Reflecting on Judaism

In an article by Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, published in the Jewish Chronicle in June 1999, he discussed, in conventional terms, the differences between the Sadducees and Pharisees regarding their approach to Judaism and made a number of points which I will now try to summarise. He wrote: -
 ‘’Both groups valued Torah. Both cherished the land of Israel. The Pharisees believed in the oral law; the Sadducees did not. The Sadducees interpreted the words of the Torah literally. The Pharisees relied on ancient tradition to teach that since there were gaps and ambiguities in the written text, the written text was not always to be taken literally. From the outset it had been supplemented by a set of unwritten traditions, passed down from teacher to disciple, since the days of Moses.

 For the Pharisees, Jews were the people of the Torah. For the Sadducees they were the people of the land and of the State of Israel. To be sure, their differences were a matter of emphasis rather than exclusion. The Sadducees dominated the priesthood and controlled most of the positions of political power. For the Pharisees Jewish life rested on quite a different institution—the synagogue, the school and the Bet Midrash, the house of study.

The Sadducees disappeared, almost without trace. They had made their wager and lost. Had it not been for the Pharisees, their belief in the oral law and their dedication to Torah, there would be no Jewish people today.’’
 This summary raises a number or questions.
 Both the Sadducees and the Pharisees were Jewish Sects active in Israel during the two centuries around the time of the destruction of the second temple. The Chief Rabbi observed that the Sadducees were strongly connected to the Priests and it is believed that they were descendants of the House of Zadok, who anointed Solomon as King. What was the standing of the Pharisees?

In his book ‘The Three Crowns’ Prof. Stuart Cohen of the Bar Ilan University, discusses the Centres of power and Authority in Israel before the destruction of the Second Temple. He suggested that there were two such Centres; the first being the Malchut Authority (The State) exercised by the Kings of Israel, and the even older Priestly Authority which was derived from Moses at Sinai. I understood the theme of his book to be that the Third Crown belongs to the Pharisees (Rabbinate) who took the opportunity to usurp the Authority of the other two during the troubled period through which they lived.

 In his book ‘The Ancient Jewish Mysticism’, Prof. Joseph Dan of the Hebrew University discusses the end of the Second Temple era and the era shortly thereafter and wrote. ‘In this short period of time, in a backwood corner of a single Roman province, religious ferment took place which gave birth to Rabbinical Judaism, Christianity and Gnosticism, and the concepts and feelings which were born during that period shaped human culture for a very long time thereafter.

 Neither of these two professors (and they are not alone) credit the Rabbinate with a long antecedence. The Rabbinate (Pharisees) do not accept this assessment of themselves for they set out the entitlement to their Authority in the  ‘Pirkay Avot’. ‘Moses received the Torah at Sinai and handed it down to Joshua, and Joshua to the Elders, and the Elders to the Prophets; and the Prophets handed it down to the men of the Great Assembly.

 In Deut. xxx1, verse 7 it states “And Moses called unto Joshua and said to him in the sight of all Israel: ‘Be strong and of good courage; for thou shalt go with this people into the land which the Lord hath sworn unto their fathers to give them; and thou shalt cause them to inherit it.’  Verse 9 states ‘And Moses wrote this law, and delivered it unto the priests, the sons of Levi, that bore the ark of covenant of the Lord, and unto all the Elders of Israel’ From these quotations from the Torah it would appear that the  ‘Pirkay Avot’ does not reflect events accurately.

 We see that Moses did not hand down the tradition to Joshua; Joshua was appointed as the Leader of the people. The tradition was, in fact, handed down directly by Moses to both the Priests (the Kohanim) and to the Elders – not through Joshua. Why does the Pirkay Avot not accurately record these clearly documented facts?

 In his commentary to the Chumash, (page 826) the late Chief Rabbi Hertz writes, “Modern writers seldom do justice to the priesthood. They exalt the Prophet, and almost invariably depreciate the priest.     ……..  . The priests indispensable function was to conserve the spiritual discoveries of the past by means of religious institutions."

 The function of the prophets was to emphasise moral values and a Just Society as the main content of the Covenant, sometimes above its more formal and religious aspects, as and when required. They were not part of the chain of transmission of the law. Why were they included as such in the Pirkay Avot?

 The Great Assembly, to which the Pirkay Avot refers, dates back only to the time of Ezra, circa 460 BCE. who was also a Cohen and scribe, and a descendant of Zadok. It must have been the Priests, of whom Ezra was one, who fulfilled the chain of transmission, as stated by the late Chief Rabbi Hertz. This fact is acknowledged by Chief Rabbi Sacks in his book ‘Will we have Jewish Grandchildren’ (page 42) where he writes about Ezra and says ‘’A group of Levites acted as instructors to the people, reading from the Book of the Law of God, making it clear and giving meaning so that people could understand what was being read.…. Ezra was the prototype of the teacher as hero’’.  The Priests including Ezra were also actively involved in rebuilding and rededicating the Second Temple.

 It has been established that the Sadducees had a very long antecedence going back through the Priesthood, via the era of Ezra the Priest, to Zadok the Priest, descendant of Eleazar son of Aaron, a period of some 1300 years. The antecedence of the Rabbinate goes back no further than the Men of the Great Assembly; a period of some 200/300 years and possibly not even that far.

 It is therefore difficult to accept without reservation the statement by Chief Rabbi Sacks that the Sadducees believed in no Oral Law. During the course of these 1300 years, from the time of the Exodus to the destruction of the Second Temple they must have transmitted the tradition and an Oral Law although different from the Oral Law subsequently developed by the Pharisees. It is said that the Saducees held to a strict interpretation of the Torah whilst the Pharisees were more lenient, which enabled them to formulate biblical precepts with greater detail as well as to apply the Torah to varied and changing economic, social and political circumstances. They (The Pharisees) represented a revolt against the Establishment and won. Although at the time they could not have known of the forthcoming destruction of the Second Temple, it might well be that their interpretation of the Oral Law preserved Judaism during its period in exile. But problems still exists; just one example: -

 When the Pharisees say that by tradition we start counting the Omer on the second day of Pesach, whilst the Sadducees said that by tradition we should start from the Sunday after Pesach, which tradition is likely to be the older? Could this explain the aggadah which relates that when Moses looked into the future and saw into Rabbi Akivah’s Academy he could not understand the teachings of Rabbi Akiva until they were accredited to him. This accreditation made him happy but was he also confused?
June 1999