Season 1: Episode 6 -The Hasmonean Kingdom

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You know, all the great stories flow like a mighty river, each individual tale winding in and out, kind of like a rivulet. But it says at the beginning of the Book of Kohelet that all the rivers flow into the sea, but the sea isn't full, because in the end of the day, there's only one story. And here we are in the main current, because this is the Jewish story. And I'm Rav Mike Foyer, and we're trying to ride that current, waves of the past that are going to carry us toward the future of which we dream. Episode 6, The Hasmonean Kingdom. Did the Maccabees win the battle only to lose the war? I want to take us back to an important piece of last week's episode, and that's Matityahu and his five sons and the prophetic spark that touched them and turned the tide of the rebellion.

when they found the strength to break the rules in order to save the story. Now remember what was happening. All the rebels were hiding out in caves around Modin, and the Greeks had come out to pick them off group by group. And there was one group of holy Jews who decided it was better to die in their innocence than to sully themselves by violating Shabbat. And indeed, of course, the Greeks obliged them in that and killed them all. and Matityahu and his sons looked and said this isn't going to work if we let them come against us even though it says in the Torah that those who violate the Shabbat shall surely die there'll be nothing left and so they found it within themselves to decide a different type of sacrifice which was sacrificing the rules in order to save the story and in that moment the Chassidim joined to them these pious ones who the author of the book of Maclees describes as mighty warriors of Israel, everyone who offered himself willingly for the law.

And that's a completely different type of misirut nefesh, of self-sacrifice, because even though the pious in the first part of the story showed their willingness to die for the sake of law, these Hasidim showed their willingness to live for it. And this always brings up in me the question of what the role of misirut nefesh, of self-sacrifice, of this absolute willingness to give for the sake of something higher, What role does that play in the unfolding of consciousness throughout history? I remember when I was growing up, I learned, as I bet many of you did, about Maslow's hierarchy. You remember it's that pyramid. There at the base are all the physiological needs, food, clothing, shelter. And then, actually, truly a little bit higher, we get into safety.

And then higher and even a narrower piece is love and belonging. Moving upwards and even tighter are esteem and the psychological needs. And then finally there at the tip, tip, top is that moment of self-actualization. The depth of identity, which is me becoming who I actually am. And while I'm sure it's true that the majority of the world actually is shaped by such a hierarchy of values, nevertheless, it's important to remember that it's the people who upend Maslow's hierarchy that make history. those who are willing to forego their physical, emotional, and even sometimes psychological well-being in the pursuit of a higher value are the ones of whom we speak today. And so I want to know, who were these Hasidim, these pious, these mighty warriors of Israel, everyone who offered himself willingly for the law, and where did they go?

because there are only three mentions of the Hasidim in the book of Maccabees. And for people who only get three mentions in the entire historical record, there's been more scholarly ink poured on them than anyone else I know. The second mention actually is what will carry us forward in our story. When we left off, it was the year 165. That's the year of the Hasmonean revolt, of the story of Hanukkah, of the liberation of Jerusalem, and the rededication of the temple. And we spoke a little bit about the fact that when I was growing up, I learned the story that that was the end of the war. But the reality is the historical record tells us that in many ways it was the beginning. So I want to touch the relationship with how we tell the story, with the Hanukkah story being the end, and who these Hasidim were.

Because if you look further in the Book of Maccabees, you'll see that the Greeks were not so interested in fighting this war with the Maccabees. and indeed, after the liberation of Jerusalem Antiochus IV, Epiphanes the evil king of the Hanukkah story, dies and his successor, after a complicated little bit of succession battle is Demetrius, and Demetrius wants to wrap up the troubles down there in the southern province of what he perceived to be his empire and so he sends Bacchides, one of the king's friends a governor of the province, down to negotiate, and he sends with him Alchemus, a priest of the house of Aron they march down with peaceable words but quite a significant military force and a group of scribes says the author of the book of Maccabees appeared in a body before alchemists to ask for just terms and amongst them it says that the Hasidim were the first amongst the sons of Israel to seek peace from them because they said a priest of the line of Aaron has come with the army and he will not harm us And in this, I think we get a little bit of insight into who exactly these Hasidim were.

