הרב רמי בר חמא

Rami bar Chama was a Babylonian amora of the fourth generation, a talmid of Rav Chisda and a study-companion of Rava, who was somewhat younger than he. He married a daughter of Rav Chisda, his rebbe, who esteemed his sons-in-law so highly that he said he would rather have daughters than sons. The Gemara tells that Rav Chisda once held his young daughter on his lap and asked which of the two she wished to marry; she answered, “both of them,” and Rava said, “and I last” — for in time she married Rami bar Chama, and after his death she married Rava.

He was a chacham of rare sharpness, who would answer whatever he was asked from his own reasoning rather than lean on an earlier mishnah or baraita — unlike Rav Sheshet, who always grounded his answers in the sources before him. It was for this that his talmid Rav Yitzchak the son of Rav Yehuda left him to learn under Rav Sheshet. Rava, for his part, held that this same quickness led Rami to his conclusions too hastily.

Rami bar Chama was niftar young — by some accounts at twenty-seven — and because of his youth he never formally received the title Rav. Rava, who then married his widow, said that his early passing was a punishment for having slighted Manasseh bar Tachlifa, a talmid chacham, by regarding him as an unlearned man. His grandson, the son of his daughter, was the amora Amemar.