Rav Nechemia bar Kohen Tzedek רב נחמיה בר כהן צדק
the last head of Pumbedita before Rav Sherira
Rav Nechemia, son of Rav Kohen Tzedek, headed Pumbedita from 4721 (961) to 4728 (968). His father had sat in the same seat a generation earlier.
His gaonate stands on a border. Before him the geonic age is known to us almost solely as a list of names and years; after him the seat is taken by Rav Sherira—who nineteen years later will write to the community of Kairouan and set out in that letter the whole chain from the Tannaim down to himself. Everything we know of Rav Nechemia's predecessors we know because his successor took up the pen.
Of Rav Nechemia himself the sources say little. His gaonate fell in the years when Pumbedita was already the chief academy of Babylonia: Sura was by then weakening, and the questions from the communities went more and more to Pumbedita. Two generations later, at the death of Rav Hai, the age would end altogether.
On the timeline
Places
Related
Sources
Rishonim
- Epistle of Rav Sherira Gaon — the place in the list of the academy's heads and the years of the gaonate
- Sefer ha-Kabbalah — the chain of the academies' heads as set out by Abraham ibn Daud
Basis: documents and evidence.