הרב אבימי מהגרוניא

Rabbi Avimi of Hagronya was an amora of the Babylonian academies. His teachings reach us in a recurring pattern: Rav Mordechai brings them to Rav Ashi, opening, “Thus said Avimi of Hagronya,” most often quoting in the name of Rava (and once in the name of Rav Huna). In many cases Rav Ashi is sitting and puzzling over a difficult question, and Avimi’s reported ruling settles the matter.

His statements span several tractates and a range of practical law. In Makkot he teaches that those liable to kareis do not require prior warning, deriving this from the cases of the Korban Pesach and circumcision, which carry punishment even without an explicit warning. Much of his quoted material concerns monetary and commercial law in Bava Metzia and Bava Batra: a borrowed cat killed by the mice it was hunting (“a man killed by women is neither a matter for law nor for a judge”), a sale where a single zuz remains outstanding and whether the buyer acquires, and a gentile guarantor who pays a gentile creditor before the orphans collect. In Ketubot he addresses everyday usage of language—whether people call two half-palms “a palm”—and in Yevamot he weighs in on whether the cause of a phenomenon is the source-spring (ma’ayan) rather than mazal.