הרב אילפא

Ilfa was an amora of the second generation in Eretz Yisrael and the chaver of Rabbi Yochanan; the two learned together before Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, and in the Gemara Ilfa’s name is always mentioned before his friend’s. When Rebbi decreed a public fast in a year that the rains held back, it was Ilfa who was sent down before the amud, and his tefillah was answered at once — at "mashiv haruach" a wind blew, and at "morid hageshem" the rain came down. Rebbi wondered at it and asked him what stood to his merit, and Ilfa answered that he lived in a village of paupers, and that poor as he was himself, he would strain to obtain wine so that every one of them should be yotzei kiddush and havdalah.

Masechet Taanit tells how the two of them, ground down by poverty, resolved to leave the beit midrash and go into trade. They lodged one night beside a wall, and Rabbi Yochanan heard two malachim speaking: one wished to bring the wall down upon men who set aside the life of the world to come for the life of the hour, and the second answered that for one of the pair the hour was standing ready. Rabbi Yochanan alone had heard, and understanding that the words were said of him he turned back to his learning, saying that the needy will not cease from the land, while Ilfa went out to earn a living. Not long after, Rabbi Yochanan was set at the head of the yeshiva in Tiberias, and when Ilfa came and heard the news it pained him, his friends telling him that had he stayed and learned, the crown would have been his as well.

Ilfa answered by hanging from the mast of a ship and declaring that he was master of the whole Torah still: let any man ask him a beraita from the beit midrash of Rabbi Chiya and Rabbi Oshaya, and if he could not resolve it he would cast himself down. An elder came and put to him a hard beraita whose tanna was unknown, and Ilfa explained it where he stood. Some of the mefarshim connect his name to that episode, ilfa being the word for a ship. He appears in the Gemara only rarely; one such place is in Gittin, on a man who washes his hands in two halves, where the question is whether the first half remaining wet enough to wet another thing joins the two into a single netilah.