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Exegesis and Appropriation: Reading Rashi in Late Medieval Spain*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2017
Extract
Scholarship in the humanities has seen a recent burgeoning interest in the processes of “appropriation,” a conceptual category that moves us away from the idea of one-way transmission or “influence” and allows us to explore the complex ways in which intellectual, literary, and material expressions or artifacts come to represent something “different from their original purposes.” Though the term has not acquired much currency in studies of medieval Jewish biblical scholarship, its fruitful deployment is amply attested in broader explorations of premodern exegetical literature. This investigation takes “exegesis and appropriation” as a revelatory integrating perspective on a neglected body of Hebrew scriptural scholarship: commentaries on the most important and influential work of Jewish biblical interpretation ever written, the Commentary on the Torah of Rashi (Solomon Yitzhaki; 1040–1105). The focus falls on “Rashi supercommentaries” (as glosses on Rashi's Commentary are usually called) from medieval Spain and on some striking religio-intellectual dynamics evident in their pages. The study thereby addresses Moshe Idel's call for scholarship to engage more with questions about “the meaning of the arrival of a corpus of writings in a new cultural environment.”
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Footnotes
*
Acknowledgments: The research for this study was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (grant no. 256/14). It also received generous support from Keren Beit Shalom, Kyoto, Japan. I wish to thank two anonymous readers for helpful suggestions while absolving them of responsibility for remaining imperfections in substance and style.
References
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19 For Rashi's comment, see Miqrā’ot gĕdolot hakketer; Sēfer šĕmot (ed. Menachem Cohen; 2 vols.; Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2007–2012) 1:32. For Rashi's source, see Ḥamiššāh ḥummĕšē torāh: Raši haššālēm (7 vols. to date; Jerusalem: Ariel, 1986) at Exod 1:117–18. For views on the origins of Pirqē R. ’El., see Sacks, Steven Daniel, Midrash and Multiplicity: Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer and the Renewal of Rabbinic Interpretive Culture (Studia Judaica: Forschungen zur Wissenschaft des Judentums 48; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009) 1–7 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Translations hereafter follow the NJPS (Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures) unless otherwise indicated, but in this passage I render “donkey” in place of NJPS “ass.”
20 Grossman, Rashi, 89–90. Nehama Leibowitz, who holds the view that Rashi cites midrashim only where there is a textual crux, adduces this instance as a parade example. In describing Abraham's donkey at Gen 22:3, the Torah does not use a definite article, which is also lacking in the verse in Zechariah. Since in these verses the donkey appears without a definite article, Rashi refrains from adducing the midrash in his explanations of them. By contrast, he cites it at Exod 4, where the textual trigger is present. See “Darko šel raši bahavā’at midrāšim bĕfērušo lattorāh,” in ‘Iyyunim ḥadāšim bĕsēfer šĕmot (Jerusalem: World Zionist Organization, 1970) 495–524, at 513. Ancient midrashists routinely made homiletical hay out of the definite articles in Scripture; see Isaac Heinemann, Darkhē ha'aggādāh (3rd. ed.; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1974) 117. Modern biblicists, by contrast, are likely to explain instances of the article such as the one in Exod 4:20 as the equivalent of a possessive pronoun, signifying that Moses mounted his family on his donkey. See Hamilton, Victor P., Exodus: An Exegetical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011) 77 Google Scholar. For this meaning of the definite article as a larger pattern, see Arnold, Bill T. and Choi, John H., A Guide to Biblical Hebrew Syntax (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003) 32 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The definite article can at times indicate generic reference as well; see Bekins, Peter, “Non-Prototypical Uses of the Definite Article in Biblical Hebrew,” JSS 58 (2013) 225–40Google Scholar. Rashi's fiercest critic of all time, a late medieval writer whose identity is unknown, insists that the definite article in this verse reflects a “habit of the holy tongue,” then casts Rashi's interpretation of it as “futility and a grave evil” (Eccl 2:21). See Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, Add. 377.3, fol. 5v.
21 Kugel, James L., “Two Introductions to Midrash,” Proof 3 (1983) 131–55, at 144Google Scholar.
22 Isaac Heinemann, Darkhē ha'aggādāh, 27–34 (27, 30 for the cited passages).
23 Visotzky, Burton L., Reading the Book: Making the Bible a Timeless Text (New York: Anchor Books, 1991) 96 Google Scholar. Not all medieval Jewish visions of the Messiah arriving on a donkey were universalist. See Yuval, Israel Jacob, Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (trans. Harshav, Barbara and Chipman, Jonathan; Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006) 124–27Google Scholar.
