הרב רפרם בר פפא

Rafram bar Papa was a Babylonian amora of the fourth generation, in the fourth century, and a talmid of Rav Chisda — so much so that nearly every teaching he brings in the Gemara, in halacha and in aggadah alike, he says in his rebbi’s name. He was a friend of the great amora Rava, though older than him, and seems to have been close in years to Rav Huna. When Rava asked him to tell over the good deeds of Rav Huna, he answered that he could recall nothing of Rav Huna’s younger years, only of his old age. Despite the name he was not a son of Rav Pappa, who belonged to a later generation; the Gemara also mentions a second chacham called Rafram bar Papa of Sichra, evidently to keep him apart from the better-known Rafram.

Among his rulings in halacha: the washing forbidden on account of mourning — whether to an individual avel or to the whole tzibbur on Tisha B’Av — includes even cold water, while the washing forbidden on a public fast is only a matter of denying oneself pleasure, so that cold water there is permitted. He also taught a way to clarify a garment suspected of shaatnez: where a linen thread is known to have been worked into a woolen garment, or a woolen thread into linen, and the thread can no longer be found, the garment may be permitted by dyeing it, since the dye takes differently on wool than on linen and will show up the lost thread; and if it still does not appear, one may assume it was removed somehow. In aggadah he taught that the churban of the Beit HaMikdash changed the very nature of the world — the sky is no longer seen in its purity, and the rains no longer come from the good storehouse nor fall on the southern side — words which the commentators explained by way of remez and sod (deeper hidden meaning).