הרב פלימו

Pelimo was a tanna of the fifth generation who appears a number of times in the beraitot of the Bavli, and a talmid of Rebbi, Rav Yehuda HaNasi. He argued halacha with Rav Elazar b’Rav Shimon, a chaver of Rebbi. Once he asked Rebbi where a man with two heads places the tefillin of the head; Rebbi took the question as provocation and gave him the choice of going into exile or accepting a nidui — and in the meanwhile a man came into the beit midrash whose child had been born with two heads.

He stood out in his chassidut, and he made a practice of provoking the Satan (devil), saying to him every day gira b’einecha, an arrow in your eyes. The aggadah of the Talmud tells that one erev Yom Kippur the Satan came to his door in the guise of a poor man asking for food. The guest behaved so strangely and so repulsively that the household scolded him, and by that he appeared to die, whereupon a bat kol called out that Pelimo had killed a soul. Pelimo fled in fear into the privy, and there the Satan showed himself to him and taught him that he should say instead the words of Zecharia HaNavi — may Hashem rebuke you, Satan — and not gira b’einecha.

Among the halachot brought in his name: in the second bracha of birkat hamazon the mention of the brit comes before the mention of Torah; there is no need to search for chametz in a hole in the wall dividing a Jew’s house from a gentile’s, because of the danger, which the gemara explains as the neighbor suspecting that the Jew is working kishuf against him and doing him harm; when the molad has not been seen at its time the month must still be sanctified actively, against Rav Elazar b’Rav Shimon, who held that no active sanctification is needed at all; and the shortest seclusion that counts as the kinuy which can bring a woman to the law of sotah is the time it takes her to reach her hand to a basket and take a loaf of bread.