168 A History of Judaism
to say, “As long as he is a tax- collector, he is not reliable. [If] he withdrew
from the office of tax- collector, behold, this one is [again] reliable.” ’^14
Much of the evidence for stipulations about the life of these haverim
is preserved for us, as we have seen, in the names of rabbinic sages from
some time after the destruction of the Temple in 70 ce. But traditions of
a dispute between the Houses of Hillel and Shammai on the length of
probation for a prospective haver – the period of thirty days proposed
by the House of Hillel contrasts markedly with the much longer pro-
bation of would- be Essenes – suggest that fellowships of this kind were
already a phenomenon of the first century ce or even earlier.
Self- dedication by an individual could cause much tension within a
family. The Tosefta worries about what should happen if the son of a
haver went to the home of his maternal grandfather, an ordinary Jew.
The compiler of the Tosefta rules leniently that ‘his father does not
worry lest he [the grandfather] feed him foodstuffs requiring conditions
of cleanness’ – unless he knows that this will happen, in which case it is
forbidden. Trading in foodstuffs with ordinary Jews, or lending or giv-
ing food, created all sorts of moral dilemmas, but the rabbinic texts
which report such dilemmas presuppose that such contacts take place
and simply have to be overcome:
An ordinary person who served in a store [owned by a haver ] – even
though the haver comes and goes – behold, this is permissible, and he [the
haver ] does not worry lest he [the ordinary person] have substituted
[untithed produce of his own for the haver ’s tithed merchandise]. If he [the
husband] was trustworthy [in the matter of tithing] and his wife was not
trustworthy, they purchase [produce] from him but do not accept his
hospitality.Such haverim are never described in any source as acting as a group, as
did Pharisees, Sadducees or Essenes, and even nazirites. They did not, so
far as is known, engage other Jews in disputes over purity and tithing.
This was a purely personal dedication. It had implications for the social
reality of their religious lives only because of practicalities: scrupulous
concern for the preparation of food was possible only within house-
holds and groups of the similarly dedicated.^15
What was the relationship of such haverim to the rabbinic sages who
recorded all these rules about how haverim should conduct themselves?
The act of recording does not in itself imply anything about identity: as
we have seen, the editors of the Mishnah and Tosefta each devoted a
tractate to correct fulfilment of the nazirite vow without suggesting that