CHAPTER 5
Sages and Rabbis
THE LAST FEW CENTURIES BCE were a watershed period, a time when the priestly and prophetic traditions were being marginalized into a small sect that continued the old ways, and the life of the people was gradually being transformed by the scribes and sages into a rabbinic and intellectual way of life. This is not to say that the rabbis and sages joined the camp of the Hasmoneans and their hellenized brand of Judaism. Quite the contrary. Just as the Zadokites tried to establish themselves and their community as an alternative to the Second Temple, so the rabbis also tried to find a new way for the Jews to define themselves, as they considered the Temple to be corrupt and illegitimate. It no longer provided a viable focus for their worship. Believing that prophecy had ended, they set about interpreting the holy texts and tried to build a way of life in which each moment would be a reminder of God and his covenant.
The earliest group of these sages, who lived from the third through first centuries BCE, are known only through a few brief references in the Talmud, the Jewish legal code which was written during several hundred years starting in the first century CE. These sages, whom the Talmud calls the hasidim rishonim (early or first pietists) underwent persecution at the hands of the hellenized Jewish rulers and the powerful Hasmonean priesthood. It is said that thousands were killed and others fled to unknown lands. In the Talmud, they were praised for their loyal adherence to the spiritual and ethical requirements of Judaism, with a total disregard of the danger this would bring. Their lives were marked by an extraordinary pursuit of virtue on the individual level. It appears that they practiced some sort of meditation every morning before their prayers in order to direct their hearts to God. It is still not known whether they were a formal sect or simply a loosely identified group of people with a common outlook and devotion for God, who followed a strict lifestyle adhering to Jewish religious and ethical law. Their loyal love of God became an inspiration for Jews over the centuries, and the terms hasid and its plural hasidim came to be associated with true devotees of God in all periods.*
There was a subgroup of these hasidim who were considered miracle workers. And indeed, many miracles were attributed to them by virtue of their good deeds and study of Torah. So, despite the official insistence that prophecy had ended, accounts in later rabbinic literature attribute numerous miracles and magical practices to these sages and the generations that followed.
Rome conquered Judea from the Greeks in 70 bce and the next generation of rabbinic leaders lived under Roman domination until the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. The Roman respect for Jewish cultural and religious autonomy produced a renewed interest in the study of Torah, which had declined during the Hasmonean period. Academies for study of religious texts were established and literacy was widespread. It is said that in Jerusalem, prior to its destruction, there were three hundred primary schools.
Haninah ben Dosa, considered the last of the early hasidim who were miracle workers, was still active during the early Roman period. Haninah’s saintly qualities and spiritual stature are revealed in the following story:
Once he went to visit his master and, arriving early at the school, he stood in the doorway and announced: “Receive everyone with a friendly countenance.” A Roman official came by and said, “Which one of you will carry me on his shoulder to his house and do for me all that I want?” Haninah rose and offered himself, took him upon his shoulder to his house, brought him water, sat down in the dust, and asked the Roman, “Master, what is thy wish, and what will my master have for dinner?” When he replied, “honey and nuts,” Haninah scurried in different directions, and brought the desired food. When the Roman threw the table to the ground, Haninah asked: “Master, kindly tell me thy wish.” When he replied, “Who will carry me to my house?” Haninah again offered himself. When he came out to the market of the town, he felt that the Roman had dismounted. He saw a flame rising to heaven and heard its voice say to him, “Haninah, return, thou hast been tried and found perfect, we shall no longer trouble thee, for I heard it said about thee, ‘And I have put my words in thy mouth, and have covered thee in the shadow of mine hand’ (Isaiah 51:16).” 81
Haninah is quoted in the Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers), a section of the Mishnah which presents the sayings of the early sages:
He whose actions exceed his wisdom, his wisdom shall endure, but he whose wisdom exceeds his actions, his wisdom will not endure.82
Haninah’s total faith in God was the subject of legend. To him and his wife, the miraculous was natural. When they ran out of oil and his wife used vinegar instead, he said:
He who commanded oil to burn will also command vinegar to burn.83
Despite his life of virtue, Haninah was truly humble and saw himself as a sinner. He exemplified the qualities of the true hasid. Once, a poisonous lizard bit him and yet it died. He brought it on his shoulder to the academy, commenting simply:
See, my sons, it is not the lizard that kills, it is sin that kills.84
The true hasid was patient and always ready to forgive. An anonymous sage taught:
There are four kinds of tempers among people. He who is easily injured and easily appeased, his loss is compensated by his gain; he who is hard to anger and hard to appease, his gain is cancelled in his loss; he who is hard to anger and easy to appease, he is a hasid; he who is easily angered and hard to appease is a wicked man.85
One of the most important teachers during the period of Roman domination was Hillel (70 bce–10 CE). His influence was widespread among the Jews of his time and persists even till today; there are quite a few legends about his personal piety, humility, and thirst for knowledge. Born in Babylonia, he was attracted to the schools of Shemaya and Abtalyon and traveled to Judea to study with them. Despite great economic hardship he studied under his masters while working to support himself, often sleeping in the cold attic of the academy.
