Who Knows “Who Knows One?”

by Eliezer Segal

Some of the most popular segments of the typical seder have no specific connection to Passover. 

I think this observation applies particularly to the selection of songs that are inserted at the end of the Haggadah. Most of these consist of standard hymns of praise, hopes for a speedy redemption and celebrations of diverse aspects of Jewish tradition. 

The presence of these songs in the seder may be no more than an arbitrary editorial decision by the publisher of the 1590 Prague Haggadah in which they made their first appearance. By virtue of that popular and influential little volume, the table-hymns became known through the Jewish world, but it was not until the late nineteenth century that they became standard fare at most seders. 

The lively tune Ehad Mi Yodea–Who Knows One?”–aka “the Number Song”–belongs to a familiar genre of poems that are found in many of the world’s cultures. Owing to the relative lateness of its first appearance in Hebrew (in the Prague Haggadah it was also accompanied by a Yiddish version), scholars beginning with Leopold Zunz, the founder of modern academic Jewish Studies, initially assumed that our version was an adaptation of a German folk song. As we shall see, this thesis is no longer regarded as compelling. 

A Haggadah commentary from 1791 reported that the Ehad Mi Yodea had been discovered on a venerable parchment page in the beit midrash of Worms and that its author was unknown. One tradition associated it with Rabbi Eliezer Rokeah (c. 1160 – 1238), the renowned commentator and mystic. Traditions of this type, making claims for the antiquity of beloved texts, appear quite frequently in religious literature and do not carry much credibility among scholars. 

The conventional view about the late provenance of the “Ehad Mi Yodea” was dealt a serious blow by the discovery of a version of it in the Cairo Genizah, that inexhaustible repository of medieval Hebrew documents that has revolutionized so many aspects of Jewish historical and literary studies. Although the date of that manuscript is not entirely certain (the Genizah was in operation from the twelfth century until the nineteenth century when its remains were transferred to Cambridge University), its authenticity is corroberated by similarities to previously known “oriental” versions of the song. 

A more solid testimony was provided by the Avignon Prayer Book, in which “Who Knows One?” is included in a selection of festival hymns with no explicit connection with Passover. 

More intriguing perhaps is the fact that a version of the song was in circulation as a wedding tune among the Jews of Cochin, India according to a 1756 manuscript. That version shares several distinctive features with the one from the Cairo Genizah. Aside from a a number of technical matters related to their Hebrew and Aramaic usages, the chief differences include the following examples: 

Both songs are worded in the third person– “He knows” instead of our familiar “I know one.” They declare the uniqueness of the one God “who is in the heavens,” but do not continue “and on earth” as in our version. Instead of the cryptic “eleven stars,” they have “Joseph’s eleven brothers,” corresponding to the standard interpretation that the allusion is in fact to the symbolic stars that figured in Joseph’s prophetic dream. The Cochin version contains twelve rather than thirteen stanzas. (The fragmentary Genizah manuscript is missing the closing sections, so we do not know how far it extended.) 

Perhaps the most surprising feature of the Genizah text is an Arabic instruction that is inserted after the “one is God” line directing us to recite the Shema’ Yisra’el. This invites some intriguing speculations with regard to the song’s original liturgical setting, whether as part of the Passover seder or in some different context. 

Folklorists have succeeded in cataloguing numerous songs from the cultures of the world that are comparable to the Hebrew “Who Knows One?” though the degree of similarity is at times very tenuous, and in some cases is limited to the fact that the tune is structured around numbers. Some historians have tried to trace the song to oriental archetypes in Sanskrit, Pahlavi, Kirghese or Pali. 

The more substantial commonalities among the songs include the use of a question-and-answer framework and the fact that the numbers are linked to religious themes. 

To date, the earliest known dated instance of the genre is a Latin text cited from a 1630 manuscript composed by Theodore Clinius of Venice, an individual who died in 1602. This version contains a few items that are identical to those in the Hebrew song: one God who reigns in the heavens, three patriarchs, five books of Moses, ten commandments and eleven stars (these similarities are found in most of the French versions as well). 

However, the differences between the Christian and Jewish versions are also unmistakable: two Testaments, four evangelists, six vessels (used for Jesus’ miracle at the Wedding at Cana), seven sacraments, eight beatitudes, nine angelic choirs and those ubiquitous twelve apostles. In my view, their preference for the three Hebrew patriarchs over a more obviously Christian trinitarian option serves as strong confirmation of the primacy of the Jewish version. Some of the other Christian versions include such Jewish elements as the six days of the week and God resting on the seventh day. 

Variants of the song in diverse languages were known under such exotic titles as “the Dilly Song” (don’t ask!), “the Carol of the Twelve Numbers,” “Green Grow the Rushes Ho!,” “The Ten Commandments,” “The Twelve Disciples,” “The Twelve Words of Truth” and “Children, Go Where I Send Thee” (a Black American spiritual that has been popularized by the Kingston Trio, Peter Paul and Mary and others), not to mention a number of overt parodies and counterfeits (such as the French “Druid” version). Most of the non-Jewish versions top out at the number twelve, a fact that some have ascribed to the unfavourable stigmas that the number thirteen bears in Christian tradition (owing largely to its association with the traitorous thirteenth disciple at Jesus’ last supper). 

Surprisingly, several of the English variants of the song do not identify the number One with God, presumably because of their reluctance to pronounce the divine name, an attitude that we now equate more readily with Jewish sensibilities. 

The dating of oral traditions is, at best, a slippery enterprise, and the publication date of a popular text does not always provide a reliable indication of its true age or source. 

Pending the discovery of new evidence, the complete truth about the origin of “Who Knows One?” currently remains unknown.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, April 10, 2009, p. 21.
• For further reading:
  • Sharvit, Shimon. “The Oriental Version of Ehad Mi Yode’a.” Tarbiz 41 (1972): 424-429. 
  • ________. “New Light on Ehad Mi Yodea.” Bar-Ilan Annual 9 (1972): 475-482 [Hebrew]. 
  • Yoffie, Leah Rachel Clara. “Songs of the ‘Twelve Numbers’ and the Hebrew Chant of ‘Echod Mi Yodea’.” Journal of American Folklore 62, no. 246 (1949): 382-411.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Fire from Water at Meron

by Eliezer Segal

Though its true origin remains shrouded in obscurity, in our days the date known as “Lag Ba-Omer” is known to many chiefly for the unruly celebrations that take place in the Galilean village of Meron. In modern Israel, the springtime feast is often accompanied by drinking and gambling. However, its official significance derives from its association with the anniversary of Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai, a central hero of kabbalistic legend and lore.

In comparison with many other traditions that have arisen in connection with graves of saints or other popular pilgrimage sites, the link between Rabbi Simeon and Meron is a relatively solid one, since midrashic tradition states quite explicitly that Meron was his final resting place–as well as that of his son Eleazar, whose body was re-interred in Meron after initial burial in Gush Halav.

Under the circumstances, therefore, it is most astonishing that the connection between Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai and Meron went virtually unnoticed until relatively recent times. From the twelfth century onward, a distinguished series of Jewish travelers passed through the region and described its religious shrines in impressive detail. Included among the ranks of those renowned chroniclers were figures like Benjamin of Tudela and Petahia of Regensburg. Most of them described Meron without the slightest mention of Rabbi Simeon or his son. For the medievals, Meron’s chief claim to religious distinction derived from two other ancient sages who were buried there: Hillel and Shammai (along with their wives and a coterie of disciples whose numbers vary with each telling). This tradition, as it happens, has no historical basis whatsoever, seeing as Hillel and Shammai were both Jerusalemites and had no known links to Meron or any other Galilean localities.

What most impressed the medieval tourists was the story of Meron’s miraculous waters. Stone basins in the burial cave would miraculously fill up with fresh water though they were not connected to any spring or well. Petahiah insisted that this wonder could only be observed by righteous individuals; but later authors, including some Arab geographers, confirmed that the waters would appear consistently on a fixed date of the year; and some modern scholars assert that the phenomenon can in fact be produced by natural geological conditions.

Fourteenth- and fifteenth-century chroniclers recorded that Jews from throughout the Middle East, along with a contingent of local Muslims would make the pilgrimage to Meron in order to experience the water miracle and carry samples back to their homelands as a remedy for drought. The date for this annual visit was identified as “Pesah Sheni,” that is, a month after Passover, the date established by the Torah as a second chance for those who were impure or abroad to offer the festival sacrifice. This would place it on the fourteenth of Iyyar, coinciding with the twenty-ninth day in the counting of the Omer days between Passover and Shavuot. Invariably the site of the pilgrimage was identified as the tombs of Hillel and Shammai–and if Rabbis Simeon ben Yohai and Eleazar were acknowledged at all, it was only as an incidental part of the scenery.

This fact is particularly surprising when we take into account that the Zohar had been published in the thirteenth century. That pseudepigraphic kabbalistic midrash turned a fictionalized Rabbi Simeon into its major protagonist, depicting him as a wonder-working mystic who was privy to incomparable supernatural insights. Even this, it would appear, was not enough to earn him more prominent billing in the Galilean tourist brochures. The date of La”G (=33) ba-Omer, which falls on Iyyar 18, did not figure at all in these pilgrimages.

Eventually, of course, Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai’s grave did succeed in becoming the primary focus of the the Meron festivities. During the heyday of the Safed kabbalistic community under Rabbi Isaac Luria’s charismatic leadership, the custom arose of paying periodic visits to Meron to prostrate themselves on Rabbi Simeon’s grave, kindle lamps and bonfires–in contrast to the water-oriented rites that had previously dominated the shrine–and especially to participate in liturgical recitations of the Zohar. Ostensibly, this dovetails perfectly with the rise to prominence and popularity that was enjoyed by the Kabbalah in those generations.

The only problem is that the kabbalistic practices that took shape around Rabbi Simeon bore no resemblance to the well-known festivities that are now associated with Lag Ba-Omer.

To begin with the most obvious problem: the dates set aside for honouring Rabbi Simeon were not on Lag Ba-Omer at all. Though several seasons were mentioned in this connection, the ones that were observed most commonly were the ten (or six) days preceding Shavuot (beginning on the thirty-ninth day of the Omer, almost a week after Lag ba-Omer) and the ten days before Rosh Hashanah.

Furthermore, those celebrations had the character of solemn revivalist conventions that were devoted to serious meditation–quite different from the atmosphere of the “Hillula“–the jubilant bouts of song and dance that began to achieve broader popularity on Lag Ba-Omer beginning from the latter half of the sixteenth century.

The historical record suggests that the “serious” kabbalists were either indifferent or outrightly hostile to the Lag Ba-Omer style of festivities. A generation later, however, the custom had become so entrenched that a rear-guard action was implemented to demonstrate that it had been sanctioned–or at least tolerated–by Luria himself.

In fact, a novel element was now introduced that has no basis in any earlier tradition: It was now claimed that Lag Ba-Omer was the anniversary of Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai’s death, his Yahrtzeit! This assertion was made by the author of the P’ri Es Hayyim, a work that was supposedly an abridgement of the teachings of Rabbi Hayyim Vital, Luria’s most influential student. In this instance, as in several others, our author was inserting notions that neither Luria nor Vital ever intended.

Vital had, in reality, tried to justify the merry mood of Lag Ba-Omer by invoking the older rabbinic traditions about how it was the date when the plague ceased that had taken the lives of thousands of Rabbi Akiva’s students. Rabbi Simeon, he declared, was among the tiny number of disciples who had survived the plague and were able to ensure the survival of the Torah tradition into the coming generations. This, according to Vital, might explain why Rabbi Simeon had happy associations with that date. Somehow, in the P’ri Es Hayyim it was transformed into Rabbi Simeon’s Yahrtzeit.

Under the circumstances, it seems unlikely (to say the least) that Safed’s most prominent kabbalists were enthusiastic supporters of the Lag Ba-Omer Hillula at Meron. In 1575 a court under the authority of Rabbi Joseph Caro reportedly tried to issue an edict forbidding dancing on the saint’s grave. Additionally, the festivities came to include a ceremony of ritual haircutting–a practice that Rabbi Isaac Luria (for obscure mytsical reasons) deemed inappropriate for the Omer season (though later tradition predictably transformed Luria into a champion of Lag Ba-Omer haircutting).

So, if they were not introduced by the Safed Kabbalists, then where did the Meron festivities really originate? The most persuasive thesis I know of is that they were the outgrowth of a different celebration that had been held since the thirteenth century to mark the anniversary of the death of the biblical prophet Samuel. The day was celebrated by pilgrimages to the traditional site in “Nebi Samuel” with candles, flaming torches and haircuts (the weight of the shorn locks in silver was often donated to charity), along with drinking and other immodest activities. The lamps were associated with the scriptural passage that describes Samuel’s first call to prophecy “ere the lamp of God went out in the temple of the Lord…”

In the late sixteenth century, Samuel’s tomb was transferred to Muslim ownership and closed to Jewish pilgrimage. It therefore appears quite likely that the Jews who did not want to forsake their venerable celebration transferred it to a new venue, Meron in the Galilee. Since the new locale had no historical associations whatsoever with Samuel, they redefined the object of their pilgrimage to Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai while continuing to observe as many of their old customs as they could justify.

In this transfer of allegiances, Samuel’s loss was to become Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai’s gain, and the wondrous waters of Meron were changed into flames.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, May 1, 2009, p. 10.
• For further reading:
  • Benayahu, Meir. “Customs of the Kabbalists of Safed at Meron.” Sefunot 6 (1962): 9-40.
  • Yaari, Abraham. “History of the Pilgrimage to Meron.” Tarbiz 31 (1962): 72-101.
  • ________.Zikhronot Erets Yisra’el: Me’ah ve-‘Esrim Pirke-zikhronot Me-Hayei ha-Yishuv Ba-arets Meha-me’ah ha-Sheva’-‘esreh ve-‘ad Yameinu. Jerusalem: ha-Mahlaqah le-‘Inyene ha-no’ar shel ha-Histadrut ha-Tsiyonit, 1947.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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He Didn’t Have a Prayer

by Eliezer Segal

One of the more wholesome of my guilty pleasures is my fascination with the genre that is known to the cognoscenti as “OTR,” old-time radio. During my daily commutes my iPod is likely to be flooding my ears with downloaded episodes from the “golden age of radio,” an era of broadcasting that produced some remarkably entertaining programs in the realms of comedy, detective stories, variety shows and other areas that would eventually be eclipsed by the emergence of television.

One little-known show that caught my attention was entitled “Encore Theatre.” This short-lived series was presented on CBS as a summer replacement in 1946 and ran for thirteen weeks. It was sponsored by a pharmaceutical company, Schenley Labs Inc., a major producer of penicillin, and consisted of half-hour dramas whose unifying theme was their focus on the medical profession. The plots including straightforward fiction as well as dramatized biographies of historical figures like Louis Pasteur and Walter Reed. 

What particularly captured my attention about this anthology was its standard closing formula, in which the episode’s star was invited to read out a passage from the “physician’s prayer” composed by Maimonides. The lines of the prayer that were chosen for the recitation were: “The eternal providence has appointed me to watch over the life and death of all thy creatures. May I always see in the patient a fellow creature in pain. Grant me strength and opportunity always to extend the domain of my craft.”

As an admirer of the great medieval Jewish scholar and physician, I was understandably thrilled to hear his words given a public airing by the likes of Lionel Barrymore, Ronald Colman, Hume Cronin, Franchot Tone or Robert Young (who would of course go on to become Dr. Marcus Welby MD!).

All this was very satisfying until I started investigating the matter a bit more thoroughly. In spite of its popularity and its frequent use at medical school graduations, it is very unlikely that Maimonides ever composed this prayer or anything resembling it.

