Tag: Midrash | מדרש
-
Radak’s Use of Bereshit Rabbati
Image: “Arch of Titus” by Nick in exsilio is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0 In his long comment on Bereshit 1:31, Radak includes an interesting midrash that he attributes to Bereshit Rabbati. Actually, the reference is itself embedded in an arresting interpretation of this blockbuster pasuk: וַיַּ֤רְא אֱלֹקים֙ אֶת־כׇּל־אֲשֶׁ֣ר עָשָׂ֔ה וְהִנֵּה־ט֖וֹב מְאֹ֑ד וַֽיְהִי־עֶ֥רֶב וַֽיְהִי־בֹ֖קֶר י֥וֹם […]
-
Rashi’s Citations of Moshe ha-Darshan
Among the contemporaries Rashi cites in his commentaries, Moshe ha-Darshan is quoted a relatively few, yet still significant, number of times: Rashi cites him by name 17 times in his Tanakh commentary and twice in the Talmud commentary. Moshe ha-Darshan was a scholar active in Provence in the first half of the 11th century, in the generation before Rashi’s. Though connected culturally to Tzarfat (northern France) where Rashi lived, especially in the 11th and 12th centuries, Provence was a distinct community. Rashi’s repeated citations of him point to the prominence of Moshe ha-Darshan, whose beit midrash in the city of Narbonne, one of the oldest Jewish Provençal communities, apparently produced works that were influential and well-circulated…