the years 1170 and 1220 students from Germany did not
study with northern French Tosafists (as they did before and
after this period) and vice versa. During this period German
Tosafists are known as leading judges and judicial figures. In
this context they produced extensive works that dealt primar-
ily with monetary law. Two examples (that are no longer ex-
tant) are Ephraim of Regensburg’s (d. c. 1175) Arba’ah
Rashim and Barukh of Mainz’s Sefer ha-Hokhmah.
On the other hand, the Tosafists of northern France,
who undoubtedly participated as judges in cases of monetary
law and in the preparation and adjudication of bills of di-
vorce, are rarely identified as such. They are known as rashei
yeshivah (heads of academies), whose power and reputation
derived mainly from their ability to put forward overarching
interpretations and novellae (hiddushim), rather than from
any role that they played as communal judges. The period
of disengagement between the northern French and German
centers ends only in the days of R. Isaac ben Moses (1180–
1250; Or Zarua’) and his student, R. Meir of Rothenburg
(1220–1293), who spent a significant amount of time study-
ing in northern France. The mid-thirteenth-century Tosafist
study hall at Evreux, France, that appears to represent an
amalgam between the Talmudic methodology of the Tosaf-
ists of northern France and the educational critique and ethi-
cal imperatives of the German pietists, should also be noted
in this regard.
The Tosafot that were produced in these different cen-
ters throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries em-
ployed somewhat different methodologies as well. German
Tosafot (and halakhic writings) take into account a wider se-
lection of Talmudic and rabbinic literature (e.g., midreshei
halakhah va-’aggadah) than did their counterparts in north-
ern France. Northern French Tosafot most often focused on
penetrating analyses of relevant texts within the Babylonian
Talmud in particular (seeing themselves as a continuation of
the methodology of the Amoraim), while German dialectic
is milder. In the end, however, the northern French Tosafot
form dominated. The three leading Tosafot collections from
the late thirteenth century, Tosafot Tukh (Turcheim, Germa-
ny), Tosafot ha-Rosh, and Tosafot Rabbenu Perez, were essen-
tially collections of earlier northern French material (even as
all the editors had German roots).
During the twelfth century northern French Tosafists
produced Tosafot comments almost exclusively, while Ger-
man Tosafists produced a wider spectrum of halakhic works
and self-standing texts that contained Talmudic commentary
as well. The production of halakhic works in northern France
at the turn of the twelfth century and into the thirteenth
(such as Barukh b. Isaac’s [d. 1211] Sefer ha-Terumah and
Moses of Coucy’s [c. 1240] Sefer Mizvot Gadol) may reflect
the influence of the German pietists with regard to the pri-
macy of practical halakhah as well as the notion that a period
of great literary creativity is most often followed by one of
collection and assessment. The thirteenth century also saw
the collection and compilation of earlier Tosafot texts, with
R. Isaac (Ri) of Dampierre’s (d.c. 1200) student Samson of
Sens (1150–1230) as one of the first and most prominent
examples. Manuscript discoveries in the last decade show,
however, that unlike other students of Ri who presented To-
safot interpretations that their students then copied and ed-
ited, Samson composed his own Tosafot interpretations and
intended them as an organized work that could be cross-
referenced from one tractate to another. Another leading stu-
dent of Ri, Judah Sirleon (d. 1224), is the first to cite Mai-
monides, Moses (Mosheh ben Maimon, 1135/8–1204) in
his Tosafot. Judah’s successor, R. Yehi’el of Paris (d.c. 1265),
also produced material in the style of Tosafot, although his
teachings are cited most often in the form of halakhic and
ritual decisions (pesaqim).Northern French Tosafists generally did not preserve
their responsa or pesaqim, while their German counterparts
did. German Tosafists consulted and communicated much
more frequently with each other and collected and preserved
more faithfully the writings of their Tosafist predecessors
from both northern France and Germany. German Tosafot
were produced by Moses Taku (c. 1230), Simhah of Speyer,
Judah b. Qalonymus of Speyers, and Eleazar of Worms, as
well as Meir of Rothenburg. Tosafists in Germany, perhaps
under the influence of the German pietists, also tended to
produce more commentaries than their French counterparts
to those tractates that were taught or studied less frequently,
such as those included in Seder Qodashim.Although it has been assumed that the genre of Tosafot
originated in northern France during the mid-twelfth centu-
ry, the earliest such activity is actually to be found in the
work of the German scholar R. Isaac b. Asher (Riga) of Spires
(d.c. 1130), who flourished a full generation earlier that
Rashi’s (R. Solomon b. Isaac, 1040-1100) grandsons, Rab-
benu Tam and Rashbam (1085–1174). There is, however,
an important stylistic or methodological distinction between
them. While Riba functioned more like a judge, who tried
to decide between the various possible positions by pushing
aside or ferreting out as much material as possible that was
not centrally relevant, the early Tosafists in northern France
sought to bring together similar sugyot to encourage compari-
sons (as a lawyer might typically do).It was, however, in northern France that the classical
form of Tosafot proliferated. Ri, who was Rashi’s great-
grandson, transformed the Tosafist method from a tool of
the elite that was to be used only by the greatest of scholars
(such as Rabbenu Tam and his closest students), to the pre-
dominant method of learning in study halls throughout
northern France. From the days of Ri a series of northern
French Tosafists expressed the notion that authoritative
Torah study and Talmudic readings and rulings are not sole-
ly the property or province of the teacher but belong equally
to his students as well who, on the basis of their analysis of
underlying Talmudic and rabbinic texts, may “outsmart” or
emend the conclusions of the teachers.9248 TOSAFOT [FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS]