Family Feuds

by Eliezer Segal

Even out here in Alberta it is not quite possible to remain insulated from the inter-denominational factionalism emanating from Israel and the larger Jewish communities.

Through our history, Judaism has been able to tolerate an impressive degree of theological disagreement and personal rivalry. If the disputes were confined to such theoretical issues, then the current contention would probably not go beyond the level nasty name-calling. Where matters get serious for Jews is when they begin to impinge on religious practice. Thus, the most acute controversies in Jewish public life have very tangible consequences in determining whether individuals may or may not marry into the Jewish community.

Controversies of this sort have arisen in previous eras of Jewish history and have been handled in different ways. The Talmud, for example, records several instances in which entire towns and provinces were declared unmarriageable because of questions that arose concerning their genealogical purity, or their failure to conform to the accepted religious standards. In at least one case, it is reported that the rejected community abandoned their Judaism altogether.

Not all disputes were treated so unyieldingly. A notable case is described in the Mishnah involving the first-century schools of Shammai and Hillel.

The controversy concerned a complex convergence of several features of Jewish family law, including levirate marriage, incest and polygamy. The upshot was that a certain constellation of circumstances could arise in which the school of Shammai would require a widow to enter into a levirate marriage with her brother-in-law (or undergo the “halitzah” release ceremony), whereas the school of Hillel would forbid such a marriage as incestuous and its offspring as mamzerim, forbidden to marry into the Jewish community.

After outlining the controversy between the two schools, the Mishnah proceeds to relate the following: “Even though one school forbids and the others permit, these declare unfit and these declare fit, nevertheless the school of Shammai did not hesitate to take wives from the school of Hillel, nor vice versa. Furthermore, in all their disagreements over purity and impurity, they did not refrain from partaking of one another’s pure foods and vessels.”

Now this is surely a remarkable instance of halakhic pluralism, where two opposing camps, divided over fundamental issues of marriage ability, agreed to acknowledge the legitimacy of positions with which they personally disagreed, even to the point of permitting unions that would, in their view, produce mamzerim. True, the Talmud tempers this liberality when it explains that what the schools were really doing was scrupulously warning one another about problematic family histories of prospective brides, in order to prevent them from transgressing their respective prohibitions. Even so, this indicates a degree of mutual respect that is not easily imaginable in our present religious climate.

A similar example may be cited from a different historical context. Medieval Jewry was split into two main movements: the “Rabbinites” who accepted the authority of the oral tradition as embodied in the Talmud; and the “Karaites” who rejected the Talmud in favour of direct reliance on the Bible. The disagreements between these two streams extended to every imaginable area of private and communal life.

Both flavours of Judaism were prominently represented in medieval Egypt. From records in the Cairo Genizah we obtain a surprising picture: Although the ideological spokesmen of the two factions missed few opportunities to attack the beliefs and practices of their opponents, we find that in all matters of communal activity and social interaction there existed a remarkable measure of cooperation.

Then as now, the welfare of the Jews of Jerusalem was a concern that unified Jews of divergent leanings. Several urgent fund drives were initiated in the twelfth century in order to rescue the holy city from its financial plight. For purposes of these campaigns, the Rabbinates and Karaites temporarily set aside their differences and worked in harmony. This magnanimous approach was encouraged by Egypt’s foremost rabbinical leader, Maimonides, whose outspoken opposition to the doctrines of Karaism was balanced by his compassion for the Karaites as people and as Jews.

Of particular interest are the marriage contracts (ketubbahs) that testify to the relative frequency of “intermarriage” between the two sects, even in the families of their most prominent leaders. Because of the radical differences in their respective observances, guidelines had to be set out explicitly in the ketubbahs so as to minimize violations of the spouse’s sensibilities. One clause, for example, stipulates whether the meat that is brought into the house must conform to the kashrut stringencies of the Karaites, or of the Rabbinites; another insists that no candles be lit on Shabbat, out of respect for the Karaite prohibition against having any fire in the house on the sabbath. Both parties obligate themselves not to desecrate their spouse’s holidays (which might fall on different dates). Some documents speak of one of the partners “converting” to the other’s denomination for the sake of the marriage.

When some of these ketubbahs were displayed at an exhibition in Israel this year, they raised several eyebrows from both the secularist and orthodox camps.

Similarly, when I recently gave a talk about the history of Jewish sectarianism, it did not take long for my audience to ask me about how those precedents ought to be applied to our contemporary denominational disputes: Should the differences between the Orthodox and Reform be likened to those between the Pharisees and Sadducees, or the Rabbinites and Karaites, who utterly rejected their opponents’ claim to Jewish authenticity? Or should they be viewed as a “dispute for the sake of Heaven” as between the schools of Shammai and Hillel, or between medieval rationalists and mystics, where differing religious outlooks did not extend to the delegitimization of their rivals?

With characteristic boldness, I replied that I prefer to wait another century or two until I can see the matters in their proper historical perspective.

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, December 4, 1997, pp.4, 11.
• For further reading:
  • M. A. Friedman, Jewish Marriage in Palestine, Tel-Aviv and New York, 1980. 
  • S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, Berkeley, 1971.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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The Menorah and the Magi

by Eliezer Segal

In contemporary North America, Hanukkah is probably the Jewish holiday that has received the most widespread acceptance from the general public. It is acknowledged in the communications media and at the greeting-card counters, and menorahs are lit ceremoniously in public places.

This has not always been the case. Although in ancient decrees of religious persecutions (e.g., under the Roman Emperor Hadrian or the Byzantine church) the celebration of Hanukkah or the kindling of its lamps were not usually singled out as prohibited acts, there have been times in our history when the observance of this holiday could entail grave dangers.

Such a situation is alluded to in the Babylonian Talmud where the following question is posed: “Is it permissible to remove a Hanukkah lamp on account of the `Habbars’ on the Sabbath?” The assumption underlying the query is that the opposition of Habbars to the Hanukkah lights was intense enough to constitute a serious threat to Jewish lives, thereby justifying a relaxation of the prohibitions against handling fire on the Sabbath.

Who were these “Habbars”? The term is apparently taken from the Biblical word designating a practitioner of charms and magic, but was applied by the Babylonian rabbis to the Zoroastrian Mazdean priesthood–the “Magi”–whose religion was the dominant one in Babylonia throughout most of the Talmudic era. The kindling and possession of fire raised some touchy problems with respect to some central pillars of their faith.

