a group of Torah Scholars, mainly grandsons and great grandsons of RASHI, who basically formulated and carried forward the Ashkenazic Tradition. They lived mainly in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in Christian Europe, during the time of the Crusades. Their works appear on the traditional “daf,” or page, of the Talmud, opposite the works of the Master Commentator, RASHI, on the other side of the “Daf.” They debated fundamental Torah ideas with RASHI, among themselves and with other “Rishonim.”
Like RASHI, although they lived in tumultuous times, replete with tragedy for many great Jewish communities, such as Worms, Speyer and Mayence, all destroyed by the Crusaders, they wrote their works as if nothing at all was amiss with the world.