Rabbinic Judaism
The history of Judaism cannot appropriately be divided into periods. Rabbi Leo Baeck, one of the great teachers and leaders of the Jewish community of our time, saw Judaism as a perennial revolution, constantly renewing itself, a ‘history of rebirth from epoch to epoch, of rebirth which created epochs— epochs which gave the old ideas new expression; this was the gift of prophet- ism to Judaism’.1 Yet these epochs do not conform to the rigid patterns of most historical systems.
The renewal of Judaism, its constant return to its biblical roots, can be a withdrawal from the world of the Renaissance or an affirmation of the golden age of Islam; it can and does combine the teachings of the rabbis from the time of the destruction of the Temple (70 ce) with the interpretations of a French rabbi a thousand years later. It stands, as it were, outside history, in its own continuum, and still responds to every aspect of the society in which it finds itself at any moment of time. Examining Jewish life and teachings from the time of the Mishnah to the present, we cannot ignore any of these dimensions of Judaism.The two centuries before the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans had seen a turbulent Jewish life in Palestine. Forces of religious syncretism and sectarianism battled with one another and created the sectarian movements of Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, New Covenanters and other sects. Messianic speculations, Hellenistic teachings, and older traditions created patterns and systems of thought which were only partially shattered by the tragedy of the Fall of Jerusalem. Jerusalem had fallen before: older teachings of consolation and of hope for rebirth came from the Babylonian experience. But this destruction was different. They were still in the land, and the land was not theirs. The Temple had fallen; and this spelled the end for the Sadducees.
Pharisaism took over, and the other groupings disappeared. The new period brought about new leadership: the rabbinate emerged. Here was a blend of scholar, judge and religious leader whose authority was derived from a new literature which the rabbinate itself created. As Nicholas de Lange notes, the origins of the rabbinate are obscure: its roots are diverse and include priestly, scribal and pietistic elements. After 70 ce, it achieved extraordinary powers through its acquisition of political privileges and the wooing of support from the scattered Jewish communities who earnestly desired a central authority. The Pharisaic approach—and serious scholars are now agreed that this was an authentic, concerned application of Jewish law to the needs of the common people—and the spiritual authority of its rabbinic leaders established rabbinism as the enduring core of Jewish life.Under the leadership of Rabbi Jochanan ben Zakkai and his successors, Pharisaic Judaism reformulated the whole system of Jewish beliefs and practices. Ben Zakkai had fled Jerusalem and established a Jewish academy in Yavneh (Jamnia) which gave a new focus to a scattered people. The Jews could not disappear among the nations. The Roman world stressed ethnic classifications, and Jewish life itself contained a deep desire for identity and cultural autonomy. Roman tolerance left room in its Empire for Jewish religious communal life, and for its schools. And these schools became the Jewish internal government. The successors of ben Zakkai (R. Gamaliel and other descendants of the Davidic house of Hillel: another basis of leadership for the rabbis linked to the royal line) were granted the authority of the patriarchate by Rome (from 85 to 425 ce). They emended the liturgy, so that the Temple rite became part of synagogue worship. They gave a response to the calamity: personal piety, observance of ritual, life within the synagogue which had replaced the Temple. And Palestine was to remain central to the Diaspora: its rabbis determined the calendar for all Jewish communities, established the rule and made its rabbis the final authority.
Behind the rabbis stood the written Law: the Torah. All laws emanated from it, with the rabbis as its interpreters. The rabbis were not charismatic figures (there were exceptions), but teachers and lawyers who established the normative rules and guided community observances. Variations were possible; the rabbis recognised minority opinions, and could not deny the brilliant Hellenistic culture of Alexandrian Jewry. There, one could not know whether ‘Philo wrote like Plato, or Plato wrote like Philo’. Many followed Philo (d. c. 50 ce) into a world where symbols became abstractions, crystallising monotheistic thought within philosophy: the God of Abraham was seen as the transcendent First Cause. But Palestinian Jewry could not rejoice in the outer world; its suffering had turned it inward. God was thought of in utterly human terms: he wept with his children—the Shekinah (God as ‘dwelling’ with his own) went into exile with them. Nevertheless, the rich symbolism and imaginative interpretations of the Hellenistic world entered the teaching of the rabbis as homiletic interpretations, as the poetry of midrash. Midrash was the creative imagination of the rabbis, applied to the biblical texts. There was Halachic (legal) Midrash, an exegesis applied to the problems of daily conduct. A collection of texts (the Mechilta on Exodus; Sifra on Leviticus; and Sifre on Numbers and Deuteronomy) became the Halachic Midrash offering hermeneutical conclusions moving from biblical texts to daily events. There was the Tosephta and the Baraitot, texts running parallel to the great collection Rabbi Judah the Prince brought together shortly before 200 ce as the Mishnah (see below). And there was the Haggadah o(Midrash: the delightful dreams, stories, poetry and sermons which linked the people to the old texts with a new love.
