Home Delivery

by Eliezer Segal

If you are one of those folks who were once resistant to online shopping, and preferred brick-and-mortar shops staffed by flesh-and-blood salespersons (eager to offer extended warranties and loyalty cards), it is more than likely that your attitudes were significantly impacted by the advent of social distancing, when visits to the mall became hazardous ventures.

Human societies have long offered some measure of choice between visiting a shop to buy merchandise or having a seller ring your doorbell. Biblical Hebrew had a special root to denote traveling salesmen:RKhL— a word that is most frequently employed in its secondary metaphoricpurchaser sense of tale-bearer or gossip. Rashi noted how a gossip, like a peddler, makes the rounds from house to house, digging up dirt to relay eagerly to the neighbours. 

Rabbinic tradition related that at the outset of the Second Commonwealth era, Ezra the Scribe enacted a decree that allowed peddlers to circulate in towns and villages. The” Talmud understood that their primary wares consisted of cosmetics and beauty aids for the benefit of the ladies who enjoyed few opportunities to do their shopping outside their houses. Such lightweight products or samples could be conveniently carried from door to door by the Avon men of yore.

The ancient peddler had an unsavoury reputation reminiscent of the traveling salesmen of more recent humour. Thus, as an example of behaviour pointing to marital infidelity, the Talmud mentions a case where a woman is observed adjusting her apron as a peddler sneaks out the back door. Rav Joseph quoted approvingly an admonition from the apocryphal book of Ben Sira: “Many were the wounds of the spice-peddler which led him on to lewdness.” Rashi understood that Ben Sira was warning the peddler against being seduced by a desperate housewife, lest he be assaulted by her enraged husband. Other interpreters regarded it as advice to the husband to deny entry to the potential home-wrecker. 

The Talmud tells of some prominent rabbinic scholars who earned their livings from door-to-door sales, likely out of economic necessity. Though it was generally understood that Ezra’s decree was only designed to protect peddlers from having their existing franchises closed down, Torah scholars were granted the exceptional privilege of establishing new sales territories lest anxiety about their livelihoods distract them from their learning.

For the most part, it was the nature or the scale of the merchandise that determined whether customers would prefer to make their purchases in a shop, in the street, or from a door-to-door salesman. The diverse options were able to coexist if conditions were appropriate.

However, as in our own days, situations arose when established shopkeepers felt threatened by the initiatives taken by enterprising sellers who were bypassing the shops in order to bring their products directly into the purchasers’ houses.

Such a case was dealt with by Rabbi Elijah Mizraḥi of Constantinople, a foremost halakhic authority of the Ottoman empire in the early sixteenth century. An inquiry was directed to him by Rabbi Abraham Solomon Treves regarding Jews in “the holy congregation of Jerusalem” who were covertly peddling merchandise, including stolen goods, in violation of government orders. (It is possible that “Jerusalem” was being used, as was customary in the literature of the time, as a generic name for an unidentified locality.) Those black marketers did not operate out of physical premises, but rather would circulate through the streets of the city from house to house. Soon the established sellers of clothing and pepper (these were among the main commodities traded in that locality) convened an assembly at which they protested before the communal authorities that too many consumers were availing themselves of the peddlers’ goods, wtherby seriously encroaching seriously on the profits of the shopkeepers. 

The community’s elders realized that perpetuating an illicit retail channel was not only causing economic harm to the veteran Jewish merchants, but was also likely to bring the community into disfavour with the Ottoman government. Therefore they were persuaded to issue an ordinance that prohibited commercial activity on the streets or in customers’ houses. Deliveries could be made to private residences only if they were explicitly requested at the time of the purchase. Similar regulations were said to have been adopted in Hebron and perhaps Salonika. 

The Jerusalem agreement was to be automatically renewed every year unless explicitly discontinued. It was not long before a representative of the street vendors was challenging the authority, the legality and the fairness of the shopkeepers’ pact. In support of his position he cited the heart-rending precedent of a certain new arrival to the community who had been forced out of his original peddling job and drifted to a criminal gang, which caused considerable harm to the community. The protesters argued that If the community was really concerned about avoiding frictions with the government, then it could restrict the scope of its prohibition to stolen goods and to commodities that were subject to official controls. 

At this point the local squabble had to be turned over to world-renowned rabbis to unravel the conflicting arguments.

In more recent times peddling became a stereotypical occupation for unskilled Jews. Many of the newcomers who arrived from central Europe in the immigration wave of the mid-nineteenth century (or their children) began roaming rural America as lowly peddlers; and some of these— like Isidor and Nathan Strauss, Adam Gimbel, Andrew Saks, Carrie and Al Neiman and Herbert Marcus—rose from rags to riches to become the founders of eminent department store empires.

In traditional societies there was not much doubt that it was far more dignified for sellers to work from their own shops, which the shoppers must patronize to make their purchases, than to prowl the streets hunting for customers. Social distancing, online catalogues and drone deliveries are radically changing the rules of the game in ways that are not yet clear.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I think a package was just dropped onto my doorstep…

---

• First Publication:
  • The Alberta Jewish News, Edmonton and Calgary, May 25, 2020, p. 10.

• For further reading:
  • Beer, Moshe.The Babylonian Amoraim: Aspects of Economic Life. Ramat-Gan, 1982. [Hebrew]
  • David, Abraham.To Come to the Land: Immigration and Settlement in Sixteenth-Century Eretz-Israel. Translated by Dena Ordan. Judaic Studies Series. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1999.
  • Diner, Hasia R. “Road Food: Jewish Peddlers During the Great Jewish Migration and Their New World Customers.”Quaderni Storici, no. 151 (2016): 23-49.
  • Ne’eman, Judah. “HaRokhel Bimei HaBayit haRishon vehaRokhel Bimei haBayit haSheni, haMishnah vehaTalmud: Mah Beineihem?”Sinai, no. 150 (2016): 32-37. [Hebrew]
  • Ovadiah, Abraham. “Rabbi Eliyahu Mizraḥi.” InKetavim Nivḥarim, by Abraham Ovadiah, 43-62. Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1942. [Hebrew]

---

My email address is: [email protected]

Overstaying Your Welcome

by Eliezer Segal

The Talmud tells of a visit by Rav Huna bar Nathan to the home of Rav Naḥman bar Isaac. During his visit, the guest did a number of things that dismayed his hosts. For instance, when offered an honourable seat at dinner, he accepted it immediately without the self-effacing refusals that were considered the appropriate etiquette for such offers. 

When asked afterwards to explain his apparent violations of the norms of civility, Rav Huna was able to cite reasons or proof-texts to justify each one. As regards his immediate acceptance of his seat he cited a rabbinic tradition that “You should do whatever the master of the house tells you to do—except ‘leave!’.”

As Rashi remarked, a version of that tradition is found in the rabbinic treatise  Derekh Eretz Rabbah , an ancient guide to social etiquette. In that work, the advice about following the host’s directives was attached to an anecdote about guests who dropped in on Simeon ben Antipatros. When Simeon insisted that they partake of food and drink, they excused themselves by taking a vow in the name of the Torah not to eat anything. Eventually, however, they relented—and the host punished them with lashes for violating their vow. 

The report of Simeon’s cruel treatment of the visitors provoked indignation among the sages who were unaware of the full circumstances of the affair. Rabbi Joshua volunteered to investigate. Arriving at the scene, he exchanged polite greetings with Simeon ben Antipatros, who offered him lodging. Rabbi Joshua discerned no sign of the cruelty that had been imputed to his host. As he was making his departure, upset that he had failed in his mission, he turned and asked Simeon directly why he had been treated with gracious hospitality whereas the previous visitors had been flogged. The host explained that they had desecrated a vow made in the name of the Torah, citing a tradition of the sages that this grave transgression is punishable by lashes. Rabbi Joshua assented vigorously that they deserved to be punished additionally for violating the rabbis’ directives! (According to one manuscript, however, Rabbi Joshua imposed lashes on the host.)

Now this text is extremely puzzling. How does the story serve as an illustration of the need to obey the host’s instructions? After all, the guests who accepted the invitation to eat and drink were ultimately whipped! 

Several commentators struggled to resolve the difficulties. For example, Rabbi Yom Tov Lipmann Heller suggested plausibly that what had induced the guests to make the troublesome vow was their determination to resist Simeon’s urgings; but they could have avoided their predicament altogether had they simply consented from the outset to partake of the offered food.

The attention of more recent commentators has focused principally on a different aspect of Rav Huna bar Nathan’s statement, namely the clause about ignoring a host’s command to leave. This stipulation seems irrelevant to the context, and its meaning is obscure. Rabbi Samuel Edels (Maharsha) attested that he had seen a carefully edited text of the Talmud in which the problematic words were deleted, and noted that Rashi says nothing about them. He agreed that this makes sense. After all, “is it really reasonable to command a person to remain in a house in defiance of the master’s objections?” Indeed, the phrase is missing from almost all the Talmud manuscripts and is not mentioned or discussed by any of the medieval commentators. 

Maharsha proposed that the problematic words might be interpreted in the sense of “Do whatever the master of the house tells you, for as long as you are dwelling with him you are obliged to submit to his instructions. However, as soon as he tells you to leave, he is no longer considered your host and you are no longer required to listen to him.”

Rabbi Joel Sirkes offered a cogent interpretation of Rav Huna’s advice, as setting a limit to the obedience expected from a guest: As long as it is an activity that is performed in the house, then it is reasonable, but to send a guest to conduct one’s business in the marketplace would be excessive and demeaning. Other authorities linked it to a passage elsewhere in the Talmud where it stipulates that a guest should remain in his lodging until the innkeeper actually resorts to violence or starts throwing out the guest’s clothing. 

A remarkable insight by Rabbi Judah Leib Alter in his Sefat Emet ;connected the statement to the tragic legend of Kamṣa and Bar Kamṣa in which the ejection of an unwanted guest from a banquet set off a chain of events that degenerated into the destruction of the Second Temple. Originally the rabbis’ taught that guests should leave at the host’s insistence, but this was emended in the wake of that catastrophe, and this gave rise to a revision of the Talmud text so as to advise against leaving a social gathering. 

Some teachers, like Rabbis Jacob Reischer and Elijah de Vidas, interpreted the statement as a parable in which the “master of the house” symbolizes the Almighty. Accordingly, you ought to obey him—except where he seems to be rejecting you altogether. As de Vidas stresses, in spite of apparent declarations to the contrary, the Master really desires that even “irredeemable” sinners repent and strive to remain in the house of the Lord.

Rabbi Yom Tov Lipmann Heller explained the words “except ‘leave’” as a witticism intended to lighten the tone of the confrontation between Rav Huna and his questioners by playfully suggesting that, had Rav Huna not seated himself immediately, he would have been expelled. In modern Hebrew the expression has taken on the status of a witty rejoinder to requests from hosts, analogous to such English catchphrases as “You can call me anything, but don’t call me late for dinner.”

And now that I’ve said my piece, I think that I’ll just make like a tree and—well, you can probably figure out the next step.

---

• First Publication:
  • The Alberta Jewish News, Edmonton and Calgary, July 6, 2020, p. 10.

• For further reading:
  • Davis, Joseph M.  Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller: Portrait of a Seventeenth-Century Rabbi . Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2004. 
  • Epstein, Abraham. “Hagahot ve-Hosafot le-Masekhet Derekh Ereṣ Rabbah.” In  Mi- Ḳadmoniyot ha-Yehudim , by Abraham Epstein, 113–15. Vienna: Commissions-Verlag von Ch. D. Lippe, 1887. [Hebrew] 
  • Krauss, Samuel. “Traité Talmudique ‘Derech Ereç.’”  Revue des Etudes Juives 36; 37 (1898 1899): 27–64, 205–21; 45–64.

---

My email address is: [email protected]

Oh Give Me a Home…

When the Bible wanted to convey the idea of extraordinary strength, one of its favourite images was an animal called the “re’em.” This creature was particularly notable for the size and might of its horns, as illustrated by Moses’s blessing to Joseph: “his horns are like the horns of re’ems, with them he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth.” 

We no longer know exactly what animal the biblical authors had in mind. The most popular candidate for the identification is an animal known as the “aurochs” [= primordial ox]. It was known for its formidable front-facing, contoured horns and its combative personality, but has been extinct since the seventeenth century. The ancient Greek Septuagint translation identified it as “monokeros,” which the King James English Bible rendered literally as “unicorn.” 

As was their custom in such matters, the sages of the Talmud and Midrash exaggerated the magnitude of the re’em to, well, biblical proportions. Rabbah bar bar Ḥana, the notorious raconteur of fantastic fish tales, related that he had personally seen a newborn re’em and it was “as large as Mount Tabor,” which the Talmud calculates as forty parasangs (about two hundred kilometers). The rabbis tried to infer from this that it could not have fit inside Noah’s ark, thereby lending support to a theory that the land of Israel had been exempted from the flood. Alternatively, it was suggested that the re’em might have been tethered to the ark and allowed to swim alongside it without actually boarding the craft.

Rabbenu Jacob Tam and the Tosafot school of Talmud commentators analyzed the pertinent passages regarding the identification of the re’em, and observed that “it is not correct when we designate buffaloes as ‘re’em.’ It would appear from this that Jews in twelfth-century France were assigning Hebrew names to their cattle, and that one species was popularly identified as the re’em. This was of course not the bison that roamed the plains of the New World, but rather a species of water buffalo—Rabbenu Tam uses the French term ”buffle”—which were harnessed to perform jobs like pulling wagons and plowing. This in itself would disqualify them from being the re’em since the book of Job asks rhetorically “Will the re’em consent to serve you?” 

The buffles also happen to be much smaller than Rabbah bar bar Ḥana’s forty parasangs; and even if we allow that gargantuan sizes of buffalo also existed, normal-sized versions were presumably available for Noah to fit inside his ark, eliminating the need for some of the Talmud’s farfetched interpretations.

Another candidate for the designation “buffalo” was the creature referred to in rabbinic lore as the “wild ox” [shor ha-bar]. The sages of the Mishnah disputed whether it was to be treated as a fundamentally domestic animal that had gone feral or as a wild beast that was subsequently domesticated.

There are several ramifications to this question when it comes to practical Jewish religious law. Notably, according to the Torah the blood of kosher wild animals (such as deer) must be covered with earth or sand after their slaughter, and certain of their fats (ḥelev) may be eaten, unlike those of domestic sheep or cattle. The dispute relates in part to whether or not the wild ox is to be equated (as it evidently was in the ancient Aramaic translation of the Torah) to the species called ״te’o״ that appears in a list of kosher animals in Deuteronomy.

In the eleventh century Rabbenu Hananel of Kairouan, Tunisia, equated the Mishnah’s wild ox with the buffalo and reported in the name of the Babylonian Geonim that its status remained undecided, and we must therefore follow the more stringent implications of both possibilities. 

Indeed, medieval Hebrew linguists knew of a dispute between the Babylonian Geonim Saadiah and Hai with reference to the creature known in Arabic as “jamoos” that is generally identified as a buffalo. Rav Saadiah argued that the jamoos is the same as the “m’ri,” a species mentioned in scripture as a sacrificial animal, which means that there can be no doubt about its being a domestic species. Rav Hai, on the other hand, claimed that the word “m’ri” is not a distinct species at all, but an adjective meaning “fattened” that can refer to both cattle and wild beasts. Hence it has no real bearing on the identification of the wild ox.

Rabbenu Hananel’s interpretation was cited by Rabbi Jacob Landau in the fifteenth century; however Rabbi Landau himself dissented from it, citing authorities (like Rabbi Isaiah di Trani) who had equated the wild ox with the domestic m’ri. A prominent expert in talmudic zoology observed that in light of all these sources, the “wild” in the term “wild ox” cannot be understood literally. 

Any rabbinic discussion about doubtful domestic / wild classifications will inevitably lead us to the case of the “koi,” a creature that sometimes seems to have been concocted purely in order to fuel talmudic debates. The Jewish sources described it as a creature, likely a bearded gazelle or antelope, whose status was either unknown, inherently indeterminate, or a distinct hybrid of a goat and a deer or gazelle, analogous to the “tragelaphos” or “hircocervus” mentioned in ancient Greek and Latin texts.

It should therefore not surprise us that Rabbi Jacob Weil in fifteenth-century Germany explicitly identified the koi as “what in German is designated a büffel.” He therefore recommended that kois should be slaughtered along with a fowl, regarding which no doubt exists as to the obligation to perform the covering of its blood. In this way it is possible to avoid the recitation of a superfluous blessing.

At the very least we may have stumbled onto the origin of “buffalo wings.”

---

• First Publication:
  • The Alberta Jewish News, Edmonton and Calgary, August 10, 2020, p. 10.

• For further reading:
  • Amar, Zohar, and Yaron Serri. “When Did the Water Buffalo Make Its Appearance in Eretz Israel?” Cathedra for the History of Eretz Israel and its Yishuv 117 (2005): 63–70. [Hebrew]
  • Bodenheimer, F. S. Animal and Man in Bible Lands. Translated by F. S Bodenheimer. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1960.
  • Dor, Menahem. Ha-Ḥai bi-Yeme ha-Miḳra, ha-Mishnah veha-Talmud. Tel-Aviv: Sifre Grafor-Dafṭal, 1997. [Hebrew]
  • Feliks, Yehuda. Animals and Plants of the Torah. Jerusalem: Yiśraʼel ha-Tsaʻir, 1984. [Hebrew]
  • ———. “Re’em, Te’o ve-Shor hab-Bar.” Lĕšonénu: A Journal for the Study of the Hebrew Language and Cognate Subjects 44, no. 2 (1980): 124–37. [Hebrew]
  • Kafaḥ, Yosef, ed. Peirushei Rabbeinu Sa‘adiah Ga’on ‘al ha-Torah. New revised. Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1984. [Hebrew]
  • Kohut, Alexander, ed. Aruch Completum. 9 vols. New York: Pardes, 1955. [Hebrew]
  • Lewysohn, L. Die Zoologie des Talmuds. Frankfurt am Main: Author and Joseph Baer, 1858.
  • Lieberman, Saul. Tosefta Ki-Feshuṭah. Vol. 2 Order Zera‘im, Part II. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1955. [Hebrew]
  • Nissan, Ephraim, and Zohar Amar. “What They Served at the Banquet for the Wedding of Shim’on Nathan’s Daughter: Considerations on the Sense of Tsvi, in Sources from East and West.” Australian Journal of Jewish Studies 26 (2012): 95–129.
  • Zivotofsky, Ari Z. “Buffalo, Giraffe, and the Babirusa (‘kosher Pig’): The Halakhic and Scientific Factors in Determining Their Kashrut Status.” BDD – Bekhol Derakhekha Daehu; Journal of Torah and Scholarship 12 (2001): 5–32.

---

My email address is: [email protected]

Balanced Budgets

Jewish religious tradition portrays Rosh Hashanah as the day on which all humanity passes in judgment before the Almighty. The solemn imagery of the “Untanneh Toḳef” hymn conveys the high stakes of this judgment: “Who will live and who will die”—who will or will not be granted a full natural lifespan, who will die peacefully and who suddenly, painfully or tragically? 

Amid such gut-wrenching life-and-death scenarios we might be forgiven if we are not particularly impressed by a more prosaic verdict that is ascribed to the New Year judgment: “who will be reduced to poverty and who will enjoy wealth?” 

The Talmud, however, singles out this aspect of our annual audit for special consideration. Rav Taḥlifa the brother [or father] of Rabinai of Ḥozai taught: “All of a person’s livelihood is allocated from Rosh Hashanah until Yom Kippur, except for the expenses related to the sabbaths and festivals, and the costs of the children’s Torah education. As regards these, if one spends less, then his allotment will be reduced, but if he spends more, then the allotment will be increased.”

The basic themes of Rav Taḥlifa’s teaching are familiar ones: As an incentive for us to repent and mend our behaviour during the “days of awe,” we should bear in mind that the sizes of our incomes and of our grocery carts for the coming year will be determined in proportion to how we fare in our annual performance review.

Furthermore, Rav Taḥlifa insists, we are encouraged to be generous when it comes to the costs of religious activities, and not focus too narrowly at the bottom line. We ought to have faith that the Almighty will arrange somehow for our incomes to be supplemented so as to cover the deficits. Rabbi Yom Tov Ishbili noted that the Talmud mentioned sabbaths, holidays and education as common examples, but that the same rule would apply equally to other religious precepts. 

Rashi approached the passage from a narrower and more practical perspective. The point was not so much about how your virtuous or sinful conduct can affect your economic prosperity in the coming year. Rather, Rashi regarded the Rosh Hashanah judgment as analogous to the submission of an annual budget by a CFO. “Everything that a person is destined to earn during the coming year, which will serve as the basis of one’s livelihood, is budgeted precisely. One should therefore be scrupulous to avoid excessive expenditures, since funds for provisions will not be supplemented beyond the original allocation.” 

This is the same principle that would later be restated succinctly by Dickens’ Micawber: “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen, nineteen and six, result: happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result: misery.”

Rashi may have been impelled to apply his accountancy model to Rav Taḥlifa’s teaching in order to resolve the incongruity between the inclusive tone of the first clause and the exceptions advocated at the end. (I personally suspect that somebody in Rashi’s family had been overspending their household budget.)

