Thanks for the Mnemonics

by Eliezer Segal

During the course of the Passover Seder, after we recite the ten plagues, the Haggadah adds a detail that seems altogether superfluous. It informs us that the second-century sage Rabbi Judah ben Ilai composed a mnemonic acronym to help remember the correct order of the ten plagues: D’Za”Kh, ‘ADa”Sh, Be’aCha”V.

Similar mnemonic signs occur frequently in the Talmud. This should not surprise us, if we consider that the hefty folios of Talmud and Midrash that now fill up library shelves were then classified as “oral Torah.” As such, they could not be written down, but had to be learned and transmitted through rote memorization. Therefore, aids to memory were very useful for students.

The tenth-century French scholar Rabbi Judah ben Yakar acknowledged that a need exists for such mnemonics, since many people have difficulty mastering the exact order of the ten plagues.

Against those who might contend that the order of the plagues is so well known that no extra help is necessary to remember them, the Spanish-Algerian scholar Rabbi Simeon Duran insisted that there are indeed specific reasons to fear that the order could get confused. 

For one thing, the Talmudic rabbis occasionally entertained the possibility that the Bible did not always present events in their historical order. In the present instance, the Scriptural evidence is particularly perplexing, since there are passages in Psalms 78 and 105 that enumerate the plagues in different sequences. 

Hence, Rabbi Duran concluded that there was a necessity for Rabbi Judah’s mnemonic sign in order to demonstrate that the book of Exodus should be accepted as the primary version of the story of the plagues.

Other Jewish authorities found it hard to fathom why such a celebrated Talmudic sage should be given credit for the trivial-looking achievement of assembling the initial letters of ten items. They therefore proposed ingenious rationales for Rabbi Judah’s mnemonic.

Rabbi Eliezer ben Nathan suggested that Rabbi Judah had intended his acronym to function as a replacement for the full recitation of the plagues, as an object lesson of how people should always strive to express themselves as concisely as possible. 

(This explanation invites some interesting speculations about how to shorten the Seder by compressing the entire Haggadah into a series of acronyms…) 

A midrashic tradition relates that the names of the plagues were all etched on Moses’ wondrous staff. A commentary attributed to Rashi pointed out that this would be easier to visualize if we assume that Moses followed Rabbi Judah’s approach of inscribing only the initial letters of each plague.

A popular interpretation, cited in early French and Italian commentaries, focused on the numerological value of the letters, according to the system known as gimatria. They pointed out that if we compute the numerical values of all the letters in Rabbi Judah’s abbreviation, the total comes to 501. 

Now compare this with the discussion in the following section of the Haggadah, where the sages try to outdo each other in calculating ever-larger totals of the plagues that were inflicted on the Egyptians at the Red Sea. Rabbi Yosé the Gallilean found fifty plagues, Rabbi Eliezer 200, and Rabbi Akiva surpassed them all with 250. Add those sums together and we come up with: five hundred.

That’s just one less than Rabbi Judah’s gimatria.

Some commentators asserted glibly that single-digit discrepancies are overlooked or rounded off for purposes of numerological computations. Others suggested that the extra unit alluded to the actual drowning of the Egyptians, or to the “finger of God” that was manifested in that great miracle. 

Several exegetes focused on the fact that Rabbi Judah’s sign divided the plagues up into three distinct groups, consisting respectively of three, three and four items. Alternatively, there are three sets of three, with the final plague (the smiting of the firstborn) constituting a class of its own. 

These scholars noted that there are numerous criteria according to which the plagues can be classified into groups of three. For example, a commentary ascribed to Rashi’s grandson Rabbi Samuel ben Meir explains that the first set of three plagues were all connected to the earth, the last to the air, while the intermediate group occurred in a natural manner.

Another threefold pattern that appears in the Torah’s narrative is that the first two plagues in each triad were preceded by forewarnings of the impending disaster; whereas the third plague was inflicted on them without prior notification. The Talmudic rabbis derived from this pattern a judicial policy of “three strikes and you’re out,” to streamline the sentencing of incorrigible criminals.

Other commentators pointed out an additional pattern: The first three plagues were all performed by Aaron, the next three either by Moses and Aaron together, or by neither of them; and the third set by Moses acting alone. According to an alternative reading of the text, the groups of plagues were inflicted through Aaron, Moses and the Almighty respectively.

Rabbi Yom-Tov Ishbili (Ritba) observed that each of the three groupings was intended to teach Pharaoh a fundamental theological lesson: 

The first set, where the plagues were announced with the declaration “I am the Lord,” affirmed the existence of God. 

In the second group, the declaration is worded “I am the Lord in the midst of the earth,” thereby proclaiming the principle of ongoing divine providence over the affairs of our world. 

Regarding the last triad, Pharaoh is admonished for not heeding the word of the Lord, reinforcing our belief that God communicates with human beings.

What a remarkable testimony this is to the ingenuity of our Jewish scholars, that they can derive such profound theological insights from a ten-letter abbreviation in the Haggadah!

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, April 1, 2004, p. 20.
• For further reading:
  • Kasher, Menahem. Hagadah Shelamah. The Complete Passover Hagadah. Jerusalem: Torah Shelema Institute, 1967.
  • Katzenellenbogen, Mordecai Leib. Hagadah Shel Pesah Torat Hayim. Jerusalem: Mosad ha-Rav Kook, 1998.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Israel Rocks

by Eliezer Segal

Even with the best of intentions, it is very difficult to define the appropriate relationships between politics and religion.

Whether it is a question of teaching about the world’s religions in the public school curriculum, or of reciting the phrase “one nation under God” in the American Pledge of Allegiance, there is no avoiding the knotty and emotionally charged controversies that are ignited whenever we attempt to demarcate precise boundaries between church and state in a society that claims to be religiously neutral or secular. 

As is to be expected, these kinds of questions have been especially ubiquitous and intense in the arena of Israeli politics. In fact, an intriguing religion-state confrontation had to be dealt with by founders of the Jewish state on the very first Israeli Independence Day.

In the historic United Nations session of November 29, 1947, the organization voted to partition Mandatory Palestine into two states, thereby creating a Jewish homeland. This was to take effect upon the termination of the British Mandate, which was scheduled to take place on May 14, 1948.

After exploring the various options, the Zionist executive under the leadership of David Ben-Gurion resolved that they should issue a formal Declaration of Independence immediately following the British withdrawal. Towards that end, Ben-Gurion convened a committee of five senior figures to draft the historic document. 

Predictably, there were many different opinions about what should or should not be included in the Declaration, not to mention the disagreements that arose over matters of Hebrew style and word choice. Potentially divisive issues, such as the name of the new state, or whether the proclamation should designate specific borders, were debated and resolved with relative ease.

As would occur repeatedly in subsequent Israeli political history, the most stubborn divisions arose in connection with the Declaration’s religious implications.

The opposing positions were marked out clearly in the negotiations. Representatives of the religious Zionist movement considered it unthinkable that a proclamation issued on behalf of the Jewish people should not invoke God’s name. Some, like Mizrahi delegate David Pinkus, insisted on a clear affirmation that the Jews’ right to their land was based on Biblical promises. 

At the other end of the ideological spectrum, confirmed atheists like socialist Aharon Zisling could not tolerate the slightest intrusion of supernatural allusions into a political text.

In the version that was ultimately adopted, the dramatic concluding paragraph began “With trust in the Rock of Israel, we set our hand to this Declaration…” Ben-Gurion presented this usage as a compromise that could be acceptable even to non-believers: “Each of us, in his own way, believes in the ‘Rock of Israel’ as he conceives it.” He explained that the atheists could identify the Rock with the Jews’ source of nationalistic strength. Presumably, Marxists could interpret it as a reference to the dynamics of dialectical materialism. 

