רב הונא בר חיננא

Rav Huna bar Chinena was a Babylonian amora of the fourth generation, a talmid of Rav Sheshet and of Rav Nachman, and a friend of Rav Nachman’s sons Rav Huna and Rav Acha. He was a chaver of Rava, rosh yeshiva of Pumbedita; both had learned under Rav Nachman, and more than once they disagreed over what their rebbi had held.

The Gemara brings several cases in which the two differed in practical psak. When the Reish Galuta asked Rav Huna to fix his orchard so that carrying in it would be permitted on Shabbat — an orchard is not lived in, so its outer walls alone do not make it a reshut hayachid, like a karpaf larger than beit sa’atayim that was not enclosed for dwelling — Rav Huna put up a partition of closely set reeds, relying on the principle of lavud, to create a dwelling for the orchard’s watchman. Rava held that a dwelling built after the outer walls already stood accomplishes nothing, and he uprooted the reeds himself. In another case Rav Huna permitted a mixture of fish in which scales, the sign of a kosher fish, were found, while Rava forbade it for fear that some of the fish were kosher and others not; contradictory public rulings went out from the two. In a third, a non-Jew had dabbled his hands in wine: Rava permitted selling the wine to a non-Jew, while Rav Huna bar Chinena forbade all benefit from it as stam yeinam. Here too both issued public rulings, but in the end Rava retracted and conceded to Rav Huna.

Abaye in his youth is mentioned sitting before Rav Huna and his chaverim as a talmid before his rebbi. Another talmid, Rav Huna, recalls a question Rav Huna bar Chinena put to him to test his understanding: whether a wife is obligated to nurse her child — one of the seven labors a wife owes her husband — when the husband’s family custom is not to nurse and her own family’s custom is to nurse. By another reading the talmid in that account was Rav Papa.