Parents and Sages as Agents of Culture in the Babylonian Talmud

Abstract

This dissertation explores how the rabbis of the Babylonian Talmud (Bavli) portray parents as involved in cultural transmission. Earlier scholarship has claimed that the rabbis sought to replace parents and the home as the primary locus of education. Through source criticism and close literary analysis, however, I show the situation to be far more complex. The rabbis address parental cultural transmission using the phrases talmud torah and hinukh. They use the term talmud torah to describe the act of studying and teaching Torah—scripture and rabbinic law and lore, while hinukh is ritual initiation and instruction. The Bavli limits the content that parents are required to transmit to their children and instructs them to bring their children to a schoolteacher to study. The Bavli, however, expands the realm of hinukh, portraying it as an obligation of parents to teach their children how to perform Jewish ritual until they become the age of majority and enter into their own full obligation. The shifting of talmud torah outside the home therefore reframed rather than eliminated the parental role in cultural transmission. The Bavli addresses parental cultural transmission in less explicit ways as well. Moving beyond what the rabbis would have identified as cultural transmission, I select passages that portray dyadic encounters between parents and children. Attending to what parents transmit in these encounters expands our understanding of how the rabbis portray cultural transmission by addressing the parental role in transmitting an unwritten curriculum of rabbinic culture. One example of this unwritten curriculum is the value the sages placed on Torah study. In a story about Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai (Rashbi) and his son retreating to a cave, the Bavli transforms a pre-existing tale about Rashbi into a tale of a father who attempts to transmit to his son the value of unadulterated Torah study—a practice of Torah study uninterrupted by other pursuits. I look to a separate set of tales in Bavli Bava Metzia to explore the ways in which the son enacts and transforms the values his father has taught. This analysis unearths a rabbinic cognizance of the complexities inherent in the parental transmission of a worldview—in contrast to transmission of a set of content or a set of skills, transmission of a worldview is a much more subtle and uncertain process. This internal rabbinic reflection defies attempts at placing it within a narrative of the shift in the locus of authority from father to sage; the same tensions and complexities highlighted by looking at these stories in tandem could surface equally if the sage were the central transmitter of this cultural worldview. My dissertation thus complicates simple narratives suggesting that the Bavli portrays the sage as completely taking over the role of cultural transmission from the father. Finally, this dissertation brings together a variety of texts in which mothers transmit cultural knowledge and cultural objects to their sons and argues that the Bavli is more comfortable portraying knowledgeable women when these women use their knowledge in service of their maternal role. The most expansive example of this phenomenon is the mother of Abaye, whose teachings her son transmits two dozen times in the Bavli. Her presence and the presence of other mothers demonstrates that the walls between the home and the beit midrash were porous. The study of parents as agents of rabbinic culture thus expands our understanding of rabbinic culture and refines our knowledge of the parental role in education.