Biography
Rabbi Yossi HaKohen was a tanna, counted in Pirkei Avot among the five principal disciples of Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai. His master praised him as a chasid — a man of marked piety. He appears in the account in Chagigah where, after a profound encounter, he brought the matter before Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai, who blessed his students with the words “Fortunate are you and fortunate is she who bore you,” describing how in his dream they were seated together at Har Sinai.
Together with Rabbi Zechariah ben HaKatzav he gave testimony, cited in Ketubot and in Eduyot, concerning a Jewish woman who had been held as a pledge in Ashkelon: though her family sought to distance her, witnesses attested that she had neither been secluded nor defiled, and the Sages ruled on the weight of that testimony. In Rosh Hashanah he offers a parable — comparing one who sins against his fellow to a man who owes a debt and must first appease the one he wronged — to teach the difference between transgressions between a person and Hashem and those between a person and his fellow. A teaching in his name is also brought in Taanit regarding a mourner who bathed in cold water during the days of mourning.
Where traditions differ. Eduyot records testimony attributed both to Rabbi Yehudah HaKohen and to Rabbi Yossi HaKohen; the exact attribution in the parallel passages should be checked.
רבי יוסֵי הכהן היה תנא שחי בשלהי המאה הראשונה לספירה, בן הדור השני של התנאים ותלמידו של רבן יוחנן בן זכאי.
Rabbi Yose Hacohen was a second-generation Tanna who lived at the end of the first century CE, a student of Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai.
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