Beam Me Up

by Eliezer Segal

Imagine the following scenario:

You’ve finally gotten around to building that new extension to your house. And it looks as if you’ve been graced with an additional stroke of luck, since your brother-in-law has succeeded in obtaining a supply of high-quality building materials at bargain-basement prices. 

A few days after the completion of the project, you are visited by a police officer, and discover that the deal that you got on the lumber was truly a “steal”–in the most literal sense of the word. The wood was part of a load that had been pilfered from a warehouse several months earlier.

How does this unfortunate development affect the status of that new extension of your house?

The Torah is quite explicit in its insistence that one who is in possession of illegally acquired property “shall restore that which he took violently away, or the thing which he hath deceitfully gotten.” 

The sages of the Mishnah also taught that as long as the stolen article is still intact, the illicit possessor is personally obligated to restore it to the hands of the lawful owner. So grave is the moral obligation imposed by Jewish law that an individual might be required to carry the stolen items all the way to far-off Media.

If follows from this that the unfortunate soul who make use of ill-gotten timber would have to disassemble the offending structures in order to return the boards and beams to their original owners.

In fact, the adjudication of such cases was a topic of controversy among the Jewish religious authorities of the first century. 

The School of Shammai insisted that one who had built a stolen beam into a residence was required to dismantle the entire building in order to extract the beam, in compliance with the dictates of the Torah. 

However the school of Hillel, which became normative for subsequent Jewish law, took a more flexible approach to the matter, allowing the culprit to compensate the owner with the cash equivalent. 

This view of the school of Hillel invites an instructive comparison with the ostensibly similar ruling in Roman law, as codified in Justinian’s Code and other sources of judicial procedure. The “Twelve Tables” stipulated that “no one shall be compelled to take out of his house materials, even though they belong to another, which have once been built into it.” 

In both legal systems, the case of the “stolen beam” became a proverbial expression for any stolen property that was subsequently embedded into a structure. The Talmud calls gives it the Hebrew designation “merish ha-gazul,” while the Latin Jurists knew it as “tignum iunctum.” 

On the surface, the laws seem identical. However, when we examine them more closely, we realize that they derive from very different motives.

The Romans had an eminently pragmatic reason for this rule; namely “to avoid the necessity of having buildings pulled down.”

The sages of Israel, on the other hand, had a very different concern in mind in foregoing the obligation of taking apart a house to retrieve stolen beams. They refer to “takkanat ha-shavim,” an ordinance for the sake of the penitent. 

Our rabbis were worried that the resulting financial loss would be so burdensome upon the culprits that it might impede their eventual repentance, which was the overriding purpose of the judicial structures of Jewish law. It was for this reason that they enacted that financial compensation would be acceptable in such circumstances.

As we noted, it was the view of the House of Hillel that became normative, and was adopted in the Mishnah. Nevertheless, though the court could not compel an individual to dismantle a house in order to restore stolen planks, the third-century sage Samuel insisted that the culprit was still under the Torah’s personal obligation to do so.

The rabbis encouraged victims to forego their claims to restitution, where that would facilitate the rehabilitation of the criminal. Rabbi Yohanan claimed the ruling was enacted as a result of an actual incident, when a criminal was on the verge of repentance until his wife argued “Idiot! If you were to make full amends, then even your belt is not your own!” 

To be sure, I would be the last person to recommend that you build a house out of stolen materials. Nevertheless, you should be aware that if you should find yourself in such an unfortunate situation, it could provide you with some profound lessons about the relationship between law and ethics in Judaism.

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free PressJune 17 1999, p. 26.
• For further reading: 
  • Cohen, Boaz. Jewish and Roman law, a comparative study. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1966.
  • Federbusch, Simon. ha-Musar veha-mishpat ba-Yisrael. Yerushalayim: Mosad ha-Rav Kuk, 1979.
  • Moyle, J. B., ed.. Imperatoris Iustiniani Institutionum, libri quattuor. [Ed. 5] ed. Oxford,: Clarendon Press, 1964.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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…Where Seldom is Heard a Mystical Word

by Eliezer Segal

Perhaps the ultimate mystery of Jewish tradition is that of the name of God. 

Soon after the close of the Biblical era, the four-letter name came to be regarded as too sacred for casual pronunciation. The Septuagint, the third-century B.C.E. Alexandrian translation of the Torah into Greek, already attests to the familiar Jewish convention of substituting the word “A-donai” (Lord) for the original Hebrew consonants, a Jewish practice that was later emulated in the King James English translation. 

By the close of the Second Commonwealth, the original divine name was not pronounced at all by Jews except as part of certain ceremonies in the Temple. Even the priests who did speak the name during worship were often careful to muffle it so that outsiders could not hear the details of its pronunciation. It came to be referred to by the Greek term “Tetragrammaton,” meaning “four letters.”

We do not know the precise circumstances that led to the cessation of uttering the divine name. Talmudic sources complain that the name was being spoken irresponsibly, whether for rash vows, for magical incantations and amulets, or for other inappropriate purposes.

Over time, the lack of a living tradition about how to enunciate the name, as well as the absence of written vowels in classical Hebrew, caused the original pronunciation to be forgotten. 

This was generally of little concern to Jews who had no practical use for such esoteric wisdom. It was however a matter that has continually kindled the curiosity of gentiles, and several different pronunciations of the four-letter name have achieved currency in English and other European languages.

Some of these reconstructions are based on legitimate philological considerations, but others reveal their authors’ shallowness and ignorance. The most absurd suggestion is undoubtedly the common non-word “Jehovah,” a misreading of the convention in many Jewish prayer books of superimposing the vowel marks for A-donai onto the consonants of the Tetragrammaton.

Some Christians like to use the name Jehovah (or some other reconstruction of the original name) when referring to the God of the “Old Testament.” These are usually the same people who are scrupulous to refer to the Muslim God as “Allah.” In either case, the implication is that the deities bearing strange names, who are worshipped by those other religions, is something less than the real God (whom they always designate by his generic English name). For these people, the Hebrew divinity is invariably portrayed as a primitive and vindictive tribal deity unworthy of an enlightened universal religion.

The etymology of the Tetragrammaton has also been subjected to diverse interpretations. Most authorities connect it to the Semitic root for “to be,” a reading which is strongly indicated in the Biblical passage where God tells Moses “I am that I am.” This reading was particularly popular among the medieval philosophers, who perceived God as Absolute Being in a profound metaphysical sense.

