Trimming the Guest List

by Eliezer Segal

It is truly a gratifying sight when Jews find opportunities to rejoice, whether on the occasion of a wedding a B’rit, or any other festive occasion. But sometimes, it must be admitted, people do go overboard in such matters.

Whether they are impelled by high spirits, by the obligations of social position, or by the pressures to “keep up with the Cohens,” there are too many cases in which the extravagance of the celebration exceeds the bounds of good taste or economic prudence.

It was a common practice in earlier generations for communities to issue ordinances known as “sumptuary laws” which set legal limits to the expenses and ostentation that could accompany festivities. There is nothing novel about this state of affairs, which arises naturally from some basic characteristics of the human personality.

By instituting these rules, which would be published on large posters and affixed to the synagogue walls, it was hoped that people would be prevented from sinking into unmanageable debts, and that the Jews would appear less flamboyant in the eyes of their neighbours. The communal leaders of Forli, Italy, described the situation as follows: “The hosts of weddings and feasts are overly generous, and go beyond their financial means, even more than the wealthy gentiles among whom we dwell, incurring serious economic loss.”

Lavish spending could also kindle envy, and might shame poorer Jews out of holding more modest festivities. 

The Jewish communities of old were no strangers to such excesses, and often had recourse to sumptuary legislation. Reading those by-laws can provide us with lively glimpses into the day-to-day lives of past Jewish societies.

The communal regulations issued in 1432 by the Jewish communities of Castille specified in meticulous detail the types of clothing and jewelry that Jews could wear. Gaudy apparel, a visible symptom of haughtiness, was a frequent target of moralistic preachers. The list of forbidden articles included silk and purple garments as well as ornaments of silver or gold. Italian statutes dictated the permissible colours, the width of veils, the quantities of real and imitation gems, how many times a necklace could be wound around the neck, and similar minutiae.

Exempted from the Castilian prohibition were unmarried or newly married women (in Italy too, brides were permitted to dress as they pleased when at home). The Castilian Jews had a reputation for allowing their women to dress glamorously while the menfolk wore subdued black attire.

Several statutes were aimed at limiting the numbers of guest who could be invited to festive meals. In Forli the maximum was set at twenty men and ten women (these numbers were halved for a circumcision), and all blood-relatives to the degree of second cousins. The stringencies adopted in Fürth (1728) declared that no non-relatives at all were to be allowed admission to weddings, no tea or coffee could be served there, and latecomers would have to forego the courses that had already been served. If the bride had to be escorted from a distant town, no more than ten horsemen and four foot-attendants could be employed. Some communities also limited the number of musicians who could be hired. 

In Italy, sumptuary laws also set limits to the values of the gifts that could be exchanged at betrothals and weddings. In the seventeenth century the community of Metz restricted the weight of wine goblets that could be placed on the tables.

In a strategy that sounds remarkably like that of our provincial government, individual communities in Castille were given thirty days in which to present their programmes for the limitation of festive gatherings, in accordance with their respective economic circumstances.

Those found guilty of violating the sumptuary laws were usually fined. Thus, the Forli regulations imposed a penalty of one ducat for each extra guest, and ten silver bolognesi for each forbidden garment or ornament.

Though similar edicts were enacted in the Rhineland, Frankfort, Lithuania and Moravia, Fez and elsewhere, historians have remarked how ineffective the Jewish sumptuary laws were. The frequency with which they had to be reissued proves how imperfectly they were observed, and several sources lament how difficult it was to enforce them, especially among the wealthy and powerful strata who were their principal targets.

Perhaps this kind of clash is inevitable whenever standards of morality and sensibility are pitted against the forces of social pressure and human vanity.

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, June 4 1998, p. 7.
• For further reading:
  • First Publication: Jewish Free Press, June 4 1998, p. 7. For further reading:
  • Israel Abrahams, Jewish Life in the Middle Ages, New York 1958.
  • Salo W. Baron, The Jewish Community, Philadelphia 1942 
  • Menachem Elon, Jewish Law: History, Sources Principles, Jerusalem 1973.
  • Finkelstein, Louis. 1964. Jewish Self-Government in the Middle Ages. 2nd ed, Abraham Berliner Series. New York: Feldheim

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Rabbi, Watch Out for That Beam!

by Eliezer Segal

Since the days of ancient Greece and Rome, carpenters and other craftsmen have provided us with a dependable reservoir of physical comedy, as a result of the mischievous potential contained in the tools of their trade.

The presence of this low kind of humour in the Talmud might not be immediately apparent to the uninitiated; however veteran students quickly acquire a taste for the kinds of bizarre situations that are discussed in those forbidding-looking volumes.

The midrashic preachers occasionally read such scenes into Bible stories, such as in their entertaining accounts of how the builders of the Tower of Babel ended up mauling one another, after God confused their languages while they were wielding tools. 

Our sages were often discussing matters of law, which included issues of civil litigation. And the situations that lead people to lawsuits tend to appearhumorous to those of us who are not directly involved. As that celebrated Jewish philosopher Mel Brooks put it, “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.” 

Talmudic legal texts are “casuistic” by nature; that is to say, they are presented to us not in the form of abstract theoretical principles, but as lists of specific cases. Historians suspect that much of this literature was generated from real-life incidents that were brought for adjudication before the ancient rabbinic courts.

The best-known opportunities for slapstick are those where tradesman stumble over each and their while carrying their respective wares. 

The Torah stipulated the legal responsibility that attaches to a person who digs or uncovers a pit in a public place. The Mishnah extends this principle by methodically examining every permutation of this situation, beginning with the simple one where individual carelessly leaves a jar in the middle of the road so that a passerby can trip on it. In that case, the sages must deal not only about the liability of the jar’s owner for injury to the victim, but also about a possible counter-suit for damage to the jar (“Why didn’t you watch where you were going?!”). 

