In what language did Rashi teach?
As a result of a conversation with a few people in the library, a few questions were raised about languages relating to Rashi. It is well-known that Rashi in his commentaries to the Tanakh and Talmud brings over two thousand translations, la’azim, of Hebrew and Aramaic words, using them to explain difficult words and phrases. Almost all of these words are from “Old French”. [1] (See this site for a good overview of the history of Old French and its dialects.) Rashi set an example for others, with there being compositions devoted entirely to lexicographical glosses, with over 4,000 estimated French glosses existing for Isaiah alone. [2] One of the questions raised was “What was the language which was spoken in Rashi’s beit midrash in France, and in what language did Rashi learn when he was in Germany?” In France it might have been Judeo-French.
The history of the Judeo-French literary tradition begins in the 11th century with the glosses of Rashi and Moshe ha-Darshan. It ends in the 14th century, after persecutions and repeated expulsions had virtually ended the Jewish presence in France.
…While some scholars regard Judeo-French as an Old French social dialect different from its Christian counterparts (e.g. R. Levy), or even as a separate Judeo-Romance language (e.g. M. Weinreich and S. A. Birnbaum), most linguists (A. Darmesteter, M. Banitt, F. Möhren etc.) seem to agree that the language of the Jews of Medieval France did not differ significantly from Old French. According to this view, the main particularity of Judeo-French lies in its distinct writing system, which allows new insights into Old French phonology, and in its independant literary tradition.
It is also possible that while Rashi’s la’azim were in Old French, that, or a related dialect, wasn’t necessarly the language of the beit midrash. It could be that the language of the beit midrash was the mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic that one finds in his commentaries. From the evidence this seems unlikely, with Hebrew/Aramaic occupying a similar place that Latin did at the time, something reserved for literary works.
What did Rashi’s students understand? M. Banitt has written that,
How little sure Rashi was that his pupils invariably understood his Hebrew, is manifested by the repeated use of glosses to explain not only Biblical terms, but even words in his own commentary, or to illustrate a grammatical remark…[3]
At least regarding the Jews in northern France during Rashi’s time, Louis I. Rabinowitz has written,
The most cogent evidence, however, of the extent of social assimilation is to be seen in the fact that there is no doubt but that French was the language of the Jews. [4]
In Germany what was the language of the beit midrash? It was possibly an early incarnation of Yiddish. (Also see this article on Judeo-German.) Yet, in the commentaries on the Talmud attributed to Rabbeinu Gershom, but more appropriately seen as “Mainz” commentaries which built on Rabbeinu Gershom’s work, one finds over a hundred la’azim into Old French! [5] I should stop before I make some claim or theory that is really off-target.
How does all of this relate to Yiddish? Steven M. Lowenstein has tried to give a brief overview of the history of Yiddish and its Germanic roots.
When speakers of Judeo-French and Judeo-Italian arrived in the Rhineland some 1000 years ago, they came into contact with various dialects of spoken German. Modern Yiddish contains elements of several German dialects, especially those of southern and central Germany. The dialects of northern Germany, which are closer to English than to modern German, have had almost no influence on Yiddish…Despite the fact that the first Ashkenazic Jews came into contact with western German dialects, modern Eastern European Yiddish is based mainly on the Bavarian and Saxon dialects, which belong to the eastern group of dialects. Althogh Jews began speaking Germanic dialects at least 1000 years ago, their speech separated into a distinctive Yiddish only slowly. Yiddish shared most of the changes of medieval German until about 1500 or so, and diverged greatly only after that time, when the bulk of Ashkenazic Jews migrated to Poland. [6]
[1] The standards works on the subject are by Darmesteter and Blondheim. See: A. Darmesteter, Les gloses françaises de Raschi dans la Bible, (Paris: Durlacher, 1909) and A. Darmesteter and Blondheim, D. S., Les gloses françaises dans le commentaire talmudique de Raschi, (Paris: Champion, 1929).
[2] M. Banitt, “The La’azim of Rashi and of the French Biblical Glossaries,” in The Dark Ages, ed. Cecil Roth, pp. 291-296.
[3] Some examples that Banitt cites are Gen. 11:3; 23:16; 25:25; 33:11; Ex. 21:25; 25:18, 31; 26:1; 28:3, 14, 41.
[4] Louis I. Rabinowitz, The Social Life of the Jews of Northern France, p. 238. Rabinowitz refers the reader to Tosafot s.v. hasurei mehasrah, BB 173b, R. Joseph Bechor Shor’s commentary on Genesis 19:14, and the Mordechai, Kiddushin 545.
[5] See the two articles by Louis Brandin in Revue des Études Juives, vols. 42 and 43. Regarding the commentaries attributed to Rabbeinu Gershom see Avraham Grossman, Hachmei Ashkenaz ha-Rishonim, pp. 165-174.
[6] Steve Lowenstein, The Jewish Cultural Tapestry, p. 57.
February 7th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
Reminds me of the question, who was the first person to learn Chumash with Rashi?
Answer – His father.
February 8th, 2008 at 1:11 am
There is an interesting series of article on Rashi’s Laazim in Sefunot.