It is known that each chapter in shas has a name comprising of the first few words in the masechet (for example יְצִיאוֹת הַשַּׁבָּת, הַמְקַנֵּא etc). My question is regarding the last chapter (Chapter 11) in Sanhedrin called חֵלֶק. Why is it called חֵלֶק if the first two words are כל ישראל ? It doesn't seem to follow the pattern?
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1Probably because it talks about those who do/don't have a portion in the world to come and that is the main thrust of the perek – Dov Apr 17 '23 at 20:37
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1Nice Q. It's not totally unique. Shabat ch. 9 is often called "Rabbi Akiva" even though the first word is "amar." I think I've sometimes seen the first two prakim of Shviit called "sadeh hailan" and "sadeh halavan" because they both begin with "ad aimatai." But chelek certainly seems to be a significant deviation. I like @שלום's answer. Maybe we also don't want to imply that "kol israel" is something that can be contained in a finite number of pages and "finished" chas v'shalom. – Avraham Apr 17 '23 at 21:49
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It would be interesting to see a list comparing how well the names match the actual first words to get a quantitative sense of how anomalous this is. – Avraham Apr 17 '23 at 22:43