Rabbi

RABBINO. — A title belonging to the doctors of Jewish law: rabh, “master”; rabbî, “my master.” Rabbân was the title given to a highly eminent master; the same title of rabbî was originally reserved exclusively for heads of schools. Among the Sephardim, the r. is called ḥâkhâm, “wise man.” The Syriac translation of the New Testament renders rabbî as “archisynagogue,” the person entrusted with divine worship. The r.’s principal task is teaching and preaching; he also had the power to decide religious and sometimes civil questions, a task generally reserved for a specific official, called dajjân, “judge.” This prerogative ceased when the civil authorities assumed for themselves every decision-making power, including with respect to the Jews.

The r. originated within Pharisaism. In the Mishnaic tractate ’Abâth, 1, 1, the r. of the first period after Christ, down to Jôhânân ben Zakkaj, are linked through an unbroken tradition to Moses. The r. was not remunerated for his teaching; for this reason he practiced a profession, to which he generally devoted one third of the day. R. Gamaliel in ’Abâth, 2, 2 explicitly exhorts those who devote themselves to the study of the Law to work. The r. of our times is a layman, without hierarchical dignity. In former times, however, the title of r. was conferred through the sêmikhâh, the laying on of hands, a ceremony of a religious character. In A.D. 135 the Romans prohibited this ceremony and made R. Jêhûdhâh ben Babâ' pay with his life for having violated their order. About a century later, at the time of Judah “the prince,” who was on good terms with the Romans, the sêmikhâh was permitted once again, but Judah himself restricted it to Palestine and to scholars who promised not to leave II.

The Jewish Enlightenment movement (haskâlâh), which developed in Germany at the end of the eighteenth century, chiefly through the initiative of M. Mendelsohn, first brought about a crisis and then a transformation in rabbinism. The r. gradually came to terms with the new cultural spirit. A great advocate of the necessity of such reconciliation was Abramo Geiger (1810–74). The institutions where the r. received their training were transformed from Talmudic academies, or jêthôth, where study was limited to the Talmud, into rabbinical colleges, where the young men’s studies were broader and more varied. The first institution of this kind opened in Metz in 1824; it was followed by the Italian Rabbinical College at Padua, opened on the initiative of S. D. Luzzatto in 1827; at Bre-

(from R. Bartoccini, La sacra roccia degli Ammoniti, Rome 1933, plate III)

slavia in 1854 saw the inauguration of the Jewish theological seminary;
in Berlin, in 1872, the «Lehranstalt für die Wissenschaft
des Judentums» and, in 1873, the rabbinical seminary. Other
institutions of this kind subsequently followed in America.