A Roadmap to the Heavens challenges readers to rethink prevailing ideas
about the social map of Jewish society during the Tannaitic period (70
C.E. - 220 C.E.). New insights were made possible by applying
anthropological theories and conceptual tools. In addition, social
phenomena were better understood by comparing them to similar social
phenomena in other cultures regardless of time and space. The book
explores the rich and complex relationships between the Sages, Priests,
and laymen who competed for hegemony in social, cultural, and political
arenas. The struggle was not simply a case of attempting to displace the
priestly elite by a new scholarly elite. Rather, in the process of
constituting a counter-hegemony, the attitude of the Sages towards the
Priests entailed ambivalent psychological mechanisms, such as
attraction - rejection, imitation - denial, and cooperation -
confrontation. The book further reveals that to achieve political and
social power the Sages used the established hegemonic priestly discourse
to undermine the existing social structure. The innovative discovery of
this monograph is that while the Sages professed a new social order
based on intellectual achievement, they retained elements of the old
order, such as family attribution, group nepotism, endogamy, ritual
purity and impurity, and secret knowledge. Thus, social mobility based
on education was available only to privileged social classes. The
conclusion of the book is that even though the Sages resisted the
priestly hegemony and attempted to disengage from it, they could not
free themselves from the shackles of the priestly discourse and praxis.
