b. Yevamot 63a. |
INTRODUCTION:
Rashi’s commentaries on the Torah are well known. However,
the commentaries on his commentaries - known as supercommentaries - are less
known, even “wholly neglected”. These supercommentaries
or Parshanei Rashi number in the dozens by conservative estimates and
possibly even in the hundreds.[1]
In this article, based extensively in the research by
Professor Eric Lawee[2] of Bar Illan University, we shall explore a sample of different supercommentaries on one single Rashi
commentary on a verse in Genesis.
NOTE: The quotation from Rashi upon which this article is
based may upset sensitive readers. The intention, however, is not to focus on the
subject but rather on the patterns which emerge in the supercommentaries which deal with it.
RASHI’S COMMENTARY ATTRACTS ATTENTION:
Our point of departure is Rashi’s (slightly altered) quote
of a strange Talmudic Midrash[3]:
א"ר
אלעזר מאי דכתיב (בראשית ב, כג) זאת הפעם עצם מעצמי ובשר מבשרי מלמד שבא אדם על כל
בהמה וחיה ולא נתקררה דעתו עד שבא על חוה
“R. Eleazar said…Adam mated
with every [species of] domesticated animal and wild animal but his appetite
was not assuaged until he discovered Eve.”
This Talmudic passage is slightly altered by Rashi to
read:
זאת
הפעם. מְלַמֵּד שֶׁבָּא אָדָם עַל כָּל בְּהֵמָה וְחַיָּה, וְלֹא נִתְקָרְרָה
דַעְתּוֹ בָּהֶם (יבמות ס"ג):
“…Adam mated with every
[species of] beast and animal but his appetite was not assuaged by them.”
[4]
Although Adam may have been categorized as a universal man
or Ben Noach (Noachide) and not subject to later Biblical law, this
unusual and surprising interpretation particularly in a culture that despises
bestiality under numerous Biblical prohibitions[5],
was soon to attract the attention of the supercommentaries.
‘STYLES’ OF SUPERCOMMENTARIES:
An interesting development occurred within the genre of
supercommentaries and that was the way in which the different commentaries
interpreted the foundational comment of Rashi. Fascinatingly, the
interpretations are divided along the cultural lines of Ashkenazi[6]
and Sefaradi Jews. Our aim is to determine just why
this is the case.
Rashi (1040-1105) was writing in Northern France and his
commentary migrated to Spain and then back to Northern France and Germany, and
the supercommentaries which accumulated along the way reflected the varying
cultural trends it passed through.
Soon a pattern emerged: Rashi’s immediate Ashkenazi
interpreters understood his Midrashic gloss quite literally, while his
Iberian or Sefaradi interpreters chose an allegorical exegesis and
reading. This divide took place almost without exception. To
put it more bluntly, the Ashkenazim understood that Adam literally mated
with the animals and the Sefaradim adopted the approach that the
relationship was, “cognitive, not carnal”.
SUPPORT FOR THE LITERAL INTERPRETATION:
Those in favour of the more literal interpretation found
some scriptural support for their view: The second chapter of Genesis describes
it as “not good” for man to be alone, and so the “wild beasts”
and “birds of the sky” were formed for sake of Adam to “see what he
would call them”. When it became apparent that “for Adam no fitting
helper was found”, Eve was created. It was then that Adam declares “this
time – bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh”.[7]
The expression “this time” - as opposed to the
implied “other times” - opens itself up for colourful interpretative
speculation.
ASHKENAZI INTERPRETATION:
Lawee writes:
“As Rashi conveyed R.
Eleazar’s exposition without qualm, so, too, did late medieval Ashkenazic
scholars cite it in ways that indicated their acceptance of its literal sense,
even as they were challenged by the midrash on other levels.”
The problem is that the profound moral implications of this Midrash,
particularly when taken on the literal level, invite polemical ridicule.
Those who were keen to discredit rabbinical Judaism were handed a golden
opportunity on a platter.
Already during the twelfth century, Moshe Sefaradi, who
became known as Petrus Alfonsi[8],
the Spanish-Jewish physician who converted to Christianity in 1106 (a year
after Rashi passed away), assumed the role of anti-rabbinic polemicist. He
collected ideas such as these to build the case against his birth religion.
A century later, Lawee explains that:
“Christian polemic focused
increasingly on classical Judaism’s midrashic inheritance.”
