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Hi everyone,
I dont remember where I read it or where I found it but I really need to find it again. There is a story about the Satmar Rav in a displaced persons camp after the war. They gave him a bowl of rice to eat and he refused to eat it because he didnt have other foods to make brachos on that would cover the rice. Meaning he never says a bracha on rice, he says a bracha on other foods that will cover the rice because he is unsure of what bracha rice really is.
Please help me find the article where I read that.
Thanks
It could be. There is a Rashi in Brachos who says that Orez is millet and that something else means rice. Therefore, according to Rashi, rice might be Adamah. The problem with this is that Rashi was from France and spoke neither Arabic nor Spanish. If he had known those two languages, he would have known that Orez is rice. (Rice is Aruz and Aros in those two languages, respectively.)
You probably mean the Klausenburger Rebbe. The Satmarer Rebbe wasn’t in a DP camp.
“If he had known those two languages, he would have known that Orez is rice.”
Too bad Rashi didnt have Sam2 around to ask him then he would have known. What a shame.
Sam2, yes, we know Rashi was from France. But can you be sure he did not know any Spanish?
Sam2’s comment is both narrow-minded and bordering on apikorsus.
I thought the Satmar rav escaped the war to Israel/Palestine. How could he have been in a displaced persons camp?
The Satmar Rebbe was never in a DP Camp, he was on the Kasner train, and while he spent some time in Belsen, the train took them to Swizterland eventually.
He made it to Palestine in 1945.
Its important not to make Halachas as you think a Rebbe might have acted from an anecdote that may not have happend
The story could be about a Rebbe whose name I forgot , he had gone to Japan during the War and the only food he could get was rice. He did not know how to cook the rice and waited 2 days learning torah until someone could cook the rice for him.
If I remember the story correctly, it was the Satmar Rav, but it wasn’t in a DP camp. It was after he was released from Bergen Belsen on the Kastner Train and arrived in Switzerland.
Rashi’s description of animal anatomy in a certain place in Chullin also does shtim with metzios. Morris and WYI, do you have anything to say?
Rashi was actually quite an accomplished linguist. He lived in a border area often in dispute between Champagne, Burgundy, their duchies, and nearby German principalities. Many languages were spoken in France at the time. He traded in Wine, so he would have had to converse with both suppliers and consumers, who necessarily came from all over what is now France (some of which was ruled by the English Plantagenets in Rashis time) and beyond so he had to know these languages. He demonstrates acute facility with what we call “old French” in his hundreds of renderings of explanations “bla’z” belashon am zu.
When discussing Spain, most of the Jewish population lived in the Northeast of the country, and the language in that area was Catalan, which is still in use today. There were also many Basque speakers in the area of the Pyrenees, where many Jews lived. There were several muslim principalities, as well as Castile, Leon, Andalusia, Galicia (yes, in Spain) and others, all with their own dialects and languages – there was no “Spanish” to know in the 11th/12th century CE. Aroz, Arus, Riz, Rice, all essentially come from the same root, which is the same root in Hebrew, Arabic, Latin, Greek, Italian, French, Spanish, German, Russian, and many other languages. In fact linguists think the root of the word for all of these languages was Tamil, as Rice was first cultivated in the Indian subcontinent.
It is very likely that Rashi’s unclear description may have come from the simple fact that rice cultivation wasn’t introduced into France until over 300 years after Rashi was nifter, though it did make its way to Southern Iberia and Sicily around the time of his life.
MORIS’ s comments show the preposterous place we have arrived at: “apikorsous” for what? because Sam2 commented on a rashi ??? this is so over the top-now we can’t even make an innocuous comment? preposterous!
MORIS,
Why is it apikorsis to say that Rashi didn’t know Spanish? He most likely didn’t. Why would he?
Read my post above. There was likely not a language known as “Spanish” at the time, so it would have been impossible to know it.
I didn’t invent the point about that Rashi. Many Achronim said it first (maybe even a few Spanish Rishonim pointed it out). So if that’s Apikorsus, at least I’m in good company.
