רבי דוסתאי ברבי ינאי

Rabbi Dostai b’Rabbi Yannai was a tanna of the fifth generation who lived in Eretz Yisrael at the close of the second century and spent stretches of time in Bavel as well; he appears in the Mishnah, in both Talmudim and in the midrashim. Born into a family of kohanim in Eretz Yisrael, he was the son of the tanna Rabbi Yannai and the brother of the tanna Rabbi Elazar b’Rabbi Yannai. He learned under Rabbi Meir and brings several teachings in his name, and he was a chaver of Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi and of Rabbi Yosi ben Kipar.

The Gemara tells of a mission he undertook together with Rabbi Yosi ben Kipar, when the two were sent to Bavel to collect money for the chachamim. On the way they came to Rabbi Achi b’Rabbi Yoshiya, the rav of Hutzal, who asked them to bring him silver vessels he had left in deposit with merchants in Neharde’a. The merchants produced the deposit but demanded that the two make a kinyan on it, so that they themselves would bear no liability should it be damaged on the road; when the two refused, the merchants insisted on giving the vessels back to Rabbi Achi and to no one else. Rabbi Dostai was ready to return them; Rabbi Yosi was not, and when the merchants pressed him with blows and complained that his companion would not yield, Rabbi Dostai told them to strike him harder.

Back in Hutzal, Rabbi Yosi laid his grievance before Rabbi Achi. Rabbi Dostai explained himself: these were violent men who bind a man when they tell their agents to bind and kill a man when they tell them to kill, and he had feared for his life — who, he said, would give his father Yannai another son like him. Once Rabbi Achi understood that the merchants stood close to the government and had horses and mules at their disposal, so that no escape was possible, he told Rabbi Dostai that he had done what he had to do.

Among his teachings: he asked why the hot springs of Teveria were not set in Yerushalayim, and answered that the olei regel should not be able to say that had they come up for nothing more than to bathe in them it would have been enough — which would make the aliyah one not lishmah. He taught that a man who gives a perutah to a poor man merits to receive the face of the Shechinah, from the pasuk ani b’tzedek echezeh panecha. In the name of Rabbi Meir he taught that one who forgets a word of his mishnah is treated by the pasuk as one who bears guilt for his own life — and only where he sat and put it out of his heart, not where the learning was too hard for him. Rabbi Eshtori HaParchi writes that he was buried beside his father Rabbi Yannai in Achbara in the Galil.