280 A History of Judaism
as the main topics inherited from the Bible, such as the covenant between
God and Israel. Ethical teachings are presented in less organized fashion
in most of the rest of rabbinic literature from this period until the emer-
gence of a distinctive ethical genre in the Geonic era (between the sixth
and eleventh centuries ce) under the influence of Islamic thought. The
earliest known rabbinic treatise devoted solely to ethics is the final
chapter, on ‘Man’s Conduct’, of Saadiah’s Book of Beliefs and Opinions
(see above, p. 258).^20
Wide- ranging rabbinic discussions of law as it affected all parts of
life in due course shaped rituals which took on new forms in light of
their rulings. So, for instance, the Kaddish prayer, which may have origi-
nated as a marker of the conclusion of learning sessions in the academy,
became by the end of the first millennium a doxology used, in various
formulations, to separate each section of the synagogue service:
Magnified and sanctified may His great name be, in the world He created
by His will. May He establish His kingdom in your lifetime and in your
days, and in the lifetime of all the House of Israel, swiftly and soon – and
say: Amen. May His great name be blessed for ever and all time. Blessed
and praised, glorified and exalted, raised and honoured, uplifted and
lauded be the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, beyond any blessing,
song, praise and consolation uttered in the world – and say: Amen. May
there be great peace from heaven, and life for us and all Israel – and say:
Amen. May He who makes peace in His high places, make peace for us
and all Israel – and say: Amen.
Of new rituals which originated entirely from within the rabbinic
academies, the most striking may be the celebration of Lag BaOmer. The
period of counting the omer in its biblical formulation involved nothing
more than a ritual means to celebrate the passage from Passover to Pente-
cost, but it was decreed in rabbinic texts of late antiquity to be a period
of mourning because of a legend that in one year in the mid- second cen-
tury a dreadful plague took place in the omer days in which 24,000
disciples of R. Akiva died of plague because ‘they did not sufficiently hon-
our one another.’ Because the plague was thought to have come to an end
on the thirty- third day, the anniversary was celebrated thereafter.^21
It is clear that the main concerns of the rabbinic academies in these
centuries lay in the development of law and the interpretation of the
Bible. But the texts also reveal other religious interests (perhaps at a less
formal level) which related to developments within other forms of Juda-
ism either before or after this period. Within rabbinic tradition were