רב יוסף בר חייא

Rav Yosef bar Chiya, called simply Rav Yosef, was an amora of the third generation in Bavel — talmid of Rav Yehudah bar Yechezkel, rebbe of Abaye and Rava, and bar plugata of Rabbah bar Nachmani. For his bekiut he was called “Sinai”: though blind, he was a master of the Torah shebichtav who could count pesukim by heart, and when targumim on the Tanach — among them the targum on Iyov — were forgotten, he restored them from memory. At one point an illness caused him to forget his learning, and his talmid muvhak, Abaye, helped him build it back.

When Rav Yehudah was niftar, Rav Yosef was the first candidate to head the yeshiva of Pumbedita, for his knowledge of the shemuot stood against Rabbah’s sharpness in pilpul; he refused the crown, and Rabbah took it at eighteen and led the yeshiva until his petirah at forty. Only then did Rav Yosef agree to serve as rosh yeshiva, and he held the position for two years, until his own petirah. He would say the derashah on Shabbat before tefillat Mussaf. The awe his talmidim held him in is told in the Gemara: Rava, taking leave of him, would walk backwards without turning until his feet were bruised and bleeding, and of Abaye it was said that when he saw the ear of Rav Yosef’s donkey approaching, he would rise.

Of his humility the Gemara itself speaks: when a tanna taught, “Since Rebbi died, humility and fear of sin have ceased,” Rav Yosef told him, “Do not teach humility — for there is I.” At sixty he made a seudah of thanks for having passed the age of karet. He gathered tzedakah for the poor all his days and served as gabbai tzedakah in Pumbedita. He fasted forty fasts, and forty more, and yet forty more, until he was assured in the words of the navi that Torah would not depart from his mouth, from his children, or from his children’s children; his sons were Rav Nechemiah and Rav Nachman bar Yosef, and his grandson was the amora Rav Dimi bar Nachman.