רבי יהושע בן לוי

Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi, known by his roshei teivot as Ribal, was an amora of Eretz Yisrael of the first generation, in the first half of the third century. He stood in the passage between the eras — some count him with the Tannaim — and his teaching seals the six sidrei Mishnah. He learned in Lod under Bar Kappara, Rabbi Elazar HaKappar, and above all Rabbi Yehudah ben Pedaya, and in his youth knew Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi. He headed the mesivta of Lod, and only at the end of his days sat in Teveria. A man of means, he labored for the tzibbur and stood before the authorities on his people’s behalf, in Caesarea and even in Rome. He was the first to give his own talmidim semichah, a power that until then had rested with the head of the Sanhedrin alone; and in his love of teaching Torah he learned even with sufferers of the illness ra’atan.

In halacha his rulings are generally upheld even against Rabbi Yochanan and Reish Lakish. He called the Mishnah an “iron pillar,” and for a halacha left wavering in the beit din he gave the rule: go out and see what the tzibbur does. He fixed practices for the weekday reading of the Torah that shuls keep to this day. Above all he was the baal aggadah of his generation: hundreds of statements stand in his name, and after his petirah a notebook of his aggadah was found. He taught that not even a wall of iron separates Yisrael from their Father in Heaven, and that the Torah bent its language by eight extra letters rather than write an unseemly word — a lesson in clean speech.

When the Roman authorities besieged Lod over the fugitive Ulla bar Koshev, Rabbi Yehoshua persuaded the man to give himself up and the city was spared; though the halacha stood with him, Eliyahu HaNavi ceased appearing to him for a time, and on his return asked, “Is this the mishnah of the chassidim?” The aggadah loves to walk him beside Eliyahu: at the gates of Rome he asked Mashiach, “When is the master coming?” and was answered, “Today — if you will listen to His voice.” And he is counted among the nine who entered Gan Eden alive: holding the knife of the Malach HaMaves, he asked to see his place in Gan Eden and leapt inside; having never broken an oath in his life, there he remained.

His son Rav Yosef, a chacham in his own right, married into the house of the Nasi; every erev Shabbat Rabbi Yehoshua heard the parashah from his grandson. The Mishnah closes with his words — that HaKadosh Baruch Hu will one day give every single tzaddik three hundred and ten worlds — and the sixth perek of Avot brings in his name the forty-eight qualities through which Torah is acquired, the last of them: saying a teaching in the name of the one who said it.