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 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.
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