Season 1: Episode 14 - Fixing the Conversation

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I've got a theory that change happens when you tap into the story inside you, and then you look up around the world, and you see that it's happening out there as well. Because it's this realization that can give you access to the momentum that allows you to transform your dreams into a reality, and through that, to change the world. So I'm telling a story that's inside me, and I'm fully convinced that it's happening in the world around us. It's a story about the past, but don't be fooled, because it's all about making us who we dream to be in the present in order to take us to the future of which we long. I'm Rav Mike Foyer, and this is The Jewish Story. Episode 14, Making the Mold. You know, one of the great mysteries of Jewish history is how is it that we maintain continuity in the face of such continual dispersion?

The truth is, it's a mystery and a debate, because the new historians of Jewish history have been spending tremendous amounts of energy in the last couple of decades deconstructing all the models of Judaism that imply that there's any monolithic identity that underlies us at all. They deny continuity. but I'm taking a stand in its favor. My continuity is a continuity of conversation and I hope you're going to join me in it. Because this phase of our story is about laying the groundwork for lots of things but the primary amongst them is the framework for a solidity of identity that can keep Am Yisrael, soon to be the Jews in the conversation for the coming century. And our primary question is going to be how do the Jews remain one people as they're progressively scattered to the four corners of the world?

And as everybody knows, there's nothing more helpful in establishing my boundaries than someone to push up against and say, hey, hey, you're not me. Because whether it's an enemy or an ally, the idea of other is critical to defining self. Therefore, I'm going to start now actually not with Am Yisrael but rather with the two forces that are arrayed against us at this point of our story and speak about how they astoundingly become one and in doing so we'll provide the framework the Malchut in the definition that we've given it this kingship which is the ability to create the context within which life will develop that context that they provide for the growth of a good portion of the Jewish people for some time to come what I'm talking about is how exactly the Pope came to rule over Rome in the place of the Emperor so, how did Christianity go from being an oppressed minority to a dominant majority?

so, for Christianity and its own story we're actually now in the patristic period this is the time of the church fathers that began when the apostles who had actually learned from Jesus of Nazareth himself of course with the exception of Paul they all died around the end of the first century. It stretches, depending on which position you take in the academic world, or the religious world for that matter, either to the end of the fifth or the ninth century. And it's the age of the own identity struggle for Christianity. They're also seeking to clarify doctrine, build consistent religious structures. And, furthermore, despite that deep sense that Christianity has had since its inception, that their new covenant has come in order to bring God to the entire world, or the entire world to God, depending on how you look at it, the possibility of a universal church seems to be quite a distant dream, because the first, second, and third centuries will be marked for Christianity by the power and tragedy of martyrdom.

That's because, unlike Judaism, at this point, Christianity is not at all a recognized religion of the Roman Empire, and that causes them quite a bit of grief. Therefore, while Hellenistic Judaism is actually flourishing in the 3rd century, which is astounding despite all the troubles we've spoken about in the 1st and 2nd century, there are many historians who believe there could have been as many as 5 million Jews in the Roman Empire around the Mediterranean Basin at this point. However, the Christians are being hounded wherever they're found. And these persecutions will actually reach their height at the beginning of the 4th century under the Emperor Diocletian and his immediate successors. But, despite the fact that their suffering comes primarily at the hands of the pagans, the prime protagonist in Christianity's identity battle will still be Am Yisrael.

And that battle is going to take a couple forms. One will be preaching to the converted in order to help keep them that way. Meaning, Judaism is still seen as a competitor for the souls of the people. And you can find a wealth of polemic literature that proves that the synagogue and the Jewish festivals still held a significant attraction to people who might nonetheless go take the sacraments on Sundays. But what's more interesting for me, and what I think will actually be a much more lasting element of both identity and struggle, is what I call the hermeneutic battle. It's the struggle for the control of the text. because remember, both Judaism and Christianity root their vision of redemption in the Hebrew Bible, despite the advent of the Christian scriptures.

