For Your Eyes Only

by Eliezer Segal

For some of us, concerns about privacy and confidentiality stem from our use of computers and electronic communications. Huge industries have arisen that are dedicated either to the creation of foolproof encryption schemes, or to the cracking of other people’s security safeguards. 

The desire to protect one’s messages from prying eyes is probably as ancient as writing itself, and may go back to the beginnings of human speech. Echoes of these concerns can be found in classic Jewish sources. 

In the early third century, the Jerusalem Talmud relates that Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba was full of admiration for those wily people of “the east” who perfected a simple technique for producing invisible ink. 

Rabbi Hiyya describes how, when one of those easterners wished to send a confidential letter, he would compose the message with special ink containing a gall-nut extract. The additive rendered the writing invisible to the eye (since a gall-nut solution was also employed in the treatment of the parchment). 

It remained for the recipient simply to pour onto the document a liquid without any gall-nut juice, which would be absorbed by the ink and become visible.

The Talmudic discussion focuses on halakhic issues, such as whether this would fall into the category of writing that is punishable on the Sabbath, or whether it would be valid if used in legal documents. The rabbis did not speculate much about why people would be impelled to keep their communications secret. 

A more sophisticated medium of communications was ascribed by the rabbis to Job and his companions. On the one hand, the Bible reports that each of the companions was residing in his own land. However, when they heard of their friend’s distress, they immediately “made an appointment together to come to console with him and comfort him.” 

Assuming that they were scattered in far-flung localities, the Talmud wonders how were they able to co-ordinate their itineraries with such precision? The circumstances become even more mystifying if we read the phrase “made an appointment together” as the rabbis did: as implying that they arrived in Job’s land of Uz at exactly the same moment. 

According to one opinion in the Talmud, Job and his comrades were able to keep in ongoing contact with the help of what might be considered the earliest version of a wireless pager. 

The advanced communications devices were housed in their crowns. Rashi explains that the crowns displayed icons representing each of the companions. Whenever one of them was in distress, his icon would change its appearance, and the rest of the musketeers would instantly know to ride off to the rescue. 

Although it is easy to imagine many prosaic reasons why people would want to communicate secretly, whether through invisible inks or wireless head-sets, the most intriguing cases are those that involve high-level diplomacy. 

Several cases of top-secret correspondence appear in the stories about the Patriarch Rabbi Judah and “Antoninus,” the Roman emperor or governor with whom he maintained a cordial association. 

On one occasion, Antoninus confided to Rabbi Judah that he had two items of legislation that he was determined to implement, but that the Senate was unlikely to support more than one of them. One of the proposed bills was the confirmation of his son as his successor; the other involved declaring Rabbi Judah’s home town of Tiberias a colonia, a duty-free zone. 

Rather than provide explicit advice, Rabbi Judah staged a bit of symbolic theatre: He had one man ride on the shoulders of another, and had the carrier order his passenger to release a dove that he was holding. 

The astute Antoninus understood the hint immediately: If he was able to establish his son in power, then the latter could be counted on afterwards to carry out his other policies. 

A similar mode of communication was employed by Rabbi Judah when Antoninus consulted him about how to deal with troublesome political opponents. 

The Rabbi went to a garden and began to pick radishes, one at a time. 

Again, the encrypted advice was not lost on Antoninus: He should be careful to deal with his adversaries one at a time, rather than try to confront them all at once. 

The sages of the Talmud were well aware of why so much secrecy was needed in these interchanges between the Jewish and Roman leaders. The topics of the conversations were likely to ruffle the feathers of the Roman rich and powerful, so that publicity could be perilous. As readers of I Claudius may recall, Roman politics of the time were permeated with a culture of treachery and deceit that was avidly promoted by unprincipled informers.

As the rabbis wryly observed, it was not enough to speak in whispers. “Don’t revile the rich in your bedchamber: For a bird of the sky may carry your voice” (Ecclesiastes 1:20). 

In keeping with the low value that the Romans placed on human life, Antoninus was able to take ruthless security measures that (we hope) would have been unimaginable to Jewish leaders. 

The Talmud reports that Antoninus used to pay clandestine visits to Rabbi Judah through a subterranean passage, accompanied by two slaves. One of these unfortunate slaves would always be killed upon reaching the destination and the other after returning home. The Roman leader insisted that no other person should be present at those meetings–which raises some intriguing questions about how the authors of the Talmud found out about them. 

Some of the medieval commentators were taken aback by the matter-of-fact manner in which the Talmud presented Antoninus’ ruthless behaviour, and Rabbi Judah’s apparent acquiescence. After all, argued the Tosafot, the prohibition of murder is a universal law, incumbent upon all of humanity, and cannot be treated lightly! 

They suggested that, in this particular case, there must have been mitigating factors. Since a security leak would have placed Antoninus’ life in grave peril, the preemptive killing of the slaves could be perceived as an act of preemptive self-defense. Furthermore, it was possible that he chose as his victims only individuals who were known to be criminals or informers, and were therefore deserving of capital punishment. 

If nothing else, the story serves to underscore how the lengths to which people will go to preserve a secret, and how dangerous some secrets can be. 

You may be sure that there is much more to be said about these delicate matters of codes and confidentiality.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, November 4, 2004, p. 9.
• For further reading:
  • Ha-Levi, E. E. Ha-Agadah Ha-Historit-Biyografit: Le-or Mekorot Yevanim Ve-Latinim. Tel-Aviv: Armoni and Tel-Aviv University, 1975.
  • Meir, Ofra. Rabbi Judah the Patriarch: Palestinian and Babylonian Portrait of a Leader Helal Ben Hayyim Library, ed. Meir Ayali. Tel-Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House, 1999.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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An Odd Bird

by Eliezer Segal

As distinct from the laws that govern fish, cattle and insects, the Torah does not provide us with a set of physical criteria through which to distinguish the birds that are permissible as food. Instead, it lists several species that are forbidden–twenty-four, according to the traditional reckoning. The rabbis understood that, by implication, any fowl that does not appear on the prohibited list may be eaten.

Unfortunately, there was no consensus about the meanings of the rare Hebrew names that designate the birds in the Torah. Although the rabbis compiled a set of biological features that must be found in kosher fowl, these were not considered sufficient by themselves to render the birds permitted, especially by Ashkenazic authorities. In practice, the policy that was adopted was that all birds should be presumed to be unclean unless there was a solid local tradition that they were kosher.

All this works quite well as long as we are dealing with a finite selection of birds, and with established communities who maintain some continuity in their practices. However, problems arise when the frontiers of travel expand, introducing Jews to previously unfamiliar species. The frequent wanderings and migrations that characterized much of our history also contributed towards diminishing the force of local custom.

Such were the challenges that confronted observant Jews with the opening up of the New World in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Among the delicacies that were first encountered in the Age of Exploration was the turkey (meleagris gallapavo).

When Europeans made their first acquaintance with the tasty gobblers, some assumed that they were cousins of the familiar chickens from back home, and therefore need not be treated as an unknown species. 

Several European languages, still under the impression that Columbus had sailed to the orient, began to refer to them simply as Indian chickens. Some rabbis took these names literally and presumed that the birds actually originated from India. If that were the case, then they might well have been known to Jews of earlier generations, who had contacts with India, and might well have possessed an old tradition about the kosher status of the bird.

At the time when turkey was first introduced into Jewish communities in Europe, a number of authorities felt that it was not appropriate to eat this bird. In part, this was a function of their habitual conservatism. There were, however, some specific questions about whether the turkeys possessed all the distinguishing signs of kosher fowl. For example, one of the conditions was that the permitted birds could not be birds of prey, and since certain non-domesticated turkeys were known to be meat-eaters, some authorities concluded that the entire species had to be prohibited.

