Levi’s War

by Eliezer Segal

Hanukkah is the only major Jewish holiday that did not originate in the Bible. For other holidays, an important component of their celebration consists of reading the scriptural passages that outline the days’ origins or regulations. However, this was not really an option for Hanukkah, since the Maccabean revolt occurred after the age of prophetic inspiration. Consequently, the designated readings for Hanukkah only deal in an indirect way with dedication ceremonies for various sanctuaries, with the sacred candelabrum, and other loosely associated themes. 

It was probably in response to this perceived deficiency that a “Scroll of the Hasmoneans” was composed and achieved considerable popularity in Jewish congregations during the early medieval era, notably in Italy and in the Arabic-speaking world. This work was apparently written in Aramaic, but it was also widely known in a Hebrew translation. Its content was based principally on the Books of Maccabees that are preserved in the Greek Apocrypha; and its narrative is seasoned with liberal sprinklings of traditions from the Talmud and other Jewish texts.

The great tenth-century Jewish leader Saadiah Gaon took it upon himself to produce authoritative Arabic translations of the entire Hebrew Bible, translations which are still in use in some Arabic-speaking Jewish communities. After completing his translation of Esther, Saadiah decided that it would also be appropriate to provide one for the the Scroll of the Hasmoneans, given the close thematic affinities that exist between Purim and Hanukkah. 

In the Introduction to his translation, Saadiah described some of the challenges that he was facing in encouraging the observance of Hanukkah among his contemporaries. He reckoned that his translation would satisfy an essential need in the Jewish world of his day, since he found that though most Jews were dutifully listening to the reading of the Scroll, few of them understood it well enough to gain a real appreciation of the meaning of Hanukkah. There were even some who, in their ignorance, rejected the holiday altogether! 

As we are well aware, Saadiah conducted an aggressive ideological campaign on behalf of Rabbinite Judaism against the Karaites who claimed to rely exclusively on the Bible while rejecting the Talmud and other works composed by the sages of the oral tradition. One senses that in this instance, he was concerned that even some non-Karaite Jews were beginning to question the legitimacy of a festival that had no visible scriptural basis.

And so Saadiah boldly undertook to demonstrate that Hanukkah, though it commemorates events that occurred after the biblical age, nonetheless has its roots planted solidly in the same authoritative revelation that underlies the Torah and the prophetic teachings. In order to achieve this formidable objective, he scoured the pages of the Bible in search of references to two main themes: (1) a military campaign against the Greeks; and (2) victorious battles that were waged by the tribe of Levi—since the Hasmonean family, as Priests, were a subset of the tribe of Levi.

He found an allusion to the latter motif in the Torah itself. Moses’s parting blessing to Levi contains the bellicose words “Smite through the loins of them that rise up against him, and of them that hate him, that they rise not again.” Since the Bible does not record any specific wars that were fought or spearheaded by the tribe of Levi, Saadiah deduced that this passage must be foretelling the Hanukkah story, when the priestly Hasmonean family would defeat Antiochus Epiphanes and drive him out of Judea.

A similar interpretation to the verse had previously been proposed in the Midrash Genesis Rabbah: “Into whose hands does the Greek empire fall? Into the hands of the Hasmoneans who are descendants of Levi.” 

Though this biblical passage might well satisfy our quest for a reference to a Levitical military triumph, the text does not really contain any explicit statement that their foes were Greeks—at least that is what we might have thought if we did not enjoy the benefits of Saadiah’s ingenious erudition. However, paying careful attention to the wording of Moses’s blessing to Levi, he focused on the unusual expression about smiting the enemy’s “loins.” 

For Saadiah, that expression evoked an association with a remarkable image in the book of Daniel, where the Jewish hero interprets the Nebuchadnezzar’s dream about a formidable statue: “This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, his legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay.” The dream was interpreted as a foretelling of the four great empires that would subjugate the world: Babylonia, Persia, Greece and Rome. According to this symbolism, Greece is symbolized as the statue’s “belly and thighs.” Thus, the “loins” of Levi’s foe, as mentioned in Moses’s blessing, can be referring to none other than the Greeks—and thereby we have established that the Hanukkah triumph was prophesied in the Torah!

If that seems too convoluted for your tastes, Saadiah adduces a more straightforward proof text from the book of Joel. The prophet inveighs there against a number of hostile foreign nations; and in a diatribe against Tyre and Sidon, he speaks about them selling the people of Judah and Jerusalem to the far-off Greeks [=Yavan], while reassuring us that the selfsame fate will ultimately be visited upon our oppressors. The Judeans will then sell their Greek prisoners to the people of Sheba. Without resorting to elaborate interpretation, the passage can be read as a prediction of a Jewish victory against the Greeks in the days of the Hasmoneans. 

In yet another proof, Saadiah cited the prophetic words of Zechariah who foretold a triumph of Judah and Ephraim “against your sons, O Yavan.” Saadiah was initially bothered by the fact that the victory is being attributed to Judah while there is no clear mention of Levi or the priests, as we should expect if the allusion were to the Hasmoneans. Admittedly, the designation “Judah” can plausibly be explained as referring to the political unit and not the tribe, but it requires a bit more inventiveness to discern a reference to the priesthood. Nevertheless, Saadiah was able to find such a reference in Zechariah’s description of Israel‘s glorious salvation: In that day “they shall be like the jewels of a crown.” 

To Saadiah’s sensitive ears, the prophet’s words evoked the image of the priestly breastplate as set out in the book of Exodus: “And the stones shall have the names of the sons of Israel…; they shall be according to the twelve tribes.” 

This imagery recalls to us the priests’ leadership over the nation, and how it was manifested when the Hasmonean family led Israel to their miraculous triumph over the Greek armies —exactly as foretold by the prophets of old.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, December 7, 2012, p. 17.

• For further reading:
  • Atlas, S., and M. Perlmann. “Saadia on the Scroll of the Hasmonaeans.” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 14 (1944): 1–23.
  • Rosenthal, Franz. “Saadyah’s ‘Introduction to the Scroll of the Hasmoneans’.” The Jewish Quarterly Review 36, no. 3 (1946): 297–302.

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My email address is: [email protected]

The Fellowship of the Hairy Toes

by Eliezer Segal

In what is probably the most significant feature of J. R. R. Tolkien’s introductory description of the beings known as hobbits, the author states that they “wear no shoes, because their feet grow natural leathery soles and thick warm brown hair like the stuff on their heads (which is curly).” Accordingly, the most cherished blessing you can bestow on a hobbit would be “May the hair on his toes never fall out!”

While even I would not be so foolhardy to claim that Bilbo and Frodo were described in Jewish literature, there is something in the image of their hairy feet that evokes for me a most intriguing episode from the annals of rabbinic scholarship.

The text that I wish to discuss here speaks of a pivotal milestone in the encounter between Jewish and Hellenic civilizations, the origin of the Greek translation of the Torah known as the Septuagint in the third century B.C.E. The name “Septuagint” derives from the Latin word for ”seventy” and it alludes to the legend that surrounded that translation, a legend whose earliest version is preserved in a work known as the “Letter of Aristeas” (included among the scriptures of the Alexandrian Jewish community), and in more elaborate forms in the writings of Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, Josephus Flavius and in several talmudic traditions. 

In that well-known tale, the emperor Ptolemy II Philadelphus of Egypt, eager to partake of the wisdom and laws of his subjects, invited seventy-two Jewish sages, six from each of the twelve tribes of Israel, to translate their holy books into Greek. Though the scholars were placed in isolated chambres and not allowed to communicate with one another, they uncannily succeeded in producing translations that were completely identical with one another. 

This miracle story had the effect of bestowing on the Septuagint an aura of revelation that elevated it above the plane of a human scholarly achievement; and it provided a justification for the Jews of Alexandria, many of whom were no longer conversant with the holy tongue, to expound and rely on a translation that had, after all, been produced with supernatural assistance.

Rabbinic traditions reveal that the Alexandrians’ reverent admiration for the Septuagint was shared by the later Jewish sages in the land of Israel and in Babylonia. Talmudic accounts of the episode of the seventy-two elders introduced an important new element: the Jewish translators arrived at their consensus not only with respect to their faithful renderings of the Hebrew original—but also with regard to a number of expressions (between ten and thirteen, according to the respective traditions) where they chose to depart from the literal meaning for assorted reasons. 

