Rabban Gamliel of Yavneh and the Order of Prayer

After Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai, leadership at Yavneh passed to Rabban Gamliel, a descendant of Hillel. He understood the danger of dispersion: if every community kept its own custom, in two generations the people would no longer be one people.

His central work was prayer. While the Temple stood, the day hinged on sacrifices; now words had to take their place. The Talmud records that Shimon haPakuli arranged the eighteen blessings in order before Rabban Gamliel at Yavneh — praise, petition, thanksgiving: the skeleton of the Amidah, identical today from Morocco to Lithuania. At the same time Shmuel haKatan, the gentlest of men, composed an added blessing against informers and the sects splitting the community.

Rabban Gamliel was firm to the point of harshness. He ordered Rabbi Yehoshua to appear with staff and purse on the day Rabbi Yehoshua reckoned to be Yom Kippur, so that the calendar would have one master. Later he humiliated him publicly over the evening prayer, and the sages deposed him, installing the eighteen-year-old Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah. That day the guard was removed from the study hall door, hundreds of benches were added, and a mass of pending questions was settled. Rabban Gamliel came to ask forgiveness and saw soot-blackened walls. From your walls one sees you are a charcoal burner, he said. Woe to the generation you lead, came the answer, if you do not know how the sages live.