הרב שמעון התימני

Shimon HaTeimani (active c. 3840–3880 / 80–120 CE), known in English sources as Simeon the Yemenite or Simeon of Teman, was a tanna of the third generation, active in Yehudah. He was one of the three Shimons — with Shimon ben Azzai and Shimon ben Zoma — counted among the great talmidim of the generation before the revolt of Bar Kochba. He was close to Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananiah, Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Tarfon, and kept a daily learning session with Rabbi Yehudah ben Bava. He sat among the important chachamim of the Sanhedrin at Yavneh, was known for untangling hard sugyot, and was among the few who knew seventy languages. He appears to have been niftar young, before receiving semichah, and so is never called “Rabbi.”

His teachings in the Mishnah and baraitot are mostly halachic, with only a few in aggadah. The best known is his ruling on who is a mamzer. The great tannaim disagreed over which forbidden unions produce a mamzer: Rabbi Akiva held any union forbidden by a lo ta’aseh, Rabbi Yehoshua only those punishable by death at the hands of beit din, and Shimon HaTeimani took the middle position — a mamzer is the child of a union for which the parents are liable to karet. The halachah follows him, as the Mishnah itself already records. He also taught that the shofar is sounded in alarm over a plague even on Shabbat, a view the Chachamim did not accept, and in aggadah he taught that it was in the merit of brit milah that Hashem split the sea for Yisrael.

How to pronounce his name is also an interesting discussion. Read as HaTeimani, it means a man of Teiman — Yemen — which is how the Yaavetz understood it; read as HaTimni, it points to the town of Timnah in Yehudah, and Rashi writes that he was from Timnah, as do the Bartenura and the Machzor Vitri. One suggestion drawn from the Rambam’s list of tannaim is that there were two chachamim of this name, one from each place.