Matters become more picturesque when the offending jar spills out its contents, leading the hapless pedestrian to slip on the resulting mud, doubtless in the head-over-heels back-flip that accompanies such misadventures in cartoons. This eventuality is also analyzed by the Talmudic jurists, as is the more graphic variation when a person shovels slippery manure into a public thoroughfare.

One of my favourite passages in Jewish legal literature is the following:

If two potters were walking, one behind the other, and the second stumbled over the first–the first is liable for damages caused to the second.

If one was carrying a pot and the other a beam, and the pot was shattered by the beam–the bearer of the beam is exempt, since each had a right to be walking there. 

If the one with the beam was in front and the pot behind, and the pot was smashed by the beam, then the person carrying the beam is exempt. But if the one with the beam stopped suddenly, then he is liable… 

If two people were passing through a public road, one of them running and the other walking, or if they were both running–then they are both exempt for damages they inflict.”

Though the unfortunate incidents are discussed only as hypothetical possibilities, I cannot help imagining them all acted in sequence out on the stage by the same pair of actors, probably clothed in baggy overalls and oversized shoes, getting up time after time to complete their itinerary, only to end up stumbling over yet another pot or puddle, or be struck in the head by a wooden beam.

There is also something quintessentially vaudevillian about the following scenario from the Talmud: Five people are seated peacefully on a bench [I imagine them all reading newspapers, and perhaps pulling out sandwiches from their lunch-boxes] until they are joined by that fatal sixth, under whose added weight the bench collapses. The Talmud even goes on to specify that we are dealing with a person “like Pappa bar Abba” who was apparently known among his contemporaries for his expansive girth. In fact, the rabbis contemplate the possibility of whether the last arrival prevented the others from standing because he was leaning on them.

As we peruse the words of the commentators, expounding at such great length upon the weighty (ouch!) questions of who should be held responsible for the damages to the bench, they seem to be devoting too much energy over an example that is clearly no more than an contrived theoretical construct.

However, unlikely as it may sound, a case precisely like it did occur in twelfth-century France, and became a topic of some controversy, embroiling the famous Rabbi Jacob Tam, Rashi’s eminent grandson, in a dispute with a certain Rabbi Azriel over the correct decision in the case. To add to the pathos, the bench was reported to belong to a poor widow!

Is it just my own impish irreverence, or are all Talmud students motivated by the hope that the next folio will bring them a fateful new encounter between a rabbi and a banana peel?

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, June 18 1998, pp. 9-10.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Nor All That Glisters

by Eliezer Segal

The untimely death of David Walsh in June 1998 served to revive interest in the bizarre saga of his Bre-X corporation and the short-lived gold-rush it created on the international investment markets–a tale that is of especial interest because of its origins here in Calgary.

When I first heard the story of how doctored core samples had been used to convince thousands of investors of spurious gold deposits in Indonesia, I immediately thought of a passage in the Mishnah that deals with the concept of a “vain oath” in which God’s name is invoked in order to affirm an assertion that is patently impossible. 

As examples of claims that are so obviously false that they require not discussion, the Mishnah mentions the following: 

“If a person said of a stone column that it was gold, or a man that he was a woman, of a woman that she was a man…” 

What a simple world our sages lived in, where guys were guys and gals were gals, stone was stone and gold was gold! In our own times, and especially after those disastrous Bre-X core samples, only the most credulous among us would consider taking any of those claims at face value, whether it involved minerals or gender.

The fascination with gold and the quest for a means to produce it artificially from cheaper ingredients, have long been an inspiration for magicians, charlatans and scientists. Among Christians in medieval Europe, Jews were reputed to have a special expertise in the realm of alchemy, an enterprise that dealt largely with converting lead into gold. However, like countless other medieval accusations about Jewish involvement in sorcery, this one was entirely baseless. Though Jews had as much interest in magic as any of their gentile neighbours, they had no conspicuous affinity for it. 

In fact, the magical branches that were most readily branded by Christians as “Jewish,” such as black magic and alchemy, were almost entirely absent from the Jewish curricula, and bibliographers have searched in vain for any original Jewish manuals on alchemy. This however did not prevent popular legend from ascribing such skills to influential rabbinic figures like Rabbi Loew (the Maharal) of Prague. Like the similar myth about his fashioning the “Golem,” this one was entirely without factual foundation. 

So too, when Martin Luther advised the Elector Joachim II of Brandenburg to keep Jews out of his court out of fears that they would perform alchemical mischief, he was evidently unaware of the fact that Joachim (who, had he lived today, would undoubtedly have invested heavily in Bre-X) had already established a sophisticated laboratory for the manufacture of gold, for which he could not find a single Jewish operative.

The teachings of the medieval Kabbalah, which claimed to reveal the secret metaphysical structure of the universe, also contained the potential for a version of alchemy; and indeed a few respectable Kabbalists like Rabbi Hayyim Vital did occupy themselves in that area of “practical Kabbalah.” However, it is interesting to note that, unlike the classic Christian version of the art, Kabbalistic alchemy typically placed gold at a relatively low rung in its symbolic hierarchy of elements, below that of silver.

For all that alchemy was merely a peripheral concern of mainstream Jewish Kabbalah, it became a central focus of the Christian version of Kabbalah that became fashionable in the Renaissance and remained influential for centuries afterwards. Since these movements were often based more on what their adherents imagined the Kabbalah to be like than on any deep familiarity with the actual Jewish mystical tradition, non-Jewish alchemical symbols (including the “Star of David”) were often identified by them as “Kabbalistic.”

Just as today every self-respecting Hollywood star can easily latch on to a Kabbalistic guru, in earlier days there were always to be found some obliging Jews ready to cash in on the gentile interest in Jewish esoteric lore. Such a figure was the 17^th-century adventurer Samuel Jacob Hayyim Falk, a Galician sorcerer and follower of Shabbetai Zvi’s messianic movement, who escaped from the Continent (where he was about to be burned for his activities) to London, where he set up a kabbalistic laboratory on the London Bridge. 

