Hillel

A baraita (a teaching from the time of the Mishnah that was not put into the Mishnah) in the Gemara in Pesachim says Hillel came up from Bavel, which is Babylonia. People called him Hillel HaBavli, Hillel the Babylonian. The people in the story are answering the Bnei Beteira, "the sons of Beteira". The passage does not say more about who the Bnei Beteira were.

After Hillel answered the question the Bnei Beteira could not answer, they seated him at the head and appointed him nasi over them. The nasi was the head of the Sages.

A baraita quoted in the Gemara in Shabbat lists four men who held the office of nasi for a hundred years while the Temple stood: Hillel, Shimon, Gamliel and Shimon. The baraita only lists the names. It does not say how the four were related.

Rashi: the last hundred years before the destruction

Rashi, the main commentary on the Gemara, explains the hundred years in that baraita. He says they are the last hundred years before the Temple was destroyed, that Hillel's time as nasi began then, and that these four generations led for those hundred years. So, Rashi says, Hillel came a hundred years before the destruction.

Reish Lakish, an Amora (a sage of the Gemara) in Eretz Yisrael, puts Hillel next to Ezra. He says that when Torah was forgotten in Israel, Ezra came up from Bavel and set it firm again. When it was forgotten again, Hillel the Babylonian came up and set it firm again. He goes on to say that it was forgotten a third time, and Rabbi Chiyya and his sons came up and set it firm.

Hillel and Shammai themselves disagreed in three places

Rav Huna, an Amora in Bavel, says that Shammai and Hillel themselves disagreed in three places. The three are listed in the Mishnah in Eduyot (1:1 to 1:3). Disputes in the names of Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel, the two schools that carry their names, are a separate matter.

The Gemara tests the count of three

The Gemara challenges Rav Huna. Hillel and Shammai also disagreed about "leaning" (the passage says only "to lean" and "not to lean"; this is the dispute in the Mishnah in Chagigah). The Gemara answers that Rav Huna counted only disputes where there was no dispute of the great sages along with theirs. It then raises one more case, grapes picked for the winepress, where Shammai and Hillel disagreed. It answers that this one is not counted because there Hillel was silent before Shammai. So Rav Huna's count of three stands.

A baraita in the Gemara in Yoma says Hillel worked every day and earned one coin, called a tarpe'ik. He gave half to the guard of the house of study and kept the other half to support himself and his household. The baraita does not say what his work was.

Hillel's best known line in Avot: If I am not for myself, who is for me? And when I am for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?

Hillel's first teaching in Avot: be one of the students of Aharon, loving peace and chasing after peace, loving people and bringing them close to Torah.

The Mishnah in Avot, whose first chapter lists who passed the Torah on to whom, says that Hillel and Shammai received it from the pair before them. Two Mishnayot earlier (Avot 1:10), that pair is named as Shemaya and Avtalyon.

The last of the five Pairs

The Mishnah in Chagigah lists five pairs of sages, one pair after another. In each pair one sage says "to lean" and the other says "not to lean" (the Mishnah gives only these words). Hillel is in the fifth and last pair. His first partner was Menachem, and the two did not disagree. Then Menachem left and Shammai came in. Shammai says not to lean and Hillel says to lean.

The same baraita says Hillel served Shemaya and Avtalyon and calls them the two great men of the generation. To serve a sage means to learn from him up close.

Rashi says that the first Shimon in that list, Rabban Shimon, was Hillel's son. The baraita itself does not say so.

A baraita in the Gemara in Sukkah says Hillel the Elder had eighty students. It names the greatest of them as Yonatan ben Uziel and the least of them as Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai.

On the roof in the snow

One day Hillel found no work, and the guard would not let him in. He climbed up and sat at the opening in the roof to hear Shemaya and Avtalyon teach. It was a Friday in the winter, and snow fell on him. In the morning Shemaya and Avtalyon noticed the room was dark, looked up, and found him under the snow. They washed him and sat him by the fire, though it was Shabbat, and said that this man is worth setting Shabbat aside for.

The Pesach that fell on Shabbat

Once the fourteenth of Nisan fell on Shabbat. The Bnei Beteira had forgotten and did not know if the Pesach offering may be brought on Shabbat. They sent for Hillel. He answered that it may, and proved it from the tamid, the daily offering, which is brought on Shabbat. The Torah uses the same word, "its set time", for both.

"I heard this law and forgot it"

In the same story, right after Hillel became nasi, the baraita says he began to taunt them with words. He told them that their own laziness in not serving Shemaya and Avtalyon is what caused a man from Bavel to become nasi over them. Then they asked him what to do if someone forgot to bring the knife before Shabbat. Hillel said he had heard that law and forgotten it. He said to leave it to the Jewish people: if they are not prophets, they are the children of prophets. The next day he saw what they did, remembered the law, and said that this is what he had received from Shemaya and Avtalyon.

