AJS Review 41:2 (November 2017), 287–313

© Association for Jewish Studies 2017

doi:10.1017/S0364009417000393

C REATORS OF W ORLDS : T HE D EPOSITION OF

R. G AMLIEL AND THE I NVENTION OF YAVNEH
Moshe Simon-Shoshan
In Memoriam Sacvan Bercovitch (1933–2014)

“Tell me a story,” said the Baroness …

“What sort of story,” asked Clovis …
“One just true enough to be interesting”
and not true enough to be tiresome,” said the Baroness.
—The Chronicles of Clovis, Saki

Abstract: This article will examine the development of Yavneh as a lit-

erary and cultural construct from tannaitic sources through the two
versions of the story of the deposition of R. Gamliel, in Yerushalmi
Berakhot 4:1 and Bavli Berakhot 27b–28a. It will explore the ways
in which the talmudic storytellers present a more developed narrative
world complete with a social and political culture. It will then analyze
the complex relationships between the narrative worlds of the Yerush-
almi and Bavli and their respective social and ideological contexts.
Based on this analysis, I shall propose a model for understanding
the way in which the Yavnehs of both the Bavli and the Yerushalmi func-
tioned in amoraic and postamoraic society to create a nuanced and
self-critical rabbinic cultural identity.

Many of the best-known and most studied rabbinic sage stories belong to a
grouping that has recently become known as the “Yavneh cycle.”1 A series of
interrelated rabbinic narrative traditions interspersed throughout the corpus of rab-
binic literature, the Yavneh cycle stories depict the establishment of Yavneh and its
“vineyard” as the center of rabbinic scholarship and authority following the
destruction of Jerusalem and the subsequent intrarabbinic struggles that occurred
there. The stories of the Yavneh cycle can be seen as collectively forming a foun-
dation myth for its creators’ civilization. They establish the norms on which the
society of the beit midrash is founded and the ground rules by which rabbinic

Earlier versions of this essay were presented at the World Congress of Jewish Studies in Jeru-
salem in July of 2013 and at the departmental colloquium of the Department of Literature of the Jewish
People at Bar-Ilan University in the fall of the same year. I would like to thank Naomi Goldstein, Geof-
frey Herman, Catherine Hezser, Rella Kushelevsky, Moshe Lavee, Hindy Najman, and Jeremy Rosen-
baum Simon for their input. I would also like to thank the anonymous readers for AJS Review and this
journal’s former editor, Christine Hayes, for their help in editing the final version of this article.
1. Daniel Boyarin, “The Yavneh-Cycle of the Stammaim and the Invention of the Rabbis,” in
Creation and Composition: The Contribution of the Bavli Redactors (Stammaim) to the Aggada, ed.
Jeffrey L. Rubenstein (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 237–92.

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study, dispute, and decision-making are to be conducted, giving them legitimacy

by rooting them in a legendary past and the deeds of the heroic founders of rab-
binic culture.
The true star of the Yavneh cycle is perhaps Yavneh itself. In these narra-
tives, Yavneh, with its central beit midrash, is more than just a physical locale.
Each of these stories constructs Yavneh as a narrative world, made up of social,
political, and ideological structures in addition to its physical features and
human personalities. It is through the narrative world of Yavneh that the
Yavneh cycle undertakes some of its key cultural work of forging a collective rab-
binic identity rooted in a legendary past while at the same time holding up rabbinic
institutions to scrutiny and critique.

D EFINING “N ARRATIVE W ORLDS ”

In recent decades, the concept of narrative worlds has gained importance in
the critical vocabulary of scholars of narrative.2 For the purposes of this study, I
define the term “narrative world” as referring to the totality of the environment
in which a story takes place. The narrative world of a story includes the geography
and history of the physical space in which the events of the plot take place, as well
as the individuals who populate that space. Also part of a narrative world are the
social, political, cultural, and normative structures and dynamics that govern rela-
tionships and events in the story. Relevant physical and metaphysical laws that
operate within the story, such as whether or not miracles, prophesy, and/or
magic exist, further help define a narrative world.
Narrative worlds are constructed in the mind of the author and constituted
through the text of the story. They are reconstituted and experienced by the
story’s readers.3 Of course, no reader will reconstruct the world of a story in the
exact same way in which the author intended or in which other readers will.4
For the purposes of this study, however, we can reasonably reconstruct the outlines
of the narrative worlds of our texts as they would have been commonly understood
by their authors and original audiences.
Narrative worlds range greatly in their size and depth. They can be as limited
and simple as an image of a doctor’s office created with a few pen strokes in a
New Yorker cartoon. At the other extreme, narrative worlds can be as vast and
richly detailed as George Eliot’s Middlemarch or Tolkien’s Middle Earth. Never-
theless, all narrative worlds are necessarily limited: no text or human imagination
can encompass the infinite details that constitute an actual human environment.5
Furthermore, narrative worlds are always presented from a particular perspective.

2. Recent book-length studies of this topic include Mark J. P. Wolf, Building Imaginary Worlds:
The Theory and History of Subcreation (New York: Routledge, 2012) and Eric Hayot, On Literary
Worlds (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
3. Lubomir Doležel, Heterocosmica: Fiction and Possible Worlds (Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1998), 21.
4. Wolf, Building Imaginary Worlds, 55.
5. On the question of the incompleteness of narrative worlds see Doležel, Heterocosmica,
169–84.

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The way a narrative world is perceived is always filtered through the narrator’s
choice of which aspects of the world to present and how to present them. As
such, implicit in most presentations of narrative worlds is also an evaluation of
that world and especially its social and moral order.
Narrative worlds are frequently referred to as “fictional worlds.” Indeed, the
critical discussion of this concept largely grew out of efforts to define the ontolog-
ical status and referential nature of fiction statements.6 However, the creation of
narrative worlds is by no means limited to fictional texts. A historical account
of the Jack the Ripper case constructs a narrative world of Victorian London no
less than a Sherlock Holmes story.

YAVNEH IN TANNAITIC S OURCES

Yavneh and its vineyard first appear as the meeting place of the sages in
several brief tannaitic traditions. Most of the key tannaitic sources are referred
to and reinterpreted in one or both of the talmudic versions of the deposition
story.7 These earlier sources portray what appear to be occasional great meetings
of the sages in which halakhic traditions were organized and transmitted, and dis-
puted issues resolved.
The phrase “the vineyard at Yavneh” appears twice in the Mishnah, in
Ketubbot 4:6: “This interpretation was presented by R. Eleazar b. Azariah
before the elders in the vineyard at Yavneh,” and in Eduyot 2:4: “Rabbi
Ishmael said three things before the sages in the vineyard at Yavneh.” These
texts, and several similar ones elsewhere in tannaitic literature,8 refer to a
meeting of sages in which halakhic traditions were presented to the assembly
by individual rabbis. It is not clear from these sources if the vineyard was the
site of a onetime gathering, occasional meetings, or a permanent institution.
However, the fact that the meeting occurred in a vineyard rather than in a building
suggests a relatively informal institution lacking a high level of infrastructure or
stability.9

6. Thomas Pavel, Fictional Worlds (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986).
7. In a separate study I trace the development and redactions of the deposition narratives from
the earliest sources to the story as it appears in the Talmuds: “The Transmission and Evolution of the
Story of the Deposition of R. Gamliel,” in Jews and Christians in the First and Second Centuries: The
Interbellum 70 – 132 CE, ed. Joshua J. Schwartz and Peter J. Tomson, CRINT 15 (Leiden: Brill, forth-
coming). Earlier attempts to trace this development include Robert Goldenberg, “The Deposition of
Rabban Gamliel: An Examination of the Sources,” Journal of Jewish Studies 23 (1972): 167–90,
Chaim Shapira, “The Deposition of R. Gamliel, between History and Legend” [in Hebrew], Zion
64, no. 1 (1994): 345–70, and Jeffery Rubenstein, Stories of the Babylonian Talmud (Baltimore,
MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), 77–80. See also Devora Steinmetz, “Agada Unbound:
Inter-Agadic Characterization of the Sages in the Bavli and Implications for Reading Agada,” in
Rubenstein, Creation and Composition, 293–337.
8. T. Yevamot 6:6, 10:3; T. Tevul Yom 2:9; Sifrei Bamidbar, Korah, pis. 118, to Numbers 18:15
and Hukat, pis. 124, to Numbers 19:9 (ed. Horovitz, pp. 138, 158).
9. We cannot discount the possibility that already in the tannaitic sources the term “vineyard”
should not be understood literally. Cohen notes the parallel between this name for the rabbinic academy
and the names of the Athenian philosophical academies, the Porch, the Walk, and the Garden. However,

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The most extensive discussion of the vineyard at Yavneh appears at the begin-
ning of Tosefta Eduyot, which opens with the following framing narrative: “When
the sages entered the vineyard at Yavneh, they said, ‘The time will come in the future
when a person will seek a teaching of the Torah and will not find it, a teaching of the
scribes and will not find it … they said let us begin with Hillel and Shammai.’” In
this account, the gathering of the rabbis in the vineyard at Yavneh is portrayed as a
turning point in the history of the study and transmission of the Oral Law. It was then
that the first steps were taken towards the organization of the Oral Law with the cre-
ation of the tractate of Eduyot, which sought to preserve a wide array of halakhic
traditions organized by tradent.10 This text is unclear as to whether this meeting
was a onetime event or the beginning of a more permanent institution.
Another important narrative about Yavneh is in Tosefta Sotah 9:5, which
presents an extended homily of R. Eleazar b. Azariah about the nature of Torah
study. The homily is framed by a narrative in which R. Yoh.anan b. Beroka and
R. Elazar b. H.isma come from Yavneh to Lod to visit R. Joshua. R. Joshua
requests that the younger rabbis relate to him words of Torah from the beit
midrash in Yavneh, asking them, “Whose Sabbath was it?” The students
respond, “It was R. Eleazar b. Azariah’s,” and then proceed to relate his teaching.11
The meaning of the phrase, shabbat shel mi hayetah, “Whose Sabbath was
it?” remains obscure. Rubenstein suggests that this phrase means, “Who happened
to speak on that Sabbath in the house of study?”12 Unlike the previous texts we
have cited, this source would then imply that Yavneh was a relatively permanent
institution that met week in, week out. However, the Tosefta’s account is likely a
later reworking of the parallel versions of this story found in the Mekhilta and in
Yerushalmi Sotah.13 These versions do not contain the phrase shabbat shel mi
hayetah.14 Instead, R. Joshua asks, mi shavat sham, “Who was there?” Thus the

as we shall see, the tannaitic sources overwhelmingly seem to portray an occasional gathering of the
sages rather than a permanent institution. Shaye J. D. Cohen, “Patriarchs and Scholars,” Proceeding
of the American Academy of Jewish Research 48 (1981): 57–85. See also Adolph Büchler, “Learning
and Teaching in the Open Air in Palestine,” Jewish Quarterly Review 4 (1913–14): 498.
10. Hanoch Albeck, Shishah sidre mishnah, Seder nezikin, (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1953), 275.
11. For a study and survey of previous scholarship on this passage and its parallel in Bavli
H.agigah 3a–b, see Rubenstein, Stories of the Babylonian Talmud, 91–115.
12. Ibid., 111. Rubenstein cites Saul Lieberman, Tosefta Ki-fshutah, vol. 7 (New York: Jewish
Theological Seminary, 1973), 680, as his source for this reading, but Lieberman does not explicitly read
the Tosefta in this way. For another possible reading, see Y. N. Epstein, Mevo’ot le-sifrut ha-tanna’im
(Jerusalem: Magnes, 1957), 419.
13. Both Shamma Friedman and Amram Tropper argue that in many cases, toseftan materials
reflect a later stage of development than their parallels in the tannaitic midrashim. Shamma Friedman,
Tosefta atiqta (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2002), 75–77; Amram Tropper, Ke-h.omer be-yad
ha-yoz.er: Ma‘ase h.akhamim be-sifrut h.azal (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 2011), esp. 23–26. In
an unpublished paper Friedman noted several examples of this phenomenon, specifically in T. Sotah.
14. Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, par. B’o, to Exodus 13:2 (ed. Horovitz-Rabin, p. 59); Y. Sotah
3:4 (18d); Y. H.agigah 1:1 (75d).

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likely earlier sources of this tradition suggest only a meeting of the sages and not
any sort of permanent institution at Yavneh.
There is another key phrase in the Mishnah, which, while it does not explic-
itly refer to Yavneh, does portray an important meeting of the rabbis in the gener-
ation following the destruction of Jerusalem. In Yadayim 3:5 and 4:2 as well as
Zevah.im 1:3, the Mishnah reports that “R. Shimon ben Azzai said, ‘I received
[this teaching] from seventy-two elders on the day on which R. Eleazar ben
Azariah was seated in the yeshivah.” Like the Mishnah’s accounts of the vineyard
at Yavneh, Ben Azzai here identifies a particular halakhic ruling as having been
transmitted at a particular great meeting of the sages. This transmission of halakhic
teachings takes place in the context of an institution referred to as the yeshivah.15
As suggested by the reference to the seating of R. Eleazar ben Azariah, this was a
group that had restricted membership. The induction of a new rabbi into the yeshi-
vah was apparently an important event in the life of that rabbi as well as of the
group as a whole. Ben Azzai also notes that seventy-two sages were in attendance
at the yeshivah, recalling the number of the biblical elders of Israel and the mem-
bership of the temple-era Sanhedrin as described in other rabbinic sources.16 Ben
Azzai’s statement thus evokes a narrative world, though lacking clear location in
space and time, which can be defined as an elite community of rabbinic sages who
come together periodically to define and transmit the authoritative teachings of the
Torah.
The fourth chapter of Yadayim goes on to present a detailed account of the
proceedings of the yeshivah on “that day,” on which R. Eleazar ben Azariah was
seated. Unlike the previous texts we have examined, which describe the rabbis
working in unison to transmit and preserve the Oral Law, these passages in
Yadayim portray the meetings of rabbis of the Yavneh generation as characterized
by intensive legal debates. Notably, the Mishnah records a debate between
R. Gamliel and R. Joshua. These passages construct a narrative world character-
ized by a culture of dispute. However, each of the disputes portrayed is ultimately
resolved as the entire beit midrash agrees to follow the opinion that triumphs in the
debate. The only factor at stake in the debate appears to be the strength of the argu-
ments presented. No underlying personal or political factors seem to influence the
debate. The rabbis address each other as “my brother,” suggesting a collegial
environment.
The sources we have seen thus far thus portray a narrative world in which
the sages come together to collect and transmit the teachings of the Oral Law.
These meetings appear to have been occasional, as with one notable exception,
there is no clear reference to a permanent institution. At least one of these

15. Gafni argues that the term yeshivah has a specifically juridical implication; however, the
context here suggests a body of wider significance and authority. Isaiah Gafni, “Yeshivah and
Metivta,” Zion 43 (1978): 12–37.
16. Sources generally give the number of sages in the Sanhedrin as seventy or seventy-one. The
appearance of the number seventy-two deserves further exploration. Nevertheless, there can be no
doubt as to the overall significance of this number here. See Michael Higger, “The Sanhedrin,” The
Synagogue Light (April–May 1944).

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meetings occurred in the vineyard at Yavneh. The rabbis tend to act as a group
without a strict hierarchy. No individual rabbis are singled out as holding leader-
ship positions. When disputes do arise they are resolved through open argumen-
tation and end with a consensus.
There is one more passage in the Mishnah that presents a different picture of
Yavneh. The first two chapters of Mishnah Rosh Ha-shanah contain extended
accounts of the activities of R. Gamliel’s calendrical court in Yavneh. This
court took over the responsibilities of the great court in Jerusalem for examining
witnesses to the new moon and declaring the beginning of the new month. The
Mishnah records a series of cases in which R. Gamliel uses his authority as the
head of the court to prevail over his colleagues and their dissenting opinions
about matters regarding the fixing of the new month. These incidents culminate
in the famous conflict between R. Joshua and R. Gamliel regarding the proper
date of Yom Kippur.
Unlike the other tannaitic sources, Mishnah Rosh Ha-shanah portrays
Yavneh not as a place of occasional study and academic debate but as the seat
of a permanent judicial institution that met monthly. It is not clear how many
sages other than R. Gamliel attended these meetings, but these were not massive
gatherings of the entire rabbinic estate. The meeting took place in R. Gamliel’s
upper chambers (2:8) rather than in an open-air forum. Not even all the most
senior sages were necessarily in attendance. In at least one instance R. Akiva was
in Lod when the witnesses were making their way to Yavneh (1:6).
Furthermore, in M. Rosh Ha-shanah, Yavneh is place with clear hierarchy. R.
Gamliel’s position prevails not because of the superiority of his argument but
because he stands at the head of the court. Related to this political hierarchy is
the fact that M. Rosh Ha-shanah’s Yavneh is the site of rancorous conflict. In the
story of R. Gamliel’s confrontation with R. Joshua the halakhic debate becomes
personal. R. Dosa mocks R. Gamliel’s ruling and R. Joshua openly challenges
R. Gamliel’s authority. R. Gamliel responded by demanding that R. Joshua publicly
submit to his authority. In the end, however, the two figures reconcile amicably,
restoring the peace and consensus familiar from the other tannaitic sources.17

YAVNEH IN THE TALMUDIC D EPOSITION N ARRATIVES

The two talmudic accounts of the deposition of R. Gamliel, in Yerushalmi
Berakhot 4:1 and Bavli Berakhot 27b–28a, follow the same basic plot line:
R. Joshua opposes R. Gamliel’s ruling that the Evening Prayer is obligatory.
Upon learning of R. Joshua’s insubordination, R. Gamliel publicly confronts
and embarrasses R. Joshua, forcing him to remain standing throughout the
day’s session at the beit midrash. The members of the beit midrash revolt,
forcing R. Gamliel to end the session and ultimately deposing him from his posi-
tion as the head of the beit midrash. In his place, they appoint R. Eleazar ben

17. I present a more complete reading of the narratives in Mishnah Rosh Ha-shanah in Stories of
the Law: Narrative Discourse and the Construction of Authority in the Mishnah (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2012), 193–97.

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Azariah. R. Gamliel goes to R. Joshua’s house in order to reconcile with him.

