Assideans for Everyone

by Eliezer Segal

It was the Hasmonean family under the leadership Judah Maccabee, who succeeded in removing the yoke of Greek oppression and purifying the defiled Temple in Jerusalem.

However, they were not the first group to take up arms against Antiochus and the Hellenizers in defense of Jewish tradition.

According to the Books of Maccabees, there had been a prior attempt at Jewish resistance, spearheaded by a group called the “Assideans.” There is no doubt that this term, which is preserved only in Greek transliteration, reflects the original Hebrew word Hassidim, “pious ones.” Although the Hassidim fought fiercely for their cause, and were successful in their initial campaigns, the Greeks soon discovered their Achilles heel: As long as the devout freedom-fighters refused to wage war on the Sabbath, they were setting themselves up as easy targets, and their ranks were soon decimated by a series of Saturday massacres. 

The turning point in the Hanukkah story occurred when Mattathias the Hasmonean ruled that it was permissible to wage defensive warfare on Shabbat. Once Mattathias and his sons had taken charge of the military campaign, the remaining loyalist forces joined the Hasmonean resistance, and little was heard afterwards from the Assideans as a separate group.

It is widely believed that the biblical book of Daniel was composed by these Assideans. Although the book is ostensibly relating stories that occurred centuries earlier, in the Babylonian courts of Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar, it reflects the historical situation and Jewish religious values at the time of the Hellenistic persecutions. 

Employing a bizarre symbolic language of dreams and mythic beasts, Daniel tells of a supremely evil empire that will arise and oppress God’s faithful. So invincible will this empire be that it can be brought low only through direct intervention by the Almighty himself, and not by any human agency. When God finally steps in to take an active part in the course of history, he will bring to a climax the succession of wicked kingdoms, and thereby initiate a radical new age in which humans will finally live in accordance with God’s will.

The themes described here express eloquently what must have been the dominant mood among the Jewish faithful during the early stages of the Hanukkah story. The Hellenizing traitors seemed invincible, and there was no suggestion that their successes would ever cease; while the laws of the Torah were being trampled with impunity. 

The author of Daniel provided assurances to his beleaguered readers that God would not allow this situation to continue perpetually. The tables would soon be turned, and those who maintained their faith under adversity would eventually be vindicated when God exacted vengeance on the sinners.

The historical records tell us almost nothing about the Assideans as a religious movement, other than the basic facts of their struggle against Hellenists and the unfortunate consequences of their strict Sabbath observance. They seem to have maintained some measure of distinct identity even after joining up with the Maccabean forces. At a later stage in the events, they fell victim to another unfortunate policy choice when (unlike Judah Maccabee) they consented to acknowledge the authority of the Hellenizing Jewish High Priest Alcimus. The latter returned the favour by slaughtering sixty of the Hassidim.

As often occurs in scholarship, the scarcity of solid facts serves as an open invitation to later generations to flesh out the details with hefty doses of imagination and ideological bias. In surveying the last two centuries of historiographic writing, one is overwhelmed by the confidence with which writers were able to describe the beliefs and values of the enigmatic movement of the Pious.

For several traditional Jewish historians, it was obvious that the ancient Hassidim were the forerunners of the type of Judaism that would later be known as Rabbinic. Some writers go so far as to identify by name the movement’s founder: Simeon the Just, one of the earliest known names in the chain of transmitters of the Oral Torah. Proponents of this view drew support from the fact that the Talmud makes occasional references to a group that it calls “Hassidim of early times.” Another obscure figure from the Mishnah, Yosé ben Jo’ezer of Seredah, is designated a Hassid, and a tradition recorded in the Midrash includes him among the victims of Alcimus’ treachery.

A markedly different picture emerges from the writings of some secular Jewish scholars. One of the most distinguished historians of the Hellenistic era asserted with unwavering certainty that the Hassideans should be seen not merely as defenders of ancestral religious traditions, but as the champion of socio-economic class interests. 

According to this view, the revolt against the Greeks was nothing less than a Marxist class struggle, with the pious Hassideans representing the interests of the urban populace of Jerusalem, including craftsmen, workers and petty traders. As one historian put it: “The law of Moses’Ķ became the war-cry of the masses, just as Greek culture was the watchword of the aristocracy. When the urban plebs took up arms to oppose the Hellenizing government with force, it was natural that the Hasidim’Ķshould be the popular directors and leaders of the insurrection.”

What a convenient coincidence that those ancient pietists, as depicted by these historians, were motivated by the same socialist ideology that guided the Labour-Zionist pioneers of the twentieth century!

In much recent scholarship, the view has taken hold that the Hassideans were an ascetic, non-violent group who later evolved into the Essene movement that withdrew from Jerusalem to pursue a life of spiritual purity in the Judean desert. This reconstruction has been copied so often from writer to writer that it seems to have achieved the status of confirmed fact.

What is exasperating about this claim is not simply that it lacks documentary corroboration. In actuality, it utterly contradicts the few facts that are known about the Hassideans. After all, they were mentioned chiefly as a military group who waged a war (albeit an unsuccessful one) against the Hellenizing forces! The Book of Maccabees speaks of them as “mighty men in Israel,” and it requires some chutzpah to interpret this expression as an allusion to spiritual prowess. Only an obstinate disregard for the sources would allow then to be portrayed as non-violent ascetics.

It would appear that this audacious twist of scholarly fantasy is symptomatic of a more general pattern among historical writers. It reflects the desperate quest of Christians to uncover roots of their faith in earlier forms of Judaism. After working so hard to dissociate themselves from the “arid legalism” of Pharisaic and Rabbinic religion, they turned their attention to less prominent sects of the Second Jewish Commonwealth. 

On the whole, this scholarly enterprise led to far-reaching misrepresentations of the Essenes, the Hassidim, the Pharisees, and for that matter, the early Christians.

When all is said and done, what is most extraordinary about this episode is the inexplicable attraction that the ancient Assideans have continued to exert upon later generations. In their own time, it is true, they were pushed to the sidelines of history, defeated by their enemies and superceded by the Hasmoneans. 

Nevertheless, recent generations have been competing vigorously to claim them as their spiritual ancestors.

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, December 7, 2001, pp. 22-4.
• For further reading:
  • Finkelstein, Louis. The Pharisees, the Sociological Background of their Faith. 3rd ed, Morris Loeb series. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1962..
  • Sandmel, Samuel. Judaism and Christian Beginnings. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.
  • Tcherikover, Victor, 1959, Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews, First ed, Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America.
  • Vermès, Géza, 1956, Discovery in the Judean Desert, New York: Desclee
  • —, 1995, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English, London: Penguin

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Hiwi the Heretic

by Eliezer Segal

News Item:October 2001. An international force led by the United States begins military strikes against the Taleban regime in Afghanistan as part of a campaign to root out the terrorist forces who attacked American targets on September 11 2001.

