Just as people sometimes need permits to sell goods today, in the ancient world a traveler could be required to obtain permission before selling their wares in a foreign market. The Talmud describes several situations in which traveling Torah scholars received special market privileges in order to facilitate their Torah study and teaching.
Today, the Talmud tells us a story about Rav Dimi, a rabbi who famously traveled back and forth between the land of Israel and Babylonia, exchanging traditions between the two great rabbinic centers. Once, when he arrived in Babylonia with a shipload of figs for sale (perhaps that is how he funded his travel?), the exilarch (the political head of the Babylonian Jewish community) tasked Rava with determining if Rav Dimi was in fact worthy of permission to sell them. Rava, in turn, employed his own student Rav Adda bar Abba to “Go smell his jar” — that is, to test Rav Dimi and see if he was in fact a Torah scholar.
How do you test someone’s rabbinic prowess? Rav Adda bar Abba asked Rav Dimi the following esoteric question:
An elephant that swallowed a wicker basket and excreted it intact along with its waste, what is it?
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Rashi explains that the question is whether, having passed through an elephant, the basket is still considered a basket — which means it could become impure (for example by having a sheretz, and unkosher animal, crawl inside it) — or is now simply excrement and no longer subject to impurity. Rav Dimi doesn’t know the answer to this difficult question but is impressed with its obscurity and asks if his questioner, whom he apparently does not know personally, is the great sage Rava. One might suppose that a student would be flattered when mistaken for their teacher, but Rav Adda bar Abba responds angrily:
He struck him on his shoe and said to him: “There is a great difference between me and Rava; but I am perforce your teacher, and Rava is your teacher’s teacher.” He did not reserve the market for him, and Rav Dimi lost his dried figs.
Gestures involving shoes were considered particularly offensive in Sasanian Babylonia at this time, though one doesn’t need to know that to understand the ferocity of Rav Adda bar Abba’s response to being mistaken for his own teacher. Perhaps Rav Adda bar Abba thought he was preserving his teacher’s dignity, but he humiliated and financially damaged Rav Dimi, who complained to another sage:
Rav Dimi came before Rav Yosef, and said to him: “Master, see what they did to me!” Rav Yosef said to him: “He who did not delay retribution for the humiliation of the King of Edom should not delay his response to your humiliation, as it is written: So says the Lord: For three transgressions of Moab, indeed for four I will not reverse for him, because he burned the bones of the King of Edom into lime. (Amos 2:1)” Rav Adda bar Abba died.
After Rav Adda bar Abba, who so energetically defended the honor of his master, died, the rabbis tried to determine who was directly responsible for his demise.
Rav Yosef said: “I punished him as I cursed him.”
Rav Dimi from Nehardea said: “I punished him, as he caused my loss of dried figs.”
Abaye said: “I punished him as he said to the sages: ‘Instead of gnawing the bones in the school of Abaye, you would do better to eat fatty meat in the school of Rava.’”
Rav Dimi thinks that his own grudge may have been the reason for Rav Adda bar Abba’s death, while Rav Yosef thinks his curse may have caused it. But it seems Rav Adda had also been badmouthing Abaye, his teacher Rava’s rival. And, as we continue down the daf, we learn that his insults didn’t stop there. Apparently, he also insulted members of Rava’s own household, which leads the great sage Rava to take responsibility as well:
Rava said: I punished him, as when he would go to the butcher to buy a piece of meat, he would say to the butchers: “I will take meat before Rava’s servant, as I am greater than he is.”
This is not the end of the matter. Next, Rav Nahman bar Yitzhak, who has not yet appeared in this story, suggests that he is responsible for Rav Adda bar Abba’s death because one time Rav Adda bar Abba did not show up to help him prepare lecture notes.
It’s hard to know how to read this litany of confessions from various scholars, all of whom claim responsibility for Rav Adda bar Abba’s untimely death. Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, in his interpretation, describes the rabbis feeling terrible about Rav Adda bar Abba’s death, and trying to determine who was to blame. After all, determining guilt helps us know who should repent and make amends for the unnecessary death. But, frankly, the discussion here also reads a little … braggy. Are the rabbis sorry that Rav Adda bar Abba died? Undoubtedly. But they also seem to be jockeying for the status of being the sage whose victimization, however minor, triggered the ultimate punishment at the hands of God.
Perhaps to put an end to this strange contest, the Talmud concludes that ultimately Rav Adda bar Abba’s untimely death came not because he insulted someone, but because he once kept Rav Nahman bar Yitzhak, head of the kallah (the rabbinic seminar), waiting, and by extension delaying the learning of many students. In this case, no sage, perhaps, is so great that a slight against them can cause the death of a colleague, but keeping Torah from an entire academy is unforgivable.
Read all of Bava Batra 22 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on July 17, 2024. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
