Shemaya and Avtalion

Before we join Hillel at the academy, a little about  Shemaya and Avtalion

 As  mentioned in a previous segment, Hillel left a loving family, a comfortable  life, and the glorious options for secular scholarship in Babylonia. He headed  for the unknown – possibly a life of poverty and deprivation in distant Judea –  and risked a highly dangerous journey where robberies and murders were common.  In addition, he had decided not to accept his brother’s Shebna offer to support  him for life, as a scholar and a partner. This lifestyle, where two brothers  made a pact of sharing the wealth of one and the scholarship of the other (by  their belief system, honorable for both parties in this world and the world to  come) was a common practice in those days when family ties were close and  brothers often faced life together. He did all that so he could complete his  Torah studies to his satisfaction, since he knew he had learned all he could in  Babylonia. At the time, Torah study in Babylonia did not reach the lofty  heights it acquired later, when the famous academies were opened in the cities  of Sura, Pumbedita, and Nehardea. One must remember that the Talmud, that great  repository of the Oral Law was not yet written. Once it came into being, a Jew  could be just as learned in a small town in Galicia or Morroco, as the one who  lived in the learning centers of Jerusalem or Yavne. In a strange way, the  Talmud supplied a similar situation to Distance Learning on the Internet – you  could be a scholar wherever you are. But at Hillel’s time, the Oral Law was not  written down, and  if one had to  settle a scholarly question, one had to hear it from the Teachers. And Hillel’s  teachers were not able to answer his questions anymore, he went far beyond them.  So was it worthwhile to tear himself from all he loved, and to go to Judea?

 In a  word, the answer is a resounding YES. Hillel was obsessed with leaning, and  trying to deny his obsession and couch it in religious terms, pretending he had  done everything to please the veiled wishes of God, would be addressing his  life as a hagiography. There are too many hagiographies about him out there now,  and have been there for two thousand years, and I do not mean to write another  one. Hillel was not only Hillel the Elder, a figure of legends. He was also a  real human being – a much more complex being than what we have been accustomed  to hear. He had to find the answers or his heart and soul would have shriveled.  And in Judea, he was going to study with the masters of Jewish learning. He
  could do no better – no one would argue about the worth of Shemaya and  Avtalion.

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