Schlomo Jizchaqi

In the year 1040, in the French city of Troyes, a boy was born who was to write Jewish history. His name was Schlomo Jizchaqi, or Solomon ben Isaac. He was the son of Isaac, a scholar and winemaker. Troyes, the capital of Champagne, was a wine-growing region even a thousand years ago. About one hundred families lived in the city; this number remained constant for a long period of time. Schlomo soon stood out as a particularly intelligent, inquisitive child. His father was the first teacher to acquaint him with the Talmud - the holy book was to become Schlomo's life's work. 
According to legend, Schlomo's parents first lived in Worms on the Rhine, a center of educated Jewry. His mother, who was pregnant with him, was walking near the synagogue when suddenly a horse-drawn carriage rushed through the narrow alley at high speed. The pregnant woman sought shelter at the synagogue wall, which gave way a little and has had a small indentation ever since. Fearing that they would be accused of witchcraft, the expectant parents moved to Troyes. The family lived there in the Jewish quarter, whose entrance was on the corner of Rue de la Cité and Quai des Comtes.

Shlomo was a quick learner. At the age of about fifteen, he decided to become a rabbi. His parents therefore sent him to Mainz, where his maternal uncle had already studied. There was a teaching house in Mainz that was known far beyond the city's borders. It was founded by Rabbenu Gershom ("our teacher Gershom") at the end of the 10th century. Soon the teaching house was a center of attraction for scholars from Italy and students came from all over Europe. Shlomo's most important teacher was Jacob ben Yakar.

But Mainz was not the only place for Jewish scholars; Speyer and Worms were also important. In Worms Schlomo studied then several years with Rabbi Isaak ben Elieser Halevi, who had founded there a large teaching house.
 
Speyer, Worms and Mainz have gone down in history as "SchUM cities" and under this abbreviation still today a term for Jewish scholarship; Currently (2018) is the application for inclusion in the UNESCO World Heritage. The abbreviation is composed of the initial letters of the medieval Hebrew city names dating back to Latin: 
Schin (Sch) for Schpira / Speyer 
Waw (U) for Warmaisa / Worms 
Mem (M) for Magenza / Mainz 

The young Rabbi Schlomo Jizchaki was called "Rashi" for short. Under this name he achieved fame and many are still familiar with him today. Rashi wrote commentaries on the texts of the Talmud in endless hours of concentrated work. These commentaries are aids to interpretation and understanding, and he wrote them in such clear language that they are suitable even for children. 

So in cheder, Jewish religious education for children from the age of three, the Five Books of Moses ("Pentateuch") are read aloud in Hebrew. When the children are a little older, they begin to read for themselves. The Jewish historian and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel (1928-2016) recalled his first encounters with Rashi in the cheder: "If I did not succeed in grasping the true meaning of a word, a name or a sentence, it was he, the master of my masters, who came to my rescue. It was a confidential relationship from child to old man, from man to man. He spoke to me as if in confidence: Look, little one, don't be afraid; everything is to be understood and easily communicated. Foreign words, obstacles? Start again with me."

Rashi's comments have had a major influence on both Jewish and Christian interpretations of the Talmud to the present day.

At the age of about thirty, Rashi married a woman whose name is unfortunately no longer known. With her he had three daughters: Miriam, Jochewed and Rachel. The young family lived alternately between Worms and Troyes, because Rashi wanted to prepare himself especially well to establish his own teaching house in Troyes. That was in 1070 or a little later. It is certain that soon after its foundation the teaching house in Troyes was at least as important as the centers on the German side of the Rhine, for Rashi was an excellent teacher and ran a hospitable house. All the foreign students lived with him and his family. Rashi's daughters also attended classes and they were considered learned.

When he was not teaching, Rashi worked in the vineyard. Wine was and is an important part of the Jewish religion and many of its ceremonies, for example at the beginning and end of the Sabbath. The connection between rabbinism and winemaking is obvious, because all winemaking must be supervised by a rabbi, all cellar work must be done only by male Jews. 

Rashi's knowledge in a wide variety of fields, such as Talmud and Bible, mathematics and viticulture, astronomy and animal science, explain his far-reaching influence. Among his gifted students were also found marriage candidates for his clever daughters. Thus, spiritual succession was assured. 

This succession consisted, among other things, of important additions to Rashi's commentaries: They are called "Tossafot," and their authors are the "Tossafists." Rashi's grandsons are among the first Tossafists. The Tossafot are written in the outer margin next to the Talmud text opposite Rashi's commentary in the inner margin. 
In the 15th century, 400 years after Rashi, a separate script was developed for his commentaries and the Tossafot, so that the main text would be visually distinct from the commentaries. This font is called "Rashi script" or "Rashi cursive." 

Martin Luther valued Rashi's Bible commentary, which was the first Hebrew book printed around 1475; And for Romanists*, Rashi's commentaries are a key to the pronunciation of Old French, for he incorporated many words of his native language into the Hebrew commentary texts - and he did so in phonetic script.  

November 27, 1095, is a fateful date in Jewish-Christian history. On that day, in Clermont-Ferrand, Pope Urban II called on Christians to go to Jerusalem and liberate the tomb of Jesus and all the holy places from Muslim sovereignty. It was the beginning of the Crusades, which would continue into the 13th century. Although the call was directed against Muslims, French Jews had bad premonitions and sent messengers to Speyer, Worms and Mainz to warn friends and relatives. The Christians who responded to Pope Urban's call moved along the Rhine and the Danube, where they murdered thousands of Jews who were unwilling to convert to Christianity.

Rashi was 55 years old at the time of the First Crusade. The news from the places of his years of study shook him, but also led him once again to a great creative urge. The creative force in the last ten years of his life was immense: he wrote pamphlets, legal decisions, wrote new commentaries and revised old ones. It was particularly important to him that Jews who had been forced into Christianity were allowed to return to their communities.

Rashi's last year of life was very arduous. He often had to dictate texts, and in his letters he confessed his weakness: "I do not have the strength to hold a pen in my hand." The events of the First Crusade weighed on him. Against this background, Rashi's commentary on the Song of Solomon is particularly moving, intended to give comfort and hope to the persecuted Jews: "But I say that King Solomon foresaw the time when the children of Israel would be deported from one exile to another, from one disaster to another. [...] God will reassure them by assuring them that He also remembers, and that their marriage continues: He has not cast them off. Israel is still his spouse, and he will return to her."

Rashi was unable to complete the commentaries on the Talmud. They were continued to be written by his students. The expressions "Kan Niftar Rabenu" ("At this point our master died") or "Kan Hifsik Rabenu" ("At this point our master interrupted his work") appear three times in his Talmud commentary. Rashi died on August 5, 1105, and he is believed to have been buried in the old Jewish cemetery in Troyes, where a public library now stands, with a monument commemorating him near it.