Something to Ponder! FWIW I heard a great lecture on this Sugya.
KT, RRW
Time for courage
By Shammai Engelmayer
(C) 2002 - all rights reserved by the author
An Orthodox colleague approached me recently with a request. The Three Weeks are about to begin, he said; perhaps it is time to reprise a column I wrote over four years ago.
The Three Weeks, of course, is that period between the Fast of Shiva Asar b’Tammuz (17th of Tammuz) and Tisha B’Av (9th of Av) that is marked by an escalating level of mourning for the sacking of Jerusalem and the razing of the Temple both in 586 BCE and 70 CE. This year, that period began on Thursday (June 27) and will end well after 9 p.m. on July 18.
The column in question had to do with why Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. Of specific interest to my colleague was not the story itself, but the lesson it taught for future generations. The recent UJA-Federation study of Bergen County Jewish life, my colleague said, is not the triumphant document of vibrant Jewish life that it is being made to appear. Its references to the high number of unaffiliated Jews in the county and other statistics, such as the number of Jews under age 35 who have Christmas trees in their homes (it is over 30 percent), only reaffirm that American Jewry is in the midst of a demographic nightmare. American Jewry may disappear entirely in a generation or two, if the horrifying trends continue.
Yet, my Orthodox colleague said, the streams continue to fight among themselves as if there is nothing wrong. The story of why Jerusalem was destroyed, he said, had something to say about that.
What was most interesting (other than that a 4-year-old column had made such an impression on him) was that the story he was referring to usually is cited inaccurately. In fact, we have heard the inaccurate version so many times that we accept it as fact: Jerusalem was destroyed because of the sin of “baseless hatred” (sinat chinam); the Talmud says so, so it must be true.
Actually, the Talmud offers many reasons for why Jerusalem was destroyed by the Roman. In the Babylonian Talmud tractate Shabbat (119b), for example, it offers a laundry list of reasons. Among them are that “Shabbat was desecrated there”; “Jerusalemites neglected reading the Shema”; “neglected [the education of] school children”; acted without concern for how their actions looked to others; acted as though the most ignorant of the law were the equals of those most knowledgeable; “closed their eyes to the evil around them and did nothing to correct the situation”; or “that scholars there were despised by the general population.”
The Jerusalem that these scenarios conjures up was one rampant in secularism and disdain for “the religious.” A picture of another sort is painted in BT Yoma (9b), and it is here that we are given the most popular reason for Jerusalem’s destruction: “But the second Temple -- during which period they occupied themselves with Torah, mitzvot, and gemilut chasadim – why was it destroyed? Because there existed there sinat chinam. That is meant to teach you that baseless hatred is considered even worse [a sin] than the three sins of idolatry, sexual immorality, and bloodshed combined.”
That is strong stuff, but especially since the three sins it outranks are the only ones for which the Talmud insists a person should suffer martyrdom rather than be forced to commit the offense.
What is absent here, however, is an explanation of this “baseless hatred.” For that, another talmudic text, BT Gittin (55b-56a) is usually cited, the infamous tale of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza. There is only one problem with this citation: It has nothing to do with “baseless hatred” and makes no such claim. Those who cite it either have never studied the text, or deliberately cut off the tale at its knees to distort the true message before it reaches the general Jewish public.
“The destruction of Jerusalem came through a certain Kamtza and a Bar Kamtza in this way,” Rabbi Yochanan explains in this section of Gittin. “A certain man had a friend named Kamtza and an enemy named Bar Kamtza. He once made a party and said to his servant, ‘Go and bring me Kamtza.’ The man went and brought him Bar Kamtza instead. When the [host] found [Bar Kamtza] there, he said, ‘Behold, you are the one who tells stories about me. Why are you here? Leave.’ Said [Bar Kamtza to the host]: ‘Since I am already here, let me stay, and I will pay you for whatever I eat and drink.’”
The host said no, and all the efforts of Bar Kamtza to avoid being embarrassed proved futile. He even offered to pay for the whole party, but the host took him by the hand and threw him out, while all of Jerusalem’s elite reportedly stood by in silence.
“Said [Bar Kamtza], ‘Since there were Rabbis sitting there and [they] did not stop him [from behaving so boorishly], I understand from this that they agreed with him. I will go to the [Roman] government and inform on them.’”
