The House of Rashi – #30

http://JewishHistory.org

Rashi’s two son-in-laws and grandchildren built what was called The House of Rashi. This was a continuous stream of scholarship within that family for centuries and it produced the great Tosafot, the additional commentaries of the Talmud which are always printed on the other side of the page opposite the commentary of Rashi. Just to imagine Rashi – if you took parchment, a quill and ink and wrote by hand all that he wrote, it would take you years and years to do it and he wrote three editions, worked on it over and over again. And you cannot imagine that Rashi lived in a great ivory tower. He lived during the first Crusade, a time of great persecution for the Jews. Rashi sold wine, had much to do with the outside world, and yet he and his children and grandchildren and great grandchildren built this tremendous house which is called The House of Rashi which is the basis for all scholarship of Ashkenazic Jewry and for Jewry generally.