You may already be familiar with his appearance, since a portrait of his cherubic face is invariably reproduced as that of Rabbi Israel Ba’al Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism. Indeed, Falk was known as the “Ba’al Shem [i.e., “master of the name”] of London” by virtue of his ability to utilize the divine name for magical purposes.

Faith in Falk’s ability to produce gold on demand drew to his door a steady stream of European nobility and aspiring royalty, and he ended his days in considerable wealth.

No doubt, if he had lived in our days he would have made his fortune selling his wares on the stock market.

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• First Publication:
  • JFP, July 3 1998, p. 8.
• For further reading: 
  • Scholem, Gershom. Kabbalah. Meridian ed. New York: New American Library, 1974.
  • Trachtenberg, Joshua. The Devil and the Jews: The Medieval Conception of the Jew and Its Relation to Modern Antisemi-tism. Reprint ed. Cleveland: World Publishing Company, 1961.
  • Trachtenberg, Joshua. Jewish Magic and Superstition. first Atheneum ed. New York: Temple Books, 1970.

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My e-mail address is [email protected]

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You Can Bank on It

by Eliezer Segal

News Item: 1998: Several major commercial banks in Canada proposed mergers, arguing that only if they increase their size can they compete in the global market. This aroused a public outcry of citizens who feared that reduced competition in the local market would make the banks even less responsive to customer needs. The banks launched an intensive advertising campaign to convince the public of the advantages of their policy.

It seems that scarcely a week goes by without hearing new reports of proposed mergers of Canada’s mega-banks. 

Proponents of these amalgamations insist that this development is a necessity if our financial institutions hope to compete in the emerging global economy. Meanwhile, the banks’ humble clients remain skeptical how much of the new efficiency will filter down to us in the form of savings or improved service.

The economic mood of sixteenth-century Italy bore some interesting similarities to our contemporary situation. At that time Europe was breaking loose of the constricting commercial policies of the Middle Ages, and launching into a flourishing capitalistic system.

For the most part, Jews did not regard this as a welcome development. The toleration of their own presence in medieval Europe had derived largely from their usefulness as suppliers of credit, since church law had not permitted Christians to lend money at interest. As the ecclesiastical hegemony weakened, and a local Christian middle class aspired to take its place in the sun, the existing Jewish banking establishment was quickly pushed aside. This process was often accompanied by vicious anti-Semitic preaching, and brought about the expulsion of entire Jewish communities.

While the easy-going attitudes of Italy generally led to a diminished degree of hostility towards its Jews, the hard economic and political realities did express themselves nonetheless in the removal of Jews from several Italian states in order to clear the way for the rise of a native middle class. 

The Republic of Tuscany, which included such important commercial centres as Florence and Pisa, initially subscribed to this policy, until the return to power of the Medici princes, especially Cosimo (1537-74) who enunciated more tolerant policies towards Jewish bankers. Thus, in 1547 we hear of the establishment of the first Jewish bank in Pisa in twenty years, under the leadership of an aggressive financier named Ishmael Da Rieti.

This event did not come without a hefty measure of controversy. There was a rival firm that claimed the exclusive privilege of maintaining a bank in Pisa. At the head of the firm was Dona Benvenida Abravanel, heir to a distinguished financial empire centered in Naples. After negotiating from the government the right to set up branches of her bank through most of the region, she entrenched her position by forming an alliance with Abraham Da Pisa. 

The Da Pisa family had operated the Jewish loan bank in Pisa prior to its closure in 1527. According to the prevailing business practices of Italian Jews, an existing bank was granted monopolistic protection against any aspiring competitors; and the combined muscle of Abravanel and Da Pisa joined together in arguing that they still possessed that right even though the Da Pisa bank had not operated for two decades.

The dispute between the two financial firms has some striking similarities to our public debate over the expansion of the Canadian banking cartels– including the conviction of both parties that unrestricted competition would be to the detriment of the profession.

Though the real decisions were ultimately determined by political and financial pragmatism, and the parties involved were careful not to reveal publicly their expansion plans, the rivals were nevertheless concerned about obtaining public support for their respective causes. For Jewish firms, this involved the solicitation of statements of support form leading rabbis, though that support did not really wield much practical weight in the financial and political marketplaces. Normally, Jewish law did not encourage the creation of new economic monopolies, though it reluctantly supported were already in existence. 

In order to insure a favourable hearing of their position, Rieti acquired the services of an influential lobbyist, Rabbi Joseph De-Arli, who was successful in obtaining endorsements from some respected rabbis. De-Arli was a controversial figure whose tactics were challenged on ethical grounds, and led to a call to revoke his rabbinic ordination. 

In terms that will be familiar to many Canadians, the bankers professed that their desire to expand was not rooted in mere avarice, but was intended primarily to benefit the public. 

One partisan responsum describes fancifully how the Pisan citizens had once begged desperately for a Jewish banker to open an office in their city, and when the altruistic Ishmael Da Rieti acquiesced, they carried him before the Duke to insist that he be granted the charter.

Initially one faction was accusing the other of collusion with politically powerful elites. In the end, the matter was resolved by civil authorities, when they guaranteed each of the competitors a secure monopoly within a defined territory. 

Those monopolies were defended zealously and ruthlessly. In later years we observe that Abravanel and Da Rieti were not above joining forces in order to fend off lesser rivals.

Once their monopolies had been consolidated we do not hear much about either bank’s professed efforts at ameliorating the conditions of the common people.

But of course, things are different in Canada.

