Sotah 107

נושא: Sotah

BET MIDRASH VIRTUALI

Once the Sanhedrin ceased they ceased singing at celebrations, as it says: "They will not drink wine with a song; strong drink will taste bitter to those who drink it."

When the earlier prophets died the Urim and Tumim ceased. When the Bet Mikdash was ruined the Shamir ceased, as did sweetest honeycomb, and there were no more steadfast believers, as it says: "Help, Lord; for the godly man ceases; for the faithful fail from among the children of men." Rabban Shim'on ben-Gamli'el quotes Rabbi Yehoshu'a [as saying]: "From the day that the Bet Mikdash was ruined there is no day that is not cursed, dew has not fallen bounteously and fruit has lost its taste." Rabbi Yosé says that even the oozing of fruit has been taken away.

1:
The two mishnayot which are the subject of our shiur are concerned with the deterioration in the quality of life experienced by the sages in the period of increasing Roman domination which culminated in the destruction of the Bet Mikdash in the summer of the year 70 CE.

2:
Mishnah 11 teaches that the first sign of this deterioration was when the supreme court of halakhic justice in Jerusalem was deprived by the Romans of the right to try capital cases. When we studied Tractate Sanhedrin I wrote:

Even if we assume that judicial executions took place according to Jewish law, the Gemara makes it abundantly clear that the Romans deprived the Sanhedrin of this right "forty years before the destruction of the Bet Mikdash" [Sanhedrin 41a]. Furthermore, from the year 70 CE, after the destruction of the Bet Mikdash, the Sanhedrin was precluded from inflicting capital punishment according to Jewish law [Sanhedrin 52b]. Thus, executions by Jewish courts ceased completely from about the year 30 CE at the very latest.

In our mishnah the sages, perhaps in retrospect, see this as the first step on the road which led to the extinction of Jewish independence and the ultimate destruction of the Bet Mikdash in a war which cost thousands upon thousands of Jewish lives. In his commentary on our mishnah Rambam attempts to explain a link between the sanhedrin and the singing. He writes:

It says [Lamentations 5:14]: "The elders have ceased from the gate, the young men from their music." The Sanhedrin is those elders which the Torah [Deuteronomy 16:18] commands: "Judges and officers shall you appoint in all your gates." When they ceased the singing ceased as well.

The quotation brought in our mishnah is from Isaiah 24:9.

3:
The second section of the bible, the Prophets, is often subdivided in "Earlier Prophets" and "Later Prophets". It is not this division to which mishnah 12 refers. Our mishnah seeks to distinguish between the prophets of the period of the second Bet Mikdash and the prophets who were active before the destruction. The prophets who were active during the Return to Zion and the rebuilding of the Temple (from 539 BCE onwards) were the un-named prophets whose words are to be found in the book of Isaiah from chapter 40 onwards, and the prophets Jaggai, Zechariah and Malachi. All the rest are pre-destruction prophets and are termed by our mishnah as being "Earlier prophets".

4:
With the demise of the earlier prophets, says our mishnah, the use of the Urim and Tumim ceased. This refers to two mysterious objects in the Breastplate of the High Priest [Exodus 28:30]. The Urim and Tumim are mentioned eight times in all in the Tanakh, together or separately. The term may be rendered as "lights and perfections", meaning perfect light. Since the exact nature of the Urim and Tumim is uncertain, various explanations have been offered. It has been suggested that they were lots of some kind which were drawn or cast by the High Priest to ascertain God's decision in doubtful matters of national importance. The Urim and Tumim were later abandoned in favor of advice given by the prophets. The gleaming gems in the Breastplate, according to some interpreters, miraculously confirmed the answer given by the High Priest while he was offering prayer for divine guidance. Other are of the opinion that the answer was inward illumination, without any external sign.

To be continued.

When discussing the identity of Yoĥanan the High Priest I suggested three possibilities: a High Priest of the 4th century BCE and two members of the Hasmonean dynasty. Art Kamlet writes:

I assume you also rejected Yohanan son of Matityahu as a candidate?

I respond:

Actually, he did not occur to me. But now that you mention him it seems to me that he could not be a suitable candidate because the reason given for the High Priest's interference with what the Levitical choir was singing was that it was not appropriate to a time when Israel was at ease. 'Israel at ease' certainly does not suggest the period of Yoĥanan ben-Matityahu, who was the immediate successor to Judah the Maccabee and the predecessor of that Shim'on who was the father of Yoĥanan Hyrkanos. Most of this Yoĥanan's 'term of office' was spent in waging a continuous war against the Syrian Greeks and in the end he was traitorously murdered.

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