רבן גמליאל דיבנה

Rabban Gamliel of Yavneh, called Rabban Gamliel the Second (Gamaliel II in English sources), was a tanna of the second generation, at the end of the first and beginning of the second century CE, and the first to head the Sanhedrin as nasi after the churban of the Second Beit HaMikdash. He was the son of Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel — of the leading men of Yerushalayim in the war against Rome, who by tradition was killed among the Asarah Harugei Malchut — grandson of Rabban Gamliel HaZaken of the house of Hillel, and grandfather of Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, who arranged the Mishnah. After the churban, when Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai had rebuilt the seat of Torah at Yavneh, he labored to restore the line of Hillel to the nesiut, and around the year 80 CE Rabban Gamliel became nasi in his place.

His life’s work was holding Yisrael together when the Beit HaMikdash and self-rule were gone — that the one Torah not become many torot. In his days the long division of Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai was brought to an end, with the ruling that halachah follows Beit Hillel, and it was fixed that psak goes after the majority of the chachamim. He wielded the nesiut firmly: when their reckonings of the new moon differed, he ordered Rabbi Yehoshua to appear with staff and money-pouch on the day that fell as Yom Kippur by Rabbi Yehoshua’s count — and when he came, Rabban Gamliel rose and kissed his head: come in peace, my rebbi in chochmah and my talmid in accepting my words. His own word on his severity was that he acted not for his honor nor for his father’s house, but so that machloket not multiply in Yisrael. After a third clash with Rabbi Yehoshua, over the standing of tefillat Arvit, the chachamim removed him and seated Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah as nasi; Rabban Gamliel accepted the ruling and kept coming to the beit midrash as an ordinary chacham, and once reconciled with Rabbi Yehoshua he was restored, Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah darshening one Shabbat in four.

The order of tefillah as we have it bears his stamp: he had Shimon HaPakoli arrange the Shemoneh Esreh before him at Yavneh and made its recital a duty three times daily, and at his word Shmuel HaKatan composed the berachah against the malshinim. His teaching stands at the heart of the Haggadah — whoever has not said these three things on Pesach, Pesach, Matzah, and Maror, has not fulfilled his obligation. With the chachamim of his generation he fixed how the moadim go on without the Beit HaMikdash — tefillot in the place of korbanot, and Musaf on the days when a korban Musaf had been brought. He traveled to the governor of Syria to be confirmed in office, and near the end of Domitian’s reign, about 95 CE, went with the elders of Yavneh to Rome to turn aside a gezeirah hanging over the Yidden; hearing the roar of the great city, they wept over Yerushalayim in her ruins. He kept close bonds with the kehillot of Eretz Yisrael and the tefutzot, journeying himself and sending chachamim abroad.

His middot were of the highest level. When his eved Tavi passed away he accepted tanchumim as for a member of his household, saying Tavi was a kosher servant; and when his neighbor lost her son and wept in the night, he wept opposite her until his eyelashes fell out. Costly tachrichim had become so heavy a burden in his days that families would abandon their dead and flee; before his petirah he commanded that he be buried in the simplest linen shrouds — and his example became the practice of all Yisrael. He was niftar around 118 CE, before the upheavals of Trajan’s days; at his levayah the ger Akilas burned costly goods worth seventy maneh, as had once been done for kings. His son Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel carried the nesiut after the years of persecution, and a traditional site of his kever stands in Yavneh to this day.