Sorrow and Distress in the Talmud 9781618111128

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S or row a nd Dist ress i n t he Ta l mud

Judaism and Jewish Life Series Editor Simcha Fishbane (Touro College, New York) Editorial Board Geoffrey Alderman (University of Buckingham) Meir Bar-Ilan (Bar-Ilan University) Herbert Basser (Queen’s University, Canada) Donatella Ester Di Cesare (Universita La Sapienza, Italy) Andreas Nachama (Touro College, Berlin) Ira Robinson (Concordia University, Canada) Nissan Rubin (Bar-Ilan University) Susan Starr Sered (Suffolk University, Boston) Reeva Spector Simon (Yeshiva University)

Sorrow and Distress in the Talmud Shulamit Valler Translated from Hebrew by Sharon Blass

Boston 2 0 1 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: A catalog record for this title is available from the Library of Congress.

Copyright © 2011 Academic Studies Press All rights reserved ISBN ISBN 978-1-936235-36-0 Book design by Ivan Grave

Published by Academic Studies Press in 2011 28 Montfern Avenue Brighton, MA 02135, USA [email protected] www. academicstudiespress.com

To my beautiful family, who support and make me happy, and thus assist me in abating sorrow.

Table of Contents

Preface  9 Chapter One: Sorrow (Mitzta’er)  17 Chapter Two: Extreme Sorrow (Hulshat da’at)  54 Chapter Three: Weeping (Bechi)  108 Chapter Four: Grief over the Death of Children  187 Chapter Five: The Encounter between the Sages and the Women Accompanying Them in Times of Distress  238 Afterword  264 Appendix: Hulshat da’at and Self-Psychology (by Alex Aviv)  273 GLOSSARY of terms used  287 Bibliography  289 Index Index of Biblical and Talmudic Figures 294 Index of Biblical and Talmudic References  298 Index of Topics 305

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Preface

There are many sources in the Talmudic literature, both in halacha and in the narrative, which respond to feelings or describe situations which are mainly expressions of emotion. The halachic sources do not relate to emotions overtly but rather formulate halachic responses to emotional behavior. Some do not do this explicitly and we understand it as implied by the content. Thus, for example, the controversy between Bet Hillel and Bet Shammai on the question of how one is expected to dance before a bride at her wedding, which is brought in the baraita in BT Ketubot 16b-17a and in additional places:1 ”?‫ “כיצד מרקדין לפני הכלה‬:‫תנו רבנן‬ ”,‫ “כלה כמות שהיא‬:‫בית שמאי אומרים‬ ”.‫ “כלה נאה וחסודה‬:‫ובית הלל אומרים‬ ‫ כלה‬,‫ אומרי’ לה‬,‫ “הרי שהיתה חיגרת או סומא‬:‫אמרו להן ב”ש לב”ה‬ ”!‫ (שמות כ”ג) מדבר שקר תרחק‬:‫נאה וחסודה? והתורה אמרה‬ ‫ ישבחנו בעיניו‬,‫ מי שלקח מקח רע מן השוק‬,‫ “לדבריכם‬:‫אמרו להם ב”ה לב”ש‬ ‫ לעולם תהא‬:‫ מכאן אמרו חכמים‬,‫ ישבחנו בעיניו‬:‫או יגננו בעיניו? הוי אומר‬ ”.‫דעתו של אדם מעורבת עם הבריות‬

Our Rabbis taught: ”How does one dance before the bride?” Bet Shammai say: “The bride as she is.” And Bet Hillel say: ”Beautiful and graceful bride!” Bet Shammai said to Bet Hillel: “If she was lame or blind, does one say of her: ‘Beautiful and graceful bride’? Whereas the Torah said: keep thee far from a false matter.” Said Bet Hillel to Bet Shammai: “According to your words, if one has made a bad purchase in the market, should one praise it in his eyes or depreciate it? Surely, one should praise it in his eyes. Therefore, the Sages said: always should the disposition of man be pleasant with people.” 1

BT Kallah Rabbati 9; BT Derech Eretz Perek Ben Azzai (3).

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Preface

The discussion between Bet Shammai and Bet Hillel leaves no room for doubt that the statement that one should praise the bride while dancing before her stemmed from the understanding that the bride needed encouragement and moral support on her wedding day since she was subject to a whirlwind of emotion. Similarly, the Mishnah in Berachot 2:5 states: .‫חתן פטור מקריאת שמע בלילה הראשון עד מוצאי שבת אם לא עשה מעשה‬

A bridegroom is exempt from reciting the Shema prayer on the first night until the end of Shabbat if he has not yet consummated the marriage.

This statement might be explained at the theological level according to the general principle: a person engaged in performing a religious commandment [mitzvah] is exempt from another religious commandment; however, there is no doubt that the law is based on consideration for the emotional state of the bridegroom. At times the halachic source even declares explicitly that it is a response to emotions, such as the example of the dispute between R. Meir and R. Jose over collecting the bones of a father or mother on the intermediate days of the holiday, which appears in Mishnah Mo’ed Katan 1:5:2 ”.‫אמר רבי מאיר “מלקט אדם עצמות אביו ואמו מפני ששמחה היא לו‬ ”.‫רבי יוסי אומר “אבל הוא לו‬

R. Meir said, “A man may gather his father’s and mother’s bones, since this is [an occasion] ‘of joy’ for him”. R. Jose says, ”It is [an occasion] ‘of mourning’.”

The halachic sources do not deal with a description of the expression of emotions but rather bring the halachic response to the emotions that organize the world of action. In contrast, the Talmudic stories reveal a broad range of extreme expressions of 2

Collecting the bones of the dead for final burial. Initially the dead would be buried in a coffin until the flesh decayed away. Afterwards the bones would be brought for reburial. R. Meir thought that a person who was bringing his parents’ bones to reburial would be joyous because he is performing a commandment, while R. Jose maintained that he is in mourning over the death of his parents.

Preface

emotion and of the responses to them. The Talmudic narratives are typically characterized by their minimalist language and style, as Ofra Meir puts it:3 “The minimalism is not only in language and style but also in the fragmented nature of the narratives.” Yet it is precisely these characteristics of the narratives that cause the expressions of emotion to be depicted with such sharp, clear-cut resolution. This is the case, for example, when the narrator in BT Ketubot 62b is interested in conveying to the reader the sense of affront and disappointment of a woman whose husband did not fulfill the unwritten agreement between them and so did not return home on the eve of Yom Kippur, and he says: ‫הוה מסכיא דביתהו ‘השתא אתי‬ ’‫השתא אתי‬ ‫לא אתא‬ .‫ אחית דמעתא מעינה‬,‫חלש דעתה‬

His wife was expecting [him every moment, saying.] ‘He is coming soon, he is coming soon’  he did not arrive she became so depressed that a tear slid down from her eyes.*

* Translation varies here from the Soncino. — sv

It is precisely this subdued, low-key style which depicts neither nervous expectation nor an outburst of weeping but rather silent anticipation and one tear; it is the device of repeating the words “he is coming soon” together with the description of one single tear sliding down that so deftly express the wife’s terrible sadness. And if the reader did not understand the injustice done to her, the ending of the story comes and demonstrates this, using a play on words in describing the punishment: in parallel to the tear which slid down out of the wife’s eye, the roof slid down (collapsed) under her husband and killed him. The punishment of death meted out to the husband who disappointed his wife leaves no doubt as to the intensity of the sorrow that she experienced: .‫הוה יתיב באיגרא‬ 3

He was sitting on a roof.

Ofra Meir, The Homiletic Narrative in Genesis Rabbah, Tel Aviv 1987, p. 43 (Hebrew).

11

12

Preface .‫אפחית איגרא מתותיה ונח נפשיה‬

The roof collapsed under him and he was killed.

Another example of a Talmudic narrative which expresses extreme sadness through the repetition of words appears at the end of the narrative concerning R. Johanan and Resh Lakish in Baba Mezi’a 84a: ,‫הוה קא אזיל וקרע מאניה‬ ‫ “היכא את בר‬:‫וקא בכי ואמר‬ ‫לקישא‬ ;”‫היכא את בר לקישא‬

Thus he went on rending his garments, and wept, saying, “Where are you, O son of Lakisha, Where are you, O son of Lakisha”;

‫והוה קא צוח עד דשף דעתיה‬ .]‫[מיניה‬

and he cried thus until his mind was turned.

.‫בעו רבנן רחמי עליה ונח נפשיה‬

Thereupon the Rabbis prayed for him, and he died.

The description of the emotional vicissitudes that R. Johanan underwent after the death of his disciple and comrade Resh Lakish is chilling, precisely because of its sharp, succinct wording which throws into sharp relief the contrast between R. Johanan’s acclaimed past and his present, as he appears before us at the lowest ebb of mortal experience. Despite these observations regarding the abundance of sources which deal with emotions in the Talmudic literature, there are few scholars in fact who have dealt with this aspect. In recent decades there has been a large increase in researchers who investigated the conceptual significance of Talmudic sources and contended that philological research is but the basis for identifying meaning, intellectual trends, and worldviews. And so it is only natural that these scholars turned their attention to the narrative material in the Talmudic sugiyot. Nonetheless, despite the fact that this material allows an examination of the emotional world of the sages, there have been almost no researchers who have pursued this direction. Yona Fraenkel, who laid the groundwork for the literary study of rabbinical narratives, dealt with the connection between

Preface

the structure, language and style of the narrative and the conceptual meanings and didactic intents, or more precisely, with the way that form harmonizes with conceptual content. However, he did not analyze the expressions of emotion that appear in the narratives.4 Ofra Meir, who established the foundation for defining the term ‘sippur’ (story, narrative) in the rabbinic literature, undertook in two books and a series of articles the work of deciphering the Talmudic narratives according to their context and revealing the personalities of the sages from them, but she did not discuss their feelings.5 Jeffrey Rubenstein and Richard Kalmin also studied rabbinical stories in the BT; however, the former focused on examining the context of the stories in the sugiya as well as their connection to the cultural milieu in which they were created,6 while the latter focused on the composition and editing of the stories and how the BT portrayed the sages.7 A different approach than the one taken by these scholars, which is pertinent to the subject of emotions was presented by Daniel Boyarin, who theorized that literature and art are practices by which “culture structures itself and organizes the creation of meaning and values,” and who sought to examine the broad context in which the rabbis operated in order to understand the meaning of the texts that they created.8 He based his words on a psychological 4

See especially Yona Fraenkel, Aggadic Narrative: Harmony of Content and Form, Tel Aviv 2001, (Hebrew). 5 Ofra Meir, “‘Changing character’ and ‘character disclosed’ in Rabbinic stories,” Jerusalem Studies in Hebrew Literature 6 (1984), pp. 61-77 (Hebrew). _____, “The context-dependent story in the Talmud” Bikoret veparshanut 20 (1985), pp. 103-19 (Hebrew). _____, The Poetics of Rabbinic Stories, Tel Aviv 1963 (Hebrew). _____, “I am certain that he will be an authorized teacher in Israel: On the relations of R. Johanan b. Zakkai with his disciples,” Alei Siah, 1982, pp. 22436 (Hebrew). _____, Rabbi Judah the Patriarch; Babylonian and Palestinian Portrait of a Leader, Tel Aviv 1999 (Hebrew). 6 See especially: J.L. Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories, Narrative Art, Composition and Culture, Baltimore and London 1999. _____, The Culture of the Babylonian Talmud, Baltimore 2003. 7 See especially: R. Kalmin, Sages, Stories, Authors, and Editors in Rabbinic Babylonia, Atlanta 1994. 8 Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel: The Discourse of Sexuality in the Talmudic

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Preface

study of emotions, but his focus on the “discourse of sexuality” limited his discussions to the sexual impulse and the emotions that stem from or are associated with it.9 The only researcher who dealt directly with emotions is Admiel Kosman, who wrote a series of articles and books on the expression of emotions in the Talmudic narratives.10 Kosman himself attested to the difficulty arising from his decision to deal with this topic twice in his last book, Femininity in the Spiritual World of the Talmudic Story. In his introduction to the book he wrote: “Writing about the sensitive subject of the soul’s experience requires great spiritual fortitude if the writer is truly interested in focusing on the inner truth of things. When writing about “innermost” subjects (‘penimi’ as they are known in the Hassidic literature) is done in an academic way, then listening to the ‘thou’ of the text becomes a most difficult undertaking and limited by its very nature. Another difficulty no less complex arises from the need to couch these understandings — which the writer perceives intuitively — in the scientific language which is the language not of ‘thou’ but of ‘it’” (pp. 35-36). Furthermore, in the passage that concludes the Literature, Tel Aviv 1999 (Hebrew). For example, he writes on p. 71: “My contention is that in the rabbinic culture, there were two psychological perceptions which did not harmonize. One was based more explicitly on a dichotomy between good and evil, and saw human will which is composed of good and evil impulses as marked by a constant struggle between the two. The second psychological perception …saw man as an essentially unified creature, whose cohesive nature had a dialectical structure. The power in human beings which causes them to build and create is the same force that causes them to do evil and destroy. The good cannot be separated from the evil, since it is the very same force.” 10 Admiel Kosman, “Between ‘Inner Homeland’ and ‘Outer Homeland’: Literary and psychoanalytic study of the Talmudic tale about Rav Asi and his aged mother,” Jerusalem Studies in Hebrew Literature, 19 (2003), pp. 47-63 (Hebrew). _____, Women’s Tractate: Wisdom, Love, Loyalty, Desire, Beauty, Sex, and Holiness, Jerusalem 2007 (Hebrew). _____, “Humility and competition in the Talmudic culture - close reading in the Talmudic story about Aba Umana,” in: A. Sagi and N. Ilan (ed.), Jewish Culture in the Eye of the Storm, Tel Aviv 2002, pp 659-74 (Hebrew). _____, Femininity in the Spiritual World of the Talmudic Story, Tel Aviv 2008 (Hebrew). 9

Preface

introduction, Kosman in a personal note thanked three people whom he said were the only ones in the academic world who did not raise a quizzical eyebrow or give a condescending wink at the integration of the poetic, religious, and academic dimensions that characterizes his approach (p. 37). Indeed, it seems that academic writing about the life of the soul, which requires the writer to add a modicum of inspiration to the meticulous, largely dry, academic research, is difficult and exhausting. I personally experienced something of this when writing some sections of my book about women in the Talmud11 and in some parts of the book that I wrote in collaboration with Shalom Razabi on small talks in the Babylonian Talmud and their origins in Eretz Israel sources.12 However, the most important part of these essays is the analysis of the form and the idea of the Talmudic narratives and drawing conclusions about social values and perceptions, and no psychological inquiry was offered in them. In this book I focus on the Talmudic stories on an emotion that it is unwelcome to us, yet quite prevalent among human beings — sorrow. Here, too, in examining the stories I adopted a critical reading approach whose purpose was to understand what Yona Fraenkel called “harmony of content and form.” In other words, to investigate the literary features of the sources — structure, style, and language — and to use these to reveal the meanings. In most cases I was not satisfied with merely uncovering meanings, but I tried rather to explain them according to the social reality and cultural milieu in which the sources were created. Although I frequently felt that the stories deserved to be examined from a psychological viewpoint, I did this only where I was able to rely on the writings of other scholars, because I do not possess knowledge in the field of the exploration of the psyche. 11

Shulamit Valler, Women and Womanhood in the Talmudic Narratives, Tel Aviv 1993 (Hebrew). _____, Women in Jewish Society during the period of the Mishnah and Talmud, Tel Aviv 2001 (Hebrew). 12 Shulamit Valler — Shalom Razabi, Small Talks in the Babylonian Talmud, Tel Aviv 2007 (Hebrew).

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16

Preface

I chose to deal with the expressions of sorrow in the Talmud because sorrow is a powerful and prevalent characteristic of the emotional life of those remote personalities whose presence fills the Talmudic stories. However, lest I be misunderstood, there are many Talmudic narratives that deal with positive emotions such as joy and love, with a wide range of expressions associated with them, and I hope to complete my work to a trilogy, by means of two additional collections which are more optimistic than this first one, in which accounts of these positive emotions in Talmudic narratives will be compiled and analyzed.

Ch apter O ne

Sorrow (Mitzta’er)

The verb mitzta’er [‫ ]מצטער‬is used in Talmudic sayings and stories in both the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmud to describe a number of situations: A. A state of physical suffering or illness;1 B. The exertion of effort or endeavor on behalf of someone or something;2 C. A state of sadness and emotional distress. For our purposes it is the third meaning which is the relevant one. I will therefore present the stories where the verb appears in this sense and discuss them. In the Babylonian Talmud there are five stories in which the verb mitzta’er is used to describe the emotional state of sadness. In 1

In several sources, the verb is used to express ‘suffering hunger,’ which may be characterized as both physical and mental suffering. See e.g. BT, Ta’anit 25a, Sanhedrin 113a. 2 The translation to English in Michael Sokolof’s dictionary under the entry ’‫צער‬,‘ p. 969, appears as: ‘to take the trouble, to make an effort.’ In all the sources where the verb mitzta’er is used in this sense, the endeavor is related to matters of faith, primarily to the ability to uphold or witness the veracity of biblical verses. In five places this verb is associated with the phrase “kol yemei” [all the days of] which shows that the concern or endeavor was long-standing. The sources in which the verb appears in this sense are: BT, Berachot 2b, Aba Binyamin (a Tanna whose time is unknown) haya mitzta’er kol yamav [took great pains all of his days] to pray in front of his bed, and that his bed be positioned between north and south; BT, Berachot 61b and JT Berachot 14b (9,5), R. Akiva haya mitzta’er kol yamav over the verse, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your might,” i.e., pondering when he would be given the opportunity to fulfill this commandment. BT, Yoma 19b A sadducee haya mitzta’er all his days over the verse “for I appear in the cloud upon the ark covering” (Lev. 16:2), when would he be given the opportunity to witness its realization; BT, Ta’anit 23a. R. Johanan recounts that Honi was mitzta’er all of his days over the verse “When God shall return the captivity of Zion, we will be as dreamers”; BT Megillah 24b, R. Jose was mitzta’er all of his days over the verse: “You shall grope at noonday as the blind man gropes in darkness”(Deut. 28:29).

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Chapter One

all of the stories except for one, which is a baraita brought in Yoma 38a, those experiencing sadness or emotional distress are sages, and the reason for their sadness is connected to the world of Torah. In two stories the sage who is the main character is beset by strong sorrow because he made use of, or caused others to make use of, the honor of the Torah. One of the stories is brought in Nedarim 62a and its chief protagonist is the Tanna R. Tarfon: ,‫ר’ טרפון אשכחיה ההוא גברא בזמן שהוקפלו המקצועות דקאכיל‬ .‫אחתיה בשקא ושקליה ואמטייה למשדיה בנהרא‬ ”!‫ “אוי לו לטרפון שזה הורגו‬:‫אמר לו‬ .‫ שבקיה וערק‬,‫שמע ההוא גברא‬ ‫ “כל ימיו של אותו צדיק היה מצטער על‬:‫אמר רבי אבהו משום ר’ חנניה בן גמליאל‬ . ”.’‫ אמר ‘אוי לי שנשתמשתי בכתרה של תורה‬,‫דבר זה‬

R. Tarfon was found by a man eating [of the figs] when most of the knives had been folded, [whereupon] he threw him into a sack and carried him, to cast him in the river. “Woe to Tarfon,” he cried out, “whom this man is about to murder!” When the man heard this, he abandoned him and fled. R. Abbahu said on the authority of R. Hanania b. Gamaliel: “All his lifetime that pious man grieved over this, saying. ‘Woe is me that I made [profane] use of the crown of the Torah’.”

According to the Mishna in Nedarim, 8:4 if someone made a vow to abstain from tasting wine and any other food and drink until the summer is over, he is forbidden to taste anything until “yekaplu hamaktzu’ot.” The Ba’alei Hatosafot3 interpreted this to mean until the time that they fold away the knives used to cut down the ‘ketziot,’ i.e. the rings of dried figs. The RID4 interpreted 3

The disciples of Rashi and their followers who lived in Northern France and Ashkenaz from the end of the eleventh century through the fourteenth century and who studied and interpreted the Talmud using a dialectic method. Ever since the first printing of the Talmud, their commentaries appear on each page opposite the commentary of Rashi. E. E. Auerbach wrote: “At first the writers of the Tosafot wished to explain the words of Rashi and to elaborate on what he wrote and commented, but these elaborations steadily developed and evolved until they became additions [tosafot] to the Talmud and a continuation of it.” Auerbach, Ba’alei Hatosafot — Their History, Writings, and Methods, Jerusalem 1968, p. 19 (Hebrew). 4 R. Yeshayahu di Tirani, who lived in the thirteenth century, spent most of

S o r r o w ( M i t z t a’e r )

it as “until they collected most of the figs,” i.e. the figs that were scattered over the field, in order to dry them. According to both commentaries, the term kipul hamaktzu’ot connotes the end of the fig gathering, which comes at the end of the summer and thus marks the end of the period of the vow taken not to taste food or drink until the summer’s end. However, kipul hamaktzu’ot refers to another idea, namely, that the fruits which remained in the fields had been abandoned by their owners and thus it was permissible for anyone to take and eat them afterwards. According to our story, according to the interpretation chosen by the Soncino translation, R. Tarfon ate fruit that had grown on private land after the knives for cutting had been folded away, and he was brutally attacked by someone who saw him doing this. In order to save himself from that person’s rage, R. Tarfon identified himself by name and thus the attacker panicked and released him.5 Here ends the first layer of the narrative. In the second layer, the speaker is the Amora, R. Abbahu.6 He brought an oral tradition from the Tanna R. Hanina b. Gamaliel who lived close upon the time of R. Tarfon,7 according to which “All his lifetime that pious man grieved over this, saying, ‘Woe is me that I made [profane] use of the crown of the Torah’.” his life in Italy but in his youth studied in Ashkenaz. Although he wrote on most topics in halacha, he was renowned for his extensive commentary on the Talmud. According to Y. Ta-Shema, The Exegetical Literature on the Talmud, II, Jerusalem 2000, pp. 174-75 ( Hebrew). 5 The vicious brutality suffered by R. Tarfon is incomprehensible, since he clearly did not commit any crime. It might be that on that occasion he encountered a violent person and as the gemara explains afterward, that this man was the owner of the orchard and fruit had been stolen all year from his orchard, so when he saw R. Tarfon, he assumed that he was the thief. 6 An Amora of Eretz Israel in the third generation. He was the outstanding disciple of R. Johanan in Tiberias and later, the Rosh Yeshiva and dayan in Caesarea, being one of the close associates of the Roman authority which had its capital in Caesarea. According to M. Margaliot, Encyclopedia of Talmudic Sages and Geonim, Tel Aviv 1959 ( Hebrew). 7 According to The Letter of R. Sharira Gaon, Wagshall ed., Jerusalem 1991, p. 28 (Hebrew).

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Chapter One

The gemara expresses perplexity over why R. Tarfon grieved for so long for making use of the crown of Torah, for obviously he had to do so in order to save his life, and it answers: “Because R. Tarfon, being very wealthy, should have pacified his assailant with money.” In other words R. Tarfon could have and should have saved himself by making use of his money. However, despite this explanation offered by the gemara, the question remains unanswered as to the discrepancy between the trivial nature of his unworthy deed, on the one hand, which could be justified by the circumstances, and the intensity and duration of his grieving over it on the other. The Ba’alei Hatosafot8 related to this question and explained that R. Tarfon’s intense sorrow stemmed from the fact that he had neglected to teach his assailant the law that states that anyone is allowed to eat of the fruit in the field “after the fig knives have been folded away,” according to the Soncino translation. For had this man known that it was permitted to eat the fruit, he would have understood that he was wrong in attacking R. Tarfon, and he would have left him in peace. However this explanation seems insubstantial, because it is difficult to understand how a person tied up in a bag and being beaten could have been capable of teaching halacha. A critical reading of the story might provide a different kind of answer to explain the discrepancy between the deed itself and the resultant suffering described in this story. Such a reading could offer a view of R. Abbahu’s words as consisting of two parts. The first part: “All his lifetime that pious man grieved over this” is a quote from the words of the Tanna R. Hanania b. Gamaliel, and the second part: “Woe is me that I made [profane] use of the crown of the Torah” are the words of R. Abbahu himself. The words of R. Hanina b. Gamaliel are nothing more than a report of the prolonged sorrow that beset R. Tarfon as a result of the violent incident he underwent, whereas the connection between his sorrow and his deed—using the crown of Torah—was added by R. Abbahu, who wished to focus the story on the world of Torah and Torah study. 8

Tosafot sv “l’hachi amai mitzta’er” If so, why was he distressed?

S o r r o w ( M i t z t a’e r )

According to this explanation, the link between sorrow and using the crown of Torah are not part of the nuclear story but an Amoraic addition grounded in a didactic agenda, and that is what creates the disproportionate discrepancy between the minor deed and the major, and protracted, sorrow over it. This reading is not applicable to the Eretz Israel version of the story brought in the Jerusalem Talmud tractate Shevi’it 34d (4,2).9 According to the version in the JT, the tradition passed down by R. Hanina as repeated by R. Abbahu is of one piece which associates the reason for the sorrow felt by R. Tarfon with R. Tarfon himself: ‫רבי אבהו בשם חנינא בן גמליאל “כל ימיו של רבי טרפון היה מתענה על הדבר הזה‬ ”.’‫ואומר ‘אוי לי שנתכבדתי בכתרה של תורה‬

R. Abbahu said on the authority of R. Hanania [Hanina] b. Gamaliel: “All his life did R. Tarfon suffer about this happening, and said, ‘Woe to me that I made [profane] use of the Crown of the Torah’.”

In contrast, in another version brought in tractate Kallah Rabbati 2,1410 the reason for the sorrow was phrased as an anonymous addition with a didactic objective: “And all of this happened so that a person does not make profane use of the crown of Torah. Therefore the sages said, Anyone who makes use of the crown of Torah for profane purposes has no share in the world to come.” 9



“Rabbi Tarfon went to eat single figs from his property without reciprocity, following the House of Shammai. The watchmen saw him and started whipping him. When he saw himself in danger, he said to them, by your lives, tell in Tarfon’s house to have his burial shrouds ready. When they heard this, they prostrated themselves before him and said, Rebbi, forgive us. He said to them, so and so should come upon me if I did not forgive you beforehand every stick that was coming down on me. In these two instances did R. Tarfon follow the House of Shammai and endangered himself, in the case here and in the case of the recitation of Shema. R. Abbahu said on the authority of R. Hanina b. Gamaliel: All his life did R. Tarfon repent about this happening, and said, Woe to me that I used the Crown of the Torah.” 10 “Another story about R. Tarfon who was eating figs from his own orchard. His tenant farmer found him and whipped him severely, and R. Tarfon did not utter a word. When he saw that he was in danger of death, he said to him, Woe is you, R. Tarfon. The [tenant] said to him, Are you R. Tarfon? He replied, Yes. Then [R. Tarfon] began to tear out his hair, wailing and crying. Why was he so distressed? Because he didn’t want to derive personal benefit from the crown of Torah. Consequently the rabbis said, Anyone who derives personal benefit from the crown of Torah has no share in the world to come.”

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Chapter One

Y. Fraenkel11 proposed that we consider the words of R. Abbahu as relating to the explanation for R. Tarfon’s grief and thus an integral part of the story. (His understanding of the story is compatible with the commentary of the Ba’alei Hatosafot cited earlier.12) According to Fraenkel, the plot of the story ends only ostensibly with R. Tarfon being released by his captor, while in effect the words of R. Abbahu are “an essential part in the shaping of the story and they give it meaning.” For when R. Tarfon considered what he had done, he understood that in the act of eating the figs when the knives had been folded, he was making use of the crown of Torah because it was only those who were knowledgeable in halacha who knew that this was permitted. Therefore the violent assailant (who according to Fraenkel was the owner of the orchard) did not understand R. Tarfon’s action and his anger at him was justified. According to this explanation, the main sentence of the story “‘Woe is me that I made [profane] use of the crown of the Torah” was indeed uttered by R. Tarfon, and it refers not only to making use of his name but to the whole set of behaviors. If so, the extreme sorrow that beset R. Tarfon is now easily understood. He was distressed that throughout the entire incident, he was making use of the crown of Torah. At the beginning of the incident, he benefited by eating or collecting the fruit because he knew that the halacha allowed him to do so. Afterwards he benefited by his superiority over the orchard owner who was ignorant of the halacha, and thus caused him to act wrongly. Finally he derived benefit when he used his own name to save himself from death at the hands of the orchard owner. It is noteworthy that the dissonance between R. Tarfon’s deed, which was not particularly serious, and the protracted sorrow that he experienced in its wake, arises only in the context of the Babylonian versions of the story and not in its Eretz Israel version as brought in the Jerusalem Talmud. Here the story begins with the sentence: “R. Tarfon went to eat his figs like Bet Shammai without [expectation of] reciprocity” which links him to the dispute between 11

Y. Fraenkel, The Ways of the Aggadah and the Midrash, Givatayim 1991, pp. 266-67, ( Hebrew). 12 Tosafot, sv “I hachi amai mitzta’er” [If so, why did was he distressed?]

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the schools of Hillel and Shammai; “Bet Shammai would say that it is not permitted to eat the fruits of the seventh year [if there were an expectation of] reciprocity, and Bet Hillel would say one is allowed to eat, both with and without reciprocity….”13 This beginning presents R. Tarfon’s deed as a legal precedent that was carried out into action in order to give authority to the stricter opinion of Bet Shammai in the dispute with Bet Hillel about eating fruit that grew in the seventh year. R. Tarfon disguised himself so that he would not be recognized and went to his own orchard to eat the fruit that had grown there. In doing so, he wished to give validity to the opinion of Bet Shammai that fruits which grow in the seventh year on a private piece of land are permitted to be eaten while wild fruits that grew in the public domain are not permitted to be eaten. Further on in the story, the plot becomes complicated because the watchmen, who did not recognize R. Tarfon, beat him vigorously14 whereupon he hinted to them about who he was only when he felt he was in mortal danger. When the watchmen understood the hint, they prostrated themselves and asked for forgiveness, while R. Tarfon for his part informed them that he had already forgiven them for each blow, since from the beginning he knew that he had transgressed the words of Bet Hillel and therefore accepted the verdict as warranted. This version is different both in content and in concept from the BT version, beginning with the fact that R. Tarfon’s eating figs after the knives had been folded was intended to teach the halacha and not to satisfy his own hunger, continuing with the fact that he disguised himself and ate his own fruit, that he suffered the blows of watchmen who did not recognize him and ending with his forgiving 13 14

Shevi’it 4,2. Fraenkel identified the assailant as the “owner of the orchard.” This identification is not supported in the BT which does not explain who was “that man” who found R. Tarfon eating figs and beat him, and it is rejected completely by the JT which tells of ‘santeraiah’ (his field watchmen) beating him. Also according to the version brought in Kallah Rabbati, the orchard belongs to R. Tarfon and the assailant is his tenant farmer. According to this version, which seems like a not very sophisticated adaptation of the JT version, it is not clear why the tenant struck R. Tarfon ‘a great blow’ and why R. Tarfon ‘did not utter a word’ until he felt that his life was in danger.

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them because at the outset he had undertaken the difficulties to which he might lay himself open due to his subversive deciding of the law. And finally—and here is the main point—in the sense of deriving personal benefit from the crown of Torah. According to the version in the JT, the use that R. Tarfon made of the crown of Torah was not that he identified himself by name but rather that he relied on his prominence in Torah and allowed himself to decide the halacha at variance with Bet Hillel and to validate his own ruling by taking action. Therefore the discrepancy that exists according to the Babylonian stories between R. Tarfon’s deed and his subsequently prolonged suffering does not exist in the Eretz Israel version where deriving benefit from the crown of Torah was given a different meaning. The evidence that shows that the very fact of a Torah scholar identifying himself by name for any purpose that is not directly connected to Torah study does constitute deriving benefit from the crown of Torah — which is fundamentally improper — is only found in the Babylonian Talmud, and one may presume that it was added by a later Babylonian redactor, perhaps to counter the practice of certain scholars to derive benefit from their status in Torah scholarship, a status that developed out of the competitive tension prevalent in the Babylonian academies. Using the crown of Torah is also the subject of a story of sorrow that beset the Tannaim R. Judah Hanasi and his disciple R. Jonathan b. Amram, brought in the BT, Baba Batra 8a: ,‫ בעלי גמרא‬,‫ בעלי משנה‬,‫ “יכנסו בעלי מקרא‬:‫ אמר‬.‫רבי פתח אוצרות בשני בצורת‬ ”.‫ בעלי הגדה אבל עמי הארץ אל יכנסו‬,‫בעלי הלכה‬ ”!‫”רבי פרנסני‬:‫ אמר לו‬.‫דחק רבי יונתן בן עמרם ונכנס‬ ”?‫ “בני קרית‬:‫אמר לו‬ ”.‫ “לאו‬:‫אמר לו‬ ”?‫“שנית‬ ”.‫ “לאו‬: ‫אמר לו‬ ”?‫“אם כן במה אפרנסך‬ ”.‫” פרנסני ככלב וכעורב‬:‫אמר לו‬ ‫” אוי לי שנתתי פתי‬:‫ בתר דנפק יתיב רבי וקא מצטער ואמר‬.)‫פרנסיה (פרנס אותו‬ ”.‫לעם הארץ‬ ‫ “שמא יונתן בן עמרם תלמידך הוא שאינו רוצה‬:‫אמר לפניו רבי שמעון בר רבי‬ ”?‫ליהנות מכבוד תורה מימיו‬ ”.‫ אמר רבי “יכנסו הכל‬.‫בדקו ואשכח‬

S o r r o w ( M i t z t a’e r )

Rabbi Judah Hanasi once opened his storehouse [of victuals] in a year of scarcity, proclaiming: “Let those enter who have studied the Scripture, or the Mishnah, or the Gemara, or the Halachah, or the Aggada; there is no admission, however, for the ignorant.” R. Jonathan b. Amram pushed his way in and said, “Master, give me food.” He said to him, “My son, have you learnt the Scripture?” He replied, “No.” “Have you learnt the Mishnah?” “No.” “If so,” he said, “then how can I give you food?” He said to him, “Feed me as the dog and the raven are fed.” So he gave him some food. After he went away, Rabbi Judah Hanasi was greatly distressed and he said: “Woe is me that I have given my bread to a man without learning!” R. Simeon son of Rabbi Judah Hanasi ventured to say to him: “Perhaps it is Jonathan b. Amram your pupil, who all his life has made it a principle not to derive material benefit from the honor paid to the Torah?” Inquiries were made and it was found that it was so; whereupon Rabbi Judah Hanasi said: “All may now enter.”

This is a complex story that seems to take a paradoxical viewpoint to transmit its message that using the crown of Torah for personal benefit is an improper practice. Rabbi Judah Hanasi wanted to prevent ignorant people from eating his produce because he believed, or as the gemara has it, that “it is the unlearned who bring misfortune on the world.” However, events developed in such a way that he gave his grain to a person whom he believed to be a man without learning. When his son saw how aggrieved he was that he had acted thus, he told his father that the man who received his bounty was in fact Jonathan b. Amram, his own disciple who presented himself as a man without learning. The story consists of two interwoven layers. At the heart of the first layer is one social message: that one should not discriminate between a scholar and a person without learning when it comes to physical sustenance; and at the heart of the second layer is another social message: Torah sages should not derive benefit from the honor of Torah. The words of Rabbi Judah Hanasi are presented in the first layer: “Let those enter who have studied the Scripture … there is no admission, however, for the ignorant” which expressed his

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worldview that discriminated against people of no learning, as opposed to the words of R. Jonathan b. Amran, who said “Feed me as the dog and the raven are fed,”15 which hinted to Rabbi Judah Hanasi that his approach was mistaken, for God Himself provides sustenance to all of His creatures, even the least important among them. From the subsequent development of the plot, it is clear that Rabbi Judah Hanasi understood the hint and did provide food to someone who appeared to be ignorant but later regretted it. At this point the first layer of the story ends without any definite decision between the egalitarian worldview that considers every human as being entitled to receive basic nourishment and the exclusionary view that denies this right to the ignorant. The second layer of the story consists of a conversation between Rabbi Judah Hanasi and R. Jonathan b. Amram which relates to the latter having concealed his true identity; the words of Rabbi Judah Hanasi’s son which expose the purpose of Jonathan’s action and thus intimates to Rabbi Judah Hanasi the flaw in his discriminatory behavior; and the final line “whereupon Rabbi Judah Hanasi said: All may now enter” demonstrates that the insinuation was taken to heart. The first element — the conversation between Rabbi Judah Hanasi and R. Jonathan b. Amram, who concealed his true identity, does not reveal the reason for this concealment. This becomes clear only in the second component — the words of Rabbi Judah Hanasi’s son. According to his son, Jonathan b. Amram concealed his identity in order to challenge his colleagues, the sages who benefited from Rabbi Judah Hanasi’s storehouses because of their knowledge of Torah. When Rabbi Judah Hanasi realized that the person who stood before him was indeed none other than his disciple R. Jonathan b. Amram, he understood that by making a distinction between those of no learning and the scholars, he had caused the latter to blunder morally, and that his real error was not in giving food to the ignorant (or to him who appeared to be ignorant) but rather in denying them food. 15

This sentence “Feed me as the dog and the raven are fed” is based on verses in Psalms 147:9 and Job 38:41, which present the raven as an example of an undomesticated animal whose sustenance is provided by God.

S o r r o w ( M i t z t a’e r )

Therefore, the concluding line, “ Rabbi Judah Hanasi said, All may now enter” must be interpreted precisely: the statement is not an acknowledgement of social equality. Rabbi Judah Hanasi took this seemingly egalitarian step paradoxically in order to protect the sages and preserve their superior moral status. The subject of tza’ar — sorrow — appears in the first layer of the story, ending with the sentence “After he went away, Rabbi Judah Hanasi’s conscience smote him and he said: ‘Woe is me that I have given my bread to a man without learning’.” According to the content matter and the language, the sentence may be divided into two parts. The first part reports Rabbi Judah Hanasi’s sorrow in the third person and in Aramaic, while the second part, which reveals the reason for his sorrow, appears in the first person singular, namely, attributed to Rabbi Judah Hanasi, and it is in Hebrew. It is possible that the first part was not included in the original story and was added during redaction in order to underscore the subject of the sorrow by adding the explicit statement “‫”יתיב רבי וקא מצטער‬ [literally: Rabbi Judah Hanasi sat and was beset by sorrow]. Supporting this way of understanding are the versions in the Florence and Paris manuscripts in both of which the word “‫”מצטער‬ [Mitzta’er] does not appear.16 So, too, the version that appears in the Vatican version: ”...’‫“לאחר שיצא ישב רבי ודאג אמ‬

[After he went out, Rabbi Judah Hanasi sat and worried].

(An Aramaic phrase appears also at the end of the story in the Vilna edition of the text ”‫ “בדקו ואשכח‬but in all of the manuscripts, this phrase appears in Hebrew.17) In any event, the sentence that emphasizes Rabbi Judah Hanasi’s sorrow plays a central role in the story because it reveals the 16

The phrase that appears in these manuscripts is: “ Afterwards, Rabbi Judah Hanasi went out and sat down and said: Woe is me that I have given of my food to the unlearned.” ”.‫ אוי לי שנתתי פתי לעם הארץ‬:‫“בתר דנפק יתיב רבי וקאמר‬ 17 Escorial, Florence, Hamburg: “‫ ”בדקו ומצאו כדבריו‬Paris: “‫ ”ומצאו כדבריו‬Vatican: “‫”בדקו אחריו ומצאו כדבריו‬.

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flaw in his perception before he learned a lesson from R. Jonathan b. Amram’s act. For Rabbi Judah Hanasi felt sorrow for his final and in effect worthy deed — giving food to the man of no learning — yet was not sorry for his original deed — depriving food from the ignorant — which was unworthy behavior both in itself and because it lead to a situation where Torah scholars derived benefit from the crown of Torah. In the concluding part of both stories cited above, the one about R. Tarfon and the fig knives and the other about Rabbi Judah Hanasi and the storehouses, it is striking that although there is no connection or similarity between them, placing them one opposite each other reveals a kind of reversed ranking. From the aspect of an unworthy deed — deriving benefit from the crown of Torah, Rabbi Judah Hanasi’s deed is more serious than that of R. Tarfon, for Rabbi Judah Hanasi caused others to act badly while R. Tarfon only acted badly himself. However, in terms of the sorrow, R. Tarfon experienced a more serious sorrow than Rabbi Judah Hanasi since he continued to suffer all of his life. It is also noteworthy that the difference between the expressions of sorrow by R. Tarfon and those of Rabbi Judah Hanasi18 portray two very different individuals. R. Tarfon is depicted as a modest sage who is overwhelmed by sorrow for having used the crown of Torah in a profane way, although he did it to save himself from death. In comparison, Rabbi Judah Hanasi is portrayed as condescending, someone who promotes the superiority of those who merited the crown of Torah and is beset by sorrow precisely when he gave food to a person who could not boast of possessing this crown. The protagonist of the next two Babylonian stories is the Eretz Israel Amora, R. Johanan, and in both he is portrayed as someone who grieves not on his own account but because of his disciples. The subject of the sugiah in both stories brought in Sanhedrin 14a is the prohibition against giving semicha [rabbinical ordination] to Torah sages outside the boundaries of Eretz Israel: 18

Probably in both stories, the manifestations of sorrow are supplements or additions of the BT and not part of the original stories.

S o r r o w ( M i t z t a’e r ) ‫אמר רבי יהושע בן לוי אין סמיכה בחוצה לארץ מאי אין סמיכה אילימא דלא‬ ‫דייני דיני קנסות “כלל בחוצה לארץ והא תנן” סנהדרין נוהגת בין בארץ ובין‬ ‫בחוצה לארץ אלא דלא סמכינן בחוצה לארץ פשיטא סומכין בחוצה לארץ‬ ‫ונסמכין בארץ הא אמרינן דלא אלא סומכין בארץ ונסמכין בחוצה לארץ מאי‬ ‫תא שמע דרבי יוחנן הוה מצטער עליה דרב שמן בר אבא דלא הוה גבייהו‬ ‫דליסמכיה רבי שמעון בן זירוד וחד דעימיה ומנו רבי יונתן בן עכמאי ואמרי‬ ‫לה רבי יונתן בן עכמאי וחד דעימיה ומנו רבי שמעון בן זירוד חד דהוה גבייהו‬ ‫סמכוהו וחד דלא הוה גבייהו לא סמכוהו רבי חנינא ורבי הושעיא הוה קא‬ ‫משתקיד רבי יוחנן למיסמכינהו לא הוה מסתייעא מילתא הוה קא מצטער‬ ‫טובא אמרו ליה לא נצטער מר דאנן מדבית עלי קאתינן דאמר רבי שמואל‬ )’‫בר נחמן אמר רבי יונתן מניין שאין נסמכין לבית עלי שנאמר (שמואל א’ ב‬ ’‫לא יהיה זקן בביתך כל הימים מאי זקן אילימא זקן ממש והכתיב (שמואל א‬ .‫ב’) כל מרבית ביתך ימותו אנשים אלא סמיכה‬

R. Joshua b. Levi said: “There is no ordination outside Palestine.” What is to be understood by, ‘There is no ordination’? Shall we assert that they have no authority at all to adjudicate cases of Kenas [A fine or penalty paid by certain classes of wrongdoers] outside Palestine? But have we not learnt: The Sanhedrin has competence both within and without Palestine! — This must therefore mean that ordination cannot be conferred outside Palestine. It is obvious, that if the ordainers are outside Palestine and those to be ordained in Palestine, [then] surely as has been said, they cannot be ordained. But what if the ordainers are in Palestine, and those to be ordained outside? Come and hear: [It is related] of R. Johanan that he was grieved when R. Shaman b. Abba19 was not with them [in Palestine] to receive his ordination. [Again it is related of] R. Simeon b. Zirud and another who was with him, viz., R. Jonathan b. Akmai, or according to others [who invert the order,] R. Jonathan b. Akmai and another who was with him, viz., R. Simeon, b. Zirud, that the one who was with them was ordained, and the other, who was not, was not ordained. R. Johanan was very anxious to ordain R. Hanina and R. Hoshaia,20 but his hope could not be realized, and it grieved him very much. They said to him: Master, you need not grieve, for we are descendants of the house of Eli. For 19

An Amora of the third generation, born in Babylon, he went to Eretz Israel and was the outstanding pupil of R. Johanan. Due to difficulties in earning a livelihood, he went to Syria and settled in Damascus. According to The Encyclopedia of Talmud Sages and Geonim, M. Margaliot, ed., Tel Aviv 1958 (Hebrew). 20 R. Hanina and R. Hoshaia were brothers born in Babylon who went to Eretz Israel to study under R. Johanan. In several places in the JT, Hoshaia was called by the title of rabbi which shows that he had been ordained despite what is written here. According to Encyclopedia of Talmud Sages and Geonim, Margaliot.

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R. Samuel b. Nahman, quoting R. Jonathan, said: Whence do we learn that none of the house of Eli are destined to be ordained? — From the verse, And there shall be no zaken [old man] in thy house for ever. What does the word ‘zaken’ mean [here]? Shall we say, literally, ‘an old man,’ but it is written [immediately after] ( I Sam. 2:32), and all the increase of thy house shall die [young] men! — It must therefore refer to ordination.21

The gemara clarifies the saying of the first generation Amora of Eretz Israel, R. Joshua b. Levi, “There is no ordination outside Eretz Israel,” and arrives at the conclusion that his meaning was that ordination itself was supposed to take place only in Eretz Israel. In other words, it was not possible to ordain a sage if he is not personally in Eretz Israel at the time of ordination. In order to support this conclusion, a collection of stories is cited around the issue of ordaining rabbis. The collection has two stories about R. Johanan which, even though they are separated by a story about R. Simeon b. Zirud and R. Jonathan b. Akmai, might be observed to be arranged in a type of hierarchy. The first story is a dry account according to which R. Johanan was sorry that he was unable to ordain his disciple R. Shaman b. Abba because he was not there with his mentor in Eretz Israel. In contrast the second story is a wide-ranging description of R. Johanan’s attempt to ordain the brothers R. Hanina (or Hanania) and R. Hoshaia, which intensifies R. Johanan’s endeavors regarding the appointment: “R. Johanan was very anxious to ordain [them],” as well as his sorrow that he did not succeed in doing so: “it grieved him very much.” The sense of grief is made more acute by the description cited later in the story, where R. Johanan needs consolation from the very sages whom he did not succeed in ordaining. Their words of consolation included a homiletic interpretation by R. Jonathan on a verse in the Book of Samuel whereby R. Hanina and R. Hoshaia did not deserve to be ordained because they were descendants of the house of Eli. This story was not cited for the purpose of bringing support for the gemara’s conclusion that there is no ordination outside of Eretz Israel, for it is not explicit that R. Hanina and R. Hoshaia were not 21

The original text is cited here in full in order to show the context; however, only the underlined passages are relevant to our discussion.

S o r r o w ( M i t z t a’e r )

with R. Johanan at the time of the narrative, as it is evident regarding R. Shaman. It would seem that his inclusion in the collection of stories stemmed from his connection to the general subject — the failure to ordain rabbis—and from his double connection to the first story, where the hero is R. Johanan and the subject, his sorrow over his inability to ordain his disciples. In any case, the two stories about R. Johanan report that he was distressed because he was not successful in ordaining his disciples, but they do not interpret the exact reason for his sorrow. It is not clear whether he was sorry because of the damage that the community would suffer because meritorious scholars were not ordained to be rabbinical sages or because of the damage to the livelihood and status of his disciples who were not ordained. A similar story is brought in two places in the JT, which tells of R. Joshua b. Levi who was distressed because he was unable to appoint (BT: ‘to ordain’) one of his disciples: ‫ממנין זקינים לדברים יחידים והוא שיהא ראוי לכל הדברים כהדא דר’ יהושע‬ ‫בן לוי מני לכל תלמידוי והוה מצטער על חד דהוה בכי בעינוי ולא הוה יכול‬ )]‫ ח‬,‫עמ’ ג [א‬,‫מימנייתיה (חגיגה דף עו‬

Even though you have said that they do appoint elders to serve for specific purposes only, that is the case only if the one appointed is suitable to carry out all sorts of tasks. This is illustrated by the following: R. Joshua b. Levi appointed all of his disciples. But he was distressed about one of them who was there, who had weak eyes,22 so that he could not appoint him. (JT Hagigah 76:c [1, 8])

and in Nedarim, 42b (10,8), as above, with a change in one word. Instead of “‫ ”בכי בעינוי‬it is written “‫גבי בעייניה‬.”23 22

Korban He’eda interpreted: “That he was blind in one eye and could not be appointed because according to all opinions, a blind person is disqualified from performing halitza.” 23 The Pnei Moshe commented: “Because he had a blemish [‫ ]גבן‬in his eyes and he had a defect in his eye.” Korban Ha’eda commented: “He had a blemish [‫ ]גבן‬in one eye and did not have vision, therefore according to all opinions, he was disqualified from performing halitza and he could not be appointed.” I did not understand the word ‘geven’ in this context. In the Leiden mss. the text reads: “that he grieved over one” and afterwards, the letters are illegible and the proofreader’s comment: “‫ ”דהוה גבי בעיניה‬appears.

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The main difference between the stories in the BT and the JT is their context in the sugiya. In the BT, the sugiya deals with the question of appointing rabbinical sages outside of Eretz Israel and establishes the principle that: “there is no ordination outside Eretz Israel” which is connected with the story about R. Shaman b. Abba. In the JT, the subject discusses the question of whether rabbinical sages can be appointed (ordained) for one subject only, such as to release people from vows, and it lays down the principle: “They do appoint elders to serve for specific purposes only, that is the case only if the one appointed is suitable to carry out all sorts of tasks,” which connects with the story of the scholar who had a defect in his eye and could not be appointed to perform halitza, and therefore was not appointed for any other task as well. A stylistic comparison of the first story about R. Johanan in the BT with the story of R. Joshua b. Levi in the JT shows that there is no major difference between them. In both stories there is a laconic report that the scholar was grieved over his inability to appoint one of his disciples. The only difference is that in the JT, R. Joshua b. Levi is depicted as being grieved that he was unable to appoint one disciple out of the many that he did appoint, while in the BT, the story with R. Shaman b. Abba is presented as an individual case, and conceivably this highlighted the sorrow felt by R. Johanan that he was unable to ordain him. It is different regarding the second story in the BT, where a comparison of the style of this story to that in the JT reveals many differences. The JT portrays R. Joshua b. Levi’s grief in a dry reportage along with the reason for the grief — his inability to appoint a disciple, and the reason in turn for that — the fact that the disciple had a physical defect. Considering the laconic style in the JT portrayal of the grief, one can easily understand its importance in the BT story which portrays R. Johanan as someone who is assiduous in ordaining his disciples, maximizing the effect of the sorrow by using the word ‘‫[ ’טובא‬very much], and intensifying it even further by presenting R. Johanan as someone who needs consolation that comes, ironically, from those very disciples who were not ordained. All of these show that the pivot of the plot is not the ordination of two sages/disciples but rather R. Johanan’s grief over his failure to accomplish it.

S o r r o w ( M i t z t a’e r )

At the opposite pole of these stories of Torah sages who grieved over not succeeding in ordaining their disciples is a story cited in the JT (in two places) as well as in the BT, in which the disciple Resh Lakish grieves that he is unable to meet R. Hiyya (apparently this means to be in contact with him in a dream) since he has not reached the latter’s high level in deciding law. First I will present the story brought in the JT, Ketubot 35a (12,3):24 ‫רבי שמעון בן לקיש צם תלת מאתן צומין למחמי רבי חיא רובא ולא חמתיה‬ ”?‫ובסיפא שרי מצטער אמר “מה הוה לעי באורייתא סגין מיניי‬ ”.‫אמרין ליה “ריבץ תורה בישראל יותר ממך ולא עוד אלא דהוה גלי‬ ”?‫ “ואנא לא הוינן גלי‬:‫אמר לון‬ ”‫ “את הויתה גלי מילן והוא הוה גלי ילפא‬:‫אמרין ליה‬

R. Simeon b. Lakish fasted three hundred fasts to order to have a vision of R. Hiyya the Elder, but he did not see him. Finally he began to be distressed about the matter. He said, “Did he labor more in learning of Torah than I?” They said to him, “He brought Torah to the people of Israel to a greater extent than you have, and not only so, but he even explained.” He said to them, “And did I not explain, too?” They said to him, “You explained only individual words, but he explained the teaching.”

Here is the parallel story brought in the BT in Baba Mezi’a 75b: .‫ כי מטא למערתיה דרבי חייא איעלמא מיניה‬.‫ריש לקיש הוה מציין מערתא דרבנן‬ ”?‫ “רבונו של עולם לא פלפלתי תורה כמותו‬:‫ אמר‬,‫חלש דעתיה‬ ”.‫ תורה כמותו לא הרבצת‬, ‫ “תורה כמותו פלפלת‬:‫בת קול יצתה ואמרה לו‬

Resh Lakish was marking the burial vaults of the Rabbis. But when he came to the grave of R. Hiyya, it was hidden from him, whereat he experienced a sense of humiliation. “Sovereign of the Universe!” he exclaimed, “did I not debate on the Torah as he did?” 24

Following is another version of the story brought in JT, Kila’im 9:3: “R. Simeon b. Lakish fasted three hundred fasts in order to have a vision of R. Hiyya the Elder, but he did not see him. Finally he began to be distressed about the matter. He said, “Did he labor more in learning of Torah than I?” They said to him, “He brought Torah to the people of Israel to a greater extent than you have, and not only so, but he even explained.” He said to them, “And did I not explain, too?” They said to him, “You explained only individual words, but he explained the teaching.”

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Thereupon a Heavenly Voice cried out in reply: “You did indeed debate on the Torah as he did, but did not spread the Torah as he did.”

The BT source, which seems to be based on the Eretz Israel tradition, will be discussed in the chapter that deals with hulshat da’at [profound distress], because it is obvious from a comparison of the sources that in the JT version Resh Lakish is portrayed as someone who is immersed in sorrow while according to the BT, ‘halsha da’ateh.’ In any case both sources depict Resh Lakish as someone who is very eager to forge a spiritual connection with R. Hiyya (according to the JT, to see him, and that means, apparently, to see him in a dream, and according to the BT, to locate his grave in order to attach himself spiritually to his character). However, he was prevented from doing so because he did not achieve R. Hiyya’s high level of teaching the law. According to the JT it is not clear whom Resh Lakish addressed in his anguish, who were the people referred to by “They said to him,” as well as the comparison between R. Hiyya and Resh Lakish which refers only to the subject of teaching: “He brought Torah to the people of Israel to a greater extent than you have,” and “You went into exile only to learn, but he went into exile to teach others.” According to the BT, Resh Lakish was answered by a Heavenly Voice and the criteria for comparison are debate , i.e. studying Torah as compared to spreading it, or in other words, teaching. In any event, in both versions Resh Lakish is depicted as someone who was grieved that he was unable to connect himself to the spirit of R. Hiyya because of his inferiority to him in the realm of teaching. In the BT, Baba Mezi’a 84a, there is a long story that describes the extremely intricate relationship between the two sages mentioned above, R. Johanan and Resh Lakish, and it concludes with an upsetting passage about the grief of R. Johanan over the death of his disciple and friend, Resh Lakish. More extensive discussions of this story will be brought in the chapters on hulshat da’at and in the chapter on women confronting the Torah scholars in states of sorrow and distress. The discussions will revolve around the hulshat da’at that besets the two scholars and caused the death

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of Resh Lakish and indirectly also the death of R. Johanan. In this chapter I will focus on the discussion in the last part of the story, which describes R. Johanan’s grief. The story begins with a description of the halachic dispute between the two personalities, which deteriorated into mutual gibes and highly disparaging affronts to both of them: ‫ הסיף והפגיון והרומח ומגל היד ומגל הקציר‬:‫יומא חד הוו מפלגי בי מדרשא‬ ?‫ ואימתי גמר מלאכתן‬.‫מאימתי מקבלין טומאה? משעת גמר מלאכתן‬ ”.‫ “משיצרפם בכבשן‬: ‫רבי יוחנן אמר‬ ”.‫”שיצחצחן במים‬:‫ריש לקיש אמר‬ ”.‫ “לסטאה בלסטותיה ידע‬:‫אמר ליה‬ ”!‫ “ומאי אהנת לי ? התם רבי קרו לי הכא רבי קרו לי‬:‫אמר ליה‬ ”.‫”אהנאי לך דאקרבינך תחת כנפי השכינה‬:‫אמר ליה‬ .‫ חלש ריש לקיש‬.‫חלש דעתיה דרבי יוחנן‬

Now, one day there was a dispute in the schoolhouse [with respect to the following. Viz.,] a sword, knife, dagger, spear, hand-saw and a scythe — at what stage [of their manufacture] can they become unclean? When their manufacture is finished. And when is their manufacture finished? R. Johanan ruled: “When they are tempered in a furnace.” Resh Lakish maintained: “When they have been furbished in water.” Said he to him: “A robber understands his trade.” Said he to him, “And wherewith have you benefited me: there [as a robber] I was called Master, and here I am called Master.” “By bringing you under the wings of the Shechinah,” he retorted. R. Johanan therefore felt himself deeply hurt [halash da’ateh], [as a result of which] Resh Lakish fell ill.[halash]

During the discussion between the two sages, R. Johanan was apparently insulted that his disciple Resh Lakish had dared to dispute him. He fired off a venomous barb at him, which attributed his expertise regarding the manufacture of the knife, dagger, and spear to his history as a member of a gang of robbers. Furthermore, not only did R. Johanan remind Resh Lakish of his unsavory past, but he also implied that the stain of criminality still clung to him (by his use of the word ‘listim’ in the present tense). It is not surprising that Resh Lakish , who was profoundly offended, struck out at R. Johanan, aiming at his Achilles heel as a teacher of the law. He told his teacher that while still a robber, he

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already knew the laws of purity and impurity and therefore he had not really benefited a whit from what he had learned from his teacher. (See a detailed explanation of his words in the chapter on hulshat da’at.) R. Johanan did manage to blunt the thrust of Resh Lakish’s barb by replying that he had benefited him by bringing him under the influence of God (perhaps in doing so, he again alluded to Resh Lakish ’s criminal past and to the fact that it was he who extricated him from that predicament). Yet it seems that R. Johanan’s pride, wounded twice by his beloved disciple — once when he differed over his teacher’s decision of the law and again when he denied the benefit he had received from him, did not recover and as a result, he felt deeply hurt. How sorely had he been offended is reflected in an external manifestation of hulshat da’at that may be judged not only by its dramatic effect on his Talmudic sparring partner but also from the story of R. Johanan’s refusal to forgive Resh Lakish despite the pleas of his sister, who was married to Resh Lakish, and his distant and condescending attitude toward her.25 R. Johanan’s extreme emotional state — hulshat da’at — was thus caused by a profound insult related to his status as a decisor of law and teacher of halacha, i.e. his status in the world of Torah. Things are different for Resh Lakish, who spent part of his life outside the bet midrash, in the world of robbers. The word that describes Resh Lakish’s reaction to the unfortunate occurrence is ‘halash’ [was weakened] and not ‘halsha da’ateh’[his spirit/mind was weakened, he was discouraged]. According to this distinction his reaction was also — perhaps primarily — physical and later in the story, the severity of this reaction becomes clear by way of its tragic result: ‫[ דרבי שמעון בן לקיש נח נפשיה‬R. Simeon ben Lakish died]. The death of Resh Lakish struck R. Johanan with mortal grief that made him forget his insult: 25

Between the paragraph that begins “Halash Resh Lakish ” [Resh Lakish was weakened] and the one that begins “Nah nafshe derabbi Simeon b. Lakish ” [R. Simeon ben Lakish died], a passage is quoted that reports the sister’s entreaty to her brother, R. Johanan, that he forgive her husband and thus cancel the fatal decree, and his imperviousness. A wider discussion of this passage appears in chapter five.

S o r r o w ( M i t z t a’e r ) .‫נח נפשיה דרבי שמעון בן לקיש והוה קא מצטער רבי יוחנן בתריה טובא‬ ‫אמרו רבנן “מאן ליזיל ליתביה לדעתיה? ניזיל רבי אלעזר בן פדת דמחדדין‬ ”.‫שמעתתיה‬ ”.‫אזל יתיב קמיה כל מילתא דהוה אמר רבי יוחנן אמר ליה “תניא דמסייעא לך‬ ‫ “את כבר לקישא? בר לקישא כי הוה אמינא מילתא הוה מקשי לי עשרין‬:‫אמר‬ ‫וארבע קושייתא ומפריקנא ליה עשרין וארבעה פרוקי וממילא רווחא‬ ”?‫שמעתא ואת אמרת תניא דמסייע לך אטו לא ידענא דשפיר קאמינא‬ ‫הוה קא אזיל וקרע מאניה וקא בכי ואמר “היכא את בר לקישא היכא את בר‬ .‫ בעו רבנן רחמי עליה ונח נפשיה‬.]‫לקישא?” והוה קא צוח עד דשף דעתיה [מיניה‬

R. Simeon b. Lakish died,26 and R. Johanan was plunged into deep grief. Said the Rabbis, “Who shall go to ease his mind? Let R. Eleazar b. Pedat go, whose disquisitions are very subtle.” So he went and sat before him; and on every dictum uttered by R. Johanan he observed: “There is a Baraita which supports you.” “Are you as the son of Lakisha?” he complained: “When I stated a law, the son of Lakisha used to raise twenty-four objections, to which I gave twentyfour answers, which consequently led to a fuller comprehension of the law; whilst you say, A Baraita has been taught which supports you; do I not know myself that my dicta are right?” Thus he went on rending his garments and weeping, “Where are you, O son of Lakisha, where are you, O son of Lakisha?” and he cried thus until his mind was turned. Thereupon the Rabbis prayed for him, and he died.

From the language and style of the story it emerges that we are confronting a later creation of the BT that was woven around the halachic dispute between two Eretz Israel personalities. The work is characterized by extreme drama that causes the reader to feel the terrible emotional jolt experienced by R. Johanan upon the death of his beloved disciple. It is almost certain that R. Johanan tormented himself, not just over the absence of his regular Talmudic disputant, but for his own share in the event that led to the weakening and death of Resh Lakish. However, the narrator does not raise this subject even 26

It should be stated that throughout the story he is called Resh Lakish while here he is called by his full name R. Simeon b. Lakish. Initially I had thought that the use of the full name was intended to add gravity and to stress the tragic dimension of his death. But an examination of other versions revealed that in most of the manuscripts (Florence, Hamburg, Munich, and the Vatican) he is called Resh Lakish in the context of his death as well, and it is only the Escorial text that has ‘R. Simeon b. Lakish,’ but in this version, he is called ‘R. Simeon b. Lakish’ throughout the story.

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by allusion. He concentrates on the description of the first reason and in intensifying the effect of the sorrow felt by R. Johanan over it until the climax, which leads to another tragedy. In the opening sentence he gives us to understand that this is not an ordinary kind of sorrow: “R. Johanan was plunged into deep grief.” In the body of the story he first presents R. Johanan’s outburst of rage towards R. Eleazar b. Pedat which is made extreme by using two markers: A. The repeated use of the intensifying number twenty-four; and B. Repeating R. Eleazer’s words “A Baraita has been taught which supports you” in a bitter and sarcastic way. Afterwards he offers a chilling description of R. Johanan whose grief pushes him over the edge into madness, and he tears his clothing, weeps bitterly, and does not cease looking for Resh Lakish (this obsessive search for Resh Lakish is reflected in the repeated cry ‘Where are you, O son of Lakisha’). At the end of the story, he presents a shocking portrayal of R. Johanan, who has declined into insanity and loss of reason: 27 “…he cried thus until his mind was turned”28 The story reveals the powerful storm of emotions that beset R. Johanan, and the reader is astonished to discover that the main reason for it is not the loss of his close friend Resh Lakish and not even the fact that he himself indirectly brought about his death, but rather only because he has lost a disciple who is capable of raising incisive objections to his argumentation. This reason is emphasized and highlighted by the device of a story within a story. 27

It should be noted that in all of the versions of the manuscripts (Escorial, Florence, Vatican, and Munich 95) the passage is missing that states “he cried thus until his mind was turned.” According to this R. Johanan’s decline into madness is not described in a graduated sequence of two statements: “he went on rending his garments and weeping, ‘Where are you, O son of Lakisha, where are you, O son of Lakisha’;” and “he cried thus until his mind was turned” but rather portrays his decline as one continuing process “He went on rending his garments and weeping, ‘Where are you, O son of Lakisha, where are you, O son of Lakisha’; and he cried thus until his mind was turned. “ 28 In Hebrew the word ’‫[‘שף‬was turned] comes from the root .‫פ‬.‫ו‬.‫ ש‬which means rubbed or worn down. It appears to me that here the active verb appears in the passive sense to show that his mind was worn down. That is apparently how Rashi understood it when he wrote (sv ‫“ )דשף דעתיה‬his reason was uprooted from him and he became mad.”

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The opening line of the first passage in the story “R. Simeon b. Lakish died, and R. Johanan was plunged into deep grief” creates by the use of the intensifier ’‫ ‘בתריה‬the sense that R. Johanan was truly sorry over the death of a man and a friend. The ending of this passage, Said the Rabbis “Who shall go to ease his mind?” also adds to this effect in seeming to express the Rabbis’ naïve intention to send R. Johanan a scholar who is beloved by him and who will comfort him. However, this ending is only a transition to another passage which reports R. Johanan’s outburst towards R. Eleazer b. Pedat, and this exposes the real reason for his sorrow: the loss of an astute disciple and in consequence the decline in the level of precision and clarity of his own study. The passage that tells of R. Eleazer b. Pedat thus explains that the reason for R. Johanan’s sorrow is the damage to his Torah scholarship and not the death of a young man,29 not even the personal loss of a friend and family member. The stories brought at the beginning of this chapter, which noted that R. Johanan was anguished when he was unable to ordain rabbis, did not elaborate upon the reason for his sorrow beyond this. Therefore it could be understood that his sorrow was also the result of human sensitivity toward those people whose appointment he was unable to accomplish and not just because the world of Torah was impoverished. This is not the case with our story here, which emphatically rejects the sorrow over the man Resh Lakish for the sorrow over the scholar Resh Lakish; namely, the loss to the world of Torah.30 29

Insensitivity to the personal aspect of the death is reflected also in R. Johanan’s conversation with his sister, the wife of Resh Lakish, who comes to him to beg for mercy for her husband, her children, and herself. See the discussion in Chapter Five. 30 There is a similar case, in which R. Akiva saw a ship sinking with all of its passengers on board and grieved particularly over the Torah scholar among them, which is brought in JT Yebamot 15d (16,4): “Rabbi Akiva said: It happened that I was sailing on the great sea and I saw a ship sinking in the ocean, and I grieved for the Torah scholar who was onboard that ship. When I came to a mountain passage in Kapudkia (region in Asia Minor), that [Torah scholar who was on the sinking ship] greeted me and began asking me questions. I said to him, my son, how were you saved? He said to me: Rabbi, a wave dashed me to another wave, and that wave to another until I cast up upon the dry land. At that moment,

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A list of the stories from the BT that make use of the root .‫ר‬.‫ע‬.‫[ צ‬tza’ar] to describe an emotional state of sadness would not be complete without two stories in which the reason for sorrow is not connected to the status of the sages and to Torah study, which were included in the beraitot, cited in the BT, and thus originated in Eretz Israel. I will begin with the baraita that is apparently the earlier of the two because its chief protagonist is Nicanor, who lived in Alexandria at the beginning of the first century. The baraita is brought in Yoma 38a, as an explanation for the miracles that were performed for the doors donated by Nicanor, according to the tradition brought in the gemara: .‫ניקנור נעשו ניסים לדלתותיו‬ ‫ כשהלך ניקנור להביא דלתות‬:‫ מה נסים נעשו לדלתותיו? אמרו‬:‫תנו רבנן‬ ‫ נטלו אחת מהן‬.‫מאלכסנדריה של מצרים בחזרתו עמד עליו נחשול לטבעו‬ ‫ בקשו להטיל את חברתה ועמד הוא‬.‫והטילוה לים ועדיין לא נח הים מזעפו‬ .‫” מיד נח הים מזעפו והיה מצטער על חברתה‬.‫וכרכה אמר להם “הטילוני עמה‬ .‫כיון שהגיע לנמלה של עכו הייתה מבצבצת ויוצאת מתחת דפני הספינה‬ . ‫ויש אומרים בריה שבים בלעתה והקיאתה ליבשה‬

Nicanor experienced miracles with his doors: Our Rabbis taught: What miracles happened to his doors? It was reported that when Nicanor had gone to fetch doors from Alexandria of Egypt, on his return a gale arose in the sea to drown him. Thereupon they took one of his doors and cast it into the sea and yet the sea would not stop its rage. When thereupon they prepared to cast the other door into the sea, he rose and clung to it, saying: “Cast me in with it!” [They did so and] the sea stopped immediately its raging. He was deeply aggrieved about the other [door]. As he arrived at the harbor of Acco, it broke through and came up from under the sides of the boat. Others say, a monster of the sea swallowed it and spat it out on the dry land.

The hero of this early story is Nicanor, who lived at the beginning of the first century and was apparently a wealthy man I said Great are the words of the sages who said, [If he fell into] water that has [a visible] end, his wife is permitted [to marry again], but [if into water] that has no [visible] end, his wife is forbidden [to marry again]. The word ’‫ ‘הצטער‬in this story means ‘grieved’ and in any event, the sorrow is not developed and is not the focus here. The focus of the story is the rescue of that Torah scholar, which is used as evidence of the veracity of the halacha cited at the end.”

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who donated valuable doors to the Temple, which were brought from Alexandria.31 In Eretz Israel sources there are two versions of the story.32 The most conspicuous difference between the version in the BT baraita and these versions is that in the Eretz Israel sources there is no mention of a sentence that states: “… the sea stopped immediately its raging.” This sentence was probably added by the Babylonian redactor who wished to highlight the miraculous component of the event. On the matter of the sorrow, it is actually the BT version which is shorter. The Tosefta writes: “He would grieve and continue until he reached the port of Jaffa.” In the JT, it is written “He would weep and mourn and continue until he reached the harbor of Jaffa” (according to the BT, they arrived at the port of Acco). It is possible that the Babylonian redactor saw no need to elaborate upon the sorrow felt by the wealthy man Nicanor 31

On Mt. Scopus there is a burial cave where a coffin was uncovered with an inscription on its side that the bones of Nicanor of Alexandria were interred there. According to Z. Vilnay, Ariel Encyclopedia of Eretz Israel, Tel Aviv 1978, entries ‘Nicanor A and B’ ( Hebrew). 32 Tosefta Yoma (Kippurim) 2:4 “All the gates which were there were covered with gold except for the Nicanor’s gates, for a miracle was done with them. There are those who say it is because their copper is bright. R. Eliezer b. Jacob says, “It was Corinthian bronze and shone like gold [‘it is as pretty as gold’].” Now what is the miracle that was done with them? They say: When Nicanor was bringing them from Alexandria, a gale rose in the sea and threatened to drown them. They took one of them and tossed it into the sea, and they wanted to throw in the other, but Nicanor would not let them. He said to them, “If you throw in the second one, throw me in with it.” He was distressed all the way to the wharf at Jaffa. Once they reached the wharf at Jaffa, the other door popped up from under the boat. And there are those who say one of the beasts swallowed it, and when Nicanor came to the wharf at Jaffa, it brought it up and tossed it onto land. And according to it, it is explicitly stated in tradition: The beams of our house are cedar, our rafters are pine (Song of Songs 1:17).”

JT, Yoma 40b (3:8)

“Nicanor experienced miracles with his doors and he is mentioned as praiseworthy. Our Rabbis taught: It was reported that when they were in the ship, a gale arose in the sea. Thereupon they took one of his doors and cast it into the sea and they prepared to cast the other door into the sea. He rose and clung to it, saying,: ‘Cast me in with it!’. He was weeping and mourning until he arrived at the port of Jaffa. It started bursting forth from under the ship, as we learned : All of the gates that were there turned to gold except for the gates of Nicanor for which a miracle was performed, and there are those who say that it is because copper turns yellow. The rabbis said in the name of R. Eliezer, copper would turn yellow and was more beautiful than gold.”

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who was grieving over the loss of a material object which was of no importance to him, although the real reason for the sorrow was the failure to construct doors for the Temple. The other baraita cited in Sanhedrin 30a deals with money that was buried, and in the last part it is written: ,‫הרי שהיה מצטער על מעות שהניח לו אביו ובא בעל החלום ואמר לו כך וכך הן‬ ‫ זה היה מעשה ואמרו דברי חלומות לא‬,‫ של מעשר שני הן‬,‫במקום פלוני הן‬ ‫מעלין ולא מורידין‬

If one felt distressed over some money which his father had left him, and the dispenser of dreams appeared to him and named the sum, indicated the place, and specified its purpose, saying that it was [for the redemption] of the second tithe — such an incident once occurred, and they [the Rabbis on that occasion] said: Dreams have no importance for good or ill.

This baraita appears with minor changes in the tosefta of Ma’aser Sheni (Lieberman) 5:9: ‫ “במקום‬,”‫ “כך וכך הן‬:‫ בא איש חלום אמ’ לו‬.‫היה מצטער איכן מעשר שיני של אבה‬ ‫פלוני הן” זה היה מעשה ומצאו שם מעות ובאו ושאלו את חכמים ואמרו הרי‬ .‫אילו חולין שדברי חלומות לא מעלין ולא מורידין‬

If one was wondering about the location of coins in the status of the second tithe [which belonged to his] father, [and] a man came to him in a dream and said, “They are thus and so,” or “They are in such and such a place” – It once occurred that they found coins there [where a vision predicted] and they went to ask the sages [about the status of the coins]. The sages said, “Lo, they are unconsecrated, for the words of a dream have no efficacy.”

In this case, too, the version in the BT is incomplete and therefore even incomprehensible, while the version cited here in the Tosefta is more complete. The BT version brings only the story about the sorrow, the story about the dream, and the explanation about the halachic ruling without the ruling itself. The version in the Tosefta brings the solution of the dream “It once occurred that they found coins there” and the ruling itself: they went to ask the sages [about the status of the coins]. The sages said, “Lo, they are unconsecrated.” There are quite a few Eretz Israel stories of sorrow in the JT. Some of them were presented and discussed previously because they are parallel to stories in the BT. To complete the picture I will

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bring others in following. The following story is brought in the JT, Kiddushin 61b (1:7), and with minor differences in the JT, Peah 15c (1:1). ”‫ר’ זעירא הוה מצטער ואמר “הלואי הוה לי אבא ואימא דאוקרינון ואירת גן עדן‬ ‫כד שמע אילין תרין אולפנייא אמר ”בריך רחמנא דלית לי לא אבא ולא אימא לא‬ ”.‫כרבי טרפון הוינא יכיל עביד ולא כרבי ישמעאל הוינא מקבלה עלוי‬

R. Zeira was distressed, saying, “Would that I had a father and a mother, whom I might honor, and so inherit the Garden of Eden.” When he heard these two teachings of Tarfon and Ishmael, he said, “Blessed be the All-merciful, that I have no father and mother, I could not behave like either R. Tarfon or like R. Ishmael.”

The story of R. Zeira is linked to two stories about the extraordinary honor paid by R. Tarfon and R. Ishmael to their mothers, by submitting to their peculiar caprices. ‫אמו של רבי טרפון ירדה לטייל לתוך חצרה בשבת והלך רבי טרפון והניח שתי ידיו‬ .‫תחת פרסותי’ והיתה מהלכת עליהן עד שהגיעה למיטתה‬ ‫פעם אחת חלה ונכנסו חכמי’ לבקרו אמרה להן “התפללו על טרפון בני שהוא נוהג‬ ”.‫בי כבוד יותר מדאי‬ ‫ אמרו לה “אפי’ עושה כן אלף‬.‫אמרו לה “מהו עבד ליך?” ותניית להון עובדא‬ ”.‫אלפים עדיין לחצי כבוד שאמרה תורה לא הגיע‬ ‫אמו של רבי ישמעאל באה וקבלה עליו לרבותינו אמרה להן “געורו בישמעאל בני‬ ”.‫שאינו נוהג בי בכבוד‬ ‫באותה שעה נתכרכמו פניהן של רבותינו אמרו איפש’ לית רבי ישמעאל נוהג‬ ”?‫בכבוד אבתיו אמרו לה “מה עבד ליך‬ ‫אמרה “כדו נפק מבית וועדה אנא בעיא משזגה ריגלוי ומישתי מהן ולא‬ ”‫שביק לי‬ ”.‫אמרו לו “הואיל והוא רצונה הוא כבודה‬

The mother of R. Tarfon went to take a walk in her courtyard on the Sabbath and her slipper fell off. R. Tarfon went and placed his two hands under the soles of her feet, so that she could walk on them until she got to her couch. One time sages went to call on him. She said to them, “Pray for Tarfon, my son, who pays me altogether too much honor.” They said to her, “What does he do for you?” She repeated the story to them. They said to her, “Even if he did a thousand times more than this, he still would not have paid even half of the honor of which the Torah has spoken.” The mother of R. Ishmael went and complained to the rabbis about him. She said, “Rebuke Ishmael, my son, because he does not pay respect to me.” At that moment, the faces of the rabbis grew dark. They said, “Is it at all possible

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that R. Ishmael does not pay honor to his parents?” They said to her, “What did he do to you?” She said, “When he comes home from the council house, I want to wash his feet in water and drink the water, and he does not let me do it.” They said, “Since that is what she deems to be the honor she wants for herself, that indeed is just the kind of honor he must pay to her.”

R. Zeira was distressed that he was an orphan and could not pay honor to his father and mother, thus earning a place in the Garden of Eden. When he found out about the deeds of R. Tarfon and R. Ishmael, and understood the significance of what honoring one’s parents entailed, he thanked God for his status as an orphan, since he realized that he was unable to meet those standards. The focus of this story is not the distress of R. Zeira but rather his sobering from it, and accordingly, the narrator does not expand upon the description of sorrow and makes do with a laconic report of its existence. Moreover, R. Zeira’s distress is not connected to the world of Torah or to his status as a sage but rather to his inability to observe a commandment that every person is obligated to perform. In both places in the JT, a saying is cited that tells of a sage who was distressed that he was unable to see an example of a commandment being performed by another sage in order to learn from it. The saying is brought with minor variations in Yoma 32c (1:1) and in Megillah 75c (4:12): .‫רבי יוסה הוה מצטער דלא חמא לולא דרבי אילעא דהוה עביד מן דעתון דכל רבנן‬

R. Jose was distressed that he did not see the chicken coop of R. Ila’a which was built according to the opinion of all of the rabbis.

The context is the discussion regarding structures that require a mezuzah to be affixed, and the decision that chicken coops — that is, structures in which geese and chickens are raised — which are built one on top of the other require a mezuzah. R. Jose was distressed that he did not see the coop of R. Ila’a which was built according to what the rabbis had prescribed, because if he had seen it, he would have known precisely how to perform the commandment of affixing a mezuzah to a chicken coop.

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Until here we have seen the sources from the JT that deal with sorrow which is caused by an inability to perform a commandment or law perfectly. Other sources deal with the distress of a scholar over what seems to him to be an error in deciding the law. Such a case is the following story that is brought in Ta’anit 66a (2:13) and in Megillah 69d (1:4).33 In Ta’anit 2:9, the rabbis and R. Jose were divided over the issue of which days are set aside as fasts of the community: ‫אין גוזרין תענית על הציבור בתחילה (“בתחילה” = שלוש תעניות ראשונות שבית‬ ‫הדין גוזר משהגיע חדש כסלו ולא ירדו גשמים) בחמישי שלא להפקיע‬ ‫ אלא שלוש תעניות הראשונות שני וחמישי ושני ושלוש שניות‬.‫השערים‬ ‫(שלוש תעניות נוספות שבית הדין גוזר אם לאחר השלוש הראשונות לא‬ ‫ (אם היו גוזרים ביום חמישי כשהכל‬.‫ חמישי שני וחמישי‬,)‫ירדו גשמים‬ ‫ אין גוזרים‬,‫ לכן‬.‫ היו החנוונים מפקיעים את השערים‬,‫קונים צרכי שבת‬ ‫תענית בתחילה אלא ביום שני שבו לא קונים הרבה ובינתיים בית הדין‬ ‫ רבי יוסי אומר כשם שאין הראשונות בחמישי‬.)‫קובעים את השער למזונות‬ .‫כך לא שניות ולא אחרונות‬

We do not ordain upon the community a fast to commence on a Thursday in order not to cause a rise in the market prices. Hence the first three fasts 33

Yebamot, 4:2 (4:1) brings the story in the context of a dispute over how long a female convert must wait until she can marry, and there the ending is slightly different: “The proselyte, the captive, and the slave woman who were redeemed, or converted, or freed, have to wait three months, the words of R. Judah. R. Jose says, they do not have to wait….Simeon bar Abba said, there came a case before R. Johanan and he instructed following R. Jose. R. Eleazar was sorry about this; he said, one disregards the anonymous [Mishnah] and follows an isolated opinion! He found that R. Hiyya stated the saying of R. Simeon in the name of R. Meir. He found that R. Hiyya stated it in the name of R. Meir. He said, the old man certainly understands the chapters about bills of divorce.” The conclusion drawn by R. Simeon, that “one disregards the anonymous [Mishnah] and follows an isolated opinion,” is rather problematic, since the dispute in the baraita is between two isolated opinions, R. Judah and R. Jose, and it seems to be referring to the words of the sages in the Mishnah, Yebamot 4:10: “The widow of a deceased childless brother must not perform halitzah nor contract levirate marriage before three months have passed by. And similarly, also, all other widows may not be betrothed or be taken in marriage until three months have gone by: whether they be virgins or no longer virgins, whether they be divorced or widows, whether they were married or betrothed.”

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(the first three fasts that the court decrees after the month of Kislev has begun and rain has not yet fallen) are held [in this order], Monday, Thursday, and Monday; the second three additional fasts (that the court decrees if after the first three, rain has still not fallen), Thursday, Monday, and Thursday; (if they decreed Thursday as a fast when everyone buys food for Shabbat, then the prices would soar. Therefore they do not decree a fast on Thursday but rather on Monday when people do not make large purchases, and in the meanwhile, the court can establish the price of foodstuffs) R. Jose says: just as the first three [fasts] should not commence on a Thursday, so too neither the second [three] nor the last [seven].

The gemara brings testimony from R. Simeon bar Abba that R. Johanan was asked to rule regarding the issue of decreeing the fasts, and he ruled as an isolated opinion in line with R. Jose, as follows: ”?‫ אמר “שבקין סתמא ועבדין כיחידייא‬,‫והוה ר’ אלעזר מצטער‬ ‫אשכח תני לה רבי חייה בשם רבי מאיר‬ ”.‫ “יאות סבא ידע פרקי גרמי‬:‫כד שמע דתני לה ר’ חיא בשם ר’ מאיר אמר‬

Now R. Eleazar was distressed at this, and he said, “Do they then abandon the statement of the law given anonymously [hence, in the name of the sages in general] and favor the statement of the law made by an individual [hence a minority]?” Then a teaching turned up that R. Hiyya had taught the matter in the name of R. Meir. When he heard that R. Hiyya had taught in the name of R. Meir, he said, “That is all right then. The elder [Johanan] knows his lessons very well”, [for he realized that though the passage was given without named authorities, in fact it represented the view of one named authority].

R. Eleazar was distressed at what appeared to him to be the incorrect judgment of R. Johanan who decided the law according to a single opinion in opposition to the majority opinion. However, when he heard that R. Hiyya taught in a baraita that the opinion cited in the Mishna as anonymous was the individual opinion of R. Meir, he realized that there was no reason for his distress. For he understood that R. Johanan knew that the Mishna is a dispute between R. Jose and R. Meir and he ruled like R. Jose. In JT, Megillah 69d (1:1), an identical story is brought in the context of a dispute over the days when fasting is prohibited. An additional short

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account regarding the distress of a scholar over an error in deciding the law is brought in Niddah 49b (1:4) whereby the decisor of the law himself is distressed over his own ruling: Who is regarded as ‘an old woman (who contaminates Tahorot that she tou-ched only from the moment that she saw blood)’? Any woman over whom three ‘onahs have passed near the time of her old age (three menstrual periods where she did not see any blood). R. Eliezer ruled: for any woman (not only an old woman) over whom three ‘onahs have passed, it suffices (to reckon her period of uncleanness from) the time of her (observing a flow) . R. Jose ruled: for a woman in pregnancy and a nursing woman over whom three ‘onahs have passed it suffices (to reckon their period of uncleanness from) the time of their (observation of the flow). .‫פעם אחת הורה רבי כרבי לעזר והיה מצטער‬

The gemara comments on this Mishnah: On one occasion Rabbi Judah Hanasi gave instructions in accord with the opinion of R. Eleazar, and he was distressed about it.

In the discussion that takes place further on regarding this subject, two possible reasons are offered for Rabbi Judah Hanasi’s distress. A. That in this case, even adding Rabbi Judah Hanasi’s opinion to that of R. Eleazar still leaves them in a minority position vis a vis the Rabbis. B. That R. Eleazar gave his opinion as a temporary order regarding a specific case and not as a principled position. All of the sources brought previously from the JT report distress and sorrow experienced by the sages. But the distress is not central to the narrative, neither in terms of subject nor concept, and apart from mentioning its existence, there is no other handling of it.34 34

Although in Niddah 29b (1:4) R. Mana is surprised at Rabbi Judah Hanasi’s distress since “When he gave instructions in accordance with the lenient rulings of R. Meir and the lenient ruling of R. Jose, he was not in distress. So here should he have been distressed?” However, the main reason for his surprise is not the distress but rather the contradiction in Rabbi Judah Hanasi’s behavior when deciding the law.

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In contrast, the two stories which will be brought in following focus on the distress of the protagonists and describe it in relative detail. I will begin with a story at whose center is a sage who was grieved over his obligation under law following a legal process that seemed to him improper. The story is brought in the JT, Sanhedrin 20d (3:9): ‫רבי ירמיה הוה ליה דין עם חד בר נש וקבלון לשהדייא דלא באפוי דרבי ירמיה‬ .‫וחייבון לרבי ירמיה‬ ”?‫והוה יתיב ומצטער “איפשר מקבלין עדים בלא בעל דין‬ ‫רבי הונא רבי פינחס רבי חזקיה חוקוק לא עלון בפירקא בההוא יומא דחק רבי‬ ‫הונא ועאל ושכח רבי ירמיה מצטער ואמר “איפשר מקבלין עדים בלא בעל‬ ”?‫דין אפילו עמהן באותה העיר‬ ”.‫ ”כן חמת דעתון דרבנן‬:‫אמר ליה‬

R. Jeremiah had a matter under litigation with someone, and the court accepted testimony in the absence of R. Jeremiah, and they declared R. Jeremiah to be liable. R. Jeremiah was sitting and sorrowful: “Is it possible that they accept testimony in the absence of the litigant?” R. Huna, R. Pinhas, R. Hezekiah did not go into the schoolhouse for the lesson on that day. R. Huna made his way in and found R. Jeremiah in a state of sorrow and Jeremiah said to him, “Is it possible that they accept testimony in the absence of a litigant, even if the litigant is there with them in the same town?” He said to him, “I have seen that the rabbis indeed hold that position.”

