Notes from the Underground

by Eliezer Segal

A tradition from the early Middle Ages links the morose character of the ‘Omer period with the Talmudic passage that speaks of 12,000 pairs of Rabbi Akiva’s disciples who perished during this period.

Because Rabbi Akiva was known to be a supporter of the rebel leader Bar Kokhba, many modern interpreters have assumed that the events referred to are related to that historical episode, that the students were in fact soldiers in the rebellion of the years 132-135 C.E. that restored Jewish independence to Judea for three years, before it was savagely suppressed by the Romans. This opinion is maintained in spite of the fact that the Babylonian Talmud ascribes their deaths to a plague that was brought upon them as punishment for their lack of respect for one another.

It was not long ago that any reference to Bar Kokhba would have been looked upon with great skepticism by respectable historians. Our sources for the uprising were limited to a few disconnected and cryptic passages in the Talmud, a quote from the Roman historian Dio Cassio preserved in an unreliable anthology, and an occasional coin dated “to the liberation of Israel.” 

Yigael Yadin’s dramatic excavation of Bar Kokhba’s command post in the early 1960’s, complete with its extensive archive of letters, documents and other archeological artifacts, have removed any remaining doubts about the reality of the rebellion and of its powerful leader, and of its deep impact on Jewish history and society.

The spades of Israeli archeologists have continued to uncover material that corroborates those ancient reports that were only recently dismissed as legendary exaggerations.

Probably the most dramatic of these reassessments has related to Dio Cassio’s account that the Jewish rebels, realizing that they would be handicapped in any frontal confrontation with the Roman legions, 

occupied the advantageous positions in the country and strengthened them with mines and walls, in order that they might have places of refuge whenever they should be hard pressed, and might meet together unobserved under ground; and they pierced these subterranean passages from above at intervals to let in air and light.

This image of an intricate labyrinth of underground tunnels and bunkers, all of them meticulously prepared in the years preceding the insurrection, and under the very eyes of the Roman armies, was too fantastic to be given credence by respectable historians–that is, until such caves and tunnels began to be uncovered in archeological excavations. To date, more than three hundred such complexes have been identified. 

Exploiting the many natural caves that typify the region’s topography, and building upon the existing infrastructure of cisterns, wine- and oil-presses, storehouses and burial caves, the tunnel complexes were cut into rock and linked together by horizontal and vertical passages. 

The prudent planners of the network provided it with shafts for ventilation, tanks for water, store-rooms for food and other necessities of a long sojourn underground. The caves were situated in villages and towns that were scattered throughout the Judean plains, particularly along the roads, where they served strategic functions in a guerilla war. The absence of natural light made them easy to conceal from the Romans. During the early stages of the rebellion from 132 to 134, when the Romans were on the defensive, it was possible for the Jews to expand the network extensively. 

In spite of the initial insistence of some skeptics, upon their discovery, that the tunnels did not necessarily date from the Bar Kokhba era, several of them were found to contain coins and other remnants that link them precisely to those years. The numismatic evidence suggests that the Jews did not take refuge in the caves until the final year of the campaign, when the military tide had turned in favour of the Romans.

Another ancient tradition that has been reevaluated in the light of recent archeological discoveries has to do with an obscure law in the Mishnah that forbids the wearing of “nailed sandals” on the Sabbath. The Talmud traces the prohibition to a tragic occurrence that occurred “in the final days of the ‘persecution’ [sh’mad],” a standard rabbinic expression for the Bar Kokhba insurrection: A group of Jews who were hiding in a sealed off cave saw the tracks of a nailed sandal that inadvertently been worn backwards, and assumed that enemy soldiers had entered their cave. In the ensuing panic, which took place on a Saturday, “more people were killed than were killed by the enemy.”

A variant of the story had it that it was the familiar scratching sound of the sandals’ nail-heads on the ground outside the cave that had provoked to the hysteria, with its deadly consequences.

Indeed, the dreaded nailed sandal was often equated in ancient sources with the might of the Roman legionary, and the word kalgas, from the Latin caliga, became a synonym for a fierce soldier.

Nevertheless, the Talmudic rationale for the prohibition of wearing nailed sandals on the Sabbath was dismissed by most respectable scholars as too farfetched for serious consideration.

Here again, archeology has altered our perspectives on the matter. 

On a mountainous ridge overlooking Jericho, a cave was excavated in 1986, and it soon became clear that it was one of those caves that had served as a refuge for Jews during the Bar Kokhba uprising. The cave also contained the remains of a nailed sandal that had evidently belonged to a Jewish revolutionary. The owner of the sandals apparently perished in the cave, along with more than thirty men and women of diverse ages. 

This tragic episode, or one very much like it, might lie at the root of the halakhic prohibition against wearing the lethal footwear. 

No doubt, the soil of Israel will continue to reveal many more secrets that will add meaning and relevance to our religious and historical traditions.

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, May 11 2000, pp. 8-9
• For further reading:
  • Hanan Eshel, and David Amit. Refuge Caves of the Bar Kokhba Revolt. Tel-Aviv: Eretz, The Israel Exploration Society, College of Judea and Samaria; C. G. Foundation, 1998.
  • Hanan Eshel, “Nailed Sandals in Jewish Sources and in the Excavation of a Cave at Ketef Jericho,” Zion 53, no. 2 (1988): 191-8.
  • Isaac, Benjamin, and Aharon Oppenheimer. “The Revolt of Bar Kokhba: Ideology and Modern Scholarship.” Journal of Jewish Studies 36, no. 1 (1985): 33-60.
  • Kloner, Amos, and Yigal Tepper. The Hiding Complexes in the Judean Shepelah. Tel-Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House, 1987.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Honey from the Tablets

by Eliezer Segal

An invaluable source of information about Jewish life in earlier generations is the illuminated Hebrew manuscript. Even when illustrating Bibles or other ancient works, the artists used as their models the contemporary norms of dress, customs and architecture, and therefore provided modern readers with unique visual glimpses into the daily life of the Middle Ages. This applies all the more when the text of the manuscript is a prayer book, describing the order of worship through the Jewish calendar, so that the illustrator is likely to base his pictures on the practices that he sees in his own community.

These observations hold true for an elaborately illuminated prayer-book from the fourteenth-century that is presently housed in Leipzig. When we turn to the pages devoted to the Shavu’ot services, we will not be surprised to see a depiction of Moses clutching the tablets of the Torah on Mount Sinai. However, we might be taken aback by several representations, right next to the familiar Biblical scene, of children with some strange props. 

Each of the tots is proudly clutching a round cake and an egg. One of them is being carried by a beardless adult, evidently his young father, who has him wrapped in a cloak. Another child is sitting on the lap of a stern-faced rabbi who bears an uncanny resemblance to the Moses in the adjacent picture. The rabbi is clutching a writing-tablet painted in the same gold-leaf as in the artist’s depiction of Moses’ tablets. Two other children are being conducted to an outing by a river. 

