The Stabilization of Rabbinic Culture, 100 C.E. -350 C.E. Texts on Education and Their Late Antique Context

In the first five centuries of the common era, in Roman Palestine and Sasanid Persia, a small group of perhaps a couple of thousand Jewish scholars and rabbis were able to secure and sustain a thriving national and educational culture. They procured loyalty to the national language and oversaw the retention of a significant national identity. This accomplishment was unique in the Roman Near East. Few physical artifacts remain to attest to this achievement. But the paucity of physical remains of late antique Jewish learning is in inverse proportion to the scope of the oral teaching, which was committed to writing only in the high middle ages. The content of this oral teaching remains the staple of Jewish learning through modern times. Marc Hirshman traces and outlines the ideals and practices of rabbinic learning as presented in the relatively few late antique sources that discuss the processes and ideals of learning. Though oral learning was common in many ancient cultures, the Jewish approach has a different theoretical basis and different aims. Hirshman explores the evolution and institutionalization of Jewish culture in both Babylonian and Palestinian sources. At its core, he argues, the Jewish cultural thrust in the first centuries of the common era was a sustained effort to preserve the language of its culture in its most pristine form. This was done by the rabbis in a very conscious cultural conflict with their surrounding cultures.

Marc Hirshman holds the Mandel Chair for Jewish Education at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is academic chair of the Melton Center for Jewish Education. He is also the academic head of the Center for the Study of the Land of Israel at the Yitzchak Ben Zvi Institute.