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, Sept 3 1998, p. 14.
• For further reading: 
  • Bonfil, Roberto. 1990. Rabbis and Jewish communities in Renaissance Italy, Littman library of Jewish civilization. Ox-ford [Oxfordshire] ; New York: Published for the Littman Library by Oxford University Press.
  • Cooperman, Bernard D. 1984. “A Rivalry of Bankers: Responsa Concerning Banking Rights in Pisa in 1547”. In Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature, edited by I. Twersky. Cambridge Mass and London England: Harvard University Press.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Dancing with the Demons

by Eliezer Segal

A recurring question in the Talmud concerns the need for conscious intention in the performance of religious precepts. Though everyone would agree that we should initially strive to be fully mindful of our actions, there is still room to ask: What is the de facto status of a mitzvah that was performed under compulsion or absentmindedly? Is the performance deemed adequate, or must it be done all over again. 

Depending on the precise nature of each commandment and the wording of its Biblical proof-text, different rulings are applied to different cases. Predictably, there are occasional disputes among the rabbis about how to interpret the sources.

The Talmud raises this issue in connection with the sounding of the shofar on Rosh Hashanah. As usual, it attempts to translate the theoretical considerations into a concrete case, as follows: What is the status of a person who sounds the shofar “in song,” as a mere musical instrument.

In explaining the passage, Rashi’s commentary adds the following remark: “In the text of my teacher Rabbi Isaac ben Judah I have seen the reading ‘if one sounds it for a demon’; i.e., in order to drive away an evil spirit.”

The textual variation between “song” and “demon” is after all a barely perceptible one in an unvocalized Hebrew text. The words “le-shir” and “le-shed” differ only by a dalet and a resh, which are graphically almost identical. Either reading provides a valid instance of how someone could blow a shofar without intending to fulfil the religious precept.

Further investigation reveals that the divergence in the Talmudic texts predates Rashi and his teachers by several generations. The matter is discussed by Rav Hai Ga’on, who headed the Babylonian academy of Pumbedita in the tenth century. Rav Hai reports: “Our reading is ‘in song’; such as to accompany the psalm that is sung over the offering of a sacrifice, or to make music music… However we have heard that there are those in the academy of Mehasiah who have the text ‘for a demon’…; At any rate, we have no idea how or why a person would sound a shofar for such creatures.”

This last remark has an unmistakable tone of ironic sarcasm, expressive of a longstanding academic rivalry that frequently coloured the relations between those two foremost institutions of Jewish learning whose origins can be traced to the third century. The yeshivahs of Pumbedita and Mata Mehasiah–the latter is better known by its other name “Sura”–were the principal venues for the debates of the Babylonian Talmud, and they continued to co-exist through the Islamic era (though then they moved to the new metropolis of Baghdad).

Rav Hai’s derisive dismissal of the “demon” tradition in the Talmud text is consistent with a fundamental divergence in the religious outlooks of the two Babylonian academies, one that continues to surface throughout the Talmudic and Ge’onic eras. While the Pumbeditans were distinguished by their rationalism, the Suran rabbis had a reputation for delving into magic and the supernatural. There is no small measure of irony in the fact that Rav Hai himself acquired a posthumous reputation as a mystic, the result of fictitious traditions that were ascribed to him by later generations.

Thus, among the revered scholars of Sura we find the ninth-century Ga’on Rabbi Moses Hakohen, famous for his expertise in amulets and spells. Shortly afterwards, the story goes, the Ga’on Rav Natronai of Sura transported himself magically from Babylonia to Spain and back in order to teach Torah, without taking a caravan and without being observed in any conventional mode of transportation. This episode was often invoked by the proud Spanish Jews as evidence of the antiquity and authority of their scholarly tradition.

When Rav Hai Ga’on was asked to comment on Natronai’s legendary exploit, he treated it with his customary skepticism: “Stuff and nonsense!” he assured the Jews of Kairowan, Tunisia. “Perhaps it was just some imposter who showed up claiming to be Rav Natronai.” 

Though he insisted that the reports of Rav Moses Hakohen’s magical abilities were greatly exaggerated, Rav Hai admitted that similar beliefs were popular in Sura. This should not be surprising, since they dwell in close proximity to the Babylonians and the House of Nebuchadnezzar, and have been influenced by their pagan superstitions. Not so the enlightened sages of Pumbedita who have never been tainted by such folly.

The moral of the story, concludes Rav Hai, is that a fool will believe everything he is told!

Both the Suran and the Pumbeditan approaches had their followers among subsequent generations of Jews. In spite of Rav Hai’s professed perplexity about the purpose of sounding the shofar for a demon, it is of a well established rabbinic belief that one of the objectives of the shofar is to “confuse Satan” when he rises to accuse before the Heavenly Court. Many Jewish thinkers have been quick to insist that such imagery must be understood metaphorically, though others (like Maimonides) omitted that explanation altogether.

However there have also been Jews who believed with stark literalness in the efficacy of the shofar as a weapon against demonic forces. This was particularly true among the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe who had less exposure to scientific and philosophical rationalism. 

Thus it happened one Rosh Hashanah in medieval Frankfort that the community’s shofar could not be made to utter a sound, and the congregation had no doubt of the cause: Satan was sitting inside the ram’s horn! Once the problem had been diagnosed, the remedy was a simple one: Psalm 91, long acknowledged as a potent defense against evil spirits, was recited three times into the haunted shofar, and immediately it became usable.

Hopefully, the sounding of the shofar this year will be received neither as musical entertainment nor as protection against demons, but rather as a meaningful call to improve our spiritual and moral lives for the coming year.

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, Sept 17 1998, pp. 20-21.
• For further reading: 
  • S. Asaf, Tequfat ha-ge’onim vesifrutah, Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1967.
  • J. Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition, New York: Atheneum, 1970.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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The Mysterious Origins of Simhat Torah

by Eliezer Segal

Nobody would question the appropriateness of holding a joyous celebration for the conclusion of the annual Torah-reading cycle. Even according to the ancient rites of the Land of Israel, where the Torah was chanted over a period of three and a half years, and did not conclude at a specific season of the year, a “Simhat Torah” ceremony was often held to mark that occasion.

What is much less obvious is how Simhat Torah came to be observed on its current date, on the “extra” day that is appended to Sh’mini ‘Atzeret, at the culmination of the Sukkot season. Neither Sukkot nor Sh’mini ‘Atzeret, whether viewed as agricultural or historical holidays, have any special relevance to the theme of Torah. Quite the contrary: There are several alternative dates in our sacred calendar that would be much more suitable for finishing and recommencing the reading of the Torah. Two alternatives that spring readily to mind are Shavu’ot, which commemorates the giving of the Torah at Sinai, and Rosh Hashanah, commencing the new year.

As we trace the obscure origins of Simhat Torah we note that there has not always been clear agreement about when it should be observed. Several medieval Spanish authorities record a custom, ascribed to the Babylonian Ge’onim, of reading the first verses of the Torah (though not necessarily from an actual scroll) on the afternoon of Yom Kippur. They cite as their reason the following legend:

Throughout the Ten Days of Repentance, Satan has been accusing Israel, arguing “Behold, the Torah which you have bestowed upon Israel–they have already finished with it!”

Now, when the Holy One hears them beginning again from Genesis, he immediately rebukes Satan saying “Look how, as soon as they complete it, they immediately start over again, so great is their love for my Torah!”

It stands to reason, if the new cycle was begun on Yom Kippur, then the old one must have been concluded, with the reading of the final section of Deuteronomy, slightly before that; however the sources are unclear about the details.

A more direct thematic link between the Day of Atonement and Simhat Torah is implied by the traditional Jewish chronology, according to which it was on Yom Kippur that the Almighty yielded to Moses’ entreaties and gave Israel the second tablets of the law.

With such powerful reasons for observing Simhat Torah on Yom Kippur, it is all the more difficult to justify how it came to be celebrated on its current date on the second day of Sh’mini ‘Atzeret.

One factor that might have influenced the choice was a Talmudic tradition that designates Deuteronomy 28, with its fire-and-brimstone threats against those who disobey God, as the fitting reading for the Sabbath preceding Rosh Hashanah, the Day of Judgment, “so that the year and all its curses will be put behind us.” Following the normal parashah divisions, this would lead to the reading of the entire Torah being completed just after the current date of Simhat Torah.

A more decisive reason for the choice of date had to do with its Prophetic reading (haftarah). According to the rules set out in the Talmud, the correct haftarah for the second day of Sh’mini ‘Atzeret is 1 Kings 8, which relates how King Solomon blessed the people at the dedication of the newly erected Temple, an event that is usually understood to have occurred on the eighth day of Sukkot, i.e., on Sh’mini ‘Atzeret.

The readings from the Torah and the Prophets ought normally to have elements in common, and indeed Solomon’s blessings bear a thematic affinity to the ones recited by the dying Moses in the closing verses of the Torah, making that day an appropriate one on which to conclude the annual Torah-reading cycle.

At this point, readers who are familiar with the holiday liturgy will undoubtedly be objecting: What is all this talk about a reading from the Book of Kings? Everybody knows that the haftarah for Simhat Torah is the opening of the Book of Joshua, which is the direct continuation of the end of Deuteronomy, but has no connection at all to Sh’mini ‘Atzeret!

The truth is that, though Joshua 1 is now the universally accepted haftarah for Simhat Torah, this has not always been the case. Early sources inform us that its acceptance as haftarah was achieved only after a prolonged struggle, seeing that it contradicts the explicit injunctions of the Talmud.

During the early medieval era communities throughout the Jewish world wavered about whether they should retain the old Talmudic haftarah about Solomon’s Sukkot blessings, or adopt the new one describing God’s exhortations to Joshua. Various localities preferred the one, or the other, or followed some combination of both texts. 

A few scholars dismissed the new custom as nothing more than a flagrant mistake, while others tried to justify it by noting that the selection of haftarahs is a matter of recommended custom rather than actual law, and that this particular innovation could be ascribed to the authority of the earliest post-Talmudic teachers of Babylonia. At any rate, they noted, there is a Talmudic principle that “custom can override the halakhah.” 

Eventually the original Talmudic haftarah from the Book of Kings was completely pushed aside and virtually forgotten. 

When that happened, we lost a vital clue to the obscure beginnings of Simhat Torah.

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, October 10 1998, pp. 10-11.
• For further reading: 
  • Yaari, A. (1989). Toledot Hag Simhat Torah. Jerusalem, Mosad Harav Kook.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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The Wagers of Sin

by Eliezer Segal

News Item: October 1998: Calgary. A plebiscite calling for the removal of video lottery terminals was narrowly defeated. This development called attention to the fierce controversy over the widespread use of bingos, casinos and other forms of gambling to finance religious and charitable institutions. Local Jewish institutions were among the beneficiaries of this problematic funding.

Calgarians have again been made aware of how dependant we are on various forms of gambling revenues, ranging from Bingo to casinos, in order to support our charitable and religious organizations. 

Although the recent plebiscite on the banning of video lottery terminals was spearheaded by religious groups, the official Jewish community has stood on the sidelines, sheepishly aware of how much of our funding comes from those dubious sources.

It is clear that games of chance have never been sanctioned in Jewish tradition. The Mishnah singled out two games that had wide currency among the ancients–dice and pigeon-racing–as disqualifying their practitioners from serving as witnesses in a Jewish court. The Talmud questions whether the objection is because the winnings are treated as unlawful gains (in which case it would apply even to occasional gambling) or because gamblers make no useful contribution to society (in which case, only full-time professionals would be disqualified). At any rate, the need for such a law attests that the phenomenon did plague Jews in antiquity.

The lure of gambling continued to entice individual Jews through the Middle Ages. Documents from the Cairo genizah tell of a visitor to the Egyptian village of Minyat Zifta who had to be expelled from his rented rooms lest his gambling habit provoke a scandal. After being excommunicated by the local Karaite leader, the gambler tried to retaliate with a counter-ban of his own, but finally relented under threats of government interference.

This situation contrasts remarkably with that of another Jewish gambler in fifteenth-century Sardinia who was invited to join the gaming table by none other than king himself–even as the local rabbi stood by, perplexed whether he could impose sanctions for this outrageous infraction of communal ordinances.

From the early fifteenth century we come across frequent mentions of card-playing, a pass-time that ensnared Jews from all walks of life. There were some who made their livings painting playing-cards, and at least one sixteenth-century Jewish card-maker (who was also the shammash of the synagogue) sued a rival for infringement of his monopoly. Some ostensibly irreproachable games, like chess and tennis, also became morally questionable when Jews took to placing wagers on their outcomes.

Rabbinic and belletristic writings of the time preserve several different attempts to condemn and discourage games of chance. Several individuals took upon themselves formal religious vows, or even legal contracts, that pledged them to forsake the practice for stipulated time-periods, specifying the penalties that would be imposed for violation of the obligation.

At times the communities would issue official enactments to that effect, to be binding upon all residents. Interestingly, these ordinances sometimes specified exemptions for special cases, such as at festive occasions, in the sukkah, when visiting the bedridden, or on Christmas. Condemnations of the pastime were a standard feature of moralistic tracts–which directed their censure at winners and losers alike. When the moralists did not succeed by preaching (as they rarely did), they turned to a more potent weapon: satire. Parodies about the evils and stupidity of games of chance were a staple of Hebrew and vernacular literatures.

An Italian Jew, the impresario Leone de Somni of Mantua, evidently gambled away his garters, causing him profound embarrassment when he had to hold up his stockings by hand while serving as doorman at his theatre.

One the most colourful Jewish figures of the Renaissance was the illustrious Italian rabbi and scholar Leone Arieh de Modena. At the age of fourteen years the precocious scholar composed a philosophical dialogue on the subject whose two protagonists, Eldad and Medad, arrived at the conclusion that games of chance, even if not absolutely forbidden by Jewish law, should be eschewed as morally reprehensible. Early in his life, Leone’s own father had had his wealth squandered by the gambling of his step-brother, Abraham Parego, so he had personal experience of the damage that could be caused by the habit.

We can surely learn an object lesson about the addictive power of the vice’s lure by following the unfortunate fate of that illustrious anti-gambling advocate. 

For in spite of all his upright ideals and convictions, Rabbi Leone 

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, October 29 1998, p. 8.
• For further reading: 
  • Abrahams, Israel. Jewish Life in the Middle Ages. Temple Books, New York: Atheneum, 1969.
  • Roth, Cecil. The Jews in the Renaissance. Harper Torchbooks ed., Temple Library, New York: Harper & Row, 1959.
  • Goitein, S. D. A Mediterranean Society. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1967-.
  • Modena, L. and M. R. Cohen (1988). The autobiography of a seventeenth-century Venetian rabbi : Leon Modena’s Life of Judah. Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press.
  • Schwarz, Leo W. 1963. Memoirs of my people; Jewish self-portraits from the 11th to the 20th centuries. New York,: Schocken Books.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Affairs of State

by Eliezer Segal

News Item: News Item: Washington D.C. 1998. The United States is shocked by the revelations about President Bill Clinton’s sexual indiscretion with Monica Lewinsky and the untiring campaign of Special Prosecutor Kenneth Star to bring about the President’s impeachment.

What a dramatic story it is! Truly, it contains all the ingredients of a classic tragedy! 

Our hero is a charismatic head of state who rose to power from humble beginnings. He is admired by his people for his successful political administration, as well as his intellectual attainments. He seems to have everything going in his favour. 

Somehow, however, he cannot overcome his weakness for women. Though he tries to keep his indiscretions from becoming public knowledge, a relentless critic appears on the scene who will not be silenced. Eventually the leader’s private vices are brought to light, to the humiliation of himself, his family and his country.

Such, in brief, was the tragedy of David, the beloved King of Israel. He was a simple shepherd boy who rose to the throne, the author of magnificent Psalms and the first to declare Jerusalem our national capital. Ultimately, however, his inability to resist the allures of Bathsheba led to him to cross the lines of acceptable personal morality. His private transgression was brought to light by Nathan the Prophet, and David was obliged to make public confession.

In contrast to the adulation that characterizes the epics and religious scriptures of other peoples, the Bible is not usually squeamish about pointing out the flaws of its protagonists. Nobody, not even Moses himself, was above being taken to task for moral shortcomings.

This uncompromising honesty was not always shared by the rabbis of the Talmud and Midrash. Many of them seemed to prefer a world in which the good guys and the villains were clearly distinguishable, without any confusing shades of grey to complicate the issue.

There are many explanations for this change of attitude, but it would appear that the phenomenon is rooted principally in the settings where Midrash usually originated. Most of the Biblical interpretations that make up the literature of the midrash were probably taken from the texts of sermons that were preached in ancient synagogues. The sermon, as we know, is a literary-form with well-defined objectives. It is not designed to teach objective historical truth, but to inspire the congregation to virtue. With this noble goal in mind, the preacher must present the listeners with clear role models, easily recognizable heroes and scoundrels whose attributes they can learn to emulate or eschew. The straightforward Biblical narrative, populated as it often is with flawed heroes and sympathetic villains, does not lend itself naturally to such didactic purposes.

Furthermore, as a vulnerable minority, Jewish teachers had additional reasons to be zealous for the honour of their past leaders. Anti-Jewish polemicists, especially among the Christians, would frequently hold their contemporary Jews accountable for the sins of their predecessors.

In the case of David, whose transgressions were delineated so unambiguously in the Biblical narrative, the midrashic preachers had their work cut out for them in presenting them in a favourable light. His sins fell into the gravest categories known to Jewish tradition: Not only did he commit adultery, but he also brought about the death of Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, by sending him on a dangerous military mission.

