Season 1: Episode 13 - The Rivers of Babylon

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I wish it need not have happened in my time, said Frodo. So do I, said Gandalf, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us. I'm Rav Mike Foyer, and I've decided to take the time given to me to tell a story. It's a story about the past, but it's all about building us up in the present in order to have the powers to take us to the future of which we dream. Because this is the Jewish story. Episode 13, By the Rivers of Babylon So with the death of Rebbe, Rebbeinu HaKodesh, Rebbe Yehuda Anasi, at the end of the last episode, we've come to the end of an era. And I know people say that all the time, and it's more than a little bit of a cliche.

but in our case, it's true nonetheless. And before I get to proving to you why, we need to say a word about periodization, this need to break history into manageable chunks in order to facilitate our study and analysis. It's an understandable need, but it deserves a conscious sort of skepticism nonetheless, because periodization is never neutral. For instance, an example. where everyone locates the beginning of the modern era is going to teach you quite a bit about what they believe the substance of modernity to be. And the very use of the word modern is somewhat loaded with a teleology. It's value-laden, and that's the thing to remember. Periodization, this breaking up of the past into chunks, according to our understanding, will always reflect our priorities, our values, and our general understanding of the forces of continuity and change as we're looking at a mass of undifferentiated information about the past.

And at this stage of our story, I insist to say that we are indeed at the end of an era. It's the end of the Tanaitic period, that period of the masters of the Mishnahh, whose teachings have come to us not only in the Mishnahh, but also in the Tosefta, in the Bright Tote preserved in the Gemara, and in many other works. It's the end of their era and the beginning of the time of the Amorayim. And that's an important change. The Tana, his name means those who repeat. It's that type of teaching which we spoke of, which is transformative through repetition. You're not only preserving information, you're making yourself into an expression of what it is that you teach. and now the Amor Ha'im their name means those who say or I'd say more to the point, who discuss because what the Amor Ha'im will do is they will cultivate and preserve the classic rabbinic dynamic of allegiance to the past and an honest engagement of the present through two principles, Amor Ha'im do not overturn the Mishnahh they will not argue directly with the words of the Mishnahh, the Mishnahh will become to a certain degree inviolate, but nevertheless they will hold by the principle of halakha kibbat trai that the actual law will go after the later authorities.

And this holding on to the past and using it, it itself, to forge with courage into the future is going to be a critical part of this period. But what I want to know is why is it that the early to mid-third century is actually a breaking point in the Jewish story. Is there anything which actually differentiates the two sides of this watershed to the extent that I can honestly say that a new period has begun? So I'm going to offer three things, in fact. First of all, I want to touch on an internal conceptual chronology that the sages offer, one that we've actually mentioned before. Second of all, we need to touch the textual transformation, in which the Mishnahh will now be the rules and playing fields of a conversation in the Omorayim, both the participants and the architects of a continuous discussion about life, the universe, and everything.

And third of all, there will be, of course, the larger sociopolitical context within which this is all happening because the Jews are far from isolated from the world. So starting with the chronology. Remembering, of course, that we've touched already in the past in our pieces on Daniel and in the Greek period, the discrepancy between traditional Jewish dating and conventional chronology. The Jewish dating is found primarily in the book Seder Olam Rabbah, that Tanaitic work, very important, it was the masters of the Mishnahh who gave us this chronology, and the contemporary being based first on the Greek historians and then on later academic development. That in mind, and of course the gap that we identified of anywhere from 163 to 166 years between them.

With that in mind, let's just peek at a Breitah, a Tanelic teaching that's presented in the Gemara and Avodah Zara. And I bless you all to have the great merit that I had in the last week or two of going through a Gemara like this with my holy Chavruta. So it says, Tanel Be'Eliahu, it was taught in the house of Eliahu. Shei shet alfim shana ha-ve-olam, the world is going to last 6,000 years. there's going to be 2,000 years of chaos 2,000 years of Torah and 2,000 years of the days of the Messiah but because of our great sins that have multiplied many days have passed from that last period and the Messiah has not come now the analysis that the Gemara offers about this bright day is going to land us at a very particular place in time, which we'll touch in a moment.