A similar tactic had been adopted by the framers of the American Declaration of Independence, who had tried to sidestep conventional religious terminology by employing vague terms like Nature’s God and “divine providence.”

In fact, the Israeli advocates of the non-religious position scored some significant points for their view in the introductory clause of the Declaration, where it states that it was the Jewish nation who “wrote and gave the Bible to the world”–an implied rejection of the more traditional religious belief in the Bible’s divine authorship.

At any rate, Ben-Gurion pushed his compromise through without allowing it be put to an official vote. 

Despite Ben-Gurion’s conviction that “Rock of Israel” was not necessarily a religious term, the official English translation composed by Moshe Sharet (Shertok), and cited in official documents, rendered it as “Almighty God.” It was not until 1962 that the Israeli government changed it to the more literal “Rock of Israel.”

I personally find it hard to imagine that an enthusiastic Bible scholar like Ben-Gurion would have been taken in by his own non-theological interpretation of “Rock of Israel.” Its scriptural source is from King David’s last words in 2 Samuel 23:3, whose meaning could hardly be more explicit: “The God of Israel has spoken, the Rock of Israel has said to me: When one rules justly over men, ruling in the fear of God.”

By the same token, I doubt that it was a coincidence that, when the Chief Rabbinate composed its official “Prayer for the Welfare of the State of Israel,” it chose to begin the blessing by invoking “Our Father in heaven, the Rock of Israel and its redeemer.” This phrase was virtually identical with the one that Mizrahi leader Rabbi Judah Leib Maimon (Fishman) had originally proposed for inclusion in the Declaration of Independence. 

If, as seems probable, the author of the Prayer for the Welfare of State was S. J. Agnon, it is inconceivable that an author with his sensitivity to subtle literary wordplays would have passed up the opportunity to insert an allusion to the contentious phrase in the Declaration of Independence.

However, we might choose to interpret the theological character of the Israeli Declaration of Independence, the religious Zionists would not be stopped entirely from adding overtly spiritual touches to the historic occasion.

After Ben-Gurion concluded the emotionally charged and ceremonious reading of the document at the Tel-Aviv Museum on 5 Iyyar 5708, his longtime friend Rabbi Maimon–who would go on to serve a distinguished career as a scholar, parliamentarian and government minister–intoned the appropriate blessing for such an important milestone, the Sheheheyanu, praising God for granting them the privilege of living to experience this great moment. 

As a signatory to the Declaration, Rabbi Maimon realized that, even if he could not succeed in having God’s name mentioned in the body of the Declaration, he still had control over how he chose to sign his own name.

If you look very carefully at the bottom of the document, you will discern that the rabbi was careful to insert before his signature the Hebrew initials that serve as an abbreviation for the phrase “with the help of God.”

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, April 22, 2004, pp. 8-9.
• For further reading:
  • Kleiman, Shelley. The State of Israel Declares Independence. Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1999. Accessed March 31 2004 2004. Web page. Available from http://www.israel-mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive/1990_1999/1999/4/Shelley Kleiman – The State of Israel Declares Ind.
  • Harris, Jay. “The Israeli Declaration of Independence.” Journal of Textual Reasoning 7 (1998).
  • Meir, Golda. My Life. 1st American ed. New York Putnam, 1975.
  • Rubinstein, Elyakim. “The Declaration of Independence as a Basic Document of the State of Israel.” Israel Studies, no. 3 (1998): 195 – 210.
  • Sharef (Sherf), Zeev. Three Days. Translated by Julian Louis Meltzer. 1st ed. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1962.
  • Troen, S. Ilan. “The Hebrew Translation of the Declaration of Independence.” Journal of American History 85, no. 4 (1999): 1380-84.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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The Return of the Grey Roots

by Eliezer Segal

The Talmud tells the story of a rabbi who faced an audience, half of whom wanted to listen to a technical discourse on religious law, while the others were eager to enjoy an edifying and entertaining sermon. 

The rabbi likened his predicament to that of a gentleman who had two wives, one young and one old. The former was in the habit of plucking out her husband’s grey hairs, and the latter his dark ones. The upshot of this situation, he lamented, was that between the two of them, he came out completely bald!

This anecdote came to my mind some time ago, when I published an article in which I collected some odds and ends from the Talmud, Midrash and miscellaneous rabbinic writings, that attested to the persistent desires of Jewish men to make themselves appear more youthful, whether by dying their hair or by donning hairpieces.

Since that time, I have stumbled on a surprising number of additional sources dealing with that topic. Most of these take the form of written inquiries that were posed to rabbis over the generations, as collected in the volumes known as “Responsa” literature. These texts have revealed to me that the phenomenon is much more widespread than I had previously imagined, and was an ongoing concern of rabbinic decision-makers for centuries. 

As we shall see, the variety of questions that were posed to the rabbis give us valuable insights into recurring traits of human nature, and about the adaptation of Jewish tradition to changing circumstances and sensibilities.

The sages of the Talmud declared that the selective plucking out of grey hairs by a man was considered effeminate behaviour, equivalent to cross-dressing, and is therefore forbidden by the Torah. Maimonides ruled that the removal of even one hair in this manner is punishable by lashes. The same prohibition would apply to the dying of a single hair in order to satisfy one’s vanity.

In a typical example from the Responsa, we find an inquiry from a thirty-four-year-old Jewish labourer whose beard had turned prematurely white. His aged appearance constituted a barrier to finding employment. The question was raised as to whether, in addition to the previously mentioned stigma of effeminate behavior, the individual might also be guilty of fraud if he were to misrepresent his appearance by artificially darkening the colour of his beard. 

The rabbi who was consulted about this question ruled that since the labourer was a contractor who was being paid by the job and not by the hour, and since the colouring actually caused him to appear more like his actual age, the issue of fraud was not applicable here. Because of the extenuating circumstances of the case, the rabbi permitted the dying of the beard, provided that it was done by a gentile.

Another intriguing question was posed to Rabbi Joseph Saul Nathanson of Lemberg (1808-75), regarding a young man, half of whose whose beard had turned white. His bizarre appearance became a target of ridicule among the rabble, and a focus of disruptive chatter in the synagogue. 

After sifting eruditely through the vast literature of previous discussions on the topic, Rabbi Nathanson suggested several strategies that he deemed to be acceptable by halakhic srtandards. These included: colouring the dark half of his beard white (since the biblical prohibition only covered the darkening of one’s hair, but not lightening it); leaving a token portion of the beard uncoloured; employing a non-Jewish barber; or using a depilatory lotion to remove the beard.

In one responsum, the rabbi was approached by the leaders of a synagogue who had recently hired a new cantor for the High Holy Days. It was the tradition in that congregation to insist on an individual with high standards of piety and learnedness, and they were convinced that they had reached an agreement with a person who satisfied their demanding criteria. 

It was only after they had hired him that they learned that their new cantor dyed his beard! 

In their distress, the synagogue leaders turned to the rabbi to find out whether such a departure from traditional standards was significant enough to warrant his dismissal, without making them vulnerable to a lawsuit for breach of contract 

The rabbi replied in no uncertain terms that this cantor had transgressed a commandment from the Torah, and theoretically was deserving of lashes. By colouring his whiskers for reasons of pure vanity, he had betrayed the expectations of his employers, and had therefore forfeited any further claims on the congregation.

In the 1940’s, a similar question was posed to a prominent American Orthodox rabbi by a thirty-eight-year-old cantor and ritual slaughterer whose hair had turned prematurely white because of the stresses and strains of a difficult life. In addition to the now-familiar problems of trying to alter his natural appearance, the case introduced several features that were distinctive to the twentieth-century American scene.

The cantor claimed that his hoary beard had served as an impediment to finding employment, since American congregations had a preference for clean-shaven “modern” rabbis (or, to be precise, those who removed their whiskers in halakhically acceptable ways, with scissors or lotions). This esthetic preference extended to the hiring of other religious functionaries as well. 

