Although the Talmudic Academies of Sura and Pumbeditha in Babylonia ceased to function almost one thousand years ago, their contributions to Jewish learning and to Jewish unity have so impressed contemporary Jews that they still recite the ancient prayer, Yekum Purkan, as part of the traditional Sabbath morning service in behalf of “our scholars and teachers in the land of Israel and in the land of Babylon, the heads of the academies and of the chiefs of the captivity….” As early as A.D. 220, Abba-Arika founded the renowned academy which was to flourish for eight centuries. Later, Sura's great rival, Pumbeditha, gave Jewish scholars another Talmudic center for research and teaching, and from both of these celebrated academies, inspirational messages flowed unceasingly to the Jewish communities throughout the Diaspora. The early sages of Sura, the Amoraim, devoted themselves to Talmudic interpretation, and their successors, the Savoraim, judged the Talmud and enlarged it considerably. At the beginning of the seventh century, the Massoretic scholars added even greater glory to the academies by making further contributions in both schools to their great project of supplying vowel points and accents to the Biblical text.