Don’t we all have PERSONAL (your capitalization) understanding of Jewish values?

I hope that you are equally outraged when hawks speak in the name of the Jewish community.

Thanks

Many commentors claim that Rabbi Yohanan was in effect inventing a new kind of Judaism….instead of the old one which supposedly was “nationalist and Temple-ritual” based he made a new one that is “universalist”-based on “prayer, lovingkindness” and which claimed that “really” the sacrificial service wasn’t that important. This is incorrect. Rabbi Yohanan realized that a large proportion of the 613 mitzvot of the Torah involved the Temple, the sacrificial system were suspended with its destruction so he worked hard to fill the vacuum, showing in particular “teshuva” (repentance) in which the animal sacrifice system played such an important role could also be obtained without it. In fact he introduced customs that REMINDED people of the Temple system such as mandating taking the 4-species of Sukkot (luval, etrog, hadas, aravah) during the intermediate days of Sukkot and not just the first, something that was only done in the Temple when it was operating. Similarly, washing the hands before eating bread, something only the Kohanim (priests) had to do before eating their ritually-pure food (terumah) was now mandated to ALL Jews all the time, just to remind them of its importance and so that the ritual purity laws should not be totally forgotten. And it is now known from archaeological evidence, particularly in the South Hevron Hills communities that existed for centuries after the destruction of the Temple that ritual baths were maintained in many houses in order to keep the ritual purity laws, in anticipation of the imminent rebuilding of the Temple. Again, this lasted for hundreds of years after the destruction, so people did NOT view the situation with replacing one form of Judaism with another.

Thus, Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkair viewed his job as PRESERVING the Torah, not “reinterpreting it”.

For quite a while lately, the name of ben Zakkai has been in my head like a melody, and I had no idea why. What I recall is that when I was a little girl, maybe about seven, in “Sunday School” I learned about ben Zakkai. His name among all the others mentioned has stayed with me over the years, but I didn’t know why. Now I know, and feel that I was fortunate to be influenced by early Reconstructionists; not only my Sunday School teacher (whose name I don’t recall; he’s probably long gone) and my father, who said, “You can’t be a Jew in America the way we were in the old country”.