ANCIENT JEW REVIEW

Actually, Simcha suggests, maybe all we have reflected in the Bavli is not a historical truth of kind kings versus mean magi but the effects of an imperial ideology which endeavored to get its Jewish subjects to think positively of the sovereigns and warily of the Zoroastrian clergy.

These two sets of patterns—rabbinic tensions with the non-rabbinic wealthy and their involvements with charity and the working poor—are arguably complementary. Not only should the rabbis prevail in the competition with the non-rabbinic wealthy for social capital because of their Torah study, interpretation, living, and teaching, they should prevail because they are benevolently mindful and even activist on behalf of their social inferiors (the working poor) and are willing and able to compel other Jews to be similarly mindful and also do charity in accordance with rabbinic visions of that cluster of practices.

The result is a radical revision of what we thought we knew about of Babylonian Jewish society, the place of the rabbis, and the nature of their textual tradition, as illuminated by comparison with other similarly-situated minority communities who were also navigating the realities of empire and being formed and transformed in the process. (I’ll return to this methodological point at the end.) But there’s more. The book also offers a radical revision of what we thought we knew about Sasanian rule.

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