Hakirah: investigating a journal

At the end of this post there's a link to my Facebook page from which you can access my response essay published in the most recent edition of the Hakirah journal. Their previous volume featured a highly disappointing critique of one of the later chapters (or more accurately half-chapters) of Talmud Reclaimed on the subject of the contrasting halachic methodology of the Geonim and Sephardi and Ashkenazi Rishonim. It is unfortunate that they chose not to show me the critique before publishing which would have allowed me to highlight its severe shortcomings.

First, it was clear that the reviewer had not read much of the relevant Talmud Reclaimed chapter, since he raised questions which were comprehensively addressed at the chapter’s conclusion. Secondly, while using some very strong and sarcastic language to dismiss the theory that I advanced, his critique entirely ignored the primary sources which I cited in support. Highly accepted and mainstream figures such as Rabbi Yosef Karo, Migdal Oz, Yad Malakhi, the Maharshal and Netziv all made similar points about the respective methodologies of Sepharad and Ashkenaz. They were all cited alongside academic scholars in my chapter; not a single one of these sources was addressed by the reviewer who nevertheless proceeded to accuse me of attempting to “reclaim the Talmud from its interpreters of the last eight hundred years”.

My essay is attached – I hope that members of this group enjoy reading it. It includes excerpts from a very supportive email that Professor Robert Brody, an expert in the field, wrote to me after reading the review.

I have just discovered that Hakirah chose to print another response to my essay alongside what I wrote. I have asked them for a copy of this new response and look forward to the chance to read it when they have the opportunity to send it to me.

For comments and discussion of this post on Facebook, click here.

Talmudic scholarship: when and why was the Vilna text canonized?

One of the primary themes of Talmud Reclaimed is the exploration of how and why the study of Talmud has evolved over the 1500 or so years which have elapsed since its composition. Some changes – such as the increased focus on abstract conceptual analysis and the diminishing practice of determining practical halacha directly from the Talmud – are relatively easy to track historically and explain in religious terms. Far more difficult is to understand how rabbinic Talmud study has come to disregard girsaot – variant Talmudic manuscripts – and essentially canonize the version of the text chosen in the 16th century Bomberg edition and later popularized by the Vilna Shas.

The examination of manuscripts is an area of expertise which attempts to identify the most accurate version of the original Talmudic teachings. This undertaking involves searching for variant manuscript texts of parallel passages and the making of careful comparisons between their language in order to identify what may very well be evidence of copyist errors or inserted commentary. To a great extent, this expertise and practice is generally found in the halls of academia rather than Yeshivot – but why is this the case?

While at first glance this form of forensic analysis would seem to be very distant from Yeshiva-style Talmudics, Talmud Reclaimed demonstrates how traditional commentators from the medieval era were not only aware of the potentialities of manuscript analysis, but enthusiastically embraced and pursued it. From Sherira Gaon to Rashi, Rambam to the Ba’alei Tosafot, traditional Talmudic commentators made frequent reference to their own dealings with manuscript analysis and redaction of the Talmud within their substantive commentaries.

Sherira Gaon, Ritva and Ramban, for example, all identified significant passages of Talmud as having been later insertions of scribes. If one accepts the principle that the Talmud bears particular authority because of the status of Ravina and Rav Ashi, it becomes crucial to determine which parts of the Talmud were not included by them but were subsequently added. For this reason, the pursuit of accurate manuscripts was a matter of great importance to Rambam, who made considerable efforts to identify later insertions and scribal errors, and who changed some of his earlier explanations and rulings as a result of his findings.