This story is different than the anecdotal stories that were brought previously in that it does emphasize the sorrow of R. Jeremiah and focuses the plot on him. The proof that witnesses are accepted for testimony when the litigant is absent and that a verdict is even given on the basis of their testimony is found already in the first line of the story, while the plot that comes after this sentence is entirely devoted to R. Jeremiah’s sorrow. The narrator is not content with giving a dry account of R. Jeremiah’s sorrow. He paints it in vivid colors by using the following devices: A. The expression “R. Jeremiah was sitting and sorrowful” conveys the sense of a prolonged situation reminiscent of the descriptions of sorrow in the BT stories. B. The description “‫[ ”דחק ונכנס‬made

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his way in] which refers to R. Huna creates a sense of the urgent need to help R. Jeremiah. C. The repetition of the description of R. Jeremiah’s sorrow and his claim of the miscarriage of justice in his case. These elements intensify the effect of R. Jeremiah’s sorrow and place him at the center of the plot. Another story that focuses on the sorrow of a hassid (pious man) from Ashkelon is brought in Hagigah 16d (2:2):35 ‫ דמך‬.‫תרין חסידין הוון באשקלון אכלין כחדא ושתיי כחדא ולעיי באוריתא כחדא‬ ‫ מית בריה דמעין מוכס ובטלת כל מדינתא‬,‫חד מינהון ולא איתגמל ליה חסד‬ ‫ אמר “ווי דלית לשנאיהון‬.‫ שורי ההוא חסידא מצטער‬.‫מיגמול ליה חסד‬ ‫” איתחמי ליה בחילמא ואמר ליה “לא תיבזי בני מריך דין עבד‬.‫דישראל כלום‬ ”.‫חדא חובא ואזל בה ודין עבד חדא טיבו ואזל בה‬

Two pious people in Ashekelon ate together and drank together and studied Torah together. When it happened that one of them died and he was not treated charitably [given burial services], the son of the customs officer died and then the entire city left its occupations to treat him charitably [arrange his funeral]. The pious man [who was still alive] began to feel sorrow. He said, “Woe, that the enemies of Israel have nothing” [he meant Israel but to camouflage his intent, he said ‘enemies of Israel]. He [the dead person] appeared to him in a dream and said, “Do not disgrace the children of your master [i.e. the Jewish people]. A person transgressed and atonement was extracted [in that they did not treat him properly], and this one performed one commandment and he was rewarded [they arranged his funeral].”

The conceptual center of this story is the balance between good deeds and transgressions which may occasionally be hidden from the human eye, even from the closest observer. However the pivot of the plot is the sorrow of the pious man from Ashkelon when his friend died and he was not treated charitably. The opening sentence of the story shows the close relationship between the two pious men from Ashkelon who acted as one: They “ate together and drank together and studied Torah together.” Afterwards, the behavior of the community upon the death of one of the two pious men is contrasted with its behavior upon the death of the customs official’s son. These two elements explain the background for the sorrow and rage of the surviving friend. The opening sentence: 35

As part of a larger story about the leadership of the Sanhedrin by Simeon b. Shetah.

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‘ate together and drank together and studied Torah together ’ describes a close partnership, a kind of unity that encompasses their entire way of life. Here it is worth noting that the sentence begins with eating and drinking and ends with Torah study. The two pious men are presented as people who shared an entire life with each other, of which study was only one component. The continuation of the story, describing the community’s behavior in two cases of death, contains the explanation for the surviving friend’s anger at the community, which in his view treated the customs official’s son kindly out of fear of his father. It is interesting to compare the sorrow of the hero of this story over the death of his friend with the sorrow of R. Johanan, the hero of the story in BT Baba Mezi’a 84a cited previously, over the death of his friend Resh Lakish, although the stories are not parallel either in terms of content or in terms of the personalities depicted in each. Comparing the aspect of sorrow in the two stories gives rise to the following differences: A. In the BT, there is an intensification of Resh Lakish’s sorrow while in the JT, the description of sorrow and rage are minimal. B. R. Johanan grieves over the loss of an astute disciple while the pious man grieves over the loss of a comrade. C. R. Johanan grieves over the impairment to the study and elucidation of the law, while the pious man grieves for his friend who was not accorded kindness in death. It is appropriate to begin the summary and conclusions for this chapter with this comparison, although it is not between parallel stories, because the differences that emerge from it represent the differences between the stories of sorrow and distress brought in the BT and those brought in the JT. The style used by the BT to intensify the description of R. Johanan’s distress over the death of Resh Lakish, “R. Johanan was plunged into deep grief” and “He cried thus until his mind was turned,” is found, at one level or another, also in other stories of sorrow in the BT. In several of the stories, the verb ‘mitzta’er’ is integrated into descriptions of prolonged emotional suffering, such as “All his lifetime the righteous man would grieve,” “Rabbi Judah Hanasi was sitting and sorrowful,” and “He was plunged into grief.”

S o r r o w ( M i t z t a’e r )

It is also notable that for the sorrow in the BT story about R. Johanan and the death of Resh Lakish, the narrator uses the verb ‘mitzta’er’ and halsha da’ateh’ alternately to describe sorrow or distress, from which one may understand its different uses. According to the context in the story, one may conclude that the verb ‘mitzta’er’ is used to describe prolonged sorrow while the use of halsha da’ateh is used to show an extreme yet short-lived reaction to a distressing event. In contrast with an intensification of sorrow in the BT stories, the style prevalent in the JT stories is minimalist, and most of these stories indicate sorrow by using the verb ‘mitzta’er’ only.36 It may be contended that the stylistic difference is negligible and is not necessarily characteristic of the stories of sorrow, for the BT’s style is to describe events elaborately and exaggeratedly while the JT’s approach is to be concise and terse in description. It is harder to ignore the distinction between the causes for R. Johanan’s sorrow and those of the pious man from Ashkelon, which demonstrates an essential difference between the reasons for sorrow expressed in the BT stories and those expressed in the JT stories. According to the story in the BT, the death of Resh Lakish causes R. Johanan distress because of the decline in study which is anticipated due to the absence of his disciple, who would raise incisive objections to his explanations. His sorrow over his diminished ability to study Torah at a high level and on the scale that he had been accustomed to was so great that he found no resolution except death. This story is a marker of the most extreme position of reasons for sorrow that are mentioned in the stories in the BT.37 The overwhelming majority of stories tell of Eretz Israel 36

Except for the baraita with the story of Nicanor who was forced to cast into the sea one of the doors which he had intended to bring to the Temple in Jerusalem, in which it is actually the Eretz Israel version which amplifies the distress more than the Babylonian version. In JT Yoma 40b (3:8) it is written: “He was weeping and grieving until he arrived at the harbor of Jaffa.” And in Tosefta Yoma 2:4: “He would continue to grieve until he arrived at the port of Jaffa,” while in the BT Yoma 38a, it merely states: “He was deeply grieved about the other door.” 37 Except for the story about the distress felt by Nicanor (Yoma 38a), and the story of the distress of the person whose father had left him money

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rabbis who were caused distress by an event that was connected to their status as sages and Torah scholars. R. Tarfon was distressed all of his lifetime because in order to benefit himself, he had identified himself as an eminent Torah scholar, and as I have already pointed out, this particular commentary on making use of the crown of Torah is only found in the BT version of the story, while according to the JT version, R. Tarfon’s making use of the honor of the Torah means that he used his power to decide a halachic ruling. Rabbi Judah Hanasi was grieved that he gave food to someone who appeared to him to be unlearned and who never studied Torah, i.e. who did not belong to the class of scholars. R. Johanan was greatly distressed that he was unable to ordain some of his disciples (as I have already pointed out, in the Jerusalem parallel which tells a similar story of R. Joshua b. Levi, the description of the sorrow is minimalist). And finally, R. Johanan was grieved unto death at the loss of his pupil Resh Lakish, since his absence impaired R. Johanan’s level of Torah study.38 The stories of sorrow in the JT, except for one that conveys a more radical ‘bet midrash-oriented’ message which has R. Akiva reporting that he saw a ship sinking at sea and he was distressed specifically on account of the one Torah scholar who was on board,39 are not connected to Torah study or the status of the scholars. Two stories tell of scholars who were distressed because they could not perform a commandment or could not perform it scrupulously. One tells of R. Zeira who grieves that he has no parents whom he (Sanhedrin 30a), both of which are told in baraitot brought in the BT. I did not include the stories of R. Johanan who was distressed that he was unable to appoint some of his disciples as judges, and the parallel story in the JT about R. Joshua b. Levi, for a similar reason. It is not clear if the distress of R. Johanan and R. Joshua b. Levi is connected with the loss to the world of Torah scholarship or to their inability to help their disciples earn a livelihood. 39 This narrative is not discussed in this chapter because its subject is not distress but the drowning and rescue. See the quote from the JT, Yebamot 15d (16:4) in note 30. The story is brought to justify the law regarding a person who drowned in water without a visible end. However, for our purposes, what is important is the phrasing of R. Akiva’s words: “I grieved for the Torah scholar who was onboard that ship” according to which his grief was for the scholar and not for the other passengers who were drowning. 38

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can honor and thus earn his place in the garden of Eden, another tells of R. Jose who is distressed that he cannot learn from R. Ila’a’s performance of a commandment. Two other stories tell of the sorrow of the scholars over rulings made in the court of law which seemed mistaken to them. R. Eleazar is distressed over a ruling that he deems to have been made on a solitary opinion, and R. Jeremiah is distressed over his liability being decided according to an improper court procedure — accepting testimony in his absence. And finally, one story tells of the sorrow of a pious man from Ashkelon over the death of his close friend who was not accorded a proper burial by the community. The fact that all of the stories tell of Eretz Israel amoraim (from the middle of the Amoraic period), the laconic nature of the narratives, and the different causes of sorrow being described all support the presumption that they are close to being reports of actual events. The last story about the pious man should be excepted from this category, since it seems like a didactic tale whose conceptual direction is the weighing of good deeds and transgressions and the balance between them. This is different in the BT stories which all focus on the distress experienced by the Eretz Israel sages remote in time and space from the narrators. These take on the aspect of literary creations with a didactic agenda which were created in the culture of the Babylonian bet midrash. Therefore, one should not be surprised that the emotional ups and downs attributed to the sages were always associated with the Torah world and their status in it.

53

Ch apter Two

Extreme Sorrow (Hulshat da’at)

An examination of over twenty narratives in the Babylonian Talmud which contain the phrase ‘halash da’ateh’ or ‘halsha da’ateh’1 in their description of an occurrence that befell a person due to deep sorrow elicits a series of conclusions relating to the causes and expressions of this emotion. At the beginning of the chapter I will propose a classification of these narratives into two groups, and I will present the general conclusions that I have reached from collecting and comparing information that is found in the stories in each group. In the main part of the chapter, I shall discuss in detail both individual stories as well as categories of stories in order to establish and explain the conclusions presented at the outset. Classification and conclusions I have categorized the stories as follows: A. Stories that tell of hulshat da’at that besets famous sages within the bet midrash [study hall], in a situation of learning or handing down rulings in Jewish law. In all of the stories that belong to this group, the reason for the hulshat da’at is associated with the teaching and/or study. B. Stories that give accounts of hulshat da’at that beset a person, not necessarily a well-known sage, outside the study hall. 1

Translator’s note: All translated passages from the Babylonian Talmud are taken from the Soncino Edition, which provides a variety of translations for the term hulshat da’at, from feeling aggrieved, affronted or disappointed to feeling profound sorrow, depression, or dejection. Because of this diversity, I have used the transliterated form along with Soncino’s translation to it, to indicate that the same Hebrew expression is being used.

E x t r e me S o r r o w ( H u l s h a t d a’a t)

In five stories of this kind, there are accounts of hulshat da’at whose cause was associated with Torah study, and in three others, the cause is a fierce longing to merit Divine love. In five additional stories, the reason for hulshat da’at is not related directly to Torah study; however, in four of them, it is related by implication and the fifth tells of hulshat da’at which besets a woman. The finding that emerges from an examination of all of these stories is that in the Babylonian Talmud, the emotion of extreme sorrow and despair known as ‘hulshat da’at’ is associated in most cases with sages and connected to their spiritual world. This finding is corroborated by several stories from among those classified above which are distinctive in that they present two occurrences which are differentiated from each other: one takes place outside the study hall and one inside, and the events are arranged in hierarchical form, so that the sorrow experienced by the sage in the event outside the study hall is less acute than that which is experienced inside. This hierarchy shows that in the Babylonian Talmud, the study hall is perceived as a place where both scholars and their students are subjected to situations of extreme emotion, and thus it is understandable that there are so many tales of hulshat da’at in situations of study or halachic rulings. Another finding emerges from a study of five of the narratives of sages in which female characters play a central role. In four of these stories, the female protagonists are active outside of the study hall, and in another story, which takes place entirely in the study hall, the female character bursts into the study hall in the second part of the plot. In all of these stories, both the causes for the outburst of sorrow and its external manifestations are completely different in the female characters than in the male characters. The world of the women is not the world of Torah scholarship, but it is rather the human world in which their emotions are rooted. This distinction between women and men with regard to hulshat da’at is given explicit expression in the response of Abaye to the question of Jacob ben Abbuha. R. Jacob b. Abbuha2 asked Abaye: ‘I, for instance, for whom 2

In the Oxford mss. in the Bodleian Library “Jacob bar Abba,” and in several

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my father pours out a cup [of wine] and my mother mixes it on my returning from the school, what am I to do’? ‘Accept it from your mother,’ he replied: ‘but not from your father; for since he is a scholar, he may feel affronted [halsha da’ateh].’3 The difference between the sorrow of women and that of men will be elaborated upon in the last chapter which will refer to the above stories as well as to additional ones. Up to this point, I have dealt with the classification of stories and several general conclusions that emerge from it. Now the emphasis will shift to the details of the stories in an attempt to reveal additional insights regarding the emotion of sorrow, its causes and modes of expression in the world of the sages and in the world of those — primarily women — whose lives were outside the study hall.4

Stories of hulshat da’at that occurred inside the study hall The first story to be discussed is cited from the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Ta’anit 9a: .‫רב הונא בר מנוח ורב שמואל בר אידי ורב חייא מווסתניא הוו שכיחי קמיה דרבא‬ ‫ כל אימת דהוה אמר להו שמעתא‬.‫כי נח נפשיה דרבא אתו לקמיה דרב פפא‬ .‫ חלש דעתיה‬.‫ולא הוה מסתברא להו הוו מרמזיה אהדדי‬ ‫” למחר כי הוו מיפטרו‬.‫אקרויי בחלמיה (זכריה יא) “ואכחיד את שלשת הרעים‬ ”.‫ “ליזול רבנן בשלמא‬:‫מיניה אמר להו‬ sources there is indeed a Babylonian Amora by this name who was the pupil of Abaye and Rava and lived in the fifth generation. 3 BT, Kiddushin 31b. (Soncino translation). 4 Here it is appropriate to add two remarks regarding the order of topics and the accompanying information: A. The stories are not presented according to the chronological order of the protagonists but by thematic and conceptual context. B. Information regarding the time and activity of well-known sages is not provided, apart from cases where there is doubt about the identity of the sage, or where the information may contribute to an understanding of the subject being analyzed.

E x t r e me S o r r o w ( H u l s h a t d a’a t)

R. Huna b. Manoah5 and R. Samuel b. Idi6 and R. Hiyya of Wastanya7 were wont to attend the discourses of Rava. When Rava died they came to those of R. Papa and whenever he expounded to them a law which did not appeal to them they winked at one another, and thus halsha da’ateh[of R. Papa]. In a dream he was made to recite the verse, ‘And I cut off the three shepherds.’ (Zech. 11) When next day these disciples took leave of him he said to them: “Go in peace.”

I have chosen to begin with this story even though according to the names of the sages mentioned it is a late story because it is a painful story that describes extreme states of sorrow and distress which are not offered any remedy. The plot extends over a backdrop of three scenes, the first of which is realistic and commonplace, the second is abstract, and the third is again realistic yet unusual and puzzling. The first scene has a description of how after the death of Rava, three of his pupils moved to the academy of R. Papa, and implicitly expressed their reservations at his method of teaching and making halachic [relating to Jewish law] decisions. The affront taken by a teacher whose pupils refuse to separate from a previous, venerated teacher is a common, well-known emotion. But the second scene, which deals with the dream of R. Papa, depicts the enormity of the insult he experienced. In his dream the three pupils are replaced by three shepherds who, according to the prophecy of Zechariah, are sentenced to death by Divine verdict.8 Since the dream is seen as 5

Fifth generation in Babylon. He is mentioned several times in the BT: he says in the name of R. Aha brei d’R. Ika, proposes a problem to R. Papa, raises a difficulty over the words of Resh Lakish and of Shmuel, and gives a reason for a saying of R. Huna. According to H. Albeck, Mavo letalmudim [Introduction to the Talmuds], Tel Aviv 1967, p. 406. 6 Fifth generation in Babylon. He is also mentioned in Pesahim 10a, as one who sent a halacha in the name of his brother Hananyah. According to Albeck, ibid, p. 423. 7 Fifth generation in Babylon. He is also mentioned in Zebahim 112a, where his reasoning is cited, ibid, p. 408. 8 The prophecy, a parable about shepherds, is quite obscure. 11:8 states: “And I cut off the three shepherds in one month; for My soul became impatient of them, and their soul also loathed Me” apparently alludes to killing them, or removing them from their position of leadership. It may be that the reference is to the high priests serving on behalf of the

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expressing the sub-conscious mind, R. Papa’s dream in which the pupils are likened to the three evil shepherds who will be put to death by God Himself, expresses not only his wish that they die but his belief in the justice of this wish.9 The third scene which returns us to the world of reality is the most terrible and puzzling of all because R. Papa is portrayed as someone who openly wishes for the death of his pupils. In any case, this is at least according to the interpretation given by R. Levi b. Hitha10 from his words of farewell to them. In tractate Mo’ed Katan, 29a the following is quoted from R. Levi b. Hitha: One bidding farewell to the dead should not say unto him ‘Go unto peace,’ but ‘Go in peace’; one bidding farewell to the living [friend] should not say to him ‘Go in peace,’ but ‘Go unto peace.’ One bidding farewell to the dead should not say to him, ‘Go unto peace,’ because it is said [unto Abraham]: ‘But thou shalt go to thy fathers in Peace,’ thou shalt be buried. One bidding farewell to the living [friend] should not say to him, ‘Go in peace,’ but ‘Go unto peace’(Ex. 4), because there was David [who] said to Absalom (II Sam 2), ‘Go in peace,’ and he went and was hanged. Whereas, Jethro said to Moses, (Ex. 4) ‘Go unto peace,’ [and] he went and succeeded.

The interpretation of the words of R. Papa according to this source indicates that he consciously wished for their death, and moreover, that he added his openly articulated wish to his hope, expressing his inner-felt desire in words. Syrian regime during the Hasmonean era who were removed from their positions after serving for a short time: Jason, Menelaus and Lysimachus. However, it is possible that the allusion is to the kingdom of Judea and the shepherds are Josiah, Jehoahaz, and Jehoyakim, or Jehoahaz, Jehoyakim, and Zedekiah (according to the commentary of A. S. Hartom, Tel Aviv 1989). 9 The use of the dream as a device for revealing the sub-conscious is found in several stories in the Babylonian Talmud, see e.g.: Berachot 28a (this story will be presented and discussed later); Yoma 22b; Ta’anit 24b. 10 Fourth generation in the Land of Israel. Creator of Aggadah. In the BT, an additional aggadic teaching of his is found in Berachot 64a. According to Albeck, ibid, p. 343.

E x t r e me S o r r o w ( H u l s h a t d a’a t)

Now the question arises: What caused R. Papa this extreme emotional distress? For after all, a pupil’s devotion to the memory of a teacher who has passed away and the reluctance to accept the authority of another teacher are not rare phenomena. Moreover, the pupils who are the protagonists of our story expressed their reservations about their new teacher R. Papa only by allusion and not flagrantly or disrespectfully. It seems that this story is an extreme demonstration of the atmosphere of tension and competition that prevailed in the study hall. It is possible that the pupils of R. Papa expressed their innocent disagreement with what he said and it is possible that they were expressing disingenuous mockery. In any case, for him these insinuations grew in dimension and became powerful ridicule because of the tension he was experiencing due to his aspiration to surpass his renowned mentor Rava, along with the knowledge that his pupils thought that he had not yet reached that stature. The competition to achieve greatness in Torah scholarship overwhelmed R. Papa to the point where even though his rival Rava was no longer alive and he was competing against his memory only, the sense of having failed caused him extreme sorrow and fierce animosity towards the three pupils who seemed to him to be involved in his failure. The plot of the story ends with the farewell scene between R. Papa and his three pupils, leaving the reader ignorant of their fate. It is unclear whether his wish for their demise was realized or not. It may be assumed that the end of the plot was not important to the author of the story, and he deliberately chose to conclude with the dramatic farewell scene that gave ultimate expression to the negative intensity of the power struggles that periodically took place in the study hall. This ending, the structure of the story, and the use of literary devices11 show that we are confronting a literary creation containing implied criticism which was composed on the basis of a fairly routine occurrence in the world of the sages. 11

Number 3 is used as a literary device: the story has three scenes; the literary device: three pupils, the correspondence between the number of pupils and the three evil shepherds mentioned in the biblical verse, and the use of the dream to convey the sub-conscious.

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The Babylonian Talmud has two stories that are similar in idea to this story of R. Papa and the pupils of Rava but different in two respects: A. The protagonist — R. Johanan — is not in a state of competition for his status in the Torah world.12 B. The plot ends with a death. Both stories to be discussed at length here are given as secondary stories within two longer and more complex13 stories that have been dealt with in the research literature.14 Here I will deal only with those passages which are relevant to our topic. The first story is brought in Baba Kama 117a within a longer narrative concerned with the escape of R. Kahana from Babylon to the land of Israel. After R. Kahana15 had taken violent action against a person who insulted his teacher Rav (and apparently, had caused that person’s death), he was smuggled by Rav to the yeshiva of R. Johanan in the land of Israel and he pledged not to ask R. Johanan questions for a period of seven years. Upon arriving in the land of Israel, he met Resh Lakish with whom he was able to debate matters pertaining to Torah because his promise to Rav applied only to R. Johanan. From the scholarly discussion, Resh Lakish was able to assess R. Kahana’s capabilities in Torah study. This quote begins at that point: ”.‫ לעיין מר במתיבתא דלמחר‬,‫ “ארי עלה מבבל‬:‫אזל ריש לקיש א”ל לרבי יוחנן‬ 12

R. Johanan is R. Johanan b. Napha, the founder and head of the yeshiva at Tiberias, the greatest Amora of Eretz Israel of the second generation, who was guided by the teachings of R. Judah Hanasi. He educated a large number of pupils and had a tremendous influence over the way of life of Jewish communities in the land of Israel and Babylon. According to Iggeret R. Sherira Gaon, (Wagshal ed.) Jerusalem 1991, p. 82, and The Encyclopedia of Talmudic Sages and Geonim, M. Margaliot ed., Tel-Aviv 1959 (Hebrew). 13 According to the elements of content and style, it appears that these stories are corresponding with each other, i.e. they seem to be structured in the same narrative tradition 14 On this story in Baba Kama 117a and its parallel versions, see the article by Shama Friedman, “The Further Adventures of Rav Kahana Between Babylonia and Palestine” in Peter Schafer ed., The Talmud Yerushalmi and Greco-Roman Culture 3, Tubingen 2002. See also references there to other studies. 15 In the Babylonian Talmud there are four Amoraim of this name. It appears that the Amora mentioned here is the second Rav Kahana.

E x t r e me S o r r o w ( H u l s h a t d a’a t) ‫ שמעתתא‬,‫ אמר שמעתתא ולא אקשי‬,‫למחר אותבוה בדרא קמא קמיה דר’ יוחנן‬ ‫ א”ל רבי יוחנן‬.‫ אנחתיה אחורי שבע דרי עד דאותביה בדרא בתרא‬,‫ולא אקשי‬ ”!‫ “ארי שאמרת נעשה שועל‬:‫לר”ש בן לקיש‬ ,‫” קם אכרעיה‬.‫אמר “יהא רעוא דהני שבע דרי להוו חילוף שבע שנין דאמר לי רב‬ ‫ אמר‬,‫ אמר שמעתתא ואקשי” אוקמיה בדרא קמא‬,‫ “נהדר מר ברישא‬:‫א”ל‬ ‫ שלפי ליה חדא בסתרקא‬,‫ ר’ יוחנן הוה יתיב אשבע בסתרקי‬.‫שמעתתא ואקשי‬ ‫ עד דשלפי ליה כולהו בסתרקי מתותיה‬,‫ אמר שמעתתא ואקשי ליה‬,‫מתותיה‬ .‫עד דיתיב על ארעא‬ ‫ “דלו לי עיני ואחזייה” דלו‬:‫ אמר להו‬,‫רבי יוחנן גברא סבא הוה ומסרחי גביניה‬ ‫ חלש‬,‫ סבר אחוך קמחייך ביה‬,‫ חזא דפרטיה שפוותיה‬,‫ליה במכחלתא דכספא‬ .‫דעתיה ונח נפשיה‬ ”?‫ “חזיתו לבבלאה היכי עביד‬:‫למחר אמר להו רבי יוחנן לרבנן‬ ”.‫ “דרכיה הכי‬:‫אמרו ליה‬ ‫ פתח פומיך ויכנס‬,‫ עכנא‬,‫ “עכנא‬:‫ א”ל‬,‫ חזא דהוה הדרא ליה עכנא‬,‫על לגבי מערתא‬ ‫ “יכנס תלמיד‬.‫ “יכנס חבר אצל חבר” ולא פתח‬.‫הרב אצל תלמיד” ולא פתח‬ ‫ “אי הוה ידענא דדרכיה דמר‬:‫ א”ל‬.‫ בעא רחמי ואוקמיה‬,‫אצל הרב” פתח ליה‬ ”.‫ השתא ליתי מר בהדן‬,‫הכי לא חלשא דעתי‬ ,‫ לא אזילנא‬- ‫ ואי לא‬,‫ “אי מצית למיבעי רחמי דתו לא שכיבנא אזילנא‬:‫א”ל‬ ”.‫הואיל וחליף שעתא חליף‬ .‫שייליה כל ספיקא דהוה ליה ופשטינהו ניהליה‬,‫ אוקמיה‬,‫תייריה‬ ”.‫ דילהון היא‬,‫ “דילכון אמרי‬:‫היינו דאמר ר’ יוחנן‬

Resh Lakish went and said to R. Johanan: “A lion has come up from Babylon; let the Master therefore look very carefully into tomorrow’s lecture.” On the morrow R. Kahana was seated on the first row of disciples before R. Johanan, but as the latter made one statement and the former did not raise any difficulty, another statement, and the former raised no difficulty, R. Kahana was put back through the seven rows until he remained seated upon the very last row. R. Johanan thereupon said to R. Simeon b. Lakish: “The lion you mentioned turns out to be a [mere] fox.” R. Kahana thereupon whispered [in prayer]: “May it be the will [of Heaven] that these seven rows be in the place of the seven years mentioned by Rav.” He thereupon immediately stood on his feet and said to R. Johanan: “Will the Master please start the lecture again from the beginning.” As soon as the latter made a statement [on a matter of law], R. Kahana pointed out a difficulty, and so also when R. Johanan subsequently made further statements, for which he was placed again on the first row. R. Johanan was sitting upon seven cushions. Whenever he made a statement against which a difficulty was pointed out, one cushion was pulled out from under him, [and so it went on until] all the cushions were pulled out from under him and he remained seated upon the ground. As R. Johanan was then a very old man and his eyelashes were overhanging he said to them, “Lift up my eyes for me as I want to see him.” So they lifted up

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his eyelids with silver pincers. He saw that R. Kahana’s lips were parted and thought that he was laughing at him. He felt aggrieved [hulsha da’ateh] and in consequence the soul of R. Kahana went to rest. On the next day R. Johanan said to our Rabbis, “Have you noticed how the Babylonian was making [a laughing-stock of us]?” But they said to him, “This was his natural appearance.” He thereupon went to the cave [of R. Kahana’s grave] and saw a snake coiled round it. He said: “Snake, snake, open thy mouth and let the Master go in to the disciple.” But the snake did not open its mouth. He then said: “Let the colleague go in to [his] associate!” But it still did not open [its mouth, until he said,] ‘Let the disciple enter to his Master,’ when the snake did open its mouth. He then prayed for mercy and raised him. He said to him, “Had I known that the natural appearance of the Master was like that, I should never have felt aggrieved” [hulshat da’at]; “now,” therefore “let the Master go with us.” He replied, “If you are able to pray for mercy that I should never die again [through causing you hulshat da’at], I will go with you, but if not I am not prepared to go with you. For later on you might change again.” R. Johanan thereupon completely awakened and restored him and he used to consult him on doubtful points, R. Kahana solving them for him. This is implied in the statement made by R. Johanan: “What I had believed to be yours was in fact theirs.”

This story divides into two parallel chapters, each of which is built as an elaborate structure, and both join together to highlight the author’s conceptual direction. The first chapter depicts a realistic portrait of the life of the study hall. However, this portrayal abounds in literary and dramatic devices beginning with sayings such as “A lion has come up from Babylon” or “The lion you mentioned turns out to be a [mere] fox,”16 and continues using the number ‘seven’ with the paralleling of the seven years, the seven rows of seats of disciples, and the seven cushions on which R. Johanan sat, ending with the 16

A.A. Halevi, Aggadot Amora’im — Ha’aggada habiographit, Tel-Aviv 1977, p. 64 (Hebrew), writes that a Greek maxim states “Lions at home, foxes abroad” and quotes the uses of this saying from Plutarch (Lysander and S. Ulla 3,1) and from Aristophanes (Peace 1189). According to Halevi, the author of the Talmudic story meant that R. Johanan said that Rav Kahana was a lion in Babylon whose scholars have scant knowledge of Torah but a fox in Eretz Israel.

E x t r e me S o r r o w ( H u l s h a t d a’a t)

picturesque description of R. Johanan’s eyelids being lifted with pincers of silver.17 The plot is conveyed in two symmetrical scenes depicting a gradual increase in the competitive tension of the protagonist until it reaches a climax — hulshat da’at. The first scene has two parts. In the first, Resh Lakish addresses R. Johanan with words that seem provocative, creating in the latter a sense of competitive tension: “A lion has come up from Babylon; let the Master therefore look very carefully into tomorrow’s lecture.” In the second, the tension gradually abates since Rav Kahana, who is obliged to fulfill his promise to Rav, does not display his academic capabilities, and thus it seems to R. Johanan that his status is not being threatened by Rav Kahana. Nonetheless, according to the mocking statement made by R. Johanan to Resh Lakish: “The lion you mentioned turns out to be a [mere] fox”, it appears that the tension that had previously existed has not entirely dissipated. Separating this scene from the second one, which also has two parts, is a short passage which describes the thoughts of Rav Kahana. The first part of the second scene presents a mirror image of the second part of the preceding scene, while the second part of it shows an intensification of this mirror image. In the first part, the “fox” gradually reverts to being a “lion.” His incremental rise from the seventh row to the first row inversely parallels the gradual decline described in the preceding scene. Apparently the emotional strain and distress felt by R. Johanan increase progressively with the advance of Rav Kahana from one row to the next. 17

Gafni, Hayeshiva habavlit [The Babylonian Yeshiva] 1980, p. 296 (Hebrew), wrote that the descriptions of the seven rows correspond to the seven rows of seats in the yeshivot in Babylon, according to R. Nathan the Babylonian. And D. Sperber “The Misfortune of Rav Kahana: A Passage of Post Talmudic Polemic” in D. Sperber, Magic and Folklore in Rabbinic Literature, Ramat Gan 1994, pp.145-164, wrote that the Rosh Yeshiva sitting on the ‘bistarkei’ [expensive cushions] and their being pulled out from under him are a Sassanian motif, indicating that this is a Babylonian addition to the story.

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In the second part of the scene, the mirror image is intensified: in contrast to Rav Kahana who is the hero of the earlier stage, moving up from one row to the next, R. Johanan, the hero of this stage, is moving down from one cushion to the next — seven in all — until he is sitting upon the earth, and one can almost hear the pounding of his heart as each successive cushion is pulled out from under him. Structuring the plot in the manner described here illustrates the emotional tension of R. Johanan, and this creates the backdrop for his suspicion of Rav Kahana and the hulshat da’at that grips him as a result of this suspicion. In the second chapter, there are two scenes: one is a realistic depiction that takes place in the study hall and the second is an obscure scene that takes place outside the study hall, near the burial cave where Rav Kahana is interred. Both pictures together correspond in reverse to the scenes in the bet-midrash of the first chapter. In the first picture, R. Johanan understands through the sages that Rav Kahana did not mock him as he had thought, and in the second, it becomes clear to him through the actions of the snake that Rav Kahana is indeed a “lion.” When he realizes these things, he sets aside his own honor, identifies himself as a pupil of Rav Kahana, and takes upon himself Rav Kahana’s absolute authority, as expressed in the powerful concluding statement: “What I had believed to be yours was in fact theirs.” This outline of the narrative’s structure shows that its two chapters create an oppositional structure in which the first part presents a problem and the second offers its resolution. The first chapter reveals the competitive tension felt by R. Johanan when Rav Kahana arrives in his yeshiva and illustrates the fluctuations in that tension. It ends with the drastic declaration “R. Johanan felt hulsha da’at and in consequence the soul of R. Kahana went to rest.” In other words, the emotional tension and sorrow that overwhelmed R. Johanan in his competition for glory in Torah ultimately brought about the death of the person who had unintentionally caused them — Rav Kahana.

E x t r e me S o r r o w ( H u l s h a t d a’a t)

The second chapter offers a way out of the tragic entanglement by moderating the competition between the scholars and leading them to the recognition that contending for honor does not benefit Torah study. Sperber18 writes that this story deals with the controversy between the scholars of Babylon and the scholars of Eretz Israel. He thinks that the literary motifs that were added to the narrative according to the milieu that was familiar to its author from the Babylonian yeshivot intensified the controversial tendency by helping to portray the superiority of the young Babylonian pupil, Rav Kahana, over the greatest of the Eretz Israel scholars, R. Johanan. Following Sperber’s interpretation, Moshe Mia in his M.A. thesis19 discusses the polemic tendency of the narrative in great detail and relates it to its structure. Mia writes “The more elderly R. Johanan is and the higher his status, the greater is the dramatic reversal later in the story.” And also “the starting point of Rav Kahana is the highest possible starting point in the cycle of sages…from here on, Rav Kahana is brought to the depths of humiliation…from this point, which is the lowest point that a Babylonian sage can reach, he rises by demoting the greatest Eretz Israel sage to the lowest point of his degradation.” Mia quotes Sperber where he says that depictions of the placement of Rav Kahana in the front row, his demotion to the seventh row, the seven cushions on which R. Johanan was seated and their removal from under him, and the transformation of R. Johanan at the opening of the burial cave were all added by a later author, and he then concluded that this narrator wanted to describe the controversy in a way that would be comprehensible to contemporary readers or listeners.20 As he wrote, the words of R. Johanan to the sages before he went to the cave: “Have you noticed how the Babylonian was making [a laughing-stock of 18

Idem. Moshe Mia, Eretz Israel traditions and their reflections in the Babylonian Talmud. M.A. Dissertation, University of Haifa 2003 (Hebrew). 20 The changes between the earliest version, which is in the LeningradAntonin Geniza Collection, and the other manuscripts which are presented clearly in his work corroborate the hypothesis that these depictions are a later addition that did not appear in the first version of the story. 19

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us]?” by which he places himself on one side and Rav Kahana and the other Babylonian sages on the opposite side, as well as in the narrator’s declaration at the end of the story: “What I had believed to be yours was in fact theirs” contain an explicit articulation of the debate between the two centers over which of them took precedence in Torah scholarship. In my opinion, despite the overt distinction made between the sages of the land of Israel and the sages of Babylon in statements such as “Have you noticed how the Babylonian was making [a laughing-stock of us]?” and “What I had believed to be yours was in fact theirs” a simple understanding of the source as a literary expression of the polemic between the two centers is insufficient to explain the extreme dramatics displayed. I believe that the main intent of the narrator was to offer criticism of the atmosphere of competition and tension that prevailed in the Babylonian yeshivot and the pursuit of honor by their sages, and to propose a different model of conduct. One might see the story as a tale of criticism based on the tradition that told of Rav Kahana’s arrival in Israel from Babylon,21 and accordingly presume that presenting the greatest of the Eretz Israel scholars, R. Johanan, as someone who was anxious about his standing in the bet-midrash despite his acknowledged pre-eminence, was designed to amplify the effect of the criticism. Notwithstanding, to return to the subject of this essay — the sorrow felt by the sages — the story added an important layer in giving concrete and dramatic expression to the influence of the relentless competitive tension that prevailed in the bet-midrash on the emotional lives of the sages. In Baba Mezi’a 74a, there is another story of hulshat da’at that besets R. Johanan due to what appeared to him to be a slight to his 21

This tradition is reflected in an Eretz Israel source — Jerusalem Talmud Berachot 5:73 (2,8), and even though the story there is very different from the narrative in the B.T. it is similar in several respects: A. The connection between Rav Kahana’s arrival in the Land of Israel and the mishap that beset him which seemed to cause someone’s death. B. Rav Kahana’s addressing R. Johanan in order to raise a question asking how the teaching can be reconciled with other sources. C. R. Johanan’s error in interpreting Rav Kahana’s intentions, which causes the break between them.

E x t r e me S o r r o w ( H u l s h a t d a’a t)

status as a decisor of law.22 This story too ends in tragedy, but this time the tragedy is compounded because it is irremediable. The well-known story, which has been written about by many,23 begins with the meeting of R. Johanan and Resh Lakish at the Jordan River. Resh Lakish, who was a member of a gang of robbers and far from the world of Torah, was impressed by R. Johanan’s beauty and he thought — with his characteristic viewpoint — that R. Johanan should use it to captivate women. R. Johanan was impressed by Resh Lakish’s physical strength and thought — with his particular way of thinking — that Resh Lakish should use it to study Torah. Moreover he promised Resh Lakish that if he would devote himself to studying Torah, R. Johanan would give him his sister, who was more beautiful than R. Johanan, in marriage. As a result of their encounter, Resh Lakish became the pupil of R. Johanan, married his sister, was very successful at Torah study, and became a “great man.” However, it turned out that R. Johanan did not forget the former life led by his pupil and brother-in-law, and in one of the disputes between the two (on the question of: At what point are a dagger, a sword, a knife, a spear, a hand-saw and a scythe considered to be completed tools and are therefore capable of becoming unclean), R. Johanan reminded his pupil of his unsavory past and thus began a chain of events that build a fascinating plot: ”!‫ “ליסטים בליסטיותיה ידע‬:]‫אמר ליה [רבי יוחנן לריש לקיש‬ ”‫ “ומאי אהנת לי? התם רבי קרו לי הכא רבי קרו לי‬:‫אמר ליה‬ ”.‫ “אהנאי לך דאקרבינך תחת כנפי השכינה‬:‫אמר ליה‬ ‫ אמרה ליה “עשה‬.‫ אתיא אחתיה קא בכיא‬.‫ חלש ריש לקיש‬.‫חלש דעתיה דרבי יוחנן‬ ”.‫בשביל בני‬ 22

A. Shermer wrote that it is possible that the similarity between the story of Rav Kahana in Baba Kama and this story shows a theoretical connection between them. A. Shermer, “Akshei lei v’akamaeih: a study of the Babylonian issue in Baba Kama 117a,” Tarbitz 66 (1997), pp. 403-415 (Hebrew). 23 See e.g. Yona Fraenkel, Studies in the Spiritual World of Aggada. Tel Aviv 1981, (Hebrew); Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel– Discourse of Sexuality in the Babylonian Talmud, Tel Aviv 1999,pp. 216-220 ( Hebrew) ; Shama Friedman, “The Historical Aggada in the Babylonian Talmud,” in Festschrift to Saul Leiberman, 1983,pp. 119-164 (Hebrew); Admiel Kosman, Men’s Tractate: Rav and the Butcher and other Stories — On Manhood, Love and Authentic Life in Aggadic and Hassidic Stories, Jerusalem 2002,pp. 34-51 (Hebrew).

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C h a p t e r Tw o ”.‫ (ירמיה מט)”עזבה יתמיך אני אחיה‬:‫אמר לה‬ ”.‫“עשה בשביל אלמנותי‬ ”.‫ (ירמיה מט) “ואלמנותיך עלי תבטחו‬:‫אמר לה‬ .‫נח נפשיה דרבי שמעון בן לקיש והוה קא מצטער רבי יוחנן בתריה טובא‬ ‫ “מאן ליזיל ליתוביה לדעתיה? ניזיל רבי אלעזר בן פדת דמחדדין‬: ‫אמרו רבנן‬ ”.‫שמעתיה‬ ”.‫ “תניא דמסייע לך‬:‫ כל מילתא דהוה אמר רבי יוחנן אמר ליה‬.‫אזל יתיב קמיה‬ ‫ “את כבר לקישא? בר לקישא כי אמינא מילתא הוה מקשי לי עשרין וארבע‬:‫אמר‬ ‫ ואת‬.‫קושייתא ומפרקינא ליה עשרין וארבעה פרוקי וממילא רווחא שמעתא‬ ‫אמרת ‘תניא דמסייע לך’? אלו לא ידענא דשפיר קאמינא?” הוה קאזיל וקרע‬ ‫מאניה וקא בכי ואמר “היכא את בר לקישא?” והוה קא צווח עד דשף דעתיה‬ . ]‫[מיניה‬ .‫בעו רבנן רחמי עליה ונח נפשיה‬

Said he [R. Johanan to Reish Lakish] to him: “A robber understands his trade.” Said he to him, “And wherewith have you benefited me: there [as a robber] I was called Master, and here I am called Master.” “By bringing you under the wings of the Shechinah,” he retorted. R. Johanan therefore felt Hulshat Da’at, [as a result of which] Resh Lakish fell ill. His sister [sc. R. Johanan’s, the wife of Resh Lakish] came and wept before him: “Forgive him for the sake of my son,” she pleaded. He replied: “Leave thy fatherless children. I will preserve them alive.”(Jer. 49) “For the sake of my widowhood then!” “And let thy widows trust in me,”(Jer. 49) he assured her. Resh Lakish died, and R. Johanan was plunged into deep grief. Said the Rabbis, “Who shall go to ease his mind? Let R. Eleazar b. Pedat go, whose disquisitions are very subtle.” So he went and sat before him; and on every dictum uttered by R. Johanan he observed: “There is a Baraita which supports you.” “Are you as the son of Lakisha?” he complained: “when I stated a law, the son of Lakisha used to raise twenty-four objections, to which I gave twentyfour answers, which consequently led to a fuller comprehension of the law; whilst you say, A Baraita has been taught which supports you. Do I not know myself that my dicta are right?” Thus he went on rending his garments and weeping, “Where are you, O son of Lakisha, where are you, O son of Lakisha”; and he cried thus until his mind was turned. Thereupon the Rabbis prayed for him, and he died.

The story describes a double insult and a double tragedy. The insult was double because both R. Johanan and Resh Lakish were insulted and also insulted others. R. Johanan demonstrated his superiority over Resh Lakish in the Torah world by reminding Resh Lakish of his ignoble past. In response, Resh Lakish denied the

E x t r e me S o r r o w ( H u l s h a t d a’a t)

superiority of R. Johanan and the benefit that he had brought him in study.24 The tragedy is double because neither R. Johanan nor Resh Lakish was capable of living in the reality that subsequently developed. Resh Lakish could not live with the knowledge that he had caused grief to R. Johanan,25 and R. Johanan, despite his complete domination of the bet midrash, was unable to continue in his spiritual world — the source of his vitality — without his partner in disputation. The compounded tragedy is highlighted both through the language — the use of similar expressions for both protagonists: ”‫ חלש ריש לקיש‬.‫ — ”חלש דעתיה דרבי יוחנן‬and by the use of the plot structure which has two parts, each of which ends in a death which is referred to as “‫נח נפשיה‬.” In contrast to the similarity between the deeds and consequences of these deeds by R. Johanan and Resh Lakish, their characters are so distinctive as to be polar opposites. R. Johanan is the model of the scholar immersed in the world of the betmidrash, self-absorbed and anxious about his status and authority. Resh Lakish by comparison is presented as a sage who entered from outside, and the spirit of competition that prevails in the betmidrash does not affect him. This distinction emerges from the fact that the narrator uses different verbs to describe the different 24

Rabbenu Tam explained that from the very beginning Resh Lakish had been very knowledgeable but had abandoned the authority of the Torah and gone on to become a robber. He proves this from Shabbat 111b, where Resh Lakish says to R. Judah Hanasi: “I have this tradition from my fathers — others versions state, ’from your fathers.’” The Ritva thought likewise. The Maharsha explained his words: “And wherewith have you benefited me…?” thus: Resh Lakish answered him, “What have I benefited by your accepting my opinion, by saying that I know more about this than you do since I used to be a robber, but that is not the case! Because back then when I was a robber, I was already called ‘Rabbi,’ and I remember now that even then before I became a robber, I had already learned that polishing the metal tool is the completion of the work.” 25 Yona Fraenkel interprets the weakness of Resh Lakish differently. He writes that Resh Lakish lost his physical strength when he joined the bet midrash, because Torah study saps a person’s strength. When he removed himself from the authority of R. Johanan, that is, when he abandoned Torah study at his bet midrash, he was left enfeebled in all respects. Fraenkel, Studies, p. 76.

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reasons for the sorrow felt by the two protagonists. The basis of R. Johanan’s sorrow is that he has been insulted and in order to express this, the author used the words “‫ ”חלשהדעתיה‬to describe his sense of insult at Resh Lakish’s words, and the word ’‫[ ‘מצטער‬grieved] to describe his egocentric reaction to Resh Lakish’s death.26 On the other hand, the basis for the sorrow felt by Resh Lakish is the offence that he gave to another person, and to express this emotion, the author used the verb ‫[ חלש‬weakened] to indicate his continuing overall emotional and physical state in order to describe his reaction to the sorrow felt by R. Johanan.27 This story, like the one before it, does not propose any way out of the tragic situation in which these two men find themselves. That is perhaps because its ideological intent is two-dimensional, unlike that in the story of R. Johanan and Rav Kahana. One dimension is speaking out in praise of controversy and its importance as a tool in studying the Torah, while the other dimension is expressing 26

In Chapter 1, the use of the word ’‫ ‘מצטער‬is discussed at length as is the distinction between ’‫ ‘מצטער‬and ’‫חלש דעתיה‬.’ 27 Admiel Kosman, Masechet, pp. 39-41, quotes a commentary, the “Derech Hayashar” according to which the story presents the two sages as exemplary figures, each of whom is absolutely attached to his own truth. R. Johanan was angered at Resh Lakish, not because he disagreed with him, for he did this frequently, but because R. Johanan who said “after they have undergone firing in an oven,” did not say this because of his own argumentation but because it was something he had received as a tradition from his teachers, and Resh Lakish was now coming to dispute his teachers. At the same time Resh Lakish was disputing R. Johanan and therefore he replied “How have you benefited me in teaching me Torah, since a person is not permitted to express an opinion based on his own thinking and knowledge, only what he has received as a tradition from his teachers, so then what is the advantage of studying Torah, since man has not been permitted to debate the issues in it. And if the reason is because of the honor of this world, there, too, they called me Master.” According to this commentator, the dispute between R. Johanan and Resh Lakish is not personal but a matter of principle. However, Kosman himself does not think so. According to him, “this reading misses the main point by ignoring the ironic, critical force of the story regarding the bet-midrash.” He cites Yona Fraenkel, stating that R. Johanan was angry at Resh Lakish because the latter refused to submit to him and to grant him the right of final decisor, which had been reserved for him in the other disputes between the two. According to this understanding, R. Johanan was insulted personally by what seemed to him to be a challenge to his authority.

E x t r e me S o r r o w ( H u l s h a t d a’a t)

criticism of the power struggles that are waged in the bet-midrash, which cause sorrow, despondence, and even death. It seems that the main criticism is expressed in the depiction of the character of R. Johanan and the account of what befell him, while Resh Lakish is merely an auxiliary to the plot. This emerges from the ever-growing sorrow of R. Johanan — his hulshat da’at while Resh Lakish is still alive and his utter madness ”‫ “שף דעתיה‬after Resh Lakish’s death. In the description of R. Johanan’s terrible suffering, which is a kind of punishment for his behavior, the author expresses his criticism of the sage’s pursuit of glory and his rough and condescending manner towards his close disciple. Another story that tells how the competitive tension in the study hall caused great sorrow to a prominent Babylonian sage is brought in Baba Batra 9a. This is the story of R. Sheshet28 in a case where he was unable to reply satisfactorily to the questions of his pupil R. Ahadboi.29 R. Sheshet was arguing with R. Ahadboi over the source of a halacha whereby “a leper during his days of uncleanness renders the person who touches him unclean.” When the latter rejected his answers and seemed to be mocking him R. Sheshet was deeply wounded (halsha da’ateh). As in the stories of R. Johanan which were cited previously, here, too, matters develop to the point of serious harm to Ahadboi which might have ended in tragedy. It was only the determined action of his mother that saved him from it. Below is the second part of the story which is relevant to our discussion. This section begins with a description of the last attempt 28

R. Sheshet was a scholar of Nehardea in the third generation, according to evidence given by several sources in the BT, and very well-versed in the baraita. In addition, Rav Nahman tells of him that he studied halacha, Sifra, Sifrei, Tosefta, and the entire Talmud (AZ 42b). Rami bar Hama and Rava called him ‘gavra’ [great man]. However, Rava expressed reservations about him in the same place (BM 16a), and Rav Hisda cited him and R. Sheshet as an example of two Torah scholars who honed each other in halacha (Ber. 47b). R. Zeira said that one should not heed rumors regarding R. Sheshet because he was blind (JT Shab. 3:1). In Bavly Ber. 58a the Talmud notes that Rav Sheshet was blind. According to H. Albeck, ibid, pp. 312-314. 29 Ahadboi b. Ammi is cited in several places in the BT as raising objections to arguments of R. Nahman, R. Hisda, and R. Joseph. According to Albeck, ibid, p. 278.

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in a series of failed attempts by R. Sheshet to answer Ahadboi’s question: “Whence do we infer that a leper while he is counting his days [for purification] renders unclean a man [who touches him]?” This account shows that his attempt to answer was met by the questioner’s amused response: ‫לרבות את‬, ‫ “שכבת זרע נמי בהדיא כתיב ביה (ויקרא כ”ב) או איש‬:‫אמר ליה‬ ‫ אישתיק רב אחדבוי‬.‫ חלש דעתיה דרב ששת‬.‫ אהדר ליה בבדיחותא‬30”.‫הנוגע‬ ‫ צווחה צווחה ולא‬.‫בר אמי ואתיקר תלמודיה אתיא אימיה וקא בכיא קמיה‬ .‫אשגח בה‬ ”‫אמרה ליה “חזי להני חדי דמצית מינייהו‬ .‫בעא רחמי עליה ואיתסי‬

“How then,” he [R. Shesheth] said, “do we know that [human] semen makes a man unclean? Do we not say that because it makes garments unclean, therefore it makes a man unclean?” He replied: “The rule of semen is also distinctly stated, since it is written in connection with it, Or a man [whose seed goeth from him], where [the superfluous phrase ‘or a man’] brings under the rule one who touches the seed.” He [R. Ahadboi] made his objections in a mocking manner which deeply wounded R. Shesheth [halsha da’ateih], and soon after R. Ahadhoi b. Abba lost his speech and forgot his learning. His mother came and wept before him, but in spite of all her cries he paid no attention to her. At length she said: “Behold these breasts from which you have sucked.” Then at last he prayed for him and he was healed.

From the development of the story, the difference in status between R. Sheshet and R. Ahadboi is clear, and it is clear that R. Ahadboi’s conduct was not likely to damage R. Sheshet’s status in the bet-midrash. With this understanding, one must be puzzled at what caused R. Sheshet to experience such extreme sorrow, whose extent we learn of from the physical and mental affliction of his pupil, as well as from the fact that R. Sheshet did not respond to the mother’s cries of distress. It appears that R. Sheshet’s outburst of sorrow is presented through the prolonged give-and-take including his unsuccessful attempts to answer Ahadboi’s questions, attempts which are rejected by the latter using learned arguments. Ahadboi’s amused answer was the last straw for R. Sheshet, who was worn out 30

The word “‫ ”או‬is used to add the category of person who touches an unclean person, because otherwise the text could have made its point by the word ”‫איש‬.“

E x t r e me S o r r o w ( H u l s h a t d a’a t)

by the struggle to prove his knowledge and frustrated at his failure to do so. Based on the premise that R. Sheshet was blind, as R. Zeira says in the JT (note 28), one may better understand his suspicion, for he could not see his colleague’s facial expression, and so he could not know if the latter were expressing gentle amusement or actually mocking him. It is interesting to compare this story with the stories of R. Johanan/Rav Kahana and of R. Johanan/Resh Lakish. The comparison shows the different ways in which the narrators weave tales around halachic subjects expressing the tension and fear of loss of authority, which characterize the world of the sages. In the story of R. Johanan and Rav Kahana, there is no halachic discussion at all. We learn of it only from the report that Rav Kahana asked questions about the legal decisions of R. Johanan and moved up from one row to the next in the yeshiva. In other words, this is not a halachic story but a dramatic plot that demonstrates the historical and cultural reality of relations between the sages of Babylon and the sages of Eretz Israel. This plot expresses the tension to which R. Johanan is subject, using a series of dramatic devices scattered throughout the story. In the story of R. Johanan and Resh Lakish, only the dispute itself is presented without any discussion of it: Now, one day there was a dispute in the schoolhouse [with respect to the following. Viz.,] a sword, knife, dagger, spear, hand-saw and a scythe — at what stage [of their manufacture] can they become unclean? When their manufacture is finished. And when is their manufacture finished? R. Johanan ruled: When they are tempered in a furnace. Resh Lakish maintained: When they have been furbished in water.

In other words, this story is a dramatized, literary illustration of an idea — the importance of the dispute on the one hand and its dangers on the other. Therefore, the competitive tension between the two disputants is given emphatic expression throughout the entire plot.

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In contrast to these stories, the story of R. Sheshet and Ahadboi, in which two of the protagonists (Ahadboi and his mother) are not eminent sages, is apparently based on a true incident that took place in the bet-midrash. Accordingly, the main part of the story is the halachic discussion that took place between R. Sheshet and his pupil, while the tension that gripped him during the discussion is given only marginal expression. The discussion will return to this story as well as to the story of R. Johanan and Resh Lakish in Chapter Five which discusses the difference between the sorrows of women and men. For now, the focus will shift from stories of hulshat da’at experienced by the sages to two stories of hulshat da’at experienced by their pupils. The first story is cited in Baba Mezi’a 84b and recounts that after the death of R. Eleazar b. R. Simeon, “Rabbi Judah Hanasi sent to propose marriage to his wife.” However, she refused, maintaining that her late husband was greater than Rabbi Judah Hanasi and she explained that although she was unable to fully comprehend her husband R. Eleazar’s greatness in Torah, she could assess that his greatness in deeds exceeded that of Rabbi Judah Hanasi. In response to this explanation, the Gemara asks: “And in Torah, what is he?” i.e. Was R. Eleazar greater than Rabbi Judah Hanasi in Torah study as well? and answers with the following story: ‫ יתבי קמייהו‬,‫דכי הוו יתבי רבן שמעון בן גמליאל ורבי יהושע בן קרחה אספסלי‬ .‫רבי אלעזר ברבי שמעון ורבי אארעא מקשו ומפרקו‬ ”.‫אמרי “מימיהן אנו שותים והם יושבים על גבי קרקע? עבדו להו ספסלי ואסקינהו‬ ‫”פרדה אחת יש לי ביניכם ואתם מבקשים‬:‫אמר להם רבן שמעון בן גמליאל‬ ”?‫לאבדה הימני‬ .‫אחתוהו לרבי‬ ”?‫ “מי שיש לו אב יחיה ומי שאין לו אב ימות‬:‫אמר להן רבי יהושע בן קרחה‬ ”?‫ “קא חשביתו לי כוותי‬:‫ אמר‬.‫ חלש דעתיה‬.‫אחתוהו נמי לרבי אלעזר בן שמעון‬ ‫ מכאן ואילך כי‬,‫עד ההוא יומא כי הוה אמר רבי מילתא הוה מסייע ליה ראב”ש‬ ‫ זו היא‬,‫הוה אמר רבי “יש לי להשיב” אמר ליה ראב”ש “כך וכך יש לך להשיב‬ ”.‫ השתא היקפתנו תשובות חבילות שאין בהן ממש‬,‫תשובתך‬ .‫ אתא אמר ליה לאבוה‬.‫חלש דעתיה דרבי‬ . ”‫ “בני אל ירע לך שהוא ארי בן ארי ואתה ארי בן שועל‬:‫אמר ליה‬ ‫ אבא ובני בתירא ויונתן‬: ‫ ‘שלשה ענוותנין הן ואלו הן‬:‫והיינו דאמר רבי‬ ”...‫בן שאול‬

E x t r e me S o r r o w ( H u l s h a t d a’a t)

‘In learning.’ To what is the reference? — When Rabban Simeon b. Gamaliel and R. Joshua b. Karha sat on benches, R. Eleazar son of R. Simeon and Rabbi Judah Hanasi sat in front of them on the ground,raising objections and answering them. Said they, “We drink their water [i.e., benefit from their learning], yet they sit upon the ground; let seats be placed for them!” Thus were they promoted. But R. Simeon b. Gamaliel protested: “I have a pigeon [alt. offshoot, referring to his son] amongst you, and ye wish to destroy it?” So Rabbi Judah Hanasi was put down. Thereupon R. Joshua b. Karha said: “Shall he, who has a father, live, whilst he who has no father die?” So R. Eleazar son of R. Simeon too was put down, whereat he felt hulshat da’at saying, “Ye have made him equal to me?” Now, until that day, whenever Rabbi Judah Hanasi made a statement, R. Eleazar son of R. Simeon supported him. But from then onward, when Rabbi Judah Hanasi said, “I have an objection,” R. Eleazar son of R. Simeon retorted, “If you have such and such an objection, this is your answer; now have you encompassed us with loads of answers in which there is no substance.” Rabbi Judah Hanasi, thus undergoing hulshat da’at, went and complained to his father. “Let it not grieve you,” he answered, “for he is a lion, and the son of a lion, whereas you are a lion, the son of a fox.” To this Rabbi Judah Hanasi alluded when he said, “Three were humble; viz., my father, the Bene Bathyra, and Jonathan, the son of Saul.”

The beginning of the story makes a clear-cut distinction between the great sages Rabban Simeon b. Gamaliel and R. Joshua b. Karha and those who at that time had the status of pupils and sons — Rabbi Judah Hanasi, son of Rabban Simeon b. Gamaliel, who was also present in the bet-midrash and R. Eleazar, son of R. Simeon bar Yohai, (hereinafter: Raba”sh) whose father was no longer alive. It further emerges from the beginning that Rabbi Judah Hanasi and Raba”sh were exceptional pupils whose comrades, and perhaps even their own teachers, would “drink their water” [benefit from their learning]. It is possible that in presenting the protagonists in pairs, both the teachers and their pupils, the narrative is alluding to the fact that both the pair of teachers and the pair of pupils acted in cooperation and in a relationship of equality. Further on in the story, an anonymous initiative is presented, apparently by the sages, to change the status of the two outstanding pupils, and it is reported that the proposed change greatly

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displeased Rabban Simeon b. Gamaliel and he warned the sages, at least regarding his own son, with the words: ‘I have an offshoot amongst you, and ye wish to destroy it!’ It is possible that Rabban Simeon b. Gamaliel was concerned that an overly-hasty promotion to a senior status in the bet-midrash might expose his son to competition and painful power struggles and ultimately even cost him his life. According to this understanding, we are confronting an anticipatory allusion to the destructive power of competition for honor in Torah, which comes to light as the story continues.31 The first part of the story reveals a picture of equality and cooperation between the two pupils, Raba”sh and Rabbi Judah Hanasi. Thus, just as Rabban Simeon b. Gamaliel took pains to protect his son Rabbi Judah Hanasi from too rapid a change in his status, so too was R. Joshua b. Karha concerned about protecting Raba”sh, who had no father, and thus both pupils returned to sitting on the ground beside each other. The beginning of the second part is surprising: even though both pupils have returned to the equal status to which they were accustomed, Raba”sh experienced hulshat da’at. The Talmud explains what was happening in his psyche by means of words that are attributed to him: “Ye have made him equal to me?” According to this explanation, when the sages relegated Raba”sh back to sitting on the ground and reunited him with Rabbi Judah Hanasi, he understood this to mean that they were equating the two pupils in terms of their level of scholarship. He was thus stirred to anger32 31

In the story of the death of Raba”sh, which forms the basis of the plot for our story, the expression “I have a pigeon amongst you, and ye wish to destroy it!” was said by Rabban Simeon b. Yohai (Rashbi) about his son Raba”sh. It would therefore seem that the use of this metaphor to give expression to the notion of the risk that exists in the bet midrash was well-known and familiar. 32 The Maharsha wrote that ‘halsha da’ato’ because “the evil eye has more power over prominent people and therefore, originally when they said to promote Raba”sh together with Rabbi Judah Hanasi, he was not angered.” That is how the Maharsha explains that Raba”sh had no negative reaction when Rabbi Judah Hanasi was promoted to sit on the bench with him but did experience hulshat da’at when he was demoted together with Rabbi Judah Hanasi. Ofra Meir wrote the following on this subject: “It seems that according to the idea behind this story, Raba”sh did not attribute importance to the honor

E x t r e me S o r r o w ( H u l s h a t d a’a t)

which led to the destruction of the cooperation between the two of them and their working as a team. For not only did he cease to help Rabbi Judah Hanasi in studying but even hurt his self-confidence, criticizing him with harsh words: “Now have you encompassed us with loads of answers in which there is no substance,” and caused him hulshat da’at. According to Ofra Meier, “Drawing a parallel between the anguish felt by Raba”sh and that felt by Rabbi Judah Hanasi tightens the plot structure and highlights both the sharp tension between the two and the vulnerability of their honor.”33 In his distress, Rabbi Judah Hanasi appeals to his father Rabban Simeon b. Gamaliel for support. However, the father did not identify with the sense of anguish felt by his son and even justified the sense of superiority felt by Raba”sh.34 Nonetheless, he did intimate his criticism of the rivalry and jealousy that prevailed in the bet-midrash by presenting himself as a “fox” and Rashbi as a “lion.” (The simile of the lion versus the fox in the context of competitive tension in the world of Torah is also brought in the story of R. Johanan and Rav Kahana).35 The words of Rashbag (Rabban Simeon b. Gamaliel), which constitute the climax of the story, create the impression that it ends well, although nothing explicit is stated about an improvement in the relations between Rabbi Judah Hanasi and Raba”sh, and it may given to Rabbi Judah Hanasi when he was also promoted to the bench, but returning him to the ground seemed reasonable in light of his feeling that Rabbi Judah Hanasi had not achieved his stature. That is why when he, too, was demoted, he interpreted the act as disparaging to him, and as emerges from the change in his behavior with Rabbi Judah Hanasi, “But from then onward” he even suspected that Rabbi Judah Hanasi (or his father) had a hand in the decision to demote him to sitting on the ground.” Ofra Meir, Rabi Yehudah ha-Naśi deyoķano shel manhig be-masorot Erets-Yiśrael u-Bavel [Rabbi Judah the Patriarch], Tel Aviv 1999, p. 38 (Hebrew). 33 Ibid. 34 Ofra Meir wrote that Rabban Simeon b. Gamliel’s words are interpreted in the story as “words of solace to his son: “You might be inferior to him but it is not by any fault of your own. You were born to a father who is a fox and not a lion.” ibid, p. 39. 35 The similes “lion” and “fox” were discussed in the story of R. Johanan and Rav Kahana, see note 5 above. It is possible that the use of these similes in a similar context shows one literary tradition around which several stories were fashioned.

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be that the sharp refusal of the latter’s widow to marry the former attest to the continuation of a prolonged rivalry between the two. An explicit reference to the rivalry between them appears in the Eretz Israel tradition found in the Jerusalem Talmud Shabbat 12b,36 upon which the Babylonian story is apparently based. 36

The tradition is cited in two additional Eretz Israel sources which also connect the story of the rivalry between Raba”sh and Rabbi Judah Hanasi with the story of Raba”sh’s widow refusing Rabbi Judah Hanasi’s proposal of marriage. Following is a quotation from the sources: Ecclesiastes Rabbah (Vilna) Parasha 11: “Whenever R. Eleazar b. R. Simeon entered the house of meeting, the face of Rabbi Judah Hanasi darkened [with displeasure]. His father said to him, “My son, it is proper [that you should bear with him] for he is a lion the son of a lion while you are a lion the son of a fox.” When [R. Eleazar] died, [Rabbi Judah Hanasi] sent an offer of marriage to his widow. She returned the reply, “Shall a vessel that has been used for a sacred purpose be used for a profane purpose!” He asked, “What did he do which I have not done similarly?” She answered, “When he sat studying Torah, he did so with all his might, and he used to say ‘May all the pains of Israel come upon me!,’ and they did befall him. When his time for studying came, he used to say, ‘Let everybody return home’.” He answered, “I will likewise act so.” He called out for the pains of Israel to come upon him, and they befell him. Subsequently he wished them to depart from him, but they did not. Some declare that for thirteen full years he suffered from toothache. He sent for and informed her of this [renewing his proposal], but she answered, “I have heard that we raise things to a higher degree of sanctity but we do not debase to a lower degree.” Pesiqta de Rav Kahana (Mandelbaum) XI:XXIV “When R. Eleazar bar Simeon would go into the meeting room, the face of Rabbi Judah Hanasi would glower and his father would say to him, “Do you see this one? He is a lion, son of lion, while as to you, you are a lion, but merely son of a fox.” When he died, he sent and sought his widow in marriage. She sent to him, “Shall a vessel that has been used for a sacred purpose be used for merely secular purposes?” He said to her, “What did he ever do that I did not do?” She said to him, “When he would work in Torah-study, having completed all that he could do, he would go to lie down and say, ‘May all the sorrows of Israel come upon me,’ and they would come upon him [so that in atonement for all Israel], he would suffer. And when the time would come again for him to labor in Torah-study, he would say, ‘May each and every one of you return to its place,’ and they would go their way.” He said to her, “I can do that too.” He called them and they came. He wanted them to go their way, but they did not go their way. There are those that say that for thirteen years, he suffered from a toothache. She sent and said to him, “I have heard that people may ascend the ladder of holiness but not descend [on which account, I shall not marry you].”

E x t r e me S o r r o w ( H u l s h a t d a’a t) ‫רבי יושוע דרומיא אמר קומי (לפני) רבי יסא בשם רבי אחא “קני גירדי רבי פוטר‬ ”.‫רבי אלעזר בי רבי שמעון מחייב‬ ”.‫ “רבי כך שמעתי מאביך‬:‫אמר לו‬ ”.‫” שמשתי את אבא עומדות מה שלא שימשתן ישיבות‬:‫אמר לו‬ ?‫ורבי תלמידיה דרבי שמעון בר יוחי דהוי לא תלמידיה דרבי יעקב בר קודשי הוה‬ ”.‫אלא כך אמר ליה “שמשתי את אבא עומדות מה שלא שמשת את רבך ישיבות‬ ‫כשהיה רבי אלעזר בי רבי שמעון נכנס לבית הוועד היו פניו של רבי מקדירות אמר‬ ”.‫ “ויאות זה ארי בן ארי אבל אתה ארי בן שועל‬:‫ליה אבוי‬ ‫ “כלי שנשתמש בו קודש‬:‫ אמרה ליה‬.‫מן דמך רבי אלעזר שלח רבי תבע באיתתיה‬ ”?‫ישתמש בו חול‬

R. Yoshea from the south said before R. Yasa in the name of R. Aha, “As to the canes of the weaver, Rabbi Judah Hanasi declares them exempt. R. Eleazar b. R. Simeon declares them liable. Rabbi Judah Hanasi said to [Eleazar], “That is what I heard from your father [that he is exempt].” He said to him, “I served father while standing up, [in my youth], [so learning things which you did not learn when] you served him seated in your sessions.” Now was Rabbi Judah Hanasi the disciple of R. Simeon b. Yohai [father of R. Eleazar b. R. Simeon]? Was he not the disciple of R. Jacob bar Qodshi? But this is what he said to him, “I served father while standing up, [so learning things which you did not learn when] you served your master seated in your sessions.” When R. Eleazar entered the council house, the face of Rabbi Judah Hanasi would darken. His father said to him, “And that is well and good. This one is a lion, son of a lion, while you are merely a lion, son of a fox.” After R. Eleazar died, Rabbi Judah Hanasi sent and sought his widow [in marriage]. She said to him, “Will a vessel used for what is holy now be used for what is ordinary?”

The word ”‫ “כשהיה‬which means ‘when’ in this Eretz Israel tradition is used to describe the effect on Rabbi Judah Hanasi of this meeting with Raba”sh. “When R. Eleazar entered the council house the face of Rabbi Judah Hanasi would darken,” attests to the fact that the tension between them continued over time. According to both the Jerusalem Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud, this tension is related to the rivalry over greatness in Torah and the condescending behavior of Raba”sh, who was confident of his superiority in this domain. However, according to the JT, it could be understood that this rivalry began with a halachic controversy between the two sages, while according to the BT, the rivalry sprang

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from what seemed to Raba”sh the sages’ affront to his honor, and only afterwards was it connected to the subject of study. The concluding line which the gemara in the BT attached to the story, “To this Rabbi Judah Hanasi alluded when he said, ‘Three were humble…” shows that according to its reading, the story was told to speak in praise of modesty and to criticize jealousy and the lust for honor, and that is indeed the main idea found in the overt level of Rashbag’s words to his son. In any event, there are several components to the plot: the parallel between Raba”sh’s hulshat da’at and that of Rabbi Judah Hanasi; the words of Raba”sh expressing a sense of insult, “Ye have made him equal to me!” and his subsequent behavior towards Rabbi Judah Hanasi; Rabbi Judah Hanasi’s distress that led him to complain to his father, Rashbag; and finally the implied criticism in the father’s words of consolation — all of these demonstrate the reality of tension, sharp competition, distress, and frustration that beset the scholars in the study hall. The second story, which has an element of sarcasm, is brought in Hagigah 5b: ‫רב אידי אבוה דרבי יעקב בר אידי הוה רגיל דהוה אזיל תלתא ירחי באורחא חדא‬ .‫בר בי רב דחד יומא‬:‫ והוו קרו ליה רבנן‬.‫יומא בבי רב‬ ”‫ “שחוק לרעהו אהיה‬:)‫חלש דעתיה קרי אנפשיה (איוב יב‬ ”.‫ “במטותא מינך לא תעניש להו לרבנן‬:‫אמר ליה רבי יוחנן‬ ‫ “’ואותי יום יום ידרשון לדעת דרכי‬:)‫נפיק רבי יוחנן לבי מדרשא ודרש (ישעיה נח‬ ‫ כל‬: ‫יחפצון’ וכי ביום דורשין אותו ובלילה אין דורשין אותו? אלא לומר לך‬ ‫העוסק בתורה אפילו יום אחד בשנה מעלה עליו הכתוב כאילו עסק כל השנה‬ ‫ ‘במספר הימים אשר תרתם‬:)‫ וכן במידת פורענות דכתיב (במדבר יד‬.‫כולה‬ ‫ אלא לומר לך‬.‫את הארץ’ וכי ארבעים שנה חטאו? והלא ארבעים יום חטאו‬ ‫כל העובר עברה אפילו יום אחד בשנה מעלה עליו הכתוב כאילו עבר כל השנה‬ ”.‫כולה‬

R. Idi,37 the father of R. Jacob b. Idi,38 used to spend three months on his journey and one day at the school; and the Rabbis called him One day scholar. So he became dispirited [halsha da’ateh], and applied to himself the verse: “I am as one that is a laughing-stock to his neighbor” (Job 12). 37

An Amora of Eretz Israel in the second generation. An Amora of Eretz Israel in the second and third generations.

38

E x t r e me S o r r o w ( H u l s h a t d a’a t)

Said to him R. Johanan: “I beg of you. Do not bring down punishment upon the Rabbis.” R. Johanan then went forth to the study hall39 and delivered the [following] exposition: (Isaiah 58) “‘Yet they seek Me day by day, and delight to know My ways.’ Do they then seek Him by day, and do not seek Him by night? It comes to tell you, therefore, that whoever studies the Torah even one day in the year, Scripture accounts it to him as though he had studied the whole year through. And similarly in the case of punishment, for it is written: (Num. 14) ‘After the number of the days in which you spied out the land.’ Did they then sin forty years? Was it not forty days that they sinned? It must come to teach you, therefore, that whoever commits a transgression even one day in the year, Scripture accounts it to him as though he had transgressed the whole year through.”

This story has three parts: A. A humoristic-sarcastic beginning that presents the background of the event described in the body of the story; B. The body of the story which describes what happened to R. Idi and expresses his sense of sorrow in sharp language; C. The ending, with its didactic principle which moves away from the main part of the story and presents the teaching of R. Johanan. The opening lines themselves begin with a surprising identification of the main protagonist, which might be an anticipatory allusion to the event soon to be described. The wording of the identifying phrase “R. Idi, the father of R. Jacob b. Idi” seems to be a mistake, for after it has been stated that R. Idi is the father of R. Jacob, it is no longer necessary to call R. Jacob the son of R. Idi. It is likely that this “mistake” was made deliberately to call attention to the son and thus allude to the fact that R. Idi was not known in the study hall on his own merit but rather as the father of his son. And in fact later in the opening, it becomes clear that R. Idi was not himself one of the outstanding scholars of the study hall because 39

I included this story among the stories whose plots take place within the study hall despite the fact that according to this line, one might think that R. Johanan left the place where the incident occurred to go to the study hall. As I understand it, the conversation between R. Johanan and R. Idi regarding the event took place outside of the study hall and afterwards, “R. Johanan then went forth to the study hall.”

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of the circumstances of his life. Alternately, perhaps because he preferred to be with his family,40 he would stay in the study hall for very short periods and his colleagues, who did not approve of his behavior, scornfully called him “one day scholar,” a person whose status in Torah study is quite low. In the first line of the two lines that constitute the body of the story, “So he became dispirited [halsha da’ateh], and applied to himself the verse: ‘I am as one that is a laughing-stock to his neighbor...,’ there is a shift from the humoristic tone of the beginning to a tone of despondency and dejection, which aptly articulates R. Idi’s sense of affront. His succinct response to the scorn of his colleagues clearly shows what was taking place within his psyche. In comparing himself to Job and in quoting the verse ‘I am as one that is a laughing-stock to his neighbor’ (Job 12), R. Idi gave expression both to the intensity of his sorrow which was comparable to the grief of Job, and to its cause — his disillusionment with his comrades, who, like Job’s friends, did not understand his circumstances and treated him shamefully. The second line, which concludes this part of the story, tells that R. Johanan begged R. Idi not to “punish the Rabbis,” i.e. not to call down Divine punishment upon the Rabbis who insulted him. This ending, which seems to presume that R. Idi was capable of punishing the Rabbis for what they did to him, highlights his righteousness and concomitantly, their wickedness. In this context it is appropriate to position this story as a counterpoint to the story in Ta’anit 9a which was discussed at the beginning of this chapter. According to the story in Ta’anit, R. Papa was deeply offended by what seemed to him to be his disciples’ scornful criticism of him, and in his dream and perhaps even in a state of wakefulness — when he took his leave of them — he expressed his wish that they be punished with death by an act of G-d. The narrator creates a certain ambiguity regarding the two major components of the story: the insult felt, where it is not clear if it was justified because 40

According to Rashi’s explanation, his home was a three-month journey from the study hall and therefore, “he would travel from his home after Passover and study one day, and then return home to bring his wife joy on Succot.”

E x t r e me S o r r o w ( H u l s h a t d a’a t)

the disciples’ intention was not evident, and the desire to take revenge and punish, which did not clearly materialize. In this way he creates a doubt surrounding the justice of R. Papa’s position. In contrast, according to what is related in Hagigah, R. Idi was insulted by the actual scorn that was heaped upon him by his comrades, and even though he himself did not seek to punish them, from what R. Johanan told him, it seems that had he made this request of God, it would have been granted to him. Thus the narrator creates certainty about the two major components of this story: the affront, and the possibility of carrying out the desire to take revenge and punish; by doing this, he shows clearly that the insult felt by R. Idi was justified. The end of the plot brings the explanation of R. Johanan, which moves away from the specific case and extrapolates a fundamental moral lesson from it. The homiletical interpretation expresses sharp criticism of the disciples in the study hall and emphasizes again the graveness of their deed, together with the intensity of R. Idi’s distress. “Whoever studies the Torah even one day in the year” refers to R. Idi, whom the Rabbis dubbed “one day scholar,” while “the transgressors who commit a transgression even one day in the year” refers to the Rabbis who ridiculed him, so that despite their devotion to study, it was as though they had committed transgressions the whole year through. It is unquestionable that what caused the sarcastic, and according to the narrator, malicious behavior of the Rabbis in the study hall on the one hand and the sorrow of R. Idi on the other was the competitive tension of the study hall. Since this story, in contrast to the previous one, does not tell of personal competition between two well-known scholars but rather the cooperative action of an anonymous group of Rabbis against one of them who was not a well-known, eminent scholar like themselves, it shows us inadvertently that the general atmosphere in the study hall was steeped in immoderate ambition, competition, and jealousy. In concluding this section, it is proper to point out a kind of covert discourse that takes place between all of the narratives on hulshat da’at in which R. Johanan is involved. In two stories discussed previously, the story of the encounter with Rav Kahana and the

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story of the dispute with Resh Lakish, the role of R. Johanan was very different than in the tale of R. Idi. In the first stories, R. Johanan was the affronted party who experiences hulshat da’at, while in the last one, R. Johanan was outside the event. Despite this, it seems that the role he played in the story of R. Idi is “holding a discourse” with the roles he played in the first two stories with Rav Kahana and Resh Lakish. For both his emotional appeal to R. Idi, “I beg of you. Do not bring down punishment upon the Rabbis,” as well as his homily addressed to the Rabbis reverberate with his personal experience and the moral lesson that he has learned. The lesson embodied in the homiletical interpretation which says that one can study Torah for one day and yet please Heaven, and alternately, one can study Torah for many days and yet be considered a sinner, stands in counterpoint to the perception that sanctifies ambitiondriven, competitive study. One could therefore presume that there is a theoretical connection between the three stories which show, each in its own way, how important it is to maintain proper, wellbalanced standards in the ambitious world of the study hall.41

Stories of hulshat da’at outside the study hall The discussion of stories in this group opens with the following story from Sotah 40a, which tells of a sage who experienced hulshat da’at because he was jealous of the success of his comrade even though the latter did not say or do anything that could have offended or hurt him: 41

Yonah Fraenkel expressed this most aptly when he wrote: “For generations of the Talmudic Period, patterns of behavior were created which imbued the Talmudic study hall with a character and style that were directed at honoring the Torah and those who study it. These are the external forms, rituals, and practices that became the rules of the study hall. This is the natural development that accompanies a closed society founded on religious authority. The dangers of this external life style are found in its becoming ossified and being exploited for the honor of the individual rather for the benefit of the purpose for which the honor of Torah (k’vod haTorah) was created.” Fraenkel, Studies, pp. 77-78.

E x t r e me S o r r o w ( H u l s h a t d a’a t) ‫ רבי‬,‫ רבי אבהו דרש באגדתא‬.‫רבי אבהו ורבי חיא בר אבא איקלעו לההוא אתרא‬ ‫ שבקוה כולי עלמא לרבי חיא בר אבא ואזול‬.‫חיא בר אבא דרש בשמעתא‬ !‫ חלש דעתיה‬.‫לגביה דר’ אבהו‬ ‫ לשני בני אדם אחד מוכר אבנים‬, ‫ “אמשול לך משל למה הדבר דומה‬:‫אמר ליה‬ ”?‫ על מי קופצין לא על זה שמוכר מיני סדקית‬.‫טובות ואחד מוכר מיני סדקית‬

R. Abbahu and R. Hiyya b. Abba once came to a place; R. Abbahu expounded Aggada and R. Hiyya b. Abba expounded legal lore. All the people left R. Hiyya b. Abba and went to hear R. Abbahu, so that the former was upset [halsha da’ateh]. [R. Abbahu] said to him: “I will give you a parable. To what is the matter like? To two men, one of whom was selling precious stones and the other various kinds of small ware. To whom will the people hurry? Is it not to the seller of various kinds of small ware?”

This short story is more like the report of an event than a literary work crafted to serve an idea. It is probable that the parable also belongs to R. Abbahu himself and is not the addition of the narrator who wishes to criticize R. Abbahu and present him as someone who tried to earn popularity at the expense of R. Hiyya b. Abba. That is because understanding the story as criticism of R. Abbahu is not consistent with the overall context in which this story appears, i.e. tales of praise for R. Abbahu’s humility. One may presume that attributing hulshat da’at to R. Hiyya b. Abba for his failure in the competition for “popularity” with R. Abbahu relies on knowing something about the former’s sense of inferiority vis a vis the latter.42 The story ends without an answer to the question of whether R. Abbahu’s words did indeed comfort R. Hiyya b. Abba or not. The Meiri wrote:43 “And even thus his mind remained troubled.” However, it is not clear to me how he drew this conclusion from the story. In any event, although this short story does not necessarily express an attitude critical of the behavior of the sages, it still does 42

Both R. Abbahu and R. Hiyya b. Abba studied at the academy of R. Johanan in Tiberias. R. Abbahu earned a higher status both in scholarly circles and with the local rulers of the Roman Empire. In comparison, R. Hiyya b. Abba, who had come from Babylon and later returned there due to problems of livelihood, did not hold a high status in the world of the sages. 43 Bet Habehira on Sotah 40a.

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make us confront the intensity of the competitive tension that existed among them and the anguish felt by those who feared that they had not successfully met the challenge of competition. Another short story which likewise does not show a markedly critical approach is brought in Shabbat 51b: ‫לוי בריה דרב הונא בר חיא ורבה בר רב הונא הוו קאזלי באורחא קדמה חמרא דלוי‬ .‫לחמר אדרבה בר רב הונא חלש דעתיה דרבה בר רב הונא‬ ”.‫אמר ליה אימא ליה “מילתא כי היכי דאיתותב דעתיה‬ ”?‫ מהו לצאת בפרומבא בשבת‬,‫ “חמור שעסקיו רעים כגון זה‬:‫אמר ליה‬ ”.‫ הלכה כחנניה‬:‫ “הכי אמר אבוך משמיה דשמואל‬:‫אמר ליה‬

Levi son of R. Huna b. Hiyya44 and Rabbah b. R. Huna45 were traveling on a road, when Levi’s ass went ahead of Rabbah b. R. Huna’s, whereupon Rabbah b. R. Huna felt aggrieved. [halsha da’ateh] Said he [Levi], “I will say something to him, so that his mind may be appeased.” Said he: “An ass of evil habits, such as this one, may it go forth wearing a halter on the Sabbath?” “Thus did your father say in Samuel’s name,” he answered him, “The halachah is as Hananiah.”

Rabbah b. R. Huna’s misery seems hard to understand. It is not clear why the fact that the animal belonging to Levi son of R. Huna b. Hiyya went ahead of his should be so important to him. The Tosafot SV “kadima” comments: “This shows that people show respect when traveling,” quoting what was written in Yoma 37a: “Of three walking along, the teacher should walk in the middle, the greater of his disciples to his right, the smaller one at his left,” and they add that according to Rabbenu Tam, this is when they are walking as one group of people.46 According to this explanation, 44

R. Huna b. Hiyya was a Babylonian Amora in the second and third generations, the disciple of R. Huna, R. Yehuda, and R. Nahman. Very few of the sages quoted him in their sayings, according to the Encyclopedia of Talmudic Sages and Geonim, M. Margaliot, ed. Tel Aviv 1969, (Hebrew). 45 Babylonian Amora in the second and third generations. Son of the wellknown Amora, R. Huna who was also his most significant mentor, and after the death of R. Hisda, headed the yeshiva at Sura. According to Margaliot, Encyclopedia. 46 That is how the Rashba explained it, and the Ritva also wrote, “And therefore, it seems to me that it depends on the nature of the journey, and who is the person who is walking with him.”

E x t r e me S o r r o w ( H u l s h a t d a’a t)

when the sages walk (or ride together) as a band, their position in the group indicates their greatness in Torah. Therefore, when the donkey which Levi rode went before the donkey carrying Rabbah b. R. Huna, the latter saw this as a sign that Levi considered him to be of lesser achievement in Torah. This understanding becomes quite clear later on in the story when Levi asked Rabbah b. R. Huna a halachic question and the latter replied by quoting a halachic tradition that had been handed down by Levi’s father. That is how Levi pacified Rabbah b. R. Huna, by showing that he recognized him as an authority in law, and he was indeed pacified and responded in kind by showing respect for Levi’s father. It would then seem that this story, too, which tells of an event that took place outside of the study hall and was not connected with the experience of study, does deal with the competition over honor conferred by Torah and the unhappiness caused to one of the sages as a result. The narrative is constructed in an inverse pattern composed of two parts. The first part, which ends with the sentence “Rabbah b. R. Huna felt aggrieved [halsha da’ateh]” presents the problem — competition over greatness in Torah and its consequence, hulshat da’at — and the second part offers the solution — a rational alleviation of the competitive tension and the establishment of a relationship based on conciliation and mutual respect. A completely different story, totally abstract, which also reveals the powerful need of the sages for acknowledgement of their greatness in Torah and the anguish they feel when they do not receive their due, is brought in Ta’anit 23a. The story is attributed to R. Johanan but its hero is the archetypal hassid — Honi.47 The narrative tells that Honi the Circle-drawer labored for many days to comprehend a verse in Psalms 126, which to his understanding meant that a person could sleep for seventy years and yet remain alive. Eventually something happened to him that proved that this was possible but caused him great anguish: 47

Honi Hame’agel (the Circle-drawer) — an exemplary figure of the righteous man who apparently lived close upon the end of the Hasmonean Period and is presented in the Tannaic sources as someone whose prayers for rain were answered.According to Margaliot, Encyclopedia.

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C h a p t e r Tw o )‫ כל ימיו של אותו צדיק היה מצטער על מקרא זה (תהלים קכ”ו‬:‫אמר רבי יוחנן‬ ”.‫“שיר המעלות בשוב ה’ את שיבת ציון היינו כחולמים‬ ”?‫ “מי איכא דניים שבעין שנין בחלמא‬:‫אמר‬ ,‫ “האי‬:‫ אמר ליה‬,‫ חזייה לההוא גברא דהוה נטע חרובא‬,‫יומא חד הוה אזל באורחא‬ “ ?‫עד כמה שנין טעין‬ ”‫ “עד שבעין שנין‬:‫אמר ליה‬ ”?‫ “פשיטא לך דחיית שבעין שנין‬:‫אמר ליה‬ - ‫ כי היכי דשתלי לי אבהתי‬,‫ האי [גברא] “עלמא בחרובא אשכחתיה‬:‫אמר ליה‬ ”‫שתלי נמי לבראי‬ ‫ אהדרא ליה משוניתא איכסי מעינא‬.‫ איתא ליה שינתא נים‬, ‫יתיב קא כריך ריפתא‬ ‫ אזל לביתיה אמר‬.‫ חזא לחמרא דאתיילדא ליה רמכי רמכי‬.‫ונם שבעין שנין‬ ”?‫” בריה דחוני המעגל מי קיים‬:‫להו‬ ”.‫ הא בר בריה איתא‬.‫ “בריה ליתא‬: ‫אמרו ליה‬ .‫” אנא חוני המעגל” לא הימנוהו‬:‫אמר להו‬ ‫אזל לבית המדרש שמעינהו לרבנן דקאמרי “נהירין שמעתין כבשני חוני המעגל‬ ”.‫דכי הוי עייל לבית מדרשא כל קושיא דהוו להו לרבנן הוה מפרק להו‬ ,‫ חלשה דעתי‬.‫ “אנא ניהו” ולא הימנוהו ולא עבדי ליה יקרא כדמבעי ליה‬:‫אמר להו‬ .‫ ומת‬,‫בעי רחמי‬

R. Johanan said: This righteous man [Honi] was throughout the whole of his life troubled about the meaning of the verse, A Song of Ascents, (Ps. 126) “When the Lord brought back those that returned to Zion, we were like unto them that dream.” “Is it possible for a man to dream continuously for seventy years?” One day he was journeying on the road and he saw a man planting a carob tree; he asked him,” How long does it take [for this tree] to bear fruit?” The man replied:” Seventy years.” He then further asked him:” Are you certain that you will live another seventy years?” The man replied: “I found [ready grown] carob trees in the world; as my forefathers planted these for me so I too plant these for my children” Honi sat down to have a meal and sleep overcame him. As he slept a rocky formation enclosed upon him which hid him from sight and he continued to sleep for seventy years. When he awoke he saw a man gathering the fruit of the carob tree and he asked him, “Are you the man who planted the tree?” The man replied: “I am his grandson” Thereupon he exclaimed: “It is clear that I slept for seventy years” He then caught sight of his ass who had given birth to several generations of mules; and he returned home. He there enquired, “Is the son of Honi the Circle-drawer still alive?” The people answered him:” His son is no more, but his grandson is still living.” Thereupon he said to them: “I am Honi the Circle-drawer” but no one would believe him.

E x t r e me S o r r o w ( H u l s h a t d a’a t)

He then repaired to the Bet Hamidrash and there he overheard the scholars say, The law is as clear to us as in the days of Honi the Circle-drawer, for whenever he came to the Bet Hamidrash he would settle for the scholars any difficulty that they had. Whereupon he called out,”I am he” but the scholars would not believe him nor did they give him the honor due to him. This hurt him greatly [halsha da’ateh] and he prayed [for death] and he died.

Three components in the content of this story reveal its author’s attitude regarding the sorrow felt by sages: A. The story is attributed to R. Johanan who is known from other stories (see above) as one whose status in Torah scholarship and the recognition of his eminence by the sages were very important to him. B. According to the story, when Honi’s own family did not recognize him, he was not beset by grief nor did he react with word or deed. In contrast, when the scholars in the study hall did not recognize him, he was overwhelmed with such intense sorrow that he wished to cease to exist, which eventually did cause his death. C. According to the narrative, Honi knew that he had remained in the consciousness of the sages in his generation and that of his sons as a great Torah scholar, for he had heard his own praises from the members of those generations. But knowing this did not alleviate his sorrow at learning that the sages of his grandsons’ generation did not recognize him. Even though according to the popular saying “Either companionship or death” which is presented at the end of the story, one might understand that the main message here is a rejection of the solitary life, it is impossible to ignore the fact that the sequence of components listed above, when joined together, point to another message: The “companionship” that Honi yearns for is the company of the scholars of the next generations, and his yearning for their companionship expresses a strong desire to merit continuity and eternal recognition in the world of Torah.48 48

The basis for the story in the BT is found in a story brought in the JT in Ta’anit 66d-67a (3:9), where there is no mention of any problem in identifying Honi nor of any incident in the study hall: “This is Honi the Circle-drawer, the grandson of Honi the Circle-drawer. Near the time of the destruction of the Temple, he went out to a mountain to his workers. Before

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As to the yearning of the sages to merit recognition in the following generations and to guarantee the continuity of their spiritual existence, it is appropriate to compare the story of Honi’s hulshat da’at with the story of the hulshat da’at of R. Hama b. Bisa which is brought in Ketubot 62b. On the surface, the stories seem totally different, but a rigorous comparison of both shows that they may be holding a “dialogue” with each other: .‫רבי חמא בר ביסא אזיל יתיב תרי סרי שני בבי מדרשא‬ ‫ אתא‬.‫כי אתא אמר לא איעביד כדעביד בן חכינאי על יתיב במדרשא שלח לביתיה‬ ‫ חזא דקא מתחדדי‬.‫ הוה קא משאיל ליה שמעתא‬,‫ר’ אושעיא בריה יתיב קמיה‬ ”.‫ אמר “אי הואי הכא הוה לי זרע כי האי‬.‫ חלש דעתיה‬,‫שמעתא‬

he got there, it rained. He went into a cave. Once he sat there, he became tired and fell asleep. He remained sound asleep for seventy years, until the Temple was destroyed and it was rebuilt a second time. At the end of the seventy years he awoke from his sleep. He went out of the cave, and he saw a world completely changed. An area that had been planted with vineyards now produced olives, and an area planted in olives now produced grain. He asked the people of the district: “What do you hear in the world?” They said to him, “And don’t you know what the news is?” He said to them, “No.” They said to him, “Who are you?” He said to them, “Honi the Circle-drawer.” They said to him, “We heard that when he would go into the Temple, it would be illuminated.” He went in and illuminated the place and recited concerning himself the following verse of Scripture: “When the Lord restored the fortune of Zion, we were like those who dream.” (Ps. 126:1). It began to rain drop by drop. They said to him, “This rain has come only to release you from your vow.” He said, “This is not what I wanted, but rain for filling up cisterns, pits and caverns. It began to rain violently. Samuel taught, “[It poured out] as if from a wineskin.” He said, “This is not what I wanted, but rain of good will, blessing, and graciousness.” Now it rained the right way until the Israelites had to flee from Jerusalem up to the Temple Mount because of the rain. This implies that the Temple Mount was roofed over. And as it has been taught: There was a colonnade within the Temple portico. Now they came and said to him, “Just as you prayed for it to rain, now pray for it to go away.” He said to them, “Go see whether the stone of the lost has disappeared.” What purpose did the stone of the lost serve? Whoever lost something, would go and find it there, and whoever found something would bring it there. He said, “Just as it is not possible for this stone to be blotted out of the world, so it is not possible for the rain to go away. But go and bring me a bullock for a thank offering.” They went and brought him a bullock for a thank offering. He put his two hands on it and said, “Lord of the ages! You have brought evil upon your children, and they could not endure it. You have brought good upon your children, and they could not endure it. But may it be pleasing to you to bring relief.” Forthwith the wind blew, the clouds were scattered, the sun shone, and the earth dried out. They went out and found the wilderness full of truffles.”

E x t r e me S o r r o w ( H u l s h a t d a’a t) .‫ הוא סבר למשאליה שמעתתא קא בעי‬.‫ קם קמיה‬,‫ על בריה‬. ‫על לביתיה‬ ”?‫” מי איכא אבא דקאים מקמיה ברא‬:‫אמרה ליה דביתהו‬ ”.‫ “החוט המשולש לא במהרה ינתק‬,)‫קרי עליה רמי בר חמא (קהלת ד‬ .‫זה ר’ אושעיא בנו של רבי חמא בר ביסא‬

R. Hama b. Bisa49 went away [from home and] spent twelve years at the house of study. When he returned he said, “I will not act as did b. Hakina.”50 He therefore entered the [local] house of study and sent word to his house. Meanwhile his son, R. Oshaia entered, sat down before him and addressed to him a question on [one of the] subjects of study. [R. Hama], seeing how well versed he was in his studies, became very depressed [halash da’ateh]. “Had I been here,” he said, “l also could have had such a child.” [When] he entered his house his son came in, whereupon [the father] rose before him, believing that he wished to ask him some [further] legal questions. “What father,” his wife chuckled, “stands up before a son!” Rami b. Hama applied to him [Ecclesiastes 4] “’And a threefold cord is not quickly broken’ is a reference to R. Oshaia, son of R. Hama, son of Bisa.”

R. Hama, son of Bisa, like Honi, returned to his hometown after many years of absence. In his case, too, the prolonged absence causes estrangement within his family. In an inverse parallel to the story of Honi, who was not recognized by his family and the members of the study hall, R. Hama b. Bisa did not recognize his own son, nor presumably, any of the other sages in the study hall (for had he known them, they would have told him that R. Oshaia was his son). Another inverse parallel between Honi and R. Hama b. Bisa is that both of them yearned for spiritual continuity, with the following exception. Whereas Honi longed for recognition of his own eminence and when he did not receive it, felt that an injustice had been committed against him and consequently he 49

R. Hama b. Bisa lived in the generation of the Amoraim in Eretz Israel. He was the disciple of R. Judah Hanasi who praised him before R. Ishmael b. R Yossi, calling him a great man. (BT, Niddah 14b). The son of R. Oshaia made a compilation of baraitot, and was the teacher of R. Johanan, who compared his greatness in Torah to that of R. Meir. Albeck, ibid, pp. 160, 163. 50 Who, according to the previous story in the collection, returned home without giving advance notice and consequently his wife, who was unable to survive the emotional turmoil, parha nishmata (lit. her soul took flight).

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became very depressed (halsha da’ato), R. Hama b. Bisa longed for a son who would continue his tradition and be an eminent Torah scholar. He felt very dejected, hulshat da’at, because he thought that it was he who had been unjust to his son by not making provision for his education. An additional parallel between the two stories is in the fact that they both describe two events — one outside of the study hall where there is no expression of emotions, and the other within the study hall, where the incident elicits extreme sorrow (hushat da’at).51 From the comparison of both stories it seems that in addition to the yearning for greatness in Torah, the sages had a fierce longing for spiritual continuity.When it seemed to some of them that this would not materialize for them, they were beset by a powerful sorrow to the point of anguish. In Berachot 28a, there is a story of hulshat da’at that afflicted a sage who was unable to realize his aspiration for spiritual continuity. The subject of the entire narrative is the dismissal of Rabban Gamaliel from his position as Nasi [head of the Sanhedrin]. The passage relevant to our discussion is the one that describes what happened in the study hall after Rabban Gamaliel’s removal, and it brings his reaction to the events: ‫ שהיה‬.‫תנא; אותו היום סלקוהו לשומר הפתח ונתנה להם רשות לתלמידים ליכנס‬ ‫ לא יכנס לבית‬- ‫ “כל תלמיד שאין תוכו כברו‬:‫רבן גמליאל מכריז ואומר‬ ”.‫המדרש‬ ‫”פליגי בה אבא יוסף בן דוסתאי‬:‫ אמר רבי יוחנן‬.‫ההוא יומא אתוספו כמה ספסלי‬ ”.‫ שבע מאה ספסלי‬:‫ אתוספו ארבע מאה ספסלי; וחד אמר‬:‫ורבנן חד אמר‬ ‫ “דלמא חס ושלום מנעתי תורה‬:‫ אמר‬,‫הוה קא חלשא דעתיה דרבן גמליאל‬ ”‫מישראל‬ .‫אחזו ליה בחלמיה חצבי חיורי דמליין קטמא‬ .‫ ההיא ליתובי דעתיה הוא דאחזו ליה‬,‫ולא היא‬

A Tanna taught: On that day the doorkeeper was removed and permission was given to the disciples to enter. For Rabban Gamaliel had issued a proclamation [saying]: “No disciple whose character does not correspond to his exterior may enter the Bet ha-Midrash.” On that day many stools were added. R. Johanan said: “There is a difference of opinion on this matter between Abba Joseph b. Dosethai and the Rabbis: 51

I will discuss the story of R. Hama b. Bisa in more detail in chapter 5.

E x t r e me S o r r o w ( H u l s h a t d a’a t)

one [authority] says that four hundred stools were added, and the other says seven hundred.” Rabban Gamaliel became alarmed [halsha da’ateh] and said: “Perhaps, God forbid, I withheld Torah from Israel.” He was shown in his dream white casks full of ashes. This, however, really meant nothing; he was only shown this to appease him.

Based on the tradition of R. Johanan relating the ancient dispute surrounding the number of pupils who joined the study hall on the day that Rabban Gamaliel was removed from his position, the gemara attributes a painful emotional reaction to Rabban Gamaliel. The gemara’s position here is plainly to reject Rabban Gamaliel’s elitist view of Torah study. This is proven clearly by the comment that it added to the account of the dream, presenting the dream as a consolation of no significance.52 However, attributing internal conflict and great sorrow to the point of dejection [hulshat da’at] specifically to Rabban Gamaliel, who was known for his elitist approach, comes to show that the aspiration to train a large number of pupils occupied a central position in his heart. It seems appropriate to conclude the discussion of the three previous stories with a quote from Boyarin, who connected the sages’ fierce yearning for spiritual continuity with the problem that he saw as the perception of masculinity and the body in the culture of the sages, positioning spiritual prowess as more important than physical strength. As Boyarin writes: “The dispute about the meaning of physical masculinity set up replication through study as a substitute for replication through procreation” due to “a profound skepticism regarding the possibility of the father transmitting his spiritual qualities to his biological son.”53 According to this analysis, one may 52

It is noteworthy that the entire account of hulshat da’at and the dream do not appear in the Eretz Israel parallel of the story of Rabban Gamaliel’s dismissal: JT, Ber. 7a (4,1). 53 Boyarin, Carnal Israel, pp. 216-220. In these pages, Boyarin deals with the story of R. Johanan and Resh Lakish and contends that “it seems that the story is criticizing the cult of physical masculine prowess and masculine beauty, and replacing them with spiritual replication through the oral transmission of Torah. However, it may be hard to assert that what the text places here instead of masculinity and physicality excels in its definitiveness and clarity.”

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easily see the connection between the sorrow over his inability to create “replication through study” and the sorrow over the inability to compete successfully in the study hall. Both types of anguish are nurtured by a view that places the study of Torah and excelling at it as the center of life. Another story of hulshat da’at that besets a sage outside the study hall is that of Mar Ukba and his wife, in Ketubot 67b: ‫מר עוקבא הוה עניא בשיבבתיה דהוה רגיל לשדורי ליה ארבע מאה זוזא בצינורא‬ .‫דדשא‬ ‫” ההוא יומא נגהא לי‬.‫יום אחד אמר “איזיל איחזי מאן קעביד בי ההוא טיבותא‬ ‫ כיון דחזיוה דקא מצלי ליה‬.‫למר עוקבא לבי מדרשא אתיא דביתהו בהדיה‬ .‫ עיילי לההוא אתונא דהוה גרופה נורא‬.‫ רהוט מקמיה‬.‫לדשא נפק בתרייהו‬ ‫ “שקול כרעיך אותיב‬:‫ אמרה ליה דביתהו‬.‫הוה קא מיקלין כרעי דמר עוקבא‬ ”.‫אכרעי‬ ”.‫ “אנא שכיחנא בגויה דביתא ומקרבא אהנייתי‬:‫ אמרה ליה‬.‫חלש דעתיה‬

Mar ‘Ukba54 had a poor man in his neighborhood into whose door-socket he used to throw four zuz (silver coins) every day. Once [the poor man] thought: ‘I will go and see who does me this kindness.’ On that day [it happened] that Mar ‘Ukba was late at the house of study and his wife was coming home with him. As soon as [the poor man] saw them moving the door he went out after them, but they fled from him and ran into a furnace from which the fire had just been swept. Mar ‘Ukba’s feet were burning and his wife said to him: “Raise your feet and put them on mine.” As he was upset [halash da’ateh], she said to him, “I am usually at home and my benefactions are direct.”

The idea at the core of this story is expressed in a saying associated by the gemara with Mar Ukba: “It is better for a person to throw himself into a fiery furnace than to cause embarrassment to his friend in public”55 and the description of despondency that besets Mar Ukba is peripheral in this story.56 Yet the story is appropriate to 54

This might be referring to Mar Ukba who was the Rosh Golah [Exilarch, or Leader of the exiled Jewish community] in the first generation, or it might be referring to the Mar Ukba who was the Rosh Golah in the second and third generations. According to Albeck, ibid, pp. 176-7, 204-6. 55 The incident of Mar Ukba is cited in Baba Batra 10b, as an example of a gift “when a man gives without knowing to whom he gives.” 56 It is at the end of the story, or more precisely according to the structure

E x t r e me S o r r o w ( H u l s h a t d a’a t)

the topic because of the description it brings, depicting the longing for closeness to God as an additional venue of ambitiousness where Mar Ukba’s sense of inferiority caused him sorrow and despondency. According to the story, Mar Ukba’s wife saw that his feet were being burnt by the coals and she proposed: “Raise your feet and put them on mine.” The narrator does not explain why the wife is the one to offer help although they are both in the same predicament. Lacking an explanation, one may suggest two opposing hypotheses. The first is that she found a place in the furnace which was free of burning coals or where the coals had already cooled, and she made a reasonable suggestion based on common sense. The other is that although her feet were being burnt, she made her offer out of love and concern for her husband. The first hypothesis is rejected out of hand because it does not fit the next part of the story where Mar Ukba feel dejected upon hearing his wife’s suggestion. The second explanation is also rejected because it does not fit with the words of the wife later in the story where it may be understood that she did not suffer burns on her feet. Only one explanation can satisfactorily explain both of these components of the story: the wife was not burned by the coals despite their heat, and Mar Ukba, who understood that she had merited God’s protection, was jealous of her for that, or in Kosman’s words: “he was deeply offended that God ‘chose’ his wife and not him”57 and therefore was beset by hulshat da’at. This explanation seems correct also from her words to him at the end of the story, which were said to appease him, “I am usually proposed by Kosman, at the end of the third scene which “photographs” the wonderful story inside the furnace — in which God intervenes as a kind of third player and “gives His opinion” of the activities of Mar Ukba and his wife. A. Kosman, Femininity in the Spiritual World of the Talmudic Story, Tel-Aviv 2008, p. 44 (Hebrew). 57 Kosman, Women’s Tractate, p. 48. On pp. 49-51 he explains at length the insult felt by Mar Ukba, and writes among other things that: “Mar Ukba is not capable of conceiving that in the eyes of God, his wife is considered to have a higher spiritual standing, for after all, she does not belong to two spiritual vertices of the triangle: — she does not study Torah in the study hall and she does not give charity in secret — This seems to be the only possible explanation for Mar Ukba’s profound sense of insult: in this furnace scene, God seems to be shattering the self-image of a sense of superiority that Mar Ukba had painstakingly built up in his imagination.”

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at home and my benefactions are direct.” This means that God’s preferring her is not related to her individual personality but rather to her gender-based existence, and she says these things in order to dispel his sorrow,58 giving her husband to understand that she is not competing with him for God’s love. Since the story ends here, we do not know whether Mar Ukba’s wife succeeded in soothing him. Nonetheless, concerning our subject, this story presents an additional aspect of the competition for spiritual status — the level of closeness to God as a factor causing tension and sorrow in the world of the sages. The extreme sorrow (hulshat da’at) that besets a sage due to the competition over closeness to God is also the subject of the following story brought in Ta’anit 21b: ‫ ולאביי כל מעלי‬,‫אבא אומנא הוה אתי ליה שלמא ממתיבתא דרקיעא כל יומא‬ ‫ הוה קא חלשא דעתיה משום‬.‫ לרבא כל מעלי יומא דכיפורי‬,‫יומא דשבתא‬ ”.‫ “לא מצית למיעבד כעובדיה‬:‫ אמרו ליה‬.‫דאבא אומנא‬ ‫[מאי הוו עובדיה דאבא אומנא? דכי הוה עביד מילתא הוה מחית גברי לחוד‬ ‫ כי‬.‫ ואית ליה לבושא דאית ביה קרנא דהוות בזיעא כי כוסילתא‬,‫ונשי לחוד‬ ‫ ואית ליה‬.‫ כי היכי דלא ניסתכל בה‬,‫הוות אתיא ליה איתתא הוה מלביש לה‬ - ‫ דלית ליה‬,‫ שדי ביה‬- ‫ דאית ליה‬.‫דוכתא דצניעא דשדי ביה פשיטי דשקיל‬ ‫ ובתר‬,‫ כי הוה אתרמי ליה צורבא מרבנן אגרא מיניה לא שקיל‬.‫לא מיכסיף‬ ‫ יומא חד שדר אביי‬.‫ זיל בריא נפשך‬:‫ ואמר ליה‬,‫ יהיב ליה פשיטי‬- ‫דקאי‬ ‫ ומך להו ביסתרקי‬,‫ ואשקינהו‬,‫ ואכלינהו‬,‫ אותבינהו‬,‫זוגא דרבנן למיבדקיה‬ .‫ ואשכחינהו‬,‫ וקמו ונפקו להו לשוקא‬,‫ לצפרא כרכינהו ושקלינהו‬.‫בליליא‬ ‫ ודלמא‬:‫ אמרו ליה‬.‫ אמר להו הכי והכי‬- ?‫ לשיימיה מר היכי שוו‬:‫אמרו ליה‬ .‫ דידך ניהו ושקלינהו מינך‬:‫ אמרו ליה‬.‫ בהכי שקלינהו‬:‫ אמר להו‬- ,‫שוו טפי‬ ‫ אמינא; פדיון‬:‫ אמר להו‬- ?‫ במאי חשדתינן‬,‫ במטותא מינך‬:‫אמרו ליה‬ ‫ השתא נשקלינהו‬:‫ אמרו ליה‬.‫ ואכסיפו למימר לי‬,‫שבויים איקלע להו לרבנן‬ .]‫ מההוא שעתא אסחתינהו מדעתאי לצדקה‬:‫ אמר להו‬- !‫מר‬ ‫ “מסתייך דקא מגנית אכולא‬:‫ אמרו ליה‬.‫הוה קא חלשא דעתיה דרבא משום דאביי‬ ”.‫כרכא‬

58

Kosman thinks that the wife’s words “express a unique greatness of spirit, because they attest that even in view of the miracle that was done for her, she is not spending even a moment marveling over it and its nature and dimensions but is immediately willing to make light of its importance and placate her husband who was “burnt,” both physically and emotionally, by God’s decision.” Ibid, p. 53.

E x t r e me S o r r o w ( H u l s h a t d a’a t)

Abba was a cupper and daily he would receive greetings from the Heavenly Academy. Abaye received greetings on every Sabbath eve, Rava on the eve of every Day of Atonement. Abaye felt dejected [halsha da’ateh] because of [the signal honour shown to] Abba the Cupper. People said to him: “This distinction is made because you cannot do what Abba does [What was the special merit of Abba the Cupper]?” [When he performed his operations he would separate men from women, and in addition he had a cloak which held a cup [for receiving the blood] and which was slit at the shoulder and whenever a woman patient came to him, he would put the garment on her shoulder in order not to see her [exposed body]. He also had a place out of public gaze where the patients deposited their fees which he would charge; those that could afford it put their fees there, and thus those who could not pay were not put to shame. Whenever a young scholar happened to consult him not only would he accept no fee from him but on taking leave of him he also would give him some money at the same time adding, Go and regain strength therewith. One day Abaye sent to him two scholars in order to test him. He received them and gave them food and drink and in the evening he prepared woolen mattresses for them [to sleep on]. In the morning the scholars rolled these together and took them to the market [for sale]. There they met Abba and they said to him, Sir, value these, how much they are worth, and he replied, So-and-so much. They said to him, Perhaps they are worth more? He replied, This is what I paid for them. They then said to him, They are yours, we took them away from you; tell us, pray, of what did you suspect us. He replied: I said to myself, perhaps the Rabbis needed money to redeem captives and they were ashamed to tell me. They replied, Sir, take them back. He answered: From the moment I missed them I dismissed them from my mind and [I devoted them] to charity.] Rava was dejected [halsha da’ateh] because of the special honor shown to Abaye and he was therefore told, “Be content that [through your merit] the whole city is protected.”

This story is part of a collection of stories arranged in a highly sophisticated structure.59 The collection is not connected to our subject and so the section that deals with the exemplary righteousness of Abba the cupper cited above in the original and in translation appears in square brackets. Our concern is only with the outline of the story which shows the relationship between the three protagonists: Abba the cupper, Abaye, and Rava. Abba the cupper 59

See an extensive discussion of this collection: Shulamit Valler & Shalom Razabi, Small Talks in the Babylonian Talmud, Tel Aviv 2007(Hebrew).

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was a simple man labeled by his profession, which attests that he is not part of the circle of sages; it was he who was preferred in the heavenly academy over the great sages Abaye and Rava, while Abaye was preferred over Rava, his colleague and opponent in Talmudic dispute. The favoring of Abba the cupper caused Abaye great sorrow to the point of dejection and the favoring of Abaye caused Rava to experience dejection. In response to Abaye’s dejection, he was given a Divine elucidation that despite his eminence in Torah study, he was unable to perform the good deeds that Abba the cupper did. (The deeds themselves are enumerated in the section of the story enclosed in double square brackets.) And in response to the dejection experienced by Rava, he is made to understand that he, too, has many merits which are recognized in Heaven. The contribution of this story to our subject is that it explicitly points out the fact that the sages competed between themselves for closeness to God and accordingly experienced profound sorrow if they achieved a lower degree of closeness than what they had strived for. Hulshat da’at over what a sage sees as his failure to earn Divine love is also the subject of the following story brought in Baba Mezi’a 85b: .‫ כי מטא למערתיה דרבי חייא איעלמא מיניה‬.‫ריש לקיש הוה מציין מערתא דרבנן‬ .‫חלש דעתיה‬ ”?‫ “רבונו של עולם לא פלפלתי תורה כמותו‬:‫אמר‬ ”.‫ תורה כמותו לא הרבצת‬, ‫ “תורה כמותו פלפלת‬:‫יצתה בת קול ואמרה לו‬

Resh Lakish was marking the burial vaults of the Rabbis. But when he came to the grave of R. Hiyya, it was hidden from him, whereat he experienced a sense of humiliation [hulshat da’ateh]. “Sovereign of the Universe!” he exclaimed, “did I not debate on the Torah as he did?” Thereupon a bat kol cried out in reply: “You did indeed debate on the Torah as he did, but did not spread the Torah as he did.”

This story follows the story of the death of Rabbi Eleazar b. Simeon (Raba”sh) and his burial in a cave. The first part of the story, which is realistic, presents Resh Lakish as involved in marking the burial caves of the sages. When he was unable to locate the burial vault of R. Hiyya, he was exceedingly dejected because he saw it as

E x t r e me S o r r o w ( H u l s h a t d a’a t)

a sign that he had failed in his competition with R. Hiyya for God’s love even though he had not been inferior to him in Torah study. The second part of the story, which is summarized in the last line, is vague and centers around the Divine explanation provided by a heavenly voice to explain Resh Lakish’s lack of success in competing with R. Hiyya: “You did indeed debate on the Torah as he did, but did not spread the Torah as he did.” Attributing this explanation to a heavenly voice means Divine confirmation of the existence of two levels of hierarchy which are inter-related in the world of the sages: the level of Torah scholarship and the level of action — teaching. Excelling in both levels was considered a guarantee of earning God’s love. However, the competitive race for excellence was fertile ground for the development of frustration and even anguish to the point of despondency (hulshat da’at) in the world of the sages. In summary, competition to merit closeness to God and to earn His love is just another facet of the competition for greatness in Torah. The realistic ranking in Torah knowledge and teaching and the preternatural ranking in the right to God’s loving-kindness are two facets of the sages’ view of the world, wherein spiritual strength is the highest ideal. Accordingly, competition over attaining a high ranking in it is difficult and demanding, at times even spiritually debilitating.

Stories of a different kind of hulshat da’at In four of the stories that tell of the sorrow, dejection, or despondency (hulshat da’at) experienced by sages, this emotion is not directly connected to their competing over God’s love or greatness in Torah scholarship. In Ta’anit 24a, the group of stories that deals with prayers for rain and which present the failures of certain eminent sages as contrasted with the successes of simple people who do good deeds also includes two stories of sages who were beset by hulshat da’at because of the failure of their prayers to bring rain. One tells of

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R. Judah Nesiah who when he decreed a fast and prayed for rain was not answered, and then “halash da’ateh v’ata mitra” [he felt greatly dejected (hulshat da’at) and rain came]. The second tells of R. Nahman; when he saw that his prayer was not answered, he asked the other sages to demote him from his seat to the ground (a metaphor for reducing his prominent status in the bet-midrash) after which he was beset by hulshat da’at, and then the rain came. These two stories depict the hulshat da’at of the sages as stemming from their emotional identification with the suffering of the community and their inability to provide relief. This emerges both from the final words attributed to R. Judah Nesiah in one of the stories: “Woe to the generation that finds itself in such plight! Woe to him in whose days this has happened,” and from the willingness of R. Nahman to relinquish his status if only it would bring rain, as reported in the other story. However, both narratives allude to the existence of another factor in the feelings of dejection experienced by the sages. In the story attributed to R. Judah Nesiah it is written: “What a great difference there is between Samuel the Ramathite and Judah the son of Gamaliel!”60 which would seem to mean that his distress over the community’s plight and his inability to help are mingled with a sense of personal failure to be worthy of God’s love and to cause his generation to merit it. In the other story, of what happened to R. Nahman, “he felt greatly dejected and rain came” is related to his willingness to renounce his status and honor in the Torah world. The third story is brought in Baba Batra 16b and tells of R. Simeon son of Rabbi Judah Hanasi, that when a daughter was born to him, he experienced disappointment (hulshat da’at): .‫ הוה קא חלש דעתיה‬.‫איתילדא ליה ברתא‬ ”‫ “רביה באה לעולם‬: ‫אמר ליה אבוה‬ 60

In I Sam. 12:17, it is written: “Is it not wheat harvest to-day? I will call unto the Lord, that He may send thunder and rain; and ye shall know and see that your wickedness is great, which ye have done in the sight of the Lord, in asking you a king.” According to this, God answered Samuel’s prayer and caused it to rain, even though it was the harvest season (when rain is not welcome).

E x t r e me S o r r o w ( H u l s h a t d a’a t) ‫ אי אפשר לעולם בלא‬:‫ “תנחומין של הבל נחמך אבוך דתניא‬:‫אמר ליה בר קפרא‬ ‫ אי‬.‫זכרים ובלא נקבות אלא אשרי מי שבניו זכרים אוי לו למי שבניו נקבות‬ ‫ אוי לו למי‬,‫אפשר לעולם בלא בסם ובלא בורסי אשר מי שאומנותו בוסמי‬ ”.‫שאומנותו בורסי‬

A daughter was born to R. Simeon the son of Rabbi Judah Hanasi, and he felt disappointed [halash da’ateh]. His father said to him: “Increase has come to the world.” Bar Kappara said to him: “Your father has given you an empty consolation. The world cannot do without either males or females. Yet happy is he whose children are males, and alas for him whose children are females. The world cannot do without either a spice-seller or a tanner. Yet happy is he whose occupation is that of a spice-seller, and alas for him whose occupation is that of a tanner.”

On the face of things, it seems that the disappointment that beset R. Simeon son of Rabbi Judah Hanasi is not at all connected to the world of the study hall, and its only cause was his desire for a male child. However, it is possible that his longing is rooted in the aspiration of Torah scholars for spiritual continuity, as presented and discussed previously. An allusion to this may be found in Rabbi Judah Hanasi’s words of solace: “Increase has come to the world,” by which he means that girls are a greater asset to the survival of the world than the boys who are engaged in Torah study because they are responsible for reproduction, and thus the birth of the sons who will study Torah is dependent on them.61 The fourth story, which is brought in Moed Katan 25b, deals with the sorrow of the Babylonian Amora R. Ashi who is confronting two simple people who serve as official eulogizers in the community. The story relates that when Ravina died, a eulogizer by the name of Bar Kipok delivered a eulogy as follows: ‫אם בארזים נפלה שלהבת‬ ?‫מה יעשו אזובי הקיר‬ ,‫לויתן בחכה יעלה‬ ?‫מה יעשו דגי הרקק‬ ‫בנחל שוטף נפלה חכה‬ !‫מה יעשו מי גבים‬ 61

If a flame among the Cedars fall What avails the lichen on the wall? If Leviathan by hook be hauled to land, What hope have fishes of a shallow strand? If fish in rushing stream by hook be caught What death may in marshy ponds be wrought!

Rashi explained, “that she hastens to produce seed,” and the Maharsha commented, “That the world increases more when there are more females than males, since one man may marry a hundred wives and sire children from them.”

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Another eulogizer, Bar Abin, delivered a different eulogy than that of Bar Kipok: ‫בכו לאבלים‬ :‫ולא לאבדה‬ ;‫שהיא למנוחה‬ .‫ואנו לאנחה‬

Weep ye for the mourners Not for what is lost: He found him rest; Tis we are left distressed.

Both official lamenters intended to praise and glorify Ravina but they made a mistake with their similes, the one in comparing him to a Leviathan and a rushing stream, and the other, to something that was lost. The reason is that the use of these similes is acknowledgement of the loss of the righteous man when he dies, which contradicts the notion that righteous people merit life in the world-to-come and are not lost when they die. According to the continuation of the story, R. Ashi was severely distressed by their misguided eulogies and the eulogizers themselves were punished in consequence: … ‫חלש דעתיה עלייהו ואתהפוך כרעייהו‬

R. Ashi was offended [halash da’ateh] with them, and their feet were turned…62 ‫ “לא בר קיפוק חולץ ולא בר‬:‫ההוא יומא לא אתו לאספודי והיינו דאמר רב אשי‬ ”.‫אבין חולץ‬

On that day [of R. Ashi’s demise] they did not come to make a lament for him, and that is what R. Ashi had said: “Neither Bar-Kipok nor Bar-Abin are fit to submit to the rite of halizah.”

62

According to the words of Amemar in Yebamot 103a: A. A person who performs the rite of halizah must push his foot into the ground and therefore, B. Someone whose foot was turned, or malformed, and who treads on the upper part of the foot is not qualified to perform halizah, which involves wearing or taking off a shoe. Rav Ashi there asked a question of Amemar about these two things and the latter set aside his objections. Then Rav Ashi said: “According to Amemar’s ruling neither Bar Abin nor Bar Kipok could submit to halizah.” Moscow-Ginsberg mss.1017: “Neither Bar Iboi nor Bar Kipok are fit to submit to halizah,” likewise in 594: “Neither Bar Iboi nor Bar Kipop are fit to submit to halizah.” Munich mss: “Neither Bar nor Bar Kipio are fit to submit to halizah.” Oxford: “Neither Bar Abib nor Bar Kipok are fit to submit to halizah.” Pisarev: “Neither Bar Uba nor Bar Kipof are fit to submit to halizah.” And he emended it: “Neither Bar Abin nor Bar Kipof are fit to submit to halizah.”

E x t r e me S o r r o w ( H u l s h a t d a’a t)

This story is the only one among the four where the profound sorrow of the sage does not stem from concern for his own honor but rather concern for the honor of his comrade. However, in this story too, as in the three preceding stories, the sorrow of the sages was connected with their position in the Torah world or on the scale of closeness to God even though it was not a direct consequence of a struggle for authority or status.

Summary of the findings and conclusions An analysis of the stories that were presented in this chapter gives rise to the following findings. A. The expression “halash/halsha da’ateh in conjunction with a sage always notes the despondency that is caused to him as a result of the failure, or what he deems failure, in competing for spiritual greatness. Several representations of this competition may be examined in the stories: 1) Competition between the sages for their status and honor in the Torah world; 2) The sages contending with their students for recognition of their authority in Torah matters; 3) Competition between students for a position in the ranking of Torah study; 4) The effort made by sages to merit spiritual continuity; 5) Competition between the sages both among themselves and with simple people, doers of good deeds, for Divine love. B. Most of the narratives dealing with hulshat da’at are Babylonian stories whose protagonists are Eretz Israel sages of the third generation. C. In most of the cases described in the stories, the fierce anguish of the sages is a result of their apprehension for their honor or status, which is based on an egocentric approach to life. These findings unquestionably indicate a difficult atmosphere of competition and ambitiousness that prevailed in the study hall and quite often caused the sages extremely painful emotional damage. This conclusion raises two questions: A. Why was the atmosphere in the study hall so troubled and rife with tension? B. Does the fact

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that the Babylonian Talmud stories tell us of Eretz Israel sages show that the confrontational atmosphere was characteristic of the batei midrash in Eretz Israel and that the traditions which documented this made their way to Babylon, or it is perhaps the opposite: that the stories are conceptualizing a reality that was familiar to the Babylonians from the batei midrash of their own time and place? Gedaliah Alon, who discussed the phenomenon of sons continuing in their fathers’ footsteps, which was very widespread in the society of the Torah scholars, contended that the extreme competition between the sages existed only in the batei midrash of the Land of Israel in the period after the middle of the second century until the fourth century, and he offered a socio-economic reason for it.63 In his words: “There are sources by Tannaim and Amoraim that discuss the sons of the sages as their students/disciples… As disciples, they merit some of the privileges of the sages, and they are judged worthy of inheriting the place of their fathers in virtue and teaching and in serving the public. This fact may teach us about the process of a type of consolidation of the status of the sages, which incorporates within it the wisdom and honor of the Torah in the tradition of a legacy signifying a spiritual and professional aristocracy.”64 Alon maintains that one can explain the fierce competition for greatness in Torah as related both to the era — the middle period of the Amoraim — and to the place — the land of Israel — as being driven by the desire of the sages to belong to the spiritual aristocracy and thus to earn for themselves and to confer upon their offspring the material benefits that were the legacy of that group. A totally different approach was proposed by Jeffrey Rubenstein,65 who presented comparisons between parallel versions of narratives recounting the life of the study hall in Babylonian and Eretz Israel sources, which show that descriptions 63

G. Alon, Studies in Jewish History, Tel Aviv 1958, pp. 58-73, (Hebrew). Ibid, p. 58. 65 J. Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories: Narrative Art, Composition, and Cultur, Baltimore 1999, pp. 276-278. 64

E x t r e me S o r r o w ( H u l s h a t d a’a t)

of extreme hostility and vexation between sages are only found in the Babylonian Talmud. Rubenstein attributed the phenomenon to the culture of study that was prevalent in the batei midrash in Babylon at the end of the Amoraic period and during the age of the Stammaim (redactors). According to Rubenstein, the culture of disputation was more developed in Babylon than in the land of Israel because in Babylon, all of the study was carried out orally, similar to the Persian tradition, while in the land of Israel, which was influenced by the Greco- Roman culture, there was also a tradition of written transmission. Yitzhak Hamitovsky recently published an article66 in which he argued that “it was specifically in the constitutive ethos of Torah study, which united those who frequent the study hall that was potential for confrontation and polarization, because the culture of study which is based on disputes that are resolved through dialogue and through arguments composed of argumentation and evidence also holds the potential for conflict that might spill over beyond the topical arguments and lead even to social polarization inside the study hall.”67 He, too, like Rubenstein, thought that it was in the Babylonian Talmud that “rejoicing at another’s misfortune and feelings of spite were presented either directly or indirectly as an integral part of the culture of the study hall while the Eretz Israel sources hardly dealt with this at all.”68 He explains this by the fact that the study framework in Eretz Israel was not as permanent and formal as it was in Babylon.69 A different explanation for the competitiveness and sometimes cruel confrontations that were common in the batei midrash, one that is unrelated to the issue of time or place, is supplied by Y. Fraenkel, who wrote: “For generations of the Talmudic Period, patterns of behavior were created which imbued the Talmudic 66

Y. Hamitovsky, “The War of Torah — Simile and reality in the study hall in the Mishnaic and Talmudic periods”, Moed 17, 2007 (Hebrew) . 67 See a copious bibliography regarding the disputatiousness and violent atmosphere in the study hall in ibid, notes 2-3, 6-7. 68 Ibid, p. 19. 69 See bibliography on the subject of the study setting in the land of Israel as compared with Babylon, op. cit., notes 13-15.

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academy with a character and style that were directed at honoring the Torah and those who study it. These are the external forms, rituals, and practices that became the rules of the study hall. This is the natural development that accompanies a closed society founded on religious authority. The dangers of this external life style are found in its becoming ossified and being exploited for the honor of the individual rather than for the benefit of the purpose for which the honor of Torah (k’vod haTorah) was created.” 70According to this explanation, Jewish society, which was a closed, hierarchical society that scrupulously observed external formal values, was a fertile ground for the cultivation of struggles for power and honor which did not always derive from the ideal of Torah study. In contrast to the socio-historical approach is a psychological, gender-based approach which is time-transcendent; according to this approach, one must seek explanations for human phenomena in the makeup of the human psyche rather than in the external agents which we call ‘historical reality.’ According to this approach, the competitive atmosphere of the study hall is not related to any reality of Eretz Israel or Babylon but rather to characteristics of the male personality such as egocentricity, disputatiousness, and ambitiousness which in Jewish society were channeled to the Torah world. This approach is bolstered by the differences that emerged in several of the stories between the expressions of sorrow articulated by the sages, both of Eretz Israel and Babylon, and those articulated by the women at their side, as I will show in Chapter Five, which is devoted to that topic and which has been presented by D. Boyarin71 and A. Kosman72 in their writing about these stories. One cannot conclude definitively, based solely on the absence of narratives of conflict in the Eretz Israel sources, that these were part of Babylonian scholarly society only. For we have seen that a considerable number of the Babylonian stories deal with Eretz Israel sages. One might contend that the culture of argumentation 70

Fraenkel, Studies, pp. 77-78. This was quoted previously in note 41, and I find it important to repeat it here. 71 See note 53. 72 See note 58.

E x t r e me S o r r o w ( H u l s h a t d a’a t)

and debate that developed primarily in Babylon had the potential for competition and personal rather than ideological conflict, and the Babylonian narrators associated their reality with the Eretz Israel figures. However, this explanation begs the next question, namely, why didn’t they tell the same stories about Babylonian personalities? Thus it seems to me proper to join the sociological explanation provided by Y. Fraenkel to the psychological, gender-based explanation of D. Boyarin and to conjecture that in Jewish society, which was a completely closed religious society that placed Torah study at its center, the natural masculine competitive drive was channeled towards the world of Torah and the study hall, and there against the backdrop of the culture of argumentation and polemic it developed to immense proportions and brought about a severe deterioration in human relationships within the band of scholars.

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Weeping (Bechi) The Babylonian Talmud in Shabbat 105b says: “Whoever weeps for a worthy man is forgiven all his iniquities on account of the honor which he showed him!”

This particular source presents weeping as a kind of ritualistic activity (in this case, to show honor to the dead) and not as an expression of personal grief. However, from a long series of Talmudic sources that will be discussed in this chapter, it emerges that weeping is indeed a physical expression of an emotion of personal grief whose causes are many and varied. Based on those sources, I will try to examine here the characteristics of weeping in Talmudic literature and to determine what are its causes, and whether they are associated solely with weeping or also with other expressions of sorrow. The first part of the chapter will be devoted to narratives of weeping by Tannaim, and the second part, to narratives of weeping by Amoraim. As in the other chapters, here, too, the main part of the chapter is the meticulous discussion of each narrative on its own merit and afterwards a summary is given and conclusions are drawn from the discussions. The Weeping of Tannaim I will begin with a narrative that tells of the weeping of R. Johanan b. Zakkai which is brought in the baraita quoted in BT, Ketubot 66b.The sugiya in which the baraita is quoted deals with the law brought in the Mishnah: “The bridegroom must undertake [to give his wife] ten denarii for her [perfume] basket in respect of each maneh.” The baraita is not connected to this topic and is brought in the sugiya incidental to a story about the daughter of Nakdimon whom the rabbis ruled should be given 400 gold coins

We epi n g (B e c h i)

for her basket of perfumes, and that is because its subject is also Nakdimon’s daughter: ‫ והיו‬,‫ מעשה ברבן יוחנן בן זכאי שהיה רוכב על החמור והיה יוצא מירושלים‬:‫ת”ר‬ .‫תלמידיו מהלכין אחריו‬ .‫ראה ריבה אחת שהיתה מלקטת שעורים מבין גללי בהמתן של ערביים‬ .‫כיון שראתה אותו נתעטפה בשערה ועמדה לפניו‬ ”!‫ פרנסני‬,‫ “רבי‬:‫אמרה לו‬ ”?‫ מי את‬,‫ “בתי‬:‫אמר לה‬ ”.‫ “בת נקדימון בן גוריון אני‬:‫אמרה לו‬ ”?‫ ממון של בית אביך היכן הלך‬,‫ “בתי‬:‫אמר לה‬ ”.‫לא כדין מתלין מתלא בירושלים מלח ממון חסר? ואמרי לה חסד‬,‫ “רבי‬:‫אמרה לו‬ ”?‫“ושל בית חמיך היכן הוא‬ ”.‫ “בא זה ואיבד את זה‬:‫אמרה לו‬ ”?‫ זכור אתה כשחתמת על כתובתי‬,‫ “רבי‬:‫אמרה לו‬ ‫ והייתי קורא בה ‘אלף‬,‫ “זכור אני כשחתמתי על כתובתה של זו‬:‫אמר להן לתלמידיו‬ ”.‫אלפים דינרי זהב מבית אביה’ חוץ משל חמיה‬ — ‫ בזמן שעושין רצונו של מקום‬,‫ “אשריכם ישראל‬:‫בכה רבן יוחנן בן זכאי ואמר‬ ‫ ובזמן שאין עושין רצונו של מקום — מוסרן‬,‫אין כל אומה ולשון שולטת בהם‬ ”.‫ ולא ביד אומה שפלה אלא ביד בהמתן של אומה שפלה‬,‫ביד אומה שפלה‬

Our Rabbis taught: It once happened that R. Johanan b. Zakkai left Jerusalem riding upon an ass, while his disciples followed him. He saw a girl picking barley grains in the dung1 of Arab cattle. As soon as she saw him she wrapped herself with her hair and stood before him. “Master,” she said to him, “feed me.” “My daughter,” he asked her, “who are you?” “I am,” she replied, “the daughter of Nakdimon b. Gorion.” “My daughter” he said to her, “what has become of the wealth of your father’s house?” “Master,” she answered him, “is there not a proverb current in Jerusalem: ‘The salt of money is diminution’?” [Others read: Benevolence].2 “And where [the Master asked] is the wealth of your father-in-law’s house?” 1

In the Munich, Petersburg, and Vatican 130 manuscripts, the wording is: from between the feet of Arab cattle. 2 Rashi comments SV “The salt of money is diminution” [melah mammon haser]: “Whoever wants to salt his money, i.e. to preserve it so it will last, should always diminish it by giving it to charity, because this diminution is its preservation.” And in SV Others read: Benevolence [amri leh hesed] Rashi comments: “Let him perform benevolent deeds with it, but your father’s household did not give charity properly and their money came to end — the one came and destroyed the other — because they joined their funds.”

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“The one,” she replied, “came and destroyed the other.” “Do you remember, Master,” she said to him, “when you signed my ketubah?” “I remember,” he said to his disciples, “that when I signed the ketubah of this [unfortunate woman], I read therein ‘A million gold denarii from her father’s house’ besides [the amount] from her father-in-law’s house.” Thereupon R. Johanan b. Zakkai wept and said: “How happy are Israel; when they do the will of the Omnipresent no nation nor any language-speaking group has any power over them; but when they do not do the will of the Omnipresent he delivers them into the hands of a low people, and not only in the hands of a low people but into the power of the beasts of a low people.”

This account about R. Johanan b. Zakkai’s meeting with Nakdimon’s daughter is quoted in two compilations of Tannaic sources: ‫מכילתא דרבי ישמעאל יתרו — מסכתא דבחדש פרשה א‬ .‫כבר היה רבן יוחנן בן זכאי עולה למעון יהודה‬ ,‫ אמר להם רבן יוחנן בן זכאי‬,‫ראה ריבה אחת מלקטת שעורים מתחת גללי הסוס‬ ”?‫“ראיתם ריבה זו מה היא‬ ”.‫ “עברית‬,‫אמרו לו‬ ”?‫“סוס זה של מי הוא‬ ”.‫ “של פרש ערבי אחד‬,‫אמרו לו‬ ,‫ “כל ימי הייתי מצטער על הפסוק הזה‬,‫אמר להם רבי יוחנן בן זכאי לתלמידיו‬ ’.‫ ‘אם לא תדעי לך היפה בנשים‬.‫והייתי קורא אותו ולא הייתי יודע מה הוא‬ ;‫ הרי אתם משועבדים לפגומי גוים ערביים‬,‫לא רציתם להשתעבד לשמים‬ ‫ הרי אתם שוקלים חמשה עשר שקלים‬,‫לא רציתם לשקול לשמים בקע לגולגולת‬ ‫ הרי‬,‫במלכות אויביכם; לא רציתם לתקן הדרכים והרחובות לעולי רגלים‬ ”.‫אתם מתקנין את הבורגסין ואת הבורגנין לעולי לכרכי מלכים‬

Mekhilta d’Rabbi Yishmael, Yitro — Masekhta debahodesh Chapter 1 Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai was [riding on an ass] going up to Emmaus in Judea. He saw a young girl gathering barley from underneath the hooves of the oxen.... Said Rabban Yohanan b. Zakkai to his disciples, “What is her standing?” They said to him, “She is a Hebrew girl.” “To whom does this horse belong?” They said to him, “To an Arab.” Then said Rabban Yohanan b. Zakkai to his disciples, “All my days I have been reading this verse of Scripture , but I have never known what it means: ‘If you do not know, O most beautiful among women, go out in the footsteps of the flock and feed your kids besides the shepherds’ tents’ (Song 1:8). You did not want to be subjugated to heaven, lo, you are subjugated to the most despicable of nations, the Arabs. You did not want to set aside

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the shekel-tax for head, ‘a beak a head’ (Ex. 38:26), lo, you separate fifteen shekels for the government of your enemies. “You did not want to keep the highways and roads in repair for those who came as pilgrims to the chosen house. Lo, you keep in repair the posts and stations on the highways for those who go up to the royal cities.” ‫ספרי דברים פיסקא שה‬ .‫ומעשה ברבן יוחנן בן זכיי שהיה רוכב על גבי החמור והיו תלמידיו מהלכים אחריו‬ ‫ כיון שראתה‬.‫וראה ריבה אחת מלקטת שעורים מתחת רגלי בהמתם של ערביים‬ ”.‫ “רבי פרנסני‬,‫את רבן יוחנן בן זכיי נתעטפה בשערה ועמדה לפניו ואמרה לו‬ ”?‫ “בת מי את‬,‫אמר לה‬ ”.‫ “בתו של נקדימון בן גוריון אני‬,‫אמרה לו‬ ”?‫אמרה לו “רבי זכור אתה כשחתמת בכתובתי‬ ‫אמר להם רבן יוחנן בן זכיי לתלמידיו “אני חתמתי על כתובתה של זו והייתי קורא‬ ’.‫ ‘אלף אלפים דינרי זהב של בית חמיה‬:‫בה‬ ‫“ושל בית ריבה זו לא היו נכנסים להשתחוות בהר הבית עד שהיו פורסים להם כלי‬ .‫מילת תחת רגליהם נכנסים ומשתחוים וחוזרים לבתיהם בשמחה‬ ‫ (שה”ש א ח) ‘אם לא תדעי לך היפה בנשים‬:‫ ומצאתיו‬,‫“וכל ימי בקשתי מקרא זה‬ ‫’ אל תהי קורא‬.‫צאי לך בעקבי הצאן ורעי את גדיותיך על משכנות הרועים‬ ‫ שכל זמן שישראל עושים רצונו של מקום אין כל אומה‬.‫גדיותיך אלא גויותיך‬ ‫ומלכות שולטת בהם וכשאין ישראל עושים רצונו של מקום מוסרם ביד אומה‬ ”.‫שפלה ולא ביד אומה שפלה אלא תחת רגלי בהמתם של אומה שפלה‬

Sifre, Deuteronomy piska 305 Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai was riding on an ass and his disciples were following after him. He saw a young girl gathering barley from underneath the hooves of the oxen of Arabs. When she saw Rabban Yohanan b. Zakkai, she covered herself with her hair and stood before him, and said to him, “My lord, feed me.” “My daughter,” he asked her, “who are you?” She said to him, “The daughter of Nakdimon b. Gorion am I.” She said to him, “My lord, Do you remember when you witnessed through your signature the document of my marriage settlement?” Said Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai to his disciples, “I signed as witness the document of this girl’s marriage settlement, and I read in it: ‘A thousand thousand of golden denars deriving from the household of her father in law.’ “Members of this girl’s household would not go up to the Temple Mount to prostrate themselves before people spread before them felt carpets under their feet, and then they would go in and prostrate themselves and go home in rejoicing. “My entire life I have sought the meaning of this verse of Scripture, now I have found it: ‘If you do not know, O most beautiful among women, go out in

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the footsteps of the flock and feed your kids besides the shepherds’ tents’ (Song 1:8). “Now I know the meaning. Do not read ‘your kids’ but ‘your [dead -SV] bodies’ [a shift in a consonant of the same word yields both senses]. So long as the Israelites carry out the will of the Omnipresent, no nation or kingdom can rule them, but when the Israelites do not carry out the will of the Omnipresent he will hand them over into the power of a despicable nation, and not only into the power of a despicable nation but even beneath the hooves of the beasts of a despicable nation.”

The account brought in the mekhilta is different from that brought in the baraita in the BT in several details of content: A. R. Johanan b. Zakkai “goes up to Maon Yehuda” and does not leave Jerusalem. B. The girl’s identity and the ownership of the cattle become clear to him from speaking with his disciples. C. The role of the girl in the story is restricted to her picking barley grains from the dung of the horse (not the cattle of Arabs). D. The narrative ends when R. Johanan b. Zakkai moralizes to his disciples regarding a verse from Song of Songs which is an extended reprimand. The narrative brought in the Sifre also is different with regard to several elements from that in the baraita quoted in the BT: A. The site of the occurrence is not mentioned. B. In a conversation between R. Johanan b. Zakkai and the girl, there is no passage that reads: “’My daughter,’ he said to her, ‘what has become of the wealth of your father’s house?’ ‘Master,’ she answered him, ‘is there not a proverb current in Jerusalem: “The salt of money is diminution?”’ [Others read: Benevolence] ‘And where [the Master asked] is the wealth of your father-in-law’s house?’ ‘The one,’ she replied, ‘came and destroyed the other.’“  C. The words that R. Johanan b. Zakkai spoke to his disciples after his conversation with the girl are different than in the baraita in the BT with respect to two elements: 1) The thousand thousands of gold denarii are attributed to her father-in-law’s house and not to her father. 2) The wealth and luxury that were practiced in her home are described at length: “And in this girl’s house, no one would go to bow down on the Temple Mount before rugs of fine wool were spread beneath their feet. They would enter and prostrate themselves and then return to their homes joyful at heart.”

We epi n g (B e c h i)

D. Here, too, as in the Mekhilta, R. Johanan b. Zakkai concludes his words to his disciples with a homily on the verse from Song of Songs3 on which the moral lesson was based, while in the baraita in the BT, the moral lesson, similar in style and length to that in the Sifre and different from that in the mekhilta, was said without a supporting verse. From a comparison between the Tannaic sources presented above and the source in the BT, a picture emerges of an Eretz Israel tradition that connected R. Johanan b. Zakkai’s homily on the verse in Songs to the tale of decline of Nakdimon ben Gorion’s daughter.4 3

In the Sifre, unlike in the Mekhilta, both parts of the verse are explained: ‫ ִמ ְׁשּכְ נֹות ָהר ִֹעים‬,‫ ַעל‬,‫ּגְ ִדּי ַֹתיְִך‬-‫ ְּור ִעי ֶאת‬,‫לָ ְך ְּב ִע ְק ֵבי ַהּצֹאן‬-‫ ַהּי ָָפה ַּבּנָ ִׁשים; ְצ ִאי‬,‫ֹלא ֵת ְד ִעי לָ ְך‬-‫ִאם‬ “If thou know not, O thou fairest among women, go thy way forth by the footsteps of the flock and feed thy kids, beside the shepherds’ tents.”

4

Another version of the Eretz Israel tradition is found in Tosefta Ketubot 5:910 where the narrative is connected with the story about the cessation of the wine allowance which angered Nakdimon’s daughter and its main protagonist is not R. Johanan b. Zakkai but rather R. Eleazar b. R. Zadok: ‫“מעשה בבתו של נקדימון בן גוריון שפסקו לה חכמים חמש מאות דינרי זהב בכל‬ ‫יום לקופת בשמים ולא היתה אלא שומרת יבם אף היא קיללה ואמ’ להם כך‬ ‫תתנו לבנותיכם אמ' ר' לעזר בר› צדוק אראה בנחמה אם לא ראיתיה שמלקטת‬ ‫שעורים מתחת טלפי סוסים בעכו קראתי עליה המקרא הזה אם לא תדעי לך‬ ”.'‫היפה בנשים וגו‬ “The sages awarded the daughter of Nakdimon b. Gorion five hundred golden denars daily for a fund of spices, and she was only a sister-in-law awaiting levirate marriage. But she cursed them and said, “So may you award for your own daughters!” Said R. Eleazar b. R. Zadok, “May I not see comfort, if I do not see her picking barley from under the hoofs of horses in Akko. Concerning her I pronounced the following Scripture: ‘If thou know not, O most beautiful of women’” (Song 1:8).

Eleazar b. R. Zadok was the main protagonist of the story also in its development as brought in the JT 30c-d (5:11) and it is also connected to the story of the anger of the main protagonist at the amount of wine that the sages awarded her. However, the main protagonist of this story is not the daughter of Nakdimon but rather Miriam daughter of Boethus: ‫”אלעזר בר צדוק אראה בנחמה אם לא ראיתיה מלקטת שעורי› מבין טלפי סוסים בעכו‬ ‫וקראתי עליה הפסוק הזה הרכה בך והענוגה וגו› אם לא תדעי לך היפה בנשים‬ “.'‫צאי לך בעקבי הצאן וגו‬ “Said Eleazar b. R. Zadok May I not see comfort, if I do not see her picking barley from under the hoofs of horses in Akko. Concerning her, I pronounced the

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It seems that the tradition of the Sifri5 is closer to the narrative in the BT baraita than that in the mekhilta and may have been the basis for it. The author of the BT baraita fashioned the narrative tradition in a style that would suit the spirit of his time and place. He placed the event at the exit to Jerusalem, based on the established traditions of his time regarding the activity of R. Johanan b. Zakkai in Jerusalem at the time of the destruction. He couched R. Johanan b. Zakkai’s conversation with the young girl in the language of riddles according to well-known narrative traditions about the wisdom of the people of Jerusalem, and respectively, to the Talmudic discourse. As to R. Johanan b. Zakkai’s homily and its moral lesson, these might not have been familiar to him; however, on the other hand he might following Scripture, ‘The tender and delicate woman among you’ (Deut. 28:56), ‘If thou know not, O thou fairest among women, go thy way forth by the footsteps of the flock’ (Song 1:8).

Another version is found in Lamentations Rabbah (Vilna), I, where the heroine’s name contains some expression of the combination of both traditions: ‫”מעשה במרים בתו של נקדימון שפסקו לה חכמים חמש מאות דינרי זהב לקופת‬ ,‫ אף היא עמדה וקללה אותם ואמרה להם כך תפסקו לבנותיכם‬,‫בשמים בכל יום‬ ‫ אמר ר' אלעזר אראה בנחמה אם לא ראיתיה‬,‫א''ר אחא אף אנו ענינו אחריה אמן‬ ‫שהיתה מלקטת שעורים מתחת טלפי סוסים בעכו וקראתי עליה הפסוק הזה (שיר‬ ‫השירים א') אם לא תדעי לך היפה בנשים צאי לך בעקבי הצאן ורעי את גדיותיך‬ “.‫אל תקרי גדיותיך אלא גויותיך‬ “It is related of Miriam the daughter of Nakdimon, that the Rabbis allowed her five hundred golden dinars daily to be spent on her store of perfumes. Nevertheless, she stood up and cursed them, saying: ‘Make such a paltry allowance for your own daughters.’ R. Aha said, ‘We responded with Amen!’ R. Eleazar said: ‘May I not live to behold the consolation [of Zion] if I did not see her gathering barley from beneath the horses’ hooves in Acco; and I quoted this verse in connection with her, “If thou know not, O thou fairest among women, go thy way forth by the footsteps of the flock, and feed thy kids” (Song 1:8) — read not gediyothayik (thy kids) but gewiyothayik (thy bodies)’.” 5

Anat Yisraeli-Taran, Legends of the Destruction, Tel Aviv 1997, p. 44 (in Hebrew) wrote that the Babylonian source was based on the Eretz Israel sources cited previously. In my opinion, the Babylonian source is based on the tradition of the Sifre which is the closest to it, as regards the names of the main protagonists, the content, and the concept — a lamentation over the terrible decline in the circumstances of the wealthy Nakdimon’s daughter, which is an example of the decline in the state of the nation.

We epi n g (B e c h i)

have known them and omitted them to preserve the smooth flow of the plot and to end it with an emotional high — the weeping of R. Johanan b. Zakkai. The sophisticated structure of the narrative, which includes three parts, each of which presents opposites, is corroboration for the hypothesis that here in the BT we are dealing with a narrative adaptation of an earlier tradition. Following are the three parts of the narrative, highlighting the opposites that they present: A. The event: Facing R. Johanan b. Zakkai who is mounted on an ass and whose disciples are walking after him is the girl, a solitary figure, who is following after the cattle of the Arabs and collecting barley from among the dung. B. The conversation between R. Johanan b. Zakkai and the girl which ends with his words to his disciples about her ketubah: in the face of the poverty and wretchedness of the present stands the glory of the past which is highlighted here as in the Sifre by means of contradictory descriptions of her present misery: “she wrapped herself with her hair and stood before him” and her past wealth “I remember when I signed the ketubah of this ]unfortunate[ woman, I read therein ‘A million gold denarii from her father’s house’ besides [the amount] from her father-in-law’s house.” However, here the contrast receives added emphasis through the extension of the conversation between R. Johanan b. Zakkai and the daughter of Nakdimon and the inclusion of the questions and answers arranged in stages showing the gradual loss of her wealth. This conversation, which is another, dramatic reference to the tremendous loss of wealth by both households with whom Nakdimon’s daughter was associated heightens the contrast between past and present. C. The ending: the lesson taught by R. Johanan b. Zakkai. The words are presented in the form of a lamentation and arranged in a contrasting structure, with an added line of amplification which connects to the beginning of the narrative and completes the structure: ‘How happy are you O Israel; when they do the will of the Omnipresent no nation nor any language-speaking group has any power over them; but when they do not do the will

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of the Omnipresent he delivers them into the hands of a low people, and not only in the hands of a low people but into the power of the beasts of a low people.’

The presentation of R. Johanan b. Zakkai’s words as a lamentation “Thereupon R. Johanan b. Zakkai wept and said…” appears only in the BT version,6 heightening the reader’s emotion and constituting a dramatic finale of a sad tale. The story of R. Johanan b. Zakkai’s weeping reveals the true reason for his sorrow and makes it clear that it is not the individual tragedy which befell Nakdimon’s daughter nor even the plight of other Jewish women,7 but rather the plight of the nation which was illustrated by her example. The weeping which, as stated, appears only in the BT version of the story, is not an expression of personal grief, as great as that might be, but rather an outburst of grief at the terrible, colossal catastrophe that befell the nation of Israel. Another story of weeping is also found in a baraita and its hero is R. Akiva. The baraita is brought in Avoda Zara 20a to contradict the words of Rav, who said: “One is forbidden to say, ‘How beautiful is that idolatress!’,” beginning with a story that describes R. Simeon 6

Thus, in all versions, except for the version in the Petersburg ms. where the entire last passage is missing. 7 Unlike the lamentation offered in another generation by R. Ishmael according to the Mishnah in Nedarim 9:10:

‫ומעשה באחד שנדר מבת אחותו הנייה והכניסוה לבית רבי ישמעאל וייפוה אמר‬..” ‫לו רבי ישמעאל בני לזו נדרת אמר לו לאו והתירו רבי ישמעאל באותה שעה‬ ‫בכה רבי ישמעאל ואמר בנות ישראל נאות הן אלא שהעניות מנוולתן וכשמת‬ ‫רבי ישמעאל היו בנות ישראל נושאות קינה ואומרות בנות ישראל אל רבי‬ ‫ישמעאל בכינה וכן הוא אומר בשאול (שמואל ב› א›) בנות ישראל אל שאול‬ “‫בכינה‬ “And thus it happened with one who vowed not to benefit from his sister’s daughter, and she was taken into R. Ishmael’s house and made beautiful. My son, exclaimed R. Ishmael to him, ‘did you vow not to benefit from this one!’ ‘No,’ he replied, where upon R. Ishmael permitted her [to him]. In that hour R. Ishmael wept and said, ‘the daughters of Israel are beautiful, but poverty disfigures them’ and when R. Ishmael died, the daughters of Israel raised a lament, saying, ye daughters of Israel weep for R. Ishmael. And thus it is said too of Saul (II Sam. 1), ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul.”

We epi n g (B e c h i)

ben Gamaliel as someone who openly enthused at the beauty of an idolatress: “It happened that R. Simeon b. Gamaliel, while standing on a step on the Temple-mount, saw a heathen woman who was particularly beautiful, and he exclaimed: How great are Thy works, O Lord (Psalms 104).” This story in the baraita is attached to another story, one that describes the behavior of R. Akiva upon seeing the wife of Tyranus Rufus: “… when R. Akiba saw the wife of the wicked Tyranus Rufus, he spat, then laughed, and then wept.”

The story itself has no connection to the prohibition against saying “How beautiful is that idolatress” nor does it contest it, for R. Akiva’s reaction upon seeing the wife of Tyranus Rufus was not verbal. It seems that in the fashion of the BT in many places, it cites the baraita in its entirety, including the part that does not properly belong to the subject of the sugiya.8 In any case, the gemara reacted specifically to this part of the baraita and explained R. Akiva’s behavior in these words: “’spat,’ — because of her originating only from a putrefying drop;

8

This was the commentary in the Torat Hayim composed by R. Abraham Hayim, first published in Lublin 1624, rev. ed. Jerusalem, 2004. And in fact, in the parallel narrative in the JT, Avoda Zara 39a-b (1:40) what appears is only: “‫”מעשה ברבן גמליאל שהיה מטייל בהר הבית וראה אשה אחת גויה ובירך עליה‬ “The story is told of Rabban Gamaliel who was walking on the Temple Mount and saw a gentile woman and thereupon recited the blessing.”

Also in JT Berachot 13b-c (9:1): ‫”הרואה אילנות ובני אדם נאים אומר ברוך שכן ברא בריות נאות בעולמו ומעשה ברבן‬ “‫גמליאל שראה גויה אישה נאה ובירך עליה‬ “One who sees beautiful trees and people recited the blessing, ‘Who has created beautiful creatures’ and the story was told of Rabban Gamaliel who saw a beautiful gentile woman and he recited this blessing.”

In both sources in the JT, the main protagonist is Rabban Gamaliel and not Rabbi Akiva, and the woman is a “gentile” and not the wife of Tyranus Rufus.

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‘laughed,’ — because he foresaw that she would become a proselyte and that he would take her to wife; ‘wept,’ that such beauty should [ultimately] decay in the dust”.9

According to the understanding of the gemara, one may distinguish between the reason for R. Akiva’s laughter, which is associated with him personally and his nationhood, and the reasons for his spitting and weeping, which are associated with the general philosophical view of the source of human life and its insignificance. From the specific explanation about R. Akiva’s weeping, one may conclude that the wife of Tyranus Rufus, the foreign woman who fascinated him, was extremely beautiful. However, as distinguished from his laughter, which expresses a personal feeling towards the woman — a kind of “falling in love” — his weeping expresses existential sorrow that was awakened precisely at the sight of such extraordinary beauty, knowing as he did that it was fated to attrition and extinction. The next story of weeping is brought in Me’ilah 17a-b and one may presume that it is an adaptation of a Tannaic source, although there is no title to define it as a baraita. The protagonist of this story is R. Simeon bar Yohai, the disciple of R. Akiva: ‫ “מנין לדם שרצים‬:]‫שאל רבי מתיא בן חרש את רבי שמעון בן יוחאי בעיר [רומי‬ ”?‫שהוא טמא‬ ”.‫ “דאמר קרא )ויקרא י”א( וזה לכם הטמא‬:‫א”ל‬ ”!‫ “חכים ליה בן יוחאי‬:‫אמרו לו תלמידיו‬ ‫ שפעם אחת גזרה‬.‫ “תלמוד ערוך בפיו של רבי אלעזר בר רבי יוסי‬:‫אמר להם‬ ‫ ושיבעלו את‬,‫ ושלא ימולו את בניהם‬,‫המלכות גזרה שלא ישמרו את השבת‬ .‫ והלך וישב עמהם‬,‫ הלך רבי ראובן בן איסטרובלי וסיפר קומי‬.‫נדות‬ ’?‫ ‘מי שיש לו אויב יעני או יעשיר‬:‫“אמר להם‬ ’.‫ ‘עני‬:‫“אמרו לו‬ ’.‫ לא יעשו מלאכה בשבת — כדי שיענו‬,‫ ‘אם כן‬:‫“אמר להם‬ .‫’ ובטלוה‬,‫ ליבטל‬,‫ ‘טבית אמר‬:‫“אמרו‬ ’?‫ ‘מי שיש לו אויב יכחיש או יבריא‬:‫“חזר ואמר להם‬ ’.‫ ‘יכחיש‬:‫“אמרו לו‬ ’.‫ ימולו בניהם לשמונה ימים — ויכחישו‬,‫ ‘אם כן‬:‫“אמר להם‬ .‫ ובטלוה‬,’‫ ‘טבית אמר‬:‫“אמרו‬ ’?‫ ‘מי שיש לו אויב ירבה או יתמעט‬:‫“חזר ואמר להם‬ 9

This expression is also found in Berachot 5b, in the words of R. Eleazar who explains to R. Johanan the reason for his weeping. See below note 157.

‫‪119‬‬

‫)‪We epi n g (B e c h i‬‬ ‫“אמרו לו‪‘ :‬יתמעט‪’.‬‬ ‫“’אם כן — לא יבעלו נדות‪’.‬‬ ‫“אמרו‪‘ :‬טבית אמר‪ ’,‬ובטלוה‪.‬‬ ‫“הכירו בו שהוא יהודי — החזירום‪.‬‬ ‫“אמרו‪ :‬מי ילך ויבטל הגזרות — ילך ר’ שמעון בן יוחאי שהוא מלומד בנסים‪,‬‬ ‫ואחריו מי ילך — ר”א בר ר’ יוסי‪.‬‬ ‫“אמר להם רבי יוסי‪‘ :‬ואילו היה אבא חלפתא קיים‪ ,‬יכולין אתם לומר לו תן בנך‬ ‫להריגה?’‬ ‫“אמר להם ר’ שמעון‪‘ :‬אילו היה יוחאי אבא קיים‪ ,‬יכולין אתם לומר לו תן בנך‬ ‫להריגה?’‬ ‫“אמר להו רבי יוסי‪‘ :‬אנא אזלין דלמא עניש ליה‪ ’.‬ר’ שמעון דקא סתפינא‪ .‬קביל‬ ‫עליה דלא ליענשיה‪ ,‬אפילו הכי ענשיה‪ ,‬כשהיו מהלכין בדרך נשאלה שאלה‬ ‫זו בפניהם‪:‬‬ ‫“מנין לדם השרץ שהוא טמא? עקם פיו ר’ אלעזר בר רבי יוסי ואמר‪) :‬ויקרא י”א(‬ ‫‘וזה לכם הטמא‪’.‬‬ ‫“אמר ליה ר’ שמעון‪‘ :‬מעקימת שפתיך אתה ניכר שתלמיד חכם אתה‪ ,‬אל יחזור‬ ‫הבן אצל אביו!’‬ ‫“יצא לקראתו בן תמליון‪‘ :‬רצונכם אבוא עמכם?’‬ ‫“בכה ר’ שמעון ואמר‪‘ :‬מה שפחה של בית אבא — נזדמן לה מלאך שלש פעמים‪.‬‬ ‫ואני לא פעם אחת; יבא הנס מכל מקום‪’.‬‬ ‫“קדים הוא‪ ,‬על בברתיה דקיסר‪ ,‬כי מטא התם‪ ,‬אמר‪‘ :‬בן תמליון צא! בן תמליון‬ ‫צא!’ וכיון דקרו ליה נפק אזל‪.‬‬ ‫“אמר להון‪‘ :‬שאילו כל מה דאית לכון למישאל!’ ועיילינהו לגנזיה‪ ,‬לשקול כל‬ ‫דבעו‪ .‬אשכחו ההוא איגרא‪ ,‬שקלוה וקרעוה‪”.‬‬ ‫והיינו דאמר רבי אלעזר בר רבי יוסי‪“ :‬אני ראיתיה בעיר [רומי]‪ ,‬והוו עליה כמה‬ ‫טיפי דמים‪”.‬‬

‫‪R. Mathia b. Heresh once asked R. Simeon b. Yohai, in Rome: “Wherefrom do we‬‬ ‫”?‪know that the blood of reptiles is unclean‬‬ ‫”‪He replied: “Because it is written: And these are they that are unclean.‬‬ ‫”‪His disciples then said to him: “The son of Yohai has grown wise.‬‬ ‫‪Said he to them: “This is a teaching prepared in the mouth of R. Eleazar son of‬‬ ‫‪R. Jose. For the Government had once issued a decree that [Jews] might‬‬ ‫‪not keep the Sabbath, circumcise their children, and that they should have‬‬ ‫‪intercourse with menstruant women. Thereupon R. Reuben son of Istroboli‬‬ ‫‪cut his hair in the Roman fashion, and went and sat among them.‬‬ ‫‪“He said to them: ‘If a man has an enemy, what does he wish him, to be poor‬‬ ‫’?‪or rich‬‬ ‫’‪“They said: ‘That he be poor.‬‬ ‫‪“He said to them: ‘If so, let them do no work on the Sabbath so that they grow‬‬ ‫’‪poor.‬‬ ‫‪“They said: ‘He speaketh rightly, let this decree be annulled.’ It was indeed‬‬ ‫‪annulled.‬‬

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“Then he continued: ‘If one has an enemy, what does he wish him, to be weak or healthy?’ “They answered: ‘Weak.’ “He said to them: ‘Then let their children be circumcised at the age of eight days and they will be weak.’ “They said: ‘He speaketh rightly,’ and it was annulled. “Finally he said to them: ‘If one has an enemy, what does he wish him, to multiply or to decrease?’ “They said to him: ‘That he decreases.’ “‘If so, let them have no intercourse with menstruant women.’ “They said: ‘He speaketh rightly,’ and it was annulled. “Later they came to know that he was a Jew, and [the decrees] were re-instituted. “[The Jews] then conferred as to who should go [to Rome] to work for the annulment of the decrees. Let R. Simeon b. Yohai go for he is experienced in miracles. And who should accompany him? — R. Eleazar son of R. Jose. “Said R. Jose to them: ‘And were my father Halafta still alive, would you have said to him to give his son for slaughter?’ “Answered R. Simeon: ‘Were Yohai my father still alive, would you have said to him to give his son for slaughter?’ “Said R. Jose to them: ‘I shall accompany him, for I fear R. Simeon may punish him.’ He [R. Simeon] undertook thereupon not to inflict any punishment on him. Not with standing this, he did punish him, for when they were proceeding on the way the following question was raised in their presence: “Where from do we know that the blood of a reptile is unclean? R. Eleazar son of R. Jose curved his mouth and said: ‘It is written: “And these are they that are unclean”.’ (Lev. 11) “Said R. Simeon to him: ‘From the undertone of thy utterance, one can see that thou art a scholar, yet the son shall not return to the father.’ “Then Ben Temalion came to meet them. [He said]: ‘Is it your wish that I accompany you?’ “Thereupon R. Simeon wept and said: ‘The handmaid of my ancestor’s house was found worthy of meeting an angel thrice, and I not even to meet him once. However, let the miracle be performed, no matter how.’ “Thereupon he advanced and entered into the Emperor’s daughter. When [R. Simeon] arrived there, he called out: ‘Ben Temalion leave her, Ben Temalion leave her,’ and as he proclaimed this, he left her. “He said to them: ‘Request whatever you desire.’ They were led into the treasure house to take whatever they chose. They found that bill, took it and tore it to pieces.” It was with reference to this visit that R. Eleazar son of R. Jose related: “I saw it in the city of Rome and there were on it several drops of blood.”

We epi n g (B e c h i)

It seems that this long and complex story is an adaptation of a tradition that told of the joint mission of R. Simeon bar Yohai (hereinafter Rashbi) and R. Eleazar son of R. Jose to Rome, and it relies on what is brought in the Tannaic source as the account given by R. Eleazar son of R. Jose who was in Rome and saw the curtain of the holy ark which had been taken from the Temple.10 10

The testimony appears in Tosefta and is quoted in the JT and BT tractate Yoma: .‫ טז‬,‫תוספתא יומא (כיפורים) (ליברמן) ב‬ ‫”נטל את הדם ממי שממריס בו נכנס למקום שנכנס ועמד במקום שעמד והזה‬ ‫ממנו על הפרוכת כנגד שני בדי ארון אחת למעלה ושבע למטה ולא היה‬ ‫מתכוין להזות לא למעלה ולא למטה אלא כמצליף וכך היה מונה אחת אחת‬ ‫ואחת אחת ושתים אחת ושלש אחת וארבע אחת וחמש אחת ושש אחת ושבע‬ ‫ר’ יהודה אמ’ משם ר’ ליעזר כך היה מונה אחת אחת ואחת שתים ואחת שלש‬ ‫ואחת ארבע ואחת חמש ואחת שש ואחת שבע ואחת היה מהלך לשמאלו עם‬ ‫הפרכת ולא היה מגיע לפרכת אם הגיע הגיע אמ' ר’ לעזר בי ר’ יוסה אני ראיתיה‬ “‫ברומי היו עליה טיפי דמים ואמ’ לי אילו מדמים של יום הכפורים‬ Tosefta Yoma (Kipurim) 2:16 “He took the blood from the one who was stirring it. He again entered into the place where he had entered [earlier] and again stood on the place on which he had stood. Then he sprinkled some of it on the Mercy Seat towards the two bars of the ark. One time upwards and seven times downwards. But he did not intentionally sprinkle upwards or downwards. But he did it like one who cracks a whip. And thus did he count, “One, one, and one, one and two, one and three, one and four, one and five, one and six, one and seven. R. Judah said in the name of R. Eliezer, “Thus did he count: ‘One, one and one, two and one, three and one, four and one, five and one, six and one, seven and one.’” He went out to his left, along the parochet [=curtain]. And he did not touch the curtain. But if he touched it, he touched it. Said R. Eleazar son of R. Jose, “I myself saw it in Rome and there were drops of blood on it. And he told me, ‘These are from the drops of blood of the Day of Atonement’.”

)‫ ד‬,‫ ע“א (ה‬,‫ירושלמי יומא מב‬ ‫”אמר רבי לעזר בי רבי יוסי אני ראיתיה ברומי מליאה טיפין של דם אמרתי אילו מן‬ “.‫הדמי' שהיו מזין עליה ביום הכיפורים‬ JT, Yoma 42a (5, 4) “Said R. Eleazar son of R. Jose, ‘I myself saw it in Rome full of drops of blood. I said, These are from the drops of blood that they would sprinkle on it on the Day of Atonement.’”

‫ ע“א‬, ‫בבלי יומא נז‬ ‫ אינו מזה על הפרוכת אלא כנגד‬,‫ כשהוא (הכהן הגדול ביום הכיפורים)מזה‬:‫”תנא‬ ‫ והיו עליה כמה טיפי‬,‫ אני ראיתיה ברומי‬:‫ אמר רבי אלעזר ברבי יוסי‬.‫הפרוכת‬ .‫דמים של פר ושעיר של יום הכפורים‬

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The story which is brought in the sugiya as evidence for the words of Rashbi that the support from the Torah for the uncleanness of reptile blood was a talmud aruch [well-ordered teaching] in the mouth of R. Eleazar son of Jose, (i.e., it was very well known to him), is a complex narrative in which one may detect, because of the switch in languages, two different levels structured one on top of the other. In the first level are three parts, each of which has a complete structure: The first part is structured like a triad. It begins with an exposition that presents the three decrees issued by the Roman emperor, continues into a diplomatic conversation between R. Reuben son of Istroboli11 and the government officials of Rome and ends with the decrees being reinstated. The central paragraph in the conversation is built of three passages that correspond to the three decrees, and each passage is also made up of three links: question, answer, and declaration that the decree was annulled. It seems that this triadic structure, the uniform, metrical style of the questions posed by R. Reuben b. Istroboli and of the .‫ודילמא דפר העלם דבר של צבור ושעירי עבודה זרה הוו? — דחזא דעבידי כסדרן‬ ‫ כשהוא מזה — לא היו נוגעין‬:‫ותנן נמי גבי פר העלם דבר של צבור כי האי גוונא‬ .‫ ואם נגעו — נגעו‬,‫בפרוכת‬ ‫ והיו עליה כמה טיפי דמים של פר העלם‬,‫ אני ראיתיה ברומי‬:‫אמר רבי אלעזר ברבי יוסי‬ “.‫דבר של צבור ושעירי עבודה זרה‬ BT, Yoma 57a “It was taught: When he sprinkled, he did not sprinkle directly upon the curtain, but towards it. R. Eleazar b. Jose said: I saw it in Rome and there were upon it many drops of blood both of the bullock and the he-goat of the Day of Atonement. — Perhaps these stains were those from the [blood of ] the bullock [offered up] for an error of the community, or of the goats [offered in expiation] for idolatry? — He saw that they were in their regular order. It has also been taught in connection with the bullock offered up for an error of the community: When he sprinkled the drops were not to reach the curtain, but if they did, they just did. And R. Eleazar b. Jose said: I saw it in Rome and there were upon it many drops of blood from the bullock offered up for an error of the congregation and from the he-goats offered up for idolatry.” 11

A Tanna of the fourth generation. It seems that he is R. Reuben (without any addition to his name) who is mentioned in Tosefta Shavuout 3:6. There are a few aggadaic sayings attributed to him. According to M. Margaliot, The Encyclopedia of Talmud Sages and Geonim.

We epi n g (B e c h i)

answers given by the Romans, as well as the lengthiness of the conversational passage in contrast to the abrupt ending, “They came to know that he was a Jew, and [the decrees] were re-instituted” are literary devices designed to heighten the tension in anticipation of the second — and major — part of the story — the joint mission undertaken by Rashbi and R. Eleazar b. R. Jose. This principal part is built like a play with three scenes: in the first scene, the sages are selecting Rashbi and R. Eleazar b. R. Jose for the assignment of having the decrees revoked. Simeon’s selection is justified while Eleazar’s is not. The second scene has two parts. In the first part, R. Jose is trying to have his son’s mission cancelled using an argument that sounds to Rashbi like fear of the danger involved. Rashbi rejects the father’s manuever by presenting the risk to himself as equal to that of R. Eleazar’s risk. The second part begins with a dialogue between R. Jose and Rashbi where it emerges that the former’s fear for his son is not because of the Romans but because of Rashbi himself and ends with this fear being validated. The Aramaic wording of this passage, the fact that it deviates from the plot, and notes with emphasis (three times) the existence of a punishment that is revealed only in the next scene, proves that it was apparently added as an explanation and link to it. The third scene, where what is implied is greater than what is explicit, is what connects the story to the sugiya. It opens with a question asked in the presence of Rashbi and R. Eleazar b. Jose, continues with a description of the confrontation between Rashbi and R. Eleazar and it ends with an encounter with the demon — Ben Temalion, and the weeping of Rashbi, who prayed for a miracle. As mentioned, what is ambiguous is greater than what is explained: the issue of ‘curving one’s mouth’ as R. Eleazar B. Jose did, is unclear because the use of this expression to show he was evading his teacher in order to teach the law in his presence is not found in other Talmudic sources. It is not clear why Rashbi punished R. Eleazar and said “the son shall not return to the father,” this, despite his explicit promise to the father. And finally, the hazy, undefined story of Ben Temalion is extremely perplexing, both

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because of its context in the story and because of Rashbi’s reaction and its connection to Ben Tamalion’s question: “Is it your wish that I accompany you?” As to the punishment, Rashi brings an aggadah wherein “Eleazar fell sick with diphtheria and was left lying in a ship. When Rashbi remembered that he had vowed to the father that he would not punish the son, he asked for Divine mercy that Eleazar recover. While he was lying sick in the ship, one of the seamen walked over him and unwittingly trod on his neck, and the diphtheria left his throat and entered the throat of that seaman.” It is not clear what is the source for that aggadah brought by Rashi. The Ba’alei Hatosafot writes “the son will not return to the father,” in the JT it is explained that diphtheria seized hold of him, and when Rashbi remembered that he had made a stipulation [to return him to his father], he felt remorse and prayed for him, and “thus he was cured.” However, the commentary of Hiddushei Hageonim on Ein Ya’akov expresses a doubt that the aggadah actually appeared in the JT, and in their words, “It is possible that it was in the Yerushalmi (JT) in Seder Kodashim which the Rishonim had but has been lost to us.” If we postulate that the aggadah or something similar was included in the original narrative, it is possible to understand: Rashbi’s weeping; the comparison that he made between himself and “the handmaid from my ancestor’s house” (namely, Hagar, handmaid of Sarah of whom it is written three times “And the angel of God said to her,” from which the midrash deduces that she encountered three angels, one after the other); and the connection between these things and the mission which was the main part of the story. It is possible that Rashbi wept because he was disappointed with himself; Rashbi attributed the absence of the angel — who met with even a servant who was found worthy — to the fact that he had not fulfilled his promise to R. Jose. According to this understanding, his private grief that he had sinned toward R. Eleazar and his father mingled with the national grief that, due to this sin, he was unable to merit Divine assistance and succeed in his mission of redeeming his people from the decrees of the Romans. The scene ends with the sentence: “Thereupon R. Simeon wept and said: The handmaid of my ancestor’s house was found

We epi n g (B e c h i)

worthy of meeting an angel thrice, and I not even to meet him once. However, let the miracle be performed, no matter how,”12 leaving the reader ignorant as to the success or failure of the mission. The story ends with a passage in Aramaic that tells of a kind of stratagem employed by Rashbi and the demon, and its outcome. The ruse was that the demon entered the daughter of the Emperor, and he left her ostensibly in response to Rashbi’s appeal to him. The result was that the Emperor allowed Rashbi and R. Eleazar to take whatever they wished from his treasure house, and they took the bill on which the decrees were written and tore it up. The description of the demon bringing salvation arouses some wonder, even more so because Rashbi had wept and asked for an encounter with an angel and was answered with an encounter with a demon. From the Aramaic wording of the story, from a description of the encounter and collaboration with the demon, and from the weak, seemingly artificial connection between the story of the demon and the story of finding the bill of decrees in the treasure house, it emerges that we are looking at a passage that was composed of two elements: a popular mystical legend about the demon Ben Temalion together with a tradition telling of R. Eleazar b. R. Jose’s account of having seen the holy ark curtain in Rome. It is possible that we have a later adaptation where both these elements are combined into a story which was appended to the story of the mission in order to show that Rashbi’s weeping was not in vain and that his joint mission with R. Eleazar ended in success. The Tanna whose weeping is mentioned in the greatest number of stories is Rabbi Judah Hanasi. In Avoda Zara there are three stories about the weeping of Rabbi Judah Hanasi which have a formulaic ending that connects the weeping to a comparison between two factors and deals with the world to come: “Rabbi Judah Hanasi [on hearing of it] wept saying: ‘One may acquire eternity in a single hour, another may acquire it after many years!’13 12

The expression ‘‫[ ’מכל מקום‬no matter how] which means ‘even though I am not as worthy as the handmaid of my ancestor’s house,’ reinforces the understanding that Rashbi feared that because of his sin towards R. Eleazar, he was prevented from being helped by an angel of God.