What do these images have to do with Shavu’ot?

As the anniversary of Israel’s receiving of the Torah, Shavu’ot was considered an appropriate time to introduce school-children to their first formal religious studies. The ceremonies that evolved around that occasion take remarkably similar forms whether we are speaking of Jewish communities in France, Germany, Poland or North Africa.

The earliest descriptions that we possess of such a celebration are from Germany in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. One of these accounts appears in the important compendium of customs by Rabbi Eleazar Rokeah. Several other documents from the time present similar pictures.

The ceremony commences with the father, or a distinguished scholar, bringing the child to the synagogue or schoolhouse, bathed and garbed in clean attire. Upon his arrival, the rabbi carries him to his seat. The letters of the alphabet, or portions of it, are written frontward and backward on a writing-tablet, as are some appropriate verses, such as “Moses commanded us the Torah, even the inheritance of the congregation of Jacob.” 

After his first lesson in reading, the child is invited to lick some honey from the tablet. He is given a piece of honey-cake on which is inscribed an appropriate Biblical verse; then a boiled egg (most authors insist on three eggs) with a different text written on it. The child recites each text after the rabbi, after which he gets to eat the cake and the egg, which are considered effective for “opening the heart.”

The concern for “opening” or “broadening” the heart is emphasized in many of the texts. The allusion is to improving the memory, which played a central role in the traditional elementary curriculum. One of the texts contains an incantation to be recited against “Potah the Prince of Forgetfulness,” the supernatural agent who–unless duly controlled–has the power to impair our powers of memorization. This is one of the reasons why, according to some of the accounts, the child is led afterwards to a river bank. In addition to the well-known identification of the Torah with life-giving water, a visit to the river was believed to assist in “broadening the heart” of the fresh young student.

In keeping with the ancient tradition, the child commences his Biblical studies with the Book of Leviticus, which is filled with the spirit of purity. One writer even insists that now is the perfect time to teach the child the art of swaying during his studies.

The sources emphasize that in this, his first encounter with the regimen of Torah study, the child is reliving the experience of our ancestors on that very first Shavu’ot at Mount Sinai.

This Shavu’ot celebration is outlined in very similar terms by other Jewish writers from medieval Germany. The main differences between the accounts relate to the choice of verses to be written, recited and eaten. Some of the texts contain detailed recipes for the cakes, and attach symbolic meanings to the ingredients.

Not all the foods have symbolic meanings. The sources encourage giving the children a wide assortment of treats, including nuts, apples and other fruits, in order to implant pleasant associations with the experience of going to school. As the Mahzor Vitry, an important French liturgical compendium from the early twelfth century, puts it so piquantly, “first entice him, and afterwards let him feel the strap on his back.”

Individual features of this celebration have been maintained informally as part of the standard way of introducing a child to his first day of school. However, in spite of the precise instructions that appear in so many compendia of Ashkenazic religious practice, there is no Jewish community has retained the full ritual as part of the Shavu’ot observance.

This puzzling development was noted by several rabbis in later generations, and they tried to suggest explanations for the abandonment of the ceremony. 

At any rate, I believe that we have good reason to sympathize with the lament of Rabbi Jacob Emden of Altona who was mystified and dismayed at how such an admirable custom could have been uprooted from Jewish tradition for no apparent reason. He regarded this development as symptomatic of our insufficient esteem for Jewish learning.

Perhaps the time has come to take up Rabbi Emden’s challenge, and to reclaim Shavu’ot’s standing as a time of rededication to meaningful Jewish education.

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, May 25 2000
• For further reading:
  • Abrahams, Israel. Jewish Life in the Middle Ages. Philadelphia and Jerusalem: The Jewish Publication Society, 1969.
  • Asaf, S. (1954). Meqorot Letoledot Hahinnukh be-Yisra’el. Tel-Aviv, Dvir.
  • Cohen, E. M. “The Teacher, the Father and the Virgin Mary in the Leipzig Mahzor.” Paper presented at the Tenth World Congress of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem 1990.
  • Marcus, Ivan G. Rituals of Childhood: Jewish Acculturation in Medieval Europe. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Rabbi in the Abbey

by Eliezer Segal

The most acerbic conflicts between Jews and Christians have hinged on their differing readings of Biblical passages. For Christians, the chief value of the “Old Testament” lay in the prophecies and “prefigurations” that, as they believed, were fulfilled in the life and death of Jesus. Jews reading the same texts might apply them to the future redemption. In many cases, Jews fail to discern any messianic content whatsoever .

During the Middle Ages, the two communities kept at arm’s length from one another, and each read their Bible according to their received understanding. However the respective commentaries frequently indicate, whether explicitly or by implication, they were well aware of the competing interpretations.

Take for example the text of Isaiah 2:22: “Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of?” The Hebrew word bameh that is rendered rhetorically as “wherein” was translated in the Catholic Latin version (known as the “Vulgate”) as “high” or “exalted.” The change transformed the verse into a reference to Jesus, as if to say: Stop afflicting the Man [i.e., Jesus], because he is reputed to be of exalted status.

A twelfth-century commentator from northern France challenged the Christian reading on solid linguistic grounds, and noted that the larger context of the chapter strongly supports the Jewish reading, since it is a warning to the Judeans not to place their trust on any mortal king, particularly the Egyptian Pharaoh, to save them from the impending wrath of the Babylonians.

The same commentator is not above challenging several other of the most popular Christian Biblical proof texts. Thus, in discussing Isaiah 7:14-16, which was understood as a prediction of the virgin birth, he notes that in its original context the prophecy is part of a reassurance that Judah will be delivered from an attack by the kings of Aram and Israel–an event that predated Jesus by many centuries.

Similarly, our commentator insists that the “suffering servant” chapters in Isaiah, applied by the church to Jesus’ torments, are better understood as personifications of the vanquished Jews of the Babylonian captivity whose anguish serves an atoning function. He even suggests that the “man of sorrows” in the passage might be Isaiah himself.

All the above instances of exegetical controversy seem quite normal in the setting of medieval Christian-Jewish disputations.

However, they take on a very different significance when we note that the French commentator whom we have been citing was not a Jew, but a Christian!

Indeed, the author of those staunch defences of Jewish theological positions was Andrew of St. Victor, a distinguished Catholic cleric who served as the abbot of monasteries in France and Britain. 

The Abbey of St. Victor, where Andrew spent much of his scholarly career, had already acquired a reputation for its unconventional approach to Biblical study. Under the leadership of Andrew’s teacher Hugh of St. Victor, a new interest had evolved in recapturing the literal meaning of Biblical texts. In the context of medieval Christianity, this was no less than revolutionary, since the church had long since committed itself to symbolic and allegorical exegesis, insisting that the “letter” of Scripture was a trivial pursuit that stifled the spirit.

