(flourished 1st century ad). The Palestinian Jewish sage Johanan ben Zakkai was highly influential in the development and preservation of Judaism. He was revered as a great teacher and scholar. During his lifetime, the Romans controlled Palestine, including Jerusalem. The Temple of Jerusalem was the center of Jewish worship and of national identity. Jews were required to make pilgrimages to the Temple, and the high priests offered animal sacrifices there. When the Romans destroyed the Temple of Jerusalem in ad 70, the Jews needed to find a way to adapt their religion to the new circumstances if Judaism was to continue.
After the destruction of the Temple, Johanan founded an important academy of Jewish learning. He taught that the study of scripture and prayer should serve as the center of Jewish religious life, rather than worship in the Temple. He thus helped make Judaism a religion that could be practiced anywhere, not just at a central sanctuary. Johanan’s name is also spelled Yohanan ben Zaccai or Yochanan ben Zakkai.
Very few details are known about Johanan’s life. It is known, however, that even before ad 70, he acted as a leading representative of a group known as the Pharisees. The Pharisees were middle-class Jewish scholars who reinterpreted the Torah to meet the needs of their times. They believed that the laws of the Jewish oral tradition are binding, and this view still remains a basic tenet of Jewish theological thought (see Talmud). The Pharisees were in conflict with the Sadducees—wealthy conservative Jews who accepted only the written Torah as authoritative.
Johanan was opposed to the policy of those Jews who were determined on fighting a war with Rome at all costs. Between 68 and 70, when Jerusalem was being besieged by the Romans during a Jewish revolt, Johanan is said to have been smuggled out of the city in a coffin. He then visited the Roman camp and persuaded the future emperor Vespasian to allow him to set up a Jewish academy. Johanan founded the academy at Jamnia (or Jabneh; now Yibna, Israel), near the Judaean coast. There he established an authoritative rabbinic body. His school was apparently famous, and a student in search of learning would go to extremes, if need be, to be admitted there. Johanan was joined at the academy by a number of his favorite students and followers. Among them were Eliezer ben Hyrcanus and Joshua ben Hananiah, who became the leading teachers of their generation.
Johanan is thought to have taught that studying the Torah is a central purpose of man and a paramount form of serving God. He believed that acts of loving kindness could substitute for the sacrifices formerly offered by the high priests in the Temple. A number of ceremonies and regulations once confined to the Temple were to be adopted outside the Temple complex to serve as memorials of the Sanctuary. However, basic decisions regarding religious practice could now be made by authorized scholars (rabbis) wherever they had to meet, rather than by the high priests in the Temple. The views of Johanan and other scholars at his academy were truly radical at the time, but they have become permanent components of Judaism.