Rabbiofberlin truthsharer
Its preposterous to think that Rashi who was one of the greatest Rishonim and knew Kol Hatorah Kulah who wrote Rashi al Hatorah with Ruach Hakodesh would write a single word of perush withought knowing it is 100% true.
In chumash he says numerous times I dont know so to think he would write something he doesnt know to be true as fact (that he could very easily verify by asking someone who speaks the language well on the off chance that he personally doesnt) is preposterous chutzpah and more.
Unfortunately we live at a time where true Torah knowledge is at an all time low (as we dont have any more Reb Moshe Feisteins and Reb Aharon Kotlers or people that come close) and “chachamim” who are given voice thanks to the internet haughtily talk oh Rashi didnt know Rambam didnt know this Rishon didnt know that one didnt know are at an all time high.
At least talk with respect and humility when referencing something that a Rishon may have possibly been wrong about.
They arent your buddies.
I’m assuming MORIS was being sarcastic, because out of all the words he could have used to argue with Sam, I feel that narrow minded is not the correct one. I don’t think Sam was being narrow minded.
Moris:
An apikorus must deny one of the thirteen principles. Rashi is NOT a navi, NOT Moshe Rabbeinu, and is certainly NOT Hashem. Don’t label something bordering on apikorsus if you have no concept.
Rashi does bring Arabic words, as well as German, Slavic and Russian.
Although finding a similar word in a different language is a good backup, it is not the be-all-end-all. Rashi gave a word because of what he was Mekabel or built from Raayos, not in a vacuum. Perhaps you can say that had he known of two languages with similar words that would have swayed his reasonning to translate it as such, but that’s it.
It is very likely that Rashi’s unclear
description may have come from the
simple fact that rice cultivation wasn’t
introduced into France until over 300
years after Rashi was nifter
Problem with that is that tosafos does say it means rice. Tosafos is not 300 years later.
Really it means Orzo. That’s how I Pasken — I make a Mezonos on Orzo.
even if this was his practice, it is not necessarily the halachah. I was a gabbai for a chassidishe rebbe who had this practice, but said it is not the halachah for everyone to follow.
Look, I apologize if my saying things straight offended some people. I actually used to have a whole long thing saved up to preface any time I ever pointed out that a major Posek was mistaken or didn’t know about something that I would cut-and-paste. But eventually it felt contrived and like I was faking an Anavah that I honestly don’t have. Look, sometimes you have to point things out. Otherwise you can’t learn. The Gemara says this. If you want to be a Talmid Chacham you have to be Kashe K’barzel. It is not ridiculous to say that Rashi didn’t know a language or know about the existence of rice.
HaLeiVi: He quotes individual words. It’s clear, though, that he didn’t understand Arabic or the Spanish Judeo-Arabic. That’s why he has a set of grammatical rules on Chumash that our grammar just doesn’t agree with. He only quotes Shlomo ibn Gabirol because he was the only of the grammarians who wrote in Hebrew. Rashi just didn’t have access to the works in other languages.
Haleivi, as I am sure you know, the baalei tosafos lived in many different places, including Languedoc, right next to the Iberian peninsula. They also lived in the generations following Rashi. Rashi lived in the Rhineland in northern Europe. What was perhaps familiar to them would not necessarily have been available to him. It is no discredit to Rashi – and in fact, to this day food is often named in descriptive terms that are not precise. A simple example from the present day is Israeli couscous, which is not actually couscous, but rather a very small pellet of pasta made from semolina flour. Yet it has become known as Israeli couscous all over the world. another, older example is the word Maize, which comes from Taino via Spanish and means American corn, but is applied to other grains which are not quite the same. It is and has been common practice for a long time to name foods this way.
I think that many of the posters have no clue what it meant to travel in those days and the difficulties it entailed. Allow me first to correct some factual mistakes.
yichusdik: Rashi did NOT live in the places that you mention. He lived most of his life in Troyes-which is in the middle of France. He learned in the area you are quoting (worms, actually) so, at best, he knew some german and, of course, Old French.