Thus, according to the testimony of Bar Kamtza, the reason for his perfidy was the silence of the Rabbis, not the animosity shown to him by the anonymous host. That animosity, in fact, may not have been baseless, at all. The host cites his reason: that Bar Kamtza spread tales about him, presumably of an evil nature. Bar Kamtza does not deny the charge. Rather, he pleads not to be embarrassed in front of Jerusalem’s elite.
The story, however, is not over. Rabbi Yochanan has more to say:
“[Bar Kamtza] went and said to [the local governor, personal representative of] Caesar, ‘The Jews are rebelling against you.’ [The Roman] said, ‘How can I tell?’ Said Bar Kamtza to him: ‘Send them an offering and see whether they will offer it [on the altar].’”
Bar Kamtza, of course, had a plan. He knew that the Romans would choose a perfect calf for the offering. He hoped that he would be the one to take it to the Temple, and he was. “While on the way,” said Rabbi Yochanan, Bar Kamtza “made a blemish on its upper lip, or some say that it was on the white of its eye, in a place where according to our way of thinking it is a blemish [thereby rendering the calf ineligible as a sacrifice], but according to [the Roman] way of looking at it, it is not [considered a blemish].”
Now Rabbi Yochanan gets to his point:
“The Rabbis reasoned that it should be offered, in order to keep peace with the government, but Rabbi Zechariah ben Avkulas said to this: ‘They will say [in the future] that blemished animals are offered on the altar.’ [The Rabbis] then suggested that Bar Kamtza be killed so that he could not go and inform against them [a second time], but Rabbi Zechariah ben Avkulas said to this, ‘They will say [in the future] that someone who makes a blemish on consecrated animals should be put to death.’”
On both points, apparently, Rabbi Zechariah ben Avkulas was able to sway the majority to his viewpoint. Said Rabbi Yochanan: “Because of the humility of Rabbi Zechariah ben Avkulas, our House was destroyed, our Temple burnt and we ourselves exiled from our land.”
We are not certain who this Rabbi Zechariah ben Avkulas was, because he never again appears (at least by that name) in the entire Talmud, although a Rabbi Zechariah ben Eucolos makes a solo appearance in BT Shabbat in a discussion of how to get rid of the kernels of Syrian dates. The traitorous Jewish historian Josephus, who ascribes the beginning of the war to the refusal to accept the offering of the emperor in 66 C.E., mentions someone with a similar name and says he was an important figure in the rabbinic circles of the day.
Who he is, however, is less important than what Rabbi Yochanan meant by humility. From the context of the story, it is clear that he meant that Rabbi Zechariah refused to bend the law even though refusal to do so could lead to tragic consequences. It is as if he said, “Who am I, a mere human, to change God’s immutable law even this once?”
That is, in fact, how most sources understand Rabbi Yochanan’s use of the word humility (both the English Soncino translation and the Hebrew Steinsaltz translation define it as “stubborness”). For Rashi, the great commentator of the Middle Ages, this was an unacceptable definition, however. In his world – the world of Ashkenaz, the Crusades and the mass murder of Jews – extremism was the route to holiness. When offered the choice of “convert or die,” the Jews of Ashkenaz were instructed to choose death, even at their own hand. Rashi, therefore, offered his own translation of humility: patience. It is not a definition that makes sense in the context of the story, but it was one that suited Rashi’s world view. (This world view is reflected in the ArtScroll translation, which uses the word “tolerance” directly in the text, avoiding “humility” altogether.)
Rabbi Yochanan’s point, however, is clear: Jerusalem was razed and the Temple set afire because one rabbi insisted that God’s law was immutable and uncompromising, and the consequences be damned.
The true lesson of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza, and the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, is that the consequences must be considered. If God was the ultimate author of the calamities of 70 C.E., then it was God Himself who rejected following a strict interpretation of halachah in the face of impending disaster. It was He who punished His people for not allowing a more liberal interpretation of the law to hold sway long enough to avert disaster.
Sometimes, God was saying, religious authorities must set aside their aversion to compromise. When the fate of the People Israel is at stake, they must be more accepting of other views and must be more honest in admitting that their views may not be the only ones that will please God. They can hold to their views, but they must neither demonize nor delegitimate those who think differently.
