During the first five centuries of our era, the chief rabbis of the academies in Eretz Israel and Mesopotamia provided the Jewish people with a legal system based on three elements: the Talmud, the rabbinical courts and academies, and the responsa, which are the rabbis’ answers to specific questions.

With the Talmud, the Jewish leadership created a set of norms, religious rulings, and legal precedents that enabled Jewish communities that were spread out in the Mediterranean and the Middle East, to share a written language and a common legal frame of reference, regardless of the political, religious, and economic environment in which each lived.

The academies also acted as rabbinical courts, offering advice on specific issues and helping to resolve legal disputes or litigation in economic, social, or religious matters. No matter where Jews lived, whether in Babylon in the sixth century, in Fustat (Egypt) in the eighth century, or in Cordoba in the eleventh century, rabbinical courts formed a judicial and arbitration body based on the Talmud as a single, binding code, but adapting their decisions to the economic contingencies and social environment of each place where Jews lived.

The process of applying Talmudic laws to new problems and particular circumstances was simplified by the mechanism of rabbinical responsa. In the academies of Sura and Pumbedita in Mesopotamia, scholars would discuss each problem using the Talmud as a paradigmatic guide, then issue a written ruling, which was sent to all Jewish communities in the Diaspora through the network of Jewish merchants. The typical structure of a responsum consisted first of presenting the ruling in question, then a concise explanation of why the ruling was reached, followed by quotations from the Talmud to support the verdict and often including arguments to refute any possible objections. The responsa service was not free: people who submitted a question had to pay for the answer. These payments served to support the academies and the scholars. The rulings of the rabbinical courts were so highly valued that contracts have even been found between Jews and non-Jews in which both agree to submit to the arbitration of a rabbi.

Having a common written alphabet, Hebrew, a common legal canon, the Talmud, a legal institution, the rabbinical courts, and a process for adapting the Talmud to the economic, social, and political circumstances of the place where they lived, the responsa, created a powerful binding mechanism that helped the development of Jewish communities scattered throughout the world but integrated into a large network. This was the Jewish self-government.

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: The Chosen Few by Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein.