Rashi — The Commentator Par Excellence
Full name: Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki | Dates: 1040–1105 | Location: Troyes, France
Who Was Rashi?
Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki — Rashi — is the pre-eminent commentator on the Torah and Talmud in all of Jewish history. His Torah commentary, which appears in virtually every printed chumash, was completed in the late 11th century and has been indispensable to Jewish learning ever since. His Talmud commentary — a parallel achievement — is printed on the inner margin of every page of Gemara and is so woven into the fabric of Talmudic study that learning Gemara without Rashi is almost unimaginable.
Born in Troyes, Champagne, Rashi studied in the great yeshivos of Mainz and Worms (the Rhineland schools of Rabbeinu Gershom’s tradition), then returned to Troyes where he ran a winery and a yeshiva simultaneously. He had no sons, but his daughters married great scholars — the Ba’alei HaTosafos who would continue and debate his approach for generations.
Why the Rebbe Studied Rashi
The Rebbe (Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson) made Rashi’s Torah commentary the subject of an extraordinary ongoing analysis throughout much of his leadership. Beginning in 5725/1965, the Rebbe’s Shabbos Parshas talks increasingly focused on Rashi — not merely explaining Rashi, but asking: Why does Rashi say this? What difficulty in the text prompted this comment? Why did Rashi choose this particular answer and not another?
This approach — finding the question behind the answer — transformed the perception of Rashi from a simple commentary for beginners into a precisely calibrated intellectual and spiritual text.
Rashi and Pshat
Rashi famously declared: “Ani lo basi ela l’pshuto shel mikra” — “I came only to give the plain meaning of the text.” Yet Rashi regularly incorporates Midrash and aggadah into his commentary. The Rebbe’s insight — explored in thousands of sichos in Likkutei Sichos — is that Rashi uses Midrash only when the simple meaning of the text demands it. Rashi’s Midrash is not decoration; it is the deepest pshat available when the literal reading raises unanswerable difficulties.
This means: when Rashi quotes a Midrash, the Rebbe asks — what in the simple reading of the text required this? The answer always reveals something about the structure of the Torah narrative that would otherwise be missed.
Rashi in Likkutei Sichos
Likkutei Sichos is in many ways the Rebbe’s running super-commentary on Rashi. Each parsha volume contains sichos that methodically explore Rashi’s word choices, omissions, and insertions. A few characteristic approaches:
- Textual precision: Why did Rashi use this word and not a synonymous one? Often the difference reveals a halachic or conceptual distinction.
- Order of comments: Why does Rashi place two comments in this sequence? Each Rashi-comment illuminates the one adjacent to it.
- Silence as commentary: When Rashi does not comment on something that seems to need comment, why not?
The Rebbe once remarked that Rashi’s commentary is studied from childhood, yet it contains secrets sufficient for a lifetime of deeper inquiry.
Rashi and Chassidus
Chassidus does not abandon pshat — it deepens it. The Alter Rebbe’s approach was: the revealed Torah (nigleh) and the inner Torah (nistar/Chassidus) do not contradict each other; they illuminate each other. Rashi represents the most refined expression of the nigleh dimension. The Rebbe’s Rashi analysis is itself a form of bein gavra legavra — bridging the intellectual and the spiritual.