JEWISH MOMENTS IN THE LAND OF ISRAEL c. 800 CE. Pirkoi ben Baboi and the Battle over Jewish Tradition

Around the turn of the ninth century, an obscure Babylonian scholar named Pirkoi ben Baboi composed a polemical letter addressed to Jewish communities in North Africa and Spain. He argued that Palestinian custom had been corrupted by persecution while Babylonian tradition alone preserved authentic law, cataloguing specific ritual disputes. Preserved only in Geniza fragments, the letter reveals the fierce rivalry between Babylonia and the Land of Israel for authority over world Jewry at the time.

Pirkoi ben Baboi, active around 800 CE, was a Talmudic scholar of the Geonic era who identified himself as a student of Rav Abba, who in turn was a student of Rav Yehudai Gaon, the powerful and assertive head of the Sura Academy from approximately 757 to 761. By claiming descent from Rav Yehudai’s teaching, Pirkoi positioned himself as heir to one of the most consequential efforts to codify Babylonian halakhic authority across the diaspora. He is known to us exclusively through his Iggeret, or Epistle, preserved in substantial but incomplete fragments in the Cairo Geniza.

The Iggeret opens with a sweeping historical narrative constructed to establish the superiority of Babylonia over Palestine as the seat of authentic Jewish tradition. Pirkoi claimed that........

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