“Where does this tendency come from to always blame the people for historical disasters?” That runs throughout the entire Hebrew Bible. It was always like that.

With God’s help, 10 Av 5780

To Elisaf — greetings,

The direct cause of an event does not necessarily reflect the reason for which the Holy One, blessed be He, allows the scenario to happen this way rather than otherwise.

For example, it could be that the direct cause of the destruction of the Temple was as Josephus describes it: that the Roman soldiers did not hear Titus’s order not to burn the Temple. Apparently Titus was hoarse that morning 🙂

But easily, the scenario could have gone differently. Why didn’t Titus think of the brilliant possibility of ordering his aide to shout that they should not burn the Temple? Or why didn’t the military doctor attached to him hand him a raw egg for a soothing egg remedy? 🙂

It is not reasonable that the “Governor of the capital” would let significant events happen merely because of a minor chance occurrence that could easily have been prevented. Therefore, the likely conclusion is that Titus’s sudden hoarseness that morning stemmed from God’s will to destroy His House as punishment for the sins of His people.

However, in the case of the destruction, “baseless hatred” is an accurate description of the historical cause of the destruction. Jewish society was scattered and fragmented, without the ability to unite for common action. Some were pulling toward revolt against the Romans, and some aspired to cooperation and reconciliation with them. And even within each group, there were a thousand and one “sub-groups” unable to unite even in the face of the common enemy.

Can anyone explain the essential difference between Simon bar Giora and John of Gischala, and between the two of them and Eleazar ben Yair? Different nuances of “the same thing” or “six of one and half a dozen of the other,” over some tiny hairsplitting point, and they kept killing one another while the enemy was already at the gate.

This atmosphere of inflating every tiny hairsplitting point beyond all proportion does not stem at all from a religious or ideological cause; it shows up stubbornly even in completely mundane matters. So-and-so insists on expelling so-and-so who accidentally came to his banquet, and the accidentally invited guest insists on staying, and when they do not allow him to, he goes and informs to the authorities, and so on and so on.

This stubbornness over matters of honor and prestige, and the inflation of every slight and mistake into a “catastrophe,” is the precise historical reason for the failure and destruction. And the more we succeed in overcoming it, the more we will bring redemption closer.

With blessings,
Shatz

By the way, the whole Roman takeover of the kingdom of Judea came from the hatred between the brothers, sons of Yannai, who invited Pompey to be an arbitrator between them, and he happily tossed both sides into the trash heap and appointed Rome’s agents as rulers of Judea.

With God’s help, 10 Av 5780

The Maharal in Netzach Yisrael says something interesting about “the meekness of Zechariah ben Avkulas” that destroyed the Temple. As usual, Zechariah ben Avkulas is the man everyone blames. The “right” blames him for not eliminating the informer before he could carry out his scheme, as Rashi explains; and the “left” blames him for not offering the sacrifice despite the blemish, thereby “provoking the government,” as the Maharsha explains.

In contrast, the Maharal says that the fact that the destruction unfolded through a rabbi’s halakhic ruling is the “seal” expressing that the destruction came by divine decree. God causes the halakhic decisor to sign off on the approval to carry out the destruction, so that we know that this is “the decree of the King of the universe.”

Perhaps one could say that Zechariah ben Avkulas’s concerns express the problematic nature of two opposite currents that threatened Judaism. On the one hand stood Hellenism and Christianity and plain ignorance, all of which argued against all the halakhic meticulousness of the Torah and openly said, “Blemished animals may be brought on the altar.”

And on the other hand stood the zealots, who were prepared to inflate every tiny hairsplitting point and were ready to kill a person even for an offense that does not incur the death penalty, openly saying, “One who inflicts a blemish on consecrated offerings should be killed.” For regarding anyone who inflicts a blemish on consecrated offerings, one can spin for the gullible a “conspiracy theory” that he planned it in order to destroy the nation and its Temple.

Zechariah ben Avkulas was unwilling to surrender to either side. He insisted on keeping the Jewish law that blemished animals are not offered, and he insisted on the Jewish law that a person is not killed on the basis of far-fetched “conspiracy theories.” And this insistence on both these “lest people say” concerns is the foundation for the existence of a healthy Torah society, in which people are meticulous about observing Jewish law without descending into a zealotry of “each man swallowed his fellow alive.”

In that particular situation, there was a mistake. They should have investigated Bar Kamtza’s motives carefully and perhaps neutralized him so that he would not go and inform, and at the same time found someone acceptable to the Romans, for example Agrippa, who would explain to them why the sacrifice had been disqualified.

But in the big picture, his direction was correct. One does not deviate from Jewish law, and one does not kill a person over every remote suspicion. The meekness of Zechariah destroyed our Temple, but that same meekness is also what will restore and rebuild it.

With blessings,
Shatz

The Sages say what the spiritual reason for the destruction of the Second Temple was. Jerusalem Talmud Yoma: “Regarding the second one, we know that they labored in Torah, were careful with commandments and tithes, and every good practice was among them; but they loved money and hated one another with baseless hatred.” And the Netziv of Volozhin explained: just as in the destruction of the First Temple the chief ones who caused others to sin were great Torah scholars, so too in the Second Temple, which came about through baseless hatred, the main ones leading the masses astray were also Torah scholars, great in Torah. About them the Torah cried out in the Song of Ha’azinu: “A disgraceful and unwise people” — meaning, they were not upright in their ways in the world, and because they were not upright, in their crookedness they divided people into these and those and hated for no reason those who were not like them. Therefore, after the destruction, Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai asked his students: “Go out and see which is the straight path to which a person should cleave.” The answers of his students — a good eye, a good friend, a good neighbor, one who foresees consequences, and a good heart that includes all these things — are the repair for the damage of baseless hatred. Best regards.