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Bringing the Bible’s Commentators to Life

Summarizing Yosef Lindell in Lehrhaus · Published Monday, February 3, 2025
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JL;DR SUMMARY Avigail Rock's book, "Great Biblical Commentators: Biographies, Methodologies, and Contributions," translated by Yoseif Bloch, offers a compelling exploration of 24 key biblical commentators spanning from Targum Onkelos to modern academics like Rabbi Mordechai Breuer. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

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Tags

Rashi  Midrash  Tanakh  Ramban  Saadia Gaon  Targum Onkelos  Biblical Exegesis  Nechama Leibowitz  Ibn Ezra  Modern Commentators 

Places mentioned

Israel
"I discovered these differences when I studied in Israel at Yeshivat Shaalvim after high school."
France
"Rashi (11th century France) tends to quote midrash, but his grandson Rashbam does not."
Spain
"Ramban (13th century Christian Spain) thinks thematically and considers character, while Ibn Ezra (12th century), deeply interested in grammar, tries to determine a verses plain meaning, but can be cryptic."
Italy
"One summer during college, shelving books at the library of the University of Pennsylvanias Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, I happened upon the 19th century Italian commentary of Samuel David Luzzatto, or Shadal."
United Kingdom
"Ibn Ezra was a peripatetic scholar who wandered through Christian Spain, Italy, France, and finally England (160-66)."
Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur, France
"R. Yosef Ibn Kaspi, a somewhat obscure 14th century commentator from Provence in southern France (Dr. Rock wrote her PhD thesis about him), was rather proud of the fact that he was a philosopher and not a halakhic expert (274)."
Aleppo, Syria
"In 1944, the Hebrew University sent Cassuto to Aleppo, Syria, to study the Aleppo Codexwhich is one of the oldest and most accurate manuscripts of Tanakh in existencein preparation for preparing a new edition of Tanakh."
Germany
"When discussing the commentators of the modern period, Rock takes note of R. Samson Raphael Hirschs (19th century Germany) inventive approach to etymology, in which roots that sound the same are related at a deeper level."
Berlin, Germany
"His commentarywhich grew out of his lectures at the Rabbinical Seminary of Berlin at the close of the 19th centurywas centered on defending the divinity of the Torah against the arguments of biblical critics, and shows his grounding in his critics arguments and the scholarly literature (388-91)."
Safed, Northern District, Israel
"While there are chapters on more obscure medieval pashtanim such as Mahari Kara, Bekhor Shor, Ralbag, and Ibn Kaspi, there is a 300-year gap from Seforno in the 1500s to R. Hirsch in the 1800s. Rock understandably did not include the many supercommentaries on Rashi published during this period (such as Gur Aryeh and Siftei Hakhamim), but she also omitted original commentators such as R. Moshe Alshikh (16th century Safed), Kli Yakar (R. Ephraim Lunshitz, 16th century Prague), and Or Ha-Hayyim (Hayyim ibn Attar, 17th century Morocco)."
Prague, Prague, Hlavní mešto, Czechia
"Rock understandably did not include the many supercommentaries on Rashi published during this period (such as Gur Aryeh and Siftei Hakhamim), but she also omitted original commentators such as R. Moshe Alshikh (16th century Safed), Kli Yakar (R. Ephraim Lunshitz, 16th century Prague), and Or Ha-Hayyim (Hayyim ibn Attar, 17th century Morocco)."
Morocco
"Rock understandably did not include the many supercommentaries on Rashi published during this period (such as Gur Aryeh and Siftei Hakhamim), but she also omitted original commentators such as R. Moshe Alshikh (16th century Safed), Kli Yakar (R. Ephraim Lunshitz, 16th century Prague), and Or Ha-Hayyim (Hayyim ibn Attar, 17th century Morocco)."

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