During that time, Nicholas Donin, a disenfranchised Jew who had been excommunicated by his former teacher R. Yechiel of Paris chose baptism and joined the Franciscan Order. His polemics against Judaism resulted in twenty-four wagon loads of Talmudic manuscripts being burned on the streets of Paris. In 1236, Donin presented thirty-five “reprehensible rabbinic dicta” to Pope Gregory IX, and this Midrash was one such example used in the Disputation of Paris in 1240 [see Kotzk Blog: 130) THE DANGERS OF TRANSLATING HEBREW TEXTS:].
A Latin “confession”
claimed that R. Yechiel of Paris conceded that Adam had relations with the
animals while still in Paradise. The Hebrew account has R. Yechiel explain the Midrashic
view that bestiality had not yet been outlawed to early mankind.[9]
Other Ashkenazi rabbis similarly argued that:
“One can say that they [the
animals] were not prohibited to him until after Eve’s creation.”[10]
From these, and other Ashkenazi rabbis[11]
it emerges that they all accepted the literal interpretation of the Midrashic
account, and surprisingly:
“…the moral-religious
implications of Adam’s multiple acts of bestiality perturbed them not at all”
(Lawee 2006:397).
Lawee (2006:398) drives this point even further when he cites
the one Ashkenazi exception to the rule. According to one (apparently
anonymous) Ashkenazi rabbi:
“’Amazing (temah)!’ How,
in the single hour that the midrashic tradition has Adam spending in the garden[12],
could he ‘have had intercourse with myriad [of creatures]?’ This inquiry
spurred an abandonment of the fullscale literalist reading of Rashi: ‘[O]ne
might answer (yesh lomar) that [what Rashi means is that] he [Adam] saw each
and every pair [of animals] mating and it did not seem to him as though he
could be assuaged [sexually] through [any of] them.’”[13]
This Ashkenazi source is the only exception to the literalist approach we have seen so far. However, it is rooted in the argumentative style of Talmudic exegeses (using typically dialectical terms like “temah” and “yesh lomar”) and it expresses no moral abhorrence to the act of mating with animals!
It simply:
“…objected to Adam’s multiple
acts of bestiality on purely logistical rather than moral-religious grounds” (Lawee
2006:398).
As we have seen, the literalist view dominated medieval Ashkenazi (Tosafist) thought in the supercommentaries on Rashi.
This was not, however, the case with regard to Sefaradi
literature on this matter:
SEFARADI INTERPRETATION:
According to Lawee (2006: 398):
“Building on precedents of the
geonic east, Andalusi-Jewish scholars developed an approach to the
interpretation of nonlegal midrash that eventually spread to Christian Spain,
southern France, Italy, and beyond. According to this approach, nonliteral
exegesis of rabbinic sayings was often valid and sometimes required. The
cleavage between north and south emerged starkly during the controversies over
rationalism of the 1230s.”
In other words, the Ashkenazi-Sefaradi divide over
whether to take Midrashim like this literally or allegorically, is
reflected in the Tosafist-Maimonidean Controversies around the
thirteenth century, which pitted the mystical Tosafists (who were largely
comprised of Rashi’s students) against the rationalists from the Maimonidean
camp [see Kotzk
Blog: 180) MYSTICAL FORAYS OF THE TOSAFISTS:].
Lawee continues:
“In often vituperative
exchanges, northern European savants urged the necessity of literal reverence
in interpreting rabbinic sayings.”
The rationalist Maimonidean school was open to figurative
and allegorical interpretation of rabbinic texts. But some Tosafists demanded the
‘canonisation’ of Rashi as the only authentic form of Biblical interpretation [see
Kotzk
Blog: 212) HOW RASHI WAS USED AS ‘LEVERAGE’ DURING THE MAIMONIDEAN
CONTROVERSIES:].
Thus, we see that the Spanish supercommentators on Rashi
took pains to arrive at a non-literal interpretation of the Midrash concerning
Adam mating with the animals.
An early Spanish supercommentator was the anonymous
contemporary of the fifteenth century Yitzchak ben Moshe haLevi (Profet Duran)
found in a manuscript from that period. According to the manuscript, Adam:
“…engaged in intense and
ongoing investigation and careful study into each and every species and
discerned its nature and temperament and the nature of all the [other] species
but failed to find a nature fitting and disposed to his nature.”[14]
This anonymous text may have been based on the fourteenth
century R. Shem Tov ben Shaprut who wrote in his Pardes Rimonim that
Adam was not looking “for a biological partner but for a rational soul mate”
(Lawee 2006: 399). Either way, a distinct not literalist approach is adopted.
