Introduction
For much of its history, the figure of the rabbi has been defined chiefly by scholastic virtues. In contrast with other figures in the late ancient or medieval landscape, what ends up making a rabbi a rabbi is his textual expertise. This was the result of a long and not necessarily linear development, which we can trace throughout classical rabbinic literature. Teaching and learning are associated already with the earliest rabbis, and an increased emphasis on Torah study is one of the characteristics of the latest layers of the Babylonian Talmud. This article aims to identify a particular turning point in this process: the point at which the study of Torah was first asserted as the only significant activity for the rabbinic sage. I argue that we can locate this development in late ancient Palestine by comparing the Tannaitic compilations, which date from the third century CE, to the Palestinian Talmud or Yerushalmi, which was compiled in the late fourth century, in what traditional historiography calls the Amoraic period.
Tannaitic compilations contrast the study of Torah with worldly activities, such as the pursuit of sustenance or social conversation. The talmudic passages studied in this article, in contrast, pit Torah study against activities that are otherwise considered part of the relationship between Israel and God, such as prayer or the care of the dead. Some of these passages claim not only that Torah study is superior to these activities but also that Torah study is the only worthy activity for the sage, sometimes taking a polemical tone against any other undertaking; a few teachings included in these passages equate study’s worldly “others” with its rival religious activities, redrawing boundaries between the spiritual and the mundane. While these passages also present other positions on these issues, they reflect a new conversation about Torah study and the figure of the sage in this period. This new conversation is pursued, I show, in part through the interpretation and reformulation of Tannaitic teachings.
The rabbinic concept of Torah study has been the topic of extensive research.Footnote 1 Studies that focused on Torah’s “others” tended to focus on the opposition to the mundane; those that have noted the opposition between Torah and other non-mundane values have not considered (or perhaps rejected) a conceptual or chronological distinction between the two oppositions—in part because they have accepted the Talmud’s interpretation of Tannaitic texts.Footnote 2 Still other studies have suggested that rabbinic texts represented certain activities as worldly because of aspects inherent specifically to those activities,Footnote 3 but the similarity in the way these various activities are contrasted with Torah study suggests that such contrasts are informed first and foremost by the claim for the exclusive merit of study.
The first two sections below explore in detail two talmudic passages that oppose Torah study and another activity—gemilut hasadim and prayer respectively; both sections trace the way in which talmudic teachings interpret Tannaitic sources. The third section briefly surveys other examples of these and similar oppositions in the Talmud. Section four addresses passages from the Tannaitic corpus that have been read, or at first appear, to draw such oppositions; it argues that despite some similarities, these passages differ in significant ways. The concluding section explores possible contexts in which the new conversation this article traces may be understood.
Gemilut Hasadim
This section centers on a passage that contrasts Torah study with acts of benevolence that extend to strangers the kind of care ordinarily reserved for relatives: the celebration of bridesFootnote 4 and the care of the dead,Footnote 5 particularly those in need. By the time this passage had been composed, these activities had been associated with or subsumed under the concept of gemilut hasadim, usually translated as “acts of kindness.”Footnote 6 While gemilut hasadim is beyond the standard requirements of rabbinic law (see m. B. Bat. 9:4), the sages celebrated it as a central value: a famous teaching by Simeon the Righteous counts gemilut hasadim among the pillars upon which the world stands, alongside the Torah and Temple worship (m. Abot 1:2); a teaching in the Tosefta considers gemilut hasadim and charity as equal to all the commandments of the Torah (t. Pe’ah 4:1).Footnote 7 It is to be expected, then, that several sources pair Torah study with gemilut hasadim as two activities worthy of the sage: “Anyone who is occupied with Torah and gemilut hasadim has merited sitting in the shade of the Holy One, blessed be he” (y. Ta‘an. 4:2, 68a). In contrast with such passages, the teachings examined in this section present Torah study and gemilut hasadim as mutually exclusive.
A. The Talmudic “sugya” on Practice versus Study and its Relationship to Tannaitic Sources
In this section, I focus on a long passage from tractate Hagigah of the Talmud Yerushalmi, beginning with the second part of the passage:
Talmud Yerushalmi Hag. 1:7, 76c (par. Peash. 3:7, 30b)Footnote 8
When R. Judah would see the dead or a bride being praised, he would cast his eyes on his students and say: practice (ma‘aseh) precedes study (talmud) [in importance].
[But] they have voted in the upper chamber of the House of ArisFootnote 9 that study precedes practice!
R. Abbahu was in Caesarea. He sent R. Hanina, his son, to gain meritFootnote 10 in Tiberias. They sent and said to him, “He has been performing acts of kindness [for the deadFootnote 11].” He sent a letter to him, “Was it because there are no graves in Caesarea that I have sent you to Tiberias? They have already voted in the upper chamber of the House of Aris in Lydda that ‘study precedes practice.’ ”
The rabbis of Caesarea say: You say that [i.e., “study precedes practice”] only when there is someone there who will perform the action (ya‘aseh), but if there is no one to perform the action, practice precedes study.
A story: R. Hiyya, R. Yassa, and R. Ami were late to come to R. Eleazar [their teacher]. He said to them, “Where were you today?” They said to him, “Performing acts of kindness.” He said to them: “Were there no others there?” They said to him: “He [the deceased] was a neighbor.”
In the first story, R. Judah casts his eyes angrily at his students as they busy themselves with study while others are celebrating brides or eulogizing the dead. He rebukes them, saying that the practice of such good deeds takes priority over the study of the Torah. An anonymous objection cites a report that when the matter was put to a vote a generation before R. Judah, the sages voted the opposite, that study takes priority over practice. We then hear a story in which this decision is cited favorably. Rabbi Abbahu is upset when he hears that his son, whom he has sent from his home in Caesarea to study in Tiberias, has been devoting himself to the care of the dead rather than to Torah study. Before citing the vote in Lydda, R. Abbahu responds with an allusion to the people’s cry to Moses in Exod 14:11—“Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness?”—here used as a rhetorical question (Did I send you to Tiberias because of its graves? I sent you there because of its renowned teachers!). The rabbis of Caesarea offer a harmonization between the two opposing views, R. Judah’s statement that “practice precedes study” and the vote in the House of Aris that “study precedes practice”: when other people are there who may perform the good deed necessary, study takes priority over practice and disciples ought to dedicate themselves to study, but if there is no one else available, practice takes priority. This teaching does not really work to resolve the tensions in the passage; R. Judah’s criticism of his students was, after all, provoked by seeing others engaging in these activities—so there were, in fact, others there.Footnote 12
In the final story, this same principle is employed by another sage. Three students are late to R. Eleazar’s lesson, explaining that they were performing an act of kindness for a man who had died. The teacher inquires whether the delay was justified: if there were others to help with the funeral, the students should have left the task to them and come immediately to the lesson. The students’ defense is that the deceased was their neighbor, and therefore they were under a special responsibility to assist. While this discussion presents a number of views on the subject, as a whole it seems to take the position that, in principle, rabbinic disciples should engage exclusively in study and leave good works to others. The next section further supports this interpretation through analysis of the structure of the entire passage as well as its context in the Talmud.
