Stop the Presses!

by Eliezer Segal

With the proliferation of popular devices like the Apple iPad and Amazon Kindle, and the massive digitizing projects being undertaken by Google Books and similar enterprises, it is clear that the business of book publication is undergoing a far-reaching transformation. Observers have compared the current developments to the appearance of movable-type printing in Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when the handwritten manuscript was supplanted by the mass-produced output of the printing press. Then as now, the rapid pace of the changes made it all but impossible for the law to keep up with the new questions that were arising with regard to intellectual property, publication and distribution.

Many of the pioneers of Hebrew printing were adventurous entrepreneurs whose economic bottom line depended on taking prompt and aggressive initiatives in a brutally competitive environment. It was vital to be the first to market with an attractive title, and to protect one’s investment against opportunistic imitators.

The first century of Hebrew printing came to be dominated by the illustrious press that operated in Venice under the direction of the Christian Daniel Bomberg from Antwerp. This press was responsible for the introduction of the standard Rabbinic Bible and the first complete editions of the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds.

When the Bomberg press ceased its operations in 1548, it was partly due to the Venetian Senate’s rescinding of its generous copyright policy; and was exacerbated by fierce competition from the new rival press of Marcantonio Giustiniani, a well-connected local aristocrat. Indeed, after Bomberg’s withdrawal from the market, Giustiniani maintained a virtual monopoly on Hebrew publications, a privilege that he exploited as leverage when negotiating with prospective authors. Thus, we find that when Rabbi Meir Katzenellenbogen (“Maharam”) of Padua approached him with his newly edited and annotated version of Maimonides’ code of law, the conditions that Giustiniani wanted to impose on him were too exploitative. This induced the rabbi to take his business to a new competitor, Aloiso Bragadini, under whose insignia the new edition of Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah appeared in 1550.

Determined not to lose out on this lucrative market, Giustiniani hurriedly prepared his own cheaper edition of Maimonides’ code that he hoped would undercut Bragadini’s and drive him out of business. He copied the Maharam’s commentary and annotations, but relocated them to an inconspicuous appendix while declaring in the preface that they were of no scholarly value. 

Rabbi Meir accused Giustinani of virtually giving his wares away in order to drive the competition out of business; and he took care to acquire copyright protection from Rabbi Moses Isserles of Cracow in a ruling that included a ban against the publication of competing products until the original inventory was sold out–a ban that Isserles argued was also to be applied to the non-Jew Giustiniani.

Not to be undone, Giustiniani prepared a bold counterstrike by appealing to the authority of the Catholic Church. He manufactured accusations that Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah was a blasphemous work that should be banned for its defamations of the true Christian religion. To add credibility to his campaign he enlisted the support of several apostate Jews who welcomed this opportunity to confirm their loyalty to their new faith by digging up objectionable quotes.

Of course this game could be played by both sides, and it did not take long for Bragadini to start hurling similar denunciations–also supported by the aspersions of his own coterie of apostates–against some of the venerable Hebrew texts that had been published by Giustiniani’s press–several of which had, in fact, been plagiarized from previous editions by Bomberg and others. The ongoing bitter conflict between these two gentile publishers of Hebrew books continued for several years.

Caught in the crossfire was the Talmud itself, which Giustiniani had recently issued. The Vatican, embroiled at this time in its desperate struggle against the advances of Protestantism, was prone to heavy-handed censorship. Thus, what had begun as a relatively minor copyright feud between rival printing houses quickly escalated into a devastating tragedy for the Jewish people when the Pope issued an injunction against the Talmud. On Rosh Hashanah in 1553, hundreds of sacred Hebrew tomes were consigned to the flames of an auto da fé on Rome’s Campo de’ Fiori, setting in motion a pattern that would rapidly spread through many Italian communities. 

A similar incident (though without such tragic consequences) became a cause célèbre. more than a century later in Amsterdam, which had inherited much of Venice’s glory as a prestigious centre of Hebrew printing.

This affair involved the publication of a Yiddish translation of the Bible. The project was undertaken by the publisher Uri Fayvesh Halevi who assigned the translating to a scholar named Jekuthiel Blitz. The two were outspoken advocates of systematic grammatical studies of the sort that were cultivated by the Sephardim, but which they felt had been largely disregarded in Ashkenazic culture. The resulting translation was heavily influenced by the standard Dutch and German versions, and Blitz even included some comments that were critical of Christianity. Owing to the heavy risks involved in financing the translation, Uri Fayvesh took the precaution of securing copyright privileges from the central governing body of Polish Jewry, the Council of the Four Lands; though the subsequent legal wrangling reveals that there remained tangible questions as to the precise identity of the copyright holder. Under the terms of the edict that was issued in 1667 and subsequently confirmed by both German and Sepharadic authorities in Amsterdam and elsewhere, no competing Yiddish Bible translation would be allowed for a period of ten years under threat of a rabbinic writ of ostracism (herem). Later, with the help of his Christian backers, he was able to obtain a twenty-year guarantee of his copyright from the Polish crown. 

Unfortunately, Uri Fayvesh had not made allowances for the chicanery of a disgruntled typesetter named Yosel Witzenhausen who used his insider’s knowledge to produce, under his own name, a translation which he offered to the press of Joseph Athias (some of it consisting of the actual typeset pages from Blitz’s edition). Athias had previously been one of Uri Fayvesh’s backers, but he became dissatisfied with Blitz’s translation and decided to publish a competing version that was more similar to the traditional Yiddish translations. He even succeeded in narrowly beating Uri Fayvesh’s edition to market. 

Athias was famous for his award-winning edition of the Hebrew Bible, and he established himself as one of the city’s foremost publishers. Athias’ affluence and professional standing enabled him to secure copyrights for Witzenhausen’s translation from several local jurisdictions (“because he fears someone else might steal his idea”), and even from the Council of the Four Lands. In reality, it appears that neither publisher was paying much attention to the solemn restrictions that were pronounced by the respective authorities, and they both proceeded to peddle their wares quite freely while citing technical legalities to justify their actions.

Nevertheless, their short-term greed turned out to be self-destructive for both publishers. By over-saturating the market they were exposing themselves to financial disaster as they found themselves in continuous debt to their financial backers. Uri Fayvesh at one point had to pawn his equipment, while Athias had to sell off his inventory and concentrate his efforts on the more lucrative business of printing English Bibles.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, August 27, 2010, p. 14.
• For further reading:
  • Amram, David Werner. The Makers of Hebrew Books in Italy; Being Chapters in the History of the Hebrew Printing Press. London: Holland Press, 1963.
  • Aptroot, Marion.”‘In galkhes they do not say so, but the taytsh is at it stands here’. Notes on the Amsterdam Yiddish Bible Translations by Blitz and Witzenhausen.” Studia Rosenthaliana 27 (1993): 136-158. 
  • ——. “Bible translation as cultural reform : the Amsterdam Yiddish Bibles (1678-1679).” D.Phil., Oxford: University of Oxford, 1989. 
  • Bloch, Joshua. Venetian Printers of Hebrew Books. New York: The New York public library, 1932. 
  • Fuks, Lajb. Hebrew Typography in the Northern Netherlands, 1585-1815: Historical Evaluation, and Descriptive Bibliography. Leiden: Brill, 1984. 
  • Netanel, Neil Weinstock. “Maharam of Padua v. Giustiniani: the Sixteenth-Century Origins of the Jewish Law of Copyright.” Houston Law Review 44, no. 4 (2007): 822-870. 
  • Roth, Cecil. History of the Jews in Venice. New York: Schocken Books, 1975. 
  • ——. The Jews in the Renaissance. 1st ed. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1959. 
  • Schatz, Andrea. “Returning to Sepharad: Maskilic Reflections on Hebrew in the Diaspora.” In Sepharad in Ashkenaz: Medieval Knowledge and Eighteenth Century Jewish Enlightened Discourse, edited by Resianne Fontaine, Andrea Schatz, and Irene Zwiep, 263-277. Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2007. 
  • Timm, Erika. “Blitz and Witzenhausen.” In Studies in Jewish culture in honour of Chone Shmeruk, edited by Israel Bartal, Chava Turniansky, and Ezra Mendelsohn, 39-66. Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 1993.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Snap to Attention

by Eliezer Segal

For the High Priests of ancient Israel, Yom Kippur could be an arduous ordeal that demanded considerable physical stamina and ritual expertise. Not only was the priest in the holy Temple of Jerusalem required to perform his duties while fasting, but according to the traditions related by the rabbis of the Mishnah, he was to be kept awake during the preceding night lest he be prevented from performing his duties by inadvertent contact with impurity. Toward that end, special contingents of young priests or Levites were assigned to keep him from dozing off. Whenever he appeared to be getting groggy they would strike before him with something called “a ṣeradah finger.” I initially imagined the lads poking or hitting the priest with their fingers; however, the talmudic rabbis did not go for that explanation, perhaps because they could not conceive of such a dignified personage being treated so shabbily.

“Ṣeradah” was an unusual term that demanded an explanation. In one of those charmingly outrageous talmudic word-plays, Rav Judah traced it to an Aramaic expression meaning “her rival” and referring to the finger opposite the thumb. For good measure, Rav Huna demonstrated the required gesture before his colleagues and succeeded in producing a sound that resounded through the study-hall. Unfortunately, no YouTube video has yet surfaced of Rav Huna’s demonstration, so the commentators are still unclear as to the precise nature of the practice being described. 

According to Rashi, the young attendant would produce the sound by snapping his index finger against his thumb and then striking it on his palm. Most other commentators, however, identified the digit in question as the middle finger, not the index finger. This in fact was stated explicitly in the Tosefta (an ancient supplement to the Mishnah) and accepted by most medieval authorities, including Rashi’s own grandson Rabbenu Jacob Tam who pointed out that “it is a well-know fact that you cannot produce a loud sound unless you strike with the middle finger.”

Maimonides also alluded to a widespread practice, noting that “many people do this on festive occasions, and it produces pleasant gestures.” It would appear from Maimonides’ wording that what kept the priest awake was not necessarily the sound of the snapping or clapping, but rather the visual grace of the finger-play.

In his commentary to the Mishnah, Rabbi Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller concocted an elaborate drama–verging on a soap opera–in order to explain the various usages of the term “rival” in the Talmud and among its commentators. The underlying Hebrew word “ṣarah” is one that is normally used to designate co-wives in a polygamous marriage arrangement. In Rabbi Heller’s elaborate reconstruction of the domestic metaphor, he observed that a woman can only take on the dubious status of a “rival” where there is already a veteran “main wife” in the household. Therefore, the scenario presupposes a domestic ménage à troisconsisting of Husband, Main Wife and Rival. When this situation is illustrated with the help of fingers (I would even recommend finger-puppets), we find ourselves casting the thumb as the Husband, the index-finger (standing stalwartly beside her man) as the Main Wife, and the tall and lovely Ms. Ṣeradah as the Rival for Thumb’s affections.

In support of this interpretation, several interpreters cited a passage by the liturgical poet Eleazar Kalir in which he expatiated on the theme of how effortless it was for the Almighty to create the vast universe using only the metaphorical fingers of a single divine hand. Crudely translated, the text states as follows: “The highest heavens he laid out with his little finger / and all the primordial mountains he weighed with his index finger / and the eternal hills he supported with the glory of his thumb / and the vale and all its soil he measured with his ṣeradah.” It turns out that, by elimination, the only finger that Kalir could have been designating as the divine ṣeradah was the middle finger. 

The Jerusalem Talmud offers a somewhat different slant on the use of the ṣeradah finger to keep the High Priest awake. It cites the following dispute: “Rav Huna [apparently the same sage who was cited in the aforementioned Babylonian tradition] says: with a ṣeradah finger in the mouth, and Rabbi Yoḥanan says: with a ṣeradah finger in the hand.”

While Rabbi Yoḥanan’s mention of a hand makes perfect sense according to all the interpretations that we have been discussing so far, it is far from clear what the finger was doing in anybody’s mouth according to Rav Huna. 

Most commentators understood that he was speaking about producing one of those powerful whistle sounds that are amplified by the insertion of fingers in the mouth. By implication, it has been suggested, Rabbi Yoḥanan would have been referring to the playing of a hand-operated musical instrument, such as the strumming of a lyre, or–as the Talmud later modifies his interpretation–to singing a vocal rendition of a tune that was more familiar in its instrumental version. 

This understanding is attested in numerous medieval liturgical poems that were composed according to the Palestinian rite and were preserved in the Cairo Genizah. In the course of their elaborate descriptions of the order of worship on the Day of Atonement, the poets included stanzas such as: “those who intone song on the Temple platform sound the melody of the ṣeradah in the mouth and not on a lyre.” 

Although the talmudic discussions focused on describing the rituals of the Day of Atonement in ancient Jerusalem, some later religious authorities were able to derive lessons that were germane to contemporary questions. For instance, Rabbi Israel Isserlein (in fifteenth-century Austria) was asked about people who snap their thumbs and middle fingers on holy days for the amusement of young children. This practice was considered questionable in view of the fact that the Mishnah explicitly prohibits making sounds by slapping or clapping the hands.

As a precedent for allowing the practice, Rabbi Isserlein cited our talmudic discussion about keeping the High Priest awake before Yom Kippur. While he acknowledged that rabbinic prohibitions such as the one against hand-clapping were not normally applied in the Temple precincts, he argued that if that were the only reason for permitting it in this instance, then the Talmud should have mentioned that fact explicitly. Since the sages did not consider the matter worthy of explanation or discussion, evidently they did not think it was problematic. Hence, Rabbi Isserlein concluded that there is no halakhic objection to snapping one’s fingers on sabbaths and festivals.
Indeed, a simple finger-snap might be a useful method for awakening those of us who drift into an occasional siesta during the synagogue services. However, the true message of the penitential season should be powerful enough to rouse us all from our more disturbing bouts of spiritual or moral lethargy.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, September 10, 2010, p. 21.
• For further reading:
  • Lieberman, Saul. Tosefta Ki-Feshuṭah. Vol. 4. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1962.
  • Malachi, Zvi.”Keeping the High Priest Awake through Yom Kippur Night: Vocal Music instead of Instrumental.” Sidra 2 (1986): 67-75.
  • Yalon, Henoch. Studies in the Hebrew Language. Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1971.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Four Species, Five Opinions?

by Eliezer Segal

The Torah usually provides us with explicit reasons for the various holy day rituals. Thus, we refrain from work on Sabbath to recall how God completed the creation of the world on the seventh day, we eat matzah on Passover to commemorate our ancestors’ hasty departure from Egypt, and so forth. Similarly, we were commanded to dwell in booths during Sukkot “in order that future generations may know that I made the Israelite people live in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt.”

However, scripture offers no rationale for the second major precept associated with Sukkot, the obligation to carry the “four species”: “you shall take the fruit of goodly trees, branches of palm trees, boughs of leafy trees, and willows of the brook…”.

In his Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonides proposed explanations of his own that he felt were true to the holiday’s main purpose. He observed that the four species express the people’s appreciation for the fact that they were finally allowed to exchange the parched and barren surroundings of the desert for a homeland of lush fruit-trees and rivers. It is therefore appropriate to express our joy by taking up samples of the finest products to blossom from the soil of the holy land: the most succulent of the fruit, the most fragrant branch, the loveliest leaves and the finest of herbs. Among all the items that might satisfy those criteria, the four chosen by the Torah have the advantages of being abundant and readily available, having fresh and attractive appearances or aromas (or, at least, not emitting disagreeable odors), and maintaining their freshness through the seven days of the festival.

No doubt, this interpretation has a lot to recommend it, particularly in the way that it creates a unifying link between the festival’s two chief rituals: just as the sojourn in the sukkah is a reliving of the wilderness experience, so too the four species contrast the privations of the desert with the fruitfulness of the promised land.

If there was a serious shortcoming to Maimonides’ explanation, it lay in the fact that it was not found in any of the classical Jewish texts that preceded him. Indeed, the pages of the Talmud and Midrash contain numerous symbolic interpretations of the four species’ significance. Many of those interpretations, including the comparisons to different types of Jews or to organs of the human body that unite in worshipping the Almighty, are probably familiar to my readers, even as they were to Maimonides’ own contemporaries. By what authority then, did he dismiss those traditions so glibly?

Maimonides was well aware of this problem, to the extent that he felt impelled to veer off on an extended digression in order to discuss the general character of midrashic interpretations. He assured his readers that anyone who is intimately familiar with the literary sensibilities of the ancient Jewish sages should recognize that many of the explanations that the rabbis attached to biblical texts were not intended as their actual meanings. On the contrary, audiences of the time were conversant with the practice of preachers to fashion an ingenious rhetorical connection between a profound idea or moral principle and the words of holy scripture. Those interpretations should be regarded as poetic figures of speech, and they should by no means be confused with serious biblical exegesis of the sort that Maimonides himself was proposing.