The diffficulties created by the presence of the beard were further compounded by its colour, to the point where he was convinced that it was depriving him of a respectable livelihood, and threatening his family with starvation.

The distressed cantor was heartened to find, in a journal devoted to Torah scholarship, an advertisement for a beard dye. He naively assumed that the editors of the respected periodical would not have consented to publish the advertisement if they had not been satisfied with its halakhic permissibility. However, he was quickly reminded that previous rabbinical authorities had objected strenuously to the practice; and so he was now desperately looking to the rabbi for explicit guidance. 

The reponding rabbi tried his utmost to steer a delicate course between compassion for the questioner’s predicament and faithfulness to the requirements of Jewish religious law.

While the intricate reasoning behind the rabbi’s ruling might prove fascinating to some of my readers, I suspect that many others would be tempted to skip over the argumentation as overly dry and technical. 

Given the diversity of my readership, I choose to omit the details. At my age, I can hardly afford to emerge–even metaphorically—with all my hair plucked out

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, May6, 2004, pp. 12-13.
• For further reading:
  • Greenwald, Leopold. Otzar Nichmod: An Intimate Study of Halachah and Hebrew Cognition. Columbus, 1942.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Pulling an All-Nighter

by Eliezer Segal

One of the most popular observances of the Shavu’ot holiday is the Tikkun, an all-night study session. The tradition can be implemented in diverse and flexible ways, whether through formal lectures, individual or group study of texts, or more creative formats. In almost all cases, the Tikkuns are conceived as educational experiences, designed to instruct participants in Judaism and its sacred texts. 

The earliest mention of this custom is found in the thirteenth-century Kabbalistic masterpiece, the Zohar. The practice occupies a very important place in that work, to the point where several of its most central passages and discourses are portrayed as having originated in the context of all-night study session conducted by Rabbi Shimeon ben Yohai and his legendary circle of mystics.

Rabbi Shimeon’s Tikkun was not so much an educational event as a mystical rite. In the Zohar’s rich symbolism, Shavu’ot, the anniversary of the revelation at Mount Sinai, is depicted as a metaphysical wedding of the male and female aspects of the divine. The masculine image of an exalted king is joined with the Shekhinah, the divine presence in our world, portrayed as a princess. 

The Torah scholars are members of the wedding party, and their task is to bedeck the bride in her finery, so that she will be ready to be presented to the groom in her full splendour. 

Metaphorically understood, the ornaments represent spiritual teachings, expositions of the Torah according to its most profound and mysterious levels of meaning. The literal meaning of tikkun in the Zohar is “ornament” or “decoration.”

The Talmud enumerated twenty-four different ornaments that a Jewish bride was expected to wear at her nuptials. For the Zohar, this invited the metaphoric analogy with the twenty-four books that make up the Hebrew scriptures.

It was in this allegorical setting that the Zohar visualized its mystical protagonists staying awake all night to regale each other with their gems of Kabbalistic exposition, in preparation for the marriage of God and Israel that will take place on the festival day. 

In Kabbalistic theology, mystical interpretations of Torah have the power to influence the upper spiritual realms, even to bring about the creation of new worlds.

The fact that the practice of Tikkun is not attested before the thirteenth century does not necessarily prove that it did not exist. The Zohar ascribed all-night vigils to “the pious of earlier generations,” leading some scholars to infer that they had an earlier history, perhaps even an ancient one.

In one passage, the Zohar provided a possible clue to the origins of the Shavu’ot vigil. In the course of a discussion about the metaphysical benefits of nocturnal study, Rabbi Judah remarks that the nations of the world conduct similar activities. 

Indeed, vigils of prayer and study were a venerable part of Christian worship, especially in the monastic orders. The Zohar’s author would likely have been familiar with the practice.

The Christian vigils were usually held on the eves of holidays. A fitting occasion for all-night worship was the Pentecost, the Christian equivalent to the Hebrew Shavu’ot. (“Pentecost” means “fifty” in Greek, referring to the fifty-day count leading between Passover and Shavu’ot). 

Modeled on the Jewish celebration of divine revelation, the Christian festival commemorated an event from their scriptures, wherein Jesus’ disciples experienced an outpouring of the holy spirit on Shavu’ot, in a dramatic episode replete with Sinai-like pyrotechnics.

The Jewish and Christian versions of the holiday exerted influences on one another in diverse customs and motifs, and the all-night vigil was an appropriate practice for Jews in medieval Spain to borrow from the non-Jewish environment. The Jews might even have assumed (as they occasionally did) that were merely repatriating an authentic Jewish ritual that had been plagiarized by the Christians. 

In spite of the Zohar’s enthusiastic championing of the Shavu’ot Tikkun, we do not possess a single record or report of one being observed until three centuries later. 

The oldest description of a Shavu’ot night Tikkun involves two of the most high-powered figures in our spiritual history: Rabbi Joseph Caro, author of the Shulhan ‘Arukh, and Rabbi Solomon Alkabes, the famed Kabbalist and liturgical poet. Alkabes visited Caro at his home in Nikopolis, (currently in Bulgaria), and the two decided to take part in a study vigil that involved intense recitation and chanting of representative passages from the Bible and Mishnah.

At midnight, Rabbi Caro was overpowered by what was perceived as a powerful supernatural voice issuing from his throat. The voice spoke in the name of the Mishnah mystically personified as the Shekhinah, the divine presence in the world. The voice went on to commend the participants for rescuing her from disgrace and neglect, and it reassured them that their words of Tora were being joyfully appreciated in the highest celestial realms.

The sublime speaker advised the rabbis that their vigil would have had even greater potency if it had been conducted by an assembly of ten participants. The rabbis therefore determined to assemble such a group and to repeat their ritual on the second night of the festival, notwithstanding the fact that they did not get any sleep during the intervening day. 

The second night’s Tikkun turned out to be every bit as spectacular as promised. The mystic voice made its appearance at an earlier hour, and then made a second appearance at midnight, instructing the scholars in Torah mysteries. It assured them of their exalted status in the celestial hierarchy, and urged them to take the next step in their spiritual development, by emigrating to the holy land.

The impact of that Tikkun was profound and enduring, not only for its participants, but for the history of Judaism. The voice’s exhortations were successful in persuading the protagonists to immigrate to the Land of Israel, where they were to become central figures in the Safed circle of Kabbalists who would influence the character of Jewish thought and practice in many significant ways. 

Rabbi Caro would continue to be visited by the personified Mishnah throughout his life. It was, according to Kabbalistic terminology a Maggid, a supernatural mentor of a sort that was relatively common among Jewish mystics. For half a century, Caro’s Maggid would advise, admonish or encourage him on matters of personal morality, asceticism and devotion in prayer. The rabbi would record go on to his visions in a spiritual journal that has survived in the guise of a booklet titled Maggid Mesharim. This work provides an unprecedented portal into the inner life of one of Judaism’s most distinguished scholars.

Over the years, I have attended many Shavu’ot Tikkuns, where I was privileged to learn Torah from capable and knowledgeable teachers. So far, however, none of those sessions has reached the level described in the Kabbalistic accounts, of being addressed by a supernatural guide, let alone of creating new worlds.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, May20, 2004, pp. 7, 10.
• For further reading:
  • Gaster, Theodor Herzl. Festivals of the Jewish Year: A Modern Interpretation and Guide. New York: Morrow, 1953.
  • Horowitz, Elliott. Coffee, Coffeehouses, and the Nocturnal Rituals of Early Modern Jewry. AJS Review 14, no. 1 (1989): 17-46.
  • Lachower, Yeruham Fishel, and Isaiah Tishby. The Wisdom of the Zohar: An Anthology of Texts. Translated by David Goldstein. 3 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
  • Liebes, Yehuda. Studies in the Zohar. Translated by Arnold Schwartz, Stephanie Nakache and Penina Peli SUNY Series in Judaica. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993.
  • Matt, Daniel Chanan, Adorning the Bride on the Eve of the Feast of Weeks. In Judaism in Practice: From the Middle Ages through the Modern Period, ed. Lawrence Fine, 74-80. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001.
  • Matt, Daniel Chanan, ed. The Zohar. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004.
  • Scholem, Gershom Gerhard. On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism. Translated by Ralph Manheim. New York,: Schocken Books, 1965.
  • Werblowsky, R. J. Zwi. Joseph Karo, Lawyer and Mystic. [London]: Oxford University Press, 1962.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Flying Off the Handle

by Eliezer Segal

On the third day of the world’s existence, the Torah tells us (Genesis 1:12) that the plant world was created, producing a brilliant variety flowers, grasses and trees. 

