Ben Tzitzit haKeset בן ציצית הכסת
third of the rich men of besieged Jerusalem
The third of the three of whom the Talmud says: one undertook to feed the city with wheat and barley, another with wine, salt and oil, the third with firewood; and it would have sufficed for twenty-one years of siege. His byname is explained two ways: his tzitzit trailed over cushions, for he never walked on bare ground—or he sat among the nobility of Rome, upon their cushions (Gittin 56a).
Then comes what puts the story in the Talmud at all. In the city were zealots who wanted war; the sages wanted peace. The zealots burned every storehouse—and the famine began, and with it the end. The Talmud does not name Rome as guilty: it names the baseless hatred of one's own. The three rich men stand in that account as the measure of what the city lost not to the siege but to itself.
The sources give no years of life; the window of activity is set by generation, following Aharon Hyman's Toldot Tannaim ve-Amoraim.
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Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Gittin 56a — the three rich men, twenty-one years and the burned storehouses
- Eichah Rabbah 1:31 — four councillors are named in the besieged city, and he is among them
- Eichah Rabbah 1:31 — four councillors are named in the besieged city, and he is among them
- Eichah Rabbah 1:31 — four councillors are named in the besieged city, and he is among them
- Eichah Rabbah 1:31 — four councillors are named in the besieged city, and he is among them
- Eichah Rabbah 1:31 — four councillors are named in the besieged city, and he is among them
- Eichah Rabbah 1:31 — four councillors are named in the besieged city, and he is among them
- Eichah Rabbah 1:31 — four councillors are named in the besieged city, and he is among them
- Eichah Rabbah 1:31 — four councillors are named in the besieged city, and he is among them
- Eichah Rabbah 1:31 — four councillors are named in the besieged city, and he is among them
- Eichah Rabbah 1:31 — four councillors are named in the besieged city, and he is among them
- Eichah Rabbah 1:31 — four councillors are named in the besieged city, and he is among them
- Eichah Rabbah 1:31 — four councillors are named in the besieged city, and he is among them
- Eichah Rabbah 1:31 — four councillors are named in the besieged city, and he is among them
- Eichah Rabbah 1:31 — four councillors are named in the besieged city, and he is among them
Basis: Talmud and midrash.