Maimonides recognized that his approach to rabbinic interpretations was not very widely acknowledged among his contemporary Jewish public. Unfortunately, this failure to appreciate the literary character of midrash gave rise to some bizarre and intellectually troubling notions. In many cases, it encouraged a mindless fundamentalism, as many Jews relinquished their ability to discern between legitimate exegesis and fanciful hyperbole.

Even more distressing were those readers who, realizing that the midrashic expositions do not qualify as credible interpretations of the text, were nonetheless convinced that the ancient sages had intended those interpretations as literal exegesis. This led them to deride the rabbis and dismiss them as incompetent simpletons.

Underlying all of this discussion is the premise that biblical texts should not have more than a single, unambiguous meaning. This was Maimonides’ personal preference, and it was consistent with his scientific outlook on life, and indeed with the prevailing temper of the rationalist Arab culture in which he was nurtured. Scientific discourse, according to this view, ought to avoid all traces of obscurity and ambiguity. Of course, he assumed that the same standard of clarity must have been embraced by the ultimate source of perfect Reason and the author of the Torah. Accordingly, there can be only one true reason for the precept of four species on Sukkot; and any additional rationales, even those set forth by our revered rabbis of old, cannot be authentic ones.

A similar discussion about the nature of rabbinic interpretations is found in the writings of the thirteenth-century Italian talmudist Rabbi Isaiah di Trani the Younger. Rabbi di Trani was concerned about Jews who, in the course of teaching Torah to gentiles, rejected the unconvincing scriptural interpretations of the talmudic rabbis. He conceded that rabbinic discourse does contain elements of exaggerated hyperbole that were never meant to be believed literally, alongside miracle tales about the workings of divine providence that ought to be accepted as a matter of faith. However, between these extremes lies a gray area in which the sages advanced multiple interpretations of a single passage. It was clear to di Trani that the rabbis were not troubled by the coexistence of several expositions of a single text.

In fact, he went on to argue, not only should this not be seen as a deficiency of their exegesis, but it is actually an indication of consummate artistic virtuosity! “Do you not observe how frequently even an author of secular works can speak in such a manner that his words contain two meanings? It follows that this should be even more valid with respect to words of wisdom that were uttered under the inspiration of the divine spirit!”

On the surface, it appears that Rabbi di Trani was advocating an approach that was diametrically opposite to Maimonides’ repudiation of ambiguity. In reality, though, di Trani also recognized that no biblical text possesses more than a single primary explanation. Where he differed from Maimonides was in his assertion that the additional interpretations that were expounded by the midrashic sages were also part of its “original meaning.” That is to say, the divine author of the Bible implanted multiple layers of supplementary meanings into the sacred text, so that Jewish preachers of subsequent generations were not inventing novel interpretations–as Maimonides would have it–but rather, they were unearthing possibilities of meaning that had been concealed there in the first place.

And in fact, in adopting that approach, Rabbi di Trani was very much in the spirit of his contemporary Italian culture. A few decades afterwards, his neighbour Dante Alighieri declared with pride that his own poetic works were susceptible to multiple interpretations, including the literal and the allegorical. He applied these strategies to his “Divina Commedia” on the premise that this was a precedent that had been established by the Bible.

Perhaps the starting point for this whole discussion, the mitzvah of the four species, provides us with an apt metaphor. Like the countless interpretations proposed by the rabbis of the midrash and by thinkers like Maimonides and di Trani, each one of the species possesses its own unique identity. However, this precept must be observed while we are holding or binding the species together as a unified whole, true to its single underlying purpose.

Now, if only we could agree on what that purpose is…

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, September 24, 2010, p. 10.
• For further reading:
  • Altmann, Alexander. “Ars Rhetorica as Reflected in Some Jewish Figures of the Italian Renaissance.” In Essential papers on Jewish culture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy, 63-84. New York and London: New York University Press, 1992.
  • Elbaum, Jacob. Medieval Perspectives on Aggadah and Midrash. Sifriyat Dorot 68. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 2000.
  • Segal, Eliezer. “Midrash and Literature: Some Medieval Views.” Prooftexts 11, no. 1 (1991): 57-65.
  • Talmage, Frank. Apples of Gold in Settings of Silver: Studies in Medieval Jewish Exegesis and Polemics. Edited by Barry Walfish. Papers in Mediaeval Studies 14. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1999.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Stincus, Scincus Shmincus—But Is It Kosher?

by Eliezer Segal

All in all, it would appear that questions about the kosher status of fish should be among the least problematic areas of the Jewish dietary laws. The Torah offers very clear rules for identifying the permissible sea creatures: “whatever in the water has fins and scales.” The Mishnah simplifies the process even more by observing that, while some species might have fins but no scales, all those with scales also have fins. This assumption allows for leniency in cases where the fins are not visible, either because they are too small or because they were removed before the Jewish consumer had a chance to examine the creature.

The halakhic waters got muddied, as it were, one day in the seventeenth century while Rabbi Yom Tov Lipmann Heller was occupying a rabbinical post in Vienna. A Jewish physician named Aaron Lucerna approached him bearing a creature with the charming name “stincus marinus” that inhabited the “Spanish Sea” (the southwest Mediterranean). Like the Japanese fugu puffer-fish, the stincus was said to be lethally poisonous until its toxin was removed by qualified experts, after which the leftovers could be utilized for assorted pharmaceutical purposes.

The main reason Dr. Lucerna thought the creature would be of interest to Rabbi Heller was because it had scales but no fins, thereby presenting an ostensible contradiction to the Mishnah’s rule. How would the rabbi account for this contradiction between science and religious teachings?

An easy solution suggested by the doctor was that the stincus marinus did in fact have “fins” if one were allowed to employ a broad enough definition. For it had four little legs to propel itself, and perhaps those could be counted as fins for purposes of the halakhic classification.

However, Dr. Lucerna had another problem with the stincus marinus. Even if it technically passed the scales-and-fins test, there was something theologically disturbing about declaring it kosher. The fact that it was poisonous and, if improperly prepared, could kill a person who ingested it, seemed incongruous with the overriding spirit of Judaism. In this connection he quoted passages from the Talmud in which the rabbis insisted that all the precepts of the Torah were subject to the condition “her ways are pleasant ways, and all her paths are peace.” Now the doctor argued, that principle should also preclude consuming an unpleasantly poisonous sea creature. How, then, could the stincus marinus  be permissible according to the Torah’s values?

Rabbi Heller related that he was initially disconcerted by Dr. Lucerna’s query and he was unable to come up with a satisfying retort. He suggested feebly that perhaps the Torah did not have this particular species in mind because it was not yet in existence in the days of Moses or of the talmudic rabbis, but was genetically engineered at a later date through cross-breeding. Even though he was able to adduce some midrashic statements about changes that had occurred in nature since the original creation, he was clearly not comfortable with that unlikely explanation.

Eventually the rabbi was able to come up with a more satisfactory solution, one that was rooted in the biblical text rather than in dubious scientific conjectures. His careful reading of the relevant scriptural passages led him to the conclusion that the Torah distinguished between fish and other aquatic creatures, and that the generalization about all scaled species having fins was only true with reference to fish. The stincus marinus, on the other hand, as a non-fish water animal, might well have scales and not fins.

We now know that the whole dilemma was based on a case of mistaken identity. The animal in question was mislabeled. Its real name was “scincus marinus” and it was a member of the skink family. As Rabbi Moses Schreiber (the “Hassam Sofer”) would later report in the name of up-to-date scientific evidence, it was not a water-dweller at all, but a landlubber. In English too it is known misleadingly as a “sandfish,” a name that it likely acquired by virtue of its remarkable talent for propelling itself under the sands by means of swimming-like strokes. These facts were unknown to the earlier Jewish scholars who participated in an animated debate that persisted for centuries. At any rate, what provoked this discussion was not the actual biological organism so much as the intriguing hypothetical concept of a poisonous, scaled and finless organism.  

Rabbi Heller’s discussion was revisited a generation or so later by Rabbi Hezekiah da Silva, a scholar known for his contentious mindset. He was veritably fuming with righteous indignation at both of Heller’s explanations of the stincus marinus: “Lord help him for publishing such foreign notions that all but uproot the boundaries and limits that were established by the ancients, thereby creating opportunities for people to succumb to errors and doubts with regard to the holy and true words of our blessed sages.” 

Da Silva was convinced that if we were to concede the possibility that new species had come into existence since the days of the Bible and Talmud, then the eternal laws of Judaism would completely lose their validity. It was therefore preferable to suppose that Heller’s stincus did originally have fins, but they had somehow dropped off before it was caught, or they had not yet reached their full maturity. Whatever biological objections might be implied in such a theory (and some later rabbis were quick to point these out), “it behooves us to seek after arguments that uphold the words of our revered sages rather than proposing theories that cast doubts on the rabbis’ received traditions.”

