|
|
Dmitry Romashov
St. Petersburg State University, lecturer
Rabbinic Traditions about Alexandrians: Transition and Transformation
|
|
| Keywords:
Sages, Talmudic Literature, Mishnah, Tosefta, Babylonian Talmud, Palestinian Talmud, Alexandria, The Mishnah and Talmud Period, Jewish Identity, Diaspora
|
|
The aim of this paper is to trace back the roots of rabbinic traditions concerning Egyptian Jews and Alexandrians in particular. These traditions may be either of Alexandrian or of Palestinian origin. Some early traditions have not changed, while some of them have undergone dramatic changes. While at the beginning of the Mishnah and Talmud period Egyptian Jewry was a part of halakhic realm, the last generations of tanaim treated them while shaping the ideology that puts Eretz Israel in the middle of the Jewish Universe. Neutral episodes get another connotation that has nothing to do with the Alexandrian Jewish Community — hardly existing by that time. The amoraim conceiving the aftermath of Judean rebellions unite the experience of Palestinian Jewry and that of the Alexandrian and, broader still, the North-African diaspora at the time of the emperor Trajan. Thus they revise the traditional attitude towards the Egyptian Jews according to the Torah prescriptions.
|
|
|