The earliest known record of the “physician’s prayer” is in a 1783 German literary journal Das Deutsches Museum, one of whose editors was Christian Wilhelm Dohm, a German political writer who enjoyed a warm friendship with Moses Mendelssohn and, inspired by the ideals of the Enlightenment, campaigned actively for the granting of equal rights for the Jews. In this publication, the text appeared in German and was labeled as “the daily prayer of a physician before he visits his patient–from the Hebrew manuscript of a famous Jewish physician in Egypt in the twelfth century.”

Given the nature of the periodical, it was likely being presented to its readership as a work of creative writing. The name of Maimonides was not mentioned explicitly, though it is reasonable to suppose that the anonymous author intended to allude to that most renowned of twelfth-century Jewish Egyptian doctors.

The next important step in the evolution of the puzzle occurred in 1790 when a Hebrew version of the prayer appeared in Ha-Me’assef, a Hebrew periodical published by disciples of the Jewish Enlightenment movement. The introduction indicated that the prayer’s author was Markus Herz, and that it was being translated into Hebrew at his request by the journal’s editor Isaac Abraham Euchel, a student of Immanuel Kant and a fervent champion of the Hebrew language and literature. In this version, the text was poignantly introduced as a “prayer for the physician as he pours out his anxieties before God prior to visiting the sick.”

Markus Herz was one of the more impressive figures of the German Jewish Enlightenment. A promising scholar who initially had to abandon his university studies because of his poverty, Herz nonetheless succeeded in impressing Kant, and a deep and respectful friendship developed between the two men. After joining Moses Mendelssohn’s circle in Berlin, Herz found sponsors for his medical studies, and went on to acquire a reputation as one of the finest physicians of his generation. There is no evidence that he was proficient in Hebrew, so if he was the first to publish the physician’s prayer, then his role was probably as the author, not as the translator of an older Hebrew manuscript.

Indeed, there are passages in the prayer that strike me as more appropriate to a modern medical practitioner than to a medieval. Much of the text consists of imploring the Almighty to grant assistance in fulfilling the doctor’s sacred calling in the face of assorted obstacles, moral failings and distractions. In this spirit, he entreats God to remove from the patients’ midst “all charlatans and the whole host of officious relatives and know-it-all nurses, cruel people who arrogantly frustrate the wisest purposes of our craft and often lead thy creatures to their death.” The author proceeds to invoke divine help in accepting instruction from those who are truly wiser than himself, while remaining impervious to the scorn or criticisms of self-important idiots.

While there may once have been some justification for upholding the thesis that the 1783 German version had been translated from a lost Hebrew original, the likelihood of such a scenario now seems infinitesimal, since the last century of scholarship has enriched us with an exhaustive knowledge of Maimonides’ writings, many of which have been saved from oblivion by the Cairo Genizah. Our expanded bibliography of Maimonides’ oeuvre includes no Physician’s Prayer. 

At any rate, notwithstanding the absence of any credible early attribution of the prayer to Maimonides, and in spite of Euchel’s explicit statement that Herz was the author, it did not take long before it came to be referred to as “the physician’s prayer by Maimonides.” Evidently, the first writer to make that claim in print was William W. Golden, Superintendent of the Davis Memorial Hospital in Elkins, West Virginia, in an article he contributed to the Transactions of the Medical Society of the State of West Virginia in 1900. 

By 1914, Golden himself addressed a query about the prayer’s authorship to the American Israelite, to which he received a learned response that Marcus Herz was the prayer’s real creator; but by then it was too late for subsequent writers to let go of the alluring attribution to the celebrated savant, even though there was no dearth of authors who were publishing notes debunking that claim, which some of them dismissed as a “hoax.” 

In one interesting instance in 1935, the Canadian Jewish Chronicle printed a letter by Chief Rabbi Dr. Joseph H. Hertz, responding to a question by Sir William Osler and informing him that Herz was the true author. 

As is too frequently the case in scholarship, once the error managed to creep into a few “respectable” publications, there was no longer anything to prevent subsequent writers from copying it repeatedly until it acquired the status of incontrovertible fact.

Perhaps the record will eventually be cleared up and people will finally stop making inaccurate references about the authorship of the Physician’s Prayer. 

That is a worthy objective that even Maimonides himself might have prayed for.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, May 22, 2009, p. 11.
• For further reading:
  • Davies, Martin L. 1995. Identity or History? Marcus Herz and the End of the Enlightenment. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
  • Muntner, Süssman. 1946. Deutero Prayer of Moses: With an Introduction about the History of the Prayer, Attributed to the Physician Maimonides and a Contemplation on the State of the Praying and on the Valour of the Prayer in General. Jerusalem: Geniza.
  • Rosner, Fred. 1967. The Physician’s Prayer Attributed to Moses Maimonides. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 41, no. 5: 440-457.
  • —. 1998. The Medical Legacy of Moses Maimonides. Hoboken, NJ: KTAV Publishing House.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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A Fine Kettle of Fish

by Eliezer Segal

Since the primordial mists of Jewish antiquity, the impression has become solidly entrenched in our minds that a Sabbath meal is not quite complete without a serving of fish. 

Back in biblical times, Nehemiah chided his community for purchasing fish from Tyrian merchants on Saturday. Later, when rabbinic texts wanted to illustrate the typical preparations for the approaching Shabbat, their favourite example was that of roasting a small fish. Several talmudic sages explained the prophet Isaiah’s exhortation to”call the sabbath a delight” as an allusion to eating fish treats. 

Rabbi Joel Sirkes (d. 1640) reported that on late Friday afternoon the beadles of the major Jewish communities would proclaim the approach of the holy day by announcing that people should now proceed to cook their fish. Indeed, in most localities fish was a relatively inexpensive commodity, and from the perspective of Jewish law its preparation is quite straightforward, in that it does not require ritual slaughter, and can be served with either dairy or meat menus. 

There are tales in the Talmud and Midrash that laud the virtues of simple Jews who were willing to incur exorbitant expenses in order to procure the choicest fish for the holy day. The ancient satirist Flaccus Persius poked fun at some of his fellow Romans who enjoyed partaking of Jewish fish. 

The association between fish and the Sabbath was stressed in diverse ways in Hasidic lore. About the Ba’al Shem Tov himself it was related that his choice to reside in the town of Medzhibozh had been dictated primarily by the availability there of Sabbath fish. Hasidic teaching depicted the Sabbath as a foretaste of the World to Come, and cultivated numerous customs that were based upon that premise. According to a classic rabbinic myth, the righteous will ultimately enjoy a banquet at which one of the entrés will be leviathan, a magnificent fish! Accordingly, they concluded, it is fitting that we should make every effort to include a fish option on our menus in anticipation of that glorious feast. Stories were told about distinguished rabbis who humbled themselves by personally participating in the buying, preparation and cooking of the fish delicacies.

Unfortunately, when a commodity is known to be valued highly by its consumers, this can tempt unscrupulous merchants to gouge the prices, confident that people will have no alternative but to pay almost any exorbitant price that is being charged for their precious wares. Such a case was dealt with in a responsum by the seventeenth-century scholar Rabbi Menahem Mendel Krochmal of Nikolsburg. The gentile fishmongers, realizing that the Jews were prepared to pay premium sums for their Sabbath fish, hiked up the prices. The Jewish community countered with a two-month boycott, leading some individuals to inquire of the rabbi whether that policy might entail an unacceptable desecration of the Sabbath. Rabbi Krochmal had to remind his questioners that eating fish was not actually a formal religious obligation; but that even if it were, there were ample precedents of ancient rabbis instituting sanctions in situations of this sort in order to lower prices and protect the interests of the consumers.

A very different attitude was voiced by Rabbi Moses Ashkenazi of Vilna. He declared that the requirement to eat fish on Shabbat does indeed stem from the Torah, and pious Jews should therefore be ready to pay inflated amounts in order to fulfill that obligation, as they would be expected to do with respect to other hallowed mitzvahs.