Many of the halakhic discussions on this question came to revolve around issues of nomenclature, since neither Yiddish nor Hebrew had a clear vocabulary for designating the various types of fowl, and a single term might carry different connotations in different localities. 

If it could be demonstrated that turkeys were mentioned by name in classic Jewish texts, then that fact could be used to refute the argument that they were previously unknown and had never been allowed by any local tradition. On the other hand, if the turkeys were equated with a type of bird that was explicitly named as non-kosher, then this would defeat their chances of acceptance.

Some communities referred to the turkey by the name perlhuhn, and noted that a prominent German rabbi had prohibited that species. On closer inspection, however, it turns out that the rabbi was not referring to our turkey, but to the guinea fowl, a creature that was generally regarded as non-kosher. A similar situation surrounds a certain American hen or kibitzer hen that is discussed by several authorities, which possesses many features in common with the turkey, but is apparently a different species. In an influential responsum, Rabbi Solomon Kluger adamantly forbade the kibitzer hens, arguing that no authentic tradition could conceivably exist with respect to a creature that originated in the New World.

The commentators’ determination to find references to turkeys in old sources could lead at time to some ingenious interpretations. 

For example, a passage in the Jerusalem Talmud enumerates various unpleasant or foul-smelling substances that people should distance themselves from during prayer. The list includes chicken droppings. This rule is further qualified to apply only to red [or perhaps: Edomite] ones.

An intriguing interpretation of this passage was proposed by Rabbi Hezekiah Silva of Jerusalem, the eighteenth-century author of the P’ri Hadash commentary to the Shulhan Arukh.

Rabbi Silva speculated that the Talmud’s red hens were to be identified with those large chickens that are imported from England. It seems clear that he was alluding to turkeys, which, though they originated in America, reached the consumers through English suppliers. 

If his explanation were true, then we would have a solid confirmation that turkeys were known to the ancient Jewish sages of the Land of Israel. Accordingly, it would be possible to argue that there could exist venerable tradition that they are kosher. Indeed, several subsequent writers cited the P’ri Hadash to justify the eating of turkey.

Whether they were persuaded by this argument or by other considerations, the undeniable fact is that American turkeys have received almost universal acceptance as a kosher bird. Although there are reportedly a handful of rabbis who personally refrain from eating them, I am aware of no kosher certifying agency that refuses in principle to authorize turkey or who would deny certification to a catered affair at which turkey was served. 

The receptiveness to turkey might be correlated to the widespread Jewish acceptance of the American Thanksgiving, where the bird, of course, occupies a place of honour at the table. Thanksgiving is a rarity among non-Jewish holidays that has not been forbidden for Jews by Orthodox halakhic authorities, and is even actively celebrated by many. 

In fact, Jews have a unique reason to associate turkey with this particular celebration. Standard modern Hebrew has adopted the convention of calling the turkey an Indian chicken, tarnegol hodu. By a convenient coincidence, hodu (India) is also a Hebrew homonym for give thanks. 

That is better. I suppose, than having to devise a holiday for eating kibitzer hen.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, November 18, 2004, p. 13.
• For further reading:
  • Broyde, Michael J. Thanksgiving, Secular or Religious Holiday? Journal of Halacha and Contemporary Society 30 (1995): 42-65.
  • Ginzberg, Louis. A Commentary on the Palestinian Talmud. 4 vols. Texts and Studies of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. New York: Ktav, 1971.
  • Zivotofsky, Ari Z. Is Turkey Kosher? kashrut.com, 2004.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Eight Days a Week

by Eliezer Segal

The earliest records that we possess about Hanukkah all concur that the festival is to be celebrated for eight days. The reason for this rule seems obvious to us: It is to commemorate the tale of that little jar of oil that miraculously illuminated the Jerusalem Temple for eight days.

The miracle of the oil appears only in a relatively late text from the Babylonian Talmud, and seems to have been unknown to earlier generations. In fact, even during the medieval era it was not widely known outside the sphere of Babylonian influence. It is not mentioned in any of the holiday prayers that originated in the Land of Israel, nor in the considerable body of liturgical poetry that was composed for the occasion.

What, then, was the original reason why Hanukkah lasts eight days? The earliest document to deal explicitly with that question is the Second Book of Maccabees, which claims to be a synopsis of a longer account of the revolt composed by a certain Jason of Cyrene. According to 2 Maccabees, the eight days of Hanukkah were ordained to emulate the eight-days of Sukkot, which were not celebrated during the year of the uprising, because the Jews were at war and the Temple was in enemy hands. Therefore, after their victory, they modeled their new holiday in honour of the one that they had missed. They celebrated it for eight days with rejoicing, in the manner of the festival of booths, remembering how not long before, during the festival of booths, they had been wandering in the mountains and caves like wild animals.

A faint echo of this tradition is preserved in the Talmud. In explaining the School of Shammai’s view that the number of Hanukkah candles should be progressively diminished each night, the rabbis suggested that this is analogous to the sacrifices that were offered on Sukkot, when the numbers of bulls offered up on the Temple altar were reduced with each successive day. The rabbis did not cite this episode to justify the number of days in Hanukkah; and there is no direct indication that they were aware of the tradition in 2 Maccabees. However, without that tradition in mind, it is hard to explain why they assumed any connection between Sukkot and Hanukkah.

Several early rabbinic traditions, however, found the precedent in ceremonies that served the identical purpose as Hanukkah, of celebrating the dedication of the sanctuary. Two such biblical ceremonies were singled out: the inauguration of the tabernacle in the days of Moses (Leviticus 8), and King Solomon’s opening ceremony for the Temple of Jerusalem. 

To the perplexity of the sages, these ceremonies lasted seven days, not eight! By the same token, the dedication ceremony described in Numbers chapter 7 lasted for twelve days, with a separate day allotted to each of the tribal princes. This chapter has been designated as the Torah reading for Hanukkah. 

It is possible that the ancient sages were taking into account the additional day of solemn assembly that was celebrated by Solomon after his seven-day dedication of the Temple (2 Chronicles 7:9). A similar pattern was followed by the returning exiles from Babylonia when they consecrated the Second Temple: the seven days of the dedication ceremony were followed by an extra eighth day of assembly. Indeed, the author of 2 Maccabees (in a passage that he ascribed to the prophet Jeremiah) referred to the ceremonies of Moses and Solomon as eight-day events.

The simplest of the interpretations proposed by the ancient sources–and arguably the least satisfying–is that it took the Hasmonean priests eight days to fashion a new temporary candelabrum to replace the one that had been ruined by the Hellenists. The plausibility of this theory is seriously compromised when we consider that the sources are speaking of a crude makeshift replacement Menorah that the soldiers assembled from iron spits, probably from their weapons.

A similar explanation, apparently preserving an ancient tradition, was cited by the twelfth-century talmudist Rabbi Judah Sir Leon, except that in his version it was not the making of the menorah that caused the delay, but rather the building of a new altar and sacred vessels to replace the ones that had been desecrated. These major projects might well have required eight days to complete.

True, the altar functioned primarily as the place where a fire was kindle to consume the sacrificial offerings. However, the connection between it and the kindling of candles seems a bit stretched. The main advantage of the interpretations that involve the menorah is that they can explain simply why Hanukkah is celebrated by lighting candles, which cannot be said about the comparisons with the biblical dedication ceremonies. 

However, if the story of the oil burning for eight days is authentic, then it is difficult to understand why it was not adduced by Josephus Flavius the first-century C.E. author of the Jewish Antiquities. Josephus reported that Hanukkah was known as the festival of lights, Photain Greek, but he was at a loss to explain why. In his bewilderment about the origin of that name, Josephus speculated that perhaps light was being used metaphorically to describe the Jews’ freedom, because this liberty beyond our hopes appeared to us; and that thence was the name given to that festival. If the stories about the rebuilding of the menorah and the miracle of the oil were current in his time, we would have expected him to mention them.

