Two Tablets

by Eliezer Segal

Ask any child to draw you a picture of the tablets with the ten commandments, and chances are that they will produce the same familiar picture of two joined rectangles with rounded tops. This is the image which occupies a central place in Jewish ritual art, particularly as a decoration of snagogue arks.

If one examines the many remains of ancient Jewish religious art, one would be hard put to find any representation of the “tablets of the covenant,” let alone the one depicted above. Unlike the lulav, the Temple and the seven-branched menorah, the tablets were not considered an identifiably Jewish symbol. This surprising situation might reflect the fact that Judaism–unlike Christianity–does not attach special significance to the “ten commandments” inscribed on the tablets, but sees them only as part of the total of 613.

Although we do not possess any ancient Jewish pictures of the tablets, the Talmuds have preserved some discussions of their shapes. The Palestinian Talmud describes them as two separated oblong tablets, whereas according to the Babylonian Talmud they were squares, measuring 6 x 6 x 3 handbreaths each–very different from any of the portrayals that we are used to. None of these sources speak of rounded tops.

Pictures of the tablets do not begin to show up in Jewish art until the 13th or 14th centuries, and they do not become widespread until a few centuries afterwards. When Jewish artists sought ways to represent them they invariably copied models that had been developed over a long period in Christian iconography.

From the earliest days of the Church, it had included the ten commandments in its traditional artwork. Ironically, the tablets figured not only in illustrations of Moses and the revelation at Mount Sinai, but also (and some would argue, primarily) in contexts that we would regard as anti-Jewish. To take one notable instance, a favorite motif in church art was the confrontation of the Church victorious and the Synagogue vanquished. In these portrayals, the synagogue was personalified as a woman with a broken staff, holding the tablets of the Law that represented the Jews’ stubborn clinging to dry legalism. The image of the two tablets became so identified with Jewish stubbornness and evil that in thirteenth-century it was prescribed as the mandatory shape of the yellow “Jew badge” which Jews had to attach to their garments as a humiliating symbol of their inferiority.

When Christians drew the tablets what did they look like? At first they took the form of two unattached rectangular blocks (like the ones that are held by Michaelangelo’s Moses). It was only in the twelfth century that we begin to encounter the familiar joined oblongs with the rounded tops. Scholars now believe that the latter form was inspired by the “diptych,” a popular type of writing-tablet consisting of two waxed boards attached by a hinge that could be closed shut. It was in this shape, which was also used for other forms of church art, that the tablets became familiar to Jewish artists in the later middle ages. In time, the unpleasant associations came to be forgotten until the tablets found their way into almost every Torah ark in the western countries.

Not all Jews had forgotten where the tablets image had come from. About ten years ago the Habad hassidim began a campaign to eliminate the rectangular tablets from Jewish religious art, arguing that they contradicted the talmudic descriptions and were an imitation of Christian portrayals. Some respected rabbis (including Rabbi Eliezer Shach), while acknowledging the truth of these arguments, insisted initially that the images had become so rooted in the Jewish mind that they had by now taken on the status of a venerable Jewish custom.

And indeed, when we see how universally this image has been accepted into our conventional synagogue decorations, it is hard to realize just how problematic it really is.

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Tsholent

by Eliezer Segal

Invariably the expresion “Jewish food” conjures up some very vivid sensory associations in all of us. Nevertheless when we really think about it, most of the dishes that are routinely referred to as “Jewish” are in actuality nothing more than adaptations of the cuisine of the various countries to which our grandparents were scattered. The recipes are of course modified to conform to the Jewish dietary laws and, in most instances, to the impoverished circumstances in which most Jews lived. But on the whole, Polish Jewish food bears a much greater resemblance to the diet of Polish gentiles than to that of a fellow Jew in Morocco or Yemen.

Having said all this, I am still prepared to concede that there is at least one culinary item that can be accurately characterized as Jewish according to the most discriminating use of the term, and that is the humble dish known to Ashkenazic Jews as “Tsholent.” Unlike almost every other one of the victuals that might lay claim to that title, the Jewishness of tsholent is not just an accidental result of the fact that many Jews happen to eat it, but its very definition is determined by the requirements of Jewish religious law. Tsholent was invented by our forefathers and foremothers in order to allow them the enjoyment of a steaming hot Sabbath meal without violating the Torah’s prohibitions against cooking and the kindling of fire. To that end, methods were devised of cooking the food before the onset of the holy day and keeping the food heated overnight. One of the more difficult chapters of the Talmud deals with the precisely defined borderlines between maintaining the heat (which is permitted) and cooking the food (which is strictly prohibited). The immense variety of formulas which ingenious Jewish cooks have invented to achieve this objective will of course vary with the available ingredients and changing tastes. The resulting dishes will also go by a broad assortment of different names. But all of them share a single halakhic definition–and what can be more uniquely Jewish than a food that is defined by halakhah!