The Gemara links the taunt and the forgetting

Later in the same discussion, Rav Yehuda says in the name of Rav, an Amora in Bavel, that anyone who acts proudly, if he is a sage, his wisdom leaves him. The passage brings Hillel as the proof: he began to taunt them with words, and then he had to tell them, "This law I heard, and I forgot it."

The man who bet he could make Hillel angry

A baraita in the Gemara in Shabbat says a person should always be humble and gentle like Hillel, and not quick to anger like Shammai. It tells of two men who made a bet: whoever could make Hillel lose his temper would get four hundred zuz (a zuz is a silver coin). One of them came again and again on a Friday, while Hillel was washing his hair, and asked odd questions. Each time Hillel wrapped himself in his cloak, came out, called him "my son" and answered. In the end the man said he had lost four hundred zuz because of Hillel. Hillel told him to be careful with his temper, and that it was worth losing that much and as much again, as long as Hillel does not get angry.

The whole Torah on one foot

A non-Jew came to Shammai and asked to be converted on condition that he be taught the whole Torah while standing on one foot. Shammai pushed him away with the builder's measuring stick in his hand. He came to Hillel, and Hillel converted him. Hillel told him: what you hate, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah. The rest is its explanation. Go and learn it.

Honoring Shabbat: two ways

A baraita in the Gemara in Beitzah says that Shammai ate all his days with the honor of Shabbat in mind. If he found a fine animal he said, "This is for Shabbat." If he then found a better one, he set the second aside and ate the first. Hillel had a different way. All he did was for the sake of Heaven, and the baraita brings the verse "Blessed is Hashem day by day." The Gemara then quotes a second baraita that gives the same two views in the names of Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel.

The prozbul

The Torah cancels loans in the shemitta year, the seventh year. The Mishnah in Sheviit says Hillel saw that people were holding back from lending to each other, and that by this they were breaking a warning written in the Torah. So he set up the prozbul. A loan with a prozbul is not cancelled. The next Mishnah gives the heart of the prozbul: the lender declares before judges that he hands over to them every debt owed to him, so that he may collect it whenever he wants.

The prozbul: for the good of the world

The Mishnah in Gittin lists rules that were set up "for the good of the world". One of them is that Hillel set up the prozbul.

A tradition he received, and a proof they could have tried

In the baraita Hillel gives two proofs: a gezera shava (learning one law from another because the Torah uses the same word in both) and a kal vachomer (if the lighter case is so, the stricter case surely is). The Gemara says the kal vachomer can be knocked down, and that Hillel said it first, they knocked it down, and then he told them the gezera shava. The Gemara asks: once he had learned the gezera shava, why did he need the kal vachomer? It answers that he was speaking on their terms. A person does not make a gezera shava on his own, so they could not have known that one. A kal vachomer a person may work out alone, so they should have worked it out. Their answer to him was that this kal vachomer can be knocked down.

Say it in your teacher's words

Hillel said that a full hin (a liquid measure) of drawn water makes a mikveh (a pool for purification) unfit. The Mishnah in Eduyot, which the Gemara in Shabbat quotes here, adds a reason for his wording: a person must say a teaching in the words of his teacher.

Rashi: why Hillel said "hin"

Rashi explains that line. He says hin is a word of the Torah and not the usual word of the Mishnah, and Hillel used it because that is how he heard the law from Shemaya and Avtalyon. Rashi then adds that his own teachers explained the line another way, and that he is unsure about their explanation.

In those three, the Sages held like neither

In each of the three disputes between Hillel and Shammai themselves, the Mishnah says that the Sages held like neither of them. This is about Hillel the man. It is different from the rule about the school, Beit Hillel.

How could Hillel set aside a Torah law?

The Gemara in Gittin asks how Hillel could rule that a loan is not cancelled if the Torah cancels it. Abaye, an Amora in Bavel, answers that Hillel's rule is about the seventh year "in this time", and follows the view of Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi. The Gemara then quotes that view in a baraita: when the shemitta of land does not apply, the cancelling of loans does not apply. The Gemara adds that the Sages set up that loans are still cancelled, as a reminder of the seventh year. The Gemara goes on to ask how the Sages could do that, and Abaye and Rava each give an answer.

The law follows Beit Hillel (the school, not the man)

This passage is about Beit Hillel, the school that carries Hillel's name, not about Hillel himself. Rabbi Abba says in the name of Shmuel that Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel argued for three years, each saying the law is like them. Then a bat kol, a voice from Heaven, said that both are the words of the living God and the law follows Beit Hillel.

Why the law was fixed like Beit Hillel

The Gemara asks: if both are the words of the living God, why did Beit Hillel earn having the law fixed like them? It answers that they were easygoing and put up with insult, they taught Beit Shammai's words along with their own, and they even said Beit Shammai's words first. The Gemara gives this as the reason the law was fixed like them. It does not give it as the reason for their opinions.