Is There a Doctor in the House? – Yavneh Here and Now
When Vespasian, the Roman legion general who crushed the Great Jewish Revolt of 66-69(CE), was about to breach the walls of Jerusalem, Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai managed to escape and demand an interview with him. Standing face to face with the general, Ben Zakkai revealed that Vespasian would soon be installed as Caesar of Rome. Indeed, it was during this very interview that a messenger arrived to call Vespasian to Rome. When asked to name his reward “Ben Zakkai said: Give me Yavneh and its Sages [and spare] the line of Rabban Gamliel [and do not kill them as if they were rebels], and [lastly give me] doctors to heal Rabbi Ẓadok [the Cohen].” (Gittin 56:b)
This Talmudic account is a symbolic story that has roots in historical events. In the following, I provide a typological reading of Ben Zakkai’s answer, which means to provide guidance for future generations also confronting events of colossal magnitude. Certainly, the novel coronavirus pandemic and the socioeconomic injustice it has exposed warrants such consideration. Generations of rabbis and scholars have reflected on this short exchange which has become a defining moment for Jewish civilization. The fall of Judea, with its massive loss of lives along with the destruction of the Temple, was not only an historical catastrophe and a spiritual upheaval but a cataclysm in the divine realm. God’s throne on earth was demolished and God’s bride, the Shekinah, went into exile with God’s people, the People of Israel. The entire religious structure was shattered and, with it, the theological worldview and the frame of reference by which the Children of Israel would have made sense of their reality.
“Yavneh is written into the DNA of Jewish civilization and is part of the very lens through which Jews perceive the world.”
Yavneh is written into the DNA of Jewish civilization and is part of the very lens through which Jews perceive the world. Nevertheless, in our collective memory, the first part of Ben Zakkai’s answer, “Give me Yavneh and its sages,” gained a stronger scholarly and popular ground than the last two parts, that is, the references to Rabban Gamliel and Rabbi Ẓadok. “Yavneh” became the symbol of establishing a rabbinic Judaism that centered on discursive development of Jewish law and the primacy of the synagogue over Priestly/Temple religion steeped in ritual. However, as we stride into our own current crisis, we should take into account all three parts of Ben Zakkai’s answer. There are global medical, economic, and political ramifications of this pandemic which demand paradigm shifts in worldview that compare in magnitude to Yavneh.
Ben Zakkai had one chance to open a crack in the mounting disaster that was about to befall Israel. He could ask one thing from the very man who orchestrated the utter destruction of his people and his civilization. Thus, faced with the gravity of the hour, he had to encapsulate in his request the seed for the plant that would become the new and renewedJewish civilization. Listening to his answer then means to listen not only to the content of his request, but to the strategy embedded in it. In his brief answer he asks the Roman general what appears at face value to be permission to open a benign non-political school on the periphery of the political theater and far from the volatile political-theological center of the rebellious nation – Jerusalem. However, Ben Zakkai’s request took care not only to save the content, i.e., the repository of Jewish knowledge, by saving the sages of Yavneh but also to codify the operating instructions needed to build Jewish civilization anew. Thus, when we ask about the revolutionary meaning of choosing “Yavneh,” we must investigate what is embedded in the unique combination of “Yavneh” with Rabban Gamliel and Rabbi Ẓadok?!
Rabban Gamliel the II descended from the line of King David. This fact alone would have caused the Romans to fear that the Jews might see him as a potential political leader/redeemer and try to suppress his position. However, Ben Zakkai managed to use this window of opportunity to bring Rabban Gamliel forward, installing him at the head of the Sanhedrin, the institution that developed halakhic authority. The text celebrates Rabban Gamliel’s vigorous and successful initiatives in centralizing the authority of the Sanhedrin as the leading religious-political Jewish institution that governed and unified scattered Jewish populations and, at times, even contradictory Jewish laws and customs.[1] The Sanhedrin, as the quintessential rabbinic institution, played a major role in rebuilding Jewish civilization after the collapse of the “old structures” of the Jewish life. Thus, through Rabban Gamliel’s unique character and qualities, Ben Zakkaimanaged to unify the political and religious authority of the rabbis.