They were the element of Am Yisrael that was most committed to the service of God. Remember, willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the law. They saw the primary vessels for their relationship with God to be in the Torah and in the Temple. And therefore, once there was going to be what they perceived to be a legitimate priest of the House of Ammon, once again running the temple service, they saw no more reason to fight. Now, we'll see that the house of the Hasmoneans, Judah and his brothers and their followers, of course, shared this dedication to the Torah and to the purity of the priesthood. That's why they fled Jerusalem to begin with. But nevertheless, they also have this strange notion that in order for the Jewish people to serve God, they have to have sovereignty over a particular geography.

That is to say, there's a third vessel for the divine relationship, and that's the land. These three vessels, the law, the temple, and the land, make up what's called the covenantal relationship. Berit. Because though religion is on our horizon historically, it's not here yet. We spoke a little bit about its roots of formation in the battle between the Hellenist and the anti-Hellenist camps within Am Yisrael, and how the Hellenist camp really empowered Antiochus and the Greeks to identify the particular beliefs, behaviors, and practices that would define the stubborn Jews. And that is the first hint of religion, because what is religion if not a system of beliefs, behaviors, and practices that negotiate and really define one's relationship with God?

And you can see as soon as you have such a system, by implication at least, if not in practice, There's something that lies outside of it. And ultimately, this will bear its fullest fruit in the birth of Christianity and that famous statement that one is to give unto Caesar what is due to Caesar and unto God what is due to God. But what's not due to God? Because the covenantal relationship within these three vessels of land, Torah, and temple is all embracing. It's kind of like my relationship with my wife. It's true there are beliefs, behaviors, and practices through which I express and deepen that relationship, just as there are beliefs, behaviors, and practices in the Torah. It's not like religion's not there.

But my relationship with my wife is not something that I do. It's the context for who I am. And that's the way in which the Torah conceives of the divine relationship. So there's an imminent split on that front. And we see it starting here, because the Hasidim break with the Hasmodeans and say, we don't really want to fight this war anymore. I don't really care who charges us with taxes and who keeps the road safe. I want to know that the temple is in our hands and that we're able to live by the Torah. And so they go and greet alchemists and Bacchides, this priest of the line of Aaron and the friend of the king who've come to make peace. And unfortunately for them, it's a trap. Because though they trusted him, it says in the book of Maccabees, he seized 60 of them and killed them all in one day in accordance with the word of the Psalms, the flesh of your saints and their blood they poured out around Jerusalem.

and there was none to bury them. It's a brutal moment, and in many ways will be the reawakening of the struggle which will last for another 20 years. And so these Hasidim disappear from the historical record, but we're going to see that perhaps, just perhaps, they will reemerge in a few generations. Now what lies ahead of us is 20 years of very complex intra-Jewish struggle between the Hellenist and the anti-Hellenist elements within Nam Israel, and an ongoing battle to push the Greeks out of the land of Israel. But I'm not a military historian, and this period is a little bit beyond the scope of our discussion. So let's suffice to say that the next turning point in our story happens in the year 142 of the Seleucid era.

And that is when Simon Hasmonean, the last standing son of Matityahu, of the original rebels from Modiin, manages to do three things. He gains release from tax and tribute to the Seleucids. He's declared in a public acclamation by the Judeans to be Nasi, that's prince, and high priest, and he conquers the port city of Yafo. In the first book of Maccabees, in the 13th chapter, we see this description that King Demetrius to Simon, the high priest and friend of kings, and to the elders and nation of the Jews greeting. As a side note, notice that he's greeting not only Simon, but the elders of the Jews. We're going to have to speak about who was this quasi-representative body that seems to be playing a role in politics.