Hillel encapsulated the teachings of Judaism in two maxims which concern the relationship of God and man, and human beings with each other: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:5), and “What is hateful to you, do no not do to your neighbor.”86 This is a concrete and practical formulation of the Golden Rule as stated in the Bible, “Love thy neighbor as thyself” (Leviticus 19:18), which Jesus of Nazareth, who lived at approximately the same time, also quoted.
Fortunately, some of Hillel’s sayings are preserved in the rabbinic literature. They are witness to his extraordinary humility and wisdom. Here are a few of them:
My humiliation is my elevation, my elevation is my humiliation.87
If I am not for myself, who will be? But if I am for myself only, what am I? And if not now, when?88
Hillel was constantly aware that life is transient, and that the cultivation of his soul was his most important duty. This is illustrated by the following story:
Once, Hillel was about to take leave of his disciples in the school. When they asked him where he was going, he replied: “To do hesed to the guest in my home. When they asked him whether he had a guest every day, he said: “Is not my poor soul a guest in the body, as it is here this day, and tomorrow no longer here?”89
In the Jewish tradition, Hillel is revered as someone who had merited the holy spirit, the ruah ha-kodesh. Exactly what he did to merit it, is not said, but the passage above implies his attentiveness to his spiritual well-being. In one of the baraitas (supplementary mishnahs) about him, it was said that Hillel “is worthy of God’s presence, the Shekhinah, to rest on him; this also means the gift of prophecy.”90 The same baraita tells about Samuel the Small, a disciple of Hillel’s, who was sitting with some fellow scholars. He was called “the small” because he made himself small (humble). The baraita says that “he was designated by a heavenly voice as the only one worthy of the holy spirit.”91 There were in fact many more of Hillel’s disciples who merited the stage of ruah ha-kodesh. According to another tradition, thirty of Hillel’s eighty disciples were evolved spiritually to that degree. The scholar Adolph Buchler remarked: “The numbers may be exaggerated, but the connection between the learning of the disciples and their character on the one hand, and their worthiness of the prophetical gift and their ability to work miracles on the other, is evident.”92 It would appear that even the talmudic rabbis recognized that prophecy had not ended with the biblical prophets.
Hillel’s legendary greatness as a teacher of morality and love is epitomized in the following maxims:
Be of the disciples of Aaron, love peace and pursue peace, love your fellow creatures and bring them near to the Torah.93
Do not judge your fellowman until you have been put in his position.94
Hillel taught the law of equivalent compensation for one’s actions – the law of action and reaction.
He [Hillel] once saw the skull of a man floating on the face of the waters, and recognizing it, said: “Because you drowned others, they drowned you. And those who drowned you will in the end be drowned.”95
Another sage of this period emphasized the need for a master or teacher to guide one on the correct way. Joshua ben Perahya said:
Get yourself a teacher and acquire for yourself a companion; and judge all people favorably.96
Humility in practice, in all respects, was the key quality to imbibe. Judah ben Tema is quoted in a later version of the Ethics of the Fathers:
If you have done your neighbor a little wrong, let it be in your eyes great; if you have done him much good, let it be in your eyes little; if he has done you a little good, let it be in your eyes great; if he has done you a great wrong, let it be in your eyes little.97
Many of the sages of the Roman period, like Hillel and the others of his academy, would have been considered Pharisees. Despite the negative picture painted of this group in some later texts, the authentic story of the Pharisees, who were active from 70 bce to 70 CE, is still uncertain. It appears, however, that like the sect at Qumran, they rejected the corruption of the Temple and priesthood. But instead of re-creating their own community as a substitute priesthood, they tried to re-create the entire country, and indeed every home, as a sacred space where God could dwell.
