On a holiday that is supposed to commemorate our liberation from the tyranny of Pharaoh, it seems quite inappropriate, to say the least, for the Haggadah to suggest that Pharaoh was not really such a terrible enemy after all: Pharaoh only issued decrees against the males, but Laban wanted to uproot us totally.
Now really! How is it possible to compare the systematic brutality and murder perpetrated by Pharaoh with the minor shortcomings of a Laban, whose crimes seem limited to an antipathy towards Jacob, and a propensity toward deceit and avarice?
How did the rabbis arrive at this bizarre comparison?
The Haggadah bases the interpretation on its reading of Deuteronomy 26:5, which it renders as An Aramean destroys my father. The ancient Aramaic translation (Targum) specified the identities of the individuals alluded to here: Laban the Aramean wanted to destroy my ancestor Jacob. In a similar vein, the Midrash Sifre to this text observed This teaches that our father Jacob went down to Aram only to be destroyed, and Scripture credits Laban with destroying him.
Had it not been for the tradition expressed in the rabbinic works, it is unlikely that this interpretation would have occurred to any normal reader, since the Hebrew form oved has an unmistakably intransitive sense, meaning lost or wandering–not destroys and certainly not wanted to destroy. Classic Jewish commentators, such as Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra, pointed this grammatical fact out clearly.
Usually, when the midrashic sages go to such extremes to contradict the plain sense of the Bible, we look for an ulterior meaning behind their words. With respect to the current anomaly, scholars have proposed some imaginative explanations.
A theory that was proposed back in the 1930’s traced the interpretation back to early Hellenistic times, an era whose Jewish community has left us very few historical records. When Alexander the Great’s Middle-Eastern conquests were divided among his generals at the Battle of Rafah in 311 BCE, the Jews of the Holy Land found themselves on the boundary of two rival empires: the Seleucids centered in Syria, and the Ptolemies in Egypt.
During the latter third century and early second century BCE, Judea was under the dominion of the Ptolemies. According to the hypothesis we are discussing, their delicate political situation made it awkward for the Jews to be outspoken about expounding the literal message of the Haggadah, in which the Egyptian leadership are cast as reprehensible villains and their resounding defeat is the occasion for a major religious celebration.
For this reason (the theory maintained), the author of our Haggadah passage chose to minimize Pharaoh’s negative image at the expense of Laban the Aramean. Aram was, after all, situated in Syria, and the allusion would be grasped by contemporary listeners as a veiled denunciation of the rival Seleucid empire.
The Ptolemies were, on the whole, benevolent in their treatment of their subjects, upholding the authority of the Jewish High Priests. In return, they had good reason to count on their allegiance. It therefore appears quite plausible that the priests would have been scrupulous in their efforts to avoid giving offence to their Egyptian sponsors.
By means of this ingenious feat of exegetical manipulation (the argument goes on), the Haggadah was able to transform a politically embarrassing passage into a virtual declaration of loyalty to their political masters. The anti-Syrian reading of the biblical Exodus story would have resonated very favourably among loyal Jews during the time of the Maccabean uprising against the oppressive decrees of their current Laban, the Seleucid emperor Antiochus Epiphanes.
The theory’s advocates went on to discern additional clues that supposedly pointed to the Haggadah’s Ptolemaic provenance. Take, for example, the emphasis that is placed on the claim that the plague of the firstborn was inflicted not through an angel, not through a seraph, and not through any intermediary–but rather, by the Holy One, blessed be he, directly. This declaration would have dovetailed neatly with the prevailing attitudes of the priestly aristocracy. As proponents of the Sadducee theology, they sought to minimize the role of angels in the management of our world.
As attractive as they once were, at a time when historical Jewish studies were in a crude stage of their evolution, such fanciful theories attract few adherents today.
Looked at without prejudice, the claim that Laban was even worse than Pharaoh sounds more like a classic left-hand compliment that hardly serves to glorify the Egyptian ruler, or any of his latter-day successors.
When all is said and done, the interpretations found in the Haggadah should be read as typical examples of midrashic exposition. This implies that they originated as parts of sermons that were preached in the ancient synagogues. Following the familiar literary conventions of the well-crafted sermon, the preacher was expected to artfully manipulate the words of the sacred scriptures to make them relevant to their congregations.
When midrashic texts are read in this manner, we may readily appreciate how the liberties that they took with the biblical verses allowed the rabbis to address urgent concerns of their times–concerns whose relevance was not necessarily confined to any specific historical setting.
In the Haggadah, Laban is branded as worse than the genocidal Pharaoh. The reason why he merited this opprobrium was apparently because he made it so difficult for Jacob to get married, raise his family, and return to his homeland.
As I see it, by portraying Laban and Jacob in this way, the ancient preachers were arguing for the centrality of the family as the future of Judaism. It is indeed probable that many Jews, under the various economic, political and religious hardships that beset them during the era of the Talmud and Midrash, were reluctant to bring children into such a hostile environment. The author of our passage from the Haggadah countered such thinking with the claim that people who avoided or obstructed family life were as bad as Laban, and even worse than Pharaoh.
Homiletical discourses on these themes can be found elsewhere in the teachings of our ancient sages. One of the best-known examples ascribes the arguments to Miriam the prophetess, prior to the birth of her brother Moses. In the Midrashic account, her parents chose to separate in order to protect future offspring from a life of bitter slavery; and Miriam had to persuade them to the contrary.
The more scholars try to place classic Jewish texts in their historical contexts, the more stubbornly those texts insist on retaining their relevance to our own times. As the Jewish demographic picture continues to deteriorate, we could probably do with another reminder that a Laban can be as much a threat to our survival as a Pharaoh.
First Publication:
The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, April 21, 2005, p. 25.
For further reading:
Alon, G. (1980). The Jews in Their land in the Talmudic Age: 70-640 C.E. Jerusalem, Magnes Press.
Cohen, J. (1989). ‘Be Fertile and Increase, Fill the Earth and Master It’: The Ancient and Medieval Career of a Biblical Text. Ithaca, Cornell University Press.
Daube, D. (1977). The Duty of Procreation. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press.
Finkelstein, L. (1938). The Oldest Midrash: Pre-Rabbinic Ideals and Teachings in the Passover Haggadah. Harvard Theological Review 31: 291-317.
Goldschmidt, E. D., Ed. (1969). The Passover Haggadah: Its Sources and History. Jerusalem, Bialik Institute.
As a group, poets have often been the objects of a cruel stereotyping that extends beyond their literary activities. We are all familiar with the image of an emotionally volatile personality, shabby in dress and in abode, quick of temper and tragic in love, a misfit whose social awkwardness is intensified by a generic weakness for alcohol. In some instances, the bohemian lifestyle has been enough to identify people as poets (if only to themselves), even though they rarely or never succeeded in finding an audience or publisher for the sublime creations of their spirits.
Our hero Hertz, a Jewish poet from Galicia, came close to matching this stereotype of the ne’er-do-well bard, except that he faced an additional obstacle that obstructed his path to artistic immortality: He sought to be a Hebrew poet in nineteenth-century Europe, before the sacred tongue had been transformed into the living language of a modern nation-state. Having chosen his exalted calling, he took up the vagabond’s life, wandering through the European and Levantine capitals, continually trying to charm a few coins from potential patrons of the literary arts.
One patron who was unable to resist Hertz’s grotesque attraction was Sir Lawrence Oliphant (1829-1888), the distinguished English traveler who was among the earliest Christian sympathizers of the nascent Zionist movement. Sir Lawrence brought Hertz to Palestine, where he assisted him in pursuing his literary ambitions. A small collection of his Hebrew works was actually printed.
From among those forgettable creations of his, one sentimentally nationalistic poem even achieved considerable popularity–and this from a poet who was outspoken in his belief that wine and women were the only fitting themes for the muses!
Nevertheless, Hertz’s fragile tolerance for the uncouth Middle East could not long outlive his gentile patron. His personal attitude towards the Zionists was one of utmost cynicism and contemptuousness for their earnest idealism. Therefore, when Oliphant died a few years later, there was nothing substantial to keep the poet from returning to civilized London. There he resumed his previous manner of existence as a shabby mendicant who occupied his days trying to squeeze out a meager and sporadic livelihood from the generosity of affluent devotees of Hebrew letters.
