Of Candles and Casinos

by Eliezer Segal

Everyone is familiar with the best-known game associated with Ḥanukkah: the dreidel, the Jewish adaptation of a medieval German device used in the game of teetotum, whose sides were inscribed with the letters N for “Nichts” (nothing), G for “Ganz” (= everything), H for “Halb” (= half) and S for “Stell ein” (= put in). When the game was adopted by European Jews they Hebraized the letters to spell out the familiar message Nes Gadol Hayah Sham: “a great miracle happened there.”

But the dreidel was not the only game that our ancestors were playing on Ḥanukkah. In fact, that festival acquired a reputation as the Monte Carlo or Las Vegas of Jewish holidays, and many Jews were risking their family possessions on assorted games of chance—but most prominently, on card-playing. 

In fact, indications are that card games were not introduced in order to enliven Ḥanukkah’s special festive spirit; originally they enjoyed popularity throughout the year, but it was only on Ḥanukkah that they survived attempts by the community authorities to outlaw the vice, as they insisted that such frivolity is inappropriate to the sober mood that ought to govern Jewish conduct through the workaday year. 

Following this line of reasoning, the rabbinic authorities excluded from the prohibition days that had a festive character. As a formal criterion for defining which days qualify as “festive,” the rabbis often looked for the omission of the penitential prayers (Taḥanun) that would otherwise be included in the daily liturgy. On that basis, the eight days of Ḥanukkah had the good fortune of being exempted from the anti-gambling edicts.

Some communities tried to stem the vice of card-playing by banning it even on most of the festive days. Nevertheless, dispensation would still be given for Ḥanukkah card games, most probably because the practice had become so entrenched that the rabbis were unable to uproot it. It probably also helped that Ḥanukkah fell during the break between terms in the standard yeshiva calendar, when idle youths were likely to be hanging around at home in need of some diversion. The frequency with which the communal decrees had to be reissued, and the increasing severity of the sanctions and punishments that were handed out for their violation, testify to how widely they were being ignored.

Typical of these decrees was the one enacted in Cracow in 1595 that forbade card-playing to householders, youths, visitors, and especially to the poor who resided in public housing. Evidently, card-playing was a particularly popular pastime among the bored ladies in the maternity wards. This might explain why the regulations specified that “women are forbidden to play, whether for cash or equivalent, other than on the intermediary days of festivals or on Ḥanukkah. 

Any woman who is caught playing cards will be arrested by the communal authorities and imprisoned, to be detained from morning to night, and her identity will be broadcast in the synagogue. No consideration will be given as to whether the women happen to be from distinguished families, or pregnant or nursing.

In the sixteenth century, Rabbi Israel Isserlein was asked to issue a ruling regarding people who were not content with the games that they played during the Ḥanukkah week and wanted to continue their gambling into the following night. The relevant ordinance in their community was worded in the standard manner that tied the prohibition to the recitation of the Taḥanun prayers; and since those prayers would not resume until the morning service, it was suggested that the cessation of card-playing could also be postponed until then. Rabbi Isserlein conceded the point.

The noted seventeenth-century German authority Rabbi Jair Bacharach recalled how, when he was a child, his father had been very upset to observe how Ḥanukkah was being perceived as an occasion for frivolous play instead of a time to express our gratitude for the divine miracle. He therefore strove to change the established custom and have the game-playing transferred to the Christmas season when Jews were supposed to stay at home and refrain from commerce with their gentile neighbours. Of course the attempt was a failure.

That gambling on Ḥanukkah was an accepted practice in several Jewish communities can be inferred from a responsum by Rabbi Isserlein’s teacher Rabbi Jacob Weil. He was consulted regarding a woman who claimed that her spouse was squandering the family resources with his gambling habit. The husband, in his defense, insisted that his frivolous behaviour was all done within the permissible norms and “confined to Ḥanukkah as is customary.” Rabbi Weil accepted his plea.

Nevertheless, there were teachers who were impelled to completely do away with the gambling even during Ḥanukkah. In the early nineteenth century, the Hasidic preacher Rabbi Moses Teitelbaum of Ujhe, Hungary, lamented that Ḥanukkah ought to be a time for religious thanksgiving and prayer, not gluttony. He therefore castigated those who misused this sacred time and indulged instead in “fun and frivolity and various games, drinking from fountains of wine and stuffing themselves with meat, staying awake all night!” 

Rabbi Jacob Emden of Altona had similar observations to make about the unsavoury social gatherings that would convene “especially on Ḥanukkah and Purim and on the sanctified feasts of the Lord,” at which men and women, young and old, would assemble immodestly to participate in card-playing. People were acting as if playing games were an actual requirement of the holiday that had to be pursued with religious zeal. Rabbi Emden allowed only one exception to the prohibition: it was permissible to play a brief game of chess—if no wagers were involved—in order to sharpen one’s mental faculties.

The questions that we have been discussing so far were related in a general way to the moral stigma of gambling at any time. Some authorities, however, raised technical issues that were specific to Ḥanukkah. For instance, when Rabbi Isserlein observed that children were playing games by the light of the holiday candles, he noted that this might not necessarily constitute a formal violation of religious law, but nonetheless it is inconsistent with the lamps’ sacred purpose of proclaiming the miracle. Nowadays we are accustomed to sidestep such objections by explaining that we are really benefitting from the light of the extra candle, the shamash; but there were preachers who rejected that argument. Thus, Rabbi Hirsch Kaidenower complained that most people are accustomed to removing the shamash to use it for profane purposes, but “they will be held especially accountable for the grave crime of playing with cards or dice by the light of the shamash, not realizing that the shamash possesses even greater holiness!”

The most strident and creative opposition to Ḥanukkah gambling came from the Hassidic preachers who had a remarkable knack for turning everyday activities into profound metaphysical symbols. When it came to card-playing their task seemed almost too easy. For one thing, the Hebrew word for cards—ḳelafim—is related to “ḳelippah,” the term designating the shells or husks left over from the primordial “shattering of the vessels,” which are synonymous with evil in kabbalistic parlance.

And if that isn’t enough for you, then take note that the German or Yiddish word for cards—“karten”—has the same numerological value as “Satan” (that’s 359, if you want to verify the math).

You might well suppose that this alarming insight would be powerful enough to completely eradicate card-playing from our midst whether on Ḥanukkah or at any other time of the year.

But I wouldn’t bet on it.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, December 4, 2015, p. 19.

• For further reading:
  • Abrahams, Israel. Jewish Life in the Middle Ages. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2004.
  • Berkovitz, Jay R. “The Persona of a Poseq: Law and Self-Fashioning in Seventeenth-Century Ashkenaz.” Modern Judaism 32, no. 3 (October 2012): 251–69. 
  • Eidelberg, Shlomo. Jewish Life in Austria in the XVth Century. Philadelphia: Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning, 1962.
  • Goldhaber, Jehiel. “Misḥaḳ ha-Ḳelafim be-Ḥanukkah.” forum.otzar.org, December 7, 2010. forum.otzar.org/forums/download/file.php?id=1940.
  • Golinkin, David. “Hanukkah Exotica: On the Origin and Development of Some Hanukkah Customs.” Conservative Judaism 53, no. 2 (2001): 41–50.
  • Kaufmann, David. “Jair Chayim Bacharach: A Biographical Sketch.” The Jewish Quarterly Review 3, no. 2–3 (1891): 292–313, 485–536. doi:10.2307/1449883.
  • Landman, Leo. “Jewish Attitudes Toward Gambling: The Professional and Compulsive Gambler.” The Jewish Quarterly Review 58, no. 1 (1967): 34–62.
  • Löw, Leopold. Die Lebensalter in der jüdischen Literatur: von physiologischem, rechts-sitten und religionsgeschichtlichem Standpunkte betrachtet. Beiträge zur jüdischen Alterthumskunde 2. Szegedin: S. Burger, 1875.
  • Stern, Naftali, and Daniel Sperber. “Le-Toledot ha-Shammash.” In Minhagei Yisra’el: Meḳorot Ve-Toledot, edited by Daniel Sperber, 5:43–64. Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1995.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Isaiah’s Cedar: The Inside Story

by Eliezer Segal

The relationships between humans and trees can take so many forms. We may savour the sweetness of their fruits or bask in the shade of their boughs. A tree or its wood may provide us with shelter—but it might also be a source of mortal danger.

A bizarre story in the Babylonian Talmud told how the prophet Isaiah found protection inside a tree—the same tree that subsequently became the scene of his gruesome murder.

Rabbi Simeon ben Azzai in the second century C.E. claimed to have discovered an ancient genealogical record from Jerusalem which attested that Isaiah had been executed by the nefarious Judean monarch Manasseh. The prophet was charged with grave religious infractions, including contradicting statements made by Moses in the Torah. Resigned to the realization that it would be futile to try to persuade the king of his innocence, Isaiah offered no defense at his trial. But when the time came for his execution, he uttered a magical divine name that caused him to be swallowed up inside a cedar tree. However, Manasseh was able to discover his whereabouts and called in his men to saw through the wood. 

The Talmud notes that the actual moment of Isaiah’s death occurred when the saw reached his mouth. In fact this was perceived as an appropriate fate for a man who had spent much of his career castigating his people for their sins and maligning them as “a people of unclean lips.” 

This talmudic story is typically laconic and academic, focusing largely on comparisons between the respective texts in the Torah and in Isaiah’s prophecies. Though it seems to assume that Manasseh’s accusations were disingenuous, it does not concern itself with their motives—after all, the Bible had already labelled the king as “evil in the sight of the Lord,” so no further explanation was needed for his misdeeds. There is even a hint of grudging sympathy for his silencing a man who had been so persistent in badmouthing his fellow Judeans.

The traditional Jewish commentators were understandably troubled by this detail of the plot: Isn’t criticizing the people for their religious and moral shortcomings an essential part of a prophet’s job description? Rashi suggested that Isaiah incurred some guilt because he exceeded his mandate when he uttered that comment about the people’s “unclean lips,” since he did so on his own personal initiative and not as part of his divinely commanded prophetic message. 

Indeed, according to the midrash Pesiḳta Rabbati, the Almighty himself reprimanded Isaiah saying, “You might be permitted to call yourself ‘a man of unclean lips,’ since you are entitled to speak about yourself—but are you authorized to say such things about my children regarding whom you said ‘I was standing among a people of unclean lips’?” In that midrash, however, Isaiah was not killed; rather, an angel punished him by silencing his lips with a burning coal. This sufficed to teach the prophet his lesson, and he now began to speak more respectfully about his people. 

