When one sees with what severity and injustice Abraham Ibn Ezra treats the French commentator, one may well doubt whether this enthusiastic eulogy sprang from his pen, capricious though we know him to have been. "The Talmud," he said, "has declared that the Peshat must never lose its rights. But following generations gave the first place to Derash, as Rashi did, who pursued this method in commenting upon the entire Bible, though he believed he was using Peshat. In his works there is not one rational explanation out of a thousand." As I have said, Rashi and Ibn Ezra were not fashioned to understand each other.[145] The commentaries of David Kimhi[146] contain no such sharp criticisms. By birth Kimhi was a Provencal, by literary tradition a Spaniard. He often turned Rashi's Biblical commentaries to good account for himself. Sometimes he did not mention Rashi by name, sometimes he referred to him openly.
A pompous eulogy of Rashi was written by Moses ben Nahman, or Nahmanides,[147] in the introduction to his commentary on the Pentateuch; and the body of the work shows that he constantly drew his inspiration from Rashi and ever had Rashi before his eyes. At the same time he also opposes Rashi, either because the free ways of the French rabbi shocked him, or because the Frenchman's naive rationalism gave offense to his mysticism. In fact, it is known that Nahmanides is one of the first representatives of Kabbalistic exegesis, and his example contributed not a little toward bringing it into credit. Even the author of the Zohar - that Bible of the Kabbalah, which under cover of false authority exercised so lasting an influence upon Judaism - whether or not he was Moses of Leon (about 1250-1305) used for his exegesis the commentary of Rashi, without, of course, mentioning it by name, and sometimes he even reproduced it word for word. The Kabbalist exegete Bahya or Behaia ben Asher, of Saragossa, in his commentary on the Pentateuch (1291) cites Rashi as one of the principal representatives of Peshat - behold how far we have gotten from Ibn Ezra, and how Rashi is cleared of unjust contempt.
Although Nahmanides was wrongly held to have been the disciple of Judab Sir Leon, it was he who introduced into Spain the works and the method of French Talmudists, whom he possibly came to know through his masters. Thus the Spanish Talmudists, though they boasted such great leaders as Alfasi and Maimonides, nevertheless accepted also the heritage of the French academies. Rashi's influence is perceptible and acknowledged in the numerous Talmudic writings of Solomon ben Adret,[148] and it is clearly manifest in the commentary on Alfasi by Nissim Gerundi (about 1350), who copies Rashi literally, at the same time developing his thought, not infrequently over-elaborating it. He also refutes Rashi at times, but his refutation is often wrong. The man, however, who best represents the fusion of Spanish and French Talmudism was assuredly Asher hen Jehiel,[149] who, a native of the banks of the Rhine, implanted in Spain the spirit of French Judaism, and in his abridgment of the Talmud united Spanish tradition, whose principal representative was Alfasi,
with Franco-German tradition, whose uncontested leader was Rashi.
Since that time Talmudic activity, the creative force of which seems to have been exhausted, has been undergoing a change of character. Asher ben Jehiel, or, as he has been called, Rosh, terminated an important period of rabbinical literature, the period of the <I>Rishonim.</I> We have seen how during this period Rashi's reputation, at first confined within the limits of his native province, extended little by little, until it spread over the surrounding countries, like the tree of which Daniel speaks, "whose height reached unto the heaven, and the sight thereof to all the earth; whose leaves were fair, and the fruit thereof much" (Dan. iv. 20-21).
CHAPTER XII
FROM THE EXPULSION OF THE JEWS FROM FRANCE TO THE PRESENT TIME
It might be supposed that the Jews of France, chased from their fatherland, and so deprived of their schools, would have disappeared entirely from the scene of literary history, and that the intellectual works brought into being by their activity in the domains of Biblical exegesis and Talmudic jurisprudence would have been lost forever. Such was by no means the case. It has been made clear that the French school exerted influence outside of France from the twelfth to the fourteenth century, and we shall now see how the Jews of France, saving their literary treasures in the midst of the disturbances, carried their literature to foreign countries, to Piedmont and to Germany. When the Jews of Germany were expelled in turn, Poland became the centre [center sic] of Judaism, and the literary tradition was thus maintained without interruption up to the present time. It is an unique example of continuity. The vitality of Judaism gained strength in the misfortunes that successively assailed it,
Per damna, per caedes, ab Ipso
Ducit opes auimumque ferro.
A large number of Jews exiled from France established themselves in the north of Italy, where they formed distinct communities faithful to the ancient traditions. Thus they propagated the works of the French rabbis. Rashi's commentaries and the ritual collections following his teachings were widely copied there, and of course, truncated and mutilated. They served both as the text-books of students and as the breviaries, so to speak, of scholars.