  The last chapter of the book then looks at the sadness and memory of the end of Rashi's life where the Crusades greatly harmed the Jews not too far from where he lived, and where one of his own sons was forced to concert to Christianity, something which greatly grieved him, one must imagine (4).

This book was originally written in French, and the translation by Catherine Temerson is great.  One wonders if the author wrote in France mainly because Rashi was himself French and the author wanted to help make him more familiar to a francophone audience.  Rashi's hostility to Christianity on the one hand was something that one can understand because of the anti-Jewish violence related to the Crusades and to the general lack of security among the Jewish population as a whole, but the author seems to think Rashi's views justified on biblical exegesis as well, which seems unwarranted.  To view Christians as Esau and Judah as Jacob might have been common among Jews (even to this day), but the reverse is likely to be true, something the author ruefully comments upon.  This book is filled with a great deal of sadness, all the more because the atmosphere of casual anti-Semitism and the reverse hostility leave the small Jewish population vulnerable to bullies who feel justified in their evil, and the author seems to have little hope in the positive benefit between interfaith communications in the Middle Ages, although his own behavior (review forthcoming) would suggest that he has considerably more hope for contemporary efforts in the United States.

[Maggie Anton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rashi [Rabbi Shlomo ben Isaac:] isn't just words on a page; he was a writer whose personality and opinions permeate his works, a father with three learned daughters in a time when women were forbidden to study the holy texts, and a teacher who attracted a cadre of disciples who wrote devotedly of the teachings they'd "received from his mouth." In this slim volume Wiesel writes a 'stream-of-consciousness' remembrance beginning with what he learned from Rashi as a child, then expanded with legends, musings about Rashi's Torah commentary on Genesis, and finally, comparisons between the First Crusade, which took place towards the end of Rashi's life, and the Holocaust, which stole Wiesel's youth and became the force behind his own prodigious writings. Throughout the book, Wiesel asks questions about the medieval scholar who so influenced his childhood. Yet not all his questions get answered. Like Rashi, Wiesel admits that there are things he doesn't know.

There are only four chapters, less than 80 pages of text. The first chapter, titled "Impressions," recounts Rashi's life and places him in a community, country, and historical setting. Legends abound, and Wiesel is careful to label them as such. Considering his own history, Wiesel can be forgiven for focusing so heavily on the adversities that Jews of Rashi's time suffered, yet he admits that "in the eleventh century … Jews in Europe and in the Holy Land lived in relative safety." During Rashi's lifetime there are no ghettos, no Inquisition, no blood libels, and no restrictions on Jews' occupations – these come much later. In fact, Rashi lived at the beginning of what is known as the Twelfth-Century Renaissance.

Some say that Rashi allows us to swim in the sea of Talmud, but Wiesel eloquently writes, "Without him, I would have gone astray more than once in the gigantic labyrinth that is the Babylonian Talmud." However one describes it, Rashi's commentary is what keeps us from drowning or getting lost in this otherwise opaque text. And since Judaism as we know it is based on the Talmud –how we celebrate our holidays, observe our life-cycle events, prepare our food, run our businesses, how we relate to our Creator - if Rashi hasn't given us the ability to understand Talmud, Judaism today would either not exist or be a very different religion.

Maggie Anton
www.rashisdaughters.com

[Augusto Pinochet · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recommend this book both to people who are merely curious, as well as those who are well versed in Rashi and to whom most of the information is not new.
For the latter group, while the information may not be new, it is worth it to read a great author write about his personal connection to another great author. It should be noted that in addition to being an accomplished author, Elie Wiesel has remained throughout his life a student of the Talmud. This in itself makes eminently more qualified to discuss the subject of Rashi, who if nothing else, was simply a commentator on the Talmud and Torah.

For those who are not well-educated in the subject, it is still a pleasure to read Elie Wiesel. He humanizes Rashi in a way that will attract those who don't already venerate him as a scholar.

In the Jewish Religion, the commentators are incredibly important, and the study of the commentaries go part and parcel with the study of the original text. Unfortunately, it is hard to find any discussion of the commentary or commentators that is not (a)too simplified or (b)too academic. This book by Elie Wiesel is perhaps the most readable book related to the subject of Torah commentary.