For now, I want to center on the relationship between this text and the earlier Tannaitic source around which it revolves, the teaching concerning the decision that “study precedes practice.” The earliest report of this decision, though not necessarily its most original representation,Footnote 13 is in the third-century Midrash Sifre Deuteronomy:
Sifre Deuteronomy §41
Once R. Tarfon, R. Aqiva, and R. Yose the Galilean were reclining in the House of Aris in Lydda. The question was asked, “Which is greater, study or practice?” R. Tarfon said that practice is greater. R. Aqiva said that study is greater. Everyone [present] responded and said that study is greater because it leads to practice. R. Yose the Galilean said that study is greater because it preceded dough offering by forty years, tithes by fifty-four years, Sabbatical years by sixty-one years, and Jubilees by one hundred and three years.
The comparison between this earlier text and our passage in the Yerushalmi raises a number of questions. Several scholars have noted that there is something problematic about R. Abbahu’s use of this vote to insist his son should focus exclusively on study when, according to this text, study was only pronounced greater because it leads to practice.Footnote 14 There is, however, a deeper difference between the two texts that has not been given sufficient attention. The word ma‘aseh, which I have translated “practice,” means different things in each of these texts, and this difference means that these texts address two different issues. As we have seen, in the talmudic passage, ma‘aseh means acts of kindness that go beyond the requirements of halakah; it is perhaps understood as an abbreviation of ma‘aseh hatov, “doing of good” or “good deeds.”Footnote 15 In the Sifre, in contrast, ma‘aseh means the practice or observance of required commandments.Footnote 16 This is clear from the fact that when R. Yose demonstrates that study precedes practice, he gives the example of the commandments that could only be obligatory once Israel had entered the promised land; the fact that those commandments were already communicated to Israel in the desert and, like other commandments, were to be reflected upon from the moment they were given, shows that God valued the study of a commandment separately from its observance and that therefore study preceded practice.Footnote 17
The same is true when we consider the broader context of this unit in the Sifre. Throughout Sifre Deut §41, when ma‘aseh is defined positively, it is defined as observance of required positive commandments, not in terms of good deeds; when ma‘aseh is described negatively, it is described in terms of breaking negative commandments (i.e., transgressing prohibitions), not neglecting good deeds. From its beginning to its conclusion, the parasha makes the argument that the merit of Torah study is independent of and, indeed, superior to, the merit of Torah observance. As Marc Hirshman has shown, the discussion resembles the negotiation in other traditions of the tension between theory and practice, but it also shows the urgency that this tension acquired for the sages following the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, which meant that many commandments could be studied but not observed.Footnote 18
The difference between the Sifre and the Yerushalmi is greater than it may first appear. The Sifre is not asking how disciples should use their time. It raises a more theoretical question of value and significance. The debate is not whether one should abandon ma‘aseh in order to study, for one must certainly perform all of the commandments, and one therefore must always pursue ma‘aseh. In the Yerushalmi, in contrast, R. Abbahu demands that his son neglect ma‘aseh in favor of study, something he could not have asked if ma‘aseh meant the observance of the commandments. In the Sifre, “everyone” assumes that study and ma‘aseh are intimately linked: one leads to the other because, after all, both have the same object, the commandments. In the Yerushalmi, study and ma‘aseh are mutually exclusive: pursue one, and you neglect the other. While these concerns overlap to an extent, they are different in nature, and only in the Yerushalmi does the debate concern the desired character of the disciple or sage and the occupations to which he should dedicate his time.
Despite these considerations, almost all studies of our passages have missed this important difference. Scholars interested in the character of rabbinic leadership and in the social history of Judaism tended to begin with the Yerushalmi passage and read the Sifre passage as if it discusses the conflict between dedicating oneself to the study of Torah and dedicating oneself to the performance of good deeds.Footnote 19 Those interested in the history of the idea of Torah study tended to begin with the Sifre passage (or its Bavli counterpart) and read the Yerushalmi passage as another testimony to the rabbinic debate on the relative merits of study or practice of the law.Footnote 20
Solomon Schechter’s brief discussion of our passage is an exception. The context of Schechter’s discussion was polemical: Alfred Edersheim, according to Schechter, attacked Rabbinic Judaism for setting the study of tradition and law above the practice of pious works. Schechter’s defense of the rabbis points exactly to the importance of the difference between the texts:
In the decision of the conference at Lud the “works” which are subordinated to “study” refer especially to the various ordinances of the law—such as the prohibitions of the labor on the Sabbath, the celebration of Passover, and so on. […] On the other hand, in the contrary position to which Rabbi Abbahu took exception, the “works” allude to definite acts of charity which are of an all-engrossing character when once earnestly pursued. It is obvious that just as the fellows and scholars of our own universities must devote the main portion of their time not to “works” but to “study,” so in ancient Judea was it necessary that the learned class should act in a similar manner.Footnote 21
For Schechter, the exclusive focus on study that is demanded by some of the teachings in the Yerushalmi is a reflection of the rabbis’ identity as “the learned class,” comparable, in his eyes, to modern academics. But what he misses is that precisely this definition of the rabbis is what is at stake here, and that the ideological configuration of that definition is not simply an “obvious” fact of learned life everywhere and always. The difference we see between the Sifre and the Yerushalmi, between an argument on the relative merit of the study or observance of the commandment and an argument on the way sages should spend their time, shows us that this view of the rabbis developed in a particular time and that it was contested. The next section explores the polemical nature of this argument, showing also just how contested it was.
B. “What Is Crooked Cannot Be Made Straight”
The Yerushalmi passage examined above appears as a part of a longer composite unit, which I now cite in full:
Talmud Yerushalmi Hag. 1:7, 76c
1. R. Simeon b. Yohai recited: If you have seen towns that were uprooted from their places in the land of Israel, know that they did not keep teachers of Scripture and mishnah on pay. What is the proof? “Why is the land ruined and laid waste like a wilderness, so that no one passes through? And the Lord says: Because they have forsaken my Torah” (Jer 9:12–3).
2. R. Judah the Patriarch [Judah II/III] sent R. Hiyya, R. Asi, and R. Ami to go through the towns of the land of Israel and appoint in them teachers of Scripture and mishnah. They entered one town where they could find neither. They [the sages] said to them [the townspeople]: “Bring us the guardians (ntwry) of the town.” They brought them the watchmen (sntwry) of the town. They said to them: “Are these the guardians of the town? These are the destroyers of the town!” They said to them, “Who then, are the guardians of the town?” They said to them, “Teachers of Scripture and mishnah. As it is said, ‘Unless the Lord builds a house [those who build it labor in vain]’ ” (Ps 127:1).
3. R. Huna [said in the name of] R. Jeremiah [who said] in the name of R. Samuel son of R. Isaac: We find that the Holy One, blessed be he, overlooked Israel’s idolatry, sexual transgressions, and bloodshed, but he did not overlook their rejection of the Torah. What is the proof? It does not say here, “Because they have committed acts of idolatry and sexual transgressions and bloodshed,” but rather, “Because they have forsaken my Torah” (Jer 9:13).
4. R. Hiyya bar Abba said: “If they abandon me, I shall overlook it; it is possible that they have kept my Torah. For if they have left me and kept my Torah, the yeast in it will bring them closer to me.”
5. R. Huna said: Study Torah [even if] not for its sake, for by [studying it] not for its sake you will come to study it for its sake.
6. When R. Judah would see the dead or a bride being praised, he would cast his eyes on his students and say: “practice precedes study.”
7. [But] they have voted in the upper chamber of the House of Aris that study precedes practice!
8. R. Abbahu was in Caesarea. He sent R. Hanina, his son, to gain merit in Tiberias. They sent and said to him, “He has been performing acts of kindness [for the dead].” He sent a letter to him, “Was it because there are no graves in Caesarea that I have sent you to Tiberias? They have already voted in the upper chamber of the House of Aris in Lydda that ‘study precedes practice.’ ”
9. The rabbis of Caesarea say: You say that [i.e., “study precedes practice”] only when there is someone there who will perform the action, but if there is no one there to perform the action, practice precedes study.
10. A story: R. Hiyya, R. Yassa, and R. Ami were late to come to R. Eleazar. He said to them, “Where were you today?” They said to him, “Performing an act of kindness.” He said to them, “Were there no others there?” They said to him, “He [the deceased] was a neighbor.”
While the passage as a whole concerns the obligation to study Torah, there are significant differences in how its different parts conceive of that obligation. The first part of the passage, consisting of units §1–4, concerns the importance of Torah education for all of Israel: it deals with entire towns and villages (§1–2) or the people exiled from the land (§3), and it refers to basic Torah education, the kind taught to children by teachers of Scripture and mishnah, the oral tradition (§2).Footnote 22 The second part of the passage, in contrast, concerns specifically the rabbinic elite, those who study or are associated with prominent sages: R. Judah’s disciples (§6), R. Abbahu’s son (§8), and the trio of R. Eleazar’s students (§10). In the first part, the teachers of Torah are contrasted with the town’s “secular” caretakers through a pun (§2);Footnote 23 in the second part, the study of Torah is opposed to pursuits that are elsewhere considered to be good deeds of great religious importance (§6, 8, 10).
The passage therefore moves from emphasizing, in its beginning, the importance of Israel’s obligation to dedicate resources to Torah education to, in its second part, making the claim that rabbinic disciples should not engage in good deeds but rather dedicate themselves completely to study. There are indications that these parts were two separate textual units originally. Elsewhere in rabbinic literature, they appear independently of each other as self-contained, thematically consistent units. The first part, §1–5, appears in Pesiqta de Rab Kahana and Lamentations Rabbah,Footnote 24 whereas the second half (with the exception of §6) appears in y. Pesah. 3:7, 30b.Footnote 25 The context of the passage in Pesiqta de Rab Kahana and Lamentations Rabbah concerns Israel’s commitment to the Torah. It does address the contrast between study and practice but only in its Tannaitic sense of the study of the commandments versus their observance, without any contrast between study and good deeds; it also does not refer to rabbinic disciples. The passage in y. Pesahim, in contrast, addresses only the tension between study and good deeds as competing values in the lives of disciples. It seems more likely that the longer passage in Hagigah presents a combination of these passages than that the longer version is the original and the other instances partial versions of it.
Regardless of its history, the passage as we have it now takes us from one set of concerns with Torah study to another. The polemical force of this transition is apparent when we consider the Mishnah unit to which our passage is appended in the Yerushalmi. The Mishnah in Hag.1:6 quotes Eccl 1:15: “What is crooked cannot be made straight.” It then digresses to two interpretations of this verse, the second of which is by R. Simeon b. Yohai, who argues that the verse refers to “a disciple of the sages who separated himself from the Torah” (m. Hag. 1:7). Our passage in the Yerushalmi responds to this interpretation by discussing the abandonment of Torah, which is the subject of the opening units, including a homily attributed to the same R. Simeon (§1). These opening units in themselves, however, cannot illustrate R. Simeon’s reference since those who abandon the Torah in §1–3 are not “disciples of the sages.” It is only in the second half that we encounter such disciples. But the argument that it is these disciples who have “separated themselves” from the Torah is a striking interpretation. R. Simeon’s statement in the Mishnah is not clear on how or why disciples abandon the Torah, but it seems likely that he is drawing here, as he does elsewhere, on the contrast between Torah study and pursuing a living;Footnote 26 it might also be that he refers to lazy neglect or even transgression of the law. The disciples in our passage, in contrast, “abandon” the Torah by choosing to help needy members of the community in accordance with values treasured in the rabbinic tradition—and this is what the Yerushalmi suggests is “abandoning” the Torah by disciples, “the crooked that cannot be made straight”!
