רבי חנינא סגן הכהנים

Rabbi Chanina, also called Chananyah, Segan HaKohanim was a tanna of the first generation who lived through the churban of the second Beit HaMikdash and afterward gave testimony about what he had seen in the Mikdash with his own eyes. His son was Rabbi Shimon ben HaSegan.

His title comes from the office he held. The segan oversaw the avodah of all the kohanim and stood ready to step into the place of the kohen gadol should the kohen gadol be found unfit for the service, which made him second in rank in the Mikdash. Rabbi Chanina himself explained why a segan is appointed at all: so that if the kohen gadol becomes disqualified, the segan enters at once and serves. In those years the kohanim gedolim were changed from year to year, and it appears that he remained in his post while they came and went — which may be why Chazal call him segan of the kohanim, in the plural, rather than simply the segan.

Much of his Torah touches on the avodah and the Mikdash. A long sugya in Pesachim, running some seven dapim in the Vilna Shas, is known as the sugya of Rabbi Chanina Segan HaKohanim because it opens with his statement that the kohanim never held back from burning meat made tamei by a secondary tumah together with meat made tamei by an av hatumah. He is known as well for the charge to daven for the welfare of the malchut — said in an age when the kehunah gedolah was bought from the Roman authorities by men unsuited to it.

Megillat Taanit Batra brings that he was killed together with Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel and Rabbi Yishmael ben Elisha, among the Asarah Harugei Malchut, on the twenty-fifth of Sivan, and that the day was fixed as a fast for the righteous — a ruling carried in the halachic sefarim from Halachot Gedolot down through the Tur and the Shulchan Aruch. The Midrash Eser Galuyot likewise counts him among the Ten Martyrs.