יוסי בן יועזר

Rav Yose ben Yoezer Ish Tzeredah was a kohen of Tzeredah and the first Nasi of the Sanhedrin in the era of the Zugot, the pairs of leaders whose line runs down to Hillel and Shammai. His partner was Yose ben Yochanan Ish Yerushalayim, who stood beside him as second; by the old ordering, the chacham named first in each pair held the nesiut and the one named after him served at his side. The mishnah in Avot places the two of them directly after Antigonus Ish Socho. Rav Yitzchak Isaac HaLevi explains that the office of Nasi stood empty for some two decades after Antigonus, and that when the Hellenizers gained ground under Yosef the tax-farmer and duties once carried by the kohen gadol went untended, the Sanhedrin turned to Rav Yose ben Yoezer — a kohen — even though his colleague was the older man.

His name stands at the opening of halachic machloket itself: the great dispute of the Zugot era over semichah, whether one lays hands upon the head of a korban on Yom Tov, begins with his view that one does not, and tradition holds this to be the first disagreement in halachah. Together with Yose ben Yochanan he decreed tumah upon the lands of the nations and upon vessels of glass. His care in the laws of tumah and taharah earned him the title chasid shebekehunah, the most pious of the priesthood, while in Eduyot he permitted three matters that had been treated as forbidden, and so was called Yose sharya, Yose who permits. Best known of all is his mishnah in Avot: let your house be a gathering place for chachamim, sit in the dust of their feet, and drink in their words with thirst — words that Rav Yitzchak Isaac HaLevi reads against the bitterness of that generation, when Torah had to be strengthened in every place it could be.

Rav Yose gave over his property to the Beit HaMikdash rather than leave it to his son, who had gone off the derech; it is told that the son afterward found a costly pearl inside a fish he had bought. Of the two Yosefs it was said, once they were gone, that the eshkolot had ceased — the men in whom everything was held together. The Midrash relates that Rav Yose was taken out to be crucified, and that on the way his sister’s son, the Hellenizing kohen gadol Alkimus, taunted him with the honors his own path had won him; the tanna answered that if such is the portion of those who do the will of Hashem, what awaits those who anger Him. Alkimus took his own life in remorse, and tradition holds that he did teshuvah at the end.