A sentence uttered 1,940 years ago by Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai became a political slogan due to a combination of ignorance and the desire to unearth the roots of the radical Left's worldview: Give me Yavneh and its sages, he said. If that sentence is removed from the context in which it was uttered when Roman soldiers were stationed several dozen meters away from the Temple, a moment before it was burned in the year 70 C.E. and after the entire country had been conquered Rabban Yohanan could be perceived as the darling of bizarre people of the kind that can be found in Peace Now. Rabban Yohanan made two other requests at the same time that are not remembered as well. They were made during talks between Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai and Vespasian, the commander of the Roman Army and they are documented in our sources. The original description is in Aramaic, and the translation here is mine. It begins in a section of Tractate Gittin and continues in the midrash. It is only an excerpt of the talks between the two leaders, and includes with important commentary. The context should be noted. Before the quote excerpted here, Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai told Vespasian that the Roman Senate was about to appoint him emperor. Indeed, during their conversation, a messenger arrived from Rome with the news. Then came the next section (with my comments in parentheses): He (Vespasian) told him (Rabban Yohanan): I am leaving (Rome, in order to become the emperor), and another general will be sent here in my place. But if you ask something of me (as we part) I will grant it to you. He (Rabban Yohanan) said: Give me Yavneh and its sages (so that Jewish tradition is preserved), the descendants of Rabban Gamliel (who was a descendant of King David) as well as physicians to treat Rabbi Tzadok. The first two requests are clear. But what is the meaning of the third? Why was Rabbi Tzadok so important? Let's go back to the story. (Rabban Yohanan) sent Rabbi Elazar and Rabbi Yehoshua (two of his students) to take Rabbi Tzadok out of the city. They went and found him at the city gate. When Rabbi Tzadok arrived, Rabban Yohanan rose to honor him. Vespasian asked Rabban Yohanan: Why are you rising before this wretched old man- Rabbi Yohanan said: I swear! If there were only one more person like him and you had double the number of soldiers, you would not have been able to conquer Jerusalem. Vespasian said: Why is he so weak- Rabban Yohanan answered: Because of his fasts and afflictions. Rabbi Tzadok Hacohen's fasts rendered him unable to eat. He began the fasts 40 years before the Temple was destroyed. (Incidentally, Vespasian kept his promise and sent physicians who saved the life of Rabbi Tzadok). So why did Rabban Yohanan say that one more weak old man like Rabbi Tzadok could have prevented the fall of the kingdom? Why was it so important to him that Rabbi Tzadok be saved? And why did Rabbi Tzadok afflict himself- Another excerpt, this time from the Jerusalem Talmud, from the period after the destruction when the Sanhedrin convened in Yavneh, reads: The Sanhedrin was like half of a round threshing floor, and the president would sit in the middle so that he could be visible and audible to everyone. Rabbi Lazar (Elazar) (son of) Rabbi Tzadok said: When Rabban Gamliel sat in Yavneh, father and his brothers would sit on his right and the elders on his left. Another question: Why was it necessary to seat this same weak old man near the president of the Sanhedrin, as if he were supervising him- The question becomes even sharper when it becomes clear that Rabbi Tzadok left only one statement in the Mishnah. It is located in Tractate Avot: Rabbi Tzadok says: Do not separate yourself from the community, and do not be like those who try to influence judges, and do not [use Torah study] as a crown with which to glorify yourself or as a spade with which to dig. As Hillel used to say: The one who would make use of the crown [of the Torah] will pass away. Thus you may learn that whoever [improperly] uses the words of the Torah removes his own life from the world. A brief explanation: Those who would influence judges refers not to the lawyers of today, but to the Greek influence that was prevalent in Israel at the time, or arch-judges. In other words: Do not see yourself as the greatest judge. But the main point of his statement is that one should not use the study of Torah for personal gain, and that it is forbidden to use the study of the Torah to glorify oneself. If so, it is no wonder that the haredim gloss elegantly over Rabbi Tzadoks words. Yet questions remain: Why did Rabbi Tzadok fast and afflict himself? Why did Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai say that if the Jewish people had one more person like him, the Romans would not have succeeded in capturing Jerusalem? And how did a man who left only a single saying become so essential- * * * Early this week, I was in Ashkelon, where I sat in the living room of Rabbi Shmuel Katz and his wife, Leah. The rabbi isn't exactly young, but we should all be blessed with his mental and physical abilities, and not just