11 - Between Innovation and Conservatism

Summary

THIS BOOK MIGHT have been entitled Rashi: Revolutionary or Conservative? In some ways, however, a better title would have been Rashi: Between Innovation and Conservatism. The title would reflect the fact that in the circumstances of Rashi's time, some of his innovations can be regarded as effecting a pedagogical or cultural revolution. In this final chapter I want to sum up, in highly abbreviated form and sometimes only allusively, the innovations that Rashi introduced. They have been referred to throughout this book, but by collecting the min one place we can use them to shed more light on Rashi's personality from this important perspective and on the reasons for his innovativeness. More than 150 years ago, Simon Bloch characterized Rashi as an innovator, but his observations did not receive the attention they deserved—either because he wrote in flowery Hebrew or because he was speaking of the innovation entailed in the very idea of writing commentaries that adhered to the plain meaning:

Therefore only an extremely exalted man, who does not restrain his spirit from breaking new paths with his mind, not always following those who have come before him since time immemorial … he is a sage and a daring man who dwells in the higher realms and is raised above the few exalted ones in each generation. These are men of valour, of priceless worth, who themselves forged a new mind and new spirit within God's Torah. Two [such men] have been born to us by our nation, they being Rashi and Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra, of blessed memory …The former was entirely unprecedented in his energetically brief interpretations and explanations, which used only a very few words to interpret for us in accord with the plain meaning and grammatical usage.

To declare Rashi an innovator in his talmudic commentary is a bit of an overstatement, For Rabbenu Gershom in Germany and Rabbi Hananel ben Hushiel in Kairouan, North Africa, preceded him. Even if their commentaries were not of the same quality as Rashi's, we cannot say that Rashi introduced substantive innovations. There is, however, a degree of innovation in the attention he devoted to interpreting the Bible and liturgical poems, in the breadth of his interpretative