All posts by Eliezer Segal

One for All and All for One

June 11, 2023 Eliezer Segal

One for All and All for One

by Eliezer Segal

One of the central and most striking of the precepts that are performed on the Sukkot holiday is the ritual carrying of the “Four Species,” the diverse plants that are clasped in our hands in fulfillment of the Torah’s command to “take you on the first day the fruit of goodly trees, branches of palm trees, and the boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook.” The rabbis treated all the details of this elaborate ritual as a single integrated package, so that if any one of the ingredients is missing or omitted, the obligation cannot be fulfilled at all.

The Talmud ruled that the three items that come in the form of branches—the palm frond, myrtle and willow—should be kept together in one hand; and the round etrog fruit in the other hand. More specifically, the three branches must be held in the right hand and the etrog in the left, a ruling that was subsequently codified by Maimonides and other early authorities. In spite of the fact that those items are physically assigned to different hands, Jewish law still regards the Four Species as a single unit.

During the medieval era, the Jewish understanding of religious rituals was revolutionized and invigorated with the emergence of a novel symbolic approach to interpreting Jewish tradition, as taught by the esoteric theological school of the Kabbalah. The spiritual states of unity and separation became a favourite subject of theological symbolism in kabbalistic writings, which attached profound mystical significance to those concepts, as well as to the concepts of right and left sides—the former was identified with divine loving-kindness, and the latter with the qualities of justice and harsh retribution.

Thus, the earliest known kabbalistic work, known as the Sefer Ha-Bahir, discerned in the Sukkot rite of the Four Species an apt metaphor for expressing the relationship between the celestial and earthly spheres, as embodied in the concept of the “Shekhinah,” the divine presence in our world. In the Bahir‘s intricate imagery, the etrog is equated with the Shekhinah, the quintessential feminine principle without which the universe could not exist. “The etrog is separated from the bound branches of the lulav, and yet the precept of the lulav cannot be fulfilled without it. At the same time, it is bound together with them all, so that it is with each one, and with all of them it is together.”

The early exponents of the Kabbalah developed this theme as a profound and mysterious vehicle for expressing the dichotomy that persists between the ideal and real worlds. At present we are living in an unredeemed reality that is disconnected from its spiritual roots; however, the ultimate divine plan calls for the full merging of these realms that now appear to be disparate. This paradoxical dichotomy is symbolized by the fact that the Four Species, although they constitute a single inseparable commandment, must nonetheless be held in different hands in order for the precept to be properly observed.

Early kabbalistic authors stressed that this truth cannot be accurately represented unless the etrog is kept at a physical distance from the other species during the performance of the ritual. Only in this way are we able to draw from the opposing celestial forces of divine mercy and justice that are represented by the right and left sides. In this way, the ritual corresponds to the complexities and contradictions that are our lot in this imperfect world of mixed holiness and sin, of joy and sorrow.

It would appear, however, that the religious mentality cannot remain satisfied for long with a situation that is less than the ideal. In the late thirteenth century, a new kabbalistic masterpiece appeared in Spain that advocated a more activist approach to spiritual life. Its author was not content to acknowledge the paradox of metaphysical oneness and division. Instead, he formulated a program for overcoming that division. In order to accomplish that objective, we mortals in the lower realm must symbolically perform the act of gathering the Four Species together in a manner that will awaken the celestial powers to create absolute unity and bring about complete harmony in the universe.

A generation later, this outlook was to have a profound effect on Rabbi Menahem Recanati, the Italian author of a remarkable kabbalistic commentary on the Torah. Recanati asserted categorically that the etrog must be held together with the other three species. In support of his ruling, which was at variance with earlier practice, he told a story of how the mystery had been revealed to him in a dream on the night of the first day of Sukkot. In that dream, Rabbi Recanati beheld his house-guest, a pious Ashkenazic man named Rabbi Isaac, inscribing the four-letter divine name in such a manner that its last letter, the h”e, was written at some distance from the three previous letters. When Recanati asked Rabbi Isaac for an explanation of this unusual practice, the reply was “this is our custom in our locality.” Thereupon Recanati protested, and wrote the divine name in its usual form with no separation between the letters.

The true significance of the puzzling dream came to him next morning when the time arrived to observe the precept of waving the lulav. He observed then that Rabbi Isaac was waving the lulav by itself without the etrog, and he raised an objection.

As interpreted by the classic kabbalistic symbolism, the four Hebrew letters of the Tetragrammaton represent the ten “sefirot,” the emanated powers of God, with the last h”esymbolizing the tenth sefirah, the Shekhinah, which was identified with the national spirit of the people of Israel. If we subscribe to the kabbalistic premise that our actions on earth have an impact on the metaphysical realms, then it follows that our separating the “letters” of the ineffable divine name strengthens the forces of dissention in the celestial ranks, resulting in a prolongation of the exile of the Jewish people from their homeland. On the other hand, keeping the letters together will help promote a state of universal unity and concord.

As the sixteenth-century kabbalist Rabbi Meir Ibn Gabbai admonished with grave foreboding, “anyone who treats this matter frivolously will in the end have to stand in judgment for it, because all our deeds must be modeled after the heavenly paradigm.” In a similar spirit, Rabbi Hayyim Vital, the most influential interpreter of the doctrines of Rabbi Isaac Luria, declared that it is forbidden to separate the etrog from the lulav when one is clasping them for the purpose of carrying out the biblical commandment.

As the ideas of the Kabbalah achieved increasing prominence in Jewish religious life, especially in the sixteenth century following the expulsion from Spain and Portugal, the custom of holding the etrog together with three other species became the prevalent one. The question was definitively settled when Recanati’s ruling was incorporated by Rabbi Joseph Caro, himself an ardent kabbalist, into his Shulhan Arukhcode, which came to be accepted as the authoritative encapsulation of traditional Jewish religious law. By now every prayer book or festival guide takes it for granted that the lulav and etrog must be held contingently when we are reciting the blessings and ritually waving the Four Species.

