This is His; This is his Teacher's

Recently, an instance of fascinating ha dideih was brought to my attention, by R’ Joshua Skootsky:

(1) Let’s start by seeing the gemara before turning to the Yad Malachi on it.

Bava Kamma 30a going into 30b:

וּמִדְּרַבִּי יוֹחָנָן אָמַר חַיָּיב – רַבִּי אֶלְעָזָר אָמַר פָּטוּר?! וְהָאָמַר רַבִּי אֶלְעָזָר

The Gemara asks: And from the fact that Rabbi Yoḥanan said that he is liable, is it evident that Rabbi Elazar said that he is exempt? But doesn’t Rabbi Elazar say

מִשּׁוּם רַבִּי יִשְׁמָעֵאל כּוּ׳!

in the name of Rabbi Yishmael that one is liable to pay for damage caused by a pit that he dug in the public domain, even if it is not his personal property?

לָא קַשְׁיָא; הָא דִידֵיהּ. הָא דְרַבֵּיהּ.

The Gemara answers: This is not difficult. This ruling, that he is exempt, is his own opinion, whereas that ruling, that he is liable, is the opinion of his teacher Rabbi Yishmael, and he disagrees with it.

In the prior section, it was a dispute with Rabbi Yochanan, an Amora, and Rabbi Eleazar. That would resolve to Rabbi Eleazar ben Pedat, the Amora. Also, the gemara discusses וּמַאי דּוּחְקֵיהּ דְּרַבִּי אֶלְעָזָר לְאוֹקֹמַיהּ, what forced Rabbi Eleazar to interpret the Mishnah in a certain way. Interpreting Tannaitic sources is a job done by Amoraim.

What about this Rabbi Eleazar mishum Rabbi Yishmael? The Stamma itself, not a named Amora, cites it, to try to fix Rabbi Eleazar’s position. The quote appears on 29b, but also appears in Pesachim 6b:

דִּילְמָא מַשְׁכַּחַתְּ לֵיהּ לְבָתַר אִיסּוּרָא, וְלָאו בִּרְשׁוּתֵיהּ קָיְימָא, וְלָא מָצֵי מְבַטֵּיל. דְּאָמַר רַבִּי אֶלְעָזָר: שְׁנֵי דְבָרִים אֵינָן בִּרְשׁוּתוֹ שֶׁל אָדָם, וַעֲשָׂאָן הַכָּתוּב כְּאִילּוּ בִּרְשׁוּתוֹ, וְאֵלּוּ הֵן: בּוֹר בִּרְשׁוּת הָרַבִּים, וְחָמֵץ מִשֵּׁשׁ שָׁעוֹת וּלְמַעְלָה.

The Gemara rejects this suggestion. Perhaps he will find it only after it is already forbidden, and at that time it is no longer in his possession and he is therefore unable to nullify leaven when it is already Passover, as Rabbi Elazar said: Two items are not in a person’s possession in terms of legal ownership, and yet the Torah rendered him responsible for them as though they were in his property. And these are they: An open pit in the public domain, for which the one who excavated it is liable to pay any damages it causes even though it does not belong to him; and leaven in one’s house from the sixth hour on the fourteenth of Nisan and onward. As this leaven has no monetary value, since it is prohibited to eat or to derive benefit from it, it is not his property, and nevertheless he violates a prohibition if it remains in his domain.

The printed text just says Rabbi Eleazar, but Rif has that it is Rabbi Eleazar mishum Rabbi Yishmael.

and:

(By the way, אנלאו 276 with a variant of mishum Rabbi Shimon is matched by Munich 95 in our local Bava Kamma sugya:

)

Nothing really in context of Pesachim forces us to say that this is Rabbi Eleazar ben Pedat the Amora. The statement is Hebrew, which works for either a Tanna, Rabbi Eleazar ben Shamua, or the Amora, Rabbi Eleazar ben Pedat. I suppose the way it is quoted, amar X mishum says more of an Amora as the first actor — a common pattern is Amar Rabbi Yochanan Mishum Some Tanna. But even there, we have instances like תַּנְיָא, אָמַר רַבִּי יְהוּדָה מִשּׁוּם רַבִּי עֲקִיבָא on Rosh HaShanah 16a, where Rabbi Yehuda (beRabbi Illai) quotes his direct teacher, Rabbi Akiva.

There is a certain strangeness in an Amora citing a Tanna so far away. When I discuss Rabbi Yochanan doing this, the very valid question arises as to whether his citing mishum Rabbi Shimon (ben Yochai) is rather the much closer Rabbi Shimon ben Yehotzadak. So Rabbi Eleazar ben Pedat doing this lengthy generation skip with a mishum is somewhat striking. (The version quoted above that makes it mishum Rabbi Shimon makes it better, since Rabbi Shimon is a fifth-generation Tanna.)

Also, the gemara itself in Bava Kamma has a difficulty with it, because the implication of the quote (R’E mishum R’Y) is that he’s liable, yet locally in Bava Batra, Rabbi Eleazar says he’s not liable! And they answer ha didei, ha derabbei, one is Rabbi Eleazar speaking for himself, one is him speaking for his teacher.