The contrast between the two parts of the passage is made visible by the fact that it opens and closes with the very same characters. In §2, R. Hiyya, R. Asi, and R. Ami examine the commitment to Torah of various towns and criticize townspeople for failing to invest in their children’s Torah education. In the concluding unit, the same three sagesFootnote 27 become themselves the target of critical scrutiny, their own commitment to Torah questioned because they chose to delay their participation in the lesson to care for the deceased. The intended message to the audience of the passage, itself composed of rabbinic disciples, is that neglecting Torah study, even for the performance of good deeds, constitutes the same transgression of the townspeople from the passage’s opening: it amounts to abandoning the Torah.
The passage gives the last word to the disciples, who explain that they were performing a duty to a neighbor. This response, which seems to extend the duty to bury dead relatives, leaves us on a more complicated note, drawing our attention again to the tension between different commitments rather than simply offering a particular resolution of that tension. But even this conclusion does not reverse the argument of the passage as a whole: while occasional circumstances may call for specific duties, study generally takes priority over good works for sages and their disciples.
Prayer
Rabbinic literature presents a rich and diverse set of prayers and other liturgical rituals that aim to petition or worship God.Footnote 28 While the sages emphasized the importance of these practices and indeed developed the traditional Jewish liturgy as we know it, we nonetheless find passages in the Talmud that present liturgical rituals almost as a mere distraction from Torah study.Footnote 29 This section focuses on a talmudic passage that addresses the two central daily rabbinic liturgical practices. The first is the Amidah or “Standing” Prayer, the primary element of prayer services mandated by halakah; rabbinic texts refer to it simply as “the Prayer.”Footnote 30 The second is the Shema, a recitation of three passages from the Pentateuch and accompanying blessings, which halakah requires individuals to perform each morning and evening.Footnote 31 The talmudic discussion pits these rituals against Torah study, and as with the text analyzed in the previous section, it allows us to trace the development of this contrast to the Amoraic period.
A. One Mouth to Labor in Torah, Another for Everything Else
The Mishnah in Sabb. 1:2 rules that “one interrupts for the recitation of the Shema but not for the [Amidah] Prayer.” The Babylonian Talmud argues that the activity that one must or must not interrupt for these rituals is the study of Torah, and therefore that this ruling exempts those occupied with Torah study from the Amidah prayer.Footnote 32 The Yerushalmi does not propose such an interpretation explicitly, but it does append to this clause in the Mishnah a discussion of whether or not Torah study must be interrupted for the Amidah and Shema. Below, I argue that understanding the Mishnah as referring to Torah study reflects the Amoraic paradigm of contrasting Torah study with other religious activities, that there is no reason to think that the Mishnah itself is at all concerned with Torah study. But first, I focus on the talmudic passage. After offering a couple of different reasons for the Mishnah’s distinction between the Shema and the Amidah, the Talmud cites two additional positions:
Talmud Yerushalmi Ber. 1:2, 3b (par. Sabb. 1:2, 3a–b)
R. Yohanan [said] in the name of R. Simeon b. Yohai: Those like us who are occupied with Torah study do not interrupt [our study] even for the recitation of the Shema.
R. Yohanan said about himself: Those like us who are not occupied with Torah study [must] interrupt [our study] even for the [Amidah] Prayer.
This one [taught] according to his own opinion, and that one [taught] according to his own opinion.
R. Yohanan [taught] according to his own opinion, for R. Yohanan said: Oh that we might [be able to] pray all day long! Why? Prayer diminishes nothing.
R. Simeon b. Yohai [taught] according to his own opinion, for R. Simeon b. Yohai said: Had I been at Mount Sinai when the Torah was given to Israel, I would have asked God to give man two mouths, one to toil in Torah and one to use for all his needs. He then retracted this and said: But if with one mouth, the world cannot exist because of slander, had there been two, how much more so.
The discussion begins with two teachings from R. Yohanan, one that he cites in the name of a Tannaitic sage, R. Simeon b. Yohai, and one that he gives without further attribution. At this point, the teachings are not represented as contradictory. The rulings are different because they apply to different kinds of people, not because they represent different opinions. Rabbi Yohanan first quotes R. Simeon b. Yohai’s teaching that people like him who are occupied with the study of Torah (i.e., R. Simeon) need not stop that study even for the recitation of the Shema, let alone for the Amidah.Footnote 33 The Talmud then says that Rabbi Yohanan taught “about himself” that since people like him are not occupied with such study, they must stop their study even for the Amidah. Both teachings, at least as they are configured in this passage (as applying to “those like us”), employ “occupied with Torah study” to denote a permanent occupation, a marker of identity rather than simply an indication of the activity pursued in a given moment. Why does R. Yohanan, the most important Torah scholar of his generation, say that he is not among those occupied with Torah study? Moshe Benovitz suggested he is being ironic;Footnote 34 Yaakov Elman, following the Bavli, suggested he is being humble about himself or his generation.Footnote 35
The passage itself seems to respond to this problem by arguing that these teachings reflect these sages’ different opinions about prayer and Torah study. First, it quotes R. Yohanan’s statement that he wished it were possible to pray all day to demonstrate that R. Yohanan had a positive inclination towards prayer or even that he literally wanted to pray ceaselessly; the implication is that it was this devotion to prayer that led him to rule that one should stop Torah study even for the Amidah prayer. In addition to supplying the inclination that supposedly underlies R. Yohanan’s ruling, the citation of this statement changes the parameters of the discussion. Until now, the passage discussed liturgical practices that are required by halakah, the Shema and the Amidah.Footnote 36 By citing the statement by R. Yohanan that mentions praying “all day,” the Talmud broadens the conversation to the value of prayer in general, including prayer that goes beyond the requirements of the law. This transition towards actions that are optional rather than mandatory is part of what allows the discussion to be set up in terms of different approaches to competing values, just as we have seen in the previous section about good deeds.
To support the argument that R. Simeon’s ruling was also grounded in a broader inclination, the passage cites his statement that he wished he had two mouths so that he would never need to stop studying.Footnote 37 The implication is that this same desire for ceaseless Torah study is also reflected in R. Simeon’s ruling that one should not stop studying for the Amidah or even for the recitation of the Shema. R. Simeon is a Tannaitic sage, and if he indeed made this argument—that the commitment to Torah study conflicts with prayer—the chronological thesis of this article would be incorrect, but it is unlikely that argument represents R. Simeon’s own position. First, there are reasons to doubt the authenticity of this statement itself. It is in Aramaic whereas Tannaitic teachings are almost always in Hebrew, and it has no precise parallel in Tannaitic compilations (more on that below).
