משה הדרשן

Rav Moshe haDarshan (first half of the 11th century) was a rishon of Narbonne in Provence, head of the yeshiva there and a father of Torah study and exegesis in France. He came of a distinguished Narbonne family: his great-grandfather Avun, his grandfather Moshe ben Avun, and his father were all heads of the yeshiva before him, and his brother Levi took the position after him.

His name rests on his work of midrashic and symbolic exposition of the Chumash, sometimes called Yesod, which is known chiefly through the places where Rashi cites him — some nineteen times in his commentary on the Chumash, and twice in his commentary on the Gemara. It gathered midrashim from earlier works, some no longer in our hands, along with his own explanations, and it stands behind the later midrash Bereshit Rabbati and shaped material in Bamidbar Rabbah. He was also among the first known to explain the piyyutim. Rav Nathan of Rome, author of the Aruch, was his talmid and cites his explanations of words and passages of the Gemara.