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Two Boys Poured Wine and Named the Messiah's Delay

Yehudah HaNasi filled their cups so the silent boys would speak. They told him the Messiah waits until his own chair falls. He winced.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. Wine at the Patriarch's Table
  2. Thorns in Rabbi's Eyes
  3. The Boy Who Walked Bareheaded
  4. Bend the Vine While It Is Green

Yehudah and Chiskiyah, sons of Rabbi Chiya, sat at the table of Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi and did not speak. The patriarch of Tiberias had redacted the Mishnah and still could not get two boys to open their mouths over bread.

Two Boys Poured Wine and Named the Messiah's Delay Click for full size

"Give the boys some wine," Rabbi said. "That they may have the boldness to speak."

Wine at the Patriarch's Table

The cups went down. The silence broke. The boys declared that the Messiah son of David would not arrive until the two great houses of Israel had fallen, the Exilarch in Babylon and the Patriarch in the Land of Israel. Isaiah had said it: a stone of stumbling to both the houses of Israel (Isaiah 8:14).

Rabbi winced. "Children, you are thrusting thorns into my eyes."

Rabbi Chiya smiled the small smile of a father who has seen wine do this before. Wine and secret, yayin and sod, both have the value of seventy. When wine enters, the secret leaks out. He told Rabbi not to be offended. The boys had only poured what the cups had loosened.

The boys sat still. No one reached to take the cups away. Yehudah HaNasi put a hand to his eyes as if the thorns were physical, then lowered it and looked at Chiya, who would not apologize for his sons. Tiberias went on outside the window. The Mishnah pages waited at his elbow.

Thorns in Rabbi's Eyes

The boys were not asking him to abdicate over dessert. They were saying the last hope is not the preservation of the present chair. Every throne falls, including the teacher's, so the final throne can be set up. That is a hard sentence from children whose cups he had just filled.

Yehudah HaNasi had built ordered teaching. The boys poured a future in which his own office becomes a stumbling stone on the way to redemption. After the cups were cleared, he still had a Mishnah to finish and a people to steady. The thorns stayed in his eyes. Even the man who orders Israel's learning must hear that redemption may require the stumbling of his own house.

He had asked for boldness. He had gotten a timetable that ran over him. The wine was still in the cups. The secret was already out of them.

The Boy Who Walked Bareheaded

Another pair of boys walked past Elders in study. One covered his head. The other walked bareheaded. Rabbi Akiva watched and said the uncovered boy was a mamzer, a child of a forbidden union. The other sages were astonished. Akiva had seen brazenness, a missing instinct of reverence that is planted early in a proper household.

He questioned the mother privately. She admitted the truth.

Children announce more than they intend. At Rabbi's table they announce a fallen house. Before Akiva they announce an origin. The adult world has to decide whether to punish the messenger or hear the message. Authority that cannot survive a hard sentence from the young was never going to be Torah's last form.

Bend the Vine While It Is Green

Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Joshua lean on the proverb: Train up a youth according to his way. Shape a child in Torah while young, and the words grow with him. Rabbi Joshua reaches for field images. A cow never taught to plow becomes impossible once full grown. A vine-shoot can be trained while moist and green, but once the wood hardens, no one can bend it.

Folly is bound up in the heart of a youth. The rod of discipline removes it. Rabbi Zevida insists the rod is the rod of Torah, and if not, the lashes of the court. Rabbi Nehunya closes the circle: whoever takes the yoke of Torah has the heavier yoke of worldly power lifted off his shoulders.

Wine had loosened a secret about fallen houses. An uncovered head had betrayed missing training. A green vine still bends if someone takes it in time. Yehudah HaNasi sat with thorns in his eyes and a Mishnah still to finish. The boys had named the delay of the Messiah over his own wine. The chair would have to stumble. He did not pour the cups back.

MessiahYehudah hanasiWineChildrenAkivaHonorPatriarchExilarch
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From the tradition

Sources

3 sources

The texts behind this telling. Some cards carry a translation of the source; others are our own retelling of it, and each card says which. Every card links out to the original.