Soon Hertz joined the torrent of Jewish immigrants making their way to America, where his bizarre escapades–embellished exponentially in his own retelling of them–became a source of perplexity and distress for supporters of Hebrew culture. To hear him tell it, this unwashed alcoholic exerted an irresistible magnetism upon the opposite sex.
As he wandered across the American expanses, Hertz was likely to show up unexpectedly in San Francisco in the guise of an Indian mystic, or on the East Side of New York as a Hebrew troubadour. He published incoherent articles about oriental theosophy that were accepted by editors more out of pity than because of their merits. Out of respect for his earlier contribution to Hebrew poetry, some Jewish community leaders arranged a small monthly allowance for him, knowing full well that the benefits of their generosity would not last much farther than the nearest saloon.
Hertz drank himself into the grave before his 54th birthday, in 1909.
And yet, for all his cynicism and self-destructiveness, there was no escaping that one nationalistic poem that he had composed during his youthful sojourn in Palestine, and which continued to be passionately declaimed and sung throughout the Jewish world.
Acquaintances recalled the proud and dreamy smile that would appear on his lips when he beheld the crowd rising to its feet at the intoning of that melodramatic old rhyme. Hertz presented quite a picture on those occasions, with his uncombed hair, his foul-smelling clothing and the perpetual whiskey bottle protruding from his coat pocket. To be sure, there were many times when he was in such a rowdy and disorderly state that he was not even allowed into the halls where his poem was being recited, and he was forced to listen to it from the street outside.
Had it not been for that single poem, Hertz would have been utterly and justly forgotten as a poet. It consisted of eight stanzas and a chorus, and had been composed in 1878, on request, to honour the founding of the town of Petah Tikvah. It was published in Hertz’s own literary journal, Barkai,
That one poem, expressing the Jewish people’s age-old longing for its homeland, strikes us as the antithesis of Hertz’s cynical life. And yet, it achieved a vitality of its own. Set to an inspiring Moldavian-Romanian folk theme by a farmer from Rishon Le-Zion, it was adopted as the official hymn of the Zionist movement, sung at the close of the Sixth Zionist Congress in Basle in 1903 in the presence of Theodor Herzl himself; and it was ultimately accepted as the national anthem of the State of Israel.
Those perceptive rabbis of the Talmud observed on occasion that there are some people who achieve their life’s destiny through a single act. Indeed, it was through his one memorable poem, originally entitled Tikvateinu (our hope), but later modified and renamed Hatikvah (the hope) that a third-rate versifier from Galicia named Naftali Hertz Imber, almost in spite of himself, enjoyed his taste of immortality.
First Publication:
The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, May 12, 2005, p. 8.
Our civilization is characterized by its obsession with new, improved versions. Arguably, the entire capitalist ethos is founded on the premise of planned obsolescence. For the commercial infrastructure to remain in operation, people must constantly be exchanging and upgrading their current possessions for a more recent model that is faster and more efficient.
These modern values permeate our thinking to such a degree that it requires a conscious effort to appreciate that, until quite recently, most societies saw matters quite differently. They assumed that the wisdom of the ancients was immeasurably greater than that of later eras, and civilization has been on a downhill course since the golden ages of the past. Therefore, any innovation was suspect; and all departures from traditional authority had to be justified.
Jewish tradition has generally shared this outlook. The acme of enlightenment was reached in the days of Moses. As we moved farther away from that era, the truth became progressively dimmer, and it became increasingly difficult to comprehend what had been so clear to the ancients. Each generation studied the works of its predecessors in hope of grasping a portion of the profound insights contained therein.
Even in traditional religious settings, this view of history sometimes felt constricting. After all, humans are endowed with intelligence, and we are capable of arriving at our own judgments and opinions. And even if we concede that the ancients possessed a deeper understanding of spirituality and values, it is hard to deny that our scientific and technological knowledge exceeds that of our ancestors.
The encouragement of independent critical thought is essential to rabbinic culture. The pages of the Talmud are packed with scholarly debates, in which scholars subject the statements of earlier sages to uncompromising scrutiny, designed to test whether those statements are consistent with the evidence, logically coherent, or whether the facts can be interpreted in other ways.
The Mishnah reports that in the deliberations of the Sanhedrin, the ancient Jewish high court, the junior scholars were instructed to speak first, before the more senior sages. This was done in order to insure that they would not be swayed by the words of their elders.
In the bewildering world of talmudic debate, every rabbi and commentator is ultimately expected to come to their own decisions from among those proposed by earlier authorities. Sometimes, they might even offer novel explanations of the relevant texts.
And yet, so powerful is the force of traditional thinking that some justification was felt necessary for disagreeing with the revered scholars of the past.
Rabbi Isaiah diTrani, the noted Italian Talmudist (died c. 1250), offered one of the most popular validations for later rabbis to argue with earlier ones, in spite of the fact that the ancients were wiser. To resolve the paradox, he cited a parable ascribed to a great philosopher:
Who can see farther, a dwarf or a giant? Of course, it is the giant, whose eyes are much higher than the dwarf’s. But if you seat the dwarf so that he rides on the giant’s neck, then who can see farther? Of course, it is the dwarf whose eyes are now higher than the giant’s eyes. In this way, we are dwarfs riding on the necks of giants, because we have seen their wisdom, and we go beyond it.
The parable that Rabbi Isaiah heard from the philosophers was a popular one in the Christian world of his time. The earliest known version is brought by John of Salsbury in his Metalogicon. John attributed it to his teacher St. Bernard of Chartres, one of the foremost scholastics of medieval Europe. The Latin maxim stated Nani gigantum humeris insidentes.
Bernard and Rabbi Isaiah both lived during a period of intellectual excitement that historians designate the twelfth-century renaissance, a time when the medieval religious communities were being invigorated by their encounters with the philosophy and literature of ancient Greece. The metaphor of the dwarf and the giant aptly expressed the confidence people were feeling about their ability to extend the vistas of contemporary science and culture to unprecedented frontiers.
Rabbi diTrani’s parable became a staple of Hebrew writing after it was incorporated by his disciple Rabbi Zedekiah Anav into his popular liturgical guide Shibbolei Halleqet, where it was ascribed to the wise among the gentiles.
As the twelfth-century renaissance quieted down in Europe, so apparently did the appeals to the dwarf and giant parable, which disappeared from Hebrew literature for some two centuries. It resurfaced during the great European Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as a way of defending the ideology of progress that was making strong inroads into the nascent modern mindset. Scholars and scientists were asserting their right–most considered it a duty–to take a critical stance vis à vis earlier authorities; and our parable was most appropriate for that purpose.
A number of Jewish authors who lived around the time of the Spanish expulsion now quoted the parable with an interesting change of imagery: no longer was it a dwarf who was sitting on top, but a child. This subtle change served to enhance the humility of the later writers, whose scholarly and scientific advances could not be ascribed even partially to their own intelligence.
Thus, Rabbi Abraham Bibago observed that the lapse of time will bring about the discovery of the truth, just as a small child seated on the shoulders of a giant will view everything that the giant sees, and more. Similar formulations appear in the writings of Rabbis Isaac Arama, Joseph Hayon, Joseph Ibn Shraga and Solomon Almoli. The last-mentioned scholar, author of an uncompleted encyclopedia of Jewish learning, hints at the source of the altered imagery. He introduces the parable with the following words: Thus did the scholar Hegido bring this parable in his medical treatise.
The odd word Hegido, we may be certain, is a corruption of Guy de, alluding to the fourteenth-century surgeon Guy de Chauliac, author of a widely read textbook Chirurgia Magna. De Chauliac did, indeed, quote the parable with the substitution of child for dwarf. The fact that Jewish writers were tacitly using the revised version, rather than the older one that had become established in Hebrew literature, confirms that they were making use of gentile sources.
In those earlier texts, the main use of the dwarf-giant parable was to validate original and critical thinking in the face of a rigid traditionalism. In our society, it would be better to read it from the opposite perspective, as a reminder that the scientific achievements of our age are not evidence of our greater wisdom or intellectual superiority.
For all our technological sophistication, we are puny creatures in comparison with the enormous spiritual values and insights that are preserved in our venerable tradition.
First Publication:
The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, May 26, 2005, p. 10.
Melamed, Abraham. On the Shoulders of Giants: The Debate between Moderns and Ancients in Medieval and Renaissance Jewish Thought. Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2003.
