Season 1: Episode 10 - Through the Flames

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The Roman philosopher Seneca said, every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end. And at this stage of our story, we are both at an end and a beginning. I'm Rav Mike Foyer, and we're telling a story about the beginning, the end, and everything that lies between. Because this is the Jewish story. Episode 10, Through the Flames So here we are, on the edge of the second great discontinuity of Jewish history. Now keep in mind that the first was undoubtedly the destruction of the first temple, Solomon's temple, and the 70 years of the Babylonian exile, which follows. And since the beginning of our story, we've been tracing the efforts of Am Yisrael to stitch itself back together in the wake of that shattering event.

And they've been using all the tools of nation-building, community organization, and narrative construction to give them the words of our day in an attempt to maintain continuity with their story of the past as they move forward in time. But the coming destruction, it's not going to be for 70 years, or even for 700. Even now, almost 2,000 years later, we still live in its wake. Those who survive this will be those who are able to tell a story which not only bridges the gulf, but actually transforms destruction and exile themselves into a vehicle for redemption. But before I can get into the aftermath and the healing, first we have to pass through the flames. And all our pieces are in place. Jerusalem has already pushed out the Romans.

We spoke at the end of the last episode about that shocking defeat of the 12th Legion, the Battle of Beit Charon, which, chief amongst all the defeats that the Romans ever faced in the eastern provinces, really shook them up. And therefore, the Roman general, and Vespasian and his son Titus have already gathered more than four legions for the assault on Judea, and they're ready to crush and burn. Jerusalem sits at the center of our drama, as it has since Ezra and the returnees came back to it. The story of her destruction actually needs to be seen from multiple perspectives, and for now we're going to try one from the inside and one from out. In order to do this, we're going to peek a little bit at this story through the eyes of two men whose lives were bound up with the events.

The first is the famous Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, and the second will be the great rabbinic leader, Rabbi Yochan ben Zakkai. Now, by his own account, Yosef ben Matityahu, also known as Flavius Josephus, was a living recapitulation of all the fragments of Judean society in his time. He's a priest, descended from the Hasmonean house on his mother's side. He is a student of the Pharisees who says that in his younger life he actually learned the ascetic practices of the Essenes with them in the wilderness. How does Josephus enter our story? Once the Romans had been driven from Jerusalem, it became apparent even to the voices of moderation that the reality of war with Rome was upon them. Rabbi Shem ben Gamaliel, the head of the Nasi of the Sanhedrin, and also head of the Pharisees within the city, joined together with the high priest Ananus, who was also at the head of the Sadducee party, and other leaders in the city in order to appoint military leaders for the various regions surrounding Jerusalem, knowing that the hammer was about to fall.

Josephus was actually chosen to command the Galilee, which in and of itself speaks of his quality because it was clear to everyone that there the heaviest blows would fall first. When we read his account of his struggle in the War of the Jews, which is a book I highly recommend that everyone read, we see that he actually spent more of his enormous energy attempting to gain control of the rebellious Jews of Galilee than he actually did preparing for the Roman assault. And in the end, the people were unprepared to resist the legions. Because Vespasian indeed moved on the Galilee first in the year 66, once he landed at the coast of Judea, and he reduced the countryside, driving the remnants of the resistance either into isolated cities, or actually the bulk of the rebel armies fled south toward Jerusalem.

The decisive battle of the Galilee was at Yod-Petah, which was the fortified city that Josephus had chosen for his headquarters, and where he held out against the Romans for almost six weeks. A dramatic siege, which I'll leave you to read the War of the Jews to get the details of. But it was dramatic as well as brutal. And after that brutal siege, Vespasian and his men managed to break the walls and take the city. Now Josephus was saved from that assault by taking refuge in a cave together with 40 other rebels that he describes as noblemen. I mean, why they were hiding instead of fighting, I leave for you to decide. But Josephus became inspired by the idea that perhaps it was time to give up. Not just to quit, but to accept the fact that the Romans were ascendant.

And he began to try to convince those with him to do so. They, however, had resolved to kill one another rather than be taken back by the enemy, and they were happy to let Josephus be the first one if he was going to give them away. So he, using his amazing oratory skills, or at least how he describes it in his own book, convinced them to draw lots in order to determine their fate, meaning he joined their plan of killing themselves, and in doing so, somehow managed to be one of the last two men alive. He says he did this on purpose, and he then persuades his companion to go out with him and surrender to the Romans rather than killing themselves. And this story actually has given rise to something known in computer science and mathematics as the Josephus problem.