But what's important to me to note is that analysis, of course, is based in the Seder Olam Rabbah, which takes this 6,000-year period as the framework for understanding the connection between creation and redemption. And it's critical to remember that the Torah, the sages, I believe the Jewish vision of time is not about the past. It's always about where we're headed. And therefore, the critical element here is not the fact that Zeru Olam Rabbah used the numbers at the beginning of the book of Breshi to figure out how far away from creation we are, but rather how close to the Messiah we just might be. And furthermore, it's clear that this B'rita is about historical periodization. We're breaking the world into chunks.

Now is not the time to talk about what Tohu was, but in the Gemara's analysis, they want to know when exactly the period of Torah began and end. And lo and behold, in the final analysis, the Gemara says that the end of the age of Torah is 172 years after the destruction of the Second Temple, which puts us in the Common Era at 242, more or less exactly when the Tanaitic age will end. And the whole focus of our story is going to begin to shift away from the land of Israel, where it's been since Ezra, if you think about it, it's been a lot of episodes, back to Mavelle. Now, it's also important to note that the whole relationship that the Mishnahh embodies and that the Gemara will articulate, and this transition point, the end of the age of Torah, can be seen in two fundamentally different ways.

If this is the end of the age of Torah, this might be the first expression that I see of what we call Yeridat HaDorot, the descent of generations, a notion which is quite common out there in the traditional Jewish world, that basically the further we get from Sinai, from that moment of revelation, the lower our status is. We're not good enough anymore. The age of Torah is over, and we're just playing with the pieces that were left. But you know what? As I said, I don't believe our count of time is about the past at all, because the further you get from Sinai teaches this B'rita, the closer you come to Mashiach, to redemption. Let it be soon, let it be now. Therefore, instead of saying we're not good enough anymore, what we might say is we actually have all we need.

Because notice what the Gemara tells us is that this shift in chronology, this period shift between the age of Torah and the age of Messiah, has happened, but we haven't actualized it yet. the Messiah is waiting for us to get it together so now we have the Mishnahh and together with it we're going to have the model of the student of the Mishnahh, the Talmid Chacham the student of the wise someone who, by the way, the Gemara will tell us is never an isolated creature, in fact the Gemara in Sanhedrin tells us that there is an ideal community, a Kihila in which this Talmid Chacham should live It's got to have a court of justice, a charity fund, a big kineset, public bath, a bathroom, a mohel, a doctor, a scribe, a ritual slaughter, and a school teacher.

And the Mishnahh, together with this idea of community, of Keilah, will now truly be the portable homeland. It's a conversation and a context in which life can be lived, discussed, understood, and cultivated. so as I said earlier our story is about to shift back to Babel and we have to speak about why that's a back to but let's wrap things up in the land of Israel first so Rabbi Yehuda Anasi as we said was born on the day that Rabbi Akiva died in the year 135 and he lives either to 188 or 219 depending on whether you go by the traditional narrative or the academic and he gave us that portable homeland of the Mishnahh but it continued to grow and evolve in the hands of the students in his own lifetime.

In fact, it's very clear that what we call Gemara, the conversation that takes place within the playing field of the Mishnahh, is actually insipidant in the Mishnahh itself. There once again a bright a Tanenic teaching in the Gemara and Baba Metzia that says that the sages taught those who occupy themselves with the study of Torah meaning scripture, the actual written Torah, are engaged in something which is only partially worthwhile. While those who occupy themselves with the study of Mishnahh are engaged in something entirely worthwhile. This in and of itself deserves its own thought, that the Mishnahh has actually in many ways replaced the Torah as the centerpiece of study in the academy. But the rite goes on and says, but there's nothing more worthwhile than the study of Gemara.

Meaning that even to the Tanaim, there was something called Gemara, which I'm offering to you is the conversation which emerges from the playing field of the Mishnahh. The other thing we need to know about Rebbe's Mishnahh is, of course, that they spoke Hebrew in Rebbe's house. The Gemara in Megillah says that in Rebbe's house, not only was the Hebrew language exclusively spoken, but even his maidservants, people who weren't to be expected to understand what was rapidly becoming a scholarly language. Nevertheless, they were fluent. And in this sense, it's important to remember that language is not primarily a means for communication. Language is primarily a means for conceptualizing and understanding our own experience.

It becomes the building blocks of experience itself. And thus, this portable homeland is critical that it is in Lashon HaKodesh, in the holy language, because as it is taken to Babel, then to North Africa, to Spain, to Italy, to Poland, to America, and all these places, what will unify the conversation in a very profound way will be the building blocks of language. and so Rebbe gave us this portable homeland but he also labored to create in the land of Israel a reliable political leadership that could stand up in the face of the Roman Empire and that we know as the Patriarchate that's what the Romans called the Sanhedrin the Jewish High Court together with the Nasi, the Prince or President of that Court and the Patriarchate really gained full recognition by Rome in the person of Rebbe's grandson, Rabbi Uda Nesia, sometime in the mid-third century.