Therefore, the hermeneutic battle will be the struggle to figure out who is reading the story in the way which will actually bring about the redemption of which they dream. Now, this struggle has been ongoing since the time of the apostles themselves. And if you know a bit about Christian history, you'll see that it's given a much sharper form by such early Christian thinkers as Justin Martyr and Tertullian. But for my purpose, I think it's best articulated in the words of Augustine of Hippo. This critical church father, late 4th, early 5th century, even though that's a little bit beyond where we are in our story right now, his thought is so foundational to Christianity. In fact, in truth, he's foundational to Western society, that it's worth it that we check out the hermeneut battle in his words.

So when Augustine addresses the verse, the elder shall serve the younger, this is a verse which you'll find in Breshit that's talking about Rivka. When she has twin babies in her womb, and their struggle has her so perplexed as to what's going on, she goes and seeks the word of God. And what she hears is that these aren't just two babies in her womb, they're not just twin brothers, these are two nations. and, as the verse says, the elder shall serve the younger. He says the following, This is understood by our writers, almost without exception, to mean that the elder people, the Jews, shall serve the younger people. He doesn't say it, but meaning the Christians. So, in the plain text, the elder shall serve the younger, is of course referring to Esau and Yaakov.

And what Augustine is doing, is he's looking at history, and using it as a lens to understand the text and then turning back around and understanding history because he's placing Am Yisrael in the role of elder brother. In historical terms, that makes perfect sense. Though he may see a great future for Christianity, at this point there's still a new kid on the block. And therefore, he's able to put Am Yisrael in a perplexing manner into the role of Esau and thus claim the inheritance which this prophecy promises as a Christian birthright. Am Yisrael the elder, Esau, and the Christians the younger, Yaakov. The sages, of course, are the ones who name Rome, and ultimately Christianity once they adopt the Roman Empire, as Edom, as Esau.

And that firmly labels them as the elder brother, even though, in a historical sense, they appear on the stage later. and this allows Israel, of course, to be the descendants of Yaakov and to claim the Christian birthright. You see the mess? So, Christianity is going to struggle to define itself against Judaism which is a big part of the early patristic era and to survive the persecutions of Rome also quite an impressive part of that era right up until the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in the year 312. At least, that's how the story is told. Because according to Eusebius, I've got to thank my friend Eric out there for helping me for the pronunciation, that critical 4th century church historian, as well as Lactantius, an early Christian author who actually becomes an advisor to the first Christian Roman emperor, this battle will mark the beginning of that same emperor, Emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity.

So what's happening? Constantine and his army are camped out on the banks of the Tiber River before Rome, at a critical juncture, the Milvian Bridge, on the eve of what will be a decisive battle in Constantine's quest to unite the empire in his own person. That night, Constantine has a vision. It's a dream, says Eusebius, sent by the Christian god. a promise of victory if Constantine's soldiers should paint God's sign on their shields. According to Eusebius, that is the Cairo, the first two letters of their Savior's name in Greek. According to Actantius, it's actually a Latin cross, which is a normal cross with the top bent over like a P. For our purpose, it doesn't really matter which symbol is which.

What matters is that Constantine indeed rises in the morning, filled by this dream, commands his soldiers to do so, and is victorious. Now, big things lie ahead for the empire under this emperor. And one of the small marks of that is the Arch of Constantine, which he of course erects in celebration of his victory, which certainly attributes his success to divine intervention, but does not display any overtly Christian symbolism. But no matter how you choose to interpret this story, and indeed how you understand the wealth of scholarly argument about whether Constantine ever actually became a Christian, whether he became one but he didn't really believe it, whether he was trying to dance at two weddings, it doesn't matter to me.

Because his actions in the next decade or two will be decisive. First will come the Edict of Milan. Because the Battle of Miliband Bridge is in 312, and within a single year, in 313, Constantine announces that Christianity has gained the tolerated status of a legal religion within their own empire. It's a status that Judaism has enjoyed for centuries. And now the race for the souls is on. Because only 12 years later, Constantine will convene the Nicaean Council. In the year 325, he commands that all the Christian bishops convene in Nicaea, in the first ever ecumenical council with the goal of attaining consensus on a doctrinal statement through an assembly that claims to represent all of Christendom.

