Overview
His surname, Arika (English, "Long"—that is, "Tall"; it occurs only once—Hullin 137b), he owed to his height, which, according to a reliable record, exceeded that of his contemporaries. Others, reading Areka, consider it an honorary title, "Lecturer" (Weiss, Dor, iii. 147; Jastrow, Dictionary under the word). In the traditional literature he is referred to almost exclusively as Rav, "the Master", (both his contemporaries and posterity recognizing in him a master), just as his teacher, Judah I, was known simply as Rabbi. He is called Rabbi Abba only in the tannaitic literature (for instance, Tosefta, Beitzah 1:7), where a number of his sayings are preserved. He occupies a middle position between the Tannaim and the Amoraim, and is accorded the right, rarely conceded to one who is only an 'amora, of disputing the opinion of a tanna (Bava Batra 42a and elsewhere).
Rav was a descendant of a distinguished Babylonian family which claimed to trace its origin to Shimei, brother of King David (Sanhedrin 5a; Ketubot 62b). His father, Aibo, was a brother of Chiyya, who lived in Palestine, and was a highly esteemed scholar in the collegiate circle of the patriarch Judah I. From his associations in the house of his uncle, and later as his uncle's disciple and as a member of the academy at Sepphoris, Rav acquired such an extraordinary knowledge of traditional lore as to make him its foremost exponent in his native land. While Judah I was still living, Rav, having been duly ordained as teacher—though not without certain restrictions (Sanhedrin 5a)—returned to Babylonia, where he at once began a career that was destined to mark an epoch in the development of Babylonian Judaism.
The Aleinu prayer first appeared in the manuscript of the Rosh Hashana liturgy by Rav. He included it in the Rosh Hashana mussaf service as a prologue to the Kingship portion of the Amidah. For that reason some attribute to Rav the authorship, or at least the revising, of Aleinu.
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