In pondering the significance of this event, a legend in the Midrash (Genesis Rabbah 5:9) describes how the initial tranquility of the trees was eventually brought to an end with the discovery of iron. 

Those hitherto invulnerable trees now shuddered at the prospect of being felled by metal axe-blades. Upon hearing their laments, the iron retorted unsympathetically: “Why are you trembling? As long as you don’t provide the wood for the axes’ handles, you will remain immune from harm.”

I am sure that many readers will recognize that this midrashic fable is substantially identical to one that appears in the numerous ancient collections of “Aesop’s Fables.”

Some editions of the story introduce a human character, a wily woodsman who dupes the guileless trees into offering him a small branch. Too late do they come to the realization that they have foolishly sealed their own doom. 

A slightly different spin on the story has the trees knowingly consent to give up an inconsequential young ash tree to be used as the handle for the woodsman’s axe. After watching the instrument wreak its havoc on the loftiest and noblest trees of the forest, a wise old oak sums up the powerful moral lesson of their situation: Abandoning the rights of the weak is the first step on the path to universal tyranny.

Some versions of the story have the trees complaining to Zeus about their defenselessness against axe-wielding humans. However, the king of Olympus dismisses them, reminding them that they themselves are to blame for their fate, because wood is so useful, and because they chose to contribute the handles for the axes.

Underlying all the disparities in their literary formulations are some unmistakable, though infuriating, lessons: We must often bear the responsibility for contributing to our own ruin. And how ludicrous it when people give their enemies the means of destroying them!

Evidently, Aesop was not the earliest author to make use of the parable of the axe and the trees. A similar message is included among the “Proverbs of Ahikar,” an Assyrian anthology of wisdom teachings that enjoyed immense popularity in the ancient world, and which has survived in several translated versions. Copies of Ahikar’s book were found in the fifth-century B.C.E. archive of the Jewish military garrison in Elephantine, Egypt; and he is mentioned in the Jewish book of Tobit that is included among the non-canonical Apocrypha. It is likely that Aesop derived several of his famous fables from the Ahikar collections.

Ahikar’s version of the axe-handle proverb reads as follows: “My son, you seem to me like a tree who said to the wood-choppers: ‘If you did not hold something from me in your hand, you would be unable to fell me.'”

The ancient rabbis appear to have been quite familiar with the Aesop literature, and more than a dozen of his fables are cited or alluded to in the pages of the Talmud and Midrash. However, the Jewish sages often used the fables or proverbs in novel and unexpected ways.

The Babylonian Talmud (Sanhedrin. 39b) employed the story of the axe-handle in order to illustrate a Jewish tradition that the biblical prophet Obadiah, whose brief book contains oracles about the impending fall of Edom, was identical with Obadiah the Edomite, a convert to Judaism who is mentioned elsewhere in the Bible as the supervisor of King Ahab’s household. 

Ephraim Maksha’ah, a disciple of Rabbi Meir, noted the irony of this situation, of a former Edomite being instrumental in the destruction of his former nation. To exemplify his point, he cited a popular maxim: “As the saying goes: From the forest itself comes the axe.” 

In his commentary to the passage, Rashi astutely explained that Ephraim’s proverb was referring to the wood that is fashioned into the axe-handle.

The same proverb was invoked in a similar context by Rabbi Yohanan, citing Rabbi Shimeon ben Yohai. He utilized it to illustrate the peculiar position of King David, a descendant of the Moabite convert Ruth, who went on to wage a victorious campaign against the Moabites. 

(Another sage Rav Dimi, chose a different, cruder analogy to illustrate the same point: The putrification of a joint of meat begins from within.)

Going beyond the ironic and cautionary insights that were suggested by previous commentators, the Maharal of Prague gave a down-to-earth psychological explanation of the fable’s meaning. 

He observed that people are by nature more likely to take an active interest in matters to which they have a strong personal connection. Accordingly, even after Obadiah’s conversion to Judaism, his Edomite origins led him to place an exceptional emphasis on the affairs of his former homeland. This led him to channel his prophetic messages towards condemnations of Edom and forecasts of its ultimate fall. 

The same principle, says the Maharal, can be adduced to explain Rabbi Yohanan’s usage of the proverb: “From the forest itself comes the axe.” He was observing that David’s commitment to waging a military campaign against Moab was intensified by the circumstances of his own Moabite ancestry; whereas a native-born Israelite would not have felt a comparable urgency about the matter. 

There are undoubtedly many valuable lessons to be derived from our simple allegory of the wooden axe-handle. 

When applied to the experiences of individuals, the parable reminds us that much of the suffering that we undergo in our lives is, at least in part, of our own making. 

Viewed from the perspective of politics or communal interaction, the fable can instruct us about the influence of personal agendas on national policies; or about the need for vigilance in preventing internal weaknesses that could be exploited by our enemies. 

In particular, it reminds us that divisions and injustices in a community will ultimately render us more vulnerable to external threats. 

It would seem therefore that the most effective way of preserving these assorted metaphoric forests–and the literal ones too, for that matter–is by striving to bury the hatchet.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, June 10, 2004, pp. 10-11.
• For further reading:
  • Friedman, Shamma. The Talmudic Proverb in Its Cultural Setting. Jewish Studies, an Internet Journal 2 (2003): 25-82.
  • Jacobs, J. The Fables of Aesop. New York, 1966.
  • Noy, Dov. Ha-Sippur ^‘Al Beri’at Ha-Barzel. Mahanayim 84 (1964): 124-6.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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The Treacherous Mr. Trebisch

by Eliezer Segal

What do the following people have in common?

• The young Jewish yeshiva student Ignaz Trebitsch in the Hungarian town of Paks, whose mystical inclinations inspired him to spend hours in fervent prayer and study, and to fast twice a week.
• The fiery Presbyterian missionary in Montreal, who led a campaign for the conversion of Jews, while studying for his theology diploma at McGill University.
• Timothy Lincoln, Liberal member of the English House of Commons. 
• The wheeling-and-dealing industrialist of the Balkan oil fields, founder of the Anglo-Austrian Petroleum Syndicate, Ltd., who tried to create a cartel embracing all the existing oil pipe-line companies.
• The notorious inmate of a Brooklyn prison whose ingenious escapes turned him into an American media hero.
• The ringleader of the White International, who staged a failed attempt at a right-wing coup against the Weimar German government, and tried to provoke simultaneous intrigues in Austria and Hungary.
• Puk Kusati, advisor to the Chinese warlord Marshal Wou Pei Fou.
• The saintly Buddhist monk Chao-Kung, author of inspiring books on world peace.

The answer is that all of the above descriptions—and many more—are referring to the same remarkable individual: the notorious adventurer Ignatius Timothy Trebitsch-Lincoln. Born to an Orthodox Jewish family in Hungary in 1879, our hero renounced his ancestral faith, and was baptized in 1898. Forced to leave his seminary because he had violated its policies by becoming engaged while still a student, he chose to continue his vocation in the less rigid surroundings of Canada, arriving in Montreal in 1900. His Jewish origins served him in good stead when bringing the Gospel to his former coreligionists. He acquired a reputation as a popular preacher, but his constant travels across Canada put heavy strains on his health and his family life. The Trebitsches decided to return to Europe, and settled in England.