Now this was an incredible effort at the creation of orthodoxy And one of the things you have to understand is that as long as heterodoxy exists meaning there are disparate opinions about belief which are duking it out for the hearts and minds of its followers, when then there is no heresy. But once you establish orthodoxy, what would have been heterodoxy becomes heresy just like that. And this is indeed what happens at Nicaea. They succeed in creating what's known as the Nicaean Creed. And with the ism of Catholicism is born the schism of chasing down heresy. The primary heresy that comes out of Nicaea is what's known as the Aryan heresy. The details of the doctrine are really beyond me and not critical to our story.

Except to understand that this Aryan perspective on Christianity doesn't go away. It will actually return to us when we see the conversion of the German tribes that are even now battering the western side of the Roman Empire. But that for a later story. For now, Constantine desired and has achieved a clear statement of faith, and it seems he planned to use the power of the state to give it a significant effect in the world. Now, toward the end of his life, he also will build a new capital for his empire, the city of Constantinople, Istanbul, Constantinople, Byzantine, Constantinople. We'll talk more about the Byzantine Empire in coming episodes, but for now, it's a major change in Rome. When he passes from the world, the next major shift in the Christian story will actually be, about 50 years later, the Edict of Thessalonica.

This was decreed by Theodosius I in the year 380, which made the Nicene Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire. And here we have it. From the beginning of the 4th century, a persecuted minority, Christianity is now the official state religion of the world's largest empire. And suddenly, the idea of a universal church and the defeat of paganism isn't such a wild dream after all. Now for our stories, we have to ask, of course, is this good news for the Jews? What does it mean for the Jews now that Christianity is suddenly the context for their life in the Greco-Roman world? Well, one thing that the historical record shows us pretty clearly is it means a surge in antagonism. Because despite the effort and the energy which is being expended on uniting the orthodoxy of Christianity, and the progressive battle rapidly succeeding now that the empire is on its side to stamp out paganism, the Jews still remain the primary identity challenge to Christianity.

And this can be seen quite clearly in the writing of John Chrysostom, the Archbishop of Constantinople and key church father of the late 4th century. His words leave no doubt that many Christians were again still attracted to the synagogue. And in order to deter them, he was a famous orator. he left behind a series of eight sermons designed to show how wicked the Jews really were. And what's fascinating for us in the context of the hermeneutic Bible I mentioned before is that his demonstrations, his proofs of the wickedness of the Jews actually don't come from his experience and his interaction with the Jews themselves in his own lifetime but are rather proof texts he pulls from the Bible. But let me just give you a taste of his language to appreciate where he's coming from.

Do you see that demons dwell in their souls and that these demons are more dangerous than the ones of old? And this is very reasonable. In the old days, the Jews acted impiously toward the prophets. Now they outrage the master of the prophets. Tell me this, do you not shudder to come into the same place with men possessed with so many unclean spirits who have been reared amid slaughter and bloodshed? Now along with this incitement, we can see in the historical record a series of anti-Jewish laws passed by the Empire, 383, 392, 404, prohibiting Jews from converting others, prohibiting Jews from punishing their brethren who convert to Christianity, prohibiting Jews from holding public office where they would have authority over Christians, forbidding the repair of destroyed synagogues and the construction of new ones.

and sadly we know that when there's incitement and when law is used to enshrine prejudice violence is never far behind and just as a small example in 388 in the small city of Kalinicon on the Euphrates River the city's bishop incites a mob of monks and Christians to burn down a synagogue now when the emperor Theodosius hears about this Remember, he is the emperor who made Christianity the official state religion. Nevertheless, his commitment, admirably, is to law and order. Therefore, he orders his Comas Orientis, the Count of the Orient, who is his agent in the East, to punish the monks and see to it that the bishop himself provide the funds to rebuild the synagogue. It's at this point that the incident enters the historical record, because Ambrose of Milan, the Bishop of Milan, which was the capital of the empire in the West, writes a lengthy letter to Theodosius protesting.

