Rav Tachlifa of the West and Wikipedia Bias (full article)
In Menachot 14b, we meet Rav Tachlifa of the West, meaning “of the Land of Israel”. That is, Rabbi Yochanan, the famous second-generation Amora from the Land of Israel, posed a query (presumably for his academy in Tiberias). The lachmei todah, loaves of thanks-offering, numbered forty, and were of four types. What if someone had invalidating piggul intent about just one of the types? Were the remaining types within the overall offering invalidated as well? Similarly, the minchat ma’afeh, baked meal offering, was composed of two types – five loaves and five wafers. If someone had invalidating piggul intent about one type, would the invalidation spread to the other type within the offering? Reacting to this, Rav Tachlifa of the West recited a brayta to him, which explicitly says that the halacha also pertains to the lachmei todah and the minchat ma’afeh (so that they are subject to the dispute between Rabbi Yossi and the Sages in the Mishnah on 13b).
I will quote Rav Aharon Hyman in Toledot Tannaim veAmoraim in the entry on Rav Tachlifa bar Ma’arava. Rav Hyman suggests that the appellation “of the West” serves as disambiguation from a Babylonian Amora also named Rav Tachlifa. (This would be a well-known Amora who spanned the third and fourth generations.) Furthermore, while this Amora merited to recite braytot in Rabbi Yochanan’s academy – based on our sugya – he was primarily in Rabbi Avahu’s academy (in Caesaria) standing before Rabbi Avahu teaching braytot. See Gittin 52b, Sotah 27a, Bava Kamma 33b, Bava Metzia 7a, Bava Batra 77b, and Sanhedrin 77b. Rabbi Avahu was a third-generation Amora in the Land of Israel, and was Rabbi Yochanan’s student. In Berachot 55a, Rabbi Yochanan interprets a verse to yield an aggadic point, that Hashem only grants wisdom to those who already possess wisdom. Rav Tachlifa hears this from Rabbi Yochanan and repeats it before Rabbi Avahu, who reacts.
It thus isn’t so strange to have Rav Tachlifa of the West teach a brayta, that is, תְּנָא לֵיהּ, to Rabbi Yochanan. He coexisted with Rabbi Yochanan. Still, I wonder if we should understand תְּנָא לֵיהּ as “taught it”, meaning the point (as in Sanhedrin 24b or Bava Kamma 5a), or taught to address the idea raised by Rabbi Yochanan, rather than to him directly. In an earlier Jewish Link article (“Rami bar Chama, the Query Master”, October 15, 2024), I’ve argued that בָּעֵי can mean that the Amora establishes a topic to be discussed by people in the academy, and that it can continue to be discussed generations later in other academies. This could have been resolved in Rabbi Avahu’s academy by the expert in braytot who was either a colleague or student, Rav Tachlifa of the West.
Rav Hyman continues that this Rav Tachlifa bar Ma’arava visits Bavel. In Ketubot 8a, he visits Bavel and recites an extended form of some of the sheva berachot at a wedding. In Moed Katan 27a, Ravin comes from the Land of Israel to Bavel, and one of the Sages, namely Rav Tachlifa bar Ma’arava, who happened to frequent the market of leather workers and so knew the term, informed him that a dargash was a leather bed. The same is reported in Nedarim 56b, except it is the tanners’ market. I’d add that in Nedarim, the variant is that Ravin reports in Bavel that he asked one of the Sages, namely Rav Tachlifa bar Ma’arava, who responded. That would imply that Rav Tachlifa bar Ma’arava said this in the Land of Israel, not in Bavel. Finally, his title “Rav” implies that he did not receive rabbinic ordination.
Tachlifa of Palestine?
Wikipedia has a minimal page, called a stub, about our Rav Tachlifa. Created August 25, 2011, it was titled “Tachlifa the Palestinian” and contained essentially this content: “Tachlifa the Palestinian (translit: Tachlifa bar Ma’arava, lit. “Tachlifa of the West”), was an amora from Palestine who studied under Rabbi Abbahu. He often travelled to Babylonia. References: Heinman, Aharon. Toldos Tannaim ve-Amoraim, Vol 3.”
Hyperlinks on the page brought the reader to other Wikipedia articles, for amora, Palestine, Abbahu, Babylonia, and Toldos Tannaim ve-Amoraim on HebrewBooks. Alas, the Palestine hyperlink brings the reader to an article that begins “Palestine, officially the State of Palestine, is a country in West Asia.” Also, the author should be Aharon Hyman, not Heinman, an error preserved in the present version.
Wikipedia has tools to see a history of edits to the page, contributors, and what other edits the contributors have made on Wikipedia site. The creator of this Wikipedia entry has made many edits to the page of Rav Shach about the latter’s opposition to Zionism, the establishment of the State of Israel, and control over the Temple Mount. His personal page on Wikipedia contains the pictures and captions which indicate to me a personal opposition to Zionism. (See image.)
