The best, <strong>in</strong>deed the only, defence <strong>of</strong> a religious people isnot military or political but educational.leadership passed from k<strong>in</strong>gs, priests, andprophets to the sage, the teacher who“raised up many disciples.” Exiled, dispersed,and deprived <strong>of</strong> power, a shatterednation was rebuilt through one <strong>in</strong>strumentality:education.Surviv<strong>in</strong>g DestructionIn the first century C.E. a second crisisstruck with devastat<strong>in</strong>g <strong>for</strong>ce. An ill-advisedrebellion aga<strong>in</strong>st Rome brought savageretaliation. The Roman <strong>for</strong>ces led byVespasian descended on the centres <strong>of</strong> <strong>Jewish</strong>resistance. In 70 C.E. Vespasian’s sonTitus brought the campaign to its climaxwith a siege aga<strong>in</strong>st Jerusalem. The citywas captured. The second Temple was destroyed.It was a fateful moment, thoughfew <strong>of</strong> those who lived through it couldhave known how long Jews would suffer itsconsequences. It was the beg<strong>in</strong>n<strong>in</strong>g <strong>of</strong> thelongest exile Israel has ever known. Notuntil the twentieth century would Jewsaga<strong>in</strong> experience what it was like to be asovereign people <strong>in</strong> their own land.The catastrophe, driven home sixty-fiveyears later with the suppression <strong>of</strong> the BarKochba rebellion, was almost total. Thebasis <strong>of</strong> <strong>Jewish</strong> life lay <strong>in</strong> ru<strong>in</strong>s. The Temple,symbol and centre <strong>of</strong> the nation, wasgone. There were to be no more k<strong>in</strong>gs orprophets, serv<strong>in</strong>g priests or sacrificeswith<strong>in</strong> the <strong>for</strong>eseeable future. The loss <strong>of</strong>the first Temple had been accompanied byhope. There were prophets who <strong>for</strong>etold returnand reconstruction. Now there were nosuch visions, at least none that carried immediatepromise. The loss <strong>of</strong> the secondTemple brought the danger <strong>of</strong> hopelessness.<strong>Jewish</strong> tradition has rightly identified onemoment as a symbol <strong>of</strong> the turn<strong>in</strong>g po<strong>in</strong>t.The Talmud tells <strong>of</strong> how the sage Johananben Zakkai stood out aga<strong>in</strong>st the Jews <strong>of</strong>his day. Dur<strong>in</strong>g the siege <strong>of</strong> Jerusalem,leaders with<strong>in</strong> the city believed that theycould prevail aga<strong>in</strong>st Rome. Johanan knewthey were mistaken and argued unsuccessfully<strong>for</strong> peace. Others believed that theywould be saved by Div<strong>in</strong>e <strong>in</strong>tervention. TheMessiah was about to come. Aga<strong>in</strong>st themJohanan taught, “If you have a sapl<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong>your hand, and people say to you, ‘Behold,there is the Messiah’ - go on with yourplant<strong>in</strong>g and only then go out and receivehim.” Johanan was a religious realist <strong>in</strong> anage <strong>of</strong> dangerous military and apocalypticdreams.Johanan, accord<strong>in</strong>g to the Talmud, had himselfsmuggled out <strong>of</strong> Jerusalem and wastaken to Vespasian. He told the generalthat he would shortly achieve greatness (<strong>in</strong>69 C.E., Vespasian was made Emperor <strong>of</strong>Rome) and made one request. “I ask noth<strong>in</strong>g<strong>of</strong> you except Yavneh, where I might goand teach my disciples and there establisha house <strong>of</strong> study and per<strong>for</strong>m all the commandments.”Johanan predicated <strong>Jewish</strong>survival not on military victory or the messianicage but on a house <strong>of</strong> study and agroup <strong>of</strong> teachers: Yavneh and its sages.Few decisions have had more last<strong>in</strong>g effects.For seventeen hundred years Jewsbecame a people held together by a