Male Pattern Baldness

by Eliezer Segal

One of the most beloved literary treasures of the ancient world was the corpus of fables that the Greeks ascribed to the storyteller Aesop, a legendary figure whom they situated some time between the seventh and sixth centuries BCE. As befits a genre that derives from oral traditions, Aesop’s fables circulated in numerous collections that differed with respect to which tales were chosen for inclusion, and in the details of their plots and characters. 

In ancient times as in our own days, you did not have to be an expert in Greek literature to be familiar with fables from the Aesop collection. Today, tales such as “the hare and the tortoise” or “the grasshopper and the ant” belong to the minimal level of literacy, even for those who do not know exactly where those stories originated. Probably this was also true in the Jewish rabbinic circles that produced the Talmud and Midrash.

Thus, the Talmud tells of Rav Ami and Rav Asi, two disciples of Rabbi Isaac Nappaḥa, who sat before their master imploring him to lecture to them (a scenario that should warm the heart of any educator). The problem was that one of the students insisted on a lesson in halakhah, religious law, while the other wanted aggadah, a discourse on a moral or inspirational theme. Whichever topic Rabbi Isaac began, one of the students would immediately interrupt.

In order to convey his frustration to his uncooperative students, Rabbi Isaac illustrated his predicament with the help of a parable: Once there was a man who was married to two wives, a young one and an older one. The young one would pluck out her husband’s white hairs and the old wife would remove his dark hairs. In the end, between the two of them, the husband emerged with a completel bald head! 

The moral of the story was that as long as each of his students refused to compromise on his demands, they would end up with no lesson whatsoever. After making his point, Rabbi Isaac went on to deliver an erudite discourse that masterfully combined legal and homiletical themes. 

Rabbi Isaac Nappaḥa’s parable was, in fact, a fable that was well-known from the Aesop collections. While this fact is of interest in itself, it is particularly fascinating to compare the rabbinic version with its Greek and Latin counterparts, with respect both to the details of the story and the moral lessons that were derived from it. 

The Aesop fable has been preserved in a number of different versions. Its earliest appearance is in a compilation known as the Augustana, considered to be the oldest of the surviving collections. Its telling of the story of the two wives is remarkably similar to Rabbi Isaac’s, but some of the differences are of interest. For one thing, it fills in a few more details about the characters and their motivations. It states clearly that the man was “half-grey,” a circumstance that is only implied in the Jewish story. Whereas Jewish law allowed polygamy, so that the parable could be depicted within a marriage, the Greeks and Romans who were strictly monogamous had to situate the protagonists within non-marital relationships. The women were “beloved ones” or concubines whom the man visited alternately. The older lady was moved by shame at her lover’s youth, whereas the younger was put off by his advanced age. 

To my mind, the most extreme differences between the versions are to be discerned in their respective moral lessons. As noted, the talmudic tale does not provide us with an explicit moral, but the context implies that it has to do with the self-defeating consequences of stubborn inflexibility. The official moral of the Augustana Aesop fable reads “An anomaly (or: unbalance) is hurtful.” This has been generally understood to refer to the deviant nature of the romantic triangle. 

Other collection of Aesop’s fables were composed in verse. Such were the Greek compendium by Babrius and the Latin by Phaedrus both of which offered the story as an object lesson about the perils intrinsic to the female sex. To be sure, Babrius introduces the male hero by mocking him for his mid-life crisis, still pursuing liaisons and carousals that were inappropriate to his mature age. However, the main focus soon turns to the women themselves who by their selfish interferences have succeeded in leaving each other a bald lover. Aesop’s stated purpose in telling this fable is “to demonstrate how pathetic is a man who becomes a victim of women. They are like the sea—first it laughingly entices them, and then it smothers them.” 

Phaedrus’ fable is even more aggressive in its hostility to the unfair sex. The moral, set forth at the outset, is that “men are always fleeced by women, whether they are the lovers or the beloved.” The older sweetheart is painted as a “cougar,” a seasoned temptress who has mastered the cosmetic ploys for concealing her advanced age. In this version, the sweet young thing is impelled not so much by a desire to make her boyfriend seem more youthful, but because she wants to appear closer to his age. The narrative also deals with the question of how the plucking was accomplished without the man protesting. It was not (as I would have imagined it) that the ladies went about their shearing while their victim was asleep–rather, they were able to persuade him that he was being pampered and coiffed. 

When I compare the Talmud’s use of the fable to the competition, I find it more satisfying from a number of perspectives. The fact that the ménage à trois has been domesticated into a family setting is perhaps the least of its virtues. On the whole, Rabbi Isaac’s terse reticence about the characters’ motives comes across as refreshingly non-judgmental, so that the anecdote radiates a gentle and whimsical humor. The husband is not censured as an aging playboy or ridiculed for his fickleness or his poor choice or mates. Nor are the wives taken to task for marrying outside their appropriate ages, nor for their vanity or for any of the numerous other faults that Aesop’s transmitters found in their personalities. The fact that we are not told about their underlying motives implies that these should not be our main concern. The tragedy (and a rather innocuous one at that) was occasioned not by the characters’ failings, but by the predicament itself. The fable thus functions as a general lesson about intractable stalemates of any sort, and is not specifically addressing marital harmony or male-female relationships. Unlike the Greek and Roman versions, it certainly does not contain a blanket vilification of the female populace. 

In the end, what I find most remarkable about all this is how effectively the Talmud has taken a story that originated in a foreign culture and reflects alien values and conventions, and successfully transformed it into a consummately  Jewish fable, one that speaks to some central institutions of rabbinic culture, such as marriage and the vigorous dynamics of Torah study.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, October 28, 2011, p. 9.

• For further reading:
  • Friedman, Shamma. “The Talmudic Proverb in Its Cultural Setting.” Jewish Studies: An Internet Journal; 2 (2003): 25-82.
  • Maciá, Lorena Miralles. “The Fable of ‘the Middle-Aged Man with Two Wives’: From the Aesopian Motif to the Babylonian Talmud Version in b. B. Qam. 60b.” Journal for the Study of Judaism; 39 (2008): 267-281.
  • Schwarzbaum, Haim. “Talmudic-Midrashic Affinities of Some Aesopic Fables.” In Proceedings of the Fourth International Congress for Folk-Narrative Research, edited by G. Megas, 466-483. Athens, 1965.
  • Stern, David. Parables in Midrash: Narrative and Exegesis in Rabbinic Literature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991.
  • ———. “The Rabbinic Parable and the Narrative of Interpretation.” In The Midrashic Imagination: Jewish Exegesis, Thought, and History, edited by Michael Fishbane, 78-95. New York: State University of New York Press, 1993.
  • Yassif, Eli. “Jewish Folk Literature in Late Antiquity.” In The Cambridge History of Judaism: The Late Roman-Rabbinic Period, edited by Steven T. Katz, 721-748. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Freedom of Speech

by Eliezer Segal

The story is told of an old-fashioned Galician Jew who visited Vienna where he was exposed for the first time to a modern synagogue and its solemn German sermon. He was puzzled to hear the familiar Hebrew title of the biblical book ‘Kohelet’ (Ecclesiastes) translated into German as “der Prediger”—”the preacher.” When he related his experiences to a friend, the latter explained to him that one can indeed learn a lot about preachers from Kohelet (and this is not limited to the book’s repeated plaints about “vanity of vanities”). 

Consider for example Kohelet’s famous list of seasons and times for every purpose under heaven. In addition to a “time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance” and so forth, most of those pairs of opposites leave room for a neutral third option; after all,  it is possible for a person to be neither weeping nor laughing, neither mourning nor dancing. 

There appears, however, to be one glaring exception to this pattern, in the verse that speaks of “a time to be silent and a time to speak.” Is it really possible to conceive a situation that is neither silence nor speaking? 

Yes indeed, concluded the friend. Such a situation may be found in the sermons delivered by those modern preachers who can wax so eloquent before their congregations—and yet say nothing that is substantial or memorable! 

The preceding anecdote reflects a tension that divided many Jewish communities when they confronted the challenges of modernity and the Enlightenment. Toward the close of the eighteenth century, and especially during the first half of the nineteenth, as Jews in Europe were being admitted to citizenship in their lands of residence, numerous proposals were offered to overhaul Judaism with a view to putting it in touch with “the spirit of the times.” It is easy to appreciate why some of the more radical changes would have provoked the rage of traditionalists. And yet some of the suggested reforms strike us today as utterly unexceptionable, making it all but impossible to imagine why anyone would have objected to them at the time.

