Mar Ukvan (article summary)

Here was my article for last Shabbos in the Jewish Link (flipdocs, HTML, paid Substack).

A short rundown of the major ideas therein, constructed from memory, so that we get the big picture:

1. On Bava Batra 55a, we have Ukvan bar Nechemia the Exilarch relate three things in Shmuel’s name. Who is this Exilarch?

2. Tangentially, and not in this article, he’s actually one of two Exilarchs quoted on this page. We also have Huna bar Natan, who is Exilarch in Rav Ashi’s time.

3. We can try to place Ukvan bar Nechemiah’s scholastic generation, in that he quotes first-generation Shmuel, and third-generation Rabba bar Nachmani relates what he said. Would that make him second-generation?

4. Yet, we also find him in another sugya, Shabbat 56a, as a great baal teshuva. Third-generation Amora, Rav Yosef, who is Rabba bar Nachmani’s contemporary, says that just as there was a great baal teshuva in generation X, we have a great baal teshuva in our generation. Would that make him third-generation? Maybe this is not precise, as “our generation” encompasses people who are alive during the time he’s speaking, even if one’s elders.

5. That same sugya in Shabbat gives his name as Natan deTzutzita, and we might use that to place him and his generation. Rav Yosef observed the acceptance of Natan deTzutzita’s repentance in a a dream.

6. Do we know his sin and repentance. Maybe Sheiltot is applying a closed-canon approach.

7. Seder Olam Zuta gives a history of Exilarchs, though it is corrupted in various aspects. There seem to be multiple Ukva / Ukvans, and two Natan deTzutzitas. That might complicate where to place him. Rav Aharon Hyman, in Toledot Tannaim vaAmoraim, fixes some of the errors, for example as to which Amoraim were the Sages of which Exilarch. He notes that we can also see that they followed the Jewish practice of reusing names of ancestors.

8. I disagree with Rav Hyman’s resolution slightly. I don’t think one person had such a long name, and that both he and his great-grandfather were baalei teshuva. Rather, we may be dealing with regnal names, where an Exilarch assumes an entirely different name upon ascending to office.