Their attention was focused on creating a way of life that would circumscribe everyday behavior with virtue. The table in the home became a holy table. It took the place of the sacrificial altar of the Temple. Table fellowship became a normative social and spiritual activity. Compassionate, ethical, and moral behavior became the benchmark of their way of life. Jacob Neusner, arguably the preeminent scholar of rabbinic Judaism, reflects:
How should the holy people serve God? They should purify themselves – sanctifying themselves by ethical and moral behavior. They should offer the sacrifice of a contrite heart, as the Psalmist had said, and they should serve God through loyalty and through love, as the prophets had demanded.98
To bring devotion to God into the home and the sphere of everyday life, they devised certain rituals or practices that would serve as reminders of one’s duty to remember God in all one’s activities. They created prayers for specific occasions, which were based on biblical texts. They wrote prayers to be recited on recovering from illness, when embarking on a journey, or when seeing a lightning storm. They instituted the use of the amulet-like mezuzah and tefillin,* filling them with important passages from the Bible concerning remembrance of God.
The Pharisees tried to provide the people an alternative focus for their worship of God, based on a contemporary interpretation of the Bible and its adaptation to the needs of the time. They introduced a new source of legitimacy, not based on divine revelation, biblical lineage, or priestly claims, but rather on the interpretation of sacred texts that had been inspired by earlier revelations. And after the destruction of the Temple, the Pharisees gained power and became known as the rabbis. This represents a true turning point in the history of Judaism, which was transformed into a religion of text and learning. Even mystic practice became dependent on study of sacred texts and knowledge of the secrets of Hebrew as a sacred language.
Jesus of Nazareth
When we reflect on the history of Jewish spirituality and mysticism,
certainly the figure of Jesus Christ needs to be included in our
thinking, regardless of the historic differences between the two sister
religions – Judaism and Christianity. Before Christianity became a
separate religion, before the belief became prevalent that Jesus was the
only messiah for all time, it must be recognized that Jesus was an
important Jewish spiritual master who brought a sublime spiritual
teaching very much in the tradition of the biblical prophets and other
mystics, which was expressed in clear terms appropriate to the time in
which he lived. Jesus has to be appreciated within the context of
first-century Judaism, regardless of how he came to be looked at later
by both Christians and Jews. He has to be viewed as a master in the long
chain of Jewish spiritual masters.
Jesus was Hillel’s contemporary and there are parallels between his teachings and those of Hillel and other early rabbis, as well as with the teachings of the biblical prophets and texts found at Qumran. Even Jesus’ baptism or anointing by John the Baptist “lies within the tradition of prophets anointing prophets,”99 writes Harris Lenowitz in The Jewish Messiahs. The modern rabbinic scholar Shaye Cohen writes:
The Jews of Galilee who beheld Jesus thought that he was “one of the prophets,” probably because he performed many miracles (Matthew 16:14 and parallels).… The image of Jesus in the Gospels and in later Christian tradition has been shaped by the belief that classical prophecy had returned and that Jesus was a prophet like Moses.100
Daniel Matt, a noted expert on Jewish spirituality and mysticism, writes beautifully about Jesus as a Jewish spiritual master, a hasid, “someone passionately in love with God.”101 He draws a parallel with the hasid Haninah ben Dosa who lived at the same time, and whom we discussed earlier:
There were other hasidim in first-century Palestine [Judea], one of whom was strikingly similar to Jesus: Haninah ben Dosa. Haninah lived in Galilee, about ten miles north of Jesus’ home town of Nazareth. Like Jesus, he was praised for his religious devotion and healing talents. Once, Haninah was praying when a scorpion bit him, but he did not interrupt his prayers. His pupils went and found the scorpion dead at the entrance to its hole. They said, “Woe to the man bitten by a scorpion, but woe to the scorpion that bites [Haninah] ben Dosa,’” Similarly, Jesus said, “Those who believe may step on snakes … and nothing will harm them.” Haninah’s prayers were widely regarded as being immediately accepted by God, so he was frequently asked to pray for the sick and those in trouble. According to the Talmud, Haninah cured the son of Gamaliel from a distance; according to the New Testament, Jesus cured the son of the Roman centurion from a distance. Haninah, like Jesus, was known for his poverty and lack of acquisitiveness. Both had no expertise in legal or ritual teachings, but were famous, rather, as miracle workers whose supernatural power derived from their intimacy with God.*102
There are numerous other parallels between the teachings of Jesus and those of the hasidim of his period. For example, as a test of his adherence to Jewish tradition, a scribe asked him about the essence of the Torah, and in response Jesus gave two of the key commandments, to love God and love your fellowman, just as Hillel did. He phrased the latter commandment as “Love your neighbor as yourself,” and elsewhere he says: “Whatever you wish that people would do to you, do so to them. For this is the [essence of the] Torah and the prophets.”103 Similarly, Hillel had said, “What you would not wish others to do to you, do not do to your fellowman.” Matt remarks that Jesus is actually more demanding, more hasidic in his rendering of the principle.104 And that is true in numerous other instances. Matt points out:
Jesus was a charismatic teacher and healer. He did not seek death in Jerusalem, but he pursued with inflexible devotion a path that led to his death, from which he did not try to escape.
