Speaker 1: Greetings, friends, and welcome to the podcast of Jewish Ideas,
a Torah in motion production.
Speaker 2: I'm jj kimbre.
Speaker 1: On today's episode, we will turn to one of the
most original and often underappreciated biblical commentator of the Middle Ages,
namely Rabbi Schmuel ben Meyer, often known as the Rashbam,
a leading figure in twelfth century Northern France and a
grandson of Rashi. Rashbam developed a radically contextual approach to
Biblical interpretation, insisting on shat or plain sense of scripture,
even when it cut against previous or established rabbinical readings.
We will be exploring the methods of the rash brahm,
is understanding of the relationship between Pshat and Dhrush, and
various other aspects of his work, and what they reveal about.
Speaker 2: The evolution of biblical commentary in the medieval period.
Speaker 1: Johnny us today to discuss the rush Bam is a
foremost authority on the subject. Doctor Martin Luchin, who is
Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies at York University. Professor Luction
has written extensively on the Rushbam, and his works included
a four volume translation of Rashbam's commentary on the Torah,
as well as a Hebrew addition, both accompanied by extensive footnotes.
It is a pleasure to welcome into the podcast of
Jewish Ideas Today, Professor E.
Speaker 2: Luction. Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 3: Wonderful to be here, like everything that Toron Motion does,
and I'm happy to be part of this podcast series.
Speaker 2: Fabulous, fabulous.
Speaker 1: So let's begin at the beginning, as it were, tell
us a little bit about this man, Rushmolov and Mayer sketch,
if you please, what we know about his life, his
circumstances from the sources, When and where and how did
he live.
Speaker 3: We actually do not know a lot of details about
Rushbam's life. We do know that he was Rushi's oldest grandson.
He was the oldest son of Rash's oldest daughter, and
she only had daughters, did not have did not have sons.
And we know that he studied with his grandfather enough
that he was able to pass on a lot of
teachings that he received from his father. This is important
for trying to figure out when he was born, because
we know that Rashi died in eleven o five, and
so the best guest that people have is from the
amount of time that Rashbam studied with his father, it
seems likely that he was born, let's say around ten eighty,
so that he managed to be with his grandfather a
student of his grandfather until age twenty five. This would
mean if Rashbam was born in ten eighty, this would
mean that Rashi became a grandfather at age forty, because
Rashi was born in ten forty. But it's not so
unthinkable that somebody would become a grandfather. We don't know
how old Rashi was when he married, and we don't
know how old his daughter was when she married, so
there's a reasonable guess that he was born around around
ten eighty. We know that he lived for a long time.
He's referred to as being elderly, and so the best
guess is that he died around eleven sixty. Professor Afreim
Mooreba has written, and I think it's pretty convincing that
after Rashi died, rush Bamb became the Roshieshiva of the
Yeshiva there in tro and after a while, Rushbamb seems
to have become overshadowed by his younger brother Rabenu Tom
Rabeno Yakov Tom was nine or ten years probably younger
than Rushbam. And there's a great scholar of Rabenu Tom
who's been writing prolifically about Rabeno Tom here in Jerusalem,
UH Professor Rami Reiner and UH Professor Reiner's theory is
that in the beginning Rabino Tom looked as his older brother,
as his rebbie, as his teacher, and then he started
looking at him as his colleague, and then he started
looking at him as being, you know, not in the
same high level that I am at. Both of them
were very active in the tosspot enterprise, and that's probably
I always tell my students that I figure that Rashbam
wrote his his commentaries on the Bible as a kind
of hobby and that and that his major gold in life,
like most rabbis in Ashkenas uh in Franco, Germany in
the Middle Ages, was it was to be an expert
in the talmwood. And he probably spent most of his
time on tambolical literature and wrote the wrote his Bible
commentaries on the side. What else do we know about
his life? It seems almost certain that he spent some
time talking with Christian scholars of the Bible in northern France.
First of all, he mentions conversations that he had with
Christians about the Bible, and he doesn't mention them with
any ranker or with any belittling of the Christians. He
just says, you know, I pointed this out to them,
and they said, that's fine. And a scholar recently, a
Catholic scholar named Monsei Lera, came here to Jerusalem and
studied Hebrew and Biblical commentaries for a dozen years in
order to be able to figure out who various scholars
who lived at the same time in France. There were
two great French scholars of the Bible who were slightly
younger than Russbaum, Hugh of Saint Victor and Andrew of
Saint Victor. And they're constantly quoting the Jews. And she
came to the conclusion that their Hebrew was not good
enough that they would have been able to read medieval
Jewish medieval Hebrew, and so they couldn't They couldn't have
read these commentaries that must have talked with Jews about them.