Anyway, he says, we've received the gold crown and palm branch, the gifts you sent us, and here is the key, is that we are making void all of the tribute, canceling the crown tax which you owe and any other tax which is collecting Jerusalem shall no longer be collected And then it says in the 170th year which is 142 in our calendar the yoke of the Gentiles was removed from Israel, and the people began to write in their documents and contracts in the first year of Simon the Great High Priest, commander and leader of the Jews. Now, why does it matter that he gained release from tax and tribute? First of all, That, on a certain level, is the definition of independence, and indeed makes this Hasmonean kingdom the first independent kingdom of Judea since the destruction of the first temple, and in many ways, the last until 1948, which is why the Zionists so loved the Hasmoneans.

Number two, the Jews, remember, are a tax-paying people since the giving of the Torah, and that original half-shekel enforced equal donation that went to the construction of the Mishkan, the portable house of God. It's critical that you remember that in this time of history, the vast majority of the populace of Judea were subsistence farmers. And a subsistence farmer's struggle on a daily basis is to produce enough calories just to stay alive. Therefore, giving taxes is literally a giving of their lifeblood. Now, the Jews will be willing to pay to support that altar which connects heaven and earth, for which they really came back from exile and have sacrificed so much in the first place. Think of the story of Hanukkah.

And they'll submit to funding what will ultimately become the mercenary armies of the Hasmonean kings, so long as those kings are perceived to be our own. But there are tax revolts in our future, and they're going to play a significant role in the descent toward destruction. So the second piece, he's declared Nasi and High Priest. Now, High Priest, the Hasmoneans claimed as their due in light of their takeover of the priesthood from the rotten element of the Hellenists that had seized the spiritual high ground. But note that the Hasminians are not part of the Sadokite house, which in the book of Hezgiel says was chosen by God to lead the priesthood upon the rebuilding of the temple. This is yet another blow to the status of the priesthood on top of Jason's purchase of the office back in 175 before the Common Era and is another sign of its descent.

Furthermore, Nasi, which today we translate as president, could be translated as prince, but it's really a name with tribal origins. And it's most significant to us for what it is not, and that is king. And also, we're wanting to keep our eye on this name, because it's going to disappear when the name of king supplants it, but it will emerge in about a hundred years in a very different fashion. And finally, we don't have any problem with the combination of religious and political power here, because don't forget, Shimon HaTzadiq was the one who went out in his role as the high priest and met Alexander on the road to Jerusalem. So the third piece of Simon was the conquest of the port city of Yafo.

Now first, of course, it's simply an economic move. The outlet to the sea is a critical move in becoming a regional player and securing the economy of Judea. And in this light, it's important to note that from the time of Judah, in the year 160, the Hasmoneans have been courting the Roman Senate in order to gain recognition as friends of the Roman people. They are the regional power. And there will be all kinds of subtle games between the Hasmoneans and the Roman Senate in their quest for legitimacy. The conquest of Yahuwah also sets an important pattern. It's the pattern of expansion of the Hasmonean state through conquest, and it's going to make the Hasmonean kingdom at its height more or less equal in extent, if not directly contiguous, with the modern state of Israel.

And there is one more important element to this conquest. It says in the first book of Maccabees, in the 15th chapter, when a little bit of a dispute arises between Demetrius, king of the Seleucid Empire, and Simon Hasmonean upon the conquest of Jaffa. Demetrius complains that he's stolen this land which formerly belonged to the Seleucids, and Simon gives the following answer. It is not foreign land we've taken, nor have we seized the property of others, but only our ancestral heritage which for a time had been unjustly held by our enemies. This quote is a critical element in the ability of the Hasminians to maintain control of the narrative. They're liberators of ancestral land, not conquerors of foreign territory.

