Yohanan ben zakkai biography for kids
Biography for 2nd graders...
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Yohanan ben Zakkai
Yohanan ben Zakkai (second half first century CE): rabbi, one of the founders of rabbinical Judaism.
After the fall of Jerusalem, in 70 CE, Judaism had to reinvent itself.
There was no temple, there was no high priest. The Sadducees had vanished, the people who had written the sectarian texts among the Dead Sea Scrolls (perhaps the Essenes) had disappeared as well, the Romans had violently repressed the Sicarians and Zealots.
Only two branches of the ancient, pluralistic faith would survive: those who stressed Messianism became Christians, those who stressed the study of the Law would develop into rabbinical Judaism.
Yohanan ben zakkai biography for kids
One key figure was Yohanan ben Zakkai, who renewed Pharisaism and gave Judaism a new future.
Crisis
The importance of the crisis in 70 CE cannot be overestimated, but the Jewish religion was not exclusively about the temple in Jerusalem.
There were synagogues, charismatics, and sects with their own customs, rituals, and ideas. One of those i