[Avodah] Will the real Rabbi Yishmael ben Elisha please stand up?

[Micha Berger via Avodah]

On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 10:56:25AM +0100, Arie Folger via Avodah wrote:
: In a well known song, Mordechai Ben David Ish Werdiger recounts how Rabbi
: Yishmael Ben Elisha offered ketoret in the Holy of Holies... a Gemara in the
: first chapter of Berakhot.
: 
: Anyway, in Gittin 58a, the Gemara tells the story of how Rabbi Yehoshuah
: Ben Chananya redeemed from captivity a young lad who would later become
: Rabbi Yishmael Ben Elisha.
...
: A) RYBE lived and worked before the Churban (if so, when was he kohen
: gadol? Does he figure in any external lists?), and had been captured
: decades before the Churban. (Ancillary question, when did Rabbi Yehoshuah
: Ben Chananya live?).

R Yeshoshua ben Chananiah was niftar in 131 CE. He sang in the BHMQ
(Eirakhin 11b). We know from Avos 2:8 that he was onew of R Yochanan
ben Zakkai's 5 prise talmidim. And he often is in machloqes with R'
Eliezer ben Hyrcanus. Might have even been chavrusos, as Ymi Chagigah
77b have them learning Tanakh at Acher's bris, and they are the once who
sneak their rebbe out of Y-m to Vespasian. That estimate of the date of
his petirah is because he is niftar shorly after following Hadrian y"sh
from EY to Alexandria, and thatwas in 130. (Medrash Rabba and Chullin
59b each have him fielding diferent questions from Hadrian.) Mind you,
that would mean he was killed after he eft Israel!? Did he return?

So he could well have had other contemporaries who were old enough to be
protagonists before churban bayis and lived through Hadrian's conquest.
A holocaust survivor having to live through a second holocaust -- not
a happy generation. No wonder R' Aqiva's laughter stood out.


: B) Jewish Action Magazine once featured an article arguing that the Beit
: haMikdash, though very heavily damaged, still stood for another few
: decades, until Hadrian had it fully destroyed. During those decades, the
: sacrificial service continued...

It didn't even need to stand. Avodah began before the walls went up,
with just curtained marking the various areas. Could be avodah continued
after.

However, I thought that from churban bayis until Bar Kokhva, there was
no Avodah, and it restarted with BK's attempt to build bayis shelishi.
Probably a machloqes hahistorians.

: Churban as a young lad, and later became kohen gadol in the half destroyed
: Temple. Assuming RYBE doesn't show up in any pre Churban lists of high
: priests...

What about Elisha? This is the gemara where the kohein gadol's two
children are enslaved and stuck in the same room by their respective
masters to produce beautiful children together.

: C) Trei RSBE havei. Needs proof, obviously.

I'm not so sure you need that much proof; Yishmael and Elisha were names
that ran in the family.

More likely, when he asks mei'achorei hapargod about the gezar din it
wasn't YK and he wasn't the KG. Invoke either piquach nefesh (if they were
to learn there was a way to save themselves) or hora'as sha'ah, as needed.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Feeling grateful  to or appreciative of  someone
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