Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note on transliteration and translation
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The concept of the three ketarim
- Section A Versions of the past: visions of the future
- Section B From theory to practice: the struggle for supremacy
- Section C Ensuring hegemony
- 8 The institutionalisation of rabbinic authority
- 9 Patterns of succession and pageants of installation
- Afterword: a symbol and its resonance
- Bibliography
- Index
8 - The institutionalisation of rabbinic authority
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note on transliteration and translation
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The concept of the three ketarim
- Section A Versions of the past: visions of the future
- Section B From theory to practice: the struggle for supremacy
- Section C Ensuring hegemony
- 8 The institutionalisation of rabbinic authority
- 9 Patterns of succession and pageants of installation
- Afterword: a symbol and its resonance
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
As portrayed in the talmudic account, the history of the early rabbinic keter torah is largely a record of the scholastic achievements and communal activities of individual sages. The prominence of their domain was not, however, entirely contingent upon the separate initiatives of egocentric personalities. What transformed a miscellaneous enterprise into a corporate achievement was the emergence of a permanent rabbinic administration and the establishment of educational frameworks whose influence transcended that of any single sage. From the organisational perspective, both were considerable advances. They equipped the rabbis with agencies for the co-ordination of their teachings and the synchronisation of their ideals. More to the point, they also provided the keter torah, in its entirety, with an institutional identity which was specifically its own. Rabbis thus became components of a bureaucratic framework organically distinct from its parallels in both the malkhut and the kehunah.
The academies of learning
Predominant among the organisational vehicles which promulgated the ideals and purposes of the keter torah during the early rabbinic period were the academies of learning. Interchangeably referred to in the literature of the times as batei wa'ad (houses of assembly), batei midrash (houses of learning), yeshivot (seats [of learning]; in Aramaic metivta'ot), those institutions were characterised by the opportunities which they provided for the dedicated pursuit of the rabbinic mode of exegesis and analysis.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Three CrownsStructures of Communal Politics in Early Rabbinic Jewry, pp. 215 - 234Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1990