Halafta

'willow'),[a] commonly mispronounced Halafta, was a rabbi who lived in Sepphoris in the Galilee during the late 1st and early 2nd centuries CE (second generation of tannaim).

He is cited without patronymic or cognomen in the Mishnah, but as Abba Helpetha in the Talmuds.

[11] In Derekh Eretz Rabbah a certain Abba Helpetha cites his father Abba Hagra,[b] and the same Helpetha ben Hagra cites Johanan ben Nuri in t. Bava Kamma 9:31 and b. Shabbat 105b.

[16] He was a senior contemporary of Gamaliel II and Johanan ben Nuri[17] and conducted a rabbinic school at Sepphoris.

He communicated to Gamaliel II an order given by his grandfather Gamaliel I, and which he had himself heard in the last years of Judea's independence;[20] he subsequently participated in the Akavia controversy,[21] and later he is met with in the company of Eleazar ben Azariah, Ḥoẓpit the Interpreter, Yeshebab, and Johanan ben Nuri, when they were old.