The Sanhedrin: a priestly prerogative or a free-standing judiciary?

The political system of ancient Israel is often lauded for its separation of powers, with a monarchy, priesthood and judiciary each functioning within distinct parameters of responsibility and power. What do we make then of the verse that we will read shortly on Simchat Torah – in connection to the priestly prerogative of the Levites: “They shall rule upon Your laws to Jacob, and [upon] Your Torah to Israel”?

These kohanim, we have already been told, sit in judgment as part of the supreme judicial Court at the Temple: “And you shall come to the Levitic kohanim and to the judge who will be in those days, and you shall inquire, and they will tell you the words of judgment” (Deuteronomy 17:9).

The book of Leviticus adds – as part of its prohibition on kohanim performing their priestly activities while under the influence of alcohol – the requirement that they “instruct the children of Israel regarding all the statutes which the Lord has spoken to them through Moses” (Leviticus 10:11). The prophet Ezekiel (44:24) takes this theme further: “They shall stand in judgment; they shall adjudicate … according to My laws…”.

Based upon these sources, interpreting and ruling upon matters of Torah and judging the people is clearly a function of the priesthood—but this is precisely the sort of role that, the Mishnah and Talmudic sources suggest, was fulfilled by the Sanhedrin as judicial institution that was independent of formal priestly involvement.

Historically, what evidence is there of a connection between the Sanhedrin and Kehunah?

It is hard to reach any definitive conclusion concerning the first Temple period. Aside from Ezekiel's instructions to the kohanim to perform judicial functions, we find that Jehoshaphat established in Jerusalem “judges of the Levites and the priests and of the chiefs of the fathers' [houses] of Israel, for the judgment of the Lord and for quarrels”. This seems to reflect the Torah’s view that the priests did play an important role in the judiciary.

During the early years of the second Temple, when Israel was controlled by Persia and Greece, historical sources suggest that political and religious power of the Jewish settlement – including the judiciary – was controlled by a priestly “gerousia” body. Josephus, himself a kohen, presents the court system as a primarily priestly institution. The rabbinic tradition meanwhile describes great scholars called “Eshkolot” who presided over the system of Torah teaching from the time of Moshe until Yose ben Yo’ezer , a rabbi of the early Maccabean period – but the identity and tribe(s) of these scholars are not clear. What may be significant, however, is that the judicial body charged with interpreting the Torah and overseeing its application underwent a change at the time of Yose ben Yo’ezer.

A Mishnah in Avot (1:4) describes Yose as a student of Antigonus of Socho. It was in Yose’s generation that, according to rabbinic tradition, the religious battle between Pharisees and Sadducees arose and intensified. The Hellenist-influenced Sadducees, who rejected the oral tradition, dominated the priestly and aristocratic classes. Yose, praised in Chagigah (2:7) as “a pious one of the priests” stood firm against the Sadducee challenge but he and his supporters remained in a minority among the priests. It would seem likely that this led the Pharisees, who controlled the Court, to detach the Sanhedrin entirely from the priesthood and establish it as a distinct judicial body.

Thus students of the Mishnah and the oral tradition learn of a judicial institution which is fully independent of and even suspicious of the priesthood. The first chapter of Yoma, teaches that Court representatives would instruct a Kohen Gadol on how to perform the Yom Kippur ceremony before requiring him to swear to conduct it in the manner of the Pharisees rather than the Sadducees. We also find a pointed comment (Horayot 3:8) that a mamzer scholar is more worthy than an ignorant high priest!

Several further Mishnayot describe how various rituals were designed by the Court to demonstrate an open rejection of Sadducee teachings. Thus the harvesting of the Omer on Shabbat was accompanied by pomp and publicity (Menachot 10:3) and the Red Heifer ceremony was carried out in a legally non-preferable manner in order to publicly reject the Sadducee position (Para 3:7). Given the existential threat that the Sadducees were believed to have posed to the transmitted oral tradition, it is not surprising that the Sanhedrin was removed from the Sadducee-dominated priestly grasp.

