Home Team Blues

by Eliezer Segal

News Item: Frequent occurrence—The Calgary Flames lose another hockey game.

My beloved Calgary is a city that takes its sports very seriously .

I have had occasion to point out the difference between the Calgarians’ unconditional loyalty to their home teams, and the sensible attitudes of the pagans of old, who, when vanquished by a mightier army, easily transferred their devotion from their own ineffectual deities to the victorious gods of their conquerors. Not so the good people of Calgary, who will continue supporting their losing athletes in defiance all reasonable hope!

The adulation that is currently heaped upon hockey and football players was once the privilege of chariot racers. In ancient Rome their popularity surpassed that of statesmen and generals. Under the Christian Byzantine empire, they rivaled even the monks and saints as heroes of the masses.

The residents of the Holy Land were not immune from the general enthusiasm for chariot-racing. King Herod is said to have erected a hippodrome in Jerusalem, and a fourth-century author counts Caesarea among the world-class centres of that sport. So famous was it that a Hebrew mystical text speaks proverbially of celestial fire-eating horses whose mouths are so immense that they can be measured as “three times the size of the Caesarea stable doors.”

To be sure, there was a cost to this manifestation of civic pride. The local chariot teams were subsidized by tax moneys, and aristocratic citizens were under strong social pressure to contribute to their sponsorship, even if this caused them considerable financial hardship. 

Society in those days was split between the supporters of the Blues and of the Greens. The devotion of the fans to their teams was so volatile, often leading to violent riots and rebellions, that historians have sought a social, political or religious background to the rivalries. At any rate, graffiti cheering on the favoured team have been unearthed in various sites in Israel, including a Greek inscription from Jerusalem that reads “Good luck, let the Blues win: Long life to them!” A seventh-century monk laments that the Blues and Greens of Jerusalem were evil and unruly men who filled the holy city with bloodshed. Tales of brutal outbreaks between Blue and the Green supporters are well attested. Sometimes the fans would support rival political leaders, with the conflicts erupting into uprisings and civil wars. Under different circumstances, the two factions were also known to join forces to combat a common enemy.

The Jews were involved in at least one such outbreak in Caesarea in 555, though historians are not in agreement about how to interpret the evidence. A witness to the events reports that the Samaritans and the Jews made common cause “in the manner of the Blues and Greens” in a violent attack on the Christians that led to several deaths and the burning of churches.

The report, with its comparison to the racing clubs, is susceptible to several possible interpretations. Some scholars see it as a simile, indicating that though Jews and Samaritans were normally as antagonistic to one another as supporters of competing teams, on this occasion they made common cause against a mutual foe. However most historians, conscious of the of Caesarea’s reputation for fierce sport loyalties, discern an actual correlation to those loyalties. Perhaps an altercation that began as a sports riot snowballed into a full-fledged insurrection.

What team did the Jews support? Apparently it was the Blues. This is explicitly documented with respect to the Jewish community of Antioch, and finds indirect corroboration in a medieval midrash about “the throne and circus of King Solomon.” The author of that work depicts Solomon and his entourage in accordance with the conventions of the Byzantine imperial court, including the obligatory sponsorship of monthly athletic contests. In that portrayal, they are likened to the Blue team arrayed in the hippodrome: The king, the sages, disciples, priests and Levites were garbed in the blue `tekhelet” of the ritual fringes, whereas foreign visitors, who gathered from afar to see the races and bring tribute and gifts to the Israelite king, were clothed in green.

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, December 19 1996, p. 8.
• For further reading:
  • Y. Dan, “The Circus and its Factions (Blues and Greens) in Eretz Israel during the Byzantine Period, Cathedra 4 (1977), pp. 133-147.
  • A. Jellinek, “Salomo’s Thron und Hippodrome,” Bet Ha-Midrasch 5 (reprint: Jerusalem 1967), pp. xvi-xviii, 34-39.
  • E. Ville Patlagean, “Une Image de Salomon en Basileus Byzantin,” Revue des Etudes Juives 71 (1962), pp. 9-33.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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A Bad Business

by Eliezer Segal

When one individual offers advice about how other people should spend or invest their money, this can raise some perplexing legal and ethical issues. It is ultimately the investor who must bear the consequence of any bad advice, and those consequences can at times be costly.

In the days of the Talmud, the economy was less complex than it is today, and the range of available investment opportunities was limited. For Jews, the possibilities were even more restricted, owing to the Torah’s stringent prohibitions against the taking of interest.

Nevertheless, there were occasions when individuals would seek expert counsel concerning financial matters, and the question arose whether the consultants bore any legal accountability for bad advice.

One financial domain that was more complicated in former times was that of coinage. In our times, it is only on rare occasions that doubts arise with respect to the value or legality of currency. However, in ancient times many doubts attached to coins, relating to their worth or their political acceptability. Money used to derive its value from its actual metallic content, and the relative worth of the different metals could fluctuate, or become debased with age or by intention. Furthermore, ambitious political leaders would often mint coins as a demonstration of their newly declared independence. Of course, the public would be cautious about accepting such currency, lest the independence–and the value of their money–turn out to be short-lived.

When questions arose concerning the wisdom of accepting dubious currency, they would normally be directed to the local money-changer. In Hebrew such an individual was known as a “shulhani,” literally a “table-keeper,” a term that is akin to the “banker” (i.e., bench-keeper) of European languages.

The shulhani was concerned primarily with exchanging coins between large and small denominations, an area of expertise that demanded intimate familiarity both with the coins themselves and with the changing economic and political circumstances.

The best way to keep up to date with developments in the market was to keep constantly in practice. The midrash used this truth to illustrate symbolically the difference between a sage who is truly wise and one who is merely “understanding.” “A wise man may be likened to a wealthy money-changer, who examines coins not only at the request of a client, but also examines his own money when he has no clients. However, an “understanding” man is like a poor money-changer who can only examine coins when working for a client, but must otherwise remain idle.” 

It was therefore common to consult successful money-changers about the wisdom of prospective investments.

Some Talmudic rabbis were involved in such professional activity. Thus, it is related concerning Rabbi Hiyya, who was an accomplished merchant, that a woman once approached him with a denar that had recently been offered to her. Based on the rabbi’s assurances, she agreed to accept the coin, only to discover to her dismay afterwards that no one wanted to take it from her.

Rabbi Hiyya consented to compensate the woman for his unsound advice. The Talmud was of the opinion that Rabbi Hiyya did not really have a legal obligation to compensate the woman, but that he acted as he did out of moral scruples. Their reasoning was that he was such an virtuoso at his occupation that any error that he might have committed must have been on such an esoteric point that it must be considered unavoidable–perhaps because the currency had been removed from circulation only very recently.

The exemption extended by the Talmud to first-class financial experts puzzled the commentators, since no such concession was given to other professionals, no matter what their qualifications.

Rabbi Solomon Ibn Adret (the “Rashba”) suggested that this followed naturally from the nature of the profession; for unlike other crafts that demand complex skills, and therefore provide varied opportunities to mess up, a financial consultant’s vocation consists solely of expertise and keenness of observation. Hence it is more reasonable to assume that the ill-advised judgment must have resulted from truly unavoidable circumstances. 

Medieval authorities were nevertheless uncomfortable with a situation where a financial consultant could be let off the hook for professional shortcomings. Therefore they explained that the Talmud exempted Rabbi Hiyya only because he had offered his services gratis; however, advisors who accept payment for their opinions, or have been explicitly informed that their advice will be used as the basis for an investment, can be held financially liable when they cause their clients a loss. 

Perhaps the issue was most astutely summed up by Rabbi Hiyya himself. At the conclusion of the Talmudic anecdote, as he was taking the money from his purse to pay the aggrieved lady, he ordered his assistant–his young nephew Rav, who would later achieve renown as one of the foremost Talmudic sages–to add a sardonic note to the margin of his ledger: “This was a bad business”!

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• First Publication:
  • JFP, January 23 1997, pp. 8-9.
• For further reading:
  • M. Beer, The Babylonian Amora’im: Aspects of Economic Life, Ramat-Gan, 1974.
  • A. Gulak, “Banking in Talmudic Law,” Tarbiz 2 (1931), 154-171.
  • S. Warhaftig, Jewish Labour Law, Jerusalem, 1982.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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The Monks and the Mishnah

by Eliezer Segal

While traversing the corridors of the University of Calgary this year, several people have been taken aback by the incongruous sight of Chinese Buddhist monks, garbed in their traditional robes, absorbed in intensive study of the Talmud and works of Jewish religious law.

I confess that I had something to do this anomalous phenomenon. The monks were students in my graduate seminar on Jewish Legal Literature, preparing their assignments with characteristic diligence.

When the two exotic students made their first appearance in my classroom I was very apprehensive about the prospects of finding common ground between what I presumed were totally dissimilar religious traditions. My fears were quickly assuaged when I noted their fascination with certain themes of Jewish ethical and spiritual life, and especially the ease with which they were able to handle the intricacies of rabbinic logic. As I was to learn, the art of logical dialectic, though directed more to philosophical than to legal questions, was a central component of their religious training.

Although Jewish interest in Buddhism has usually been marginalÑtypically involving individuals whose inadequate Jewish educations have prompted them to seek spirituality from more exotic sourcesÑmainstream Buddhists have taken an unexpected interest in Judaism. This has been particularly true of the Tibetans, massacred and exiled by their Chinese overloads, who have found an instructive example in the Jewish ability to maintain their national and religious identity under adversity and outside their homeland. So intense is this interest that some years ago I saw a picture of the Dalai Lama being instructed in how to wrap a set of tefillin.

Many Jews would be surprised to learn that a legend about the Buddha enjoyed immense popularity in Jewish literature in several languages.

The story in question goes under the name “the Prince and the Monk.” The Jewish prototype of the story was composed by the thirteenth-century poet Rabbi Abraham Ibn Hisdai of Barcelona. The work is an example of the “makama” genre that enjoyed immense popularity in medieval Arabic and Hebrew literatures. In a typical makama, a loosely structured plot formulated in rhymed prose provided the author with an opportunity to link together heterogeneous units, many of which were composed as formal poetry.

The basic plot of “the Prince and the Monk” involves a pagan king who had been cautioned that his son would one day forsake his royal station in favour of a new religion. In order to prevent this from happening, the king placed the prince in total isolation from the world, and banished all religious teachers from his realms. In spite of all these precautions, the prince was prompted to ask a number of profound existential questions, and eventually was approached by a spiritual mentor who succeeded in secretly instructing him in his new faith, persuading him to exchange his life of opulence for that of a spiritual ascetic.

The motif of individuals turning their backs on material comforts to pursue a course of spiritual fulfillment is a common one in fact and legend; the Jewish Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanos and the Christian St. Francis of Assisi are two familiar instances that spring to mind. It is clear that Ibn Hisdai’s immediate source was an Arabic text, though the Hebrew version was an independent and thoroughly Jewish work in its own right. The Arabs had apparently picked up the story from the Manichees of Central Asia, who had in turn learned it from Buddhist missionaries.

For the story of the Prince and the Monk is in reality none other than the traditional tale of the enlightenment of the Buddha, the Siddhartha Gautama.

The convoluted wanderings of this story add up to one of the most extraordinary achievements of world literatures. From its origins in India, it entered just about every known Asiatic and European culture. It achieved wide circulation in medieval Europe in its Christian guise as the “Tale of Barlaam and Josaphat.” The prince’s Latin name, “Josaphat,” is actually a variant of the Arabic “Yudasaf,” which appeared in Manichee as “Bodisaf,” recalling the original Sanskrit title Bodhisattava, “the future Buddha [enlightened one].” As “Saint Josaphat” the Buddha came to be acknowledged as a full-fledged Christian saint, complete with shrines and relics! The legend has exerted a powerful influence on figures like Tolstoy who was inspired by it to exchange his aristocratic life for a simple, pacifistic one.

In its Jewish version, The Prince and the Monk enjoyed immense popularity. It was reprinted dozens of times and ranked among the foremost Hebrew moralistic treatises. A Yiddish edition was published in Lublin in 1874, and reprinted several times thereafter.

Indeed, if the story of the Buddha can be accepted as a source of Jewish ethical teaching, why should we be so startled by the spectacle of my Buddhist monks poring over the Talmud?

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, February 6 1997, p. 8.
• For further reading:
  • W. C. Smith, Towards a World Theology, Philadelphia, 1981. 
  • I. Zinberg, A History of Jewish Literature, Cleveland and London, 1972.
  • H. Schirmann, Ha-Shirah Ha-‘Ivrit bi–Sfarad uvi-Frovans, Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv, 1960.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Matches Made in Heaven

by Eliezer Segal

I believe it was the sardonic 17th-century author Robert Burton who first coined the English adage that “matches are made in heaven.” However the idea underlying that adage has enjoyed a much longer history in Jewish tradition.

The Talmud observed that forty days prior to conception, a divine voice is already declaring which mates are destined to be joined in conjugal life. This perception of a foreordained match is encapsulated in the Yiddish word “bashert.”

The ancient Jewish sages were aware of the myth–familiar to many of us from Aristophanes’ speech at Plato’s Symposium–that men and women were originally a single androgynous being that was split into two, so that in seeking their ideal mates, they are really striving to reunite with the missing portions of their selves. This reciprocal aspect of a successful union was voiced in rather archaic terms by Ogden Nash when he mused “I believe a little incompatibility is the spice of life–particularly if he has income and she is pattable” (Feel free to switches the gender designations).

The preparation of a proper match is no easy matter, even for the Almighty. Rabbi Yohanan in the Talmud observed that the task ranks in its difficulty alongside the splitting of the Red Sea.

When a Roman matron asked Rabbi Yosé ben Halafta how God has been occupying himself since completing the creation of the universe (reflecting the widespread view among ancient philosophers that after setting the world in motion, the Creator withdrew from active involvement in the affairs of that world), the Jewish sage was quick to reply that God has his work cut out for him preparing suitable matches for his creatures.

The lady countered that this seemed a trivially simple task for an omnipotent deity, upon which Rabbi Yosé dared her to try her own hand at it. Taking up the challenge, the matron convened a mass wedding for the male and female slaves of her household.

However the honeymoons were cut short, since by the next day most of the newlyweds were bruised and bleeding. The matron was compelled to concede the wisdom of Rabbi Yosé’s words! 

The Talmudic traditions about destined matches came to be interpreted by Jewish thinkers in the light of the new theological ideas and social realities that arose in later generations.

Thus, the medieval mystics interpreted the matchmaking process from the perspective of their own distinctive doctrines. Some Kabbalists observed that a good shiddukh, like all other holy handiwork, is fashioned by means of permutations of the sacred letters of the Hebrew alphabet. This, explains Rabbenu Bahya bar Asher, is why the Torah decreed that a marriage can only be dissolved by means of a written document of divorce.

Other Kabbalists, including the author of the Zohar, depicted supernatural matchmaking in accordance with their belief in reincarnation: Thus, it sometimes happens that people’s transgressions prevent them from finding their destined mate in their current lifetime, and the matter must be deferred to a subsequent existence.

The medieval Jewish philosophers were bothered by this implied suspension of free will. Maimonides addressed this weighty question in a responsum to Obadiah the Proselyte, insisting that the Rabbis’ statements about preordained marriages should not be taken at face value, since they challenged the foundations of moral autonomy. Perhaps, Maimonides suggested, the Talmud meant only to say that God rewards or punishes people by yoking them to worthy or disagreeable mates.

Some ingenious twists on the belief in preordained matches are preserved in the Sefer Hasidim (The Book of the Pious), that remarkable collection of Jewish lore from twelfth-century Germany.

One passage in Sefer Hasidim tells of a bridegroom who was forced into an unwanted–but lucrative–union. In the course of the wedding ceremony he recited both the “Barukh dayyan ha-emet” blessing which is usually recited over a tragedy or bereavement, and “Barukh ha-tov veha-metiv,” the blessing for good fortune! He justified his strange practice by citing the Talmudic traditions about the Almighty’s role in the selection of his mate. 

New heights of chutzpah are suggested in another passage from Sefer Hasidim, where an adulterer is said to have invoked the Talmudic traditions in order to justify his illicit liaison with a married woman: “If matches are made in Heaven,” he deduced, “then it was God who made me do it!”

Needless to say, the Rabbi who discussed this argument was less than impressed by its cogency. 

Notwithstanding such occasional misuses, the fundamental notion that God has a hand in the selection of a compatible union is hopefully to be regarded as an expression of the feelings of the couple, that an enduring marriage is such a remarkable achievement that it can hardly be credited to chance or human agency.

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, February 20 1997, p. 16.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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The Force is With Us

by Eliezer Segal

News Item: January 1997–Twenty years after its original release, George Lucas’ Star Wars trilogy returns to the cinema screens in an enhanced version.

“They fought from heaven,” sang Deborah in the Bible, “The stars in their courses fought.” 

Well, I have finally gotten around to seeing the movie “Star Wars,” even if it took me twenty-five years to do so, and I thoroughly enjoyed the technological swashbuckler.

I am certainly not the first to comment on the religious dimensions of “Star Wars.” Though some of its motifs are patently un-Jewish (“Obi-Wan died so that others might live,” observed a writer in another newspaper last week), there are nonetheless some tantalizing affinities with traditional Jewish themes.

Most remarkably, its depiction of the epic struggle between the cosmic forces of Good and Evil evokes some well-known themes from Jewish mystical lore.

The notion that the battle against evil should involve the rescuing of a captive princess from the dark forces is a commonplace in Kabbalistic literature. For our mystics, the princess is a personification of the Divine Presence, the Shekhinah, who has become separated from her divine “bridegroom,” and now participates in the sufferings and exiles of the people of Israel. In keeping with this perspective, redemption demands that she be freed from the clutches of the Dominion of Evil and restored to her proper place in the celestial hierarchy.

Needless to say, this motif is not uniquely Jewish. It has furnished countless plots for chivalrous romances, Germanic fairy tales and computer games, even as it has inspired the allegorical parables of the Zohar and Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav.

Another interesting twist of the “Star Wars” story is the idea that in order to achieve ultimate liberation from evil, the powers of virtue must actually descend into the realms of darkness. This is an idea that also has a venerable history in the Kabbalah, symbolized for example in the descent of Abraham, Jacob and Moses into the metaphysical immorality of Egypt. This theology was stretched to radical extremes when devotees of Shabbetai Zvi interpreted their messiah’s conversion to Islam as his own penetration of the “Deathstar” in order to purify evil itself, in what was anticipated to be the ultimate stage of the redemption.

All in all, I discerned the most remarkable parallels to Jewish mystical concepts in the idea of the “Force,” that spiritual power that permeates the universe, and which can be channeled to moral objectives by the upright Jedi knights. The belief that an understanding of the divine creative process can allow humans to manipulate that power is undoubtedly central to Jewish esotericism. However the similarities do not stop there.

What I found particularly fascinating about it all was the premise that the Lord of Evil, Darth Vader, was himself an adept of the Force, a former Jedi knight–who had learned to cultivate the “dark side” of the Force.

Now the perception that Evil constitutes the flip side of Holiness is a distinctively Kabbalistic response to the classical philosophical conundrum of how evil can exist and thrive in a universe controlled by an omnipotent and beneficent deity. Religious thinkers have wrestled with this question for millennia, offering a plethora of unsatisfying answers. Some traced the sources of evil to a cosmic satanic power that acted in defiance of God; whereas others tried to argue that evil is merely an illusion, an “absence of God” or an optical illusion created by our inability to see the larger picture.

The Kabbalah, however, teaches that evil is not so much tolerated by God, as it is an essential ingredient of the metaphysical structure of the cosmos.

Although there are different opinions about exactly how evil fits in to the larger scheme of things, most Kabbalistic authorities acknowledge that it is closely related to the divine attribute of Justice, the aspect of God that is responsible for keeping the universe under control and maintaining the limits and borders between the different domains. This necessarily involves the creation of destructive capabilities so that sinners can be deterred or chastised. Once the arsenal of destruction has been set loose in the universe, it can scarcely be restrained. These impure realms are known in Kabbalistic terminology as the “Other Side” (Sitra Ahra).

In the theology of Rabbi Isaac Luria the very existence of the universe would have been impossible were it not for those powers of repulsion and separation, since they issue from the same ultimate principle that separates God from his creation. Were it not for them, God would be indistinguishable from his world, and there could be no creation. 

The Kabbalistic imagination populated the invisible world with vast armies of demonic soldiers serving under the satanic command of Samael, a nefarious host far more horrific than “Star War’s” Imperial Storm Troopers.

Jewish religious history also knew its share of individuals whose obsession with the occult led them to the “dark side.” The Talmud relates that Rabbi Elisha ben Abuya, the notorious “Other,” was induced by his mystical pursuits to forsake his faith and his people.

And there was the case of the fifteenth-century Spanish Kabbalist Rabbi Joseph Della Reina who become so caught up in messianic frenzy that he was impelled to conjure up Samael himself with a view to forcing his hand at hastening the Messiah’s coming, but was instead tricked by the arch-demon into worshipping the evil powers, with disastrous consequences.

Predictably, the cautionary legends that evolved around Joseph Della Reina came to incorporate motifs from similar stories in other cultures, including the anti-hero’s involvement with the “queen of Greece,” likely a borrowing from the tale of Dr. Faustus’ preoccupation with Helen of Troy.

Indeed, who knows how long it will take before episodes from “Star Wars” began to be cited as “midrash” from our synagogue pulpits?

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, March 6 1997, pp. 10-11.
• For further reading:
  • J. Dan, The Hebrew Story in the Middle Ages, Jerusalem, 1974.
  • M. Idel, Kabbala: New Perspectives, New Haven and London, 1988.
  • Y. F. Lachower and I. Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar, Oxford, 1989
  • Gershom Scholem, Kabbala, New York, 1974.
  • G. Scholem, “Le-ma’aseh yosef della reyna,” Zion 5 (1933), 124-31.
  • E. Urbach, “The Traditions about Merkaba Mysticism in the Talmudic Period,” in: Studies in Mysticism and Religion Presented to Gershom G. Scholem, Jerusalem, 1967.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Bare-Bones Burials

by Eliezer Segal

News Item: October, 2002. To great public fanfare, a small chalk ossuary was produced, bearing an inscription that identified it as that of “Jacob (James) son of Joseph brother of Jesus.” It was subsequently found to be a forgery.

There has been much publicity in recent months concerning an ancient box that allegedly housed the bones of Jesus’ brother James. Although most of the controversy has focused on the artifact’s dating and authenticity, I suspect that many Jews must have been puzzled by the basic question of its function.

The item in question is referred to as an “ossuary,” a receptacle for bones. Too small to function as a full-fledged coffin for a corpse, it was used to store the bones of the deceased following the decomposition of the flesh.

The institution of ossuaries implies that a distinction existed between the relative sanctity of the flesh and of the bones as regards their rights to permanent interment. It also presupposes that the remains can be removed from their original burial spot and relocated to a different locality, a procedure that is known as “ossilegium.”

In all these respects, the practice differs radically from current halakhic standards, which insist on permanent burial of all physical remains of the corpse, even items like intravenous tubing. Israeli highway engineers and archeologists are very familiar with the outcries that come from religious circles whenever the need arises to excavate an ancient cemetery. 

In reality, however, the practice of reburying bones has deep roots in Jewish history. Perhaps the most notable precedent was set by Joseph in the Bible when he commanded his descendants to remove his remains from their burial place in Egypt for re-interment in the holy land.

There exists much archeological evidence from biblical times of secondary burials in individual, family or collective ossuaries. However, the practice seems to have enjoyed its greatest popularity in Jerusalem and its environs, from the Herodian era (around 20 B.C.E.) until the city’s total destruction in the second century. For some time after that event, the use of Jewish ossuaries spread to other corners of Israel.

Although they vary considerably in their physical forms, certain motifs are common in these caskets. Architectural patterns in the shape of gabled houses have been explained variously as expressing the idea of a “final home” for the departed, a portal to the next world, or homage to the holy Temple of Jerusalem. The seven-branched menorah, arguably the most widespread and identifiable symbol of Judaism, appears on many of the ossuaries. A six-petaled floral pattern known as a “rosette” is particularly common, though its symbolism (if it is not merely decorative) is not obvious.

The practice of ossilegium is discussed at considerable length in talmudic literature, where it is referred to in Hebrew as liqqut asamot, bone-gathering. The ossuaries are often identified by the Greek term “glossokomon” (which appears in Hebrew as gluskema or dluskema), or by the biblical word aron.

A passage in the Jerusalem Talmud succinctly summarizes the stages of the process and its ambivalent psychological impact on surviving family members: “At first they used to bury people in ditches. After the flesh had decomposed, the bones were collected and deposited in chests. On that day, the son would grieve, but on the following day he rejoiced because his parent had now found rest from judgment.”

As we learn from the above tradition, the day on which people gathered their parents’ bones for reburial combined contradictory elements of mourning and elation, in recognition that the deceased will henceforth enjoy a final repose. In this respect, the ritual is reminiscent of the emotional complexity evoked by our custom of observing the yahrzeit as a blending of celebration and sorrow for a departed loved one. 

Historians are not in agreement about how or why the use of ossuaries became so popular among Jews. It is possible that the practice was dictated by the dearth of available land for conventional cemeteries within Israel’s narrow borders. 

Some authors have pointed out that the ancient Hebrew ideal of spending eternity in the bosom of one’s family, expressed in the biblical idiom of “sleeping with one’s ancestors,” encouraged the creation of family mausoleums which were most conveniently (in keeping with the realities of Israeli geology) situated in caves to which the bones of the deceased would have to be relocated. 

That most cemeteries and burial sites belonged to individual families is confirmed by the archeological findings, inscriptions and historical references, and is presupposed by the discussions in rabbinic sources. 

Although the initial burial would sometimes be under the earth, as is our current practice, it was more common to lay the bodies in rows of niches that were carved into a cave or mountainside. 

There is significance to the fact that most Jewish ossuaries were designed to preserve each skeleton by itself or with close family members, rather than in collective tombs. This development seems to dovetail with a general evolution towards awareness of the individual in the Jewish consciousness, a perception that may have some correspondence with the growing economic affluence of Judean society in Herodian times.

Some scholars trace the origins of the practice to the strong Jewish belief that there is special merit to being buried in the soil of the Land of Israel, or better still, in the vicinity of Jerusalem, where the resurrection of the dead will first commence in the messianic era. The custom of transporting ossuaries from the diaspora communities for burial in Israel is well attested in rabbinic sources, and was sometimes resented by the natives. While there are many passages in talmudic literature that speak of the atoning potential of burial in the holy land or the Temple altar, at least one ancient Zionist ridiculed the notion that Jews who had spent their lives in foreign lands should benefit posthumously from burial to the holy land.

Aside from direct communications from the Next World, there is no way to know with certainty how well the respective burial customs serve the interests of those who have departed this life. It is clear, however, that they provide the living with an opportunity to give tangible expression of their devotion to their loved ones. 

This important aspect of the ritual was poignantly stated by Rabbi Eleazar ben Zadok, who described how he dutifully carried out his late father’s instructions to collect his bones and place them in an ossuary. At the end of his account, Rabbi Eleazar voiced his special satisfaction at having maintained continuity from generation to generation:

“Just as he attended his father, so have I attended him.”

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, December19, 2002, pp. 10-11.
• For Further Reading
  • Fine, Steven. “A Note on Ossuary Burial and the Resurrection of the Dead in First-Century Jerusalem,” Journal of Jewish Studies 51, no. 1 (2000): 69-76
  • Kraemer, David Charles. The Meanings of Death in Rabbinic Judaism. London and New York: Routledge, 2000.
  • Krauss, Samuel. “La Double Inhumation chez les Juifs,” Revue des Etudes Juives 97 (1934): 1-34
  • Meyers, Eric M. Jewish Ossuraries: Reburial and Rebirth: Secondary Burials in Their Ancient Near Eastern Setting Biblica et Orientalia. Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1971.
  • Rahmani, Levi Yizhaq. “Ossuaries and “Ossilegium” (Bone-Gathering) in the late Second Temple Period.” In Ancient Jerusalem Revealed, ed. Hillel Geva, 191-205. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1994.
  • Zlotnick, Dov. The Tractate “Mourning” (Semahot): Regulations relating to Death, Bburial and Mourning Yale Judaica Series. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Aquarian Esther

by Eliezer Segal

Of all the possible names that might have been selected for the holiday commemorating the Jews’ deliverance from Haman’s decree, Purim, “lots,” has never struck me as the most obvious choice. It refers to a relatively incidental feature of the story, when Haman used a lottery in order to select the appropriate date on which to execute his plot. It is not immediately obvious why this particular detail was considered significant enough to lend its name to the entire festival.

The Rabbis of the Midrash tried to reconstruct the process by which Haman went about choosing the suitable date. In one version he is depicted as consulting the astrological symbolism that attached to each month of the year, rejecting them one at a time because their Zodiac signs held favourable associations for the Jews. At length he was left with Adar, governed by Pisces. Against Haman’s reading that this was an omen of Israel’s being swallowed up like so many fish, the Almighty retorted that fish can be predators as well as prey.

In the eyes of many medievals, astrology was accepted as irrefutable science, and several Jewish commentators were proud to discern allusions to that discipline in the pages of the Hebrew scriptures. Probably the most notorious of this group was the twelfth-century exegete Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra who never passed up an opportunity to reveal the astrological roots of biblical stories and laws. True to form, in his commentary to Esther he amplified the midrashic tradition about Haman’s consideration of the Zodiacal associations. He observed that the preference for Adar as a time for massacring Jews lay in the fact that Capricorn was aligned with Aquarius, Israel’s sign. Several other commentators underscored that the inauspicious character of the day was governed by the convergence of celestial forces.

In a similar vein, Rabbi Bahya ben Asher envisaged the Purim story as a cosmic battle between heavenly powers: The beneficent influences of Venus and Mars were embodied in the persons of Mordecai and Esther, which were arrayed against Ahasuerus and Haman who served as agents of the malevolent Saturn and Mars. The peril that threatened the Jews was thus of cosmic proportions. All this invites the objection: If the influences of the stars are truly decisive in determining the destinies of mortals, than how did it happen in the end that Haman’s plot failed?

According to several authorities, this is precisely the key to correctly understanding the miracle of Purim, for a divine decree in defiance of a horoscope is as much a marvel as the suspension of any other law of nature. Most Jewish exegetes drew attention to the fact that divine interference was necessary to counteract the supernatural threat.

While some commentators were content to see the Almighty prevail against the forces of stellar destiny, others took the theme much farther, discerning in the Purim story an outright rejection of the efficacy of astrology. The fifteenth-century Spanish Rabbi Abraham Shalom believed that this was the main issue in the struggle between Mordecai and Haman. The latter, as the descendant of Israel’s primordial foe the Amalek, held a consistently mechanistic view of a universe governed by the unchangeable course of the stars. Mordecai’s refusal to do obeisance to Haman followed from his commitment to the Jewish idea of a God who transcends nature, and who has bestowed upon humans the ability to make free moral choices. 

Thus, although we might initially seem far removed from a “primitive” world in which supposedly intelligent people believe in horoscopes, there is nevertheless a decidedly contemporary ring to the medieval debate. If for “astrology” we were to substitute “physics” or “genetics,” then we would find ourselves in the midst of a thoroughly modern argument about how far scientific method can be applied to matters of human values and spirituality. 

Then as now, the question elicited a broad range of responses. At the extremes, there were fanatical rationalists (especially among the Jewish followers of the Arabic philosopher Ibn Rushd) who sought to provide scientific explanations for the miracle tales of the Bible; as well as pious fundamentalist who tried to isolate themselves entirely from the heresies of scientific progress.

It would appear however that most Jewish thinkers tried to steer a delicate middle course in which scientific integrity did not demand the abandonment of religious values. It was this ideal that was epitomized in their assertion that Haman’s astrological prognostications stopped short of determining the destiny of the Jewish people.

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, March 20 1997, pp. 8, 11.
• For further reading:
  • B. D. Walfish, Esther in Medieval Garb, Albany 1993.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Yom Kippur: Encounters with the Absolute

by Eliezer Segal

Whether in first-century Alexandria or in contemporary Calgary, Yom Kippur–the Jewish Day of Atonement–has maintained an inexplicable hold even over Jews who in other respects have become severed from their spiritual roots. The holiday’s power is not diminished by its dearth of tangible symbols, historical associations or links to the cycles of nature.

The following two vignettes illustrate the awesome force that can be exerted by this sacred day over Jew and Gentile alike:

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In 1911 Rudolf Otto, a young German lecturer in Theology, undertook a journey to North Africa, India and the Far East. The Day of Atonement that year found him, a Christian, in the Moroccan town of Mogador, where he visited the local synagogue. Amidst the material squalor of the setting, Otto was overwhelmed by the grandeur of the Hebrew chanting, particularly of the “Kedushah,” that sublime prayer in which the community emulates the angelic adulation of the Almighty as portrayed in the mystic visions of Isaiah and Ezekiel: “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts!”

In this experience were sown the seeds of Otto’s lifelong fascination with the experience of holiness in world religions. In his seminal work The Idea of the Holy he explored the essence of the “mysterium tremendum” that engulfs individuals when they stand before the power of a “wholly other” majesty that transcends rational understanding.

In Otto’s analysis of the holiness experience, it is the process of atonement that allows us to bridge the chasm of profane unworthiness and enter into relationship with God.

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In another episode that occurred shortly afterwards, the spell of Yom Kippur saved Judaism from losing one of its most creative and heroic teachers:

Like many of his Jewish contemporaries in turn-of-the-century Germany, young Franz Rosenzweig embarked upon a quest for personal religious solutions to the puzzles of human existence. Though unsatisfied by the aridity of the prevailing philosophical schools, his superficial Jewish education had not equipped him to counter the attractions of liberal Protestantism, which professed to embody the essence of enlightened universalism. 

In 1913 Rosenzweig resolved to adopt Christianity, a move which was conventionally viewed as a necessary prerequisite to full acceptance into European culture and society. However he wished to enter the new religion “as a Jew,” and therefore determined to spend the last days before his conversion in Jewish settings, emulating the founders of Christianity who had seen the new faith as a fulfilment of their Judaism.

When Rosenzweig confided his plans to his mother, she threatened to have her apostate son turned away from the Yom Kippur services in the central synagogue of Cassel. It thus turned out that Rosenzweig attended worship on Oct. 11 1913 at a tiny orthodox house of prayer (“shtiebl”) in Berlin.

The experience was an overpowering one. Rosenzweig never described precisely what it was that transformed him in that Berlin synagogue, but we know that immediately afterwards his perspectives underwent a complete reversal, and that the prospect of conversion was “no longer possible.”

In later writings Rosenzweig emphasized that, beyond feelings of personal exaltation and communal solidarity, Yom Kippur constitutes “a testimony to the reality of God that cannot be controverted.” He described movingly how on that day every Jew “confronts the eyes of his judge in utter loneliness as if he were dead in the midst of life…” And yet, in spite of the apparently unbridgable gap between individual and Creator, on Yom Kippur “he is as close to God…as it is ever accorded man to be.”

Whatever it was that Rosenzweig experienced in that Berlin synagogue, it impelled him to devote the remainder of his life–much of it in the grip of a debilitating illness–to studying and teaching the Jewish tradition. His Star of Redemption remains one of the most challenging works of Jewish theology. His collaboration with Martin Buber produced a fresh new German translation of the Hebrew Bible and under his leadership the Frankfurt “Freies Jüdisches Lehrhaus” inspired some of German Jewry’s most distinguished intellectuals.

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Perhaps it is Yom Kippur’s very defiance of historical or natural context that cries out against the facile determinisms of modern ideologies. Starkly alone before our Creator, we acknowledge that the power to change life’s course belongs to no-one but ourselves.

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• First Publication:
  • The Calgary Herald, September 23 1996, p. A6, as “Yom Kippur bridges gap to God.”
• For further reading:
  • Nahum N. Glatzer, Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought, New York 1951.
  • Rudof Otto, The Idea of the Holy, Oxford 1923.
  • P. C. Almond, Rudolf Otto: An Introduction to his Philosophical Theology, Chapel Hill, 1984.

