Eleazar ben Shammua

R. Eleazar ben Shammua (also: Eleazar ben Schammua , in Mishnah and Baraita always simply called R. Eleazar , not to be confused with Eleazar = Eleazar ben Pedat ) was a Tannait of the third generation, after others of the fourth generation, who was highly valued as a lawyer Belonging to a priestly tribe (from a wealthy family), born in Alexandria , lived and worked in the second century AD.

He visited his teacher Akiba in prison, then went - like many others forced to leave his homeland during the Hadrianic persecution of religions - with Jochanan ha-Sandelar to Nisibis to study under Jehuda ben Batyra.

He did not receive his ordination through Akiba, but only after his death through R. Juda ben Baba . Eleazar ben Shammua is used in various places in the bab. Talmuds called "the most excellent of the learned". He is said to have been politically active for his people, including through an intervention in Rome .

He reached a very old age, which he attributed, among other things, to the fact that he never used the synagogue as a passage, was always either present in front of the students in the teaching house so as not to bother the students who were already present by walking through (who saw themselves prompted to get up from their seats) or, if he was late, stand behind the students.

Eleazar ben Schammua, who had so many students that they often only "had to be content with a yard of room in the teaching house" (Bab. Eruwin 53 a), also became the teacher of Yehuda Hannasi , who called Eleazar "the most important of the wise" .

Eleazar is also counted among the " Ten Martyrs ".

Of his tenets, the one quoted in PA IV, 12 is best known: "The honor of your pupil is as dear to you as your own, the honor of your friend as the reverence for your teacher and the reverence for your teacher as the reverence for God! "

literature

• Zacharias Frankel : Hodegetica , Leipzig 1859
• Weiss : dor dor ... , 1871 ff. (Volume II.)
• Jakob Brüll , Mewo hamischna , Volume I., 1876
• Bacher , The Agada of the Tannaites , 1884 ff., Volume II
• Ludwig A. Rosenthal, Article Eleasar ben Schammua , in: Jüdisches Lexikon , Berlin 1927 (Volume II.)
• Hermann L. Strack and Günter Stemberger , Introduction in Talmud and Midrash , 7th edition, Beck, Munich 1982
• Solomon Schechter , Samuel Mendelsohn :  Eleasar ben Schammua. In: Isidore Singer (Ed.): Jewish Encyclopedia . Funk and Wagnalls, New York 1901-1906. Retrieved May 8, 2010