What Do They Study in Your Yeshivah? The Scope of Talmudic Commentary in Europe During the High Middle Ages

Abstract

At the start of the eleventh century, as the last of the great geonim were completing their oeuvre that consisted principally of responsa and halakhic monographs, leading scholars in Germany and North Africa, such as Rabbenu Gershom (960–1028) and his successors in Mainz, and Rabbenu Hananel (d. 1056) and Rav Nissim b. Jacob (990–1062) in Kairouan, were beginning to produce their talmudic commentaries. By this time, most, if not all, of the Babylonian Talmud had reached these areas in the west, although the precise details of its transmission and the availability of particular texts in any given area are di¥cult to pinpoint.1 (from Introduction)