Was Ravina a Babylonian? (full article)
Menachot 42a relates that Ravina and Rav Samma were once sitting before Rav Ashi. Rav Samma noticed that, in one corner of Ravina’s cloak, the hole in which the tzitzit were inserted was torn and extended, so that the tzitzit were less than the requisite distance from the garment’s edge. Said Rav Samma to Ravina, “Doesn’t Master hold like Rabbi Yaakov (about the requisite distance)?” Ravina replied that that distance was only specified regarding when the tzitzit are initially inserted into the garment. Rav Samma was embarrassed. (His mild rebuke had turned into a revelation of ignorance.) Rav Ashi consoled him, telling him: Don’t be upset; one of them is like two of us.
Rashi explains “one of them is like two of us” as referring to Amoraim of the Land of Israel and the Land of Bavel respectively, for Ravina was from the Land Israel. Rashi, and his teacher, Rabbenu Gershom, did not invent this explanation out of whole cloth. Rather, they knew that Rav Ashi, a sixth-generation Babylonian Amora, was channeling the words of fourth-generation Babylonian Amoraim Abaye and Rava in Ketubot 75a.
In Ketubot, they interpreted a verse in Tehillim (87:5): “And of Zion it shall be said, this man and this man (אִישׁ וְאִישׁ) were born in her, and the Most High shall establish her (יְכוֹנְנֶהָ עֶלְיוֹן).” Abaye explained that one of Israel’s inhabitants is better than two of us (Babylonians). Presumably, Abaye understood this as, “of scholars in Zion it will be said that this man and this man – that is, two people – are within him”. Indeed, by uttering his statement, Abaye fulfilled this interpretation of the verse! Rava continued, explaining that if a Babylonian scholars ascends (סָלֵיק) to there, he is superior to two people raised there. Rava gives proof from Rabbi Yirmeyah, a third-generation Babylonian Amora, who knew very little while in Babylonia but when he ascended there, he called Babylonian Sages “foolish Babylonians”. Rava may have been speaking sardonically, but he presumably interpreted the second half of the verse, so that “man and man were born in her” refers to natives of the Land of Israel; עֶלְיוֹן refers to ascending to the land, and he have have connected it as well as supremacy; יְכוֹנְנֶהָ may refer to name-calling. Regardless, this phrase is clearly applied elsewhere to Babylonia / Land of Israel distinctions, and so surely this is how Rav Ashi meant it here.
Was Ravina Babylonian?
The problem with this is that, aside from this one sugya, we had no inkling that Ravina was a Sage of the Land of Israel – not that he was born there, or that he operated as a Sage there. When we speak of plain Ravina, it is either Ravina I, a fifth- and sixth-generation Babylonian Amora who was Rava’s student, or Ravina I’s nephew Ravina II, who was a seventh-generation Babylonian Amora and Rav Ashi’s student. Both of them seem solidly Babylonian. Indeed, in his entry on Ravina I in Toledot Tannaim veAmoraim, Rav Aharon Hyman discusses our sugya and notes the problem that we never find Ravina, nor his family, as originating in the Land of Israel. Before we get to Rav Hyman’s answer, let us consider a few potential solutions.
First, note that חַד מִינַּיְיהוּ כִּתְרֵי מִינַּן does not explicitly refer to Babylonia or the Land of Israel. Abaye’s expression could be repurposed by Rav Ashi to refer to other distinctions. If this Ravina is Ravina I, who is a quasi fifth-generation Amora, and Rav Samma is a seventh-generation Amora, Rav Ashi could be referring to the descent of the generations. Alternatively, Rav Ashi could refer to Ravina’s identity as a Pumbeditan Amora, in contrast with Amoraim associated with his own academy in Mata Mechasia, in the vicinity of Sura1. Note the reverse assessment by Rav Mesharshiya, a fifth-generation student of Rava, who sent his three seventh-generation sons, named Rava, Rav Yitzchak, and perhaps importantly, Rav Samma, to study under Rav Ashi in Mata Mechasia. He told them (Horayot 12a and Keritot 6a) how Mata Mechasia was to be preferred to Pumbedita. To cite Rav Steinsaltz’s translation, he told them “And it is preferable for you to sit on the rubbish heaps of Mata Meḥasya, and do not sit in the palaces of Pumbedita. Better to eat the rotten fish of Mata Meḥasya than to eat kutḥa, which displaces rocks (a metaphor for how potent it is).” This may be poetic language about the types of Torah study in the two academies, perhaps compared with the material level.
