Meiri המאירי
Provençal Talmud commentator, author of «Beit HaBechirah»
Rabbi Menachem ben Shlomo HaMeiri lived in Perpignan in Provence, where Spanish scholarship met the French Tosafist school. His «Beit HaBechirah» is arranged unlike any other commentary. Meiri does not gloss line by line: he takes a topic, states the mishnah, then calmly retells the course of the discussion, cites the views of the Rishonim and derives the law. It is the most readable Talmudic commentary of the Middle Ages, in clear and almost luminous Hebrew.
His manuscripts were nearly lost and returned to study only in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from libraries in Italy and Paris. Today the Beit HaBechirah stands beside Rashi and Tosafot.
His legal innovation is distinctive. The Talmud contains laws about idolaters restricting trade, testimony and trust. Meiri ruled that these applied to ancient nations without moral law, not to «nations bounded by the ways of religion» — the Christians and Muslims of his own time. This is not censorship but a consistent position, repeated hundreds of times.
He also defended the study of philosophy against the ban proclaimed by the Rashba.