Customer Reviews

Rashi

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Ok I have published Rashi and Merely Mary Ann at the same time, because I'll be publishing Michael Boatman's horror anthology and The Big Bow Mystery later this year and I want to devote as much time as possible to promotion of those books.

In writing a review, I know that I have essentially two audience members - those who know Rashi quite well and those that have never heard of Rashi before.

For those of you unfamiliar with Rashi, he was an 11th century rabbi who wrote responsa, Torah commentary, Talmud commentary and died in 1205. Maurice Liber has many chapters devoted to his Torah commentary and discussion thereof. If you are Jewish, this can give you a taste of Rashi before studying further. If you are not Jewish, this makes for a fascinating study in medieval philosophy as well as the tensions between Christian and Jewish communities. Maurice Liber notes many instances where Rashi purposefully comments on a psalm or a passage in a way that illegitimizes the Xian viewpoint. In other places, he's merely commenting as a commentator without the tensions.

If you are familiar with Rashi, this is still a fascinating book. Written in 1905 with a completely different set of biases (Liber praises Rashi for inspiring Mendelssohn for example), this book at times feels like the antithesis of those Artscroll biographies that make you suspect that the great sages never went to the bathroom much less read the secular newspapers of their days. Liber places Rashi in a particular time and place before Christian Jewish relations went to hell (the Crusades and the Black Death were either not happening or much less vicious in Rashi's time) and he also discusses the ways that later commentators would disagree with Rashi. Ibn Ezra was particularly vicious towards the Rashi commentaries. Rather than lower Rashi in one's estimation, Liber manages to make Rashi into a more respectable figure as he's human and some of his commentaries are not without problems for the modern reader. Liber also publishes some of Rashi's selichot which are fascinating in their own right.

So if you are at all interested in medeival history or Rashi as a person in a particular time, please buy this book.

I am sorry to say that this book on Rashi, by the eminent Maurice Liber is simply to dated, both in its written style, and with a lack of information on Rashi's Milieu.