I would not venture to impose my personal opinions in matters related to esoteric lore or mystical symbolism. Nevertheless, it occurs to me that the very persistence of such disagreements among the learned kabbalists and halakhic authorities points to a more tangible lesson that can be derived from the imagery of the Four Species.

Indeed, they can be viewed as an eminently fitting testimony to the lively give-and-take that has characterized Jewish scholarship over the ages. Our determination to keep those objects together, in whatever manner we consider preferable, aptly reflects an openness to diverse perspectives that has contributed powerfully to the ongoing vitality of the Jewish tradition and to the unity of our people.

First Publication:
- The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, September 16, 2014, p. 19.

For further reading:
- Ḥalamish, Mosheh. Kabbalah in Liturgy, Halakhah and Customs. Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2000. [Hebrew]
- Ta-Shma, Israel M. Ha-Nigle She-Banistar: Halachic Residue in the Zohar. A Contribution to the Study of the Zohar. Tel Aviv: Hakkibutz Hameuchad, 1995. [Hebrew]

My email address is: [email protected]

This article is included in the collection: A Time for Every Purposes, the Alberta Judaic Library, 2015

To Boldly Go…

June 11, 2023 Eliezer Segal

To Boldly Go…

by Eliezer Segal

According to the Torah, the designers of the tower of Babel were motivated by the hope that their monument would “make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” In preventing the tower’s completion, God seemed less concerned with the project itself than with the potential threats that might emerge from a populace that was concentrated in a single place and spoke a common language.

The most familiar interpretation in Jewish tradition has it that the tower was to be used to climb up the the heavens and make war on God or the angels.

For the eighteenth-century Rabbi Jonathan Eybeschütz, that reading was unsatisfactory. At whatever altitude we choose to locate the “heavens” to which the tower was suppose to reach, any novice architect would recognize that for such a structure to be stable, its base would have to be very broad to keep it from toppling over—broader, perhaps, than our entire planet.

Rabbi Eybeschütz suggested, therefore, that the tower’s builders had a more modest objective in mind: to make themselves impervious to any future flood that God might decide to inflict on them as punishment for their misdeeds. Although some might immediately dismiss this scenario, citing God’s pledge after Noah’s flood that he would never again smite the earth in this way, Eybeschütz pointed out that that vow had been introduced with the words “and the Lord said in his heart” —implying thereby that it had not yet been disclosed publicly (so as not to remove its deterrent effect). Consequently, the iniquitous humans were not yet aware that there was no pressing need for their ambitious project. The no-more-flood clause would not be revealed publicly until the advent of the wicked Balaam who used his prophetic skills to leak it to the heathen nations.

The tower’s engineers based their strategy on some simple scientific observations. They were aware that all rainfall originates in the water vapor that is stored in the clouds; and rain-clouds are never located higher than five miles above the earth’s surface. Therefore, they reasoned, it would be possible to keep dry during any future deluge by ascending to a higher altitude. And once you are climbing that high, you might as well find a comfortable and stable place to stay. So why not the moon, which seemed to be amenable to human habitation?

But how could humans reach the moon? Rabbi Eybeschütz did not regard that as an insurmountable difficulty. The journey could be accomplished by harnessing some basic principles of aeronautical engineering—perhaps inspired by the mechanics of everyday kites. Since the motion of the winds seems to carry objects upwards, the trick was to construct a ship-like vehicle whose sails were laid out horizontally to catch the gusts. In keeping with his understanding of aeronautics and meteorology, Eybeschütz believed that it is much easier to understand how a vessel can keep ascending skyward than to explain how it can return to earth. The latter process is in a sense anomalous, occasioned when the aircraft comes under the influence of the heavy moist air that is found closer to the the earth’s surface.

In that primitive age near the beginning of Genesis, some people were still under the sway of ignorant superstitions and believed that the winds were animistic beings who could be manipulated by magical rites. They tried their hand at offering sacrifices so that their aircraft would be lifted from below, but were disappointed to discover that wind and air are not willful beings who are subject to persuasion, but merely impersonal natural forces. Consequently, a consensus was reached that they should pursue a more scientific approach to achieving their objective. Put another way: after a prolonged period in which they tried out multiple strategies, humanity had now reached a state in which “the whole earth was of one language.”

And so our stalwart band of aviators planned to launch their airship from an elevation beyond the pull of the heavy winds that would have drawn them downwards. Having passed this crucial point, it should now be clear sailing to the moon. An irrefutable proof of their scientific theory was the fact that nobody had ever seen a bullet or cannonball fall to the ground after it had been shot straight up in the air by a powerful blast of gunpowder. This, according to Rabbi Eybeschütz, was an empirical fact upon which there existed a clear scientific consensus.

In discussing this factor, he was anticipating by more than a century an approach that would be preferred by Jules Verne in his 1865 pioneering science-fiction novel From the Earth to the Moon. Verne’s craft was indeed propelled from a huge cannon and was calculated so that it would be powerful enough to lift the craft beyond the pull of the earth’s gravitational pull.

Back to the Bible story: The best thing to do at this stage was to launch their missile from a point that was higher than the heavy air that was impeding its ascent.

This, then, was the purpose of the tower. It was intended to serve as the launching pad for the spaceship that would transport the intrepid travelers to their moon base where they could safely wait out any excessive rainfall that might be directed at our planet as retribution for their crimes.

We should bear in mind that Eybeschütz was not always sympathetic to the most advanced scientific discoveries. In his work Ye‘arot Devash he rejected Copernicus’s claims that the earth orbits the sun. This was the result of his commitment to the Aristotelian theory advanced by Maimonides according to which the sun and the visible planets are in reality “separate intelligences,” beings of pure intellect without physical matter, the beings that the philosophers equated with the angels of the Hebrew scriptures. It is an essential and irrevocable part of the divine cosmological plan that these beings continue to revolve in their eternal orbits as they contemplate ultimate truth. For Eybeschütz this metaphysical axiom was so crucial to Judaism that he was confident Copernicus’s apparent proofs to the contrary would be refuted imminently.

