Avot239

1:
Rabbi Me'ir was different from most of his contemporaries (and from most of his predecessors) in that he was not born in Eretz-Israel but in Asia minor (modern Turkey). We know almost nothing about him before his arrival in Eretz-Israel, and we can completely discount a ridiculous statement in the Gemara [Gittin 56a] that the Roman Emperor Nero was not murdered (in 69 CE) by the praetorian guard, but converted to Judaism and a subsequent descendent was Rabbi Me'ir!

2:
The origins of Rabbi Me'ir are so shrouded in mystery that we cannot even be certain of his name. Was Me'ir his given name or was it an honorific? The Gemara [Eruvin 13b] gives so many possibilities that we cannot really know which – if any – is correct:

"Me'ir" is explained as an honorific because he enlightened [me'ir] the eyes of his contemporaries; Nehorai is just an Aramaic rendition of Me'ir. We are also told that his name may have been Me'asha. But he has certainly gone down to posterity as Rabbi Me'ir.

3:
Me'ir must have arrived in Eretz-Israel at a very young age – possibly brought as a child by his parents. His first attempt at higher Torah studies was with Rabbi Akiva; but he found the system of that sage unsuitable and transferred his allegiance to Rabbi Yishma'el from whom he gained a thorough training in Torah. Later on he rejoined the Bet Midrash of Rabbi Akiva. This time Akiva was so impressed with the acumen in Torah that Me'ir demonstrated that he ordained him despite the fact that he was still just a youngster. Apparently, this ordination was not recognized (because of the youth of the ordinand?) and, as we have seen [Avot 232], Me'ir was one of the young scholars who were clandestinely ordained by Rabbi Yehudah ben-Bava.

4:
It is well-known that Rabbi Akiva was very active in support of Shim'on bar-Kokhba and his insurgence against the Romans [Avot 078]. It seems that Me'ir did not support the revolt and did not take part in it; indeed, he so disapproved of the revolt that he went abroad until it was over. In the persecutions that followed the collapse of the revolt the father-in-law of Rabbi Me'ir was executed and his sister-in-law was taken as a slave to Rome where she was installed in a brothel! The Gemara [Avodah Zarah 18a] tells how Me'ir went to Rome to rescue her by paying the brothel-keeper a large bribe.

5:
When Rabban Shim'on ben-Gamli'el finally succeeded in re-establishing the Sanhedrin in Usha [Avot 076] Rabbi Me'ir returned to Eretz-Israel and took his rightful place in that body of sages. Indeed, some time later he was appointed Ĥakham, the President's deputy. The task of reconstruction which faced the Sanhedrin benefited enormously from the halakhic stance which Me'ir had learned from Rabbi Yishma'el: he maintained that every halakhah that was discussed in the Sanhedrin must be validated on rational grounds. But in the deduction of new halakhot Rabbi Me'ir used with great caution the hermeneutic rules established by his teacher Rabbi Yishma'el; but he also rejected Akiba's method of deducing a new halakah from a seemingly superfluous particle in the Scriptural text [Avot 087]. We have already noted [Avot 087] that the greatest merit of Rabbi Me'ir in the field of the development of Halakhah was that he continued the labors of Rabbi Akiba in arranging the rich material of the oral law according to subjects, thus paving the way for the compilation of the Mishnah by Rabbi Yehudah, the President of the Sanhedrin.

To be continued.

We have seen that several sages bore the name Yishma'el. The biblical origin of that name is, of course, the rejected elder son of Abraham and his concubine Hagar. The Rabbis saw the biblical Yishma'el as a rather unsavoury person. This prompts Jacob Chinitz to ask a very interesting question:

At what point did Jews stop naming their children Yishma'el? In this Mishnah we have Rabbi Yishma'el, and we have Yishma'el the High Priest. Esau was never used as a Jewish name. Was it when Islam came into the world that Yishma'el became identified with the Arabs, and the name Yishma'el was put in the same category as Esau? The historian Dinur in his little book on the Diaspora claims that the true Galut started with the Arab conquests associated with Islam in the seventh century. Before then Jews had a foothold in Eretz Yisrael.

I respond:

I must confess that I cannot substantiate Jacob's surmize, which seems to be quite convincing. Does anybody have any information on this subject?