There remain many unresolved questions and puzzles about the origins of Hanukkah’s observances. It’s a good thing that we have eight days to try to shed light on them.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, December 9, 2004, p. 21.
• For further reading:
  • Noam, Vered. The Miracle of the Cruse of Oil: The Metamorphosis of a Legend. Hebrew Union College Annual 73 (2002): 191-226.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Silent Night

by Eliezer Segal

A friend of mine who used to teach in a traditional Jewish girls’ school once told me how surprised she had been to discover that some of her students were extremely well-informed about the intricacies of the Christian calendar. Their expertise was not limited to the such commonplace knowledge as the December 25 date for Christmas. No, the young ladies in this class were also conversant with lesser-known variations on that date as celebrated by the assorted denominations according to their respective calendars, with much of December and January being sprinkled with more obscure holy days, like Advent and St. Nicholas Day. 

It eventualy became clear that the students’ erudition on these matters was not an indication of their interest in multicultural ecumenism. Rather, it was a simple consequence of their aversion to homework.

These avid learners were appealing to the Christian sacred calendars in order to exempt themselves from schoolwork on those days, in keeping with a curious custom in some Ashkenazic Jewish communities that prohibited religious study on Christmas.

In the terminology of those communities, Christmas is referred to as Nittel. The simplest explanation of the word is as a variant form of the Latin natalis, as in dies natalis or natale dominus, meaning day of birth, the same word that gives us the French Noël. However, later generations, for whom the original derivation was no longer familiar, subjected it to their own imaginative attempts at speculative etymology.

The most frequently cited theory traced Nittel to the Hebrew form nitleh meaning ‘hanged, a word that could legitimately be applied to a victim of crucifixion. 

Other writers favored a derivation from Hebrew nittal, meaning taken. Though this produces a better similarity of sounds, its connection to Christmas is harder to fathom. Supporters of this reading understood it in the sense of the one who was taken from Judaism or the arrested one, though this designation would apply more appropriately to Easter.

The avoidance of Torah study on a gentile holy day is a puzzling notion that seems downright pathological in its readiness to diminish one’s own spiritual growth in order to deny recognition to someone else’s faith. While such narrow-mindedness might have been understandable in the ghettos of medieval Europe where it originated, it is particularly distasteful to find it continued into our own days. 

Evidently, this custom was not merely a marginal phenomenon in Ashkenazic communities; The proscription of study on Christmas is mentioned by several respectable halakhic authorities, and in some circles it was treated as a quasi-obligatory practice.

Occasionally, the differing attitudes towards Nittel-nacht were recognized as criteria for distinguishing between the Hassidim and their opponents. Thus, we find that the scholarly orientation of the Lithuanian yeshivahs led many of their leaders to oppose any interruption of study on Christmas eve, whereas Hassidic lore depicted the night as a time of sinister metaphysical foreboding that must be treated with grave vigilance.

The oldest descriptions of a Jewish anti-Christmas can be pieced together from some early seventeenth century writings (albeit most of them were by apostate Jews). We learn from these reports that, in the Jewish folk imagination, Jesus was being depicted as a veritable anti-Santa, a grinch-esque bogymen doomed to creep through sewers on Christmas night, as punishment for his heresy, emerging periodically to terrify children. In order to prevent him from enjoying any easing of his sentence by virtue of the merits of Torah study, Jews vindictively chose that time to refrain from learning.

Not convinced that mere religious contempt provided a sufficient justification for abstaining from such a vital mitzvah, some Jewish authors sought other rationales for the custom. Rabbi Nathan Adler of Frankfort interpreted it as an expression of mourning, presumably for all the persecutions that were inflicted on Jews since the inception of Christianity. In this respect, it was comparable to the prohibition of Torah study that is observed on the Ninth of Av fast. 

His student the Hassam Sofer of Pressburg objected that Rabbi Adler’s explanation failed to account adequately for the widespread practice of limiting the prohibition to the hours until midnight. He therefore proposed a different theory: the real purpose of the custom was to encourage Jews to resume their studies after midnight, because otherwise they might (from a heavenly perspective) be compared adversely with the devout gentiles who were spending Christmas eve in pious devotion in their churches. 

A nineteenth-century scholar suggested that the custom had evolved from what were initially pragmatic considerations. Because in earlier times, Christmas eve had been an occasion for assaults on Jewish institutions (a claim that, as it happens, has no factual basis), it had been recommended that the yeshivahs be left dark and empty during that night, in order to keep potential attackers from being attracted to the lights. 

Those who forbade study on Nittel night insisted that grave consequences would befall people who transgressed the prohibition. One Hasidic rabbi attested that irresponsible individuals who insisted on pursuing their studies had their houses visited by dogs–a terrifying prospect for eastern European Jews, especially since (as the writer hints) dogs have symbolic associations with the demonic realms.

An odd development in the nineteenth century rabbinic discourse involved the identification of Nittel with the winter solstice. Because the astronomical definition of the solstice is at variance with the halakhic usage, and the disparities between the Julian and Gregorian calendars lead to divergences in the computations used by different churches, this interpretation has given rise to some peculiar talmudic arguments over such questions as: the correct halakhic date of Christmas; whether the ban on learning can override the Sabbath; and how to determine the precise moment when Christmas night begins! 

As noted above, our conscientious schoolchildren may enjoy the benefits of these uncertainties, and utterly do away with their religious education during December and January, as long as they piously insist on satisfying the full range of calendrical options. What an achievement that would be for Jewish scholarship!

Whenever we hear about representatives of other religious communities mocking or vilifying Jews or Judaism, we consider it unacceptable, and we justly insist that the defamations be stopped. I trust that the same principles apply when the tables are turned. Hopefully, the anti-Christian tone of the Nittel is now nothing more than an obscure historical memory from a more primitive age.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, December 23, 2004, p. 7.
• For further reading:
  • Shapiro, Marc B. Torah Study on Christmas Eve. Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 8, no. 2 (1999): 319-53.
  • Sperber, Daniel. Minhage Yisra’el: Meqorot Ve-Toledot. Jerusalem: Mosad ha-Rav Kuk, 1989-.
  • Zuckermann, Ghil’ad. ‘Lexical Engineering as a Tool for Judging Other Religions: A Socio-Philological Perspective. 2004. Accessed 25/11/04 2004. Adobe Acrobat document. Available from http://www.zuckermann.org/engineering.pdf.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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That Mysterious Fragrance

by Eliezer Segal

Most of us, when we think of the trees of the Land of Israel, are likely to summon up images of olive or fig trees, dates, pomegranates, and other examples of fruit-bearing trees that are mentioned and extolled in the Bible.

However, to judge from the works of ancient Greek and Roman authors, the most important tree to grow on Judean soil was not a fruit tree at all, but the balsam tree, which produced a renowned perfume. The balsam made a powerful impression throughout the world, and several classical writers knew very little about the Jews and their land other than their association with the cultivation of balsam.

This pattern emerges already in the works of Theophrastus (3^rd-4^th centuries B.C.E.), a student of Aristotle, whose lost treatise On Piety praised Judaism as a paradigm of philosophical religion. The only bit of specific information he provides about the Jewish homeland is a description of the balsam plantations. 

According to Theophrastus’ report, the entire balsam production of Judea was confined to two tiny parks. He describes in detail the procedures for piercing the tree-trunk and collecting the fragrant resin. The harvest must be carried out in the hottest days of summer, and the miniscule amount of gum is afterwards blended with additional ingredients before it is fit to be marketed. The pure balsam gum fetched a price of twice its weight in silver.

The first-century B.C.E. historian Diodorus of Sicily also wrote about the lucrative eminence of Judean balsam, which he explained on the grounds that it was not grown in any other locality, and it was highly valued by physicians for its pharmaceutical uses. Diodorus’s younger contemporary, the geographer Strabo of Amaseia, provided more specific details of the balsam’s medicinal advantages: it can cure headaches and arrest the development of cataracts. He confirmed that the combination of its usefulness and its scarcity servedf to make it a very costly commodity.

Strabo declared that the dearth of balsam trees was not the consequence of natural factors. Rather, the shrewd Judeans intentionally limited their cultivation in order to artificially inflate the price.

The most detailed and informative description of Judean balsam is included in the Naturalis Historia of Pliny the Elder, the celebrated naturalist and colonial administrator who completed his masterpiece shortly after the Romans crushed the Jewish uprising and destroyed Jerusalem.

In Pliny’s account, the status of the balsam was actually depicted as a symbol for the subjugation of the Jews. He noted with considerable pride how Vespasian and Titus made a point of exhibiting the balsam shrubs publicly in the triumphal processions thorugh Rome, as if to declare that the plant, which the Jews had hitherto kept as their own closely guarded secret, was now subservient to the authority of the Empire: The balsam-tree is now a subject of Rome, and pays tribute together with the nation to which it belongs.

Pliny described how the Jews had tried unsucccessfully to carry out a scorched-earth policy to keep the balsam trees from falling into enemy hands; however, the Romans were ultimately successful in protecting the treasures. He reported with visible satisfaction that the plantations were now cultivated profitably by the Roman fiscus.

From Pliny’s detailed description of procedures for extracting the fragrant oil, it appears that it was an extremely delicate operation, and that even a minor slip of the operator’s hand could severely damage the tree. Training in the requisite skills must have been conducted under very careful controls.

Balsam and its fragrant qualities are mentioned frequently in rabbinic literature. A passage in the midrash described how the larcenous generation of Noah’s flood used to smear the locations of people’s valuables with oil during the day, so that they would be able to find them easily when they broke in afterwards under cover of darkness.

The midrash goes on to report sardonically that, on the night after Rabbi Hanina told that story in the context of a sermon that he preached in Sepphoris, three hundred break-ins were reported in the town!

Another passage from the midrash described how the promiscuous young ladies of Jerusalem would tread on egg-shells containing balsam in order to irresistibly captivate approaching young men with the seductive fragrance that they released.

In the rabbis’ descriptions of the World to Come, it was considered appropriate to include lush landscapes with flowing rivers of balsam. Righteous and saintly individuals were said to exude the fragrance even in their earthly lives, and the beneficial effects of their deeds were figuratively compared to its perfume.

The significance of balsam cultivation to ancient Jewish society has also been invoked to solve a puzzling archeological riddle. 

The ancient synagogue in the village of Ein Gedi, which was excavated in the early 1970’s, contained an unusual Aramaic mosaic inscription. The text calls down dreadful curses upon the heads of those who would incite strife, inform on their comrades to the gentiles, steal their neighbours’ property, or divulge the secrets of the village to outsiders.

Understandably, scholars have been hard pressed to fill in a historical context that would have provoked the community to be so concerned about those particular indiscretions, to the point that the curse should be inscribed prominently and permanently on the floor of a house of worship.

The most persuasive interpretation of the inscription relates it to Ein Gedi’s unique situation as one of the centres of Judean balsam cultivation. As was evident from the above-mentioned description by Pliny, the tending of balsam trees, the extraction of the gum and the preparation of the oil involved specialized training and dexterity. It was common in the ancient world to preserve the secrecy of such rare skills within the confines of individual families or exclusive guilds. As we have seen, the need for secrecy was felt more urgently by the Jewish communities in the Land of Israel, who lived under the yoke of despised occupiers, and were willing to destroy their cherished plantations rather than allow the Romans to benefit from their lucrative professional secrets. 

Accordingly, some scholars have argued that, after their defeat in 70 C. E., when they were forced to pursue their craft as mere tenants of Roman taskmasters, the guild of balsam-cultivators imposed an explicit curse upon anyone who would betray their industrial secrets, as well as on those who might interpret their status of subservience to the Romans as a carte blanche to pilfer company equipment. 

In spite of the efforts of our conquerors, the memory of Israel’s world-famous balsam cultivation still continues to spread its tangible fragrance centuries later, in the pages of our classic literature and in the inscriptions of our ancient houses of worship, as it is borne along by the breezes of Jewish history.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, January 20, 2005, p. 11.
• For further reading:
  • Eitan, Avraham, Ruth Hestrin, Yael Israeli, and Ya’akov Meshorer. Inscriptions Reveal Catalogues of the Israel Museum. Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 1972.
  • Feliks, Yehuda. Trees: Aromatic, Ornamental, and of the Forest, in the Bible and Rabbinic Literature. Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 1997.
  • Lieberman, Saul. A Preliminary Note to the Ein-Gedi Inscription. Tarbiz 40 (1971): 24-6.
  • Loew, Immanuel. Die Flora Der Juden. Hildesheim: Gg. Olms, 1967.
  • 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.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Weddings in the Wilderness?

by Eliezer Segal

Of the many practices and beliefs that set the ancient Essene sect apart from the other Jewish movements of the Second Temple era, the most extraordinary might have been their preference for celibacy, an attitude that contrasts glaringly with the normal Jewish insistence on marriage and family.

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the subsequent archeological excavations in the Judean wilderness, raised new questions about the Essenes’ attitudes towards marriage. Because it was generally assumed that the scrolls had been written by an Essene community, scholars were most eager to find out whether or not the literary and physical evidence from the Qumran site would bear out the previous claims about the Essenes’ celibacy.

A milestone in the discussion was the publication, in 1982, of a fragmentary document to which the editor attached the title Marriage Ritual. The existence of such a document in the Qumran library invited the obvious question: If the scrolls were of Essene provenance, and the Essenes did not marry, then why were they composing liturgies for wedding ceremonies? 

We must appreciate that the document in question was in a very poor state of preservation. It was hardly more than a bundle of tiny papyrus scraps, many of them too minuscule to contain readable text, and none of them complete enough to indicate how the puzzle pieces were supposed to fit together. Basically, they amounted to little more than a few disconnected Hebrew words and letters.

Nevertheless, it is not hard to understand why the editor arrived at his initial characterization of the text as a marriage ritual–the hypothesis that I will refer to henceforth as Theory #1. Several of the fragments’ legible words and phrases are reminiscent of the blessings recited at a traditional Jewish wedding. For example, the scroll contains a few variations on the Hebrew root smḥ, joy, and apparent references to Adam and his wife, companions, being fruitful and young and old. One fragment seems to describe an exchange of blessings between a man and woman.

Faced with this evidence, scholars who accepted the premise of Essene celibacy were forced to conclude that the wedding ceremony in the document must have been intended for use outside the Qumran settlement. Josephus Flavius, whose writings are our main source of first-hand information about the Essenes, had indeed written that some Essenes were town-dwellers who followed more conventional life-styles than their fellows in the Judean wilderness, and were accustomed to marry.

Other scholars, however, proposed alternative interpretations of the document that had nothing to do with weddings. One analysis of the fragmentary text arrived at a novel reading of its function. Theory #2 (as we shall call it) focused on the unusual frequency of terms designating elderly men and women–not the sort of vocabulary that one normally associates with weddings. 

Admittedly, some of these occurrences can be explained as parts of inclusive descriptions of the entire community (young and old), as guests who are being invited to partake in the festivities, or as references to the community elders who presided over the nuptials. But what remained of the text still seemed oddly out of place for the occasion of a marriage.

The author of Theory #2 calls our attention to the writings of the first-century Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria and his detailed description of an Essene-like group called the Therapeutae. According to Philo, the Therapeutae used to hold an annual festival at which the youths of the community would bestow honours on their elders. After a ceremonial banquet, the men and women would chant hymns and dance; and the culmination of the event came when the male and female choirs would join their voices, in a manner reminiscent of the songs of Moses and Miriam at the Red Sea. This was indeed a remarkable phenomenon, since the Therapeutae normally frowned on mingling of the sexes.

Philo reports that the female members of the Therpeutae sect were in fact unmarried women who had chosen a life of spiritual contemplation instead of the pleasures of marriage and family.

Based largely on these clues, Theory #2 stated that the ritual recorded in the Qumran fragments was not intended for the marriage of a young couple, but for a celebration of the community’s mature members as they reached a revered stage of seniority after surviving their youthful years in a state of celibacy. This Golden Age ceremony seems to have been celebrated annually, perhaps on Sukkot.

Seems convincing, does it not? But that is by no means the end of the scholarly grappling with our enigmatic document.

A more recent attempt at unraveling the text’s mysteries approached it from yet a different perspective. Theory #3 stresses the fact that the occasion for the festivity is designated an appointed time–mo’ed in Hebrew, a word that is normally employed in connection with fixed dates on the calendar, and is therefore not a suitable term to denote a wedding ceremony, which can occur at any time of the year.

If we search carefully through the Dead Sea scrolls, we will discover that there is an occasion that is referred to as the appointed time of rejoicing, and that is the New Year festival. However, we must bear in mind that in ancient times, the main New Year holiday was not the Rosh Hashanah that we celebrate in the fall, but rather the springtime date of the first of Nissan. 

This is the month that is designated in the Torah as the head of the months owing to its association with the liberation from Egypt; and indeed the Bible and Talmud always number the months commencing from Nissan. Furthermore, the beginning of this month was sanctified with the ceremonies for the inauguration of the Tabernacle. In the calendar followed by the community in the Judean wilderness, the first day of Nissan was a special memorial day for the heads of the years and the turning points of their seasons.

The disconnected words and letters of our cryptic text display a resemblance to prayers that were recited on the occasion of the spring time new year.

It is not immediately obvious why a springtime New Years celebration should contain wedding-like prayers about the rejoicing of men and women. Nevertheless, this riddle can be accounted for if recall the Jewish tradition that the world was created in Nissan. It would follow from this that the creation is a perfectly suitable theme for the holiday liturgy–and it would naturally include, or even culminate with, a description of the creation of the first human couple in the Garden of Eden, which some might see as the peak of the creation.

Therefore, the same expression that one reader might interpret as directed towards a bride and groom, can be read by others as a retelling of the story of Adam and Eve.

So there you have it: A wedding service, a Golden Age celebration, or a springtime Rosh Hashanah liturgy: Feel free to choose the theory that you find most compelling. Or perhaps you have a different, more convincing hypothesis to account for the tantalizing clues. These kinds of exasperating ambiguities are standard fare in the precarious realm of Dead Sea Scrolls research.

If the document from the wilderness of Judea really does preserve the text of a wedding ceremony after all, then I hope those marriages were built on more solid foundations than the tenuous theories that they inspired.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, February 10, 2005, pp. 13, 15.
• For further reading:
  • Baillet, Maurice. Qumrân Grotte 4 III (4Q482-4Q520). Vol. 7 Discoveries in the Judaean Desert. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982.
  • Baumgarten, Joseph M. 4Q502, Marriage or Golden Age Ritual. Journal of Jewish Studies 34 (1983): 125-35.
  • Satlow, Michael L. 4Q502: A New Years Ritual. Dead Sea Discoveries 5 (1998): 57-68.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Defender of Liberty

by Eliezer Segal

News Item: January-February 2004: American President George W. Bush reiterates in his Inauguration and State of the Union addresses that his administration’s foreign policy calls for the exporting of democracy to states currently ruled by tyrants.The dedication and courage of the Iraqi people in exercising their right to vote demonstrate the need for such regime changes.

There was but a single super-power that now dominated the international arena, and was able to impose its world order on rival states. Whether acting alone or at the head of various alliances, this state maintained military hegemony far beyond its own borders. Its thriving commerce also made it the region’s dominant economic power. Its successes in amassing wealth and affluence inspired simultaneous admiration and resentment from other nations, some of whom charged that its economic strength was giving it unfair advantages in negotiations with weaker trading partners. Concomitant with its political stature, this country was seen as the only effective bulwark against the encroachments of expansionist Islam.

What was the source of their unprecedented political, military and economic supremacy? Many observers ascribed it to the nation’s distinctive political culture, to its preference for elected government and private initiative over autocratic tyranny. 

In case you have not yet figured it out, the subject of the previous lines was the republic of Venice, as it was perceived by many Europeans in the sixteenth century. The scrappy city-state had become the foremost player in international diplomacy and commerce, and the chief obstacle to Turkish expansion, achievements that many observers ascribed to their pioneering experiment in republican government. The Venetian state was ruled by an elaborate hierarchy of legislative and judiciary councils. This was at a time when the prospect of a state without an absolutist, hereditary monarchy was virtually unknown, outside the histories of ancient Greece or republican Rome. 

Don Isaac Abravanel (1437-1508) was so deeply impressed by the Venetian political model that he became an enthusiastic advocate of republican ideals. In doing so, he was defying a millennia-old monarchist consensus in Jewish thought, a tradition that aspired to the restoration of the royal house of David, and which generally relegated democracy to the realm of local communities. Virtually all the political discourse of the ancient and medieval rabbis focused on the nature of the ideal king, the only political leadership that was taken seriously in those days.

Don Isaac had plenty of opportunity to observe the different systems of government from the inside. He served in high offices in the absolutist states of Spain and Portugal, and afterwards in various Italian and Greek communities, ending his distinguished career in Venice. 

His antipathy towards autocratic rule was prompted by his bitter personal experiences. After decades of successful and loyal service as the Minister of Finance in the Spanish court, Don Isaac became a victim of the edict of expulsion that called for the immediate eviction of all Jews from the domains of Christian Spain, and later Portugal. When he contrasted the cruel and arbitrary policies of the Iberian sovereigns with the fair treatment that he and his coreligionists received in Venice, it is hardly surprising that he ascribed the differences to the respective political systems. 

Although Abravanel was well versed in the philosophical theories about ideal forms of political leadership, he insisted that the most valid lessons are to be derived from empirical evidence: But why should we argue this point on theoretical grounds, when experience is more powerful than logical reasoning! 

Abravanel frequently referred admiringly to the well-ordered societies of Venice and other Italian city-states. Look and see the lands that are ruled by kings, and you will observe their abominations and their idols…for through them the earth is filled with violence. The most glorious days of ancient Rome were under the Republic, whereas the Caesars reduced the empire to decline and ultimate collapse.

Abravanel was not content merely to profess his own opinions on the subject; as a learned Jewish scholar, he was determined to prove that the Bible itself advocated a democratic republican model. He argued his case in his commentaries to key scriptural passages. 

When commenting on Jethro’s counsel to Moses to appoint rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens (Exodus 18:21), Abravanel did not interpret this advice–as did virtually every other commentator–as an exhortation to establish a hierarchy of judges with progressively expanded jurisdictions. Instead, he read it as mandate for the creation of separate governing councils, with varying numbers of elected members: One thousand, one hundred, fifty, forty or ten, each of them responsible for dealing with different areas of law or policy. 

And you ought to know that each of the types of councils that I have mentioned here may be found today in the great city of Venice. For they have a great council [Consiglio Majore] which contains more than a thousand men, and there is another council called the Pregadi containing only 200 members, and another council of forty men known as the Quarantis, and there is yet another council of only ten men called Consiglio dei Dieci. 

In fact, Abravanel’s interpretation of the Torah’s council structure was more democratic than the ones that existed in Venice, since his were all to be elected by popular vote, whereas in Venice, the highest consiglio was comprised of hereditary aristocrats, who had the prerogative of appointing the members of the lower bodies. 

The question of who had the authority to appoint judges was a persistent cause of contention in medieval Europe, as the kings and the citizens competed for that right. Abravanel read the text of Deuteronomy 16:18 Judges and officers shalt thou make thee in all thy gates as a directive to the rank and file of the Hebrew tribes to choose their own judges, at least for the lower courts, thereby removing the king entirely from the process. Here too, he did not confine himself to the exegetical rationale, but pointed out also that this was the actual practice in some Spanish territories, in France and in the Maghreb.

Abravanel’s commentaries also contain caustic condemnations of autocratic monarchy: It is not essential for a nation to have a king. On the contrary, it is very harmful and dangerous. In Abravanel’s opinion, the very origins of royalty were rooted in iniquity. The first kings had either seized power by force and never relinquished their grip, or they had persuaded the citizenry to appoint them by pledging to serve the interests of the populace, a social contract that has never been carried out. According to either premise, all royal claims to legitimacy should be dismissed as bogus and illegitimate. Even the monarchies of ancient Israel were a concession to the people’s inadequacies, not a recommended system of government.

Don Isaac was a strong believer in the premise that absolute power corrupts absolutely; and he attributed that situation to the fact that, no matter how noble-sounding the religious or moral frameworks that are supposed to restrain abuses of power, in the end there is really nothing to deter rulers from corruption and exploitation, as long they are not answerable to their constituents. 

The best alternative to this predicament is to limit the leaders’ terms of office to fixed time-periods, so that their misdeeds will eventually be uncovered and punished by their successors. 

Not only are states that demand accountability from their legislators less vulnerable to capricious misuses of power, but they also operate more efficiently, because their generals, diplomats and finance ministers are more likely to be chosen for their competence in carrying out their respective tasks. 

A leader of today’s most powerful republic recently declared There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants, and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom. 

I suppose that at least one sixteenth-century Jewish diplomat would have applauded that declaration with great enthusiasm.

To Dt. 16:18: …You will observe that there are kingdoms in which the appointment of judges is under the authority of the king… thus is the law and the custom in the entire kingdom of Castille and Aragon, and in the kingdom of Naples. There are other lands in which the appointment of judges is assigned to the populace…, who elect those whom they regard as most qualified on an annual basis, and the king has no say in the matter. This is the practice in some Spanish territories, in France and in all of Morocco. Note that the supreme prophet explained that the Judges who will be in Israel should not be appointed by the king, and should not be under his authority, but rather the people should elect them; i.e., each tribe should choose the most suitable judges in every one of their towns. Regarding this it ways: which the Lord your God gives you to your tribes. This implies that the Lord your God assigned the appointment of judges to your tribes, who will choose them in their gates, and not the king.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, February 24, 2005, p. 9.
• For further reading:
  • Kimelman, Reuven R. Abravanel and the Jewish Republican Ethos. In Commandment and Community: New Essays in Jewish Legal and Political Philosophy, ed. Daniel H. Frank, 195-216. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995.
  • Millen, Rochelle L. Isaac Abravanel’s Concept of Monarchy. In Religion in the Age of Exploration: The Case of Spain and New Spain, ed. Bryan F. LeBeau and Menahem Mor, 5, 1-13. Omaha and Bronx: Creighton University Press, 1996.
  • Netanyahu, B. Don Isaac Abravanel: Statesman 
  • amp; Philosopher. 5^th revised and updated ed. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1972. 
  • Polish, Daniel F. Some Medieval Thinkers on the Jewish King. Judaism 20 (1971): 323-9.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Mystical Mingling

by Eliezer Segal

In spite of the claims in certain showbiz circles that you don’t have to be Jewish to study Kabbalah, serious scholars of Judaism have raised questions about whether this uniquely Jewish school of esoteric interpretation can make any sense outside the boundaries of traditional Jewish belief, observance and scriptures. 

Many would go so far as to argue that Kabbalah is not a form of mysticism at all, as mysticism is understood in other cultures. Unlike the Kabbalists, classic mystics strive to transcend the physical and social planes in order to experience union with the divine. In their attempts to reach such an exalted metaphysical goal, mysticism tends to emphasize universal values, and to minimize those features that distinguish religions from each other. 

The pursuit of such paths has often created tensions between the mystics and the more orthodox religious authorities, who encourage adherence to specific rituals and regulations. This kind of tension has rarely arisen in Judaism, precisely because Kabbalah does not challenge the conventional halakhic life-style. Quite the contrary, it provides a compelling metaphysical validation for adherence to orthodox ritual observance. Therefore, unlike the mysticisms of other religious, Kabbalah has flourished not among marginal groups of recluses or dissidents, but among the foremost authorities on talmudic scholarship.

A paradigmatic example of conventional mysticism is the Islamic movement known as Sufism. Sufism arose as a protest against institutional orthodoxy, objecting not only to excesses of worldliness among the mainstream leadership, but also to their focus on religious laws and rituals, which it regarded as distractions from the supreme human vocation, the quest for communion with the divine.

Many Sufi teachers were pleased to disseminate their teachings among disciples outside the Muslim community. And in turn, many Jews were drawn to the philosophy, which (they felt) did not necessarily put them in conflict with their Jewish heritage.

Take, for example, the case of Basir, a Jewish bell-maker in fourteenth-century Cairo. Basir became so impressed with the Sufi brotherhood led by the charismatic Yusuf al-Jami al-Kurani that he abandoned his family, and was on the verge of selling his property in order to take up permanent residence in al-Kurani’s secluded monastery.

Distraught by this prospect, Basir’s wife appealed to the leader of Egypt’s Jewish community, the Nagid David. She urged the Nagid to rescue her spouse from the clutches of the cult, to deprogram him, and to remind him of his duties to his wife, three children, and Judaism. Although her letter (preserved in the Cairo Genizah) relates sympathetically to Basir’s quest for spiritual fulfillment, she is apprehensive that his Sufi life-style might eventually lead him to forsake his ancestral religion. 

David the Nagid himself was heir to Rabbi Moses Maimonides; but of greater interest to our current discussion is another of David’s ancestors, Moses’ son Abraham (1186-1237), who was arguably the most eminent exponent of the medieval Jewish-Sufi synthesis. Rabbi Abraham Maimonides’ treatise Kifayat ul-‘Abidin [the compendium for those who serve God] advocated an ideal of sublime piety based on a discipline of mystical communion. 

Abraham recommended that Jews adopt some Sufi practices, such as solitary contemplation and mantra-like repetitions of the divine names. To those who charged him with the promotion of un-Jewish ideas, he countered that it was the Sufis who had taken their inspiration from the authentic practices of the ancient Hebrew prophets. In all this, Abraham was solidly convinced that he was being faithfully consistent with his father’s philosophy.

The central text of the Kabbalah, the Zohar, contains at least one reference to Sufi practice. It tells, with some measure of admiration, about the people of the east, the inhabitants of the mountains of light, who worship the pre-dawn light that shines before the appearance of the sun. They refer to this light as Allah of the shining pearls. 

This expression is taken from the mystical terminology of the Sufis, where the white pearl [al-durra-l-baida] refers to the highest emanation of divine intelligence through which power is channeled into our world: In the beginning God created from his own precious soul a white pearl. Although the Zohar accuses those easterners of directing their adoration to the light and not to the God who created it, it also acknowledges that it is based on an ancient tradition of authentic wisdom.

Possibly the most imposing example of the integration of Kabbalah and Jewish orthodoxy was Rabbi Joseph Karo, the learned compiler of the Shulhan Arukh, the sixteenth century code of religious law that is still regarded as the quintessential embodiment of rabbinic Judaism. Though Rabbi Karo was a devotee of the Kabbalah, he rarely allowed his Kabbalistic beliefs to influence his halakhic codification. 

Like several of his contemporaries, he was privileged to receive ongoing revelations from a maggid, a supernatural mentor that would take possession of him and speak revelations through his lips. These revelations were recorded in a diary that was later published under the title Maggid Mesharim.

Although Rabbi Karo epitomized the distinctive qualities of Jewish religious learning, even he was not completely insulated from the spiritual currents that were at work in the gentile surroundings; as we discover when we read passages in the Maggid Mesharim. 

In at least one place, Karo’s Maggid relied on a Sufi tradition. While instructing Karo in the virtues of remaining completely indifferent to the opinions of others, the Maggid said: This secret can be learned from the tale of a wise man, who once addressed a question to a person who was seeking a state of absolute spiritual equanimity. For the truth is that anyone who is not indifferent to the good and bad things of this world has not attained a state of devotion that is purely focused. 

This story, which appears in various versions in the writings of the medieval moralists, was introduced to Jewish literature by the eleventh-century philosopher Rabbi Bahya Ibn Paqudah in his Arabic treatise The Duties of the Heart. Bahya explicitly credited the tale to a Sufi source. Indeed, Bahya’s central messages–that people waste too much time on the trivial details of daily life (which, for him, included a narrow focus on religious laws and rituals), and not enough on spiritual transformation –was very much in the Sufi spirit.

There is a passage in Rabbi Karo’s mystical diary that suggests a more active involvement of Jews with Sufism. The text there describes a stroll that he took with a group of companions. When they passed the entrance to the Tekiya, the companions brought Karo inside to enjoy the ambiance.

A Tekiya, or Tekke, is a meeting place or retreat centre for Sufi meditation; Tekkes are especially common in Turkish mystical schools. Most of them contain walled gardens designed to isolate the occupants from the distractions of the world and to promote a fitting mood for contemplation. 

Karo had reason to regret his visit. That night, his Maggid took him to task him for turning to idols and ba’als, a grave sin that resulted in a temporary disruption of the lines of communications between the rabbi and his creator. 

It appears that, until this episode, visits to the Tekke had been a common routine for the Safed mystics, who presumably found inspiration in the tranquility of the surroundings. It was only after Rabbi Karo’s visit provoked the Maggid’s censure that the practice was terminated.

Perhaps those earlier Kabbalists in Safed felt that there exists a state of spiritual elevation in which the differences between religious communities and traditions are less important than the mystic unity that underlies all creation.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, March 10, 2005, p. 9 (as “A Sufi Influence on Judaism?”).
• For further reading:
  • Fenton, Paul. “Judaism and Sufism”. In Routledge History of World Philosophies, ed. S. H. Nasr and O. Leaman, 755-68. London: Routledge, 1996.
  • 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.
  • Matt, Daniel Chanan. Zohar: The Book of Enlightenment Classics of Western Spirituality. New York: Paulist Press, 1983.
  • Scholem, Gershom Gerhard. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism Schocken Paperbacks, New York,: Schocken Books, 1961.
  • Trimingham, J. Spencer. The Sufi Orders in Islam. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971.
  • 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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Haman for All Seasons

by Eliezer Segal

Haman’s condemnations of the Jews, as they appear in the Megillah, are alarming enough, even without any additional embellishment. Nevertheless, the ancient expositors of the book of Esther did take the trouble to supplement the hateful tirade with some additional slanders that they found hidden, as it were, between the words and lines of the biblical text. The retellings of the Purim story in the Talmud, Midrash, in the Aramaic Targums, and in the Jewish Antiquities of Josephus Flavius, overflow with new crimes and failings that were ascribed to the Jewish people by Haman.

The unfortunate fact is that hostility towards the nation of Israel and its religion was current among many circles in the Hellenistic and Roman worlds. The reasons for this attitude can be readily understood: Greek culture prided itself on its tolerance and universalism, and therefore any culture that insisted on maintaining a separate identity in the new global civilization was perceived as narrowly parochial and unworthy of sympathy. This is a pattern that would be repeated in subsequent historical settings; self-professed enlightened liberals could be downright ruthless when it came to the suppression of cultural individuality.

The ancient historian Josephus Flavius was impelled to compose a special treatise, Against Apion, in order to refute the accusations of his contemporary antisemites. We are familiar with several of the arguments that were being voiced by enemies of the Jews in the ancient world, by virtue of their inclusion in Josephus’ work. This information is very helpful for understanding how the ancient Jewish sages depicted Haman and his hateful message.

The rabbis of the Talmud, when interpreting the episode where Haman castigated the Jews because their laws are diverse from all peoples (Esther 3:8), expanded Haman’s arguments to identify specific Jewish practices that limited their social interaction with pagans: They do not eat or drink with us, nor do they intermarry with us.

Accusations of this sort, irritating as they might have been to gentiles, had a factual basis. They bear an uncanny resemblance to Tacitus’ indignant complaint that Jews sit apart from us at meals, and sleep apart. Although as a race they are prone to lust, they abstain from relations with foreign women. Similar expressions appear in the satires of Juvenal: they cannot share the pleasures of the table with the rest of humanity, nor join in their libations, prayers or sacrifices. 

Jews in the ancient world were not always affectionate towards their gentile neighbours. They usually insisted on maintaining a cautious distance from the polytheistic religious outlook that united almost every other segment of the Hellenistic and Roman empires.

Nevertheless, the criticisms being voiced by the Hellenistic writers went far beyond recognition of the Jews’ insularity, loyalty to their monotheistic faith, or distinctive religious practices. It was widely believed that active hatred of humanity (in Greek: misanthropia) was a central teaching of the Law of Moses. The historian Pompeius Trogus alleged that Moses had ordered his people to have no communication with strangers. The Egyptian anti-Semite Apion even went so far as to describe a solemn oath that all Jews allegedly took, in which they solemnly swore to show no good-will to a single foreigner, especially to Greeks. 

Familiarity with Greek and Roman anti-Jewish accusations helps us to better understand some other allegations that the rabbis inserted into Haman’s tirade. For example, when the Bible has Haman describe the Jews as scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples, the rabbis utilized a word-play on the Hebrew words for scattered–mephorad— and for mule– p’ridah— making Haman draw an analogy between mules and Jews: just as mules are incapable of reproduction, so the Jews are fundamentally incapable of benefiting society by productive activity.

This bizarre claim, perhaps the earliest instance of the Jew as parasite libel, had a long history. The first-century B.C.E. orator Apollonius Molon, charged that Jews are the most witless of all barbarians, and are consequently the only people who have contributed no useful invention to civilization.

This accusation is closely related to a similar one that the ancient Jewish expositors read into Haman’s words neither do they keep the king’s laws. Several midrashic interpretations saw this as an allusion to the loss of productivity that was occasioned by observance of the Sabbath and festivals. Because ancient employers and tax collectors expected workers to toil throughout the year, the Jewish institution of days of rest was regarded as fiscal idiocy, and a sign of outright indolence. As Seneca declared, by introducing one day of rest in every seven, they lose in idleness almost a seventh of their life. And not to be outdone, Tacitus related that the Hebrews were led by the charms of indolence to give over the seventh year as well to inactivity. Taking a day off was portrayed as both silly and unpatriotic.

The implication that emerges from many of these traditions is that Jews were being singled out for persecution, both in Haman’s time and in the days of the Greeks and Romans, precisely because of their scrupulous adherence to the Torah, which required that they eschew their neighbours’ gods, abstain from their food, wine and social events, and observe their own cycle of holy days. 

To be sure, when they felt it appropriate, the same preachers could take the opposite approach, arguing that the Jews in Esther’s generation were placed in peril because they were too lax in their religious commitment and too accommodating in their readiness to assimilate to the gentile culture.

