Yose ben Yoezer of Tzereda יוסי בן יועזר איש צרדה

Yose ben Yoezer of Tzereda opens the age of the «pairs» (zugot) — two centuries of five duos, each with its nasi and its av beit din. He received the tradition from Antigonus of Socho and passed it to Yehoshua ben Perachya; his partner was Yose ben Yochanan of Jerusalem.

Avot preserves his saying: «Let your house be a house of assembly for the sages; sit in the dust of their feet, and drink in their words with thirst.»

He was a priest, and the Mishnah calls him «chasid shebikehunah» — the most pious of the priesthood (Chagigah 2:7). In law, though, he is remembered as «Yose the Permitter»: Eduyot 8:4 records three of his lenient rulings. The same tractate records his stringencies — the impurity of lands outside the Land of Israel and of glass vessels — rulings aimed at keeping Jews from settling abroad.

He lived through the worst of it: the decrees of Antiochus and the Hasmonean revolt. The sources tie his death to the killing of sixty pious men by the Hellenising High Priest Alcimus (1 Macc 7:16). Bereshit Rabbah 65:22 relates that Alcimus was his nephew: leading his uncle to execution he mocked the reward of the righteous — and was answered that if this is how those who do God's will are treated, how much more so those who defy it. In the story the nephew, seized with remorse, put himself to death, and the uncle saw him enter the portion of the righteous before him.

His year of birth is unknown; the year of death — about 162 BCE (AM 3598) — is inferred from the date of that killing, not stated outright.