Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai (Rashbi)

The Tanna who hid from Rome in a cave for thirteen years, buried to the neck in sand, learning with his son until their eyes burned what they looked at — and the man the Zohar chose, eleven centuries later, as its hero and mouthpiece. Whether or not he wrote a word of it, Lag ba-Omer at his tomb in Meron is the largest annual pilgrimage in Israel: the character became a covenant.