רבי יאשיה

Rabbi Yoshiyah was a tanna of the fourth generation, born in Bavel, and the most distinguished talmid of Rabbi Yishmael; later generations called him Rabbi Yoshiyah Rabbah — Rabbi Yoshiyah the Great. Of his father nothing is known beyond that he too was a talmid chacham. He went up to Eretz Yisrael and learned before Rabbi Yishmael in his beit midrash in the south, at Kfar Aziz, apparently in the rebbi’s last years; there he found Rabbi Yonatan, the chaver and bar-plugta with whom his name is joined throughout the midrashim.

He is not mentioned in the Mishnah at all, and only once in the Tosefta; his Torah lives instead in the midrashim that came out of Rabbi Yishmael’s beit midrash — the Mechilta and the Sifrei on Bamidbar — in the braitot of both Talmudim, and a little in the Sifra and the Sifrei on Devarim. His disputes with Rabbi Yonatan turn on the derash of the pesukim, with a single halachic exception concerning the ir hanidachat. For a time he learned together with Rabbi Matya ben Charash, until need forced him to break off and turn to trade for his parnassah.

He returned to Bavel and sat in the beit midrash of Rabbi Yehuda ben Beteira in Netzivin, and disputes of his with the chachamim of Bavel — Rabbi Natan, Rabbi Zutra, and Rabbi Yitzchak — are brought in the Gemara. He taught Torah in the town of Hutzal, and the Talmud tells that through him the people of Hutzal became talmidei chachamim, until Rav Kahana applied to him the verse from Mishlei, “tzaddik yesod olam.”

Characteristic of his derech is his teaching on “u’shmartem et hamatzot”: read it, he says, as u’shmartem et hamitzvot — just as one does not let the matzah turn sour, so one does not let a mitzvah turn sour; when a mitzvah comes to your hand, do it at once. He was niftar, it seems, before Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, and his place was filled by his son, Rabbi Achai beRabbi Yoshiyah.