Other Wikipedia editors moved the page title to Tachlifa of the West, and so the page moved back and forth between titles. Eventually, this editor seems to have been topic-banned, and so his last change to this page was in March 2016. While some editors changed the phrase to “was an amora from Eretz Israel” (sic) with a link to the “Land of Israel” entry, it currently says that he “was an amora from Syria Palæstina”.
I am unhappy with Syria Palæstina, as I’ll discuss below, because it is inexact and because I’m convinced that it is part of a coordinated effort to delegitimize the State of Israel. Ashley Rindsberg, an investigative journalist, a senior editor at Pirate Wires and founder of the platform NeutralPOV (www.neutralpov.com), has published numerous articles detailing how specific “edit gangs” or coordinated groups influence content on politically sensitive topics, such as the Israel-Hamas conflict and U.S. politics. He also tweets on the subject (see image).
Indeed, a few years back, I had a similar issue and edit war with the Wikipedia editor named in the tweet. The page on Rabbi Eleazar ben Pedat had been a mess, combining information about Eleazar ben Pedat and Pedat ben Eleazar, who were two distinct people. I fixed it up, pulling information from Jewish Encyclopedia, and mentioned in the summary that he lived in “the Land of Israel”. Iskandar323 changed it to “Syria Palæstina”. My strong guess is that he is not deeply invested in Talmudic biographies and a third-generation Amora. Instead, this editor is the creator of the Wikipedia page on the “Ongoing Nakba”. It is a good thing that Wikipedia eventually topic-banned him and will hopefully soon ban him from the entire site.
Merits of Different Terms
I can appreciate the pros and cons of the various terms for where these Amoraim lived. To briefly summarize: Many old articles by academic scholars about the Talmud and Amoraim refer to the area as “Palestine”. These were written when the area was under Ottoman and then British control. There are plenty of such modern scholars who continue using the term.
Meanwhile, “Land of Israel” is used by other scholars, including modern ones. Jacob Neusner and David Weiss Halivni refer to Sages living in the Land of Israel. So does Moshe Lavee, in the title of his article “Marital Bond and Genealogical Anxiety–Reaffirming the Schism between Rabbinic Texts from Babylonia and the Land of Israel”. It is also how the land is self-identified in the Mishnah and Talmud, meaning that is how Jews of that time and place referred to it.
“Syria Palaestina” was a term imposed by the Romans after the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132–135 CE). It replaced the province Judea and incorporated it into a larger Syrian administrative unit. The renaming is widely understood as part of a policy to de-Judaize the province’s identity. Thus, the area where Rav Tachlifa of the West and Rabbi Eleazar ben Pedat lived would have been encompassed in Syria Palaestina.
The problem with calling it “Palestine” is that the word has undergone a profound semantic shift. A good many readers will believe it refers to a non-existent country populated by Muslims and / or Arabs in that era. Semantic shift is when words change meaning or implication. “Awful” used to mean “awe-inspiring” and “silly” used to mean “blessed / innocent”. Terms should not be used where they confuse. Further, when words shift meaning, especially in a damaging way, Wikipedia does not use the old term. By way of analogy, Jackie Robinson is described as “African American”, even though “Negro” was the acceptable term when he played.
Calling it “Syria Palaestina” is to use the colonial oppressor’s term, rather than how the Jewish people who lived in the land referred to it. Also, it is introduced across Wikipedia by biased editors whose aim is to delegitimize Israel. More than that, I think that it is inexact. It is like avoiding the term “New Jersey” for biased reasons and instead saying that someone lived in the “Tri-State Area” which contains New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Rabbi Eleazar did not make aliyah to Syria Palaestina. Ideologically and sociologically, he made aliyah to the Land of Israel.
Calling it “the Land of Israel” deviates from what earlier English-speaking scholars did, prior to the recent semantic shift. Further, it was not called that by the Romans who ruled over it in that era. Finally, perhaps it gained traction because of Israeli and Hebrew-speaking scholars, who use the term ארץ ישראל. Despite all this, I am strongly in favor of its usage. It is the cleanest, clearest, and most precise way of specifying the location after the semantic shift, and is used by modern Talmudic scholars.
At first glance, whether Rav Tachlifa was from “the West” or “Palestine”, or whether he lived in “the Land of Israel” or “Syria Palæstina” seems fairly unimportant. However, it is one cut in a death by a thousand cuts, with many minor edits yielding a larger harm. It is therefore worthwhile to oppose each individual cut. Anyone relying on Wikipedia – and this includes many college students – will develop this deliberately cultivated false impression. Further, anyone performing a Google search will see an infobox with the information pulled from Wikipedia. Similarly, LLMs like ChatGPT and Gemini operate downstream of Wikipedia. They use it as training data, or conduct a search to add context which drives or enhances their responses. Wikipedia bias can and does infect ChatGPT. It is therefore critical to counter this bias at its source.