Yosef Lindell
Review of Avigail Rock, Great Biblical Commentators: Biographies, Methodologies, and Contributions, trans. Yoseif Bloch (Maggid Books, 2023).
When I began studying Humash in grade school, it was always Humash-Rashi. Even when we added other commentators, I knew nothing of the historical contexts in which they wrote or the schools of thought they represented. Believing the commentators to be of one mindset and largely making cumulative suggestions that could all be true at once, I didn’t understand that they had serious methodological disagreements about how to interpret the Humash.
I discovered these differences when I studied in Israel at Yeshivat Sha’alvim after high school. I learned, for example, that Rashi (11th century France) tends to quote midrash, but his grandson Rashbam does not. Ramban (13th century Christian Spain) thinks thematically and considers character, while Ibn Ezra (12th century), deeply interested in grammar, tries to determine a verse’s plain meaning, but can be cryptic.
Yet, I began to wonder about biblical exegetes not printed in the Mikra’ot Gedolot. On a trip to the basement of the Sha’alvim beit midrash, I discovered a volume by Rabbi Mordechai Breuer (1921-2007), who, rather shockingly, accepts the tenets of the Documentary Hypothesis but finds a way to make them more religiously palatable (more on that below). One summer during college, shelving books at the library of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, I happened upon the 19th century Italian commentary of Samuel David Luzzatto, or Shadal. I sat with it on the floor of the stacks, riveted by Shadal’s originality. Could it be that Bilam’s donkey never really spoke after all, but brayed in a way that Bilam alone could understand? (Bamidbar 22:2).
I might not have been so surprised by the diversity of background and opinion among the biblical commentators had Dr. Avigail Rock already written Great Biblical Commentators. This 2023 volume in Koren Publishers’ Maggid Tanakh Companions series was originally published in Hebrew as Parshanei HaMikra in 2021. Tragically, Dr. Rock passed away at a young age in 2019 before either edition was published. The work, all but two chapters of which was originally published as a series of articles on Yeshivat Har Etzion’s Virtual Beit Midrash website circa 2014, examines the life and work of 24 different biblical exegetes, from Targum Onkelos in the Amoraic period to contemporary scholars such as R. Breuer.[1] Each short chapter (although a few, like Rashi’s, are longer) examines a different commentator, exploring his biography and unique contribution to the study of Tanakh. As noted in the introduction written by Dr. Rock’s husband Rabbi Yehuda Rock, “In addition to biographical and historical details, the studies include extensive work on the commentator’s exegetical methods, his interactions with his historical period and environment, and his contribution to the world of exegesis” (xiv).
The commentators’ individual personalities shine through in the book’s biographical portions. Sa’adia Gaon of 10th century Babylonia never missed an opportunity to polemicize against the Karaites, whether in prose or in poetry (20). Ibn Ezra was a peripatetic scholar who wandered through Christian Spain, Italy, France, and finally England (160-66). 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).[2]
Rock mentions Shadal’s poverty and how he lost his wife and several of his children (342-43). She recounts how in the 19th century, Malbim was accused of treason by religious reformers, and when the authorities sentenced him to death, he was saved only by the involvement of Sir Moses Montefiore (359). Rock explains that, unlike other Eastern European rashei yeshiva of the late 19th century, Netziv accorded the study of Tanakh a place in the Volozhin Yeshiva’s curriculum (374-75). I found Rock’s chapter on Prof. Umberto Cassuto, an Italian biblical commentator who taught at the Hebrew University, particularly fascinating. In 1944, the Hebrew University sent Cassuto to Aleppo, Syria, to study the Aleppo Codex—which is one of the oldest and most accurate manuscripts of Tanakh in existence—in preparation for preparing a new edition of Tanakh. Although he was not allowed to photograph the Codex, Cassuto’s notes allowed for the reconstruction of some portions of the Codex that are presumed to have been destroyed by riots in Aleppo in 1947.
Great Biblical Commentators not only brings its subjects to life, but it zeroes in on what makes each of their approaches to studying Tanakh unique. R. Yosef Kara, also known as Mahari Kara, was a student of Rashi, but, unlike his teacher, he almost never cites midrash in his commentaries on the books of the Nevi’im. To the contrary, he suggests that those who seek out midrashic interpretations do not know the simple meaning of the verse (91). R. Yosef Bekhor Shor, another medieval exegete of the northern French school, strove for the most naturalistic explanations—when Lot’s wife looked behind when fleeing Sodom, she did not miraculously become a pillar of salt, but simply failed to outrun the wave of salt and sulfur emanating from the ruined city (144).
Dr. Rock explains that Abarbanel, who was expelled from Spain in 1492, structured his biblical commentary differently than most others before him: he did not comment on individual verses, but instead divided the text into larger narrative units. Each unit begins with a list of questions that are resolved in a free-flowing narrative discussion that often touches on issues of peshat, theology, and philosophy (288-290). Seforno, from Renaissance Italy, was a humanist, believing in the centrality of humankind and in an individual’s ability to perfect oneself, although he acknowledges that God is the source of that perfection (302). He is also a great defender of biblical heroes; Rock notes that Seforno is the only commentator who defends the brothers for selling Joseph into slavery, arguing that they believed he was plotting to kill them and that therefore his life was forfeit (308-09).
