Even the greatest leader needs God’s words to inspire his own.
Responsa
Recognized as a quasi-ultimate authority, Rashi received many queries from people near and far, from disciples and peers, dealing with individual and collective problems. Hence the weight and range of his answers (over four hundred, though several may be falsely attributed to him). His opening remarks are usually personal, inquiring after the health of his correspondents and their families. He often uses the expression “in my humble opinion” or “as I was told from on high.” This might not, to modern ears, sound like modesty, but it in fact presents him as nothing but a conduit for divine insight. His genuine humility never fails to inform everything he writes.
The questions—a wide spectrum—come to him from in dividuals, community leaders, and rabbis, living both close and far away. In some instances, says Rashi, before making a decision that will affect all its members, the community should gather in a plenary session, in absolute secrecy, in a cave. He cosigned a decision, at least once, with one Zerach ben Abraham. Rashi rarely focuses his attention on money matters. But he is attentive to the problems of individuals. A woman to whom a countess gives the order of following her on horseback asks Rashi what to do if this falls on the day of the Fast of Esther: can she put off fasting to the next day, in other words, to the day of Purim? No, says Rashi, she cannot.
The range of his answers includes problems dealing with prayer, holidays, mourning, divorce, marriage, circumcision, and the biblical and Talmudic texts.
What concerns him most is the fate of the community, tradition, ritual, the Laws, their implications and applications. Respect for his Teachers (particularly Rabbi Yaakov ben Yakar) and ancestors, the Kadmonim, was a determining factor for him when he ruled on the subject of the Sabbath, or the kashrut of meat or wine; he usually adopts a moderate attitude. For him, the Law isn’t impersonal and shouldn’t be. It involves human beings and therefore the human level should always be taken into account.
From time to time, in a difficult situation, he queried one of his teachers. Sometimes he wrote to Mainz or Worms to request clarifications of particular biblical or Talmudic interpretations based on their ancient manuscripts.
The following text, copied by Rashi himself, hardly exemplary, deals with rulings intended for his own community:
We the residents of Troyes and of the surrounding communities have ordered by oath, excommunication and strict ordinance, to all the men and women who live here, as follows:
No person can free himself of the public yoke, either today or tomorrow, with the help of the count or his representatives, who make Jews leave and separate them from the assembly of Israel. If it turns out he has not paid the tax with his brothers, we order that he will pay the same amount as each of them and that his tax will not be reduced. If he must pay the count and the latter has separated him from his brothers, from that day on he will be counted among them, and each one will pay based on his capital, based on what we the residents of the city decided and such as it has been since its inception.
The ancients who came before us passed down to us the following rules: each person will pay according to his fortune, not counting his utensils, his houses, his vineyards, his fields. As for the money of the Christians (lent to the Christians) with which he earns his keep, he will pay only on the capital. However, if he received a deposit from his fellow Jew, he will pay based on the value of half the deposit for which he has the legal responsibility. If he has silver objects, gold objects, women’s jewels or rings, he will pay according to their value. If a Jew is in possession of a loan for which he is entirely responsible, such as a charitable gift that was charity for one year before becoming a loan, he will pay based on the whole amount, but during the first year.
We have also heard that such was the custom of the ancients: in cases where a city resident took money out of the city, he would have to pay based on the whole amount. However, if he has come to live here, but has not yet arranged to bring over his money, he does not have to pay until he has brought it over and started trading with it. If he has already brought over his money, but it has stayed on deposit without being used, he will pay only once he starts using it.
In cases where residents from here have made a gift to their sons and their daughters and taken it out of the city, for as long as the sons will live in the city, or if they leave it temporarily and their father intends to make them return, they will participate in the public expense with that money.
In cases where one of them received books as a security for a free loan given to his brother, he will pay based on the value of the books. (Responsum no. 248)
Rashi’s concern for the individual Jew is naturally matched by his concept of what makes a community vibrant and enduring, particularly in exile: the idea of remaining attached to the Law of Moses and its ancient interpreters. Their words reverberate in his. Their decisions on an immense variety of topics and situations transcend frontiers and centuries. But the most tragic case he deals with is the fate of the converted. And there we arrive at the most painful subject as far as the Jewish people in the Rhineland are concerned: the Crusades.
Liturgical Poems
Grossman and others ascribe seven liturgical poems to Rashi. Truthfully we can say with very little hesitation that they don’t really reflect Rashi’s greatness. His greatness is not as a poet. Other poets of his time are more admirable. But his poems must be studied so we can better value him, and even love him.
They all describe the trials Israel is going through: the torn Torah scrolls, the students and their teachers slaughtered in a bloodbath, the ransacked synagogues: on reading them one’s heart is overcome with anguish and inexpressible grief.
Was this his personal reaction to the bitter ordeal of the first Crusade?
We sense this too when we read his introduction—the only introduction he ever wrote—to the Song of Songs, which Rashi believed, according to tradition, was written by King Solomon. The great scholar Dov Rappel stresses its historical, philosophical aspect. For Yehuda Rosenthal, due to its sensitivity and brilliance, it presents a spellbinding historical allegory. For Rashi the Song was written thanks to prophetic gifts.
