Tosafot

The Tosafot, Tosafos or Tosfot (Hebrew: תוספות) are medieval commentaries on the Talmud. They take the form of critical and explanatory glosses, printed, in almost all Talmud editions, on the outer margin and opposite Rashi's notes.

The authors of the Tosafot are known as Tosafists; for a listing (see List of Tosafists.)

The word tosafot literally means "additions". The reason for the title is a matter of dispute among modern scholars.

Many of them, including Heinrich Graetz, think the glosses are so-called as additions to Rashi's commentary on the Talmud. In fact, the period of the Tosafot began immediately after Rashi had written his commentary; the first tosafists were Rashi's sons-in-law and grandsons, and the Tosafot consist mainly of strictures on Rashi's commentary.

Others, especially Isaac Hirsch Weiss, object that many tosafot — particularly those of Isaiah di Trani — have no reference to Rashi. Weiss, followed by other scholars, asserts that tosafot means additions to the Talmud, that is to say, they are an extension and development of the Talmud. For just as the Gemara is a critical and analytical commentary on the Mishnah, so are the Tosafot critical and analytical glosses on those two parts of the Talmud. Further, the term tosafot was not applied for the first time to the glosses of Rashi's continuators, but to the Tosefta, the additions to the Mishnah compiled by Judah ha-Nasi I. Tosefta is a Babylonian term, which in Jerusalem writings is replaced by tosafot. The Tosafot resemble the Gemara in other respects also, for just as the latter is the work of different schools carried on through a long period, so the former were written at different times and by different schools, and gathered later into one body.

Up to and including Rashi, the Talmudic commentators occupied themselves only with the plain meaning ("peshaṭ") of the text; but after the beginning of the twelfth century the spirit of criticism took possession of the teachers of the Talmud. Thus some of Rashi's continuators, as his sons-in-law and his grandson Samuel ben Meïr (RaSHBaM), while they wrote commentaries on the Talmud after the manner of Rashi's, wrote also glosses on it in a style peculiar to themselves.

The Tosafot do not constitute a continuous commentary, but rather (like the "Dissensiones" to the Roman Code of the first quarter of the twelfth century) deal only with difficult passages of the Talmud. Single sentences are explained by quotations which are taken from other Talmudic treatises and which seem at first glance to have no connection with the sentences in question. On the other hand, sentences which seem to be related and interdependent are separated and embodied in different treatises. The Tosafot can be understood only by those who are well advanced in the study of the Talmud, for the most entangled discussions are treated as though they were simple. Glosses explaining the meaning of a word or containing a grammatical observation are very rare.

The Tosafot may be considered from the point of view of a methodology of the Talmud. The rules are certainly not gathered together in one series, as they are, for instance, in Maimonides' introduction to the Mishnah; they are scattered in various parts, and their number is quite considerable. Neither are they stated in fixed terms; a generally accepted rule is followed by "This is the way of the Talmud" or "The Talmud usually declares." Sometimes the negative expression is found, "This is not the way of the Talmud." A frequently recurring rule is indicated by some such formula as "We find many like this."