Rabbi Yirmeyah
260 CE–335 CE · Amoraim · Tiberias
Rabbi Yirmeyah was a third-generation Amora of the Land of Israel, active primarily in Tiberias during the early fourth century. Though born in Babylonia, he became a prominent scholar in the Palestinian academies and was known for his sharp dialectical mind and his willingness to challenge established positions. He studied under the luminaries of his generation and engaged in rigorous halachic debates with his contemporaries. Yirmeyah is remembered in the Talmud for his incisive questions and interpretations of earlier teachings, and his name appears frequently in discussions of both halachah and aggadah in the Yerushalmi.
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TiberiasLand of Israel
We know they were here, but the specifics of what they did at this stop aren’t recorded yet in our corpus.
Tiberias in this era
Under Roman rule—first the Severan emperors and later the Tetrarchic system that divided imperial authority—Tiberias remained a center of Jewish learning and communal life despite Christian ascendancy in the broader empire. The city's rabbinical academy flourished as a place where the oral traditions of the Mishnah were debated, interpreted, and eventually compiled into the Jerusalem Talmud, a monumental work that would shape Jewish practice for centuries. While Christian emperors like Constantine (who rose to power in 312) began transforming the empire's religious landscape, Tiberias's Jewish scholars continued their intensive hermeneutical work, establishing the city as a seat of halakhic authority. Rabbi Yirmeyah, active in this period, was part of this remarkable intellectual enterprise, contributing to the interpretive conversations that would crystallize Jewish law even as the political world around them shifted toward Christian dominance.
About Tiberias
Tiberias, on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel, was founded around 20 CE by Herod Antipas and named for the emperor Tiberius. After the Sanhedrin settled there around 220 it became a leading centre of Jewish learning: by tradition beginning with Rabbi Yochanan bar Nappacha, the Jerusalem Talmud took shape there (scholars date its completion to about 400), and the Masoretes of Tiberias later devised the Tiberian vocalisation of Hebrew. After the Muslim conquest around 636 it was the capital of the district of Jund al-Urdunn, and the hadith scholar al-Tabarani was born there in 873. Maimonides was buried in Tiberias, and in 1783 the Hasidic leader Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk moved there from Safed with his followers.
In Tiberias at the same time
Sefer Yetzirah (trad. Avraham Avinu), Anonymous Merkavah mystics, R. Yochanan, Reish Lakish, R. Eleazar, Yose bar Chanina
In the same place & time
Sages whose lives overlapped with Rabbi Yirmeyah’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
In the same tradition
Sefer Yetzirah (trad. Avraham Avinu), Anonymous Merkavah mystics, R. Yochanan, Reish Lakish, R. Eleazar, Yose bar Chanina, Shimon bar Abba, Rabbi Ami, Shmuel bar Nachmani, Ulla, Rabbi Assi, Chiyya bar Abba, Yitzchak Nappacha, Rabbi Helbo, Rav Safra, Yehuda Nesia II, Rabbi Zeira, Rabbi Levi
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Rabbi Yirmeyah’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Works
No works attributed in the corpus yet.