Some of the rabbis preferred to minimize David’s guilt by means of legal technicalities. As regards the charge of adultery, they introduced some new mitigating factors into the case: Before going to battle, they insisted, Uriah had given Bathsheba a conditional bill of divorce that would take effect retroactively upon his death; so that she was not technically a married woman at the crucial moment. 

As for David’s complicity in Uriah’s death, it was argued that Uriah had it coming to him for treasonous activities. Unfortunately, there is nothing in the Biblical account that would suggest that Uriah was anything other than a loyal and devoted subject of his monarch. According to some, however, this was precisely his weakness: He was too devoted. When the king invited him to prolong his furlough, the soldier Uriah pleaded to return as quickly as possible to his buddies at the front. Hardly the sort of disloyalty that we would expect to earn a person a death sentence!

Even the rabbis who were most determined to protect David’s good name were not all satisfied with such legalistic excuses. In some instances this led them to even more farfetched claims of innocence. Rabbi Johanan went so far as to deny that the king, who was ever in complete control of his passions, had been at all attracted to that Bathsheba woman; insisting that the whole affair had been staged (as had Israel’s equally incriminating misdeeds in worshipping the golden calf) in order to furnish posterity with models of repentance under the most hopeless circumstances.

Ultimately, in spite of attempts to put a favourable spin of David’s indiscretion, he emerges as a flawed and quintessentially human being. He came to acknowledge the gravity of his sin, and in contrition begs for forgiveness. He was made to suffer, at the death of an infant son, and in the uninterrupted sequence of domestic quarrels and uprisings instigated by his sons. 

A passage in the Talmud notes with consternation how lightly David was let off for his offenses when compared with the tragic fate that befell his predecessor, Saul, for what would appear to be a lesser sin of sparing the life of Agag. king of Amalek. For all the torments and disappointments of David’s later years, he was not deposed from the throne. He was allowed to die peacefully while still in power, and the monarchy remained in the hands of his descendants. Saul, however, was declared unfit to rule, and the kingdom was transferred to David.

The medieval Spanish philosopher Rabbi Joseph Albo confronts this question, and offers an intriguing solution: David’s sins were manifestations of personal weakness, but did not affect his ability to govern. Saul’s sin, on the other hand, had occurred in the exercise of his political office, and hence he was disqualified from that office.

Perhaps in medieval Spain people were ready to forgive their rulers for private indiscretions, as long as it did not interfere with the business of government.

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, November 12 1998, pp. 12-13.
• For further reading: 
  • Garsiel, Moshe, “The Story of David and Bathsheba: A Different Approach”. Catholic Biblical Quarterly 55 (1993):244-62.
  • Abrahams, Israel. Jewish Life in the Middle Ages. Temple Books, New York: Atheneum, 1969.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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First Editions

by Eliezer Segal

I am always taken aback when I hear Jews refer to themselves proudly as the “people of the book,” as if the epithet were some ancient Hebrew expression contained in the Bible or Talmud to describe the traditional Jewish fondness for literature. 

The truth, of course, is that the title derives from the terminology of Islamic law, which granted judicial protection to established religious communities (“peoples”) who possessed a venerable scripture (“book”), a policy which furnished the basis for toleration of Jews and Christians in Muslim states.

Notwithstanding the above terminological quibble, there is no denying the longstanding affection that Jews have had with the written word, as well as with the printed page. 

Some enthusiasts wanted to go so far as to claim that Jews actually invented printing thousands of years ago.

This outlandish boast is based on an enigmatic passage in the Mishnah that tells of an individual named Ben Kamsar, who is said to have pioneered the development of some sort of mechanical writing. As interpreted by the Talmud, he invented a clever technique for writing four letters simultaneously with the help of four pens that he strapped to his fingers. 

Ben Kamsar insisted on keeping his patent under strict secrecy, a policy that did not find favour with the rabbis of the Talmud. Though the rabbis were aware of several artisans who had similarly refused to publish the tricks of their trades, those others were able to justify their secretiveness on grounds that the knowledge could be put to undesirable use. Ben Kamsar was unable to supply a persuasive excuse for his own protectiveness, and hence the sages applied to him the harsh words of Proverbs (10:7): “but the name of the wicked shall rot.”

The upshot of Ben Kamsar’s reticence is that we do not know to what precise use he was putting his craft. Rashi understood that his process was employed exclusively for inscribing the mysterious four-letter name of God on sacred texts, perhaps in order to keep the scribe from voicing it aloud as he wrote; though that detail is not stated explicitly in the Talmud. 

The nineteenth-century Galician Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Chajes, one of the precursors of modern Orthodoxy, noted that if the Talmud was referring to the process of writing in its normal sense, with pens attached to different fingers each writing a different letter, then such an act is humanly impossible. As an alternative, Rabbi Chajes proposed that Ben Kamsar had made use of pieces of metal upon which the forms of the letters had been imprinted. 

“We must therefore conclude,” he writes, “that Ben Kamsar’s achievement consisted of the invention of printing!” 

It follows from this that the rabbis condemned Ben Kamsar for keeping under wraps an innovation that would have brought untold benefit to humanity.

The influential sixteenth-century Polish halakhic authority Rabbi Benjamin Slonik went so far as to deduce from the story of Ben Kamsar that printed texts can be considered more sacred than handwritten ones, precisely because they inscribe the sacred names in a single action. Some authorities even permitted their use for ritual items like mezuzahs and t’fillin.

Although Rabbi Chajes might have been a bit imaginative in his interpretation of Ben Kamsar’s accomplishment, it is nevertheless true that Jews were among the pioneers of movable-type printing when the technology was first introduced to Europe in the mid-fifteenth century. 