The Sadducees neither recognised nor wished to participate in a Court which was not based upon the Kehunah – a matter which they understood to be required by the Written Torah. Meanwhile, Josephus ignored the shift in judicial dynamics, perhaps regarding the Pharisees’ move as a temporary suspension of the priestly prerogative rather than a permanent change.

Perhaps the most powerful sources which indicate a strong priestly involvement in the Sanhedrin during the late Second Temple period are found in the New Testament, with the Gospels providing accounts of the trial of Jesus at the Sanhedrin – a trial which was apparently presided over by the High Priest. While some historians consider such sources as being in direct contradiction to the rabbinic tradition, Dr Hugo Mantel (Studies in the History of the Sanhedrin) collects an impressive array of scholarly opinions which reject this claim.

Among the arguments that he advances, Mantel demonstrates that none of the charges that Jesus was recorded as having faced were capital offences that would have been tried by the Sanhedrin, and that there exists no record of the Sanhedrin charging or sentencing to death any member of the numerous branches of Judaism that the Pharisees regarded as heretical. The New Testament sources point instead to Jesus’s crime and trial as having been primarily a political offence for a crime of rebellion against Rome. This would explain why the trial is described as taking place in the High Priest’s residence (rather than in the standard Sanhedrin chambers), and with numerous Sadducees participating in the judgment. Seeing Jesus’s trial in the context of a political rather than religious offence would also make it easier to understand why the Court handed him over to non-Jews for execution in a manner which is biblically prohibited for a Sanhedrin to perform (Deuteronomy 21:23). Both Mantel and Josephus are in agreement that the Court that tried Jesus was not therefore the Great Sanhedrin of the Pharisees, but rather a separate political body which was appointed by and under the auspices of the Roman rulers.

For their part, the sages could not ignore the overwhelming biblical association between the priesthood and the judiciary. However, they understood that such an association was an ideal to which the Court should aspire rather than a mandatory requirement: “It is a mitzvah for there to be priests and Levites in the Supreme Sanhedrin, as Deuteronomy 17:9 states…[but] if appropriate ones are not found, it is permissible for all the judges to be Israelites” (Rambam, Hilchot Sanhedrin 2:2 based on Sifre). The non-priestly judiciary which Moshe established in the desert, and Ezra’s Great Assembly, would seem to support this more flexible interpretation.

The aristocratic Sadducee movement, with its strong Temple focus and lack of a flexible oral tradition, was unable to adapt to the new post-destruction reality, and ceased to exist altogether at that point of Jewish history. Looking to the future, when the opportunity arises for a new Sanhedrin to be formed, we will be left to determine the extent to which it should be a priestly body – as the biblical texts appear to advise – or whether we will preserve the sages’ shift towards a fully independent Court.

First posted on Facebook 26 September 2021, here.

Sadducees, Sukkot and Simchat Beit HaShoeva

With the conclusion of Yom Kippur, our attention turns immediately to Sukkot. I am honoured to have my essay included in this wonderful book produced by the Habura. In it I survey and analyse the different categories of laws and customs which are observed over the coming weeks.

One of the more mysterious Sukkot ceremonies that I focus on involves the “drawing of water”; the famed “simchat beit hasho’eva” which became a centrepiece of the Sukkot celebration at the Mikdash. Upon closer inspection, this ceremony itself is not a commandment, but rather a preparatory process for the pouring of water on the mizbe’ach each day of Sukkot. Unlike the pouring of the wine, which is explicitly commanded by the Torah, the pouring of the water on Sukkot is listed by the Talmud as a Halachah leMoshe MiSinai, meaning that it is a law with biblical force but devoid of a scriptural source.

During the Maccabean era, the aristocratic and priestly classes became increasingly dominated by Sadducee doctrine, which rejected the notion of a transmitted oral tradition. Laws – and details of laws – which lacked an explicit scriptural source were challenged and disputed. The pouring of water on Sukkot, which was a public act of worship carried out by the kohanim, seems to have been a particularly contentious matter. In one particularly infamous incident near the start of the Maccabee era, the Sadducee High Priest who had been honoured with pouring the water onto the mizbe’ach instead spilled it on his feet to demonstrate his opposition to the practice. The assembled crowd expressed its outrage by pelting him with the etrogim.

