Rabbinic Judaism

Here we’re going to focus on a very particular stage in Jewish history. We’ll attempt to answer a basic question. If, as I said before, the faith and the behavior prescribed by Judaism derive primarily from the Bible, why is it that the Judaism we encounter today is so radically different from the biblical representation of that very same religious tradition?

The answer will lead us to a discussion on the origins and basic tenets of what we call Rabbinic Judaism. We will see the establishment of an alternative path of Jewish religious expression following the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in the year 70 C.E. Here we’ll explain where the very notion of the Rabbinic model of leadership comes from, because it is conspicuously absent in the Bible. There are no rabbis in the Bible. There are priests, there are prophets and kings. We will be addressing here a very specific stage and development that would define Judaism until this very day.

1. The Origins of Rabbinic Judaism: We find that the Judaism practiced today is radically different from everything known to us in the Bible. For instance, how do Jews worship? These changes are just a few of the major adjustments that resulted from was arguably the most dramatic event in Judaism’s long history, maybe only the holocaust is equal in drama: the destruction of the second Jewish Temple in the year 70 C.E. by the Romans.
2. Rabbinic Judaism and the Synagogue: The Rabbinic period introduced a new system of daily public prayer. We know that synagogues existed even before the destruction of the temple. There, the Torah was read and a sermon was delivered. We have many sources that talk about this kind of activities, but not prayer. One of the main questions is when the prayer begins as a systematic daily Jewish expression of worship. Most probably, only in this post-temple period.
3. What Rabbinic Judaism Really Means: The message we get in Rabbinic literature is: “yes, we have created an alternative lifestyle (but hopefully that temple will be rebuilt)” The success of Rabbinic Judaism was precisely in this balancing between obvious innovation and the stress on continuity with the written Bible.
   

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What Rabbinic Judaism Really Means

The statement made by Yochanan ben Zakai, suggesting that acts of loving kindness could replace sacrifices, may resonate with Christian circles, as does the whole process of spiritualization of ritual. This is true because both Christianity in its early Judaic setting, as well as Rabbinic Judaism, survived the destruction precisely because neither group was temple-oriented.

There was a major difference between these two groups, and it was critical. For the early Church, the destruction of the temple was vindication or proof of Christianity’s earliest message. Jesus himself was quoted as prophetizing “no stone will be left unturned in Jerusalem”.

The Church preserved the writings of Josephus Flavius. If we read the Church fathers, it is obvious why. One Church father living in the city of Caesarea would quote Jesus as saying “no stone will be left unturned in Jerusalem”, and then he says “now let us see this came to be in the writings of Josephus”. The destruction was indeed considered vindication or proof of the veracity of the teachings of the early Church.

For the rabbis, that was not the case. On the one hand, they created an alternative Judaism. On the other hand, the destruction continued to pose a major theological as well as practical problem. The problem manifested itself in many ways, one of them being related to the question “do we want to build another temple?”.

A New Religion?

Was this Rabbinic Judaism presented as a system that superseded the Bible? In early Christianity, that will certainly be the case, were the Old Testament was superseded by the New Testament. Rabbis realized that this would be a very dangerous approach to take. On the one hand, they did create an alternative style of religious expression, but on the other hand, they never outwardly negated the earlier one. They never claimed that one ultimately takes the place of the other.

I said before that I would love to have a time machine and go back and ask Yochanan ben Zakai some very important questions. The one question I would probably ask him is: “Yochanan, please tell me, did you really intend to reform Judaism the way you did? To create an alternative system based on a spiritual decentralized mobile type of leadership? Prayer instead of sacrifice?”.

I wonder if I would get an answer out of him. The message we get in Rabbinic literature is: “yes, we have created an alternative lifestyle (but hopefully that temple will be rebuilt)”. There was never an outright negation of the earlier vestiges of Judaism by the rabbis who created an alternative system. There is a tremendous tension between continuity and innovation in the development of Rabbinic Judaism.

