A Champagne rabbi still sits beside every Talmud page
Shlomo Yitzchaki—Rashi—lived about 22 February 1040 to 13 July 1105 in Troyes, France. After studying in Worms under pupils of Gershom ben Judah, he joined Troyes's court, answered legal queries, and wrote lucid line-by-line commentaries on Tanakh and Talmud that beginners and scholars still open first.
The acronym expands Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki; folk readings stretch it to Rabbi of Israel. Older books sometimes call him Jarchi, wrongly tying him to Lunel. An only child, he claimed kinship through Mainz uncle Simeon bar Isaac to Gershom's circle and, in legend, deep priestly ancestry.
Miraculous birth tales—a jewel refused for idol adornment, a wall opening for his pregnant mother—show how fame breeds folklore. The durable achievement is stylistic: concise peshat that unlocked dense Aramaic debate for centuries of classrooms.
Print later fixed his words in the margins of nearly every standard Talmud; the French wine-country teacher became Judaism's default guide to the text.
He grew up in Troyes, in Champagne. Tradition says his father began teaching him Torah on Shavuot when he was five; at 17 he married and left to study in Worms under Yaakov ben Yakar, coming home three times a year, and later moved on to Mainz. Back in Troyes at 25, he joined the rabbinical court, eventually led it, and around 1070 opened a yeshiva that drew many students. Legend makes him a vintner, and although nothing proves it, his writing shows close knowledge of winemaking tools. In 1096 the People's Crusade killed three sons of his Worms teacher Isaac ben Eliezer Halevi, and seven of the penitential poems Rashi wrote in mourning survive. He died on 13 July 1105, aged 65. His three daughters, Yocheved, Miriam and Rachel, were learned, and Yocheved's sons included Rashbam and Rabbeinu Tam.
Source: Rashi