In his codification of the laws governing the repayment of loans, Rambam reveals that [t]here are versions of the Talmud which state that when a person tells a colleague:

"Do not repay [a loan] unless witnesses are present" and the borrower claims: "I fulfilled the stipulation and repaid you in the presence of so-and-so and so-and-so, but they have journeyed overseas or died," his word is not accepted. This is a scribal error. For this reason, the halachic authorities erred because of those texts. I have researched ancient versions of the text and I found that they state that the borrower's word is accepted. In Egypt, a portion of an ancient text of the Talmud written on parchment, as was the custom in the era approximately 500 years before the present era, came to my possession. I found two versions of this law among those parchments. Both state: "If he claims: 'I fulfilled the stipulation and repaid you in the presence of so-and-so and so-and-so, but they have journeyed overseas or died,' his word is accepted."…Although these texts have been carefully edited, this appears to be the ruling based on the judgment of the Talmud.” [Hilchot Malveh Veloveh 15:2]

Several further examples of legal rulings and interpretations being revisited as a result of manuscript analysis are discussed in the chapter.

Having shown not only the legitimacy – but even the desirability – of careful examination of Talmudic manuscripts, we are left with the question of why it has been so broadly neglected in traditional circles in the modern era.

Talmud Reclaimed argues that an unintended consequence of the codification and popularization of the Shulchan Aruch is that modern rabbinic scholarship of the oral law has increasingly gravitated into two categories: developing and clarifying halachic rulings and the more abstract “Lomdus” analysis which reached its most powerful expression with Brisk. While both of these schools of contemporary Yeshiva scholarship are ultimately built upon the Talmud, they are clear departures from the widespread medieval commentaries which focused primarily upon the peshat – plain meaning – of the Talmud, and pursued the clarification of its laws and underlying principles only as a secondary project. For this reason, rabbinic interest in girsaot and the skills necessary for their clarification have gradually been lost to the Yeshiva world.

The increasingly popular Daf Yomi project, while focusing around the text of the Talmud, typically engages with it in a more superficial manner, and if anything has intensified the modern embrace of the text, pagination and format of the Vilna Shas to the extent that it has effectively been canonized in popular thought. Perhaps the strongest authoritative endorsement of this canonization of the Vilna Shas can be found in the words of the Chazon Ish who argued that divine providence had guided the version of Talmud used by earlier sages and that it is inconceivable that they relied on a mistaken manuscript based on a scribal error (Kovetz Iggrot, Letter #32). Ironically this view itself appears to represent a significant departure from the girsaot methodologies of the earlier sages which it seeks to revere.

Rabbi Yechiel Ya’akov Weinberg lamented how, in contrast to medieval scholars who proactively researched manuscripts and were willing to highlight apparent mistakes and propose amendments, later scholars abstained from this practice. There are however exceptions. Even as late as the close of the nineteenth century we find that the analysis of Rabbi Raphael Rabinowitz’s Dikdukei Soferim– a work which lists variants between the printed edition and other manuscripts – received glowing approbations from leading rabbis of his generation. This positive response suggests that, while neglected, the discipline remained a valued pursuit within some parts of the traditional camp. Be that as it may, the prevailing attitude to manuscript authentication in the modern era is that this practice is unessential and perhaps even a distraction from primary Talmud study.

While the text of the Vilna Shas may have become hallowed in the popular perception, scholars now have access to an ever-increasing array of manuscripts, such as fragments from the Cairo Genizah, the Munich Manuscript and Yemenite sources, none of which were available to those who compiled the Bomberg edition of the Talmud. How far should these hitherto unavailable manuscripts be explored?

For traditional Talmudists who face this challenge today, it is a question of priority rather than legitimacy. As Professor Daniel Sperber argues:

“These requirements necessitate the competence in philological and lexicographical disciplines, rarely to be found in the standard yeshivah “bohur” (student). Perhaps the advantages to be gained from such long and hard-won knowledge are so marginal that the investment in them is not considered worthwhile. But is the process of their mastery to be viewed as bitul Torah? If it is intended to deepen one’s understanding of Torah, surely it comes within the category of “amala shel Torah”, the toil and labor of Torah!”

Priority in traditional halls of study is likely to continue to be placed on substantive study of Talmudic law and the wisdom that derives from it. The determination of the correct Talmudic text should certainly not be ignored. Instead, advised Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein

“the beit midrash can reap benefits from work now largely initiated on the outside”.

This would seem to imply that the process of manuscript identification plays a secondary, supporting, role to standard Talmud and can therefore be happily delegated to academic scholars who are well trained in the necessary skills.

For more about Talmud Reclaimed: An Ancient Text in the Modern Era visit www.TalmudReclaimed.com .

For comments and discussion of this post on Facebook, click here.

Rebellious sons and a radical rabbinic tradition

Near the start of yesterday’s Torah reading we find the strange commandment of ben sorer umoreh (wayward and rebellious son), the rabbinic interpretation of which serves only to intensify its perplexity:

If one of his parents had a hand cut off, or was lame, mute, blind or deaf, he cannot become a “wayward and rebellious son”, because it says “his father and mother shall take hold of him”—not those with a hand cut off; “and bring him out”—not parents who are lame; “and they shall say”—and not parents who are mute; “this our son”—and not parents who are blind; “he will not obey our voice”—and not parents who are deaf.

Talmud Reclaimed explores this extremely narrow line of interpretation, contrasting it with commandments elsewhere in the parashah which are interpreted considerably more expansively. Consider this passage of the hungry vineyard worker (a law I was privileged to observe for the first time while volunteering last week!):

“How do we know it of all other things? We infer them from the vineyard: just as regarding the vineyard its produce grows from the earth, and once it is ripe the labourer may eat of it, so too everything which grows from the soil and is ripe, the labourer may eat from…”

It seems surprising that the same interpretative tradition that renders seemingly simple verbs such as holding, bringing and speaking to exclude certain categories of parent, can also read vineyard and grapes to include anything that grows from the ground. Other commandments in the parashah such as not muzzling an ox on the threshing floor and not ploughing with a combination of donkey and ox are similarly expanded to apply to all members of the animal kingdom (including fish!).

Are we to assume that, as the Malbim claims, the sages were fully engaged in an exercise of drawing delicate hints and linguistic inferences from the biblical text in order to construct midrashic meaning? Alternatively were they basing their midrash on received traditions (Rabbi D. Z. Hoffman) or was it merely a means through which the Sanhedrin legislated new details of biblical law (Rabbi J. Faur)? Talmud Reclaimed probes the relative strengths and weaknesses of all these approaches and attempts to plot a middle path of compromise between them.

In addition to such efforts to discover the interpretative methodology of our sages, the law of the ben sorer umoreh contains a further – particularly peculiar – interpretive idiosyncrasy which Judaism Reclaimed explores. Was this case of ben sorer umoreh a law that could ever have had practical application?

The Gemara in Sanhedrin (71a) presents a fascinating Tannaitic discussion regarding ben sorer umoreh and ir hanidachat (idolatrous city): Rabbi Yehudah derives from a close interpretation of the relevant verses (and his colleague R' Shimon from logic) that these laws can have no practical application. If so why do they feature in the Torah? The answer is “doresh umekabel s'char” (study and receive a reward). Rabbi Yonatan emphatically disagrees with his colleagues: not only do these laws have practical application but, he reports, he has personally sat upon the grave of an executed youth.

This apparent dispute is very strange. Rabbi Yonatan and the other Tannaim were contemporaries who all studied under Rabbi Akiva. On the assumption that the Sanhedrin's destruction of a whole city or the judicial execution of a child would have been remarkable and therefore well-known events, it is extremely unlikely that only Rabbi Yonatan would have known of them, even if the Tannaim in question lived some time after the Sanhedrin had ceased to rule in capital cases. Even more strangely, the Gemara and commentaries do not question the source of this Tannaitic argument. Does Rabbi Yonatan reject the textual interpretation and logical deduction made by his contemporaries in order to render these cases possible?

