Ṭarfon

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ṬARFON

ṬARFON (late first and early second centuries ce), Palestinian tanna. A Jewish resident of Lod, he was the teacher of Yehudah bar Ilʿai and a prominent leader of the generation of rabbis active at the seaside town of Yavneh after the destruction in 70 ce of the Temple in Jerusalem.

There are two strands within the traditions associated with Ṭarfon. One group of traditions makes Ṭarfon subservient to his colleague ʿAqivaʾ ben Yosef and occasionally mocks Ṭarfon for foolishness in his behavior or opinions. A second group of traditions cites Ṭarfon's actions as precedents for the rulings of Yehudah bar Ilʿai and appears to have been formulated by Yehudah's disciples.

In establishing the criteria for legal decisions on the performance of religious obligations, Ṭarfon emphasized the importance of deed over intention, of formal action or objective fact over subjective thought. This posture differs sharply from that of ʿAqivaʾ, who placed greater emphasis on the role of intention. In several instances Ṭarfon's view is included in the text as a foil for the authoritative opinion of ʿAqivaʾ.

Ṭarfon's major rulings frequently concern rituals performed by priests. In matters of dispute he consistently ruled in favor of the priestly families. He ruled, for instance, that a priest may receive gifts of heave-offerings of wine and oil from a householder throughout the year, an economic advantage for the priest. Ṭarfon's dicta emphasized that the priests could play a central role in the life of the Jews even after the destruction of the Temple.

Bibliography

Joel Gereboff's Rabbi Tarfon: The Tradition, the Man and Early Rabbinic Judaism (Missoula, Mont., 1979) presents a systematic study and analysis of all the materials concerning this rabbi. In Tannaitic Symposia (in Hebrew), 3 vols. (Jerusalem, 1967), Israel Konovitz collects all the references to Ṭarfon in rabbinic literature.