In the version of the story that is found in the Jerusalem Talmud, Manasseh was simply persecuting Isaiah without any trial or interrogation, and Isaiah’s escape into the cedar tree was accomplished without recourse to magical divine names. His enemies were able to discover his hiding place by virtue of the fact that his ritual fringes were left dangling outside the tree. When Manasseh ordered his men to commence sawing the tree, blood began to flow from it in keeping with the Bible’s statement that “Manasseh shed innocent blood very much till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another [the literal idiom has it: from mouth to mouth].” For the purposes of the talmudic exposition, all that innocent blood belonged to Isaiah, the righteous divine spokesman who was persecuted by the evil king. 

Actually, these talmudic passages are not the earliest sources to preserve the legend of Isaiah’s death. A very similar tale survives in Ethiopic and Latin texts of a work that predates the Talmud. The work, known as “the Ascension [or: Martyrdom] of Isaiah,” was known to early Christian writers and it offers us a much more elaborate version of the circumstances surrounding the prophet’s death.

According to the Ascension of Isaiah, Isaiah had already foretold to Manasseh’s righteous father King Hezekiah that Beliar (as Satan was often designated in the literature of the time) would take up residence in Manasseh’s heart and induce him to saw Isaiah in two. The agent for this crime was a Samaritan prophet named Belkira, who (in a manner similar to the talmudic tale) accused Isaiah of defaming Israel and predicting the devastation of Jerusalem and Judea—including the humiliating captivity of the king himself–and boasting of sublime mystical visions of the heavenly realms that implied his superiority over Moses. With the help of Belkira and his henchman, Isaiah’s body was subjected to a wood-saw. Even though he was experiencing a prophetic vision during the ordeal, Isaiah was fully conscious of what was being done to him, yet he “did not cry out or weep, but his mouth spoke with the holy spirit until he was sawed in two.”

The dating of the Ascension of Isaiah is subject to a scholarly dispute. Some have argued that is must be contemporary with the Dead Sea Scrolls, since it shares many of their attitudes, doctrines and narratives, such as its depiction of the world as a battleground for God and Satan and its conviction that people are preordained to belong to either the “children of light” or the “children of darkness.” The Ascension of Isaiah also relates that Isaiah and his fellow prophets were compelled to seek refuge in “a mountain in a desert place” to escape harm at the hands of the corrupt leadership in the cities. This echoes the story of the “Teacher of Righteousness,” the purported founder of the Dead Sea sect, who fled to the desert in the face of persecution by the “Wicked Priest” and the Jerusalem leadership. The dying Isaiah urges his followers to flee northward to Tyre and Sidon, even as some of the Dead Sea Scrolls speak about a migration of their harassed community to Damascus. 

Nevertheless, other facts are harder to explain according to this theory. For example, the introduction of a Samaritan villain does not seem to reflect the main concerns of the Essenes or Dead Sea sect; and no copies of the Ascension of Isaiah have actually been unearthed at Qumran. Most scholars tend to date the book somewhat later, to the first centuries C.E.

A crucial element that is missing from the Ascension of Isaiah is any mention of the tree that encased the prophet. Some scholars have tried to argue that this detail may be inferred from the mention of the “wood-saw,” but most recognize that you do not need a tree, or even wood, to use a wood-saw. 

Now fast-forward to the early tenth century and the “History of the Prophets and Kings” by the great Iranian Muslim scholar Al-Tabari. Al-Tabari (who lived not far from the main centres of Babylonian talmudic scholarship) wrote about how Isaiah became a victim of the political anarchy that beset Judea in the last years of the first Temple. After Isaiah concluded an inspiring and disquieting speech that God had instructed him to deliver, the incensed people rose up to attack him, but he was able to escape. A certain tree split open allowing him to get inside. However, Satan grasped the fringe of his garment, thereby disclosing the prophet’s hiding-place to his assailants who promptly set about sawing the tree and its inhabitant in two. Unlike the Jewish traditions that placed the blame on Manasseh, Belkira or other wicked individuals, al-Tabari attached collective guilt to the Judeans as a group, a feature that may indicate that he received his tradition via a Christian source.

There are as many questions as there are lessons to be derived from the differing accounts of Isaiah’s unpleasant demise. 

At the very least, the tree-huggers among us should be alerted that they should be very suspicious if a tree tries to hug them back.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, January 22, 2016, p. 11.

• For further reading:
  • Amaru, Betsy Halpern. “The Killing of the Prophets: Unraveling a Midrash.” Hebrew Union College Annual 54 (1983): 153–80.
  • Flusser, David. “The Apocryphal Book of ‘Ascensio Isaiae’ and the Dead Sea Sect.” Israel Exploration Journal 3, no. 1 (1953): 30–47.
  • Ginzberg, Louis. Legends of the Jews. Translated by Henrietta Szold. 2nd ed. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 2003.
  • Grelot, Pierre. “Deux tosephtas targoumiques inédites sur Isaïe LXVI.” Revue biblique 79, no. 4 (1972): 511–43.
  • Hall, Robert G. “Isaiah’s Ascent to See the Beloved: An Ancient Jewish Source for the Ascension of Isaiah?” Journal of Biblical Literature 113, no. 3 (1994): 463–84.
  • ———. “The Ascension of Isaiah: Community Situation, Date, and Place in Early Christianity.” Journal of Biblical Literature 109, no. 2 (1990): 289–306.
  • Houtman, Alberdina. “The Targumic Versions of the ‘Martyrdom of Isaiah.’” In Studies in Hebrew Literature and Jewish Culture, edited by Martin F. J. Baasten and Reinier Munk, 189–201. Amsterdam Studies in Jewish Thought 12. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2007.
  • Knibb, M. A. “Martyrdom and Ascension of Isaiah (Second Century B.C.-Fourth Century A.D.).” In The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments, edited by James H. Charlesworth, 143–76. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2010.
  • Philonenko, M. “Le Martyre d’Esaie et L’histoire de La Secte de Qoumrain.” In Pseudépigraphes de l’Ancien Testament et Manuscrits de La Mer Morte, edited by M Philonenko, 1:1–10. Cahiers de La Revue d’Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuses 41. Paris: Presses Universitaires, 1967.
  • Porton, Gary G. “Isaiah and the Kings: The Rabbis on the Prophet Isaiah.” In Writing and Reading the Scroll of Isaiah: Studies of an Interpretive Tradition, Vol 2, edited by Craig C. Broyles and Craig A. Evans, 693–716. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997.
  • Schürer, Emil. “8. The Martyrdom of Isaiah.” In A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus, edited by Géza Vermès, Fergus Millar, and Martin Goodman, 3:1:335–41. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1986.
  • Yassif, Eli. The Hebrew Folktale: History, Genre, Meaning. Folklore Studies in Translation. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999, 92-95.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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The Ultimate Space-Saver

by Eliezer Segal

Modern technology has devised many ingenious ways to make more efficient use of space and to miniaturize objects so that they perform their functions without leaving large footprints. Nonetheless, to the best of my knowledge, we have not yet reached the stage where we can produce structures that literally occupy no space at all.

It would appear that Jewish lore ascribed such impressive qualities to architectural masterpieces of the past, especially to the holy Temple of Jerusalem.

Take for example the passage in the Mishnah Avot that relates the experiences of the throngs of pilgrims who assembled for the major festivals. “They would be constricted when standing, but had adequate space to prostrate themselves.” Rashi explained that this was a truly miraculous occurrence—a twofold miracle, in fact. Not only would the bodies of the worshippers be elevated above the ground to prevent their intruding on each other’s individual space, but the area would actually expand to separate them, in order to insure privacy when they were reciting their personal confessions.

However, not all the commentators were willing to interpret the passage in blatantly supernatural terms. Rabbi Menahem Meiri wrote more prosaically that the worshippers were forced to stand on their tiptoes to keep from trampling on their neighbours’ toes. According to Maimonides, the Mishnah was merely describing the subjective feelings of the worshippers who became oblivious to the crowding because they were overwhelmed by feelings of intense reverence for the holy place.

In other talmudic passages, the rabbis read various biblical texts as implying that hundreds of thousands of Israelites were squeezed together in the doorway or courtyard of the Tabernacle for the dedication ceremonies; or atop the small rock that produced water for the congregation in the wilderness. 

In a similar vein, the talmudic sages claimed regarding Solomon’s Temple, that “the ark was not included in the measurement” of the twenty cubits of the sanctuary’s length. The simple sense of this statement is probably that the area contained by the ark was not included in the calculation of the ten cubits separating each of its sides from the wall of the inner sanctuary. However, in the Babylonian Talmud the statement was construed as proof that the ark “was standing miraculously.” Rashi explained this to mean that the ark “did not occupy any space at all that would diminish from the dimensions of the space of the room”!

Rashi’s interpretation follows logically from the analogy that the Talmud drew between the case of the ark and a similar phenomenon involving the dimensions of the cherubs and their wings. The third-century sage Samuel calculated that it is impossible to fit the two cherubs into the twenty cubits of the sanctuary’s length, since the length of each of their wings was five cubits; so if they were allowed to spread to their full capacity, the four wings would span twenty cubits, and would not leave any room for the parts of cherubs’ bodies that were not coextensive with the wings. This led Samuel to the conclusion that the cherubs and their wings did not occupy any measurable physical space in the sanctuary. The fact that the Talmud equated the cases of the ark and of the cherubs demonstrates that, in their opinion, the essence of the miracle lay in the premise that neither object occupied any space in the sanctuary.

The miracles in question were evidently characterized by violations of the laws of geometry: if we were to measure from either edge of the ark until the Sanctuary wall, we would come up with a distance of ten full cubits, even though the ark itself was two and a half cubits wide and the total length of the Sanctuary was exactly twenty cubits.

In most of the Greek and Roman philosophical schools that were contemporary with the talmudic rabbis, it was widely assumed that even God is subject to the fundamental laws of logic and mathematics. On these grounds, several philosophers ridiculed religious beliefs that defied basic logic, such as the doctrine that the universe was created out of nothing. 

The famed physician and philosopher Galen (129 – c. 200) chided the Torah for believing that there are no limits to what God can do. “We however do not hold this; we say that certain things are inherently impossible and that God does not even attempt such things at all.”

In the twelfth century, the Jewish physician Maimonides was aware of Galen’s position and of his accusations about the Torah’s irrationality. Maimonides refuted those charges, insisting that they were based on a misrepresentation of Jewish teachings. “Moses’ real opinion is that the power to do impossible things cannot be ascribed to God.” While there may be room for legitimate philosophical debate over which things are inherently impossible (such as the doctrine of creation out of nothing), this does not alter the basic axiom that even God acts within the principles of rationality, which include the laws of mathematics.

