King Alexander Yannai on Hypocrisy

The King Priest Alexander Yannai, aka, Alexander Janneaus, was dying and gave his wife Solome the following advice (per BT Tractate Sota),

"...beware of hypocrites who appear like the Peru-shim [Pharisees] as their actions are like the act of Zimri [public copulation with an idol worshiper in Numbers 25, which is this week's parshah] and they request a reward like Pinchas..."

Interestingly, according to the historian Josephus, Alexander Yannai was actually anti Pharisee, to the point of occasional persecution, but his wife, Solome had a brother who was among the leader of the Pharisees. Solome became Queen, the only Queen of the 2nd commonwealth, after Yannai died and her brother became head of the Sanhedrin (per Josephus explicitly and also implicitly in various parts of the Talmud).



The first image is of a 16th century artist and is from the Wikipedia website of Alexander Janneaus.

The second image, also from Wikipedia, is a 17th century creation showing Yannai feasting while Pharisees are being executed.

Sort of Admitting to Hypocrisy

Dr. Mark Lurie is a professor specializing in epidemiology at Brown University.

Back in March 2020, Lurie said, 

"The virus doesn't care about your party affiliation or you political beliefs....If you don't follow the CDC recommendations, you're increasing (the chance) that you're going to get infected and that you're going to infect other people... "denialism" is something that's been seen at the beginning of other epidemics, but the more coronavirus infiltrates our daily lives, the more people are going to take it more seriously." 

But in today's New York Times, Lurie, who apparently joined some of the non socially distanced protests, is quoted,

 “Instinctively, many of us in public health feel a strong desire to act against accumulated generations of racial injustice....But we have to be honest: A few weeks before, we were criticizing protesters for arguing to open up the economy and saying that was dangerous behavior. I am still grappling with that.”

Mark Lurie's comments after social distancing back in March are here.

Mark Lurie's comments post protests are here.

Mark Lurie's page at Brown University is here.