רבי אלעזר בן שמוע

Rav Elazar ben Shammua HaKohen, a tanna of the fourth generation who lived in the middle of the second century, was among the last of the five young talmidim of Rabbi Akiva and is counted a talmid muvhak of his. In the Bavli he appears simply as Rabbi Elazar and in the Yerushalmi as Rabbi Lazar. He was of priestly descent and a man of means, and he learned also before Rabbi Yehoshua and Rabbi Tarfon.

When a plague took twenty-four thousand of Rabbi Akiva’s talmidim and the world lay desolate, Akiva came to the sages of the south and taught his Torah anew to Rabbi Meir, Rabbi Yehuda, Rabbi Yose, Rabbi Shimon, and Rav Elazar ben Shammua — and these were the ones who upheld the Torah in that hour. Because the Hadrianic persecution forbade semichah on pain of death, Rabbi Akiva could not ordain him; after Akiva’s passing he was ordained by Rabbi Yehuda ben Bava, together with his colleagues, at a hidden place between Usha and Shefaram. The ordainer was caught and slain, but those he ordained escaped and carried the Oral Torah to the generations that followed.

He presided over an academy that drew many talmidim, among them Issi ben Yehuda and Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, who told how densely the students pressed to hear him — six seated in a single amah. Rav called him tuvyana dachakimei, the most fortunate of the sages. Once he and Rabbi Yochanan HaSandlar set out for Netzivin to learn before Rabbi Yehuda ben Beteira; reaching Tzaidan they remembered Eretz Yisrael, wept, tore their garments, and turned back, declaring that dwelling in the Land is equal to all the mitzvot of the Torah.

His words in Pirkei Avot are well known: let the honor of your talmid be as dear to you as your own, the honor of your fellow as the reverence of your rebbi, and the reverence of your rebbi as the awe of Heaven. Asked how he had reached great age — tradition gives it as a hundred and five years — he said he had never made the beit knesset a shortcut, never stepped over the heads of the holy people by coming late, and never raised his hands in the priestly blessing without first reciting its berachah. According to the Midrash Eleh Ezkerah he was among the Ten Martyrs slain by Rome.