lem, 1973) were compiled, it would seem, when he was still
young. In them the teachings of his teacher Riy are excep-
tionally predominant, and one can still sense in his style the
give and take of the discussion in the academy. In contrast,
the second edition of his tosafot to tractate EAvodah Zarah
(modern edition, New York, 1969) exhibit little of the style
of disputation characteristic of most tosafot; they are instead
rather similar to the style of the Rash in his Mishnah com-
mentaries.
Authority in the academies of the tosafists was not insti-
tutionalized; there was no well-defined hierarchy within
them. Whoever could demonstrate exceptional capabilities
and great erudition gained authority, but this authority was
constantly subject to the challenges and criticism of younger
scholars and students.
With the passage of time, different styles of tosafot devel-
oped. Some scholars were content to record their critical
notes on famous tosafot, such as those of Rash of Sens. This
is what ElEazar of Worms (the author of Sefer ha-roqeah:) and
Berakhiyah of Nicole (modern-day Lincoln, England) did.
In contrast, after the burning of the Talmud in Paris in 1244,
there is a clearly discernible tendency, especially in the acade-
my at Évreux, to compose tosafot shit:ah—a presentation of
the Talmudic sugyah together with various explanations of
it and the discussions of tosafists. One such shit:ah from
Évreux on tractate Nazir was published from a manuscript
in New York in 1974.
Toward the end of the thirteenth century, in the wake
of the emigration of many of the sages of northern France
and the increasing persecutions in Germany, original creativ-
ity among the scholars became rarer, while the collection of
existing tosafot became more widespread. The great compil-
ers, whose works spanned the entire Talmud, were Perets of
Corbeil, EliEezer of Touques, and Asher ben Yeh:iDel. The to-
safot of Perets of Corbeil were extant in Italy until the time
of the printing of the Talmud, and they also reached Spain.
EliEezer of Touques abridged and edited the tosafot compiled
by Rash of Sens, added to them from other collections, and
appended his own novellae in the margins. His tosafot quickly
spread through France and Germany.
When Asher ben Yeh:iDel, known as Rabbenu Asher (also
as RoDsh), left Germany, he brought with him to Spain col-
lections of tosafot from the collections of Riy and Rash of
Sens and copied them almost unchanged, occasionally ad-
ding an explanation of his teacher, MeDir ben Barukh, known
as Maharam of Rothenburg. Rabbenu Asher prepared this
work in order to present the community of scholars in Spain
with an important collection of the teachings of the out-
standing scholars of France. His son YaEaqov (that is, YaEaqov
ben Asher), author of the halakhic codex ArbaEah T:urim,
wrote to a German scholar who was preparing to come to
Spain: “Bring whatever books you have, whether commen-
taries of Rashi, or gemaraD, or other works, but you needn’t
bring the tosafot, for they only learn the shit:ah of my father
and teacher, may the memory of the righteous be a blessing.”
These tosafot did not spread beyond Spain, though, and they
were subsequently dispersed abroad (especially to Italy and
the Ottoman Empire) with the exiles from Spain. While the
scholars of Germany and Poland remained unaware of their
existence, for us these tosafot are an important source for re-
constructing the original formulation of the tosafot of Riy
and his disciples.
The aforementioned compilations sealed a period of
nearly two hundred years of creativity. The earlier tosafot
were superseded by the later collections, but many of the for-
mer were preserved by individuals, some of whom copied
from them into their own compilations and collections. This
phenomenon can be observed in various collections: the cata-
logs of decisions and responsa, like Or ZaruEa, compiled by
Yitsh:aq ben Mosheh of Vienna, and the Mordekhai of
Mordekhai ben Hillel; in the Haggahot Maymuniyyot and the
Teshuvot Maymuniyyot of the school of Maharam; the collec-
tions of exegesis of the Pentateuch (such as DaEat zeqenim,
Hadar zeqenim, Moshav zeqenim, and Minh:at Yehudah); and
in manuscripts. All of these works help us to identify the edi-
tors of extant collections of tosafot and the authors of anony-
mous interpretations recorded in them.
PRINTING OF THE TOSAFOT. The spread of the tosafot en-
couraged printers of the Talmud to print these commentaries
alongside the commentary of Rashi, which were already
being printed alongside the Talmudic text. YehoshuEa Shelo-
moh first printed the tosafot to tractate Berakhot in Soncino,
Italy, in 1484. By 1519 his nephew Gershom Soncino had
printed twenty-three tractates with tosafot. The Bomberg
Press in Venice (1520–1523) generally copied the tosafot
from the Soncino edition, but they corrected them from
manuscripts. After that time, the tosafot were printed in every
edition of the Talmud, except in some early Eastern editions,
until the gemaraD, the commentary of Rashi, and tosafot came
to be studied as a single unit, referred to as GePeT (from
gemaraD, perush Rashi, and tosafot).
EDITING OF THE TOSAFOT. Examination of the tosafot print-
ed in standard editions of the Talmud in relation to other
collections that have been printed or preserved in manuscript
and in comparison with other sources demonstrates that the
standard tosafot originated in various academies and at differ-
ent times. A summary of the conclusions that can be drawn
about the origins of the tosafot of the various tractates can
be found in table 1.
THE METHOD OF INTERPRETATION IN THE TOSAFOT. De-
spite the diversity and the convoluted process of develop-
ment of all the various collections, the tosafot nevertheless
share a common method of explication, for they all are char-
acteristically dialectical and critical. These methodological
foundations, as drawn by Rabbenu Tam and Riy, remained
fixed, with variation only in the quality of their employment.
On the one hand, the tosafists themselves adopted the style
of discussion of the amoraim and developed special tech-
niques by which to express it; on the other hand, they traced
and criticized the way in which the amoraim used this style.9244 TOSAFOT [FIRST EDITION]