The altered passages include a rather diverse range of texts. Some of the emendations involved phrases that were felt to be theologically problematic or misleading, such as when God is referred to in grammatically plural forms. Some other examples seem to be based on variant texts of the Hebrew Torah that were in circulation at the time, as we can now confirm with the help of comparisons with the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Samaritan Torah. 

Conspicuous among the “emendations” ascribed to the seventy-two sages of Alexandria is their translation of an item from the list of non-kosher animals in Leviticus 11:6 that contains a prohibition of (according to the conventional translations) “the hare, because he chews the cud, but divides not the hoof; it is unclean unto you.” 

The Hebrew word that is being translated here is “arnevet” and the identification is problematic in any case since hares do not chew their cuds. Be that as it may, the Talmud relates that a very different issue troubled our translation committee in ancient Alexandria: “They also wrote for him ‘the beast with hairy feet’ instead of ‘the hare,’ because Ptolemy’s wife was named ‘Hare’— They feared lest he should say: the Jews have ridiculed me by placing my wife’s name in the Torah”!

Although some of the details of this account have become confused or garbled in the course of their telling, it is nevertheless possible to discern a fundamental kernel of authenticity in several of its details.

To begin, the text speaks of a queen who bore the Greek equivalent of a name like “Bunny,” and it adds that the Jewish translators feared that the Egyptian monarch would find it offensive if he found her name grouped together with rodents, swine and other unclean critters mentioned in that biblical passage. 

It is not hard to figure out how this idea arose. Although Ptolemy II may not have had a wife named Bunny, he did indeed have a grandfather who was known to posterity as Ptolemy Lagos—that is, “the Rabbit,” the founder of Egypt’s great Ptolemaic dynasty. 

Furthermore, as was customary among ancient Egyptian royalty, Ptolemy II was married to his sister Arsinoe II who was thereby also heir to the Lagos lineage, and whose name bore a slight resemblance to the Hebrew word “arnevet.”

As noted, the Talmud states that the translators replaced the normal word for “hare” with one that meant “hairy-footed.” The text of the Talmud is in fact not entirely clear on this point, since the Hebrew words “se‘irat raglayim” can be read either as “small-footed” or “hairy-footed,”and the two very similar forms are both attested in the manuscripts. However, an elementary acquaintance with Greek is sufficient to remove any lingering doubts on this question. The normal word for “hare” is indeed “lagos,” whereas, the Septuagint translation of this verse employs a less common (and somewhat cumbersome) alternative compound, “dasu-poda”— literally: “hairy-footed”—to designate the forbidden animal.

And so, if we wished to take this discussion an irresponsible step farther in our speculations, we might have some basis—a most tenuous one, to be sure—for the suggestion that Jewish tradition preserves an obscure allusion to a species distinguished by its hairy feet; and (as I believe we are all most pleased to have learned) that those beloved and plucky creatures are not classified as kosher. 

I will leave it to more devoted Tolkien aficionados to advise me as to whether or not hobbits chew their cuds.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, January 4, 2013, p. 11.

• For further reading:
  • Gmirkin, Russell. Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus: Hellenistic Histories and the Date of the Pentateuch. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006.
  • Segal, Eliezer. “Aristeas or Haggadah: Talmudic Legend and the Greek Bible in Palestinian Judaism.” In Common Judaism: Explorations in Second-Temple Judaism, edited by Wayne O. McCready and Adele Reinhartz, 159–172. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008.
  • Tov, Emanuel. “The Rabbinic Tradition Concerning the ‘alterations’ Inserted into the Greek Pentateuch and Their Relation to the Original Text of the LXX.” Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman Period 15 (1984): 65–89.
  • Veltri, Giuseppe. Eine Tora Für Den König Talmai: Untersuchungen Zum Übersetzungsverständnis in Der Jüdisch-hellenistischen Und Rabbinischen Literatur. Texte Und Studien Zum Antiken Judentum 41. Tübingen: Mohr, 1994.
  • Wasserstein, Abraham. “On Donkeys, Wine and the Uses of Septuagintal Criticism: Septuagintal Variants in Jewish Palestine.” In Jews in the Hellenistic-Roman World, edited by Aharon Oppenheimer, Isaiah Gafni, and Daniel R. Schwartz, [English] 119–42. Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History and the Israel Historical Society, 1996.
  • Wasserstein, Abraham, and David Wasserstein. The Legend of the Septuagint: From Classical Antiquity to Today. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
  • Wasserstein, David J. “The Ptolemy and the Hare: Dating an Old Story about the Translation of the Septuagint.” Scripta Classica Israelica 17 (1998): 77–86.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Whispering Palms

by Eliezer Segal

When comparing the scholarly credentials of the various disciples of Hillel the Elder, the Talmud surprisingly ranked Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai as the bottom of the list. Yet It stressed that even this “minor” disciple mastered an incredible range of wisdom that embraced not only the usual areas of scriptural and rabbinic lore, but also several more exotic subjects, including: “the conversation of the ministering angels, the conversations of demons and the conversations of date-palms.” 

If you are at a loss to figure out what sorts of “conversation” the Talmud had in mind here, then you are in excellent company. No less an exegete than the great Rashi confined his commentary on this text to a terse admission that “I do not know what this is.”

Well, we can appreciate that angels and demons might indulge in some sort of verbal exchanges, whether among themselves or addressed to humans. It is also conceivable that some saintly rabbis might have mastered the techniques for tuning in to those supernatural communication networks. But “date-palms”? Are we expected to believe that trees express themselves in a language that was comprehensible to Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai?

The meaning of the date-palms’ conversation was indeed a puzzle that occupied the attention of several eminent Jewish scholars through the ages. 

The tenth-century commentary to the Talmud produced by the school of Rabbenu Gershom of Mainz explained that the conversations were some sort of incantations; that Rabban Yoḥanan knew how to utter magic spells that could either cause a field to fill up instantly with date-palms, or to completely uproot trees from a field.

Other commentators were convinced that trees are really able to impart information to those who know how to decode it. A responsum that is ascribed either to Rav Sherira Gaon or to his son Hai Gaon outlined a very precise set of instructions for eavesdropping on the conversations of the trees, following a procedure that was practiced by experts who operated in their locality. 

For best results, one should choose a day on which there is no breeze blowing, when the air is so still that if you spread a sheet it will not stir at all. (Some authors understood that the spreading of the sheet was a necessary step in the procedure.) On such a calm day one should take a position between two adjacent trees and observe the motions of the palm fronds. The qualified tree-interpreters were capable of learning “several things” from those motions. The responsum mentioned a certain Rabbi Abraham Gaon Kabasi who lived in the ninth century and reportedly achieved renown for his mastery of the language of the date-palms. He made use of his expertise in order to foretell future events. 

In a later era, the Hasidic master Rabbi Zvi Elimelech Shapira of Dinov posed an intriguing question based on his literal reading of the talmudic passage about Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai. He acknowledged that birds, beasts and palm-trees do possess some sort of language—and he even knew of saints in more recent times who were capable of understanding those languages. But if that is so (Rabbi Shapira objected), does this not create a conflict with the longstanding doctrine of philosophers and theologians that humans are the only species that can communicate through rational speech? If palm-trees can also conduct conversations, then what is it that really justifies our claim to superiority over the “lower” species? 

The Rabbi of Dinov concluded his investigation by presenting an idea that had been previously argued by Rabbi Menaḥem Nahum Twersky of Chernobyl. As far as normal natural languages are concerned, humans may in fact have no significant edge over the plants and beasts who share our ability of conveying basic information to one another. Where our spiritual superiority finds its true expression is only in the holy tongue, Hebrew, which (the mystics teach) was the instrument through which the Almighty created the universe. Implied in this assumption is the disturbingly chauvinistic premise that people whose language is not Hebrew cannot achieve authentic spirituality.

Other commentators suggested more rationalistic ways for understanding the concept of date-palm conversation. Notably, although Rashi’s grandson Rabbi Samuel ben Meir (Rashbam) had no particular objection to interpreting the “conversation of demons” as a magical doctrine for manipulating supernatural beings, especially by means of amulets employed for healing, he appears to have drawn a line at talking trees. Rather than interpreting the expression as referring to conversations by trees, he explained it as discourse about the trees; that is to say, the scientific disciplines of horticulture or botany. Rabbi Menahem ben Solomon Meiri of Provence took this idea a step further and noted that, like all valid scientific pursuits, the study of trees serves as a necessary foundation for the sublime discipline of metaphysics.