The vindication of the straightforward reading of the Bible, spearheaded by the scholars of St. Victor’s, coincided with similar developments among Jewish French exegetes, as distinguished students of Rashi were also endeavouring to confront the Bible on its own terms, independently of the traditional explanations of the Midrashic and Talmud. It appears that one of the motives that impelled the Jewish sages to set aside the traditional Talmudic and Midrashic interpretations was their conviction that the unadorned plain sense of Scripture provided a stronger weapon against Christian proof-texts.

While it is not clear whether the trends in Christian scholarship were modelled after Jewish precedents, there can be no doubt that the Christian exegetes were consulting with Jewish teachers. Their writings are filled with references to the readings and interpretations of the “Hebrei,” including many comments that cannot be traced to known literary sources. Conscious that in their Jewish quarters dwelled living links to the Biblical tradition, Hugh, Andrew and others were accustomed to drop in on the local rabbis in order to deepen their acquaintance with the Hebrew original.

As we saw in the above example, the Christian scholars were very respectful of the Jewish interpretations, often (though not always) giving them equal or greater credence than the readings that were current in the church. Indeed, here and there we can catch glimpses of theological debates between rabbis and monks that are extraordinary in their candidness.

Not all Christians at the time were quite ready for such academic neutrality and religious tolerance; and manuscripts of the St. Victor commentaries often contain disapproving glosses inserted by more conservative students, such as “You strive too much to judaize.”

Nevertheless, the annals of Christian European would come to know several additional “judaizing” exegetes. The most influential of these was probably the French scholar Nicholas of Lyra (1270-1340). He deplored the state of Biblical studies in his own time, insisting that valid theological or allegorical interpretation of the Bible had to be grounded in a proper understanding of Hebrew language and grammar, which had to be based in turn on direct study of the original text, not translations. Towards that end, Nicholas achieved expertise in Hebrew and relied extensively on the commentaries of Rashi and other Jewish scholars. He produced interpretations that excelled in their clarity, precision and plausibility. Nicholas’ “Postillae” soon achieved unequalled popularity and, in a manner reminiscent of the place of Rashi among Jewish readers, was the first Biblical commentary to be printed. By the fifteenth century it was widely rumoured that Nicholas was of Jewish birth, though there was no truth to the report.

Nicholas of Lyra exerted a decisive influence upon the new vernacular Biblical translations that proliferated during the Protestant Reformation. Among other things, this accounts for some of the uncanny agreements between the King James translation of the Bible and the traditional Jewish interpretations as taught by Rashi. For all that many Jews enjoy whining about our reliance on English Bibles that are rooted in a Christian version, the fact is that–aside from a relatively small number of places where the translation blatantly reflects Christian theological doctrine–the elegant King James English, with its faithful echoes of the original Hebrew syntax and word order, has provided a comfortable companion for several Torah and Tanakh editions issued under Jewish auspices, including those of Chief Rabbi Hertz and the Jewish Publication Society. 

The following quote, written by a student of the twelfth-century theologian Peter Abelard, reveals another reason why medieval Christians had such appreciation for Jewish scholarship:

If the Christians educate their sons, they do so not for God, but for gain, in order that the one brother, if he be a cleric, may help his father and mother and his other brothers. They say that a cleric will have no heir and whatever he has will be ours and the other brothers.’ 

…But the Jews, out of zeal for God and love of the law, put as many sons as they have to letters, that each may study God’s law…A Jew, however poor, if he had ten sons would put them all to letters, not for gain, as the Christians do, but for the understanding of God’s law–and not only his sons, but his daughters.

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, June 15 2000, 10-11.
• For further reading:
  • Grossman, Avraham. The Early Sages of Ashkenaz: Their Lives, Leadership and Works. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1995.
  • Hailperin, Herman. Rashi and the Christian Scholars. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1963.
  • Kamin, Sarah. “Affinities Between Jewish and Christian Exegesis in 12th Century Northern France.” Paper presented at the Ninth World Congress of Jewish Studies 1985.
  • Neumann. “Influence de Rachi et d’autres commentateurs juifs sur les postilles de Lyra.” Revue des Etudes Juives 26-27 (1893): 172-82, 250-62.
  • Smalley, Beryl. The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Horse Sense

by Eliezer Segal

Have you ever seen photographs of the early Zionist pioneers mounted proudly on horses, garbed like bedouins and radiating a sublime confidence? An important ingredient in their mood is the fact that they were bucking a long and entrenched tradition.

Jews were simply not supposed to ride horses.

As one who resides in the home of the world’s largest rodeo, it is only with great difficulty that I can divulge this dark secret about the age-old animosity between Jews and horses. 

The problem goes back many millennia. 

In the Bible, horses are likely as not to be mentioned in connection with an enemy cavalry. Even the beloved in the Song of Songs is portrayed as a mare sent in to wreak distracting havoc among the stallions of the Egyptian army. The Torah sets strict limits to the number of horses that can be owned by a Hebrew monarch, and condemns Solomon for violating those limits.

This hostility to our equine friends is quite surprising when we bear in mind that the ancients regarded horses as an emblem of nobility.

Thus, when Ecclesiastes attempted to describe a state in which all conventions have gone topsy-turvy, he declared “I have seen servants upon horses, and princes walking as servants upon the earth.” This indeed expresses aptly the reversal of the normal social hierarchy. 

The costs of equine upkeep were sufficiently prohibitive that in ancient times the ownership of horses was usually a prerogative of the aristocratic classes. From their elevated perches, the blue-bloods could conveniently command battalions of foot-soldiers in war, and lord it over the peasants in peacetime.

As a saying in the Talmud put it: “The person on the horse is the king, the person on the donkey is a free man, the person wearing shoes is a human being, and the person who has none of these is worse than someone who is dead and buried.” 

From the rabbis’ perspective, the greatest Jewish leaders of the past should have ridden on horses. For this reason, a Talmudic tradition related that the authors of the Greek translation of the Torah had altered the sacred text, so that Moses would be described as riding a horse, in keeping with his position of leadership, rather than on a lowly donkey, which would have disgraced our greatest prophet in the eyes of foreign readers.

According to the Talmud, Balaam was ridiculed by his aristocratic colleagues because he rode a humble donkey, instead of the horse that should have conveyed a royal emissary of his stature. The pagan prophet tried to defend his dignity by declaring disingenuously that his horse happened to be in the shop (or pasture) that week. Just his luck that his donkey could talk and divulge the truth.

Jewish traditions from the Second Temple era equated the riding of horses with collaboration with the Greek or Roman enemies. Thus, at the time of the Maccabean uprising, the Hellenistic High Priest Alcimus taunted the martyred sage Yosé ben Yoezer “Look at my horse, which my Roman master has allowed me to ride!” 

A certain individual who rode a horse on the Sabbath during the days of the Greeks was executed “not because he really deserved it, but because the hour demanded such action.” The violation of the Sabbath restrictions was considered to be of a lesser severity; however the riding of a horse was seen as a dangerous betrayal of religious principles.

