Tag: Amoraim

  • Bavel

    Bavel

    Bavel – בבל (Babylonia) is what Jews called the region of present-day Iraq. In the Talmudic period it included Persia and was ruled in Sasanians. Later, in the period of the Geonim, by the Abbasid Muslim caliphate.

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  • Chazal

    Chazal

    חז”ל – “our Sages, of blessed memory,” the abbreviation for חכמנו זכרונם לברכה – Chakhmenu zikhronam li-verakhah, meaning the rabbis of the Mishnah and Talmud, the Tannaim and Amoraim, respectively. Variations are also used, such as רז”ל – Rabbotenu zichronam li-verakhah, “our Rabbis, of blessed memory.”

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  • Talmud

    Talmud

    Commonly refers to the Talmud Bavli, meaning the Mishnah (redacted Oral Law) with the Gemara (commentary) as redacted in Bavel (Babylon). It is also called by the acronym Shas, referring to the six orders (sedarim, sing. seder) into which the tractates (massekhtot, sing. massekhet) of the Mishnah and Gemara on it are divided. Today, there…

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  • Tannaitic

    Tannaitic

    Belonging to the era of the Tannaim (sing. Tanna – תנא), the rabbis who formulated and transmitted the Oral Law that became the Mishnah in the 1st to 3rd centuries CE. There are seven generations of Tannaim.

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