One Passover in Vancouver

by Eliezer Segal

Like so many historical milestones, differences have arisen regarding the precise details of this encounter. Everyone remembers that it occurred on Passover, but they disagree about the date. She places it in 1922, when Passover began on Wednesday evening, and the meal in question occurred on Friday evening. He, on the other hand, recalled it as happening in 1921 when the first day of Passover fell on Shabbat. 

Both versions concur that Esther and David Marks (originally: Marcowitz) of Vancouver were observing their normal custom of inviting visiting entertainers for a splendid Friday night meal. 

The Markses were a wealthy and socially prominent couple, active in the general and Jewish communities. They had a special affection for theatrical performers. Those were the days of vaudeville, entertainers who would travel through circuits of theatres throughout North America. In Vancouver the most active venue for these shows was the old Orpheum, and many rising stars passed through it during that period.

That year one of the acts that was appearing at the Orpheum was the Marx Brothers. The Markses (not related to the Marxes) extended an invitation to the comedians, but in the end the only brother to show up for that Passover meal was not one of the notorious zany characters, but their straight man, Herbert Manfred Marx, known in their stage act as “Zeppo.” 

Zeppo arrived at the Marks house in the company of another performer, a frequent roomie of his, a comedian named Benjamin Kubelsky from Waukegan, Illinois. Zeppo persuaded the shy Benjamin to attend, assuring him that “he knew some fascinating Vancouver girls and it would be wild, with Canadian ale, Canadian rye, Canadian women and Canadian whoopee.” Benjamin protested that the prospect held no attraction for him, but he consented to be dragged along nonetheless—only to discover that this was no rowdy fling, but a wholesome Jewish Shabbat meal (or seder, depending on which version we accept).

The nearest thing they encountered there to the wild Canadian women promised by Zeppo were the Markses’ two teenage daughters, Ethel (“Babe”) and Sadie, about nineteen and seventeen respectively. (The precise ages vary in the telling). Sadie tried to impress the guests by dressing above her age and playing violin, but her efforts were not well received.

Kubelski was clearly bored, and he whispered audibly to Zeppo, “What did you bring me to meet these kids for? Let’s get out of here!” This did not help ingratiate him in Sadie’s estimation. Afterwards, she and some classmates attended some of Benjamin’s performances in order to heckle. 

A few years later the Marks family had moved to Los Angeles where Sadie was employed at the May Company department store. Kubelsky, now known by his stage name of Jack Benny, was performing in that city and befriended Sadie’s older sister. Their acquaintance was renewed and went through many ups and downs, until they were married in a small Jewish wedding ceremony in Waukegan, attended only by immediate family, on  Friday afternoon, January 14, 1927. He was unaware that this was the same silly teenage girl whom he had ignored at that Passover meal in Vancouver.

Neither Jack nor Sadie—who adopted the professional name Mary Livingstone—was particularly outspoken about their Judaism. Both of them identified their parents as “strictly Orthodox,” whereas their adopted daughter Joan recalled that her grandparents “weren’t particularly religious,” though they lit Shabbat candles and were at home in Yiddish culture. I suspect that the discrepancy reflects differing expectations and stereotypes of what Orthodox Jews should be like.

Although it has been suggested that Jack Benny was uncomfortable with his Jewish identity, the reasons underlying this perception are not quite convincing. 

His proverbial miserliness has been criticized as the exploitation of an antisemitic trope, but it blends with a bundle of other personality flaws, especially his vanity, that somehow make him come across as endearing.

The fact that he and Mary relinquished their original Jewish names apparently stemmed (at least initially) from other motives. While still rising in the showbiz ranks Jack was pressured by performers with similar names (Jan Kubelik and Ben Bernie) to maintain a clear differentiation from them. Sadie took the name of “Mary Livingstone” when she was hired to replace an actress who was already playing a character of that name. In any case, there was no shame in having a Jewish name in a profession that was dominated by borscht-belt stars like Jolsen, Jessel and Cantor. Even gentiles like Bing Crosby were constantly throwing in Yiddish expressions. In a scratchy recording of a rehearsal of his radio show it is possible to hear Jack sharing crude Yiddish insults with his producer Hilliard Marks (Mary’s brother) about one of the crew members.

Jack’s ensemble often included a parody of a thickly accented Yiddish immigrant, a carryover from an old vaudeville convention now known as “Jewface,” which had undeniable antisemitic overtones. And yet Benny’s exemplifications of this stereotype—the pushy Shlepperman and the whimsical Mr. Kitzel—were both depicted affectionately. 

I don’t think any Jewish religious traditions were ever mentioned on the show except in the occasional Mr. Kitzel sketch. Jack did devote shows every year to Christmas and Easter, but without any religious content. The Christmas shows were about shopping for gifts, with Jack driving the store clerk crazy with his indecisiveness; and Easter was limited to the parade or egg-hunt.

His well-known generosity (the real Jack Benny was the opposite of his tightfisted stage persona) extended to Jewish and Zionist causes.

If the crucial Passover meal in Vancouver was actually a seder, then it presumably included the recitation of “Next year in Jerusalem!” Jack would fulfil that prayer, including a visit to the Western Wall, in September 1943 as part of an entertainment tour for the United States armed forces. He again performed in the Jewish state in 1972, two years before his death.

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A Prophet in Persia

by Eliezer Segal

Esther has many claims to greatness in the Jewish memory. She was a brave and loyal member of her community, the heroine of the book that bears her name, a renowned beauty, and monarch of the Persian empire.

Rabbinic tradition adds yet another important aspect to Esther’s greatness: she was a prophet.

The Hebrew word for prophet— “n’vi’ah” —is not actually used in connection with Esther, but various rabbis proposed different textual sources for the claim. 

Rabbi Ḥanina derived it by employing a common hermeneutical method, the “gezerah shavah,” that allows the exegete to expound similarities between occurrences of identical words in the Bible. In this case, he focused on the passage where the queen is preparing for her fateful approach to the king to invite him and Haman to a banquet. The Bible here employs the expression “It came to pass on the third day, that Esther was clothed in royalty.” The Talmud notes that royalty—as distinct from “royal apparel”—is not something that can be worn physically. Therefore the reference must be to a spiritual entity. “This teaches that the holy spirit clothed her.” This interpretation finds support in an episode in the book of Chronicles about the warriors who pledged their allegiance to David when he was fleeing from King Saul. Of all the men who were present, only Amasai took the initiative of addressing David: “Then the spirit clothed Amasai, who was chief of the captains… and he said: We are yours, David.” 

To be sure, being “clothed” by the spirit might just mean that Amasai was animated with the courage to speak out on this occasion. At any rate, Rabbi Ḥanina understood it as relating to supernatural inspiration. In rabbinic parlance, the holy spirit is the conduit through which the Almighty communicates prophetically with his creatures. From this Rabbi Ḥanina inferred that the similar expression used in connection with Esther was also referring to prophetic inspiration.

An earlier rabbinic collection took a different approach to demonstrating Esther’s prophetic status. Seder ‘Olam, a chronological treatise ascribed to the second-century sage Rabbi Yosé ben Ḥalafta cites the verse about how “the decree of Esther confirmed these matters of Purim; and it was written in the book.” 

Rabbi Yosé understood that Esther was not merely instituting a new holiday, but authorizing that the story of its origin be accepted into sacred scripture. This implied that the book of Esther, like all the other books of the Hebrew Bible, had been revealed prophetically, and that Esther was therefore to be ranked as a prophet.

Whether or not the book of Esther qualifies as inspired scripture was discussed from several perspectives. Some rabbis pointed to passages in the book that describe people’s thoughts or actions that human observers could not have known of. But others countered that it was possible for people’s thoughts to be discerned by means of their observable behaviour. (Of course modern readers take for granted that narrators of fiction can penetrate the thoughts of the characters.)

The Talmud imagines how, when Esther approached her contemporary sages insisting that her story be included among the sacred scriptures, they objected, whether out of fear of offending their gentile neighbours or because the Torah set strict limits to the acceptance of new scriptural books. In the end, they were able to creatively expound phrases in the Torah so as to justify Esther’s request, though some rabbis remained hesitant about recognizing the Megillah as holy writ in all respects.

Among all the reasons that the Talmud proposed for classifying Esther as a prophet, there is one whose absence might surprise some of us: she is not credited with accurate predictions of future events. 

In some ways this is a reassuring fact. Jews often find themselves insisting that the Hebrew navi is not primarily a “prophet” in the sense of a foreteller; and that the conventional English translation, which goes back to the ancient Greek version of the Torah, reflects the centrality of oracles and divination in Greek religious life. The navi, on the other hand, transmits God’s message in many ways, particularly to chastise the people for their moral shortcomings or to console them in difficult times. 

Be that as it may, the Babylonian Talmud attached much importance to predictions as part of the navi’s job description.

In both Seder ‘Olam and the Talmud, Esther is mentioned as one of seven female prophets (Sarah, Miriam, Hannah, Deborah, Abigail, Hulda and Esther). Both works cite prooftexts in support of the claims. As tends to happen in such cases, the authority of the Babylonian Talmud influenced medieval scribes to impose its readings on other texts, so that the standard editions of Seder ‘Olam do not differ significantly from the Talmud. However, in the most reliable manuscripts of Seder ‘Olam the choice of proof-texts is at times quite notable.

As regards most of those women, Seder ‘Olam is satisfied with quoting texts that use the word “nevi’ah” in connection with them; however, the Babylonian Talmud prefers to ascribe to them specific predictions of future events. This difference might reflect a fundamental divergence between the rabbis of Babylonia and of the land of Israel concerning the navi’s job description. Is it defined primarily by predictions, or by the broader mission to serve as a messenger of the holy spirit?

An intriguing possibility was suggested by Rabbi Levi ben Gershom (Gersonides). He focused on the Talmud’s prooftext about Esther clothing herself in royalty on the third day, explaining it literally, as an example of the meticulous planning that she invested in her strategy to persuade the king and disarm Haman. This included choosing her most impressive regal wardrobe, carefully timing her entry before the king’s presence, insightful psychological readings of Ahasuerus and Haman, and more. 

The Talmud observes that “a wise person is preferable to a prophet.” Perhaps it was Esther’s astute strategic wisdom, more than any supernatural prophetic communication, that succeeded in saving the Jews.

First publication:

• Alberta Jewish News, February 26, 2025, p. 31.

For Further Reading:

• Bar-Ilan, Meir. Some Jewish Women in Antiquity. Brown Judaic Studies, 2020. 
• Freudenthal, Gad. “Gersonide, Génie Solitaire: Remarques sur l’Evolution de sa Pensée et de ses Méthodes sur Quelques Points.” In Les Méthodes de Travail de Gersonide et le Maniement du Savoir chez les Scolastiques, edited by Colette Sirat, Sara Klein-Braslavi, and Olga Weijers, 291–317. Etudes de Philosophie Médiévale 86. Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, 2003.
• Milikowsky, Chaim Joseph, ed. Seder Olam: Critical Edition, Commentary, and Introduction. Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi Press: Rabbi Moses and Amaliah Rosen Foundation, 2013.
• Segal, Eliezer. The Babylonian Esther Midrash: A Critical Commentary. 3 vols. Brown Judaic Studies 292–294. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993.
• Walfish, Barry. Esther in Medieval Garb: Jewish Interpretation of the Book of Esther in the Middle Ages. SUNY Series in Judaica. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993.

My email address is: [email protected]

Tree Huggers

by Eliezer Segal

The Torah, as is well known, has much respect for trees, especially those that bear fruit. Whenever it extolls the virtues of the land of Israel, the country’s distinctive fruits are placed at the top of its list of assets. The Israelites were forbidden to destroy fruit trees when besieging Canaanite cities.

However, some limits are set to the admiration of fruit trees.

Evidently, there was a serious problem of people worshipping trees as deities. The expressions used in the Torah are rather vague, and do not clearly spell out what is being prohibited or why it is deemed problematic.

Among the rules for the holy Temple, Moses stipulates, “Thou shalt not plant thee an asherah of any trees near unto the altar of the Lord thy God.” If an “asherah” is an idol, it is hard to understand why the prohibition should be restricted to the Temple since idol-worship should not be permitted in any place. 

Several commentators were therefore inclined to accept a metaphoric exposition proposed by sages in the Talmud, that the Torah was equating the appointment of unworthy judges to acourt of competent scholars, with the planting of an asherah next to the Temple altar. 

At any rate, the reference to planting indicates that the forbidden asherah is a tree, or at least some kind of plant.

The next verse states, “Neither shalt thou set thee up any image, which the Lord thy God hateth.” This also supports the view (though in itself it does not prove it) that the asherah was an idol.

Nahmanides observed that the word “asherah” is related to the Hebrew root meaning “straight,” and that the custom of the idolaters was to position an asherah at the entrances to their sanctuaries in order to guide the worshipers’ steps in the right direction.

In the narratives of the Bible’s historical books, we find more specific evidence of the asherah and its nature, though it is still difficult to emerge with a consistent picture. 

In the book of Judges, the Lord commanded Gideon to “tear down your father’s altar to Baal and cut down the asherah pole beside it.” Concerning the Judeans, Jeremiah lamented that “ their children remember their altars and their asherahs by the green trees upon the high hills.” The book of Kings described how the evil monarchs Ahab and Manasseh placed asherahs in the Jerusalem Temple. The objects remained there until the religious reforms instituted by King Josiah after the discovery of the lost text of Deuteronomy when he ordered “to bring forth out of the temple of the Lord all the vessels that were made for Baal, and for the asherah, and for all the host of heaven: and he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron… And he brought out the asherah from the house of the Lord, outside Jerusalem, unto the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron, and stamped it small to powder.”

