The Sages: Volume 1 by Binyamin Lau

Author:Binyamin Lau
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Maggid Books
Published: 2010-03-09T16:00:00+00:00

The account in the Tosefta is informative. It describes how a problem arose and how Hillel enlisted his intellectual abilities as well as received traditions in order to solve it. It makes no reference to the questioners’ identity, to Hillel’s origin, or to the identity of Hillel’s rabbis, and there is likewise no attempt to evaluate the validity of his proofs. It is a “dry” and succinct account of the event that precipitated Hillel’s appointment to the Patriarchate.10 The color and drama are provided by the two Talmudic traditions:

Talmud Yerushalmi Pesaḥim 6:1[33a] Talmud Bavli Pesaḥim 66a

This halakha was forgotten by the Elders of Beteira:

It once happened that the fourteenth [of Nisan] fell on Shabbat, and they did not know whether the Paschal offering overrides Shabbat or not. They said, “There is here a certain Babylonian, Hillel is his name, who apprenticed under Shemaya and Avtalyon, who knows whether a Paschal offering overrides Shabbat or not. Perhaps something good can come from him.” They sent and called him. They said to him, “Have you ever heard whether, when the fourteenth [of Nisan] falls on Shabbat, it overrides Shabbat or not?” He said to them, “Do we have only one Paschal offering each year that overrides Shabbat? Are there not many Passover offerings that override Shabbat during the year?” They said to him, “We have already said that something good can come from you.”

He started to expound for them using different forms of traditional interpretation: a hekesh [juxtaposition], a kal vaḥomer [a fortiori], and a gezeira shava [analogy]…They said to him, “We have already said, ‘Is there something good [that can come] from the Babylonian?’

“The hekesh that you stated has a rebuttal…the kal vaḥomer that you stated has a rebuttal… the gezeira shava that you stated has a rebuttal, for a person may not deduce a gezeira shava on his own…” And even though he sat and expounded to them all day, they did not accept the teaching from him until he said to them, “In Heaven’s name! This is what I heard from Shemaya and Avtalyon.”

Immediately upon hearing this from him, they stood up and appointed him patriarch over them.

As soon as they had appointed him, he began to castigate them, saying: “What caused you to need this Babylonian? Is it not because you failed to serve the two great men of the world, Shemaya and Avtalyon, who lived near you?” As soon as he castigated them, he forgot a law: They asked him, “What should we do for the people who did not bring their slaughtering knives before Shabbat?” He said to them, “I heard this law, but have forgotten it. Nevertheless, let Israel be. If they are not prophets, they are the disciples of prophets.”

Immediately, he whose Paschal offering was a lamb, stuck [the knife] in the wool. If it was a goat, he would tie it between its horns. Thus, their Paschal offerings brought their knives with them.

As soon as he saw this happening, he remembered the law, saying, “This is what I heard from Shemaya and Avtalyon.

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