He says that to force a bishop to construct a synagogue was just the same as forcing Christians to build altars to the pagan gods and goddesses. And so we here have the whole package of polemic, incitement, law, and violence. and it all really gets codified in the Theodosian Code. Theodosian Code was a compilation of the laws of the Roman Empire which really lasts from the beginning of the Christian Emperors in 312 all the way through to its publication in 438. And since law in general can be seen as a codification of status and power relationships, this is not good news for the Jews. It includes all of those specific ideas that I mentioned to you already. now in addition to this sort of legal manifestation there is also a larger conceptual framework that's going to join together with its manifestation and law and really set the mold for the whole relationship between Christianity and Judaism in the Middle Ages you know it's interesting law and conceptual framework Mishnahh and Midrash are always at play it's not an exclusively Jewish approach and I think I'll best put the conceptual framework in the words once again of Augustine because he says in his magnum opus his great life work, The City of God once again, analyzing text he brings a verse from the Psalms saying, slay them not lest they should at last forget your law he goes on and says unless he had also added disperse them because the whole verse includes disperse them he explains because if they had only been in their own land they being the Jews with the testimony of the scriptures and not everywhere scattered amongst the world certainly the church which is everywhere he says could not have had them as witnesses among all the nations to the prophecies which were sent before concerning Christ between this statement of Augustine and the one we looked at previously he establishes the two-fold idea which will actually become the official status of the Jews in the Christian kingdoms of the Middle Ages the first is the one we mention is that the Jews are the elder brother and therefore servants of the younger brother and this will actually manifest as the Jews become the serfs of the king in the feudal system and literally his slaves the second is what's called informally the doctrine of the suffering remnant this is what Augustine just said that the reason that the Jews are dispersed abroad is in order to testify to the truth of the Christian interpretation of scripture remember, Christianity is basing its prophecies in the Hebrew Bible and the Jews become a living testimony first of all to the truth of that Bible but second of all to the consequence of ignoring as they see it the true truth.

That's that hermeneutic battle once again. And thus the Jews are actually kept alive by the Church. It's an important thing to note that the Church as an official organ never seeks to destroy the Jews. The masses may at times, but the Church sees the Jews ultimately as a demonstration of the truth of their prophecies. So, that's the context. Now, let's speak about the inside story. because there's a big question about the nature of rabbinic authority and the power it plays in shaping Jewish identity because if we follow the narrative as presented by rabbinic texts well then rabbinic authority basically experienced a steady and unchallenged rise from the time that Rabbi Yochanan escaped the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70, which I hope you recall until basically the enlightenment and since documentary evidence, aside from these rabbinic texts themselves, in this critical period of late antiquity is so hard to come by, and because in the end the rabbis will indeed emerge as the primary voice of authority and shapers of identity in the Middle Ages, this is largely the way it's been viewed up until now.

However, there's a small but growing body of research which points to a continued diversity of Jewish identity and therefore authority well into the early Islamic period, what we're going to call the Gaonic period in the coming episodes. Now, where do they search for such evidence? One place is actually, interestingly enough, in archaeology. Because the synagogue in the 3rd century emerges as a center point in the organization of community. And there have been many excavated around the Mediterranean basin. And within those synagogues we can find inscriptions. and what's fascinating is the inscriptions found in the synagogues of the 3rd and 4th century, even in the land of Israel where the Mishnahh has been created and where presumably rabbinic authority and the culture which it was tempting to foster would have been at its strongest these inscriptions are more often than Greek, even than Aramaic and Hebrew inscriptions, or even Hebrew words in the inscriptions are exceedingly rare This seems to say that it's the Hellenistic version of Judaism which is thriving at this time.

Now, it's important to note that by the 6th century, the use of Hebrew is clearly spreading rapidly because rabbinic culture is on the rise. What's even more fascinating to me is that many of these synagogues are actually decorated with mosaics that display figures, seemingly mythological, human, animal, meaning that the absolutist stance of rabbinic culture opposed to energetic representation apparently hadn't caught on. And it's significant that the Gemara tells the same story. If you look in the Yerushalmi, if you look it up in Sotah if you want the details just call me it says that two sages visited a synagogue in Qesariah And when the congregants began to recite the Shema, that great declaration of unity which set the core of Jewish practice and belief, it was in Greek.

