רבי שמעון בן יהודה

Rabbi Shimon ben Yehuda of Kfar Akko was a tanna of the fifth generation, in the second half of the second century, and the foremost talmid of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. Nearly everything he teaches is in his rebbi’s name — at times a tradition that differs from what others report in the name of bar Yochai — and when he and Rabbi Elazar ben Rabbi Shimon cite Rabbi Shimon together, he is named before the master’s own son. He also cites Rabbi Yosi ben Chalafta, and even Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Yishmael. He appears four times in the Mishnah and about a hundred times across the literature of Chazal, and Rav Sherira Gaon in his Iggeret counts him among the chachamim of the generation of Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel.

He lived in Kfar Akko, the village beside the city of Akko, and is often called simply “Rabbi Shimon of Kfar Akko”; the village’s name appears in several spellings. In the few places where he speaks in his own name, all of them in aggada, he stands against the view that a house afflicted with tzara’at “never was and never will be,” telling of a place in the Galil where afflicted stones were said to exist. The tanna Rabbi Zakkai brings teachings in his name. He made his living from the land: we hear of instructions he gave his sharecropper on the laws of kilayim.