Editorial notes: This post was found in ‘Draft’ mode in the original blog and may be incomplete. It is published here in its original state. It was last updated on 06/11/2014.
Every commentator is an author whose concerns and responses allude to a hidden constellation. Thus a hidden dynamic – the back and forth of text-into-potential-engagement and specific-engagement – is made static across the myriad passages of any given author.
My concern here is singular, made twofold. How can we study a commentator to approach their underlying ethos? And I wish to attempt this by way of the first 13 verses of parashat Lech Lecha with Rashi. The epilogue follows as an inevitable corollary: Why is this valuable?
I’ll do this in 3 chapters: (1) A brief summary of these verses; (2) two groupings of Rashi’s commentary there; (3) an imagined induction from those groupings. (Nb. this necessitates an abridging of reasoning and method).
First chapter
Avram is told to leave his homeland, to go to a land he will be shown, where he will be blessed. He travels that land (of Canaan), gives sacrifices, sets up a tent, a famine strikes, and he makes plans to go to Egypt.
Second chapter
Amongst the explanations of Rashi are these:
A commandment to leave is necessary for the mechanism of blessing; reasoning of commandment qua trial; how the blessing manifested; reasoning of famine qua trial.
Explanation of what Avram took when he travelled; how he set up his tent; the intentions of his sacrifices; the meaning and explanation of Avram’s plans.
I’ve grouped these as commentaries that (I) explain divine actions, or (II) explain righteous actions. (Further sub-groups are possible, most obvious explanations of the appearances of those actions, vs their meaning/motivation).
Third chapter
I step aside and imagine how else you might have approached interpretation. Even restricting the focus to the first verse. Rashi explains the necessity to leave for the blessing. I might have asked why those descriptions of where to leave from (your homeland, birthplace, etc) were logically necessary. Or the context against the tower of Bavel which precedes. Or the moral clause implicit in “you go” vs what Avram took. Or how would the sentence have been different without “the land I’ll show you”. Or the significance in beginning the story of the first Jew in this way. Etc. – This is just an exercise to appreciate the character of Rashi’s commentary.
To the extent that this very small sub-section of Rashi’s magnum opus that is the entirety of his commentary across the kingdoms of the textual tradition, can be interpreted:
Rashi exemplifies the hermeneutical bias to question “what (did it look like) happened” and “what was the motivation behind the actors who made those things happen”.
Epilogue
I would not devote myself to these specific conclusions. Their presentation is a pilot study, and preferentially a demonstration of a way to approach Torah methodology:
There is a current that sways the unfolding of the Jewish relationship to its texts. To study its texts, it is fundamentally beneficial to appreciate those currents, and this requires one to study what was commentated, what concerns does it reveal, what permissivity of interpretation does it reveal, and how can those benefit my own instinct (i.e. the way that I sense my personal reactivity to the text)?
