Around 220 CE, the Jewish scholar Abba Arikha arrived in Sura city and found no organized religious Jewish community. Arikha ("the Tall") was respected by Gentiles as well as Jews. He began the Sura Academy to support the continuity of Jewish learning and community. He founded the yeshiva in 225, and the word started to spread that Sura was the site of serious Jewish scholarship.
Eventually it had a faculty of 1200 using an impressive campus, some of the remnants of which can still be seen. It had offices for rabbis and deans and classrooms and a garden that grew much of what was consumed by staff and students.
The Pumbedita Academy was founded after the death of Abba Arikha. Judah ben Ezekiel (220 - 299 CE) founded it somewhere in Iraq (the exact location is not known). Judah was so obsessed with learning that he was known to neglect daily prayer in order to study. That discipline for study and a remarkable memory helped him immensely in transmitting teachings to others, and gave Pumbedita a reputation to equal Sura.
While developing the system of learning at Pumbedita, he created Talmudic dialectics, a very critical examination of the subjects in the Talmud. This clinical approach did not please older more traditional students, but younger students embraced it.
Sura and Pumbedita lasted for hundreds of years. During the years 988 - 990, Pumbedita moved from its original location. Jews were migrating to big cities, and the current dean of Pumbedita decided to relocate the yeshiva to Baghdad, whose grandeur and reputation as a city where knowledge was celebrated was well-known. That dean was Hai Gaon, a Renaissance Man before there was a Renaissance, who crossed the boundaries of religion to interact with those of other faiths. Let's talk about him next time.