An alternative interpretation that been proposed by some scholars traces the name to the Hebrew pronoun hu, meaning “he.” According to this theory, the “ya” component is a generic exclamation (as it is in Arabic) akin to the English “O!”; whereas the second syllable of the name was originally pronounced “hu” or “hoo.”

In support of their interpretation, the champions of this etymology point to the practices of the medieval Islamic mystics, especially the Dervishes who are famous for the whirling dances that they use in order to induce an ecstatic state. As they spin, they gradually raise their voices until they are shouting an unceasing litany of “Ya hoo! Ya hoo””: O He! O He! 

As the Persian Sufi Jalal qad-Din al-Rumi wrote in a poem: “I know no other except Ya-Hoo and Ya-man-hoo (O He-who-is)!”

Martin Buber has suggested that a similar usage lies at the primordial core of the four-letter Hebrew name of God: an elemental cry of religious ardour, accompanied perhaps by the throwing out of a gesturing arm. This experience was afterwards formalized into a name.

Perhaps there is a link between this theory and the Mishnah’s report that during the spirited festivities that took place in the Temple during Sukkot, the participants used to chant “Ani-wa-hoo!”

Needless to say, the image of ancient Hebrew nomads shouting “Ya-hoo!” in the throes of a mystical encounter holds tantalizing associations for someone who lives in out here in the land of the Calgary Stampede and its characteristic whoop. Viewed from a proper historical perspective, the rodeo qualifies as a primal religious celebration.

Let me therefore advise any Jewish cowboys who wish to avoid pronouncing the mystical divine name: The next time you are riding on your bronco and feel moved to issue your spirited holler, you should consider crying out an alternative sound, like “Yippee!” or “Ya-koo!“

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free PressJuly 5 1999, p. 10.
• For further reading: 
  • Albright, William Foxwell. From the stone age to Christianity : monotheism and the historical process. 2d / ed, Doubleday anchor books ; A100. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1957.
  • Buber, Martin. Moses, the revelation and the covenant, Harper torchbooks. The Cloister library. New York: Harper, 1958.
  • Montgomery, J. A. “The Hebrew Divine Name and the Personal Pronoun HU.” Journal of Biblical Literature 63, no. 2 (1944): 161-3.
  • Urbach, Efraim Elimelech. The sages, their concepts and beliefs. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1987.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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The Siren’s Song

by Eliezer Segal

The sages of the Talmud rarely displayed an academic interest in science, unless it related directly to matters of religious law or Biblical interpretation. For example, some bizarre instances of genetic mutation are discussed by the rabbis only by virtue of their effects on the dietary laws or the sanctification of the firstborn. 

I don’t know whether such topics are more appropriate to a zoology textbook or to the National Enquirer, but the Talmud does embark on earnest discussions concerning the halakhic status of creatures who give birth to offspring of a different species, such as sheep begetting goats or cows begetting camels: Should they have the status of the mother of the species that they resemble?

It is in this connection that the rabbis digressed to some rudimentary classifications of various species, with a view to facilitating their recognition. The classifications are based on the ways in which the creatures mate, give birth and nourish their young.

The Talmud’s zoological inventory includes a reference to dolphins, which it correctly describes as mammals, in that “they procreate by mating like humans.”

Thanks to our modern dolphinariums and Public Television, any schoolchild can now be expected to have intimate familiarity with the habits of dolphins and other sea mammals. This, however, was not universally true in earlier times. The Babylonian sage Rav Judah felt obligated to explain the unusual word “dolphin” by noting that they are b’nai yama: “children of the sea.” 

It would appear that this explanation was not sufficient for all the subsequent commentators, and medieval exegetical literature supplied some surprising identifications of this mysterious “dolphin” creature. 

A particularly noteworthy interpretation took root among European rabbinic scholars. The commentary compiled in eleventh-century Mayence by the disciples of the celebrated Rabbenu Gershom, elucidated that Rav Judah’s “child of the sea” was more precisely a “man of the sea.” A generation later, Rashi amplified this notion, writing that “there exist sea creatures that are half human and half fishlike in their form.” For those who might have difficulty imagining such beings, Rashi provided the French translation: “sirène.”

Now any aficionado of ancient literature will immediately realize that the Sirens of Greek mythology, sea nymphs whose seductive voices presented fatal dangers to ancient seafarers like Odysseus, Jason and Aeneas, were not mermaids, but rather human-bird hybrids. Nevertheless, it is clear that Rashi believed that the Talmud was referring to mermaids, a species whose existence was not questioned by medieval authorities.

As if that were not enough, Rashi introduces yet another bizarre wrinkle into our increasingly complex account of the dolphin-mermaid: Where most texts of the Talmud passage speak of the dolphins breeding “like humans,” Rashi’s version had it that they mated with humans and produced offspring!

Although Rashi claimed to know the word “Siren” from the French, he might have been aware that it makes an appearance in an ancient Hebrew midrashic compilation known as the Sifra. Commenting on the passage in Leviticus 11:10 that defines the kosher and non kosher sea creatures, concluding with the words “”and of any living beingwhich is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you,” the author of the Sifra comments that the ostensibly superfluous expression “being” comes to include the Sirens within the scope of the Biblical prohibition.

In his commentary to the Sifra, the twelfth-century Rabbi Abraham ben David of Posquières (the Ravad) identifies the Hebrew term with the French expression adduced by Rashi, and provides a more extensive description: “The upper half of her body has the form of a woman, and she sings like a human” 

This last-mentioned detail was not mentioned in any of the Hebrew sources that were available to the Ravad, and it attests to his independent knowledge of their role in the Odyssey, where their song lured passing sailors onto the deadly rocks, a fate that would have brought disaster upon Odysseus and his crew had he not taken the precaution of plugging his men’s ears and having himself bound to the ship’s mast. 

It would appear that these pious scholars were not above occasionally setting aside their talmudic tomes in order to enjoy some more fanciful fare about heroic voyages and legendary creatures that was so attractive to their contemporaries. Indeed, so enticing are those tales that we can readily appreciate how difficult it was for Rashi and the Ravad to resist the Sirens’ song.

