Eretz-Israel 009

45:
Towards the end of the last shiur we began looking at a passage in the Gemara [Sanhedrin 5a-b] which shows how the sages of the Babylonian diaspora were seeking to equate their halakhic standing with that of the sages of Eretz-Israel. We noted that the ruling of the mishnah is that civil disputes must be tried before a court of arbitration that consists of three arbitrators – two of whom could be lay people. However, a licenced sage could try such cases by himself with no associates. Of course, in the discussion in the Gemara this prompts the question not only who can issue such a licence but also what is the nature of this licence.

46:
A licence to judge civil disputes as a sole arbitrator was only issued to a generally recognized expert. In Eretz-Israel, of course, one's expertise was recognised by the title 'Rabbi' which had been accorded by the President and his Sanhedrin. Anyone who had received semikhah [ordination] from the Sanhedrin could be granted such a licence by the President of the Sanhedrin, at his discretion. Since, as we have already seen, the sages of Eretz-Israel zealously guarded the right to grant semikhah and would not permit that right to be exercised outside Eretz-Israel, this would make it nigh impossible for the sages of Babylon to receive such a licence. They circumvented this restriction by according the right to issue such a licence to the Exilarch.

47:
The exilarch was the lay leader of Babylonian Jewry. We have already seen that in 597 BCE the young king Yehoyakhin of Judah was exiled together with his government to Babylon where he was held in regal imprisonment for more than 36 years. When the time came eventually for the Jews to return home to Eretz-Israel only a minority took that opportunity and the majority of the exiles preferred their prosperous life in Babylon to the hardships of rebuilding Jewish life in Eretz-Israel. The leadership of Babylonian Jewry was vested in descendents of that King Yehoyakhin. Thus the exilarchs were all members of the House of David, descendents of the kings of Judah. (When the exilarchate came to an end around the year 1000 CE the Davidic dynasty had survived for more than 2000 years!) The sages of Babylon used this pedigree of the Exilarch to bolster their move for halakhic independence.

48:
In the Gemara [Sanhedrin 5a-b] we read:

In this passage 'here', of course, refers to Babylon and 'there' refers to Eretz-Israel. Note how the Babylonian Talmud is neatly creating a kind of equality between the two centres. But then it goes one stage further: perhaps the licence granted 'here' by the Exilarch is also valid 'there', in Eretz-Israel! And now the Gemara pulls its rabbit out of the hat:

Hidden in this enigmatic phrase is a bold claim to Babylonian superiority over the sages of Eretz-Israel! The two terms referred to are derived from a beautiful scriptural passage [Genesis 49:8-10]. When the patriarch Jacob is giving his deathbed blessing to the future tribes of Israel this is what he says of the tribe of Judah:

49:
This poetic passage was interpreted as assuring the ascendancy of the tribe of Judah over the other tribes – at least until 'the arrival of him from Shiloh'. (Modern biblical scholarship understands this as a reference to the prophet Aḥiyah the Shilonite [1 Kings 11-12], whose intervention after the death of Solomon wrested the northern tribes from the suzereignty of Judah and established the northern kingdom of Israel.) We note in this passage a parallelism between 'the sceptre' and 'the lawmaker's staff'. In the passage in the Gemara which we are studying this is not understood as poetic parallelism but as referring to two kinds of leadership in the descendents of the tribe of Judah. To understand this we must clarify a certain point.

50:
We have already seen that the exilarchs in Babylon traced their ancestry back to Yehoyakhin, the last king of Judah. Thus, they claimed to be the legitimate heirs of the House of David. The presidency of the Sanhedrin in Eretz-Israel was vested in the House of Hillel. Hillel was the outstanding sage of Jewry at around the turn of the era – he died around the year 20 CE. Hillel had been born in Babylon but had made aliya to Eretz-Israel while still a youth. Hillel, too, claimed descent from King David, but through his mother, not through his father. Thus, while the presidents of the House of Hillel in Eretz-Israel were also scions of the House of David their descent was not entirely through the male line as were the exilarchs in Babylon.

51:
Thus, the sages of Babylon are hinting in the passage in the Gemara that the Exilarchs have a claim of superiority over the presidents of the Sanhedrin in Eretz-Israel, and therefore a licence granted by them in Babylon to a sage should be valid in Eretz-Israel as well! The Gemara explains the biblical passage from a barayta:

Note that the phrase 'descendents of Hillel' is used rather than 'presidents of the Sanhedrin' and they are not accorded rulership but they 'only' teach Torah!

52:
The Gemara now boldly asks whther a licence granted in Eretz-Israel would be recognized in Babylon! It attempts to answer this question by relating an incident that once occurred:

That is a bold statement indeed! Even the Gemara is taken aback. It now recounts another incident in which another sage from Eretz-Israel was involved:

The Gemara responds rather lamely that Rabba bar Rav Huna was just letting off steam!

It seems to me rather strange that the sages mentioned all have very Babylonian names. This leads me to suspect that what aroused the ire of the Babylonian sages was the fact that some of their number – Rabba bar-Ḥana, Rabba bar Rav Huna, and others – went to Eretz-Israel where the Sanhedrin gave them a licence. Upon their return to Babylon this was not recognized, perhaps in chagrin.

53:
We are now nearing the end of our journey. God willing, in our next shiur we shall complete this topic and learn some more concerning the origins of semikhah [classic ordination].