רבי שמעון חסידא

Rabbi Shimon Chasida was an amora whose teachings are preserved in the Babylonian Talmud, most often brought in the name of Rav Chana bar Bizna (and in related passages Rav Acha bar Bizna). His statements range across aggadah and halachah and appear in several tractates, including Berachot, Sanhedrin, Sotah, Sukkah, and Rosh Hashanah.

Among his best-known teachings is the account of King David: a harp hung above his bed, and when midnight arrived the north wind would blow upon it so that it played by itself, whereupon David would rise and occupy himself with Torah until dawn (Berachot 3b; Sanhedrin 16a). He also teaches the principle that it is better for a person to cast himself into a fiery furnace than to shame his fellow in public, learned from Tamar (Berachot 43b; Sotah 10b), and the severe warning against one who withholds a teaching from a student, comparing it to robbing him of his ancestral inheritance (Sanhedrin 91b).

His words also touch on the redemption to come: on the verse in Zechariah describing the four craftsmen, he identifies them as Mashiach ben David, Mashiach ben Yosef, Eliyahu, and the righteous priest (Sukkah 52b). In matters of halachah he is cited regarding Rabban Gamliel’s ruling about who is exempted from prayer, where two versions of his statement are recorded — whether the exemption extended even to those in the fields or was limited to them because of their labor (Rosh Hashanah 35a).