When Mount Sinai Was Lifted Up

by Eliezer Segal

Traditional Judaism has always asserted that the Torah can be understood in an infinite number of ways, as it addresses itself to the individual abilities and concerns of every person in every age and locality. 

This principle has also been applied to the account of the giving of the Torah itself, which we commemorate in the festival of Shavuot. The events at Mount Sinai have been interpreted by Jews over the ages in a rich variety of manners, reflecting the concerns and approaches of the respective commentators, and their reactions to developments in the world around them.

By way of illustration, I would like to focus on one particular passage in the Sinai narrative that has lent itself to diverse interpretations.

In describing the preparations for the revelation, the Torah states that “Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet God; and they stood beneath the mountain (Exodus 19:17). 

The Hebrew phrase used here (be-tahtit ha-har) evidently means that they encamped at the foot of the mountain.

Hoever, looked at with a more narrow literalism, it can be understood as “they stood underneath the mountain”

A similar wording is employed in Deuteronomy 4:11: “And you came near and stood under the mountain [tahat ha-har].” 

The wording inspired commentary by a number of Jewish Sages.

Love for God

The renowned Rabbi Akiva, who dominated Jewish life at the beginning of the 2nd Century C.E., had a singular mystical approach to religious life. 

Central to his outlook was the Song of Songs, a unique biblical book which consists of sensuous love poetry. It was through Rabbi Akiva’s advocacy that the Song of Songs was ultimately accepted, with opposition, into the Hebrew Bible.

He believed that the eroticism of the Song was a symbolic expression of the highest degrees of individual and national intimacy with the Divine.

He was guided by the powerful love imagery in some of the decisive moments his life, including his own mystical experiences, and his ultimate act of martyrdom at the hands of the Romans, a fate to which he was condemned because of his own passionate commitment to Torah. 

He perceived martyrdom as the ultimate expression of his love for God. 

It was in keeping with such a religious outlook that Rabbi Akiva regarded the revelation of the Torah at Mount Sinai as precisely the kind of immediate religious ecstasy that was being poetically portrayed in the Song of Songs. 

In this spirit, some sages of the Midrash applied to the Sinai events the passionate words of the Song: “0 my dove, who are in the clefts of the rock, in the crannies of the cliff ” (2:14). This was expounded as if to say that God had lovingly lifted the mountain in order to offer a protective shield for his people. 

When the people encamped “beneath the mountain”, they were doing so in the most literal manner, and God was extending over them his caring protection. 

Accepting the Torah

A later rabbi adapted the same image to make a totally different point, as recorded in the following well-known passage from the Babylonian Talmud:

“And they stood in the bottom of the mountain”– This teaches that God overturned the mountain on them like a tub and said to them: “If you accept the Torah, fine. But if you don’t, then here shall be your burial!”

The implications of this passage were troubling to the other talmudic Sages. 

One rabbi argued that this would undermine the entire basis for adherence to the Torah, since according to Jewish law a commitment made under threat or duress is not considered binding. It could also be used by gentiles to deflate the pride that Jews have always taken in their willingness to obey the word of God. 

Interestingly, the noted Babylonian Sage Rava resolved the problem by asserting that the real acceptance of the Torah took place in the time of Mordecai and Esther, when “the Jews ordained and took upon them and upon their seed” (Esther 9:27). 

Rava seems to be saying that we should be suspicious of commitments made in the heat of ardor, to the accompaniment of thunder, lightning and assorted pyrotechnics. 

What is more important and lasting is the carefully considered decision made at a time when God’s glory is not so visible, as was the case in the time of the Purim story.

Two Torahs

A number of commentators were troubled by the fact that the above portrayal of the Israelites’ acceptance of the Torah under threat seems to run counter to the prevalent view that they had accepted the Torah with full willingness. First, before even hearing what was contained in the Torah, they had declared unconditionally “We shall do it!”; and only afterwards “and we shall hear” the details of its contents (Exodus 24:17). 

According to one medieval view, the about-face can be resolved by distinguishing between two different Torahs.

Jewish tradition recognizes that, in addition to the written text of the Pentateuch, God revealed at Mount Sinai the Oral Torah, which is of equal sanctity and authority. 

Following this approach, it was suggested that it was easy to get the Israelites’ unconditional consent to the finite-looking corpus of the written Torah. 

Not all the Hebrews, however, were so ready to commit themselves to the Oral Torah, a vast body of lore that encompasses the classical literature of the Talmud, commentaries and codes, infinitely expanding and developing through the generations. It was with respect to this branch of the Torah that the Almighty was required to resort to threats and coercion.

It is interesting to note that the first known appearance of this interpretation seems to be in a sermon preached in the early Middle Ages, aimed at underlining the interdependence of the Written and Oral Torah. 

It is clear that the homelist was responding to an actual challenge: This was the era which marked the rise of the Karaite movement, a Jewish sect that claimed to accept only the written Bible, and to reject the authority of the Rabbinic-Talmudic traditions. 

Our anonymous commentator was saying, in effect, that the same problem had existed in the time of Moses, and that the response had to be forceful and decisive. 

Cleansed at Mount Sinai

Other midrashic interpretations of the Sinai revelation have also been explained as reactions to sectarian challenges. 

For example, in one talmudic passage Rabbi Yohanan stated that when Israel stood before Mount Sinai they became cleansed of the filth that had been injected into Eve by the serpent in the Garden of Eden. 

This strange-sounding comment takes on new meaning when we contrast it to the Christian teachings of the apostle Paul, who argued that the Torah had no power to cure people of the “original sin” of Adam and Eve; only through the acceptance of Christianity could such purification be realized. 

In fact, according to this view, all the “Law” [i.e., the Torah] did was magnify people’s consciousness of sin.

Rabbi Yohanan is countering such arguments by saying that, whatever defilement may have attached itself to humanity, it was removed at Mount Sinai by virtue of the acceptance of God’s Torah. 

Ironically, in Rabbi Yohanan’s version only the Jews were cleansed. The heathen nations, who had not been present to accept the Torah, remained in their spiritual impurity.

A Place in the Qur’an

A final note: The legend of the lifting up of Mount Sinai makes its appearance in an unexpected place: the Qur’an. According to Muslim belief, this work, the sacred scripture of Islam, contains the revelations spoken to the prophet Mohammad (570-632 CE). It is a work that is deeply influenced by Jewish teachings. 

The Qur’an provides a lengthy description of the story of the Israelite Exodus. It includes this passage, in which God is said to relate: 

And then We took a covenant with you and raised the mountain over you: Accept forcefully what We have given you, and remember what is in it. (Sura II, 60)

Most of the Muslim commentators, who could find no basis for this story in the biblical text itself, and who were of course not experts in talmudic writings, insisted that the passage must be understood figuratively. 

The commentators might have been tipped off, however, to Mohammad’s use of a Jewish source by his choice of words. 

Thus in the sura cited above, for the word “mountain” he uses not the expected Arabic term jabal, but an Aramaic equivalent: tura. Tura is also the word that is employed to translate “mountain” in the standard Jewish Aramaic translations of the Torah. 

Jewish readers, at any rate, can easily discern the influence on the Koran of the Rabbinic traditions we have been discussing.

My email address is: [email protected]

---

This article is included in the collection: In Those Days, At This Time: Holiness and History in the Jewish Calendar, University of Calgary Press, 2007.

Crowning Achievement

by Eliezer Segal

In retelling the events of the first Shavuot, as Moses stood alone with the Almighty on Mount Sinai, the Talmud introduces some astonishing new details to the story. 

As the rabbis tell the tale, Moses was so overcome by impatience that he could not restrain himself from complaining that the Lord was spending precious moments on what appeared to be decorative ornaments to the Hebrew letters of the Torah. To this the Creator replied that, while these ornaments–designated by the Hebrew word tag [plural: tagin]–might now appear superfluous, in a future generation there would arise a great scholar named Rabbi Akiva who would be able to derive heaps and heaps of new laws and teachings from those trivial-looking tags.

What, indeed, were those tagin that were important enough to cause God to postpone the giving of the Torah?

At first glance, the answer seems a simple one, well known to anyone with a cursory knowledge of how Torah scrolls are written. According to the traditional practice set down in the Talmud, there are seven letters–identified by the acronym sha’atnez getz–that are decorated whenever they appear in the Torah with a special embellishment attached to the top of the letter. 

If these ornaments were the tagin that Moses beheld on Mount Sinai, calligraphic features that are mechanically added to the form of the letters, then it is difficult to imagine how Rabbi Akiva could have ascribed to them exegetical importance. 

And in truth, when we examine the traditional commentators to the Talmudic passage, we see that they understood the matter quite differently.

Rashi calls our attention to a passage that is found elsewhere in the Talmud, a delightful anecdote about how a class of schoolchildren produced a sequence of ingenious new interpretations for the names and shapes of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. 

According to these young prodigies, the letter kof stands for the word kadosh, and refers to the Holy One, whereas the resh represents rasha, the wicked. Accordingly, they ask “Why is the kof turned away from the resh? It is as if the Holy One is saying: I am unable to gaze upon the wicked.”

Rashi explains that that the children were basing their interpretation on the fact that the kof sometimes has a little tag ornament on its roof, like a miniature zayin, that faces away from the resh when the alphabet is written in proper sequence.

As we read Rashi’s comments, we sense that something is not quite right. After all, kof is not one of the seven letters included in the sha’atnez getz group, so why should it have a  tag on its top?

Furthermore, as we study other medieval compendia of Jewish law, it quickly becomes apparent that the conventions for writing tags in Torah scrolls are much more complicated than we first supposed.

One of the most important sources for the development of synagogue practice in medieval Europe is a work known as the Mahzor Vitry, a compendium of laws and customs that was composed by Rashi’s students in twelfth-century France. From various directives contained in the Mahzor Vitry we learn that the sha’atnez getz rule was not meant to apply to every occurrence of those seven letters in the Bible, but to specific texts that are inscribed in a Mezuzah. This approach finds independent corroboration in Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, where he deals with the sha’atnez getz letters only in connection with the writing of the Shema‘ in Tefillin and Mezuzot. After specifying their locations and shapes, he comments “If one neglected to include the tagin or wrote more or less than the required ones, this does not disqualify it.”

Furthermore, we learn from the Mahzor Vitry that the tagin were not written in the way they are written today, by adding the same zayin-like appendage to the tops of the respective letters. Rather, there were special rules for how the letter was to be shaped each individual time it appeared.

The shin has five tagin: two on the first leg and two on the last, and one on the middle one. The ‘ayin has three on each leg. The tet has two on the first leg and three on the last. The nun and the zayin have three apiece. The gimel has three tagin. The tzadik has two on the first leg and three on the last.

In an addendum to this section, the editor of the Mahzor Vitry notes that he has witnessed the practice of decorating all the sha’atnez getz letters in a uniform manner, though such was not the dominant custom in his own community. Some authorities (such as Rashi’s grandson, Rabbi Jacob Tam), preferred to play it safe by following both practices: The individual rules should be followed with regards to the special shapes of specific letters, but in other cases the sha’atnez gatz letters should always be decorated with their uniform tags.

The Mahzor Vity actually incorporates a separate treatise devoted to the minutiae of writing tagin in sacred texts, a work that bears the title, appropriately enough, The Book of Tagin. Its opening lines bear witness to the author’s belief that he was in possession a most ancient and arcane tradition that was carefully passed from teacher to disciple from the earliest times: 

And this is the book of Tagin that Ely the Priest took up from the twelve stones that Joshua set up at Gilgal; and he handed them to Samuel, and Samuel handed them to Palti ben Laish, and Palti ben Laish handed them to Ahitofel, and Ahitofel to Ahijah the Shilonite, and Ahijah to Elijah and Elijah to Elisha and Elisha to Jehoiadah the Priest. And Jehoiadah to the prophets. And they buried it under the doorstep of the Temple. And when the doorstep of the Temple was uprooted during the reign of Jehoiachin King of Judah, Ezekiel found it and brought it to Babylonia. And during the reign of Cyrus King of Persia, when Ezra brought up the ten different castes, Ezra discovered this book and brought it up to Jerusalem, and it reached

Rabbi Moses Nahmanides accepted this claim at face value, and held the Book of Tagin in profound reverence, since he associated the tagin with the mysterious gates of understanding that had been bestowed upon Moses when God wrote out the Torah for him at Sinai. The significance of the special letters was a mysterious secret “…for these secret allusions can be known only through the oral tradition that originated with Moses at Sinai.”

The traditions surrounding the tagin were especially important to the Jewish pietist movement known as Hasidut Ashkenaz that flourished in Germany from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries. The followers of this movement placed great emphasis on the mystical significance of words, and they meticulously reckoned the numerological values of each word in the prayer book. Evidently, the movement’s founder Rabbi Judah the Pious composed a treatise entitled the Book of Wisdom in which he expounded the mysteries of the tagin. The colophon to that book aptly reflects the reverence in which the tagin were held by those circles:

It is forbidden to add to [the authorized list of tagin], nor may one omit even a single tag, since they are precisely as they were given at Mount Sinai. They have been passed down as an oral tradition by Elijah the Prophet to Ezra the High Priest. And the person who is punctilious about them will be blessed in this world and in the next. One must take great care not to diminish or to add even as much a hair’s breadth, for several explanations and several mysteries can be derived from them, for each one contains several interpretations. Any Torah scroll that lacks them is not fit to be read from. Therefore, all God-fearing individuals should be scrupulous with regard to them, and their reward will be great from the God of Israel…

Maimonides also emphasized, in his rules for writing Torah scrolls, that the tagin should be written in their traditional manner:

One ought to take great care with regards to the letters that are to be written larger and the ones that are written smaller, and the ones that have dots and the ones that have unusual shapes, like the wrapped peh‘s and the twisted letters, as the scribes have copied one from another. And one ought to take great care with regard to the tagin and their proper number; sometimes a letter requires one tag, and there are shins that have seven of them. So too, regarding the tagin that have the shape of zayins, which are as thin as a hair.

It is evident that Maimonides’ contemporaries were mystified by the tagin, and he was questioned about their shapes and the whether they should be treated as a mere custom or as an indispensable requisite for kosher Torah scrolls or Mezuzahs. After providing a brief description of some of their forms, Maimonides stated that their purpose is no longer known, nor is it possible to deduce it; though that we can learn from the Talmudic account of Moses’ sojourn on Mount Sinai that the tagin had been part of Moses’ original Torah scroll. Nevertheless, their omission does not disqualify the scroll, and conflicting traditions have evolved concerning their precise forms and placement.

Seeing as there is much disagreement on this, and since according to the strict law their omission is not a grounds for disqualification, because their inclusion is only intended to imitate the scrolls that were written by our Master Moses, therefore the people of some countries preferred to omit them and to leave them out of the scrolls altogether, on account of the disagreements that surround them; for writing them would not be a faithful imitation of the above-mentioned scroll.

Maimonides himself was of the opinions that, notwithstanding the divergence of opinions, a normative practice could be formulated based on majority usage, and that it would be preferable, though not compulsory, to follow that practice. 

An attitude closer to our current practice was espoused by Rav Hai Ga’on, who headed the Babylonian academy of Sura during the eleventh century. He was asked whether every occurrence of the letter zayin (one of the sha‘atnez getz letters) in a Mezuzah or Tefillin required a tag. His questioners noted that they possessed old Mezuzahs in which only some of the letters had the tagin. The Ga’on nevertheless ruled that they were not fit unless every single zayin was decorated by a tag. 

Examination of actual Torah scrolls reveals considerable variation in the degree to which different Jewish communities tried to implement the traditions about the “strange letters.” Diverse traditions of writing “wrapped peh“s (variants of that Hebrew letter that had extra curls inside them) were maintained quite faithfully in Yemen, Bohemia and Germany, though we do not encounter them in texts from the Cairo Genizah. 

I suppose that it should not surprise us too much that the secrets of the tagin have been lost over time. After all, Moses himself was unable to comprehend them! Nevertheless, it is tempting to speculate how much we would be enriched–whether in the form of Rabbi Akiva’s “heaps and heaps” of laws, or Rabbi Judah the Pious’ mystical insights–if only we were able to reclaim that ancient tradition.

• First Publication:
  • Ha’Atid, the magazine of the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation, Summer 2000.
• For further reading:
  • Moses Gaster. The Tittled Bible: A Model Codex of the Pentateuch. London: Maggs Bros., 1929.
  • Menashe Manfred Lehmann, “‘Al Pe-in Lefufin,” Beit Mikra 30, no. 4 (1985): 449-55.
  • Yitzhak Razhabi, “Irregular Letters in the Torah,” in Torah Shelemah, ed. Menahem M. Kasher, 29, 1-234, Jerusalem: American Biblical Encyclopedia Society Inc., 1978.
  • I. M. Ta-Shma, “The Attitude to Aliya to Eretz Israel (Palestine) in Medieval German Jewry,” Shalem: Studies in the History of the Jews in Eretz Israel 6 (1992): 315-8.
  • I. M. Ta-Shma, “‘Al Tagin ve-Ziyyunin Shel Sefer Torah,”

My email address is: [email protected]

This article is included in the collection: In Those Days, At This Time: Holiness and History in the Jewish Calendar, University of Calgary Press, 2007.

Post navigation

The Wise King Ahasuerus

by Eliezer Segal

Well, Australia is still in the Commonwealth, and Queen Elizabeth is still your official Head of State . As a Canadian, I welcome you back to our charmingly anachronistic political association.

In this democratic world, the role of the sovereign is indeed a questionable one, particularly in constitutional monarchies where their role is ceremonial and symbolic.

The story of Purim has provided Jewish scholars through the ages with occasions to contemplate the nature of government, and the place of the king within the mechanisms of power. Not surprisingly, their interpretations of the Biblical text often reveal a great deal of their own contemporary concerns.

I think that modern readers have tended to regard Ahasuerus as something of a comical buffoon. This is not only the result of the frivolity that has characterized our Purim celebrations, but it legitimately reflects the king’s ever-changing positions in the Esther narrative. Initially, he is a benevolent leader entertaining the populace with banquets and festivities. Quickly he is persuaded by Haman to support a genocidal massacre. And then, just as instantly, Esther turns him into an ally of the Jews, determined to execute vengeance on Haman and his collaborators.

It is difficult not to agree with the Talmudic rabbis who termed Ahasuerus a hafakhfakhan, an unstable personality easily influenced by his counselors and subject to constant changes of attitude.

A recurring argument in the Talmud concerns the evaluation of Ahasuerus’ intelligence. Was he a shrewd statesman, or an incompetent boob? Certain episodes lend themselves to either interpretation.

Thus, the opening verses of Esther recount two separate royal feasts. In the first, the king entertained the citizens of the provinces, and only afterwards did he convene celebrations for the residents of Shushan, the capital city. Some rabbi were convinced that it was a wise political move to curry the good will of the outsiders first; while others insisted that it was an act of folly to befriend the provincials, who might rebel at any moment, before he had properly secured his position at home.

Several Talmudic sages were quick to adduce examples of Ahasuerus’ stupidity and fickleness: in his abandonment of former allies, in his impulsive treatment of Vashti and in several other acts of dubious judgment.

In light of this critical attitude among the ancient Jewish sages, it comes as something of a surprise to observe how determined many of the medieval commentators were to paint the Persian king in flattering colours. This was particularly true among scholars who lived in Spain.

Even with regard to that most incriminating of passages, when Ahasuerus gives Haman a carte blanche to eradicate the Jews of the empire, several Spanish Jewish exegetes insisted that the king did not really intend that the Jews should come to physical harm. 

Thus, Rabbi Abraham Hadidah argued that the king only planned to destroy the Jews’ possessions, but not to kill the people. According to this interpretation, when Haman subsequently issued the order to “o destroy, to kill, and to cause to perish, all Jews, both young and old,” he was exceeding the authority that had been granted to him by the king. For this reason, Ahasuerus could sincerely claim later on that he had been completely unaware of Haman’s machination.

In as similar vein, Rabbi Isaac Arama wrote that Ahasuerus scheme had been to expel the Jews from his domains, rather than to murder them. Clearly Rabbi Arama had in mind the recent experiences of several European Jewish communities, in England, France and elsewhere who had been forcibly evicted from their respective lands.

Another Spanish interpreter, Rabbi Abraham Saba, could not conceive of the possibility that a great emperor of Ahasuerus’ stature would knowingly perpetrate a ruthless massacre. To do so would bring lasting shame upon his kingdom, and no self-respecting king would consider it. Rabbi Isaac Arama concurred, insisting that the very possibility of murdering an entire nature was so abhorrent to human nature that no monarch would have given such an order.

For other commentators, the king’s sympathies for his Jewish subjects was assured by their indispensable contributions to the royal coffers. It would be an act of economic irresponsibility to eliminate such a lucrative source of tax revenues. Rabbi Solomon Astruc argued that in the closing verses of the Megillah, when “king Ahasuerus laid a tribute upon the land, and upon the isles of the sea,” he was in fact following Mordecai’s advice in levying a tax on the Jews, as a way of underscore their fiscal benefits to the realm.

This irrational desire to defend Ahasuerus, to a degree that is unwarranted by the Biblical account or its Midrashic interpretations, seems to accurately reflect the attitudes of the Jews towards their own monarchs. Under the prevailing rules of medieval politics, the Jews were the “property” of the king, or of the royal treasury, and subject to the direct protection of the Crown. When anti-Jewish hostilities arose from other segments of the society, whether from the nobility, the clergy or the peasantry, it was the king who was responsible for guaranteeing the safety of “his Jews”. The monarchs usually lived up to their obligations, but not always.

At any rate, the ability of the Jews to maintain their fragile existence, as a despised minority amidst a hostile environment, demanded that they convince themselves of the faithfulness, not only of their current rulers, but of the institution of monarchy itself. If they could not depend on their kings, then who knows what might befall them?

In the end. as we all know, the latter-day Ahasueruses into whose hands they had placed their destinies betrayed them, and the glorious Jewish communities of the Iberian Peninsula were destroyed overnight, with the blessing of the monarchy, through expulsion, massacre and forced conversion.

Of course, from our post-Holocaust perspective the patriotic self-delusion exhibited by the Spanish Jewish commentator appears pathetic, if not pathological. It reminds us of the naiveté of those German and Polish Jews who upheld their faith in the decency of European enlightenment, until the bitter end.

And yet, it is difficult to know if we would have acted differently under the circumstances. Only in recent years have the Jewish communities of the United States and Canada become aware how our governments (unlike that of Australia), while maintaining public postures of liberality and benevolence, were in fact hard at work suppressing all reports of Nazi genocide, and insuring that no Jewish refugees would find refuge on our hospitable shores. At the same time, Her Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom was making additional efforts to keep the Jews out of Palestine, for fear of alienating their Middle-Eastern allies. 

Through all those years of betrayal, the Jews of these enlightened lands continued to maintain unwavering faith in the uprightness of their leaders. Any alternative was unimaginable.

I expect that future generations of Jews will continue to examine the story of Purim from the perspective of their own experiences. Even after the last despicable Haman has vanished from the earth, the events and personalities of the Book of Esther will inspire us to insightful discussions about the ideals of good government.

• First Publication:
  • Ha’Atid, the magazine of the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation, Spring 2000.
• For further reading:
  • Barry Walfish, Esther in Medieval Garb: Jewish Interpretation of The Book of Esther in the Middle Ages, SUNY series in Judaica. (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1993)

My email address is: [email protected]

This article is included in the collection: In Those Days, At This Time: Holiness and History in the Jewish Calendar, University of Calgary Press, 2007.

Where to Draw the Line

by Eliezer Segal

Our God and God of our fathers,
reign thou in thy glory over the whole world,
and be exalted above all the earth in thine honour,
and shine forth in the splendour and excellence of thy might
upon all the inhabitants of thy world…

These stirring phrases from the New Years Musaf service illustrate aptly the universalistic tone of the High Holy Day season that sets it apart from all other periods in the Jewish calendar.

The resolve of Jews to observe their traditions in lands and climes far from Jerusalem presents some unique and intriguing challenges to the custodians of Jewish law.

This article will explore one such challenge that is of especial concern to Jews in Australia and the Orient.

Although the dates for all the Jewish holidays can now be conveniently ascertained, even years in advance, by consulting a calendar, this was not the case during Talmudic times.

According to the astronomical cycles, the appearance of the new moon could take place either twenty-nine or thirty days after the commencement of the preceding month. The precise date had to be determined on each occasion by a properly constituted court in Jerusalem, on the basis of testimony from witnesses who had actually observed the relevant astronomical phenomena. Only then could the start of the new month be officially declared. Messengers would then be dispatched to publicize that decision, and until the arrival of those messengers, distant Jewish communities could not be certain exactly when to observe any festivals that might occur during the month.

Although a perpetual computed calendar was introduced in the fourth century, traditional Jews outside the Holy Land have continued to add an extra day to most festivals, a vestige of those earlier times when the messengers would not have reached their localities in time to inform them of the correct date.

Rosh Hashanah remains the only festival for which the extra day is observed even in Israel. As the only holiday that falls on the first day of the month, the earliest possible date had to be observed in all years, as a precaution lest it be discovered at some point later in the day that the holiday had commenced at the preceding sundown, and that the day had become retroactively subject to Yom Tov restrictions.

The Talmud in the tractate Rosh Hashanah cites an obscure regulation concerning the determination of the new month; to the effect that it could be declared only if the first sighting of the new moon appeared before noon on the twenty-ninth day of the month. Even the great Babylonian sage Samuel (who was also renowned as an astronomer) was at a loss to explain this cryptic tradition.

Some of our medieval sages took up the challenge of explaining the Talmudic passage based on the advanced scientific knowledge of their age. The noted Spanish poet and philosopher Rabbi Judah Hallevi devoted a discussion to this topic in his famous theological treatise, the Kuzari.

Rabbi Judah begins from the premise that the court may decree a New Moon only if the day will last a full twenty-four hours. When the Talmud determines noon as the cut-off time, it is stating that until that hour it will be possible for somebody somewhere to the west of Jerusalem to fit in a full day of Rosh Hodesh.

Now let us try a few simple calculations. Keep in mind, that according to Jewish law the day begins with nightfall on the previous day. Hence, assuming that nightfall comes at approximately 6 p.m., eighteen hours will have elapsed by the noon deadline in Jerusalem itself.

The choice of noon as the determining point presupposes that there is a place in the world where the day of Rosh Hodesh (or, to be precise, its preceding evening) had not yet commenced when it was noon in Jerusalem. The farthest westward point at which this would be true would thus, according to the Talmud, be eighteen hours west of Jerusalem, which is the equivalent of being six hours to the east of it. At this point, we will have entered a new day.

While conventional wisdom regarded such a location at the farthest extreme of Asia as the “land of the rising sun,” whose clocks ran six hours earlier than Jerusalem, Rabbi Judah insisted that all sabbaths since the Creation had been set to commence in the Holy Land itself, and that the time in China is not six hours earlier than in Israel, but eighteen hours later:

…A place must exist which is at the same time extreme west and the beginning of east. This is, for the Land of Israel, the beginning of the inhabited world, not only from the point of view of the Torah, but also from that of natural science. For it would be impossible for the days of the week to have the same names all over the world unless we fix one place which marks the beginning, and another one not far off…that one should be east absolute, and the other west absolute.

What Rabbi Judah has established through this complex process of reasoning is the delineation of the Jewish version of the International Date Line! As noted, the location that is thereby designated is at a longitude six hours (or ninety degrees) east of Jerusalem. Since Jerusalem is situated at 35º longitude, this would place the halakhic Date Line at 125º.

Of course, throughout much of Jewish history these calculations were of no practical relevance. The line derived thereby runs through the farthest reaches of Siberia, China and Japan, lands in which few self-respecting Jews were likely to have wandered.

With the modern Age of Discovery, this situation changed drastically. Not only did Jewish feet come to tread on the soils of Japan and Australia, but the world at large had established its own International Date Line at a conveniently uninhabited region in the Pacific Ocean, opposite the Greenwich median at 180º longitude. In theory, and Jews who might find themselves dispersed to those far-off domains between the two lines should be following a different calendar from their gentile neighbours.

In spite of the gradual blossoming of Jewish life in the Far East, the issue did not come up for serious discussion until 1941.

The event that sparked the debate was the flight of several hundred Eastern European yeshivah students, fleeing the reign of Nazi terror, to the Far East. They were among several thousand desperate Jews whose lives were spared thanks to the heroism of Chiune Sugihara, the righteous Japanese consul in Kovno who disregarded the orders of his government, and fought the Soviet insistence on the immediate closure of his consulate, sot that he might issue as many visas as he physically could before the gates were fatally closed.

Following their arduous adventure on the Trans-Siberian Railroad, the meticulously observant students, mostly from the renowned Yeshivah of Mir, reached the Japanese town of Kobe prior to being settled in Shanghai.

Kobe was situated between the Jewish and International Date Lines. In order to avoid transgressing the sabbath, the yeshivah students initially kept it for two days each week, but eventually decided to resolve their doubts by telegraphing some of the foremost rabbinical authorities in Europe and Palestine.

The most prominent of the respondents was Rabbi Abraham Karelitz, the celebrated “Hazon Ish,” who was firm in his commitment to Rabbi Judah Hallevi’s version of the Date Line, insisting that the students observe their sabbath on the day that the rest of the Japanese regarded as Sunday.

The seriousness with which these students regarded the matter became apparent later in `1941, when a group of them were given an opportunity to sail from Shanghai to Canada. Upon realizing that their ship would be crossing through the doubtful zone on Yom Kippur, requiring them to fast for two consecutive days, they decided to forego this rare chance at freedom. Before they could find another ship, the intensification of the war halted all traffic, and they remained precariously stranded in China until 1946.

As you may already have realized, the 125º longitude cuts right through the deserts of Western Australia, putting most of the continent on the “wrong” side of the halakhic date line. It would indeed follow from this that Australian Jews should always be one day out of sync from the rest of their society, keeping their Shabbat on Sunday.

In truth, there are some other halakhic opinions on the matter.

The most convenient of these is based on the argument from silence: The bulk of medieval rabbinic opinion simply ignores the issue altogether, and should therefore be counted as an overwhelming indication that the halakhah has no fixed doctrine about the placement of the Date Line. Individual communities are should consequently be free to choose their own. This view found almost no support among the leading interpreters of Jewish religious law.

The Hazon Ish himself acknowledged, as had Rabbi Judah Hallevi, that the designated meridian need not be followed so precisely as to cut off small chunks of territory from the larger land masses. Accordingly, once we have established that the bulk of Asia lies to the east of the halakhic date line, those few extremities of Siberia or China that happen to cross the line can safely be treated as part of the larger land mass.

Unfortunately, this calculation would only serve to join the western third of Australia along with the rest of the country into the “wrong” side of the International Date Line.

A more effective halakhic solution is the alternative date line that has been posited by some rabbinic scholars at 145º west, which places Australia safely to its west. The defenders of this view point out that their line falls precisely half-way around the world from Jerusalem.

Though this option might elicit sighs of relief form the Jews of Sydney, Melbourne, or even Tokyo, it offers little solace to their unfortunate coreligionists in Hawaii, who have thereby been cut off from the familiar international calendar.

The stalwart Australian diaspora might yet have to ponder the possibilities of a two-day fast on Tom Kippur, or a third day of Rosh Hashanah.

• First Publication:
  • Ha’Atid, the magazine of the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation, Fall 1999, p. 8.
• For Further Reading:
  • Judah Hallevi. The Kuzari (Kitab al Khazari); An Argument for the Faith of Israel. Translated by Hartwig Hirschfeld. New York: Schocken Books, 1964.
  • Leitner, Y. Operation Torah Rescue: The Escape of the Mirrer Yeshiva from War-Torn Poland to Shanghai, China. Jerusalem: Feldheim, 1987.
  • Mochizuki, K., and D. Lee. Passage to Freedom: The Sugihara Story. New York: Lee & Low Books, 1997.
  • Pahmer, D. “The International Date Line and Related Issues.”The Journal of Halacha and Contemporary Society 21 (1991): 60-83.
  • Ta-Shma, Israel M. Rabi Zerahyah ha-Levi ba’al ha-Ma’or u-vene hugo : le-toldot ha-sifrut ha-Rabanit bi-Provans. Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1992.

My email address is: [email protected]

This article is included in the collection: In Those Days, At This Time: Holiness and History in the Jewish Calendar, University of Calgary Press, 2007.

Purim, Parody and Pilpul

by Eliezer Segal

Like all the festivals of the Jewish calendar, Purim as we know it today is the product of a long history of development. 

Ostensibly a commemoration of national deliverance from danger, we should have expected solemn ceremonies of thanksgiving such as characterize Passover and Hanukkah. The victory over Haman is, however, distinguished by a unique mood of high-spirited frivolity, coloured by high alcoholic content and a general tendency to make light of matters which would be treated more reverently at other seasons.

Original Solemnity

The earliest descriptions of Purim celebrations, from the Second Temple and Mishnaic eras, offer no indication of the irreverence that we associate with the festival. The emphasis is on the formal reading of the Scroll of Esther, which was to be conducted with great care and seriousness.

To the best of my knowledge none of the familiar themes of drinking, parody, etc., are mentioned in Talmudic sources emanating from the Land of Israel. In fact the chief Palestinian rabbinic exposition of Esther, the midrash Esther Rabbah, seems to take every possible opportunity to emphasize the dangers of wine, incorporating a lengthy tract on the virtues of temperance.

The events of the Megillah are interpreted as reflections of the religious behaviour of the Jews of the time, and within the context of broader historical themes, especially the destruction of the First Temple and the beginnings of the building of the Second (which the Rabbis believed was delayed by Ahashverosh and Vashti).

It was the Jews of Babylonia who seem to have introduced some of the more frivolous customs into the observance of Purim. Two main factors can be traced to the Babylonian Talmud: “Purim-Torah” and the encouragement of drunkenness.

In the Babylonian Talmud

An exceptional passage in the “Bavli” (Hullin 139b) serves as a model for subsequent “Purim-Torah”–that is, playfully using some of the far-fetched methods of talmudic logic and Biblical exegesis in order to reach absurd conclusions.

The passage in question relates how a visiting rabbi was challenged to find references to Mordecai, Esther, Haman and Moses (!) in the Pentateuch. The sage responds to the riddles with audacious, clever puns. For example, ignoring the traditional vocalization, he finds an allusion to Haman in Genesis 3:11: “Is it from (hamin) the tree…” (also hinting at the villain’s hanging); and to Esther in Deuteronomy 31:18, where God says, “I will surely hide (haster ‘astir) my face” (recalling Esther’s refusal to disclose her origins to the king).

Typically, some of the later commentators approached the talmudic passage without full appreciation of its humorous intent. Thus Rashi gravely tries to justify the need to find an “allusion” to Moses’ name in the Torah.

Or to take another example, the later custom of donning masks and costumes on Purim–a practice which is first reported in Provence in the early fourteenth century, and later achieved popularity under the influence of the German Fastnacht celebration and the Italian carnivals–was afterwards tied to the idea of God’s “hiding his face” as found in the Talmud!

In contrast to the approach taken by the Palestinian sources, the Babylonian Talmud records the famous dictum of the noted sage Rava (Megillah 7b): “A man is obligated to get drunk on Purim to the point where he can no longer distinguish between `Cursed is Haman’ and `Blessed is Mordecai.'”

Here, too, later authorities had trouble accepting the ruling at face value. For an arch-rationalist like Maimonides it was unimaginable that the halakhah could be condoning such actions; hence he re-interpreted the ruling to refer to drinking only enough to fall asleep. Some authorities understood that the statement was rejected by the Talmud, a view which it indicates by juxtaposing to it an incident wherein Rabbah slaughters Rabbi Zera while under the influence (Rabbah is able to revive his colleague, though the latter politely refuses an invitation to the next year’s festivities).

Medieval Parodies

From these Talmudic beginnings we can trace the development of a whole genre of Purim parodies, wherein Jews would affectionately poke fun at the world of Talmud and halakhah. From the 12th century, Jews in Italy, southern France (Provence) and elsewhere were producing parodies on the Talmud, liturgy and other familiar pillars of Jewish life.

A typical “Purim Tractate” (Masekhet Purim) might follow the form of the Tractate Pesahim which deals with the regulations of Passover, except that all the stringent laws concerning the removal of leaven are now applied to water and non-alcoholic beverages, which are not to be tolerated on the holiday.

A special roster of biblical and rabbinic authorities populates these works. Alongside such drunkards as Noah and Lot we might encounter the prophet Habakbuk (“the Bottle”); as well as Rabbi Shakhra (“Drunkard”), or the commentary of Rasha (“Wicked”). In modern times especially, the format has been used to satirize a variety of social phenomena, from American Judaism to Israeli politics

It might be my imagination, but I have noted that in recent years it has become almost impossible to find these parodies, which used to be routinely reprinted before Purim. This might be indicative of an excessively defensive mood that has overtaken religious Jewry.

Particularly among German Jews there also developed the institution of the “Purim-shpiel,” a rowdy play on the Megillah story (or other theme) traditionally performed on Purim. Absorbing a number of different traditions, from the German theatre as well as from Jewish exegesis, these productions took great liberties with plot and characterization, such that Mordecai might appear as a pathetic buffoon, Haman as a tragic figure, and so on. Such irreverence could of course be tolerated only at Purim time.

To German Jewry we also owe the adoption of the Hamantasch, an adaptation of the German mahn-tash (“poppy-pocket”) pastry, given a new meaning for the occasion.

Our custom of sounding noisemakers at the mention of Haman’s name is also a version of an old practice, which took on different forms through the generations. The earliest sources (from the writings of the Babylonian Ge’onim) speak of burning effigies of Haman on a bonfire. In medieval Europe children would write Haman’s name on stones or wood blocks, and bang them until the name was erased.

In our observance of Purim we are thus drawing from a long line of historical precedents and developments.

My email address is: [email protected]

This article is included in the collection:

Holidays, History and Halakhah, Jason Aronson, 2001.

“Because They Were Included in the Miracle”

by Eliezer Segal

There is little in the major themes of Hanukkah that would characterize it as a distinctively female holiday. Women do not figure prominently in either the military victories or in the miracle of the jar of oil. And yet Jewish tradition has emphasized that women have a special connection to the celebration, and in some communities they are accustomed to refraining from work while the candles are lit.

The basis for this tradition is in a saying in the Talmud by Rabbi Joshua ben Levi that “Women are obligated to light Hanukkah candles because they were included in the miracle.” The commentators disagree over how precisely to understand this passage. Does it mean that women were merely counted as one segment of the whole Jewish people, all of whom were redeemed from Greek oppression? Or did they have some special role in the deliverance. The former possibility (which appears to be the view of the Jerusalem Talmud) finds support in the fact that a similar observation is made regarding Passover, in which story women did not have a conspicuous role. The latter possibility is suggested by the juxtaposition to Purim, where Queen Esther was a key player.

Most traditional commentators have preferred to explain that women did indeed play a central role in the Maccabean victories. However there is no consensus about what episode is being alluded to. A likely possibility would have been the heroic martyrdom of the mother and her seven sons, which was known to the author of the Book of Maccabees as well as to the Talmud. Yet few authors make reference to that episode, probably because it did not advance the miracle of the Jewish victory in any obvious way.

Rashi alludes cryptically to a different tradition, writing that “the Greeks had decreed that all brides would first be violated by the Greek officers, and the miracle was accomplished with the help of a woman.” 

The story to which Rashi is alluding is not attested in any of the standard talmudic or midrashic works. However medieval manuscripts have preserved a number of similar tales which claim to reconstruct the origins of the Maccabean revolt. These accounts concur with Rashi that the Greek generals had claimed the “right of the first night” with Jewish brides (a motif which appears in other talmudic stories, without connection to Hanukkah), and add that one of the Hasmonean women–her precise name and family relationship vary in the different traditions–stirred her hitherto passive family into action by publicly stripping herself naked on her wedding day, shocking the people into avenging the sacrilege and humiliation of the daughters of Israel, even as Simeon and Levi had requited Dinah’s honour.

Several medieval commentators supplement Rashi’s words with additional details. R. Nissim of Gerona, citing a “midrash,” states that the daughter of Johanan the Hasmonean fed cheese to an enemy general in order to make him drowsy, whereupon she proceeded to cut off his head, thereby allowing her companions to flee to safety. He notes that this was the origin of the custom of eating cheese on Hanukkah. Rashi’s grandson Rabbi Samuel ben Meir (Rashbam) identifies the heroine of the story as Judith.

It is clear that these commentators were identifying Rashi’s story with the ancient tale of Judith. According to the exciting story which has been preserved in the Greek Apocrypha, the lovely and virtuous widow Judith lived during the time of Nebuchadnezzar, and succeeded in saving Jerusalem from an invasion by the Assyrian general Holofernes by pretending to seduce him, getting him drunk, and then decapitating him. The historical context is of course inappropriate to Hanukkah, and the detail about the cheese (which appears to have been copied from the similar exploit of Jael and Sisera in the Book of Judges) is absent from most versions of the Judith story. Although there is an interesting analogy when Judith invokes the precedent of Simeon and Levi’s reprisal against Shechem, it is clear that we are dealing with a different event.

This fact did not impede the Jewish storytellers from grafting together the stories about the Hasmonean bride and the heroic widow, and including the resulting tale among the episodes of the Maccabean revolt. A fortunate consequence of this was a rekindling of Jewish interest in the Book of Judith, a charming and inspiring gem of our literature which might otherwise have been consigned to neglect.

My email address is: [email protected]

This article is included in the collection:

Holidays, History and Halakhah, Jason Aronson, 2001.

Why the Olympic Spirit Lacks a Jewish Neshama

by Eliezer Segal

Some time ago a note was circulated to various lecturers at the University of Calgary, including members of my own Religious Studies Department, requesting articles that would reflect the close links between our respective fields of expertise and the values embodied in the ideals of sportsmanship and the “Olympic Spirit.”

The simple request made my very uncomfortable. This was not only because of the impossible deadline that would have had to be met (it wasn’t), but also because of a gut feeling that, whatever might be the case with respect to other cultures, religions and academic disciplines, there exists an essential conflict between traditional Judaism and the world of athletics. And the conflict becomes more exacerbated when the pursuit of athletics is translated into a value system.

After giving the matter some more thought, I decided to subject my gut feelings to the scrutiny of scholarship.

Greeks vs. Jews

The earliest association I can think of between Jews and athletics is part of the Hanukkah story (the archery practice through which Jonathan signals to David to escape in I Samuel 20 hardly qualifies as a sports event, especially during war time).

When the author of the First Book of Maccabees, our main source for the events, wishes to characterize the wicked Jewish accomplices of Antiochos’ Hellenization program, the first act he sees fit to describe (I:14ff.) is how the traitors “built a gymnasium in Jerusalem in the heathen fashion, and submitted to uncircumcision, and disowned the holy covenant; they allied themselves with the heathen and became the slaves of wrongdoing.”

E. Bickerman, in his classic study of the issues behind the Maccabean revolt, writes:

The “gymnasium,” i.e., the sports-stadium, during the Hellenistic period formed the symbol and basis for the Greek way of life. Physical education was something alien to the Oriental, but a natural thing for the Greeks. Wherever Greeks came together, or people who wanted to be counted as Greeks, they started athletic exercises….That meant that when native people participated in the athletic contests, they were accepted into the ruling class, and they acknowledged the hegemony of the Greek way of life.

Simply put, indulgence in athletics was viewed by the “good guys” of the story as tantamount to a denial of one’s Judaism. The fact that this episode has not been universally included in the teaching of the Hanukkah story results in the historical irony that the name “Maccabee” came to be applied today to (of all things) a Jewish athletic organization!

In a similar vein, Josephus Flavius described at length the Hellenizing activities of King Herod (that arch-tyrant of Judaea who succeeded in perpetuating his rule by currying the favour of the Roman rulers at the expense of the sensibilities of his Jewish populace). Among other things, Josephus also reports that Herod established his own five-yearly games on an international scale in honour of Caesar, to be held in Jerusalem and elsewhere. He even named one of his daughters Olympia.

Josephus’ account of Herod’s own Olympic games reveals to us a new phase in the development of the athletic world-view of antiquity. Whereas Jewish objections to Greek sports were primarily due to their inherently pagan character (as well as to their immodesty and frivolity), the Romans introduced a new dimension to the arena: cruelty which even surpassed that of professional hockey.

The classic examples of Roman viciousness were the throwing of prisoners (among whom were probably numbered many captured Jewish freedom-fighters) before wild beasts, and gladiatorial combat. Herod included such displays in his own games, to the delight of the pagan tourists and to the indignant shock of his Jewish subjects.

This sadistic side of athletics seems to be the one that figures most prominently in rabbinic writings.

Thus “theatres and circuses” are commonly condemned in the Talmud as places of idolatry and evil, though Jews are permitted to attend the events even on the Sabbath, because they might be able to save the lives of victims (by indicating through the “thumbs up” gesture their wish that the victim’s life be spared).

One noted rabbi, Simeon ben Lakish, was forced by economic difficulties to take up the life of a gladiator. The talmudic legend describes how his eventual opting for the life of Torah was at the expense of his physical prowess–the two worlds were perceived to be inherently antithetical.

Medieval Frivolity

As we move into the medieval period, most of the aspects of ancient athletics which had aroused the objections of the Jewish authorities–especially the pagan connections and the cruelty–were no longer in force. Most of the writings which discuss sports seem to bundle them in with other frivolous pursuits. As such they are generally frowned upon, though the sources allow for situations when frivolity is sanctioned.

A homily on the word ke-dorbonot (“The words of the wise are as goods”) in Ecclesiastes 12:2 presumes the existence of “girls’ ball-playing” (kaddur banot) to which the transmission of the Torah is compared. This probably reflects a belief that such pursuits as games were more appropriate to women. Men indulged only at special times.

For example, even as the talmudic rabbis had outdone each other in feats of juggling and so forth during the festive Rejoicing of the Water-Drawing (Simchat Beit Ha-She’uvah) on Sukkot, medieval sources speak of jumping competitions on Purim and of mock jousting and fencing at weddings. These were occasions when frivolity was acceptable.

Rabbinic writings that discuss the fine halakhic issues involved in ball-playing on Sabbath serve to remind us that the solemnity of the rabbis was rarely realized in the practice of ordinary people. Maimonides in his medical writings recommends (though not necessarily for Jews) an occasional game of football as a beneficial form of exercise. These seem to be the only concessions allowed for sports activities in traditional rabbinic literature.

An argument might be made for the claim that the demand for competitiveness and play was filled in traditional Judaism by the aggressive debate that characterizes Talmud study. Conversely, the fact that the Talmud did succeed in satisfying these needs may account for the unlikely popularity of Talmud as against such subjects as Bible or theology.

“Physical Repentance”

A radical departure from the normative Jewish antipathy towards athletics is to be found in the writings of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the revered Chief Rabbi of the Land of Israel during the formative years of the Zionist revival in Eretz Yisrael.

Rav Kook’s Zionist outlook saw that the life of Torah must exist in harmony with nature, and the spiritual redemption promised by the re-establishment of Jewish independence must be accompanied by a corresponding physical rebuilding of Jewish bodies. He even cites the Hebrew equivalent of Juvenal’s famous dictum. Mens sana in corpore sano (“A healthy mind in a healthy body”).

