My beloved colleagues in the Sanhedrin. Dayanim, Rabbanim,
We arrive at a moment of terrifying crossroads. You all know the litany of perverted infamies Herod has done. Matricide against his wife, filicide of his sons, rumors of infanticide all around the West Bank. I needn't elaborate on them.
Then a crime which we cannot hold from our ears. He demands to put his statue in the Temple in place of Adoshem Elokim. ...Alright, I'm just going to say the name, Adonai Elohim. What does it matter now? I believe we have to say His name. If there is any time in modern Jewish history when He is present then HE is here, right here, with us. He is watching. We are in His presence. We are ALWAYS in His presence, and some infinitesimal part His presence is a part of us all.
I did my best to fight Herod on it. I did something I've never done before: I stood up to him. Not persuaded him, stood up to him. Literally. I blocked his statue with my body and dared Roman guards to kill me. They didn't, but my time is probably limited. They didn't kill me, but now, here I stand in front of you, standing trial before my own Rabbanim after two months in the Praetorium.
Herod knows he can't kill me. Why am I not dead? Because only you can, and as your Rosh-Sanhedrin, I hereby ORDER you to pronounce my execution.
(general whispered commotion)
We have done everything we can to accomodate Herod. More to the point, I have done everything we can to accommodate Herod. It is my responsibility that we have blessed a ruler who is everything God is not, and it is my shame. I have been culpable, I have been unfaithful, I have robbed, I have cast aspersions, I have been perverse, I have acted wickedly, sinned intentionally, acted violently, falsely ascribed guilt, given bad council, lied, scoffed, rebelled, vexed, committed iniquity and transgressed.
I am an execration and astonishment before the Living God, and I deserve death, but SO DOES HEROD!
(yelling commotion: 'SHANDEH! FARRETER!
Shammai smiles)
No leper should be judged by his appearance, but as he ages, Herod IS his appearance: more maggot than man now. He is Pharaoh, he is Amalek, he is Haman, he is Nabuchadnezzar. He is the evil that the Kadosh Baruch Hu brings to us once every few hundred years to test an entire new era of Jews: will we be silent, will we collaborate, will we let our souls go to their deaths, or will we resist? Will we fight? Will we save our souls?
I collaborated Herod even as Herod never collaborated with us. I called him a penitent even as he murdered and stole and I thought by instructing Herod then little by little he would reform. Herod will never reform, and somewhere in my lev I knew that and felt a pain of fire. I willfully neglected the most important rule of Judaism: not the First Commandment, not any commandment, not even any mitzvah in the Torah. The most important commandment in Judaism is 'What is hateful to you, do not do unto them.' That is our faith. That is the whole Torah. The rest is just commentary.
(more whispers)
Herod 'did unto them.' He has 'done unto them' every day for thirty-three years, and whatever you do, I do my part to say that had I any power at all, I would expel him from Judaism!
(KAPO! BOGED! TZADDIK! HASID!)
I curse that ugly pustule the way Elisha cursed the boys who called him bald. Cursed be he by day and night, cursed be he in sleep and cursed be he when he wakes, when he goes out and when he comes in. Let him walk in God's fury all the few remaining days of his life!
(MOSER! REBBE!)
Shammai speaks: SHA! Rabban Hillel is your master even in death!
Thank you Rebbe Shammai but I don't deserve your tzedakah. For years and years we fought the Jewish destiny. I now see that Reb Shammai is the man who must lead you and should have from the moment he became our Holy Father. I lead God's body to wickedness, he would lead you to purification. The world of Israel must be cleansed, and Shammai is the man to cleanse us.
(half the room cheers)
All that can cleanse us is the truth, and here is the truth: the Sanhedrin has been sullied from the day it was formed.
(the room boos and hisses)
You know it's true! You all know how the Sanhedrin collaborated with rulers of filth long before Herod. Please understand, the Sanhedrin is not an evil institution, it is the last best hope of our people to remain a country of our own. But it is an institution of the earth, not the skies, and the Holy One Blessed be He gave it to us so that we could prove ourselves worthy of him, and prove it we have not.
(PASKUDNYAK!)
You know it! You've seen it! You've heard it!
So here is a truth of my youth. When I was fourteen, I served as clerk to Rabban Shemaya and Rebbe Avtalayon, the very men who killed my father and grandfather. They didn't just order their deaths, they killed them, they held the knife!
(SHREKLEKH! AYMAH!)
