Background
Abbaye was an orphan from the day of his birth in 280CE.
Abbaye was an orphan from the day of his birth in 280CE.
he was educated by his uncle, Rabbah bar Nahmani, and later by Joseph bar Hiyya, who served in turn as head of the Pumbedita academy. Both helped to develop Abbaye’s gift for logical analysis and his compre¬hensive knowledge of traditional sources. As a youth, he was obliged to finance his daytime study by working the land he owned at night; this gave him an understanding of the common people and sheds light on his belief that Torah study should be combined with productive labor.
Together with Rava, his childhood companion and fellow student, Abbaye was the leading teacher of the age in Babylonia. After Joseph bar Hiyya’s death, Abbaye succeeded him in Pumbedita while Rava opened a new academy at Mahoza. The debates of these two men over points of Jewish law derived from the Mishnah, receive a good deal of space in the Talmud, and became virtually synonymous with Talmudic argumentation.
Through private tutorials and public instruction, Abbaye exerted a wide influence; he was a great upholder of rabbinic authority and declared, that those whom he taught should serve as moral (not merely intellectual) examples. Yet he could also be down-to-earth, quoting familiar proverbs, giving advice about the cure for some ailment, and (when the rabbinic law seemed doubtful) telling his students to “go and see what ordinary folk have to say about the matter.”
Quotations:
• One should run to synagogue.
• Speak not one thing with your mouth and another with your heart.
• Your servant should be your equal. You should not eat white bread and he black bread; you should not drink old wine and he new wine; you should not sleep on a feather bed and he on straw.
• In prayer always associate yourself with the congregation and say “Our God, lead us...”
An exemplary performer of good deeds, Abbaye figured in many popular tales crediting him with the receipt of heavenly communications and immunity from demonic powers. It was Abbaye, who began the practice of observing a feast to mark the completed study of a Talmudic tractate, and it was he, who fostered the idea of thirty-six “hidden saints" gaining merit in every generation and thus preserving the world from destruction.