Left in the Attic

Before he died, Rebbi Elazar told his wife, "I know that the sages are angry with me, because I turned over many of their relatives, and they may not attend my funeral. You shall leave me in the attic and do not be afraid of me."

She did as he asked, and kept him in the attic for eighteen to twenty years after his death. Every day she went up to look at his hair and found nothing amiss. Once a hair fell out, and blood was visible. Another time she found a worm in his ear and was upset, until he appeared to her that night in a dream and said, "It is nothing to be upset about, for this is a punishment for my having allowed a young scholar to be insulted in my presence."

After his passing, when two people came to his house over a lawsuit, they would stand at the door and state their cases. A voice would then come from the attic: "You, ploni, are just" or "You, ploni, are unjust with your claims."

During a quarrel, a neighbor once said to Rebbi Elazar's wife, "Let her be like her husband, who was not worthy of burial." When the sages heard this, they said it was an insult to the deceased and that he must be buried. According to others, his father, Rebbi Shimon Bar Yochai, appeared to the sages in a dream and said, "There is a young pigeon among you and you are neglecting to bring it to me."

The people of Achbarin refused to give up the body, because as long as it lay in the attic no wild beast had entered their town. On Erev Yom Kippur, when the townspeople were busy, the sages hired men from the neighboring village of Biri to remove Rebbi Elazar's body. They brought him to his father's cave in Meron and buried him there.