Judah bar Ilai

Almost at the beginning of Hadrian's persecution, Judah was forced to flee from Usha and conceal himself, and he often related episodes of the "times of peril".

[6] When, after the revocation of Hadrian's edicts of persecution, the pupils of Akiba held their reunions and councils in Usha, Judah received the right to express his opinion before all others.

[7][8] He was intimately associated with the patriarch Simeon ben Gamaliel II, in whose house he is said to have been entrusted with the decision in matters pertaining to the religious law.

[9] He was also able to win the confidence of the Romans by his praise of their civilizing tendencies as shown in their construction of bridges, highways, and marketplaces.

He drank no wine except on the days when Jewish law required,[11] and recommended against eating expensive meats so as to avoid developing a taste for luxuries.

[15] The study of Halakha was his chief and dearest occupation, and he lamented the fact that such a devotion was no longer widespread as in former times.

[18] Obadiah of Bertinoro, after visiting his tomb, wrote in 1495: 2,000 cubits from Safed is the grave of Rabbi Judah beRabbi Ilai, and there is a little village there called Ein Zeitoun.

[19]Italian pilgrim Moses ben Mordecai Bassola wrote in 1523: I was in Ein Zeitoun, which is a mil from Safed .

They say that an Arab woman climbed the tree on the gave to gather almonds, disdaining to ask the saint's permission first as she had been instructed by others and mocking them instead.

Yet it is only they who interpret or expound the Bible who receive this latter name; for he who makes a literal translation of a verse of Scripture is a "liar," and he who adds to it a "blasphemer".

In his Biblical interpretation and in the deduction of legal requirements from it, Judah adheres strictly to the method of his teacher Akiba, whose rules of exegesis he adopts.

[28] Nevertheless, he interprets also according to the older Halakah in cases where he deduces a definition from the literal wording of a passage, and bases his explanation strictly on its obvious meaning, "debarim ki-ktavan".