ֿSadducees, Rabbis, and the Smoke of Yom Kippur
More than two thousand years ago, in the Second Temple era, the most severe split within the land of Israel was the dispute between the Sadducees, who read the Bible literally, and the Rabbis, who passed on oral traditions, and interpreted the Biblical text.
One significant point of dispute related to the most important service of the most important day of the year: when the high priest would enter the holy of holies to offer the incense. The Sadducees read the verse to mean that he would put the incense on the coals, outside the holy of holies, and then enter the holy of holies while the coals were already creating smoke. The Rabbis, by contrast, understood the verse to mean that while in the holy of holies, the high priest would place the incense on the coals.
Since the verse states that “no man should be in the tent of meeting when he {the high priest} enters to atone”, there was no way to know whether the high priest would perform according to the rabbinic tradition or whether he was a closet Sadducee. The Mishnah describes how the Rabbis would administer an oath to the high priest, adjuring him to perform the service as they instructed:
The Elders of the court passed him {the high priest} to the Elders of the priesthood, and they took him up to the House of Avtinas. And they administered him an oath and took leave of him and went on their way.
When they administered this oath, they said to him: My Master, High Priest. We are agents of the court, and you are our agent and the agent of the court. We administer an oath to you in the name of Him who housed His name in this House, that you will not change even one matter from all that we have said to you with regard to the burning of the incense or any other service that you will perform when alone.
After this oath, he would leave them and cry, and they would leave him and cry in sorrow that the oath was necessary. (Yoma 1:5)
This dispute was not a mere technicality of how to read a specific verse; but rather, it captured the deep philosophical divide between two notions of what it means to have a relationship with the Divine. In the eyes of the Sadducees, the human being is passive. His role is to accept the Divine wisdom as received from above in the written Torah. The human being is the recipient, whose greatest achievement is the submission to the Divine will. As such, when the high priest enters the holy of holies, expressing the deepest intimacy between human and G-d, he must be passive.
The Rabbis, by contrast, have a completely different view of what it means to be in a relationship with G-d. The human being is in partnership with G-d, who, in the oral Torah, is called upon to interpret and apply the Divine wisdom. In the beginning of our Parsha, referring to the cloud of smoke produced by the incense, G-d states: “for I appear over the ark cover in a cloud”. Rabbis understood that for G-d to appear in the holy of holies, for the intimacy and connection to be established, human effort and input are required. The ultimate connection to G-d is achieved not through submission alone, but through partnership.
For in order for the Divine presence to appear in the holy of holies, the high priest must actively create the cloud of smoke.