Shimon HaTzadik (High Priest)

Shimon HaTzadik (Simeon the Just) was a high priest in Jerusalem whom Pirkei Avot 1:2 calls "one of the last of the Men of the Great Assembly." His saying opens the chain of rabbinic tradition: "The world stands on three things: on Torah, on the Temple service, and on acts of kindness." He is identified either with Simon I, son of Onias, whom Josephus (Antiquities 12.43) says was called "the Just," or with Simon II, praised in Ben Sira 50 for repairing the Temple and its walls and for his splendor as he came out of the sanctuary.

The Talmud (Yoma 39a) says that during his forty years as high priest the lot "for the Lord" always came up in his right hand on Yom Kippur and the western lamp of the menorah never went out, and that he foresaw his own death in his last year. Another tradition (Yoma 69a) credits him with meeting Alexander the Great and saving the Temple. His disciple Antigonus of Sokho carries the chain forward (Avot 1:3), and a rock-cut tomb in the Jerusalem neighborhood named after him draws pilgrims on Lag BaOmer.