The Jubilee Calendar Essay Research Paper THE — страница 5

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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