In a similar confrontation that arose in the nineteenth century, Rabbi Abraham Teomim of Buczacz was asked to support a general boycott against overpriced fish, in order to safeguard the interests of the local poor. However, he refused to impose an inconvenience on the rich for the sake of the needy, as long as the price increase had not reached critical proportions—and that would not be the case until the inflation jumped one third beyond the normal price. At any rate, Rabbi Teomim argued in his finest Marie Antoinette spirit that if the poor could not afford fish, then they ought to find something else to dine on!

The opposing view had been vociferously argued by distinguished figures like Rabbis Abraham Gumbiner and Shneur Zalman of Liady. The latter pointed out nevertheless that eating fish was not mentioned in any of the standard codes of Jewish law, and was nothing more than a matter of local custom or preference. 

Nevertheless, Jewish exegetical creativity took up the challenge of proposing ingenious rationales and sources for the practice of eating fish on Saturday. Some of those rationales were quite straightforward; for example, the Hebrew word for fish,”dag,” has the numerological value of seven, quite appropriate for the seventh day. [For those who are impressed by such things, we should point that the other Sabbath table staples also fit neatly into the pattern: wine (yayin)=70, and meat (basar)=700.]

The association of fish with water also evoked some well-trodden symbolic associations. Water is a familiar image for Torah, and hence the relationship between the fish and water is comparable to the one between Israel and the Torah. It reminds us that without our holy scriptures, we would perish like…fish out of water!

Certain kabbalistic interpreters found significance in the fact that fish (lacking eyelids) never close their eyes, and can therefore serve as fitting symbols for unceasing divine providence, which is said to be especially receptive to our needs during the Saturday afternoon meal.

The kabbalistic belief in reincarnation suggested an additional theme: the fish on your plate may embody the soul of a Jew who is seeking redemption for the transgressions committed during a previous life. Therefore, when one eats it in the context of Sabbath holiness, one is mercifully allowing it to move on to the next stage of its rehabilitation. 

One interpretation that I find particularly charming was proposed by Rabbi Zvi Elimelech Shapira of Dynow, and focuses on God’s blessings from at the time of the creation. According to the opening chapter of Genesis, there were three beneficiaries of that divine blessing: the fish (on Thursday), humans (on Friday) and the Sabbath. 

Therefore, when the Jews consume their fish on Shabbat, they are symbolically unifying those three elements into a most powerful threefold blessing.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, July 3, 2009, p. 11.
• For further reading:
  • Moshe Hallamish, Kabbalah in Liturgy, Halakhah and Customs (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2000).
  • Moshe Hallamish, Kabbalistic Customs of Shabbat (Jerusalem: Orhot, 2006).
  • Hayyim Karlinsky,”Maqor Ha-Minhag Le’ekhol Dagim Likhvod Shabbat ,” Shanah Be-Shanah (1984): 293-301.
  • Jacob Nacht,”Dagim,” Sinai 8 (1941): 326-333.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Pandemonium in the Pews

by Eliezer Segal

What a wonderful spiritual serenity envelops us during the High Holy Day season! In keeping with our ancient tradition, before we beseech God to forgive us for our misdeeds, many of us take the trouble to approach our neighbours to seek their forgiveness for any affronts we might have committed against them. It is therefore a time of harmony and goodwill for the Jewish community.

Of course there are the occasional exceptions.

Take for example the medieval savant and moralist Kalonymos ben Kalonymos of Arles, Provence (in southern France). In his satirical tract Even Bohan (the Touchstone), composed in 1322, he singled out Yom Kippur as a day rife with communal bickering, as rival families and factions compete for the privileges of leading the prayers–until the service degenerates into anarchic strife. He tells of a particular occasion when one of those squabbles erupted into the breaking of synagogue vessels, acerbic mutual accusations and a general mood that was, to say the least, inappropriate for that solemn day.

Well, Kalonymos was writing a satire, a genre that depends on comic exaggeration, so we don’t know how literally we should take his words. To be sure, violence in synagogues was not entirely unknown in Jewish society. It was rampant enough that the medieval rabbinic authorities had to issue special regulations to deal with it. This situation is implicit, we may assume, in the edict ascribed to Rabbi Jacob Tam declaring that the normal fine for assault is twenty-five denars, but if the attack takes place inside a synagogue then it is increased to fifty denars (if the victim returns the blow, however, he thereby forfeits his rights to compensation under the law).

Several incidents of a similarly violent character are recorded in medieval Provençal communities–including some that found their way into the local police records.

Let us begin with a case that occurred on the Day of Atonement itself, in the town of Manosque in 1338, and led to a trial that dragged on for many months–some sixteen years after the writing of the Even Bohan.

As in Kalonymos’ story, this episode involved the controversial selection of a cantor for the festival, a decision that was complicated by the existence of a longstanding feud in the Jewish community. Indeed, the appointment of cantors was one of the more frequent causes of disputes–including violent ones–in traditional Jewish communities, and the gentile authorities would often be called in to intervene in the process. 

The congregational leadership of Manosque initially offered the position to a young man from a neighbouring town, Isaac of Alamania. Isaac diplomatically declined the invitation knowing that it would be likely to irritate an influential citizen of Manosque named Jacob of Baherias. A neutral substitute was found to serve as cantor, but for unexplained reasons was unable to continue his task beyond the Shaharit morning service. They approached the community’s spiritual leader, referred to in the transcripts as “Magister Vitalis” (= Rabbi Hayim), but he bowed out pleading physical weakness. Isaac of Alamania appared to be the only viable candidate and attempts were made to achieve a reconciliation between him and Jacob. The negotiations broke down and Isaac–perhaps out of spite–proceeded to resume the service beginning from the reading of the Torah. 

The result was total pandemonium.

At this point, Jacob and his father Abraham commenced shouting and objecting that Isaac was ineligible to chant the service according to the halakhah. Indeed, an edict of Rabbi Simhah of Speyer had declared that cantors could not be appointed unless they were acceptable to every member of the community, and even a sole dissenter could exercise a veto for that purpose. Although Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg had mitigated that ruling in recognition of how difficult it was to find such consensus in Jewish society, even he had insisted on applying it strictly for the solemn worship of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Jacob went on to threaten Isaac with excommunication for this violation of protocol. 

With the congregation now split into two warring camps, the Baherias faction approached Magister Vitalis insisting that he take decisive action to dismiss that arrogant outsider from his cantorial post. To their disappointment, the rabbi urged them to continue the service peacefully.

In all this frantic activity, a certain Leonitus who was carrying the Torah scroll tried to stop Jacob’s brother-in-law from rushing toward the rabbi. This led to a full-scale brawl. The damage from the scuffle included the ripping of a portion of the Torah mantle and perhaps worse.

The uproar of this altercation was not contained within the walls of the sanctuary. The decibel level reached sufficient intensity to be audible even in the nearby “poor people’s synagogue.” Isaac stood down at the conclusion of the Torah reading, and the weary rabbi was persuaded to take over the remainder of the service. By then the violent dispute had to be dealt with by the non-Jewish civil authorities.

Our knowledge of the details surrounding this disgraceful incident derives from the fact that it has been preserved in the archives of the Manosque judiciary. That is to say, the local gendarmes were called in to uphold public order and to punish those responsible, with a view to deterring future rabble rousers–as well as to fatten the municipal coffers with the lucrative fines that would be imposed on the culprits. 

