In our times, Rashbam’s commentary on the Torah is a very popular one, as his goal is plain-sense interpretations. (Although Ibn Ezra does the same thing, he often writes too cryptically.)

A few centuries ago, this commentary of Rashbam seems to have been lost. It was only in 1705 that Rabbi David Oppenheim published a manuscript that he had found in the 1680s among many other rotting documents in a synagogue genizah in Worms. (He was initially hesitant to have it published as he thought Rashbam may not have intended his Torah commentary for the public.) This manuscript is known as Breslau 103. It was plundered in the Holocaust and has disappeared.

(The first edition of the Mikraot Gedolot was published in the early 16th century. Rashbam was not included until one of the later editions.)

The Breslau 103 manuscript was missing the first 17 chapters of Bereishit, and Parshat Pinchas, and from Devarim 33:4 until the end of the Torah (34:12). (The manuscript had been eaten by rodents on both ends.)

Later, Rashbam’s commentary on Bereishit chapter 1 (almost all of it) was found elsewhere and published by Abraham Geiger in the middle of the 19th century, and the commentary to Devarim chapter 34 was found and published by Moshe Sokolow in 1984. But as you can see, much is still missing.

Wouldn’t it be great if those missing sections could be found or at least reconstructed?

It turns out that this is being worked on at AlHatorah.org. The person who founded this site, Hillel Novetsky, wrote his PhD thesis on the topic of reconstructing Rashbam to Genesis chapters 1-17. The Mikraot Gedolot at the AlHatorah.org site did more than reconstruct Rashbam on these chapters. At the end of Devarim they include what Sokolow found plus a few additional sources. They also have one reconstructed Rashbam in Parshat Pinchas.

How did Novetsky do a reconstruction of Rashbam’s Torah commentary? Here are his sources:

—Rashbam’s other writings: In these, he sometimes refers to his interpretations on verses from the missing chapters.

—Citations of Rashbam by others: Novetsky discovered many heretofore unknown citations of Rashbam’s Torah commentary in manuscripts from libraries around the world.

—Chizkuni (13th cent.): Many scholars have noted that a significant portion of this commentary is taken from Rashbam. (But Chizkuni almost never cites his sources, so Novetsky had to decide on a methodology to identify which were taken from Rashbam.)

—Most importantly, there is a Tosafist compilation containing both pshat and midrashic interpretations that survived in two witnesses: manuscripts Munich 252 and Oxford Marsh 225. Although this compilation rarely cites Rashbam by name, Novetsky found that its pshat interpretations incorporate large amounts of Rashbam without attribution. For example, Novetsky writes: “A statistical analysis of Bereishit 18-22 (…the first full parsha on which Rashbam’s commentary is extant) reveals that a full 60% of the pshat interpretations in the Munich 252-Oxford Marsh 225 compilation derive from Rashbam and they generally preserve Rashbam’s own language with only minimal modifications.”

Novetsky adds that about 20% of the pshat interpretations in this compilation derive from Bechor Shor. So applying this back to Bereishit 1-17, once one eliminates what is from Bechor Shor, there is a high likelihood that the vast majority of the remaining pshat interpretations in this Munich-Oxford compilation are from Rashbam.

But this only gets us to a high probability. In order to determine which of these interpretations are definitely or almost definitely from Rashbam, Novetsky proceeded to compare each of them with the extant corpus of Rashbam’s writings, identifying content, language and methods that could be uniquely traced to Rashbam. It turns out that there are several phrases that are used only by Rashbam and these can be used as “fingerprints” to establish the source of many interpretations. Thus, using a combination of methods and tools, Novetsky was able to reconstruct many of the lost interpretations of Rashbam.

Of course, Novetsky’s reconstructions are not definite. Just like Novetsky did in his dissertation, the Mikraot Gedolot in the AlHatorah.org site divides the reconstructed interpretations into two categories: 1) almost definite, and 2) questionable. The latter are presented in brackets. The site has notes to briefly explain the basis of each reconstruction and refers the reader to the pages in his dissertation for the extensive analysis. (A copy of the dissertation can be obtained by contacting the website’s support address.)

A prior scholar D. Rosin did some initial reconstruction work in his critical edition of Rashbam’s Torah commentary published at the end of the 19th century. But working over a hundred years later, Novetsky had much more material available and was able to reconstruct about five times as much.

Rashbam sometimes discusses verses from Bereishit 1-17 and the other missing sections in his commentaries on the Talmud. On first thought, one might think that these commentaries could serve as a source for reconstructing Rashbam’s Torah commentary. But Rashbam has a different method altogether in these commentaries. As we all know, his Torah commentary is one where he seeks the “omek peshuto” (=deep plain sense meaning) of a verse. Therefore, it would be a mistake to assume that what Rashbam wrote in his Talmud commentaries about a verse would be what he would have written in his Torah commentary. See Ephraim Kanarfogel, “The Intellectual History and Rabbinic Culture of Medieval Ashkenaz” (2013), p. 31. (This is part of a section called “Multiple Truths and Interpretations.”)

For example, there are sometimes contradictions between Rashbam’s interpretation of a Biblical verse in his Talmud commentary and his interpretation of the same verse in the portions of his Torah commentary that we have. This is because he was taking a different approach in each commentary. (Also, when any commentator writes an interpretation in a Talmud commentary, a main motivation is to interpret the verse in a way that makes it fit with the flow of the sugya.)

The Mikraot Gedolot section of AlHaTorah.org also includes newly discovered material from widely used commentaries such as Rashi and Ibn Ezra, and many lesser-known commentaries, medieval and modern. It also has Rashbam on sections of Nach. It is really a life-changing site for Torah and Nach study. (Unlike a printed Mikraot Gedolot, it can and is constantly being updated and improved.)

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There is a great podcast on Rashbam by the scholar Martin Lockshin at seforimchatter.buzzsprout.com. There Lockshin mentions Rashbam’s widely quoted comment (at Gen. 37:2) that Rashi admitted to him that if he only had the time, he would revise his commentary based on the insights into the plain meaning that arise every day. Lockshin suggests (perhaps only facetiously!) that sometimes grandfathers say things to grandchildren that are not meant seriously and are only meant to encourage them!

Mitchell First can be reached at [email protected]. Regarding the Breslau 103 manuscript, I am not sure if the damage to Parshat Pinchas was also caused by rodents. Perhaps the rodents found something in this parsha to their liking!