1

The Talmudic Era

Our focus on the Lamed Vav mythos begins in ancient times. To place it meaningfully in historical context, the essential starting point is the year 70 CE, when Roman legions seized and destroyed the sacred Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. Three years later, they captured Masada, the last surviving Judean fortress, and the Jewish rebellion was over. These calamitous events marked the abrupt end of Judaism’s priestly structure and animal sacrificial system; tremendous political and social developments simultaneously occurred. The Sanhedrin, the Jewish Supreme Court, ceased to exist. The aristocratic authority of the priestly families and the dominance of the Sadducees in national affairs also came to a sudden close. The Zealots, who had brought on the war, were ruined. The Pietists were overcome by excessive mourning. As a result, the Pharisees were the only cohesive group left to preserve Judaism.

Soon after Jerusalem’s fall, Rabbi Yohanan established a new Sanhedrin at Yavneh (a location in central Israel). It met in the upper story of a house and in a vineyard near a pigeon house. Upon his death, leadership of the sages’ conclave passed to Rabbi Gamliel II, a dynamic organizer, and the Judean people soon regarded Yavneh as the spiritual equivalent of Jerusalem. Between 70 CE and 132 CE, it truly accomplished a great deal. There, each year, the Hebrew calendar was calculated and the shofar (ram’s horn) blown. In the year 90 CE, the Bible was canonized in one of the most significant, far-reaching acts associated with “Yavneh, the great city of scholars and rabbis” in the historic phrase. That decision meant that no other books would ever be accepted in Judaism as biblical writ.

Beginning in this period and culminating in the decades after the final Jewish revolt against Rome (132–135 CE), Judaism underwent an extremely powerful and enduring change of emphasis. In contemporary language, we would say that a paradigm shift took place in those years. Initially, many expected and then hoped that the Holy Temple would be rebuilt in their lifetime. Leading scholars, unfamiliar with the subtleties of political dealmaking, periodically led delegations to high Roman officials, but met ceaseless disappointment. The revered second-century CE text known as Pirkey Avot (“Ethics of the Fathers”) advised future generations: “Be on guard in your relations with the ruling power, for they bring no one near to them except for their own interests. Seeming to be friends such time as it is to their own advantage, they stand not with a person in his hour of need.”1

Apocalyptic teachings about an approaching Judgment Day initially aroused huge excitement. Even the great Rabbi Akiva, the dean of his contemporaries, was caught up in such alluring speculation. He initially proclaimed the Judean soldier Bar Koziba the harbinger of the Messiah (renaming him Bar Kochba or Son of the Star), when he won a few early victories against Roman forces. However, the brutality and devastation that accompanied the suppression of Bar Kochba’s rebellion decisively convinced the Jewish people that no quick reversal of their dismal political situation was at hand.

As punishment for the revolt, the Romans forbade Torah teaching on penalty of death by torture. Sabbath observance and circumcision were likewise capital offenses. Thousands of Jews were sold into slavery. Jerusalem was rebuilt as Aelia Capitolina and no Jew was allowed within its gates. The emperor renamed the country Palestine (land of the Philistines), a label deliberately chosen to indicate that the territory was no longer regarded as Judean.

Soon after the rebellion was put down, Rabbi Akiva and other leading scholars were tortured to death for violating the ban on Torah teaching. Shimon bar Yochai, Rabbi Akiva’s leading disciple—and his son Eliezer allegedly went into hiding for thirteen years, and became the later subject of legends on their mystical prowess. In 139 CE, Antoninus Pius initiated an easing of conditions, but the galut (exile) for the Judean nation was indisputable.

The Torah academies now deliberately put apocalypse aside. In order for Judaism to survive, its spiritual leaders stressed, it was necessary to accept the political situation and strive for individual closeness to God. With the Holy Temple in ruins and Jerusalem a forbidden city, each Jew would metaphorically become a high priest, seeking divine favor for the nation and for oneself. The nation couldn’t free itself from the exile, but the possibility of self-renewal, teshuvah, lay open for all. According to the sages of the time, teshuvah was created even before the universe. In a way, it was seen to transcend both time and space as a supernal force in the cosmos.

