ר' יוסף קרא

Rav Yosef Kara ben Shimon (c. 4825/1065–c. 4895/1135), known as the Mahari Kara, was among the leading chachamim of northern France at the close of the eleventh century and the beginning of the twelfth: an original commentator on the Chumash and Nach, a commentator on piyutim, and a man much occupied with the Jewish-Christian disputations of his day. The name Kara was given him for his chief occupation, the study of Mikra, which he also taught to others; it marks him as a master of peshat rather than a darshan. He learned from his uncle Rav Menachem ben Chelbo, of whom he writes that he taught him all his days — his citations are nearly the only window we have onto Menachem’s peirush. He spent years in the yeshivot of Ashkenaz, chiefly in Worms under Rav Kalonymus ben Shabtai of Rome, and a long period in the beit midrash of Rashi in Troyes, where he came to know the Rashbam. He is reckoned a talmid-chaver of Rashi: each quotes the other, and in several places he moved Rashi to change what he had written.

He wrote a peirush on the Torah, most of which was lost and only fragments of which have come down; to it he added a kuntres acharon of further explanations that came to him after the main work was finished. He also wrote many glosses on Rashi’s peirush, which copyists absorbed into the body of Rashi’s own text. His commentary on Nevi’im survived in a single manuscript, the Kirchheim manuscript, whose traces were lost in the Shoah; before it disappeared Shimon Eppenstein printed from it the portions on Nevi’im Rishonim between 1906 and 1920, and missing chapters have since been recovered from other manuscripts. From Ketuvim we have his peirush on Iyov, on Eichah and on Esther, and it is known that he explained others, certainly Mishlei and Divrei HaYamim. On some sefarim he wrote more than once: two commentaries on Hoshea, on Rut and on Eichah, and three on Michah and on Esther.

He stands at the head of the peshat school of northern France, and presses the priority of peshat over derash more sharply than Rashi does, writing that a prophecy was set down together with its meaning and lacks nothing, so that later generations need not stumble in it. He cites Menachem ben Saruk, Dunash ibn Labrat, the Kalir and Kalonymus, and in Iyov he draws on the writings of Rav Shabtai Donnolo, preserving through them extracts from the lost Baraita d’Shmuel. His comments are quoted often by the Ba’alei HaTosafot and above all by the Chizkuni, who generally brings them without naming him; Rav Yosef Bechor Shor drew from him as well.