רבי יוסי דמן יוקרת

Rav Yosi of Yokrat was an amora of the third generation and the rebbe of Rav Yosi bar Avin. The name of his place, Yokrat, has come down in a form no longer identifiable today, though some connect it with the village known in Hebrew as Yukrat, Ikrit.

Three accounts of him are brought in the Gemara, two of them turning on the exacting standard he held, which he did not soften even for his own children. His son, seeing his father’s workers waiting, prayed and drew figs from a nearby tree before their season; when his father heard what had happened he said to him that since he had troubled his Creator to bring out the fruit of a fig tree out of its time, he too would be gathered in before his time. The second concerns his daughter, whose beauty drew a man to watch her from hiding; challenged by Rav Yosi, the man answered that if he had not merited to marry her, might he not at least merit to see her — whereupon Rav Yosi said to his daughter that she was causing distress to people, and that she should return to her dust so that men not stumble on her account. It was this, the account says, that moved his talmid Rav Yosi bar Avin to leave him and learn instead by Rav Ashi; asked why he had left his rebbe, he answered that a man who has no pity on his own son and daughter would have none on him. The third tells of a donkey he would hire out, which came back at the end of each day with its fee on its back; once a pair of sandals that were not his were left on the animal, and it would not move from its place.

The Rama MiPano explains by way of Kabbalah that the neshama of Elisha HaNavi was in Rav Yosi of Yokrat. The Shelah HaKadosh writes in a letter that he saw beside his kever a fig tree that gives its fruit out of season; the place of the kever is given in the anonymous Igeret Yichus HaAvot, among the resting places of Eretz Yisrael.