Rav (Abba Arikha) רב (אבא אריכא)
first Babylonian Amora, founder of the academy at Sura
His name was Abba, his nickname Arikha—"the tall one". In the Talmud he is simply "Rav", without a name, as "Rebbi" without a name means Yehuda HaNasi: the title of a man who begins an era.
Raised in Babylonia, he went up to the Land of Israel and studied with Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi while the Mishnah was still the living speech of its editor. Returning home he found Jewish Babylonia rich and populous but starved of learning. Around the year 3979 he founded the academy at Sura, which lasted eight hundred years.
Rav is remembered for more than law. Tradition credits him with the Rosh Hashanah prayers, including "Aleinu"; his is the saying that the commandments were given only to refine human beings, and the warning that a person will one day answer for every permitted pleasure he refused.
He also established the "kallah" months, when farmers and traders left their work to study. With Shmuel of Nehardea he forms the pair whose arguments open the Babylonian Talmud.
Chain of transmission
Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi → Rav (Abba Arikha) (together with Rabbi Yochanan, Shmuel of Nehardea) → Rav Huna
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
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Chullin 137b — Rav and his students at Sura
- Berachot 33a — the formula of blessing established by Rav
- Shabbat 156a — “Israel is not governed by a star” — his well-known statement
Rishonim
- the Epistle of Rav Sherira Gaon — the founding of the academy of Sura and the beginning of the age
Basis: tradition.