The city of Troyes in Northern France is commemorating the 900th anniversary of the death of Rabbi Shlomo Itzchaki, best known by the acronym Rashi. Corks of champagne (the region he came from) will pop in celebration of this peerless commentator whose work is at the center of rabbinic scholarship and Jewish learning. “Without Rashi’s commentary, the Talmud would have been a closed book,” said Columbia University Jewish history professor Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, adding that Rashi’s commentary on the Talmud would always be essential.

This historical figure from Troyes is the subject of intense interest. His hometown is known for its charming half-timber houses and tripe sausage called “andouillette.” The city’s fortifications limn the shape of a champagne cork. While attractions in the region nearby include Rheims and its famed cathedral, Troyes has its own towering historical notoriety. A statue, unveiled in the early 1990s, marks the 950th anniversary of Rashi birth; his burial place remains unknown. Some say Rashi died while writing the word “pure” into his commentary of a tractate of the Talmud (Makkot, 19b).

Studying in the German Rhineland towns of Worms and Mainz, Rashi lived during the first crusade. He returned to Troyes at the age of 25, worked as a vintner and founded a yeshiva that grew in fame. Mr. Kraemer said Jewish feminist scholars have noted that Rashi’s daughters may have put on tefillin (phylacteries). Two of Rashi’s grandchildren in particular were famed Talmudists, Samuel (known as “Rashbam”) and Jacob (“Rabbenu Tam”). They and other students were called the Tosafists, who added their own contributions and elaborations. “From what we can tell of Rashi, he welcomed questions,” Mr. Kanarfogel said.

Not much is known about Rashi’s early life, but Rabbi Lincoln recounted one legend about Rashi’s mother being knocked down by runaway horses and shielding her son by pressing herself close to a wall, which miraculously opened.

His straightforward style of commentary explained basic concepts while weaving commentary into the text and finding a balance between literal and Midrashic (story) interpretations. “Rashi doesn’t encumber the text,” said a Jewish history professor at Yeshiva University, Ephraim Kanarfogel, “rather, he makes it much more accessible.” One cannot really study Talmud without having recourse to his commentaries, said Mr. Kanarfogel, who described Rashi’s greatest contribution was opening the Bible and the Talmud to subsequent study and interpretation on many different levels. He “was not the last word” but the indispensable first word that allowed others access to these treasures of Judaism, he said.

“He is universally read,” said Rabbi David Lincoln of Park Avenue Synagogue. “Rashi had the skill to clear the abstruse discussion. Better than anybody else, he got to the point and solved the riddles.”

“Rashi is the most important and primary explicator of the Bible and the Talmud,” said the director of the National Jewish Outreach Program, Rabbi Ephraim Buchwald. Rashi elucidated the esoteric elements in the Talmud, he said, and in his Biblical commentary. “He always looks for the primary meaning of the text,” said New York University chairman of the Hebrew and Judaic studies department, Lawrence Schiffman. “Rashi took the expansionist types of interpretation that exist in Rabbinic literature and extracted from them what he thought was the simple meaning of the text.”

David Kraemer, a professor of Talmud and Rabbinics at Jewish Theological Seminary of America, said Rashi was so important that the very earliest printings of the Talmud contained Rashi’s commentary; if a manuscript is going to have a commentary, it is going to have Rashi, even Sephardic ones, despite Rashi being Ashkenazi (central European).

His work is an indispensable guide. Rabbi Berel Wein, writing in the Jerusalem Post, recalled his teachers in yeshiva comparing Rashi to a mother holding the hand of her child while crossing a busy street. Rabbi Wein co-produced an animated video with Ashley Lazarus and Allan Leicht about Rashi’s life called “Rashi: A Light After the Dark Ages.” Shown on Israeli television, it featured Leonard Nimoy as Rashi.

Mr. Kraemer said Rashi’s masterful commentary enhanced the popularity of books by making them more accessible. While the Talmud was for a more elite audience, Mr. Kraemer said, Rashi intended to popularize the Torah for a broad Jewish audience. Along with Maimonides – whose death was commemorated with its 800th anniversary last year – Mr. Kraemer said they were “the two greatest figures in the history of the formation of Jewish tradition in the Middles Ages.”

Writing in Hebrew with a mixture of Aramaic, Rashi’s masterful brevity sometimes included French words to describe certain things. Mr. Schiffman said Rashi preserved definitions (“glosses”) in Old French, and as a result, he is an important source for the history of the French language.

Early next month, the French Government Tourist Office and the Champagne Regional Tourist Board, under the auspices of the Consul General of France, Francois Delattre, will host a private kick off in New York to commemorate the various upcoming events planned in France. An overview of the region of Champagne and the city of Troyes will be given, and Toni Kamins, author of “The Complete Jewish Guide to France,” will speak on Rashi’s life. The events include an inter-religious conference on May 15-16; an exhibit called “Rashi and the Jews of Troyes during the Middle Ages” beginning June 4; a lecture on “the traces of a Tosafist club in Chateau-Theirry” on June 16; a symposium on Rashi, beginning June 27; and even a theatrical production about Rashi, scheduled for June 29. The French Government Tourist office has also released a “FranceGuide for the Jewish Traveler,” tracing Jewish history in France back more than 2,000 years. In addition, Rashi’s accomplishments can be examined at an exhibit on the printing of the Talmud, currently on view through late August at Yeshiva University Museum at the Center for Jewish History.

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, best known for his translation and commentary on the Talmud, said Rashi’s achievements as a Jewish historical figure were so great that one could say history divides into two periods – before and after him. Rabbi Steinsaltz said a later sage described Rashi simply as “the teacher,” which is appropriate, Mr. Steinsaltz said, because in so many ways, he was the teacher of the entire Jewish people. Rabbi Steinsaltz said another sage likened Rashi to the “twin of the Holy Torah.” Other commentaries may be there, he said, but “whatever approach you take on the Bible or the Talmud, he is there – the book and Rashi.”

It is sometimes marvelous to see how children can understand his commentary on the Bible, Rabbi Steinsaltz said. “Some of our greatest minds took upon themselves the duty” to write on Rashi’s work, so “Rashi can be understood by the smallest children and still be an enigma to the greatest scholars.”