And she counted up the dozens of times that they
quote the Jews, and she found that the interpretations that
they quote in the name of the Jews again with
they quote without rank or and without belittling. They just say,
here's what the Jews say about this, about this passage,
that the plurality of the explanations that they cited in
the name of the Jews are explanations that come from
rush Bomb. And she concluded in her book on the
subject that either they talked to rush Bomb, or at
a minimum, they must have talked to a student of
rush Bomb, so he was interested in the Bible enough
to talk about it with non Jews. There's an assumption
that a lot of modern Jews have that if Jews
and Christians were talking about the Bible, it's because they
were in forced disputations, or that they were that the
Jews were forced into these discussions, and I'm totally unconvinced
by that.
Speaker 4: I think that there.
Speaker 3: Were friendly discussions of people who are interested in the Bible.
The Bible is the Bible for the Jews, and it's
part of the Bible for the Christians too, And in
the same way that you and I can talk to
a Christian today about the Bible without enmity, I think
it was possible in the twelfth century also fascinating.
Speaker 1: That is actually a very interesting indeed, which leads me
a little bit into my next, let's say, contextual question
before we dive into the commentary itself, which is surrounding
just some of the characteristics of his place and time,
because of course, round about the same centuries that Russian
Rushbam and others were producing a total commentaries in what
can be called a French school or a Nashar school
of devil commentary those of course the Spanish school, though
you know Rambane, but Ezra various others in that school,
And so you know, I wanted to ask what were
the sort of general characteristics of the culture of the
intellectual ambiance in which Rushbam and his grandfather Russian will
get to that moment in which they lived, which are
relevant or salient for understanding his his pirush and just
his mode of thought I was going on at that
time and place in which he lived.
Speaker 2: That can shed light on this.
Speaker 3: So it's clear that study of the Tuml was extremely
central to rush Bamb's judaism, to his uh to his
intellectual life, but that doesn't show up in his Torah commentary.
Very often that shows up in other in other works
of his the centrality of this and that and that's
what that was the central Jewish intellectual activity in Franco Germany,
as opposed to in this period of time in uh
in Muslim Spain, the tom Wood was not as central
to Jewish to Jewish understanding. I once asked professor Professor
Oriel Simone, who's a neighbor of mine here in Jerusalem
and is possibly the world expert on Abraham Eben Ezra,
I once asked them, how much Tomwood do you think
that uh Ibn Ezra knew? And he said, I think
that even Ezra had the education of a well educated
jew from from Muslim Spain, which probably consisted of studying
the ref the Rabeno Jitsak Alfassi's kind of condensation of
the Talmud. And he said that in those circles in
Muslim Spain there wasn't that emphasis on the Talmud that
you found in Franco Germany. So that that's part of
the intellectual world in which Rushbam is living. But also
some of the teachings of Muslim Spain are reaching France
in the days of rush bomb and I think one
of the differences. One of the many differences between Rashi's
Torah Commentary and Rushbam's The Torah Commentary is that rush
Bamb had read the best available books of Hebrew grammar,
the ones written by Yehuda Hayuj and Bayona Idan Janach
that had actually been written in Judaeo Arabic. They had
been written before Rashi was formed. But Rashi didn't read
Judeo Arabic, and he did Rushibam. Rusham didn't read Judeo Arabic,
but those books had been translated into Hebrew by the
time rush Bomb came along. They weren't translated in time
for Rashi to make use of them, and so rush
Bomb had a I would say, a better grounding in
grammar than Rashi did, because the great works of Hebrew
grammar that came up with the discovery in quotation marks
that we all. One of the first things that any
of us learned when we learned Hebrew is that every route,
pretty well every root in the Hebrew language has three letters.
That wasn't something that Rashi was taught. It's not to
be blamed for not knowing this, but this theory was developed.
It's not a fact when you look at the word
va yate above you and tet and they tell I
remember when my third grade teacher told me that the
root of vayet is nun tet hey. I looked at
the teacher, what are you talking about. There's no nun here,
There's no hey here. But that became the that became
the dominant theory of Hebrew grammar. There's that has been
taught since the days of Yona Binjana until until today.
And Rashi didn't know that theory of Hebrew grammar. And
so rush Bamb is part of the milieu of the
Tomwood centered Jews of Franco Germany, but he has been
exposed to some of the teachings or many of the
teachings of the Jews of Muslim Spain.
Speaker 1: Interesting, that is a very interesting difference between the two,
of course, which is, you know, one it seems to
conflate Russian and Rushbat. You know, obviously grandfather and grandson
sort of similar time periods. That what you're saying is
that in those in that generational difference actually a very
important difference of the information that was flowing in from
from outside, including these advances as a Hebrew grammar and understanding.
That's that's very interesting.
Speaker 2: Okay, fine, fair enough. So let's let's dive into a
little bit the.
Speaker 1: That that particular relationship, right, but one of the most
famous relationships, intellectual relationships, familiar relationships in the history of
Jewish I thought, which is of course Jan Rushi and
his grandson Rashbam. And so let me ask you, I mean,
what do we know of that relationship? Firstly, on both
on a personal level, Let's say, what we know of
their interactions? Did they learn together? Were they to what
extent we know about that? And secondly, I suppose tracing
influence a little bit. I mean, obviously Rushuram sees himself
at some sort of continuation of Rashi perhaps or some
sort of an heir to his title, but also doing
something quite different. I mean, how do we how do
we throw the two of them into dialogue with each
other and what do we see as their relationship?
