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Downloaded341283 from Brill.Com09/29/2021 07:13:55AM Via Free Access a Sage Story As Dramatized Biblical Exegesis 7 zutot �4 (�0�7) 6-�8 ZUTOT: Perspectives on Jewish Culture brill.com/zuto brill.com/zuto A Sage Story as Dramatized Biblical Exegesis Adiel Kadari Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Abstract In the study of rabbinic legend there is a widely accepted generic distinction between those legends that expand on biblical stories (exegetical narratives) and those that feature the sages of the Mishnah and the Talmud (sage sto- ries). This article questions the absolute nature of this generic distinction by examining the circumstances that shaped the development of a sage story that appears in the midrashic collection Leviticus Rabbah and its parallels. I seek to demonstrate that occasionally stories about the sages emerge from the exege- sis of biblical verses. My article demonstrates how a verse from Psalms takes on the shape of a story, which serves to solve a linguistic problem in the verse. This example sheds new light on the relationship between exegetical narratives and sage stories, and suggests that we view them as part of the same broader creative intellectual context. Keywords midrash – Leviticus Rabbah – sage stories – biblical exegesis – rabbinic Judaism The story of Rabbi Yannai and the peddler, which appears in Leviticus Rabba 16:2, has been the subject of a range of studies from various perspectives: There are those who read it as a tale of confrontation expressing social and moral criticism of a sage who condescends to a simple man,1 and those who view it as a window into the economic activity of peddlers in the Land of Israel in Rabbi 1 A. Shinan, ‘Rabbi Yannai, the Peddler, and the Well-Dressed Man’ (in Hebrew), Criticism and Interpretation 30 (1994) 15–23; O. Yisraeli, ‘A Talebearer in Your Nation: On Multiple Meanings in the Story of Rabbi Yannai and the Peddler’ (in Hebrew), Sifrut Aggadah 2 (2004) 95–105. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���6 | doi �0.��63/�8750��4-��Downloaded34��83 from Brill.com09/29/2021 07:13:55AM via free access A Sage Story as Dramatized Biblical Exegesis 7 Yannai’s time,2 and still others who seek to use it to derive geographic conclu- sions about the location of the settlement of Akhbara, where Rabbi Yannai lived.3 But it seems to me that one major question remains unanswered, namely how the story came about in the first place. Sage stories generally pres- ent themselves to the reader as completed works and do not reveal anything about the circumstances of their inception. In this paper I seek to argue that this is a unique example in which the story itself lays bare to the reader aspects of its own origin and development that generally remain concealed. In light of the fact that this story has been subject to various literary analyses, I will not offer one of my own, but will focus on aspects relating to the circumstances under which the story initially came about.4 There is a story of a peddler who used to go around the towns in the vicin- ity of Sepphoris crying out: Who wishes to buy the elixir of life? Come and taste! He entered Akhbara and came close to the house of Rabbi Yannai. Rabbi Yannai was sitting and expounding in his room, and he heard him call out: Who wishes to buy the elixir of life? Rabbi Yannai looked out and said to him: Come here and sell it to me. He said to him: Neither you nor people like you require that which I have to sell. Rabbi Yannai pressed him. The peddler went up to him and brought out the 2 Z. Safrai, ‘The Village During the Period of the Mishnah and the Talmud,’ M. Stern, ed., Nation and History: The Ancient Period and the Middle Ages (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem 1983) 188–189; D. Adan-Bayewitz, ‘The Itinerant Peddler in Roman Palestine,’ in N. Gross, ed., Jews in Economic Life (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem 1985) 79–80, and see n. 41. 3 On the location of Rabbi Yannai’s study house in Akhbara in the upper Galilee, see A. Oppenheimer, ‘Those of the House of Rabbi Yannai’ (in Hebrew), Studies in the History of the Jewish People and the Land of Israel 4 (1978) 137 n. 1 and references; S.S. Miller, Sages and Commoners in Late Antique ʾErez Yisrael (Tübingen 2006) 46 n. 44. Based on the portrayal of the peddler as one who ‘would frequent the cities close to Sepphoris’ in some of the versions of our story, it seems that this settlement was located in the lower Galilee, near Sepphoris. See Oppenheimer’s remarks in ‘House of Rabbi Yannai,’ 140 n. 24; Safrai, ‘Village,’ 188–189; Adan-Bayewitz, ‘Itinerant Peddler,’ 79–80, n. 41; Shinan, ‘Rabbi Yannai,’ 17 n. 12. Rosenfeld pro- poses that the settlement of Akhbara was indeed next to Sepphoris, and raises the possibility of the existence of two settlements with the same name. See B. Rosenfeld, ‘Akhbara: Priestly Settlement Adjacent to Sepphoris’ (in Hebrew), Israel—People and Land 7–8 (1990–1993) 127–132. 