Clearly, many Jews felt frustrated at the apparent unfairness of the situation, at the fact that their religious loyalty was a stumbling block that provoked hatred and suffering. In one midrash on Esther, this irritation was placed in the mouth of the angel Michael, who came to Israel’s defense with the impassioned plea Master of the universe! It is clear and manifest before you that they are not being condemned because they were worshiping idols, nor because of sexual impropriety, nor because they were guilty of bloodshed. On the contrary, it is because they were following your Torah!

The Almighty responded to this heartrending entreaty with an assurance that, notwithstanding their desperate predicament, he would never really abandon the Jews. Of course, Haman did receive his just desserts, and the Jews of ancient Persia emerged unscathed. In the face of similar threats through the generations, we have not always fared so well.

There are many features that contribute to the timelessness of Purim. Unfortunately, one of the most prominent of them is history’s unrelenting parade of Hamans who arise continually to defame us.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, March 24, 2005, p. 9.
• For further reading:
  • Heinemann, Isaac. The Attitude of the Ancients toward Judaism. Zion 4 (1939): 269-93.
  • Herr, Moshe David. Anti-Semitism in Imperial Rome in the Light of Rabbinic Literature. In Benjamin De Vries Memorial Volume, ed. E. Z. Melamed, 149-59. Jerusalem: Tel Aviv University Research Authority and Stichting Fronika Sanders Fonds, 1968.
  • Poliakov, Léon. The History of Anti-Semitism. Translated by R. Howard The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, ed. David Goldstein, Louis Jacob and Lionel Kochan. London: Routledge, Kegan Paul, 1965.
  • Segal, Eliezer. The Babylonian Esther Midrash: A Critical Commentary. 3 vols. Brown Judaic Studies. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994.
  • 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.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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A Study in Scarlet

by Eliezer Segal

Several years ago, the most popular fashion accessory of the day was a bracelet consisting of a simple scarlet thread. The demand for them seemed insatiable.

Those little items were fetching obscene prices, to a large extent because their sellers were able to plug in to the Kabbalah fad that was (and is still, at the time I am writing this) sweeping the entertainment industry. One major American retail chain had to withdraw the red strings from circulation after Jewish organizations complained that they were trivializing a sacred Jewish ritual. 

At a major community event in Montreal last year, whose organizers were looking for a meaningful gift idea to distribute to the participants, the choice that they ultimately arrived at was–you guessed it–scarlet strings.

Okay, dear readers, listen carefully: Red strings have nothing to do with Kabbalah, and they are not Jewish symbols. If anything, using them may actually be prohibited by Jewish religious law.

Have a look at any of the major classics of the Kabbalah, at works like the Zohar, or Rabbi Hayim Vital’s multi-volume collection of the teachings of Rabbi Isaac Luria. See if you can find any references there to the wearing of red strings. I have yet to find a single expert–including scholars and rabbis much more proficient in these matters than I am–who has succeeded in turning up such a reference.

In a Jewish ethnographic journal published in Odessa in 1918, the author, writing under a fictitious name (the editor noted that the only thing they were allowed to reveal about him was that he was a rabbi in a Polish village) announced that he had assembled a collection of customs that have never before been documented in any book, or which have not been adequately explained. 

Included among these previously unrecorded practices was the following: When there are illnesses circulating in town, the women tie scarlet threads (Yiddish: royteh bendelakh) to the necks or hands of children as a safeguard. The learned author speculated that this custom might have some connection to the older practice of wearing a coral necklace or a collar to avert the evil eye. 

If nothing else, the inclusion, by a scholar of impressive erudition, of the red strings in a list of customs that were previously unrecorded, lends further force to my claim that we are not dealing here with an ancient or authoritative Kabbalistic practice. 

There is, to be sure, one work of classic Jewish religious literature that mentions red strings. It is a book called the Tosefta, an important compendium of teachings from the early talmudic era. One section in the Tosefta enumerates folk superstitions that might be unacceptable because they border on idolatry. In the terminology of rabbinic law, such practices are known as the ways of the Amorite after the primitive heathens who inhabited the holy land before the time of Joshua.

One of the customs that is forbidden in the Tosefta’s list of quasi-pagan practices is placing a red thread on one’s finger. A recent commentator to the Tosefta, recalling the use of red threads in his youth in eastern Europe, suggested sardonically that they must have understood the text as permitting the threads as long as they were placed somewhere other than on the finger. 

As with several of those superstitions, a quick survey of Greek and Latin authors confirms that red strings were indeed popular in the gentile environment of the ancient world. They are mentioned by the first-century Cilician physician, pharmaceutical expert Dioscorides and by the Church father John Chrysostom. 

In fact, the aforementioned Christian theologian John Chrysostom was familiar enough with the Bible to be aware that scarlet threads play a prominent and recurrent role in Hebrew narratives and purification rituals. In one of his sermons, he called attention to such cases as the birth of Zerah, son of Judah and Tamar, where the midwife bound a scarlet thread upon his hand to indicate that he had poked his hand out, even though his twin brother Peretz was afterwards the first to push his way out of the womb. Both Jews and Christians attached great symbolic significance to this episode, since it defined the ancestry of King David and of the Messiah who would issue from that line. In what seems to be a totally unrelated episode in the book of Joshua, Rachab the harlot was advise to tie a scarlet thread to her window to ensure her protection when the Israelite armies captured Jericho.

Chrysostom proposed his own symbolic interpretation of the scarlet thread in those episodes. He saw these and similar passages as prefigurations of the blood of Christ, which provided ultimate protection and salvation. It is possible that these kinds of associations account for the widespread popularity of red threads, corals and necklaces as protective devices in medieval Europe. 

As was often the case, Jews replicated the practice of their gentile neighbours without being aware of their pagan or Christian associations.

Collectors of Jewish folk practices mention red strings or necklaces most frequently for protection during pregnancy, childbirth and childhood illnesses, especially scarlet fever. In some communities, pregnant women would wrap around their bellies a string that had been carried seven times around a renowned rabbi. This custom is similar to the standard procedure for preparing scarlet threads in Israel: to be effective in preventing miscarriages, scarlet embroidery twine has to be wound seven times around Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem. Visitors to downtown Jerusalem are likely to be pestered by characters like Golda the bendel-maker, who will insist that her merchandise has undergone that process–but be prepared to have curses heaped upon you and your progeny if you decline her offer.

I am sure that some of you will retort with memories of how your beloved bubbeh tied a red string to shield her children from the envious Evil Eye. I respectfully submit that not every questionable superstition that was followed by Jews in Poland or Russia qualifies as a sacred Jewish tradition, let alone as a Kabbalistic mystery.

Now, I have no personal objection to snake-oil peddlars making a buck or two off the gullibility of ignorant consumers. I just think that my own esteemed readers deserve to be forewarned when the unscrupulous scam artists are misrepresenting Jewish traditions.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, April 7, 2005, p. 11.
• For further reading:
  • Elzet, Judah (Pseudonym for Judah Leib Avida/Zlotnick). Mimminhagei Yisra’el. Reshummot 1 (1918): 335-77. 
  • Klein, Michele. A Time to Be Born: Customs and Folklore of Jewish Birth. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1998.
  • Lewy, Heinrich. Morgenländischer Aberglaube in Der Römischen Kaiserheit. Zeitschrift des Vereins für Volkskunde 3 (1893): 23-40, 130-44, 238.
  • Lieberman, Saul. Tosefta ki-Fshutah. New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1955-.
  • Luntz, Abraham Moshe. Minhagei Aheinu Be-‘Ir Ha-Qodesh Be-Dat Ve-Hayyei Ha-‘Am. Yeda-‘Am 13, no. 33-34 (1968): 3-23.
  • Marmorstein, A. Comparisons between Greek and Jewish Religious Customs and Popular Usages. In Occident and Orient. Gaster Anniversary Volume, ed. Bruno Schindler, 409-23. London: Taylor’s Foreign Press, 1936.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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