Meaning & use
gaon
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A title given to the heads of the great Babylonian Jewish academies of Sura and Pumbedita, and later to eminent rabbinic scholars.
See it in a sentence
The gaon issued a responsum settling the dispute between the two communities.
Rabbinic literature often cites the rulings of the medieval gaons on matters of Jewish law.
A note on using this word
The word means 'eminence' or 'pride' in Hebrew, and the era of the geonim, roughly the 6th to 11th centuries, shaped much of later Jewish legal tradition.
Words with a similar meaning
sagescholar
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