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My e-mail address is [email protected]

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Dolly and the Golem

by Eliezer Segal

News Item: February 1997— Amid much controversy, Dolly, the first successful clone of an adult mammal, is produced by Dr. Ian Wilmut and his team of scientists in Edinburgh. Dolly is the product of a donor cell of one ewe, combined with a modified donor egg of another ewe, which was then into the uterus of a third ewe which gave birth to the clone

As I write these words, the moist eyes of Dolly the cloned sheep still adorn the front pages of the newspapers, and learned philosophers and columnists are busily speculating about the imminent cloning of human beings. Several have even alluded to the reputed creation of golems by Jewish mystics and magicians.

Indeed, if we are to believe the Talmud, the creation of a living mammal in a “laboratory” was accomplished by two rabbis as early as the third century, though their choice of animal was a calf rather than a sheep: “Rav Hanina and Rav Hoshaya used to convene every Friday and occupy themselves with the `laws of creation.’ They were able to fashion a calf one-third grown, which they ate.” This seems to have been a routine matter for them, and they had no qualms about serving up the delicacy as the entrée at their Sabbath table.

What were those “laws of creation” that served as the instruction manual for the calf-cloners? Scholars are unsure whether to identify them with the collection called “Book of Creation”–Sefer Yetzirah–that was familiar to Jewish mystics in the Middle Ages.

Sefer Yetzirah is one of the most unusual works in Jewish literature. Attributed to the Patriarch Abraham, it represents a Jewish version of neopythagoreanism, an ancient philosophy that viewed the mystical combinations of number patterns as the key to the mysteries of the universe. The author of Sefer Yetzirah takes this theme one step further. In addition to elaborating on the mysterious potencies of the ten decimal numbers, he expands upon an idea, found in the Talmud, of creation being accomplished by means of combinations of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. According to the ancient rabbis, this was how the Torah’s supreme artisan Bezalel was able to fashion the sacred implements of the Tabernacle.

The medieval “Book of Creation” is founded upon the principle that the structures of mathematics and language reflect the metaphysical configuration of the universe. From this it follows that one who has mastered those principles will be able to imitate the divine process of creation.

If this was the method employed by Rabbis Hanina and Hoshaya in the Talmud, then perhaps it would not be inappropriate to draw analogies between their permutations of letters and modern scientists’ permutations of genetic codes. An ingenious medieval tradition claimed that the calf was served at the “siyyum,” the festive meal that was held in honour of the rabbis’ completing their study of Sefer Yetzirah.

The ancient rabbis appear to have been less daunted than their modern counterparts by the prospect of manufacturing artificial human life. The Talmud ascribes such an achievement to the sage Rava. Apparently the creature was a credible enough imitation to pass itself off as fully human–but for the fact that it could not speak. The faculty of speech, traditionally equated with the uniquely human capacity for reason, continued to elude mortal imitators of the creative process. Later writers disagreed whether or not this limitation was insurmountable. For all its deficiencies, Rava’s creature was the first documented case of a “golem.” The Hebrew word “golem” denotes an unformed substance, especially a lump of clay or earth. The word is sometimes used with reference to the earth from which the first human being was fashioned, before God imbued it with the breath of life. By extension, it was applied to similar beings that were brought to life by human creators.

It was the thirteenth-century German-Jewish mystical and pietists known as the Hasidei Ashkenaz who were the most fervent in their attempts to produce a golem. Rabbi Eleazar of Worms composed an extensive manual in which he detailed all the incantations and intricate alphabetical combinations that were needed to fashion a viable humanoid. Upon its forehead was inscribed the Hebrew word Emet, “truth,” which was also considered a name of God.

In the Middle Ages, the making of golems was restricted for the most part to ecstatic trances; they did not have any existence in the “real” world. Legends that purport to tell about great rabbis, such as Rabbi Samuel the Pious in Germany and Solomon Ibn Gabirol in Spain, who fashioned golems to serve as their personal attendants, gained circulation only in later eras.

As we come closer to modern times, the methods of golem manufacture become more varied, reflecting some of the current scientific thinking. One writer speaks of combining organic material in a vessel, and another of a mechanical contraption assembled from boards and hinges.

The golems were also becoming more dangerous. Their sheer size, if allowed to develop unchecked, was seen to constitute a threat. It was related that Poland’s most renowned golem-maker, Rabbi Elijah of Chelm, was killed, or at least injured, when he was crushed while deactivating his overgrown creation. By the nineteenth century, even as alarm at the relentless pace of industrial and technological progress was inspiring works like Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, Jewish legends were also imagining golems who could run wild and wreak destruction. In order to destroy the golem–as was necessary on occasion, since otherwise they would continue to grow uncontrollably–one had to reverse the order of the divine letters from which it had been formed, or erase the first letter of the word emet on its forehead, transforming it into met, “dead”–at which point it would crumble back to lifeless dust.

Notwithstanding the circulation of such horror stories, it appears that the predominant concern was less with the monster’s going on a rampage or turning on its creator than with the moral and theological implications of the endeavour.

For all the satisfaction that might result from this ultimate expression of our “divine image,” there remained a powerful anxiety that people might thereby obscure the distinction between the Eternal Creator and his mortal imitators, and come to treat the latter as objects of idolatrous worship. The permissibility of “playing God” was in itself questioned; and not all aspiring creators were convinced that Rava’s inability to produce a speaking or reasoning being was a systemic limitation. And of course there were always skeptics who insisted that the real golems were the aspiring sorcerers, not their fictitious creatures!

Truly, the discussion sounds very much like the current one surrounding Dolly the sheep.

We might do well to keep in mind that the Talmud introduced the whole topic in order to illustrate its claim that “if the righteous wished, they could create a world.”

It seems to follow from that statement that those who are really righteous will have the discretion to refrain from usurping a function that rightly belongs only to the Creator.

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, April 7 1997, pp. 8-9.
• For further reading:
  • Idel, Moshe, The Golem: Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions on the Artificial Anthropoid, SUNY Studies in Judaica, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990.
  • G. Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, London 1965.
  • J. Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition, New York 1970.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Staging the Exodus

by Eliezer Segal

Cecil B. DeMille was not the first person to stage a dramatization of the Passover story.

