Two-Faced Titus

by Eliezer Segal

Titus, the general (later, Emperor) who commanded the Roman forces in the Great Jewish Rebellion, was invariably designated in rabbinic tradition as “the wicked” taking his place alongside eminent villains like Balaam, Nebuchadnezzar and Haman. The sages of the Talmud and Midrash depict him as no mere military leader—but as a heathen scoundrel determined to triumph over the God of Israel.

As related in the Midrash and Talmud, Titus was resolved to profane the Temple’s sanctity by plundering its sacred vessels to display them in Rome, and by performing obscene acts on a Torah scroll in the sanctuary. He boldly taunted the Hebrew God for his inability to defy him, and for his powerlessness to defend the Jerusalem Temple, his personal domain.

This portrayal of Titus differs diametrically from the one presented by Josephus Flavius, whose accounts of “the Jewish Wars” preserve the most extensive record of the events. Josephus writes that Titus was uncertain how to proceed after his legions had effectively penetrated the city’s walls. A decision had to be made whether or not to destroy the Temple structure, an operation that would take a toll in Roman lives and reflect poorly on the victors’ respect for the shrines of subject nations. Seeking advice on this question, he convened a council of his foremost officers.

The council was divided. One faction favoured demolishing the structure “according to the rules of war” (presumably something along the lines of “to the victor belong the spoils.”) More specifically, they argued that there was a clear military advantage to eliminating the Jewish Temple owing to its function as a place of assembly for Jewish pilgrims from their homeland and the diaspora, gatherings that often inspired mobs to rise up against their conquerors. Rebellions would never cease as long as the Temple continued to stand.

Another faction reasoned that a deal might yet be negotiated if only the Jews would consent to a ceasefire and disarm themselves, knowing that any violation of those terms would result in the devastation of their beloved spiritual centre.

According to Josephus, Titus advocated an exceptionally conciliatory position: even if the Jews persisted in their insurrection, the Romans should refrain from destroying the Temple. After all, wars are fought against human enemies, not inanimate structures. And furthermore, after the suppression of the Jewish uprising the glorious Temple should survive as a tangible source of pride for the victorious empire. 

General Titus’s position would have prevailed had not one of the soldiers, “propelled by a divine fury,” taken the initiative of tossing in a torch and igniting a conflagration that could not be restrained until the Temple lay in ruins, contrary to Titus’s wishes. Titus in fact hurried to have the fire extinguished, and even commanded to punish the soldiers who participated in the burning and looting, Ultimately, however, Josephus states that it was the Jews themselves, in their persistent opposition even against the soldiers trying to extinguish the fire, who were responsible for the Temple’s burning.

A very different version of Titus’s role in the event appears in a chronicle by a 3^rd-4^th century Christian scholar named Sulpicius Severus of Aquitania. In his account it was Titus who took the position—contrary to others who argued that the Temple should be left to stand as a monument to Rome’s magnanimity and not as a testimony to her ruthlessness—that it should be destroyed without delay, “in order that the religions of the Jews and Christians should be eradicated totally. For those religions, though opposed to one another, derive from the same founders; the Christians stemmed from the Jews and the extirpation of the root would easily cause the offspring to perish.” 

“The Destruction and Sack of the Temple of Jerusalem” Nicolas Poussin (1626), Bridgeman Art Library

Historians are still debating which of these contradictory portrayals is accurate. In the absence of direct evidence of the deliberations at the time, the question is often formulated as: who had reasons to falsify the historical record?

Thus, with regard to the Jewish sages, it should be noted that they were not historians in the academic sense of striving for objective accuracy. Their concerns were with deriving religious inspiration from those events, and that often involved depicting the villains and heroes of the Jewish past in stereotypical black and white terms. A malicious Titus could serve as an effective prototype in their contemporary struggles against idolatry and Roman subjugation.

Scholars have questioned the credibility of Sulpicus’ premise that Titus regarded Christianity as a threat as early as the first century, and concede that the detail was likely inserted by Sulpicius; however, the rest of his account seem plausible, and may be based on an otherwise lost passage from the respected historian Tacitus, whom Sulpicius often cites.

As for Josephus’s portrayal of a kinder, gentler Titus, we must not forget that the historian himself owed his personal survival after defecting from the Jewish army to Titus and the Flavian emperors. This was a sufficient motivation for him to compromise the truth so as to present his sponsors in a favourable light.

Dio Cassius reported that some Roman forces were reluctant to advance inside the Temple because of their “superstitious” reverence for the shrine, and only under compulsion from Titus did they proceed inwards. 