And one of the rabbis, Levi Bar Chita, was appalled and he wanted to stop the service right then and there. Imagine, hold it! But Revi Yossi, his companion, held him back. And he said, better to recite the Shema in Greek than not to recite it at all. That's a level of pragmatism that shows that you don't expect to be able to control people's behavior. There's another reference specifically to the depiction of pictures and mosaics in the synagogue. The Yerushalmi in Avodah Zarah says that in the days of Rabbi Yochanan, we spoke about last episode, that's the 3rd century, the Jews began depicting on the walls and the rabbis didn't protest. In the days of Rab'abun, which is a century later, the 4th century, they began depicting on mosaic floors, and he did not protest.

These are the slightest signs that while the sages had a clarity of the goal of their project of crafting identity, they weren't there yet. Another fascinating piece of evidence, potentially, in this slow rise of rabbinic authority, as opposed to the old-school vision of its immediate imposition, is in the tension between rabbinic literature and what's known as the Hei Chalot literature. The Hei Chalot literature is the earliest written form of Jewish mysticism that we have available. And its focus is on techniques for achieving power and knowledge of the divine directly through heavenly ascent. In a sense, this means it's maintaining the desire for an unmediated relationship to God. And as such, is opposed to one which is defined by legal authority as embedded in rabbinic culture.

now, we're not going to pursue the Hekelot now it's a bit over my head and off the track of our story but you should just know something will come back to us throughout the next, I don't know how many episodes because it's a theme to this very day in Jewish culture is that there's an uneasy relationship between the mystics and the rabbis sometimes they'll be one and the same sometimes they'll be partners in pursuing God and tradition and other times they will stand in opposition so, in reality all these examples are small potatoes when it comes to the question of how rabbinic authority managed to gain the power to shape Jewish identity. Because ultimately, the true foundation of their authority is going to be in the Gemara.

They will produce it, and in the end it will produce the Jews. We saw in the last episode that the Mishnahh, this great portable homeland as I called it, shaped by Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, was in the hands of his students in the land of Israel within his lifetime and for a few generations afterwards. And in Eretz Yisrael, the discussion of these students will produce what we call the Yerushalmi, that awkwardly named Palestinian Talmud, which was compiled largely in the north, mostly in the city of Tveria. And if you recall, Rabbi Yochanan and Reish Lakish were the students of Rabbi, or the students of his students, depending, who left their mark on almost every page of the Rushalmi, to the point where, traditionally, Rabbi Yochanan is seen as the compiler of the Palestinian Talmud.

We'll touch on when that process actually ends in a minute, but the real question is, what is the Gemara? And what is in specific the Palestinian Talmud, the Rushalmi? Because if one reads it, it seems quite different from Babli, terse, sometimes laconic, obtuse. That's because it's the record of a deep conversation which was cut off in the middle. For this reason, number one, it's far more limited in scope than the Babylonian Talmud. Of the 63 tractates of the Mishnahh, only 39 of them get a treatment in the Ushalmi, and it's very heavy on the agricultural laws, which are almost completely absent from the Babylonian Talmud, for the reason that the laws really only pertain to the physical land of Israel.

But, even more so, it lacks that layer of anonymous explication and editing that the Bavli will get. That's because no one ever came along and explained what these Amorayim of the land of Israel were talking about, in order to make sure that those who weren't there could be in on the conversation. The participants themselves were actually cut off mid-sentence by the difficulty of life in Israel. And that's indeed what happens. around about the early 5th century. The Yerushalmi is simply cut off without any polish or flourish. And we'll mention at the end perhaps why. For now, the Yerushalmi actually lives on in learning to this very day. And the academy at Tiveria will survive even the most painful conditions in the land of Israel for many centuries to come.

And we'll return to our story, don't worry. But it's really the Babylonian Talmud that's going to reign supreme. so that's what I want to focus on. We spoke again in the last episode about these twin academies of Sur and Pompidita out there in Bavel and how Rav and Shmuel, that first generation of Amorayim took the portable homeland of the Mishnahh and began the conversation around it which will become the Gemara. But the question is how does a conversation become a document? And on a deeper level does making a conversation into a document kill it, or actually keep the conversation alive. Now, Rav Shreya Ghosn, who we've mentioned many times, who we will place in his proper position in history when we get to the Ghosnic period, but for now, just recall, in the 10th century, in response to the question of one of the wise men of North Africa, he gives us the first rabbinic historiography, tracing the development of the Mishnahh and the Gemara up to his time.

