(882-942). Outstanding scholar of the geonic period and communal leader. Born of humble origins in Upper Egypt, he migrated as a young man to Erets Israel, where he settled in Tiberias, then the center for Masorah studies. From there he moved to Babylonia, but not before he had engaged in a protracted controversy with the Palestinian gaon Aaron ben Meir. The immediate issue involved was the authority to regulate the Calendar, a prerogative that had long since passed from the Academies of Erets Israel to those of Babylonia but which Ben Meir sought to reclaim. The controversy ended after a number of years in a victory for Saadiah and the threat against the generally recognized Jewish calendar was averted. The larger issue was the supremacy of the Babylonian over the Palestinian sages.
Upon his arrival in Babylonia, Saadiah was granted the honorific title of Aluf (Prince), in recognition of his achievements in Jewish learning. Shortly after his appointment as Gaon of the Academy of Sura by the Exilarch, David ben Zakkai, Saadiah became embroiled with the latter in a bitter controversy. The exilarch put Saadiah under a ban and deposed him as gaon of Sura. Saadiah responded with a counter-ban of Ben Zakkai. For seven years the dispute that divided the leadership of Babylonian Jewry into two opposing camps dragged on before a settlement was reached.
These public frays, in Babylonia and Erets Israel, in no way affected either the number or variety of his scholarly works. However, most of his writings are known today by title nly, with scattered fragments preserved in the Cairo Genizah, or in quotations. They reflect originality and a high sense of logical, orderly arrangement rare in his time.
In the area of Hebrew language, Saadiah composed a Hebrew rhyming dictionary (Sefer ha-Agron); a list and explanation of words that appear only once in the Bible (hapax legomena); and a work on grammar. In recent times, considerable portions of his commentary on many books of the Bible (written in Arabic) have been recovered and published with Hebrew translation. His crowning achievement in Bible studies is his Arabic translation of the Bible, with a partial commentary. To this day, Yemenite Jews use this translation and it is printed alongside the Hebrew text together with Targum Onkelos in a volume called the Taj ("Crown of the Torah").
Saadiah's edition of the Prayer Book incorporated the pertinent laws and customs as well as a number of original prayers.
Saadiah's philosophical work, Sefer ha-Emunot ve-ha-De'ot ("The Book of Beliefs and Opinions"), inaugurated medieval Jewish philosophy. Strongly influenced by the Mutazilite school of Islamic philosophy, as well as by Aristotelianism, Platonism, and Stoicism, Saadiah offered a rational analysis and proof of the basic theological concepts of Judaism. Reason and revelation, he held, correspond and one cannot be used to refute the other. Throughout the book there is a strong polemical note directed at the Karaites, as well as dualists, Trinitarians, and Islam.
In the area of Jewish law, Saadiah did pioneering work in ten monographs on specific areas, written in Arabic. Only one of the monographs, the Book of Documents, a masterly model of logical arrangement, is extant.
Maimonides said of him: "If it were not for Saadiah, the Torah could well have disappeared from among the Jewish people."
