Book
Sifra ספרא
The halakhic midrash on Leviticus, "Torat Kohanim"—the book with which by ancient custom children began their studies.
"Why do children begin with Torat Kohanim? Let the pure come and occupy themselves with the pure." So the midrash explains the custom of beginning study not with Genesis but with the laws of offerings.
The Sifra belongs to the school of Rabbi Akiva and works through Leviticus verse by verse. The Talmud ascribes it to Rabbi Yehuda: "an anonymous Sifra is Rabbi Yehuda." It is full of inferences from the smallest particles of the text, and through it one sees what Akiva's reading of the Torah means: for it there is not one superfluous word.
On the timeline
3948 · 188 CERabbi Yehuda haNasi and the Writing of the Mishnah3978 · 218 CEThe End of the Tannaitic Era: Tosefta and Baraitot
Related
Sources
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Vayikra Rabbah 7:3 — «let the pure come and occupy themselves with the pure»
- Sanhedrin 86a — «an anonymous Sifra is Rabbi Yehuda»
- Sifra, Vayikra, opening — verse-by-verse exposition
Basis: documents and evidence.