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free PressAugust 26 1999, p. 10.
• For further reading: 
  • Feliks, Yehuda. Kil’e zeraim ve-harkavah : masekhet Kilayim : Mishnah, Tosefta ve-Yerushalmi le-perakim I-II : berur ha-sugiyot ve-rikan ha-botani-haklai be-livyat 188 temunot ve-sirtutim. Vol. 2. Tel Aviv: Devir, 1967.
  • Ginzberg, Louis. Al halakhah ve-agadah : mehkar u-masah. Tel-Aviv: Devir, 1960.
  • Ginzberg, Louis, and Boaz Cohen. The Legends of the Jews. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1968.
  • Kohut, Alexander, and Nathan ben Jehiel. Plenus aruch, Targum – Talmudico – Midrasch, verbale et reale lexicon. Vienna,: Brög, 1878.
  • Twersky, Isadore. Rabad of Posquières, a Twelfth-Century Talmudist, Harvard Semitic series, v. 18. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Roman Holiday

by Eliezer Segal

It was the night of Rosh Hashanah, in the year 5040 (1280). For Rabbi Abraham Abulafia this was the perfect time to pay a visit on the Pope.

Abulafia was one of the most bizarre and colourful figures in Jewish history. A native of Spain, he set out towards the Middle East at the age of twenty in search of the fabled Sambation river whose rock-heaving waters presented an insurmountable barrier to the return of the ten lost tribes of Israel. When this project failed, he continued his travels in Greece and Italy.

Abulafia concocted a unique mystical discipline that wove together elements from the Kabbalah, Aristotelian philosophy, and yoga-like meditation. He believed that through the pursuit of this regimen he could aspire to prophetic revelations.

And it almost goes without saying that such an eccentric eventually became convinced that he was the messiah.

In most of Abulafia’s writings, he seems to portray the messianic vocation in rather modest dimensions. Each individual can become a messiah insofar as they can bring about a spiritual liberation of their own souls.

Nevertheless, the conventional perception of the messiah as a national redeemer was not absent from Abulafia’s self-image.

In keeping with the prevailing views of the time, this made it virtually mandatory that he have an audience with the leader of the Christian church.

Centuries of Jewish literature had elaborated the idea of an ultimate confrontation between the Jewish redeemer and presiding chief of the Evil Empire. Whereas ancient texts regarded the pagan Roman Empire as the ultimate foe, many medievals believed that this role had been inherited by the oppressive Roman church. 

This expectation had been given explicit formulation in recent years by Rabbi Moses Nahmanides, who had declared, in his disputation against the apostate Pablo Christiani, in Barcelona 1264, that “when the final time arrives, the messiah will approach the Pope at God’s command, and say ‘Let my people go that they may worship me!’ Only then will he have truly arrived.”

Evidently it was with such thoughts in his mind that Abulafia (who preferred to designate himself by the mystical epithet “Raziel”) was inspired to seek his audience with the pontiff on that fateful Rosh Hashanah.

The aspiring messiah did not hide his plans, and it did not take long for Pope Martin to receive word of his distinguished visitor. The Pope gave orders to the Vatican staff that if the rabbi should drop in seeking to discuss Judaism with him, they should arrest him immediately and send him to a place outside the city where firewood was already prepared for a quick execution. Though Abulafia was notified in advanced of the Pope’s inhospitable intentions, he remained determined nonetheless to keep his appointment. 

And thus it was that he approached the gates of the Vatican on that foreboding Rosh Hashanah eve. 

And at that moment, the announcement was made that Pope Martin had passed away at the ripe age of eighty. Abulafia’s life was saved.

Needless to say, the good rabbi saw this development as divine intervention and as irrefutable proof of the authenticity of his mission–notwithstanding the fact that he was imprisoned for a month by Franciscan monks. 

More than two centuries later, another self-styled Jewish redeemer was planning a trip to Rome. The individual in question was David Reubeni, a mysterious adventurer who claimed to be the brother of the monarch of an independent Jewish kingdom in Arabia.

Masquerading as a descendent of the of Islamic prophet, he wandered through Ethiopia, Egypt and Israel. It was while sojourning in Alexandria in 5284 (1523) that he Rosh Hashanah in a small synagogue awaiting the next available ship to Italy. 

It would take more than two months to find a galley sailing to Venice, and more than a year before he would enter the Papal palace on a white steed. Pope Clement greeted David with full diplomatic honours when the Hebrew emissary proposed a diplomatic alliance between his kingdom, Rome and Portugal, such that a Jewish army would expel the Turks from the Holy Land. Clement even provided David with letters of reference to several European rulers. With these documents in hand, he came close to finalizing a pact with the Portuguese king for the transporting of armaments to Reubeni’s fictitious regiments.

So impressive were David Reubeni’s exploits among the European elites that a young Marrano named Diego Pires was inspired to return openly to Judaism, taking the name of Solomon Molkho. 

Convincing himself that he was the Messiah, Solomon journeyed to Turkey, Israel and Italy, and of course he eventually arrived in Rome for the obligatory confrontation with the Pope. The pontiff extended to him hospitality and protection. 

When it became impossible to resist the Inquisition’s persistent calls for Molkho’s death, it is stated that Pope Clement saved his life by substituting a condemned criminal to be executed in his stead. Eventually however, Solomon became unable to fend off his accusers. He was arrested by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and perished as a martyr proudly proclaiming his Judaism to the end.

David Reubeni, who was imprisoned along with his disciple, managed somehow to escape death, and lived out the rest of his days in a Spanish prison under Imperial protection.

A Jewish chronicler reports that even after Molkho’s demise there remained many Jews who were convinced that the aspiring messiah had miraculously cheated death, and that eight days after the auto-da-fé he had been seen at his home.

When Shabbetai Zvi, the mystical messianic figure of the seventeenth-century, achieved prominence throughout the Jewish world, he spent his entire career in Turkey and the Holy Land, and did not make any attempt to visit the Vatican. Nevertheless, the Pope could not ignore the momentous events of the age, particularly after he received anxious letters from clergy in Jerusalem who were convinced that a Jewish restoration was imminent and that Christians faced imminent expulsion. He was compelled to send a fact-finding delegation to keep a close eye on the developments.

In 1668, following Shabbetai Zvi’s conversion to Islam, the aspiring messiah sent his “prophet” Nathan of Gaza on a special mission to Rome to perform a mysterious ritual whose purpose was to purify the Vatican, symbolically imprisoning the “Prince of Edom” and binding him in chains. His journeys through the Jewish communities of Italy served as a catalyst for the eruption of factionalist controversies between the messianists and their opponents. At length, perhaps in gentile disguises, Nathan was able to spend a few days in Rome, where he performed his secret rituals, felling the metaphysical princes of evil with the power of the divine name. Unfortunately he was eventually overcome by the demonic forces. Shabbetai Zvi reproached Nathan for the failure of his mission, and sent him to wage another spiritual battle in the Balkans, where his movement was more safely established.