In support of his reading of the talmudic text, Rashbam made reference to the biblical descriptions of King Solomon’s incomparable wisdom. Among the many fields in which the great monarch excelled, scripture relates that “he spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall; he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes.” Just as Solomon was speaking “of” trees and not “to” them, so are we to understand what the Talmud said about Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai’s course of study.

The precedent of Rabban Yoḥanan’s familiarity with arboreal lore was invoked in a recent halakhic responsum. The rabbi was asked whether the designated blessing on seeing wise men from the nations of the world—“Blessed are you, Lord God…who has imparted of your wisdom to creatures of flesh and blood”—can also be recited for Jews who excel in secular disciplines but have no significant expertise in Jewish religious learning. The questioner pointed out that the Talmud’s singling out of Rabban Yoḥanan’s expertise in the “conversation of date-palms” seems to demonstrate that it was valued as a praiseworthy scholarly accomplishment in its own right.

Another possible meaning of the “conversation of the trees” may be exemplified by a remarkable Hebrew composition of unknown authorship, a work known as Pereḳ Shirah (“A Chapter of Song”). This magnificent celebration of the divine creation ascribes poetic words of praise, most of them consisting of verses from Psalms or other biblical texts, to some eighty-four different denizens of the natural realm. The cosmic choir who sing those praises include such voices as: the trees of the field, the grapevines, the fig, pomegranate and apple trees—as well as the date palm which intones the lyric “the righteous shall flourish like the palm tree.” 

Although the purpose and meaning of the Pereḳ Shirah have been debated, I think it it is reasonable to assume that the author does not mean to imply that the trees, birds, beasts, earth and sky sing in any literal sense—but rather that we can derive sublime spiritual lessons from a sensitive observation of nature’s vast diversity. 

And that is truly a valuable message that can be derived from the conversations of the date palms.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, January 25, 2013, p. 15.

• For further reading:
  • Ginzberg, Louis. Legends of the Jews. Edited by Paul Radin. Translated by Henrietta Szold. 2nd ed. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2003.
  • Kohut, Alexander. Arukh Ha-Shalem. Vindobona, 1926.
  • Lewin, Benjamin Manasseh. Otzar ha-Gaonim. Vol. 6: Tractate Yoma and Sukkah. Jerusalem, 1934.
  • Slifkin, Nosson. Nature’s Song: An Elucidation of Perek Shirah. Torah Universe. Southfield, MI and Nanuet, NY: Targum distributed by Feldheim, 2001.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Mad about Mordecai

by Eliezer Segal

At the conclusion of the Scroll of Esther, we hear about the glory and success that were bestowed upon the hero of the story: “Mordecai the Jew was next to king Ahasuerus, and great among the Jews, and accepted of the multitude of his brothers.” 

In later dialects of Hebrew, the word that is rendered here as “multitude”—rov—acquired the sense of “majority.” Some of the ancient sages saw this as a pointed criticism of Mordecai. For all his virtues, he nonetheless had flaws that alienated him from some of his fellow Jews and precipitated a drop in his popularity polls. As one source concluded, some of Mordecai’s colleagues (“brothers”) in the Sanhedrin distanced themselves from him after he was elevated to a high office in the Persian court. 

This might be no more than a sardonic reflection on the unavoidable price that must be paid when national heroes take on political and communal responsibilities that divert their energies from loftier pursuits. However, many of the interpreters understood it as a disparagement of Mordecai’s role in the Purim story.

The eleventh century French exegete Rabbi Joseph Kara proposed the following explanation for Mordecai’s fall from popular favour. Even after the Jews had been rescued from the danger that threatened them, they could not forget that he was the one who had originally set in motion the chain of events that put them in grave peril. “They murmured against him saying: Look what Mordecai has done to us! He was the one who provoked Haman, and on his account we were sold to be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish.” Only through divine intervention were the Jews eventually rescued from the predicament that had been initiated by Mordecai.

Haman’s wrath against the Jews was sparked by Mordecai’s refusal to bow down to the vizier, and the biblical narrative does not supply a reason for Mordecai’s disobedience. There would normally be no inherent religious objection to a display of respect to a powerful dignitary, as when Abraham prostrated himself before the Hittites, or Jacob humbly bowed before his brother Esau. Indeed, several commentators contrasted Mordecai’s staunch refusal to show obeisance to Haman with the conduct of Abraham, who had politely bowed down to his three angelic visitors even when, according to the midrashic reading, he assumed that they were heathen Arabs. At least one author suggested that Mordecai was following the precedent set by his archetypal ancestor Benjamin, the only one of Jacob’s sons who (because of his youth at the time) did not demean himself by bowing before Esau.

Rabbi Moses Alashkar devoted an elaborate responsum to resolving the apparent discrepancies between these the cases of Abraham and Mordecai. Citing pertinent talmudic passages, he posited a fundamental distinction between the two different situations. He concluded that although Jewish law forbids performing any worshipful act before an actual idol, there is no prohibition against bowing before idol-worshippers as Abraham had done with the Hittites. Rabbi Alashkar even went so far as to assert that it is permissible to bow to persons who have idolatrous images displayed on their garments, since it will be obvious to any observers that the Jew is acting out of respect (or fear) for the person and not out of reverence for the image.

Ancient Jewish interpreters, for the most part, preferred to understand that Haman had set himself up as a deity to be worshipped, so that Mordecai’s refusal to bow down was an assertion of his monotheistic faith and not motivated by some personal grudge against Haman. Under other circumstances, however, religious duty would not have demanded that Mordecai provoke an open confrontation with Haman. 

Rabbi Alashkar suggested that the Torah would forbid bowing only in situations where two conditions converge (as was the case with Haman): the person must both (a) be claiming divine status, as well as (b) wearing visible religious symbols.

In this connection, Rabbi Alashkar cited a responsum by Rabbi Isaac of Oppenheim who made use of these halakhic distinctions to resolve an actual question. Rabbi Isaac had been consulted regarding the proper etiquette when meeting Christian clergy. Is it permissible to offer gestures of respect, such as standing up, bowing or removing one’s hat, when the person opposite you is wearing a crucifix or other objectionable religious symbol? Rabbi Isaac ruled permissively on this question, basing himself on the talmudic stipulation that a prohibition would only apply to someone who is “worshipped like Haman,” but not to a Christian priest who is clearly not presenting himself as an object of worship. Nonetheless, he did recommend tightly shutting one’s eyes, where possible, during such encounters.

The Aramaic expansion of Esther known as the Targum Sheni includes a dramatic elaboration of the fateful sleepless night when Ahasuerus called for the royal chronicles to be read to him. In the Targum Sheni all the main characters were stricken with insomnia that night for a variety of different reasons. In Mordecai’s case, it was because the “house of Israel” assembled itself before him and accused him of being responsible for their predicament. They charged that if he had but shown due deference to Haman, then all the ensuing troubles could have been avoided.

For Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra, even if Haman was laying claim to divine status, this was not necessarily a sufficient justification for Mordecai’s inflammatory behaviour. After all, the Jewish courtier could have tried to absent himself from the palace gates when Haman was passing by. In not doing so, he was recklessly endangering himself and the lives of the entire nation. Therefore Ibn Ezra was forced to introduce an elaborate new detail into the story: the king had explicitly commanded Mordecai to be stationed at the palace gate, leaving him with no alternative but to obey the royal decree.

Rabbi David ibn Abi Zimra, known as the “Radbaz,” found Ibn Ezra’s solution unconvincing. It would certainly have been possible for Mordecai to apply to the king for permission to go somewhere else (analogous to taking a “personal day”). Radbaz therefore suggested a different rationale for Mordecai’s imprudent conduct: it simply never occurred to him that Haman would react so furiously to such a trivial provocation by targeting the entire Jewish nation in response to a perceived slight by one individual. Mordecai may have been perfectly ready to martyr himself for his principles in the manner of Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah who refused to bow down to Nebuchadnezzar’s idol, but he would not knowingly have acted in a manner that imperilled all of Israel. 

Radbaz found support for his interpretation in the fact that it is only after Haman has put his genocidal plot into motion that the Megillah informs us “Mordecai perceived all that was done”—implying that prior to this point Mordecai had not envisaged the full consequences of his actions.