We should relate in a similar spirit to his failure to raise the question of how humans would breathe in outer space (Jules Verne took the trouble to furnish his spacecraft with an oxygen-producing machine, and to describe a moon that possessed a thin atmosphere and a bit of water). Rabbi Eybeschütz, in fact, was more concerned with describing how the expanses between the earth and the moon contained winds to lift the wings of the ancient airship. This was no problem for him, since he took very seriously the principle that nature abhors a vacuum. Looked at from a theological perspective, this taught him that it would be wasteful and uneconomical for the Almighty to leave immense sections of the universe completely empty. Hence, there would always be helpful breezes to carry the rebellious sinners up above the rain clouds.

Based on similar reasoning, he deduced that Noah’s flood did not consist of water falling onto the surface of the entire world—for why waste good rainwater on oceans or on uninhabited regions (he mentions America as such a barren place)? Rather, what God did was to temporarily suspend the upward motion of the air so that the rainwater would cease to rise and evaporate.

Well, we all know how the debacle of the tower of Babel ended. According to Rabbi Jonathan, it was not on account of any flawed science or engineering, but only because of the divine intervention. It kind of makes you wonder what sort of experiments he was conducting in his garage.

Of course the ensuing division of mankind into diverse languages might require the launching of an International Space Station—but that, I suppose, is another story (“Babel 2”?) that Rabbi Eybeschütz did not pursue.

First Publication:
- The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, October 17, 2014, p. 13.

For further reading:
- Bettan, Israel. “The Sermons of Jonathan Eybeshitz.” Hebrew Union College Annual 10 (1935): 553–597.
- Brown, Jeremy. New Heavens and a New Earth: The Jewish Reception of Copernican Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 213.

My email address is: [email protected]

This article is included in the collection: Chronicles and Commentaries, The Alberta Judaic Library, 2015.

By Any Other Name

June 11, 2023 Eliezer Segal

By Any Other Name

by Eliezer Segal

As is well known, Jewish tradition attaches crucial importance to the assignment of people’s names. The Bible goes out of its way to explain how and why parents chose the names of their children. With respect to our most important ancestors, the Almighty himself is often the one who selects the name. Fundamental changes in a person’s status are accompanied by divinely ordained re-namings.

Notably, the promise that Abraham will become the father of many nations is accompanied by the declaration, “neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham.” Similarly, the assurance to his childless wife that she will bear a son is confirmed by the change of her name from Sarai to Sarah.

The sages of the Talmud and Midrash took those name changes very seriously. Some of them declared that anyone who continues to refer to Abraham as “Abram” is actually transgressing a biblical prohibition, while others insisted that the violation was even more serious, involving both positive and negative precepts.

In view of such sweeping claims, later commentators were puzzled to observe that none of the major lists of Torah commandments or codifications of Jewish religious law actually included a requirement to use the name “Abraham” or to avoid “Abram.” Rabbi Judah Bachrach suggested that this was because the relevant passages were taught prior to the revelation at Mount Sinai.

Rabbi Samuel Edels inferred that the rabbinic comments and their proof-texts were not intended to be taken literally, but were merely homiletical overstatements of a kind that are encountered frequently in the Talmud.

For Rabbi Ezekiel Landau this approach was not quite satisfying: granted that it does not rank among the 613 commandments of the Torah—it is nonetheless a normative rule, if only by rabbinic authority, and therefore it deserves to be included in comprehensive halakhic codes like those of Maimonides or Rabbi Joseph Caro! Indeed, a few authorities, such as Rabbis Isaiah Di Trani and Abraham Gombiner, made a point in their writings of presenting this rule as a normative law—or even a full-scale commandment.

Now this may all be well and good for the name of Abraham; but we do not find in the rabbinic tradition any equivalent law with respect to other figures whose names were changed by divine command. In the case of Sarah, the Torah states, “and God said unto Abraham: as for Sarai thy wife, thou shalt not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall her name be.” The Talmud explained that the verse was addressed specifically to Abraham, and was not being commanded as a binding obligation for future generations.

More difficult is the case of Jacob. He is subject to a momentous renaming—to “Israel”—as the result of his struggle with the mysterious supernatural being at the Jabbok river, at which point he was informed, “thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel.” Despite the apparent similarity to the story about Abraham, Jewish tradition never insisted that the new name “Israel” must completely replace “Jacob.” In fact, this was not a real option, since the Almighty himself continued using the old and new names alternately, as we find a few chapters later: “and God spake unto Israel in the visions of the night, and said, ‘Jacob, Jacob.’”

For the medieval Spanish exegete Rabbi Baḥya ben Asher, who understood Jacob’s struggle with his opponent as a symbolic representation of the battle between body and spirit within each person, the retention of the earlier name holds an important lesson: even if we aspire to an ideal standard in which the spirit holds the upper hand over our earthly desires, this should not come at the cost of a complete neutralization of our physical nature. We are after all creatures of flesh and blood, and even if our spiritual “Israel” is able to maintain its supremacy over our “Jacob,” but we were never intended to deny or eliminate our basic physicality.

However, the names “Abram” and “Abraham” have a very different relationship to one another. As understood by rabbinic tradition, Abram was destined, at the most, to be the progenitor of a local movement or sect among the Arameans; whereas the name-change to “Abraham” assured him that through Sarah’s promised son he was to become the universal “father of many nations.” The implications of those two names are therefore mutually exclusive, and the bestowing of the new one necessarily involved the total retiring of the old.

