A Bride for One Night: Talmud Tales

The Other Side

15 The Other Side One day Rabbi Yohanan was swimming in the Jordan river. Reish Lakish saw him and thought he was a woman. He jumped into the Jordan after him, dropped his spear in the water, and leapt to the other side of the river. When Rabbi Yohanan saw Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish,1 he said to him: Your strength should be for Torah! Reish Lakish said to him: Your beauty should be for women! Rabbi Yohanan said to him: If you will repent, I will give you my sister, who is more beautiful than I am. Reish Lakish accepted this arrangement. He tried to retrieve his possessions , but he was unable to do so. Rabbi Yohanan taught him Torah and Mishnah and made him into a great man. One day, they were debating in the study house: The sword, the knife, the hunting spear, the hand sickle, the harvesting sickle—at what stage do they become impure? [That is, at what stage in their production do they shift from being raw materials, which are not susceptible to impurity, to vessels that may contract impurity?] And they answered: From the time they are completed. And when are they regarded as completed? Rabbi Yohanan said: When they are refined in the furnace. Reish Lakish said: When they are polished with water. Rabbi Yohanan said: A thief knows the tools of his trade. Reish Lakish said: And what good have you done for me? There [among the robbers] they called me master, and here [among the sages] they call me master. Rabbi Yohanan said: I have not done any good for you at all. Rabbi Yohanan’s spirit grew weak. Reish Lakish grew ill. 16 The Other Side Rabbi Yohanan’s sister came and cried before him. She said to him: Look at me! He did not pay attention to her. She said: Look at these children who will be orphans! He said to her: “Leave your orphans, I will sustain them” (Jeremiah 49:11). She said to him: For the sake of my widowhood! He said to her: “And let your widows trust in Me” (Jeremiah 49:11). Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish passed away. Rabbi Yohanan grieved very deeply. The rabbis said: What will we do to bring him comfort? Let us send Rabbi Elazar ben Pedat to sit before him, since he is a brilliant scholar. They brought Rabbi Elazar ben Pedat before Rabbi Yohanan. In response to everything that Rabbi Yohanan would say, Rabbi Elazar ben Pedat would say to him: Here is a text that supports you. Rabbi Yohanan said: Do you think I need this? Whenever I used to say something to Reish Lakish, he would pose twenty-four objections, and I would give him twenty-four solutions. But you just say to me: Here is a supporting text. Don’t I already know that what I said was correct? Rabbi Yohanan would walk about the gates [of Tiberias] and cry: Reish Lakish, where are you! Until he lost his mind. The rabbis prayed for mercy for him, and his soul came to its final rest. —Bava Metzia 84a The Jordan River was the boundary. The city extended to its banks, and beyond it lay the Golan, a wilderness, a place of robbers and wild animals . On the banks of the Kinneret, to the west, Tiberias flourished. Its city square was the site of a bustling, colorful marketplace on Monday and Thursday mornings. The women of the villages, dressed in bright dresses, would stand behind fruit and vegetable stalls. The fishermen’s The Other Side 17 wives from Capernaum would carry baskets of fish, and children would crowd around them in the filthy alleys, hoping for bags of small fish to use in their games. Old fishermen would lean on benches, soothing their aching backs in the sun and telling stories to one another. They stretched out their nets between the pillars to dry in the morning sun. From time to time a Torah scholar would make his way through the colorful hubbub in a clean light cloak. He would greet passersby, and they would make way for him. He would direct his steps toward the village beyond the market , to the study house of Rabbi Yohanan—that basalt hall whose windows looked out over the sea of Tiberias. On Mondays and Thursdays the study house served as a courtroom, and people would come...