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Creators of Worlds: The Deposition of R. Gamliel and the Invention of Yavneh

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 November 2017

Moshe Simon-Shoshan
Moshe Simon-Shoshan*
Affiliation:
Bar-Ilan University
*
mdshoshan@gmail.com
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Abstract

This article will examine the development of Yavneh as a literary and cultural construct from tannaitic sources through the two versions of the story of the deposition of R. Gamliel, in Yerushalmi Berakhot 4:1 and Bavli Berakhot 27b–28a. It will explore the ways in which the talmudic storytellers present a more developed narrative world complete with a social and political culture. It will then analyze the complex relationships between the narrative worlds of the Yerushalmi and Bavli and their respective social and ideological contexts. Based on this analysis, I shall propose a model for understanding the way in which the Yavnehs of both the Bavli and the Yerushalmi functioned in amoraic and postamoraic society to create a nuanced and self-critical rabbinic cultural identity.

Type
Research Article
Information
AJS Review , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , November 2017 , pp. 287 - 313
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Jewish Studies 2017 

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Footnotes

Earlier versions of this essay were presented at the World Congress of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem in July of 2013 and at the departmental colloquium of the Department of Literature of the Jewish People at Bar-Ilan University in the fall of the same year. I would like to thank Naomi Goldstein, Geoffrey Herman, Catherine Hezser, Rella Kushelevsky, Moshe Lavee, Hindy Najman, and Jeremy Rosenbaum Simon for their input. I would also like to thank the anonymous readers for AJS Review and this journal's former editor, Christine Hayes, for their help in editing the final version of this article.

In Memoriam Sacvan Bercovitch (1933–2014)

“Tell me a story,” said the Baroness …

“What sort of story,” asked Clovis …

“One just true enough to be interesting”

and not true enough to be tiresome,” said the Baroness.

—The Chronicles of Clovis, Saki

References

1. Boyarin, Daniel, “The Yavneh-Cycle of the Stammaim and the Invention of the Rabbis,” in Creation and Composition: The Contribution of the Bavli Redactors (Stammaim) to the Aggada, ed. Rubenstein, Jeffrey L. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 237–92Google Scholar.

2. Recent book-length studies of this topic include Wolf, Mark J. P., Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Subcreation (New York: Routledge, 2012)Google Scholar and Hayot, Eric, On Literary Worlds (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)Google Scholar.

3. Doležel, Lubomir, Heterocosmica: Fiction and Possible Worlds (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 21 Google Scholar.

4. Wolf, Building Imaginary Worlds, 55.

5. On the question of the incompleteness of narrative worlds see Doležel, Heterocosmica, 169–84.

6. Pavel, Thomas, Fictional Worlds (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986)Google Scholar.

7. In a separate study I trace the development and redactions of the deposition narratives from the earliest sources to the story as it appears in the Talmuds: “The Transmission and Evolution of the Story of the Deposition of R. Gamliel,” in Jews and Christians in the First and Second Centuries: The Interbellum 70 – 132 CE, ed. Joshua J. Schwartz and Peter J. Tomson, CRINT 15 (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming). Earlier attempts to trace this development include Goldenberg, Robert, “The Deposition of Rabban Gamliel: An Examination of the Sources,” Journal of Jewish Studies 23 (1972): 167–90Google Scholar, Shapira, Chaim, “The Deposition of R. Gamliel, between History and Legend” [in Hebrew], Zion 64, no. 1 (1994): 345–70Google Scholar, and Rubenstein, Jeffery, Stories of the Babylonian Talmud (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), 77–80 Google Scholar. See also Devora Steinmetz, “Agada Unbound: Inter-Agadic Characterization of the Sages in the Bavli and Implications for Reading Agada,” in Rubenstein, Creation and Composition, 293–337.

8. T. Yevamot 6:6, 10:3; T. Tevul Yom 2:9; Sifrei Bamidbar, Korah, pis. 118, to Numbers 18:15 and Hukat, pis. 124, to Numbers 19:9 (ed. Horovitz, pp. 138, 158).