Recent events have taught us more than we may have wanted to know about obscure locations in the bleak terrain of Afghanistan with names like Mazar e-Sharif and Kanduz.

Even without entering into the controversial theories that identify certain Afghan tribes with the “ten lost tribes” of Israel, there can be no denying that Jewish communities existed in Afghanistan for many centuries.

During the medieval era, the region was known as Khorasan, and it is mentioned in many Jewish documents as a place of habitation and as a station on the lucrative trade routes to the Orient. 

I wish to focus here on one particular area in Khorasan, a place known as Balkh, which was recently   mentioned in the news as the scene of a major surrender of Taliban fighters. The city of Balkh was known in ancient times as Bactria íŸÏ a glorious metropolis destroyed by Genghis Khan in the thirteenth century, and rebuilt in the fifteenth century by the Turkic ruler Timur. 

This territory was also home to one of Judaism’s most radical and enigmatic heretics.

The name of Hiwi (or more correctly: Hayawaihi) al-Balkhi shows up, usually qualified by caustic insults and maledictions, in the writings of several prominent Jewish biblical commentators, including Sa’adia Ga’on and Abraham Ibn Ezra. 

Hiwi, who lived in the early   ninth century, is one of the earliest Jewish scholars that we know of from the post-talmudic era. None of Hiwi’s works have survived intact, and therefore modern scholars have been compelled to reconstruct the personality of this mysterious author on the basis of the derogatory remarks of his antagonists.. 

Sa’adia Ga’on devoted a special treatise to refuting Hiwi’s unorthodox views, and a few fragments of that work have survived.

What was it about this obscure Afghan Jew that aroused the indignation of so many distinguished rabbis and scholars? 

To judge from the few remaining samples of his two hundred (!) objections to the Bible, Hiwi was neither a profound intellect nor a systematic philosopher. Rather, he often strikes us as a prototypical village atheist taking pot-shots at easy targets in the Bible.

A favourite stratagem of his was to call into question the miracles of the Torah. 

For example, he argued that the parting of the Red Sea was a natural phenomenon, and that Moses’ claim to greatness lay merely in his ability to calculate the right moment for the crossing. Hiwi provided similar naturalistic explanations for the mannah and the radiance of Moses’ face (the latter he wrote off as “wrinkling,” not “shining”). He also emphasized that the Egyptian magicians were able to reproduce several of Moses’ “miracles,” proving that they could not have been so unique.

Several of Hiwi’s criticisms were directed at what he felt were philosophically primitive notions of God’s power. Why should an omniscient deity have to “test” Abraham? Why does God have to walk through the Garden of Eden calling out in search of Adam? Why does he have to be fed on sacrificial meat?

Hiwi was also quick to point out inconsistencies in the meting out of divine justice. Were the people of Sodom and Gomorrah really more evil than many other wicked figures in the Bible? Why can God not safeguard the righteous from natural or human injury?

Historians have attempted unsuccessfully to find a theological foundation that would account for Hiwi’s critique of the Hebrew scriptures. Unfortunately, such efforts are usually obstructed by Hiwi’s methodological inconsistencies. In some places, he bases his criticism on the literal meaning of a verse, but in others he is tacitly accepting the midrashic interpretation. Sometimes he seems to be championing a more refined monotheism, while elsewhere he seems to be supporting a trinitarian reading of the text.

Several scholars have pointed out that Hiwi’s objections to the depictions of God in the Bible seem to be reworkings of arguments that appeared earlier in inter-religious polemical literature. In the hands of the ancient Gnostic Christian sect, these criticisms were used to prove that the God of the “Old Testament,” is an inferior deity who dwells in darkness and ignorance. In the hands of the dualistic Manicheans and Zoroastrians (the founder of whose religion had actually been born in Balkh), the same proof-texts were cited in order to identify the God of Israel as a power of absolute evil.

From all the above examples there emerges a classic image of a self-hating Jew who has accepted the anti-Jewish accusations of rival religious movements. Viewed this way, it is not hard to understand the disdain with which he was treated by Sa’adia or Ibn Ezra. 

In spite of all his shortcomings, our Afghan Jewish heretic may nevertheless lay claim to some more constructive contributions to Jewish culture.

It was only in recent decades that it became possible, by comparing a five-word quote preserved in a work by a Karaite author with a manuscript fragment in the Cairo Genizah, to restore about a dozen lines from Hiwi’s original words.

This modest snippet of text is enough to reveal some unappreciated aspects of Hiwi’s achievement. Most importantly, we can now recognize that Hiwi was a talented Hebrew poet, the earliest known writer to compose Hebrew verse for use outside the synagogue liturgy. Hiwi can also be credited as a pioneer in adapting the sacred tongue to the needs of rationalistic discourse. Many other Jewish philosophers were convinced that Hebrew was unsuited to that task, and elected to publish their works in Arabic. Hiwi had the ingenuity and boldness to harness the holy tongue to this formidable task.

In these respects, Hiwi may be compared to those exponents of Enlightenment ideologies in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe who, in spite of their declared discomfort with traditional Jewish values, became so enamored of their ancestral language that they ended up laying the foundations for a renaissance of Hebrew letters that would one day play a pivotal part in the Jewish national revival.

So too with the enigmatic personality of Hiwi of Balkh– even when he was attempting to disparage or ridicule the sacred scriptures, he did so as a Jew, and in the language of his people.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, December 20 2001, pp. 10-11.
• For further reading:
  • Baron, Salo Wittmayer. A Social and Religious History of the Jews. 2d ed. 19 vols. Vol. 6. New York: Columbia University Press, 1958.
  • Gil, Moshe. Hivi Ha-Balkhi Ha-Kofer Me-Horasan,  Ketavim. Merhaviah: Sifriyyat Po’alim, 1965. 
  • Davidson, Israel, ed. Saadia’s Polemic against Hiwi Al-Balkhi: A Fragment Edited from a Genizah Ms,  Texts and Studies of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1915. 
  • Fleischer, Ezra. “A Fragment from Hivi Al-Balkhi’s Criticism of the Bible.” Tarbiz 51, no. 1 (1981): 49-57.
  • Guttmann, J. “The Sources of Hiwi Al-Balkhi.” In Alexander Marx Jubilee Volume, edited by Saul Lieberman, 95-202. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1950. 
  • Malter, Henry. Saadia Gaon: His Life and Works,  Morris Loeb Series. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1921.
  • Rosenthal, J. “Hiwi Al-Balkhi: A Comparative Study.” Jewish Quarterly Review 38; 39 (1947-48; 1948-49): 317-42, 419-30; 79-94.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Renewable Resource

by Eliezer Segal

Even in a land like Canada that is blessed with abundant, and apparently limitless, forests, we have come to appreciate what a precious commodity a tree can be. The Torah commanded that even in time of war, it is forbidden to destroy a fruit-tree in order to build bulwarks against a besieged city.

