שמעון הצדיק

Shimon HaTzaddik was Kohen Gadol in the days of the second Beit HaMikdash and one of the last of the Anshei Knesset HaGedolah — the first of the chachamim named in the Mishnah, standing between the age of the nevi’im and the era of the Zugot. The Rambam, in his introduction to the Mishneh Torah, counts him a talmid of Ezra HaSofer who took up the kehunah gedolah after him; his family belonged to Beit Tzadok, the line of Yehoshua ben Yehotzadak of the days of shivat Tzion. Yosef ben Matityahu explains his title: he was called the Tzaddik for his fear of Heaven and his love of his people. His mishnah in Avot is learned by every child — the world stands on three things: on Torah, on the avodah, and on acts of chesed.

He held the kehunah gedolah for forty years and prepared two parot adumot. Chazal count seven signs of blessing that rested on the Mikdash through those years: a kohen given no more than an olive’s measure of the bikkurim, the shtei halechem and the lechem hapanim ate and was satisfied; the goral for Hashem came up in the right hand; the crimson strip whitened on Yom Kippur; the lamp never failed; and the fire of the mizbeach needed little wood. All of them ceased with his passing, and the Tosefta says his brother kohanim then held back from saying Birkat Kohanim with the Shem HaMeforash, no longer seeing themselves fit.

The best known account of him is his meeting with Alexander of Macedon. The Gemara relates that he went out in his priestly garments to Antipatris; Alexander came down from his chariot and bowed, telling his courtiers that this was the figure of the vision that had foretold his victories. Asked that his image be set in the Heichal, Shimon HaTzaddik explained that the Torah does not permit it, and undertook instead that every son born to kohanim that year would be named Alexander and that shtarot be dated from Alexander’s reign — by one view the beginning of minyan shtarot. His talmid was Antigonus ish Socho, and from Antigonus’s own talmidim, Yosi ben Yoezer and Yosi ben Yochanan, the era of the Zugot begins.

The Gemara tells that each Yom Kippur a figure in white would bring him into the Kodesh HaKodashim and out again; in his last year it came in with him clothed in black and did not come out. He fell ill for seven days and was niftar after Sukkot, and the day was fixed as the twenty-ninth of Tishrei. Ben Sira, who gives a whole chapter to his praise, describes him emerging from the Kodesh; that poem entered the mussaf of Yom Kippur as Mareh Kohen. By a tradition of the rishonim he is buried in the cave north of the Old City that bears his name, whose site was bought in 5636/1876 by the Rishon LeTzion Rav Avraham Ashkenazi.