Another intriguing solution to these difficulties may be found in an exposition by the illustrious Polish preacher Rabbi Ephraim Luntshits in his Keli Yaḳar. The starting point for his interpretation is the prophecy of Jeremiah who offered hope and reassurance to his exiled brethren, promising them that redemption would eventually arrive, and that the glories of that ultimate redemption will be so great that they will eclipse our previous paradigm, that of the exodus from Egypt. “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that they shall no more say: the Lord lives, who brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt.” The Talmud explained that the prophet was not suggesting that the exodus will be entirely forgotten or dismissed, but rather that it will henceforth be perceived as subordinate to the perfect redemption that will prevail in the messianic era.

Rabbi Luntshits proposed that there exists a crucial thematic analog between the two redemptions and the dual names of our ancestor. Developing a line of interpretation suggested by Rabbi Jacob Ibn Ḥabib, he pointed out that the name “Jacob,” bestowed upon the infant when he was born clutching his twin brother’s heel, has connotations of subterfuge or crookedness, traits that sometimes characterized the patriarch’s ways of dealing with the conflicts that he encountered throughout his life.

So too, the exodus from Egypt, for all its great wonders, was not always accomplished by means of frontal shows of national strength against the oppressor. The Hebrews had not yet amassed sufficient spiritual merit for that, so they initially had to bargain with Pharaoh, requesting his permission to observe a limited religious celebration, and then they snuck out in haste in the middle of the night. This remained a typical survival strategy of the Jewish nation in their subsequent exiles, to live by their wits while avoiding direct engagements with their oppressors.

The future redemption—that of Israel—will be of a decidedly different kind, corresponding to the name of Israel which means, “you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.” Once the people have overcome their spiritual deficiencies, they will be restored to their glory and pride in the full light of history, as the prophet declared, “for you shall not go out in haste, and you shall not go in flight.”

Thus—concludes Rabbi Luntshits—although the ultimate redemption will be far more glorious than the exodus from Egypt, the earlier exploit will not be deleted from our historical consciousness. We will continue to recall it, if only to instill an awareness of the crucial differences between those two events and of the moral states from which they derived.

By the same token, the continued use of the lesser name “Jacob” reminds us of how far we will have progressed when we eventually achieve the ideals that are embodied in the name of “Israel.”

First Publication:
- The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, October 31, 2014, p. 10.

For further reading:
- Ben-Sasson, H. H. “Wealth and Poverty in the Teaching of the Preacher Reb Ephraim of Lenczyca.” Zion 19, no. 3-4 (1954): 142–166.
- Bettan, Israel. “The Sermons of Ephraim Luntshitz.” Hebrew Union College Annual 8 (1931): 443–80.
- Block, Herbert. “Distinguishing Jacob and Israel.” Jewish Bible Quarterly 34, no. 3 (2006): 155–158.
- Grünwald, M. Rabbi Salomo Ephraim Luntschitz. Frankfurt a/M: M. J. Kauffmann, 1892.

My email address is: [email protected]

This article is included in the collection: Chronicles and Commentaries, The Alberta Judaic Library, 2015.

Unforgettable

June 11, 2023 Eliezer Segal

Unforgettable

by Eliezer Segal

Progressive educational theory no longer assigns much value to memorization. Analytical abilities and problem-solving take priority over the rote recitation of a Shakespearean soliloquy or of the multiplication tables. This is perhaps a luxury that we enjoy in a world where so many texts and facts can be accessed instantly. Even so, I fear that the tendency is at times overdone and may impede the students’ efficient functioning in real-life situations.

A similar pattern is discernable in Jewish religious education. Whereas earlier generations devoted most of the primary curriculum to memorizing the correct reading of the Bible or other sacred texts, the preference, especially in Ashkenazic schools, shifted to early immersion into the Talmud, cultivating the ability to probe the intricate logic of legal argumentation. Although the ability to call up vast quantities of text is an admired achievement, it usually takes second place to the honing of keen and creative analytical acumen.

Things were quite different in ancient times when scholars did not have access to written texts of rabbinic teachings. At that time the entire body of traditions that would eventually be published as the Talmuds and Midrash were transmitted from teacher to student solely by word of mouth. Therefore, to qualify as a rabbinical scholar it was not enough to master the intellectual challenges of talmudic reasoning, but one had to have memorized the equivalent of dozens of thick tomes.

Thus, while scholarly success was regarded as a crucial religious virtue and a source of social prestige, many aspiring rabbis were impeded by the inherent limitations of their memories. Talmudic literature contains references to students whose memories suffered from lapses, whether on account of their inborn mental circuitry, emotional distress or medical conditions.

From documents that have survived from the early medieval era we learn that some students sought to improve their memories with the help of technology—or as we would now classify it: magic. Mystical texts belonging to the genre of “Hekhalot” (which describe spiritual ascents through a succession of celestial “palaces”) preserve a remarkable tradition ascribed to its pseudonymous heroes Rabbi Ishmael and his teacher Rabbi Neḥuniah ben ha-Ḳanah. Rabbi Ishmael reports how, when he was a lad of thirteen, Rabbi Neḥuniah found him “in a state of self-affliction, great suffering and momentous peril.” It seems that Ishmael’s memory was unable to retain from one day to the next the biblical or mishnaic texts he had just learned. He had tried unsuccessfully to enhance his powers of recollection by abstaining from food, drink, bathing, women, song and frivolity.

Wise old Rabbi Neḥuniah had a more effective solution to Ishmael’s predicament. He showed Ishmael how to invoke powerful supernatural agents in order to achieve his objective. In keeping with the norms of Jewish magic, this was done largely by imposing oaths on the angels who are responsible for memory, by invoking the appropriate divine names—which are to be repeated exactly one hundred and eleven times, carefully counted out on the fingers (and woe to the one who errs in the count!).

