Sabbath: To Feast or to Fast?

by Eliezer Segal

Our familiar Shabbat has so much to do with eating and drinking that we might well feel bewildered to hear that many ancient writers believed that Jews celebrated their holy day by abstaining from food.

According to the first-century Roman historian Pompeius Trogus, Moses instituted the Sabbath as a fast day in order to commemorate the Israelites’ seven days of deprivation when they trekked through the Arabian desert on their way to Mount Sinai. Augustus Caesar once wrote to Tiberius “Not even a Jew fasts so scrupulously on his Sabbaths as I have today.”

The satirist Petronius speculated about the dire fates in store for uncircumcised Jews who, as he wryly put it, would be exiled by their intolerant coreligionists to Greek cities where they would be unable to observe their Sabbath fasts. And Martial tried to insult a correspondent by accusing him of having a breath that smelled “worse than one of those Sabbath-fasting Jewish women.”

Our first reaction is to marvel at how so many writers, including some of the most respected names in Greek and Latin letters, could have gotten their facts so absurdly wrong. If anything, Shabbat is a day of overeating, during which it is mandatory to partake of at least three meals. Except in very rare cases, fasting is strictly prohibited. 

Many scholars dismissed this stubborn inaccuracy as yet another ignorant stereotype about Jews that was copied indiscriminately from author to author in spite of the fact that it had no basis in reality.

However, if we examine the talmudic sources more carefully, we discover that the attitudes of the ancient Jewish sages towards eating on the Sabbath were more ambivalent than might be suggested by our current practice.

Take for example the case of Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus who insisted on drawing out his classes for the entire day, and expressed disdain at the faint-hearted students who snuck away to join their family repasts.

Rabbi Yosé ben Zimra went so far as to declare that Jews who fasted on Shabbat were assured of the cancellation of any negative decrees that had been issued against them by the heavenly court.

It would appear therefore that, alongside the mainstream view that regarded Shabbat as a day of physical as well as spiritual delight, there existed a significant minority of sages who wanted it to be a day of exclusively spiritual contemplation, on which physical desires should be minimized or suppressed.

It is likely that at the root of this ancient dispute lay divergent interpretations of the story of the giving of the manna in Exodus 16. According to the biblical narrative, the Israelites were informed that they would be issued a double ration on Friday because no manna would descend on the Sabbath. 

The usual way or understanding this episode is that the double ration would suffice for meals on both Friday and Saturday.

It is conceivable, however, that some interpreters read the story as a mandate for eating double quantities on Friday in order to allow the people to refrain from nourishment on the following day, in a manner analogous to the “concluding meal” that precedes Yom Kippur. 

In fact, the Torah’s designation of the Day of Atonement as a “Sabbath of Sabbaths” could be read as implying that the weekly day of rest should be equated in all respects to Yom Kippur, and therefore should be observed also as a fast 

Talmudic tradition insisted that the requirement to eat three meals is rooted in the words of the Torah. However, the proof text that is adduced for the practice is rather contrived, to say the least. It is based on the fact that the word “day” appears three times in the verse (Exodus 16:25): “And Moses said, Eat that [i.e., the manna] today; for the day is a sabbath unto the Lord; this day ye shall not find it in the field.” 

Even if we are not convinced by the midrashic attempt to squeeze three meals out of the verse, it might nonetheless be conceded that the scriptural text contains an explicit association between eating and the Sabbath. 

We must imagine that the advocates of Shabbat fasting read the words as if they said “eat the manna today [i.e., Friday] because tomorrow will be the Sabbath day, when you will be unable to do so.”

There are several passages in the Talmud that extol the virtues of eating three meals on Shabbat, and consider it an expression of extraordinary piety. Rabbi Joshua ben Levi stated in the name of Bar Kappara that those who partook of all the required meals would be spared the torments of the “birth-pangs of the Messiah,” the judgment of Gehenna and the apocalyptic war of Gog and Magog. Other teachers promised unlimited boundaries, or immunity from subjection to foreign nations.

If eating three meals on Shabbat were a clear-cut precept from the Torah, it is difficult to imagine why so many of the sages described it as an act of unusual devotion that warranted special pride, or even supernatural rewards. For this reason, Rabbi Jacob Tam deduced in the Tosafot that the practice of eating three meals must not have been well entrenched during the talmudic era. 

The prophet Isaiah’s injunction to “call the sabbath a delight” does not strike us initially as congruent with total abstention from eating. However, we must acknowledge that different people find delight in different activities. Though conventional Jewish tradition equated delight with eating and drinking, there have always been individuals whose preference is for more spiritual or intellectual gratification. 

Indeed, to judge from the accounts by the first-century Jewish writers Philo Judaeus of Alexandria and Josephus Flavius, the Jewish populace spent the seventh day assembled in the synagogues for meditation and philosophical instruction.

From all of this evidence emerges an ambiguous picture of the ideal Shabbat. The opposing positions were epitomized in the Jerusalem Talmud in the contrasting views of two third-century rabbis. One declared: “The festivals and Sabbaths were given to Israel purely for the sake of eating and drinking”; while the other insisted “The festivals and Sabbaths were given to Israel purely for the sake of Torah study.” 

For the most part, Jewish tradition strove to arrive at a middle ground between those extremes. Some sources made a distinction between the practices of scholars, who spent the week in study and therefore needed physical relaxation on the Sabbath, and normal working folk for whom the Sabbath provided the only opportunity to indulge their spiritual needs. 

The most widespread compromise solution was to divide the day equally between physical and sacred pursuits, spending half a day in prayer and study, and the other half in eating and repose. 

The advocates of the foodless day of rest have long since been swept to the margins of our tradition. Nevertheless, in our weight-conscious society there might yet be a market that will be attracted by the prospect of a non-fattening Sabbath.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, October31, 2002, pp. 10-11.
• For further reading:
  • Gilat, Yitzhak D. “On Fasting on the Sabbath,” Tarbiz 52, no. 1 (1982): 1-15.
  • Goldenberg, Robert. “The Jewish Sabbath in the Roman World up to the Time of Constantine the Great.” In Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt, ed. Wolfgang Haase, 2.19.1, 414-47. Berlin and New York: Walter De Gruyter, 1979.
  • Mann, Jacob. “The Observance of the Sabbath and the Festivals in the First Two Centuries of the Current Era, according to Philo, Josephus, the New Testament and the Rabbinic Tradition,” Jewish Review 4, no. 22-3 (1914): 433-56, 498-532
  • Stern, Menahem. Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism Publications of the Israel Academy of Sciences: Section of Humanities. Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1980.
  • Urbach, Ephraim E. “Ascesis and Suffering in Talmudic and Midrashic Sources.” In Yitzhak F. Baer Jubilee Volume on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday, ed. S. W. Baron, B.Dinur, S. Ettinger and I. Halpern, 48-68. Jerusalem: Ha-Hevrah ha-Historit ha-Israelit, 1960.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Hanukkah by Star-Light

by Eliezer Segal

The fifteenth-century Rabbi Jacob Moellin, known as the Maharil, is one of our most important sources for the preservation of Ashkenazic liturgical customs. So meticulous was the Maharil about his personal observance that his disciples would record his every action, recognizing that even the most trivial-looking of his deeds must be rooted in their master’s unmatched expertise in religious law and local tradition.

It was therefore a matter of some consequence when the Maharil objected to the placement of the Hanukkah candles in the Maintz synagogue. Upon noticing that they had been set up in a disorderly way, he ordered the sexton to rearrange them in a straight row. The reason he gave for his concern was that “they should not have the appearance of a bonfire.”

Maharil was alluding to a ruling in the Talmud that disqualifies a Hanukkah lamp that was fashioned by filling a bowl with oil and extending wicks out of the bowl’s circumference. The Talmud declares that this kind of arrangement, in which the flames are not clearly differentiated, does not constitute a proper kindling of lamps, but is a mere medurah, a “bonfire.” 