in relation to his age. We talked about the scroll containing a family tree that had been passed down from generation to generation in my late mothers family for more than 1,800 years. It is an amazing story. It's hard to believe, but until several years ago there were still eyewitnesses who had seen it. Today, Rabbi Katz is the last person known to have had any connection with it. When it was at his grandfather's house (who was also my grandmother's grandfather), the family tree was burned during a pogrom in the city of Piatra-Neamt, in Romania. The most important detail about this family tree is that the patriarch of the family dynasty who started it was Rabbi Tzadok Hacohen, who lived before the destruction of the Temple. We are all his descendants. The family tree was a parchment scroll that passed from generation to generation and kept in a wooden box. Parts of it were in very poor condition. Each head of the family wrote the names of his sons and daughters on it, and it passed, like the most precious of items, from one generation to another. The scroll wandered for more than 1,800 years from the Land of Israel all across Europe. More recent generations of the family settled in Transylvania, in northern Romania. According to tradition, the first Jews arrived there with the Roman legions, many of them as slaves who had been exiled. The Romans settled many Jews on the empires frontiers. Later on, those same Jews established communities. Rabbi Katz told me about the family. To make a long story short, I will start here with his grandfather, who, one day, was called to meet his mother, then living in Russia. They summoned grandfather to Russia," Katz told me. "He was told that he would receive something very important. His father was no longer alive, but when he went, his mother and sister told him: 'Look, this is our family tree. Guard it with extreme care.'" They also told him that they wanted him to keep the family tree alive and write down everyone who had been born. And so it was. "My grandfather wrote down the names of his children and the names of their children, as had been done before him," Katz told me. "All the generations did the same.... Grandfather received the scroll and continued to add the names of the family. He also wrote down the names of his cousins. This went on for many years." Rabbi Katz continued: "At the beginning of the 20th century, a wave of revolts broke out in Romania and Russia. The situation was terrible. Non-Jews fought among themselves. The first pretext for their conflicts was a fight over the calendar, since the Romanians and the Russians used the Pravoslav calendar, while others used the Gregorian calendar. The riots developed into a large rebellion, and of course, people exploited this opportunity to rob and murder a great many Jews. Grandfather lived in Piatra-Neamt, then in Romania. Although most of the houses were covered in plaster, the structure was made of wood. Because of the revolt, he had to leave the house. After two or three weeks, he returned to discover that the non-Jews had burned the Jews homes. His home had been razed as well. Everything had turned to ashes and nothing was left and the scroll had been inside the house. Grandfather stood among the ruins and said that everything else in the house was worthless compared to the scroll outlining the family tree. There was a rabbi in Piatra-Neamt that I knew as a child. I remember visiting his home when I was 7 or 8, and I saw something there that amazed me. The rabbi sat at the table and wrote with both hands at the same time, in two different languages. I dont remember why I was at the rabbis house that day, but when my father came to take me home, the rabbi told him: Your father's scroll helped me in many cases in which the order of generations or dates of certain events were listed differently. But I checked, and I think that your fathers scroll was much more precise. This was not the only testimony that the scroll contained not only the family tree but also dates of important events. I was told once that some births were marked on the scroll not only using the date but also with a reference to an important event from the same time, like two years after the great war. Rabbi Katz continued: I remember that the rabbi told my father: I lost the key to the Holy Ark twice: The first time was when your father lost the scroll, and the second was when he died. * * * So what happened with Rabbi Tzadok? Why was he so important to Rabban Yohanan? And what happened to him 40 years before the destruction that made him begin the fasts and afflictions- Well, one thing Christian and Jewish sources agree on is that the establishment was corrupt and despicable in the years before the destruction of the Temple. Apparently, there had never been such a low point in the history of the Jewish people. Tractate Yoma contains a description of one of the more shocking events from that time (quoted with light editing): Two priests who were of equal station were running up the altar ramp. One of them passed within four cubits of his colleague. The [second] man took hold of a knife and stabbed him in the heart. What the tractate is described here is