Youth
Even as a boy Samuel displayed rare ability (Yer. Ketuvim v. 30a; Yer. Peah viii. 21b). His first teacher was an otherwise unknown man, and Samuel, who knew more about a certain legal question than did his teacher, would not submit to ill treatment by him (Ḥul. 107b). Then Samuel's father, who was himself a prominent teacher of the Law, recognized as such even by Rab (Abba Arika; Ket. 51b), undertook to instruct the boy. As he seems to have been unequal to this task he sent him to Nisibis to attend the school of the rabbi who had predicted the boy's birth, that he might there acquire a knowledge of the Law ("Tanya," Hilkot "Abel," ed. Horowitz, p. 137, quoted from Yer.; comp. also Mordecai on M. Ḳ. 889). Samuel seems to have remained only a short time at Nisibis. On his return to Nehardea he studied under Levi b. Sisi, who was in Babylon before the death of Judah ha-Nasi (see A. Krochmal in "He-Ḥaluẓ," i. 69), and who exerted a great influence on Samuel's development. Samuel made such rapid progress and became so proficient in his studies that he soon associated as an equal with his teacher (Hoffmann, "Mar Samuel," p. 70).
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Famous quotes containing the word youth:
“Meantime the education of the general mind never stops. The reveries of the true and simple are prophetic. What the tender poetic youth dreams, and prays, and paints today, but shuns the ridicule of saying aloud, shall presently be the resolutions of public bodies, then shall be carried as grievance and bill of rights through conflict and war, and then shall be triumphant law and establishment for a hundred years, until it gives place, in turn, to new prayers and pictures.”
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“In Homer and Chaucer there is more of the innocence and serenity of youth than in the more modern and moral poets. The Iliad is not Sabbath but morning reading, and men cling to this old song, because they still have moments of unbaptized and uncommitted life, which give them an appetite for more.”
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“The complete life, the perfect pattern, includes old age as well as youth and maturity. The beauty of the morning and the radiance of noon are good, but it would be a very silly person who drew the curtains and turned on the light in order to shut out the tranquillity of the evening. Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.”
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965)