R. Joshua at first rebukes R. Gamliel for his lack of awareness of R. Joshua’s
destitute economic circumstances, but ultimately R. Joshua accepts the apology.
The two then deliver a message to the beit midrash that their feud has ended,
and R. Gamliel returns to his position of power. As is its wont, the Bavli presents
a version of the deposition story that is significantly longer than the Yerushalmi’s,
not only providing more details but also including entire scenes that are absent
from the Yerushalmi’s version. (An English translation of both talmudic accounts
can be found in synoptic format at the end of this article.)
The first critical difference between the talmudic stories and the tannaitic
sources is that in the Talmuds the rabbis do not simply periodically gather to
collect and transmit traditions, and debate and issue rulings. Yavneh is now the
site of a beit midrash that is a permanent and all-encompassing institution standing
at the center of all rabbinic activity. The yeshivah of the Mishnah is understood as a
“yeshiva,” an academy for the study of Torah.
Similarly, the talmudic version rejects the simple understanding of “the vine-
yard at Yavneh” as describing an agricultural site. It reinterprets the term as a met-
aphorical description of a vast building, with the rows of the vineyard representing
the rows of benches in the academy. The Yerushalmi records a dispute as to
whether there were eighty or three hundred rows, suggesting the existence of a per-
manent home of the yeshiva of the rabbis with seating for hundreds, with many
more occupying the standing room. The Bavli increases the number of benches
in the beit midrash, presenting a dispute as to whether there were four hundred
or seven hundred benches, establishing the beit midrash as a structure of epic pro-
portions, which was host to a population of scholars at least equal to that of a small
town.18
The talmudic stories further depict the beit midrash in Yavneh as an enclosed
world. It is portrayed as the location where the rabbis spend the majority of their
time, meeting there each day for study sessions. Nearly all of the characters in the
story are rabbis and the action largely takes place in the yeshiva building. The few
scenes that take place outside the beit midrash are set in various rabbis’ homes,
which appear to be located in or near the town of Yavneh.
The Talmuds’ Yavneh is not the collaborative world portrayed in most of the
tannaitic sources. It has a hierarchal social order and is riven with personal and
ideological conflicts, similar to the Yavneh of Mishnah Rosh Ha-shanah. But the
talmudic accounts present an even harsher environment. In M. Rosh Ha-shanah,
the issue under debate is the authority of R. Gamliel’s court to set the calendar.
R. Joshua’s threat to follow his own calculations undermines R. Gamliel’s

18. Geoffrey Herman, “Insurrection in the Academy: The Babylonian Talmud and the Paikuli
Inscription” [in Hebrew], Zion 79, no. 3 (2014): 381 n. 18, notes that it is difficult to know what sort of
seating furniture is referred to by the term safsal. In some instances it seems to refer to a stool for a
single individual, while in others it seems to indicate a bench on which multiple individuals can sit.
Herman favors the former option for this case, in which case the number of scholars being portrayed
in the beit midrash would be considerably fewer than I have suggested. See Shmuel Kraus, Kadmoniyot
ha-talmud, vol. 2a (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1929), 25.

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vision of a single calendar that unites the entire Jewish people. R. Gamliel’s deci-
sion to aggressively assert his authority in this case is thus understandable.
In contrast, the question that sparks the conflict in the deposition narrative, the
status of the Evening Prayer, does not appear to be critically important for the
unity of the rabbinic community. Furthermore, whereas in the M. Rosh Ha-shanah
story R. Joshua openly challenges R. Gamliel’s authority, in the deposition
story R. Joshua seeks to avoid confrontation with R. Gamliel. R. Gamliel publicly
humiliates R. Joshua merely for holding an opposing position. The Talmuds’
Yavneh and particularly the conflicts between R. Gamliel and R. Joshua that
occur there are quite brutal. R. Gamliel emerges as a dictatorial figure who seeks
to root out all dissent.

N ARRATIVE W ORLDS AS P OLITICAL C ONSTRUCTS : B ETWEEN THE B AVLI AND

THE Y ERUSHALMI

Both the Yerushalmi and Bavli accounts present Yavneh as a total institution
that is the site not only of rabbinic study but of intense power struggles. Both focus
on the political aspects of the operation of the beit midrash and present a critical
perspective on these matters. However, there is a sharp divergence between the
world of the Yerushalmi and that of the Bavli regarding the details of these
power dynamics and the principles according to which they operate.
The world of the Yerushalmi is based on aristocratic principles. There,
power and authority belong only to those who were born to it.19 R. Gamliel inher-
ited his position from his forebears, who were members of the Pharisaic elite at the
end of the Second Temple period. Many rabbinic sources further attribute Davidic
lineage to R. Gamliel.20 When R. Gamliel is removed from power, there is only
one viable candidate to replace him, R. Eleazar b. Azariah, who comes from
priestly lineage of the highest order. In the end, however, even among the aristoc-
racy, everyone needs to know his place. R. Gamliel demands his position back
from R. Eleazar b. Azariah, declaring, “Let the sprinkler son of a sprinkler [of
ashes of the red heifer], sprinkle; shall he who is neither a sprinkler nor the son
of a sprinkler say to a sprinkler son of a sprinkler, ‘Your water is cave water
and your ashes are oven ashes’?” In other words, just as R. Eleazar b. Azariah
and the rest of the priestly caste have their own rights and responsibilities regarding
cultic matters and questions of ritual purity, the privileges of political and halakhic
leadership belong solely to the house of R. Gamliel. In the end, R. Gamliel
must return to his proper position. Even so, at the conclusion of the story,
R. Eleazar b. Azariah is appointed to the secondary position of ’av beit din,
further consolidating the power of the elites.

19. Devora Steinmetz, “Must the Partriarch Know ’Ukqtzin? The Nasi as Scholar in Babylonian
Agadda,” AJS Review 23, no. 2 (1998): 163–90, has noted the role of heredity in the Yerushalmi version
of the narrative.
20. For a survey and discussion of these sources see David Goodblatt, The Monarchic Principle:
Studies in Jewish Self-Government in Antiquity (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1994), 146–75.

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The Yerushalmi thus contains elements of critique against the rule of an

inherited aristocracy. First, it shows how R. Gamliel abuses his power in order
to dominate his opponents. R. Gamliel is also depicted as a detached leader
who does not understand the difficult economic circumstances of his plebian fol-
lowers. In the end, R. Gamliel acknowledges the error of his ways, but the poten-
tial for similar such abuse at the hands of R. Gamliel’s descendants remains. Along
the same lines, the story demonstrates how the aristocratic regime prevents the
most talented individuals from coming to power. After R. Eleazar b. Azariah is
appointed, we hear R. Akiva’s lament at having been passed over for the job,
“For it is not that he is a greater scholar than I, but rather that he possesses
better lineage….” Though R. Akiva is surely the most qualified candidate, he is
passed over because of his humble origins. Both he and the community as a
whole suffer because of the lost opportunity for his leadership. Nevertheless,
the Yerushalmi accepts the aristocracy as a given. It criticizes the establishment
but ultimately does not call for its removal.
The world of the beit midrash portrayed in the Bavli is quite different. In
place of the secure stability of the Yerushalmi’s aristocratic framework, the
Bavli’s world is quite volatile, as people rise and fall based on their abilities.
The ruling principle appears to be survival of the fittest. One needs to know
how to navigate the often fickle political winds of the beit midrash. When
R. Eleazar b. Azariah consults with his wife about accepting the position
offered to him by the other rabbis she expresses her concern that he may lose
favor with the other rabbis as quickly as he gained it. R. Eleazar b. Azariah
concurs with her analysis but argues that it is worth the risk.
Thus, in the Bavli, R. Gamliel’s aristocratic hegemony is far from inevitable.
When R. Gamliel is overthrown, so is the entire aristocratic structure he represents.
The collective members of the beit midrash decide to elect his replacement on the
basis of careful political calculation. R. Joshua is eliminated not because of his
actual qualifications, but because of the possible appearance of impropriety
given his conflicts with R. Gamliel. The ultimate choice of R. Eleazar
b. Azariah is a pragmatic one. His package of qualifications makes him most
likely to succeed at the job. His descent from Ezra is but one of these credentials,
along with Torah scholarship and wealth. Lineage is presented as important only
because it provides a tactical advantage of giving him metaphysical protection
against his enemies.21 Even when one is equipped with all of these resources,
external appearances are also important. R. Eleazar b. Azariah’s wife objects to
his heading the beit midrash because he lacks white hair. In the world of power
politics looking the part is a crucial credential. In response to this critique, God
miraculously grants R. Eleazar b. Azariah this credential as well.22

21. Isaiah Gafni, “Shevet u-meh.okek: New Models of Leadership in the Talmudic Period,” in
Kehunah u-melukhah: Yah.ase dat u-medinah be-Yisra’el u-ve-‘amim, ed. Isaiah Gafni and Gavriel
Motzkin (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 1987), 87.
22. See the discussion of these issues in Steinmetz, “Must the Patriarch.”

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The difference between the worlds presented by the Yerushalmi and the
Bavli can be further illustrated through a close comparison of the stories’
endings. In the Yerushalmi version, R. Gamliel has little trouble making
amends with the majority of the rabbis of the beit midrash, including R. Joshua.
The primary obstacle to R. Gamliel’s return to power is R. Eleazar b. Azariah.
The power has passed from one aristocratic family to another. In the autocratic
world of the Yerushalmi, it is only with R. Eleazar b. Azariah’s consent that
power can be returned to its original owner. Here, the parable of the “sprinkler
son of sprinkler,” which argues that political leadership belongs by right to
R. Gamliel’s line, is directed only at R. Eleazar b. Azariah. When R. Eleazar
b. Azariah agrees to relinquish power, it is he who declares to the other rabbis
that “you and I shall go up to [R. Gamliel’s] door,” to recognize him once again
as the leader.
In contrast, in the Bavli, R. Gamliel at first goes to reconcile with R. Joshua
only. If he is to end his feud with the other rabbis, he must first gain the support of
the one he offended. R. Joshua himself accepts R. Gamliel’s claim to power on the
basis of his lineage. He forgives him only after R. Gamliel asks that he do so “for
the sake of my father.” They then send a request to have R. Gamliel reinstated. The
parable of the sprinkler reappears here with the addition of a second, similar
parable about “one who wears the robe,” an image of political authority, again
making the argument for R. Gamliel’s hereditary entitlement to his position.23
In the Bavli, though, the case is made not to R. Eleazar b. Azariah, who does
not appear in this final scene at all, but to the entire beit midrash, under the lead-
ership of their plebian de facto leader, R. Akiva. R. Akiva and his colleagues
completely reject R. Gamliel’s aristocratic arguments. They further close the
doors of the beit midrash in the face of R. Gamliel and his men, fearing that
R. Gamliel will seek to seize power by force. Once again, in the Bavli it is political
strength that is the ultimate factor, not hereditary claims. However, when R. Akiva
sees that R. Joshua has made peace with R. Gamliel, he changes his stance. It is
R. Akiva who speaks the phrase, “you and I shall go up to [R. Gamliel’s]
door.” Once the original dispute has been resolved, there is no reason, in principle,
not to let R. Gamliel return to power. The concerns here are purely pragmatic, not
ideological as in the Yerushalmi. In line with this realpolitik approach, in the Bavli,
the rabbis do not agree to return to the status quo. In the end, they attempt to create
a balance of power between R. Gamliel and R. Eleazar b. Azariah, instituting a
rotation system in which neither of them has absolute power.24
There is a further ramification of the differing sociopolitical structures of the
two worlds. In the Yerushalmi’s Yavneh, halakhic authority flows directly from
aristocratic power. R. Gamliel’s right to impose his halakhic positions on others
is never questioned. Similarly, the Yerushalmi emphasizes that R. Eleazar