It would appear that this practice succeeded not only in perfecting Rabbi Ishmael’s memory and initiating him into the “mystery of Torah,” but also: “any Torah scholar who recites this great secret will also acquire a pleasant appearance, people will admire his speaking abilities, everyone will fear him, he will not experience any bad dreams, and he will be safeguarded from all sorts of disasters, witchcraft and the flames of Gehenna.”

The plight that was ascribed to Rabbi Ishmael is one that was probably shared by many yeshivah students who found themselves overwhelmed by the difficulties of memorizing huge volumes of intricate texts. Recent academic scholarship has argued (unconvincingly, to my mind) that the authors and consumers of these works were outsiders who wanted to break into the ranks of the rabbinic milieu, which came to be perceived as as a snobbish elite who maintained their exclusivity by means of their exacting intellectual standards.

Some of the texts provide us with more precise details about a supernatural being who wields the power over Torah learning. Very popular for this purpose was an expanded version of the Havdalah prayer for the conclusion of the sabbath. That text was ascribed to Rabbi Akiva and it incorporated numerous magical motifs, most of them designed to shield the reciter from malevolent sorcery.

The “Havdalah of Rabbi Akiva” probably originated in Babylonia. It was included in several manuscripts of Rabbi Amram Ga’on’s ninth-century responsum on the order of prayer which formed the basis for most subsequent Jewish liturgical compendia. It likely traveled the well-trodden route of medieval mystical traditions— through southern Italy, and then as part of the esoteric lore brought to the Rhineland communities by the esteemed Kalonymos dynasty of mystics. In Germany it became part of the lore of the Jewish pietist movement (Ḥasidut Ashkenaz) that exerted a powerful influence on the customs and folkways on future generations of Ashkenazic Jewry.

The clause in Rabbi Akiva’s Havdalah that relates to memory improvement consists of an oath imposed on a being by the name of “Putah prince of forgetfulness” who is urged “to remove the stupid heart from me and from X son of Y, and all afflictions and evil ailments and all flying spirits and all demons and devils, and cast them down to the mountains and onto the heights.” Like any respectable Jewish magical spell, it proceeds to cite a heap of biblical verses on the theme of protection, and to invoke a dazzling catalogue of names of angels to whom it appeals for “an understanding heart and a heart that retains, so that every thing that I hear I shall learn and everything that I learn I shall not forget.”

There is, perhaps, a measure of irony in the fact that the name of this imposing “prince of forgetfulness” was not remembered very accurately by later Jewish tradition. Some texts spell it “Potaḥ,” appropriately related to the Hebrew word for opening. In later traditions emanating from the kabbalistic circle of Rabbi Isaac Luria, it turns into “Purah” (apparently connected to fertility). Other versions have “Pelaṭiah,” from a root designating escape or slipping away; or the incomprehensible “Puṭa” which, it has been suggested, originated as “Buiti” (or Buidhi), a nasty Persian demon who seduces people to idolatry.

One typical manuscript containing directions (as allegedly taught by Rabbi Ishmael to Rabbi Akiva) for the enhancement of skills in studying Scripture, Mishnah and Talmud, the reader is equipped with an assortment of incantations full of exotic divine names that must be recited a specified number of times and at designated occasions; along with instructions for prolonged fasting, bathing and partaking of special foods. Magical expressions are to be inscribed on certain objects, such as the leaves of fig and olive trees, or dissolved into wine that one then drinks from a special jar or cup. The formula is to be written on a one-day-old egg from a dark spotted hen. The egg is roasted, peeled and again inscribed with the incantation, and then it is eaten. This should be followed by a period of fasting.

If performed precisely, the Prince of Torah will appear to the person and speedily remove the metaphoric stone that was obstructing his heart, so that he will now be able to internalize and master the sacred texts.

Now, I am aware that these instructions are quite complicated—but don’t bother copying them down.

If all goes well, you should have no trouble remembering them.

First Publication:
- The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, November 14, 2014, p. 11.

For further reading:
- Dan, Joseph. The Ancient Jewish Mysticism. Translated by Schmuel Himelstein. Broadcast University Series. Tel-Aviv: MOD Books, 1993.
- Halperin, David J. The Faces of the Chariot: Early Jewish Responses to Ezekiel’s Vision. Texte Und Studien Zum Antiken Judentum 16. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1988.
- Heller, Bernard. “Autre Note sur le Nom Divin de Vingt-Deux Lettres et sur le Démon de l’Oubli.” Revue des Études Juives 57, no. 1 (1909): 105–108.
- Kanarfogel, Ephraim. Peering Through the Lattices: Mystical, Magical, and Pietistic Dimensions in the Tosafist Period. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2000.
- Krauss, Samuel. Additamenta ad Librum Aruch Completum. Reprint. Jerusalem: Makor, 1970. [Hebrew]
- Marcus, Ivan G. Rituals of Childhood: Jewish Acculturation in Medieval Europe. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.
- Margaliot, Reuben. Malʼakhe ʻElyon. Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1945. [Hebrew]
- Schäfer, Peter. Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur. Tübingen: Mohr and Siebeck, 1981.
- Scholem, Gershom. “Havdala De-Rabbi ‘Aqiva: A Source for the Tradition of Jewish Magic During the Geonic Period.” Tarbiz 50, no. 1 (1981-1980).
- Swartz, Michael D. Scholastic Magic: Ritual and Revelation in Early Jewish Mysticism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.

My email address is: [email protected]

This article is included in the collection: Chronicles and Commentaries, The Alberta Judaic Library, 2015.

Labeling Laban

June 11, 2023 Eliezer Segal

by Eliezer Segal

Labeling Laban

The ancient Hebrew work known as the “Book of Jubilees” is one of the earliest commentaries to the Torah that have come down to us. It selectively narrates many of the stories in the book of Genesis, often inserting details that are not found in the original text. Many of the alterations in Jubilees express its author’s distinctive approaches to chronology—for instance, dividing history into a sequence of forty-nine-year units. However, some of those additions appear to be responding to difficulties posed by the scriptural text, the same kinds of difficulties that would be dealt with in later times by the rabbis of the Midrash and by classical Jewish commentators.

