רב דוסא גאון

Rav Dosa ben Saadia Gaon (c. 4690/930–4777/1017) was among the geonim of Bavel — son of the great Rav Saadia Gaon — and head of the yeshiva of Sura at the end of his long life. Some say he was named for Dosa the father of the tanna Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa, from whom Rav Saadia traced his descent. He was orphaned young: Rav Saadia was niftar in 4702/942, when the boy was about twelve. In 4713/953 he and his older brother She’erit published the list of their father’s sefarim, and the Raavad brings in Sefer HaKabbalah that Rav Dosa sent Rav Chasdai an iggeret containing an account of Rav Saadia’s life and all the good he wrought for Yisrael.

The yeshiva of Sura had all but ceased to function after Rav Saadia’s petirah; Rav Sherira Gaon reopened it, and at its head stood, one after another, descendants of the earlier geonim — among them Rav Shmuel ben Chofni — and after them Rav Dosa, who is counted among the geonim of Sura in the writings of Rabbi Yehuda al-Madari. Appointed in about 4773/1013, when he was already an old man of some seventy-five years, he led the yeshiva, by then seated in Baghdad, for some five years until his petirah.

His name went out far beyond Bavel: she’eilot came to him from Kairouan and from the Jews of Spain, some asking him to explain passages in his father’s writings. Only single teshuvot of his survive in the collections of the geonim; the best known is his teshuvah on ketubat benin dichrin, in which he takes up the words of Rav Hai Gaon, his younger contemporary, whose Talmudic interpretations he also defended. He wrote perushim on the Talmud and works of machshavah that have not reached us; the Rambam lists a sefer of his on the question of the world’s eternity alongside the works of Rav Saadia, Rav Shmuel ben Chofni and Rav Hai Gaon. From his youth he took upon himself, as a practice of perishut, an oath not to eat bread, and kept it to the end of his days. He was niftar in Baghdad in about 4777/1017.