13

In the story of Eleazar b. Dordia which will be brought afterwards, the

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The first story is brought in Avoda Zara 10b and its main protagonist is Keti’ah b. Shalom:14 ‫ “מי שעלה לו נימא‬:‫אמר להו לחשיבי דמלכותא‬.‫דההוא קיסרא דהוה סני ליהודאי‬ ”?‫ יקטענה ויחיה או יניחנה ויצטער‬,‫ברגלו‬ ”.‫ “יקטענה ויחיה‬:‫אמרו לו‬ ‫ )זכריה ב( ‘כי‬:‫ דכתיב‬,‫ דלא יכלת להו לכולהו‬,‫ “חדא‬:‫אמר להו קטיעא בר שלום‬ ’‫’ מאי קאמר? אלימא דבדרתהון בד‬.‫כארבע רוחות השמים פרשתי אתכם‬ ‫ לארבע רוחות מבעי ליה! אלא כשם שא”א לעולם‬,‫ האי כארבע רוחות‬,‫רוחות‬ ”‫ קרו לך מלכותא קטיעה‬,‫ ועוד‬.‫ כך א”א לעולם בלא ישראל‬,‫בלא רוחות‬ ”.‫ מיהו כל דזכי למלכא שדו ליה לקמוניא חלילא‬,‫ “מימר שפיר קאמרת‬:‫א”ל‬ ‫ “ווי ליה לאילפא דאזלא‬:‫ אמרה ליה ההיא מטרוניתא‬,‫כד הוה נקטין ליה ואזלין‬ ”!‫בלא מכסא‬ ”.‫ “יהבית מכסי חלפית ועברית‬:‫ אמר‬,‫נפל על רישא דעורלתיה קטעה‬ ”.‫ “כל נכסאי לר”ע וחביריו‬:‫ אמר‬,‫כי קא שדו ליה‬ ”.‫ )שמות כט( “והיה לאהרן ולבניו — מחצה לאהרן ומחצה לבניו‬:‫יצא ר”ע ודרש‬ ”.‫ “קטיעא בר שלום מזומן לחיי העוה”ב‬:‫יצתה בת קול ואמרה‬ ”.‫ ויש קונה עולמו בכמה שנים‬,‫ “יש קונה עולמו בשעה אחת‬:‫בכה רבי ואמר‬

There was once a Caesar who hated the Jews. One day he said to the prominent members of the government. “If one has a wart on his foot, shall he cut it away and live [in comfort] or leave it on and suffer discomfort?” To which they replied: “He should cut it away and live in comfort.” Then Keti’ah b. Shalom addressed them thus: “In the first place, you cannot do away with all of them, for it is written, ‘For I have spread you abroad as the four winds of the heaven.’ Now, what does this verse indicate? Were it to mean that [Israel] was to be scattered to the four corners of the world, then instead of saying, as the four winds, the verse would have said, to the four winds! It can only mean that just as the world cannot exist without winds, so the world cannot exist without Israel. And what is more, your kingdom will be called a crippled kingdom.” To this the king replied: “You have spoken very well. However, he who contradicts the king is to be cast into a circular furnace.” On his being held and led away, a Roman matron said of him: “Pity the ship that sails [towards the harbor] without paying the tax.” order is reversed: ‘One may acquire eternity after many years, another may acquire it in a single hour.’ 14 Reuven Margaliot, A Study of Names and Nicknames in the Talmud, Jerusalem 1960, p. 13, note 17 (Hebrew), wrote that Ze’ev Yavetz (in A History of Israel, IV) proved that Keti’ah b. Shalom was in fact Clemens the nephew of the Roman Emperor Domitian.

We epi n g (B e c h i)

Then, throwing himself on his foreskin he cut it away exclaiming: “Thou hast paid the tax, thou wilt pass and enter [paradise].” As he was being cast [into the furnace] he said: “All my possessions [are to go to] R. Akiba and his friends.” This, R. Akiba interpreted according to the verse, “And it shall be unto Aaron and his sons [which is taken to mean that] one half is Aaron’s and one half his sons.” A bat-kol then exclaimed: “Keti’ah b. Shalom is destined for [eternal] life in the world to come!” Rabbi Judah Hanasi [on hearing of it] wept saying: “One may acquire eternity in a single hour, another may acquire it after many years!”

This story is brought as part of cycle of stories about the relationship between Antoninus and Rabbi Judah Hanasi. It is connected with a learned discourse that took place between the two about whether Antoninus was worthy of the world to come, and describes how one of the Roman officials — Keti’ah b. Shalom — prevented the Emperor who hated Jews from carrying out his genocidal program. The story is structured in a very sophisticated way around the root of the verb .‫ע‬.‫ט‬.‫[ ק‬to truncate, cut away] which is brought into the story in several conjugations in each of the three sections. The first section is a conversation between the emperor and his prominent officials, in which the word ’‫[ יקטענה‬he shall cut it away] recurs with reference to a foot afflicted with a wart, which is compared to the people of Israel. The second part is a dialogue between the Emperor and the official ‘Keti’ah b. Shalom.’ (This name does not appear anywhere else in the Talmud. It appears here seven times in seven parallel usages which are brought in the later compilation of midrashim, Yalkut Shimoni). The words that compose the name “Keti’ah b. Shalom” represent a contrast between ‘ketiya,’ what is cut away, amputated, destroyed, and ‘shalom,’ what is whole, exists, and is living peacefully. Thus the name ‘Keti’ah b. Shalom’ was derived from the gist of the words spoken by its bearer, who proved to the Emperor that the wholeness of the world and its continued existence depend on the Jewish people, who are scattered through the four winds of the heaven, and that destroying them would leave him with

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a crippled kingdom.15 The Emperor accepts his argument and yet sentences him to death in a fiery furnace, for that is the penalty for contradicting the king.16 The third and last part describes the execution of Keti’ah b. Shalom and what happened there. A Roman matron who saw him being led to the furnace clarified to him through a parable that he could not enter the world to come if he was uncircumcised. Upon hearing her words, he fell upon his foreskin and cut it away. When Keti’ah was cast into the fire, he ordered all of his possessions to be left to R. Akiva and his comrades. This part of the narrative is also marked by the word ketiah — cutting off: first, his foreskin and then his possessions in order to give them away (according to the interpretation of R. Akiva, half of his possessions were to be left to R. Akiva and half to Akiva’s comrades.) At this stage, the language shifts from Aramaic to Hebrew and a passage with three sections follows: A. A homily by which R. Akiva learns that he would receive half of Keti’ah’s possessions. B. A declaration by a bat-kol [Heavenly voice] “Keti’ah b. Shalom is destined for life in the world to come!” (apparently proclaiming that the man’s name which clearly signifies his deeds — that precisely by ‘cutting off’ he had made himself whole in terms of Judaism — was designed to explain his being summoned to life in the world to 15

It is possible that the name ‘Keti’ah b. Shalom’ is a word play created by associations to the words of R. Nahman cited in Kiddushin 66a. The gemara there asks: How do we know that the service of a man with a blemish is [retrospectively] invalid? The answer given there is: Said Rab Judah in Samuel’s name: Because Scripture saith, Wherefore say, Behold, I give unto him my covenant of perfection [Shalom] (Num. 25:12) when he is perfect, but not when he is wanting. The gemara asks: But the word ’‫‘שלום‬ [shalom = peace] is written! And the answer: Said R. Nahman: The ‘vav’ of shalom is broken off [in the middle]. In other words, the letter ‘vav’ in the word ‘shalom’ is broken so it must be read as a ‘yud’ and then the word is read ’‫[‘שלים‬shalim] meaning, unblemished. According to this, ‘‫’שלמות‬ [wholeness] — the meaning of the word — is created by breaking off the letter ‘vav.’ 16 The idea of casting the successful challenger of the king’s authority into a fiery furnace may have been based on the story in the book of Daniel. In any event, it appears in relation to Abraham in an aggadah found in the Book of Jubilees, chapter 19 and in Genesis Rabbah 38:28.

We epi n g (B e c h i)

come).17 It was reported that on hearing this, Rabbi Judah Hanasi wept saying: “One may acquire eternity in a single hour, another may acquire it after many years!” By the shift in speakers and language in the passage, one may postulate that it was not an integral part of the story of Keti’ah. This assumption is supported by the weak connection between Rabbi Judah Hanasi’s weeping and words, and the narrative plot. It is not clear who are the elements of the equation created by Rabbi Judah Hanasi, “One may acquire eternity in a single hour” and “another may acquire it after many years,” and on whose account he wept and grieved. The Maharsha explained that Rabbi Judah Hanasi grieved over Keti’ah who acquired eternity in a single hour by comparing him to the righteous who acquire eternity in several years and therefore achieve a higher spiritual level than him in the world to come. However, this explanation cannot be reconciled with the narrative that presents Keti’ah as an exceptionally righteous person who acquired eternity by a series of deeds. The commentary Iyun Ya’akov (by Rabbi Jacob Reischer) brought in Ein Ya’akov compared the weeping of Rabbi Judah Hanasi here to the weeping associated with the story of R. Eleazar b. Dordia in the narrative that will be brought below, and wrote: “That might be why Rabbi Judah Hanasi wept, because he suffered for several years before he died, as written in Baba Metzi’a 85a in Perek Hapoalim ‘for thirteen years, six through stones in the kidneys and seven through scurvy,’18 and he said about it, ‘another may acquire eternity after many years’ and he thus lamented himself.” 17

According to Reuven Margaliot, the name used in the summons of Keti’ah b. Shalom to the world to come was based on the language of the scripture (Isaiah 57:2) ”‫[ ”יבוא שלום ינוחו על משכבותם‬...He… shall enter in peace to them that rest in their graves]. But this is not mentioned in the gemara. 18 BT, Baba Metz’ia 85a. .‫ ושבע בצפרנא‬,‫ קבל עליה תליסר שני — שית בצמירתא‬.‫ חביבין יסורין‬:‫”אמר רבי‬ “.‫ ושית בצפרנא‬,‫ שבעה בצמירתא‬:‫ואמרי לה‬ “Rabbi Judah Hanasi said: Suffering is precious. Thereupon he undertook [to suffer likewise] for thirteen years, six through stones in the kidneys and seven through scurvy: others reverse it. According to Rashi, ‫ = צמירתא‬a sickness of the mouth or the urinary tract (stones), ‫ = צפרנא‬a disease of the teeth and gums.”

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According to this interpretation, “one may acquire eternity in a single hour” refers to Keti’ah who suffered only a short time and “another may acquire it after many years” refers to Rabbi Judah Hanasi who suffered for many years. The comparison which Rabbi Judah Hanasi drew between himself and Keti’ah sharpened the magnitude of his pain and suffering, and therefore he wept. However, even this interpretation, where the elements of the equation are Keti’ah and Rabbi Judah Hanasi, does not fit the story for the reason previously mentioned, that one cannot say that Keti’ah acquired eternity in one hour. From all of the above it seems that the ending that tells of the Heavenly voice and Rabbi Judah Hanasi weeping: A bat-kol then exclaimed: ‘Keti’ah b. Shalom is destined for [eternal] life in the world to come!’ Rabbi Judah Hanasi [on hearing of it] wept saying: ‘One may acquire eternity in a single hour, another may acquire it after many years!’

is not part of the story but was moved here from another place because the narrative itself, in the parable of the matron, contains the motif of entering into eternal life.19 Another narrative which is connected to Rabbi Judah Hanasi’s weeping is brought in the baraita in Avoda Zara 17b, and its main character is R. Eleazar b. Dordia: 20 ‫ פעם‬.‫ שלא הניח זונה אחת בעולם שלא בא עליה‬,‫אמרו עליו על ר”א בן דורדיא‬ ‫ נטל‬,‫אחת שמע שיש זונה אחת בכרכי הים והיתה נוטלת כיס דינרין בשכרה‬ :‫ אמרה‬,‫ בשעת הרגל דבר הפיחה‬.‫כיס דינרין והלך ועבר עליה שבעה נהרות‬ ‫ כך אלעזר בן דורדיא אין מקבלין‬,‫“כשם שהפיחה זו אינה חוזרת למקומה‬ ”.‫אותו בתשובה‬ ”.‫ “הרים וגבעות בקשו עלי רחמים‬:‫ אמר‬,‫הלך וישב בין שני הרים וגבעות‬ ‫ )ישעיהו נד( ‘כי‬:‫ שנאמר‬,‫ “עד שאנו מבקשים עליך נבקש על עצמנו‬:‫אמרו לו‬ ”.’‫ההרים ימושו והגבעות תמוטינה‬ 19

The homily of R. Akiva is also brought in other places in the Talmud: Sanhedrin 21a; Yoma 17a, and there it is attributed to Rabbi Judah Hanasi. It may be that knowing that the homily was attributed to Rabbi Judah Hanasi is the reason for bringing his words close upon it even though here it is ascribed to R. Akiva. 20 R. Eleazar b. Dordia appears in the Talmud only in this place.

We epi n g (B e c h i) ”.‫ “שמים וארץ בקשו עלי רחמים‬:‫אמר‬ ‫ )ישעיהו נא( ‘כי שמים‬:‫ שנאמר‬,‫ “עד שאנו מבקשים עליך נבקש על עצמנו‬:‫אמרו‬ ”.’‫כעשן נמלחו והארץ כבגד תבלה‬ ”.‫ “חמה ולבנה בקשו עלי רחמים‬:‫אמר‬ ‫ )ישעיהו כד( ‘וחפרה‬:‫ שנאמר‬,‫ “עד שאנו מבקשים עליך נבקש על עצמנו‬:‫אמרו לו‬ ”.’‫הלבנה ובושה החמה‬ ”.‫ “כוכבים ומזלות בקשו עלי רחמים‬:‫אמר‬ ‫ )ישעיהו לד( ‘ונמקו‬:‫ שנאמר‬,‫ “עד שאנו מבקשים עליך נבקש על עצמנו‬:‫אמרו לו‬ ”.’‫כל צבא השמים‬ ‫” הניח ראשו בין ברכיו וגעה בבכיה עד שיצתה‬.‫ “אין הדבר תלוי אלא בי‬:‫אמר‬ .‫נשמתו‬ ”.‫”ר”א בן דורדיא מזומן לחיי העולם הבא‬:‫יצתה בת קול ואמרה‬ .‫ כיון דאביק בה טובא כמינות דמיא‬,‫[והא הכא בעבירה הוה ומית!] התם נמי‬ ”.‫ ויש קונה עולמו בשעה אחת‬,‫ “יש קונה עולמו בכמה שנים‬:‫בכה רבי ואמר‬ ”.’‫ אלא שקורין אותן ‘רבי‬,‫ “לא דיין לבעלי תשובה שמקבלין אותן‬:‫ואמר רבי‬

Surely it has been taught: It was said of R. Eleazar b. Dordia that he did not leave out any harlot in the world without coming to her. Once, on hearing that there was a certain harlot in one of the towns by the sea who accepted a purse of denarii for her hire, he took a purse of denarii and crossed seven rivers for her sake. As he was with her, she blew forth breath and said: “As this blown breath will not return to its place, so will Eleazar b. Dordia never be received in repentance.” He thereupon went, sat between two hills and mountains and exclaimed: “O, ye hills and mountains, plead for mercy for me!” They replied: “How shall we pray for thee? We stand in need of it ourselves, for it is said, (Isaiah 54:20) ‘For the mountains shall depart and the hills be removed’!” So he exclaimed: “Heaven and earth, plead ye for mercy for me!” They, too, replied: “How shall we pray for thee? We stand in need of it ourselves, for it is said, (Isaiah 51:20) ‘For the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment’.” He then exclaimed: “Sun and moon, plead ye for mercy for me!” But they also replied: “How shall we pray for thee? We stand in need of it ourselves, for it is said, (Isaiah 24) ‘Then the moon shall be confounded and the sun ashamed’.” He exclaimed: “Ye stars and constellations, plead ye for mercy for me!” Said they: “How shall we pray for thee? We stand in need of it ourselves, for it is said, (Isaiah 34) ‘And all the hosts of heaven shall molder away’.” Said he: “The matter then depends upon me alone!” Having placed his head between his knees, he wept aloud until his soul departed. Then a bat-kol was heard proclaiming: “Rabbi Eleazar b. Dordia is destined for the life of the world to come!”

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Now, here was a case of a sin [other than minuth] and yet he did die! — In that case, too, since he was so much addicted to immorality it is as [if he had been guilty of] minuth. Rabbi Judah Hanasi [on hearing of it] wept and said: “One may acquire eternal life after many years, another in one hour!” Rabbi Judah Hanasi also said: “Repentants are not alone accepted, they are even called ‘Rabbi’!”

The major part of this narrative is an imaginary conversation that R. Eleazar b. Dordia held with the mountains and hills, the heaven and earth, the sun and moon, the stars and constellations. The structure and style of the conversation leave no doubt as to the narrative being a work of ideological-didactic intent. The style of the conversation is reminiscent of the parable of Yotam in the book of Judges21 and is composed of four requests by R. Eleazar b. Dordia to the foundations of the universe. These requests are worded in an identical style and arranged in a hierarchy determined by their 21

Judges 9

,‫ּגְ ִרזִ ים‬-‫ וַ ּיֵלֶ ְך וַ ּי ֲַעמֹד ְּברֹאׁש ַהר‬,‫יֹותם‬ ָ ְ‫ ז  וַ ּיַּגִ דּו ל‬7 And when they told it to Yotam, he went and stood in the top of Mount ‫ ִׁש ְמעּו ֵאלַ י‬,‫ֹאמר לָ ֶהם‬ ֶ ‫ וַ ּי ְִק ָרא; וַ ּי‬,‫וַ ִּי ָּשׂא קֹולֹו‬ Gerizim, and lifted up his voice, and .‫ֹלהים‬ ִ ‫ ֱא‬,‫ וְ י ְִׁש ַמע ֲאלֵ יכֶ ם‬,‫ַּב ֲעלֵ י ְׁשכֶ ם‬ cried, and said unto them: ‘Hearken unto me, ye men of Shechem, that God may hearken unto you. ;‫ לִ ְמׁש ַֹח ֲעלֵ ֶיהם ֶמלֶ ְך‬,‫ ח ָ הלֹוְך ָהלְ כּו ָה ֵע ִצים‬8 The trees went forth on a time to anoint a king over them; and they ‫(מלְ כָ ה) ָעלֵ ינּו‬ ָ ‫ מלוכה‬,‫ֹאמרּו לַ ּזַ יִת‬ ְ ‫וַ ּי‬ said unto the olive-tree: Reign thou over us. ,‫ּד ְׁשנִ י‬-‫ת‬ ִ ‫ ֶה ֳח ַדלְ ִּתי ֶא‬,‫ ַהּזַ יִת‬,‫ֹאמר לָ ֶהם‬ ֶ ‫ ט  וַ ּי‬9 But the olive-tree said unto them: Should I leave my fatness, seeing that ‫נּוע‬ ַ ָ‫ ל‬,‫ֹלהים וַ ֲאנָ ִׁשים; וְ ָהלַ כְ ִּתי‬ ִ ‫ּבי יְכַ ְּבדּו ֱא‬-‫ר‬ ִ ‫ֲא ֶׁש‬ by me they honour God and man, .‫ה ֵע ִצים‬-‫ל‬ ָ ‫ַע‬ and go to hold sway over the trees? .‫ ָמלְ כִ י ָעלֵ ינּו‬,‫א ְּת‬-‫י‬ ַ ִ‫ לְ כ‬:‫ לַ ְּת ֵאנָ ה‬,‫ֹאמרּו ָה ֵע ִצים‬ ְ ‫ י  וַ ּי‬10 And the trees said to the fig-tree: Come thou, and reign over us. -‫ וְ ֶאת‬,‫מ ְת ִקי‬-‫ת‬ ָ ‫ ֶה ֳח ַדלְ ִּתי ֶא‬,‫ ַה ְּת ֵאנָ ה‬,‫ֹאמר לָ ֶהם‬ ֶ ‫ יא  ַּת‬11 But the fig-tree said unto them: Should I leave my sweetness, and my .‫ה ֵע ִצים‬-‫ל‬ ָ ‫נּוע ַע‬ ַ ָ‫ ל‬,‫ּטֹובה; וְ ָהלַ כְ ִּתי‬ ָ ‫נּוב ִתי ַה‬ ָ ‫ְּת‬ good fruitage, and go to hold sway over the trees? )‫(מלְ כִ י‬ ָ ‫ מלוכי‬,‫א ְּת‬-‫י‬ ַ ִ‫ לְ כ‬:‫ לַ ּגָ ֶפן‬,‫ֹאמרּו ָה ֵע ִצים‬ ְ ‫ יב  וַ ּי‬12 And the trees said unto the vine: Come thou, and reign over us. .‫ָעלֵ ינּו‬

133

We epi n g (B e c h i)

subject, and followed by four replies that they supposedly gave, relying on verses in Isaiah. The first appeal is to tangible, nearby foundations, the mountains and hills, the second to more distance, obscure elements, the heaven and earth; the third to even more remote elements whose reality for man is only through the light or heat they radiate, the sun and moon; the fourth is most remote of all, elements which are observed from a great distance and cannot be felt by man at all: the stars and constellations. The four negative replies, based on verses in the book of Isaiah, reflect a perspective whereby when man sins, he is not harming himself alone but also the very foundations of the universe. Thus, the mountains, hills, earth, heaven, sun, moon, stars and constellations all fear for their existence and themselves need Divine mercy. The answers lead R. Eleazar b. Dordia to the inevitable moral: “The matter then depends upon me alone!” and the story ends with a dramatic passage that describes his repentance and forgiveness by God, which he has earned: “Having placed his head between his knees, he wept aloud until his soul departed. Then a bat-kol was heard proclaiming: “Rabbi Eleazar b. Dordia is destined for the life of the world to come!” ,‫ירֹוׁשי‬ ִ ‫ּת‬-‫ת‬ ִ ‫ ֶה ֳח ַדלְ ִּתי ֶא‬,‫ ַהּגֶ ֶפן‬,‫ֹאמר לָ ֶהם‬ ֶ ‫ יג  וַ ּת‬13 And the vine said unto them: Should I leave my wine, which cheereth God ‫נּוע‬ ַ ָ‫ ל‬,‫ֹלהים וַ ֲאנָ ִׁשים; וְ ָהלַ כְ ִּתי‬ ִ ‫ַה ְמ ַׂש ֵּמ ַח ֱא‬ and man, and go to hold sway over .‫ה ֵע ִצים‬-‫ל‬ ָ ‫ַע‬ the trees? ,‫ לֵ ְך ַא ָּתה‬:‫ה ָא ָטד‬-‫ל‬ ָ ‫ ֶא‬,‫ה ֵע ִצים‬-‫ל‬ ָ ָ‫ֹאמרּו כ‬ ְ ‫ יד  וַ ּי‬14 Then said all the trees unto the bramble: Come thou, and reign over .‫עלֵ ינּו‬-‫ְך‬ ָ ָ‫ְמל‬ us. ‫ ִאם ֶּב ֱא ֶמת ַא ֶּתם‬,‫ה ֵע ִצים‬-‫ל‬ ָ ‫ ֶא‬,‫ֹאמר ָה ָא ָטד‬ ֶ ‫ טו  וַ ּי‬15 And the bramble said unto the trees: If in truth ye anoint me king over ;‫ ּבֹאּו ֲחסּו ְב ִצּלִ י‬,‫מ ְֹׁש ִחים א ִֹתי לְ ֶמלֶ ְך ֲעלֵ יכֶ ם‬ you, then come and take refuge in -‫ וְ תֹאכַ ל ֶאת‬,‫ה ָא ָטד‬-‫ן‬ ָ ‫ּת ֵצא ֵאׁש ִמ‬--‫ִן‬ ֵ ‫אי‬-‫ם‬ ַ ‫וְ ִא‬ my shadow; and if not, let fire come .‫ַא ְרזֵ י ַהּלְ ָבנֹון‬ out of the bramble, and devour the cedars of Lebanon

.

I am not referring to a structural similarity (in Yotam’s parable, there are three + one and here four equal hemistichs) nor even to the ideological similarity. The similarity is between the style of anthropomorphizing inanimate objects, and the rhythmic repetitions of the requests followed by reasoned refusals.

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It would appear that this ending, in which Eleazar b. Dordia was summoned by a heavenly voice to eternal life, provoked the redactor of the sugiya to question why such a great reward was granted to a penitent after he had led his entire life in sin, and thus he connected to the story the line telling of Rabbi Judah Hanasi weeping: “Rabbi Judah Hanasi wept and said: ‘One may acquire eternal life after many years, another in one hour!’ ” as well as the additional line which is found only here, and links the general insight that grieved Rabbi Judah Hanasi to his critical conclusion drawn from the particular case of Eleazar b. Dordia: “Rabbi Judah Hanasi also said: ‘Repentants are not alone accepted, they are even called ‘Rabbi!’”

It is not clear what is the precise meaning of the words attributed to Rabbi Judah Hanasi, which have no parallel anywhere else in the Talmud. It was not clear whether those who accept penitents and honor them by calling them ‘rabbi’ is a reference to human society or to God, who receives penitents in the world to come. In any event, it seems clear that the words attributed to Rabbi Judah Hanasi were brought by the redactor in our sugiya, because what separates the story of Eleazar b. Dordia from these words is the gemara’s question about the subject that caused this story to be brought and its answer. It seems that the words were connected to the story of Eleazar b. Dordia, because from its ending, one can draw a conclusion about the ease of becoming a repentant and acquiring eternal life in the world to come. The question of the right to enter the world to come is the conceptual center of the story about R. Hanina b. Teradion in the baraita brought in Avoda Zara 18a: :‫ אמר לו‬.‫ הלך רבי חנינא בן תרדיון לבקרו‬,‫ כשחלה רבי יוסי בן קיסמא‬:‫תנו רבנן‬ ‫ אי אתה יודע שאומה זו מן השמים המליכוה? שהחריבה את ביתו‬,‫“חנינא אחי‬ ,‫ ועדיין היא קיימת‬,‫ והרגה את חסידיו ואבדה את טוביו‬,‫ושרפה את היכלו‬ ‫ואני שמעתי עליך שאתה יושב ועוסק בתורה [ומקהיל קהלות ברבים] וספר‬ ”!‫מונח לך בחיקך‬ ”.‫ “מן השמים ירחמו‬:‫אמר לו‬ ‫ תמה אני‬,‫ ואתה אומר לי מן השמים ירחמו‬,‫ “אני אומר לך דברים של טעם‬:‫אמר לו‬ ”!‫אם לא ישרפו אותך ואת ספר תורה באש‬

‫‪135‬‬

‫)‪We epi n g (B e c h i‬‬ ‫אמר לו‪“ :‬רבי‪ ,‬מה אני לחיי העולם הבא?”‬ ‫אמר לו‪“ :‬כלום מעשה בא לידך?”‬ ‫אמר לו‪“ :‬מעות של פורים נתחלפו לי במעות של צדקה וחלקתים לעניים‪”.‬‬ ‫אמר לו‪“ :‬אם כן‪ ,‬מחלקך יהי חלקי ומגורלך יהי גורלי‪”.‬‬ ‫אמרו‪ :‬לא היו ימים מועטים עד שנפטר רבי יוסי בן קיסמא‪ ,‬והלכו כל גדולי רומי‬ ‫לקברו והספידוהו הספד גדול‪ ,‬ובחזרתן מצאוהו לרבי חנינא בן תרדיון שהיה‬ ‫יושב ועוסק בתורה ומקהיל קהלות ברבים וס”ת מונח לו בחיקו‪ .‬הביאוהו‬ ‫וכרכוהו בס”ת‪ ,‬והקיפוהו בחבילי זמורות והציתו בהן את האור‪ ,‬והביאו‬ ‫ספוגין של צמר ושראום במים והניחום על לבו‪ ,‬כדי שלא תצא נשמתו מהרה‪.‬‬ ‫אמרה לו בתו‪“ :‬אבא‪ ,‬אראך בכך?”‬ ‫אמר לה‪“ :‬אילמלי אני נשרפתי לבדי היה הדבר קשה לי‪ ,‬עכשיו שאני נשרף וס”ת‬ ‫עמי‪ ,‬מי שמבקש עלבונה של ס”ת הוא יבקש עלבוני‪”.‬‬ ‫אמרו לו תלמידיו‪“ :‬רבי‪ ,‬מה אתה רואה?”‬ ‫אמר להן‪“ :‬גליון נשרפין ואותיות פורחות‪”.‬‬ ‫“אף אתה פתח פיך ותכנס [בך] האש!”‬ ‫אמר להן‪“ :‬מוטב שיטלנה מי שנתנה ואל יחבל הוא בעצמו‪”.‬‬ ‫אמר לו קלצטונירי‪“ :‬רבי‪ ,‬אם אני מרבה בשלהבת ונוטל ספוגין של צמר מעל לבך‬ ‫אתה מביאני לחיי העולם הבא?”‬ ‫אמר לו‪“ :‬הן”‬ ‫“השבע לי!”‬ ‫נשבע לו‪ .‬מיד הרבה בשלהבת ונטל ספוגין של צמר מעל לבו‪ ,‬יצאה נשמתו‬ ‫במהרה‪ .‬אף הוא קפץ ונפל לתוך האור‪.‬‬ ‫יצאה בת קול ואמרה‪“ :‬רבי חנינא בן תרדיון וקלצטונירי מזומנין הן לחיי העולם‬ ‫הבא‪”.‬‬ ‫בכה רבי ואמר‪“ :‬יש קונה עולמו בשעה אחת‪ ,‬ויש קונה עולמו בכמה שנים‪”.‬‬

‫‪Our Rabbis taught: When R. Jose b. Kisma was ill, R. Hanina b. Teradion went‬‬ ‫‪to visit him. He said to him: “Brother Hanina, knowest thou not that it is‬‬ ‫‪Heaven that has ordained this [Roman] nation to reign? For though she laid‬‬ ‫‪waste His House, burnt His Temple, slew His pious ones and caused His best‬‬ ‫‪ones to perish, still is she firmly established! Yet, I have heard about thee‬‬ ‫‪that thou sittest and occupiest thyself with the Torah, dost publicly gather‬‬ ‫”!‪assemblies, and keepest a scroll [of the Law] in thy bosom‬‬ ‫”‪He replied, “Heaven will show mercy.‬‬ ‫‪“I,” he remonstrated, “am telling thee plain facts, and thou sayest Heaven will‬‬ ‫‪show mercy! It will surprise me if they do not burn both thee and the scroll‬‬ ‫”‪of the Law with fire.‬‬ ‫”?‪“Rabbi,” said the other, “How do I stand with regard to the world to come‬‬ ‫‪“Is there any particular act that thou hast done?” he enquired.‬‬ ‫‪He replied: “I once mistook Purim-money for ordinary charity-money, and‬‬ ‫”‪I distributed [of my own] to the poor.‬‬ ‫‪“Well then,” said he, “would that thy portion were my portion and thy lot my‬‬ ‫”‪lot.‬‬

136

Chapter Three

It was said that within but a few days R. Jose b. Kisma died and all the great men of Rome went to his burial and made great lamentation for him. On their return, they found R. Hanina b. Teradion sitting and occupying himself with the Torah, publicly gathering assemblies, and keeping a scroll of the Law in his bosom. Straightaway they took hold of him, wrapt him in the Scroll of the Law, placed bundles of branches round him and set them on fire. They then brought tufts of wool, which they had soaked in water, and placed them over his heart, so that he should not expire quickly. His daughter exclaimed, “Father, that I should see you in this state!” He replied, “If it were I alone being burnt it would have been a thing hard to bear; but now that I am burning together with the Scroll of the Law, He who will have regard for the plight of the Torah will also have regard for my plight.” His disciples called out, “Rabbi, what seest thou?” He answered them, “The parchments are being burnt but the letters are soaring on high.” “Open then thy mouth” [said they] “so that the fire enter into thee.” He replied, “Let Him who gave me [my soul] take it away, but no one should injure oneself.” The executioner then said to him, “Rabbi, if I raise the flame and take away the tufts of wool from over thy heart, will thou cause me to enter into the life to come?” “Yes,” he replied. “Then swear unto me” [he urged]. He swore unto him. He thereupon raised the flame and removed the tufts of wool from over his heart, and his soul departed speedily. The Executioner then jumped and threw himself into the fire. And a bat-kol exclaimed: “R. Hanina b. Teradion and the executioner have been assigned to the world to come.” When Rabbi Judah Hanasi heard it he wept and said: “One may acquire eternal life in a single hour, another after many years.”

The story of the death of Hanina b. Teradion appears in Sifre, Deut. 207 in a different version: ‫הצור תמים פעלו כשתפסו את רבי חנינה בן תרדיון נגזרה עליו גזירה לישרף עם‬ .‫ספרו‬ ”.‫אמרו לו “נגזרה עליך גזירה לישרף עם ספרך‬ ”.‫ “הצור תמים פעלו‬:‫קרא המקרא הזה‬ ”.‫ “נגזרה על בעלך גזרה לישרף ועליך ליהרג‬,‫אמרו לאשתו‬ ”.‫ “אל אמונה ואין עול‬,‫קראה המקרא הזה‬ ”.’‫ “נגזרה גזירה על אביך לישרף ועל אמך ליהרג ועליך לעשות ‘מלאכה‬:‫אמרו לבתו‬ ”.‫ (ירמיה לב יט) “גדול העצה ורב העליליה אשר עיניך פקוחות‬:‫קראה המקרא הזה‬ ‫ “כמה גדולים צדיקים אלו שבשעת צרתם הזמינו שלשה פסוקים של‬:‫אמר רבי‬

We epi n g (B e c h i) ‫” כיוונו שלשתם את לבם וצידקו עליהם‬.‫צידוק הדין מה שאין כן בכל הכתובים‬ .‫את הדין‬ ‫ “מרי אל תזוח דעתך ששרפת את התורה‬,‫עמד פילוסופוס על אפרכיא שלו אמר לו‬ ”.‫שממקום שיצאת חזרה לה לבית אביה‬ ”.‫ “למחר אף דינך כיוצא באלו‬,‫אמר לו‬ ”.‫ “בשרתני בשורה טובה שמחר יהא חלקי עמהם לעולם הבא‬,‫אמר לו‬

Concerning the verse: “The Rock — His deeds are perfect; A faithful God, never false, true and upright is He.” When they arrested R. Hanina b. Teradion, a decree against him was issued that he be executed by burning, along with his scroll. They told him, “A decree against you has been issued that you be executed by burning, along with your scroll.” He recited this verse: “The Rock — His deeds are perfect.” They informed his wife, “A decree against your husband was issued that he be executed by burning, along with his scroll, and against you, that you be put to death.” She recited this verse: “A faithful God, never false, true and upright is He.” They told his daughter: “A decree against your father has been issued that he be executed by burning, along with his scroll, and against your mother, that she be executed, and against you, that you ‘do work’.” And she recited this verse: “Great in counsel and mighty in work, whose eyes are open” (Jer. 32:19). Said Rabbi Judah Hanasi: “What great righteous people are these, for in their hour of trouble they called forth three verses which justify God’s decree in a way that none of the rest of the verses of Scripture do it. All three of them formed the exact intention in such a way as to justify the judgment of God concerning them.” A philosopher went to the ruler and said to him, “My lord, do not boast that you have burned the Torah, for to the place from which it has come forth, it now returns, namely to the house of its father.” He said to him, “Tomorrow you will be judged in the same way as these [and be put to death].” He said to him, “You give me very good news, that tomorrow my share will be with theirs in the world to come.”

The narrative in the Sifre presents an ancient tradition regarding the execution by burning of Hanina b. Teradion, and at its core is the justification of God’s decree which is repeated in the words of each of the three members of the family. At the end appears the motif of acknowledgment by the non-Jewish philosopher of the greatness of the Torah, which entitles him to a share in the world to come. The two motifs which are brought in the plot in the Sifre — the

137

138

Chapter Three

execution by fire of Hanina b. Teradion and the acknowledgement by the gentile of the Torah which earns him a place in the world to come — also appear in the baraita in the BT; however, in the baraita, the ideological center of the narrative has shifted from justification of God’s decree to the question of reward and punishment, which is demonstrated by the discussion of the right to eternal life.22 The linguistic and conceptual parallels as well as the metrical repetitions in the baraita show that we are dealing with a sophisticated literary work designed to serve an idea. In Semachot 8:12 there is an additional version where justification of

22

God’s decree is also the main point, but the story and the words of the protagonists in this tradition are different than those in the Sifre and are not unequivocal: ‫ ועל‬,‫ ועל אשתו להריגה‬,‫ גזרו עליו לשריפה‬,‫”וכשנתפס רבי חנינא בן תרדיון למינות‬ ,‫ אמרו לו להריגה‬,‫ אמר להם מה גזרו על אותה עניה‬.‫בתו לישב בקובה של זונות‬ ‫ הצור תמים פעלו כי כל דרכיו‬,‫ צדיק ה' בכל דרכיו וחסיד בכל מעשיו‬,‫קרא עליה‬ ,‫ אמרה להם מה גזרו על אותו רבי‬.‫משפט אל אמונה ואין עול צדיק וישר הוא‬ ‫ גדול העצה ורב העליליה אשר עיניך פקוחות על‬,‫ קראה עליו‬,‫אמרו לה לשריפה‬ ‫ וכששרפוהו כרכוהו בספר‬.‫כל דרכי בני אדם לתת לאיש כדרכיו וכפרי מעלליו‬ ‫ ואמרה זו‬,‫ והיתה בתו צועקת ומתחבטת לפניו‬,‫תורה ושרפוהו וספר תורה עמו‬ ‫ מוטב שתאכלני‬,‫ אמר לה בתי אם עלי את בוכה ועלי את מתחבטת‬,‫תורה וזו שכרה‬ ‫ ואם על ספר‬,‫ שנאמר תאכלהו אש לא נופח‬,‫ ולא אש שלא נופחה‬,‫אש שנופחה‬ ‫ הרי הן הכתובין פורחין‬,‫ הרי זה התורה אש ואין אש אוכלת אש‬,‫תורה את בוכה‬ “.‫ ואין האש אוכלת אלא העור בלב‬,‫באויר‬ “When they arrested R. Hanina b. Teradion for heresy, it was decreed that he be executed by burning, and his wife was to be killed and his daughter to be confined in a den of whores. He asked, ‘What did they decree against that poor woman?’ They told him, ‘death by sword.’ He recited this verse: ‘God is righteous in all ways and merciful in all His works. The Rock — His deeds are perfect; A faithful God, never false, true and upright is He.” She asked them, ‘What did they decree against that rabbi?’ They told her, ‘death by burning.’ She recited this verse, ‘Great in counsel and mighty in work, whose eyes are open to give everyone according to his ways and according to the fruit of his doings.’ And when they burned him they wrapped him in the Torah scroll and burned him, along with the scroll. And his daughter was shrieking and crying before him, saying, ‘is this Torah and is this its reward?’ He said to her, ‘my daughter, if you are weeping over me, it would be better for me to be devoured by a fire that is blown than by a fire that is not blown, as is written (Job 20:26) “[the wicked] will be consumed by a fire not blown.” If you are crying over the Torah, the Torah itself is fire and fire cannot consume fire. That which is written is soaring into the air, and fire is consuming only the skin of the heart.’”

We epi n g (B e c h i)

The narrative is composed of three parts, where a parallel is created between them using identical sentences. The first part begins with the line: .‫ הלך רבי חנינא בן תרדיון לבקרו‬,‫ כשחלה רבי יוסי בן קיסמא‬:‫תנו רבנן‬

Our Rabbis taught: When R. Jose b. Kisma was ill, R. Hanina b. Teradion went to visit him.

And the second part begins with the line: ‫ והלכו כל גדולי רומי‬,‫אמרו לא היו ימים מועטים עד שנפטר רבי יוסי בן קיסמא‬ .‫לקברו‬

It was said that within but a few days R. Jose b. Kisma died and all the great men of Rome went to his burial.

The parallel between these lines as well as the sound of the last word of each sentence is striking. (In Hebrew the first sentence ends with levakro and the second with lekovro i.e., the same root letters in the verb .‫ר‬.‫ק‬.‫ב‬, but arranged in a different order.) R. Jose b. Kisma’s words to R. Hanina b. Teradion in the first part begin with a metrical repetition: ‫שהחריבה את ביתו‬ ,‫ושרפה את היכלו‬ ‫והרגה את חסידיו‬ ‫ואבדה את טוביו‬

[Rome] laid waste His House, burnt His Temple, slew His pious ones and caused His best ones to perish

And it continues with a lecture: ‫ואני שמעתי עליך שאתה יושב ועוסק בתורה [ומקהיל קהלות ברבים] וספר מונח‬ … !‫לך בחיקך‬ !‫… תמה אני אם לא ישרפו אותך ואת ספר תורה באש‬

Yet, I have heard about thee that thou sittest and occupiest thyself with the Torah, dost publicly gather assemblies, and keepest a scroll [of the Law] in thy bosom! …It will surprise me if they do not burn both thee and the scroll of the Law with fire.

In the second part in the description of the execution of R. Hanina b. Teradion, the words of R. Jose b. Kisma in the first part are repeated:

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Chapter Three ‫מצאוהו לרבי חנינא בן תרדיון שהיה יושב ועוסק בתורה ומקהיל קהלות ברבים‬ ‫ והקיפוהו בחבילי זמורות‬,‫ הביאוהו וכרכוהו בס”ת‬.‫וס”ת מונח לו בחיקו‬ .‫והציתו בהן את האור‬

…they found R. Hanina b. Teradion sitting and occupying himself with the Torah, publicly gathering assemblies, and keeping a scroll of the Law in his bosom. Straightaway they took hold of him, wrapped him in the Scroll of the Law, placed bundles of branches round him and set them on fire.

However, in the description of the execution, something has been added: ‫ כדי שלא תצא נשמתו‬,‫והביאו ספוגין של צמר ושראום במים והניחום על לבו‬ .‫מהרה‬

They then brought tufts of wool, which they had soaked in water, and placed them over his heart, so that he should not expire quickly.

This expression repeats itself twice more with a reversed meaning in the third part of the narrative: ”.‫ אם אני מרבה בשלהבת ונוטל ספוגין של צמר מעל לבך‬,‫“רבי‬ .‫מיד הרבה בשלהבת ונטל ספוגין של צמר מעל לבו‬

“Rabbi, if I raise the flame and take away the tufts of wool from over thy heart.” He thereupon raised the flame and removed the tufts of wool from over his heart, and his soul departed speedily.

As to the narrative structure, it is important to emphasize again the graduated repetition of the world-to-come motif: In the first part, Jose b. Kisma poses a question: ”?‫“רבי מה אני לחיי העולם הבא‬

“Rabbi, How do I stand with regard to the world to come?”

This is a surprising question and its connection to the discussion underway is flimsy. However, it is given a positive answer couched in lyrical language: ‫ מחלקך יחי חלקי‬,‫אם כן‬ .‫ומגורלך יחי גורלי‬

Would that thy portion were my portion and thy lot my lot.

He thus supports his right to the world to come with one good deed which he performed in this world. At the beginning of the third part of the story, the words of

We epi n g (B e c h i)

the executioner to R. Hanina b. Teradion are used to reiterate the question concerning the right to enter the world to come, couched in language that is similar to the wording used by R. Jose b. Kisma: ,‫ אם אני מרבה בשלהבת ונוטל ספוגין של צמר מעל לבך‬,‫ “רבי‬:‫אמר לו קלצטונירי‬ ?”‫אתה מביאני לחיי העולם הבא‬

The Executioner then said to him, “Rabbi, if I raise the flame and take away the tufts of wool from over thy heart, will thou cause me to enter into the life to come?”

This part, and the entire story, ends with the answer given from heaven to this question and phrased in exactly the same language: ‫ “רבי חנינא בן תרדיון וקלצטונירי מזומנין הן לחיי העולם‬:‫יצאה בת קול ואמרה‬ .”‫הבא‬

And a bat-kol exclaimed: “R. Hanina b. Teradion and the Executioner have been assigned to the world to come.”

The analysis above shows quite clearly that we are confronting a narrative that was constructed deliberately with a specific format and in service of an idea. The dissonance in content between the first part that tells of R. Hanina b. Teradion’s devotion to Torah and the second part that describes his terrible end highlights the idea of reward in the world to come, the knowledge of which allowed R. Hanina to act as he did. This is also emphasized through the dialogue between R. Hanina and R. Jose b. Kisma, which reveals that the latter became convinced of the existence of the world to come. However, the same dialogue reveals another aspect of the concept of reward, and that is that the right to eternal life might be acquired through a one-time deed, such as distributing money to the poor. This aspect is repeated in the third part of the story when it receives official Divine approval by means of a bat-kol which invites R. Hanina b. Teradion and his executioner alike to the world to come. The executioner earned his right by one solitary act of mercy — hastening the death of R. Hanina b. Teradion. At the end of the narrative — the weeping of Rabbi Judah Hanasi and the comparison he drew between “one who acquires

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eternity in a single hour,” and “another who acquires it after many years” offers a challenge to the power granted by Heaven to the one-time deed of a repentant person. Rabbi Judah Hanasi wept because the executioner and the victim had an equal right to eternal life even though the former had performed only one solitary act of kindness, and even that only after stipulating that he be rewarded for it, while the latter had fought the battle for Torah his entire life. The analysis here indicates that the ideological focus of the story of Hanina b. Teradion’s death in the baraita in the BT is the right to life in the world to come. Therefore the ending, presenting a certain aspect of that right which arouses conflict, connects satisfactorily to the ideological focus of the story and may plausibly be seen as one of the components of its subject matter. This narrative may be the source of the formula: “Rabbi Judah Hanasi wept, saying: One may acquire eternity in a single hour, another may acquire it after many years,”23 and it expresses the pain of a believer who is spiritually distressed by a theological problem. The formula that connects Rabbi Judah Hanasi to weeping caused by the equalizing of two factors appears in the BT in two other stories where the comparison is not related to reward in the world to come. Both stories describe highly emotional encounters between Rabbi Judah Hanasi and another person. One story describes an encounter between Rabbi Judah Hanasi and the daughter of Elisha b. Avuya (Aher), while the other describes his encounter with Pinhas b. Ya’ir. In Hagigah 15b it is told that the daughter of Aher asked Rabbi Judah Hanasi to support her, and after he wondered how it happened that there were still descendants of Aher in the world, she answered him thus: .‫זכור לתורתו ואל תזכור מעשיו‬

Remember his Torah and not his deeds. ,‫ “ומה למתגנין בה — כך‬:‫ בכה ואמר רבי‬.‫מיד ירדה אש וסכסכה ספסלו של רבי‬ ”.‫למשתבחין בה — על אחת כמה וכמה‬

At the sound of these words, forthwith, a fire came down and enveloped Rabbi Judah Hanasi’s bench. 23

Or reversed, as in the story of R. Eleazar b. Dordia

We epi n g (B e c h i)

And in consequence: Rabbi Judah Hanasi wept and said: “If it be so on account of those who dishonor the Torah, how much more so on account of those who honor it.”

The vagueness of the word ’‫[ ‘כך‬so] in the sentence — ...‫ למשתבחין בה‬,‫ומה למתגנין בה — כך‬ If it be so on account of those who dishonor the Torah, how much more so on account of those who honor it — creates a vagueness about the interpretation of the statement that Rabbi Judah Hanasi accompanies with his weeping. It is possible that the word is alluding to the wise daughter with whom R. Elisha b. Avuya was blessed, or it might be referring obliquely to the Torah of Elisha b. Avuya, which will be remembered despite his deeds, as his daughter averred. Matters become clarified in the Eretz Israel version of the story brought in the JT, Hagigah 77c (2:1): ”?‫”אין אמרין לך בההוא עלמא למאן את בעי למבקר’ לאבוך או לרבך‬:‫אמרון לר”מ‬ ”.‫ “אנא מיקרב לר’ קדמיי ובתר כן לאבא‬,‫אמר לון‬ ”?‫ “ושמעין לך‬,‫אמרין ליה‬ ‫ “ולא כן תנינן ‘מצילין תיק הספר עם הספר תיק תפילין עם התפילין‬,‫אמ’ לון‬ ”.‫מצילין’? לאלישע אחר בזכות תורתו‬ ‫ “אל יהי לו מושך חסד‬,‫ גזר רבי ואמר‬.’‫לאחר ימים הלכו בנותיו ליטול צדקה מר‬ ”.‫ואל יהי חונן ליתומיו‬ ”.‫ אל תבט במעשיו הבט בתורתו‬,‫” רבי‬:‫אמרו לו‬ ‫ “מה אם זה שיגע בתורה שלא‬,‫ אמר‬.‫באותה השעה בכה רבי וגזר עליהן שיתפרנסו‬ ”.‫לשום שמים ראו מה העמיד מי שהוא יגע בתורה לשמה על אחת כמה וכמה‬

They said to. R. Meir: “If they ask you in that world [to come], whom do you intend to visit first, your father or your master [, what will you do]?” He said to them, “I will visit my master first, and after that, my father.” They said to him, “Will they hearken to your plea [for Elisha]?” He said to them, “Have we not been taught thus: ‘They may save the casing of the scroll together with the scroll [and] the casing of the phylacteries together with the phylacteries’ [Shabbat 16:1]? Elisha Aher will be saved through the merit of [his study of the] Torah.” Some time later, Elisha’s daughters went to receive alms from Rabbi Judah Hanasi. Rabbi Judah Hanasi decreed, saying, “Let there be none to extend kindness to him , nor any to pity his fatherless children” (Ps.109:12). They said to him, “Rabbi, do not look upon his deeds but upon his Torah.”

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At that moment, Rabbi Judah Hanasi wept and decreed that they should be provided for. He said, “If these are [the children] raised by this man who labored in Torah for the wrong motives, how much more would be achieved by one who labors in it for the right motives [lit. for the sake of heaven]!”

The passage that concerns us is the underlined section which tells a different story than the parallel story in the BT on several points: A. The story begins with a declaration that is part of R. Meir’s words: “Elisha Aher will be saved through the merit of [his study of the] Torah.” The declaration reveals that the words spoken by the daughters afterwards were well supported. B. Rabbi Judah Hanasi meets the daughters of Elisha, not just one daughter. C. There is no element of surprise in the encounter. Rabbi Judah Hanasi knows the daughters and it is he himself who had decreed that they not be given from the charity funds, basing himself on Psalms 109 which calls for revenge against the wicked.24 24

Psalms 109 :‫ לְ ָדוִ ד ִמזְ מֹור‬,‫ א  לַ ְמנַ ֵּצ ַח‬1 For the Leader. A Psalm of David. O God of my praise, keep not silence; .‫ּת ֱח ַרׁש‬-‫ל‬ ֶ ‫ ַא‬,‫ֹלהי ְת ִהּלָ ִתי‬ ֵ ‫ֱא‬

‫עלַ י ָּפ ָתחּו; ִּד ְּברּו‬--‫ה‬ ָ ‫מ ְר ָמ‬-‫י‬ ִ ‫ּופ‬ ִ ,‫ ב  ּכִ י ִפי ָר ָׁשע‬2 For the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of deceit have they opened .‫ לְ ׁשֹון ָׁש ֶקר‬,‫ִא ִּתי‬ against me; they have spoken unto me with a lying tongue. .‫ ג  וְ ִד ְב ֵרי ִׂשנְ ָאה ְס ָבבּונִ י; וַ ּיִּלָ ֲחמּונִ י ִחּנָ ם‬3 They compassed me about also with words of hatred, and fought against me without a cause. .‫א ֲה ָב ִתי י ְִׂש ְטנּונִ י; וַ ֲאנִ י ְת ִפּלָ ה‬-‫ת‬ ַ ‫ ד ַ ּת ַח‬4 In return for my love they are my adversaries; but I am all prayer. ,‫טֹובה; וְ ִׂשנְ ָאה‬ ָ ‫ ַּת ַחת‬,‫ ה  וַ ּי ִָׂשימּו ָעלַ י ָר ָעה‬5 And they have laid upon me evil for good, and hatred for my love: .‫ַּת ַחת ַא ֲה ָב ִתי‬ .‫י ְִמינֹו‬-‫ י ֲַעמֹד ַעל‬,‫ ו ַ ה ְפ ֵקד ָעלָ יו ָר ָׁשע; וְ ָׂש ָטן‬6 ‘Set Thou a wicked man over him; and let an adversary stand at his right hand. ‫ ִּת ְהיֶה‬,‫ י ֵֵצא ָר ָׁשע; ְּות ִפּלָ תֹו‬,‫ ז ְ ּב ִה ָּשׁ ְפטֹו‬7 When he is judged, let him go forth condemned; and let his prayer be .‫לַ ֲח ָט ָאה‬ turned into sin. .‫ י ִַּקח ַא ֵחר‬,‫י ָָמיו ְמ ַע ִּטים; ְּפ ֻק ָּדתֹו‬-‫ ח  י ְִהיּו‬8 Let his days be few; let another take his charge.

We epi n g (B e c h i)

D. The words of the daughters are not accompanied by any heavenly intervention to validate them. E. The weeping of Rabbi Judah Hanasi is connected to the words of the daughters but also to the fact that he annulled the decree that he himself had made. Based on these differences, it appears that the Eretz Israel narrative wishes to emphasize the drama taking place in Rabbi Judah Hanasi’s soul, as he was torn between the legal imperative to uphold his own decree and the imperative of sentiment and kindness that bade him breach it. This story lacks the element of surprise which is interwoven into the Babylonian version. According to the text, Rabbi Judah Hanasi knew that the women standing before him were Elisha’s daughters and that he himself had doomed them to death. His weeping is incorporated into the story as an immediate reaction to the daughters’ statement: “Rabbi, do not look upon his deeds but upon his Torah,” and as a prologue to his expunging his first decree as expressed by the sentence: “Decree that they be provided for.” It appears that the weeping is a release from the tension that beset him and gratitude to the daughters for freeing him from fulfilling the decree that he himself had issued. According to this, and according to the words “If these are [the children] raised by this man” which appear in the concluding sentence of the Eretz Israel narrative, it is clear that his words referred to the daughters of Elisha, not to his Torah. As distinct from the Eretz Israel narrator who put Rabbi Judah Hanasi at the center .‫ ַאלְ ָמנָ ה‬,‫ְתֹומים; וְ ִא ְׁשּתֹו‬ ִ ‫בנָ יו י‬-‫יּו‬ ָ ‫ ט  י ְִה‬9 Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. ,‫נֹוע יָנּועּו ָבנָ יו וְ ִׁש ֵאלּו; וְ ָד ְרׁשּו‬ ַ ְ‫ י  ו‬10 Let his children be vagabonds, and beg; and let them seek their bread out of .‫בֹות ֶיהם‬ ֵ ‫ֵמ ָח ְר‬ their desolate places. ‫לֹו; וְ ָיבֹּזּו זָ ִרים‬-‫א ֶׁשר‬-‫ל‬ ֲ ָ‫ לְ כ‬,‫נֹוׁשה‬ ֶ ‫ יא  יְנַ ֵּקׁש‬11 Let the creditor distrain all that he hath; and let strangers make spoil of his labor. .‫יְגִ יעֹו‬ ,‫י ְִהי חֹונֵ ן‬-‫ מ ֵֹׁשְך ָח ֶסד; וְ ַאל‬,‫לֹו‬-‫י ְִהי‬-‫ יב ַ אל‬12 Let there be none to extend kindness unto him; neither let there be any to be .‫יתֹומיו‬ ָ ִ‫ל‬ gracious unto his fatherless children. ‫ י ִַּמח‬,‫א ֲח ִריתֹו לְ ַהכְ ִרית; ְּבדֹור ַא ֵחר‬-‫י‬ ַ ‫ יג  י ְִה‬13 Let his posterity be cut off; in the generation following let their name be .‫ְׁש ָמם‬ blotted out.

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of his tale, the Babylonian author centered his story around the abstract distinction between a person’s deeds and his Torah, which he expressed through the words he placed in the mouth of Elisha’s daughter. Accordingly, this narrator worded the comparison attributed to Rabbi Judah Hanasi in a way that could be understood as a comparison between those who dishonor the Torah and those honor it. 25 BT Hullin 72b tells of Rabbi Judah Hanasi’s encounter with R. Pinhas b. Yair, who evades the former’s invitation to dine at his table. The story is incorporated as the last in a cycle of miracle tales about Pinhas b. Ya’ir and his donkey, brought as an example and illustration of the expression “the beast of the righteous man”: ”‫ “רצונך סעוד אצלי‬:‫ אמר ליה‬,‫שמע רבי נפק לאפיה‬ ”‫ “הן‬:‫אמר לו‬ ‫ “כמדומה אתה שמודר הנאה מישראל אני? ישראל‬:‫ אמר לו‬,‫צהבו פניו של רבי‬ )‫ (משלי כ”ג‬:‫ וכתיב‬,‫ יש רוצה ואין לו ויש שיש לו ואינו רוצה‬,‫קדושים הן‬ ‫‘אל תלחם [את] לחם רע עין ואל תתאו למטעמותיו כי כמו שער בנפשו כן‬ ‫’ ואתה רוצה ויש לך מיהא השתא‬,‫הוא אכול ושתה יאמר לך ולבו בל עמך‬ ”.‫ כי הדרנא אתינא עיילנא לגבך‬,‫ דבמלתא דמצוה קא טרחנא‬,‫מסרהיבנא‬ 25

In the baraita cited in Sanhedrin 103a, there is an additional story that connects Rabbi Judah Hanasi’s weeping with the Torah and commandments: ?‫ מפני מה אתה בוכה‬,‫ רבי‬:‫ אמר לו‬,‫ נכנס ר' חייא אצלו ומצאו שהוא בוכה‬,‫”כשחלה רבי‬ ‫ מתוך הבכי — סימן רע לו; פניו למעלה‬,‫ מת מתוך השחוק — סימן יפה לו‬:‫והתניא‬ ‫ כלפי‬,‫ פניו למטה — סימן רע לו; פניו כלפי העם — סימן יפה לו‬,‫— סימן יפה לו‬ ‫ פניו צהובין ואדומים — סימן יפה‬,‫הכותל — סימן רע לו; פניו ירוקין — סימן רע לו‬ ,‫ במו“ש — סימן רע לו; מת בערב יוהכ“פ — סימן רע לו‬,‫לו; מת בע“ש — סימן יפה לו‬ ‫ מפני שרובם של‬,‫במוצאי יוהכ“פ — סימן יפה לו; מת מחולי מעיים — סימן יפה לו‬ !“‫ אנא אתורה ומצות קא בכינא‬:‫צדיקים מיתתן בחולי מעיים! א“ל‬ “When Rabbi Judah Hanasi fell ill, R. Hiyya entered into his presence and found him weeping. ‘Master,’ he said to him, ‘Why are you weeping? Was it not taught: ‘[If a man] dies smiling it is a good omen for him, if weeping it is a bad omen for him; his face upwards it is a good omen, his face downwards it is a bad omen; his face towards the public it is a good omen, towards the wall it is a bad omen; if his face is greenish it is a bad omen, if bright and ruddy it is a good omen; dying on Sabbath Eve is a good omen, on the termination of the Sabbath is a bad omen; dying on the Eve of the Day of Atonement is a bad omen, on the termination of the Day of Atonemen is a good omen; dying of diarrhea is a good omen because most righteous men die of diarrhea?’ And the other replied, ‘I weep on [account of my impending separation from] the Torah and the commandments’.” (This baraita is also cited in Semachot 3.)

We epi n g (B e c h i) :‫ אמר‬.‫ איתרמי על בההוא פיתחא דהוו קיימין ביה כודנייתא חוורתא‬,‫כי אתא‬ ”?‫“מלאך המות בביתו של זה ואני אסעוד אצלו‬ ”.‫ “מזבנינא להו‬:‫ אמר לי‬,‫שמע רבי נפק לאפיה‬ ”‫ (ויקרא י”ט) “ולפני עור לא תתן מכשול‬:‫אמר ליה‬ ”.‫“מפקרנא להו‬ ”.‫“מפשת היזקא‬ ”.‫“עקרנא להו‬ ”.‫“איכא צער בעלי חיים‬ ”.‫“קטילנא להו‬ ”.‫“איכא (דברים כ’) בל תשחית‬ ,‫ “מה בחייהן כך‬:‫ בכה רבי ואמר‬.‫ גבה טורא בינייהו‬,‫הוה קא מבתש ביה טובא‬ ”.‫במיתתן על אחת כמה וכמה‬

When Rabbi Judah Hanasi heard of the arrival of R. Pinhas, he went out to meet him. “Will you please dine with me?” asked Rabbi Judah Hanasi. “Certainly,” he answered. Rabbi Judah Hanasi’s face at once brightened with joy; whereupon R. Pinhas said: “You imagine that I am forbidden by vow from deriving any benefit from an Israelite. Oh, no. The people of Israel are holy. Yet there are some who desire [to benefit others] but have not the means; whilst others have the means but have not the desire, and it is written (Prov. 23): ‘Eat thou not the bread of him that hath an evil eye, neither desire thou his dainties; for as one that hath reckoned within himself, so is he: Eat and drink, saith he to thee; but his heart is not with thee.’ But you have the desire and also the means. At present, however, I am in a hurry for I am engaged in a religious duty; but on my return I will come and visit you.” When he arrived, he happened to enter by a gate near which were some white mules. At this he exclaimed: “The angel of death is in this house! Shall I then dine here?” When Rabbi Judah Hanasi heard of this, he went out to meet him.” I shall sell the mules,” said Rabbi Judah Hanasi. R. Pinhas replied (Lev. 19): “Thou shalt not put a stumbling block before the blind.” “I shall abandon them.” “You would be spreading danger.” “I shall hamstring them.” “You would be causing suffering to the animals.” “I shall kill them.” “(Deut. 20) There is the prohibition against wanton destruction” Rabbi Judah Hanasi was thus pressing him persistently, when there rose up a mountain between them. Then Rabbi Judah Hanasi wept and said. “If this is [the power of the righteous] in their lifetime, how great must it be after their death.”

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Pinhas b. Yair’s evasion of Rabbi Judah Hanasi’s invitation to eat at his table seems incomprehensible. At the end of the sugiya, it says: ‫ מימיו לא בצע על פרוסה שאינה שלו‬:‫אמרו עליו על ר’ פנחס בן יאיר‬ .‫ומיום שעמד על דעתו לא נהנה מסעודת אביו‬

It is related of R. Pinhas b. Yair that never in his life did he say grace over a piece of bread which was not his own; and furthermore, that from the day he reached the years of discretion, he derived no benefit from his father’s table.

This text shows that the BT regarded Pinhas b. Yair’s behavior as righteous and therefore composed an extended dialogue between him and Rabbi Judah Hanasi concerning the mules, used to symbolize Rabbi Judah Hanasi’s wealth which annoyed R. Pinhas b. Yair. One might explain then that the story of R. Pinhas eluding Rabbi Judah Hanasi’s invitation to dine, like their dialogue about the mules, was designed to demonstrate the discrepancy in status and attitude between the two. However, the Eretz Israel version of the narrative which appears in two sugyot of the JT26 attributes Pinhas’ refusal to eat with Rabbi Judah Hanasi to his objection to Rabbi Judah Hanasi’s desire to relax the laws of shemittah.27 26

JT Demai 22a (1:3) and JT Ta’anit 66c (3:1) See O. Meir, Rabbi Judah the Patriarch — Palestinian and Babylonian Portrait of a Leader, Tel-Aviv 1999, pp. 12-13 (Hebrew), who quotes G. Alon, History of the Jews in the Land of Israel in Mishnaic and Talmudic Times, Tel-Aviv 1971, pp. 146-147 and S. Safrai, “The Commandment of the seventh year in the time after the destruction of the Second Temple,” Tarbitz (36) pp. 1-21, and The Land of Israel and its Sages in the Mishnaic and Talmudic Periods, Tel-Aviv 1983, 166-170. These scholars saw this narrative as proof of Rabbi Judah Hanasi’s attempt to ease the laws of shemittah in general. Countering this evidence, Meir brings the words of Y. Felix, Talmud Yerushalmi, Tractate Shevi’it Jerusalem 1986, pp. 442-443, who wrote that the narrative tells of a certain sabbatical year where there was a shortage of food and the fields produced an abundance of sefichim [self-seeded produce normally prohibited for use during the shemittah year]. A. Oppenheimer, Rabbi Judah Hanassi, Jerusalem 2007, pp. 74-75 (Hebrew), based himself on the JT narrative and wrote, “In his attempt to cancel the laws of shemittah entirely, Rabbi Judah Hanasi encountered opposition from R. Pinhas b. Yair the Pious,” and further “There was a valid reason that Rabbi Judah Hanasi appealed to R. Pinhas b. Yair when he wanted to cancel

27

We epi n g (B e c h i) ‫רבי בעא מישרי שמיטתא סלק רבי פינחס בן יאיר לגביה‬ ”?‫ “מה עיבוריא עבידין‬:‫אמ’ ליה‬ ”.‫ “עולשין יפות‬:‫אמר ליה‬ ”?‫“מה עיבוריא עבידין‬ ”.‫” עולשין יפות‬:‫אמר ליה‬ ‫ “מישגח רבי מיכול עימן ציבחד‬:‫ אמר ליה‬.‫וידע רבי דלית הוא מסכמא עימיה‬ ”?‫פטל‬ .‫יומא דין אמר לון אין מי נחית חמא מולוותא דרבי קיימין‬ ‫ “כל אילין יהודאי זנין איפשר דלא חמי סבר אפוי מן כדון!” אזלון ואמרון‬,‫אמר‬ .‫לרבי‬ ‫שלח רבי בעי מפייסתיה‬ ‫” ונחתו בני קרתא ואקפון עלוי‬.‫ אמר “בני קרתיה קורבין לי‬.‫מטון ביה גבי קרתיה‬ ”.‫אמר לון “רבי בעי מפייסתיה‬ ‫שבקוניה ואזול לון‬ .‫” נחתת אישתא מן שמיא ואקפת עלוי‬.‫אמר “בני דידי קורבין לי‬ .‫אזלון אמרון לרבי‬ ‫אמר “הואיל ולא זכנינן נישבע מיניה בעלמא הדין ניזכי נישבע מיניה בעלמא‬ .”‫דאתי‬

Rabbi Judah Hanasi wanted to permit the Sabbatical year. Rabbi Pinhas b. Yair went to him. He said to him: “How is the grain doing?” He answered him:”Endives are doing fine.” He said to him: “How is the grain doing?” He answered him:”Endives are doing fine.” From this Rabbi Judah Hanasi understood that he did not agree with him. He said to him: “Would the rabbi care to eat a bite with me today?” He said to him, “Yes.” When he came, he saw the she-mules of Rabbi Judah Hanasi standing. He said, “Are these all fed by Jews? He will not see me again!” They went and told Rabbi Judah Hanasi. Rabbi Judah Hanasi sent and wanted to pacify him. They found him in his city. He said, “The people of my city should come close to me.” The people of his city came and surrounded him. They said to him, “Rabbi Judah Hanasi wants to make peace with you.” They left him and went away. He said, “My cousins should come close to me.” Fire descended from Heaven and surrounded him. the shemittah laws. R. Pinhas, who was one of the foremost pious men who emphasized the societal aspects of the commandments, was likely to object to canceling shemittah because the poor were able to benefit from the fruits that year. Thus the pious men were unmatched in their strict adherence to the laws of tithing and the seventh year.”

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They returned and told Rabbi Judah Hanasi. He said, since we did not have merit to eat our fill from him in this world, may we be worthy to eat our fill from him in the World to Come. 28

Germane to our discussion is the comparison between the concluding lines of both stories: In the Babylonian narrative

In the Eretz Israel narrative

‫ במיתתן על אחת‬,‫ מה בחייהן כך‬:‫בכה רבי ואמר‬ ;‫כמה וכמה‬

‫אמר הואיל ולא זכנינן נישבע מיניה בעלמא הדין‬ .‫ניזכי נישבע מיניה בעלמא דאתי‬

Then Rabbi Judah Hanasi wept and said: If this is [the power of the righteous] in their lifetime, how great must it be after their death.

He said: since we did not have merit to eat our fill from him in this world, may we be worthy to eat our fill from him in the World to come.

Juxtaposing the last lines of both narratives shows that the ending of the Babylonian story is different than the Eretz Israel story, both in language and in content. The language of the ending of the Babylonian narrative is Hebrew whereas the entire story is in Aramaic. In terms of content, only the Babylonian version states that Rabbi Judah Hanasi wept; furthermore, the comparison drawn by Rabbi Judah Hanasi in this story is different than the comparison made in the Eretz Israel story. In the Babylonian narrative, Rabbi Judah Hanasi demonstrates the distinction between himself and R. Pinhas b. Yair in life and in death; in the Eretz Israel version he presents the distinction between this world where the two men are different and in the world to come, where this distinction will be cancelled out. The shift in language from Aramaic to Hebrew at the end of the Babylonian story together with the use of the version that appeared in several places (as noted previously) which attributes weeping to Rabbi Judah Hanasi and the comparison between two factors, raise the possibility that this passage was appended to the narrative in the redaction in order to reinforce the message which reveals the disparity between the worldviews of the aristocratic Rabbi Judah the Prince and Pinhas b. Yair, the pious man and 28

Translation and commentary by Heinrich W. Guggenheimer, Berlin-New York 2000.

151

We epi n g (B e c h i)

ally of the weak and poor. This possibility is further supported by the line ”‫[ “גבה טורא בינייהו‬there rose up a mountain between them] which demonstrates the distance between the two personalities and anticipates the weeping which expresses the frustration felt by Rabbi Judah Hanasi at the lack of agreement between them. O. Meir29 concluded from the differences between the Babylonian and Eretz Israel narratives that “The Eretz Israel tradition preserved the fascinating contest between two respected personalities and left the question of identification with each of them to the preference of the readers for generations to come. The Babylonian tradition fashioned the contest in total empathy with R. Pinhas b. Yair, leaving Rabbi Judah Hanasi as a personality whose pursuit of wealth caused him to disregard ethical principles.” Her conclusion that the BT presented Rabbi Judah Hanasi as “a person whose pursuit of wealth caused him to disregard ethical principles” seems to be overstated in its severity, yet her reading was correct in asserting that the Babylonian story does award the moral high ground to R. Pinhas b. Yair.30 It does this by showing the 29 30

O. Meir, Rabbi Judah, pp. 148-149. Another Babylonian narrative that shows R. Pinhas b. Yair in a positive light attributes specifically to his profuse weeping upon seeing his father-in-law R. Simeon bar Yohai wounded and scratched after a prolonged stay in the cave where he hid with his son from the Romans:

‫שבת דף לג עמוד ב‬ ‫ עייליה לבי בניה הוה קא אריך ליה‬,‫“שמע רבי פנחס בן יאיר חתניה ונפק לאפיה‬ ‫ וקא נתרו דמעת עיניה‬,‫ הוה קא בכי‬,‫ חזי דהוה ביה פילי בגופיה‬,‫לבישריה‬ ,‫ אשריך שראיתני בכך‬:‫ אוי לי שראיתיך בכך! — אמר לו‬:‫ אמר לו‬.‫וקמצוחא ליה‬ ‫ דמעיקרא כי הוה מקשי רבי שמעון‬.‫שאילמלא לא ראיתני בכך — לא מצאת בי כך‬ ‫ לסוף כי הוה‬,‫בן יוחי קושיא — הוה מפרק ליה רבי פנחס בן יאיר תריסר פירוקי‬ ‫מקשי רבי פנחס בן יאיר קושיא — הוה מפרק ליה רבי שמעון בן יוחי עשרין‬ ”‫וארבעה פירוקי‬ BT, Shabbat 33b “R. Pinhas b. Yair his son-in-law heard and went out to meet him. He took him into the baths and massaged his flesh. Seeing the clefts in his body he wept and the tears streamed from his eyes. ‘Woe to me that I see you in such a state!’ he cried out. ‘Happy are you that you see me thus,’ he retorted, ‘for if you did not see me in such a state, you would not find me thus [learned].’ For originally, when R. Simeon b. Yohai raised a difficulty, R. Pinhas b. Yair would give him thirteen answers, whereas subsequently when R. Pinhas b. Yair raised a difficulty, R. Simeon b. Yohai would give him twenty-four answers.”

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disparate understandings between himself and Rabbi Judah Hanasi, which is not flattering to Rabbi Judah Hanasi, and this reaches a climax in the last two sentences: “There rose up a mountain between them” and “Then Rabbi Judah Hanasi wept and said. ‘If this is [the power of the righteous] in their lifetime, how great must it be after their death.” In the two stories of weeping discussed here, weeping expresses emotion comprising both a personal and an ideological aspect. In the first narrative, weeping expresses joy, which has a personal facet — the possibility of providing for the daughter of Elisha b. Avuya — and there is also the ideological aspect — revealing the legitimacy of distinguishing a man’s Torah from his deeds. In the second story, weeping expresses sorrow and frustration, whose personal side is the offense felt by Rabbi Judah Hanasi at R. Pinhas b. Yair’s evading the invitation to his table, and the ideological aspect is the realization that there is a gap that cannot be bridged between his world of values and that of Pinhas b. Yair. Weeping of Amoraim In two places in the Talmud appear accounts of weeping by the early Amoraim upon reading Biblical verses. Yoma 9b brings the account in a series of homilies on the reasons for the destruction of the First Temple: “There were three things in it: idolatry, immorality, and bloodshed.” The Eretz Israel Amora of the second generation, Samuel bar Nahmani, attests that his teacher R. Jonathan wept upon reading a verse in Isaiah: ,‫ וגלוי עריות‬,‫ עבודה זרה‬:‫מקדש ראשון מפני מה חרב? מפני שלשה דברים שהיו בו‬ .‫ושפיכות דמים‬ ”.‫ כא) “כי קצר המצע מהשתרע‬:‫עבודה זרה — דכתיב (ישעיהו כח‬ ?”‫מאי “קצר המצע מהשתרע‬ ”.‫ “קצר מצע זה מהשתרר עליו שני רעים כאחד‬:‫אמר רבי יונתן‬ ‫ “כי מטי‬:‫ כא) “והמסכה צרה כהתכנס”? אמר רבי שמואל בר נחמני‬:‫(ישעיהו כח‬ ‫ז) “כנס כנד מי‬:‫ ‘מאן דכתיב ביה )תהלים לג‬:‫ אמר‬,‫רבי יונתן להאי קרא בכי‬ ”.’‫הים” נעשית לו מסכה צרה‬

Why was the first Sanctuary destroyed? Because of three [evil] things which prevailed there: idolatry, immorality, bloodshed.

We epi n g (B e c h i)

Idolatry, as it is written (Isaiah 28:21): “For the bed is too short for a man to stretch himself and the covering too narrow when he gathereth himself up.” What is the meaning of “For the bed is too short for a man to stretch himself”? R. Jonathan said: It is: “This bed is too short for two neighbors to stretch themselves” And [what is the meaning of] ‘the covering too narrow when he gathereth himself up’? (Isaiah 28:21) — R. Samuel b. Nahmani said: “When R. Jonathan [in his reading] came to this passage, he would cry and say: ‘To Him , concerning Whom it is written (Ps. 33:7), “He gathers the waters of the sea together like a rampart,” the cover became too narrow’.”

R. Jonathan explained the two parts of the verse in Isaiah as directed against idolatry. According to his interpretations, the word ’‫[ ‘להשתרע‬to stretch himself] in the phrase “the bed is too short for a man to stretch himself” shows that the Temple was not made to contain the “evil” i.e., idolatry, and the expression ’‫[ ‘והמסכה צרה כהתכנס‬and the covering is too narrow] shows that the Temple was destroyed because the covering, i.e., idolatry, became too narrow-close , in the sense of acting as a rival (in Hebrew, the word ’‫ ‘צרה‬means both ‘narrow’ and ‘rival wife in a polygamous family’) to the true God, of Whom Psalms 33:7 writes — ”,‫“ “כנס כנד מי הים‬Who gathers the waters of the sea,” based on the same letters ’‫ ‘כנס‬used in both verses. According to R. Jonathan’s exclamations, the first expression in the verse expressed a theoretical opposition to syncretism, while the second expression in it described how the implementation of this theological perception in the First Temple led to the destruction. This distinction clarifies aptly why R. Jonathan wept upon specifically reading the second part of the verse, for as he understood, it illustrated to him the reality of the destruction. In Hagigah 15b, a narrative is brought about the Babylonian Amora of the first generation, Samuel, who found his disciple weeping because he had interpreted a verse from Isaiah as aimed at sages who fell into evil ways. .‫אשכחיה שמואל לרב יהודה דתלי בעיברא דדשא וקא בכי‬ ”?‫ מאי קא בכית‬,‫ “שיננא‬:‫אמר ליה‬

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Chapter Three ‫יח) ‘איה ספר איה שקל‬:‫ “מי זוטרא מאי דכתיב בהו ברבנן (ישעיהו ל”ג‬:‫אמר ליה‬ ‫ איה‬.‫איה ספר את המגדלים’? איה סופר — שהיו סופרים כל אותיות שבתורה‬ ‫ איה סופר את המגדלים — שהיו‬.‫שוקל — שהיו שוקלים קלין וחמורין שבתורה‬ ”.’‫שונין שלש מאות הלכות ‘במגדל הפורח באויר‬

Samuel found Rab Judah leaning on the door-bolt weeping. So he said to him: “O, keen scholar, wherefore dost thou weep?” He replied: “Is it a small thing that is written (Isaiah 33:18) concerning the Rabbis? ‘Where is he that counted, where is he that weighed? Where is he that counted the towers?’ Where is he that counted? — for they counted all the letters in the Torah. Where is he that weighed? — for they weighed the light and the heavy in the Torah. Where is he that counted the towers? — for they taught three hundred halachot concerning a ‘tower which flies in the air’.”

Chapter 33 in the book of Isaiah prophesizes the destruction of the evil kingdom, apparently that of Sanneherib, whose regime caused fear and dread to the Jewish people. The prophet might have been referring either to the promise of redemption for Hezekiah from the evil kingdom, or to the Messiah in the end of days. In any event, the verse interpreted by R. Judah, ”?‫ איה ספר את המגדלים‬,‫ איה שקל‬,‫“לבך יהגה אימה איה ספר‬ [“Thy heart shall muse on the terror: ‘Where is he that counted, where is he that weighed? Where is he that counted the towers?’”] is interpreted according to the literal explanation as expressing the change that will take place in the nation’s feelings when it is proven that everyone who had intimidated them had disappeared — the king’s officials and the men who weighed out the taxes and counted the fortified towers in a show of their might.31 This verse, which is a consolation of the Jewish people, is explained by R. Judah as a kind of lamentation over sages who had become corrupted like Elisha b. Avuya, the subject of the sugiya. 31

Rashi’s comment on the verse differs in the details but not in the general idea: Thy heart shall muse on the terror—when you see the officers and wise men of the gentiles who were despots in their lives and now are doomed to gehinnom [purgatory], you will muse on that terror and say: Where is their wisdom and greatness now, those who counted out and weighed every wise word when asked for advice by the king, where is he who counted the towers—the one who would count the towers of every city because these taller houses were important and would command a higher price.

We epi n g (B e c h i)

He laments the sages, among whom were those whose greatness consisted of counting the letters of the Torah and interpreting them, those whose glory was in teaching the halachot using the rules given for elucidating the Torah such as kal vehomer, and those pilpulists who produced three hundred laws regarding impurity and purity from the law of “the tower that stood in the air”32 cited in the Mishnah Oholot 4:1.33 In both accounts brought here, the weeping of the sages is associated with the abandonment of God, whether by the community or by individuals, while in another collection of accounts, brought in Hagigah 4b -5a, the weeping of the sages is associated conversely with those who adhered to God and the complexity of this relationship between God and man. This collection brings thirteen instances where Amoraim wept when in the course of their study, they came upon certain verses. The identical style used in each of the instances shows that the collection had been edited. Judging by the names of the Amoraim who wept, all belonging to the third generation, its redaction probably cannot be dated before the fourth generation.34 ‫ “עבד שרבו מצפה לו‬:‫ אמר‬,‫ כי מטי להאי קרא “יראה יראה” בכי‬,‫) רב הונא‬1 ‫לראותו יתרחק ממנו? דכתיב ‘כי תבאו לראות פני מי בקש זאת מידכם רמס‬ ”’?)‫יב‬,‫חצרי (ישעיה א‬

32

“[With regard to] a tower standing in the open air, if there is uncleanness within it, vessels in the thickness [of its walls] remain clean. [If there is uncleanness in] its thickness, vessels inside [the cupboard] remain clean. R. Jose says: “half and half.” Rashi ad. loc. brings a different version of “a tower standing in the air”: It seems to me that this is speaking of the laws of tents, a wooden tower which is known as a cupboard, which stands at the opening and its door is open to the yard where there is air. 33 The aforementioned passage is one of the interpretations of the problematic sentence “they taught three hundred halachot concerning a ‘tower which flies in the air’.” Rashi ad.loc. brings two additional explanations: 1) They would discuss the height of the letter ‘lamed,’ and they were able to deduce everything from that. 2) Some say this was the tower built by the generation of the Tower of Babel. 34 Or even to the fifth generation, as shown by the name ‘Bibi bar Abaye’ who is the hero of the story which the gemara associated with the weeping of R. Jose.