Take for example the story about Jacob and Laban. Now, Laban the Aramean has not fared very well in the hands of mainstream Jewish tradition. However, though his personality according to the unvarnished biblical text may not be particularly sympathetic, neither is it abhorrent. He acts as a sort of foil to young Jacob, who was (let’s face it) a bit of a wimpy Mama’s boy; Laban, on the other hand, is portrayed as a hard-nosed negotiator whether in his determination to find husbands for both his daughters or in squeezing the most out of his employees. His resolve to tend to his daughters’ successful marriages is not unlike the challenges faced by familiar literary parents like Jane Austen’s Bennets or Sholem Aleichem’s Tevyeh.

And yet the well-known midrash cited in the Passover Haggadah paints Laban in colours even more nefarious than the Pharaoh who enslaved the Israelites, ascribing to him a diabolical plot to commit preventative genocide against Jacob’s still-unborn descendants. It can therefore be quite jarring for Jewish readers to read how the book of Jubilees seems to bend over backwards to minimize the negative implications of Laban’s behaviour.

For example, the Torah contrasts Jacob’s feelings toward Laban’s two daughters, a contrast that resulted from their their different physical appearances: “Leah was tender eyed; but Rachel was beautiful and well favoured.” It would follow from this that palming off the homely daughter in place of the beautiful one would indeed amount a clear case of fraud.

However, Jubilees introduces a subtle abridgement into the description of the the two sisters’ appearances: “Leah’s eyes were weak, but her form was very lovely; but Rachel had beautiful eyes and a graceful and very lovely form.” According to this reading, Laban’s bride-switching was not a clear-cut case of substituting an ugly girl for an attractive one, but rather of exchanging one beauty (albeit with bad eyes) for a more stunning beauty. Since according to either version Jacob was the kind of man whose romantic affections were shaped by external appearances—he fell for Rachel at first sight before acquainting himself with her personality—he had less compelling grounds for resentment against his father-in-law.

And what, indeed, was Laban’s motive for exchanging Jacob’s sisters? According to the Torah he argues in his defense, “It is not so done in our country, to give the younger before the firstborn.” In their general determination to vilify Laban, traditional Jewish commentators have tended to read this argument as a disingenuous bit of self-justification. To be sure, some later Jewish exegetes, like the sixteenth-century Rabbi Eliezer Ashkenazi, read the passage astutely as a fitting retribution for Jacob’s own deception when he misled his father into awarding him the blessing that was really intended for his older twin Esau.

Evidently, however, the author of Jubilees is accepting Laban’s argument as fully sincere. In that version, Laban goes on to argue his case in elaborate detail: A father who marries off his younger daughter before the elder will have committed a grave sin that is registered on his heavenly permanent record. Therefore, such behaviour is eschewed by all righteous persons, and is deemed evil in the eyes of the Lord.

And if the reader hasn’t yet got the hint, Laban spells out clearly that this is not just a local custom but a full-scale law: the Israelites are absolutely forbidden to take or give a younger daughter in marriage before her older sibling. (Note that at this point in the narrative, neither the name “Israel” nor any of the children who were to inherit it were yet in existence.)

And if your are skeptical as to the genuineness of such a prohibition, Laban in Jubilees appends a remarkable footnote to his plea: “for thus it is ordained and written in the heavenly tablets.”

Now, we might have understood that the wily Laban was just fabricating an impressive-sounding source on which to base his deed. After all, the Bible contains not even the slightest hint of a law or moral injunction that an older daughter must be married before her younger sister. In fact, the Torah forbids a man to marry any two sisters, so it is not clear how the author of Jubilees—who believed that the Hebrew patriarchs observed all the precepts of the Torah prior to its proclamation at Mount Sinai—was able to justify Jacob’s marriage to Leah and Rachel in whatever sequence.

However, the image of heavenly tablets “of instruction and testimony” is a prominent one in the book of Jubilees, one that is adduced several times in order to provide confirmation for cherished religious concepts and practices. It is an image that can be traced back to the “tablets of fate” in ancient Babylonian myth, and was mentioned often in Jewish Apocalyptic works like the Book of Enoch. It would later resurface in traditions as diverse as Islam and Mormonism. In some instances, as in our current passage, the tablets are invoked as a testimony of the commandments and laws that were being observed before Sinai. In other places, it serves a more abstract or narrative function as the document in which God wrote down the destiny of the human race, or as the ledger in which our good and evil deeds are recorded in order to mete out our final retribution.

All of this is fully consistent with the fatalistic outlook that pervades the book of Jubilees, whose author was deeply convinced that the course of history had been pre-ordained from the beginning of time and that the people of Israel were chosen from the moment of the world’s creation to participate in a divine covenant. After surveying these themes as they appear in numerous religious traditions, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel felt compelled to stress that the normative religion of Israel “had no place for the concept of ‘tablets of fate,’ and that any texts that seem to suggest otherwise must be interpreted figuratively.”

Nevertheless, it would appear that from the distinctive perspective of the book of Jubilees, Laban has not only been exonerated from the stigma of fiendish villainy that was affixed to him by the rabbinic tradition, but he has attained the full status of a halakhic authority—and almost to the rank of a prophet who is privy to the teachings inscribed on the revered heavenly tablets, to their sacred laws and to their records of human virtues and failings.

First Publication:
- The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, November 28, 2014, p. 13.