One of these surprisingly contentious proposals called for rabbis to preach inspirational sermons in the local language on all sabbaths and festivals. From the perspective of our contemporary North American Jewish scene, where the weekly English sermon is one of the mainstays of nearly all synagogue services, it is hard to imagine a time when sermons were not preached, let alone to understand why anyone would be offended by them. 

At any rate, both the demand for sermons and the resistance to them were a recurring feature in the evolution of modern Judaism. The issue was addressed, for example, by the Jewish Consistory of Westphalia, the governing body that was established in 1808 under the auspices of Napoleon’s brother Jérôme Bonaparte to regulate the affairs of the local Jewish communities and to oversee the Jewish citizens’ integration into the post-Revolutionary world order. The Consistory’s first significant enactment was an 1809 document delineating the “Duties of the Rabbis” which attached crucial importance to the delivering of edifying sermons, preferably in German. 

Similar clauses appeared in the synagogue regulations legislated by several German states. In spite of the official sanctions, the practice was very slow in catching on outside a few major centres. An ambitious program for redefining the rabbinate, published by the educator David Caro of Posen in 1820, insisted that the modern rabbi should employ artistically crafted inspirational sermons in order to achieve his religious objectives in the most effective manner. These German discourses should expound the sacred commandments while addressing universal moral values.

From 1820 to 1822, one of the preachers at the Reform temple in Berlin was a bookish young scholar named Yom-Tov Leopold Zunz. Zunz became aware of an accusation emanating from the traditionalist camp to the effect that the introduction of weekly sermons was nothing more than an imitation of a Christian practice that had never been customary among authentic Jews. 

Indeed, in the Jewish communities of Germany, France and eastern Europe, the rabbi’s preaching was restricted to a few occasions during the year. In most cases, the discourses were offered only twice: on the Sabbath preceding the Day of Atonement on the theme of repentance, and a lecture before Passover dealing mostly with the complex dietary regulations that govern that holiday. In some communities, the rabbis also preached prior to one or two additional festivals. Some of the liberal rabbis, sensitive to the allegations that they were emulating gentile customs, made special efforts to incorporate elements of the traditional Jewish “d’rashah” into their speeches. 

As a scholar well-versed in the history and literature of the Jews, Leopold Zunz was exasperated by the charge that the synagogue sermon was somehow foreign to our tradition. He had previously responded to a government edict requiring Jews to retain “authentic” Jewish names by publishing a learned monograph in which he demonstrated that Jews throughout history had always adopted names from the surrounding gentile cultures. In this case too, his reaction took the form of an erudite academic study of “the Sermons of the Jews” (Gottesdienstliche Vorträge der Juden), published in 1832.

Zunz’s treatise traced the history of Jewish homiletics and scriptural interpretation from their beginnings through to his own generation. He adduced evidence that sermons were as old as the synagogue itself and had accompanied the reading of the Torah back in the days of the Jerusalem Temple. He compiled an exhaustive bibliography of the vast corpus of rabbinic Midrash, and demonstrated that much of that literature had originated in sermons that were delivered in ancient synagogues on sabbaths and festivals. He showed how skillfully the ancient Jewish preachers had applied rhetorical structures to their craft. Clearly, the synagogue preachers of modern Europe were not copying alien practices—if anything, it was the Christians who had borrowed their sermons as part of their inheritance from their Jewish antecedents. 

Indeed, Zunz’s research was unassailable in its precision; and though Jewish scholarship has advanced considerably since his time, “the Sermons of the Jews” (usually in a revised Hebrew translation) continues to be consulted profitably almost two centuries after its original publication—a boast that can be made by very few works of academic research.

After tracing the development of Jewish preaching in the age of Midrash, and through the Babylonian academies of the talmudic and post-talmudic eras, Zunz continued his historical excursion through the medieval synagogues of north Africa, Italy, Spain and France, describing the specialized genres of philosophical and kabbalistic discourses that emerged in those cultures. He left no room for doubt that sermons were a pervasive part of religious life in the synagogues and academies, whether in the holy land or in the diaspora. 

It remained for him to explain why the medieval French and German communities had departed from the established norm by discontinuing the venerable practice of weekly sermons. He hazarded a number of possible reasons to account for this development: for one thing, the Ashkenazic services were prolonged by the cultivation of cantorial virtuosity and by the inclusion of many piyyuṭim (liturgical poems) in the liturgy, so that the further addition of a sermon would overstretch the patience of the worshipers. Moreover, many Jews preferred to derive their inspiration from reading books or in the talmudic academies rather than from orations from the pulpit. Most significantly, Zunz attributed the decline of Franco-German Jewish preaching to the atmosphere of fear and oppression that silenced the tongues of the preachers and unsettled the concentration of their audiences.

And so the upshot of all this scholarly labour is that, if you are happen to be of those Jews who derives satisfaction from listening to inspiring sermons, you need not feel guilty about indulging your passion.

And the bad news, I suppose, is that if you are one of those congregants who find the preaching irritating or tedious, you will have to look for another pretext for tuning it out.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, November 11, 2011, p. 11.

• For further reading:
  • Albeck, Chanoch. “Mavo La-Sefer.” In Ha-Derashot Be-Yisra’el, edited by Chanoch Albeck, by Leopold Zunz, 11-32. Sifre Mofet be-Ḥokhmat Yisra’el. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1974.
  • Heinemann, Joseph. Derashot ba-Tsibur bi-Teḳufat ha-Talmud. Sifriyat “Dorot”. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1970.
  • Heinemann, Joseph, and Jakob Josef Petuchowski. Literature of the Synagogue. 1st ed. Jewish Studies Classics v. 4. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2006.
  • Mann, Jacob. The Bible as Read and Preached in the Old Synagogue; a Study in the Cycles of the Readings from Torah and Prophets, as Well as from Psalms, and in the Structure of the Midrashic Homilies. The Library of Biblical studies. New York: KTAV, 1971.
  • Meyer, Michael A. Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1995.
  • Sadan, Dov. Kaʻarat Ṣimmuḳim. O Elef Bediḥah u-Bediḥah. Asuppat Humor Be-Yisra’el. Tel-Aviv: Mordecai Neuman, 1949.
  • Schechter, Solomon. “Leopold Zunz.” In Studies in Judaism, by Solomon Schechter, 84-117. Freeport NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1972.
  • Zunz, Leopold. Die gottesdienstlichen Vorträge der Juden historisch Entwickelt. Ein Beitrag zur Altertumskunde und biblischen Kritik, zur Literatur- und Religionsgeschichte. Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1966.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Escalator to Heaven

by Eliezer Segal

Jacob’s dream of angels climbing up and down a ladder is one of the most enigmatic images in the entire Bible, and Jewish commentators have proposed many interpretations to make sense of its meaning and its function in the narrative. 

Some well-known explanations connect it to fundamental Jewish concepts, such as exile from the homeland or the rise and fall of mighty empires. The strangeness of the image inspired some commentators to project their own personal values and interests onto the vision of the ladder. Arguably, many of these exegetical comments reveal more about the commentators than about the original meaning of the biblical text that they were trying to expound.

Rabbi Moses Maimonides, the Jewish philosopher par excellence, believed that the quest for a true metaphysical understanding of God is the ultimate goal in the Torah’s ideal of religious life. In keeping with this outlook, he understood that Jacob’s ladder “standing soundly on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven” was intended to be an apt symbolic portrayal of this intellectual trajectory. Thus, the image teaches that a well-grounded understanding of God is the most stable form of knowledge, with respect to both its eternal validity and the coherent scientific premises upon which it is founded. Therefore, when a person has devoted his life to scientific and theological study, and climbed the figurative rungs as far as the heavens, there is no danger of the ladder’s ever toppling.

The rabbis of the Midrash were initially puzzled by the illogical sequence of the Torah narrative when it spoke of the angels “ascending and descending” on the ladder. If the abode of angels is in the heavens, shouldn’t they have to descend from there before they can ascend? Various explanations were proposed to account for this anomaly.

Maimonides’ solution was based on his own rationalistic understanding of the phenomenon of biblical angels. It was obvious to him that angels are not human-like figures who flutter about on wings, strum harps and savour cream cheese. In some cases, he acknowledged that Scripture used the term to designate disembodied metaphysical entities composed of pure intellect; but for the most part, scriptural references to angels should be explained away as imaginary beings that exist only in prophetic visions, or as poetic metaphors.

Maimonides claimed that the angels who were climbing Jacob’s ladder represented the prophets. This was consistent with his own doctrine that the attainment of prophecy requires a person to first master an extensive curriculum of science, mathematics and metaphysics. The select few who make it through this arduous program of study—provided that they are also endowed with a powerful imaginative faculty—become qualified to be chosen as prophets, a calling that will then require them to come back down to mundane human society in order to deliver a divine message or instruct humanity in the eternal verities of monotheism. According to Maimonides, this was the spiritual ideal that was conveyed to Jacob in his nocturnal vision of angels climbing up and down a ladder.

