November 14, 2002

 mfinley.com   
"Yavneh"

by Michael Finley

I was at a high school last month, talking about change to an economics
class, and a junior had this question for me:

"What, from all your reading and study, was the most successful change
initiative ever undertaken?"

I looked at the girl, who could be no more than 16. And I thought, that's a
good question.

I stood there a moment pondering. What was the greatest transformation. Was it GE, Chrysler, Nokia?

Or was it something bigger, like Hitler's recreation of Germany following
Versailles, or FDR's remaking of America and government during the Great
Depression?

Or was it something that happened even longer ago than that, two thousand
years ago, but whose impact is still felt today?

Yes, I knew what my answer would be: Yavneh.

The story I told them is known to every Jew is the world, but non-Jews are
much less aware of it. It occurred in a dusty village variously remembered
as Jabneh, or Yabne, or Yavneh, or Jamnia, near the modern city of Rehovot,
15 miles south of Tel Aviv, and perhaps 50 miles west of Jerusalem.

Today Rehovot is a city of 100,000, known for its citrus fruit and
food-packing industries,and for the Weizmann Institute for Science, named
for Israel's first president, who lived there in the 1920s.

But let's look back in time for a moment, to the year 70 AD. A thick cloud
of smoke hangs over the plains, as it will hang for months. The legions of
Rome are finally acting after decades of provocation and guerrilla war by a
subset of Jewish patriots known to us as Zealots.

The Zealots believed that being occupied by Rome was unacceptable, that it
blocked them from their manifest destiny as God's chosen people. Therefore they fought ceaselessly and without subtlety to throw off the yoke of tyranny. In so doing they sealed their people's fate.

Rome under Emperor Titus laid siege to the holy city of Jerusalem. Sieges
are never pretty affairs, and this one was hideous. People inside the walls
suffered awfully, as much the victims of the Zealots as they would be of the
Romans once the Zealots fell.

Before many months passed, Jerusalem would be leveled so that "there was not a stone upon a stone." The Temple of Solomon, where 10,000 people gathered every day to offer sacrifice, would be looted, burned, and knocked down.

The Zealots would retreat to the mountain fortress Masada, where they
resisted Rome for another year, hurling boiling oil on the soldiers below,
until legions under the direction of the General Vespasian built a giant
ramp up one side of the mountain. When the legions arrive at the summit in
the spring of 72, the one thousand Zealots of Masada will have already taken their own lives.

Amid the fog of war, things went badly for all Jews, not just the Zealots.
An estimated 100,000 people were put to the sword or set ablaze throughout this excruciating period. Perhaps 90 percent of surviving Jews forcibly departed their ruined region, migrating around the Mediterranean and the Middle East.

Jewish families were broken up and deported. Heads of households were
executed or sold into slavery. Crops were burned and fields were ploughed
under, so that starvation threatened all who stayed.

It was one of the lowest moments in a history of low moments, on a par with slavery in Egypt, the Babylonian exile, and the modern-era Holocaust.

The annihilation of Judea signaled, to many Jews, the end of the world, and
certainly the end of the Jews as a concerted, organized force. Split up,
deprived of their symbols, of their priesthood, and of their temple, how
could they continue to be any kind of people, much less God's chosen ones.
All was gone. All was lost.

Except, there was Yavneh, and an old man named Rabbi Johannan ben Zakkai....

For the rest of this story, go to Mike's edoc site:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/asin/B00007FYRM/thewhythingsdont

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_{COPYRIGHT (c) 2002
by MICHAEL FINLEY}