Merton, Robert King. On the Shoulders of Giants: A Shandean Postscript. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
Yuval, Israel Jacob. “Rishonom and Aharonim, Antiqui et Moderni (Periodization and Self-Awareness in Ashkenaz)”. Zion 57, no. 4 (1992): 369-394.
Zlotnick, Dov. “The Commentary of Rabbi Abraham Azulai to the Mishnah”. Proceedings of the American
More than any other festival in the Jewish calendar, Shavu’ot suffers from a peculiar identity crisis: There is no consensus about exactly what the holiday is supposed to commemorate.
The Torah associates Shavu’ot primarily with the stages of the grain crop. It occurs at the conclusion of the barley harvest–symbolized by the counting of seven weeks after the offering of the initial omer of barley–and at the start of the wheat harvest, which is celebrated with the offering of wheaten loaves in the Temple on Shavu’ot itself.
A secondary theme in the Bible associates Shavu’ot with the offerings of the first-fruits, bikkurim; though strictly speaking, the season for bringing first-fruits extends through the whole summer and well into the winter.
In the traditional liturgy, Shavu’ot is described chiefly as the anniversary of the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. This idea is not stated anywhere in the Bible, and is not emphasized before a relatively late stratum of talmudic literature.
In this connection, it is intriguing to read how Shavu’ot was understood by the book of Jubilees. This extraordinary work, composed some time during the Maccabean era, claims to record teachings that were revealed to Moses during his forty days on Mount Sinai. It retells the early narratives of the Torah according to a distinctive interpretation of Jewish tradition. Central to its doctrine is the idea that our sacred history can be divided into periods of forty-nine years–called jubilees.
An issue that was of vital concern to the author of Jubilees was the determining of the correct religious calendar. Rejecting the Babylonian lunar system that was adopted by mainstream Judaism, the Book of Jubilees advocated a 364-day solar calendar. It missed no opportunity to show that such was the calendar that had been followed by the ancient Hebrews.
As we have learned from the Dead Sea scrolls, the Jewish sect whose library was preserved at Qumran followed that same calendar, and held the book of Jubilees in great reverence. The author of Jubilees seems acutely conscious that he was in a minority and that the majority of the Jews had deviated from the true teachings of the Torah as he understood them. However, he was confident that this anomalous situation was about to change, that Israel would soon return to the authentic path, and thereby usher in an epoch of increased blessings. This belief lent much urgency to the book’s mission of persuading Jews to adopt its interpretations of the Bible.
Surprisingly, Jubilees’ main discussion of Shavu’ot occurs in connection with the story of Noah and the flood. According to its reckoning, Noah disembarked from the ark at the beginning of the third month, Sivan, and then proceeded to offer sacrifices to atone for the devastated earth. In response, God blessed Noah and his descendents with a covenant that guaranteed them continued survival in the future.
As in the familiar biblical account, Noah and his children were given a visible sign of this divine assurance: the appearance of the rainbow in the clouds. Jubilees concludes: Therefore, it is ordained and written in the heavenly tablets that they should observe the feast of Shavu’ot in this month, once every year, in order to renew the covenant in all respects year by year.
Thus, thanks to this ancient document, we learn of yet another reason to celebrate Shavu’ot. It is the anniversary of the divine promise to Noah, the festival of the Rainbow covenant. This holiday and the event that it commemorated were so central to the divine plan that Shavu’ot was being celebrated in heaven even before the time of Noah.
As we read the story in the Book of Jubilees, there can be no mistaking the author’s conviction that the most critical element in the Noahide covenant was the prohibition of consuming blood. This universal law lies at the root of the more specific dietary prohibition that would be given to the Israelites in the time of Moses.
Although it is not emphasized very much in traditional Jewish interpretations, the theological centrality of this law is quite explicit in the biblical account of Noah’s covenant. It is elaborated and repeated at considerable length in the book of Jubilees, which dwells on the grave consequences of violating the precept: And the man who eats the blood of cattle or birds throughout all the days of the earth, he and his seed shall be uprooted from the earth.
In fact, the entire institution of Israelite sacrificial worship, in which atonement is achieved by the pouring of blood on the altar, is understood by the book of Jubilees as deriving from Noah’s covenant, which designated blood as the exclusive prerogative of the Almighty.
The Book of Jubilees goes on to explain how, in recognition of that primordial divine covenant with humanity, the month in which it occurred was established as a fitting season for subsequent covenants as well. God’s covenant with Abraham was established on the same date, as well as the most important covenant of all–the one at Mount Sinai.
Some scholars have gone so far as to suggest that the author of Jubilees did not derive the name of the festival, as the Torah does, from the word Shavua, week, in reference to the seven weeks that are counted from the offering of the omer sheaf; but rather from the word sh’vu’ah, oath, which is closely associated with the concept of covenant.
I am particularly intrigued by the Book of Jubilees’ emphasis on the prohibition of blood as a central theme of Shavu’ot. At first sight, this interpretation has no parallel in the mainstream Jewish traditions.
Nevertheless, it is tempting to venture, purely by way of speculation, that these forgotten associations might ultimately contain the solution to one of the most persistent puzzles in the history of Jewish observances: our custom of eating dairy foods on Shavu’ot. Although the practice is not attested until many jubilees–er, centuries–later, it might not be totally farfetched to ascribe it to the ancient connection between Shavu’ot and the covenant of the rainbow against consuming blood.
First Publication:
The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, June 29, 2005, p. 9.
Melamed, Abraham. On the Shoulders of Giants: The Debate between Moderns and Ancients in Medieval and Renaissance Jewish Thought. Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2003.
Merton, Robert King. On the Shoulders of Giants: A Shandean Postscript. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
Yuval, Israel Jacob. “Rishonom and Aharonim, Antiqui et Moderni (Periodization and Self-Awareness in Ashkenaz)”. Zion 57, no. 4 (1992): 369-394.
Zlotnick, Dov. “The Commentary of Rabbi Abraham Azulai to the Mishnah”. Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 40 (1972): 147-168.
The Torah devotes a considerable amount of space to condemnations of assorted cultic practices that were observed by the ancient Canaanites. However, the millennia that separate us from those ancient idol-worshippers make it all but impossible for later generations to understand those bizarre rites.
One passage that was particularly perplexing to the Jewish scholars was Deuteronomy 18:10: There shall not be found among you any one that makes his son or his daughter to pass through the fire. The rational and respectable commentators of the Middle Ages were at a loss to figure out why anyone would want to offer their offspring up on pyres.
An intriguing interpretation to this puzzle was proposed by Rabbi Joseph Albo, the fifteenth-century Spanish Jewish philosopher in his classic formulation of Jewish doctrine, the Sefer Ha-Ikkarim.
Albo associated the cult of child burning with primitive attempts to draw down celestial power in the hope of attaining prophetic inspiration. The pagans believed in the existence of supernatural beings who were rooted in the element of fire. Hence, they concluded that their acts of imitative magic (including passing their children through fire) would enable them to partake of the supernatural force that would allow them to predict future events.
Albo goes on to claim that the pagan rites forbidden by the Torah should not be relegated to the distant past. Quite the contrary: Even after those nations were formally converted to Christianity, they continued to practice some ancestral customs that had once been associated with heathen necromancy. This, he argued, was the reason why Christians buried their dead in churches and made so much noise at their funerals.
Christians also preserved some rites that had once been associated with pagan fire worship: These include the making of large bonfires every year on a certain night when the sun enters the realm of Cancer… at which time they dance and clap around the bonfire, encircling it and skipping over it.
Clearly, the precise descriptions included in Rabbi Albo’s account could not have been derived from his reading of the Bible. His words have all the hallmarks of an eyewitness account of customs that he had witnessed personally.
It turns out that Albo’s intriguing interpretation had been proposed a century or so earlier, in the philosophical Torah commentary composed by Rabbi Nissim ben Abraham of Marseilles. In his discussion of the Torah’s prohibition against passing children through fire, Rabbi Nissim laments his inability to account for the practice: To this day I haven’t the slightest idea, nor have I heard from others, any reason or purpose that would have impelled them to do such at thing.
Nevertheless, he goes on to observe that some interpreters equate the biblical passage with a contemporary Christian custom of venerable antiquity, observed on summer evenings, of kindling large bonfires in the markets and public squares.