[Dana · Rating 2 out of 5]

In this book, Elie Wiesel tells the story of Rashi, the most renowned Jewish commentator of the Jewish scriptures, and Talmud. Rashi, Shlomo Yitzhaki, lived in France in the 11th century and to this day, his commentary is used and respected. Wiesel tells a bit about France in the 11th century and how Jewish people were treated then and about the Crusades and their devastation on the Jewish people. Mostly, he speaks about Rashi being a genius, and he tells what is known about Rashi's life, however, in many respects, not a lot is known about his life so there is not a whole lot to tell. Wiesel shares some of Rashi's commentary on the Torah and gives his own view of Rashi's statements.

I am reading The Stone Edition Chumash, which includes Rashi's commentary so I have already read much of the commentary that Wiesel included in this book.
It is an interesting little book, but I think I was expecting a bit more from it.

[Mabel · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading Night, it would be difficult to hold another book by Elie Wiesel and not compare it. Rashi is another beautifully written book by Elie Wiesel that talks about hardships and troubles that many Jewish people faced and Rashi. Rashi is a known scholar who was a known leader, both religiously and spiritually and his interpretations of different ideas have been used over and over by many.

I think after reading a powerful book like Night, it's hard for me to think of another book by Wiesel as highly as I do of Night. Although that's how I feel, I think this book is certainly a different reading and it is very well written.

[Elf · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rashi is a towering figure in Judaism who produced some incredible, insightful commentaries on the Torah/Tanakh and Talmud. Rashi was not his real name. It is a combination of the three Hebrew letters, Resh, Shin, Yud, which stand for Rabenu Shlomo Yitzchaki - our Rabbi Solomon, the son of Yitzchak. He was born in 1040 and lived 65 years in Troyes, France. Rashi studied under great Jewish scholars, became a great scholar himself and later the Rabbi of Troyes.
It is not surprising that Elie Wiesel, who won a Nobel Prize for Literature, survived Nazi concentration camps, and is a knowledgeable writer of Jewish philosophy, notions of God and ways of life, chose to write a portrait of Rashi. Wiesel says: “Ever since my first Bible lessons in the heder, I have turned to Rashi in order to grasp the meaning of a verse or word that seemed obscure...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.”
1017: King Robert the Pious orders the Jews to convert; when they refuse, he sets fire to synagogues and Jewish homes. 1095: Pope Urban II preached in favour of the Crusade. Destination: Palestine. The goal: to save Christianity’s holy sites.
The Christians accused the Jews of deicide (the murder of Christ-God), persecuted and butchered tens of thousands of them in European pogroms. Troyes, however, did not face such desperate times in Rashi's days but the madness engulfed Jews all around him and this is why there is a deep melancholy in his commentary on the Song of Solomon. Rashi knew well enough to hide his pain regarding the Christians forcing Jews to convert at sword-point or killing them. In some places in the Holy Land, Jews and Muslims joined hands to fight the marauding Christian Crusaders. Many Jews chose “Kiddush ha-Shem, a martyr’s death.”
Rashi's immense oeuvre was said to be inspired from the Holy Spirit, the Shekhinah. Seeing what Christians were doing to the Jews, he was convinced that Christendom symbolized Esau.“Rashi is convinced that Esau was guilty of the three worst transgressions: idolatry, adultery, and murder. In general, he uses Esau—or Edom—as a symbol of everything evil and wicked surrounding Israel.”
Rashi’s commentary on the Bible was the first Hebrew book to be printed: around 1470. Likewise with his commentary on the Babylonian Talmud. Christian scholars benefited from his commentaries each in his own way.In the 13th century Nicholas of Lyra translated him into Latin and he quoted Rashi so much that his critics nicknamed him Simius Solomnis, Solomon’s (Shlomo’s) ape. Through Nicholas of Lyra, Rashi had a big influence on Martin Luther and his German translation of the Bible.
Rashi was humble. He never hesitated to admit that he didn’t know the answer to a question, or the solution to a difficulty when it came to the Hebrew or Aramaic text. But Rashi believed that the land of Israel itself was holy and that Jews should not leave it but return to it. He writes: “If the nations of the world say to Israel, ‘You are thieves, brigands, because you conquered the land of the Seven Peoples,’ they will answer: ‘the whole earth belongs to the Holy One, Blessed be He. It is He who created it, who offered it to whomsoever He wanted. When He wanted, He gave it to them (first), and then in accordance with His will, He took it away from them and gave it to us.’”
He has some interesting takes on Scripture.“I will make him a fitting helper for him” (literally, a “helper facing” or “opposed to him”). Rashi’s question: How is she both a help and in opposition? Rashi’s answer: If he is deserving, the other will help him; if he is not, the other will fight against him.”
And then this one. “And (seeing woman for the first time) “Adam said, this is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.” This means that Adam had already mated with beasts and animals, but was satisfied only when uniting with his spouse. Or this one: The serpent persuaded Eve to taste the forbidden fruit in spite of the danger that she could die. Then she gave it to Adam so he would share it with her. Rashi: She was afraid that she would die and that Adam would survive her and marry another woman.
I do not cite these to disparage Rashi but only to point out that great freedom existed among the interpreters of the Tanakh and Talmud and those who read their interpretations are expected to use their own judgement. Also, true Rabbis are not afraid of their own readings of the text in the Holy Tongue. Rabbinical discourse is a continuous process and throws up both strange and amazing insights. Take this, for instance. Cain kills Abel. “God reprimands him: “What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother’s blood (in plural) cryeth unto me from the ground.” Rashi explains the plural: “The blood of thy brother, and also of his descendants."In other words: he who kills, kills more than the victim.
Once, he noticed that a Christian with whom he had business dealings didn’t really care about his own faith. Rashi refused to see him again. But Rashi didn’t take part in the virulent polemics with the Christians on what separates the two religious traditions. He took the higher ground of wisdom.
Wiesel covers almost the entire corpus of Rashi's writings by selecting carefully that which interests him as a writer. At the end of the book there is a historical timeline and a glossary. This book is Wiesel's tribute to Rashi and it is a superb read for anyone who seeks to encounter the “ha-Moreh ha-Gadol”, the Great Teacher.

