Origins of Jewish practices

Dr,. Stefan Reif, Head of the unit for research into the Cairo genizah documents at Cambridge University gave a talk on Feb 15 in the AACI-Netanya Academic College series that I organize. The title was "Synagogue customs in Eretz Yisrael and Babylonia a millennium ago," based on the findings from the genizah documents. Stefan Reif is a lively and extremely well-informed lecturer and it was a pleasure to hear his exposition of this complex subject. This is my summary of his talk.

In general terms we know very little of Jewish ritual practices about a thousand years ago. What we do know is that there were major Jewish population centers in Eretz Yisrael, Egypt and Babylonia (now Iraq). Jews were first exiled there on the fall of the Kingdom of Judah in 586 bce and more joined them to escape the later Roman conquests. What the documents show is that the Babylonian center of Judaic studies and practices became far larger, more organized and centralized than anywhere else. We know that the Babylonian Talmud, that had been written down from oral practices and law over the previous centuries, was far larger, more extensive in subject matter and better edited than the "rival" Jerusalem Talmud. In fact, from the genizah documents it is clear that most questions and requests for rulings were sent to Babylonian sages rather than to those in Eretz Yisrael. In Babylonia, the yeshivot (religious schools) in Pumbedita and Shushan were far more prestigious for Judaic studes than any in Eretz Yisrael. This must be partly attributed to the long time period over which the Jews of Babylonia were allowed to practice their religion undisturbed for centuries and the concomitant greater affluence of this Jewish community. The basis of teaching Judaism from the Babylonian Talmud became over time the standard for all Yeshivot.

Jewish practice was oral and traditional until about the 8th century. It was only then that the two Talmuds began to be compiled. In Eretz Yisrael there were different groups of Rabbis and scholars without centralization and as a consequence the Jerusalem Talmud is quite inconsistent in parts and was hardly edited so it is very difficult to read and study. By contrast the Babylonian Talmud was much more coherent and edited and became the basis for Ashkenazi, Sephardi and Mizrahi (Eastern) Jewish practices, and in fact gave them a common origin. In 1211 a trust deed was signed by a group of rabbis from Eretz Yisrael that sought to establish their authority, but it was their last gasp. By 1260, a son of Maimonides wrote a letter in Aramiac testifying to the fact that in Egypt the Babylonian Talmud was accepted as the authoritative version. As a result through the centuries the Jerusalem Talmud has mainly been regarded as archaic.

One interesting facet that Stefan mentioned is that the Babylonian Talmud is written mainly in Aramaic (The Talmud is the commentaries, but the original Torah was written in Hebrew), but in eastern Aramaic as spoken in Babylonia, while the Jerusalem Talmud is written in western Aramaic as spoken in Eretz Yisrael. This has led to some mistranslations by Biblical scholars who are unaware of the subtle differences. Perhaps the only group of Jews whose practices derived from Eretz Yisrael were the Romaniote Jews, who were largely contained within the Roman Empire. However, depredations over the centuries followed by the Holocaust, has largely decimated this community. All major Jewish groups in the world adhere to the Babylonian traditions.