רבי יהושע הגרסי

Rabbi Yehoshua HaGarsi was a tanna of the fourth generation, known above all as the one who attended Rabbi Akiva during his imprisonment by the Romans for learning Torah. The meaning of the name HaGarsi is not clear; it may point to his place or to his trade, that he ground grits.

The Gemara relates that each day he would bring Rabbi Akiva a measured amount of water in his cell. One day the prison guard stopped him and said that his water was a great deal that day — perhaps he needed it to dig his way out of the prison — and poured out half of it. When Rabbi Yehoshua came late, his rebbe asked him: “Yehoshua, do you not know that I am old, and that my life depends on your life?” He told him all that had happened, and Rabbi Akiva said, “Give me water to wash my hands.” His talmid was astonished: there was not enough even to drink, and his rebbe wished to pour it out for netilat yadayim? Rabbi Akiva answered that the matter carries a penalty of death, and that it was better for him to die his own death than to go against the view of his colleagues. A midrash further tells that while Rabbi Akiva stood on trial before Turnusrufus, Rabbi Yehoshua stood with him in tefillah, and when a cloud came down and surrounded them he said that it had come only so that his rebbe’s tefillah should not be heard.

Another midrash brings that on erev Yom Kippur he took leave of Rabbi Akiva and went home, and that night Eliyahu HaNavi came and told him that Rabbi Akiva had been niftar. The two walked all night until they reached the prison, found it open and the guards asleep, and took out Rabbi Akiva’s body. Rabbi Yehoshua wondered how Eliyahu, who is a kohen, could hold it; Eliyahu answered that there is no tumah for tzaddikim, and charged him to tell the chachamim to teach this to their talmidim. They laid him in a cave in which stood a bed, a chair and a menorah. The account was woven into the midrash Eileh Ezkerah on the ten harugei malchut.

Once a Betusi (Sadducee – Jewish breakaway sect) asked him why tefillin are written on the hide of nevelot and tereifot. He answered with a parable of two men sentenced to death by the government, one put to death by the king and one by the executioner — which of them is the more honored? The one whom the king put to death. When the questioner pressed that such animals should then be permitted in eating as well, he answered that the Torah said not to eat any nevelah, and the questioner accepted his words. Rabbi Yosei brings a halacha in the name of his brother, Nimos or Unimus.