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Why is there no Rashi on Yerushalmi? What can I learn instead?

Is there anything that can replace it, and why was it not written?

Isaac Moses
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Rashilover
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    Rashilover, welcome to the site. I hope you stick around end enjoy it. You may wish to split up this question into an historical one (why Rashi didn't write on the Y'rushalmi) and one seeking a recommendation (for a similar commentary) in order to boost your chances of getting a reply to each and in order to make the question better for future visitors. On another note, you may wish to register your username: this will afford you a better site experience. – msh210 Feb 06 '12 at 22:12
  • Why do you think Rashi ever saw a Yerushalmi manuscript? Most (all?) of his Yerushalmi citations are by way of Babylonian sources or Galilean midrash collections. – magicker72 Jan 28 '20 at 02:00

2 Answers2

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A common commentary to the Yerushalmi that serves a similar function to Rashi is the Penei Moshe written by Rabbi Moshe Margolis. A volume from the Talmud Yerushalmi with his commentary can be seen here.

Other commentaries that follow a similar pattern are Korban Ha'edah by Rabbi David Frankel and Chiddushei Ridvaz by Rabbi Yaakov David Willowsky. These are all available in many printed Yerushamis today.

As to why Rashi didn't compose a commentary on the Yerushalmi: he might have if he had ever finished the Bavli. Unfortunately, he died before doing so in the middle of writing his commentary on Bava Batra (he made it until page 29a).

Double AA
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    +1 for the commentary recommendations. Re "he probably would have if he had ever finished the Bavli", do you have a source or argument for this, or is it pure speculation? – msh210 Feb 06 '12 at 22:16
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    @msh210 Speculation (thought I think pretty reasonable). I've edited to make it less presumptuous. – Double AA Feb 06 '12 at 22:18
  • I've heard in the name of an Adam Gadol (the Brisker Rav, perhaps?) that Rashi didn't write on Yerushalmi because he had no mesorah from his rabbeim as to its meaning. – Dave Feb 06 '12 at 22:51
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    @Dave, IIRC, Rashi does quote Yerushalmi here and there, so it's not like he didn't know what it meant. Also, as per the famous comment of the Rashbam regarding Rashi's commentary on Chumash, according to which he would have rewritten it with "newer" p'shat explanations if he had had the time, apparently Rashi was not against writing commentaries without a specific mesorah from his teachers (although perhaps I shouldn't compare chumash with gemara). – jake Feb 06 '12 at 23:49
  • @jake - obviously Rashi would have had a lot to say about Yerushalmi. The point is that he did not feel it correct to compile a definitive elucidation on Yerushalmi based mostly on educated speculation. You can see in his commentary on Bavli that he often cites more than one approach, meticulously pointing out which one he heard from his Rebbi. Such level of detail would not be possible in Yerushalmi. It would necessarily be a string of conjectures, albeit very informed ones. – Dave Feb 07 '12 at 00:40
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    @Dave You assume Rashi wrote Rashi to be Rashi. – Double AA Feb 07 '12 at 01:00
  • @DoubleAA Yes, I do think Rashi was very well aware of what he was doing. Let's put it this way: Learning Yerushalmi today, one will find numerous, widely-divergent approaches to any given passage. Had Rashi written a peirush on Yerushalmi, that peirush would have become the "baseline" meaning of the text, and most of the other approaches would never have seen the light of day. Perhaps, knowing this, Rashi did not want to constrict the meaning of Yerushalmi to his personal conjectures. – Dave Feb 07 '12 at 01:14
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    @Dave, I think it may simply be this: Rashi's commentary on the Bavli actually began as a rewrite of the students' notes that were floating around in the yeshivos of France and Germany. Presumably, if the Yerushalmi had been a regular subject of study there, there would have been similar students' notes that he might have then used as a basis for a commentary; without those, though, there may have been no more reason for him to write on the Yerushalmi than on any other Chazalic literature. – Alex Feb 07 '12 at 04:12
  • Yerushalmi for many reasons was not the main text that they studied, and it seems Rashi may not even have had access to all of it. – Ariel K Feb 07 '12 at 17:33
  • @Alex so how are we medayek from leshonos of his students (especially when the identity of the final editor is unknown)? – ertert3terte May 04 '12 at 18:54
  • @ShmuelBrin: it's actually the other way around. Rashi took the existing students' notes (including his own) and reworked them into a full-fledged commentary. So each expression there is either his own, or something that he found already written and approved of it. (In this way, then, his commentary is somewhat like first few chapters of Divrei Hayamim, which were collated by Ezra and Nechemiah from existing records written by unknown authors who probably didn't have ruach hakodesh, but which, having been sifted through by them, are on an equal level of holiness with the rest of Tanach.) – Alex May 04 '12 at 19:13
  • @Dave, et al, re: Rashi's Mesorah, see my question here about Ma'ase DiBruriah. If his Mesorah is strong in Bavli, as I would expect it to be, where did this story come from? And if he is correct, why do some defy this and claim Beruriah to be righteous, and why would R' Meir employ such a trick (and tease his wife that way)? – Seth J May 30 '12 at 12:41
  • Who said that Rashi had all of the Yerushalmi or any part of it by him!? Perhaps when he quotes it it could be from other sources. – Yehoshua Apr 14 '13 at 11:32
  • @Dave Sounds like a classic case of people overthinking the obvious. Rashi did not write on Yerushalmi because it wasn't as important to him as his current projects. There is a strain of thought in the Rishonim that the Bavli superseded the Yerushalmi and any opinion in Yerushalmi not mentioned in Bavli is assumed to have been rejected by the Bavli. Rashi may have agreed. – N.T. Oct 19 '22 at 11:02
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Double AA covered the main commentaries on Yerushalmi. Here are a few very useful contemporary ones:

Lev Yerushalayim (on all of Yerushalmi, I think)

Commentary of Rav Chaim Kanievsky (example here)

The Artscroll Yerushalmi

mbloch
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Dave
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    See also http://www.yerushalmionline.org/seforim.html. – msh210 Feb 07 '12 at 18:43
  • That is now a dead link and this extensive list of links to scanned/digitized commentaries on the Yerushalmi can now be accessed at https://www.yerushalmionline.org/commentaries/ – EraserX Oct 19 '22 at 13:02