24 Isaac Abarbanel, Yĕshu‘ot mĕšiḥo (Königsberg: Gruber and Langrien, 1861) 48r. For the same author's slightly more muted rejection of a literal interpretation of the midrash (“far-fetched and nigh impossible for it to be explained literally”), see his Pēruš ‘al hattorāh (3 vols.; Jerusalem: Benei Arabel, 1964) 1:263.
25 Grossman, Rashi, 90.
26 Bezalel, Judah Loew ben, Gĕvurot ’adonāy (London: Honig & Sons, 1964) 114 Google Scholar.
27 See Rabinowitz, Zvi Mayer, “Qiṭ‘ē gĕnizāh mippirqē dĕrabbi ’eli‘ezer,” Bar-’Ilān: Sēfer haššānāh lĕmaddĕ‘ē hayyahadut wĕhāruaḥ 16–17 (1979) 100–111 Google Scholar, at 100, who mentions a reference to the work from the turn of the 12th cent. by Judah Barzeloni. For later citations, see, e.g., Halevi, Judah, Kuzari 4:29; Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed 2:26 (trans. Pines, Shlomo; 2 vols.; Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1963) 2:330Google Scholar.
28 Miqrā’ot gĕdolot hakketer; Sēfer bĕrēšit (ed. Menachem Cohen; 2 vols.; Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1993) 1:34. For discussion, see Septimus, Bernard, “‘Open Rebuke and Concealed Love’: Naḥmanides and the Andalusian Tradition,” in Rabbi Moses Naḥmanides (Ramban): Explorations in His Religious and Literary Virtuosity (ed. Twersky, Isadore; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983) 11–34 Google Scholar, at 16. Referring to the 14th cent., Michael Marc Epstein notes that the interpretation given by Rashi is not cited by Sephardic commentators. He also observes its origin in Pirqē R. ’El., which, he adds, “would have been well-known to a contemporary Spanish Jewish audience.” Epstein might have noted the obvious: by a certain juncture the midrash would have become well known in Spain due to its appearance in Rashi's Commentary. See “Another Flight into Egypt: Confluence, Coincidence, the Cross-cultural Dialectics of Messianism and Iconographic Appropriation in Jewish, Medieval and Culture, Christian,” in Imagining the Self, Imagining the Other: Visual Representation and Jewish-Christian Dynamics in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period (ed. Frojmovic, Eva; Cultures, Beliefs, and Traditions 15; Leiden: Brill, 2002) 33–52 Google Scholar, at 48 n. 35.
29 Shaprut, Shem Tov ibn, Pardēs rimmonim (Sabbioneta, Italy: Foa, 1554) 2r. For Maimonides, see Lorberbaum, Yair, “Tĕmurot bĕyaḥaso šel hārambam lĕmidrāšot ḥazal,” Tarbiṣ 78 (2009) 81–122 Google Scholar.
30 Almosnino, Pēruš ’almośnino, 108. Prior to Almosnino, the ḥamor/ḥomer interchange appears in philosophic writers of southern French origin such as Yedayah, Isaac ben and Avraham, Levi ben, both in the context of midrashic and biblical interpretation. For the former, see Saperstein, Marc, Decoding the Rabbis: A Thirteenth-Century Commentary on the Aggadah (Harvard Judaic Monographs 3; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980) 113 Google Scholar. For an example from the sphere of biblical interpretation, see Levi ben Avraham, Liwyat ḥēn, as in Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cod. hebr. 58, fol. 37r, where the prohibition on plowing with an ox and donkey together (Deut 22:10) is explained in terms of a proscription against the yoking of the intellectual faculty (“ox”) to the “beastly, material” (bahami, ḥomri) parts of a person symbolized by the donkey. Jacob Anatoli fleetingly suggests a reading of the donkeys of Abraham, Moses, and the Messiah in the manner developed much more fully here by Almosnino. See Malmad hattalmidim (ed. Eliezer Lipmann Silbermann; Lyck, Prussia [now Ełk, Poland], 1866) 85v. It is by no means certain that Almosnino would have known Anatoli's apparently pioneering development of this idea. For a possible Sephardic source, see Samuel ibn Zarza, Mĕqor ḥayyim (Mantua, 1559) 32v.
