Yavneh — the New Center of Torah in Place of Jerusalem

The Temple lay in ashes, Jerusalem was closed to Jews, the priests had no service. What survived was what cannot be burned: knowledge of the Torah and a court that knows how to apply it. Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai moved the Sanhedrin to Yavneh, a coastal town south of today's Tel Aviv — not a temporary shelter but the beginning of a new form of Jewish life.

Yavneh decided the questions on which continuity depended. Who declares the new month without a Temple? How is the shofar sounded on Shabbat when Jerusalem is gone? What becomes of tithes and offerings? The Mishnah preserves short dry sentences — Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai enacted — and behind each stands a decision not to let the law halt.

Here the century-old dispute between the schools of Hillel and Shammai was settled. A heavenly voice, the Talmud says, declared: these and those are the words of the living God, but the law follows Hillel — because his students were yielding and reported the other side's opinion first.

At Yavneh the boundaries of the Hebrew Bible were also discussed. There Rabbi Akiva said of the Song of Songs: all the writings are holy, but this one is the holy of holies. Yavneh became a byword: the place where, after catastrophe, people sit down and go on learning.