Those of you who are students of modern history should find this familiar. So that's the life of Simon. And he, last son of Matityahu, eventually, as is true of everyone, dies. and in the year 135 before the common era his son, Yochanan inherits both the mantle of Nasi of prince and high priest this is the Yochanan that the Gemar in Baruchod on Daph 29 says in response to the Mishra which says don't trust yourself until the day you die that Yochanan Kohen Gadol served for 80 years and in the last day of his life became a tzaduki, a Sadducee. So we're going to have to talk about what exactly that means. First of all, Yohan was a very powerful nasi, not yet king. He continues the pattern of expansion through conquest, adding the element of forced conversion with the conquest of Idumea, which lies to the south of Judea.

Now, this could be looked at as a historical aberration, since Jews have never really been into forcing people to convert. But the more interesting question is, how exactly is this possible? Those who think of Judaism as a religion, as a set of beliefs, behaviors, and practices, might find it difficult to imagine, well, I can't really force someone to do such a thing. I mean, today the religious world can't even manage to entice most of its adherents to do everything they're supposed to do. and the answer really lies in the Shuchan Aruch in that amazing and all-encompassing work of Jewish law published in the 16th century where if you look, the laws of slavery and the laws of conversion are back to back because the precedent that we have for what we today would call forced conversion in the ancient world was slavery because the halacha teaches us that a slave that's brought into a Jewish household has to be circumcised for the sake of slavery.

They also have to go to a mikvah. There's a whole structure that they get integrated into. But when you free such a slave, do you know what they become? A Jew. And this is going to matter for two reasons. First of all, it's another indication that we are in this transition zone between religion and covenantal relationship. Because those who have the sign in the flesh, who live under Jewish sovereignty and sacrifice in the temple, are Jews. The question of what you believe or even how you practice might be important, but it's not definitive. The other reason this story matters to us is that there's going to be a very famous offspring of these four converts of Idumea, and that will be Antipater, who if you haven't heard of him, I'm sure you've heard of his son, Herod.

Now, it's in the time of Yochanan Hyrcanus, Yochanan the high priest, that according to Josephus, the tears in the social fabric of the Hasmonean state begin to show. Josephus outlines four factions into which Judean society had become divided in the time of Jochen and Hyrcanus. The Sadducees, the Pharisees, the Essenes, and the Zelots. I want to take time now to focus on the first two, the Sadducees and the Pharisees, as it's the struggle between them that's going to help us answer our question of whether the Maccabees won the battle only to lose the war. And we'll discuss the other two, don't you worry, as circumstances begin to draw us toward the destruction, because then their contribution will become quite pressing.

But for now, the Sadducees, where does the name come from? Well, it's a derivation most likely of Tzadok. Tzadok was either the priest whose family gained the eternal covenant, we see it in the book of Yehezkel, for instance, God had promised that the Tzadokite priests were the ruling house of the priests. Or perhaps he was a student of Antigonus of Soho. If you recall, we spoke about him. He was the one who inherited the tradition from Shimon Hatzarik, Simon the Righteous. And he had the students who brought the first schism into Am Yisrael. Either way, Sadducees is the derivation of Tzadok, Tzadokite. What we need to know about them is that they are rooted in the spiritual and landed aristocracy of Judea.

The spiritual aristocracy, that's the priesthood. And the landed aristocracy, as you might imagine, both these groups are a continuation of the Hellenist camp within Am Yisrael, because that desire to be part of the larger cultural milieu, to be Greek-speaking Judeans with our own national center of worship, has not gone away. And we'll understand more about the particular elements of the worldview in opposition to their opponents, the Pharisees. Pharisees, the Prushim in Hebrew, it's a funny name. Prushim can really mean one of two things. It can be the explainers, or it can be those who separate. Now, in light of their role as explainers of giving a Perush, an explanation, it's important to note that the Pharisees' major assertion is that they hold the tradition of the fathers.

These are laws and customs passed down through the generations, not written down in the Torah, but seen as equally binding. This is the first indication we will get of what eventually becomes a pillar of normative Judaism, which is the idea that the written and the oral Torah were both given to Moshe at Tzaneh and therefore are both obligatory upon the Jewish people. And we will spend much time discussing that. But for now, you should understand that it may be at the root of the name Pharisees. Perush is to explain. The other way in which to understand their name is separate. the frosh or the hafrish is to separate from or to separate something from something else. And the question, of course, is of what?

