Eleazar ben Simeon  Eleazar b. Simeon (or Eleazar ben Simeon or R. Eleazar son of R. Simeon; , lit. "Eleazar beRabbi[son of Rabbi] Shimon", or רבי אלעזר בן שמעון , lit. "Rabbi Eleazar ben [son of] Shimon") was a Jewish Tanna sage of the fifth generation, contemporary of R. Judah haNasi. He was the son of R. Shimon bar Yochai, and appears in many of the stories concerning his father. According to these stories, Eleazar spent his youth with his father in a cave, studying Torah while hiding from the Roman persecutors who sought his father's life. After the death of Hadrian, when events took a somewhat more favorable turn for the Jews, father and son left the cave and returned to the busy world. Eleazar, grown too zealous during his long seclusion, often cursed those who devoted their time to things secular, and his father found it necessary to interfere, appeasing them and mollifying him. After Shimon's death Eleazar entered the academy of the Patriarch Simeon ben Gamaliel II, and became the colleague of the patriarch's son, Judah HaNasi; but there was rivalry between the two. Nevertheless, after Eleazar's death, Judah HaNasi devoted himself to caring for Eleazar's wayward son Yosei. There are various legendary stories concerning Eleazar's unusual physical size. Though wanted in his youth by the Roman government, later on Eleazar worked on behalf of the Roman government as a security and public order commissioner. This made him very unpopular, and one of the rabbis remonstrated with him, saying, "Vinegar product of wine [= "Degenerate son of a distinguished father"], how long will you continue to deliver the people of God to the hangman?" Eleazar, however, continued in office, justifying himself by saying, "I only weed out thistles [i.e. evil men] from the vineyard." His mentor answered that the weeding ought to be left to the proprietor of the vineyard—that is, that God Himself would visit punishment on the idlers and evildoers. Later in life he regretted the part he had taken under the hated government, and is said to have imposed on himself the most painful penance.