23. On the symbolism of the robe see Reuven Kimelman, “The Conflict between the Priestly
Oligarchy and the Sages in the Talmudic Period,” Zion 48, no. 2 (1983): 138. On the phenomena of
the Bavli creating such “doublets,” see Rubenstein, Stories of the Babylonian Talmud, 211–12.
24. For an alternative approach to this arrangement, see Steinmetz, “Must the Patriarch,” 181.

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b. Azariah was appointed to his position purely based on his lineage, despite the
fact that he was not the preeminent scholar of his day. In line with its world view,
in the Bavli’s Yavneh, Halakhah is determined through open debate. Torah schol-
ars are portrayed as “shield bearers,” gladiators who face each other in combat in
the arena of the beit midrash. R. Gamliel initially sought to limit this open debate
by restricting access to the beit midrash to those whose “inside is like his outside.”
R. Gamliel’s exact intentions are unclear here, but from the context it seems that he
sought to evaluate the purity of students’ motivations and inner life. R. Eleazar b.
Azariah removes this moral test. Under the new regime students are evaluated
based only on the knowledge and dialectical prowess that they display in the
beit midrash. The result is an influx of talent and energy and an immediate explo-
sion of creative scholarship. The Bavli declares that in addition to the formulation
and dissemination of the teachings recorded in Yadayim chapter 4 and all of
Eduyot, “on that day, no outstanding question in the beit midrash went unre-
solved.” In the Bavli, then, the world of Yavneh combines a freewheeling political
environment with an unfettered commitment to the pursuit of truth through intel-
lectual investigation.
The story’s ambivalence towards this arrangement is most clearly expressed
in the scene describing R. Gamliel’s response to the new developments in the beit
midrash. R. Gamliel expresses concern that, given the productive outcome of
R. Eleazar b. Azariah’s open-door policy, his previous policy of restricting
access to the beit midrash to those whose purity of motivation could be ascertained
was mistaken. R. Gamliel receives a vision in a dream of “white casks full of
ashes.” The dream is described by the Bavli as a message from God communicat-
ing divine disapproval of R. Eleazar b. Azariah’s new regime, despite its benefits
to the world of Torah scholarship. This vindication of R. Gamliel’s approach
stands in tension with the rest of the story, which presents R. Eleazar b. Azariah’s
reform as an overwhelming success.25

H ISTORICAL C ONTEXT OF THE PALESTINIAN D EPOSITION N ARRATIVE

Earlier scholars viewed these stories as providing us a window, however
clouded, onto the circumstances of the historical Yavneh.26 Over the past genera-
tion, scholars have gradually come to the consensus that the amoraic accounts of
the Yavneh era are not rooted in reliable historical traditions, and that there is little
connection between the events described and actual occurrences in rabbinic
circles at the turn of the second century. Nevertheless, contemporary scholars
still tend to view these stories as direct reflections of historical circumstances—

25. The next line in the story states that God sent R. Gamliel the dream only to “put his mind at
peace.” Rubenstein cogently argues that this forced effort to resolve this tension is in fact a later gloss.
He sees it as evidence of continued debate among the Stammaim over this very issue. Rubenstein,
Stories of the Babylonian Talmud, 89.
26. See for example Levi Ginzburg, Perushim ve-h.iddushim be-yerushalmi, vol. 3 (New York:
Ktav, 1971), 174–220; Gedalyah Alon, The Jews in Their Land in the Talmudic Age, trans. Gershon
Levi (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 319–22; Ephraim E. Urbach, The Halakhah:
Its Sources and Development, trans. Raphael Posner (Jerusalem, Yad La-Talmud, 1986), 278–80.

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Moshe Simon-Shoshan

as relatively transparent commentaries on the dominant social and political

systems in the worlds of their authors in later amoraic or postamoraic Palestine
and Babylonia. A careful reading of the deposition narratives, however, will
show that their relationship with the circumstances of their authors is hardly so
clear-cut, and it may be nearly as problematic to use these texts as sources for
later rabbinic history as it is to use them as evidence for the earlier period they
purport to portray.
Let us begin with the Yerushalmi version of the story. Devora Steinmetz
argues that this account reflects the status of the patriarch in the amoraic period,
where the hereditary office was primarily political in nature and was not necessar-
ily filled by a great scholar.27 Chaim Shapira goes further, seeing the Yerushalmi
account as indirectly relating R. Yoh.anan’s perspective on his conflicts with the
patriarch of his day, R. Judah Nesiah.28 This view sees the narrative world of
Yavneh as merely a thinly disguised adaption of the real world of its creators.
There are certainly aspects of the story’s depiction of R. Gamliel that recall
the later patriarchate. Notably, R. Gamliel is portrayed as an aristocratic patron of
the rabbis who is ignorant of, and perhaps indifferent to, the true extent of the eco-
nomic distress of some of his dependents. Shapira also notes that the phrase
nashkim le-pith.o, “go up to [R. Gamliel’s] door,” apparently refers to the
Roman practice of salutatio, a formal visit expressing fealty to the emperor or
one’s patron, which was practiced in the court of the patriarch in the third
century.29 These elements portray R. Gamliel as part of the Roman aristocracy,
something not attested in early sources regarding R. Gamliel, but an accurate
depiction of Rabbi and his successors.30 Additionally, as we have already
noted, the story assumes the existence of a permanent academy under
R. Gamliel, which was also apparently true only of R. Judah and his descendants.
There can be little doubt that members of the original audience of the Yerushalmi’s
story would have made the link between the office and figure of R. Gamliel and
that of the patriarch of their own day, and would have understood the story as in
some way commenting on their contemporary situation.
There are also very significant disjunctures between the Yerushalmi’s
Yavneh and the world of the Palestinian Amoraim. The term “patriarch” never
appears in either version of the story. Indeed, R. Gamliel and R. Eleazar
b. Azariah are not described as possessing any broader political powers over the
Jews of the Land of Israel as a whole. In the story, their authority is purely halakhic
and does not seem to extend beyond the circle of their fellow rabbis. They are both
presumed to be outstanding scholars, even if they ultimately owe their positions to
their lineage. This contrasts sharply with what we know of the patriarchs of the
amoraic period, who were political leaders of the entire Jewish community but

27. Steinmetz, “Must the Patriarch,” 187.

28. Shapira, “Deposition of R. Gamliel,” 19–22.
29. Ibid., 18.
30. Sacha Stern, “Rabbi and the Origins of the Patriarchate,” Journal of Jewish Studies 54
(2003): 193–215.

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not outstanding scholars.31 In this respect, the image of R. Gamliel that emerges
from the story is far more similar to the position of the historical R. Gamliel, as
portrayed by contemporary historians, than it is to that of the later patriarchate.
In the current view, R. Gamliel was merely the leader of the nascent rabbinic
movement, not a figure of political significance on the wider scene of Palestinian
Jewry.32 It was Rabbi who first bore the title of patriarch and served as the political
and spiritual leader of the Jews of the Land of Israel.33

B ETWEEN N ARRATIVE W ORLDS AND O THER P OSSIBLE W ORLDS

The Yavneh of the Yerushalmi’s account thus stands in a complex and
ambiguous relationship with both the world that it purports to represent and the
world in which it was formed and first recounted. In order to properly understand
this text as a historical and cultural artifact we will need a new paradigm for study-
ing the relationships between stories and “reality”—narrative worlds.
Thus far we have treated narrative worlds as autonomous literary phenom-
ena. Theorists of narrative worlds indeed frequently emphasize the gap between
fully constructed narrative worlds and the “real world” of the creators and consum-
ers of a given story. Notably, Richard Gerrig has studied the experience of readers
of stories being “transported” from their own environments into the alternative
reality of the story, both in fiction and nonfiction stories.34 Yet narrative worlds
are never created ex nihilo. They are inevitably constructed by authors and
reconstructed by readers by cannibalizing elements of other “possible worlds”
to which they have access through their personal experience and their cultural
and intellectual environment. Here “possible world” refers to any integrated
cognitive-imaginative construct through which an individual or culture conceptu-
alizes a possible physical environment.
The most important possible world on which creators of a narrative world
draw is, adapting a term coined by J. R. R. Tolkien, the author’s or reader’s
“primary world.”35 A person’s primary world is the one she perceives as the
“real” world in which she directly experiences her day-to-day life. From an onto-
logical perspective, primary worlds have privileged status vis-à-vis other possible
worlds because they are constructed from direct sensory data acquired by individ-
uals about the material environment in which they live. Yet primary worlds remain

31. On the patriarchate in the third and fourth centuries, see Stern, ibid.
32. For a survey of the emerging scholarly consensus on this issue, see Catherine Heszer, The
Social Structure of the Rabbinic Movement in Roman Palestine (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997). See
also Sacha Stern, “Rabbi and the Origins of the Patriarchate.”
33. Stern, following Jacobs, goes so far as to argue that Rabbi was not even of the Gamliel line,
severing any direct connection between the religious leadership of R. Gamliel II and his son Shimon
and the patriarchate established by Rabbi. M. Jacobs, Die Institution des jüdischen Patriarchen:
Eine quellen- und traditionskritische Studie zur Geschichte der Juden in der Späntantike (Tübingen:
Mohr Siebeck, 1995).
34. Richard J. Gerrig, Experiencing Narrative Worlds: On the Psychological Activities of
Reading (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), 2–17.
35. J. R. R. Tolkien, “On Fairy Stories,” in Tree and Leaf (London: Allen and Unwin, 1964), 37.