From whom On one front we know culturally they were separating themselves from ritual impurity and the habits of the Am the peoples of the land These were meticulous observers of religious law And even their inheritors, their intellectual and spiritual inheritors of the sages, after the temple is destroyed, will continue to keep many of the laws of ritual purity as an act of devotion and intense separation from the common folk. Nevertheless, they are also separators from their former Hasmonean allies. Because if we associate the Pharisees, as we mentioned earlier, with the Hasidim, these pious, mighty warriors of Israel, each one ready to give himself for the sake of the law, who joined the Hasmoneans when things looked grim in the face of the Greek conquest, but then split from them when they thought that they had an opportunity to return the temple to the hands of a righteous priest, even though in the end they were mistaken.

So then we see the Pharisees are separators from their former Hasmonean allies now that these Hasmoneans have begun to take on the trappings of a Hellenistic kingdom. And this is what leads many scholars indeed to identify the Pharisees with the Hasidim of Saver Bechavis because they split off from the Hasmoneans who lost sight of the centrality of Torin Temple in their pursuit of control over the land. There's a couple of particular beliefs that we need to touch on. First of all, the Pharisees believed in the immortality of the soul and reward and punishment after death, both of which the Sadducees denied. This is a critical development in Jewish consciousness. The scholars will tell you that the idea of the immortality of the soul was borrowed from Greek culture, and that is a discussion that's perhaps a bit beyond the scope of our story.

Nevertheless, I will say this. is that there are one or two very slight references in the Tanakh to the immortality of the individual soul, but the way in which the reference is such that it takes for granted that the reader knows that such a thing is true. I would rather say this, is that until the Second Temple time, when the imminent loss of any ability to control the context within which we live our religious lives becomes apparent, There was no real need to focus on the individual destiny after death. The destiny was a national destiny. But now that exile is truly looming, people want to know. What is their role in pushing this story forward? And therefore, does it end in this world? More on that when we come to the theology of exile in the next episode.

The Pharisees also believed in free will as well as divine providence, while the Sadducees rejected absolutely the idea of any divine interference in human affairs. And this will both be in opposition to some thoughts of the Essenes. And as I said, we'll discuss those things as the destruction becomes imminent. So the last, and perhaps for this part of our story, most critical element of the Pharisees is that Josephus repeatedly states that they have the support of the masses, that they're popular amongst the masses, that the people turn to them for religious guidance. And particularly it's important to know, of course, that the masses, most of whom are subsistence farmers, don't forget, are culturally still part of the Near East.

They have not become Hellenized because they're not exposed to the economic and cultural pressures that the elite have been exposed to. And this will result in progressively more violent power struggles as the Hasmoneans develop into a full-blown Hellenistic kingdom estranged from its roots in Jewish culture. So those are the basics of the first two groups, the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Now let's get a couple numbers straight before we can go on with our story. Remember, Simon the Hasmonean, the last of the five brothers of Matityahu, is declared Nasi and High Priest in 142 and he reigns until 135 before the Common Era. His son, Johann Hyrcanus, also Nassian high priest, set, or at least follows in the pattern of this expansion through conquest from 135 to 104 before the Common Era.

He has a son, Aristobulus, who lives only long enough to call himself a king, and indeed we have a couple of existing coins which he struck, naming himself Aristobulus king, but dies almost immediately. His younger brother, however, Alexander Yanai, will rule from 103 until 76. That's quite a long reign, and he will establish a kingdom which, as we said, rivals in extent the modern state of Israel. He also marries Shlom Tzion in Leverite marriage. That's Yibum, to those of you who speak the Hebrew of the Mishnahh. He marries his brother's sister because when Aristobulus dies, he dies childless. And the Torah mandates that a brother must marry his brother's wife if she's left widowed without children, even though there's some complications around the fact that they are priests.