In a similar vein, Rabbi da Silva objected to Heller’s hypothesis that the presence of scales without fins was not a sufficient criterion for permitting consumption of aquatic creatures other than fish. He therefore declared the stincus marinus to be kosher. As for the argument that the Torah would never allow us to eat a species that is potentially deadly, that factor was surely offset here by its pharmaceutical benefits. He noted that there are many medicinal products that are permitted by the Torah in spite of their potentially hazardous side-effects. His pious confidence in divine providence reassured him that the no innocent people would ever come to harm from ingesting stincus, as stated in Proverbs: “no harm befalls the righteous, but the wicked have their fill of trouble.” (It seems to me that it would still be prudent to read the fine print on the label.)

The disagreement between Heller and da Silva defined the frame of reference for much subsequent discussion of these issues: Does piety demand a belief that the rabbis of yore possessed infallible expertise in ichthyology, knowledge that originated in divine inspiration rather than in academic scientific study? And do the Jewish dietary laws take into account health factors, or other moral and aesthetic considerations?

Some scholars, like Rabbis Jonathan Eybeschutz and Jacob Zvi Mecklenburg, resolved the problem quite simply by noting that it is virtually impossible to speak of invariable laws among the infinite varieties of biological phenomena; whereas the Torah concerns itself only with the most common situations. The Talmud itself declares that its generalizations are subject to exceptions. As Eybeschutz put it, “if you should discover a creature without fins, this does not disprove the general rule, because it is an exception, and the talmudic sages were speaking about the majority of fish.”

I may be wrong, but I find something quintessentially Jewish in the way that this skirmish between science and religion came to focus not on broad cosmic questions like Evolution or the Big Bang, but on an unpretentiously practical problem about a seafood option on the dinner menu.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, October 15, 2010, p. 10.
• For further reading:
  • Davis, Joseph M. “Ashkenazic Rationalism and Midrashic Natural History: Responses to the New Science in the Works of Rabbi Yom Tov Lipmann Heller (1878-1654).” Science in Context 10 (1997): 605-626.
  • —. “Philosphy and the Law in the Writings of R. Yom Tov Lipman Heller.” In Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature, edited by Isadore Twersky and Jay Harris, 249-280. Harvard Judaic monographs 2. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1979.
  • —. Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller: Portrait of a Seventeenth-Century Rabbi. Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2004.
  • Eisikivits, Eliezer. “Fish Story.” Mishpacha, 2009.
  • Slifkin, Nosson. The Camel, the Hare & the Hyrax: A Study of the Laws of Animals with One Kosher Sign in Light of Modern Zoology. Southfield, MI: Zoo Torah in association with Targum/Feldhei

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My email address is: [email protected]

Uncommon Cold

by Eliezer Segal

In spite of my most stubborn efforts at denial, there is an unmistakable chill in the air and a sniffle in my breathing. We are approaching the season of heavy parkas and runny noses. 

The rabbis of the Talmud and Midrash occasionally turned their thoughts to the effects of cold weather on human health. Their musings led them to some whimsical observations about the relative responsibilities of God, nature and human behaviour in the spread of sicknesses. Several discussions in the Babylonian Talmud connect the issue to an unlikely text, a verse

in the book of Proverbs (22:5) that is usually translated as “thorns and snares are in the way of the perverse: he that keepeth his soul holdeth himself far from them.”

Virtually all the Jewish commentators are in agreement about the verse’s basic meaning. Like most of the book of Proverbs (attributed by tradition to the perspicacious King Solomon), it sets out an extreme contrast between the wise man and the fool; the former is headed toward glorious success, whereas the path of the latter will inevitably lead to shameful disaster. The obstacles mentioned in the Hebrew text of the verse, ṣinnim and paḥim can be translated based on other occurrences of those roots elsewhere in the Bible as referring to dangerous thorns and to pits that are laid out along a roadway. Thus, an intelligent person is vigilant enough to watch out for such potential hazards, but a fool who walks carelessly is doomed to be pierced by the thorns and to stumble into the pit. 

This is a simple and straightforward message, worthy of inscribing on schoolyard gates. The specific examples in the verse can, of course, be generalized as archetypes for any kind of hazard that might lie in our path. 

Nevertheless, when we take a careful look at the interpretations of this verse in the Babylonian Talmud, we find that the ancient Jewish sages understood the dangers in quite a different sense, as alluding not to thorns and pits, but to cold and heat. 

Even Rabbi Samuel ben Meir (Rashbam) who was unswerving in his devotion to the literal meaning of scripture, could not ignore the numerous talmudic passages in which the verse was applied to cold and heat. The closest he could come to acknowledging the verse’s original sense was by suggesting that it be paraphrased as “cold and chills are as a pit and a trap in the path of a perverse one.”

The talmudic rabbis–with their characteristic disinterest in sequential chronology–assumed that the patriarch Jacob had King Solomon’s advice in mind when he admonished his children not to take their youngest brother Benjamin to Egypt: “If harm befall him by the way in which you go, then will you bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave.” What “harm” was it that preoccupied Jacob when contemplating his son’s journey to Egypt? The sages’ initial assumption was that the patriarch feared Benjamin would be afflicted by an “act of God.” Exactly what sorts of perils could he have had in mind? The Talmud refers us to the same terms that appeared in Proverbs–ṣinnim and paḥim–understood as: cold and fever.

The third-century teacher Rabbi Ḥanina bar Ḥama declared that “everything is in the hands of Heaven except for chills and heat.” There is something very surprising about this sentiment when we compare it to the numerous texts in the Bible that extol the Creator’s absolute control over the forces of nature including the blazing sun, snow and frost. As understood by the Talmud and its interpreters, Rabbi Ḥanina was not setting any limitations to divine omnipotence, but was lamenting the folly of the human species. 

Rashi explained that in contrast to other ailments that may strike at people in ways that are entirely beyond our control, colds and fevers occur as the consequence of human carelessness, and therefore are fundamentally preventable. If people lack the good sense to dress warmly or stay in heated houses, and then fall victim to shivers and fevers, then they are at least partly to blame for their predicaments, and hence the disease cannot be classified entirely as an act of God.

The Tosafot expanded on this interpretation: Of course the states of extreme cold and heat are meteorological phenomena whose origins lie in the works of the Almighty. However, if self-destructive idiots are determined to leap into flames or frigid rivers, then they are perfectly capable of doing so even without special assistance from divine or natural forces.

The Maharal of Prague was adverse to extremes of any sort, whether of cold or of heat, both of which he regarded as inherently ungodly. He explained that the Almighty, as the embodiment of righteousness and justice, is utterly antithetical to all forms of one-sided extremism, and therefore he refuses to have anything to do with excessive heat or cold, preferring instead to allow those forces to follow their natural courses without supernatural intervention. How refreshing it is to contemplate a deity who distances himself from extremism, meteorological or otherwise!

The discussion described thus far was based on traditions contained in the Babylonian Talmud. Evidently, the problematic proof-text from Proverbs did not figure in the discussions of the subject that were composed in the land of Israel and preserved in works like the Jerusalem Talmud and Leviticus Rabbah. Those sources report that Rabbi Aḥa arrived at a similar observation by basing himself on a different text, Deuteronomy 7: 15 which assures us that “the Lord will take away from thee all sickness.” This suggested to Rabbi Aḥa that the responsibility for sickness is in some way “from thee”–that is, it is at least partly our own fault and not God’s. 

Rabbi Ḥanina explained that the sickness being referred to by the Torah was a cold; and he even went on to observe that ninety-nine percent of people perish from cold, and only one percent due to other afflictions. The midrash went on to comment that Rabbi Ḥanina’s attitude was probably influenced by the fact that he resided in the chilly Galilean town of Sephoris. Just imagine if he had experienced the delights of a Canadian winter!

Not everybody was daunted by the prospect of frigid temperatures. In one of those legendary encounters that the rabbis enjoyed relating between Rabbi Judah the Prince and the Roman leader known as Antoninus, the latter asked his Jewish comrade to offer a blessing on his behalf. When the Jewish sage uttered a plea for protection from the cold, Antoninus retorted dismissively that adequate protection from cold could be provided by simply adding a few extra layers of warm clothing. Rabbi Judah thereupon emended his prayer to one for preservation from the heat. 

Antoninus acknowledged that the latter blessing, if effective, was indeed a most precious one, because there is no escaping the discomfort of unbearably hot weather.