But even if something like this statement were said by R. Simeon or goes back to the Tannaitic period, its placement by the Talmud gives it a significance that it does not have on its own. The statement itself does not mention any liturgical practices at all.Footnote 38 It presents a dichotomy between “toiling in Torah” and all other matters for which one might use one’s mouth—including, say, conducting business. Elsewhere in the Yerushalmi, the expression “toiling in Torah” appears in contrast with toiling in work to earn a living.Footnote 39 One might think, therefore, that prayer would fall into the first category, the category of Torah-related speech. This would be especially true in the context of R. Simeon’s position about the Shema, which is a recitation of passages from the Torah that most sages considered to be a mandate from the TorahFootnote 40—what could be more Torah-related speech than that? And yet, by using this teaching to justify R. Simeon’s position that one does not interrupt Torah study for the Amidah and the Shema, the Talmud puts these liturgical practices in the latter category with all other business. Again, we see here the “secularization” of everything except Torah study, this time directed at liturgical ritual.
This statement by R. Simeon may be a variation on a position that is indeed attributed to him in the Tannaitic corpus.Footnote 41 But in the Tannaitic version, R. Simeon opposes Torah study to secular occupations relating to subsistence rather than prayer:
Sifre Deuteronomy §42
“And you will gather in your grain, your wine, and your oil” (Deut 11:14). Why is this said? Because elsewhere it is said, “This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth” (Josh 1:8). I might think that this is to be taken literally; therefore Scripture teaches, “And you will gather,” etc.—the Torah has spoken about the way of the land [i.e., making a living, worldly pursuits]. These are the words of R. Ishmael. R. Simeon b. Yohai says: There is no end to it. If one harvests at harvest time, ploughs at ploughing time, threshes in the hot season, winnows in the windy season—when can one study Torah? Rather, when Israel does God’s will, their work is done for them by others, as it said, “Strangers shall stand and feed your flocks [foreigners shall till your land and dress your vines]” (Isa 61:5).
R. Ishmael interprets Deut 11:14 as permission or even an instruction to work the land and make a living, which qualifies the injunction in Josh 1:8 that the Torah should not depart from one’s mouth. R. Simeon objects: the demands of work (in this case, agriculture) are such that there is always something to do, and no time is left for Torah study. Israel should trust that when they do God’s bidding, God will sustain them.Footnote 42 While both the Sifre and the Talmud have R. Simeon demanding total dedication to Torah study, these texts differ on what, according to R. Simeon, study should be prioritized over: in this passage, it is material pursuits; in the Yerushalmi, it is prayer.
B. “This is Recitation and That is Recitation”
In the next stage of the discussion, the Talmud offers a different explanatory framework for the positions of R. Yohanan and R. Simeon:
Talmud Yerushalmi Ber. 1:2 3b (par. Sabb. 1:2 3b)
Said R. Yose before R. Jeremiah: [The teaching] of R. Yohanan goes as [i.e., conforms with] R. Hanina b. Aqavia.
For it was recited: The writers of [Torah] scrolls, phylacteries, and mezuzahs interrupt [their writing] for the recitation of the Shema, but they do not interrupt [it] for the recitation of the [Amidah] Prayer. R. Hanina b. Aqavia said, “Just as they interrupt it for the recitation of the Shema, so they interrupt it for the [Amidah] Prayer and phylacteries and all the rest of the commandments of the Torah.”
And does not R. Simeon b. Yohai concede that one interrupts [Torah study] to practiceFootnote 43 the sukkah and practice the lulav?Footnote 44 And does not R. Simeon b. Yohai agree [with the statement], “The one who studies in order to practice [the Torah’s commandments] and not the one who studies not in order to practice. For the one who studies not in order to practice, it is better for him had he not been created”?Footnote 45 And R. Yohanan said: “One who studies not in order to practice, it is better for him had his placenta smothered him and he never came out to the world.”
R. Simeon b. Yohai’s reason is that this is recitation (shinun) and that is recitation, and one does not desist from one recitation for another.
R. Yose argues that R. Yohanan’s position is similar to a position attributed to R. Hanina b. Aqavia in a Tannaitic teaching. That teaching, a version of which is also attested in t. Ber. 2:6, records a dispute about those occupied with writing Torah texts: the anonymous ruling mandates that they interrupt that activity for the Shema but not for the Amidah, whereas R. Hanina’s dissenting opinion argues that they must interrupt their writing for the Amidah just as they must interrupt it for any commandment. R. Yohanan’s ruling that one must interrupt Torah study for the Amidah is similar to R. Hanina’s ruling.
The Talmud then raises a series of objections concerning how R. Simeon’s ruling has been understood so far. Surely R. Simeon would agree that one must interrupt Torah study to observe the commandments of the Torah, such as building a sukkah; surely, R. Simeon agrees that one must not only study the commandments but study them in order to observe them. Why should the Shema be an exception? The answer the Talmud offers is that R. Simeon holds that since the Shema consists of recitation of the words of the Torah, and since one is already engaged in that activity during Torah study, then there is no reason to break from study for the Shema: “This is recitation, and that is recitation.”Footnote 46
If the previous stage of the sugya constructed an opposition between liturgical and scholastic priorities, this stage argues for an essential similarity (though not identity) between study and the recitation of the Shema—indeed that the former fulfills the obligation for the latter. This solution, on the one hand, draws on a long association between Torah study or similar activities and the Shema. The verses of the Shema in Scripture themselves mention study and teaching; the Sifre passage analyzed in the previous section turns to these verses to provide scriptural basis for the independent commandment to study (Sifre §41), and there is some Tannaitic precedence, as we will see below, for the equation between engaging with Torah texts and Shema recitation. At the same time, the argument that those occupied with Torah study fulfill the Shema obligation is unprecedented. Furthermore, in order to establish similarity between the Shema and study, our passage describes the latter with a ritual term that has not applied to it before. The noun used here for recitation, shinun, is derived from the Shema verses themselves (“Recite them [veshinantam] to your children,” Deut 6:7), and is used in rabbinic literature almost exclusively in connection with the Shema (see, e.g., Sifre Deut §34). Uses of this noun or verbal forms of its root, sh.n.n., in connection with Torah study are rare, and none of them predate the Yerushalmi; recitation in the context of study is normally indicated with forms of the root sh.n.y. Footnote 47
The previous stage of the discussion, I argued above, broadened the scope of the discussion beyond halakic requirements, setting up two conflicting visions of devotion. This stage, in contrast, returns to address mandatory activities. It contends that positions on such activities cannot be based on preferences for prayer or study. R. Yose equates R. Yohanan’s ruling with R. Hanina’s teaching that writing Torah texts must be interrupted for the Shema just as it must be interrupted “for all commandments of the Torah”—which differs from the earlier understanding of R. Yohanan’s position as relating to his devotion to prayer specifically; similarly, the anonymous comment reasons that R. Simeon must have agreed that the commandments should always be observed, and therefore his position about the Shema cannot be merely a reflection of the great value he places on study. And yet, even at this stage, the opposition between the scholastic and liturgical is not completely reversed. The sages’ positions on interrupting study for the Amidah and the Shema may not have been connected to their desires for ceaseless prayer or study, but the articulation of these desires as opposing values stands. The Talmud never challenges or retracts the dichotomy it attributes to R. Simeon. The vision that lumps together all pursuits—including activities such as prayer—as distractions from the ideal life of study remains as a guideline for avoiding all but what is required by the Torah.