Speaker 3: For sure, Rushbam I was a tolmidbothake, a dedicated a
student of his of his grandfather, Rafshi, and he often
quotes things in the name of Rashi, and he often
speaks with great respect about Rashi. His his approach to
the to the interpretation of Talmudic texts is very similar
to Rashi. I have some things to say if you're
interested about about the differences. And we have some of
Rashbaum's commentaries on the Tomlud, and I think that he
tried to go in a little bit of a different
direction from Rashi, but he's definitely following in Rashi's footsteps.
Rush Bomb reports to us in his commentary on the
Torado that he used to discuss shot with his with
his grandfather, and he says nakiv I would argue with
him to his face. And Rashi admitted to me that
if he had time, he would change. He would write
new commentaries based on Rushbamb, says hashadrachimbhol Yom, the newly
thought of shot interpretations of the Bible that you come
up with day by day. And there is some evidence
that Rashi, towards the end of his life was being
influenced by some of the approaches to the Bible of Rushbamb.
Certainly Rushbam was influenced by Rashi, but there is evidence
there another great rabbi who is younger than Rushbam named
rabittak Or Zarua reports that there were various verses that
Rashi used to call suke di Shmuel, the verses of Schmuel,
the verses that my grandson came up with an explanation
of these verses, and that was very proud of the
fact that he was learning something about the Bible from
his from his grandson. So it was an interesting relationship
with a lot of books that were written in the
Middle Ages got lost. A lot of books that were
written by rush Bumb got lost. The Torah Commentary written
by rush Bamb almost got lost, and we can get
back to that in a second. But towards the end
of Rashi's life, we know that there was a work
that he wrote. He was too weak to write it himself.
And there's a work that's called hell Haught yay Nesse
that Rashi dictated to rush bomb and we don't have
that work, but quotations from it appear in other reshow
names and other rabbis from this period, So you know
he was He was close enough to his grandfather that
at the end of his grandfather's life was he was
like his amanuensis. He was helping him write the things
that that Rashi wasn't able to write. Himself anything.
Speaker 1: Of course, there is this famous line of that. Russibamb
reports Rashi saying that, you know, Russi would have gone
over and recomposed some of his tory piroshin in light
of things he learned, in light of the new shut him,
the new explanations that arise every day.
Speaker 3: You know, As a grandfather myself, I often wonder because
occasionally a grandchild of mine says something, and I say, oh,
that is brilliant, and sometimes it was brilliant, and sometimes
I'm just being a good grandfather. And so you know,
you never to know for sure when Rushbam says that
Rashi said, oh, you've taught me important new things, whether Rashi,
I'd like to think that Rashi really meant it, and
that he wasn't just encouraging his young his young grandchild.
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, it's very interesting what you say just now,
that in your mind the influence wasn't only in one direction.
In other words, that one could perhaps correct the sun
elements of Russi's writings, the Russi's way of thinking that
had been shaped by interactions with his own, presumably precocious grandson.
Speaker 3: Yes, I really think that that that is the case.
I'm not saying that Rashi, you know, totally revolutionized his approach,
totally changed his approach. But you can find and things
that he's writing, presumably towards the end of his life,
some influence of Russi bomb. And we also know that
Rashi was constantly revising his own works, including his tra commentary.
And there are places where, like in the verse from shiratayam,
you mean hajasm and aribako you mean hahashm tirat. Oh, yeah,
when there are two references to God's right arm there.
First of all, Rashi begins by explaining why there would
be two references to God's right arm, and then he says,
but the shot is and then he says something very
similar to what Rushbam says. And the plastibility that he
was talking about this verse with his grandson and that
he revised his commentary to that verse in order to
explain it the way his grandson explained it. I think
that's a real possibility.
Speaker 2: Okay, fine, fair enough.
Speaker 1: And having danced around the edges of Rushbam's commentary, now
for a little bit, let's dive into it itself.
Speaker 2: One of the most salient aspects of Rushbam's commentary.
Speaker 1: Elatura is is its dedication to what is generally called shot,
and and you know, and then rush Bamb is usually
tagged as you know he is the grandfather of Mikra.
And so I want to ask you because this is
actually not such a simple thing to describe exactly. People
think it's generally translated to the plain or ordinary meaning
of the words. But let me ask you, I mean,
what did Rushbamb think shat was? What did he think
he was doing in his methodology? And then let me
ask I mean, as sort of a follow up, was
the shot of Rushbamb the way he thought was what
he thought he was doing the same as what others
were I don't know Rashibanezra and Bane the others in
his generation.
Speaker 2: Was his pursuit of shot.
Speaker 1: The same as what others thought they were doing when
they said they were doing the same thing.
