Rabbi Anani ben Sason (Hebrew: רבי ענני בר ששון; also called 'Anani, 'Inani, and 'Inyani) was a Jewish Talmudist who lived in the Land of Israel in the third century (third generation of amoraim).
Teachings He was a contemporary of Rabbi Ammi. He rarely discussed Halakhot, and his discussions of them were not original.Shabbat 64b Once he recited a Halakhah in the patriarch's mansion, without naming its author, which provoked Ammi to ask: "Is it his own? It is what Rabbi Eleazar had reported in the name of Rabbi Oshaiah".Moed Kattan 24b
In aggadah, he sometimes reported the sayings of others, but more often he was original. Thus, to explain the juxtaposition of the laws of sacrifice and priestly vestments,Exodus 28-29 he argues that the priestly vestments were to provide atonement just as the sacrifices do. He represents the miter as atoning for haughtiness, and cites R. Chanina as saying, "That which rests highest on the priest atones for one's considering himself high"; and similarly with the rest of the priestly garments.Zevachim 88b; Arachin 16a; compare Yerushalmi Yoma 7 44b; Leviticus Rabbah 10
Referring to God's appearance in the burning bushExodus 3:2-4 he remarks, "The Holy One—blessed be He!—said to Moses, 'When I will it, one of my angels stretches forth his hand from heaven and reaches to the ground,' as Scripture says,Ezekiel 8:3 'He put forth the form of a hand, and took me by a lock of my head'; and when it so pleases me, I make three angels sit under one tree;Genesis 18:4 when I choose, my glory fills the universe, as it is written,Jeremiah 23:24 'Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord'; and when I so willed, I spoke to Job in a whirlwind, as it is saidJob 38:1, 40:6 "The Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind"".Exodus Rabbah 3, where the interpretation is somewhat forced
The same idea, though in different form, is found elsewhereGenesis Rabbah 4, Pesikta Rabbati 1:47 in the name of R. Chanina b. Issi (Sissi). As the name of the subject of this article is sometimes written 'Inani and also 'InyaniCompare Dikdukei Sofrim to Shabbat 64b, Moed Kattan 24b, Zevachim 88b—which forms are dialectic variations of Chanina, though with the initial aleph instead of ayin—the circumstance probably suggested the identity of the two names.Compare Bacher, Ag. Pal. Amor. iii. 547, 4-5 But this identification meets with insuperable chronological difficulties, Chanina b. Sissi being a contemporary of Johanan,Yerushalmi Sanhedrin 2 20c while 'Anani was younger even than Johanan's pupils.
Isaac ReichlinHa-Kerem, 1887, p. 214b aptly suggests that Anani's real name was Ananiel, as it is still preserved in Exodus Rabbah 3:7, and that its apocopated form was adopted to avoid the mention of the name "El" (God) in common speech.
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