We'll Always Have Yavneh

Gittin 56

Give me Yavneh and her sages תן לי יבנה וחכמיה .  Among the many stories presented in the Gemara, this vignette in Gittin, with Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai’s daring escape from Jerusalem and his prescient request of Vespasian is one of the most famous. We often tell it to help explicate how Judaism was able to survive one of its greatest catastrophes, the destruction of the Second Temple.

But what is Yavneh? What did Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai really accomplish? And how?

Yavneh was, and still is, a relatively small town, not near the major cities of the time: Jerusalem, Zippori, Caesaria.  It was part of the tribal area of Judah and was centrally located  – not far from the sea, near the coastal road, close to the metropolis of Lod. It had a Jewish and a Hellenized population in Second Temple times. And it was the first stop outside Jerusalem for the nomadic Sanhedrin:

www.lib.cet.ac.il

But most significantly, according to Josephus,  Yavneh was royal property. First it was owned by Herod, and then by the Roman Caesars, notably Vespasian:

Josephus, The Wars of the Jews, Book 4, Chapter 16: he [Vespasian] moved on to Lod and Yavneh. As these two were subdued already, he settled there a sufficient number of those who had submitted. . .”

Did Rabbi Yochanan choose Yavneh or did it choose him, being a prison camp for troublemakers? Either way, it was far enough away from the rebels in Jerusalem to enable Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai and the sages he gathered around him to quietly start a revolution of their own. The Romans didn’t know it, but Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai was simultaneously keeping the memory of Jerusalem alive and creating a blueprint for Jewish life without a temple.

Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai established some significant precedents in Yavneh, putting it on a par with Jerusalem in some ways. One could blow shofar there on Shabbat, something previously only done in the Temple. People would come on pilgrimage to Yavneh, not to sacrifice but to have their halakhic questions answered (Tosefta Hullin chapter 3, Tosefta Mikvaot chapter 4).  Witnesses came there to testify about the new moon.

And yet, Yavneh existed as a center for a very short period, a few decades at best. The Sanhedrin and the rabbis moved to other places and we don’t even have much in the way of archaeological remains (yet!) on Tel Yavneh. The most dominant building there is a Crusader church converted into a Mameluke mosque:

 www.myavne.co.il

So why all the fuss? Yuval Shachar, a professor at Tel Aviv University, perhaps put it best in an article about Yavneh (my translation):

“There is Yavneh before Lod or Yavneh before Usha, Bet Shearim , Zippori or Tverya, but there is no Yavneh before Yavneh.”*

Yavneh becomes the template for survival in a world without the Temple. Despite Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai’s dictum  מהרה יבנה המקדש  the Temple should be rebuilt speedily, it is a template that has had to serve the Jewish people for many centuries.

Today, the modern town of Yavneh is a growing suburb and its main attraction for outsiders is cold and sweet, the Ben and Jerry’s flagship store in Israel:

May the temple be rebuilt speedily, and Ben and Jerry’s can be served there too!

*"יבנה התלמודית: שני דורות ותהילת נצח" יובל שחר