הרב יהודה בריה דרבי חייא

Rav Yehudah brei d’Rabbi Chiyya lived in the generation that bridged the tannaim and the amoraim. He was a son of Rav Chiyya and his wife Yehudit, and the twin brother of Chizkiyah, and his teachings appear many times in the Gemara, above all in Seder Kodashim.

When he came of age he married the daughter of Rabbi Yannai. After the marriage he would sit in the beit midrash the whole week and return home for Shabbat, with a pillar of fire going before him. Once he was so deep in a sugya that he did not notice that the hour had come at which he was accustomed to come home — the time set for talmidei chachamim to fulfill the mitzvah of onah, once a week. When his father-in-law Rabbi Yannai heard of it, he said that Yehudah must have been niftar, for had he been alive he would surely not have let that mitzvah pass. The chachamim of the Gemara explain that his words were like an error that goes out from before the ruler: the word of a tzaddik must come true even where he did not intend it, and his son-in-law was niftar.