“I will make a helper for him alongside him [kenegdo]” – if one merits, she [his wife] is a helper, but if not, she is against him [kenegdo]. Rabbi Yehoshua bar Neḥemya said: If he merits, [his wife will be] like the wife of Rabbi Ḥanina bar Ḥakhinai, but if not, she will be like the wife of Rabbi Yosei the HaGelili. The wife of Rabbi Yosei [HaGelili] was malicious, though she was his sister’s daughter.
She would humiliate him in the presence of his students. His students said: Be rid of that malicious wife7Divorce her. who does not respect you. He said to them: Her marriage contract is too large for me, and I do not have enough [money] to be rid of her. One time he and Rabbi Elazar ben Azarya were sitting and studying.
When they finished, he [Rabbi Yosei] said to him: ‘Rabbi, accept my suggestion, and let us go up to my house [to eat].’ He said to him: ‘Yes, let us go up.’ When he went up, she looked downward and walked out. He saw a pot and said to her: ‘Is there anything in that pot?’
She said to him: ‘There is only relish.’ He went and opened it and found pieces of chicken. Rabbi Elazar ben Azarya realized what he had heard.8He realized that Rabbi Yosei and his wife had a difficult relationship. They sat and ate.
He said to him: ‘Rabbi, did she not say there was only relish? Yet we found pieces of chicken in it.’ He said to him: ‘They [came about] through a miraculous act.’ When they finished, he said to him: ‘Rabbi, be rid of that wife, because she does not act respectfully towards you.’
He said to him: ‘Her marriage contract is too large for me, and I do not have enough [money] to be rid of her.’ He said: ‘We will pay her the marriage contract, and you can be rid of her.’ They did this for him, and he was able to pay her marriage contract and be rid of her. He married a different wife, who was better than her.
The sins of that women brought about that she went and married the city watchman. Some time later, he experienced suffering9He contracted a disease. and became blind. She would hold his hand and take him around the city streets.10To beg for charity. When she reached the street of Rabbi Yosei HaGelili, she stopped and turned back.
Because that man knew well the [layout of the] city, he said to her: ‘Why did you not take me to the neighborhood of Rabbi Yosei HaGelili, of whom I heard that he gives charity?’ She said to him: ‘I am his divorcée, and I cannot bear to see his face.’ One time, they came and called11They sought charity. in Rabbi Yosei’s neighborhood. He realized what she was doing12He sensed that she was turning around. on the first day and the second day, and then he began to hit her.
Their voices were loud and audible, and they became disgraced throughout the city. Rabbi Yosei looked in the direction of their voices, and he saw them becoming disgraced in the streets. He said to him: ‘Why are you hitting her?’ He said to him: ‘Every day she causes me to lose the support [that I could take in] from this street.’
When Rabbi Yosei heard this, he took them and put them up in a house that he owned and supported them all the days of their lives, due to [the verse]: “Do not disregard your own flesh” (Isaiah 58:7).