For further reading:
- Amaru, Betsy Halpern. The Empowerment of Women in the Book of Jubilees. (Supplements to the Journal for the study of Judaism v. 60). Leiden and Boston: Brill, 1999.
- Boccaccini, Gabriele. “From a Movement of Dissent to a Distinct Form of Judaism: The Heavenly Tablets in Jubilees as the Foundation of a Competing Halakah.” In Enoch & The Mosaic Torah The Evidence of Jubilees, edited by Gabriele Boccaccini and Giovanni Ibba, 193–210. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009.
- Garćia Martínez, Florentino García. “The Heavenly Tablets in the Book of Jubilees.” In Studies in the Book of Jubilees, edited by Matthias Albani, Jörg Frey, and Armin Lange, translated by Michael Thomas Davis, 243–260. Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 65. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997.
- Heschel, Abraham Joshua. Heavenly Torah: As Refracted Through the Generations. Translated by Gordon Tucker and Leonard Levin. New York: Continuum, 2005.
- Himmelfarb, Martha. “Torah, Testimony, and Heavenly Tablets: The Claim to Authority of the Book of Jubilees.” In A Multiform Heritage: Studies on Early Judaism and Christianity in Honor of Robert A. Kraft, 19–29. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999.
- Kister, Menahem. “Two Formulae in the Book of Jubilees.” Tarbiz 70 (2001): 289–300.
- Kugel, James L. Walk through Jubilees : Studies in the Book of Jubilees and the World of Its Creation. Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism, Volume 156. Leiden: Brill, 2012.fy
- Leibowitz, Nehama. Studies in the Book of Genesis in the Context of Ancient and Modern Jewish Bible Commentary. Translated by Aryeh Newman. Jerusalem, Israel: World Zionist Organization, Dept. for Torah Education and Culture, 1972.
- Loader, William R. G. Enoch, Levi, and Jubilees on Sexuality: Attitudes towards Sexuality in the Early Enoch Literature, the Aramaic Levi Document, and the Book of Jubilees. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Pub, 2007.
- Paul, Shalom M. “Heavenly Tablets and the Book of Life.” Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society of Columbia University 5 (1974): 345–353.
- Segal, Michael. The Book of Jubilees: Rewritten Bible, Redaction, Ideology, and Theology. Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism volume 117. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007.
- Shemesh, Aharon. Halakhah in the Making: The Development of Jewish Law from Qumran to the Rabbis. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.
- Smith, Wilfred Cantwell. What Is Scripture?: A Comparative Approach. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993.
- Tzoref, Shani. “Covenantal Election in 4Qq252 and Jubilees’ Heavenly Tablets.” Dead Sea Discoveries 18, no. 1 (2011): 74–89.
- VanderKam, James C. Textual and Historical Studies in the Book of Jubilees. Harvard Semitic Monographs No. 14). Missoula: Scholars Press for Harvard Semitic Museum, 1977.
- Werman, Cana. “Jubilees 30: Building a Paradigm for the Ban on Intermarriage.” Harvard Theological Review 90, no. 1 (1997): 1–22.
- ———. “The תורה and the תעודה Engraved on the Tablets.” Dead Sea Discoveries 9 (2002): 75–103.
- Widengren, Geo. The Ascension of the Apostle and the Heavenly Book. Uppsala: Lundequistska bokhandeln, 1950.
- Zetterholm, Karin. “Portrait of a Villain: Laban the Aramean in Rabbinic Literature.” Interdisciplinary Studies in Ancient Culture and Religion 2. Leuven: Peeters, 2002.

My email address is: [email protected]

This article is included in the collection: Chronicles and Commentaries, The Alberta Judaic Library, 2015.

Soldiers, Solder and Solid Gold

June 11, 2023 Eliezer Segal

Soldiers, Solder and Solid Gold

by Eliezer Segal

According to the books of Maccabees, the Seleucid Emperor Antiochus Epiphanes carried off and destroyed the sacred vessels of the Jerusalem Temple, including the golden candelabrum. The restoration of those vessels after the successful Jewish uprising become one of the most prominent themes of the Hanukkah saga and celebrations.

Rabbinic literature preserves two principal traditions about how the Hasmoneans dealt with the absence of the menorah when they came to rededicate the Temple and wished to kindle the lamps as required by the Torah. In most respects those two traditions are identical—so identical, in fact, that a minute difference between them has generally been written off as nothing more than a copyist’s error.

The texts all commence from the premise that the victorious Jews entered the sanctuary bearing seven iron rods, and that these formed the basis for a makeshift candelabrum that they fashioned to serve until a proper gold menorah could be set up. It has been suggested that those rods were in fact hollow spear-heads of the sort that in ancient armies often served as torches. The spear-heads had sockets drilled into them with which they could be affixed to the the handles, and these could serve conveniently as receptacles for oil and wicks for warriors who were arriving straight from a battle.

The texts also report that they did something to those rods that involved tin—or, to be exact, an alloy of tin and lead. As to what the tin was used for, that is precisely the issue on which the traditions diverge.

The more familiar version, the one that is preserved in the Babylonian Talmud, states that they used the tin as a coating for the rods. As might be expected in a work devoted to the minute technicalities of Jewish religious law, the matter of the coating had implications for several practical questions of halakhah. Although the Torah seems to insist that the menorah must be shaped out of a single piece of pure gold, the rabbis asked whether, in cases where that is not possible, it would be permissible to substitute other materials? If so, must they be metals, or would wood or ceramics be acceptable? And if only metals are allowed, will any metal suffice, or must it be a precious one like silver, or perhaps bronze?

The story of the Hasmonean menorah could be cited as a precedent in those halakhic deliberations, implying perhaps that—in the absence of gold or silver—a plating of tin (which also has a gleaming silver-like appearance) is preferable to drab (albeit durable) metals like iron.

But the identification of permissible materials for the menorah could have additional implications that led to restrictive rulings. The rabbis of the Talmud extended the Torah’s prohibition “Ye shall not make with me gods of silver, neither shall ye make unto you gods of gold” to apply to replicas of any object that is “with” God, including the structure, vessels or implements of the Temple or Tabernacle: “A person may not construct a house in the form of the Temple, or an exedra in the form of the Temple hall, or a courtyard corresponding to the Temple court, or a table corresponding to the sacred table, or a candelabrum corresponding to the menorah. One may, however, manufacture one with five, six or eight lamps—but one should refrain from making any with seven lamps, even if it is composed of other metals.”