Speaker 3: Okay, great question. There isn't a simple definition of shot
that everyone would would agree to. I remember, you know,
I had the great privilege many years ago of studying
with Nahamad Labovich, and she once said, there's a choke
that the only difference between shot, and Rash is that
shot is what I say in Drash is what everybody
else says. Yes, and for a lot of people that
that's the way it is. There's there's a book written
by David by Salivni called Shot in Russia. He argues
in this book that really the word shot, as the
years went on, started to mean my explanation that I
think is true without any real real definition. And Yeshiba
boys know that, you know, the y boy will often
say this is the shots in the commar. It doesn't.
It doesn't mean anything other than the true interpretation. But
I think that there are some characteristics of shot the
way Russibumb understood Shot, in the way most Medievals understood Shot,
that that we can define define. One of them is
conforming to the rules of grammar. One of them is
conforming to the context, looking to interpret the text in
its context. One of them is being freed from seeing
previous methods of interpretation as being binding. So Rashi himself
said Anilo Badi el Albshutosh Mikra. But anybody who reads
Rashi knows that Rashi is I don't know, maybe around
ninety percent of the time or even more than that,
he's offering things that he found in meat rush Rabba
and taught Kumar and various various meat rashim he has
not freed himself from. And he's probably proud of the
fact that he hasn't freed himself from the traditions of
Jewish interpretation. He's using those traditions of interpretation in his commentary,
and he's probably using some kind of criteria for deciding
which meat rashim he will use and which meat rashim
he won't use. But rush Bumb hardly provides a meat
rush eff in his commentary. It so there's there's the
experience of me looking at the text using the the
rules of grammar and syntax and reading the text in
its context. And what makes rush Bumb so interesting and
also so challenging is that he seems to also say,
let the chips fall as they may. Now, I'm just
going to give this interpretation. And if you tell me
that the interpretation that I gave here goes against what
it says in the talm Wood, then I'll say to you, Okay,
I know that, but it's the shot. Does that mean
that he was rebelling against the Talmud God forbid. Now,
Rushbamb believed in a text that has more than one
meaning to it, and he thinks that the text should
be read using the mid rashik method, and he thinks
that it should also be read using the shot method.
And he didn't have any trouble with the suggestion that
maybe they arrived at different conclusions one from the other,
not just maybe often they did. And sometimes he'll write,
here's what the shot is, but the rabbi said the following,
and he could live with that. He could live with
that tension. You asked, you know, is he's so different
from Rashi. Yes, he's very different from Russia, because Rashi
doesn't do that. Rashi is still very wedded to the
midrash Is he so different from Ivanzra? It's not all
that different from Ivanzra, except that even Ezra is not
eager to live with that tension between the midrashik reading
and the and the shot. There are places where Rashi
where Rashbam says, give you an example, the rules of
the evity breed the Jewish Slave. That says that a
Jewish slave can be a slave only for six years
and then and then he goes free. Unless he wants
to stay. There's a ceremony that he can go through,
and then he stays a slave. And then it says
if he goes through this ceremony, the text the Taurus
says Olam, he will worship, not worship, he will work
for his uh for his master Olam. And the hawaha
is that that the slave goes free at the jovela
the jubilee year. But Rushbam says, no, that's you know
that the shots of the passages that he remains a
slave all of his life. And he knows very well
that that's not what the halaka is. But he's interested
in explaining the shot, even if the shot does not
come to the same conclusion as as the halaha. Even
Eesra couldn't live with that. Even Ezra writes in the
introduction to his commentary that when when he finds a
conflict between the traditional way of reading the text and
the shot way of reading with the text, he'll see
if he can make a kind of compromise between them,
and if not, you have to choose. You can't have
them both. And even Eesra had at one point in
his uh in his Obra writes that any author Hajamia
oh Navi, whether it's a sage or a prophet, Tom
e Radlied Barrow, there's one interpretation of what of what
he says, there's one correct interpretation. Rushbam didn't feel that way.
Rushbaum felt that a text had many levels of meaning,
or at least two levels of meaning, the meaning that
has arrived at using the methodology of meat Rush and
the meaning that has arrived at by using the methodology
of Shot.
Speaker 5: And this is I think one of the reasons why
Rushbamb's commentary for most of Jewish history was not particularly popular.
Speaker 3: Because a lot of Jews had trouble relating to the
idea of an interpretation. A lot of religious Jews had
trouble relating to an interpretation that wasn't worried about what
the Halaja said the interpretation of the text was. Rushboton
was a very pious Talmudist. He wasn't trying to organize
any rebellion against the against Talmudic law. But as I said, before,
this commentary almost got lost. There were we have dozens,
if not hundreds, of manuscripts of Rashi's commentary on the
Torah that were produced before print that came along in
the fifteenth century, and perhaps the first and not the
first that it was. The second Jewish book ever printed
was Rashi's Commentary on the Torah in the fourteen seventies,
already Incannabula, a book published already in the fifteenth century.
Rushbump's Commentary on the Torah wasn't published until the eighteenth century.