The rabbis of the Talmud projected some of their own concerns for forestation back to the heroes of the Bible.

For example, in setting out the construction procedures for the Tabernacle, the Torah stipulates that much of the structure had to be fashioned from wooden boards. The midrashic sages considered it quite surprising that so much lumber should have been available in the wastes of Sinai. They therefore inferred that the wood supply had been prepared far in advance, even before the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt.

The credit for such foresight was assigned to the patriarch Jacob. When Jacob embarked on his journey to join Joseph in Egypt, his prophetic vision and ancestral faith made him confident that his children would one day be redeemed from their exile, and that they would be commanded to build a sanctuary in which to worship the Almighty. 

Knowing how scarce timber is in the desert, Jacob took care to have his sons plant trees right away, so that they would be available centuries later when the need arose. 

The rabbis found confirmation for this story in the wording of Exodus 25:15, where God commands “you shall make the boards for the tabernacle of acacia wood standing.” The apparently redundant word “standing” was understood as an allusion to the fact that the trees from which the boards were cut had been standing there in advance. 

Some midrashic traditions extolled the miraculous nature of these trees. For example, they applied to them the words of the Psalmist “then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice,” implying that they burst into song when they were built into the tabernacle.

It should be noted that not all the rabbis took such an ecologically sensitive view of the origins the tabernacle trees. An alternative midrashic tradition links the story to a different episode in Jacob’s life, an unexpected detour that the patriarch made on his route to join Joseph in Egypt.

According to the Torah, Jacob first stopped off in Beersheba to offer sacrifices and to commune with his Creator. Rav Nahman claimed that Jacob also took advantage of the opportunity to cut down the tamarisk trees that Grandpa Abraham had planted there years before. It was these trees that Jacob set aside to be used for the tabernacle.

At any rate, these traditions make the point that if trees are to be perceived as a renewable resource, we must view the matter over a broad time-span, since the growth of a tree is likely to last several lifetimes. Unfortunately, not all people are capable of seeing beyond the immediate present. 

An object lesson in the virtues of investing in future generations may be found in the story of the miracle-worker Honi ha-Me’aggel.

Honi was once walking along the road when he encountered a man who was planting a carob tree. This struck Honi as an absurdly futile act. It takes a carob seventy years to mature, and the planter would not live to enjoy the fruits of his labour.

Upon hearing Honi’s low opinion of his efforts, the man replied simply “I found a world containing a carob tree. Just as my ancestors planted trees for my benefit, so shall I plant trees for the benefit of my descendants.”

The tale goes on to describe how Honi sat down to eat his lunch, lay down to nap, and dozed off…for seventy years.

When he finally awoke, he saw before him a man gathering fruit from a full-grown carob tree. Eventually, it was established that Honi was conversing with the grandson of the person who had originally planted the tree. 

Though Honi’s experience had evidently instilled in him an appreciation of how important it is to provide for the needs of future generations, his own end was a tragic one. 

The brave new world in which he now found himself had no place for what it saw as a delusional old man who claimed to be the legendary Honi Ha-Me’aggel. Thrown into depression, he prayed for a quick death, and his wish was mercifully granted.

The sad case of Honi Ha-Me’aggel contains a large dose of poetic justice. Because his horizons were too limited to recognize his responsibilities to posterity, he was doomed to live in a bleak and inhospitable future.

Honi’s tragic flaw was symbolized by his failure to appreciate the importance of planting a simple carob tree.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, January 24 2002, p. 10.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Remembering Harbona: for Good or for Bad?

by Eliezer Segal

At the conclusion of the Megillah reading, it is customary to read a Hebrew poem that celebrates the victory of the Jews over their adversaries. Following this, several benedictions and brickbats are musically distributed to the heroes and villains of the story: Blessings are heaped upon Mordecai and Esther, while Haman and his wife Zeresh are singled out for malediction.

And as an anticlimax, the song concludes: “And Harbona too should be remembered for good.”

Now, Harbona was hardly the most memorable figure in the Megillah. Altogether, he makes two brief walk-on appearances. The first time, he is mentioned as one of the seven chamberlains who advised Ahasuerus to exhibit Vashti before the guests at the royal banquet. Then, after Esther has pointed the accusing finger at Haman, it is Harbona who volunteers the information about the incriminating gallows that the villain has erected in his house; laying the groundwork for Haman to be hoisted on his own petard.

Considering how minor a character he is, it is quite surprising that he is given star billing in the closing credits, right up there beside Esther and Mordecai. 

What is even more surprising is that the Babylonian Talmud had some very derogatory things to say about Harbona’s apparent support for the good guys. According to Rabbi Hama bar Hanina, Harbona was initially a wicked collaborator in Haman’s conspiracy. and only switched sides at the very last minute, when it was already evident that their plot was doomed to failure. His decision to turn Crown Witness was, according to Rabbi Hama, nothing more than the desperate act of an opportunist, and not an expression of sympathy for the persecuted Jews.

Some of the traditional commentators were troubled by Rabbi Hama’s readiness to cast aspersions on Harbona’s character, seeing that the Bible itself offers no indication that the chamberlain was motivated by anything other than virtue and honesty. They scoured the text of the Megillah for clues that might point to his nefarious intentions.

Rabbi Samuel Eidels (the Maharsha) found just such a clue in the way that Harbona is identified as a servant of the king when he makes his first appearance, but not later on in the story. Perhaps, suggests Rabbi Eidels, this indicates that Harbona had shifted his allegiance in the interval from the king to Haman.

In a similar vain, Rabbi Josiah Pinto pointed out that the biblical text is very careful to state that Harbona made his accusation of Haman “before the king” –as if to imply that prior to that point his words had not been addressed to the king, but to Haman. 

Rabbi Solomon Alkabetz draws our attention to a tiny inconsistency in the way Harbona’s name is spelled in the two places where it is mentioned. The first time, it ends with an alef and the second time with a he. This, he concludes, must have been the author’s subtle way of teaching us that Harbona had undergone a change of heart during the course of the narrative.

These negative evaluations of Harbona’s character and motives do not help to explain why our traditional liturgy is so willing to bestow blessings upon him.

It would appear that not all the ancient Jewish sages were in agreement with Rabbi Hama bar Hanina’s disparaging view of Harbona. Our current practice follows the ruling of a certain Rabbi Pinhas in the Jerusalem Talmud who stated “one must say: Harbona of blessed memory.” 

Rabbi Pinhas’s statement appears in several midrashic and halakhic works that were composed in the Land of Israel, and seems to reflect the prevailing view there, As was the case with many ancient Israeli customs, this one too became the normative practice among the Jews of medieval France and Germany.

According to one midrashic tradition, the person who told Ahasuerus about Haman’s gallows was actually Elijah the prophet, who had impersonated Harbona for the occasion! This audacious interpretation may have been suggested by Rabbi Pinhas’s use of the expression “of blessed memory” [zakhur le-tov], which is frequently reserved for Elijah. 

