So immense is the impact of the Torah commentary of Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac, better known by the Hebrew acronym Rashi (1040-1105), that nearly every Jew who received a traditional education over the past several centuries has encountered it as child, and nearly every subsequent rabbinic Torah commentary uses it as a point of departure. It is also the subject of numerous supercommentaries, as well as works of systematic criticism. In a recent book, Eric Lawee presents the first complete academic study of the work itself, how it achieved its canonical status, and its overall reception in the Middle Ages. David Berger writes in his review:
[T]he book concludes with an explanation of Rashi’s victory over his most distinguished rival: Abraham Ibn Ezra (ca. 1092-1164) and Moses Naḥmanides (1194-1270)—and for that matter, the Maimonidean approach to the Bible. [Certainly], it is self-evident that Ibn Ezra’s commentary and Maimonidean interpretation could not have achieved the sweeping popularity of Rashi’s work, and to a slightly lesser degree the same is true of Nahmanides, whose work is almost certainly the most widely studied of the three rivals to Rashi.
Nevertheless, Lawee’s formulation is more than worth recording. All three of Rashi’s rivals, he says, separated Scripture into esoteric and exoteric layers, with the former inaccessible to all but a small elite. In Rashi’s case, both layers of Scriptural meaning, p’shat [the plain meaning] and midrash [the exegetical readings of the early rabbis], were exoteric and accessible in principle—and for the most part in reality—to the widest audience. I cannot improve on Lawee’s summary statement, and so I simply reproduce it. “Not that [Rashi’s] commentary was a simple text. Scores of supercommentaries, many by leading rabbis, could hardly have come to grace it if it were so. But, as Raymond Aron said of Karl Marx, his teaching lent itself to ‘simplification for the simple and to subtlety for the subtle.’ So it was with the commentary, and that, plus its protean and self-replenishing character was, and remains, a part of its greatness.”
Read more on Tradition: https://traditiononline.org/book-review-eric-lawee-rashis-commentary-on-the-torah-canonization-and-resistance-in-the-reception-of-a-jewish-classic/