הרב איסי בן יהודה

Rav Issi ben Yehudah was a tanna of the fifth generation, at the close of the second century and the start of the third. He came up from Hutzal in Bavel to Eretz Yisrael, and so his name is followed in Shas by HaBavli or Ish Hutzal — the man of Hutzal. He learned under Rav Elazar ben Shamua. A baraita in Pesachim gathers the many names by which he appears: Yosef Ish Hutzal, Yosef HaBavli, Issi ben Gur Aryeh, Issi ben Yehuda, Issi ben Gamliel and Issi ben Mahalalel — and concludes that his true name was Issi ben Akavya. He is described as holding his colleagues in unusually high regard, speaking of the learning and ability of each in generous terms.

In halacha he is known for his reading of mipnei seivah takum: where the chachamim understood the obligation to rise before the aged as applying to a talmid chacham, he held it applies to any elderly person, even a zaken ashmai. He weighed the honor due a father so heavily that in his view a man must set aside a mitzvah which another can carry out in order to fulfill his father’s instruction. His opinions on culpability for Shabbat transgressions and on a person’s right to eat from another’s vineyard were preserved in the Megillat Setarim, and in both the chachamim did not rule with him. In aggadah he taught that there are five verses in the Torah in each of which a word cannot be settled with the words before it or the words after it — an observation later taken into the Masorah, which notes the five undecided words.