An easier answer would be that one is the Tanna, one is the Amora! And the Stamma somehow missed the distinction, misunderstanding the foreign reference. Or maybe the Stamma doesn’t miss this. Rather, the Stamma fixes the position of Rabbi Eleazar the Amora, but in doing so also fixes the position of Rabbi Eleazar the Tanna.

Because at play in this is that Rabbi Eleazar the Tanna is certainly also present. Our gemara on 29b reads:

וּמִי אָמַר רַבִּי אֶלְעָזָר הָכִי? וְהָא אָמַר רַבִּי אֶלְעָזָר אִיפְּכָא! דִּתְנַן: הַהוֹפֵךְ אֶת הַגָּלָל בִּרְשׁוּת הָרַבִּים, וְהוּזַּק בָּהֶן אַחֵר – חַיָּיב בְּנִזְקוֹ. וְאָמַר רַבִּי אֶלְעָזָר: לֹא שָׁנוּ אֶלָּא שֶׁנִּתְכַּוֵּין לִזְכּוֹת בָּהֶן, אֲבָל לֹא נִתְכַּוֵּין לִזְכּוֹת בָּהֶן – פָּטוּר. אַלְמָא מַפְקִיר נְזָקָיו – פָּטוּר!

The Gemara asks: And did Rabbi Elazar actually say this, that one who renounces ownership of his hazardous objects is liable? But didn’t Rabbi Elazar say the opposite? As we learned in a mishna (30a): In the case of one who turns over dung in the public domain and another person incurred damage due to it, he is liable to pay for his damage. And Rabbi Elazar says: They taught this ruling only in a case where the one who turned over the dung intended to acquire it, but in a case where he did not intend to acquire it he is exempt. Apparently, according to Rabbi Elazar, one who renounces ownership of his hazardous property is exempt, since he is liable only if he intends to take possession of the dung, even if he moved it significantly.

The first instance is Rabbi Eleazar of the Mishna, thus the Tanna. The second is Rabbi Eleazar who is an Amora explaining the Mishnah, thus Rabbi Eleazar ben Pedat. So, even if we assert that the one citing Rabbi Yishmael is himself the Tanna Rabbi Eleazar, there is still an internal argument between Rabbi Eleazar the Tanna (as explained by Rabbi Eleazar the Amora) himself and Rabbi Eleazar the Tanna citing Rabbi Yishmael the Tanna. We need to kvetch the wording of the gemara slightly, or else argue with it, but I think it works.

(2) Now that we’ve seen the gemara, here is the Yad Malachi. To explain the nature of this encyclopedic work, here is English Wikipedia:

He is most famous for his Yad Mal'aki (1766-7), a methodological work and compilation in three parts: part one contains an alphabetical list of all the rules and technical terms found in the Talmud, with explanations; part two deals with rules regarding the codifiers; part three deals with the rules relating to legal decisions, explaining certain general principles of legal responsa.

So, in the entry on הא דידיה הא דרביה, he writes:

Essentially, his point is that just because it calls him רביה in the phrase הא דידיה הא דרביה, that doesn’t mean that he’s really the literal rebbe, or even personally knew him at all. And he ends with our case, of Rabbi Eleazar (ben Pedat) mishum Rabbi Yishmael. It is known that Rabbi Eleazar never saw Rabbi Yishmael nor recognized him. Rather, this is certainly because he citing something in his name, that is the reason that he is termed rabbeih.

I certainly agree with this sentiment, and have expressed it myself in the past. Sometimes, in Rabbinic biography, this phrase derabbeih is taken by Rav Aharon Hyman in Toledot Tannaim vaAmoraim as evidence that X was the literal student of Y. I’d say that this is no proof. rabbeih is just used in a functional sense, that he’s the one being cited. Meanwhile, while agreeing with the sentiment, in item #1 I worked rather hard to give a different answer, that the Rabbi Eleazar is Rabbi Eleazar ben Shamua. If I am arguing with the Stamma, then this point about הא דידיה הא דרביה stands. If we can somehow kvetch the gemara so that he agrees that we are dealing with the Tanna, then maybe fifth-generation Rabbi Eleazar encountered fourth-generation Rabbi Yishmael!

(3) Anyway, I have written a whole lot about משום and הא דידיה הא דרביה, and over the past few days copied a bunch of it over here to Scribal Error. For your further reading pleasure, here is a partial list.

(a) First, a full article on the definition of Mishum, on Ketubot. Explanations of this term, as opposed to amar, include that the person was the primary teacher, that he didn’t actually hear it directly, and others. I go through many examples of ha dideih which always appears with a mishum, and my conclusion is that it is used once we transition into the Tannaitic (or quasi-Tannaitic) period, as well as perhaps when someone is citing it, but without endorsing that position. Thus he says it on behalf of the other person.

(b) Another full article on citation without endorsement, finding another case which is essentially ha dideih without using that term. I identify Abaye as the named Amora using ha dideih before the Talmudic Narrator runs with it. And, I examine the scholastic relationships in the sugya Nedarim to see if a Mishum pans out. Did Rabbi Yehuda and Tarfon see each other directly?

(c) Finally, there is this Scribal Error post about Mishum, where I reference the Ketubot article and partly summarize it, in order to process a sugya in Nazir. There are several parallel sugyot where we have Rabbi Yehuda’s own opinion, as well as his opinion as citing Rabbi Tarfon.