Chizkuniחזקוני
Northern France · 1220
חז
Chizkuni
Chizkuni
1220 CE–1280 CE · Rishonim · Northern France
R. Chizkiyah ben Manoach (c. 1220-1280), the Chizkuni, was a 13th-century French Tosafist whose Torah commentary distills the peshat readings of his predecessors — Rashi, the Tosafists, Rashbam, Bekhor Shor — into a clear running commentary. He deliberately omitted attributions to the rishonim he drew from (stating in his introduction that he wished to avoid the pitfall of preferring authority over truth), which has occasionally made source-identification difficult; modern scholarship continues to uncover his sources. Printed alongside Rashi in many Mikraot Gedolot editions; widely studied for parshanut.
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Stop 1 of 11220–1280Lived
Northern FranceצרפתNorthern France — exact town unrecorded
What they did here
A 13th-century French exegete; the exact town where he lived is not recorded. Around 1240 he composed the Chizkuni, a Torah commentary synthesizing some twenty earlier authorities — among them Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Rashbam and Bekhor Shor — written, he tells us, in honor of his father, who had lost his right hand for his steadfastness in the faith.
About Northern France
Northern France (the regions of Champagne and the Île-de-France) was, from the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries, the heartland of the Tosafist school of Talmudic study, beginning with Rashi of Troyes and continuing through his descendants and disciples. This node represents medieval northern French Jewry broadly; the Torah commentator Rabbi Chizkiyah ben Manoach (the Chizkuni) worked in this milieu in the thirteenth century. The exact town is not specified.
The world in their lifetime
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Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Chizkuni’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.