C. Reading an Amoraic Question into Tannaitic Teachings
This second framework for understanding the positions of R. Simeon and R. Yohanan is more in line with Tannaitic approaches, but it differs from them in a crucial respect. There are indeed Tannaitic teachings that discuss how engagement with the text of the Torah interacts with the Amidah and Shema obligations. The Mishnah rules that if someone is reciting the Torah when the time for the Shema arrives and he intends his reading to fulfill the requirement to recite the Shema, he has indeed fulfilled it (m. Ber. 2:1). This ruling has normally been interpreted as referring to the Shema passages of the Torah specifically: even though an individual recited these passages in the course of reciting the running text, and even without the accompanying blessings that are normally part of the Shema recitation, his recitation has fulfilled the requirement.Footnote 48 Another Tannaitic teaching, a version of which we have seen the Yerushalmi cite, rules that those who labor in the writing of Torah artifacts that also include the Shema portions, such as scrolls, phylacteries, and mezuzahs, may continue writing even when it is time for the Amidah, and according to R. Judah the Patriarch, even when it is time to recite the Shema (t. Ber. 2:6).
These teachings, however, do not mention Torah study (talmud torah). The practices they address consist of reproducing the fixed Torah text verbatim through recitation or writing and in that sense are indeed closer in mode to liturgical practices. Torah study, in contrast, involves not just verbatim reproduction but analysis and original argumentation or interpretation, and its object is not only the written Scripture but also the “oral” Torah or rabbinic tradition; the last two comments in our sugya highlight these aspects of Torah study.Footnote 49 While the Talmud’s discussion builds on these Tannaitic sources, we cannot simply read its concerns into texts that follow a different logic.Footnote 50 Tannaitic teachings address how the obligations of the Shema and the Amidah are affected by various situations and activities—participating in weddings, a death in the family, having seminal emissions, tending to public affairs;Footnote 51 studying Torah is simply not among them.
The most important case of reading the Amoraic contrast between study and liturgical practices into a Tannaitic text concerns the Mishnah unit to which our passage is appended:
Mishnah Sabb. 1:2
One may not sit down before the barber near the time of the afternoon service unless one has already prayed. Nor may one enter a bathhouse or a tannery, nor eat, nor judge. But if one has already begun [any such activity], one does not interrupt it. One interrupts for the recitation of the Shema, but one does not interrupt for the [Amidah] Prayer.
The Mishnah rules that one should not begin certain time-consuming activities right before the time of afternoon service, lest one miss it; if one has already started these activities, though, he is permitted to complete them, presumably as long as he can do so before the appropriate time for the afternoon service passes. The last sentence of the excerpt quoted here presented a challenge to the Mishnah’s interpreters already in the Amoraic period. If this sentence relates to the previous sentence, why does it not simply say, “But one does interrupt for the recitation of the Shema”? The Bavli solves the problem by suggesting that this last sentence applies to a new, unstated subject, Torah study, taking it to mean, “[If one is engaged in Torah study,] one interrupts [the study] for the recitation of the Shema, but one does not interrupt [Torah study] for [the Amidah] Prayer.”Footnote 52 The Yerushalmi does not present the same interpretation explicitly. Benovitz argued that it shares this understanding of the Mishnah with the Bavli, in part drawing on the fact that the positions of R. Simeon and R. Yohanan seem to be formulated as comments on the Mishnah.Footnote 53 At the very least, we can say that even if the composers of the Yerushalmi did not precisely interpret the Mishnah as referring to Torah study, what they were interested in when they commented on that clause was how it may apply to study.
The majority of modern scholars agree that there is no compelling reason to read a reference to Torah study into the Mishnah.Footnote 54 Still, these scholars have not identified what motivated this particular talmudic reading, in part because they assumed that in general Tannaitic sages addressed the conflict between liturgical practices and Torah study. The redundancy in the Mishnah’s formulation may have contributed to this reading, and the Bavli appeals to it explicitly to justify its reading. But on its own, this redundancy does not point to study. Given the other materials examined in this article, it is likely that this Amoraic reading reflects the new inclination to oppose study and other religious activities.