The same Talmudic passage states, however, that if a covering were placed over the bowl, so that each wick appeared to emerge separately from the bowl, then it would be perfectly acceptable for fulfilling the precept of Hanukkah candles.

We must assume that the candles that upset the Maharil were positioned in such a haphazard way that their flames could not readily be distinguished from one another.

A similar ruling was reported in the name of Rabbi Isaac of Corbeil (13^th-century), to the effect that one should never arrange the Hanukkah candles in a circular shape, for fear that they will look like a medurah.

Rabbi Isaac mentions in passing that he maintained his opposition to circular lamps in spite of the fact that such shapes were common in synagogues. This incidental detail provides us with an important clue for tracing the evolution of Hanukkah lighting.

What Rabbi Isaac apparently had in mind was to point out that the preferred structure of a Hanukkah lamp should be different from the normal type of fixtures that were used to illuminate the synagogues of the time. 

For a modern reader, it is difficult to see much significance in the observation, since we do not expect to find a correspondence between standard utilitarian lighting and the ritual Hanukkah candelabrum. In our world where electricity is employed for providing most forms of light, and oil lamps are set aside almost exclusively for ritual purposes, we would be unlikely to confuse a Hanukkah lamp with a normal light fixture.

However, when we view the matter in the context of the history of Hanukkah observance, we see that Rabbi Isaac’s insistence on such a differentiation constituted an important departure from earlier norms.

It took many centuries for the one-piece Hanukkah menorah to emerge as a distinctive religious artifact. From ancient times through to the early Middle Ages, Jews made use of conventional lamps and candles in order to commemorate the miracles of the Hasmonean triumph. For this purpose, most communities used an individual oil lamp for each flame, rather than a single eight-branched candelabrum, as is the norm in our days.

In those earlier times, the most common way of illuminating large rooms was with round or star-shaped fixtures that were suspended from the ceilings. These lamps had wicks protruding from their outer edges, or from the tips of the stars, which absorbed their fuel from a bowl that was hung from the bottom of the lamp. Such lamps were manufactured with varying numbers of wicks, and the eight-wick types were considered appropriate for ritual use on Hanukkah.

The star-shaped fixture, usually fashioned from metal, was designed to be used with oil and wicks, and continued to be the preferred form of indoor lighting in European lands until the late medieval era. By then, improvements were taking place in the manufacture of wax tapers that allowed them to surpass in popularity the more cumbersome oil lamps. Gradually, the star-shaped oil-lamp fixtures disappeared from general consumer use among the European populace.

As so frequently occurs over the course of history, Jews were the last to abandon the earlier practice, even though the star-shaped lamp had originally been borrowed from non-Jewish sources and had no identifiable religious significance. Nevertheless, it came to be perceived as the “traditional” vehicle for honouring the Sabbath and Hanukkah in the synagogue and in private homes. Soon it came to be viewed by gentile observers as a uniquely Jewish device, and was popularly referred to in German as a “Judenstern” (Jewish Star). In Hebrew sources, it was usually designated by the term “lampa.”

It was at this point that the groundwork was prepared for the introduction of special one-piece Hanukkah menorahs. For the most part, these were designed to hold wax candles, which were arrayed in a straight row. 

It did not take long before the halakhic permissibility of the older star-shaped models was called into question. This is the situation that is reflected in the rulings of Rabbi Isaac of Corbeil, the Maharil, and several other authorities who had to impress upon their audiences that the familiar old Jewish candelabra might not be appropriate for Hanukkah observance.

To be sure, there were rabbis who continued to defend the permissibility of the star-menorahs, provided that they conformed to the halakhic provisions. Rabbi Israel Isserlein insisted that the lampa did not pose any ritual problems, since each wick is completely separated form the others and there is no possibility of it being confused with a medurah>. This opinion was incorporated into Rabbi Moses Isserles’ glosses to theShulhan Arukh>, which established the normative standard for most Ashkenazic practice. Nonetheless, there remains a widespread view that circular menorahs can never be kosher.

Our story of the rise and fall of the star-shaped Hanukkah menorah was influenced by a perplexing array of different factors, including halakhic arguments, tenacious loyalty to local custom, and receptivity to technological innovation. 

Ultimately, all these diverse opinions and practices have been inspired by the same single-minded determination that Hanukkah’s inspiring message must continue to shine forth brightly in every age.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, November 28, 2002, pp. 15, 19.
• For further reading:
  • Kayser, Stephen S., and Guido Schoenberger, eds. Jewish Ceremonial Art: A Guide to the Appreciation of the Art Objects Used in Synagogue and Home, Principally from the Collections of the Jewish Museum of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America>. Philadelphia,: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1955.
  • Yaniv, Bracha. ‘Hashpa’at Ha-halakhah Veha-minhag ‘al ‘Issuv Menorat Ha=Hanukkah.’ In Minhagei Yisra’el, ed. Daniel Sperber, 5, 121-61. Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1995.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Bare-Bones Burials

by Eliezer Segal

There has been much publicity in recent months concerning an ancient box that allegedly housed the bones of Jesus’ brother James. Although most of the controversy has focused on the artifact’s dating and authenticity, I suspect that many Jews must have been puzzled by the basic question of its function.

The item in question is referred to as an “ossuary,” a receptacle for bones. Too small to function as a full-fledged coffin for a corpse, it was used to store the bones of the deceased following the decomposition of the flesh.

The institution of ossuaries implies that a distinction existed between the relative sanctity of the flesh and of the bones as regards their rights to permanent interment. It also presupposes that the remains can be removed from their original burial spot and relocated to a different locality, a procedure that is known as “ossilegium.”

In all these respects, the practice differs radically from current halakhic standards, which insist on permanent burial of all physical remains of the corpse, even items like intravenous tubing. Israeli highway engineers and archeologists are very familiar with the outcries that come from religious circles whenever the need arises to excavate an ancient cemetery. 

In reality, however, the practice of reburying bones has deep roots in Jewish history. Perhaps the most notable precedent was set by Joseph in the Bible when he commanded his descendants to remove his remains from their burial place in Egypt for re-interment in the holy land.

There exists much archeological evidence from biblical times of secondary burials in individual, family or collective ossuaries. However, the practice seems to have enjoyed its greatest popularity in Jerusalem and its environs, from the Herodian era (around 20 B.C.E.) until the city’s total destruction in the second century. For some time after that event, the use of Jewish ossuaries spread to other corners of Israel.

Although they vary considerably in their physical forms, certain motifs are common in these caskets. Architectural patterns in the shape of gabled houses have been explained variously as expressing the idea of a “final home” for the departed, a portal to the next world, or homage to the holy Temple of Jerusalem. The seven-branched menorah, arguably the most widespread and identifiable symbol of Judaism, appears on many of the ossuaries. A six-petaled floral pattern known as a “rosette” is particularly common, though its symbolism (if it is not merely decorative) is not obvious.

The practice of ossilegium is discussed at considerable length in talmudic literature, where it is referred to in Hebrew as liqqut asamot, bone-gathering. The ossuaries are often identified by the Greek term “glossokomon” (which appears in Hebrew as gluskema or dluskema), or by the biblical word aron.

A passage in the Jerusalem Talmud succinctly summarizes the stages of the process and its ambivalent psychological impact on surviving family members: “At first they used to bury people in ditches. After the flesh had decomposed, the bones were collected and deposited in chests. On that day, the son would grieve, but on the following day he rejoiced because his parent had now found rest from judgment.”

As we learn from the above tradition, the day on which people gathered their parents’ bones for reburial combined contradictory elements of mourning and elation, in recognition that the deceased will henceforth enjoy a final repose. In this respect, the ritual is reminiscent of the emotional complexity evoked by our custom of observing the yahrzeit as a blending of celebration and sorrow for a departed loved one. 

