Reflecting on Judaism

When the previous essay was completed I sent it to a number of Rabbis, from among my friends and acquaintances, asking for their comments. Only three responded. The first suggested that I have misunderstood the history of the period, without explaining in which way, and recommended that I do some further reading. The second commented on one or two aspects of it, which I will discuss below, and he too ended his letter by suggesting that I read more. For these suggestions I am very grateful. The third agreed with many of the thoughts I had expressed and loaned me a book, ‘A hidden Revolution’ which discusses, at length, ‘The Pharisees’. I followed their suggestion and précis below, as faithfully as I can, the results of my research.

   In my original essay I tried to show that the Pharisees, in establishing their authority, deliberately did not reflect past events accurately. It is not difficult to understand why they should have acted in this way. We are taught that Torah truths are eternal and are relevant for every generation. The Torah states that the Law was handed over directly by Moses to the Priests. This Law was taught and explained by the Priests throughout the ages, certainly down to the period of Ezra and beyond. The Pharisees must have been aware of these facts but they write the Priests out of our history. Generations of Rabbis must also have been aware of the correct facts but they too appear to accept the incorrect version without question. 

 Chief Rabbi Sacks acknowledged that the Pharisees and Sadducees both valued Torah and that both cherished the land of Israel. He also said that the Pharisees believed in the Oral Law and the Sadducees did not. But if the Sadducees did not have an Oral Law and their antecedents go back to Aaron the Priest through the Ezra Era, from where did the Pharisees, whose antecedents go back to a maximum of only, say, 200 years, get their Oral Law? It can have come only from the Sadducees, via the Ezra era. 

  Chief Rabbi Sacks also stated that without the teaching of the Talmud, a product of the Pharisees, there might well be no Jewish people in existence today. I acknowledged that this might well be so. But Jewish survival is not the subject under discussion. What we are discussing is whether the Oral Law of the Pharisees is more authoritative than that of the Sadducees. As a result of my research we may now reasonably ask whether the Pharisees had their own independent Oral Law at all. We Jews are very fortunate. Unlike some other religions we are positively encouraged to ask questions and in doing so follow a long and well-established tradition. Since the question has been raised and the grounds for raising it given, we hope that the Rabbis will now give a satisfactory answer. 

 Précis extract of “Sects in Judaism" by the Rev. Reuben S. Brooks, past director of the Birmingham Hebrew Congregation. He quotes the Jewish historian Josephus Flavius (37-100 CE) as saying that the Pharisee party came into existence either, circa, 160 BCE or circa. 134 BCE and suggests that they introduced into normative Judaism, certain beliefs based upon apocalyptic visions only hinted at in the Hebrew Scriptures (see Graetz below). They also added new restrictions to the Biblical law in order to keep the people at a safe distance from the forbidden ground, thus making a fence around the Law. These new introductions do not, I suggest, constitute the receiving of an Oral Law at Sinai but the addition of new elements into it.

  The Rev. Reuben S Brooks also mentioned that some suggest that the Sadducees were descendants of the High Priest Zadok but that there is also a legend that the name derives from another Zadok, a disciple of Simon the Just, who lived during the third Century BCE. It is alleged that this second Zadok broke away from the Torah, lived in luxury, and established schools which taught that life on earth was the goal of man. This Zadok could not have been the founder of the Sadducees movement as described by the Chief Rabbi since those he described were strict adherents of the written Torah.     
 
 Précis extract of  ‘ Hillel the Elder’ by Nahum N. Glatzer. Prof. Glatzer states that since the period of the Maccabean struggle, circa 168 BCE, the Jews in Israel were divided into two major groups, the Pharisaic and the Sadducean. While the Pharisee’s tradition can be traced back, at the earliest, to the period of Alexander the Great, (356-323 BCE,) the Sadducees probably derived from the Solomonic Chief Priest Zadok.

 Hillel, whom Glatzer described as the greatest sage of the 2nd temple period (70 BCE- 10 CE), came from Babylon, and rose to the position of central leadership of the religious and communal life of Judea. When he died his disciples said of him “The Hasid (Hillel) the humble man, the disciple of Ezra is no more.’ This would imply that Hillel the Pharisee was following Ezra’s (The Sadducee’s) teachings and Oral Law.

