SHIMʿON BEN GAMLIʾEL II (second century CE) was a Palestinian tanna. He held the hereditary office of nasiʾ, or president, of the Sanhedrin. It is said that he studied Greek and that he supported a policy of peace with Rome.

According to a Talmudic source, two of his rabbinic colleagues—Meʾir, the ḥakham of the Sanhedrin, and Natan, its av beit din—sought to oust Shimʿon from his position as nasiʾ during a power struggle within the ranks of rabbinic leadership. In the Talmudic account, the two masters became angry when Shimʿon decreed that the students in the academy at Usha should not stand in their honor when they entered. Meʾir and Natan then conspired to test Shimʿon on an obscure tractate of...