As an alternative hypothesis, Radbaz speculated that Mordecai was endowed with the gift of prophetic foresight, so that he actually knew from the outset that the initial adversity would ultimately be resolved in a way that would bring about an improvement in the status of the empire’s Jews. 

As to why Mordecai seemed so seriously worried until the villain’s downfall if he had already read the last chapter of the Megillah, Radbaz retorted that there is always good reason to fear that some sin might still overturn the divine plan for Israel’s salvation.

All this exegetical wrangling should give us some appreciation of how difficult it is for even the most admired and righteous individuals to maintain their popularity if they elect to enter the hazardous arenas of politics or communal leadership.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, February 15, 2013, p. 14.

• For further reading:
  • The Life and Times of Rabbi David Ibn Abi Zimra: a Social, Economic and Cultural Study of Jewish Life in the Ottoman Empire in the 15th and 16th Centuries as Reflected in the Responsa of the RDBZ. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1970.
  • Grossfeld, Bernard. The Targum Sheni to the Book of Esther: A Critical Edition Based on MS. Sassoon 282 with Critical Apparatus. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Sepher-Hermon Press, 1994.
  • ———. The Two Targums of Esther. The Aramaic Bible v. 18. Collegeville, Minn: Liturgical Press, 1991.
  • Horowitz, Elliott S. Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence. Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.
  • Pelles, Yisrael Mordecai. “Responsa and Rulings of Rabbi Yitzhak Oppenheim.” Tzfunot—Tora Quarterly 16 (1992): 9–13.
  • Segal, Eliezer. The Babylonian Esther Midrash: A Critical Commentary. Vol. 3. 3 vols. Brown Judaic Studies no. 291-293. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994.
  • Walfish, Barry. Esther in Medieval Garb: Jewish Interpretation of the Book of Esther in the Middle Ages. SUNY Series in Judaica. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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New, Newer…Newest Moon

by Eliezer Segal

The fact that we observe the Jewish New Year in the autumn month of Tishrei creates a misleading impression that Tishrei is the first month of the Jewish year. This is clearly not the case. The Torah explicitly designates the springtime month of the exodus—the one that was later called Nisan—as “the beginning of months.”

From the study of old liturgical compendia and fragmentary manuscripts of prayer books, we learn that in the land of Israel it was customary to attach special prominence to the month of Nisan in prayers and blessings. In Arabic, the first day of Nisan was given the title “Ras al-Halal al-Kabir,” the Great New Moon. Where the normal New Moon service refers to “this beginning of the month,” the prayer for Nisan spoke of “this beginning of the beginnings of the months. ”The evening service—which marks the onset of a new day according to the Hebrew calendar—was introduced by a special recitation of Psalm 97: “The Lord reigneth, let the earth rejoice.”

Moreover, there was even a special Kiddush blessing for this day that was recited over a cup of wine in the synagogue following the evening service, a rite that had no equivalent for any of the other New Moons of the year. In some respects—such as its elaborate preamble of rhymed stanzas designed to be sung in a variety of musical styles—the solemnity of this Kiddush more than rivaled those of the major biblical festivals.

Indeed, the New Moon of Nisan inspired a distinctive genre of liturgical poetry (piyyuṭ) that stressed the primacy of this date as the the time when the ancient Israelites were first notified of their approaching liberation from Egypt. Hence the day also served as an inspiration to strengthen the people’s faith in the imminence of the messianic redemption.

A popular genre of piyyuṭ for this occasion took the form of literary debates in the Aramaic language between Nisan and the other months, as each argued its case for why it was more deserving to be chosen as the time for Israel’s liberation from Egypt. Other poetic creations dwelled on the numerous events associated with the first of Nisan. The poets commemorated such themes as the inauguration of the Tabernacle in the desert, the offerings of the tribal princes, the investiture of the priests and the centralization of the sacrificial rites. And of course they recalled that the month as a whole was the occasion of the very first Passover celebration, the exodus and the miraculous parting of the Red Sea.

Documents from the Cairo Genizah allow us to trace the development of these prayers from the mists of antiquity through to the thirteenth century. Most of the testimonies relate to the “Shami” Jewish community [referring to the followers of the Palestinian rite] of Cairo, and all indications point to the fact that they were celebrating the first day of Nisan as a lively and popular spring festival. Although the Shami community originally observed special prayers for the beginnings of all the Hebrew months, the one for Nisan was the only one to survive past the thirteenth century.

In April 1906, a young Semitics student named Herbert Loewe (who would later become a prominent scholar at Cambridge University) was living in Cairo, and he submitted an article for the London Jewish Chronicle in which he provided an eyewitness description of the mass celebration by the Jewish community in Cairo’s Abasiyya quarter on the evening of the first of Nisan. 

The ceremony was known by the Arabic name “Al-Tawḥid”—literally: the oneness, unification or uniqueness. In a compendium printed in 1908 chronicling the Jewish customs of Cairo, Rabbi Raphael Aaron Ibn Simeon associated that puzzling name with an Arabic prayer that was chanted by the cantor extolling “the greatness of the creator, his uniqueness and his many acts of kindness toward his creatures.” I consider it more likely that the original meaning was probably related to the idea that this is Day One of the first month of the year. A special prayer book for the occasion was published in Alexandria in 1887. 

In his newspaper report, Herbert Loewe described how the festive venue and the roads leading to it were adorned with oil lamps, banners, wreaths and branches, and the local police tried ineffectually to keep the street open to the pedestrian traffic. The interior of the synagogue, whose construction was not yet completed at the time, was decorated with colourful tapestries, and the organizers positioned chairs upholstered in garish red for the benefit of the community dignitaries. The crowd partook of the food, drink and singing that are the norm at Jewish religious festivities.

The service combined a standardized set of hymns that were recited from year to year—Loewe singled out for mention the “Mippi El,” which is still a hit at our Simḥat Torah festivities— alongside a few novel offerings composed especially for that year’s celebration. In general, the songs exhibited conspicuous influences from prevailing Arab musical fashions. Several of the hymns were bilingual, consisting of alternating Hebrew and Arabic stanzas. The service concluded with a version of the “Prayer for the Welfare of the Sultan” that was all but indistinguishable from the one that was recited in the mosques.

When the rabbi rose to deliver his sermon in Arabic, it was not, as we might have anticipated, on such themes as Passover or redemption from oppression, nor about the mysteries of the Hebrew calendar or any of the usual ideas that are standardly associated with the first of Nisan; but rather he spoke about the construction of the Tabernacle, an event that had indeed occurred on that date, and had the added advantage of allowing him to divert his sermon into a fund-raising pitch on behalf of the synagogue building fund. There was no subtlety here. After the sermon, the beadle individually approached each and every Effendi in the congregation, and the cantor chanted a “Mi-shebbeirakh” blessing in honour of each contributor.

In spite of all the public recognition that was bestowed on the donors, the campaign was a dismal failure and netted the community nothing more than a bit of small change. Only the community’s elders were delighting in the venerable and familiar ceremony, whereas the younger attendees seemed bored and fidgety through the whole affair. Raphael Ibn Simeon noted that in the early twentieth century the custom was losing much of its popularity as a result of urban sprawl, as young Jewish families were moving away from the traditional Jewish quarter to become scattered in the far-flung reaches of Cairo’s suburbs. Furthermore, the mercenary tone of the proceedings likely contributed to a widespread disaffection on the part of the community’s younger members.

It appears unlikely that we will be witnessing a revival of the public “First First Month” festivities any time soon. Nonetheless, there is much to admire in this powerful symbol of national and spiritual renewal.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, March 8, 2013, p. 12.

• For further reading:
  • Fleischer, Ezra. “Additional Data concerning the ‘Great New Moon’.”  Sidra 7 (1991): 49–65.
  • ———. “Seder Al-Tawḥid: A Late Recurrence of an Ancient Palestinian Custom.”  Pe’amin: Studies in Oriental Jewry 78 (1999): 75–99.
  • ———. “Studies in Piyyut and Medieval Hebrew Poetry.”  Tarbiz 39, no. 1 (1969): 19–38.
  • ———. “The Great New-Moon Day.”  Tarbiz 37, no. 3 (1968): 265–278.
  • Wieder, Naphtali. “Concerning the Article ‘The Great New-Moon Day’.”  Tarbiz 38, no. 1 (1968): 92.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Low Sodium Diet

by Eliezer Segal

Most current Passover Haggadahs include an instruction along the lines of “take a green vegetable (karpas) and dip it into salt-water or vinegar.” You are likely familiar with the reasons that are usually given for this “karpas” ritual and its ingredients: the green vegetable reminds us of the spring, while the salt water recalls the tears of slavery; the act of dipping stimulates the curiosity of the children and emulates the hôrs d’oeuvres that are offered at the banquets frequented by free people.

