This answer didn’t please the emperor. After calling Rabi Chutzpit stubborn and brazen, he said, “How long will you Jews continue to trust in your God Who has no power to save you from my hands? My fathers destroyed His Temple and scattered the corpses of His servants around Jerusalem, without burial. Now your God is old, and He no longer has the power to save. If He still had power, He would wreak vengeance for Himself, for His people Israel, and for His Temple, just as He did to Pharaoh, Sisera and all the kings of Canaan.”
Rabi Chutzpit cried bitterly and rent his clothes in mourning when he heard this blasphemy against Hashem. Then he was taken out to be killed. He was first stoned, and then hanged.
As an added punishment, his tongue was cut out of his mouth and dragged through the dirt by swine. According to Kiddushin 39b, Elisha ben Abuya saw this and asked, “How can it be that a tongue which produced such pearls should end up licking the dirt?” When he could find no answer that satisfied his questions about Hashem’s treatment of the righteous, he was driven to heresy. He is known in the Talmud as “Acher.”
However, there is a very different lesson we can take from the story of Rabi Chutzpit, who never questioned Hashem’s judgments. When he asked for one more day so that he could accept the yoke of Heaven and proclaim the greatness and uniqueness of Hashem two more times, he showed us the correct way to view the gift of life and the gift of speech—two precious gifts from Hashem.
Next Week: For These I Cry —Rabi Elazar ben Shamua