It would appear that the traditions that spoke literally of the ark or cherubs not occupying any space in the sanctuary would have been treated by Maimonides as no different from a claim that two and two equal five. People who believe in miracles of this sort are not enhancing the Almighty’s greatness—quite the contrary, this kind of primitive credulity is characteristic of “those who are ignorant of mathematics and …know only the words in isolation but do not comprehend their true meanings.”

In the end, Maimonides determined that the tradition about pilgrims standing crowded but bowing spaciously, if taken literally, misrepresented the capabilities of the omnipotent deity, notwithstanding the whimsical embellishments of the rabbis.

In spite of Maimonides’ defense of Judaism’s intellectual sophistication, a survey of rabbinic texts would seem to bear out some of the allegations that were directed by Galen and others against the uncritical Jewish acceptance of impossible miracles. The sages of the Talmud and the Midrash remained largely unaffected by the philosophical views that were prevalent in their Greek-thinking environment. This strikes us as all the more astonishing when we bear in mind that, at about the same time, the question of God’s power to violate logical rules was the topic of vehement debates between the philosophers and the representatives of revealed religious traditions, and that the uncritical Jewish belief in miracles had provided ammunition for assaults on the intellectual cogency of Judaism (and of Christianity).

Come to think of it, in our brave new world of quantum mechanics, wormholes, non-Euclidian geometry and nanotechnology, the notion of zero-space objects need no longer be dismissed as absurdly illogical. Indeed, it might offer renewed hope for us commuters who have to squeeze ourselves into packed trains or overloaded urban parking lots.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, February 5, 2016, p. 11.

• For further reading:
  • Dienstag, Jacob Israel. “Introduction: The Relationship of Maimonides to His Non-Jewish Predecessors; an Alphabetical Survey.” In Studies in Maimonides and St. Thomas Aquinas, xxxvii – xxxix. Bibliotheca Maimonidica 1. New York: Ktav, 1975. 
  • Goldin, Judah. “A Philosophical Session in a Tannaite Academy.” In Essays in Greco-Roman and Related Talmudic Literature, 366–86. New York: Ktav, 1977. 
  • Guttmann, Julius. The Philosophy of Judaism: The History of Jewish Philosophy from Biblical Times to Franz Rosenzweig. Northvale, NJ: J. Aronson, 1988. 
  • Harvey, Warren Zev. “Rabbinic Attitudes Toward Philosophy.” In “Open Thou Mine Eyes …”: Essays on Aggadah and Judaica Presented to Rabbi William G Braude on His Eightieth Birthday and Dedicated to His Memory, 83–101. Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 1992. 
  • Husik, Isaac. A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2002. 
  • Rabinovitch, N. L. “The Concept of Possibility in Maimonides.” Tarbiz 44, no. 1 (1975): 159–71. 
  • Rokeah, David. Jews, Pagans and Christians in Conflict. Leiden and Jerusalem: E J Brill and Magnes Press, 1982. 
  • Schacht, J., and Max Meyerrhof. “Maimonides against Galen, on Philosophy and Cosmogeny.” Bulletin of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Cairo 5, no. 1 (1937): 53–88. 
  • Segal, Eliezer. “‘The Few Contained the Many’: Rabbinic Perspectives on the Miraculous and the Impossible.” Journal of Jewish Studies 54, no. 2 (2003): 273–82. 
  • Stern, Menahem. Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism. Fontes Ad Res Judaicas Spectantes. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1974. 
  • Walzer, Richard. Galen on Jews and Christians [microform. Oxford Classical and Philosophical Monographs. London: Oxford University Press, 1949.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Chariot of the God

by Eliezer Segal

When archaeologists first began to excavate ancient synagogues in Israel from the Byzantine era, the discoveries of elaborate mosaics on their floors came as an unsettling surprise to many people. Especially puzzling was the recurrence of one particular motif: a wheel consisting of the twelve zodiac signs, at the centre of which stood a mythological representation of the sun portrayed—according to the Greek convention—as the deity Helios driving a four-horse chariot. 

Modern Jews had long since accepted the rationalist verdict of Maimonides that astrology is a silly superstition that is adamantly opposed by “authentic” Judaism. And of course, the graphic portrayal of a heathen god in a site devoted to monotheistic worship seemed altogether incomprehensible. 

Indeed, some scholars have continued to interpret all this as evidence that the average Jews who worshipped on those mosaic floors observed an eclectic blend of Hebrew monotheism and Hellenistic spirituality; but they had little interest in the austere legalism of the rabbis who (it was argued) constituted no more than a tiny and isolated sect removed from the Jewish masses. Others argued that those mosaics expressed an ancient priestly ideology, which was preoccupied with the sun and advocated a liturgical division into twenty-four divisions, corresponding to the ancient Sadducee calendar . 

Zodiac floors have been found or attested in about half a dozen sites scattered through the land of Israel, including Hammat Tiberias, Beit Alpha, Na‘aran, Susiya, Husifa, and Sepphoris. They conform to a very standardized structure: in the centre sits the hub containing the sun-chariot, around which extends the wheel whose twelve spokes or slices are identified by the Hebrew names and symbols of the constellations, and sometimes by the names of the months. Because the rooms and their floors are square, this design leaves room for four triangular corners that are devoted to the four seasons—identified, as per the standard talmudic convention, by the names of their first months: Tishrei, Ṭevet, Nisan and Tammuz. This too is a bit odd, given that the middle eastern climate does not really have four seasons, but merely a rainy and a dry time. However, the solstices and equinoxes are objective meteorological facts—and after all, those four corners had to be filled with something. It has been suggested that the zodiac motif was originally and primarily used on domed ceilings, but ceilings do not survive the ravages of history, so it is only the synagogue floors that remain.

Comparative studies reveal that similar motifs were quite widespread in architecture throughout the Mediterranean basin in the pre-Byzantine world, though the pagan versions were considerably more diverse than their Jewish counterparts. The christianization of the empire in the fourth century inspired an aggressive ideological opposition to all manifestations of astrology; and at least one church spokesman wrote derisively of the Jewish tendency to perpetuate pagan folly. Indeed, some scholars count this among the numerous instances where Jews adopted a foreign practice and continued to uphold it tenaciously long after the gentiles themselves had abandoned it.

Scholarship has had several decades to ponder the anomalies of the zodiac mosaics, but no real consensus has emerged. The old notion that rabbinic Judaism is inherently opposed to graphic art has long since been abandoned. It is also quite obvious that many Jews did acknowledge some type of astrology, though this outlook may have been more prominent in Babylonia, the birthplace of that ancient science, than in the land of Israel. 

The scholarly questions have shifted, for the most part, from: how were the zodiac floors possible? to: why were they so prevalent? and: how did they fit in with Jewish values and synagogue practice? The answers that have been proposed are too manifold to survey here, and I shall confine myself to a few theories that make sense to me.

One can hardly overstate the importance of the calendar to Jewish life, with its intricate sequence of annual dates set aside for the commemoration of historical exploits and tragedies, as well as marking the cycles of nature and agriculture. Much of this sequence is celebrated through communal worship, scriptural readings and preaching in the synagogues.

In spite of their centrality to the religious rhythms, the Hebrew months offer relatively little symbolic potential of the sort that would be of use to homilists or poets. In the Torah they are given no names at all, but are merely identified by number. Eventually, the Jews adopted their Babylonian names, but those names are usually obscure Akkadian words, or (as in the case of Tammuz) actual pagan gods. By equating the months with their astrological signs, the worshippers could associate them with familiar inoffensive themes, such as rams, scales, water-vessels and the like, that could be easily incorporated into sermons and liturgical poetry. We observe this practice in several poetic texts by classic liturgical poets, such as Eleazar Kallir and Yannai, in which themes such as the blessings of water and rain or the devastation of Jerusalem are illustrated by references to the zodiac signs.

It also seems probable that for Jews who lived after the twilight of Greek and Roman paganism, a personification of the sun riding a chariot no longer conjured up associations with the mighty Helios or Sol Invictus. In the case of the Sepphoris mosaic, it is possible that the artists intentionally refrained from motifs that overtly evoked the sun god. At any rate, the primitive portrayals in the Byzantine mosaics have a crude cartoon-like quality to them. By then the image had become a religiously neutral one for representing the sun, in a manner analogous to our own casual invoking of Norse or Roman deities in the English names of our months and weekdays. And after all, the image of “chariots of God” is found in the Bible. It is in fact arguable that the consistent linking of the sun to a wheeled chariot is a distinctly Jewish development that has no precise equivalent in pagan art. Some rabbinic interpretations identified the human-like figure enthroned atop the mysterious chariot in Ezekiel’s famous vision as Metatron, the “prince of the divine countenance,” the foremost angel who bore the name of his Master and played a prominent role in ancient Jewish mysticism.

An early medieval midrash deftly illustrates how the figure of the sun at the reins of a divine chariot would enhance liturgical allusions to the sacred seasons. Pirḳé de-Rabbi Eliezer, expounding references from Ecclesiastes and Psalms, depicted the chariot emblazoned with the letters of the divine name and led by angels, dramatically running its course through the heavens, switching direction at each of the four seasons, ‘as it says (Psalm 19:6), ‘it is like a hero, eager to run his course.’’’

From my own perspective in the midst of the frigid Canadian winter, it is tempting to imagine that some worshippers might have found in their synagogues’ mosaic decorations a reassurance that the sun was hastening toward them on its swift solar-driven vehicle to bring tidings of a warm summer ahead.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, February 19, 2016, p. 13.