The problem is that little if any of this seems to be attested in any early Haggadahs or codes of Jewish law. The Mishnah mentions dipping something in ḥaroset, but it is not quite clear what it is that gets dipped, or whether it even makes a difference. In fact, there are variant readings in the Mishnah that differ over the crucial question of whether one should be dipping something in ḥaroset, or dipping ḥazeret (lettuce) in something. To add to the puzzle, several commentators have pointed out that the Mishnah itself does not speak of the ḥaroset being brought to the table until a somewhat later stage in the meal. The matter was further confused by the insistence of Rashi and other authorities that the Mishnah was not referring to a special dipping ritual, but simply to one of the courses eaten as part of the meal. 

By the time that the medieval commentators all had their say, there was a bewildering assortment of opinions in circulation. Some,like the Tosafot, favoured dipping lettuce in ḥaroset in order to counteract poisonous substances or worms. Others, including Rabbi Isaac Or Zarua of Vienna, insisted that ḥaroset, since it evokes recollections of the mortar of slavery, should only be taken at the time of the ritual eating of the bitter herbs, and not before. 

It was Rabbi Jacob Tam who observed that for ordinary vegetables that are not subject to toxins or worms, dipping them in vinegar or salt-water would suffice, and that was the practice that he personally adopted. As far as I can tell, none of the classic commentators suggested that there was any special symbolism attached to the salt-water. Presumably, the salt-water was merely mentioned as a substance that is commonly used for dipping, and as a contrast to the ḥaroset. And in fact, when later authors paraphrased Rabbi Jacob Tam’s ruling, they omitted the reference to salt-water, or substituted different ingredients like wine or ordinary water. 

I have not yet figured out when it was precisely that salt-water resurfaced as the definitive dip for karpas or when it first became identified with the tears of slavery.

Moving forward through the Seder menu, to the eating of the matzah, we come to another obscure and contentious question involving salt. A tradition that can be traced back to Rabbi Isaac ben Judah of Mainz in the eleventh century (who himself refers to it as a venerable custom of the Rhineland communities) forbids the use of any salt in the preparation of Passover matzah. Already by that time, it appears that they were at a loss to explain the origins of the custom, and a variety of different theories were being proposed.

A frequently cited reason was based on a talmudic discussion in which “matzah” is described as “unsalted.” The problem is that the passage in question is not about unleavened bread at all, but about types of parchment, and the “matzah” there is actually a Greek loan-word (“maxa”) referring to untanned hides. 

Other authorities tried to find halakhic objections to salted matzah. They appealed to a rabbinic discussion involving cases where some meat falls into a forbidden substance. The Talmud states that if the meat was salted it is treated as if it were “boiling” and therefore should be treated more stringently, as if the substance were cooked into it. Perhaps (thus they argue) we are to infer from this that salted dough should also be treated as if it were steeped in boiling water and therefore more likely to accelerate the leavening process, a prospect that must of course be avoided in Passover matzot! In a similar spirit, other writers alluded to the fact that the Talmud sometimes classified salt as a substance that can give rise to corrosive vapours. 

This theory was also problematic, to say the least, not only because the circumstances in the cases are inherently so different, but also because the quoted Talmud passages stated explicitly that salting was only considered like boiling if it was laid on so thickly as to make the meat inedible—which hardly applies to the pinch of NaCl that might be sprinkled to enhance the flavour of a batch of matzah.

Yet another alleged objection to salted dough was that it would bring the matzah into the category of “enriched matzah” (similar to matzah that is kneaded in fruit juice or eggs), and therefore disqualify it from representing the “bread of affliction” at the seder. Others countered that “bread with salt” is in fact the stereotypic rabbinic description of the austere diet of the pious poor. 

By the early thirteenth century, the Jewish communities in Europe were divided on the question of salted matzah. In the territory then known as as Lotharingia, spanning northern France and Germany, salt was severely prohibited and treated as outright ḥametz. There were nevertheless localities in France where the standards of cuisine demanded that salt be added to the water in which the dough was kneaded, not only to enhance the taste, but specifically to evoke the Torah’s admonition “with all your offerings you shall offer salt”—a symbolism that is widely observed whenever Jews break bread at a meal. The predominant Ashkenazic practice also deprecated this practice at the seder on the grounds that the salt would distract from the flavour of the matzah.

Those who based the prohibition on the “bread of affliction” criterion were prepared to take a more moderate position of forbidding salt only for use at the seder, but not for the remaining days of the Passover festival; however this approach did not attract much of a following.

When the dust had settled on this controversy, the compendia of Jewish law and practice came to regard the prohibition of salted matzah as a matter of regional custom distinctive to the German communities, though they admittedly knew of no convincing rationale for the prohibition other than the virtue of upholding one’s received tradition. Eminent Spanish and Provençal authorities observed that they personally had no qualms about permitting salted matzah, that the attempts to adduce halakhic arguments against it were “weak,” and that if such a prohibition existed it should certainly have been mentioned in the Talmud. Nonetheless, the avoidance of salted matzah gradually achieved popularity among Sephardic Jews as well.

One of the more intriguing attempts at accounting for this phenomenon relates it to attitudes that were common in medieval European and Jewish folklore that ascribed protective powers to salt. Jewish tradition characterized Passover night as a leil shimmurim—interpreted as a night of protection in which Jews throughout the generations are immune to the perils of malevolent forces. To make use of salt on that night could therefore be construed as a lack of faith in the divine providence that shelters us, and for that reason it was excised from the menu. 

Both the aversion to salted matzah and the practice of dipping greens in salt water continued to to be preserved long after their original reasons were forgotten. So far those reasons remain unknown, and until more explicit evidence surfaces, we would do well to take the various attempts at explanation with a liberal grain of…well, you know.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, March 22, 2013, 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.
  • Ta-Shma, Israel M. Early Franco-German Ritual and Custom. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1992.
  • 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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Hebraic Headlines

by Eliezer Segal

As we come to celebrate the State of Israel on Yom Ha-‘Atzma’ut, it is a daunting challenge to choose which of its manifold achievements should be given top billing. I could focus on Israeli arts and culture, military exploits, technological innovation, economic miracles and much more. 

But for me, the most amazing of those accomplishments was the transformation of Hebrew from an archaic, bookish language accessible only to a small scholarly elite into the everyday vehicle of spoken communication for an entire nation. Even the prophet of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, who dared to imagine some boldly imaginative scenarios in his Old-New-Land, still assumed that its residents would be conversing in German or other European languages.  

The person who is usually credited with the revival of Hebrew is Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (originally: Perlman), the Lithuanian-born writer and activist whose single-minded devotion to this goal reaped a success that was nothing less than miraculous. Although scholars are often quick to limit the proportions of Ben-Yehuda’s contributions by reminding us of his precursors and collaborators, and the peculiar constellation of ethnic and social realities that facilitated the process—for me it is still impossible to imagine the revival of modern Hebrew without the zeal of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda.

Ben-Yehuda’s campaign to revive our national tongue took many forms and was applied in numerous settings, ranging from his own family hearth to the national and international spheres. It is appropriate that this article that I am submitting to a newspaper should focus on the part played by Ben-Yehuda’s journalistic endeavours in the renaissance of Hebrew.

Ben-Yehuda founded his own newspaper Ha-Ẓvi in Jerusalem in 1884. To be sure, there were other Hebrew and Jewish newspapers being published at that time in Europe and in the holy land. On his arrival in Jerusalem, he was initially hired by the journal Ḥavaṣelet edited by Israel Dov Frumkin, but he soon grew disenchanted by its lack of ideological commitment to the Jewish national movement. 

The publication of Hebrew periodicals in the nineteenth century was in itself a rather ironic development, since many of them originated in modernist Enlightenment circles and were promoting assimilationist ideologies that encouraged Jews to master the languages of the lands in which they resided. Initially the publishers turned to Hebrew only as a last resort, recognizing that their target audiences could not read German or Russian—and of course the barbaric Yiddish “jargon” was entirely out of the question! 

