Rome had issued a decree: no new rabbis could be ordained. The empire understood that as long as the chain of rabbinic authority remained unbroken, the Jewish people could never truly be conquered. Cut the chain of ordination, and the Torah would die within a generation.
Judah ben Baba understood the stakes. He was an elderly sage, and he knew what the decree meant — not just for the scholars of his time, but for every generation that would follow. Without ordained rabbis, there could be no authoritative rulings on Jewish law, no transmission of the tradition, no future.
So he gathered five young scholars in a narrow mountain pass between two cities — Rabbi Judah, Rabbi Simeon, Rabbi Meir, Rabbi Eleazar ben Shamua, and according to Rabbi Avaye, Rabbi Nehemiah as well. There, hidden from Roman eyes, he performed the forbidden ceremony and ordained them all.
The Romans discovered what he had done. When the soldiers arrived, Judah ben Baba told the young rabbis to flee. "Run!" he commanded. "I am old. I will stay." The five newly ordained scholars escaped through the pass while the old man stood his ground.
The Roman soldiers drove three hundred iron lances through his body. Judah ben Baba died pierced like a sieve. But the chain of ordination survived. The five rabbis he ordained went on to become the great teachers of the next generation, carrying the Torah forward through the darkest period in Israel's history.