Though it is impossible to ascertain who deserves that particular honour, we do know of a stage-play based on the story of the Exodus that was composed as early as the second century B.C.E. The author of that play was a Jew named Ezekiel. As was the case with most of the cultural heritage that has survived from the illustrious Greek-speaking Jewish communities, Ezekiel’s oeuvre was preserved by pagans and Christians, not by Jewish posterity.

“Ezekiel the Tragedian” entitled his drama the “Exagogé” (the Exodus). Arranged in five acts, it follows the career of Moses from his flight to Midian until after the revelation of Mount Sinai.

Ezekiel artfully blends a precise retelling of the Biblical story with the literary conventions of Hellenistic culture. On the whole, he reflects the convictions of a proud Jewish community that their own sacred history was as worthy a subject for drama as the myths of their Greek and Roman neighbours.

Although the surviving remnants of the Exagogé testify to its faithful reliance on the Scriptural story, there are several apparent departures from the Bible that deserve our attention. Some of these demonstrate the acceptance by Hellenistic Jews of values and ideas that were current among the Greeks and Egyptians.

For example, the play supplies details about Moses’ education that are not spelled out in the Torah. Not only was he taught about his Jewish origins going back to Abraham, but according to Ezekiel he also mastered the full range of Egyptian wisdom. This detail is consistent with the opinion that was widely held among the ancients–and by no means limited to patriotic Egyptians–that Egypt was the birthplace of all true wisdom, and that such wisdom equipped Moses ideally for the role of leader of his people.

Some of the most novel details in the Exagogé are those that relate to its geographical setting.

Most of us have been brought up to assume that Midian, to which Moses fled after killing the Egyptian taskmaster, was somewhere on the Sinai Peninsula, as was Mount Sinai. However Ezekiel situates all these events on the African mainland, in the Libyan region of Cyrene. This was an idea that had considerable currency among ancient authors. The Jewish historian Demetrius related that the descendants of Abraham’s wife Keturah, believed to be the ancestors of Moses’ Midianite wife Zipporah, had found their way to Africa. Non-Jewish Hellenistic authors knew of many traditions related to the exploits of the African branch of Abraham’s descendants, including military and marital alliances with the mighty Hercules. 

In placing this unexpected emphasis on Cyrene as a setting of formative Jewish history, the Hellenistic Jews were emulating the attitudes of their Greek neighbours who maintained that North Africa was the cradle of civilization, and associated it with many episodes in their mythical history, from the journeys of Jason’s Argonauts to the labours of Hercules. Indeed, it was believed that the Atlas Mountains housed the primordial paradise of the Greek gods, a theme that may have influenced Ezekiel’s idyllic portrayal of the biblical oasis of Elim (Exodus 15:27). It was only fitting that this cherished region should also have been the setting for the central events of Israelite history.

Another Greek mythological motif that Ezekiel incorporated into his drama was the legend of the marvelous Phoenix, the bird whose rebirth out of the North African sands once in a millennium was believed to herald major historical epochs. Appropriately, the Phoenix-sighting is said to have occurred during the Hebrew Exodus, which initiates underscoring its importance as a historical turning point. 

Some interesting twists in the dramatization emerge from the playwright’s staging of the “burning bush” revelation. Here, the Jewish author found himself at a disadvantage vis à vis his pagan counterparts who could easily have actors play the roles of the various deities. Ezekiel, by contrast, had to represent a dialogue between Moses and an invisible God, an effect which he achieved by having the voice of God speak from behind curtains.

However Ezekiel’s problem was not just a technical one. For a philosophically sophisticated Hellenistic Jew it was considered unacceptably crude to conceive of a spiritual God who literally possessed a “voice” in the human sense. Out of similar considerations, the renowned thinker Philo Judaeus of Alexandria reinterpreted many passages in the Bible that appeared to be referring to divine speech as mere metaphors designed to convey a process of intellectual perception.

Philo preferred to minimize God’s direct involvement with the created world by applying the Stoic concept of the “Logos,” an emanated entity that furnished the rational structure that regulates the physical world. In Philo’s interpretations, it was this Logos, not God himself, that was heard or seen by the prophets of the Bible. This usage was adopted by the standard Aramaic translation of the Torah (where the Logos appears as the memra, the word of God) and continued to influence Jewish philosophers in later generations.

And so, while striving to fashion a literary representation of God’s appearance to Moses, the tragedian Ezekiel was scrupulous in eschewing all references to the “voice” of God. Instead, he consistently makes reference to the “word of God,” namely the divine “Logos,” in a manner reminiscent of Philo.

You are probably asking yourselves: How was it possible in those primitive times before DeMille and Spielberg, to act out on a stage the miraculous splitting of the Red Sea? Ezekiel solved this problem by borrowing a trick that had previously been utilized by Aeschylus to dramatize the Battle of Salamis in the Persians. Instead of enacting the miracle directly, Ezekiel introduced the character of a lone Egyptian survivor who reported their calamity, in the most dramatic and graphic terms, to Pharaoh. In the surviving fragments of Ezekiel’s scene, the Egyptian survivor gives us meticulous descriptions of the unequal array of forces, mounting gradually to the certainty that Egyptian victory is inevitable. When the tables are finally and suddenly turned in Israel’s favour, it comes with overwhelming dramatic impact.

The many allusions in Ezekiel’s play to its Cyrenian setting have led some scholars to believe that the author was himself a citizen of that region. If that theory is true, then it would provide a remarkable complement to several pieces of archeological evidence from that region that attest to the existence of a special amphitheatre in Cyrene that was owned and utilized by the local Jewish community.

This invites some tantalizing speculations: Perhaps our synagogues should also give serious consideration to the introduction of theatrical dramatizations of biblical texts, as an alternative to some of our more longwinded preaching.

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, April 21 1997, pp. 18-19.
• For further reading:
  • Y. Gutman, The Beginnings of Jewish-Hellenistic Literature, Jerusalem 1963.
  • H. Jacobson,  The Exagogé of Ezekiel, Cambridge, England, 1983.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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