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‫‪Chapter Three‬‬ ‫‪ )2‬‬

‫‪ )3‬‬

‫‪ )4‬‬

‫‪ )5‬‬ ‫‪ )6‬‬ ‫‪ )7‬‬ ‫‪ )8‬‬

‫‪ )9‬‬ ‫‪ )10‬‬

‫‪ )11‬‬

‫רב הונא כי מטי להאי קרא בכי (דברים כ”ז‪:‬ז) “וזבחת שלמים ואכלת שם‪”.‬‬ ‫“עבד שרבו מצפה לאכול על שלחנו יתרחק ממנו? דכתיב (ישעיהו א’‪:‬יא)‬ ‫‘למה לי רב זבחיכם? יאמר ה’‪”’.‬‬ ‫רבי אלעזר כי מטי להאי קרא בכי (בראשית מ”ה‪:‬ג) “ולא יכלו אחיו לענות‬ ‫אתו כי נבהלו מפניו‪“ ”.‬ומה תוכחה של בשר ודם — כך‪ ,‬תוכחה של הקדוש‬ ‫ברוך הוא — על אחת כמה וכמה!”‬ ‫רבי אלעזר כי מטי להאי קרא בכי (שמואל א’ כ”ח‪:‬טו) “ויאמר שמואל אל‬ ‫שאול למה הרגזתני להעלות אתי‪“ ”.‬ומה שמואל הצדיק היה מתיירא מן‬ ‫הדין‪ ,‬אנו — על אחת כמה וכמה! שמואל מאי היא? דכתיב )שמואל א’ כ”ח(‬ ‫‘ותאמר האשה אל שאול אלהים ראיתי עלים‪ ’.‬עלים — תרי משמע‪ ,‬חד —‬ ‫שמואל‪ ,‬ואידך — דאזל שמואל ואתייה למשה בהדיה‪ .‬אמר ליה‪‘ :‬דלמא חס‬ ‫ושלום לדינא מתבעינא‪ ,‬קום בהדאי דליכא מילתא דכתבת באורייתא דלא‬ ‫קיימתיה’‪”.‬‬ ‫רבי אמי כי מטי להאי קרא בכי (איכה ג‪:‬כט) “יתן בעפר פיהו אולי יש תקוה‪”.‬‬ ‫אמר‪“ :‬כולי האי — ואולי?”‬ ‫רבי אמי כי מטי להאי קרא בכי (צפניה ב’‪:‬ג) “בקשו צדק בקשו ענוה אולי‬ ‫תסתרו ביום אף ה’‪ ”.‬אמר‪“ :‬כולי האי — ואולי?”‬ ‫רבי אסי‪ ,‬כי מטי להאי קרא בכי (עמוס ה’‪:‬טו) “שנאו רע ואהבו טוב והציגו‬ ‫בשער משפט אולי יחנן ה’ [אלהי] צבאות‪“ ”.‬כולי האי — ואולי?”‬ ‫רב יוסף כי מטי להאי קרא בכי (משלי י”ג‪:‬כג) “ויש נספה בלא משפט‪ ”.‬אמר‪:‬‬ ‫“מי איכא דאזיל בלא זמניה?” — אין‪ ,‬כי הא דרב ביבי בר אביי הוה שכיח גביה‬ ‫מלאך המות‪ .‬אמר ליה לשלוחיה‪“ :‬זיל אייתי לי מרים מגדלא שיער נשייא”‬ ‫אזל אייתי ליה מרים מגדלא דרדקי‪ .‬אמר ליה‪“ :‬אנא מרים מגדלא שיער‬ ‫נשייא אמרי לך!’ — אמר ליה‪“ :‬אי הכי אהדרה!” — אמר ליה‪“ :‬הואיל ואייתיתה‬ ‫— ליהוי למניינא‪ .‬אלא היכי יכלת לה?” “הות נקיטא מתארא בידה‪ ,‬והות קא‬ ‫שגרה ומחריא תנורא‪ .‬שקלתא ואנחתא אגבה דכרעה‪ ,‬קדחא ואיתרע מזלה‪,‬‬ ‫ואייתיתה‪ ”.‬אמר ליה רב ביבי בר אביי‪“ :‬אית לכו רשותא למיעבד הכי?” אמר‬ ‫ליה‪“ :‬ולא כתיב ויש נספה בלא משפט?” אמר ליה‪“ :‬והכתיב (קהלת א’) דור‬ ‫הלך ודור בא!” אמר‪“ :‬דרעינא להו אנא עד דמלו להו לדרא‪ ,‬והדר משלימנא‬ ‫ליה לדומה‪ ”.‬אמר ליה‪“ :‬סוף סוף‪ ,‬שניה מאי עבדת?” אמר‪“ :‬אי איכא צורבא‬ ‫מרבנן דמעביר במיליה מוסיפנא להו ליה‪ ,‬והויא חלופיה‪”.‬‬ ‫רבי יוחנן כי מטי להאי קרא בכי (איוב ב’‪:‬ג) “ותסיתני בו לבלעו חנם‪“ ”.‬עבד‬ ‫שרבו מסיתין לו וניסת‪ ,‬תקנה יש לו?”‬ ‫רבי יוחנן‪ ,‬כי מטי להאי קרא בכי (איוב ט”ו‪ :‬טו) “הן בקדשו לא יאמין‪ ”.‬אי‬ ‫בקדושיו לא יאמין — במאן יאמין?” יומא חד הוה קא אזיל באורחא‪ ,‬חזייה‬ ‫לההוא גברא דהוה מנקיט תאני‪ ,‬שביק הנך דמטו‪ ,‬ושקיל הנך דלא מטו‪ .‬אמר‬ ‫ליה‪“ :‬לאו הני מעלן טפי? “ אמר ליה‪“ :‬הני לאורחא בעינן להו‪ ,‬הני — נטרן‪,‬‬ ‫והני — לא נטרן‪ ”.‬אמר‪“ :‬היינו דכתיב ‘הן בקדשו לא יאמין’‪ ”.‬איני? והא ההוא‬ ‫תלמידא דהוה בשיבבותיה דרבי אלכסנדרי ושכיב אדזוטר‪ ,‬ואמר “אי בעי‬ ‫האי מרבנן הוה חיי‪ ”.‬ואם איתא — דלמא מהן “בקדשו לא יאמין הוה”? —‬ ‫ההוא מבעט ברבותיו הוה‪.‬‬ ‫רבי יוחנן כי מטי להאי קרא בכי (מלאכי ג’‪:‬ה) “וקרבתי אליכם למשפט‬ ‫והייתי עד ממהר במכשפים ובמנאפים ובנשבעים לשקר ובעשקי שכר שכיר‪”.‬‬

‫‪156‬‬

We epi n g (B e c h i) ‫ תקנה יש לו?” אמר רבי יוחנן בן‬,‫ וממהר להעידו‬,‫“עבד שרבו מקרבו לדונו‬ ‫ “כל‬:‫” אמר ריש לקיש‬.‫ “אוי לנו ששקל עלינו הכתוב קלות כחמורות‬:‫זכאי‬ — ‫ שנאמר (מלאכי ג’) ‘ומטי גר‬,‫המטה דינו של גר — כאילו מטה דינו של מעלה‬ ‫ “כל העושה דבר ומתחרט בו — מוחלין‬:‫” אמר רבי חנינא בר פפא‬.’‫ומטי כתיב‬ ”.’‫ הא יראוני — מוחלין להם מיד‬,‫ שנאמר (מלאכי ג’) ‘ולא יראוני‬,‫לו מיד‬ ‫יד) “כי את כל מעשה האלהים‬:‫ ) רבי יוחנן כי מטי להאי קרא בכי (קהלת י”ב‬12 ?‫” עבד שרבו שוקל לו שגגות כזדונות תקנה יש לו‬.‫יבא במשפט על כל נעלם‬ ‫” ושמואל‬.‫ “זה ההורג כינה בפני חברו ונמאס בה‬:‫מאי על כל נעלם?” אמר רב‬ :‫” מאי אם טוב ואם רע? אמרי דבי רבי ינאי‬.‫ “זה הרק בפני חבירו ונמאס‬:‫אמר‬ ‫ כי הא דרבי ינאי חזייה לההוא גברא דקא‬.‫“זה הנותן צדקה לעני בפרהסיא‬ ‫ ‘מוטב דלא יהבת ליה מהשתא דיהבת‬:‫ אמר ליה‬,‫יהיב זוזא לעני בפרהסיא‬ ‫ “זה הנותן צדקה לאשה בסתר דקא‬:‫” דבי רבי שילא אמרי‬.’‫ליה וכספתיה‬ ‫ “זה המשגר לאשתו בשר שאינו מחותך‬:‫” רבא אמר‬.‫מייתי לה לידי חשדא‬ ‫” — והא רבא משגר! — שאני בת רב חסדא דקים ליה בגווה‬.‫בערבי שבתות‬ .‫דבקיאה‬ ‫כא) “והיה כי תמצאן אתו רעות‬:‫) רבי יוחנן כי מטי להאי קרא בכי (דברים ל”א‬13 ‫” “עבד שרבו ממציא לו רעות וצרות תקנה יש לו? מאי רעות‬.‫רבות וצרות‬ ‫” ושמואל‬.‫ כגון זיבורא ועקרבא‬,‫ “רעות שנעשות צרות זו לזו‬:‫וצרות?” אמר רב‬ ‫ “היינו דאמרי‬:‫” אמר רבא‬.‫ “זה הממציא לו מעות לעני בשעת דוחקו‬:‫אמר‬ ”.’‫ לתליתא — שכיח‬,‫‘אינשי זוזא לעללא לא שכיחא‬

1) R. Huna, when he came to this verse, “Yir’eh, Yera’eh,” wept. He said: “The slave whom his Master longs to see should become estranged from him! For it is written: ‘When ye come to appear before Me, who hath required this at your hand, to trample My courts (Isaiah 1:12)?’” 2) R. Huna, when he came to the [following] verse (Deut. 27:7), wept: “And thou shalt sacrifice peace-offerings, and shalt eat there.” “The slave at whose table his Master longs to eat should become estranged from him! For it is written: ‘To what purpose is the abundance of your sacrifices unto Me? saith the Lord (Isaiah 1:12)’.” 3) R. Eleazar, when he came to the [following] verse (Gen. 45:3), wept: “And his brethren could not answer him, for they were affrighted at his presence.” “Now if the rebuke of flesh and blood be such, how much more so the rebuke of the Holy One, blessed be He!” 4) R. Eleazar, when he came to the [following] verse (I Sam. 28:15), wept: “And Samuel said to Saul: Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring me up?” “Now if Samuel, the righteous, was afraid of the Judgment, how much more so should we be! How do we know this about Samuel? — For it is written: ‘And the woman said unto Saul: I see godlike beings coming up out of the earth.’ ‘Coming up’ implies two: one was Samuel, but [who was] the other? Samuel went and brought Moses with him, saying to him: ‘Perhaps, Heaven forfend, I am summoned to Judgment: arise with me, for there is nothing that thou hast written in the Torah, which I did not fulfill’.”

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5) R. Ami, when he came to the [following] verse (Lam. 3:29), wept: “Let him put his mouth in the dust, perhaps there may be hope.” He said: “All this, and [only] perhaps?” 6) R. Ami, when he came to the [following] verse (Zeph. 2:3), wept: “Seek righteousness, seek humility, perhaps ye shall be hid in the day of the Lord’s anger.” He said: “All this, and [only] perhaps!” 7) R. Assi, when he came to the [following] verse (Amos 5:15), wept: Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish justice in the gate, perhaps the Lord, the God of hosts, will be gracious. All this, and [only] perhaps! 8) R. Joseph, when he came to the [following] verse, wept (Prov. 13:23): But there is that is swept away without judgment. [He said]: Is there anyone who passes away before one’s [allotted] time? — Yes, as in the story [heard] by R. Bibi b. Abaye, who was frequently visited by the Angel of Death. [Once] the latter said to his messenger: “Go, bring me Miriam, the women’s hairdresser!” He went and brought him Miriam, the children’s nurse. Said he to him: “I told thee Miriam, the women’s hairdresser.” He answered: “If so, I will take her back.” Said he to him: “Since thou hast brought her, let her be added. But how were you able to get her?”“She was holding a shovel in her hand and was heating and raking the oven. She took it and put it on her foot and burnt herself; thus her luck was impaired and I brought her” Said R. Bibi b. Abaye to him: “Have ye permission to act thus?” He answered him: “Is it not written: There is that is swept away without judgment?” He countered: “But behold it is written: One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh!” He replied: “I have charge of them till they have completed the generation, and then I hand them over to Dumah!” He [then] asked him: “But after all, what do you do with her years?” He replied: “If there be a Rabbinic scholar who overlooks his hurt, I shall give them to him in her stead” 9) R. Johanan, when he came to the [following] verse (Job 2:3), wept: “And thou didst incite Me against him, to destroy him without cause.” “A slave whose Master, when they incite him yields, is there any help for him?” 10) R. Johanan, when he came to the [following] verse (Job 15:15), wept: “Behold, He putteth no trust in His holy ones.” “If He does not put His trust in His holy ones, in whom will He put his trust?” One day he was going on a journey and saw a man gathering figs; he was leaving those that were ripe and was taking those that were unripe. So he said to him: “Are not those better?” He replied: “I need those for a journey: these will keep, but the others will not keep.” Said [R. Johanan] “This is the meaning of the verse: “Behold He putteth no trust in His holy ones.” But is it so? For behold there was a disciple in the neighborhood of R. Alexandri, who died in his youth, and [R. Alexandri] said: “Had this scholar wished, he could

We epi n g (B e c h i)

have lived!” If now it be [as R. Johanan said] perhaps he was one of those of whom it is said: “Behold He putteth no trust in His holy ones”!—That [scholar] was one who had rebelled against his teachers! 11) R. Johanan, when he came to the [following] verse (Mal. 3:5), wept: “And I will come near to you to judgment and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages.” “A slave whose Master brings him near to judge him, and hastens to testify against him, is there any remedy for him?” Rabban Johanan b. Zakkai said: “Woe unto us that Scripture weighs against us light like grave offences” Resh Lakish said: “Whoever wrests the judgment of the proselyte is as if he wrests the judgment of the All-High, for it is said: ‘And that turn aside the proselyte from his right: the consonants [can be read]: And that turn Me aside’.” R. Hanina b. Papa said: “Whoever does something [wrong] and repents of it, is forgiven at once, for it is said: ‘And [that] fear not Me. But if they do fear Me, they are forgiven at once’.” 12) R. Johanan, when he came to the [following] verse (Eccl. 12:14), wept: “For God shall bring every work into the judgment concerning every hidden thing.” “A slave to whom his Master accounts errors as willful offences, is there any remedy for him? What is the meaning of, concerning every hidden thing?” — Rav said: “This refers to one who kills a louse in the presence of his neighbor, so that he feels disgust thereat.” And Samuel said: “This refers to one who spits in the presence of his neighbor so that he feels disgust thereat.” What is the meaning of, whether it be good or whether it be evil? The School of R. Jannai said: “This refers to one who gives alms to a poor person publicly, like the story of R. Jannai. He [once] saw a man give a zuz to a poor person publicly, so he said to him: ‘It had been better that you had not given him, than now that you have given him publicly and put him to shame’.” The School of R. Shila said: “This refers to one who gives alms to a woman secretly, for he brings her into suspicion.” Raba said: “This refers to one who is in the habit of sending his wife on the eve of the Sabbath meat that has not been cut up.” But Raba [himself] used to send!—The daughter of R. Hisda is different, for he was sure of her that she was an expert! 13) R. Johanan, when he came to the [following] verse (Deut. 31:21), wept: “And it shall come to pass, when many evils and troubles are come upon them.” “A slave whose Master brings many evils and troubles upon him, is there any remedy for him? What is the meaning of ‘evils and troubles’?”— Rav said: “Evils which become antagonists to each other, as for instance the [bites of] a wasp and a scorpion.” And Samuel said: “This refers to one who furnishes money to the poor person [only] in the hour of his extreme distress.” Raba said: “This is the meaning of the proverb, ‘For [purchasing]

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provision a zuz is not to be found, for hanging up [in the basket] it can be found.”

The assumption that we are confronting a collection which has been redacted leads us to attempt to identify the considerations of the redactors. The ideological common denominator of all of the instances of weeping is the discovery of frustrating and baffling aspects of the relationship between God and man. Because of the similitude in the names of the sages and the use of identical concluding sentences, it is clear that the arrangement of the stories in groups was done deliberately, and the groups themselves were arranged in an ascending hierarchy of specific reasons for weeping. The hero of the first two instances is R. Huna, and both accounts end with the question: “The slave at whose table his Master longs to eat should become estranged from him?” In both cases R. Huna wept at the discovery of the extreme contradiction between, on the one hand, the Torah imperatives to appear before God on the festivals (Ex. 23:17) and to bring a sacrifice (Deut. 17:7), which show God’s intent to bring man closer to Him, and on the other, the prophet Isaiah commanding man with respect to not appearing before God (Isaiah 1:12) and not bringing a sacrifice (Isaiah 1:11), which reveal God’s desire to keep man at a distance. According to R. Huna, the contradiction between God’s words as written in the Torah and His words as spoken through the prophet reflects God’s disappointment with man and with the nation who became corrupt, and that is why he wept. These two cases are the only ones where the cause of the Amora’s weeping is the conduct of the individual or the nation towards God.35 In all of the others, the reasons for weeping stem from God’s conduct toward man. 35

In two places in Sanhedrin there are cases of Tannaim who wept upon reading verses that they understood to allude to man’s inability to cleanse himself of iniquity and to be righteous in the eyes of God. Sanhedrin 65b brings the following: ‫ (דברים י”ח) ודורש אל המתים — זה המרעיב עצמו והולך ולן‬:‫“דורש למתים — כדתניא‬ ‫ וכשהיה רבי עקיבא מגיע למקרא‬.‫בבית הקברות כדי שתשרה עליו רוח טומאה‬ ‫ ומה המרעיב עצמו כדי שתשרה עליו רוח טומאה — שורה עליו רוח‬,‫זה היה בוכה‬ ‫ אבל מה‬.‫ המרעיב עצמו כדי שתשרה עליו רוח טהרה — על אחת כמה וכמה‬,‫טומאה‬

161

We epi n g (B e c h i)

The hero in the next two cases is R. Eleazar, and both end with the sentence: ”‫על אחת כמה וכמה‬...‫“[ “ומה‬as to…, how much more so”]. In both cases, through a comparison of kal vehomer, he concludes how great is man’s fear of God’s rebuke and judgment. In the first case he deduces it from the word ‘‫[ ‘נבהלו‬affrighted] which described the terror that Joseph’s brothers felt of his reprimand (Gen. 45:3), and in the second, he concludes it from the word ’‫[ ‘הרגזתנ‬alarm, disquiet] in the words of the prophet Samuel “Why have you disquieted me to raise me?” (I Sam 28:15) which shows that even the righteous ‫אעשה שעונותינו גרמו לנו שנאמר (ישעיהו נ”ט) כי [אם] עונותיכם היו מבדלים‬ ”.‫ביניכם לבין אלהיכם‬

“He who enquireth of an ob — is that not the same as one that consulteth the dead? — As has been taught (Deut. 18): Or that consulteth the dead: this means one who starves himself and spends the night in a cemetery, so that an unclean spirit [of a demon] may rest upon him [to enable him to foretell the future]. And when R. Akiba reached this verse, he wept: If one who starves himself that an unclean spirit may rest upon him has his wish granted, he who fasts that the pure spirit [the Divine Presence] may rest upon him —how much more should his desire be fulfilled! But alas! Our sins have driven it away from us, as it is written (Isaiah 59), But your iniquities have separated between you and your God.”

And in Sanhedrin 81a: ‫ מאי דכתיב )יחזקאל י”ח( אל ההרים לא אכל — שלא אכל‬:‫“דרש רב אחא ברבי חנינא‬ .‫ ועיניו לא נשא אל גלולי בית ישראל — שלא הלך בקומה זקופה‬.‫בזכות אבותיו‬ ‫ ואל אשה נדה לא קירב‬.‫ואת אשת רעהו לא טמא — שלא ירד לאומנות חבירו‬ .‫ וכתיב )יחזקאל י”ח( צדיק הוא חיה יחיה‬,‫ שלא נהנה מקופה של צדקה‬/‫יקרב‬/ — ‫ ואמר מאן דעביד לכולהו‬,‫כשהיה רבן גמליאל מגיע למקרא הזה היה בוכה‬ ‫ אלא מעתה )ויקרא י”ח( אל‬:‫ אמר ליה רבי עקיבא‬.‫ בחדא מינייהו — לא‬,‫הוא דחיי‬ ,‫ באחת מכל אלה‬:‫ בחדא מינייהו לא? אלא‬,‫ בכולהו אין‬,‫תטמאו בכל אלה הכי נמי‬ ”.‫ באחת מכל אלה‬:‫הכי נמי‬

“R. Aha b. Hanina gave the following exposition: What is meant by, [But if a man be just and do that which is lawful and right, etc.] and hath not eaten upon the mountains? I.e., he did not eat through his forbears’ merit; neither hath he lifted up his eyes to the idols of the house of Israel, that he did not walk with haughty mien; neither hath defiled his neighbor’s wife, indicating that he did not [competitively] enter his neighbor’s profession; neither hath come near to a menstruous woman, meaning that he did not benefit from the charity fund. And it is written (Ezek. 18), He is just, he shall surely live. When R. Gamaliel read this verse he wept, saying, ‘Only he who does all these things shall live, but not merely one of them!’ Thereupon R. Akiba said to him, ‘If so, Defile not yourselves in all these things. Is the prohibition against all [combined] only, but not against one?’ [Surely not!] But it means, in one of these things; so here too, for doing one of these things [shall he live].”

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Samuel feared God’s judgment. Thus, in contrast to R. Huna who wept and grieved over man’s evil conduct towards God, R. Eleazar wept because of man’s fear of the powerful reprimand and the strict judgment that God adopts regarding man. In all four instances above we can see a single category of narratives that show the frustration felt by the sages at the damaged relationship between God and man which is caused both by man’s evildoing and because of God’s harsh judgment. After this group of narratives, there is a discussion in the gemara that seeks to establish R. Eleazar’s conclusion regarding ‘you have alarmed me’ in Samuel’s words and to prove that Samuel indeed feared God’s judgment. It seems that this conclusion requires proof because unlike its predecessors, it does not emerge directly from the p’shat of the verse. The second group consists of instances in all of which the weeping of the sages expresses perplexity in the face of man’s hopelessness because of God’s disproportional treatment of him. All of the instances, except for the last, end with the question: ’?‫“ ‘כולי האי ואולי‬All this, and [only] perhaps!” The last story, as I shall show below, which is different than the three that went before, also ends with a question, but this time it is not one of doubt but rather of certainty: Is there anyone who passes away before one’s time?

?‫מי איכא דאזיל בלא זמניה‬

”.‫ כט”( יתן בעפר פיהו אולי יש תקוה‬:‫רבי אמי כי מטי להאי קרא בכי )איכה ג‬ ”?‫ “כולי האי — ואולי‬:‫אמר‬ ‫ג’( “בקשו צדק בקשו ענוה אולי תסתרו‬: ‫רבי אמי כי מטי להאי קרא בכי )צפניה ב‬ ”?‫ “כולי האי — ואולי‬:‫” אמר‬.’‫ביום אף ה‬ ‫ טו( “שנאו רע ואהבו טוב והציגו בשער‬:’‫ כי מטי להאי קרא בכי )עמוס ה‬,‫רבי אסי‬ ”?‫” “כולי האי — ואולי‬.‫משפט אולי יחנן ה’ [אלהי] צבאות‬ ‫ “מי‬:‫” אמר‬.‫ “ויש נספה בלא משפט‬:(‫ כג‬:‫רב יוסף כי מטי להאי קרא בכי )משלי י”ג‬ ”?‫איכא דאזיל בלא זמניה‬

R. Ami, when he came to the [following] verse (Lam. 3:29), wept: “Let him put his mouth in the dust, perhaps there may be hope.” He said: “All this, and [only] perhaps!” R. Ami, when he came to the [following] verse (Zeph. 2:3), wept: “Seek righteousness, seek humility, perhaps ye shall be hid in the day of the Lord’s anger.” He said: “All this, and [only] perhaps!”

We epi n g (B e c h i)

R. Assi, when he came to the [following] verse (Amos 5: 15), wept: “Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish justice in the gate, perhaps the Lord, the God of hosts, will be gracious.”“All this, and [only] perhaps!” R. Joseph, when he came to the [following] verse, wept (Prov. 13: 23): “But there is that which is swept away without judgment.” He said: “Is there anyone who passes away before one’s time?”

In this group there is an intensification of the frustration when confronting God’s treatment of the world. The weeping of R. Ami and R. Assi goes further than that of R. Eleazar. The latter weeps to express human fear of Divine reprimand and injustice, while the former’s weeping expresses doubt as the existence of Divine justice. In the first case, R. Ami weeps upon reading the verse in Lamentations 3:29: “Let him put his mouth in the dust, perhaps there may be hope.” The entire chapter is the lamentation of a believer who is undergoing personal and national suffering and yearns for God’s salvation, and verse 29 expresses his doubts as to its actual existence. In the second case, there is an amplification of doubt as to Divine justice. For in contrast to Jeremiah who portrays God as bringing salvation and as a source of hope even if he doubts its benefit, Zephaniah presents God as wreaking evil and puts a question mark near the very possibility of man, who is striving to lead a moral life, being able to escape this evil: “Seek righteousness, seek humility, perhaps ye shall be hid in the day of the Lord’s anger” (Zeph. 2:3). In the third case, the verse that arouses R. Assi to weep makes a more radical demand of man than that demanded by Zephaniah who urges one to try to live a moral life. Amos is the prophet (5:15) who warns about maintaining a high moral standard: “Establish justice in the gate.” Beyond the prophet’s demand for an operative fulfillment of the moral imperative, he demands a spiritual transformation: “Hate the evil, and love the good.” Along with this supreme demand upon man is the uncertainty about God’s forgiveness: “Perhaps the Lord, the God of hosts, will be gracious,” and that even that, if it does happen, will only affect “the remnant of Joseph.” The distance between man’s deeds and God’s reaction becomes greater from one case of weeping to the next and climaxes in the fourth story where R. Joseph weeps. Unlike the verses which

163

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provoked the weeping by R. Ami and R. Assi where the key word is ‘perhaps,’ the verse that elicits weeping from their Babylonian contemporary R. Joseph is: “But there is that is swept away without judgment” (Prov. 13:23) which he understood to mean the certain failure of justice in God’s treatment of man. Nonetheless the word ’‫[ ‘ויש‬there is that] is used as a restrictive phrase regarding the phenomenon and clarifies that it is not the usual practice of God to destroy man without any judgment.36 However, at the same time, the verse proclaims the certain possibility of there being Divine 36

It is noteworthy that all of the verses in the chapter illustrate the doctrine of reward and punishment specifically by the use of contrasts:

‫ׁש ַמע‬-‫ֹלא‬ ָ ,‫מּוסר ָאב; וְ לֵ ץ‬ ַ ,‫א ֵ ּבן ָחכָ ם‬ .‫ּגְ ָע ָרה‬

1 A wise son is instructed of his father; but a scorner hears not rebuke.

‫ יֹאכַ ל טֹוב; וְ נֶ ֶפׁש‬,‫איׁש‬-‫י‬ ִ ‫ב ִ מ ְּפ ִרי ִפ‬ .‫ּבֹגְ ִדים ָח ָמס‬

2 A man shall eat good from the fruit of his mouth; but the desire of the faithless is violence.

,‫ ׁש ֵֹמר נַ ְפׁשֹו; ּפ ֵֹׂשק ְׂש ָפ ָתיו‬,‫ג  נ ֵֹצר ִּפיו‬ .‫לֹו‬-‫ְמ ִח ָּתה‬

3 He that guards his mouth keeps his life; but for him that opens wide his lips there shall be ruin.

‫ נַ ְפׁשֹו ָע ֵצל; וְ נֶ ֶפׁש‬,‫ד ִ מ ְת ַאּוָה וָ ַאיִן‬ .‫ָח ֻר ִצים ְּת ֻד ָּשׁן‬

4 The soul of the sluggard desires, and hath nothing; but the soul of the diligent shall be abundantly gratified.

,‫ י ְִׂשנָ א ַצ ִּדיק; וְ ָר ָׁשע‬,‫ׁש ֶקר‬-‫ר‬ ֶ ‫ה ְ ּד ַב‬ .‫י ְַב ִאיׁש וְ י ְַח ִּפיר‬

5 A righteous man hates lying; but a wicked man behaves vilely and shamefully.

,‫ּד ֶרְך; וְ ִר ְׁש ָעה‬-‫ם‬ ָ ‫ ִּתּצֹר ָּת‬,‫ו ְ צ ָד ָקה‬ .‫ְּת ַסּלֵ ף ַח ָּטאת‬

6 Righteousness guards him that is upright in the way; but wickedness overthrows the sinner.

,‫רֹוׁשׁש‬ ֵ ‫ וְ ֵאין ּכֹל; ִמ ְת‬,‫ז  יֵׁש ִמ ְת ַע ֵּשׁר‬ .‫וְ הֹון ָרב‬

7 There is that pretends himself rich, yet hath nothing; there is that pretends himself poor, yet hath great wealth.

-‫ ֹלא‬,‫איׁש ָע ְׁשרֹו; וְ ָרׁש‬-‫ׁש‬ ִ ‫ח  ּכ ֶֹפר נֶ ֶפ‬ .‫ָׁש ַמע ּגְ ָע ָרה‬

8 The ransom of a man’s life are his riches; but the poor hears no threatening.

‫צ ִּד ִיקים י ְִׂש ָמח; וְ נֵ ר ְר ָׁש ִעים‬-‫ אֹור‬ ַ ‫ט‬ .‫י ְִד ָעְך‬

9 The light of the righteous rejoices; but the lamp of the wicked shall be put out.

‫נֹוע ִצים‬-‫ת‬ ָ ‫ י ִֵּתן ַמ ָּצה; וְ ֶא‬,‫ּבזָ דֹון‬-‫ק‬ ְ ‫י ַ ר‬ .‫ָחכְ ָמה‬

10 By pride comes only contention; but with the well-advised is wisdom.

‫יָד‬-‫ ֵמ ֶה ֶבל י ְִמ ָעט; וְ ק ֵֹבץ ַעל‬,‫יא  הֹון‬ .‫י ְַר ֶּבה‬

11 Wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished; but he that gathers little by little shall increase.

We epi n g (B e c h i)

injustice. At the end of the story, and perhaps it is an addition made by the gemara, a question is incorporated that is attributed to R. Assi: “Is there anyone who passes away before one’s [allotted] time?” The answer is in the affirmative (probably given by the gemara). Afterwards the gemara brings an example of a woman whose life was cut off in an untimely way, and it tries to blunt the thrust of the words “But there is that is swept away without justice” by explaining that the years taken away from that woman—who was destitute in terms of Torah and commandments and died before her time—were given to another person who was a Torah scholar of laudable personal traits, and thus his life was extended.37 In any event, taking the Torah scholars and people of virtue out of the cycle of Divine injustice is an unsatisfactory explanation which does not make the sorrow over its existence excessive. This is especially since the explanation attributed to R. Joseph is that God in His wrath does not distinguish between the righteous and the evil, as written in his name in Baba Kama 60a: ‫לֵ ב; וְ ֵעץ‬-‫ ַמ ֲחלָ ה‬,‫ ּתֹוחלֶ ת ְמ ֻמ ָּשׁכָ ה‬ ֶ ‫יב‬ .‫ ַּת ֲאוָ ה ָב ָאה‬,‫ַחּיִים‬

12 Hope deferred makes the heart sick; but desire fulfilled is a tree of life.

‫ הּוא‬,‫ י ֵָח ֶבל לֹו; וִ ֵירא ִמ ְצוָ ה‬,‫יג ָ ּבז לְ ָד ָבר‬ .‫י ְֻׁשּלָ ם‬

13 Whoso despises the word shall suffer thereby; but he that fears the commandment shall be rewarded.

,‫ לָ סּור‬--‫ ְמקֹור ַחּיִים‬,‫ ּתֹורת ָחכָ ם‬ ַ ‫יד‬ .‫ִמּמ ְֹק ֵׁשי ָמוֶ ת‬

14 The teaching of the wise is a fountain of life, to depart from the snares of death.

‫חן; וְ ֶד ֶרְך ּבֹגְ ִדים‬-‫ן‬ ֵ ‫ י ִֶּת‬,‫טֹוב‬-‫טו ֵ ׂשכֶ ל‬ .‫ֵא ָיתן‬

15 Good understanding gives grace; but the way of the faithless is harsh.

,‫ י ֲַע ֶׂשה ְב ָד ַעת; ּוכְ ִסיל‬,‫ערּום‬-‫ל‬ ָ ָ‫טז  ּכ‬ .‫י ְִפרֹׂש ִאּוֶלֶ ת‬

16 Every prudent man deals with forethought; but a fool unfolds folly.

37

The Maharsha ad. loc. SV “Ie ika tzorba derabanan” (If there is a rabbinical student) used this explanation to connect the first part of verse with the last part and wrote: it seems that we can explain in this way the first part of the verse “rav ochel nir roshim” according to what is said here, that if there is a rabbinical student or Torah sage, which is what is meant by “rav,” one of the rabbis, ochel nir, he will eat the produce of the furrow. This rabbinical student is able to eat in this world the furrow or the portion of the poor (meaning those who are poor in the observance of the commandments), because one of those poor in commandments dies without justice, i.e., because they die before their time.

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Chapter Three ’?‫ “מאי דכתיב (שמות יב) ‘ואתם לא תצאו איש מפתח ביתו עד בקר‬,‫תאני רב יוסף‬ ‫ אלא‬,‫ ולא עוד‬.‫כיון שניתנה רשות למשחית אינו מבחין בין צדיקים לרשעים‬ ‫ שנאמר (יחזקאל כא) ‘והכרתי ממך צדיק‬,‫שמתחיל מן הצדיקים תחילה‬ ”!‫ “כולי האי נמי לאין דומין‬:‫” בכי רב יוסף‬.’‫ורשע‬ ‫ דכתיב (ישעיה נז) ‘כי מפני הרעה נאסף‬.‫ “טיבותא היא לגבייהו‬:‫אמר ליה אביי‬ ”.’‫הצדיק‬

R. Joseph learnt: “What is the meaning of the verse (Ex. 12), ‘And none of you shall go out at the door of his house until the morning?’ Once permission has been granted to the Destroyer, he does not distinguish between righteous and wicked. Moreover, he even begins with the righteous at the very outset, as it says (Ezek. 21): ‘And I will cut off from thee the righteous and the wicked’.” R. Joseph wept at this, saying: “So much are they compared to nothing!” But Abaye [consoling him,] said: “This is for their advantage, as it is written (Isaiah 57), ‘That the righteous is taken away from the evil to come’.”

The following five instances deal with R. Johanan weeping upon reading verses that present different perspectives on God’s way of serving judgment upon man. All except the second—which ends with a question about a God who does not believe in man— end with the question: “Is there any remedy for him?,” denoting a doubt as to man’s ability to endure Divine judgment. These instances show sorrow and frustration that may choke the heart of the man of faith as he confronts the cruelty of Divine judgment, and thus heighten the central motif: the problematic relationship between man and the Creator. In the first two instances of weeping in the collection, weeping represented man’s frustration at his inability to adhere to the good and come close to God; in the next two, weeping expressed frustration upon confronting the severity of God’s reprimand. In three instances brought in the second group, weeping expressed frustration over the existence of doubt regarding God’s just treatment of the world, and in the fourth case, the doubt became a certainty, and the weeping expressed frustration with the certainty of injustice in Divine judgment. This acknowledgement of injustice is spelled out in minute detail and illustrated by the last five cases. In the first, R. Johanan is weeping when he reaches the verse in Job 2:3: “Thou didst incite Me against him, to destroy him without cause,” since he concludes from God’s admission that the Satan had incited Him against Job that there is a flaw in the absolute

We epi n g (B e c h i)

nature of His justice and judgments. The weeping of R. Johanan and his question—whether there is any remedy for man in the face of this flaw—expresses his frustration at man’s impotence when standing to Divine judgment. A graver failing in the Divine system of justice stems from God’s inability to believe in man even if he is holy, since he is always capable of changing his ways.38 That is why R. Johanan wept when he came upon the verse in Job 16:15: “Behold, He putteth no trust in His holy ones” and asked in anguish: “If He does not put His trust in His holy ones, in whom will He put his trust?” One can see the inverse parallel between the two cases: in the first, R. Johanan’s frustration was the result of the flawed nature of God and in the second, of the flawed nature of man. In any case both flaws are the reason that God’s judgment of man cannot be carried out with absolute justice.39 In the following two instances, R. Johanan wept when he came upon verses that teach of God’s manner of judging. In the first one, R. Johanan learned from the verse in Malachi 3:2 that God is swift in judgment,40 (and the gemara here connects the words of R. Johanan b. Zakkai “Woe unto us that Scripture weighs against us light like grave offences” to show that he meant to say that swiftness in judgment means over-severity) and in the second, he learned from the verse in Eccl. 12:14 that God judges errors as willful offences.41 38

This insight is explained by the parable of figs which is placed in the gemara after this narrative. 39 The inverse parallel between the stories is similar, although in reversed order, to the order of the stories about the weeping of R. Huna, which deals with man’s wickedness, and the two stories about R. Eleazar weeping over the severity of Divine reprimand and judgment which is hard for man to withstand. 40 “And I will come near to you to judgment and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages” and according to the RIF ad. loc.: The law applied to one who oppresses the hireling is the same law as for the one who commits adultery and sorcery, which are graver, which is death. Thus he judges light and willful offences the same. 41 “For God shall bring every work into the judgment concerning every hidden thing.” The Maharsha ad; loc. explains: ‘every hidden thing’ refers to unintentional sin, such as “and if it be hidden from the eyes of the

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The recognition that God’s judgment is unyielding and uncompromising raises the question of what chance does man have to escape His wrath, or as R. Johanan said “A slave whose Master brings him near to judge him, and hastens to testify against him, is there any remedy for him?”42 The instance that concludes the entire cycle of narratives presents R. Johanan weeping upon reading the verses in Deut. 31:21: “Then it shall come to pass, when many evils and troubles are come upon them, that this song shall testify before them as congregation.” From the words ‘every hidden thing’ the gemara deduces that God judges every sin committed unintentionally even if trifling and even if the doer intended well and did not understand that his deed had a sinful aspect. 42 It was told of R. Akiva, too, that he wept when he came to the verses that teach that someone who sinned unintentionally must seek forgiveness and do penance, but he wept because he deduced from the verses the severity of judgment against one who sins intentionally:

:‫ע”ב‬,‫קידושין פא‬ ‫“דתניא (במדבר ל) אישה הפרם וה’ יסלח לה — מה הכתוב מדבר? באשה שנדרה בנזיר‬ ‫ והיתה שותה יין ומטמאה‬,‫ והיא לא ידעה שהפר לה בעלה‬,‫ושמע בעלה והפר לה‬ ‫ ומה מי שנתכוין‬:‫ אמר‬,‫ רבי עקיבא כי הוה מטי להאי פסוקא הוה בכי‬.‫למתים‬ ‫ מי‬,‫ צריכה כפרה וסליחה‬:‫ אמרה תורה‬,‫לאכול בשר חזיר ועלה בידו בשר טלה‬ ‫שנתכוין לאכול בשר חזיר ועלה בידו בשר חזיר — על אחת כמה וכמה! כיוצא‬ ‫ כשהיה רבי עקיבא מגיע‬,‫ (ויקרא ה) ולא ידע ואשם ונשא עונו‬:‫בדבר אתה אומר‬ :‫ אמרה תורה‬,‫ ומה מי שנתכוין לאכול שומן ועלה בידו חלב‬,‫לפסוק זה היה בוכה‬ ‫ מי שנתכוין לאכול חלב ועלה בידו חלב — על אחת‬,‫ולא ידע ואשם ונשא עונו‬ ‫ ולא ידע ואשם ונשא עונו — על דבר זה ידוו כל‬:‫כמה וכמה! איסי בן יהודה אומר‬ ”.‫הדווים‬

Kiddushin 81b: “Even as it was taught: Her husband hath made her void, and the Lord shall forgive her: of whom does the Writ speak? Of a woman who made a nazirite vow and her husband heard of it and annulled it; but though she was unaware that her husband had annulled it, she drank wine and defiled herself through the dead. When R. Akiba came to this verse, he wept. If of him who intended to eat swine’s flesh but chanced upon sheep’s flesh, yet the Torah decreed that he requires atonement; how much more so of him who intended to eat swine’s flesh and actually ate swine’s flesh! Similarly, you read: Though he knew it not, yet he is guilty, and shall bear his iniquity. When R. Akiba came to this verse, he wept. If of him who intended to eat shuman [permitted fat] but chanced upon heleb [forbidden fat], yet the Torah said: ‘though he knew it not, yet he is guilty, and shall bear his iniquity’: how much more so of him who intended to eat heleb and actually ate heleb! Issi b. Judah said: ‘Though he knew it not, yet he is guilty, and shall bear his iniquity’ — for this thing all grief-stricken must grieve.”

We epi n g (B e c h i)

a witness; for it shall not be forgotten out of the mouths of their seed; for I know their inclination how they do even now, before I have brought them into the land which I swore.” According to the literal meaning of the verse, God will make a reckoning with the people of Israel for their deeds in the desert after they enter the Land of Israel, to which the song mentioned in the chapter will testify. In Hebrew, the adjective ’‫[ ‘רבות‬many] is placed between the two nouns ’‫‘רעות רבות וצרות‬, creating a linguistic difficulty, because it is not clear if the adjective refers only to evil or also to troubles, nor is the distinction between these two nouns clear. R. Johanan found it sufficient to understand that God would bring many troubles upon Israel, but the gemara, because of the conjuctive vav before the word ‘troubles,’ understood this as an additional adjective and explained that the evils would be both many and close, i.e. coming close one upon the other, and antagonistic, (as in the usage of ’‫ ‘צרה‬as a rival wife in a polygamous marriage) so that the remedying of one evil causes the creation of another. In any case, the insight R. Johanan derived from this verse is the most pessimistic of all the insights derived from the verses. Not only is God’s judgment liable to be biased and disproportional but the punishment leaves no room for hope, for if God hides His face and sends man many antagonistic evils, there is no remedy. The conclusion of the cycle of narratives with this pessimistic case completes the hierarchical structure of the sense of frustration that is revealed in the weeping of the sages.43 In the first stage two cases were brought which presented man’s inability to draw near to God, and in the second stage, two cases that showed the severity of His reprimand. In the third stage four cases were brought, three of which demonstrated uncertainty concerning the rewarding of the righteous, and the fourth of which demonstrated certainty that the righteous were not rewarded. In the fourth stage five cases were brought, of which four presented the flaws characteristic of 43

I have found a different attempt to explain the order of the narratives in a short article by Mordechai Tropper “Why did the sages weep?,” Shma’atin pp. 39-43 (Hebrew). However, his attempt to explain the arrangement of stories according to their conceptual content is not convincing, and he himself cannot uphold the order set out in the gemara.

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God as a judge and consequently, man’s inability—whether he be saint or sinner, or someone who committed a minor offence, even unintentionally—to hope for a fair judgment. The fifth instance concluded the collection by bringing to a climax the sense of injustice and pessimism by presenting God as providing man with many evils without any connection to his deeds44 and leaving man no room for any hope of being cured of them. Along with narratives about sages who wept because of great sorrow related to the national or theological sphere, there are several narratives in the Talmud telling of sages who wept because of personal distress. Two long and complex stories of distress are brought in Baba Mezi’a 83b-84a. One refers to the weeping of the Tanna R. Eleazar b. R. Simeon who wept because he had turned over a person to the Roman authorities, and the second, to the weeping of the Amora R. Johanan over the death of his disciple Resh Lakish. I will not analyze these narratives here, because detailed discussions of these narratives are found in Chapter One and Chapter Five. The Talmud brings several short narratives that deal with sages whose weeping expressed personal sorrow. One such story is bought in Hullin 107b and tells of the Babylonian Amora of the first generation, Samuel: ‫ “אמאי קא‬:‫ דאבוה דשמואל אשכחיה לשמואל דקא בכי אמר ליה‬.‫תא שמע‬ ”?‫בכית‬ ”.‫“דמחיין רבאי‬ 44

The RIF asks why it was not written that R. Johanan wept when he came to the verse that preceded our verse, which states: ‫ּומ ָצ ֻאהּו ָרעֹות ַרּבֹות‬ ְ ‫“ וְ ָח ָרה ַא ִּפי בֹו ַבּיֹום ַההּוא וַ ֲעזַ ְב ִּתים וְ ִה ְס ַּת ְר ִּתי ָפנַ י ֵמ ֶהם וְ ָהיָה לֶ ֱאכֹל‬ ”‫ֹלהי ְּב ִק ְר ִּבי ְמ ָצאּונִ י ָה ָרעֹות ָה ֵאּלֶ ה‬ ַ ‫וְ ָצרֹות וְ ָא ַמר ַּבּיֹום ַההּוא ֲהֹלא ַעל ּכִ י ֵאין ֱא‬ “Then My anger shall be kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake them, and I will hide My face from them, and they shall be devoured, and many evils and troubles shall come upon them; so that they will say in that day: Are not these evils come upon us because our God is not among us?”

He answers that this verse speaks of many antagonistic evils that came because the nation sinned and God hid His face from them, while verse 21 states that the many evils are not the result of sin and God’s hiding His face from mankind, hence R. Johanan understood that troubles beset a person arbitrarily without any connection to his behavior.

We epi n g (B e c h i) ”?‫“אמאי‬ ”.‫“דאמר לי קא ספית לבראי ולא משית ידיה‬ ”?‫“ואמאי לא משית‬ ”!‫ “הוא אכיל ואנא משינא‬:‫א”ל‬ ”.‫ “לא מיסתייה דלא גמיר מימחא נמי מחי‬:‫א”ל‬

Come and hear [from the following incident]. The father of Samuel once found Samuel crying and asked him, “Why are you crying?” “Because my teacher beat me.” “But why?” “Because he said to me,You were feeding my son and you did not wash hands before doing so.” “And why did you not wash?” [He replied:] “It was he that was eating, so why should I wash?” Said [the father of Samuel:] “It is not enough that he [your teacher] is ignorant [of the law], but he must also beat you!”

The focal point of this story is the insult — in Samuel’s opinion, unjustified — meted out to Samuel through a beating by his teacher, and his father’s reaction to it. The story opens with a short exposition comprising a moving portrait of a father and son. In the body of the story are three questions and three answers. The first questions reveal two close relationships, between a father and son and between the son and his teacher.45 Samuel’s answer to the father’s question, “Why?” reveals a family-like connection between Samuel and his teacher—Samuel seems to be feeding his teacher’s small son. However, this intimacy also has an unpleasant side—the teacher allows himself to beat Samuel for feeding his young son without first washing his hands.46 At this stage the reasons for the teacher’s anger are not clear: is it because Samuel ignored the halacha 45

The comparison between the father-son and pupil-teacher relationship appears in several places in the Talmudic literature. See e.g. Mishnah Baba Mezi’a 5:1; BT Kiddushin 32a; BT Kiddushin 33b. 46 The word ’‫ ‘ידיה‬in the sentence ‘‫’קא ספית לבראי ולא משית ידיה‬presents a problem: it is not reasonable that the suffix indicating third person is directed at the small son, and if the teacher had been addressing Samuel, he would have said ’‫)’ידיך‬your hands) and that in fact is the textual version in the Hamburg ms., Munich and Vatican ms. 121, and Vatican ms. 122. The word is written ‫ ידי‬without the final ’‫ ‘ה‬signifying the third person and that is the version in Soncino as well.

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or because he ignored the rules of hygiene? The answer becomes clear from the reply to the father’s third question: “And why did you not wash?” which reveals that Samuel acted in accordance with halacha as he understood it, hence, the teacher beat him because he thought Samuel had not acted halachically. The story ends with sharp criticism of the teacher by the father. It is likely that the abrasive criticism “It is not enough that he is ignorant, but he must also beat you?” was uttered by Samuel’s father not only concerning the halachic side of the issue but out of personal anger at the hurt inflicted upon his son, as well as his wish to mollify his son and calm him. In this context one must note the similar sound in Hebrew of the last words in the first and last sentences: ’‫( ‘בכי’ — ‘מחי‬weepingbeating). It may be that the use of a similar sound serves the meaning by juxtaposing the insult felt by Samuel opposite the insult that Samuel’s father unleashed at the offending teacher. Another story is brought in Ta’anit 25a and tells of the thirdgeneration Eretz Israel Amora (who went there from Babylon), R. Eleazar b. Pedat. ‫ עבד מלתא ולא הוה ליה מידי‬.‫רבי אלעזר בן פדת דחיקא ליה מילתא טובא‬ ‫ אזול רבנן‬.‫ חלש לביה ונים‬,‫ שקל ברא דתומא ושדייה בפומיה‬.‫למטעם‬ .‫ ונפק צוציתא דנורא מאפותיה‬,‫ חזיוהו דקא בכי וחייך‬,‫לשיולי ביה‬ ’?‫ ‘מאי טעמא קבכית וחייכת‬:‫כי אתער אמרו ליה‬ ‫ ואמרי ליה ‘עד מתי אצטער בהאי‬,‫ ‘דהוה יתיב עמי הקדוש ברוך הוא‬:‫אמר להו‬ ’?‫עלמא‬ ‫ ניחא לך דאפכיה לעלמא מרישא? אפשר דמתילדת בשעתא‬,‫ ‘אלעזר בני‬:‫ואמר לי‬ ’.‫דמזוני‬ ’?‫ ‘דחיי טפי או דחיינא‬:‫ ואפשר?’ אמרי ליה‬,‫ ‘כולי האי‬:‫אמרי לקמיה‬ ’.‫ ‘דחיית‬:‫אמר לי‬ ’.‫ לא בעינא‬,‫ ‘אם כן‬:‫אמרי לקמיה‬ ‫ ‘בהאי אגרא דאמרת לא בעינא — יהיבנא לך לעלמא דאתי תליסרי‬:‫אמר לי‬ ’.‫ דמענגת בהו‬,‫ כפרת ודיגלת‬,‫נהרוותא דמשחא אפרסמון דכיין‬ ’?‫ ותו לא‬,‫ ‘האי‬:‫אמרי לקמיה‬ ’?‫ ‘ולחברך מאי יהיבנא‬:‫אמר לי‬ ’?‫ ‘ואנא מגברא דלית ליה בעינא‬:‫אמרי ליה‬ ’!‫ גירי‬,‫ גירי בך‬,‫ ‘אלעזר ברי‬:‫ ואמר לי‬,‫מחיין באסקוטלא אפותאי‬

R. Eleazar b. Pedat found himself in very great want. Once after being bled he had nothing to eat. He took the skin of garlic and put it into his mouth; he

We epi n g (B e c h i)

became faint and he fell asleep. The Rabbis coming to see him noticed that he was crying and laughing, and that a ray of light was radiating from his forehead. When he awoke they asked him: “Why did you cry and laugh?” He replied: “Because the Holy One, Blessed be He, was sitting by my side and I asked Him, ‘How long will I suffer in this world?’“ “And He replied ‘Eleazar, my son, would you rather that I should turn back the world to its very beginnings? Perhaps you might then be born at a happier hour?’ “I replied: ‘All this, and then only perhaps?’ I then asked Him: ‘Which is the greater life, the one that I had already lived, or the one I am still to live?’ “He replied: ‘The one that you have already lived.’ “I then said to Him: ‘If so, I do not want it.’ “He replied: ‘As a reward for refusing it I will grant you in the next world thirteen rivers of balsam oil as clear as the Euphrates and the Tigris, which you will be able to enjoy.’ “I asked: ‘And nothing more? “He replied: ‘And what shall I then give to your fellow men?’ “I said: ‘Do I then ask the share of one who has nothing?’ “He thereupon snapped at my forehead and exclaimed: ‘Eleazar, my son, I have shot you with my arrows’.”

This narrative is constructed as a story within a story. The first story, which opens with biographical information about R. Eleazar, ends with a realistic yet puzzling portrait full of contrasts. The scene is deciphered only at the end of the second obscure narrative which is based on a dialogue that takes place in R. Eleazar’s dream. For our purposes, the first story and the last line of the second story are connected. According to the plot, R. Eleazar fainted because after a bloodletting, he had only a bit of garlic to eat, due to his poverty. The Rabbis who came to ask him halachic questions saw him weeping and smiling and a spark of fire dart out of his nose, or his forehead. The narrative is built of a series of contrasted parallels which create a type of metric cadence: .‫רבי אלעזר בן פדת דחיקא ליה מילתא טובא‬

R. Eleazar b. Pedat found himself in very great want

As against: ‫עבד מלתא ולא הוה ליה מידי למטעם‬

Once after being bled he had nothing to eat

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In contrast to the intensifier ’‫ ‘טובא‬which describes his poverty, the modifier adjective ’‫ ‘מידי‬describes his meal. he became faint and fell asleep

‫חלש ליביה ונים‬

versus ‫עיילו רבנן לשיולי‬

The Rabbis came to see him and ask him questions

This contrasts his motionless and speechless condition with their movement and speech. The Rabbis saw before them two contrasting modes of behavior: ‫דבכי וחייך‬

He wept and he smiled

Moreover, in contrast to his deed, ‫אשכח ברא דתומא שדא לפומיה‬

when he put the skin of garlic into his mouth

is his appearance fire came out of his nose

‫ונפיק צוציתא דנורא מאפותיה‬

The key part of this story is the paradoxical appearance presented by R. Eleazar, that while unconscious, his face showed two conflicting expressions simultaneously, weeping and smiling, and that a spark of fire darted out of his nose or forehead. The line that connects this story to the second one is the question posed by the Sages: ”?‫“ “מאי טעמא קבכית וחייכת‬Why did you cry and laugh?” In the second story, there is a mystifying dialogue in five stages between R. Eleazar and God, who “was sitting with him,” also styled in the language of contrasts. In response to his question “How long will I suffer in this world?” God offers to turn back the world in order to undo his personal history. R. Eleazar’s next question shows the contrast between ’‫ ‘דחיי‬and ’‫( ‘דחינא‬his past life and his life to come) and God’s promise in response is also stylized as a contrast between R. Eleazar’s life in this world and what is awaiting him in the world to come. God’s last question: “And what shall I give your fellow men”—whether to grant him additional pleasures in addition to thirteen rivers of balsam oil—presents

We epi n g (B e c h i)

a contrast between R. Eleazar and “his fellowman” who also has an entitlement to the world to come. In his reply, R. Eleazar poses another contrast, in placing himself in opposition to the one who is not his fellowman, and hence not entitled to the world to come. In addition to the stylistic contrasts, there is a contradiction in the content of both parts of the narrative: in the first part, the discourse focuses on this world, when R. Eleazar received the offer to turn it back in time for him, and, upon learning that his time in this world was short, rejected the offer completely. In the second part the discourse deals with the world to come, whose pleasures were offered to R. Eleazar, who accepted the offer and even asked for more. The story ends with God acting and speaking in a way that shows the victory of R. Eleazar. God gave R. Eleazar ’‫‘אסקוטלא‬ [a light punch on his nose] and said, “Eleazar my son, I have shot you with my arrows.” Rashi ad loc. interpreted this as words of affection and jest: “I have shot you with my arrows” is meant in jest, “I will tap you with a finger.” According to this, diametrically opposed are the grimaces that R. Eleazar made in his state of unconsciousness, which resulted from God’s show of affection toward him. The consequence of the punch was the spark of fire that flew out of his nose, and the consequence of the promise was the smile of contentment. The weeping joined the fiery spark and smile as an expression of the great emotion and joy that gripped R. Eleazar upon realizing God’s display of affection and His promises.47 47

Another story that presents R. Eleazar as weeping due to a reason connected with the end of life in this world is brought in Berachot 5b. The story, which begins with the weeping of R. Eleazar and ends with the shared weeping of R. Eleazar and R. Johanan, connects the weeping at the beginning— by means of R. Johanan’s questions about the personal unhappiness of R. Eleazar—with the end through R. Eleazar’s words over his anguish at the fate of another, R. Johanan, whose beauty at the end of his life will turn to dust. Perhaps R. Eleazar meant to goad R. Johanan because he interpreted the latter’s questions as being the condescension of one whose life has been favored toward one whose life has been difficult, and perhaps he meant to express fundamental sorrow at the futility of human life. It is possible that the end of the story which shows the two sages weeping together teaches that the narrator preferred the second possibility, although it is possible that R. Johanan’s weeping was caused by his grief at his own fate.

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At the end of the discussion of the two stories describing sages who wept because of reasons related to themselves, it is noteworthy that both have similar components of content—a blow followed by weeping—but the stories are in fact opposites. The first story begins by showing the cause for the weeping: the blow. It is given by a man and represents violence and injustice, and thus the weeping is an expression of affront. The second story ends by showing the cause of the weeping—the punch, which was given by God and represents a display of affection; hence, the weeping it elicits expresses an emotional flood of joy and happiness. Another story about a sage weeping for himself is brought in Baba Batra 151a, and is totally different from the ones brought previously: .‫אחתיה דרב טובי בר רב מתנה כתבתינהו לנכסה לרב טובי בר רב מתנה בצפרא‬ ‫”השתא אמרי מר צורבא‬:‫ אמר לה‬,‫לפניא אתא רב אחדבוי בר רב מתנה בכה לה‬ ‫מרבנן ומר לאו צורבא מרבנן!” כתבתינהו ניהליה‬ ‫ חוזר‬,‫”הכי אמר שמואל כל שאילו עמד חוזר‬:‫אתא לקמיה דרב נחמן אמר ליה‬ ”.‫במתנתו‬

The sister of R. Tobi b. R. Mattenah gave her possessions, in writing, to R. Tobi b. R. Mattenah in the morning. In the evening, Ahadboi son of R. Mattenah came [and] wept before her, saying: “Now [people will] say [that] one is a scholar and the other is no scholar” [So] she gave them in writing to him. ‫ גלייה לדרעיה‬,‫ חזא דהוה קא גני בבית אפל‬.‫ על לגביה רבי יוחנן‬,‫“רבי אלעזר חלש‬ ‫ אמאי קא בכית? אי משום‬:‫ אמר ליה‬.‫ חזייה דהוה קא בכי רבי אלעזר‬.‫ונפל נהורא‬ !‫ אחד המרבה ואחד הממעיט ובלבד שיכוין לבו לשמים‬:‫תורה דלא אפשת — שנינו‬ ‫ואי משום מזוני — לא כל אדם זוכה לשתי שלחנות! ואי משום בני — דין גרמא‬ ‫ על דא‬:‫ אמר ליה‬.‫ להאי שופרא דבלי בעפרא קא בכינא‬:‫ אמר ליה‬.‫דעשיראה ביר‬ ”...‫ ובכו תרוייהו‬,‫ודאי קא בכית‬ “R. Eleazar fell ill and R. Johanan went in to visit him. He noticed that he was lying in a dark room, and he bared his arm and light radiated from it. Thereupon he noticed that R. Eleazar was weeping, and he said to him: Why do you weep? Is it because you did not study enough Torah? Surely we learnt: The one who sacrifices much and the one who sacrifices little have the same merit, provided that the heart is directed to heaven. Is it perhaps lack of sustenance? Not everybody has the privilege to enjoy two tables. Is it perhaps because of [the lack of] children? This is the bone of my tenth son! — He replied to him: I am weeping on account of this beauty that is going to rot in the earth. He said to him: On that account you surely have a reason to weep; and they both wept.”

We epi n g (B e c h i)

He [subsequently] appeared before R. Nahman, [who] said unto him: “Thus said Samuel, Wherever a person may retract if he recovers, he may [also] withdraw his gift.”

This story is brought in the gemara in the course of the discussion of a gift made on a person’s deathbed in order to teach the halacha attributed in the end to Samuel, whereby a person who had been on his deathbed and subsequently recovered can retract his gift, as did the sister of R. Ahadboi. For our purposes, R. Ahadboi explains his weeping as the potential insult that will be offered to him by the public’s possible interpretation of his sister’s deed — handing over her assets to his brother. However, this explanation which the narrator puts in his mouth, perhaps to prevent his being shunned by the company of sages, is not convincing and it seems more likely that he wept partly because of the insult and mainly because of his disappointment at the material loss he suffered at his sister’s hand. Apart from stories about sages weeping, there are also several stories in the Talmud whose heroes are simple people or women. In Sanhedrin 31a, there is a story about a youth who was convicted after he couldn’t supply evidence or testimony that would overturn the conviction: .‫ההוא ינוקא דתבעוהו לדינא קמיה דרב נחמן‬ ”?‫ “אית לך סהדי‬:‫אמר ליה‬ ”.‫ “לא‬:‫אמר ליה‬ ”?‫“אית לך ראיה‬ ”.‫ “לא‬:‫אמר ליה‬ .‫חייביה רב נחמן‬ ”.‫ “אנן ידעינן במילי דאבוך‬:‫ אמרו ליה‬,‫ שמעוהו הנך אינשי‬.‫הוה קא בכי ואזיל‬ ”.‫ דינוקא במילי דאבוה לא ידע‬,‫ “בהא — אפילו רבנן מודו‬:‫אמר רב נחמן‬

A lad was once summoned for a [civil] suit before R. Nahman. The latter asked him: “Have you any witnesses?” He answered: “No.” “Have you any [documentary] proof?”’ “No,” was the reply. Consequently, R. Nahman ruled him to be liable. As he went along weeping, some people heard him and said to him: “We know your father’s affairs.” Said R. Nahman: “In such a case even the Rabbis agree that the youth is not expected to know his father’s affairs.”

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This story connects with the dispute between the Rabbis and R. Simeon b. Gamaliel in Mishnah Sanhedrin 3:5: ‫כל זמן שמביא ראיה סותר את הדין אמרו לו ‘כל ראיות שיש לך הבא מכאן עד‬ ‫ אמר‬,‫ לאחר שלשים יום אינו סותר‬.‫’ מצא בתוך שלשים יום סותר‬,‫שלשים יום‬ ‫רבן שמעון בן גמליאל “מה יעשה זה שלא מצא בתוך שלשים ומצא לאחר‬ ”?‫שלשים‬ ”‫אמרו לו “הבא עדים” ואמר “אין לי עדים” אמרו “הבא ראיה” ואמר “אין לי ראיה‬ ‫ אמר רבן שמעון בן‬.‫ולאחר זמן הביא ראיה ומצא עדים הרי זה אינו כלום‬ ‫גמליאל “מה יעשה זה שלא היה יודע שיש לו עדים ומצא עדים לא היה יודע‬ ”?‫שיש לו ראיה ומצא ראיה‬ ‫” ואמר “אין לי ראיה” ראה‬,‫ “הבא ראיה‬,”‫” אמר “אין לי עדים‬,‫אמרו לו “הבא עדים‬ ‫ ואמר קרבו פלוני ופלוני והעידוני או שהוציא ראיה מתוך‬.‫שמתחייב בדין‬ ‫אפונדתו הרי זה אינו כלום‬

Whenever he brings proof, it can upset the verdict. But if they have told him: “All the proofs which you may have you must produce within thirty days,” if he does so within thirty days, it upsets [the decision]. After thirty days, it does not. But Rabban Simeon b. Gamaliel said: “What is he to do who did not find [favorable evidence] within the thirty days, but only thereafter?” If they have said to him, “Bring witnesses,” and he answered, “I have none,” or, “Bring proof,” and he replied, “I have none,” yet subsequently he produced proof, or found witnesses, it is of no value. Said Rabban Simeon b. Gamaliel: “What is he to do who did not know that witnesses were available, but found them afterwards; or that there was proof, yet discovered it later?” If on seeing that he was about to be condemned he said: “Admit so and so to testify in my favor,” or produced [documentary] proof from his belt, it is valueless.

According to the words of R. Simeon b. Gamaliel in the first part of the Mishnah (underlined above) if the person stated in court that he had neither witnesses nor proof and afterwards when he saw that he was about to be convicted, he produced witnesses or documents in evidence, he is suspected by the court of bringing perjurers or forged documents. The story of the youth fits the circumstances in the first part of the Mishnah, for at the beginning he said he had no witnesses or documentary proof and afterwards witnesses were produced. Thus R. Nahman did not overturn the verdict despite the fact that witnesses were found. He explained that even the sages who had said in the beginning “you must produce proof within thirty days” would admit that in this case, the youth-

We epi n g (B e c h i)

defendant did not know about any witnesses or proof and when suddenly, close upon his conviction, such were produced, he is not considered trustworthy. Weeping plays a central role in this narrative, which publicly criticizes what is said in the Mishnah. The last two sentences of this narrative which focus on the weeping make it clear that there is no reason to suspect the youth’s witnesses. The first sentence “as he went along weeping” shows that the youth reacted to the verdict finding him liable with an outburst of emotion and not with the rational thinking needed if one is planning a deception. The second sentence “some people heard him and said to him, ‘We know your father’s affairs’“ shows that his weeping stirred people who were familiar with his father’s affairs to come to testify on their own initiative. Despite all this, R. Nahman remained loyal to the halachic formalism and did not overturn the youth’s verdict since he opined that the youth was not familiar with his father’s affairs and therefore could not have known of the existence of the witnesses. Another story is brought in Yebamot 78b and its main protagonist is a man who was proclaimed a mamzer. The story is brought in the context of an interpretation given by the Amora R. Zeira in the name of R. Judah to the words of the Tanna R. Eliezer concerning the endurance of mamzerim: “Would that I had the third generation and I would declare them pure.” In his interpretation, R. Zeira coined the phrase ’‫ ‘דידיע חי‬which means a promise of continuity made specifically to the mamzer who status is known to all, and therefore halachically-accepted people do not intermarry with him. The story is connected to this expression and to the distinction made by R. Zeira between mamzerim whose status is known, those whose status is not known, and those who are partly known.48 48

His words in their entirety: ‫עד‬-‫ דידיע ולא ידיע‬,‫ דלא ידיע לא חיי‬,‫ דידיע חיי‬:‫“לדידי מפרשא לי מיניה דרב יהודה‬ ”.‫תלתא דרי חיי טפי לא חיי‬ “It was explained to me by Rab Judah that those who are known survive; those who are not known do not survive; and those who are partly known and partly unknown survive for three generations but no longer.”

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180

Chapter Three .‫ אכריז עליה דממזרא‬,‫ההוא דהוי בשבבותיה דר’ אמי‬ ”.‫ “חיים נתתי לך‬:‫ אמר ליה‬.‫הוה בכי ואזיל‬

A certain man once lived in the neighborhood of R. Ami, and the latter made a public announcement that he was a bastard. As the other was bewailing the action, [the Master] said to him: “I have given you life.”

This short story is constructed as a series of contradictions, both in the act and the speech of R. Ami. On the one hand, R. Ami damaged the man’s ethnic affiliation by declaring that he was a mamzer, while on the other, by making this very declaration, he created a different affiliation for him and this guaranteed his continuity. For our purpose: weeping also serves contradictory roles in this story. On one hand it expresses the man’s sorrow, since as a result of the declaration, the fact of his mamzer status became public knowledge. On the other hand, he himself contributed to the further publication of his birth status by bewailing it, an action that is both prolonged and public, which aroused people to ask why he was weeping and thus to become aware of his being a mamzer.

We epi n g (B e c h i)

Summary and conclusions In quite a few Talmudic narratives, weeping is portrayed as a physical expression of the feeling of sorrow. Narratives whose main protagonists were Tannaim may be distinguished from narratives whose main protagonists were Amoraim or their contemporaries. All of the Tannaim who wept were key figures in Jewish society and were at the center of some deological turmoil that developed against a background of national or ideological upheavals. R. Johanan b. Zakkai, of whom it was told that he wept upon seeing a young woman collecting grain from among the dung of the Arabs’ donkeys,”49 lived through the destruction of Jerusalem and was active in rebuilding the nation at Yavneh. R. Akiva of whom it was told that he wept at the sight of the wife of “Tyranus Rufus the wicked,”50 and R. Ishmael to whom was attributed weeping over the daughters of Israel and saying, “the daughters of Israel are beautiful, but poverty disfigures them,”51 experienced the Bar Kochba revolt and the decrees of religious persecution. Likewise, R. Simeon bar Yohai, whose weeping was a prayer for a miracle to help him save his nation.52 R. Judah the Prince, the hero of many stories of weeping, lived most of his life in a period of relative national calm; however, he was firmly planted in the generation that suffered religious persecution, and his teachers were the last five disciples of R. Akiva. Therefore, he is associated with weeping in connetion with the summons to the world to come of the righteous among the Romans, such as the executioner of R. Haniana b. Teradion53 and Keti’ah b. Shalom.54 Weeping associated with him also extends to cultural and social conflicts that took place in his day, such as the weeping over the fate of his 49

51 52 53 54 50

Ketubot 66b. Avoda Zara 21a. Nedarim 66a. Me’ila 17a-b. Avoda Zara 18a. Avoda Zara 10b.

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teacher Elisha b. Avuya55 or the weeping over the mountain that rose up between his worldview and way of life and those of Pinhas b. Yair.56 As for the Amoraim, most of the stories dealing with their weeping attribute their weeping to reading verses in the Torah, Prophets, or Ketuvim (Writings) that reminded them of divine punishment visited upon the nation or that broached skepticism in the theological realm. Weeping was attributed to R. Jonathan when he read the verse ‘the covering too narrow when he gathereth himself up’(Isaiah 28) which reminded him that the First Temple was destroyed because the people pursued idol worship,57 and to R. Judah when he read another verse in Isaiah (33) that reminded him of the disappearance of those sages who had fallen into bad ways.58 One collection of narratives in the Babylonian Talmud consists of thirteen accounts of weeping by Eretz Israel and Babylonian sages of the third generation, each of them upon reading a verse that illuminated another aspect of the complexity of the relationship between man and God. 59 There were very few stories that deal with Amoriam or simple people of their era whose weeping expressed a totally personal feeling of insult,60 anger,61 disappointment,62 or alternately, happiness.63 It would seem that the common denominator of almost all of the narratives of weeping in the BT, whether those told about the Tannaim or those told about the Amoraim or their contemporaries, is the image of weeping as an expression of sorrow for another person or for the collective, free of egocentric concerns. 55

57 58 59 60 61 62 63 56

Hagigah 15b. Hullin 7a. Yoma 9b. Hagigah 15b. Hagigah 4b-5a. Hullin 107b. Sanhedrin 31a. Baba Batra 151a. Ta’anit 25a.

We epi n g (B e c h i)

The characters of the Tannaim and the Amoraim who people the stories in these chapters are very far from the characters of the sages (particularly the Amoraim) who people the stories in the previous two chapters. The heroes of this chapter, Tannaim and Amoraim of the first generations, wept when they were reminded of the troubles of the nation, such as the destruction of the Temple, its causes and consequences, and when they were confronted with unresolved theological dilemmas and grieved at the futility of man facing the sometimes terrifying power of God. In the narratives brought in the previous chapters, the sorrow of the sages was associated mainly with themselves. The stories of the first chapter present sages who grieved over failures that were frequently connected with themselves and their world—the world of Torah. Thus we read of R. Tarfon who grieved over the use of the crown of Torah for personal benefit and R. Johanan who was sorrowful that he had not succeeded in ordaining sages. Even his grief over the death of his comrade Resh Lakish was limited to his sorrow that he had lost a worthy intellectual disputant. The stories of Chapter Two which present narratives of sages who felt hulshat da’at [despair] amplified the descriptions of the extent of their self-concentration and attention to their ranking on the scale of honor. In the narratives in this chapter, the weeping of the sages is not presented as an expression of an emotion that sets them apart but rather as an emotion that brings them together. Most of the sages did not weep over themselves but rather over another, and even those who wept for themselves did not grieve over failure in the competition for honor or status but because of a painful reality or event. Furthermore, in most of the stories of weeping, the private sorrow of the sages—both the Tannaim and the Amoraim—was associated with the suffering of the public, the result of a national or social state of affairs, or metaphysical sorrow over man’s status as an individual confronting God. A characteristic articulation of the sorrow of an Amora, in which the private and the national-ideological are mingled, may be found in the story of the weeping of Ulla, which is brought in two

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places in the JT.64 I will present the more easily comprehensible of the two stories, which is brought in JT Kila’im 31d (9:3). .‫עולא נחותא הוה אידמך תמן שרי בכי‬ ”.‫ “מה לך בכי אנן מסקין לך לארעא דישראל‬,‫אמרין ליה‬ ‫ “ומה הנייה לי אנא מובד מרגליתי גו ארעא מסאבתא‬,‫אמר לון‬ ”.‫לא דומה פולטה בחיק אמו לפולטה בחיק נכריה‬

Ulla was an emigrant. He was dying there and started to cry. They said to him, “Why are you crying? We shall bring you to the Land of Israel.”

He said to them, “How does this help me? I am losing my pearl in an impure land. One cannot compare one who expires in the bosom of his mother to one who expires in the bosom of a strange woman.”65 Death in a state of full awareness should be the epitome of terror and self-pity. However, Ulla did not plead for his life nor did he express any fear. He rather wept with regret because he was losing his life (soul) in a corrupt land—Babylon—rather than parting with it in the beloved Land of Israel. The portrait of Ulla on the verge of death and weeping, together with the explanation that he himself gave for his weeping, 64

The story is also brought in BT Ketubot 111a, but there the weeping motif is missing: ‫ אתו אמרו ליה לרבי‬,‫ נח נפשיה בחוץ לארץ‬,‫”עולא הוה רגיל דהוה סליק לארץ ישראל‬ ‫ אנת‬:‫ אמר‬,‫אלעזר‬ ‫ אינו דומה‬:‫ אמר להם‬,‫ ארונו בא‬:‫עולא )עמוס ז) על אדמה טמאה תמות! אמרו לו‬ ”.‫קולטתו מחיים לקולטתו לאחר מיתה‬ “Ulla was in the habit of paying visits to the Land of Israel but came to his eternal rest outside the Land. When they reported this to R. Eleazar, he exclaimed, ‘Thou, Ulla, shouldst die in an unclean land! (Amos 7) ‘His coffin,’ they said to him, ‘has arrived.’ ‘Receiving a man in his lifetime,’ he replied, ‘is not the same as receiving him after his death.”

65

The other place is JT Ketubot 34d (12:3): ‫“עללה נחותה הוה אידמיך תמן שרי בכי‬ ‫אמרי’ ליה מה לך בכי אין מסקון לך אמ’ לון ומה הנייה אית לי ואנא מובד מרגליתי גוא‬ ”.‫ארע’ מסאבת’ לא דמי הפולטה לחיק אמו לפולטה בחיק נכריה‬ “Ulla, who went down into exile, was dying there. He began to cry. They said to him, ‘Why are you crying? Will we not bring your body to be buried there?’ He said to them, ‘And what good does it do me, if I lose my pearl [my soul] in an unclean land? It is not the same when one sucks in the bosom of one’s mother as when he sucks in the bosom of an alien woman.’”

We epi n g (B e c h i)

reveals the fact that his emotional world was based on an ideological dimension, in this case, love of the land of Israel, and not on a narrow egoistical vision that placed honor and status at the center.66 I will conclude this chapter with a quotation from the sugiya in Hagigah 5b which gives ultimate expression to the concept of weeping as an expression of participation in the sorrow of the community, by presenting God Himself as weeping over the destruction of His nation and the neglect of study of the Torah: ”.‫ ”ואם לא תשמעוה במסתרים תבכה נפשי מפני גוה‬:)‫(ירמיהו י”ג‬ ’‫ “מקום יש לו להקדוש ברוך הוא ו’מסתרים‬:‫אמר רב שמואל בר איניא משמיה דרב‬ ”.‫שמו‬ ‫ “מפני גאוותן של ישראל שניטלה מהם‬:‫מאי “מפני גוה”? אמר רב שמואל בר יצחק‬ ”.‫ונתנה לנכרים‬ ”.‫ “מפני גאוותה של מלכות שמים‬:‫רבי שמואל בר נחמני אמר‬ ‫ “אין עציבות לפני‬:‫ומי איכא בכיה קמיה הקדוש ברוך הוא? והאמר רב פפא‬ ‫ ’הוד והדר לפניו עז וחדוה‬:)‫ שנאמר (דברי הימים א’ ט”ז‬,‫הקדוש ברוך הוא‬ ?‫ ובבתי בראי לא‬.‫ הא — בבתי בראי‬,‫ הא — בבתי גואי‬:‫במקמו’!” לא קשיא‬ ‫ “ויקרא אדני ה’ צבאות ביום ההוא לבכי ולמספד‬:)‫והא כתיב (ישעיהו כ”ב‬ !”‫ולקרחה ולחגר שק‬ ‫”הן‬:)‫ שנאמר (ישעיהו ל”ג‬,‫ דאפילו מלאכי שלום בכו‬,‫שאני חרבן בית המקדש‬ ‫”ודמע תדמע ותרד‬:)‫” (ירמיהו י”ג‬.‫אראלם צעקו חצה מלאכי שלום מר יבכיון‬ .’‫” כי נשבה עדר ה‬,‫עיני דמעה‬ — ‫ ואחת‬,‫” שלש ‘דמעות’ הללו למה? אחת — על מקדש ראשון‬:‫אמר רבי אלעזר‬ ‫ “אחת על‬:‫” ואיכא דאמרי‬.‫ ואחת — על ישראל שגלו ממקומן‬,‫על מקדש שני‬ ‫ “כי נשבה‬,‫” בשלמא למאן דאמר על ישראל שגלו — היינו דכתיב‬.‫ביטול תורה‬ ‫ מאי “כי נשבה עדר ה’”! — כיון‬,‫” אלא למאן דאמר על ביטול תורה‬.’‫עדר ה‬ .‫שגלו ישראל ממקומן — אין לך ביטול תורה גדול מזה‬ ‫ על שאפשר לעסוק בתורה‬:‫ שלשה הקדוש ברוך הוא בוכה עליהן בכל יום‬:‫תנו רבנן‬ ‫ ועל פרנס המתגאה על‬,‫ ועל שאי אפשר לעסוק בתורה ועוסק‬,‫ואינו עוסק‬ .‫הצבור‬ 66

Extreme instances of weeping as an expression of patriotic feeling are found here in a Tannaic source: Sifre Deut. Piska 80: “The story is told of R. Judah b. Beteira and R. Matiya and R. Hanina nephew of R. Joshua and R. Jonathan who went outside of the Land of Israel and reached Paltom, and when they remembered the Land of Israel, they raised their eyes and their tears flowed and they tore their garments and read this verse (Deut. 1:31) ‘…and you shall possess it and dwell in it. And you shall observe to do all the statues and judgments which I set before you this day.’ They said: Dwelling in the Land of Israel is equal to all of the commandments in the Torah. They turned back and went to the Land of Israel.”

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(Jeremiah 13): “But if ye will not hear it, My soul shall weep in secret for the pride.” R. Samuel b. Inia said in the name of Rab: “The Holy One, blessed be He, has a place and its name is ‘Secret.’” What is the meaning of [the expression] ‘for the pride’?-R. Samuel b. Isaac said: “For the glory that has been taken from them and given to the nations of the world.” R. Samuel b. Nahmani said: “For the glory of the Kingdom of Heaven” But is there any weeping in the presence of the Holy One, blessed be He? For behold R. Papa said: “There is no grief in the Presence of the Holy One blessed be He; for it is said (1 Chronicles 16): ‘Honor and majesty are before Him; strength and beauty are in His sanctuary’!” There is no contradiction; the one case [refers to] the inner chambers, the other case [refers to] the outer chambers. But behold it is written (Isaiah 22): “And in that day did the Lord, the God of Hosts, call to weeping and to lamentation, and to baldness, and to girding with sackcloth!” The destruction of the Temple is different, for even the angels of peace wept [over it] for it is Said (Isaia 33): “Behold for their altar they cried without; the angels of peace wept bitterly.” (Jeremiah 13): “And mine eye shall drop tears and tears, and run down with tears,” because the Lord’s flock is carried away captive. R. Eleazar said: “Wherefore these three [expressions of] ‘tears’? One for the first Temple, and one for the second Temple, and one for Israel, who have become exiled from their place.” But there are some who say: “One for the neglect of [the study of] the Torah.” This is all right according to the view that [one] is for Israel, who have become exiled from their place: this agrees with that which is written: “Because the Lord’s flock is carried away captive.” But according to the view that it was for the neglect of [the study of] the Torah, how do you explain [the text], “Because the Lord’s flock is carried away”? — Since Israel have become exiled from their place. You can have no greater neglect of [the study of] the Torah than this. Our Rabbis taught: Over three the Holy One, blessed be He, weeps every day: over him who is able to occupy himself with [the study of] the Torah and does not; and over him who is unable to occupy himself with [the study of] the Torah and does; and over a leader who domineers over the community.

Ch apter Fou r

Grief over the Death of Children The Talmudic sources contain quite a few stories of mourning and bereavement, and among them stories which describe the behavior of the Rabbis over the deaths of their children. Most of the stories are associated with the laws of mourning and deal with types of behavior that comply with, or alternately conflict with, the laws.1 Since this work is not a study of the laws (halacha), their development and application, but rather a study of the expressions 1

See for example, Mo’ed Katan 20b: ‫ אידכר דמיושב‬,‫ אתא בריה — קרע באפיה‬.‫ קרע עילויה‬,‫“אמימר שכיב ליה בר בריה‬ — ?‫ קריעה דמעומד מנלן‬:‫ אמר ליה רב אשי לאמימר‬.‫קרע — קם קרע מעומד‬ ”.‫דכתיב (איוב א’) ויקם איוב ויקרע את מעלו‬ “Amemar lost his son’s son, and he rent [his garment]. Thereupon his son came and he [again] rent [his garment] in his [son’s] presence. He then recollected that he had done it while sitting; he rose and rent [his garment again] standing. Said R. Ashi to Amemar: Whence do we derive that the rending [of a garment] is [to be done] standing? From the text: (Job 1:20) Then Job rose and rent his mantle.”

For more on the subject of rending garments, see Nissan Rubin, The End of Life, Tel Aviv 1997, pp. 163-167 (Hebrew). ‫ ונכנס לבית המדרש ודרש‬,‫ “ומעשה ומת בנו של רבי יוסי בציפורי‬:‫ ע”א‬, ‫מועד קטן כא‬ ”.‫כל היום כולו‬ ‫ ונכנס‬.‫ ונכנס לבית המדרש‬,‫ “מעשה ומת בנו של רבי יהודה בר אילעאי‬:‫ושם בברייתא‬ ‫ ורבי חנניה בן‬,‫ ולחש הוא לרבי חנניה בן עקביא‬,‫רבי חנניה בן עקביא וישב בצדו‬ ”.‫ ותורגמן השמיע לרבים‬,‫עקביא לתורגמן‬ Mo’ed Katan 21a: “There was an actual case, when a son of R. Jose of Sepphoris died, he went into the Beth Hamidrash and expounded there all day long.” And in the baraita there: “It happened, that when a son of R. Judah b. Il’ai died, he went into the Beth Hamidrash and R. Hananiah b. ‘Akabia also went in and sat him down at his side: he then whispered to R. Hananiah b. ‘Akabia and R. Hananiah b. ‘Akabia [whispered] to the Turgeman [interpreter] and the Turgeman spoke aloud to the public.”

;‫ ונתן רשות לאחר לדבר על ידו‬,‫ “ומעשה שמת בנו של רבי יהודה‬:‫מסכת שמחות פרק ח‬ ‫ ונתן רשות לאחר שידבר על ידו; ומעשה‬,‫ומעשה שמת בנו של רבי יוסי הגלילי‬

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of sorrow in Talmudic literature, I shall only discuss those stories which contain expressions of emotion by grieving fathers and by those who participate in their mourning. I found four narratives that deal with well-known Tannaim who lost their sons,2 and two stories of Amoraim, one about R. Samuel bar Yehudah3 who was bereaved of his daughter and the other of Hiyya bar Abba4 who was bereaved of his son. In all of the stories there is a description both of the expression of grief by the mourner himself and of the words of the comforters, which also express grief and pain. An examination of the expressions of the mourners as well as those of the comforters will yield conclusions regarding the expression of grief and forms of behavior at times of grief which were prevalent in Jewish society at the time of the Talmud. ‫ והיה יושב‬,‫שמת בנו של רבי עקיבא והיה יושב ודורש כל היום; וזה המעשה היה ברבי‬ ”.‫ודורש כל היום‬ Mishnah Semachot 8: “Now it happened that when the son of R. Judah died, he designated another person to speak for him. When the son of R. Jose the Galilean died, he also designated another person to speak for him; on the other hand, it happened that when the son of R. Akiva died, he continued preaching all that day. When the same thing happened in the case of Rabbi Judah Hanasi, he, too, continued preaching all that day.”

For more on mourning and Torah study, see Rubin, pp. 179-181. ‫ מעשה ומתו בניו‬:‫ דאמר רבי אבא הכהן משום רבי יוסי הכהן‬,‫ “תא שמע‬:‫ע”א‬,‫תענית יג‬ ”. ‫ ורחץ בצונן כל שבעה‬,‫של רבי יוסי בן רבי חנינא‬ Ta’anit 13a: “Come and hear: R. Abba the Priest said in the name of R. Jose the Priest: It happened that the sons of R. Jose b. Hanina died and he bathed in cold water throughout the seven days [of mourning]!”

For more on washing, see Rubin, pp. 173-175. In this chapter, I shall discuss three of them (the third one appears in two versions). The fourth story, concerning the death of R. Meir’s sons, will be discussed in Chapter Five. 3 A Babylonian Amora of the third generation. Lived for a certain period in Eretz Israel and studied with R. Johanan and R. Eliezer in Tiberia , according to M. Margaliot, Encyclopedia of Talmudic Scholars and Geonim. 4 An Amora of the third generation who was born in Babylon and went to Eretz Israel. Studied with sages of the first generation there, but the major part of his study was with R. Johanan in Tiberias, according to M. Margaliot, Encyclopedia. 2

‫‪189‬‬

‫‪Grief over the Death of Children‬‬

‫‪I will begin with a narrative that tells of the death of the son‬‬ ‫‪of R. Johanan b. Zakkai and is brought in Avot Derabbi Natan, recen‬‬‫‪sion A, chapter 14:5‬‬ ‫כשמת בנו של רבן יוחנן בן זכאי נכנסו תלמידיו לנחמו‪.‬‬ ‫נכנס רבי אליעזר וישב לפניו ואמר ליה‪“ :‬רבי רצונך אומר דבר אחד לפניך?”‬ ‫אמר לו‪“ :‬אמור‪”.‬‬ ‫אמר לו‪“ :‬אדם הראשון היה לו בן ומת וקבל עליו תנחומין‪ .‬ומנין שקבל עליו‬ ‫תנחומין? שנאמר ‘וידע אדם עוד את אשתו’ (בראשית ד’ כ”ה)‪ .‬אף אתה קבל‬ ‫תנחומין‪”.‬‬ ‫אמר לו‪“ :‬לא די לי שאני מצטער בעצמי‪ ,‬אלא הזכרת לי צערו של אדם הראשון?”‬ ‫נכנס רבי יהושע ואמר לו‪“ :‬רצונך אומר דבר אחד לפניך?”‬ ‫אמר לו‪“ :‬אמור‪”.‬‬ ‫אמר לו‪“ :‬איוב היו לו בנים ובנות ומתו כולם ביום אחד וקבל עליהם תנחומין‪ .‬אף‬ ‫אתה קבל תנחומין‪ .‬ומנין שקבל איוב תנחומין? שנאמר ‘ה’ נתן וה’ לקח יהי‬ ‫שם ה’ מבורך’ (איוב א’ כ”א)‪“.‬‬ ‫אמר לו‪” :‬לא די לי שאני מצטער בעצמי‪ ,‬אלא שהזכרת לי צערו של איוב?“‬ ‫נכנס רבי יוסי וישב לפניו אמר לו‪” :‬רבי רצונך אומר דבר אחד לפניך?“‬ ‫אמר לו‪” :‬אמור‪“.‬‬ ‫אמר לו‪” :‬אהרן היו לו שני בנים גדולים ומתו שניהם ביום אחד וקבל עליהם‬ ‫תנחומין‪ .‬שנאמר‪‘ ,‬וידם אהרן’ (ויקרא י' ג')‪ .‬אין שתיקה אלא תנחומין‪ .‬ואף‬ ‫אתה קבל תנחומין‪“.‬‬ ‫אמר לו‪” :‬לא די לי שאני מצטער בעצמי אלא שהזכרתני צערו של אהרן?“‬ ‫נכנס רבי שמעון ואמר לו‪” :‬רבי רצונך אומר דבר אחד לפניך?“‬ ‫אמר לו‪” :‬אמור‪“.‬‬ ‫אמר לו‪” :‬דוד המלך היה לו בן ומת וקבל תנחומין‪ .‬ואף אתה קבל תנחומין‪ .‬ומנין‬ ‫שקבל דוד תנחומין? שנאמר‪‹ ,‬וינחם דוד את בת שבע אשתו ויבא אליה‬ ‫וישכב עמה ותלד בן ויקרא את שמו שלמה‪( .‬שמואל ב' י“ב כ“ד)‪ .‬אף אתה‬ ‫רבי קבל תנחומין‪“.‬‬ ‫אמר לו‪” :‬לא די שאני מצטער בעצמי‪ ,‬אלא שהזכרתני צערו של דוד המלך?“‬ ‫נכנס רבי אלעזר בן ערך‪ .‬כיון שראהו‪ ,‬אמר לשמשו‪” ,‬טול כלי ולך אחרי לבית‬ ‫המרחץ לפי שאדם גדול הוא ואיני יכול לעמוד בו‪“.‬‬ ‫נכנס וישב לפניו ואמר לו‪” :‬אמשול לך משל‪ .‬למה הדבר דומה? לאדם שהפקיד‬ ‫אצלו המלך פקדון‪ .‬בכל יום ויום היה בוכה וצועק ואומר ‹אוי לי אימתי אצא‬ ‫מן הפקדון הזה בשלום?› אף אתה רבי היה לך בן‪ .‬קרא תורה מקרא נביאים‬ ‫וכתובים משנה הלכות ואגדות; ונפטר מן העולם בלא חטא‪ .‬ויש לקבל עליך‬ ‫תנחומין כשהחזרת פקדונך שלם‪“.‬‬ ‫אמר לו‪” :‬רבי אלעזר בני נחמתני כדרך שבני אדם מנחמין‪“.‬‬ ‫‪ Avot Derabbi Natan is a collection composed in a later period (see Y. Fraenkel,‬‬ ‫)‪The Ways of the Aggadah and the Midrash, Givatayim 1991, ( Hebrew), p. 10‬‬ ‫‪and even though it contains earlier material, it would seem by the language‬‬ ‫‪and the content that the narrative before us is a later work.‬‬

‫‪5‬‬

190

Chapter Four

When the son of R. Johanan b. Zakkai died, his disciples came in to bring him comfort. R. Eleazar came in and took a seat before him and said, “Rabbi, with your permission, may I say something before you?” He said to him, “Speak.” He said to him, “The first Man had a son who died and he accepted comfort in his regard. And how do we know that he accepted comfort in his regard? Because it is said, ‘And Adam [Man] knew his wife again’ (Gen. 4:25). You, too, be comforted.” Said he to him, “Is it not enough for me that I am distressed on my own account, that you should mention to me the distress of the first Man?” R. Joshua came in and said, “Rabbi, with your permission, may I say something before you?” He said to him, “Speak.” He said to him, “Job had sons and daughters who died on the same day and he accepted comfort on their regard. How do we know that he accepted comfort on their regard? As it is said, ‘The Lord gave and The Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord’ (Job 1:21). You, too, be comforted.” Said he to him, “Is it not enough for me that I am distressed on my own account, that you should mention to me the distress of Job?” R. Jose came in and took a seat before him and said, “Rabbi, with your permission, may I say something before you?” He said to him, “Speak.” He said to him, “Aaron had two grown sons who died on the same day and he accepted comfort in their regard. For it is said, ‘And Aaron held his peace.’ (Lev. 10:3) Silence means only comfort. You, too, be comforted.” Said he to him, “Is it not enough for me that I am distressed on my own account, that you should mention to me the distress of Aaron?” R. Simeon came in and said, “Rabbi, with your permission, may I say something before you.” He said to him, “Speak.” He said to him, “King David had a son who died, and he accepted comfort. You, too, be comforted. And how do we know that he accepted comfort in his regard? Because it is said, ‘And David comforted his wife Bathsheba and went in unto her and lay with her, and she bore a son, and called his name Solomon’ (II Sam. 12:24). You, too, be comforted.” Said he to him, “Is it not enough for me that I am distressed on my own account, that you should mention to me the distress of King David?” R. Eleazar b. ‘Arach came in. When he [R. Johanan b. Zakkai] saw him, he said to his assistant, “Take my clothes and follow me to the bathhouse [so I can prepare to accept consolation] for he is a great man, and I shall not be able to resist his arguments.”