Based on texts like these, several commentators inferred that it was common in pagan sanctuaries like those devoted to Baal to position asherahs next to the main idol; and this was the reason why the Torah specified that the Israelites must resist the temptation to emulate this practice, to avoid giving the impression that they were sacrificing to the asherah. 

Despite the prophets’ determination to uphold a radical contrast between the religion of Israel and its Canaanite neighbours, the archeological evidence confirms the impression that often the common people were not very scrupulous in maintaining that contrast.

It remains unclear what exactly an asherah was. Was it a deity in its (presumably: her) own right, like the Baal that it so often accompanied? Or was it a physical object that represented the god’s power—a tree, wooden pole or sacred grove? All these options have their scholarly defenders.

You might imagine that, being physical artifacts, idols would be easier to understand than verbal texts that are susceptible to diverse interpretations. Indeed, this would have been true if the archeological relics were explicitly labelled as asherahs.

The disappointing truth, however, is that we possess numerous statues and images of female deities (often fertility goddesses), ceremonial poles, and tree images—but they are not necessarily identified as asherah figures. Scholarship in recent generations has been eager to grasp at any possible evidence for a primordial goddess cult.

One of the few scriptural passages that portrays the asherah unambiguously as a worshipped being is the story of the dramatic confrontation to which the prophet Elijah invited “the prophets of Baal four hundred and fifty, and the prophets of the Asherah four hundred,” assigning Asherah a status comparable to that of the male god Baal. 

The Mishnah dealt briefly with the asherah as a tree venerated by idolaters. There is however a halakhic rule that natural formations like mountains and trees cannot be forbidden as objects of heathen worship, prompting the sages to discuss what degree of human involvement with a tree would be necessary to classify it as a prohibited idol. However, there is no suggestion in those talmudic discussions of any mythological identifications of the asherahs with a specific deity.

Maimonides, consistent with his tendency to interpret obscure biblical prohibitions as reactions to the pagan cults that were prevalent in Moses’s generation, cited the work known as “the Nabatean Agriculture,” supposedly an Arabic translation of a document composed by the heathen “Sabians.” Maimonides ridicules one of their myths about a power struggle between two asherah plants. “It is a long story, and you may learn from it the opinions and the ‘wisdom’ of the men of that time. Such were the wise men in those days of darkness of Babel to whom reference is made in Scripture, and such were the beliefs in which they were trained.”

I am not so sure that today we have necessarily made much progress in our attitudes—either to trees or to goddesses.

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Mending Misdeeds, Maccabee Style

by Eliezer Segal

The familiar Hanukkah story tells about a clearly defined conflict pitting Jewish monotheists against hellenizing pagans, between followers of the one God of Israel and the idolatrous cult of the Olympian deities.

However, the Jewish fighters might not have been completely unwavering in their rejection of idolatry. We find a suggestion to that effect in the Second Book of Maccabees (“2 Maccabees”), a record of the Hasmonean uprising composed in Greek in Egypt or Libya shortly after the events. It describes how Judah Maccabee organized a force to collect the bodies of fallen soldiers and prepare them for burial in ancestral graves. While carrying out this task, they discovered, hidden under the tunics of the corpses, objects devoted to the gods of Jamnia. 

It is not clear whether the deceased soldiers actually worshipped those objects or had merely taken them as battlefield mementos. In any case, it was obvious to Judah and his followers, and to the pious authors of 2 Maccabees, that this lapse from Torah standards must have been the reason for their deaths. In recognition of this fact, “they all blessed the Lord who judges righteously and who makes the hidden things visible.” They prayed that God should now obliterate this weighty sin. Judah admonished the Jews to draw the appropriate conclusions and not be lured into the same fatal temptation.

Not content with all this, he took up a general collection from the populace, amounting to the immense sum of 2,000 silver drachmas which he sent to Jerusalem to purchase sin-offerings. The narrator commends Judah not only for the act itself, but for its underlying theological message. 

“For had he not expected that the fallen would be resurrected, it would have been pointless and silly to pray for the dead –and having in view the most beautiful reward that awaits those who lie down in piety, a holy and pious notion. Therefore he made atonement for the dead so that they would be absolved of the sin.” 

In fact, neither the rabbinic traditions nor any other ancient authors speak of sin-offerings or other sacrifices being offered on behalf of the dead. 

It has been suggested plausibly that Judah Maccabee was more concerned for possible immediate repercussions of his soldiers’ indiscretions, recalling the defeat that Joshua’s army suffered when Achan pilfered from the spoils of Jericho.

At any rate, the doctrine of resurrection was a controversial issue in the Jewish world at the time, and was rejected by sects like the Sadducees. Along with the Pharisees and the rabbis who succeeded them, the authors of 2 Maccabees were strongly committed to this belief and never missed an opportunity to insert it into their narrative. Some scholars speculate that the belief originated among the Egyptians who were famously obsessed with the afterlife, and it subsequently spread to major Jewish centres like Alexandria where 2 Maccabees was likely composed.

There is another closely related question that is raised by this episode: Is it really possible for later generations to benefit the souls of the departed? As regards sin-offerings, the established rule in rabbinic law is that a sacrifice whose original owner died is disqualified from further use.

The ancient Jewish sages spoke frequently of “the merits of the ancestors,” reassuring us (especially during the penitential season) that even if we are found wanting when we stand in judgement before the creator, we may draw from the stockpiles of merit accrued by our righteous forefathers. However it is hard to find examples in the Midrash and Talmud where the process operates in the reverse direction. 

One passage that was discussed in this context was an early Midrash explaining the procedure for expiating communal guilt when a murderer was not identified. The priest prays, “Forgive, O Lord your people Israel, whom you have redeemed.” The Midrash interprets that the desired forgiveness is meant to apply to the generation of the exodus, to the living and to the dead; and concludes: “This implies that the dead are in need of atonement.” This text was known to some medieval Jewish authorities but was generally not considered authoritative. 

Rav Sherira Ga’on, the tenth-century head of the Babylonian talmudic academy, wrote pointedly that a person’s fate in the afterlife “is only according to his deeds. Even if all the saints in the world were to pray for mercy on his behalf, and all acts of charity were performed for his sake, they would not benefit him one bit.”

The recitation of prayers for the souls of the dead does not appear in Jewish liturgies until well into the medieval era. The familiar Ashkenazic memorial prayers such as “Yizkor” or “E-l Male Rahamim,” are first attested in communal Memorial-Books like that of Nuremberg dating from the late thirteenth century. These prayers were for martyrs, prominent scholars or others who had made notable contributions to the community. 

Similar questions were raised in the ancient Christian church. In the early fifth century, Augustine was asked whether there was any scriptural foundation to the widespread practices of praying and performing other religious obligations on behalf of the deceased. He acknowledged, “In the books of the Maccabees we read of sacrifices offered for the dead.” However, what was crucial for him was not the flimsy textual evidence so much as the established practice of the church for whom the “recommendation of the dead” held an honoured place among the customary prayers. 

