Map showing Jewish cemetery in Troyes
Has a nine-hundred-year-old mystery finally been resolved? Between the pages of an ancient manuscript in the Oxford library, an ancient and very clear source was discovered, testifying explicitly that the Master of Jewry, Rabbenu Shlomo Yitzchaki, Rashi HaKodosh, is buried in Troyes in France, near the graves of his ancestors. Alongside this discovery, additional testimonies from various French archives such as maps indicating the presence of a Jewish cemetery in the city, and other findings of the location serve to confirm veracity of the site.
Rashi was born in Troyes in 4800 (1040 C.E.). In his youth, he went to study in yeshivos in Germany and upon his return, disseminated Torah from his own yeshiva, where he wrote his commentaries on the Torah and the Talmud until his passing, on the 29th of Tammuz, 4865, 921 years ago, as is also documented in the colophone of an ancient manuscript of his commentary on Torah, that he actually passed away in the 65th year of life.
At the end of the period of the Rishonim, with the Jewish expulsion from France in 4154 (1394), the tombstones of the Jewish cemetery in Troyes were uprooted and there was no Jewish presence in Troyes for many centuries. French expatriates had a tradition that Rashi was indeed buried in his city, but in the course of centuries, rumors circulated that he was buried in Prague or in Worms. These rumors did not originate from reliable sources and no such rumors were verified in those communities. However, they were sufficient to cast doubt. Historians became accustomed to say that "his burial site was not known."
The discovery dawned upon the public during preparations of a pilgrimage trip organized for students of the Beis Yisroel Yeshiva of Vishnitz in London to pray at the graves of French Rishonim, a tour headed by HaRav Levi Yitzchok Hager, son of the London Vishnitzer Admor, and the grandson and right-hand-man of the Admor of Kaliv.
In the course of the initial research, which included the Oxford library, a manuscript of lineage of French sages, written in France at the end of the fifth millennium (1240), only a few generations after Rashi, was discovered. This was written at the time when the Jewish community and its cemetery were still intact. Part of this document is quoted in the responsa of the Maharshal (siman 29), however, here, it was found in its entirety. It is difficult to decipher, and even researchers who studied it in the past, were unaware of the great discovery hidden in one single line which reads, "In the year 4865 the light of Israel was extinguished, and the garland fell. And he was buried with his forefathers in Troyes."
