By the time all the dust had settled, Shimon Hatzadik’s brother, Eliezer, was Kohen Godol and Chonyo was in Alexandria, Egypt. Once there, Chonyo built an altar and began to attract a following among the local gentiles, his goal, to teach the people about the true worship of the One G-d. No Jew offered sacrifices on this altar as Jewish sacrifices outside of the Mikdash in Jerusalem were (and still are) strictly forbidden.
Eventually, Chonyo returned to Jerusalem and took up the position of high priest he had lost so many years before.
Three generations later, another Chonyo (a direct descendent of Shimon Hatzadik’s son) travelled to Egypt. He too built a altar – actually a replica from the Mikdash in Jerusalem – and there Jews offered their own (forbidden) sacrifices. Such was the strange state of the Jewish community of Alexandria.
YEB
…And if you think a Jewish Mikdash in Alexandria was strange, wait ’till you hear about Yeb! Around ninety years ago, archaeologists working near the present-day site of the Aswan Dam (on the Nile River) discovered a collection of perfectly preserved papyrus letters. The letters seemed to be the correspondence of the soldiers of a Persian garrison stationed in the area towards the beginning of the Second Mikdash period. What is interesting to us, is that these paid soldiers – and their families who lived alongside them – were Jewish! They lived in the garrison town for generations, cut off from Jewish life.
Reading the letters (written originally in Aramaic) we can learn a great deal about the Jewish life of the period. For one thing, these Jews had a temple dedicated to idol worship. Apparently, some Egyptian vandals destroyed their temple and the Jews applied to the Persian governor in Alexandria for permission to rebuild it. They were unsuccessful. Later they wrote to the Jewish governor in Jerusalem from whom they received the permission to do what they wanted.
In another letter, the high priest in Jerusalem found it necessary to inform the people of Yeb that the festival of Passover was approaching and that it was forbidden to eat chometz for the whole week. It is hard to imagine the ignorance that plagued such Jews EVEN WHILE THE MIKDASH STILL STOOD!
THE LINGERING EXILE
The majority of Jews chose not to follow Ezra up to the Holy Land to rebuild the Second Mikdash. While the communities of the exile contributed funds and resources to the project, they were noticeably missing from the shattered city. Ezra, the leader of his generation, spoke harshly about those who stayed behind and on some of them, even invoked curses. The Jewish world was much bigger than one might think:.
Babylonia: (modern-day Iraq) was the main Torah community and was host to the greatest Jewish population in the world. Already at the time of the destruction of the first Mikdash, the Babylonian community was strong and ready to receive and support the new exiles. It was one of G-d’s many kindnesses that He arranged for Torah leaders to be brought to Babylonia to prepare a home, decades before the mass of Jewish exiles would arrive.
North Africa: To this day, the island of Djerba is home to an ancient Jewish community. Strangely enough, they are nearly all priests (kohanim, a few yisroelim and no leviim at all. Legend has it that Ezra cursed the leviim of Djerba for not going to Jerusalem when they were needed. There is also a legend that any levy who goes to Djerba, will die within a year. don’t personally know anyone who’s put it to the test.
France: France, four hundred years BEFORE the building of the first Mikdash. There is a tradition from the Sefer Meiros Eynayim (a commentator on Shulchan Aruch, quoted by She’eris Yisroel), that there were members of the tribe of Benjamin who escaped from the Jewish civil war – fought just one hundred years after the exodus from Egypt (see Judges, chapters 19 and 20) – and ran to France. One of the communities they founded was the famous city of Worms (Rashi’s home).
The Sefer Meiros Eynayim contends that one of the reasons the city of Worms suffered so badly at the hands of the medieval crusaders was because their ancestors had failed to answer Ezra’s plea for immigrants to the fledgling Jewish community in Jerusalem. The hand of the old sage, Ezra, reaches far indeed.
THE SADDUCEES
The name Sadducee is derived from that of Zadok, the high priest of the Jerusalem Mikdash in the time of Solomon. But what proof have we that these Zaddikim were, in fact the rightful priesthood, expelled from the Mikdash by an apostate sect? What proof have they offered to us that their laws and customs bear the mark of authenticity?
Proof of the Zaddikim’s authenticity lies in the evidence that they were the keepers of the true implements of the Mikdash Cult from the First Temple (Mikdash). Since the time of King Solomon, virtually without interruption up until the time of the Hasmonean Revolt, the Zadokite Priests had been in control of the Jerusalem Mikdash. They trace their ancestry back to the high priest Zadok, who officiated in King Solomon’s Mikdash. It was members of this group who were to become known as Sadducees to the Pharisees. In other words, the Sadducees were the priestly aristocracy, The prophet Ezekiel (Ezek. 44:9-16) assigned the priestly duties exclusively to this family.
In fact, according to the T’nach, only the sons of Zadok (the Zaddikim or Sadducees) will have the right to make sacrifices in the New Mikdash; see Ezek. 40:46. This means that the Dynasty of Zadok, the First High Priest in the Mikdash, will be restored. These items would include such items as the Mikdash incense, the anointing oil of the priesthood, the ashes of the Red Heifer, and the Ark of the Covenant.
