A lengthy talmudic story tells of a man from the city of Nehardea who entered a butcher’s shop in the city of Pumbedita and demanded some meat.1 When the man was told that he must wait until the attendant of Rav Yehuda b. Ezekiel is served, he rages, “who is Yehuda b. Shewiskel to receive before me!” – omitting Yehuda’s title “Rav” and employing a derisive portmanteau of Rav Yehuda’s patronymic “Ezekiel,” and the word for a type of roasted meat, shewisqa.2 When informed of the slight against him, Rav Yehuda excommunicates the man, while the rabbi’s students further advise him that this man regularly insults others by calling them slaves. Rav Yehuda cites a dictum, which he attributes to Shmuel, to the effect that anyone who calls others a slave is himself the descendent of slaves. This man then sues Rav Yehuda for defamation, and they appear before a judge. The man insists that, far from being a slave, he is in fact a descendant of the priestly and royal Hasmonean line. Rav Yehuda counters by conveniently furnishing another statement which he once again attributes to Shmuel: “Whoever says ‘I am descended from the house of the Hasmoneans’ is a slave.”