When Ravah bar Nachmani, one of the giants of the Babylonian academies in the fourth century, died alone in the wilderness, his students searched for him for days without success. At last someone noticed a strange sight: a great number of birds hovering in one place, their wings overlapping, a living canopy in the air. The students went toward the birds and found the body of their master laid out beneath the shadow of their wings.
They buried him there and began to mourn. After three days and three nights, they prepared to return home. Before they could leave, a scroll descended from heaven. It carried a single warning: if they departed now, they would be placed under excommunication. The students sat down again and mourned for seven days and seven nights. At the end of the seven, a second scroll descended. This one sent them home in peace.
On the day Ravah died, a tempest tore through the air. An Arab merchant riding his camel was lifted bodily from one bank of the river Pappa and dropped on the opposite shore. The merchant picked himself up from the ground and shouted into the sky, "What sort of storm is this?" A bat kol, a voice from heaven, answered him: "Ravah bar Nachmani is dead."
The merchant understood. He did not know Ravah personally, but he knew what the death of a great master cost the world. He prayed. "Master of the universe," he said, "the whole world is Yours, and Ravah bar Nachmani is Yours. You belong to Ravah and Ravah belongs to You. Why must You destroy Your world because one of Your own has returned to You?" The storm stopped. The air was perfectly still. The Talmud preserves this scene in tractate Bava Metzia (86a). Even a passing merchant, the story suggests, can argue with heaven and be heard.