Rabbi Nissim surmises that this contemporary ritual is in reality a remnant of an ancient pagan practice. When the founders of the Christian faith arrived in Europe to convert the heathens, they were not completely successful at weaning the masses from the attractions of their former cult; so instead, they endowed those customs with a Christian complexion by associating them with the veneration of certain saints.
Rabbi Nissim illustrates this policy by comparing it with the efforts of the biblical King Asa, who made many laudable advances in eradicating the idolatrous abominations of his predecessors. However, even under his uncompromising iconoclasm, the high places of pagan worship were not entirely removed (1 Kings 15:14).
Rabbi Nissim speculates that the original focus on fire was intended to mark the beginning of the hot and dry summer season, and it served the practical purpose of reminding the people to conduct themselves in a manner suitable to the season.
Unable to resist the temptation to score a point against the rival religion, Rabbi Nissim quips that those ancient heathens, in spite of all their gross superstitions, were nonetheless wiser than contemporary Christians. The idolaters, at least, were grounded in realities of nature and astrology (like most enlightened Jewish rationalists, Nissim believed that astrology and astral magic were valid sciences), and they had no illusions about the superstitious foundations of their practices.
In its Christian version, on the other hand, the custom is essentially fraudulent, as its practitioners pretend that what they are doing is a pious Christian ritual. They have thus jumped out of the frying pan into the fire (to cite Rabbi Nissim’s own phrase).
From the information provided by the medieval authors, we can derive three solid clues to the practice that they were alluding to: It involved the kindling of bonfires, it was held on a specific summer night, and it was identified with a Christian saint.
From this information, it is easy to identify the celebration as the Eve of Saint John the Baptist, which is celebrated on the night of June 24, coinciding with the Summer Solstice. Modern historians and anthropologists are in complete agreement with the medieval Jewish authors that the holiday originated as a pre-Christian nature rite and was afterwards dressed up to look like a respectable Christian saint-day.
Here in Canada, of course, we are most familiar with the rowdy merrymaking that accompanies this date as an expression of French-Canadian nationalism. We rarely hear even the most half-hearted attempts to link la Fête de la Saint-Jean-Baptiste to the pious Jewish martyr to whom it is nominally dedicated.
Bonfires are still a mainstay of the June 24 festivities in Québec, and the feux de joie, consisting of a chain of thousands of bonfires connecting several villages, are traditionally lit for the occasion. This observance was brought to the New World from Europe, where it had been practiced by the Celts, Romans and Franks. The Church synods of the eighth century tried futilely to suppress the heathen rites, but they eventually came to terms with their popularity by declaring that the day of the summer solstice should be dedicated to the beloved saint.
The pioneering work of religious anthropology, James Frazer’s The Golden Bough, surveys mid-summer bonfire rituals that have survived in every corner of Europe, especially in Scandinavia, the Baltic lands and Ireland. Some of the customs involve young men and women jumping back and forth through the fire as they hope for better luck in finding a mate, good health or fertility.
Frazer argued that all these rites can all be traced back to a single source: an old myth about the tragic death of the virtuous Norse god Balder. According to his reconstruction, the fires (which sometimes involved the burning of human effigies) evolved out of a primitive rite of human sacrifice.
As a former Montrealer, I would be the last one to deny my old neighbours their fête nationale. Come to think of it, it is probably just as well that the throngs of revelers in la Belle Provence on June 24 are blissfully unaware of the scathing denunciations of their festival in the writings of medieval Hebrew commentators.
First Publication:
The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, June 30, 2005, p. 9.
For further reading:
Frazer, James George. The Golden Bough: A Study in Religion and Magic. Mineola, N.Y: Dover, 2002.
In July 2005, a number of North American Muslim organizations published a fatwa that contained a powerful condemnation of terrorism, extremism and violence against civilians.
The pronouncement evoked mixed reactions in the Jewish community. The message was indeed gratifying, and one that had been rarely expressed. Nevertheless, many of us remained somewhat skeptical about whom the council represents, why it took so long to make its declaration, and whether the fatwa also renounced violence against Israelis and Zionists.
In addition to those thorny political questions, many raised eyebrows were provoked by one of the proof-texts that was cited in support of the plea for moderation. The authors quoted the Qur’an as teaching that Whoever kills a person…it is as though he has killed all mankind. And whoever saves a life, it is as though he had saved all mankind.
A quote from the Qur’an? Anyone with a smattering of Jewish literacy will recognize the passage as identical to a saying of the Jewish sages, a tradition that appears in the Mishnah and Talmud!
The quote is indeed found in the Qur’an. For historians of religions, such overlaps between Islam and Judaism come as no surprise; and this is just one more example of the powerful influence that Judaism and Jewish teachers exerted on the Muslim prophet.
The talmudic version of the saying has an intriguing history of its own. In the Mishnah (Sanhedrin 4:6), it forms part of a lengthy instruction that was given to witnesses in capital cases, designed to remind them of the sanctity of human life and of the grave damage that will result from the extinguishing of a human soul.
In that passage, the infinite worth of a human life is derived from the creation story: It was for this reason that the first man was created alone–so that we might appreciate that the life of each individual is as precious as the entire race.
The universal scope of this teaching underwent some modification during the medieval era, as Jews became more insular and were less likely to be considerate of the hostile gentile world around them. The Mishnah was often quoted with a significant modification, as Whoever destroys a single Israelite life is considered by scripture as if they had destroyed an entire world; and whoever preserves a single Israelite life, scripture counts them as if they had preserved an entire world.
To be sure, this more parochial version of the teaching was appropriate to the specific contexts in which it appeared in ancient rabbinic literature, all of which involved Jews; such as the Mishnah in Sanhedrin, which describes the trial of a Jewish defendant; or the Talmud’s story (BB 11a) where the angels praise a pious charity officer who supported a starving Jewish family out of his own pocket; or in the midrash about Achan, who confessed to stealing from the forbidden ruins of Jericho in order to bring an end to the internecine bloodshed that he had provoked. Nonetheless, the foremost medieval commentators, including Rashi and Maimonides, knew only of the original universalistic formulation of the teaching.
With the beginnings of Hebrew printing in the late fifteenth century, the version that specified Jewish life became entrenched in several editions of the Babylonian Talmud.
An important milestone in the history of Jewish booklore occurred towards the end of the sixteenth century, when Hebrew publications began to be subjected to stringent censorship, designed primarily to remove passages that might be offensive to Christians. Several of the changes that were introduced then continue to leave their mark on standard editions of the Talmud. Not only were the handful of references to Jesus excised, but even expressions that might vaguely be construed as negative allusions to Christianity were replaced by ones that referred unambiguously to ancient heathens. It is to this process that we owe the substitution of the newly invented phrase worship of stars and constellations instead of the Talmudic expression for idolatry [avodah zarah], and of Edom for Rome (since the latter could theoretically be applied to the Roman church). The Jewish communities usually appointed their own internal censors who screened the books for offensive expressions before submitting them for official government approval.
As it happened, the Christian censors were not particularly perturbed by the editions of the Mishnah and Talmud that extolled the value of Israelite (rather than human) life. It was not until 1832 that an edition of the Mishnah printed in Grodno-Vilna deleted the words in Israel from the passage, a policy that was continued through subsequent printings of rabbinic texts in Vilna, Warsaw and elsewhere. Similarly, when Rabbi Jonathan Eybeschütz succeeded in obtaining permission from the local bishop to publish an edition of the Talmud in Prague, the permit specified that it would contain no portions that were offensive to Christians. The resulting edition did indeed omit the words of Israel from the Mishnah.
Occasionally, the Jewish censors were more zealous in their work than their Christian counterparts. To be more precise, some of those the Jewish censors were motivated by theological or pedagogic agendas that went beyond the mere need to avoid affronts to Christians. Often, the individuals who were appointed to these posts were advocates of the Enlightenment who realized that Jewish survival in the modern world depended on the cultivation of greater openness and tolerance towards the gentile world and its culture. They wanted Jews to be acknowledged as an enlightened people worthy of acceptance into European society. This was the spirit that inspired the brothers Wolf and Jakob Tugendhold, both of whom served as Jewish internal censors during the 19th century, and both of whom took care to ensure that the universalistic formulation of the Mishnah was the one that appeared in print. Neither of them was an expert in the textual history of rabbinic literature, so it was almost inadvertently that they succeeded in restoring the authentic readings of the ancient documents.
