Ezra the Scribe עזרא הסופר
the scribe who restored Torah to the people after the exile
Ezra was a priest of Aharon's line and "a ready scribe". He came up from Babylon in 3413, a year after the Second Temple's dedication, with a royal charter and a group of returnees. The Talmud says plainly: "Ezra was worthy for the Torah to be given through him, had Moshe not preceded him."
He found a community that had forgotten the Torah and intermarried with its neighbours, and set about rebuilding. On the first day of the seventh month he read the Torah aloud in the square before the Water Gate from dawn to midday while the Levites explained the sense; the people wept, and he told them, "Do not grieve, for the day is holy to the Lord."
Ten ordinances are ascribed to him: public Torah reading on Mondays, Thursdays and Shabbat afternoon; courts sitting on market days. Under him the Torah was written in the square Assyrian script still used for scrolls.
With Nechemyah and the Great Assembly he settled the biblical canon and the order of prayers. Tradition identifies Ezra with the prophet Malachi.
Chain of transmission
Baruch ben Neriah → Ezra the Scribe (together with Nehemiah) → Simeon the Just
A link in Maimonides is a court, not a man, and more than one name may stand in a single link.
On the timeline
Places
Related
Sources
Tanakh
- Nechemiah 8–10 — the public reading of the Torah at the Water Gate
- the Book of Ezra — the ascent from Babylon and the restoration of the service
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Sanhedrin 21b–22a — “Ezra was worthy that the Torah be given through him”; the Ashurit script
- Bava Kamma 82a — the ten ordinances of Ezra
- Megillah 15a — Ezra is Malachi, according to one view
Basis: stated in the Tanakh.