Rabbi Meir
Rabbi Meir (Hebrew: רַבִּי מֵאִיר) was a Jewish sage who lived in the time of the Mishnah. He was one of the Tannaim of the fourth generation (139-163). He is the third most frequently mentioned sage in the Mishnah and is mentioned over 3,000 times in the Babylonian Talmud.[1] His wife Bruriah is one of the few women cited in the Gemara.
Biography[edit]
He was born in Asia Minor. According to the Talmud, his father was a descendant of the Roman Emperor Nero who, it is said, escaped death at the time of his deposition and became subsequently a convert to Judaism.[2] According to Rambam, Nero was his Father.[3]
Twenty four thousand students of Akiva died in a plague. He found five new students, including Meir and Rabbis Judah ben Ilai, Eleazar ben Shammua, Jose ben Halafta, and Shimon bar Yochai.[4]
Meir entered the school of Rabbi Akiva, then went to the school of Rabbi Ishmael. During this time, Meir held the profession of a scrivener, copying principally sacred script, for which he was admonished: "My son, pay particular heed to your profession, since your profession is the work of heaven; lest perhaps you leave out one letter, or else you add one superfluous letter, and in so doing you find that you have destroyed thereby the entire world."[5] He then returned to Akiva, who, recognizing his dialectical powers, ordained him over the heads of his other disciples.[6] This ordination, which was considered invalid on account of Meir's youth, was confirmed by Judah ben Baba.[7]
Unlike Akiva, Meir seems to have kept aloof from the revolutionary movement of Bar Kokhba.[8] Nevertheless, he suffered greatly from its consequences. His father-in-law, Hananiah ben Teradion, was killed in the Hadrianic persecutions, and his sister-in-law was taken to Rome and sold to a brothel.
During the Hadrianic persecutions Meir lived abroad, but he returned to Judea after the repeal of the oppressive edicts, and took part in the reestablishment of the Sanhedrin in the city of Usha. Shortly afterward Simeon ben Gamaliel II was elected patriarch, and Meir became a hakham, in which office he was charged with the duty of preparing the subjects to be discussed in the Sanhedrin.
In the later part of Meir's life in one day he lost two sons, who died suddenly on a Sabbath while he was at the house of study.[9] Shortly after the death of his sons his wife died. According to a legend, she committed suicide after having been dishonored by one of her husband's pupils.[10]
The last years of Meir's life were passed in Asia Minor. He was induced to leave Judea because of the conflict that arose between him and the patriarch over the change introduced by Simeon in the ceremonial of the Sanhedrin. Custom required its members to rise when the president, the judge, or the reader entered the academy. Simeon issued an order that the assembly should rise as a body only on his own entrance, while on the entrance of the judge only the first row, and on that of the reader only the second row, should rise. Meir and Nathan (the judge) felt offended at this new arrangement and determined to show Simeon's unfitness for his office by puzzling him with difficult halakic questions which he would be unable to answer. Informed of this, Simeon expelled them from the Sanhedrin, but he could not prevent them from writing difficult questions and distributing them among its members. Compelled to readmit both Nathan and Meir, he contrived that their names should not be recorded in the ordinances enacted by him. Nathan submitted, but Meir continued to embarrass the patriarch by addressing to him difficult questions. When, at last, the patriarch threatened excommunication, he answered, "I do not care for your sentence unless you can prove to me on whom, on what grounds, and under what conditions excommunication may be imposed," and left the Sanhedrin.[11]
A different story in the Babylonian Talmud indicates that he was forced to flee to Babylonia due to pursuit by the Roman authorities, or due to other unclear circumstances.[12]
Name[edit]
"Meir" may have been a sobriquet. The Babylonian Talmud asserts that his actual name was not Meir but Nehorai, and that the real name of Nehorai was not Nehorai but rather Nehemiah or Eleazar ben Arach.[13] This passage is ambiguous regarding whether Meir was renamed twice (from Nehorai and previously from another name), or whether two rabbis (Meir and Nehorai) were each renamed.
According to Yeshayah Berlin, Meir and Nehorai were separate rabbis.[14] This reading is supported by several of the oldest Talmud manuscripts.[15]
In contrast, modern scholar John McGinley assumes that Meir was renamed twice. To explain the renaming, McGinley notes that Eleazar ben Arach is elsewhere is described as being the greatest of the Sages,[16] and a student of Yohanan ben Zakkai who (at an early age) had mastered the meaning of the mystical revelations which are associated with "the Work of the Chariot."[17] McGinley suggests that the virtual disappearance of Eleazer Ben Arach from rabbinic ways allowed the usage of this name as a cognomen for Meir, acceptably to rabbinic officialdom who permitted this cover name to honor him but with sufficient indirectness so as not also to honor his checkered history with Rabbinic officialdom.[18] The book also says that Yochanan Ben Zakai set up a bet midrash at Bror Hayil after he left Yavneh. Meir was not a student of Zakai at Yavneh.
Teachings[edit]
Halacha[edit]
First a disciple of Elisha ben Abuyah and later of Rabbi Akiva, Meir was one of the most important Tannaim of the Mishnah. Akiva's teachings, through his pupil Meir, became the basis of the Mishnah.
According to the Babylonian Talmud, all Mishnas that state laws without introducing them with an indication that they are attributed to any one of the Sages are attributed to Meir.[19]Following an unsuccessful attempt to force the resignation of the head of the Sanhedrin, Meir's opinions were noted, but not in his name, rather as "Others say...".[20] However, in a few places the opinion of "Others" is recorded alongside a contradictory opinion of "Rabbi Meir", suggesting that this identification is not universal.[21]
Meir "was able to give 48 reasons to prove a thing legally clean, and as many more reasons to prove it unclean".[6] This excess of dialectics is given in the Talmud as the only reason why his halakhot did not receive the force of law; the pros and cons offered by him were so nearly equal in strength that one never knew his real opinion on a subject.
In the deduction of new halakhot from the Biblical text, Meir used with great caution the hermeneutic rules listed by his teacher Ishmael; and he rejected Akiva's method of deducing a new halakhah from a seemingly superfluous particle in the Scriptural text.[22]