Although Augustine himself did not go so far as to include 2 Maccabees in the official Christian canon, he recognized that it was a convenient proof text for important Catholic beliefs like resurrection, duties to the dead, and even for the doctrine of Purgatory, the stage between death and final judgment. These questions would be revived during the Protestant Reformation. 

Thus, the Jewish Second Book of Maccabees continues to live among Christians as part of their “Apocrypha,” well after its abandonment by Jewish tradition.

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Honest to Goodness

by Eliezer Segal

A well-known platitude has it that “it’s a sin to tell a lie,” and many people seriously believe that the Bible forbids uttering any untruths.

Yes, one of the Ten Commandments forbids bearing false witness, but this seems to refer to specific judicial contexts which are likely also to involve perjury and the profanation of the Lord’s name. To be sure, a venerable Christian tradition, formulated by prominent theologians like Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, argues that all falsehoods are sinful, though some are more serious than others. And among Jewish philosophers, Maimonidees made an exception to his usual advocacy of the “middle way,” by insisting that a virtuous person should eschew all forms of falsehood. “It is forbidden to utter a single word of deception or fraud. Rather, one should have only truthful speech, a proper spirit and a heart pure from all deceit and trickery.” 

Although dishonesty is not recommended as a general course of behaviour, there are numerous stories in the Bible where the heroes lie or mislead, and do not appear to be censured for it.

For example: When our aging ancestor Abraham realized that the time had come to find a wife for his son Isaac, he was conscious of his predicament: As the sole member of the Hebrew community that was dedicated to serving the one universal God, how could he expect to find a suitable young lady to integrate into his family and monotheistic movement?

One thing Abraham was sure of was that the local Canaanite populace were unacceptable to him as spouses or inlaws. With that in mind, he instructed his trusted servant, “thou shalt not take a wife unto my son of the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I dwell. But thou shalt go unto my land, and to my birthplace, and take a wife unto my son Isaac.”

When the servant finally arrived in Haran and was convinced that Rebekah would be an ideal mate for Isaac, he reported to her family the instructions he had received. However, according to his version of the events, Abraham had stipulated “thou shalt go unto my father’s house, and to my kindred, and take a wife unto my son.” That is to say, apparently, that the patriarch had explicitly demanded that Isaac’s wife must be a member of Abraham’s family, and not merely a resident of his home town, as had been stated in the Torah’s original third-person narration.

The fifteenth-century Spanish exegete Rabbi Isaac Arama understood that this manipulation of the truth was part of the servant’s ingenious negotiating strategy. He wanted Rebekah’s family to think that, though Haran may have been Abraham’s first preference for finding a bride, the patriarch was not entirely rejecting the possibility of settling for a local Canaanite girl (though of course he really was!) if the negotiations over Rebekah fell through. Rabbi Arama concluded that “this kind of deviousness was justified in order to bring about the divine purpose” of uniting Isaac and Rebekah.

The servant’s misrepresentation also bothered Arama’s contemporary Don Isaac Abravanel. He explained that it was intended to enhance the attractiveness of his offer by making Rebekah’s family feel specially honoured by being chosen, “so that they would think that Abraham was very desirous of their relationship.” To assist in achieving that noble objective overrides the lesser prohibition of uttering falsehoods, and hence his behaviour should be deemed unobjectionable.

The fourth-century Babylonian teacher Rava once observed cynically that “there is no truth in the world.” Then he made the acquaintance of a certain Rav Tavut or Tavyomei who insisted that he would never tell a lie even if tempted by all the world’s wealth. 

This honest man then told Rava about his visit to a locality named Kushta (Aramaic for “truth”; by medieval convention the name Kushta became the Hebrew equivalent for Constantinople). The residents of that place never departed from the truth, a virtue that they believed safeguarded them all from premature deaths. Rav Tavut relocated there, married a local girl and raised a family.

All was well until one day when a neighbour came knocking on their door while his wife was washing her hair. According to the standards of propriety in those days, it was considered vulgar to speak of such matters, so he simply said that his wife was not home. This violation of the town’s commitment to uncompromising truthfulness undermined their immunity to premature death—resulting in the deaths of his two innocent children. The townspeople realized what had happened and asked him to leave in order to avoid causing further suffering.

The ancient Jewish sages observed that even God, who is equated with Truth, is not above bending the truth for a legitimate purpose. 

Thus, when Sarah heard the divine promise that she would bear a child at the age of ninety, the Torah says that she laughed, thinking that she was too old “and my husband is old.” But when God reported that conversation to Abraham, he deleted her comment about her husband’s age. The rabbis understood that the deletion was intended to spare Abraham’s feelings and avoid any resentment that might threaten the couple’s domestic harmony. From this they concluded, “Great is peace, as even the blessed Holy One strayed from the truth for its sake.”

The issue is really more nuanced than it at first appears. The Hebrew word “emet” that is usually translated as “truth” does not really denote mere factual accuracy, but rather trustworthiness and other noble metaphysical and moral ideals—whose achievement might actually conflict with the demands of simple factual truth. Indeed, the upholding of peace can outweigh the virtues of brutal honesty.

Nevertheless, in our current political and commercial cultures, which are steeped in shameless fraudulence, it is surely preferable to minimize our tolerance of untruthfulness.

This, at least, is how I see the issue. 

Honestly.

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The Forgotten Festival

by Eliezer Segal

Sukkot, the festival of Tabernacles, has two principal rituals: (1) the carrying of four species of plants in a procession in the Temple or synagogue, and (2) dwelling in booths. As understood by the rabbinic tradition, these ceremonies are quite distinct and seem to reflect differing aspects of the holiday.

A very different picture seems to emerge from the book of Nehemiah when it describes the great assembly that was convened by Ezra at the return of the Babylonian captivity. On that occasion, Ezra read and expounded from “the book of the Torah of Moses.” On the first day of the seventh month, which coincided with Rosh Hashanah, the people wept as they realized that they were not keeping the festival regulations as prescribed in the Torah, and they had to be encouraged to celebrate it as a joyous feast.

Upon reconvening on the second day, 

they found written in the law which the Lord had commanded through Moses, that the children of Israel should dwell in booths in the feast of the seventh month. And that they should publish and proclaim in all their cities, and in Jerusalem, saying, Go forth unto the mount, and fetch olive branches, and pine branches, and myrtle branches, and palm branches, and branches of thick trees, to make booths, as it is written. So the people went forth and brought them, and made themselves booths… for since the days of Joshua the son of Nun unto that day the children of Israel had not done so.

Now this account raises numerous difficulties.

For starters: Is it really imaginable that a festival that was commanded in the Torah had not been observed since the earliest days of Israelite history?

