This is a more sentence by sentence description..
very repetitive..
SBD a lech activist, wrote in the 50s , the reality of what he saw..
SBD saw that the state was in a bad state..
no direction, no self awareness, like a baby, unable to fend for itself, can't even walk let alone run...
unlike most who only saw the great things. He saw reality
(I disagree.. i think govt is more evil.. not stupid like a baby. e.g. netanyahu belives we need a world coalition or at least coalition with america, against terrorism . I think the idea that the israeli government is naiive has to go. They know what they're doing, they're not idiots, they have their own reasons, corruption, psychological issues, secularism. It's not like a child )
He was of lechi- activist background..
Analyses how we got to where we are.
For thousands of years, or rather, at the mid 19thC, the jewish people were scattered over the globe, no focal point or national leadership.
Late 18thC and 19thC. (I think he means 1880s based on joan peters)..
Some think zionist movement, only because of herzl there were jews in EY. Not true. It wasn't starting from zero. There was already a well established jewish presence but not a majourity. But it was growing and vibrant/full of energy.
Then you have zionist movement, analysing zionist movement from there till the inception of the state. SBT does that. Written in 1951/52. TSNA,TSNB.
Essay from 4th volume.. has in front of him. HaPeshara veHaPeshar VeHistori HaBayit Shayni. The meaing and upshot of historical story of the second temple period.
Quotes prof yosef klausner, prof jewish history of hebrew univresity. nationalistic, not religious. He says.. We all heard of yehuda hamaccabee. From where do we know of him? where is his name mentioned.
obv not tenach. mishna,talmud-bavli or yerushalmi, midrash-agad,halachot. al hanissim(matityahu his father was mentioned, justifiably, he started the revolt, set the ball rolling, but after that there are no names). Prof Klausner find a disturbing fact. THe only reason that we know about yehuda hamaccabee, and the historical events of that period (we know also from josephus flavius but the question remains the same).. If it was not for the fact that Josefus flavius , a renegade jew or semi renegade jew, decides to write a history of the jewish people up to his time, for the non-jewish roman world..that's if talking about josephus. But, talking of Hashmonaim alpehph, Maccabee aleph,gimmel and daled. All sorts of books describing the historical events of that period. All those books are in our possession , not because the jewish people, that is to say, the yeshivot or chachamim kept those books , it's only becuase christian monks in monastries and abbies around te world copied these books .. in the originail, maccabim aleph we have in greek, translated from the hebrew, which is better than nothing. Had they not preserved them over the millenia, today we would know next to nothing we would know next to nothign about the period of the maccabian revolt.
Prof Klausner was pointing a finger at Chazal, saying they didn't preserve them.. that if it was up to them we wouldn't know anything about them. no emphasis on them. Maccabim, Chashmonaim(hasmoneans).
SBD goes further..
The real question is much bigger. it's not just the parasha before and after that.. It's the entire period of bayit shayni. We have no historical records preserved by written by handed down by chazal . we have mishna, talmud, midrash, but if you look there you will discover that there is no real attempt to give any record of the second temple period. a period of at least roughly 500 years, and didn't happen in chutz laaretz, far flung area, it happened in yerushalaim. Here and there something is mentioned in passing because something else is mentioned, but that's entirely coincidental.. There is no attempt to give us any information. And it's even more suprising that the tenach gives the opposite. IT gives lots of historical records. Sefer yeshushoa onwards gives sa more or oess chronological record of what happened from a political and religious nature, some apparently not even of great religious import, but written in quite some detail. sefer divrei hayamim, more ddiotional information. Chazal we aimagine are the torch bearers of the people that wrote the tenach, and yet there are nothing at all. He writes at length, with all the time in the world, you have to be very patient to read it. His conclusion is that chazal deliberately ignored or chose not to write about the history of the second temple period, because it was not up to par, less than what the jewish peopel are supposed to be doing for themselves.
an answr- what caused the revolt. not the full exprssion of trying to rerestablish malchut ben dovid. THeyt were living under foreign occupation. persian then greeks, and we don't hear of any attempt. No talk of how you get from foreign rule, break out and get act together fully. Matityahu who is mentioned in Al Hanissim, and chazal a few times, and his sons, yehuda hamaccabee, when did they rise up? only when the greco-syrian govt also heavily occupeid by jewsi b,t theis foreign occupation govt, began to crack down on even the minimal and basically pathetic and limited form of jewish existance that they had at that time.. Galut judaism, that was what the jews wre living under eretz yisrael under greek rule also, and they did nothign to break out and aspire to something greater. it's certainly not the torah recipe for judaism in eretz yisrael. They did nothing until their backs were against the wall.. Only when at the point of being forced to make a churban to greek gods and hellenize or die, did he revolt. Only when the anti jewish measures were relaxed, they were willing to revert to the situation they were in before. So the real problem is not the fact that the kings were kohanim, the problem was that there was no real aspiration to go beyond that. chazan never criticised the chashmonaim for being kings or leaders.. If all vision of judaism is keep shabbat and ot to be forced to make korbanot to zeus. Not to give a historical record, so what. Chazal didn't tell us about yehuda hamaccabee, because tey didn't think ti was mportant because they thought it's not the true judaism, it's very limited.. it's a heavily blemished seriousyl degenerate compromised version of judaism. very far from anything that can be considered the proper goal that the jewish people must aspire to and therefore they didn't consier details important like in tenach. In tenach jewish peopel wre a sovereign nation in their own land, healthier more focussed, normal existance. SBD quotes gemear yoma dav(daf?) tet gemara, that's one source we will go into next time. Anothe source, is to show the limited nature of the maccabean revolt, he quotes from sefer maccabee, hashmonaim or maccabim, perek yud daled , pasuk mem aleph,. (14:41 I suppose)
"The jews the important representatives of the jews, and the kohanimn, (important decision makers) agreed to make shimon nasi . (normally more-or-less nasi and melech/king are interchangeable, but here intention is something less than a full blown king, we see mainly they referred to themselves with title kohain gedolim. And in these times, persian and greek rule, kohain hagadol was more like a poloitical head of the jewish people , represented osoverieng/occupying force). They argeed to make him nasi until a real prophet commenced After broken revolt, a stop gap temprary solution assigning a nasi to this role. No fundamental effort had changed the nature of their reality for the better. a half hearted thing. This is a direct quote from sefer hashmonaim. The hashmonaim saw thmselves not as the great redeemers ushering in a messianic age. they saw themsevle as saingg jews from boblivion , reinstating the status quo ante(way things were before) . reinstating previous reality, as if that was desirable. And there are overtones. but have to sotp here for tonight next time we discuss gemeara masechet yomah which discusses why bayit rishon was destroyed, why bayit shayni was destroyed, which period was greater, which period were the jewish people better. all discussed by SBD on that page over there. He offers some important insights to that.
to a question we cannot hear
The jewish royal family, davidic family, was in bavel, no attempt to bring them here(to israel). Picture of tremendous victory things turned from black to white. Chanukah celebrates the return to the mikdash .. then ter was a period of ups and downs, different shades of grey, the situation never became really positive and fundemantally changed reality, nd the greeks were able to rurn to governing the land before too long. It was a very short lived event and a partial and half hearted victory.
to another question we cannot hear
no real chagne there either , 2 year period bar kochba romans retreated put the whole thing down. Today's shiur was just an introdocution to the topic.
Topic: Classes about the teachings of Shabbetai Ben Dov. Available only at JTF Forum (Read 5186 times)