יהודה בן טבאי

Rabbi Yehuda ben Tabbai lived in the era of the Zugot, the pairs who led the Torah leadership in the generations of the Anshei Knesset HaGedolah and after. He appears together with Shimon ben Shatach as one of the pairs who received the Torah from those before them. The sources record a dispute over his exact office: according to one view he served as Av Beit Din while Shimon ben Shatach was Nasi, while another opinion among the pairs holds the first-named of each pair to have been the Nasi.

In Pirkei Avot his teaching warns a judge against acting as an advocate for the litigants, instructing that while the parties stand before him he should regard both as guilty, and once they accept the verdict and depart he should regard both as innocent. He also takes part in the recurring debate of the Zugot recorded in Chagigah over semichah — whether one may lean on a festival offering — where he holds the view “not to lean.”

A striking episode is brought in Makkot and Chagigah: in his zeal to refute the Tzedukim, who claimed that scheming witnesses (eidim zomemim) are not executed unless the accused has already been put to death, Yehuda ben Tabbai put to death a single scheming witness. He came to regret this — for the halachah requires a pair of scheming witnesses — and accepted upon himself never to render a ruling except in the presence of Shimon ben Shatach. The sources relate that for the rest of his life he would prostrate himself on the grave of that witness, and that the voice heard there, which people mistook for the executed man’s, was his own.