122 CHAPTER THREE
this the intercessor we petitioned you for?”^60 He said, “By your lives! I’ve given
you a man like myself!”... [Rabbi then summons Levi and asks him the same
questions and he answers them easily.] Rabbi said, “Why did you not answer them
[the villagers]?” He said, “They made me a bigbemaand sat me upon it and my
spirit swelled.” And Rabbi applied to him the verse, etc., and said, “Who caused
you to become foolis hin words of Tora h? It was only because you elevated yourself
through them.” (Y. Yevamot 12:7, 13a)
This story is quoted in Y. Yevamot 12 because of the questions about the
halitzahceremony, whereby a childless widow is released from her biblical
obligation to marry her brother-in-law, which are relevant to the concerns of
the tractate. But the story also appears in different contexts, indicating that it
circulated independently and so was probably formulated for reasons uncon-
nected withhalitzah.^61 In the “historical” interpretation of the story, it is often
noted that the villagers had the option of rejecting an incompetent patriarchal
appointee. But this would in fact have been a trivial qualification of patriarchal
authority—provincials could ask the Roman emperor, whose authority is in-
dubitable, to remove an incompetent governor, too. It is less often emphasized
that the patriarch did not simply appoint a functionary; rather, the Simonians
petitionedthe patriarch. What we have here, then, is something less than a
display of formal administrative authority; it is a demonstration of patriarchal
prestige, which served as a guarantee to the villagers that the communal func-
tionary would be appropriate. The patriarch was not alone in possessing such
prestige. Apparently Rabbi Shimon ben Laqish (mid-late third century),
among other rabbis, enjoyed it too, for the Jews of Bostra approachedhim
wit ha request to appoint a communal functionary similar to t he one requested
by the Simonians.^62 What is least often observed about the story is that it is a
homily, not a historical account, and one of its points is to warn rabbinic
religious functionaries not to get carried away with the authority of their posi-
tions, lest in their pride they forget their Torah (and lose their jobs).^63 As such,
(^60) Haden paysuna depaysantak—following the translation of M. Sokoloff,Dictionary of Jewish
Palestinian Aramaic of the Byzantine Period(Jerusalem: Bar Ilan University Press, 1992), s. v.
PYYSWN; correct Neusner accordingly.
(^61) See also Genesis Rabba h81:1 = T heodor-Albeck, p. 969.
(^62) Y Sheviit 6:1, 36d. The language of the request is identical to that in Y. Yevamot, perhaps
reflecting a standard formula. I am skeptical that there was in the third century any formal “right
ofminui,” or if there was, that it had any connection with village appointments. In any case, the
Palestinian Talmud occasionally mentions appointments made by nonpatriarchal rabbis, and the
schematic pseudohistory ofminuiin Y. Sanhedrin 1:2, 19a admits that in its day (?) the patriarch
was no longer the exclusive holder of the right. See Alon,Jews in their Land, pp. 719–27, and,
in more detail, “Those Appointed for Money,” pp. 401–10, for an attempt to read Y. Sanhedrin
as real history. See also Levine, “Status of the Patriarch,” 7–10.
(^63) Which is not to deny the obvious fact that for the editors of the Palestinian Talmud the
story’s point was exclusively halakhic.