רבי יצחק נפחא

Rabbi Yitzchak Nappacha was an amora of Eretz Yisrael in the second and third generations. His byname Nappacha — the smith, after his trade — appears often in the Bavli but never in the Yerushalmi. He sat in the beit midrash of Rabbi Yochanan and brought many teachings in his name, and Rabbi Yochanan’s leading talmidim, Rav Ami and Rav Asi, would sit before him. Already in Rabbi Yochanan’s lifetime he had reached a high rung: when he once differed with him in aggadah, Reish Lakish said that the words of Nappacha are better than the words of bar Nappacha — Rabbi Yochanan himself being called bar Nappacha.

He was among the most fruitful masters of aggadah of his day, and prized it as strength for a people worn down by the poverty and suffering of the age. When two talmidim once sat before him — one asking for halacha, the other for aggadah — and neither would let him begin the other’s subject, he answered with a parable of a man between a young wife and an old one, each plucking the hairs that did not suit her until he was left bald on both sides. In halacha his name is tied to the principle that a person feels for his wallet at every moment, from which follows that one who finds money in a public place may assume the owner has already noticed its loss and despaired of it.

He went down from Eretz Yisrael to Bavel and joined its leading chachamim, among them Rav Nachman. His blessing to Rav Nachman is well known: as a weary traveler in the desert can wish a fruitful, shady tree beside a stream only that its saplings be like it, so he blessed Rav Nachman — who had Torah, wealth, and children — that his offspring be like him. His son was Rabbi Yochanan ben Rabbi Yitzchak Nappacha.