Mishnaic Sages

A series of lectures outlining biographical sketches and anecdotes of the lives and teachings of the Sages of the Talmud (the Mishnaic era).

How and why the Oral Torah came to be put in writing for the first time.

May 10, 2012

It is not very often that we find the name of a woman mentioned in the Talmud. It is the names of our great Tannaim and Amoraim, the teachers of our people, that we usually find in the Talmud. Now and again, however, we come across a great Jewish woman ...

The name of the great Sage Rabbi Elazar, the son of Azariah, is familiar to Jewish boys long before they begin to study the Talmud. For this great Tanna (teacher of the Mishnah) is mentioned in the Haggadah, and he is known as "the young man who became ...

The great and famous sage Hillel had eighty most distinguished disciples; thirty of them were said to be worthy to enjoy the Divine Presence as Moses did; another thirty were said to be great enough to have stopped the sun in its path as Yehoshua did; ...

Rabbi Meir was a disciple of Rabbi Akiba. He was called Rabbi Meir because he enlightened the Sages with his great scholarship. (Meir comes from the word "Or" light). He belonged to the third generation of Tannaim after the destruction of the Beth ...

Last month we talked about life in Eretz Yisroel in the days of Rabbi Akiba. We described how eager the people were to learn the Torah despite the many hardships and sacrifices they made. We also mentioned, in passing, that the scholars of the Torah ...

Rabbi Shimon ben Chalafta was one of the last Tanaim. He was a friend of Rabbi Judah the Prince, the compiler of the Mishnah, who compiled and arranged the 6 volumes of the Mishnah about 1800 years ago, Rabbi Shimon ben Chalafta belonged to a family of ...