הרב רחבה דפומבדיתא

Rav Rachava of Pumbedita was an amora of the fourth generation in Bavel and the foremost talmid of Rav Yehuda. He learned in the yeshiva of Pumbedita in the years when Rav Yehuda stood at its head, and the name of the yeshiva became fixed to his own, so that he is known everywhere as Rachava of Pumbedita.

What he was known for was exactness. He would repeat Rav Yehuda’s teachings as they were given, remembering even who the author of each one had been; and where Rav Yehuda himself was unsure of an attribution, Rachava held on to his rebbe’s doubts as well. For this reason, when the Bavli wants to show a man who is precise in what he brings — Rav Yosef, for instance — the measure it reaches for is that he was as exact as Rachava of Pumbedita.

When he came of age he married Chuma, daughter of Isi son of Rav Yitzchak brei d’Rav Yehuda, and so a great-granddaughter of his own rebbe. She was afterward held to be a katlanit, a woman whose husbands do not live, and Rachava was niftar young. His sons Ifa and Avimi also learned in Pumbedita, and their sharpness earned them the name charifei d’Pumbedita, the “keen ones” of Pumbedita.