It is chiefly the commentaries on the Five Books of
Moses and the Five Megillot, the Scriptural books forming part of
the synagogue liturgy, that were widely circulated in print and
were made the basis of super-commentaries. The best of these are
the super-commentary of Simon Ashkenazi, a writer of the
seventeenth century, born in Frankfort and died at Jerusalem, and
the clear, ingenious super-commentary of Sabbatai ben Joseph
Bass, printer and bibliographer, born in 1641, died at Krotoszyn
in 1718.
The other representatives of the French school of exegetes have
fallen into oblivion. Rashi alone survived, and what saved him,
I greatly fear, were the Halakic and Haggadic elements pervading
his commentary. An editor who ventured to undertake the
publication (in 1705) of the commentary on the Pentateuch by
Samuel ben Meir,[156] complains in the preface that his
contemporaries found in it nothing worth occupying their time.
Rashi's commentary was better adapted to the average intellects
and to the Talmudic culture of its readers.
Rashi's Talmudic commentary, also, was more generally studied
than other commentaries, and gave a more stimulating impulse to
rabbinical literature. Teachers and masters racked their brains
to discover in it unexpected difficulties, for the sake of
solving them in the most ingenious fashion. This produced the
kind of literature known as
Hiddushim, Novellae, and
Dikdukim, subtleties.
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