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Relations with Christianity.
During the persecutions of the Jewish Christians in Palestine, Eliezer was charged with being a member of that sect, and was summoned before the penal tribunal. Being asked by the governor, "How can a great man like thee engage in such idle things?" he simply replied, "The judge is right." The judge, understanding thereby Eliezer's denial of all connection with Christianity, released him, while Rabbi Eliezer understood by "judge" God, justifying the judgment of God which had brought this trial upon him. That he should be suspected of apostasy grieved him sorely; and though some of his pupils tried to comfort him, he remained for some time inconsolable. At last he remembered that once, while at Sepphoris, he had met a sectary who communicated to him a singular halakah in the name of Jesus; that he had approved of the halakah and had really enjoyed hearing it, and, he added, "Thereby I transgressed the injunction (Prov. v. 8), 'Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house,' which the Rabbis apply to sectarianism as well as to heresy" ('Ab. Zarah 16b; Eccl. R. i. 8). The suspicion of apostasy and the summons before the dreaded tribunal came, therefore, as just punishment. This event in his life may have suggested to him the ethical rule, "Keep away from what is indecent and from that which appears to be indecent" (Tosef., Ḥul. ii. 24). It is suggested that his sayings, "Instructing a woman in the Law is like teaching her blasphemy" (Soṭah iii. 4); "Let the Law be burned rather than entrusted to a woman" (ib.); and "A woman's wisdom is limited to the handling of the distaff" (Yoma 66b), also date from that time, he having noticed that women were easily swayed in matters of faith.
Separated from his colleagues and excluded from the deliberations of the Sanhedrin, Eliezer passed his last years of life unnoticed and in comparative solitude. It is probably from this melancholy period that his aphorism dates: "Let the honor of thy colleague [variant, "pupils"] be as dear to thee as thine own, and be not easily moved to anger. Repent one day before thy death. Warm thyself by the fire of the wise men, but be cautious of their burning coals [= "slight them not"], that thou be not burned; for their bite is the bite of a jackal, their sting is that of a scorpion, their hissing is that of a snake, and all their words are fiery coals" (Ab. ii. 10; Ab. R. N. xv. 1). When asked how one can determine the one day before his death, he answered: "So much the more must one repent daily, lest he die to-morrow; and it follows that he must spend all his days in piety" (Ab. R. N. l.c. 4; Shab. 153a).
Shalom
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