Ben Zakkai (article summary)
My article from this past Shabbat is appropriate for Sunday’s daf, which has the Mishnah mentioning Ben Zakkai, but even more for today’s daf, which delves into Ben Zakkai’s identity. You can read that article online here: (Jewish Link HTML, flipdocs, paywalled Substack which has hyperlinks).
Here are the bullet points.
The opening Mishnah of the perek on Sanhedrin 40a mentions Ben Zakkai, who asked about the stems of figs. This was an illustration of the principle that whoever increased in interrogations was praiseworthy.
Who is Ben Zakkai? Is it an otherwise unknown Tanna, or is it the famous Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai?
The gemara on Sanhedrin 41 considers the options. There’s a brayta that the Sanhedrin moved from the Lishchat HaGazit 40 years before the Temple was destroyed; an Amora explains this as they stopped ruling on fines. The Talmudic Narrator attacks this and reimagines it as stopping judging capital cases. Meanwhile, Rabban Yochanan’s 120 year life was divided into three spans of 40 years exactly, and he rose to prominence in the last third, which encompassed time after the Temple was destroyed. So how could he have ruled in a capital case? But the Talmudic Narrator explains a way he could have suggested the approach to his teachers; and there’s a brayta that says Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai in full interrogated that way.
There’s a parallel sugya in Rosh Hashanah about the crimson wool turning white or not, on Yom Kippur, and possibly that Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai made a decree about it. Rav Pappa and Rav Nachman bar Yitzchak (fifth-generation Amoraim) debate it. In explaining why each doesn’t rule like his colleague, the Talmudic Narrator invokes the same kind of logic as in our local sugya.
We explore other instances of the name Ben Zakkai appearing alone. “Here, Ben Zakkai cut the terumah of lupines” declared by an elder, which worked to rule a marketplace pure for kohanim to enter, may plausibly be the same Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai. Other instances, depending on girsaot, may be an Amora (Ulla quoting Ben Zakkai) or a patronymic (Ulla ben Zakkai). There’s also a pressing room of Bar Zakkai where the Sages met.
Two alternatives to our sugya’s analysis present themselves. First, are we certain that the 120 and 40 are not round, approximate, or poetic numbers, in which case there’s no problem with Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai’s active participation? Second, perhaps there’s eponymy at play, in which a Tanna named Ben Zakkai asked such a great targeted question that the defendant was acquitted. Thus, Ben Zakkai = The Acquitter.