During his brief, career as a curate in the sleepy rural community of Appledore (with nary a Jew to convert), the ambitious Trebitsch began to take an interest in politics. He wagered his vicar that he could be elected to Parliament within seven years–and he achieved that goal with almost a year to spare. His British naturalization had barely been processed, when in January 1910 the charismatic orator, who had now changed his name legally to the more English-sounding” Timothy Trebich-Lincoln,” was elected Liberal Member for the borough of Darlington.

During the chaotic years leading up to World War I, Trebitsch-Lincoln was able to maintain simultaneous enterprises in Rumania, Bulgaria and Turkey, while remaining on top of continual attempts at deceit and intrigue by his collaborators. 

When the war broke out, he was employed briefly as a British military censor, but continued to be outspoken about his sympathies for the Germans. The British eventually accused him of being an enemy spy, though Trebitsch-Lincoln always denied the charge, blaming it on English xenophobia. At any rate, the British were so determined to capture him that they had him arrested and imprisoned even after he had fled to the United States (which was still neutral). In 1916, he was extradited to England where he served three years in prison—on charges of forgery.

It appears that the remainder of Trebitsch-Lincoln’s life was devoted to avenging himself on the British. Initially, his retribution took the form of involvement in plots to restore German power and undo the repressive decrees of the Treaty of Versailles. In addition to monarchistic intrigues in Hungary, he took an active role in the 1920 putsch that strove to close down the German Reichstag and install as dictator the reactionary Wolfgang Kapp. Even though they managed to drive the elected government into flight, the junta quickly crumbled because the workers refused to accept their authority.

During the short-lived insurrection, the conspirators took up quarters in a Berlin hotel. A sympathizer named Adolf Hitler hurriedly flew from Munich in order to join the putsch. However, as soon as one of his companions recognized that the Jew Trebitsch was serving as the new régime’s Press Chief, he gripped Hitler’s arm and pulled him away saying “Adolf, we have no further business here.”

In 1922, Trebitsch-Lincoln’s anti-British schemes entered a new phase. He had concluded that the only way to topple the Empire would be by turning China into a military power that was strong enough to push the British out of India. With this goal in mind, he booked passage to China, which was then plunged into an anarchic civil war between rival warlords. He quickly found his way to the camp one of the more powerful generals, Wu-Pei-Fu, to whom he offered his ambitious proposal for turning China into a stable and modern world power. From that point on, he remained the general’s close counselor. In 1924, however, Wu-Pei-Fu’s career was effectively ended when his attempt to take Shanghai was foiled by a betrayal. 

Then, in 1925, in a sudden reversal of temperament, the former kheyder student developed a fascination with the Buddhist teachings of internal harmony and withdrawal from the material world. Assuming the name Chao Kung, he accepted the austere regimen of a Buddhist monk, and his charisma allowed him to advance as quickly as he had in all his previous pursuits.

Trebitsch-Lincoln’s withdrawal from the world was accelerated by a personal tragedy when his son was executed for a murder committed while he was drunk. Despairing at the same time of the civil war between the Communist and Nationalist forces in China, our hero was prevented by the British from achieving his ambition of settling in Tibet. 

After several years in the West, where he lectured on Buddhist teachings, he returned to China where, in addition to his spiritual vocation, he served as an agent and collaborator for the Japanese. In 1938, reports were circulated that influential circles in the Japanese government were proposing that the monk Chao Kung should be appointed as the new Emperor of China. 

In September 1938 the British Consul-General in Chungking reported to his superiors that Trebitsch-Lincoln was headed towards Tibet to press his claim that he was the latest incarnation of both the Panchen Lama and the Dalai Lama. 

At the same time, he was publishing his personal ultimatum for world peace, which called for the resignation of all current governments (except those of Finland and Japan) and the convening of an international peace conference. “Otherwise, the Tibetan Buddhist Supreme Masters…will unchain forces and powers whose very existence are unknown to you and against whose operations you are consequently helpless.”

In 1941 he was negotiating with the German Gestapo attaché from Tokyo, demanding an urgent interview with the Führer in Berlin in order to persuade him to end the war. As evidence of his supernatural authority, three of the wise men of Tibet would be made to appear miraculously out of the wall at his command. The proposal was taken seriously enough to be communicated to Berlin, where it was received with great animosity.

Though Ignaz Trebitsch had abandoned his Judaism early in his convoluted career, the last record that we possess of his life comes from an interview that was conducted for Unzer Lebn, the Yiddish-Russian-English newspaper published by the Jewish refugees in Shanghai. 

In an issue published in July 1943, a few months before his death, the reporter describes him, residing now in Shanghai’s YMCA, serene in his monk’s robes. Trebitsch used the occasion to offer his views on Jewish issues. Though vehemently opposed to Zionism, he of course had devised his own plan for solving the problems of Jewish homelessness. 

He would settle the Jewish refugees on Buddhist-owned territory near Shanghai, “proposing to build there a Model Settlement, a Tel-Aviv in miniature.”

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, June 24, 2004, p. 10.
• For further reading:
  • Gyomaï, Imré. Trebitsch Lincoln: Le Plus Grand Aventurier du Siècle. Paris: Les Éditions de France, 1939.
  • Nedavah, J. Trebits-Linkoln, Parshat Hayyim So’arim. Tel-Aviv, 1955.
  • Trebitsch-Lincoln, J. T. The Autobiography of an Adventurer. Translated by Emile Burns. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1932.
  • Wasserstein, Bernard. The Secret Lives of Trebitsch Lincoln. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Did You Hear the One about the Parrot…?

by Eliezer Segal

I am sure that most of my readers have had occasion, at some point in their lives, to guffaw or groan at one of those inane jokes about talking animals. Typically, they begin with a guy walking into a saloon with dog, and challenging the barflies to a bet that the creature is capable of speech.

The corpus of Jewish humour contains its own distinctive variations on the theme. For example, there’s that one about the dog who could chant the High Holy Days services in a beautiful cantorial tenor…; And you must have heard about the fellow who spent a fortune to surprise his mother with a Yiddish-speaking parrot on her birthday. The punch-line, of course, goes It was delicious!

It turns out that tales about loquacious pets have an ancient pedigree in Jewish literature. Some might even argue that the Torah’s narratives of the serpent in the Garden of Eden and Balaam’s talking ass belongs to this genre.

A most elaborate (and genuine) instance of such a shaggy-dog story was reported by a prominent Jewish scholar in medieval Egypt.

The scholar in question, Rabbi Isaac ben Samuel ha-Sefaradi al-Kinzi (died in 1125) migrated in the eleventh century from Spain to Egypt, where he achieved distinction as an authority on Jewish religious law. His literary output included commentaries to books of the Bible and Talmud, as well as responsa and liturgical poems; and he was appointed to the local religious court. He was politically well connected with the administrative head of the Egyptian Jewish community, Mevorakh ben Sa’adia, who held the eminent title of Nagid (prince).

A lost commentary by Rabbi Isaac was cited by a 15^th-century Yemenite author. In this passage, Rabbi Isaac described a remarkable spectacle that he witnessed while in the court of the Nagid in Fustat (Cairo).

The office of the Nagid carried with it both religious and political authority. In keeping with the spirit of the times, it was expected that the prestige of his position be given tangible expression through the trappings of regal pomp and ceremony, an abundance of honorific titles, and the insertion of mandatory blessings for his welfare in marriage contracts and synagogue worship.

One of the benefits of a high political office is the entitlement to valuable tributes from petitioners and visiting dignitaries. In this manner, the Nagid Mevorakh came into possession of a parrot that had been presented to him by a Jewish traveler from India. Like those familiar birds in the jokes, this one had been well educated until it was capable of reciting several sacred Hebrew texts.

Rabbi Isaac attested that he had personally heard the clever bird intone the opening verse of Judaism’s central declaration of faith, the Shema Yisra’el: Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is the one Lord. 

Not content with pronouncing the words correctly, the parrot even conformed to the correct liturgical custom of drawing out the last word, ehad (one), as devout Jews are instructed to do in order to underscore the Almighty’s absolute uniqueness.

And, for good measure, the parrot proceeded to declaim some appropriate passages from Psalms: David’s Psalm of praise. I will extol you, my God, O king; and I will bless your name for ever and ever; and Save, Lord; the king will answer us on the day when we call.

Though in our superficial world, the image of an erudite parrot might be used for not much more than a joke or a barroom wager, traditional Jewish writers were able to put it to more edifying uses.

An instructive instance may be found in the writings of Rabbi Judah Halevy, a younger contemporary of Rabbi Isaac ben Samuel (died in 1141). Judah has enriched Hebrew literature with some of its most moving and eloquent lyrics that express the poet’s longings for Zion. He was the author of such poignant verses as My heart is in the east, though I am at the extremes of the west and It would seem to me to be easy to leave all the good of Spain, as the dust and destruction of the sanctuary has become precious to my eyes. 

The great scholar eventually fulfilled his spiritual yearnings by forsaking his comfortable life in Toledo, Spain and embarking on a journey to the holy land.

In his philosophical magnum opus, the Kuzari, Rabbi Judah had some acerbic things to say about Jews who were less consistent than he was in actualizing their professed reverence for their ancestral homeland. 

He reminded them that the standard prayers, recited thrice daily by observant Jews, contain unequivocal declarations of our belief in the centrality of the Land of Israel, and of our desire that the dispersed exiles of our people will be imminently gathered together in Jerusalem.

Rabbi Judah therefore found it incomprehensible that pious Jews could continue to mouth these passages by rote without drawing the obvious conclusions and setting sail towards their true spiritual home.

With this inconsistency in mind, Judah wrote: When such a person recites the phrases ‘Worship at his holy mountain’ (Psalms 99:9), ‘Worship at his footstool’ (99:5), ‘…;who restores his presence to Zion,’ and similar texts, his pronouncement resembles the speech of a starling or a parrot. We are attaching no substance to what we are saying, neither with respect to this matter nor with any other.

Ouch. Indeed, many of us become all too comfortable about living with the inconsistencies between our ideals and our realities. 

Until recently, some doubts persisted about how diligent Judah Halevi had been about following his own advice, since there was an apparent lapse of a decadde between the time that he declared his resolution to travel to Israel and the date of his actual journey. We hear of him leaving Alexandria for Israel in 1141. 

However, recent manuscript discoveries have revealed that he did make an earlier departure in 1129, but was forced to return to Spain because of problems with his travel arrangements. Clearly, he viewed his commitment very seriously, and was not merely parroting platitudes.

Sometimes it takes a pious bird to remind us that it is not enough to just talk the talk.

And that’s no joke.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, Sept. 2, 2004, p. 14.
• For further reading:
  • Cohen, Mark R. Jewish Self-Government in Medieval Egypt: The Origins of the Office of Head of the Jews, Ca. 1065-1126 Princeton Studies on the near East. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980.
  • Friedman, Mordechai Akiva. Maimonides, the Yemenite Messiah and Apostasy. Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2002.
  • Gil, Moshe, and E. Fleischer. Yehuda Ha-Levi and His Circle Mekorot Le-Heker Tarbut Yisra’el. Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 2001.
  • Mann, Jacob. A Second Supplement to the Jews in Egypt and in Palestine under the Fatimid Caliphs. Hebrew Union College Annual 3 (1926): 257-308.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Assault on the Angels

by Eliezer Segal

High Holy Days worshippers might be forgiven if they cursorily mumble through a certain unobtrusive text that is embedded in the Selihot penitential prayers.

The Hebrew poem titled Makhnisei Rahamim, recited before Rosh Hashanah and during the Ten Days of Repentance, is addressed to those who bring our mercy before the All-Merciful One. In emotionally powerful language, the prayer implores the angels to ensure that our heartfelt supplications, cries and tears are delivered intact to the supreme judge who will decide our fates during this solemn season.

The Makhnisei Rahamim has a venerable history. It appears in the earliest post-Talmudic liturgical collections by Amram Ga’on (ninth century) and Sa’adiah (tenth century).

In spite of its poignant beauty and pedigree, this prayer has provoked immense antagonism among some influential Jewish thinkers. 

In thirteenth-century Spain, Rabbi Moses Nahmanides observed that addressing prayers to angels constitutes a violation of a basic Jewish belief that–unlike other peoples who approach God through intermediaries and patrons–Jews have direct access to the sovereign of the universe. In this connection, Nahmanides cited a passage from the Jerusalem Talmud where the Almighty is said to instruct us: If you find yourself in distress, do not cry out to Michael or Gabriel, but rather cry out to me and I shall personally answer you. 

For this reason, Nahmanides determined that the Makhnisei Rahamim, along with other prayers that are directed to angelic intercessors, are inappropriate to Jewish worship, and border perilously on idolatry.

The tenth-century Karaite scholar Jacob Qirqisani singled out this prayer for ridicule, as proof that the superstitious Rabbinites were resorting to angels to bring their pleas before the divine throne.

The debate over Makhnisei Rahamim would flare up from time to time in various Jewish communities, and several of those communities actually removed it from their liturgies. By the end of the medieval era, its recitation came to be regarded as distinctive to Ashkenazic Jewry, which had a reputation for tenacious loyalty to ancestral custom, as well as for uncritical receptiveness to superstitious practices. 

A particularly intense eruption of the controversy took place in Trieste during the early eighteenth century. This cosmopolitan city was at the crossroads of the Italian, Balkan and Austro-Hungarian territories; and the Italian Jewish community was a complex blend of Ashkenazic, Sepharadic and native Italian Jews. It should therefore not come as a surprise that Italy often served as a battleground for conflicting Jewish ideologies and customs. 

Evidently, this particular disagreement was ignited when a new rabbi proposed to eradicate Makhnisei Rahamim from the community’s Selihot service. This led to a prolonged exchange of correspondence between the advocates and opponents of the controversial prayer. Underlying the Trieste dispute were fundamental conceptual differences about how people approached their Judaism. 

Defenders of the prayer generally placed a very high value on fidelity to ancestral custom. For them, Judaism was less a philosophy than a deeply personal encounter with the Creator. 

The opponents of Makhnisei Rahamim invoked the rationalist theologies of the prominent Jewish philosophers, who had insisted that any appeal to beings other than God compromises the doctrine of absolute divine unity.

The defenders of Makhnisei Rahamim often went so far as to call into question the legitimacy of the entire Jewish rationalist tradition, which they dismissed as an alien perversion of authentic Judaism. Several of these authors cited a popular legend to the effect that even the great Maimonides had ultimately repented of his philosophical heresies and was converted to Kabbalah.

Other supporters of the prayer pointed out that it was, after all, making use of a well-established poetic convention of depicting God as a supreme monarch whose royal court is modeled metaphorically after its human equivalent. The literary imagery thus demanded that the grandeur of the celestial court be expressed in terms of the proliferation of courtiers who shielded their sovereign from frivolous access by commoners. 

Accordingly, it would not enter anyone’s mind that these intermediaries exercise any independent authority. They are nothing more than palace functionaries who act on behalf of their ruler; and their metaphoric mention in prayers serves to enhance the exaltedness of the Almighty. 

