Rashi by Elie Wiesel Page A

intervene in one another’s affairs was recognized by the competent rabbinical authorities. After all, didn’t they share a common destiny?
    As for me, today, I am looking for the traces of a man whose learning still influences my life, as it does the lives of all those who have a thirst for study.
    Houses, large and small, stores, gardens. The man I am looking for must have walked here, dreamed here, shed tears here over the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, comforted broken hearts, counseled those who had gone astray, taught them to overcome fear and hope for the arrival of the Messiah.
    I remember: as a child, his cursive script frightened me; more than that of the Bible, it suggested a world that was doubtless complex and probably mysterious, where only adults had the right and competence to enter.
    Later, with the years, in the heder or yeshiva, before the candles on the table, every time someone asked, “What does Rashi say?” I rushed to look at his countless commentaries. Whenever I couldn’t grasp the meaning of a word, it was he, the Teacher of my Teachers, who rescued me. An intimaterelationship, from child to elderly man, person to person. He said to me, as if confidentially: look, my child; fear nothing, everything must be grasped and conveyed with simplicity. Strange words stand in the way like obstacles? Start all over again with me. It happened to me too. I started all over again. You just have to break through the shell of a word, a sentence, an expression. Everything is inside them. Everything is waiting for you.
    Thanks to his life, his erudition, his work, his generosity, he remains the spring from which we all drink. Without him, my thirst would never have been quenched. Without him, I would have gone astray more than once in the gigantic labyrinth that is the Babylonian Talmud.
    Yet he doesn’t try to impress us with his learning, his vast religious and secular culture, his originality, or even his inventive mind. He confines himself to quoting the ancients or his precursors, sometimes his peers, and even his own disciples.
    Rashi or the celebration of commentary? Better yet: Rashi or the celebration of memory, and of fraternity too. The danger lies in oblivion. Were I to forget where I come from, my life would become barren and sterile. Were I to forget whom I am the descendant of, I would be doomed to despair.
    I loved him. I couldn’t make headway without him. Of course, I explored other approaches, other commentaries:those of Abrabanel, Sforno, Radak, Or ha-Hayim, Ibn Ezra, but Rashi’s are unique, different, indispensable. He radiates warmth and friendship. And simplicity. He is great because he remains faithful to the text, and to its literal meaning. He never uses his learning to make things complicated but to simplify. He never flaunts his erudition to impress students with the originality of his reasoning. Reconciling two words, two sentences, two verses is enough for him. To those who are timid he seems to be saying, Don’t be afraid, I am here by your side.
    Sometimes, in my small town, it seemed to me that Rashi had been sent to earth primarily to help Jewish children overcome loneliness.
    And fear.
    Under a cloudless blue sky, alone with my thoughts, and my nostalgia, I wander through the back streets of Troyes.
    Where was his house? No one can tell me. His vineyard? Again, no one knows. His grave in the Jewish cemetery? His parents’ graves or his wife’s? The graves of his three daughters? Are there any remains of his house or his school?
    I find none.
    I try to use my imagination.
    The father and his three daughters during the grape harvest.Their Sabbath dinners. The discussions with his students. His solitude as he bent over his worktable, consulting books and ancient documents, and writing his oeuvre whose immensity never ceases to surprise us—his commentary on the Bible and the Talmud, and his vast body of responsa, the answers he furnished to questions posed from