Q&A: Someone on the Scale of Maimonides and Rashi
Someone on the Scale of Maimonides and Rashi
Question
Rabbi Michi, hello.
I’ve seen a bit of your position on the decline of the generations. Do you think figures like Maimonides and Rashi do not prove that there is a decline of the generations? After all, we look at their works and it seems like something beyond human.
Answer
No. They are indeed impressive works, but there certainly could be comparable ones nowadays. Beyond that, according to your approach there is actually an ascent of the generations, since their works are far more impressive than the Talmud, the Rif, and the Geonim.
Discussion on Answer
With God's help, 15 Av 5780
To A. — greetings,
Precisely in terms of free time to study day and night, it seems that the medieval authorities (Rishonim) had much less time than we do. Both Rashi and Maimonides were occupied with earning a living—Rashi as a wine merchant and Maimonides as a physician—and, not for the sake of reward, they were also involved in all communal matters, with all their burden and responsibility.
Perhaps דווקא when one is under time pressure, learning becomes more focused and purposeful, and one succeeds in fully clarifying the truth?
Best regards,
Shatz
You see what effective use of time looks like?
Maimonides, until age 39, dealt only with Torah, and before he earned his living as a physician he had completed the vast majority of his halakhic writings. Rabbi David the Nagid said in the name of our master his father concerning the composition of the Mishneh Torah: for ten years our master Moshe sat in his room and did not go out the doorway until he finished it.
It is commonly accepted that Rashi supported himself by selling wine, but there is no proof of that at all. Rashi’s expertise in growing vines and producing wine may have come from his father, who made a meager living from selling wine. In any case, Rashi was the head of a yeshiva in which thousands of students studied, and in the words of Rabbi Yohanan: “If the rabbi resembles an angel of the Lord, they should seek Torah from his mouth.”
If Maimonides had built an airplane and discovered how it’s possible to fly through the air, that would be much more impressive than writing something that afterward many people argued about whether it was right or wrong.
What you need to grasp here is the Mishneh Torah. We’re talking about a work with precise language that managed to distill the entire world of the Talmud and the midrashim into organized Jewish laws by topic. That is master craftsmanship. Today, to prepare a Talmudic encyclopedia, whole teams work for decades. And on top of all that he also composed many additional writings in thought and medicine. He was also the leader of the Jews. He was the king’s physician. Can you imagine someone with abilities like Maimonides’? There was nothing like it, friends.
And regarding Rashi, there is no commentator who managed to give such a concise and precise commentary on the entire Talmud. As for commenter A., who in my understanding was a bit dismissive of his commentary on the Torah—there is an interesting quotation brought by the Chida, that Rabbenu Tam said that a commentary like Rashi’s on the Talmud he can understand how one could produce, but his commentary on the Torah—he cannot understand how he managed to produce it.
We are talking about two giants that, in my opinion, we have not seen in later generations.
I wouldn’t put Maimonides next to Rashi. There was no one like Maimonides. By the way, when I used to read the Hebrew Bible with Rashi, it would ruin it for me. “Beyond human” only because that’s how you were conditioned to perceive them. But they and their works were completely human. They studied in a certain method and toiled day and night, and they didn’t have all the idle distractions of our time. If you were occupied with studying in a certain method and worked as hard as they did, maybe someone like them would emerge from you.