And just in case there remained room for doubt as to the correct meaning of the text, an edition of the Mishnah printed in Stettin in 1863 spelled it out unmistakably: …whoever destroys the life of a human being... In this case, evidently, the publisher’s concern was less about promoting religious tolerance than about getting their books past the Russian censors.
Interestingly, the Jewish censors were more ardent about imposing their emendations on popular works, like the Mishnah and Midrash, than on the Talmud, which was ostensibly a work of greater importance and authority. This anomaly is, in fact, consistent with their focus on educating of common folk, among whom the need was more pronounced, and with whom they were more likely to achieve successful results. That target audience was less likely to be studying the specialized intricacies of talmudic dialectic.
Whatever the vagaries of the text, there can be no doubt that the ancient rabbis did not intend to distinguish between Jewish and non-Jewish lives with regards to their fundamental sanctity. The universality of the teaching is clearly demonstrated by the fact that it was inferred from the creation of the first man–the common ancestor of all humanity. It would appear that the same observation should hold true about the version in the Qur’an.
Hopefully, it is not utterly naïve to hope that this moral axiom is self-evident to decent people from all faith communities, in spite of the efforts of assorted chauvinists and extremists to obscure it.
First Publication:
The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, September 15, 2005, p. 12.
For further reading:
Carmilly, Moshe. Censorship and Freedom of Expression in Jewish History. New York: Sepher-Hermon Press, 1977.
—. External and Internal Censorship of Hebrew Books. Jewish Book Annual 28 (1970): 9-16.Popper, William. The Censorship of Hebrew Books. New York: Ktav, 1969.
Urbach, Ephraim E. ‘Whoever Preserves a Single Life…’: The Evolution of a Textual Variant, the Vagaries of Censorship and the Printing Business. Tarbiz 40 (1971): 268-284.
Legend and Liturgy: The Elusive Tale of the Untanneh Tokef
by Eliezer Segal
For many worshippers at the High Holy Days services, the text in the prayer book that most powerfully evokes the solemnity of the season is the Untanneh Tokef. This magnificent poem conveys the awesome consciousness of standing before the divine tribunal, as the all-knowing Judge recalls all the forgotten things, opens the book of records… inscribing the destiny of every creature.
The reasons why this poem has had such a profound and lasting impact are not necessarily limited to its theme or contents. After all, descriptions of humanity standing in judgment before the Almighty were a stock motif in the Rosh Hashanah liturgy, and the principal themes of the Untannah Tokef may be found in the Talmud and Midrash, as well as in many Jewish ethical writings.
For many of us, the unique quality of the Untanneh Tokef is closely bound to a story about its origins, which is often summarized in the margins or footnotes of the festival prayer books. The standard version of this tale ascribes the poem to a certain Rabbi Amnon of Mainz, an affluent and respected Jew who was constantly being hounded by the local bishop to convert to Christianity, until the rabbi tried to stall the persistent nagging by requesting three days, as though to consider the offer.
Afterwards, Rabbi Amnon was terribly grieved for having given the bishop even the slightest pretext to suspect that he would seriously contemplate abandoning his ancestral faith, and he failed to show up to the appointment. When the rabbi was finally brought before the bishop, his insolence was punished by having his hands and legs amputated for not conveying him to the meeting.
When Rosh Hashanah arrived, the mutilated saint asked to be placed on the bimah of the synagogue, along with his dismembered limbs, prior to the chanting of the Kedushah of the Additional Service. It was at this point that Rabi Amnon recited the Untanneh Tokef with his final breaths.
In the context of his own personal tragedy, it constituted a supreme statement of resignation to the unpredictable vicissitudes of inscrutable divine justice. By uttering it before the Kedushah–the section of the service that focuses on the theme of God’s holiness–Rabbi Amnon was transforming the meaning of that prayer. This Kedushah was not only a declaration of God’s sublime and exalted holiness as pronounced by the angelic choirs in the visions of the prophets; it now became a meditation on the human sanctification of God’s holy namemeasured by the readiness to suffer martyrdom for the sake of one’s faith.
The legend goes on to relate that three days afterwards, Rabbi Amnon appeared in a dream to Rabbi Kalonymos ben Meshullam, to whom he taught the text of the Untanneh Tokef and instructed him to disseminate it through the Jewish world.
The poignant story of Rabbi Amnon’s martyrdom is known primarily from the account preserved by Rabbi Isaac of Vienna in his halakhic compendium, the Or Zarua (13th century). Rabbi Isaac was citing an earlier chronicle by Rabbi Ephraim of Bonn. The tale’s background, with its strained relationships between Jews and Christians, and its culmination in an act of martyrdom, reflects the harsh and complex realities of Jewish life in Germany during the medieval era.
For all the storys poignancy, it is an indisputable fact that this Rabbi Amnon could not have been the author of the Untanneh Tokef. Documentary evidence teaches us that the poem was likely composed in the Land of Israel up to five centuries before the date when Rabbi Amnon purportedly recited it in the synagogue of Mainz. It was well known to the Jews of Italy in earlier generations, and allusions to it were embedded into subsequent liturgical poems composed by their prolific poets.
The Untanneh Tokef belongs to agenre of synagogue poetry known as silluk, which serve as transitions leading into the Kedushah. In the early medieval rites, the Untanneh Tokef was used as a prelude to a poetic version of the Kedushah composed by Rabbi Eleazar Kalir, one of the most revered of our liturgical poets.
The presence of texts from the holy land in later Ashkenazic rites is normally understood as a relic of the community’s earlier migrations, harkening back to the days when their ancestors lived in Italy and followed the authority of the Jerusalem Talmud, rather than the Babylonian tradition. Literary evidence suggests that the Untanneh Tokef even predated Rabbi Eleazar Kalir, who alludes to it in some of his own poems.
The legend that describes Rabbi Amnon as the prayer’s author might reflect a later misinterpretation of the process of its transmission. After all, the story would also make sense if Rabbi Amnon had not composed a new prayer, but had merely recited an existing text that was not yet well known in Germany, and which was now injected with new relevance because of its association with his tragic circumstances.
The fact that the Untanneh Tokef is recited at precisely the same point in all the diverse Ashkenazic rites attests to the fact that it had been adopted there before the communitys founders migrated to the Rhineland indicating a date no later than the tenth century.
The silluk that it replaced, composed by Eleazar Kalir himself, was still known in some French communities at the end of the eleventh century, but afterwards it was universally replaced by the Untanneh Tokef, largely by virtue of its association with the tale of Rabbi Amnon’s martyrdom.
It is in fact questionable whether there ever was a rabbi named Amnon from Mainz. The name Amnon was not in use among the Jews of central Europe–and never achieved widespread popularity, even after the proliferation of this tale. The author of the Untanneh Tokef legend had to make a special point of explaining that the protagnonist was called Amnon on account of his deep religious faith (emunah in Hebrew). This detail probably had to be introduced because his readers were not familiar with Jews in their own lands who bore that name. On the other hand, Amnon was a relatively common name among Italian Jews, and an individual bearing that name appears in a group of ten Jews who were martyred in southern Italy in 925.
Some historians have assumed that this legend is nothing more than a conventional work of hagiographic fiction, or perhaps a recycling of elements from an earlier Italian tradition. Some even suggest that it was a Jewish adaptation of the Christian legend about St. Emmeram of Regensburg, who was subjected to amputation on trumped-up charges, and later died while praying for those who had wronged him. Still others prefer to uphold the storys basic reliability by suggesting that our Rabbi Amnon was an Italian Jew who had migrated to Mainz–as, in fact, was the case with the Rabbi Kalonymos to whom he appeared in the dream in the standard story. Obviously, there are major gaps in our knowledge about the persons and the legend associated with this beautiful prayer.
The text of the Untanneh Tokef reminds us mortals that our ultimate destiny does not lie entirely in our own hands, and that we can never know with absolute certainty what awaits us in the future.
The elusive history of the Untanneh Tokef shows us that Jewish texts and legends are often subject to similar twists of unpredictable fortune.For many worshippers at the High Holy Days services, the text in the prayer book that most powerfully evokes the solemnity of the season is the Untanneh Tokef. This magnificent poem conveys the awesome consciousness of standing before the divine tribunal, as the all-knowing Judge recalls all the forgotten things, opens the book of records… inscribing the destiny of every creature.
