Awards

• Winner of Winner of the Jewish Book Council Nahum M. Sarna Memorial Award in Scholarship.

Overview

This book explores the reception history of the most important Jewish Bible commentary ever composed, the Commentary on the Torah of Rashi (Shlomo Yitzhaki; 1040-1105). Though the Commentary has benefited from enormous scholarly attention, analysis of diverse reactions to it has been surprisingly scant. Viewing its path to preeminence through a diverse array of religious, intellectual, literary, and sociocultural lenses, Eric Lawee focuses on processes of the Commentary's canonization and on a hitherto unexamined--and wholly unexpected--feature of its reception: critical, and at times astonishingly harsh, resistance to it. Lawee shows how and why, despite such resistance, Rashi's interpretation of the Torah became an exegetical classic, a staple in the curriculum, a source of shared religious vocabulary for Jews across time and place, and a foundational text that shaped the Jewish nation's collective identity. The book takes as its larger integrating perspective processes of canonicity as they shape how traditions flourish, disintegrate, or evolve. Rashi's scriptural magnum opus, the foremost work of Franco-German (Ashkenazic) biblical scholarship, faced stiff competition for canonical supremacy in the form of rationalist reconfigurations of Judaism as they developed in Mediterranean seats of learning. It nevertheless emerged triumphant in an intense battle for Judaism's future that unfolded in late medieval and early modern times. Investigation of the reception of the Commentary throws light on issues in Jewish scholarship and spirituality that continue to stir reflection, and even passionate debate, in the Jewish world today.

Full Product Details

9780190937836

Table of Contents

Reviews

excellent book * Canadian Jewish News * After finishing this book, one feels that one has just put down a great piece of scholarship. A book that is deserving of its forthcoming awards. One that will now be on the reading list of every Jewish educator who teaches Rashi and on the reading list of every graduate student. The years put into this project show in the wonderful final product. ... This book is groundbreaking for opening up new avenues of research on Rashi's thought, on medieval intellectual trends, and on the exegetic imagination. * Alan Brill, Cooperman/Ross Endowed Professor in the Department of Religion at Seton Hall University * an essential contribution to the discussion...Lawee's research covers centuries of reactions to Rashi from Jews around the world...[an] excellent book. * Martin Lockshin, The Canadian Jewish News *

an essential contribution to the discussion...Lawee's research covers centuries of reactions to Rashi from Jews around the world...[an] excellent book. * Martin Lockshin, The Canadian Jewish News *

Author Information

Eric Lawee is Professor of Bible at Bar-Ilan University where he specializes in Jewish biblical interpretation in medieval and modern times. He holds the Weiser Chair for Research into Medieval Jewish Biblical Interpretation and directs Bar-Ilan's Institute for Jewish Bible Interpretation. He recently served as Shoshana Shier Distinguished Visiting Professor for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto. His studies appear in leading journals of Jewish studies, religious studies, and medieval studies. His first book, Isaac Abarbanel's Stance Toward Tradition: Defense, Dissent, and Dialogue (2001), won a Canadian Jewish Book Award and was a finalist for a National Jewish Book Award.

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