Grief over the Death of Children

[R. Eleazar b. ‘Arach] came in and took a seat before him and said to him, “I shall draw a parable for you. To what may the matter be compared? To the case of a man to whom the king entrusted a treasure. Every day the man would weep and cry, saying, ‘Woe is me, when shall I get complete and full relief of this treasure that has been entrusted to me?’ You, too, my lord, had a son. He would recite from the Torah, the Prophets, the Writings, Mishnah, laws, and lore; he has departed from this world without sin. You have reason therefore to accept consolation for yourself that you have returned your treasure entrusted to you, whole and complete.” He said to him: “R. Eleazar b. ‘Arach, my son, you have given comfort to me in the right way in which people console one another.”

This story is placed after the three-part narrative which tells of the five disciples of R. Johanan ben Zakkai. The beginning of the story of the five disciples presents the epithets that R. Johanan b. Zakkai used for them, including the one he used for R. Eleazar b. ‘Arach, “like a spring flowing steadily stronger,” and the explanation he gave for this designation: “if all of the sages of Israel were on one side of the scale—even if R. Eliezer b. Hyrkanos (who outweighs them all) were among them, and R. Eleazar b. ‘Arach on the other, he would outweigh them all.” The second part describes the entrance of the five disciples one after the other to R. Johanan b. Zakkai to answer his question, “What is the proper path for a person to adhere to in order to enter life in the world to come?,” and he notes that he prefers the answer of R. Eleazar b. ‘Arach who said “A good heart, towards Heaven and towards his fellowman.” The third section is an inverted mirror of the preceding one: The disciples come into R. Johanan in order to answer his question “What is the evil path that a person should distance himself from in order to enter life in the world to come?” Here, too, he prefers the answer provided by R. Eleazar b. ‘Arach “A heart which is evil toward Heaven and evil toward his fellowman.” The two central qualities that recur in R. Johanan b. Zakkai’s words in the three sections of the story are the judicious ranking of the disciples and his reasoned preference for R. Eleazar b. ‘Arach. These characteristics also repeat themselves in the story here which deals with his disciples’ attempts to console their teacher over the death of his son. The five disciples enter in turn to speak to

191

‫‪192‬‬

‫‪Chapter Four‬‬

‫‪R. Johanan b. Zakkai and to try to comfort him with their words, but‬‬ ‫‪it is only R. Eleazar b. ‘Arach who succeeds in doing so.6‬‬ ‫‪6‬‬

‫‪ The structure of a question followed by five answers where the last one is‬‬ ‫‪preferred is associated with R. Johanan b. Zakkai on a totally different topic‬‬ ‫‪in the baraita brought in Baba Batra 10B:‬‬ ‫“תניא‪ ,‬אמר להן רבן יוחנן בן זכאי לתלמידיו‪ :‬בני‪ ,‬מהו שאמר הכתוב (משלי י”ד)‬ ‫צדקה תרומם גוי וחסד לאומים חטאת? נענה רבי אליעזר ואמר‪ :‬צדקה תרומם‬ ‫גוי — אלו ישראל‪ ,‬דכתיב‪( :‬שמואל ב’ ז’) ומי כעמך ישראל גוי אחד בארץ‪ ,‬וחסד‬ ‫לאומים חטאת — כל צדקה וחסד שאומות עובדי כוכבים עושין חטא הוא להן‪,‬‬ ‫שאינם עושין אלא להתגדל בו‪ ,‬כמו שנאמר‪+ :‬עזרא ו’‪ +‬די להוון מהקרבין ניחוחין‬ ‫לאלהה שמיא ומצליין לחיי מלכא ובנוהי‪ .‬ודעביד הכי לאו צדקה גמורה היא?‬ ‫והתניא‪ :‬האומר סלע זה לצדקה בשביל שיחיו בני‪ ,‬ובשביל שאזכה לעולם הבא —‬ ‫הרי זה צדיק גמור! לא קשיא‪ :‬כאן בישראל‪ ,‬כאן בעובד כוכבים‪ .‬נענה רבי יהושע‬ ‫ואמר‪ :‬צדקה תרומם גוי — אלו ישראל‪ ,‬דכתיב‪ :‬ומי כעמך ישראל גוי אחד‪ ,‬וחסד‬ ‫לאומים חטאת — כל צדקה וחסד שאומות עובדי כוכבים עושין חטא הוא להן‪,‬‬ ‫שאין עושין אלא כדי שתמשך מלכותן‪ ,‬שנאמר‪( :‬דניאל ד’) להן מלכא מלכי ישפר‬ ‫עליך וחטיך בצדקה פרוק ועויתך במיחן עניין הן תהוי ארכא לשלותיך וגו’‪ .‬נענה‬ ‫רבן גמליאל ואמר‪ :‬צדקה תרומם גוי — אלו ישראל‪ ,‬דכתיב‪ :‬ומי כעמך ישראל‬ ‫[וגו’]‪ ,‬וחסד לאומים חטאת — כל צדקה וחסד שעכו”ם עושין חטא הוא להן‪ ,‬שאין‬ ‫עושין אלא להתיהר בו‪ ,‬וכל המתיהר נופל בגיהנם‪ ,‬שנאמר‪( :‬משלי כ”א) זד יהיר‬ ‫לץ שמו עושה בעברת זדון‪ ,‬ואין עברה אלא גיהנם‪ ,‬שנאמר‪( :‬צפניה א’) יום עברה‬ ‫היום ההוא‪ .‬אמר רבן גמליאל‪ :‬עדיין אנו צריכין למודעי‪ .‬רבי אליעזר המודעי‬ ‫אומר‪ :‬צדקה תרומם גוי — אלו ישראל‪ ,‬דכתיב‪ :‬ומי כעמך ישראל גוי אחד‪ ,‬וחסד‬ ‫לאומים חטאת — כל צדקה וחסד שעכו”ם עושין חטא הוא להן‪ ,‬שאין עושין אלא‬ ‫לחרף אותנו בו‪ ,‬שנאמר‪( :‬ירמיהו מ’) ויבא ויעש ה’ כאשר דבר כי חטאתם לה’ ולא‬ ‫שמעתם בקולו והיה לכם הדבר הזה‪ .‬נענה רבי נחוניא בן הקנה ואמר‪ :‬צדקה‬ ‫תרומם גוי וחסד — לישראל‪ ,‬ולאומים — חטאת‪ .‬אמר להם רבן יוחנן בן זכאי‬

‫לתלמידיו‪ :‬נראין דברי רבי נחוניא בן הקנה מדברי ומדבריכם‪ ,‬לפי שהוא‬ ‫נותן צדקה וחסד לישראל‪ ,‬ולעכו”ם חטאת‪”.‬‬ ‫‪“Rabban Johanan b. Zakkai said to his disciples: My sons, what is the meaning of‬‬ ‫‪the verse, Righteousness exalteth a nation, but the kindness of the peoples‬‬ ‫‪is sin? (Prov. 14:34) R. Eliezer answered and said: ‘Righteousness exalteth‬‬ ‫‪a nation’: this refers to Israel of whom it is written, Who is like thy people‬‬ ‫‪Israel one nation in the earth? (Sam. 7) But ‘the kindness of the peoples is‬‬ ‫‪sin’: all the charity and kindness done by the heathen is counted to them as‬‬ ‫‪sin, because they only do it to magnify themselves, as it says, That they may‬‬ ‫‪offer sacrifices of sweet savour unto the God of heaven, and pray for the life‬‬ ‫‪of the king and of his sons (Ezra 6). But is not an act of this kind charity in‬‬ ‫— ‪the full sense of the word, seeing that it has been taught: ‘If a man says,‬‬ ‫‪I give this sela for charity in order that my sons may live and that I may be‬‬ ‫‪found worthy of the future world, he may all the same be a righteous man‬‬ ‫‪in the full sense of the word’? — There is no contradiction; in the one case‬‬ ‫‪we speak of an Israelite, in the other of a heathen.‬‬

Grief over the Death of Children

The first four disciples reflect a single notion of consolation: they bring examples of biblical figures who experienced the loss of children and expound on these stories in such a way as to show that the ancients were consoled over the loss of their children. However, the disciples’ interpretations of the stories are hard to accept and far from their literal meaning. R. Eleazar deduced from the statement “And Adam [Man] knew his wife again” (Gen. 4:25) that Adam accepted consolation for the death of Abel.7 However, the simple explanation of the verse seems to show that the one who accepted R. Joshua answered and said: ‘Righteousness exalteth a nation,’ this refers to Israel of whom it is written: Who is like thy people Israel, one nation on the earth? ‘The kindness of peoples is sin’: all the charity and kindness that the heathen do is counted sin to them, because they only do it in order that their dominion may be prolonged, as it says, Wherefore O king, let my counsel be acceptable to thee, and break off thy sins by righteousness, and thy iniquities by showing mercy to the poor, if there may be a lengthening of thy tranquility (Dan. 4:27). Rabban Gamaliel answered saying: ‘Righteousness exalteth a nation’: this refers to Israel of whom it is written, Who is like thy people Israel etc. ‘And the kindness of the peoples is sin:’ all the charity and kindness that the heathen do is counted as sin to them, because they only do it to display haughtiness, and whoever displays haughtiness is cast into Gehinnom, as it says, The proud and haughty man, scorner is his name, he worketh in the wrath [‘ebrah] of pride (Prov. 21:24), and ‘wrath’ connotes Gehinnom, as it is written, A day of wrath is that day (Zeph. 1:15). Said Rabban Gamaliel: We have still to hear the opinion of the Modiite. R. Eliezer the Modiite says: ‘Righteousness exalteth a nation’: this refers to Israel of whom it is written, Who is like thy people Israel, one nation in the earth. ‘The kindness of the peoples is sin’: all the charity and kindness of the heathen is counted to them as sin, since they do it only to reproach us, as it says, The Lord hath brought it and done according as he spake, because ye have sinned against the Lord and have not obeyed his voice, therefore this thing is come upon you (Jer. 40:3). R. Nehuniah b. ha-Kanah answered saying: ‘Righteousness exalteth a nation, and there is kindness for Israel and a sin-offering for the peoples.’ Said R. Johanan b. Zakkai to his disciples: ‘The answer of R. Nehuniah b. ha-Kanah is superior to my answer and to yours, because he assigns charity and kindness to Israel and sin to the heathen.” 7

A. Beitner explained that what invited this explanation was the interval of time that passed between the birth of Abel and the birth of Seth, which was explained by Adam’s mourning over his son’s death. A. Beitner, “Conflict and dialectic in narratives of Yavneh Sages, as a model of a literary phenomenon with an ideological and historiosophic message,” Doctoral dissertation, Bar-Ilan 1995, pp. 144-52 (Hebrew).

193

194

Chapter Four

consolation was his wife Eve, as it is written: “For God, said she, has appointed me another seed, instead of Abel, whom Cain slew.” R. Joshua understood from the words of Job, “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21) that Job accepted consolation over the death of his sons and daughters. However, Job’s words show at best, as the author of the book states, that Job “sinned not nor did he lay reproach on God” (idem, 22), but there is no evidence that he was comforted. The inference drawn by R. Jose from the words “And Aaron held his peace” does not meet the test of the literal explanation of the words, which does show that Aaron accepted Divine judgment but not that he was consoled. Likewise the conclusion of R. Simeon from the story that David lay with his wife Bathsheba (II Sam. 12:24), because according to the literal explanation of the words, it was David who was the comforter and not the comforted: “And David consoled his wife Bathsheba and went in to her and lay with her, and she bore a son…” However, according to what was described previously, David did indeed recover after the death of his son; however, he had achieved an insight “I shall go to him, but he will not come back to me”(idem, 23), this, without the intervention of comforters and even to the astonishment of his servants. The section describing the entrance of R. Johanan b. Zakkai’s disciples to comfort him is constructed to create two groups of two disciples each, first R. Eleazar and R. Joshua and then opposite them R. Jose and R. Simeon. The first disciple in each group is described as the one who came in and sat, while the second as someone who came in and said. Everyone who entered repeated the question, “With your permission, may I say something before you?” and to each one, he replied in a word: “Speak.” By this formulation of question and answer, the narrator creates a sense of distance between those who enter and R. Johanan b. Zakkai. Both their request for permission to speak and the response in the imperative mood reflect an insistence on a correct relationship between teacher and his disciples, who hold themselves back from giving open expression to emotion in a situation which is brimming with emotion. This preservation of teacher-disciple relations is also present in the substance of what they wish to say. For they ask permission to say “one thing”—

Grief over the Death of Children

a learned statement, a verse, or fact from the scripture rather than something personal. And, first and foremost, their perspective is didactic: they wish to teach R. Johanan b. Zakkai a moral lesson using the examples of Biblical heroes, whereas he is in an emotional state completely unsuited to scholarship and learning a lesson. The examples brought by the disciples to comfort him are couched in an identical style and arranged according to three principles. The first is time and place. According to this principle, the words of the disciples are arranged in a hierarchy, from distant to close.8 The second principle is the identity of the Biblical personalities. According to this principle, the personalities are arranged in two groups. The first two disciples are recognized as having brought two early historical figures who are not necessarily associated with the Jewish people, Adam and Job, while the second two are portrayed as having brought mythical personalities from Jewish history—Aaron, the founding father of the priesthood, and David, the founding father of the kingdom. The third principle is the evidence that these people accepted consolation. According to this principle, the words of the sages are arranged again in two groups according to the nature of the evidence: the first and fourth versus the second and third. The fourth piece of evidence supplements the first: 1) Adam accepted consolation

4) David accepted consolation

“And Adam [Man] knew his wife again”

“David knew his wife, and she bore a son”

The third proof is a contradictory parallel of the second proof: 2) Job accepted consolation “He said: God gave and God has taken away, blessed be the name of God.”*

4) Aaron accepted consolation He fell silent: “Aaron held his peace”

* Beitner, Conflict, p. 146, believes that the figure of Job contributed its pattern to this story by analogy. The friends of Job came together to console him, and each one spoke separately. He also points out the linguistic similarity between the discourse that Job held with his friends and that which R. Johanan b. Zakkai held with his disciples. 8

Bringing Job after Adam and before Aaron corresponds to the opinion of several sages. There are those who said that Job preceded the time of Moses, and there are those who contended that he lived even before the Patriarchs. See BT Baba Batra 14b-15a and JT Sota 20c (5:8).

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We thus see before us a highly sophisticated arrangement of the words of the four disciples who came to give comfort. The personalities about whom these words were spoken are presented from the most remote to the closest: Adam, Job, Aaron the Kohen, and King David. The proofs brought to show that these personalities did accept consolation in their bereavement are arranged by their content in the following order: the beginning and ending (first and fourth) are cogent proofs showing an active demonstration of accepting consolation—going on with life and procreation. The proofs that fall in the middle (the second and third) are weaker and relate to a passive acceptance of consolation that is expressed either by a statement or by silence. It would appear that the meticulous phrasing and arrangement of the words of the four disciples were designed to serve an ideological purpose. The author of the narrative wished to rule out words of consolation that were based on comparing one grief, the subject of the consolation, to another. According to this view, there is no point in bringing examples of other mourners who were comforted because the grieving person who is presented with these examples cannot identify with them and hence cannot find any comfort in their consolation. This direction is further highlighted in the responses given by R. Johanan b. Zakkai to the words of his disciples, which are also couched in formulaic uniformity,9 and the recurrent idea is that not only did the disciples fail to console him, but they actually intensified 9

There are minor changes. The first time and the second time, he says, ”‫“לא די לי שאני מצטער בעצמי אלא הזכרת לי צערו של אדם הראשון‬

“Is it not enough for me that I am distressed on my own account, that you should mention to me the distress of the first Man?”

and then “ ‫“לא די לי שאני מצטער בעצמי אלא שהזכרת לי צערו של איוב‬

“Is it not enough for me that I am distressed on my own account, that you should mention to me the distress of Job?”

The third time he says ”.‫“לא די לי שאני מצטער בעצמי אלא שהזכרתני צערו של אהרן‬

“Is it not enough for me that I am distressed on my own account, that you reminded me of the distress of Aaron?”

Grief over the Death of Children

his pain by bringing examples of those who had found consolation. The four-time repetition of the words: “Is it not sufficient that I am grieving but you have reminded me of the grief of…” emphasizes the absurdity of the disciples’ words of consolation, which smack more than a little of moralizing, calling upon the mourner to turn his gaze outward, at the very time that he is flooded by a need to withdraw into himself and his grief and to contemplate his feelings and thoughts inwardly. A. Bietner revealed an intriguing editing rationale for the words of the comforters, different than that stated previously; he proposed a more profound reason for their failure. According to him, the first and last consolation speak of the death of one son. The difference between them is that in the first case, the father— Adam—was blameless and so was the son—Abel—while in the last case, the father—David—was a wrongdoer and the infant son was blameless. The two middle consolations speak of the death of multiple children. The difference between them is that in the second consolation of these two, the father—Job—is innocent and his children are innocent, while in the third, the father—Aaron— is blameless while his sons are wrongdoers. According to Beitner, these connections between the stories of consolation show that the same rule applies to a blameless son and a sinful one, a blameless father and a sinful one, and therefore, the theological meaning that emerges from these cases arouses a difficult question about Divine justice. For this reason, the disciples not only do not manage to comfort R. Johanan b. Zakkai, but they exacerbate his distress. Beitner concludes from the repetition in the examples, which he regards as simplistic to the point of vulgarity, that the narrator is creating irony bordering on the grotesque in order to highlight the words of R. Eleazar b. ‘Arach, which are a sharp turnabout and lead towards a different conceptual way of coping.10 The description of and the fourth time, ”‫“לא די שאני מצטער בעצמי אלא שהזכרתני צערו של דוד המלך‬

“Is it not enough for me that I am distressed on my own account, that you reminded me of the distress of King David?” 10

A. Beitner, Conflict, p. 149.

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the meeting with R. Eleazar b. ‘Arach differs in style and content from the descriptions of the encounters with the four other disciples. The opening line itself sheds valuable light on the character of R. Eleazar b. ‘Arach and portrays him as an unusual personality. R. Johanan b. Zakkai’s words to his servant, “Take my clothes and follow me to the bathhouse for he is a great man, and I shall not be able to resist his arguments,” show that he feels apprehensive about meeting R. Eleazar b. ‘Arach.11 The expression “‫”איני יכול לעמוד בו‬ “I shall not be able to resist his arguments” is used in the Talmud to signify an inability to bear a burden or cope with a task or a situation.12 It would therefore seem that R. Johanan b. Zakkai feared that in his existing state of mind, he would be unable to bear the encounter with his favorite disciple, R. Eleazar b. ‘Arach, both because of his eminence and because of the necessity of engaging intellectually with him. However, from the next part of the narrative, it becomes clear that there was no basis for his concerns, for R. Eleazar b. ‘Arach, in his sensitivity, understood that the time was not appropriate for intellectual discourse and he avoided it. The description of his entrance is different than that of the four other disciples. Despite the emotionally charged situation, they related to him at arm’s length and acted as disciples who wished to please their teacher by offering a piece of information. R. Eleazar b. ‘Arach, on the other 11

According to Beitner, R. Johanan b. Zakkai’s words are surprising. How could he wash himself during the mourning period? He brings in a footnote the article by A. Goshen-Gottstein, “R. Eleazar b. ‘Arach: Symbol and Reality” in A. Oppenheimer et al, (eds) Jews and Judaism during the Second Temple Period; Studies in Honor of Shmuel Safrai, Jerusalem 1993, pp. 173-97 (Hebrew), who wrote that this passage is an addendum that found its way into the narrative. However, he categorically rejects this hypothesis, both because the passage appears in all the manuscripts and the text versions, and because in his opinion the passage is a key literary component of the narrative. Beitner believes that R. Johanan b. Zakkai’s response recalls that of King David after the death of his son (II Sam. 12:24), and our astonishment at R. Johanan b. Zakkai recalls the astonishment felt by David’s servants. Indeed, this association leads the reader to remember David’s reply to them, that his washing and eating reflect his having reconciled himself to his son’s death, and to draw the parallel to R. Johanan b. Zakkai. 12 See e.g. BT Baba Mezi’a 33a, JT Berachot 7d (4:2), JT Berachot 14:2 (9:5), and many more.

Grief over the Death of Children

hand, aware of his teacher’s emotional state, understood that the situation called for closeness and empathy. “R. Eleazar b. ‘Arach came in and took a seat before him and said to him, ‘I shall draw a parable for you.’” He did not ask his teacher what he wanted but offered himself as a comforter. In contrast to the scholarly and wellreasoned examples offered by his predecessors, R. Eleazar b. ‘Arach offered an entirely different medium—a parable. The parable is a story that captures the attention of the listener because it is new and surprising,13 and R. Eleazar b. ‘Arach used this device to extricate R. Johanan b. Zakkai from burrowing deeper into his grief and to force him to see what had happened to him in a new perspective. The parable told by R. Eleazar b. ‘Arach belongs to the category known as ‘the parable of the king.’ D. Stern wrote:14 “Using the king as hero is not merely a matter of style. It is very characteristic to have the image of the king signify God.” He contends that this symbolization originated in Near Eastern traditions and is also common in rabbinic literature besides the parable form. For our purposes, using the parable of the king, R. Eleazar b. ‘Arach connects God to R. Johanan b. Zakkai and his son, and presents Him as a partner, although he does not mention Him outright. Presenting the dual relations between father and son as a triangle with God at the vertex offers more than a touch of consolation, because it creates a sense of intimacy with the father, in this case, of R. Johanan b. Zakkai with God.15 13

See Y. Fraenkel, The Ways of the Aggadah and the Midrash, Givatayim 1991, pp. 326-27 ( Hebrew). 14 D. Stern, The Parable in Midrash, Tel Aviv 1995, pp. 30-31 ( Hebrew). According to Stern the traits of the king in the Sages’ parables were fashioned after those of the Roman emperor or his proconsul in Eretz Israel, and in support of this he cites the research by Ignaz Ziegler from the early twentieth century: I. Ziegler, Die Konigsglechnisse des Midrasch, Breslau 1903. 15 It may be that the parable in based on idea that God deposits a pregnancy in woman, which is alluded to also in the words of the BT, Rosh Hashana 32b, which interprets the word ’‫ ‘פקד‬in the text ‘‫( ’וה’ פקד את שרה‬Gen 21:1) “And God visited Sarah” in the dual sense: remembered her and also caused pregnancy. In a discussion of the words of the sages in the Mishna “There should be recited not less than ten Kingship verses, ten Remembrance verses, and ten Shofar verses...” The gemara quotes the words of the Tanna

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The moral corresponds only partially to the parable, that is, the idea of entrusting someone with a treasure. Afterwards there is a discrepancy between the parable and the lesson learned from it, since the watchman’s eagerness to return his trust to the king does not apply to a father who most probably is not looking forward to the return of his son to God. This lack of correspondence between the parable and the moral emerges clearly from a comparison of the two parts of the text. Parable

Lesson

To the case of a man to whom the king entrusted a treasure

You, too, Master, had a son.

Every day the man would weep and cry

He would recite from the Torah, the Prophets, the Writings, Mishnah, laws, and lore; he has departed from this world without sin.

Woe is me, when shall I get complete and full relief of this treasure that has been entrusted to me.

You have reason therefore to accept consolation for yourself that you have returned the treasure entrusted to you, whole and complete

Presenting the text thus, parable versus moral lesson, shows that the sentence describing the watchman’s weeping daily and his wish to be rid of the trust does not appear in the lesson, where R. Jose, “Visitation’ is equivalent to ‘remembrance’ as, for instance, in the verse, ‘And the Lord visited Sarah’.” The gemara raises an objection: “Now in R. Jose’s view, even granting that ‘visitation’ is equivalent to ‘remembrance,’ the text, ‘And the Lord visited Sarah’ refers to the visitation of an individual, [does it not]?” And it answers: “Since a multitude issued from her, it is as good as a multitude.” Both according to the question and to the answer, the word ’‫‘ — ‘פקד‬pakad’ has a double meaning, both to remember and to cause pregnancy. Rashi, too, interprets the verse in Genesis in the same way while Nachmanides objects and states that ‘pakad’ ’‫ ‘פקד‬means ‘remember’ and states that the verse goes on to say that “and God did to Sarah as He had spoken.” Another transmutation of the idea of seeing pregnancy as a trust or deposit appears in the midrash in Gen. Rabbah 17:13, where Man is represented as depositing seed in Woman.

Grief over the Death of Children

instead there is a detailed description of the son’s daily studies. It is precisely here that the lesson directed at R. Johanan b. Zakkai appears, in the gap between the parable and the lesson, which is supposed to point out to him his good fortune. For by the nature of things, guarding a Divine trust is accompanied by concern that it be kept safe and intact, and an inability to enjoy it, while in fact R. Johanan b. Zakkai was privileged to enjoy his son who studied Torah in all its forms and never sinned.16 The three components of the parable: presenting the son as a treasure entrusted to him by God, recalling the good that the father enjoyed while he held the trust, and the knowledge that he had to return the trust intact, create a consolation that relates to R. Johanan b. Zakkai ’s tragedy and tries to alleviate it. According to Beitner, the theological demand of the father that he be prepared at any time to return the trust intact to its owner, God, is so great as to be impossible. However, posing this requirement shifts the center of gravity from the question of Divine justice onto man, who is called upon to fulfill an obligation toward God, and it is the sense that he has fulfilled his obligation and returned the trust intact which enables him to reconcile himself to the loss. Beitner maintains that the first four comforters represent the theological viewpoint that the essence of man’s life and death are the responsibility of God while R. Eleazar b. ‘Arach represents a different view point, one that places the responsibility for preserving and shaping life on man, and therefore, there is consolation for man in knowing that he has succeeded.17 In addition to what was stated above regarding the difference between R. Eleazar b. ‘Arach’s words of comfort and those of 16

In many rabbinic parables, there is a gap between parable and moral. Stern, Parable, p. 29, wrote: “One of the most widespread techniques that the rabbis use to complicate the meaning of the parable is to insert discrepancies and inconsistencies between the narrative in the parable and its moral.” Fraenkel, Methods of the Aggadah, pp. 334-338, shows how the parable and the moral explain each other, and how it is precisely that the dissimilarity between them evokes the moral lesson which the creator of the parable wishes to suggest to the listener by means of the parable. 17 A. Beitner, Conflict, pp. 152-153., and see further 153-155 for his extensive explanation of the connection between the story of R. Eleazar b. ‘Arach’s consolation and the story of his going to Dimsit.

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R. Johanan b. Zakkai’s other disciples, it is noteworthy that R. Eleazar b. ‘Arach’s comfort lacks any hint of moralizing that might be implied by comparing R. Johanan b. Zakkai’s tragedy to other tragedies, as the first comforters did. R. Johanan b. Zakkai’s reply to R. Eleazar b. ‘Arach is also different than his reply to the other comforters: “He said to him, ‘R. Eleazar my son, you have given comfort to me in the right way in which people console one another’.” The emotional address to him as “my son” creates intimacy and shows that R. Eleazar b. ‘Arach’s words have touched him and affected him emotionally. 18 The words “you have given comfort to me in the right way in which people console one another” aptly describe the difference between R. Eleazar’s consolation and that of the other disciples, and carry more than a hint of criticism toward them. These words show that the main difference between them is not any theological doctrine, as A. Beitner thought, but rather the approach they adopted in addressing a suffering human being. The four disciples who entered first took on a distant, scholastic approach to their grieving teacher and spoke like scholars in a situation that demanded sensitivity and gentleness, while R. Eleazar b. ‘Arach spoke to him in a personal way, as one human being to another. Support for this reading may be found in an earlier story in this collection which praises R. Eleazar b. ‘Arach’s view of man and his humane approach, and R. Johanan b. Zakkai’s appreciation of these. In answer to the question posed by R. Johanan b. Zakkai on the essence of the path a person should choose, R. Eleazar b. ‘Arach gave a different reply than his fellows: ”‫“לב טוב לשמים ולב טוב לבריות‬

“A good heart, towards Heaven and towards his fellowman.”

To this R. Johanan b. Zakkai responds: ”‫“רואה אני את דברי רבי אלעזר בן ערך מדבריכם שבכלל דבריו דבריכם‬ 18

Beitner, Conflicts, p.152, wrote that against the backdrop of the death of R. Johanan b. Zakkai’s son there is a special significance to the fact that he calls R. Eleazar b. ‘Arach “my son.” R. Johanan b. Zakkai may be implying that the scholarly R. Eleazar b. ‘Arach is continuing the path of his son, who during his lifetime had been intensively involved in the study of Torah.

Grief over the Death of Children

“I prefer the words of Eleazar b. ‘Arach to your words, for within the comprehensive character of his words are your words [included].”

And similarly, on the question of the nature of the evil path that a person should distance himself from choosing, which repeats itself in the narrative, R. Eleazar answered: ”‫“לב רע לשמים ולב רע למצות ולב רע לבריות‬

“An evil heart, evil to Heaven and evil to the commandments and evil to his fellowman.”

And again R. Johanan b. Zakkai responded with the same words: “I prefer the words of Eleazar b. ‘Arach to your words, for within the comprehensive character of his words, are your words [included].”

R. Eleazar b. ‘Arach denied the difference in the relationship between man and God and between man and his fellowman in everything that had to do with morality. This world view, which won the approbation of R. Johanan b. Zakkai, was also reflected in the words that R. Eleazar b. ‘Arach used to comfort him in his mourning. Out of empathy for his teacher and a knowledge of his world, R. Eleazar b. ‘Arach adopted a tone and content that paved the way to acceptance and consolation. Presenting parenthood as safeguarding a treasure that one has been given in trust by God, and experiencing the death of the child as returning the trust, enabled him to break through, if only partially, the wall of grief surrounding R. Johanan b. Zakkai by adding a vantage point from which he could recognize the success he had had in educating his son and the good that the son had afforded him in his lifetime. R. Johanan b. Zakkai’s reaction: “You have given comfort to me in the right way in which people console one another” attests that the humane approach of R. Eleazar b. ‘Arach made inroads into his heart and benefited him. Another narrative, showing a situation which is in a certain sense opposite to that presented in the first, is brought in the baraita in BT Mo’ed Katan 28b and tells of the bereavement of R. Ishmael:

203

‫‪Chapter Four‬‬ ‫תנו רבנן‪ :‬כשמתו בניו של רבי ישמעאל נכנסו ארבעה זקנים לנחמו‪ :‬רבי טרפון‪,‬‬ ‫ורבי יוסי הגלילי‪ ,‬ורבי אלעזר בן עזריה‪ ,‬ורבי עקיבא‪.‬‬ ‫אמר להם רבי טרפון‪“ :‬דעו שחכם גדול הוא‪ ,‬ובקי באגדות‪ ,‬אל יכנס אחד מכם‬ ‫לתוך דברי חבירו‪”.‬‬ ‫אמר רבי עקיבא‪“ :‬ואני אחרון‪”.‬‬ ‫פתח רבי ישמעאל ואמר‪“ :‬רבו עונותיו‪ ,‬תכפוהו אבליו‪ ,‬הטריח רבותיו פעם‬ ‫ראשונה ושניה‪”.‬‬ ‫נענה רבי טרפון ואמר‪’“ :‬ואחיכם כל בית ישראל יבכו את השרפה אשר שרף’‬ ‫(ויקרא י‪ ,‬ו)‪ .‬והלא דברים קל וחומר? ומה נדב ואביהוא שלא עשו אלא מצוה‬ ‫אחת‪ ,‬דכתיב ‘ויקרבו בני אהרן את הדם אליו’ (ויקרא ט‪,‬ט) כך‪ ,‬בניו של רבי‬ ‫ישמעאל — על אחת כמה וכמה!”‬ ‫נענה רבי יוסי הגלילי ואמר‪’“ :‬וספדו לו כל ישראל וקברו אתו‪ ’.‬כי זה לבדו יבא‬ ‫לירבעם אל קבר יען נמצא בו דבר טוב (מלכים א‪ ,‬יד‪ ,‬יג)‪ ,‬והלא דברים קל‬ ‫וחומר‪ :‬ומה אביה בן ירבעם שלא עשה אלא דבר אחד טוב‪ ,‬דכתיב ביה‪‘ ,‬יען‬ ‫נמצא בו דבר טוב’ — כך‪ ,‬בניו של רבי ישמעאל — על אחת כמה וכמה!”‬ ‫מאי דבר טוב? רבי זירא ורבי חיננא בר פפא; חד אמר‪ :‬שביטל משמרתו ועלה‬ ‫לרגל‪ ,‬וחד אמר‪ :‬שביטל פרדסאות שהושיב ירבעם אביו על הדרכים שלא‬ ‫יעלו ישראל לרגל‪.‬‬ ‫נענה רבי אלעזר בן עזריה ואמר‪’”:‬בשלום תמות ובמשרפות אבותיך המלכים‬ ‫הראשנים [אשר היו לפניך כן] ישרפו לך’ (ירמיה לד‪ ,‬ה)‪ .‬והלא דברים קל‬ ‫וחומר‪ :‬ומה צדקיהו מלך יהודה‪ ,‬שלא עשה אלא מצוה אחת‪ ,‬שהעלה ירמיה‬ ‫מן הטיט — כך‪ ,‬בניו של רבי ישמעאל — על אחת כמה וכמה!”‬ ‫נענה רבי עקיבא ואמר‪’“ :‬ביום ההוא יגדל המספד בירושלים כמספד הדדרמון‬ ‫בבקעת מגדון’ (זכריה יב‪ ,‬יא)‪ .‬ואמר רב יוסף‪‘ :‬אלמלא תרגומיה דהאי קרא‬ ‫לא הוה ידענא מאי קאמר‪“ :‬בעידנא ההוא יסגי מספדא בירושלים כמספדא‬ ‫דאחאב בר עמרי דקטל יתיה הדדרמון בר טברימון‪ ,‬וכמספד דיאשיה בר‬ ‫אמון דקטל יתיה פרעה חגירא [בבקעת מגידו]‪ ’”.‬והלא דברים קל וחומר‪:‬‬ ‫ומה אחאב מלך ישראל‪ ,‬שלא עשה אלא דבר אחד טוב‪ ,‬דכתיב ‘והמלך היה‬ ‫מעמד במרכבה נכח ארם’ (מלכים א‪ ,‬כב ‪,‬לה) — כך‪ ,‬בניו של רבי ישמעאל —‬ ‫על אחת כמה וכמה!”‬

‫‪Our Rabbis taught: When the sons of R. Ishmael died, four Elders went into his‬‬ ‫‪house to comfort him: R. Tarfon, R. Jose the Galilean, R. Eleazar b. Azaria,‬‬ ‫‪and R. Akiva.‬‬ ‫‪Said R. Tarfon to them: “Know ye, he is a great sage and erudite in homiletic‬‬ ‫”‪exposition, let none of you break in while another is speaking.‬‬ ‫”!‪Said R. Akiva: “And I be last‬‬ ‫‪R. Ishmael opened [the conversation] and said: “His sins were many, his‬‬ ‫‪sorrowful bereavements came in close succession; he troubled his Masters‬‬ ‫”!‪once and a second time‬‬ ‫‪R. Tarfon responded and said: “‘But your brethren, the whole house of Israel‬‬ ‫‪bewail the burning which the Lord hath kindled’ (Lev. 10:6). Is not this‬‬ ‫‪universal sorrow more due now [even than there]? Why, if Nadav and‬‬

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Grief over the Death of Children

Avihu who had performed but one office — as it is written: ‘And the sons of Aaron presented the blood unto him’ (Lev. 9:9). . . were thus [universally mourned]— how much more due to the sons of R. Ishmael!” R. Jose the Galilean then responded and said: “It is written: And all Israel shall make lamentation for him and bury him. Is not more due now? Why, if Aviyah Jeroboam’s son who had done but one good thing — as it is written: ‘Because in him there is found some good thing towards the Lord God of Israel’ (I Kings 14:13) — was mourned in such a universal manner, how much more is due to the sons of Ishmael!” What was that ‘good thing’? R. Zeira and R. Hanina b. Papa [gave different explanations]: one saying that he left his charge [post] and went on a festive pilgrimage [to Jerusalem]; the other saying that he removed the military guards that his father had posted on the roads to prevent the Israelites from going on a pilgrimage [to Jerusalem]. R. Eleazar b. Azaria then responded and said: “’Thou shalt die in peace and with the burning of thy fathers, the former kings that were before thee, so shall they make a burning for thee’ (Jer. 34:5). Is not more due now? Why, if Zedekiah King of Judah who had performed but one office in having had Jeremiah lifted from the mire was to be mourned thus, how much more is due to the sons of Ishmael!” R. Akiva then responded and said: “‘In that day there shall be a great mourning in Jerusalem, as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon’ (Zech. 12:11). [On this] R. Joseph said, ‘Had we not the [Aramaic Targum] rendering of that text, I would not have known what it said there: “In that time the mourning at Jerusalem will be as great as the lament over Ahab son of Omri whom Hadadrimmon son of Tabrimmon had slain, and as the lament over Josiah son of Amon whom Pharaoh the Lame [Necho] had slain in the valley of Megiddon’.” Is not more due now? Why, if Ahab King of Israel who had done but one good thing—as it is written: And the king was stayed up in his chariot against the Arameans [and died at even] (I Kings 22:35)—was lamented thus how much more is due to the sons of Ishmael!”

The beginning of the narrative is the exposition of an event: “When the sons of R. Ishmael died, four Elders went into his house to comfort him.” A comparison of this introduction with that of the previous narrative highlights a significant difference between them. R. Johanan b. Zakkai lost one son, while it states here “when the sons of R. Ishmael died” and later it becomes clear that there were at least two sons. Furthermore, those who came to comfort R. Johanan b. Zakkai, five in number, were disciples whereas those who came to comfort R. Ishmael, four in number, were ‘elders.’

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The differences in these two introductions are significant for the conceptual content of the narrative. The fact that R. Johanan b. Zakkai’s comforters were disciples determined both the style of their words “with your permission, may I say something before you?” and their content: comparing his grief to that of Biblical figures. Both of these factors—style and content—not only failed to comfort R. Johanan b. Zakkai, but instead added to his grief, unlike the words of the fifth disciple, R. Eleazar b. ‘Arach, whose comfort was totally different than theirs. R. Ishmael’s grief was greater than that of R. Johanan b. Zakkai, and his comforters were not his disciples but rather his peers, ‘the Elders.’ This friendship was thus the basis for the relationship of the leaders toward him, as becomes clear from the preparatory meeting that was held before they entered: R. Tarfon said to them,19 “Know ye, he is a great sage and erudite in homiletic exposition, let none of you break in while another is speaking. R. Akiva said, And I be last.” The Maharsha explained that R. Tarfon warned his friends about speaking in a way that resembled a give-and-take, because of the concern that R. Ishamel, who was a great sage and erudite in homiletic exposition, would also be drawn into the discussion, which is forbidden during the mourning period. In any case, from the first part of his explanation, it seems that R. Tarfon wanted to avoid a scholastic-style exchange. The Maharsha’s halachic explanation of R. Tarfon’s words may be supplemented by an emotional explanation, that R. Tarfon wished to prevent the comforters from being drawn into a cold, scholarly discourse, and he warned them 19

Z. Frankel, The Methods of the Mishnah, adapted and revised by Rabbi Isaac Nussenboim, Tel Aviv 1959, p. 111 ( Hebrew), concluded from this source that R. Tarfon was the leader of the speakers, and from additional baraitot that R. Tarfon spoke before R. Joshua: one in BT Baba Kama 101a, that tells of the visit by sages to R. Eliezer when he was ill and died and the other in BT Gittin 83a where the elders came together after the death of R. Eliezer to confute his words, because already during the lifetime of R. Joshua, R. Tarfon was considered one of the greatest sages, but he did not join with Bet Hillel as long as Bet Shammai was still in existence.

Grief over the Death of Children

that the things they might say in such a discourse were already known to R. Ishmael who was a great and erudite sage, and would not help allay his grief.20 On the emotional plane one can also understand the words of R. Akiva, “And I be last,” which according to the Maharsha were said “out of humility,” namely, from an attitude of feeling toward R. Ishmael and not from a scholastic position. The body of the narrative begins with the words of R. Ishmael, which are a kind of metric, rhymed lamentation: ,‫ תכפוהו אבליו‬,‫רבו עונותיו‬ ‫הטריח רבותיו פעם ראשונה ושניה‬

His sins were many, his sorrowful bereavements came in close succession; he troubled his Masters once and a second time!

In this lamentation, R. Ishmael created a connection between the sins he associated with himself and the deaths of his sons, thus blaming himself for their deaths. Furthermore, he also blamed himself for causing inconvenience to the sages who came to console him “once and a second time.”21 The Maharsha explained the paragraph to mean that R. Ishmael was the one who began the conversation, according to the halacha, “Comforters are not permitted to say anything until the mourner initiates conversation,”22 and he concluded that it might be for this reason that they did not come to comfort him the first time, and that is why he said that the frequency of his bereavements caused them trouble. However, these conclusions do not correspond to what R. Ishmael said, “he 20

Another explanation was adopted by Y. Fraenkel, Methods of the Aggadah, p. 42, who wrote “R. Tarfon warns his friends before they came to the mourner’s house that R. Ishmael was a sage and erudite in the homiletic parables, and therefore they must carefully prepare their speeches of consolation.” 21 From these words, one may understand that two sons of R. Ishamel had died. 22 It may be possible to use this to explain that the disciples of R. Johanan b. Zakkai who asked “Rabbi, with your permission, may I say something before you?” forced him to breach his silence and answer them, thus enabling them to speak and give comfort.

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troubled his masters once and a second time” which means that the elders had already come to comfort him on the death of his first son. It would be correct to see R. Ishmael’s words as a heartfelt manifestation of the feelings of grief and loss that inundated him. In this respect, too, the narrative here is different than the account of the death of R. Johanan b. Zakkai’s son. R. Johanan b. Zakkai retreated into silence and perhaps may have thus contributed to his disciples’ detached style of discourse. R. Ishmael was not silent but he also did not complain or protest to God. By blaming himself at that difficult time, he revealed an extraordinarily high degree of moral judgment. Moreover, while still overwhelmed by his double grief, he found room in his soul to regret that he had troubled the elders, and he even honored them with the title ‘masters,’ although apart from R. Tarfon, there was none more senior than him. In the midst of all of this, he also connected the inconvenience to the sages to his own sins, which he believed had caused the tragedy, and in turn, the need for the sages to come to comfort him twice. The sages’ speeches of consolation are a response to R. Ishamel’s last words and are arranged in the order of the Books of the Scripture from whence the quotes are taken. As Rabbi Jacob Reischer wrote in Ein Ya’akov:23 “R. Ishmael attributed the fault to himself, that his sins had caused other sins, requiring the rabbis to come to comfort him and eulogize his sons. They replied that he had not troubled them but rather they had come to pay respects to his sons and each one brought proof for his words, beginning with the Torah, First Prophets, Jeremiah, and Later Prophets, namely Zechariah.” The first of the comforters was R. Tarfon, as mentioned, who warned the sages before they went in that R. Ishmael was a great scholar and erudite and that none should interrupt the other’s words. R. Tarfon quoted a verse from Leviticus which deals with the people of Israel mourning over the death of Aaron’s sons Nadav and Avihu: 23

Ein Ya’akov on Mo’ed Katan, pisqa 24.

Grief over the Death of Children ‫אׁשיכֶ ם ַאל ִּת ְפ ָרעּו ִּובגְ ֵדיכֶ ם‬ ֵ ‫ֹאמר מ ֶֹׁשה ֶאל ַא ֲהרֹן ּולְ ֶאלְ ָעזָ ר ּולְ ִא ָית ָמר ָּבנָ יו ָ‘ר‬ ֶ ‫“וַ ּי‬ ‫ֹלא ִת ְפרֹמּו וְ ֹלא ָת ֻמתּו וְ ַעל ּכָ ל ָה ֵע ָדה י ְִקצֹף וַ ֲא ֵחיכֶ ם ּכָ ל ֵּבית י ְִׂש ָר ֵאל י ְִבּכּו ֶאת‬ .)‫ו‬:‫’”(ויקרא י‬.’‫ַה ְּשׂ ֵר ָפה ֲא ֶׁשר ָׂש ַרף ה‬

“And Moses said unto Aaron, and unto Eleazar and unto Itamar, his sons: ‘Let not the hair of your heads go loose, neither rend your clothes, that ye die not, and that He be not wroth with all the congregation; but let your brethren, the whole house of Israel, bewail the burning which the Lord hath kindled’” (Lev. 10:6).

According to the verse, Aaron and his remaining sons were commanded to refrain from mourning over Nadav and Avihu, who were consumed by fire sent by God for offering strange fire before God.24 On the other hand, all of Israel was commanded to weep and mourn over them. The comparison of Aaron the Kohen’s mourning to that of R. Ishmael, who was also a Kohen, contains two levels of consolation. The first level is in the verse itself that tells of the Divine command to “the whole house of Israel” to mourn the death of the sons of Aaron. R. Ishmael was supposed to deduce from that verse something about himself and to reconsider the blame he attributed to himself in the last part of his words—that he had troubled the sages with his mourning. The second level appears in the words of R. Tarfon regarding the verse: “But let your brethren, the whole house of Israel, bewail the burning which the Lord hath kindled. Is not this universal sorrow more due now [even than there]?” This relates to the blame that R. Ishmael directed against himself in the first part of his words, saying that it was his sins that brought about his sons’ death. By making a comparison between the sons of the righteous Aaron who died for their own sin, R. Tarfon was sending a clear message—the death of sons is caused by their own sins. However, the knowledge that the sons have sinned cannot comfort 24

‫”וַ ּי ְִקחּו ְבנֵ י ַא ֲהרֹן נָ ָדב וַ ֲא ִביהּוא ִאיׁש ַמ ְח ָּתתֹו וַ ּי ְִּתנּו ָב ֵהן ֵאׁש וַ ּי ִָׂשימּו ָעלֶ ָיה ְקט ֶֹרת וַ ּי ְַק ִרבּו‬ ‫אֹותם וַ ּי ָֻמתּו‬ ָ ‫ וַ ֵּת ֵצא ֵאׁש ִמּלִ ְפנֵ י ְיקֹוָ ק וַ ּתֹאכַ ל‬:‫לִ ְפנֵ י ְיקֹוָ ק ֵאׁש זָ ָרה ֲא ֶׁשר ֹלא ִצּוָה א ָֹתם‬ .)‫ב‬-‫ א‬:’‫לִ ְפנֵ י ה’” (ויקרא י‬ “And Nadav and Avihu, the sons of Aaron, took each of them his censer, and put fire in it, and laid incense thereon, and offered strange fire before the Lord, which He commanded them not. And a fire went forth from the Lord, and devoured them, and they died before the Lord” (Lev. 10: 1-2).

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a grieving father. Therefore, he brought the inference from minor to major (the kal v’homer argument) that explains the comparison with Aaron’s sons and shows that even though R. Ishmael’s sons might have died for committing a sin, there is no doubt that in their lifetime they did many mitzvot. The combination of this idea with the inference from minor to major whereby the dead sons were worthy of great respect afforded R. Ishmael a double consolation— it cancelled the guilt he had been feeling and minimized the guilt of the sons to whom he attributed good deeds. The second comforter was R. Jose the Galilean who connected his words of consolation with the case of Jeroboam ben Nevat who lost his son Aviyah. R. Jose the Galilean focused on a comparison between the sons and ignored a possible comparison between the fathers, R. Ishmael and Jeroboam. Such a comparison would have led to a cruel conclusion concerning R. Ishamel, because, A. Jeroboam is represented in the text as an evil man, and B. the text shows that Aviyah died because of his father Jeroboam’s wrong-doing.25 25

I Kings 14

,‫קֹול ַרגְ לֶ ָיה‬-‫ו  וַ י ְִהי כִ ְׁשמ ַֹע ֲא ִחּיָהּו ֶאת‬ ‫ ּב ִֹאי ֵא ֶׁשת‬,‫ֹאמר‬ ֶ ‫ וַ ּי‬,‫ָּב ָאה ַב ֶּפ ַתח‬ ,‫ ַא ְּת ִמ ְתנַ ּכֵ ָרה‬,‫י ָָר ְב ָעם; לָ ָּמה ּזֶ ה‬ .‫לּוח ֵאלַ יְִך ָק ָׁשה‬ ַ ‫ ָׁש‬,‫וְ ָאנֹכִ י‬

6 And it was so, when Ahiyah heard the sound of her feet, as she came in at the door, that he said: ‘Come in, thou wife of Jeroboam; why feignest thou thyself to be another? for I am sent to thee with heavy tidings.

‫א ַמר יְהוָ ה‬-‫ֹה‬ ָ ‫ ּכ‬,‫ז  לְ כִ י ִא ְמ ִרי לְ י ָָר ְב ָעם‬ ,‫ י ַַען ֲא ֶׁשר ֲה ִרמ ִֹתיָך‬,‫ֹלהי י ְִׂש ָר ֵאל‬ ֵ ‫ֱא‬ ‫ ַעל ַע ִּמי‬,‫ִמּתֹוְך ָה ָעם; וָ ֶא ֶּתנְ ָך נָ גִ יד‬ .‫י ְִׂש ָר ֵאל‬

7 Go, tell Jeroboam: Thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel: Forasmuch as I exalted thee from among the people, and made thee prince over My people Israel,

,‫ה ַּמ ְמלָ כָ ה ִמ ֵּבית ָּדוִ ד‬-‫ת‬ ַ ‫ח  וָ ֶא ְק ַרע ֶא‬ ,‫ִית ּכְ ַע ְב ִּדי ָדוִ ד‬ ָ ‫הי‬-‫ֹלא‬ ָ ְ‫וָ ֶא ְּתנֶ ָה לָ ְך; ו‬ ‫הלַ ְך‬-‫ר‬ ָ ‫ֲא ֶׁשר ָׁש ַמר ִמ ְצו‍ ַֹתי וַ ֲא ֶׁש‬ ‫ ַרק ַהּי ָָׁשר‬,‫ לַ ֲעׂשֹות‬,‫לְ ָבבֹו‬-‫ַא ֲח ַרי ְּבכָ ל‬ .‫ְּב ֵעינָ י‬

8 and rent the kingdom away from the house of David, and gave it thee; and yet thou hast not been as My servant David, who kept My commandments, and who followed Me with all his heart, to do that only which was right in Mine eyes;

‫היּו‬-‫ר‬ ָ ‫ ִמּכֹל ֲא ֶׁש‬,‫ט  וַ ָּת ַרע לַ ֲעׂשֹות‬ ‫ֹלהים‬ ִ ‫ּלְ ָך ֱא‬-‫לְ ָפנֶ יָך; וַ ֵּתלֶ ְך וַ ַּת ֲע ֶׂשה‬ ‫ וְ א ִֹתי‬,‫ לְ ַהכְ ִע ֵיסנִ י‬,‫ּומ ֵּסכֹות‬ ַ ‫ֲא ֵח ִרים‬ .‫ ַא ֲח ֵרי גַ ּוֶָך‬,‫ִה ְׁשלַ כְ ָּת‬

9 but hast done evil above all that were before thee, and hast gone and made thee other gods, and molten images, to provoke Me, and hast cast Me behind thy back;

Grief over the Death of Children

It seems that R. Jose chose the example of Jeroboam and Aviyah precisely in order to compare R. Ishmael’s case to two components that appear in it and which make it distinctive: A. The concern and compassion of the father, Jeroboam, toward his ailing son; B. The elements which single out Aviyah as opposed to other members of his family,26 the extraordinary circumstances of his burial and the fact that Scripture attributed it to “some good thing toward the God of Israel” that was found in him.27

‫ּבית‬-‫ל‬ ֵ ‫ ִהנְ נִ י ֵמ ִביא ָר ָעה ֶא‬,‫י  לָ כֵ ן‬ ‫ וְ ִהכְ ַר ִּתי לְ י ָָר ְב ָעם ַמ ְׁש ִּתין‬,‫י ָָר ְב ָעם‬ ;‫ ָעצּור וְ ָעזּוב ְּבי ְִׂש ָר ֵאל‬,‫ְּב ִקיר‬ ‫ ּכַ ֲא ֶׁשר‬,‫י ָָר ְב ָעם‬-‫ִּוב ַע ְר ִּתי ַא ֲח ֵרי ֵבית‬ .‫ּתּמֹו‬-‫ד‬ ֻ ‫י ְַב ֵער ַהּגָ לָ ל ַע‬

10 therefore, behold, I will bring evil upon the house of Jeroboam, and will cut off from Jeroboam every man-child, and him that is shut up and him that is left at large in Israel, and will utterly sweep away the house of Jeroboam, as a man sweepeth away dung, till it be all gone.

‫ יֹאכְ לּו‬,‫יא   ַה ֵּמת לְ י ָָר ְב ָעם ָּב ִעיר‬ ‫ יֹאכְ לּו עֹוף‬,‫ וְ ַה ֵּמת ַּב ָּשׂ ֶדה‬,‫ַהּכְ לָ ִבים‬ .‫ ִּד ֵּבר‬,‫ ּכִ י יְהוָ ה‬:‫ַה ָּשׁ ָמיִם‬

11 Him that dieth of Jeroboam in the city shall the dogs eat; and him that dieth in the field shall the fowls of the air eat; for the LORD hath spoken it.

‫ לְ כִ י לְ ֵב ֵיתְך; ְּבב ָֹאה‬,‫קּומי‬ ִ ‫יב  וְ ַא ְּת‬ .‫ּומת ַהּיָלֶ ד‬ ֵ ,‫ַרגְ לַ יְִך ָה ִע ָירה‬

12 Arise thou therefore, get thee to thy house; and when thy feet enter into the city, the child shall die.

‫ וְ ָק ְברּו‬,‫י ְִׂש ָר ֵאל‬-‫לֹו כָ ל‬-‫יג  וְ ָס ְפדּו‬ ‫ ָיבֹא לְ י ָָר ְב ָעם‬,‫זֶ ה לְ ַבּדֹו‬-‫ּכִ י‬--‫אֹתֹו‬ ,‫בֹו ָּד ָבר טֹוב‬-‫ י ַַען נִ ְמ ָצא‬:‫ק ֶבר‬-‫ל‬ ָ ‫ֶא‬ ‫ּב ֵבית‬--‫ל‬ ֵ ‫יְהוָ ה ֱא‬-‫ֶאל‬ ְ ‫ֹלהי י ְִׂש ָר ֵא‬ .‫י ָָר ְב ָעם‬

13 And all Israel shall make lamentation for him, and bury him; for he only of Jeroboam shall come to the grave; because in him there is found some good thing toward the LORD, the God of Israel, in the house of Jeroboam.

26

Ahiyah the Prophet had uttered a curse against the family of Jeroboam: “Him that dieth of Jeroboam in the city shall the dogs eat; and him that dieth in the field shall the fowls of the air eat; for the Lord hath spoken it” (I Kings 14:11). 27 At this point the gemara interrupts the baraita in order to bring two sayings of Amoraim which explain what is the one good thing found in Aviyah: “R. Zeira and R. Hanina b. Papa [gave different explanations]: one saying that he left his charge [post] and went on a festive pilgrimage [to Jerusalem]; the other saying that he removed the military guards that his father had posted on the roads to prevent the Israelites from going on a pilgrimage [to Jerusalem].”

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The consolation in the words of R. Jose is missing the component that cancels out R. Ishmael’s self-accusation that his sons had died for their father’s sins. Instead it clears R. Ishmael of his sense of blame for troubling the sages, and this emerges from a comparison of the inconvenience in his mourning period to the eulogy and mourning that “all Israel” observed after the death of Aviyah. The comparison is made more powerful by the fact that Aviyah’s burial was exceptional for his family due to the curse that hung over Jeroboam’s family, “Him that dieth of Jeroboam in the city shall the dogs eat; and him that dieth in the field shall the fowls of the air eat” (II Kings 14:11). Furthermore, the most powerful part of R. Jose’s consolation was eliminating the blame from R. Ishmael’s sons and portraying them as righteous men, using the inference from minor to major [kal v’homer] principle applied to Aviyah who had done one good thing. Even though R. Ishmael was also left with an unanswered theological question as to the reason for his sons’ deaths, he could comfort himself with the knowledge that they had not sinned in their lifetime. The third comforter, R. Eleazar b. Azariya, adopted a different tactic of consolation than his predecessors; he interpreted verses which related to the death of Zedekiah and had no connection to father-son relationships. In comparing the death of R. Ishmael’s sons to the ultimate fate of Zedekiah, R. Eleazar b. Azariya ignored a possible yet most bitter association—comparing it to that of the death of Zedekiah’s son: “And his sons they slaughtered before his eyes.” He predicated his consolation on the story of the death of Zedekiah himself which Jeremiah had prophesied to him: “Thus says the Lord of thee, Thou shalt not die by the sword; but thou shalt die in peace and with the burnings of thy fathers, the former kings which were before thee, shall they make a burning for thee, and they will lament thee saying, Ah master!” (Jer. 34: 4-5). According to Jeremiah’s prophecy, Zedekiah‘s death was different than that of the leaders of Judea; to them he prophesied that they would be handed over to their enemies and into the hand of them that seek their life, “their dead bodies shall be food to the birds of the heaven and to the beasts of the

Grief over the Death of Children

earth.”28 R. Eleazar b. Azariya explained that this prophecy was said to Zedekiah because of one good deed that he had done—raising Jeremiah from the pit where the princes had cast him (Jer. 38:10-13), and based on this event, the inference from minor to major principle is applied to R. Ishmael’s sons. This consolation does not contain the element that purges R. Ishmael of self-blame in feeling that it was his sins which caused the death of his sons; on the contrary, it allows the possibility of associating their deaths with the terrible deaths of Zedekiah’s sons for the father’s transgressions. Likewise, it does not absolve R. Ishmael of his sense of guilt at having inconvenienced the sages because the verses describe the burning and eulogy of Zedekiah using the words “Ah, master” which was the customary honorific for a king who has died, but there is no report of the participation by “the whole house of Israel” as was written of the sons of Aaron, or by “all Israel” as for Aviyah son of Jeroboam, and we do not know the identity or number of people who carried out the burning and eulogy. It then seems that the strongest element of R. Jose the Galilean’s consolation was the sole element of R. Eleazar b. Azariya’s consolation, which only dealt with the blamelessness of the sons. The words of the comforters may be seen as arranged in descending order: the consolation offered by the first comforter, R. Tarfon, is the most comprehensive and responds to all of the elements in R. Ishmael’s lamentation “His sins were many, his sorrowful bereavements came in close succession; he troubled his Masters once and a second time!” The consolation of the second speaker, R. Jose the Galilean, answers two of the three components in the lamentation: “his sorrowful bereavements came in close succession; he troubled his Masters once and a second time!” The consolation offered by the third speaker, R. Eleazar b. Azariya, responds to only one component: “his sorrowful bereavements came in close succession.” The consolation given by the last speaker, R. Akiva, reverts to the first in responding to all elements of the lamentation, and 28

It must be noted that this prophecy was not fulfilled, and this is discussed in the sugiya in the gemara.

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the way it is understood by the Amora R. Joseph shows it to be the most compelling of all the attempts to comfort, because according to his explanation, it conveys the message using two extreme examples. R. Akiva interprets the verse “In that day there shall be a great mourning in Jerusalem, as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon” (Zech. 12:11). According to R. Joseph’s interpretation, R. Akiva’s homily was addressed to two occasions of mourning that were held in Jerusalem, one for Ahab son of Omri who was killed by Hadadrimmon, and the other for Josiah son of Amon who was killed by Pharoh Neco in the valley of Megiddo. However, this interpretation, which was brought between the two parts of R. Akiva’s homily, does not fit, because R. Akiva himself interpreted it to apply only to the verse about Ahab, not to Ahab and Josiah both. However, the gemara saw fit to bring it and even deals later on with the contradiction between the account in Kings of Josiah’s death (I Kings 20:22) and the story of his death in Chronicles (II Chron. 35).29 In any case, according to the homily, Ahab himself merited a proper burial and extensive eulogy for the one good thing that he had done—that he stood up in his chariot when he confronted Aram in battle (I Kings 22:35).30 Bringing Ahab as an example is not a reference to father-son relations, because both the father, Omri, and the son, Ahab, were wicked. Therefore R. Ishamael had no reason to conclude there was any parallel to himself and to blame himself that his sons had died for their father’s sins. In contrast, R. Ishmael could have found comfort that Ahab, who was a sinner and the son of a sinner, merited a great eulogy for 29

Without R. Joseph’s explanation, it is doubtful whether one could understand how R. Akiva connected the verse in Zecharia with Ahab. R. Joseph himself preceded his explanation with the words: “R. Joseph said, Had we not the [Aramaic Targum] rendering of that text, I would not have known what it said there.” 30 Beitner, Conflict, p. 132 comments that one must note that R. Akiva did not use the theme that the text itself called upon, namely that after Elijah’s wrathful prophecy, Ahab submitted to God and the punitive decree was postponed to his son’s reign. In my opinion, R. Akiva did not use this idea because he wanted to attribute a genuinely good deed to Ahab, whereas here the subject is penitence rather than an actual deed.

Grief over the Death of Children

the one good deed that he did do. From this he could deduce by the inference from minor to major that his own sons who had not sinned like the evil Ahab were certainly deserving of a great eulogy and that the sages were obligated to trouble themselves on their behalf. According to the interpretation given by R. Joseph, R. Akiva linked the example of Josiah to that of Ahab, because Josiah also merited a great funeral. Linking the righteous Josiah who did only good and Ahab, the evildoer king, is based on the similarity between the accounts of their death (Ahab—Kings 22: 30-36; Josiah—II Chron. 35: 22-24). For our purposes, this linkage might offer conclusive answers to all of the components of R. Ishamel’s lamentation by proving that both Ahab, who had done one good deed, and Josiah, who had done many good deeds, were worthy of extensive mourning. More important, this linkage categorically rejects the attribution of the death of sons to the sins of the father or to their own sins, and shows that there was no connection between the sins of the fathers—Omri or Amon—and the death of their sons, just as there is no connection between the sins of the sons themselves (Ahab) or their righteousness ( Josiah) and their death. Like all the homiletic interpretations that preceded it, even that of R. Akiva, it is not a seamless consolation since it does not supply an answer to the theological problem that R. Ishmael faced and it does not explain the deaths of his sons. However, it does provide immediate, momentary comfort because it emphatically rejects the connection between his sins or that of his sons and their deaths. Another story of consolation is brought in the baraita cited in BT Mo’ed Katan 21b. The baraita itself is brought as a contradiction to another baraita that states: “But in the first three days of mourning, it is forbidden to offer a greeting. From the third to the seventh day, he may respond but not offer greeting, from the seventh and afterwards, he offers and responds as usual.” The baraita that contradicts this one brings a story that when R. Akiva was in mourning, he greeted the sages who came to comfort him. The contradiction is solved with the explanation that “the honor of the public is different”; in other words, R. Akiva was permitted to offer greetings to the sages

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because they were many, and the prohibition is set aside because of the honor due to the public. Here is the passage with the baraita, the contradictory baraita, and the explanation: ‫ משלשה ועד‬,‫ שלשה ימים הראשונים — אסור בשאילת שלום‬,‫ “אבל‬:‫תנו רבנן‬ ”.‫ מכאן ואילך — שואל ומשיב כדרכו‬,‫שבעה — משיב ואינו שואל‬ ?‫שלשה ימים הראשונים אסור בשאילת שלום‬ ‫ נכנסו כל ישראל והספידום הספד‬,‫ “מעשה ומתו בניו של רבי עקיבא‬:‫והתניא‬ ‫ ‘אחינו בית‬:‫ בשעת פטירתן עמד רבי עקיבא על ספסל גדול ואמר‬.‫גדול‬ .‫ישראל שמעו! אפילו שני בנים חתנים — מנוחם הוא בשביל כבוד שעשיתם‬ ‫ אלא כך אמרתם )תהלים‬.‫ואם בשביל עקיבא באתם — הרי כמה עקיבא בשוק‬ ”.’‫ לכו לבתיכם לשלום‬,‫ל”ז( “תורת אלהיו בלבו” וכל שכן ששכרכם כפול‬ .‫כבוד רבים שאני‬

Our Rabbis taught: “A mourner is forbidden during the first three days to give greeting [of peace]; after three and to seven [days], he responds but does not give greeting [of peace]; thereafter he gives greeting [of peace] and responds in his usual manner.” [It is stated above] Forbidden during the first three days to give greeting of peace? But surely it was taught: “It happened, when [two] sons of R. Akiba [bridegrooms], died, all Israel entered and made a great lament for them, and as the people were about to depart, R. Akiva stood on a large bench and addressed them: ‘Our brethren, the House of Israel, hear ye! Even though these two sons were ‘bridegrooms,’ I am consoled on account of the honor you have done [them]. And even though you have come on account of Akiva, there is many an Akiva! But this is what you said [to yourselves]: “The law of God is in his heart, [his footsteps will not falter].” All the more then, twofold be your reward: Go home unto peace!’”— Deference Towards the Public is a Different Matter.

The story begins by noting the death of R. Akiva’s sons and the great funeral held for them, in which “all Israel” participated. This narrative might seem to be “corresponding” with the narrative of R. Ishmael cited previously, where R. Akiva’s words play a distinctive role in the introduction and conclusion. In the opening he humbly requests to be the last of the speakers, and at the end, he comforts R. Ishamael in a different way than his predecessors had (see above). Like R. Ishmael, R, Akiva also lost two sons, and like the sons of Aaron where the whole house of Israel was commanded to mourn them, as R. Tarfon mentioned in the beginning of the narrative, here too “all Israel” came to lament the sons of R. Akiva.

Grief over the Death of Children

The similarity between our narrative and the story of R. Ishmael may be reduced to these things. Because unlike in the previous narrative, when R. Ishamel blamed himself for the deaths of his sons, R. Akiva did not refer at all to the deaths of the sons, and most of his speech consisted of accepting consolation and giving thanks to his comforters for the honor that they had showed his teaching. In the central scene of the narrative, which describes the time “when the people were about to depart,” R. Akiva stood on a large bench and addressed the comforters with the words “Our brethren, the House of Israel, hear ye!” N. Rubin brought several examples of eulogies which began with the words “Our brethren, the House of Israel, hear ye!” and concluded that this style of address apparently was traditionally used in eulogies. As he wrote: “the eulogizers use linguistic terms: “our brethren”—the concept of family—and “House of Israel”—the concept of an ethnic group or extended family. The use of these phrases expresses the sense of solidarity and affiliation at times of crisis.”31 It seems to me that R. Akiva’s address to the comforters should be seen as an expression of intimacy which he is articulating at the moment of their departure, first by addressing them as “Our brethren, the House of Israel, hear ye!” and later with the blessing “Go home unto peace.”32 Between these two ends appear words that come from the heart and attest to the success of the comforters in three stages: A. Optimal evaluation of the consolation (to the point where even if his sons died when they were bridegrooms, he still would be comforted). B. The reason for the success of the consolation—the honor paid to his teaching by the comforters and their faith in his righteousness (based on the verse in Psalms 37:31). C. The result for the comforters: promise of a double reward. 31

N. Rubin, The End of Life, p. 207, and see there references to the eulogies themselves. 32 This is understood differently by A. Beitner, Conflict, pp. 164-168, which tries to see irony in R. Akiva’s words, and in his ending, “Go home unto peace” a suppression of his emotional turbulence and the theological dilemmas which were not resolved. Despite the apt connotations that he proposes, I was not convinced that this is an ironic narrative illustrating a theological problem. In my opinion, this is an emotionally charged description of a dramatic event and not an engagement with theological questions.

217

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The parallel between the first stage, which describes the magnitude of comfort with the words “Even though these two sons were bridegrooms,” and the last stage, “All the more then, two-fold be your reward” proves, to my mind, that the conceptual core of this narrative is the significance of the eulogy for the mourner. The two previous narratives showed personal and individual forms of consolation in which the comforters “came in” in order to offer consolation, while this narrative shows a different consolation: a mourning ceremony is held with public eulogizing, open to the public. N. Rubin noted four parameters of meaning in the eulogy for the mourners and its contribution to consoling them: “First, the eulogy provides consolation to the mourner. The eulogizer rationalizes death using accepted linguistic patterns and euphuisms which make it easier for the mourner to take in what is being said and to arrive at a realistic perception of death… Secondly, the eulogy presents the society’s highest values and emphasizes the fidelity of the deceased to those values and the norms that are derived from them… Third, the eulogy offers compensation for the feelings of guilt harbored by the mourners toward the deceased … And finally, for the community, the eulogy places an emphasis on justifying God’s judgment and also showing the way to penitence and good deeds. This is done by portraying the deceased as an exemplary figure and stressing the loss to the community caused by his demise.”33 The narrative before us does not elaborate on the contents of the “great eulogy” that “all of Israel” made for the sons of R. Akiva. However, from his words stating that they came to pay respect to his teaching and from the verse that he chose to quote as expressing the eulogizers’ thoughts, “The law of God is in his heart, his footsteps will not falter,” it emerges that the eulogy portrayed R. Akiva, and perhaps his sons, too, as exemplary figures and praised their fidelity to the supreme values of society—Torah study and observance of the commandments — and this helped the bereaved father find consolation for the death of his sons. 33

N. Rubin, End of Life, pp. 205-206.

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‫‪Grief over the Death of Children‬‬

‫‪Mishnah Semachot 8:13 brings a story of the death of R. Akiva’s‬‬ ‫‪son which seems like a development and expansion of the story‬‬ ‫‪in Mo’ed Katan 21b. It is possible that the version in Semachot was‬‬ ‫‪fashioned on the basis of two different narrative traditions. In any‬‬ ‫‪case, it appears that part of it was based on the same narrative‬‬ ‫‪tradition that appears in Mo’ed Katan.‬‬ ‫אין מבטלין תלמוד תורה למת עד שתצא נשמתו‪ .‬וכשהיה שמעון בנו של רבי‬ ‫עקיבא חולה‪ ,‬לא ביטל מבית המדרש שלו‪ ,‬אלא פיקדו ביד שלוחין‪ .‬בא‬ ‫הראשון ואמר לו נטען‪.‬‬ ‫אמר להם‪“ :‬שאלו‪”.‬‬ ‫בא השני ואמר לו “הכביד‪ ”.‬החזירן לתלמוד תורה‪.‬‬ ‫בא השלישי ואמר לו “גוסס‪”.‬‬ ‫אמר להם‪ ”:‬שאלו‪”.‬‬ ‫בא הרביעי ואמר לו “השלים‪”.‬‬ ‫עמד וחלץ את תפיליו וקרע את בגדיו‪ ,‬ואמר להם “אחינו ישראל שמעו‪ ,‬עד כאן‬ ‫היינו חייבין בתלמוד תורה‪ ,‬מכאן ואילך אני ואתם חייבין בכבודו של מת‪”.‬‬ ‫נתקבצו קהל גדול לכבוד בנו של רבי עקיבא‪ ,‬אמר להם‪“ :‬הוציאו לי ספסל מן‬ ‫הקברות‪”.‬‬ ‫הוציאו לו ספסל מן הקברות וישב עליו ודרש ואמר‪“ ,‬אחינו ישראל שמעו‪ ,‬לא‬ ‫שאני חכם‪,‬יש כאן חכמים ממני‪ ,‬ולא שאני עשיר‪ ,‬יש כאן עשירים ממני‪ .‬אנשי‬ ‫דרום מכירין את רבי עקיבא‪ ,‬אנשי גליל מאין מכירין? האנשים מכירין את‬ ‫רבי עקיבא‪ ,‬הנשים והטף מאין?‬ ‫“אלא יודע אני ששכרכם מרובה‪ ,‬שלא נצטערתם ובאתם אלא לכבוד תורה‬ ‫ולשם מצוה‪ .‬מנוחם אני‪ ,‬אילו היו לי שבעה בנים וקברתים כשמת בני‪,‬‬ ‫ולא שאדם רוצה לקבור את בניו‪ ,‬אלא יודע אני שבני בן העולם הבא הוא‪,‬‬ ‫שזיכה את הרבים‪ ,‬וכל המזכה את הרבים אין חטא בא על ידו‪ ,‬וכל המחטיא‬ ‫את הרבים אין מספיקין בידו לעשות תשובה‪ ,‬משה זכה וזיכה את הרבים‪,‬‬ ‫לפיכך זכות הרבים תלויה בו‪ ,‬שנאמר (דברים לג‪:‬כב) ‘צדקת ה’ עשה‬ ‫ומשפטיו עם ישראל‪ ’.‬ירבעם חטא והחטיא את הרבים‪ ,‬לפיכך חטא הרבים‬ ‫תלוי בו‪,‬שנאמר ‘על חטאת ירבעם אשר חטא ואשר החטיא את ישראל’‬ ‫(מלכים א’‪,‬טו‪:‬כח)‪”.‬‬

‫‪The study of Torah is not to be interrupted out of respect for a dying man until‬‬ ‫‪his soul departs. Now when Simeon the son of R. Akiva was sick, his father‬‬ ‫‪did not neglect his academy but arranged for messengers to stand by: the‬‬ ‫”‪first came and said, “He is very ill.‬‬ ‫‪“Carry on,” said R. Akiva to his pupils.‬‬ ‫‪The second came and said, “He is getting worse.” He had them resume their‬‬ ‫‪studies.‬‬ ‫”‪The third came and said, “He is dying.‬‬ ‫”!‪“Carry on‬‬ ‫”‪The fourth came and said, “He is gone.‬‬

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Whereupon R. Akiva arose, removed his tefillin and rent his garments, and said to them, “O Israel, our brethren, listen! Up until now we were obligated to study. From this moment on, you and I are obligated to honor the dead.” A large gathering assembled to honor the son of R. Akiva. He said to them, “Prepare a bench for me at the cemetery.” They brought out a bench at the cemetery upon which he sat and preached. “O Israel, our brethren, listen! It is not that I am wise. There are those here who are wiser than I. It is not that I am rich. There are those here who are richer than I. The people of the South know Akiva. How do the people of the Galilee know him? The men know Akiva. How do the woman and children know him? “I know that your reward is great for you are grieved. You came only for the sake of Torah and for the sake of the commandment. I am comforted, even if I had had seven sons and buried them when my son died. And it is not that a man wants to bury his sons. It is only that I know that my son is a child of the world to come, for he caused the people to do good, and whosoever is a force for good cannot be an instrument for sin. And whosoever causes the people to sin is not given the occasion to repent. Moses was good, and he was a force for good. The merits of the community were therefore accounted to him, for it is written: ‘He executed the righteousness of the Lord, and His ordinances with Israel’ (Deut. 33:22). Jeroboam sinned and he was a force for sin. The evils of the community were therefore accounted to him, for it is written ‘For the sins of Jeroboam which he sinned, wherewith he made Israel to sin’ (I Kings 15:28).”

The first part of the narrative is structured like a folk tale (3+1) and in terms of the narrative frame, is reminiscent of the Biblical story of the death of the son of David and Bathsheba (II Samuel 12:1524), except that it is reversed and made extreme. David behaved as a mourner while his son was alive but ceased as soon as he died, while R. Akiva ignored his son’s illness throughout the various stages and continued to study Torah; only when he died did R. Akiva cease his study in order to mourn him. The structure of the narrative, its similarity in some ways to the Biblical narrative, and its extremism show that this is probably a deliberately produced work whose creator placed at the center R. Akiva, the exemplary sage who was known for his devotion to Torah study and his willingness to sacrifice himself for it, in order to establish the halacha brought in the beginning: “The study of Torah is not to be interrupted out of respect for a dying man until his soul departs.”

Grief over the Death of Children

Although this narrative is not identical to the one in Mo’ed Katan, both in terms of the halacha that it supports34 and in terms of the subject, which is the illness and death of a son, not of sons as in Mo’ed Katan, the two narratives share many similarities. Both narratives use features that create the scene of a public eulogy and yet a setting of intimacy and mutual respect between the eulogizers and R. Akiva. Both narratives begin with an account of the size of the crowd which came to participate in the eulogy; in Semahot it is described as “a large gathering” and in Mo’ed Katan as “all Israel.” In both narratives the eulogy begins by R. Akiva addressing the eulogizers in a way that is at once public yet personal: “O Israel, our brethren, listen!” in Semahot, and in Mo’ed Katan, “Our brethren, the House of Israel, hear ye.” In Semahot the address is repeated, and in between repetitions, there is a description of the site where the speech is made—the bench, which appears with minor changes in Mo’ed Katan.35 According to what is told there, R. Akiva stood on a large bench, a description that enhances the size of the crowd which assembled to lament the sons. 34

Mo’ed Katan: “A mourner is forbidden during the first three days to give greeting [of peace]”; Semahot: “The study of Torah is not to be interrupted out of respect for a dying man until his soul departs.” 35 In Semahot, it is written: “A large gathering assembled to honor the son of R. Akiva. He said to them, ‘Prepare a bench for me at the cemetery.’ They brought out a bench at the cemetery upon which he sat and preached…” Sitting on a bench which was taken out of the cemetery (as compared to standing on a large bench, as written in Mo’ed Katan), may be interpreted as the sitting associated with mourning, or of physical weakness. As to standing on a bench, according to Mo’ed Katan, it appears that he stood in order to be seen and heard. In Tosefta Berachot (Lieberman) 3:17, it is written: ‫“לא יעמד אדם לא על גבי מטה ולא על גבי ספסל וכסא ולא על גבי מקום גבוה ויתפלל‬ ”.‫שאין גבהות לפני המקום שנ’ ממעמקים קראתיך ה’ ואם היה זקן או חולה מותר‬ “One should not stand on a bed nor on a bench and chair, nor on any elevated place to pray, because elevation is not proper when standing before God, as it is written: Out of the depths I have cried to you O Lord (Ps. 130:1); however, if he was old or infirm, it is permitted.”

It is possible that they ascribed standing on a bench to R. Akiva since they were referring to a eulogy and not to prayer.

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As to the contents of R. Akiva’s words, it seems that the three subjects included in the words attributed to him in Mo’ed Katan were developed and elaborated upon in Semahot and brought in a different order: first come the words which speak of the largescale participation in the mourning, which is because of the respect that the community had for R. Akiva’s teaching. This is summarized in Mo’ed Katan in the second sentence: “And if you have come for Akiva, then there are many Akivas in the marketplace, but you said, ‘The law of God is in his heart’,” while in Semahot this was placed first in the narrative (because in that story, the focus is on Torah study), and there it is constructed as a chant with a rhythmic repetition of four hemistichs. Added, too, was the perception of participation in the mourning as the observance of a commandment: “…you are grieved. You came only for the sake of Torah and for the sake of the commandment”—all of this to intensify the sense of R. Akiva’s humility and greatness. Second in order comes the blessing in abbreviated form to the comforters: “I know that your reward is great.” In Mo’ed Katan the blessing is uttered at the time of the comforters’ departure and in a meaningful manner designed to draw them closer: “All the more then, two-fold be your reward: Go home unto peace!” Yet of the two, it is the version in Semahot that elaborated and emphasized the matter of the mass participation in the lament and the reason for it, and downplayed the importance of R. Akiva’s expression of gratitude to his comforters, which is brought before his words about the success of the comfort and is not uttered with any great emotion. In the third place are his words about the success of the consolation offered and these, interestingly, merited amplification. In Mo’ed Katan it is written: “Even though these two sons were ‘bridegrooms’, I am consoled…” while here, the number of sons has risen to seven: “I am comforted, even if I had had seven sons and had buried them when this son died.”

At the conclusion of the words attributed to R. Akiva in the version in Semahot, there is an extended speech about his faith in the righteousness of his son and his merit of eternal life in the world to come:

Grief over the Death of Children ,‫ אלא יודע אני שבני בן העולם הבא הוא‬,‫“ולא שאדם רוצה לקבור את בניו‬ ‫ וכל המחטיא‬,‫ וכל המזכה את הרבים אין חטא בא על ידו‬,‫שזיכה את הרבים‬ ,‫ משה זכה וזיכה את הרבים‬,‫את הרבים אין מספיקין בידו לעשות תשובה‬ ‫כב) ‘צדקת ה’ עשה‬:‫ (דברים לג‬,‫ שנאמר‬,‫לפיכך זכות הרבים תלויה בו‬ ‫ לפיכך חטא הרבים‬,‫’ ירבעם חטא והחטיא את הרבים‬.‫ומשפטיו עם ישראל‬ ’‫ ‘על חטאת ירבעם אשר חטא ואשר החטיא את ישראל‬,‫ שנאמר‬,‫תלוי בו‬ ”.)‫כח‬:‫(מלכים א’ טו‬

“And it is not that a man wants to bury his sons. It is only that I know that my son is a child of the world to come, for he caused the people to do good, and whosoever is a force for good cannot be an instrument for sin. And whosoever causes the people to sin is not given the occasion to repent. Moses was good, and he was a force for good. The merits of the community were therefore accounted to him, for it is written: ‘He executed the righteousness of the Lord, and His ordinances with Israel’ (Deut. 33:22). Jeroboam sinned and he was a force for sin. The evils of the community were therefore accounted to him, for it is written ‘For the sins of Jeroboam which he sinned, wherewith he made Israel to sin’ (I Kings 15:28).”

This speech, which relies on homily and historical proofs from Jewish history, is different in style and content than the earlier parts of the narrative, and there is no parallel passage in Mo’ed Katan. It is possible that we have here a later addition which was intended to explain why R. Akiva was comforted over the death of his sons, because it is difficult to postulate that he drew comfort solely from the fact that a large multitude had gathered to take part in the lament and do honor to his teaching. We have then before us a more satisfactory answer to the philosophical-theological question that accompanied the death of his son, namely that R. Akiva, who knew his son in his lifetime and knew that he had brought merit to the community, could find comfort in the fact that his son “is a child of the world to come.” For a man of such radical faith as R. Akiva, there was great consolation in the knowledge that his deceased son had been such an exemplary figure in his lifetime and in the security of knowing that he merited life in the world to come. I will shift now to two narratives of mourning brought in the BT that revolve around figures of Amoraim.36 36

In JT, Demai 22a (1:3) there is a story told by R. Haggai in the name of

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‫‪Chapter Four‬‬

‫‪I will first discuss the story brought in Ketubot 8b which deals‬‬ ‫‪with the death of the son of the teacher of Resh Lakish’s son:‬‬ ‫כי הא דרב חייא בר אבא מקרי בניה דריש לקיש הוה‪ ,‬ואמרי לה‪ :‬מתני בריה דריש‬ ‫לקיש הוה‪ ,‬שכיב ליה ינוקא; יומא קמא לא אזל לגביה‪ ,‬למחר דבריה ליהודה‬ ‫בר נחמני מתורגמניה‪.‬‬ ‫אמר ליה‪“ :‬קום אימא מלתא כל קביל ינוקא‪”.‬‬ ‫פתח ואמר‪’”:‬וירא ה’ וינאץ מכעס בניו ובנותיו’ (דברים לב‪ ,‬יט) — דור שאבות‬ ‫מנאצים להקב”ה‪ ,‬כועס על בניהם ועל בנותיהם ומתים כשהם קטנים‪ ”.‬ואיכא‬ ‫דאמרי‪ :‬בחור הוה‪ ,‬והכי קאמר ליה‪“ :‬על כן על בחוריו לא ישמח ה’ ואת יתומיו‬ ‫ואת אלמנותיו לא ירחם כי כולו חנף ומרע וכל פה דובר נבלה בכל זאת לא שב‬ ‫אפו ועוד ידו נטויה” (ישעיה ט‪,‬טז)‪.‬‬ ‫מאי “ועוד ידו נטויה?” אמר רב חנן בר רב‪“ :‬הכל יודעין כלה למה נכנסה לחופה‪,‬‬ ‫אלא כל המנבל פיו ומוציא דבר נבלה מפיו‪ ,‬אפילו נחתם לו גזר דינו של‬ ‫שבעים שנה לטובה — נהפך עליו לרעה‪”.‬‬ ‫אתא לנחומי‪ ,‬צעורי קמצער ליה? הכי קאמר ליה‪“ :‬חשיב את לאתפוסי אדרא‪”.‬‬ ‫אמר ליה‪“ :‬קום אימא מלתא כנגד שבחו של הקב”ה‪”.‬‬ ‫פתח ואמר‪”:‬האל הגדול ברוב גדלו‪ ,‬אדיר וחזק ברוב נוראות‪ ,‬מחיה מתים במאמרו‪,‬‬ ‫עושה גדולות עד אין חקר ונפלאות עד אין מספר‪ ,‬בא”י מחיה המתים‪”.‬‬ ‫א”ל‪“ :‬קום אימא מלתא כנגד אבלים‪”.‬‬ ‫פתח ואמר‪”:‬אחינו המיוגעים המדוכאין באבל הזה‪ ,‬תנו לבבכם לחקור את זאת‪:‬‬ ‫זאת היא עומדת לעד‪ ,‬נתיב הוא מששת ימי בראשית‪ ,‬רבים שתו רבים ישתו‪,‬‬ ‫כמשתה ראשונים כך משתה אחרונים‪ .‬אחינו‪ ,‬בעל נחמות ינחם אתכם‪ .‬ברוך‬ ‫מנחם אבלים”‬ ‫אמר אביי‪‘“ :‬רבים שתו’ לימא‪‘ ,‬רבים ישתו’ לא לימא‪‘ ,‬משתה ראשונים’ לימא‪,‬‬ ‫‘משתה אחרונים’ לא לימא‪ ,‬דאר”ש בן לקיש‪ ,‬וכן תנא משמיה דר’ יוסי‪:‬‬ ‫“לעולם אל יפתח אדם פיו לשטן‪”.‬‬ ‫אמר רב יוסף “מאי קרא? (ישעיהו א’) ‘כסדם היינו לעמורה דמינו’‪”.‬‬ ‫מאי אהדר ליה? “שמעו דבר ה’ קציני סדום‪ ,‬וגו’‪”’.‬‬ ‫א”ל‪“ :‬קום אימא מלתא כנגד מנחמי אבלים‪”.‬‬ ‫פתח ואמר‪“ :‬אחינו גומלי חסדים בני גומלי חסדים המחזיקים בבריתו של אברהם‬ ‫אבינו‪( ,‬שנאמר‪( :‬בראשית י”ח) “כי ידעתיו למען אשר יצוה את בניו וגו’”)‬ ‫אחינו‪ ,‬בעל הגמול ישלם לכם גמולכם‪ .‬ברוך אתה משלם הגמול‪”.‬‬ ‫א”ל‪“ :‬קום אימא מלתא כנגד כל ישראל‪”.‬‬ ‫‪R. Samuel b. Nahman of a pious man who used to dig water pits and give‬‬ ‫‪water to passers-by. When his daughter was about to be married, she was‬‬ ‫‪washed away by the river and he refused to accept any consolation over her.‬‬ ‫‪At first it seemed that the narrative was relevant to our subject because it‬‬ ‫‪tells of a bereaved father who refused to be comforted. However, this story‬‬ ‫‪ends well: the daughter of that man returned, showing that what seemed‬‬ ‫‪like death was not really death, and therefore the story is not relevant to our‬‬ ‫‪chapter here.‬‬

‫‪224‬‬

Grief over the Death of Children ‫ הושע עמך ישראל מן הדבר ומן‬,‫ מלט‬,‫ פדה והצל‬,‫ “רבון העולמים‬:‫פתח ואמר‬ ‫ ומכל מיני פורעניות המתרגשות‬,‫ ומן השדפון ומן הירקון‬,‫החרב ומן הביזה‬ ”.‫ ברוך אתה עוצר המגפה‬,‫ טרם נקרא ואתה תענה‬,‫ובאות לעולם‬

…as in the case of R. Hiyya, the son of Abba, [who was] the Bible teacher of the son of Resh Lakish, or, as some say, the Mishnah teacher of the son of Resh Lakish. [It happened as follows:] A child [of R. Hiyya, the son of Abba] died. The first day he [Resh Lakish] did not go to him. The next day he [Resh Lakish] took with him Judah the son of Nahmani, his meturgeman [interpreter] [and] said to him: “Rise [and] say something as against [the death of] the child” He spoke and said: “[It is written.] ‘And the Lord saw and spurned, because of the provoking of His sons and His daughters.’ [This means, in] a generation [in which the fathers spurn the Holy One, blessed be He,] He is angry with their sons and their daughters and they die when they are young.” And some say [that] he [the child of R. Hiyya, the son of Abba, that died] was a young man and that he [Judah the son of Nahmani] said thus to him: “Therefore the Lord shall have no joy in their young men, neither shall He have compassion on their fatherless and widows; for every one is profane and an evil-doer, and every mouth speaketh folly. For all this His anger is not turned away, but His hand is stretched out still.” What is the meaning of “But His hand is stretched out still”? Said R. Hanan, the son of Rav. “All know for what purpose a bride is brought into the bridal chamber, but whoever disgraces his mouth and utters a word of folly — even if a [divine] decree of seventy years of happiness were sealed [and granted] unto him, it is turned for him into evil.” He came to comfort, [and] he grieved him? This he said to him: “Thou art important enough to be held responsible for [the shortcomings of] the generation.” He [then] said to him: “Rise [and] say something with regard to the praise of the Holy One, blessed be He.” He spoke and said: “The God, who is great in the abundance of His greatness, mighty and strong in the multitude of awe-inspiring deeds, who reviveth the dead with his word, who does great things that are unsearchable and wondrous works without number. Blessed art thou, O Lord, who revivest the dead.” He then said to him: “Rise [and] say something with regard to the mourners.” He spoke and said: “Our brethren, who are worn out, who are crushed by this bereavement, set your heart to consider this: This it is [that] stands for ever, it is a path from the six days of creation. Many have drunk, many will drink, as the drinking of the first ones, so will be that of the last ones. Our brethren, the Lord of consolation comfort you. Blessed be He who comforteth the mourners.”