Additional Examples
The two long passages examined above, the passage from Hagigah and the passage from Berakhot, present well-articulated examples of a new conversation about Torah study. Each of these passages contains several teachings that attest to the development of a new discourse contrasting Torah study with other activities, and the composite passages are motivated by an interest in this contrast. The same conversation is attested in other passages in the Talmud. A story in tractate Nazir tells of the beginning of R. Aqiva’s study with the sages: performing an act of kindness, he brought an abandoned corpse for burial; the sages criticized him for the way he handled the corpse; realizing how even his good intentions can go wrong without a good knowledge of halakah, he vowed never to leave the sages. While the sages’ critique involves a specific issue with the corpse handling, the story moves to emphasize the importance of attending to the sages, and the passage concludes with another teaching attributed to R. Aqiva that says that whoever does not do so is liable to death. The implication is that R. Aqiva should have attended to the sages rather than to a corpse and should focus on study rather than acts of kindness.Footnote 55 A few passages in tractate Berakhot present the tension between liturgical and scholastic pursuits. One story tells us that during his Torah study, R. Judah the Patriarch observed the obligation to recite the Shema as minimally as possible, so minimally it was imperceptible to one of his students (y. Ber. 2:1, 4a-b). Another passage addresses the Mishnah’s statement that the “pious ones” would break from other activities an hour before the Amidah so that they could pray with the appropriately serious state of mind; the Yerushalmi is concerned: “When did they engage with Torah? And when did they engage with their work?” (y. Ber. 5:1, 8d). Footnote 56
Other examples involve topics other than prayer and gemilut hasadim. A long passage in tractate Bikkurim addresses the Torah’s commandment to rise before elders. The passage as a whole is critical of the connection between rank and honor, as Seth Schwartz argued.Footnote 57 But at least two of its components, which concern sages engaged in a supererogatory practice of rising, participate in the discourse traced in this article. R. Zeira reports that R. Aha would “interrupt” his studies to rise before elders and comments that he did so because he was scrupulous about the teaching that those writing Torah artifacts must interrupt their writing to observe any commandment in the Torah, as we have seen cited in the sugya about the Shema and Amidah. In the second anecdote we hear that when Hezekiah b. Rabbi Hiyya “would toil in Torah as much as he needed”—compare R. Simeon’s fantasy about the mouth occupied with ceaseless Torah study and the mouth for all other “needs”—he would go to the assembly house specifically so he could see elders and rise before them (y. Bik. 3:3, 65c). Another type of supererogatory piety, the particularly scrupulous care about corpse impurity, is said, in a teaching presented in tractate Kil’ayim, not to apply in the study house. While the teaching is ostensibly Tannaitic, it has no parallel in the Tannaitic corpus, and it is followed with illustrations that involve only Amoraic-era sages (y. Kil. 9:2, 32a).
Tannaitic Precedence?
The previous sections demonstrated a chronological development in the discourse on Torah study by showing how the Yerushalmi adapts or interprets Tannaitic sources. This section examines passages in the Tannaitic corpus that are not directly related to the Yerushalmi passages studied above but that have been interpreted or could be interpreted as reflecting the opposition between Torah study and good works or pious activity. My argument is that even though the concerns of these Tannaitic passages sometimes overlap with those raised in the talmudic passages, there are crucial differences between the two sets of texts.
I begin with one of the most famous rabbinic pronouncements on the value of Torah study:
Mishnah Pe’ah 1:1
These are the things the fruits of which man consumes in this world, and the principal endures for him in the world to come: honoring father and mother, gemilut hasadim, and bringing peace among men. And the study of Torah is equal to all of them.
Like the passages we have seen above, this passage compares Torah study with other virtuous activities and claims superiority for study. But unlike those passages, which contained explicit directions for or comments on behavior (R. Abbahu was angry at his son for caring for the dead; R. Simeon, according to the Yerushalmi, said one should not cease from Torah study for the Shema), this passage is silent about the implications of this superiority in practice. Other passages in Tannaitic literature declare the settlement of the land of Israel, circumcision, or charity and gemilut hasadim as equal to all other commandments in the Torah,Footnote 58 a statement even stronger than the one in this passage—but these teachings do not recommend pursuing these commandments at the expense of the others. In contrast with the talmudic passages, Pe’ah 1:1 never suggests that there is some conflict between certain pursuits and the study of Torah or that these other activities and Torah study are in some sense mutually exclusive. On the contrary, it promises rewards for all these activities, and in this sense, it presents Torah study simply as the most rewarding among several meritorious activities that one may pursue.
In a series of articles, Shmuel Safrai has argued that several Tannaitic sources reflect a tension between the sages and a group called the hasidim, the pious ones. According to Safrai, these hasidim prioritized supererogatory deeds and acts of piety over the study of the Torah, and the sages were therefore hostile to them. Safrai posits, then, that the same tension we have seen in the Talmud stretches back to the Tannaitic period. He adduces two kinds of sources to support this claim, those that mention hasidim explicitly and that which he himself attributes to hasidim. But there is little in the sources that supports the notion that what distinguished hasidim from (the rest of) the sages was a different commitment to Torah study: in the Tannaitic corpus, hasidim are distinguished primarily by their stricter approach to various matters of the law, which these sources never associate with a lesser commitment to Torah study.Footnote 59 There is also little evidence that the sages were antagonistic towards the hasidim: the term is used positively throughout rabbinic sources.Footnote 60
Sources that Safrai himself identifies with hasidim do testify to a Tannaitic debate about the balance between wisdom and good deeds in the figure of the sage, but these sources present these as complementary rather than conflicting values. Tractate Abot attributes to Hanina ben Dosa the following teaching: “Anyone for whom the fear of sin takes priority over wisdom—his wisdom endures, but anyone for whom wisdom takes priority over the fear of sin—his wisdom does not endure […] anyone whose [good] deeds exceed his wisdom—his wisdom endures, and anyone whose wisdom exceeds his [good] deeds—his wisdom does not endure” (m. Abot 3:9–10). This statement does not pit piety against wisdom but rather argues that piety is essential to obtaining lasting wisdom. Another teaching adduced by Safrai, Hillel’s statement that “the ignorant cannot fear sin nor is the ‘am ha’arets pious” (m. Abot 2:5), argues for the other side of the coin: one cannot be pious without being also wise. If this statement, like our talmudic passages, assumed that pious activity comes at the expense of Torah study, it might have said that piety leads one to be ‘am ha’arets.
Finally, there are several Tannaitic passages that set the study of Torah in opposition to family commitments. The most famous is a discussion that contrasts Torah and procreation:
Tosefta Yebam. 8:7
Said Ben Azzai:Footnote 61 Anyone not engaged in procreation is like one who commits murder and nullifies the image [of God], for it was said, “For in his own image God made humankind,” and it is written, “And you, be fruitful and multiply” (Gen 9:6–7). R. Eleazar ben Azariah said to him: Ben Azzai, words are good when they come out of the mouth of those who practice them. There are those who expound well but do not carry out well [the teachings that they expound] and those who carry out well but do not expound well. You expound well but you do not carry out well. He said to him: What can I do? My soul desires Torah. Let the world be sustained by others.
