Who Was Rashi?

Image: A monument to Rashi, marking the spot that scholars believe was the Jewish cemetery for his era in Troyes, France. This photo of La Maison de Rhodes is courtesy of TripAdvisor.

His name was Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaqi, or Solomon ben Yitzchak, abbreviated to the acronym RaSHI. He was born in the year 1040, in the city of Troyes. He was the only child of a winemaker-rabbi named Yitzchak and his wife, whose name is not known to us but whose brother was Rabbi Simon the Elder was the Rabbi of Mainz. As a young man, Solomon studied at yeshivot (schools of Torah learning) in Worms and in Mainz, along the banks of the Rhine River. Some of his teachers were among the greatest of that age.

Rashi was an industrious note-taker as he studied in the yeshivot of Worms and Mainz. At age 25, he returned to Troyes to stay. He was invited to serve on the rabbinical court (beit din) of Troyes, and his fame spread as someone who could answer subtle questions of halakhah (Jewish Law.) In about 1070 he opened a yeshivah of his own, and students flocked to it.

The work for which Rashi is best remembered are his commentaries on the Torah and on the Talmud. He took his notes, oral tradition from his teachers about the subtleties of the texts, and he spent his later years writing them all out as commentaries on the texts. This was fortunate, because when the Crusaders came through the Rhine Valley on their way to the East in 1096, they murdered about 12,000 Jews in the region, including many of the teachers in the yeshivot. All of their learning would have been lost forever, had it not been for R. Solomon ben Yitzchak.

While only a few oblique clues in his commentaries mention anything about the horrors of 1096, there is a piyyut (liturgical poem) attributed to Rashi which many congregations still say in the Yizkor service, Av Harachamim. It is said in memory of all the martyrs of Israel, from earliest times to the present day:

The Father of mercy who dwells on high
in His great mercy
will remember with compassion
the pious, upright and blameless
the holy communities, who laid down their lives 
for the sanctification of His name.
They were loved and pleasant in their lives
and in death they were not parted.
They were swifter than eagles and stronger than lions
to carry out the will of their Maker, 
and the desire of their steadfast God.
May our Lord remember them for good 
together with the other righteous of the world
and may He redress the spilled blood of His servants 
as it is written in the Torah of Moses the man of God:
“O nations, make His people rejoice
for He will redress the blood of His servants
He will retaliate against His enemies
and appease His land and His people”.
And through Your servants, the prophets it is written:
“Though I forgive, their bloodshed I shall not forgive 
When God dwells in Zion”
And in the Holy Writings it says:
“Why should the nations say, ‘Where is their God?'”
Let it be known among the nations in our sight 
that You avenge the spilled blood of Your servants.
And it says: “For He who exacts retribution for spilled blood 
remembers them
He does not forget the cry of the humble”.
And it says:
“He will execute judgement among the corpse-filled nations
crushing the rulers of the mighty land;
from the brook by the wayside he will drink
then he will hold his head high.”

– Ashkenazi Siddur