רבי יוסי בר חנינא

Rabbi Yose bar Chanina was an amora of Eretz Yisrael, of the close of the second generation and of the third, a talmid of Rabbi Yochanan who served as a dayan. Rabbi Yochanan gave him semichah himself, and he grew in Torah until he was reckoned a talmid chaver to his rebbi, differing with him in halachah more than once. Through Rabbi Yochanan’s beit midrash he came to know Reish Lakish and Rabbi Elazar ben Pedat, and he is brought differing with them too.

The Gemara cites him a great many times, and other amoraim bring halachah in his name, among them Rabbi Abbahu and Rav Chama bar Ukba. Rav Asi called him a great man, and it was said of him as a dayan that he knew how to descend to the depth of a case. He was a central enough figure that the phrase in the Gemara “they laughed at it in the West” — that is, in Eretz Yisrael — is taken to mean him. Because he was an expert dayan, some Rishonim, the Rambam and the Ramah among them, hold that the halachah follows him even where he differs with Rabbi Yochanan; the Rashba holds that Rabbi Yochanan prevails, and the Rosh explains this is because Rabbi Yochanan was his principal rebbi.

Among his teachings: one who says words of Torah in public and they are not sweet to those who hear them as honey, it were better for him not to have said them; and any love that carries no rebuke with it is not love, for rebuke brings love. Two of his rulings that entered the halachah are that a person’s courtyard acquires for him without his knowledge, and that the tefillot were instituted by the Avot. After he was niftar, Rabbi Zeira said that he had appeared to him in a dream, and that when asked where he was set he answered: beside Rabbi Yochanan.