How would you arrange such a situation to make sure that you were amongst the last two standing? You can look it up, but I hope you never have any cause to use it. So, you know, Josephus, because of this story, which of course he himself tells, as well as the experience of the fall of the Galilee and his surrender, was labeled as a traitor by his contemporaries. And truth is, he still bears that stain in the minds of many down to this day. The question we need to ask is, is he a traitor, or the only one in the whole Galilee who was willing to read the writing on the wall? furthermore he at least says that he was an inspired actor in this story here are his words about his decision now Josephus was able to give shrewd conjectures about the interpretation of such dreams as have been ambiguously delivered by God moreover he was not unacquainted with the prophecies contained in the sacred books as being a priest himself and of the posterity of priests and then he says, and just then he was in an ecstasy meaning that he had been dreaming very powerful dreams and when he started to think about what these dreams might mean he looked up to God and he put up a secret prayer, he says since it pleases you who has created the Jewish nation to repress the same and since all their good fortune has gone over to the Romans and since you have made choice of this soul of mine to foretell what is to come to pass hereafter, I willingly give them my hands, and am content to live.

And I protest openly that I do not go over to the Romans as a deserter of the Jews, but rather as a minister from you. Meaning that Josephus, going over to the Romans, far from being an act of treason in his eyes, was actually in the service of God, because he felt that his inspiration had come to him in order to deliver a very important message to Rome. Because when he surrendered, and he was placed in chains by Vespasian, he immediately announced the greatness in store for this general, who was soon to be emperor, according to Josephus. Now, was Josephus truly a prophet? Well, we can say for sure that he was fully aware that there was a widespread prophecy throughout Judea, and even the East, that the ruler of the world was destined to come forth from Judea.

This we know from the Christian story. And truth is, we know even echoes of such a prophecy had reached Rome. And though this was likely a messianic prophecy, and indeed he says in the Jewish word that the zealots themselves interpreted it as referring to the Messiah, nevertheless, it was quite easy to pose to Vespasian the idea that he himself might be the one. so when Josephus saved himself was he pursuing gross self-interest and massaging prophecy to his own ends or was he taking a different track on Jewish survival because of course telling the story is half the battle the question of who fights and runs away or surrenders in this case and whether he's meant to be praised or excoriated actually to a certain degree derives not only the evolution of our story in real time during the siege and will also actually drive it down through the ages as the destruction of Jerusalem becomes a foundation stone of Jewish memory.

And the Christians, the zealots and the sages actually all have very different perspectives on those who ran away. No matter what, in the end, Josephus lives because he recognizes that Rome is here to stay, that pillar of political wisdom that we have seen since the time of Antipada. and because of his desire to tell the story of the war of the Jews, which he makes clear in his book, is the goal is to drive home its moral. That resistance is futile. You have to learn to read the writing on the wall. Okay, so Josephus joins the camp of Vespasian. And after Vespasian conquers the Galilee, he sends these rebel armies fleeing southward to Jerusalem, where much trouble will result, and then establishes his headquarters in Caesarea the classic headquarters of the Roman prefecture since Herod built it and proceed to clear the coast of all resistance because this is all just a lead to the climactic battle for Jerusalem.

I have to say at this point that because this is a story of the development of consciousness in its historical context and not a podcast on military history, I'm going to spare you the gruesome details of the struggle for the Holy City. because for my purposes, for our purposes the critical question is why was Jerusalem destroyed not how and the truth is, we can actually approach the question through an overview of the vast number of rabbinic texts which answer it because as is usual the sages derive a broad diversity of answers to such an important question and what's fascinating to me is that a close examination of the sources gives a clear sense that both the destruction of Jerusalem and the state of their contemporary social context are being judged.

If you're interested, by the way, you can send me an email at mfeuer at hotmail.com and I can send you a source sheet on it. Either way, for our story, the primary lesson that we can find out of the fact that there are so many answers to such a weighty question of why was Jerusalem destroyed is that classic phrase which makes it into our liturgy on the festival holidays in the additional prayer, mitnei chate'enu galinu me'artzenu. It was because of our sins that we were driven from our land. No matter what the particular sin it was that caused Jerusalem in the particular text that we see, the assumption is very clear. The Romans did not destroy Jerusalem. They were a mechanism, not the cause. And even to say that God destroys Jerusalem, of course, is to avoid the real depth of the question.

