Ulpan.com's daily dose of Hebrew Headline Animator

4/10/12

Cutting the Omer and responding to eresy

Written by Rabbi Gidon Rothstein
The tenth chapter of Menachot discusses the Omer.  We won’t have space here to analyze the whole chapter, even of Mishnah, but some of the highlights include a discussion of whether the cutting of the Omer on Shabbat proceeds the same as when the 16th of Nissan occurs during the week.  (Note that the 16th can only happen on Shabbat when the New Moon is set by witnesses; in our fixed calendars, the first day of Pesach is never on Friday); the rule that the Omer should be brought from as close to Jerusalem as possible, either to ensure the barley would still be moist when it was ground into flour (as the verse in the Torah requires), or because of the general principle that we don’t forego opportunities for mitzvah; and a discussion of R. Yochanan b. Zakkai’s ruling, in the aftermath of the Destruction of the Beit haMikdash, that new grain would continue to be prohibited until the evening after the 16th.
Much Ado About Cutting
The third Mishnah in the chapter tells us of a remarkable ceremony when it came to the cutting of the Omer.  (Bikkurim were brought with similar attention to pomp, and there, too, we can see that bikkurim mean a lot more than giving God the first of our fruits).  The Mishnah tells us that messengers of the court would prepare the barley ahead of the holiday, by binding it together at the top, making it easier to cut.
That might sound like they were hoping to have the cutting go quickly, except that the Mishnah then details a ceremony was focused on publicity, not speed. The cities surrounding the place of the cutting would gather to the spot (implying that after the messengers had chosen the barley to cut, there was some process for spreading the word, since it was a different place each year).
The Mishnah is also explicit about the goal, drawing attention to the reaping.  To create even more ritual, once it was dark, the person in charge would ask the crowd whether it was dark, and they would assure him it was. Three times. He’d then check that he had the right scythe, and they would assure him he did, three times.  He would check whether he had the right basket, and—on years when it was Friday night—whether he should really do this on Shabbat. Then he would check whether he should cut, and they would assure him he should. At each step, he would go through the question and answer three times.
 The Boethians (Beitusim, From Here On)
The Mishnah itself explains that all this was done as a counter to the Beitusim, who claimed that the cutting of the Omer should always occur on a Saturday night. The debate hinged around the meaning of the phrase “the morrow of the Sabbath (mi-mochorat haShabbat; Vayikra which appears at 23; 11, 15, and 16).”  While tradition read that as relating to the first day of Pesach, the Beitusim insisted that Shabbat should be taken more literally, referring to the seventh day of the week.  To make clear that we disagree with them, we reap the Omer publicly and flamboyantly. (Ironically, this year, if the fixed calendar is correct, we would have cut the Omer on Motsaei Shabbat).
To fully understand what is going on, I’d like to spend a few minutes discussing what tradition tells us of the Beitusim. I think it teaches important lessons about the nature of heresy, back then and in our times, it allows us a chance to see Rambam’s extraordinarily harsh views on the topic, and then to return to the Omer and see its resonances for a faithful community.
The Mishnah refers a few times to them and their disagreements with the Sages.  One we’ve seen here, where tradition read a verse one way (and, as Rambam points out in Temidim u-Musafim 7;11, had been the practice of the Jewish people, guided by the Sanhedrin and by prophets, for generations) and the Beitusim decided to read it another way.
There is a similar example regarding the bringing of the incense into the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur.  The Mishnah in the beginning of Yoma tells us that the High Priest would prepare for seven days for the service, aided by advanced Torah scholars. Just before these scholars left him in the care of elders of the priesthood, they would administer an oath that he would perform the service exactly as they had studied it together, and then the elders would cry and the High Priest would cry.
The Yerushalmi explains that the oath was administered because the Beitusim insisted that the incense should be placed on fire (and begin smoking) outside the Holy of Holies, and then brought in, whereas the proper tradition had it that the High Priest would bring the incense into the Holy of Holies and then put in on the fire.  I will come back to this (as well as the Omer) example in a minute, because incidents around these two claims tell us something about the commitment of the Beitusim to their point of view.
Beitusim and Tsedukkim: The Same or Different?
Before I do, I wanted to note one more example.  The Talmud in Taanit, listing days on which we do not declare fasts because of happy events that forever marked those days as auspicious, includes the 1st through 8th days of Nissan (incidentally, the 8th of Nissan was this past Shabbat), because on those days the rule of the tamid, the daily communal sacrifice, was established. Tosafot explains that the Beitusim (but, I note, Rashi has it as the Tsedukim) read Scripture to say that a private individual could offer this communal sacrifice.  Our tradition, of course, disagreed, and said the animal had to belong to the community at large to be sacrificed.
