Avot082

1:
The first mishnah of Chapter Two is attributed to "Rabbi". Truly, we should approach this personality with reverence for "the place upon which you stand is holy ground" [Exodus 3:5]. The very fact that the author of our mishnah is just given a title and himself remains unnamed, as it were, should warn us that there is here an extraordinary personality. If I were to go through the list of all the sages who have been mentioned so far in this tractate and to choose those whose contribution to the development of Judaism was crucial I would name three. I mean that the three sages whom I would put within this category made such an impact on the development of the Jewish religion that it was not the same after their contribution as it was before. My three choices are Simon the Righteous, Rabbi Akiva and "Rabbi". (There is a fourth such personality in the period which is the object of our present study but he has not yet been mentioned.) Concerning the contribution of Simon the Righteous see Avot 008 and the subsequent shiurim. Concerning Rabbi Akiva see Avot 078 and the following shiur – though we have yet to speak of Rabbi Akiva's revolutionary contribution to the development of Judaism, having so far only given a part of his biography.

2:
"Rabbi" is known to us by several names. His formal name is Rabbi Yehudah ben-Shim'on, for he was the son of Rabban Shim'on ben-Gamli'el whom we discussed in the previous shiurim. He also bears the sobriquet Rabbenu ha-Kadosh, 'our sainted rabbi'. But he is probably best known by his title Rabbi Yehudah ha-Nasi, Rabbi Yehudah the President [of the Sanhedrin]. It is a mark of his singular greatness that he is affectionately known to rabbinical scholars throughout the ages simply as "Rabbi" – 'the one and only' as it were. Another indication of the enormous respect in which he was held may be seen in the fact that unlike his predecessors from the House of Hillel he was not accorded the honorary title of Rabban, which means 'our rabbi'. He did not need it; nor did he need a name: he was quite simply "Rabbi". Basing himself on the Tosefta [Eduyot 3:4], in his famous work Shné Luĥot ha-Brit Rabbi Isaiah Horowitz (1570-1626) coined an oft-quoted tag concerning the relative status of rabbinical appellations:

Thus 'Hillel' is greater even than those of his descendents who bore the title Rabban because he is so great that he needs no title, as it were. It is a measure of the greatness of "Rabbi" that he need not even be named!

3:
The Gemara [Kiddushin 72b] says that Rabbi was born on the day that Rabbi Akiva died at the hands of the Roman executioner. Whether is is accurate or not is immaterial, since he clearly must have been born around that time. So let us accept the witness of the Gemara and set the year of his birth as 136 CE. Since we know he died in the year 217 CE this would mean that he was 81 years old when he died.

To be continued.

In Avot 077 I wrote: The Jews rebelled against the Romans in Egypt, Cyrenaica and Cyprus… Trajan, the Roman emperor, ordered the commander of his Mauritanian auxiliaries, Lusius Quietus, to clean the suspects out of these regions. Quietus organized a force and killed many Cypriot, Mesopotamian and Syrian Jews – in effect wiping them out…

Barak Rosenshine writes:

I've always been surprised that these revolts occurred. I've never understood what they expected to gain, or whether conditions were so bad that a revolt was the only choice.

I respond:

The only logical explanation is that there was a kind of delayed reaction to what had happened in Eretz-Israel a few decades previously. It seems that the Jews of the Diaspora were originally too stunned to react at all when the Jews lost the war against the Romans and the Bet Mikdash was destroyed. But, when the opportunity presented itself, they wished to cause trouble for the Romans as a kind of delayed retaliation. I cannot think of any other logical explanation for this revolt at the beginning of the 2nd century CE.

Chapter 9 has been added to the Sanhedrin Archive