רב חגא

Rav Chaga was an amora active in both Babylon and the Land of Israel. He appears in the Gemara raising challenges and engaging in give-and-take in matters of halachah. In Avodah Zarah he presses Ulla with an objection concerning wine that fell into lentils and vinegar that fell into split beans, drawing on the dispute over whether something spoiled from the outset is permitted. In Bava Metzia he raises a difficulty in a monetary case, with Abaye responding to his point.

A striking account in Moed Katan portrays Rav Chaga’s devotion and care: he tells how, when he had served as attendant before a sage from the age of eighteen, he did not so much as see a seminal emission, and how he once fasted forty days when a strap of his tefillin turned over. The same passage relates that when a pillar of fire appeared, Rav Chaga, frightened, set upright the bier of Rav Huna and departed, and that he was spared punishment because he had set the bier upright. In Shabbat a teaching is brought — attributed to Rav Huna, and by some to Rav Chaga — expounding the verse in Malachi about “the dung of your festivals,” applied to those who set aside words of Torah and spend all their days as festivals.