31
For example, Almosnino invokes a verbal root (
) that Maimonides had employed in his Letter on Astrology in a passage that speaks of philosophers who “engaged in all species of scientific activity [
].” See ’Iggĕrot hārambam (ed. Yitzhaq Shailat; 2 vols.; Ma‘ale Adumim, Israel: Maaliyot, 1987–1988) 2:481.
Septimus, Bernard, “What Did Maimonides Mean by Madda‘?” in Me'ah She‘arim: Studies in Medieval Jewish Spiritual Life in Memory of Isadore Twersky (ed. Fleischer, Ezra
et al.; Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2001) 83–110, at 88Google Scholar.
32 Maimonides, Guide 3:8 (trans. Pines, 2:432–33). For discussion, see Stern, Josef, The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ “Guide” (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013) 97–131 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
33 Maimonides, Mišnēh torāh, Hilkhot yĕsodē hattorāh 4:8; Guide 1:1–2 (trans. Pines, 1:21–26).
34 Maimonides, Guide 1:70 (trans. Pines, 1:171). The metaphorical meaning of “riding” as domination figures in Maimonides's exposition of an obscure midrashic dictum elsewhere in the Guide. See Stern, Matter and Form, 177–81 (above, n. 32).
35 A recent overview is Lawee, Eric, “Sephardic Intellectuals: Challenges and Creativity (1391–1492),” in The Jew in Medieval Iberia (ed. Ray, Jonathan; Jews in Space and Time; Boston: Academic Studies, 2012) 352–94, at 357–64Google Scholar.
36 The supercommentary appears in New York, JTS MS Lutski 802 (my thanks go out to the librarian and faculty of the Jewish Theological Seminary for providing me with a copy of this manuscript). The work's date can be deduced from its references to the grammatical work of Profayt Duran of 1403, Ma‘aśēh ’ēfod, on the one hand, and to Duran as being among the living, on the other. (For both, see fol. 4r; Duran is also mentioned on fols. 16v, 23v, and 146r.) These referents, however, pin down the period of composition less than one would wish, since Duran's date of passing is unknown. He was most likely born in the mid to late 1350s and apparently lived into the 1430s. See Kozodoy, Maud, The Secret Faith of Maestre Honoratus Profayt Duran and Jewish Identity in Late Medieval Iberia (Middle Ages Series; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015) 15, 36CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The classic account of the 1391 riots and their aftermath is Baer, Yitzhak, A History of the Jews in Christian Spain (2 vols.; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1961–1966) 2:95–244Google Scholar.
37 Rashi on Gen 28:12 (Miqrā’ot gĕdolot hakketer; Sēfer bĕrēšit, 2:26).
38 Kugel, James L., The Ladder of Jacob: Ancient Interpretations of the Biblical Story of Jacob and His Children (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006) 11–14 Google Scholar.
39 Maimonides, Guide 2:6 (trans. Pines, 2:262). For Maimonides on angels, including those associated with Jacob's ladder, see James Arthur Diamond, Maimonides and the Hermeneutics of Concealment: Deciphering Scripture and Midrash in “The Guide of the Perplexed” (State University of New York Series in Jewish Philosophy; Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002) 57–59.
40 For the cited characterization, see Twersky, Isadore, Introduction to the Code of Maimonides (Mishneh Torah) (YJS 22; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980) 324 Google Scholar n. 1. For Maimonides on the land of Israel in particular, see idem, “Maimonides on Eretz Yisrael: Halakhic, Philosophic, and Historical Perspectives,” in Perspectives on Maimonides: Philosophical and Historical Studies (ed. Joel L. Kraemer; Littman Library of Jewish Civilization; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991) 257–90.
41 Simon, Uriel, “Interpreting the Interpreter: Supercommentaries on Ibn Ezra's Commentaries,” in Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra: Studies in the Writings of a Twelfth-Century Polymath (ed. Twersky, Isadore and Harris, Jay M.; Harvard Judaic Texts and Studies 10; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Center for Jewish Studies, 1993) 86–128 Google Scholar, at 87.