The very name tsholent attests to its quintessential Jewishness. Unlike most of the vocabulary of Ashkenazic Jewry, the name cannot be traced to either the German, Hebrew or Slavic components of the Yiddish vernacular. Linguists are not entirely certain, but the prevailing view is that the word hearkens back to the medieval French word for heat (related to the modern French chaleur), testifying to the earliest stages in the migrations of the Jews who would later settle in central and Eastern Europe.

As often happens, the clearest acknowledgment of tsholent’s distinctive Jewishness comes not from Jewish sources, but from the observations of outsiders. I will confine myself here to two examples:

The Spanish Inquisition would periodically issue “Edicts of Faith” containing helpful signs through which to recognize those Conversos who were illicitly persisting in the observance of Jewish practices. One such edict includes among these tell-tale acts “cooking on Fridays such food as is required for the Saturday, and on the latter eating the meat thus cooked on the Friday, as is the manner of the Jews.” The preparation and consumption of tsholent thereby became declarations of Judaism for which people might face the Inquisitor’s fires.

Travelling back in time more than a thousand years earlier, we find the Roman satirst Juvenal furnishing us with a most surprising glimpse of Jewish daily life in antiquity. In his quest for a familiar visual image that would graphically depict Jewish poverty, Juvenal makes a curious reference to those Jews whose entire material estate consists of “a basket and a box of hay.” What might sound puzzling to us was quite clear to Juvenal’s ancient commentators: Even the poorest of Jews were popularly known to keep a “box of hay” in which they would insulate their tsholent on shabbat, to keep it from losing its heat, a method that is amply documented in the Mishnah and Talmud.

Thus we see that throughout our history, this humble and much-maligned steaming pot of beans and roast meat (or whatever ingredients you might happen to prefer) has been acknowledged by friend and by foe alike as a sublime expression of Jewish identity.

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The Incredible Plant-Man

by Eliezer Segal

For the Tree of the Field is man…

There exists a longstanding disagreement among the Jewish commentators about how precisely to read the words of Deuteronomy 20:19–as an assertion that “the tree of the field is essential to human life” or as a rhetorical question: “Is the tree of the field a man?!” Whichever reading we prefer, it seems clear that the Torah did not intend to literally equate human beings with trees or any other plants. Jewish literature does however contain references to a creature who is half-man and half-plant.

The Mishnah tractate Kila’im, which elaborates upon the biblical prohibitions against cross-breeding and hybridization, deals in meticulous detail with the botanical and zoological classifications of several species. In the course of its discussions it makes mention of a creature of doubtful classification, which it calls “adnei hasadeh” (probably to be translated as “men of the field”). The question discussed in that passage is whether such a creature is to be regarded as human or animal, or as a bit of both.

Commentators, traditional and modern, have been puzzled about what sort of creature could be referred to. The less imaginative authorities posit that the Mishnah is referring to some sort of ape or gorilla. The context seems to imply something more along the lines of a “missing link” –maybe a talmudic incarnation of Bigfoot.

The Palestinian Talmud offers the following enigmatic explanation of the term “`adnei hasadeh“: 

It is the “Man of the Mountain,” and it lives from its navel. If it is cut at the navel it dies.

The standard commentators understand that the Talmud was referring to a sort of plant-man who was joined to the earth by his umbilical cord. Such beliefs were widely held in ancient and medieval times.

The medieval French commentator Rabbi Samson of Sens (12th-13th centuries) relates the following tradition.

I have heard in the name of Rabbi Meir ben Kalonymos of Speyer that it is an animal known as the Yadua. Its bones are used in magic and it has a kind of large rope that extends from a root fastened in the earth. From this it grows like a cucumber or a pumpkin, except that its face, body, arms and legs have human form. It is attached from its navel to a cord that emerges from the root, and no creature can approach within the radius of that cord lest the creature attack them. It constantly looks around and observes anyone who attempts to come within range of the cord to hunt it, so that no one may come near it. Instead, they must lure if away from the cord until it snaps, at which point it immediately dies.

This explanation was circulated in many subsequent commentaries though not all authorities were pleased with it. For one thing, the Mishnah seemed to be referring quite explicitly to an animal-man, not a plant-man. Maimonides for example, basing himself on popular books about the “wonders of the world” (the medieval equivalent of National Geographic television specials), suggests that the `adnei hasadeh were human-like creatures that were known to emit human-like but indecipherable sounds.

The belief in the existence of animals that grow from plants was widespread in earlier generations. Medieval rabbinic literature knows of a persistent dispute among rabbinic authorities over the kosher status of a “bird that grows on trees.” In accordance with the prevailing view of the time, a certain species of fowl (the “barnacle goose”) was believed to grow either from barnacle shells attached to wood planks, or like a fruit attached (at the beak) from the branches of trees. Leading rabbis held differing views as to whether such creatures were to be treated as meat, fruit or shellfish. Church authorities at the time were debating with equal vehemence whether the creatures were permitted during Lent. The Shulhan Arukh, by the way, rules that they are a species of fruit, and do not require shehitah.

A fascinating discussion of the Adnei hasadeh question is contained in the commentary Tiferet Israel by the nineteenth-century scholar Rabbi Israel Lifschutz which is printed in standard editions of the Mishnah. Rabbi Lifschutz cites the plant-man tradition of Rabbi Samson of Sens but is reluctant to accept it. The problem is not, he emphasizes, because such a being is unknown to naturalists, “for there are found beneath the earth the bones of many creatures that are now extinct, such as the mammoth and others, which may have been killed off because they were too dangerous.” Rabbi Lifschutz refers in several places in his commentary to the latest discoveries of paleontology and archaeology and argues that such revelations confirm the midrashic tradition which speaks of God creating and destroying many worlds before finally settling on our own.

Lifschutz’s rejection of the plant-man tradition stems from another difficulty: Such a being, he argues, would violate the economic logic of nature. God does not endow his creatures with superfluous limbs or organs. If the plant-man draws all its nourishment from the soil, then it should not be born with mouth, arms or legs. In any case, says the Tiferet Israel, the passage in the Palestinian Talmud that is understood to refer to a plant-man need not necessarily be construed that way.

Rabbi Lifschutz presents his own alternative identification: The reference, he says, is to the orangutan. In size and shape, the orangutan bears a strong resemblance to a human, and can be trained to hew wood and draw water, to wear clothing and to sit at a table and eat with cutlery. (One gets the impression that the rabbi may have seen some performing in a circus.) And though in our time, he continues, they are found only in the jungles of central Africa, it is entirely conceivable that in talmudic times they also inhabited the cedar forests of Lebanon and Israel.

As in other places in his commentary, the Tiferet Israel presents a dazzling combination of traditional Jewish scholarship and lively fascination with the scientific wonders of the world around him.

By the way, Rashi, the foremost Jewish commentators, makes a brief allusion to the Adnei hasadeh in his commentary to Job (5:23), where the phrase “avnei hasadeh” (“stones of the field”) appears. Rashi claims that the expression is identical to the Mishnah’s “adnei hasadeh” and refers to a “kind of human,” as distinct from actual beasts of the field mentioned separately in the verse.

Louis Ginzberg, the distinguished twentieth-century authority on rabbinic literature, understood that Rashi was referring to werewolfs. Belief in werewolfs, vampires and other assorted monsters was common among the Jews of medieval Germany (as it was among their Christian neighbours) and several case studies may be culled from works such as the twelfth-century Sefer Hasidim (the Book of the Pious).

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Gladdening the Bride

by Eliezer Segal

It is generally acknowledged that there exists a religious obligation in Judaism to bring joy to the heart of a new bride. Although some authorities regard it as an expression of gratitude for having been invited to the wedding, most view it as a distinct mitzvah in its own right.

According to the Talmud, the obligation is fulfilled by singing the bride’s praises–a requirement which is not mentioned with respect to the groom. One commentator explains this gender-imbalance by noting that the main purpose of the compliments is to reassure the hesitant young husband about the correctness of his decision. Since women are less demanding about their choice of mates, they have no urgent need for that kind of encouragement.

It was thus common at Jewish weddings to celebrate the beauty of the bride. This practice gave rise to the hypothetical question: What are we expected to sing when the lady in question is not a spectacular beauty? Must we maintain strict standards of honesty at all costs? Should we at least be diplomatically selective in singing her praises? Or are we allowed to lie blatantly in ascribing to her physical charms which we do not really see?

The above question of wedding etiquette is discussed in a well-known passage in the Talmud: 

“How are people supposed to sing about the bride as they dance before her?” The School of Hillel state that each and every brides should be extolled for her charm and grace, whereas the School of Shammai insist that she be described exactly as she is, for Judaism can never countenance even the slightest deviation from the unvarnished truth.

The commentators are in some disagreement about the precise limits of both positions. One authority, for example, paints a picture of the wedding-dancers, following the strict view of the House of Shammai, belting out a rousing rendition of the lyrics “O bride, as you really are!” The meaning would be that even if her beauty is not apparent to our superficial appreciation, we recognize that her new husband must discern in her many attractive spiritual qualities, for otherwise he would not have married her. After all, did not the wise Solomon teach us that “Favour is deceitful and beauty is vain; but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised”!

Rashi paraphrases the School of Hillel’s view so that the emphasis is on charm rather than beauty. He subtly alludes to the midrashic tradition that Queen Esther was gifted with a “thread of grace” that caused her to be admired in spite of the fact that she was in reality a homely and sallow (“greenish”) creature. Presumably the idea is to focus on the bride’s strong points (“She has a great personality and all her friends like her”!), but not to overtly misrepresent her deficiencies.

The Tosafot, on the other hand, argue that even the School of Shammai would presumably not insist that we be so insensitively honest as to serenade the couple with a list of the bride’s blemishes or deformities. Since the Shammaites must also permit some degree of delicacy and discretion, the School of Hillel must be advocating a much more permissive position, allowing for unrestrained compliments, even if they are made at the expense of overt misrepresentation. Anything less than that–even diplomatic silences–would embarrass the bride by calling attention to the glaring omissions in the accolades. It is this interpretation that has been accepted as normative practice by the Shulhan Arukh and other law-codes.

The whole issue would not arise at all if we were to follow the stringent position of some rabbis who strictly forbade all those present, out of considerations of modesty, to gaze upon the bride’s face . The most that these authorities would concede is that we may peek at her ornaments in order to verify that she has in fact been married! 

But the issue, as I have described it, is surely a hypothetical one. I am after all quite certain that I have never set eyes on a bride who did not radiate beauty on her wedding day.

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• First Publication: 
• Jewish Free Press, Feb. 17 1994.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Cutthroat Competition

by Eliezer Segal

News Item: January 1994-— U.S. figure skating champion Nancy Kerrigan is clubbed on the knee by a henchman associated with rival skater Tonya Harding.

Imagine this picture: Two eager young men posed nose-to-nose as they run towards the finish line. They are approaching the last tense centimeters of the race as one of the youths begins to feel that he is falling behind. In desperation he recalls that they are now ascending a ramp, and that his rival is precariously close to the edge. A slight push and the other racer falls over the edge with a broken leg.

The above incident sounds as if it could have come from the pages of a daily newspaper. In fact its setting was neither a race-track nor an Olympic arena. It is described in the Mishnah (Yoma 2:1), and took place in the Temple in ancient Jerusalem as two priests strove to be the first to reach the sacrificial altar. The prize that awaited the winner was not a gold medal and not a lucrative contrast endorsing sports equipment. The glittering attraction that provoked such violence was nothing less than the privilege of cleaning off the ashes from the altar in accordance with the command recorded in Leviticus 6:3.

The original reason behind the establishment of this competition was to make the commandment seem more attractive, and to provide the young priests with an opportunity to give physical expression to their eagerness in serving God. As often happens, the primary purpose became obscured and the competition itself became an overriding obsession to be won even at the cost of injuring one’s fellow.

Things could get even worse.

A similar incident is recorded in the pages of the Talmud, except that in that race the losing runner did not satisfy himself with injuring his opponent. This time he pulled out a knife and stabbed the other priest in the heart. To add insult to the injury, before the victim had expired his father appeared on the scene and began to express his concern for the possible ritual defilement of the knife!

Once again, the dimensions of this ancient tragedy teach us the truth of Ecclesiastes’ observation that “there is nothing new under the sun,” and that sometimes there are no lengths that people will not go to in their ambition to be a winner.

The Jewish sages of that time were shocked into the realization of how skewed some people’s priorities can become in the presence of a competitive challenge. They immediately abolished the race and instituted a lottery for the assigning of jobs in the Temple worship.

To the best of my recollection, our sources do not relate whether there were frequent attempts to cheat the lottery.

But matters were not always so bad. The Talmud tells of other occasions when people, especially children, were encouraged to compete for the right to perform a mitzvah. For example, according to the Mishnah (Pesahim 8:3) it was customary for parents to urge their children to hurry along on the Passover pilgrimage by offering a share in the paschal sacrifice to the first one to reach Jerusalem. I imagine that the alternative to such a practice would have been a persistent chorus of whining “Are we almost there yet?” In this case, the results seem to have been more wholesome, and the triumphant child would generously share his portion with the remaining siblings.

And just for the record: The Talmud informs us that sometimes it was the girls came out ahead of the boys in the race to Jerusalem.

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Collecting for Israel—Circa 1707

by Eliezer Segal

Unfortunately, there have been few eras in recent history when the Jews of the Land of Israel have not been forced to rely on contributions from their coreligionists in the Diaspora. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, this situation can be blamed on the heavy economic burdens created by her security needs. In earlier generations the finances of the Holy Land communities were often depleted by cruel and rapacious rulers, by natural and humanly caused disasters, and by the otherworldly pursuits that were the principal concern of most of the Jews who dwelled there.

The gathering of donations for the populace and institutions of Israel was therefore a constant source of concern. The wandering emissaries from yeshivot and charitable foundations became a familiar feature of diaspora life. Many distinguished rabbis donned the cloak of the mendicant journeying through the Jewish expanses in search of material sustenance for their communities. In fact special manuals would be composed to advise the fund-raisers how to make useful contacts in the various cities and effectively present their cases before the prospective donors. These handbooks provide us with some engaging insights into the dynamics of Jewish communal life.

One of the most ambitious of the emissaries’ manuals was the Sefat Emet by the Jerusalemite Rabbi Moshe Hagiz, which appeared in Amsterdam in 1707. From this book we can learn of the difficulties that frequently obstructed the fund-raisers of the time. Rabbi Hagiz devotes much space to the refutation of common criticisms accusations that would be leveled against the collectors. For example, to the charge that the needs of the recipients appear to be insatiable he responds with a detailed financial report of the community’s expenditures and growing debts. Nonetheless it was charged that they would use the revenues to “drink coffee and chew tobacco, and scribble whatever comes to mind so they can publish it.” Some communal leaders were arguing that priority should be given to pressing local needs. Others were even claiming that Jews had no business living in Eretz Yisra’el before the advent of the Messiah! 

Hagiz has harsh words for the reluctant philanthropists who prefer to waste their money in the “conspicuous consumption” of fancy homes and vehicles and extravagant social lives, but treat the visiting emissaries with scorn and disrespect. He accuses them of giving more generously to local gentile charities than to their own needy brethren.

One issue raised by Rabbi Hagiz strikes me as particularly noteworthy. He mentions that in some of the larger European Jewish communities, such as Amsterdam, Venice and Livorno there were in circulation private lists of worthy candidates for charitable donations. Such individual lists counteracted the established policy of having the funds collected and distributed by a centralized authority. Hagiz himself was opposed to this development which threatened the fairness of the allocations and weakened the authority of the recognized institutions. 

Hagiz does not make it clear how this state of affairs arose. Perhaps it was the consequence of widespread suspicions regarding the efficiency or trustworthiness of the central agencies. It is also possible that political considerations played a part. The Jewish world in Eretz Yisra’el and abroad was at that time in the throes of a fierce struggle between the aggressive followers of the messianic pretender Shabbetai Zvi and his opponents over the control of Jewish religious and communal institutions. Under such circumstances, potential contributors would take especial care to assign their donations only to like-minded individuals and organizations.

As usual, the issues confronted by the Jews in eighteenth-century Amsterdam have a distinctly familiar ring to them, and the intervening centuries have not diminished the resonance of the venerable Hebrew tomes.

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The Invisible Guest

by Eliezer Segal

Since my childhood a special mystique has always been generated by the presence at the Passover seder of a visitor who was never seen, but whose reality was no less tangible for that fact. The unseen guest is of course Elijah the prophet. A special cup filled with wine was set for him, and we all waited impatiently until the moment when one of us would (often with discernible signs of fear at the prospect) open the door to admit the righteous visitor. Our family dog observed his own tradition of barking just before that moment as if he were greeting a more conventional caller. Afterwards we would carefully measure Elijah’s cup to verify that the level of the wine had receded since being poured.

The belief that Elijah continues to wander about our world is a mainstay of Jewish folklore. Rabbis in the Talmud were accustomed to running into him and addressing questions to him about the goings-on in the Heavenly realms, or about other matters that are normally concealed from human view. Many tales were spun about how a ragged vagrant was discovered, after his departure, to have been the prophet in disguise, come to earth to test people’s faith and virtue, or to grant them a long-sought desire.

