JERUSALEM CONT FOR TODAY RECIPE

The History

The most successful military commander of the ancient world was Alexander the Great (Alexander III of Macedonia). After unifying the Greek city-states under Macedonian control, he took his armies forth and conquered a vast region stretching from Greece in the north, Egypt in the west, and Persia and the Punjab in the east. However, when he died in 323 b.c.e., he left no recognized heir, and the empire he had forged began to disintegrate. In 312 b.c.e. Seleucus, one of Alexander's generals, established control over the eastern reaches of Alexander's holdings from Babylon, the center of power, to the Mediterranean coast. This was the foundation of the Seleucid Empire, which brought Hellenistic influences to Persians, Medes, Jews, and Indians alike.
But the empire proved to be too large, and the people resisted Hellenization; it was not long before the outer reaches began to break away. By the time of King Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who reigned from 175 to 163 b.c.e., aggressive efforts to de-Judaize the Jewish populace of the empire led to a breaking point. In about 167 b.c.e. Mattathias (of the tribe of Levi) and his sons Judah “Maccabee” (the Hammer), Eleazar, Yohanan, Yonaton, and Shimon led a successful uprising against the Seleucid overlords in Judea. Though fighting would continue for twenty-five years, in about 164 b.c.e. the Maccabees (for so they became known) were able to retake Jerusalem; they cleansed the Temple of foreign influences (including the sacrificing of pigs) and reestablished Jewish worship there. In 139 b.c.e. Shimon (the only surviving son) became both High Priest and Leader, establishing the Hasmonean line of succession in Judea. The memory of the purification of the Temple gave rise to the Jewish festival of Hanukkah (Chanukah).
At the end of the conflict with the Seleucids, the Jews had become divided into three different parties. The first were the Essenes, a group of ascetical mystics who lived in isolation in the desert. The second were the Sadducees, the priests and Jewish aristocracy; though they were religiously conservative, following a strict and inflexible interpretation of the written Torah, they were socially liberal, having embraced Hellenistic cultural practices. The Temple was the center of worship for the Sadducees; indeed, it was the only place where true worship could occur. The third group were the Pharisees, who believed in both a written and an oral Torah, both of which Jews were bound to follow and both of which the rabbis were empowered to interpret. In general, the Pharisees highly valued education but were opposed to Hellenism and to the Hasmonean usurpation of the Priesthood. These party divisions persisted even after Rome conquered Judea, though Roman conquest led to the rise of the Zealots and Sicarii, revolutionaries whose sole goal was the overthrow of Roman imperialism.
From the beginnings of the Hasmonean Empire until the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in 70 c.e., the Pharisees and the Sadducees bitterly opposed each other. The conflicts were manifold: the Sadducees promoted the interests of the wealthy and tended to favor hierarchy, while the Pharisees showed concern for the common people and tended to favor more participatory religious practices; the Sadducees followed Greek social customs, while the Pharisees attempted to preserve Jewish traditions; the Sadducees put the Temple first and tended to restrict religion to the Temple grounds, while the Pharisees put the word of God before everything and tended to sanctify the everyday world; and the Sadducees adhered to the letter of the Law, while the Pharisees believed that the Law was a living, changing force. The Pharisees also believed in the importance of ritual washing before all meals and in the resurrection of the dead at the end of time.
The New Testament scriptures present a very critical picture of the Pharisees and Sadducees. The new Jewish sect known as “Christians” emphasized God's love and forgiveness for all people, including society's outcasts. The Sadducees were presented as people of privilege who hoarded everything, including God's grace, for their own select group; and the Pharisees were presented as being obsessed with purification rites, to the exclusion of anyone who did not correctly perform their rituals. On the other hand, some scholars have posited that Jesus was himself a Pharisee, and that his efforts to include all persons in God's beloved community echoed the Pharisees' emphasis of participatory religion. Indeed, many of the teachings of Jesus as related in the gospels are consistent with the philosophies of the Pharisees of his day, including one of the most well known, whose name was Paul.