The third axis of Ben Zakkai’s program is Rabbi Ẓadok, an eminent sage of his generation. However, what distinguishes him here is his status as a Kohen and that he “observed fasts for forty years, praying that Jerusalem would not be destroyed. [He became so emaciated from fasting] that when he would eat something it was visible from the outside [of his body]. And when he would eat [after a fast] they would bring him figs and he would suck out their liquid and cast [the rest] away.” (Gittin, 56a) When Ben Zakkai embarked on rebuilding, reforming and revolutionizing Judaism, helping to institute crucial innovations such as substituting prayer for sacrifices and promoting synagogues over the Temple, he needed to anchor the new phase of Judaism within an old tradition and keep continuity with respect to the past. This crucial link is embodied in Rabbi Ẓadok’s persona as a Kohen and a rabbi, a persona that mourns the fate of the priestly religion yet belongs to the emerging rabbinic elite. Asking Vespasian for doctors to heal Rabbi Ẓadok, Ben Zakkai makes the former ascetic an embodiment of the transition from mourning to joining the new enterprise.
The three axes of Ben Zakkai’s program create a mechanism that insures that “Yavneh” became a model of leadership that bound Torah study to practice and thus, vision to implementation, that is, Torah to the political sphere. We see that Ben Zakkai’s retreat to the geographical periphery of Yavneh was not a surrender but a tactical move. In Yavneh, he built a Judaism that erected a new connection between heaven and earth via halakha (law), minhag (custom) and aggadah (lore). Ben Zakkai taught us that religion based on preaching the words of the prophets, on one hand, and priestly religion, i.e., religion based in ritual and sacrament on the other hand, is not the essence of Judaism, at least not the essence of a rabbinic Judaism that can survive independently amongst the nations, without a geographic center or a Temple. He also taught us that radical change must remain deeply connected to the entirety of Jewish tradition and its whole body of knowledge, as personified by Rabban Gamliel. Furthermore, the whole of Israel (Klal Israel), as personified by Rabbi Ẓadok, must be considered when making decisions. Above all, he taught us that Judaism is first and foremost a connection between vision and practice and that prophetic vision, as inspiring as it can be, is not enough. Judaism requires us to translate our lofty ideas to concrete ways – into a course of action, or in more modern terms, policies and political plans. That brings me directly to the changes that I think Reform Judaism must consider, especially at this fateful hour. We need to employ and deploy the Judaism that grew from the wellspring of our “Yavneh.”
Reform Judaism as typically practiced and articulated in its ideological writings seeks guidance in Jewish sources that seem to align well with modern liberal Western or American worldviews. Reform Judaism in general, and in its American iteration in particular, is inspired by and strives to connect with the words of our prophets that address and promote social justice, compassion and universal concerns. When we Reform Jews look back to the writings of the rabbis, we search for teachings that reinforce our modern sensibilities and intrigue us, but we do so only to a point of bolstering our sense of the contemporary Zeitgeist. We very rarely allow them to drive us to a point of transforming our behavior and worldview. However, the world of the sages, the world of the Talmud and the revolution that is encapsulated in Ben Zakkai’s program is, of course, rooted in halakha, and, as such, that program does not recognize the clear demarcations between the private and the public or the religious and the political to which we hold. Yet now, especially when the pandemic is sounding an alarm across the world, it behooves us to reconsider our most fundamental assumptions regarding the relations between our religious lens and the impact of that lens on our social and political worldviews.
“We, as Jews and as rabbis and teachers and leaders, cannot be satisfied with preaching general words about justice that are too abstract and open to conflicting interpretations.”