The severity of the problem is evident from a story that is related elsewhere in the Talmud, in which a third-century rabbi was lying in his sick-bed in the company of some colleagues when a Habbar burst in and snatched away his bedside lamp, prompting the Jewish sage to quip: “Merciful God, it would be preferable to live under Thy shade, or even in the shade of the children of Esau (i.e., the Romans)”! Though the lamp in this story was not a Hanukkah menorah, it was nevertheless considered an affront to the Habbar.

As the Talmud’s commentators would explain, the problem had nothing to do with the religious character of Hanukkah, or with its themes of religious and national freedom. It was the fire itself that lay at the root of the antagonism. 

The preservation of a sacred fire was a central feature of Iranian religion. It was a priestly duty to maintain the flames, usually in special fire-temples devoted to that purpose. There existed a hierarchy of different flames, and although lower flames (like the human spirit) could be upgraded by being brought to a higher flame, the opposite was strictly forbidden. The fires that burned in individual hearths were allowed only insofar as they were subordinated to the next-higher flame, and so on..

A medieval Ga’on, a successor to the Babylonian rabbis who still possessed traditions about the circumstances of earlier generations, wrote about how “during the reign of the Persians the Habbars would make the rounds of all the Jewish households, where they would extinguish the lamps and gather the embers, which they would bring to their idolatrous fire-temple. They would not allow leave either the fires or the coals to burn through the night except for those which they kept in the temples.” The Talmud elsewhere tells of the vials and bellows that would be used by the Mazdean priests in order convey the flames that had been profaned by infidels in order to refine them in the sacred flame at the temple of Varahran. 

Another Ga’on linked the Talmudic stories with a particular Zoroastrian festival observed in his own days, known as Sadah or Sadag. The origins and precise date of this holiday are not completely known, but it is described in the ancient sources as a winter fire-festival, designed to encourage the sun to prevail over the winter cold and darkness, which they perceived symbolically as the embodiment of Ahriman the god of evil. The ceremonious kindling of fires was central to its observance, and we may readily appreciate how the Jews’ public kindling of their own fires at that season could be seen as a profanation of their rites.

The historical context for these events is well-known to scholars. Until the beginning of the third centuries the Jews of Babylonia lived under the tolerant rule of the Parthians who were scrupulous not to interfere with the religious and legal autonomy of the various ethnic groups who inhabited their empire. That situation came to an end with the rise to power of Persian Sasanian dynasty whose emperors saw it as their sacred duty to promote the ancient faith of Zoroaster. Although the Jews were usually able to maintain good relations with the ruling powers, there were times when the missionary zeal of the Persian priesthood constituted a serious threat.

The most formidable champion of militant Mazdaism was Kartir who strove to make his faith the only legal religion throughout the Persian empire. Towards that end he gave high priority to the establishment of many new fire temples. Although initially his fanaticism held in check by the kings, by the end of the third century he was given free reign and encouragement in his activities. In a monumental inscription that has been preserved, Kartir boasts of his effective persecution of the Jews and other religious communities. Under this kind of atmosphere the joyous lighting of a menorah could become an act fraught with peril.

Nevertheless, then as at other times, the Jews were somehow able to weather the crisis, and the Hanukkah flames eventually succeeded in outlasting the cultic flames of their opponents.

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, December 19, 1997, p. 18.
• For further reading:
  • R. N. Frye, The Heritage of Persia, London, 1962.
  • I. M. Gafni, The Jews of Babylonia in the Talmudic Era, Jerusalem, 1990
  • J. Neusner, A History of the Jews of Babylonia: The Early Sasanian Period, Leiden, 1966
  • E. S. Rosenthal, “For the Talmudic Dictionary–Talmudica Iranica,” in: S. Shaked, ed., Irano-Judaica I, Jerusalem, 1982.
  • E. Yarshater, ed., The Cambridge History of Iran, Cambridge, 1983.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Dreams of Fields

by Eliezer Segal

Though I cannot claim any particular expertise in matters of high finance, I can recognize the soundness of the advice contained in the words of the third-century Rabbi Isaac Nappaha when he declared: “A person’s assets should be divided up into three parts: One third should be invested in land, one third in trade, and the remaining third should remain available for immediate use.” The result would be a diversified portfolio of the kind that is encouraged by contemporary financial advisors.

The ancient rabbis held a variety of views about which kinds of investments should be most recommended. Rabbi Isaac’s statement seems to be typical of the opinions prevalent in Israel and other Mediterranean lands, where commerce was hailed as the key to economic security. This perception was inspired by the sad state of agriculture under the Roman administration, when more and more lands were expropriated from their original owners, whose status was transformed thereby into that of hereditary serfs enslaved to the absentee landlords. When their situation was ameliorated later under Arab rule, Jews indeed became full partners in a trading enterprise that extended from Spain to India. 

A different attitude prevailed among the Jewish sages of Babylonia, as reflected in many teachings and anecdotes in the Talmud. For them, the purchase of real estate was unquestionably the most desirable of investments. The folios of the Babylonian Talmud are filled with accounts of the aggressive measures taken by individuals to acquire available real estate, with the demand far exceeding the supply. In several of these episodes, the courts were called to adjudicate between competing claims by squatters and purchasers to the ownership of available properties. In some of these cases, individuals who already possessed estates of their own would elbow aside less fortunate persons who were trying to get their first foothold in land ownership. Symptomatic of the frenzy for land acquisition was an occasion on which a rabbi, who had been given money with which to purchase property on behalf of a colleague, went and bought the land for himself.

There was a widespread perception that reliable credit could be established only by land holdings, rather than by possession of cash or movables. It was assumed that nobody would sell their fields voluntarily; such a move could only be a result of financial distress in the face of creditors or the tax-collector.

Unlike our own times, the land that was attracting so many aspiring buyers was not situated in cities, nor was its value related to its potential for mineral or energy resources. What people were so eager to possess was agricultural land.

This attraction seems somewhat anomalous when we consider that the Talmudic sources had a very realistic awareness of the arduous character of rustic life, noting on occasion that in order to succeed, farmers must became enslaved to their fields.

Notwithstanding that the livelihood of the merchant was likely to come more quickly and with less exertions, the Babylonian Jews shared with their Persian neighbours a conservative outlook (as reflected in Zoroastrian religious texts) that equated moral virtue with traditional ideals of agricultural industry. Several rabbinic texts speak pityingly of those unfortunate souls who must rely for their sustenance upon the vagaries of the marketplace, as compared with the favoured persons who could eke out an independent subsistence from the soil. Indeed, throughout history social prestige has been commonly equated with the possession of real estate; all the more so in antiquity, when “landed” and “aristocracy” were inseparable concepts.

From my perspective as an academic, I should note that, according to the Talmud, land ownership is particularly crucial for us scholars. Thus, a story is related about a rabbi who questioned his students about the progress they were making in their studies. When they responded that they had indeed mastered the assigned material, they added that their success was directly related to their recent acquisition of a small field.

This episode must be contrasted with several others in which scholars whose academic performance was impaired by their financial straits. As Rabbi Johanan once summarized his own distress, “all the limbs depend on the heart, but the heart depends on the purse.”

If only my employers would pay careful heed to those words of wisdom!

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, January 29, 1998, pp. 11-12.
• For further reading:
  • Beer, Moshe, The Babylonian Amoraim: Aspects of Economic Life, Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1974.
  • Daniel Sperber, Roman Palestine: 200-400–The Land, Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1978.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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The Name is David —King David

by Eliezer Segal

A colleague of mine who specializes in the study of ancient Jewish preaching likes to remind me that in Talmudic society the synagogue sermon functioned as the central form of entertainment for a Jewish community that was deprived of television or cinema, and was discouraged from attending the theatre or circus. This desire to spice instruction with amusement accounts for some of the more poetic, as well as the bizarre and sensational elements, that find their way into works of “aggadic midrash,” a literary genre that is composed largely of snippets from ancient sermons. Not all of our contemporary preachers have proven as skillful in packaging their words in such an attractive form.

The recent screening of a festival of James Bond thrillers on cable television got me to pondering how well the ancient rabbis would have succeeded in competing with such exciting fare. Predictably, it did not take me long to come to the conclusion that the standard 007 format was in fact invented by the ancient Jewish sages, and examples of it are found in the pages of the Talmud.

If you find this claim difficult to accept, allow me to cite in evidence the following story. It is translated almost verbatim from the Babylonian Talmud (Sanhedrin 95a), in a story that is in itself an expansion of two verses in the Bible (2 Samuel 21:16-17). Other than a few words of my own enlightening commentary, all that I have added are some headings to call your attention to basic ingredients of what will later be regarded as the standard formula for a James Bond thriller. The swashbuckling hero of the Talmudic adventure is none other than King David.

Element #1: The formidable villain: 

This role is filled by the Philistine Ishbi-benob, brother of the notorious (and deceased) Goliath. Ishbi possesses a horrendous arsenal of destructive weaponry (2 Samuel 21:16: “the weight of his spear weighed three hundred shekels of brass in weight, he being girded with a new sword”), and is determined to wreak vengeance upon his brother’s slayer.

Element #2: The hero’s briefing with his Superior Officer:

Since this is a Bible story, David gets his orders not from a mortal “M,” but from the Supreme Commander, the Almighty himself. The session begins with a chastising of David for the recklessness that has led to unnecessary loss of life. His present mission: to penetrate the headquarters of Ishbi-benob.

Element #3: Getting all those neat gadgets from “Q”:

Well, this is not actually described in the midrash, but from later episodes we can deduce that David has been issued a number of astounding bits of high-tech (or miraculous) weaponry. These include:

1. A miniature earth remover.
2. A secret communications system to signal his accomplice.
3. A warp-speed mule.
4. An anti-gravity device.

Element #4: Getting captured by the arch-villain:

David is inadvertently drawn to the headquarters of the Philistine enemy while tailing what he believes to be a simple deer. It is in fact, none other than Satan in disguise.

Element #5: Hero is cruelly imprisoned, rather than killed, by the villain:

Ishbi binds David and buries him in the earth under a heavy olive-press beam. Painful death is so certain that Ishbi does not make allowances for:

Element #6: Hero’s last-minute escape from death, using gadget #1:

Miraculously (literally), David is able to dig himself out of his earthy grave. He makes an appropriately wry comment (predictably, a quotation from the book of Psalms [18:37]): “Thou dost enlarge my steps under me and my feet have not slipped.”

Element #7: He calls in reinforcements, with the help of gadget #2:

The sidekick here is David’s cousin, Abishai ben Zeruiah. The red-alert is communicated through one of the following two coded signals:

1. by injecting bloodstains into Abishai’s hair-conditioner.
2. by having a distressed dove appear before Abishai.

The impetuous Abishai immediately speeds to David’s rescue, but his pace is slowed by the stuffed-shirts bureaucrats. He wishes to drive on David’s super-fast mule (gadget #3 above), but first needs official permission from the rabbis for this extraordinary use of His Majesty’s property. Once the permission has been approved, he zips over to Ishbi-benob’s lair, to discover encounter…

Element #8: The villain’s exotic hit-man:

In this case, it is a hit-woman, Ishbi’s mother Orpah, to be exact. He meets her as she is, in apparent innocence, spinning away at the spinning-wheel. Quickly he realizes that her spindles are in reality deadly weapons that she can hurl at her victims with great agility.

Element #9: Villains always miss. Heroes hit their mark on the very first shot:

Her first needle misses him. She asks Abishai to return it, but he takes advantage of her error to throw it at her head, killing her instantly.

Realizing that he is now outnumbered, Ishbi plots certain death for King David. He throws him up in the air (remember that he is Goliath’s brother), and plants a sharp spear in the ground to skewer him on his descent.

Element #10: When the situation seems hopeless, the hero is saved in the nick of time by his partner:

Abishai employs Gadget #4, the anti-gravity trick, to suspend David in mid-air.

Element #11: The heroes escape from the villain’s stronghold:

With Ishbi hot on their heels, David and Abishai flee (after letting the king alight safely to earth, of course).

Element #12: Each stage of the struggle is accompanied by ironic humour:

In the present tale, the heroes employ puns based on the names of the villages through which they pass on their way out of Philistine country. At Kubé they say to each other “Kum beh”–Stand up to him! At “Be-Trei” they quip “With two [be-trei] whelps they killed the lion.” 

Finally the two take advantage of the villain’s weakness, his love for his belligerent mother. In the midst of the struggle they invite him to join Mom in the grave. In that moment of emotional frailty, David and Abishai are able to overcome and execute him.

That is the story, pretty much as it appears in the Talmud. I believed that my contention is irrefutably demonstrated, that it contains the original prototype for the classic James Bond formula. 

Nevertheless, I am sure that there are some among you who are not entirely satisfied. There is still something missing:

Element #13: The gorgeous women:

Folks, remember with whom we are dealing here. This is King David, paramour of Bathsheba; a monarch whose romantic escapades rivaled even those of an American President!

No doubt, such stories succeeded in drawing large audiences into the synagogues, even as their current imitations fill the contemporary cinemas.

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, Calgary, February 12, 1998, pp. 8-9.

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My e-mail address is [email protected]

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Voyage Round a Bridegroom

by Eliezer Segal

Difficult as it is to recall all the details of my wedding, which occurred almost a quarter-century ago, one memory that does still emerge through the mists of time was my bride’s determination to observe the practice of walking around her groom seven times under the marriage canopy. At that time and in our straightlaced community, this was not a familiar part of the ceremony, and I imagine that the rabbi and guests regarded it as yet another example of our fundamental eccentricity. They were probably right.

I believe that since those days in the hoary past, the custom of circling the groom, like many other obscure and exotic Jewish customs, has achieved more widespread acceptance, often among young couples whose parents or grandparents would never have heard of the practice. The standard pattern seems to be that the more exotic and bizarre a custom is, the more fervently will it be touted as an essential expression of authentic Judaism, especially by individuals whose acquaintance with Jewish tradition is of recent vintage.

By Jewish standards, groom-circling can not lay claim to any impressive antiquity. The earliest known reference to it is in a biblical commentary composed by a certain “Rabbi Dosa the Greek” in the early fifteenth century. Rabbi Dosa cites the custom, which consisted of three rather than seven circuits, as that of “Austria.” In subsequent centuries, as many central-European Jews migrated eastward, we find the practice mentioned in connection with Hungary, Galicia, Poland and Russia. Not untypically, we note that similar customs were also attested among non-Jews in Slavic and Balkan lands, and it is not always clear who was copying from whom.

The precise details of the custom vary in the early sources. The older texts generally speak of three circuits. In some versions the bride is escorted on either side by a bridesmaid bearing a candle. Several communities accompanied the ceremony with the singing traditional hymns, or with the humming of a wordless melody.

As is often the case with Jewish customs, there is no consensus about its fundamental purpose or origins.

The favourite proof text is Jeremiah 31: 21: “for the Lord hath created a new thing in the earth, A woman shall compass a man.”

In the original context of the prophet’s allegory, the woman symbolizes the people of Israel, who will initiate the reconciliation with her beloved, the Almighty. Although in the human realm, such forwardness in a woman was considered an unprecedented novelty, on the religious plain God anticipates it eagerly. The Hebrew phrase that is translated “compass”–tesovev– is used here to designate a courtship, rather than actually walking around. However, the advocates of the custom found in the literal translation of the passage a convenient Biblical precedent.

Indeed, Jeremiah’s imagery seems more propitious than that of another biblical passage that was adduced by some interpreters, that of Joshua circling the walls of Jericho seven times until it crumbled to the ground. For all that the theme was understood in a favourable sense, as representing the breaking down of divisions and barriers between the new couple, we may expect that the image would give rise to discomfort among some prospective husbands. 

Not all the rationales cited biblical texts. Some scholars proposed interpretations that built more directly upon the elements of the custom.

According to one very practical approach, the whole ceremony was designed to provide the groom ample opportunity to observe his prospective mate from all possible angles, just to make sure that nobody had tried to substitute an impostor in her place. Presumably, the lessons of Jacob’s unfortunate deception by Laban have not been lost on his posterity. At any rate, one wonders why this objective could not have been accomplished more effectively by having the man walk around the woman. 

However most authorities prefer interpretations that are less practical and more symbolic. 

For example, some commentators suggest that the groom is being compared to a king surrounded by the adulations of his ceremonious retinue. This opinion would be more convincing if it were the guests, rather than the bride, who were doing the surrounding. 

A more spiritual symbolism was introduced by Rabbi Dov Ber of Lubavitch who explained that, in walking around her spouse, the wife was demonstrating how she would bask in the benevolent influences that radiated, so to speak, from his person.

A variation on this symbolism is that it represents how the groom will now be encompassed by the luminescence that issues from his of his bride. The seven circuits are required to penetrate the seven shells of solitude in which the soul has been encrusted.

For all the charm or insight that we find in such explanations, none of them strikes me as altogether convincing. Their sheer number arouses the suspicion that their authors were just guessing at the source for a custom whose original reasons were no longer known.

The most convincing theory is that the practice originated as a protective measure against the demonic whose envy tends to be kindled on festive occasions. The bride’s walking around the groom might be a variation on a similar procedure, described in a work from the early nineteenth century, in which they encircled him with a cushion into which had been stitched a gold coin. Similar prophylactic devices are widespread in world folklore.

Whatever its original purpose, I have it on reliable authority that the effects can be quite enduring, and that some husbands have been known remain dizzy for years after the wedding.

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, February 26, 1998, p. 18.
• For further reading:
  • Ahrend, Aaron. “Bride Going around the Bridegroom–Study of a Marriage Custom.” Sidra 7 (1991): 5-11.

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Return to the main index of Eliezer Segal’s articles

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Passing Through Shushan

by Eliezer Segal

It is undoubtedly one of the most dramatic and tension-filled moments in the Book of Esther.

While the lives of Persia’s Jews hang in the balance, Mordecai has persuaded Esther to risk her life by approaching the king, uninvited, to plead her people’s cause. Esther has in turn beseeched her fellow Jews to fast and pray for three days for the successful outcome of her mission.

At this point, the story introduces an apparently superfluous detail into the sequence of events: “So Mordecai passed on, and did according to all that Esther had commanded him” (Esther 4:17).

What is the meaning of “passed on” here, and of what relevance is this item of information to the unfolding of the story?

Not surprisingly, the rabbis of the Talmud attempted to provide various explanations and translations for the obscure expression. Some read it in the sense of “transgressed,” as an indication that Mordecai fasted on that day even though it was (according to their calculations) Passover, though such an activity would have been forbidden on a festival for anything less than a grave national emergency.

Among the suggestions mentioned in the Talmud is one by the third-century Babylonian sage Samuel: “He crossed over a stream of water.”

Now this comment hardly helps to clarify the issue. Quite the contrary, Samuel has apparently introduced yet another irrelevant detail into the narrative. Although Rashi’s remark that Mordecai was on his way to assemble the Jews to pray for Esther fits the context, it does not provide a satisfactory reason for mentioning the crossing of the stream.

Some of the most intriguing solutions to this puzzle do not come from the pens of scholars or exegetes, but from the chronicles of medieval Jewish travelers. Probably the most celebrated of that breed was the twelfth-century Spanish globetrotter Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela whose detailed record of his voyages among the Jewish communities of his day is one of our crucial sources of historical and demographic information about that era.

In his account of his visit to Shushan, the scene of the events related in Esther, Rabbi Benjamin remarks that “the River Tigris divides the city, and the bridge connects the two parts. On one side, where the Jews dwell, is the sepulchre of Daniel” (Daniel was of course an esteemed favourite son of the Persian Jews).

From this account we learn that the river separated Shushan’s Jewish quarter, with its reported 7000 inhabitants, from the royal palace, at least in Benjamin’s days. A similar description is given by another celebrated medieval Jewish tourist, Petahiah of Regensburg, who visited Shushan at around the same time.

The fact that the palace, or Acropolis, of Shushan was separated from the city by a River is in fact known from ancient sources, including the geographer Strabo. 

All this would indeed furnish corroboration for Rashi’s version of the story, of how Mordecai had to traverse the water in order to rally the Jewish community to its fasts and supplications.

This reconstruction of the local geography finds additional support from the commentary of Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra. Ibn Ezra’s focus was not Mordecai’s “passing on,” but an apparent confusion in the terminology employed by the narrator in referring at times to Shushan, and at times to “the palace of Shushan.” This leads him to conclude that there were in reality two separate locations: the walled sector that contained the royal palace; and the unwalled city that housed, among other things, the city’s Jewish quarter.

As usual, Ibn Ezra’s interpretation is based on thorough textual and linguistic analysis of the biblical evidence (though he does not connect it to our problem about Mordecai’s “passing on”). However it is also conceivable that his depiction of the ancient Persian capital reflected his experiences in Muslim Spain, where the caliphs were accustomed to constructing their magnificent palaces at a distance from the cities. 

For all the attractiveness of the theory about Mordecai crossing a river to reach the Jewish neighbourhood, it involves several difficulties.

For one thing, it supposes that the layout of the city’s neighbourhoods remained substantially intact from the fifth century B.C.E. until the twelfth century C.E. While this is not entirely inconceivable in the slow-moving societies of pre-modern times, in this particular instance we have good reason to question the premise. References to a Jewish community in Shushan are entirely absent from Talmudic sources, and a Persian document tells of the city’s being completely rebuilt in the early fourth century C.E. by King Yezdegerd I–albeit at the request of his appropriately named Jewish queen Shoshan-dukht, daughter of the reigning Exilarch!

Furthermore, we must recall that the entire interpretation hinges on Samuel’s comment about Mordecai crossing a “stream” of water. Now, the Aramaic word that is used by Samuel to denote the body of water (`urkama) is one that appears in several passages in the Babylonian Talmud. If one compares how the word is used elsewhere, we find that the `urkama seems to refer to a mere puddle, or the temporary overflow from a river, rather than to the full-scale river that would be required by the aforementioned explanations.

When all is said and done, we still do not have a convincing solution to our original puzzle about Mordecai’s movements in ancient Shushan. However, as is often the case, the search itself has been an educational experience all its own, allowing us to make the acquaintance of a diverse company of Jewish commentators, travelers, and even some royalty for good measure.

Exactly the sort of scholarly fare that is ideal for Purim.

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, March 12, 1998, pp. 6,7.
• For further reading:
  • Adler, Marcus Nathan, ed. The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela. London: Henry Frowde, Oxford University Press, Amen Corner, E. C., 1907.
  • Eshel, Ben-Zion. Jewish Settlements in Babylonia During Talmudic Times. Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1979.
  • Gafni, Isaiah M. The Jews in Babylonia in the Talmudic Era: A Social and Cultural History. Monographs in Jewish History, ed. A. Grossman et al. Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1990.
  • Hakham, Amos. “Esther.” In Hamesh megillot, Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1973.
  • Krauss, S. Qadmoniyyot ha-talmud. Berlin, Vienna, Tel-Aviv: 1924-45.
  • Moore, Carey A., ed. Esther. The Anchor Bible. Garden City: Doubleday, 1971.
  • Moore, C. A., ed. Studies in the Book of Esther. The Library of Biblical Studies. New York: Ktav, 1982.
  • Paton, L. B. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Esther. Inernational Critical Commentary, ed. S. R. Driver, A. Plummer, and C. A. Briggs. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1964.
  • Segal, Eliezer. The Babylonian Esther Midrash: A Critical Commentary. Brown Judaic Studies, ed. Ernest Frerichs, Shaye J. D. Cohen, and Calvin Goldscheider. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994.
  • Walfish, Bary Dov. Esther in Medieval Garb: Jewish Interpretation of the Book of Esther in the Middle Ages. SUNY Studies in Judaica: Hermeneutics, Mysticism, and Religion, ed. Michael Fishbane, Robert Goldenberg, and Arthur Green. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Adrift

by Eliezer Segal

Modern religious movements struggle with a delicate tension between the contemporary focus on individual expression, and the requirements of conformity to standards of orthodoxy. In recent months, the Canadian public has had occasion to observe such a struggle over the “unorthodox” pronouncements by new moderator of the United Church of Canada.

From my vantage point in an academic department of Religious Studies, I try to the best of my abilities to avoid personal involvement in such questions. Nevertheless I find myself approached with increasing frequency by individuals who have been stirred to question their received religious traditions. For all my reluctance to missionize or tamper with people’s faith, I do not always succeed in wriggling out of these encounters.

A recent interview of this sort involved a young man who was seriously considering conversion to Judaism. As it turned out, he had Jewish ancestry (on his father’s side), and had even spent time in Israel, though he had been raised as a Christian. Unable to accept the beliefs in Jesus’ divinity or the virgin birth, he had arrived at a realization that his authentic religious identity must be as a Jew. Towards that end he was ready to take on the yoke of the commandments.

In spite of my misgivings, this situation seemed to hold some initial promise. As our conversation proceeded, however, certain statements started to raise alarms. First of all, he made a sharp distinction between the revealed laws of the Bible, and that “oral tradition” that he did not acknowledge.

Now this in itself was not an insurmountable obstacle. I recalled the Talmud’s story about Hillel the Elder, who, unlike his less patient colleague Shammai, had accepted a potential convert on precisely those terms, in the hope (subsequently borne out) that the candidate could eventually be persuaded to accept the authority of both the written and oral Torahs.

However, as we continued our chat he confided that his rejection of Jesus’ being the “son of God” did not imply denial of his role as Messiah. Once I had established that he was convinced of this point, I told him that the matter was to all intents and purposes closed: No rabbi, knowing of such views, would agree to accept him as a convert.

