Biography
Rabbi Yose ben Yochanan, called Ish Yerushalayim (“of Jerusalem”), was a sage of the era of the Zugot, the pairs who led the people in the generations before the tannaim. In Pirkei Avot he is paired with Yose ben Yoezer, and his teaching there sets a standard of generosity and modesty: “Let your house be open wide, let the poor be members of your household, and do not engage in excessive conversation with a woman” — words the Sages applied first to a man’s own wife and all the more so to another’s.
In Chagigah he appears among the Zugot in the recorded debate over semichah (laying hands on a festival offering on Yom Tov), where he holds that one does lay hands, opposite Yose ben Yoezer’s view that one does not. A figure called Abba Yose ben Yochanan is also brought in halachic contexts: in Keritot regarding the preparation and grinding of the spices, with the call “Pound thoroughly, thoroughly pound,” and in Yevamot, citing Rabbi Meir, on the laws of bi’ah and chalitzah.
Where traditions differ. The 'Abba Yose ben Yochanan' cited in Keritot and Yevamot (the latter quoting Rabbi Meir) may be a different figure from Yose ben Yochanan of the Zugot.
יוסי בן יוחנן איש ירושלים היה אב בית הדין הראשון מתקופת הזוגות. בן זוגו, נשיא הסנהדרין, היה יוסי בן יועזר.
Jose ben Jochanan was Av Beit Din of the Sanhedrin in the 2nd century BCE. He was a native of Jerusalem. He and Jose ben Joezer were the successors and, it is said, the disciples of Antigonus of Sokho, and the two together formed the first of a series of duumvirates that transmitted the traditional law; according to tradition, in each pair one was the Nasi and the other was the Av Beit Din.
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