1. With these opening words, Rabbi Yohanan offered an interpretive key to the Aggadot.

2. The Aggadot on the Destruction begin with a general statement: “Rabbi Yohanan said: Blessed is the man who is always wary” (Tractate Gittin)

3. The first sage for whom the Mishnah uses the title of rabbi was Yohanan ben Zakkai, active in the early-to-mid first century CE.

4. Even before the temple was destroyed, Yohanan Ben Zakkai, a respected disciple of the Pharisaic leader Hillel, received permission from Vespasian (soon to be emperor) to move the spiritual center of Judaism and the Sanhedrin from Jerusalem to Yavneh.