The reasons why this poem has had such a profound and lasting impact are not necessarily limited to its theme or contents. After all, descriptions of humanity standing in judgment before the Almighty were a stock motif in the Rosh Hashanah liturgy, and the principal themes of the Untannah Tokef may be found in the Talmud and Midrash, as well as in many Jewish ethical writings.
For many of us, the unique quality of the Untanneh Tokef is closely bound to a story about its origins, which is often summarized in the margins or footnotes of the festival prayer books. The standard version of this tale ascribes the poem to a certain Rabbi Amnon of Mainz, an affluent and respected Jew who was constantly being hounded by the local bishop to convert to Christianity, until the rabbi tried to stall the persistent nagging by requesting three days, as though to consider the offer.
Afterwards, Rabbi Amnon was terribly grieved for having given the bishop even the slightest pretext to suspect that he would seriously contemplate abandoning his ancestral faith, and he failed to show up to the appointment. When the rabbi was finally brought before the bishop, his insolence was punished by having his hands and legs amputated for not conveying him to the meeting.
When Rosh Hashanah arrived, the mutilated saint asked to be placed on the bimah of the synagogue, along with his dismembered limbs, prior to the chanting of the Kedushah of the Additional Service. It was at this point that Rabi Amnon recited the Untanneh Tokef with his final breaths.
In the context of his own personal tragedy, it constituted a supreme statement of resignation to the unpredictable vicissitudes of inscrutable divine justice. By uttering it before the Kedushah–the section of the service that focuses on the theme of God’s holiness–Rabbi Amnon was transforming the meaning of that prayer. This Kedushah was not only a declaration of God’s sublime and exalted holiness as pronounced by the angelic choirs in the visions of the prophets; it now became a meditation on the human sanctification of God’s holy namemeasured by the readiness to suffer martyrdom for the sake of one’s faith.
The legend goes on to relate that three days afterwards, Rabbi Amnon appeared in a dream to Rabbi Kalonymos ben Meshullam, to whom he taught the text of the Untanneh Tokef and instructed him to disseminate it through the Jewish world.
The poignant story of Rabbi Amnon’s martyrdom is known primarily from the account preserved by Rabbi Isaac of Vienna in his halakhic compendium, the Or Zarua (13th century). Rabbi Isaac was citing an earlier chronicle by Rabbi Ephraim of Bonn. The tale’s background, with its strained relationships between Jews and Christians, and its culmination in an act of martyrdom, reflects the harsh and complex realities of Jewish life in Germany during the medieval era.
For all the storys poignancy, it is an indisputable fact that this Rabbi Amnon could not have been the author of the Untanneh Tokef. Documentary evidence teaches us that the poem was likely composed in the Land of Israel up to five centuries before the date when Rabbi Amnon purportedly recited it in the synagogue of Mainz. It was well known to the Jews of Italy in earlier generations, and allusions to it were embedded into subsequent liturgical poems composed by their prolific poets.
The Untanneh Tokef belongs to agenre of synagogue poetry known as silluk, which serve as transitions leading into the Kedushah. In the early medieval rites, the Untanneh Tokef was used as a prelude to a poetic version of the Kedushah composed by Rabbi Eleazar Kalir, one of the most revered of our liturgical poets.
The presence of texts from the holy land in later Ashkenazic rites is normally understood as a relic of the community’s earlier migrations, harkening back to the days when their ancestors lived in Italy and followed the authority of the Jerusalem Talmud, rather than the Babylonian tradition. Literary evidence suggests that the Untanneh Tokef even predated Rabbi Eleazar Kalir, who alludes to it in some of his own poems.
The legend that describes Rabbi Amnon as the prayer’s author might reflect a later misinterpretation of the process of its transmission. After all, the story would also make sense if Rabbi Amnon had not composed a new prayer, but had merely recited an existing text that was not yet well known in Germany, and which was now injected with new relevance because of its association with his tragic circumstances.
The fact that the Untanneh Tokef is recited at precisely the same point in all the diverse Ashkenazic rites attests to the fact that it had been adopted there before the communitys founders migrated to the Rhineland indicating a date no later than the tenth century.
The silluk that it replaced, composed by Eleazar Kalir himself, was still known in some French communities at the end of the eleventh century, but afterwards it was universally replaced by the Untanneh Tokef, largely by virtue of its association with the tale of Rabbi Amnon’s martyrdom.
It is in fact questionable whether there ever was a rabbi named Amnon from Mainz. The name Amnon was not in use among the Jews of central Europe–and never achieved widespread popularity, even after the proliferation of this tale. The author of the Untanneh Tokef legend had to make a special point of explaining that the protagnonist was called Amnon on account of his deep religious faith (emunah in Hebrew). This detail probably had to be introduced because his readers were not familiar with Jews in their own lands who bore that name. On the other hand, Amnon was a relatively common name among Italian Jews, and an individual bearing that name appears in a group of ten Jews who were martyred in southern Italy in 925.
Some historians have assumed that this legend is nothing more than a conventional work of hagiographic fiction, or perhaps a recycling of elements from an earlier Italian tradition. Some even suggest that it was a Jewish adaptation of the Christian legend about St. Emmeram of Regensburg, who was subjected to amputation on trumped-up charges, and later died while praying for those who had wronged him. Still others prefer to uphold the storys basic reliability by suggesting that our Rabbi Amnon was an Italian Jew who had migrated to Mainz–as, in fact, was the case with the Rabbi Kalonymos to whom he appeared in the dream in the standard story. Obviously, there are major gaps in our knowledge about the persons and the legend associated with this beautiful prayer.
The text of the Untanneh Tokef reminds us mortals that our ultimate destiny does not lie entirely in our own hands, and that we can never know with absolute certainty what awaits us in the future.
The elusive history of the Untanneh Tokef shows us that Jewish texts and legends are often subject to similar twists of unpredictable fortune.
First Publication:
The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, September 29, 2005, p. 26.
For further reading:
Fraenkel, Avraham. R. Amnon and the Penetration of ‘Untanneh Toqef’ into Italy, Ashkenaz and France. Zion 67, no. 2 (2002): 125-138.
Marcus, Ivan G. Qiddush ha-Shem be-Ashkenaz ve-Sippur Rabbi Amnon mi-Magenza. In Sanctity of Life and Martyrdom: Studies in Memory of Amir Yekutiel, ed. Isaiah Gafni and Aviezer Ravitzky, 131-147. Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 1992.
Yahalom, Joseph. Poetry and Society in Jewish Galilee of Late Antiquity Sifriyat Helal Ben-Hayim. Tel Aviv: Ha-Kibbuts Ha-Me’uhad: Yad Yitshak Ben-Zvi, 1999.
Yassif, Eli. Legend and History: Historians Read Hebrew Legends of the Middle Ages. Zion 64, no. 2 (1999): 187-219.
For many of us, the main attraction of Sukkot lies in the way that it puts us in touch with nature. There is, however, a considerable body of Jewish interpretation that takes a diametrically opposite perspective, and regards the festival as a rebellion against the domains of nature and materialism.
This approach is rooted in an incongruity that was pointed out by Rabbi Jacob ben Asher, the fourteen-century Spanish author of the Arba’ah Turim: If this holiday is supposed to commemorate the sojourn of the Israelites in the wilderness following their liberation from Egypt, then why were we commanded to dwell in the sukkah during the autumn, rather than in the springtime, when the Exodus actually occurred? Would it not be more logical if the Sukkot rituals were observed as part of Passover?
Rabbi Jacob resolved this dilemma by pointing out that it is precisely the unnaturalness of the practice that demonstrates its purely religious motive. During the warm days of springtime, it is normal for people to erect rustic booths to provide them with shade; and if Jews were to practice their ritual during that season, observers would not appreciate that they were doing so as a testimony to their faith in God’s power.
Hence, by ordering us to forsake the comforts of our warm homes during the cold and rainy days of the late autumn, we are making it unmistakably clear that we are doing so in order to acknowledge the miracles that were performed for our ancestors in the wilderness.
I suspect that the formulation of Rabbi Jacob’s problem was influenced by the specific agricultural and climatic realities of medieval Spain, which differed from those of the ancient Israel. Whereas in the Middle East it was common for farmers to dwell in makeshift sukkot while they were in the fields harvesting the crops, it seems that in Spain such structures were used primarily for recreation or enjoyment.
