Parshat Tazria6 min read

The Fugitive Rabbi Who Died With Clean on His Lips

Denounced for hiding twelve thousand students from the poll-tax, Rabbah ran through the marshes of Babylonia until heaven itself summoned him.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Word Reached Pumbeditha Before the Soldiers Did
  2. Two Cups Too Many at the Inn
  3. Under the Tree at Agma
  4. The Reed of Death and the Last Word

The villages were empty, and the king's men did not understand why. Twice a year, in the weeks before Passover and again before the Feast of Tabernacles, the tax collectors of the Persian crown walked into town after town to take the annual poll-tax, and found no one. Doors shut. Fields untended. Twelve thousand men gone all at once, every year, as if the land swallowed them. The collectors followed the empty roads until the roads led to a study hall in Pumbeditha, where Rabbah bar Nachmani sat teaching the Talmud, and the twelve thousand sat in front of him.

To the crown this was not learning. It was theft. A man who could empty the tax rolls for two months of every year was a man hiding the empire's silver inside the word of God, and the king signed an order for his arrest.

The Word Reached Pumbeditha Before the Soldiers Did

Rabbah did not wait at the gate to be taken. He ran. From Pumbeditha to Akra, from Akra to Agmi, from Agmi to Sichin, from Sichin to Zeripha, to Ein d'Maya, and then back to Pumbeditha, doubling through the marsh-towns of Babylonia, sleeping where the reeds were thick and the water hid a man's tracks. The greatest mind in the academies of the east had become a thing the soldiers chased through swamp grass.

And by the kind of turn few accounts dare, the royal messenger sent to seize him and the fugitive he hunted came to the same inn on the same night, and neither knew the other's face.

Two Cups Too Many at the Inn

The innkeeper set wine before the king's agent and poured. Two cups. The man drank them both, and when the table was cleared his head wrenched around on his neck until his face stared backward over his own spine.

This was the work of the shedim. Pairs are an open door. Drink an even number of cups and you have counted out a welcome for the demons, who answer the count. The innkeeper, shaking, went to the quiet guest in the back room for help, never guessing he was begging the very man his guest had come to arrest.

Rabbah told him what to do. Set the table again. Pour again, but this time an odd number, so the count breaks the pair and shuts the door the wine had opened. The innkeeper obeyed. The agent drank the odd cup, and his face turned forward on his neck, and the demons let him go.

Healed, the man remembered his errand. "The one I am hunting," he said, "is in this house." He took Rabbah and locked him in a room. "If I could free you and lose only my own life, I would," he told him. "But they would not stop at my life. They would take it slowly. I cannot let you go." Rabbah prayed against the wall, and the wall opened, and he was gone into the swamp again.

Under the Tree at Agma

He came at last to Agma and sat beneath a tree and opened a difficult passage in his mind, the laws of leprous marks and the laws of tents, the two domains where he had once said of himself, "In these I stand alone." His lips moved over the words. He could not stop reciting, and that was his armor.

Far above the tree, in the academy of the firmament, the sages of heaven were locked in a quarrel they could not end. A particular leprous hair, by the law of Leviticus, was it clean or unclean? The Holy One, blessed be He, ruled it clean. Every voice of the heavenly academy ruled it unclean. The court of heaven stood deadlocked, God on one side and all the sages on the other, and they asked who alive could break the tie. One answer came back. Rabbah bar Nachmani, who stood alone in exactly these laws.

The Reed of Death and the Last Word

The Angel of Death was sent down to fetch him. But the angel could not lay a hand on a man whose mouth never stopped moving over Torah, and Rabbah's mouth did not stop. So the angel took another shape. He raised the sound of a Persian cavalry troop, hooves and harness and the roar of soldiers crashing through the reeds toward the tree, the very thing Rabbah had fled across six towns to escape.

Rabbah heard the empire coming for him at last. "Better to die by the angel," he cried, "than fall into their hands." And in that breath the voice of heaven asked its question across the deadlocked court. Clean or unclean? "Clean," said Rabbah, and with the word his soul left him under the tree, the empire's phantom hooves still thundering through the marsh.

A voice broke from the sky. "Blessed are you, Rabbah bar Nachmani, for your body is clean, and clean was the word on your lips when your spirit went out." His body lay alone in the open field. Then birds came, a great wheeling flock from every quarter of the sky, and locked their wings into a roof of feathers over him, holding a shadow against the sun. The disciples of Pumbeditha, hunting the swamp for their master, saw the dark turning cloud of birds and ran toward it, and found him beneath the canopy.

A scroll fell out of heaven into Pumbeditha. It named him admitted to the academy of the firmament. On the day he died a tempest tore through the valley, and the soldiers who had chased him from town to town were scattered into the storm with nothing left to seize.

Rabbah Bar NachmaniTalmudBabyloniaAngel Of DeathDemonsRitual PurityTax
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From the tradition

Sources

3 sources

The texts this telling draws on, in full. Open a card to read inline, or expand it for a wider, quieter read.