There were other Jewish scholars who followed Maimonides’ precedent by injecting symbolic meanings into the story of Jacob’s dream. For example, Rabbi Nissim ben Moses of Marseilles noted the discrepancy between the verse that speaks of Jacob taking “of the stones of the place” to place under his head while he slept, as distinct from the later verse that refers only to a single “stone.” The well-known midrash cited by Rashi explained that the stones had all quarreled for the privilege of serving as a pillow for our righteous forefather until God merged them into a single rock. Rationalist commentators were not usually sympathetic to such cartoon-like tales about bickering minerals, but in this instance Rabbi Nissim was willing to regard it with some seriousness insofar as the episode did not claim to possess any reality outside of Jacob’s dream. The story must be conveying a profound message.

According to Rabbi Nissim, the rock placed under Jacob’s head symbolized the study of natural science. Mastery of the sciences was thereby shown to be a necessary prerequisite to the more advanced disciplines of theology and metaphysics. The individual stones stand for the diverse materials that constitute the physical world. As long as the aspiring philosopher limits himself to describing the details without integrating them into a comprehensive theory of the genesis of the universe, this will only lead to fruitless disputes and confusion. However, by further delving into the ultimate origin of matter (that is, by combining the proverbial stones into a single rock), one will eventually arrive at the proof for the existence of the eternal Creator who brought the physical universe into existence. 

In a similar spirit, the Spanish expositor Rabbi Isaac Arama interpreted the ladder dream as a divine message to Jacob informing him that, in spite of his impressive spiritual stature, he had not yet completed his course of theological and prophetic studies: the individual “stones” supporting his head had not yet coalesced into a unified metaphysical theory of creation. Such a grand world-view is only as valid as the scientific premises from which it is composed, so that a flaw at any stage of the investigation would cause the whole intellectual structure to topple.

Rabbi Nissim found an allusion to this idea in the rise and fall of the “angels”: the ladder symbolizes the process of scientific investigation, and the angels of God represent our thoughts. The empirical data is the first to be grasped by the mind, but it represents a secondary stage in the sequence of creation; this kind of knowledge is designated as “ascending.” On the other hand, the more advanced stage of discovery comes when the scientist proposes theoretical models to account for the facts. Though this more sophisticated phase of the inquiry occurs later in the process of cognition, it will lead to inferences about the primordial beginnings of the universe, and is therefore depicted in Jacob’s dream as angels “descending” from the cause to the effects.

In another passage in his Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonides cited approvingly some midrashic speculations about the exact numbers of angels and ladder-rungs in Jacob’s vision, noting that such passages were particularly appropriate for allegorical expositions. Rabbi Nissim suggested that these texts could be understood as symbolic allusions to the hierarchical structure of the world. Thus, a textual tradition that enumerated four steps on the ladder could refer to a scale consisting of: inanimate beings, vegetation, animals, and homo sapiens. A variant tradition that counted seven rungs would allow for a more elaborate classification that also distinguished between fish, fowl and reptiles. The minerals and vegetative beings sit at the bottom of the scale ready to ascend, while the animal and rational species are at the top looking downward. It is only in the human species that all four qualities coalesce.

In Rabbi Arama’s dramatic summation of the passage, when Jacob finally awakened from his remarkable dream he realized that he had been granted a comprehensive glimpse of the entire divine “ladder.” He now understood the Great Chain of Being and the mystery of its unfolding in the universe. He had thereby gained an appreciation of how the mathematical, scientific and metaphysical dimensions of reality are intricately woven into a sublime unity.

From my own perspective as an educator, I cannot but be impressed that this accelerated curriculum in theoretical physics could be completed while Jacob remained asleep.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, December 2, 2011, p. 13.

• For further reading:
  • Diamond, James Arthur. Maimonides and the Hermeneutics of Concealment: Deciphering Scripture and Midrash in the Guide of the Perplexed. SUNY Press, 2002.
  • Eisenman, Esti. “’Sulam Muṣav Arṣa ve-Rosho Maggia‘ Hash-shamayma’: Ḥalom Ya‘aḳov ve-Dimmuyo ha-‘Aṣmi shel ha-Rambam’.” Akdamot 6 (1999): 47-58.
  • Klein-Braslavi, Sara. “Maimonides’ Commentary on Jacob’s Dream of the Ladder.” Bar-Ilan: Annual of Bar-Ilan University 22-23 (1987): 329-350.
  • Kreisel, Howard Theodore. Prophecy: the History of an Idea in Medieval Jewish Philosophy. Springer, 2001.
  • Kuntz, Marion Leathers, and Paul Grimley Kuntz, eds. Jacob’s Ladder and the Tree of Life: Concepts of Hierarchy and the Great Chain of Being. Rev. ed. American University Studies v. 14. New York: P. Lang, 1988.
  • Lovejoy, Arthur O. The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2009.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Valley Forgery

by Eliezer Segal

Chances are that you have met up with some version of the following story, maybe in the Hanukkah supplement to a Jewish magazine, or in a sermon—or perhaps it was once told to you as a bedtime story.

The story is recounted from the perspective of an unnamed solitary young Jewish soldier who is serving in the American revolutionary army during the bleak winter of cold and hunger at Valley Forge. Lighting his Hanukkah menorah, a memento from his father in Poland, brings the young man some solace and a hope for victory in that difficult hour. That night his tent is visited by General George Washington himself, who is profoundly moved by the power of the Jew’s faith, and this presumably inspires him to his ultimate victory against the British forces. The following year, Washington visits the young man’s home in New York City where he confers on him a specially minted gold medal portraying a menorah and an inspirational caption.

The tale of George Washington and the Hanukkah menorah has been circulating for many decades in Jewish periodicals and children books. Some leading Israeli rabbis have taken to citing it in their sermons. The version that is currently making the rounds on Jewish religious sites on the Internet concludes with the words “This is a true story.”

And it almost goes without saying that the story is not true at all, but a work of fiction. 

In spite of the assiduous efforts of several scholars, its original text has not been discovered, and is probably irretrievably lost. Chances are that it was composed for the children’s section of a local Jewish periodical. The earliest known printed version is actually in Hebrew. It appeared under the title “Hanukkah on the Battlefield, 1777” in the Hanukkah volume of the anthology of festival texts Sefer Ha-Moʻadim assembled by folklorist Yom-Tov Lewinski, published in 1954. The story’s author is identified there only by his initials: Z.R. A surprising amount of energy has since been expended on futile efforts to identify an eighteenth-century Jewish soldier whose name would fit those initials. However, the author or adaptor was probably Zalman Robushov, better known as “Shazar,” who would afterwards serve as Israel’s president from 1963 to 1973. Robushov, an author and journalist, did in fact contribute some other chapters to Lewinski’s Book of Festivals.

The tale is so packed with factual errors that it is hard to imagine why anyone would ever have been induced to accept it as non-fiction. For example, it dates the events at Valley Forge in the winter of 1775-76, whereas they occurred two years later. It situates Washington, apparently in the role of President, in New York City during the winter of 1776; in reality, the general was then waging war elsewhere, and his presidential term would not commence until 1789. Washington promises to award the lad a Medal of Honor—but that award would not be established until the Civil War, almost a century later. The narrative assumes that the Jewish soldier hailed from Poland (he equates the British oppression with that of the “poretz” in the old country). This is unlikely in terms of the demographics of the eighteenth century, though of course that detail would have appealed to a readership in the twentieth-century when the vast majority of American Jews were of eastern European origin.

In the quest for a historically authentic narrator-hero, a number of names were unearthed from among the hundred or so Jews who were enlisted in Washington’s Continental Army. One of them, Phillip Moses Russell, served faithfully as Surgeon’s Mate, and at Valley Forge as Surgeon, and he received a commendation from Washington. However, Russell lived in Philadelphia, not New York, and there is nothing in the records to connect him with the menorah legend. Another candidate for the hero’s role was even more unlikely: the famous Haym Solomon, also a Philadelphian, was indeed Polish-born (though of Sephardic extraction), but he never saw combat whether at Valley Forge or elsewhere. His contributions to the revolutionary cause were mainly in a financial capacity, as well as through intelligence gathering.

As a work of fiction, we can readily appreciate how this story could capture the hearts of American Jews by merging the struggles for freedom that underlie the epics of the Maccabean uprising and the American Revolution, and reminding American readers of the Jewish participation in the their struggle for independence. This message has particular relevance during a season when the majority of Americans are celebrating Christmas, a holiday with a very different thematic colouring. The story also underscores the contrast between the welcoming character of the American diaspora and previous exiles where Jews were victims of harsh persecution.