• For further reading:
  • Englard, Yaffa. “Mosaics as Midrash: The Zodiacs of the Ancient Synagogues and the Conflict Between Judaism and Christianity.” Review of Rabbinic Judaism 6, no. 2–3 (2003): 189–214. 
  • Fine, Steven. Art and Judaism in the Greco-Roman World: Toward a New Jewish Archaeology . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 
  • ———. “Art and the Liturgical Context of the Sepphoris Synagogue Mosaic.” In Galilee: Confluence of Cultures: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on the Galilee, January 1997 , edited by Eric M. Meyers, 227–237. Winona Lake IN: Eisenbrauns, 1999. 
  • Foerster, Gideon. “The Zodiac in Ancient Synagogues and Its Place in Jewish Thought.” Eretz Israel 19 (1988): 225–54. [Hebrew] 
  • Goodenough, Erwin Ramsdell. Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period . New York: Pantheon, 1953. 
  • Hachlili, Rachel. Ancient Synagogues—Archaeology and Art: New Discoveries and Current Research . Brill, 2013. 
  • ———. “Zodiac in Ancient Jewish Art: Representation and Significance.” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research , no. 228 (1977): 61–77. 
  • Mack, Hananel. “The Unique Character of the Zippori Synagogue Mosaic and Eretz Israel Midrashim.” Cathedra 88 (1998): 39–56. [Hebrew] 
  • Magness, Jodi. “Heaven on Earth: Helios and the Zodiac Cycle in Ancient Palestinian Synagogues.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 59 (2005): 1–52. 
  • Miller, Stuart S. “‘Epigraphical’ Rabbis, Helios, and Psalm 19: Were the Synagogues of Archaeology and the Synagogues of the Sages One and the Same?” Jewish Quarterly Review 94, no. 1 (2004): 27–76. 
  • Roussin, Lucille A. “The Zodiac in Synagogue Decoration.” In Archaeology and the Galilee: Texts and Contexts in the Graeco-Roman and Byzantine Periods , edited by Douglas Ray Edwards and C. Thomas McCollough, 83–96. South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism 143. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997. 
  • Sonne, Isaiah. “The Zodiac Theme in Ancient Synagogues and in Hebrew Printed Books.” Studies in Bibliography and Booklore 1, no. 1 (1954): 3–13. 
  • Weiss, Zeev. “The Zodiac in Ancient Synagogue Art: Cyclical Order and Divine Power.” In La Mosaïque Gréco-Romaine. IX , edited by Hélène Morlier, 1119–30. Collection de l’École Française de Rome 352. Rome: École française de Rome, 2005. 
  • Weiss, Zeev, and Ehud Netzer. “The Sepphoris Synagogue: Deciphering an Ancient Message Through Its Archaeological and Socio-Historical Contexts.” Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2005. 
  • Yahalom, Joseph. Poetry and Society in Jewish Galilee of Late Antiquity . Sifriyat “Helal ben Hayim.” Tel-Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad and Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1999. [Hebrew]
  • ———. “The Sepphoris Synagogue Mosaic and Its Story.” In From Dura to Sepphoris; Studies in Jewish Art and Society in Late Antiquity , edited by Lee I. Levine and Zeev Weiss, 83–91. Portsmouth RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2000.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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A Match for a Misogynist

by Eliezer Segal

This contract did not bode well for a happy marriage. It was dated inauspiciously on the thirteenth day of Adar, the Fast of Esther that is observed on the day before Purim; and the date was designated ominously as a day of infamy for the groom Zerah, a day on which “joy ceased from of his heart,” the occasion of his public humiliation. The terms of this ketubbah obligated the hapless husband to toil for his spouse for the duration of a life that would be likened to the travails of the Israelites in Egypt. 

To make matters worse, the bride to whom Zerah was now wed was not the vivacious maiden Ayalah Sheluḥah who had originally captured his heart, but a wrinkled gold-digging harradan, the shrewish trollop Rizpah bat Ayah (a namesake of King Saul’s tragic concubine).

As was the custom, the groom volunteered additional gifts for the bride; but the relevant clause echoed the angry words of Isaiah: “instead of robes there shall be great plagues, and instead of rings—great and numerous tribulations; and instead of fine clothing—sackcloth; and instead of sweet perfume—a stench.”

As you have probably guessed by now, the ketubbah-from-Hell that I have been describing was a parody, one that was likely intended to be read and enjoyed on Purim, the special day on the Jewish calendar when it is customarily permitted to poke fun at institutions that are treated reverently during the rest of the year.

This ketubbah of Zerah and Rizpah made its appearance in a satirical composition by the Spanish Hebrew poet Judah Ibn Shabbetai, a work that bore the title “the Offering of Judah the Woman-Hater.” It belonged to a literary genre known as “makama” that enjoyed popularity among both Arabs and Jews in Arabic-speaking lands. Composed in rhymed prose, Most makamas took the form of humorous picaresque compositions.

In Ibn Shabbetai’s creation, Zerah’s unfortunate marriage was the result of a clever conspiracy hatched against him by a coven of hostile ladies. For Zerah’s wise father Taḥkemoni had carefully instructed him to eschew the company of women on the grounds that their caprice and treachery lie at the root of the appalling ignorance that afflicts mankind. To prove his point, Taḥkemoni discoursed on the villainy of most of the ladies in the Bible, from Eve who entrapped the innocent snake, through the matriarchs Rebekah and Rachel who were responsible for provoking sibling rivalries among their children.

Employing phraseology found in the book of Esther when describing the aftermath of the Jewish triumph over their foes, Ibn Shabbetai relates how “many of the people of the land ‘became Jews’ [i.e., were converted to his cause]; for the fear of Zerah fell upon them, and in every province, and in every city, whithersoever Zerah’s commandment and his decree came, he filled the women with wormwood and gall.” 

As more men were persuaded to join him in rejecting marriage, the female populace became alarmed. The ladies, under the leadership of the shrewd enchantress Kozbi and her consort Sheḳer (“Falsehood”) now set out to choose a lady who could lure their foe to his ruin. Toward that end they dispatched recruiters to screen all the eligible young ladies in the land until they found the one maiden who, like Esther in the court of Ahasuerus, “obtained favour in the sight of all them that looked upon her.” Sheḳer persisted in his campaign to persuade Zerah of the joys of marital bliss in which husbands enjoy their wives’ absolute obedience. This too was expressed using language taken from the Megillah: “all the wives shall give honour to their husbands.” 

The winning candidate for Zerah’s seduction was Ayalah Sheluḥah, whose name translates as “a hind let loose”—employing imagery that was applied to Naphtali in Jacob’s blessing, where it was also stated that “he giveth goodly words.” As soon as Ayalah was declared the winner of the competition, they “set the royal crown upon her head.” 

And indeed, Zerah’s nemesis was gifted not only with a graceful form and a pretty face—in the end she succeeded in ensnaring the confirmed misogynist by means of goodly words—in a poetry contest! As was the custom in medieval Andalusian salons, each of the contestants was called upon to improvise stanzas of elegant and formally crafted verse; and the fair Ayalah Sheluḥah was succeeded in outdoing her male opponent. She made effective use of seductive themes, praising the misogynist’s physical appearance; to which he responded in kind. Following the stereotypical rom-com format, the antagonists were becoming passionately enamored of one another. In the end, however, what won over Zerah was not the lady’s erotic poetry but an ingenious riddle that gave apt testimony to her agile wit.

But poor Zerah was not to enjoy the fruits of his romance. When he finally removed his bride’s veil and discovered the hoax that had been perpetrated upon him, he was devastated. Eventually his buddies persuaded him to file for divorce, but the ensuing trial, which was adjudicated by the author’s patron Abraham al-Fakhr, resulted in Zerah’ being sentenced to death. 

At this point our author was impelled to step onto the literary stage and remind his readers that the whole story was a mere fabrication. And besides—Judah was really a devoted husband and family man whose venture into male chauvinism had been commissioned by his patron. 

Readers of Ibn Shabbetai’s work have been at a loss as to how to interpret it. Are the views of the hero to be equated with those of the author (who attached the epithet “hater of women” to his own name)? Which passages are to be read seriously and which are intended ironically? Modern scholars have been divided into polarly opposite camps on these questions. Given the absurd liberties he takes with biblical heroines, I find it difficult to imagine that the author ever intended it to be grasped as more than an entertaining bit of Purim silliness.

And yet prominent medieval Hebrew authors in Spain, Provence and Italy took the work at face value—particularly when it provided them with opportunities to compose their own literary rebuttals in defense of the fair sex. Judah al-Harizi’s popular makama “Taḥkemoni” included a version of the “substituted bride” motif that was likely inspired by Ibn Shabbetai. In 1210 a poet named Isaac of Burgos, Spain, published “‘Ezrat Nashim” [“the defense of women”] to refute Ibn Shabbetai’s book by proving (against the views of his patron) that virtuous women do in fact exist in the world. Yedaiah Penini of Beziers countered with “the Woman-Lover” in which Ibn Shabbetai himself comes down from Heaven to unsuccessfully plead his case. 

And of course the theme was eagerly taken up by Hebrew poets in Renaissance Italy who continued from the fourteenth through to the seventeenth century to compose works in condemnation or praise of womankind and married life. Creations of this type issued from the pens of Hebrew poets like Immanuel of Rome, Abraham of Sartiano (who composed a poem entitled “the Hater of Women”), the prominent dramatist Leone de’ Sommi and numerous other authors who could not resist entering the literary fray. 

At the conclusion of Ibn Shabbetai’s saga about the downfall of the misogynistic Zerah, everyone had a hearty laugh, the poet collected his salary, and they all lived happily ever after. 

And it is likely that they all sat down to a sumptuous Purim feast, where perhaps they raised their cups in appreciation of Esther…or Vashti.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, March 18, 2016, p. 13.

• For further reading:
  • Davidson, Israel. Parody in Jewish Literature. Columbia University Oriental Studies 2. New York: Columbia University Press, 1907.
  • Dishon, Judith. Good Woman, Bad Woman: Loyal, Wise Women and Unfaithful Treacherous Women in Medieval Hebrew Stories. Jerusalem: Karmel, 2009.
  • ———. “The Bad Advice of Women: A Thematic Series in Medieval Hebrew Literature.” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Folklore 19/20 (1997): 311–27.
  • Fishman, Talya. “A Medieval Parody of Misogyny: Judah Ibn Shabbetai’s ‘Minḣat Yehudah Sone Hanashim.’” Prooftexts 8, no. 1 (1988): 89–111.
  • Huss, Matti. “Critical Editions of ‘Minḥat Yehudah’, ‘Ezrat hanashim’ and ‘Ein mishpat’ with Prefaces, Variants, Sources, and Annotations.” The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1991.
  • Jacobs, Jill. “‘The Defense Has Become the Prosecution:’ Ezrat HaNashim, a Thirteenth-Century Response to Misogyny.” Women in Judaism 3, no. 2 (2003): 1–9.
  • Pagis, Dan. Change and Tradition in the Secular Poetry: Spain and Italy. The Keter Library: The Jewish People and Its Culture 5: Literature. Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House, 1976.
  • ———. “The Controversy Concerning the Female Image in Hebrew Poetry in Italy.” Jerusalem Studies in Hebrew Literature 9 (1986): 259–300.
  • Rosen, Tova. Unveiling Eve: Reading Gender in Medieval Hebrew Literature. Jewish Culture and Contexts. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003.
  • Roth, Norman. “The ‘Wiles of Women’ Motif in the Medieval Hebrew Literature of Spain.” Hebrew Annual Review 2 (1978): 145–65.
  • Scheindlin, Raymond P., ed. Wine, Women, & Death: Medieval Hebrew Poems on the Good Life. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999..