And the only reason it was published in the eighteenth
century is because at the very end of the seventeenth century,
from the Jewish book collector, a rabbi found one manuscript
of rush Bumb's commentary on the Torah, and all of
our versions of rush Bum's Commentary on the Torah are
based on one count them, one manuscript which got lost
during the show. Up For many years, I was hoping
that the manuscript was plundered by somebody and that it
would be put up for sale. But now that it's
so many years after the after the show, it seems
it seems that the manuscript was was destroyed. And so
why were there not so many, uh, not so many
manuscripts of rush Bomb's commentary on the Torah Because people
weren't all that interested in learning it. Because religious Jews
who were studying the Torah, wanted to have an explanation
of the Torah that conformed to the tom Wooduk understanding
of it. And I think Rashi had had the genius
to realize this. While he professed an interest in Shot,
as I said before, the majority of what he did
was wasn't shot. And it's in the last couple of
centuries that people have started to, you know, because modern
people are different than medieval people and uh and many
modern Jews, including many observant modern Jews. I'm an observant
modern Jew, and I find a lot of interest in
rush Bumb's understanding of the of the Bible.
Speaker 1: And I am okay, there's a lot that I want
to address, and one of them is the very interesting,
let's say, ramifications of rush BAM's ideas regarding Latin Rush because,
as you said, he has this interesting relationship with mid
Haan Hazal's readings, including the i Godic readings and those
readings of the narratives in the in the Tanak, but
also the halachic readings that Rabbi's legal midrash on on
the text. And as you say, rush Bamb doesn't reject
these as authoritative He doesn't say, you know, therefore we
don't have to you know, we're not bound by these,
but he does insist there's not the shot, there's not
actually the reading, or I don't know the correct reading,
there's not the genuinely how would you say what rush
Brahm's attitude is to mid Russia, because at the end
of the day, he is in a way, I don't know,
demoting them or or like categorizing them as one particular
thing while insisting that the plain text reading says something else.
Speaker 2: And I'm cold you sort of make make sense.
Speaker 3: Of all this, m Well, I think that that the
key to this is that rush bamb believed that there
could be two ways of interpreting the same text and
they could both be valid. And you know, if you're
studying poetry, uh, you you discover things like this. You know,
there isn't just one correct interpretation of a poem. And
Refam understands that there's a tool kit that the Midrash
uses for interpreting a text, and it involves things like Kalbajomer,
the thirteen medats that are used by Rabil. He writes this,
he said, this is the halachically binding way of reading
the Torah. But there's another way of reading the Torah,
and that's the contextual way of reading the Torah. And uh,
maybe I'll just give one more example. Rasfan made many
people angry when he wrote in uh in his commentary
on the first chapter of the Torah, that by he era,
by he bolk here does not mean that that the
Jewish day begins at night and continues. It goes from
sunset the sunset. What it means is that God created
on the first day and then, like the rest of us, wahabdil,
just like the rest of us, when he finished working,
there was evening and that was morning, and that was
the end of the first day. When morning and that's
we're talking today on a Sunday where I'm living here
in Israel. Right now, the sun has already set and
alofialy it's Monday, but everybody thinks of it as being Sunday.
It's being Sunday still, And when will people think that
Monday really begins. They'll think that it may that it
begins when the sun comes up tomorrow morning. That'll be
the beginning of the new day. And that's what rush
Bomb says. That's what's going on in Genesis chapter one.
Even Astra got apoplectic about this interpretation and said that
he thought that maybe a commentary that that wrote something
like this deserved to be burnt or at least to
be torn to pieces, because because it seemed to undermine
the tradition. And Russibamb managed to live with this, with
this tension between what the text says on the shot
level and what it is that we as religious Jews
are required to do.
Speaker 2: Right, you mentioned that very interesting.
Speaker 1: I don't know what controversies the right word, but the
sorry the Rushbaum's opinion that indeed the Jewish day begins
the vayer very voca means that the Jewish day really
begins in the morning, as we sort of instinctively understand
it and wake up in the morning and believe it
to be the case. And that that vaya very very
voca as it is invoked in Genesis chapter one, just
means that the day passed and the thing that was
crazy on that day happened like it was sort of
you know, it was the day ended. Or firstly, before
we get onto to the other thing, this occasions quite
a response from Ibn Ezra if I'm understaken that he
had to defend his position. And can you briefly enlighten
us as to that particular very interesting episode in in
in the life of these two men.
Speaker 3: Yes, so, so Ibanezra wrote a whole book to try
to disprove this uh the theory. And again because Ibanezra
has this feeling that a text has one interpretation to
it and that has to be the correct interpretation. Rashban
was not suggesting that the Halahi definition of a day
should change. In fact, there are other passages where Rushban
makes it very clear that he thinks that the halahik
definition of a day is from from the time that
the stars come out today until the stars come out tomorrow.
That's a Hallafi day. But he just argues that the
correct reading of the first chapter of Gray Sheet is
that during those first six days of creation, those days
of creation finished in the morning. And eban Ezra says,
what kind of weird thing would that be for the
Torah to begin? If the Torah it's interested in us
keeping days that begin in the evening and in the evening,
why would it say something say something like that. It
seems to be undermining the whole system. And so iban
Azra wrote this old pamphlet. Some people call it a book,
but it's really just a pamphlet called the Garrett Ashabad,
which he wrote when he was towards the end of
his life, when he was living in England, was to
try to disprove this, this approach, and that there's a
certain there's a certain irony about this because as I
said before, Rashbaumb was the accomplished Talmudist and Ebn Ezra's
not of Talmudist. That was not his thing. He did
not write works of halacha, and Rushibamb did write works
of halaka. Rush Bamb and his Tomlind commentaries gives us
halachak summaries of the Talmudic text very often. He's very
interested in people knowing what's the halaja is much more
than Rashi and Rashi's Talmwud commentaries. Rush Bamb is much
more interested in presenting the Talmudic text to students in
such a way that they will know what the halaja is,
and so that really matters to him. And yet another
irony in the Torah Commentary written by Moses Mendelssohn at
the end of the eighteenth century, in the introduction to
Medilson wrote an introduction to Parashashpatim to the laws that
appear in chapter twelve, twenty one, twenty two, and twenty
three of Exodus of Schmaltz. And he says, there, you know,
and of course paraphrasing you, but he says, you know,
I try to follow Rushbamb all the time, but I
can't follow Rushbamb on Parshakh Mishpatim because rush Bamb often
interprets laws here in Parshakh Mishpatim in a way that
doesn't conform with the halaka. And how can you do
something like this? So the great father of the Jewish
Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, Moses Mendelssohn, feels as if
Rushbamb is not feel a pardon that is not from enough.
He's you know, it's not from enough for me, for Mendelssohn.
And the irony of this, of course, is that Rushbam's
life was the tom in his life was the Halaja,
and was not trying to change anything. But Meddelsohn just
thought that this was that the rush Bomb had gone
too far in his commitment towards chat And it's possible
that that's why there weren't so many manuscripts of Rushbaumb's commentary,
because other Jews over the years felt that he had
gone gone too far. Before the twentieth century, there was
just one super commentary written on rush Bamb's commentary, and
the author of this super commentary writes in his introduction,
I've heard people saying, what do I need this commentary for?
What good does this commentary do for us? And I
think that was what a lot of traditional Jews felt
over the ages. But then again, there were people who
followed in his in his footsteps. If you look at
someone like schmil W Luzzato in Italy in the nineteenth century.
Shadal Luzzatto was writing just after Rushbaum's commentary was published
for the for the first time, and he was he
was very taken by it, and he's quoting it all
the time, and he liked that approach. And Shadala was
a religious Jude, teaching all of his life in the
seminary in Padua, felt that he had teaching Tanach there,
felt that he had this kind of role model of
somebody who could stay loyal to the tradition but was
not willing to compromise his logical analysis of the text,
and that's what Shadal. That's what Shadal does in his commentary.
In many modern commentaries follow in Rushbam's footsteps. Just to
give one example, Rushbam reads the story of Jacob and
Esau very differently from the way that Rashi and the
Jewish tradition at general reads the story of Jacob and Isa.
Rushbam says that when Jacob was coming back from Haran
to Erasistrael, he was afraid of his brother Esa for
no reason. And God had promised him that everything would
be fine when he came back, and he didn't believe
what God said to him, and in fact, he was
trying to run away. At the last moment, after he
brought his family across the river, he decided to run
away and run in the opposite direction. And that's when
God sent that man Angel to wrestle with him so
that he wouldn't be able to run away. And then
when he meets Esau and Isa runs to him and
kisses him and hugs him. That's because that's what I
saw was planning on doing all along. One of the
great Bible scholars who writes these days Professor Yonatan Grossmann
of Barilan University wrote a book called Yakhov recently, and
I went to the book launch of that book, and
in the book launch he talked about the story of
Yakov Aesov and he explained all the reasons why Rushbam's
reading of the story of Yakov Vnesov was the correct
reading of the text, a number of arguments beyond the
ones that Rushbamb made. Professor Grossman was convinced that it
was the was the correct reading.
Speaker 1: So which is which is introjected extraordinarily subversive reading? And
again I sort of because of course, the whole weight
of Abinning tradition to mean Russian, you know, the gamar
that all assumed that Asaf was irredeemably wicked, that Yakov
was always heroic, and that the kiss was either a
very suspect kiss or wasn't a kiss at all, and
that uh, you know, and right here comes Rushbam, just
with the reading of the plain text, entirely subverts and
so that was the basis of my initial question. On
the one hand, he is loyal to rabbinic practice, and
and the way, you know, I suppose the conclusions of
the Brining tradition. But in terms of reading the verses,
the way he does it and the conclusions he reaches,
he's he's a real outlier.
Speaker 2: He's completely rather subversive.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, that's an attraction to me and to many
people who are attracted to this commentary that it's you know,
I think to myself, just how creative this person was.
