This was so keenly felt by Hiyya that when asked by his nephew for a blessing he said: "May God preserve you from an evil that is worse than death—a contentious woman".
Disguising herself, she went to him and asked whether the obligation of propagating the human race extended to women; receiving an answer in the negative, she took drugs which rendered her barren.
[4] However, Hiyya's good nature was so great that he overwhelmed her with presents, meeting the astonishment of his nephew by saying that men should show themselves grateful to their wives for rearing their children and for keeping their husbands from sin.
[6] The high reputation acquired by him in Babylonia had preceded him to Israel, and he soon became the center of the collegiate circle of the patriarch Judah haNasi.
Regarding him more as a colleague than as a pupil, Judah treated Hiyya as his guest whenever the latter chanced to be at Sepphoris, consulted him, and took him with him when he went to Caesarea to visit Antoninus.
While the latter was away, the prophet Elijah, assuming Hiyya's features, presented himself to Judah and healed a toothache from which the patriarch had suffered for thirteen years.
[11] His prayers are said to have brought rain in a time of drought and to have caused a lion, which had rendered the roads unsafe, to leave Israel.
Simeon ben Lakish names him after the two other Babylonians, Ezra and Hillel, who came to Israel to restore the study of the Torah.
It is related that when Hanina bar Hama boasted that he could reconstruct the Torah by logic should it be forgotten, Hiyya said: "I am able to devise a method by which the Torah would never be forgotten by Israel, for I would bring flax seed, sow it, spin thread, twist ropes, and prepare traps by means of which I would catch gazelles.
Some of them are introduced in the Talmud with the words "Tane Rabbi Hiyya," and are considered the only correct version of the halakhot omitted by Judah.
From the time of Sherira Gaon, Hiyya was generally regarded as the author of the Tosefta, but the supposition has been rejected on very strong grounds by modern scholars.
Although very conservative, he opposed the issuing of new prohibitions: "Make not the fence higher than the Law itself, lest it should fall and destroy the plants".
Sayings of his, and his controversies with Simeon ben Halafta, Bar Kappara, Jonathan, and Jannai are frequently quoted in aggadic literature.