Jesus condemned hypocrisy and injustice among his own people and sought to prepare his followers for the coming redemption, for the kingdom of heaven [malkut shamayim]. For Jesus, the kingdom was not a pious theory or a far-off promise. It was an immediate reality that could not be denied or evaded.… The kingdom is here and now. Jesus was compelled to make his fellow Jews aware of this awesome, humbling fact. To enter the kingdom, Jesus said, you must be like a child. Innocence is a window to the infinite, unavailable to the skeptical mind until it pauses and reflects.
Like later hasidim, Jesus felt that it was not enough to follow the Torah: One must become Torah, living so intensely that one’s everyday actions convey an awareness of God and evoke this awareness in others. 105
Jesus’ message was to be innocent. Like the prophets, he taught that one had to become pure in heart and mind, and worship God within, through the word or name of God. The pride of the intellectual had no place there. The common man could find salvation by following Jesus and making his life conform to his teachings, by loving God and loving his fellow human being. Jesus’ appeal was that his teaching was not complex or intellectually demanding but drew on man’s inherently spiritual, devotional inclination.
We are fortunate to have so many of Jesus’ sayings preserved in the New Testament; they give us an insight not only to Jesus as an important spiritual master, they also reveal the consistency of Jesus’ teachings with the nature and language of spirituality among the Jews of his time, as we saw earlier with the fragment from the Dead Sea Scrolls, that explores “the signs of the messiah.”
Many of Jesus’ early followers looked to him as the messiah who would fulfill the hopes and predictions that were current at that time, as expressed in the apocalyptic messianic literature that was under wide circulation among all sects of Jews. Not only was he seen as a prophet and potential spiritual redeemer, most of the Jews viewed him as someone who would redeem them from Roman tyranny. Most did not or could not understand that Jesus came only as a spiritual master, a prophet, functioning solely on a spiritual level, and not as a political leader.
The longing for a messiah continued to propel the Jews to seek a master who would combine the roles of prophet, king, priest, and political liberator all in one. To the Jews of that period, political redemption and spiritual salvation were tied together, and they hoped for one messiah who would free them on all levels simultaneously.
Over the next twenty centuries the hope for redemption would find embodiment in a series of messianic figures who will be discussed in later chapters. Although their activity and teachings generally concerned the salvation of the Jewish people on a national and religious scale – the ingathering of the exiles and establishment on earth of the heavenly Jerusalem and kingdom of heaven on earth – many of them also had a spiritual and mystical dimension to their teaching. Indeed, there were always those people within the community who sought a spiritual return – a return to divine favor, to the state of higher consciousness where one can come in touch with the spirit of God and follow in his ways.
The rabbis at Yavneh and Tiberias
There were roughly three periods in which the sages became
progressively more powerful, until they represented the normative,
mainstream form of Jewish leadership that continues until today – the
time of the early hasidim, the period of Hillel and other Pharisees, and
the Pharisees’ eventual transformation into the rabbis.
When the Second Temple was destroyed in the year 70 CE, the Pharisees fled to the town of Yavneh to reestablish their academy and court (the Sanhedrin) under the leadership of Yohanan ben Zakkai, who had lived for seven years in a cave to escape from the Romans. Yohanan was ideally suited for the task of reconstruction. He had studied under Hillel, and the venerable master had proclaimed him “the father of wisdom” and “the father of coming generations.”