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Thrown to the Dogs

by Eliezer Segal

It is well known that the biblical dietary laws prohibit the consumption of meat that has not been slaughtered according to the required procedures. In this connection, the Torah commands: “neither shall ye eat any flesh that is torn of beasts in the field.” So what may we do if we find ourselves in possession of such non-kosher meat? The text continues: “ye shall cast it to the dogs.”

Now, some readers might naively suppose that the expression “cast it to the dogs” is simply an idiomatic way of stating that the carrion is unfit for any human consumption and therefore has to be discarded. However, talmudic law inferred from this verse that it is permissible to derive benefit from non-kosher meat. Moreover, the Jewish commentators, convinced that every word in the Torah was chosen with perfect care and precision, were spurred to ask why dogs were singled out for mention as the beneficiaries of the disqualified meat rather than, say, cats.

From the perspective of the ancient rabbis, the principles of divine justice demanded that the canines must have done something worthy to merit this preferred treatment. They found such an instance in the last of the Egyptian plagues, when Moses reassured the Israelites that absolute security would prevail in their homes while the Egyptians were enduring the horrible deaths of their firstborn. The expression employed by the Torah is: “but against any of the children of Israel shall not a dog move his tongue.” A midrashic tradition explained that the dogs, though they barked continually to hound the Egyptian oppressors while they were burying their dead, maintained a respectful silence for the Israelites. It was this simple act of pious restraint that earned the ancient dogs and their progeny a God-given right to discarded non-kosher meat.

Rabbi Meir Abulafia referred to that tradition in order to explain a statement in the Talmud that “the dog recognizes its master, but the cat does not recognize its master.” Rabbi Meir understood that the “master” being referred to was none other than the Master of the Universe, and that the canine species were endowed with a religious sensibility that found expression in their obedient behaviour during the Egyptian exodus.

Most of the commentators were not as willing as Rabbi Abulafia to ascribe spiritual virtues to simple mutts. They argued more prosaically that the “master” that the Talmud had in mind was the animal’s human owner. Rabbi Jacob Ibn Habib observed “This is the way of the world, that a dog recognizes a master and follows him wherever he goes in order to protect him. However, this is not so with cats.”

The nineteenth-century exegete Rabbi Henokh Zundel of Bialostok, in his Etz Yosef commentary to the Midrash, was puzzled why Rabbi Abulafia had proposed such a seemingly unlikely interpretation of the talmudic passage. He suggested that it was rooted in his personal observations that cats too are, after all, domesticated creatures who acknowledge their owners and remain attached to the homes of their masters. Perhaps it was this difficulty that impelled Rabbi Abulafia to apply the Talmud’s distinction between dogs and cats to the realm of religious devotion, rather than mere loyalty to a human owner. 

For all his efforts to defend the existence of feline domesticity, Rabbi Henokh Zundel could not refrain from pointing out a decisive difference between the respective forms and degrees of allegiance that are manifested in the two species: When all is said and done, the cat’s primary loyalty is to a place rather than to a person. The truth of this assertion can be verified in cases where the master moves to a new dwelling. While a dog will faithfully follow its human to a different place of residence, the cat is just as likely to forsake the master and remain in the old environment to which it has grown accustomed.

Another commentator to the passage, Rabbi Jacob Reischer, took a different approach to describing the supposed spirituality of dogs. In his view, the distinguishing characteristic of dogs is their poverty—I suppose that his personal acquaintance with the species involved junkyard mutts rather than pampered thoroughbreds or lapdogs. 

At any rate, Rabbi Reischer explained that there is nothing like poverty for maintaining a community’s constant awareness of their dependence on their Creator. This is a sentiment that can be supported from numerous quotations in the Bible and rabbinic works, where affluence is condemned as a factor that impedes piety. He cited an adage from the Talmud to the effect that “poverty is as becoming to Israel as a red strap on the neck of a white horse.” Owing to their shared predispositions towards poverty, Jews and dogs have therefore come to share a consciousness of their existential reliance on a higher power. 

It is therefore fitting, says Rabbi Reischer, that the Pereḳ Shirah, an ancient work that identifies appropriate songs of praise to be recited by each of nature’s creatures, had dogs intoning the words of the Psalm, “Oh come, let us worship and bow down; Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.”

The interpretations that we have been discussing so far offer intriguing readings of the texts, along with some illuminating insights into canine, feline and human characters. Nevertheless, they all suffer from a major shortcoming: they quote the Talmud passage out of context and in an incomplete form. 

The full text reads as follows:

Rabbi Eleazar ben Zadok’s disciples asked him: Why does a dog recognize its master while a cat does not recognize its master?

He said to them: Since a person who partakes of something from which a mouse has eaten suffers memory loss— how much more should this apply to one that actually eats the mouse!

Rabbi Eleazar thus focuses not so much on the canine virtues as on the feline diet. Mice were presumed to have poor memories on account of the food that they consumed; and the cats, because of the higher rung they occupy on the food chain, ingest an amnesiac ingredient whenever they gobble up their rodent snacks. This causes them to forget all sorts of things, not just the identities of their masters. 

Rabbi Loeb of Prague, the Maharal, was one of the few commentators to cite the Talmud passage in its entirety. However, he too refused to accept it at its face value. The Maharal insisted that the cats’ memory problems are not the result of their appetite for mice; for if that were the case, then a cat who has not eaten mice should be immune, which does not seem to be the case. 

Rather, the felines’ indiscriminate readiness to devour rodents is a symptom of their dismal spiritual state. Mice occupy one of the lowest rungs in the hierarchy of creation, and a being that would eat them has demonstrated thereby the perverse quality of its soul. Rabbi Loeb is careful to stress that what he is talking about has nothing to do with the animals’ intelligence, and that he is not accusing cats of stupidity. It is, rather, a matter of their spiritual makeup. 

Thus, presumably, while we would be hard put arguing that dogs are smarter than cats, it is somewhat easier to credit them with fine moral qualities like loyalty and courage.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, April 22, 2016, p. 14.

• For further reading:
  • Aptowitzer, Victor. “The Rewarding and Punishing of Animals and Inanimate Objects: On the Aggadic View of the World.” Hebrew Union College Annual 3 (1926): 117–55. 
  • Isaacs, Ronald H. Animals in Jewish Thought and Tradition. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 2000. 
  • Lawee, Eric. “The Sins of the Fauna in Midrash, Rashi, and Their Medieval Interlocutors.” Jewish Studies Quarterly 17, no. 1 (2010): 56–98. 
  • Schochet, Elijah Judah. Animal Life in Jewish Tradition: Attitudes and Relationships. New York: Ktav, 1984. 
  • Schwartz, Joshua. “Cats in Ancient Jewish Society.” Journal of Jewish Studies 52, no. 2 (2001): 211–34. 
  • ———. “Dogs in Jewish Society in the Second Temple Period and in the Time of the Mishnah and Talmud.” Journal of Jewish Studies 55, no. 2 (2004): 246–77. 
  • Slifkin, Natan. Man and Beast: Our Relationships with Animals in Jewish Law and Thought. Brooklyn: Yashar Books, 2006. 
  • Zellentin, Holger M. Rabbinic Parodies of Jewish and Christian Literature. Texte Und Studien Zum Antiken Judentum; Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 139. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Princess of Egypt

by Eliezer Segal

Li’l Moses was found in a stream.

Li’l Moses was found in a stream.

He floated on water

Till ol’ Pharaoh’s daughter,

She fished him, she said, from dat stream.

(Gershwin)

The great liberator Moses owed his life—and his name—to the daughter of Pharaoh who happened to be bathing in the Nile when the infant’s basket floated by; and she, in full realization that he was an illicit Hebrew child, chose to raise him as her own. In a civilization that had degenerated to depths of cruelty and genocidal paranoia, the Egyptian princess was, to be sure, a courageous and compassionate lady. 

And yet the Torah never mentions her again, and does not even tell us her name.

These blaring silences provoked interpreters to fill in the details without which the scriptural narrative seems incomplete.

And so we find that some of the ancient re-tellings of the saga of Moses did know the name of the virtuous Egyptian princess. The earliest known work to identify Pharaoh’s daughter was the Book of Jubilees(from the third or second century B.C.E.) which names her Tharmuth, but other than a paraphrase of the familiar Bible story, has very little to say about her. 

What seems to be a variant on that name appears in Josephus Flavius’s retelling of biblical history in his Jewish Antiquities composed in the latter years of the first century C.E. However, the Egyptian princess Thermuthis in Josephus’s account plays a far more active part in the narrative.

According to Josephus, Thermuthis’ determination to rescue the baby Moses was not motivated so much by compassion as by his wondrous beauty—since God had intentionally made the child so stunningly adorable that even otherwise hostile Egyptians would find him irresistible. Thermuthis was particularly desirous of adopting Moses because she had no children of her own, and hence there appeared to be no other prospect for an heir to the Egyptian throne.

In this connection Josephus inserted an episode that bears an uncanny resemblance to a story that would later appear in rabbinic midrash. It seems that one of the Egyptian scribes had predicted that a child would be born to the Hebrews who would bring about the downfall of Egypt. Now, when Thermuthis brought her baby Moses to charm her father as she notified him of her intention to adopt him, Grandpa Pharaoh playfully placed his crown on the child’s head—but the mischievous toddler threw it on the ground and proceeded to kick it around and stomp on it. At this point, the scribe recognized this as an omen that little Moses was the foretold child who would overpower Egypt, and called for his execution. It was Thermuthis who boldly stepped in to rescue young Moses, making it possible for him to grow up to become the liberator of his enslaved people.

It would appear that both Jubilees and Josephus were drawing on the same earlier tradition, perhaps an elaborate novel that expanded the life of Moses. Indeed, at this point Josephus inserts a detailed narrative that fills in exploits from Moses’s younger years between his escape from Egypt after killing the taskmaster until his arrival in Midian—including a period of forty years when he reigned over Ethiopia (with the approval of Thermuthis). It is likely that this story had its beginnings in the Jewish community of Alexandria as a way of demonstrating their deep and aristocratic roots in Egyptian history. In several other respects as well (for example, by linking Osiris-worship with their memories of Joseph), Jewish tradition tried to show that central aspects of Egyptian culture and religion had evolved out of biblical sources.

In Egyptian lore, the name “Thermuthis” was in fact that of a serpent-headed goddess associated with fertility and baby-nursing, and who later came to be identified with Isis. The ancient Christian teacher Epiphanius wrote derisively of how the Egyptians had turned Pharaoh’s daughter into an idol to be worshipped. Notwithstanding the efforts of Bible scholars and Egyptologists to find an historical Egyptian princess of that name, and thereby resolve ongoing controversies as to who was the Pharaoh of the Exodus, no such personage has turned up yet in the detailed chronicles of the ancient dynasties.

