Beit HaBechirah of the Meiri בית הבחירה למאירי
Thirty-five tractates set out so clearly that the book can be read without the Talmud itself. The manuscript lay in Parma for six hundred years and came to light only in 5680.
Rabbi Menachem HaMeiri of Provence wrote not a line-by-line commentary but an exposition: first the mishnah, then what the discussion came to, whose opinions differ and on what they stand. The course of an argument that leads nowhere he leaves out.
Because of this the Beit HaBechirah is the one medieval work on the Talmud that can be read almost independently of the Talmud itself. He draws in the Jerusalem Talmud as well, and gives historical explanation, which is hardly to be found among his contemporaries.
Thirty-five tractates in all are covered.
Six hundred years of silence. The book was not lost—it simply lay in manuscript, in the Biblioteca Palatina in Parma, and was hardly known. Fragments came through other men's collections: the treatment of Bava Kamma found its way into the Shitah Mekubetzet. The manuscript was rediscovered in 5680, and has been published ever since.
What follows from this. The Meiri took no part in the seven hundred years of conversation that went on after him: neither the Tur, nor the Shulchan Aruch, nor the Acharonim read him. The Chofetz Chaim and Rabbi Soloveitchik met this book as something new. It is the rare case of a Rishon reaching the reader later than an Acharon.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Rishonim
- Beit HaBechirah — the work itself: thirty-five tractates
Scholarship
- Encyclopaedia Judaica, “Meiri, Menahem” — the Parma manuscript and the rediscovery of 1920
Basis: documents and evidence.