Torah Readers Reflections

The death of Empires

Empires have come and gone, great civilizations have risen and fallen, yet despite the destruction of the temple and the end of the primary form of worship, Jews somehow survived these cataclysmic events. What was it that the Jews did that caused them to survive when great nations fell?
Dvar Image

Empires come and empires fall. It seems that it is an inevitability  that no matter how powerful a nation or an empire may be, it will eventually collapse and with that collapse, it will take with it the civilization that it built. History has shown us this time and time again. But why do empires collapse, is there a specific reason that after a period of time, sometimes a few years and sometimes many hundreds of years, they eventually disintegrate? 

 

Many observers of history would argue that an empire collapses or a nation loses its power because of complacency. One generation struggles to build a nation, while the following generations live in ever growing comfort, not realizing the struggles of previous generations. 

 

If we think about the typical American immigration story; The first generation to come to these shores struggles to build a life here. They work hard, they fight for their place in society in order that their children may have a better life than they did. The second generation is witness to the sacrifices that their parents made for them and they in turn work hard to improve their standard of living and provide for their children. The third generation is no longer a witness to the hard work and they live in comfort, usually not needing for anything, everything is provided with little to no effort required. They become complacent and no longer are driven.

 

So it is with a nation. While there is certainly some logic in this reasoning, it is only part of the problem. It ignores the fact that nations generally last longer than three or four generations and not all people in a nation are unmotivated or complacent.

 

In her book, “Thinking our way out of extinction”, Rebecca Costa explains her theory on why civilizations die. They do so, she explains, because the problems become too complex. Societies reach a cognitive threshold. They simply can’t figure out a way to chart a path forward from the present to the future.

 

Costa provides the example of the Mayan civilization. For a period of 3,500 years, the Mayans dominated most of central America. They developed art, agriculture, writing, a calendar that tracked the stars and learnt how to predict the weather patterns. They developed advanced  mathematics and an impressive system of irrigation.

 

Then suddenly, for reasons we don’t know, the whole system collapsed, their civilization was almost completely obliterated from the face of the earth. Was it overpopulation? Wars? Epidemic? Maybe a combination of events - we have no way of knowing, however, after 35 centuries, the Mayan civilization failed and became extinct.

 

Costa argues that whatever the causes of the Mayan collapse, similar to the fall of the Roman empire, or the Khmer Empire of thirteenth-century Cambodia, it occurred because problems became too many and too complex to be solved by the people in that place and at that time. There was a cognitive overload and systems broke down.

 

It can happen to any civilization and in fact it might be happening in ours, she argues. The first sign of a breakdown of society is gridlock. Instead of dealing with what everyone knows to be the major problems, instead people continue as usual and simply push the hard decisions down the road for someone else, or the next generation to deal with. As a result, society becomes polarized instead of unified and the real problems are lost in a sea of irrelevant and secondary problems that divide the nation. The second sign is a retreat into irrationality. Since people can no longer cope with the facts, they either make their own facts to suit their ideal situation or possibly retreat into religious extremism. The Mayans, for instance, took to offering human sacrifices on a massive scale. Does any of this seem familiar in our own society today?

 

In the case of the Mayans, they resorted to placating the gods through mass and very brutal human sacrifices; it appears that other societies on the precipice of decline also fell into this obscene religious practice.

 

All this begs the question, what makes the case of the Jews and Judaism in general so unique - how did the Jews survive the destruction of its society, its religious rituals?

 

Even before the Great Rebellion against Rome that ended in the destruction of the second temple in 70 CE, the Jews were hopelessly divided and were already expecting some great disaster. 

 

Groups such as the Qumran sectarians, the Essenes and others seemed to have retreated into apocalyptic visions and desert retreats. The Sadducees, who were the priestly elite, carried on as if nothing was changing. However, the Pharisees and their heirs, the rabbis, did the exact opposite of what other cultures had and would do. Instead of focusing on appeasing God through sacrifices or retreating into religious extremism, they dedicated their energies towards finding substitutes to the sacrifices, reinventing the religion for a time when they couldn’t practice as they had for generations. This would prove to be critical in sustaining, or possibly redefining the practice of the religion through the coming generations of turmoil and destruction.