One solution is offered by Rabbeinu Bachaye, who suggests that Rabbi Yonatan may not be referring to a ben sorer umoreh or ir hanidachat that was actually tried by the Sanhedrin. Another Talmudic passage teaches a principle that, when the death penalty cannot be imposed, the Heavenly Court may arrange for it to be carried out in other ways. Rabbi Yonatan therefore may not be arguing with the teaching of his colleagues who maintained that the legal requirements for ben sorer umoreh rendered the case impossible for the Sanhedrin to implement. He is simply adding that, despite this impossibility, the ben sorer umoreh and ir hanidachat may still be subject to a Divine decree. It is such a Divine decree which Rabbi Yonatan claims to have caused the early death of the ‘ben sorer umoreh’ whose grave he sat upon.

If this understanding is correct, it would appear that we have an agreed upon transmitted tradition that ben sorer umoreh – in contrast to other commandments in the parashah which are interpreted expansively – must be read so narrowly so as to prevent it from ever occurring.

But what would really be the point of such an exercise? Are there not plenty of other biblical verses which could serve as a basis for more practical rabbinic midrash – why have a law on the biblical books which was never intended to be applied? Rabbi S. R. Hirsch, implicitly addressing this question, identifies a swathe of ethical lessons and pearls of parental guidance that can be gleaned from these verses and their midrash.

A more recent answer from a historical perspective was suggested by Professor Moshe Halbertal. Halbertal argues that the Torah’s primary function with this law (perhaps alongside others in the parashah) was to prevent the father and mother of the young delinquent from taking the law into their own hands and performing some form of “honour killing”. Instead of this apparently accepted ancient practice, the father and mother are instructed to “bring their son to the city elders and the gates” for the matter to be dealt with by a proper court. A court which, it would seem, has a longstanding tradition to interpret the verses sufficiently narrowly so as to avoid handing the wayward and rebellious youth a death sentence.

For more details visit www.TalmudReclaimed.com

First posted on Facebook yesterday, here.

Baba Kama: integrating halacha and Talmudic wisdom

One chapter of Talmud Reclaimed explores the complex relationship in Talmud study between the twin goals of determining practical halacha on the one hand and internalising Talmudic wisdom on the other. The chapter demonstrates how what was once an integrated and mutually beneficial approach to Talmud study has become increasingly bifurcated in recent centuries.

The pages which are currently being studied in the Daf Yomi cycle provide perfect examples of how the Talmud combines these two key tasks within its investigations and debates, which seek to clarify not only the practical laws which govern various forms of damage, but also their underlying conceptual characteristics. Tomorrow’s daf analyses aish – the heading of liability which governs damage to property caused by fire (or other wind-borne items that can inflict harm). The Torah imposes basic liability on a person who is responsible for a fire which causes damage to the property of another:

If a fire goes forth and finds thorns, and a stack of grain or standing grain or the field be consumed, the one who ignited the fire shall surely pay

Not satisfied with stating the practical laws which emerge from this verse and deriving the finer details of this form of liability, the Gemara presents a dispute between two early Amoraim from the Land of Israel which revolves around its underlying nature.

Liability for aish, explains Rabbi Yochanan, is mishum chitzav: belonging to the category of obligations that are imposed upon an individual by virtue of that person’s own act. Thus, in the same way as one is personally culpable for damage done by an arrow that he shoots, so too is the harm that results from a fire attributed directly to the person who negligently permitted it to spread into a neighbour’s property. 

A second opinion, that of Resh Lakish, considers instead that aish mishum mamono: liability for permitting a fire to spread out of control is more akin to failing to prevent one’s animals from causing damage to another person’s property. According to this opinion, one is not personally liable for fire damage, but only vicariously liable as owner of the property. The Talmud demonstrates that neither category is a perfect fit. The comparison of fire to an arrow is tenuous, since the damage that an arrow inflicts is caused directly by the human force which propelled it while a fire damages by burning rather than through human energy. Likewise, the comparison with damage inflicted by one’s property is challenged since, unlike livestock, fire is not considered to be something that one can acquire and own.

Despite acknowledging the substantial difficulties involved in fitting aish into either of these pre-existing categories of liability, the Talmud, is not prepared simply to record and clarify the law of fire as requiring compensation by the person who is responsible for its damage. Rather it insists that this apparently free-standing biblical law be conceptualised and then categorised in such a manner as to conform with broader principles – even if this requires an inelegant extension of the existing chitzov or mamono precedents.

