My article in the Jewish Link (HTML, flipdoc, paywalled Substack) this past Shabbos is once again about the first Mishnah in Gittin. Rabbi Eliezer says one must recite befanai nichtav even from Kfar Ludim to Lud.
The outline of the ideas follows:
Unless we know Israeli geography in Mishnaic times, it is difficult to understand Rabbi Eliezer’s intent.
The Bavli, especially as it interprets the explanations of (Babylonian Amora) Abaye and (Israeli Amora) Rabba bar bar Chana seem to take it as being proximate but also over the border, thus overseas. The innovation being that the border was concave so it is also swallowed up inside Israel, despite being outside/
The Yerushalmi, however, rather clearly interprets Kfar Ludim and Lud as both being inside Israel. In Galilean Aramaic, it reports on or imagines an exchange between Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus and the Sages, from which it emerges that we are dealing with a dispute about place to place within Israel borders. We should favor the Yerushalmi’s explanation if it is about places in Israel, no?
How should we understand Rabba bar bar Chana in particular? It kinda seems that he said that he witnessed it himself, it it [from Kfar Luddim to Lud] is like from Bei Keivi to Pumbedita. And, if he was indeed talking about Kfar Luddim, it also seems that Bei Keivi was over the border outside Bavel.
I analyze the expression “I’ve seen it myself”, and it seems to be used exclusively about quantitative measures, that is distance or area, and never about qualitative measures, like we have here, that it is over the border, or that the border is concave.
I analyze occurrences of Bei Keivi, to get at its nature. It certainly has proximity to Pumbedita academy. There is one gemara that could suggest that Bei Keivi was over the border of Babylonia — and thus, just as one who leaves Israel, a place of Torah study, is liable, and one who leaves Babylonia is liable, so is one who goes from Pumbedita to Bei Keivi — but I propose a different explanation, that it simply means relocated from an even narrower Torah center.
They shrunk the Yerushalmi image to the point of obscurity, which is fine, given that it wasn’t a particular variant in the text that I was discussing. But here is a larger image.
By the way, here is the basis of the article title: