Thirty-Three and Counting

by Eliezer Segal

The Torah, as interpreted by the ancient Jewish sages, prescribes a sequence of special rituals commencing on Passover with the offering of a sheaf (‘omer) of barley, and culminating, after a count of seven weeks, in the Feast of Weeks— Shavu‘ot—fifty days later. In their original biblical context, the offerings serve to acknowledge our dependence on divine providence for the success of the barley and wheat harvests, and express our appreciation for the agricultural bounty that we hope to enjoy. 

In subsequent generations, however, the period between Passover and Shavu‘ot took on a very different tone as a mournful season in which people are supposed to refrain from displays of cheerfulness. It is against this background of sadness that a distinct personality has been assigned to the thirty-third day in the sequence, which is known as “Lag [= 33] ba-‘Omer.” This day is a happier one and—depending on the tradition followed by one’s particular community—it is observed either as a temporary interruption of the mourning regimen or as its conclusion. 

The biblical and talmudic sources have little to offer us when it comes either to the reasons for the period’s sorrowful character or for the exceptional status of the thirty-third day.

There is however one particular text in ancient rabbinic literature that became the focus for the tradition that associates the ‘Omer period with tragedy and mourning. The Talmud tells of twelve thousand pairs of Rabbi Akiva’s disciples who all perished within a short time span. An interpretation cited in the Talmud identifies that time period as the days between Passover and Shavu‘ot, though this detail is not mentioned in all the versions of the story. 

Previous generations of historians linked this tradition to reports about Rabbi Akiva’s support for the Bar Kokhba insurrection (around 132-135). More recent scholarship is more skeptical about its historical value, regarding it as no more than a pastiche of motifs and clichés stitched together from assorted rabbinic passages. 

Nowhere in the Talmud or Midrash do the rabbis draw any normative implications from the story, and there is no suggestion that the deaths of Rabbi Akiva’s disciples are supposed to be commemorated through restrictions on joyful activities. Nevertheless, such restrictions–albeit to a far more limited extent than would become the later norm—became an established feature of the season by the eleventh century. 

Early authors treat the entire seven weeks as a single unit. It is not until the early thirteenth century that we hear for the first time about the thirty-third day of the ‘Omer being an exception to the mood of mourning that prevails through the rest of the season. This date makes its first recorded appearance in the works of Rabbi Eliezer ben Joel Halevi (Raviah) in Germany. He provided no explanation for the significance or origin of this date, stating only that until then it is customary not to hold weddings.

The Provençal scholar Rabbi Abraham ha-Yarḥi of Lunel, author of an encyclopedic survey of customs in different Jewish communities, reported that Jews in France and Provence would also forgo weddings from Passover until the thirty-third day of the ‘Omer. 

Furthermore, in the name of his compatriot Rabbi Zerahiah ha-Levi of Lunel he claimed to have an ancient textual source for this custom. Rabbi Zerahia cited a version of the talmudic tale about Rabbi Akiva’s disciples according to which the plague extended between Passover and “pros” Shavu‘ot. “Pros” is a Greek preposition that simply means “before” and is employed in that sense in rabbinic Hebrew; however Rabbi Zeraḥiah creatively equated it with a Hebrew word meaning “portion” or “half.” On the basis of this imaginative exegesis Rabbi Zerahiah interpreted the talmudic text as if it were saying that the disciples continued to die until half a month—fifteen days—before Shavu‘ot, which (with a bit of tweaking the numbers) brings us to Day #33 of the ‘Omer period! In any case, even if the arithmetic did work out neatly, the crucial word is not attested in any extant manuscript of the Talmud. 

It is now known from a list of fast days preserved in the Cairo Genizah and from liturgical poems composed by prominent synagogue poets that the eighteenth day of Iyyar, equivalent to the thirty-third day of the ‘Omer, was observed in the land of Israel as the anniversary of the death of the biblical Joshua. It has been proposed that traditions about this date were carried to Europe by pilgrims returning from the holy land and that they somehow evolved there into the familiar Lag ba-‘Omer celebration. 

Against this thesis it is argued that, after all, numerous “yahrzeits” of that sort were observed in Israel, and it is far from obvious why this particular one should have achieved special prominence or why it came to be celebrated as a festive occasion. 

A much later spurious tradition, ascribed to the kabbalist Rabbi Isaac Luria, claimed that Lag Ba-‘Omer was the date of the death of Rabbi Simeon ben Yoḥai, the reputed author of the Zohar—but neither the Zohar nor Rabbi Luria ever actually made any such an assertion. 

All of this contributes to an impression that scholars were scrambling to find an authoritative basis, no matter how forced or unconvincing it might be, for a custom that they could not otherwise explain.

A Syriac document first published in 1977 and attributed to Cyril, the fourth-century Bishop of Jerusalem, identifies Iyyar 19, the calendar date equivalent to Day #34 of the ‘Omer, as the date in the year 363 when the attempt by Emperor Julian to rebuild the Jewish Temple C.E. was disrupted by an earthquake, such that the actual construction would have commenced on the previous day. 

Julian “the Apostate,” the last imperial champion of old Roman religion (albeit in a philosophically refined mystical version), was determined to do everything in his power to offend the Christians and to subvert the favoured status that they had achieved under Constantine. Though Julian had no particular fondness for the religion of Israel, he reasoned that the restoration of Judaism’s holiest shrine would effectively debunk the Christian theological claim that Jerusalem’s ruin, as foretold by Jesus, attested to the Jews’ rejection by God and the supersession of their Torah by the new faith. 

Understandably, the Jews were very enthusiastic about this favourable upturn in their circumstances. If the document is authentic, then it is possible that Lag Ba-‘Omer originated in the high hopes that Jews initially pinned on Julian’s project, a development that they viewed as a harbinger of their imminent redemption from the yoke of Rome.

Unfortunately, however, the Jews’ soaring spirits soon plummeted when a natural disaster overturned the project at its very outset. Worse still, the spokesmen for the Christian church missed no opportunity to gloat over what they saw as divine confirmation of their theological claims. It has therefore been suggested that the short-lived day of celebration on the eighteenth of Iyyar / 33rd day of the ‘Omer was transformed into a day of respite from a season of national grieving whose original significance was effectively forgotten or suppressed. 

The Bible describes the words of the Lord as “pure words: as silver… refined sevenfold.” The Talmud interpreted “sevenfold” in the sense of seven times seven, forty-nine. They inferred from this that there are fifty “gates of understanding,” but the ultimate fiftieth level was unattainable even for the greatest prophet, Moses. That statement has inspired commentators over the ages to propose innumerable sublime and mystical interpretations. 

The mystery of the thirty-third day of the sevenfold counting will probably have to remain one of those humbling questions about which we must resign ourselves to ignorance—at least for the time being.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, April 24, 2018, p. 9.

• For further reading:
  • Fleischer, Ezra. “Haduta—Hadutahu—Chedweta: Solving an Old Riddle.” Tarbiz 53, no. 1 (1983): 71–96. [Hebrew]
  • Landsberger, M. “Der Brauch in den Tagen zwischen dem Pessach- und Schabuothfeste sich der Eheschliesung zu enthalten.” Jüdische Zeitschrift für Wissenschaft und Leben 7, no. 2 (1869): 81–96. [German]
  • Levenson, David B. “The Ancient and Medieval Sources for the Emperor Julian’s Attempt to Rebuild the Jerusalem Temple.” Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman Period 35, no. 4 (2004): 408–60.
  • ———. “The Palestinian Earthquake of May 363 in Philostorgius, the Syriac Chronicon Miscellaneum, and the Letter Attributed to Cyril on the Rebuilding of the Jerusalem Temple.” Journal of Late Antiquity 6, no. 1 (2013): 60–83.
  • Morgenstern, Julian. “Lag Ba’omer — Its Origin and Import.” Hebrew Union College Annual 39 (1968): 81–90.
  • Reiner, Elchanan. “Joshua is Rashbi, Hatzor is Meron: On the Typology of a Galilean Foundation Myth.” Tarbiz 80, no. 2 (2012): 179–218. [Hebrew]
  • Silberman, Lou H. “The Sefirah Season: A Study in Folklore.” Hebrew Union College Annual 22 (1949): 221–37.
  • Sperber, Daniel. Minhage Yisraʼel: Meḳorot Ṿe-Toladot. Vol. 1. 8 vols. Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1989. [Hebrew]
  • Tabory, Joseph. Jewish Festivals in the Time of the Mishnah and Talmud. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1995. [Hebrew]
  • Wainwright, Philip. “The Authenticity of the Recently Discovered Letter Attributed to Cyril of Jerusalem.” Vigiliae Christianae 40, no. 3 (1986): 286–93.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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A Feast of Firsts

by Eliezer Segal

The sections from the Bible that are read in the synagogue on the holidays are usually connected in obvious ways to the themes of the respective festivals. As regards the festival of Shavu‘ot, the Mishnah prescribed that the designated reading from the Torah should be the passage from Deuteronomy that ordains the counting of seven weeks culminating in the Feast of Weeks and its special observances. This is in keeping with the Torah’s depiction of the holiday as a celebration of the grain crops and first fruits.

The Babylonian Talmud, however, was aware of Shavu‘ot’s other important theme: as the anniversary of the revelation at Mount Sinai. Accordingly, it included a variant option of reading the section in Exodus that recounts that momentous event. 

Those early texts reflected the situation when Shavu‘ot consisted of only a single day and communities would have to choose between the alternative readings. However, a later stratum in the Talmud accommodated the practice in diaspora communities of observing two days. It therefore concluded “Nowadays that we keep two days, we follow both options, but in the reverse order.” That is to say, the receiving of the Torah is given precedence by being read on the first day, whereas the passage with the agricultural themes is subordinated to the second day. This indeed remains the universal practice in traditional diaspora communities.

It would appear that this approach was eventually adopted by most Jewish congregations in the land of Israel as well. Although they kept only one day of Shavu‘ot, the designated reading for that day was about the Sinai revelation, not the first-fruits. Testimony to this fact—as for much of what we know about the ancient liturgical practices in the land of Israel—are the many liturgical poems—piyyuṭ— that were incorporated into the holiday synagogue services.

The craft of composing Hebrew liturgical poetry is a very exacting one. In addition to the artistic qualities that are to be expected from any work of literature, these needed to adhere to a very elaborate catalog of formal conventions. One of their essential qualities was the requirement of bridging between various thematic and textual components. Since each piyyuṭ was tailor-made for the Sabbath or special occasion on which it was to be recited, it had to incorporate references to the scriptural readings for that day. And because they took the place of the regular prayers, they also had to incorporate the requisite components of the standard liturgy—even while maintaining their connections to the relevant scriptural texts. 

As noted, the story of the Sinai revelation came to be accepted almost universally as the mandatory Torah reading for Shavu‘ot; and it should therefore come as no great surprise that most of the classical Hebrew liturgical poetry that was composed for that festival expounded that glorious event, drawing upon the full range of biblical associations and rabbinic expositions to magnify the awesome drama of that unique divine-human encounter. The synagogue poets also took up the opportunity to extol the sanctity of the Torah in both its written and oral versions.

One of the most revered and prolific authors of piyyuṭ was Eleazar Kiliri (also known as the Kalir) who resided in the holy land in the sixth or seventh centuries and left us an extraordinary body of work, much of which has been recovered thanks to the Cairo Genizah. A favourite genre of his was the “Ḳedushta,” a piyyuṭ that expounded the first three blessings of the “Eighteen Benedictions” prayer in the morning services for Sabbaths and festivals. Like most of his fellow poets, Kiliri constructed his works for Shavu‘ot around the theme of the receiving of the Torah. 

There is, however, one exception to that pattern, A Ḳedushta, partially preserved in a manuscript fragment in Oxford, is built around a poetic exposition of the Deuteronomy passage that was endorsed by the Mishnah and is recited on the second day of Shavuot (as well as on other festivals) in the diaspora rites. This curious exception is difficult to explain, provoking some doubts as to the poem’s authorship. Although the name “Eleazar” does appear in an acrostic and the style closely resembles that of Kiliri, the attribution is not entirely indisputable. It is also conceivable that Kiliri might have composed the work to be recited in a congregation outside of Israel or for one that followed a divergent practice.

What I find remarkable about this piyyuṭ is how the author was able to take the elements of the text in Deuteronomy—a loose assortment of laws related to sacrifices and priestly rituals—and turn it into a poem about the proclamation of the Torah.

To be sure, Eleazar’s poem develops the convention of stirringly portraying the Israelites’ experience of hearing God’s voice at Sinai as an occurrence that was at once fearsome and incomparably joyful. Nevertheless, the piyyuṭ’s principal focus is on the miscellany of commandments in the Deuteronomy passage. The commandments that are mentioned there are understood to be representative samples of the Torah in its entirety, thereby allowing the poet to dwell on the unique privilege that was vouchsafed to Israel when the Almighty “handed down to them the precious gift that [here he employs imagery from the Song of Songs:] ‘never lacks blended wine.’”

One of the conventions of piyyuṭ was that it usually focused on the opening words of the designated biblical readings. In the present instance, the reading begins with the law of firstborn animals. If they are unblemished, they are deemed sacred and must be eaten inside the sanctuary.

For our poet, this rule resonated with the fact that the Torah designates Shavu‘ot as “the day of the first fruits, when you bring a new grain offering unto the Lord.” A stanza that states “You sheltered them on the day of the first fruits” creates a transition to the theme of divine protection as found in the first blessing of the Eighteen Benedictions, when God is addressed as the “shield of Abraham.”

The mention of firstborns also evokes associations with the situation of the Israelites before Mount Sinai. God had recently “revealed yourself in Noph [i.e.: Memphis, Egypt] in order to smite their firstborns; your own firstborn [= Israel] you instructed to sanctify every firstborn.” 

Thus, the concept of firstborn was associated with the people of Israel, as God had instructed Moses to say to Pharaoh: “Israel is my son, even my firstborn.” Furthermore, the image of unblemished firstlings—and indeed, the requirement that all sacrificial offerings be free from any blemishes—put the poet in mind of a midrashic homily in which God declared that it would be inappropriate to give the perfect Torah to people who were blemished, disabled or disfigured; and for this reason he took the initiative of healing all such persons immediately prior to the great revelation. 

The poet also alluded to a midrashic legend according to which the people were scorched by the heavenly flames that burned at Sinai; and afterwards the Almighty commanded the clouds of divine glory to pour life-giving moisture upon them. This motif provided an ingenious link to the second blessing in the Eighteen Benedictions with its themes of dew and resurrection.

All these motifs converge in the concluding stanza of the piyyuṭ which assembles a broad range of nuanced associations and word-plays with the concepts of first-born and first-fruits: 

Then from the top of the rocks [= from the days of Israel’s forefathers] 
You designated your people as firstborn, 
and for their sake you smote the firstborns of Egypt 
and you admonished them regarding the commandment of the firstlings 
who are your first choices 
human firstborns and those which open the womb of the donkeys 
as well as the firstlings of the sheep and goats and cattle.

I like to imagine that the Kiliri’s own congregation was swept away when they first heard the poet’s virtuoso blending of literary artistry, erudition and spiritual expression—upholding a tradition of lyric inspiration whose roots may be traced to that first revelation at Mount Sinai.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, May 11, 2018, p. 9.

• For further reading:
  • Elizur, Shulamit. Rabbi El‘azar BiRabbi Kiliri: Ḳedushtaʼot le-Yom Mattan Torah [Rabbi El‘azar Birabbi Kiliri: Hymni Pentacostales] . Jerusalem: Mekize Nirdamim, 2000. [Hebrew] 
  • ———. “The Congregation in the Synagogue and the Ancient Qedushta.” In Knesset Ezra: Literature and Life in the Synagogue. Studies Presented to Ezra Fleischer , edited by Shulamit Elizur, Moshe David Herr, Gershon Shaked, and Avigdor Shinan, 171–90. Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi and the Ben Zvi Institute for the Study of Eastern Jewish Communities, 1994. [Hebrew] 
  • 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] 
  • ———. “Solving the Qiliri Riddle.” Tarbiz  54, no. 3 (1985): 383–427. [Hebrew] 
  • ———. “Studies in the Prosodic Character of Several Components of the Qedušta.” Hasifrut: Quarterly for the Study of Literature  3 (1972): 390–414. [Hebrew] 
  • Mirsky, Aaron. “The Ten Commandments in the Liturgical Poetry of Eleazar Kallir.” In Ten Commandments in History and Tradition , edited by Ben-Zion Segal, translated by Gershon Levi, 343–54. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1990. 
  • Rand, Michael. “Liturgical Compositions for Shemini ’Atzeret by Eleazar Be-Rabbi Qillir.” Ginzei Qedem 3 (2007): 9–99. 
  • Zulay, M. “Were Hillel and Shammai Real Brothers?” Melilah , Original Series, 5 (1955): 63–82. [Hebrew]

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Wake-Up Call

by Eliezer Segal

Let’s face it. For many of us getting out of bed in the morning can be a challenging ordeal. 

It is therefore understandable that the traditional Jewish morning prayers begin with a series of blessings (texts following the formula “blessed are you, Lord God…”) that address the arduous process of waking up. 

Most of those blessings stem from a passage in the Talmud in which each one is attached to a specific stage in the process: opening one’s eyes, sitting up, standing straight, getting dressed and so forth. Early in the Middle Ages, the Babylonian Ge’onim instituted the practice of reciting them all sequentially as part of the synagogue ritual.

As is the case with many Jewish blessings, it is not always easy to distinguish between the ones whose purpose is to endow an action with the status of a religious precept, to express our gratitude, or to convey the praises of the Almighty.

Amidst all this liturgical richness there is one particular blessing, at the end of the list, that many of us find most germane to our physical and mental states when the alarm clock—or, as the Talmud presumes, the crowing of the rooster— rouses us from our slumbers: “Blessed are you, Lord God, sovereign of the universe, who gives strength to the weary.” Indeed, sometimes I have the feeling that without a bit of supernatural nudging I would be incapable of overcoming my grogginess, returning to consciousness and setting about my morning regimen.

The first recorded discussion of this blessing was by Rabbi Jacob ben Asher in his code of Jewish law, the “Arba‘ah Ṭurim.” Rabbi Jacob’s comments are of particular interest because, though he composed his code in Toledo, Spain, he was actually born in Germany from which he migrated in 1303, and he was thus acutely conscious of the variations in custom and legal traditions between the main centers of Jewish culture. In his enumeration of the obligatory passages to be included in the early morning service, he observed, “There is an additional blessing included in the Ashkenazic prayer books: ‘Blessed are you… who gives strength to the weary.’ It was ordained because a person entrusts his soul at night into the hands of the Holy One when it is weary from labouring hard all day, but he restores it to him in the morning in a rested and peaceful state.”

Rabbi Jacob’s interpretation was inspired by a parable from the midrashic compendium Genesis Rabbah: Citing a text from the book of Lamentation, “renewed each morning, great is your trustworthiness,” Rabbi Simeon bar Abba expounded: “By virtue of how you renew us each and every morning, we know how great is your trustworthiness to restore the dead to life!” That is to say, the fact that last night’s worn and weary body can wake up refreshed and invigorated is a marvel that is comparable to the resurrection of the dead in the messianic future. On many mornings I can personally sympathize with that impression. Some later commentators read the blessing as a reassurance to the nation of Israel that they will be restored to vitality after the lethargy of exile.

The religious sentiment underlying the blessing seems beyond reproach. Nevertheless, there was considerable resistance to incorporating it into the standardized liturgy. The main objection was that it did not have a source in the Talmud—even though the expression itself comes from the Bible where it was uttered by Isaiah: “He giveth power to the faint, and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.” 

As Rabbi Jacob ben Asher observed, the recitation of the blessing was initially confined to the realm of Ashkenazic Jewry. It makes its earliest known appearance in a manuscript of the Ashkenazi prayer book that was written in the twelfth century. Though it achieved some currency in French and German communities, even in those localities there were authorities who tried to keep it out of their prayer rites on the premise that all Jewish practice must be strictly and exclusively governed by the Talmud—a principle that had been laid down by Rabbi Jacob ben Asher’s own father, Rabbi Asher ben Jehiel. For that reason Rabbi Joel Sirkes (died 1640) would later suggest that the blessing would not have been adopted unless it had been found in earlier versions of the Talmud text.

In the sixteenth century, Rabbi Joseph Caro’s Shulḥan Arukh upheld the conservative attitude that opposed any tampering with the authoritative sources of tradition; even though he was sympathetic to Rabbi Jacob’s appealing rationale for reciting the blessing. This would normally have ended the discussion, at least among the Sephardic communities for whom Caro’s Shulḥan Arukh was the definitive arbiter of Jewish law. On the other hand, the glosses of Rabbi Moses Isserles, which supplemented Caro’s rulings with alternative traditions developed in the Ashkenazic schools, concluded that “the widespread custom among the Ashkenazim is to recite it.” This in fact was something of an overstatement, as the practice had never came close to being a uniform policy.