This question was taken up by the sages of the Talmud: “Is it possible that King David arose, and yet neither the Jews of his time nor of all subsequent generations constructed sukkahs until the advent of Ezra?” (Indeed, scripture explicitly describes how King Solomon celebrated the festival when he inaugurated the Jerusalem Temple.) The rabbis proposed a rather technical solution to the question, explaining that the holiday had in fact been observed throughout the era of the first Temple, albeit not in exactly the same manner as in the days of Joshua and Ezra. 

Critical  biblical historians cite this episode as evidence that the relevant passages in the Torah (what they designate the “Priestly Document”) were later creations that were not composed or redacted until the era of the Babylonian exile, when they were published and circulated to a populace that until then was unfamiliar with Sukkot or other holy days.

Furthermore, from the narrative in Nehemiah it would appear that there was no separate command to take hold of the “lulav” and the other three plant species, but rather that the people fetched those items in order “to make booths.” That is to say, they were the materials out of which the booths were constructed and decorated. Indeed, Rabbi Judah ben Ilai in the Mishnah ruled that a sukkah must be built from the four species.

Although the lists of plants in Nehemiah overlap tantalizingly with those in the Torah, they are not identical. The Torah in Leviticus mentions four items while Nehemiah has five. The overlap includes the branches of “thick trees” which the rabbis equated with myrtle (hadas, whose leaves cluster around the branch), and palm leaves or fronds.

The Torah speaks of an undefined “fruit of a goodly tree” which Jewish tradition identified as the citron, etrog. Nehemiah on the other hand has “olive leaves and oil trees.” This might indicate that the author interpreted the Torah’s “goodly tree” as the olive, the source of valued oil. Many traditional and modern commentators identify the “oil” tree as pine. However, even this does not quite match, inasmuch as the verse refers to leaves and trees (wood), but not to fruit. 

Commentators were forced to ingeniously stretch the semantic range of the Hebrew words that normally designate trees, leaves, branches and fruits, in order to turn them into materials suitable for building walls or decorative hangings. Some even suggested that “to make booths” here really meant “to celebrate Sukkot.”

Diverse branches of ancient Judaism took differing positions on these questions. 

Philo of Alexandria wrote at considerable length about how dwelling in plain booths commemorates the autumn equinox and the completion of the agricultural ingathering, and brings all humanity to the state of simple equality that is a prerequisite for true justice. In all this he made no mention of a separate ceremony of carrying the “four species.”

Similarly, the Samaritans, who claim to be the authentic remnants of the Israelite tribes who resisted the innovations introduced during the Babylonian exile, insist that the plant species were used for building sukkahs. This was the position generally favoured by medieval Karaite Jews; though some—like the respected fourteenth-century Byzantine scholar Aaron ben Elijah—after making an objective assessment of the scriptural texts and their possible interpretation, leaned towards the rabbinic interpretation even though in principle Karaites rejected the authority of the talmudic tradition. 

On the other hand, the ancient book of Jubilees, revered by the Essene sect, described the Sukkot holiday—whose origin it traced back to Abraham—in terms that dovetailed with the rabbinic version:

For it is ordained forever regarding Israel that they should celebrate it and dwell in booths, and set wreaths upon their heads, and take leafy boughs, and willows from the brook. And Abraham took branches of palm trees, and the fruit of goodly trees, every day going round the altar with the branches seven times in the morning.

Similar statements are found in non-rabbinic authors like Josephus Flavius and the Second Book of Maccabees.

With this wealth of opportunities for the interpretation of Sukkot as a celebration of history, nature and spirituality, may we all succeed in making our holiday an event that is truly unforgettable.

My email address is: [email protected]

Holiness by the Numbers

by Eliezer Segal

The Torah is not very informative about how it chose the date for the holiday that we celebrate as “Rosh Hashanah,” which has no obvious historical or agricultural explanation.

Among the Jewish commentators who tried to deal with this question was the eminent twelfth-century philosopher, poet and grammarian Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra—who was firmly convinced of the scientific validity of mathematical astrology. His observations appear in his commentary to the brief passage in the book of Leviticus that mentions among the holy days of the calendar the annual “day of the sounding of horns”.

He introduces his explanation as a confidential secret: “I shall be giving to you hints of mysteries. If you pay careful attention, then perhaps you might understand them.” 

Ibn Ezra’s exposition is wrapped in obscure mathematical terminology, but the gist of his reasoning seems to go as follows: The principal dates on the Hebrew religious calendar follow an arithmetic logic, coinciding with the beginning, quarter-points and the mid-point (days 1, 7, 15) of the months. Whereas the concluding days of Passover and Sukkot mark the beginnings of the respective fourth quarters of the first and seventh months, the fact that Sukkot has an additional eighth day, while the last day of Passover is the seventh, has esoteric numerological significance. 

There is no question that the Torah treats the beginning of the first month, the one that later came to be called “Nissan,” as the real starting point of the religious year. Interestingly, Ibn Ezra derives its importance not from its being the anniversary of the exodus, as mainly from its association with the construction of the Tabernacle, which was completed at the beginning of that month—and will again be the case for the third Temple according to the prophecies of Ezekiel. 

The dates of the Spring festivals are parallelled in the Fall. Each of those months is the seventh one since its predecessor, an indication of the special metaphysical status that the Torah assigns to the number seven. “Hence Rosh Hashanah is the greatest of them all” by virtue of its identification with the seventh month. 

As it happens, Ibn Ezra was not the first Jewish interpreter to adopt this approach to explaining the Hebrew festival calendar. A strikingly similar theory was professed by Philo of Alexandria, the first-century Jewish philosopher. Philo was strongly influenced by the teachings of the philosophical school known as “neo-Pythagoreanism” which held that the mathematical structure of reality furnishes the basis for a mystical understanding of creation, in accordance with a system called “arithmology.” He reports that he composed a separate treatise to the subject, but that work has not survived. 

To the best of our knowledge, Philo and his writings were not known to Abraham Ibn Ezra or his Jewish contemporaries in the Middle Ages; though they were quite popular among Christian scholars who were strongly attracted to his allegorical method of scriptural interpretation. Nevertheless, it would appear that Ibn Ezra had access to translations of ancient neo-Pythagorean works, and that he applied them independently to the study of Jewish texts, producing results that were remarkably similar to Philo’s.

Thus, when Philo discusses the Sabbath in his commentary to the Ten Commandments, he does not focus on its overt themes as a commemoration of the creation or of the liberation from Egyptian slavery—but rather on the significance of observing it on “the sacred seventh day.” The metaphysical, arithmological quality of this primary numeral is what makes it the appropriate key to understanding the many ethical and social laws that are linked to the seventh year, such as the release of Hebrew bondmen, forgiveness of debts, and allowing the earth to rest on the sabbatical and Jubilee years. Multiplying seven by four gives us twenty-eight, which Philo—not quite accurately—identifies as the total of days in a lunar cycle.

