After the Temple

Jonathan Klawans is a great one for cutting through nonsense. In his Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple, he points to the oddity that “documents composed three, four, or even five centuries after the destruction are labeled as delayed responses to the destruction. . . the suggestion that it took the rabbis centuries to respond to the destruction, because it ostensibly took that long to assert that the temple could be bested by something else, is insulting both to the rabbis themselves and the institution whose loss they mourned” (210).

Klawans characterizes the rabbis’ response as one of nostalgia. They didn’t think there was anything particularly wrong with “the temple that was destroyed,. Theirs is not a reformist vision of the future; they simply want back what they lost.” Unlike Josephus, the Qumran community, the rabbis didn’t think the temple was defiled. It was destroyed for their sins, but “no single institution or group was responsible: there was plenty of blame to spread around” (210).

In short, the rabbinic attitude to the temple and its fall was: “(1) a generally sympathetic discussion of the practices of the Second temple, combined with (2) a desire to absolve the Second Temple of practically any guilt connected to its own destruction, along with (3) a sincere hope for the temple’s restoration.” They wanted “the temple back, just the way it was” (211).