Nevertheless, whatever their initial motives for producing their Hebrew journals, several publishers developed a paradoxical affection for their ancestral tongue and made serious efforts to craft it into an effective vehicle for expressing modern ideas and literary genres. For the most part, they strove to uphold the purity of the biblical style and vocabulary, dismissing later dialects as corruptions of the classical paradigm. Ben-Yehuda recognized that this kind of linguistic purism was too inflexible to serve as the foundation for a vibrant language of a reborn nation.

Ben-Yehuda’s Ha-Ẓvi differed from the other Hebrew journals that were available at the time in that its principal contents were not educational or ideological, but actually devoted to…reporting the news! The market for such newspapers would normally have been very limited, since coverage of world events was available (for those Jews who were cosmopolitan enough to be interested in them) in publications in other languages.

However far-fetched the prospects for success might have seemed, Jerusalem was actually an opportune locale for promoting a Jewish language. The delicate demographic balance between the Ladino-speaking Sephardic and the Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazic Jewish communities had already forced them both to make considerable use of a “market Hebrew” as the means of enabling communication between the groups; whereas the immense diversity of the Turkish, Arabic and assorted European gentile enclaves prevented any single one of their languages from acquiring the status of a lingua Franca.

Indeed, Ben-Yehuda’s journalistic enterprise filled a unique niche in Ottoman Jerusalem. At that time, newspapers did not exist at all in Arabic or Turkish. Though some Ladino publications could be imported from Turkey for the Sephardic readership, the ultra-traditionalist Ashkenazic community eschewed the pursuit of secular news. In fact, Ben-Yehuda targeted Ha-Ẓvi largely at Jews in Russia who were eager for information about developments in Palestine and in Middle-Eastern politics (which had taken on a more immediate urgency for them when the Crimean raised questions about the durability of the Ottoman empire).

This broad spectrum of journalistic subject matter compelled Ben-Yehuda to expand the vocabulary of Hebrew in order to equip it to describe international political and military developments, as well as the minutiae of daily life in Jerusalem. For these purposes he insisted on opening up the language not only to the full range of post-biblical Hebrew dialects, but also to the sister tongue, Arabic, on which he pinned great hopes as a potential wellspring of serviceable Hebrew expressions.

It was important for him that the newly forged spoken and literary tongue should evolve naturally from previous versions. Thus, Ben-Yehuda had to discover or coin words with which to report on such non-traditional subjects as politics, wars, the arts and sciences, as well as terms related to the craft of journalism itself. Between the columns of news items in Ha-Ẓvi—which enthusiastically reported all the latest advances in Hebrew-language education in the Jerusalem community—the editor would insert his own manifestos for the future directions of the language’s revival. 

Ben-Yehuda’s flexible model of living Hebrew, as it was publicized in the columns of Ha-Ẓvi, had a surprising impact on the linguistic standards that were establishing themselves in Palestine and in the Jewish diaspora. Often he accomplished this stealthily, by making use of one of his thousands of ingenious lexicographic usages, without explicitly calling attention to it, on the assumption that the word would be spontaneously understood and adopted by the newspaper’s readers. 

As the constricting atmosphere of Jerusalem’s religious society began to relax, the appearance of each issue of Ben-Yehuda’s Ha-Ẓvi came to be perceived as an exciting event, and the numbers of copies sold and read reached astonishing levels. Contemporaries reported how intensely and avidly each copy was scoured for its precious linguistic gems.

I can only pray that some of my own humble contributions to the fourth estate might occasionally be snatched up with similar enthusiasm—and make even a fraction of the contribution that Eliezer Ben-Yehuda did to the advancement of Jewish culture.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, April 12, 2013, p. 10.

• For further reading:
  • Fellman, Jack. The Revival of a Classical Tongue; Eliezer Ben Yehuda and the Modern Hebrew Language. Contributions to the sociology of language 6. The Hague: Mouton, 1973.
  • Gilboaʻ, Menuḥah. Hebrew Periodicals in the 18th and 19th Centuries. Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv: Mosad Bialik and the Ḥayim Rosenberg Institute of Jewish Studies, Tel-Aviv University, 1992.
  • St. John, Robert. Tongue of the Prophets; the Life Story of Eliezer Ben Yehuda. Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1972.

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…Perchance to Dream 

by Eliezer Segal

One of the most familiar customs currently associated with the festival of Shavu’ot is the “tikkun leil Shav’ot,” an all-night vigil of Torah study. This custom, which originated in kabbalistic circles, was mentioned in the Zohar and was first observed in the sixteenth century by Rabbi Joseph Karo, under the direction of his supernatural advisor, his “Maggid.”

Like several kabbalistic practices that entered the wider Jewish mainstream, the Tikkun’s transformation into a quasi-normative rite was facilitated by the seventeenth-century Polish scholar Rabbi Abraham “Abe’leh” Gombiner, author of the influential Magen Abraham commentary to the Shulḥan Arukh code of Jewish law. Not content with relying on kabbalistic tradition, or even on popular custom, Rabbi Gombiner strove to base the Tikkun on more authoritative rabbinic texts. In this connection he cited a midrashic parable about a king who declared his intention of visiting a city, but on his arrival found that the residents had overslept. The king commanded that they be roused to the blasts of trumpets, and he ordered the governor to lead them out to greet the king in his palace.

The king in this parable represents God, and the governor is Moses. The biblical narrative of the giving of the Torah relates how God issued an advance proclamation of the coming revelation, apprising them that he would be coming down to address his subjects. It goes on to describe the sounds of trumpets, thunder and lightning as Moses led his people to Mount Sinai.

The midrashic text concludes: “Israel slumbered throughout that night because sleep on Shavu’ot is pleasurable and the night is short.” This incident furnishes the context for God’s admonition (as stated by Isaiah): “Why when I came was there no man? Why when I called was there none to answer?” 

According to the Magen Abraham, it is in order to make amends for this inappropriate behaviour by our ancestors that subsequent generations accepted upon themselves the duty of learning Torah all night during Shavu’ot, the anniversary of the revelation.

As it happens, not all Jewish scholars were persuaded by Rabbi Gombiner’s reading of the midrash. Notably, Rabbi Zadok HaKohen of Lublin, the nineteenth-century talmudist who became an adherent of Hasidism, challenged his key premise, that it was improper for the Israelites to have gotten in a good night’s sleep before proceeding to their momentous encounter with the Almighty. Quite the contrary, insisted Rabbi Zadok—the midrash’s characterization of the sleep as “pleasurable” doesn’t sound much like a condemnation of a lapse that demands correction; indeed, by sleeping our ancestors might well have been accomplishing a laudable spiritual task. 

Sleep and dreams occupied a central place in the religious thought of Rabbi Zadok of Lublin, in ways that bear fascinating similarities to the theories of psychiatry and anthropology that were emerging in European thought of the time. Anticipating Freud and Jung, he maintained that dreams are the expression of the most primal and unrefined human feelings. In their primitive form they are full of delusional errors, but they can also serve as conduits for the most elevated spiritual truths. The spiritual maturing of a religious personality can be described as an ongoing struggle between the imaginary illusions and the divine truth that will hopefully prevail. Rabbi Zadok therefore found it difficult to dismiss the Israelites’ slumber on the night before the giving of the Torah as a simple case of self-indulgent indolence

Basing himself on a passage in the Zohar, Rabbi Zadok described the ancient Israelites as readying themselves for the revelation by means of a profound purification process that consisted chiefly of absorbing the “waters” of Torah into their very beings and purging all remnants of worldliness from their souls.

Rabbinic doctrine, we must recall, asserts that there are two Torahs. In addition to the written Torah consisting of the five books of Moses that are inscribed in ink on a scroll, there is also an oral Torah that is typically acquired through study, analysis and argumentation. While later generations would enjoy the opportunity to participate in the full regimen of talmudic dialectic, the oral Torah was not yet available to the Israelites of Moses’s era. Instead, they adopted a strategy of binding themselves to the Almighty by means of sleep—thereby surrendering themselves totally to God. Rabbi Zadok believed this kind of sleep can effect a higher level of spiritual cleansing than the intellectual exertions associated with the actual study of the oral Torah. In this connection he cited a midrashic tradition that designated nighttime as the preferred time for the study of the oral Torah.

