Jewish Babylonia between Persia and Roman Palestine.

• Author: Oppenheimer, Aharon
• Position: Book review

Jewish Babylonia between Persia and Roman Palestine. By RICHARD KALMIN. Oxford: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2006. Pp. xiv + 285. $65.

Babylonia was home to the only significant Jewish Diaspora community outside the borders of the Roman Empire in the period of the Mishnah and the Talmud. Jews had been living there from the days of the Exile in the First Temple period, but the significance of the Jewish community of Babylonia dates from the time of the arrival of refugees from the revolts against the Roman authorities. After the influx of refugees from the Bar Kokhba revolt, which was put down in 135-36 C.E., it is possible to identify the beginnings of two institutions which characterized the Babylonian Jewish community in the period of the Talmud and afterwards--the exilarchate and the yeshivot.

Babylonian Judaism received a particular impetus with the final redaction of the Mishnah by Rabbi Judah haNasi in Palestine and the subsequent return of his pupil Rav to Babylonia in 219 C.E. It was on the basis of the Mishnah that the Babylonian Talmud took shape in the Babylonian yeshivot over three hundred years, and during this period Babylonia gradually overtook the place of Palestine as the major Jewish center. It is thus hardly surprising that it was the Babylonian and not the Jerusalem (Palestinian) Talmud which became the decisive source for halakhic rulings from that time on, up to the present day.

For various reasons which it would be inappropriate to detail here, there are relatively more studies of Roman Palestine than of Jewish Babylonia. From the Talmudic period on. Babylonia became the cradle of Judaism for generations, but only a very small number of studies in Jewish history are devoted to it. In contrast, much work has been done on Roman and Byzantine Palestine, even though the number of Jews living in Palestine declined over time, and the influence on future generations got smaller and smaller. Hence the particular importance of Kalmin's new book, which provides a cornerstone for research into Babylonian Jewry and the study of its Talmud as a historical source. Some of the chapters in this book have indeed already been published in part in scientific journals and collections of papers, but they have been updated and given a new form in this book, which includes a comprehensive bibliography and detailed indices. There is no comparison between seeing individual dispersed papers and reading this book, which contains seven chapters each...