רב ענן

Rav Anan bar Tachlifa was an amora of the second generation in Bavel and a prime talmid of Shmuel, in whose name he brings a great many teachings, along with teachings in the name of Rav. He was a contemporary of Rav Huna and Mar Ukva, and a beit midrash carried his name, Devei Rav Anan.

The Gemara in Ketubot brings that Eliyahu HaNavi would come to Rav Anan and learn with him the order of teaching known as Seder Eliyahu, and that Rav Anan set down what he received from him in the sefer Tanna d’Vei Eliyahu. A man once brought Rav Anan a gift and then mentioned that he had a din Torah coming before him; Rav Anan held the gift to be shochad even though it had not been given for that purpose, and sent the man to Rav Nachman to be judged instead. Rav Nachman understood from the message that the litigant was a relative of Rav Anan and gave his case precedence, whereupon the other litigant, seeing the honor shown his opponent, lost the confidence to press his claims. Though Rav Anan had brought this about without meaning to, Eliyahu ceased coming to him. He sat in taanit and begged for rachamim until Eliyahu returned — but now the revelation was fearsome to him, so he made a box and sat within it while Eliyahu taught. From this Chazal explain the two parts of the work: Seder Eliyahu Rabbah, learned before the episode, and Seder Eliyahu Zuta, learned from inside the box.

He once wrote to Rav Huna on behalf of an orphan girl, asking that her dowry be collected from a tenth of the estate her brother had inherited, and opened the letter with the words “Huna our colleague.” Rav Huna, the gadol hador, took this as a slight to kavod haTorah and sent Rav Sheshet to answer him; Rav Anan brought the matter to Mar Ukva, who explained the rebuke to him. Rav Nachman, for his part, once brushed aside one of his arguments with a sharp remark about how he had spent his time in Shmuel’s beit midrash, yet addressed him with the title Mar. Among the teachings brought in his name: Rav Anan said in the name of Rav that the Shechinah supports a sick man, as the pasuk says, Hashem yis’adenu al eres devai. His burial place is not named in the words of Chazal; the main tradition, attested from the second half of the nineteenth century, places his kever in Teveria near the western gate of the city.