Rav Yosef Kara

Mahari Kara, an apparent student of Rashi, maintained both a loyalty to and at the same time a strong independence of Rashi.

Mahari Kara’s exegetical principals include:

• Loyalty to the peshat, much more so than Rashi, feeling no obligation to cite any derash at all. In this, his commentary may be considered trailblazing. 
• A great sensitivity to literary technique and style including lashon nofel al lashon, alliteration, paronomasia, rhythm and meter, literary structure, and connective associations.
• He delineates exegetical principles that may be applied elsewhere in Tanakh including pre-emption and parallelism.  

Mahari Kara makes two basic assumptions about peshat and derash:

• Even the Sages, who wrote the midrashim, believed that peshat is the essence.  The aim of derash is only for ethical purposes, and not to provide an explanation missing in Tanakh.
• Tanakh does not require external facts in order to explain it; it cannot be that the verse speaks ambiguously and relies on Midrashic material in order to be understood.