Talmud su Deuteronomio 28:10

Rebbi Yoḥanan⁴⁷The following notes show that the permission to accomodate Gentile rulers is not prescriptive but can be disregarded by genuinely holy men (though not by any other Jew.) The stories are ordered by rank of the Gentile involved. Rebbi Yoḥanan was reciting Shema‘ when the ἄρχων, the prefect of the district, passed by. He was in danger to be beaten up by prefect’s bodygard but, as ruler of a city with an important Jewish population, he was acquainted with their behavior and their adherence to the νόμος, “the law” of the Torah. was sitting and reciting in front of the Babylonian synagogue of Sepphoris. The prefect passed by and he did not get up before him. They wanted to whip him; he said to them: Let him, he is occupied in the laws of his Creator. Rebbi Ḥanina and Rebbi Joshua ben Levi appeared before the proconsul⁴⁸Ἀνθύπατος “proconsul”, the Roman governor of an entire province. Both prefect and proconsul were also the local military commanders. of Caesarea. He saw them and rose before them. They said to him, you get up before these Jews? He said to them, I saw faces of angels. Rebbi Jonah and Rebbi Jose appeared before Ursicinus⁴⁹The general in charge of all of Syria and Palestine under the Caesar Gallus, around 350 C. E. in Antiochia. He saw them and rose before them. They said to him, you get up before these Jews? He said, I win in battle if I see the faces of these. Rebbi Abun appeared before the king⁵⁰The “king” is either the emperor Diocletian or one of his immediate successors, so probably R. Abun here is R. Abun II. Diocletian changed the formally republican Roman principate into an absolute monarchy in which the sacred person of the emperor required veneration as a godlike person (this was not abolished by his Christian successors.) In particular, after an audience the visitor was supposed to walk backwards with his face always towards the throne. R. Abun’s act was one of denial of the godlike nature of the king. After this incident, R. Abun escaped to Babylonia, as noted in Babli Ḥulin 106a, “when Rabin came, it was because he was in danger of being killed.”. When he left, he turned his neck. They came and wanted to kill him but they saw two sparks of fire emanating from his neck, so they let him go, to affirm what is said (Deut. 28:10): “All peoples of the earth will see that the Name of the Eternal is called over you and they will be afraid of you.⁵¹This is a reference to a statement in Babli 6a: “All peoples of the earth will see that the name of the Eternal is called over you and they will be afraid of you;” the great Rebbi Eliezer said: These are the tefillin on the head. It can be safely assumed that this statement of an Israeli Tanna was known to the editors of the Yerushalmi, so they had no need for an explicit statement that the sparks came from the straps of R. Abun’s tefillin.”