It is not hard to see how this role came to be assigned to Elijah. The Bible relates how he was accustomed to travel about assisting people in distress. He was also privileged to be numbered among the select few who never actually died; instead he was carried up to heaven in his lifetime in a flaming chariot. Elijah was thus eminently qualified to serve as an intermediary between the upper and lower worlds. 

The original reason for opening the door probably had nothing to do with Elijah. The door opening occurs just after the conclusion of the meal and before the resumption of the Hallel, as we intone the words “Pour out thy wrath upon the nations that have not known thee, and upon the kingdoms that have not called upon thy name,” a time when our European ancestors had good reason to check outside to make sure that there were no malevolent figures lurking outside ready to pounce upon the celebrants with accusations of the infamous blood libel that often ignited massacres of innocent Jews.

Another widespread belief had it that Elijah’s presence at the seder was necessary in order to resolve the talmudic dispute about how many cups of wine should be drunk that night, in keeping with the talmudic belief that certain facts remain undisclosed “until Elijah will come.” The uncertainty grew out of the midrashic premise that the cups symbolized the four expressions of redemption contained in God’s pledge to the enslaved Israelites:

…I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will rid you out of their bondage, and I will redeem you with a stretched out arm, and with great judgments. And I will take you to me for a people. (Exodus 6:6-7).

Given this rationale, a doubt arose with regard to the words “And I will bring you in unto the land” in the next verse. Is it really appropriate to commemorate this promise which was not to be fulfilled until after the generation of the Exodus had perished?

Talmudic tradition reports that Rabbi Tarfon advocated the drinking of a fifth cup. The two Babylonian academies of Sura and Pumbedita were divided on this issue, as were several medieval Jewish communities. Some, like the Yemenites, have always included a fifth cup in their Haggadah. Rashi, on the other hand, was so opposed to the idea that he had Rabbi Tarfon’s opinion excised from the Talmudic manuscripts (which is why you will not find it in the printed editions of the Talmud).

Thus, the extra cup that is placed on the festive table, but is not drunk (at least not by the mortal participants) serves as a memorial to a practice that has been rejected by Ashkenazic Jews. It is understandable that this cup came to be identified with the name of the renowned resolver of halakhic doubts.

The two most prominent instances of the prophet’s participation in the seder, the opening of the door and “Elijah’s cup,” have thus been seen to be relatively recent add-ons to the basic Passover service. There are however more substantial grounds for the widespread feeling that Elijah’s spirit pervades the holiday and connects to its most essential themes and teachings.

Jewish tradition has always acknowledged a continuity between the past liberation of the enslaved Israelites and our future deliverance from the oppressions of exile. This attitude underlies the choice of the prophetic reading on the Sabbath preceding Passover, in which God offers his assurance that “I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.” Because it is Elijah who will herald the advent of Messiah, Jews over the generation have clung tenaciously to the hope that the prophet would take advantage of his annual visits to Jewish households in order to proclaim the imminence of the cherished redemption.

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First Publication: 

• Jewish Free Press, March 30 1994.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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The Founding of Jerusalem: A Palestinian Midrash?

by Eliezer Segal

The following story is probably familiar to most of my readers. I have heard it told on innumerable occasions from the pulpits of synagogues in Israel and the Diaspora.

According to the tale, there long ago lived two brothers who shared a field whose crops they used to divide equally. One of the brothers was a bachelor, and the other a married man with many children. Once, during the harvest, each of them felt pity for the other. The bachelor was worried that his brother did not have enough to feed his household, while the bachelor had concern for his brother’s solitude. In the dark of the night each of them would carry some sheaves of produce to the other’s house, and in the morning each would be astonished to discover that their own supplies had not diminished. This went on for several days and nights until the two finally met tearfully during one of their nocturnal errands. At that point it was decreed from above that this was the place upon which it would be fitting to establish God’s Holy Temple.

The rabbis who tell this moving story, often in connection with Jerusalem day, usually cite it as a Talmudic legend taken from the “midrash.” Making allowances for the limitations of my own erudition, I was always troubled that I had not encountered the story of the two brothers in any of the standard compendia of rabbinic lore. As it turns out, the same problem had troubled a more capable scholar than myself, the late Prof. Alexander Scheiber of Budapest, who devoted a number of special studies to the history of the legend.

According to Scheiber’s researches, the earliest attestation of the story appears in the writings of Alphonse de Lamartine, a noted French author with an affection for the Bible and its land. He claims to have heard it from the mouth of an Arab peasant during a journey through the Holy Land in 1832. The literary record of that journey was published in 1835.