Bava Metzia 86a; Pesachim 110aHebraic Literature (1901)

Rabbah bar Nachmani ran one of the great academies of Babylonia, and twice a year, in the month before Passover and the month before the Feast of Tabernacles, thousands of Jews traveled to hear him teach. Twelve thousand students, the tradition says. The king's tax collectors discovered that when they came to collect the annual poll-tax on these twelve thousand men, the villages where they lived were empty. Everyone was at Rabbah's academy.

The king was not pleased. A royal messenger was dispatched to arrest the rabbi.

Rabbah fled. He went to Pumbeditha, then to Akra, then to Agmi, then to Sichin, then to Zeripha, then to Ein d'Maya, and finally back to Pumbeditha. And by one of those twists that only a talmudic tale allows, the royal messenger and the fugitive rabbi ended up at the same inn, on the same night, without knowing who the other was.

The innkeeper set two cups of wine before the messenger. He drank both. When the table was taken away, his face, suddenly, twisted around to the back of his neck.

This was the work of the shedim, the rabbis explained. Pairs of things (zugot) are dangerous; drinking an even number of cups opens a door for demonic mischief (Pesachim 110a).

The terrified innkeeper went to the hidden rabbi for advice. Rabbah told him to have the table placed before the messenger again, and to prepare an odd number of cups. The balance would be restored.

The king's agent was healed, the rabbi escaped, and the academy resumed (Bava Metzia 86a). Tradition turns tax evasion into a parable: the study of Torah runs on a different calendar than the empire, and heaven defends its scholars with strange tools.

Full source
Bava Metzia 86aHebraic Literature (1901)

The Roman official had one cup too many set before him, and his face twisted unnaturally. A Rabbi knew the cure, rearrange the cups so the even number became odd, and the face would right itself. They did. The face returned to normal. Then the official remembered his errand. "The man I want," he said, "is here." He locked the Rabbi up. "If I could save you by losing only my life, I would. But I fear torture. I have to hold you."

The Rabbi prayed in his cell. The walls gave way. He fled to Agma and sat beneath a tree, and there, Rabbah bar Nachmani, one of the greatest minds in Babylonian Talmud, began to meditate. Bava Metzia 86a picks up the scene.

Above him, in the heavenly academy, a debate was raging. The question was a technical one from (Leviticus 13:25), a certain kind of leprous hair: clean or unclean? The Holy One, blessed be He, ruled clean. The entire heavenly academy ruled unclean. Deadlock. "Who shall decide?" they asked. "Rabbah bar Nachmani," came the answer, "for he said of himself, 'In the laws of leprosy and tents I stand alone.'"

The angel of death was dispatched. He could not approach, the Rabbi's lips never stopped reciting Torah. So the angel took the shape of a troop of Roman cavalry thundering through the field. Rabbah, terrified of capture, cried out: "Better to die by him than fall into their hands!" At that instant the heavenly voice asked the question. "Clean," said Rabbah. And with the word his soul departed. A voice rang out from Heaven: "Blessed are you, Rabbah bar Nachmani, for your body is clean, and clean was the word on your lips when your spirit departed."

A scroll fell from the sky into Pumbedita announcing his admission to the heavenly academy. His students went to Agma to bury him. Some men die in battle. Some die in bed. Rabbah died mid-sentence, teaching the angels.

Full source
Gaster, Exempla no. 220; cf. Bava Metzia 86aThe Exempla of the Rabbis (1924)

Rabbah bar Nahmani, the great head of the academy at Pumbeditha in the early fourth century, was accused by the government of a crime invented out of jealousy, that he was keeping people from their work and holding them in the village for two months during the agricultural off-season, when in fact they had come to study Torah.

Rabbah fled into the wilderness to escape arrest. As he wandered between towns, he sat down under a tree to study a difficult passage. He was deep in the sugya when the Angel of Death drew near, because in heaven his voice was wanted for a debate about ritual purity that the sages above could not resolve without him.

Rabbah's soul left his body there under the tree, and his body lay unnoticed on the ground. But the sky remembered him. A great flock of birds gathered from every direction and hovered in a thick ring, their wings overlapping to cast a deep shadow over the place where he lay, shielding his body from the sun. The Pumbeditha disciples, searching the desert for their master, saw the strange dark cloud of circling birds and hurried toward it, and there beneath the canopy of wings they found his body.

They mourned him for three days in the town. On the third day a letter fell from heaven, and on it was written: Whoever returns to his house shall be excommunicated. So the community extended the mourning to seven days. Then a second letter fell: Go home. On the day of his death a great tempest blew through the valley.

He died young, the sages note, and he died poor. But even his body, left in the open, was tended by heaven.

(From The Exempla of the Rabbis, Moses Gaster, 1924, no. 220, based on Bava Metzia 86a.)

Full source