The Memory of the Temple in Palestinian Rabbinic Literature Nathan Still Schumer Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2017 © 2017 Nathan Schumer All rights reserved ABSTRACT The Memory of the Temple in Palestinian Rabbinic Literature Nathan Schumer This dissertation concerns the memory of the Jerusalem Temple in rabbinic literature, arguing that different groups of rabbis continued to remember and recall the Temple after its destruction in 70 CE for a series of changing memorial purposes. This dissertation concerns two discrete questions about the role of the Temple in rabbinic literature: why did the rabbis remember the Temple in their various texts after its destruction in 70 CE and why were they often so accurate in their memories of the Temple and people that lived in the Second Temple period? Previous scholarship on this question has primarily argued that rabbinic memories of the Temple were a means to create rabbinic authority. This explanation does not account rabbinic literature’s accuracy concerning the Temple and the figures of the Second Temple period. My argument is that the project of rabbinic memory of the Temple is far more complex, and I argue that each rabbinic collection has its own particular set of memorial purposes, which motivated its commemoration of the Temple. Indeed, the very object of commemoration shifts between different rabbinic collections, which shows the malleability of rabbinic accounts of the Second Temple period. For this dissertation, I draw on the methodology of social memory, looking at how the past was updated and changed to fit the present. This provides a conceptual model for understanding the Temple and the Second Temple period in rabbinic literature, as well as how its portrayal was updated and changed by various groups of rabbis. Social memory studies suggests that we focus on the historical conditions in which these particular groups of rabbis operated, providing a means to write a history of the memory of the Temple. At the same time, social memory also provides a conceptual model for addressing the historicity of rabbinic recollections of the past. Drawing on this model of social memory, I argue that rabbinic accounts of figures and events from the Second Temple period were accurate to a certain degree, but that these accounts were constructed in the service of a set of internal rabbinic goals and biases that govern the transmission of these memories. Each chapter of the dissertation examines a different aspect of the rabbinic memory of the Temple and how it reports and reimagines the memories of the Second Temple period. Chapter 1 focuses on the Temple in the first century CE, examining the descriptions of the Temple found in the works of the historian Josephus and descriptions of dedications to the Temple. The evidence of Josephus and these dedications suggest that Jews and non-Jews alike saw the Temple as a commemorative site. This chapter is an explanatory prologue to the main body of my dissertation, which focuses on rabbinic literature. This claim of Chapter 1 frames my argument about the function of the Temple in the Mishnah in Chapter 2, where it continued to function as a commemorative site. Chapter 2 primarily concerns ritual narratives, descriptions of the Temple and its rituals that. I claim that one purpose of these narratives is to serve as a memorial of the destroyed Temple. Drawing on this account of the Mishnah, I turn to Mishnah Middot, a tractate that provides the measurements of the Temple’s space. I argue that Middot uses the commemoration of individuals and events from the Second Temple period to construct a narrative of the Jewish past. The rabbis of the Mishnah adapt and change the commemorative function of the Temple in Mishnah Middot. In the late antique rabbinic collections the Talmud Yerushalmi and Eichah Rabbah, the focus of rabbinic memory shifts from the Temple to the Second Temple period more generally. I argue that stories in these different collections portray the Second Temple period as a particular sort of historical time, characterized by Jewish greatness. This Second Temple past is a time of moral and material superiority to the rabbinic present. I argue that this discourse reflects the context of Roman rule, as the rabbis sought to craft a usable and evocative Jewish past, which reminded Jews of their shared historical experience before Roman rule. Chapter 3 concerns moral exemplarity as a means of commemorating the Second Temple period, focusing on stories in the Talmud Yerushalmi and Palestinian amoraic midrash collections. I provide close readings of three stories in which figures from the Second Temple period (who often seem to have been real individuals in the Second Temple period) are transformed into moral exemplars, embodiments of moral virtues or vices. Chapter 4 turns to another discourse around the Second Temple past, which is found in the Yerushalmi and Eichah Rabbah (ER). I argue that this discourse, the “Romanization” of the Second Temple period, uses the Roman convivial meal and the Roman province of Palestine to describe the greatness of the Jews in the Second Temple period, projecting these institutions back onto the Second Temple past. This strategy of displaced anachronism and misremembering commemorates Jewish greatness in the Second Temple period, a potential form of resistance to Roman rule, but the highly Roman means for doing so show the degree to which the rabbis are embedded in their Roman provincial context. Table of Contents Introduction ........................................................................................................................................................ 1 Chapter 1: The Temple as Monument .......................................................................................................... 21 Chapter 2: Commemoration and the Mishnah ............................................................................................ 65 Chapter 3: Moral Exemplarity and the Second Temple Past .................................................................. 119 Chapter 4: Eichah Rabbah and the “Romanization” of the Second Temple Past ............................... 171 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................................... 227 Bibliography .................................................................................................................................................... 229 i Acknowledgements Dissertations are the products of communities, which are instantiated in the work of a particular person. So it is time for some brief thanks. I owe much to my adviser, Seth Schwartz, whose wit and sharp intellect drew me to the study of ancient Judaism, and whose determined (often tested) faith that I had something interesting to say made this dissertation happen. His generosity as an editor and a reader, as well as his unstinting honesty, has made this dissertation far better than it has any right to be. I also owe much to my second reader, Beth Berkowitz, who is a remarkably incisive reader of texts and who has made my dissertation so much richer and thoughtful than it otherwise would have been. I also owe many thanks to Richard Kalmin, who has helped in immeasurable ways with the dissertation process (including by pushing me to learn Syriac as a means of not thinking about my dissertation). The other members of my committee, John Ma and William Harris, helped sharpen my thinking and provided the invaluable perspective of ancient historians. I have also benefited from a great variety of institutional support, so I would like to thank the Department of History, the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, and the faculty and community at the Jewish Theological Seminary. My time as a graduate student has also been shared with many close friends, who I would like to thank for their support and aid throughout this dissertation writing process. Eitan Kensky and Zach Mann provided me with a trajectory in academia, indeed, inspiring me to pursue the process in the first place. Eitan convinced me that I wanted to get a PhD, so in a way this is all his fault (thank you, I guess?). I would also like to thank my generous older colleagues Todd Berzon and Loren Spielman who showed that it was possible to finish a dissertation. Stef Halpern, Saul Zaritt, Debra Glasberg, and Gil Rubin have all been exceptional colleagues, reading early drafts and sharing ii in the drudgery of job applications and graduate student life. Simcha Gross and Krista Dalton have been fellow travelers in academic rigorousness and the project of taking the history part of ancient Jewish history seriously, as well as close friends and incisive editors throughout the process. I would also like to thank my parents David and Maryellen and my in-laws, Dan and Myra for their love and support. I also owe a great deal to my siblings (including those I have acquired throughout the process) Molly, Ari, Sam, Josh, Jenn, Phoebe, and Lili. My aunt Deborah has also supported me a great deal since I moved to New York, and I’ve been exceptionally grateful for her support and love during the dissertation process. In the last months of dissertation writing, all of these people played a crucial role in enabling me to finish the writing process. My daughter Sophia