Rabbi Menachem HaMeiri and the Beit HaBechirah

Thirteenth-century Provence was a crossroads: books arrived from Muslim Spain and from the Ashkenazi academies, translators worked from Arabic into Hebrew, and the controversy over Maimonides' philosophy raged. Rabbi Menachem ben Shlomo HaMeiri of Perpignan (5009–5075) grew up in that world and wrote the work known as Beit HaBechirah, 'the House of Choosing.'

His method resembles neither Rashi nor the Tosafot. He does not comment line by line: he takes a talmudic passage whole and restates it in his own words — the settled law first, then the reasoning, then the views of earlier authorities, whom he names not personally but by description: 'the great commentators,' 'the sages of Narbonne.' His Hebrew is unusually clear and even, almost free of Aramaic. He also wrote Chibbur HaTeshuvah, a large work on repentance and fasting, and Kiryat Sefer on the writing of Torah scrolls.

His most famous innovation is a legal distinction. He restricts the Talmud's restrictions concerning non-Jews to the ancient pagans 'who had no religion,' and consistently exempts 'nations bound by the ways of religion' — Christians and Muslims living under moral law. In practice this meant equality in matters of property and life.

The book's fate is remarkable: the manuscript nearly disappeared and was recovered and published only centuries later, after which Meiri became one of the most cited Rishonim.