Now, this leaves us in the year 103 with Alexander Yanai as king and his wife Shlom Sion as queen. But just to add to our confusion, our two primary sources on the era, Josephus and the Gemara, cannot seem to agree on when which stories happened to whom. Well, Josephus, we know, is at least striving for chronology. But it's important to remember that the Babli openly admits that it has constructed a character which it calls Yanai, who's basically an amalgamation. He's a representation of what the Gemara feels we need to know about the Hasmonean kingdom. Nevertheless, as I said, Shimon is the liberator and founder of the first independent kingdom since the destruction of the First Temple. He sets that pattern of expansion through conquest.

Yochanan follows his lead in holding both offices of Nasi, prince and high priest, as well as in conquering and even forcibly converting some of the peoples around Judea. By the way, there's good evidence that Yochanan Herkenes actually considered himself primarily primarily to be the high priest, and less so as a political leader. And furthermore, that his rule was shared with some sort of assembly, which is, as far as we can tell, the Gerusia that we mentioned in the last episode, who received the permission from Antiochus III, that's the father of the evil king of the Hanukkah story, to practice the Torah in Judea under the Seleucid rule. What's our evidence? It's that 63 coins were actually found near Bethlehem, which bear the inscription, Yochanan, High Priest.

On the opposite side of the coin, it says, The Assembly of the Jews. This suggests that he saw himself not only primarily as High Priest, but accepted that he had a political ally in the Assembly. And furthermore, there were no pictures of animals or any other graven image on this coin, which is not true of the later Hasmonean kings, which itself suggests that he strictly followed the Torah's prohibition against any sort of graven image. Now, everybody knows that rule by committee tends to lend itself to conflict. And Josephus, in the Antiquities of the Jews, cites the first known instance of animosity between the Pharisees and the Sadducees in the time of Yohanan. The scene he describes is a banquet held by Yohanan Herknes, who at the time was a student of the Pharisees.

And he asks the Pharisees, his teachers, whether or not they're satisfied with his rule. And then Eliezer, one of the Pharisees, takes the opportunity to ask Yohanan to abdicate the high priesthood due to certain rumors that his mother was held captive and perhaps violated by the Greeks in the time of the Hanukkah revolt. An awkward statement to the ruler, to say the least. but they were willing to let him remain on as king. Hyrcanus is obviously quite insulted and goaded on by a Sadducee friend, Jonathan. He joins the ranks of the Sadducees. And this story is why the sages say that one shouldn't trust in himself until the day they die because Yohanan, high priest, was with the Pharisees for 80 years until he joined the Sadducees on the day of his death.

Now, the Gemara in Kedushan on 66a records a remarkably similar story but with some significant details that are going to cast an important light on. It says, after King Yanni, remembering that Yanni is the Gemara's articulation of the Hasmonean kingdom, it may be Yohanan, it may be Alexander Yanni, it actually may just be the Hasmoneans in archetype. says that in the time of Yonai, one of the elders, Yehuda ben Gedidia, stood up to King Yonai and said, let the royal crown suffice and leave the priestly crown to the seat of Aaron, just like in Josephus' story. And they investigate the rumor that his mother was taken captive, but it was not sustained. And the sages of Israel have to leave in anger, meaning the Pharisees are embarrassed because their insistence on religious law has led to their confrontation with the king and they failed.

And then, Eliezer ben Porya stands up and says to the king, this is the law even for the most humble man in Israel, but you, a king and high priest, that's going to be your law too? And Yana asks, what should I do? And he replies, if you take my advice, trample them down, meaning kill the sages. Yana responds, but what will happen to the Torah? And then, Eliezer ben Porya says a very important thing. behold, he says it's rolled up and lying in the corner whoever wishes to study let him go study there it is, he says the Torah is right there, what do you need the sages for? and then the Gemara pulls back the lens and you suddenly see the audience to whom this story is being told Rav Nachman bar Yitzchak says immediately a spirit of heresy entered into the king for he should have replied that's all well and good for the written law But what of the oral law And the Gemara finishes straightaway Evil burst forth All of the sages of Israel were massacred The world was empty until Shimon ben Shattach came and restored the Torah to its pristine glory.

