הלל בן גמליאל

Rav Hillel ben Gamliel was among the last of the generation that bridges the Tannaim and the Amoraim, and is counted in the first generation of the amoraim of Eretz Yisrael. He was the son of Rabban Gamliel b’Rabbi, and he was still young enough to learn Torah from his grandfather, Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi himself.

He was among those who came and went in the house of Rav Zakkai of Kabul, and when he arrived in Kabul together with his brother Yehuda the townspeople received the two of them with great honor. Two practices of his are remembered for what he gave up rather than for what he did: he and his elder brother, Rav Yehuda Nesiah, used to bathe together in the bathhouse, and stopped when they saw that people looked askance at two brothers bathing together; and they used to go out on Shabbat in kordekisin, wide and loose sandals, without concern that these might slip off the foot, and left off that practice too when it caused wonderment among the public — in both cases although they themselves held the thing permitted. His teachings are found in baraitot, and according to some views in the Mishnah as well, while his elder brother Rav Yehuda is generally reckoned among the first generation of amoraim; Rav Aharon Hyman suggests the difference lies in Rav Hillel having been niftar at a young age, so that most of his Torah belongs still to the transitional generation, while Rav Yehuda lived long and worked mainly in the amoraic period. Some sources describe him as a great master of the translation of Scripture, and it was on this that Origen (a Christian thelogist) came to consult him.

Some identify him with the Rav Hillel who said that Israel has no Mashiach, for they consumed him already in the days of Chizkiyah — the statement to which Rav Yosef answered that his Master should forgive Rav Hillel — a saying that occupied Jewish thinkers in every later generation. Several mishnayot in Avot brought in the name of Hillel are held by some to be his, since they follow the words of his grandfather Rabbi and his father Rabban Gamliel b’Rabbi, while many hold them to be the words of Hillel the Elder, since the mishnah that follows opens with Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai receiving from Hillel and from Shammai. The Gemara in Gittin brings a baraita in the name of Hillel that a prozbul is written only upon a perforated pot; Rashi writes that this Hillel is an amora, and it may well be Rav Hillel, since his words were brought in a baraita.