So obvious was it that loyal Jews would not ride horses that, according to one tradition, a group of Pharisaic rabbis, in the days of the Sadducee king Yannai, fled to Lebanon in a time of sectarian persecution, and were able to conceal their presence from hostile pagans by tying a horse to the front gate of their hiding-place. Potential assailants simply ruled out any possibility that pious Jews could have a horse parked in front of their house. 

It is probably no mere coincidence that the most notorious heretic of the Talmudic era was also one of its few Jewish horsemen. Elishah ben Abuya, who abandoned his heritage and collaborated with the Romans, rode his horse beyond the distance permitted on the Sabbath. And just so that there should no misunderstanding of his intentions, he also made a point of trotting along on the Temple Mount on a Yom Kippur that fell on the Sabbath.

The upshot of all these stories is that horses were associated with the qualities that were most antagonistic to Jewish values: oppression, arrogance and atheism. The beast was accused of every kind of obnoxious trait; including that it “enjoys promiscuity and loves war, is overbearing, hates sleep, eats much and excretes little; and some say that it try to kill its owner in battle.”

Another old adage insisted that “one who purchases a horse in the marketplace in order to ride it and flaunt himself before his fellows– is destroying his reward in this world, and abolishing the fruits of the world to come.” 

Is it any wonder that the great rabbis of the Talmud and midrash, like the prophets of Biblical days, took care to travel on more modest steeds, such as mules and donkeys?

I think that the Jews of the Canadian prairies are ideally positioned to effect a reconciliation of this tragic historic enmity. It is finally time for us to rein in all that ingrained hostility and ride off together into the sunset.

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, June 29 2000.
• For further reading:
  • Moshe Beer, “The Attitude of the Sages towards Riding Horses,” Cathedra 60 (1991): 17-35. 
  • Yehuda Feliks, Ha-hai ba-mishnah (Jerusalem: Institute for Mishna Research, 1972). 
  • L. Lewysohn, Die Zoologie des Talmuds (Frankfurt am Main: by author, 1858).
  • Marvin H. Pope, Song of Songs, ed. W. F. Albright and D. N. Freedman, The Anchor Bible (Garden City: Doubleday, 1977).

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My email address is: [email protected]

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The Vice-President of Granada

by Eliezer Segal

News Item: August 2000. Al Gore chooses Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman, a traditionally observant Jews, to be the Democratic candidate for the vice-presidency of the United States.

With the selection of Senator Joseph Lieberman as the Democratic candidate for the American Vice Presidency, a lot of rhetoric has been appearing in the news media about how radically unprecedented this development is. 

Looking at the matter from a broader historical perspective, we actually find that several traditional Jews have held similar, or higher, positions of authority.

The best-known of these figures were probably the Biblical heroes Joseph and Mordecai who served their respective monarchs with efficiency and loyalty. 

In later times, the most extraordinary Jew to hold the equivalent of a vice-presidential office was Rabbi Samuel Ibn Nagrila; and it is to his outstanding achievements that I wish to devote this article.

A native of Cordoba, Spain, Rabbi Samuel (993-1056) was forced to flee to Granada when inter-factional fighting among the local Muslim groups brought about the destruction of his birthplace. After a brief spell in business, the young refugee rose rapidly in the Granadan civil service. He attributed this success in large measure to his elegant Arabic literary style and calligraphy, which were considered the keys to advancement in the governmental hierarchy (Young readers, take note!). Samuel’s political prominence also caused him to be recognized as the official head of Granada’s large and established Jewish community, conferring upon him the Hebrew title of Nagid. 

Throughout his life, Samuel felt a special identification with the Biblical Joseph, whose personal ambition and self-assurance had been fuelled by youthful dreams. Samuel related that he too had been reassured by a prophetic dream that appeared to him in his youth, promising that he would forever be delivered from the perils of fire and water. He would have many occasions to recall that pledge in the course of the intrigues, travels and battles that would fill his life. Samuel’s writings express his constant awareness that his personal success was being guided by a divine hand.

When a dispute arose over the succession to the throne, Samuel found himself in a minority faction that supported the claims of one of the deceased king’s sons, Badis, against his brother Boluggin. As it turns out, Badis prevailed, and the new king acknowledged Samuel’s support and political acumen by appointing him Vizier, an office that was roughly the equivalent of a Vice-President or Prime Minister. In several respects, Samuel was emulating the accomplishments of Hasdai Ibn Shaprut, a Jew who, a generation earlier, had achieved prominence in the court of the Caliph Abdur-Rahman III, and had used his power to enhance Jewish learning and culture.

Unfortunately, after an initial period of active partnership with his Vizier, Badis withdrew from active politics and left the day-to-day administration almost entirely in Samuel’s hands.

Predictably, some of Samuel’s fiercest opponents came from the established Jewish community, members of which were uneasy about one of their coreligionists (and an outsider to boot!) rising to such prominence. In the most extreme displays of antagonism, they had him imprisoned, and hired thugs to assassinate one of his allies. However, Samuel had a knack for landing on his feet in times of adversity.

Samuel’s responsibilities extended to the command of the royal army, requiring him to lead his forces into battle against hostile kingdoms. This role, unprecedented among medieval Jewish leaders, was celebrated by the Nagid in a unique corpus of epic Hebrew war poems.

Throughout Samuel’s career, the Berber kingdom of Granada was involved in unceasing rivalry with the Arab kingdom of Seville. Each of these states was trying to tip the fragile balance of power in its own favour by making inroads into the smaller districts in the region, whether through alliances or conquest. The upshot of this was that Samuel was almost continually out in the battlefield at the head of the Granadan forces. In the vast majority of his campaigns he emerged victorious, but his few defeats produced some extremely close calls. Once, when he was caught in a surprise ambush, he fled on his horse across a river, evading his attackers whose own steeds were too weighed down by armour to make the crossing. On another occasion, he was actually taken prisoner by his foes, and rescued by the Granadan forces only moments before he would have been executed. 

In medieval Arab society, the political and military leaders were also expected to excel in the artistic, literary and scholarly realms. In the case of Samuel Ha-Nagid, this expressed itself in a dazzling variety of endeavours of which the most famous was his immense output of Hebrew poetry. He was, after all, a contemporary of the “Golden Age” of Spanish Jewish civilization, where great importance was attached to humanistic education. A significant feature of the social and intellectual life was the custom of gathering in salons to exchange philosophical ideas or to show off one’s latest literary masterworks (which were often improvised on the spot).

