Who was Rashi?
Rashi is the acronym of Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, who lived in Troyes, France, from 1040 to 1105. His commentary has accompanied the text of the Torah and the Talmud for almost a thousand years and is, for many, the first doorway into learning.
A life devoted to the text
Rashi studied in the yeshivot of the Rhineland, in Mainz and Worms, and returned to Troyes, where he taught and kept vineyards. He commented on almost all of Tanach and almost all of the Talmud Bavli. His grandsons, among them the Rashbam and Rabbeinu Tam, gave rise to the Tosafists, whose comments are printed beside his on every page of the Talmud.
The first dated printed Hebrew book is Rashi's commentary on the Torah, printed in Reggio di Calabria in 1475. The semi-cursive typeface used for commentaries became known as “Rashi script”.
Peshuto shel mikra: the plain meaning
Rashi states his purpose at Bereshit 3:8: “I have come only for the plain meaning of the verse” and for the midrash that clarifies it. He asks what an attentive reader would find strange (an extra word, an unexpected order, a repetition) and answers in a few lines, often with a source from the sages.
That is why studying Rashi teaches you how to read: each comment reveals a question hidden in the text. The Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chayim 285:2) allows someone reviewing the weekly parashah to study Rashi in place of the targum.
Rashi at AutoParashah
Each parashah analysis at AutoParashah is organized around “Rashi axes”: his comments that turn the reading, because they resolve a tension in the text that changes the meaning of the whole portion. The methodology page explains how those axes are chosen.