Echoes of Rashi

Rashi, Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, lived in France from 1040 to 1105. His commentary transformed the way we study Torah. His was the first comprehensive Hebrew commentary to move systematically, pasuk by pasuk, through the Torah, combining close attention to pshat with Midrash and the teachings of Chazal.

Rashi’s range was remarkable. Alongside his mastery of Torah and rabbinic literature, his commentary reflects deep linguistic sensitivity and an impressive familiarity with everyday life, including agriculture, commerce, crafts, tools, and trades. He often draws upon this practical knowledge and old French to clarify a difficult word, image, or description.

Rashi’s commentary quickly became the foundational commentary on the Torah. For centuries, generations have encountered Torah through his explanations. Even today, virtually every traditional Chumash, no matter how many additional commentaries it contains, places Rashi alongside the biblical text.

In my new book, Echoes of Rashi: Bereishis, I explore some of the larger ideas that emerge from Rashi’s commentary. These messages are as relevant today as they were in the world of Bereishis. Jewish history often moves in recurring patterns; challenges faced by earlier generations return in new forms, and the lessons they learned continue to guide us.

What follows are several of these ideas, each carrying particular relevance to our current condition and the challenges we face.

{The Trail and the Trial

Immediately upon arriving in Eretz Yisrael, Avraham faces a severe famine. Rashi explains that this hardship was a test to see if Avraham would question Hashem’s command to settle the land now that his arrival was fraught with crisis and struggle. Sometimes the trail ends, but the trials are only beginning.

Nowadays, as in the days of Avraham, our return to Israel did not bring an end to our trials. We have faced relentless violence, hostility, and opposition. These hardships can lead people to question whether we are truly meant to live here. Avraham teaches the opposite. Faith in the journey does not mean that the trials end when we arrive. Sometimes arrival creates new trials.

For many who have made aliyah, this story is personal. Aliyah may represent the fulfillment of a lifelong dream of living in our homeland. Yet many discover that the journey to Israel is only the beginning. The trail to Israel leads to trials that test our faith in the land and our commitment to remain here.

A Seat Filled for a Reason

Avraham comes to Chevron to purchase a burial place for Sarah, making the first recorded Jewish acquisition of land in Eretz Yisrael. To complete the transaction, he must negotiate with Ephron, who had just been appointed a judge of the city. Rashi comments that Ephron was elevated to this position on the very day Avraham arrived. This was no coincidence. Hashgachah operates not only through miracles, but also through political appointments and public events. The person needed to facilitate Avraham’s purchase was placed in position precisely when Jewish history required him.

The modern return to Israel was likewise shaped by a long chain of political developments. Some stretched back centuries, including the rise of the British Empire, which later played a decisive role in the events leading toward Jewish statehood. World War I brought the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and redrew the political map of the Middle East. Later, the emergence of the United States as the dominant global power, and American support for Israel, created conditions that helped make Jewish sovereignty possible.

Rashi’s comment reminds us that history is shaped not only by people who occupy positions of power, but also by the timing of their arrival. Sometimes a political seat is filled because Jewish history needs the person sitting in it.

Questioning Our Origins

On the day Yitzchak was weaned, Avraham hosted a great celebration. Rashi comments that many women brought their infants to Sarah so she could nurse them. Skeptics had questioned whether Sarah, at her advanced age, could have given birth to Yitzchak. Others questioned Yitzchak’s paternity, since Sarah had recently been abducted to the palace of Avimelech. By nursing other children, Sarah demonstrated that her body had miraculously been restored to motherhood.

These questions were not merely personal. If Yitzchak was not truly the child of Avraham and Sarah, Avraham would have no biological successor. His family would have no future and no one to inherit the land that Hashem promised them. Challenging Yitzchak’s pedigree was therefore a way of challenging the larger story that began with Avraham.

Our enemies have revived a similar strategy. They do not merely dispute Israeli policies or borders. Some challenge the pedigree of the Jewish people themselves: whether we are an ancient nation, whether we possess a historic presence in this land, and whether our connection stretches back thousands of years. Rashi reminds us that denying Jewish pedigree was already a way of denying Jewish continuity and Jewish claims to this land.

{A Rainbow-Less Generation

A rainbow appears after the mabul as the sign of Hashem’s covenant with humanity never to destroy His world. Rashi explains that it signals that the world is once again deserving of divine judgment. The rainbow reminds us that Hashem remains faithful to His covenant and will never again destroy the world through a flood.

Rashi then adds a striking comment. Some generations were so righteous that they did not require the rainbow. Their merit was sufficient to protect them from divine punishment. Among the generations Rashi mentions is that of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, who lived during the harsh Roman persecutions of the second century. It was a generation that endured enormous pressure yet remained committed to preserving Torah, faith, and Jewish identity.

We may be living through another kind of rainbow-less generation. In the decades following the Holocaust, the Jewish people rebuilt shattered lives, returned to Israel in vast numbers, and established a sovereign Jewish state. More recently, our soldiers and their families have displayed extraordinary courage, sacrifice, and emunah. A generation capable of rebuilding after devastation and defending Jewish life at enormous personal cost possesses a reservoir of merit that is difficult to measure. Perhaps this is the kind of generation that does not need a rainbow to plead its case.

{The Home Front

After defeating the coalition of kings and rescuing Sodom, Avraham refuses payment from the king of Sodom. Yet Rashi notes that Avraham insists that those who remained behind to guard the camp and protect the people and possessions should receive their share. They may not have fought on the battlefield, but their contribution was indispensable. Without those who protected what lay behind the frontline, the campaign could not have succeeded.

Our current war has reminded us how essential the home front—the oref—is to national defense. Our cities and civilian population have come under sustained attack, forcing families to display enormous psychological strength and resilience. At the same time, the prolonged mobilization of reservists has placed extraordinary burdens on spouses, children, workplaces, and communities. Many reservists have spent months away from home while their families have carried responsibilities that normally would have been shared.

Avraham understood that victory belongs not only to those who fight at the front, but also on those who hold everything together behind them. Then as now, the battlefield can succeed only when the home front remains strong.

A Country of Newcomers

Toward the end of Vayigash, the Torah describes the measures Yosef took as the famine intensified. Among them, he relocated the Egyptian population from one city to another. At first glance, this appears to have been an economic strategy, shifting people to areas where agricultural production could be managed more effectively during the crisis.

Rashi, however, sees a different purpose. Yosef feared that his brothers would be singled out and discriminated against as foreigners. By uprooting the Egyptian population and turning everyone into a migrant, he leveled the social playing field. The Jewish newcomers would no longer be the only displaced population in Egypt.

Thousands of years later, a similar pattern emerged in the United States. America became a nation shaped by successive waves of immigration, with relatively few groups able to claim deep ancestral roots in the country. That immigrant society made it easier for millions of Jews to arrive, integrate, and build secure lives without always being marked as outsiders. As antisemitism has become more visible in the United States, we can only hope that this is temporary, and that Jews will continue to live there with security, equality, and dignity until they are ready to return home to Israel. 

Rabbi Moshe Taragin is a rabbi and educator at Yeshivat Har Etzion (Gush). Find his latest book, Echoes of Rashi: Bereishis, at mtaraginbooks.com.