Consistent with a pattern that can be found throughout Rabbinic Judaism, the Sanhedrin and leading sages sought to emphasise and celebrate the importance of laws which the Sadducees (and later the Karaites) objected to on account of their rejection of the oral tradition. Thus the transmitted commandment to pour water on the mizbeach during the week of sukkot was transformed into a ceremony of celebration and joy – the simchat beit hasho’evah.

A Mishnah sets out a process for the daily water-drawing ceremony, replete with golden vessels and repeated blasts from the trumpet and shofar which would publicise the event. In the following chapter, the Talmud describes the associated festivities in detail, including the lighting of an immense candelabrum in the Temple courtyard which generated such intense light that it illuminated every courtyard in the city. A Levite orchestra of flutes, trumpets, harps, and cymbals accompanied torchlight processions, and men of purity, character and scholarship danced enthusiastically to the hand‑clapping, foot-stomping, and psalm‑singing crowds. The account reaches its climax with the Tannaitic proclamation that “whoever who did not see the rejoicing at the place of the water-drawing has never seen rejoicing in his life”.

The Pharisaic expansion of the water-pouring ritual into a week of mass-celebration demonstrates just how significant the debate with the priestly Sadducees over the legitimacy of the practice had become. This is particularly understandable when one takes into account that the ceremony was performed at the Mikdash at a time when pilgrims from across the nation would have been in attendance to witness it. The establishing of this week of water-drawing celebration must also be seen in its historical context.

At the very start of the Maccabee period, the Sadducees appeared to be successfully wresting control of the priesthood and Sanhedrin from the Pharisees. Seeking a more flexible approach to interpreting the written text in a way that could support their Hellenistic reforms, Sadducees saw a string of high-profile successes; Yochanan Kohen Gadol defected to their ranks at end of his life, and Yochanan’s son King Yannai was a loyal Sadducee. Yannai executed a number of leading Pharasic sages and sent many others into exile. Megillat Ta’anit details a number of traditional laws which the Sadducees were able to overturn temporarily during this period. In the words of the Talmud “the world was desolate of Torah until Shimon ben Shatacḥ came and restored the Torah to its former glory”. With the help of his sister, queen Shlomtzion, Shimon managed to restore the court to the Pharisees. For a while, however, the very existence of the oral tradition had seemed under threat, and the priesthood in particular remained clouded in suspected Sadducee association. As a possible reaction to this perceived existential threat, the Pharisees repeatedly emphasised the importance of the traditional interpretation of the Torah, and sought to publicise its observance in any way possible.

I conclude with a broader analysis of other Mikdash rituals which had been the subject of Sadducee challenge and were therefore transformed into high-profile events. These include the harvesting of barley for the Omer, which the oral tradition maintains is to be performed on the second day of Pesach – and which the Sadducees disputed (rendering mimacharat haShabbat literally to mean Sunday) – is also depicted as an elaborate and protracted ceremony. When it came to the Para Aduma ritual, the Pharisees were even prepared to perform this in a less than ideal manner in order to publicly distance themselves from Sadducee doctrine. The emphasis placed by the sages on observing the commandments in a way that demonstrated loyalty to the oral tradition rather than Sadducee sensibilities is also seen in non-Temple laws. While Sadducees, for example, would sit in the dark over Shabbat in line with their reading of “you shall not burn a fire in any of your dwelling places on the day of Shabbat”, the Pharisees’ emphasis on lighting Shabbat candles has led to it being widely regarded as embodying the spirit of Shabbat through to this very day.

This attitude is not solely of historical interest. The concept that one must go to an extreme to combat a perceived threat to Jewish tradition was drawn upon in recent years by Rabbi Herschel Shachter in his firm ruling that halachic ground should not be ceded to the feminist movement - here.

We are left wondering at what stage does an apparent deviation from previously accepted halachah represent a threat to Jewish tradition? Are we living in an equivalent era to the one in which the Sadducees attempted to take over the Sanhedrin – the body which was charged with maintaining and transmitting the oral tradition?

First posted on Facebook 6 October 2022, here.