From politics to piety;: The emergence of Pharisaic Judaism

If the black hat yeshiva world is as interested in truth as its leaders claim then every beis medrash (house of study) would contain Rabbi Jacob Neusner's works on Pharisiac Judaism including "From Politics to Piety." Alas, this is not the case at present. Rabbi Neusner takes account of this in the early pages of "From Politics to Piety," remarking that his method of criticism breeds skepticism about some of the words of our holy rabbis. The college-educated are the ones with the mental equipment and encourage able to endure such probing, the author concludes. Most of the black yeshivas will continue in the self-satisfied nether world of "blah, blah, blah...Rashi....blah, blah, blah...Tosefos." Neusner's tracking of the Pharisees from a political party to a table fellowship is critical but admiring. The author builds on his earlier studies of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai. If there was a Mount Rushmore for teachers that have brought the Jewish people from the destruction of the Second Temple to today then Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai and Rabbi Yehudah Ha-Nassi (editor of the Mishnah) would surely be on it. Chapter 8 of "From Politics to Piety" excellently places these two giants at the head table of kosher Judaism. The meat of Neusner's book is searching for the Pharisees through the works of Josephus Flavius, the Christian Gospel writers, and the Jewish rabbonim. Although the textual analysis can become somewhat numbing (brace yourself to see the terms "pericopae" and "terminus ante quem" dozens of times) it is worth going through. Hillel the Elder emerges as the figure that steered the Pharisees away from head-on public political annihilation. But old and bad habits die hard. Rabbi Neusner's broad vision enables us to see the differences in the challenges presented by Greece and Rome. Superficially, they might appear the same, as some Jews in Roman times reckoned, but this was a major error that still rings down the corridors of history. The Syrian-Greeks threatened the practice of Judaism thus the Jews rightly fought and won. Rome was not looking to scuttle Israel's religious life thus war was not obligatory. Yet the Jews fought a nationalistic struggle that had grave consequences. Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai and other luminaries of Yavneh and Usha were left to pick up the pieces. Reading "From Politics to Piety" during Chanukah 5770 (2009) made this stand out to me. The disaster of the Bar Kochba War and Rabbi Akiva's unfortunate endorsement of it paradoxically did great work in moving the Jews away from statist cant and military messianism. But the weeds have grown back in our times, threatening Jewish piety and physically endangering Jews and non-Jews in the Middle East and elsewhere. Read Rabbi Neusner's summary of the Bar Kochba Zealots' mindset and note how closely it resembles the Likud Party view of the world - "...The answer was power, politics, the right to live under one's own rulers, and to stand apart from, and independent of, other n