THE INFLUENCE OF RASHI
CHAPTER XI
FROM RASHI'S DEATH TO THE EXPULSION
OF THE JEWS FROM FRANCE
The preceding chapters show how voluminous and varied was Rashi's work. And yet we are far from possessing everything he wrote; a number of texts have disappeared, perhaps are lost forever. But this fertility is not Rashi's sole literary merit. If the excellence of a work is to be measured not only by its intrinsic value, but also by its historical influence, by the scientific movement to which it has given the impulse, by the literature which it has called into being, in short, by its general effect, no work should receive a higher estimate than that of Rashi, for, it may be said without exaggeration, no other work was ever the occasion of so much comment and discussion, and none exerted an influence so far reaching and enduring. From the moment of their appearance his writings spread rapidly, and were read with enthusiasm. After profoundly affecting his contemporaries, Rashi continued to guide the movement he had started. His influence upon rabbinical literature is comparable only with that of Maimonides. Indeed, it was more wholesome than his. The Talmudic codex established by Maimonides aimed at nothing less than to shut off the discussions and to give the oral law firm, solid shape. Rashi, on the contrary, safeguarded the rights of the future, and gave his successors full play. Again, not having introduced into his work philosophic speculations, he was shielded against criticism, and his renown was therefore more immaculate than that of the author of the Mishneh Torah, who had to undergo furious attacks.
Rashi dominates the entire rabbinical movement in France and Germany. Generally, the influence of a writer wanes from day to day; but as for Rashi's, it may he said to have increased by force of habit and as the result of events, and to have broadened its sphere. Limited at first to French, Lotharingian, and German centres [centers sic] of learning, it soon extended to the south of Europe, to Africa, and even to Asia, maintaining its force both in the field of Biblical exegesis and of Talmudic jurisprudence.
Since it is impossible to mention all the authors and works following and preceding Rashi, it must suffice to point out some characteristic facts and indispensable names in order to bring into relief the vitality and expansive force of his achievement, and to show how it has survived the ravages of time, and, what is more, how it has overcome man's forgetfulness - <I>edax tempus, edacior homo.</I> We shall see that Rashi directed the course of the later development at the same time that he summed up in his work all that had previously been accomplished.
"The example of a man as revered as Rashi for his piety, his character, and his immense learning was bound to make a profound and lasting impression upon his contemporaries. His descendants and his numerous disciples, pursuing with equal zeal the study of the Talmud and that of Scriptures, took as their point of departure in either study the commentaries of their ancestor and master, to which they added their own remarks, now to enlarge upon and complete the first work, now to discuss it, refute it, and substitute new views. Thus arose the Tossafot, or additional glosses upon the Talmud, and thus in the following generations arose new commentaries upon the Pentateuch or upon the entire Bible, in which the rational spirit evoked by Rashi assumed a more and more marked and exclusive form."[131]
Finally, Rashi's influence was not confined either within the walls of the Jewries or within the frontiers of France, but it radiated to foreign lands and to ecclesiastical circles.