רבי חייא

Rabbi Chiyya (Hebrew חייא), called Chiyya the Great, lived in the generation of transition between the Tannaim and the Amoraim, at the close of the second century. He was the son of Abba Karsala of Kafri in Bavel, where he spent the earlier part of his life before going up to Eretz Yisrael to learn from Rabbi Yehuda haNasi. He settled in Tiberias and traded in silk, which he sent to Tzur, and he was received by Rebbi more as a colleague than a talmid; so high was Rebbi’s regard that he said Chiyya and his sons were as worthy as the Avot.

Chiyya’s great work was in gathering the baraitot — the mishnayot that Rebbi had not brought into the Mishnah. Together with his talmid Rabbi Oshaya he collected and arranged them, and it was said that any baraita not learned in the beit midrash of Rabbi Chiyya and Rabbi Oshaya is unreliable, and no proof may be drawn from it. His care was above all that Torah not be forgotten from Yisrael: he founded schools for young children, and described how he would sow flax, weave nets to trap deer, feed their meat to orphans and write the Torah upon their hides, then go and teach children in places that had no teacher.

His wife was Yehudit, and his twin sons Yehuda and Chizkiyah were themselves counted among the chachamim. His nephew and talmid was Rav — Abba Arikha — whom he brought before Rebbi for semichah, and who went on to found the great yeshiva of Sura in Bavel.