The scholars at Yavneh continued teaching and formulating an all-encompassing set of laws to govern everyday life, which eventually became the Mishnah. There was no more Temple, no more priesthood. Roman domination meant an absolute end to the Temple cult with no real hope for its reestablishment in the present reality, only the hope for a hazy messianic future. But how was one to live now? How was one to worship God? Fortunately, the social structure and thinking that the Pharisees had developed as an alternative to a corrupt Temple in the late Second Temple period provided the response. Was it the end of history? No. The Pharisees had responded to the challenge by taking their teaching inwards. God was understood as all-pervasive and immanent, the very ground of their being. The concept of God taught throughout this period was not of a being or power that needed to be worshipped in a temple, but as the formless One who is present in the entire creation. As Ben Zion Bokser, scholar of rabbinic Judaism, explains:
The rabbis repeatedly insisted that God is not a concrete being, with tangible form.… Such a being would be part of the universe, not its master. Indeed, one of the ways he is referred to in the Talmud is Makom, “Place.” God is the “place,” or the ground of creation. In the words of the Midrash: “The Holy One, praised be He, is the place of His universe, but His universe is not His place.”106
Under the leadership of Yohanan and Rav (Abba Areka), the Jews were taught to accept the catastrophe as God’s will. They had total faith in God that all would be for the best. The rabbis’ response to the Temple’s destruction was to focus on the need for compassionate and ethical behavior, and to pray for the coming of the messiah. The story is told of Yohanan’s wisdom:
Once, as Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai was coming forth from Jerusalem, Rabbi Joshua followed after him and beheld the Temple in ruins.
“Woe unto us,” Rabbi Joshua cried, “that this, the place where the iniquities of Israel were atoned for, is laid waste!”
“My son,” Rabbi Yohanan said to him, “be not grieved. We have another atonement as effective as this. And what is it? It is acts of lovingkindness, as it is said, For I desire mercy and not sacrifice” (Hosea 6:6).107
As the story shows, Yohanan taught that only positive individual action would please God; repentance was the key to removing sin and “restoring favorable relations between God and the individual Jew.”108
Yohanan is remembered for a parable that emphasizes the need for constant readiness to meet one’s maker:
This may be compared to the case of a king who invited his servants to a banquet but did not specify the time. The wise ones dressed themselves and sat waiting at the entrance to the palace, saying: In a king’s palace nothing is ever missing [we might be called at any time], while the fools continued with their work, saying: Can there be a banquet without preparation [he will give us plenty of time to prepare]? Suddenly the king invited his servants to come in. The wise ones came before the king properly dressed, while the fools entered with their clothes soiled. The king was happy with the wise ones, but he was angry with the fools. He declared: Let those who are properly dressed for the banquet sit down and eat and drink, while those who are not properly dressed are to stand and look on.*109
Rabbi Jacob also wrote about the need to be ready for death, to understand that this world is not our home.
This world is like a vestibule before olam ha-ba [the world-to-come]. Prepare yourself in the vestibule so that you may enter into the main chamber.110
Entry into the main chamber – the divine realm – is the result of great individual efforts in prayer and meditation, and living properly in this world. The “world-to-come,” a phrase in rabbinic literature that means life after death, mystically may refer to the heikhalot, the palaces or realms that one enters during mystic transport. Some scholars have translated the Hebrew phrase olam ha-ba as “the world that is coming,” meaning that it is continually coming. It is the realm of spirit, continually penetrating the material plane with its divine essence.
