In this episode, Rabbi Reinman shows how the Anshei Knesses Hagedolah set the course of history for the entire Imperial Quadrant.
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Chapter Thirty-six: The Dreaded Demon Dies
During the Babylonian captivity, the Jewish people formed a ruling council of one hundred and twenty sages known to history as the Anshei Knessess Hagedolah, the Men of the Great Assembly, a who’s-who of the Jewish elite. Most were prophets, and all were outstanding teachers of the Torah. The older sages, such as Baruch ben Neriah, Mordecai, Daniel, Chananiah, Mishael, Azariah, Yechezkel, Zerubavel and Ezra, still remembered the First Temple. Others, such as Nechemiah and Shimon Hatzaddik, were born in exile.
The work of the Assembly had an enormous impact on the future of the Torah and the Jewish religion. They also effected a seismic change in the human experience that would determine the future course of the history of the world …
The work of the Anshei Knessess Hagedolah was complete. They had sealed the Scriptures against falsification and manipulation; they had built protective “fences” around the Torah; they had secured the efficacy of prayer; and they had planted the seeds of the Talmud which would guarantee the preservation of the Oral Law. They had also encouraged the proliferation of yeshivahs and a broad dissemination of Torah study. The Torah was sinking deep roots in the revived Jewish community in a form designed to weather the unpleasant surprises the future so often brings. The future seemed assured.
It was time for the Assembly to turn its attention to the dreaded demon that had plagued the Jewish people for close to a thousand years. One of the salient features of Jewish nationhood had been the battle against pagan influences. The annals of the Periods of the Judges and the Kings chronicle with almost dismal monotony the ebb and flow of this incessant struggle for spiritual survival. Indeed, the Talmud intimates that the idolatrous influences were so powerful in ancient times that even the sages of the Talmud would have been hard-pressed to resist. This burning issue now faced the Anshei Knessess Hagedolah. How could the Jewish people be protected from the terrible trap of idolatry even as its leadership and political situation declined? What good were all the “fences” and reinforcements to Judaism if the people remained vulnerable to the siren call of idolatry?
This problem had troubled the leading sages of all earlier generations, and their solution had been to fire up the national zeal, to strengthen the adherence to the Torah and its commandments, to “seek God” in every aspect of life. Bitter experience, however, had shown that such levels of intensity could not endure indefinitely, that revivals were almost always followed by relapses. And although new revivals eventually followed the relapses, each relapse took a horrendous toll of the Jewish people.
The Anshei Knessess Hagedolah understood that the debilitated Jewish community, subservient to pagan masters, was too fragile to withstand the pendular swings that had characterized the days of independence. In desperation, they resorted to drastic measures that the sages of earlier generations had never contemplated.
As the Talmud relates, the Anshei Knessess Hagedolah beseeched God to remove the human inclination to idolatry, to lobotomize that part of the human psyche, so to speak. They were successful. A fiery lion emerged from the Kodesh Kodoshim, and one the prophets in attendance declared, “This is the inclination to idolatry.” At the same time, they also considered the removal of the sexual drive, but they realized that to do so would bring an end to procreation. This brief passage in the Talmud, which draws a parallel between the inclination to idolatry and the sexual drive, sheds tremendous light on the entire Biblical period …
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