Bekhor Shorבכור שור
Orléans · 1145
בש
Yosef Bekhor Shor
Yosef Bekhor Shor
1140 CE–1190 CE · Rishonim · Orléans
R. Yosef ben Yitzchak Bekhor Shor (c. 1140-1190) of Orléans was a leading second-generation Tosafist student of Rabbenu Tam and one of the most original peshat commentators in the Ashkenazi tradition. His Torah commentary is notable for its rationalist tendencies — offering naturalistic explanations of miracles where possible, engaging directly with Christian anti-Jewish polemic (his commentary is one of the richest sources for the Jewish-Christian disputational context of 12th-century France), and freely disagreeing with Rashi where peshat warranted it. He was likely also the Tosafist 'Yosef of Orléans' cited extensively in Tosafot.
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Stop 1 of 11140–1190Lived
OrléansאורליאנסFrance — Loire valley
What they did here
Born and lived in Orléans — a French tosafist, exegete and poet. A student of Rabbeinu Tam (with whom he also corresponded), Joseph Kara and the Rashbam, his peshat-focused Torah commentary sought rational explanations for miraculous accounts and is counted among the boldest of the medieval French school.
About Orléans
Orléans, a city on the Loire in north-central France, had a medieval Jewish community and was the home of Rabbi Joseph Bekhor Shor of Orléans, a twelfth-century Tosafist and biblical commentator. A student of Rabbeinu Tam, he was among the last of the northern French exegetes to write a Torah commentary in the plain-sense (peshat) tradition.
The world in their lifetime
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Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Yosef Bekhor Shor’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.