so he says that it's actually in the fourth generation of the Amor Ha'im during the time of the band that we call Abaye and Rava that the inhabitants of the land of Israel were subject to severe persecution and this persecution actually resulted in a mass influx of all the great Torah scholars from Eretz Israel to the academies in Bavel either the ones that lived in Israel or the Babylonians that had moved to Israel all came back and according to Rav Shura this influx basically caused people to realize hey, we've been having this conversation and you've been having this conversation over there in the land of Israel and the truth is there's a certain structure which is emerging these are what the Gemara calls the Habayot de Abayi ve Rava the discussions of Abayi and Rava now, I want you to think of a conversation with your friends not like a chat over coffee sometime but think of a friend you've had for 10 years.

And I bet you can imagine that there are conversations you've been having for most of that time. And it's not like every time you're just chewing the same fat. What it is, it's a conversation which returns and deepens and returns and builds structures of thought so that you don't have to reinvent the wheel in order to get to the depth. But that you understand that you've constructed a framework within which the conversation can progress. so Abaya and Rafa began the process of locking pieces of the conversation into place in order that it could deepen but in reality Rav Shura says that it's Rav Ashi and his later contemporary Rav Veina who are really the ones that finished the Babli approximately in the year 500 of the common era now, if it was hard enough to understand what it means to put pieces of a conversation into place, what does it mean to finish a conversation that you actually intend to keep having for a thousand years or more?

Maybe we can get a little hint from the Gemara in Gittin where it says, from the days of Rebbe until Rebbe Asher, Rebbe remember was the redactor of the Mishnahh from the days of Rebbe until Rav Ashi, who is traditionally the one who finishes the Gemara, we do not find both Torah and Malchut in the same man now Torah is the living exposition of the will of God when you're a prophet that's the direct line but when you're one of the wise it's a connection to creation that allows you to speak out the divine intention because of the intensity of your sensitivity to how it's expressed in the world Malchut we said is the ability to create the context within which that understanding can grow. That's the type of malchut that's speaking about here.

Neither of these men are kings. They don't rule over anything. They don't wield the power to create a sociopolitical system within which their culture can grow. They're creating a context for identity to grow. And that context becomes the Gemara. This is the next phase of the portable homeland. They've moved in and they've started to build. so if the speaking out of this conversation didn't end then what did end with Rav Ashi because the Gemara says that Rav Ashi and Ravvena sof Hora'ah Rav Ashi and Ravvena are the end of Hora'ah what's fascinating is that Hora'ah likely comes from the same root as Torah itself it's instruction which is meant to guide one and Rav Shira explains that Rav Ashi actually put the Gemara in a position that anything which had been said up to then was no longer to be changed.

That they were the last to engage, he and his generation, in deciding between Tanaitic opinions, in making other major aspects of law, and anything which was codified up to that point was no longer called into question. They finished the context of the conversation. The Rambam actually says this in what I believe to be a much simpler, more elegant sense. He says that there were 40 generations from Moshe at Sinai all the way to Rav Ashi. And anyone who knows a little bit about rabbinic culture knows that the rabbis were not mathematicians, but they loved numbers as a language. And that number 40 is the number of wholeness. It's the number of days we say that the fetus gains form in the womb. It's the number of days that Moshe was on the mountain.

the number of years that the children of Israel wandered in the desert, that there was a gestation that went from Moshe to Rav Ashi, and now he could codify, and the conversation could be complete, but not finished. And that's really the question. Is it codification or calcification? When we stop this process in order to allow the further conversation to take place within it, does that preserve its life or destroy it? Now, the Gemara itself feels that tension, because it notes that it was actually forbidden, as we spoke about in the time of Rebbe, to write down the oral law at all, and yet it says it's time to act for God, because they've made void your Torah, meaning that the pressures of life were such that we have to act by violating the Torah itself in order to preserve it.