Because the world was created in six days, it was fitting for the creator to praise and sanctify the seventh day. Philo rhapsodizes: “I doubt whether anyone could adequately celebrate the properties of the number seven, for they are beyond all words.” He goes on to show how this magnificent number—including its squares, cubes and other derivatives and combinations—reflects patterns of geometry, astronomy (such as the numbers of known planets and of stars in major constellations), the distribution of equinoxes, lengths of biological gestation, stages of personality development, and much more.

The fact that the Torah commands the observance of the major public festivals at the times of the equinoxes, each of which falls in the seventh month since its predecessor, is thus consistent with the logic of nature and with mathematics. 

The number ten also occupies an honoured position in Philo’s theory of numbers. He enumerates ten holy days in the Hebrew calendar. These include (1) the sabbath, (2) the monthly new moon, (3) Passover and (4) the feast of unleavened bread (which he counts separately), (5) the day of the “sacred sheaf” (when the ‘omer of barley is offered), (6)  the feast of seven sevens (Shavuot, concluding a count of seven weeks); and the holy days of the seventh month: (7) the festival of the sacred moon, or the feast of trumpets; (8) the fast (Yom Kippur) and (9) Tabernacles (Sukkot). The total reaches ten if we accept his assertion that the first festival “is that which anyone will perhaps be astonished to hear called a festival. This festival is every day”!

As a loyal Jew, Philo admired Moses as a prophet, philosopher and lawgiver. But sometimes it seems that his greatest accomplishment lay in the fact that he “always adhered to the principles of numerical science, which he knew by close observation to be a paramount factor in all that exists. Therefore Moses never enacted any law great or small without calling to his aid—and, as it were, accommodating to his enactment—its appropriate number.”

In preparation for the holiday season, maybe we should brush up on our mathematical skills—if only to count our blessings.

My email address is: [email protected]

In Your Dreams!

by Eliezer Segal

Compared to some other topics in Jewish religious law, the Torah’s criteria for kosher and non-kosher fish seem very straightforward: “Any creature in the water that has fins and scales, those you may eat. But any that do not have fins and scales are an abomination for you.” This distinction effectively excludes all shellfish, mussels and the like. 

And yet the sages managed to complicate the issue by raising questions about the precise classification of “scales”; such as: how they adhere to the fish’s skin or body, and how permanently they have to be attached. In general, Jewish law was permissive with regard to fish whose scales become visible only at an advanced stage of their development, drop off after the fish is removed from the water, or cannot be easily scraped off. Nevertheless, there were still some cases where the pertinent biological details were not entirely obvious; and therefore different communities evolved distinct traditions as to whether or not certain species were kosher.

A disagreement of this sort arose with regard to an aquatic creature known as the “barbuta” or “balbuta.” Though it had visible scales during the active period of its aquatic life, they dropped off when it was extracted from its natural environment. In keeping with the Talmud’s guidelines about such cases, the most eminent authorities in medieval Europe classified the barbuta as a kosher species. 

It is not quite clear which species they were referring to, but a likely candidate would be the turbot, some of whose European strains lack conventional scales. Indeed, the permissibility of turbot became the subject of a longstanding disagreement between the Jewish communities of Amsterdam and the Hague. Furthermore, the high likelihood of confusing the kosher and non-kosher strains have induced some—but not all—authorities to extend the prohibition to otherwise permissible fish merely to avoid confusing them with the non-kosher kinds.

In his compendium of Jewish law the Or Zarua‘, the thirteenth-century scholar Rabbi Isaac ben Moses of Vienna told of a tradition he had received from Rabbi Judah the Pious, the foremost figure in the mystical school of German pietists (Hasidei Ashkenaz) who admonished, “Anyone who eats balbuta will not merit eating from the leviathan,” the sea creature that would otherwise be served to the righteous in the next world. 

In this connection, he told a tale about Rabbi Ephraim of Regensburg who had ruled that the balbuta is kosher—but then reversed his position after experiencing a disturbing dream. In that dream, he was served a plate full of creepy creatures. When he expressed his irritation at the person who served them, the latter retorted that there was no justification for the rabbi’s vexation, seeing as he himself had declared such creatures permitted! At that point, the indignant Rabbi Ephraim woke up and recalled that he had permitted balbuta on that very day. He immediately commenced smashing all the pots and dishes from which they had been eaten.

The fourteenth-century scholar Rabbi Samson ben Zadok, whose Tashbez compendium assembled teachings from the school of Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg, provided a more graphic version of the story, in which the mysterious figure in Rabbi Ephraim’s dream was “an old man with flowing white hair, a distinguished countenance and a long beard” who admonished him: “‘All these things are just as kosher as the creeping things that you ate [not just ‘permitted’] today.’ When he awakened he realized that the prophet Elijah had appeared  to him.” The tale concluded: “May blessings rest upon the head of any person who refrains from eating them.”

But some halakhic authorities were less than impressed by Rabbi Ephraim’s readiness to rescind his initial decision because of a dream. Such was the view of Rabbi Ezekiel Landau and his son Samuel Segal Landau, authors of the influential responsa collection Noda‘ bi-Yhudah. 

An acrimonious controversy had arisen in 18th-century Prague in connection with the sterlet, the species of sturgeon from which caviar is derived. Sterlet possesses scale-like protrusions that attach directly to its body and not to its skin, and cannot be scraped off easily, as required according to some early rabbinic authorities. Rabbi Ezekiel Landau personally experimented on a dried sterlet and was convinced that its scales qualify to render the fish kosher. However, he was attacked by many rabbis who disagreed with his decision. The disputing sides invoked the old case of Rabbi Ephraim of Regensburg and the barbuta. 

The notion that dreams could be a factor in deciding questions of religious law was abhorrent to the Landaus. They assumed that the permissive rulings of the Tosafot and other early commentators had been based on thorough analysis of the relevant texts and on empirical scientific observation of the fish species. Rabbi Samuel sprinkled his responsum on the topic with scriptural and talmudic quotes about the unreliability of dreams. 

Rabbi Landau argued that, for all Rabbi Ephraim’s piety and righteousness, it assuredly could not be the dream that persuaded him to revoke his position. After all, such dreams did not appear to any of the other authorities who had permitted barbuta. Rabbi Ephraim would never have retracted if there were not concrete factual and logical justification for the admonition that was voiced in the dream. In this particular case, he linked it to his having permitted the barbuta; but if it had been proven to Rabbi Ephraim that the barbuta had scales, as had been evident to the authors of the Tosafot, then he would certainly have applied his dream to some other issue on which he had taken a permissive stand. Yet in the end there is no justification for basing a decision on a mere dream. 

The mainstream of talmudic discourse has generally preferred the Noda‘ bi-Yhudah’s rational, rule-bound approach when deciding questions of religious law. 

Nevertheless, the persistence of dreamers like Rabbi Ephraim of Regensburg continues to add some mystical spice to the flavoursome chowder of talmudic discourse.