Because God destroys Jerusalem through the mechanism of the Romans in response to the failure of the people. And before we start beating ourselves in the breast with this Jewish guilt, and indeed this idea that because of our sins we were exiled from our land becomes a cornerstone of Jewish guilt somewhere in the Middle Ages as far as I can tell, that is not at all what it means. What it means is that we maintain agency in the face of history. because if our sins destroy Jerusalem well then our merits and actions will cause it to be rebuilt so Josephus is outside the city and inside the city is Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai he of course, we mentioned him a few episodes ago is the shining student of Hillel the Elder he's the link of continuity that we'll see between the Pharisees and the people who will really be born as they pass through these flames into the sages the rabbis of the Mishnahh.

So if we look into the Gemara in Gittin, on the 56th page, in page A and B, we'll see it tells the story like this. The Biryani were then in the city. The Biryani is the rabbinic name for the zealots, so it really means thugs. And the rabbis said to them, let us go out and make peace with the Romans, as we see from the historical record that that's what they wanted to do, at least in the beginning. The Biryani wouldn't allow it, but on the contrary said, let us go out and fight them. The rabbi said, you will not succeed. Now one can hear that as defeatism, one can hear it as pragmatism, or one can actually hear it as a debate on whether force is the means in which we want to save ourselves. The biryani then rose up and burned all the stores of wheat and barley in the city, so that a famine ensued.

And I have seen with my own eyes, in the tunnels under the modern day excavations of the city of David, the burnt wheat which may indeed have been left from this horrible act. A famine ensued, in order to force the people's back against the wall. The Gemara goes on and says, Abba Sikra, the head of the Beryoni in Jerusalem, Abba Sikra means father knife, he was the son of the sister of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, his nephew. Rabbi Yochanan sent to his nephew saying, come visit me privately. When he came, Rabbi Yochanan said to him, how long are you going to carry on this way and kill all the people with starvation? Jerusalem is burning from within, starving from within, not from the Romans. And Haber Sikra said to him, what can I do?

If I say a word to them, they will kill me. And here we hear one of the first notes of that alarm bell that should be sounded in the mind of all aspiring revolutionaries. Just be careful of letting the radical go, because in the end they'll eat you alive. Rabbi Yochan says to him, devise some plan for me to escape, and then perhaps I'll be able to save a little. There'll be a Hatzalah Purta. We're going to come back to that idea. So Rabbi Sikr tells him to pretend to be ill, and they'll come visit, and then they'll put some evil-smelling substance by him, and everyone will say, Oy, Rabbi Yochanan is dead. And so they go to carry him out, wrapped in his funeral shroud on a baier. And at the gates, the guards who are there to prevent the Jews from going out to the Romans, as well as the Romans from getting into the city, they want to poke through to make sure he's really dead.

And they say, with indignation, the rabbis, the students of the rabbis say to them, the Romans will say they pierced their master. and so the guards back off and Rabbi Yochanan is successfully smuggled out of the city and when he finds himself in front of Vespasian I just imagine that Josephus might have not been far away he says to him peace to you, O king, peace to you, O king and Vespasian replies you're a dead man on two counts one because I'm not a king and yet you call me so and the other is if I'm a king how come you didn't come before this? so you're not one to catch a rabbi heavy on his feet when it comes for a clever answer but here Rabbi Eulon shows that he too is feeling the power of inspiration he replies as you're saying that you're not a king in truth you are a king because if you were not a king Jerusalem would not be delivered into your hand as it says in the book of Isaiah and Lebanon shall fall by a mighty one and then he proves from Jeremiah that Lebanon refers to the temple and ask for your question, says Rabbi Yochanan, if you are a king, why didn't I come to now?

Well, that's obvious. The biryani, these thugs amongst us, would not let me come. And so Rabbi Yochanan also gives him a nice mix of prophecy and real politique. And at this very point, says the Gemara, a messenger came to Vespasian from Rome saying, Arise, the emperor is dead, and the notables of Rome have decided to make you head of the state. Now, before we get to the conclusion, I do want to note that in Roman history, this year is known as the year of the four emperors. It's really the full-blown birth into Roman political culture of the ability of the legions to choose their generals as heads. And that's indeed what happens between the year 69 and 70. At four different points, the legions rise up and appoint their own leaders as Caesar, only to be defeated by another.

