Gamaliel II

Gamaliel II (flourished 2nd century ad) was the nasi (president) of the Sanhedrin, at that time the supreme Jewish legislative body, in Jabneh, whose greatest achievement was the unification of the important Jewish laws and rituals in a time of external oppression by Rome and internecine quarrels.

In the ancient biblical city of Jabneh, many Jews had taken refuge from the Roman siege of Jerusalem in ad 70. Gamaliel succeeded Johanan ben Zakkai as leader of a school of Judaism whose members inherited the authority of the Sanhedrin of Jerusalem. He strengthened the Jewish faith, which had been seriously weakened by the loss of the Temple and Sanhedrin in Jerusalem and by the Jewish loss of political autonomy.

Gamaliel ended the division of Jewish spiritual leaders—some of whom belonged to the school of Hillel and others to that of Shammai—by ruling that Hillel’s more lenient interpretations of Jewish Law were authoritative. He devoted special attention to the regulation of prayer ritual, which had become all-important since the cessation of sacrificial worship. He gave the principal prayer, the ʿamida, consisting of 18 (subsequently 19) benedictions, its final revision and declared that it was every Israelite’s duty to recite it three times daily. By asserting his authority to standardize the Jewish calendar and thus fix the dates of festivals, Gamaliel further unified all Jews. He was recognized as patriarch (leader of the people) by Rome, and his reforms raised the power and prestige of the patriarchate.

During his administration, Gamaliel frequently became dictatorial toward dissenters; at one point, he excommunicated his own brother-in-law. Because of his harsh methods, he was deposed, but he was later restored to power. When he died, he was buried, according to his own wish, garbed in simple linen, to discourage the expensive burials that had impoverished many Jewish families.