הרב חנינא בר פפא

Rabbi Chanina bar Pappa was an amora of Eretz Yisrael of the third generation, brought also as Chananyah and, in the Talmud Yerushalmi, as Rabbi Chinena bar Pappa. He was a younger contemporary of Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachman. The frequency with which the Bavli, the Yerushalmi and the Midrashim bring him shows the breadth of his learning, and he kept company with the leading chachamim of his generation: he discussed the reading of pesukim with Rabbi Shimon ben Pazi, and sat in judgment together with Rabbi Abbahu and Rabbi Yitzchak Nappacha. He was expert above all in aggadah, and he is brought throughout the aggadic portions of Shas.

He gave tzedakah generously and distributed it at night, so as not to shame those who received it. The Gemara tells that the chief of the harmful spirits met him and objected that he was encroaching on his domain, quoting the prohibition against moving a neighbor’s boundary; Rabbi Chanina answered with the pasuk that a gift in secret subdues anger, and the spirit withdrew. He was also guarded from error in ruling: having once erred in a matter of mourning, he was corrected that night in a dream.

The Gemara relates that he was close with the malach hamavet. When his time came he asked for thirty days to review his learning, on the strength of the saying that fortunate is one who arrives there with his learning in hand. At the end of the thirty days he asked to be shown his place in the World to Come, and then asked for the angel’s knife, so as not to be frightened on the way — the angel, remembering that Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi had once asked the same and kept it, put him off by asking whether he stood on Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi’s level, and Rabbi Chanina had no answer. Even so, when he was niftar a pillar of fire divided his bier from the people, which the chachamim held is done for only one or two in a generation. Those who came to attend to his burial could not approach, until Rabbi Alexandri stood before the bier and asked him to remove it for the honor of his Torah, and it withdrew.

Among his teachings: expounding the pasuk that the glory of Hashem shall endure forever, he brought that when the Holy One said of the trees that they be brought forth each after its kind, the grasses reasoned from them and each came forth after its own kind, at which the prince of the world opened and said that verse. He also set two pesukim against one another — that water is brought out to meet the thirsty, and that whoever is thirsty should go to the water — and answered that for a fitting talmid one brings the water to him, and if not, let him come to the water himself.