From Sepharad to Ashkenaz

Though much has been done in the past half century to clarify boundaries and crossing points on the religious-intellectual maps of “Ashkenaz” and “Sepharad,” a large body of evidence that advances this complex exercise in cultural cartography has been wholly neglected: supercommentaries on Rashi’s Commentary on the Torah . Though it was produced in that part of Europe that Jews came to call (perhaps under Rashi’s influence) “Ashkenaz,” the Commentary traveled to points far and wide. Among the diverse responses that it elicited in its new homes, the vast supercommentary literature that came to surround the Commentary stands out. Though scholars working in diverse cultural orbits produced this literature, Sephardic and Ashkenazic writers created most of it. This genre continues to flourish, at times in new forms. Yet although some of the major rabbinic figures (e.g., Judah Loew of Prague) produced Rashi supercommentaries, and although these works reflect significant trends in premodern Judaism, the genre’s neglect among scholars has been well-nigh total

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