Rabbeinu Yehoshua Ibn Shuaib

A Thought on Parshas Bereishis In my ongoing hunt for Rishonim on Chumash, I returned once again to Jerusalem, having exhausted my searches in other places. This summer, while strolling through the streets of Meah She'arim after a wonderful day on the Bais Din, I decided to go back to the small shop where I had found, twelve months before, the commentary of the Gan, whose works we just completed. I figured that my unplanned wandering into that place had paid off once before, so I opted to try it again. Once more, I walked to a shelf and this time, about knee high, I saw an unfamiliar set of two red volumes. I got them off the shelf and once again, I felt that the bracha of Jerusalem was there for me. I had a "new" Rishon. This commentary is by a Spanish scholar from early in the 13th century. He was a disciple of the Rashba - Rabbeinu Shlomo ben Aderet - and although little is known of his life, he was apparently a respected scholar, versed in all of the revealed and hidden facets of Torah. He may have come from Tudela, in the province of Navarra, places which are known to us today only because they are mentioned from time to time by early scholars as having been seats of Torah learning before the Inquisition. In style, he seems to me similar to Rabbeinu Yona of Gerona (who was the Rashba's mentor) , whose works I studied early on when first composing these parsha emails. That similarity lies in his addressing each parsha in its entirety, rather than verse-by-verse, in drasha form: he looks at the homiletic lessons and values which we can derive from the events of each passage. Another nuance I have begun noticing in the short amount of time in which I have been studying this Rishon is his grappling to derive messages from word-usage, word-positioning and midrashic or kabbalistic inferences from the words. This discovery will likely be a challenge; may it be a rewarding and an enlightening one iyH. So, allow me to introduce the commentary with whom we shall spend hours of labor and delight. Our Rishon for the year 5776 is Rabbeinu Yehoshua ibn Shuaib. Like ibn Ezra, ibn Gabirol, ibn Tibbon and ibn Migash, this is a sage whose name bespeaks his family's sojourn in Moorish Spain. A man often took on the name of his father or of a great patriarchal figure in his family. Whereas today's Jewish men (I will use my name as an example) have names such as Dovid Zalman ben Gershon (my father should have a refuah sheleimah), in earlier times and in Iberia, I might have been ibn Gershon. Let us begin to study Drashos Rabbeinu Yehoshua ibn Shuaib.