Jewish rabbinic tradition was generally uneasy about anonymous or one-time characters in the Bible, and often sought to fill in the gaps by identifying such figures with named persons who appear elsewhere. As it happens, there is another Pharaoh’s daughter who shows up in one of the genealogies that abound in the books of Chronicles. In a listing of descendants of Judah, an otherwise unknown individual named Mered is said to have married “Bithiah the daughter of Pharaoh.” A homiletic rule cited in the Midrash held that Chronicles should not be read on its own, but only as a vehicle for illuminating texts from other books of the Bible; and accordingly the rabbis found it most convenient to conclude that this Bithiah was identical with the Egyptian princess who adopted and protected Moses.

Midrashic homilists painted Bithiah as a paragon of piety and as a sincere convert to the monotheistic faith of Israel. Her bathing in the Nile was interpreted as an act of purification from the defiling idolatry of her father’s palace. 

In particular, she was portrayed as a poster-girl for adoption (an institution that was not discussed very much in ancient Jewish sources). One midrashic exposition expressed this most eloquently: God gave her the name “Bithyah” meaning “daughter of the Lord” in recognition of how she reared Moses as her own son. Assorted rabbinic comments dwell at length on the personal effort, courage and divine assistance that were required for her to disobey the royal decree when rescuing Moses from the waters. The rewards for her valour included immunity from the plagues, especially from the death of the firstborns for which she would otherwise have been eligible.

The desire to expand the role of this heroine has continued into more recent times; and it may be discerned in what might be the most influential modern interpretation of the Exodus story: Cecil B. DeMille’s 1959 epic “The Ten Commandments.” In the producer’s introductory speech he explicitly named Bithiah among the elements of Moses’s “missing years” that the film reconstructed from extra-biblical sources. 

Indeed, DeMIlle’s Bithiah plays a prominent role in the plot in ways that do not derive from any of the historical novels that were consulted by the screenwriters. Many of the ancient traditions about Pharaoh’s daughter were accessed in the thorough (but uncritical) investigations of the studio’s historical researcher Henry S. Noerdlinger who stitched together a detailed biography for the princess: As a widow who had no child of her own to inherit the throne, Bithiah chose to raise the Israelite child against the protests of her servant, in the hope that he would grow up to be a worthy ruler of Egypt. Aware of Moses’s Hebrew origins, Bithiah tried to destroy the swaddling cloth from his basket that testified to that fact. Eventually the princess decided to cast her fate in with that of the Israelites and she accompanied them in the exodus, participating in the first Passover meal. Her conduct among her adopted people was exemplary for its courage and compassion, relinquishing her princely litter for the sake of unfortunates who had difficulty walking. She was also among the few who resisted the temptation to join in the dissolute celebrations around the golden calf.

By whichever name we chose to call her—Tharmuth, Thermuthis, Bithiah or just plain “Pharaoh’s daughter”—this royal personage inspired imaginations over many generations; and indeed she deserves a place of honour when we gather to retell the story of the exodus.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, April 22, 2016, p. 18.

• For further reading:
  • Day, John. “The Pharaoh of the Exodus, Josephus and Jubilees.”  Vetus Testamentum 45, no. 3 (1995): 377–78. 
  • Eldridge, David.  Hollywood’s History Films. London and New York: I.B.Tauris, 2006. 
  • Feldman, Ron H. “Josephus’ Portrait of Moses.”  Jewish Quarterly Review 82, no. 3–4 (1992): 285–328. 
  • Flusser, David, and Shua Amorai-Stark. “The Goddess Thermuthis, Moses, and Artapanus.”  Jewish Studies Quarterly 1, no. 3 (1993): 217–33. 
  • Heimlich, Evan Samuel. “Divination by ‘the Ten Commandments’: Its Rhetorics and Their Genealogies.” Ph.D., University of Kansas, 2007. 
  • Ginzberg, Louis.  Legends of the Jews. Translated by Henrietta Szold. 2nd ed. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 2003. 
  • Levine, Yael.  Midreshe Batyah Bat Parʻoh: ʻIyun Nilveh le-Lel ha-Seder ; Va-yehi ba-Ḥaṣi ha-Lailah: Batte Tosefet ʻal Nashim. Jerusalem: Yael Levine, 764. 
  • Matthews, Shelly. “Ladies’ Aid: Gentile Noblewomen as Saviors and Benefactors in the ‘Antiquities.’”  The Harvard Theological Review 92, no. 2 (1999): 199–218. 
  • Noerdlinger, Henry S.  Moses and Egypt: The Documentation to the Motion Picture the Ten Commandments. Los Angeles: University of Southern California Press, 1956. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.b3384828. 
  • Rajak, Tessa. “Moses in Ethiopia: Legend and Literature.”  Journal of Jewish Studies 29, no. 2 (1978): 111–22. 
  • Avigdor Shinan, “Moses and the Ethiopian Woman: Sources of a Story in the Chronicles of Moses,” ed. Joseph Heinemann and Werses, Shmuel,  Scripta Hierosolymitana Studies in Hebrew Narrative Art Throughout the Ages, no. 27 (1978): 66–75. 
  • Steiner, Richard C. “Bittě-Yâ, Daughter of Pharaoh (1 Chr 4,18), and Bint(i)-ʻanat, Daughter of Ramesses Ii.”  Biblica 79, no. 3 (1998): 394–408.

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My email address is: [email protected]

A Day of Celebration

by Eliezer Segal

The government of the fledgling state of Israel was quick to establish an annual Independence Day. That proclamation merely designated its date as the fifth of Iyyar, the Hebrew anniversary of Israel’s Declaration of Independence, declaring it a day on which businesses and institutions would be closed. It said nothing about the manner in which it was to be celebrated. 

The official religious response to the new holiday was somewhat slow in coming. The body responsible for such questions was the Israeli Chief Rabbinate. Israel had inherited from the Ottoman  and British Mandatory eras its system of separate Sephardic and Ashkenazic Chief Rabbis; the former position was filled at the time by Rabbi Benzion Ouziel and the latter by Rabbi Isaac Halevy Herzog. The first announcement on the topic was a letter circulated by both Chief Rabbis to the Chief Rabbinate Council on April 3 1949. In it they acknowledged that the miraculous rebirth of Israeli statehood warranted the creation of an annual festive commemoration. They declared that the new holiday was to override the traditional mourning rites that would otherwise be in force during the “Omer” period. The letter did not specify a liturgy for Yom Ha-Atzma’ut beyond a vague reference to “prayers of thanksgiving and sermons expounding the event in the afternoon services in the synagogues.” The short and innocuous afternoon service seems like an odd choice for the purpose—it seemed to presuppose that most Israelis would be going to work in the morning.

The Chief Rabbis applied to Israel’s independence the talmudic expression “atḥalta di-ge’ula,” (the beginning of redemption). In the Talmud’s apocalyptic scenario, the advent of the messianic era would be preceded by a great war; and it was in this context that the sages declared “war too marks the beginning of redemption.” The terse letter does not clarify what its authors had in mind in using this terminology, and it is likely that they meant it as a hopeful prayer rather than ascribing messianic significance to Israel’s creation.

Unlike the tone of the discourse that would develop after 1967, when many religious Zionists became convinced that the advent Israel was a step in the larger messianic process, the rabbis in the earliest days of independence recognized that the creation of the state was itself of momentous religious significance. This theme appear consistently in pronouncements and responsa by Rabbis Ouziel, Herzog, Meshullam Rath and other prominent authorities of the time. They made it clear that what ought to be celebrated was not military victory or territorial conquest, but the renewed sovereignty of the Jewish people as embodied in its Declaration of Independence. That historic milestone made possible the successful revolt against British imperialism, the repelling of massive Arab invading armies and the opening of the gates of sanctuary to the scattered remnants of our people. All these, they insisted, were worthy occasions for instituting a day of religious celebration in the homeland and abroad. Rabbi Rath considered it obvious that on a day of such great importance the full Hallel selection from Psalms must be recited with its accompanying blessings, along with the “Sheheḥiyanu” blessing that is invoked on days of special rejoicing.

Other documents that were circulated among members of the Chief Rabbinate Council spoke of the omission of penitential prayers (Taḥanun), and of the inclusion of memorial prayers for fallen soldiers—this was before the establishment of a separate Memorial Day. Although there was a general and understandable tendency to observe the holiday in the manner of Purim or Ḥanukkah, this was offset by a reluctance to fully implement the joyous practices as long as Jerusalem remained divided.

And indeed the question of how to celebrate Yom Ha-’Azma’ut did return to the rabbinic agenda in 1967 after the the Six Day War brought the old city of Jerusalem under Israeli rule. A new generation of rabbis were now charged with setting halakhic guidelines for the holiday, as well as initiating a celebration of the unification of Jerusalem. The discussions after 1967 were not unlike those that had taken place two decades earlier. Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi Unterman extolled the miraculous dimensions of the recent victory and the obligation to proclaim it publicly (pirsuma de-nissa, even as Jewish law assigns major importance to the obligation of publicly proclaiming the miracle of Ḥanukkah in order to promote the sanctification of God’s name in the world: “As regards the obligation to publicly proclaim the great wonder that the Holy One performed on our behalf in this war against our enemies, all of whom sought to destroy us, and thanks to his help we emerged from death to life and from darkness to a great light—all agree that there is an obligation to recite the Hallel.”

Rabbi Shlomo Goren, who served as Chief Rabbi of the I.D.F. during the Six Day War, was quite militant in his political views; nevertheless, he was scrupulous to dissociate his halakhic stance on the celebration of Independence Day from theological perceptions about the state’s supposed messianic dimensions. He too urged that the holiday be celebrated because “it symbolizes the rescue of the nation from total destruction, its emergence into independent life, to the national revival and the restoration of Israel.” He cited talmudic texts that required the recitation of Hallel “on every occasion and each trouble that befalls them; whenever they are redeemed they should recite it over their redemption.” In halakhic discussions prior to 1967 the term “ge’ulah” [redemption] was not usually employed in its messianic connotation, but rather in its more concrete sense of being rescued from adversity, and especially from impending death. 

In light of the above statements by various Chief Rabbis, it is surprising that the official position of the Chief Rabbinate continued to shy away from requiring a blessing over the Hallel. The reasons they gave tended to be technical ones and easy to refute: the struggle was not yet over, or it did not embrace the whole Jewish nation; there was no specific precept to which the blessing could be attached analogous to the reading of the Megillah or the lighting of Ḥanukkah candles. The great Talmud scholar Rabbi S. J. Zevin reported that the Rabbinate had reluctantly yielded to external pressures when they refrained from mandating the recitation of a full Hallel with the accompanying blessing.