Samuel’s oeuvre encompassed all of the standard poetic themes of the time, including romance, wine, farewells, satire and more, all composed according to the demanding formal strictures of Arabic poetry, which included precise rules for scanning patterns of long and short vowels. He was the only poet in his circle who was capable of writing war poetry, based on his personal experiences in the battlefield. As a deeply religious individual, he used these poems as an opportunity to express his gratitude to the Almighty who had delivered him from the enemy armies. His positive self-image moved him on several occasions to compare himself favourably with that earlier warrior-poet King David! When dealing with more conventional themes, Samuel found frequent opportunities to dwell on the fleetingness of life and the need to enjoy whatever small pleasures the moment might offer. His personal success was diminished by the deaths of several close relatives, including his beloved brother and two of his young children.

Samuel also distinguished himself in more conventional genres of Jewish religious literature. During his childhood in Cordoba he had studied with some of Spain’s most celebrated rabbis, and he later composed his own influential works on Hebrew philology, Biblical grammar and Talmudic law. His halakhic encyclopedia, from which only fragments have survived, was considered a masterpieces of its genre. Samuel even composed a polemical work criticizing the Qur’an–something he could get away with thanks to his powerful political position. At one point in his career, he became the moving force in the appointment of a new Caliph (the Muslim equivalent of a Pope) who was to serve as a rallying point for a new political alliance of Berber tribes.

Throughout his distinguished career in the service of a gentile state, Samuel Ha-Nagid remained conscious of his Jewish spiritual roots, which he always cultivated with pride and diligence. He found time to pursue his own religious scholarship, and took an active role in the religious education of his children, even when this took the form of sending them homework assignments from the battle front. The Nagid of Grenada was always a generous supporter of Jewish scholarship and culture at home and abroad.

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, August 31 2000, pp. 10-11.
• For further reading:
  • Ashtor, Eliyahu. The Jews of Moslem Spain. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1973.
  • Margalioth, Mordecai, ed. Hilkhot Hannagid: A Collection of the Extant Halakhic Writings of R. Shmuel Hannagid. Jerusalem: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1962.
  • Scheindlin, Raymond P. Wine, women, & death : medieval Hebrew poems on the good life. 1st — ed. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1986.
  • Schirmann, Jefim. Ha-Shirah ha-‘ivrit bi-Sefarad ube-Provans. Yerushalayim: Mosad Byalik, 1960.
  • Weinberger, Leon J. Jewish Prince in Moslem Spai: Selected Poems of Samuel Ibn Nagrela. Judaic Studies. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1973.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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You Have Mail

by Eliezer Segal

The many restrictions that define the traditional Jewish Sabbath are not always to everyone’s taste. I have found, however, that there is one feature that rarely fails to impress people who have had no previous experience of Sabbath observance.

I am referring to the ability to ignore the ringing of a telephone. 

In watching an Orthodox Jew sit nonchalantly as the nudnik appliance keeps crying out for attention, we realize how enslaved we were to it during the other days of the week. Ironically, the aspects of Shabbat observance that involve non-use of electricity are, of course, modern innovations that have no clear precedents in ancient or medieval Judaism. While a virtual consensus has developed regarding the fact of the prohibition, the rabbis are not all that clear when it comes to explaining it. Nevertheless, being unplugged is probably the single most conspicuous identifier of the Biblical Day of Rest for observant Jews today.

Though earlier generations did not have to deal with the demands of the telephone, they did have to cope with written mail and with the question of whether it could be read on the Sabbath. The Talmud cites a ruling that one should not read “profane documents” on the holy day, and the later commentators were in disagreement about what kinds of documents were included in this prohibition.

Rashi initially supported a broad definition that encompassed not only commercial bills and the like, which are obviously inappropriate on the Sabbath, but also simple personal correspondence. Rashi’s students challenged his interpretation, noting that it did not reflect the widespread practice. Rabbi Isaac of Dampierre pointed out that a newly arrived letter might possibly contain urgent matters involving life-or-death issues, and hence it would be permissible to open and read it. Rashi’s grandson Rabbi Jacob Tam took this reasoning a step further, and argued that if the recipient was already familiar with the contents of the letter (for example, if it had arrived and been read earlier in the week), then there re-reading it on the Sabbath would not actually accomplish anything, and therefore cannot be defined as a act of labour that could be forbidden on the Sabbath.

As cited in the Tosafot commentary to the Talmud, the authorities make it clear that the point of their controversy is limited to correspondence, where a reasonable likelihood exists that its contents will have some measure of urgency. By no means do they consider permitting as Sabbath reading material “those war epics composed in the vernacular”–that is, works like the Chanson de Roland and other troubadour romances and tales of chivalry that were popular among the Jewish readership. In fact, the Tosafot add wryly, “Rabbi Isaac did not know who allowed them to be read on weekdays.”

In a society when most of our communications are done by means of the telephone or other electronic media, it is doubtful if most of us (other than physicians, police or other emergency workers) would consider seriously the chances that any snail-mail message might be critically urgent. Nevertheless, persistent ringing might impel some individuals to pick up the telephone receiver just in case.

A rabbi’s son once related to me such an experience, when the unceasing ringing of the telephone, into the late hours of Friday night finally persuaded his father to answer the phone on the assumption that the call was about a life-or-death emergency. 

As it turned out, at the other end of the line was a congregant who wanted the address of a Jewish publisher.

That incident was considerably more benign than the ordeals faced by students of Martin Buber. The celebrated existentialist philosopher was so hostile to the observance of religious law–which he felt to place barriers in the way of a direct I-Thou relationship with the Almighty–that he could not stomach the fact that several of his most distinguished and devoted disciples were traditionally observant Jews.

One of those students, the eminent educational philosopher Akiva Ernst Simon, had a policy of answering the telephone on the Sabbath if it rang more than fifteen times, which constituted sufficient proof for him that the matter was urgent. Unfortunately, Buber was aware of Simon’s policy, and made it his custom to periodically telephone his student on Shabbat, ringing persistently until he was answered, and then he would mockingly chastise him for answering.

Compared to the problems posed by today’s telephones and e-mails, Rashi and the other rabbis of earlier times had an easy time of it deciding whether or not to read newly arrived letters. Lacking all the distractions of our Information Age, they could find the time and concentration to produce commentaries and responsa that had truly lasting worth.

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, September 14 2000, p. 12.
• For further reading:
  • Diamond, Malcolm L. 1968. Martin Buber: Jewish Existentialist, Harper Torchbooks. New York and Evanston: Harper & Row.
  • Simon, Ernst. 1948. Martin Buber: His Way Between Thought and Deed. Jewish Frontier, February 1948, 25.
  • Simon, Ernst. 1958. Martin Buber and the Faith of Israel. Iyyun: Hebrew Philosophical Quarterly 9 (1):13-50.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Vanity, Emptiness and the Throne of Glory

by Eliezer Segal

The ‘Aleinu prayer, which is now recited at the conclusion of every Jewish prayer service, first appeared on the scene as part of the Additional Service for Rosh Hashanah. It is indeed a most appropriate text to introduce the theme of “Malkhuyyot,” the proclamation of God’s sovereignty over the entire universe. 

The unique tenor of the ‘Aleinu, full of confidence that idolatry and tyranny will imminently yield to universal acceptance of God’s dominion by all the nations of the earth, distinguishes it from the majority of rabbinic prayers, which confined their scope to the Jewish nation. 

The placement of the ‘Aleinu at the conclusion of all three daily prayer services was instituted because the medievals saw in it an expression of the highest ideals of Judaism.

The ‘Aleinu‘s triumphal tone led some medieval rabbis to ascribe it to Joshua. At any rate, the prevailing view among historical scholars sees it as the product of a time when the Temple was standing and a confident Jewish nation dwelled on its ancestral soil.

For later generations, it was more difficult to uphold their faith that humanity as a whole would come to acknowledge God’s sovereignty. The change in attitude was occasioned largely by the conversion of the Roman empire to Christianity in the fourth century. Hebrew liturgical poets who lived under the yoke of Byzantine oppression ceased hoping for a time when the world would voluntarily submit to God’s will. Their works were filled instead with apocalyptic visions in which Israel and its messiah would prevail over their irreconcilable foes, especially the evil empire of Rome. 

Like many other traditions that had their origins in ancient Palestine, the tendency to depict God’s judgment on Rosh Hashanah as an ultimate confrontation between Israel and the heathen nations was continued by the early synagogue poets of medieval Germany. This motif came to pervade many of the familiar festival prayers in the Ashkenazic rite.

In light of these developments we may readily understand how, though the ‘Aleinu‘s origins almost certainly predate the advent of Christianity, there was a widely held view in medieval Europe that it was a specifically anti-Christian text.

This accusation was directed primarily at the passage in the ‘Aleinu that speaks of heathens who “bow down to vanity and emptiness, and pray to a god who cannot save.” The Hebrew word for “and emptiness”–varik–has the same numerological value–gimatria–as “Yeshu,” which was believed to be the Hebrew name of Jesus.

In spite of the historical anachronism implied by this interpretation, it was taken very seriously by Christians and Jews alike. The influential Jewish mystical school of German Pietism (Hasidut Ashkenaz) set great store by numerological interpretations of the liturgy, and Rabbi Jacob Moellin (Maharil), the renowned authority on liturgical customs, was accustomed to spit when he pronounced varik (the word also sounds like the Hebrew word for spitting).

When the Christians (often through the agency of apostates) heard how the Jews construed the prayer, they were understandably offended, which led to the excising the offending sentence from many prayer books; though it has been reintroduced (usually in brackets) into most recent printings.

Armed with a bit of arithmetical creativity, you can prove almost anything, and it did not take long for some clever individuals to find an anti-Islamic reference in the same sentence. The full phrase “to vanity and emptiness” adds up to the numerological sum of “Jesus and Mohamet.” Unfortunately, the calculation requires some tampering with the spelling of the Muslim prophet’s name (which should end with a d, not a t), as well as the adding of a letter to the Hebrew text, so that it reads velarik instead of larik. However, such is the power of a good gimatria that the “emended” spelling was introduced into several texts of the prayer book, and was solemnly discussed by the learned commentaries of the time.

For those who insisted on a correct spelling of Muhammad’s name, an alternative gimatria was derived based on the end of the verse. The expression “to a god who cannot save” adds up to the desired sum, except that it also requires a tiny change in the Hebrew text, from “el el lo yoshia'”to “le’el lo yoshia’.” 

While the emendation involves no change at all in the meaning of the Hebrew sentence, it happens that the original formulation was based on a Biblical quotation, from Isaiah (45:20).

Some authorities, like Rabbi Judah the Pious, preferred a third version: “el lo yoshia’” (to one who does not save), in order to remove the name of God entirely from this unsavoury setting.

It did not take long for our nimble numerologists to run into an unexpected problem. The consonantal text of varik forms an anagram of the word yekaro, which means that the two words share the same gimatria. Yekaro means “his glory,” as in the clause “and the throne of his glory is in the heavens above.” 

Now, if they wanted to be consistent, then they would have to interpret this sentence as well as an allusion to Jesus, leading to implications that were far too ecumenical for any medieval Jew! 

Though we might easily brush off this word game as a mere triviality, the medieval German rabbis treated it with the utmost seriousness, and several of the most distinguished halakhic authorities of the time voiced opinions on the question. In some prayer rites, the offending sentence was deleted or replaced by synonyms with different gimatria totals. An examination of the medieval Ashkenazic prayer books and commentaries reveals that much energy and ingenuity was being devoted to the quest for new ways to say “throne of glory” without forcing the innocent Jewish worshipper to inadvertently acknowledge the divinity of Jesus.

One of the obvious lessons to be derived from this story is that we should not build too much on the capricious game of gimitria. The whole episode reminds me of the excitement that surrounded the discovery a few years ago of mathematical codes in the Bible, that supposedly proved beyond question its supernatural authorship and the authenticity of the Jewish oral tradition. All was well until the Christians began to apply the same methods, and were able to demonstrate equally irrefutable evidence that their own messiah was predicted in the numerical patterns of the Old Testament. 

However, I think there is a more significant moral to be learned: namely, that our prayers should be more concerned with our own relationships with the Almighty, and less with passing judgment upon the followers of other faiths.

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, September 28, 2000, pp. 10-11.
• For further reading:
  • Elbaum, Yaaqov. 1972-3. Concerning Two Textual Emendations in the ‘Aleinu Prayer. Tarbiz 42: 204-8.
  • Sperber, Daniel. 1994. Minhagei Yisra’el. Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook.
  • Wieder, Naphtali. 1998. Regarding an Anti-Christian and Anti-Muslim Gematria (in the ‘Alenu le-shabeah“) prayer). Sinai 76: 1-14.
  • Yahalom, Joseph. 1999. Poetry and Society in Jewish Galilee of Late Antiquity. Edited by M. Ayali, Helal ben-Hayyim Library. Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Come Gather ‘Round People

by Eliezer Segal

Among the holidays of the Hebrew calendar, Sukkot has been endowed with more than its share of rituals and ceremonies. We are all familiar with its rustic booths, the lulav and etrog, and with the solemn Hoshana processions around the synagogue. 

There is however a momentous biblical precept associated with Sukkot that has been largely forgotten. This ceremony, known as the Hakhel [“gather together”], is described in the book of Deuteronomy:

At the end of seven years, in the solemnity of the year of release, in the feast of tabernacles. When all Israel is come to appear before the Lord thy God in the place which he shall choose, thou shalt read this law before all Israel in their hearing. Gather the people together, men, and women, and children, and thy stranger that is within thy gates, that they may hear, and that they may learn, and fear the Lord your God, and observe to do all the words of this law.

Though the Torah seems to be ordaining the ceremony for the septennial Sabbatical year, the Jewish oral tradition understood that it was to take place at the beginning of the eighth year, that is to say, in the year following the sabbatical.

As for the date upon which the Hakhel should be convened, rabbinic sources confront us with an array of contradictory and confusing traditions about which of the eight days of Sukkot the Torah had in mind. The Babylonian Talmud understood that it should be on the second day (that is, the first day of Hol ha-Mo’ed), and this interpretation has been accepted as normative. However, according to accurate manuscripts of the Mishnah, the ceremony actually took place after the completion of the festival, on the night following Sh’mini Atzeret or the following day, when the full complement of pilgrims were assembled in Jerusalem and had not yet begun their homeward journeys. The gathering was attended by men, women and children alike.

The prevailing tradition declared that it was the king who should read the Torah to the people, and tells of one such ceremony in which king Agrippa did the reading. A special platform was constructed for the occasion and trumpets were sounded. The pageantry was heightened as the Torah scroll was passed around among the various Temple officials until the High Priest handed it to the monarch. On this occasion, Agrippa was so moved by the scriptural reading that he began to weep and to question his own right to the throne of Israel, since he was descended from the Herodian line of Idumean converts. The people cried out “Do not fear, Agrippa! You are our brother, you are our brother.”

It would be reasonable to expect that the practice of Hakhel would cease with the loss of Jewish sovereignty and the destruction of Jerusalem. And yet we find that aspects of the Hakhel continued to be observed even when the Temple lay in ruins. Thus, there is evidence that it was carried out in the academy of Yavneh, the main centre of Jewish spiritual leadership in the generation following the fall of Jerusalem. The rabbis of the time transferred to their own institutions, such as the courts, synagogues and academies, several of the functions that had hitherto been the prerogatives of the Temple and its priesthood. 

It is probable that the ideal of the Hakhel also played a crucial role in shaping the rhythms of the Torah reading in the Land of Israel. 

It has long been recognized that the Jews in the Holy Land, during the talmudic and early medieval eras, divided the weekly readings from the Torah according to the “triennial cycle.” In actuality, the complete reading of the Torah was completed over a span of three and one half years. Recent scholarship has argued persuasively that this system was designed so that two cycles could be completed in exactly seven years. It was at the conclusion of this double cycle that a “Simhat Torah” would be celebrated on the date that coincided with the Biblical Hakhel gathering. When the Babylonian Jews introduced their own one-year Torah-reading cycle, they also arranged it so that it would conclude and recommence at the end of Sukkot, the date on which we still celebrate Simhat Torah. 

Even during the Middle Ages the Hakhel did not cease. The observance of a Hakhel ceremony with great pomp and ceremony was attested as late as the eleventh century. At this time, the Jewish presence in Jerusalem was enjoying a revival such as it had not known since the days of the Second Temple, and the holy city again played host to the rabbinical academy of the Land of Israel. 

When the Muslims liberated Jerusalem from the Byzantine Christians, the Jewish community was quick to purchase rights to the Mount of Olives. The Biblical character of Sukkot as a time of pilgrimage was reinstated, as Jews from around the world flocked to their capital, a development that helped fortify the ties between Israel and the diaspora communities. 

Documents from this time describe a solemn gathering that was convened on the Mount of Olives at the end of Sukkot. To the accompaniment of song, the pilgrims would march around the gates of Jerusalem and then proceed to the Mount of Olives for prayer. The occasion was also used to issue official proclamations regarding rabbinical appointments, the religious calendar (at a time when Palestinian Jewry was reclaiming its ancient prerogative over the determining of the sacred calendar) and other matters of public interest. Elaborate prayers were recited for the welfare of the academy’s benefactors, even as grave maledictions were directed at the Karaite heretics. The imposing proportions of the event were not lost on Christian and Muslim chroniclers who describe it with great interest.

It is difficult not to be amazed by the sheer tenacity of this ancient rite, and by our ancestors’ determination to keep it alive for so long after the destruction of the Temple. Though there are many possible reasons for the phenomenon, I feel that much of the Hakhel gathering’s attraction stemmed from the way in which it gave tangible expression to that most evasive of ideals: the unity of the Jewish people.

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, October 19, 2000, p. 10.
• For further reading:
  • Gil, Moshe. 1983. Palestine during the First Muslim Period (634-1099). Edited by S. Simonsohn. Vol. 1, Publications of the Diaspora Research Institute. Tel-Aviv: Tel-Aviv University Press and the MInistry of Defense Publishing House.
  • Henshke, David. 1992. When is the Time of Hakhel?. Tarbiz 61 (2):177-94.
  • Naeh, Shlomoh. 1998. The Torah Reading Cycle in Early Palestine: A Re-Examination. Tarbiz 67 (2):167-87.
  • Zevin, S. Z., ed. 1961-. Talmudic Encyclopedia. Jerusalem: Talmudic Encyclopedia Institute.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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BC-BCE Shuffle a Distinction of Note

by Eliezer Segal

Recent editorials and op-ed pieces in the Herald have had a field day ridiculing the Royal Ontario Museum’s use of the abbreviations BCE (Before the Common/Christian Era) and CE (Common/Christian Era) as replacements for the venerable BC and AD. The various authors lumped this phenomenon together, as instances of idiotic secularist Political Correctness, comparable to Toronto’s attempt to divest the fir tree of its association with Christmas, or the Canadian Mint’s seasonal adverting campaign about “the twelve days of giving.”

I confess that, from my own perspectives as an academic scholar of religion and as a traditional Jew, what surprised me most about the whole BC-BCE affair was the assumption in the Alberta press that this terminology is a new development that could be equated with militant manifestations of anti-Christianity. 

Just to be sure, I pulled out a random sampling of Canadian, British and American undergraduate textbooks from my shelves, works that were published over at least two decades, and darned if I was able to find a single volume that still employs the old BC-AD nomenclature! In fact, the Oxford Dictionary cites examples of BCE-CE going back to 1881.  

Admittedly, most people do not have frequent occasion to make such distinctions on their day-timers; nevertheless, it is very startling that the news has taken so long to reach Alberta.

In my own adult life, I don’t think I have ever been called upon to use the BC-AD system, and I would certainly have put up stiff resistance to any such a move.

Take note that mine is not the stereotyped voice of the militant secularist Christian-baiter. I personally delight in the pious decorating of Christian trees in public squares, provided that similar opportunities are extended to the symbols of other religious communities. I am likewise offended by the Canadian Mint’s ignorance in suggesting that Hanukkah (or, for that matter, Ramadan) can be characterized as “twelve days of giving.”

But this is not the issue here. 

While I rejoice in the right of Buddhists, Christians, Hindus or Muslims to celebrate their observances in an authentic manner, I refuse (as have several generations of my coreligionists) to be coerced into using a dating system that requires me to proclaim somebody else’s faith.

The BC-AD usage is by no means a theologically neutral or “civil” usage. Whether or not they are aware of the fact, all those who use that system are declaring themselves Christian believers.  

