[Avodah] bavel leadership

[Arie Folger]

RSZN asked:

>  in re  r YL's  question , chazal  seem not  to  have  concentrated
>  on the interpersonal  aspect  of  chanuka  ie  jew  vs  jew fighting;
>  but there are no tannaim  yet  in bavel are there?   who led  the
> community  there  150 BCE?

The Gemara in Gittin, first perek, around daf heh or so, says that the
situation in Bavel improved markedly misheata Rav leBavel. So even
though there were some rabbinic leaders there, their impact was quite
limited.

I recall that this was explored by Shai Secunda in a Torah in Motion
series entitled The Talmud and Its World.

Note also that during Bayit Sheni, Bavel there was hardly an excuse to
live outside Israel, and whereas initially Bavel was like America
today, i.e. people could emigrate, but wealth and roots kept most
people from doing so [this is, in a very sensible shiur by R' Menachem
Leibtag, the meaning of the otherwise historically impossible midrash
that the sin of the Jews of Shushan was that they drank from the
keilim of the Beit haMiqdash. It's impossible, because Achashberosh
came after Koresh, and Koresh had already sent *all* the keilim to
Jerusalem, in his first year. As if to underscore this, the Gra shows
that the number of sins hinted at in Achashverosh's party corresponds
to the number of keilim Koresh sent away. I.e., he draws our attention
to the fact that the midrash was obviously meant to be understood
nonliterally, as a rebuke of those who were still in Bavel, who didn't
join 'Haggai, Zekharya, Malakhi, Ezra (who may be Malakhi), Ne'hemya,
etc. This is a recurring theme of R' Leibtag, and is beautifully
explored here: http://tinyurl.com/leibtag-on-esther ]

Over time, however, more and more people came to Israel, especially
the Torah elite. Since there was hardly an excuse left to live outside
Israel during Bayit Sheni, so the community would not have been very
learned, as the gemara cited at the beginning of this post implies.

-- 
Arie Folger,
Recent blog posts on http://ariefolger.wordpress.com/
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