ר' מנחם בן חלבו

Rav Menachem ben Chelbo Kara (4775/1015–4845/1085) was among the earliest commentators on Tanach in northern France, and his glosses and halachic principles left their mark on Rashi. He was born into a family of French Torah scholars — his brother was Rav Shimon Kara, and his nephew Rav Yosef Kara, whom he taught. In his younger years he learned in Provence, which accounts for the Arabic words and the Provençal forms of French that reached Rashi through him.

Rav Menachem wrote comments on the piyutim, which he gathered into a work called Pitronim, “solutions.” It spans Nevi’im and Ketuvim; the Torah he deliberately left aside. Almost none of his commentary survives, having been displaced by Rashi’s; what remains of his Torah was preserved by his nephew Rav Yosef, who brought it to Rashi. His approach rested on a few settled principles: to reach for the pshat of the pasuk while still drawing on the midrashim of Chazal, to keep a comment short, to weigh the closeness of Hebrew and Arabic, to render hard Hebrew and Aramaic words into French and German, and to link one passage to another and read halacha out of the setting of a word.