Mr. Princeps Caesar Augustus and Domina Livia,
I know we have not communicated before, but immediately upon my release from jail my contact ordered me to send all future reports to directly to you, Revered One and Mater Patriae. To say the least, I am flabergasted to be reporting directly to the masters of the Roman world after my life hung in the balance for eighteen months on end.
I am told that Caesar is not a man for fawning, so that is the last reference shall make to the reverence in which I have always held you both.
The Sanhedrin has determined to make its President an hereditary post, and but for Shammai's brief sojourn as its head, the position now falls to Shimon ben Hillel: yes, of that line, and he was approved by unanimous consent, clearly by order of Shammai.
The first order of business was that the Shammaian party, lead by one Buta ben Baba, proposed a ruling on going to war on the Sabbath. One would expect that the School of Shammai, due to their strict interpretation of Jewish law, would stand by the injunction, but the School of Shammai has long since dropped all pretense to neutrality--at least for the moment, and is willing to entertain any and all measures to fight what they refer to as 'the Occupation.' They point to the example of your General Pompey who used that prohibition to attack Jerusalem on Sabbath (sometimes called Shabbos) and since then they've never gotten rid of Rome (please note: your new man in Judea says that with approval).
However, the School of Hillel, holding an equal number of seats, did not let the motion pass, the vote was tied 35-35. It is quite probable that the Hillelians held strict instructions from their master that any resolution about war would rightly be seen by Rome as a provocation.
The entire Shammaian party left the Sanhedrin chamber and walked out en masse to the Temple Courtyard, perhaps it was all planned and the entire meeting of the Sanhedrin was a kind of procedural theater. The Shammaians are lead by one Buta ben Baba, who mounted the Temple's western wall and made a frankly magnificent speech to all those assembled in the public courtyard about not appeasing Rome (I refer to its quality merely so Caesar can understand the jubilant effect it had on the public), however, the peroration of his speech was interrupted by the entrance from the Chain Gate by one Zadok, whom my contact assures me Caesar is familiar with some hundred twenty followers. He refers to his followers as Zealots or Kanna'im in the Hebrew tongue. Zadok explained that they are there to rebel against what they believe is Hillel's appeasement and collaboration and they demand the lives of every Sanhedrin Rabbi from the School of Hillel be forfeit. To the perhaps shock of these Zealots, it was the Shammaians who blocked the door to the Sanhedrin chamber and the unsuspecting party of liberality. Buta ben Baba made a second brief speech entreating the citizens of Jerusalem to defend the Sanhedrin. What followed was a terribly bloody melee in which were killed no less than seventeen Shammaian rabbis and yet another one wounded. The Shammaians covered themselves in valor defending these more progressive Rabbis whose deaths they would entirely welcome in the right circumstances.
This had the further result that the Hillelians have actually expanded the Sanhedrin to 71; fully allowing the Shammaians an extra seat so that the 17 empty seats may be replenished by the School of Shammai, and the surviving Rabbi too may reclaim his seat upon return from convalescence.
The Shammaians have eminently earned this seat, but there is no future plan for parity, so while Hillel rules in figure, Shammai rules indeed.
Reverentur Summito,
Your Man in Jerusalem
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