Hillel and Shammai

Hillel and Shammai were two leading sages of the last century BCE and the early 1st century CE who founded opposing schools of Jewish thought, known as the House of Hillel and House of Shammai. The debate between these schools on matters of ritual practice, ethics, and theology was critical for the shaping of the Oral Law and Judaism as it is today.

Despite the many disputes that later developed between their respective Houses, only five differences are recorded between Hillel and Shammai themselves. In the record of the Talmud alone, there are 316 issues on which they debated; the large number of their disputations led to the saying the one law has become two. The matters they debated included:

In general, the House of Shammai's positions were stricter than those of the House of Hillel. On the few occasions when the opposite was true, the House of Hillel would sometimes later recant their position; similarly, though there are no records of the House of Shammai as a whole changing its stance, a few individuals from it are recorded as deserting a small number of the more stringent opinions of their school, in favour of the viewpoint of the House of Hillel.

The principles of the House of Shammai in relation to foreign policy were similar to those of the Zealots, among whom they therefore found support. As, over the course of the 1st century, public indignation against the Romans grew, the House of Shammai gradually gained the upper hand, and the gentle and conciliatory House of Hillel came to be ostracised from the House of Shammai's public acts of prayer.

As the Jewish conflict with the Romans grew, the nations surrounding Judea (then part of Roman Iudaea province) all sided with the Romans, causing the House of Shammai to propose that all commerce and communication between Jew and Gentile should be completely prohibited. The House of Hillel disagreed, but when the Sanhedrin convened to discuss the matter, the Zealots sided with the House of Shammai.

Subsequently Eleazar ben Ananias, the Temple captain and a leader of the militant Zealots, invited the students of both schools to meet at his house; Eleazar placed armed men at the door, and instructed them to let no-one leave the meeting. During the discussions many of the House of Hillel were killed, meaning that those present from the House of Shammai were able to force all the remaining individuals to adopt a radically restrictive set of rules known as The Eighteen Articles; later Jewish history came to look back on the occasion as a day of misfortune.

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