Josephus himself mentioned several instances of Titus’s insensitivity to Jewish sacred shrines and his general hostility to Judaism as a religion.  For example, he ordered the destruction of the Jewish sanctuary in Egypt in order to prevent it from becoming a rallying point for rebels.

Indeed, Josephus came to view the fall of Jerusalem as divinely ordained; and his historical chronicle is sprinkled with stories (analogous to those told by Roman historians like Suetonius) of supernatural portents that presaged the inevitable disaster. Seen from that perspective, the blame could hardly be assigned to any mortal leader.

Frankly, as a Jew if not as a historical scholar, I am quite comfortable recalling our ancient antagonists as unmitigated bad guys whom we are free to despise.

My email address is: [email protected]

Member of the Tribes

by Eliezer Segal

A favourite cliché of American humour involves encounters between Jews and American indigenous peoples—“Indians,” according to the defunct terminology. This motif pops up in cinematic comedies like the Frisco Kid or Blazing Saddles, or in Canadian characters like Mordecai Richler’s Atuk and Solomon Gursky. The hilarity springs from the surprising unlikeliness of overlap between such totally dissimilar cultures—preferably if the Indians are speaking Yiddish.

Comical stereotypes aside, in the annals of the American west there was one Jew who did become the chief of an indigenous tribe. I am referring to Solomon Bibo who presided over the Pueblo village of Acoma, New Mexico, in the late nineteenth century. 

Bibo’s family hailed from Prussia and was part of the wave of Jewish migration, mostly from central Europe, that arrived in the United States following the suppression of the liberal uprisings of 1848. Shortly after landing in New York in 1869, he joined his brothers who were already established in commercial activities in Santa Fe.

The Pueblo people had experienced a long and bitter history of genocidal warfare and oppression under the Spanish colonial régime and the Catholic church, who were determined to eradicate their culture. By the time of Bibo’s arrival, under American rule, matters had reached a relatively moderate modus vivendi. Although the Pueblos were nominally Catholic, they maintained a clandestine, “Marrano”-style spirituality, practicing many of their traditional religious rituals under the guidance of tribal elders.

During Spanish rule, the Pueblos adopted European terminology for designating their political and administrative offices. Notably, the tribal chiefs were known as “governors.”

In the course of his commercial dealings with the Acomas, Bibo became deeply integrated into their society and culture (his detractors argued that this was motivated solely by opportunism), and the tribe granted his firm exclusive trading privileges. His marriage in 1885 to Juana Valle del Acomo, granddaughter of a tribal governor, secured his status as an acknowledged leader of the community. 

In those days, commercial privileges and tribal land claims were administered by the office of the federal Indian Commissioner. Solomon tried unsuccessfully to represent the Acoma’s interests in a land dispute before the American authorities. The Department of the Interior upheld the claim of the rival Laguna tribe who were represented by a white trader who had also married into that tribe.

In 1884 Solomon Bibo and his brother Simon became embroiled in an acrimonious dispute with the Indian Agent Pedro Sanchez and the competing merchants of the Marmon family over trading rights with the Acomas. Each side was able to produce petitions in support of or in opposition to the respective spokesmen, including records of formal votes. Although Bibo did not emerge victorious from the legal battle, the Acomas so esteemed him, and were so afraid of losing him, that in 1885 they elected him the governor of their tribe, a position that he held for several terms. 

The period of his governorship was one of rapid economic and social change in the United States; and the native communities of New Mexico were especially affected by the transcontinental railroads. 

One of Bibo’s principal interests was building a functional school system. The prevalent model at the time was virtually identical to the “residential school” structure that has caused so much grief in its infamous Canadian implementation. Indigenous students were to be distanced from their homes and forcibly prohibited from speaking their native languages or following any traditional customs. Bibo was a firm advocate of that philosophy, which he believed was essential for the integration of the natives into modern society. In 1889 (when he was not in office), he urged the arrest and punishment of a tribal governor who encouraged students to resist the official policy and follow traditional Pueblo customs. The controversy continued to divide the community and likely contributed to his decision to leave Acoma and settle in San Francisco.

Other than as an incidental feature of his ancestry, was Bibo’s Judaism a relevant factor in shaping his life and personality? 

On the one hand, we must note that he married a native woman in a union that had political and economic overtones; and the wedding was celebrated in both a native ceremony at a Catholic church and in a civil ceremony before a justice of the peace. However, this was likely dictated by the fact that in those days there was no available rabbi or Jewish institution in the territory. The fact that the couple chose to be cremated should also not be taken as a rejection of his Judaism, since the option seems to have been quite acceptable among many Jews at that time. Juana did undergo a conversion to Judaism, though it is not clear under what auspices. At any rate, their marriage was a stable one that lasted long after they had left New Mexico.

Indeed, Solomon’s father Isak had served as a synagogue cantor in the old country, so Solomon’s familiarity with Jewish traditions must have had some substance to it. Indeed, a family friend recalled that Judaism was important to him. Though several factors (including the persistent political squabbles) might have motivated the couple to leave Acoma for San Francisco, there is good reason to suppose that a serious consideration was their desire to avail themselves of good Jewish educational opportunities that allowed their children to be raised as Jews. In San Francisco, Solomon and Juana were active congregants of Temple Emanuel. Looking at the families of Solomon’s brothers who lived similar lives in New Mexico, we find that several of their offspring married Jewish partners and retained their Judaism—an unusual phenomenon on the American frontier.

A valuable element facilitating Bibo’s successful integration into so many diverse cultures was his aptitude for European and native American languages: Acoma, English, German, Laguna, Navajo, Spanish and Zuni.

One of the languages that he mastered was Yiddish—which might qualify him for a role in a Mel Brooks comedy.

My email address is: [email protected]

From Moses to Moses…

by Eliezer Segal

That archetypal Jewish heretic Baruch Benedict Spinoza was not very impressed with the institution of sacrifices as they are set down in meticulous detail in the Torah. He insisted that true religion must originate in a divine imperative; and God would not impose commandments on humanity unless they were designed to achieve “blessedness” by instilling theological truths and moral virtues. Spinoza did not discern any of these qualities in the biblical rites of slaughtering animals and burning them on an altar.

So why did the Patriarchs sacrifice to God? It was not because some divine law told them to, or because the universal foundations of divine law taught them to—but because it was the custom at that time. If any command came into it, it was the command of the laws of the state in which they were living, by which they were also bound.

Indeed, the authority for sacrifices, as argued in Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise, is not rooted in spiritual wisdom or divine revelation, but ultimately derives from political considerations. The Hebrews were ordered to observe the sacrificial worship and the other precepts of the Torah only because Moses declared them to be the law of their nation; and in that respect they were like most normal nations. 

As Spinoza understood the historical situation at the time of the Torah’s giving, the Israelites suddenly found themselves released from the dominion of Egypt or of any external authority. This multitude of unruly slaves was unequipped to devise a completely new legal system, so they delegated that responsibility to a single leader, their liberator Moses, who was gifted with the theological and political acumen necessary for the establishment of a new nation with an ideal government.

In order to motivate the Israelites to obey the laws, Moses struck a balance between promising rewards for obedience and severe punishments for insubordination. But his plan went beyond that. He introduced a minutely detailed regimen of rules that would prevent them from ever acting according to personal choice. 

So that is what ceremonies were for: to bring it about that men did nothing by their own decision, and everything according to the command of someone else, and that they should admit… that they were not their own master in anything.

Spinoza had no interest in defending traditional Judaism, and it is not surprising that he could take such a cynical attitude regarding the purpose and content of the Torah. However, key points in his thesis were derived from an earlier, more respectable source: Rabbi Moses Maimonides. 

In his Guide of the Perplexed, the great medieval philosopher proposed an explanation of biblical sacrifices that was virtually identical to Spinoza’s. Maimonides himself believed that true worship should consist of meditation on an abstract divinity who can only be grasped through intense scientific and metaphysical study. Such a deity transcends human language, let alone physical rituals like sacrifices. Yet unlike Spinoza, Maimonides believed that the laws of the Torah did originate from God and not Moses. Why, then, did the Almighty ordain sacrifices as the principal mode of worship?

Like Spinoza, Maimonides situated the revelation of the Torah within a strategy to transform a population of primitive slaves into a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” During the era of their enslavement, the only mode of worship they knew was that of sacrifices. God knew that if he were to suddenly command them to give that all up and switch to spoken prayer or abstract meditation, they would not accede. He therefore employed a “gracious ruse” by instituting a system of sacrificial rituals that could be carefully regulated to remove objectionable idolatrous elements. This, however, was merely an ad hoc solution intended to guide the Israelites until they were ready for authentic worship. Maimonides pointed out that this was consistent with the gradual evolutionary process that characterizes changes in nature.

