272 A History of Judaism
learning was far weaker than that of the Babylonian schools in the last
three centuries of the first millennium, although we have noted (Chap-
ter 10) the specialized role of the masoretes in Tiberias in establishing
the final shape of the biblical texts through their acknowledged expert-
ise in preserving traditions about vocalization, accents, divisions,
spelling and scribal conventions. These masoretes were engaged in such
scholarly work, primarily in Palestine, for about five centuries from the
middle of the first millennium, and the prominence of the Tiberias
school owed much to the influence of one family of scholars. Aharon b.
Moshe b. Asher produced in the tenth century ce what was to become
the standard biblical text, using a system of vowels and accents for can-
tillation (ritual chanting) which became normative first in manuscripts
and later in printed editions. He was the fifth generation of a family
dedicated to the same work. It is clear that they did more than simply
record the views of their predecessors, for the text of a biblical codex
containing the Prophets, copied in Tiberias by Aharon’s father Moshe in
897 ce and preserved in the Karaite synagogue in Cairo, frequently
disagrees with the vocalization and accents preferred by Aharon
himself.
At some time after the sixth century, and possibly as late as the ninth
century, Jerusalem and Ramleh became centres of rabbinic scholarship
in place of Tiberias, although the link with the earlier academy was evi-
dently precious. Daniel b. Azariah, who headed the Jerusalem academy
from 1051 to 1062, signed himself ‘nasi and gaon of Tiberias’ in a letter
found in the Cairo Genizah. Daniel himself was a descendant of a Bab-
ylonian exilarch, and was therefore believed to be from the house of
David. But the honour in which he was held as ‘the Light of Israel, the
Great Prince and Head of the Academy of the Majesty of Jacob’, as he
was called in the synagogue of the Palestinian Jewish community in Old
Cairo, owed more to his birth than to the rabbinic learning and auth-
ority of his academy.^13
The spread of rabbinic learning from Palestine to Italy and further
north into Europe took place mostly after the end of the first millen-
nium, but a story found in several medieval German Jewish sources,
that in 917 ce a certain ‘King Karl’ (presumably a reference to Charle-
magne, although by this date he was dead) brought the Kalonymus
family, who were experts on rabbinic literature, to Mainz from Lucca in
northern Italy, presupposes knowledge of rabbinic scholarship in Lucca
itself at this period. Before settling in Lucca in the eleventh century,
R. Kalonymus b. Moses was said to have taught in Rome, presumably