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Said Abaye: ”’Many have drunk’ he should have said, ‘many will drink’ he should not have said; ‘the drinking of the first ones’ he should have said, ‘the drinking of the last ones’ he should not have said, for R. Simeon, the son of Lakish, said, and so one has taught in the name of R. Jose: ‘Man should never open his mouth to Satan’.” Said R. Joseph: “What text [shows this]? ‘We should have been as Sodom, we should have been like unto Gomorrah’.” What did He reply unto him? “Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom,” etc. He [then] said to him: “Rise [and] say something with regard to the comforters of the mourners.” He spoke and said: ”Our brethren, bestowers of loving kindnesses, sons of bestowers of loving kindnesses, who hold fast to the covenant of Abraham our father (for it is said, for I have known him, to the end that he may command his children, etc.), our brethren, may the Lord of recompense pay you your reward. Blessed art Thou who payest the recompense.” He [then] said unto him: “Rise [and] say something with regard to the whole of Israel.” He spoke and said: “Master of the worlds, redeem and save, deliver [and] help Thy people Israel from pestilence, and from the sword, and from plundering, and from the blast, and from the mildew, and from all kinds of calamities that [may] break forth and come into the world. Before we call, mayest Thou answer, Blessed art Thou who stayest the plague.”

The narrative presents five utterances of consolation, each one addressed to one of the parties to the mourning. What is surprising is that the literal meaning of the words addressed to the bereaved father Hiyya b. Abba is not of comfort. Already at the beginning of the narrative we become aware of the surprising attitude of Resh Lakish towards the grief of Hiyya bar Abba, his son’s teacher. He did not go to comfort him but instead sent his interpreter to do the job and gave him instructions. This might be an anticipatory allusion to the fact that the bereaved father is about to hear stern words that Resh Lakish does not want to pronounce himself because of his close relationship with him.37 37

The narrator hints at the parallel between Resh Lakish’s living son and the dead son of Hiyya bar Abba using the words: “the Bible teacher of the son of Resh Lakish, or, as some say, the Mishnah teacher of the son of Resh Lakish” as opposed to “they die when they are young. And some say [that] he [the child of R. Hiyya, the son of Abba, that died] was a young man.” There are two possibilities for estimating the age of Resh Lakish’s son and in parallel, two ways to estimating the age of the deceased son of Hiyya bar Abba.

Grief over the Death of Children

According to the story, the interpreter, speaking according to the instructions given by Resh Lakish, spoke five utterances of consolation. The first time he spoke in response to the instruction: “Rise [and] say something as against [the death of] the child.” His words were comprised of three parts: an interpretation of a verse in Deuteronomy, an alternative interpretation of a verse in Isaiah, and the words of R. Hanan son of Rav38 which are connected to the homily by the gemara. The very instruction ”‫“ “קום אימא מילתא קבל ינוקא‬Rise [and] say something as against [the death of] the child” shows the anticipation of hearing negative things, and in all of the other instructions, the instruction is couched in the words: ”‫“ “אימא מלתא כנגד‬Rise [and] say something with regard to….” The three parts of the first speech connect the death of R. Hiyya bar Abba’s son with the grave accusations that are leveled against the father. At the beginning of his statement and as a response to the instruction where he is told to say something as against the “death of the child,” the interpreter explained a verse in Deuteronomy 32:19 from which he deduced that the father had sinned in blaspheming God and that is why his young son was punished and died. Later the gemara brings a tradition whereby the son died when he was already a young man, and according to this tradition, the interpreter is seen as having interpreted a verse in Isaiah from which he deduced that the young man was punished and died because of the sins of the father’s generation which was “profane and an evil-doer,” and “every mouth speaketh folly.” The third part, which is not attributed to the interpreter, focused on the end of the verse in Isaiah “but His hand is stretched out still” and brought a saying by R. Hanan bar Rav according to which the end of the verse is interpreted with a connection to its beginning “Therefore the Lord shall have no joy in their young men.” 38

The reference here might be to R. Hanan bar Rabba, a Babylonian Amora of the second generation who almost always brought teachings in the name of Rav. And in fact in the Munich mss. 95, the text reads: “Said R. Hanan son of Rabba” and in Vatican mss. 112, the text reads “Said R. Hanin son of Rabba” (In Vatican mss. 130 it seems that this was a copyist’s error: “Said R. Nahman son of Nahman son of Abba”).

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The lesson that is derived from the homily is that a young man who utters profanity is committing villainy and therefore, even if it was decreed that he live seventy years of good, it will be reversed to evil. These words might be an additional indictment against the father, but they may also be interpreted as an indictment of the son — the young man himself. One way or another, it seems that each part of the speech expands upon and intensifies the blame associated with the father (according to the first tradition, he blasphemed against God, according to the second, his entire generation was profane and evil-doers, and according to the third, evils anticipated him yet in the future). Therefore, the gemara itself raises an objection over how it happened that the interpreter who was sent to comfort was found to be causing even more grief, and it answers: “Thou art important enough to be held responsible for [the shortcomings of] the generation.” According to this interpretation of the gemara, the harsh accusations were not directed at R. Hiyya bar Abba but rather at his generation, while he and his son were chosen by God specifically because of their importance in order to atone for the sins of their generation. The knowledge that the death of the son was neither random nor arbitrary but rather the deliberate choice of God and for a higher purpose was the reply to the theological question regarding reward and punishment in a world led by God; thus it offered consolation for the bereaved father. However, it is noteworthy that this understanding was inserted by the gemara, while the homilies themselves, which show that sons die because of their fathers’ sins and thus place the guilt for the son’s death on R. Hiyya bar Abba, do not contain a shred of consolation. In this sense, the four ensuing utterances are different than the first one. The second saying is brought as a response to the instruction “Rise [and] say something with regard to the praise of the Holy One, blessed be He,” and the interpreter does glorify God and in doing so mentions the Divine power to revive the dead; this mention can breathe hope into the heart of R. Hiyya bar Abba and offer him comfort. The third saying is addressed to the throng of comforters and makes the investigation of the cause of the death superfluous, with the knowledge that death is a necessary evil that has existed

Grief over the Death of Children

ever since the expulsion from Eden, that is, from the earliest day of creation. The perception of death as part of life and the release from any necessity to seek to understand its reasons and to find justification for it contain comfort for the mourners. Indeed this utterance ends with the words: “The Lord of consolation comfort you. Blessed be He who comforteth the mourners.” The fourth statement addresses the comforters, describing them as bestowers of loving-kindness who are sons of bestowers of loving-kindness and promises them a reward. The fifth addresses the people of Israel and it consists of a prayer that God save the people of Israel from all impending calamities. The order of the second, third, and fourth utterances corresponds to the order of the blessing of the mourners that appears in the baraita in the Tosefta although its style is different:39 ”‫מקום שנהגו לומר ברכת אבלים שלש כולל את הראשונה ב”תחיית המתים‬ ‫” שניה בתנחומי אבלים וחותם בה “מנחם עמו‬.‫וחותם בה “מחיה המתים‬ 40 .‫” שלישית בגמילות חסדים ואינו חותם‬.‫בעירו‬

In a place where the custom was to recite the tripartite Blessing of the Mourners, the first is included in the blessing on the resurrection of the dead and ends with “He who resurrects the dead” the second is the comforting of the mourners and ends with the blessing “He who comforts His people with [the rebuilding of] His City,” and the third is about acts of loving-kindness and doesn’t end with a blessing.

However, the four sayings (including the last one about the people of Israel which in fact seems like an addendum) create a closed and symmetric structure.41 At the beginning of the structure the main protagonist is God, who is the source of hope for the 39

The first saying ends with a blessing on the resurrection of the dead. But the second ends with “Blessed be He who comforts the mourners” and not “Who comforts His people with [the rebuilding of] His City,” and the third ends “Blessed art thou o Lord who pays a reward,” while the baraita teaches “it does not end with a blessing.” 40 Tosefta Ber. 3:24. 41 Except for the intervention of the gemara after the third utterance, which is structured as two sayings of Amoraim and a baraita.

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revival of the individual dead, and at the end, the main protagonist is still God—the redeemer of the entire nation of Israel. Between the beginning and the end, which deal with a nebulous, mystical kind of comfort and putting faith in God who, it is hoped, will save individuals from death and the nation from annihilation, there are two statements which deal with a realistic kind of consolation. The mourners are comforted by the knowledge that death was decreed upon man from time immemorial because of the primeval sin of Adam, and they need not search for reasons in their own sins. The comforters benefit from the positive reception of their effort and from the promise of reward, ideas which support them and help them find consolation. The last narrative of comforting mourners that I will bring in this chapter is perplexing; it is brought in Baba Kama 38a-b: ”‫ “קום ניזל נינחמיה‬:‫ אמרו ליה רבנן לעולא‬,‫רב שמואל בר יהודה שכיבא ליה ברתא‬ ‫ דאמרי ‘מאי אפשר‬,‫ “מאי אית לי גבי נחמתא דבבלאי? דגידופא הוא‬:‫אמר להו‬ ”!‫’ הא אפשר למיעבד עבדי‬,‫למיעבד‬ ’‫ “’ויאמר ה’ אל תצר את מואב ואל תתגר בם מלחמה‬:‫ א”ל‬,‫אזל הוא לחודאי גביה‬ ?‫ וכי מה עלה על דעתו של משה לעשות מלחמה שלא ברשות‬,)‫ט‬,’‫(דברים ב‬ ‫ ‘ומה מדינים שלא באו אלא לעזור את‬:‫ אמר‬,‫אלא נשא משה ק”ו בעצמו‬ ,)‫יז‬,‫ כה‬,‫ “צרור את המדינים והכיתם אותם” (במדבר‬:‫ אמרה תורה‬,‫מואב‬ ‫ ‘לא כשעלתה על דעתך עלתה על‬:‫מואבים עצמן לא כל שכן!’ אמר לו הקב”ה‬ ’.‫ רות המואביה ונעמה העמונית‬,‫ שתי פרידות טובות יש לי להוציא מהן‬.‫דעתי‬ ‫ ומה בשביל שתי פרידות טובות חס הקב”ה על ב’ אומות גדולות‬:‫“והלא דברים ק”ו‬ — ‫ בתו של רבי אם כשרה היא וראויה היא לצאת ממנה דבר טוב‬,‫ולא החריבן‬ ”.‫על אחת כמה וכמה דהוה חיה‬

When R. Samuel b. Judah lost a daughter the Rabbis said to Ulla: “Let us go in and console him.” But he answered them: “What have I to do with the consolation of the Babylonians, which is [almost tantamount to] blasphemy? For they say ‘What could have been done,’ which implies that were it possible to do anything they would have done it!” He therefore went alone to the mourner and said to him: [Deut. 2:9,] “’And the Lord spake unto me, Distress not the Moabites, neither contend with them in battle.’ Now [we may well ask], could it have entered the mind of Moses to wage war without [divine] sanction? [We must suppose] therefore that Moses of himself reasoned a fortiori as follows: ‘If in the case of the Midianites who came only to assist the Moabites the Torah commanded “Vex the Midianites and smite them” (Num. 25:17), in the case of the Moabites [themselves] should not the same injunction apply even more

Grief over the Death of Children

strongly?’ But the Holy One, blessed be He, said to him: ‘The idea you have in your mind is not the idea I have in My mind. Two offshoots have I to bring forth from them; Ruth the Moabitess and Naamah the Ammonitess.’ “Now cannot we base on this an a fortiori argument as follows: If for the sake of two virtuous descendants the Holy One, blessed be He, showed pity to two great nations so that they were not destroyed, may we not be assured that if your honor’s daughter had indeed been righteous and worthy to have goodly issue, she would have continued to live?”

The story consists of two sections, and each one separately is perplexing. The first section tells that when the daughter of R. Samuel b, Judah died, the Rabbis proposed that Ulla accompany them to comfort the father. He scathingly rejected their offer, terming their method of comfort “blasphemy” and explained that their words of consolation imply that God rules the world arbitrarily. Ulla ’s behavior is difficult to fathom and the RIF raised an objection and asked: “It is hard to understand, he could have gone and offered proper consolation and not like the Babylonians proposed. Who compelled him to offer comfort like the Babylonians?” The RIF explains that Ulla did not want to hear improper declarations. However, this explanation is insubstantial, and it would seem that the critical explanation is a more likely one, i.e. that the words were ascribed to Ulla because of the tension that existed between the sages of Babylonia and those of Eretz Israel.42 42

Ulla was the disciple of R. Johanan and R. Eleazar who went to Babylon several times and taught the teachings of Eretz Israel. In JT Kila’im 32c (9:3), he was given the title “‫“ ”נחותא‬nahuta”—one going down from Eretz Israel to Babylon. In BT Ber. 38b, R. Hisda described him as “our Rabbis [teachers] who came down from the Land of Israel” Ta’anit 9b also ascribes to him words of censure for the Babylonians: ‫ לסוף לא‬.‫ דהשתא אתי מיטרא‬,‫ פנו מאני‬:‫ אמר להו‬.‫ חזא פורחות‬,‫“עולא איקלע לבבל‬ ‫ עולא איקלע‬.‫ כי היכי דמשקרי בבלאי הכי משקרי מיטרייהו‬:‫ אמר‬.‫אתי מיטרא‬ ‫ מלא צנא דדובשא בזוזא ובבלאי לא‬:‫ אמר‬.‫ חזי מלא צנא דתמרי בזוזא‬,‫לבבל‬ ”.‫עסקי באורייתא‬ “Ulla chanced to be in Babylon and observing light clouds [porehoth] he exclaimed, ‘Remove the vessels for rain is now coming.’ No rain however fell and he exclaimed, ‘As the Babylonians are false, so too is their rain.’ Ulla chanced to be in Babylon and observing that a basketful of dates was being sold for a zuz he exclaimed, ‘A basketful of honey for a zuz and yet the Babylonians do not occupy themselves with the study of the Torah’.”

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In any case, this part of the narrative is a suitable introduction to the second part, because it creates the anticipation of a different kind of consolation offered by Ulla. And indeed, the second part presents an expressly incomprehensible kind of consolation which intensifies the astonishment that has already been aroused by his conduct. Ulla gives a speech which links two verses from the Bible: the first, “And the Lord spake unto me, Distress not the Moabites, neither contend with them in battle”(Deut. 2:9), and the other: “Vex the Midianites and smite them” (Num. 25:17). The first verse arouses an objection: Why the need to give Moses a negative command not to fight with Moab; in any case, he would not have set out to do battle without an explicit command by God. The answer to this difficulty is provided in the second verse which deals with the Midianites. From the command to vex and smite the Midianites because they helped Moab fight Israel, one might have deduced by inference from minor to major that there was a command to fight the Moabites themselves, as Rashi explained: “They began the corrupt deed by hiring Bila’am [to curse Israel].” Therefore God commanded Moses “Distress not the Moabites nor contend…” The explanation for this command is the focal point of Ulla’s message. God spared Moab and Ammon despite their wickedness because He planned to bring forth from these nations two “fine offshoots” 43—Ruth the Moabitess and Naamah the Ammonitess. From this it can be deduced that God spares the wicked if there is a potential for righteous offspring to issue from them. How much more does He spare the righteous who are worthy of righteous offspring? The lesson to R. Samuel b. Judah is, then, that his daughter died, because she was not righteous and was not even worthy of righteous offspring. The astonished reader must ask himself, how can this be of any consolation to the bereaved father? The commentator Jacob Reischer sought to explain 43

The use of the word ‘‫ ’פרידה‬offshoot as a metaphor for a child appears twice more in Baba Metz’ia 84b, once in the words of R. Simeon b. Yohai who appeared in a dream and said: “I have an offshoot amongst you which you refuse to bring to me” and another time in the words of R. Simeon b. Gamaliel: “‘I have a offshoot amongst you, and ye wish to destroy it!”

Grief over the Death of Children

this and wrote:44 “Since the language in the text is ‫[ שכיבה‬lay down] and not ‫[ מיתה‬death] she must have left after her a daughter like herself, thus, her absence was not so painful to him because he knew that she was worthy of having something good come forth from her. That is why Ulla comforted him with this idea.” However, according to the literal understanding of the words, it is not clear how this commentator deduced that R. Samuel’s daughter had a daughter and how he transformed Ulla’s words into words of consolation. I think that the correct understanding of both parts of this narrative is its intention to censure the Babylonians and glorify Ulla the rabbi of Eretz Israel by presenting a contrasting picture of the words of comfort offered to R. Samuel b. Judah. From the theological perspective, Ulla’s words, which make man’s fate dependent not only on God’s decision but also on man’s deeds, are preferable to the message attributed to the Babylonians, who said that man’s fate is determined by an arbitrary God. However, in the Babylonian view which said that there was no human power to save his daughter from death, there is some consolation to the bereaved father because this clears him of guilt feelings. On the other hand, Ulla’s words find the daughter guilty by presenting her as someone worthy of death; even though they offered comfort from the theological viewpoint of justifying God’s judgment, they must have pierced the bereaved father’s heart most painfully and wounded him mortally. To sum up: The title of this chapter, “The Grief over the Death of Children,” attests to its content, the powerful and terrible grief caused by the worst fate of all — the loss of a son or daughter. Paradoxically, the expressions of grief that were common in the previous chapters do not appear in this chapter, whose stories are free of descriptions of emotions. The sages named in theses narratives bear their grief with restraint; they are not beset by profound despair (hulshat da’at), they do not weep, and they are not even described as grieving all of their lives. However it is precisely this self-control that attests to the depth of the grief and emotional distress in which they find themselves. 44

Iyun Ya’akov in Ein Ya’akov on Baba Kama 141:9.

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The plots of the previous chapters, charged with tension and replete with strong feelings, are not relevant to the narratives of this chapter, whose subject is consolation. Three of the six narratives treated in this chapter are structured in an identical pattern. Each of them has five components, one of which is exceptional as compared with the other four. The first narrative tells of five disciples who went in to comfort R. Johanan ben Zakkai who had lost his son. Four of them based their words of comfort on homiletic interpretations of Biblical verses which taught of important personalities who accepted consolation over the death of their children. All of the consolations called upon R. Johanan b. Zakkai to take a lesson from their conduct and to apply it to himself. The response of R. Johanan b. Zakkai to the messages of consolation offered by each of the four disciples shows that he was not comforted. His emotional state did not lend itself to study and learning moral lessons. Comparing his grief to that of others, with all of the implied connotations, not only did not comfort him but actually exacerbated his grief. The fifth comforter, R. Eleazer b. ‘Arach, adopted a different method than that of his predecessors, and the dialogue between him and R. Johanan b. Zakkai is presented as a contrast to that held with the four disciples who preceded him. In order to dispel some of R. Johanan b. Zakkai’s sense of grief, R. Eleazer b. ‘Arach presented a parable where he compared the deceased son to a treasure entrusted to the father, which had been returned intact to the Creator. Like the four messages of comfort which went before, the parable of the trust did not offer an answer to the question of the injustice of death. However, the parable did enable R. Johanan b. Zakkai to contemplate his son’s death from another perspective and through it to see the raising of his son as a partnership between the keeper of the trust and God-the owner, and, consequently, to see death as the return of the son to the kindly bosom of God as a success. This contemplation cleared both father and son from blame over the death and thus could have helped the father in some measure to reconcile himself to death and perhaps, subsequently, to achieve peace of mind. In the second narrative, which tells of R. Ishmael who lost his

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sons, the construct with its five components represents the words of the bereaved father, R. Ishmael, as standing in opposition to the words of the four sages who came to comfort him. R. Ishmael delivered a lament where he blamed himself for the deaths of his sons and for troubling the sages who came to comfort him. In contrast, the sages offered examples from the Bible with a common message, that the deaths of sons cannot be blamed on their own sins, nor even on the sins of the fathers. This narrative, like the preceding one, did not offer a theological answer to the question of why the sons died. However, it also canceled out the view that sees the death of children as a punishment for the sins of the fathers, and thus offered consolation to R. Ishmael, who had initially blamed himself for his sons’ death. The third narrative is constructed in the same pattern — one versus four—telling of the death of the son of R. Hiyya bar Abba. This story deals with five instructions that Resh Lakish gave his interpreter whom he sent to comfort R. Hiyya bar Abba in his mourning, and the five utterances delivered by the interpreter based on these instructions. The first instruction touched upon saying things about the deceased, and the words that were spoken in response to it are quite surprising because they expressly connected the son’s death with the sins of the father’s generation. Justifying the death of the son in this way could not have brought any relief to the already tormented soul of R. Hiyya bar Abba. The gemara explains that the father and son were chosen to atone for the sins of their generation precisely because of their greatness, but this is a forced explanation arising from the need to understand the interpreter’s words as words of consolation. In contrast to these statements made to the grieving father, the next four utterances were addressed to God, to the various participants in the mourning, and to the entire people of Israel, and were actually utterances of consolation. The first offered hope of the resurrection of the dead, the second explained that death must be accepted as an integral part of life and there is no point in investigating its meaning, the third glorified the importance of participating in another person’s mourning, and the fourth gave hope of Divine loving-kindness in the future.

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Two additional narratives discussed in this chapter, which were not arranged in this five-phased structure, are the narratives of the death of R. Akiva’s son and the story of the death of the daughter of R. Samuel b. Judah. The story of the death of R. Akiva’s son/sons in both versions deals with a public lament held for the sons, and with R. Akiva’s emotional discourses of gratitude delivered to the eulogizers, whose conceptual focus was the importance of the eulogy and of participation in the process of comforting the mourners. The story of the death of R. Samuel b. Judah’s daughter does not seem at first glance to be a narrative of consolation. This narrative, like the statements made to Hiyya bar Abba by the interpreter after his son’s death, expresses a perspective that associates death with sin and sees it as the just verdict of God. While it is true that justifying the Divine verdict and reconciling oneself to death are the beginning of consolation, yet it is hard to postulate that the bereaved father was comforted by the knowledge that his daughter was not worthy and therefore her death was unavoidable. From the collection of statements brought in the narratives, whether they can be easily understood as utterances of consolation or whether it is not clear what comfort they are offering, it is possible to glean several characteristic features about the grief of bereaved fathers. The most obvious feature is the painful feeling arising from an inability to find justification and explanation for the death of the child. The obsessive quest for answers, stemming from the desire to understand the death, on the one hand, and the inability to understand it, on the other, leads to frustration, anger, and bitterness. Frustration is engendered not only because of the existential problem — finding the reason for death—but also because of the theological dilemma, where the mourners are torn between the urge to deny Divine justice and the desire to justify God, and as a result, to see themselves as sinners or, worse than that, to see their children as sinners. An additional point that emerges from these narratives is the sense of isolation that accompanies bereavement. The narratives do not portray this loneliness openly, but the great importance that

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is attached both by the mourners and by the comforters to the act of participation in the eulogy, and the heartfelt words of gratitude spoken by R. Akiva to the eulogizers of his son in particular, show the powerful need of the mourners to be surrounded and embraced, and thus by inference the sense of loneliness that they are experiencing. The frustration and self-accusation that accompany the inability to understand death and the loneliness of bereavement are further compounded by other bitter feelings, such as the loss of direction and the hopelessness that emerge from an analysis of the specific utterances of comforters. The heroes of the narratives in this chapter make no declaration of their feelings and in most cases never articulate their pain verbally. One is able to learn about their deep grief only indirectly from the statements of the comforters and from some of the responses to these statements.

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The Encounter Between the Sages and the Women Accompanying Them in Times of Distress

This section will discuss three narrative passages from the BT and one narrative from the midrash which tell of the encounter between the sages and the women accompanying them in situations of grief and severe emotional distress. The conceptual common denominator of these passages, all of which were “detached” from their narrative context, is the presentation of radical differences between the behavior of the sages and that of the women who accompany them. The first narrative passage is brought in Baba Mezi’a 84b-85a, and the main protagonists in it are R. Eleazar b. R. Simeon and his wife. The second narrative is taken from Prov. Rabbah 311 which portrays the reactions of R. Meir and his wife to the death of their sons. The third passage of narrative is taken from a story that is found in the gemara before the story of R. Eleazar b. R. Simeon b. Yohai [hereinafter, R. Eleazar b. Rashbi] and his wife. It is brought in Baba Mezi’a 84b and presents a conversation between a brother, R. Johanan, and his sister, who asks him to have mercy on her husband. The fourth narrative passage is brought in Baba Batra 9a-b and presents a scene that is taking place between a sage, Rav Sheshet, and the mother of his disciple Ahadboi, who asks him to have mercy on her son. 1

Proverbs Rabbah is a later collection that was composed long after the Talmudic period. The story brought in the context of ‘Woman of Valor’ (Prov. 31) is probably late, but I chose to bring and discuss it because it is the ultimate example of feminine behavior as compared to masculine behavior at a time of sorrow and distress.

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The first passage brought in Baba Mezi’a appears within a much longer story, or more precisely, a collection of stories about the Tanna R. Eleazar b. Rashbi. (The series of narratives about R. Eleazar b. Rashbi is interrupted by narratives about R. Johanan which are connected here because of a paragraph that is attributed to him and a paragraph that glorifies him.)2 The sequence contains various narratives about the life and death of R. Eleazar b. Rashbi, in which reality and imagination are intermingled. One may reasonably assume, and this assumption is discussed by Shama Friedman in his article “Historical Aggadah in the Babylonian Talmud,”3 that the basis of the narratives is an early Eretz Israel collection of this kind which appears in Pesikta de Rav Kahana, parshat Vayehi beshalah (Mandelbaum edn., New York 1986, pp. 194-200). From this sequence I will focus on the discussion of the passages that portray the relations of R. Eleazar b. Rashbi with his wife, which I will later compare to the passages in the Pesikta de Rav Kahana, which apparently served as their basis. I will begin by quoting the passages from BT Baba Mezi’a 84b:4 ‫ באורתא‬.‫ואפילו הכי לא סמך רבי אלעזר ברבי שמעון אדעתיה קביל עליה יסורי‬... ‫ למחר‬.‫ לצפרא נגדי מתותי משיכלי דמא וכיבא‬,‫הוו מייכי ליה שיתין נמטי‬ ‫ ולא הות שבקא ליה‬.‫עבדה ליה דביתהו שיתין מיני לפדא ואכיל להו וברי‬ .‫ כי היכי דלא לדחקוהו רבנן‬,‫דביתהו למיפק לבי מדרשא‬ ”!‫ מפני ביטול תורה‬,‫ “זילו‬:‫ “אחיי ורעי בואו!” בצפרא אמר להו‬:‫באורתא אמר להו‬ ‫ כלית ממון של‬,‫ “את קא מייתית להו עילויך‬:‫ אמרה ליה‬,‫יומא חד שמעה דביתהו‬ ‫ עיילו‬,‫ סליקו ואתו הנך [שיתין] ספונאי‬.‫ אזלה לבי נשא‬,‫בית אבא!” אימרדה‬ ‫ ועבדו ליה שיתין מיני לפדא ואכיל‬,‫להו שיתין עבדי כי נקיטי שתין ארנקי‬ .‫להו‬ ”.‫ “זילי בקי באבוך מאי קא עביד האידנא‬:‫יומא חד אמרה לה לברתא‬ 2

S. Friedman, “Historical Aggadah in the Babylonian Talmud” , in Saul Lieberman Memorial Volume, Jerusalem and New York 1993, p. 144, (Hebrew), writes that one must take into account the possibility that the aggadah about R. Simeon b. Yohai and his son R. Eleazar existed together alongside of aggadot about R. Johanan and Resh Lakish also not in the framework of the BT Baba Mezi’a chapter 7, and were influenced by each other. 3 S. Friedman, ibid, p. 124. 4 The passages in bold are those that center around the wife of R. Eleazar b. R. Simeon b. Yohai.

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Chapter Five ”.‫ “זילי אמרי לאמך שלנו גדול משלהם‬:‫ אמר לה‬,‫אתיא‬ ‫” אכל ושתי‬.‫ “הייתה כאניות סוחר ממרחק תביא לחמה‬:)‫קרי אנפשיה (משלי לא‬ .‫טהרינהו‬-‫ אייתו לקמיה שיתין מיני דמא‬.‫וברי ונפק לבי מדרשא‬ ”?‫ “סלקא דעתך לית בהו חד ספק‬:‫הוה קא מרנני רבנן ואמרי‬ ”.‫ ואם לאו תהיה נקבה אחת ביניהם‬,‫ “אם כמותי הוא יהיו כולם זכרים‬:‫אמר להו‬ .‫היו כולם זכרים ואסיקו להו רבי אלעזר על שמיה‬ ”.’‫ ‘כמה פריה ורביה ביטלה רשעה זו מישראל‬:‫תניא “אמר רבי‬ ‫ “ידענא ברבנן דרתיחי עלי ולא מיעסקי בי‬:‫כי הוה ניחא נפשיה אמר לה לדביתהו‬ ”.‫שפיר אוגנין בעיליתאי ולא תדחלין מינאי‬ ‫ “אישתעי לי אימיה דרבי יונתן דאישתעיא לה דביתהו‬:‫אמר רבי שמואל בר נחמני‬ ‫ ‘לא פחות מתמני סרי ולא טפי מעשרין ותרין שנין אוגניתיה‬:‫דראב”ש‬ ‫בעיליתא כי הוה סליקנא מעיננא ליה במזייה כי הוה משתמטא ביניתא‬ .‫ חלש דעתאי‬,‫ יומא חד חזאי ריחשא דקא נפיק מאוניה‬.‫מיניה הוה אתי דמא‬ ‫ יומא חד שמעי בזלותא דצורבא‬,‫ “לא מידי הוא‬:‫איתחזי לי בחלמא אמר לי‬ ‫” כי הוו אתו בי תרי לדינא הוו קיימי אבבא אמר‬.‫מרבנן ולא מחאי כדבעי לי‬ , ‫ “איש פלוני אתה חייב‬:‫מר מילתיה ומר מילתיה נפיק קלא מעיליתיה ואמר‬ ”’.”‫איש פלוני אתה זכאי‬ ‫ “תהא כבעלה שלא‬:‫ אמרה לה‬,‫יומא חד הוה קא מינציא דביתהו בהדי שבבתא‬ ”.‫ניתן לקבורה‬ ‫ “כולי האי ודאי לא אורח ארעא!” איכא דאמרי רשב”י איתחזאי להו‬:‫אמרי רבנן‬ ...‫בחלמא‬

Reverting to the story of R. Eleazar son of Rashbi, yet even so, R. Eleazar son of Rashbi’s fears were not allayed,5 and so he undertook a penance. Every evening they spread sixty sheets for him, and every morning sixty basins 5

The previous passage tells that R. Eleazar b. Rashbi handed over to the authorities a washer who had insulted him. When his anger cooled, he tried to secure that man’s release but the latter was hanged. R. Eleazar b. Rashbi was tormented although he was told that the man was a sinner and that he and his son had seduced a betrothed woman on Yom Kippur. The passage ends with a surrealistic description of R. Eleazar falling ill with an intestinal disease and a kind of miraculous operation that he underwent. The sugiya continues with a similar case that happened to R. Ishmael son of R. Jose which is brought apparently to point out the correct solution rather than handing a person over to the authorities. Later another story is brought about R. Eleazar son of R. Simeon and R. Ishamel son of R. Jose and afterwards, the sequence is interrupted by a cycle of narratives about R. Johanan, at the end of which the sugiya returns to tell about R. Eleazar b. Rashbi and the washer, as though it had never ended. It begins: — “…yet even so, R. Eleazar b. Rashbi’s fears were not allayed.” According to Rashi, by using the words, “yet even so” R. Eleazar meant to say, “even

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of blood and discharge were removed from under him. In the mornings his wife prepared him sixty kinds of pap, which he ate, and then recovered. Yet his wife did not permit him to go to the schoolhouse, lest the Rabbis discomfort him. Every evening he would exhort them, “Come, my brethren and familiars!” whilst every morning he exclaimed, “Depart, because ye disturb my studies!” One day his wife, hearing him, cried out, “You yourself bring them upon you; you have [already] squandered the money of my father’s house!” So she left him and returned to her paternal home. Then there came sixty seamen who presented him with sixty slaves, bearing sixty purses. They too prepared sixty kinds of pap for him, which he ate. One day she [his wife] said to her daughter, “Go and see how your father is faring now.” She went, [and on her arrival] her father said to her, “Go, tell your mother that our [wealth] is greater than theirs” [sc. of his father-in-law’s house]. He then applied to himself the verse (Prov. 31), “She is like the merchant’s ships; she bringeth her food from afar.” He ate, drank, and recovered, and went to the schoolhouse. Sixty specimens of blood were brought before him, and he declared them all clean. But the Rabbis criticized him, saying, “Is it possible that there was not [at least] one about which there was some doubt!” He retorted, “If it be as I [said], let them all be males; if not, let there be one female amongst them.” They were all males, and were named Eleazar, after him. It has been taught: “Rabbi Judah Hanasi said: ‘How much procreation did this wicked [state] prevent in Israel’.” On his death-bed he said to his wife, “I know that the Rabbis are angry with me, and will not properly attend to me. Let me lie in an upper chamber, and do you not be afraid of me.” R. Samuel b. Nahmani said: “R. Jonathan’s mother told me that she was informed by the wife of R. Eleazar son of R. Simeon: ‘I kept him lying in that upper chamber not less than eighteen nor more than twenty-two years. Whenever I ascended there, I examined his hair, and [even] if a single hair had fallen out, the blood would well forth. One day, I saw a worm issue from his ear, whereat I was much grieved, but he appeared to me in my dream and told me that it was nothing. [“This has happened,” said he,] “Because I once heard a scholar insulted and did not protest, as I should have done.” Whenever two people came before him [in a lawsuit], they stood near the door, each stated his case, and then a voice issued from that though it turned out that this man, about whom I was in doubt if he had sinned, was undeniably a sinner, I am still tormented that he was turned over to the authorities.”

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upper chamber, proclaiming, “So-and-so, you are liable; so-and-so, you are free”.” Now, one day his wife was quarrelling with a neighbor, when the latter reviled [her, saying,] “Let her be like her husband, who was not worthy of burial!” Said the Rabbis: “When things have gone thus far, it is certainly not meet.” Others say: R. Simeon b. Yohai [Rashbi] appeared to them in a dream…

The story ends with a conversation between R. Judah Hanasi and the widow of R. Eleazar b. Rashbi: .‫שלח רבי לדבר באשתו‬ ‫ “באתר דמרי‬:‫ “כלי שנשתמש בו קודש ישתמש בו חול?” תמן אמרין‬:‫שלחה ליה‬ ”.‫ כולבא רעיא קולתיה תלא‬,‫ביתא תלא זייניה‬ ”?‫ אבל במעשים טובים מי גדול ממני‬,‫ “נהי בתורה גדול ממני‬:‫שלח לה‬ ‫ דהא קביל עליה‬,‫ במעשים ידענא‬,‫ “בתורה מיהא גדול ממך לא ידענא‬:‫שלחה ליה‬ ”.‫יסורי‬

Then Rabbi Judah Hanasi sent [messengers] to propose [marriage] to his wife. She sent back: “Shall a utensil in which holy food has been used, be used for profane purposes!” There [sc. in Palestine] the proverb runs: “Where the master hung up his weapons, there the shepherd hung up his wallet.” He sent back word, “Granted that he outstripped me in learning, was he [also] my superior in good deeds?” She returned, “Yet at least he outstripped you in learning, though I did not know it. But I do know [that he exceeded you] in [virtuous] practice, since he submitted himself to mortification.”

The four passages with the presence, direct or implied, of the wife of R. Eleazar b. Rashbi yield up a most intriguing image of an independent and assertive woman who is cast into conflict between anger at her husband, disgust and repulsion on the one hand, and loyalty and admiration for him on the other. In the first passage there is a one-sentence description of the suffering which the couple has undergone and the wife’s devotion. The expressions “In the mornings his wife prepared him sixty kinds of pap, which he ate, and then recovered” and “Yet his wife did not permit him to go to the schoolhouse, lest the Rabbis discomfort him” do not deal with a one-time occurrence but rather a prolonged saga of care and effort. (According to both of Rashi’s commentaries on the expression ”‫( “רשעה זו‬this wickedness) at the end of the second

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passage,6 it emerges that R. Eleazar was prevented for many years from coming to the bet midrash.) The two characters — the patient and the caregiver — are immersed in totally different worlds. He — despite his external physical appearance — is totally given over to a spiritual existence. Physical suffering is agreeable to him because he believes that it grants him purification from the emotional suffering and the anguish that plagued him due to deeds he had committed in the past. Therefore, paradoxically, he feels himself to be in a gratifying state of mind although to the outside observer, he is suffering unspeakable torment. The outside observer here is his wife, who is outside the world of her husband R. Eleazar b. Rashbi. She is suffering terribly because of her husband’s deeds, because she does not understand their significance for him; in terms of her own concepts and desires, her world has been overturned because of him. The narrator presents a portrait of emotional detachment between the main protagonists where neither is able to understand the needs and wishes of the other. By means of this portrait one can observe the difference between the behavior of the sage—the man— and the wife—the woman—who belong to the society of sages, at their time of unhappiness. At the level of the literal interpretation, R. Eleazar b. Rashbi is presented as an exemplary scholar and man of conscience. However, a deeper look will reveal that using the conflict between R. Eleazar b. Rashbi and his wife, the author is implying criticism of his conduct. He depicts the situation that has been created around R. Eleazar b. Rashbi as paradoxical: while he was tormented over possibly having done an injustice in the past to strangers, he was oblivious to the injustice he was doing in the present to people who were close to him—to his wife and possibly even a daughter (later on we read about his daughter). Both R. Eleazar b. Rashbi and his wife demonstrated determination, fortitude under suffering, and perseverance, each in his own way. But while he was engrossed in himself, his devotion to Torah study, admirable as that may be, is directed at his own salvation, and his wife was intent on her fellow 6

See quote below.

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man—him—and directed all of her efforts toward what she sees as saving him from himself. The wife’s efforts continued until she found out that her husband R. Eleazar b. Rashbi had control of his suffering and was directing it according to the needs of his study (it is possible that the account of dispelling pains in the morning and summoning them back at night suggests a psychosomatic element that the wife does not understand). When she heard about it from her husband himself, she lost faith in him and detached herself from his world. If previously she had not understood his total dedication to study despite his suffering, now her lack of understanding has increased, in light of the knowledge that he had been directing his suffering towards the needs of his study, with complete disregard for her and her needs. This knowledge proved to her that the family and its welfare had no place in his heart and that his attitude towards her was completely instrumental. At this stage, the wife demonstrated independence and assertiveness in word and deed: “One day his wife, hearing him, cried out, ‘You yourself bring them upon you; you have [already] squandered the money of my father’s house! So she left him and returned to her paternal home.” However, despite the rebelliousness that she demonstrated, both her sorrow over the loss of “the money of her father’s house”7 and her returning to the paternal home express the sensitive behavior that is characteristic of women who do not revolve around themselves alone but around another. The second passage in the narrative completes, in terms of the woman, the profile of the character that emerges from the first passage. The wife, though extricating herself from the world of R. Eleazar b. Rashbi that she regardede as perverse, did not liberate herself from the sense of obligation toward him and the need to ensure his welfare. 7

The accusation “you have squandered the money of my father’s house!” is rather surprising. Rashi’s explanation that her husband’s illness has used up the money is not sufficient. This might be her way to vent her anger at him. And perhaps after she lost her temper, she settled her account with him about his extreme conduct, both in the material realm, his gluttony, and in the spiritual realm, summoning suffering upon himself, and the monetary damage that was caused in consequence.

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In this context, too, the author creates a paradoxical picture that seems to shout the differences between the emotional mechanisms of men and women. He was in a state of spiritual elevation which was achieved through a combination of undergoing painful suffering and dedication to study, and yet enjoyed material comfort because of the great boon he had received from the seamen (which is intensified by the recurrent use of the number sixty8). In this elevated condition, concern for his wife was far from his heart. She, despite her emotional distress (anger, failure to understand, and loneliness) and perhaps also material distress (for he had used up her money), was still concerned with his well-being, and so she sent their daughter to check how he was living. While the words attributed to her reveal her bitterness— for she says “your father” implying alienation and distance from him, and the sentence “how your father is faring now” (to distinguish it from the past)9 sounds somewhat cynical—yet despite her anger at him , she is not indifferent to his plight. There is also bitterness in the reply that he sent her, couched in words that are parallel to hers: “Tell your mother” and “our [wealth] is greater than theirs.”10 It seems that both of them were bitter and angry at each other. In any case, she was concerned about his well-being and he was not concerned about hers. 8

The Maharsha wrote: “That is the usual way of the Talmud to use the number sixty everywhere” meaning, that it was intended to signify a large number. 9 However, it is noteworthy that the word ”‫ “האידנא‬now does not appear in the Escorial and Hamburg mss., and in the Florence ms., the text is totally different: ”.‫ “איזילי חזי אבוך מאי קא הויא עליה‬: “Go see your father, what has become of him.” 10 In the printed version ”‫“ “שלנו גדול משלהם‬that our [wealth] is greater than theirs” it is not clear exactly what he is referring to by the word “theirs.” In the Florence ms. it is written: ”‫שלנו גדול משלכם‬,“ (that our [wealth] is greater than yours), in the Munich ms. “‫שלנו גדו’ משלכם‬,“ (that our [wealth] is greater than theirs), in the Vatican ms. ”‫שלנו גדול משלה‬,“ (that our [wealth] is greater than hers), in the Cambridge Genizah fragments “‫גדול משלכם‬.“ Greater than yours. According to all these versions of the text, R. Eleazar b. Rashbi was referring to his wife’s words ”‫( ”כלית ממון של בית אבא‬you have squandered the money of my father’s house), and he sent his wife a message of protest.

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This chapter with the narrative of R. Eleazar b. Rashbi ends with a report of his return to the bet midrash and the extensive enterprise of declaring women ritually pure. The end of the story, in which sixty children who were born and named for R. Eleazar as a result of that activity, expresses a preference for the masculine position, which advocates devotion to Torah study, over the feminine stance that advocates a commitment to human beings. The conclusion suggests that because of his masculine adherence to the ideal of Torah study, R. Eleazar b. Rashbi helped fulfill the feminine ideal of procreation. In any case, after the ending the redactor incorporates a baraita attributed to Rabbi Judah Hanasi and, according to one of the commentaries, attests to his position on the distance between the world of the male sages and that of their wives. According to the baraita, Rabbi Judah Hanasi reacted to R. Eleazar b. Rashbi’s successful action: ”‫“כמה פריה ורביה בטלה רשעה זו מישראל‬ “How much procreation did this evilness prevent in Israel.”

Rashi gives two alternate interpretations for the words ”‫רשעה זו‬,“ this evilness. 1) A kingdom of evil that appointed him to apprehend thieves, hence, he did not always come to the bet midrash so that women could ask questions regarding blood [ritual purity or impurity]; 2) Another version reads that this refers to his wife who prevented him from going to the bet midrash for many years. From the second interpretation it emerges that Rabbi Judah Hanasi, no less than R. Eleazar b. Rashbi, regarded the latter’s wife as motivated not by devotion to him but by wickedness. However, there is only a slight probability that this is the correct interpretation in light of what comes afterwards, according to which Rabbi Judah Hanasi himself requested R. Eleazar b. Rashbi’s widow in marriage. Therefore, it is unlikely that he called her an evil person. The third passage describes a bizarre situation that depicts in an extreme way the contrast between the behavior of R. Eleazar b. Rashbi and of his wife at a time of sorrow. R. Eleazar b. Rashbi, who apparently felt that his illness had grown more serious and his death was imminent, asked his wife to leave his body in an upper part of the house (the narrative does not bring details of when they returned to live together). He preceded his strange request

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by explaining that he knew that the Rabbis were angry at him (according to Rashi, it was because they had family members among the thieves whom he apprehended), and hence they would not give him a proper burial. Both the explanation and the request reveal an egocentric and egoistic attitude that place his honor and emotional welfare at the center and disregard the honor of his comrades and the emotional welfare of his wife. The words ”‫“ “ולא תדחלין מנאי‬do you not be afraid of me” show that he had fleetingly reflected that he was condemning his wife to living in a frightening reality. However, even though he did consider his wife’s feelings, either briefly or at length, this did not deter him from making his strange request. At a great remove from R. Eleazar b. Rashbi is his wife who, according to her own testimony cited in our narrative by a third party, lived under the same roof as the body for eighteen to twentytwo years, at any rate for a long period, and during that entire period, she cared for him devotedly. The wife dismissed all feelings of fear and disgust that must have assailed her, and at regular intervals she would go to the upper chamber to clean her husband’s hair, which apparently had a life of its own. And as in the first passage that tells of her perseverance and devotion, which were cut short as soon as her faith in him was destroyed when she discovered that he was in control of his own suffering, so too in this passage, her faith in him was destroyed when it turned out that he was subject to the worms and maggots of the grave, although he had presented himself as immune to these mortal signs of death. Even though while he was alive, she had severed her connections with him and his household, when he died and his body was in her care, she did not detach herself from the obligation to keep him in her house, although it is not clear whether she continued to take care of his body or not. The wife’s behavior throughout a long period of suffering unquestionably reveals her monumental ability to set aside her own feelings for the needs of another, even though this ‘other’ is no more than a corpse. In this respect she was his complete opposite, because even on the verge of death, he was unable to set his honor aside for the benefit of another person.

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The fourth passage presents a dialogue that took place between Rabbi Judah Hanasi and the widow of R. Eleazar b. Rashbi about her refusal of the former’s marriage proposal. The excuse ascribed to the widow: “Shall a utensil, in which holy food has been used, be used for profane purposes?” is surprising for two reasons: A. Because it attributes a sexist remark—comparing women to vessels who serve men specifically—to a woman who was depicted in this story as being strong and independent. B. Because it attributes loyalty and admiration for R. Eleazar b. Rashbi after his death to a wife who rejected him in his lifetime. However, what seems surprising to the modern reader in fact expresses most precisely the narrative author’s perception of the restrictions placed on independence and assertiveness by feminine nature. The heroine of the narrative is expressing a dichotomy prevalent in Talmudic narratives about the women who lived in the society of the sages: assertiveness and independence on the one hand and self-abnegation, devotion, and loyalty on the other. Her last words to Rabbi Judah Hanasi: ”‫ דהא קביל עליה יסורי‬, ‫ במעשים ידענא‬,‫“בתורה מיהא גדול ממך לא ידענא‬

“Yet at least he outstripped you in learning, though I did not know it. But I do know [that he exceeded you] in [virtuous] practice, since he submitted himself to mortification”

again present her self-effacing attitude towards the world of Torah. Yet at the same time the last part shows clearly that her husband’s suffering seems to her after his death as understandable and even noble. This might be seen to contradict her scathing objections to him and his suffering which are described in the first passage. However, the truth is that she had no reservations about the fact that he had accepted upon himself suffering (and she even tried to allay and relieve this suffering), but rather about the fact that he subordinated them to the needs of his study. According to this reading, the author presents a further dichotomy that for him characterizes the wife of R. Eleazar b. Rashbi (and perhaps the wives of the circle of sages in general): a lack of understanding of the spiritual world of their husbands, the sages, on the one hand, and a deep identification

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with and even admiration for their way of conducting themselves in this world, on the other. A comparison of the BT version of this narrative with Pesikta de Rav Kahana, which is apparently the source or the closer of the two to the original version, corroborates the premises presented here about the intentions of the BT redactor. Here are the relevant passages from Pesikta de Rav Kahana: The first passage: ‫ר’ אלעזר בר’ שמע’ אתשש ואתגליית אדרעה וחמא לאינתתיה דהות דחכא‬ .‫ובכייא‬ ‫ דחכת דאמרת טוביי‬.‫ “חייך דאנא ידע למה דחכץ וידע למה דבכיית‬:‫אמ’ לה‬ ‫’ ובכיית‬.‫ טוביי דאידבקית להדין גופא צדיקא‬,‫‘מה הוה חלקי בהדין עלמא‬ ‫ אנא ברם רימה חס‬.‫ מדמוך‬,‫’ וכן הוא‬.‫דאמרת ‘ווי דהדין גופא אזל לרימה‬ ‫ אלא חדא תולעת’ דעתידא דנקרא אחורי אודני‬,‫ושלום לית הוא משלוט בי‬ ‫דחד זמן הוינא עליל לכנשתא ושמעת קלא דחד בר נש מחרף והווה ספיקא‬ ”.‫גבי למעבד ביה דינא ולא עבדית‬

R. Eleazar, when he grew weaker [as he lay dying], his arm came to be exposed. His saw his wife both laughing and weeping. He said to her, “By your life, I know exactly why you are laughing and also why you are weeping. You are laughing because you are thinking, ‘How good it has been for me! How excellent has been my portion in this world. How good it has been for me that I have cleaved to the body of that righteous man.’ You are weeping because you are thinking, ‘Woe for that body that is going to the worms.’ And that is true; I am dying. But the worm—God forbid—will never rule over me. But there is one worm that is destined to chew on the back of my ears, for one time I was going into the synagogue and heard a voice of a man who was blaspheming, and I had the power to do something about it and I did not do so.”

The depiction of the confrontation between R. Eleazar b. Rashbi and his wife here is different on many points from the description of the same event brought in the BT. Here it is a onetime conversation and there is no mention of her prolonged care of him, of preventing his going to the bet midrash, her anger at him for squandering the money of her father’s house, the fact that she rebelled and returned to her father’s house, and sending the daughter to inquire after her husband’s welfare. The portrait that emerges from this description is the opposite in many respects of that depicted in the BT. The BT version presents a picture of prolonged illness that creates a relationship fraught with tension

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between a husband and wife who are living in different worlds: he, in a world that revolves around morality and Torah study, she, in a world that is centered around caring for her husband and the family’s material wellbeing. She does not understand his spiritual needs, and he is engrossed in himself and does not notice her. In contrast, the version in Pesikta de Rav Kahana does not tell the saga of their life but rather brings one single dramatic incident that presents R. Eleazar b. Rashbi and his wife as a loving couple who demonstrate understanding for each other. She responds sensitively to his suffering and illness, and he for his part consoles and soothes her. While his consolation does contain a tone of self-assurance and is somewhat patronizing, his personal conviction that she is happy that she has been devoted “to the body of the righteous man” shows that he is assured of her love and admiration, and it appears that she has given him reason for this confidence. Most of the elements that make up this passage in Pesikta de Rav Kahana are scattered throughout various passages in the BT narrative. Thus, the words of consolation that R. Eleazar b. Rashbi spoke to his wife according to the Pesikta, that after his death maggots would not have power over his flesh, and a single worm would chew the back of his ears for the one sin he had committed, are brought in the BT in other contexts. The words about the maggots constitute the basis for a detailed description that is incorporated into the BT sugiya of the “operation” undergone by R. Eleazar b. Rashbi, in the course of which basketfuls of fat were removed from his abdomen which did not putrefy although they were placed in the hot sun of the month of Tammuz. The words about the worm served as the basis for the BT narrative about the terror that gripped R. Eleazar b. Rashbi’s wife after his death, when she saw a worm come out of his ear, and in consequence, he appeared to her in a dream to soothe her.11 It is 11

According to the Pesikta, R. Eleazar b. Rashbi told his wife about the worm and gave her an explanation for it while he was still alive, yet according to the BT, the entire incident took place after his death. The context of the explanation for the presence of the worm in the Pesikta is also different than the explanation in the BT. According to the Pesikta, R. Eleazar b. Rashbi said that he heard a man blaspheme and did not do anything about it, while according to the BT, he said that he heard a scholar insulted and he had not protested.

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evident that by integrating R. Eleazar b. Rashbi’s words to his wife in the version brought before us in the BT, the redactor wished to rule out the existence of any emotional intimacy between R. Eleazar and his wife. The second passage. The Pesikta describes how after R. Eleazar b. Rashbi died, he was buried in Gush Halav. But his father Rashbi (R. Simeon ben Yohai) revealed himself to the people of Meron in a dream and demanded that his son be buried next to him. The people of Gush Halkav did not allow the body to be moved. However, once on the eve of Yom Kippur when the people of Gush Halav were occupied with eating the meal before the fast, the people of Meron went to get the body of R. Eleazar b. Rashbi and two snakes of fire accompanied them; when they reached the cave, they positioned themselves outside the entrance. And then follows the rest of the story: ”?‫אמרין “מן עליל מייתי ליה‬ ”.‫אמרה “איתתיה אנא עלה ומייתי ליה דאית לי סימן בגויה‬ ‫ בעי‬.‫עלת בעית למיתיה יתיה ואשכחת דההיא תולעת דנקרא חורי אודנא‬ ’.‫ ‘אירפיה למרי חובא דיגביה חוביה‬:‫למירמתה ושמעה ברת קלא אמרה‬ ‫ אמרין מן ההיא שעתא לא אתגלי ר’ שמע’ בר יוחאי‬.‫אייתוניה ויהבוניה גבי אבוי‬ .‫על מרונייא‬

They said, “Who will bring him out?” Said his wife, “I shall go in and bring him out, for I know the mark [that will tell me which body is his].” She went in and wanted to bring him out, and found the worm nibbling the back of his ear. She wanted to take away the worm, but heard an echo [bat kol] saying, “Let the Creditor collect his debt.” They brought out the body and set it next to the body of his father.They say that from that time, R. Simeon b. Yohai never again appeared to the people of Meron.

The differences between the passage in the Pesikta and the parallel one in the BT are obvious. The BT narrative presents a strange request made by R. Eleazar b. Rashbi of his wife shortly before his death, that she lodge his body in the upper part of the house and not fear it. I have written about the egoism reflected in such a request and the fact that his wife’s total dedication to caring for his body is astonishing considering the fact that during his lifetime, she had rebelled against him and left him. Yet here the

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Pesikta presents a scenario that seems like the natural development, both in content and in atmosphere, of the situation portrayed in the previous passage it cited. In terms of the atmosphere, the sensitivity and love that were expressed in the previous passage in the dialogue between the husband and wife are expressed in this passage by the wife asking the sages to allow her to enter the cave to bring out her husband’s body. In terms of the content, the secret that R. Eleazar b. Rashbi entrusted to his wife in the previous passage—the worm that nibbled behind his ear—is retained in this passage and serves as a identifying mark to find her husband. The story of the worm is used by the Pesikta as the secret shared by R. Eleazar b. Rashbi and his wife, which demonstrates the unity between them. The wife’s reaction at the sight of the worm in the Pesikta is also completely different than her reaction as represented by the BT. In the Pesikta it is written ”‫“ “בעי למרמתא‬She wanted to take away the worm,”12 and according to this, not only was she not horrified by the sight but she wanted to remove the worm with her own hands in order to improve the state of the body. In the BT it is written: ”‫“חלש דעתאי‬ “I was much aggrieved.” In other words, the wife was not a partner to her husband’s secret in his lifetime, and therefore she was not prepared for the awful sight and was aggrieved. It was only after he died, and then only in a dream, that R. Eleazar b. Rashbi provided her with the explanation of the worm. It is easy to see how the BT redactor, who is faithful to the gender-based distinctions mentioned above, used the elements of the love story and conjugal unity whose natural by-products are commitment and loyalty in order to weave a narrative about masculine distress which is based mainly on pangs of conscience and dedication to Torah study, and feminine sorrow, which is mostly devotion to another person that becomes an obsession after his death.13 12

In the Safad ms. (its copying was completed in Egypt in 1565), the text reads: ”‫( “בעת למקטליה יתיה‬she wanted to kill it) and in the Carmoli ms. (apparently written in North Africa at the end of the fifteenth century or the beginning of the sixteenth), the version reads: “‫[ “בעית היא למקטליה‬she wanted to kill it]. 13 See S. Friedman, Historical Aggadah p. 126, who wrote: “There is no doubt that the story of lodging the body in an upper chamber is part of the story

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The third passage: ‫וכיון דדמך שלח (רבי) תבע באיתתיה שלחה ואמרת ליה “כלי שנשתמש בו קדש‬... ”?‫ישתמש בו חול‬ ”?‫ “מה הוא עבד דלית אנא עביד דכוותיה‬:‫אמר לה‬ ‫”כד הוה לעי באוריתא כל צורכא הוה אתי מדמוך ליה ואמ’ ‘כל יסוריהן‬:‫אמרה ליה‬ ‫ וכד הוה עונתא למלעי באורייתא הוה‬.‫דישרא’ ייתון לון עליי’ ואינון אתיי לון‬ ”.‫’ ואינון אזלין להון‬,‫אמ’ ‘כל חד וחד מנכון יחזור לזויתיה‬

When he died, he [Rabbi Judah Hanasi] sent and sought his widow in marriage. She sent to him: “Should a utensil which has been used for sacred purposes now be used for merely secular purposes?” He said to her, “What did he ever do that I do not do?” She said to him, “When he would work in Torah study, having completed all that he could do, he would go to lie down and say, ‘May all of the sorrows of Israel come upon me,’ and they would come upon him [so in atonement for all of Israel, he would suffer]. And when the time would come again for him to labor in Torah study, he would say, ‘May each and every one of you return to its place,’ and they would go their way.”

[Afterwards in the narrative, it is told that Rabbi Judah Hanasi tried to emulate this but he was unable to drive away the suffering.] In a preliminary reading, one may already detect the outstanding difference between the Babylonian text and Eretz Israel text. In the latter, the report of R. Eleazar b. Rashbi’s conduct regarding his suffering is brought by his wife. The language ascribed to her: ”‫“כשהיה עמל בתורה כל צרכו‬ “When he would work in Torah study, having completed all that he could do” and ”‫“כשהגיע הזמן להתייגע בתורה‬ “when the time would come again for him to labor in Torah study” shows that she understood and appreciated her husband’s world and his deeds, and her words ”‫“היה בא לשכב‬ “he would go to lie down” portrays her as a partner in his life. The portrayal of their relationship in her words is very different of the burial brought in Pesikta de Rav Kahana, where it says that R. Eleazar b. Rashbi’s wife went into the cave and “found the worm.”

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from the tale told in the BT, according to which she is outside her husband’s world, the world of Torah, and does not understand his motives, and there is no direct communication between them. Moreover, the words attributed to her in the BT— ”‫”בתורה מיהא גדול ממך — לא ידענא‬ “he outstripped you in learning, though I did not know it”— which represent her as someone who does not believe that she has a foothold in the world of Torah do not appear in the Pesikta. According to the Pesikta, the dialogue between the widow of R. Eleazar b. Rashbi and Rabbi Judah Hanasi are consistent with the entire narrative, which portrays a saga of spiritual union between R. Eleazar b. Rashbi and his wife.14 In contrast, the dialogue in the BT, which also presents the wife as a faithful widow, is surprising and even outrageous, in light of the details known from the earlier parts of the narrative about the suffering she underwent because of him and the fact that she rebelled against him. In summary: the comparison between the Babylonian narrative and the narrative that appears in the Pesikta, which apparently is the source of the story, highlights the gender-driven inclination of the Babylonian redactor. He presented two completely different patterns of behavior by R. Eleazar b. Rashbi and his wife at their time of suffering, and one may postulate that according to his perception, this difference is a function of the vast divide between the experiences and outlook of men and women. Another narrative that also portrays women’s functioning versus men’s at a time of grief is brought in Proverbs Rabbah 31. However, unlike the story of R. Eleazar b. Rashbi and his wife, this story, whose main characters are R. Meir and his wife, does not show a rift between the couple. On the contrary, R. Meir’s wife reveals understanding both for her husband’s spiritual world and for his material needs. She takes pains to preserve his life routine and in order to do so, she overcomes her own grief and conceals 14

The coherence of the Pesikta is evident also in that the wife’s final words ”‫“ “שמעתי שמעלין בקודש ואין מורידין‬I learned that one may raise an object to a higher grade of sanctity but must not degrade it to a lower” were spoken in light of Rabbi Judah Hanasi’s failure to banish suffering, which depicts him as inferior to R. Eleazar b. Rashbi in the eyes of God.

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‫‪from him the terrible reality of the death of their sons for a period‬‬ ‫‪of time.‬‬ ‫“אשת חיל מי ימצא?” (משלי לא‪:‬י) אמרו מעשה היה בר’ מאיר שהיה יושב ודורש‬ ‫בבית המדרש בשבת במנחה‪ ,‬ומתו שני בניו‪ ,‬מה עשתה אמו ‪/‬אמן‪ ,/‬הניחה‬ ‫שניהם על המטה ופרשה סדין עליהם‪.‬‬ ‫במוצאי שבת בא ר’ מאיר מבית המדרש לביתו‪ ,‬אמר לה‪ ”:‬היכן שני בני?”‬ ‫אמרה‪“ :‬לבית המדרש הלכו‪”.‬‬ ‫אמר לה‪“ :‬צפיתי לבית המדרש ולא ראיתי אותם‪”.‬‬ ‫נתנו לו כוס של הבדלה והבדיל‪ ,‬חזר ואמר “היכן שני בני?”‬ ‫אמרה לו‪“ :‬הלכו למקום אחר ועכשיו הם באים‪”.‬‬ ‫הקריבה לפניו המאכל ואכל ובירך‪.‬‬ ‫לאחר שבירך אמרה לו‪“ :‬רבי ‪,‬שאלה אחת יש לי לשאול לך‪”.‬‬ ‫אמר לה‪ ”:‬אמרי שאלתך‪”.‬‬ ‫אמרה לו‪“ :‬רבי‪ ,‬קודם היום בא אדם אחד ונתן לי פקדון‪ ,‬ועכשיו בא ליטול אותו‪,‬‬ ‫נחזיר לו או לא?”‬ ‫אמר לה‪“ :‬בתי‪ ,‬מי שיש פקדון אצלו הוא צריך להחזירו לרבו‪”.‬‬ ‫אמרה לו‪“ :‬רבי חוץ מדעתך לא הייתי נותנת אצלו‪”.‬‬ ‫מה עשתה? תפשתו בידה‪ ,‬והעלה אותו לאותו חדר‪ ,‬והקריבה אותו למטה‪ ,‬ונטלה‬ ‫סדין מעליהם‪ ,‬וראה שניהם מתים ומונחים על המטה‪.‬‬ ‫התחיל בוכה ואומר “בני בני רבי רבי‪ ,‬בני בדרך ארץ‪ ,‬ורבי שהיו מאירין פני‬ ‫בתורתן‪”.‬‬ ‫באותה שעה אמרה לו לר’ מאיר‪“ :‬רבי‪ ,‬לא כך אמרת לי אני צריך להחזיר הפקדון‬ ‫לרבו?”‬ ‫אמר‪’“ :‬ה’ נתן וה’ לקח יהי שם ה’ מבורך’ (איוב א‪ :‬כא)‪”.‬‬ ‫אמר ר’ חנינא‪“ :‬בדבר הזה נחמתו ונתיישבה דעתו‪ ,‬לכך נאמר ‘אשת חיל מי ימצא’‪”.‬‬ ‫אמר ר’ [חמא בר] חנינא‪“ :‬מפני מה נתחייבו בניו של ר’ מאיר ומתו בבת אחת‪,‬‬ ‫מפני שהיו רגילין להניח בית המדרש ויושבין באכילה ובשתיה‪”.‬‬ ‫אמר ר’ יוחנן‪“ :‬ואפילו בדברי הבטלה‪ ,‬שבשעה שניתנה תורה לישראל לא הזהירן‬ ‫אלא על דברי תורה‪ ,‬שנאמר ‘היום הזה ה’ אלהיך מצוך לעשות’ (דברים‬ ‫‪15‬‬ ‫כו‪ :‬טז)‪”.‬‬

‫‪“A good wife who can find (Prov. 31:10)?” It once happened that Rabbi Meir‬‬ ‫‪was sitting and lecturing in the house of study on Sabbath afternoon, and‬‬ ‫‪his two sons died. What did their mother [Beruryah] do? She laid the two‬‬ ‫‪of them on the bed and spread a sheet over them.‬‬ ‫‪After the departure of the Sabbath, Rabbi Meir came home from the house of‬‬ ‫”?‪study. He said to her, “Where are my two sons‬‬ ‫’’‪She said, “They went to the house of study.‬‬ ‫”‪He said, “I was watching the house of study, and I did not see them.‬‬ ‫‪She gave him a cup for havdalah, and he recited the havdalah prayer. He again‬‬ ‫”?‪said, ‘’Where are my two sons‬‬ ‫‪ The passage is taken from the Buber edition.‬‬

‫‪15‬‬

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She said to him, “They went to another place and will soon come.” She set food before him, and he ate and blessed. After he blessed, she said, “Master, I have a question to ask you.” He said to her, “Ask your question.” She said to him, “Master, some time ago a man came and gave me something to keep for him. Now he comes and seeks to take it. Shall we return it to him or not?” He said to her, “Daughter, whoever has an object in trust must he not return it to its owner?” She said to him, “Master, I would not have given it to him without your knowledge.” What did she do? She took him by the hand and led him up to the room. She led him to the bed and removed the sheet that was on them. When he saw the two of them lying dead on the bed, he began to cry and say, “My sons, my sons, my teachers, my teachers. My sons because that is the normal way of things, my teachers because they illuminated my eyes with their Torah.” At that moment she said to Rabbi Meir, “Master, did you not say to me that I must return the trust to its master?” He said, “‘The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord’ (Job 1:21).” R. Hanina said, “In this way she comforted him, and his mind was set at ease. Regarding such an instance does it say, ‘A good wife who can find?’” R. Hama b. Hanina said, “Why were R. Meir’s sons deserving of death and died all at once? Because they were in the habit of leaving the house of study and sitting down to eat and drink.” R. Johanan said, “They were even involved in idleness, for when the Torah was given to Israel, it warned them specifically about words of Torah, as it is written ‘This day the Lord your God has commanded you to do these statutes and judgments’ (Deut. 26:16).”

The narrative is constructed of three parts which set out for the reader a kind of riddle that is solved in the end, and its solution is highly flattering to the woman, presenting her as a shining example who in many respects exceeds R. Meir in her virtues. The first part of the narrative is made up of three surprising actions taken by the woman, among them a dialogue with her husband during which she lies to him twice. The first action begins with the rhetorical question “what did their mother do?,” showing that the narrator wished to arouse the reader to wonder at the description of the wife-mother’s actions:

T he E nc ou nt e r B e t w e e n t he S a g e s a nd t he Wome n

“She laid the two of them on the bed and spread a sheet over them.” The reader must ask himself how she did not summon R. Meir from the house of study immediately upon discovering the death of her sons, something that was appropriate to do because of human nature and even according to the halacha which states that the obligations of mourning overrule Torah study. (As previously mentioned, R. Akiva, the teacher of R. Meir, continued his Torah study throughout all stages of his son’s illness and only set it aside and removed his tefillin after the son died.) Astonishment at the wife’s rapid regaining of her composure is heightened after the conversation that she holds with R. Meir, brought immediately after this section, where we deduce that the death of the sons was sudden. For in response to R. Meir’s repeated query “where are my two sons?,” the wife answered once “They went to the house of study” and the second time “They went to another place and will soon come.” Thus we realize that when he left the house, his sons were still healthy and well. The perplexity provoked by the wife’s behavior increases in view of the steps she took to guarantee her husband’s well-being: “She gave him a cup for havdalah, and he recited the havdalah prayer” and “She set food before him, and he ate.” Her actions suggest that she wished to maintain R. Meir’s normal routine. However, it is not clear what was the purpose of maintaining routine in the face of such a terrible calamity, hence the wife’s behavior seems preposterous. The second part of the narrative is a scholastic dialogue conducted by R. Meir and his wife. She addressed him thus: ”‫שאלה אחת יש לי לשאול לך‬, ‫“רבי‬ “Master I have a question to ask you,” and he replied ”‫“אמרי שאלתך‬ “Ask your question.” The woman’s question “Shall we return it [the object in trust to its owner]?” was even stranger than her actions, because it was unnecessary, the answer being obvious. That was apparently how R. Meir understood it, for he replied with a question: ”?‫“בתי מי שיש פקדון אצלו [אינו] הוא צריך להחזירו לרבו‬ “Daughter, whoever has an object in trust must he not return

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it to its owner?” (The word ’‫‘—‘בתי‬daughter’—attests to the good relations between them, which caused him to answer her gently despite his astonishment at her question.) The wife’s statement at the end of this section ”‫“חוץ מדעתך לא הייתי נותנת לו‬ “Master, I would not have given it to him without your knowledge,” explains why she asked him a seemingly gratuitous question and completes her portrayal as an admirer of her husband, but leaves the astonishment at her question and at the very possibility that she had considered not returning the object in trust. In the last part of the narrative, the riddle of her behavior is solved. This passage places her in contrast to her husband, presents the thinking that lay behind her actions, and greatly enhances her image. R. Meir’s outburst of weeping and lamentation at the sight of his dead sons was the normative reaction of a bereaved father who has lost both sons at once. In light of his reaction, one can respect his wife’s conduct and understand the intensity of effort she required to control herself and not betray her grief. Her actions and words in this part of the narrative solve the riddle of her behavior in the earlier parts. Now the reader understands that it was her concern for her husband’s welfare that caused her to delay the news of the tragedy for a short time so that she could strengthen him physically with food and drink, and spiritually by laying down an ideological basis that would enable him to be consoled. On the motif of an object in trust used as a consolation, I have written at length in the analysis of the story of the death of R. Johanan b. Zakkai’s son.16 In the narrative here, the parable of the object in trust is presented in a more concise manner, without the moral lesson that appears in the story of R. Johanan b. Zakkai where the very success in safeguarding the deposit and returning it intact is the consolation. However, unlike R. Eleazar b. ‘Arach who came to comfort R. Johanan b. Zakkai, R. Meir’s wife was not satisfied with verbal consolation which is understood by the intellect, but transformed the parable into a dramatic event, “sucking” R. Meir into it and causing him to 16

See the previous chapter on “Grief on bereavement over children.”

T he E nc ou nt e r B e t w e e n t he S a g e s a nd t he Wome n

feel a partnership with God and a closeness to him. This new feeling which he articulated using the words spoken by Job “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21) abated somewhat the sense of loss that enveloped him at the sight of his dead children. This story is the ultimate portrayal of feminine behavior versus masculine behavior at a time of grief and distress. R. Meir’s wife is known from several sources in the BT as a scholar and a member of the society of sages.17 It is therefore clear that portraying her as serving her husband and citing the words that she addressed to him as a disciple addresses a teacher were designed to shape her image as a loving and solicitous wife. However, towards the end of the story, when the considerations and planning that motivated all of her actions became apparent, she reverted to being the wife of R. Meir who was renowned for her wisdom. The complete character that is brought to light throughout the plot is in fact the character of a “woman of valor” as depicted in Proverbs 31. She has absolute self-control, executive ability, wisdom, and a high level of emotional intelligence. These traits are given added prominence through her being portrayed as caring for her husband, R. Meir, who is in the role of the subject of her ministrations. Her level-headed actions and wise words as well as her ability to diminish herself and to direct her behavior toward the feelings of the other person places her far above her husband, the eminent sage, who seems like a pale and helpless figure in comparison. The next narrative passage is taken from a longer, well-known story of a tragic dispute between R. Johanan and Resh Lakish, which appears in Baba Mezi’a 84a. The story in its entirety is discussed in Chapter Two of this book, most of which is not pertinent to our subject here. I will focus the discussion, then, on the passage that tells of the wife of Resh Lakish who pleads for mercy on her 17

See: David Goodblatt “The Beruria Tradition,” Journal of Jewish Studies 26, 1975, pp. 68-8; Tal Ilan,”The Quest for the Historical Beruriah, Rachel and Imma Shalom,” AJS Reviw 22,1, 1997, pp. 1-17. Dalia Hoshen, “Beruria the Tannait: A theological reading of the character of the woman scholar in Talmudic literature”, Akdamut 22, 2009, pp. 168-196 (Hebrew).

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husband from her brother R. Johanan (who is in effect responsible for his plight). .‫ חלש ריש לקיש‬,‫חלש דעתיה דרבי יוחנן‬ ”.‫ “עשה בשביל בני‬:‫ אמרה ליה‬. ‫אתא אחתיה קא בכיא‬ ”.‫יא) “עזבה יתמיך אני אחיה‬:‫ (יר’ מט‬:‫אמר לה‬ ”.‫“עשה בשביל אלמנותי‬ ”.‫יא) “ואלמנותיך עלי תבטחו‬:‫ (יר’ מט‬:‫אמר לה‬

R. Johanan therefore felt himself deeply hurt, [as a result of which] Resh Lakish fell ill. His sister [R. Johanan’s sister, the wife of Resh Lakish] came and wept before him: “Forgive him for the sake of my son,” she pleaded. He replied: “‘Leave thy fatherless children. I will preserve them alive’ (Jer. 49:11).” “For the sake of my widowhood then!” “‘And let thy widows trust in me’ (Jer.49:11).”

From the full narrative, the characters of the brother, R. Johanan and his sister, the wife of Resh Lakish, emerge as emotional, excitable personalities. However, there is a huge difference between the matters that cause emotion in the brother and those that cause emotion in the sister. While R. Johanan is distressed over what happened to him personally, his sister is distressed over what is happening to another person.18 While R. Johanan is sensitive to honor and the subject of the dispute between him and Resh Lakish is a memory of the past, his sister is sensitive to the existence of people dear to her, and the subject of her quarrel with her brother is the future of the family. Other differences are reflected in the emotional behavior of each: while R. Johanan’s distress debilitates and paralyzes him, his sister’s distress spurs her to action. And while her appeal to him is made out of genuine emotion and expresses a longing for intimacy and sympathy, his scholarly replies express distance and condescension. Similar differences between the behavior of a woman and a man during a time of grief also emerge in the last part of the narrative brought in Baba Batra 9b, telling of a serious incident that took place in the study hall between R. Sheshet and his disciple 18

In this context, the order of things is noteworthy: the concern over her own widowhood takes third place after the general subject of her plea, her husband, and the subject of her first claim, her son.

T he E nc ou nt e r B e t w e e n t he S a g e s a nd t he Wome n

Ahadboi as a result of which Ahadboi is struck mute. In the passage relevant to our subject, there is a description of the confrontation between the mother of Ahadboi who is summoned to defend her son and his teacher R. Sheshet (who, like R. Johanan before him, is responsible for his disciple’s plight) ‫אהדר ליה בבדיחותא [אחדבוי לרב ששת לאחר כמה קושיות שהקשה לו‬ ‫ אישתיק רב אחדבוי‬,‫ותשובותיו לא היו מספקות] חלש דעתיה דרב ששת‬ .‫בר אמי ואתיקר תלמודיה‬ .‫אתיא אימיה וקא בכיא קמיה צווחה צווחה ולא אשגח בה‬ .‫” בעא רחמי עליה ואיתסי‬.‫אמרה ליה “חזי להני חדי דמצית מינייהו‬

He [R. Ahadboi] made his objections in a mocking manner which deeply wounded R. Shesheth, and soon after R. Ahadboi b. Abba lost his speech and forgot his learning. His mother came and wept before him, but in spite of all her cries he paid no attention to her. At length she said: “Behold these breasts from which you have sucked.” Then at last he prayed for him and he was healed.

The mother’s behavior in this story is emotional to the point of being hysterical. The image of her exposing her breasts depicts her as a simple woman, even somewhat coarse. However, one must remember that seeing her son struck speechless and forgetting his learning before her eyes is what drove her to this undignified conduct. In any event, the differences between the sorrows felt by R. Johanan and that felt by his sister as they come to light in the story about R. Johanan and Resh Lakish in Baba Mezi’a are also present in the comparison between the sorrow of R. Sheshet and Ahadboi and that of the mother with respect to the cause of the sorrow and how it is expressed in emotional behavior. With reference to the cause of the sorrow, R. Sheshet was aggrieved because of the offense to himself, while Ahadboi’s mother was distressed because of a genuinely existential matter—the blow to her son’s mental health and intellectual capabilities. With regard to emotional behavior, both of the main protagonists of the narrative, R. Sheshet and Ahadboi, as a result of their distress, entered into a state of paralysis where they were unable to do anything: one experienced severe emotional distress (hulshat da’at), while the other was struck speechless. In contrast, the mother waged a frenzied struggle, both

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verbally and physically, to save her son, and her activity was indeed crowned with success. Both of the stories brought here portray the sorrow of women as an emotion grounded in concern or love for another person, free of any connection to the pursuit of honor or status.19 Moreover, the women are depicted in these narratives as externalizing their sorrow and expressing it verbally or physically, whether by a plea like Resh Lakish’s wife or by an outburst like Ahadboi’s mother. This behavior, which contains a certain surrender of one’s own dignity, is different than the behavior of the sages who when confronting the event that caused them anguish are beset by hulshat da’at, e.g., they are struck speechless and fall silent because they cannot set aside their honor. In summary: the sources discussed in this chapter demonstrate the unquestionable difference between the expressions of grief and ways of behaving at times of sorrow of women and those of men according to the following points. The causes of sorrow in women are never connected to ego and in most cases, their sorrow was born of seeing and understanding the other person. The connection between sorrow and a blow to the ego causes men to become paralyzed, while women are galvanized into action and effort on behalf of their fellow man.

19

Admiel Kosman, in his work Femininity in the Spiritual World of the Talmudic Story, Tel Aviv 2008, p. 39 (Hebrew), writes in the chapter devoted to the story of Mar Ukva: “The reading that I propose of the Talmudic narrative before us will find that the narrator wishes to show that in the spiritual world, there is little meaning to the human endeavor to attain spiritual achievements, since the very endeavor is rooted in an egocentric approach, which is blind to one’s fellowman, while the feminine, non-achiever approach, which accepts the other as he is, has a genuine spiritual value. In other words: the masculine hierarchical scale which assigns scores from ‘high’ to ‘low’ according to the number of intellectual attainments laboriously acquired is completely nullified in the spiritual world of truth. Here, it emerges that it is precisely the one who waives the achievement-oriented competition and accepts with humility his ‘lower’ place on the scale is the person who finds himself ultimately at the top of the spiritual scale of values.”

T he E nc ou nt e r B e t w e e n t he S a g e s a nd t he Wome n

Women dispense with their honor and are prepared to lower themselves and even to be humiliated in order to help someone dear to them who is in distress. Loyalty to members of the family—husband, children, etc.—is a dominant motif in determining female behavior at a time of grief. It is reasonable to assume that the explanation for the differences that are described above is grounded both in the different experiences and life circumstances of men and women and in the image that the authors of the narratives had of the traits and roles of each of the genders.

263

Afterword

This book represents a collection of seventy-five narratives, most of them from the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmud and a small number from Tannaic sources—compilations of midrash and Tosefta. Their common denominator is a preoccupation with grief and emotional distress. The book is organized into five chapters, three of which contain sources that were collected according to a key word that expresses sorrow or grief and two of which contain sources collected by subject—sorrow and distress. The first part of each chapter was devoted to a literary and conceptual analysis of each narrative in its own right, and the second part to a comparison of the analyses and to conclusions about what is similar and dissimilar about the causes and modes of expression of sorrow analyzed. The aim of the entire work is to investigate the perception of sorrow as reflected in the Talmudic narratives, to consider who are the people experiencing sorrow, for what reasons, how they express it, how they are seen by their surroundings, and if and how they are given tools to help them cope with their sorrow. As customary in rabbinic literature, most of the heroes of these narratives are sages—Tannaim and Amoraim—and there are only a few who are simple people or women. However, it is the presence of the latter that made it possible to compare their grief along with its causes and manifestations with those of the sages, and this led to conclusions about the reality and perceptions in which the sages operated, especially those which were prevalent in the Jewish academies of Babylon, as well as their emotional world, which was very different from that of the simple people and even more so from the women with whom they lived. Each of the five chapters has a different subject and as a result, the research method adopted in them was different. The first chapter brings narratives whose focus is verbs derived from the root .‫ר‬.‫ע‬.‫( צ‬tza’ar), i.e. sadness or emotional distress.