The pages of Scripture contain several examples of individuals who achieved wisdom and inspiration by means of well focused sleep. In this connection Rabbi Zadok assigned especial prominence to the figure of King Solomon. In psalm ascribed to that wisest of monarchs it states, “it is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows, for so he gives his beloved sleep.”

“Eating the bread of sorrows” should be understood as an allusion to the considerable efforts that are required to master the intricacies of the oral Torah. This activity can often lead to discouragement, exhaustion or despondency. And yet after Solomon’s most profound and intimate conversation with the Almighty in which the king asked for the understanding to rule his people wisely and was rewarded with a full grasp of the oral Torah, the Bible concludes: “and Solomon awoke and behold it was a dream.” 

According to rabbinic tradition, Solomon was designated “Yedidya,” the Lord’s beloved one, lending special significance to the psalm’s statement that “he gives his beloved sleep.” There exists a sublime spiritual level that can only be achieved by means of slumber.

Rabbi Zadok enumerated other righteous figures who communed with God in their sleep. He contrasted the devotion of Abraham, whose religious insights were acquired by means of intense personal effort, to that of Jacob who entrusted his fate entirely into divine hands and was vouchsafed an effortless revelation while he lay asleep at Beth-El. This is the true meaning of “fear of God” that is motivated by a powerful desire for Torah wisdom, and this was the spiritual sweetness to which the Israelites were aspiring as they enjoyed their pleasurable—or even ecstatic!—sleep on the night of the first Shavu’ot.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, May 3, 2013, p. 16.

• For further reading:
  • Brill, Alan. Thinking God: The Mysticism of Rabbi Zadok of Lublin. New York and Jersey City: The Michael Scharf Publication Trust of the Yeshiva University Press, 2002.
  • Elman, Yaakov. “Reb Zadok Hakohen of Lublin on Prophecy in the Halakhic Process.” In Jewish Law Association Studies I, 1–16. Chico, CA: Scholars Pr, 1985.
  • Unger, Szmuel. Toldot ha-Kohen mi-Lublin: Yemé Ḥayyaṿ, Ḳorotaṿ u-Sefarav. Lublin: M. Shnaidmeser, 1923.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Gentlemen of the Jury…

by Eliezer Segal

The dignified speaker turned around and directed his sincere gaze at the audience, and then to his opponent. He called attention to the large contingent of Jews who made up a distinct and recognizable segment of the assembly. “You know what a big crowd this is, and how those people always stick together, how influential they are.” He continued, now  lowering his voice to a stage whisper as if to prevent his words from being overheard by the wrong ears, “for there is no shortage of people who would be pleased to incite the Jews against me and against every respectable person. Well, I shall not make it easier for them to do so.” He went on to accuse the Jews of flouting respectable convention by persisting in their barbaric religion—and to make things worse, they insist on sending contributions to Jerusalem rather than supporting local causes.

The preceding scene was not taken from some recent show trial convened in an Islamic capital, nor even from a session of the American senate. It was from a speech delivered at a trial that took place in Rome in the year 59 BCE, and the speaker was none other than the celebrated Latin orator Marcus Publius Cicero. Cicero was serving as the defense attorney for Lucius Valerius Flaccus, the former proconsul of Asia Minor (roughly, the territory now occupied by Turkey) who had been accused of assorted misdeeds during his term of office. Trials of this sort to punish extortion of the provincial natives (under the law of “de repetundis”) had been instituted in response to widespread abuses of colonial authority; but they could also be exploited as a convenient meeans of discrediting political rivals. The full list of accusations against Flaccus has not come down to us, and can only be reconstructed through a careful reading of Cicero’s summary arguments.

Among those who felt that they had been mistreated by the former governor were the province’s Jewish communities. They had long enjoyed the privilege of sending their annual half-shekel tributes for the upkeep of the holy Temple in Jerusalem, in accordance with the time-honoured practice that allowed all the Jews of the world to be equal participants in the nation’s communal offerings. Governor Flaccus had suspended that privilege in Asia in 62 B.C.E. as part of economic measures that were designed to stabilize fiscal irregularities that were plaguing the empire. The edict forbade all exports of gold from Asia. 

In this particular instance, the scattered Jewish communities of Asia had already transferred their year’s donations to four main centres from which they were to be sent to Jerusalem in large shipments. After Flaccus had these sums confiscated, government officials duly registered the amounts and deposited them in the state treasury, the aerarium. The prosecution insisted that this action was an illegal violation of an established Jewish privilege and an unprecedented insult to Jewish religious sensibilities. After all, even when Pompey conquered Jerusalem a few years earlier, he had scrupulously refrained from plundering the Temple’s treasury. 

Based on his snide allusions to the sinister “Jewish lobby” and its dreaded power to cause unspecified harm to its opponents, some historians were quick to lump Cicero together with more outspoken representatives of ancient anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories who routinely lambasted the Jews for their alleged xenophobia and superstitions. To be sure, Cicero had great admiration for one of those certified Jew-haters, his own instructor in rhetoric Apollonius Molon of Rhodes, who had authored a tract attacking the Jews for being uncouth misanthropes. However, Cicero’s high regard for Apollonius was evidently confined to his skills as a teacher of rhetoric, whereas he never quoted any of his libels against the Jewish religion. In fact, apart from his speech on behalf of Flaccus, Cicero appears to have had very little interest in the Jews or their religion. Therefore, most scholars now assume plausibly that Cicero was not expressing any personal opinions, but rather he was simply doing one of the things that he did best —namely, making use of any rhetorical tricks that he thought would persuade the judges of his client’s innocence. In his days as in ours, skilled trial attorneys would try to discredit their opponents and witnesses not only by casting explicit aspersions on their morals, but also by the subtle use of innuendo. In the cosmopolitan setting of Rome, ethnic stereotyping was an accepted weapon in such courtroom confrontations.

Whatever this episode might teach us about Cicero and his attitudes toward the Jews, it contains some tantalizing information about the beginnings of the Jewish community in Rome. For one thing, even if we make allowance for possible exaggerations, we learn from Cicero’s words that the Jews made up a recognizable component of the city’s population, and were a political force that could not be ignored, though they were relative newcomers to the capital. 

It is no less remarkable how this small immigrant community involved itself so actively in the political life of its host society. Their involvement was not merely a matter of showing up at a high-profile trial in order to show their support for one of the sides. It would appear that the Jewish community of Rome took a vital role in the ongoing political frictions that occupied the last years of the Roman republic. The political landscape then was quite similar to the current American political structure. There was a blue-blooded conservative party, of which Cicero himself was one of the most eloquent spokesmen, who championed traditional values and old-time pagan religion. These were pitted against a “democratic” alliance of miscellaneous disenfranchised ethnic and social factions. Cicero and his companions looked with suspicion at these foreign bodies that were subverting the integrity of traditional Roman society and its values. In particular, he feared that such groups, including the Jewish ethnic minority, were likely to be manipulated by populist demagogues such as his arch-enemy Publius Clodius Pulcher who did eventually succeed in bringing Cicero to ruin and having him exiled from Rome. The ensuing factional wars brought an end to the Roman republic, which gave way to the absolutist régime of Julius Caesar.

In the end, Cicero won this case and Flaccus was acquitted of the charges against him. Some scholars still maintain that Flaccus was guilty, and that his exoneration must be ascribed entirely to his lawyer’s clever rhetorical tricks. An ancient tradition even attributed Cicero’s courtroom triumph to his use of an off-colour joke that was afterwards removed from the published transcript of his oration.

Although we have now come to regard such things as normal, I find it quite remarkable that Rome’s fragile and insignificant Jewish community could be counted on to rally to the defence of their coreligionists in distant lands—especially when it involved the welfare of their holy city and its beloved sanctuary.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, May 24, 2013, p. 12.

