Reflecting on Judaism

No matter where they now find themselves on the religious spectrum, few would disagree with the suggestion that rabbis, particularly the orthodox rabbis in the Anglo Saxon community, are recommending ever stricter and ‘higher’ standards of observance. Certainly stricter than those which were current during my formative years in the orthodox community in East London before and after the Second World War.
 
All would agree that there is, in Judaism, the potential for rabbis to recommend, within the Oral Law, both strict and lenient standards of observance. We need only refer to the records of the ancient schools of Hillel and Shamai, which show that, generally, Hillel ruled leniently, Shamai ruled strictly. The majority decisions usually went in favour of the lenient Hillel. One reason given for their different approaches is that Shamai was of the upper class and did not appreciate the difficult living conditions of the majority of the people whilst Hillel was of the people, understood their condition and tried to make things easy for them. The purpose of this illustration is to show that the Oral Law is not set in stone; it is flexible.
 
In my essay ‘What is Ultra Orthodox’ I gave examples of food which had been accepted by most as kosher and which in fact is still kosher, but which is now frowned upon and its use discouraged by today’s stricter rulings.  One personal experience not mentioned in this essay concerns wine. It was not unusual, in the UK till 1973, to provide table wines at celebrations, wines not produced under the supervision of a Kashrut Authority. A notice to this effect was displayed on each table. In 1973 my wife and I started preparing for our Silver wedding celebration and invited a firm of kosher caterers to discuss it with us. They asked whether we wanted kosher Israeli wine or non-supervised wine. We chose the Israeli variety. They then told us that this would be the last time that customers would have a choice because the Kashrut Commission had informed kosher caterers, that if they did not provide only supervised wine they would lose their kashrut licence. 
 
The caterers explained that they bought their stock of wine months in advance. They were given six months to use up their non-supervised wine. If they continued to use this wine after this time they would lose their licence. This experience perfectly illustrates the ability of rabbis to rule either leniently or strictly. Non-supervised wines, because pagans do not produce them, were considered by some rabbis not to be prohibited.
 
One of the by-products of these strict rulings is that it has made ‘kashrut’ a growth industry providing jobs for many supervisors some of whom will not eat the kosher food they supervise. The Supervisory Bodies, which were once small organisations employing few people are today big organisations employing many. The turnover of one UK organisation’s Kashrut Division alone is over £1,250,000.
 
This raises the question, how were the rabbis able to gain such detailed authority over of so much of our personal lives, assuming that we wish to live within a religious community?
 
I personally believe that religious communities need religious leaders. I was very surprised when one of my more observant friends remarked that he thought that the days of the communal rabbi in the U.K. were drawing to a close. ‘There are an ever-increasing number of lay persons able to run synagogue services with the pastoral work being done by organisations like Jewish Care’. I am not sure that I agree with him. We should now consider the status of the rabbi and investigate how he obtained his authority.
 
In my essay ‘The role and authority of the rabbi’ I discuss how the rabbis obtain ordination (i.e. the laying on of hands; conferring authority); how the quality of ordination differs from rabbi to rabbi; how the ordination of today differs from, and is inferior to, the original ordination.  I also mentioned that our tradition relates that the original chain of ordination dates back to Joshua and ended with the completion of the Talmud circa 5th Cent CE.  The following quote from the Mishnah shows where and how the tradition started. Can the Mishnah be wrong?
 
The Mishnah ‘Avot’ starts with the sentence ‘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 Great Assembly.’
 
I quote below five excerpts from the Torah, and the circumstances surrounding them, which deal with ‘the laying on of hands (ordination)’. From these it is reasonable to deduce that neither Joshua, nor the prophets, nor the rabbis, nor the Great Assembly were ever part of the chain of ordination. If this is so, what and where is the ‘chain of ordination’ to which the rabbis claim to be the heirs? Is there, perhaps an alternative reasonable deduction which can be made from these five excerpts?
 
The first, second, third & fifth excerpts show that Moses did ‘lay hands’ on Joshua but only for the purpose of promoting a warrior leader not a religious leader.
 
The fourth excerpt shows that the Torah was handed, neither to Joshua nor to the prophets but to the Priests and the Elders to be our teachers. The Priests remained our teachers, certainly till the time of Ezra and probably beyond. The rabbis, not being part of this ‘chain of ordination’ of the Priests, wrote themselves into it, via the above Mishnah, at the beginning of the Talmudic period. As discussed in my essay* ‘Sadducees and Pharisees’ they usurped the Priests authority, for good reasons, and then justified their action by introducing an aura of their antiquity.        
 
1st) Towards the end of his life Moses was looking for a successor who combined the capacity of leadership in warfare with the vigorous prosecution of the duties that devolved upon the head of a nation and asked God to suggest somebody. God replied that Moses should take Joshua ‘ and lay thy hands on him’ ( Hertz’s Chumash, Page 693 Numbers. Ch. xxvii V18).
 
2nd) Moses begged God to let him cross the river Jordan and see the goodly hill country. His request was denied. Instead he was instructed, in private, to ‘charge Joshua, and encourage him, and strengthen him: for he shall go over before this people, and he shall cause them to inherit the land which thou shalt see’ (Page 755 Deut. Ch. iii V28).
 
3rd) Moses still strove to ensure sound succession. He repeated in public that which God had instructed him in private. He called Joshua before the people and said to him, ‘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). Page 888 Deut. xxxi V7.
 
4th) In verse 9, just two verses later, it states, ‘And Moses wrote this law and delivered it unto the priests, the sons of Levi, that bore the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, and unto all the Elders of Israel’.
 
5th ) Moses died and the Torah records ‘ And Joshua the son of Nun was full of the spirit of wisdom, for Moses had laid his hands upon him, and did as the Lord commanded Moses. (Page 916 Deut. xxxiv V4).
 
The Great Assembly is believed to have started as an educational organisation, possibly by Ezra, at about the time of his return from Babylon, circa 444BCE. The first mention of the Pharisees, from which the rabbinic movement grew, is circa 150 BCE, a continuity gap of some 300 years, a period about which we know very little. Although the Talmud refers to the Great Assembly there is no strong evidence to make us believe that there is a significant link between Ezra and the Pharisees via the Great Assembly.
 
So let us try to assess the status of the rabbi based on the straightforward reading of the Torah excerpts above; from my understanding of their status, as gleaned from several books on Jewish history, written by orthodox Jewish authors, and which is set out in greater detail in my essays ‘Sadducees and Pharisees; .always bearing in mind that the views there expressed are the historians, not mine.  
 
We can clearly see that the rabbi did not form part of the original chain reaching back to Joshua. This chain started with from Moses and then through the Priesthood to beyond Ezra, who was from the Priestly Family, and acknowledged as the foremost teacher of his day. We are told that he was also a Sadducee, a descendant of the priest Zadok, who by tradition, anointed Solomon as king. History relates that after the Ezra period the priests became gradually more corrupt, were very strict in their interpretation of the Law and were unable to adapt Torah Law, inter alia, to the ever-increasing international commercial activity with which the Jews wanted to be associated.
 
The rabbis introduced many new concepts, contrary to the teachings of the priests while claiming that these new concepts formed part of the original Oral Law. These innovations captured the imagination of the people and eventually the popularity of the rabbis enabled them to usurp the priests' authority. I suppose that by this description the rabbis were the first reform Jews. However, I must be honest and admit that I believe that if the rabbis had not usurped the priest’s authority and introduced their innovations I doubt whether the Jewish People would still be around today. It is a pity that they appear to have lost their innovative spirit. With it they could solve some of the urgent problems currently troubling our people, Agunah for example, along the lines recently suggested by a small number of innovative and forward thinking Orthodox rabbis such as the late Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits.      
 
Moses lived circa 1300 BCE. The historians claim that the rabbis usurped the priests’ authority circa 150 BCE. If the historians are correct it follows that for 1150 years (1300-150 BCE) the Jews lived with the priests’ (Saducees) interpretation of the Law and for the following 2152 years (150 BCE-2002 CE) they lived with the rabbis’ interpretation of the Law. This long period of rabbinic rule grants the rabbis status. They should use, not abuse it. They should be as considerate as Hillel and use their constructive skills to make the lives of the community as easy as possible within the Law and revert to recommending lenient, not strict rulings, following the example of the school of Hillel. They have acquired the authority to do so, albeit against the clear intentions of Moses, but do they have the will? 
 
November 2002