42 MS Lutski 802, fols. 29r–v.
43 Diamond, James A., Maimonides and the Shaping of the Jewish Canon (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014) 68 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
44 The Maimonidean character of the idea of providential governance in “the land” as still conducted through angels/intermediaries is brought into higher relief when set alongside its counterpart in Nahmanides, who taught the divine division of other countries among the angels of the nations in contrast to the direct infusion of the divine influx over the holy land. See Attias, Jean-Christophe and Benbassa, Esther, Israel, the Impossible Land (trans. Emanuel, Susan; Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture; Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003) 68 Google Scholar. For views in contemporaneous Catalo-Aragonese sources that match ones espoused by the anonymous supercommentator, see below.
45 Above, n. 36.
46 Profayt Duran, Ma‘asēh ’ēfod (ed. John Friedländer and Jakob Kohn; Vienna: Holzwarth, 1865) 10, 13. For discussion (including the rendering “occult virtue”) see Kozodoy, The Secret Faith, 182–203; Talmage, Frank, “Keep Your Sons from Scripture: The Bible in Medieval Jewish Scholarship and Spirituality,” in Understanding Scripture: Explorations of Jewish and Christian Traditions of Interpretation (ed. Thoma, Clemens and Wyschogrod, Michael; Studies in Judaism and Christianity; New York: Paulist, 1987) 81–101 Google Scholar, at 89–92 (91 for the translation of šefa‘ given here).
47 Crescas, Hasdai, ’ Or ’adonāy 2:2:6 (ed. Shlomo Fischer; Jerusalem: Sifrei Ramot, 1990) 176 Google Scholar. See Harvey, Zeev, “R[abbi] ḥasdāy qĕreśqaś ‘al yiḥudāh šel ’ereṣ yiśrā’ēl,” in ’Ereṣ yiśrā’ēl bahāgut hayyĕhudit bimē habbēnayim (ed. Halamish, Moshe and Ravitzky, Aviezer; Jerusalem: Ben Zvi, 1991) 151–65Google Scholar.
48 Saperstein, Marc, “The Land of Israel in Pre-Modern Jewish Thought: A History of Two Rabbinic Statements,” in The Land of Israel: Jewish Perspectives (ed. Hoffman, Lawrence A.; University of Notre Dame Center for the Study of Judaism and Christianity in Antiquity 6; Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986) 188–209 Google Scholar, at 196–201. Rashi cites the midrashic idea in question in a gloss on Gen 17:8 (Miqrā’ot gĕdolot hakketer; Sēfer bĕrēšit, 1:151).
49 Gerondi, Nissim ben Reuven, Dĕrāšot hāran (ed. Feldman, Aryeh L.; Jerusalem: Makhon Shalem, 1977) 54 Google Scholar.
50 This is the rendering given in Marcus, David, “The Mission of the Raven (Gen 8:7),” Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society 29 (2002) 71–80 Google Scholar, at 73–74.
51 For a history of interpretation and a fresh resolution to the question, see Moberly, R. W. L, “Why Did Noah Send out a Raven?,” VT 50 (2000) 345–56Google Scholar.
52
The conundrum concerns the second infinitive absolute (
) in its presumed modification of the earlier combination of an infinitive absolute with a cognate main verb (
). On the synthetic reading, the raven went out in a returning fashion; that is, he did not leave the ark but only flew about it. On the antithetic reading, the raven left and returned, with the manner in which his venture contributed to Noah's effort to discern the state of the floodwaters remaining up for debate. See Moberly, “Why Did Noah,” 350; Marcus, “Mission of the Raven,” 74–75. Both Moberly and Marcus mention a third reading (attested among other places in LXX) according to which the raven left the ark, never to return.
53
This reading is attested in an overwhelming preponderance of good manuscripts while the semantically insignificant word
is lacking in a couple of manuscripts, including one often adduced as the best witness to Rashi's Commentary (Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek, B.H. 1, fol. 6v). For variants in over a dozen other manuscripts, see the note (n. 12) on this gloss at “AlHaTorah.org Rashi Project” (ed. Aviva Novetsky), AlHaTorah.org, 13 September 2015, http://alhatorah.org/Commentators:Rashi_Leipzig_1/Bereshit_8#cite_note-12. In light of these data, the version found in Miqrā’ot gĕdolot hakketer; Sēfer bĕrēšit, 1:94, is startling: “He suspected him of intending to copulate with his mate” (
). This version does not appear in MS Parma, Biblioteca Palatina Cod. Parm. 3204 (de Rossi 181), fol. 9r, the apparent base text for the version of the Commentary in Hakketer. Indeed, in that manuscript the key words of the gloss are scored through due to Christian censorship (see below, n. 61). It seems certain that the Parma manuscript contained the word
found in most versions, the first letter of which is visible, and likely that this letter's appearance mistakenly prompted the otherwise unattested reconstruction
.