To be sure, Washington was favourably disposed toward the Jews of his realm, as attested in his famous 1790 letter to the community of Newport Rhode Island in which he wrote: “May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid. May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy.”

While the legend’s attraction for American Jews is easily understandable, it is fascinating to note how it was put to diverse uses in Israeli culture. During the 1950s and 1960s, simplified Hebrew versions appeared in newspapers published for the benefit of new immigrants. In keeping with the prevailing Zionist ideology, those retellings tended to downplay the distinctive role of America as a haven for persecuted Jews, while stressing instead the bond that united the ancient Jewish insurgents with their American counterparts taking up arms to resist tyranny. More recently, the story has been circulated as a factual memoir by organizations promoting the return to old-time Jewish religious values. Preachers from these circles, who have rarely been noted for their insistence on historical accuracy, tend to stress the young soldier’s religious faith and ritual observance as the story’s chief lessons.

Now this kind of tampering with the historical truth might seem especially incongruous when it is applied to the great American leader who declared “I cannot tell a lie!” 

But then again, historians tell us that the familiar tale of the hatchet and the cherry tree was also a pious fabrication by a later story-teller (a certain Parson Weems) and had no basis in historical fact.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, December 16, 2011, p. 16.

• For further reading:
  • Bell, J. L. “Washington’s Hanukkah: An Oral Tradition.” Boston 1775, 2, 2007.
  • Kellock, Harold. Parson Weems of the Cherry-Tree; Being a Short Account of the Eventful Life of the Reverend M. L. Weems. Ann Arbor: Gryphon Books, 1971.
  • Lewinski, Yom-Tov, ed. Sefer Ha-Moʻadim. Vol. 1. 8 vols. Tel Aviv: Dvir for the Oneg Shabbat (Ohel Shem) Society, 1956.
  • Schely-Newman, Esther. “George Washington and the Hanukkah Candles: Transformations of a Legend.” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Folklore 24-25 (2007): 150-173.
  • ———. “Local Concerns, Foreign Heroes: George Washington in Israel.” Western Folklore 67, no. 4 (Fall 2008): 351-378.
  • Schwartz, Laurens R. Jews and the American Revolution: Haym Salomon and Others. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1987.
  • Wenger, Beth S. History Lessons: The Creation of American Jewish Heritage. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Pardes Lost

by Eliezer Segal

An unusual and enigmatic passage in the Mishnah lists several topics that were classified as Top Secret in that they were not to be discussed or taught openly. These subjects include “the account of the beginning” and “the account of the chariot.” The former presumably involves interpretations of the biblical creation story; whereas the latter deals with the bizarre vision described by the prophet Ezekiel of a chariot composed of and drawn by supernatural beings and bearing a royal throne. The ancient sages were so scrupulous about not publicizing these matters that we now know virtually nothing about them. Nevertheless, the Talmud preserves stories about the impressive supernatural pyrotechnics that occurred when prominent rabbis discoursed about the mystical chariot.

In order to demonstrate the need for secrecy, the rabbis told a story of four sages from the early second century who pursued this esoteric lore. All but one came to unfortunate ends. Their fates were described in a famous parable: “Four entered the orchard— …Ben Azzai peeked and died… Ben Zoma peeked and was maimed… ‘The Other’ peeked and cut the plants… Rabbi Akiva ascended safely and descended peacefully.”

In some traditions, the imagery is explained in greater detail: ”To what may this matter be compared? To a royal orchard that had an upper balcony. A person is permitted to peek at it as long as he does not stare at it for a long time.” Indeed, the Mishnah and other early texts seem to be worried principally about the prospect of people overindulging their desires to gawk too familiarly at the sublime spectacle that is designated for royalty.

Thus, the endeavours of the four rabbis who contemplated the “account of the chariot” were depicted metaphorically as attempts to sneak an illicit peek at a garden that was restricted for the exclusive enjoyment of the king. In keeping with the usual convention in such parables, the king represents the Almighty. Accordingly, for mortals to claim unobstructed access to the celestial throne-room and the angelic chariot was condemned as inappropriate lèse-majesté toward the divine. The same Mishnah that prohibited open teaching of the account of the chariot went on to admonish: “whoever is not sensitive to the honour of his Creator, it would have been better for him if he had never come into this world.”

According to this imagery, each of the four rabbis tried to steal into the walled royal park via the gallery. Two of them came to harm in the course of scaling the wall, one fatally. “The Other”—the infamous heretic Elisha ben Abuya—succeeded in gaining entry to the garden, and he set about vandalizing the trees. As we learn from other accounts in the Talmud, Elisha’s undisciplined contemplation of spiritual mysteries led him to become a heretic and a traitor to his people. In contrast to the other three sages who trespassed into the walled garden with the intention of beholding and admiring its flora, Elisha’s motives were malicious. By destroying the proverbial plants, he left the garden unprotected to the glare of the sun. This is probably a metaphoric allusion to his revealing mysteries that were supposed to remain “shaded” in respectful secrecy. Rabbi Akiva was the only one of the four who emerged unscathed from his respectful visit to the royal orchard.

Allowing for the obscurity of the subject matter, the parable of the orchard comes across as fairly straightforward. However, later commentators introduced additional complication and mystification.

At the root of the matter is the Hebrew word for orchard or vineyard: “pardes.” This is a very commonplace term in rabbinic usage; its meaning is plain, and it has no mystical or supernatural connotations. Quite the contrary, rabbinic literature routinely introduced a pardes into parables that were intended to illustrate how well humans are performing their duties for the Master of the Universe. For these purposes, the Talmud and Midrash (like Christian texts that were produced in similar cultural settings) often employed the metaphor of “labourers in a vineyard” or in an orchard. These parables often specified the diverse tasks that were assigned to the “gardeners” or the criteria according to which their work was rewarded—and several of them made mention of a tower or balcony from which the king kept a vigilant eye on his employees.

Later commentators, however, were alert to the resemblance between the Hebrew “pardes” and the similar-sounding word “paradise” and its cognates in other languages. Indeed, both terms do likely originate in the old Persian “pairidaeza” connoting a walled park. Thus, Rav Hai Ga’on explained that the rabbinic pardes was referring to the garden of Eden: just as the original garden was hidden away after Adam and Eve sinned, so too, this paradise was a hidden celestial locale that houses the souls of the righteous. Through the mediation of prominent medieval commentators such as Rabbis Ḥananel of Kairowan, Nathan ben Jehiel of Rome and Rashi, this interpretation became the dominant one, and the original metaphor of an orchard or park was all but forgotten.

These commentators described how the four ancient rabbis employed secret divine names in order to ascend to the celestial paradise. Indeed, a similar procedure had been cultivated by schools of medieval Jewish mystics who described their spiritual journeys as ascents through multiple levels of palaces; the entry at each level was guarded by menacing angels who demanded to be shown a “seal” consisting of holy names. It was not always clear whether the ascent to paradise was being presented as an actual event, or as a psychological experience that took place within the soul of the mystic.

The evolution of the “pardes” image reached an intriguing new phase toward the end of the thirteenth century when Rabbi Moses de Leon, the author of the Zohar, began to use the four-letter Hebrew word as an acronym for four different modes of Jewish scriptural exposition: P’shaṭ (literal), Remez (allegorical), D’rash (rabbinic midrash), and Sod (esoteric). This usage was subsequently popularized by an anonymous kabbalist whose works were incorporated into the standard editions of the Zohar, and from there it has become a mainstay of Jewish exegetical theory.

De Leon did preserve some of the original botanical associations when he likened the deeper meanings of the Torah to a nut whose edible kernel is wrapped in multiple layers of shell. Some other authors, such as Rabbi Baḥya ben Asher, applied the “Remez” epithet to philosophical allegories.

Scholars have noted the remarkable resemblance between the fourfold Jewish “PaRDeS” scheme and a system that had been formulated earlier by medieval Christian authors. The Christian classification consisted of: History, Allegory, Tropology or Typology (moral homilies) and Anagogy (interpretations related related to the end times). While it is easy to understand how such a framework could have evolved independently out of the native traditions of Hebrew scriptural interpretation, it is unlikely that medieval Jewish scholars would have been entirely oblivious to the Christian version that was enjoying much popularity at that time, especially in Spain.

The original foray of the four sages into the enigmatic pardes;had by now undergone substantial transformations—beginning as a furtive break-in into a walled orchard, changing into a metaphysical ascent to a celestial paradise, and on to its later incarnation as an abstract scholarly acronym.

And so, the tangled branches of this story, so deeply rooted in the rich soil of Jewish tradition, continue to bring forth a tasty assortment of symbolic fruit for the mind and spirit.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, January 20, 2012, p. 12.

• For further reading:
  • Bacher, Wilhelm. “L’Exégèse biblique dans le Zohar.” Revue des Études Juives 22 (1891): 33-46.
  • Goshen-Gottstein, Alon. “Four Entered Paradise Revisited.” Harvard Theological Review 88, no. 1 (1995): 69-133.
  • Halperin, David J. The Faces of the Chariot: Early Jewish Responses to Ezekiel’s Vision. Texte und Studien zum antiken Judentum. Tubingen: J C B Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1988.
  • Idel, Moshe. “The Zohar as Exegesis.” In Mysticism and Sacred Scripture, edited by Steven T. Katz, 87-100. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.>
  • Neher, André. “Le Voyage Mystique des Quatre.” Revue de l’Histoire des Religions 140, no. 1 (1951): 59-82.
  • Sandler, P. “On the Question of PaRDeS and Fourfold Method.” In Sefer Eliyahu Auerbach: Offered in Honor of Dr. Eliyahu Auerbach, on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday, edited by Arthur Biram and Elias Auerbach, 222-235. Jerusalem: Kiryath Sefer for the Israel Society for Biblical Research, 1955.
  • Schäfer, Peter. “New Testament and Hekhalot Literature : the Journey into Heaven in Paul and in Merkavah Mysticism.” Journal of Jewish Studies 35, no. 1 (1984): 19-35
  • ———. The Origins of Jewish Mysticism. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009.
  • Scholem, Gershom Gerhard. Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and Talmudic Tradition. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1960.
  • ———. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. New York: Schocken Books, 1995.
  • ———. “The Meaning of the Torah in Jewish Mysticism.” In On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, by Gershom Gerhard Scholem, translated by Ralph Manheim, 32-86. New York: Schocken, 1956.
  • Urbach, Efraim Elimelech. “The Traditions concerning Mystical Doctrine in the Period of the Tannaim.” In Studies in Mysticism and Religion, Presented to Gershom G. Scholem on his Seventieth Birthday by Pupils, Colleagues and Friends, edited by Efraim Elimelech Urbach, R. J. Zwi Werblowsky, and Chaim Wirszubski, 1-29. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1967.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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The Price is Wrong

by Eliezer Segal

The past year (2011) has been marked by a great deal of unrest, much of it provoked by frustration at the soaring cost of living. Last summer, the Israeli middle classes erupted into vocal protests in response to the exorbitant price tags on cottage cheese. And of course much of the industrialized world has been agitated by demands to occupy Wall Street and other perceived bastions of capitalist exploitation.

These concerns are likely to be compounded when it comes to the expenditures required for maintaining a commitment to traditional Jewish life in such budget items as kosher food and private schools.

The high price of being Jewish is not a new concern. The Torah already allowed for variable offerings to be brought for certain transgressions depending on the sinner’s economic circumstances. Even so, the prices of sacrifices could become prohibitively expensive.

A tradition to that effect is recorded in the Mishnah. For certain complicated cases involving impurity associated with childbirth and multiple miscarriages, the prevailing law was that several offerings had to be brought in order to effect purification. Although such sacrifices should not have been particularly onerous—a pair of pigeons or doves was the standard unit—the Mishnah relates that the heavy demand served to inflate the prices of the doves to absurd proportions: twenty-five gold denars for a pair of birds.

The precise circumstances of the situation are difficult to reconstruct. The ritual issues that were described by the Mishnah sound very rare and unlikely, so it is not obvious how they could have caused such an extreme spike in the price of a common commodity. Perhaps the Mishnah mentioned this particular case as but one example of a more widespread tendency of religious authorities to make stringent rulings that failed to make allowances for the financial hardships that they were causing to Jews with limited incomes.

At any rate, the Patriarch Rabban Simeon ben Gamaliel found the situation utterly intolerable and set his sights to remedying it. He took a solemn oath in the name of the holy sanctuary that he would not go to bed that night until he had managed to slash the price of doves by ninety-five percent, to a single silver denar. He accomplished this by issuing a new halakhic ruling, that in those cases of multiple miscarriages, only a single  pair of doves would now be required.

The Mishnah concludes that Rabban Simeon’s success exceeded his hopes by far. Before the day was through, the cost of a pair of doves had plummeted to a quarter of a silver denar—a mere 1% of the previous inflated price.

While it is puzzling to historians how a rabbinic ruling about an obscure area of cultic law could have such an instantaneous and radical impact on market prices, Rabban Simeon ben Gamaliel’s decree has had an enduring influence on Jewish legal philosophy, as a precedent for judicial activism on behalf of beleaguered consumers.

For precisely that reason, it appears that not all the commentators were comfortable with the proposition that ritual requirements could be relaxed for the sake of social and economic convenience. Therefore, some preferred to soften the Mishnah’s message, arguing that Rabban Simeon had not really tampered with the accepted law, but rather he subscribed to an opposing position that just happened to require fewer doves.

Rashi was probably responding to such an interpretation when he insisted that the Patriarch deliberately adopted a lenient position on a Torah law in the belief that this was warranted according to the principle “It is time to act for the Lord for they have made void thy law,” a rule that was invoked elsewhere in order to justify overriding specific laws for the sake of urgent communal priorities. According to Rashi, Rabban Simeon was worried that the high price of doves would cause people to forgo the ritual altogether, leading them to violate graver Torah prohibitions.

A very similar attitude is discernible in connection with another ruling in the Talmud that was designed to lower the price of a ritual object. The Mishnah stated that it is unacceptable to observe the precept of taking myrtle branches (hadas) on the Sukkot festival unless at least one of the branches is intact without its tip being cut off. However, the Babylonian sage Samuel ruled in accordance with the dissenting position of Rabbi Tarfon who permitted clipped myrtle branches.

This ruling ostensibly runs counter to the accepted norms of talmudic decision-making, which usually give preference to the anonymous opinions recorded in the Mishnah. The Talmud linked Samuel’s ruling to an incident involving consumer protection. Apparently the myrtle sellers in his community were overcharging their customers, and it was in order to counteract this development that Samuel confronted them with an ultimatum: either they lower their prices or he would announce publicly that the halakhah follows the lenient view of Rabbi Tarfon, so that kosher hadasim would become much easier to procure, severely reducing the merchants’ profit margins.

In the seventeenth century, Jewish communities in Moravia declared a two-month boycott of fish because the local suppliers had been exploiting the Jewish attachment to Sabbath fish as a pretext for charging exorbitant prices. Rabbi Menahem Mendel Krochmal was asked whether there were religious grounds for supporting the boycott in light of talmudic assurances that Jews would be divinely compensated, even rewarded, for their Sabbath expenditures. In his responsum, Rabbi Krochmal enthusiastically encouraged the sanctions basing himself on the Mishnah about Rabban Simeon ben Gamaliel and the doves, as well as Rashi’s commentary thereto. If, in order to combat outrageous prices, the sages of old were prepared to adopt a lenient position regarding a precept from the Torah, it was clear that Jews could temporarily forfeit some fish for the benefit of the consumers

Though most authorities were in favour of combating inflation, they did not always agree on the best means for achieving that goal. The Talmud reports that the father of the sage Samuel would try to sell his produce as early as possible in the season when the market price was at its lowest. His son tried to go him one better by stockpiling the low-priced produce until later, and making it available cheaply after the prices had generally risen, hoping thereby to help drive them down. It sounded like a good idea at the time, but the scholars of the land of Israel observed that the father’s policy was preferable to the son’s. They reasoned that the impact of the price-lowering is more likely to be felt early in the season before matters have had a chance to stabilize, than later on after the higher prices have already taken effect.

To be sure, there are items for which we should be willing to pay a premium price. The wise Solomon mentioned some examples in his book of Proverbs. Thus, for the sake of acquiring understanding one should be prepared to give all one’s possessions. And of course, a woman of valour fetches a price above rubies!

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, February 10, 2012, p. 14.

• For further reading:
  • Elon, Menachem. Jewish Law: History, Sources, Principles. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1994.
  • Friedman, Hershey H. “Ancient Marketing Practices: The View from Talmudic Times.” Journal of Public Policy & Marketing 3 (1984): 194-204.
  • Sanders, E. P. Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 BCE-66 CE. London and Philadelphia: SCM Press and Trinity Press International, 1992.
  • Warhaftig, Itamar. “Consumer Protection: Price and Wage Levels.” Crossroads: Halacha and the Modern World 1 (1987): 49-77.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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A Dinner Fit for a Queen

by Eliezer Segal

When Esther applied for the position of Queen of Persia and Media, Mordecai advised her not to divulge the fact that she was Jewish. The biblical story does not concern itself with all the details of how she was able to uphold Jewish religious observances without revealing her origins. The fundamental fact of her being married to the heathen Ahasuerus was in itself a glaring violation of Jewish law that later interpreters had to grapple with in various ways.

