wh gerot Troe + audacity cond Temple and Hellenistic Judaism 41, Definition, Relationship to Other Groups. ‘The term havurah (pl. havurot) designates a volun- tary association whose members (taverim) were Jew- ish men in Judea rigorously committed to being re- liable (ne’eman) in purity and tithing. Detailed evidence for the havurah comes in tractate Demai of ‘the Mishnah and Tosefta, whose few statements are the earliest datable sources and go back to rabbis who served at Usha (ca. 140-200 CE). Scholarly in- terest in the havurah was mainly limited to rabbinic studies until the discovery of the DSS in 1947. In the Rule Scrolls (1QS, CD), thematic and linguistic similarities tothe rabbinic havurah texts became the basis fora popular but very speculative revision that placed the havurah in the Second Temple period. Responsible handling of the evidence requires ac knowledgment that no earlier or better evidence yhas been added to the Ushan-era Demat texts (raade). Havurot appeared in the context of a pro- liferation of voluntary associations in the Mediter- ranean world under Hellenistic and Roman rule. Other Jewish associations from the period include the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Dpad-Sea COR nanters, Therapeutae, and Christ Mediterranean associations exhibist~semarkable consistency in internal organization and regulation, despite being separated by time, geography, lan guage, ethnicity, social status, religion, and. pur- pose. Since these consistencies seem to have been appropriated from the bureaucratic and legal sys- tem of cities, adequate understanding of any associ- ation requires attention to their HellenisticRoman sociopolitical context (Gillihan). 2. H-B-R Terms for Social Groups in the Second Temple Period. No Second Temple source uses the term havurah for a voluntary association. A small body of evidence from numismatics and the DSs suggests that havurah may first have entered popu- lar usage as a political term. On Hasmonean coins from the 1st century BCE the phrase “Hever of the Judeans” designates the commonwealth of Judea as 4 whole or its government. Similar usage appears three times in the Damascus Rule (CD) of the DSS. Laws on charity in CD 14:12-17 establish an in- come-based system of contributions to pay for aid to the poor and vulnerable. The last two lines refer to charitable support as “the service of the hever,” While “the house of the fever” refers cither to the sect as a whole or to a conciliaigommunit} tasked ‘with ensuring support for those in need. CD 12:68 forbids killing Gentiles in order to take their wealth and forbids taking their property at all, “except by counsel of the hava of Israel,” a title as political 2s “bever of the Judeans.” The identity, authority and in bwdmotcu. Havurah 2 responsibility that these texts claim for the sect ~ a council “of Israel” that “taxes” income, guarantees social welfare, and determifig When to attack Gen- tile lives and property ~ far Exceeds that of a typical association but matches what ancient constitutions ascribe to state councils and officials. Given the Covenanters’ ultimate goal to govern Israel at the end of days, their usage of H-BR terms for their ‘own bodies might best be understood as symbolic appropriation of contemporary political terms to af- firm their future political role. 3. Features and Purpose of the Havurah. The pri- ‘mary purpose of the havurah, it seems, was to sanc- tify the daily life of haverim to the same degree as priestly activity in the temple; this explains the dif- ficulty of obtaining full membership. Candidates proved reliability in a staged probation period dur- ing which they demonstrated rigorous avoidance of impurity and untithed produce. This required com- pletely avoiding certain types of property and pro- fessions, and restricting social and economic inter- actions with non-members — especially a class ‘known not to be reliable in tithes and purity called ‘Am Ha’arets, “people of the land.” Full haverim de~ cided who could advance toward membership on the basis of how each candidate handled tithes and purity with increasingly difficult types of goods and situations. Members who compromised their ne‘ ‘man status faced sanctions, including expulsion. ‘Haver status may have had economic and cultic significance beyond the havura, since, at least in theory, it established a class of people upon whom, others could rely to protect and judge the fitness of exchanged goods. The fact that several prominent rabbis in the Mishnah and Tosefta commented on requirements for haverim may also indicate an im- portant social role. Yet the limited evidence pre- cludes secure knowledge about most features of the havurah, from origins, purpose, and internal struc- ture, to visibility and role in Judean society. 4. The State of Post-1947 Scholarship. The DSS brought new optimism, urgency, and numbers to the study of the kavurah; this, along with the still paltry state of the evidence, has resulted in swarms of contradictory scholarly claims. Chaim Rabin di- vines the Covenanters’ origins as late-Ist-century- BCE radical faverim who splintered off from the parent group to mount a more vigorous opposition to the ascendant rabbis. Jacob Neusner makes the ‘havurah and Covenanters contemporaries in a late Second Temple “Pharisaicrabbinic” context. He resents the /haverim as tolerant, learned, influen- tial, and worthy of modern emulation, while his Covenanters star in a cautionary tale of how apoca- lyptic utopianism begets misanthropy, alienation, and extinction. Aharon Oppenheimer turns havurot into a general term for late Second Temple Jewish associations, reserving haverim for the kavurah of elite Pharisees. The piety of each havurah was super- ah dam ha- Aves ~~3 Havurah erogatory, not exemplary or influential. After 70 CE ‘havutrah-based social organization vanished; the rab- bis preserved rules pertaining to individual haverim, discarding those that governed whole associatidns. Solomon Spiro imagines the havurah as a guild of tax collectors founded in Judah under Persian rule. Early Hasmoneans conscripted them to raise war funds; they were pictistically counter-reformed along Pharisaic lines in the late 2nd century BCE, later became a rabbinic scholastic society, and have continued to evolve until the present day. Others proceed more cautiously. Saul Lieberman gleaned from his detailed philological analysis the modest generalization that Ist-century Judean sects had similar formal features. Alan Avery-Peck attempts historical reconstruction using only direct evidence and minimal speculation. His havurah was an Us- han innovation, probably not related to the Phati- sees and possibly created to resolve a discrepancy between perceived and actual rabbinic power. Steven Fraade argues that two persistent habits pre~ vent understanding the kavurah in its own right. Studies that use the evidence to illuminate aspects of early Christianity or rabbinic Judaism look for information relevant to other groups, overlooking distinctive features of the havurah. Studies that aim to fix the havurah’s precise identity, flomit, and so- cial relationships by tallying similarities and differ- ences with other groups miss the rhetorical quali ties of the evidence, including principles by which the rabbis selected aspects of the havurah to discuss. "Thorough investigation of such qualities could im- prove historical accounts of this elusive institution’, as they remain a desideratum. 4m. Bibliography: » Avery Peck, A., Mishna’s Divison of Agricul ture: A History and Theolgy of Seder Zeraim (BJS 79; Chico, Ca- Tif, 1985). = raade, 5, “Qumran Yahad and Rabbinic Hab- irk: A Comparison Reconsidered,” DSD 16 (2008) 433-53. Gillihan, ¥. M., Civic Ideology, Organization and Law in the Rule Sells (STDJ 97; Leiden: Beil, 2012). «Lieberman, S. “The Discipline in the So-Called Dead Sea Manual of Disci- pine” JBL 71 (1952) 199-206. »Neusne, J. Fellowship in Judator: The Fist Century and Today (London 1963). * Op ‘Penheimes, A, The Am ha"Arete: A Study nthe Soil History of the Jewish People in the Hellenistic Roman Period (Leiden 1977). = Oppenheimer, A., “Haverim,” EncDSS, ed. L. Schiffman) J. Vanderkain; Oxford 2000) 333-36. Rabin, C. Qumran Studies (Oxford 1957). Spiro, S., *Who Was the Haver? A. New Approach to an Ancient Institution,” JS} 14 (1980) 186-216, Yonder Moynihan Giltihan do remata—