What was its role? Well, primarily to collect taxes and to pay off the Romans. But you should appreciate that after the chaos of the first and second centuries and the three Roman Jewish wars and the bitter taste left in the mouth of Rome against the Jews, it's phenomenal that a semi-autonomous Jewish government emerged in the Galilee, in the northern part of the land of Israel, at this point in the third century. So Rebbe Yehuda Nasiyah, Rebbeinah Kodesh's grandson, is traditionally seen as the last nasi of the Sanhedrin who can enact laws binding on all of Am Yisrael. This is the end of that phase of centrality of religious leadership. From this point on, the Patriarchate will actually become more of a civil power than a source of Torah wisdom.

and it's illuminating to me to see the very few thoughts that were preserved by Rabbi Yehuda Nesia in the Gemara. In fact, we only have a couple of statements but it's clear where he saw the future of Am Yisrael to Lai. Rabbi Yehuda Nesia says The world only exists in the merit of the breath that comes from the mouth of the young students who are learning. He goes further and says, if someone should say to you, let's cancel class today, we have to build the Holy Temple, something which we as a people have envisioned for so long, he says, don't listen. And finally, he says that any city which doesn't establish teachers for its children deserves to be destroyed. And in these three statements, in the mouth of the grandson of the great rabbi who gave us the Mishnahh, we can see that education is no longer simply a leadership model.

as it has been since we started that transition out of the prophetic era into the era of wisdom, but it's now a full-on tool of social construction. So, as I mentioned, even during the lifetime of Rabbeinu HaKadosh, of Rabbi Yehud HaNasi, the conversation around the Mishnahh that we call Gemara was ongoing in the land of Israel as well as Bavel. and in Israel, its primary architect was Rabbi Yochanan Bar-Navcha, the son of a blacksmith, who died in 279 of the Common Era. As a young man, he was taken under the wing by Rabbi, too young really to be one of his chief students. In the end of the day, one of the most impressive experiences of his life, he relates in the Gemara that he watched sparks flying from the mouth of Rabbi into his student Rav's mouth, who we'll speak about soon, and out of Raab's mouth into the mouth of Rebbe, but he was watching from way back in the 17th row.

Nevertheless, Rabbi Yochanan will become the leader of the first generation of Amorayim, of the people who discuss the Mishnahh in the land of Israel, and he will actually be known as the chief compiler of the Talmud Yushalmi, the Jerusalem Talmud, which is the compilation of the discussion around the Mishnahh which happened in the land of Israel. and that means that he began to preserve and through that preservation frame elements of the conversation in ways that are going to be discussed actually in the coming episode when we talk about the construction of the Babylonian Talmud but the spirit he adds to our story I think is best seen through the relationship between he and his soulmate and Heruta, Reish Lakish the story is in the Gemara and Bab Metsia 84b if you want to check it out for yourself says one day Rabbi Yochan was swimming in the Jordan and Reish Lakish who was a well-known bandit at the time saw him and leapt into the Jordan after him when Rabbi Yochan saw this phenomenal leap he said, oh, your strength is for Torah and Reish Lakish, quite disappointed at finding him to be a man instead of a woman says, well, your beauty is for women Rabbi Yochan said, well, you know, I have a sister and she's even better looking than me come with me back to the Beit Midrash to the study hall and I'll let you marry her and Reish Lakish accepts And amazingly, he goes back to the other side of the river to try to get his weapons, but his strength was gone.

So Rabbi Yochanan takes him to the Beit Midrash, he teaches him the written Torah, he teaches him the oral Torah, and he becomes a great man in the academy. But one day, they started to fight. They started to fight, of course, in Torah. And the question had to do whether a sword, a knife, or a spear, at what stage they acquire ritual impurity. and it was really about when their production was done it's not so important to get into the details for us but the key is at some point in the argument Rabbi Yochanan in the Heath of the Moment says well, a thief should know about the tools of thievery and it was like a knife in the heart of Rish Lakish he says, what good have you done me? when I was a thief they called me master and in the Beit Midrash they called me master Rabbi Yochanan was not at all apologetic he says, what good have I done you?

