רבן גמליאל הזקן

Rabban Gamliel the Elder was a tanna who taught in Judaea and stood at the head of his generation. He is best remembered for a series of formal enactments (takkanot) instituted “for the betterment of the world” (mipnei tikkun ha’olam). In matters of divorce he ruled that a husband could no longer convene a court elsewhere to annul a get he had already sent, and he ordered changes to how names and places were written in the document (Gittin). To ease the burden on a widow collecting her kesubah, he enacted that she could take a vow to the orphans instead of being made to swear an oath (Gittin).

He also legislated in the area of the calendar and the new month. He extended the bounds within which witnesses who came to testify about the new moon could move on Shabbat, fixing two thousand cubits in every direction, so that they would not be confined for the whole day (Rosh Hashanah). His rulings appear across several tractates of the Mishnah and Gemara, including Bechorot, where Chizkiyah brings a teaching in his name regarding the laws of purity in earthenware vessels, and Orlah, where Yoezer of the Birah relates a question he asked of Rabban Gamliel while the latter stood at the eastern gate.

The Gemara records his passing with notable detail: at his funeral Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua instructed those present concerning the overturning of the beds in mourning, and the people responded that they had already done so on the authority of the elder (Moed Katan). The Mishnah in Sotah marks his death as the end of an era, noting that with the passing of Rabban Gamliel the Elder certain qualities ceased from the world.