 

What is amazing is the foresight that the rabbis had long before the destruction of the second temple. They understood that the worst case scenario could be the new reality long before it actually happened. Instead of clinging to the past, to religious practice that was defined by the offering of sacrifices, they needed to redefine what could replace the central role that sacrifices held in the religion.

 

The book of Leviticus is defined by the detailed laws of the priestly work in the Tabernacle and specifically the laws surrounding the various sacrifices. What we should be asking ourselves is not why the sacrifices were commanded in the first place (we have addressed this question already in the essay “Sacrifice, Soul & Spirit”), but rather, how did Judaism survive without this practice that was so central to the religion?

 

By all accounts, Judaism should have been eradicated if not after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, then certainly following the Bar Kokhba revolt and the ensuing ethnic cleansing of the Jews of Judea by Emperor Hadrian in 134 CE. However, they didn’t disappear, instead they redefined what it meant to practice Judaism.

 

What they understood was that the sacrifices were symbolic enactments of processes of the mind, the heart and deed and they could be expressed in other ways.

They substituted act of kindness for the sin offering, Torah study instead of daily sacrifices, Prayer in place of the various sacrifices, repentance in place of offerings, fasting in place of fat and blood offerings, hospitality - as long as the Temple stood, the alter atoned for Israel, now a person’s table atones for him, and so on.

 

The celebration of Jewish festivals was always determined by the seasons, the months and the day of the month as defined in the Torah, i.e. Yom Kippur is on the 10th day of the 7th month, Passover is on the 14th day of the first month, etc. In order to know when a new moon had occurred, a witness was brought before the Sanhedrim court, one who could reliably testify as to having witnessed the new moon. Messages were then sent out to all the Jewish communities that a new moon had been witnessed. Even though mathematical calculations based upon the ancient Babylonian calendar were already being used, there were discrepancies in the calculations that resulted in drift - i.e. as the years progressed, the days would move in relation to the seasons. The Sanhedrin were responsible for adding days to the months and adding in an extra month when required, this ensured that the festivals remained in their correct seasons.

 

By around 350 CE, when Emperor Constantius II issued anti-Jewish edicts and banned new moon communications to Jewish communities. The Sanhedrin did one last, and possibly the most important act in their History before being disbanded forever;  they defined and made public the calculations that would define the Hebrew calendar forever. It was Hillel the second (or Hillel the younger) who used the Persian calendar as a basis for calculating how many days were in a month, when a leap year needed to be added. The Hebrew calendar presented specific complexity in that the fast of Yom Kippur couldn’t fall on a Friday or a Sunday - since it would prevent food being prepared for the sabbath or prevent  preparation for the fast if it fell on a Sunday. Hillel the second figured out the complex math required to accurately build a calendar that could take these restrictions in consideration while also taking into consideration when a leap year would be required.

 

With a perpetual calendar, Jews around the world were able on their own to figure out when to celebrate the festivals as commanded in the Torah. They no longer needed the Sanhedrin to let them know and could be independent of any central religious authority.

 

Jews did not abandon the past. The sacrifices are still referred to in our daily prayers. Nor did Jews take refuge in irrationality. They thought through to the future, created institutions such as the synagogue, substituted prayer, good deeds, hospitality, charity and so much more for the sacrifices. Defined a perpetual calendar, built schools of thought and study.

 

This is no small achievement; The world's greatest civilizations have come and gone, yet the Jews persisted. In one sense this is divine providence, yet in another it might just be the foresight of the early rabbis who resisted a cognitive breakdown. They created solutions today for the problems of tomorrow. They did not seek refuge in irrationality, instead they built the Jewish future.

 

Judaism is the civilization that did not die because despite its respect and loyalty to the past, it is fundamentally a future-orientated faith. What the sages did after the destruction of the second temple is one of the greatest religious achievements of all time; creating a form of faith that would hold Jews to their identity, linking them to their God and to one and another throughout the longest exile ever endured by a people, despite an unparalleled history of dispersion and persecution. Finding substitutes for sacrifices, they showed how a civilization inspired by eternity can defeat death itself.

Comments

Leave a Comment