s<strong>in</strong>glethread: study <strong>of</strong> Judaism’s holy texts. Inplace <strong>of</strong> the temple came the synagogue,the yeshiva, and the bet midrash. In place<strong>of</strong> sacrifices came prayer, learn<strong>in</strong>g, and theper<strong>for</strong>mance <strong>of</strong> good deeds. The mantle <strong>of</strong>We are <strong>in</strong> an unusually good position totest Johanan ben Zakkai’s strategy becausehis was not the only version <strong>of</strong> <strong>Jewish</strong> life.We know from Josephus and other sourcesthat there were several tendencies <strong>in</strong> <strong>Jewish</strong>life <strong>in</strong> the Second Commonwealth. Johananrepresented the group known as thePharisees, who gave rise to the rabbis <strong>of</strong>the Mishnah and Talmud. There was a secondand more powerful group known as theSadducees, who were <strong>in</strong> general wealthierand more closely associated with the Templeand priesthood. Josephus calls the thirdgroup the Essenes. They lived quasimonasticlives <strong>in</strong> small separatist communities<strong>of</strong> which the Qumran sect, known tous through the Dead Sea Scrolls, may havebeen one.For the Sadducees, the central dimension<strong>of</strong> <strong>Jewish</strong> life was the state and its <strong>in</strong>stitutions:the Sanhedr<strong>in</strong> and the Temple. Forthe Essenes it was the messianic age, <strong>for</strong> itappears that they lived <strong>in</strong> imm<strong>in</strong>ent expectation<strong>of</strong> an apocalypse which would shakethe foundations <strong>of</strong> the world. For the Pharisees,as we have seen, it was education.Their key <strong>in</strong>stitution was the school. Theirfigure <strong>of</strong> authority was the scholar. Theirtouchstone <strong>of</strong> <strong>Jewish</strong> identity was <strong>in</strong>dividuallearn<strong>in</strong>g and observance <strong>of</strong> the Torah.Neither Sadducees nor Essenes survived. Of their memory,only the most fragmentary traces rema<strong>in</strong>. There was atime when both groups flourished and when each was conv<strong>in</strong>cedit held the key to the <strong>Jewish</strong> future. But historyruled otherwise. Once aga<strong>in</strong>, education proved the onlyroute to cont<strong>in</strong>uity.P A G E 14 • C O N T I N U I T Y M A G A Z I N E
After AuschwitzThe third crisis br<strong>in</strong>gs us to the presentcentury and to what, <strong>in</strong> human terms, is thegreatest tragedy ever to have struck thepeople <strong>of</strong> the covenant: the Holocaust. Atthe beg<strong>in</strong>n<strong>in</strong>g <strong>of</strong> the twentieth century fourout <strong>of</strong> every five Jews lived <strong>in</strong> Europe. Bythe end <strong>of</strong> the Second World War the vastheartlands <strong>of</strong> European Jewry had been destroyed.The great powerhouses <strong>of</strong> rabb<strong>in</strong>iclearn<strong>in</strong>g - Vilna, Volozh<strong>in</strong>, Ponevez, Mirweregone. The citadels <strong>of</strong> the <strong>Jewish</strong> spirithad been reduced to ashes. Jewry’s religiousleaders and the communities fromwhich they came had been murdered. Atmost, the survivors were “a brand pluckedfrom the burn<strong>in</strong>g fire.” Never had Judaism’severlast<strong>in</strong>g light come closer to be<strong>in</strong>g ext<strong>in</strong>guished.What, spiritually, was left? Russian Jewry,the largest surviv<strong>in</strong>g <strong>Jewish</strong> group <strong>in</strong> Europe,lived under political and religious repression.America, though it was tolerant<strong>of</strong> Jews, had proved disastrous <strong>for</strong> Judaism.One wave <strong>of</strong> <strong>Jewish</strong> immigrants after another- first Spanish, then German, thenEast European -had acculturated, assimilated,and disappeared. The new State <strong>of</strong>Israel, though it meant everyth<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong> physicaland