Not surprisingly, Maimonides’ thesis provoked a great deal of opposition from more conventional rabbis. Nahmanides cited many scriptural passages that placed sacrifices at the centre of divine worship in all generations, past and future. As a kabbalist he argued that sacrifices are essential in ways that transcend human understanding, for maintaining harmony in the metaphysical fabric of the cosmos. 

Similar issues, involving the differing functions of belief and practice in Judaism, would again come to prominence in the eighteenth century. Some Christian correspondents challenged Rabbi Moses Mendelssohn of Dessau, claiming that Judaism was a coercive faith that demanded that its adherents submit to specific beliefs, which made Jews unfit to participate in a modern enlightened society that values freedom of conscience.

Mendelssohn argued that Judaism is actually more tolerant and enlightened than the brand of liberal Christianity that promoted itself as the ideal form of a universalist rational faith. 

He explained that—unlike Christianity with its focus on correct theological dogmas—the religion of Israel does not profess an exclusive truth or mandatory beliefs. After all, authentic concepts about God and morality are derived from reason, and accordingly they are accessible to all rational people, without need for prophetic revelation. What uniquely defines Israel’s religion is its revealed law, not its theology —and that has no bearing on what was considered “religion” in modern European discourse.

As Mendelssohn summed it up:

In short: I believe that Judaism knows of no ‘revealed religion’ in the Christian sense of the phrase. The Israelites have a divine legislation. What Moses revealed to them in a miraculous and supernatural manner were laws, commandments, ordinances, rules of life, instruction in God’s will regarding how they should conduct themselves in order to attain temporal and eternal happiness.

This was truly a remarkable new inference about the relationship between theology and ritual practice in Jewish tradition as they had been expounded by Maimonides and Spinoza. 

It makes one wonder how the biblical Moses would have regarded these remarkable understandings of the purpose of the Torah that were expressed by his illustrious latter-day namesakes.

First publication:

• The Alberta Jewish News, May 22, 2025, p. 23.

For Further Reading:

• Bareli, Matanel, and Menachem Marc Kellner. “Maimonides on the Status of Judaism.” In Polemical and Exegetical Polarities in Medieval Jewish Cultures: Studies in Honour of Daniel J. Lasker, edited by Ehud Krinis, Nabih Bashir, Sara Offenberg, and Shalom Sadik, 135–61. Studia Judaica 13. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2021.
• Gottlieb, Michah. Faith and Freedom: Moses Mendelssohn’s Theological-Political Thought. Oxford  and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
• Guttmann, Julius. “Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem and Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise.” In Studies in Jewish Thought: An Anthology of German Jewish Scholarship, edited by Alfred Jospe, 361–86. Detroit : Wayne State University Press, 1981: Detroit : Wayne State University Press., 1981.
• Klein, Reuven Chaim. “Weaning Away from Idolatry: Maimonides on the Purpose of Ritual Sacrifices.” Religions 12 (2021): 1–26.
• Lemmens, Willem. “Spinoza on Ceremonial Observances and the Moral Function of Religion.” Bijdragen, International Journal in Philosophy and Theology 71, no. 1 (2010): 51–64.
• Mendelssohn, Moses. Jerusalem, or, on Religious Power and Judaism. Edited by Allan Arkush and Alexander Altmann. Hanover: Published for Brandeis University Press by University Press of New England, 1983.
• Pinchot, Roy. “The Deeper Conflict Between Maimonides and Ramban Over the Sacrifices.” Tradition 33, no. 3 (1999): 24–33.
• Pines, S. “Moses Mendelssohn in Relation to Maimonides and Spinoza: Two Notes.” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 2, no. 1 (1982): 150–52.Schweid, Eliezer. “Torat Ha-Sovlanut Shel Moshe Mendelssohn.” Moznaim 50, no. 5/6 (1980): 355–59.

My email address is: [email protected]

The Mother Tongue

by Eliezer Segal

In 1845, the eminent scholar Abraham Geiger published a pioneering grammar of the Hebrew of the Mishnah. His analysis supported his claim that the language in which that central rabbinic text was composed was not a spoken dialect, but rather an artificial contrivance based mostly on the biblical language, combined with a large dose of Aramaic. Its character was thus analogous to the role of Latin in medieval Christendom. 

