The Torah Comments of Yeḥiel of Paris: Mediating between Peshat and Derash

Abstract

More than a century ago, Samuel Poznanski charted in great detail the decided turn in northern France to peshuto shel miqra (the plain meaning of scripture) that was embraced by Rashi (d. 1105) and several of his students and Tosafist successors during the twelfth-century, including Joseph Qara, Rashbam and Joseph Bekhor Shor of Orleans (d. c. 1190). However, Poznanski and others maintain that this quest for peshat (sensus literalis) interpretation in northern France largely came to an end during the thirteenth-century with the appearance of the so-called Tosafist Torah compilations. These heavily focused on midrashic interpretation (Poznanski 1913: viii-cxxv; Grossman 1995: 462-77; Touitou, 2003: 11-47; Japhet 2004: 413-18).