Even so, when we compare the texts of old prayer-books and halakhic compendia, we come to appreciate that they are divided on the question of whether or not to include the blessing for Harbona at the end of the Megillah reading. 

In spite of all the ingenious textual tricks that the commentators were able to utilize in support of the midrashic interpretations, my personal suspicion is that Rabbis Hama and Pinhas might have been reading Harbona’s personality in the light of their own experiences and values. For reasons that were rooted in his previous encounters with the gentile world, Rabbi Hama may have developed a strong scepticism when it came to friendly gestures by pagans, which led him to denigrate Harbona’s contributions to the Jewish cause.

An opinion in the Talmud expresses a similar assessment of another ostensible act of kindness by a non-Jew, in the episode when the insomniac Ahasuerus asks his servants whether Mordecai was ever rewarded for his service to the king. The servants are quick to point out that Mordecai never received a proper token of royal appreciation. 

In connection with this detail, the Talmud quips “It was not that they loved Mordecai, but rather because they despised Haman.” Here too, the commentators scurried to find textual clues that would justify such a negative assessment of ostensibly altruistic behaviour. Most of these attempts, like Rabbi Alkabetz’s declaration that “it is the normal practice of the righteous to judge the wicked unfavourably,” are not quite convincing. Here too, rather than responding to some textual stimulus in the biblical story, it seems more likely that the sages in question were expressing their personal cynicism about the benevolence of heathens. 

On the other hand, Rabbi Pinhas appears to have taken a more pragmatic approach to such situations. In his view, one should never be overly dismissive of one’s allies, even in cases when their motives are not entirely pure and their support of your cause springs from ulterior considerations. In the end, it is better to have such people in your camp than on the opposite side.

From this perspective, even an opportunistic Harbona should be remembered for good.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, February 7 2002, pp. 10-11.
• For further reading:
  • Ginzberg, Louis, 1967, The Legends of the Jews, translated by H. Szold, Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America
  • Grossfeld, Bernard, ed. 1991, The Two Targums of Esther, edited by M. M. e. al., The Aramaic Bible: The Targums, Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press
  • Jacobson, B. S., 1973, Netiv Binah: Pirqé Mavo, Perushim ve-‘Iyunim ba-“Sidur”, Tel-Aviv: Sinai
  • Segal, Eliezer, 1994, The Babylonian Esther Midrash: A Critical Commentary, 3 vols, Brown Judaic Studies, Atlanta: Scholars Press

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Skin Deep

by Eliezer Segal

How important is physical beauty in choosing a mate? 

The Book of Proverbs, in praising the “woman of valour” assures us that “Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised” Nevertheless, a cursory survey of the scriptural narratives reveals that several of our biblical forebears married women who were distinguished by their fairness of form. The bevy of biblical beauties includes, among others, the matriarchs Sarah and Rachel, as well as David’s wives Abigail and Abishag. 

The ancient Jewish sages appear to send us mixed messages on this question.

We are all familiar with Rabbi Judah the Prince’s well-known advice “Do not look at the container, but at the contents” However, the context of this saying in  Pirkei Avot makes it clear that Rabbi Judah is speaking of the assessment of scholars, not the selection of a spouse.

An intriguing testimony on this question is found in the Mishnah’s description of the rustic festivities of Yom Kippur and the Fifteenth of Av, when the daughters of Jerusalem used to dance in the vineyards as they sang: 

“Young man, lift up your eyes and see, what are you choosing for yourself? Do not set your eyes on good looks, rather set your eyes on family”

The Talmud, however, modifies this idyllic and idealistic picture by pointing out that diverse types of maidens tried to draw the attention of their potential suitors to different virtues. 

Indeed, those young ladies who could lay claim to impressive pedigrees emphasized the importance of a respectable genealogy. 

However, the attractive ones had no qualms about stressing the advantages of physical beauty. 

Those unfortunate maidens who could lay claim to neither of those assets were resigned to recommending the men to make their choices out of purely altruistic motives, “for the sake of Heaven”

And in a finale that seems to reflect the shared aspirations of all classes of women, the Talmud reports that they would declare that they would welcome potential suitors “as long as they adorn us with golden coins”! 

The ancient rabbis recognized that physical beauty, or its absence, could play a decisive and legitimate psychological role in the selection of a mate. 

Accordingly, the Mishnah rules that if a man took a vow not to marry a certain woman because she was ugly, but later discovered that she was really attractive, then the vow could be annulled. One can easily imagine the rabbis making a more moralistic–but less realistic–response, by insisting that physical appearance should be entirely disregarded in such matters.

A poignant variant on this theme is discussed by the Mishnah in its account of a potential husband who rejected a proposed match on account of the bride’s repulsive appearance. In the end, Rabbi Ishmael was able to improve the appearance of the emaciated girl by sitting her down to a healthy meal. 

The underlying assumption of the story is that an ostensibly unsightly appearance can sometimes be the consequence of social or economic conditions, which can deprive underprivileged girls of flattering clothing, cosmetics, or even a healthy diet. 

As Rabbi Ishmael lamented tearfully, “The daughters of Israel are all beautiful, but they have been rendered unattractive by their poverty” For many Jews, this observation epitomized the bleak realities of daily life under the oppressive conditions of Roman role. 

Rabbi Jacob Reischer exemplifies the attempts made by later scholars to grapple with the apparent contradiction between the spiritual and the aesthetic. 

After expressing his initial surprise at the fact that the rabbis praised various biblical heroines for their external loveliness, Reischer acknowledged that beauty can be a virtue as long as it serves as a complement to inner piety. 

And after all, he concludes, an admiration of feminine pulchritude can be a legitimate path to appreciation of the Creator who has fashioned such fair creatures in his world. 

In saying this, Rabbi Reischer was alluding to the story told about Rabban Simeon ben Gamaliel who, upon encountering a particularly attractive woman on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, was moved to proclaim the words of the Psalmist: 

“O Lord, how manifold are thy works! In wisdom hast thou made them all!”

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, February 28 2002, p. 11 A [as: “Beauty versus Virtue: An Age Old Argument”].
• For further reading:
  • Lamm, Maurice. The Jewish Way in Love and Marriage. 1st ed. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980.
  • Satlow, Michael L. Jewish Marriage in Antiquity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Old King, New King

by Eliezer Segal

The beginning of the Hebrew enslavement in Egypt, as recounted in the opening chapters of the Book of Exodus, was occasioned by the ascension to the throne of “a new king over Egypt, who knew not Joseph.”

The meaning of this verse was debated by Jewish sages in third-century Babylonia. 

According to one opinion, the verse is to be accepted at face value as indicating that the Pharaoh who had befriended Joseph and extended hospitality to his family was now deceased, and was succeeded by a different ruler who instituted malevolent policies towards his Hebrew subjects.