Unique among Jewish religious thinkers, Rav Kook viewed “physical repentance” as an essential condition of the ideal of teshuvah which permeated all his writings. The traditional negation of things physical was according to him the consequence of the anomalous conditions of Exile and the influence of alien religious values, a symptom of a general spiritual imbalance which had to be undone before true redemption could be achieved.

“When the holy people will be physically firm and strong,” Rav Kook wrote, “holiness will prevail in the world. When Jewish children will be strong, sound and healthy, the air of the world will become holy and pure.” Clearly, physical achievements (or, for that matter, military heroism) cannot become ends in themselves. They must always be employed as a means to a spiritual goal. Rav Kook insisted that physical education should be an important part of the curriculum of the yeshivah.

In his study at Rav Kook’s thought, Zvi Yaron summarizes the issue:

Since one of the factors that makes possible the fulfilment of “our physical duties” is athletic activity, the Rav comes to the conclusion that there is a great spiritual value to sports. The strengthening of physical prowess is a form of worship. The spiritual power of the most righteous becomes improved through the “exercises practised by the youth of Israel in Eretz Yisrael in order to strengthen their bodies to make themselves courageous sons of their nation.”

Accordingly, Rav Kook made a special request to the 1927 Zionist Congress in Basle that care should be taken to hold all athletic events, including football games, on weekdays, so that religious youths could participate freely. 

As in other aspects of his work and teachings, Rav Kook was going firmly against the grain of the religious establishment of his time.

Just as the distinguished rosters of modern “great Jewish sports heroes” did not pay much attention to Orthodox Jewish law (since their activity was inherently a symptom of non-Jewish cultural influence), so too, traditional Orthodoxy has never really called for the abolition of Sabbath sports events. This is probably because they presumed that their own youth had no practical interest in sports.

Nonetheless Rav Kook’s ideas have proved influential in parts of the Israeli religious community. They also help to place in clear focus the borderlines within which traditional Judaism could relate to athletics.

On the one hand, Rav Kook realized well that the objections raised against athletics in the ancient world–the heathen connotations and the sadistic cruelty–no longer applied to most modern manifestations.

On the other hand, he does not really extend his favourable attitude to sports substantially beyond the parameters allowed by the medievals. Athletic endeavor is justified as a means towards physical fitness. Physical fitness is, in turn, a legitimate instrument for the better performance of a Jew’s religious duties, as well as part of the process of national redemption.

We should not however allow Rav Kook’s enthusiastic phraseology (which is typical of his admiring reactions to the achievements of the Zionist pioneers) lead us to ignore a fundamental feature of his position: Even he would deny that there is any legitimacy to the concept of a “spirit” or “value-system” attached to sports.

For it is the belief of traditional Judaism that there is only one value-system: the religious world-view of the Torah. Other areas of human life may or may not be in harmony with the teachings of the Torah. Where an essential conflict must exist is when these areas (and this would apply to fields such as art, patriotism, or science, as much as to the “Olympic Spirit”) claim to make up autonomous ideologies.

Traditional Judaism–or for that matter, any religious world view–does not recognize rival value systems.

Thus, speaking from the perspective of Jewish sources (I emphasize that I am writing as an historian, not as a rabbi or theologian), it would be difficult to point to much affinity with any approach which sees athletic activity as more than part of a fitness program.

This premise would tend to discourage spectator sports altogether, except insofar as they arouse our admiration for God’s masterful creation of the human body. It would also tend to limit the amount of time a Jew should be devoting to such pursuits.

Professional or full-time athletes (unless it is with a view to teaching or some other justifiable end) would be frowned upon as avoiding their legitimate functions of “habitations of the world,” a charge which would also be brought against professional gamblers and other unproductive types.

It is when people begin to attach an inherent value, or “spirit,” to athletic achievement that Jewish tradition must find itself at odds with the secular environment, forced to stand at some distance from the Olympic arena.

My e-mail address is [email protected]

This article is included in the book
Why Didn’t I Learn This in Hebrew School?: Excursions Through the Jewish Past and Present, Lanham MD: Jason Aronson, 1999.

Weasels, Wells and Wedding Worries

by Eliezer Segal

It is important to be trustworthy, taught Rabbi Ammi in the Talmud.

 “How do we learn this? From the weasel and the pit. And if this is true for a weasel and a well, then how much more so with respect to one who trusts in the Holy One!”

No doubt trustworthiness is an admiral quality, whether in our relations with the Almighty or with our fellow humans. But what is this business about a weasel  [or maybe: rat, or mole] and a well?

The medieval commentators tried to fill in the missing details by citing a tale of obscure origin. Its earliest known version was recorded by Rabbi Nathan of Rome in the eleventh century: 

Once upon a time, a fair young maiden from a noble family was wandering in the desert and came upon a well. She lowered herself in a bucket to drink from its water but was unable to climb out. A young bachelor of priestly lineage offered to rescue her (after satisfying himself that she was not a demon) —on condition that she consent to marry him. They pledged that neither would wed any other partner. When (in keeping with respectable Jewish practice) she insisted that he provide witnesses to validate their commitment, a weasel passed near the well, so the suitor assured her that the weasel and the well could serve as witnesses for the purpose.

After returning home, the maiden, faithful to her pledge, fended off suitors by feigning insanity. The man, on the other hand, forgot his pledge, married another woman and fathered two sons. Tragically, both children came to untimely ends: one fell into a well and the other succumbed to a fatal weasel bite. These calamities reminded him of how he had betrayed his pledge. His wife then insisted that he divorce her and marry his original fiancée. He found her and married her, and they lived happily ever after.

In significant respects, this strange tale dovetails neatly with legal developments that were being confronted by  Jewish communities in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

In ancient times, The Jewish marriage procedure consisted of two stages that were originally quite distinct: the betrothal—known as eirusin or kiddushin—and the actual marriage (nissu’in). 

The eirusin is in fact a legally and religiously binding relationship, in that it cannot be dissolved without a formal divorce; and infidelity would be subject to the severe laws governing marital adultery. In order to minimize the possibility of such situations arising, medieval rabbinic authorities moved the kiddushin ceremony—when the groom bestows the ring upon the bride—to the actual wedding ceremony, thereby precluding any suspicions of violations during the betrothal period. This practice became widespread by the eleventh and twelfth centuries in France, Germany, Spain and North Africa; and it remains the norm in almost all communities. Historians have connected it to the uncertainties facing Jews because of persecution, expulsions or poverty.

The fact remained, however, that the original betrothal arrangement did serve an important purpose by strengthening the commitment to go through with the marriage. If prospective spouses too easily weaselled out of the scheduled nuptials, it could cause grave psychological and moral distress, as well as heavy financial costs when wedding expenses had already been paid.

This eventuality was addressed by resorting to a contractual mechanism of “shiddukhin”—a mutual agreement between the prospective in-laws to carry out the wedding. Unlike the talmudic betrothal, the shiddukhin did not create a ritually defined marriage relationship. The contracting parties would normally stipulate financial penalties for failure to uphold one’s commitments. These took numerous different forms. As with Christian practice at the time, the obligation was confirmed by guarantors (though not by weasels or wells). 

Documents from Egypt, Spain and elsewhere described how prospective grooms conveyed three “shiddukhin,” in the guise of seal-rings—two silver and one gold, representing the three stages in the marriage process. These were entrusted to a guardian as a kind of security deposit to be delivered, returned or forfeited at the time of the actual marriage. A compendium of legal forms from Barcelona also stipulates severe penalties in cash and real estate that would be exacted from the defaulting party, even if it required resorting to non-Jewish courts for enforcement—an extraordinary departure from the norms of Jewish law. In other respects the shiddukh agreement was treated as a business contract, and there was no religious stigma to retracting from the agreement as long as one was ready to pay the fines.

In Germany and France, on the other hand, some distinctly religious penalties were invoked for non-compliance. Violators were subject to the severe sanctions of the ḥerem, a writ of excommunication and social ostracism. When Rashi was called to deal with a case of someone who reneged and wanted to reclaim his deposit, he ruled that the matter must be adjudicated stringently, even to the point of imposing corporal punishment; for “the early authorities adopted this policy in order to avoid humiliating the daughters of Israel.” Though in principle the law applied to violations by either side, it was normally assumed that the women were the ones who needed protection.

Of particular interest was the standard practice of confirming the match by means of a handshake, an option which had no firm precedents in prior Jewish law, but became common in commercial transactions in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The ancient Greeks and Romans used to confirm marital matches in this way, and the practice was adopted by the Christian church until it became standard procedure in medieval Germanic law. 

Whether through handshakes, excommunications or cautionary tales about fair maidens in wells—this seems like a lot of effort to devote to enforcing simple honesty. And most of it would be unnecessary if prospective spouses just followed Rabbi Ammi’s directive about being trustworthy. 

Unfortunately we unreliable humans still have much to learn from the solid dependability of pits and weasels.

My email address is: [email protected]

Mr. Pepys’ Outrageous Outing

by Eliezer Segal

On Wednesday evening, October 14, 1663, for reasons that he did not record, the famous diarist Samuel Pepys, along with his wife and a companion, decided to pay a visit to a London synagogue. What he observed there was bizarre and, in some respects, abhorrent to him.

Though he did not always understand the objects and activities that he was describing, those of us with greater familiarity with Jewish practice can easily decipher his cryptic narrative.

Thus, when he writes of the men and boys in their vayles, it is obvious that the reference is to the prayer shawls worn by male worshippers. The reference to the women behind a lattice out of sight was also a common feature of traditional synagogues. When Pepys writes some things stand up…in a press to which all coming in do bow, he is correct in surmising that those standing things were scrolls of the Law, the Torah, to which the congregation bowed in reverence. They were housed in the typical Sepharadic casing that allowed them to be placed upright on the reading table. In a similar manner, he accurately describes the words, incomprehensible to him, that the men recited when they donned their vayles–referring to the Hebrew blessings, of course–and the responses of amen and of kissing the fabric of the shawls.

Noting that their service was all in a singing way, and in Hebrew, Pepys related that the worshippers removed the Torah scrolls from their cases, and several men carried them around the room a number of times to the accompaniment of congregational singing. And in the end they had a prayer for the King, which they pronounced his name in Portugall; but the prayer, like the rest, in Hebrew. That is to say, though the Hebrew blessing was for the welfare of the reigning British monarch, Charles II, the worshippers’ pronunciation of His Majesty’s name revealed their Spanish or Portuguese origins.

Up to this point, Pepys sounds bemused, perhaps even impressed, at stumbling upon an enclave of quaint oriental ritual in the heart of conventional London. Henceforth, however, his sympathies undergo a decided deterioration: But, Lord! to see the disorder, laughing, sporting, and no attention, but confusion in all their service, more like brutes than people knowing the true God, would make a man forswear ever seeing them more and indeed I never did see so much, or could have imagined there had been any religion in the whole world so absurdly performed as this. In a state of intense mental agitation, he elected to leave the building.

It is possible that the staid Pepys would have been shocked by any religious service that was foreign to his familiar Anglican sensibilities. However, the shock level was compounded here by the fact that he chose to schedule his synagogue visit not to coincide with a normal weekday service, nor even with the solemn Sabbath prayers–but on the festival of Simhat Torah. Even if we were not otherwise aware that the Julian date October 14 1663 coincided with the Hebrew date 23 Tishri 5424, we would have been able to figure it out from the fact that the Torah scrolls were being taken out at night and carried in joyous processions around the sanctuary. I rather doubt that those Sephardic congregants would have been really raucous by our standards, but the English High Church liturgy prided itself in a decorous respectability that did not look kindly on any expressions of physical activity or spontaneous song in a house of worship.

Indeed, a century or two later, when Jews on the continent were offered entry into European society, one of the first priorities they set for themselves was to impose decorum on the synagogue services, lest their uncouth behaviour embarrass them in the eyes of dignified visitors from the churches down the street.

The Simhat Torah service attended by Samuel Pepys was, indeed, a remarkable historical milestone.

Jews had been forbidden to reside in England since the Edict of Expulsion of 1290. A tiny community of Sephardic merchants had only recently allowed itself to recommence its communal life in London, following Oliver Cromwell’s loosening of the restrictions. Though it is common to speak of a formal edict in 1656 readmitting the Jews to England, historians have been unable to locate that edict. It is true that Cromwell was eager to attract Sephardic Jewish merchants from Amsterdam, who held prominent positions in the world of international commerce; and it is equally true that the renowned Jewish visionary Menasseh ben Israel had been allowed to set foot on British soil to lobby for the readmission. Menasseh’s conference with Cromwell even gave rise to a conference in Whitehall where the matter was discussed. In the end, however, no formal legislation is known to have resulted from this flurry of activity and good intentions.

The synagogue that Pepys visited was established quietly during this same time period. By the end of 1656, there were enough Jews dwelling in London to require a permanent place to worship, and that could be pursued openly only now, though not necessarily legally. The community’s representatives acquired one storey of a building in Creechurch Lane to serve as England’s first functioning synagogue in almost four centuries.

The actual founder of the Creechurch Land synagogue was Antonio Fernandez Carvajal, a successful Jewish merchant of Portuguese birth whose business dealings led him to settle in London, where he held lucrative contracts for procuring various commodities for the English government. During the early years of his residence in England, he continued to masquerade as a Catholic. In 1645, the laxity of his observance led to an accusation of illicit religious activity, but he was sufficiently well connected to have the charges dismissed by the House of Lords. His contribution to the war effort against Spain brought him a legal permit of residency in England, and Cromwell himself arranged to have his property transported from the Canary Islands.

As the first Jew to be admitted to England since the expulsion, Carvajal supported Menasseh ben Israel’s petition to Parliament to readmit the Jews, and he was instrumental in obtaining Cromwell’s good will on that matter. Nevertheless, Carvajal and his comrades refused to appoint Menasseh as their community’s rabbi, choosing instead a relative from Hamburg, Rabbi Moses Athias. Rabbi Athias may well have been presiding over that Simhat Torah service during Pepys’ visit.

During the years leading up to Pepys’ visit, the fate of London’s nascent Jewish community was not clear. In spite of the encouragement of Cromwell and other high-placed figures, there was no shortage of antisemites who were urging the enforcement of the expulsion edict. One of the most vocal of these was the alderman Thomas Violet, who in 1659 campaigned to have Cromwell’s edict declared illegal. Impatient with the judge’s procrastination, he devised a sting operation in which one of his agents would plant a packet of counterfeit coins on Rabbi Athias. When the agent confessed to the conspiracy, Violet proceeded in 1660 to petition the Privy Council that all Jewish property be impounded and the Jews imprisoned, to be ransomed by their brethren in Europe. Other agitators, including the authorities of the City of London (some things, apparently, never change), went as high as Parliament itself to initiate a debate on the banishment of the Jews. However, a royal message was presented before the House requesting, instead, that they consider the question of granting protection to the Jews of the realm.

From this point onwards, notwithstanding some minor obstacles, the rights of England’s Jews remained relatively secure.

That sense of relief might well have contributed to the boisterous elation that offended Samuel Pepys during his Simhat Torah visit to the Creechurch Lane synagogue.

• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, September 28, 2007, p. 13.
• For further reading:
  • Wolf, Lucien. The Resettlement of the Jews in England: A Paper Read before the Jews’ College Literary Society, November 27th, 1887. London: Jewish Chronicle, 1888.
  • Roth, Cecil. A History of the Jews in England. 3rd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978.
  • Katz, David S. The Jews in the History of England, 1485-1850. Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press, 1994.
  • ________. Philo-Semitism and the Readmission of the Jews to England 1603-1655 Oxford Historical Monographs. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982.
  • Hyamson, Albert Montefiore. A History of the Jews in England. London: Chatto, 1908.

My email address is: [email protected]

This article is included in the collection Sanctified Seasons, the Alberta Judaic Library, 2008.