From that point on, versions of the tale began to appear in several European languages, including German and Hungarian. It also found its way into Jewish writings, such as the moralistic anthology Mikveh Yisra’el by Rabbi Israel Costa of Livorno, Italy, which was published in 1851 and a collection of miracle tales (Ma’aseh Nissim) that was printed in Baghdad around the turn of the century.

The story has become so familiar that many knowledgeable Jews are convinced that it is indeed a talmudic Aggadah. Some have insisted that the Arabs might be preserving an originally Jewish tradition that for some reason was not recorded in our own literature.

The fact is that even in ancient times it was not uncommon for foreign legends and fables to find their way into the volumes of Talmudic and Midrashic teachings. Our rabbis did not live in isolation from their surroundings, and recognized that an edifying teaching is worth retelling no matter what its source. The concept of “midrash” is accordingly a dynamic one, and there is nothing inherently novel or unacceptable about receiving an Arab folk-tale into the family of Jewish legend. Indeed, the story of “the two brothers” accurately reflects the traditional reverence which Islam has always held for the site of the “Bait al-muqdasah” (the Temple) and its builder, King Solomon. The story, by the way, is still part of the living oral tradition of the Palestinian Arabs.

The main purpose of the legend was to emphasize the values of peace, compassion and brotherly love that are symbolized by Jerusalem and the Temple. Is it not therefore doubly appropriate that in admitting (or repatriating) this story into Jewish tradition we should have to express a debt of gratitude precisely to those cousins with regard to whom it has been so difficult to realize those very ideals! 

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The Jewish School: Yesterday and Today

by Eliezer Segal

Beneath the foreboding clouds of the reductions to Alberta’s education budgets, some Jewish members of the University of Calgary community have been convening over the past academic year to learn about Jewish attitudes towards public education as they emerge from selected passages in the Talmud, its commentaries and codes. The participants in the seminar were frequently astonished to discover how aptly the ancient Jewish sources anticipated issues that we had hitherto presumed were unique to our own era. Some of the items that we discussed might be of interest to the larger body of Jewish Free Press readers, and might be read with profit by our representatives in Edmonton and the local Community Council.

The first remarkable fact that should be emphasized is that a system of universal elementary Jewish education has existed since the era of the Second Commonwealth. According to that ordinance, which remained revolutionary for centuries after its adoption among the Jews, schools must be established in every community to ensure that all Jewish children (at least, the males) have access to formal instruction.

The rabbis recommended six or seven as the age at which a child should begin attending classes, depending on his health and intellectual development. The sources delineate several stages for introducing the pupils to the world of formal learning: Initially the student is gently encouraged to learn, later he is “stuffed” with information in a non-coercive way; eventually he is compelled to apply himself to studies even where this conflicts with his own inclinations.

Although the Talmud is quite explicit in discouraging the admission of children below the age of six, later generations of rabbis strove to reinterpret the sources so as to sanction a lowering of the minimum age to five years or less. They were probably trying to justify the prevailing practices in their own communities. 

The Talmud has very precise ideas about the optimal ratios of students to teachers that the community can be forced to support: A single instructor can effectively teach twenty-five students. For forty children an assistant must be hired (usually an advanced member of the class who can help his fellows with reviews and the like). For fifty pupils a second teacher must be appointed. There is disagreement among the commentators about whether these numbers represent minimums, maximums or averages. By all interpretations, they invite some instructive comparisons with the prevailing standards in both public and Jewish schools.

Some parents and educators will sympathize with the words of Rabbi Samuel Kidnover, writing in seventeenth-century Poland, when he laments that in his generation even ten students cannot be managed properly by one teacher, and that the Talmud’s ratios must be adjusted in recognition of the spiritual decline that has occurred over the generations!

Closely related to the issue of teacher-student ratios are such questions as: What happens if a community has too few school-age children to warrant their own school? Under what circumstances should they be transported to an institution outside their town or neighbourhood? What consideration must be given in that decision to the children’s comfort and safety?

Another associated problem retains its contemporary and local relevance: What happens if neighbours object to the establishing of a school in their vicinity on the grounds that it will create excessive noise, or otherwise impair the esthetic quality of the neighbourhood? 

Here the Jewish position is unmistakable: Although such considerations would normally justify the inhabitants of a residential community in obstructing the establishment of businesses or other institutions, in this case the pivotal importance of Jewish education overrides all other objections, and the school must be permitted. Regrettably this principle has not always been appreciated by some elements in our own community.

