Abstract from Tatlafush to Sura: on the Foundation of the Academy of Sura According to Rav Sherira Gaon

abstract From Tatlafush to Sura: On the Foundation of the Academy of Sura according to Rav Sherira Gaon Amram Tropper According to the Epistle of Rav Sherira Gaon , Rav left Nehardea after refusing to assume the mantle of leadership over the Nehardean rabbinic academy out of respect for his colleague Shemuel. Having left Nehardea, according to Rav Sherira, Rav decided to establish a new academy in Sura as soon as he learned that the Jews of Sura were ignorant of even the most elementary halakhic obligations. In time the academy in Sura became a famous rabbinic institution, and so Rav Sherira’s account of Rav’s establishment of the academy is, in fact, a foundation story of the renowned rabbinic academy of Sura. Rav Sherira maintains that Rav departed Nehardea after a confrontation with Shemuel in which Rav refused to lead the Nehardean academy. Rav Sherira’s notion of a fateful confrontation with Shemuel is explicitly based on a story about a confrontation between Rav and Shemuel brought in Bavli Bava Kamma 80a-b, but no extant source prior to Rav Sherira’s epistle actually links this confrontation with Rav’s departure from Nehardea. Indeed, it appears that Rav Sherira’s account of Rav’s departure from Nehardea is not a reliable historical tradition but rather an imaginative invention that emerged naturally when Rav Sherira juxtaposed the confrontation story from Bava Kamma with the account of Rav’s visit to Tatlafush discussed below. Rav Sherira explicitly bases his foundation story of the Suran academy on a sugya in Bavli Hullin 110a, which discusses a visit by Rav to Tatlafush, but this sugya mentions neither the establishment of an academy nor the city of Sura. Most scholars assume that Tatlafush was in or near Sura and that Rav Sherira identified Tatlafush with Sura because he was familiar with geographical information regarding Tatlafush’s location which is no longer extant. In my opinion, however, the location of Tatlafush remains a mystery. Tatlafush appears nowhere else in our sources, and I suggest that Rav Sherira identified Tatlafush Oqimta 2 (5774 [2014]). Full article at: http://www.oqimta.org.il/oqimta/5774/tropper2.pdf with Sura on the basis of a shared legal stringency discussed in Hullin 110a, i.e. the prohibition of consuming animal udders. In short, Rav Sherira transformed a rabbinic story unrelated to Sura or to rabbinic academies into a foundation story of the rabbinic academy in Sura. Furthermore, careful comparison with additional sugyot reveals that the account in Hullin 110a is not a transparent and reliable historical report, but rather a literary creation inspired and modeled on other rabbinic traditions. In other words, the rabbinic account of Rav’s visit to Tatlafush, transformed by Rav Sherira during Geonic times into a foundation story of the Suran academy, was itself inspired by various earlier sources. Thus, Rav Sherira’s foundation story of the Suran academy is the product of a long history of literary evolution. Oqimta 2 (5774 [2014]). Full article at: http://www.oqimta.org.il/oqimta/5774/tropper2.pdf .

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