A peculiar feature of the correspondence generated by the Italian controversy was the authors’ intimate familiarity with the practices and writings of their gentile surroundings. For example, one of the correspondents claims support for his views from the Latin work Theologia Judaica by the Christian Hebraist Joannes a Lent. He also includes a learned discourse about the role of intermediary divinities in ancient Greek mythology, and is able to quote in Latin the text of a Christian prayer Omnes sancti Angeli et Arcangeli orate pro nobis (Pray for us, all you holy angels and archangels) that bears an alarming resemblance to our Hebrew poem. 

Alongside the extreme positions of support and opposition, there were rabbis who occupied middle ground and tried to mitigate the objectionable features of the prayer, whether through creative interpretation, or by proposing subtle emendations to the text. 

In the former category, we may mention the suggestion of Rabbi Judah ben Yakar (France, twelfth century) that the poem is not addressed to angels at all, but is referring to the saintly individuals whose prayers on behalf of the congregation carry special weight before the heavenly tribunal.

Into the latter category falls the proposal by the Maharal of Prague that the problematic verb be emended from a command addressed directly to the angels, to a third-person future, which expresses nothing more than a pious hope that our prayers be granted admission before the supreme judge. 

Amid the continual barrage of arguments over doctrine, tradition, faith and devotion, we can only hope that the beleaguered angels (whether literal or metaphoric) will somehow fulfill their sacred task of conveying the prayers to their proper address.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, Sept. 16, 2004, p. 21.
• For further reading:
  • Bacher, Wilhelm. Qirqisani, the Karaite and His Work on Jewish Sects. In Karaite Studies, ed. Philip Birnbaum, 259-82. New York: Hermon Press, 1971.
  • Kanarfogel, Ephraim. Peering through the Lattices: Mystical, Magical, and Pietistic Dimensions in the Tosafist Period. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2000.
  • Malkiel, David. Between Worldliness and Traditionalism: Eighteenth-Century Jews Debate Intercessory Prayer. Jewish Studies, an Internet Journal 2 (2003): 169-98.
  • Zunz, Leopold. Die Synagogale Poesie Des Mittelalters. (Nachdruck) ed., ed. Aron Freimann. Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1967.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Citric Asset

by Eliezer Segal

Alongside its inexhaustible layers of religious, moral, historical and mystical symbolisms, we cannot forget that the etrog is also a commodity. Before it can serve its spiritual role as part of the Sukkot rituals, it must be cultivated, transported, marketed and sold. 

It is in fact quite surprising to note how lucrative this commodity is, when we bear in mind that it has virtually no usefulness as a food or condiment; and apart from occasional medicinal use, the entire market for the etrog is restricted to its incorporation into rituals practiced by devout Jews for eight days of the year.

Although there was apparently a time when Jews were able to maintain control over the cultivation and distribution of etrogim, this was no longer the case by the seventeenth century. Jewish consumers in north and central Europe had to rely on gentile merchants to supply them with the goodly fruits that grew in the warmer climes of the Mediterranean basin. As the geographical distances between the producers and the consumers expanded, it became difficult to maintain confidence in the fitness of the etrogs.

Prior to the eighteenth century, European Jews could purchase etrogim originating from a variety of centres, including Catalonia, Italy, Greece and Albania. The main distribution centres were in Genoa, Venice and, later, Trieste.

Towards the end of the eighteenth century, a popular new brand of etrog was close to conquering the market. These fruits, haling from the Greek island of Corfu, offered an irresistible combination of esthetic beauty, availability and affordable price. Their uniform quality could be guaranteed by the fact that they were supervised centrally by the Ottoman Empire, especially in the Sultan’s orchards in Parga. 

This fact was of supreme importance to Jews who maintained constant vigilance lest they recite their blessings over some hybrid containing genes from other citrus species. 

In 1808, the Napoleonic wars disrupted the trade routes of the rival etrogs from Genoa, so that the Corfu fruits were now the only type available in Europe. Initially, some rabbis permitted Corfu etrogs only if there was no reasonable alternative, while others still would not allow the blessing to be recited over them. Soon, however, they came to be regarded as the preferred type for observing the holiday rituals.

This idyllic situation came to an end in the middle of the nineteenth century. Around 1840, the Turkish administration decided to withdraw from the etrog business, in favour of a policy of deregulation. 

As we can well appreciate, this development had the effect of throwing the market into considerable confusion, as privately run orchards began to spring up throughout the empire like weeds after a storm, or long-distance providers after the dismemberment of a monopoly. 

Although the esteemed reputation of the Corfu etrog continued to persist for some time, it soon became clear that the name could no longer serve as a guarantee of halakhic respectability.

The anarchy in the industry made possible irregularities that were not initially known to those well-meaning rabbis who had certified the products on the basis of the previous situation. By 1846, a collection of rabbinic responsa was published in Lvov, Galicia, to sound the alarm against the Corfu etrogs, as they loosely referred to the full range of etrogim from the eastern Adriatic regions that were marketed through Trieste. 

On the whole, the Corfu etrogs were accepted more readily by Sepharadic consumers, but it was difficult for them to make inroads in the Ashkenazic milieu because of suspicions surrounding their fitness.

The first accusation that was leveled against the fruits was that they were hybrids, having been grafted onto lemon or orange stock. The Torah forbids the mixing of species at the best of times, and if these accusations were true, the product would become a particularly inappropriate vehicle for the fulfillment of a religious precept. It was questionable whether this fruit cocktail was, technically, an etrog in the first place.

Furthermore, the Greek merchants were not above mixing together cargos of kosher and non-kosher merchandise. Therefore, even though the Parga orchards could still be trusted, there was no reliable way to ascertain an etrog’s place of origin. 

The antipathy towards the Corfu etrogs was further aggravated by the knowledge that the merchants were keeping their prices artificially inflated by dumping large quantities into the waters of the Adriatic.

The phenomenon of grafted etrogim generated an extensive literature in responsa and Jewish law codes. 

Many of the authorities decided to disqualify the doubtful fruits for ritual use, and insisted that consumers should only purchase etrogim bearing a seal of certification from the rabbi in their place of cultivation. Rabbi Moses Sofer of Pressburg ruled that in the absence of any objective criteria for determining the permissibility of the etrogs, we must rely only on an established tradition. 

The various rabbis strove unsuccessfully to define botanical criteria for distinguishing between pure and hybrid etrogs, based on signs mentioned in the Talmud or in horticultural lore. The defenders of the Corfu etrogs, including several very prominent Sepharadic rabbis, argued that as long as there was no clear-cut physical proof of hybridization, the fruits should be assumed to be kosher. In a similar spirit, Rabbi Ephraim Zalman Margolies claimed that any plant that can reproduce itself is not included in the biblical prohibition of mixed species.

A most ingenious case for permitting the Corfu etrogs was made by Rabbi David Kleinerman of Szereszow: Since the Torah insists on fulfilling the precept with the fruit of a goodly tree, it is the goodliness, the beauty of the fruit, that is the primary factor for choosing an etrog, and this consideration overrides the prohibition of hybridization.

It is evident that several of the authorities who discussed the issue were deeply sensitive to its economic implications. They realized that if they disqualified the cheap etrogim on technical halakhic grounds, they would also be depriving many individuals (and in some cases, entire communities) of the opportunity of participating in the mitzvah. 

The halakhic debate could not always be easily disentangled from the economic interests of its participants. By coincidence, the individual who spearheaded the publication of the responsa collection that effectively disqualified all etrogim except those from Parga itself, a certain Rabbi Alexander Ziskind Mintz of Brody, had acquired the exclusive franchise on Pargian etrogs one year previously.

In spite of the taint of self-interest, several distinguished rabbinical authorities supported his cause, especially Rabbi Solomon Kluger, also of Brody. Eventually, however, he was persuaded that even the Parga etrogs could not be trusted. 

A counteroffensive to Mintz’s campaign was initiated by his former partner, Mordecai Bick, who succeeded in recruiting an equally impressive roster of rabbinical supporters. 