So here's Vespasian, the end of that process. So Vespasian says to Rabbi Yochanan, I'm going to go now, except the royal purple, and will send someone to take my place. That's going to be his son Titus, who will finish the siege. You can, however, now make a request of me, and I will grant it. So Rabbi Yochanan says the following to him. Do you feel the tension? Just imagine that you found a genie one day. All-powerful being willing to grant three wishes. One thing I can say for sure is that if you ever have the chance to get your wishes met, you better hope it's your best day, because what you ask for is exactly what you're going to get. so Rabbi Yochanan says to him give me Yavna and its sages and the family chain of Rabban Gamliel and bring me physicians to heal Rabthadok and we will speak momentarily about these three things but then the Gemara goes on and says that Rabbi Yosef or some say Rabbi Akiva applied to Rabbi Yochanan in that moment the verse God turns wise men backward and makes their knowledge foolish why?

because he ought to have said to Vespasian go away let the Jews off this time then the Gemara answers this criticism says he, Rabbi Yochanan however, thought that so much Vespasian would not grant and so that even a little would not be saved and thus the story ends again with that notion of Hatzalah Purta, saving a little bit so Rabbi Yochanan gets three wishes and he uses them to save a little bit. And before we take apart those three wishes for Mona, I just want to emphasize that this is not playing it small. This is not taking what you can get. This is actually playing the long game by saving a living remnant. He's playing to win, as we'll see as our story unfolds in this episode and the next and onward to the rise of the modern state.

but in order to play to win sometimes you just have to save a little bit so the first thing that Rabbi Yeochanan asked for is the last one we'll speak about I'm going to go in reverse he asked for physicians to save Rabbi Tzadok Rabbi Tzadok, if you recall we mentioned has been fasting for 40 years 40 years it's been known to him that the temple would be destroyed and we even noted that Rabbi Yeochanan himself was famous for rebuking the doors of the temple as they opened themselves and he's saying everybody knows you're going to be destroyed but you don't have to open your doors. So for 40 years, Rebbe Tzadok has represented the ability to read the writing on the wall. And so, Rebbe Yochanan knows that this last remnant of the prophetic path, which really, to a certain degree, defines the sages as who is wise, the one who sees that which is coming to be, needs to be preserved, and it's on life support.

Number two, he asks for the family of Robin Gamliel. Who was Robin Gamliel? He was the elder son of the great chain of rabbinic leadership Descended from his holy ancestor Hillel the Elder And since we can connect through Rabbi Gamaliel and Hillel the leadership of Torah, what's called the Nasi, the Prince, as we've spoken about, and since the Gemara connects Hillel back to Ezra, as another one who brought the Torah up from Bavel, and since the Gemara also connects Ezra to Moshe, well, in a sense, what you're saving is Moshe. And it's really at this point in history that Moshe officially becomes a rabbi. Moshe Rabbeinu, Moshe our teacher. As opposed to what he is up to that point, which is Moshe Av Hannevi'im, Moshe the father of prophets.

And the last thing the Reh Yohanan asks for is the sages at Yavne. Yavne is a small and somewhat unremarkable town just off the coast in southern Israel we can call it. And if you go there today, you won't see much. Which is in and of itself part of its power. Because what he was saving was the core of the Torah that had gathered there. The teachers who knew how to use the tools of Mishnahh and Midrash in order to engage the coming discontinuity and to stitch it together into a story of God's will in the world, even in the face of tragedy. More on Yavda at the end. So Vespasian left the siege in the hands of his son Titus and sails off to Rome to take the imperial office. And on the eighth day of Av, the final assault began.

the people within were too weakened and divided by starvation and internecine battle to put up an effective resistance any longer Titus brought up the rams and the towers and as they ascended the ramp he built battered his way through the walls and set fire to the city according to Josephus by the way it was his men who set fire to the temple and Titus resisted it but our rabbis teach us that Titus actually in its audacity entered into the Holy of Holies in order to kill God himself. Josephus had been in the Roman camp, as we mentioned, since the beginning of the siege, and he had actually attempted to persuade the Jews to give up their rebellion, an act for which he almost paid with his life.