Sanhedrin 38a (Hebraic Literature, 1901)Hebraic Literature (1901)

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.Project Gutenberg eBook #14368, Hebraic Literature · PD-US-pre-1929

Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, known simply as Rabbi, the Holy One, the redactor of the Mishnah, sat one evening at his table with two of his youngest guests: Yehudah and Chiskiyah, the sons of Rabbi Chiya. The boys ate in silence. They were awed, perhaps, by the presence of the patriarch of Tiberias.

Give the boys some wine, Rabbi said. Let them have the boldness to speak.

The wine went in, and the secret came out. The boys declared that the Messiah son of David would not arrive until the two great houses of Israel had fallen, the house of the Exilarch in Babylon and the house of the Patriarch in the Land of Israel, for so it is written in (Isaiah 8:14), and He shall be for a sanctuary, and for a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense to both the houses of Israel.

Rabbi, himself the patriarch whose house was one of the two named, winced. Children, he said, you are thrusting thorns into my eyes.

Rabbi Chiya smiled. Do not be offended at them. Wine and secret, yayin and sod, both have the numerical value of seventy. When wine enters, the secret leaks out. (Sanhedrin 38a.)

The Messianic hope, the boys were saying, is not the preservation of current power. It is the willingness to let every throne fall, including your teacher's. So that the final throne can be set up.

Full source
Exempla of the Rabbis, No. 83Exempla of the Rabbis (Gaster, 1924)

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.The Exempla of the Rabbis, Moses Gaster (1924) · Public Domain

Two boys walked past a group of Elders who were sitting together in study. One boy had his head covered, as was the custom of modesty and reverence. The other boy walked by with his head bare and uncovered, showing no deference to the sages he was passing.

Rabbi Akiva watched the two boys carefully. The great sage was known for his penetrating insight into human character, and something about the bareheaded boy caught his attention. Rabbi Akiva turned to his colleagues and made a startling declaration: "That boy, the one who walks with his head uncovered, is a mamzer." A mamzer, in Jewish law, is a child born from a forbidden union, and the status carried significant legal consequences.

The other sages were astonished. How could Rabbi Akiva know such a thing simply from watching a boy walk past? There was no visible mark, no sign that anyone else could read. But Rabbi Akiva saw what others could not, a certain brazenness, a lack of the natural reverence that a child raised in a proper household would absorb from infancy.

To verify his claim, Rabbi Akiva went to the boy's mother and questioned her privately. Under his gentle but persistent inquiry, she admitted the truth. The boy was indeed a mamzer, born from a union that the Torah forbade. Rabbi Akiva's reading of the boy's character from a single moment of behavior had been exactly correct.

The tale became evidence of the extraordinary perception of the great sages, who could discern a person's inner nature from the smallest outward sign.

Full source
Midrash Mishlei 22:3Midrash Mishlei

Translation of the source text.Midrash Mishlei (Buber) · CC-BY

"Train up a youth according to his way" (Proverbs 22:6). Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Joshua differed. Rabbi Eliezer says: If you have trained your son in words of Torah while he is still a youth, he keeps growing in them, as it is said, "Even when he grows old he will not depart from it." And Rabbi Joshua says: It is like this cow that has not learned to plow, and is hard to handle in the end; and like this vine-shoot, which has its place while it is still moist - and once it has hardened on you, can you still bend it? "Folly is bound up in the heart of a youth; the rod of discipline removes it from him" (Proverbs 22:15). Rabbi Zevida said: The rod of Torah removes it from him. If a person is worthy of the rod of discipline, well and good; and if not, then the lashes of the court. This is what the proverb says: "To the wise, a hint; to the fool, a fist." If a person is worthy, then there is the rod of Torah; and if not, then the rod of the kingdom. There we have learned (Mishnah Avot 3:5): "Rabbi Nehunya ben ha-Kanah says: Whoever takes upon himself the yoke of Torah, they remove from him the yoke of the kingdom."

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