Put into the context of the demographic nightmare facing us, which was the point of my colleague’s request, it will take all three streams working together to stem the tide of disaster. Each must revisit its hardened opinions and decisions. Each must find ways to recognize the validity of the other and the usefulness of the other in trying to reawaken Judaism in the hearts of the born-Jewish. Each must set aside its triumphalism and its competitiveness, and sit together in formulating the battle plans for saving the Jewish future.
What was lacking in the Kamtza/Bar Kamtza story was rabbinic courage. The Rabbis at the party did not have the courage to stand up to the anonymous host. They lacked courage again in the face of the stubbornness of Rabbi Zechariah ben Avkilus.
If they lack the courage now, we are doomed.
3 comments:
The difficulty with the 3 "streams" working together is that all but one base themselves on rejecting the Torah as a source of authority, something which cannot be defined as authentically Jewish.
As for the final stream, it really isn't fighting with the others. It has dismissed them as inconsequential blips in history just like every other non-religious Jewish movement of the last 2500 years which has had its moments and then faded into obscurity.
If anything, the situation we're in today is the opposite of the time of the Second Temple. Today refusing the offering would be the right thing to do to stem assimilation. Appeasement and accomodation, on the other hand, are rapidly bringing about the demographic collapse.
"The difficulty with the 3 "streams" working together is that all but one base themselves on rejecting the Torah as a source of authority,""
This is true of most of the steams leaders. Most of the followers are simply ignorant of the ideological issues involved.
And there are STILL a small Cadre of Orthodox rabbis working in Non-O
Congregations for purposes of Keiruv.
You can discern the sincere ones as follows
1. They are NOT making the big bucks
2.Some or many of their success stories "graduate" into a form of O affiliation.
I think that Shammai Engelmeyer was addressing just those kinds of situations where co-operation would lead to keiruv.
Or to put it this way, Shammai is recommending following Hillel:
"oheiv es habriyos umekarval letorah" Sometimes that might mean "playing nice" with the other parties.
KT
RRW
shammai:
while i disagree with many of your conclusion and suppositions in this piece and have huge attitudes about many of your positions, I found some your analysis of the Kamtza stroy to be extraordinarily sensitive and insightful. I am hoping to remeber some these points by heart. I was especially pleased by your assessment that the most grievous fault lay at the rabbis who did not leave the affair when kamtza was bodily ejected, even after having offered to pay for the whole feast. On this we agree. However I do not take this to be a call to unite disparate parties, rather it is call to all people not to endorse harsh, demeaning, publicly humiliating or violent practices. That having been said I remain pleased by your insight probably because this site carried an earlier link to another interpretation of the Kamtza story which recommended summary execution for Jews labeled as "informer" or "wicked." Given that an Israeli Prime minister has already been murdered with such rationalizations I was disturbed by this endorsement of thugism and its categorization as "Torah in the News." While i certainly can identify with rabbis of the time contemplating the murder of Kamtza for his diabolical vengefulness against his entire people, its hard to beleive that anyone would think that killing Kamtza would have averted the crisis, especially a man with a sechel like R. Yohanan. I think the Caesar would have taken the news that his emissary was murdered as a confirmation of the lie that the Jews were rebelling. If the conclusion of the piece was not so committed to equating hamas (violence) with redemption, it would have been almost laughable in its absurdity.
However, though you have in no way arrived at the same conclusions, I have associated you with it in that both interpretations attempt to sweep aside the problem of sinat hinam.
I don't agree with your definition of sinat hinam as "baseless hatred." Classic commentaries on the talmud such as the Rambam, Ramban, and Maharal, agree that the fundamental quality of sinat hinam is its derivation to sinah balev, hatred in the heart or repressed hatred. Essentially a backlog, the problem of sinat hinam is not baselessness but rather contextlessness. Example, boy comes home from school fight and kicks dog. Yes, the anger at the dog seems baseless but that is a derivative effect of sinat hinam. The initial anger was not at all baseless. Unfortunately unresolved opposition was acted out on the dog, The problem was the failure to resolve the negative feeling in the first place.