political terms, was aggressivelysecular. Ben Gurion had granted concessionsto religious groups, but was confidentthat with<strong>in</strong> a generation they would havedisappeared.What happened next will one day be told asone <strong>of</strong> the great acts <strong>of</strong> reconstruction <strong>in</strong>the religious history <strong>of</strong> mank<strong>in</strong>d. A handful<strong>of</strong> Holocaust survivors and refugees setabout rebuild<strong>in</strong>g on new soil the world theyhad seen go up <strong>in</strong> flames. Rabbis MenahemMendel Schneersohn, Aaron Kotler, JacobKamenetzky, Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz,Joseph Soloveitchik, and others like themrefused to yield to despair. While others respondedto the Holocaust by build<strong>in</strong>g memorials,endow<strong>in</strong>g lectureships, conven<strong>in</strong>gconferences, and writ<strong>in</strong>g books, they urgedtheir followers to marry and have children.They built schools and communities andyeshivot. They said: our world has beenshattered but not destroyed. They said:Hitler brought death <strong>in</strong>to the world, there<strong>for</strong>elet us br<strong>in</strong>g life. With<strong>in</strong> a generationMir and Ponevez, Lubavitch and Belz livedaga<strong>in</strong>, no longer <strong>in</strong> Europe but <strong>in</strong> Israel andAmerica.In the past half-century, traditional Jewryhas risen from the ashes to become thefastest grow<strong>in</strong>g and most <strong>in</strong>fluential <strong>for</strong>ce<strong>in</strong> <strong>Jewish</strong> life. It has achieved what all observershad hitherto thought impossible. Ithas shown that Torah can flourish <strong>in</strong> a secularIsrael and an open America. It hasproved that Jews <strong>in</strong> today’s diaspora canexperience demographic growth. It hasbrought about a revival <strong>in</strong> talmudic studythat has no precedent s<strong>in</strong>ce the great days<strong>of</strong> Babylonian Jewry. But it has done more.It has demonstrated <strong>in</strong> our time that theclassic <strong>Jewish</strong> response to crisis rema<strong>in</strong>sthe most powerful. Like Ezra, the yeshivaUnlike traditional <strong>Jewish</strong>education, Holocausteducation <strong>in</strong> itself <strong>of</strong>fersno mean<strong>in</strong>g, no hope,no way <strong>of</strong> life.Unaccompanied by faith,it recapitulates the error<strong>of</strong> Lot’s wife. The Holocaustis a black hole <strong>in</strong>human history, and if westare at it too long wewill turn to stone.and Hasidic leaders concentrated on teach<strong>in</strong>g.Like Johanan ben Zakkai they devotedthemselves to rais<strong>in</strong>g up disciples.Theirs - to repeat - was not the only responseto the Holocaust. Other groups reacteddifferently. They built museums andmonuments, funded chairs and periodicals,wrote Holocaust theology and sponsoredvisits to Auschwitz. A generation <strong>of</strong> youngJews, those who grew up <strong>in</strong> the seventiesand eighties, has been liberally exposed toliterature, films, and lectures about theHolocaust, and it is this generation which ischoos<strong>in</strong>g to marry out <strong>of</strong> Judaism at the rate<strong>of</strong> one <strong>in</strong> two. The reason is not hard to f<strong>in</strong>d.As one Holocaust historian, disturbed bythe obsessive <strong>in</strong>terest <strong>in</strong> the Shoah, put it:our children will learn about the Greeksand how they lived, the Romans and howthey lived, and the Jews and how they died.Jews never <strong>for</strong>got the destruction <strong>of</strong> thefirst Temple, or the second. We mourn themon the N<strong>in</strong>th <strong>of</strong> Av, and at every <strong>Jewish</strong>wedd<strong>in</strong>g we still break a glass <strong>in</strong> memory.A P U B L I C A T I O N O F Y I T Z H A K R A B I N H I G H S C H O O L“ A L i f e t i m e o f L e a r n i n g ” • P A G E 15