Some commentators stressed that Rabbi Ḥanina’s observation about colds and fevers should not be confused with the well-known maxim that “everything is in the hands of Heaven except for the fear of Heaven.” That statement referred to the fundamental characteristics of one’s personality, physical constitution, economic circumstances and moral stature. The dictum about colds and fevers, on the other hand, is more modest in its scope, dealing only with how people cope with certain external conditions of health and climate.

At any rate, the promise in Deuteronomy that colds and other ailments will eventually be eradicated appears to contradict the rabbinic claim that cold lies outside the range of divine control. Some commentaries harmonized the difficulty by arguing that the Torah’s blessing is an assurance that God will completely rid the world of extreme cold weather, so that even those reckless souls who do not have the sense to stay inside during a blizzard will be saved from the consequences of their foolishness.

As I contemplate the approach of winter, that is a prospect that truly warms my heart.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, October 29, 2010, p. 10.
• For further reading:
  • Krauss, Samuel. Antoninus und Rabbi. Vienna: Israel-theologische Lehranstalt, 1910.
  • Meir, Ofra. Rabbi Judah the Patriarch: Palestinian and Babylonian Portrait of a Leader. Sifriyat Helal Ben-Ḥayim. Tel-Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1999.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Please Honour Us by Your Presents

by Eliezer Segal

I realize that the exchange of gifts is supposed to be a heartfelt expression of appreciation, gratitude or affection. And yet it sometimes takes on the character of an onerous ritual with very rigid rules and innumerable opportunities to cause embarrassment if a gift is overlooked, too cheap, too expensive or otherwise inappropriate. In our world, gift exchanges are associated with birthdays and anniversaries, Mothers and Fathers Days and assorted life-cycle events. 

Be consoled in the knowledge that in earlier times, the burdens of offering and graciously accepting gifts were much more demanding than they are today.

One of the traditional gift-giving occasions that has lost much of its lustre is the institution known to the Talmud as “sivlonot“–presents that a prospective groom gave to his bride prior to the wedding. Because of the fact that in Jewish law the marriage itself is usually effected by the transfer of a ring or other object to the bride, it was important to establish clear guidelines for distinguishing between formal betrothals and more casual exchanges of sivlonot gifts, so as not to inadvertently create a legal marriage before the match was actually finalized.

By the sixteenth century, the Italian Jewish middle class had developed an extraordinary passion for exchanging gifts as part of the preliminary negotiations leading to a marriage agreement. Where earlier generations might have been satisfied with modest or symbolic tokens of affection, the prospective Italian grooms were expected to impress their brides (or the brides’ families) with extravagant and frequent offerings of jewelry, gold and silver coins, articles of clothing, hair ornaments and culinary delicacies (chocolate was always a favourite!).

A favourite choice of gift in the Middle Ages was a book. Before the advent of printing, each volume had to be individually penned by a scribe, so each was a unique and prized item. Thus, a simple prayer book could be costly enough to warrant being recorded in the marriage contract. More ornate tomes such as illuminated Passover Haggadahs would fetch even higher prices. Several Hebrew manuscripts that are now housed in library collections sport inscriptions testifying to their prior use as wedding presents or as part of a bride’s dowry. 

In his definitive responsum dealing with the phenomenon of marital gifts, Rabbi Joseph Colon observed that in his day (the fifteenth century) it was the universal practice in all the Jewish communities of Italy to exchange valuable gifts immediately following the formal ceremony at which the two families agreed to the match. 

But the matter did not end there. Proper etiquette demanded the bestowing of expensive gifts and the convening of elaborate feasts on numerous additional occasions between the sealing of the match and the wedding day. The list of gift-giving occasions could include: the days of the finalizing of the shiddukh and the setting of the wedding date, the groom’s visits to his fiancée’s home, the bride’s immersion in the mikveh, her departure from her home, and Purim (when gift exchanges are mandatory anyway).

Conspicuous ostentation of presents served as a means of demonstrating a family’s distinguished socio-economic profile. They would often hold on to all the gifts that were given to the bride by the groom’s family, so that they could be pulled out for a lavish display at the wedding–after which they would be returned to the original owners since they had served their main purpose of impressing the guests. (This custom is comparable, perhaps, to renting a tuxedo or returning a glamorous designer gown to the shop after a gala celebration.)

Toward that end, it became standard, especially among affluent families, to maintain meticulous records of all the gifts that had passed between them, noting their monetary values as assessed by experts and the precise circumstances of their delivery. Several ledgers of this kind have survived in manuscripts. Since not all prospective couples actually made it to the wedding canopy, this insistence on detailed record-keeping made it easier to avoid legal squabbles when the time came to return gifts after the cancellation of nuptials. Nevertheless, disputes could still arise over intangible expenses such as transportation, entertainment or catering costs.

The conspicuous consumption of Italian Jews was addressed by their leaders in the form of “sumptuary laws,” edicts forbidding extravagance in such matters as clothing or the number of guests invited to family celebrations. As far as I know, however, the culture of gift-giving was not targeted in these edicts. 

Our contemporary model of courtship as the cultivation of a romantic connection between two individuals was quite different from the reality of marriage in earlier generations. In fact, the rabbis instituted several regulations that were designed to avoid confusion between respectable matchmaking and subversive courtships by impulsive Romeos and Juliets. Thus, it was decreed that gifts directed to the bride were not to be delivered to her personally, but via an intermediary, lest her acceptance mistakenly be construed as a formal betrothal. For similar reasons, the gifts should not be accompanied by personal missives, especially love letters, because their wording could also be mistaken for binding marriage proposals.

All of the above describes the gift-giving procedures as they were envisaged by the rabbis and the respectable parents who were eager to wield control over the mating process. However, real-world experience and literature (including a delightful Hebrew play of the time, Leone Sommi’s “Comedy of Betrothal”) tell us that the desires of the young people could not be disregarded entirely. Sometimes they had the irritating habit of falling in love, inspiring emotions that could not be expressed adequately by means of the impersonal transfer of fiscal assets between their families. 

There is a quaint tale preserved in a Hebrew manuscript, in which a beau was able to communicate secretly with his lady Luna through a hole in the basement wall or through a window and persuade her to accept his gifts as a token of betrothal.

Clandestine exchanges between sweethearts of such trinkets as portraits or medallions bearing the images of the beloved had a subversive quality that (so it was feared) might even threaten to undermine the marriages that were being arranged by their parents. 

We see, then, that there are gifts and there are gifts. In some contexts, they serve to uphold the social standing of respectable families, while in others they undermine the structures of parental authority. These are, of course, very weighty matters that should be pondered seriously before choosing your next gift. 

At the very least, you should probably take care not to forget your next anniversary.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, November 19, 2010, p. 16.
• For further reading:
  • Abrahams, Israel. Jewish Life in the Middle Ages. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2004.
  • Baron, Salo Wittmayer. The Jewish Community: Its History and Structure to the American Revolution. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1972.
  • Bonfil, Robert. Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
  • Marcus, Jacob Rader. The Jew in the Medieval World: A Source Book, 315-1791. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1990.
  • Sommi, Leone de’. A Comedy of Betrothal (Tsahoth B’dihutha D’Kiddushin). Translated by Alfred Siemon Golding. Carleton Renaissance Plays in Translation. Ottawa: Dovehouse Editions Canada, 1988.
  • Weinstein, Roni. “Gift exchanges during marriage rituals among the Italian Jews in the early modern period: a historic-anthropological reading.” Revue des Études juives 165, no. 3 (July 1, 2006): 485-521.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Looking Forward to Hanukkah

by Eliezer Segal

Is Hanukkah a mitzvah?

That depends in part on how you define a “mitzvah.” In its most narrow sense, the word designates only precepts that are actually written in the Torah and were commanded by God to Moses at Mount Sinai.

According to that definition, it would appear quite obvious that the word “mitzvah” cannot be applied properly to Hanukkah since the holiday is not mentioned in the Bible and it commemorates events that occurred long after the revelation at Sinai.

This, however, was not obvious to all of our great rabbinic authorities. Take for example Rabbi Simeon Qayyara, the eighth-century author of the influential legal compendium Halakhot Gedolot who introduced his book with an enumeration of all the commandments. His listing of the 613 mitzvot does in fact include the obligation to light lamps on Hanukkah, as well as the celebration of Purim and the recitation of the Hallel psalms on festive occasions.

Rabbi Moses Maimonides, writing in twelfth-century Egypt, felt that the Halakhot Gedolot was guilty of intellectual sloppiness on this issue, and that the question of counting commandments had to be revisited in a thorough and consistent manner. Clear methodological guidelines had to be established for determining what qualifies as a true “commandment” and what does not. Maimonides composed a special Arabic treatise on this topic–the “Book of Commandments”–much of which was devoted to formulating a set of coherent principles for the enumeration of mitzvot.