 Précis extract of ‘The Parting of the Ways’ by the Rev. Dr. A. Cohen, editor of the Soncino Chumash.  He writes that in connection with the religious composition of the Jewish community during the period under consideration, the sources of information for the first three hundred years (circa 500-200 BCE) are almost non-existent. As far as it is possible to judge, the Jewish people remained a homogeneous religious body until the time of the Maccabean war. This does not mean that all agreed on every detail of creed and practice. The first rift made its appearance circa 175 BCE as the aftermath of the crisis which resulted from the attempt by Antiochus to merge Judea completely into the Syrian Empire and obliterate the distinctiveness of the Jews by suppression of their religion.  The rift grew wider until two distinct parties were formed to support different viewpoints; the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Dr. Cohen goes on to say that often these are described as ‘Sects’ in Judaism but they alike paid allegiance to the Temple and the Mosaic Code and both observed fundamental Jewish rites and holy occasions.

 From Dr. Cohen’s statements it can be assumed that until the rift occurred both the Pharisees and the Sadducces observed the same Oral tradition. Dr. Cohen heaps praise upon Ezra, the Priest and Scribe; a descendant of Zadok. Of him, the Rabbis later said, that he was worthy that the Torah should have been given to Israel by his hand, was it not that Moses had forestalled him. When Israel had forgotten the Torah, Ezra came up from Babylon and restored it. ‘Traditionally, the Priests were the teachers in matters of ritual’.  Ezra also established the Keneset Ha’ Gedolah, the Great Assembly, and some of the ordinances ascribed to it in the Talmud, Dr. Cohen wrote, may be due to a tendency to attach antiquity to religious laws and practices which in fact were not so ancient as claimed. Dr. Cohen continues to heap praise on Ezra and in discussing the Maccabean struggle (168 BCE) suggests that defeat may have spelt death for Judaism.  The problem of survival was solved by Ezra’s policy of making Torah the basis of Jewish existence. Again the implication must be that it was Ezra’s Oral Law which was being followed.

 Précis extract of ‘ popular history of the Jews’ by Graetz. He suggests that the Judaeans borrowed some beliefs from the Babylonians and succumbed easily to their influence. They believed it would be to the glory of God if He were surrounded, after Iranian fashion, by myriads of beings ready to carry out His will and desires, i.e. angels. The Judeans also borrowed their reprehensible demonology i.e. Satan. A new concept of reward and punishment after death and the belief in future resurrection of the dead also developed in Judaism as a result of this Babylonian influence.  In later years the Pharisees made these beliefs Articles of Faith and part of the Oral Law which the Sadducees would not accept. It became a bone of contention between them but whose Oral Law is the more authentic? 

 Graetz shows that Hillel the Great made no claim that the Pharisee’s Oral Law dated back to Sinai. He also paved the way, to a certain extent, for a reconciliation between Pharisaism and Sedduceeism by admitting the Sadducee’s principle that no law is valid unless it appears to be based upon the Written Law. He then weakened this principle by saying that this basis need not be looked for in ‘the dead letter‘ but in the general spirit of the text and he formulated seven principles by which this can be done. Never the less, Graetz points out, he enriched the Oral Law which his Pharisee teachers taught him, by referring back to the ancient traditions which he had brought with him from Babylon. It has already been pointed out is this tradition is the Ezra, pre Pharisee, tradition.       
   
 Graetz also suggests that alongside the Written Law, customs and usages came into vogue, the origins of which were lost in obscurity. If a certain religious custom could not be derived explicitly from the letter of the Law, it was made to point back to some great teacher or to the Men of the Great Assembly. Graetz does not minimize the importance of these developments but he recognized them for what they were and for what they achieved in preserving Judaism. They do however, not constitute an Oral Law stretching back to Sinai.

 Précis extract of ‘ A hidden revolution’ by Professor Dr. Ellis Rivkin. This book, mentioned above as having been loaned to me, proved to be the most disturbing, the most radical, the most controversial and the most interesting of all the books which I have read on the subject. For this reason it would be proper to tell something of the author before reporting on his writings.

 Dr. Rivkin was a professor of Jewish history when the book was published in 1978.He received his Doctorate from the Johns Hopkins University and received an Honorary Doctorate from the Baltimore Hebrew College. In researching the book he applied, he said, the clarity of analysis which he learned from his teachers whom he much admired. He was brought up in a family in which he, his parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts lived the life of the ‘twofold law’ (oral and written) and which he totally embraced. It is in the light of this background that I found his writings so unexpected. In his book ‘ The hidden revolution’ he sets out to show that the Pharisees took away the leadership of the Jewish people from its’ rightful owners, i.e. the High Priests. By detailed analysis of contemporary writings he discusses the who, when, why and how.

