הרב נחום המדי

Nachum HaMadi was a tanna whose rulings appear across several tractates of the Mishnah and Gemara. His name (“HaMadi,” the Median) attaches to a set of distinctive opinions, many of which the other Sages did not accept. In Shabbat he holds that one may kindle the Sabbath light with boiled fat, against the view of the Sages. In Bava Batra he teaches that one who sells a donkey has also sold its equipment, a position debated by the Sages and refined by Rabbi Yehudah; the Gemara analyzes precisely when his view applies. In Avodah Zarah he limits the prohibition to a single day before the festivals of the nations and permits selling them a male or aged horse for war — rulings to which the Sages responded that “the matter is forgotten and was not said,” though the Gemara notes that a later generation of Sages aligned with him.

In Nazir, Nachum HaMadi is recorded as having erred: when nezirim came up from the exile and found the Temple destroyed, he asked whether they would have taken their vow had they known, and on their answer released them — a ruling the Mishnah marks as a mistake. In Ketubot he is identified, according to Rabbi Natan, as one of the judges of decrees in Jerusalem, alongside Admon and Chanan, though the Sages did not concur with that view.