The Restoration in Rabbinic Literature: Palestine and Babylonia from Past to Present / שיבת ציון בספרות חז"ל: בין ארץ ישראל לבבל ובין עבר להווה

Study and consideration of rabbinic literature's depictions of the Restoration at the onset of the Persian period reveal that Babylonian and Palestinian sages evinced discrepant and conflicting portrayals of the period. Palestinian literature posits the Restoration as a redemptive age, encompassing national and religious transformation as well as global political change. Certain Palestinian midrashim employ redemptive terminology to depict the fall of Babylonia, Cyrus' edict and the construction of the Temple. The Babylonian Talmud, in contrast, paints a radically divergent picture. It unequivocally rejects the use of the term 'redemption' with respect to Cyrus' edict. Moreover, in many instances the Talmud portrays the returnees as few in number, of dubious lineage and deficient religiosity. These depictions culminate in various assertions of the total dearth of theophanic manifestations within the Second Temple. Of particular note is the Talmud's practice of expropriating a variety of biblical and tannaitic phrases that laud the returnees and interpreting them in a manner that is antithetical to their original intent. The Bible and tannaitic literature meticulously record the census of the returnees with the purpose of framing the Restoration as a form of second Exodus. The Talmud exploits different contexts pertaining to the enumeration of the returnees to establish their numerical paucity, thus implying their religious shortcomings too. The second part of this paper advocates reading rabbinic literature's accounts of the period in light of Hayden White's historiographical theory. White posits a theoretical scheme that sees an affinity between literary articulations, including plot and tropes, and the type of historical explanation and ideological mode. Such a reading affords an appreciation of the historical controversy over the Restoration not only as a theoretical argument over the nature of the period, but as a fierce ideological polemic over the essential nature of history itself. The romantic framing of the period and its protagonists in Palestinian literature comprises a belief in the ability to act and effect change within the realm of history as well as an exhortation to political-messianic activism. The Babylonian Talmud, in contrast, portrays the period in an ironic and satirical light that overlays unqualified distrust of one's capacity to operate in history. This stance engenders an overall passivity in respect to all political undertakings