Rabbi Solomon Isaac of Troyes, France, 1040–1105, the first letters of whose name yields the popular acronym. Rashi wrote the most influential commentaries in Judaism to the Hebrew Scriptures and the Babylonian TALMUD. His reading of these two foundation documents, the written and the oral Torah, respectively, forms the point of departure for all subsequent study. On the Hebrew Scriptures, his commentary is eclectic, gathering and arranging received comments into a collage of authoritative interpretation.
On the Babylonian Talmud, the commentary is pedagogical and analytical, explaining the sense of words and the meaning of passages. Since Rashi’s commentary on the Torah is the one thing Jews study along with Scripture, what Judaism teaches about the Pentateuch is mediated to the pious through Rashi’s selection and arrangement of the received tradition. Since his commentary to the Babylonian Talmud is the primer that affords access to that document, here too what the pious learn about that authoritative document is defined by Rashi. He therefore may be said to have defined the religious world of Judaism from his time to the present.
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