Josephus, himself a priest of the Pharisees who had no knowledge of the Oral Law being given on Mt. Sinai, relates that the Sadducees reflected the traditions of the Fathers, which seems to have been the forerunner of the Oral Law, and was also observed as law by the Pharisees. It follows then that at the time of the First Holy Mikdash, it was not taught that the Oral Law was given to Moses on Mt. Sinai. On the contrary, a smaller body of law was, at that time, referred to as TRADITION. Both groups adhered to this tradition. To justify and venerate their own rulings, the Pharisees began to call their own legislation the very Word of G-d. In this way they set themselves above their vanquished foe, the Sadducees, and rewrite history. The truth, however, has come back to bite them in the form of the Dead Sea Scrolls of the Sadducees.
Dr. Lawrence Schiffman, Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University in the Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and also in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Literature, focused on the unique Halakhah peculiar to the Dead Sea sect. He began his study of the legal material with is doctoral dissertation in 1974, which dealt with “The Halakhah at Qumran.” A year later, in 1975, his dissertation was published in a volume by the same name, that dealt with the “conceptual framework behind the legal material in the Qumran corpus, how the sect derived its law, and how its members perceived this process. In 1991, he was appointed to the team publishing and researching the Dead Sea Scrolls. Dr. Schiffman has the respect of his contemporaries in Dead Sea Scrolls research as evidenced by the comments of Herschel Shanks and Emanuel Tov on the cover of his recent book, “Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls”. Regarding the Qumran Sect, he tells us that:
“The earliest members must have been Sadducees unwilling to accept the status quo establishment in the aftermath of the Maccabean revolt. The Maccabees, by replacing the Zadokite high priesthood with their own, reduced the Zadokites to a subsidiary position for as long as Hasmonean rule lasted. Even after leaving Jerusalem, the Dead Sea sect continued to refer to its leaders as the ‘Sons of Zadok’. These were indeed Sadducees who protested the imposition of Pharisaic views in the Temple under the Hasmonean priests.”
From the text of the Zadokites Fragments found in the Cairo genizah, we learn that “in ancient times Israel went astray.” As a result G-d “hid His face” and allowed the destruction of the First Mikdash in 586 BCE, “yet a remnant of the defeated people remained,” and it was they, who ultimately formed the sect.” The Sadducee sect at Qumran, by their way of life and beliefs, claimed to be this remnant and the true Israel. The text below is telling us that the sect arose from Israel (the people) and from Aaron (the priesthood). It also presents a chronological date for the formation of the Qumran Sadducee sect:
“And in the period of wrath, three hundred and ninety years after He handed it (the Mikdash) over to Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon, He remembered them (Israel) and caused to grow from Israel and Aaron the root of a plant (i.e. the sect).” Zadokite Fragments 1:5-7.
THE PHARISEES
Modern Rabbinic Judaism is descended from the Pharisees, who appeared (by name) suddenly in history as a distinct entity during the Hasmonean period, in the time of Jonathan Maccabee (150 BCE). These “Rabbinic sources trace their history back to the ‘Men of the Great Assembly’, who are said to have provided the religious leadership for Israel in the Persian and early Hellenistic periods.” When the “Pharisees appear in Hasmonean times, they are part of a governing council that serves in coalition with the Sadducees, with whom they sought to advance their vision of how the Jewish People should live and govern themselves.” Encyclopedia Judaica informs us that the name Pharisee is derived from the Hebrew word “perushim”; which means “cast out”. Originally the Sadducees cast the perushim out of the Sanhedrin for their heretical ideas. These “cast out” Perushim, usurped the Zadokite Dynasty with the Hasmonean Dynasty — and only 35% of the time did they come out of the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur, alive.
The Gemara (Yoma 9a) states that the first Holy Mikdash where the Dynasty of Zadok served and which stood for 410 years, only had 18 High Priests who served in it. Tosafot state that Divrei Hayamim (I Chronicles 5:36) itemizes only eight High Priests who served.
In the second Holy Mikdash, which abided for 420 years, more than 300 Pharisee priests served. If you subtract the 40 years which Shimeon the Righteous served, the 80 years which Yochanan the High Priest served, the 10 years which Yishmael b. Fabi served or, as some say, the 11 years of Rabbi Eleazar b. Charsum, and then count the number of High Priests from then on — you will find that none of them completed his year in office. The Jewish Press, Friday, May 9, 1997 states: “They all died when they entered the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur to pray for a good year for all Jews. This happened because they were corrupt. They bought the high priestly office for money and also accepted bribes.”
AN ABOMINATION THAT MAKES DESOLATE
The people were so accustomed to see the priests die that they tied a rope around them and, when they didn’t walk out from the Holy of Holies, the people knew they had died and they were then pulled out, for no one else was allowed to enter the Holy of Holies.
With the release of 4QMMT (”The Halakhic Letter” from the Dead Sea Scrolls) in 1985, the Sadducees exiled to Qumran once again spoke from their graves. The letter asserts that when an upper vessel, the source of a liquid stream is pure and the lower vessel is not, if the stream connects both liquids, then the impurity is also in the upper vessel. This assertion is even found in the Mishnah: “The Sadducees say: ‘We complain against you Pharisees, for you declare pure the (poured out) liquid stream’”. M Yadayim 4:7. The laws regarding the Red Heifer are also explained according to the Sadducean position.
One reason for HaShem to strike dead these 300 Perushim, who usurped the Zadokite Dynasty with the Hasmonean Dynasty; was called “deliberate contamination to undermine the influence of the Sadducees”. Rabbi Chaim Richman, in his book The Mystery of the Red Heifer – Divine Promise of Purity (vanity p