While this may have neatly answered the immediate question, it was clear that it did not solve his existential personal crisis. After all, he no longer saw himself as a Christian, and was unlikely to feel at home in a Christian community. Since religion is not an affair for isolated individuals, I found myself upset by his predicament.

As is my scholarly custom, I tried to think of historical parallels to his situation, and was surprised at how readily they came to mind.

There was, for example, the case of the ancient Ebionites. They were mentioned by the fourth-century church historian Eusebius as a pernicious heresy, allegedly founded by an individual named Ebion. Among their eccentric doctrines were a commitment to observing the laws of the Torah, including the Sabbath, and a rejection of the claims that Jesus was son of God or born of a virgin.

Scholars now realize that there was never a person named Ebion. The Hebrew word, which means “poor,” was in reality used to refer to the simple life-style followed by the remnants of the original Jewish-Christian church of Jerusalem, led by Peter and members of Jesus’ family. While the mainstream of Christianity had followed a different course, becoming an overwhelmingly gentile religion defined by its faith in the godhood of Jesus, this small sect precariously maintained its identity as a movement within Judaism distinguished only in their belief in the Messiahship of Jesus, but rejected by the vast majority of Jews and Christians alike. By Eusebius’ time, orthodox Christianity found it unimaginable that a group of that description could be designated “Christian” at all. Unable to find a place in either Judaism or Christianity, the Ebionites gradually dwindled and were virtually forgotten by history.

Similar tragedies befell some of the Marranos of Spain and Portugal. Though many of them strove stalwartly to maintain their Jewish identities secretly under the threat of the Inquisition, they had no access to authentic Jewish texts or tradition, and fashioned the best substitute they could on the basis of their knowledge of the “Old Testament.”

When opportunities did present themselves for Marranos to flee to more tolerant lands in Italy or Northern Europe, they were frequently shocked by the disparity between their previous expectations of Judaism and what they encountered in living, breathing Jewish communities that did not live solely according to the Bible, but according to a venerable historical tradition.

This led to the appearance of spiritually rootless personalities who no longer felt at home in either their old or new religions. The most famous example was probably Uriel d’Acosta (1585-1640), whose unsuccessful attempts to fit in to the Amsterdam Jewish community reportedly culminated in his suicide (a tragedy that has been portrayed in several plays and operas).The excommunication of Spinoza should probably seen, at least in part, as a product of similar circumstances. In fact, historians have suggested that the presence of so many misfits in Europe may have been one of the chief factors in the rise of the Enlightenment in the 17th century.

A more recent manifestation of this phenomenon seems to be arising out of the success of the “Messianic Judaism” movement. Although their message is clearly a disingenuous cloak for a straightforward missionary campaign, they do call for their adherents to embrace Christianity as Jews, including a commitment to the religious commandments (particularly those that are susceptible to Christian allegorization). It appears that many of the Jews who have been drawn to the movement have been taking that message much more seriously than was intended by their self-professed “rabbis” whose initial intention was simply to deceive the uninformed into thinking that they were entering a synagogue rather than an evangelical church.

At any rate, this process is leading to the emergence of a distinctive stream on the contemporary Christian scene that affirms the validity of the Jewish covenant as embodied in the observance of the commandments of the “old Testament.” The fact that “Messianic” Jews are observing Shabbat and kashrut does not dovetail with the standard Christian notion that the Torah was rendered obsolete with the coming of Jesus. This is clearly not to the liking of many of the conventional Christians who initiated this project, and it is not yet clear whether this will lead to the evolution of yet another orphaned religious movement.

The spiritual statelessness of such groups and individuals–whether they be Ebionites, Marranos or “Messianic” Jews–is on the whole a tragic phenomenon.

If nothing else, it might inspire us to be more compromising when our individualism causes us to chafe at the restrictions of community standards. For belonging to even an imperfect community can be preferable to not belonging at all.

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, March 26, 1998, pp. 12-13 (as “The tragedy of spiritual rootlessness”).
• For further reading:
  • R. Pritz, Nazarene Jewish Christianity, Jerusalem and Leiden, 1988
  • C. Roth, A History of the Marranos, New York, 1966.
  • L. W. Schwartz, Memoirs of My People New York, 1963.
  • S. G. Wilson, Related Strangers, Minneapolis, 1995.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Those Magnificent Men and Their Matzah Machines

by Eliezer Segal

What an efficient piece of work is a box of matzahs! With its compact brick-like shape, it can be easily transported and stacked on supermarket shelves; and it provides a convenient means for kosher travelers to maintain a minimum diet while venturing into ritually challenged frontiers.

Not so those expensive hand-baked matzahs that we purchase for the seder. With their unwieldy shapes, they have to be individually wrapped and packaged as if they were delicate crystal; and even so, special blessings are still advised in order to insure that they arrive intact, and not as a jumble of disconnected crumbs.

Of course, through most of our history Jews did not have any choice in the matter, and all matzahs were of the hand-made variety, usually baked at home or in a communal oven. It was therefore quite a momentous turn of events when the Industrial Revolution came along and redefined a practice that had remained virtually unchanged since Moses’ times.

The turning point came in 1857 in Austria, where the first mechanical Matzah device was put to work. The machine was designed to knead the dough, squeeze it through a set of metal rollers, perforate it and deliver the pieces promptly to be baked in the oven.

At that stage the notion of a square matzah had not yet occurred to anyone, and this gave rise to some serious halakhic problems. For the roundness of the matzahs was achieved with a sort of cookie-cutter. In the quest for efficiency, the left-over corners were then regathered and combined with the new dough. This raised fears lest, by allowing the dough to circulate too long between kneading and baking, it might actually start to leaven. In order to avoid such a dreadful eventuality, our beloved square matzah came into being. Continual improvements in the speed of the matzah-machines increased its acceptability among many Jews.

Not all Jewish leaders were pleased with the new developments, and several prominent rabbis were quick to voice their opposition to the newfangled matzah machines.

The struggle against innovation was spearheaded by the celebrated Rabbi Solomon Kluger of Brody, who immediately issued a directive forbidding the use of mechanically prepared matzah on Passover.

Rabbi Kluger’s objections were based on a number of considerations. Primary among them was the old fear that, even after the switch to square matzahs, bits of old dough could still adhere to the gears and cogs of the mechanism longer than the time-period permitted by the halakhah. Complex machinery was, after all, difficult to keep clean.

With the advent of milling-machines, which were usually steam-powered, additional fears were incited when moisture that was seen to condense in the machines due to the heat that they generated, creating lumps in the flour. That problem would later be eased somewhat by the introduction of electronic devices.

Furthermore, Rabbi Kluger noted that the time-honoured parameters established by the ancient rabbis, including the strict eighteen-minute limit for preparation of the dough, had all presupposed a manual process. Since we possess no equivalent traditions about how to deal with an automated bakery, it would be prudent to avoid the new methods. 

And even if we could be convinced that the process can be engineered so as to overcome all our fears of inadvertent leavening, there remained some thorny problems that related to the religious status of matzah on Passover. After all, the matzah that is consumed at the seder is intended to fulfil a religious precept, and must be fashioned with the appropriate intention. We can hardly speak of a machine having any kind of intention.

Marshaling together his objections and those of similarly minded scholars, Rabbi Kluger published his prohibition in 1859 in a widely distributed pamphlet bearing the title “Moda’ah le-veit yisra’el,” “a Declaration to the House of Israel.” Within the year, a refutation was issued by one of the influential halakhic authorities of the day, Rabbi Joseph Saul Nathanson of Lemberg. He titled his pamphlet “the Annulment of the Declaration.”

In it, he argued that the rapid speed of the automated process actually made it preferable to the older methods. He was satisfied that the machinery was capable of being adequately cleaned and inspected.

There ensued a lengthy exchange of diatribes in the newspapers, in which the authors did not refrain from indulging in the most vitriolic of personal attacks. 

All this squabbling seems to be utterly divorced from reality, ostensibly providing yet another instance of the rabbis’ excessive concern with trivial technical details. However, careful reading of the literature reveals that there were some important economic and social issues at stake. 

Nineteenth-century European society was witnessing widespread unemployment as vast numbers of agricultural and industrial workers were being replaced by efficient machines. These were the same circumstances that had incited the English Luddites to go on rampages of machine-smashing. The opponents of automated matzah production feared that this same scenario would now be played out in small Jewish communities, where temporary employment at the matzah bakery frequently provided an important source of supplementary income for poor Jews who needed the money to purchase holiday provisions.

The supporters of the mechanized process were also concerned for the fate of the poor. However they saw the matter from the opposite perspective, observing that mass production would help lower the burdensome cost of the holiday grocery basket.

But most of all, the battle over matzah-machines must be viewed in the context of the deep rifts that were splitting European Judaism at the time. Experience had taught the traditionalists to be wary of any departure from accepted practice, even where it did not involve any overt violation of Jewish law. The dreaded Reform movement had begun by questioning minor customs, and had ended up (so they felt) denying fundamental Jewish values!

This underlying suspicion was articulated by the rabbi of Gur in his correspondence with the rabbi of Radomsk in 1908:

…It is clear from the acts of those who are permissive that their real desire is to remove little by little something from each mitzvah with the intention of ultimately uprooting everything… Consequently we are obliged to stand firm in the breach, especially in this generation when, if we are lenient with regard to forbidden things, especially with regard to the prohibition of leaven on Passover, the heart of the Torah, it is against the heart of the Torah that they stretch their hands. 

Seen in this light, it is quite surprising how unsuccessful the traditionalists were in spreading their opposition to machine-made matzahs. By the early twentieth century, virtually all Orthodox Jewish communities had embraced the permissive position. 

Halakhic integrity is unquestionably an important matter, as is ideological struggle.

But who can resist for long the allure of a new technology?

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, April 9, 1998, pp. 12-13.
• For further reading:
  • Freehof, Solomon B. The Responsa Literature. 2nd joint ed., New York: KTAV, 1973.
  • Goodman, Phillip. The Passover Anthology. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1961.
  • Kitov, Eliyahu. The Book of Our Heritage: The Jewish Year and Its Days of Significance translated from the Hebrew Sefer ha-toda’ah. Revised ed., Translated by Nathan Bulman. Jerusalem: Feldheim, 1978.
  • Jacobs, Louis. A Tree of Life: Diversity, Flexibility and Creativity in Jewish Law. The Littman Library of Jewish Civili-zation, ed. David Goldstein et al. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984.
  • Zevin, Shelomoh Yosef. The Festivals in Halachah : an analysis of the development of the festival laws = [ha-Mo’adim ba-halakah]. Translated by Uri Kaploun and Meir Holder. ArtScroll Judaica Classics, New York and Jerusalem: 1982.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Gathering the Dispersed of Israel

by Eliezer Segal

More than any other contemporary, the State of Israel has been a nation of immigrants. The very first law enacted its the fledgling parliament was the Law of Return that guaranteed Israeli citizenship to any Jew who sought it. Although we are accustomed to measuring periods of Israeli history in terms of wars, it would provide a more revealing evaluation of the national spirit if we were to enumerate instead the many waves of Jewish immigration that have left their imprint on the country’s cultural diversity.

At the beginnings of the Zionist movement and in the early years of the State of Israel, the chief objective of Jewish nationalists was to provide a sanctuary for persecuted Jews of the Diaspora. Such situations, however, have been the exception and not the rule through most of our history. In contrast to the security and comfort enjoyed by Western Jewish communities, then as now, there have not been many occasions when Jews would choose to settle in the promised land for the sake of ease or tranquillity. On the contrary, those who took upon themselves the commitment to “go up” to the holy land were aware that they were also being called upon to accept a lowering of their material standards of living in order to fulfil ideological and religious goals.

In spite of this, there have always been Jews who were prepared to accept those hardships for the sake of the privilege of dwelling upon their ancestral soil.

We might expect that the spirit of dedication and sacrifice demonstrated by those new immigrants would have been appreciated by the beleaguered populace of Israel. 

However, appreciation is not always forthcoming. The Jews of the holy land have not always been overwhelmed with admiration for their cousins who had chosen to join them from more affluent communities abroad.

There have been several examples of frictions and prejudices between the assorted ethnic groups that compose the Israeli Jewish community. One can cite many examples of intolerance directed against new immigrants.

Jews hailing from Iraq were stereotyped for the coarseness of their manners, while those from Egypt were mocked for their pride and arrogance. And there was the lamentable case of those hapless Turkish Jews who had settled in a Galilean town, who were moved to lament to their rabbi about their social isolation: Nobody would even extend them a simple “hello.”

To be fair, immigrants from these distinguished diaspora communities were slow to assimilate into the local culture, maintaining their own synagogues, customs and landsmanschaften long after settling in the homeland. One nationalistic Israeli rabbi lost his composure when he encountered a clique of immigrant Jews congregating together in the street. He began chasing them away, while castigating them viciously for the failure of their families and former-countrymen to immigrate to Israel en masse, rather than in a slow trickle! To hear the rabbi rant, these newcomers were to blame for all of Israel’s troubles!

