{"id":157,"date":"2009-07-13T07:30:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-13T07:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/07\/there-are-certain-things-we.html"},"modified":"2009-07-13T07:30:00","modified_gmt":"2009-07-13T07:30:00","slug":"there-are-certain-things-we","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/07\/there-are-certain-things-we.html","title":{"rendered":"A Jewish Pope?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There are certain things we take for granted about Judaism that turn out not to be so. Like that Jews never proselytized. That they don&#8217;t have a mission to the world. And that, for another example, Judaism after the destruction of the Temple was forever after a totally decentralized affair. We never had anything remotely like a pope or caliph. True or false?<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<div>Over the weekend I was looking at an interesting new book,&nbsp;<i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/428-AD-Ordinary-Roman-Empire\/dp\/0691136696\">428 AD: An Ordinary Year at the End of the Roman Empire<\/a><\/i>&nbsp;(Princeton University Press), by Giusto Traina. As Traina points out, for Jews it was a more than ordinary year. 428 marked the end of the office of Jewish patriarch in Roman Palestine &#8212; a hereditary position last occupied by Gamaliel VI. As the head of world Jewry, the patriarch, or&nbsp;<i>nasi<\/i>, took in funds and distributed offices to subordinates, &#8220;apostles,&#8221; who were sent out to the diaspora. The emperor Theodosius II took the occasion of Gamaliel&#8217;s death without heirs to abolish the office.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>An &#8220;exilarch,&#8221; tracing descent to King David, meanwhile ruled the Jewish community from Babylon (Iraq) until 1401 when that office was abolished by Tamerlane.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Today, due to our sins, the closest analogue would be Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are certain things we take for granted about Judaism that turn out not to be so. Like that Jews never proselytized. That they don&#8217;t have a mission to the world. And that, for another example, Judaism after the destruction of the Temple was forever after a totally decentralized affair. We never had anything remotely&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":72,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jewish-history"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A Jewish Pope? - Kingdom of Priests<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/07\/there-are-certain-things-we.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Jewish Pope? - Kingdom of Priests\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There are certain things we take for granted about Judaism that turn out not to be so. Like that Jews never proselytized. That they don&#8217;t have a mission to the world. And that, for another example, Judaism after the destruction of the Temple was forever after a totally decentralized affair. We never had anything remotely&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/07\/there-are-certain-things-we.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Kingdom of Priests\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-07-13T07:30:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"David Klinghoffer\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"A Jewish Pope? - Kingdom of Priests","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/07\/there-are-certain-things-we.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"A Jewish Pope? - Kingdom of Priests","og_description":"There are certain things we take for granted about Judaism that turn out not to be so. Like that Jews never proselytized. That they don&#8217;t have a mission to the world. And that, for another example, Judaism after the destruction of the Temple was forever after a totally decentralized affair. We never had anything remotely&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/07\/there-are-certain-things-we.html","og_site_name":"Kingdom of Priests","article_published_time":"2009-07-13T07:30:00+00:00","author":"David Klinghoffer","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/07\/there-are-certain-things-we.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/07\/there-are-certain-things-we.html","name":"A Jewish Pope? - Kingdom of Priests","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-07-13T07:30:00+00:00","dateModified":"2009-07-13T07:30:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/#\/schema\/person\/6e6734f7e172e24221264a565e8f4454"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/07\/there-are-certain-things-we.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/07\/there-are-certain-things-we.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/07\/there-are-certain-things-we.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"A Jewish Pope?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/","name":"Kingdom of Priests","description":"David Klinghoffer","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/#\/schema\/person\/6e6734f7e172e24221264a565e8f4454","name":"David Klinghoffer","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/285\/28517f740f5d348f010a20178619ea6cx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/285\/28517f740f5d348f010a20178619ea6cx96.jpg","caption":"David Klinghoffer"},"description":"David Klinghoffer is an author and senior fellow in the Religious, Liberty & Public Life program at the Discovery Institute. His writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the National Review, the Weekly Standard, and the Jewish Forward. A California native, he currently lives on Mercer Island, Washington, with his wife and five children.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/author\/dklinghoffer"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/72"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}