This ruling implies that any material that is permitted for the actual Temple candelabrum thereby becomes forbidden for non-sacred or private use. Therefore if we accept that tin was considered an allowable medium for the construction of the original Temple candelabrum, then it should lead logically to a prohibition against the crafting of non-sacred tin candelabra for use outside the Temple. This issue was discussed by the Jewish sages.

The alternative version of the story about the Hasmoneans’ temporary menorah states that the triumphant Jewish forces made use of the tin not in the actual body of the candelabrum, but only as a bonding substance for soldering the rods together.

Indeed, this procedure makes a lot of practical and historical sense. We know that tin and alloys of tin and lead were commonly utilized for welding in the ancient world, and that the process was well known to the Jewish sages.

For example, when the rabbis wished to describe how the Egyptians fashioned a sarcophagus for Joseph that would remain concealed underwater until the time of the promised exodus, they said that it was constructed out of metal and firmly welded together by means of tin and lead. The container’s weight allowed it to sink to the bottom of the Nile and to remain there until Moses was ready to proclaim that the time of redemption had arrived, at which point the casket miraculously floated to the surface ready to be carried to the promised land for proper interment by the liberated Hebrews.

The metallurgic status of the Temple candelabrum continued to pique the interest of Jewish scholars and poets in some surprising ways.

For instance, a rabbinic compendium devoted to the structure of the Tabernacle and its vessels concluded that the Torah’s requirement that the menorah be made from a single block of beaten gold did not extend to its ornaments: the “knobs” and the “flowers.”

A midrashic exposition expanded on this premise to imaginatively reconstruct an exchange that took place when God commanded Moses to oversee the crafting of the original menorah. The great prophet was perplexed and overwhelmed by the complexity of the verbal instructions, until God had recourse to visual aids in order to personally illustrate the process for his benefit: he projected a full-coloured graphic presentation in which a model of the menorah was fashioned out of white, red, black and green flames. The model included all the cups, knobs, flowers and the six branches projecting from the central column.

This tale would appear to furnish the background for a strange and fascinating tradition that is embedded in the liturgical poetry of several notable Hebrew authors whose lyrical creations were deeply rooted in the midrashic teaching and talmudic scholarship of the land of Israel.

Thus, a piyyuṭ by the eighth century poet Rabbi Phineas Beribbi Hakohen of Tiberias addressed the Almighty with the words: “the candelabrum in your abode is compose of three different golds.” The renowned Yannai spelled this out in more extensive detail in his description of the menorah: “It was entirely of gold, as was instructed—yet it appeared as if it were three golds: a green metal was the gold of the cups, red for the knobs, white for the flowers.”

While it is doubtful that the craftsmen in Moses’s time would have known how to produce gold in diverse hues, the basics of such a technology were known in the talmudic era and in the times of the great liturgical poets. White, yellow, red or green varieties of gold can be manufactured by mixing in the correct proportions of silver, copper, platinum or nickel.

And indeed this image of a lamp fashioned from assorted tints of gold provides us with an powerful metaphor to illustrate the diverse and ever-brilliant illuminations of the Jewish cultural and spiritual traditions—as they continue to shed their manifold lights on the meaning of the Hanukkah story.

First Publication:
- The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, December 12, 2014, p. 18.

For further reading:
- Cretu, Cristian, and Elma van der Lingen. “Coloured Gold Alloys.” Gold Bulletin 32, no. 4 (1999): 115–26.
- Elizur, Shulamit, ed. The Liturgical Poems of Rabbi Pinḥas Ha-Kohen: Critical Edition, Introduction and Commentaries. Sources for the Study of Jewish Culture 8. Jerusalem: Word Union of Jewish Studies: The David Moses and Amalia Rosen Foundation, 2004.
- Fine, Steven. “The Menorah, the Ancient Seven-Armed Candelabrum: Origin, Form and Significance.” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, no. 331 (2003): 87–88.
- Friedman, Shamma. “Hanukkah in the Scholion of Megillat Ta‘anit.” Zion 71, no. 1 (2006): 5–40.
- Kirschner, Robert, ed. “Baraita De-Melekhet Ha-Mishkan: A Critical Edition with Introduction and Translation.” Monographs of the Hebrew Union College15. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1992.
- Levene, Dan, and Beno Rothenberg. “Tin and Tin-Lead Alloys in Hebrew and Jewish Aramaic.” In Biblical Hebrews, Biblical Texts, edited by Gillian Greenberg and Ada Rapoport-Albert, 100–112. London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001.
- Lieberman, Saul. “Ḥazzanut Yannai.” Sinai 4 (1939): 221–50.
- ———. Tosefta Ki-Feshuṭah: A Comprehensive Commentary on the Tosefta. Vol. 8: Order Nashim. New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1962.
- Noam, Vered. Megilat Taʻanit: Versions, Interpretation, History with a Critical Edition. Between Bible and Mishnah: The David and Jemima Jeselsohn Library. Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi Press, 2003.
- ———. “The Miracle of the Cruse of Oil: The Metamorphosis of a Legend.” Hebrew Union College Annual, January 1, 2002.
- Rabinowitz, Zvi Meir, ed. The Liturgical Poems of Rabbi Yannai according to the Triennial Cycle of the Pentateuch and the Holidays: Critical Edition with Introductions and Commentary. Vol. 2. 2 vols. Jerusalem: Bialik Institute and the Hayyim Rosenberg Institute for Jewish Studies of Tel-Aviv University, 1985.
- Sperber, Daniel. “An Early Meaning of the Word Šapud.” Revue Des Études Juives 124 (1965): 179–84.
- ———. “Minora.” Jewish Studies, an Internet Journal 11 (2012): 61–78.