Rabbi Yannai רבי ינאי

Rabbi Yannai belonged to the first generation of the Amoraim of the Land of Israel, a disciple of Rebbi's house. He was wealthy—the Talmud remembers his four hundred vineyards—and kept an open table; his academy at Akbara stood by the road, and he fed his students as household. Chief among them was Rabbi Yochanan, the future light of Tiberias, who for decades said "thus Rabbi Yannai taught me".

In Pirkei Avot his name carries the most honest sentence on theodicy: "it is not in our hands—neither the ease of the wicked nor the sufferings of the righteous" (Avot 4:15)—a refusal to measure Heaven with earthly bookkeeping.

The sources give no years of life; the window of activity is set by generation, following Aharon Hyman's Toldot Tannaim ve-Amoraim.