Concepts of Scripture in the School of Rashi 113that rabbinic interpretation is the “essence” (Hebrew, iqqar) and bedrock
of the Torah. However, it is not as clear that the absence of some Kara-like
homily in the service of peshat necessarily means that he would consider
peshat exegesis to be of no value whatsoever beyond intellectual exercise.
What it does mean, however, at the minimum, is that Rashbam maintains
what I termed the “vertical” addition of peshat interpretations as part of the
concept of “Torah” alongside that of the “essence” that he considers mid-
rashic rabbinic interpretations to convey. It is important to remember that,
in Rashbam’s eyes, even though peshat interpretations are apparently ideo-
logically inferior to the iqqar, “essential” level of rabbinic midrash, they are
nonetheless a systemic part of what is now a fully two-tiered text. Th us, for
Rashbam, Torah is multivalent in that (a) it conveys an essential, midrashic
meaning that fi nds its roots in God’s revelation of Oral Torah at Sinai (and
as passed on by rabbinic tradition) alongside that of Written Torah; and
(b) it conveys a contextual, peshat meaning — never losing it, ever (again,
“Scripture never escapes the hold of its context”) — that is rooted in the
ability of individual, attentive intellects to bring this to light.
Th us, while the traditional rabbinic adage “shivim panim la-Torah” —
“the Torah conveys an infi nite number of possible interpretations” — still
holds, now this no longer means only midrash but peshat interpretations
as well. Moreover, Rashbam considers that one ought not to speak of “the”
peshat but rather many peshatot, that is, contextual interpretations. He fa-
mously declares this to be so in his comment on Genesis 37:2:
Lovers of reason should become enlightened and understand that, as our
Rabbis tell us, no Scriptural verse ever loses its contextual [ peshat] mean-
ing. Although it is also true that the main aim of the Torah is to teach us
aggadot, halakhot, and laws, which are derived by hint or by the use in
Scriptural verses of superfl uous words or by means of the thirty-two rules
of Rabbi Eliezer ben Rabbi Yosi the Galilean or the thirteen rules of Rabbi
Ishmael. In their piety the early scholars devoted all their time to the mid-
rashic explanations, which contain, indeed, the main teachings of the To-
rah. But, as a result, they became unfamiliar with the deeper aspects of the
text’s contextual meaning. . . . Our Master, Rabbi Solomon, my mother’s
father [Rashi], who illumined the eyes of all those in exile, and who wrote
commentaries on the Torah, Prophets, and the Writings, also set himself
the task of elucidating the contextual meaning of Scripture. And I, Sam-
uel, son of his son-in-law Meir, may the memory of the righteous be for a
blessing, argued it out with him [Rashi, i.e., privately] and in his presence