In 1444, an obscure Jewish dyer named Davin of Caderousse, resident in the southern French city of Avignon, began taking lessons from a Christian goldsmith from Prague named Procopius Waldvogel in “the science and practice of writing.” The precise character of this “science” becomes clearer to us when we read the text of a contract that was drawn up between the two parties in 1446. The notarized document stipulates that, in return for Davin’s commitment to train Procopius in the craft of dying, the latter would agree to provide Davin with a full Hebrew typeface of twenty-seven Hebrew letters (i.e., the 22 normal letters plus the five special “final” forms). 

That the letters were to be used for printing comes across unambiguously from the contract’s phraseology, where it is designated that they must be “well cut in iron” and be bundled with appropriate “instruments of timber, lead and iron.” A later receipt refers to the project as “artificial writing.”

Unfortunately however, the agreement fell through for unknown reasons, and the ensuing lawsuit required Davin not only to return the typeface, but also–in a manner reminiscent of Ben Kamsar of old–to refrain from passing on the technology to anyone else in the region.

Had the project reached fruition, it would have culminated in the mechanical printing of Hebrew books several years before the appearance Gutenberg’s famous Bible in 1455. 

And Jews would have yet another reason to claim the title “people of the book.”

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, November 26 1998, pp. 12-13 (as: “First editions and the people of the Book”).
• For further reading: 
  • Roth, Cecil. The Jews in the Renaissance. Harper Torchbooks ed., Temple Library, New York: Harper & Row, 1959.
  • N. E. Shulman, Authority and Community, Hoboken and New York, 1986.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Getting a Handel on Hanukkah

by Eliezer Segal

Unlike the episodes from Jewish sacred history that were familiar to Christians because of their inclusion in the Bible, the Hanukkah story has left few traces in the artistic traditions of Western civilization. 

A notable exception is G. F. Handel’s oratorio “Judas Maccabeus,” which celebrates the victories of the ancient Jewish loyalists against their pagan foes. That grand work continues to enjoy enormous popularity over the years, and one of its themes, “See the Conquering Hero Comes,” has been adopted by Jews as a veritable Hanukkah melody; though, if the truth be told, it did not appear in the original version of “Judas Maccabeus,” but was grafted subsequently from Handel’s later oratorio about Joshua. 

That Handel and his audience should be familiar with the exploits of Judah Maccabee need not surprise us, since the Books of Maccabees were included in the “Apocrypha,” the additions to the ancient Greek Bible translations that were in use among ancient Egyptian Jews, but which were ultimately excluded from the official Hebrew canon. The Apocrypha were still in widespread circulation among Christians in Handel’s time, as were the historical chronicles of Josephus Flavius, who provided a detailed history of the Maccabean uprising. 

Nevertheless, it is not immediately apparent why crowds of gentile concert-goers should have been interested in an ancient Jewish struggle for religious liberty.

The answer to this question requires some knowledge of the events that were taking place in Britain at that time when Handel was composing “Judas Maccabeus.” 

Supporters of the deposed dynasty of King James had recently mounted their final and most serious attempt to regain the throne. Charles Edward Stewart, the “Young Pretender,” had recently returned to Scotland from his French exile and had gathered around himself an army of Scottish highlanders, determined to recapture the throne from Handel’s patron George II whose German-born father had brought him to England from the old country. 

In 1745, “Bonnie Prince Charlie” began a victorious campaign from Scotland through to England, and his forces seemed unstoppable. For a while it appeared that London and the English heartland would fall to the Stewart forces. The tide was turned in April 1746, when the Duke of Cumberland routed the Jacobite armies in the ruthless massacre at Culloden Moor.

The bitter civil war called for inspiring patriotic music, an art in which Handel excelled. While he may have had little enthusiasm for the ancient Jewish successes over Antiochus Epiphanes, Handel saw in that exploit a fitting paradigm for England’s recent deliverance from a grave threat.

The oratorio’s tone of pompous nationalism would bring it enduring appeal in Germany, though under the Nazi regime, not surprisingly, its title character had to be camouflaged as “Wilhelm von Nassau.”

For all its success, there are few critics who would rank the magisterial strains of Judas Maccabeus among Handel’s finest works. In actuality, the composer himself openly shared that negative assessment. 

He had recently introduced some changes to his method of financing his projects. Initially, Handel had sold subscriptions, which required the subscribers to commit themselves to several performances, a system that allowed him considerable independence in maintaining artistic standards.

Recently, however, the diminishing popularity of his operatic productions had impelled him to market his wares more directly. Now, if he was to be financially successful, he would have to cater more flagrantly to the lower esthetic standards of popular tastes, a fact that is very much in evidence in “Judas Maccabeus.” 

The hasty quality of this oratorio is evident from the German-born composer’s bloopers, originating in misunderstandings of some of the more difficult English words in the libretto, which he could not be bothered to look up in the dictionary.

Although he did not compose “Judas Maccabeus” for a Jewish audience, nor with any thought of the Hanukkah festival, the oratorio achieved immediate popularity among England’s small Jewish community, which totalled no more than seven thousand souls at that time. In spite of their small numbers, Handel recognized that Jewish patrons of the arts made up a substantial proportion of its audience. This phenomenon inspired Handel to compose a series of additional oratorios devoted to Jewish heroes, including Solomon, Joshua, Susana and Jephtha.

Thus, though Handel might originally have envisaged Judah Maccabee as a pageant of English patriotism, rather than as a source of Jewish national pride, in some ways “Judas Maccabeus” can justifiably be considered a work of Jewish art.

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, December 10 1998, p. 24.
• For further reading: 
  • Dean, W. (1959). Handel’s Dramatic Oratorios and Masques. New York, Oxford University Press.
  • Hogwood, C. and A. Hicks (1984). Handel. London, Thames and Hudson.
  • Lipman, V. (1972). England. Jewish Art and Civilization. G. Wigoder. New York, Walker. 2: 7-51.
  • Young, P. M. (1949). The Oratorios of Handel. London, D. Dobson.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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