First, I am going to discuss the text of Rashi on the Torah in general. Then, I am going to point out that a well-known statement in the standard printed editions of Rashi to Genesis 32:5 was not authored by him.

My discussion of the text of Rashi in general is based on “Rashi’s Commentary on the Torah,” (2021) by Eric Lawee. My discussion of the Rashi of Genesis 32:5 is based on an article by Chananel Mack in “Tarbitz 65,” (1996).

Rashi died in 1105. We do not have a manuscript of any of his commentaries that was actually written by him. This is, of course, the normal situation with regard to Rishonim. (One exceptional case is Rambam.)

The most important manuscript of Rashi’s Torah commentary is known as, “Leipzig 1.” This one probably corresponds more closely than any other to what Rashi himself wrote. (It dates from the first half of the 13th century.)

Lawee writes (page 16): “Early exemplars (of the commentary) date from a century or more after Rashi’s death. Yet the Commentary’s textual vagaries also reflect, in a rather extreme way, a general phenomenon of medieval Hebrew literature that Yisrael TaShema called, ‘the open book.’ The tendency of authors was to circulate different versions of their works in an interim state, at times on the basis of a concept of a text’s collective ownership and understanding that scribes might alter or interpret a previously “published” work. The author himself expected shifts in his (own) state of knowledge for any number of reasons, the most obvious being the discovery of new insights over time … (Rashi) never authorized a definitive version of his Commentary and apparently continued to view his interpretation of the Torah as a work in progress.”

Lawee points out that Nachmanides, “made hundreds of changes to his Torah commentary following his late-in—life arrival in the land of Israel, some of them born of fresh knowledge of realia in his new place of residence in the holy land or his exposure to previously unknown books there.”

Based on all of the above, the notion of an original text of Rashi is misplaced. But Lawee cites with approval the conclusion of a leading Rashi scholar, Avraham Grossman, that approximately 90 percent of what we find in the present printed editions of Rashi on the Torah was authored by him.

Lawee writes further (pages 17-18): “Author originated changes were hardly the main cause of the Commentary’s mutability. It owes more to interventions, conscious or otherwise, of those charged with transmitting the work … ” For example, copyists might insert into the body of the work the comments of those of Rashi’s students like Rabbi Joseph Kara and Rashbam and those of Rashi’s loyal disciple, Shemaya. “Transmitters acted on the widespread medieval view that fidelity to a work at times required its alteration,” i.e., alteration should be done when a difficulty presented itself. Also notable is “an identifiably Ashkenazic version distinct from Sefardic counterparts in its omission of many midrashim … The Commentary studied by Rashi’s most influential Sefardic reader, Nahmanides, was not, in all particulars, the one that became standard.”

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Now, let us address the printed Rashi to Genesis 32:5. This is not the same issue that we discussed above. Rather, we are now dealing with a much later addition to the commentary.

At Genesis 32:5, Yaakov sends messengers to Esav with this message: “I sojourned ( גרתי ) with Lavan and lingered until now.” On the word גרתי, there are two explanations in the printed Rashi: “I have become neither a prince nor a person of importance but merely a sojourner. It is not worth your while to hate me on account of the blessing of your father who blessed me: ‘Be master over your brothers,’ for it has not been fulfilled in me. Davar acher: גרתי has the gematria: תרי״ג, as if to say, “I sojourned with Laban, the wicked, but I observed the תרי״ג מצות, I did not learn from his evil actions.””

Although the “davar acher” is widely cited in modern times as a statement of Rashi (based on its appearance in the Mikraot Gedolot), Mack has done extensive research and shows that this cannot be the case.

He points out that:

The statement, or something similar, is cited by many others, but it is not cited as being a statement of Rashi until the first quarter of the 16th century.

It is not found in the manuscripts of Rashi from the time of the Rishonim.

Its first appearance in a text of Rashi is in a printed edition in 1491. (It later made its way into the Mikraot Gedolot text of Rashi in the 16th century.)

The early commentaries who write on Rashi never mention this “davar acher.”

The earliest source that mentions the gematria is the Lekach Tov of Rabbi Toviah ben Eliezer, who lived in Greece in the late 11th and early 12th centuries. He cites it as coming from “midrash.”

Another source that mentions the gematria is Bereshit Rabbati. Here, all it says is: “Chesbon garti keneged taryag mitzvot.” (Rabbi Toviah had written more than this.) Bereshit Rabbati is a work based on the writings of Rabbi Moshe HaDarshan (11th century, Narbonne.) See Mack, page 253, EJ 7:401 and 12:429.

Another important find by Mack was the following statement by Rokeach (died 1238, Germany) in his Torah commentary: “im Lavan garti, vekiyamti taryag mitzvot keminyan garti. MiYesodo shel Rabbi Moshe HaDarshan.” A main work of Rabbi Moshe HaDarshan was his “Yesod.”

Mack concludes that it is possible that Rabbi Toviah obtained the gematria from Rabbi Moshe HaDarshan. But it is also possible that he did not and each thought of the gematria on his own. Finally, perhaps, both obtained the gematria from an earlier source that is lost to us.

(Rabbi Moshe HaDarshan is a widely cited figure. But almost nothing has survived of what he wrote himself. He is often cited by Rashi. He was a big fan of gematria. See EJ 7:402.)

Lawee discusses our Rashi and concludes (page 18): “It took little effort, for example, to append a midrash as an ‘additional explanation’ … of just the sort that Rashi himself frequently supplied … This was just the sort of midrash Rashi could have included in his Commentary. An “additional explanation” it, indeed, was—but one placed in the mouth of Rashi only a half-millennium after he ceased putting pen to paper … Needless to say, its presence there ensured an enduring afterlife at the Sabbath table—in sermons, and in classes at all levels.”

P.S. The ArtScroll (Sapirstein) edition of Rashi has our “davar acher” in brackets. In the introduction to this work it stated that “variant readings are enclosed in brackets.” Their note on the bracketed material is: “From the treatise of Rabbi Moshe HaDarshan (see Peirush HaRokeach).” (But the ArtScroll edition does not clearly state that it was not Rashi who took this statement from Rabbi Moshe HaDarshan. Nor does it state that the variant is one that arose only many centuries later.)

Mitchell First can be reached at [email protected]. His last name, פירסט, in gematria is 359. This is the gematria of וחמשה. This alludes to the five books that he authored prior to 2024. And that initial “vav” alludes to the one he just authored, his sixth!