Shmuel ha-Katan

Shmuel ha-Katan (literally Shmuel the Small) was a Babylonian Jew considered a great early religious scholar. He was one of the second generation of Tannaim, who served under the patriarch Gamliel II of Yavneh, during the last two decades of the 1st century CE.

He is supposed to have contributed to the calculation-based Hillel II Hebrew calendar in the time shortly after the destruction of the second Temple in Jerusalem; this calendar brought an end to the practice of declaring the new moon from the testimony of witnesses, and to have established some of the standard prayers of the Jewish liturgy, the Siddur. Particularly, he wrote the Birkat HaMinim benediction, the 13th blessing in the silent prayer said three times daily, the Amidah. This prayer condemns heretics, most likely the Jewish Christians.

External links

• Jeffrey M. Cohen, "Shmuel HaKatan and the political background to Avot 4:19" originally in Judaism, Spring, 1995