Yehuday Ga’on

According to Sherira Ga’on (ca. 906–1006), Yehuday ben Naḥman Ga’on trained in the academy of Pumbedita, at the time located on the Euphrates, in Iraq. He then served as the head of the rival academy of Sura, to the south, from 757 to 761. A staunch traditionalist who was purportedly blind, Yehuday was concerned with upholding the rulings of the Babylonian Talmud and the principles of his teachers. He wrote more than one hundred responsa, but scholars think that the traditional attribution of the legal code Decided Laws (Halakhot pesukot) to him is unlikely. In the late eighth century, Pirqoy ben Baboy claimed to be a student of a student of his and recounted some of Yehuday’s battles with Palestinian Jews.