YEHUDAH HA-NASIʾ (135?–220?), called "Rabbi" or "Our Holy Rabbi," was a Palestinian tanna. Yehudah was the son of Shimʿon ben Gamliʾel of Yavneh. With Yehudah the office of nasiʾ (patriarch, head of the court) reached its zenith. Reestablished by the Romans after the disastrous defeat of the Bar Kokhba Revolt in 135 CE, the position of nasiʾ by the end of the century afforded Yehudah an authority recognized by Jews and Romans alike. Even the Jewish community in Babylonia looked to him as the head of the Jewish people.

As nasiʾ Yehudah first established his court in Beit Shearim. However, for reasons of health he spent the last seventeen years of his life in Sepphoris (J.T., Ket. 12.3, 35a). Yehudah's major task as nasiʾ was to secure the economic recovery of Israel after the destruction caused by the Bar Kokhba Revolt. He...