9. We cannot discount the possibility that already in the tannaitic sources the term “vineyard” should not be understood literally. Cohen notes the parallel between this name for the rabbinic academy and the names of the Athenian philosophical academies, the Porch, the Walk, and the Garden. However, as we shall see, the tannaitic sources overwhelmingly seem to portray an occasional gathering of the sages rather than a permanent institution. Cohen, Shaye J. D., “Patriarchs and Scholars,” Proceeding of the American Academy of Jewish Research 48 (1981): 57–85 Google Scholar. See also Büchler, Adolph, “Learning and Teaching in the Open Air in Palestine,” Jewish Quarterly Review 4 (1913–14): 498 Google Scholar.

10. Albeck, Hanoch, Shishah sidre mishnah, Seder nezikin, (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1953), 275 Google Scholar.

11. For a study and survey of previous scholarship on this passage and its parallel in Bavli Ḥagigah 3a–b, see Rubenstein, Stories of the Babylonian Talmud, 91–115.

12. Ibid., 111. Rubenstein cites Lieberman, Saul, Tosefta Ki-fshutah, vol. 7 (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1973), 680 Google Scholar, as his source for this reading, but Lieberman does not explicitly read the Tosefta in this way. For another possible reading, see Epstein, Y. N., Mevo'ot le-sifrut ha-tanna'im (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1957), 419 Google Scholar.

13. Both Shamma Friedman and Amram Tropper argue that in many cases, toseftan materials reflect a later stage of development than their parallels in the tannaitic midrashim. Friedman, Shamma, Tosefta atiqta (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2002), 75–77 Google Scholar; Tropper, Amram, Ke-ḥomer be-yad ha-yoẓer: Ma‘ase ḥakhamim be-sifrut ḥazal (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 2011), esp. 23–26 Google Scholar. In an unpublished paper Friedman noted several examples of this phenomenon, specifically in T. Sotah.

14. Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, par. B'o, to Exodus 13:2 (ed. Horovitz-Rabin, p. 59); Y. Sotah 3:4 (18d); Y. Ḥagigah 1:1 (75d).

15. Gafni argues that the term yeshivah has a specifically juridical implication; however, the context here suggests a body of wider significance and authority. Gafni, Isaiah, “ Yeshivah and Metivta ,” Zion 43 (1978): 12–37 Google Scholar.

16. Sources generally give the number of sages in the Sanhedrin as seventy or seventy-one. The appearance of the number seventy-two deserves further exploration. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt as to the overall significance of this number here. See Michael Higger, “The Sanhedrin,” The Synagogue Light (April–May 1944).

17. I present a more complete reading of the narratives in Ha-shanah, Mishnah Rosh in Stories of the Law: Narrative Discourse and the Construction of Authority in the Mishnah (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 193–97Google Scholar.

18. Herman, Geoffrey, “Insurrection in the Academy: The Babylonian Talmud and the Paikuli Inscription” [in Hebrew], Zion 79, no. 3 (2014): 381 Google Scholar n. 18, notes that it is difficult to know what sort of seating furniture is referred to by the term safsal. In some instances it seems to refer to a stool for a single individual, while in others it seems to indicate a bench on which multiple individuals can sit. Herman favors the former option for this case, in which case the number of scholars being portrayed in the beit midrash would be considerably fewer than I have suggested. See Kraus, Shmuel, Kadmoniyot ha-talmud, vol. 2a (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1929), 25 Google Scholar.

19. Steinmetz, Devora, “Must the Partriarch Know ’Ukqtzin? The Nasi as Scholar in Babylonian Agadda,” AJS Review 23, no. 2 (1998): 163–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar, has noted the role of heredity in the Yerushalmi version of the narrative.

20. For a survey and discussion of these sources see Goodblatt, David, The Monarchic Principle: Studies in Jewish Self-Government in Antiquity (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1994), 146–75Google Scholar.