Following Yohanan, Gamaliel II became head of the Sanhedrin, and the stories that have come down to us about him also demonstrate his sympathetic character, embodying the qualities of hesed. Bokser writes:
The joy of having his colleagues as guests in his home was unbounded, and he insisted on taking the place of his servants in waiting on them. He was touchingly devoted to his slave Tebi. Members of his household were trained to call the slave “father” and the slave’s wife, “mother.” And when Tebi* died Gamaliel sat in mourning as for a departed member of the family. “Tebi was not like other slaves,” he explained; “he was a worthy man.” “Let this be a token unto thee,” he once exclaimed, “so long as thou art compassionate, God will show thee mercy; but if thou hast no compassion, God will show thee no mercy.”111
The next generation of scholars at Yavneh continued their teaching of ethical behavior. They emphasized the ephemeral nature of life and that we are all accountable for whatever we do. Unalterable destiny ordained by the divine law and based on previous actions was understood as the rule of life. Implied in their teachings is the soul’s reincarnation or transmigration from body to body to make payment for its actions in each life.* Rabbi Eliezer ha-Kappor used to say:
Those born are destined to die; and those that die are destined to live again; and those that live are destined to stand in judgment. Let men, therefore, know and proclaim and establish the conviction that He is God, He the Maker, He the Creator, He the Discerner, He the Judge, He the Witness, He the Plaintiff. In his judgment, praised be He, there is no unrighteousness; there is no lapse of memory; there is no favoritism and no bribery. But everything proceeds in accordance with an accounting. And do not imagine that the grave is an escape. For by divine determination are you formed; by divine determination are you born; by divine determination do you live; by divine determination will you die, and by divine determination are you due to stand in judgment before the Supreme King of kings, praised be He.112
Among the rabbis at Yavneh was Akiva, a brilliant young scholar and mystic, who used the metaphor of financial accounting to explain the law of action and reaction:
Everything is a loan given against a pledge, and the net is cast over all the living so that none may forfeit paying by escaping. The shop is open; the shopkeeper extends credit; the ledger is spread out and the hand makes entries. Whoever wishes to borrow may come and borrow, but the collectors make their rounds daily and exact payment, whether or not one is aware of it. They go by an unfailing record, and the judgment is a judgment of truth. And everything is made ready for the final accounting.113
Akiva also taught that everything is predestined and foreknown by God, yet we live in a paradoxical situation, as we are given freedom of choice. The saving grace is just that – the mercy and grace of God.
Everything is foreseen, yet freedom of choice is given. The world is judged mercifully, yet all is in accordance with the preponderant quality of the work.114
Rabbi Tarfon taught about the importance of effort, and that our reward may not appear in this life but in future lives or the world-to-come.
It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it. If you have studied much Torah, you will receive much reward. Your Employer may be trusted to compensate you for your labor. And remember that the true reward of the righteous [hasidim] is in the world- to-come.115
After the year 116 CE, the Jews renewed their rebellion against Rome, led by those who had returned to Judea after being scattered into the diaspora in the year 70. Hadrian became the Roman ruler in 117, and as part of his program of social reform and creating a common Roman culture across his empire, he decided to restore Jerusalem as a pagan city, renamed Aelia Capitolina, with a Greek temple dedicated to Jupiter at its center.
In 132 CE, a man named Bar Kokhba (son of the star) claimed to be the awaited messiah and led a rebellion against Rome, obtaining the support of the populace at large and many of the Yavneh rabbis who thought the messianic time had come. Initially Bar Kokhba was successful, but after winning a few battles and gaining even more supporters, he and his followers were defeated; Jewish casualties were estimated at about 600,000. The country was in ruins. The Romans then clamped down even harder; they forbad Jewish religious assemblies, study of Torah, and the rituals of circumcision and Sabbath observance.
Rabbis Akiva, Tarfon, and Yose the Galilean held a secret conclave and issued a joint statement to their people, urging them generally to comply with Roman edicts but to resist unto death any orders involving the commission of idolatry, murder, or unchastity.116 Akiva and his colleagues openly defied the Roman police by continuing to meet with their students for the study of Torah. Their attitude was best summarized in Akiva’s famous parable of the fishes and the fox. Warned that his open defiance of Roman law would lead to imprisonment, he replied that a fox had invited some fishes to seek safety from the fishermen on dry land. The fishes replied, “If the water which is our normal habitat holds out no safety, what will happen to us on the dry land which is not our habitat?” “Similarly,” expounded Akiva, “if we are in this state now when we sit and study Torah, … how much more precarious would our existence be if we neglected it!”117
Unfortunately, a reign of terror was released on the stubborn Jews, and many were imprisoned, banished, executed, or sold into slavery. There was a mass execution of ten renowned rabbis. Among those arrested was Rabbi Akiva. From his prison cell, he continued to defy his captors, dispatching secret messages to his followers. A hurried trial was held and he was condemned to death. According to tradition, he was flayed alive. Akiva remained steadfast to the very last, expiring with a resolute testament of faith: “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.” “He prolonged the word ehad, ‘one,’ and he expired reciting ehad. A heavenly voice came forth saying: ’How fortunate are you, Rabbi Akiva, that your soul has departed with the word ehad.’”118 Akiva’s work was taken up by his devoted disciples, including Rabbi Meir and Simeon bar Yohai. Meir’s wife Beruriah was also considered a great sage and holy person.
