Responsa literature refers to the exchanges of letters in which one party consults another on a halakhic matter. Responsa played an important role in disseminating the Oral Law and establishing the authority of the Babylonian Talmud. They are a valuable source of historical information because, unlike official documents, they were not written with any historical purpose or intention. Also, their subject matter is frequently about normal day-to-day life on a level too mundane to merit recording in the usual historical primary sources.

Relief depicting the development of the Oral Law as the course of a river. The Oral Law is composed of halakhic (legal) and aggadic (non-legal) contents.

Rashi is thought to have written some 350 responsa, a large number of which were collected from various sources by S. Elfenbein (1943). They give a colorful picture of Jewish life in Champagne, northern France and the Rhine River Valley in the second half of the 11th century. We learn of transactions in land and vineyards, an indication that viniculture was a not uncommon occupation amongst Jews in the area.

One responsum records the case of a Jewess and her son who held a village and the tithe from it "as a feudal reward" for something they had done. Here we have evidence that Jews at the time held land under certain feudal conditions; the amount of land and properly held could be substantial. We learn from another responsum that some Jews held considerable landed property amounting to a least four vineyards and five houses and that the property seemed to have been in the family for some time. In this case, the maker of a will declared, "I do not wish the heritage of my fathers to pass into the hands of aliens." An alien in this context was someone outside the family.

Credit transactions also made an appearance for the first time in an 11th-century responsum. A question had been posed regarding winding up a partnership in which loans had been made to gentiles on trust; the rabbi´s response makes it obvious that Jewish credit to gentiles was accepted and widespread. Rashi took this into consideration in one of his own responsum, saying that it was "indeed the local custom that he who lends money through his friend will allow the middlemen a third or a quarter of a fifth, and Simeon is therefore required to share the interest according to local custom." Rashi's decisions often permit this procedure to be used as a way of avoiding the biblical prohibition of taking interest from other Jews.

Rashi believed the community had a role to play in the regulation of relationships between its members. He approved of a case in which a community had publicly intervened in a quarrel between two families, calling the intervention a communal decree. His stance on community and authority derived from his belief that Jews were responsible for one another.

Rashi also believed that "decisions made by the ancients" could be cancelled in the light of changing circumstances, declaring that communities were entitled to cancel "decisions made by the ancients according to the needs of the time."

One of his most important decisions, based on talmudic precedents, involved the right of converts to return to Judaism: "A Jew who sins is still a Jew." Cited throughout the generations, this ruling is a quiet testimony to the pressure placed on the Jews of the time to accept Christianity (a pressure which increased during the massacres of 1096 after which the majority of Rhineland Jews had either been slaughtered or forcibly converted.) The ruling is also testimony to Rashi's own humanity and understanding for the lot of others.

To round off this brief look at Rashi's decisions: he ruled that the wine of Christians was not to be considered the wine of idolaters. Whether as a wine producer, his ruling was an example of a liberal attitude or simply a sound business decision is a matter for conjecture.

This article is take from the Jewish Heritage Online Magazine