4 The version of the story presented is taken from M. Margulies’s edition (Midrash Ṿa-yiḳra rab- bah: yotse la-or ʿal pi kitvei-yad u-seridei ha-genizah [Jerusalem 1953–1960]) 349–350. I noted only those textual variations relevant to my analysis. For a comprehensive presentation of textual variants see the section on textual variants there. For an updated synoptic presenta- tion of the various textual variants, see H. Milikowsky, http://www.biu.ac.il/JS/midrash/VR. zutot 14 (2017) 6-18 Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 07:13:55AM via free access 8 Kadari Book of Psalms and showed him the verse, ‘Who is the man who desires life, who loves days, that he may see goodness?’ (Ps. 34:13). What is writ- ten immediately thereafter? ‘Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking lies. Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it’ (Ps. 34:14–15).5 Rabbi Yannai said: All my life I have been reading this passage,6 but I did not know how to expound it7 until this peddler came and informed me.8 (LevR 16:2) This is the story of an encounter between a sage and a peddler. In the first part of the story, each is busy with his own affairs: the peddler advertises his wares, and the sage sits and learns. This leads to an encounter between the two, in which Rabbi Yannai is surprised to discover that contrary to his prior assumptions, the peddler does not seek to sell ordinary wares, but rather to teach him Torah and impart a moral lesson. At the end of the story Rabbi Yannai explicitly lays bare the role reversal that takes place in this scene, in which the sage is not the one who teaches, but the one who is taught. The verse that the peddler presents to Rabbi Yannai is Psalms 34:13: ‘Who is the man who desires life, who loves days, that he may see goodness?’ Rabbi Yannai declares, ‘All my life I have been reading this passage, but I did not know how to expound it.’ Rabbi Yannai’s admission is surprising, because the content of the verse seems very easy to comprehend. The moral and educational mes- sage of guarding against the harmful effects of language is transparent, and it certainly does not require tremendous sophistication to elucidate, and so why did Rabbi Yannai require the assistance of the peddler? And why was it :an additional sentence appears: ‘Rabbi Yannai said (ולפ) In some of the textual variations 5 Even Solomon declared, “Those who guard their mouths and their tongues keep themselves from calamity” (Prov. 21:23),’ which appears after the end of the story in other variants. I agree with Margulies (p. 350, note to l. 5) that this is an error, and that the verse from Proverbs and of the [צרעת] guard against leprosy—[צרות] its exegesis, ‘Keep themselves from calamity soul’ was originally appended after the conclusion of the story as part of the editorial activity that incorporated this story into the proem introduced by a verse about leprosy, ‘This shall be the law of the leper’ (Lev. 14:2). ’.read: ‘All my life I have been distressed about this verse (אב) Some of the textual variants 6 from the word for truth and directness, but ,קשוט read (כק) Some of the textual variants 7 generally translated as expound. The latter variant serves as a literal echo of ,פשוט most read the beginning of the story, where Rabbi Yannai was sitting and expounding. This is also the opinion of Shinan, ‘Rabbi Yannai,’ 19, n. 19 and Yisraeli, ‘A Talebearer in Your Nation,’ 102 n. 23. 8 The Margulies edition reads, ‘and informed him,’ but it seems that the preferable version is .(טכק) and informed me,’ as per some of the textual variants‘ Downloadedzutot from Brill.com09/29/2021 14 (2017) 6-18 07:13:55AM via free access A Sage Story as Dramatized Biblical Exegesis 9 specifically the peddler who succeeded in laying bare the meaning of the verse, while the prominent sage Rabbi Yannai failed?9 It seems to me that the answer to this question requires a closer examination of the term invoked in Rabbi Yannai’s declaration, ‘All my life I have been read- ing this passage, but I did not know how to expound it.’ The root of the word appears at the beginning and end of the story. The first part of ,פשט ,expound (הוה יתיב ופשיט) ’the story reads that Rabbi Yannai was ‘sitting and expounding .(היכן הוא פשוט) ’and the end reads that he ‘did not know how to expound it There is no doubt that an understanding of the precise meaning of this verb is crucial to our understanding of the story framed by the two appearances of this term.
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