Rashi Writing

Until the mid-20th century, the use of Hebrew script in general, and Rashi in particular, was considered an integral part of Ladino (Judeo-Spanish). The Hebrew Rashi script (Rashi Script, כתב רש "י), also known as Sephardic script when handwritten, was developed by Sephardic Jews in Spain and the Arab countries. It owes its name to the acronym of the name of the rabbi and leading commentator on the Talmud, Ravi Solomon Ben Isaac (Troyes of France, 1040-1105).

It was an adaptation of the four-letter script, with variations from the Bible script. Its use was widespread. It was used in typography, in printed and interpretive texts, and in commentaries on the Torah and Talmud to distinguish it from the original text.

It flourished in Europe during the late Middle Ages and experienced a revival with the development of Hebrew printing in the 15th and 16th centuries. It was widely used in Hebrew publications in Italy, Spain and the Ottoman Empire, making it a basic writing system for commentaries on religious texts.

Rashi is not just an ancient writing system, but an important vehicle of Jewish literary and religious tradition. Indicative of the value of this particular script is the opinion of Samuel Saadi Levy, a Ladino journalist in Thessaloniki (1904), that "The day that a single word of Judeo-Spanish is printed in a script other than Rashi or so-called square Hebrew, on that day our language will be dead and buried."

The Rashi writing system remains a valuable tool for the study of classical Hebrew texts and a symbol of the rabbinic hermeneutical tradition.