My email address is: [email protected]

De-Bugging Titus

by Eliezer Segal

General Titus Caesar Vespasianus led the Roman forces against the Jewish insurrection in Palestine, presided over the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple at the age of 42 in the year 70, and later succeeded his father Vespasian as Emperor. 

Titus’s reign was a short one. According to the historian Dio Cassius, he died a natural death when he was stricken with a fever in the year 81. The biographer Suetonius described how Titus accepted his fate with a blend of tears and fatalistic serenity: “He said that there was no act of his life of which he had cause to repent, save one only.” That enigmatic statement challenged scholars to decipher his meaning. Suetonius guessed that the allusion might be either to an affair he had been having with his sister-in-law, whereas Dio Cassius preferred to explain that he regretted not killing his brother Domitian who was plotting against him and  may have ultimately hastened his death.

What is wrong with the above account?

Many Jewish readers will be bothered by one glaring omission. According to the tale told in the Talmud and Midrash, Titus did not die a natural or quick death, but suffered for several years from an agonizing and debilitating sickness. 

The best-known version of this story is found in the Babylonian Talmud, in a version that satisfies our expectation that evildoers should be made to suffer for their crimes: A gnat entered through Titus’s nostril, and  continued to peck at his brain for seven years, allowing only occasional relief from the pain by means of the sound of a blacksmith’s hammer. After his death they opened up his head and found that the gnat had grown to the size of a large bird with a brass beak and iron talons. 

The discrepancies between the talmudic and the non-Jewish accounts of Titus’s death were especially troubling to Rabbi Azariah dei Rossi the sixteenth-century Italian scholar whose Me’or ‘Eynayim built upon his dazzling mastery of Classical languages and literatures. He provided an exhaustive survey of all the known rabbinic versions of the legend of the gnat, including the Talmuds and several collections of homiletic midrash.

Dei Rossi noted that, notwithstanding the minor differences between the texts, they agree about important narrative and thematic features, in that the unrepentant heathen blasphemer is made to suffer horribly for his crimes against God and the holy temple; and divine justice arranged matters such that the world’s most powerful tyrant was struck down by one of nature’s tiniest and least significant creatures.

Rabbi Azariah regarded the numerous disagreements among the Jewish texts as evidence that they should not be trusted as historical fact; for if they did stem from a true event they could not have diverged to such an extent. 

Furthermore, the story of the gnat is medically implausible. Granted that anatomic research confirms that a passage leads from the nostrils to the brain—nevertheless, the cerebral membrane is not capable of supporting a bird-sized growth. Furthermore, the notion of metals like brass or iron growing in an organism is clearly an impossibility. Some modern writers have speculated that the portrayal was inspired by autopsies of brain tumors.

Citing Jeremiah’s advice to “ask ye now among the heathen,” Rabbi Azariah consulted all available Greek and Roman histories and biographies (including Dio Cassius and Suetonius), and confirmed that their most respected authorities were in agreement that Titus died of a fever. 

Dei Rossi reasoned that we ought to accept the consensus of those independent objective testimonies that concurred in contradicting the rabbinic story. Echoing an idea that had been voiced centuries previously by Maimonides, he was concerned that credulous Jews would mistake these legendary tales for attempts at factual history, and thereby discredit our sages and the entire Jewish tradition. It is therefore crucial to recognize those stories for what they were intended—as moral allegories that teach the common people about the inscrutable paths of how divine justice is integrated into the natural order. (Interestingly, even the Maharal of Prague who was adamantly opposed to the Me’or ‘Eynayim, conceded that the gnat story should not be taken literally, and that the rabbis were not interested in conveying simple historical facts.)

Dei Rossi’s concerns had actually been expressed a generation earlier by Rabbi David Gans of Prague in his pioneering historical chronicle the Tzemaḥ David. In contrast to the attitudes of rabbinic literature which painted Titus as a quintessential antisemite, sadistic killer and blasphemer, Gans  generally followed the Roman historians, as well as Josephus Flavius and the author of the medieval Hebrew adaptation of Josephus’s histories known a the Yosippon. In their portrayals Titus came across as quite an admirable figure, a patron and contributor to the arts who ruled his people justly and generously, and regretted the bloodshed he had been forced to inflict. Josephus, who had defected to the Roman camp and became part of Titus’s entourage, insisted that the Jews brought the disaster upon themselves by following extremist leadership. Gans argued that Josephus predated the rabbinic texts, so his assessment should be given preference. 

In noting that none of those historians knew about the Talmud’s tale of the gnat, he cited a theory that the chroniclers excluded the episode intentionally so that Titus would not be blamed for the suffering he inflicted on Israel.

Like Dei Rossi, Rabbi Gans advocated reading the rabbinic account as a fictitious parable. He recommended the approach taken by the commentary Paḥad Yiṣḥak by Rabbi Isaac Chajes of Prague, who allegorically derived the name “Titus” from the Hebrew “ṭiṭ,” meaning “mud,” alluding to one who who is mired in the evil inclination of heathen materialism that will eventually be vanquished by enlightened Torah values (symbolized as Jerusalem) such as humility (a gnat) and freedom (bird).

Regrettably, history provides us with enough literal, physical foes and oppressors that we don’t really need to resort to symbolic readings.

First publication:

• The Alberta Jewish News, July 10, 2024, p. 23.

For Further Reading:

• Baron, Salo W. “Azariah de’ Rossi’s Historical Method.” In History and Jewish Historians: Essays and Adresses, edited by Arthur Hertzberg and Leon A. Feldman, 205–39. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1964.
• Eisen, Chaim. “Maharal’s Be’er Ha-Golah and His Revolution in Aggadic Scholarship —in Their Context and on His Terms.” Hakirah 4 (2007): 137–94.
• Neher, André. David Gans, 1541-1613: Disciple Du Maharal, Assistant De Tycho Brahe Et De Jean Kepler. Publications Du Centre de Recherches et d’Etudes Hebraiques de l’Université de Strasbourg; Études Maharaliennes. Paris: Klincksieck, 1974.
• Preuss, Julius. Biblical and Talmudic Medicine. Translated by F. Rosner. Northvale, NJ: J. Aronson, 1993.
• Rosenberg-Wohl, David Michael. “Reconstructing Jewish Identity on the Foundations of Hellenistic History: Azariah de’ Rossi’s Me’or ’Enayim in Late 16th Century Northern Italy.” Ph.D., University of California Berkeley, 2014.
• Rossi, Azariah ben Moses dei. The Light of the Eyes. Edited and translated by Joanna Weinberg. Yale Judaica Series 31. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001.
• Roth, Cecil. The Jews in the Renaissance. 1st ed. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1959.
• Šedinová, Jiřina. “Non-Jewish Sources in the Chronicle by Davis Gans, ‘Tsemah David.’” Judaica Bohemiae 8, no. 1–2 (1972): 3–15.
• Weinberg, Joanna. “The Beautiful Soul: Azariah de’ Rossi’s Search for Truth.” In Cultural Intermediaries: Jewish Intellectuals in Early Modern Italy, edited by David B. Ruderman and Giuseppe Veltri, 109–26. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.
• Yavetz, Zvi. “Reflections on Titus and Josephus.” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, GRBS, 16, no. 4 (1975): 411–32.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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The Letters of the Law

by Eliezer Segal

For many of my contemporaries, the quintessential visual representation of the life of Moses is Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 cinematic epic The Ten Commandments starring Charlton Heston. 

