Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki was born in Troyes, in northern France, to his father Rabbi Yitzchak, in the year 4800 (1040). Very little is known of his early years, though it appears he began learning Torah from his father at a young age. At approximately twenty years of age, Rashi left France for the great yeshivot of Germany. He came first to the yeshivah of Mainz, where Rabbeinu Gershom, the Light of the Exile had taught two generations earlier and whose renown had spread far and wide. There Rashi studied under Rabbi Yaakov ben Yakar, a foremost disciple of Rabbeinu Gershom, who became his principal teacher and instructed him for six years. In his commentaries Rashi refers to him as "my elder teacher," citing his interpretations in numerous places. After Rabbi Yaakov ben Yakar's passing in 4824 (1064), Rashi studied under Rabbi Yitzchak ben Yehudah, likewise among the greatest disciples of Rabbeinu Gershom. After some time, he transferred to nearby Worms, where he learned from Rabbi Yitzchak HaLevi.
Following nearly ten years in Germany, Rashi returned to Troyes and joined the rabbinical court there. He began issuing halachic rulings for the Jewish communities of the surrounding region and maintained an ongoing correspondence with his teachers and colleagues in Ashkenaz (Germany). Apart from a brief return to study at the yeshivah of Worms, Rashi remained in Troyes for the rest of his life, founding there a celebrated yeshivah.
His towering greatness was immediately recognized throughout the Jewish world; questions were directed to his beit midrash across a wide range of disciplines, and the commentaries he composed spread with remarkable speed throughout the land. Both his sons-in-law were among the foremost Torah scholars of France, and the leading figures of the next generation numbered among his descendants and disciples. Rashi passed from this world on Thursday, the 29th of Tammuz, 4865 (1105), and was buried, according to tradition, in his native city of Troyes.
Rabbi Yitzchak possessed a beautiful gem of extraordinary worth, and the non-Jewish townspeople wished to purchase it for their house of worship. Though they offered a great sum in payment, he refused to hear of it. They eventually contrived through cunning to bring Rabbi Yitzchak onto a ship in the middle of the sea and began to compel him to surrender the gem. Seeing that he would be forced to hand it over, he cast it into the sea and God delivered him from their hands. A heavenly voice was heard in his beit midrash (study hall), before all his students, proclaiming: “Behold, a son is given to you, who will illuminate all Israel.”
Within a year a son was born to him, and he named him Shlomo, after his own father. The child grew in wisdom, and none like him arose in the kingdom of France. Every novella and commentary he encountered or heard—whether from others or from his own understanding—he would set down in a kuntres (booklet). It is for this reason that the Tosafists—the generations of Talmudic scholars after Rashi—referred to him as “the Kuntres.” He continued thus until his thirty-third year, at which point he vowed to undertake seven years of voluntary exile, to atone for the anguish his father had suffered over the gem he had cast away. For even though his father had sanctified the Divine Name through that act, he had nonetheless endured great pain over the loss, and thus the mitzvah had not been fulfilled in its fullness.
There was yet another reason he wished to go into exile: he had by then completed his commentary on the Torah and most of the tractates of the Talmud, yet he was reluctant to release his kuntresim. He wondered—perhaps someone else had preceded him with greater clarity and beauty? And so during his years of exile, he would inquire and investigate in the yeshivot concerning the commentaries already in existence. He therefore wandered through Italy, Greece, and the Land of Israel, passed through Egypt where he beheld the Rambam, traveled through Persia, and returned by way of Germany to his home, the city of Troyes in France. Upon his return he completed his commentary on the Torah, completed his commentary on twenty-three full tractates of Talmud and many others in partial form, and only then began to disseminate his works.
(Seder Olam 4565).
On the surface, the two reasons for Rashi’s self-imposed exile appear unrelated: the first was motivated from his desire to remove any shadow from his father's act—through whose merit he was born—while the second was prompted by his extraordinary humility. Yet upon deeper reflection, both share a common root: Rashi’s desire to complete and publish his commentary in the purest and most unblemished manner possible.
The atonement for his father’s anguish was not merely an expression of gratitude, nor simply a wish that all his father’s days be accounted as good. Rashi felt and knew that all his commentaries and novellae drew their life from that very act of self-sacrifice. And though the great pain transformed the deed into something far greater—a mighty triumph for the honor of Heaven, a source of immense Divine delight—Rashi nonetheless wished that not even such sorrow would cast the faintest shadow over the light of his great works.
The second reason as well—the concern lest “someone else had preceded him with greater clarity and beauty”—speaks to Rashi’s singular purity. Like Moses, who pleads with the Almighty to send someone else to deliver the Israelites from Egypt— “Send please, by the hand of whomever You will send”—Rashi too refused to believe that there was none more worthy and righteous than himself to compose the commentary so desperately needed on the Torah. The Midrash reveals (based on the verses) that Moses debated with the Almighty at the Burning Bush for seven days before consenting to the mission of liberating the Israelites. According to one tradition, the seven years of Rashi’s own exile prior to writing his commentary correspond to Moses’ seven days.
In any case, Rashi’s sole purpose was the honor of God, and if another was more fitting, why should he take the task upon himself? Only after years of searching for a scholar or commentary that might fill the great void he perceived in Torah study did he understand that Heaven had chosen him for the mission toward which he had felt so powerful an inner compulsion for so long.
From this, every person may learn something about his own calling and mission in life. On the one hand, there burns within each person a strong urge to fulfill his mission in the world—a sense of what is needed in the world and of his ability to fill it. On the other hand, this must be approached with submission, humility, and purity, and with a genuine desire for rectification rather than any wish to displace any other individual who may be more worthy. If such a person truly exists, one must embrace the quality of “walk humbly with your God” (Michah 6:8) and not hasten toward a mission that is not truly yours.
Rashi’s desire to cleanse the story of his birth from every trace of sorrow over the precious gem is likewise a purity required of anyone setting out on a mission. A mission, like a wedding, is a kind of rebirth. The one sent forth takes upon himself to be born anew—and he must be born free of all residue from the past. So it is written in Kabbalah: The Mother Principle (Imma), from within whom souls are born, draws from the attribute of “and cleansed” (וְנַקֵּה)—the Divine principle of compassion that relates to cleansing and absolution (Exodus 34:7).
There are thus two forms of preparation for any mission. The first is simple purity from the moment of birth, or rebirth—as Rashi atoned for his father’s sorrow. The second is a state of purity described in the Talmud as the type of cleanliness of mind possessed by (Mishnah Gittin 9:9) the scrupulous men of Jerusalem (נְקִיֵּי הַדַּעַת שֶׁבִּירוּשָׁלַיִם) who were very sensitive to the state of mind of the people they encountered. Here this purity is needed to ensure that the mission one has taken to heart truly falls within the category of being the messenger in “a place where there is no one else [to perform the mission]” (Mishnah Avot 2:5). After these two forms of preparation—corresponding to the stages of submission and separation, the first two in the Ba’al Shem Tov’s three stage process of transformation—comes the time for sweetening, pursuing a mission by fulfilling the end of the mishnah, “Endeavor to be a man [the messenger for that mission]!”