You know, he have learned from the time that he
was in kindergarten or whatever the equivalent of kindergarten was
in order to France, and at the end of the
eleventh century, he must have been taught that bay he
Era Vahi Bocher teaches us that the Jewish day begins
at night. And then he just decided he's going to
look at the text independently, independently of all the things
that he had been that he had been taught, and
that you know, it's a great mind of somebody who's
able to do this. I would say that not every
interpretation that Rushbumb wrote is totally convincing to me, but
I think that he did a really good job of
looking at the Bible through the lens of context, grammar, syntax,
and what the text is saying, and not necessarily what
thea is interesting?
Speaker 2: Interesting?
Speaker 1: Okay, there were several points in what you said that
I want to approach, and one of them is there
is an aspect, an aspect of the Rushbam's terror commentary
which you have also noted, which is what one might
call noticing the literary aspects, the literary points of the
of the tourist narratives and laws, et cetera. And could
you elaborate a little bit on that. This is actually
something which, as you say, is important, especially because it
foreshadows more modern readings of the Tanakh. And you know,
there's something that contemporary scholars pay a great deal of
attention to, and Rushbam seems to have been something of
a trailblazer and this in noticing this, So could you
elaborate what was within Rushbam's commentary that is different or
is what does he notice, let's say, what does he
place within his commentary is that others don't.
Speaker 3: So, first of all, the example that I gave before
of what Brawshi called suke de schmoil noticing that there's
a pattern modern scholars call this latter parallelism, where there
is a you have a poetic line and in the
beginning of the phrase. In the first half of the
poetic line, a noun or a verb appears, and then
it's repeated in the second half of the line, and
there's an elaboration of it in the second half of
the u the line. When you study about Biblical poetry
these days in a university where they teach about these things,
they'll tell you that's yes, that's what's going on in
many lines of Biblical poetry. And and rashbamb writes about
this at length. And to notice that when it is
you mean ha hashem, if your right hand God is glorious,
your right hand God will destroy the enemy. That there
aren't two right hands that are being described here. It's
just a stylistic way of writing writing a Hebrew poem.
You know, that's an important tool for understanding what should
be paid attention to and what what need not be
paid attention to. Why is there a repetition because that
is the style It goes back Rushwan mentioned the first
person by any means to talk about, you know, common
biblical style. You'll find tabletic disagreements where let's say, a
verse says shamorish maroon, it says keep you shall keep
it uses a verb twice, and one rabbi will say
that's the doubling came to teach us thus and such,
and then another rabbi will say that that's how you
speak in Biblical Hebrew, and you don't need to make
a big deal out of it. The Tumble does that
in a number of places, and Restauran does that all
so in more places. Noticing what constitutes standard biblical style.
If anomalies are important for you, if unusual things in
the text are important for you, then you have to
know what is anomalists So what is an anomaloust? And
if you it's important to see what the what the
pattern is, what the literary pattern is that somebody is.
Speaker 1: Following interesting and and as you say, you know the
rush bumbs as let's say, in the nineteen twentieth century
such as Chada and others also picked up and ran
with this and that there are that the Tanaka is
written not just is also, among other things, a good
books written with sudden techniques and certain styles. And that's yeah,
I ask you, let me ask you. So the rush
bomb is a very interesting commentary. He's also an odd
commentator in that he sort of refuses to say and
there In other words, you read Ramban Barbunell and others,
and they sort of they make a point about the
pust oken question, and they say and therefore and kind
of build an edifice of ah of ideas, of the
sort of philosophy of Judaism. And then they kind of
use their commentary of the Toura as a platform for
building a larger palace of ideas, whereas Rushbam seems very.
Speaker 2: Retisent to do that.
Speaker 1: In fact, it doesn't seem to be interested in doing
that at all. And so I guess I have a
double headed question, one of which is why does he
seem disinclined to do that? And the second is despite this,
are there elements of a worldview that one can discern
from Rushbum's commentary on Alatora? Is there a russibamb philosophy
of Judaism, let's say, which appears even vaguely, even a
silhouette of a philosophy that comes from this perish or
were talking about.
Speaker 2: No, this is just he's just explaining.
Speaker 3: The text great questions. First of all, I would say
that that you're right, and I often said to my
students that your shool asps you to speak at sudash
luchet on schabat and you're looking for a dvar tora,
don't look in Rushbomb. You are unlikely to find some
you'll find some insight into the text. But if you
want to say something in shool and have a conclusion
and therefore we should be doing uh this or such,
here here's something to h some value that we should
be pursuing. You're better off using more meat Rashik commentators
than this. Why does rushbamb avoid doing this for the
most part. I don't think he avoids it one hundred percent,
but he.
Speaker 4: Does avoid it for the for the most part because
I think because he thinks that the mead Rashik method
of reading the text, as I said before, and as
he says very often, is a valid way of reading.
Speaker 3: The text, and that's the way of reading the text
that comes up with the and therefore kind of understanding,
and therefore we jew should be doing thus, thus and such. Nevertheless,
there are a few places where he does he does
teach I think it does try to teach moral moral lessons.