The Manosque archives document additional synagogue brawls, including one that involved a formidable arsenal of sticks, stones, swords and spears, and yet another one in which a gravedigger’s spades were used as weapons when the local community refused to interrupt its prayers to assist with the burial of a corpse form a nearby village. The issues that provoked the quarrels included such examples as (once again) the choice of a cantor (whether for Tish’ah beAv or during the Ten Days of Repentance), and a certain abusive shrew named Bianca who vocally questioned the right of her synagogue-neighbour to occupy a seat or to open her mouth in the company of respectable ladies.
Perhaps some of my readers have felt occasional frustration at the ill will or lack of decorum encountered in their own congregations. I find considerable consolation in the realization that, when we study the antics of some of of the Jewish communities of past generations, our own petty lapses into disharmony appear quite tame and forgivable by comparison.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, September 18, 2009, p. 18.
• For further reading:
  • Finkelstein, Louis. Jewish Self-Government in the Middle Ages. 2nd ed. New York: Feldheim, 1964.
  • Shatzmiller, Joseph. “‘Tumultus et Rumor In Sinagoga’: An Aspect of Social Life of Provençal Jews in the Middle Ages.” AJS Review 2 (1977): 227-255.
  • —. Recherches sur la Communauté Juive de Manosque au Moyen Age, 1241-1329. Paris: Mouton, 1973.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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The Well-Groomed Torah Groom

by Eliezer Segal

In many Jewish communities it is customary on Simhat Torah to ascribe special prestige to the ceremonial reading of certain key passages from the Bible. Because the festivities mark the conclusion of one Torah-reading cycle and the beginning of a new one, it is natural that members of the community are especially eager to be chosen for the  aliyyot at the end of Deuteronomy and the start of Genesis. The honourees are known respectively as the “bridegroom of the Torah” (hatan Torah) and the “bridegroom of Genesis” (hatan B’resehit).

Different Jewish communities evolved diverse mechanisms for assigning these honours. They were often the subjects of auctions, in which the bidding wars would serve to beef up the public coffers while confirming the class distinctions between the wealthy and the needier citizens. In some Italian towns, the more democratic procedure was adopted of holding a lottery in order to determine who would be privileged with the readings of those special sections of the Torah reading.

And so it happened one year in the early eighteenth century, that the honour of being appointed hatan B’resehit fell to the lot of a certain gentleman whose identity was discretely concealed by the official records under the generic epithet “Reuben” (the rabbinic equivalent of “John Doe”). Unfortunately, at the beginning of the Sukkot festival, Reuben had been suffering from a vexatious skin ailment that prevented him from shaving his beard. 

Now, according to the law set down by the ancient rabbis, it is forbidden to shave during the intermediate days of Sukkot or Passover. This was ordained originally as a preventative measure, lest people intentionally postpone their visit to the barber until the arrival of the holiday week, and thereby commence the festival in an unkempt state. Nevertheless, the Talmud had made allowances for some exceptional instances when unavoidable circumstances prevented people from shaving before the holiday; and Reuben’s physicians had explicitly declared that, as he was on the verge of recovery at that time, premature shaving was likely to cause a relapse of his medical condition, and at any rate he would be unable to withstand the resulting mental and physical anguish.

Happily, Reuben did recover from his disease in time for Simhat Torah, and he was eager to participate in the festivities. He therefore sought rabbinic guidance as to whether he was allowed to shave in order to honour the ceremony with an appropriately decorous appearance. His inquiry was supported by detailed letters (in transliterated Italian) submitted by his doctors.

Little could Reuben suspect what a volatile controversy would be ignited by this innocent-looking question about a religious ritual. The query generated a considerable volume of rabbinic responsa. Most of the Italian scholars who were consulted, such as Rabbis Shabbetai Del Vecchio, Raphael Levi of Finale and Isaac Lampronti could find no serious grounds to forbid the shaving, since the extenuating circumstances were very similar to those recognized by the Mishnah.

However, a shockingly different position was advocated by Rabbi Moshe Hagiz of Amsterdam. In a lengthy responsum, he accused Reuben and his doctors of barefaced mendacity, and invoked the collective opinions of the rabbis of Amsterdam and Venice who indignantly rejected any hint of permissiveness in the matter. The enactment that was issued by the Venetian rabbis had stated explicitly that appointment to be Hatan Bereshit should not be deemed an acceptable reason for allowing shaving during the festival.

Hagiz’s indignation takes on a clearer significance when we note that his discussion of festival shaving was included in the context of a chapter whose main topic was supposed to be the imbibing of non-Jewish wines. In the easygoing and open society of early modern Italy, these two practices were linked together as key indicators of excessive laxity in the maintenance of community religious standards.

Indeed, the presence or absence of beards could become a portal to numerous contentious issues in Jewish society and theology. True, the Torah’s prohibition against trimming “the corners of your beard” had been interpreted narrowly by the Talmud to include only cutting with a razor, while allowing scissors or depilatory lotions. However, by the eighteenth century, the teachings of the Kabbalah had established themselves solidly in European Judaism; and the Zohar attached a supreme mystical purpose to the human beard as a reflection of the sublime divine beard that acted as a symbolic conduit for the transmission of spirititual blessings from the metaphysical realms down into our world. God’s tresses were mapped out meticulously so as to trace the course of the thirteen attributes of divine mercy. In terror of the possible spiritual catastrophe that might result from cutting those supernal locks, the disciples of Rabbi Isaac Luria forbade tampering with even a single hair on the chin of a Jewish male.

The kabbalistic promotion of facial hair ran into a headlong conflict with the prevailing aesthetic sensibilities of Italian society with which most Jews of the time identified wholeheartedly. At around this historical era, the beard was being expelled from the fashionable circles of several European lands, reduced at most to a discreet Van Dyck goatee (which at least one Jewish traditionalist condemend for its visual resemblance to a cross!). In this respect, the urbane Italians, Jews and Christians alike, formed a stark contrast to the norms of the Turks whose Islamic traditions required cultivation of beards on all self-respecting males. Each culture viewed the other’s conventions as utterly bizarre and repulsive.

The conflict between cultures came to a head in the early 1720s in the Ottoman port of Thessalonika, where the colony of Italian merchants (“Francos”) had traditionally been allowed the special privilege of following their native practices, which included trimming their whiskers, while living in an unshaven Levantine environment. Now, however, a new generation of intolerant religious leadership was calling for the termination of that arrangement. This dispute generated its own spate of partisan responsa in which the rabbis grappled with the subtleties of local custom, kabbalistic interpretation, economic concerns and textual interpretations.

To cite one notorious controversy of that age, when calls were issued for the excommunication of the charismatic young mystic Moses Hayim Luzzatto of Padua, suspected of sympathies for the failed Messiah Shabbetai Zvi, several of Luzzatto’s detractors pointed to the incongruity between his mystical pretensions and the smoothness of his jaw; and his defenders were at a loss to respond.

Pious Italian Jews were at pains to find justifications for their deviations from recognized kabbalistic practice. Rabbi Shabbetai Baer suggested unconvincingly that the Zohar’s policy had only been directed to the residents of the holy land, or to individuals who occupy themselves exclusively in religious study, but who were not involved in mundane commercial activities.

As for our friend Reuven–as far as I am aware, the documents do not tell us explicitly whether or not he carried out his Simhat Torah honour that year with unkempt whiskers or a clean-shaven jaw–though it seems very likely that he did manage to shave before becoming aware of what a heated debate he had precipitated. I hope that the ensuing controversy did not dampen the elation that all Jews ought to have when they gather to celebrate the Torah.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, October 9, 2009, p. 14.
• For further reading:
  • Carlebach, Elisheva. The Pursuit of Heresy: Rabbi Moses Hagiz and the Sabbatian Controversies. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990.
  • Ginzburg, Simon. The Life and Works of Moses Hayyim Luzzatto, Founder of Modern Hebrew Literature. Philadelphia: Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning, 1931.
  • Horowitz, Elliott. “The Early Eighteenth Century Confronts the Beard: Kabbalah and Jewish Self-Fashioning.” Jewish History 8, no. 1-2 (1994): 95-115.
  • ________. “Visages Du Judaisme: De La Barbe En Monde Juif Et De L’Elaboration De Ses Significations.” Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales 49, no. 5 (1994): 1065-1090.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Vegetarian Kook-ing?

by Eliezer Segal

When Noah and his family disembarked from the ark, they entered into a new relationship with their creator. To these new ancestors of the human race God offered the reassurance that he would never again alter the dependable seasonal cycles of nature. In this solemn declaration he also confirmed humanity’s mastery over the rest of the animal realm, while stipulating that “all that moves on the earth shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.”

