Елиша бен Абуя: Еретик және оның ізбасарлары

Rabbi of end of Second Temple period

Elisha ben Abuyah (spelled variously, including Elisha ben Avuya) was a rabbi and Jewish religious authority born in Jerusalem sometime before 70 CE. After he adopted a worldview considered heretical by his fellow Tannaim, the rabbis of the Talmud refrained from relating teachings in his name and referred to him as the "Other One" (אחר, Acher). In the writings of the Geonim this name appears as "Achor" ("backwards"), because Elisha was considered to have "turned backwards" by embracing heresy.

According to Louis Ginzberg "it is almost impossible to derive from rabbinical sources a clear picture of his personality, and modern historians have differed greatly in their estimate of him. According to Grätz, he was a Karpotian Gnostic; according to Siegfried, a follower of Philo; according to Dubsch, a Christian; according to Smolenskin and Weiss, a victim of the inquisitor Akiva."

Ginzberg suggests that Elisha became a Sadducee, since the Jerusalem Talmud mentions Elisha's betrayal of the Pharisees. Also, one of the reasons given for Elisha's apostasy is characteristic of a Sadducee perspective: Elisha is said to have seen a child lose his life while fulfilling two laws for which the observance of the Torah promised a "long life" honoring one's father and mother, and sending away a mother bird,

Ginzburg writes that the mention of the "Holy of Holies" in this passage is not an anachronism, as Grätz thinks, for while it is true that Eliezer and Joshua were present as the geonim par excellence at Elisha's circumcision—which must, therefore, have occurred after the death of Johanan ben Zakkai (80)—it is also true that the "Holy of Holies" is likewise mentioned in connection with Rabbi Akiva; indeed, the use of this expression is due to the fact that the Rabbis held holiness to be inherent in the place, not in the building. The same passage from the Jerusalem Talmud refers to Elisha as being alive when his pupil Rabbi Meir had become a renowned teacher. According to the above assumption, he must have reached his seventieth year at that time. Of all Elisha's colleagues he alone, perhaps in the hope of reclaiming him for Judaism, continued to associate with him and discuss with him scientific subjects, not heeding the remonstrances of some pious rabbis who regarded this association with some suspicion. Meir's attachment for Elisha was so great that on the death of the latter he is said to have spread his mantle over his friend's grave. Thereupon, according to a legend, a pillar of smoke arose from it, and Meir, paraphrasing Ruth 3:13, exclaimed, "Rest here in the night; in the dawn of happiness the God of mercy will deliver thee; if not, I will be thy redeemer". The same aggadah adds that at the death of Meir smoke ceased to issue from Elisha's grave.

Jacob Gordin wrote a Yiddish play, Elisha Ben Abuyah (1906); it was performed unsuccessfully in New York City during Gordin's lifetime, and more successfully in numerous productions after his death; the title role was written for Jacob Adler, the only actor ever to play it. In the 1911 production after Gordin's death, the fallen woman Beata was played by Adler's wife Sara, Ben Abuyah's faithful friend Toivye Avyoini was played by Sigmund Mogulesko, and his daughter (who, in the play, runs away with a Roman soldier) by the Adlers' daughter Frances; in some of the last performances of the play, toward the end of Jacob Adler's career, the daughter was played by Frances's younger, and eventually more famous, sister Stella. Gordin's Ben Abuyah is clearly a surrogate for Gordin himself, and to some extent for Adler: an unbeliever, but one who thinks of himself, unalterably, as a Jew, and who rejects Christianity even more firmly than Judaism, a man who behaves ethically and who dies haunted by a vision of "terrible Jewish suffering", condemned by the rabbis generally, but lauded as a great Jew by his disciple Rabbi Meir.

Conservative Rabbi Milton Steinberg fictionalized the life of Elisha ben Abuyah in his controversial 1939 novel, As A Driven Leaf. Steinberg's novel wrestles with the 2nd century Jewish struggle to reconcile Rabbinic Judaism both culturally and philosophically with Greek Hellenistic society. In Elisha's struggle, Steinberg speculates about questions and events that may have driven such a man to apostasy, and addresses questions of Jewish self determination in the Roman Empire, the Bar Kochba Revolt (132 135), and above all the interdependence of reason and faith. Although the novel draws on Talmudic tradition to create the framework for Elisha's life, Steinberg himself wrote that his novel "springs from historical data without any effort at rigid conformity or literal confinement to them."

Iraqi Israeli author Shimon Ballas' novel Outcast, published in English in 2007, features an Elisha like character. Outcast is narrated by Haroun Soussan, a Jewish convert to Islam. For Iraq, he left Judaism, embraced Islam, and fought Zionism as the nonpareil, ethnocentrist threat to his dreams. He has lost his closest friends because of politics, particularly Assad Nissim, a principled Iraqi Jew forced to depart for Israel. Despite everything Soussan believes and has done, however, what he was is not forgotten, and he feels an outcast not merely from the Jews and the West but within his homeland. Based on a historical figure, Ahmad (Nissim) Soussan's work ended up being used as anti Jewish propaganda during the era of Saddam Hussein. Commenting on the use of Soussan's writing on Judaism by propagandists, his friend Assad Nissim likens him to Elisha Ben Abuya, or the one they called Aher, the Outcast. In Hebrew, the title of the book is V'Hu Aher, which means And He is an Other or And He is a Different One.

Elisha is revealed to be the main antagonist of the series, a mystic driven mad by the sight of the Outer God Azathoth during his explorations of the seven heavens. His cutting of the root is a literal severance of the astral tether anchoring his soul to his own body.

The story of Elisha's transformation into Aher is contrasted with the story of Job as an allegory for how the protagonist should bear with his current circumstances. A parallel is also drawn between his occupation of training artificially intelligent software agents and how asking difficult questions lead to Elisha's exile.