Abraham’s Abulafia’s planned Rosh Hashanah visit with Pope Martin should therefore be seen as a link in a distinguished series of such encounters. If only we possessed the precise text of the message that the Jewish mystic intended to deliver to the Christian leader.

I hope, at least, that Abulafia had the good grace to wish the pope a cordial “Gut Yontef, Pontiff.”

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free PressSeptember 9 1999, p. 24.
• For further reading: 
  • Benayahu, M. (1971-1977). “The Shabbatean Movement in Greece.” Sefunot 14(The Book of Greek Jewry–IV): 9-555.
  • Schwarz, L. W. (1963). Memoirs of my people; Jewish self-portraits from the 11th to the 20th centuries. New York, Schocken Books.
  • Scholem, G. G. (1972). Ha-Kabalah shel Sefer ha-Temunah ve-shel Avraham Abulafiyah. Jerusalem, Akadamon.
  • Scholem, G. G. (1973) Sabbatai Sevi : the mystical Messiah, 1626-1676. Princeton, N.J.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Prince of Rain

by Eliezer Segal

Sukkot marks the beginning of the rainy season according to the rhythms of the Middle Eastern climate. This transition is acknowledged in the liturgy by the fact that, from Sh’mini Atzeret until Passover, we include in the daily prayers a formula that praises God as the one “who causes the wind to blow and the rain to fall.” 

The season’s first insertion of the phrase, during the Musaf service, is commemorated in the Ashkenazic rite with a special “piyut,” a Hebrew liturgical poem devoted to the importance of rain and water. The poem enumerates several righteous figures from the Bible whose associations with water should be credited to later generations, when our allotment of rainfall is decreed on high. 

The piyut was composed by Rabbi Eleazar Hakalir, perhaps the foremost Hebrew liturgical poet of the classical era. A resident of the Land of Israel, probably during the seventh century, Rabbi Eleazar authored a formidable literary oeuvre, much of which has only recently been retrieved from manuscripts. Like most examples of the genre, his poems are distinguished by their extraordinary erudition, full of obscure allusions to Biblical and rabbinic passages. 

The opening words of his piyut for rain tends to jar the sensibilities of many modern readers. The cryptic Hebrew words translate roughly as follows: “Af B’ri spells out the name of the Prince of Rain who forms clouds and mists, which he empties and from which he pours water.” 

Many contemporary worshipers, brought up with the expectation that God should always be approached directly and not through intermediaries, are understandably taken aback by the poem’s mythological tenor, which seems to divert our prayers to an obscure rain-god. 

After all, Rabbi Yohanan stated in the Talmud that the key to rainfall is kept permanently in the custody of the Almighty and never lent out to agents. The medieval Tosafot commentary objected to this claim, noting the Biblical account of how Elijah was given the power to bestow or withhold rain. They resolved the apparent contradiction by observing that, though God might hand the proverbial keys to emissaries, those emissaries can never act on their own authority, but always in obedience to the divine command.

A different Talmudic tradition declares that the rainfall in the Land of Israel is taken care of only by God himself; however, when it comes to other lands, he does appoint deputies.

In spite of attempts by Jewish rationalists to provide symbolic or allegorical interpretations for the offending texts, it is clear that our ancestors shared their world with diverse contingents of angels, demons and other supernatural beings.

Who then is this mysterious Prince of Rains who is addressed in our piyut? The words “af b’ri” are taken from the book of Job (37:11), from a passage in which Job’s companion Elihu tells how powerful storms provide evidence of God’s dominion over creation. The passage is standardly translated into English as: “with moisture he saturates the thick clouds.” 

Like most of the Book of Job, the original Hebrew text here is inscrutable, and commentators have thrown up their hands in despair at deciphering it. The word “af” is generally assumed to be the common Hebrew particle signifying “furthermore” or “also.” As for “b’ri,” it’s anyone’s guess. The King James translation cited above reads it as “with moisture.” Other scholars connected it to words for “purity,” light” or “lightning.” Hardly any of the commentators were persuaded to see an allusion to the name of an angel.

It is to be expected that the poet based his interpretation on a Talmudic or midrashic source; however his source has come down to us. 

Quite the contrary, an early guide to Talmudic hermeneutics interprets the word “af” in its normal sense of “also,” deducing from it that “the clouds and the rain are stubborn, and the Holy One must implore them to rain. And how do we know that just as he implores them to rain, so must he implore them to cease? From the word’ af’meaning also.” 

Clearly, the author of this text did not understand af to be part of a proper name.

Nonetheless, Rabbi Eleazar Hakalir had an enthusiastic and reputable champion in the person of Rashi, whose commentary to Job states as follows: “Af B’ri is the name of an angel who presides over the clouds, and he distributes the Almighty’s rains.” 

On one occasion in his commentary to the Talmud, Rashi found an additional pretext for squeezing in a reference to the Prince of Rains. This was in connection with a Talmudic passage that reads as follows:

Rain is withheld only on account of the sin of violence, as it states (Job 36:32): “He covereth his hands with the lightning.” This implies that for the sin of ‘their hands’ [i.e., violence] he covers the light”

And ‘light’ means nothing other than rain, as it states: ‘He spreadeth abroad the cloud of his lightning.”…

This last-mentioned quotation is in fact the continuation of the “af b’ri” verse in Job, and Rashi takes that fact into account when he observes (unnecessarily, it seems) that “the angel named Af B’ri will scatter the cloud of his light, namely his rain.”

Rashi’s insistence that Af B’ri is the angel in charge of rain, involves him in an additional difficulty, since the Talmud elsewhere makes reference to a different rain-angel, as we find in the following passage:

Our Rabbis taught: There are three sounds that extend from one end of the world to the other; and they are: the sound of the sun, the sound of the throngs of Rome, and the sound of a soul as it leaves the body.

…Some add: the sound of “Ridia.”

In explaining the word “Ridia” Rashi states that “it is the angel in charge of watering the earth with rain from the heavens above and from the deep waters below.”

A medieval Babylonian Ga’on reported that in his days it was still possible to hear harsh voices emerging from beneath lakes and pools, which the people, both Jews and Arabs, ascribed to Ridia.