I took you from a life of bandwagery into the life of the Shekhinah, the presence of God. And Rabbi Yochanan ikpid, he became very upset with Reish Lakish, and hey, you better look out, because when a Talmud Chacham gets upset, people go down. In fact, Reish Lakish became deathly ill. Rabbi Yochanan's sister came and begged and pleaded with him, because she was his wife, and he said, forget it, he wasn't listening, and finally, Reish Lakish died. And Rabbi Yochanan's heart was broken. And in order to console him, the sages brought him a new study partner. but what was the problem? every time Rabbi Yochanan said something the study department would say ah, you're right and I'll bring you a Mishnahh to prove it oh, you're right I'll bring you a B'rita all the teaching of the Tanaim finally Rabbi Yochanan said to him what good are you?

when Reish Lakish was alive he would challenge anything I'd say with 24 objections and I would answer him with 24 answers and out of that would become a real understanding of the law and you just keep telling me I'm right and bringing proofs and then weeping and mad, he goes off, and the sages actually pray for mercy, and he dies. So, this is a phenomenal story, and deserves to be unpacked. I encourage you to do it. But, one thing that we need to take away is this power of a commitment to process that allows you to argue with others in pursuit of the truth. And furthermore, for the particular Eretz Yisrael context, because the time of the Morayim will not be long in Eretz Yisrael, The future of the Torah really lies in Bavel, in Babylon.

And in a sense, what we can get from this is that the banditry that died within Reish Lachish and ought to have actually been forgotten, is an unavoidable byproduct of life in the land of Israel. It's a chaotic reality there of colonial rule. Terrible economic suffering as part of the general instability of the 3rd century that we'll discuss momentarily. there is of course the rising competition from Christianity which we'll speak about in the coming episode and even perhaps deep below the surface little sparks of that spirit of the Maccabees that crazy notion that in order to serve God we have to have sovereignty over particular geography is lurking just below the surface and that was the power that Rish Lakish brought to bear and Rabbi Yochan stood over and against him with the power of the pure Torah, and between the two of them, they were able to be whole.

Because so long as the discussion of how to live Torah was actually living in the land of Israel, it would be in the spirit of combat. As the Gemara itself says, Tachazi, come see, Ma'aben tekifei de'ara Yisrael v'chassidei de'babel What lies between the fierce ones of the land of Israel and the pious of Bavel. Because the future is in Bavel. And it had indeed begun to rise as the new home of Torah, even in Rabbi's lifetime. The Gemara and Sanhedrin says that our rabbis in Babylon refer to Rav and Shmuel And we have to give a little sketch of each of them but first a bit of the Babylonian backstory Truth is if we want to go to the way back story we should remember that Avram Avinu actually came from Ur which is the land of Babylon.

It's where we come from. But moving a little bit forward in history, the first temple was destroyed in the year 586, before the Common Era, according to the secular dating. and you may or may not know that even before it was destroyed, 11 years in fact before it was destroyed, the king Yoh Yachin was actually taken into exile together with the nobles, the craftsmen, the spiritual elite of Jerusalem and they laid the groundwork for Jewish life in Babel. Now the Gemar P'sachim said that exile of Yoh Yachin together with the dispersion of Torah out of the land of Israel into Babel in the time we're speaking of was Am Yisrael being sent back to their mother's house. So again, Pesachim 87b, if you want to look.

When the Gemara discusses why that would be, the first answer he gives is the name of Rebbe Chia. It says, The Holy One, blessed be He, knows that Israel is unable to endure the cruel decrees of Edom, and therefore he exiled them to Babylon. Edom in the rabbinic mind is Rome and the difficulty with Greco-Roman culture is far from over. Remember, the socio-political reality of the Greco-Roman culture has come to see the Jews as the indigestible element of the empire. And of course, the Christian element which is soon to take a large place in Greco-Roman culture has come to see the Jews as a failed path and perhaps even the killers of God. When the two combine into the Christian Empire, oy vavoy. And in Babylon, well, the Sassanid incarnation of the Persian Empire for the next couple hundred years, truth is until the mid-5th century of the Common Era, will be just dandy.