The problem with calling sinat hinam baseless hatred is not simply a matter of precision but rather a stumbling block to solving the problem. For example, I clean the whole house without anyone asking me to and am then upset that no one noticed. If I accept responsibilty for revealing my anger I will talk to my housematesand may get recogmition or even resolution for its not having been acknowledged in the first place. But if I begin to rationalize and judge my own negative feelings and try to feel that my expectations were unreasonable--then my more primal, negative emotion will remain and show up unexpectedly in some future unconnected situation as sinat hinam.
Look at it this way: sinat hinam is the key concept for a depth psychology discovered 1400 years before Freud. But instead of taking animal instinct as it origin, the rabbi established what I would prefer to call a Tor Lev, an exploration of the heart, where the most fundamental knot in our energy comes from a failure to reveal our opposition to one another. LIke the repressed contents described by freud and jung, these feelings operate autonomously, separate from conscious control. Sinat Hinam can be therefore translated literally as free hatred in the same way biochemists describe free radicals. However, for the purposes of clarity, i prefer to translate the term as free floating hatred, a hatred free of conscious control. In its dormant form it is sinah balev. This is the tumah or contamination of the heart, our holy vessel for truly encountering another.
My next problem is your dismissal of yoma 9b for understanding Gittin 55b. I'm hoping you would consider the Maharal's sensitive read here. In any case, I disagree with your claim that shabbat119b offers an alternative to the conclusions of Yoma 9b.
I argue that Shabbat 119b represents an earlier work sheet on the problem of explaining the destruction of the temples. I do absolutely disagree with your characterization of Shabbat 119b as essentially a rebuke concerning secular practices: this seems to be your concern about america . There is much evidence that the Jerusalem in the decades leading up to the destruction was a city housing a very pious bunch. Supporting my contentions that shabbat 119b was a preliminary source to the Talmud's conclusion's and also not an attack on secularity is the theory attributed to R Hanina, who lived during the time of the destuction and who is quoted in shabbat 119b. Hanina (a wonder worker) concludes that Jerusalem was destroyed because people didn't openly oppose (lo tochichu) one another! Not only does this not have anything to do with separatist or religious practice but it is the origin of sinat hinam as understood by Rambam or Ramban. Again shabbat 119b is a working list of theories for the destruction of Jerusalem. These theories are not argued out but merely presented. There is no attempt to specifically set out causes for the first temple as opposed to the second temple. We know from the layered testimony of yoma 9b that for a long period there was no conclusive theory as to why the second temple was destroyed. at the time of yochanan and eleazar, the mid third century, the rabbis felt that casues of the First temple lay revealed in the prophets whereas the cause of the destruction of the second temple was as yet unrevealed at this time. The list of shabbat 119b belongs to this interim period. yet the statements about sinat hinam made in Yoma 9b are by stam , the anonymous editorial voice of the Talmud, estimated by most modern scholars to have been made sometime in the sixth century. Therefore, Yoma 9b represents a long awaited conclusion on the subject. I would further challenge your false premise that people refer to sinat hinam simply because the "talmud says so". Your straw man is blown away by 1500 years of sophisticated talmudic scholarship which is well aware of Shabbat 119b yet follows the conclusion of stam in Yoma 9b. However I do agree that the stam left many questions unanswered like if sinat hinam existed in the first temple period why wasn't it as problematic then? I have an answer but I would only say it in a trustful situation. As to why sinat hinam was not really explained that I'm more open about putting out my theory even though my goal may be to needle you and those who may by chance happen upon this old discussion.
The first clue to the vagueness of the concept of sinat hinam can be shown in Shabbat 119b in relation to R. Hanina's theory, the failure of Yerushalmim to openly oppose one another. Yoma 9b ,instead of referring to a specific toraitic violation , merely cites the problem without citing a rule. In other words the problem of our time can be pointed out but its solution cannot be commanded. similarly the privileging of sinat hinam over mitzvot represents what halachists regard as secular, that is privileging the heart . Ultimately the commitment to resolving sinat hinam over and above all mitzvot is anathema to authoritarians, people who may claim to worship God but actually worship power. In fact most authoritarians would not even be able to think of God in any way but in terms of power. I would add that an authoritarian first commitment is to power and understanding the world that way. The commitment to power precedes any notion of God so that God is understood as Power. The reason that the elimination of sinat hinam is a goal repugnant to authoritarians is that it requires the acknowledgment of the interpersonal realm where trust and truth reign, an unbearable challenge to the authoritarian who believes only in ruling and the ruled. Authoritarians deny the personal and the relational, the very place where open opposition takes place. And so the phenomenon of sinat hinam diminishes the importance of authority. Although it by no means dismisses authority. Authority and authoritarians will not be dismissed and are perhaps the most serious test for a human being as to whether they are acting out some anger of the past or are really here in the moment carefully responding to a heavy handed power driven assh-le in their face.
My last problem was what got me up and running in first place. rather cavalierly at a moment you were seemingly trying to support your argument you characterized your source,Josephus, as "traitorous." Though not uncommon in the zealot world, I believe this accusation to be groundless, malicious or simply mired in ignorance. Since you offer no specific testimony to support your accusation, i am inferring the source of your judgments from the only source we have on Josephus, his own writings.
Josephus first mission was as a volunteer diplomat
attemptin to achieve the release of kohanim the procurator has arbitrarily imprisoned in Rome. Surviving shipwreck and saving lives, Josephus completed the journey and successfully negotiated the release of the prisoners. Perhaps because of this , the Sanhedrin appointed him to command the defense of most of the Galilee. Josephus' preparations for war and seige were so extraordinary that the only criticism of his autobiography he felt necessary to address in a later work was that he underplayed his enthusiam in defending against Rome. After valiantly fighting a 45 day seige at Jotapata, Josephus escaped with several men t a cave where they decide to commit suicide rather than commit suicide, Josephus cleverly escaped this pact and surrendered to the Romans. As a general he was taken to Vespasian whom he predicted would become the next emperor. After two years in prison, Vespasian, through a very strange string of circumstances atttained throne, and released Josephus to the patronage of the general Titus. Believing the war to be utterly futile, having been a widely respected figure ( he was a descendant of of Matityahu) Josephus went to Jerusalem to urge surrender in order to save Jerusalem from destruction. Josephus, having failed in this, chronicled the war from inside Roman positions. I have seen an accusation on wikipedia that Josephus provided intelligence to the Romans but since no such admission is in either the "Jewish war" or in his Life
it is a false accusation.
I believe that most zealot or zealot leaning Jews consider Josephus a traitor becasue he failed to commit suicide and then lived under Roman sponsorship. Many might think it was kissing up to vespasian to predict his rise to power. Now in the late 40's when the accusation first became popular it was among secular socialist zionists who most certainly disparaged tamudic thought. But for any Jew subscribing to influence from the rabbis this position became problematic. Consider the story of the founding of Yavneh. Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai escaped a beseiged Jerusalem run by zealot thugs (the Mishnah uses the term "biryonim", Josephus uses a similar term often translated as robbers) by pretending to have died. Rabbi Eliezer (the Great) and Rabbi Yehoshua
pretended to bring the coffin outsdie the walls for burial and then surrendered to the Romans. The mishnah, compiled over 100 years after Josephus published his work, ascribes a meeting between Vespasian and Rabbi Yochanan where RY predicts Vespasian's accession to the throne! As a result of this prediction RY was granted the right by the Romans to organize the first yeshiva at Yavneh, the proteus of the rabbinic world. So if you feel that Josephus was a traitor, for not dying in the seige and then living under the whim of the emperor, then perhaps in your future work you may refer to the "traitorous" Rabbi Yohanan. I hope you don't because then you might be referring to the "traitorous" Jeremiah who spent a lot of time in a pit for advocating surrender to the Babylonians, who was set free by the Babylonians. And maybe you might protest Tzom Gedaliah and consider Gedaliah's murder justified for being a quisling and operating an occupation government under the Babylonians. I don't feel that way and in fact believe that zealotry is mere tribalism you can find all over the world. Sovereignty and blood for land are not fundamental pursuits for Am Yisrael despite the transformation of frum or traditionalist Jews into zealots. The oppositional core of Am Yisrael rather than a lockstep group , I 'm hoping, remains. So stop picking on Josephus, and focus on all us cowards running from the reality of sinat hinam and the loss of power it would mean for us if we truly faced the people right in front of us.
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