The rabbis of the Talmud, like most other exegetes, were sensitive to the contrast between this passage, which permitted the eating of animals, and the instructions that had been issued to the first couple in the garden of Eden. At that time, Adam and Eve, though they were also granted dominion over the animal kingdom, were placed on the same dietary plane as the other beasts and permitted to eat only fruits but not flesh. 

Most commentators have read this reversal of the policy towards the consumption of meat not as a progressive stage in the evolution of the human spirit, but quite the contrary, as a reluctant concession to human weakness. This implies that humanity’s ideal state, as embodied in the original divine plan for creation, was one of vegetarianism.

Of course, from the perspective of traditional Judaism, this premise seems very theoretical at best. A substantial part of Jewish religious practice (especially when sacrifices were offered in the Temple) involves the slaughtering, eating or burning of birds and animals, as well as the utilization of different parts of those animals to fashion ritual articles like parchment scrolls or leather t’fillin. It is understandable that the Jewish populace over history produced a very small proportion of practicing vegetarians. 

Arguably the most famous and distinguished Jewish vegetarian was Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the revered spiritual leader of the Land of Israel during the early twentieth century. 

In an essay published in 1910, Rabbi Kook proposed an ambitious new philosophy to explain the religious significance of the commandments. In that context, he devoted a special section to exploring the Torah’s model of human-animal interrelations. As with most aspects of his thought, Rabbi Kook conceived of this relationship as a dynamic, progressive evolution. Ideally, humanity should dwell in perfect harmony with animals. Indeed, he employs the bold terminology of “animal justice” as a sublime ethical objective. Unfortunately, however, our earliest ancestors proved themselves unready to realize this lofty ideal of meting out justice equally to humans and animals; and therefore, as a provisional compromise, we were commanded to limit the scope of our immediate quest for justice to the human race alone. 

This imperfect situation, however, will not remain in force permanently. In fact, according to Rabbi Kook, one of the purposes of the Torah’s commandment system is to wean us away gradually from carnivorous behaviour. This objective is implicit in the precepts that place obstacles in the way of our instantaneous consumption of meat. Among these obstacles are the complex laws of ritual slaughter and the requirement to cover the blood of non-domestic birds and animals, which Rabbi Kook interpreted as a token of our shame for killing blameless beasts whose upkeep is not a burden on us. 

Rabbi Kook cites numerous scriptural passages in which the ancient prophets envisaged eventual harmony between the species. Even while we are still in the carnivorous age, moral sensitivity to our animal friends is constantly being instilled in us by means of humane commandments that take into account the beasts’ emotions and instincts, such as the prohibition against taking the young in presence of their mothers, or the insistence on employing the most painless procedure for slaughtering.

In light of these statements, it is readily understandable how Rabbi Kook is so often adduced as an example of a learned and pious Jew who eschewed the eating of meat.

Evidently, however, that widespread claim has no foundation in historical fact. Quite the contrary, all indications are that Rabbi Kook personally ate meat and had little patience for those who refrained from doing so.

This fact is revealed clearly in a series of letters to his son Zvi Yehuda who had begun in 1916 to dabble in vegetarianism. The elder Kook (who was in Switzerland at the time) saw this as stemming from an inappropriate desire to hasten the redemption. At around this time he composed a small treatise in which he argued that in our current historical epoch, the ingestion of animal flesh plays a crucial function in integrating the physical and spiritual domains, as well as in fortifying our bodies to face our challenges in this world. The ideal age of vegetarian concord has not yet arrived; and it is improper to initiate it before we are truly ready to fulfill our higher spiritual calling. 

During this period, Rabbi Kook was repeatedly urging his son to master the laws of ritual slaughter, a vocation that he esteemed highly on account of its mystical and moral functions of instilling qualities of compassion toward lesser species. He exhorted Zvi Yehuda to eat some meat every day, if only out of consideration for his health. In his instructions to his son, Rabbi Kook kept stressing that though he attached great theological importance to vegetarianism, it should not be implemented prior to the advent of the final redemption, when the world will be restored to its primal perfection. 

In fact he was extremely distrustful of the motives of people who profess fanatical devotion to animal rights, since their outward compassion was often accompanied by misanthropy or concealed antisemitic agendas. As regards the latter suspicion, he was probably alluding to European efforts, already evident in the nineteenth century, to outlaw Jewish slaughter on grounds of its alleged inhumaneness. Several figures who would later achieve prominence in the Nazi party were vocal advocates of animal rights, which became a favourite subject of German legislation immediately after Hitler’s seizure of power. 

In common with many of his contemporaries, religious and secular alike, Rabbi Kook was imbued with a powerful and naïve conviction that the inexorable course of progress was rapidly approaching its culmination. According to the traditional Jewish symbolism, this would involve humanity’s restoration to Adam and Eve’s Paradise and to the idyllic state of harmony with nature. 

At the present moment, however, it is still not entirely clear which food we should be packing for that long hike from Noah’s ark back to the garden of Eden.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, October 9, 2009, p. 12.
• For further reading:
  • Bokser, Ben Zion, ed. Abraham Isaac Kook: The Lights of Penitence, The Moral Principles, Lights of Holiness, Essays, Letters, and Poems. New York, Ramsey and Toronto: Paulist Press, 1978. 
  • Rosenak, Avinoam. Prophetic Halakhah : Rabbi A. I. H. Kook’s Philosophy of Halakhah. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2007. 
  • Sax, Boria. Animals in the Third Reich: Pets, Scapegoats, and the Holocaust. New York: Continuum, 2000.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Lava and Lightning-bolts

by Eliezer Segal

The sudden and complete destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is one of the most startling episodes in the Bible. The utter horror of the catastrophe is magnified by the fact that the devastation is related in only two laconic Hebrew sentences: “Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven. And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.”

For most readers in ancient or medieval times, that depiction of a sudden and total cataclysm could hardly be imagined except in supernatural terms. Clearly, no human agent could have caused it, and even nature’s formidable arsenal did not furnish many phenomena that could account for an upheaval of such lethal proportions. 

This conslusion was perfectly fine for most traditional Jewish thinkers. It served for them as proof that God is vastly superior to nature and can marshal natural forces to punish the wicked.

However, not all of our commentators subscribed to that approach. Some of them found the existence of miracles to be theologically problematic, in that they raised questions about the absoluteness of the natural law, and about the eternal perfection of the Creator of those laws. 

Rabbi Nissim ben Moses of Marseilles devoted a study to the investigation of biblical miracles. Rabbi Nissim (whose Hebrew name appropriately translates “miracles”) published his work in 1306, and in it he analyzed most of the miracle stories in the Torah from a rationalistic and scientific perspective. Wherever possible, he strove to minimize the miraculous or supernatural elements of the stories. Like Maimonides, he claimed that many of the wondrous episodes in the Bible were actually visions that had no reality outside the minds of the prophets, and that their importance lies in their theological or moral lessons, not in their historical veracity.

Nevertheless, when he came to deal with the story about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Rabbi Nissim was not prepared to deny that the event had actually occurred in the physical world. He classified it as a “wonder” (pele in Hebrew), the technical term he coined to designate those miracles that should be understood literally. 

The reason he offers for this uncharacteristic credulity is that the event described in the biblical story does actually correspond to known natural phenomena. It resembles several of the features that accompany a volcanic earthquake that is powerful enough to produce fissures in the earth’s surface. As he saw it, the presence of fire, brimstone and salt is also consistent with that premise, since the quake might well release such materials when it breaks open faults in the earth’s surface.

We must make allowances for the fact that Rabbi Nissim’s science is not always up to our current standards. For example, he believed that the ultimate natural cause of an earthquake is to be sought in the stars, which can exert an astrological influence on the winds that will in turn cause the earth to tremble.

