the period we're going to begin describing right now is an extremely important period in the
history of the jews overall and in many ways it is a period that has had such phenomenal impact that
jews today are really still reeling from the encounter between these two very important
cultures that are encapsulated by the words athens and jerusalem jerusalem of course we've
dealt with extensively now we're in lecture 18 of this series uh you know the stands for monotheism
stance of the world of the prophets revealed religion all kinds of things like that athens
on the other hand stands for a culture that is so radically different and so amazingly tempting so
much powerful information in athens that this is the first time that the jews in jerusalem really
encountered a culture that was so powerful not in terms of physical might but in terms of its
persuasive power that they were fully engaged with it and in many ways risked losing all of their own
self-identity in the process so that's really what we're going to have to talk about right now is
the development of something called hellenism so the term hellenism comes from the word helas
meaning greek and in this context i'm sort of using the shorthand of athens because of all
the greek city-states athens is perhaps the most significant and has so much of the the golden era
of greek culture which flourished in the fifth and fourth and third centuries in particular
that affected jerusalem now the greeks were guests in israel long before they were conquerors
there's no question that hellenistic ideas were penetrating into israel in the persian period but
it gets a huge burst forward when alexander the great begins his massive conquest of the near east
and goes all the way out through central asia until he gets right to afghanistan and up to
the edges of india really he dies prematurely on his way back his his soldiers rebel against him
and there's a lot of fascinating stories about alexander's person but in our context we really
want to know uh his relationship to israel in particular so there is a story that is related in
the talmud apparently he came to jerusalem and he encountered the great rabbi shimon hat sadiq who
convinced alexander not to destroy jerusalem that much for sure is true jerusalem was not destroyed
by alexander and that's a you know a kindness it's wonderful you know jews are generally very happy
when their cities are not destroyed by conquering armies it does not happen all that often
the legend goes that as a result all jews name their sons that were born in the following year
alexander after this kindness and in fact alexander is a very old jewish name as a
consequence even though it is greek and origin not hebrew in fact my own grandfather allah shalom and
one of my sons is named alexander as a consequence of this particular interaction but what we can say
about alexander's you know presence in israel is the fact that he brought with him greek norms
uh greek organization greek government greek economics and greek thought as
well and that is extremely important for our purposes because this is a period in which
jews were fully engaged in everything greek even to their own detriment as we shall see
the idealized cooperation of the greeks and the jews is encapsulated in a rabbinic reading
of a verse in genesis that yaffeth who was one of the sons of noah will dwell in the tents of shame
shem being another son of noah in the rabbinic sort of like map of the cultural world represents
greece and shame represents israel hence we get the term by the way semite for example from
shame jew is historically engaged in the thought of these philosophers in a very big way
platonic elements uh can be seen in a lot of thoughts in particular when you look at the
mystical tradition there are a lot of ideas that are congruent with platonic teachings
aristotle has a very strong role to play in the way that maimonides describes for example
ethical behavior the idea of the golden mean there are some very significant differences there
but the the central concept seems you know really congruent in fact maimonides calls aristotle ha
philosoph the philosopher and it said that robino yona a very important medieval thinker said that
aristotle was one level shy of actually achieving ruach hakodesh the um divine inspiration that's
associated with prophets so there's no question there's a lot of respect among the jewish thinkers
really for much of the ancient and the medieval period for the great greek thinkers and their
philosophies were engaged in a very very important way one must not think that the encounter
of athens uh influenced only the uh the highest intellectual levels of the jewish community
on the contrary there's abundant evidence to indicate that jews as a whole saw a lot of value
in hellenistic culture and adopted it in many aspects of human life for example as i'm
recording this video i'm thinking a lot about the holiday of passover i just finished reading
tracktape sakhim in the talmud and there's a lot of discussion in the final chapter there about
leaning of course those of you who celebrate passover one of the elements of the seder
is that one must lean to the left while eating which is a little bit awkward in you know regular
dining room chairs especially if you don't have arms on them but in an ancient greek culture
this would be perfectly normal because upper class free men would typically sit on these
sort of chaise lounges to eat this is a room called a triclinium which means three reclining
and it would be a dining room for a wealthier greek family specifically the men the room was
also called an andron a uh men's room literally because it was typically men who would eat here
women we elsewhere i don't think that would be entirely true in a jewish setting for reasons
which are beyond the discussion here but at any rate um you know it's very clear from
the talmudic discussion of how people are supposed to eat on passover is that jews are supposed to
eat like free people and their model of free people's eating is this kind of strange greek
leaning to the left so even in common uh sorts of interactions like dining like personal adornment
beauty names there's so many greek names that make their way into the jewish vocabulary and not
just great figures like alexander but figures like antigonus ich sojo antigonus clearly a greek name
so there's no question that on all kinds of levels in a systemic manner hellenism penetrated jewish
jewish society we see it also in terms of for example entertainment the greeks were
phenomenal entertainers uh their their tragedians eascalists you know uh sophocles and euripides and
so on making phenomenal plays that you know are still classics today the the greek myths
were so powerful and so engaging that uh jews were also engaged in theatrical presentations
quite often uh against the uh the wishes of the rabbis as we shall see later their
theater was was associated with uh inappropriate behavior in all kinds of ways but that didn't stop
the jews from going to the theater in general here's a beautiful view of the theater at
caesarea cesaria that was built later on by herod not in the greek period but in
the successor to the greek period the romans in many ways followed a lot of greek culture
as well and you know jews were frequently the theaters much to the consternation of the rabbis
even things like the sanhedrin which is of course a deeply jewish institution the sanhedrin being
the great court of the jews and the idea of the sanhedrin is already described in the torah with
gathering of a certain number a large number in this case you hear a 72 men to judge cases
of jewish law but the very word sanhedrin is greek and origin this is not a hebrew term
and and these are just a few examples of how athenian culture really penetrated jewish culture
in so many ways this was a uh what was going to become a cultural a culture struggle but in the
first 150 years of the greek presence in israel jews were you know grabbing onto it with both
hands the period that i'm describing right now is primarily a period from alexander the great about
332 before the common era to antiochus epiphanes iv which who is the wicked king associated with
the hanukkah rebellion that was in the year 165 before the common era so we have about 150 years
of this kind of you know cross-fertilization of culture and even a degree of slavish imitation
of hellenistic norms but let me just give you a little bit of a dunk experiment for a second
so let's say you have a bowl of chicken soup and it's delicious it's aromatic and it's flavorful
and and it's got so much nutrition and so but it's really too hot it's too much you know and
it's hard to eat it when it is so hot so you put an ice cube in there you put a little bit
of water in there and you wait a little bit oh it's still delicious but the fact is it's
still too hot and you really want to eat it but it's still too hot so you put in some more ice
a little bit more water and at a certain point and no one knows exactly when that point is
but at a certain point it becomes certainly cool enough to eat but it's no longer chicken soup now
it is sort of chickeny water and this is precisely the problem of the hellenistic era for the jews
this was a moment where the greek culture was so overwhelming so powerful that they
were absorbing it so heavily and were at risk of submerging their own identities and their own
value there would be a reaction to that in the period of the maccabean revolt which we're going
to pick up in the very next video that's basically when uh the more traditionalist element of jewish
society stood up and said no this is too much enough with the greek stuff already
you are taking on so much of it that you are sacrificing core values in judaism
so that's we're going to pick up our story in the next video just want to kind of set the scene
of the very powerful and tempting culture of greece that encounter jerusalem
in the fourth century before the common era thanks very much for watching you