Why the Rabbis of the Yerushalmi Called R. Judah Nesiah “a Great Man”

Abstract

We can demonstrate the accomplishments and status of Judah Nesiah’s predecessors using texts that show these earlier Patriarchs exercising their powers, often apparently for the first time, and we can use specific evidence in later sources of the accomplishments and status of his successors. But Judah Nesiah’s powers, accomplishments and status must either be deduced from what we know about his successors or teased out of sources close to his time, in part by new readings of familiar texts. On these bases we find that he presented himself to both the Roman government and the Jews as the leader of the empire’s Jews; that he instituted or solidified several practices that his successors built on, such as raising funds and beginning to supervise Jewish institutions; and that he attempted even more by working to establish a relationship with the imperial government, including with the emperor himself, and unsuccessfully trying to obtain imperial recognition for the Jewish law judgments of Jewish courts.