For the moment, let us focus on a more concrete question: what did Esther eat while she was residing in the royal palace? In her determination to conceal her nationality, did she simply forgo any attempts to maintain a kosher diet, or did she find some way to avoid transgressing the dietary restrictions without blowing her cover?

The Bible’s reticence about these questions provoked a great deal of exegetical discourse among Jewish commentators in ancient and medieval times. The classic talmudic discussion took its cue from the obscure wording of Esther 2:9, which speaks of her introduction to the harem stating that she and her maids were provided with “the good thing of the house of the women.” The Talmud reasonably asks what exactly was this “good thing” that they gave her? To this question the Babylonian sage Rav replied that they fed her “Jewish food.”

The belief that Esther kept the kosher rules while in Ahasuerus’ palace might also have been shared by the author of the ancient Greek version of Esther, which contains a prayer (subsequently preserved in the Apocrypha) in which she claims merit for the fact that “your maidservant has not sat at table in Haman’s house, nor graced by her presence the banquet of the king.” 

While Rav’s explanation may allay some of our trepidations about Esther’s ritual observances, it opens up a veritable can of worms with regards to the logic of the plot. If “Jewish food” is the same as kosher food, then wouldn’t that have given away the secret of her Jewish identity? Or are we to imagine that she somehow managed to express her gastronomic requirements as an innocuous preference for ethnic cuisine (“I’m tired of Cushite take-out, how about ordering some Jewish tonight?”). Some commentators suggest that the offer of Jewish food originated from the Persian authorities and was part of a stratagem for revealing the mystery of her nationality.

A similar approach to the question was taken by Rabbi Yoḥanan in the Talmud. He explained that the food served to Esther consisted of “pulse”; that is: the seeds of legumes like beans or lentils. He inferred this from a comparison with the tale of Daniel and his companions who found themselves in a similar situation in the imperial court of Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia. Those pious Jews refused to partake of the delicacies provided by the king and restricted their diet to pulse and water. It should be noted, however, that unlike Esther, Daniel was not trying to conceal his Jewishness, and therefore he had the option of openly declining the non-kosher dishes on religious grounds.

Rabbi Solomon Alkabetz of sixteenth-century Safed suggested a number of other possible reasons why Esther might have chosen to eat pulse. For one thing, it was likely to induce bad breath and thereby discourage Ahasuerus’ unwanted romantic advances.

Whatever objections might have been sparked by Rav’s assertion that Esther ate Jewish food, there was even greater discomfiture with the comment of his colleague Samuel who claimed that Esther was given swine meat to eat. The early commentators go into considerable detail in their attempts to determine the correct reading of the relevant talmudic text and to define exactly which cuts of the prohibited animal were being offered to her. Most probably, the reference was to pork necks. Rabbi Nathan ben Jehiel of Rome in his dictionary the Arukh interpreted it as bacon, and also cited (evidently in the name of an unnamed Babylonian Ga’on) a recipe for preparing a kind of pork schnitzel!

Indeed, Rashi accepted Samuel’s comment at face value, observing that under the circumstances, given that Esther had no alternative and was involved in a mission to save the Jewish people, it was permissible to violate the dietary rituals for the sake of the greater good. In this connection, some commentators invoked a remarkable statement from the Talmud to the effect that the Israelite soldiers who conquered Canaan in the days of Joshua were permitted to eat the bacon that they found in houses of the previous inhabitants.

That talmudic law was in fact a topic of heated controversy among medieval authorities. Maimonides understood that this was simply an application of the well-established principle that ritual prohibitions are set aside in order to preserve lives; and hence it only referred to cases where the soldiers were starving and had access to no other sources of nourishment. Naḥmanides, on the other hand, argued that this law constituted a unique exemption from the Torah’s dietary restrictions, and as such it applied even if the soldiers were able to procure food from elsewhere.

At any rate, the application of this principle to Esther’s situation is not without its own difficulties. After all, at this stage of the Purim story Haman has not yet made his appearance and there is no clear and present danger confronting the Jews that would provide an obvious justification for disregarding ritual precepts. Mordecai’s encouraging Esther to apply for the office of Queen of Persia appears to be based on nothing more than an intuition that it might come in useful some day, or (as argued by some commentators) on the premise that Esther and Mordecai were gifted with prophetic insights into the future that allowed them to appreciate the crucial importance of planting a Jewish mole in the highest echelons of the Iranian government.

Several other authors tried to mitigate the problem by proposing alternative translations for the Aramaic term that is usually understood as “pork necks” or “bacon strips.” Some suggested that Samuel was not referring to ḥazir (swine), but that the problematic word ought instead to be derived from a homonymous lexical root referring to a head of lettuce, or even an apple. (Given the current rabbinic horror of microscopic bugs in green vegetables, I’m not certain that this would now be considered a satisfactory solution.)

An ancient Aramaic translation of Esther, cited with approval by some later interpreters, claimed that while it is true that Esther’s hosts offered her bacon, she discretely passed it on to her maidservants.

And in a similar spirit, the medieval Tosafot retorted succinctly and categorically—whatever the Talmud might suggest to the contrary—that “God forbid! She never ate it!”

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, March 2, 2012, p. 13.

• For further reading:
  • Ehtentreu, Chanoch. “Ḥaluṣei Ṣava Mutar Lahem Le’ekhol Neveilot.” In Talmudic Studies, 253-255. Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1997.
  • Segal, Eliezer. The Babylonian Esther Midrash: A Critical Commentary. Vol. 2. 3 vols. Brown Judaic Studies no. 291-293. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994.

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Don’t Go Near the Water

by Eliezer Segal

In the days of Rabbi Judah the Pious (1140 – 1217) it once happened that the first day of Passover fell on March 21, the day following the Spring equinox. Since talmudic law insisted that the water with which matzah dough is kneaded must be left to settle overnight, and the time-honoured Ashkenazic custom forbade the baking of matzahs earlier than the afternoon preceding the seder, the community had no apparent alternative but to make use of water that had been drawn on the previous day.

In this particular instance, however, they were faced with a grave predicament: Jewish tradition categorically forbids the use of any water that was drawn from its source prior to the equinox.

If you are not familiar with this obscure prohibition of pre-equinox water, I refer you to the Shulḥan Arukh, the authoritative compendium of Jewish religious law. It includes an enumeration of various practices that must be avoided because they were believed to be dangerous or unhealthy. In his glosses to that passage, Rabbi Moses Isserles of Cracow added a few more items to the original list, basing himself on traditions that had evolved in Ashkenazic communities. In this context Rabbi Isserles noted that “the prevalent custom is not to drink any water at the time of the seasonal transition (Hebrew: teḳufah). This is in accordance with the earlier authorities, and should not be changed.”

Indeed, the avoidance of water at the four teḳufahs of the solar year—that is: the vernal and autumnal equinoxes and the summer and winter solstices—has a long and enigmatic history in Jewish lore. The Jews of Kairowan, Tunisia, addressed an inquiry about this practice to the distinguished head of the Babylonian academy Rav Hai Ga’on (d. 1038) asking whether it had any genuine basis in Jewish tradition. The Ga’on responded that he personally was unable to explain the reason for the custom, but that it was nevertheless a venerable one that should be treated very seriously. He speculated that its main purpose might to be to add solemnity to these important seasonal transitions by partaking of something more substantial than mere water. Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra amplified that explanation, noting that these four milestones have the status of New Year days and should therefore be ushered in with a flavorful beverage.

To be sure, there were respectable authors who rejected the practice—which could lay claim to no clear source in the Bible or Talmud—as a piece of popular superstition that should be dismissed out of hand. Such, for example, was the attitude of Rabbi Abraham bar  Ḥiyya of Barcelona.

It would appear nonetheless that Jews in many different communities were scrupulous about refraining from water on the four key teḳufah dates, whether in obedience to an entrenched custom or—and this was probably the most common case—because they were truly convinced that not to do so would imperil their lives.

To return to our case of the matzah kneaders, the problem was averted there thanks to a judicious decision by Rabbi Judah the Pious who stated that whatever danger might otherwise lurk in the pre-equinoctial waters did not apply when they were being used for the fulfilment of a religious precept; as declared by the wise Ecclesiastes: “whosoever keeps the commandment shall experience no evil thing.” 

