הלל הזקן

Hillel HaZaken (c. 111 BCE–c. 10 CE), the tanna who headed the Sanhedrin in the last generations of the Zugot, was a son of Neryahu and a descendant of David HaMelech, and the founder of the beit midrash known as Beit Hillel. He was born in Bavel and came up to Eretz Yisrael at forty; the Sifri sets his years in three parts of forty — until he came up, serving the chachamim, and leading Klal Yisrael. He founded the line of nesi’im that led the nation for fifteen generations. His counterpart and disputant was Shammai HaZaken, av beit din, and Chazal call the two of them the fathers of the world.

When he arrived in the Land he was desperately poor, cutting wood for half a dinar a day and handing half of that to the keeper of the beit midrash for admission. One winter day he earned nothing and was refused entry; he climbed to the roof and lay by the skylight to hear Shemayah and Avtalyon, and the learners below, seeing the light dim, found him buried under three amot of snow. Though it was Shabbat they washed him and set him before the fire, saying that such a man is worthy that Shabbat be set aside for him. Later, when a question of the avodah left the Bnei Batheira at a loss, Hillel resolved it and they gave over the nesius to him; the seven rules of derashah that bear his name, on which the thirteen middot of Rabbi Yishmael rest, are tied to that day.

As nasi he enacted takanot for the tzibbur, the best known being the prozbul, which preserved the collection of debts through shemittat kesafim; men of means had stopped lending for fear of loss, leaving the poor with no one to borrow from. Few halachot are quoted in his own name, but his talmidim, Beit Hillel, fill the Mishnah opposite Beit Shammai, and the halacha was fixed like Beit Hillel because they were pleasant to others and would state the words of Beit Shammai before their own. The Yerushalmi counts eighty pairs of talmidim in his beit midrash, the eldest Yonatan ben Uziel and the youngest Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai.

His humility became the model Chazal set before every Jew: a man should always be patient like Hillel and not exacting like Shammai. The ger who asked to be taught the whole Torah while standing on one foot was turned away by Shammai and received by Hillel, who told him: that which you yourself hate, do not do to your fellow — that is the entire Torah, and all the rest is its explanation; go and learn it. The Maharsha explains that he drew it from the mitzvah of loving one’s fellow as oneself. A burial cave attributed to Hillel and his talmidim stands at Meron beside the compound of Rashbi; mentioned from the eleventh century onward, it drew an annual gathering for tefillah on Pesach Sheni.