One example that comes to mind is when he talks
about uh talks about succot. So there is a question
the number of medieval rabbis and modern rabbi stealth with off.
If Succot commemorates the fact that when we left Egypt
we dwelt in succot, then why are we celebrating succot
in the fall because we didn't leave Egypt in the fall.
We should we should have our sadr in a soca
because that's when we left Egypt, so we should build
a soka in the So there are all sorts of
explanations in rush Bomb deals with this on the I think,
on the shot level in a very in a very
moving kind of manner. He says that the time of
year when people are harvesting is the time of year
that they are most likely to feel Kocho Yadia sali
At a fail has a g isn't a great I've
got all this stuff, I'm I've brought in the harvest
now and I don't really I don't really need God
God's help because that's a farmer. Uh is in the
black in his in his books around squat time when
he's gathered in all of the all of the fruit,
and rush Bomb says this is a time of year
where it's important to teach people humility and to remember
the humble origins of the Jewish people, to remember that
once upon a time we didn't own any land, and
we were wandering in the desert.
Speaker 6: And that's why, that's why we go and move out
of our houses and move into a suka at the
time of year when we are doing the best financially,
because we.
Speaker 3: Should remember the humble origins of our of our people.
And this also helps explain an an anomaly in that text.
The text about Sukhota says quoha is rahbi Israel. Yeso
every ezra modern Hebrews citizen, but they the landed people.
And this is the only time in the Bible that
the word ezrach appears in a legal context and doesn't
say ha is rach. Bagel doesn't say both the landed
the people who are part of the landed gentry, and
the strangers are the converts who have joined you here.
It just says that the israk should move and rush
Bump says, well, the ra is the one who really
needs to move into a suka, because the Israh is
the one who's likely to feel that on the top
of the world now because he's he's brought in the
harvest and he's doing doing great, and he's he's the
one who.
Speaker 7: Really needs to move into a sukka every fall, So
that you know, that's a moral lesson that he attaches
to the text.
Speaker 3: So if they ever ask you to give it to
our tora around some quot time and you're looking for one,
you can you can quote that one from from rush Bomb,
but they are few and far between. His attempts to
to say, as you put it, and therefore or here's
what we should be doing, and he doesn't see that
as the purpose of his commentary.
Speaker 1: Would you say that that is a characteristic difference between
the Spara and Ashkena's schools of a country or is
that taking it too far? Is that sort of building
a you know, making a mountain out of a molehill,
as it were.
Speaker 3: No, I don't think that that's something that is specifically
a sparad kind of thing. Certainly, Rashi is trying to
do uh to do that in his commentary, and he's
trying to leave you with with moral messages and the
whole question of how to categorize Ramban. Ramban, of course,
came from Spain and from that perspective is from Farrad,
but he came from Christian Spain, and Christian Spain is
is more part of the world of Rashi and Rasbaan
that it is part of the world of Ibanezra and Rambam.
Speaker 1: Interesting, Okay, fine, fair enough, President monte Lock. We're coming
towards the end sadly of our interview today. But I
do want to ask one final question which I asked
to many of my guests, which as well as which
is that if you could sit down tonight to dinner
with the subject of your of your studies with Rushbamb,
what would you what would you be asking him if
you had an opportunity to converse with him, What is
it that you'd like to bring up with him? And yeah,
you know, would you imagine he would say to your
your question or your query?
Speaker 3: So the big question that I've been thinking of for
forty or fifty years, whereas I've been studying and writing
about Rush Farmbers, why did he write the commentary and
the so far shelter of are in the bottom line analysis?
What was the purpose of writing the commentary? And there
are there are a number of possible answers that that
that I could give to this, but I'd like to
hear what his answer is why he was doing it.
On a certain level, he's trying to show that he
understands shot better than his grandfather understands shot. And you know, well,
Rashi says Anivo Badielkra, rush Bamb says almost the same thing,
and and Rushbam says, h you're interested in the mead rashim,
you can find many of them in the works of
my grandfather Rashi. So it could just be that he's
trying to say, you're trying to do shot. Here's how
you dupe shot. It's possible also that Rushbamb felt that
if how shall I put it, if God chose not
to write the Shokanaru and not to write the Talmud,
but to write the Torah that has a shot meaning
to it, that maybe God wanted us to be looking
at the shot meaning. Also, even though we won't be
conducting our lives since religious Jews on the basis of
the shot meaning, maybe God wanted us to be doing this.
So those are a couple of the possible reasons why
rush Bamb could have written this commentary, and that would
be the first question that I would ask him.
Speaker 1: Interesting, okay, fair enough, that is certainly worthy of consideration.
Professor Martin Lucchan, thank you so very much for Jody
yesterday on the podcast of Jewish Ideas. This has been
a great pleasure and you've suddenly spurred us on too
much for the thought on this topic.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much for your contributions and we hope
to see you again.
Speaker 3: You very good. Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 1: This has been the podcast of Doing Ideas by Tora
in Motion, produced by Alisha Kellman and myself JJ Kimbri,
edited and mixed by Alicia Kelman. You can stay up
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