Rabbinic Study Sessions

In Roman Palestine, rabbinic study would mainly be conducted informally, through disciples’ observance of their masters’ daily life practices, walking with them on the road or in the marketplace, and sitting in front of them and discussing matters at home or outdoors. Occasionally, the Talmud refers to larger, more structured and formal sessions that were envisioned to have taken place in public settings. In this talmudic text, the seating is imagined to have been strictly hierarchical, with the disciples of the sages sitting in rows in front of their teachers, separated from other Jews who are standing behind a fence, even further separated from the sages and unable to participate in the discussions. The two tannaitic traditions at the end refer to a yeshiva and the vineyard in Yavneh and indicate that this passage is an editorial construction based on separate earlier traditions. The spatial arrangement seems to be modeled on Greek philosophical schools and on the Greco-Roman court, in which bystanders were separated from judges and advocates. The exaggerated size and hierarchical structure of the scenario was meant to emphasize the importance of the meeting within the public sphere.