At that point in history, the religious Zionist movement was undergoing a radical transformation. Its most vocal segments subscribed to the eschatological vision preached by Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, an ideology that stressed settling the historical land of Israel as a prelude to ultimate redemption. Some advocates of this ideology were ambivalent about recognizing the secular democratic state of Israel. It is symptomatic of this change that recitation of full Hallel with its blessing was now reserved for Jerusalem Reunification Day.

The older approach was articulated succinctly by Rabbi Zevin:

The independant state of Israel qualifies as a miracle and a wonder, and it ranks as the most important development in recent Jewish history. Nevertheless I avoid voicing opinions regarding the rise of Israel as to whether it is the “beginning of the redemption.” We are not privy to God’s plans and we haven’t the vaguest conception of how the future redemption will take place. Therefore it would be stupid to equate the reestablishment of Israel as expressed in the Bible with the redemption of Israel at the present time. Autonomous Jewish sovereignty is undeniably a wondrous prospect, and we are therefore commanded to give thanks and praise to the Lord.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, May 13, 2016, p. 13.

• For further reading:
  • Arend, Aharon. Israel’s Independence Day: Research Studies. Ramat Gan: Campus Rabbi’s Office Bar-Ilan University, 1998.
  • Geller, Jacob. “Pesiḳotav Shel Ha-Rav Meshullam Rath ’al Ha-Tefillah be-Yom Ha-‘Aṣma’ut.” Dav Shevu“i, Campus Rabbi”s Office, Bar-Ilan University Faculty of Jewish Studies, no. 964 (April 26, 2012).
  • Katz, Shmuel. “Ha-Rabbanut ha-Roshit ve-Yom  Ha-‘Aṣma’ut.” In Collection of Articles in Celebration of Seventy Years Since the Establishment of the Israel Chief Rabbinate, edited by Itamar Warhaftig and Shmuel Katz, 2:804–966. Jerusalem: Hekhal Shelomoh, 2002.
  • Leibowitz, Yeshayahu. Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State. Edited by Eliezer Goldman. Translated by Eliezer Goldman, Yoram Navon, Zvi Jacobson, Gershon Levi, and Raphael Levy. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1992.
  • Melamed, Eliezer. “7 – Hallel With or Without a Blessing? | Peninei Halachah.” Blog. Peninei Halachah, February 4, 2010. http://ph.yhb.org.il/en/05-04-07/.
  • Rakover, Nahum, ed. Hilkhot Yom ha-ʻAtsmaʹut ve-Yom Yerushalayim. Jerusalem: Israel Ministry of Education, Torah Culture Section, 1973.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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A Golden City

by Eliezer Segal

One of the most beloved legends in talmudic literature is that of the initiation of the unschooled shepherd Akiva into the world of Torah study through the encouragement of his wife who recognized his spiritual potential. A later tradition supplied her with the name “Rachel” though the Talmud maintains her anonymity. When the lady’s father, the Jerusalem aristocrat Ben Kalba Savua‘, heard of their clandestine marriage he disowned his daughter for marrying beneath her station. While Akiva was away for many years occupied with his studies, the wife was left to fend for herself in dire poverty for what amounted to twenty-four years of abandonment. Nevertheless, the happily-ever-after moment did eventually arrive when her father was finally reconciled with his son-in-law who was now a renowned scholar, and the couple were able to enjoy their life together in affluence. 

In one version of this tale, the young couple’s poverty was illustrated poignantly by their having to spend the cold winter nights sleeping in a straw storage shed. As Akiva picked out pieces of straw from his wife’s hair he would muse longingly, “If I could only afford it, I would present you with a golden Jerusalem.” At this point (as often happens in legends of this sort), the prophet Elijah appeared disguised as a destitute stranger who begged them for some straw to place under his wife who was in childbirth. This made the couple appreciate that there were people even more abjectly poor than they were and who did not even have any straw.

A tradition preserved in a different rabbinic work introduced a satisfying follow-up to the legend of Rabbi Akiva and his wife: “They said that he did not die before he had slept on golden beds and fashioned a golden crown and golden sandals for his wife. His children [or: his disciples] said to him: People are making fun of us [for indulging in such conspicuous consumption]! He retorted: I don’t care what you say. After all, she suffered deprivations during my studies.”

What exactly is a “golden Jerusalem”? The Jerusalem Talmud equates it with an object called a “city of gold” that is mentioned in the Mishnah as an item of women’s jewelry that may not be worn outdoors on the Sabbath because it is not considered an article of clothing, and hence the bearer of such an object would be transgressing the prohibition against carrying in the public domain. In connection with this law, the Talmud remarks that Rabbi Akiva had a golden Jerusalem fashioned for his wife. This would be consistent with what we know about his support for Bar Kokhba who led an insurrection to oppose the Roman desecration or devastation of Jerusalem.

Rabbi Akiva’s generosity provoked the envy of the wife of the Patriarch Rabban Gamaliel. When she began nagging her husband to buy her a similar trinket, she was reminded that Akiva’s wife had earned the right to her precious gift by virtue of her great act of self-sacrifice when she used to sell the tresses of her hair in order to finance her husband’s studies.

But other than its name and the fact that it was worn by wealthy ladies, none of those rabbinic texts really brings us much closer to a clear description of the “golden city” or “golden Jerusalem”. 

Fortunately, achievements in Near Eastern archeology provide considerable assistance in advancing our knowledge of this topic.

The ancient city of Ugarit on the northern coast of Syria has left us a remarkable archive in a language very similar to biblical Hebrew. One surviving text consists of an inventory of the possessions belonging to the thirteenth-century B.C.E. Queen Aḥatmilku. Among her assets was an item that was identified by means of a Sumerian expression that translates as a “city of gold weighing 215 [shekels].”

As it happens, the archeological remains have provided us with many pictorial examples of the ornament or garment that is being referred to. The standard ancient iconographic representation of a city usually included a wall strengthened by turrets, battlements or towers. This became a common motif on crowns worn by queens and goddesses, whose images have been unearthed in localities ranging from the Hittite kingdom in Asia Minor to Elam and Assyria. 

During the Hellenistic era, many cities chose as their supernatural protector Tyche, the Greek goddess of good fortune (known to the Romans as “Fortuna”). Tyche was often depicted wearing a similar headgear with a representation of fortified city walls— what is referred to as a “mural crown.” The crown on the head of the Tyche of Antioch was particularly famous and probably served as a model for other cities.

Indeed, we possess an example of a painting from ancient times that depicts a distinguished Jewish lady sporting a mural crown on her head. It is found in one of the biblical frescoes that decorate the walls of the synagogue at Dura Europos in Syria from the third century C.E. In the panel devoted to the story of Esther, the heroine is shown seated on her throne next to Ahasuerus. All of the paintings in the synagogue incorporate motifs from their contemporary Hellenistic environment, including the fashions of clothing and furnishings. Accordingly the crown atop Esther’s head has three golden towers—it is a city of gold (perhaps even a “Jerusalem of gold”) like the ones that were worn by all self-respecting ancient noblewomen, royalty or goddesses.

There is yet another intriguing feature that has been pointed out with respect to the uses of city-of-gold crowns. In the ancient Mediterranean region a very common function of the crowns was as a way of giving public recognition to the generosity of benefactors. Indeed the passage of centuries has done nothing to diminish the dependence of civic, cultural and educational institutions on the magnanimity of wealthy donors; and the recipients sought to motivate major supporters and to express their appreciation by bestowing conspicuous honour on them. Synagogues and Jewish religious schools were of course among the institutions that relied on such support, and women played a distinguished part as benefactors—as is amply attested by surviving plaques and inscriptions. 

An inscription from the Anatolian city of Phocaea stated that “The synagogue of the Jews honoured Tation, daughter of Straton son of Empedon with a golden crown and the privilege of sitting in the seat of honour.” The Greek words used to designate the golden crown here are apparently the same ones that appear in the Jerusalem Talmud as the explanation of the “city of gold” mentioned in the Mishnah (though the text became garbled in transmission and had to be reconstructed by scholars).

It has therefore been suggested that the Talmud’s story about Rabbi Akiva’s wife’s golden city might have had an additional symbolic implication: in a profound way, this steadfast lady was, after all, a paradigmatic patroness of Jewish education, sacrificing her own comfort and happiness to put her husband through school. In that capacity, her grateful husband was honouring her with the same kind of diadem that would have been awarded to a wealthy donor to an academic institution.

Although most of us would probably have preferred to see some of that generosity being invested in the lady’s own education, it does nonetheless appear appropriate that the glow of Jerusalem’s gold should be associated with the selfless promotion of Jewish learning.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, May 27, 2016, p. 12.

• For further reading:
  • Boyarin, Daniel. Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture. The New Historicism 25. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
  • Brooten, Bernadette J. Women Leaders in the Ancient Synagogue: Inscriptional Evidence and Background Issues. Brown Judaic Studies 36. Chico: Scholars Press, 1982.
  • Cohen, Aryeh. Rereading Talmud: Gender, Law, and the Poetics of Sugyot. Brown Judaic Studies 318. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998.
  • Fraenkel, Jonah. “Iyyunim be-”Olamo ha-Ruḥani shel Sippur ha-Aggadah. Sifriyat Helal ben Hayim. Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2001.
  • Friedman, Shamma. “A Good Story Deserves Retelling: The Unfolding of the Akiva Legend.” Jewish Studies, an Internet Journal 3 (2004) [= In Creation and Composition: The Contribution of the Bavli Redactors (stammaim) to the Aggada, 71–100. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005].
  • Henkin, Eitam. “Ṣemiḥato Shel R’ Aḳiva—ha-Sippur ha-Shalem.” ‘Alonei Mamre 123 (2010): 33–48.
  • Hoffner, Harry A. “The ‘City of Gold’ and the ‘City of Silver.’” Israel Exploration Journal 19, no. 3 (1969): 174–77.
  • Ilan, Tal. “‘Jerusalem of Gold’ and the Historical Kernel in the Stories of R. Aqiva’s Wife.” In A Woman in Jerusalem: Gender, Society and Religion, edited by Tova Cohen and Joshua Schwartz, 33–46. Ingeborg Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies Publications. Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University, 2002. [Hebrew]
  • ———. Mine and Yours Are Hers: Retrieving Women’s History from Rabbinic Literature. Arbeiten zur Geschichte des antiken Judentums und des Urchristentums 41. Leiden and New York: Brill, 1997.
  • Kister, Menahem. Studies in Avot de-Rabbi Nathan: Text, Redaction and Interpretation. Dissertation Series. Jerusalem: The Hebrew University Department of Talmud and Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi: The Institute for Research of Eretz Israel, 1998. [Hebrew]
  • Kraemer, Ross Shepard, ed. Women’s Religions in the Greco-Roman World: A Sourcebook. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
  • Levine, Yael. “Yerushalayim shel Zahav: ‘Al ha-‘Aṭarah ‘Yerushalayim shel Zahav’ ba-Sifrut ha-Rabbanit.” Meḥḳere Ḥag 12 (2002): 116–40. [Hebrew]
  • Lieberman, Saul. Hayerushalmi Kiphshuto: A Commentary. Vol. Part 1 Vol. 1: Sabbath Erubin Pesahim. 1 vols. Jerusalem: Darom Publishing Co., 1934. [Hebrew]
  • ———. Tosefta Ki-Feshuṭah. Vol. 8. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1973. [Hebrew]
  • Lindbeck, Kristen H. Elijah and the Rabbis: Story and Theology. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.
  • Marks, Susan. “Follow That Crown: Or, Rhetoric, Rabbis, and Women Patrons.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 24, no. 2 (2008): 77–96.
  • Paul, Shalom M. “Jerusalem–a City of Gold.” Israel Exploration Journal 17, no. 4 (1967): 259–63.
  • ———. “Jerusalem of Gold—A Song and an Ancient Crown.” Biblical Archeology Review 3, no. 4 (1977): 33–36.
  • ———. “Jerusalem of Gold–Revisited.” In “I Will Speak the Riddles of Ancient Times”: Archaeological and Historical Studies in Honor of Amihai Mazar on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday, 787–94. Winona Lake, Ind: Eisenbrauns, 2006.
  • Rubenstein, Jeffrey L. The Culture of the Babylonian Talmud. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.
  • Safrai, Shemuel. Rabi ʻAkiva ben Yosef. Sifriyat “Dorot.” Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1970.
  • Valler, Shulamit. Women and Womanhood in the Talmud. Translated by Betty Sigler Rozen. Brown Judaic Studies 321. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Standing [or is that: Sitting?] Room Only

