When the fearsome Alexander Yanai came to power over the Jewish world, he strengthened the position of the Sadducees, the deniers of the Oral Law. To the traditional Jews, or the Pharisees, this was grounds for civil war. Rabbi Wein brings to life the Talmudic stories which reveal Alexander Yanai's paranoia and his defiance of the rabbis which led to one of the bloodiest periods of Jewish history.