Rabbi Caro himself completed his law code in the holy land, and he spent the latter years of his life as a prominent leader of the intensely kabbalistic community of Safed in the Galilee. Like most previous rabbis who followed the teachings of Kabbalah, he was generally quite resolute about not allowing mystical texts (such as the Zohar) to impinge on the integrity of the halakhic decision-making process. However, with the ascendancy of Rabbi Isaac Luria and his mystical circle, Kabbalah was making increasing claims to constituting an autonomous legal authority. 

Although Luria himself did not commit his mystical teachings or his liturgical customs to writing, his disciples reported that he had taken issue with Caro’s ruling and insisted that the blessing “who gives strength to the weary” ought to be recited in the morning rites. As befits  mystical thinkers, the reason that was given for the blessing was a profoundly metaphysical one emanating from the kabbalistic doctrine of reincarnation. The human soul earns spiritual “garments” that are woven for it in proportion to each person’s performance of meritorious deeds. In a manner reminiscent of Indian Karma, these garments accompany the soul through its various incarnations. This motif appears to have entered Jewish lore via a tale in Rabbi Nissim ben Jacob Ibn Shahin’s eleventh-century anthology of inspirational tales, which derived in turn from an Arabic source.

As explained by Luria’s most important interpreter Rabbi Haim Vital, at bedtime the righteous entrust their souls to the celestial powers for overnight “laundering”—whereas the sinners who are still lacking any spiritual garments are provided with brand-new ones. “A person who possesses a garment, but is weary, is supported and given strength.” 

According to this scenario, the blessing about giving strength to the weary is linked with the one in praise of the Lord “who clothes the naked” that was recited when dressing oneself in the morning. When both of the blessings are understood in their allegorical senses, the distinction comes to hinge on whether the soul in question is being issued a new garment or is having their existing one refurbished. From the kabbalistic perspective, the uttering of prayers does not merely express one’s adherence to a spiritual attitude or theological belief, but actually has the power to alter spiritual reality.

This is bringing us into some very complicated and strenuous intellectual territory. It might be advisable to take a break, and to revisit the subject in the morning, after being refreshed by a good night’s sleep.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, May 25, 2018, p. 13.

• For further reading:
  • Baneth, D. H. “‘Haluqa de-Rabbanan,’ ‘Hibbur Yafeh Min Ha-Yeshu’ah’ and a Mohammedan Tradition.” Tarbiz 25, no. 3 (1956): 331–36. [Hebrew]
  • Benayahu, Meir. “Rabbi Ḥayyim Viţal bi-Yrushalayim.” In Yerushalayim: Ir Ha-Ḳodesh veha-Miķdash—Ma’amarim, edited by Jacob Gliss and Moshe Hayim Katzenelenbogen, 162–73. Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1977.
  • Halamish, Moshe. “Birkat ha-Noten La-Ya‘ef Koaḥ.” Asufot: Annual for Jewish Studies 1 (1987): 361–77. [Hebrew]
  • ———. Kabbalah in Liturgy, Halakhah and Customs. Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2000. [Hebrew]
  • Jacobson, Issachar (Bernhard Salomon). Netiv Binah. Vol. 1. 5 vols. Tel-Aviv: Sinai, 1964. [Hebrew]
  • Scholem, Gershom G. “The Paradisic Garb of Souls and the Origin of the Concept of ‘Haluka de-Rabbanan.’” Tarbiz 24, no. 3 (1955): 290–306.
  • Tabory, Joseph. “The Conflict of Halakhah and Prayer.” Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought 25, no. 1 (1989): 17–31.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Sabbath under Siege

by Eliezer Segal

In 1953 the United Nations was deliberating over a plan to replace the standard Gregorian calendar with a more rational and efficient one. The new calendar promised to be far more economical and generally beneficial than its awkward predecessor.

No doubt our present civil calendar is not particularly elegant. The lengths of the months fluctuate erratically from twenty-eight to thirty-one days with variations for leap years. From year to year a given date will fall on different days of the week, creating difficulties for long-term scheduling.

The calendar that was submitted to the United Nations by the representative from India overcame most of these objections. It was to consist of four three-month quarters in which the first two months had thirty days and the last thirty-one (totaling ninety-one days per quarter), adding up to 364 days. An alternative proposal, with thirteen months of twenty-eight days apiece (the thirteenth month would be named “Sol”), produced a similar total. Since 364 is evenly divisible by seven, dates would occur on the same weekday every year. In order to bring it into alignment with the astronomical solar cycle of 365 ¼ days, an extra null or blank day (“Worldsday”) would be appended to each year. That day lay outside the weekday count. When the discrepancy warranted an additional day (the leap years of our current calendar), a second null day would be inserted in mid-year. All very neat and compelling.

My first reaction to learning about this proposal was to wonder about its possible connection to another development that was taking place at around that same time—namely the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls at Qumran. The calendar advocated in many of those ancient Hebrew documents was identical to the U.N.’s twelve-month proposal. In fact, scholars had been aware of that system previously from the ancient Pseudepigraphical books of Enoch and Jubilees, but their presence in the newly discovered Qumran library brought them renewed public attention. Important scholarly studies of the Qumran calendar were published in the early 1950s, so it seemed reasonable to presume that the advocates of the new calendar had been inspired by reading about the Hebrew scrolls.

The Qumran calendar did not indicate how it compensated for the 1¼ day by which it lagged behind the solar year. Initially it was hoped that the solution would turn up when more texts were published, but this never happened; and scholars are left to speculate how—if at all—the ancient sectarians handled the problem.

At any rate, it turned out that I was very wrong in positing a link existing between the scrolls and the 1953 calendar proposal. The movement that inspired that proposal had already been around for quite a long time, based on a system devised in 1834 by the Italian Marco Mastrofini. Its most ardent advocate was an American named Elisabeth Achelis who founded The World Calendar Association (TWCA) to agitate for its adoption.

TWCA was successful in bringing their proposal before the League of Nations, and it came very close to being adopted. The cultural climate at that time was characterized by its veneration of science and economic efficiency. Religion and tradition, on the other hand, were dismissed as vestiges of primitive superstition that would soon wither away with the impending triumph of Enlightenment.

This was not good news for the Jewish community. Although Jews have long since learned to accommodate themselves to following a calendar that was out of step with that of the majority society, integration into the general economy—particularly with the emergence of the five-day work week—was only feasible because the Christian (and Muslim) weeks were the same as theirs. Traditional Jews believe that the designation of sabbaths follows a sequence that goes back without deviation to the origin of the world when the Almighty ceased from his work on the seventh day of creation. The insertion of one or two eight-day weeks every civil year would quickly place the Jewish sabbath out of sync with the rest of the world, preventing them from participation in most types of employment.

In 1923 the League of Nations established a “Special Committee of Enquiry into the Reform of the Calendar” that was mandated to examine the proposals dispassionately—though in reality that committee was heavily stacked with men who were committed to revising the calendar with little or no consultation with the nations whom they ostensibly represented. Their most prominent backers were wealthy American financial interests, notably the photography magnate George Eastman. Contravening their original pledge to give a hearing to Jewish views, the committee never included a Jewish delegate, though three Christian denominations were represented (whose main concern was the contentious issue of stabilizing the date of Easter).

The battle to defeat the reform proposal was taken up at once by Rabbi Dr. Joseph H. Hertz, the Chief Rabbi of the British Empire—in a time when the Empire was still near its peak. In what he appreciated as a rare instance of Jewish solidarity, his campaign drew immediate support from across the British and American Jewish spectrum, from the liberal to the ultra-orthodox—thereby refuting his adversaries’ claim that the opposition was confined to a handful of archaic religious fundamentalists. 

When a calendar reform proposal was surreptitiously placed before the American Congressional Committee on Foreign Affairs in 1928, a Jewish congressman insisted that stakeholders be given an opportunity to express their views. In this connection the eminent leader of Reform Judaism Dr. Stephen Wise declared, “Even if there were only 1,000 Jews left in the whole world to whom the Saturday Sabbath is sacred, I would go through fire and water to safeguard their religious liberty.” 

Rabbi Hertz continued to lobby effectively, garnering allies among British parliamentarians, Christian clergy (especially, but not exclusively, the Seventh-Day Adventists) and several European communities. He doggedly solicited petitions and letters of support for his cause. Although he was able to demonstrate conclusively that in most countries there was virtually no public support for—or even interest in—calendar reform, the committee sessions in Geneva continued to favour the plan, insisting that “the discomforts of a religious minority should not stand in the way of the economic advantages of a majority.” 

The big showdown took place in League of Nations’ Hall in Geneva in the presence of 111 delegates representing forty-two nations who assembled on October 12, 1931. When the dust settled, the conference was forced to concede that there was little popular enthusiasm for a new calendar, and considerable opposition to it. In October 1931 the conference concluded that “the present is not a favourable time, taking into account the state of opinion, for proceeding with a modification of the Gregorian calendar.” 

In the wake of World War II, Achelis and the TWCA were quick to bring the matter up for deliberation by the United Nations. This time, however, the American U.N. delegate nipped it in the bud with a categorical declaration that the change would offend the religious principles of many Americans, and “it would be inappropriate for the United Nations, which represents many different religious and social beliefs throughout the world, to sponsor any revision of the existing calendar that would conflict with the principles of important religious faiths.” He also advised that no further study of the subject should be undertaken. Without this support, Achelis dissolved her World Calendar Association.

Rabbi Hertz likened his achievement to the triumphs related in the biblical book of Judges, of which it was said “And the land had rest forty years.” 

Well, far more than forty years have elapsed since the last skirmish, but there is no guarantee that the issue will not be put on the table again as part of the current barrage of legal challenges to traditional religious practices and institutions. Today’s defenders of Jewish tradition have much to learn from the strategies and attitudes that were employed so effectively in the previous rounds of the struggle.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, June 21, 2018, p. 9.