This sort of attempt to analyse the underlying nature of laws and then to arrange them accordingly is one of the basic techniques that Brisk would later develop and popularise. At the conclusion of our passage from Baba Kama we even find one opinion adopting a trademark Brisk maneouvre of trei dinei, suggesting that liability for fire contains features of both chitzav and mamono, each one explaining legal details of aish that the other cannot.

Moving to a second example, which was studied in the daf earlier this week, it would seem that later Amoraim go out of their way to demonstrate the extent to which Jewish law applies its analytical principles consistently throughout the Talmud, deliberately clarifying practical laws on the basis of non-practical precedents:

Rava said: Whatever causes ritual contamination in [the activities of] a zav will in the case of damage involve full payment, whereas that which in [the activities of] a zav would not cause ritual contamination, will in the case-of damage involve only half damages.

The laws that determine the situations in which a zav causes defilement distinguish between scenarios where he was in physical contact with an object or person, and thereby contaminates it, and those where he throws an object and causes it to hit another. In this latter case, even though his force (kocho) makes an impact upon the second object, he does not cause it to become defiled. A zav can only transfer contamination through actual physical contact – even if this contact is quite remote, as occurs when the wagon in which he is sitting runs over an object. In the passage quoted above, Rava teaches that the laws of damages similarly distinguish between cases in which one’s animal causes damage by means of direct contact with the damaged object (where full compensation is payable) and where it causes a pebble to launch and thereby cause damage (where only partial compensation must be paid).

A parallel passage in Avodah Zarah (60b) sees Rav Ashi use the very same legal framework that governs the zav as a means of explaining the laws of yayin nesech – wine which, having been touched by an idolator, thereby becomes prohibited. Rav Ashi teaches that any wine with which an idolator comes into contact, even remotely, is subject to this prohibition. By applying the analogous case of the laws relating to the zav, he excludes from the scope of the prohibition a situation in which an object is thrown at the wine by an idolator. Significantly, the laws in these two highly practical areas of law are not taught independently. Rather, the later Amoraim identified Tannaitic precedent for how Jewish law defines the concepts of contact and force, even though that precedent is from an area of law which was no longer of practical concern even in the Talmudic era.

In building the laws of damages and the permissibility of certain wines upon a foundation of remote laws of ritual contamination, Rava and Rav Ashi can be seen as conveying a clear message: that the Talmud and its laws are one interrelated organic body which share the same underlying conceptual principles. Not only the commandment of Torah study but also the process of properly comprehending and determining practical law therefore require familiarity and expertise in all areas of the Talmud, not merely those of obvious practical relevance to contemporary Jewish society.

For more information visit www.TalmudReclaimed.com

First posted on Facebook 23 November 2023, here.

A time to light? Are we authorised to amend Talmudic law?

Visitors to Jerusalem typically react with equal measures of frustration and endearment at its unique charms and idiosyncrasies. One local custom which pertains specifically to Chanukah relates to the time of lighting; while the majority of the Jewish world lights Chanuka candles at nightfall, many Jerusalemites follow the position of the Gra and therefore start lighting immediately at sunset – approximately half an hour earlier.

As I show in my new Talmud Reclaimed, what might at first glance be regarded as a minor dispute in fact embodies two different legal philosophies and methodologies which separated leading medieval Jewish Halachists.

This dispute regarding the latest time for performing the commandment of lighting the Chanukah lights provides a perfect example of the different approaches taken by the Maimonidean and Tosafist schools to extrapolating Jewish law from Talmudic sources. Chapter 6 of Talmud Reclaimed explores these differences in detail, with Rambam, Rif and the Geonim typically relying on a stricter and more literal reading of Talmudic sources in contrast to the relatively freer approach of the Tosafot who permit themselves to incorporate more of their own rationalisations into the halachic process. The case study below is based upon an accompanying Appendix which explores 30 relevant case studies.