One of Maimonides’ key principles stated that, to qualify as a commandment, a law must indeed have been revealed at Mount Sinai. In an acerbic barb directed at Rabbi Qayyara, he noted that there really should not have been any need to mention such an obvious truism, given that the classic talmudic source for the concept of 613 commandments refers to them as having been “spoken to Moses at Sinai,”and that clearly excluded any precept–like Hanukkah–that was introduced later by the rabbis (or, for that matter, by other biblical prophets). 

Nor did Maimonides allow the matter to rest there. Purely for the sake of argument, he imagined the hypothetical possibility that Hanukkah could have been legislated in Moses’ time. “Let us assume that Moses was instructed at Sinai to command us that if, in the last days of our independence we should undergo certain events in connection with the Greeks, then we should be obligated to kindle a Hanukkah lamp.”–But after proposing that tenuous hypothesis, he immediately dismissed it: “I doubt that anyone would ever conceive of such an eventuality, nor even imagine it!” And indeed, Maimonides’ reductio ad absurdumsounds compelling and irrefutable.

Or is it? In his cogent reconstruction of what could or could not have been said at Mount Sinai, Maimonides used a rather narrow selection of proof-texts. There was after all an alternative approach to the question, one that found expression in a number of well-known rabbinic traditions. Some texts suggested that the laws that were given at Sinai were not necessarily subject to the constraints of chronological sequence. A familiar example is the Talmud’s assertion that “even an original interpretation that will be proposed some day by an advanced student was already given to Moses at Sinai.” When viewed from this perspective, there is nothing intrinsically preposterous about the scenario of Moses being instructed at Sinai about the “commandment” of Hanukkah.

As it happens, the Talmud did touch briefly on the question of Hanukkah’s status as a commandment . The familiar blessing that accompanies the kindling of the lights refers to God as having “commanded us to kindle the Hanukkah lamps.” Our sages, acutely sensitive to the difficulty inherent in this wording, asked “where did he command us?” to which Rav Avia replied by citing the verse “don’t turn away from what they [your religious leaders] tell you,” and Rabbi Nehemiah quoted “ask your father and he will tell you, ask your elders and they will explain it to you.” That is to say, the Torah is commanding us to follow the instructions and enactments that will be made by the priests, elders and sages of each generation, and they are authorized to establish new holidays like Hanukkah. 

This, argued Maimonides, was what the talmudic sages had in mind in their expositions about the original insights of future students being revealed to Moses at Sinai. They did not mean to imply that Hanukkah or Purim were explicitly decreed or foretold in that revelation, but rather that the Israelite people were consenting at Sinai to follow the instructions of the sages of future generations, including any new “commandments” that they would see fit to establish. 

In this connection, Maimonides drew a sharp distinction between the unique revelation of Mount Sinai and the teachings of subsequent biblical prophets. Even those prophets who introduced obligatory practices were doing so in their capacity as rabbinic scholars, and not by virtue of their supernatural revelations.

Maimonides had yet another gripe against the author of the Halakhot Gedolot: If it was permissible to include post-Sinai commandments in the count, then there were too few of them in his list! Since all the enactments of the prophets and sages had been revealed to Moses, why did Rabbi Simeon Qayyara count only three of them among the 613? 

Maimonides’ outspoken position found a scathing and worthy critic in the person of Rabbi Moses Naḥmanides, the Ramban. Naḥmanides had a general inclination toward conservatism, and for that reason alone he was likely to oppose the upstart Maimonides’ blunt dismissal of the revered Halakhot Gedolot. Naḥmanides argued that the Talmud’s allusion to the 613 commandments being spoken at Sinai need not be understood so literally, and it would not be unreasonable if the general rule had two or three exceptions.

Nor, insisted Naḥmanides, is it outrageous to believe that God actually revealed to Moses some commandments that would not take effect until the distant future. The rabbis were skillful at uncovering all manner of subtle allusions or numerological secrets in Scripture that foretold future events. Though Maimonides might not have accepted such instances as literal teachings of the Torah, that should not prevent other scholars from taking them seriously. The three precepts that were singled out by Rabbi Simeon Qayyara (Hanukkah, Purim and Hallel) were special in that they were unconditionally obligatory and not contingent on other factors or conditions.

Naḥmanides raised a further objection against his adversary’s position: By subsuming the entire body of rabbinic tradition under the Torah’s precept of “don’t turn away from what they tell you” (in keeping with Rav Avia’s statement in the Talmud), Maimonides appeared to be effectively obliterating all distinctions between the authority of the Torah and that of the rabbis!

Compared to this kind of unmanageable jumble, Naḥmanides argued, the Halakhot Gedolot comes across as far more reasonable when it declared that only Hanukkah and a few other observances had been elevated to Sinai-like status.

When you think about it, Naḥmanides’ attitude can have some extraordinary implications.

If Moses on Mount Sinai was informed about the Hasmonean victories in the distant future, then he could also have been aware of the ensuing controversies between Naḥmanides, Maimonides and Halakhot Gedolot. And for that matter, he might well have known something about the discussion of the issues in this article.

A person can get thoroughly dizzy contemplating such timeless questions.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, December 3, 2010, p. 21.
• For further reading:
  • Halbertal, Moshe. By Way of Truth: Naḥmanides and the Creation of Tradition. Sifriyat Yahaduyot. Jerusalem: Shalom Hartman Institute, 2006.
  • Silman, Yochanan. Voice heard at Sinai. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1999.
  • Twersky, Isadore. Introduction to the Code of Maimonides (Mishneh Torah). Yale Judaica series v. 22. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Passion-Fruit or Brain-Food?

by Eliezer Segal

While trees and their fruits have had an ongoing importance for Jewish culture, it was probably the very first encounter between humans and trees that had the most powerful and long-lasting impact.

As recounted in the opening chapters of Genesis, the first couple were placed in a garden endowed with diverse vegetation, but among them were two special trees whose fruits they were forbidden to eat. Of course we are all familiar with the outcome: as punishment for their primordial act of disobedience in eating from the tree of knowledge, Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden of Eden, and since that time the human race had to make its way through the less hospitable realities of the outside world.

What, indeed, is a “tree of knowledge”? Are we dealing with an actual botanical species, or with some uniquely metaphysical entity–or is it an allegory or metaphor for a profound spiritual state?

Several rabbis in the Talmud and Midrash tried to identify the fateful fruit with known species of trees. Rabbi Judah chose the grape, whose fermented juice is a frequent cause of mishaps. Rabbi Abba of Acre suggested it was an etrog. Rabbi Yosé voted for the fig, noting that this is why the couple later covered their nakedness with fig leaves. Rabbi Joshua ben Levi insisted that scripture intentionally refrained from divulging the name of the inauspicious fruit in order to avoid tainting it with a stigma. Note, by the way, that apples were not mentioned in any of these discussions.

Medieval Jewish commentators had more sophisticated ways of understanding the lessons of the story. They observed that the effects of the fruit had profound moral and spiritual consequences that could not be produced by any natural tree. Much of their discourse on this topic came to focus on defining the precise effects that were precipitated by the eating of the fruit.

Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra understood that the forbidden fruit had an aphrodisiac quality that transformed Adam and Eve’s attitude toward sex from a natural biological process into a complex psychological fixation with destructive guilt-inducing potential. This quasi-Freudian insight can be inferred from their reaction to eating the fruit: they were overcome by a shame of their nakedness that they had not felt previously.

Rabbi Moses Nahmanides understood that the unique power of the fruit lay in its ability to bestow free will on those who ingested it. Prior to eating it, people were obedient cogs in the causal dynamics of physics and nature, no different from any other beast that follows its assigned course without question. The fruit bestowed upon Eve and Adam a mixed blessing: on the one hand, possession of a free will elevated them to a more “godly” status; however, it also subjected them to a curse, as they would henceforth be involved in continuous struggles with decisions, temptations and desires.

It would appear, according to the conventional reading of the biblical narrative, that in partaking of the forbidden fruit the first humans were enhancing their status and, in effect, being allowed to enjoy the wages of their disobedience. This can be jarring to our natural expectation that crime should not pay.

This objection was posed to Maimonides by an unnamed scholar, and it induced him to suggest an intriguing new interpretation for the story and for the function of the forbidden fruit in God’s plans for the human race.

