What was rashi famous for

Writing primarily in Hebrew, he occasionally coined his own terms in his commentaries. A sculpture honoring Rashi in his birthplace of Troyes, France. Wikimedia Commons. Thanks to his many disciples who shared his work, his writings and his approach to text study quickly came into use in Jewish communities all over France, and during his lifetime spread to northern Europe.

Within a century his work spread farther to other countries. Though his work is not considered to be philosophically original, unlike the work of someone like Maimonides , Rashi has exerted the widest influence of any other Jewish commentator on subsequent Jewish literature and remains a fixture in Jewish learning to this day.

Please subscribe or login. Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here. Not a member? Sign up for My OBO. Already a member? Publications Pages Publications Pages. Subscriber sign in You could not be signed in, please check and try again. Username Please enter your Username. Password Please enter your Password. It helped make the notion of a running textual commentary one of the defining forms of Jewish intellectual culture.

His commentary soon supplemented most editions of these texts. The commentary has a unique, pleasant, even poetic style, bringing the Torah to life as a story, and illuminating its meaning like a powerful flashlight. Rashi uses his knowledge of history, logic, philology and psychology to explain obscure texts in just a few short words or lines. The Talmud was written in legalese: terse, unexplained language with no punctuation. Rashi provided a simple explanation of all Gemara discussions.

He explained all the terse phrases; he explained the principles and concepts assumed by the sages who put together the Gemara. His simple, brief explanations for practically every phrase of the Gemara made the Talmud understandable to the non-scholar.

Their complicated and sometimes convoluted commentaries were called Tosafot Additions. The scholars who created these additions were called the Tosafists Those Who Added. Rashi had no sons, but his three daughters, Yocheved, Miriam and Rachel, all married Talmudic scholars. He died on July 13, Tammuz 29, at the age of He was buried in Troyes. The approximate location of the cemetery in which he was buried was recorded in Seder Hadoros, but over time the location of the cemetery was forgotten.

A Sorbonne professor discovered an ancient map depicting the site of the cemetery, which now lay under an open square in the city of Troyes. In , Yisroel Meir Gabbai erected an additional plaque at this site marking the square as a burial ground. Many Rishonim are buried here, among them Rabbi Shlomo, known as Rashi the holy, may his merit protect us. Download our mobile app for on-the-go access to the Jewish Virtual Library. Category » Jews for Jesus.