When discussing the commentators of the modern period, Rock takes note of R. Samson Raphael Hirsch’s (19th century Germany) inventive approach to etymology, in which roots that sound the same are related at a deeper level. For example, according to R. Hirsch, nun-sin-aleph, to “lift,” is related to nun-samekh-heh, to “test,” because being tested helps one ascend to a higher spiritual level (324). On the other hand, Malbim, who was a contemporary of R. Hirsch’s in Eastern Europe, believed that there are no synonyms in Tanakh. Much of his commentary is devoted to arguing—against the views of maskilim (those influenced by the Enlightenment) and Reformers—how there are no superfluous words in the Torah and that it is anything but ordinary literature (361-62). R. David Tzvi Hoffman also responded to those questioning the Torah’s integrity. His commentary—which grew out of his lectures at the Rabbinical Seminary of Berlin at the close of the 19th century—was 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).
The volume does not shy away from highlighting exegetes’ controversial views. Rock compares different versions of Ibn Ezra’s commentary and suggests that he—always the great concealer—believed that Rachel stole the terafim (idols) from her father Lavan, not to wean him off idol worship, but to use them. Rock explains that Ibn Ezra only alludes to this view cryptically because otherwise it might have led to the “removal of [his] commentary from the Jewish library”; still, he did not want to hide it completely (198-99). Rock also mentions Radak’s (12th century southern France) provocative opinion about the origins of keri and ketiv—the places in Tanakh where the text is written one way but pronounced a different way. According to Radak, the Men of the Great Assembly reconstructed the text of Tanakh following the Babylonian exile, and were sometimes unsure which version they found in the scrolls was the correct one, so they used one as keri and one as ketiv (208-09).
Dr. Rock studied with Prof. Nehama Leibowitz (51), one of the most important peshat-focused Tanakh teachers of modern times. Rock’s choice of which commentators to include in the book seems related to their significance to the peshat school of Tanakh study foreshadowed by Leibowitz and pioneered by Yeshivat Har Etzion (Gush) and its affiliate Herzog College. This revolution in Tanakh study—which I’ll call the “Gush school”—focuses, among other things, on reading Tanakh on its own terms without jumping directly to its interpreters (particularly those of the midrashic bent), using sophisticated literary tools, and interpreting Tanakh thematically rather than verse-by-verse.[3] Thus, Cassuto, who did not believe that the Torah came from heaven (407), gets a chapter in Great Biblical Commentators, presumably because he is often quoted by Leibowitz and also because of his importance to the literary study of Tanakh. For instance, Cassuto breaks up the text into literary units and identifies how a leitwort (leading word) repeated in a passage can allude to the passage’s central theme (414-15), an important feature of the way the Gush school studies Tanakh. R. Yehuda Rock writes that he included the final chapter on R. Mordechai Breuer because Breuer influenced many devotees of the Gush school (417). Moreover, he explains that Breuer’s shitat ha-behinot—which acknowledges that God put parallel, and sometimes contradictory, narratives and laws in the Humash to express different aspects of truth—provides “a fundamental tool for revealing structure and significance in the biblical text” (426).
Dr. Rock’s affinity for Leibowitz’s and the Gush school’s commitment to peshat also seems to have dictated whom she left out of the book. 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). I suspect that Rock left these commentators out because, despite their stature and influence, they are more homiletical or kabbalistic in their approaches. Yet, their omission leaves a substantial chronological gap, and one wishes that Rock had at least included a chapter or two explaining how biblical commentary developed and changed during this centuries-long period.
Great Biblical Commentators is still a masterpiece. Rabbi Yonatan Kolatch’s ongoing series of books, Masters of the Word, which also explores the historical contexts and methodologies of a variety of biblical commentators, is comparable in some respects. But Kolatch’s three volumes (so far) only cover the period from the Talmudic Sages to Rabbeinu Bachya and Ralbag in the 14th century. Rock’s survey is complete in one volume. Whether one is looking for biography, methodology, or just a survey of how multifaceted our tradition of Tanakh study has been, Great Biblical Commentators has it all. Sadly, Dr. Rock’s passing means that we will not see other works from her in the future. Let this volume stand as a testament to her erudition, her masterful pedagogy, and her love of Torah.
[1] Michal Dell wrote the chapter on R. Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg, the 19th century German rabbi who composed the commentary Ha-Ketav ve-Ha-Kabbalah, based on her PhD thesis, and R. Yehuda Rock, Dr. Rock’s husband, wrote the chapter on R. Breuer.
[2] In his ethical will, Ibn Kaspi tells a humorous anecdote about his lack of halakhic knowledge. When preparing for a large party he was hosting, the “luckless handmaid put a milk spoon into the meat pot.” Not knowing what to do, Ibn Kaspi went to a rabbi, but the rabbi was eating, and Ibn Kaspi “waited at his door until the shades of evening fell, and my soul was near to leave me.” When Ibn Kaspi finally got his answer and went home to his guests, he “related all that had happened, for I was not ashamed to admit myself unskilled in that particular craft. In this I lack skill, but I have skill in another craft. Is not the faculty of expounding the existence and unity of God as important as familiarity with the rule concerning a small milk spoon?” Israel Abrahams, ed., Hebrew Ethical Wills (JPS, 1926), 151-52.
[3] See Ezra Bick & Yaakov Beasley, eds., Torah MiEtzion: New Readings in Tanach, Bereishit (Maggid Books, 2011), xiii-xxi; see also Yaakov Beasley, “Review Essay: Return of the Pashtanim,” Tradition 42:1 (2009): 67-83.
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