Study Taanit folio 21A with parallel Hebrew-English text, traditional commentary, and modern study tools. Free access to Babylonian Talmud online.
due to the fact that there are many soldiers in the city of Meḥoza, and if I let them all eat, they will take all the food I own.
§ The Talmud relates another story that involves an unstable wall. Ilfa and R' Yoḥanan studied Torah together, and as a result they became very hard-pressed for money. They said: Let us get up and go and engage in commerce, and we will fulfill, with regard to ourselves, the verse: “Although there s
R' Yoḥanan heard that one angel said to the other: Let us knock this wall down upon them and kill them, as they abandon eternal life of Torah study and engage in temporal life for their own sustenance. The other angel said to him: Leave them, as there is one of them whose time of achievement stands
R' Yoḥanan said to Ilfa: I will return home and fulfill with regard to myself the contrary verse: “For the poor shall never cease out of the land” (Deuteronomy 15:11). R' Yoḥanan returned to the study hall, and Ilfa did not return, but went to engage in business instead. By the time that Ilfa came
His colleagues said to Ilfa: If the Master had sat and studied, instead of going off to his business ventures, wouldn’t the Master have been appointed head of the academy? Ilfa went and suspended himself from the mast [askariya] of a ship, saying: If there is anyone who can ask me a question concer