Other authorities found different grounds for permitting the problematic matzah. Rabbi Isaac of Dampierre, for example, argued that whatever hazard might have infested the waters did not apply in urban settings. Some other authors were confident that the danger could be counteracted by placing a piece of iron in the water. Nevertheless, when a similar situation presented itself in 1206, there were communities who ignored their rabbis’ permissive rulings and preferred to bake their matzahs before the equinox rather than face the terrifying threat of the menacing waters.

Modern research has been no more successful than was Rav Hai Ga’on at identifying the custom’s origin. Although several scholars tried to situate it in the realm of world folklore, there have been some recent attempts to trace it to forgotten themes from ancient Hebrew religion. 

One intriguing theory links it to the biblical tale of Jephthah’s daughter who was sacrificed as a result of the rash oath taken by her father. The story goes on to tell how “the daughters of Israel went four days each year to commemorate the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite.”

As tends to happen with customs related to women and their experiences, the official male-authored scriptures preserve no records about the nature of this commemoration, nor do we have any evidence that it continued to be observed. 

However, a tradition that was current during medieval times traced the four forbidden days to four scriptural episodes when water was transformed into blood. As recounted by Rabbi Judah the Pious, the waters of the Nile turned into blood at the spring equinox; Moses caused water—and also, according to this tradition, blood—to be discharged from the rock at Kadesh on the summer solstice; Isaac was offered as a sacrifice on the autumnal equinox—whereupon Abraham’s sword supposedly dripped blood; and Jephthah made his ill-conceived vow at the winter solstice, causing all the waters to turn to blood.

We see that this tradition grouped together four separate incidents, and had to take some liberties with the original stories in order to fit them into the blood-and-water motif. The crucial reference to “four days” had its origin in the tale of Jephthah’s daughter, suggesting a special association with her commemoration. This tradition juxtaposes her sacrifice to the better-known one of Isaac, as an archetype of selfless devotion. 

A different medieval tradition about the four teḳufahs has inspired yet another theory about its origins. It is based on a widespread legend that depicted those days as the occasions of a quarterly celestial “changing of the guard,” when new companies of angels arise to relieve those of the previous season. During each interregnum, the world, as it were, is left unprotected and vulnerable. This theory is attested principally in kabbalistic works and may derive from older Hebrew mystical writings.

Some scholars point to a similar pattern that emerges from the Dead Sea scrolls. As we have learned from those documents, many ancient Jews followed a religious calendar that differed considerably from the one currently in use. Its years consisted of twelve thirty-day months, with an extra day inserted after every third month, bringing the total to 364 days. According to the apocalyptic Book of Enoch these four days are guided by special angels. Therefore it has been conjectured that remnants of this ancient calendar may have survived in the oral traditions of the medieval Jewish mystics. They worried that on those four critical dates, the water supply is deprived of adequate supernatural defenses, between the withdrawal of the angelic guards from their posts and the arrival of their replacements.

I have not personally witnessed any dire effects resulting from drinking the waters of the solstices or equinoxes, but just to be safe, it would probably not hurt to toast those days with a cupful of a stronger or more delectable beverage.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, March 16, 2012, p. 12.

• For further reading:
  • Aptowitzer, Viktor. “Issur Shetiyat Mayim be-she‘at ha-Teḳufah.” Ha-Tsofe me-’Erets Hagar 2 (1912): 122-126.
  • Baumgarten, Elisheva. “‘Remember That Glorious Girl’: Jephthah’s Daughter in Medieval Jewish Culture.” Jewish Quarterly Review 97, no. 2 (2007): 180-209.
  • Elior, Rachel. The Three Temples: On the Emergence of Jewish Mysticism. Translated by David Louvish. Littman library of Jewish civilization. Oxford and Portland OR: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2004.
  • Ta-Shma, Israel. “The Danger of Drinking Water during the Tequfa—The History of an Idea.” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Folklore 17 (1995): 21-32.
  • Trachtenberg, Joshua. Jewish Magic and Superstition: A Study in Folk Religion. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Fractions, Factions and Afflictions

by Eliezer Segal

According to the traditional practice, the Passover seder table must contain a stack of three matzahs. The middle piece is broken early in the service, with one half of it being set aside as the “afikoman.” That leaves two and a half matzahs for fulfilling the related precepts and reciting the appropriate blessings later in the evening. 

Several different reasons have been proposed to explain the need for three matzahs. Some of these focus on symbolic associations with the number three. However, as is often the case in the study of Jewish practices, the original explanation is to be sought in an intricate complex of legal considerations. 

On a normal Sabbath meal it is customary to break bread over two loaves. The Talmud derives this rule from the story of the manna in the wilderness, the bread from heaven that appeared to the Israelites in the wilderness every morning except on the seventh day. “And it came to pass, that on the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread.” The double portion of manna that was delivered on Friday sufficed for the Israelites’ needs on the seventh day, and this great miracle is commemorated when we partake of two loaves at our Shabbat meals. Out of respect for the holiness of the occasion, the loaves should be whole and unbroken. 

Passover, however, offers its own unique spin on the practice. Of course, any bread that is used in connection with the festival of freedom must be of the unleavened variety. However, the Torah designates matzah as “bread of affliction.” According to tradition, we express this theme visually by the use of a defective, broken matzah. 

So how are we to accommodate these conflicting demands—of whole loaves for a festival and of a broken matzah for Passover? It is in this halakhic conundrum that we will find the source for our familiar insistence on having two and a half matzahs on the seder table. Rav Pappa declared in the Talmud: “all agree that on Passover one should place the broken piece inside the whole one when breaking bread.” That is to say, we are to cover both bases by using both whole and broken matzah. 

Problem solved—or so it would seem at first glance. 

Medieval authorities inform us about a difference that arose between the Jewish communities of Babylonia and Israel with respect to the matzah at the seder. “The residents of Babylonia, when Passover occurs on the Sabbath, place the broken matzah between two whole ones; and on a weekday they use one broken and one whole matzah…; whereas the people of the land of Israel, whether on a weekday or on the Sabbath, place the broken piece on the whole matzah.” 

The earliest records do not specify what were the issues that underlay the divergent practices. It would appear that they had to do with the status of “double loaves” on festivals. The original biblical story about the manna referred only to the weekly Sabbath, so it was not obvious whether the requirement of two loaves also extended to festivals that occur on other days of the week. Various midrashic texts reflect differing opinions on this question. 

At any rate, it is understandable that the Babylonian Jews would have drawn a distinction between seders that fell on Friday nights and those that occurred on other days with respect to the obligation of the two unbroken loaves. This distinction was mentioned in the prayer book of Sa’adiah Ga’on. 

Another likely point of contention concerned the relationship between the “double bread” requirement and the need for whole loaves. Though on normal Sabbaths or holy days it makes sense that we should insist that the breads be whole, it is also conceivable that Passover could be viewed as an exception to that rule. Since the Torah mandates the use of “bread of affliction” uniquely for the Passover meal, then perhaps a broken matzah qualifies as a full-fledged loaf for purposes of the double-bread requirement at the seder. This would explain the policy of those Jewish communities for whom one and a half matzahs were deemed sufficient for proper observance of the precept. 

Indeed, this very rationale was enunciated by the tenth-century Babylonian Ga’on Rav Sherira who noted that, in contrast to Sabbaths and other festivals when it is obligatory to partake of two loaves, on the Passover table there should be only one and a half loaves in fulfilment of the “bread of affliction” requirement. A source cited by Rav Sherira’s son Hai Gaon went so far as to insist that it was utterly forbidden to use two whole matzahs for the seder ritual, as this would undermine the symbolism of the “bread of affliction.” On the other hand, another influential text emanating from the geonic academies, Amram Ga’on’s “Order of Prayer,” instructed that “we take hold of two whole loaves and a broken piece,” irrespective of whether Passover falls on the Sabbath or on a weekday. 

For several generations afterwards, we find that the Jewish communities of the world were divided between the 1½-ers and the 2½-ers—and neither of them was making any distinctions between Shabbat and weekdays. Some authorities asserted categorically that Sabbaths and festivals were equally subject to the obligation of double loaves, whereas others described the use of an additional unbroken matzah on weekdays as nothing more than a precautionary measure lest people forget that such a requirement exists on Shabbat. 

The major Sephardic codes, including such preeminent authorities as Rabbi Isaac Alfasi and Maimonides, all favoured a literal reading of Rav Pappa’s statement in the Talmud about placing the broken matzah inside a (presumably single) whole one. This position was the dominant one in Yemen, in older Italian works, and elsewhere. 

