had become to a great extent dead. Moreover, by the Talmud, the interpretation of which was chiefly in the hands of the academies of Sura and Pumbaditha, the Jews of all the world found, if not a new Jerusalem, at least a new Yabneh (Jamnia), i.e., a place where the old learning was not merely continued, but made to shine with a yet greater splendour. This fact will be the more readily acknowledged and appreciated when one casts a glance at the miserable religious condition of the Ḳaraites, the so-called Scriptural Jews.
Transference of Talmudic Learning from the East to the West.—There naturally came a time when Talmudic learning, if it was to maintain its influence upon the Jews, could not be confined to one spot. We have seen under Rashi (q.v.) that the great emperor of the West (Charlemagne) had been the means, towards the close of the 8th century, of bringing learned Talmudists not only to Provence but to the north of France and the south of Germany.[1] But when nearly two hundred years later the academies of Babylonia were threatened with extinction (because of their lacking, from various causes, the means of subsistence), so that they had to send out members of their body to supplicate the support of their richer brethren in other countries, it providentially happened that the four men whom they sent were taken by a Spanish corsair admiral and sold in four different slave-markets. Rabbi Shemaryah was sold at Alexandria, and was redeemed by the Jews, and great was their astonishment when they recognized in him a most able Talmudist. He became the head of the Cairo community, and one of the most successful Jewish Talmud teachers Egypt ever had. Rabbi Ḥusshiel was taken to Kairwan, in Africa. There the Jews redeemed him; and when his great learning was found out he was named the spiritual head of the Jews in that place. From the school which he founded sprang not merely his own son, the famous Rabbenu Ḥananeel, but also the great Rabbenu Hissim, both teachers of Riph (q.v.). Another learned captive, R. Mosheh, was brought to the slave-market of Cordova, the rabbi of which town, a noble and rare example of unselfishness, modesty, and love of truth, placed the ragged stranger who had only been ransomed for charity’s sake a day or so before at the head of the community instead of himself. The name of the fourth is unknown (see Rabad II., and Yoḥasin, ed. Cracow, leaf 125b). Some assert that he was R. Nathan Habbabli, and that he became the teacher of the Jews in Narbonne, but this is a mere conjecture, the truth of which has yet to be proved (see page 37, footnote7). Be this, however, as it may, four great Talmudists, who had come direct from the Babylonian academies, became the means of bringing Babylonico-Talmudic learning to places the Jews of which had been dependent on the religious and literary crumbs that fell from the richly-laden tables of Sura and Pumbaditha. Some years afterwards the former academy was closed, and a short time afterwards the same fate befell that of Pumbaditha, the sunset of which, if not the noonlight, in the persons of Rab Sherira Gaon and his son Rab Haï Gaon was even more glorious than that of the sister academy, the last "gaon" of which was Rab Shemuel b. Hophni, father-in-law of Rabbenu Haï. Meanwhile, however, Talmudic learning had not merely become naturalized, but eventually indigenous in various parts of Africa, and part of Europe (Spain, Italy, Provence, the south of Germany, and the north of France). Rabbenu Gershom b. Yehudah of Metz and his disciple Rabbenu Yiṣḥaḳ of Troyes, Rabbenu Yaˤaḳob b. Yaḳar of Worms, Rabbenu Eliˤezer Haggadol and his disciple and successor Rabbenu Yiṣḥaḳ Segan Leviyyah, Rabbenu Yiṣḥaḳ b. Yehudah of Mainz, Rabbenu Elyaḳim of Spires, Rabbenu Nathan b. Yeḥiel of Rome, and last but not least Rashi himself, and his sons-in-law and other disciples, represented Talmudic learning in such perfection as had not been found before as regards the Babylonian Talmud, even in the land of its birth and growth. It was the disciples’ disciples of these men who studied and taught in various towns of England within a hundred years (1150) after the Conquest. When, towards the end of the 13th century and the commencement of the 14th, the Jews were driven out of England (1290) and France (1306), and flocked chiefly to Italy, Greece, Germany, and Poland, the last-named country appropriated the lion’s share of Talmudic learning, so that till within our own century the rabbis of the chief communities in Hungary, Moravia, Bohemia, and other Austrian states, and in Germany, Holland, England, &c., had to be fetched from Poland. Talmudic learning, since Mendelssohn and his school arose, threatened to die out not merely among the Jews in Germany, but also among those of the other countries where the Jews spoke the German tongue in some form or other. Within the last twenty-five years, however, fresh impulse has been given to these studies, not merely among Jews but also among Christians.