The divergent attitudes vis à vis the Corfu etrogs were significantly influenced by ideological and political developments that were taking place during the tumultuous nineteenth century.

For example, some Hasidic groups came to associate their support of Corfu etrogs with Hasidism itself, or at least as a protest against the anti-Hassidic factions, 

Historical events contributed to giving Corfu a distasteful reputation among the Jews of the world. While the island was under French rule, its Jews enjoyed full civil rights. However, this situation changed drastically in 1815, when it became part of a new republic under English auspices, at which point the Jews were deprived of their rights. The persecutions became even more severe when Corfu became part of a Greek union, giving rise to an infamous blood accusation and other pogroms. In response, a movement was inaugurated to boycott the etrog -growers of that island.

The anti-Corfu sentiments were very intense by the time the traders tried to sell their wares in America at the end of the nineteenth century. A Hebrew work published in Newark in 1992, entitled God’s War against Amalek, stridently lamented that the shriek of the children of Israel on Corfu, the island of blood, pierces heaven. These cursed beasts, these Greeks, descendents of the tyrant Antiochus’ slander us with accusations of ritual murder. 

The same work lambastes the merchants as traders in the blood of Israel’s circumcised antisemites.

With the rise of Jewish agricultural enterprises in the holy land, it seemed natural for many consumers to switch their allegiances to the etrogs that were grown there, though these were not without their own halakhic problems. 

In the end, the rise and fall of the Corfu etrog were determined by a complicated mixture of factors involving, not only religious law and lore, but also geography, botany, history, politics and economics.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, Oct. 6, 2004, p. 11 [as: “It’s not easy being a (halachic) etrog”].
• For further reading:
  • Isaac, Erich and Rael. A Goodly Tree. Commentary 26, no. 4 (1958): 300-7.
  • Salmon, Yosef. Pulmus Etroge Korfu Ve-Rik’o Ha-Histori. AJS Review 25, no. 1 (2000-2001): 1-24.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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The Seat of the Problem

by Eliezer Segal

In our communities, there are usually only two or three special holidays during the year when it matters where a person is allowed to sit in the synagogue. This situation does not necessarily reflect well on the levels of our shul attendance, but it does help to minimize the occasions for strife and friction between congregants.

In more traditionally observant communities, as were the norm in earlier generations, it was expected that all eligible worshippers would be in attendance at the services, at least for the Sabbath and holiday prayers. Furthermore, since many Jewish communities would only sanction the existence of a single congregation in their midst, the indignant members who were dissatisfied for one reason or other did not have the option of taking their sacred business to a competing synagogue. 

As we learn from documents in the Cairo Genizah, when a faction refrained from going down to the community synagogue, this was no mere expression of protest or dissatisfaction. People would not take such radical measures unless they were convinced that they had no alternative. They had to be thoroughly convinced that worshipping in the synagogue would constitute a violation of their religious principles, whether because of the inappropriateness of the prayer leaders, an objectionable phrase in the liturgy, or some other grave concern. 

On the other hand, the austere Jewish community of Qumran, which left us the Dead Sea Scrolls, seems to have been more accustomed to people leaving their ranks. Evidently, they actually had a fixed liturgical ritual to accompany the expulsion of members who did not conform to their demanding standards.

With the completion of Amsterdam’s magnificent Portuguese synagogue in 1675, which boasted almost 900 members at its inception, the institution of assigned seating became the established practice. Of course, not all members were satisfied with their seats, and it became increasingly common for people to simply park themselves where they pleased. 

In 1680, the city’s Sephardic community council–the Mahamad–responded to the encroaching anarchy by appointing a special seating committee that would be responsible for the allocation of places in the synagogue. Their decisions would remain immutable for five years, and anyone who refused to accept them would be barred from entering the interior of the sanctuary.

The task of synagogue seating committees is never an easy one. In their attempts to please their congregations, they must give consideration to innumerable factors: there are friends who wished to be placed near each other, and adversaries who should be kept apart at a discrete distance. In times when communities were divided into clear social hierarchies, the stratification was also reflected in the distribution of synagogue places. 

It was hoped that the Amsterdam community’s decisions would be widely accepted, either because the fairness of the process was evident to all, or in deference to the authority that stood behind them. 

Inevitably, there were some malcontents. The chief gadfly was a certain Ishack (Isaac) Enrriquez Cotiño. Señor Cotiño expressed his displeasure about his placement in the synagogue in a particularly rude and insolent letter that he penned to the communal leadership. In it, he complained that the seat assignments had been carried out unfairly, and had thereby undermined the cohesiveness of the congregation. 

Following the established procedure in that community, the dissident was invited to three interviews with the community representatives, in hope of arriving at a mutually satisfactory arrangement. However, the negotiations broke down when he refused to attend the meetings.

Exactly one month after the establishment of the seating committee, the Mahamad responded in a decisive manner by barring Cotiño from the synagogue, even from his previous seat, and by denying him the privilege of praying with the community. He would not be eligible for readmission until he made a formal public apology.

Having reached an impasse at the highest level of the Jewish community administration, it appeared as if Cotiño had exhausted all his options. Undaunted, he chose to go over the heads of the Jewish leadership, and proceeded to launch a suit against the Mahamad in the civil courts. 

This turned out to be a huge mistake on his part. Not only did the judges uphold the authority of the Jewish leadership to enforce their decisions, but they went a significant step further, denying him even the prerogative of worshipping in the privacy of his home. As long as he was a member of the Jewish community, he was obliged to abide by the decisions of its leaders and sit in his designated place in the synagogue.

Even at this stage, Cotiño was still not ready to admit defeat. This time, he approached the Amsterdam city council and accused the Mahamad of committing procedural irregularities when they placed him under a severe ban of excommunication–herem–without providing him with a sufficient opportunity to argue his position. 

It was easily established in the course of the hearing that this latter accusation was simply not true; Cotiño had never been placed in herem.

At any rate, our rebel pleaded that, if the Mahamad refused to assign him the seat that he coveted in the synagogue, they should at least refrain from harassing him when he tried to assemble a priviate minyanin his residence.

Cotiño’s appeal was again rejected. 

At this point, we lose track of the litigation, and Cotiño’s name disappears for a few years from the lists of tax-paying community members. Eventually, he resurfaces as a paid member in good standing. In the last year of his life, his contribution to the community chest was especially generous.

The case of Amsterdam’s Ishack Enrriquez Cotiño may have been an uncommonly acerbic episode. The community authorities might have adopted an unusually intransigent stance in order to stave off unorthodox or embarrassing behaviour that sometimes typified Spanish crypto-Jews recently returned to the fold–of whom Spinoza was the most notorious, but by no means the sole example. However, it seems that squabbles of a similar nature have been standard fare in synagogue life throughout history. 

In my more youthful days, I am certain that I would have been cheering for the rebel tilting at the Establishment windmills (though Señor Cotiño was actually an affluent capitalist). At any rate, decades of working on behalf of beleaguered Jewish community institutions have severely diminished my patience for troublemakers of his ilk.

My sympathies are now entirely with the dedicated and longsuffering volunteers who strive to enhance harmony in the community by serving dutifully on the seating committees.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, Oct. 21, 2004, p. 11.
• For further reading:
  • Chazon, Esther G. Hymns and Prayers in the Dead Sea Scrolls. In The Dead Sea Scrolls after Fifty Years: A Comprehensive Assessment, ed. Peter W. Flint and James C. VanderKam, 1, 244-270. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 1998.
  • Goitein, S. D. A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza. 6 vols. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967.
  • Kaplan, Yosef. Bans in the Sephardi Community of Amsterdam in the Late 17th Century. In Exile and Diaspora: Studies in the History of the Jewish People Presented to Professor Haim Beinart on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday, ed. Aaron Mirsky, Avraham Grossman and Yosef Kaplan, 517-540. Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 1988.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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