France Observes 900th Anniversary of Rashi

The 900th anniversary of the birth of Solomon Bar Isaac, better known as Rashi, famous commentator on the Bible and Talmud, who was born in Troyes in 1040, is being observed by the French Government and press.

Newspapers are pointing with pride to the fact that Troyes was in Rashi’s time a world center of Jewish learning, that Rashi, after spending seven years in Worms, returned to Troyes at the age of 25, established his academy in this French city and there started his work of commenting on the Bible and Talmud to make these religious works more understandable to the Jewish lay folk.

There is no doubt that were it not for the war the French authorities would have sponsored a large celebration in Troyes and would have organized a pilgrimage of Jews to that city from all parts of the world, as the Spanish Government did in 1935 in connection with the 800th anniversary of the birth of Maimonides.

Official literature has been prepared by the Government in French and English describing the city of Luneville where Rashi’s father, Isaac Jarchi, lived and reproducing photographs of synagogues in this and other towns. The literature, tracing Jewish history in France, says there is definite proof that the Jews resided in Paris since the sixth century, while documents mentioned them as living in other parts of France as early as the fourth century, especially in Marseille and Lyon.

Pointing out that Jews at that time were undistinguishable from Christians except by religion, the review emphasizes the important role which Jews then played in France as farmers, civil servants and merchants up to the Middle Ages, when feudalism gave the Jews a new status in France, considering them generally as aliens. The history is then traced through the emancipation by Napoleon. Rashi died at the age of 65, leaving three daughters, all married to students of his academy.