However, others advocated a very different reading of the situation: The evil Pharaoh was the same individual as before. What was “new” was not his identity, but his attitude. In other words, the selfsame monarch who had elevated Joseph to greatness subsequently underwent a change of heart and issued new decrees against the children of Israel. According to this view, the Torah’s assertion that Pharaoh “knew not Joseph” alludes to a self-imposed amnesia about Egypt’s debt to their Hebrew benefactor.

The Talmud, in order to defend this strained reading of the biblical text, observes that the Torah makes no explicit mention of the death of Joseph’s Pharaoh. According to the peculiar midrashic modes of reading sacred texts, this kind of argument from silence may be viewed as evidence that the original Pharaoh was still alive and reigning when the Israelites were reduced to slavery.

The Jewish sages have often allowed themselves to take liberties with the literal meaning of the Bible in order to elicit new insights and moral guidance. In the present instance, however, generations of commentators have struggled to understand what advantage was gained by what appears to be a contrived manipulation of the scriptural passage. 

I believe that a better understanding of the Talmudic discussion might be achieved if we bear in mind some of the literary and rhetorical features that characterize midrashic discourse. 

Much of the literature that is included in ancient midrashic collections originated in the sermons that were preached in ancient synagogues. Midrashic interpretations were normally built around confrontations between verses from different parts of the Bible. In this manner, the rabbis were able to reinforce the fundamental unity of sacred scripture, as well as to suggest novel possibilities of interpretation. 

This is the same attitude that underlies our practice of matching the Torah readings on Sabbaths and festivals with haftarot from the Prophets section of the Bible. Indeed, the interplay between the haftarahand the Torah reading provided inspiration for many expositions in talmudic and midrashic literature.

A survey of midrashic collections reveals that several discourses for the opening section of Exodus were based on expositions of Hosea 5:7, which contains a scathing condemnations of Israel: “They have dealt treacherously against the Lord: for they have begotten strange children, now shall a month devour them with their portions.” 

The allusion to being devoured by a “month” is exceptionally obscure, and scholars continue to argue about its correct interpretation. 

The midrashic preachers stressed the etymological relationship between the Hebrew word hodesh (translated here in its usual sense of “month”) and its basic root meaning of “new.” This inspired them to formulate elaborate sermons in which the enslavement of the Israelites in Egypt was blamed on their readiness to introduce new innovations into their ancestral traditions. 

The ancient sermons identified specific practices that were viewed as symptoms of Israelites’ assimilation to Egyptian lifestyles. Singled out for special denunciation was the practice of some Hebrews of neglecting to circumcise their children; or even of undergoing surgical procedures to undo their own circumcisions. 

Another “new” practice for which the Israelites were censured was their adoption of the foreign hair-style known as the b’lurit, which provided further proof of their affection for gentile lifestyles, and might even involve actual participation in heathen religious rituals, since the Greeks and Romans would sometimes clip their b’lurits and offer them to assorted spirits or deities.

Thus, by reading the Exodus story and the Hosea verse in counterpoint, the rabbis were able to conclude that it was on account of their adoption of new and untraditional practices that the generation of Israelites following Joseph’s death had “begotten strange children,” and it was this offense of “newness” that led ultimately to their being “devoured” by Pharaoh’s new decrees. 

As is to be expected of any worthwhile sermon, the preachers’ concern was not so much with the shortcomings of their long-dead ancestors, but with the behaviour of their contemporaries. Under Roman rule, it was convenient for some individuals to keep their Jewishness under wraps. In times of official anti-Jewish persecutions (such as those associated with the Bar-Kokhba uprising in 135 C.E.), the practice of circumcision might even have been a legally punishable offense.

The midrashic preachers warned their congregations of the gravity of these dangers by projecting them back to the days of Joseph and Moses. The message was now unmistakable: Just as in days of yore the injection of new and foreign elements into the tradition brought about a sudden and fatal transformation of the Israelites’ idyllic status in Egypt, so too in the present time, any compromising of Jewish norms will lead to catastrophic consequences

Another possible link between the enslavement of the Hebrews and the concept of “newness” is furnished by Exodus 12:1-20, which begins “This month shall be unto you the beginning of months[hodashim],” again using the same lexical root that designates both “month” and “new.” This passage, which is read on the Sabbath preceding the New Moon of Nissan, serves as a liturgical prologue to Passover, and would have provided a convenient opportunity for preachers to dwell upon the evils of religious innovations, and their fatal consequences for the children of Israel.

Seen from this perspective, we might be able to suggest a more cogent explanation of the talmudic debate over the identity of the new Pharaoh. 

The rabbi who emphasized the newness of the decrees, rather than of the king, was really trying to stress that the change of circumstances was more important than the question of royal succession. Accordingly, the practical lesson to be derived from the Exodus narrative is that, in keeping with the measure-for-measure logic of Jewish history, any unacceptable departure from established tradition will be punished by an adverse transformation of the condition of the Jews. 

To this extent, it is the people themselves who will determine their destiny — and the fate of the Jewish people can be transformed as easily under a single Pharaoh as under two. 

These valuable and timeless lessons were made possible by our rabbis’ boldness in proposing novel interpretations to familiar biblical texts, allowing our ancient scriptures to remain fresh and new for each generation.

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free PressMarch 14 2002, pp. 8-9.
• For further reading:
  • Heinemann, Joseph, and Jakob Josef Petuchowski. Literature of the Synagogue, Library of Jewish Studies. New York: Behrman House, 1975.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Drip before You Sip

by Eliezer Segal

There comes a time during the course of the Passover seder, when some of us are inclined to take an admiring look at the sparkling white tablecloth, radiant with beautiful festival dishes and fancy silverware. 

And then we cringe.

The occasion for this uneasiness is the anticipation of a picturesque custom in which we begin to trickle droplets of wine from our cups.

Ideally, the dripping would be contained safely in a plate or other vessel. In the real world, however, you can be certain that at least some of the wine will end up being soaked into the tablecloth, while remnants will remain on the children’s fingers for future smearing into the walls or holiday clothing. 

This is, of course, one of those little inconveniences that we are happy to put up with for the sake of a meaningful celebration of the festival of freedom.

According to the familiar practice, the spilling of the wine commences with the quotation from the prophet Joel: “And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke” A dripping is performed for each of the three wonders mentioned in the verse, and then again with the enumeration of each of the ten plagues inflicted upon Egypt. 

The matter does not stop there, as yet another three wine drops are spilled to correspond to the three-word mnemonic abbreviations proposed by Rabbi Judah to remember the correct order of the plagues: D’tzakh, ‘Adash, Be’ahav.

As several medieval commentators point out, the total number of drippings was considered crucial. The fact that they added up to sixteen was invested with allegoric or mystical importance, especially in the writings of the German pietists of the Hassidei Ashkenaz movement, who often devoted their spiritual energies to counting the numerological values of the letters or the numbers of words in prayers and sacred texts. 