And when one of the later commentators, the Maharsha, tries to understand what exactly changed in this situation, aside from the historical context that we've spoken about, the terrible persecutions, the breakdowns of the academy, and as we see the progressive dispersion of the people he says the following He says It certainly impossible to write down all that the mouth is capable of conveying through words of Torah It's infinite. You're in the midst of a conversation which has no end, so therefore you can't write it down. Therefore, he goes on, the earlier generations, whose hearts were broader than the sea, said that they were not to be written down in order that one should review their learning continually.

meaning anything which is important you would never write it down otherwise if it's written down it's just information as opposed to something which transforms one who learns it and once it's being returned to and reviewed continually it will be well ordered enough to learn from and bring you to action but the Marashah goes on to lament the fact that by the time of the Gemara our hearts had been reduced and it was impossible to remember all these things by learning them orally So, now it's time to bring ourselves to action through making an orderly written version, even though this itself is forbidden by the Torah. The Marashah is telling us that the key to understanding the Gemara is that it's not about what you know, or even how you know, the cognitive lenses we use to see the world.

It's about what and how you know bring you to live in the world. And that's about who you are. You know a person, after all, by their actions. And this is why, in my opinion, the doctrinal schisms that will characterize Christianity at this stage are all but absent from Am Yisrael. They're replaced by arguments around orthopraxis, the unification of law and practice, and it's true that there will be a major doctrinal schism on the horizon, because remember, ism and schism come into the world together. But for right now, the sealing of the Gemara is not the creation of an ism. It is the creation of a closed conversation. Keeping in mind that by closing the conversation, we make it into a document which is essentially infinite.

And the proof of that is the successive generations who speak out its depths. What happens when you stop the development of the conversation itself, and you make it into a context within which the conversation continues, it ends up shaping who the members of that conversation will be. Through a development of culturally specific language, conceptual frames, and of course the power of authority that comes with ownership over the jargon of any discourse, you get into a conversation about software engineering with an expert and you'll see exactly what I mean. In the long run, in the next few generations, the Gemara is going to become a cultural matrix in the hands of the Gaonim. We'll speak about what that means, but for now, it's no longer a live conversation shaped by and reflective of its participants, but rather a tool for shaping those who will join in the conversation at all.

This is powerful and limiting, but it allows for a unified point of identity, which transcends even legalism and is critical as the dispersion grows. Because as the Rambam says, this time, year 500 is marked by the following quoting from his introduction to his great halachic work the Mishneh Torah every court that was established after the conclusion of the Talmud meaning after Rav Ashi regardless of the country in which it was established they issued decrees, they enacted ordinances they established customs for the people of that country or even the surrounding countries but these practices were not accepted throughout the Jewish people because of the distance between their different settlements and the disruption of communication between them.

Meaning, the Gemara is the end of a unified conversation. And if you want to ensure that what you're saying is being heard and spoken in the name of all of Am Yisrael, at this point, it has to be rooted in the Gemara. So, moving toward the end of this era, it's critical to know that for almost a thousand years, since the time of Ezra and the returnees, the center point of our story has been in the land of Israel. And even though I mentioned in the previous episode that that center has really shifted to Babel, to Babylonia, it's at this point in our story, at the end of late antiquity, as the Middle Ages are really on the horizon, that the center in Israel truly dissolves. And this is demonstrated, I think most concretely, by the shift in the Jewish calendar which lies ahead.

you know, today, if you want to know when the new moon falls out or when Passover is, or when any other Jewish holiday falls out you look on the wall, there's a calendar, you can check your phone, I'm sure you can get an app it's all unified but listen to what the Rambam says in his Laws of Sanctification of the New Moon he says, and this is in the 5th chapter, Laws 2 and 3 if you want to look it up when there's a Sanhedrin, the Jewish high court the monthly calendar is established according to the sighting of the moon when there's no Sanhedrin the monthly calendar is established according to the fixed calendar that we follow now and the sighting of the moon is of no consequence ok means the calendar is bound up with a live court and he goes on and says when did the entire Jewish people begin using this fixed calendar?

at the conclusion of the Talmudic period when Eretz Yisrael was in ruin and an established court no longer remained there in the era of the sages of the Mishnahh and in the era of the sages of the Gemara until the time of Abaye and Rava again the people would rely on the establishment of the calendar in Eretz Yisrael now there are challenges to this version of the story and there's good evidence that the mathematical model which underlies our fixed calendar actually remained under construction for several hundred years after the time that the Rambam speaks about but nevertheless the ultimate success in creating a fixed calendar which was not dependent on the existence of the Sanhedrin was a critical act of survival because we had become uncoupled from our geographic center in the land of Israel.