They held the knife to kill the entirety of the Sanhedrin. All of your ancestors in both office and blood. And not only did they that but they are responsible for Herod's Sack of Jerusalem!
(KHOSHEKH)
The Houses of Shemayah and Avtalayon deliberately held withheld their troops on the day of the invasion. All that they did but HEROD MADE THEM!
(silence)
It does not excuse anything they did. Perhaps they should have chosen death rather than collaboration, but WHAT DID WE DO FOR THEM?
They were the begging children of converts. Like Herod we sieged and raped and massacred their peoples, then we forced conversion on survivors by the sword, and then we left them to live with nothing. These men rose in the ranks of the Sanhedrin while owed us nothing and having every reason for vengeance.
And yet they were tortured men of God. I watched Rabban Shemaya weep every day in Rebbe Avtlayon's arms as they tried to reconcile their horrible deeds with their holy office. Perhaps suffering is all they deserve, but suffer they did, and in spite of their justified hatreds, in spite of their treachery, in spite of their belief in their irredeemability, in spite of the contempt for them of all Jerusalem, once they achieved their holy offices they executed them in complete faith!
I will tell a further truth now. When I was fourteen Herod was in meeting with them. Without he grabbed me by the chest from behind and held a knife to my throat. He told them simply to give the order and he would cut it. He said, quite correctly, that they are the murderers of my entire patrimony. He said that one day I would be Rosh Sanhedrin, and I would take my revenge. Why did he do it? To show that Shemaya and Avtalyon were weak, that they could never do it, that Herod was the murderer, not them.
Shemaya showed just how weak he was... He didn't just weep, he cursed Herod, he cursed Herod in terms that went all the way to God! The Holy One Blessed Be He heard his curse, and brought an earthquake to Jerusalem. Yes, that earthquake of our childhoods was summed by Rabban Shemaya! These were men of God and my revenge on them is to tell you so!
To tell you the truth, not just in part, but the whole truth, the whole men, the whole Rabbanim.
These are men who came from the nothing our parents gave them, and with that nothing they defended Judaism and the Jewish people for twenty years of repentance. For twenty years they administered the poor and the sick. Herod, blessed be he for this, built sanitoriums for the unfortunate. It was not out of Herod's goodness that he did so, it was out of public health and safety. But Herod would have reduced their funding to nothing had our Chief Rabbanim not begged him on their knees to keep funding them every month, and on the months Herod refused, they paid for the sanitoriums themselves. Yes, it was illegal money but from where else would it have come in this regime of theft?
Repentance, prayer and charity avert the evil decree, and for a decade and a half, these murderers were our protectors who averted Herod's evil decrees upon us a hundred times or more.
But Herod is no Shemaya or Avtalyon. He has not repented, he will not repent, and he deserves nothing short of death.
And here is the second truth. Rebbe Shammai you may not want me to speak anymore after you hear this:
The truth is this. We are incapable of the standard Hashem sets for us.
(KHALERYEH! KHERPAH! KLIMAH!)
WHY WOULD WE BE CAPABLE OF NEARNESS TO THE HOLY ONE BLESSED BE HIS NAME? We are not supposed to be capable of it! We're supposed to sin. It is only through sin that we're redeemed! If any among us did not sin, we'd have no need for a Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.
The Maccabees set us an impossible standard of righteousness and holiness, and that impossible holiness sent us to generations of humiliation and infamy.
(commotion stars)
IT IS NOT because we should have assimilated. It is not because should have followed the Greeks or the Romans instead. We did not rebel until the Maccabees because we are weak and lazy and born to sin, and it should not have taken a group of fanatics to make us realize the profanity of Western ways. But we were comfortable, we were satisfied. The privileged among our houses were well fed and domiciled, and we forgot that centuries people beneath us were born to poverty, violence, sickness and early death.
Shammai has always been my ally, Shammai has always been my right hand, in spite of us not agreeing on anything. But Shammai is necessary BECAUSE we are weak and indolent and settled on our lees. Even as I try to point us toward the Father of Mercy, Shammai strengthens us and moves us to the Father of Justice in an era when we've forgotten what justice is.
It is only just that you sentence me to death, and it is only just that Herod is sentenced as well. My death is in your hands and God's. If I die, let my death be the atonement for all the sins and errors and transgressions of my Presidency, and may my death inspire the uprising of which only Shammai is capable of leading.
Strength, strength, and may you be strengthened.
Amen
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