The success of Rabbinic Judaism was precisely in this balancing between obvious innovation and the stress on continuity with the written Bible.

Rabbinic Judaism establishes a new legal system, but it places an enormous importance on relations between human beings. One could almost claim that this was enhanced in the Rabbinic period even more than in earlier periods.

Earlier periods imagined that the whole world was a structure held up by three pillars. One of the three pillars is the Torah, meaning the teaching of the Bible. The second one was aboda, which in Hebrew means sacrificial worship. The third pillar is acts of loving kindness. If this is a structure that has three pillars underneath, what happens to that structure if I remove one of the pillars form underneath? The structure begins to tip over and ultimately falls.

When Yochanan ben Zakai says to his disciples Joshua weeping over the cessation of sacrificial worship “there is another atonement that takes its place, acts of loving kindness”, what is he doing? He is reinterpreting that ancient statement. We thought that all three are required to maintain Judaism. Legal texts, sacrificial worship and the human aspect of behavior among mortals. Yochanan comes and says that they are ideally the underpinning of Judaism, but when one is removed, the other picks up the slack.

The structures that were set up at Yavneh not only saved Judaism, they would be used in subsequent generations. Yochanan ben Zakai is probably up there in the pantheon of Jewish heroes. The right person at the right place at the very right time.

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Rabbinic Judaism and the Synagogue

The revitalized Judaism of the post-temple period, known to us as Rabbinic Judaism, would set the pattern of Jewish behavior for all subsequent generations. Here a few words are in order regarding the word “rabbi”.

The word itself means “master”. In the context of our discussion, it is really the designation of a sage, a teacher of Torah. The restructuring of Jewish religious expression after the destruction, in many ways can be defined as a sort of spiritualizing process, in which the rabbis were the main motivators.

Jewish religious expression was decentralized. It no longer required geography. It no longer required one temple on one mountain in one city. You can do it anywhere. The exclusivity of a temple was replaced by the synagogues, that could now function as minor sanctuaries. It is interesting because, ultimately, Jews would talk about synagogues as assuming status of sacred space. In many ways, the synagogue does become a new expression of what was once a temple.

Daily Public Prayer

The Rabbinic period introduced a new system of daily public prayer. We know that synagogues existed even before the destruction of the temple. There, the Torah was read and a sermon was delivered. We have many sources that talk about this kind of activities, but not prayer. One of the main questions is when the prayer begins as a systematic daily Jewish expression of worship. Most probably, only in this post-temple period.

The priests lost their major power base, the temple. The rabbis were slowly assuming a more central position within the community. We must remember that priests claimed to authority by virtue of lineage. They were born into the priesthood. The rabbis’ authority was earned through learning and individual charisma.

This charismatic or merit-oriented leadership, however, ultimately evolved into a standardized type of leadership, like those of the rabbis. This would happen much later in Jewish history. The rabbis still realized that they had something new to offer, and were very careful not to fall to the riff of priesthood and this idea of hereditary access to leadership.

A New Decentralized Religion

What is more important about rabbis is that they are mobile. They can attract disciples anywhere. They can establish local centers of learning throughout Judea proper, but ultimately, throughout the Jewish diaspora. Where there was a high concentration of Jews was in the land of Babylonia. We must remember that the Jews remained in Babylonia from the destruction of the first temple in the year 586 B.C.E. As long as the second temple stood, Jews in Babylonia, liking it or not, remained there, on the fringes of the Jewish community. Once Judaism was refashioned on a spiritually mobile context, Jews in Babylonia could now thrive.

Rabbis would make their way to Babylonia, and the study of Torah becomes a major phenomenon, not only within the land of Judea, but in Babylonia as well. Rabbinic Judaism stresses that the study of Torah is done not merely to know what God wants. You don’t read the Bible only to know how to behave. You read and study the Bible as a form of devotion.

I can almost venture to say that it was at this stage where education, through this tremendous Jewish stress on learning, really takes off. This idea of people devoting themselves to a learning of the texts for some people would become a career, for others it is a way of expressing some sort of religious devotion.