Now, the fact that both Josephus and the Gemara placed the point of conflict between the Pharisees and the king as the priesthood and not the kingship, which, by the way, strictly speaking, belongs to the house of David, so therefore could have been quite a point of conflict. This is one of the pieces of evidence, again, from which the scholars argue that the Pharisees are the continuation of the Hasidim. Recall whose primary concern, as we saw, was Torah and Temple, and in particular, the purity of the priesthood. We also see from this story that both the king and the Pharisees see themselves as subject to the same law. When the Pharisees say that there's a question about the king's lineage, he accepts the accusation it's investigated, found false, and then the sages accept the conclusion everybody is operating under one law.

And finally we see that heresy takes two forms which are really two sides of the same coin. Number one, killing the sages. And number two, denying the integral relationship between the written and the oral law. These two things will have implications for hundreds of years to come. Because indeed, in the coming decade, there is a civil war between the Pharisees and their followers and Alexander Yanni and his mercenary army. So intense that the opposition of the Pharisees actually led to his defeat at the hands of the Seleucid king, Demetrius III, in 89 before the Common Era. It was a rout so bad that it actually led to a reconciliation. the Pharisees came and reallied themselves with Yanai, kind of based on the logic of better the devil you know than the one you don't, or better your own king than somebody else's.

So finally in the Gemara, it's important that the hero of the story is mentioned but not seen, because it says that the world was desolate until Shimon ben Shetach came and returned the Torah to its pristine glory. Who is Shimon ben Shetach? Well, he's the leader of the Pharisees. named, by the way, in the first chapter of Pirkei Avot, of the mission of ethics of our followers, as an integral link in the chain of authentic tradition. And he's a vast personality in rabbinic literature. You know, we're not going to spend so much time touching all the facets of his personality, but if you want, you should check out the series of classes on which this podcast is based. You can just send me a message on Facebook, and I'm happy to send you the link.

I have a number of sharing on the richness of the personality of Shimon Ben Shetta. But for now, suffice it to say this. The tradition teaches that Shimon Ben Shetta was not just the leader of the sages of the Pharisaic party. He was also the brother of Shlom Tzion, the wife of Alexander Yanai. Talk about a love triangle. And though the historians are skeptical of that specific claim, they do agree that when Yanai dies and leaves his wife, that's in the year, by the way, 76 before the Common Era, and he leaves his wife Shlom Tzion as queen regent for his two underage sons, thus making her the only Jewish queen in history. Esther was a queen, but she wasn't a queen of the Jews. When he dies and leaves Shlom Sion as queen regent for his two underage sons, the Pharisees become the dominant element in Judean society under her patronage.

And this is seen through the eyes of the Gemara as a golden age, when power and authority are wedded, so to speak, in this brother and sister team. And it's without doubt that this period is what laid the groundwork for the eventual ascendancy of the Pharisees in religious and political life at the end of the Second Temple period, which in turn provided the basis for the emergence of what we know as rabbinic Judaism after this destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans. So there's one last story I want to tell to close this chapter of history. As I mentioned, Alexander Yanni left behind two young sons, Hyrcanus and Aristobulus. But what he didn't leave behind was any clear instruction as to who was meant to succeed him.

And when Shlomzion dies in the year 68 before the Common Era, a civil war erupts between Aristobulus and Hyrcanus. And the Gemara and Sota tells a very interesting story about this war. It says on page 59b, Our rabbis taught, when the kings of the Hasmonean house fought one another, Hercules was outside and Aristobulus within. They're speaking about Jerusalem. There was a siege, and neither could break the siege. In fact, the siege and the Civil War went on for five years. But Bethlehem offers a very strange detail of the siege. It says, each day they used to let down a basket of denarii, of gold coins, and haul up for themselves animals for the continual offering. That's right, even in the midst of the siege, the brother inside, which is Aristopoulos, would lower down money, and the brother outside, Hyrcanus, or at least his men, would provide sacrifices for the daily offering in the temple, because remember, they're all priests, they're all Kohanim.

