Rashi Read Online Free PDF

order to better understand Rashi’s genius as an exegete, we propose to study some of his commentaries on the first book of the Bible, the book of Genesis. To look at these commentaries is to get a glimpse of the rabbinic mind, a way of reading and of writing that dominated Jewish creativity for hundred of years. Each word of the Bible is scrutinized, each phrase subject to possible interpretations, and the result is both deeply faithful to sacred text and also the product of wild inventiveness that is both playful and serious, the work of human imagination and yet simultaneously a work of sacred interpretation.
    In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth …
    What does Rashi say about this first verse of Genesis?
    “Amar Rabbi Yitzhak:
Rabbi Yitzhak says: the Torah should have started with ‘This month shall be unto you the first of the months’ … since that is the first mitzvah, thefirst commandment given to Israel. Why did it start with
Bereshit
or ‘In the beginning’? Because of verse 6, Psalm in : ‘He hath showed his people the power of his work, that he may give them the heritage of the heathen.’ If the nations of the world say to Israel, ‘You are thieves, brigands, because you conquered the land of the Seven Peoples,’ they will answer: ‘the whole earth belongs to the Holy One, Blessed be He. It is He who created it, who offered it to whomsoever He wanted. When He wanted, He gave it to them (first), and then in accordance with His will, He took it away from them and gave it to us.’”
    Actually you would think that Rashi’s question could easily be answered using the chronological argument. After all (and Nachmanides will make this point later), creation preceded the Laws, did it not? Isn’t it therefore logical that it should be recounted first?
    Rashi himself remains attached to this first verse that “requires further elaboration.” True, citing a Midrash, he states his conviction that the world was created for the Torah, and also for Israel. But this does not satisfy him in explaining why creation is placed at the beginning of the book. So he will provide his own hypothesis, which consists of combining the first three verses into a single one that reads as follows: “When God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form and darkness wasupon the face of the deep, and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, God said, let there be light and there was light.”
    His combined verses offer a brilliant interpretation, but Rashi persists and wonders about the meaning of certain words. For example: how is one to understand that the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters? Here is how: “The Throne of Glory stood suspended in the air thanks to the word of the Holy One, Blessed be He, like a dove that hovers over its pigeon house
(couvetière
in Belaaz).”
    And God saw that the light was good and divided the light from the darkness. Rashi tells us why: so that the impious can’t use it, and to safeguard it for the Righteous until the end of time.
    As the creation nears completion, we have the verse, “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness …” (Genesis 1:26). The use of the plural “our” elicits two commentaries from Rashi:
The verse teaches us that the Holy One, Blessed be He, is humble. God consulted with the angels so they would not become jealous of man.
God consulted them even though they did not help him in the creation. But couldn’t the heathens use this for their own ends? Possibly. But more important is the lesson that is learned from it: the need for modesty on the part of the great; they should always consult with humbler men.
    For another glimpse of how Rashi sees God’s role in the creation of man, we look to the next chapter, in which the creation is told in a different narrative. “And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone” (Genesis 2:18).
    Rashi[’s question: Why is it