רב קרנא

Rav Karna was among the first Amoraim of Bavel, in the generation after the sealing of the Mishnah, a colleague of Rav and of Shmuel. In the Talmud Bavli he appears simply as “Karna”; in the Yerushalmi he is called Rav Karna. He served as a dayan, and the title “Dayanei Golah” — the judges of the exile — in the Bavli refers to him; the Rishonim write that it means Shmuel and Karna together. He gathered a collection of baraitot on Seder Nezikin, known as “Nezikin deVei Karna,” and indeed most mentions of him in the Talmud concern dinei nezikin. His parnasah was from testing wines: he was the expert on whose word the wine merchants decided which barrels would keep and which must be sold at once.

The Gemara tells of Rav’s arrival in Bavel: Shmuel and Karna were sitting on the bank of the Nehar Malka when they saw the waters rising dark and swollen. Said Shmuel: a great man is coming from Eretz Yisrael, and he is ill in his intestines, and the waters rise in his honor — go and take his measure. It was Rav. Karna stood and questioned him, and Rav answered everything he asked; but the delay pained Rav in his illness, and he said, “What is your name?” “Karna.” “May it be His will that a keren come out in his eye.”

The Gemara teaches that beit din appoints inspectors over weights and measures but not over prices. When the household of the Reish Galuta appointed inspectors over both, Shmuel told Karna: go out and teach them — inspectors for measures, not for prices. Karna went out and expounded the opposite: inspectors for measures and for prices alike — holding like the view brought by Rami bar Chama in the name of Rabbi Yitzchak, “because of the cheats.” In his beit din each of the two litigants would pay a sela — not as a fee for judging, which is forbidden, but for his loss from the wine-testing he set aside while he sat in din.

A single statement of aggadah stands in his name in the Bavli, on Yaakov Avinu’s charge “carry me out of Mitzrayim and bury me in their burial place”: devarim bago — there is hidden matter here. Yaakov knew of himself that he was a complete tzaddik, and if the dead of chutz la’aretz will live, why did he trouble his sons to carry him? Because he did not accept upon himself the tza’ar of the mechilot — the rolling of the dead through underground passages to rise in Eretz Yisrael.