Rashi’s explanation is based on an interpretation by the Babylonian Talmudic sage Rabbah. Commenting on the words of the Psalmist (42:8) “Deep calleth unto deep at the voice of thy cataracts,” Rabbah reported “I myself have seen Ridia, and he resembles a three-year-old heifer with its lips split. To the upper deep he says ‘Restrain your waters.’ To the lower deep he says ‘Let your waters burst forth'”

As Angels of Rain go, this heifer-like Ridia is indeed an imposing creature. Some scholars have speculated that Ridia is a Judaized version of the Persian angel-goddess Aredvi Sura who was believed to preside over the celestial waters, which were a source of fertility as well as immortality.

When all is said and done, whether we prefer to address our prayers directly to the Almighty, or to convey them via a prince or angel, I am sure that we all join in hoping that the coming year will be one of moisture and abundance for Israel and the world.

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free PressSeptember 23 1999, pp. 8-9.
• For further reading: 
  • Corbin, Henry. Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth, Bollingen Series. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977.
  • Feldman, Moses J. Areshet Sefatenu: Source Book of Hebrew Prayer and Proverb. 4 vols. St. Louis, 1942.
  • Frye, Richard N. The Heritage of Persia. Cleveland and New York: World Publishing Company, 1963.
  • Goldschmidt, Daniel, ed. Mahzor Sukkot LiShmini ‘Atzeret ve-Simhat Torah. Jerusalem: Koren, 1981.
  • Harkavy, Alexander. Hadashim gam Yeshanim. Jerusalem: Karmi’el, 1970.
  • Jacobson, B. S. Netiv binah : pirke mavo, perushim ve-iyunim be-“Sidur”. Tel-Aviv: Hotsaat “Sinai”, 1973.
  • Kohut, Alexander. Supplement to “Aruch completum”; containing sources of Rabbi Nathan’s Aruch, additional foreign words (especially from the Midrasch Haggadol), corrections and explanations to the eight volumes. Jerusalem: Makor, 1970.
  • Kohut, Alexander, and Nathan ben Jehiel. Plenus aruch, Targum – Talmudico – Midrasch, verbale et reale lexicon. Vienna,: Brög, 1878.
  • Margaliot, Reuben. Mal’akhe ‘elyon. 2^nd ed. Yerushalayim: Mosad ha-rav Kuk, 1964.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Flowery Language

by Eliezer Segal

According to a recent news report, it will now be standard practice in Texas maternity wards to expose the newborns and yet-to-be-borns to strains of classical music. 

This interesting development is consistent with a growing conviction in our culture that sound and music can have far-reaching effects upon the development of plants and animals. 

It is possible that a smilar belief was shared by some of the ancient Jewish sages. 

To cite one example, the Talmud (in a passage that is also included in the daily prayers) provides the following intriguing detail pertaining to the preparation of incense for the Jerusalem Temple: “While it is being pounded, he calls out ‘well crush, crush well.'” [hetev hadek hadek hetev].

The commentators appear to disagree about who exactly is doing the calling: Is it (as understood by Maimonides) the person who is pounding the ingredients, or his supervisor (as implied by Rashi)? In either case, the need for such a litany is far from some obvious. It hardly seems likely that, in the absence of continuous nagging, the person stands in danger of forgetting to grind the spices to their requisite fineness. 

At first glance, we might suppose that the advantage of reciting a rhythmically repetitive formula lies in the fact that it helps the pounder chop the chunks into evenly sized grains. 

The Talmud, however, suggests that it is really the sound of the voice itself that is beneficial to the spices.

Rabbi Yohanan contrasted the case of pounding spices with the procedures for preparing wine for libations in the Temple. According to the Mishnah, as wine was being tested from a new cask, the Temple treasurer would sit beside the wine-tester, clutching a reed or straw in his hand. If froth started to issue from the cask, indicating that the wine was not of satisfactory quality, the treasurer would tap the cask with his straw as a signal that the tester should immediately seal the cask.

The Talmud inquired why there was need for this roundabout signal, when it would have been much simpler for the treasurer simply to tell the tester to close the cask. 

The reason, it concludes, is that the human voice was considered harmful to the wine.

Indeed, concludes Rabbi Yohanah, “just as speech is beneficial for spices, so is it injurious to wine.” 

The comparison between the incense and wine suggests strongly that in both cases the results are achieved by the sound of the voice itself.

In fact, the spices were improved not only by human voices, but by other sounds as well. The Talmud tells us that “there was a mortar in the Temple made of bronze, which dated back to the days of Moses. In it they would mix the spices. It happened once that the mortar became damaged, so they brought in craftsmen from Alexandria, Egypt. The craftsmen repaired it, but it would not mix as well as it had previously. They undid the repair, and then it mixed as well as before.”

In explaining the nature of the damage that had befallen the mortar, Rashi wrote that in its original state, the mortar had produced a clear sound, which was capable of nicely fattening up the spices, and enhancing their aroma. When the Alexandrian craftsmen patched the metal, it became thicker and altered the tone of its vibration, a change that had detrimental effects on the spices. 

In support of his interpretation, Rashi alluded to the importance of chanting “well crush, crush well” while pounding the spices.

As in our own scientific community, there may have been some individuals who remained skeptical about the benefits that should be ascribed to voices and sounds. 

Thus, in Maimonides’ code of Jewish religious law we find an otherwise complete paraphrase of the Talmudic procedures for preparing the incense spices, except that it leaves out the Talmud’s rationale that “the voice is beneficial to the spices.” I cannot escape the suspicion that Maimonides, who was also a prominent physician and scientist, was not entirely won over by the Talmud’s claims.

I too find myself somewhat perplexed by the whole question. I think I’ll have a serious discussion about the matter with my avocado plant.

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free PressOctober 7 1999, p. 8 (as “The power of the human voice”)
• For further reading: 
  • Brand, Yehoshua. Ceramics in Talmudic LIterature. Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1953.
  • Feliks, Yehuda. Trees: Aromatic, Ornamental, and of the Forest, in the Bible and Rabbinic Literature. Jerusalem: Rubin Mass Press, 1997.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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A Dubious Blessing

by Eliezer Segal

Few Jewish religious texts have provoked as much indignation and discomfort as the brief passage that is recited by traditional Jewish men at the beginning of the daily morning prayers: “Blessed are you, Lord, our God, ruler the universe who has not created me a woman.” For many, it expresses a quintessential misogynism that lies at the core of our patriarchal religion.

The text in question appears as part of a sequence of blessings, found in the Talmud, that are meant to accompany activities that are performed in the course of waking up in the morning, such as hearing the first cock-crow, opening one’s eyes, stepping on the ground, getting dressed, etc. In order to maintain uniformity, medieval Jewish authorities preferred that all the blessings be recited together in the synagogue, rather than left to the discretion of individuals. 

The “has not created me a woman” blessing is part of a sub-group that expresses similar gratitude for not having been created a gentile (i.e., a heathen) or a slave. Differing liturgical traditions are at variance over whether these three blessings are to appear near the beginning of the sequence or at its conclusion.

This inconsistency attests to an important fact: The three “who has not made me” blessings were not originally part of the same set as the others. They originate in a separate Talmudic passage, ascribed to the second-century sage Rabbi Judah bar Ilai. Earlier versions of the tradition read “ignoramus” instead of “slave.”

Contemporary apologists for the blessing insist that the blessing is not intended to disparage women or imply that they are inferior, but merely to express gratitude for the fact that men are obligated to perform more religious commandments. It must be admitted that the “apologetic” explanation is not a modern invention, but it appears explicitly in the earliest version of the blessing.

An old liturgical fragment from the Cairo Genizah contains a more positive formulation of the same themes “…who has created me a human and not beast, a man and not a woman, an Israelite and not a gentile, circumcised and not uncircumcised, free and not slave.”

Some scholars have suggested that the Apostle Paul was alluding to an early version of this blessing when he declared “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female…” Others have preferred to portray Rabbi Judah as reacting to Paul’s words.

The American Conservative Movement opted to replace the negative formulation with an affirmation of what we are: free, Jewish and (instead of “male”) created in God’s image. In making this change, they could cite the precedent of the Genizah text cited above, as well as the text of the Rome Mahzor which reads “who has made me an Israelite.” 

Several modern scholars, beginning with the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, have remarked on the uncanny parallel between the wording of the Jewish blessings and an ancient Greek tradition ascribed variously to Thales, Socrates or Plato. The sage in question was allegedly in the habit of thanking God for three things: “that I was born a human and not a beast; a man and not a woman; a Greek and not a Barbarian.”

Is it possible, then, that our problematic blessing is not even an original Jewish one, but merely a plagiarism from Greek sources?

Most traditional prayer books prescribe an alternative blessing to be recited by women, “..who has created me according to his will.” The blessing, which strikes many as a kind of verbal sigh of resignation, is first cited by the fourteenth-century Spanish liturgical authority Rabbi David Abudraham.

Evidently, that was not the sole option available to women in their prayers.

I recall many years ago paying a visit to a well-known American Judaica scholar who had devoted much of his career to obtaining access to Hebrew manuscripts in Soviet libraries. The scholar had just returned from a jaunt to Russia, and was eager to show me his latest finds. One manuscript puzzled him. It was a small handwritten siddur, evidently written medieval Germany. Upon opening it to the morning blessings, we noticed some orthographic irregularities and tampering in the text of the “who has not made me a woman” blessing. 

After a few minutes of investigation, I realized what had happened. The prayer book, which had been custom-written for a woman, had originally contained a blessing praising the Almighty “who had not created me a man”; to be recited while the men-folk were expressing their gratitude for not being women. Subsequent owners had “corrected” the text in order to bring it into conformity with the standard male wording.

The discrepancy between the Spanish rite , as reflected in Abudraham’s text, and the the Ashkenazic practice attested in this manuscript, is consistent with a general pattern that is emerging in the study of medieval Jewish society; namely, that the Jewish women of France and Germany enjoyed a much higher social and religious status than their sisters in Islamic lands..

In a society that encourages men to cultivate their “feminine sides,” I doubt that that this “vive la difference” approach would be considered acceptable in all circles. At any rate, it does have an unexpectedly egalitarian ring to it, and serves to remind us of the diversity of approaches that coexisted in earlier Jewish tradition.

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First Publication:

• Jewish Free PressOctober 21 1999, p. 10.

For further reading: 

• Goldschmidt, E. D. On Jewish Liturgy: Essays on Prayer and Religious Poetry. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1989.
• Jacobson, B. S. Netiv binah : pirke mavo, perushim ve-iyunim be-“Sidur”. Tel-Aviv: Sinai, 1973.
• Levy, Isidore. Recherches sur les sources de la Legende de Pythagore. Vol. 42, Sciences Réligieuses: Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes: Libraire Ancienne Honouré Champion, 1926.
• Lieberman, Saul, and Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Tosefta ki-feshutah. New-York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1955.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Spare Change

by Eliezer Segal

This past summer, the social service agencies in Calgary began posting advertisements in the city’s trains and buses in order to persuade the public that it is counterproductive to give money to individual beggars on the street. This ostensible act of generosity, they insisted, is likely to aggravate the recipient’s dependence, rather than solving the problem.

Though panhandlers may have appeared to be nuisance in Calgary, it takes a few months in Jerusalem to reveal the real extremes which the practice can reach. Large segments of the population of the holy city have been brought up in the belief that the world owes them charity, whether or not they make any efforts to support themselves productively. 

I have found myself in the uncomfortable situation of having to warn my children–reversing years of effort invested in cultivating their generosity and compassion–that they should carefully avoid the greedy hands that will be constantly and arrogantly reaching at them as they stroll around Meah She’arim or the Western Wall.

In Israel, this world-owes-me-a-living attitude is not confined to a few individual shnorrers; it actually translates into a full-scale political culture. Ultra-orthodox parties have been established largely in order to pressure the government into supporting a constituency that has little inclination to pay its own way through life. 

Centuries ago, the sages of the Talmud had to deal with individuals who tried to bypass the communal welfare agencies in order to abuse people’s generosity and gain an unfair advantage over others in need. An ancient ruling laid down “No assistance of any sort is to be given to beggars who go from door to door.” 

The Talmud softened the severity of that ruling, permitting the mendicants to be given a small coin–though some commentators insisted that even this should be distributed by the official agencies, and not at the whims of individual donors.

The Jewish community always took care of its poor, to a degree that had no parallel in any other society. In Talmudic times, to be “poor” usually meant that one did not possess land. Such dispossessed persons hired themselves out as itinerant agricultural labourers, and their economic fortunes were subject to the caprices of the season and market. 

The oral tradition translated the Biblical commandment of tzedakah into an elaborate network of funds and agencies to care for the destitute. Even small rural communities were scrupulous to maintain a “kuppah,” which would pay out a weekly stipend to those who required it; a “tamhui” where the hungry could receive their daily meals; as well as specialized funds to supply dowries, burial, ransom of captives and other needs that could arise. These agencies carefully screened the beneficiaries of their charities, to insure that the limited funds would be distributed in the most equitable manner. 