Many other Jewish commentators built on Rabbi Jacob’s insights in order to develop subtle philosophical interpretations of Sukkot that go beyond the simple historical and agricultural rationales provided by the Torah. They focus instead on how living in a sukkah involves an implicit defiance of the natural order.
Typical of these thinkers was Rabbi Isaac Arama, author of the Akedat Yitzhak commentary to the Torah. Rabbi Arama pointed out that by dwelling in booths, we are expressing a profoundly spiritual perspective about the relative importance of material existence vs. eternal life. Most humans spend futile lives in virtual enslavement to the amassing of wealth and physical pleasures. Therefore, when Jews forsake their permanent houses in order to dwell in fragile and impermanent structures, they are demonstrating their independence from the illusory realm of materialism, and declaring their spiritual liberation as creatures whose main allegiance is to a higher truth.
While we are dwelling in our plain booths, we are symbolically rejecting the idolatries of greed and luxury, and expressing our conviction that day-to-day earthly existence, which most people experience as the only known reality, is for Jews nothing more than a foyer to the ultimate reality of the next world.
This line of thought was developed still further by Rabbi Moses Alsheikh, the noted commentator from sixteenth-century Safed. Like Arama, he stressed that the human soul has a uniquely spiritual vocation, and in the larger scheme of things it is destined to transcend the paltry circumstances of physical existence. The brief sojourn that the soul spends enclosed in its fleshy garb is meant to be used as preparation for the purely spiritual existence that it will enjoy in the hereafter.
As Alsheikh’s imagery describes the process, we ready ourselves for eternity by cooking up a veritable feast of mitzvot, which provides us with a modest sampling of the incomparable metaphysical nourishment that awaits us in the world to come.
In this context, the temporary booth exemplifies the fleetingness of our terrestrial lives, and encourages us to disregard wealth and social status.
Rabbi Alsheikh’s interpretation is based on the biblical teaching that Sukkot commemorates the wanderings of the Israelites’ through the wilderness. He interprets this theme mystically, as a metaphor for our spiritual rootlessness: Just as the historical Jewish people have been uprooted from our geographical homeland, though we are accompanied in our exile by the divine presence, the Shekhinah– so are our individual souls consigned to a state of metaphysical exile, distanced momentarily from the direct source of divine illumination. We are symbolically reenacting this predicament every year on Sukkot when we evict ourselves from our homes, and force ourselves to live in fragile and temporary booths.
Alsheikh stresses that, like the Sukkot holiday itself, the anomalous state of spiritual malaise that it represents is only a transitory situation. Our ultimate destiny, indeed, is to be restored eternally to our proper spiritual destination.
A further variation on this theme may be discerned in the popular commentary by Rabbi Ephraim of Lencziza, the Keli Yekar. As is his custom, Rabbi Ephraim arrives at his ingenious interpretation by focusing carefully on the details of the Torah’s wording. The relevant passage in the Leviticus (23:42) commands: Ye shall dwell in booths seven days; every ezrah in Israel shall dwell in booths.
The rare Hebrew word ezrah, which most commentators and translators render in the sense of native-born, was understood by Rabbi Ephraim in a radically different way, as referring to sojourners and wayfarers. Hence, those who observe the precept of sitting in a sukkah are thereby symbolizing the condition of a human soul that is paying a fleeting visit to the physical world, but will ultimately be returning to its eternal abode.
In response to Rabbi Jacob ben Asher’s question about why the Torah commanded us to celebrate Sukkot in the fall, the Keli Yaqar and some other commentators offered an additional explanation, based on their astute insights into human nature: It is during the harvest and ingathering seasons, when we are overwhelmed by the abundance of nature’s gifts, that humans stand in greatest peril of being seduced by their material affluence. In those lush times, it is all too easy to imagine that the physical world constitutes the totality of our lives, and that we are the masters of our destinies. In order to fend off such subversive philosophies, the Torah commanded us to give allegorical expression to the transience of this world, by transferring our residence to crude and flimsy booths.
I confess that I am generally wary of any interpretation of Judaism that is overly dismissive of the here-and-now. At any rate, in a society that can easily become complacent in its prosperity, security and good health, it is important to be reminded on occasion how suddenly we can be visited by personal, national or global tragedies. By calling our attention to the delicate status of our current wellbeing, the annual Sukkot experience helps us cope more effectively with any unpleasant trials that might confront us.
Of course, it would be better if no one ever had to struggle with such challenges. But that is as unrealistic an expectation as a Sukkot when it can never rains.
First Publication:
The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, October 20, 2005, p. 10.
For further reading:
Donin, Hayim. Sukkot Popular Judaica Library. Jerusalem: Keter Books, 1974.
Goodman, Philip. The Sukkot and Simhat Torah Anthology. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of Amerca, 1973.
Rubenstein, Jeffrey L. “The Symbolism of the Sukka.” Judaism 43 (1994): 371-387; 44 (1995): 373-98.
Among students of Jewish history, the Premier of Ontario’s recent (2005) decision to abolish all of the province’s religion-based courts evoked feelings of déjà vu. Ever since Jews were first offered civic equality in European society, in the context of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, the argument was put forth that we cannot claim the rights of citizenship as long aw we are still clinging to our own separate system for administering civil law. This principle was accepted even by liberal advocates of Jewish rights, such as C. W. von Dohm in his treatise On the Civil Improvement of the Jews (1781). The premise was acknowledged wholeheartedly by many Jewish thinkers and communal leaders.
The pioneer of Jewish Emancipation, Moses Mendelssohn of Dessau, was especially zealous in his quest to abolish the institution of herem, the ban of excommunication and social ostracism that served as the Jewish community’s main instrument for enforcing its decisions.
For Mendelssohn, this was not merely a tactical question of accommodating the demands of the gentile authorities, or even of maintaining a consistent separation of church and state. He was convinced that coercion was utterly antithetical to any legitimate form of religion; and that Judaism, as an enlightened faith, must allow its adherents to make free moral and theological choices, guided by their God-given intellects and proper moral instruction. Mendelssohn regarded the herem and other forms of religious coercion as vestiges of medieval obscurantism, copied from the ecclesiastical controls exercised by the Catholic church.
In 1806, when the Emperor Napoleon solemnly convened his Assembly of Jewish Notables, he confronted the delegates with discomforting questions about whether the rabbis wielded police jurisdiction or judicial force over their flocks. The respondents, including the foremost religious and communal leaders of the French and Italian Jewish communities, were quick to reassure the Emperor that the existence of rabbinic courts was not essential to the Jewish religion; and that where such tribunals did exist, it was purely by customary usage, and only with the approval of the gentile government. In support of their claim, they pointed out how rabbinic courts had been completely suppressed in France and Italy since the French Revolution, and that the Jews of Napoleon’s empire were perfectly content to confine the roles of their rabbis to clerical, educational and ritual activities.
I do not know how sincere these Jewish delegates intended to be in their declarations, but the historical record paints a decidedly different picture of judicial autonomy in Jewish tradition. The sages of the Talmud were resolute about forbidding Jews from taking their civil cases to gentile courts, even in matters where their laws were identical to those of the halakhah. The rabbis derived this prohibition from the words of Scripture (Exodus 21:1): Now these are the ordinances which thou shalt set before them which was read in the sense of ‘before them‘–but not before the gentiles.
This principle was formulated at a time when the Roman government was determined to prohibit the operation of an independent Jewish judiciary. Some midrashic sources went so far as to equate recourse to non-Jewish courts with treason and apostasy: One who forsakes the Jewish judges to go before the gentiles–has firstly renounced the Holy One, and afterwards renounced the Torah…
Among the medieval authorities, there was only one situation in which recourse to foreign courts was seriously contemplated–in cases where a litigant refused to acknowledge the authority of the rabbinical court. Rav Paltoi Ga’on, the ninth-century head of the Babylonian academy, ruled that in such circumstances, the other litigant was entitled to seek redress in a gentile court with greater powers of enforcement.
Even this concession was too much for most Jewish authorities. Rabbi Moses Nahmanides doubted whether a true Ga’on could have issued such a decision, and declared that it was permissible, at most, to appeal to non-Jewish authorities in order to enforce a decision by the Jewish court–but not to have cases adjudicated by them in the first place.
In both Christian and Islamic lands during the Middle Ages, Jewish communities were usually given the right to administer their affairs according to the halakhah, which covered most areas of civil law. This privilege included the power to enforce the courts’ decisions by means of coercive measures such as lashes and the herem.