299
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subjective psychological constructs. Each of us makes sense of the world around

us based on our beliefs and ideas, conditioned by our individual experiences and
sociocultural backgrounds.36 Primary worlds are particularly important to the con-
struction of narrative worlds because they are always the most extensively devel-
oped and detailed world to which a person has access. A person’s primary world is
their default world to which they instinctively first reach when they need to fill in
the gaps of the narrative world of the story.37
Other important categories of possible worlds on which authors and readers
draw in constructing narrative worlds include “contiguous worlds,” worlds that
individuals perceive as being within the same physical universe as their own,
but removed from their direct experience, temporally or geographically. These
are worlds that exist in the past or in faraway places. Like primary worlds,
these worlds have “nonfictional” statuses in the minds of those who create or rec-
reate them. Their raw material, however, is not sensory experience, but texts and
other modes of representation.
Another important set of possible worlds belong to the class of “ideological
worlds.” These are conceptualizations of how the world should, or should not,
work. For example, many stories occur in worlds in which good inevitably tri-
umphs over evil, even though in the primary world of the author this is not the
case. The most obvious examples of narrative worlds rooted in a particular ideo-
logical world are utopian narratives, which present worlds that are instantiations of
a theory about what an ideal community or world should look like. Utopian nar-
rative worlds function in an exemplary manner exactly as the theories behind them
predict. Ideological worlds do not necessarily reflect only our rational or philo-
sophical belief systems; they also draw on our emotional lives, reflecting our irra-
tional desires and fears.38
Finally, in constructing narrative worlds authors sometimes draw on the nar-
rative world of a preexisting story or stories. Similarly, broader literary genres
often collectively construct narrative worlds, constituting “literary worlds,”
which later authors and readers draw on in the process of writing and reading
new works.
To create narrative worlds, authors and readers draw on aspects of a set of
possible worlds of the types here described. Narrative worlds are inevitably inter-
connected with the historical, cultural, intellectual, and emotional worlds of their
creators. But once created, narrative worlds cannot be so easily reverse engineered
into their constituent parts. Each narrative world is a new creation, which synthe-
sizes components of other worlds together with new material into an original unity.
Narrative worlds tend to blur the distinctions between the possible worlds on
which they draw.

36. Jerome Bruner, “The Narrative Construction of Reality,” Critical Inquiry 18, no. 1 (Autumn
1991): 1–21.
37. This is what Marie-Laure Ryan calls “the principle of minimal departure.” Marie-Laure
Ryan, “Fiction, Non-Factual and the Principle of Minimal Departure,” Poetics 9 (1980): 406.
38. Tolkien, “On Fairy Stories,” 38.

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T HE Y ERUSHALMI A CCOUNT AND I TS P OSSIBLE W ORLDS

The Yerushalmi’s Yavneh mixes together aspects of its authors’ and original
audience’s primary world with those of the contiguous world of the historical
Yavneh as it was understood in amoraic times. R. Gamliel and R. Eleazar ben
Azariah are generally portrayed as halakhic authorities who only rule over the
other rabbis. This comports with current understandings of the Yavneh era’s his-
torical reality. At the same time, the story also gives R. Gamliel some of the trap-
pings of the aristocratic patriarchs of the amoraic period. The Yavneh of the
Yerushalmi thus blurs the distinctions between these worlds, creating a new
reality whose exact relationship with either the historical Yavneh or the world
of the Palestinian Amoraim is difficult to discern.
Elements of the ideological worlds of its creators are also evident in the
Yerushalmi’s Yavneh. It reflects not only historical realties of various periods,
but also various ideals about what the beit midrash and rabbinic society in
general should look like. As we have seen, the Yerushalmi’s beit midrash reflects
the culmination of a gradual development in the sources in which Yavneh trans-
forms from a site of an informal and/or occasional meeting of rabbis to a more
established institution. This parallels changes in the real world of the rabbis,
which historians believe underwent a process of increasing institutionalization
over the course of the first four centuries CE as the rabbis became increasingly
urbanized and influential among the wider population.39 But the Yerushalmi’s
Yavneh is significantly more centralized, institutionalized, and insulated from
the wider world than any actual beit midrash the Palestinian Amoraim would
have known. Though we know very little about the workings of amoraic acade-
mies in Palestine, the evidence indicates that they were generally local affairs,
often made up of nothing more than study circles gathered around an individual
rabbi, and did not have buildings of their own. Almost certainly, there was no
single centralized beit midrash that had room for thousands of students and encom-
passed the entire rabbinic establishment in a structured total institution.40 The
story portrays a utopian beit midrash that is an insular and unified community
united in a single physical and institutional structure. From our vantage point, it
is difficult to determine where the Yerushalmi’s depiction of the real beit
midrash as they experienced it ends and where the portrayal of an ideal beit
midrash begins.
We can also trace the impact of ideological worlds on the Yerusahlmi’s
depiction of the aristocratic power structure in Yavneh. To be sure, the patriarchate
was an aristocratic institution passed from father to son and rooted in the patri-
arch’s claims of descent from an illustrious line of leaders. Similarly, aristocratic
priestly families apparently remained politically and economically powerful in the

39. Hayim Lapin, “The Rabbinic Movement in Israel,” in The Cambridge History of Judaism,
vol. 4, ed. Steven Katz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 218–25.
40. Lee I. Levine, The Rabbinic Class of Roman Palestine in Late Antiquity (Jerusalem: Yad
Ben-Zvi, 1989), 76–77; Catherine Heszer, Social Structure, 195–214.

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Land of Israel into the amoraic period.41 These realities are to some degree
reflected in the figures of R. Gamliel and R. Eleazar b. Azariah in our story.
Ultimately, though, the story focuses on power relationships within the closed
world of rabbinic study and legal deliberation and not on the sociopolitical
structure of Palestinian Jewry as a whole. Here too, historians going back to
Gedalyah Alon have argued that in Palestine, rabbinic positions were at least in
some cases passed on from father to son and that coming from an established
rabbinic family advanced one’s position in rabbinic society.42 We do not
know the exact extent of the influence that these aristocratic tendencies
played in determining the social and political hierarchy among the rabbis. It is
clear, however, that in historical Roman Palestine aristocratic structures did
not exert the same decisive influence on who rose to power among the rabbis
as they do in the world of the Yerushalmi’s story. To give but one prominent
example, R. Yoh.anan attained a preeminent position in rabbinic society
despite his apparently humble lineage.43
The dominance of hereditary factors in the authority structure of the Yerush-
almi’s Yavneh cannot, therefore, be seen as merely reflecting the primary world of
the story’s authors and original audience. Rather, it seems that the Yerushalmi’s
Yavneh also draws on contemporary ideological worlds that portray the appropri-
ate place that hereditary factors should play in an ideal world. In addition to pro-
viding evidence for the existence of aristocratic practices among the Palestinian
rabbis, Alon and subsequent scholars have also marshaled significant evidence
for the existence of a long-standing debate between various Palestinian rabbis
about whether or not aristocratic practices and values have a place in an ideal rab-
binic world. Some rabbis thought that Torah should be the domain of a hereditary
elite, while others advocated a meritocratic system that values ability and achieve-
ment, but not birth. Alon cites a passage from Avot de-Rabbi Natan that records a
dispute between the houses of Hillel and Shammai regarding the credentials that
should be required of students of Torah. Shammai argues that only students with
proper lineage should be taught Torah, whereas Hillel argues that all should be
taught in order to attract and cultivate the best possible students as the next gen-
eration of sages.44 Similarly, in a series of studies, Moshe Beer analyzes the mid-
rashic discussions about the sons of Moses, Eli, and Samuel, all of whom failed to
follow in their fathers’ footsteps. Beer argues that these discussions reflect a debate
in Palestinian sources between advocates and critics of aristocratic practices in

41. Kimelman, “Conflict.” Several recent scholars have argued for the rise of priestly leadership
in the era immediately following the completion of the Yerushalmi and the end of the patriarchate. See
for example Oded Irshai, “Confronting a Christian Empire: Jewish Culture in the World of Byzantium,”
in Cultures of the Jews: A New History, ed. David Biale (New York: Schocken, 2002), 189–204.
42. Gedalyah Alon, “Sons of the Sages” [in Hebrew], in Meh.karim be-toldot Yisra’el, vol. 2 (Tel
Aviv: Ha-kibbutz Ha-me’uh.ad, 1970), 58–73; See also Isaiah Gafni, “Shevet u-mehokek” and Heszer,
Social Structure, 257–67.
43. Kohelet Rabbah 9:10 and Heszer, Social Structure, 258.
44. Alon, “Sons of the Sages,” 61; Avot de-Rabbi Natan, B:4 (ed. Schechter, pp. 14–15).

