הרב נחום איש גמזו

Nachum Ish Gamzu (Hebrew נחום איש גמזו) was a tanna of the second generation, in the first century, and one of the rebbeim of Rabbi Akiva. He is best remembered for the phrase he would say over whatever befell him — gam zu letovah, “this too is for the good” — from which, the Talmud explains, his very name was drawn. Others, among them Rabbeinu Chananel and Rabbi Natan of Rome in his Arukh, hold that he was called after his town, Gimzo, a place named already in Divrei HaYamim.

Nachum taught Rabbi Akiva the method of ribbui u’mi’ut — inclusion and exclusion — and expounded the whole Torah by it, reading the word et as coming to include something beyond what is stated outright; only before the words “you shall fear Hashem” did he refrain, unwilling to draw anything else into that reverence. In his later years his limbs were stricken and his body afflicted with grievous ailments, which he bore not only with patience but with joy. Asked by his talmidim how so wholly righteous a man came to such suffering, he answered that he had once brought it upon himself, when a poor man who begged him for food died before he could open his bundle to feed him.

The Talmud derives his name from his saying gam zu letovah, while Rabbeinu Chananel and the Arukh hold it comes from his town of Gimzo. One tradition places his kever in Tzefat, in a street that bears his name; another sets it on the road approaching Parod. Some identify him with the Nechemiah ha’Imsoni named elsewhere in the words of the Tannaim.