The Greatest Jewish Bible Commentator, and His Opponents and Interpreters

Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac (1040–1105), better known by the acronym Rashi, spent most of his life in his hometown of Troyes, in the Champagne region of France. There he wrote commentaries on almost the entire Hebrew Bible, as well as on most of the Babylonian Talmud. These works have become the basis of virtually all traditional education in these texts, and nearly all subsequent rabbinic commentaries on either the Tanakh or the Talmud take Rashi’s interpretation as their point of departure. In conversation with J.J. Kimche, Eric Lawee explores this extraordinary rabbi’s approach to the Bible, what accounted for his commentary’s success, and this work’s admirers and detractors. (Audio, 61 minutes.)