רבי חנינא תורתייא

Rav Chanina Tortaah was an amora of Eretz Yisrael in the second generation and a talmid of Rav Yochanan, the greatest of the amoraim of Eretz Yisrael in that generation, before whom he would recite the beraitot of seder Kodashim. He learned the laws of terumah from Rav Oshaya and Rav Yannai as well, and in the name of Chizkiya he brings the derasha that learns the kinyan of agav from the pasuk in Divrei HaYamim II 21:3, where the father gave his sons many gifts of silver and gold and precious things together with fortified cities in Yehuda. Rav Yona and Rav Chiya bar Abba bring teachings in his name, and it may be that they were his talmidim.

The name attached to him, Tortaah, comes down in many forms — in the Bavli as Tiritaah, Tirta, Tirnaah or Tritaah, and in the Yerushalmi as Tortaya, Tirta, Tortayah or Tartiah. Rashi in Menachot writes that the name was given him for the place where he lived, which was called Torata.

Because his name varies so widely between the two Talmuds, the Seder HaDorot of Rav Yechiel Heilprin treats him as two separate amoraim — Rav Chanina Tirtaah, the talmid of Rav Yochanan of the Bavli, and Rav Chanina ben Torta of the Yerushalmi — and the Sefer Yuchasin of Rav Avraham Zacuto divides him three ways. Rav Zev Rabinowitz, in his notes on the Seder HaDorot, holds instead that the Bavli’s Chanina Tirtaah and the Yerushalmi’s Chanina ben Tortaya are one man under two forms of one name, and that the confusion came from a second figure altogether, Rav Chanina ben Torta, who carried that name because of the cow through which he came to convert.