Abstract

The modern academic title(s) may take their origins from the early Jewish semikhah – the ordination of rabbis at the turn of the first century CE in Roman Judea, as described by the tractate Sanhedrin of the Babylonian Talmud. This, however, raises a general historical-sociological question: to what extent is a particular practice such as the semikhah preserved, or does its rationale change, over time and in differing habitats?