Some interpreters stated that the number of the wine-drops corresponded to the sixteen blades of a terrifying sword wielded by the Angel of Death. Thus, in splattering the wine outside the cup, we are trying to assure ourselves that death will remain on the outside. 

In the name of Rabbi Eliezer Rokeah, it was pointed out that this same number sixteen underlies some central Jewish observances, such as the numbers of lambs offered in the Temple during a normal week; or of men called to the reading of the Torah during the week (seven on Saturday morning, and three each on Saturday afternoon and Monday and Thursday mornings). 

And if anybody feels skeptical about such bizarre associations, Rabbi Rokeah is quick to admonish them: “You should not scoff at the customs of our holy ancestors”

Rabbi Jacob Moelin (the Maharil) offered his own version of the reasoning behind the practice: Since the cup of wine is traditionally associated with blessings, it follows that spilling the drops outside the cup can transfer the destructive plagues away from Israel, and deflect them onto our persecutors. 

The anonymous commentary printed in the Prague Haggadah connects this sentiment with the biblical text (Exodus 15:26) “I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians”

Most of the interpretations that we have cited here have a vengeful or vindictive tone to them, in that they are concerned with metaphorically diverting the plagues away from Israel and towards the Egyptians and their latter-day successors. This xenophobia reflects the historical origins of the custom in medieval German communities, where relations with the Christian majority were often strained, and Passover could serve as the occasion for anti-Jewish violence. 

A more enlightened attitude is evident in the Sepharadic milieu, in Don Isaac Abravanel’s commentary to the Passover Haggadah. Although he would eventually fall victim to the Spanish and Portuguese expulsions, Abravanel’s exegesis expresses the universalistic sentiment that our cup of joy cannot be full as long as our liberation has to involve punishment of others. 

A similar interpretation was favoured by Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch and other nineteenth-century scholars. In fact, this last-mentioned rationale has became the most frequently cited one at North American seders, and I suspect that the older medieval explanations are virtually unknown to most modern Jews. 

Some interesting divergences of opinion surround the proper manner in which the wine should be dripped. Each tiny detail in the procedure was felt to be fraught with symbolic meaning, and therefore could not be left to personal preference.

Thus, Rabbi Moses Isserles insisted that the wine should be spilled by placing the forefinger in the cup. It is this limb that in Hebrew is referred to as esba, the generic word for “finger” and it therefore evokes the biblical passage in which Pharaoh’s magicians declared that “This is the finger of God” On these grounds, Isserles rejects the widespread custom of performing the ritual with the pinky.

A different procedure was recommended by the great Kabbalistic master Rabbi Isaac Luria of Safed. He was opposed to the whole notion of dripping with fingertips, and insisted that the sixteen drops be poured directly from the cup. Other Kabbalistic teachers added that the liquid should be discharged into a broken vessel, a variation that has profound allegorical importance in Jewish mystical lore.

Another difference of opinion arose concerning the desirability of drinking the wine that remains after the drops have been removed. Rabbi Hayyim Vital reports that some celebrants were careful to rinse out the cup and avoided partaking of a beverage that had been associated with deadly plagues. 

Other authorities, however, were quick to point out that it was the sixteen drops that had negative associations, and these had after all been removed. The remaining wine, for this reason, should be considered particularly wholesome and salutary. 

And indeed, there were Jews who believed that there was exceptional virtue attached to the act of sipping the wine left over from the “plague drops” Drinking this potion was considered an effective charm for guaranteeing a prosperous year. 

For a promise of such abundant blessings, it might even be worth risking a few wine-stains on your Passover tablecloth.

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, Calgary, March 28 2002, pp. 8-9.
• For further reading:
  • Fox, Shlomo, and Yisrael Isser Zvi Herczeg, eds. The Passover Haggadah with the Commentary of Don Isaac Abarbanel. 1st ed, Artscroll Mesorah Series. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Mesorah Publications, 1990.
  • Glatzer, Nahum Norbert. The Passover Haggadah. 3rd revised ed. New York: Schocken Books, 1979.
  • Kasher, Menachem M. Hagadah Shelemah: The Complete Passover Hagadah. Third ed. Jerusalem: Torah Shelema Institute, 1967.
  • Katzenellenbogen, Mordecai Leib. Hagadah Shel Pesah Torat Hayim. Jerusalem: Mosad ha-Rav Kook, 1998.
  • Raphael, Chaim. A Feast of History: Passover through the Ages as a Key to Jewish Experience. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972.
  • Roth, Cecil. The Haggadah: A New Edition. London: Soncino Press, 1934.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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That Old Blue Box

by Eliezer Segal

No symbol of commitment to the Zionist cause is more recognizable than that simple blue JNF blue box that has graced many a mantelpiece or kitchen counter over the last century.

Initially, several alternative methods were considered for collecting the donations that would be used to purchase lands on behalf of the Jewish people. 

An article that appeared in 1900 in the Zionist newspaper Die Welt favoured the distribution of stamp sets that could be assembled into special albums. At the same time, a “Golden Book” was established to be inscribed with the names of all patrons who had contributed at least ten pounds to the cause. 

While both these modern-looking ideas were implemented immediately, and with some measure of success, it would take a few years before the Zionist movement hit upon their most popular fund-raiser, the placing of tin collection boxes in private homes.

This last-mentioned idea was the invention of a Galician Zionist named Haim Kleinman, who tested the method in his own locality before it earned recognition from the official bodies. 

Kleinman commenced by placing a single box in his office. When he reported the success of his efforts in a letter to Die Welt in 1902, the method was spontaneously emulated by many individuals, still without official sanction from the Zionist leadership. 

It was not until 1905 that the official reports included any acknowledgment of the blue boxes. Within a few decades it had become clear that the revenues collected through the blue boxes were greater by far than those brought in from any other source.

At the time of its reluctant adoption by the Zionist movement, the domestic charity-box was by no means unknown to the world of Jewish philanthropy. Pushkahs had been in use for close to a century as a means of collecting funds for various religious causes, especially for the support of the poor in the Holy Land. 

Precisely these associations with the religious–and anti-Zionist–institutions of the “Old Yishuv” that made many Zionists reluctant to adopt this method for their own fund-raising. 

The institution of the home-based charity box appears to be rooted in the waves of immigration from Eastern Europe to the Holy Land that took place at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of nineteenth centuries. This phenomenon embraced both Hasidic and anti-Hasidic (Mitnagdic) circles, the latter represented by leading disciples of the Ga’on of Vilna. Through their modest contributions to the pushkahs, Eastern European Jews strengthened their identification with their brethren in Palestine. For their own part, the new immigrants did not integrate well with the veteran Jewish populace, and required a constant flow of donations in order to maintain themselves and their separate institutions. 

Working for one’s livelihood was still not an option that was taken seriously in such intensely spiritual circles. 

In contrast to the earlier situation, when the Jews of Eretz Israel were perceived as a tiny body of far-off zealots, the current crop of immigrants included many respected scholars, who maintained strong links with local rabbis, communities and relatives. Thus it was both necessary and possible to create a solid infrastructure for the continual collection of donations from their home communities. 

Although they attracted only tiny contributions and were virtually impossible to regulate in an organized manner, the home-based coin-boxes had the advantage of involving all segments of society, including women and others who would not have had frequent access to charity-boxes that were housed in the synagogues or other public institutions. 

By 1829, a Galician Maskil penned a letter to the Austro-Hungarian government in which he condemned the prevalence of charity-boxes as an unpatriotic subterfuge for illicitly channeling funds outside of the homeland. 

At the same time, the same Lithuanian scholarly circles that had played a prominent role in immigration to Palestine were also pioneering the establishment of their new model of international yeshivahs. It did not take long for them to latch onto the same successful fund-raising scheme, and it became a common sight for Jewish homes to house, side by side, two different pushkahs: one for upkeep of the Jews of Jerusalem, and one for the Volozhin Yeshivah.

When the Jewish National Fund reluctantly decided to emulate this traditional form of alms-giving, one can easily imagine their leaders’ discomfort at imitating a programme that had been developed by circles whose ideology and objectives were so diametrically opposite to their own. Zionism was, after all, striving for the creation of a new secular Jewish culture in which proud workers would cultivate their own land. For the Zionists, the traditional pushkah denoted a society of superstitious parasites, locked into the middle ages, passively waiting for the redemption while living off the generosity of others.

Ironically, the JNF box would inherit many of the religious associations of its predecessors. Like the boxes that were intended for the collection of pennies for the poor of Jerusalem, the blue boxes would routinely be positioned next to the Shabbat candlesticks, so that the act of dropping in a coin became for many a ritual associated with the sabbath preparations.

These kinds of paradoxical encounters between the old and the new, the traditional and the revolutionary, the extremes of militant religion and secularism, are of course an inescapable part of the Zionist experience that never fails to contribute to the fascination and exasperation of Israeli culture.

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, Calgary, April 18 2002, pp. 8-9.
• For further reading::
  • Hirschmann, Ira. The Awakening: The Story of the Jewish National Fund. New York: Shengold, 1981.
  • Lehn, Walter, and Uri Davis. The Jewish National Fund. London: Kegan Paul, 1988.
  • Shilony, Zvi. Ideology and Settlement: The Jewish National Fund, 1897-1914. Translated by Fern Seckbach, Israel Studies in Historical Geography. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1998.
  • Shva, Shlomo. One Day and 90 Years: The Story of the Jewish National Fund. Jerusalem: Dept. of Publications and Audio-Visual Aids Information Division, Jewish National Fund, 1991.
  • Stampfer, Shaul. “The ‘Collection Box’: The Social Role of Eretz Israel Charity Funds.” Cathedra 21 (1981): 89-102.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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The Case of the Missing Omer

by Eliezer Segal

In the days when the Jerusalem Temple stood at the centre of Jewish religious observance, the offering of the omer of barley on the second day of Passover was one of the most beloved of sacred rites. Not until that first sheaf of grain was harvested and offered as a sacrifice, was it permitted to partake of the new grain crop.

The Mishnah stipulates that it is preferable to bring the omer of barley from the vicinity of Jerusalem, so as to indicate our eagerness to perform the precept as quickly as possible. However, if the grain there has not yet ripened sufficiently, it can be brought from elsewhere. 

As an illustration of such a case, the Mishnah mention an occasion when the omerwas brought from “Gagot Serifin.” Scholars have identified this name with the town of Sarafand near Lydda.

Though the context of the Mishnah seems to suggest that the need to fetch barley from outside Jerusalem was the result of natural delays in crop growth, rabbinic tradition speaks of a more ominous background to the episode. 

According to the Talmud, the dearth of suitable grain in the Jerusalem area was the result of a civil war that was being waged by two rival claimants to the Hasmonean throne, Hyrcanus and Aristobulus. This incident, which took place in 66 B.C.E., is also described by Josephus Flavius. 

As Hyrcanus’s forces were laying siege to the holy city, Aristobulus’s followers were confined within the walls. It was under these conditions that the need arose to search for barley from other regions.

The talmudic account goes on to describe the peculiar manner in which the barley was procured. Initially, the community was at a loss to locate an alternate source, so they issued a call to anyone who could point them to a place from which to harvest the precious sheaves.

In the end, the only person who responded to the call was a deaf-mute who bewildered everybody with incomprehensible charades. He positioned one hand on a roof and the other on a shed. Eventually, the signal was deciphered by one of the Temple officials, a certain Petahiah who was renowned for his astounding linguistic abilities. Petahiah concluded that “roofs” in Hebrew are gagot and sheds are serifin. Once it was established that there was a locality named Gagot Serifin, the necessary barley was taken from there to perform the omerritual.

Several traditional commentators had difficulties accounting for some of the details in this story. For one thing, it stretches our credulity to suggest that the effects of the siege were so extreme that not even a modest measure of barley could be procured in the Jerusalem area. It is equally puzzling why nobody but the deaf-mute knew the whereabouts of the barley, and why the message could not be conveyed in a more direct manner.

Basing himself on anomalies of this sort, Rabbi Solomon Edels (the Maharasha) arrived at the conclusion that the lack of barley was not an indirect or collateral result of the siege, but must have been part of a deliberate policy to suppress the performance of the precept. 

This premise makes is easier to understand why the entire barley supply was systematically destroyed. It also helps explain why the whereabouts of the barley at Gagot Serifin were kept secret and divulged only to a deaf-mute, so that they would have to be decoded like a carefully guarded password. In this way, the information was less likely to fall into the hands of hostile parties.

Rabbi Jacob Ibn Habib saw in the choice of the deaf-mute a symbolic disparagement of a contentious generation who metaphorically closed their ears to words of Torah.

In fact, Josephus provides some interesting historical details that help elucidate why there was no barley available for the omer ritual.

Josephus, in agreement with talmudic traditions, describes an accord that called for the priests inside Jerusalem to lower a sum of money over the city walls in a basket, in return for which the besieging forces would send up sheep for the daily sacrifices. On one occasion, Hyrcanus violated the agreement by sending up pigs instead of sheep. So indignant were the priests at this blasphemous provocation that they beseeched God to exact vengeance on the perpetrators. 

In what was interpreted by contemporaries as an act of supernatural retrubution, there arose a fierce windstorm that utterly destroyed all the produce of the land.

Josephus’s story offers us an appropriate explanation for the disappearance of barley at that point in time.

This moral issues of the story were expressed forcefully by the pious miracle-worker Onias, in an incident related by Josephus. This Onias was the same figure who appears in talmudic legend as “Honi Hamme’aggel,” famous for his unfailing ability to produce rain through his prayers. According to Josephus, Hyrcanus tried to recruit Honi to curse Aristobulus and his faction, but the saint refused adamantly to misuse his spiritual gift to exacerbate a conflict between fellow Jews. 

Eventually, in spite of his repeated refusals and excuses, Honi was found and compelled to speak. At this point, he stood up and entreated the Almighty not to hearken to the prayers of either side.

The outcome of Honi’s noble stand that he was stoned to death by the incensed rabble.

The combined testimony of the Talmud and Josephus Flavius can serve as a valuable lesson in the proper and improper uses of Jewish religious practice: Rituals like the omer offering were intended to promote unity and concord, not to be exploited in the interests of discord and factionalism.

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• First Publication:
  • Jewish Free Press, Calgary, May 2 2002, pp. 8, 10.
• For further reading: 
  • Betz, O. “The Death of Choni-Onias in the Light of the Temple Scroll from Qumran.” In Jerusalem in the Second Temple Period: Abraham Schalit Memorial Volume, ed. A. Oppenheimer, U. Rappaport and M. Stern, 84-97. Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi and Ministry of Defence, 1980.
  • Ginzberg, Louis. A Commentary on the Palestinian Talmud. 4 vols. Texts and Studies of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. New York: Ktav, 1971.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Covenant Renewal Day

by Eliezer Segal

Students of talmudic law and of Second Temple Jewish history are acutely aware of the ongoing dispute between rival Jewish movements about how to calculate the date of Shavu’ot. The Torah speaks of counting seven weeks beginning on “the morrow of the sabbath.” Jews today interpret this law in accordance with the view of the ancient Pharisees, that “sabbath” here refers to the first day of Passover, causing Shavu’ot to fall fifty days later, on the sixth day of Sivan.

The Talmud relates that other Jewish groups at the time understood “sabbath” in its normal sense of Saturday. Thus, they began their fifty-day count from a Sunday during or after Passover, and invariably celebrated Shavu’ot on a Sunday seven weeks afterwards.

The Dead Sea Scrolls have enriched our knowledge of this dispute, by showing us that according to the calendar of the ancient Essene sect, the counting invariably commenced on the Sunday following the end of Passover, the 26^th of Nissan, and culminated with the festival of Shavu’ot on Sunday the fifteenth of Sivan.

The respective methods of calculation gave rise to conflicting appreciations of the festival’s significance. The Torah itself describes Shavu’ot only as an agricultural holiday that commemorates the grain harvest. 

According to the Pharisaic-rabbinic system, however, the date of Shavu’ot coincides with that of the revelation of the Torah at Mount Sinai. Only in this way does Shavu’ot acquire a historical meaning as the anniversary of that central moment in our past, when Israel entered into a covenant with God by agreeing to obey the laws of the Torah.

It would appear to follow naturally from all these premises that the advocates of the Dead Sea calendar, did not possess an annual festival to commemorate the revelation at Sinai.

This would indeed follow naturally, but it is apparently not true. 

The Dead Sea Scrolls contain precise guidelines for the celebration of Shavu’ot as the festival of the Renewal of the Covenant.

This holiday seems to have occupied a vital place in their religious life. 

It was not a mere matter of adding special prayers or biblical readings. To all appearances, the festival ritual involved a solemn reenacting of the ceremony described in the book of Deuteronomy, when the people positioned themselves between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim, while the Priests intoned the blessings in store for those who observe the covenant; and the Levites uttered the blood-curdling curses that will befall those who violate that covenant. To each declaration, the participants responded “Amen.”

The Essene holiday incorporated ingredients from yet another momentous ceremony of biblical history, when the returning Babylonian exiles congregated in Jerusalem to accept upon themselves the obligations of the Torah. 

Like that earlier assembly, described in the book of Nehemiah, the Essene covenant renewal included the recitation of a survey of Jewish history that highlighted God’s generous providence towards his people, contrasting it with the sad record of backsliding and ingratitude that culminated in the destruction of their sanctuary and exile from their homeland.

The texts give us the impression that the participants in the ceremony were expected to line themselves up in single file and pass between the Priests and the Levites.

Other elements in the ritual included the uttering of blessings to the God of goodness, and the heaping of vigorous curses upon the evil power of Belial. 

It is consistent with the sect’s general outlook that good and evil are not portrayed as options between which the individual may choose. On the contrary, Essene theology held that humanity has already been pre-assigned into opposing domains of good and evil. Members of the sect have, virtually by definition, been designated to the realm of goodness and light, whereas the rest of the world are counted among the children of darkness. 

Accordingly, those who take part in the covenant renewal ceremony are not declaring their personal determination to choose good over evil, but merely expressing their appreciation that the Almighty placed them under the powers of goodness, rather than the forces of Belial to which the rest of the world is subject.

Although the talmudic tradition understood that the ceremony at Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim had been a one-time event performed when the Israelites first entered the Promised Land, the Essenes seemed to have perceived it as an annual holiday. To be precise, the scrolls stipulate that the ceremony must be repeated every year “throughout the days of the dominion of Belial.” That is evidently another way of saying that the renewal ceremony is necessary only as long as humanity continues to inhabit an imperfect and unredeemed world. 

By implication, the ritual will become obsolete after God has vanquished the forces of darkness and vindicated the small community of his faithful. 

The Qumran community, like many other Jews of the time, lived in imminent anticipation of this great event.

The designers of the covenant ceremony were aware that membership in the Essene community did constitute an automatic guarantee of personal holiness or religious virtue. For this reason, apparently, reference is made in the scrolls to two classes of individuals who, in spite of their ostensible belonging to the Dead Sea community, will not benefit from the blessings that accrue to the true Children of Light. 

One such group consists of people who avoid participating in the ceremony in the hope that they can thereby evade the obligations and penalties that would arise from fully accepting the conditions of the covenant.

The second group included people who went through all the outward motions of accepting the covenant, but remained insincere in their commitment.

Special curses are reserved for both these groupings. They are declared to be impure and subject to terrible divine chastisement.

The dire and fatalistic mood that radiates from the Dead Sea Scrolls strikes an extreme contrast with the joy and optimism that permeate the rabbinic celebration of Shavu’ot.

Although few of us will be induced to convert to the Essene brand of Judaism, I believe that we can still be moved by the sect’s devotion to the Torah as they understood it, and by their earnest efforts to keep Jewish tradition alive and meaningful.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, May 16 2002, pp. 4-5.
• For further reading:
  • Licht, Jacob, ed. The Roll Scroll: A Scroll from the Wilderness of Judea. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1965.
  • Milik, J. T. Ten Years of Discovery in the Wilderness of Judaea. 1st English ed. Studies in Biblical Theology. London: SCM Press, 1959.
  • Vermès, Géza. Discovery in the Judean Desert. New York: Desclee, 1956.
  • ________. The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English. London: Penguin, 1995.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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