54 On Ibn Gabbai, see Baer, History of the Jews, 2:121–22; Israel M. Ta-Shma, “Gabbai, Moses ben Shem-Tov,” EncJud 7:319.
55 Moses ibn Gabbai, ‘Eved šĕlomoh (ed. Moshe Filip; Petah Tikvah: Filip, 2006) 43. In post-1391 Sephardic writing, “insolent waters” (Ps. 124:5) refers to baptism.
56
For Ibn Ezra, see Miqrā’ot gĕdolot hakketer; Sēfer Bĕrēšit 1:94. At least one Sephardic supercommentator finds Rashi's insistence on the raven's non-departure from the ark very defensible on exegetical grounds, claiming that Scripture should have stated that the raven “returned and left” (
) rather than “left and returned.” See Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS. Dd. 10.14.2/2, fol. 8v.
57 Ibn Gabbai, ‘Eved šĕlomoh, 75–76. This line of exegetical argument appears already in the commentary of Joseph Bekhor Shor; see Miqrā’ot gĕdolot hakketer; Sēfer bĕrēšit, 1:95, s.v “wayyēṣē’ yāṣo’ wāšov.”
58 b. Sanh. 108b. See Rashi at Gen 6:18, 7:7, 8:1, and 8:16.
59 b. Sanh. 108b.
60 For a modernizing approach to this midrash and others like it, read in terms of fantasies about transgressive desires, see Biale, David, Eros and the Jews: From Biblical Israel to Contemporary America (New York: Basic Books, 1992) 84 Google Scholar. In another midrashically based gloss, Rashi posits a series of actual interspecies sexual relations between human being and beast, in this case in primordial times, between Adam and the animals. Not surprisingly, this gloss also prompted interpretive responses on the part of the Sephardic supercommentators who, to a person, took it as given that this midrashic idea could not possibly have been intended literally. See Lawee, “Reception” (above, n. 15).
61 Given its heavily midrashic tilt, Rashi's Commentary was especially susceptible to censorial initiatives in an age when Christian attacks on rabbinic literature intensified. The censorship of the gloss on the raven attested in the version of the Commentary in Parma 3204 (above, n. 53) is presumably the work of one of the church hands that expunged passages in the manuscript, one of which belonged to the especially “meticulous” censor Luigi da Bologna, on whom see Raz-Krakotzkin, Amnon, The Censor, the Editor, and the Text: The Catholic Church and the Shaping of the Jewish Canon in the Sixteenth Century (trans. Feldman, Jackie; Jewish Culture and Contexts; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007) 112 Google Scholar. For censorship of Rashi's Psalms commentary in the same manuscript, see Gruber, Mayer I., Rashi's Commentary on Psalms (South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism 161; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998) 131 Google Scholar.
62 “Monet R. Salomon, corvum timuisse ne se absente Noe corniculam suam in uxorem acciperet, et propterea non fuisse ausum longius ab arca recedere. Ad quod etiam confirmandum testimonium producit ex Talmud.” Cited in Piet van Boxel, “Robert Bellarmine Reads Rashi: Rabbinic Bible Commentaries and the Burning of the Talmud,” in The Hebrew Book in Early Modern Italy (ed. Joseph R. Hacker and Adam Shear; Jewish Culture and Contexts; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011) 121–32, 275–82, at 281 n. 69 (for discussion, see 130–31).
63 Ibn Gabbai, ‘Eved šĕlomoh, 75–76.
64
Samuel ibn Shoshan, Ḥāzur wĕšošān, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Opp. Add. fol. 38, fol. 3v (reading
for
in the phrase translated “did not wish to depart”).
65 Ibid. I render the opening words of the concluding sentence here as “they [the sages],” following on the plural at the outset, though the abbreviation could refer to “he” (= Rashi) in the singular.