• For further reading:
  • Guterman, Simeon L. Religious Toleration and Persecution in Ancient Rome. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1971.
  • Hild, J.-A. “Les Juifes à Rome devant l’Opinion et dans la Littérature.” Revue des Études Juives 8 (1884): 1–37.
  • Juster, Jean. Les Juifs dans L’Empire Romain. Burt Franklin Research and Source Works series 79. New York: B. Franklin, 1965.
  • Leon, Harry Joshua. The Jews of Ancient Rome. Updated ed. Peabody, Mass: Hendrickson Publishers, 1995.
  • Lewy, Hans. “Cicero on the Jews in His Speech for the Defence of Flaccus.” Zion 7, no. 3 (1941): 109–134.
  • ———. Studies in Jewish Hellenism [ʻOlamot Nifgashim]. Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1969.
  • Marshall, Anthony J. “Flaccus and the Jews of Asia (Cicero ‘Pro Flacco’ 28.67-69).” Phoenix 29, no. 2 (1975): 139–154. doi:10.2307/1087696.
  • Radin, Max. The Jews Among the Greeks and Romans. The Jewish People: History, Religion, Literature. New York: Arno Press, 1973.
  • Stern, Menahem. Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism. Fontes ad Res Judaicas Spectantes. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1974.
  • Tan, James. “Contiones in the Age of Cicero.” Classical Antiquity 27, no. 1 (2008): 163–201. doi:10.1525/ca.2008.27.1.163.
  • Vogelstein, Hermann. Rome. Translated by Moses Hadas. Jewish Communities Series. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1940.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Non-Euclidean Theocracy

by Eliezer Segal

In the campaign leading up to the January 2013 Israeli elections, a pamphlet was circulated in the name of the ḥareidi “United Torah Judaism” (UTJ) party. At the centre of the Hebrew page stood the solitary word “Euclid.” The smaller print below explained: no, this is not the name of some drug, but rather that of a Greek mathematician whom our Jewish children will be compelled to study instead of Mishnah—unless you can avert that dreaded catastrophe by casting your votes en masse for the UTJ party in the coming election.

When the pamphlet was first brought to my attention I was all but certain that it had to be be a hoax or parody created by political opponents or pranksters. Of all the heathen authors whose names might have been invoked to instill terror in the hearts of the black-coated denizens of Bnai Brak or Me’ah She’arim, Euclid was arguably the worst fit for the role. One cannot fault them perhaps for being unaware of the numerous medieval Hebrew translations of Euclid that exist in manuscripts. But how could they not know that the celebrated Rabbi Elijah the Gaon of Vilna—so revered by the Lithuanian yeshiva culture that makes up a large portion of the UTJ constituency—was an ardent admirer of the ancient geometer, and even commissioned his student Rabbi Baruch Bendit of Shklov to produce a Hebrew translation of Euclid’s Elements—”which elucidates the complete science of measurement, angles, rectangles, triangles, circles, ratios and values” (as it states on the title page of that edition). A separate primer on elementary geometry titled Ayil Meshullash was published under the Gaon’s name, probably based on his private notes.

The Gaon believed that mathematics, like the other sciences, is an indispensable tool for a proper understanding of the Torah. Rabbi Baruch quoted his teacher as asserting that “insofar as a person is deficient in knowledge of secular subjects, he will be deficient one hundredfold in the wisdom of the Torah. For the Torah and secular knowledge are bound together.” Another disciple reported similarly that Rabbi Elijah had made a point of mastering algebra, geometry and music theory, impelled by his conviction that “all the sciences are necessary for our Torah and are included therein.”

Rabbi Baruch added that considerations of national pride should also motivate Jews to learn geometry, since (in keeping with a time-honoured Jewish belief), all the scientific and philosophical wisdom of the nations had originated among the Hebrews but had subsequently been appropriated by our oppressors during the exile. Therefore it is incumbent upon us to deflate their superior attitudes by mastering the disciplines that belong to our authentic heritage.

On December 9 1787 the renowned English philosopher of Utilitarianism Jeremy Bentham was traveling through Eastern Europe, where his brother Samuel, a prominent engineer and industrialist, was serving in the employ of Prince Potemkin and the empress Catherine the Great. Jeremy spent some time with his brother hoping to implement some of the innovative architectural ideas that he was developing in his “Panopticon.” In the course of a journey through the town of Slonim (now in Belarus), Jeremy discovered to his chagrin that he was unable to find a vacancy at any of the town’s respectable inns. He was forced to lodge the night with a Jew, a rabbi who was the proprietor of a hardware store.

Bentham was surprised to note that his host, a modest representative of the local bourgeoisie, possessed two glass-enclosed bookcases that housed between 250 and 300 Hebrew volumes. The rabbi took particular pride in two scientific works in his collection: a book on astronomy to which he had added a diagram of his own, and an edition of Euclid’s Elements. As fate would have it, the library that so impressed the British philosopher would be destroyed a few years later in a fire.

It is possible to identify Bentham’s unnamed hardware merchant as Rabbi Samson ben Mordecai who presided over the rabbinical court of Slonim and whose name was signed to one of the letters of approbation accompanying Baruch of Shklov’s translation of Euclid. That volume was printed in The Hague in 1780; the other three letters were all by Dutch rabbis. Rabbi Samson’s words echoed the themes voiced by the translator, that Jews needed to familiarize themselves with the scientific curriculum in order to refute the accusations by hostile nations that we are a barbaric and ignorant people, in the spirit of the Torah’s words “for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations, who will hear about all these decrees and say: Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.”

As it happens, the same Rabbi Samson ben Mordecai of Slonim hosted yet another famous European philosopher—or to be precise, a young man who was beginning his trajectory toward a brief but distinguished philosophical career.

A brilliant young talmudic prodigy named Sh’lomo ben Yehoshua, stifled by the arid rabbinic culture of his native Lithuania, was desperate to broaden his intellectual horizons. Sh’lomo later wrote in his memoirs how he was assisted in his quest by a certain rabbi in “the town of S.” who possessed some proficiency in the German language as well as with the rudiments of science and mathematics, and also owned a useful collection of books in German. The youth trekked on foot to S. where he was able to make his first acquaintance with some old tomes on optics, physics and medicine. Our young scholar later moved to Prussia where he adopted the name “Salomon Maimon” in honour of his intellectual hero, Maimonides.

It is quite certain that the youthful Maimon’s benefactor was the very same Rabbi Samson of Slonim who encouraged the Hebrew translation of Euclid’s Elements, and that this modest initiation into modern scientific studies facilitated Maimon’s eventual acceptance into the philosophical salons of Berlin where he made a name for himself as one of the foremost critics of Kant and as a commentator on Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed. Maimon’s life in Germany was full of hardship, and he was never able to rid himself of the stigma of his crude eastern European mannerisms; but even his deriders were deeply impressed by his quick and instinctive grasp of difficult mathematical reasoning.

In light of the great esteem that Euclid and his teachings inspired among such respectable rabbis, it is all the more astonishing that the UTJ should have selected him as their example of a heathen whose reputation ought to frighten pious Jews into casting their votes for their party. Nevertheless, as far as I have been able to discover, the campaign leaflet is an authentic one that was really commissioned by the UTJ. None of this inspires confidence in either the erudition or the integrity of the advertisement’s authors.

Alas, it is almost axiomatic that ignorance and deceit will converge at the intersection of politics and religion.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, June 7, 2013, p. 9.

• For further reading:
  • Bartal, Israel. “Jeremy Bentham and Samson of Slonim: Two Book Lovers’ Story.” In Studies in Ashkenazi Culture, Women’s History, and the Languages of the Jews Presented to Chava Turniansky, edited by Israel Bartal, Galit Hasan-Rokem, Ada Rapoport-Albert, Claudia Rosenzweig, Vicky Shifriss, and Erika Timm, 1:207–226. Jerusalem: The Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History and Center for Research on Polish Jewry, The Hebrew University, 2013.
  • Christie, Ian R. The Benthams in Russia, 1780-1791. Anglo-Russian Affinities Series. Oxford and Providence: Berg, 1993.
  • Etkes, I. The Gaon of Vilna: The Man and His Image. Translated by Yaacov Jeffrey Green. The S. Mark Taper Foundation Imprint in Jewish Studies. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.
  • Fishman, David E., and Yoichi Funabashi. Russia’s First Modern Jews: The Jews of Shklov. New York and London: NYU Press, 1996.
  • Lichtenstein, Kalman, ed. Pinḳas Slonim: Record and Face of a Town, Ruin of the Community, in Memoriam. Tel-Aviv: Irgun ʻOle Slonim be-Yisraʼel, 1961.
  • Shuchat, B. Raphael. “The Debate Over Secular Studies Among the Disciples of the Vilna Gaon.” Torah U-Madda Journal 8 (1998): 283–294.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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