הרב שמעון בן עזאי

Shimon ben Azzai, known simply as Ben Azzai, was a tanna of the early second century, counted among the chachamim of Yavneh. Though a master of Torah, he never carried the title of rabbi: he and Ben Zoma were the very model of “talmidim worthy of hora’ah” — disciples fit to rule in halacha who remained talmidim all their days. His rebbi was Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananya, and he stood to Rabbi Akiva as both talmid and chaver, following his ways in halacha and in drush while adding to his words with reverence.

His hallmark was hasmadah without measure — Chazal said that when Ben Azzai died, the diligent ceased — and it kept him from marriage. He was betrothed to the daughter of Rabbi Akiva but never built a home; when reproached, he answered: what shall I do? My soul cleaves in love to the Torah; the world can be sustained by others. The Rambam and the Shulchan Aruch rule that one whose soul desires Torah like Ben Azzai, and never marries, has no sin in his hand. His piety matched his diligence: whoever sees Ben Azzai in a dream, the Gemara says, may look forward to chasidut. On the day Rabbi Elazar ben Azarya was raised to the nesiut at Yavneh, Ben Azzai brought a halacha from the mouths of seventy-two elders and taught that Kohelet and Shir HaShirim are kodesh like the rest of the Ketuvim.

He was one of the four who entered the Pardes, the inner chamber of hidden wisdom; of the four only Rabbi Akiva emerged in peace, and of Ben Azzai it is said “he gazed and died,” and the pasuk was applied to him: precious in the eyes of Hashem is the death of His chasidim. Amoraim of later generations, in an hour of clarity, would say, “Here I am like Ben Azzai in the markets of Teverya.”

Two of his sayings stand in Pirkei Avot: run to a light mitzvah as to a weighty one and flee from aveirah, for mitzvah draws mitzvah and aveirah draws aveirah; and despise no man and dismiss no thing, for there is no man without his hour and no thing without its place. He also taught that “this is the sefer of the toldot of man” — that man is made in the likeness of Hashem — is a klal gadol in the Torah even beyond “love your neighbor as yourself.” A tradition places his kever in a cave in Tzfat, identified today with the cave known as Me’arat Shem v’Ever.