Sometimes the treatment of the immigrants has degenerated into cruelty, as in that unpleasant reception that awaited one Iraqi rabbi shortly after his arrival in the promised land. When the rabbi, a frail and diminutive individual, entered a local butcher shop in search of a cut of meat, the proprietor seems to have taken offense at the idea of this little foreigner’s self-importance, and decided to play a mean trick on the arrogant greenhorn, whose strange accent and outlandish dress betrayed his foreign origins.

When the rabbi inquired about the price of his purchase, he was told that it would come to “fifty liras and a smack.” In vain, the rabbi ventured to offer to raise the monetary price in hope that the butcher would relinquish the smack, but ended up with a bill for “a hundred lira and the smack.” The bewildered sage was forced to submit to the humiliation, and left the shop muttering about the peculiar customs in the new land.

Before we go too far with this scathing indictment of Israeli xenophobia, one small detail should be made clear: All of the stories related in the preceding paragraphs were quoted from the pages of the Talmud and Midrash, and occurred more than 1500 years ago. The names of the lands of immigration were modernized, of course, so that “Babylonia” became “Iraq” and “Cappadocia” “Turkey,” but the stories themselves were otherwise unchanged.

Modern Israel has been characterized as a society that “loves immigration, but hates immigrants.” From the perspective of history we can see that the same fundamental human attitudes have remained constant over the generations. Similar anecdotes could of course be told about the experiences of newcomers to Calgary, Toronto or Los Angeles.

And yet, strengthened by their dedication, persistence and resilience, as well as by the fundamental decency of the veteran citizens, most of those immigrants have ultimately succeeded in being absorbed into their intimidating new surroundings. 

Of all the manifold accomplishments in which Israel can take pride on her fiftieth anniversary, this surely ranks among the most miraculous.

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, May 7, 1998, pp. 10-11.
• For further reading:
  • S. Lieberman, “’Thus it was and thus it shall be’–Palestinian Jews and world Jewry during the era of the Mishnah and the Talmud,” Cathedra 17 (1981), pp. 3-10.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Healthy Advice from the Top Authorities

by Eliezer Segal

As you browse through the shelves of your neighborhood book shop, you will undoubtedly be confronted by numerous volumes devoted to alternative medicine, herbal remedies and the pursuit of healthy life-styles. 

Chances are that the covers of those books will include attestations that the advice contained between the covers is more than mere quackery. You will probably find impressive resumés of the authors’ credentials (medical or otherwise), accompanied by enthusiastic testimonials from healthy and satisfied readers.

Although guides to health and medicine are not a recent invention, earlier generations tended to look for different kinds of endorsements for the reliability of their contents. The traditionally minded folk of pre-modern times were more concerned that their prescriptions could claim an ancient pedigree– and most popular of all were those fortunate tomes that could be traced back to a supernatural origin. 

This was true in most prescientific cultures, and the Jews were no exceptions to the pattern.

The upshot of this was that health guides would often include flowery introductions relating how the secret lore had come to the knowledge of the current author. 

One venerable Hebrew medical compendium claimed to be the original “Book of Noah”–that is, a collection of teachings that were revealed to Noah in the aftermath of the flood, while he was still anchored in the vicinity of Mount Ararat. At that time (so the author avows), Noah’s family approached him with numerous complaints about plagues and diseases that were being inflicted upon them by malevolent demons. In response to Noah’s prayers and sacrifices, he was visited by the angel Raphael (whose name is derived from the Hebrew root meaning “to heal”), who quickly incarcerated most of the demons, but left some of them at liberty, apparently to serve as instruments of chastisement for sinful humans. However in order to even the playing field, the remaining demons were also ordered to instruct Noah in the preparation of cures for the afflictions. They showed him how to identify the trees, herbs, roots and seeds that could be used for medicinal purposes. 

This invaluable lore was written down by Noah and handed down to his children. Its mysteries thereby came to be known to the sages of India, Macedonia and Egypt, enriching the wisdom of the ancient celebrated medical authorities. 

As desirable as it might appear to have access to a health manual that was revealed by an actual angel, there are indications that such works were not always valued by the Jewish sages. 

The Mishnah informs us that King Hezekiah ordered that a “book of remedies” be hidden, and that the rabbis of the time approved of his action. 

Most commentators explain that the convenience of sure-fire medical relief was discouraging people from turning to God in contrition. The Medieval scholar Rabbi Eleazar of Worms cited a tradition that Hezekiah’s “book of remedies” had been in use since the time of Noah, and that it consisted of a directory of springs whose waters possessed healing abilities. 

To be sure, other commentators preferred to believe that its author had been King Solomon, wisest of mortals.

If you are skeptical about the medical expertise of angels, then how about a giant frog?

Yes, such was the source of the pharmaceutical expertise of a certain pious scholar named Rabbi Hanina, according to an exotic tale preserved in the medieval Mayse Bukh. The last instruction given to Rabbi Hanina by his dying father was to go to the market and purchase the first item he saw, whatever its cost. The article he found was a silver plate, exorbitantly priced, which he obediently bought and took home; as it happened, it was just in time for the Passover seder. Appropriately, he discovered that the dish housed a precocious frog, which he dutifully continued to feed and care for. 

The amphibian kept eating and growing, even as Rabbi Hanina’s finances dropped alarmingly below the poverty level. At this point the frog, now of human proportions, addressed him with the modest request that he teach him the entire Torah! Again, with his father’s deathbed wish in mind, the beleaguered Rabbi Hanina patiently obeyed (by literally feeding him the teachings on scraps of paper).

At length, Kermit (who now revealed himself as Adam’s illegitimate offspring) decided that the time had come to recompense his unselfish benefactors. He led Rabbi and Mrs. Hanina into the forest and summoned all the birds and the beasts, commanding them to fetch the kindly couple an ample selection of herbs and roots, whose curative potentialities he diligently disclosed to them. Needless to say, the Rabbi and his wife lived happily ever after in wealth and honour.

Esteemed readers, I shall leave it to you to decide into whose hands you prefer to entrust your health: to a sagacious frog, an angel, a wise king –or for that matter, to an M.D. The most important thing is that you should all be healthy.

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, May 21, 1998, p. 14.
• For further reading:
  • Ginzberg, Louis. 1909-39. The Legends of the Jews. Translated by H. Szold. 7 vols. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America.
  • Jellinek, Adolph, ed. 1967. Bet ha-Midrasch. Reprint ed. 6 vols. Jerusalem: Wahrmann.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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