66 See the editor's introduction to Jacob ben Shabbetai, Ḥizquni ‘al pēruš raši (ed. Moshe Filip; Petah Tikvah: Makhon Rashi, 2009) 11–45, at 40. His gloss on Rashi on the raven is one of a number of places where Ibn Gabbai mentions this work explicitly. Ben Shabbetai's work has thus far left only the faintest of marks in secondary literature. See Claude Brahami, “Le manuscrit hébreu 167 de la bibliothèque nationale de Paris contient-il une copie du Ḥīzqūnī?,” REJ 127 (1968) 211–21, at 215–16; Ta-Shma, Israel M., “Qunĕṭrēs ‘sodot hattĕfillāh’ lĕrabbi yĕhudāh heḥāsid,” in Kĕneset meḥqārim: ‘Iyyunim bassifrut hārabbānit bimē habbēnayim (4 vols.; Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 2004–2010) 1:219–20Google Scholar.
67 E.g., see Ben Shabbetai's glosses on Gen 2:15, 27:29 (Ḥizquni, 53, 98). For Ibn Ezra's sojourn in the Midi, see Golb, Norman, The Jews in Medieval Normandy: A Social and Intellectual History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) 258–61Google Scholar. The Sephardic figure whom Jacob most cites is Maimonides, but almost always in a halakhic context (introduction to Ḥizquni, 34).
68 Jacob ben Shabbetai, Ḥizquni, 67.
69 Anonymous, on Gen 8:7 (Lutski 802, fol. 9v).
70 Ibn Gabbai, ‘Eved šĕlomoh, 76. In making this point, Ibn Gabbai reprises a point made elsewhere in his supercommentary, that subhuman creatures lack “intellect or understanding” of the sort that would allow them to exercise moral judgment or agency. See ibid., 70. For discussion, see Eric Lawee, “The Sins of the Fauna in Midrash, Rashi, and Their Medieval Interlocutors,” JSQ 17 (2010) 56–98, at 94–95. Yet another Sephardic supercommentator, Ibn Gabbai's son-in-law Aaron Aboulrabi, counters his father-in-law's objection by explaining the midrash on the raven on evolutionary (or rather devolutionary) grounds. Aboulrabi conjectures that at the earliest stages of history, subhuman creatures did in fact possess intellect; hence, they were capable of acts of moral discernment such as the sages and Rashi ascribe to the raven. If this theory does not suffice, then Aboulrabi is willing to say the midrash regarding the raven's suspicion of Noah harbors an esoteric meaning (sod) that, however, he does not presume to report (or even to know). See Pērušim lĕraši (Constantinople, [1525?]) 18v.
71 Gabbai, Ibn, ‘ Eved šĕlomoh, 44. See b. Šabb. 30b; Maimonides, Mišnāh ‘im pēruš rabbēnu mošeh ben maymon (ed. Kapah, Yosef; 3 vols.; Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1965–1968) vol. 2, Nez., 139 Google Scholar.
72 Septimus, Bernard, “Maimonides on Language,” in The Culture of Spanish Jewry: Proceedings of the First International Congress (ed. Doron, Aviva; Tel Aviv: Levinski College of Education, 1994) 35–54 Google Scholar.
73 See, e.g., in the index, s.v. “bĕdiḥutā’,” in Elbaum, Lĕhāvin divrē ḥakhāmim (above, n. 11), 411 (171–72, 177–79 for Hillel).
74 By contrast, Ibn Gabbai's son-in-law Aaron Aboulrabi (above, n. 70) does not chalk up the midrash on Noah and the raven to an elegant witticism but instead gives it a serious reading with a clever psychological twist. Its starting point is Aboulrabi's astonishment that the raven should have suspected Noah of a desire for his ugly mate when, if anything, the raven should have imputed to Noah designs on the far more alluring female dove. To explain the raven's misguided stance, Aboulrabi invokes the rabbinic principle that “one who imputes a defect to others reveals the defect in oneself.” On this view, the issue at play in the midrash is projection. When the raven made his charge against Noah, he actually provided Noah with evidence that the raven had violated the prohibition on sexual congress on the ark (above, n. 58). This discovery led Noah to try to eject the avian transgressor who had indirectly revealed himself in this manner from the ark (Pērušim lĕraši, 18v). It might be noted that we have here something of a supercommentarial reversal of roles, since in general the father-in-law tended to be far less dismissive of and reverent toward midrashic ideas than the son-in-law. See Eric Lawee, “Aaron Aboulrabi: Maverick Exegete from Aragonese Sicily,” Hispania Judaica Bulletin 9 (2013) 131–62, at 154.