• For further reading:
  • Achelis, Elisabeth. “The Fundamentals of the World Calendar.” Social Science 26, no. 1 (1951): 24–32.
  • The World Calendar: Addresses and Occasional Papers Chronologically Arranged on the Progress of Calendar Reform Since 1930. Ann Arbor: Gryphon Books, 1971.
  • Bushell, W. F. “Calendar Reform.” The Mathematical Gazette 45, no. 352 (1961): 117–24.
  • Davies, Christie, Eugene Trivizas, and Roy Wolfe. “The Failure of Calendar Reform (1992–1931): Religious Minorities, Businessmen, Scientists, and Bureaucrats.” Journal of Historical Sociology 12, no. 3 (n.d.): 251–70. 
  • Elior, Rachel. The Three Temples: On the Emergence of Jewish Mysticism. Translated by David Louvish. Oxford and Portland, OR: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2004.
  • Hertz, Joseph Herman. Changing the Calendar: Consequent Dangers and Confusions. London: Oxford University Press and H. Milford, 1931.
  • The Battle for the Sabbath at Geneva. Oxford: Oxford University Press and H. Milford, 1932.
  • Hoenig, Sidney B. “A Jewish Reaction to Calendar Reform.” Tradition 7, no. 1 (1964): 5–26.
  • Jaubert, Annie. “Le Calendrier des Jubilés et de la Secte de Qumrân: Ses Origines Bibliques.” Vetus Testamentum 3, no. 3 (July 1953): 250–64.
  • Kennelly, Arthur E. “Proposed Reforms of the Gregorian Calendar.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 75, no. 1 (1935): 71–110.
  • League of Nations, ed. The League of Nations and the Reform of the Calendar. Geneva: Information Section, Secretariat of the League of Nations, 1928.
  • Ogle, Vanessa. The Global Transformation of Time: 1870-1950. Cambridge, MS: Harvard University Press, 2015.
  • Stern, Sacha. Calendar and Community: A History of the Jewish Calendar, Second Century BCE-Tenth Century CE. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
  • Talmon, Shemaryahu. “Calendar Reckoning of the Sect from the Judaean Desert.” Edited by Chaim Rabin and Yad. Scripta Hierosolymitana 4: Aspects of the Dead Sea Scrolls (1958): 162–99.
  • Taylor, Derek. Chief Rabbi Hertz: The Wars of the Lord. London and Portland, OR: Vallentine Mitchell, 2014.
  • Watkins, Harold. Time Counts: The Story of the Calendar. London: N. Spearman, 1954.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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What Will the Neighbours Think?

by Eliezer Segal

The traditional Jewish practice in congregational worship requires that the central prayer, known as the “Eighteen Benedictions” (Shemoneh ‘Esreh), be recited two times in the service. First It is whispered or mumbled quietly by the individual worshippers, and afterwards it is chanted out loud by the prayer leader on behalf of the congregation. 

Considering that the prayer in question is quite a lengthy one, its double recitation can challenge the patience of participants who have other tasks to attend to in their daily schedules. Nevertheless, the repetition was a mainstay of Jewish liturgical practice. Its origins date back to the era when rabbinic Judaism insisted on a strict differentiation between the written Torah—a category that was essentially restricted to the books in the Bible—and the oral Torah that comprised all the other accepted religious traditions. Because the prayers were classified as part of the oral tradition, they could not be written down, and therefore had to be memorized or improvised. 

The rabbis realized that in the absence of written texts, many Jews were probably not knowledgeable enough to recite the complex prayers on the spot; and this was the main reason for instituting the dual recitation: during the initial silent recitation, the more learned worshipers would address their Creator individually; and afterwards the prayer leader would recite the text aloud so that unschooled members of the community could fulfil their obligations by responding “amen” to his blessings.  

As with several qualities of devout prayer, the sages of the Talmud traced this one back to the biblical figure of Hannah, the pious mother of the prophet Samuel, about whom it said: “she spake in her heart; only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard.” The rabbis pointed to several spiritual ideals that are best expressed by means of silent meditation—including the implied trust in an all-knowing God who does not need to be shouted at, and the opportunity it provides to confess individual sins without fear of their becoming embarrassing public knowledge.

The post-talmudic leaders of the Babylonian academies, the Ge’onim, were generally inflexible about continuing that ancient ritual, and they refused to abandon it even in the face of extenuating circumstances, such as when not enough time remained to recite the full service within the permitted time limits, or on Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur when the lengthy and elaborate service greatly exceeded the capabilities of most worshippers to articulate their own silent versions of the prayer. 

Notwithstanding all the commendable reasons and benefits that might attach to the convention of repeating the prayer, it also gave rise to several problems. For one thing, it was based on a division of the congregation into two distinct classes, the literate and the uneducated. Consequently, each class might feel some redundancy or resentment regarding the the portion of the service allotted to the other.

In the twelfth century an inquiry was addressed to Maimonides concerning a custom that had been introduced by a former cantor in an Egyptian town: of reciting both renditions aloud, but omitting from the first one the passages that may only be recited in the context of formal communal worship. Those passages—primarily, the “Ḳedushah” (holiness) blessing—would be included in the subsequent repetition by the prayer leader. The community had adopted this format as their norm. 

A Jewish scholar visiting from a Christian land later proposed a different alternative that was supported by some of the locals: According to his reading of the talmudic sources, the circumstances that gave rise to the silent reading—especially the concern about penitents not confessing their transgressions aloud—were not pertinent in most situations. Moreover, it was arguable that someone who has already fulfilled his obligation by reciting the prayer quietly should henceforth be disqualified from reciting it again as the congregational prayer leader. For this reason, the visitor recommended that they completely abolish the silent prayer, and keep only the full cantor’s intonation. The community chose to remain loyal to their homegrown custom of two spoken recitations.

Maimonides himself categorically rejected the community’s practice, insisting that vocal recitation of a silent prayer is self-contradictory and defeats the original purpose of the practice. 

As for the proposal to abolish the silent prayer, Maimonides noted that this would contravene the Talmud’s ruling and the normative custom. Nevertheless he supported such a procedure, but for entirely different reasons. In fact, he urged that it be adopted with the explicit awareness that it constituted an innovative religious reform. 

Like similar reforms that had been introduced by the sages of previous eras, this one would be justified by an urgent need to overcome a serious problem. The knowledgeable members of the community, once they had fulfilled their own liturgical obligations by whispering the silent prayer, felt that they had no reason to listen attentively to the ensuing public recitation; and instead they felt free to chat, stroll, spit and cough. The masses, who looked to the scholars for guidance, emulated their behaviour to the point of feeling free to walk out of the sanctuary.

In order to counteract this irreverent chaos, Maimonides ordained that the service should consist of only a single, orderly reading of the Eighteen Benedictions aloud, during which the learned and the unlettered alike would be required to be standing respectfully and carry out their obligations by mouthing the words along with the leader or by responding “amen” to each blessing.

The maintaining of respectful decorum is of course an important religious value at all times. However, Maimonides had an additional—and probably more pressing—concern that he wished to address through his proposal. He argued that the existing situation amounted to a desecration of God’s name. Muslim neighbours, who cultivated orderly discipline in their own prayers, derided the boorish behaviour in the synagogues that seems to make a mockery of prayer. In justifying his departure from established practice he invoked the scriptural battle cry, “It is time, Lord, to act for thee: for they have made void thy law!”

A student of Maimonides appealed to his teacher for support in his efforts to impose the liturgical reform in Alexandria. This tampering with the accepted custom succeeded only in part. It was limited to the town’s smaller “Babylonian” synagogue and excluded certain holy days for which the worshipers refused to abandon their cherished liturgical poetry. Nevertheless, it had provoked widespread and vehement hostility that was taking a long time to calm down. At any rate, Maimonides’ son Abraham reported that his father’s enactment was taking hold in many middle eastern communities, a trend that would persist until the sixteenth century. 

Maimonides’ reform would be revisited by Rabbi David Ibn Abu Zimra [the Radbaz] who presided over the Jewish community of Egypt in the sixteenth century. In 1539 a dispute broke out between the new Sephardic majority who wished to restore the silent prayer, and the “native” Arabic-speaking (“musta‘rib”) Jewish community who insisted that residents of Maimonides’ own city ought to remain loyal to his teaching.

In discussing Maimonides’ arguments about maintaining a favourable impression among their Muslim neighbours, the Radbaz noted that the formerly respectful relations between Jews and Muslims had deteriorated significantly since Maimonides’ day. “They dismiss our prayers as blasphemies, they claim that our Torah has been tampered with, and so forth. And since they hold such opinions about us anyway, we may as well just follow the normative law, since there would be no advantage to doing otherwise.” It appears that this hostile attitude has only intensified since the Radbaz’s days. 

Now I do not normally encourage worrying about how others see us. Nonetheless, a bit more mutual respect between the two communities could well be an improvement. 

Improbable as that objective appears at this point in history, it might yet be worth devoting a prayer for its achievement—at the least, a silent prayer.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, August 24, 2018, p. 13.

• For further reading:
  • Blidstein, Gerald J. Prayer in Maimonidean Halakha. Jerusalem and Beersheba: Mosad Bialik and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 1994. [Hebrew]
  • Elbogen, Ismar. Jewish Liturgy: A Comprehensive History. Translated by Raymond P. Scheindlin. Philadelphia and New York: Jewish Publication Society and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1993.
  • Friedlaender, Israel. “A New Responsum of Maimonides Concerning the Repetition of the ‘Shmoneh Esreh.’” The Jewish Quarterly Review 5, no. 1 (1914): 1–15.
  • Friedman, Mordechai A. “Abraham Maimonides on His Leadership, Reforms, and Spiritual Imperfection.” Jewish Quarterly Review 104, no. 3 (2014): 495–512.
  • ———. “Abraham Maimuni’s Prayer Reforms: Continuation or Revision of His Father’s Teachings?” In Traditions of Maimonideanism, edited by Carlos Fraenkel, 139–54. Leiden: Brill, 2009.
  • ———. “Repetition of the Evening ʿAmĪda on Festivals and Special Sabbaths in the Custom of Eretz Israel.” Tarbiz 85, no. 3 (2018): 477–93.
  • Halamish, Moshe. “Siḥat Ḥullin be-Veit-Keneset: Metsi’ut u-Ma’avaḳ.” MILET: Studies in Jewish History and Culture 2 (1974): 225–51.
  • Morell, Samuel. Studies in the Judicial Methodology of Rabbi David Ibn Abi Zimra. Studies in Judaism. Dallas: University Press of America, 2004.
  • Reif, Stefan C. “Maimonides on the Prayers.” In Traditions of Maimonideanism, edited by Carlos Fraenkel, 73–100. Leiden: Brill, 2009.
  • ———. Problems with Prayers: Studies in the Textual History of Early Rabbinic Liturgy. Studia Judaica 37. Berlin and New York: W. de Gruyter, 2006.
  • Wieder, Naphtali. Islamic Influences on the Jewish Worship. Oxford: Sifriyyat Mizraḥ u-Ma‘arav, 1947.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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So You Think You Can Dance

by Eliezer Segal

The Day of Atonement is characterised by its mood of austere solemnity as the Torah commands us to “afflict our souls,” depriving ourselves of food and other physical pleasures in order to concentrate on the spiritual purification that will, we hope, make us deserving of divine clemency.

And yet ancient Jewish texts also portray Yom Kippur as a joyous time. The Mishnah records that Rabban Simeon ben Gamaliel looked back nostalgically to the days when the Second Temple stood in Jerusalem, and recalled that “there were no days as festive for Israel as the fifteenth of Av and the Day of Atonement. On those days the daughters of Jerusalem would go out in borrowed white garments… and dance in the vineyards.

And what would they say? Young man, lift up your eyes and behold what you are choosing for yourself. Do not fix your gaze on beauty, fix your gaze on pedigree…

Indeed the Mishnah’s description suggests a kind of dating site in which each lady strives to profile her most pleasing trait—whether it be physical beauty, prestigious family or an appeal to the young man’s altruism. 

There is no obvious thematic connection between Yom Kippur and the fifteenth of Av, and perhaps their similarity consisted of nothing other than the joyous feeling that they shared.

The fifteenth of Av is not mentioned explicitly in the Bible, and the talmudic sages devoted considerable efforts to speculations about the reasons for its special status as a day of festivity or seeking marital partners.

As regards the Day of Atonement, on the other hand, the ancient sages provide no extensive discussion as to why it would have been celebrated by dancing in the vineyards. In one passage, the Talmud treats this as an obvious corollary of its being the occasion for forgiveness and pardon—the culmination of an intense process of judgment and spiritual renewal that reaches its climax in the dwindling twilight hours, as the merciful creator grants forgiveness to his people. 

According to the traditional chronology, Yom Kippur was also the date when Moses descended from Mount Sinai bearing the second set of tablets inscribed with the ten commandments. This was seen as an assurance that the people had been pardoned for their fall from grace in the shameful episode of the golden calf that had impelled Moses to shatter the first tablets.

Nevertheless, a small faction of commentators could not accept the notion that virtuous Jewish maidens were dancing and trying to attract marriage partners at a time that was supposed to be devoted to moral introspection and physical deprivation. 

A medieval Yemenite commentary attributed that opinion to the Babylonian Ge’onim Sherira and Hai. According to them, the two dates mentioned by Rabban Simeon ben Gamaliel were equated only as regards their intense joyfulness—however the dancing in the vineyards took place only on the fifteenth of Av and not on Yom Kippur, since “we do not empower the evil inclination on the Day of Atonement.”

An ironic twist on that premise gave rise to an intriguing development in some modern Jewish communities. When freethinkers, especially followers of the anarchist ideology, were looking for a blatant way to flaunt religious tradition, they introduced “Yom Kippur balls” at which participants could enjoy dinner, singing and dancing. This institution debuted in London in 1888, then spread to various North American communities. It enjoyed popularity and notoriety until it eventually fizzled out (in part because it failed to offend the tolerant Canadian Jewish religious establishment) with the final event of its kind, held in Montreal in 1905.

Travelers to the Caucasus in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries reported that it was customary there to hurry through the Yom Kippur service, after which bands of unmarried young people would wander off, equipped with drums and concertinas, and spend the afternoon in lively song (though not, apparently, in dance). Similar testimonies came from Jewish communities in Libya.

Some writers want to see this as a survival of the ancient Israeli custom of dancing in the vineyards. More prosaically, I wonder whether it might simply have arisen as a way for young people (especially girls, who were usually unlettered in those traditional societies) to deal with the seemingly endless holiday prayers while their parents were occupied all day in the synagogue. 

The wording of the Mishnah strongly supports the position that the dancing took place on Yom Kippur. After identifying the two festive dates, Rabban Simeon stated that the daughters of Jerusalem would dance “on those days”—using the plural form—which seems to leave no room for doubt that the description applies to both the fifteenth of Av and the Day of Atonement. 

Several other ancient rabbinic texts also understood that Rabban Simeon ben Gamaliel was referring to dancing on Yom Kippur. For example, when the book of Lamentations says of devastated Zion that “her virgins are afflicted, and she is in bitterness,” the Aramaic Targum inserted an explanation that “her virgins mourn because they have stopped going out on the fifteenth of Av and on the Day of Atonement to dance their dances. Therefore she too is very bitter in her heart.”

The eminent medieval Provençal exegete Rabbi David Kimchi also accepted the historicity of the dancing on the Day of Atonement. Thus, when the biblical book of Judges relates how the Israelite tribes wanted to revoke their earlier oath to withhold their daughters from the men from the tribe of Benjamin, it describes their plan to abduct some young ladies who could thereby be married to Benjaminite husbands without actively violating the oath: “And, behold, if the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in dances, then come ye out of the vineyards.” In commenting on this passage, Rabbi Kimchi speculated that the allusion was to an ancient festivity that would be held annually on one of the festivals, “possibly Yom Kippur.”

A prominent authority who rejected the tradition about dancing on Yom Kippur was Rabbi Israel Lipschutz of Danzig in the nineteenth century. It was clear to him that the supremely holy day is not an appropriate occasion for young Jewish ladies to be roaming outdoors trying to ensnare potential husbands. (On the other hand, the medieval Spanish scholar Rabbi Yom Tov Ishbili stressed that the white garments donned by the maidens symbolized the purity and wholesomeness of their motives.) 

In support of his interpretation, Rabbi Lipschutz pointed to the fact that Rabban Simeon ben Gamaliel in the Mishnah cited a verse from the Song of Songs: “Go forth, O ye daughters of Zion, and behold King Solomon with the crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals, and in the day of the gladness of his heart.” 

Now, according to rabbinic tradition, the Song of Songs must not be understood in its literal sense as a romantic song, but rather as a sublime allegory depicting the relationship between God and the people of Israel. Rabbi Lipschutz insisted therefore that Rabban Simeon’s statement must also be interpreted in this manner, as depicting the spiritual longing of the Jewish people who are being personified allegorically as a young maiden. She is imploring her beloved to overlook her sins and imperfections, and not to be taken in by the superficial charms of the rival heathen nations. With this in mind, our eager bachelorette urges the Almighty to appreciate her holiness and Israel’s unique pedigree as the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

And we hope this year that the lady will impress her prospective partner with her spirited and flawless footwork.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, September 9, 2018, p. 19.

• For further reading:
  • Abraham ben Solomon. Perush Neviʼim Rishonim. Edited by Yosef Kafaḥ. 1st ed. Ḳiryat Ono: Mekhon Mosheh le-ḥeḳer Mishnat ha-Rambam, 759. [Hebrew]
  • Albeck, Chanoch, ed. Shishah Sidré Mishnah. Vol. 2. 6 vols. Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv: Mosad Bialik and Dvir, 1959. [Hebrew]
  • Bergman, Yehuda. Ha-Folklor Ha-Yehudi: Yedi‘at ‘Am Yisra’el, Emunotav, Tekhunotav u-Minhagav. Jerusalem: R. Mass, 1961. [Hebrew]
  • Chorny, Joseph Judah. Sefer ha-Masaʻoth be-’Eretz Ḳauḳaz uva-Medinot ’asher me‘ever le-Ḳauḳaz u-Ḳetzat Medinot ’Aḥerot be-Negev Russia. St. Petersburg: Obshchestvo dli︠a︡ rasprostraneni︠a︡ prosvi︠e︡shcenii︠a︡ mezhdu Evrei︠a︡mi v Rossii, 1884. [Hebrew]
  • Margolis, Rebecca E. “A Tempest in Three Teapots: Yom Kippur Balls in London, New York, and Montreal.” Canadian Jewish Studies 9 (2001): 38–84.
  • Sassoon, David Solomon. Ohel David: (Ohel Dawid) Descriptive Catalogue of the Hebrew and Samaritan Manuscripts in the Sassoon Library, London. 2 vols. London: Oxford University Press, H. Milford, 1932.
  • Sperber, Daniel. Minhage Yisraʼel: Meḳorot ve-Toladot. Vol. 2. 8 vols. Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1991. [Hebrew]
  • Tabory, Joseph. Jewish Festivals in the Time of the Mishnah and Talmud. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1995. [Hebrew]

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Testing the Waters

by Eliezer Segal

I suppose that most of us have almost identical visual images of Noah’s ark. We envisage it as a large houseboat with rounded contours and an upper deck occupied mainly by African animals, especially the obligatory giraffe.

Although that depiction might be ubiquitous in cartoons and children’s toys, it hardly fits the description found in the Bible itself. In fact, the craft that Noah built was not designated as a ship or boat at all, but as a container or box (as indicated correctly by the English “ark”). It was a rectangular structure three hundred by fifty by thirty cubits (137 × 22.9 × 13.7 meters), tapering to a point towards its top (useful for draining the torrential rain). A statement in the midrash noted that these proportions were ideal for ensuring the stability of a vessel at rest in harbour; and this was consistent with the construction practices for Roman merchant galleys. The ark was, at any rate, comparable to the cubic craft constructed by Utnapishtim to survive the flood, as related in the Babylonian “Epic of Gilgamesh.”

Now, the Torah provides what seems at first glance to be a clear and precise timetable of the various stages of the rainfall, the rising and receding of the waters, and the ark’s eventual settling onto Mount Ararat. For some of the stages it counts the numbers of days, whereas in other instances it identifies them by the dates in the months. Unfortunately, months in biblical parlance did not have names, but were referred to by numbers, and it is not always clear how the counting is being done. Does the “seventh month” refer to a fixed calendar—and if so, would that be the normal biblical calendar beginning in the spring with Nissan, or the alternate system that begins with Tishri in the fall? Or is it just counting the months from the last-mentioned point in the narrative? 

The rabbis of the midrash provided a chronology according to which the divine judgment of that wicked generation extended for exactly twelve months. Perhaps this was regarded as a prototype for the sentences that are meted out to all of us sinners after death.

The Torah says that the water level at the flood’s peak was at least fifteen cubits. According to the rabbis’ calculations, the ark came to rest after the waters had receded only four cubits. From this premise they deduced that part of the craft—the bottom eleven cubits—must have been submerged under the water as it floated. This would prevent it from keeling over, and makes good nautical sense. It might reflect the sages’ familiarity with the structures of the boats in the Sea of Galilee or the Mediterranean; though it is not clear why they felt obliged to raise this technical matter in a religious commentary.

In the eleventh century in France, Rashi included a paraphrase of that complicated midrashic calculation in his commentary to the Torah, supplemented by his own justification for the rabbis’ identifications of the various months in the biblical chronology. This all seems perfectly reasonable. Rashi often elucidated scriptural passages in accordance with the ancient rabbinic interpretations. 

And yet when we advance to thirteenth century Catalonia, we find that Rabbi Moses ben Nahman (Nahmanides, Ramban) was not at all pleased with Rashi’s judgment in this matter. He frowned upon Rashi’s eclectic propensity to fluctuate between literal explanations and midrashic expositions. Invoking the talmudic proposition that “there are seventy facets to the Torah,” Nahmanides allowed himself to challenge Rashi (and the midrash), and argue for a different reading of the biblical text. With that in mind, he attacked Rashi for his inconsistency in attaching different meanings to the Torah’s various enumerations of months in the passage. 

