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.
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.