In France and Germany, on the other hand, the 1½-ers, such as Rabbis Peretz and Yom-Tov of Joigny in twelfth-century France, never amounted to more than a small minority. Most Jews likely thought that it was safer to do follow the more stringent option, rather than omit an element of the ritual that might turn out to be religiously significant. 

A notable exception to the Ashkenazic pattern was Rabbi Elijah of Vilna in the eighteenth century. With his characteristically dismissive attitude toward popular customs, he invoked the authority of the Sephardic codifiers and argued that the Torah’s emphasis on the bread-of-affliction motif was best served by minimizing the quantity of unbroken matzahs on the seder plate. 

Once the three-matzah stack had had gained universal acceptance, it stimulated commentators to propose symbolic interpretations, as they did for other number-based elements in the seder and Haggadah (such as the Four Cups and Four Sons). An explanation that enjoyed popularity among French and German authors linked it to the thanksgiving sacrifices. According to the Torah, these were accompanied by offerings of matzot, three of which were offered up on the Temple altar. The three mandatory matzahs at the seder thus remind us that our deliverance from Egypt was a definitive occasion for conveying our thanksgiving. 

Rabbi Eleazer Rokeaḥ associated the number with the three seahs of bread that Sarah prepared for her angelic visitors in Genesis 18:6. According to rabbinic tradition, this episode took place on Passover. 

And in all this voluminous literature of classic sources discussing the practice, one would be hard pressed to find any mention of the one explanation that is most familiar to us by virtue of its inclusion in so many Haggadah commentaries and on embroidered matzah-covers: the link to the three divisions of the Jewish people, Kohens, Levites and Israelites.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, March 30, 2012, p. 18.

• For further reading:
  • Kasher, Menahem. Hagadah Shelemah: The Complete Passover Hagadah. Jerusalem: Torah Shelema Institute, 1967.
  • Tabory, Joseph. Passover Ritual Throughout the Generations [Pesaḥ Dorot: Peraḳim Be-Toldot Lel Ha-Seder] . Sifriyat “Helal Ben-Ḥayim”. Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1996.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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A Blessed State

by Eliezer Segal

Since medieval times it has been customary for Jewish communities to recite prayers for the welfare of the governments in whose realms they reside. This was in keeping with the admonition voiced by the prophet Jeremiah to “seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captives.” Jeremiah was speaking to his fellow Jews who had been exiled to Babylon, the very state whose armies had destroyed Judea and sent its citizens into exile. And indeed, diaspora Jews in later ages continued to pray even on behalf of governments whose attitudes and policies were not particularly amicable toward them.

In 1948, following the declaration of independence by the newly established State of Israel, the religious authorities there realized that the Jewish state deserved at least as much liturgical support as the gentile overlords of previous generations; and so they set to composing a prayer on that theme that would be recited in synagogues during the Sabbath morning services. To be precise, a number of such prayers were proposed—including one by the Chief Rabbi of Tel-Aviv who submitted his text immediately following the November 29 1947 United Nation partition decision—but none of those efforts had sufficient institutional leverage to ensure their widespread adoption. For the most part, those prayers consisted of modified versions of the familiar exilic “prayer for the monarch,” with the name of the State of Israel and its citizens substituted for the foreign rulers.

On the other hand, the version that is in current use was issued by the Chief Rabbis of Israel, the official body that been inherited from the Ottoman and British Mandatory regimes to regulate the religious activities of the local Jewish community. This authorized “Prayer for the Welfare of Israel” was first published in the September 20 1948 editions of the Hebrew daily newspapers Ha’aretz and Hatzofeh. It was accompanied by a declaration that the Chief Rabbis of the Land of Israel, Isaac Halevy Herzog and Ben-Zion Ouziel had established and revised the text to be recited in all the synagogues in Israel and the diaspora. The press release also contained a notice from Rabbi Herzog stating that the author S. Y. Agnon had assisted in the crafting of the prayer. Agnon was one of Israel’s most distinguished literary figures, and he would go on to win the Nobel Prize for literature in 1967. He died in 1970.

Taken at face value, Rabbi Herzog’s declaration seemed to be saying that the two chief rabbis had been responsible for the actual wording of the text, and that Agnon had served only as a consultant, perhaps to polish the style or correct a few errors in the Hebrew idioms. This was how the story was understood for a generation. Agnon himself, according to the testimony of acquaintances, described his role as merely editorial; however he never explicitly denied the rumours about his being the prayer’s principal author.

In 1986 an Israeli scholar published an article in the daily Ma’ariv in which he declared with great fanfare that he could shed a completely new light on the question of the prayer’s authorship. The principal evidence for this assertion was the discovery among Agnon’s files of a photocopy of the prayer in the writer’s handwriting. In the wake of this revelation, it became conventional for two subsequent generations of writers to identify the original author the Prayer for the Welfare of Israel as S. Y. Agnon, while limiting the Chief Rabbis’ contributions to their official authorizations.

More recently, the story has been subjected to a thorough rethinking based on examination of the original documents, including both the text of the prayer by Rabbi Herzog and Agnon’s hand-written version (not the photocopy) which had come to light in the meantime and are now available for viewing in Israeli museums. The inscription attached to Agnon’s manuscript bears out Rabbi Herzog’s original claim that Agnon contributed editorial revisions and was not the prayer’s author. The fact that he insisted on writing out a completely new draft of the prayer, rather than merely inserting his corrections and emendations to the text he had been given, was ascribed to his pious desire to uphold the integrity of what would in effect be acquiring the status of a sacred document.

Rabbi Herzog took pride in the fact that his prayer referred to the state of Israel as “the first blossoming of our redemption.” If taken literally, this expression implied that the establishment of the Jewish state was not merely a great and welcome political achievement, the creation of a haven for a persecuted people and an opportunity for Jewish cultural renewal—but that it represented a crucial stage in a divinely ordained scenario for final redemption. Hopes for imminent redemption are indeed a standard rhetorical convention in Jewish prayers and homilies. At any rate, these kinds of theological niceties had little practical relevance in the years immediately following the birth of the state.

This situation underwent a decisive reversal in 1967 when Israel found itself in control of territories captured from Jordan in the Six Day War. Though most Israelis formulated their attitudes regarding the fate of the territories based on conventional political, strategic or ethical considerations, a sizable minority in the religious Zionist camp had by then been raised on the faith that the birth of the Jewish state was an actual blossoming of the messianic redemption. Advocates of this extremist ideology applied their belief to concrete political issues, especially in their obsession with holding on to Israel’s biblical borders. Towards this end, they established unauthorized settlements and opposed any political negotiations that involved withdrawal or territorial compromise. Ultimately, it was this same “first blossoming of our redemption” perspective that inspired the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, and which encouraged militant resistance to the disengagement from Gaza in 2005. A fundamental premise of their apocalyptic philosophy was that no elected government possesses the authority to obstruct the path of God’s historical plan for national redemption.

I find it quite ironic how a prayer whose original purpose was to express support for the institutions of the Jewish state (and thereby to distinguish those congregations that recited it from anti-Zionist sects) now provides a rationale for undermining the legitimacy of that same state. An analogous mindset has led to the demotion of Israeli Independence Day, the celebration of a national exploit, from the roster of festivals, to be supplanted by Jerusalem Unification Day which focuses on more narrowly religious and territorial themes and is observed by many religious nationalists as a confirmation of Israel’s imminent messianic fulfilment.

It would certainly be more prudent for us all if we were to divert our attention from the futile second-guessing of messianic timetables, and focus instead on the part of the Prayer for the Welfare of the State in which we urge the Almighty to “send your light and truth to its leaders, ministers and counselors, and direct them with wise counsel.” 

Indeed, with all the external and internal challenges that must be dealt with by our beloved Jewish state, I can think of no more precious blessing than a judicious dose of wise counsel.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, April 20, 2012, p. 12.

• For further reading:
  • Arend, Aharon. Israel’s Independence Day: Research Studies. Ramat Gan: Chaplain’s Office, Bar-Ilan University, 758.
  • Sheleg, Ya’ir. “Ushelaḥ Orekha Lerasheha Sareha Veyo‘aṣeha.” Ha’aretz. Tel-Aviv, May 5, 2008.
  • Yoel Raffel, “Tefillah Meyuḥeset Bat Shemonim,” Maḳor Rishon (Tel-Aviv, September 19, 2008).
  • Tamar, David. Eshkolot Tamar: Meḥḳarim Ve-ʻiyunim Be-Toldot Tsefat Ṿe-Ḥakhmeha U-Gedole Yiśraʼel Ba-Dorot Ha-Aḥaronim. Edited by Michael Riegler. Jerusalem: Reuben Mass, 2002.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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