And his description of the final discretion is complete and too heart-rending to read here. I prefer to leave a veil over the details of such tragedy. Nevertheless, here are a few words we can take with us. First is his wonder at the accuracy of this period. He says, For the same month and day were now observed, as I've mentioned before, when the Holy House was burnt formerly by the Babylonians. Josephus is the oldest source to tell us that the second temple was destroyed on the 9th of Av, just as the first had been, which is the great indicator to the people that it's not the Romans who destroy the temple. They're the mechanism. But what they need to search for is their own sins. and then Josephus says a little bit further on as soon as the army had no more people to kill or plunder because there were none left to be objects of their fury because he says they would have not spared any had there remained any other work to be done Caesar gave orders that they should now demolish the entire city and the temple but that one wall was to be spared which enclosed the city on the west side.

This wall was spared both in order to afford a camp for the garrison that was to lie there and in order to demonstrate how well fortified and mighty the city was which Roman valor had subdued. But everything else they leveled to its foundation. That desire to commemorate the might of a defeated people and through it the might of Rome is what leaves us the Western Wall. And we can see the desire for Titus to glory at his victory on the arch which he built for his triumph in Rome to this very day. The depiction of the Jews carrying the vessels of the temple off into captivity that we see on Titus' arch actually becomes, from this moment forward, the symbol of an exile of almost 2,000 years. but Rome's ascendancy over Jerusalem was immortalized in another and even better known structure what could be a more iconic building of ancient Rome than the Colosseum and when we look closely there's an inscription there which has been reconstructed which says the emperor of Vespasian ordered that this new amphitheater be erected from his general share of the budi and since the Colosseum was actually built around the year 73 or it began we can say with certainty that the greatest construction project of ancient Rome was funded by the spoils taken from the temple after the siege of Jerusalem and we know that along with those spoils perhaps as many as 100,000 Jewish prisoners were brought back to Rome after the war and served as slave labor in its construction and so we see that the words of the sages were truly prophetic, that if you see Rome built, know that Jerusalem is in ruins.

But of course, they said those words well afterwards, and that's because when Jerusalem fell, Rabbi Yochanan was already at Yavna. And when Jerusalem fell, and it burned, and the word reached Rabbi Yochanan at Yavna, and he and his sages heard of the great tragedy, they tore their clothes, threw dirt on their heads, lay on the ground and cried, and like Ezra, were struck dumb until the evening. But also like Ezra, the Sage of Yavna got up and began to engage the ever-present problem of Am Yisrael, and that is embodiment. How does the idea of Israel, as we see it articulated through revelation, understanding, accumulated custom and historic experience, take form in the world? This is the question.

Ezra and the returnees, as we spoke about, were able to use the twin tools of exclusion and entirety to simplify this process, because he became the new Moshe, and those who gathered around him were automatically Israel. And through this powerful approach, they reestablished the temple and the land as vehicles which could hold the growth of the Torah, and through which Israel would embody itself in the world. now we've been tracing the breakdown of these vessels on all fronts since basically the Greek encounter it's important then to say what embodiment lies ahead and in that light I would like to frame the great revolt and the destruction that comes in its way basically as an evolutionary watershed meaning what?

there are those who will survive and those who do not and those who do will be the ones who seek new forms for the Torah, for Israel to embody itself in the world. First of all, the Sadducees are swept away when their power base in the temple is literally destroyed. And while it's true that there will be later incarnations of their attitude toward oral law and rabbinic authority, for now, they're in the dustbin of history. The Essenes are lost as well. We know that the community of Qumran, made famous by their association with the Dead Sea Scrolls, was destroyed in the year 68, by the Spasians' army as they prepared for the siege of Jerusalem, and perhaps in that moment they received the final battle for which they longed.