TAM, commonly called Rabbenu Tam, more correctly Rabbenu Tham (ר״ח=רבכחם) By this title are known two eminent Rabbinic scholars, both named Yaʿaḳob, to whom this epithet was given in allusion to Genesis xxv. 27: "And Jacob was a perfect man" (Ish Tam, ותלול). They belonged to the north of France, lived in the 12th century, and were master and pupil.
1. Rabbenu Yaʿaḳob b. Meir. b. Shemuel was, on his mother’s side, a grandson of Rashi (q.v.). He was his parents’ third son, younger brother of Ribam and Rashbam (q.v.), older brother of Rabbenu Shelomoh of Rameru,[2] and brother-in-law of Rabbenu Shemuel b. Simḥah of Vitry the younger[3] (the reputed author of the Maḥzor Vitry,[4] now apparently lost[5]). Rabbenu Tham had, like his grandfather Rashi, six teachers:—(1) his own father, (2) his brother Ribam, (3) his brother Rashbam, (4) Rabbenu Ya'akob b. Shimshon,[6] (5) his grandfather Rashi,[7] and (6) Rabbenu Yoseph Tob-ˤElem the younger.[8] Rabbenu Tham had at least five children.[9] The names of three of his sons were Yoseph,[10] Yiṣḥaḳ,[11] and Shelomoh.[12] Rabbenu Tham was unquestionably among Jews the foremost man of his age. For not only was he the greatest Talmudist after his maternal grandfather’s death, hut he also added reading wide and varied to a stupendous memory and a marvellous
- ↑ Italy, notably Sicily, was apparently the country which obtained her teachers direct from Iraḳ.
- ↑ See MS. Add. 27,200 in the Br. Mus., leaf 158b.
- ↑ See Rashi's Siddur, i. leaf 1b.
- ↑ See Schiller-Szinessy, Catalogue, ii. p. 88.
- ↑ See art. Rashi (vol. xx. p. 284, note 10).
- ↑ This rabbi was a disciple of R. Shemuel Hallevi (see Schiller-Szinessy, Catal. ii. p. 65, note 1) and of Rashi, and was not only a great Talmudist, as were all the disciples of the last-named eminent teacher, but also a great mathematician and astronomer, though a terribly bad poet. His commentary on Aboth is in part printed, and is to be found, more or less perfect, in various libraries in Europe, although not recognized as his. It is ascribed variously to Rashi, to Rashbam, and others. There are copies of it in Cambridge (Add. 1213; Add. 1523), Oxford (Opp. 317), the British Museum (Add. 27201), the Beth Hammidrash of the Ashkenazim in London, &c. (The master of St John's, Cambridge, is preparing an edition of it.) A work on intercalation by Rabbenu Ya'aḳob b. Shimshon exists in MS. at the Bodleian (Opp. 317) under the name of Sepher Haelḳoshi. From him, no doubt, Rabbenu Tham imbibed his love for science. On the fact that Rabbenu Ya'akob b. Shimshon was Rabbenu Tham’s teacher (against Zunz), see Schiller-Szinessy, Catal., ii. p. 66, note.
- ↑ Rabbenu Tham, dying an old man, must have been, from fourteen to sixteen years of age when Rashi died.
- ↑ See Sepher Hayyashar, § 620 (leaf 74a, col. 2).
- ↑ See Camb. MS. Add, 667, 1, leaf 64b, col. 1.
- ↑ See Brit. Mus. MS. Add. 27200, leaf 158b.
- ↑ See Sepher Hayyashar, § 604.
- ↑ See Shibbole Halleḳet (ed. Buber), p. 10.