Despite its title, the film is not primarily about the revelation of the commandments at Mount Sinai. Only a brief segment of the screen time is devoted to the giving of the tablets (carved by spectacular divine fire), Moses’s receiving them, smashing them, and delivering them to the Israelites.

When I first saw the movie in my youth, I was disappointed—as, I suppose were many Jewish viewers—by the fact that the text on the cinematic tablets was not written in the familiar squarish characters that we learned in Hebrew school and in which Jews have been writing and reading for more than two millennia. Instead, it was inscribed in an unfamiliar alphabet similar to the one found on coinage minted by the Hasmoneans and Bar-Kokhba, and still used by the Samaritans.

All this invites questions of why and how DeMille and and his collaborators chose to make use of that particular portrayal of the biblical tablets, and how accurate they were in rendering them for the silver screen.

The background story to this decision inspires immense respect for the persons involved. Prominent among these was Henry S. Noerdlinger, a Swiss-born researcher to whom DeMille assigned the task of verifying the accuracy of this and other historical films. 

We should note that Noerdlinger’s definition of historical accuracy differed considerably from academic standards. Notably, he strove to incorporate narrative additions from later rabbinic, Christian and Muslim traditions; and the opening credits proclaimed proudly that the story was “in accordance with the Ancient texts of Philo, Josephus, Eusebius, the Midrash and The Holy Scriptures.” DeMille also speculated that other ancient sources had been “long since destroyed, or perhaps lost like the Dead Sea Scrolls” that were coming to light at that time. Those texts were the sources of numerous plot complications, political and romantic intrigues in the Egyptian court, and other non-scriptural elements that enhanced the movie’s dramatic impact. 

How was the team of filmmakers able to wrestle with arcane details of Hebrew paleography? So insistent was DeMille on giving his film a genuine look that his tablets of the Law were actually carved out of reddish granite rock extracted from the slopes of Mount Sinai (or at least from Jabal Musa, the site that has been identified with that biblical location). Multiple copies of the tablets had to be crafted from various materials for use in diverse lighting situations. In recent years, those props have been fetching prices of $50,000 to $80,000 at auctions.

As regards the choice of alphabet, this was also dictated by DeMille’s desire for historical authenticity. For this purpose he consulted with Prof. Ralph Marcus, a respected expert on Second Temple Judaism. Of the various options from which they could have chosen (and which are in fact quite similar in appearance), Marcus argued for a late Bronze-Age Canaanite script that would likely have been in use in Moses’ time. 

DeMille was very appreciative of Marcus’s contribution to the production and repeatedly consulted him on matters of scholarly accuracy. Marcus soon realized that for a blockbuster that was netting its producers $130 million, he deserved more than the paltry fifty dollars that he was paid. He hesitantly suggested a raise to $250, but received no response before he was felled by a heart attack.

The Talmud preserves divergent opinions regarding the alphabet in which the Torah and the Decalogue had originally been inscribed. While most sages recognized that our square script, known to the Mishnah as “Assyrian,” was introduced in the days of the Babylonian captivity, others (like Rabbi Eleazar ha-Moda‘i) denied that Jews had ever used anything other than our square alphabet. Rabbi Judah the Patriarch held that the original tablets had been inscribed in Assyrian letters, which had subsequently been abandoned until they were re-introduced by Ezra in Babylonia. 

DeMille himself was a practicing Episcopalian Christian, and was presumably unaware that he might have qualified halakhically as Jewish, insofar as his mother Beatrice Samuels was of Jewish birth, though she converted to Christianity before her marriage. (Through her he was second-cousin to Viscount Herbert Samuel, the High Commissioner of Mandatory Palestine). 

His sentimental attachment to the Jewish people was exemplified when filming an earlier, silent version of “Ten Commandments” in 1923, for which he employed a large number of recent Jewish immigrants to play the Hebrew slaves. At one point, those Jewish extras broke into a chant of the liturgical melodies “Av Ha-Rahamim” [merciful father] and “Sh’ma Yisra’el,” eliciting tears from the director.

If (as I did) you transliterate Marcus’s text into “normal” square Hebrew letters, you will observe that its content is not completely identical to that of our Jewish Bibles. Some of the  differences might stem from the same challenges faced by designers of synagogue Torah arks when they set out to depict the motif of the Ten Commandments, but realize that there is not enough space to display them in their entirety in a readable size (especially the wordier ones at the beginning). A common  solution is to include only the first two words of each commandment, or to substitute single letters of the Hebrew alphabet, used as numbers. The designers for the film seem to take an analogous pragmatic approach; though some also made reference to a scholarly theory that the original commandments given to Moses were formulated concisely, and were expanded in later times. 

Curiously, the text on DeMille’s tablets skips over the prohibition against taking God’s name in vain. It was likely a simple copyist’s omission (in a text that nobody could proofread)—but I wonder whether  DeMille had concerns about his own reputed propensity for cussing and blaspheming on the set.

After all, such violations might not be so grave if the prohibition wasn’t set in stone.

First publication:

• The Alberta Jewish News, June 5, 2024, p. 22.

For further reading:

• Birnbaum, Salomo A. The Hebrew Scripts. Leiden: Brill, 1971.
• Bowman, John, and Shmarjahu Talmon. “Samaritan Decalogue Inscriptions.” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 33, no. 2 (1951): 211–36.
• Higham, Charles. Cecil B. DeMille. New York: Scribner, 1973.
• Joselit, Jenna Weissman. Set in Stone: America’s Embrace of the Ten Commandments. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.
• Noerdlinger, Henry S. Moses and Egypt: The Documentation to the Motion Picture the Ten Commandments. Los Angeles: University of Southern California Press, 1956.
• Rodrigues, Nuno Simöes. “Josephus as Source of the Egyptian Sequences in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956).” In How Pharaohs Became Media Stars: Ancient Egypt and Popular Culture, edited by Fernández Pichel Abraham I. and Fernández Pichel, 110–35. Archaeopress Egyptology 48. Oxford: Archaeopress Archaeology, 2023. 
• Soloveichik, Meir Y. “When Moses Went Through DeMille.” Commentary, New York, 2023.
• Vorderstrasse, Tasha. “Written in Stone: Cecil B. DeMille & the OI’s Hollywood Legacy.” News & Notes 243, no. 243 (Autumn 2019): 18–19.

My email address is: [email protected]