R. Shmuel Almosnino wrote, during the fifteenth century,
that Rashi’s reference was a “figurative expression” and did not signify
any physical relationship at all.[15]
Moses ibn Gabbai, who hailed from Aragon but wrote his
supercommentary on Rashi in North Africa around 1420, maintained that the event
should not be understood “according to its prima facie meaning” (kifeshutah).[16]
Moshe ibn Gabbai believed that Adam was bound by the proscription of bestiality
before Eve’s creation. This opinion was rejected by the Ashkenazi rabbi,
Yehiel of Paris and other Ashkenazic authorities.
Moshe ibn Gabbai’s non-literalist approach was similarly
reflected in his son-in-law, R. Aharon Aboulrabi’s supercommentary that because
Adam was the most “perfect” of humans, being created by G-d, there was no way
he could have engaged in “intercourse with one not of his species.”[17]
Yitzchak Arama (1420-1494), author of Akedat Yitzchak[18]
(a philosophical commentary on the Torah) emphasised the Midrashic
reference to the word “da’ato” (mind, as in “his appetite - lit. mind
– was not assuaged") as support for an intellectual encounter rather than a
physical one, “discerning reflection on the animals and their nature”[19]
(Lawee 2006:400).
Lisbon-born Don Yitzchak Abravanel (1437-1508) writing in
Italian exile after the Spanish Expulsion of 1492, also emphasized the
intellectual nature of Adam’s encounters with the animals. Both Abravanel and Arama
were concerned with presenting difficult Midrashim in a “sophisticated”
intellectual style so as to appeal to the more rational milieu of their Spanish readers.
Thus, the Sefaradi community adopted a more
rationalist and non-literalist approach to the difficult Rashi text, while
their Ashkenazi counterparts were not prepared to budge one iota from their
literalist interpretation.
POST EXPULSION:
Lawee goes on to show how things began to change after the
(openly practicing) Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492 and Portugal in 1497, and began to settle
in Ashkenazi Europe. Their more rational style of Biblical interpretation
began to influence the mystical and literalist Ashkenazim - and soon the
Ashkenazi rabbis were also offering allegorical explanations of this
difficult Rashi.
Spanish rabbis like Yitzchak Kara (1458-1535), author of the Toldot Yitzchak commentary on the Torah -
after being expelled from both Spain and Portugal - brought their more rational
reading of Rashi to Europe and, in Kara’s case, to Constantinople.
Lawee (2006:403) writes:
“…segments of the Ashkenazi world were undergoing a cultural transformation that was shaped decisively by the advent of Sephardic intellectual sensibilities and exegetical trends in northern and eastern Europe. The spiritual upheaval left marks on theological trends, interpretive methodologies, homiletical styles, and other areas of intellectual endeavor and religious life.”
Yitzchak Kara wrote:
“Heaven forefend that he
[Adam] had intercourse [with beast and animals] in actuality.”[20]
This continued for some time until there was a backlash from
the Ashkenazi establishment and more modern Ashkenazi rabbis
reverted to their traditional literal interpretation that Adam indeed mated
with the animals. These trends, to and fro, are all reflected in the general Aggadic
(non-legal) commentaries and particularly in the supercommentaries on Rashi’s
gloss about Adam and the animals.
Thus, through an analysis of the vast literature of the supercommentaries
over the centuries, on this one difficult Rashi text, we are able to trace the vacillating
trends of Hashkafic weltanschauung regarding rationalists and mystics, allegorists
and literalists.
THE MODERN ERA:
The work of the ever-expanding corpus of supercommentaries on
Rashi continues unabated in the modern era and has moved into the domain of the
English language.
In the 1930s, the Pentateuch with Targum Onkelos,
Haphtaroth and Rashi’s Commentary was published for English readers. According
to Lawee (2006:423):
“…it went out of its way to
avoid familiarizing English readers of the precise meaning of Rashi’s gloss on ‘this
time’…
Here is but one instance in
which avoidance, not to say censorship, of some of Rashi’s more frankly sexual
glosses manifested itself on the English side of the page."
Lawee (2006:423-4) goes on to describe the Artscroll[21] series, whose editors:
“...rest confident in their
continuity with the ‘Torah-true’ Judaism of the Ashkenazic past…
In an early commentary on
Genesis put out under the Mesorah Publications Artscroll label, Adam’s cry ‘this
time’ was said to reflect his earlier unsuccessful attempt to find ‘a mate from
among every creature,’ whereas a less than luminous note explained, ‘Rashi; as
explained by Lekach Tov; Toledos Yitzchak and Vilna Gaon.’ Clearly, the editors
of this volume felt compelled to cite Rashi (no other commentator was summoned)
while also steering clear of the stark sexual content of his gloss.”
Thus, inadvertantly, the many supercommentaries on Rashi produced to this day
continue the long line of tradition allowing discerning scholars to immediately
pick up on the hidden (and not so hidden) agendas of their writers.
FURTHER READING:
Kotzk
Blog: 213) AND WHAT DOES RASHI SAY?
[1]Israel
Shapira, “Parshanei Rashi Al haTorah,” Bitzִaron 2 (1940): 426–37; and Aron
Freimann, “Manuscript Supercommentaries on Rashi’s Commentary on the
Pentateuch,” in Rashi Anniversary Volume (New York: American Academy for Jewish
Research, 1941), 73–114.
[2] Eric
Lawee, “From Sepharad to Ashkenaz: A Case Study in the Rashi Spercommentary
Tradition”, AJS Review 30:2 (2006) 393-425.
[3] b. Yevamot
63a.
[4] Rashi adds bahem, that Adam was not satisfied “by them”, and omits that he was satisfied by Eve (Sefaria). There are other versions of this Rashi (Ohalei Shem, Michael Peretz, Mexico 2012):
[5]
Exodus 22:19, Leviticus 18:23, Leviticus 20: 15-16, Deuteronomy 27:21.
[6] Lawee
points out that the term Ashkenaz (referring to Northern France and
Germany) was probably coined by Rashi in the first place.
[7]
Genesis 2:15-23.
[8] Also
known as Peter Afonso. See Jeremy Cohen, Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of
the Jew in Medieval Christianity (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1999), 210–17.
[9] R.
Margoliyot, ed., Vikkuach Rabbenu Yehִiel miPariz (Lvov, n.d.), 26.
[10] Jacob
Gellis, ed., Sefer Tosafot haShalem (Jerusalem: Ariel United Israel
Institutes, 1982–), Bereshit-Noah 114 (no. 2).
[11] See
Chizkiya ben Manoach and his commentary, known as Chizkuni which is
based on Rashi and about twenty other commentaries. See also Lawee (2006: 397).
[12]
According to Midrashic literature, Adam only experienced “twelve
hours of the sixth day”, which included one hour in the Garden of Eden. See
Anthony J. Saldarini, The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan (Abot de
Rabbi Nathan) Version B: A Translation and Commentary (Leiden, The Netherlands:
Brill, 1975), 37.
[13] Suleiman
Sasson, ed., Sefer Moshav Zekenim Al haTorah, 2nd ed. (Jerusalem: Sifrei
Rabanei Bavel, 1982), 2.
[14] New
York, JTS MS Lutski 802 (film no. 24033, Institute for Microfilmed Hebrew
Manuscripts in Jerusalem), 4r.
[15] Moshe
Philip, ed., Perush leFerush Rashi me-haRav haGadol Rabbi Shmuel Almosnino
(Petah Tikvah, 1998), 23.
[16] Moses
ibn Gabbai, Eved Shlomo, Oxford, Bodleian, MS Hunt. Don. 25 (film no.
16338, Institute for Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts in Jerusalem, New York),
12v.
[17] Perushim
leRashi (Constantinople, 1525?), 16v.
[18]
Arama also authored Chazut Kasha (A Difficult Vision) which dealt with
the interaction of philosophy and theology [see Kotzk Blog: Chazut
Kasha]. Even though Arama also dealt with Kabbalah, (ascribing
authorship of the Zohar to R. Shimon bar Yochai [see Kotzk
Blog: 087) MYSTERIES BEHIND THE ORIGINS OF THE ZOHAR:] his primary concern
was with its philosophy rather than its mysticism.
[19] H.
J. Pollak, ed., Akedat Yitzִchִak,
6 vols. (1849; repr., Jerusalem: Books Export, 1960), 1:84r.
[22] An
early commentary on Genesis put out under the Mesorah Publications Artscroll
label. Meir Zlotowitz, ed., Bereshis: Genesis/A New Translation with a
Commentary Anthologized from Talmudic, Midrashic and Rabbinic Sources, 2nd ed.,
6 vols. (Brooklyn, NY: Mesorah, 1986), 1:109.
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