As the emancipation spread through Europe, the decline of the Jewish civil court system occurred almost instantaneously, in spite of impassioned protests of some leading rabbis. Some authorities found theoretical justifications for the new situation.
As in our current situation, it was common to cite the talmudic maxim the law of the land is the land. In its original context, however, that rule had a relatively narrow scope, mainly for purposes of recognizing the validity of transactions that were conducted according to gentile law. Until modern times, it was never invoked to justify recourse to gentile tribunals.
Some authorities, such as Rabbi Isaac Elhanan Spektor of Kovno, proposed a historical justification for permitting the use of gentile courts. He argued that the original prohibition had been decreed in ancient times, when all foreigners were idolaters. Clearly, this was no longer the case. In our own days all these matters should be adjudicated according to the laws of the state, and we should not, God forbid, question their reasons or motives.
Although no modern nation-state allowed its Jewish communities the degree of legal autonomy that had prevailed in medieval times, it was widely accepted that those few Jews who preferred to avail themselves of rabbinical courts could do so in the form of arbitration tribunals, provided that all the parties agreed to be bound by their verdicts. In some circumstances, notably when there was a need to compel recalcitrant husbands to issue religious divorces, or pay alimony and child support, arrangements were put in place in some localities so that the state would enforce compliance with the decisions of the Jewish judges.
This transformation of the status of Jewish law is startlingly apparent in the literature of the responsa, the questions that were addressed to halakhic authorities on matters of Jewish law. If one looks at collections of responsa that were composed prior to the Emancipation, it is clear that the overwhelming majority of queries dealt with matters of civil and family law, and only a tiny proportion with rituals, liturgy and the like. After the Emancipation, the proportions quickly reverse themselves, reflecting the degree to which Jewish law has been evicted from the court and marketplace, to be confined to the home and synagogue.
First Publication:
The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, November 3, 2005, p. 9.
For further reading:
Baron, Salo Wittmayer. The Jewish Community: Its History and Structure to the American Revolution. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1977.
Elon, Menachem. Jewish Law: History, Sources, Principles. Translated by Bernard Auerbach and Melvin J. Sykes. A Philip and Muriel Berman ed. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1994.
Green, Kenneth Hart. “Moses Mendelssohn’s Opposition to the Herem: The First Step Toward Denominationalism?” Modern Judaism 12 (1992), 39-60.
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You would have to be a very naive optimist to assume that, after you have sent off a gift, it will always arrive promptly and undamaged at its destination.
If this cautionary observation holds true in our age of well-policed roads and sophisticated modes of transportation, then imagine how perilous it was to deliver a valuable gift in more primitive times, when the roads were infested with highwaymen and vulnerable to assorted natural and human menaces.
This may have been the reason why, according to a story from the Talmud, the Jewish authorities chose Nahum of Gimzu to convey a valuable cargo that was being sent as a tribute to the Roman authorities. Nahum had a knack for seeing the silver lining in every cloud, so much so that rabbinic legend related that he would greet every mishap with a cheerful “This too [in Hebrew: gam zu] is for the best!” Nor did it hurt that he had a reputation for attracting obliging miracles.
And so it happened that, as he was transporting his valuable gift, Nahum spent the night at a certain inn, where the masters of the house broke into his luggage and made off with its valuable load of priceless jewels. They cleverly filled the container with earth, so that the oblivious messenger would not even realize that a crime had been committed.
Of course, when Nahum arrived at the imperial court, and proudly opened his crate to show the emperor the magnificent token of his people’s esteem, His Majesty was incensed to see its worthless contents; and he presumed that this was a deliberate affront to him on the part of those insolent and rebellious Jews. He immediately commanded that Nahum be executed for his impudence.
Our hero did not flinch at the prospect, convinced as always that everything would turn out for the best. And indeed, his trust was quickly rewarded with an opportune case of supernatural intervention.
In the familiar tradition of Jewish legend, the prophet Elijah showed up in the guise of one of the Roman courtiers. He suggested to the Caesar that, far from being worthless, the earth lying in Nahum’s crate might actually be a secret weapon of enormous strategic usefulness to the imperial forces.
Conveniently, this emperor happened to be well versed in the Hebrew scriptures and their rabbinic embellishments. Accordingly, Elijah reminded him of the prophet Isaiah’s depiction of the patriarch Abraham: “He gives them as the dust to his sword, as the driven stubble to his bow” (41:2). From this passage, he concluded that Abraham had been in possession of a wondrous variety of dust that could transmogrify itself into deadly swords. Perhaps (the disguised prophet now suggested to Caesar) the innocent-looking Hebrew dirt lying in Nahum’s crate was of that same unique variety, and would therefore be an invaluable addition to the royal arsenal.
After some preliminary testing under combat conditions, the Romans established that this was indeed the case. The monarch was overcome with gratitude and appreciation for Nahum, and ordered his subjects to load up his luggage with precious jewels and to send off Nahum in full pomp and circumstance.
On his way back home, Nahum showed up at same nefarious inn, to the utter amazement of the hosts, who had likely written him off for dead. He told them how the emperor had rewarded him generously for his gift. When the astonished scoundrels asked him what it was exactly that he had delivered to Caesar, Nahum replied unassumingly that it consisted of “what I took from here”–possibly hoping to elicit a confession from the culprits. Upon hearing this, their greedy eyes lit up at the prospect of exchanging their earth for valuables. They set to work demolishing their inn so that they could excavate an enormous pile of dirt to bring as a gift to the palace, which they presented ceremoniously before the emperor.
Of course, since this was your ordinary civilian kind of dirt, and not the special Elijah-enriched military issue, the emperor was decidedly underwhelmed, and was convinced that he had been the victim of a malicious prank. The larcenous perpetrators were executed, suffering the fate that they had tried to inflict on the righteous Nahum.
This delightful tale provided generations of Jewish readers with an edifying lesson about the rewards that are meted out to those who trust in the Lord, and the severe retribution that befalls evildoers.
Some commentators had a bit of trouble accepting the more fantastic elements of the story. For example, the Maharal of Prague insisted that the dust had not literally been transformed into sabres, but merely that it contained high-quality iron ore suitable for the manufacture of weapons-grade blades and missiles.
Variations on this theme crop up in later eras of Jewish literature. The most famous of these was probably the charming children’s poem in rhymed prose by the doyen of modern Hebrew poets, Hayyim Nahman Bialik. which first appeared in 1923 under the title “The Duke of Onions and the Duke of Garlic.” The popularity of this work is attested not only by its frequent reissues and numerous translations, but also by its adaptation into a popular musical play, and the existence of an obscure “Duke of Onions” street in Tel-Aviv, conveniently situated near one of the city’s produce markets.
In Bialik’s whimsical farce, a prince sailed off in search of wisdom and found himself in an exotic island, where he was entertained regally with the most elaborate of feasts. He realized, however, that there was something odd about the otherwise exquisite local cuisine; and it soon dawned upon him that the flavour of onion was lacking from their culinary creations.
When he discovered that the onion was entirely unknown in this island, the enterprising prince decided to introduce it to the natives as a precious delicacy. The onions that he imported from his homeland impressed his hosts, both for the delicate beauty of their form, and for the sublime contributions that they made to the quality of the cooking. As in the talmudic legend about Nahum of Gimzu, the rulers of the island rewarded the prince generously with treasures of gold and precious stones, and they solemnly elevated him to the aristocratic rank of “Duke of Onions.”
After he returned to his homeland and told people about his lucrative voyage, another prince, an ambitious ne’er-do-well, was inspired to improve his own fortunes by imitating the success of the Duke of Onions. He conducted a bit of market research to discover that there was another condiment lacking on the island: garlic. Accordingly, he paid a visit to the island, introduced the hosts to the glories of garlic, and his gastronomic offering was greeted with similar enthusiasm and appreciation. He too was inducted into the local aristocracy, as the exalted “Duke of Garlic.”
Like his predecessor, the Duke of Garlic was rewarded with a chest filled with the island’s most precious valuables. Only this time, it was neither cash nor jewels that he received.
His contribution was honoured with the gifts that the islanders now held in the highest regard–a crate full of…onions!
First Publication:
The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, November 24, 2005, p. 19.
For further reading:
Frenkel, Jonah. “The Structures of Talmudic Legends.” Folklore Research Center Studies 7 (1983): 45-97 [Hebrew].