And whenever that calendar was exactly fixed, we know that the Sanhedrin ceased in exactly the year 426. How do we know? Because the Theodosian code that I mentioned earlier actually records an edict from the year 426 which transformed the tax that the patriarch, the head of the Sanhedrin, had the right to levy into an imperial tax after the death of Rabbi Gamaliel VI. Because Theodosius II did not allow the appointment of any successor and by 429 we can say that the patriarchate with the nasi at its head, what we call the Sanhedrin, that it served the center of Jewish life had been a sociopolitical umbrella under which the people could take shelter for over 200 years was now at an end. Combined with the oppression of the newly Christianized empire and revolts that roiled the country in the 5th and 6th centuries and shifted the demographics, making Christianity finally the dominant group in the land of Israel, the story there for now is going to take a back seat to the dispersion.

okay this has been a lot but now we have our calendar and our Gemara we have a unified time and an ongoing conversation which will have to be enough to give a basis if there's going to be any unified identity in the face of an incredibly changing world and increasing dispersion of the Jews because have no doubt about it late antiquity is a massive change the old gods are dying all over, and God is on the rise. The only question, really, is which side people will pick. We can see an incredible, at the beginning of the 4th century, Armenia converts to Christianity, the kingdom of Ethiopia will follow suit, there's even a fascinating story about the Himerite king, Tibin Asad Abu Karib, who's there at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, who converts to Judaism together with his whole people.

We might touch that story when we talk about the rise of Islam. And these are small potatoes compared to Rome. And of course, The world of Islam is on our horizon. The old gods are dead. Furthermore, the mold has been set for the life of Am Yisrael within Edom. That's the mythic version for the Jews amongst the Christians. We are meant to be the suffering remnant, serfs of the king living on as a miserable testimony to the truth of their salvation. Now, life has been better for the Jews under the Persians in Babylonia. much better than it was in the Greco-Roman world for hundreds of years. But even this has to come to an end. Because our tradition reports that not long after the close of the Gemara, in the mid-6th century, life in the Persian Empire deteriorated so badly that the Exilarch, the political head of the Jewish community there, Marzutra II, actually fought a battle and established an independent kingdom around the city of Mehoza for seven years.

In the end, this last gasp of Jewish sovereignty was not to be. It was crushed as a rebellion, and the leaders executed, including Marzutra himself. His son was actually smuggled into the land of Israel, and the office of the Exilarch, the central political point of Jewish life in Babylon, came to an end, and will only be resurrected in the coming Muslim period. I'd like to end with the words, once again, of the Rambam's introduction to the Mishneh Torah. He says, After the court of Rab Ashi composed the Talmud, and completed it in the time of his son. The Jewish people became further dispersed throughout all the lands, reaching the distant extremes and far-removed islands. Strife sprung up throughout the world, the Roman Empire will collapse, and the paths of travel became endangered.

Torah study decreased, and the Jews ceased to enter the Yeshivot in the thousands and myriads, as was customary previously. Instead, individuals, the remnants who God called, would gather in each city and country, occupy themselves in Torah study, and devote themselves to understanding the text of the sages and learning the path of judgment from them. I like to picture these individuals scattered throughout North Africa, Babylon, Spain, Poland. You know, when they would step outside and look up the moon, they knew that they were seeing the same thing, no matter where they were. And when they stepped back inside the Beit Midrash and opened up the holy books, they also knew that they were having the same conversation, even if they'd never met.

I just want to thank everybody who gives of their hard-earned money to make this story possible. You know, there are right now 30 people who give their money to make this show free and distributed all over the world. If you want to join them, I encourage you to go right now to www.patreon.com. You can find my page at M4Air, and you can hit the donate button to support. I also want to thank pardes.org.il for giving me the chance to touch such a broad swath of the Jewish people. I want to thank the folks at the Land of Israel Network for being a platform to get my voice out to a world which is broader than I ever would have imagined. I want to thank Sulem Yaakov Sulem Yaakov.com because it's my home and I love it and I want to thank you all for listening I'm Rav Mike Foyer and this is The Jewish Story