Rabbi Yehuda ben Bava רבי יהודה בן בבא
the pious one who saved ordination at the cost of his life
After the crushing of Bar Kokhba, Hadrian outlawed semichah: the ordainer and the ordained were liable to death, the town of ordination to destruction. Rabbi Yehuda ben Bava chose a place that belonged to no town—a defile between two mountains, between Usha and Shefar'am—and there ordained five: Rabbi Meir, Rabbi Yehuda, Rabbi Shimon, Rabbi Yose and Rabbi Elazar ben Shamua. Sighting the Romans he said: "Run, my sons, and I will lie before them like a stone that cannot be moved". Three hundred iron spears pierced his body (Sanhedrin 13b–14a). The chain of ordination running from Moshe passed through that defile.
Of him they said: wherever the Talmud tells "a deed of a certain pious man", it is either Rabbi Yehuda ben Bava or Rabbi Yehuda bar Ilai (Bava Kamma 103b).
The sources give no years of life; the window of activity is set by generation, following Aharon Hyman's Toldot Tannaim ve-Amoraim.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Sanhedrin 13b–14a — the ordination in the defile and the three hundred spears
- Bava Kamma 103b — «a deed of a certain pious man» means him
Basis: Talmud and midrash.