Shimon ben Eleazar
140 CE–210 CE · Tannaim · Tiberias
Rabbi Shimon ben Eleazar was a fourth-generation Tanna active primarily in Tiberias during the late second century CE. He was a student of Rabbi Meir and a contemporary of Rabbi Judah the Prince. Shimon ben Eleazar became known for his sharp dialectical mind and his expertise in legal reasoning, frequently appearing in Mishnaic disputes where he offers distinctive interpretations of Jewish law. He was particularly engaged with questions of ritual purity, damages, and other areas of halakha. His teachings were preserved in the Mishnah and Tosefta, and he was remembered as a rigorous transmitter of tradition and an independent voice in the academy at Tiberias during a formative period of rabbinic Judaism.
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TiberiasLand of Israel
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Tiberias in this era
Under the Roman emperors from Antoninus Pius through Septimius Severus, Tiberias flourished as the spiritual and administrative heart of Palestinian Jewry, its lakeside academies humming with the voices of sages debating Torah while Roman legions garrisoned the broader land. The Jewish community there—prosperous merchants, scribes, and scholars—enjoyed a degree of autonomy under their own patriarchs, who administered civil law and collected taxes on Rome's behalf, a precarious equilibrium that allowed Jewish learning to bloom even as Rome's grip tightened elsewhere in the province. The very generation in which R. Shimon ben Eleazar taught saw the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–135 CE) still casting its shadow: restrictions on Jewish practice had eased somewhat, but the community remained vigilant, aware that Roman patience was conditional and could fracture at any moment. In this atmosphere of fragile stability, the sage contributed to the Mishnah's crystallization, helping preserve oral law at a moment when the old Jewish political order had been permanently shattered.
About Tiberias
Tiberias, on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel, was founded around 20 CE by Herod Antipas and named for the emperor Tiberius. After the Sanhedrin settled there around 220 it became a leading centre of Jewish learning: by tradition beginning with Rabbi Yochanan bar Nappacha, the Jerusalem Talmud took shape there (scholars date its completion to about 400), and the Masoretes of Tiberias later devised the Tiberian vocalisation of Hebrew. After the Muslim conquest around 636 it was the capital of the district of Jund al-Urdunn, and the hadith scholar al-Tabarani was born there in 873. Maimonides was buried in Tiberias, and in 1783 the Hasidic leader Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk moved there from Safed with his followers.
In Tiberias at the same time
Sefer Yetzirah (trad. Avraham Avinu), Yose ben Yehuda, Chiyya HaGadol, Levi bar Sisi, Reish Lakish
In the same place & time
Sages whose lives overlapped with Shimon ben Eleazar’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
In the same tradition
Sefer Yetzirah (trad. Avraham Avinu), Yose ben Yehuda, Chiyya HaGadol, Levi bar Sisi, Reish Lakish
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Shimon ben Eleazar’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Works
No works attributed in the corpus yet.