The text of the Torah, the Written Law, was sacred. Nothing was to stand alongside it. Nevertheless, over the centuries, new interpretations had kept it relevant to life, and various hermeneutic rules had preserved the flexibility of the law.
The rabbis believed that these interpretations should not be written down: oral law, and oral transmission, came to be established. It was claimed that Moses had received the Oral Law at Sinai as well: all that the rabbis did was to rediscover that aspect of revelation. Yet the Oral Law kept growing and was more difficult to memorise. The rabbis surrendered to the needs of the present, and prepared their own written summaries. Throughout the second century, starting with Rabbi Akiva, continuing with Rabbi Meir and concluding with Rabbi Judah the Prince, these were collated and became the Mishnah, a systematic code divided into six sections and sixty tractates. The rabbis quoted in this body of law, this super-commentary upon the Torah, were called the Tannaim, and their authority endured through the centuries. The Mishnah ensured the homogeneity of Jewish usage and Jewish community organisations for the Jews of Syria and Rome, of Persia and Egypt.The process of the Oral Law continued. The next sages, called the Amoraim, made their commentaries and explanations upon the Mishnah. Using all of the material from the earlier period—midrash, halachah, haggadah, texts not included in the Mishnah, and their own knowledge and training in logic, they created their own body of law, emanating from the great Jewish academies of learning which developed in Babylonia as the academies in Palestine declined. The Palestinian rabbis also continued their work; but the growing anarchy after Constantine meant that their Gemara (Completion) was never finished. It was Babylonia, with great academies in Sura, Pumpeditha, Nehardea, Mehoza and Nersh, active from 200 ce until the Arab conquest (c. 640 ce), which fashioned that marvellous structure of Jewish law called the Talmud.
There is a Babylonian Talmud and a Palestinian Talmud. Both may be viewed as records of discussions held in the rabbinic academies (it would be a mistake to think of the Talmud as ‘a book’). They resemble Hansard or the Congressional Record: complete accounts of the discussions within a legislative assembly, including asides, poetry, stories, anecdotes, minority opinions and the final decisions on legal points.
There are academic notes, cases cited; exegesis deriving laws from Torah texts; biographical notes on the great rabbis and their clashes with one another; astronomy, folklore and anything which could arise within a group which combined the functions of legislation, study, enforcement, creation of liturgies and living within a host culture. One of the first great Amoraim, Sh’muel (a friend of the Sassanid ruler Shapur I) had enunciated the principle of dina d’malchuta dina—the law of the land is binding and in some cases superior to Jewish law. The Jews of Babylonia created patterns of conforming to the surrounding culture. This is also reflected in the Talmud; and the Babylonian Talmud came to be the authority for Jewish life in all lands up to the present time. The process of Oral Law continued: commentary followed upon commentary, and a rabbinic court today will still view itself as rediscovering the revealed Law of Sinai; but it is generally guided by the thoughts and precepts of the Talmud. The Talmud Bavli (Babylonian) is the heart of Halachah, of normative Jewish law through the centuries. The Talmud Yerushalmi (Palestinian) does have its legal sections, primarily dealing with the first three tractates of the Mishnah on Damages, and a compendium of commentaries on other sections, probably edited in Tiberias before 400 ce. Theodosius II abolished the patriarchate a few years later; and the texts we have give fascinating insights into a vanished Jewish life but cannot compete with the Babylonian Talmud as the centre of Jewish life and law.Babylonia replaced Palestine. The thousand years after the fall of the Temple mark a development and inner growth within Judaism which was fashioned in Babylonia. The head of the community was the Resh Galuta, the Exilarch, recognised by all Jewish communities once the Palestinian Patriarchate had been abolished. The Exilarch was a prince, deemed a descendant of David, third in rank at the Babylonian court. He appointed the judges and was the civil ruler ofjewry, with a splendid court of his own.
