Levi ben Sisi

Who is Levi ben Sisi?

Levi ben Sisi or Levi bar Sisi was a Jewish scholar, disciple of the patriarch Judah I, and school associate of his son Simeon; one of the semi-tannaim of the last decades of the 2nd century and of the early decades of the 3rd century.

Levi ben Sisi assisted Judah in the compilation of the Mishnah and contributed baraitot. Many of Levi's baraitot were eventually embodied in a compilation known as Ḳiddushin de-Be Levi. In the Babylonian Talmud Levi is seldom quoted with his patronymic, and neither in that nor in the Jerusalem Talmud nor in the Midrashim is he quoted with the title of "Rabbi". Keeping this in mind, the student of rabbinics will easily determine whether passages written under the name "Levi" without a patronymic must be credited to Levi bar Sisi or to a younger namesake who is almost always cited as "R. Levi". But although Levi bar Sisi is not given the title "Rab," he was highly esteemed among the learned, and in many instances where an anonymous passage is introduced with the statement למדין לפני חכמים it is to be understood that the argument referred to was advanced by Levi before Judah I.