Nahmanides also rejected the premise that water recedes at a steady, unchanging rate. This seemed unlikely, especially when applied to uneven mountainous terrain. Furthermore, Noah’s ark was a flat-bottom craft with its top section narrowing to a single cubit in width. If more than one third of its lower portion were submerged beneath the surface of the water, it would not be seaworthy.

A very similar exegetical disagreement emerged a few generations later, but this time in the domain of Christian exegesis. The Franciscan scholar Nicholas de Lyra was the author of the “Postilla litteralis super totam Bibliam,” which was completed in 1332 and went on to become the most widely read Christian commentary to the Bible. In his notes to the Noah narrative in Genesis, de Lyra boasted that, based on the dates and numbers provided in the scriptural account, it was possible to compute how much of the ark was submerged under the water. His calculation came to nine or thirteen cubits.

Almost a century later, in 1429, the learned Castilian expositor Pablo de Santa Maria of Burgos completed a work devoted to criticism of de Lyra’s interpretations: “Aditiones ad postillam Magistri Nicolai Lyra.” Pablo was particularly concerned to set distinct methodological boundaries between literal and allegorical readings. 

Pablo objected vehemently to de Lyra’s discussion about the receding of the waters and the dimensions of the ark’s submersion. For one thing, the trivial exercise in deduction served no useful purpose in steering the reader toward correct beliefs or practical moral behaviour—in effect, Pablo was claiming that Nicholas had gotten in over his head. Without going into precise argumentation, he claimed that the biblical text was open to other and better interpretations.

It is no coincidence that the controversy among these Christian exegetes bore such an uncanny similarity to the to the one between Rashi and Nahmanides. Nicholas de Lyra was a devoted admirer of Rashi, and courteous references to “Rabbi Salomon” appear on just about every page of his lengthy commentary. In Nicholas’ eyes, Rashi was the epitome of reasonable Jewish literal exegesis. It was probably through Nicholas’ subsequent influence on Christian biblical studies that the King James English translation came to incorporate a great deal of traditional Jewish interpretation.

As for Pablo de Santa Maria—this prominent Catholic theologian and exegete had begun his career as Rabbi Solomon Ha-Levi. He converted to Christianity in 1391, apparently out of sincere religious conviction; though many other Spanish Jews were accepting baptism on account of the large-scale massacres that were being perpetrated at that time. Pablo rose to important positions in the universities, the church and in the government of Castile, and he took an aggressive part in attempts to convert or persecute his former coreligionists.

It has been suggested that with respect to his exegetical approach, Pablo’s opposition was not so much to Nicholas de Lyra himself, but to his excessive reliance on Rashi. Or, to put it another way: even after abandoning his ancestral faith, Pablo continued to uphold the persistent scholarly rivalry between the French and Sephardic approaches to scriptural interpretation. The Sephardic authors had developed their own rigorous system of grammatical and literary methods for uncovering the original meanings of the sacred texts; and they often felt that it was unfair that Rashi should be treated by northern European Jews and Christians as the doyen of literal exegesis. Nicholas’ tacit reliance on Rashi’s analysis of the ark’s dimensions and nautical state (he seemed unaware that Rashi was in fact paraphrasing an earlier midrashic source) exemplified his own shortcomings, as well as Rashi’s failure to maintain the distinctions between literal and midrashic hermeneutical methodologies.

In choosing which of the competing interpretations is the better one, it is of course necessary to examine the specific merits and weaknesses of each, noting how well it accounts for the linguistic usages and the narrative logic of the scriptural text. 

And yet, as we saw in this example, there are often ulterior motives that influence exegetes in their work. These motives are not usually stated explicitly, and the authors might not even be consciously aware of them. 

But like the hulls of sailing craft, they are often lying beneath the surface.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, October 5, 2018, p. 19.

• For further reading:
  • Baer, Yitzhak. A History of the Jews in Christian Spain. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1992.
  • Elman, Yaakov. “‘It Is No Empty Thing’: Nahmanides and the Search for Omnisignificance.” The Torah U-Madda Journal 4 (1993): 1–83.
  • Geiger, Ari. “A Student and an Opponent. Nicholas of Lyra and His Jewish Sources.” In Nicolas De Lyre Franciscain Du XIV Siè Exégète et Théologien, edited by Gilbert Dahan and Louis Burle, 167–203. Collection Des Études Augustiniennes: Série Moyen Âge et Temps Modernes 48. Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 2011.
  • Hailperin, Herman. Rashi and the Christian Scholars. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1963.
  • Klepper, Deeana Copeland. The Insight of Unbelievers: Nicholas of Lyra and Christian Reading of Jewish Text in the Later Middle Ages. Jewish Culture and Contexts. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007.
  • Merrill, Eugene H. “Rashi, Nicholas De Lyra, and Christian Exegesis.” The Westminster Theological Journal 38, no. 1 (1975): 66–79.
  • Milikowsky, Chaim Joseph, ed. Seder Olam: Critical Edition, Commentary, and Introduction. Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi Press: Rabbi Moses and Amaliah Rosen Foundation, 2013. [Hebrew]
  • Netanyahu, Benzion. The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth Century Spain. 1st edition. New York: Random House, 1995.
  • Sarna, Nahum M. Understanding Genesis. 1st ed. Heritage of Biblical Israel 1. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1966.
  • Twersky, Isadore, ed. “Open Rebuke and Concealed Love: Nahmanides and the Andalusian Tradition.” In Rabbi Moses Naḥmanides (Ramban): Explorations in His Religious and Literary Virtuosity, 11–34. Texts and Studies of the Harvard University Center for Jewish Studies 1. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983.
  • Smalley, Beryl. The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941.
  • Sperber, Daniel. Nautica Talmudica. Bar-Ilan Studies in Near Eastern Languages and Culture. Ramat-Gan, Israel: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1986.
  • Yisraeli, Yosi. “A Christianized Sephardic Critique of Rashi’s Peshaṭ in Pablo de Santa Maria’s Additiones Ad Postillam Nicolai de Lyra.” In Medieval Exegesis and Religious Difference: Commentary, Conflict, and Community in the Premodern Mediterranean, edited by Ryan Szpiech, First edition., 128–41. Bordering Religions: Concepts, Conflicts, and Conversations. New York: Fordham University Press, 2015.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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The Unkindness of Strangers

by Eliezer Segal

According to the story told in the book of Genesis, the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were condemned to destruction because the outcry against them was “so great and their sin so grievous.” Not even a bare quorum of ten righteous persons could be found to justify averting the catastrophe.

The Torah does not tell us what exactly were those grievous sins that warranted the cities’ devastation by brimstone and fire. In English parlance, as in most Christian-based traditions, the event generated the word “sodomy” to designate sexual offenses, inferred from the passage where the men of the city surrounded Lot’s house and threatened his angelic visitors: “Where are the men which came in to thee this night? Bring them out unto us, that we may know them!”

As appalling as that episode may be, it was not what defined Sodom’s immorality in most ancient Hebrew traditions. The prophets of Israel frequently invoked Sodom as a benchmark for their own people’s moral failings and as an object lesson for the ruin that Israel was inviting upon itself.

Ezekiel gave the most explicit listing of those sins: “Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom: pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.”

That city, which had enjoyed the luxuries and indolence that come from material affluence, became insensitive to the plight of the disadvantaged.

This was the evil that had justified Sodom’s annihilation—and according to the prophet, the complacent Judeans of his generation deserved no better.

With an insight that sounds disturbingly contemporary, a rabbinic tradition observed how Sodom’s wealthy gentry resented having to share their wealth with shabby immigrant newcomers. 

A passage in the Talmud relates several anecdotes about the injustices that prevailed in Sodom. Most of those stories sound like comical folk tales about a topsy-turvy legal system in which corrupt magistrates impose penalties on innocent victims, though in some cases a resourceful trickster (notably Abraham’s servant Eliezer) was able to turn the tables on the reprobates.

In keeping with the biblical sources, several of the Talmud’s tales are about the mistreatment of guests, visitors, widows and orphans. The collection includes an adaptation of the well-known Greek legend about Procrustes, the fiendish bandit who forced guests to fit into his one-size-fits-none iron bed even if it required painful stretching or amputating their limbs.

The Sodomite mentality is depicted somewhat differently in the discourse of rabbinic law and ethics. Various situations were discussed in which one party asks another for a favour that would benefit him without imposing any disadvantage on the other. For example, if somebody has taken up residence in a house whose owner had no intention of living in it himself or renting it out, can the owner claim payment from the squatter? Or: how should we deal with a case where Reuben intends to sell a field that borders on Simeon’s property, and Simeon requests that his offer be given priority because it would be especially convenient for him to be cultivating a single continuous property. For Reuben to refuse this kind of request—apparently out of spite or meanness—is stigmatized by the Talmud as “the standard of Sodom”; and the sages discuss whether a Jewish court can compel Reuben to accede to Simeon’s request.

Everyone seems to agree that such coercion is legitimate in principle. The only quibbles that occupy the scholars are about how to measure the benefits or disadvantages to the respective litigants in particular cases. The general tendency among subsequent authorities has been to recognize even small, temporary or hypothetical annoyances as overriding the consideration of “the standard of Sodom.”

Although the civil justice system in modern Israel draws most of its legal precedents from the British Common Law tradition, the 1980 “Foundations of Law Act” authorized the courts to give consideration to “the principles of freedom, justice, equity, and peace of Israel’s heritage.” It is interesting to note that several judicial decisions have invoked the talmudic rule about using compulsion against the “standard of Sodom” in order to promote a kind of natural justice, even when this seemed opposed to the prevailing Common Law approach.

A more theoretical or psychological perspective on the phenomenon is found in the Mishnah tractate Avot (“Ethics of the Fathers”). The Mishnah enumerates different human attitudes towards personal property, ranging from the extreme magnanimity of one who declares “what is mine is yours and what is yours is yours” to the rapacious “what is mine is mine and what is yours is mine.” After noting that the stance of “what is mine is mine and what is yours is yours” is that of a normal person, the Mishnah records a dissenting opinion that in fact “this is the standard of Sodom”!Not surprisingly, this disagreement generated quite a bit of discussion among Jewish thinkers and commentators.

It might come as a surprise to many of us that most Jewish thinkers favoured the second view in the Mishnah, and had difficulty justifying the first opinion. Typical of such writers was the thirteenth-century halakhist and moralist Rabbi Jonah of Gerona. While he can readily accept that a person’s reluctance to be on the receiving end of generosity is consistent with the counsel in the Book of Proverbs that “he that hateth gifts shall live,” he finds it inconceivable that the sages would rank a Jew who refuses to give charity as anything less than wicked, especially in light of Ezekiel’s explicit condemnation of such persons. 