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rabbinic circles.45 Isaiah Gafni has similarly noted the range of positions reflected
in Palestinian sources regarding the question of whether rabbinic society should be
meritocratic or aristocratic.46 These sources demonstrate the existence of two com-
peting ideological worlds among the rabbis, with opposing visions of an ideal rab-
binic society.
In constructing their narrative world, the creators of the Yerushalmi story
made use of both of these ideological worlds. On the one hand, the dominant
place that figures of Davidic and priestly descent play in the political hierarchy
of the Yerushalmi’s Yavneh reflects the ideal world of those who believed that rab-
binic authority should be hereditary. On the other hand, the Yerushalmi’s Yavneh
is hardly a utopia. The story highlights dysfunctional elements of the aristocratic
system by depicting R. Akiva’s marginalization due to his lack of lineage and
R. Gamliel’s detachment from the harsh economic realities faced by other
rabbis. This critique reflects an opposing world view that posited that an ideal rab-
binic society would be a meritocracy or at least have a significant meritocratic
element.
Previous scholars of rabbinic narrative have certainly been aware that these
stories present narrative worlds that integrate elements of existing ideological
worlds. Thus, Chaim Shapira suggests that the Yerushamli’s story is more than
just a reflection of amoraic rabbinic society, concluding that the story is ultimately
propatriarchal, expressing recognition of the patriarch’s leadership. He argues that
“on the one hand, the story presents a position which sees the sages as a central
factor, whose purpose is to balance the power of the Patriarch and which can
even use its power to remove him from office. On the other hand, the story
clearly expresses the recognition that there can be no replacement for the
dynasty of R. Gamliel and that it is necessary to recognize the authority of the
Patriarchs even when their behavior departs from accepted norms.”47 Shapira
sees the Yavneh of the Yerushalmi as consisting of a combination of the
authors’ own primary world, which he identifies as the patriarchal court in the
third century CE, and an ideological world whose ideal is a balance of power
between the patriarch and the leading rabbis of the time, a world he identifies
with the position of R. Yoh.anan.48 Shapira thus ignores the significant differences
between the rabbinic position of the head of the beit midrash and the largely
secular role of the patriarch of the third century. If this story were a simple
roman à clef about the patriarch and his authority, it could certainly have portrayed
R. Gamliel’s role in a more fitting manner. Shapira’s evaluation of the underlying
message of the story similarly ignores the story’s focus on the privileges of both

45. Moshe Beer, “The Sons of Samuel in Rabbinic Legend,” “The Hereditary Principle in
Jewish Leadership,” and “The Sons of Eli in Rabbinic Legend” [in Hebrew], in H.akhme ha-mishnah
ve-ha-talmud: Hagutam, po‘alam u-manhigutam (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2011), 362–
73, 373–81, 382–96.
46. Isaiah M. Gafni, “Rethinking Talmudic History: The Challenge of Literary and Redaction
Criticism,” Jewish History 25 (2011): 367.
47. Shapira, “Deposition of R. Gamliel,” 21.
48. Ibid., 22.

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the Davidic and priestly aristocracy. It is hardly obvious that this story was meant
to promote the authority of R. Yoh.anan or other leading rabbis who lacked pres-
tigious rabbinic pedigree. Nor is the Yavneh of the Yerushalmi just a veiled rep-
resentation of the patriarchal court and its affiliated rabbinic academy. This
story cannot fit neatly into an exact social and historical matrix. It presents an
autonomous world that interacts with and comments on various other possible
worlds only indirectly and ultimately inconclusively.

T HE B AVLI V ERSION AND I TS P OSSIBLE W ORLDS

As in the case of the Yerushalmi’s account, numerous scholars have under-
stood the Bavli’s story as reflecting and commenting on the academic milieu in
which it was produced. To be sure, the world of Yavneh as portrayed by the
Bavli is in many ways reminiscent of the image of the Babylonian academy as
described elsewhere in the Bavli. The Bavli frequently describes debate in the
beit midrash as a form of open combat in which the best scholars and the best argu-
ments ultimately prevail.49 Similarly, there is little reason to doubt that the Baby-
lonian academies had their share of power politics like those described in the story.
However, they were not nearly as freewheeling as the beit midrash of Yavneh of
the Bavli’s story.50 Indeed, as Geoffrey Herman writes, “the Babylonian yeshiva
was characterized by strict formality, ceremonialism, order, rigid hierarchy and
wealth.”51 The Babylonian rabbis valued pure lineage to an extreme degree,
even more so than the rabbis of the Land of Israel. Though lineage is presented
in the Bavli version of our story as merely one factor in choosing a leader,
valued only for its prophylactic advantages and not as an end in itself, in
reality, it seems that such status could play a decisive role in one’s rabbinic
career.52 It appears that the Babylonian rabbis gave particular weight to priestly
descent, especially with regard to the appointment of rashe yeshivah. As
Herman has demonstrated, the majority of the Babylonian rabbis identified in
Rav Sherira Gaon’s epistle as rashe yeshivah and whose lineage is mentioned
in the Bavli were related to the priesthood by birth or marriage.53 Herman has
also shown that the Bavli frequently uses royal imagery to describe the yeshivot

49. Rubenstein, Culture of the Babylonian Talmud, 54–56.

50. The question of the exact timing of the emergence of the Babylonian yeshivot as fully devel-
oped institutions is beyond the scope of this study. Similarly, it is not my intent to take a position on the
thorny question of the date of the final redaction of the Babylonian Talmud and the role of the “Stam-
maim” in this endeavor. For our purposes it sufficient to note that, one way or another, scholars agree
that the Bavli was redacted in the context of highly developed yeshivot similar to the institutions known
to us from geonic sources. For recent discussion of these questions see Jeffrey Rubenstein, “The Rise of
the Babylonian Rabbinic Academy: A Reexamination of the Talmudic Evidence,” JSIJ 1 (2002): 55–68;
Gafni, “Rethinking,” 355–75.
51. Herman, “Insurrection,” 381.
52. Rubenstein, “Rise of the Babylonian Rabbinic Academy,” 80–101. See also Geoffrey
Herman, “Ha-kohanim be-Bavel bi-tekufat ha-talmud” (MA thesis, Hebrew University, 1998).
53. Geoffrey Herman, “Priests and Amoraic Leadership in Sassanian Babylonia,” Proceedings
of the Twelfth World Congress of Jewish Studies, Division B, History of the Jewish People (Jerusalem:
World Union of Jewish Studies, 2000), 59*–68*.

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and their leaders.54 All of this suggests that, as in the case of the Yerushalmi, the
original audience of the Bavli’s account would have found the world of Yavneh at
once familiar and strange. While the audience would have recognized the
rough-and-tumble world of the beit midrash as portrayed in the story, the notion
that individuals rose to the top of rabbinic society almost entirely based on their
abilities and credentials would not have conformed with their experience. Like
amoraic Palestine, the Babylonian rabbinic world was governed by a combination
of aristocratic and meritocratic principles, though in a different balance.55
The Bavli’s Yavneh does not generally reflect these aristocratic aspects of
the primary world of its creators and their intended audience. To the extent that
these aristocratic forces are portrayed in the story in the person of R. Gamliel,
they appear as ultimately subservient to the meritocratic forces of the beit
midrash. The Yavneh of the Bavli’s story is rooted not only in the reality of the
Babylonian yeshivot but also in an idealized notion of a beit midrash fully
based on a radically meritocratic ethos, consumed in a constant state of internecine
war that selects for the best Torah scholars and the most capable leaders. This ideo-
logical position is reflected in the many sources in the Bavli that valorize the indi-
vidual sage who lives by his wits, his Torah knowledge, and his political savvy.56
Once again, it is exceedingly difficult to evaluate the exact relationship between
the narrative world of the Bavli’s story and the real and ideological worlds of
its creators. Indeed, the creators of the story themselves might not have had
such a clear distinction in their own minds between these two realms.
While the Yavneh of the story does resemble the ideal academy advocated
by some voices in the Bavli, it is hardly taken to be a utopia. The story in its final
form reflects clear elements of ambivalence towards such a world. Most notably, it
raises the possibility that R. Gamliel’s more elitist approach to admission to the
beit midrash was in fact favored by God himself, which suggests the influence
of an alternative ideological world in which violent meritocracy is not the ideal.
As in the Yerushalmi, the Bavli presents a particular vision of the ideal beit
midrash while depicting that vision as flawed. In doing so, the Bavli combines
two opposing ideological worlds into its narrative world.57
Yet, we do not find in the Bavli story the same tension between its creators’
primary world and their historical memory of the early tannaitic period that we
found in the Yerushalmi. The portrayal of the leader of the beit midrash as a pow-
erful individual who exerted significant influence on the rabbinic world but did not
hold political power over the wider Jewish community fits the Babylonian rosh
yeshivah. Nevertheless, the fact that the story is set in the distant past and stars
the renowned heroes of the formative age of rabbinic Judaism is hardly incidental.

54. Herman, “Insurrection,” 379–80.

55. Gafni, “Rethinking,” 367.
56. Rubenstein, Culture of the Babylonian Talmud, 54–56.
57. For a survey of the place of wealth and social status in rabbinic culture in Palestine and Bab-
ylonia throughout the rabbinic period, see Alyssa M. Gray, “The Formerly Wealthy Poor: From
Empathy to Ambivalence in Rabbinic Literature of Late Antiquity,” AJS Review 33, no. 1 (2009):
101–33.

