Alexander in Bavli Tamid: In Search for a Meaning

Growing up in Israel in the 1980’s, I never read rabbinic literature. In the political and cultural atmosphere of the time, such a seemingly innocuous activity was regarded as a religious and political statement, which did not conform to my ideas in either of these fields. It is the wonderful irony of life that only during my sojourn in Berkeley, ten time zones away from Israel and farther West than even Alexander dreamt of going in the wildest of his “last plans”, did I first become acquainted with the rabbinic Alexander.¹ I thus learnt a double lesson. First, that Alexander