The Tosafot to ChapterArvei Pesahim: Identification of the Editor and His Sources / התוספות לפרק ערבי פסחים: זיהוי העורך ומקורותיו

For the large majority of tractate Pesahim, Tosafot Tucheim mention teachers and students known from the Academy of Ri and R. Shimshon of Sens. By contrast, the scholars mentioned in the Tosafot to the last chapter ("Arvei Pesahim") belong to later generations. The Tosafot to Arvei Pesahim quote the scholars of Evreux and R. Yehiel ben Yosef of Paris. The question is, why were the comments of the original Tosafist scholars, from the academy of the Ri, substituted by a later collection of his students' students? One may assume that this action of editing was due to the well-known phenomenon whereby the ends of works in medieval manuscripts were cut off or fell into disrepair. Even copies of Tosafot Sens to Pesahim which we have today are missing the last chapter, and it seems that even the medieval arrangers of Tosafot were subject to that same absence of text. The absence of text of Tosafot of Sens was completed in Tucheim by a later collection of Tosafot commentaries. Scholars have already debated regarding the identification of the author of Tosafot to Arvei Pesahim, and this debate reflects on the very essence of the association between the various parts of Tosafot printed on the pages of Pesahim. Y.N. Epstein argued that the author of Tosafot to Arvei Pesahim who quotes R. Yehiel of Paris is his student, R. Peretz ben Eliyahu of Corbeil, whose teacher's traditions are preserved in his Tosafot. According to Epstein, the chapter Arvei Pesahim taken from the Tosafot of R. Peretz is not related to the Tucheim Tosafot of the rest of the tractate, reflecting a technical combination of an unrelated Tosafot meant to fill in the gap at the end of the tractate. By contrast, E.E. Urbach claimed that the editor who quotes R. Yehiel is another student of his, namely R. Eliezer of Tucheim. Thus, even Arvei Pesahim relates to the Tucheim Tosafot, although, as opposed to the rest of the tractate, the raw material with which the editor worked was the Tosafot of R. Yehiel and not Tosafot of R. Samson of Sens. By identifying new sources, this study proves conclusively Urbach's view that the Tosafot to Arvei Pesahim is an organic part of the Tucheim Tosafot to the tractate. However, as opposed to Urbach, the collection that R. Eliezer of Tucheim worked upon was not the Tosafot of R. Eliyahu, but the Tosafot of R. Peretz. This research study shall demonstrate that the editing and processing work of R. Eliezer on the tractate of Pesahim was applicable to its last chapter as