During this era, the importance of Torah study also came to occupy a central position in Judaism. Study of the Torah—that is, the Bible and the oral tradition based on it—became regarded as vital to the heavenly plan. Through sacred study, the sages declared, the exalted mysteries of Creation become understandable and even explicit. Torah study became respected as a mystical activity, allowing the individual’s soul to ascend to higher realms. Inevitably, therefore, the scholars came to be viewed as holy figures, capable of working wonders. Some were extolled as seers and masters of arcane knowledge, but nearly all were revered as teachers to guide men and women through the straits of everyday life. Indeed, the Hebrew appellation rabbi, which originated in this period, literally means “my teacher.”

Instead of forming a separate professional class, however, the rabbis were bound up with the world of ordinary people. Rather than existing as philosopher-kings as the ancient Greek thinker Plato might have preferred, more than a hundred celebrated scholars of this period were artisans, a considerable number were tradespeople, and others were physicians or practiced various professions. Some of the most renowned rabbis made their living with their hands—as carpenters, smiths, or shoemakers. None of these early sages earned their livelihood as scholars: To accept money for fulfilling God’s command was deemed a prostitution of their sacred calling.

As a result of this situation, Judaic emphasis on the practical, here and now aspects of spirituality became paramount. Apocalyptic and messianic speculation receded to Judaism’s periphery, for the rabbis were far more concerned with the patient, step-by-step path of inner ascent. Clearly reflecting this outlook, the Mishnah, the foundation of Judaic law, was completed and put into writing in the early third century CE. It also devoted considerable attention to self-mastery as the basis for transcendent experience, and even the nature of existence in the afterlife.

Long after the Mishnah emerged as the definitive postbiblical text of Jewish law and belief, new generations of scholars continued their discussions in both the Land of Israel and Babylonia. These discourses comprised not only legal give-and-take on the proper way to observe Scripture (halacha in Hebrew, literally “the way to walk”) but also included nonlegal materials involving folklore, health advice, homilies, legends, and even humor; such material was known in Hebrew as aggadah, “tellings.” Initially, no clear demarcation existed between these two fields, and many scholars were proficient in all branches of Jewish learning—from seemingly mundane aspects of business relations to transcendental speculations. These included the brilliant sage Abaye, whom I will highlight in a later chapter.

Meanwhile, in the Babylonian world, severe Byzantine suppression led to a series of Jewish rebellions. The eastern emperors shut down the Torah academies around the year 300 CE. Though they later permitted these to reopen with tight restrictions, the sages clearly saw that the reprieve would be only temporary, for rulers were eager to eliminate the remaining vestiges of autonomous Jewish life. Thus, the Palestinian (or Jerusalem) Talmud (“compilation” in Hebrew) was hastily accumulated and edited, just before the Emperor Theodosius II permanently abolished Jewish self-government in the Land of Israel. In Babylonia, the situation was much the same. Massive persecutions and murders by the Babylonian royalty caused many Jews to fear that the centuries-old Oral Tradition would be extinguished unless it was written down. In approximately 470 CE, half the Jews in the city of Isfahan were massacred and leading scholars executed. The survivors recognized that the time had arrived to record the oral tradition—encompassing both law and folklore—as fully as possible.

It’s vital to know that the Talmud is not a unitary work. Rather, it’s an edited anthology of the deliberations of the academies where Jewish belief and ritual practice were explicated. The Talmud presents opinions that showed a strong consensus, as well as those of dissenting individual teachers. Much of the Talmud involves the intricacies of Scripture-derived law on virtually every aspect of human life—from prayer to parenting and even lovemaking. Crucially for our focus on the Lamed Vav mythos, the Talmud also contains a tremendous amount of aggadic material—including aphorisms about human character types, anecdotes and tales about biblical and postbiblical personages like Elijah, astronomical and botanical observations, medical and psychological advice, and many other topics. Intriguing remarks abound on dreams and the mind, emotions and physical health, and the nature of visionary experiences.