a murder on the altar in the Temple courtyard. Two priests fought over a sacrifice and one of them felt that the other had invaded his personal space. And so, while they were on the altar ramp, one murdered the other. The description of the incident continues: Rabbi Tzadok stood on the steps of the sanctuary and said: Our brothers, the House of Israel, listen: See, He spoke (God said in the Torah): If a corpse is found on the ground, the elders and judges shall go forth. We, for whom should we bring the offering of the calf to be beheaded? On behalf of the city, or on behalf of the courtyards- An explanation: According to Jewish law, when a human corpse was found and it was not known who was responsible for his death, a group of leaders had to perform a ceremony of atonement. But here, Rabbi Tzadok cries out, the leaders themselves were the murderers. What do we do- Let us return to the incident. Immediately after Rabbi Tzadok cried out upon the steps of the sanctuary, The whole nation cried out, weeping. The father of the baby (the young priest who had been stabbed, since according to the Talmud, even a grown son will always remain a baby to his father) came and found him dying. He said: This is your atonement, and my son is still dying, and the knife has not been rendered impure. Again, an explanation: According to Jewish law, an object that came into contact with a corpse becomes ritually impure, and cannot be used. What interests the father is not his dying son: He is upset about the knife and wants to pull it from his sons body before he dies. The Talmud sums up the incident: To teach you that they are more concerned about the purity of vessels than about bloodshed. All of this brings to mind sentences that we have heard recently in Israel such as, It is better to stand before a firing squad than to listen to women sing, and other similarly, excessively strict observances. But it only sounds that way. * * * When he stood on the steps of the Temple and saw the distorted order of priorities, Rabbi Tzadok Hacohen, the man who began writing our family tree, realized that the end of Jewish sovereignty was drawing near. He began fasting until the destruction. Because Rabbi Tzadok Hacohen realized it even then, Rabbi Yohanan said that if the Jewish people had possessed another person like him, Jerusalem would not have fallen. The kingdom did not fall due to a lack of military might. It fell because of abominable behavior, because the sages of the time held matters of ritual purity to be more important than bloodshed. It should also be mentioned that the sages, also in the context of the destruction, said embarrassing another person in public was as serious an offense as bloodshed. As a warning for the future, Rabbi Tzadok was seated next to the president of the Sanhedrin. He served as a constant reminder of the sins that led to the destruction, and a permanent warning to rabbis of that generation not to use the Torah as a tool for personal gain, be it honor or money. Yes, there were times in which a moral compass was necessary to oppose the establishment someone who knew what came first: the laws of purity or an act of bloodshed. How good it is that those days are behind us. Perhaps it is also good that the scroll containing the family tree did not survive. Who knows whether it would have survived here among us- * * * Rabbi Katz is silent for a moment. We can hear the sounds of Ashkelon outside and suddenly there is a siren. Later on, the news reports would say it was a false alarm. Look, he says, Jews are coming back to Israel after 2,000 years. Each one of us brings here with him not only the Jewish tradition that we took from the Land of Israel when we went into exile. In every place, Jews also absorbed the spirit of the environment in which they lived. And when they return and are gathered together, it is hard. Everything collides. These things are of great concern for me. But you know, we host the family Seder once every two years. Eighty-two guests arrive. I came here from Romania, but we have everything in our family: Morocco, Yemen. And all of us, all 82 of us, are very comfortable with one another. And then people start singing and I listen and notice that a moment comes when everybody is singing in harmony. But lets leave that aside for now. Did I tell you enough about the family tree, the one that was started by the patriarch of the family, Rabbi Tzadok Hacohen- * * * Once, a neighbor of Hersheleh of Ostropol [a figure in Jewish lore and humor] complained: I am so fed up with the mice in my home. Please advise me what should I do- Hersheleh answered, Place crumbs of the afikoman near the mice holes so that when they come out, they will eat them immediately. And right after they eat the afikoman, they will have to return to their homes and not run around your house, since Jewish law forbids eating anything after the afikoman. The man said in astonishment: Good advice, but how do the mice know this law- Hersheleh answered: Common sense requires that they know it because before they moved into your home, the mice lived with me and ate the entire Shulhan Arukh, and now their bellies are full of Torah. Happy Passover.
