Biography
Rabbi Yochanan bar Nappacha (c. 3940/180 – c. 4039/279), known in English sources as Johanan bar Nappaha, was the foremost amora of Eretz Yisrael and rosh yeshivah in Teveria for some sixty years. His rulings and aggadic teachings fill both Talmudim and the Midrashim, and the compilation of the Talmud Yerushalmi is ascribed to him. He was born in Tzippori and orphaned before he could know his parents: his father was niftar while his mother was carrying him, and she was niftar as he was born. A grandfather raised him. Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, who drew orphans into his yeshivah, brought the boy in, noticed how carefully he chose his words, and said that this one would rule in halachah for Israel.
He was only fifteen when Rebbi was niftar, so his Torah came mainly from Rebbi’s talmidim. He sat in the seventeenth row, far behind Rav, and could not follow the give and take; of that period he said that he merited Torah only because he glimpsed Rebbi’s fingers from the edge of his sleeves. His principal rebbeim were Rabbi Oshaya, whom he served thirteen years, Rabbi Yannai, and Rabbi Chanina bar Chama, who taught him the aggadic reading of Tanach — excepting Mishlei and Kohelet — and, it appears, medicine, in which he became skilled. His parents had left him fields between Teveria and Tzippori, and he sold them all to buy time for learning; passing one of them with Rabbi Chiyya bar Abba, who wept at the sight, he said he had traded what Hashem created in six days for what was given in forty.
A dispute in halachah with Rabbi Chanina moved him from Tzippori to Teveria, where he opened a yeshivah and admitted anyone who wished to learn — a step not everyone approved of. Among his talmidim were Rabbi Abbahu, Rabbi Ami, Rabbi Asi, Rabbi Elazar ben Pedat, Rabbi Chiyya bar Abba, Rabbi Yose bar Chanina and Rabbi Yitzchak Nappacha. He corresponded with Bavel, addressing Rav as “our master in Bavel” and Shmuel as “our colleague”; when Shmuel sent him rulings on the dietary laws he said he still had a master in Bavel after all. Because the halachah follows him in his many disputes, his name in a sugya tends to settle it.
He analyzed the Mishnah closely and worked to reconcile its contradictions, preferring where he could not the baraitot of Rabbi Chiyya and Rabbi Oshaya; the rule that the halachah follows an unattributed mishnah is his. Ten of his sons were niftar in his lifetime, and he would console other mourners with a bone of the tenth. His chavruta was Reish Lakish, his brother-in-law, whom he called his counterpart and whose loss left him unable to enter the yeshivah for three and a half years. He never once left Eretz Yisrael, whose settlement he held to be a mitzvah of the first order. Rabbi Elazar ben Pedat succeeded him at the head of the yeshivah in Teveria.
Where traditions differ. The sources differ on whether he belongs to the first or the second generation of the amoraim of Eretz Yisrael. ; His birth and passing are given as approximations; the Raavad in Sefer HaKabbalah places his birth about 180 and his passing about a century later. ; Opinions differ on the meaning of the name bar Nappacha — his father's trade as a blacksmith, the place his family came from, or a quality of his own. ; His role in the compilation of the Talmud Yerushalmi is a long-standing tradition rather than a documented fact. ; Much of what is told of him — his beauty, his strength, the account of Reish Lakish — is aggadic in character.
רבי יוחנן היה מגדולי האמוראים, בכיר אמוראי ארץ ישראל בדור ראשון, וראש ישיבת טבריה במשך עשרות שנים.
Johanan bar Nappaha, also known as Rabbi Yochanan or Johanan bar Nafcha, was a leading rabbi and second-generation Amora during the Talmudic era.
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