So the Gemara goes on and says, Rebbe Ezra says, because their language is akin to the language of the Torah. Why was Am Yisrael sent specifically to Bavel? Because Aramaic, which was the spoken language of Bavel, is a Semitic language, and therefore very close to Hebrew. And here is a real indicator of that second proof that we are indeed at the end of an era. Because the shift from Hebrew to Aramaic in the text of the Gemara is almost always indicative of a shift between a teaching of the Tanaim and the Amorayim. and finally the Reb Yochan in the Scamara says well, he sent them back to their mother's house just like a man who becomes angry with his wife where does he send her? not to a foreign land, but to his mother's house and I understand this as saying we went to Babylon in order to grow up and the question that we have to hold is is that what exile is all about?

us growing up? and if so, what do we have to look like before we can leave. So, as part of this backstory, Rabbi Shreya Gaon, important 11th century rabbinic figure, well, actually end of the 10th, who we'll speak about when we get to him in his own context, but he teaches that those exiles from the pre-destruction of the first temple, actually built a synagogue in a city called Nehardea in Babylon. and in order to lay its foundation, they brought with them earth and stones from Jerusalem. Now this synagogue had quite a long duration, and it will become known by the sages in Babel in the 4th century as the seat of the Shekhinah in Babel, the place of the Divine Presence, which apparently could also exist outside of Israel.

furthermore the original backstory to Bavel lays the groundwork for a whole new relationship to Malchut to the sociopolitical powers that hold the context within which Am Yisrael will develop and the first indication we get of this is in the 29th chapter of Jeremiah where in lines 5-7 God in the voice of the prophet tells the people build houses and live in them, plant gardens, take wives daughters, sons build, build, and furthermore seek the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you and pray to the Lord on its behalf for in its prosperity you shall prosper and this is critical because so long as the Jews were attempting to live the life of Torah in the land of Israel, as I noted in that story of Rabbi Yochanan and Rish Lakish underlying the surface would be the sense of an illegitimacy to the Malchut whereas there's a safety in exile there we are able to embrace the Malchut in a way which would never be possible in the land of Israel and so now we come to our rabbis in Bavel Shmuel was actually born in 165 in the common era in the city of Nardea which we just mentioned that makes him a contemporary of Rabbi Yehudah Nasi nevertheless he is considered an Amora and not a Tana now we know that in his youth Shmuel quickly absorbed everything that the sages of Bavel had to offer and went up to learn the Mishnahh from the students of Rebbe within his lifetime and when he returned to Bavel he was so wise he was appointed the head of the Beit Din of the court in Nardia by the Exilarch Marukva the who?

the Exilarch The Exil Ark is the parallel of the Patriarch in Babel. It's an autonomous Jewish leadership. And it will actually become an important part of our story. When we get to the Gonic period, for now, we can just remember that the Jews had self-rule limited, though it may be, within the Persian Empire. And Marukva, the Exil Ark, appoints Shmuel. Now, it was actually Shmuel who gave formal articulation in law to the principle of Dina de Malchuta Dina, that the law of the land, or the law of the king, is indeed the law. As we said, its roots are in Jeremiah, but he was the one who, in his close personal relationship to the Persian court, became a powerful intercessor for the Jews of the Persian Empire, and came to see, in fact, that so long as the question is one of the interest of the king, or the benefit of the citizens of the state, that one has an obligation to uplaw all the laws of the state.

It doesn't mean that Am Yisrael is going to begin to judge according to the laws of the non-Jewish courts, but they must respect and abide by them. It's interesting to note that Shmuel is also the chief voice in the rabbinic debate around the nature of Messiah for a continued socio-political vision. He's the one who says, There's no difference between this world and the time of the Messiah other than the fact that we will be freed from the subjugation of the nations. Shmuel clearly understood that a very important part of our exile was coming to a new relationship with the sociopolitical context within which we'd find ourselves. so Shmuel eventually actually gains the post of Resh Sidra the head of the academy of Nahardeah but not until it had actually been refused by Rav now who was Rav?

Rav is a slightly younger contemporary of Shmuel born also in Bavel in the year 175 and he also at a young age came up to the land of Israel to learn but he became actually one of Rebbe's chief students. And the fame of Rav, his claim to fame, so to speak, is that Rav is the one who brought the Mishnahh with him on his return to Bavel. And in fact, the traditional narrative teaches that the year of Rav's return to Bavel, 219th year of the Common Era, 530th of the Seleucid, if you happen to be counting that way, is the starting point of the Talmudic age, meaning the beginning of the age of the Amorayim. And the Gemara says about Rav, Tanehu Ufalik. And that could mean one of two things. It could mean, and it's generally taken to mean, that he actually occupies a bridge position between the Taneim and the Amorayim.

