רב גיזא

Rav Giza was among the Savoraim, the sages who carried the Torah of Bavel in the generations after the Amoraim and until the era of the Geonim. His name is preserved in Seder Tannaim v’Amoraim and in the Sefer HaKeritut of Rabbeinu Shimshon of Chinon, both of which bring the tradition “Rav Giza and Rav Simona — sof savara,” the close of the savoraic era. On the strength of that line their passing, around 4300/540, has been taken as the point where the era ends, though it is also reckoned as running well past that date.

Many identify Rav Giza with Rav Ina, who stood at the head of the yeshiva in Sura in the second generation of the Savoraim, as the counterpart of Rav Simona at the head of Pumbedita. On that identification he was a talmid of the last Ravina, and the Iggeret of Rav Sherira Gaon relates that he and Rav Simona added anonymous passages to the Talmud Bavli as part of the savoraic editing, which supplied explanations, fine readings and decisions in the halacha.

The Sura he was appointed to lead was no longer the Sura in which the Bavli had been edited. With the passing of the last Ravina its standing fell sharply, and the center of Bavel moved to Pumbedita under Rabbah Yosi; the Jews of Sura suffered hard persecution from the Zoroastrian priests, who had the cooperation of the Sasanian throne. After Rabbah Yosi was niftar in 4274/514 the sages of the generation, in a lull in the persecutions, resolved to renew the learning at Sura, and it was then that Rav Ina was set over it. The years that followed were bitter ones: the persecutions returned, and the Mazdakite movement, which had won the support of King Kavad and demanded that property and wives be held in common, brought riots that struck at taharat hamishpacha. Pumbedita held a large and settled community that could defend itself; Sura and the smaller towns could not, and many left. The learning in the yeshiva shrank, and in those years Pumbedita was the capital of the Jews of Bavel.