At first glance, it is an essentially prophetic love story between the God of Israel and the people of Israel from the Exodus out of Egypt to the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. And Rashi describes this with melancholy and hope, the one as emotional, deep, and inevitable as the other.
Let us read the text:
King Solomon had foreseen, with the help of the Holy Spirit, that it was to be Israel’s destiny to go from exile to exile, from disaster to disaster, and to nostalgically bemoan the time when she was God’s chosen lover. She will say: “I shall return to my first husband (God) for it was better with me than now” (Hosea 2:7). The Children of Israel will remember His kindness and also their transgressions against Him. And they will remember the kindness He promised them at the end of time.
Often the prophets compare the relations between God and Israel to those existing between an angry husband and the sinful wife who betrayed him. Solomon composed the Song of Songs using that very allegory. It is a fascinating dialogue between the husband (God) who loves and continues to love his repudiated wife, and the wife, really the widow of a living husband, who waits for her husband and seeks to get close to him once again: she recalls the love of her youthful years while recognizing her misdeed.
God too is afflicted in their affliction (Isaiah 63:9), and He remembers her youthful grace, her beauty, and the endowments for which He so loved her in the past. He lets her know that she has remained in His heart and that He will find her again, for she is still His wife and He her husband.
Rashi’s commentary also includes advice on how to live in exile without capitulating: by studying in the synagogues and erecting faith as a great wall; and in the worst cases, through martyrdom. As Solomon says of the dove, Rashi says: “The dove becomes attached to his lo
ved one. And when his throat is cut, he does not flutter and wriggle but cranes his neck.” And he continues: “this virtue of self-sacrifice can only astonish the other nations of the world, and lead them all to ask: in what way is your God different from the others that you are ready to be burned and crucified for Him?”
The Song of Songs, therefore, is a story written for present and future exiles, but also a moving prayer in their memory to bring them closer to Redemption.
4
Sadness and Memory
Rashi was fifty-five at the time of the first Crusade: rumors about it must have reached him. How did he react?
Let us broaden our canvas.
The eleventh and twelfth centuries were a time of political turmoil, military turbulence, and religious upheavals. Christendom and Islam pursued their religious wars by making territorial conquests. Norway, Sweden, Burgundy, Spain, France … too many kings wanted to reign over too many countries. The Byzantine emperor Roman III seized Syria. In Constantinople, Patriarch Michael I Cerularius was excommunicated, precipitating the schism between the Christian East and Christian West. Benedict IX, a corrupt and cruel man, was crowned pope only to be deposed and reelected. He then sold his title and office to Gregory VI who abdicated a year later. In the Islamic world the situation was hardly more commendable. Shiites and Sunnis lived in fear and with the constant desire to win supreme domination through violence. There was the victory of William the Conqueror at Hastings and his tumultuous reign; the invasion of the Byzantine Empire by the Turks; the appearance of anti-Papists; Rome’s efforts to weaken the authority of the local princes; Gregory VII’s excommunication of the German king Henry IV; the latter’s forced walk to Canossa in penitence; the battles among Arabs for the reconquest of Spain; the capture of Capua by Robert Guiscard’s Norman troops …
What a century!
Before it drew to a close, Rashif ed-din Sinan founded the secret Shiite society called the hashishiyyin, or “assassins,” whose suicidal and murderous fanaticism is still active today. Sent to the four corners of the Islamic empire, its leaders trained flawlessly efficient professional assassins whose record of achievements would make the best specialists under contract to the Mafia jealous.
And what about the Jewish world?
While the Gentiles were busily waging bitter battles and bloody wars among themselves, by and large they still found time to take their anger out on the Jews. But less so in the eleventh century. Chroniclers related no major catastrophe. The Jews in Europe and in the Holy Land lived in relative safety, which means in relative danger. In Spain, for instance, they enjoyed the fruits of the Golden Age, a time so vibrant in our collective memories. The great thinker and poet Shmuel ha-Nagid was commander in chief of the armies of the Catholic kings; his role in the defeat of the Muslims on several battlefields has never been questioned. Shlomo Ibn Gabirol and Yehuda ha-Levi paved the way for Maimonides…. The prevailing sentiment must have been, “Let’s hope it lasts!” Well it didn’t last. For the Jews of Western Europe the century ended in a deluge of blood, fire, and death, all in the name of a man who was born Jewish of Jewish parents, whose beautiful dream was to bring love into the hearts and souls of believers.
The Crusades. We have returned to the topic.
Don’t be surprised, reader; we are not drifting away from our main subject. The Crusades concern Rashi.
It is impossible to read or reread the blunt and detailed chronicles of the period without feeling a broken heart and being overcome with despair.
It all started in Clermont-Ferrand on November 27, 1095, when Pope Urban II appealed to the Christians to go to Jerusalem and use force to liberate Christ’s tomb and all the holy shrines then under Muslim rule.