 Who were the Pharisees? He describes them as a ‘Revolutionary Scholar Class’ who introduced the ‘twofold’ law to which the Saducees objected so strongly. Their name probably means ‘those who separated themselves’ from the ordinary people because of their strict observance of the laws of purity.

 When did they arrive on the scene?  Dr. Rivkin can find no mention of them before, circa 185 BCE nor could he find any reference whatsoever to an Oral Law before that date. He refers to Ben Sira’s wisdom book ‘Ecclesiasticus’ written circa 280 or 180 BCE which makes no mention of such an Oral Law nor of the Pharisees but which protects a society constructed by the priests on the foundation of a single Written Law.

 Why did they take the Priest’s authority? Dr. Rivkin gives two reasons. The first is that at the time the priesthood had become corrupt. Jason was improperly appointed and then Meneleas was corruptly appointed as High Priests although neither was eligible. Secondly, the Written Law was bogged down in a commitment to immutable laws administered by a priestly class which was tied to preserving the interests of only the priests and peasants. It was not geared to the fast-paced urbanisation and commercialisation which was then developing. People became frustrated and the time for revolution had arrived. The Pharisees were there and took their opportunity to seize power.

 How did they seize power? Dr. Rivkin gives several reasons of which I will mention just three. (a) They showed that perhaps the ultimate authority did not lie with the priesthood. (b) That there were various ambiguities in the Torah, which enabled them to draw their own inferences. (c) They introduced their grand achievement as an Article of Faith i.e. the concept of individual eternal life, a concept that the majority wanted to believe. These were all new concepts.

 I realise that I have greatly simplified Dr. Rivkins submissions and perhaps I have inadvertedly misquoted him.  I would highly recommend this book as a great read for those interested in learning about the development of the Jewish people.

 I have read several other books on the subject and they all follow in similar vein. I believe that I have established, prima facie, the fact that an oral tradition of the Sadducees existed and is far older than that of the Pharisees. It is now for our Rabbis to explain why they consider the Oral Law of the Pharisees to be the more authentic. It might be, as the Chief Rabbi said, that had we not followed the Oral Law of the Pharisees there would be no Jewish people today. But I repeat that this is not the subject under consideration. 

  I believe that I now understand what may have disturbed the afore mentioned two Rabbis and perhaps those other Rabbis who did not respond. Could it be because my essay questions the authority of the Rabbinate (Pharisees) whose Oral Law we now follow? Do they fear their teachings might be undermined by such research? I doubt whether it would, for what matters is the collective acceptance of heritage, whether literally complying with the truth or not. However, by learning of the power and authority that the early rabbis took for themselves, to abrogate, alter or add to the Written Law, we may come to realize that they also have the power and authority to resolve some of today’s difficult problems. To give just a few examples:

 Sotah. This is a trial by ordeal provided for in the Torah but abolished by Yohanan Ben Zakkai (1st cent. CE.) because he considered it to be inequitable in his day and age.

 Agunah. Where a husband is missing for a long period the wife is nevertheless ‘chained ‘ to him. The early Rabbis relaxed the Written Law and accepted that one witness to his death would be acceptable instead of the prescribed two witnesses. After the holocaust, the husband was presumed dead after a reasonable time had elapsed.

 Takkanot. Hillel the Elder, motivated by social concerns, introduced several reforms, notably the Prosbul, which virtually abolished the Written Law providing for the cancelling of debts.

 Support for the view that the Rabbis both took and have such powers and authority might perhaps also be found in a Paper delivered by Rabbi Dr. Jeffrey Cohen to the Limmud conference 1999. He is reported to have said that a solution to the problem of the Agunah was available to the Bet Din by them acting unilaterally and that there was, he said, justification for such action with precedents set by Hillel the Great. 

 I will now revert to the comments made by the second rabbi referred to in the first paragraph of this addendum. He said that the reason for the rabbis taking the authority away from the Priests was because they had become unworthy to retain it. This in itself is an admission that it had originally rested with them. I replied that this was not sufficient reason for completely writing the Priests out of our history as the rabbis had done. Graetz goes even further and quotes from Ben Sira’s wisdom poem ‘Ecclesiasticas’. In Ben Sira’s time a question was raised as to whether the high priesthood had to remain an hereditary one. Ben Sira wrote that God had selected the house of Aaron as a sacred family, just as He had appointed a certain house as his sanctuary, and just as He had distinguished certain days as holy festivals; and man in his imprudence, dare not change this order of things.
 
 Surely the Pharisees should have applied the same principle to the priest’s position within Judaism. What do you think?
 January 2000