The economic and political fallout from the pandemic will require us to answer to some basic systemic injustices in our society. Those systemic social injustices are, by now, clearly responsible for the disparity of harm caused by the pandemic. It is often said “the virus does not differentiate between rich and poor” and, yet, the socioeconomic conditions of those stricken and those who attempt to avoid it make it clear that the novel coronavirus leads to discrimination; recovery from Covid-19 is not the same for all.[2] Healthcare, and the lack of healthcare, is connected to economic injustice and the two are in turn connected to political questions of access, prioritization, and prejudice. After the pandemic and in the wake of the mass unemployment that has followed, we can no longer continue arguing that these questions are separable. We, as Jews and as rabbis and teachers and leaders, cannot be satisfied with preaching general words about justice that are too abstract and open to conflicting interpretations. To be sure, we do incorporate inspiring words of wisdom from the prophets and our sages in our sermons and teachings, but this is not “Yavneh” and certainly not Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai’s program. We must change our way of leadership and our teaching substantively if we want to answer the call of the hour in a significantly Jewish way, which is a holistic Jewish way. Our teaching must both be rooted in the entire gamut of the Jewish literature and speak through that literature while integrating the best of today’s science and philosophy. This path was paved by our sages before us; now it is our task. We must do it even if we must argue with the fundamental precepts of Reform religious ideology that relegated Judaism to “a faith” and religion to the private sphere alone. Let us argue for the sake of heaven[3] and for what is at stake: a Jewish response to the new challenges and existential threats to humankind.
Judaism is a religion that translates ideas into precepts and precepts into direction; in Hebrew, the word that describes the process is halakhah. For example, Jewish tradition is not content to preach about charity, but it also specifies how much one should give, to whom one should give, etc., as well as what precisely constitutes tzedakah.[4] I do not mean that we ought to rely solely on the Shulkhan Arukh, however, I am suggesting that we, as Reform Jews, should re-engage with halakhic ways of thinking, writing and teaching. We should create our own Shulkhan Arukh – policies and guidance that incorporates the entire Jewish canon. Following Ben Zakkai, such a guide will be based on a deep knowledge and the ability to lead and respect and engage with Klal Israel. Our rabbis must strive to educate and lead and speak beyond the consensus of their congregations. This is a revolutionary change. It will change the Reform rabbi, the education of the Reform rabbinate and the relations between that rabbinate and their congregations. The basis to build this shift is already laid out by the CCAR Responsa project and I call upon colleagues in the CCAR to accelerate their action and upon us at HUC-JIR to reform our mission and our curriculum to a degree that our students can follow the Responsa arguments and their respective references to the array of cited sources. Eventually, HUC-JIR students will produce their own. We should encourage our rabbis to see themselves as leaders who are ready to challenge their congregations and pull them forward in the name of the entire Jewish tradition – to be Yavneh, Gamliel and Ẓadok in one.
“The first order of business for American rabbis and professors holding positions of intellectual leadership is the question of healthcare in the U. S.”
The first order of business for American rabbis and professors holding positions of intellectual leadership is the question of healthcare in the U. S. It is a life and death question and therefore it is the highest political question of all and thus a sacred one for us. As religious leaders, we cannot exempt ourselves from the discussion and leave politicians to determine the ideological parameters of the healthcare debate or experts to phrase our questions. After all, those who phrase the question predetermine the blueprint of the answer. We must produce a clear Reform Jewish message and be ready to lead at this hour even if it turns out to be “politically” controversial.[5] We can, of course, produce several reasoned opinions but all of them should follow the comprehensive procedure of Ben Zakkai’s program. Thus, our discussion of healthcare as a basic human right should integrate modern arguments with (a) sources from the Bible, Talmud, other rabbinic literature and Jewish thought, and (b) the literature and Jewish traditions of our “non-Reform” colleagues, i.e., Klal Israel.
