the high priest’s connections with Alexander the Great are recounted in a few sources, including rabbinic sources.40 When the Samaritans conspire to destroy (or take over, in other sources) the Temple, Simon the Just dons his priestly attire and makes his way at night—accompanied by other dignitaries bearing candles—to meet Alexander. The Greek leader, having witnessed the delegation heading his way at night, is informed by his counselors that it is composed of Jewish rebels. However, when morning breaks and they reach Antipatris, Alexander sees Simon the Just. Alexander descends from his chariot and bows before him. His counselors are bewildered. “A great king like you bows before this Jew?” they ask. Alexander replies: “I see his image when I go into battle and I win.” This is the appropriate ending for a political-theological fantasy,41 a genre associated in rabbinic literature with figures such as Vespasian,42 Hadrian,43 and Antoninus.44
Simon the Just’s statesmanship, as we learn from the Alexandrian episode, derives its power from his priestly office. When Simon appears before him, clothed in his white priestly vestments, Alexander acknowledges the superiority of the God that Simon represents. The nature of the knowledge and power entailed in his specific embodiment of that institution is further exemplified in other traditions about Simon. For example, in a large segment in the Babylonian Talmud (Yoma 39a–b), he appears as a metonym for the Second Temple in its glory, and his death signals its decline and corruption. As long as he lived, we are told, the “western candle” (in the Temple) always burned—a sign of the abiding presence of the Shekhinah (divine presence). Similarly, the maʿarakhah, the fire of the great altar, sustained itself from morning to evening. Once he died, the candle ceased to burn, and the fire of the maʿarakhah dwindled and required constant rekindling. In his lifetime, the showbread was sufficient and equally divided among the priests. Once he died, the meek did not receive any bread while the gluttonous got double their share.45 As an exceptionally virtuous character in rabbinic literature, he is imparted with the knowledge of his own demise.46 Simon the Just learns of his impending death from the disappearance of an old man, dressed in white, who used to accompany him annually to the Holy of Holies. When, instead of that man, appears an old man dressed in black who accompanies him while he enters but stays behind when he leaves, Simon knows that his days are numbered.47 It is important to emphasize the locus of his wisdom. The contrast with another rabbinic character, Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai, whose ability to predict the approaching death of the Roman emperor is attributed to his exegetical-midrashic skills (thus legitimizing the foundation of the rabbinic academy in Yavneh), is telling.48 Simon the Just’s knowledge stems from, and is inextricable from, his access to the Temple’s innermost sanctum. The presumption is that there he stood close(r) to God. Yet the text is quick to point out that priesthood in and of itself does not guarantee divine proximity. Simon’s death is followed by deterioration in the priestly ranks.
The characters of Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai and Simon the Just are reflections of the Sages: they are what the rabbis think about such figures and, indirectly, about themselves. As self-reflections, they walk a tightrope, juggling the narcissistic fantasy of identity and the lack of identity-sameness between the subject (Sage) and its representation. Again, it should be emphasized: the lack of sameness is implied in the actual multiplicity of possible reflections. Note also that reflective representations vary in their specific contents, forms, and functions: the discourse surrounding Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai is part of the Yavneh foundation legend.49 The ancestral figure and the foundational institution are imagined accordingly as identical—albeit not entirely—to the Sages who were the authors of rabbinic texts. Moreover, in this imaginative landscape, Rabban Yoḥanan and his academy are not only models; they are imagined as the generators of rabbinic identity in the present. Indeed, a different kind of reflexivity manifests itself in the discourse of Simon the Just, a legendary figure whose death marks the beginning of an end.50 Reflecting on and with this figure means reflecting about a time in which the mere presence of a unique individual was sufficient to keep the flame of the Temple alive and to appease a mighty king, a time in which knowledge was bestowed by proximity in the inner chambers of the Holy of Holies. It also means reflecting from and about a time when there is no Temple and no Holy of Holies. Reflecting at times when scriptural—and later, textual—exegesis constitutes the backbone of rabbinic hermeneutics, and at times when priesthood has lost its past claim to authority and leadership lies in the hands of rabbinic dynasties.51
As the traditions of Simon—including the story of the Nazirite—suggest, the past, or the imagined past, is not obliterated so as to form an identical image of the self in the present. On the contrary, figurative images that are reflected throughout the rabbinic corpus might be termed “internal strangers.” Simon the Just, in our text, is exactly that: he is conceived (as manifestly indicated in tractate Avot) as a rabbinic forefather, a link in a reproductive chain leading up to the rabbinic present(s). The story even ends with a projected sameness, when Simon engages in a typical rabbinic practice: midrash. Yet, as many other rabbinic traditions emphasize, Simon is different. This difference cannot be erased even in our story: the story revolves around sight as an epistemic paradigm as both characters (Simon and the Nazirite) are awakened and stirred to action by what they see. An epistemology based on sight appears elsewhere in rabbinic literature vis-à-vis textually based hermeneutics.52 Although that points to the multifaceted aspects of rabbinic hermeneutics (and the epistemologies to which they correspond), it is possible to argue for the supremacy allotted in rabbinic literature as a whole to a text-oriented epistemology. But, as the story of Simon the Just and the Nazirite shows, this supremacy is not uncontested, and the contest is embodied in other or “semi-other” characters.
The Nazirite: A Possible Self
The Nazirite sets him- or herself apart,53 albeit temporarily. It is the ambivalence of the Nazirite’s position as an every-person/different that thematizes a same/other tension in his character. This tension is endemic to the Nazirite in general and is characteristic of the Nazirite shepherd of our story as well. After all, he is referred to by his title alone.
The Nazirite of our story should be seen in yet another general framework: the discursive context from which he derives his title, the laws pertaining to the Nazir. One key question is the relevance of these laws in the rabbinic period. Why are the rabbis discussing a practice that has, on the face of it, no direct consequence for their own time? This question—along with its possible answers—applies to a whole range of rabbinic discussions addressing Temple and cult practices.54 It seems that, at least in the early rabbinic period, the practice of Naziriteship persisted, albeit, obviously, without its sacrificial component and the purifying rite from corpse impurity (which required the ashes of a red heifer).55 It has also been suggested that Naziriteship represents for the rabbis matters of asceticism in general—a discursive site in which issues of abstention, self-control, and intention are addressed.56 Accordingly, if the Nazirite is referred to as both a sinner and a holy person,57 it attests to the ambivalence that rabbinic culture(s) held toward a pivotal component of its identity (asceticism), a component defined and redefined vis-à-vis the place it comes to occupy in neighboring cultures and religions (paganism and Christianity).
A Samson-Like Self
The Nazirite shepherd of our story operates within a general discursive framework. But he is also a particular Nazirite, implying that reflecting with him and about him may allow for further specifications. He could even be, as noted earlier, a Nazirite whose pure intention is paradoxically manifested in his self-defilement, thus embodying a subversion of the underlying notions of purity and defilement that are essential for the category. Other components render him exceptional. First, we should recall that hair plays a critical role in the story of Samson, the only biblical character explicitly identified as a Nazirite. The story, related in the Book of Judges, has erotic overtones and takes place in the south, between Tsorah and Eshta’ol and in the land of the Philistines. Our story’s shepherd, who also hails from the south, seems to have absorbed something of the erotic vitality