Geiger’s theory achieved influence among many scholars, but it was eventually disproven decisively. Not only were there internal features of Mishnaic Hebrew (as recorded in trustworthy manuscripts) that could not be ascribed to either the Bible or Aramaic, but documents that came to light subsequently—such as the Dead Sea scrolls and the Bar Kokhba letters—were composed in Hebrew dialects that resembled that of the rabbinic texts. There is now no doubt that Hebrew was a living vehicle of communication during the early years of the Common Era. 

To be precise: During the second Jewish commonwealth, the residents of the southern part of Israel, Judea, communicated in both Hebrew and Aramaic, while the northern Galileans spoke only Aramaic. The destruction, killing, enslavement and expropriation perpetrated by the Romans in their suppression of Jewish uprisings led to a mass migration northward. As a result, by the early second century, Hebrew was losing its status as a dominant vernacular. 

According to a story that is brought in several variations by the Talmuds, a group of students were puzzled by some unusual Hebrew words that appear in the Bible and rabbinic works. In order to ascertain their meanings they came to the regal home of the patriarch Rabbi Judah. They were met there by a feisty maidservant who, in ordering them about, made use of those obscure words in her conversation.

One of the perplexing words was “serugin” meaning “out of sequence.” The students learned its meaning when the maidservant scolded them for entering the building in a disorganized jumble instead of in an orderly double-file. 

Another obscure word was “halaglog,” referring to the herb purslane. The maidservant revealed its meaning when one of the students dropped some (which they referred to using an Aramaic word), whereas she designated them by the archaic Hebrew term. She also knew to sweep up the mess with a broom, to which she referred by means of an arcane term from biblical Hebrew.

Some scholars understand that in choosing a maidservant as the linguistic authority in these anecdotes, the authors intended to show that Rabbi Judah’s court was so learned that even a menial domestic worker could be knowledgeable about the intricacies of the sacred tongue. However, most historians seem to read the evidence in a different way—as evidence that after transferring to Galilee where most students adopted the local Aramaic culture, only an aged family retainer held fast to the old Judean customs, and was thereby able to preserve the remnants of the traditional Hebrew vernacular.

It would appear that spoken Hebrew was still alive, albeit tenuously, in the tenth century, during the lifetime of Rav Saadiah Gaon who was instrumental in formulating a synthesis between Jewish tradition and the prevalent Arab Muslim civilization. In their determination to create a pure, authentic standard of literary Arabic, urbane scholars would journey from Baghdad to visit bedouin tribes in the Arabian desert in the hope of hearing their sacred tongue in its rarified, unadulterated form as it issued from the lips of native speakers. 

Evidently, Saadiah was attempting a similar project for Hebrew. He recognized Tiberias in the Galilee, where he had resided before moving to Babylonia, as the preeminent centre of Hebrew language in his generation, as a locality where Hebrew (mixed with Aramaic) was used not only by scholars, but also served as the vernacular for Jewish men, women and children in their everyday interactions at home and in the marketplace.

In connection with a certain technical grammatical question of how a vowel at the end of one word can affect the pronunciation of the first consonant in the next, Saadiah reported: “This is true not only in the Bible, but also in all speech and conversation, even among women.” To illustrate this grammatical rule, he cited an anecdote about a woman who approached her child’s teacher and said to him: ‘O teacher, release my son!’ using the soft (fricative) form of the consonant, rather than the hard (plosive) form. On another occasion, she called her son “Gad Gad” using the hard form of his initial letter, and the boy did not respond until she called him “Ya Jad” using the soft form, because this time she had inserted the word “ya” before the name. 

Although some eight centuries separate the stories about Rabbi Judah’s maidservant and the young student’s mother in Tiberias, they are in fundamental agreement about the fact that Jewish women were speaking proper Hebrew in their homeland. 

In the modern era the role of women in the transmission of Hebrew became crucial again with the revival of the language under the aegis of the Zionist movement. Beginning with the establishment of the first Hebrew kindergarten in Palestine, in Rishon Lezion, institutions for early childhood education proliferated, often in the face of opposition from traditionalists and competition for scarce financial resources. Almost all the teachers were young women chosen for their competence in the Hebrew language. 

But of course, a spoken language is not acquired only in the classroom. Ita Yellin, a prominent activist in the fields of childhood education and Hebrew language instruction at the beginning of the twentieth century, observed how “the Hebrew mother had no choice but to learn the language from her children who were educated in our language, and once they returned home from the kindergarten, they chattered with their parents and sang their songs in Hebrew.”

Those mothers and teachers were continuing a long and honoured tradition of perpetuating the language that is so vital to the Jewish national soul.

My email address is: [email protected]

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.

My email address is: [email protected]

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.

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