Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel II was a tanna of the second century CE, grandson of Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel I through his father Gamaliel II. He is said to have escaped as a youth from the massacre that followed the Roman capture of Betar in 135 CE, and he later became Nasi, presiding over the restored Sanhedrin at Usha, where Jewish communal leadership was reorganized after the Bar Kokhba revolt. He is remembered for the teaching preserved in Pirkei Avot 1:18 that the world stands on three things, justice, truth and peace, and he was the father of Judah HaNasi, the redactor of the Mishnah.
Facts
Open Questions
Lifespan or FloruitNo source records a birth year for Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel II. He is first attested as a youth who escaped the massacre following the Roman capture of Betar in 135 CE, the year recorded here as the earliest point at which he is attested, not as a birth year. Lifespan or FloruitNo source records a death year for Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel II. He is attested as Nasi presiding over the restored Sanhedrin at Usha from around 140 CE and was eventually succeeded by his son Judah HaNasi, but no source dates his death precisely. 165 is recorded here only as a conventional marker within the span scholarship places his patriarchate, not as a confirmed death year. Place of OriginNot established. Rabbinic sources place him among the sages of the Land of Israel active at Usha, but no source names a birth city. 2 No source records a birthplace for Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel II. He is first attested as a youth caught in the massacre following the fall of Betar in 135 CE and later as head of the reconstituted Sanhedrin at Usha, but neither account names where he was born. Origins
Defining MomentNamed justice, truth and peace as the three things the world stands on in the teaching preserved at Pirkei Avot 1:18, one of the best known sayings in the tractate. 1 Attestation
Traditions Revering This Figure Learn More
A Massacre Survivor Rebuilds Rabbinic Leadership at Usha
This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel II survived, as a youth, the massacre that followed the Roman capture of Betar in 135 CE, the catastrophic final defeat of the Bar Kokhba revolt, a documented origin distinct from teachers who reached leadership through ordinary succession rather than through surviving a specific disaster that scattered the leadership before them.
He went on to become Nasi, presiding over the Sanhedrin restored at Usha in the Galilee after the revolt's suppression had scattered the rabbinic leadership that had survived it. Reorganizing Jewish communal leadership at a new site, rather than simply resuming an office Betar had only interrupted, is documented as a deliberate act of rebuilding rather than a straightforward continuation of what the revolt had broken apart.
That a leader who survived the massacre ending one center of rabbinic authority went on to preside over its reconstruction at a different site marks Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel II's tenure as a documented case where personal survival of a catastrophe became the basis for rebuilding the very institution that catastrophe had scattered, rather than remaining a biographical detail set apart from his leadership itself.
A Father's Three Words and a Son's Redaction of the Mishnah
This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel II is remembered chiefly today for a single teaching preserved at Pirkei Avot 1:18, that the world stands on three things, justice, truth and peace, one of the best known sayings in the whole tractate. The saying is documented as his own attributed formulation rather than a proverb later tradition simply assigned to him after the fact, and it is transmitted within the same Mishnaic corpus his own son would go on to redact.
He was also the father of Judah HaNasi, the sage who redacted the Mishnah into the form still studied today, a documented genealogical link between a teacher remembered for one widely quoted maxim and a son whose own editorial work shaped how the entire rabbinic legal tradition would be transmitted afterward. The father's saying and the son's redaction are preserved within the same corpus without either eclipsing the other, a documented pairing rather than two unrelated achievements that happen to share a family name.
That a teacher chiefly remembered for three carefully weighed words fathered the redactor of the Mishnah itself marks Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel II's combined legacy as a documented case where a single maxim and a monumental editorial achievement, one generation apart, were both instances of the same instinct to weigh transmitted teaching down to its essential and lasting form.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Attributed Works
Emet, Virtues Emet, truth, is named by Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel as one of three things the world stands on, alongside justice and peace, in Pirkei Avot 1:18.
Belongs to Tradition
Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel was a tanna of the Mishnaic rabbinic period.
Related To
Grandfather and grandson. Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel I's son Gamaliel II succeeded Yochanan ben Zakkai as Nasi at Yavne, and Gamaliel II's own son was Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel II, later Nasi at Usha. No entity for Gamaliel II exists yet in this atlas; the generation between them is named here in prose.
Sources
Open Questions (2 open questions)
When was Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel II born, and when did he die?
Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel II is first attested as a youth at the fall of Betar in 135 CE and later as Nasi presiding at Usha from around 140 CE, but no source gives an actual birth or death year for him.
What would resolve this A datable document or inscription fixing his birth year, and a record of his death independent of his son Judah HaNasi's own, later-attested succession.
Talmudic chronology, history of the Sanhedrin and the Hillelite patriarchateMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.), Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edition
Where was Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel II born?
Rabbinic sources remember Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel II as a youth who escaped the massacre at Betar in 135 CE and later as Nasi at Usha, but no source names where he was born.
What would resolve this A datable document naming his birthplace, independent of the Betar and Usha narratives that establish only his later life.
Rabbinics, history of the Mishnaic periodMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.), Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edition
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