[Michelle Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

This small little book was a joy to read and deeply frustrating at the same time. A joy because Wiesel’s deep affection for Rashi is plain to see. A joy because Rashi the person and his influence on Judaism are so fascinating and rewarding to read about. Frustrating because the book really just barely scratches the service on Rashi and his contributions to Jewish scholarship. You can’t read this book and not be hungry for far more information about Rashi and his Torah and Talmud commentaries.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful introduction to the writings of Rashi and Rashi as a person. Wiesel speaks of Rashi as a student talks of their most beloved teachers. The admiration and love is palpable. While many readers who are already familiar with Rashi will be able to skip over some of the middle of the book, where Wiesel reviews some of the rabbi's most famous teachings, the poetic writing with nonetheless make this a pleasant and quick read.

[David Bennatan · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is indeed a very short book and there is very little information on Rashi as little is known. The important part of the book for me is the chapter of quotations from Rashi on Genesis. It is a brief sample but if someone wants more there are books with all of Rashi in translation. This book is only meant to be an introduction for those not familiar and a perhaps a reminder to those who were once acquainted.

I am familiar with Rashi as a commentary on the Hebrew Scriptures and Gemara and this chapter brought back pleasant associations. Familiar with but not really very knowledgeable, I have always found his commentaries challenging. In the Torah world this is opposite the usual experience. In the cheder five year old children are very much at ease reading Chumash and Rashi. Once I studied in a class led by a rabbi who studied Gemara as a full time occupation. He was at a level that for him, as he told us, reading a page of Gemara was so simple, "Just Chumash and Rashi". Well, for me it's a big challenge and it's certainly not just because I'm sometimes intimidated by the script. Perhaps it's because the writing is so concise. In any case, I know there is a wealth of information in Rashi if you can grasp it. I realized this when, for a few weeks, I studied Rashi with a fellow who was totally fluent in the subject. He would read the Rashi and then the commentary explaining why Rashi was addressing a the question at hand. Fascinating! All this just to say that reading the book by Wiesel motivates me to go back to reading Chumash and Rashi.

[nathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was really disappointed by this book, as I’ve come to expect more from Wiesel’s writing. This book is so slim, so slight, that I kind of question why it was written in the first place. The other entries I’ve read in the Jewish Encounters series from Schocken/Nextbook have been of a much higher quality & depth than this one.

Wiesel does provide a nice overview of what is known about Rashi’s life in France: the nature of his family & scholarly life, the upheaval of European politics that accompanied the Crusades, and the networks of Jewish life that crisscrossed France and Germany. And it’s clear that Wiesel had a deep affection for Rashi’s writing and it definitely makes me want to read and learn more about the great Torah scholar, but the middle section is just a compendium of rather surface-level glimpses into his commentaries. I can’t help but compare this book to Rebecca Goldstein’s “Betraying Spinoza” from this same series, a creative biography that also profiles a Jewish scholar about whom we know little in terms of biographical detail. While that book soars, Wiesel’s never really leaves the ground.

[Isaac · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good luck summarising the genius of Rashi into less than a 100 page book. That was the challenge that Elie Wiesel took with this book.

In doing so you are reading about him as much as about Rashi. His fondness of Rashi is not just in the introduction, it shows through the book even when the author is not entirely happy with the perspective adopted.

I found it interesting the difference noted in the book between Ishmael and Esav as well as the count of the number of times that Rashi writes ‘I don’t know’.

[Chris Wares · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book met my needs perfectly.

I was interested in Rashi the person, not theologian, and this book pitched it perfectly. Wiesel describes Rashis life and then goes on to describe some of his religious opinions in a readable, relatable way. Enough to “get to know him” but not overwhelming.

[Matthew Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written decently well with some highlights from Rashi's life and works, but very light in terms of content

[Mindy Swedarsky · Rating 3 out of 5]

I guess I was looking for a history book, and this was not that!

[Julie-Anne Borgias · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lacking in any great depth although this could be as much scarcity of detail as stylistic choice

[Kerr Howell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting man and his take on the Hebrew Scriptures.

[Josh Fisher]

I, too, would like to own a vineyard and write about ancient tales in my spare time

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

The content was okay if a bit basic for me. The narrator should have been coached as the pronunciations of Hebrew and Biblical terms was awful

[Stephan Leemen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Een ode aan Rabbi Shlomo ben Yitzhak. Het oeuvre van deze middeleeuwse geleerde is enorm en zijn invloed zo mogelijk nog groter. Voor de liefhebbers interessant.

[Bill Dauster · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant, if overly brief treatment of Rashi by one of our time's most creative thinkers

[Matthew]

An interesting and readable sketch of Rashi's life and times.

[Brian · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book isn't that long, so I won't be writing one of my usual thousand-word reviews of it. I'll just say that I knew very little about Rashi before reading this book, and not all that much more after reading it. There's an entire chapter devoted to the events that may or may not have happened in Rashi's life. We don't know his birthdate. We don't know how many children he had--probably three, but maybe four, and maybe the third daughter is a later error. How did he earn a living? Was he a winemaker, as a tradition has it, or something else?

So, having learned very little about Rashi's life, what about his Biblical commentary that's so famous? Well...there's mostly just an overview here. There's a lot of statements but not much attempt to actually elucidate why Rashi thought that way. For example, as near as I can tell, he thinks the patriarchs are blameless and twists and mistranslates the story of Jacob and Esau in order to present a version where Jacob never has to lie to his father and isn't trying to steal a birthright that isn't his, but is instead claiming his rightful due since Esau is a monster in human skin. Also, Ishmael spent his free time practicing archery by shooting at Isaac. I have no idea where Rashi came up with this--presumably it's based on some quirk of the Hebrew or some other passage elsewhere in the Tanakh--but Rashi's vagueness makes it seem like he just wrote these interpretations because he hated Christianity, couldn't overtly say so for obvious reasons, and used Esau as a stand-in for the various difficulties Jews have faced during their history.

But it's not just Esau. I mean, there's another example given of how Rashi says that when Laban chased Jacob down and they embraced after meeting, it wasn't because Laban had repented of his earlier anger and was welcoming Jacob and offering a peaceful resolution. Nope, it was because he wanted to pick Jacob's pockets. What.

So that's why the book is one star. Reading it gave me the impression that Rashi just made up a bunch of stories that fit his pre-existing prejudices and may or may not have any textual basis, and I certainly didn't get any feeling for his supposed brilliance or enduring legacy despite Wiesel's obvious enthusiasm for his ancestor. I suppose it's possible that I've seen through the fog and discovered the real man behind the curtain based on reading a sub-100-page book and poking around Rashi's wikipedia entry for a few minutes...but somehow, I doubt it. For me, Rashi pretty much did the opposite of what it set out to do, and I can't recommend it to anyone.