In this specific case, Rabbi Nissim was able to cite a concrete example of a Sodom-like cataclysm that would have been fresh in the memories of many of his readers. “Such an event occurred in our own times on the island known as Ischia, which lies at a distance of fifteen miles from Naples. It used to contain some five thousand houses, until the entire earth was devastated, split and scorched by brimstone, salt and streaming fire. To this day much smoke issues from that area.” 

Rabbi Nissim’s account is corroborated by scientific and historical evidence of an eruption of immense proportions on the volcanic island of Ischia in the Bay of Naples. The disaster that he refers to took place in January or February of 1302. It was the only eruption of that volcano recorded since 295, and there has not been another one afterwards. Eruptions at Ischia appear to have been much more frequent in ancient times, and there are still ongoing traces of volcanic and seismic activity beneath the island’s surface.

Indeed, the geological descriptions of the Ischia eruption dovetail remarkably with the biblical account of Sodom. It involved the creation of a crater, a heavy stream of molten lava and the emission of immense quantities of ash and pumice, sufficient to darken the daytime sky. It is very easy to appreciate why Rabbi Nissim would have equated that event with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

There were some other ancient and medieval writers who invoked natural models in order to explain what had happened to the wicked cities. Josephus Flavius, the first-century Jewish historian, provides us with an eyewitness account of the state of that region in his own time: 

“Now this country is so sadly burnt up, that nobody cares to come to it… Owing to the impiety of its inhabitants, it was burnt by lightning; in consequence of which there are still … ashes growing in their fruits, and those fruits have a colour as if they were fit to be eaten: but if you pluck them with your hands, they will dissolve into smoke and ashes.” 

I suspect that Josephus’ description of the divine retribution by lightning was inserted in order to appeal to his Greek and Roman readers who were accustomed to tales about Zeus or Jove hurling thunderbolts to smite foes and rivals. 

Some two centuries later, the Midrash quotes Rabbi Joshua ben Levi (a resident of Lydda) as saying that ever since the biblical upheaval, if a person were to collect rainwater from the air of Sodom and use it to irrigate a field, it would not cause any plant to grow. 

Sa’adiah Gaon, writing in the tenth century, found an indirect allusion to that claim in the wording of the Bible. In his Arabic commentary to Genesis, he noted that the Torah’s specification that the destruction extended to “that which grew upon the ground” appears initially to be a superfluously trivial detail, given the massive proportions of the desolation. Therefore, Sa’adiah concluded that the expression was inserted in order to inform us that the air itself was polluted in the aftermath of the cities’ destruction. 

In support of this claim about the air quality in the Sodom region, he notes “this can be demonstrated empirically.” He then goes on to describe the same experiment that had been mentioned by Rabbi Joshua ben Levi. Although the similarity of the phraseology makes it clear that he is alluding to the passage from the Midrash, it is not inconceivable that Sa’adiah might have had access to the testimony of contemporary travelers who had reported the same phenomenon of sterile rainwater.

When Josephus, Sa’adiah or Nissim were grappling with the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, it was clear to them that the instantaneous demolition and contamination of entire regions remained beyond the capability of any human agent. Unfortunately, technological progress has allowed us humans to vie with the catastrophic forces that were once the exclusive domain of God, volcanoes or lightning-bolts. 

Hopefully, our growing ability to “play God” will begin to be accompanied by a corresponding improvement of our moral stature. The alternative would be catastrophic.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, November 6, 2009, p. 10.
• For further reading:
  • Kreisel, Howard T, ed. Rabbi Nissim Massilitani: Liber Ma’ase Nissim: Commentarius in Pentateuchum. Jerusalem: Mekize Nirdamim, 2000. 
  • Leaman, Oliver. Moses Maimonides. Oxford: Taylor & Francis, 1990.
  • Zucker, Moshe, ed. Saadya’s Commentary on Genesis. New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1984.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Dad Always Liked You Best

by Eliezer Segal

Ideally, the distribution of presents should be an expression of goodwill that enhances the affection or esteem that exist between the giver and the receiver. There are, however, some occasions when the implications of a gift are not fully thought out, and it becomes an occasion for resentment or bitterness. A common scenario of this sort is when the generosity that was extended toward one person causes others to feel slighted.

It would appear that a classic instance of this pattern may be found in the Torah, in Jacob’s treatment of his children. It was not enough that the patriarch openly demonstrated that he loved young Joseph more than his siblings, but he had to rub their faces in it by giving him a special Dream Coat to serve as a constant reminder of his partiality. Evidently this was what pushed the tragic sibling rivalry to its point of no return.

The pious sages of the Midrash were often inclined to put a favourable spin on questionable deeds of our biblical ancestors. Indeed, several of them found weighty reasons why Jacob, who was endowed with prophetic insights into his sons’ spiritual character and the destiny of their descendants, should have singled out Joseph for special favours. Nevertheless, they could not completely overlook what was manifestly a case of unforgivably bad parenting. This disapproving perspective was given unequivocal formulation by some prominent rabbis: “Rabbi Simeon ben Laqish said in the name of Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah: A man should take care not to show favouritism with his children. For on account of the ornamental cloak that our father Jacob fashioned for Joseph–When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him and could not speak a kind word to him.'”

The Babylonian Talmud drew the same conclusion in more pointed and explicit language: “Rava bar Mahasia cited Rav Hama bar Goria in the name of Rav: A person should never show favouritism towards one of his sons. For it was on account of a mere two selas’ weight of fine wool by which Jacob favoured Joseph more than his other sons that they became jealous of him; and ultimately this caused our ancestors to end up in Egypt.”

Indeed, by linking Jacob’s special treatment of Joseph not only to the appalling sibling rivalry, but also to the nation’s enslavement in Egypt, the Talmud was opening itself up to a potential objection, one that was raised by several later scholars. As the medieval Tosafot argued: Why should we blame Jacob or his sons? The Israelites would certainly have ended up in Egypt in any case! After all, the Almighty had already foretold to Abraham that “your descendants will be strangers in a land not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated.” 

Some of the commentators respond to this objection by noting that the divine promise to Abraham could have been fulfilled in other ways, in a different land (Egypt was not identified by name to Abraham) or with less severe suffering. However, it seems to me that such solutions are missing the main point. 

This issue was tackled head-on by the fifteenth-century Spanish philosopher Rabbi Isaac Arama in his Akedat Yitzhak commentary, in the context of a remarkable theological discussion about the interplay between the divine historical plan and the moral freedom of individual human beings. Although God ultimately made use of the family conflict to bring about his scheme of enslaving Abraham’s descendants, in no way did he compel or encourage Jacob or his sons to mistreat Joseph in the first place. Consequently, they must accept full moral accountability for their actions and choices. If Jacob had not provoked their envy and if the brothers had not sold Joseph, then surely the Lord would have found other ways to achieve his historical purpose.

This reproachful attitude toward Jacob was echoed by the Italian exegete Rabbi Obadiah Sforno who stated that in favouring Joseph with the gift of the special coat, Jacob had shown bad judgment by singling out one of his children for preferential treatment, and by making evident to them the special affection that he had hitherto been keeping to himself. 

The difficult question is exacerbated yet more when we turn to a later episode in the saga of Joseph and his brothers. After they have all been reconciled and Joseph invites the family to escape the famine by joining him in Egypt, he provides them all with presents: “To each of them he gave new clothing, but to Benjamin he gave three hundred shekels of silver and five sets of clothes.”

The Talmud was flabbergasted by Joseph’s conduct here. Joseph himself was now perpetuating the same kind of gift-giving treatment that his father had shown toward him, and which that had brought upon him and his family such grievous suffering! 