But the remnants would be absorbed either directly into rabbinic Judaism and Christianity, or would live on as non-conformist Gnostic sects on the edges of these societies. Now, despite the destruction that they brought on themselves, the Zealots are not actually finished yet. In fact, in a story which is well known to many, a group of zealots had actually managed to flee before the siege to the desert mountaintop fortress of Masada. And after slaughtering the Roman garrison there, and according to Josephus, a good portion of the countryside around them, they managed to hold out against Rome for three years even after the fall of Jerusalem. The drama of their siege and their eventual end by mass suicide is detailed by Josephus and is, I hope, a well-known story.

but we need to actually hold this thought that though the crushing of Masada and the tragic end of its defenders might appear to demonstrate the futility of an all or nothing attitude towards survival as opposed to Rabbi Yochanan's goal of saving a little the zealots and the spirit of the Maccabees which they embody are not finished in our story yet hold out for it in the coming episode. And by the way, the Christians also at this watershed will take their own approach to the problem of embodiment, particularly over the coming generations. But for now, we just need to know that they indeed survived. How they did so is in fact a matter of some debate. The early Christian historians Eusebius and Epithenaeus teach that prior to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, the Jerusalem Christians actually fled to the Decapolis city of Pella, in modern-day northern Jordan.

and they point back critically to a story in the Gospel of Mark which says that as Jesus and his disciples exited the temple one of them turned and said look teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings and Jesus said to him, do you see these great buildings? they will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down and then he goes on to give his disciples a discourse on the end and this end runs together the temple, the Jewish nation, and the history and the world. Now, despite this end-of-days attitude, the very survival of Christianity, and of course the fact that the world doesn't end, is going to necessitate that they themselves cultivate a new approach to embodiment of their vision in the world We going to keep our eye out for that in the coming episodes as well Finally it is the sages who emerge from the destruction through this great discontinuity as the voice of Israel.

And they will be the ones to craft a mode of embodiment that will carry Israel through the long exile that lies ahead. There is actually a fundamental question here of whether one believes that evolution has a teleality. Meaning, is the survival of the sages an expression of divine will? And therefore, their eventual leadership is an expression of the authenticity and essential rightness of their path? Though, preceding the destruction, there was quite a bit of argument about it. Or is this simply a case of the last man standing? This itself will be a very important frame of how we understand the progress of Israel through exile and the development of what is known as Judaism and the Jews. Because there are really kind of two ways in which we can understand cultural evolution.

We can say that genuine Israel is conceived by the Torah as a people in a land with its king, temple, and prophets at the center. And that everything else is a product of historical circumstance, accidental exile, and therefore not authentic. And by the way, our vision of redemption will then be what we call neoclassical. it will be a going back to an ideal past that was. We could, however, also say that the changing historical context that Israel will encounter through exile will allow for the emergence of sides of the truth that lies within them, within Israel and within the Torah, that would have never been expressed otherwise. This is a critical shift because then the vision of redemption will be the ability to integrate our entire story, both the neoclassical vision of the ideal past and all of the wealth and suffering of the exile into a combined future.

But for now, we're going to leave that frame on the side and come back to it periodically. I want to take the last few minutes and just touch with a little more detail on what exactly happened at Yavna. Because there, what we know as religious life was born. first of all, perhaps the most important thing which occurs is the reparation of Machloke, fixing all the battles which had occurred during that time of sectarian strife leading up to the destruction if one looks at the Toseft in Eduyot in the first chapter, in the first law it says there that the sages entered into the vineyards of Yavna meaning they were like a vineyard, they sat in rows and rows and rows meaning all of the great mines were there and they were concerned that someday people would come and say we can't find clarity on the words of the Torah we don't know how to understand or decide between the teachings of the sages therefore there at the beginning of a duyo they take upon themselves to begin with the words of Hillel and Shammai and take testimony that's what the meaning of the name is take testimony on what had been said and what was correct now it's critical to note that this is not just a technical fix for argument from achloke.

It is actually symptomatic of a larger shift toward the understanding that disagreement does not necessitate the elimination of other as it had in the sectarian battles around who would be true Israel. Rather, disagreement can be accepted as a process of combining partial perspectives in the quest to know a truth which is larger than any one individual or even any single generation could ever know. And so it will be the commitment to that process combined with the humility and passion of Machloket that will actually cause Israel to birth ever larger truths into the world. So at Yadna there also was a series of decrees which allowed the Torah to replace the Temple and at the same time institutionalized the notion that the Temple will be speedily rebuilt.

I'm not going to go into the details of the decrees, but I just want you to appreciate the power of that phrase. It allowed the Torah to replace the Temple. It accepted the present even while mourning for the past, and yet institutionalized the vision of the future, which is tied to the past. The temple will be rebuilt speedily in our day. And it also moved the service of the temple into the Mikdash Ma'at, into the synagogue. Now it's important, of course, that is a Greek term, synagogue. And the inscriptions that we see, the original usage of the name from Hellenistic times, was actually referring to the communal organization and not to the building itself. But once the physical temple is gone, then the motion into the synagogue will be overwhelming.

