Rashi's Commentary on the Torah: Canonization and Resistance in the Reception of a Jewish Classic [Hardcover]

TheCommentary on the Torahof Rashi (Shlomo Yitzhaki; 1040-1105) stands out as the most important Jewish Bible commentary of all time. The Commentary has shaped perceptions of the meaning of Judaism's foundation document, the Torah, among leading scholars, lay readers, and initiates in Jewish learning for more than nine centuries. It remains the classic commentary on Judaism's classic text. Lawee's book explores how and why theCommentaryhas left so indelible an imprint on generations of Jews and the processes that turned it into the closest thing Judaism has to a canonical commentary on scripture.Winner of the Jewish Book Council Nahum M. Sarna Memorial Award in ScholarshipThis book explores the reception history of the most important Jewish Bible commentary ever composed, theCommentaryon the Torah of Rashi (Shlomo Yitzhaki; 1040-1105). Though the Commentary has benefited from enormous scholarly attention, analysis of diverse reactions to it has been surprisingly scant. Viewing its path to preeminence through a diverse array of religious, intellectual, literary, and sociocultural lenses, Eric Lawee focuses on processes of theCommentary's canonization and on a hitherto unexamined--and wholly unexpected--feature of its reception: critical, and at times astonishingly harsh, resistance to it. Lawee shows how and why, despite such resistance, Rashi's interpretation of the Torah became an exegetical classic, a staple in the curriculum, a source of shared religious vocabulary for Jews across time and place, and a foundational text that shaped the Jewish nation's collective identity.The book takes as its larger integrating perspective processes of canonicity as they shape how traditions flourish, disintegrate, or evolve. Rashi's scriptural magnum opus, the foremost work of Franco-German (Ashkenazic) biblical scholarship, faced stiff competition for canonical supremacy in the form of rationalist reconfigurations of Judaism lƒ4