Rabbi Jonah therefore proposed that the Mishnah was not speaking about persons who refrain entirely from any charitable giving (these misers are unquestionably to be stigmatized for their Sodom-like baseness), but rather about those who have to force themselves to be generous against their natural inclinations. The underlying question is whether we judge such people negatively, on the basis of their uncaring feelings (which will lead to widespread social evils if they are not duly criticized)—or respectfully, in deference to their dutiful, albeit reluctant, actions.Rabbi Simeon Duran of Algiers argued that the Mishnah was not speaking about charitable giving at all, but about relations among social equals. A misanthropic insistence on complete self-sufficiency might be an acceptable ideal (as exemplified by some righteous figures in the Bible) provided that one does perform some acts of benevolence. However, the author of the Mishnah’s second opinion was worried that such behaviour might develop into the severely anti-social attitudes associated with the citizens of Sodom. 

The “to each his own” attitude is indeed the norm of classical laissez-faire political thought, according to which a person’s right to honestly earned possessions is sacred and the Powers-That-Be should have little or no business redistributing such assets. If I choose to be generous with my wealth, that is my own decision, but it cannot be subject to judicial coercion. In our culturally diverse world, most of us are understandably wary of governments forcing their morals or beliefs down our throats.

On the other hand, our world appears to have swerved to the opposite extreme. We have come to believe that any act that is not actually punishable by law is socially acceptable; and there is no longer any level of personal disgrace that would necessitate a politician’s resignation or dismissal.

Such ethical dilemmas, like the human situation itself, are inherently complex and subject to varying circumstances. They certainly do not lend themselves to homogeneous solutions—and they should not be forced into inflexible Procrustean beds.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, October 19, 2018, p. 9.

• For further reading:
  • Baer, Yitzhak. A History of the Jews in Christian Spain. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1992.
  • Elon, Menachem. Jewish Law: History, Sources, Principles. 3 vols. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1994.
  • Englard, Izhak. “The Problem of Jewish Law in a Jewish State.” Israel Law Review 3, no. 2 (1968): 254–78.
  • Epstein-Halevi, Elimelech. Sha‘arei Ha-’Aggadah. Tel-Aviv: Dvir, 1982. [Hebrew]
  • Ginzberg, Louis. Legends of the Jews. Translated by Henrietta Szold. 2nd ed. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 2003.
  • Lichtenstein, Aharon. “‘Kofin Al Middat Sedom’: Compulsory Altruism?” Edited by Reuven Ziegler. Translated by David Strauss. Alei Etzion: A Torah Periodical of Yeshivat Har Etzion 16, [Special Issue in Honor of Harav Aharon Lichtenstein] (2009): 31–70.
  • Segal, Eliezer. “A Funny Thing Happened on My Way to Sodom.” Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Period 46, no. 1 (2015): 103–29.
  • Shilo, Shmuel. “Kofin Al Midat S’dom: Jewish Law’s Concept of Abuse of Rights.” Israel Law Review 15, no. 1 (1980): 49–78.
  • Ta-Shma, Israel M. “Rabbi Jonah Gerondi: Spirituality and Leadership.” In Creativity and Tradition: Studies in Medieval Rabbinic Scholarship, Literature and Thought, 213–27. Cambridge MA: Distributed by Harvard University Press for Harvard University Center for Jewish Studies, 2007.
  • Zevin, Shelomoh Josef. “Zeh Neheneh veZeh Lo Ḥaser.” Edited by Shelomoh Josef Zevin. Talmudic Encyclopedia. Jerusalem: Talmudic Encyclopedia Institute, 1978. [Hebrew]

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My email address is: [email protected]

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It’s My Party—and You’ll Cry If I Want to

by Eliezer Segal

One of the happiest expressions in the vocabulary of Hebrew-speakers, especially the young and young-at-heart, is “yom huledet”—birthday. The term has a long history, making its debut in the book of Genesis in the context of the Joseph story. During his incarceration in the Egyptian dungeon, the young Hebrew interpreted the dreams of his fellow prisoners, the chief butler and chief baker; and then, “it came to pass the third day, which was Pharaoh’s birthday, that he made a feast unto all his servants: and he lifted up the head of the chief butler and of the chief baker among his servants.”

The occasion has all the ingredients of a familiar birthday celebration, including a party and the fulfilment of wishes—though I suppose that an absolute monarch like Pharaoh could have his wishes fulfilled on every day of the year. All that’s missing is a cake adorned with candles and icing and a game of Pin-the-Tail-on-Seth-Typhon-the Donkey-Headed-God. 

Though for modern Israelis the words “yom huledet” roll-easily off the tongue, the biblical usage is far from simple. Grammarians point to its incongruous status as a passive infinitive, which should not take an object; and yet Pharaoh’s name is introduced here by the Hebrew particle “et” that usually indicates a direct object. This could imply that the birth that was being celebrated was not that of the current Pharaoh, but perhaps that of a newborn heir to the throne. Indeed, the grammarian and lexicographer Rabbi David Kimhi seemed undecided as to whether Pharaoh was marking the birth of a son or an annual commemoration of his own birth. Rashi analyzed the wording at considerable length in order to defend the interpretation that this was Pharaoh’s own birthday party. Towards the end of his comment he explained the syntactic logic, and he provided examples of similar usages in biblical Hebrew.

The Greek Septuagint translation has “the day of Pharaoh’s geneseos.״ The same Greek word is used by the Midrash Genesis Rabbah and in some of the Aramaic Targums. Rashi also equates yom huledet with the term “genesia” that appears in rabbinic texts. The Mishnah contains a list of days on which Jews should avoid doing business with pagans, so as not to give them occasion for rejoicing or expressing gratitude to their idols. One of the items on the list is “the king’s genesia day.” 

The Greek word “genesia” is well known from classical literature. It was mentioned by Herodotus in connection with the festivities that were observed by dutiful Greek sons in honor of their deceased fathers—evidently on their birthdays. However, there is no lack of instances where that word refers to birthdays of the living. The first-century Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria employed a similar word (genesthia) to describe the seventh day of the creation as a universal celebration of the “birthday of the world.” Now, the creator of the universe, we must not forget, is normally portrayed as its supreme monarch.

The question thus arises, whether birthday celebrations were perceived in the classical sources as an exclusive prerogative of emperors and pharaohs, or whether they could be enjoyed by commoners as well.

In this connection it is significant that the sages in the Mishnah associated the forbidden imperial birthdays with the burning of corpses. In Roman practice this ritual was part of the process of “Apotheosis” by which an emperor assumed divine status upon his death. His body and a wax effigy were burned on a tall funeral pyre, from the top of which an eagle was dispatched to carry the monarch’s soul to its celestial abode. In subsequent years his birthday would be commemorated annually in solemn ceremonies. Many of the pagan practices and objects forbidden by rabbinic law were those associated with the cult of emperor worship, for which the talmudic sages had an intense distaste.

Non-royal birthdays are mentioned less frequently in classical documents. Nevertheless, there exists a considerable literature of Latin birthday greetings addressed to the authors’ social superiors (and at times just to friends), invoking blessings and gratitude upon them and their guardian spirits (“genius”; in Hebrew: “mazal”). We learn from these texts about the cultic rituals—including sacrifices, libations, incense, wreaths and ritual cakes—that accompanied the patron’s “dies natalis.” Indeed, such religiously observed birthdays appear to have been an important component of the patronage system that was central to the Roman social structure.

A tyrant’s behaviour at his party could be—well, tyrannical. True, Pharaoh’s birthday feast proved to be a propitious step in Joseph’s rise to success, but I doubt that the chief baker would have seen it quite that way as he was being led to his execution. 

Several of those ancient royal celebrations involved disastrous consequences for Jews. Antiochos IV’s birthday was the occasion for the decree in which he compelled his subjects, on pain of death, to participate in the cult of Bacchus in the Temple.The Roman general (later emperor) Titus Flavius, the destroyer of Jerusalem, made the birthdays of his brother and father occasions for the deadly party games for which his nation was infamous: condemning thousands of Jews to horrible fates in the arenas by ferocious beasts, gladiatorial combat and other forms of suffering and death.

And then there was the unfortunate case of the itinerant preacher John the Baptist who provoked the rage of Herod Antipas, tetrarch of the Galilee, by challenging the legitimacy of his marriage to his sister-in-law Herodias. According to the Christian account, it was at the ruler’s birthday celebration (genesia) that Herodias’s daughter Salomé performed the dance that induced him to grant her the fulfilment of a wish “up to half my kingdom”—which turned out (at her mother’s suggestion) to be the delivery of John’s head on a platter (in a manner that might have been meant to evoke Pharaoh’s “lifting up” the head of the chief baker).

It appears from the discussions of several later Jewish interpreters that birthday celebrations were largely a privilege reserved for royalty. This seems to be the view of the fifteenth-century Yemenite exegete Rabbi Zechariah the Physician who mentioned the widespread custom of holding a feast on the king’s birthday.

And who says that birthdays have to be limited to once a year? Another Yemenite scholar, Nethanel ben Isaiah, the fourteenth-century compiler of the book Ma’or Afelah, wrote that “kings used to hold feasts on the same day of the week on which they were born. For example, whoever was born on Saturday would make a feast every Saturday.” Living in an Islamic environment, Nethanel had little knowledge of Christianity (which he dismissed as idolatrous), and he inferred that their observance of Sunday as a weekly holy day was because it was the commemoration of Jesus’s birthday. (In reality, the Sunday “Lord’s Day” derived its sanctity from being the day of his resurrection.)

There were nonetheless some commentators who were aware that birthdays could also be celebrated by commoners. Rabbi Menahem ben Solomon, the twelfth-century Italian author of the “Sekhel Ṭov” commentary to the Torah, remarked with reference to Pharaoh’s birthday that “Most people have a fondness for the day when they complete a year of their life, the anniversary of their birth. They are happy about it and hold a feast.” 

In his ethical will, Rabbi Israel Lipschutz (1782-1860) commanded all of his seven children to send each other congratulatory greetings on every birthday—and he made sure to list all their dates. “And it goes without saying that all greetings must be acknowledged. No exceptions except for unavoidable circumstances.”

He made no mention of piñatas or bouncy castles.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, December 14, 2018, p. 9.