Yet the polarities ofjewish life set another force alongside him: the heads of the great Jewish academies. The Gaon (Excellency) of Sura and of Pumpeditha ruled Jewish religious life by reason of scholarship, and the period from 600 ce to 1000 ce often came to be called the Geonic Period by Jewish historians. The gains of the Talmudic Period were consolidated, with the knowledge that the law, theHalachah, kept growing, and that answers to legal questions, ‘Responsa’, had to continue as a link between the academies and Jewish life throughout the Mediterranean areas.Other texts developed throughout that period, within the Talmud and alongside it. In the ninth century, Rav Amram Gaon compiled the first complete prayer book in response to the needs of Spanish communities. One cannot ignore the Siddur (Prayer Book) as an abiding expression ofjewish faith which grew and developed through the ages. Here, the rabbis expressed their theology of the near and far God (‘Our Father, our King’), and affirmed the complementary divine attributes of rachamim (loving-kindness) and ofdin (justice). In good times and bad, the Jews turned
to the Siddur to affirm the moral order which filled the universe. All aspects of Jewish life—suffering and martyrdom, teaching about the one God who requires moral actions from his worshippers, remembrance of the dead and the assuming of responsibility for the living and their needs—all entered the Prayer Book. At various times, various languages were used: the vernacular was always considered proper within worship—had not a translator stood alongside Ezra when he read the Law? But the Hebrew and Aramaic tongues linkedjewry together throughout the Diaspora. The Targumim (translations) of the late Talmudic time give insights into the process of acculturation; but the knowledge of the original texts within a profoundly literate Jewry stands behind all translations.
There have always been challenges to rabbinic Judaism and to the Oral Law. In late Geonic times, when Saadya Gaon was the intellectual leader of Jewry, he had to oppose the Karaite sect. Karaites only recognised the Written Law, the Torah interpreted most literally. Karaism rejected the customs and ceremonies developed in Palestine and Babylonia, the minutiae of Talmudic law. The founder, Anan ben David, failed in his attempt to become Exilarch, and broke away to found a sect which was joined by many Jews in search of simplicity and antagonistic to rabbinic authority. Saadya (892-942 ce) was the greatest Jewish mind of his time, a philosopher and leader who re-established Babylonian authority over the reviving claims of Palestine, and who was able to give rational, clear answers to the Karaites which contained them as a sect at a time when they were growing in authority. Saadya’s Arabic translation of the Bible is still in use. He was a pioneer of Jewish grammar, a liturgist of note, scholar of mystic texts and a great legal authority. His central philosophic text, Beliefs and Opinions, was written in Arabic, since Arabic philosophy had influenced it. It is a text of extreme rationalism: Judaism is completely in line with reason, with revelation there to advance our knowledge but not to deny the dictates of reason. Saadya proves God’s existence through rational proofs, and dismisses the anthropomorphic language of the Bible: whatever contradicts reason must be seen as allegory.
In his texts, and in the writings of the other Geonim, Babylonia reached out to instruct the communities now developing under Islam. There was a creative encounter between religions which developed here, but the centre ofjewish life slowly began to shift away from Babylonia. The Spanishjewries were beginning to set up their own academies, to turn to their own scholars. Jews under Islam, Jewish communities within a Europe of the Middle Ages, came to create new patterns. Sephardi and Ashkenasi Jewish life began to form different patterns. Yet all this built upon the rabbinic Judaism established during the thousand years after the destruction of the Temple. The Talmud would receive different commentaries—French rabbis as well as Spanish sages—and would realise itself within varying communal organisations; but it remained the centre of the Jewish world. The
Oral Law led to medieval codes, but also to teachings of universalism, to the vision of humanity engaged in the quest for a better world in partnership with God. It was a most necessary vision for the centuries ahead of a Jewish community entering a period of much darkness and some light.