Elhanan ben Ḥushiel
ELHANAN BEN ḤUSHIEL
ELHANAN BEN ḤUSHIEL (first half 11th century), av betdin in *Kairouan, Tunisia. Elhanan went to Kairouan from Italy with his father at the end of the tenth century. His name appears in verses contained in a letter of R. Ḥushiel to R. *Shemariah ben Elhanan (publ. by S. Schechter in jqr, 11 (1899), 643–50). Scholars disagree as to whether Elhanan was the brother of R. *Hananel b. R. Ḥushiel, the well-known commentator of the Talmud, whether there were two sages by the name of Ḥushiel at the same time in Kairouan, or whether Hananel and Elhanan are the same person under different names. Only two of his responsa are extant. In one, the questioner addresses him as: "Our teacher, the great rabbi, the head of the bet din, the head of the schools," from which it may be concluded that as well as being the av bet din in Kairouan he was also the head of one of the yeshivot in that city. He also appears to have written a commentary to the tractates Bava Kamma and Bava Meẓia.
bibliography:
Poznański, in: Festschrift… A. Harkavy (1908), 186–7 (Heb. pt.); Aptowitzer, in: Jahresbericht der Israelitsch-Theologischen Lehranstalt in Wien ( 1929– 1932), 37–39 (1933), 3–50; Mann, in: jqr, 9 (1918/19), 160; idem, in: Tarbiz, 5 (1933/34), 286ff.; Assaf, ibid., 9 (1937/38), 22; Abramson, in: Sinai, 60 (1967), 149–59.
[Simha Assaf]