166 A History of Judaism
years,’ and her son returned from the war, and she was a nazirite for seven
years. At the end of the seven years she came up to the Land [of Israel], and
the House of Hillel taught her that she must be a nazirite for yet another
seven years; and at the end of this seven years she contracted uncleanness.
Thus she continued a nazirite for twenty- one years.^11About the religiosity of haverim, or ‘fellows’, we learn only from the
tannaitic texts. A definition of what it is to be a ‘fellow’ was inserted,
without explanation, into a section of the Tosefta which concerns the
treatment of agricultural products about which there is some doubt
whether they have been properly tithed: ‘He who takes upon himself
four things, they accept him as a haver – not to give heave- offering and
[not to give] tithes to [a priest who is] an ordinary person [am haarets –
that is, not a haver ], and not to prepare foodstuffs requiring conditions
of cleanness for ... an ordinary person, and to eat unconsecrated food
in a state of cleanness.’^12
Both this passage and others in the Tosefta assume that some Jews
dedicated themselves to particular care with regard to purity and tith-
ing. Not only did they insist that any tithes they gave to a priest must be
consumed by him in the required state of purity after ritual ablutions,
but they took upon themselves the non- biblical requirement to ensure
that everything they themselves ate – including unconsecrated food –
should be eaten in a state of purity. We have already seen that many
Jews, such as Essenes, Therapeutae and the Yahad, took purity very ser-
iously in the last century before the Temple was destroyed in 70 ce, but
the haverim were apparently distinctive in treating their purity and tith-
ing undertakings as the main focus of their groups and in living their
dedicated lives within the wider Jewish community despite the constant
threat this posed to their piety.
According to the biblical injunctions, the heave- offerings and tithes
taken so seriously by these Jews were dues given to the priests and to the
poor. We have seen the significance of such offerings to the income of
the priests and hence the upkeep of the Temple worship. But the con-
cerns of the haverim seem to have been more with the operation of
giving than with the effects of the gift. The biblical rules were complex
and confusing. The Bible does not prescribe the proper proportion of
agricultural produce to be set aside for a heave- offering, but the Mishnah
records that ‘The proper measure of heave- offering, if a man is liberal,
is one- fortieth part (the House of Shammai say: one- thirtieth); if he is