Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel רבן שמעון בן גמליאל
“on three things the world stands: on justice, on truth and on peace”
His two sayings in the first chapter of Avot stand one after the other and both became proverbial. "All my days I grew up among the sages, and I found nothing better for the body than silence." And: "on three things the world stands: on justice, on truth and on peace."
The second deliberately echoes an earlier one — Shimon HaTzaddik said the world stands on Torah, on service and on acts of kindness. There, what holds the world up before Heaven; here, what holds it up between people.
His time is after the catastrophe. The Bar Kokhba revolt has been crushed, Betar has fallen, ten sages have been executed, the study of Torah is forbidden on pain of death. The assembly at Usha, where the Sanhedrin was restored, falls in his days; the enactments made there concern the simplest things — how much a person may give to charity without ruining himself; from what age a father must support his children.
His son, Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, would carry the work through and write the Mishnah down.
On the timeline
Sources
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Mishnah Avot 1:17 — “I found nothing better for the body than silence”
- Mishnah Avot 1:18 — “on three things the world stands: on justice, on truth and on peace”
- Ketubot 49b–50a — the enactments of the assembly at Usha
Basis: Talmud and midrash.