רבי יהודה בר שלום

Rav Yehuda bar Shalom — also called Rav Yudan bar Shalom — was an amora of Eretz Yisrael of the fifth generation, at the close of the fourth century, and a talmid of Rabbi Yosi the amora. He is brought as the disputant of Rabbi Matanya. He occupied himself with halacha as well, and it seems he served as a dayan, but the greater part of what has come down in his name is aggada.

He explained on the worth of the mitzvah of tzedakah, holding that a man’s outlay is fixed for him from above in advance, whether he gives tzedakah or not: just as a man’s sustenance is apportioned to him from Rosh Hashanah, so are his losses apportioned to him from Rosh Hashanah — if he merits, the loss goes out in breaking his bread for the hungry; if he does not merit, it goes out on the poor who are brought into his house (Bava Batra 10a). In the Yerushalmi (Yoma 1:1) he asks why the Torah sets the passing of Aharon beside the breaking of the luchot, and answers that it is to teach that the passing of tzaddikim is as hard before HaKadosh Baruch Hu as the breaking of the luchot. And he brings a teaching on Moshe Rabbeinu’s request that the Mishnah be given in writing: HaKadosh Baruch Hu saw that the nations would one day translate the Torah and read it in Greek, and would say that they are Yisrael — and the scales would hang even (Pesikta Rabbati 5).

His most widely known words are those he said in the name of Rabbi Elazar: three things annul a harsh decree, and they are teshuvah, tefillah and tzedakah (Midrash Tanchuma, parshat Noach). The teaching reached every davener through the piyut U’Netaneh Tokef, which brings it. This is the foundation of the tefilla of the yamim noraim(Rosh Hashana, and Yom Kippur).