Rabbi Eleazar Ben Shimon's Body Gave Rulings From the Hidden Loft

The Man Too Strong for His Own Good

Eleazar ben Shimon, son of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai, inherited two things from his father: the secrets of Torah and a body of extraordinary strength. The Talmud describes his belly as large enough for an ox to pass under it without touching either side. He used to earn coins carrying travelers across rivers on his back. When donkey-drivers mocked him during a meal, he stood up, walked to their animals, and lifted each donkey one by one into a loft above their heads. He was not a small man living inside a large tradition. He was a large man whose physical presence matched the scale of what he studied.

He had also, for a period, collaborated with Rome. He worked as an official investigator authorized to catch thieves, and he was very good at it. He would sit at drinking booths and watch who came in. A man who appeared tired at midday had either been studying all night or stealing all night; since Torah scholars did not generally loiter in taverns, the tired ones were the criminals. He caught them reliably. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Korcha rebuked him with contempt: "Vinegar, son of wine. Why do you hand over your own people?"

Elijah's Disguise and the Collar That Would Not Fit

His strength became a liability when the prophet Elijah arrived disguised as an old man asking for a beast of burden. Elazar told the old man he could carry him to the ends of the world and swung the old man onto his shoulders. They set off together. As they walked, the old man grew heavier. Not naturally heavier, but impossibly so. His weight doubled and redoubled. By the time Elazar reached the destination, he could barely move. His coat would not fit over his enlarged collar afterward. Elijah had used the walk to drain him of the strength he had accumulated over years of overconfident physicality.

The rabbis debated whether this was punishment or correction. It was probably both. Eleazar had used his strength for legitimate purposes and for purposes the tradition found troubling. Elijah's correction left him diminished but not destroyed. He continued to study and judge.

The Body That Would Not Corrupt

When Eleazar ben Shimon died, his wife faced a practical problem that became a theological one. She had been arguing with him about money, or about something else, depending on which version of the story a reader follows. She did not want to let him go. She took his body to the loft of their house and laid it there and told no one he had died.

Legal questions kept arriving at the household. She carried them upstairs. The answers came back down. For eighteen years, according to some versions of the story, Eleazar ben Shimon's body gave halakhic rulings from the loft. The body did not decay. Worms did not touch it. The Talmud explains this as the reward for a life of suffering accepted willingly: Eleazar had, at some point, invited the afflictions that came to him, believing that suffering accepted in this life cleared a debt that would otherwise be paid in the next. His body's incorruption was the physical expression of what that accounting had produced.

The Worm That Finally Came

One day, neighbors heard screaming from the loft. They ran upstairs and found Eleazar's body had been bitten by a single worm, and the rabbi in the body was screaming that this pain, this one bite from this one worm, was harder to bear than all his previous suffering combined. The appearance of the worm marked the end of what the body could bear. His wife finally allowed him to be buried. The eighteen years of rulings from the loft were over.