• For further reading:
  • Argetsinger, Kathryn. “Birthday Rituals: Friends and Patrons in Roman Poetry and Cult.” Classical Antiquity 11, no. 2 (1992): 175–93.
  • Blaufuss, Johannes. Römische Feste und Feiertage nach den Traktaten über fremden Dienst (Aboda zara) in Mischna, Tosefta, Jerusalemer und babylonischen Talmud. Beilage zum Jahresberichte des Königl. Neuen Gymnasiums in Nürnberg. Nürnberg: J. Stich, 1909.
  • Deblytzki, Serayah. “Ba‘al Tif’eret Yisra’el u- Ṣva’ato.” Hama’yan 11, no. 4 (1971): 28–44. [Hebrew]
  • Elmslie, Alexander Leslie, ed. The Mishna on Idolatry. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 1911.
  • Krauss, Samuel. Paras Ṿe-Romi Ba-Talmud Uva-Midrashim. Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1948. [Hebrew]
  • Lachs, Samuel Tobias. “A Note on Genesia in Abodah Zara I,3.” The Jewish Quarterly Review 58, no. 1 (1967): 69–71.
  • Rosenthal, David. “Mishna Aboda Zara — A Critical Edition with an Introduction.” The Hebrew University, 1981.
  • Schürer, Emil. “17. The Sons of Herod.” In A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus, edited by Géza Vermès, Fergus Millar, and Martin Goodman, 2:10–149. London, New Delhi, New York, Sydney: Bloomsbury T. & T. Clark, 2014.
  • Ta-Shma, Israel M. “On Birthdays in Judaism.” Zion 67, no. 1 (2002): 19–24. [Hebrew]
  • Ulmer, Rivka, and Brigitte Kern-Ulmer. “Visions of Egypt in Midrash: ‘Pharaoh’s Birthday’ and the ‘Nile Festival’.” In Biblical Interpretation in Judaism and Christianity, edited by Isaac Kalimi and Peter J. Haas, 52–78. Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 439. New York: T & T Clark, 2006.
  • Urbach, Efraim Elimelech. “The Rabbinical Laws of Idolatry in the Second and Third Centuries in the Light of Archaeological and Historical Facts.” Israel Exploration Journal 9, no. 3 (1959): 149–65.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Speed Demon

by Eliezer Segal

Jewish law establishes limitations about where and how far one may travel and carry on the Sabbaths or holy days. These laws are rooted in the passage in the book of Exodus that tells of the miraculous mannah, the “bread from heaven” that nourished the Israelites during their sojourn in the desert. Mannah would not materialize on the Sabbath, and the people were admonished not to leave their dwellings to look for it: “Abide ye every man in his place, let no man go out of his place on the seventh day.” What may have originated as a warning to trust the divine word was understood by the Jewish legal tradition as a categorical prohibition against traveling beyond a specified distance from one’s place of residence or carrying objects between private and public domains.

Rabbi Ḥanina in the Talmud raised the intriguing question of whether the legal distinctions between the different domains apply only on the surface level; or do they extend above-ground—beyond the elevation of ten hand-breaths that normally defines the upper limit of a private domain? What was at that time a trifling instance of unrealistic rabbinic casuistry would later take on practical relevance for dealing with air rights in our age of aviation and drones.

In its effort to resolve Rabbi Ḥanina’s query, the Talmud cited an incident that occurred in the academies of fourth-century Babylonia. One Saturday morning, a collection of seven statements was expounded before Rav Ḥisda in the town of Sura, and towards the end of that day the exact same statements were cited before Rava in Pumbedita (today’s Fallujah), some 175 km away! The best explanation that the rabbis could produce for that instantaneous transfer of the teachings over such a large distance was by postulating supernatural channels of communication. 

Jewish lore knows of one prominent figure who travels between the earthly and heavenly domains, namely the prophet Elijah. Scripture does not tell of Elijah’s death, but rather of his ascent to heaven in a whirlwind with a chariot of fire. Rabbinic literature relates many conversations between the prophet and Jewish sages, and it was therefore not entirely unreasonable for them to suppose that Elijah had couriered the teachings from Sura to Pumbedita. Since he was of course observant of Jewish law, he could not have walked beyond the permitted limits. Therefore, they initially assumed that he flew the distance (perhaps in a chariot or whirlwind). However, this explanation only works if we accept the premise that there is not any Sabbath no-fly zone in effect above ground level. This reasoning would appear to answer Rabbi Ḥanina’s question.

However, the Talmud rejects that argument. The Elijah hypothesis is not the only plausible way of accounting for the same-day delivery of Rav Ḥisda’s seven statements. The ancient rabbis knew of at least one other figure who could have traversed the distance: “Perhaps it was Joseph the demon who reported them!” Rashi explained that the demon was not subject to the objections leveled against Elijah because he was not Sabbath-observant.

The mention of a demon in an ancient Jewish text is hardly remarkable, since until quite recently virtually every known human culture shared the belief in invisible beings who have to be controlled or conciliated (In our more scientifically advanced civilization we assign similar roles to space aliens, viruses and Google). The Iranian heritage that held sway in Babylonia at that time was particularly rich in its mythology of subversive and malevolent “daevas,” and this is vividly reflected in the Talmud. 

It is nonetheless interesting that the supernatural creature mentioned in this story bears a Hebrew name, and that the venues of his activities were rabbinic academies. It is not clear whether he was motivated by a helpful desire to advance the spread of Torah learning, or if he was colluding in a kind of plagiaristic hacking into proprietary Suran knowledge.

This is not the only place in the Talmud that mentions Joseph the demon. For the most part, he appears as a sympathetic figure, one who makes use of his demonic connections to assist the Jewish sages. Thus, Rav Pappa and Rav quote him as a source of practical first-hand advice about how to protect oneself from the machinations of evil spirits who are ready to attack the unfortunate persons who committed the deadly blunder of imbibing or performing other actions in even-numbered units. 

Jewish rationalists were understandably reluctant to accept this kind of story at face value. The thirteenth-century Provençal scholar Rabbi Menaḥem Meiri asserted that the Talmud’s reference to Elijah was purely figurative; it alluded to a contemporary teacher—albeit one who was capable of leaping between distant towns like the biblical prophet. Similarly, for Meiri Joseph was not literally a demon. Like all such instances in rabbinic literature, that epithet was being employed here as a rhetorical euphemism to indicate a Jew who violated the Sabbath, and perhaps to contrast him with the proverbial “Joseph who honours the Sabbath,” the devout hero of a well-known talmudic tale.

Rabbi Judah the Pious of Regensburg, the foremost figure in the medieval mystical “Ḥasidei Ashkenaz” movement, insisted that not only do demons believe in the Torah, but they even scrupulous in their observance of all the rabbinic laws. When challenged as to how Joseph was able to transmit his information from Sura to Pumbedita without transgressing the Sabbath laws, Rabbi Judah explained that Joseph in fact never left Pumbedita, where he received the data from a fellow demon stationed in Sura who communicated it to him by means of a “long hollow tablet.” 

I am not sure how exactly we are supposed to visualize that ancient communication device. Apparently Rabbi Judah had in mind an ultra-long tube capable of conveying and sustaining a voice over vast distances (He was probably not aware of the actual distance involved). In any case, Rabbi Judah’s disciple Rabbi Isaac Or Zarua‘ challenged his teacher’s explanation, pointing out that as long as there was no Sabbath desecration involved, then there was no reason for the Talmud to abandon its initial hypothesis that it was Elijah who conveyed the information to Pumbedita.

Our knowledge of talmudic Judaism in Babylonia derives almost exclusively from the information contained in the Talmud itself, with very few external archeological artifacts. An interesting exception to this rule is the phenomenon of “incantation bowls.” These are clay bowls whose interior surfaces are inscribed with magical texts in Aramaic, usually written in a continuous spiral beginning from the outer rim. These were intended to restrain or expel hostile demonic beings. The bowls would be placed upside-down so that they would symbolically entrap their supernatural targets. Thousands of these bowls have been unearthed, mostly around Nippur. Most of them are of Jewish provenance, and their wording is often modeled after Jewish legal formulas, especially those that are employed in documents of divorce or excommunications. There are certain rabbis whose names are standardly invoked in the incantations, but these are usually legendary figures who lived long before the time when the bowls were produced. 

However, one of those bowls—after listing an impressive roster of figures who endorse the ban, continues: “…And may you be under the ban of Rav Joseph the demon. And may you be under the ban of all demons and dark ones that are in Babylonia.” 

For the scribe who composed this incantation, Joseph the demon was not merely an observant Jew (as would later be claimed by Rabbi Judah the Pious), but he even qualified for a rabbinic ordination and the title “Rav”—Rabbi. Evidently the two callings were not regarded as mutually contradictory.

And his sermons might not have been original, but they were probably delivered very quickly.

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• First Publication:
  • The Jewish Free Press, Calgary, November 9, 2018, p. 13.

• For further reading:
  • Halbertal, Moshe. Between Torah and Wisdom: Rabbi Menachem Ha-Meiri and the Maimonidean Halakhists in Provence. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2000. [Hebrew]
  • Harari, Yuval. Early Jewish Magic: Research, Method, Sources. Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, Ben Zvi Institute for the Study of Jewish Communities in the East, Yad Ben-Zvi, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2010. [Hebrew]
  • ———. Jewish Magic before the Rise of Kabbalah. 1st edition. Raphael Patai Series in Jewish Folklore and Anthropology. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2017.
  • Harviainen, Tipani. An Aramaic Incantation Bowl from Borsippa: Another Specimen of Eastern Aramaic “Koiné.” Studia Orientalia Edited by the Finnish Oriental Society. Helsinki: Federation of Finnish Learned Societies, 1981.
  • Ilan, Tal. “Rav Joseph the Demon in the Rabbinic Academy in Babylonia: Another Connection between the Babylonian Talmud and the Magic Bowls.” In Let the Wise Listen and Add to Their Learning (Prov. 1:5): Festschrift for Günter Stemberger on the Occasion of His 75th Birthday, edited by Günter Stemberger, Constanza Cordoni, and Gerhard Langer, 381–94. Studia Judaica 90. Berlin ; Boston: De Gruyter, 2016.
  • Levene, Dan. Jewish Aramaic Curse Texts from Late-Antique Mesopotamia: “May These Curses Go Out and Flee.”Magical and Religious Literature of Late Antiquity 2. Leiden: Brill, 2014.
  • Lindbeck, Kristen H. Elijah and the Rabbis: Story and Theology. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.
  • Montgomery, James Alan, ed. Aramaic Incantation Texts from Nippur. Philadelphia: University Museum, 1913.
  • Secunda, Shai. The Iranian Talmud : Reading the Bavli in Its Sasanian Context. 1st ed. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.
  • Shaked, Shaul. “Form and Purpose in Aramaic Spells: Some Jewish Themes [the Poetics of Magic Texts].” In Officina Magica: Essays on the Practice of Magic in Antiquity, 1–30. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005.
  • Shaked, Shaul, James Nathan Ford, and Siam Bhayro. Aramaic Bowl Spells: Jewish Babylonian Aramaic Bowls. Magical and Religious Literature of Late Antiq­uity 20. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2013.
  • Steinsaltz, Adin. The Essential Talmud. Translated by Chaya Galai. New York: Basic Books, 1976.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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