Maimonides challenged the notion that eating the fruit led to an improvement in the human situation. The truth, he argued, was the exact opposite: from the very beginning of their existence, men and women were imbued with the spirit and image of God, which should be equated with the possession of a rational intellect. The fact that the Almighty could command Adam and Eve not to eat from certain fruits presupposed that they could choose whether or not to obey, implying that they must surely have been capable of making intelligent judgments. If this is true, then what transformation occurred in them when they bit into the fruit?

The truth, insists Maimonides, is that there was never any such thing as a “tree of knowledge.” If you read the text carefully, what the Torah is speaking of is actually the “tree of knowledge of good and evil“–or “of good and bad“–which is a different matter altogether. From the perspective of a dedicated rationalist, “knowledge of good and evil” verges on being an oxymoron, since authentic knowledge should be limited to the realm of absolute certainty: of “true and false.” True rationality is grounded in the realm of what is eternally true–as expressed in disciplines like logic, mathematics and metaphysics–whereas moral values belong to an inferior plane of thought that is subject to the vagaries of social conventions, political correctness, imagination and personal taste.

Indeed, Maimonides believed that God’s original plan for human perfection was that we should all function like computers that analyze reality according to clear-cut binary criteria. Vague categories like “good” and “bad” might be suitable for lesser modes of fuzzy discourse such as esthetic judgments, moral sensibilities or “truthiness,” but not for the sound logical reasoning that God expected from serious human beings.

When viewed in this manner, the outcome of Eve’s and Adam’s disobedience was not an upgrading of their status, but a decisive demotion in rank. Instead of experiencing the world from the clear perspective of divine intelligence and understanding, they now relinquished their control over the most basic aspects of their reality, as exemplified in their inability to deal with their nakedness. Once they had compromised their true intellectual vocation by yielding to the sensual allure of the luscious fruit, they were relegated to the confused realms of opinions, impressions and subjectivity.

If Maimonides’ interlocutor believed that the fruit of Eden had the power to transform a two-legged beast into a true homo sapiens, Maimonides himself was convinced that the act of eating the fruit brought about humanity’s degeneration from a God-like species to a state just barely above the brute animals.

None of these interpretation offers us much practical help for recognizing the fruits if they should happen to show up at your local supermarket. Nevertheless, if you should find yourself in possession of a crate of ripe knowledge-fruit, I strongly recommend that you read the label carefully for possible side-effects.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, January 21,, 2011, p. 12.
• For further reading:
  • Berman, Lawrence V. “Maimonides on the Fall of Man.” AJS Review 5, no. 1 (1980): 1-15.
  • Moshe Halbertal, By Way of Truth: Nahmanides and the Creation of Tradition, Sifriyat Yahaduyot (Jerusalem: Shalom Hartman Institute, 2006).
  • Harvey, Warren Zev. “Ethics and Meta-Ethics, Aesthetics and Meta-Ethics in Maimonides.” In Maimonides and Philosophy: Papers Presented at the Sixth Jerusalem Philosophical Encounter, May 1985, edited by Shlomo Pines and Yovel, Yirmiyahu, 131-138. Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Idées 114. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1986.
  • ——. “Maimonides’ Commentary on Genesis 3:22.” Daat 12 (1984): 15-22. 
  • Navon, Chaim. Genesis and Jewish Thought. Translated by Strauss, David. KTAV, 2008.
  • Pines, Shlomo. “Truth and Falsehood Versus Good and Evil: A Study in Jewish and General Philosophy in Connection with the “Guide of the Perplexed” I,2.” In Studies in Maimonides, edited by Isadore Twersky, 95-157. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.
  • Safran, Bezalel. “Rabbi Azriel and Nahmanides: Two Views of the Fall of Man.” In Rabbi Moses Nahmanides (Ramban): Explorations in His Religious and Literary Virtuosity, edited by Isadore Twersky, 75-106. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1983.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Loose Lips

by Eliezer Segal

Several events during the recent months have drawn our attention to the immense damage that can be caused by leaking information that was meant to be confidential. Huge uproars have resulted from such diverse incidents as the mislaying of an experimental iPhone prototype in a bar, publication of the identities of Israeli soldiers involved in the Gaza campaign, or the distribution by WikiLeaks of embarrassing diplomatic correspondence. 

Each of these cases raises its own practical and moral issues, and the public debate will assuredly continue to give voice to contrasting positions as to whether whether they are triumphs of our democratic rights to freedom of information or treacherous violations of national security.

From the perspective of Jewish history, at any rate, it seems quite clear that the divulging of strategic secrets is regarded as a very grave offense that should be punished severely.

Indeed, the standard daily prayers contain a passage that is explicitly directed against such miscreants: “May the informers have no hope.” Though the operative term is often interpreted as referring to the activities of gossips and talebearers, it is clear that the original meaning of “informer” was a decidedly political–or even a military–one. 

When the Jews of the holy land were living under Roman occupation, Jewish society took on the character of an underground movement committed to a policy of resistance (whether active or passive) against the evil empire. Their struggle could only succeed if they could maintain a high level of secrecy; and they generally succeeded at this, as may be inferred from the events leading to the Bar Kokhba uprising when (according to the ancient historian Dio Cassius) the Jews were able to create an intricate network of clandestine tunnels throughout the Judean hills under the Romans’ noses, as well as to “accidentally” manufacture substandard weaponry for the Roman legions, so that it would be discarded and subsequently refurbished for use by the rebel forces. 

The Midrash projected this situation back to the Israelites in Egypt, explaining that one of the virtues by which that generation was deemed worthy of redemption was that no one betrayed the secret preparations for their departure.

It is therefore understandable that the Jewish leadership took a very dim view of informers. The sanctions were not limited to condemnation in the prayers, but could even extend to capital punishment or vigilante action. Furthermore, the secrets need not be of an explicitly military character. One of the most widespread–and most severely punished–varieties of informing consisted of revealing a person’s property to the tax authorities.

We must of course bear in mind that the regimes in those days were not democratically elected governments who collected their revenues equitably in order to finance social welfare programs. Colonial taxation was a for-profit business, farmed out to greedy entrepreneurs who were determined to squeeze out as much as they could get away with from their oppressed subjects. Ratting on a person’s taxable assets was therefore treated as a dire and punishable offense by the Jewish communities of Israel and Babylonia.

The Talmud preserves a disquieting incident that took place in the early third century in Babylonia. When a person threatened to reveal somebody’s undeclared inventory, the eminent halakhic authority Rav ordered him to desist, but the culprit could not be dissuaded. Rav’s disciple Rav Kahana, who was present during the exchange, took the law into his own hands and fatally broke the informer’s neck.

From Rav’s response, it seems clear that he had no religious or moral objection to Kahana’s behavior, which was evidently motivated by a realistic consideration of the dangers that would have faced the informer’s victim. Rav was, however, alarmed about the practical consequences of Kahana’s deed. Babylonia had only recently undergone a major change of government. The previous regime, headed by the Hellenizing Arsacid Parthians, had allowed a large measure of judicial autonomy to the diverse ethnic groups of the empire, including the Jews. The Parthians would not have objected if a rabbi had executed a transgressor in accordance with Jewish law. However, since the year 226, Babylonian was subject to the authority of the Persian Sassanian dynasty who were enforcing a highly centralized administration. “Previously we were dealing with the Hellenists who were not so strict about executions, but now it is the Persians who take a dim view of our executions, and will cry ‘Murder! Murder!'” Rav persuaded Kahana that now might be an opportune time to immigrate to the land of Israel.

Several Jewish communities during the medieval era continued to exercise the right of putting informers to death. This was particularly common in Spain, where the Jews argued that this authority fell within the jurisdiction granted to them by the king to administer their own legal affairs. 

Rabbi Asher ben Jehiel (the “Rosh”) who migrated from Germany to Spain in the early fourteenth century, observed that the prevalent custom throughout the diaspora was to seek out ways to do away with confirmed informers, in order to strengthen the social fabric and to deter other potential informers, as well as to provide assistance to their victims. On the basis of these considerations, he approved of a Jewish court that ordered the hanging of an informer, applying to him the words of the biblical judge Deborah (Judges 5:31): “So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord.” 

The regulations enacted for Castilian Jewry by the council of Valladolid in spring 1432 devoted much space to the penalties of fines, imprisonment or excommunication that were to be enforced against Jews who informed on their coreligionists. They felt that these crimes posed such a grave existential threat to the community that they warranted a relaxing of the normal rules of due process. In some cases where the charges could not be proven according to the strict halakhic laws of evidence, the court could be authorized to brand defendants on their foreheads with hot irons. After a third conviction, a repeat offender was to be handed over to the royal tribunal for execution [–all this, of course, provided that the leaked information was not intended in the first place for the benefit of the king].