The new centers of Rabbinic activity embarked on an enhanced interpretation of all earlier religious traditions. By the third century there was a new compilation of legal works of the rabbis, the Mishnah. The Midrash, on the other hand, was the exegetical interpretation of the Bible. These were the fruits of this new Rabbinic phenomenon. These, the Mishnah and the Midrash, would in turn be examined for hundred of years and serve as the basis for centuries of further learning, leading to the development of the Talmud.

The total sum of all Rabbinic teaching came to be known as the “Oral Tradition”. This designation suggests a mass of material that complements the written tradition, which of course is the Bible. The two, the Bible on the one hand, and the oral tradition of the rabbis on the other; were destined to be inseparable. They became the base for almost all subsequent intellectual and legal activity.

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The Origins of Rabbinic Judaism

We find that the Judaism practiced today is radically different from everything known to us in the Bible. For instance, how do Jews worship? The standard system for religious expression was through sacrifices in the Temple of Jerusalem. Today, there is a total decentralization. The very same decentralization that was frown upon in the Bible today is the standard. Jews worship in synagogues. These are located wherever a sufficient number of Jews warrant their establishments. This decentralization would seem to go on the face of what the Bible was interested in.

The Israelites of the Bible were required to serve God through an elaborate system of sacrificial worship. They slaughtered animals on an altar at a temple. This was primarily carried on by a priestly family. Today, we encounter a totally different mode of worship in Judaism: prayer. In that model, there is absolutely no necessity for priests. Anyone can do it.

The most visible form of religious leadership today is the Rabbinic model. We all know these are the leaders of the Jewish community. But whereas the Bible talks about kings, about priests and about prophets, there is absolutely no mention of rabbis anywhere. Where does this model come from?

The Destruction of the Temple

The changes I mentioned are just a few of the major adjustments that resulted from what was arguably the most dramatic event in Judaism’s long history, maybe only the holocaust is equal in drama: the destruction of the second Jewish Temple in the year 70 C.E. by the Romans.

The Second Temple stood in Jerusalem for almost 600 years, from 560 B.C.E. to 70 C.E. Viewed in historical perspective, the sudden lose of the center of Jewish life for practitioners of Judaism throughout the world must had been devastating. We must remember that not only Jews from the land of Judea worshiped there, but Jews throughout the diaspora supported that temple. It was really the focal point of a worldwide brotherhood.

If we add to that that the first temple stood for almost 400 years, we find that for a thousand year period, save for a 70 year interval, Judaism understood its religious existence around the Temple. The sudden absence of the Temple demanded a theological explanation, as well as a practical adjustment to the new reality.

If God’s temple was destroyed by Roman armies, does that must mean that the Roman gods defeated the Jewish God? That was the mentality of the ancient Roman world. One of the books of the Midrash describes how the Roman conquered Jerusalem. The Roman general actually entered the temple of Jerusalem, banged on the altar and attacked the Jewish God by saying “you’re a god and I’m a god, come and do battle with me”.

We have a book that was written in Arameic on Assyria by a fellow who called himself Baruc. He understands the destruction of the temple as being the cessation of life. There is nothing to live for without a temple.

Other sources describe groups of Jews entering a state of perpetual mourning. They assumed the life of ascetic abstinence. They would not eat meat, they would not drink wine. The would derive no joy from this world.

The Solutions

Rabbinic stories would describe how one sage living at the time, literally in the immediate aftermath of the destruction, his name is Rabbi Joshua, approaches these ascetics and argues with them. He claims that such extreme reactions to the destruction can only lead to an ultimate negation of life itself.

We’re told that the ascetics stopped eating meat and stopped drinking wine. Joshua asks why. They say “how can we eat meat when meat is no longer offered on the temple, as it used to be when there were sacrifices”. “How can we drink wine when there are no longer wine libations.” Joshua responds by saying “if we are going to follow your logic, let’s stop eating bread, because they used to offer it on the temple. Let’s stop drinking water, because they used to pour water on the altar.” What Joshua was basically saying is that if I use your logic and I take it to its logical extreme, we cannot live anymore.

