יהודה בן נתן

Rav Yehuda ben Natan, known as the Rivan, was a French rishon of the eleventh–twelfth century, among the greatest talmidim of Rashi and his son-in-law — he married Rashi’s second daughter, Miriam. His Torah is woven into the very page of our Gemara: it was the Rivan who completed Rashi’s commentary on Makkot, from daf 19b to the end of the masechta. At the point where the rebbe’s hand ceased, the printed commentary carries the words: “Rabbeinu, whose body was pure and whose soul departed in purity, explained no further; from here on is the language of his talmid, Rav Yehuda ben Rav Natan.”

The Rivan added to Rashi’s commentaries and glossed them, and wrote perushim of his own on most masechtot of Shas, though only a small part has reached us — portions on Yevamot have been printed from manuscript, and the commentary brought at length in the Shitah Mekubetzet on Ketubot under the name “Rashi mahadura kamma” is in fact the Rivan’s. His perushim generally follow Rashi’s path, using Rashi’s language and building upon it, yet more than once he differs with him; he drew as well on the Kuntres of Magentza, on the perush of Rabbeinu Chananel, and on the Torah of his fellow talmidim of Rashi. In his commentaries one can already see the beginnings of the derech of learning that would grow into the shitah of the Tosafot — indeed he wrote some of the first tosafot on the Talmud, is named as a tosafist in the Hagahot Mordechai on Sanhedrin, and is quoted often in the printed Tosafot. Collections of Tosafot on the Torah mention that he wrote perushim on Chumash as well.

His sons carried his Torah onward: Rav Yom Tov of Falaise, who went on to head a yeshiva in Paris, together with his brothers Shimshon and Rabbeinu Eliezer. His daughter Alvina was a learned woman whose conduct served as a basis for later halachic rulings, and his granddaughter Dulcea married Rav Elazar of Worms.