Thursday, 21 October 2021 - 12:00 PM
Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies
Virtual, Zoom
The rabbis featured in the Babylonian Talmud are typically imagined as constituting a centralized movement centered around a few large institutions (yeshivot), and serving as the official expositors of proper Jewish behavior among the Jews of the time.
In recent years, scholars have begun to challenge this portrait, arguing instead that the rabbis’ activities were decentralized, deinstitutionalized, heterogenous, and local in nature. Formal academies and the centralization of the movement happened later, when post-talmudic attitudes were retrojected onto the talmudic past.
This talk explores the social and cultural worlds of the rabbis of the Talmud and how they emerged as the dominant stream of Jewish practice and tradition.
Register here: https://katz.sas.upenn.edu/events/rise-rabbis