Could Ravina have originated in the Land of Israel? While Rav Hyman found no evidence, consider these four sugyot. In Bava Kamma 64a, after contemporary Babylonian Sages object regarding a midrashic interpretation that two repeated verbs are adjacent generalizations (kelalot), such that a proposed derasha is not a true kelal ufrat ukhlal, Ravina notes that כִּדְאָמְרִי בְּמַעְרְבָא, as they say in the West, meaning the Land of Israel, in such an instance, you can project the perat between the two generalities and it functions as a kelal ufrat ukhlal. The same principle, with Ravina channeling כִּדְאָמְרִי בְּמַעְרְבָא, also appears Chullin 66b and Shevuot 5a. It appears again Zevachim 44a associated with Rava, but the Columbia 294-295 manuscript makes it Ravina. This phrase אָמְרִי בְּמַעְרְבָא is rare, though בְּמַעְרְבָא אָמְרִי is more frequent and associated with Amoraim of the Land of Israel, especially those who traveled between there and Bavel. It is particularly associated with Rabbi Yirmeyah (Sanhedrin 17b), who moved from Bavel to the Land of Israel. Still, this is quite limited evidence in favor of associating Ravina with the Land of Israel.
The Rabbi Abba Alternative
Rav Hyman endorses an answer by Rabbi Isaac HaLevi in Dorot HaRishonim, that רבינא here is a scribal error for רבי אבא. Indeed, we’ll note the names share multiple letters in order, and a nun can resemble a bet, so this is a fairly minor scribal error. What makes it even more likely is that this Rabbi Abba is fairly unknown, which may have prompted scribes to erroneously “correct” to the more famous Amora.
Rav Hyman elaborates in his entry on Rabbi Abba III. Rabbi Abba was an Amora of the Land of Israel who descended to Babylonia in the days of Rav Ashi. Some scholars of rabbinic biography invented the idea that wherever Rav Ashi appears with Rabbi Abba, this must be an earlier Rav Ashi HaKadmon, or else they emend Rav Asi to Rav Ashi. However, the truth is that this is Rabbi Abba III.
Rav Hyman writes (approximate translation): “And in fact, he was a Jerusalemite. When the academies of the Land of Israel were destroyed, around the time that Emperor Julian — the esteemed emperor, a friend of Rabbi Hillel who instituted the calendar calculation — was killed, in the year 470 according to the Seleucid era, and the sect of the heretics grew stronger, and all the supremely pious were slain — at that time all the academies of the Land of Israel were destroyed, and the surviving remnant fled to Babylonia.”
“It is known from the Epistle of Rav Sherira Gaon (Part III, Chapter IV) that Rav Ashi died in the year 538. He reigned for nearly sixty years, that is, from the year 482. At that time, or a few years earlier, Rabbi Abba came and took a major role in the redaction of the Talmud together with Rav Ashi and Ravina.”
In that entry, Rav Hyman notes several places in the Talmud indicating Rabbi Abba having come from the Land of Israel. For instance, in Taanit 4a and elsewhere, אַתּוּן, מֵהָתָם מַתְנִיתוּ לַהּ. אֲנַן, מֵהָכָא מַתְנֵינַן לַהּ, “you learn the idea from here, whereas we learn it from this other source”, something said by Amoraim of the Land of Israel. In Shabbat 150b and Bava Kamma 27b, Rabbi Abba says בְּמַעְרְבָא אָמְרִינַן הָכִי, “in the West, we say as follows”, this demonstrating that he is of the Land of Israel.
In light of this, I wonder if my four instances of Ravina referring to the interpretive method of the Land of Israel are really further instances of a Ravina / Rabbi Abba mixup. If this pattern holds, the scribal error hypothesis not only resolves the biographical conundrum in Menachot 42a, but also elegantly unifies these seemingly disparate references to Eretz Yisrael scholarship under the single, consistent identity of Rabbi Abba.
See רבינא וחכמי דורו, נספח ד (להערה 158) חד מינייהו כתרי מינן by Avinoam Cohen. He discusses how this idea is proposed in Sam Chaim, but endorses Rav Albeck who sees no support for this elsewhere.