Soon after the failure of the rebellion, pressure from the Romans eased, and in 138 the Sanhedrin court was reconstituted in a town called Usha. There the rabbis continued working on the codification of Jewish law, the Mishnah, eventually moving their school to Tiberias on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. The Mishnah was completed in 215.
After the Mishnah was completed, the next generations of rabbis began their work on its interpretation, which would eventually be compiled in the fifth century as the Jerusalem or Palestinian Talmud.* A second Rabbi Yohanan became the head of the academy at Tiberias. He extolled six commandments with particular emphasis: hospitality to strangers, visiting the sick, careful prayer, rising early to go to the academy, raising children with knowledge of the Torah, and judging everyone according to his good deeds.
Yohanan II was a great humanitarian and broadminded in his thinking. He treated his slave as an equal and served him regularly the same food eaten by the rest of the household. “The slave,” he explained, “is the same child of God that I am.”119 He suspended all laws forbidding labor on the Sabbath if a sick person could be saved, who could then live to observe many Sabbaths. He ruled that the injunction to return a straying ox or sheep, as instructed in Deuteronomy 22:1, applied even if the owner was a Jew who had renounced his Judaism, and he called upon people to give full recognition to the truths discovered and taught by “pagan” wise men.
Although the work on the Jerusalem Talmud continued at Tiberias for some time, religious life declined in Palestine during the fourth and fifth centuries. There were more uprisings among the Jews, the Roman empire was weakening, and invasions from the west by Goths and Vandals brought chaos.
Babylonia
After the defeat of Bar Kokhba and the devastation of Judea, some of
the rabbis from Yavneh fled to Babylonia, where they set up their own
academies to teach the large Jewish community that had been living there
since the days of the exile in the sixth century BCE. The rabbis who
initially settled in Babylonia were colleagues or disciples of Rabbis
Akiva and Ishmael, the leading Yavneh masters before the war.
One of the leading rabbis in Babylonia was Abba Areka, or as he was popularly known, Rav, signifying that he was the master above all others. He had studied in Palestine under the masters there, and returned to start teaching in Babylonia, setting up his academy at Sura at the age of sixty-four. Rav had brought the text of the Mishnah with him from Palestine, and he based all his lectures on it, supplementing it with explanations, illustrations, and various new applications. He was equally interested in the exposition of moral lessons. The Talmud has preserved a number of his moral maxims and they are among the choicest ethical expressions in all literature:
Whatever may not properly be done in public is forbidden even in the most secret chamber.
It is better to throw one’s self into the fiery furnace than to humiliate one’s fellowman.120
And, in a wry comment about the standard of morality by which the rabbis viewed the actions of all humanity, Rabbi Judah said in the name of Rav:
Most people are guilty of robbery, a minority of lewdness, and all of slander.121
Another academy was set up at Nehardea, a place with a large Jewish community. It was presided over by Samuel, who was often called Mar (Master) Samuel. He had also studied at the academy in Palestine, but was well educated in scientific subjects, including astronomy and medicine, and tried to raise the people out of their superstitious beliefs. The academy at Nehardea was later moved to Pumbedita after Nehardea was destroyed in a battle between the Babylonians and Romans. Both the academies at Sura and Pumbedita continued their teaching with little interruption through the end of the fifth century, when the Jews suffered renewed persecutions and prohibitions on religious life.
Under the leadership of their visionary rabbis, the Babylonian academies developed an ingenious educational institution which enabled them to reach large numbers of nonprofessional students. During the two months of the year when the average farmer was free from his work in the fields, special sessions called kalla were held in both academies. The subject to be taken up at each of these sessions was announced in advance, and laymen were encouraged to spend their hours of leisure in preparation. The lectures of the rector of the academy were supplemented with discourses by other teachers. The basic text discussed in all these gatherings was the Mishnah; one tractate was generally covered each month. It is reported that 12,000 students were enrolled in one such kalla session. These sessions significantly raised the intellectual and cultural level of the general populace and guaranteed that religious awareness and knowledge of sacred texts would be widespread.122
The rabbis felt tremendous responsibility for the moral improvement of the population at large. All was centered around a perception that it was man’s duty to imitate God in every possible respect. Thus, just as God provided for humanity, so each person should actively pursue the welfare of his neighbor.
