רב רבאי מרוב

Rav Rabbai of Rov (Rav Rabbai d’min Rov) was among the leading Savoraim of Bavel, of the second and third generation of that period. He came from the town of Rov, near Nehardea, and took the rosh yeshiva of Pumbedita after the passing of Rav Simona in 4300/540. As with the other chachamim of the Savoraic era, very little about him has come down to us: the Savoraim composed no works of their own, and their additions to the Talmud were made for the most part anonymously, without the name of the chacham attached. Nearly everything we know rests on the Iggeret of Rav Sherira Gaon.

The Jews were under persecution during his lifetime. The harassment of the Jews of Bavel, which had begun some decades earlier, grew worse in his day — a time of instability in which various bands, driven mainly by ideology and at times with the backing of the Sassanian authorities, carried out riots against the Jews. Pumbedita, which held the largest concentration of Jews in Bavel, had withstood this until then, but as the persecutions spread, learning in the yeshiva became impossible and the rosh yeshiva could no longer deliver shiurim before his talmidim. The chachamim of the city uprooted the yeshiva and moved it, with the talmidim, to Firuz Shabur in the region of Nehardea. After some years the situation of the Jews of Bavel eased, and the yeshiva at Firuz Shabur remained the central yeshiva of Bavel for some fifty years, until Rav Chanan of Ishkiya returned it to Pumbedita in 4349/589 — a return that some take as the close of the Savoraic period and the beginning of the Geonim.

Rav Sherira Gaon attributes to him one specific comment in the Talmud, in masechet Sanhedrin 43a, where the sugya deals with the four court-administered deaths and with the ruling that the means of execution are not funded by the condemned man himself. A baraita there brings that the noble women of Yerushalayim would donate the wine and the grain of levonah given to a man being taken out to be put to death, so that his mind be dulled. The Savoraic addition asks who bears the cost if they did not donate, and answers in his name: Rav Rabbai of Rov explained that it stands to reason the funds come from the public, since the verse says “give.” The same passage in his name stood before Rabbeinu Chananel. Rav Rabbai lived to a great age, by estimate until about 4320/560 or 4349/589.