21. Gafni, Isaiah, “ Shevet u-meḥokek: New Models of Leadership in the Talmudic Period,” in Kehunah u-melukhah: Yaḥase dat u-medinah be-Yisra'el u-ve-‘amim, ed. Gafni, Isaiah and Motzkin, Gavriel (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 1987), 87 Google Scholar.

22. See the discussion of these issues in Steinmetz, “Must the Patriarch.”

23. On the symbolism of the robe see Kimelman, Reuven, “The Conflict between the Priestly Oligarchy and the Sages in the Talmudic Period,” Zion 48, no. 2 (1983): 138 Google Scholar. On the phenomena of the Bavli creating such “doublets,” see Rubenstein, Stories of the Babylonian Talmud, 211–12.

24. For an alternative approach to this arrangement, see Steinmetz, “Must the Patriarch,” 181.

25. The next line in the story states that God sent R. Gamliel the dream only to “put his mind at peace.” Rubenstein cogently argues that this forced effort to resolve this tension is in fact a later gloss. He sees it as evidence of continued debate among the Stammaim over this very issue. Rubenstein, Stories of the Babylonian Talmud, 89.

26. See for example Ginzburg, Levi, Perushim ve-ḥiddushim be-yerushalmi, vol. 3 (New York: Ktav, 1971), 174–220 Google Scholar; Alon, Gedalyah, The Jews in Their Land in the Talmudic Age, trans. Levi, Gershon (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 319–22Google Scholar; Urbach, Ephraim E., The Halakhah: Its Sources and Development, trans. Posner, Raphael (Jerusalem, Yad La-Talmud, 1986), 278–80Google Scholar.

27. Steinmetz, “Must the Patriarch,” 187.

28. Shapira, “Deposition of R. Gamliel,” 19–22.

29. Ibid., 18.

30. Stern, Sacha, “Rabbi and the Origins of the Patriarchate,” Journal of Jewish Studies 54 (2003): 193–215 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31. On the patriarchate in the third and fourth centuries, see Stern, ibid.

32. For a survey of the emerging scholarly consensus on this issue, see Heszer, Catherine, The Social Structure of the Rabbinic Movement in Roman Palestine (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997)Google Scholar. See also Sacha Stern, “Rabbi and the Origins of the Patriarchate.”

33. Stern, following Jacobs, goes so far as to argue that Rabbi was not even of the Gamliel line, severing any direct connection between the religious leadership of R. Gamliel II and his son Shimon and the patriarchate established by Jacobs, Rabbi. M., Die Institution des jüdischen Patriarchen: Eine quellen- und traditionskritische Studie zur Geschichte der Juden in der Späntantike (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995)Google Scholar.

34. Gerrig, Richard J., Experiencing Narrative Worlds: On the Psychological Activities of Reading (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), 2–17 Google Scholar.

35. Tolkien, J. R. R., “On Fairy Stories,” in Tree and Leaf (London: Allen and Unwin, 1964), 37 Google Scholar.

36. Bruner, Jerome, “The Narrative Construction of Reality,” Critical Inquiry 18, no. 1 (Autumn 1991): 1–21 Google Scholar.

37. This is what Marie-Laure Ryan calls “the principle of minimal departure.” Ryan, Marie-Laure, “Fiction, Non-Factual and the Principle of Minimal Departure,” Poetics 9 (1980): 406 Google Scholar.

38. Tolkien, “On Fairy Stories,” 38.

39. Lapin, Hayim, “The Rabbinic Movement in Israel,” in The Cambridge History of Judaism, vol. 4, ed. Katz, Steven (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 218–25Google Scholar.

40. Levine, Lee I., The Rabbinic Class of Roman Palestine in Late Antiquity (Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 1989), 76–77 Google Scholar; Catherine Heszer, Social Structure, 195–214.

41. Kimelman, “Conflict.” Several recent scholars have argued for the rise of priestly leadership in the era immediately following the completion of the Yerushalmi and the end of the patriarchate. See for example Irshai, Oded, “Confronting a Christian Empire: Jewish Culture in the World of Byzantium,” in Cultures of the Jews: A New History, ed. Biale, David (New York: Schocken, 2002), 189–204 Google Scholar.

42. Alon, Gedalyah, “Sons of the Sages” [in Hebrew], in Meḥkarim be-toldot Yisra'el, vol. 2 (Tel Aviv: Ha-kibbutz Ha-me'uḥad, 1970), 58–73 Google Scholar; See also Isaiah Gafni, “Shevet u-mehokek” and Heszer, Social Structure, 257–67.

43. Kohelet Rabbah 9:10 and Heszer, Social Structure, 258.

44. Alon, “Sons of the Sages,” 61; Avot de-Rabbi Natan, B:4 (ed. Schechter, pp. 14–15).

45. Moshe Beer, “The Sons of Samuel in Rabbinic Legend,” “The Hereditary Principle in Jewish Leadership,” and “The Sons of Eli in Rabbinic Legend” [in Hebrew], in Ḥakhme ha-mishnah ve-ha-talmud: Hagutam, po‘alam u-manhigutam (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2011), 362–73Google Scholar, 373–81, 382–96.

46. Gafni, Isaiah M., “Rethinking Talmudic History: The Challenge of Literary and Redaction Criticism,” Jewish History 25 (2011): 367 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47. Shapira, “Deposition of R. Gamliel,” 21.

48. Ibid., 22.

49. Rubenstein, Culture of the Babylonian Talmud, 54–56.

50. The question of the exact timing of the emergence of the Babylonian yeshivot as fully developed institutions is beyond the scope of this study. Similarly, it is not my intent to take a position on the thorny question of the date of the final redaction of the Babylonian Talmud and the role of the “Stammaim” in this endeavor. For our purposes it sufficient to note that, one way or another, scholars agree that the Bavli was redacted in the context of highly developed yeshivot similar to the institutions known to us from geonic sources. For recent discussion of these questions see Rubenstein, Jeffrey, “The Rise of the Babylonian Rabbinic Academy: A Reexamination of the Talmudic Evidence,” JSIJ 1 (2002): 55–68 Google Scholar; Gafni, “Rethinking,” 355–75.

51. Herman, “Insurrection,” 381.

52. Rubenstein, “Rise of the Babylonian Rabbinic Academy,” 80–101. See also Geoffrey Herman, “Ha-kohanim be-Bavel bi-tekufat ha-talmud” (MA thesis, Hebrew University, 1998).

53. Herman, Geoffrey, “Priests and Amoraic Leadership in Sassanian Babylonia,” Proceedings of the Twelfth World Congress of Jewish Studies, Division B, History of the Jewish People (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 2000), 59*–68* Google Scholar.

54. Herman, “Insurrection,” 379–80.

55. Gafni, “Rethinking,” 367.

56. Rubenstein, Culture of the Babylonian Talmud, 54–56.

57. For a survey of the place of wealth and social status in rabbinic culture in Palestine and Babylonia throughout the rabbinic period, see Gray, Alyssa M., “The Formerly Wealthy Poor: From Empathy to Ambivalence in Rabbinic Literature of Late Antiquity,” AJS Review 33, no. 1 (2009): 101–33Google Scholar.

58. Herman, “Insurrection,” 395–407.

59. Boyarin, “Yavneh-Cycle,” 247, 253.

60. Ibid., 241.

61. Ibid., 42, quoting Stern, David, Midrash and Theory: Ancient Jewish Exegesis and Contemporary Literary Studies (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1996), 37 Google Scholar.

62. Boyarin, “Yavneh-Cycle,” 260.

63. Gerrig, Experiencing Narrative Worlds, 16–17, 196–241.

64. Simon-Shoshan, Stories of the Law, 227–31.

65. On the potential dangers of publicly criticizing the patriarch for his abuse of power, especially vis-à-vis the priesthood, see the story of Joseph of Maon, Y. Sanhedrin 2:6 (13b).

66. Translations of the Bavli and Yerushalmi passages adapted from Steinmetz, “Must the Patriarch,” 165–70.