Rashi by Elie Wiesel

treason and publicly demoted on a tide of French anti-Semitism. He was exonerated in 1906.
June 1940
France surrenders to the German army. The country is divided into two zones; the north is under direct German control, and the south is ruled by a French puppet government based in Vichy.
November 1942
Germans take control of all of France. Deportations of Jews increase. More than eighty thousand Jews from France, both native French and Jewishimmigrants to France, are killed at Auschwitz by the end of the war. Many more Jews suffer greatly in work camps and forced labor battalions.
May 14, 1948
Founding of the State of Israel.
1989
Rashi Institute, dedicated to Jewish scholarship, opens in Troyes.

GLOSSARY
    Aramaic    A Semitic language, related to Hebrew and Arabic, which flourished in the Mesopotamian world in different forms from approximately 700 BCE to the middle of the first millennium CE, and is still spoken by small groups in Lebanon, Turkey, and Kurdistan. The language of the Talmud and other important Jewish texts, Aramaic was used for rabbinic writings through the thirteenth century CE .
    Ashkenazi    Originally referred to Jews from Germany; eventually generalized to include all Jews from Central and Eastern Europe.
    Belaaz    From the Hebrew
be
, “in,” and
lo’ez
, “foreign.”
Laaz
eventually came to be associated with Romance languages, so the term
belaaz
is used to introduce a translation from Hebrew into one of those languages. Frequently used by Rashi to refer to Old French.
    Blood libel    The anti-Jewish slander, first appearing in Norwich, England, in 1144, that Jews kill Christian children and use their blood for ritual purposes, especially on Passover. This slander occasionally still surfaces and hasbeen the pretext for anti-Jewish violence over the centuries, leading to much death and destruction.
    Diaspora    The Jewish communities outside the land of Israel. After the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in the year 70 CE, most Jews were exiled from the land of Israel, but they never ceased to long to return to the land.
    Drash
    One of the four traditional methods of exegesis, referring to an interpretive commentary on a biblical verse.
    Gaonic period    From the end of the sixth through the middle of the eleventh century, the period during which the
geonim
, the leaders of the yeshivas of Sura and Pumpedita in Babylonia, were the accepted legal authorities of the Jewish world.
    Mahzor Vitry
    A guide to liturgy and
halakhah
written by Rashi’s student, Simhah ben Shmuel of Vitry.
Mahzor Vitry
is based on Rashi’s halakhic rulings for the liturgy of the entire cycle of holidays, including Shabbat, and is also a valuable record of Jewish life in France in Rashi’s time.
    Mainz    A city on the Rhine River in Germany, capital of the Rhineland region and site of Jewish settlement from at least the mid-tenth century. Mainz is 282 miles northeast of Troyes.
    Midrash    A method of exegesis of biblical texts; a legal, exegetical, or homeletical commentary on the Bible. Also refers to the collections thereof.
    Mishnah    The collection of rabbinic legal opinions redacted by Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi, around the year 220. The Mishnah is the primary text of Jewish law or
halakhah
. It is divided into six orders,
sedarim
, which are further divided into sixty-three tractates.
    Mitzvot    Hebrew for commandments (singular is mitzvah), referring to God’s commandments. Used colloquially to refer to “good deeds.”
    Peshat
    One of the four traditional methods of biblical exegesis, focusing on the simple or literal meaning of the text. This was Rashi’s preferred means of explanation.
    Remez
    One of the four traditional methods of biblical exegesis, focusing on the allusive level of meaning.
    Responsa    The term for the continually evolving body of Jewish legal decisions developed as responses to questions posed to rabbis.
    Sefer