הרב שמואל

Shmuel (c. 165–c. 257 CE), Shmuel bar Abba of Nehardea, was among the greatest amoraim of the first generation in Bavel, a kohen and a leader of the community, and the counterpart of Rav with whom he shaped the learning of Bavel. His father, known as Avuha di-Shmuel, was himself a great teacher of Torah, and Shmuel showed rare ability from his youth. Beside his Torah he was a physician — he tended to Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi — and a master of the courses of the heavens, for which he was called Shmuel Yarchinaah; he said of himself that the pathways of the sky were as clear to him as the streets of Nehardea.

He headed the yeshiva of Nehardea, and together with Rav in Sura the two academies carried the Torah of Bavel; the give-and-take between Rav and Shmuel fills the Gemara. Though a chacham of the first rank, he never received semichah and the title Rabbi — the sources give various reasons — and so he is called simply Shmuel, or Mar Shmuel by the chachamim of the following generation, who out of his greatness also called him Aryoch.

In matters of halachah the rule was fixed for the generations that the halachah follows Shmuel in dinei mamonot, in the laws between man and his fellow; and it was Shmuel who taught the great principle dina d’malchuta dina — that the law of the kingdom is binding law — which governs the dealings of Jews with the wider world to this day. He was niftar in Nehardea, where he had served all his life, and his teachings are learned in every yeshiva wherever the Gemara is opened.