Shabbat Sukkot 5784 Simchat Beit Hashoevah

"At this most joyous season of the year, with all the electric anticipation along the caravan trails, the stirring ceremonies, and the lively singing and feasting, the epitome of celebration in Temple times took place surrounding a water ritual: the Rejoicing (Simchat) at the Place of (Beit) the Water Drawing (Hashoavah).
Every day of the year, after the sacrifice was burned, an offering of wine was poured on the altar. During Sukkot, there was also a water libation (nisukh hamayim). Some have suggested that it was a folk rite, an inducement for rain made by pouring out water at the season’s onset, transformed by the rabbis into a symbolic Temple ritual.
Each morning of Sukkot, the priests went to the pool of Siloah (Silwan) near Jerusalem to fill a golden flask. Shofar blasts greeted their arrival at the Temple’s Water Gate. They then ascended and poured the water so that it flowed over the altar simultaneously with wine from another bowl."
-Quoted directly from https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/simchat-beit-hashoavah-the-water-drawing-festival/

"In the time of the Second Temple, the Jews were, as usual, divided. The Sadducees, comprised of the priestly class and the wealthy, stood opposed to the Pharisees, who included the rabbis, the sages, the Essenes and other sects, and most of the people. The tension between these groups was high; but on Sukkot, divisions would be forgotten and the liturgy carefully designed to contemplate the sensitivities of each faction. For example, the core of the Water Ceremony (Simchat Beit Hashoe’va) was a popular procession in which sages and commoners led the people, with the priests uncharacteristically following behind. During the Temple ritual, the High Priest — almost by definition a Sadducee — conducted the rituals with deference to the customs of the Pharisees, especially in one critical ceremony: the pouring of water over the altar as a way of imploring God for abundant rains.
On one particular Sukkot, however, all that would change.
The year was around 100 BCE and Judea was ruled by Alexander Yannai. The charismatic grandson of the last of the Maccabees, who had established an independent Jewish kingdom after the heroic war we remember every Chanukah, Yannai took power amid messianic expectations. As both a Sadducee but also a disciple of the great Pharisee Nitai of Arbel, he was seen as a unifier; and having secured more territory for Judea, he was also credited with making the country safer and stronger.
Behind the veneer of openness and unity, however, Yannai was power hungry and had little regard for Jewish norms of government. He refused to give up the title of High Priest, ending the separation of power between the secular and the religious by acting as both priest and ruler. He illegitimately proclaimed himself king, a title to which only descendants of King David could aspire.
The Talmud relates how neutered the Sanhedrin, the high court, by filling its benches with loyalists and declaring himself immune from prosecution. He deliberately set out to favor an extremist minority of Sadducees and give them inordinate power at the expense of the Pharisee majority.
Finally, his military strategy became erratic. He annexed Idumea and Iturea against the advice of the sages, who were concerned that choosing to rule over another people could ultimately end with them ruling over the Jews instead.
Growing discontent with Yannai’s policies finally came to a head during Sukkot. There were hopes that Yannai would use the holiday of unity to make a gesture towards the Pharisees and the people and thus heal the divide; but instead, he did the opposite.
Tens of thousands of pilgrims had participated in the Water Ceremony and were now massed on the Temple esplanade, carrying their “Four Species” and waiting for Yannai, as High Priest, to pour the ritual water over the altar.
The Sadducees didn’t believe in that ritual, but they were a minority. The masses were tense, and the air was pregnant with hope and anticipation. The pouring of the water would beseech a loving God to bless His people with a good year: one with rains and crops, peace and health.
Yannai took up the golden jar, looked at the crowd, and then defiantly poured the water on his own feet as the Sadducees clapped and laughed.
A gasp of horror rose from the esplanade. Then the shock gave way to anger.
Somebody threw an etrog at Yannai. That opened the floodgates: The king was pelted by thousands of etrogim as people called him a usurper and a tyrant.
In response, Yannai quietly ordered his personal guard to enter the esplanade and mow down the protesters, who had only lulavim to protect themselves.
This personal guard wasn’t a Jewish army. For some time now, the Judean army, which was a popular army since the time of the Maccabees, had refused to follow the tyrant blindly; so Yannai replaced them with a professional mercenary force composed primarily of Cilicians and Psydians. He no longer had to deal with opinionated and scrupulous Jewish soldiers, but rather with efficient and obedient killing machines.
Six thousand Jews died at the Temple that day. A seven-year civil war ensued, in which the sages and the people fought against the Sadducees and Yannai’s mercenaries. More than 50,000 Jews died, and much of the country lay in ruins. Yannai ultimately put down the revolt through sheer brutality: a mass execution of Pharisees and their families. Yannai feasted with his concubines while people were beheaded, quartered and, in an innovation from the West that was all the rage, crucified.
(Historians used to believe that Talmudic sources and the historian Josephus Flavius, who recorded those events in the decades that followed, grossly exaggerated Yannai’s cruelty. Then in 2018, while digging the foundation of the new Bezalel Academy building in Jerusalem’s Russian Compound, workers found the mass graves from that massacre. The site included women, children and even fetal remains, indicating that pregnant women were executed too. Artifacts and coins infamously engraved with the text Yehonatan Hamelech, Yannai’s full Hebrew name and title, confirmed the time period. Apparently neither Josephus nor the Talmud had exaggerated.)
Although Yannai ruled for almost 20 years after the revolt, the seed of destruction was planted. A few years after his death, a new civil war broke out, and the Roman general Pompey used the opportunity to occupy Judea. When the Romans needed a puppet king, Herod, an Idumean, was happy to oblige, just as the sages had feared. That was the end of Jewish sovereignty for 20 centuries.
-As told by Andres Spokoiny
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