Initially, the undertaking was directed against Muslims alone. The Jews were not to be affected. But some members of the French Jewish community had forebodings. Based on what? We don’t know; all we know is they sent emissaries to their relatives and friends in Mainz and Worms advising them to prepare themselves for riots. Strangely incredulous, too confident, the Jews of Mainz and Worms sent the messengers away, with their messages, back to the Jews of France. Yet the French were right. When they started their crusade down the Rhine and the Danube, the Crusaders, blind with hatred, inflicted suffering and agony on the thousands upon thousands of Jews living in Cologne, Mainz, Worms, and Speyer who refused to convert to Christianity.
In some places, the Crusaders met with Jewish resistance; in others, the majority of Jews chose martyrdom. The first martyr, a woman, refused to be baptized and chose to die voluntarily. A great many coreligionists followed her example. The story of their behavior is unbearable to read. In synagogue courtyards, men recited blessings and prayers and then stabbed their wives and children to death. “Accept baptism and you will live,” shouted the Crusaders wherever they suddenly appeared, like ghosts in a blaze of violence and horror. “We believe in God, in our one God,” replied the Jews before dying. In some chronicles it is reported that the Crusaders entertained themselves by slashing open the bellies of pregnant women, putting live cats inside, and sewing them up.
In his masterly book on the Akedah, the binding of Isaac, in Jewish history, the great scholar and teacher Shalom Spiegel quotes a passage in Rabbi Eliezer bar Nathan’s book on the disasters of 1096. When the Crusaders entered Mehr, a village on the banks of the Rhine, the local lord delivered his Jews to them. Threatened with ugly humiliation, torture, and death, some Jews let themselves be baptized. Others were slaughtered. One man called Shmaya bribed an official who helped him escape with his wife and three sons. Then the official betrayed them. At night Shmaya slit the throats of his wife and their three children and plunged the knife into his own chest. He lost consciousness, but did not die. The next day, when the Crusaders found him lying on the ground, they said to him, “Convert to our faith and you shall live.” But he answered, “May heaven protect me from renouncing the living God!” So the villagers dug a grave. The saintly Shmaya placed his wife on one side and his three sons on the other, and lay down in the middle. And the mob began to throw earth on their bodies. He was covered with earth but was still alive. They took him out. “Confess your sins and you shall live,” they said to him. He refused. They put him back in the grave, but he was still alive. They took him back out again. “Are you ready to abandon your God?” The holy man, in his last breath, refused to exchange what was great and eternal for what was not…. He passed the test, as had Abraham the father, in bygone days! Oh, Blessed be He …
Why did so many men and women in the Rhine provinces choose martyrdom through suicide whereas their brothers and sisters in the Sephardic countries reacted differently? Is this due to a different mentality or to a different interpretation of the Law? Gershon Cohen published a remarkable essay on the subject. But this is not the topic at hand. The Crusades are.
When the Crusaders, led by Godfrey of Bouillon, swept into Jerusalem, they devastated the City of God and brutalized its inhabitants. Jews and Muslims combined forces and put up a courageous and relentless resistance, but they were outnumbered. The Crusaders locked up a group of Karaites in a synagogue and set it on fire. The entire group was burned alive.
Litanies and lamentations were composed describing the barbarity of the murderous invaders and the deaths of their victims. They are still recited today, on appropriate dates.
Did Rashi know what was happening in those distant lands? Word must have reached him. What does he say on the subject?
As mentioned earlier, when the first Crusade began, Rashi was fifty-five years old. He would live another ten years. He worked more, and better, than usual. His creativity was boundless. Pamphlets, halakhic decisions, new commentaries, the revision of earlier ones: he surpassed himself.
But how was this possible psychologically? How had he managed not to see, hear, or know what was going on so close to his own city? Were his powers of concentration so great and sustained? Admittedly, for incomprehensible reasons, neither his family
nor his community suffered. Oddly, Troyes was miraculously spared. But Mainz and Worms, two cities he knew well for having spent years there with his mentors, were not far away; travelers and messengers went back and forth regularly. Rashi must have had reports, if only scant ones, of the bloodbaths that had taken place in those cities. Proof: in his commentary on the Psalms, one senses his inability to hide or contain his anguish. Of course, technically, he is commenting on ancient, biblical times, but we can guess that he is actually describing his own times.
In some of his litanies of penitence, he implores God to collect the tears of children in His chalice. And he implores the holy Torah to intercede up high in favor of those who give up their lives for His glory.
Are these remarks related to the tragic events that were then unfolding in so many communities on the banks of the Rhine and far away, in Palestine?
Is his beautiful introduction (unique in its kind) to the Song of Songs a response—his response—to the pain and misfortune that have befallen his people? It expresses a stirring, very moving appeal. His aim: to bring consolation and hope to the persecuted. He says: “This song has often been commented on in the Midrashic sources, but I say that King Solomon had foreseen the time when the Children of Israel would be deported from one exile to another, from one disaster to another. And that they would lament, while recalling their past glory and the love that made them different from others. And they will remember the promises made by God.” And, Rashi adds, citing the prophets, “God will reassure them, saying that He too remembers the promises, and that their marriage is still valid: He did not send them away, Israel is still His wife and He will return to her.”