75 Adapting a formulation in Rita Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) 64. For the distinctively Sephardic hermeneutic principles that informed much of the late medieval commentary tradition on Rashi in Spain, see Lawee, “Omnisignificant Imperative” (above, n. 16).
76 An example is the response of post-1492 supercommentator Abraham Bokhrat to Rashi's teaching on “corrections of the scribes” (tiqqunē sofĕrim) at Gen 18:22. Regarding the possibility that this rabbinic idea was meant to signal an actual change in the scriptural text effected by later scribes, Bokhrat responds with a pious shudder: “The mouth cannot utter such a thing!” On the basis of earlier Sephardic sources, Bokhrat is able to cite a perfectly valid explanation for the phenomenon mentioned by Rashi that, in his view, “handsomely” addresses the problem. Still, he throws up his hands when it comes to Rashi himself, admitting that this theologically acceptable understanding is undeniably at variance with what Rashi wrote. Bokhrat even reports his attempt to locate a different base text of Rashi's gloss that might allow him to posit scribal error as the source of Rashi's ideas of later alterations to the biblical text. With intellectual integrity, he admits that this effort came up empty: “All versions that we have seen, recent as well as ancient,” contain the offending passage. See Sēfer zikkāron (ed. Moshe Filip; Petah Tikvah: Filip, 1985) 123 and, for discussion, Yeshayahu Maori, “‘Tiqqun sofĕrim’ wĕ‘kinnāh hakkātuv’ bĕfēruš raši lammiqrā’,” in Nĕṭi‘ot lĕdāwid: Sēfer yovēl lĕdāwid halivni (ed. Yaakov Elman, Ephraim Bezalel Halivni, and Zvi Arie Steinfeld; Jerusalem: Orhot, 2004) 99–108, at 100–101.
77 Young, James O., Cultural Appropriation and the Arts (New Directions in Aesthetics 6; Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008) 5 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
78 Zimmels, H. J., Ashkenazim and Sephardim: Their Relations, Differences, and Problems as Reflected in the Rabbinical Responsa (Jews’ College Publications 2; London: Oxford University Press, 1958) ix, 1Google Scholar. For an overview of historical trends, see Avraham Grossman, “Relations between Spanish and Ashkenazic Jewry in the Middle Ages,” in Moreshet Sepharad: The Sephardi Legacy (ed. Haim Beinart; 2 vols.; Jerusalem: Magnes, 1992) 1:220–39. For an overview of historiographic trends, see Malkiel, David, Reconstructing Ashkenaz: The Human Face of Franco-German Jewry, 1000–1250 (Stanford Series in Jewish History and Culture; Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009) 1–61 Google Scholar.
79 For such standard phrases as characteristic features of exegetical supercommentaries generally, see Simon, “Interpreting the Interpreter,” 87 (above, n. 41).
80 E.g., Schwartz, Dov, ’ Asĕṭrologĕyāh umagyāh bahāgut hayyĕhudit bimē habbēnayim (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1999) 262–90Google Scholar. I am oversimplifying here at least in some measure, since some Ibn Ezra supercommentators adhered to Maimonidean ideas that in certain cases did depart from basic precepts of Ibn Ezra's teaching. See Visi, “Ibn Ezra,” 89–131.
81 For this body of supercommentary, see Abrams, Daniel, Kabbalistic Manuscripts and Textual Theory: Methodologies of Textual Scholarship and Editorial Practice in the Study of Jewish Mysticism (Sources and Studies in the Literature of Jewish Mysticism 26; Jerusalem: Magnes, 2010) 198–223 Google Scholar.
82 See the 1993 postface to Merton, Robert K., On the Shoulders of Giants: A Shandean Postscript (the Post-Italianate Edition; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993) 301–320, at 312Google Scholar; Merton ascribes this usage to his mentor, George Sarton.
83 Prickett, Stephen, Origins of Narrative: The Romantic Appropriation of the Bible (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) 38 CrossRefGoogle Scholar [italics in original].