The confusion of names between Rashi and Tosafot highlights the confusion in general around whether these were separate groups.  Rambam traces the origins of these groups to two students of Antignos of Socho, who is cited in the beginning of Avot as saying “don’t serve God for the sake of a reward, serve God without thought of reward.” In the Hebrew, though, his intent is not quite as clear.  Rambam claims that Tsadok and Beithus, two students, misheard Antignos to be saying that there was no reward and punishment. If there was no reward and punishment, they decided, there was no point or value in observance.  They couldn’t say that, though, because people would reject their view, or even kill them. Instead, they attacked a weak point of the system, the tradition of reading; people were willing to believe that the text should mean what it seemed to them to mean, and from there, in Rambam’s view, they could manipulate the system to produce a “religion” that was satisfying to them.
We’ll come back to that as well, but I wanted to note that it suggests that the two groups were very close to each other. Indeed, Tosafot Yom Tov in Menachot assumes that the groups started separately, but eventually adopted each other’s ideas (so they may have started re-analyzing the religion separately, but were open to hearing other good ideas than their own).
The Commitment of the Beitusim and the Damage It Caused
Before we get to how we react to such heresies and what it says about the Omer (and Pesach), I want to point out that Rambam’s comment about these groups being self-serving has to be nuanced somewhat to make sense.  Rambam in Avot makes it seem like the Beitusim were fully cognizant of what they were doing, and were cynically shaping a system comfortable to them.  Even in that view, they did have to articulate their ideas in a way the people around them were willing to accept.
But it goes further than that, because at least two incidents show that later generations of Beitusim were very dedicated to their view, with deleterious consequences for the Jewish people as a whole.  A Mishnah in Rosh haShanah 22a tells us that originally, the Sanhedrin would accept testimony about having seen the New Moon from anyone who came.  At some point, the Beitusim began sending false witnesses to mess up the system, and from then on, the Sanhedrin could only accept testimony from witnesses they knew (or who had references).
The Tosefta explains that this was actually an outgrowth of our original discussion—since the Beitusim held that Shavuot should always fall out on a Sunday, they wanted Pesach to happen on Shabbat, and decided to send witnesses to manipulate the New Moon to bring it about.   This is a first example of their dedication hurting us: they were so committed to working the calendar work out as it should, they ended up destroying the fundamental trust that had existed among Jews.
Messing with the Yom Kippur Service
The Yerushalmi I mentioned before, which explained the need for an oath by the High Priest before he went to perform the Yom Kippur service, tells a story that gives the worry more teeth.  It notes a certain High Priest who, despite his oath, performed the incense service the way the Beitusim held.  When he came out, he bragged about it to his father, noting that they had all been too afraid of the Sages to act on their convictions, but he had the courage to do it his way. (The Yerushalmi adds that he died soon after, but the damage was done).
Both incidents show us that while it might be easy to demonize heretics as those who want to live life their own way (as Rambam had it), at least the later generations of such groups become dedicated to their worldview, and act on it with courage and commitment. It doesn’t make them any less wrong, but it does remind us that just because someone is wrong doesn’t mean they don’t believe in what they’re doing, complicating the question of how to prove to them that they’re wrong. (And, to repeat, they’re totally wrong; often in diverse societies, we learn that many different points of view can all have positive aspects, and that can also be true. But sometimes people or movements are totally wrong, corrupt in their fundamental makeup, and yet those people will still be as sincere as the rest of the world).
The Challenge of the Omer
At the cutting of the Omer, the Sages decided to make a much bigger deal than they might have (Keren Orah understands the Rambam to have thought that, once instituted, this greater ceremony would apply in a 3rd Beit haMikdash as well, but doesn’t know why. I suspect it might be because Rambam thinks those heresies are continuingly with us; in his days, they were called Karaites, in our days, probably, Reform and Conservative, the linking element being their rejection of the traditional reading of Scripture and halachah.) 
I suggest the reminder wasn’t only aimed at the Omer itself, but at the importance of tradition in general. Pesach being the celebration of our national birth, it is a time to rededicate ourselves to our fundamental principles, one of which is the understanding that the Torah means what tradition tells us it means, not what we decide it means.  Confronted with people who have decided differently than us, we need to remind ourselves that, however we deal with those other people, we know and are confident that we follow the Torah and tradition, not the Torah and our ideas about what’s best.

No comments:

Post a Comment