Also, the Plantagenets did NOT rule that part of france- as a matter of fact, Rashi died in 1105 ,when the Plantagent dynasty had not started yet.
Arabic was unknown to Rashi- he never traveled to Spain and, probably, castilian Spanish was also unknown to him.
To WIY- again, you elevate Rashi to be a Novih. Rashi was the greatest “meforosh”on shas- and one of the greatest Jews that lived but this doesn’t make him infallible nor does it make his words always correct (there are plenty of “kashas” from his own grandchildren, the baalei tosefos).
In any case, this is not even an opinion by Rashi ,it is just a description of an item and it is ludicrous to say that Rashi did not make a mistake in namimg the wrong item.
We don’t have to go back a thousand years to Rashi to see how this works. How many Ashkenazim don’t eat corn on Pesach due to kitniyos concerns?
ROB, I concede that the Plantagenets (Angevins, actually, at the time, I didn’t make the appropriate distinction) ruled in Anjou, somewhat to the west- southwest of Troyes.
I only mentioned that he lived in the Rhineland. I’ve read opinions that Rashi lived in Trier, not Troyes, and Trier had a significant Jewish population at the time. Either way, even if I am wrong, Champagne and the Palatinate are geographically very close. they are both North of the Latitude of Switzerland, which puts them in Northern Europe as I wrote. Rhineland traffic and Ardennes traffic flowed along the rivers, generally north to the North Sea. But as an exporter, (wine was one of the principle elements of trade at the time) Rashi would have encountered many people and words that were uncommon. Also, there is a mesorah in my family that Rashi’s 3rd daughter married someone from Iberia (Spain), so he would have had at least some give and take with the area.
Much of the information on Rashi related in this thread is only partially correct.
For an authoritative treatment of where Rashi lived, what languages he knew, and whom he quoted, see Prof. A. Grossman’s ???? ???? ???????? , pages 121-253. A must read.
Corn as we know it, Is actually the Indian crop Maize and was not available in Europe until after Columbus and the Europeans came to the new world.
There was no “Corn” in Rashis time.
Rashi probably spoke Old French and maybe Old Spanish which are different than modern French or Spanish.
If Rashi spoke english it was old english which is unintelligble to the modern english speaker
Rashi actually did travel pretty much. He mentions his being in ‘Rusia’, and he gives a word from that language. By the building of the Beis Hamikdash by Shlomo Hamelech, Rashi writes by the word Yekev, dluta Berusia.
I can’t tell you about Spain, but when he defined a word it wasn’t from lack of knowledge, or from the process of elimination. He had a reason or a Mesora to define it as such. Which serious person would say, I only know of a few other grains so this must be it? Isn’t that the complaint against the Tcheiles? (There, at least he depended on the fact that he did research.)
“old man” thanks for your information! How does one get hold of this book (sefer) ?
BY THE WAY- just to show that Rashi was quite familiar with books who were NOT gemoro or halachic- he mentions “sefer josef ben gurion” on daf 43A in berochos (see Rashi “shemen artzeinu”). for those who are unfamiliar with “josef ben gurion”, he is Josephus and this is based on his book.
Truthsharer: Corn is actually more interesting. It’s because Koren in olde English meant grain and was a word interchangeably used with wheat. Thus, do to concerns for confusion B’nei Ashkenaz added corn to the list of things that aren’t Kitniyos.
(And now to be called an Apikores again: R’ Moshe has a famous T’shuvah where he explains why corn is Kitniyos but potatoes aren’t. He says because they had corn before the Minhag developed but they didn’t have potatoes because it was a New World vegetable. This, of course, is not quite true. Both corn and potatoes are New World crops. The difference is the name.)
There are two reasons some may be reluctant to say Mezonos on rice.
Therefore, it is understandable that some people are reluctant to say Mezonos on a typical rich dish.
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