And it says in the Gemara in Megillah, as well as in Sanhedrin, that it was at Yavna, before Robin Gamliel, who had been saved from the destruction, that Shimonath Huli taught the order of prayer. Now why the order of prayer? Jews are praying that way to this very day. The Gemara goes on and says, well, we want to know, why does this prayer follow that prayer follow this prayer follow that prayer? You know what that is? It's a narrative flow. On this level, by institutionalizing prayer at Yavna, what they were doing was actually institutionalizing a story, a story about God and the world. And they were harnessing the power of narrative to preserve consciousness, because if we tell the same story over and over again, it doesn't become something we know, it becomes how we know the world.

Now, politically, the rise of Yavna was at least passively supported by the Romans, which is significant, because when the Romans conquered a rebellious province, they generally eliminated all native leadership and placed it under direct Roman rule, which in case it was, at this point, direct Roman military rule. But nevertheless, they tolerated the sages at Yavin, because first of all, they had an accommodationist element. Because remember, Rabbi Yochanan and Rabbi Gamaliel the Elder actually tried to avert the war, and then to make peace in the midst of it. Also, the Romans recognized that the sages were highly popular with the masses, and therefore could serve as a good bridge toward peace. And of course, the sages seemed to be mostly concerned with what the Romans perceived to be religious law.

They couldn't really appreciate the power that was being harnessed there. But in the year 80 of the Common Era, Rabbi Yochanan, having shepherded the transitions from within Jerusalem to without, that passage through the flames, bringing out the living little remnant in order to play the long game toward the vision which was yet to be, abdicates his authority in favor of Rabban Gamal II and leaves Yavne. And this is really why Yavne is an unremarkable city to this day, because it wasn't about Yavne. It wasn't about any particular place anymore. What it was about was the ability to use those twin tools of Mishnahh and Midrash, of law and story, in order to craft a world in which we could still serve God.

Rabban Gamal manages to actually establish the authority of the office of Nasi in the eyes of the Romans, in the eyes of Am Yisrael, and it's at this point that his Davidic element in his lineage actually becomes quite critical. Now, Yavna is the future. The culture of discourse, the commitment to Torah, the conscious dedication to building Kehillah, community, which are given first form there, through law and custom, through Mishnahh and Midrash, are going to serve as the model for Jewish life in the coming two millennia, and they will be the ones who frame the story of the destruction in a way which can actually not only be survivable, but growthful. They'll allow space for mourning our loss, and they will encourage and demand in fact, introspection that's required in order to learn its lessons, and they'll craft a view of history that'll allow Am Yisrael to main a posture of agency, even as the classic platform of historical action, the nation, has completely dissolved.

it was clear in the eyes of the sages that the Pyrrhic absolutism of the Zealots was wrong and it was actively disparaged in fact, the story of Masada was completely forgotten by the Jews until they rediscovered the works of Josephus in the late Middle Ages and even then it lacked adherence until the Zionist movement once again took on the problem of embodiment in the 19th century and became quite enamored of Masada but the spirit of the Maccabees that deep conviction that our divine mission is bound up with sovereignty over particular territory and the passion that the people felt for immediate redemption through a cataclysmic battle at the end of days has not yet had its final stay in our story because Judean society in the wake of the great revolt is defeated but not cowed the temple was burnt but not forgotten the national vessel is broken but it's not actually quite destroyed and there's a final round of struggle ahead and this will be a mighty conflagration that will once again shake Rome and cause Jerusalem to burn and this final messianic upheaval of the Second Temple Society will be led by none other than the great hero of Jewish history, the mighty giant of Torah Rabbi Akiva I just want to thank the 28 individuals whose contributions make this material free and available and widely distributed to the public.

If you want to join them, you can go to www.patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N, and find Mike Foyer, and you can contribute to the project there. I also want to thank the Pardes Institute, that's pardes.org.io, for giving me a platform to teach such a broad and beautiful swath of Jewish people. I want to thank the Land of Israel Network awesome people for getting it out to the world as a whole and I want to thank you for listening I'm Rav Mike Poirier and this is The Jewish Story