Referring to Ecclesiastes 7:20, “For there is not a just man [tzadik] on earth who does good and does not sin,” Rabbi Judah ben Simeon asked “Is there such a thing as a tzadik who gives tzedakah and thereby sins?!” Subsequently it was explained to him that the verse can be applied to communal officials who distribute charity to those who do not deserve it, and do not adequately support those who have legitimate needs. The Mishnah warned that a fitting Heavenly punishment is in store for anyone who receives charity when they do not really require it. Such individuals “will not leave this world before they have truly become dependent on the generosity their fellow creatures.”

The rabbis were aware that generosity did not constitute a virtue if it was channeled to the undeserving. Although the indiscriminate dropping of a coin into the pushkah has been turned by some into a ritualized act designed to add points to our mitzvah rating, the administrators of a fully functional Jewish society were required to focus less on the spiritual betterment of the donor than on the efficient allocation of the resources to the appropriate recipients. The daunting responsibilities that come with the judicious distribution of charitable funds can be felt in the words of Rabbi Yosé ben Halafta: “Let my lot be with the collectors of charitable donations, and not with those charged with distributing the funds.”

Such a situation formed the basis for a Talmudic exposition of Jeremiah’s diatribe against the people of Judah: “Let them be caused to stumble before you. Deal thus with them in the time of your anger” (18:23). Rava interpreted the verse as if the prophet were beseeching God “Even when they perform charitable acts, cause them to stumble on account of individuals who are undeserving, so that they will not earn any merit for their actions.”

Some of our sages even found consolation in the fact that not all beggars could be trusted, since it lightened the overwhelming responsibility to respond to every cry for assistance, in keeping with the Torah’s grave warnings against ignoring the plight of the legitimate poor. 

I used to have a neighbour in Jerusalem who spent his working hours holding out a cup on a street-corner–after which he came home to his comfortable middle-class suburb. A similar experience befell Rabbi Hanina in the Talmud when he was informed by his wife that a beggar to whom he was accustomed to send weekly donations was in fact very affluent.

The good rabbi reacted with relief, declaring “Come let us express our appreciation to the swindlers; for were it not for them, we would be committing sins each day!”

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, November 4 1999, pp. 14-5 (as: “Buddy can you spare a dime?”).
• For further reading: 
  • Urbach, E. E. “Political and Social Tendencies in Talmudic Concepts of Charity.” Zion 16, no. 3-4 (1951): 1-27.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Millennium Fever

by Eliezer Segal

News Item:1 999. Much of the world anticipated momentous, if not apocalyptic, events with the arrival of the year 2000 of the Christian calendar.

Aside from some niggling concerns about the functioning of our computers after January 1, I expect that most Jews have been happy to sit on the sidelines of the current Millennium hysteria. After all, we operate according to a different calendar, which places us in the year 5760 since the Creation.

Some of us might even be tempted to remark disdainfully that the millennium closes at the end of 2000, and not 1999. Furthermore, no historian seriously believes that Jesus’ birth, the supposed starting point of the calculation, took place in the Year Zero or One. 

Therefore it seems safe to conclude that the date of the Christian Millennium has no eschatological significance for Jews; notwithstanding the reports that a seventeenth-century Kabbalist named Rabbi Abraham Azulai calculated that 5760 will be a year of powerful judgments on the world.

A similar atmosphere prevailed at the turn of the previous Christian millennium, as the year 1000 loomed near. In fact, texts from a thousand years ago indicate that both Jews and Christians had powerful expectations that something momentous was about to transpire, though they did not all pin their hopes on the same year. Even for Christians the number 1000 was not believed to be as significant as 1063. Many Jews hung their hopes on the year 1068, which was believed to mark the thousandth year since the destruction of the Second Temple. 

There were also many Jews who expected that the Christian year 1085 would bring the redemption.

In order to understand the underlying reasons for this last-mentioned date, we must learn to appreciate some peculiar features of the calendar. From an astronomical standpoint, we are influenced by two principal cycles, governed respectively by the sun and the moon. 

Jewish tradition attaches importance to the fact that that once in twenty-eight years the Spring equinox occurs on Tuesday night, which is Wednesday, according to the Hebrew reckoning. This constellation repeats the situation that was in place when the sun was made on the very first Wednesday of creation. A special blessing, the birkat ha-hamah, was ordained to be recited every time that cycle begins.

A second cycle relates to the lunar rhythms that determine the patterns of months. These cycles repeat themselves every nineteen-years.

Medieval Jews attached enormous importance to periods of 532 years, the number produced by multiplying 28 by 19, and indicating those rare occasions in which the lunar and solar cycles return to their condition at the beginnings of time. Years that were multiples of 532 were considered especially auspicious, and a special Hebrew acronym was coined to designate them: “Taklab.”

In a liturgical commentary composed in France at the close of the eleventh century, Rabbi Shema’yah, a senior student of Rashi, noted how privileged he had been to have lived during the Hebrew year 4845 (1085), which, according to his calculation (and assuming, for obscure reasons, that the lunar cycles were not counted until the year 57 after creation), marked the conclusion of the ninth Taklab.

In his exposition, Rabbi Shema’yah mentions that the calculation of Taklabs was also of interested to non-Jews of his own generation, and he quotes a Christian informant to the effect that the birth of their saviour had also taken place in a Taklab year, the equivalent of 3.C.E. Accordingly, 1067 C.E. had been a Taklab year for Christians (or 1067, for those who dated Jesus’ birth from the year Zero).

Rabbi Shema’yah had no difficulty brushing aside the bad math that underlay the Christian calculations, since the nearest Taklab to New Testament times would have occurred in the year 27 C.E. 

In fact, the Jewish sage had missed the point entirely. The Christians were not measuring their cycles from the Creation, but simply assumed as axiomatic that any meaningful chronology should by definition begin with the birth of Jesus.

In spite of Rabbis Shema’yah’s rejection of the Christian reckoning, he did accept the correctness of the date they assigned to Jesus’ birth. It is even more extraordinary to observe how subsequent generations of Jewish scholars laboured to incorporate the dates of New Testament events into their own sacred chronology.

The thirteenth-century commentator Rabbi Abraham ben Azriel of Bohemia cites a tradition according to which Jesus was crucified in a Taklab year. He is unsure however how to fit this into the accepted Jewish chronology, and plays around with an assortment of dates ranging from 105 to 37 B.C.E.

