The First Pair: Yose ben Yoezer and Yose ben Yochanan

After Antigonos of Socho, the transmission of the Torah runs through pairs — the zugot. There are five, spanning nearly two hundred years: from the persecutions of Antiochus to Hillel and Shammai. The first of each pair was nasi, the second av beit din, head of the court. This is the first division of its kind in Jewish history: to teach and to judge are two offices, held by two men.

The first pair is Yose ben Yoezer of Tzeredah and Yose ben Yochanan of Jerusalem, disciples of Antigonos. Each said three things, and their words are preserved in tractate Avot.

Yose ben Yoezer: "Let your house be a meeting place for the sages; cover yourself in the dust of their feet, and drink in their words thirstily." Yose ben Yochanan: "Let your house be open wide; let the poor be members of your household; and do not converse overmuch with a woman" — said of one's own wife, all the more so of another's.

Two adjacent mishnayot, two open doors: one for learning, one for the needy. They are usually read together.

They lived in a hard time: the Hasmonean revolt, the persecutions, the struggle over the high priesthood. A midrash tells of Yose ben Yoezer's death. He was being led to execution when his nephew Yakim of Tzerorot — Alcimus in the Greek sources, the high priest of the hellenising party — rode past and mocked him: see the horse my master has given me, and see the horse yours has given you. Yose answered: if this is how He treats those who anger Him, how much more those who do His will. The words entered the nephew like snake venom; he repented and took his own life by all four modes of execution at once. Yose ben Yoezer saw his bier rising to the Garden of Eden and said: he went before me by a short hour.

The Mishnah in Sotah marks their death specially: "When Yose ben Yoezer of Tzeredah and Yose ben Yochanan of Jerusalem died, the eshkolot ceased" — the "clusters," men in whom everything was gathered at once.