[Avodah] Location of Yeshivos of the Amoraim?

Micha Berger micha at aishdas.org
Wed Jan 17 09:53:26 PST 2018


Doing a favor for a self-described "certified lurker", who asked me
to forward this anonymously:

: Someone who's learning Gittin asked me to find maps that would show
: relationship of Eretz Yisroel (e.g. Acco aka Acre) to Sura,
: Neharda'ah and Mechuzah.  I can find Sura on Wikipedia etc but I
: can't find a way to print a map with all of these cities.  Maybe
: someone knows their present day names, or knows how to find such a
: map?

I can get you started:

Rav started Nehardaa, in what is now the governate of al-Anbar. He
eventually leaves Nehardaa to Shemuel, whose father was the mora de'asra,
and started a second yeshiva in Sura. They were intentionally at distant
parts of Jewish Babylonian settlement, to make Torah available to as
many towns as possible.

Igeres R' Shrira Gaon says that Sura was identical to Masa-Machsia. R'
Natronai Gaon says Sura was a few miles from al Hira in the direction
of Mechoza (see below). Academics think Mata-Machsia was a suburb.
Either way, there are records of shiurim of Sura sometimes being at MM.

When the city of Nehardaa is destroyed (259ce), about a decade after
Rav's petirah, many rebuld in nearby Pumbedisa. Pumbedisa is today's
Falluja. (In honor of the costly US action in Falluja during the Iraq war,
I blogged in 2010 something about R' Yehudah, Pumbedisa, and the birth of
Babylonian amoraic "lomdus" <http://www.aishdas.org/asp/falluja>. I make
Rabbi Yehuda out to look like a precursor to R' Chaim Brisker -- thought
it was wrong to make aliyah, invented a new way to learn halakhah, etc...)

The original yeshiva in Nehardaa doesn't entirely close, and really
regains its former glory under Rava (about a century later).

So, Nehardaa was where the Euphrates and the King's Canal (Nahr Malka)
meet. I think the city of Ramadi is there now, unless I got my canal's
confused. Pumbedisa is in Falluja. Ramadi and Falluja are < 10 mi apart,
so that fits the history.

Abayei was Rosh Yeshiva in Pumbedisa. When he was niftar, his
talmidim relocated the yeshiva to Mechoza (today's al-Mada'in),
where Rav was teaching, and absorbed the school already there.
So, Mechoza and Pumbedisa are two different locations, but the
same yeshiva.

Meanwhile Sura runs continually for the whole period. Perhaps with an
occasional side trip to Masa-Machsia, depending on whether it's a town
and a suburb, two names of the same place, and why we find amoraim of
Sura often talking in MM.

Both Sura and Pumbedisa end up in Baghdad and evaporate in the 11th
cent CE.

HOWEVER, R' Berel Wein says that a Baghdadi institution that had a
continuous history from THE Academy of Sura and retained the name Sura
was closed as late as the Baathist party (the people who put Saddam
Hussein into power) in 1958. Making Sura the longest running institute
of higher learning in human history.

Chodesh Tov!
Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "As long as the candle is still burning,
micha at aishdas.org        it is still possible to accomplish and to
http://www.aishdas.org   mend."
Fax: (270) 514-1507          - Anonymous shoemaker to R' Yisrael Salanter


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