Although pious Victorian novelists are reported to have composed historical fictions about “the Christ family,” the  fact is that “Christos” is not a proper name, but a profoundly theological title. It means “anointed” and is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word Mashiah. For Christians, the term has well-known connotations of a redeemer or divinity; and it is impossible to use the term accurately without buying into that alien doctrine. 

Sorry, folks, but we Jews, along with the members of other religious communities that inhabit the Canadian multicultural mosaic, do not accept that particular article of Christian faith, and we refuse to use language that violates the sancta of our beliefs.

The problem becomes even more blatant with respect to the second abbreviation. AD stands for the Latin Anno Domini: in the year of the lord. Clearly, the “lord” in this expression is Jesus, and every time the expression is used, one is implicitly accepting Jesus as one’s lord. 

Again, with all due respect, we non-Christians must beg to remove ourselves from that archaic civic consensus, and we would prefer not to be branded as intolerant extremists when we choose to do so.

“Pedantic nitpicking,” I can already here people retorting. “Who really pays attention to the literal meaning of every word and letter!” 

Well, perhaps I am a mere fossil from an antiquated civilization that took its words seriously and equated bad grammar with sloppy thinking. I trust, however, that I am not alone in my conviction that inattention to the implications of our words is an important factor in our current social, moral and political malaise. 

In this Sysiphian struggle for linguistic and conceptual precision, I believe that we are justified in expecting support, not mockery, from the esteemed members of the Fourth Estate.

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• First Publication:
  • The Calgary Herald, December 28, 2002, p. OS10.

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My e-mail address is [email protected]

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Thou Shalt Not Murder

by Eliezer Segal

Those of us who are familiar with the original Hebrew text of the Bible find frequent occasion to whine about inaccuracies and misleading expressions in the translations that are in use among non-Jews. Many of these discrepancies arose out of patently theological motives, as Christian interpreters rewrote passages in the “Old Testament” so as to turn them into predictions or prefigurations of the life of Jesus. Some of the mistranslations, though, are harder to account for.

For me, one of the most irksome cases has always been the rendering of the sixth commandment as “Thou shalt not kill.” In this form, the quote has been conscripted into the service of diverse causes, including those of pacifism, animal rights, the opposition to capital punishment, and the anti-abortion movement.

Indeed, “kill” in English is an all-encompassing verb that covers the taking of life in all forms and for all classes of victims. That kind of generalization is expressed in Hebrew through the verb “harag.” However, the verb that appears in the Torah’s prohibition is a completely different one, “ ratsah” which, it would seem, should be rendered “murder.” This root refers only to criminal acts of killing.

It is, of course, not just a question of etymology. Those ideologies that adduce the commandment in support of their gentle-hearted causes are compelled to feign ignorance of all those other places in the Bible that condone or command warfare, the slaughter of sacrificial animals, and an assortment of methods for inflicting capital punishment. 

The good old King James version of the Bible, which introduced this formulation into standard English discourse, is usually much more accurate in its Hebrew scholarship, and I have wondered for many years how the erudite scholars who produced that fine translation managed to slip up on such a simple expression, one that would have been caught by any Jewish schoolchild.

It turns out that the confusion did not originate with that seventeenth-century English translation. From the writings of Jewish exegetes who lived in medieval France, we learn that the gentiles in their environment were also translating the biblical prohibition incorrectly.

For example, two of the most eminent commentators of the time, Rabbi Samuel ben Meir (Rashbam) and Rabbi Joseph Bekhor-Shor, felt the need to go on at uncharacteristic length in order to explain that the Hebrew text refers only to unlawful killing. Both these scholars pointed out plainly the differences between the Hebrew roots for killing and murdering (for good measure, Bekhor Shor even provides a French translation of the latter term: meurtre), and brought ample evidence of the Torah’s condoning other types of killing.

Rashbam concludes his discussion of the topic with the following words:

And this is a refutation of the heretics, and they have conceded the point to me. Even though their own books state “I kill, and I make alive” (in Deuteronomy 32:39) –using the same Latin root as for “thou shalt not murder”–they are not being precise.

From the words of these French Jewish scholars, we learn that the “thou shalt not kill” translation stems from the Latin Bible translation that was in use in the medieval Roman Catholic church. Indeed, the Vulgate (as that translation is designated) employs the Latin verb occidere which has the sense of “kill” rather than “murder.” By demonstrating that the Vulgate itself employed the root occidere in Deuteronomy, when the Almighty himself is speaking of his own power over the lives of his creatures–in a context where it cannot conceivably be rendered as “murder”–Rashbam aggressively proved the error of the traditional Christian understanding of the sixth commandment. It is not surprising, therefore, to hear that his Christian interlocutors acknowledged their error without a fight.

This still raises some difficult questions about the Latin Vulgate translation. The author of that translation, Saint Jerome (died in 420), spent much of his career in the Land of Israel, where he consulted frequently with Jewish scholars whose interpretations he often cites with great respect. Even the Septuagint, the old Greek translation of the Bible, translated the commandment with a word that means “murder” rather than “kill.” St. Augustine, basing himself on the standard translations, made it clear that the commandment does not extend to wars or capital punishment that are explicitly ordained by God.

The fact remains, however, that even the Jewish translators were not unanimous in maintaining a consistent distinctions between the various Hebrew roots. 

Don Isaac Abravanel and others noted that ratsah is employed in Numbers 35:27-30 both when dealing with an authorized case of blood vengeance, and with capital punishment–neither of which falls under the legal category of murder.

In fact, some distinguished Jewish philosophers believed that “thou shalt not kill” is a perfectly accurate rendering of the sixth commandment. Maimonides, for example, wrote that all cases of killing human beings involve violations of the command, even if the violation happens to be overridden by other mitigating factors. It has been suggested that this tradition underlies the virtual elimination of capital punishment in Rabbinic law.

Viewed from this perspective, we may appreciate that the translation “thou shalt not kill” was not the result of simple ignorance on the side of Jerome or the King James English translators. Rather, it reflects their legitimate determination to reflect accurately the broader range of meanings of the Hebrew root.

As usual, careful study teaches us that what initially appeared ridiculously obvious is really much more complex than it seemed at first glance. We should be very cautious before passing hasty judgement on apparent bloopers.

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, October 19, 2000, p. 8.
• For further reading:
  • Blidstein, Gerald J. “Capital Punishment–The Classic Jewish Discussion.” Judaism 14, no. 2 (1965): 159-71.
  • Lockshin, Martin I., ed. 1997. Rashbam’s Commentary on Exodus: an Annotated Translation, Brown Judaic. Atlanta: Scholars Press.
  • Segal, Ben-Tsiyon. 1990. The Ten Commandments in History and Tradition. Translated by Gershom Levi, Publications of the Perry Foundation for Biblical Research, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Jerusalem: Magnes.

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German translation as: “Du sollst nicht morden …” in Jüdische Allgemeine, November 9, 2006.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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