The Talmud (Shabbat 21b) states that the time for lighting is from sunset until the time that people have left the marketplace. Rif and Rambam take the duration of this window of fulfilment of the commandment to be approximately half an hour. Once this time has elapsed, the Talmud tells us, there is no longer an obligation to light (and, as a corollary, any blessing over the lights after this time may be biblically prohibited as a berachah levatalah,a blessing in vain).

Rambam records this Talmudic conclusion into his laws of Chanukah (4:5):

Should one forget, or even if one purposely did not light at sunset, one may light afterwards until there are no longer any passers-by in the marketplace. How long a duration of time is this? Approximately half an hour or slightly more than that. Should this time pass, one should not kindle the lights.

Tosafot however, take a very different approach to this law, assessing how it should apply within the context of the realities of post-Talmudic Jewish life. Since the Jewish people went into exile following the destruction of the Second Temple, the commandment of Chanukah lights has largely been performed indoors for the benefit of the members of the household. Accordingly, Tosafot understand, there is no longer any reason to limit the time of lighting to when passers-by can see them.

Rambam’s strict methodology of recording simple Talmudic conclusions does not permit him to make this innovative alteration to the Talmudic rule, even if he thought it logical to do so. Like Rif before him, Rambam interprets the Talmud’s phrase “until there are no longer passers-by in the marketplace” to represent a specific measure of time after sunset rather than making the time span for fulfilling the commandment practically dependent on the actual presence of passers-by by to witness the lights. In this he is supported by the use of the identical phrase elsewhere in the Talmud (Menachot 36a), regarding the law of wearing tefillin after sunset – a commandment which is wholly unconnected to the publicising of a miracle to passers-by. The Talmud’s specification that the commandment must be fulfilled during the half-hour following sunset may instead be explained as requiring a time that is dark enough for the lights to be noticed, but not so dark that they can be mistaken for regular night-time lights (see Yerei’im and Maharam MiRottenberg).

Talmud Reclaimed argues that the vast contrast in the methodologies and legal philosophy of these schools of medieval scholars is the primary cause of varying halachic practices between Ashkenazim and Sephardim to this very day.

Ironically however when it comes to Chanuka lighting times in Jerusalem, it is the Ashkenaz communities who are most likely to adopt the stricter Talmudic reading of Rambam and Rif to light at the earlier time, while Sephardim follow the more flexible Tosafist approach. This is because Jerusalem custom is in line with the Gra (who was often more Maimonidean in his halachic methodology), while the majority of Sephardim follow the Shulchan Aruch’s ruling which embraces a later time for lighting.

For more information about Talmud Reclaimed: An Ancient Text in the Modern Era visit www.TalmudReclaimed.com.

First posted on Facebook 10 December 2023, here.

Why does Talmud Bavli enjoy halachic supremacy over Yerushalmi?

The Babylonian Talmud has enthralled and frustrated millions of dedicated students since first being published in 6th century Sura. Its apparently chaotic and challenging accounts of rabbinic debates over Jewish law have long formed the primary resource for subsequent scholars seeking to determine halachic rules and principles.

Often overlooked, however, is the Bavli’s older sibling compiled over a century earlier in the land of Israel. As Talmud Reclaimed explores, standard halachic tradition has long been based on the principle of the supremacy and binding nature of legal conclusions of the Babylonian Talmud – even if there are significant variations in the methodologies of how such conclusions are to be determined and implemented. While the Yerushalmi has not traditionally been accorded the same binding authority as the Bavli, neither has it been totally ignored and absent from the halachic process – even those who profess loyalty to the Bavli can sometimes be seen to have relied on the Yerushalmi too.

The uncertain status of the Yerushalmi and its mysterious overshadowing by the Bavli can be traced back to its earliest years. While its authorship is widely attributed to the first generation Amora, Rabbi Yochanan, what exactly was its authority? Was it approved by majority or collective of Palestinian scholars? Might it even have been approved by the Sanhedrin which was still sitting, albeit in limited and persecuted form, in the Land of Israel?