There was an old man there who was learned in Greek wisdom, and he spoke to them in Greek. Don't forget, way back at the beginning of our story, at the first moment of the Greek encounter, I pointed out that the bridge between these two cultures is in language. So he spoke to them in Greek wisdom, in Greek language, saying, fools, doesn't say that I added it, fools, as long as they carry on the temple service, they'll never surrender to you. And so the people on the outside says, what should we do? And he gives them his advice on the morrow. when the people inside let down the gold in the basket the besiegers put a pig in place of the goats and when the pig reached halfway up the wall of Jerusalem it stuck its claws into the wall and the entire land of Israel was shaken over a distance of 400 parsings and in that time they declared they, who's the they?

it's the voice of the sages they declared, cursed be the man who rears pigs And this is the way in which the Gemara chooses to describe the end of the Hasmonean kingdom. First of all, there's a very important point in here. And that is the question of what is Greek wisdom? Here at the end of the story of the Hasmonean kingdom, we have to ask the question, Did the Maccabees win the battle only to lose the war? They fought out the Greek Empire. They managed to take the temple back from the Hellenizing priests, and they, in their turn, became a Hellenistic kingdom, and they adopted Greek wisdom. Now, for many hundreds, it's not thousands of years, up until this very day, there's an ongoing battle within religious jury about what exactly Greek wisdom is.

There's a portion of the world which will say that it's specifically philosophy. There's a portion of the religious world which will say it's any knowledge outside of Torah. Now's not the time to reach the depths of that question, although it will keep coming back to us as our story progresses. But for here, I want to place a thought. It's very clear, actually, from this story what the essence of Greek wisdom is. As long as these two brothers lived within the same story, they saw themselves as subject to the same rules, the same narrative, They were both priests. It never occurred to them to disrupt the temple offering. Of course, they were striving for sociopolitical power, for leadership. But please, that doesn't mean you're going to upset the relationship with God.

It was the Greek perspective, that outside perspective that said, You silly Jews! If you want to win, just take a step outside and see it from my perspective. because the essence of Greek wisdom is what we call Dat Echitsoni. It's that outside perspective that's willing to reduce the story of Israel to just another narrative. And from that perspective to gain power. And that is indeed what happens in this story. And that pig shook the walls of Jerusalem. Now, I want to leave you with this. In the rabbinic mind, the pig represents Rome. That's a discussion that I could prove in another time, but for now, I'd like you to just take it on faith. And why does that matter? Because here in the year 63, outside of the narrative frame of the Gemara, a new element appears in our story.

Rome at this point was undergoing its own struggles. Let's just call it too much testosterone. And in light of that, they sent Caesar to the west to conquer Gaul, and they sent Pompeii to the east to pick off the remnants of the Hellenistic kingdom. And indeed, in the year 63, Pompey eliminated the remains of the Seleucid Emperor. And when Hyrcanus, who was outside of the city, saw that there was a new power on the block, he sent an embassy to Pompey to get his assistance in deciding the civil war. And indeed, it's Pompey who sends his support, realized that Hyrcanus was the weaker and more pliable of the two brothers, affirms him as Nasi and Ethnarch, a king under the Roman ages, and breaks the siege and declares victory in the Civil War.

In other words, it will be the Hasmoneans that bring Rome to the land of Israel. I just want to thank all the people who make this possible. Pardes Institute for Jewish Studies, that's p-a-r-d-e-s dot org dot i-l for giving me the opportunity to reach such a broad swath of the Jewish people. To all the folks at thelandofisrael.com, you should just keep broadcasting truth to power. And of course, suomiakov.com. I love it because it's my home. I also want to thank all the individuals who gave from their hard-earned money to make my dream happen. I'm Rav Mike, and this is The Jewish Story.