Indeed, Rabbi Eleazar ben Pedat could not conceive how Joseph could have acted so foolishly. It simply made no sense as long as his action was understood purely from the perspective of the psychological dynamics of the family relationship. He therefore proposed another, symbolic meaning for the special gift that Joseph bestowed on Benjamin. The five sets of clothes should accordingly be read as a prophetic allusion to the exploits of Benjamin’s illustrious descendant Mordecai who would one day be honored by Ahasuerus with five splendid garments of royal apparel. 

Even according to this rather fanciful reading of the story, Rabbi Eleazar is acknowledging that, were it not for the deeper symbolic significance of the gesture, it would have been improper for Joseph to single out Benjamin for preferential treatment in the doling out of presents to his brothers. 

And this, I suppose, is a valuable lesson that we can take away from this disturbing instance of family dysfunctionality: whenever the spirit of magnanimity moves us to give out presents to people we love and admire, we must consider not only the feelings of satisfaction that the gift may produce in the recipients, but also the offended reactions it might provoke in persons who have not benefited from the same measure of generosity.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, November 20, 2009, p. 10.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Eleazar Died for Our Sins

by Eliezer Segal

There is one exploit from the Hanukkah saga that has always captured my imagination with a special vividness. The heroic battle of Judah Maccabee against the Greek elephants at Beth Zechariah had all the vibrancy and spectacle of a technicolor epic. 

As the story is related in the First Book of Maccabees (and copied verbatim into Josephus Flavius’ “Jewish Antiquities”), King Antiochus V Eupator was encountering stubborn resistance in his siege of the town of Bethsura in what he expected to be a victorious march to Jerusalem. Judah and his forces were, at the time, besieging the citadel of Jerusalem striving to wrest it from the enemy forces; but he chose to withdraw for a while from that operation in order to confront the king at the mountain pass at Beth Zachariah. 

At this point, Antiochus decided to pursue a strategy of shock and awe by commanding his forces to face Judah’s encampment in their most imposing battle array. The most impressive equipment in the Greek army was the “armored corps” made up of elephants who were fed on grape and mulberry wine in order to heighten their aggressiveness. The beasts marched in single file, but the procession was orchestrated in such a way as to strike terror in the hearts of the ragged band of Jewish guerrillas. Each elephant was surrounded by a thousand heavily armored foot-soldiers and a troop of five hundred first-class horse-cavalry. The elephants carried on their backs skilled Indian drivers, as well as tall wooden turrets to house archers. 

The soldiers were instructed to bear their shiniest gold and bronze shields that would flash dazzling light onto the surrounding hills, and to shout thunderously in the diresction of the resounding mountainsides. This was intended to enhance the frightening psychological impact, making the Seleucid Greek force appear indestructible and superhuman. As reported by the ancient Jewish chroniclers, Judah and his followers were not at all daunted by this vision, and initially they enjoyed considerable success against the enemy. 

At this point, the focus of the narrative shifts to Judah’s youngest brother, Eleazar. Eleazar noticed that one of the enemy elephants seemed to be more prominent than the others. It was taller than the rest and was decorated with regal armour, all of which seemed to indicate that the king himself was being conveyed inside the tower on its back. Eleazar reasoned that a succesful assault against that elephant and its rider might tip the scales of the battle or of the entire campaign. 

In full swashbuckling form, he leaped into the fray and approached the imperial pachyderm, single-handedly slaughtering or putting to flight the dozens of enemy soldiers who stood in his way. Then, having positioned himself directly under the beast’s soft underbelly, he plunged the blade of his sword into it, knowing that this heroic act would bring about his own demise. This was indeed the outcome of his attack: the animal’s immense weight now collapsed onto Eleazar, fatally crushing him. 

As it turned out, the king was not on that fatal elephant, and the Seleucid forces were able to continue their advance to Jerusalem and the Temple. A reprieve was eventually granted only because the Greeks had to withdraw their forces to deal with an attempted coup back home. Eleazar’s self-sacrifice turned out to be in vain.

In recent years, some historians have called into question the veracity of the story, noting some problems with the geographical topography, and the fact that several details in the description of the Seleucid military strategy were well-known literary clichés in Greek writings of the time. The suspicion is that the author of 1 Maccabees, a propagandist for the Hasmonean regime, was trying to exaggerate the power of the Seleucid army in order to make the Jewish defeat more palatable to his readers.

At any rate, neither the Book of Maccabees nor the writings of Josephus Flavius were accepted into the ranks of canonical Jewish religious texts, and (unlike some of the other episodes in those works) the adventure of Eleazar and the elephant did not find its way into the Talmud or Midrash. Nevertheless, a brief account of the episode did survive in the “Scroll of Antiochus,” a Hebrew paraphrase of Maccabees that was recited on Hanukkah in many medieval Jewish communities. 

In the Scroll of Antiochus, unlike the Book of Maccabees, Eleazar did not charge against a particular elephant because of his suspicions about its illustrious passenger. Rather, he was conducting a campaign against all the enemy’s elephants. When the battle was over, Eleazar’s comrades were at first unable to find him, until eventually they discovered his corpse drowned in elephant dung.

If the memory of Eleazar elicited little interest in Jewish tradition, he did achieve remarkable prominence in medieval Christian tradition. The Books of Maccabees were counted among the Roman Catholic sacred scriptures, and the Jewish heroes of those works were elevated to the status of saints or holy martyrs.

Even by the inventive standards of medieval Catholic exegesis, it is hard not to be astonished by the role that was assigned to Eleazar: his readiness to sacrifice his life for his beliefs and for his nation was seen as a typological archetype of Jesus’ crucifixion, in keeping with the time-honoured Christian belief that the stories in the Hebrew scriptures are to be read as “prefigurations” of the “new covenant.”

However we may feel about the theological implications of this approach—and I am not aware that it was cultivated very much in Christian literature or art—we might be grateful that it opened the doors for the inclusion of Eleazar’s story among the standard motifs of European art. On the whole, the artists seemed less interested in the story’s allegorical significance than in the opportunites it offered them to draw exotic animals, architecturally complex fortresses and action-packed battles. 

Thus, in the crude illuminations and woodcuts that accompanied the popular medieval encyclopedia Speculum Humanae Salvationis (Mirror of Human Salvation) by Vincent of Beauvais, the artists provided a precise rendering of our story, with Eleazar in his knightly armour sitting rather serenely under the elephant’s belly and stabbing it with his sword—except that the lean beast in question looks rather like a hybrid of a horse and camel with a stretched-out nose, in a style oddly reminiscent of Dr. Seuss. Presumably, we will have to forgive those European artists who never got to see an accurate picture of an elephant, let alone behold one in the flesh. 

On the other hand, Eleazar’s heroism also inspired more talented artists. Among the most memorable renderings of the story was Gustave Doré’s unnerving etching in which the rampant trumpeting elephant, drawn with zoological precision, veritably leaps off the page as the archers perched on its back exchange missiles with the Jewish warriors.

And if your preference is for poetry and music rather than the visual arts, you might find inspiration in the grandiose tribute that Handel placed in the mouth of Judas Maccabaeus in the oratorio of that name:

But pause awhile: due obsequies prepare
To those who bravely fell in war.
To Eleazar special tribute pay;
Through slaughter’d troops he cut his way
To the distinguish’d elephant, and, whelm’d beneath
The stabbed monster, triumph’d in a glorious death.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, December 11, 2009, p. 21.
• For further reading:
  • Bar-Kochva, Bezalel. “The Description of the Battle of Beth Zacharia: Literary Fiction or Historical Fact ?” Kathedra. 86 (1998): 7-22.
  • Gera, Dov. “The Battle of Beth Zachariah and Greek Literature.”The Jews in the Hellenistic-Roman World: Studies in Memory of Menahem Stern. Ed. Daniel R. Schwartz, Aharon Oppenheimer, & Isaiah Gafni. Jerusalem, 1996. 25-53.
  • Scigliano, Eric. Love, War, and Circuses. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002.
  • Wilson, Adrian, and Joyce Lancaster Wilson. A Medieval Mirror: Speculum Humanae Salvationis, 1324-1500. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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