1. BT Hagigah 15a.
2. And although the Talmud later contemplates the question of why it is permitted to learn from a rabbi who has gone sour, in this story the ongoing master-student relationship between Another and Rabbi Meir goes unremarked.
3. Jeremiah 3:22; see also Jeremiah 3:14.
4. Isaiah 48:22.
5. BT Hagigah 15b.
6. Consider, in contrast, that the rabbis did impose the ban on the great sage Rabbi Eliezer in the aftermath of the oven episode discussed in part I. Rabbi Eliezer’s fault was to be right about the true meaning of the Law and to insist on his rightness even to the point of threatening the rabbis’ authority. That subjected him to discipline. It also subjected the rabbis in turn to the consequences of punishing one of their number whose powers extended to unwittingly killing the prince of his day through his own prayers. Rabbi Eliezer, beloved of God, was the furthest thing from a bad Jew. Nevertheless, his pious challenge to rabbinic authority merited punishment more than Elisha’s violation of the Law.