Rav Paltoi Gaon רב פלטוי גאון

Rav Paltoi bar Abaye was Gaon of Pumbedita about the years 4602–4618. His chief deed was not a book but a decision.

To the Geonim of Babylonia questions came from every end of the diaspora, and the answers went out as letters: so the unity of the law was kept, but so too was the dependence. When the communities of Spain asked that the Talmud be sent to them, Rav Paltoi sent not only a scroll of the text but a commentary with it—"the Talmud and its explanation", as Rabbi Abraham ibn Daud writes in the Sefer haKabbalah. It was a turning point: the West received into its hands not an answer to a question but the means of answering for itself.

A century and a half later that independence would grow into the academies of Kairouan and Spain, and a century after that into Rashi and the Tosafists, and the centre of learning would leave Babylonia for good. The Gaon who sent the book can hardly have meant that.

The years are taken from the Epistle of Rav Sherira Gaon—the letter of 4747 (987), the only source in which the age of the Savoraim is set out by name and year. There is no other testimony, and that should be kept in mind.