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If nothing else, it emphasizes that Yavneh is a world distinct from the regular
milieu of the authors and their original audience, to which they must be trans-
ported in the process of experiencing the story.
In the case of the Bavli, there may be yet another class of possible worlds
that contributes to the construction of Yavneh. In a recent article, Geoffrey
Herman argues that the authors of the Bavli’s account of the deposition story
repeatedly allude to aspects of the Sasanian royal court, suggesting an equivalence
between the beit midrash and the royal court and between the head of the beit
midrash and the emperor. According to Herman, this lends a certain “imperial
atmosphere,” to the Bavli’s story. In particular, he draws a series of parallels
between the Bavli’s account of the deposition of R. Gamliel and the account
related in the late third-century Paikuli Inscription, which tells of a contemporary
succession struggle over the Sasanian throne. Herman argues that these parallels
link the Bavli’s story to a wider genre of Persian and general ancient Near
Eastern epic tales of intrigues within various royal courts.58 Translated into our
terms, according to Herman, in creating their Yavneh, the Bavli’s storytellers
drew from contemporary cultural and literary worlds that portrayed the social
and political environment of Persian court life. The Bavli’s portrayal of the
power politics of Yavneh thus cannot be described as a transparent representation
of the Babylonian rabbinic academies. Rather, it is a literary construct that draws
on a range of literary and cultural models and sources.
This account of the Bavli’s Yavneh bears some similarities to, as well as
crucial differences from, Daniel Boyarin’s understanding of this story. Boyarin
argues that the Bavli’s version of the deposition story represents a coded stam-
maitic portrayal of the emergence and triumph of their own academic institutions,
culture, and ideology. He sees the Yavneh of the entire Babylonian Yavneh cycle
as reflecting the world and views of the Stammaim, whom he credits with shaping
these stories in their final form. This Yavneh is a world in which “contention,
quarrel and the interpretation of texts,” reflect an “ideology of endless dispute
for its own sake, of a divinely justified polynoia,” and which would have been
understood by the original performers of these traditions as “the ideal situation
of ‘our’ Yavneh, the Yavneh that we inhabit, as it were, today—namely, the
‘today’ of the redactors.”59 Boyarin argues that while this Yavneh is in fact
only a “utopian beit midrash,”60 it would have been identified by its performers
with their own academies and their culture of dispute.
At the same time, Boyarin acknowledges that in the Bavli’s accounts of
Yavneh, “conflict [is] a malignant presence and its resolution is the violent exer-
cise of power.”61 Boyarin sees these elements of the stories as reflecting another
possible world, which he calls the “bad old days.” This world, which Boyarin
identifies with earlier Palestinian rabbinic culture, stands in contrast to the

58. Herman, “Insurrection,” 395–407.

59. Boyarin, “Yavneh-Cycle,” 247, 253.
60. Ibid., 241.
61. Ibid., 42, quoting David Stern, Midrash and Theory: Ancient Jewish Exegesis and
Contemporary Literary Studies (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1996), 37.

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endless debate and pluralism of Babylonian culture. It is marked by a search for

absolute truth and an effort to create a clear dividing line between heresy and
orthodoxy. Boyarin understands the Bavli’s version of our story as portraying
the transformation of Yavneh from “the bad old days” into a utopian beit
midrash in accord with Babylonian norms and values. He sees this narrative as
a displaced account of an actual historical revolution that he attributes to the
work of the Stammaim in Babylonia at the end of the rabbinic era. For Boyarin,
in this story, “the Talmud makes its values entirely transparent.… The new
regime of open access to Torah is … firmly and definitively approbated by the
authoritative voice of the Talmudic narrator, matching up well with the literary
practices of the talmudic and midrashic redactors as well.”62
Underlying Boyarin’s reading is his assumption that he can pull apart the
different elements of the story’s narrative world and identify them with particular
ideological and historical worlds. He uses these identifications to map the conflicts
and development of the plot onto particular historical events. Yet, as we have seen,
these elements of the story’s world cannot be so simply disentangled. The open
discourse and debate of Yavneh that Boyarin associates with the authors’ ideal
beit midrash is in fact inexorably intertwined with power politics that he associates
with the “bad old days.” The story presents the world of the beit midrash “warts
and all,” showing both the great potential of its culture of open debate as well as
the ugly side of its at-times brutal politics that results from its relative lack of hier-
archy. As we have seen, this world is hardly a transparent portrayal of the reality or
ideals of the Babylonian academies. Furthermore, to the extent that R. Gamliel
does represent a perspective that advocates elitism and authoritarianism, this
could just as well be understood as reflecting the “imperial” reality and ideology
of contemporary Babylonian rashe yeshivah rather than the circumstances of the
distant world of earlier Palestinian Judaism. While there can be no doubt that the
Bavli’s story directly engages its authors’ own cultural and ideological reality, we
cannot reverse engineer the story in order to establish the exact contours of this
relationship. Furthermore, the story does not appear to be taking an unequivocal
stand on any of the issues of its day. It rather seems to be an effort to dramatically
portray and engage these issues without presenting a clear-cut agenda.

N ARRATIVE W ORLDS AS C ULTURAL A GENTS

If we cannot read these stories as containing clear social commentary, how
then are we best to understand the way in which they functioned within their initial
social and ideological environments? The experience of journeying back and forth
between an individual’s primary world and a narrative world involves a blurring of
boundaries between the reader’s experience of the real and the ideal, the past and
the present, and the literary and the prosaic.63 Upon returning from the narrative
world, readers potentially carry over this experience into their interactions with
other possible worlds, most notably their primary and ideological worlds, bringing

62. Boyarin, “Yavneh-Cycle,” 260.

63. Gerrig, Experiencing Narrative Worlds, 16–17, 196–241.

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Moshe Simon-Shoshan

them to new understandings and opinions about their material, social, and ideolog-
ical environments. Thus, the experience of reading or hearing the deposition
stories would have indirectly helped to shape their audiences’ perceptions of
their primary worlds of amoraic rabbinic culture and their beliefs about how rab-
binic society should ideally function.
The Palestinian and the Babylonian versions of Yavneh each fuse elements
of postdestruction early rabbinic society with the social and political realities of
later rabbinic academies to form a single integrated narrative world. The experi-
ence of being transported into this world would have instilled in its performers
an organic sense of connection between their own circles and their endeavors
and those of the first generations of rabbis. Each time these stories, and others
like them, were performed, they would have reinforced the sense among the
later rabbis that they are the authentic inheritors of the small group of sages
who survived the destruction and set out to reconstruct Judaism in Yavneh and
throughout the Land of Israel. The story similarly would have served to legitimate
the regnant social and political structures and ideologies in late antique rabbinic
societies by creating the impression that these arrangements go back to the
times of the earliest rabbis.
We might see the tradition of the deposition of R. Gamliel as functioning as
what I have elsewhere called an “authoritative discourse,” a narrative structure that
seeks to consolidate the collective identity and legitimacy of the individual rab-
binic communities and their social and ideological status quo. At the same time,
the experience of the Yavneh stories could also have helped to generate a “dis-
course of authority,” which stimulates its participants to interrogate and potentially
reevaluate those same social and ideological structures.64 Narrative worlds are
neither stable nor complete entities. They are inherently fragmentary and
dynamic systems that must be reconstructed each time a performer encounters
the text. By isolating certain aspects of their real and ideological worlds and recon-
structing them in a new context, insulated from the immediate pressure of their
day-to-day environments, narrative worlds give performers the opportunity to
reexamine their assumptions and opinions in a different light.
The narrative world of Yavneh would have provided an experimental arena
in which the potential implications of the various ideologies and values present in
their societies could be played out. By shifting the action to the semilegendary
world of Yavneh and isolating particular ideological and social structures, these
stories would have made it possible to discuss sensitive and even potentially
explosive issues in a more controlled and indirect manner. In the case of the Yer-
ushalmi, the experience of its narrative world would have stimulated its readers to
consider the pros and cons of the aristocratic theories and practices of their society
in a way that did not directly attack those who were deeply invested in the aristo-
cratic power structure.65 The Bavli’s story would have served a similar function

64. Simon-Shoshan, Stories of the Law, 227–31.

65. On the potential dangers of publicly criticizing the patriarch for his abuse of power, espe-
cially vis-à-vis the priesthood, see the story of Joseph of Maon, Y. Sanhedrin 2:6 (13b).

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with regard to its culture’s meritocratic ideas and structures. These stories do not
take an unequivocal stand on these matters and cannot predetermine how they will
impact the views of any given reader. What they can do is help their tellers and
audiences reevaluate ideas and situations that they may have taken for granted.
*****
Focusing on the question of “narrative worlds” in the study of rabbinic nar-
ratives in general, and the Yavneh cycle in particular, helped us understand how
perceptions of Yavneh changed through the course of the rabbinic period and pro-
vided a framework for analyzing the social and political structures and values por-
trayed in each version of the story. The analysis showed that an understanding of
the complex and inherently ambiguous relationship between the world of the story
and the various possible worlds on which the authors drew in creating that world
has important implications for the use of this story and others like it as historical
sources. Talmudic stories cannot so easily be mined for information about and
insight into the world of the Amoraim and Stammaim that produced them.
While we can often identify parallels between the world of the story and
various aspects of the primary and ideological worlds of its creators, it is generally
difficult if not impossible to pinpoint the exact nature of this relationship. Finally,
the tension between a narrative world’s autonomous nature and its inherent
interdependence with other possible worlds can help us to think about the
dynamic cultural role that talmudic stories played in the societies that created
and transmitted them.

