Iraq: Cradle of Judaism
SHANKS, HERSHEL
PERSPECTIVE HERSHEL SHANKS Iraq: Cradle of Judaism The Babylonian Talmud was principally created in three competing rabbinical academies— Sura, Nehardea and Pumbedita. These are what I want...
...A Talmud was also created in Eretz Israel, and somewhat imprecisely called the Jerusalem Talmud or the Yerushalmi...
...And things got worse from there...
...We had been watching the situation worsen for a month or more, but we always distinguished our locale from where the trouble was—mostly in the so-called Sunni Triangle...
...Tourism could be a major industry and money-maker in Iraq...
...I was going to get a start in March when my colleague, Suzanne Singer, and I were invited to visit Iraq by the Regional Coordinator of the Coalition Provisional Authority, an American State Department official stationed in Hilla, about 60 miles south of Baghdad...
...Hundreds of years later, from about the 3rd to the 6th century C.E., the Talmud was created in what is now Iraq...
...Perhaps one day we will be able to make this trip...
...Aramaic Pum-Bedita is Pallughtha in Syriac and Falluga in Arabic, or Fallujali as current newspapers spell it...
...While for centuries, it was guarded by the Jewish community, today it is guarded by a local tribal sheikh...
...Yale professor Christine Hayes explains that the differences between the two Talmuds are subde and complex...
...and features more highly developed methods of analysis...
...PERSPECTIVE HERSHEL SHANKS Iraq: Cradle of Judaism The Babylonian Talmud was principally created in three competing rabbinical academies— Sura, Nehardea and Pumbedita...
...I haven't given up...
...But we sometimes forget that most of them stayed behind...
...For centuries it was a center of Jewish pilgrimage...
...We knew from the start that we would not be able to investigate one of them—Pumbedita...
...A Cairo newspaper has written that by its resistance to American troops Fallujah has earned a vaunted place in Islamic history...
...Is anything left of them...
...Some of them did—and they re-built the Temple...
...SOMEDAY I'M GOING TO MAKE A Documentary called "Iraq—Cradle of Judaism...
...As Jeremiah wisely advised, "Seek the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you and pray to the Lord in its behalf...
...I hope our next invitation will come from a minister in a new Iraqi government, heralding the emergence of democracy in the Arab world...
...What would it likely turn up...
...These are what I want to find...
...These are what I want to find...
...There must have been quite a fight between the two communities before this was definitively settled...
...If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, Let my right hand wither, Let my tongue stick to my palette, says the psalmist...
...It is located in Fallujah, just 3 5 miles west of Baghdad and, as I write, the most violent city in Iraq...
...The tomb is just a few miles from Babylon...
...So much happened there...
...Those who stayed thrived...
...We even located it on an old map in the Library of Congress published by the Directorate of Antiquities in Baghdad...
...There are many references to them and their location in the literature...
...Fallujah is the center of the current anti-American insurgency in Iraq...
...There's no question about which Talmud is dominant: the Bavli...
...Life in Babylon wasn't that bad...
...Well, not the only Talmud, just the Babylonian Talmud, commonly referred to as the Bavli...
...When the Persians replaced the Babylonians as the world's eastern superpower, Cyrus allowed the exiles to return...
...It is interesting to think about the fact that the Talmud was created in one of most violent towns of modern Iraq...
...Generally speaking, it is a little bit southwest of Baghdad across from Mahoza, if you know where that is...
...The tomb itself is quite magnificent, connected to an equally magnificent synagogue...
...On the willows There we hung up our harps...
...After all, Abram, as he then was known (before his name was changed to Abraham), started in Ur...
...Would an archaeological excavation be feasible...
...The security situation had deteriorated to the point where our host felt he could not give us adequate protection...
...But then two American civilians stationed in Hilla and their Iraqi translator were ambushed, shot and killed on their way to Baghdad...
...Indeed, the Bavli is the sole text used in 19th and 20th century yeshivot...
...It was the hub of Jewish life after Nebuchadnezzar's hordes destroyed Jerusalem and Solomon's Temple in 586 B.C.E...
...Pirkoi castigates those who learn the "customs of Eretz Israel...
...We know generally where they are...
...The problem with locating it on the ground is that there are likely to be many other ancient sites in its vincinity...
...It is marked as an ancient site...
...According to the Babylonian Talmud, "Just as it is forbidden to leave Eretz Israel for Babylonia, so it is forbidden to leave Babylonia for other countries" (Ketubot I l i a ). The Babylonian Talmud was principally created in three competing rabbinical academies—Sura, Nehardea and Pumbedita...
...for in its prosperity you shall prosper" [29:7...
...It is an amalgam of teachings of the sages of Tiberias, Caesarea and Sepphoris...
...They are, he says, "customs of apostasy...
...As late as the 8th- 9th century, the Encyclopedia Judaica tells us, the work of a Babylonian rabbinical sage named Pirkoi Ben Baboi contained "echoes of the long drawn-out struggle between the two Torah centers—Eretz Israel and Babylon...
...Distinguishing one from the other is sometimes difficult...
...By the waters of Babylon, There we sat down and wept, As we remembered Zion...
...A week before we were scheduled to leave, however, our invitation was rescinded...
...It is where two Americans were recently mutilated and their bodies hanged on a bridge...
...And Babylon itself was just eight miles north of Hilla...
...According to Jacob Obermeyer, a 19th century scholar, modern Fallujah is the linguistic equivalent of Pumbedita...
...New research by modern critical Talmud scholars indicates that the Babylonian Talmud was completed as many as 300 years after the Jerusalem Talmud, in the 6th century C.E...
...Iraq will make a great documentary— when I finally get there...
...Nehardea is more uncertain than Sura but less difficult than Pumbedita...
...Even if we don't find these sites, we will definitely want to see Ezekiel's tomb...
Vol. 29 • August 2004 • No. 4