Afterword

All of the narratives except for one portray sages who experienced this emotion in consequence of their own action or failure to act. The choice of the methodology that characterizes this chapter—a comparison of the Babylonian narratives with the Eretz Israel narratives—derives from the fact that the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds were found to contain more than a few parallel narratives relating to sorrow and emotional distress. It is an intriguing fact that the main protagonists of all of the Babylonian narratives are Eretz Israel sages, and in all of them the sadness and distress are associated with their status as sages and Torah scholars. In comparison, most of the stories about sadness and sorrow in the Jerusalem Talmud, whose main protagonists were probably Eretz Israel sages, are not related to competition over Torah study or status in the world of Torah. Moreover, the JT narratives are laconic accounts resembling reportage, while the BT narratives are literary works with a didactic intent. They heighten the impression of the deep sorrow of the sages by means of descriptions such as ”‫“הווה קא מצטער טובא‬ (he was grieved very greatly), and ”‫“כל ימיו של אותו צדיק היה מצטער‬ (All the lifetime of that pious man he grieved) and always ascribe it to an action or failure to act that is associated with studying or teaching Torah. It may be seen then that the creators and redactors of the Babylonian narratives attributed their account to distant Eretz Israel sages whom they depicted as they perceived them to be, based on the reality and views that were current in their own academies. The Babylonian point of view is not only marked by elements that are related to deep sorrow but also in the shaping of the plots they reflect the Babylonians’ criticism of what seemed to them to be the unjust social worldview prevalent in Jewish society in Eretz Israel. This emerges, for example, from a comparison of the story of R. Tarfon who made personal use of the crown of Torah in the BT (Nedarim 62a) with the parallel story in the JT (Shevi’it 34d (4:2), as well as from the depiction of Rabbi Judah Hanasi as someone who did not want to provide food to unlearned people and was deeply

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grieved that he had been convinced to give food to someone whom he considered to be ignorant (Baba Batra 8a). The second chapter examines narratives containing the phrase hulshah da’atey/hulshat da’at, a temporary lapse of consciousness as a result of profound sorrow. To analyze these narratives, they were divided into two groups, one comprised of narratives whose plots unfolded within the study hall, and the other narratives which took place outside the study hall. A comparison of the two groups revealed that there was a hierarchy in which events that took place inside the study hall grieved the sages more than those that transpired outside. The element common to both groups of narratives is that most of the main protagonists in these stories are sages and the profound despair to the point of physical weakness (hulshat da’at) which they experienced was related to competition over status and their ranking in the spiritual world. From these narratives, especially those in the first group, one can see that the way of life of the Babylonian academies was charged with tension, and the sages were subject to prolonged and exhausting power struggles over their status in the world of scholarship and halachic ruling. It is probable that many of these narratives were created as critiques of the atmosphere of excessive ambitiousness that prevailed in the academies. Conclusive expression of this criticism appears in the story of Rav Kahana and R. Johanan (Baba Kama 117a), which presents R. Johanan as anxious about his status in the study hall, and the dramatic change that took place in his thinking, and consequently in his feeling, when he stood opposite the burial cave of his wondrous disciple, Rav Kahana. At times the criticism is brought in the sugiya itself outside the narrative, as in the words cited in the sugiya in Baba Mezi’a 84b immediately before the story about the dispute between Rabbi and R. Eleazar b. Simeon. The author of the sugiya incorporated a saying of Rabbi Judah Hanasi near the narrative which praises three humble Tannaim, and this reveals his critical opinion of the power struggles and envy that apparently characterized the sages of his time. Several of the narratives in the second group resemble the narratives in the first group in that they describe sages who were

Afterword

caused deep sorrow by the competition for pre-eminence in the world of Torah. However, this group includes narratives that portray additional causes for hulshat da’at of the sages, among them the sage’s sense that he has not succeeded in achieving closeness with God, the fear that he and his Torah teachings will not be remembered, and disappointment at failing to provide spiritual heirs. From the collection of narratives in both groups, one may find five causes for the anguish felt by the sages: 1) Failure, or what the sage sees as failure, in competing for spiritual greatness. 2) Failure, or what the sage sees as failure, in competing in teaching or enforcing the religious law. 3) The sage’s sense that he is inferior to another scholar in knowledge or ability. 4) Disappointment at his lack of success in creating spiritual continuity. 5) Disappointment at lack of success in reaching a high spiritual level that merits a revelation of God’s love. The common basis of all of these causes is the worldview that regards Torah study as the main aspiration of human life, as the only measure of human worth, and the exclusive cause of spiritual elevation. This worldview was predominant in the world of the sages, determined their aspirations, and caused aggressive rivalry among them, accompanied by feelings of frustration and anguish. The question of why this worldview led to imposing aggressive competition in the study hall has troubled more than a few scholars who tried to examine the phenomenon from various aspects. G. Alon posited that the competition over honor and status characterized the Eretz Israel sages more than others, and he attributed it to the sages’ desire to belong to an aristocracy and to acquire material benefits for themselves and their offspring. His theory seems unsubstantiated, because the narratives that describe the harshest events are Babylonian narratives, many of which attributed their accounts to the distant Eretz Israel sages, placing them in situations familiar to themselves from their own time and place. J. Rubenstein maintained that this phenomenon was characteristic of the Babylonian sages and ascribed it to the culture of study prevalent in the Babylonian academies, which was based on disputation and therefore had the

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potential for conflict and polarization. Y. Fraenkel ascribed the phenomenon to Jewish society in general and explained that it was a religious, closed, and hierarchical society and thus served as a breeding ground for struggles over power and status. D. Boyarin also attributed the phenomenon to the structure and nature of Jewish society and explained that since Jewish society was subject to foreign domination, male passions for power and achievement were channeled into the wars of Torah in the study halls. For our purpose, whether we accept the historical or the sociological explanation, or alternately the cultural explanation, for the wars that were waged within the world of Torah, we must admit that based on the stories of sorrow brought in this chapter and particularly the Babylonian narratives, these wars were unbearably difficult for the sages who were involved in them, and they had a profound impact, not necessarily positive, on the shaping of their emotional world. The third chapter deals primarily with the comparison of stories of weeping among the Tannaim and among the Amoraim; most of the stories brought there are quoted from the BT. According to these narratives, the weeping of the Tannaim was never an expression of personal anguish alone and always stemmed from a mixture of a personal and a communal, or philosophical, motive. A. All of the Tannaim who people the narratives of weeping were key figures in Jewish society. Some of them wept over the experience or memory of national tragedies or harsh decrees issued against the nation, others wept when a sight or event brought them to philosophical contemplation of the futility of human existence, and many wept out of sorrow because they did not find answers to the theological and moral questions which perturbed them. The hero of many of the stories of weeping was Rabbi Judah Hanasi, and in all of the narratives his weeping sprang from frustration. At times his frustration was caused by an inability to understand Divine behavior such as in the cases where people merited eternal life in the world to come because of a single deed (Avoda Zara 10b; 17b; 18a), and at times because of his inability to comprehend human behavior, as in his encounter with the daughter of Elisha b. Avuya (BT Hagigah 15b and JT Hagigah 77c [2:1]) or in the confrontation

Afterword

with Pinhas b. Yair (BT Hullin 7a-b; JT Demai 22a [1:3] and Ta’anit 66c [3:1]). In most of the stories that deal with this subject, the weeping of Amoraim is not related to actual events but rather to instances of scholarly insight. The Amoraim wept when they studied Biblical verses which they interpreted as raising issues of national concern or unresolved theological dilemmas. They also wept upon reading Biblical verses which taught them about man’s inability to adhere to the good, about God’s severe and disproportional justice, and as a result of these, about the hopelessness of mankind. As distinct from the Tannaim, according to some of the narratives, the Amoraim wept because of personal reasons. There were Amoraim who wept because of material difficulty, out of a sense of insult, anger, or the feeling that an injustice had been done to them, and there were even those who wept for joy. The collection of narratives brought in this chapter shows a different picture than what emerged from the narratives of the two previous chapters in terms of the causes of sorrow. Even though most of the main protagonists of this chapter are also sages and not ordinary laymen, their sorrow is not related to their status and honor in the world of Torah. Whether the sage wept because of personal grief or because of the suffering of the community or the nation, envy and power struggles were not among the causes. Furthermore, in most of the narratives the sages did not weep on their own account but because of others. Their weeping was not an expression of an emotion that set them apart but one that brought them together, and their personal grief was associated with the general sorrow over the plight of the nation or the human condition. The fourth chapter contains narratives that contend with the worst sorrow of all—grief over the deaths of children. The discussion in these narratives is different than the discussion in the narratives of the preceding chapters. Its purpose is not to describe expressions of sorrow or to reveal and explain its causes, because in all of these stories, the cause of the sorrow is the same—the deaths of children. The grief is personal and private and cannot be grounded in any social or conceptual reality. The expressions

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of grief that were common in the narratives of the preceding chapters, such as weeping or profound despair (hulshat da’at), are not mentioned at all in this chapters. More than anything, it is the silence of the main protagonists on the subject of their loss or the grief that they experienced that attests to its authenticity and magnitude. The scene of the event is not the study hall as in most of the narratives in the previous chapters but rather the personal space of the mourners, and their frustration and sadness are not the product of the competetitive struggle of life, but rather of the sense of loss, loneliness, and inability to comprehend, emotions which characterize the experience of bereavement. None of the narratives included in this chapter deal with manifestations of sorrow but with situations of consolation or mourning and eulogy. In all of the stories the comforters’ words are structured on the basis of homiletic interpretations of Biblical verses, and most are constructed in a consistent pattern of five elements arranged as an equation of four versus one. Both the structure and the style of the consolatory speech were in all probability patterned after a conventional formula which was intended to ease the task of the comforters in finding words of consolation. One may conclude from the words of the comforters as well as from the responses of the mourners and their words of gratitude that the grief of bereavement is portrayed only from the viewpoint of faith in God and Divine justice. The words of neither the mourners nor the comforters contain any mention of longing for the deceased, pity for them, nor sorrow over a life cut short. The two major features of their grief are: acknowledgement that the cause of death was sin (either their own or their children’s), and a longing for closeness to God, which is expressed as hope that the deceased child returned to God and that his death was favorable to God, and an anticipation of Divine loving-kindness. These two characteristics leave no doubt that the narratives depict the sages grieving over the death of their children in such a way that the theological dimension is dominant in their mourning. The fifth chapter is different from all the others in that it does not deal with the expressions or causes of sorrow but instead with the encounters between the sages and the women accompanying

Afterword

them in situations of grief and physical and mental distress, and compares their respective behavior. The discussion of the first narrative, whose intricate plot focuses on the sage R. Eleazar b. R. Simeon and his wife, is a comparative discussion because we have both the Babylonian version of the story (Baba Mezi’a 84b) and the Eretz Israel version (Pesikta de Rav Kahana, parshat Vayehi beshalah 18). A comparison of the two versions shows that the redactor of the Babylonian text presented polarized patterns of behavior of the hero R. Eleazar b. R. Simeon and his wife. It was this polarization that threw into sharp relief the difference between the masculine way of thinking and acting, centering around the “ego” and the feminine mode of thinking and acting which centers around the “other,” i.e. other than herself. This difference is expressed with much greater intensity in the story of the death of R. Meir’s sons (Midrash Proverbs 31). The narrative describes the behavior of R. Meir as the behavior expected of a bereaved father, in contrast to the extraordinary behavior of his wife, the bereaved mother, who in her darkest hour demonstrates self-control, sensitivity to her fellow, and wisdom in speech and deed that command respect. Two additional narrative excerpts—one of which depicts the confrontation between R. Johanan and his sister, who comes to plead for mercy for her husband (Baba Mezia 84a), and the other, the mother of Ahadboi who asks R. Sheshet to have mercy on her son, his disciple (Baba Batra 9b)—also reveal distinctions which are complimentary to women. In contrast to R. Johanan whose inability to forgo the honor due him caused him profound despair, hulshat da’at, his sister waived her dignity in order to save another person, her husband. Likewise in the case of R. Sheshet whose dignity was wounded, causing him to suffer extreme distress because it appeared that a disciple had been ridiculing him, the mother of the disciple Ahadboi did not hesitate to demean herself in order to help her son. The collection of narratives presented in this chapter offers a clearer distinction between the behavior of women and that of the sages—men—at times of grief and distress. The men who are focused on themselves and apprehensive about their honor become powerless when confronted by sorrow, tragedy, or even an affront

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to their feelings. It is precisely in those situations that the women become more empowered: because they are sensitive and loyal to their fellows, they are able to seize the initiative and take action to help or rescue even at the price of setting aside their own feelings and waiving their dignity. The decision to place this chapter at the end of the book is by way of a summing up. Dozens of stories of profound despair, hulshat da’at, weeping, and mourning portrayed sorrow as firmly planted in a closed masculine world detached from everyday reality and governed by worldly desires for honor and status, on the one hand, and by a religious yearning for closeness to God on the other. The narratives in this chapter balance out the masculine outbursts of ego described in the earlier chapters by depicting feminine sorrow rooted in real life. Their expressions of sorrow are reserved and free of egoistical considerations and thus they reveal to the reader the meaning of sorrow, the nature of its causes, and the way it is expressed in the world of ordinary people.

App end i x

Hulshat da’at and Self-Psychology Alex Aviv, MD.*

Hulshat da’at, although it expresses extreme dejection (see chapter two, note 1), is not a synonym for depression but more like the experience of a sense of lack, the absence of the strong position that was previously felt, perhaps even shame. The author writes that the hulshat da’at felt by the sages may have arisen from their being in a state of extreme emotion. I would propose explaining this by the fact that the sage’s academic status is fragile and not a simple hierarchy; he must continually prove his wisdom anew. The very fact that the title ‘Sage’ or ‘wise man’ [hacham] is derived from the Hebrew word hachma [wisdom] creates a situation where whether or not the person is acting “wise” immediately affects his status as a “wise man.” In contrast to the traditional psychoanalytic approach, which had an almost Platonic view of the dichotomy between good and evil, of conscious and unconscious, a greater emphasis has been placed in the last four decades on the psychological development of the human being to “Self.” The self is a psychic structure that begins as a small nucleus and constantly grows and develops over the course of a person’s lifetime. According to Freudian psychoanalysis, narcissism is perceived as a stage of development that should give way to object love. Heinz Kohut, the psychoanalyst who founded the school of “self-psychology,” brought about a revolution in psychoanalysis’s perception of narcissism. He attributed narcissism to the Self and believed that narcissism does not disappear and *

The writer is a psychiatrist and group analyst in the Psychotherapy Program of the Sackler School of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University.

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clear the way for something more mature (object love) but rather continues to develop throughout life, without necessarily constituting a pathological regression. Thus appeared the basic concept of healthy narcissism and the axis of the development of narcissism in parallel to the development of the investment in the object and conducting a reciprocal relationship with it. Narcissism and object love were no longer opposed to each other but rather complementary. The concept of Self relates to the total personality, to the whole set of psychic functioning, to the Body Self, as well as to more defined components such as a person’s representation of himself. It is used to explain the experience of continuity, and the cohesiveness of the psyche and its development. Kohut believed that from the very first stages of life a raw Self exists and is a vital entity in the functioning of the psyche. It is ultimately controlled by the principle of the primacy of selfpreservation according to which preservation of the psychological self is the basic motivation of human behavior, while self-destruction is the most profound threat. In the modern psychological approaches, there is an emphasis on the fact that man from the very beginning of his life seeks a relationship with another human being and not merely instinctive gratification from an object. Every person has a self, which like a plant, is dependent on a nurturing environment in order to emerge. But at the beginning the infant’s self is only potential. The only way the self can know its own worth is through its reflection. The Self is that part of the personality that gives the sense of selfhood, which arises and is strengthened by a regular supply of responsiveness. In order for a person to feel good and to conduct his life with a confident sense of Self, free of anxiety and depression— he must experience himself as surrounded by the responsiveness of others. Kohut thought that a certain quantity of responsive selfobject experience is required throughout a person’s life from birth until death. An environment of responsiveness is essential to psychological health. The knowledge that a person is understood by another causes him to feel better. His sense of Self is reinforced by this knowledge.

Appendix

Kohut called the function that reinforces the Self “selfobject.” In the beginning of life, it is given exclusively by the parent who takes care of the infant, and later on when the self grows stronger, the person is supposed to fulfill this function for himself. In other words, even when we are adult and grown-up, we have the need to know how much we are worth, but at that point, there is a developmental expectation that this need will be supplied chiefly by ourselves. One of the most important needs of the Self is the need for mirroring. In effect, this is the human need to be recognized, accepted, and valued by the presentation of one’s self, deeds, works, opinion, etc. and thus to receive confirmation and affirmation of one’s value and status. The two poles of self are the poles of ambitions and of ideals. The self is motivated by its ambitions and guided by its ideals. Generally when a person feels good with himself, it may be said that he has a cohesive self. When there is a narcissistic injury, the self withdraws from a situation of cohesion to a state of partial or full loss of self-worth; the person moves into a changed structural state of the self which is called “fragmentation.” Fragmentation occurs in varying degrees, beginning with uneasiness, continues on to a decline in energy and vitality until it becomes emptiness, anxiety, or depression and at times, reaches the point of the person experiencing terror and dread of impending death steadily drawing nearer, signaling a state of an irreversible disintegration of self. The sense of the self disintegrating is so unpleasant that people would do almost anything to avoid it. This might bring about a kind of regression toward a much earlier stage where the self is limited to fragments of the physical and mental self at the beginning of life. The destruction of the function of selfobject or its disappearance leads to a full or partial disintegration of self. The nucleus of the disintegration itself—fragments of the early grandiose self which has undergone idealization—is by its very nature found outside the range of the healthy part of the psyche. The ego identifies the signs of disintegration but cannot control them. As to the sages—the heroes of the Talmudic narratives about hulshat da’at—it might be said that since their whole existence as sages was dependent on the confirmation of their disciples and

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colleagues and was reflected in a demand for recognition, when one of these did not take place, their sense of self-worth was undermined. The Talmudic sages are presented in the narratives as particularly sensitive to criticism. Their extraordinary personality and talent as teachers of the law captivated their disciples and made them into objects of idealization among them, but also aroused envy among their colleagues. I would like to propose that the hulshat da’at depicted in the Talmudic stories originates in effect from the inordinate weakness of Self that takes place in the fragmentation described previously and is not necessarily synonymous with depression. In the first story of R. Papa’s reaction to the behavior of three of his disciples, one can relate first to the envy and the narcissistic desire to be loved by another person’s disciples (and the acknowledged affront when this does not happen, as the author of the book pointed out). But beyond that, one can discern from the story the existence of a deeper narcassistic vulnerability that may have stemmed from the fact that R. Papa did not feel that his status was secure enough as a mentor (sage) and not only in the eyes of Rava’s disciples. In other words, he was unable to fulfill for himself the selfobject function to achieve a reasonable level of self-esteem, and therefore he was hypersensitive to the reactions of his disciples in general, and on particular to Rava’s disciples (because they had a basis for comparison) and this sensitivity turned him into a person in need of their “reinforcement of self” reaction. The author of the narrative states explicitly that the disciples did not openly and volubly express their dissatisfaction and reservations about the teaching style of R. Papa, and he understood it only by insinuation. The author might have intended for the reader to perceive thus that R. Papa’s narcissistic sensitivity brought him to a paranoiac state where he attributed hidden meanings to the insinuations and even to the random gesturing of the disciples which in no way attested to any genuine criticism but existed only in the eyes of the beholder. R. Papa felt that they were disparaging of his knowledge, i.e. of that thing that makes a sage into a sage (wise man). He was reinforced in this feeling by the insinuations made among the disciples, whether such insinuations truly existed

Appendix

or whether he experienced them as such because of his basic lack of confidence, causing him to seek out signs that they did not rely on his ruling of the law. On the other hand, one could not rule out altogether that some basis in fact did exist for his conclusions and that perhaps this was the polite way for the disciples to express a doubt about his wisdom. In any event, casting doubts on the knowledge of a sage is quite serious for him because it means “pulling the rug out from under his feet,” i.e. destroying the basis of his existence; in such a situation, the narcissistic injury is grave and leads to fragmentation—hulshat da’at. But instead of shame, depression, and withdrawal, the characteristic reaction for people with narcissistic vulnerability is destructive rage, where the injured person wishes to harm those who exposed his shame. It is not rare that such narcissistic rage leads these people to wish to destroy the offending party, in this case the three disciples. Since this is a kind of wish that could not be accepted by the ego, the symbolic dream appears where it is God who punishes the disciples for the offense. At the same time, when R. Papa parted company with them, his internal censorship of the death wish did not operate adequately, and a slip of the tongue (parapraxis) exposed it. The story of the relationship between Rav Kahana and R. Johanan also represents the struggle for primacy although, as the author notes, R. Johanan’s status should have been uncontestable. From the beginning of the story there is an allusion to the “indirect” narcissistic sensitivity of R. Kahana by dint of his being a discipleadmirer of Rav. When someone refused to accept the ruling of Rav, i.e. rebelled against his authority and in essence harmed the selfobject function that Rav fulfilled for R. Kahana by marring the image of the idealized parent, narcassistic rage appeared which led him to beat the dissenter to death. In any event, it is clear that the greatest punishment that could be imposed upon a sage like R. Kahana was not being able to demonstrate his knowledge vis a vis R. Johanan, in other words, not being allowed to raise any objections to the latter’s rulings for seven years. However, he was unable to endure the punishment imposed upon him because the narcissistic injury that he had suffered by being transferred to the seventh row in the study hall and by being considered “a fox” by

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R. Johanan was so profound that for him it was equivalent to suffering seven years of silence, and he broke his promise to Rav and stood up to voice his ideas. At the same time the author gives a graphic portrayal of the acute vulnerability of R. Johanan who begins to lose his self esteem through the “narcissistic seesaw” mechanism. In other words, it could not be that both sages were respected and deemed worthy to the same extent, and as R. Kahana advanced through the rows, R. Johanan was demoted from his eminence. The ascent of one was directly related to the loss of intellectual assets by the other. At this stage, R. Johanan was at the height of an almost paranoiac sensitivity about his status, and when he saw the smile (imagined) on the lips of R. Kahana, he interpreted it as R. Kahana gloating over his decline, and he was unable to endure the humiliation. What is intriguing about the story is the missing explanation of the death of R. Kahana. The visit to the burial cave represents a continuation of the injury to R. Johanan’s status and the continued idealization of R. Kahana. The snake, a creature which is associated with passions and prohibitions, protects its master’s wounded pride in a primeval, archetypical way even after death and does not allow R. Johanan to enter the cave until he is prepared to demean himself to the point of inversion: ‘Let the disciple enter to his Master.’ The snake, as the universal symbol of healing, knows that the way to cure the injury done to R. Kahana (who was called a “fox” by R. Johanan) is by idealizing him. In the next narrative of the confrontation between R. Johanan and Resh Lakish, R. Johanan’s lack of confidence regarding his status is even further highlighted; in the jargon of self psychology, he is unable to fulfill selfobject functions adequately for himself, so that when he is unsuccessful through intellectual argumentation to persuade Resh Lakish to accept his opinion, he is prepared to hit Resh Lakish “under the belt” and to remind him of his unsavory past, doing whatever is necessary to gain supremacy in this battle. Resh Lakish’s response to this action is in essence a mortal blow to the selfobject function that Resh Lakish had fulfilled for R. Johanan because he denied his primacy towards him and the contribution

Appendix

that R. Johanan had made to his life. Since Resh Lakish was R. Johanan’s most valued disciple and disputant ( as we see also later in the narrative when R. Johanan makes nothing of the abilities of R. Eleazar b. Pedat as compared with those of Resh Lakish), R. Johanan is left with a vast and irremediable vacuum which leads to fragmentation — and he experiences hulshat da’at. The narrator further implies that R. Johanan’s distress deepened in the absence of his colleague-disputant. Namely, R. Johahan’s wisdom was prominent when Resh Lakish was there to challenge it, but when he died R. Johanan had no one to fulfill the selfobject function that was so essential for his spiritual existence. In the story of R. Sheshet and his disciple Ahadboi, there is a portrayal of R. Sheshet’s sensitivity which might be attributed to mirroring, one of the conditions for a person knowing that he is understood by the significant other, in this case, R. Ahadboi. The frustration that R. Sheshet felt that he had not succeeded in satisfying R. Ahadboi with an adequate answer led him to the sense that he had no value as a teacher of law. R. Ahadboi’s failure to recognize R. Sheshet’s greatness as a teacher of law constituted a significant basis for the injury that R. Sheshet felt at R. Ahadboi’s amused response, which he saw as derisive both because of the vulnerable psychic state he was in and because he was visually impaired, leading him to a negative misinterpretation, i.e., a negative mirroring of his own self worth. Instead of receiving recognition and affirmation of his grandiose self, he experienced humiliation and failure. R. Ahadboi’s light-hearted response represented a turning point where the critical mass of narcissistic injury brought about fragmentation—“halsha da’atei” [he was deeply wounded]. The narrator takes pains to describe how wrong R. Sheshet was about his significant position as selfobject for R. Ahadboi; when his teacher collapsed, he experienced a more severe fragmentation than R. Sheshet. The first injury was essentially to the Body Self (“R. Ahadboi lost his speech”) , an almost catatonic loss of bodily control and afterwards came the actual injury to the scholar, the injury to Mind Self (“he forgot his learning”). All those qualities that made him wise and exalted above others was lost. Later the narrator re-emphasizes the mortal injury caused to R. Sheshet in

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that all of his sensory receptors were obstructed, even those where he had been the most sensitive, such as his hearing, which must have been sharp since he was visually impaired. The narrator takes pains to tell that he not only could not hear the weeping of Ahadboi’s mother but he also did not hear her unremitting cries (the repetition is portrayed to show that these were not normal cries) and instead persisted in his impassivity. Nor can one ignore the

possibility that R. Sheshet’s anger at R. Ahadboi was the cause of his unresponsiveness, and it was not a hearing problem but rather imperviousness, which Ahadboi’s mother was able to mollify only by emotional manipulation. The story of the competition between R. Eleazar b. R. Si-

meon and Rabbi Judah Hanasi emphases Rabbi Judah Hanasi’s narcissistic difficulty in accepting the supremacy of R. Eleazar b. Simeon and his attempt to equalize his status through external measures because he was apparently unable to compete with him in the academic realm. Rabbi Judah Hanasi wanted to feel equal in order to be worthy, and the ultimate proof of his being of equal value to R. Eleazar b. R. Simeon was his being worthy of marrying the latter’s widow. This proposal not only was not successful but also earned him a further devaluation when she compared his deeds to those of her late husband and even labeled him hol (‘ordinary,’ as opposed to ‘sanctified’). As to the event that occurred to the two disciples in the study hall, speculations may be raised as to whether the initiative to change their status came from the sages, but because it is similar to the equalizing symbolic act of the first part of the story, one cannot rule out the possibility that it was Rabbi Judah Hanasi who pushed for it so that, at least to outward appearances (sitting on a raised bench), he would be equal to R. Eleazar b. R. Simeon and the sages. Reinforcement for this assumption may be obtained from the reaction of R Simeon b. Gamaliel who, knowing his son, understood that his too-rapid promotion to a higher status would not serve his studies but instead be a narcissistic gratification merely by the way he is perceived by others. The surprising turning point in this story comes when it is revealed that R. Eleazar b. R. Simeon was more sensitive to his status that R. Judah Hanasi, and when he was returned to the “lower” status together with R. Judah Hanasi, it was

Appendix

a narcissistic blow to his self worth—and he experienced hulsaht da’at. Although until that point he had behaved toward R. Judah Hanasi in a collegial manner, his actions later show that he actually felt superior to him, notwithstanding that this superiority was fragile and not anchored in an adequately cohesive self so that he underwent fragmentation when brought down from his elevated status. Later on we see the reaction so characteristic of narcissistic injury—devaluating the person who caused this injury. Because R. Eleazar b. R. Simeon was unable to strike at the sages, he struck at the weak link, i.e., R. Judah Hanasi, and vented his anger until he caused his colleague to lose his self worth and brought him to a state of hulshat da’at. When he saw his son’s state, R. Simeon ben Gamaliel understood that the only way to restore his peace of mind was to offer him mirroring to reinforce his Grandiose Self while at the same time maintaining humility in relation to himself and thus told his son that he, R. Judah, was a lion son of a fox. In the narrative as it appears in the Jerusalem Talmud, there is no symmetry in the sensitivity to status, and only R. Judah Hanasi’s narcissistic vulnerability is mentioned and it is emphasized that he doesn’t feel “good enough” when next to him is a man of much greater worth than himself. The text makes it possible to postulate that when R. Eleazar b. R. Simeon was absent, R. Judah Hanasi beamed because he received mirroring that showed him to be the best among those present. But when R. Eleazar b. R. Simeon entered, R. Judah Hanasi understood that R. Eleazar b. R. Simeon’s splendor would dim his and unable to bear this, his face would darken. Notwithstanding, this does not refute what the author of the book wrote, that implicitly it may be understood that R. Eleazar b. R. Simeon’s conduct was arrogant, i.e. when he entered the study hall, he made sure that everyone would see that he was the lion. The story of R. Idi is a critical portrayal of the culture of the study hall which prefers quantity, or in other words, prefers what is overt to what is deep and hidden from the eye. The story is in fact a frank critique of the narcissistic characteristics which show a clear preference for those who, to all outward appearances, are engaged in Torah study from morning until night over the modest person

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who is self-effacing, who presents himself as a scholar in public for a short time and then disappears/falls mute for a prolonged period. We again see how narcissistic and arrogant behavior leads to a label which, although it reflects reality, is hurtful: “one day scholar.” Indeed, the affront to R. Idi was a result of this treatment and he experienced hulshat da’at; the narrator emphasizes that the injury to his self-esteem was considerable because it came from an unexpected source (his colleagues)—“I am as one that is a laughingstock to his neighbor.” It is clear that the peer group constitutes a continual supply of nourishment and is important for maintaining his self worth, allowing the individual, in this case R. Idi, to cope with a difficult reality (the economic or other need that forced him to limit his study days). However, when this social system not only fails to support him but instead rises against him and insults him, then his world collapses and the sense of loss of the cohesive self is frightening to the point that the injured party feels that his world has fallen apart, like Job who lost his family and friends. The critical narrator wishes to accentuate the severity of the injury that expressing contempt for another can cause when he presents the sages who insulted R. Idi as deserving of such serious punishment that R. Johanan had to intercede on their behalf. In order to magnify the severity of their deeds, the narrator insinuates that they injured a righteous man who, had he wished, could have called down a curse on their heads, something that is again called for as revenge for a narcissistic injury. The story about R. Abahu and R. Hiyya b. Abba clearly presents the teacher’s narcissistic need for mirroring by his disciples. In other words, the value of a teacher of this type is directly connected to the existence or absence of feedback. In fact were R. Hiyya b. Abba more confident of himself, i.e. if his Self were sufficiently cohesive in providing selfobject functions of his being a fine and worthy teacher, he would not have felt so humiliated when the crowd left him to go to listen to R. Abahu, and he would not have been so upset (hulshat da’at). R. Abahu, in his attempt to encourage R. Hiyya b. Abba, did wish to convince him that it was not his merit as a teacher that caused his disciples to leave him but rather it was the subject matter that he taught.

Appendix

The next narrative, which deals with Levi and Rabbah b. R. Huna, shows even more dramatically than the previous one the importance attributed by the Talmudic sages to external, and perhaps even ridiculous, markers as though these reflect an intellectual hierarchy. Probably the observer of that era also would not consider that the position of the donkey in the band of sages truly symbolizes a person’s ranking, yet as described in Yoma 57a, out of respect for a great man, they allow his donkey to go first. The narrative’s author emphasizes that this symbolic act becomes for Rabbah b. R. Huna something so significant that if it is breached (perhaps even by chance, by Levi’s donkey which ‘decided’ to press forward when his rider was distracted) his reaction is extreme— he ‘felt aggrieved’ (halsha da’atei). One of the most prominent narcissistic characteristics is expressed in external signs of hierarchy. That is because the internal self esteem is not sufficiently cohesive and requires outside supports to bolster what is not stable. When such external support collapses (your donkey went before mine), fragmentation takes place and the entire edifice collapses as though it were a house of cards. The author also shows how Rabbah b. R. Huna’s self worth is re-established, by his being convinced logically to assign meaning to his position in the world of Torah rather than to his donkey’s position in the caravan. It is interesting that although Levi took direct action to reinforce the Self of Rabbah b. R. Huna by showing appreciation for his opinion, the latter repaid Levi with an indirect compliment which did not reinforce his stature in Torah (because he still was in competition with Levi), but instead paid honor to the dynasty from which Levi came. In the story of Honi the Circle-drawer there are two pairings which create a dialectical tension between themselves. One pairing is between the narrator’s admiration for Honi’s greatness in Torah on the one hand and the destructive effects that this very greatness causes him and his family on the other. Another pairing that appears throughout the story as a recurrent theme is death and immortality. The story begins with Honi inquiring into the meaning of a verse in Psalms 126. This investigation leads him to action, a kind of self-hypnosis. As a way of discovering if this thing were possible, he found an opportunity to enter into a prolonged dream-

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sleep of seventy years, in effect to die without being dead (we know that according to Jewish tradition, during sleep the soul leaves the body as in death. BT Berachot 57b states: “Sleep is one-sixtieth part of death”). Thus Honi sacrificed his family in order to gain an understanding of one verse. He disappeared from sight without any warning or preparation and in effect left his wife a widow and his children orphans. In order to remove any doubt that for Honi his family was of secondary importance, the text attributed to him a mild reaction upon hearing that his son was no longer alive and at the fact that his family did not believe his identity. It is this episode that emphasizes the immortality of Honi as opposed to his being a mortal man. In contrast, his position as the leading teacher of law was of prime importance for him. However he was not satisfied that in his first life he had been accorded all of the admiration due to his greatness in Torah and that even sages of the subsequent generations had heard of it. When he returned to the world of the living and wakeful, he anticipated that his greatness would be so undeniable and immortal that the new generation would also accept him without reservations as a leader. When he did not receive this narcissistic gratification of being immortal spiritually, fragmentation appeared which was expressed as a death wish and in actual physical death. The story of the day that Rabban Gamaliel was removed as head of the Sanhedrin portrays the price of elitism in a very concrete way. What is so apparent here is the fact that he was not aware of the tremendous number of disciples whom he gave up. The narrator wishes us to understand to what extent Rabban Gamaliel’s behavior, which may have aggrandized his own name, did harm to hundreds of potential pupils. In the middle of the story, the narrator shows Rabban Gamaliel’s reaction of regret and sorrow for his behavior. This change creates dramatic tension and an expectation in the reader that perhaps Rabban Gamaliel will truly and sincerely regret his elitist worldview. However, immediately afterwards there is a description of a dream, which is the way of the unconscious to soothe the feelings of guilt, here by presenting the pupils who assembled in the study hall as casks filled with ashes.

Appendix

The dream story shows clearly that this was only rationalization to afford him peace of mind, and this returns the reader to the sense of his missing out on potential pupils. In the story of Mar Ukba and his wife, the threat of narcissistic injury appears as a recurrent thread, transforming the heroes into victims. In the first section, Mar Ukba is very careful to protect the poor man’s dignity; in order to avoid embarrassing him in public by exposing his need for charity—i.e. causing him a narcissistic injury—he is willing to sacrifice his own body. In the second section, we learn of Mar Ukba’s sensitivity to himself and his status in God’s eyes. Instead of rejoicing that his wife was so righteous that God performed a miracle to save her feet from being scorched when she offered generously to let him rest his feet on hers, he experienced envy, insult, and a narcissistic blow. This blow stemmed not only from the characteristic need to make comparisons and to be insulted when he did not received the same as the other person, but in this case, it had far-reaching significance, affecting his wish to be chosen by the ultimate omnipotent figure—God. This blow brought about fragmentation and he experienced despondency (halsha da’atei). Mar Ukba’s wife again displayed her noble character traits by being modest and saying that she was not in competition with her husband for God’s love. Thus she was transformed into the unhidden heroine of the story whose author brings the reader to a critical view of people whose whole desire is to win God’s love. Pursuit of God’s love is similar in fact to the pursuit of honor in terms of its narcissistic roots—the Self is strengthened when the individual is chosen by a significant, admired, and esteemed figure. By being chosen, some of the splendor of that figure adheres to him. But as the well-known rabbinical adage teaches, whoever flees from honor, honor pursues him: it is the wife whom God chooses, the person who does not try to attain His love. The story of Abba Umana (the Cupper), Abaya, and Rava is similar to the preceding story. It tells of the pursuit of honor which is expressed in the competition among the sages for a hierarchical position that reflects closeness to God. The narrator shows respect for the sages but also criticizes them for being blind to the possibility that not only through elitist and sophisticated study of Torah can

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one achieve closeness to the Creator but that God in His heavenly court rather prefers the simple people, even those who engage in ignominious work as long as they are heedful about respecting others with deeds of kindness. It may be said that the author comes out against narcissism and in favor of love of one’s fellowman and he implies that here on earth, too, people fall into a trap due to their esteem and even admiration of sages; for indeed, God has another scale of values.

Bibliography Kohut, H. The Restoration of the Self, New York: International University Press, 1977. Kohut, H. The Analysis of the Self, New York: International University Press, 1971. Wolf, E.S. Treating the Self: Elements of Clinical Self Psychology, New York: The Guilford Press, 1988.

GLOSSARY of terms used

Aggadah (aggadic, adj.) — non-legal material in the Talmud and Midrash, including homiletic expositions of the Bible, stories, legends and parables. Amora (Amoraim, pl.) — “Interpreter”; Rabbinic authority who expounded the words of the Tannaim in the Gemara. Baraita — “outside”; a teaching or a tradition of the Tannaim that has been excluded from the Mishnah and incorporated in a later collection. Bat kol — a voice descending from heaven reflecting God’s will, offering guidance in human affairs and considered a lower grade of prophecy. Bet Hillel — Bet Hillel and Bet Shammai — Two opposing schools of thought in the first century. Bet midrash (Batei midrash, pl.) — study hall; also, general term for the world of Torah scholarship. Gemara — commentary in the form of discussions and rulings of the Amoraim on the Mishnah. The Gemara and the Mishnah together constitute the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmud. Halacha (halachic, adj.) — the corpus of comprised of rules and practices that Jews are obligated to follow, including the 613 biblical commandments, commandments instituted by the Rabbis, and binding customs; alternately, one specific ruling. Halitza — the ceremony (of taking off the shoe of the brother of a husband who has died childless) which enables the widow to remarry. Havdalah — the religious ritual marking the end of the Sabbath or a holiday, recited using wine and a candle. Kal v’homer argument — proof of a contention whereby deductions are made from the simple to the complex or vice versa. Ketubah — marriage contract including the settlement which the wife is entitled to receive on her being divorced or on the death of her husband. Mamzer — the child of a union that is prohibited under penalty of death and invalid under Jewish law, such as an incestuous union.

288

Glossary

Midrash — stories, sermons, parables, and other material explaining the Biblical phrases or stories in order to derive a principle of Jewish law or provide a moral lesson. Mitzva (mitzvot, pl.) — 613 religious commandments referred to in the Torah (and elaborated upon by the rabbinic sages); any act of religious duty or obligation; colloquially, a “good deed.” Pesikta — Jewish midrashic homilies. The best-known collections are Pesikta de Rav Kahana and Pesikta Rabbati. Sifre, Mekhilta — compilations of midrashim, aimed at an exact definition of the laws contained in the Bible by precise interpretation of the text and meaning of the various words. Mekhilta is the commentray on Exodus, Sifra on Leviticus and Sifre on Numbers and Deuteronomy. Sugiya (sugiyot, pl.) — unit of discussion in the Talmud, which takes the form of a series of questions-hypotheses and proof-based responses. Tanna (Tannaim, pl.) — “Teacher”; Sage quoted in the Mishnah or Baraita. Tosafot — “additions” or “supplements.” The Tosafot were composed by many scholars in different schools throughout the 12th and 13th centuries. Tosefta — compilation of the Jewish Oral Law, supplement to the Mishnah and closely corresponding to the same divisions.

Bibliography

Translations Epstein, Isidore. ed. The Soncino Press Babylonian Talmud. London: Soncino Press, 1935-48. Freedman , Harry. ed. Midrash Rabbah. London : Soncino Press, 1961. Guggenheimer, Heinrich W. Jerusalem Talmud Translation and Commentary. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2000. Neusner, Jacob. Pesiqta de Rab Kahana. An Analytical Translation and Explanation. Atlanta: Scholars Press for Brown Judaic Studies, 1987. –––––. Mekhilta Attributed to R. Ishmael: An Analytical Translation. Atlanta: Scholars Press for Brown Judaic Studies, 1988. –––––. Sifré to Deuteronomy: An Analytical Translation. Atlanta: Scholars Press for Brown Judaic Studies, 1987. –––––. The Talmud of the Land of Israel: A Preliminary Translation and Explanation. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982-1993. Pp. IX-XII, XIV-XV, XVII-XXXV. –––––. A Theological Commentary to the Midrash. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2001. Studies in Judaism Series. –––––. The Tosefta: Translated from the Hebrew. New York: Ktav, 1977-1980. Pp. II-VI.

Commentary and research literature Albeck, Chanoch. Introduction to the Talmud (Mavo laTalmudim). Tel-Aviv: Dvir, 1969 (Hebrew). Alon, Gedalia. Studies in the History of Israel (Mehkarim Betoldot Israel). Tel-Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 1958 (Hebrew). –––––. History of the Jews in the Land of Israel in the Mishnaic and Talmudic Period (Toldot Hayehudim BeErez Israel Bitkufat Hamishnah Vehatalmud). Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad,1971 (Hebrew). Beitner, Azaria. “Conflict and Dialectic in Narratives of Yavneh Sages as a Model of a Literary Phenomenon with an Ideological and

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Histoiosophic Message.” Doctoral Dissertation: Bar Ilan University, 1995 (Hebrew). Boyarin, Daniel. Carnal Israel — Discourse of Sexuality in the Talmud (Habasar Shebaruah: Siah Haminiyut Batalmud). Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1999 (Hebrew). Felix, Yehuda . Talmud Yerushalmi Tractate Shevi’it. Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 1986 (Hebrew). Fraenkel, Yonah . The Aggadic Narrative — Harmony of Form and Content (Sipur Ha’agada: Ahdut Shel Tochen Vetzurah). Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 2001 (Hebrew). –––––. The Methods of the Aggada and Midrash (Darchei ha-Aggadah veha-Midrash). Tel Aviv : Massada, 1991 (Hebrew). –––––. Studies in the Spiritual World of Aggadic Narrative (Iyunim beOlamo Haruhani Shel Sipur ha’Agada). Tel-Aviv: HaKibbutz Hameuchad, 1981 (Hebrew). Frankel, Zecharia . The Methods of the Mishnah (Darke Ha-Mishnah). Adapted and revised by Rabbi Issac Nussenboim, Tel Aviv: Sinai, 1959 (Hebrew). Friedman, Shama Yehuda. “Historical Aggada in the Babylonian Talmud.” In Saul Lieberman Memorial Volume, edited by S. Friedman. Jerusalem and New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America Press, 1993 (Hebrew). –––––. “The Further Adventures of Rav Kahana Between Babylonia and Palestine.” In The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Culture, Vol. 3, edited by P. Schafer. Tubingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2002. Gafni, Isaiah. The Babylonian Jewry and its institutions in the Talmudic Period (Yahadut Bavel Umosdoteha Bitkufat Hatalmud), Jerusalem: Shazar Center, 1980 (Hebrew). Goodblatt, David. “The Beruriah Traditions.” Journal of Jewish Studies 26 (1975): 68-85. Goshen-Gottstein, Alon. “R. Eleazar b. Arach: Symbol and Reality” (“Rabbi Eleazar ben Arach Semel Umeziut”). In Jews and Judaism During the Second Temple Period; Studies in Honor of Shemuel Safrai, edited by A. Oppenheimer et al. Jerusalem, Historical Society of Israel, 1993 (Hebrew). Halevi, Elimelech. Aggadot Amoraim — The Historic-Biographic Aggada. Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1975 (Hebrew).

Bibliography

Hameiri, Menahem. Beit Habehirah, with commentary of Samuel Dickman, Jerusalem : The Israeli Institution of the Talmud Hashalem, 1965. (Hebrew). Hamitovsky, Itzhak. “The War of Torah — Simile and Reality in the Jewish Academies in the Mishnaic and Talmudic Periods” (“Milhamta shel Torah; Dimion Umeziut Bveit Hamidrash Betkufat Hamishnah Vehatalmud”). Mo’ed 17 (2007) (Hebrew). Hartom, Eliyah Samuel. Commentary on the Bible. Tel Aviv: Yavneh, 1989 (Hebrew). Hoshen, Dalia. “Beruria the Tannait: A Theological Reading of the Character of the Woman Scholar in Talmudic Literature” (“Beruria Hatannait, Kriah Theologit Bidmut Talmidat Hachamim Bsifrut Hatalmudit”). Akdamot 22 (2009) (Hebrew). Ilan, Tal. “The Quest for the Historical Beruriah, Rachel, and Imma Shalom.” AJS Review 22 (1997). Kalmin, Richard. Sages, Stories, Authors and Editors in Rabbinic Babylonia, Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994. Kosman, Admiel. “Between internal and external homelands.” Mehkarei Yerushalaim Besifrut Ivrit 19 (2003) (Hebrew). –––––. Femininity in the Spiritual World of the Talmudic Story (Nashiut Beolamo Haruhani Shel Hasipur Hatalmudi). Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2008 (Hebrew). –––––. Men’s Tractate: The Rabbi, the Butcher and Other Stories (Massechet Gevarim: Harav, Hakazav Veod Sipurim). Jerusalem: Keter, 2002 (Hebrew). –––––. “Modesty and competition in the Sages’ world — Reading the Talmudic story about Abba Umna.” Tarbut Yehudit Beein Hase’ara , Saggi Avi ed. Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, (2002) (Hebrew). –––––. Women’s Tractate: Love, Loyalty, Passion, Beauty, Sex and Purity (Massechet Nashim: Ahava, Neemanut, Tshuka, Yoffi, Min, Vekdusha). Jerusalem: Keter, 2007 (Hebrew). Margaliot, Mordechai. Encyclopedia of Talmudic and Geonic Literature, Tel Aviv: Joshua Chachik, 1958 (Hebrew). Margaliot, Reuven. A Study of Names and Nicknames in the Talmud (Leheker Hashemot Vehakinuim Batalmud). Jerusalem: Harav Kuk Institution, 1960 (Hebrew).

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Maya, Moshe. “Eretz Israel Traditions and their Reflection in the Babylonian Talmud.” M.A. Dissertation, Haifa University, 2003 (Hebrew). Meir, Ophra. Sugiot in Poetic of Hazalic Stories (Sugiot Bapoetica Shel Sipurey Hazal). Tel Aviv: Sifriat Poalim ,1993 (Hebrew). –––––. “Rabbi Yohanan — His Attitude Towards His Disciples.” Aley Siah (1982) (Hebrew). –––––. “The Story and its Context in the Talmud.” Bikoret Uparshanut 20 (1985) (Hebrew). –––––. The Darshanic Story in Genesis Rabba (Hasipur Hadarshani Bebereshit Rabba). Tel Aviv: Hakibutz Hameuchad, 1987. (Hebrew). –––––. Rabbi Judah the Patriarch in Traditions of Israel and Babylonia (Rabbi Yehuda Hanassi Deyokano Bemassorot Eretz Israel Ubavel). Tel Aviv: Hakibutz Hameuchad, 1999 (Hebrew). Oppenheimer, Aharon. Rabbi Judah the Patriarch (Rabbi Yehuda Hanassi), Jerusalem: Shazar Center, 2007 (Hebrew). Rubenstein, Jeffrey. Talmudic Stories, Narrative, Art, Composition and Culture. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. –––––. The Culture of the Babylonian Talmud. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. Rubin, Nissan. The End of Life (Ketz Hahaim). Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 1997 (Hebrew). Safrai, Samuel. “The Commandment of the Shmitah After the Destruction of the Second Temple.” Tarbiz 36 (1967) (Hebrew). –––––. The Land of Israel and its Sages in the Time of the Mishnah and Talmud (Eretz Israel Vehahameiha bitkufat Hamishnah Vehatalmud). Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1983 (Hebrew). Sherira Gaon. The Iggeret of Rav Sherira Gaon. Jerusalem: Vagshal Publishing, 1991 (Hebrew). Shor, Abraham Haim. Torat Haim (rev. ed.). Jerusalem, 2004 (Hebrew). Shremer, Adiel. “Akshey Lei Veukmeih: a Study of the Babylonian Sugiah in Baba Kama 117a.” Tarbiz 66 (1997) (Hebrew). Sokolof, Michael. A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic. Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2002. Sperber, Daniel. Magic and Folklore in Rabbinic Literature. Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1994.

Bibliography

Stern, David. The Parable in the Midrash (Hamashal Bamidrash). Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 1995 (Hebrew). Ta-Shma, Israel, M. The Exegetical Literature on the Talmud (Hasifrut Haparshanit Latalmud), Vol 2. Jerusalem: Magnes, 2000 (Hebrew). Troper, Mordechai. “Why Did The Sages Weep?” Shema’atin (1997) (Hebrew). Urbach, Ephraim Elimelech. The Tosaphists: Their History, Writings and Methods (Ba’aley Hatosafot, Toldoteihem, Hibureihem veshitatam). Jerusalem: Bialick Institute, 1968 (Hebrew). Valler, Shulamit. Women and Womanhood in the Talmud. Providence: Brown University, 1999. –––––. Women in Jewish Society in the Talmudic Period (Nashim Bahevrah Hyehudit Bitkufat Hmishnah Vehatalmud). Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 2000 (Hebrew). Valler, Shulamit., and Razabi., Shalom. Small Talks in the Babylonian Talmud (Sihot Hullin Batalmud Habavly). Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2007 (Hebrew). Vilnai, Zeev. Ariel Encyclopedia of Eretz Israel. Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1978 (Hebrew). Yisraeli-Taran, Anat. Legends of the Destruction (Aggadot Hahurban). Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuhad, 1997 (Hebrew). Ziegler, I. Die Konigsglechnisse im Midrash. Breslau: S. Schottlaender, 1903 (German).

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Index of Biblical and Talmudic Figures Aaron and his sons  127, 190, 194-7, 205, 208-10, 213, 216 Aba Binyamin  17n2 Abaye  55, 56n2, 97-8, 166, 226 Abba Joseph b. Dosethai  92 Abba the Cupper  97-8 Abbahu, R.  18-22, 85 Abraham  58, 128n16, covenant of 226 Adam  190, 193, 195-7, 230 Aha b. Hanina, R.  161n35 Aha brei d’R. Ika, R.  57n5 Ahab son of Omri  205, 214-5 Ahadboi b. Ammi, R.  71-2, 74, 238, 260-2, 271 Ahadboi b. R. Mattenah  176-7 Aher (Elisha b. Avuya) and his daughter(s)  142-6, 152, 154, 182, 268 Akiva, R.  17n2, 39n30, 52, 116-8, 128, 130n19, 168n42, 181, 188n1, 204-7, 213-23, 236-7, 257 Amemar  102n62, 187n1 Ami, R.  158, 162-4, 180 Amos the Prophet  163 Antoninus, Roman emperor  127 Alexandri, R.  158-9 Ashi, R. 101-2,  187 Assi, R.  158, 163-5 Aviyah son of Jeroboam  205, 210-3 Bar Abin  102

as Bar Iboi, Bar Abib, or Bar Uba  102n62 Bar Kipok  101-2 as Bar Kipop, Bar Kipof, or Bar Kipio  102n62 Ben Temalion  120, 123, 125 Beruryah, wife of R. Meir  255-9 b. Hakina  91 Bibi bar Abaye  155n34, 158 Bila’am  232 Caesar, a  126 David and Absalom  58, 190, 198, 220 and Bathsheba  190, 194, 195-8, 210, 220 Eleazar son of Aaron  290 Eleazar, R.  45-7, 53, 114, 118, 157, 161-3, 167n39, 184, 186, 193-4, 231n42 Eleazar b. ‘Arach, R.  190-4, 197-9, 201-3, 206, 258 Eleazar b. Azaria  204-5, 212-3 Eleazar b. Dordia  125n13, 129-34, 142n23 Eleazar b. R. Jose, R.  119-23, 124-5 Eleazar b. Pedat, R.  37-9, 68, 172-5, 176n47, 279 Eleazar b. R. Simeon b. Yohai (Raba”sh), R. / R. Eleazar b. Rashbi  74-7, 78n36, 79-80, 98, 170, 232n43, 238-54, 266, 271 R. Eliezer  47, 121, 179, 188, 192, 206

Index of Bibl ica l a nd Ta l mudic Fig ures

Eleazar b. R. Zadok, R.  113 Eliezer b. Hyrkanos, R.  191 Eliezer b. Jacob, R.  41n32 Eliezer the Modiite, R.  193n6 Elijah the Prophet  214n31 Elisha b. Avuya see Aher Gamaliel, Rabban  92-3, 117n8, 161n35, 193n6 Hadadrimmon son of Tabrimmon  205 Hagar  124 Haggai, R.  223-4n36 Hama b. Bisa, R.  90-2 Hanan bar Rav (or Hanan bar Rabba)  227 Hanania  86 Hananiah b. ‘Akabia, R.  187n1 Hanina (or Hanania) b. Gamaliel, R. 18-21, 31 Hanina, R.  29-30, 256 Hanina b. Papa, R.  159, 205, 211n27, Hanina b. Teradion  134-42 Hanina nephew of R. Joshua 185n66 Hezekiah  154 Hezekiah, R.  48 Hisda, Rav  71n28-9, 86n45, 231n42 his daughter, wife of Raba  159 Hiyya, R.  45-6, 146n25 Hiyya b. Abba, R.  85, 188, 225-8, 235-6, 282 Hiyya of Wastanya, R.  57 Hiyya the Elder, R.  33, 98-9 Hoshaia, R.  29-30 Honi Hame’agel (the Circledrawer)  17n2, 87-91, 283

Huna, R.  48-9, 57n5, 86n45, 157, 160, 162, 167n39 Huna b. Hiyya, R.  86n44 Huna b. Manoah, R.  57 Idi, R.  80-4 Ila’a, R.  44, 53 Ishmael, R.  43, 116, 181, 203-17, 234-5 Ishmael, R., son of R. Jose  91n49, 240n5 Issi b. Judah  168n42 Itamar son of Aaron  209 Jacob b. Abbuha, R. (Oxford mss: Jacob bar Abba)  55 Jacob b. Idi, R.  80-1 Jacob bar Qodshi, R.  79 Jannai, R.  159 Jeremiah the Prophet  163 Jeremiah, R.  48-9, 53, 205, 212-3 Jeroboam  205, 210-3, 220, 223 Jethro  58 Johanan b. Napha, R., known as R. Johanan  12, 17n2, 19n6, 28-32, 34-39, 45-6, 50-2, 60-71, 73-4, 77, 81, 83, 85n42, 88-9, 91n49, 92-3 118n9, 158-9, 166-70, 175-6n47, 188n3, 231n42, 239, 240n5, 256, 266 and his sister, wife of Resh Lakish  36, 39n29, 67-8, 238, 259-61, 271 Johanan (Yohanan) b. Zakkai, R. 108-16, 159, 167, 181, 189-203, 205-6, 207n22, 208, 234, 258 Jonathan, R.  152-3, 182, 214 Jonathan b. Akmai, R.  29-30 Jonathan b. Amram, R.  24-6, 28 Jonathan, son of Saul  75

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Index of Bibl ica l a nd Ta l mudic Fig ures

Jose, R. (R. Jose b. Halafta)  10, 17n2, 44-7, 53, 120-5, 155n32n34, 190, 194, 200n15, 266 Jose b. Hanina, R.  188n1 Jose b. Kisma, R.  135, 139-41 Jose the Galilean, R.  188n1, 204-5, 210-3 Jose the Priest, R.  188n1 Jose of Sepphoris, R.  187n1 Joseph  161 Joseph, R.  71n29, 158, 163-6, 205, 214-5, 266 Joshua, R.  185n66, 190, 193n6, 194, 206n19 Joshua b. Karha, R.  75-6 Joshua b. Levi, R.  29-32, 52 Josiah  58n8 Josiah son of Amon  205, 214-5 Judah, R.  45n33, 121n10, 179, 182, 188n1 Judah b. Beteirah, R.  185n66 Judah b. Il’ai, R.  187n1 Judah Hanasi, R.  24-8 47, 50, 52, 60n12, 69n24, 74-7, 77, 78n36, 79, 91n49, 100-1, 125, 127, 129-30, 132, 134, 136, 141-52, 181, 188n1, 214, 242, 246, 248, 253-4, 265-6, 268 Judah Nesiah, R.  100 Judah, Rab  128n15, 154, 179n48 Judah son of Gamaliel  100 Judah son of Nahmani  225 Keti’ah b. Shalom  126-30, 181 as Clemens, nephew of Emperor Domitian  126n14 Kahana, Rav (second of four in the BT)  60-6, 67n22, 70, 73, 77, 83-4, 266 Levi b. Hitha, R.  58

Levi, son of R. Huna b. Hiyya  86-7 Mana, R.  47n34 Mar Ukba and his wife  94-6 Matiya, R.  185n66 Mathia b. Heresh, R.  119 Meir, R.  10, 45n33, 46, 47n34, 91n49, 143-4, 188, 238, 254-9, 271 see also Beruriah Menelaus  56n8 Miriam daughter of Boethus 113n4 alternately, daughter of Nakdimon b. Gorion  108-11, 113-6 Miriam the hairdresser and Miriam the nurse  158 Moses  58, 157, 209, 220, 223, 230, 232 Naamah the Ammonitess  231-2 Nahman, R.  71n28n29, 86n44, 100, 128n15, 177-9, 227n38 Nakdimon b. Gorion, daughter of, see Miriam daughter of Nakdimon Nathan, R., the Babylonian  63n17 Nehunia b. ha-Kanah, R.  193n6 Nicanor  40-2, 51n36n51 Oshaia b. Hama, R., son of R. Hama b. Bisa  91 Papa, R.  57-60, 82-3, 186 Pinhas, R.  48 Pinhas b. Yair, R.  142, 146-52, 182, 269 Pharaoh the Lame [Necho]  205 Rab  186 Raba”sh see R. Eleazar b. Simeon Rabbah b. R. Huna  85, 87 Rami bar Hama  71n28, 91

Index of Bibl ica l a nd Ta l mudic Fig ures

Rashbag see Rabban Simeon b. Gamaliel Rashbi see R. Simeon bar Yohai Rav  60-1, 63, 159, 116, 159, 227n38 see also R. Hanan son of Rav Rava  56n2, 57, 59, 60, 71n28, 97-8 Ravina  101-2 Resh Lakish  12, 33-9, 50-2, 57, 60-1, 63, 67-71, 73-4, 84, 93n53, 98-9, 159, 170, 183, 224-6, 235, 239n2, 259-62 Reuben b. Istroboli, R.  119-22 Ruth the Moabitess  231-2 Sadducee  17n2 Samuel, Amora  90n48, 128n15, 153-4, 159, 159, 170-2, 177 Samuel b. Idi, R.  57 Samuel b. Inia, R.  186 Samuel b. Isaac, R.  186 Samuel b. Judah, R.  230-3, 236 Samuel b. Nahman, R.  30, 224n36 Samuel bar Nahmani, R.  152-3, 186, 241 Samuel bar Yehudah, R.  188 Samuel, prophet  100n60, 157, 161-2 Samuel the Ramathite  100 Sanneherib  154 Sarah  124, 199-200n15 Saul, King  75, 116n7, 157 Shaman b. Abba, R.  29-32 Sheshet(h), R.  71-4, 238, 260-71 Shila, R.  159 Simeon, R.  190, 194 Simeon b. R. Akiva  219 Simeon bar Abba, R.  45n33, 46 Simeon bar Yohai, R. (Rashbi)  76n31, 77, 79, 118-25, 151n30, 181, 232, 239n2, 242, 251

Simeon b. Gamaliel, Rabban (Rashbag)  75-7, 80, 116-7, 178, 232n43 Simeon b. R. Judah Hanasi, R.  25, 100-1 Simeon b. Lakish, R. see Resh Lakish Simeon b. Shetah, R.  49n35 Simeon b. Zirud, R.  29-30 Tarfon, R.  18-24, 28, 43-4, 52, 183, 204, 206, 207n20, 208-9, 213, 216, 265 Tam, Rabbenu  69n24, 86 Tobi b. R. Mattenah, R., sister of  176-7 Tyranus Rufus, wife of  117-8, 181 Ulla  183-4, 230-3 Yasa, R.  79 Yoshea, R.  79 Yotam  132-3 Zedekiah, King of Judah  58n8, 205, 212-3 Zeira, R.  43-4, 52, 71n28, 73, 179, 205, 211n27 Zephaniah  163

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Index of Biblical and Talmudic References Torah Genesis 4:25  190, 193 21:1  199n15 45:3  157, 161 Exodus 4  58 12  166 23:17  160 38:26  111 Leviticus 9:9  205 10:1-2  209n24 10:3  190 10:6  204, 209 11  120 16:2  17 19  147 Numbers 14  81 25:12  128n15 25:17  230, 232 Deuteronomy 1:31  185n66 2:9  230, 232 17:7  160

18  161n35 20  147 26:16  256 27:7  157 28:29  17n2 28:56  114n4 31:21  159, 168 32:19  227 33:22  220, 223

Writings Psalms 33:7  153 37:31  217 104  117 109  144 109:12  143 126  87, 88 126:1  90n48 130:1  221n35 147:9  26n15 Proverbs 31  238, 241 Job 1:20  187 1:21  190, 194, 256, 259 2:3  158, 166

Index of Bibl ica l a nd Ta l mudic References

12  80, 82 15:15  158 16:15  167 20:26  138n22 22  194 38:41  26n15 Ecclesiastes 4  91 12:14  159, 167 Song of Songs 1:8   110, 112, 113, 114n4 1:17  41n23 Daniel Fiery furnace  128n16 4:27  193n6 Ezra 6  192n6 I Chronicles 16  186 II Chronicles 35  214 35:22-24  215

Prophets Amos 5:15  158, 163 7  184

Isaiah 1:11  160 1:12  157, 160 22  186 24  131 28  182 28:21  153 33  182, 186 33:18  154 34  131 51:20  131 54:20  131 57  166 57:2  129n17 58  81 59  161n35 Jeremiah 13  186 32:19  137 34:4-5  212 34:5  205 38:10-13  213 40:3  193n6 49  68, 260 Judges 9  132 I Kings 14  210n25 14:11  211n26, 212 14:13  205 15:28  220, 223 20:22  214 22:30-36  215 22:35  205, 214

299

300

Index of Bibl ica l a nd Ta l mudic References

Malachi 3:2  167 3:5  159 I Samuel 2:32  20 12:17  100n60 28:15  157, 161

Me’ilah 17a-b  118, 181n52

II Samuel 1  116, 116n7 2  58 12:15  220 12:24  190, 194, 198n11

Oholot 4:1  155

Zechariah 11  57 12:11  205, 214

Semachot 8  188n1 8:13  219

Zephaniah 1:15  193n6 2:3  158, 162-3

Ta’anit 2:9  45

Jubilees 19  128n16

Mishna Baba Metzi’a 5:1  171n45 Berachot 2:5  10 Mo’ed Katan 1:5  10

Nedarim 8:4  18 9:10  116n7

Sanhedrin 3:5  178

Yebamot 4:10  45

Toseftas Tosefta Berachot (Lieberman) 3:17  221n34 3:24  229n40, 229n40 3:27  221n35 Tosefta Ketubot 5:9-10  113n4 Tosefta Shavuout 3:6  122n11

Index of Bibl ica l a nd Ta l mudic References

Tosefta Yoma (Kippurim) 2:4  41n32, 42, 51n36 2:16  212n10 Ma’aser Sheni 5:9  42 Mekhilta d’Rabbi Yishmael Yitro 1  110

Babylonian Talmud (BT) Avoda Zara 125 10b  126, 181n54, 268 17b  130, 268 18a  134, 181n53, 268 20a  116 21a  181n50 66b  181n50 Baba Batra 8a  24, 266 9a  71, 238 9b  260, 238, 291 10b  94n55, 192n6 14b-15a  195n8 16b  100 151a  176, 182n62 Baba Kama 38a-b  230 60a  165 101a  206n19 117a  60, 67n22, 266

Baba Mezi’a 33a  198n12 74a  66 75b  33 83b  170 84a  12, 34, 50, 170, 259, 271 84b  73, 232n43, 238-9, 266, 271 85a  129, 238-9 85b  98 Berachot 2b  17n2 5b  118n9, 175n47 28a  58n9, 92 38b  231n42 47n  71n28 58a  71n28 61b  17n2 64a  58n10 Derech Eretz Perek Ben Azzai (3)  9n1 Gittin 83a  206 Hagigah 4b-5a  155, 182n59 5b  80, 185 15b  142, 153, 182n55n58, 268 Hullin 7a  182n58, 269 7b  269 72b  146 107b  170, 182n60

301

302

Index of Bibl ica l a nd Ta l mudic References

Kallah Rabbati 2, 14  21, 23n14 9  9n1 Ketubot 8b  224 16b-17a  9 62b  11, 90 66b  108, 181n49 67b  94 111a  184n64 Kiddushin 31b  56n3 32a  171n45 33b  171n45 66a  128n15 81b  168n42 Megillah 24b  17n2 Me’ila 17a-b  118, 181n52 Mo’ed Katan 15b  20b  187n1 21a  187n1 21b  215, 219, 221 25b  101 28b  203 29a  58 Nedarim 62a  18, 265 66a  181n51

Niddah 14b  91n49 Pesahim 10a  57n6 Sanhedrin 14a  28 21a  130n19 30a  42, 52n35 31a  177, 182n61 65b  160n35 81a  161n35 103a  146n25 113a  17n1 Semachot 3  146n25 8:12  138n22 Shabbat 33b  151n30 51b  86 105b  108 111b  69n24 Sotah 40a  84 Ta’anit 9a  58, 82 9b  231n42 13a  188 23a  17n2, 87 24a  99 24b  58n9 25a  17n2, 172, 182n63

Index of Bibl ica l a nd Ta l mudic References

21b  96 Yebamot 103a  102n62 78b  179 Yoma 9b  152, 182n57 17a  130n19 19b  17n2 22b  58n9 37a  86 38a  18, 40, 51n36n37 57a  122n10 Zebahim 112a  57n7 Manuscript versions: Cambridge Gezinah fragments  245n10 Carmoli manuscript  252n12 Florence manuscript  27, 37n26, 38n27, 245n9 Munich manuscript  37n26, 38n27, 102n62, 109n1, 171n46, 227n38, 245n10 Paris manuscript  27 Safad manuscript  252n12 Vatican manuscript  27, 37n28, 38n27, 109n1, 171n46, 227n38, 245n10

Jerusalem Talmud (JT) Avoda Zara 39a-b (1:40)  117n8

Berachot 5:73 (2,8)  66n21 7a (4,1)  93n52 7d (4:2)  198n12 13b-c (9:1)  117n8 14:2 (9:5)  198n12 14b (9,5)  17n2 Demai 22a (1:3)  148n26, 223n36, 269 Hagigah 16d (2:2)  49 76:c (1,8)  31 77c (2:1)  143, 268 Ketubot 34d (12:3)  184n65 35a (12,3)  33 Kiddushin 61b (1:7)  43 Kila’im 9:3  33n42 31d (9:3)  184 32c (9:3)  231n42 Kodashim, lost aggadah of  124 Megillah 69d (1:1)  46 69d (1:4)  45 75c (4:12)  44 Nedarim 42b (10,8)  31

303

304

Index of Bibl ica l a nd Ta l mudic References

Nida 29b (4:1)  47n34 49b (1:4)  47 Peah 15c (1:1)  43 Sanhedrin 20d (3:9)  48 Shabbat 3:1  71n28 12b  78 Shevi’it 34d (4,2)  21, 23n13, 265 Sota 20c (5:8)  195n8 Ta’anit 66a (12:13)  54 66c (3:1)  26n148, 269 66d-67a (3:9)  89n48 Yebamot 4:2 (4:1)  45n33 15d (16:4)  39n30, 52n39 Yoma 32c (1:1)  44 40b (3:8)  41n32, 51n36 42a (5, 4)  121n10

Other sources Avot Derabbi Natan, recension A, ch.14   189 Ecclesiastes Rabbah Parasha 11  78n36 Ein Ya’akov commentary of Hiddushei Hageonim   124 Iyun Ya’akov on Baba Kama   129, 233n44 on Mo’ed Katan, 24  208 Genesis Rabbah 17:13  200n15 38:28  128n16 Lamentations Rabbah I  114n4 Pesikta de Rav Kahana   249-52, 253n13, 254 XI:XXIV  78n36 Parshat Vayehi beshalah   239, 271 Proverbs Rabbah 31  238, 254 Sifra  71 Sifre, Deuteronomy 207  136 80  185n66 305  111 Yalkut Shimoni  127

305

Index of Topics

Acco  40-1, 114 abandonment see emotions acquiring eternity  125-7, 129-31, 141 Alexandria in Egypt  40-1 Alon, Gedalia — History of the Jews in the Land of Israel in Mishnaic and Talmudic Times  148n27 — Studies in Jewish History  104 Amoraim  53, 104-5, 108, 152-180, 182-3, 188, 268-9 anger  22, 50, 70n27, 76-7, 113n4, 171-2, 182, 240n5, 242, 244n7, 245, 249, 169 — God’s anger  158, 162-3, 70n44, 225, 236 anguish  34, 39, 77, 86-7, 92, 99, 103, 167, 175n47, 243, 262, 267-8 also see sorrow Aristophanes, quote from Peace  1189 62n16 Ashkelon, pious men from  49-51, 53 Auerbach, E. E.: Ba’alei Hatosafot – Their History, Writings, and Methods  18n3 Babylon/ia  60-3, 65-6, 85n42, 103-6, 114n5, 172, 182, 184, 230-1, 233, 265

— Babylonian Talmud see Index of Biblical and Talmudic References — Difference in emphasis between Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmud accounts  22, 24, 51n36, 79, 93n52, 114n5, 145-6, 150-1, 253-4, 265, 271 — Culture of the Babylonian academies  24, 53, 55, 66, 71, 1047, 264, 266-7 Baraita  9, 18, 37-8, 40-2, 45n33, 46, 51n36, 52n37, 68, 71n28, 91n49, 108, 112-4, 116-8, 130, 134, 138, 148n25, 187, 192n6, 203, 206n19, 211n27, 2156, 229, 246 bat kol (Heavenly voice)  34, 98, 127-8, 130-1, 133, 136, 141, 251 Beitner, A.: Conflict and dialect in the narratives of Yavneh Sages  193n7, 195, 197, 198n11, 201-2, 214n31, 217n32 Bene Bathyra  75 bereavement see death, mourning Bet Habehira  85n43 Bet Hillel and Bet Shammai, controversies between  9-10, 23-4 — Rabbi Tarfon and  21n9, 22-4, 206n19

I n d e x o f To p i c s

306

blame  197, 207-14, 217, 228, 234-5 also see guilt, self-blame Boyarin, Daniel 13, 93, 106-7, 268 — Carnal Israel: The Discourse of Sexuality in the Talmudic Literature   13, 67n23, 93

218, 220, 222, 226, 230, 232, 256 companionship  89 compassion/mercy  39, 62, 124, 1313, 135, 141, 211, 238, 255, 259-60, 271 competitive tension  59-66, 69-60, 83, 85-7, 94, 96-9, 103-7, 266-7

Caesarea 19n6

— tension and competition

captive/captivity 45, 97

between Babylonian and Eretz

— Jer. 13, “the Lord’s flock is

Israel sages  60-6, 73, 230-1, 230-

carried away captive”  186

3, 236, 104-7, 231, 266

— Psa. 216, “When God shall return the captivity of Zion”  17 caretaking  241-254 charity  109-111, 115, 141-4, 149n27, 152, 159, 192-3n6

concern/worry  27, 76, 75, 103, 198, 201, 206, 245, 258, 260n18, 262 confirmation  99 consolation  30, 32, 80, 93, 96, 101, 166, 190-218, 222-36, 250, 256-9 consulting the dead  161n35

chicken coop of R. Ila’a  44

contamination see impurity

collection

convert, female  45n33

— of barley behind Arabs’ cattle see daughter of Nakdimon

criticism  59, 66, 71, 77, 80, 82-3, 85-6, 93n53, 172, 179, 202, 241, 243, 265-6

b. Gurion — of figs  19-22

daughters  100-2, 108-16, 120, 125,

— of parents’ bones for

136-7, 138n22, 142-6, 152, 159, 224,

burial  10

230, 241, 243, 245, 249, 268 death of

— of a posthumous debt to God  251

188, 190, 194, 225, 230-3, 236 death  12, 36, 39, 49-53, 57-6, 82, 101-

— Leningrad-Antonin Gezina

2, 118, 127-37, 138n22, 139-40, 143,

Collection  65

145, 146n25, 147, 150-2, 158, 162-5,

comforters  39, 85, 188-218, 222, 225-6, 228-37, 256, 258, 270 commandment  10, 17n2, 44-5, 49,

170, 176-7, 181-5, 246-54, 266, 269-70 — due to sorrow, grief, or misery  37-8, 51-2, 62, 64, 68, 89-

52-3, 146n25, 149n27, 265, 185n66,

92, 131-4

203, 209-10, 216,

— of children 187-239, 269 also

I n d e x o f To p i c s

see daughters, sons

183, 185, 194-5, 202, 206-7, 217n32,

— of parents  10n2

222, 233-4, 243-7, 251, 259, 260-2,

— of spouses  11, 91, 238, 242-52

264-5, 268-70

— of transgressers  11, 49, 131-4,

— abandonment  11-13, 155

167n40, 182, 193n6, 197, 209-12, 214,

— fear, terror, alarm  50, 73, 86,

225, 228, 231-3, 235-6, 240n5, 256,

93, 120, 123, 125n12, 133, 154, 157,

270

159, 161-2, 164, 183-4, 198, 208, 240-

dedication  244-5, 251-2

1, 247, 250-1, 267

“Derech Hayashar”  70n27

— frustration  73, 80, 99, 151-2,

devotion  59, 67, 83, 141, 220, 242-3, 246, 247-8, 250, 252

160, 163, 166-7, 169, 236-7, 267-8, 270 — grief  22, 30, 32, 34, 36-50,

disciples  12, 18n3, 19, 24-33, 35-9, 50-

52n39, 68-9.82, 89, 108, 116, 168n42,

2, 55, 56n2, 57-76, 79, 82-3, 86, 91n49,

175n47, 183, 186, 187-238, 254, 258-

92-4, 103-4, 109, 112-8, 136, 143, 153,

60, 262-4, 269, 270-1

158, 165n37, 170, 171n45 181, 190-

— guilt  124, 210, 213, 218, 228,

202, 205-6, 207n22, 208, 219, 231n42,

233, 284 also see iniquity

234, 238, 259, 260-1, 266, 284-5, 271

— inferiority  85, 95, 98-9, 267

distress  17-54, 57, 59, 63, 72, 77, 80,

— insult, offense, ridicule,

83, 100, 102, 142, 159, 170, 190-203,

mockery  35-6, 56-7, 59, 60-8,

233, 238, 245, 252, 259, 261, 263-5,

70-3, 80-4, 95, 102, 120, 123, 152, 261,

271 also see mitzta’er

171-2, 177, 182, 240n5, 241, 250n11,

Divine justice  57, 82, 98-9, 163-7, 197, 201, 236, 270, Divine love / God’s love  55, 96, 98-100, 103, 144, 235, 267, 270 divorce  45n33 dreams  33-4, 42, 49, 57-8, 59n9 82, 88, 93, 173, 232n43, 241-2, 250-2

269, 271 — longing, yearning  55, 89-92, 95, 101, 260, 163, 270, 272 — sadness, sorrow see hulshat da’at Erez Israel  15, 19n6, 21-2, 24, 28, 29n19, 30, 32-5, 37, 40-2, 51-3, 58n10, 60, 62n16, 65-6, 73, 78-92, 103-4, 107,

Eden  43-4, 53, 229

113, 143, 145, 148, 150-1, 188n3, 191,

ego  70, 102, 106, 182, 185, 247, 251,

231, 233, 239, 253, 265, 267, 271

262, 272 emotions  9-18, 36-8, 40, 50, 55, 63, 66, 92, 100, 116, 142, 152, 175-6, 178,

— academies, culture of  104-6 also see Babylonian academies and competitive tension

307

I n d e x o f To p i c s

308

— land of  28, 30, 32, 60, 104,

221-2, 225, 227-33, 235-6, 254n14, 270

106n69, 184-5, 199, 265

man’s relationship with  95-100,

eulogy/ize see mourning

103, 133, 155, 160-70, 174-6, 182-3, 203, 233, 259, 267, 269, 272

fasting  33, 45-7, 100, 161n35, 251 also see Yom Kippur

grief see emotions guilt see emotions; iniquity

Felix, Y.: Talmud Yerushalmi, Tractate Shevi’it  148n27 Frankel, Z.: The Methods of the Mishna, rev. by R. Isaac Nussenboim  206n19 Fraenkel, Yonah  12, 15, 23n14,

halash / halash da’ateh, see hulshat da’at halacha/halachic/laws  9-10, 19n4, 20, 22-5, 35, 36-7, 42, 44-8, 52n39, 54, 57, 67-74, 85-7, 116, 121-2, 148-50,

70n27, 105-6, 107, 268

155n32n33, 159, 161n35, 164n36,

— Aggadic Narrative: Harmony of

165n37, 168n42, 177-80, 192, 207, 219,

Content and Form  13n4

221n34, 222, 246

— Methods of the

halitza  31n22n23, 32, 45n33

Aggadah  201n16, 207n20

halsha da’ateh, see hulshat da’at

— Studies in the Spiritual World

Hamitovsky, Yitzhak: “The War of

of Aggada  67n23, 84n41, 69n25,

Torah — Simile and reality in

106n70

the study hall in the Mishnaic

— The Ways of the Aggadah and

and Talmudic periods”  105

the Midrash  22, 189n5, 199n13 Friedman, Shama — “The Further Adventures of

Hassid/ic  14, 49, 87-90 Heavenly Voice see bat kol homily/homiletical  30, 83-4, 113-4,

Rav Kahana Between Babylonia

128, 130n19, 152, 204, 206, 207n20,

and Palestine”  60n14

214-5, 223, 227-8, 234, 270

— “The Historical

honor  64-6, 70n27, 76-7, 80, 84, 87, 89,

Aggada in the Babylonian

97, 100, 103, 106, 108, 134, 183, 185-6,

Talmud”  67n23, 239, 252n13

215-7, 220, 223, 247, 260-3, 267-9,

frustration see emotions

271-2 of Torah 18-25, 52, 84n41, 104, 106, 143, 146

God  26, 36, 58, 83, 134, 137-8, 153, 157, 173-6, 185-7, 194-5, 199-202, 205, 208-9, 210n25, 211, 214n31, 218,

honoring parents  43-4, 53, 56, 241 also see mourning hulshat da’at (extreme sorrow/

I n d e x o f To p i c s

distress)  34-6, 54-107, 183, 233,

Kalmin, Richard: Sages, Stories,

261-2, 266-7, 270-2

Authors, and Editors in Rabbinic

classification of  54-6

Babylonia  13

in the study hall  56-84

Korban He’eda  31n22-3

outside the study hall  84-99

Kosman, Admiel  14-5, 95, 106

caused by other matters  99-103

— “Between ‘Inner Homeland’

also see mitzta’er, also see

and ‘Outer Homeland’”  14n10

appendix

— Femininity in the Spiritual

— halash  35-6, 103

World of the Talmudic Story  14,

— halash da’ateh  35-6, 54, 91, 94,

95n56 262n19

100-3

— “Humility and competition

— halsha da’ateh / da’ato /

in the Talmudic culture”  14n10

da’atei  34, 36, 51, 54, 57, 71-2,

— Masechet, quoting “Derech

76n32, 80-6, 92, 97, 103

Hayashar”  70n27

— hulshah da’atey  266

— Men’s Tractate: Rav and the Butcher and Other Stories  67n23

Iggeret R. Sherira Gaon (Wagshal ed.)  60n12 impurity  36, 47, 155, 184, 246

— Women’s Tractate: Wisdom, Love, Loyalty, Desire, Beauty, Sex, and Holiness  14n10, 95n57, 96n58

inferiority see emotions inheritance  42, 104

lamentation  18, 102, 114n5, 115, 116,

iniquity  132, 168n42, 233

129, 136, 154-5, 163, 186, 205, 207,

insult see emotions

211n25, 212-3, 215-6, 221-6, 258 also

Iyun Ya’akov by Rabbi Jacob Reischer  129, 208, 232-3

see weeping, emotions Leningrad-Antonin Geniza Collection  65n20

Jaffa  41, 51n36 Jason  58n8 Jehoahaz  58n8

literary  12, 15, 53, 59, 62, 65, 73, 77n35, 85, 138, 198n11, 264-5 literary and narrative devices  59,

Jehoyakim  58n8

62, 65, 123

Josiah  58n8

— anthropomorphization 

Judea  58n8, 110, 212

131-3 — dreams  58n8, 59n9

kal vehomer  155, 161

— minimalist style  11, 50-1

309

I n d e x o f To p i c s

310

— numbers: three  59 seven  62,

mercy see compassion

127, 222 twenty-four  38 sixty  245

Mia, Moshe  65

— parable of the king  199

mirroring/reflection  38, 63-4, 191,

— repetition  11-2, 49, 196n9, 222, 133n21, 207

203, 260 mitzta’er (sorrow, emotional

— structure  13, 77, 139-41, 173, 195

distress)  17, 51 also see

— structural similarity in

emotions: sorrow

parables  13, 15, 16n13, 60n13, 192n6, 220, 234 longing see emotion loyalty  198, 242, 248, 252, 252, 263, 272 Lysimachus  58n8

mothers  14n10, 43-44, 56, 71, 74, 137, 184, 328, 241, 245, 255-9, 261-2, 271 — bones of  10 motives  144, 246, 254, 259, 268 mourning  187, 270 — comforters  37-9, 68, 188, 190218, 221-38, 256, 258, 270 also see

madness  12, 73-9, 50, 68, 71

consolation

Maharsha, The  69n24, 76n32,

— customs  10, 49-50, 58, 187,

101n61, 129, 165n37, 167n41, 126-7,

188n1, 190, 198n11, 207, 216, 221,

245n8

229, 257

mamzer  179-80

— eulogy/ize  101-2, 136, 155,

matron, Roman  126, 128, 130

208, 212-5, 216-8, 220-3, 236-7, 270

Mavo letalmudim [Introduction to

— honoring the dead  108, 136-7,

the Talmuds] by H. Albeck  57 Meir, Ofra  13, 76-7

139, 155, 208, 215-223, 246-52 — for events  116, 177-83, 268

— ‘Changing character,’ ‘character disclosed’  13n5

narrative see literary devices

— Homiletic Narrative in Genesis

Nehardea  71n28

Rabbah, The  11

nursing women  47

— Rabbi Judah the Patriarch 

object in trust  191-203, 234, 256-259

76-7n32

Oppenheimer, A.

— ‘The context-dependent story

— Jews and Judaism during the

in the Talmud’  13n5

Second Temple Period  198n11

— The Poetics of Rabbinic Stories  13n5 Meiri, The  85

— Rabbi Judah Hanassi  148n27 ‘onah  47 ordaining see semicha

I n d e x o f To p i c s

other person  262, 271

157, 160, 192-3, 209 Safrai, S.: “The Commandment

penimi  14

of the seventh year in the

Plutarch (in Lysander and S. Ulla,

time after the destruction

3,1)  62n16

of the Second Temple” and

Pnei Moshe, The  31n23

The Land of Israel and its Sages

praying for death  89

in the Mishnaic and Talmudic

pregnancy  47, 199-200n15

Periods  148n27

proselyte  45, 118, 159 psyche/psychological  13, 14n9n10, 15, 76, 82, 106-7, 244 punishment  11, 71, 81-4, 102, 120, 123-4, 138, 164, 169, 182, 227-8, 235 pupil see disciple

selfhood appendix  274 — self-absorbtion/ concentration  69, 183, 197 — self-blame  207-14, 217, 235, 237 also see guilt — self-confidence/ assurance  77-9, 250

redemption  154, 124, 226, 230 — of tithes  24 — of captives  45n33, 97 rending garments  12, 37, 38n27, 68, 72, 185n66, 187n1, 220 rivalry  71-80, 153, 169 also see competition

— self-image  95n57 semicha (ordination)  2 8 - 3 3 , 3 9 , 52, 183 sensitivity  14, 39, 198, 202, 244, 250, 252, 260, 271-2 Shermer, A.: “Akshei lei v’akamaeih: a study of the

responsiveness appendix  274

Babylonian issue in Baba

Rubenstein, Jeffrey  13, 267

Kamma  117a, 67n22

— Talmudic Stories, Narrative

silence  11, 190, 195-6, 207-8, 233, 262, 270

Art, Composition and

sippur  13

Culture  13n6, 104-5

slave  45n33, 157-60, 168, 241

— The Culture of the Babylonian

sons  68, 75-6, 77-81, 86, 88-9, 120,

Talmud  13n6 Rubin, Nissan: The End of Life  187-8n1, 217-8

123-4, 127, 164n36, 171-2, 283, 240, 251, 260-2 death of 49-50, 176n47, 187n1, 188, 189-230, 234-7, 237, 255-9, 271

sacrifice  127-8, 136, 141, 176n47, 220

— honoring/comforting pa-

sacrificial offerings  90n48, 122n10,

rents  25-6, 43-4, 91-2, 151n30

311

I n d e x o f To p i c s

312

spiritual procreation through  75-9, 91-3, 101, 104, 171n45, 202n18 sorrow see emotions Sperber, D.  65 — Magic and Folklore in Rabbinic

104-6, 183, 185-6, 191, 200, 202n18, 219-21, 242, 250, 254, 267 Torah world  18, 36, 39, 53, 55, 84, 89, 103, 248, 268-9 tza’ar (Hebrew: ‘sorrow’)  27, 40, 264

Literature  63n17 status, social/spiritual  27-8, 52, 69, 72, 75-80, 82, 85n42, 86-7, 100, 103, 106, 148, 262n19, 266, 272

vulnerability  77 Valler, Shulamit — Women and Womanhood in the

stone of the lost  90n48

Talmudic Narratives  15

student see disciple

— Women in Jewish Society

study hall (bet midrash)  54-84, 89,

during the period of the Mishnah

91-3, 95n57, 101, 103-7, 260, 266-8, 270 suffering, physical  17-24, 129-30,

and Talmud  15 — (with Shalom Razabi)

135-7, 140-1, 151n30, 171-5, 241-54

Small Talks in the Babylonian

also see emotions

Talmud  15, 97n59

Sura, yeshiva at  86n45 washing  44, 171-2, 151 also see Talmud Yerushalmi and GrecoRoman Culture 3, ed. by Peter Schafer  60n14 Tanna/im/ic  18n2, 19-20, 24, 87n47,

mourning weeping  11, 37-8, 102, 108-134, 108186, 191, 200, 233, 268-70, 272 — of the mother of R. Ahadboi

92, 104, 108-152, 160, 170, 179, 181-3,

b. Abba  72, 261, 280

185n66, 188, 199n15, 239, 264, 266,

— of Ahadboi son of

268-9

R. Mattenah  176-7

Temples, First and Second,

— of R. Akiva  117-8, 168n42, 181

destruction of  90-1n48, 135, 139,

— of the daughter of R. Hanina

152-3, 182-3, 186

b. Teradion  138n22

Temple Mount  90n48, 111-2, 117,

— of R. Eleazar b. Dordia  130-3

tension  24, 59, 63-4, 66, 71, 73, 77,

— of R. Eleazar b. Pedat  172-176

79-80, 83, 86-7, 96, 103, 123, 145, 231,

— of R. Eleazar b. R. Simeon  

234, 149-50, 266

170; of his wife  249

Torah study  25-8, 33-4, 39, 50-1, 54, 60, 70, 74-5, 81, 84-5, 93, 95n57, 99,

— of R. Ishmael  181 — of R. Johanan  12, 37-8, 50, 68

I n d e x o f To p i c s

of his sister  68, 260

— of R. Eleazar b. R. Simeon /

— of R. Johanan b. Zakkai  12,

R. Eleazar b. Rashbi  74-5,

108-118, 181

238-154, 271

— of R. Jonathan  38, 68, 152

— of R. Hama b. Bisa  91

— of R. Judah Hanasi  125-34,

— of R. Hanina b.

136, 141-45, 147, 150, 152-3, 181, 268

Teradion  137-8

— of R. Meir  258

— of R. Idi  82n40

— of Nicanor  41, 51

— of Jeroboam  210

— of R. Pinhas b. Yair  151n30

— of Mar Ukba  94-6, 285

— of Samuel  170-2

— of R. Meir (Beruriah)  238,

— of R. Simeon bar Yohai

254-129, 271

(Rashbi)  118-125, 181

— of Resh Lakish  39n29, 68, 238,

— of Ulla  183-5

259-260, 262

— of thirteen Amoraim

— of Tyranus Rufus  117-8, 181

upon encountering certain

— whose husband did not

verses  157-166, 182 — out of patriotic

return on Yom Kippur  11 women  67, 97, 116, 119-20, 177,

feeling  185n66

238-64, 270-2

— over the sons of Aaron  209

— and sorrow  56, 106

— of God  185-6

— and Torah scholarship  55

wives  30, 40n30, 101, 108, 145n24, 153, 159, 161n35, 169, 246-248, 284

world to come  21, 102, 125-42, 150, 174-5, 181, 191, 220, 222-3, 268

— of Adam (Eve)  190, 194-5 — of b. Hakina  91n50

Yom Kippur  11, 240n5, 251

— of David (Bathsheba)  190, 193-5

Zedekiah  58n8

313

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Although Maimonides did not write a running commentary on any book of the Bible, biblical exegesis occupies a central place in his writings, particularly in his Guide for the Perplexed. In this book, Klein-Braslavy offers a collection of essays on several key biblical interpretations by Maimonides dealing with: the creation of the world; the story of the Garden of Eden; Jacob’s dream of the ladder; King Solomon as an esoterist philosopher; and the problem of exoteric and esoteric biblical interpretations in the Guide. Special attention is paid to Maimonides’ methods of interpretation and to his esoteric way of writing. Some of the articles in this volume were originally published in Hebrew, and appear here for the first time in English. Sara Klein-Braslavy (PhD Université de Paris IV) is a professor of Jewish philosophy at Tel-Aviv University. She is the author of three Hebrew books on Maimonides: Maimonides’ Interpretation of the Story of Creation; Maimonides’ Interpretation of the Adam Stories in Genesis — A Study in Maimonides’ Anthropology; and King Solomon and Philosophical Esotericism in the Thought of Maimonides. She has also written numerous articles on Jewish medieval philosophy. “Sara Klein-Braslavy is one of our generation’s pre-eminent interpreters of Maimonides. This volume makes available to the English reader a selection of her pioneering studies on Maimonides as interpreter of the Bible and on his art of writing. Professor Klein-Braslavy’s important work is thus made available to a much wider audience and makes a substantial contribution to the reader’s understanding of this crucial figure.” —Menachem Kellner, University of Haifa S e r i e s : Emunot: Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah

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