Rav Sechora (article preview)

Let us say your father and rebbe are both carrying heavy boxes and need assistance putting it down. A Mishnah in Bava Metzia 33a says your teacher takes precedence, unless your father is also a Torah scholar. The same for returning his lost item. A brayta there (also Tosefta Bava Metzia 2:13) presents a Tannaitic dispute in defining this teacher. Rabbi Meir, a fifth-generation Tanna, maintains it’s the teacher who taught him חׇכְמָה / wisdom¹ rather than the one who taught him Scripture and Mishnah. His colleague Rabbi Yehuda says this is the one from whom he learned most his חׇכְמָה / wisdom². His colleague Rabbi Yossi says that this teacher is even one who enlightened his eyes in understanding a single Mishnah.

Rava, a fourth-generation Babylonian Amora, gives an example of Rabbi Yossi’s singular teacher: “Such as Rav Sechora, who explained zuhama listeron”, which is a utensil with a fork on one end and spoon on the other, mentioned in the Mishnah in Keilim 13:2. There, even if its spoon was taken, it still is susceptible to tum’ah on account of its fork and vice versa. They use the utensil to remove the zuhama / froth or foul matter from the pot.

The problem with this is our sugya in Sanhedrin 49b. The Mishnah had stated there were four court-imposed death penalties, and enumerated them. Rava cited Rav Sechora who cited Rav Huna that wherever the Sages taught by means of an enumerated list, the meaning isn’t significant, except by the seven abrasive substances, where the meaning is significant. In Sanhedrin, Sechora is uniquely spelled with an aleph, so it is hand to find, but spelled with a final heh, we find אָמַר רָבָא אָמַר רַב סְחוֹרָה אָמַר רַב הוּנָא scattered across Shas. If Rav Sechora provides Rava with a corpus of Rav Huna statements, how could Rava claim to have such limited dependence upon Rav Sechora, only defining one Mishnaic term?