For those whose curiosity has been aroused, the Talmud and its commentators deal with many other timely issues related to elementary education, including: the use of corporal punishment; tenure and grounds for the dismissal of teachers; the relative merits of memorization vs. critical analysis, and much more. Hopefully some of you are already scurrying to your libraries to learn more about the subject. For the others, I may return to the subject in a future column.

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First Publication: 

• Jewish Free Press, May 19 1994.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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King Solomon’s Genie

by Eliezer Segal

Following in the footsteps of other beloved creations of legend and folklore, the Islamic Genie has by now been irrevocably co-opted by the Disney cartoonists. Future generations of children will undoubtedly envisage the genies of the Arabian Nights as amorphous blue creatures with the appearance and manic personality of Robin Williams.

The original Genie, or jinn, was of course a being of a different colour. Stemming from the hazy past of ancient Arabian paganism, Muslim tradition enriched the jinn‘s profile by adding to it features derived from the demons who inhabited Jewish and Christian lore, as well as the more exotic South Asian and African civilizations into which Islam subsequently penetrated.

The Qur’an, Islam’s sacred scripture, mentions the jinn on several occasions. Some of the passages will evoke familiar associations for readers versed in talmudic legend.

For example the Qur’an relates that King Sulaiman’s (Solomon’s) mastery of the languages of all creatures allowed him to regiment the hosts of humans, birds and jinnsunder his command. This echoes the talmudic legends of how the wise monarch exercised dominion over the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and assorted demons and supernatural spirits.

Solomon’s sovereignty over the animal kingdom can be derived in a reasonably straightforward manner from biblical verses such as 1 Kings 5:13 (“He spoke also of beasts and of fowl and of creeping things and of fishes”), but the tradition about Solomon’s control over the supernatural realms was derived from imaginative midrashic exegesis of verses like 1 Chronicles 29:23 (“Solomon sat on the throne of the Lord”) and Ecclesiastes 2:8 where Solomon recalls how he accumulated “shiddah veshiddot,” an obscure expression that might refer to anything from concubines to cabinets, but which rabbinic midrash identified with the Hebrew word for demon, “shed.”

The Qur’an also records stories about how Solomon harnessed the power of the demons (or: jinns) for his ambitious and demanding construction projects: “They made for him what he pleased of fortresses and images, and bowls large as watering-troughs and cooking-pots that will not move from their place.”

According to the Qur’an, Solomon died while leaning upon his staff, but his demise did not become known until a worm started to gnaw through the wood of the staff. Had the enslaved jinns known this fact, they would not have continued to labour for the king.

Several of the themes in this story can be traced to talmudic writings. Rabbinic legend tells us that Solomon was punished for his overbearing pride when he was impersonated by the demon king Ashmedai and removed from the throne. In this early prototype of the “prince and the pauper” motif, the real king was forced to wander the world as a beggar until, as the Midrash states it, nothing remained of his former magnificence except the staff in his hand. One version of the tradition states that Solomon never regained his throne and died in abject poverty, a theory that is supported by a very literal reading of Ecclesiastes 2:10: “and this [i.e., only what I am now holding in my hand] was my portion of all my labor.”

The worm in the Muslim story also recalls one of the more marvelous inhabitant of the talmudic bestiary, the “shamir,” a miraculous worm-like creature that Solomon (with the unwilling assistance of Ashmedai) captured and utilized to cut the stones for the construction of the Temple.

The story of Solomon and Ashmedai resurfaces again in the legends of the Thousand and One Nights. All of us are familiar with the propensity of genies to get stuck inside lamps and jars. In at least one instance the genie claims to have been placed there by none other than King Solomon who “sent his minister…to seize me, and his vizier had me bound and brought against my will to stand before the prophet [Solomon] as a suppliant.” When the jinn stubbornly refused to proclaim his faith in God, Solomon had him imprisoned in the jar, which was sealed with lead, stamped with the royal ring inscribed with God’s name, and cast into the ocean.

This Arabic folktale shares many elements in common with the talmudic story in which Solomon sends his chief minister Benaiah ben Jehoiada to capture Ashmedai. Solomon continued to hold the demon in chains with the help of a magic ring. It was by tricking Solomon into lending him the magic ring that Ashmedai was able to depose the king, and only after taking back that ring was Solomon (according to one version of the story) able to return to power.

When all is said and done, an unmistakable thread of continuity, twisted and complicated though it may be, leads from the pages of the Bible and the Talmud to the cartoon genie of Disney’s “Aladdin” films.

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• First Publication: 
• Jewish Free Press, June 2 1994.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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