Since procreation is a commandment, and since it is difficult to see how procreation itself would lead to transgression of the Torah, scholars have reasonably suggested that Ben Azzai here contrasts a life dedicated purely to study with a life dedicated in part to the family.Footnote 62 His statement, like our talmudic passages, does indeed construe Torah study and a competing commitment as mutually exclusive. But Ben Azzai’s response to R. Eleazar points to the inherently worldly aspect of procreation: even though in his own exposition, Ben Azzai condemns the lack of procreation as nullifying the image of God, when he defends his own choice not to procreate, he creates an opposition between himself, who is occupied in Torah, and those who sustain the world through procreation. Another passage in the Tosefta (Bek. 6:10) speaks of the conflict between marriage and Torah study, resolving it by postponing marriage until later in life. In that passage, similarly, the concern may be less about the value of marriage and more the accommodation of sexual lust.Footnote 63 Still another aspect of this opposition between Torah study and family commitments is addressed in teachings that oppose a commitment to one’s teachers and parents. The Mishnah instructs that the lost item of one’s teacher takes precedence over the lost item of one’s father because while the father brought the student to this world, the teacher will bring him to the next (m. B. Mes. 2:11).Footnote 64 Again, the family commitment is described as something this-worldly rather than a competing religious obligation.
It is true that unlike other Tannaitic texts that oppose Torah study to, say, making a living, these passages point to the worldliness of what the sages perceived as Torah mandates—procreation and filial piety. And it is true that the talmudic passages we have seen above seem to make a similar argument when they equate charitable acts and prayer with worldly activities. But the reason for this equation in the Talmud is not that there is something inherently worldly about these activities, unlike the claims about family commitments in Tannaitic literature. The Talmud could have suggested that prayer is worldly because it is a vehicle for people to petition God for their needsFootnote 65 or that gemilut hasadim is worldly because it is part of a system of reciprocity.Footnote 66 But these talmudic texts do not take up these lines of argument. If the passage in Hagigah was intended to target the expectation of worldly reciprocation for gemilut hasadim, they could have done better than the care of the dead—after all, the performer would pass from this world by the time such action could be reciprocated.Footnote 67 Similarly, the Yerushalmi’s discussion contrasting the scholastic and the liturgical is structured around the recitation of the Shema—the ritual that epitomizes worshipful rather than petitionary aspects of prayer, “accepting of the yoke of the kingdom of heaven” (m. Ber. 2:2, 2:5). The idea that these activities may be inferior to Torah study because there is something inherently “worldly” about them does not come up in these passages.
Conclusion and Contextualization
Discussions of Torah study have been central to rabbinic literature from its earliest stages; already in the Tannaitic corpus, the merits of study are examined and defined in comparison to the merits of other activities, such as observance of the commandments and pursuit of financial gain. This article has argued that the Talmud Yerushalmi attests to a new conversation, one that pits study against activities that are elsewhere considered part of a life of Torah. The analysis undertaken here shows how the talmudic reframing of the conversation was pursued by imposing the new contrastive paradigm on earlier rabbinic teachings. Modern studies have missed this development in part because they accepted these talmudic interpretations. While this new Amoraic conversation presented several different positions, the binary opposition it produced contributed to shaping the figure of the rabbi-scholar who defined the life of Torah as a life of Torah study.
Understanding how this development was related to other social and cultural processes requires further study, but I want to conclude by considering how it may be illuminated by other developments already established in scholarship. First, studies of the social configuration of the community of sages have noted that the late Tannaitic and early Amoraic periods witnessed consolidation and institutionalization, even if on a more modest scale than traditionally imagined. Haim Shapira has shown that while the expression bet hamidrash in the Mishnah generally refers to a study session, in later strands across the Tannaitic corpus as well as in the Talmuds it comes to refer to a permanent building.Footnote 68 Hayim Lapin argued that the production of the Mishnah and the rise of citation of and commentary on earlier rabbinic teachings reflect the development of a new kind of self-consciousness and efforts to standardize rabbinic knowledge.Footnote 69 It is beginning with Amoraic sources that we hear of rabbinic “appointments” and rabbinic solicitation of funding.Footnote 70 The new conversation about Torah study can be read, in this context, as a debate on the character of the sage rising at the moment of an increasingly self-conscious and defined community of sages.
Second, this new conversation may reflect broadly attested tensions among different visions of religious life and leadership in the late ancient Mediterranean. Scholars have shown that precisely in the period represented in the Yerushalmi, the third and fourth centuries CE, Christian communities converged over an acetic ideal that also underlay a new type of leader, the monk-bishop. While these communities, including those who articulated this new ascetic ideal, produced volumes of scholarly literature, this ideal was sometimes contrasted with intellectual pursuits and presented, as Phillip Rousseau argued, an “anti-intellectual bias.”Footnote 71 This discourse of asceticism and the emerging figure of the monk-bishop were associated with the activities that Amoraic texts contrast with Torah study. Éric Rebillard has argued that the duty to bury the poor played a significant role in the construction of Christian identity and was seen as one of the bishops’ obligations;Footnote 72 Andrew Crislip discussed the role of monasticism in care for the sick;Footnote 73 and Claudia Rapp has shown the centrality of prayer to the bishops’ ascetic authority.Footnote 74 In other words, this ascetic discourse drew on a contrast similar to the one the talmudic passages draw between scholarship, on the one hand, and good works or prayer, on the other hand, but it reflected a preference for the side opposite to the one that triumphed among the sages. Scholars such as Michael Satlow and Eliezer Diamond have shown that Torah study may be understood as a cognate of late ancient ascetic culture.Footnote 75 But reading the passages studied in this article in the context of Christian evidence also allows us to consider Torah study as relating to a specific type of askesis that stood in tension with other types.
My aim in drawing attention to the rise of asceticism and the figure of the monk-bishop is not necessarily to suggest that the positions we find in the Talmud were articulated as a response to Christianity. The talmudic passages examined here are addressed inwardly, to rabbis and their disciples, not to the “nations of the world,” the minim, or Jewish “holy men.”Footnote 76 But recognizing these wide-ranging social transformations, in which Christianity played a significant role and for which Christian sources are our main evidence, can help us understand why the conversation traced here developed when it did and the significance it had for the audience of our texts. It allows us to consider that when R. Abbahu’s son moved to Tiberias to take care of those that died in poverty, he may have been following a model of piety promoted by the new asceticism; and that in chastising him, R. Abbahu was arguing against this model of piety for an intellectualist model that featured a newly exclusivist emphasis on scholarly virtue. While further study is needed to establish concrete historical connections between the rabbinic development examined here and these broader developments in the late ancient Mediterranean, the contrasts and convergences are suggestive. Regardless of whether this rabbinic development was shaped by these broader trends, the consideration of contemporary traditions that took other, even opposite paths, highlights the specificity and significance of the ideological position that shaped the figure of the rabbi-scholar.
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