Meet Hananya ben Hizkiya ben Garon TB Shabbat 13

We don’t know much about the earliest tanaim, rabbis of the Mishnah. Even most of their names are lost to us. Today’s daf TB Shabbat 13 introduces us to one of them, Hananya ben Hizkiya ben Garon. His father lived before the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in the year 70 C.E. and he lived after the destruction. The great 19th century Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz believes that he was a follower of Shammai and not of Hillel based on the Mishnah on TB Shabbat 13b. That’s why there the number of students of Bet Shammai out numbered the students of Bet Hillel when they visited him in his attic.  He is credited with composing Megillat Taanit which outlines those days we are prohibited to fast on. This Megillah is now lost to us.  He is also credited with saving the book of Ezekiel’s place in our Bible for the Sages wanted to declare it profane and not holy. Below are the actual excerpts from today’s daf that my introduction explains.

“MISHNAH: And these are among the halakhot that the Sages, who went up to visit him, said in the upper story of Hananya ben Hizkiya ben Garon. The precise nature of these halakhot will be explained in the Gemara. These halakhot are considered one unit because they share a distinctive element. Since many Sages were there, among them most of the generation’s Torah scholars in Eretz Yisrael, they engaged in discussion of various halakhot of the Torah. It turned out that when the people expressing opinions were counted, the students of Beit Shammai outnumbered the students of Beit Hillel, and they issued decrees with regard to eighteen matters on that day in accordance with the opinion of Beit Shammai.

“Gemara: The Sages taught in a baraita with regard to Megillat Ta’anit, which is a list of days of redemption that were established as celebrations for generations: Who wrote Megillat Ta’anit? This scroll was written by Hananya ben Hizkiya ben Garon and his faction, who held dear the memory of the troubles that befell Israel and their salvation from them.

“Rav Yehuda said that Rav said: Truly, that man is remembered for the good, and his name is Hananya ben Hizkiya, as if not for him, the book of Ezekiel would have been suppressed because its contents, in many details, contradict matters of Torah. The Sages sought to suppress the book and exclude it from the canon. What did he, Hananya ben Hizkiya, do? They brought him three hundred jugs of oil, for light and food, up to his upper story, and he sat isolated in the upper story and did not move from there until he homiletically interpreted all of those verses in the book of Ezekiel that seemed contradictory, and resolved the contradictions.”