Historians are not in agreement about how or why the use of ossuaries became so popular among Jews. It is possible that the practice was dictated by the dearth of available land for conventional cemeteries within Israel’s narrow borders. 

Some authors have pointed out that the ancient Hebrew ideal of spending eternity in the bosom of one’s family, expressed in the biblical idiom of “sleeping with one’s ancestors,” encouraged the creation of family mausoleums which were most conveniently (in keeping with the realities of Israeli geology) situated in caves to which the bones of the deceased would have to be relocated. 

That most cemeteries and burial sites belonged to individual families is confirmed by the archeological findings, inscriptions and historical references, and is presupposed by the discussions in rabbinic sources. 

Although the initial burial would sometimes be under the earth, as is our current practice, it was more common to lay the bodies in rows of niches that were carved into a cave or mountainside. 

There is significance to the fact that most Jewish ossuaries were designed to preserve each skeleton by itself or with close family members, rather than in collective tombs. This development seems to dovetail with a general evolution towards awareness of the individual in the Jewish consciousness, a perception that may have some correspondence with the growing economic affluence of Judean society in Herodian times.

Some scholars trace the origins of the practice to the strong Jewish belief that there is special merit to being buried in the soil of the Land of Israel, or better still, in the vicinity of Jerusalem, where the resurrection of the dead will first commence in the messianic era. The custom of transporting ossuaries from the diaspora communities for burial in Israel is well attested in rabbinic sources, and was sometimes resented by the natives. While there are many passages in talmudic literature that speak of the atoning potential of burial in the holy land or the Temple altar, at least one ancient Zionist ridiculed the notion that Jews who had spent their lives in foreign lands should benefit posthumously from burial to the holy land.

Aside from direct communications from the Next World, there is no way to know with certainty how well the respective burial customs serve the interests of those who have departed this life. It is clear, however, that they provide the living with an opportunity to give tangible expression of their devotion to their loved ones. 

This important aspect of the ritual was poignantly stated by Rabbi Eleazar ben Zadok, who described how he dutifully carried out his late father’s instructions to collect his bones and place them in an ossuary. At the end of his account, Rabbi Eleazar voiced his special satisfaction at having maintained continuity from generation to generation:

“Just as he attended his father, so have I attended him.”

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, December19, 2002, pp. 10-11.
• For further reading:
  • Fine, Steven. “A Note on Ossuary Burial and the Resurrection of the Dead in First-Century Jerusalem,” Journal of Jewish Studies 51, no. 1 (2000): 69-76
  • Kraemer, David Charles. The Meanings of Death in Rabbinic Judaism. London and New York: Routledge, 2000.
  • Krauss, Samuel. “La Double Inhumation chez les Juifs,” Revue des Etudes Juives 97 (1934): 1-34
  • Meyers, Eric M. Jewish Ossuraries: Reburial and Rebirth: Secondary Burials in Their Ancient Near Eastern Setting Biblica et Orientalia. Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1971.
  • Rahmani, Levi Yizhaq. “Ossuaries and “Ossilegium” (Bone-Gathering) in the late Second Temple Period.” In Ancient Jerusalem Revealed, ed. Hillel Geva, 191-205. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1994.
  • Zlotnick, Dov. The Tractate “Mourning” (Semahot): Regulations relating to Death, Bburial and Mourning Yale Judaica Series. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966.

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My e-mail address is [email protected]

Fiscal Prudence

by Eliezer Segal

The third-century Babylonian sage Rav Huna acquired a reputation for his saintly deeds. When Rava demanded an example of his benevolence, he was informed that it was Rav Huna’s custom to dispatch an agent to the market every Friday in the late afternoon, as the Jewish shopkeepers were shutting down for the Sabbath, to buy up all the unsold greens. Rav Huna instructed the agent to toss the vegetables into the river.

By minimizing the losses that would otherwise be inflicted on the sellers due to unsold and perishable inventory, Rav Huna’s actions achieved the long-term effect of assuring his community’s food supply. This behaviour was presented to Rava as a display of extraordinary righteousness.

Nevertheless, some of the talmudic rabbis raised initial objections to this policy, which must have seemed as absurd to them as (to take a far-fetched 

example) the prospect of a government paying farmers not to grow certain crops in order maintaining price stability.

For one thing, the rabbis argued, the prospect of throwing out food runs counter to deeply ingrained Jewish sensibilities. Would it not make more sense to distribute it to the needy?

To this objection the Talmud replied that it was advisable not to encourage dependence on charity for basic dietary staples, since this particular source of sustenance could not always be relied upon.

In discussing Rav Huna’s approach to market regulation, some of the medieval commentators maintained that it was an instance of a fundamental principle of Jewish law: “The Torah is sparing with the money of Israel.”

Now, this assertion might be regarded with a measure of skepticism by those of us who endure the financial burdens imposed by kosher diet, private religious schools, synagogue memberships, and the many other outlays that add to the expenses of maintaining of a Jewish life-style. 

Nevertheless, the fact remains that the Torah’s commitment to reducing the costs of religious observance is indeed a fundamental axiom. 

The ancient Jewish sages found an unexpected precedent for this idea in an obscure area of purity laws.

According to Leviticus 14, a house can be stricken by a “plague” that infests the walls. However, before a mold-like growth is officially determined to be impure, it must be declared so by a priest who is summoned to inspect it.

The Torah stipulates that before the formal inspection is conducted, “the priest shall command that they empty the house, before the priest go into it to see the plague, so that all that is in the house be not made unclean. And afterward the priest shall go in to see the house.”  

This was understood by the rabbis to mean that the owner of the house was being given a loophole to rescue household items by removing them from the house before the impending declaration of impurity. This devious-looking advice is to be carried out with the full knowledge of the priest, and with the encouragement of the Torah itself.

But the matter does not end there. The incisive exegesis of the rabbis pointed out some additional implications of this situation.

They noted, for example, that most of the objects that are susceptible to defilement, such as metal, wood or cloth, can be restored to purity with relative ease, by immersing them in a mikvah. The major exceptions to this pattern would be earthenware vessels, which are among the least costly items in most households.

Furthermore, rabbinic tradition regarded plagues of this sort as being of a spiritual character, inflicted as divine punishment for the sins of gossip and slander.

Based on these premises, Rabbi Meir in the Mishnah reasoned: If the Torah is so attentive to the trivial inconveniences of sinners, imagine how much care it must take to avoid serious financial losses to decent, respectable folks! 

The rationale that “the Torah is sparing with the money of Israel” was invoked to explain why, when the faithless Israelites complained to Moses about the scarcity of water in the wilderness, the Almighty took the extra trouble to provide them with miraculous water from the rock, not only for the humans, but also for their cattle.

Similarly, the talmudic sages used this principle to explain several peculiar regulations of biblical law and Temple practice. For example, the law that requires the Passover lamb to be shared among a group of celebrants was described as a cost-cutting measure. They also observed that ritually forbidden fats, though they may nor be eaten, can be put to other uses; and meat that has not been properly slaughtered can nevertheless be given to non-Jews. 

The rabbis also resorted to this principle in order to understand why it is that, in spite of the general tendency to glorify the Temple and its rituals with only the finest and most elaborate materials (ideally, gold), Jewish tradition insisted on making some exceptions to that rule. 

It is, they argued, out of concern for the money of Israel that the High Priest does not don golden robes when performing the solemn Day of Atonement service. This is why mere silver was used to plate the shofars that were sounded on public fast days, as well as for the censers upon which incense was burned in the daily worship. For the same reason, the lottery tokens used for choosing the scapegoat on Yom Kippur were fashioned from wood, and not from a more precious metal.

Out of analogous budgetary considerations, Jewish religious law does not insist on subjecting the flour of the meal offerings, or the olive oil in the Temple menorah, to the most rigorous degree of refinement. Furthermore, the quantity of the oil in the menorah was measured so as to burn exactly for the duration of the night, as a way of reducing energy costs. 

It should be pointed out that the Jews were not the only community in the ancient world who were worried about the high prices of ritual observance. The Greek comedian Menander lamented how married men were constantly being reduced to poverty by their wives’ insistence that they offer expensive sacrifices on every festival. 

The historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus praised Rome’s founder Romulus for instituting a cult that was not overly taxing on the  pocketbooks of its citizens. It was considered acceptable to offer food to the gods on old wooden tables, in crude baskets or earthenware trays. He was especially gratified that gold and silver vessels were not required for pouring libations, but clay jugs were deemed perfectly satisfactory. 

As we saw in the case of Rav Huna, consideration for the pocketbooks of the common people was considered a commendable virtue in communal and political leaders. A talmudic rabbi relied on this principle in opting for a lenient halakhic interpretation of a kashrut-related question. A midrashic text praised King Saul because he was scrupulous about paying for expenses from his own money, and not from the public treasury. 

Indeed, there are valuable lessons to be derived from these precedents, lessons that may not have been fully absorbed by the all of the public office-holders in our own days.

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• First Publication:
• For further reading:
  • Beer, Moshe. The Babylonian Amoraim: Aspects of Economic Life. 2nd expanded ed. Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1982.
  • Hallevy, E. E. ‘Erkhei Ha-aggadah Veha-halakhah. Tel-Aviv: Dvir, 1979-82.

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My e-mail address is [email protected]

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Beasts of Burden and One-Armed Clockmakers

by Eliezer Segal

I think that it is fair to say that most of my university colleagues would be much happier if we were left to pursue our scholarly research and our teaching in peace, without the burdens of administrative responsibility that are constantly being heaped upon us. How much more productive we could be if we were not always being diverted by those eternal committees and bureaucratic paperwork!

Because Jewish tradition has usually seen learnedness as a prerequisite for communal leadership, conflicts between the opposing demands of scholarship and administration have a long history in Judaism, 

Some talmudic rabbis were very uncomfortable with this paradigm. Rabbi Akiva went so far as to admonish his son Joshua not to dwell in a town that was administered by scholars. Rabbi Shimeon ben Yohai was particularly adamant about not mixing Torah study with worldly pursuits, and took pride in the fact that he avoided serving as a judge. Rabbi Joshua ben Levi lamented that his communal responsibilities caused him to forget much of his teachings.

Nevertheless, the prevalent approach through most of Jewish history has been that erudition and study should go hand in hand with the exercise of leadership.

Some of the rabbis who chafed at their communal duties did so because of the daunting responsibilities that were involved. In many cases, however, the sages simply resented their inability to allocate sufficient time to their studies.

To tell the truth, when I survey the daily schedules of our most celebrated leaders through history, I am put to shame by the vastness of their scholarly output in spite of all the obstacles.

Take for example the great Maimonides, who composed masterpieces in Jewish law, exegesis, philosophy, logic, science, medicine and more.

In a letter to his student Joseph ben Judah, he complains that his reputation as a physician makes him a favourite of the Egyptian aristocracy, forcing him to waste his days attending patients in Cairo. Upon returning home to Fustat , he must spend the available moments of the day and night futilely trying to keep au courant with the recent medical literature. The upshot of this is that Maimonides finds no time to study the Bible except on Saturday; and has despaired of keeping up-to-date on the latest scientific studies.

A more formidable outline of Maimonides’ daily schedule was included in a letter that he wrote to his translator Rabbi Samuel Ibn Tibbon of Marseilles when the latter expressed a desire to visit Egypt to consult with the author about the Hebrew translation of the Guide of the Perplexed. 

Maimonides, after pointing out how he had to sneak away for a private moment even to write this letter, informed his correspondent about the obstacles that stood in the way of a meeting. 

He proceeded to describe his tedious daily early-morning commute from Fustat to the Sultan’s residence in Cairo, where his medical duties to the households of the Sultan and other royal officers kept him occupied for the greater part of the day. Upon returning to Fustat in the late afternoon, starved and exhausted, Maimonides would find his antechamber swarming with people, Jews and gentiles, all with urgent claims on his time. He would partake of a hurried snack (his first nourishment of the day) and proceed immediately to care for his patients until late into the night.

Because his weekdays were entirely taken up with medical duties, he was available to the Jewish community only on Shabbat. Immediately after the Saturday morning services, he was visited by the majority of the congregation, to whom he gave practical instruction, and then offered a sequence of classes for the remainder of the day.

The upshot of all this, Maimonides assures Rabbi Samuel, is that it would be a waste of time and energy to undertake the arduous voyage from France to Egypt, since there would not be enough time for any constructive consultation.

Similar griping reappears in the writings of prominent Jewish sages in later eras. 

After spending more than a decade as the rabbi of Oldenberg, a community that made few administrative demands on its spiritual leader, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch moved in 1841 to a new post as the District Rabbi of Emden. The apathy of his earlier pulpit had left him the time to compose several of his greatest masterpieces of Torah learning, including The Nineteen Letters of Ben Uzziel and Choreb. In stark contrast, his communal duties in Emden were so vast that they left him little time for study, and he published almost nothing during his term there. 

In a letter to a colleague in Amsterdam, Rabbi Hirsch wrote. “I am overwhelmed with work from morning until evening and, more often than not, I do not put my pen down until after midnight. I am a beast of burden bearing the load of the quarrels and affairs of the holy flock whose shepherd I am.” 

In a similar vein, Rabbi Arieh Yellin, the nineteenth-century Polish scholar whose Yefeh Einayim commentary is an indispensable tool for anyone who wants to compare the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds, speaks bitterly of the difference between his own situation as a rabbi, and the idealized past when rabbis were permitted to devote all their time to scholarly pursuits. Like Maimonides, he describes the need to steal rare moments to jot down his original insights or interpretations. 

With reference to his own celebrated publications, Rabbi Yellin compares his achievement with that of a one-armed artisan who fashioned a clock to give to the king. 

His clock was not particularly superior when compared to equivalent products produced by able-bodied craftsmen. What made the gift appear so remarkable was the fact that it had been manufactured in spite of its creator’s handicap. 

So too, concluded Rabbi Yellin, what is remarkable about my work is not its inherent superiority, but merely the fact that I was able to produce it at all in the face of my time-consuming communal responsibilities.

This historical survey of scholarly frustrations helps to set my own aggravation into perspective. 

I suppose that I will feel more justified in lamenting my overworked lot after I have produced the equivalent of a Yefeh Einayim, a Choreb or a Guide of the Perplexed.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, February 6, 2003, pp. 10-11. 
• For further reading:
  • Alon, Gedalia. Jews, Judaism, and the Classical world: Studies in Jewish History in the Times of the Second Temple and Talmud. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1977.
  • Klugman, Eliyahu Meir. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch : Architect of Torah Judaism for the Modern World. 1st ed. Artscroll History Series. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Mesorah, 1996.
  • Rosenbloom, Noah H. Tradition in an Age of Reform: The Religious Philosophy of Samson Raphael Hirsch. 1st — ed. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1976.
  • Twersky, Isadore, ed. A Maimonides Reader, Library of Jewish Studies. New York: Behrman House, 1972.
  • Urbach, E. The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs, translated by I. Abrahams. Cambridge, Mass. and London, England: Harvard University Press, 1987.
  • Ziskind, Rivka. Rabbi Aryeh Loeb Yellin, Author of Yefeh Einayim. Jerusalem: Reuben Mass, 1973.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Rabbi Judah’s Troublesome Wedding Guest

by Eliezer Segal

It is a dilemma that eventually confronts anyone who is planning a wedding: 

What to do about those unpleasant individuals whom you would really prefer not to invite at all, but social obligation dictates that you must include them on the guest list?

Such was the awkward situation that Rabbi Judah the Prince was placed in when the time came to marry off his son Simeon.

Apart from his impeccable scholarly credentials as the renowned compiler of the Mishnah, Rabbi Judah was also a public figure, who held the highest political office in the Jewish community, as the head of the Jewish supreme court and the chief representative of world Jewry before the Roman imperial authorities. 

As is the inevitable fate of political leaders, his decisions and policies aroused a measure of dissatisfaction among the populace. Some people were upset at how Rabbi Judah maintained a princely estate and allied himself with the wealthier strata of Jewish society. Many sages were particularly uneasy about his attempts to impose centralized authority over the individualistic scholarly culture of the rabbinic academies.

Foremost among Rabbi Judah’s critics was the maverick scholar Eleazar Ha-Kappar, known as Bar Kappara. Bar Kappara’s erudition as a Torah scholar was combined with a unique flare for rhetorical and poetic expression. When his indignation was aroused, this would be translated into biting satire, and woe to the victims of Bar Kappara’s scathing wit!

Not surprisingly, Rabbi Judah the Prince figured prominently as a target of Bar Kappara’s barbs. Therefore, one might well appreciate that Rabbi Judah entertained serious doubts about the prospect of inviting such a troublemaker to his son’s wedding. In the end, Bar Kappara’s prominence as a scholar made it impossible to exclude him entirely.

As his invitation was slow in arriving, Bar Kappara assumed that Rabbi Judah had indeed removed him from the guest list. He determined to get even.

For this purpose he employed the time-honoured method of graffiti.

“240 million denarii were spent on this wedding,” he scrawled on the walls of the structure that housed the huppah, “but he did not see fit to invite Bar Kappara! If the Almighty is so generous to those who disobey his will, imagine how generous he is to those who obey him!”

Eventually, Bar Kappara discovered that he had been invited after all. He was now forced to reformulate his graffiti in a more positive spirit: 

“If this is the reward for obedience in this world, imagine how great are the rewards that await the righteous in the next world!” 

Later interpreters found it hard to accept that one of Judaism’s most celebrated and pious sages could have been treated so disrespectfully, or that Bar Kappara should have been so zealous of his personal honor. 

Confronted with these difficulties, the Maharsha’s commentary proposed a radically different reinterpretation of the episode. In this version, Bar Kappara had never intended anything but respectful praise for Rabbi Judah. Initially, he had extolled Rabbi Judah by comparing him with lesser mortals, who must claim their rewards either in this world (as is usually the case with the wicked) or in the next world (like most of the righteous). Rabbi Judah the Prince, on the other hand, belonged to a rare group who could enjoy the benefits of both worlds, as indicated by the extravagance of his son’s wedding feast! 

Acccording to Maharsha, both of Bar Kappara’s messages had the same purpose of lauding Rabbi Judah; however, he had to restate the point more explicitly because its subtlety had been misunderstood the first time round.

With all due respect to Maharsha, his pious rewriting of the story does not give due weight to Bar Kappara’s track record as an iconoclastic prankster. This impression is amply confirmed by several anecdotes about him and Rabbi Judah.

For example, Bar Kappara seems to have taken particular offense in the fact that Rabbi Judah had allowed his daughter to marry an individual named Bar El’asah, an aristocrat whose material affluence was (to put it delicately) not matched by his intellectual abilities. 

On one occasion, Bar Kappara persuaded Bar El’asah that he could impress his father-in-law if he posed ingenious questions to him, and the clever scholar generously even offered to compose an appropriate query for the occasion. 

Bar El’asa commenced reciting the challenging and perplexing riddle that Bar Kappara had devised for him, a brainteaser that was replete with obscure biblical allusions and was obviously beyond El’asah’s modest intellectual capacities. As he listened to the declamation, Rabbi Judah observed Bar Kappara smirking in the background, and expressed his strong disapproval of the prank. 

At this point Bar Kappara now realized that he had ruined any hope he might of had of ever receiving rabbinic ordination. 

Rabbi Judah did not enjoy laughing, and he was convinced that his lapses into levity would have dire consequences.Once he offered to pay Bar Kappara forty se-ahs of wheat if he would only restrain his jesting.

When the time came to claim the reward for his good behaviour, Bar Kappara approached Rabbi Judah with a basket ‚ which he comically turned upside down and wore on his head. Rabbi Judah could not withhold a painful chuckle.

At the same wedding where Bar Kappara wrote his audacious comments on the walls, he also bet Bar El’asah that he could get Rabbi Judah to dance and his wife to pour him wine. Of course he won his betãby refusing to regale them with his novel biblical interpretations unless they complied with his demands. 

Bar El’asah was so upset by his adversary’s success that he stomped out of the wedding in disgust.

From the perspective of the hosts, the social event of the year might well have been an appalling disaster. Nevertheless, thanks to the impudence of one eccentric and problematic guest, the wedding of Rabbi Simeon became one of the most memorable affairs of its timeãand we are still talking about it today.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, February 27, 2003, p. 16. 
• For further reading:
  • Alon, Gedalia. The Jews in Their Land in the Talmudic Age (70-640 C.E.). Translated by Gershon Levi. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1980.
  • Epstein, J. N. Prolegomena Ad Litteras Tannaiticas: Mishna, Tosephta Et Interpretationes Halachicas, ed. E. Z. Melamed. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1957.
  • Lieberman, Saul. Siphre Zutta (the Midrash of Lydda). Talmudah Shel Kisrin. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1968.
  • Meir, Ofra. Rabi Yehudah Ha-Nasi: Deyokno Shel Manhig Be-Masorot Erets-Yisra’el U-Vavel Sifriyat Helal Ben-Hayim. Tel-Aviv: ha-Kibbuts ha-Meuhad, 1999.
  • Schwartz, Joshua. Jewish Settlement in Judaea after the Bar-Kochba War until the Arab Conquest Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Hanging Out with Vaiezatha

by Eliezer Segal

The book of Esther reaches its culmination with the defeat of the villains, as Haman and his ten sons are hanged on the fifty-cubit tree that was originally prepared for the execution of the righteous Mordecai. 

In a rare departure from the standard scribal practice, Jewish law insists that the names of Haman’s sons must be written in the Megillah as a vertical column, so that each name is positioned above the next, rather than in normal blocks of prose. The Talmud suggests that the structural shakiness of such a narrow stack of blocks symbolizes the ultimate transience of Haman’s evil.

Some of our sages deduced from the unusual way of writing the names of Haman’s sons that the shape of the written text was intended to replicate graphically the positioning of the sons on the gallows. 

Indeed, several traditional commentaries and manuscript illustrators tried to calculate the precise placement of the culprits along the fifty-cubit pole. The favourite representation had the entire family suspended in a single vertical sequence, in order of seniority.

Of course, baby brother Vaiezatha was the low man on the hanging-pole, dangling just above the surface. Some commentators suggested that this unpleasant posture might even have caused his body to stretch an extra cubit.

The Talmud provided an additional instruction about how to write the name of the youngest sibling:

“The vav of Vaiezatha must be stretched out like a pole. What is the reason for this? Because they were all hanged on a single pole.”

Though the general idea behind this instruction seems clear enough, the commentators were not in agreement about whether it was referring to the graphic form of the Hebrew letter vav (which is, basically, a straight vertical line that can be conveniently elongated by the scribe), or to the manner of its spoken pronunciation.

The Lekah Tov, a homiletical commentary composed in eleventh-century Bulgaria, recommended a combination of both practices: 

“…The reader of the Megillah must … pronounce the vav of Vaiezatha in a drawn-out manner. For this reason the vav of Vaiezatha is written long.” 

This interpretation would later be advocated by Rabbi Jacob Tam and others. 

On the other hand, some commentators, like Rabbi Jonathan of Lunel, understood that the ruling refers not to the lengthening of the consonant, but to pronouncing it with special clarity and elaborate musical rendering. 

Other medieval authorities argued that the Talmud was speaking neither about the letter’s pronunciation, nor its length, but about its shape. As interpreted by Rabbi Aaron Hallevy of Barcelona and several Spanish scholars, the correct interpretation was that the little curled roof that normally appears at the top of the letter vav should be omitted in this case, producing a simple straight line.

The debate over whether the Talmud was speaking about the shape of the vav or its pronunciation remained unresolved throughout the medieval era, with the rabbis adducing ingenious arguments and proof-texts in support of their respective positions.

In their attempts to determine the correct way of writing the vav of Vaiezatha, it was natural that the scholars would consult the literature of the “Masorah,” the meticulous compendia of textual rules that were devised to ensure the accurate writing and chanting of the Bible.

Some authors reported that, though the Masorah enumerates letters in the Bible that should be written larger than normal size, the vav in Vaiezatha’s name is not mentioned in those lists.

However, it turned out that not all editions of the Masorah were identical when it came to this question. Some scholars cited Masoretic texts that set down, in the name of “the practice of the scribes who have received it by tradition,” that the vav of Vaiezatha must be written large.

Thus, the original dispute over the correct interpretation of the talmudic passage was seen to hinge on the more fundamental question of whether there existed a conflict between the Talmud and the accepted scribal practices for writing works of Scripture.

And in truth this inconsistency is borne out by the extant editions of Masorah. When we examine carefully the tiny mnemonic annotations that occcupy the margins of the printed Rabbinic Bibles, we observe that the vav of Vaiezatha is included in a list of “Large Letters” that is attached to the beginning of Genesis, but it is absent from a similar list appended to 1 Chronicles. 

One scholar, who delved through the manuscript evidence to collect ten different Masoretic lists of this kind, discovered that our extended vav is mentioned in only four of them.

Amidst the turmoil of conflicting traditions about how to correctly inscribe the first letter of Vaiezatha’s name, the commentators display little concern about the more philosophical implications of the story. 

For example, I am not aware of any traditional interpreters who were troubled by the prospect of collective punishment being imposed upon an entire family, which may have included innocent children. Evidently, they were satisfied that all of Haman’s ten sons, old and young alike, must have been as wicked as their father, each one a worthy heir to the nefarious royal line of Amalek and deserving of his own individual retribution. Talmudic tradition relates that the sons all lobbied actively with the Persian government to obstruct the construction of the Second Temple.

Whether we accept that the stretching of the vav is to be done graphically or orally, it is clear that the fate of Haman’s entire family is being represented by the person of Vaiezatha. This invites the question of why this symbolism should have been attached to the name of the youngest of the culprits, rather than to Haman himself, or to one of his older offspring? In fact, some of the names of Haman’s elder sons are written with small letters.

One lesson that might be suggested by this anomaly is that the “small folk” of the world bear a decisive share of the responsibility in allowing tyrants to carry out their malevolent schemes. 

There is always a temptation to pass off the blame onto our leaders and wielders of power. By figuratively associating Haman’s execution with the youngest of his sons, Jewish tradition is reminding us that normal citizens are ultimately accountable when they fail to protest or resist the evil decrees of their superiors.

This is, I believe, a lesson whose relevance has not diminished in recent history and in our contemporary world.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, March 13, 2003, pp. 10-11. 
• For further reading:
  • Ginsburg, Christian D., ed. The Massoreth Ha-Masssoreth of Elias Levita. Edited by Harry M. Orlinsky, The Library of Biblical Studies. New York: Ktav, 1968.
  • Ginsburg, Christian David. The Massorah Compiled from Manuscripts. London, 1880.
  • Segal, Eliezer. The Babylonian Esther Midrash: A Critical Commentary. Vol. 3 Brown Judaic Studies. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994.
  • Zevin, S. J., ed. Talmudic Encyclopedia. Jerusalem: Talmudic Encyclopedia Institute, 1978-.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Thicker than Water

by Eliezer Segal

As the traditional Jewish commentators scrutinized the Bible with their characteristic thoroughness, they could not help but be struck the diversity of the ten plagues that were inflicted upon the Egyptians. 

Some of the plagues, such as the fiery hailstones and the precise targeting of the Egyptian firstborn, were hard to explain as anything other than supernatural marvels. However, most of the others, including the assorted human and animal diseases, were outwardly indistinguishable from natural phenomena, and their miraculous status was manifest only in their opportune timing and in their being foretold by Moses and Aaron.

The Passover Haggadah, for the most part, reflects the typical approach of the talmudic and midrashic preachers who delighted in magnifying the miraculous dimensions of the plagues. This approach is evident, for example, in that familiar passage where Rabbis Yosé the Galilean, Eliezer and Akiva vie to outdo each other in counting how many afflictions were really compressed into the ten plagues of Egypt and the splitting of the Red Sea.

The first of the ten plagues, the transformation of the Nile’s waters into blood, is situated midway between the extremes of the purely naturalistic and the outright miraculous. A straightforward reading of the biblical narrative favours a distinctly supernatural interpretation of the event, since water (at least before the advent of modern industrial pollutants) does not normally mutate itself into an organic substance like blood. 

The rabbis of the Midrash followed their usual policy of multiplying the supernatural aspects of the plague, introducing novel details into the story beyond those provided by the Torah. For example, some sages asserted that not only did blood flow in the lakes and rivers, but it even issued from the Egyptian idols. Others related how the liquid remained crystal-clear and drinkable when it was poured by the Israelites

During the Middle Ages, many Jewish thinkers were deeply influenced by the rationalistic approaches of the Greek philosophical tradition, and they sought to apply scientific principles to the understanding of Scripture.

From the perspective of the Jewish philosophers, the greatness of God can best be appreciated by means of an intensive study of the unchanging and intricate laws of nature. For this reason, they were usually reluctant to acknowledge any suspensions of the natural order. 

In contrast to the Talmudic sages, for whom the proliferation of miraculous events served to exalt the infinite power of the Almighty, the medieval rationalists believed that superfluous miracles actually diminished the stature of the omnipotent and eternal Creator who had established the laws of nature.

It was no easy task for them to propose scientifically plausible explanations for the plague of blood. 

Take for example the difficulties faced by the fourteenth-century French commentator Rabbi Nissim of Marseilles. As a matter of general principle, he declared that the plague of blood should not be classified as a nes, a truly supernatural miracle, but rather as a mofet (“sign”), a natural process whose imminent occurrence was predicted by Aaron thanks to his expertise in reading the evidence of the stars. 

Even Rabbi Nissim had to acknowledge that the change that affected the water was a drastic one, since the Torah states that the water remained utterly undrinkable for seven days. He argued that the transformation was achieved by means of the intensity of the sun, which rendered the waters red, thick and putrid. Water of that sort provided a natural breeding environment for the frogs who would show up for the next plague.

Even some authors with clearly philosophical sympathies admitted that the Torah’s plain sense was undeniable in this instance, and that that the Nile underwent a bona fide chemical mutation from water to real blood. 

Maimonides, who was usually very reluctant to acknowledge changes in the natural order, stressed that the change was only a temporary one that left no lasting effects. 

The impermanence of the water’s altered state was also underscored in the commentary of the thirteenth-century French exegete Rabbi Hezekiah ben Manoah (the Hizzekuni): “The transformation of the Nile into blood was only for a specified time, causing the fish to perish instantly on account of the blood. Afterwards, the Nile reverted to its original state.” 

In a similar vein, the French philosopher and exegete Gersonides, while accepting the literal implications of the episode, stressed that the potentiality for such an “exception” had been programmed into nature at the time of the universe’s inception, and therefore did not constitute a violation of the natural order. 

Another Jewish scholar who tried his hand at scientifically analyzing the plague of blood was Rabbi Abraham Farisol, a16^th-century philosopher who wandered from Avignon in southern France, settling eventually in Ferrara, where he was involved in the lively intellectual life of the Renaissance. In addition to his prolific output of Bible commentaries and inter-religious polemics, he is known primarily for his influential geographical treatise, Orhot Olam.

Farisol found it impossible to accept the biblical story at face value. As a scientist, he had very clear ideas about the physical nature of blood, as a substance that is found exclusively in living creatures that take nourishment. It was obvious to Rabbi Farisol that there is no scientific process by which simple H₂0 can be changed into an organic substance. Therefore, he concluded, what the Egyptians experienced must have been an elaborate optical illusion with a symbolic message. By causing the water to decay and assume a red form, the Egyptians were being issued a metaphoric forewarning of the death lay in store for them in the forthcoming plagues.

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It is intriguing to speculate about how these Jewish savants of yore conducted their seders. When the time came to recite the ten plagues, they might well have supplemented their Haggadot and traditional commentaries with chemistry textbooks, and perhaps even a few kosher-for-Passover flasks and test tubes. 

They might eventually have reached an agreement in their disputes over the correct interpretation of Exodus story. 

And agreement among Jewish scholars would have been the greatest of miracles.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, March 27, 2003, pp. 12-13. 
• For further reading:
  • Heinemann, Isaac. Darkhei Ha-‘Aggadah. Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv: Magnes and Masadah, 1970.
  • Kreisel, Haim. “The Torah Commentary of R. Nissim Ben Mosheh of Marseilles: On a Medieval Approach to Torah U-Madda.” The Torah u-Madda Journal10 (2001): 20-36.
  • Kreisel, Howard T., ed. Liber Ma’Ase Nissim: Perush La-Torah Le-R. Nisim Ben Mosheh Mi-Marseilles. Jerusalem: Mekitse Nirdamim, 2000.
  • Roth, Cecil. The Jews in the Renaissance. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1977.
  • Ruderman, David B. The World of a Renaissance Jew: The Life and Thought of Abraham Ben Mordecai Farissol Monographs of the American Jewish Archives. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1981.
  • Sirat, Colette. A History of Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

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Why Was This Haggadah Different?

by Eliezer Segal

For people making their first acquaintance with the traditional Passover Haggadah, the most startling discovery is likely to be how disconnected the text is from the original biblical story. In their quest to fulfill the precept of recounting the miracles of our liberation from Egypt, the authors of the Haggadah did not take the obvious route of instituting a recitation of the opening chapters of the Book of Exodus. Instead, they focused on secondary digests of the story from the books of Deuteronomy and Joshua. 

More significantly, much of the seder liturgy is composed of a bewildering assortment of sayings and stories involving rabbis from the eras of the Mishnah and the Talmud, whereas Moses’ name is almost entirely absent. 

All of this suggests that the rabbis who assembled the traditional liturgy were determined to stress that Scripture must always be filtered through the authorized interpretation of the oral Torah, as represented in the literature of the Talmud and Midrash. 

This principle was clearly enunciated by Rav Natronai Ga’on, the ninth-century leader of the Babylonian talmudic academy of Sura. 

It had been brought to Rav Natronai’s attention that some communities were making use of a Haggadah in which the biblical texts were recited without their midrashic expositions.

The Ga’on declared not only that anyone who used such a Haggadah was not fulfilling their religious obligation, but that “he is a heretic, a dissident, rejecting the authority of the sages and showing disdain for the words of the Mishnah and Talmud. It is incumbent upon every community to ostracize such persons and separate them from the congregation of Israel.”

On first reading, this might strike us as an excessive response to a relatively minor deviation from the standard liturgy. However, Rav Natronai reveals later on that there are serious grounds for his concern, when he accuses the authors of the unorthodox Haggadah of being “disciples of Anan, may his name rot!” 

Anan ben David was the founder of the Karaite movement that arose in the eighth century to oppose the hegemony of the Talmud and the rabbis, and to proclaim the exclusive authority of the Bible in defining normative Judaism. 

The particular Haggadah that provoked the Ga’on’s ire was evidently not actually of Karaite origin. It may in fact have preserved an ancient rabbinic tradition from the Land of Israel. Nevertheless, the Rabbinite-Karaite controversy was so intense at that time that he refused to countenance even an appearance of heretical sympathies.

The Passover Haggadot used by the Karaites reflect their conviction that the Bible must be the sole source of spiritual guidance for Jews. For this reason, their liturgies adhere closely to the sequential telling of the Exodus story, supplemented by appropriate biblical texts prescribing how the festival is to be celebrated, and songs of thanksgiving from the book of Psalms. 

Notwithstanding their declared rejection of talmudic embellishments, that ideal was not realized consistently. Even the assumption that the Passover meal should be the occasion for recounting the exodus story to the next generation has no explicit basis in the Torah, though it was never questioned by the Karaites. 

The exclusively biblical content of the Karaite Haggadah makes perfect sense in light of their ideology. It is more difficult, however, to understand why a similar approach was adopted by non-Karaite Jews in the nineteenth century. A non-rabbinic Haggadah was published in London in 1842 as part of a two-volume prayer book, under the auspices of David Woolf Marks, who served as spiritual leader of the West London Synagogue of British Jews, the pioneering Liberal congregation of the United Kingdom.

In Marks’ Haggadah, the exclusion of post-biblical elements was not limited to midrashic expositions and other questionable texts, but extended as well to the customs and rituals of the Seder meal. Gone were the familiar “four cups,” the hand-washings, haroset, Hillel’s matzah sandwich and the afikoman, none of which were perceived as genuine biblical ceremonies. 

The mere fact that the Haggadah was composed for Liberal Jews is not sufficient to explain its rejection of rabbinic components. After all, no equivalent work was produced in any of the other main centre of religious reform, whether on the European continent or in the New World. 

Although some German Reformers claimed to be “Jews of the Mosaic persuasion,” and proclaimed their commitment to “Mosaism.” these grandiose phrases did not translate into a consistent rejection of the rabbinic tradition. Indeed, historians have coined the term “Neo-karaism” to designate the distinctive British attitude.

The most plausible explanation for the rise of this ideology in England is that the Jews were assimilating attitudes that were current in the surrounding Christian society. During the Victorian era, the Church of England was experiencing a revival of evangelical fundamentalism that stressed the primacy of Scripture as the sole wellspring of spiritual legitimacy. 

In most respects, this reflected the traditional Protestant opposition to the authority of the Pope and historical traditions in the Roman Catholic Church. Nevertheless, many Jews felt (whether consciously or unconsciously) that they were called upon to justify their faith in terms that would be acceptable to Christian sensibilities. 

This translated into a widespread rejection of Jewish practices that could not find support in the Bible, such as the observance of the second days of festivals; though some have argued that the desire to abolish the burdensome extra holidays was the primary concern of the reformers, and that the rejection of non-biblical authority was merely chosen as a convenient pretext for that departure from tradition.

The Christian stimulus to the debate comes across quite unmistakably in the bizarre-sounding theological terminology and assumptions that appear in the discussions. Particularly jarring to Jewish ears is the frequently-cited premise that the authority of rabbinic writings is contingent on a belief in their “divinity.” 

Another factor that may have favoured the rise of the biblicist ideology among English Jewry was the strong influence of Spanish and Portuguese Marranos in shaping the Jewish religious establishment there. Crypto-Jews who had been raised in the shadow of the Inquisition had no access to any post-biblical Jewish documents, and developed a naive image of Judaism as “the religion of the Old Testament.” 

When these refugees openly assumed their ancestral faith in England, they often suffered serious crises when it came to acknowledging the living reality of rabbinic Judaism. This issue was grave enough to inspire David Nieto, the eighteenth-century Haham of London’s Spanish-Portuguese community to compose a major work in defense of the Oral Law; and it is perhaps significant that chapters from this work were reissued during the 1840’s. 

At any rate, the distinctive theology that underlay Marks’s prayer book gave rise to some fascinating departures from the liturgies that were being developed by the Liberal movements in other Jewish communities. Probably the most surprising of these was the inclusion of entreaties for the rebuilding of the Jerusalem Temple and the reestablishment of sacrificial worship, ideas that were rejected as primitive and parochial by the Reformers on the Continent in spite of their deep biblical roots. Most of these passages were removed in later incarnations of the Marks prayer book.

Furthermore, Marks insisted on eliminating the Aramaic passages from his text, since he apparently viewed the language itself as a residue of abhorrent rabbinism. German Reformers, on the contrary, when they were not insisting on translating all their prayers into the prevailing vernacular, had a fondness for Aramaic prayers, which they viewed as a precedent for the adaptation of the tradition to the language of the common folk.

The fact that a book has been published does not guarantee that it will be read or used. This appears to have been the case with David Woolf Marks’ revolutionary Haggadah. Although the clergy of the West London congregation could enforce the use of the new prayer book within the walls of the synagogue, they had little power over what people did in their own homes. 

The evidence suggests that Marks’ successors did not share his commitment to the Jewish Scripturalist ideology, and eventually replaced his liturgical innovations with more conventional versions. 

All this serves as a powerful illustration of how traditional Judaism does not recall the liberation from Egypt as a one-time event from the distant biblical past, but as a personal experience that must be continually reinterpreted for us by the rabbis and sages of every generation.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, April 17, 2003, pp. 22-3. 
• For further reading:
  • Goldschmidt, E. D., ed. The Passover Haggadah: Its Sources and History. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1969.
  • Meyer, Michael A. Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism Studies in Jewish History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
  • Petuchowski, Jakob. “Karaite Tendencies in an Early Reform Haggadah.” Hebrew Union College Annual 31 (1960): 223-49.
  • Petuchowski, Jakob Josef. Prayerbook Reform in Europe: The Liturgy of European Liberal and Reform Judaism. New York: World Union for Progressive Judaism, 1968.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Pyre, Pyre, Pants on Fire

by Eliezer Segal

The image of frenzied crowds burning articles of clothing at a public gathering is one that seems appropriate for a rock concert or protest rally, but not quite what one would expect at a Jewish religious ceremony. 

Such, however, was the custom of the throngs who flocked to Mount Meron in the Galilee on Lag Ba’Omer to commemorate the yahrzeit of Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai. The Kabbalistic community that achieved such prominence and influence in neighbouring Safed venerated Rabbi Simeon as the inspired author of the Zohar , the most influential compendium of Jewish esoteric lore.

The festivities at Rabbi Simeon’s grave could take some startling forms. The noted nineteenth-century Sepharadic authority Rabbi Joseph Hazzan reported in alarm that the participants were in the habit of soaking valuable articles of clothing in oil and setting them on fire. The same practice was discussed in a responsum by the Galician scholar Rabbi Joseph Saul Nathanson.

Both these rabbis had serious reservations about the entire practice of commemorating the death of a great saint by means of cheerful revelry. However, what irritated them most about the Lag Ba’Omer festivities was the burning of clothing. They insisted that the ritual was a blatant violation of the Jewish law known as “bal tash-hit” that prohibits unnecessary destruction of useful property.

For their part, t he defenders of the practice were able to point to some impressive precedents from ancient Jewish traditions. 

For example, the Bible mentions the practice of burning on a pyre the robes and other personal possessions of a deceased monarch; while the Talmud observes that this custom was tolerated, and excluded from the category of outlawed pagan superstitions.

Rabbis Hazzan and Nathanson retorted that this was a unique case, limited to dead royalty, and could not be applied to the current situation. The latter also noted that the practice was still in force in his day.

Others, in their attempts to justify the burning of clothing, invoked the precedent of the Simhat Beit Hashe’uvah, the public revelry that took place in Jerusalem during Sukkot in the days of the Temple. The Talmud related that worn-out robes and sashes of the Priests would be shredded into wicks for the torches that would illuminate the city’s courtyards during the weeklong celebrations.

To counter this argument, it was retorted that there is a decisive difference between recycling old priestly clothing (which have no other permissible use once they have become unwearable) and setting fire to costly new garments, as was the custom at Meron.

Undaunted in their determination to justify their practice, the garment-burners invoked the precedent of great Kabbalists and scholars who, they alleged, had themselves participated in the custom. The mystical circle of Safed rabbis included some of Judaism’s most glorious names, including figures like Rabbis Isaac Luria (the Ari) and Joseph Karo. 

Rabbis Hazzan and Nathanson both refused to entertain the possibility that there was any truth to those reports. 

“It is obvious that the Ari and the other holy men who were in the land must have confined themselves to studying at his grave, and to reciting prayers and supplications over his death… Clearly, the Beit Yosef[Rabbi Joseph Karo] and his circle would never have allowed people to act in such a way.” Other authorities favoured fasting, not feasting, as the appropriate manner of observing a saint’s yahrzeit. The sages of Tiberias, while upholding the legitimacy of the Meron festivities, preferred that the value of the garments should be donated to the poor.

The opponents of the custom concluded that it was no more than a recent innovation that had been incorrectly mistaken for a venerable tradition—so much so that many people feared that it would be sinful not to participate in it.

In the late nineteenth century, the Chief Rabbi of Safed, Rabbi Samuel Heller, composed a special work entitled Kevod Melakhim (Honour of Kings) in defense of the Meron festivities. 

In his work, he attempted to demonstrate in painstaking detail that the burning of clothing in honour of Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai does not fall under the prohibition of gratuitous destruction, since it has a legitimate spiritual purpose.

As for the charge that the deaths of great sages should be mourned rather than celebrated, Rabbi Heller countered that true joy and sadness are intertwined in profound ways. He explained that the purpose of burning expensive clothing was to demonstrate our humility and disdain for the material and physical pleasures that stand in the way of ultimate spiritual fulfillment.

Not only did Rabbi Heller affirm that the Ari and other renowned sages had participated actively in garment-burning, but he insisted that some of them had acted in ways that were even more bizarre.

In this connection, he invoked the precedent of Rabbi Hayyim ben Atar, who used to climb Mount Meron on his hands and knees while bleating like an animal and loudly proclaiming his worthlessness in the face of Eternity. The burning of garments should presumably be interpreted in a similar spirit, as a symbolic expression of the insignificance of this world and its possessions.

In spite of all their discomfort with the garment-burning custom, Rabbi Nathanson and his supporters had to concede that their protests were unlikely to have much success in eradicating it. They therefore concluded that, under the circumstances, discretion might be the better part of valour. After all, they reasoned, if the celebrants persisted in their objectionable practice even after being admonished by the rabbinic leadership, then that would compound the severity of their transgression.

Though I have never attended the Lag Ba’Omer revelries at Meron, it is my understanding that the igniting of clothing is no longer a prominent feature of the event. However, the popular gathering has taken on several other customs that are even more objectionable, whether in the form of pervasive drinking and gambling, or the illicit ransacking of construction sites to take wood for the bonfires.

Though the pyres of Meron are said to symbolize the warmth and illumination of the Torah’s mystical inspiration, it is very difficult to avoid crossing the fine line that separates a radiant glow from a destructive conflagration.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, May 9, 2003, pp. 12-3. 
• For further reading:
  • Kitov, Eliyahu. The Book of Our Heritage: The Jewish Year and Its Days of Significance. Jerusalem: Feldheim, 1978.
  • Zevin, Shelomoh Yosef. The Festivals in Halachah: An Analysis of the Development of the Festival Laws. Translated by Meir Holder and Uri Kaploun Artscroll Judaica Classics. New York and Jerusalem: Mesorah Publications and Hillel Press, 1999.

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