In the first case, an informed position would argue for universal healthcare based on the Leviticus law “neither shalt thou stand against the blood of thy neighbour: I am the LORD.” (Lev. 19:16), followed by the Talmudic discussion that explains this Leviticus quote as an active personal obligation to rescue any person from apparent fatal danger.[6]These may be tied together with Maimonides’ code advocating our obligation to come to the rescue of a person even if it necessitates contracting agents to help us.[7] In other words, it is our obligation to support lifesaving institutions. Maimonides also rules that one should only reside in a city that has, among other things, a doctor of medicine.[8] From these principles we may base our argument that “a city worthy of its name” must have doctors for us to hire to work on our behalf in the institution that we support. In addition, we should relate to modern Jewish theological teachings, such as from Buber and Levinas, about our ethical obligations to the other and the shortcomings of our federal, state and local governments, as well as our social organizations, in providing remedies to individual’s suffering. Thus, we may learn that instituting healthcare for all still does not wash away our individual responsibility.
In the second case, an informed position would consider the current halakhic discussions amongst leading Conservative and modern Orthodox Jewish rabbis regarding organ donations, abortions, end-of-life decisions, etc., as well as one of the greatest “Jewish experiments” of our age, the State of Israel and its universal healthcare system. In fact, in 1988, Leviticus 19:6 became a Knesset law which obligates every person to rescue or seek immediate help for his/her/their endangered fellowperson. This statute goes beyond mere reporting of threats or abuse. Instead, the State of Israel has anchored the ethical and theological personal obligation to the life of another into Israeli law.
Following healthcare, we should identify two additional themes that are crucial to the survival and prosperity of our society in the face of current events. The fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic has intensified the economic injustice and sin’at hager (hatred towards foreigners, immigrants and migrants). The other daunting crisis for which we must prepare a thorough Jewish response is climate change and its impact on the sociopolitical and economical condition of human beings. These subjects present moral challenges that Jewish leaders must answer through a Jewish lens. Once we translate questions of human rights and justice into Jewish language and provide Jewish answers, these answers will have political ramifications. “Yavneh” is holistic leadership, not a retreat to neutrality in the face of calamity. There are big questions and fateful moments in which rabbis need to take a Jewish-political stand, and now is that time.
* Thanks to my colleagues and friends Profs. Y. Amir, J. Kalman, D. Dor and C. Rechnitzer for their helpful comments.
[1] There are numerous references. It suffices here to note a few examples: the codification of the Jewish calendar (Mishna Rosh Hashanah, 2:9), the affirmation of the authority of rabbinic dialectical reasoning versus other traditional sources as well as the claim to prophetic and charismatic authority as depicted in the famous story of Akhnai’s Oven (Baba Metzi’a 59:b), and the determination to default in most matters of halakhic disputes between the Schools of Hillel and Shammai to the School of Hillel, the establishment of laws that substituted Temple rituals such as in Mishnah Pesaḥim (10:a) and as recited in the Pesaḥ Haggadah “Rabban Gamliel used to say: whoever does not say these three things in Pesaḥ does not fulfill his duty. And these are: Pesaḥ Matzah, and bitter herbs….”
[2] “We know that Covid-19 is killing African-Americans at greater rates than any other group. You can see this most clearly in the South. In Louisiana, Blacks account for 70% of the deaths but 33% of the population. In Alabama, they account for 44% of the deaths and 26% of the population.” https://nyti.ms/2YqTtUN (4/16/2020)
[3] “Every dispute that is for the sake of heaven, will endure; but one that is not for the sake of Heaven, will not endure. …” (Mishna, Avot , 5:17)
[4] See for example Shulkan Arukh, Yoreh De’a, 29:b
[5] For example, in the midst of the political debate over President Obama’s Healthcare legislation I published an argument for Healthcare reform that combines general political philosophy and Jewish tradition. See Haim O. Rechnitzer, “Hobbes, Maimonides, Healthcare Reform and Zelem Elohim: The Political Theology of Universal Healthcare,” CCAR Journal (2010): 104-09. https://bit.ly/2WJuz13.
[6] Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 73:1.
[7] Maimonids, Mishneh Torah, Murder and Preservation of Life 1:14.
[8] Maimonides, Misnah Torah, The Book of Knowledge, 39.
