Talmudic Academies

In southern Iraq, in an area referred to as Babylonia in Jewish lore, there were two Talmudic academies (yeshiva) that for a time were the source of all important Torah decrees. They were Sura and Pumbedita.

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.

Nahshon ben Zadok

One of the men who studied the world and the Torah to make sure the Jewish calendar was accurate was Nahshon ben Zadok. He flourished in the Gaonim Era, from 589 CE to 1038 CE (Hebrew years 4349 - 4798). The Gaonim ("pride" or "splendor" but more recently translated "genius") were the heads of the great Talmudic schools Sura and Pumbedita. We do not have many dates for Nahshon, but from 874 - 882 CE he was head of the Sura Academy in southern Iraq, what Jewish texts call Babylonia. 

Nahshon was a scholar, producing a dictionary of sorts with explanations of difficult words found in the Talmud. He did not, however, list them in alphabetical order as some others did. Instead, he wrote them down in the order in which they appear, making them more like footnotes.

Looking at the calendar, he realized that there was a cycle of 247 years, after which the order of weekdays on which any particular festival would fall repeats. He created 14 tables that show this cycle.

There are some writings that are ascribed to him, although we do not know for certain about some of them. One on ritual slaughtering, the Re'umah, is usually said to be his, but authorship cannot be proven. The writings that are believed to be his are often in Aramaic, but some are in Hebrew. His writings do not always agree with prior or subsequent scholars, but he was respected enough in his time to be made head of Sura.

The illustration is a carving of one of the Gaonim teaching at the Sura Academy. Sura and Pumbedita Academies were two chief sources of Talmudic scholarship for centuries, and we will talk about them more tomorrow.