Rabbi Yehuda Hanassi
Great Men of the Mishna and Talmud

Amongst the leaders in Jewish history, few occupy as weighty a place as Rabbi Yehudah HaNassi. In the tumultuous times of Roman rule, he befriended Emperor Antoninus and secured years of peace for the Jewish people. But rather than letting them become complacent, he called together a convention of the Torah leaders of the day so they could write down the Oral Tradition once and for all. Though a break from tradition, Rabbi Yehudah Ha Nassi's prescience in doing it not only preserved the Jewish religious tradition but the Jewish people as well.