Why? Because he holds the right more or less exclusively for one who's considered an Amorah and not a Taneh of disputing with the opinion of the Tanah, as I said, that whole rabbinic dynamic of holding the Mishnahh inviolate, but nevertheless charging forward into the future believing that the latest voice in the conversation is the correct one is a critical piece of the dynamic. So, Tanahu, Uchfalig, either he is like a Tanah and therefore can argue, or you can read it as he taught and argued, which again is that foundation of that educational approach embodied in the Gemara, that the way we carry forward the wisdom of the past is by arguing with it, not simply by slapping it along into the future.

So Rav, as I said, refuses the position of Reh Sidra at Nahardia. He's not willing to be the head of the academy when Shmuel is there. Shmuel is older than him, even though Rav was recognized as greater in Torah, and he didn't want to impinge on Shmuel's honor. Therefore, he moved to Surah on the banks of the Euphrates. Surah, which the Gemara says he found an open field and fenced it in, meaning It was filled with Jews who knew nothing. Rav overheard a conversation between two maidservants saying, how much milk do you think it takes to cook two pounds of meat? They knew nothing, not about the laws of the Torah, and not about the rabbinic perspective on the halakha. But what they had was geographic concentration, what I call the Brighton Beach model of Judaism.

They were Jews because everybody was Jewish, the bus driver the guy in the candy store etc and so this was a growth medium into which Rav could root the Mishnahh and allow the Gemara to grow because Surah indeed becomes a magnificent academy of Torah, so much so that it continues to exist in name, if not in actual geographic location, all the way through the 10th century. So Rav and Shmuel together made Surah and Nahardiyah into thriving centers of Torah learning. And they were so successful that from their time forward, there was no absolute need for students to leave Bavel, to go up to Eretz Israel. And Shmuel himself taught that just as it's forbidden to migrate from Israel to Bavel, so too is it forbidden to migrate from Bavel to any other country.

As we'll see at the end, there's one step left in the elevation of Bavel. And this twin academy model which is a well-known phenomenon of the Amoretic period, is now in existence. Though Nardea is actually soon to be replaced by the better-known Pompidita. Surin Pompidita is what many people recognize to be the twin academy model. And why is it replaced? Because Nardea is destroyed soon after Shmuel's death by Lucius Septimus in the year 259 of the Common Era. And why was it destroyed? Well, in order to understand that, we have to look at the third piece of the end of an era, and that is the sociopolitical context, the crisis of the third century in the Roman Empire. So the crisis, so to speak, always has to begin with something.

In our case, it begins with the assassination of the Emperor Severus Alexander by his very own troops in the year 235. And this touched off a half a century of chaos. in which there were, by some counts, 26 people who claimed the title of emperor. At the same time, Northern Europe began to boil over in its population, and Germanic tribes poured down onto the continent, beating back the Lens, that line of legions that were set at the edge of the Roman Empire. The empire was completely blindsided by this, because they had been focused almost exclusively on the dangers of the resurgent Sassanid Persian Empire in the east. So therefore, in the years following the emperor's death, the Roman army began to fight each other for control of the empire and neglect their duties from defending the threat from Persia on the east or the German tribes on the west.

And by 268, it had actually split into three competing states. officially. There was the Gallic Empire, the Palmyran Empire, which is the one that actually destroyed Nardia, and then the classic Italian-based Roman Empire. And though, within a decade or two, it was finally reunited under Aurelian, nevertheless, the damage was extreme. Dozens of formerly rich and thriving cities were gone. Their populations had been dispersed. The economic system had taken a blow from which it really would never fully recover. And in a little glimmer of the implications for this change, many of these former city dwellers and many small farmers actually were forced to give up their basic civil rights in order to get protection from the large landholders who were becoming an increasingly important power in the Roman Empire.

And they became this half-free class of Roman citizens known as coloni, tied to the land, ultimately bound by law in that their status became hereditary. And this will lay the groundwork for what we call serfdom. And in that, already we're seeing pieces of the Middle Ages emerging, even as we watch. But that chaos is going to have an extreme impact on life in the land of Israel, something that we'll speak more of in the next episode. So here we are. We have these three elements to argue that we are indeed at the end of an era. First of all, that ideological, idealist chronology of Seder Olam Rabbah, which places the end of the era of Torah in the year 242, and in my opinion doesn't tell us that we're not good enough anymore, but rather, since we're already into the age of the Mashiach, well into it, What it's telling us is that we already have the pieces that we need.

We just need to get the conversation right. Furthermore, the textual, linguistic, geographic shift embodied in the move between the Mishnahh to the Gemara, the Hebrew to Aramaic, the land of Israel to Bavel, and finally the shaking of the foundations of the Roman Empire, which ultimately will regroup, but never to be quite the same again. I do want to say that there's a piece we left out. And in the coming episode, we're going to have to return and trace the trajectory of Christianity and how it intersects Rome. And furthermore, we're going to have to explore the full construction of the document that we call the Gemara, and understand how a conversation can become a canon. But for now, the question I want to end with is always the important question, which is, where is this conversation going?

What is the understanding of exile which lurks behind the discussion happening within the bounds set by the portable homeland? If we're inside this conversational capsule, are we on some inevitable track outward into the unknown? Or can we just seize the moment at any given time, as Rebbe Akiva tried to do, and turn the tide? well, in order to do that in order to understand that I just want to take a peek at one last Gemara at the end of the Gemara in Ketubot on 110B111A there's a powerful articulation of the nature of exile Gemara says that Rabbi Zerah was avoiding Rav Yehudah Rabbi Zerah is one of the third generation of the Morayim and Rav Yehudah is the second And Rabbi Yehuda, to learners of the Gemara, will be very familiar because he was the one who really preserved and compiled the teachings of Rab and Shul.

Amar Rabbi Yehuda, Amar Rab, Amar Rabbi Yehuda, Amar Shmuel are very common sayings in the Gemara. And he, in fact, was the founder of that replacement academy of Pumidita, which would become so famous. Rabbi Zerah was his student. And why was he avoiding his teacher, Rabbi Yehuda? Because Rabbi Zerah wanted to go up to the land of Israel. but Rav Yehuda had taught the following whoever goes up from Bavel to the land of Israel transgresses a positive commandment for as it says in the Bible they shall be carried to Babylon and there shall they be until the day that I remember them saith the Lord once again Jeremiah 27-22 just see the shift Shmuel the first generation of Amorayim said well just as it's forbidden to leave the land of Israel to come here to Babel, so too you can't leave Babel in order to go anywhere else.

He understood that Babel was important, but it was still second tier. Here by the third generation, the tide has turned. And they are actually articulating, whether he meant there was indeed a positive commandment or not is not important. The tide had turned that they were indeed bound in Babylon. And as the Gemara goes on, it turns into a discussion of certain verses in the book of Shir Hashirim. And the conclusion of the discussion is actually what's known as the three oaths. What are these three oaths? These are the three oaths that actually bind Am Yisrael in exile. And by the way, if you think that this is insignificant, we should be blessed to reach the Zionist era and we'll speak about how these three oaths become central to the battle of religious drury against the movement for national rebirth.

But for now, what are the oaths as the Gemara articulates them? 1. That Israel shall not go up like a wall. That the era has passed for a mass movement of return to the land of Israel. 2. The Holy One, blessed be He, warned Israel that they not rebel against the nations of the world. As we saw in that vision of Daniel so long ago, malchut, the power to control the socio-political context within which life will be lived, has been handed over to the kingdoms until the time of the Messiah. Let it be soon, let it be now. And number three is that HaKadosh Baruch Hu warned the nations of the world that they not oppress Israel too much. And that question of how much is too much, how long is too long. And what it is we will do while we're in exile, the type of conversation we can have, whether we understand ourselves as being a descent of generations and we're no longer good enough, or whether we really embrace the fact that we have everything we need.

We're already living in the Messianic era. We just need to turn the tide of the conversation. Well, that's what lays ahead for many episodes to come. I just want to thank everybody who gives their hard-earned money to make this project possible you know there are 28, only 28 people who do so and if you want to join them and keep this material free and widely distributed well then you can go to www.patreon.com you can find my MFoyer page and you can donate to the podcast project I'd also like to thank pardes.org.il a wonderful place to teach and learn and it gives me such an opportunity. I want to thank the folks in the Land of Israel Network for getting my voice out to broader horizons than I really could have ever imagined on my own.

I want to thank Sulem Yaakov because it's my home and I love it. I want to thank you for listening and being part of the Jewish story. I'm Rav Mike Hoyer and this is the Jewish story.