The rabbi with his circle of disciples became the paradigm for the transmission of the deepest levels of spirituality as well as of religious law. Despite the availability of many written scriptures and other religious literature from the previous centuries, it was recognized that one needed to attach oneself to a master of one’s time. There was more to learning about God than could be conveyed through words or writing. This would remain true throughout Jewish history, whether in Palestine or Babylonia during the talmudic period; among the rabbis of the merkavah (chariot) mysticism; and even later among the kabbalists and modern hasidim.
THE MASTER-DISCIPLE RELATIONSHIP
The rabbis who fled to Babylonia set up academies like the ones in
Palestine, and the relationship between master and disciple was similar
to what took place in the academies in Palestine. These were not only
schools where students learned intellectually. They provided a place
where the student could absorb the very spirit of his master and become
like him. Disciples were attached to particular masters and served them
in every aspect of life. To follow a rabbi required a special kind of
devotion, of true discipleship. Jacob Neusner writes eloquently about
the master-disciple relationship during the rabbinic period:
Disciples were not students who came to a master only to learn facts or holy traditions. They came to study the master as well as what the master said.…
The disciple, indeed, acquired more than a master. He gained a new father.… The master was truly and really the second father of the disciple, who would shape him for eternity as the father had for this world. The father had given the physical features. The master would sculpt the soul.
Entry into the rabbinical circle, like initiation into a mystery cult, marked the end of an old existence, the beginning of a new life, a new being. The disciple did not simply learn things; he was converted from one way of living to another.123
It was said that “one who had studied merely Scriptures, and even Mishnah, remained a boor, learned but no different from a magus [magician], unless he had also ‘served’ a master through imitation of the master’s way, subjecting himself to his discipline and that of the schools.”124
The most striking aspect of these schools was the rabbis’ conception that in them lived holy men, men who more accurately than anyone else conformed to the image of God conveyed by divine revelation through the Torah of Moses our rabbi. The schools were not holy places in the sense that pious people made pilgrimages to them or that miracles were supposed to take place there, although pilgrimages were made and miracle-stories were told in a scholastic setting. The schools were holy because there men achieved sainthood through study of Torah and imitation of the conduct of the masters.… Thus obedience to the teachings of the rabbis led not merely to ethical or moral goodness, but to holiness or sainthood. Discussion of legal traditions, rather than ascetic disciplines or long periods of fasting and prayer, was the way to holiness.125
Shaye Cohen gives an interesting perspective on the relationship of these early rabbis with their disciples:
As a rule … the rabbis of the second century did not need a special place for the instruction of their disciples, because the disciples were always with the master. They would live, eat, sleep, and travel with him. They would listen to his discussions with other rabbis and watch him decide legal cases. There was little privacy for either party in this relationship; even on his wedding night Rabbi Gamaliel was attended by his faithful disciples. The master was sometimes addressed as “father,” because he was the father to his disciples. According to rabbinic law a student’s obligations to his master are similar to those of a son to his father: he had to stand up in his presence, to greet him, and perhaps even to bow down before him. He could not stand or sit in his place, speak in his presence, contradict him, or respond sharply to him. This was the way of Torah. In effect, joining a disciple circle was like joining a new family.…
These small communities of devoted disciples gathered around a revered master have many analogies, of course, to the earliest community of the followers of Jesus. One of Jesus’ major activities, as remarked above, was to teach, and the apostles were his beloved disciples. Jesus was not only a teacher, however; he was also a prophet and healer, and the traditions about him clearly derive in part from the biblical record about Elijah and his disciple Elisha.… Although the social settings are very different, the disciple circle of Jesus closely resembles the disciple circles of the rabbis in the second century.126
Ironically, as we shall see in the next chapter, the divergence in approach between the prophetic-mystical Qumran sect and the intellectual rabbis found union in the merkavah mystics, who were active between approximately the first and the eighth centuries CE. Many of the rabbis of the Talmud, legalists and leaders of the community, were engaged in mystical practice alongside their legal discussions. Their small secretive circles of fellow mystics would become the model for all such fellowships of Jewish mystics from this time forward, until the eighteenth century, when the elite nature of Jewish mysticism was transformed by the spiritual masters of Hasidism, who made it accessible to all.