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July 16, 2010
Vigorous dialectic has value
A history of creative tension has offered Jews strategic choices.
EUGENE KAELLIS
Every Jew has heard at least one joke about the often sharply divisive conflicts within almost any Jewish community. But behind the humor, sometimes too targeted and biting to be funny, there is, one hopes, the appreciation of the dialectics, the internal contradictions, which have kept Judaism vibrant over the millennia, even in the face of unprecedented tragic circumstances.
Hillel-Shamai, Mitnagdim-Chassidim, Orthodox-Reform, secularist-observant, traditionalist-reformist, particularist-universalist, even Yiddishist-Hebraist, have all served to offer Jews strategic choices in the face of an almost invariably hostile world and the “perturbations” it has imposed on them. As a consequence, Jewry developed within itself the “creative tension” of its own dialectics. (Although there may be other sources for the phrase “creative tension,” I first heard it from Martin Luther King, Jr.)
One major historical instance of the kind of conflict was in the reaction of the Jews during the first century CE, when Rome had incorporated Judea into its empire. Opposition among Jews ran wide and deep and was most markedly expressed in the revolutions that followed.
The division among Jews was not only about how to deal with the Romans. It was about aspects of Temple worship as well. The traditionalist group, the Zealots, during their brief control of Jerusalem, reinstituted the ancient custom of electing a high priest for the Temple instead of following the more recent tradition of hereditary succession. Among the Zealots, there was an even more militant group, the Sicarii, who practised the assassination of alleged Jewish collaborators and expressed their social-economic agenda by destroying property ownership deeds and debt records, anticipating by many centuries European peasant revolts and one of the major actions of the French Revolution.
The first-century revolution started successfully. Rome frequently lost first encounters with its enemies, but almost invariably ended up, with its overwhelming strength in numbers and weapons, winning its wars. Furthermore, Rome, with its monolithic policy, was aided by the sharp divisions among the Jews. The chief city in Galilee, for example, refused to join the uprising, facilitating the Roman capture of a nearby fortress. Later, when the Roman general Vespasian had re-conquered almost all the lost territory, little more than the walled city of Jerusalem remained in Jewish hands. Then, for awhile, the revolt benefited from the political confusion following Emperor Nero’s suicide and the violent factional wars within Rome on the choice of his successor.
While besieged Jerusalem was still held by the Zealots, a group of Jews, headed by Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, considered by many Zealots to be a passive collaborator of the Romans, realized the inevitability of the city’s fall. A small group of his students carried his shrouded, but still alive, body to the wall and dropped it over the side. Since normal access to Jewish burial sites could no longer be obtained, the Romans thought nothing of this, as Jews had been disposing of bodies this way since the siege began.
The students then informed the Roman guards that the body they had just disposed of was that of ben Zakkai, an illustrious disciple of Hillel the Great, head of the Sanhedrin and director of one of the most important academies in Jerusalem. They pleaded that such an eminent Jew was entitled to a traditional burial and the guards agreed. Ben Zakkai was said to be 110 years old at the time and an odor of death came from beneath the motionless shroud – coming, in fact, from putrefying meat he had secreted alongside his body.
Well beyond the city walls, the cortege stopped, the bearers laid “the corpse” on the ground and whispered a few words to the rabbi. Ben Zakkai sat up and immediately went with his followers to see Vespasian.
According to a widely repeated story, the rabbi asked Vespasian for permission to set up a rabbinical academy in Yavneh, a territory near the coast and the personal property of the Roman emperors. It is likely that he requested safe passage to Yavneh for himself and other sages. Vespasian, flattered by ben Zakkai’s prediction that he would become the emperor of Rome (which, indeed, happened) and eager to support a moderate faction among the troublesome Jews, granted the request.
The suppression of the Jewish revolt was resumed full force in the spring of 70 CE, after Vespasian, based in Judea, returned to Rome to be installed as the new emperor, leaving his son, Titus, to lay siege to Jerusalem, which fell at the end of August. The Romans razed the Temple and the city, killing many civilians, violating and enslaving others, sending some to Rome to face gladiators or wild beasts in the Coliseum. Today’s city of Rome has a triumphal Arch of Titus, depicting in bas relief the sacking of the Temple and the enslavement of the Jews.
In the midst of the carnage, about 900 men, women and children, all Zealots led by Eleazar ben Ya’ir, escaped to Masada, the palace-fortress built by Herod the Great. Most Jews know about what happened at Masada, where, for three years, Roman forays were repulsed, until engineers built a ramp over which they launched their final and successful attack.
Whatever the details of ben Zakkai’s plea to Vespasian, the outcome was that, for over a half-century after the destruction of the Temple, the academy at Yavneh continued Torah study and producing commentary until it was succeeded by other centres of learning elsewhere. Ben Zakkai advanced Pharisiaic Judaism, which had been granted new importance and meaning with the destruction of the Temple and, ultimately, evolved into rabbinic Judaism.
The significance of this important episode in Jewish history is, in part, how the coexistence of two different factions in Judaism, one of which, the Zealots, failed to achieve its objective, while the other, the academicians, guaranteed the survival and evolution of Judaism.
No one can say what would have happened if this elaborate scheme to keep ben Zakkai alive, spirit him out of besieged Jerusalem and convince Vespasian to grant his wishes had not unfolded successfully. We do know that, in 135 CE, the Jews again revolted under the leadership of Shimon Bar Kochba and, once more, after initial successes, were defeated by the Romans under Julius Severus. Jews were not to regain control of Jerusalem until June 1967.
The destruction of the Temple and the razing of Jerusalem seemed to presage the end of Judaism, but it turned out that it forced Jews to refashion how they were to maintain their religion and culture under the most extreme, prolonged, varied and hostile conditions to which any people and their beliefs and practices have been exposed.
Life demands that people, whatever their doubts, sometimes in spite of the circumstances of the moment, are obligated to make long-term decisions, however qualified, especially when faced with immediate danger. Perhaps more than any other people, Jews, in their long history, have demonstrated the value of having a “Plan B,” based on a worst-case scenario.
The biggest problem Jews face today is not the possible dissolution of Israel; its continuance, while in ongoing jeopardy, is probable. But the continued existence of Israel by no means guarantees the survival of Diaspora Jewry, which is declining in numbers, both
relatively and absolutely. Growth of some communities is matched by the virtual disappearance of others. In a self-accelerating process, diminishing numbers ultimately leads to the disappearance of religious, cultural and educational institutions, leading to the yet greater loss of identity.
Diaspora leadership has not sufficiently acknowledged these facts and devised contingency plans. Where is the Yochanan ben Zakkai of today?
Eugene Kaellis has written a novel, Making Jews, on the theme of the current basic problem of Diaspora Jewry, which is available from lulu.com.
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