His solution, as opposed to theirs, was to establish formal symbols of mourning. You paint your house and you leave one portion unpainted to remind people of the destruction. Then, get on with life.

When you read these stories, you realize that it must have taken quite a bit of guts to stand up and say “we have to get on with life”. That is really the essence of the Rabbinic solution and the Rabbinic period. We cannot go into this constant state of negation of life.

Rabbinic literature describes the efforts to create alternative systems of Jewish religious expression. From one sage in particular. He is a fantastic fellow. I often dream that I could create a time machine so that I could go back in history and interview this Rabbi, whose name is Yochanan ben Zakai.

Not surprisingly, it was Yochanan ben Zakai who was Joshua’s mentor. It was he that really developed much of this process of rejuvenation and redefinition of Judaism.

A New Atonement Without the Temple

A popular Rabbinic story describes how during the siege of Jerusalem Yochanan ben Zakai realized the city was doomed. Something had to be done before the city fell. He faints death and smuggles out of the city in a coffin. That was the only way you could leave town. He appears before the Roman general conducting the battle and prophetizes that this general would be the next Caesar. Sure enough, a messenger comes running, telling the general exactly that. This general turns Caesar and is so overwhelmed that he tells Yochanan ben Zakai “what can I do for you?”. Yochanan says “give me a little town of the southern coast of Judea known as Yavneh and its wise men”. This little town would set up a center of learning that ultimately would become the new focal point of Jewish Rabbinic life.

The story is clearly anachronistic for one obvious reason. That city of Yavneh and its wise men did not exist yet. But people who told the story generations later knew that something happened that assured continuity. All stories really intended to answer the riddle how could Judaism had survived.

These wise men would become the foundation for a new type of leadership and a new type of ritual Jewish behavior.

A more symbolic legend describes Yochanan and his disciple Joshua visiting Jerusalem after it had been destroyed. Joshua sees the sanctuary devastated. He says to his mentor Yochanan, “the place where the sins of Israel are atoned for is devastated”.

The mentality here is clear. Joshua imagines a Jewish nation accruing sins throughout the calendar year, but he knows that the Bible has already presented the people of Israel with a solution. A day in the calendar year is known as the day of atonement, where sins are atoned for as the result of a particular process of sacrificial worship and changing of behavior patterns. People obviously tried to atone for sins that were committed not only towards God, but towards fellow men. The point is that Joshua imagined that there is only through Temple worship that sins would be atoned for. Without the Temple, these sins would pile up and they would ultimately crush us.

Yochanan replies with a fascinating statement. “My son, be not grieved. We have another atonement as effective as this: acts of loving kindness.” He is quoting the prophet Hosea for a desire of mercy, not sacrifices.

Yochanan was brilliant. He knew that when the prophet made that statement, he did not claim that we don’t need a temple. What the prophet was suggesting was that sacrifice without mercy is not only meaningless, but it might achieve the opposite that it intends. It is an abomination to God to you think that by burning an animal in an altar you’re achieving something if that is not accompanied by proper behavior.

Yochanan is reinterpreting that prophetic statement to say that the prophets already suggested that acts of loving kindness can take the place of sacrifices. It is a reinterpretation of a biblical statement. The Mishnah, that code of law produced by the Rabbis, attributes to Yochanan ben Zakai a number of ordinances. These all intended not so much to get over the grieving and the theological implications of the destruction, but the practical implications. To establish alternative practices. To establish an alternative leadership.

Yochanan would move certain behaviors and practices that once were only allowed in the temple to towns throughout the country. A decentralizing process.

These legends and traditions were probably put to literary form years and generations after the death of Yochanan ben Zakai. They testify to an awareness of a totally new system and context for the maintenance of Judaism as a vital religion, not withstanding the destruction of all previous historical frameworks.

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