by Eliezer Segal

Traditional Jews often get dismissive or indignant when they hear people speak about the “ten commandments.” We are quick to retort that there are far more than ten commandments in the Torah—according to the standard enumeration there are 613 of them! 

In fact, the concept of Ten Commandments (or Ten Words, or Ten Statements—also known as the “Decalogue”) is found in the Torah itself, in texts like Exodus 34:28 “And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.”

The privileged status of the Ten Commandments was a source of controversy in ancient Judaism. Although they are not currently included as a mandatory text in most versions of the Jewish liturgy, this was not always the case. The Mishnah reports that the priests in the Jerusalem Temple would recite them before the Shema‘, the classic declaration of monotheistic faith, as part of their daily morning prayers, and this is confirmed by ancient documents like the “Nash papyrus” (from the second century B.C.E.) and the Septuagint Greek translation in which the Ten Commandments were grouped together with the Shema‘. Indeed, Rabbi Levi in the Talmud demonstrated ingeniously how all ten of the commandments are implicit in the words of the Shema‘. 

Several of the tefillin parchments that were unearthed among the Dead Sea Scrolls also include the Ten Commandments. Talmudic tradition records that the old practice of reciting the Ten Commandments with the Shema‘ was discontinued “because of the claims of heretics” that only those ten were revealed by the Almighty at Sinai. Scholars have been unsuccessful at identifying a specific heretical sect that is being referred to. Although it is tempting to see this as an allusion to the Christian antipathy to the Law of Moses, we know of no particular ancient Christian group that professed a distinction between the Ten Commandments and the rest of the Torah; and the Talmud’s heretics might well have been some other group of Hellenistic Jews (such as the “radical allegorists” criticized by Philo of Alexandria) who were opposed to the literal observance of religious precepts.

Over the generations there were attempts to bring the Decalogue back into the daily service. Such an initiative is mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud, and in medieval Egypt one synagogue would take out a special scroll from which to read it. Authorities like Rav Hai Ga’on and Rabbi Solomon Ibn Adret expressed their opposition to similar developments in some Jewish communities.

However we may choose to interpret the exceptional status of the Ten Commandments, its most conspicuous visible manifestation is probably in the position of the listeners while it is being read in the synagogue, whether as part of the sequential readings of the Torah for Exodus and Deuteronomy or as the designated reading for the festival of Shavu’ot which is celebrated as the anniversary of the revelation at Mount Sinai. In most Jewish communities where I have attended services, it has been the custom for the worshippers, who normally remain seated during the chanting from scripture, to stand for Ten Commandments. 

In previous centuries, however, there was considerable diversity in this matter. Some congregations were motivated by a desire to relive the original experience of the Israelites at Mount Sinai where the text says that “they stood beneath the mountain.” As one ancient Midrash put it when it prescribed the reading of that passage on Shavu‘ot: “My children, if you read this section every year, then I shall consider it as if you yourselves were standing before Mount Sinai and receiving the Torah.” It follows that a faithful reenactment of that occasion can only be achieved while we—like our ancestors—are reverently on our feet.

Other authorities were vehemently opposed to any practice that suggested that some sections of the Torah are holier or more important than others. As long as people ordinarily remain seated during the reading, then standing for the Decalogue could be perceived as casting aspersions on the genuineness of the rest of the Torah. 

And so it happened that the Jewish world came to be split between the Standers and the Sitters.

This controversy underlies a question that was posed to Maimonides. The inquirers dwelled in a town that had not established its own scholarly credentials, and was therefore accustomed to consult rabbis from elsewhere, who tended to impose their own customs and practices. In the present instance, the community’s original practice had been to stand during the reading of the Ten Commandments—until Rabbi A arrived and introduced (among several other reforms) an enactment that forbade standing. This enactment, for which the community still possessed the original document bearing the rabbi’s own signature, equated the Standers with the ancient heretics who were denounced in the Talmud for denying the authority of the rest of the Torah. Rabbi A’s ruling became entrenched for several generation, and the community aligned itself clearly with the Sitters.

But eventually the town was visited by Rabbi B (the inquirer had no doubt that this interloper was the intellectual inferior of Rabbi A) who hailed from a community of Standers, and succeeded in persuading several of the local citizenry to follow his approach—which was the prevailing practice in Baghdad and other prominent Jewish centres. 

It was at this point that the perplexed citizenry were impelled to turn to Maimonides for guidance.

I suspect that the inquirers knew well what to expect from the great sage. Maimonides had already gone on record in the eighth of his “Thirteen Fundamental Principles” with his insistence that it is heretical to make distinctions in the authenticity, authority or significance of different sections of the Torah. Here as well, he put his unwavering support behind the Sitters. He even stigmatized the Standers with the taint of the most prominent heresy in his own time: Karaism; since followers of that anti-talmudic Jewish ideology generally stood during their Torah readings (albeit for the entire reading and not just for particular passages).

When a similar question was directed to Rabbi Ḥaim Yosef David Azulai (the “Ḥida”) in the eighteenth century (Maimonides’ responsum was not printed until the twentieth century), he defended the Standers. As regards the Talmud’s concern about heretics, it was clear to him that it applied only if the Decalogue was recited separately and inserted into the mandatory liturgy; however when incorporated into the ongoing sequential reading of the complete Torah “it is obvious that the whole Torah is being acknowledged as true. It is just that they are standing for the Ten Commandments in recognition of their being the foundation of the Torah, and inscribed on the tablets. The Holy One proclaimed them to all of Israel, and the people trembled when the Holy One uttered them. Therefore, by standing during their recitation they wish to commemorate that occasion in some way.” 

Insofar as standing was the dominant practice in most communities, Rabbi Azulai insisted that no exceptions should be tolerated in those congregations, since compliance with the established customs is itself a pivotal value in Jewish law. (Maimonides, on the other hand, was adamant that upholders of the truth should never concede to the errors of the majority). 

Rabbinic tradition looked back longingly to the rare unity of purpose that characterized Israel’s assembly before Mount Sinai on that first Shavu‘ot. 

I wonder how long it took before that single-minded community managed to divide itself into factions of Sitters and Standers.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, June 10, 2016, p. 4.

• For further reading:
  • Adler, Yonatan. “Identifying Sectarian Characteristics in the Phylacteries from Qumran.” Revue de Qumran 89 (2007): 79–92
  • Amir, Yehoshua. “The Decalogue according to Philo.” In Ten Commandments in History and Tradition, edited by Ben-Tsiyon Segal, translated by Gershon Levi, 121–60. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1990
  • Fleischer, Ezra. Eretz-Israel Prayer and Prayer Rituals as Portrayed in the Geniza Documents. Publications of the Perry Foundation in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1988. [Hebrew]
  • Ginzberg, Louis. A Commentary on the Palestinian Talmud. 4 vols. Texts and Studies of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America 10. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1941. [Hebrew]
  • Hammer, Reuven. “What Did They Bless? A Study of Mishnah Tamid 5.1.” The Jewish Quarterly Review, New Series, 81, no. 3/4 (1991): 305–24. doi:10.2307/1455322
  • Heschel, Abraham Joshua. Theology of Ancient Judaism. 3 vols. London, UK and New York, NY: The Soncino Press, 1962. [Hebrew]
  • Kimelman, Reuven. “The Šĕmaʻ and Its Blessings: The Realization of God’s Kingship.” In Synagogue in Late Antiquity, edited by Lee I. Levine, 73–86. A Centennial Publication of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Philadelphia: American Schools of Oriental Research, 1987
  • Mann, Jacob. “Genizah Fragments of the Palestinian Order of Service.” Hebrew Union College Annual 2 (1925): 269–338
  • Oppenheimer, Aharon. “Removing the Decalogue from the Shema and Phylacteries: The Historical Implications.” In Decalogue in Jewish and Christian Tradition, edited by Henning Graf Reventlow and Yair Hoffman, 97–105. New York: T & T Clark, 2011
  • Urbach, Efraim Elimelech. “The Role of the Ten Commandments in Jewish Worship.” In Ten Commandments in History and Tradition, edited by Ben-Tsiyon Segal, translated by Gershon Levi, 161–89. Jerusalem: Magnes Pr, 1990
  • ———. The Sages, Their Concepts and Beliefs. Translated by Israel Abrahams. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987
  • Vermès, Géza. “The Decalogue and the Minim.” In In Memoriam Paul Kahle, edited by Matthew Black and Georg Fohrer, 232–40. Beihefte Zur Zeitschrift Für Die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 103. Berlin: A Töpelmann, 1968
  • Zevin, Shelomoh Yosef. The Festivals in Halachah: An Analysis of the Development of the Festival Laws = [ha-Moʻadim Ba-Halakah]. Translated by Uri Kaploun and Meir Holder. ArtScroll Judaica Classics. New York: Mesorah Publications, 1999.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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