Yerushalmi Sotah 9:10 ירושלמי סוטה ט׳:י׳

MISHNAH: When Yose ben Yo‘ezer from Ṣereda and Yose ben Joḥanan from Jerusalem died¹⁷¹The first couple of leaders mentioned in Abot (1:4)., the grape bunches¹⁷²People who united in their personalities knowledge, exemplary behavior, and leadership. disappeared, as it was said¹⁷³Micah 7:1. The reference is to v. 2: “The devout man has perished from the earth, there is no upright person among humankind.”: “There is no bunch to eat, no early ripe fig that my soul desires.”

HALAKHAH: There did not arise another grape bunch until Rebbi Aqiba rose. Were the other couples¹⁷⁴Those mentioned in the first Chapter of Mishnah Abot after the two Yose. not also grape bunches? But these served in a position of leadership¹⁷⁵They served just before the Maccabean revolt; Yose ben Yo‘ezer was killed as an opponent of the Seleucids. It seems that the two were the heads of the ruling council of the province of Judea. After the revolt, the political power was totally divorced from the spiritual leadership and the later couples could not attain the political role played by the first or by R. Aqiba in the Bar Kokhba years.; the others did not serve in a position of leadership.

It was stated: It is possible to raise questions about all couples¹⁷⁷The president (נָשִׂיא) and executive officer (אַב בֵּית דִּין) of the high court of the nation at any given moment.
The text here is the opposite of the tradition of the Babli (Temurah 15b) which states that the couples who held office between Moses and the two Yoses either taught Torah as well as Moses did or that it was impossible to find anything questionable about them. from the time that Moses died until Yose ben Yoezer from Ṣereda and Joseph ben Joḥanan from Jerusalem. It is possible to raise questions about all couples from the time that Yose ben Yoezer from Ṣereda and Joseph ben Joḥanan from Jerusalem died until Rebbi Jehudah ben Baba arose. They said about Rebbi Jehudah ben Baba that all he did was in the name of Heaven except that he raised an animal of the flock¹⁷⁸There exists a rabbinic rule (Babli Temurah 15b, Baba qama 80a) which forbids raising sheep and goats in agricultural lands because their destructive feeding habits.. This happened the following way. Once he fell sick and the medical men went to visit him. They told him: there is no healing for you except freshly warm milk, because he had angina pectoris. What did he do? He bought a goat and bound it to the legs of his bed¹⁷⁹That it could not roam and damage plants. and when he had an attack of angina he sucked from it freshly warm milk. But when the Sages wanted to visit him, they said how could we enter when the robber¹⁸⁰Greek λῃστής, “robber”. dwells with him in the house? When he died, he said: I did never sin except that in this case I disregarded the words of my colleagues. After his death they checked all he had done and did not find any sin except that goat alone¹⁸¹The Babli, Temurah 15b, tells this story about “a pious man” and doubts whether it is about R. Jehudah ben Baba, who was executed by the Roman government in the aftermath of the war of Bar Kokhba, or R. Jehudah bar Ilai, known simply as R. Jehudah..

Rebbi Simeon from Shezur said, my father’s family were landowners in Galilee. Why were they ruined? Because they judged civil matters alone¹⁸²While a competent judge may sit alone in judgment, it is bad behavior since only God judges alone (Mishnah Sanhedrin 1:1). and were raising animals of the flock. And this was so: We had a copse close to the village but a field was between it and us, and the flock entered it going and coming there¹⁸³The goats did damage to agriculture while being driven to the woods. He denies that R. Jehudah ben Baba did anything wrong since he was careful to keep his goat from doing damage and holds him a blameless pious man..