A Bride for One Night: Talmud Tales

Elisha

123 Elisha Rabbi Meir was preaching in the study house in Tiberias. His teacher Elisha rode past on his horse on the Sabbath. They came and said [to Rabbi Meir]: Your rabbi is outside. He stopped and went out to him. He [Elisha] said to him: What were you teaching today? He [Rabbi Meir] said to him: “And the Lord blessed the latter years of Job’s life more than the former” (Job 42:12). He said to him: And with what verse did you introduce your teaching? He said to him: “And the Lord gave Job twice what he had before” (Job 42:10), meaning that he doubled his wealth. He said to him: Enough Meir, we have come to the boundary beyond which it is forbidden to travel on the Sabbath. He [Rabbi Meir] said to him: How do you know that? He [Elisha] said to him: From the steps of my horse, which I counted as it trotted for a distance of 2,000 cubits. He said to him: You have all this knowledge in you, yet you still do not want to repent from your heresy? He said to him: I cannot. He said to him: Why? He said to him: Because once I was passing by the Holy of Holies on my horse on the Day of Atonement, which fell on the Sabbath. I heard a still, small voice coming out of the Holy of Holies and saying : Return, my wayward sons, except for Elisha ben Abuya, who recognized my power and turned against me.” —J. Hagiga 2:1 124 Elisha The bright sun peeking cautiously from behind the clouds after weeks of rain and mud drew a great crowd out of their homes. The dresses and kerchiefs of the women and girls filled the yard outside of the synagogue with color. The synagogue, the heart of Tiberias, was so awash with humanity that it seemed to be the center of the world. The Torah reading had already concluded, and the last of the readers returned to their places. The Torah scroll was rolled and returned to the ark in the southern wall, which faced Jerusalem. The people waited to hear the teachings of one of their rabbis. They knew what to expect: The style of teaching that involved beginning with a seemingly unrelated verse from the Prophets and Writings and then circling back to the Torah portion read that week was a challenge for even the most gifted commentators. The speaker had to be able to relate distant teachings to more immediate ones in a way that had novelty and depth and that touched upon the lives of the members of the community. It was Rabbi Meir’s turn. He went up to the podium, his head bent, looking out on his congregation. Even the wisest sages could not always fully comprehend the finer points of Rabbi Meir’s teaching. On several occasions when he had addressed the community on the Sabbath, his words had gone completely over their heads. Out of respect for Rabbi Meir, everyone sat in utter silence when he spoke, even if they could not understand what he was saying. In the local study house there was a rumor that in the Torah scroll that he had written for himself, Rabbi Meir had jotted in the margins, on the page of notes and corrections, a variant wording of the verse from Genesis: “And God saw all that He had made and found it very good” (1:31). Rumor had it that Rabbi Meir had switched around a few Hebrew letters so that instead of “very good,” he suggested “death is good.” Some saw this as a sign of pride, as if he had shot an arrow straight into the eye of the Angel of Death. Rabbi Meir spoke. Verses from the Book of Job fell from his lips, verses describing a man beset by tremendous hardship. It was well known that Rabbi Meir knew this book by heart. The style of commentary known as the P’tichta, which involved masterfully weaving a distant verse into a verse from that day’s Torah reading, was like clay in the hands of a potter for Rabbi Meir. He began with, “And the Lord blessed Elisha 125 the latter years of Job’s life more than the former.” The congregation spread out over the benches, and their hearts were open to...