Moshe Simon-Shoshan
Bar-Ilan University

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 APPENDIX: SYNOPSIS AND TRANSLATION OF THE TWO VERSIONS OF THE STORY OF THE DEPOSITION OF R. GAMLIEL 66

Moshe Simon-Shoshan
Bavli Berakhot 27b–28a Yerushalmi Berakhot 4:1
It happened that a certain student came before R. Joshua: It happened that a certain student came and asked R. Joshua:
He said to him:
“Is the Evening Prayer optional or compulsory?” “What is [the law concerning] the Evening Prayer?”
He said to him: “Optional.” He said to him: “Optional.”
He came before R. Gamliel. He came and asked R. Gamliel:
He said to him:
“Is the Evening Prayer optional or compulsory?” “What is [the law concerning] the Evening Prayer?”
He said to him: “Compulsory.” He said to him: “Compulsory.”
He said to him: “But R. Joshua told me optional!” He said to him: “But R. Joshua told me optional!”
He said to him: “Wait until the shield bearers enter the beit midrash.” He said to him: “Tomorrow, when I enter the bet ha-va‘ad, stand
and ask this law.”
When the shield bearers entered, the questioner stood and asked: On the next day, that student stood and asked R. Gamliel:
“Is the Evening Prayer optional or compulsory?” “What is [the law concerning] the Evening Prayer?”
310

R. Gamliel said to him: “Compulsory.” He said to him: “Compulsory.”

R. Gamliel said to the sages:
“Is there anyone who disagrees concerning this matter?”
R. Joshua said to him: “No.”
He said to him: He said to him:
“But they told me optional in your name!” “But R. Joshua told me optional!”
R. Gamliel said to R. Joshua:
“Is it you who says optional?” He said to him: “No.”
He said to him: “Joshua, stand on your feet, and let them testify against you.” He said to him: “Stand on your feet, and let them testify against
you.”
R. Joshua stood on his feet and said: “If I were alive and he dead—the living
can contradict the dead. But now that I am alive and he is alive—how can
the living contradict the living?”
R. Gamliel was sitting and teaching, and R. Joshua was standing on his feet, R. Gamliel was sitting and teaching, and R. Joshua was standing on
until all the people shouted and said to H.uzpit the turgeman: “Stop,” and he his feet, until all the people shouted and said to R. H.uzpit the
stopped. turgeman: “Dismiss the people.”
66. Translations of the Bavli and Yerushalmi passages adapted from Steinmetz, “Must the Patriarch,” 165–70.
 They said to R. Zenon the h.azzan: “Say ‘Begin’”; and he said:
“Begin.” [? This passage is obscure.] And all the people stood on
their feet and said to him: “For upon whom has your evil not
come always?” [Nahum 3:19]
They then said: “How long is he [R. Gamliel] to go on insulting him [R.
Joshua]? On New Year last year he insulted him; he insulted him in the
matter of the firstborn in the affair of R. Z.adok; now he insults him again!
Come, let us depose him!”
“Whom shall we appoint? Shall we appoint R. Joshua?—he is involved in the They went and appointed R. Eleazar b. Azariah to the academy. He
matter. Shall we appoint R. Akiva? —he might be punished, because he has was sixteen years old, and his whole head became full of gray
no ancestral merit. Rather, we shall appoint R. Eleazar b. Azariah, for he is hair.
wise, and he is rich, and he is tenth [in descent] from Ezra. He is wise—if And R. Akiva was sitting and feeling troubled, and he said: “It is not
one asks him, he can answer him. And he is rich—if he has to go to the that he is a more learned man than I, but he is more a descendant
court of the Caesar to pay honor, he too can go pay honor. And he is tenth of great people than I. Happy is the man whose forefathers have
[generation] from Ezra—he has ancestral merit, and he cannot be gained privilege for him! Happy is the man who has a peg on
311

punished.” which to hang!” And what was R. Eleazar b. Azariah’s peg? That
he was the tenth generation from Ezra.
They went and said to him: “Is it agreeable to the master to become head of the
academy?” He said to them: “I will go and consult my family.” He went and
consulted his wife. She said to him: “Perhaps they will remove you.” He
said to her: “Let a man use a valuable cup for one day, and let it be broken
on the next.” She said to him: “You have no white hair.” That day he was
eighteen years old. A miracle occurred to him, and eighteen rows of his hair

Creators of Worlds
turned white. And that is why R. Eleazar b. Azariah said: “Behold, I am as if
seventy years old—and not seventy years old.”
It was taught: That day they removed the doorkeeper, and permission was
given to the students to enter. For R. Gamliel used to announce, saying:
“Any student whose inside is not like his outside shall not enter the beit
midrash.”
Continued
 APPENDIX (contd.)

Bavli Berakhot 27b–28a
That day many benches were added. R. Yoh.anan said: “Abba Yosef and the
rabbis dispute this; one said 400 benches, and one said 700 benches.”
R. Gamliel’s mind was disturbed. He said: “Perhaps, God forbid, I have withheld
Torah from Israel.” He was shown in a dream white casks filled with ashes.
But it was not so; that was shown to him to settle his mind. It was taught:
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Moshe Simon-Shoshan
Yerushalmi Berakhot 4:1
And how many benches were there? R. Jacob b. Sisi said: “There
were eighty benches of scholars there, excluding those standing
behind the fence.” R. Yose b. Abun said: “There were 300 there,
excluding those standing behind the fence.”
As we learn there: On the day on which R. Eleazar ben Azariah was
seated in the yeshiva. We learn there: This midrash R. Eleazar b.
Azariah taught before the sages in the vineyard at Yavneh. And
was there a vineyard there? Rather, these are the scholars who
used to be arranged in rows, like a vineyard.

Eduyot was studied on that day—and wherever we say on that day, it was on
that day and there was no law which had been left hanging in the beit midrash
which they did not explicate. And even R. Gamliel did not withhold himself
from the beit midrash even for a moment, as we learn: On that day, Judah the
Ammonite proselyte came before them in the beit midrash. He said to them:
“Am I permitted to enter the congregation?” R. Gamliel said to him: “You are
forbidden to enter the congregation.” R. Joshua said to him: “You are per-
mitted to enter the congregation.” R. Gamliel said to him: “But it has already
been said: ‘An Ammonite or a Moabite shall not enter the congregation of the
Lord’ [Deut 23:4].” R. Joshua said to him: “And are Ammon and Moab still
dwelling in their places? Sennacherib, king of Assyria, already has gone up
and mixed up all of the nations, as it is said: ‘And I have removed the
boundaries of peoples and have plundered their treasures, and I have brought
down their inhabitants as a mighty one’ [Isa 10:13]—and anything that is
separated, is separated from the majority.” R. Gamliel said to him: “But it
 already has been said: ‘And afterward I shall return the captivity of the
children of Ammon, says the Lord’ [Jer 49:6]—and they already have
returned.” R. Joshua said to him: “But it already has been said: ‘And I shall
return the captivity of my people Israel’ [Amos 9:14]—and they have not
yet returned.” Immediately, they permitted him to enter the congregation.
R. Gamliel said: “Since it is thus, I will go and appease R. Joshua.” When he Immediately, R. Gamliel went to each one to appease him in his
came to his house, he saw that the walls of his house were blackened. He house. He went to R. Joshua. He found him sitting and making
said to him: “From the walls of your house it is apparent that you are a needles. He said to him: “Are these how you make a living?”
charcoal burner.”
He said to him: “Woe to the generation of which you are the leader, for you do He said to him: “And until now you need to know!”
not know of the troubles of scholars, how they support themselves and how Woe to the generation of which you are the leader!”
they sustain themselves.”
He said to him: “I submit to you; forgive me.” He paid no attention to him. He said to him: “I submit to you.”
“Do it for the honor of my father.” He was appeased. They said: “Who will
go and tell the rabbis?”
313

R. Joshua sent to the beit midrash: “Let him who wears the garment wear the
garment; but shall he who does not wear the garment say to him who wears
the garment: ‘Take off your garment, and I shall wear it’?” R. Akiva said to
the rabbis: “Bolt the doors, so that the servants of R. Gamliel do not come
and trouble the rabbis.” R. Joshua said: “It is better that I get up and go to
them.” He came and knocked on the gate. He said to him: “Let the sprinkler
son of a sprinkler sprinkle; but shall he who is neither a sprinkler nor the son
of a sprinkler say to the sprinkler son of a sprinkler: ‘Your water is cave
And they sent to R. Eleazar b. Azariah a certain launderer, and some
say it was R. Akiva.
He said to him: “Let the sprinkler son of a sprinkler sprinkle; but
shall he who is neither a sprinkler nor the son of a sprinkler say to
the sprinkler son of a sprinkler: ‘your water is cave water, and
your ashes are from roasting’?”
He said to them: “Are you satisfied? I and you will rise early to the

Creators of Worlds
water, and your ashes are from roasting’?” R. Akiva said to him: “R. door of R. Gamliel.”
Joshua, have you been appeased? Have we done anything other than for
your honor? Tomorrow, I and you will rise early to his door.”
They said: “What shall we do? Shall we remove him? We learn that one Nevertheless, they did not depose him from his greatness; rather,
increases in sanctity but does not decrease. Shall one master teach one they appointed him ’av beit din.
Sabbath, and one master one Sabbath? That will lead to jealousy. Rather, let
R. Gamliel teach three [or: two] Sabbaths, and R. Eleazar b. Azariah one
Sabbath.” And this is what a master said: “Whose Sabbath was it? It was
R. Eleazar b. Azariah’s.”