Several other writers of the time discuss this theme. It is based on the premise that Taklab years possess a beneficial quality. In the present instance, a remarkable “midrash” was quoted to the effect that Jesus had arranged to be arrested in such an auspicious year.

He knew that it was a Taklab year, and said “I shall accept suffering for the sake of the unity of God’s name and the yoke of Heaven.” He surrendered his body out of reverence for his Creator. “May it be his will that I be found acceptable to God.” A divine voice then declared “Because it is now a year of grace, a Taklab, your prayer will be answered–though not in your own times, and not within your lifetime, but only a long time after your death.” And so it came to pass.

This amazing Jewish legend, though evidently adapted from Christian sources, is not as sympathetic to Jesus as it might appear at first glance. It portrays Jesus as a kind of sorcerer, akin to the midrashic depictions of Balaam whose prophetic abilities were limited to his ability to anticipate moments of divine favour. A text from the same era spells this out: 

We have it on tradition that in a Taklab year there is a moment when the gates of mercy open, and the heavens are exposed. Jesus calculated when that moment would occur. He prayed that the nations would have faith in him even as Israel had held faithfully to the Torah…

The story explains the success of the Christian religion as little more than sleight of hand. Ultimately, it makes Jesus’ death, rather than his birth, into the favourable event of the Taklab year.

As with our current millennial anticipation, the significant dates of the time, whether according to the Jewish or the Christian reckoning, became focal points of messianic anticipation. In addition to the years 1068 and 1085, many Ashkenazic Jews anticipated the 256^th lunar cycle in its entirety (1085-1104) to have eschatological importance.

There was indeed much going on at the time to warrant such a perception. In particular, the illustrious Jewish communities of the Reinland were suffering massacres at the hands of the Crusaders. The grand conflict between Edom and Ishmael over the possession of the Holy Land must certainly have appeared to contemporary Jewish observers as a prelude to the advent of the Messiah. 

In those days as in our own, Jewish and Christian millennial expectations could not help but exert a profound influence upon each other.

Perhaps we ought to commence our preparations for the next Taklab, due to arrive in 2149.

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free PressNovember 19 1999, p. 8.
• For further reading: 
  • Emanuel, Simcha. “A Jewish-Christian Debate–France 1100.” Zion 63, no. 2 (1998): 143-155.

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My email address is: [email protected]

Burning Issues

by Eliezer Segal

The precept of lighting candles on Hanukkah is intended to bear public witness to the great miracles of the defeat of the Hellenist forces and the rededication of the Temple. For this reason, the Talmud requires that the Hanukkah lamps be stationed outside the doorway, or on a second-storey window that opens onto the street, allowing them to be observed by passers-by.

In Talmudic, times indoor lighting of Hanukkah lights was an exceptional occurrence, a special dispensation that was given by the rabbis of the time on account of flare-ups of Zoroastrian religious persecution.

During the Middle Ages, when Jewish communities flourished in many parts of Europe, we discover to our surprise that indoor candle-lighting had become the almost universal norm, and nobody was observing the original Talmudic tradition of placing their menorahs outside the house.

The rabbis of the time were keenly aware of the discrepancy, but were not certain how to account for it. The most widely quoted rationale posited that the Talmudic sages, in order to remove the peril of Zoroastrian persecution in their own generation, had issued a decree that candles be lit indoors; and for some reason had never gotten around to revoking it. Since then, even though the grounds for the edict had long ceased to exist, no subsequent court possessed the authority to repeal it.

A few authorities have suggested a more prosaic reason for the change. A very compelling factor that discouraged outdoor Hanukkah lighting was the weather. Strong winds and torrential rains occurred more frequently in the northern European climes than in the Middle Eastern lands where the rules had originally been formulated. This made it a daunting challenge to keep the flames lit without resorting to complex and costly equipment, such as glass cases for the candles.

Interestingly, none of the medieval sources that deal with this question contain the remotest suggestion that Hanukkah was considered offensive to the religious sensibilities of Christian neighbours. The phenomenon of Jews having to conceal their candles from hostile gentiles is invariably presented as a scenario from the distant past. 

It is therefore comes as something of a surprise to read the words of the prominent fourteenth-century Spanish halakhist Rabbi Jeroham ben Meshullam, who wrote that “some people are accustomed to lighting it inside the doorway that opens to the courtyard, because gentiles and thieves are common.”

Though Rabbi Jeroham’s misgivings might simply be motivated by the prospect of stolen menorahs, what are we to do about the puzzling ruling by the fifteenth-century Rabbi Joseph ben Moses, who wrote that “In a house belonging to a non-Jew, a person should light only one candle and one shammash. Even though the non-Jew would not object to two or three candles, there is always that one case in a hundred when it could lead to danger, and it would bring discredit upon the precept.” 

Since Rabbi Joseph states explicitly that the gentile in question has no problem in principle with his Jewish tenant lighting candles, what difference does it make how many candles he lights?

I suspect that the issue here is not a theological matter, but an eminently practical one. Medieval Jews had acquired some notoriety for causing accidental conflagrations with their Sabbath candles. According to Talmudic halakhah, it is permitted to extinguish a fire on Shabbat only in order to save lives, but not to prevent destruction of property. Therefore, when fires did break out in their homes and neighbourhoods on Friday nights or Saturdays, Jews were reluctant to extinguish them, and the flames could spread rapidly through their ramshackle neighborhoods and beyond. 

It is understandable that otherwise well-disposed Christian landlords could become very apprehensive at the prospect of eight days of Jewish candle-lighting. 

Through their scrupulous adherence to the Sabbath prohibitions, Jews had occasionally placed themselves in danger of injury at the hands of enraged Christians who blamed them for promoting large-scale conflagrations, and vented their wrath in the form of bloody pogroms. 

It was these kinds of considerations that led many influential medieval rabbis to relax the restrictions on putting out fires on Sabbath. Several French and German authorities allude to cases where the irate gentiles, on determining that the fire had originated from a Jewish home, would cast the Jews into the flames.

Under the circumstances, it is not surprising that Rabbi Joseph ben Moses was willing to cut down on the number of Hanukkah candles in order to allay the fears of a Christian landlord.

And I think that we can all take this as a valuable reminder to take appropriate precautions in preparing our holiday candles, so as not to bring discredit or calamity upon this joyous precept.

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free PressDecember 2 1999, p. 20.
• For further reading: 
  • Sperber, Daniel. Minhage Yisrael : mekorot ve-toladot. Yerushalayim: Mosad ha-Rav Kuk, 1989-.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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