Now I am not suggesting for a moment that anyone who divulges a secret should be branded or executed. Nonetheless, it is worth reminding ourselves that some military and diplomatic confidences can have an immense impact on lives or property, and informers should be prepared to suffer serious consequences.

To judge from the public discussion of the issues, it would appear that it all comes down to a question of whose confidences are being leaked. If they are airing your embarrassing secrets, then the informers are obviously vile traitors, but if the confidences are somebody else’s, the whistle-blower is to be acclaimed as a champion of free speech.

Everybody seems to hold a very strong opinion on the topic. 

So just to be on the safe side, I would request that you not divulge publicly the contents of this article.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, February 4, 2011, p. 13.
• For further reading:
  • Baer, Yitzhak. A History of the Jews in Christian Spain. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1992.
  • Beer, Moshe. The Babylonian Exilarchate in the Arsacid and Sassanian Periods. Bar-Ilan University Series of Research Monographs in Memory of the University’s Founder and First President Professor Pinchas Churgin. Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1970.
  • Ben-Zimra, Eliyahu Z. “Al ha-Malshinut u-Mesirah be-Ḥayyei ha-Kehillah ha-Yehudit bi-Tekufat ha-Aḥaronim.” In Sefer Aviʻad: Ḳovets Maʼamarim U-Meḥḳarim Le-Zekher Dr. Yeshaʻyahu Volsfberg-Aviʻad, edited by Isaac Raphael, 112-142. Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1986
  • Elon, Menachem. Jewish Law: History, Sources, Principles. 4 vols. A Philip and Muriel Berman edition. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1994.
  • Friedman, Shamma. “The Further Adventures of Rav Kahana: Between Babylonia and Palestine.” In The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Culture, by Peter Schäfer, 3:247-272. Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 93. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002.
  • Gafni, Isaiah. The Jews of Babylonia in the Talmudic Era. Monographs in Jewish History. Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 1990.
  • Sperber, Daniel. “On the Unfortunate Adventures of Rav Kahana.” Irano-Judaica 1 (1982): 83-100.
  • Rosenthal, E. S. “For the Talmudic Dictionary—Talmudica Iranica.” Irano-Judaica 1 (1982): 38-134.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Sweetening the Waters

by Eliezer Segal

The Israeli cabinet recently approved an emergency plan calling for expansion of its desalination capacity, so that by 2013 the proportion of water provided by desalination must equal that extracted from the Sea of Galilee. Ever-increasing proportions of Israel’s water supply are already being furnished in the form of desalinated salt water, and by some estimates Israel currently leads the world in the development and implementation of desalination processes.

The scarcity of drinkable water has always been a disquieting reality of the Israeli climate, and it had a profound impact on shaping the Hebrew religious consciousness. In ancient times, threats of withholding rainfall were an effective divine sanction against disobedience, and the production of drinking water provided frequent occasions for miracle tales, as when Moses was called upon to sweeten the bitter waters by stirring them with a tree, or to make water flow from a rock to satisfy the thirsty Israelites in the desert. Rabbinic legend told of a wondrous well that accompanied the Israelites through their wanderings in the wilderness thanks to the merits of Moses’s righteous sister Miriam.

In modern Israel, the precariousness of the water supply has been compounded by lax environmental practices, increased demand and prolonged dry spells. While the current interest in desalination as a mainstream source of drinking water has mostly been a consequence of recent developments in the ecological crisis, demographic growth and advances in science, an interest in this technology has been around for quite a long time. Chief among the stakeholders were the providers of oceanic travel who looked to desalination as a way to free passenger liners from the costly burdens of carrying large reserves of fresh water. With the expansion of trans-ocean travel in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, entrepreneurial inventors strove to devise more cost-effective methods of extracting fresh water from the ubiquitous brine.

Enter Mr. Jacob Isaacs (or Isaacks), an impecunious member of the venerable Jewish community of Newport Rhode Island in the late eighteenth century. Though Mr. Isaacs does not appear to have possessed any formal credentials in science or engineering, he was propelled by a personal zeal for desalination. When George Washington visited Newport in August 1790, Isaacs presented him with a bottle of desalinated sea water that he had personally created, assuring the President that the fluid was “extracted from ocean water, so free from saline material as to answer for all the common and culinary purposes of fountain or river water.” The president was reportedly “highly satisfied” with the product that he received.

During the following year, Isaacs turned to the American House of Representatives, submitting a petition in which he declared that he had discovered a revolutionary new method for treating salt water. His technique was so simple that it could be applied in the kitchens of normal seagoing vessels. Isaacs offered to divulge the secrets of his process to the American government in exchange for fair compensation for his time and expenditures.

The House of Representatives turned the matter over to Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, who was renowned for his passionate interest in scientific research. In March 1791, Jefferson assembled three distinguished American scientists, members of the American Philosophical Society, to observe a demonstration of Mr. Isaacs’ desalination process. When the initial trial proved inconclusive, Jefferson urged the scientists to give it a second chance, explaining that whatever the results, he viewed the occasion as a valuable opportunity to impress upon the scientific community the importance and ultimate viability of desalination. He ordered the three experts to avoid delay in reaching their final decision, urging them to have consideration for the fact that Isaacs “is poor, and complains that his delay here is very distressing to him.”

The testing continued for four more days, and meanwhile Jefferson was gathering information about previous experiments in the field. However, at this juncture the process had to be postponed until October owing to the adjournment of Congress, and it took another month for them to submit the actual report. The resulting “Affidavit of the Secretary of State on the Result of the Experiments” opened with a survey of three centuries of previous efforts at desalination, and then it turned its attention to a detailed description of the process that Jefferson’s scientific team had witnessed: “Mr. Isaacks fixed the pot of a small cabouse [=ship’s kitchen], with a tin cap, and strait tube of tin passing obliquely through a cask of cold water: he made use of a Mixture, the composition of which he did not explain, and from 24 pints of sea water, taken up about three Miles out of the capes of Delaware, at flood tide, he distilled 22 pints of fresh water in four hours, with 20 lbs. of seasoned pine, which was a little wetted, buy having lain in the rain.” 

At this point, the scientists decided to run through the experiment once more without Isaacs’ mysterious “Mixture” in order to establish how crucial it had been to the operation. This resulted in a slight speed increase and a more efficient use of the wood fuel. A series of additional trials of this sort determined that the mysterious Mixture had no significant effect on the outcome.

The report was effusive in its praise for the quality of the water that was extracted by means of Isaacs’ process. It was at least as pure as the fresh water that was pumped in the city–and tastier than some of it.

To their credit, Jefferson continued, Isaacs’ experiments should be acknowledged as powerful evidence that ocean waters could be sweetened by a relatively simple, cost-effective process that could be replicated on any sailing vessel. The United States government should make this information widely available to the shipping industry, printing it on the reverse sides of the permits of every vessel that sailed out of American ports, in the hope that they would try the experiment on their voyages and return with detailed reports of the successes or failures of the technology.

As for Mr. Jacob Isaacs, his patience and resources were being stretched by the government’s lengthening delays in responding to his request for financial compensation. After being read in Congress, Jefferson’s report was conveniently forgotten. At any rate, the Secretary of State recommended that no patent be awarded for this particular process because it did not appear to be significantly novel or superior when compared to existing methods. As a general rule, Jefferson was somewhat ambivalent on the issue of patents. Though he was all for the liberal encouraging and rewarding of inventors, he was reluctant to allow them long-term monopolistic ownership over their inventions. As a result, very few patents were issued under his administration of the office.

The historical record, as far as I know, has nothing to say about Isaacs’ personal reaction to Jefferson’s recommendation, nor about his subsequent involvement in scientific ventures. One might well imagine that his disappointment was akin to the pouring of salt water on a wound–and that he would have found little consolation in the knowledge that his efforts would later be perceived as part of a historic current of Jewish water-sweeteners extending from Moses to modern Israel.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, February 18, 2011, p. 11.
• For further reading:
  • Abramowitz, Barbara Hillson. “George Washington Shlept Here: America’s Jewish Connection Has a Building at Its Center.” Liberty Apr 1977: 23-25.
  • Friedenwald, Herbert. “Jacob Isaacs and his Method of Converting Salt Water into Fresh Water.” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society 2 (1894): 111-117.
  • Gutstein, Morris A. The Story of the Jews of Newport: Two and a Half Centuries of Judaism 1658-1908. New York: Bloch, 1936.
  • Martin, Edward Thomas. Thomas Jefferson: Scientist. New York: H. Schuman, 1952.
  • Schachner, Nathan. Thomas Jefferson: A Biography. New York and London: T. Yoseloff, 1960.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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