What is fascinating to note is that, while the Babylonian Talmud records numerous Palestinian voices and traditions within its pages and accords them great respect – often elevating their interpretations and traditions over those of its own sages – no mention is made at all of the existence of a Talmud from the Land of Israel. Given the great reverence with which the Bavli treats Rabbi Yochanan, the author of the Yerushalmi, why does it omit mention of his magnum opus? It is difficult to imagine that Babylonian rabbis were entirely unaware of this work.

One theory that has occurred to me is that it is actually inaccurate to refer to our Talmud as “Babylonian”. It is not only that Rabbi Yochanan is revered in the Bavli – he is one of its most frequent contributors. Together with Reish Lakish and other Amoraim from the Land of Israel, he ensures that there is a strong Palestinian voice and influence in almost every major discussion within the Bavli.

An important shift took place within the Talmudic world of Bavel during its 3-4th generation, as intense persecution shuttered the academies and courts within the Land of Israel sending its revered rabbis and considerable scholarship into Babylonian exile. This shift meant that fourth generation Babylonian sages, such as Abaye and Rava, now had the benefit of a vast array of traditions and interpretations that had not been available to their predecessors. As a result of this new information, a principle of halacha kebatra’i (law follows the latter authority) was introduced. Also from this generation, the Bavli no longer links rabbinic teachings back to earlier generations of Babylonian scholars as it did previously (e.g. Amar Rav Yehuda amar Rav) – seemingly because the pool of scholarship and traditions now meant that later generations were standing on the shoulders not only of their Babylonian predecessors, but of those of their Palestinian counterparts too.

In short, the later generations of Babylonian Amoraim, from Abaye and Rava through to Ravina and Rav Ashi who compiled the Talmud, represented the fruits of a joint tradition from Bavel and Eretz Yisrael. They sought to weave together and tease out the most authoritative, logical and practical traditions and interpretations and formalise them within the Babylonian Talmud. If this is true, it is not that the Yerushalmi was ignored – anymore than Rav and Shmuel were ignored. But that they were component parts of what was to become an all-encompassing compilation of the Oral Tradition.

Sherirah Gaon accords binding authority to the rulings of the Babylonian Talmud on account of the supremacy of Rav Ashi’s academy having been accepted by all other rival academies, an acceptance which Rav Elchanan Wasserman (among others) understands to have given it a quasi-Sanhedrin status. If we are correct in viewing the Yerushalmi as having been subsumed within Babylonian scholarship then it is far easier to deem Ravina and Rav Ashi’s Court to have represented some kind of National Rabbinic Authority. Independent historical sources from this era are hard to come by (some are analysed in Talmud Reclaimed), but it seems reasonable to suggest that at Rav Ashi’s time there was scant serious scholarship outside of Bavel which could challenge his authority.

By the time we reach the Geonic period we see a resurgence of Jewish communities and scholarship in the Land of Israel, and evidence of strong clashes between them and their Babylonian counterparts. While many of the divergences between Babylonian and Palestinian practice were limited to legitimate differences in minhag (such as prayer liturgy and triennial cycle of Torah reading), we also find disputes over halachic matters such as the observance of second day of Rosh Hashanah. The most high-profile and threatening “rebellion” against Babylonian authority came with an attempt to make significant changes to the Jewish calendar – an attempt which was forcefully defeated by Saadiah Gaon.

Ultimately, even Rambam and Rif, two powerful halachic authorities who prided themselves on their links to Babylonian Geonim, were openly prepared to draw upon Yerushalmi interpretations as long as these were not explicitly contradicted by later rulings of the Bavli. As the Rif stated at the end of his commentary to Eruvin, the reason for this is halacha kebatra’i. As with the teachings of early Babylonian Amoraim, the combined Yerushalmi-Bavli tradition woven together by Abaye and Rava through to Rav Ashi was taken to be superior to each of its individual component parts. A truly national Talmud.

For more information visit www.TalmudReclaimed.com

First posted on Facebook 24 December 2023, here.