הרב עולא

Ulla (in the Yerushalmi called Ulla ben Yishmael) was an amora of Eretz Yisrael in the second and third generations, a talmid of Rabbi Elazar and Rabbi Yochanan. He would travel down often to Bavel and back, carrying halachot and minhagim from the sages of Eretz Yisrael to those of Bavel — one of the nechutei, the amoraim who went down and up between the two centers of Torah. In Bavel he would at times lodge with Rav Nachman, rosh yeshiva and son-in-law of the Reish Galuta.

The Gemara in Berachot brings a well-known episode from one such visit: the amora would not let Yalta, Rav Nachman’s wife, drink from the cup over which he had bentched, on the strength of Rabbi Yochanan’s teaching about the blessing of a woman’s fruit. Yalta, angered, went down to the wine cellar and broke four hundred jars of wine. Among his words of aggadah: that one who benefits from his own labor is greater than one who fears Heaven; that Yerushalayim was destroyed only because its people had no shame before one another; and that since the Beit HaMikdash was destroyed, Hashem has in His world only the four amot of halacha.

The amora was niftar in Bavel, and felt bitter sorrow that he had not merited to die in Eretz Yisrael. Those around him promised to bring his bones up to the Land, but he took no comfort in it, saying that it was no gain to lose his pearl — his soul — on impure soil. His teacher Rabbi Elazar eulogized him with the cry, “You, Ulla — on impure earth shall you die?”