רבי מאיר

Rabbi Meir was among the greatest Tannaim of the fourth generation, one of the five great talmidim Rabbi Akiva raised up after the passing of his twenty-four thousand, and the sage whose learning underlies the Mishnah itself: an unattributed mishnah, the Gemara teaches, is Rabbi Meir according to Rabbi Akiva. He is the second most cited sage in the Mishnah and appears thousands of times in the Bavli. The Gemara relates that his family descended from the emperor Nero, who became a ger; his given name was Meisha (in the printed texts, Nehorai), and he was called Meir because he lit up the eyes of the chachamim in halacha.

He began under Rabbi Akiva, went to Rabbi Yishmael to acquire the breadth of gemara, and returned to Rabbi Akiva for depth of sevara. Rabbi Akiva gave him semicha, but it was not accepted because of his youth, and Rabbi Yehuda ben Bava later ordained him at mesirut nefesh in the years of shmad. He also learned under Elisha ben Abuya, Acher, the teacher who left the path; Rabbi Meir did not cast off what he had received from him, and the Gemara says of him: he found a pomegranate — he ate the fruit and discarded the peel. His wife Beruriah, daughter of Rabbi Chanina ben Teradyon who was killed in the persecutions of Hadrian, was herself learned in Torah, among the few women whose words the Gemara brings; their two sons were niftar young.

By trade he was a sofer, writing sifrei Torah and megillot; once, in a place with no sefer, he wrote out all of Megillat Esther from memory. Of the three sela’im he earned each week, one went to poor talmidei chachamim. After the gezeirot were lifted he helped re-establish the Sanhedrin at Usha, where he served as the chacham. Every leil Shabbat he taught in Chamat — a third halacha, a third aggadah, a third meshalim; he knew three hundred fox-parables, and with his passing, said Chazal, the makers of parables ceased. He could give forty-eight reasons to declare a thing tahor and forty-eight to declare it tamei; his chaverim could not reach the end of his thought, so halacha was not fixed like him — save in his decrees, where halacha follows Rabbi Meir. He was a rodef shalom who let his own honor be set aside to make peace between a husband and wife.

At the end of his life he left Eretz Yisrael and was niftar in Asya, asking that his aron be placed at the edge of the sea, so that the waters that touch Eretz Yisrael would reach it. Since the days of the rishonim a kever beside the Kinneret near Teverya has been visited as his; the site, known as Rabbi Meir Baal HaNes, holds a great shul and beit midrash to this day. The sixth perek of Pirkei Avot is founded on his teachings; among his talmidim were Sumchus, Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar, and Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi.