(Abba bar Joseph bar Ḥama; c.280-352 CE). Prominent Babylonian amora of the fourth generation. His teachers were Naḥman Ben Jacob (in Maḥoza), Joseph Ben ḥiyya (in Pumbedita), and Rav ḥisda (in Sura), whose widowed daughter he later married. When Abbayé, his great rival and one-time fellow student, became head of the Pumbedita Academy in 323 CE, Rava settled in his native Maḥoza and gained a formidable reputation through his teaching there. After the death of Abbayé (338 CE), Maḥoza absorbed Pumbedita's teaching staff and, from then until the end of Rava's life, served as the only academy in Babylonia. The debates between Rava and Abbayé constituted one of the foundations of the Babylonian Talmud. In all but six cases, the Halakhah was decided in Rava's favor. He had a brilliant analytical mind, excelling in the detection of analogies, and in his arguments relied on logic and reason where others invoked tradition.
Equally noted as an aggadist, Rava would address large public gatherings on Sabbath afternoons. Torah study was exalted as a supreme value in Rava's teachings. "How foolish people are!" he once observed. "They rise in the presence of a Torah scroll, but not for a great Torah scholar" (Mak. 22b). Ethical sensitivity moved Rava to declare that whoever puts someone to shame in public will be denied a share in the afterlife (BM 59a). When someone reported that, on pain of death, he had been ordered to kill another man, Rava told him: "Rather allow yourself to be killed than commit murder. Is your blood redder than that other man's? Perhaps his blood is redder than yours" (Pes. 25b).
The New Encyclopedia of Judaism. Copyright © 1989, 2002 by G.G. The Jerusalem Publishing House, Ltd. All rights reserved.
