רבי יהושע בן כפוסאי

Rabbi Yehoshua ben Kapusai was a tanna of the third generation and a son-in-law of Rabbi Akiva. His name appears in the words of Chazal in a range of forms — ben Kevusai, ben Kefusai, ben Kufsahi, ben Kevisai, ben Kefutzai, ben Kavsoy and others.

He said of himself that he was among the chachamim of the beit va’ad in Yavneh: all his days he had read the pasuk “and the tahor shall sprinkle upon the tamei,” and only in the otzar of Yavneh did he find its meaning — that one tahor person sprinkles even upon a hundred who are tamei. From the Tosefta it emerges that he was present in the beit midrash when the chachamim differed with Rabbi Eliezer ben Hurkanos in a halacha of maasrot; there he said that never was his heart haughty enough to tell a man to go and gather mustard tops and pickle them and be exempt from maaser. He held with the chachamim who exempt, yet would not rule so in practice, perhaps because he was young in years. He also told what he had seen of Rabban Gamliel of Yavneh and Onkelos the ger in Ashkelon, that Rabban Gamliel immersed only in the sea; and Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel cites a halacha in his name.

Several halachot of the bechor are brought in his name. In the Tosefta he says that the bechor may be slaughtered only on the word of two, and elsewhere he differs with Rabbi Chanina ben Antigonus in the details of its shechitah. The Bavli describes a meeting between him and Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, from which it emerges that he was Rabbi Akiva’s son-in-law and that he lived on into the generation of Rebbi; and in the Yerushalmi he says of himself that he received a position of authority in the world of the chachamim.