Unlike Micawber’s £20, however, when the Rosh Hashanah budgets are drawn up most of us do not get to be in the room where it happens, so we cannot be certain how much we were given to spend. Rashi presumably intended that we should be conservative and plan for the worst case, spending as little as we can on nonessential pleasures. 

Several commentators were troubled by Rav Taḥlifa’s directive to spend lavishly on sabbaths and festivals. It appeared to contradict a famous statement by Rabbi Akiva: “treat your sabbath like a weekday rather than placing yourself in debt.” 

In an uncharacteristic personal reminisce in his Arba‘ah Ṭurim law code, Rabbi Jacob ben Asher recalled how, when he was in financial straits, he would often ask his father Rabbi Asher ben Jehiel whether his predicament was severe enough to justify economizing on his sabbath meals. In the end he was inspired by an insight that he found in a commentary on the tractate Avot attributed to Rashi. The Mishnah there juxtaposes Rabbi Akiva’s saying to Rabbi Judah ben Teima’s exhortation to be “as ferocious as a leopard in carrying out the will of your father in heaven.” From this we may infer that, except for cases of most extreme poverty, we should all be prepared to battle like leopards to enhance our religious observance by trimming our weekday expenses, and trust in the Lord to balance our accounts.

In any case, various authorities quibbled about exactly how poor a person must be before having to “treat their sabbath like a weekday.” If the person does not have the wherewithal to repay a loan, that would seem to qualify—but what if it were possible to obtain the requisite funds from charity funds? And even then, didn’t Rav Taḥlifa say that we should place our trust in the Creator and go into debt for the sake of a worthy objective?

The insistence on living within one’s means resonated strongly with Rabbi Israel Meir Kagan, the “Ḥafeẓ Ḥayyim.” In the chapter about sabbath preparation in his Mishnah Berurah compendium he digressed into an impassioned diatribe about how this topic “constitutes a severe reprimand of our own generation.” Too many people fail to keep a proper accounting of their household expenses, and their love of extravagances (in this matter he attaches particular blame to the womenfolk) causes their spending to exceed their earnings. Then in order to keep their financial heads above water they end up indulging in questionable business practices. “This kind of misconduct has been the downfall of many people, leading eventually to crimes of larceny and violence, and even to disgrace and humiliation.” I’m not sure that the situation has improved much since then.

---

• First Publication:
  • The Alberta Jewish News, Edmonton and Calgary, September 8, 2020, p. 22.

• For further reading:
  • Brown, Benjamin. “‘Soft Stringency’ in the Mishnah Brurah: Jurisprudential, Social, and Ideological Aspects of a Halachic Formulation.” Contemporary Jewry 27, no. 1 (2007): 1–41. 
  • Broyde, Michael J., and Ira Bedzow. The Codification of Jewish Law and an Introduction to the Jurisprudence of the Mishna Berura. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2014. 
  • Fishbane, Simcha. The Method and Meaning of the Mishnah Berurah. Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 1991. 
  • ———. “The Supra-Legal Materials in Rabbi Israel Mayer Hacohen’s ‘Mishnah Brurah’.” In Essays in the Social Scientific Study of Judaism and Jewish Society., edited by Simcha Fishbane, 1:203–14. Judaism and Jewish Society. Montreal: Concordia University, Department of Religion, 1990. 
  • Yitzchaki, Chanan. “‘And All Thy Saints’: About the Educational Path of ‘Ba‘al Ha’Turim’ – Rabbi Asher.” Derech Efrata: The Efrata Teachers College Yearbook 15 (2018): 7–16. [Hebrew]

---

My email address is: [email protected]

Abraham’s Daughter

by Eliezer Segal

The Talmud tells of a group of rabbis who gathered for a festive meal in the sukkah of the exilarch, the administrative head of the Babylonian Jewish community.

Their meal was interrupted by an angry woman who accused the exilarch’s servants of stealing her wood to make his sukkah. She insisted on the immediate return of her lumber, submitting her protest before Rav Nahman.

Rav Nahman (who was the exilarch’s son-in-law and served as the presiding judge in his law court) initially paid no attention to her plea. Thereupon she exclaimed indignantly, “A woman whose father had three hundred and eighteen servants has cried out before you, and yet you ignore her!” That is to say, she was descended from Abraham who “armed his three hundred and eighteen trained servants who were born in his own house” in a foray to rescue his nephew Lot who had been taken captive. As a Jewish woman she was surely entitled to justice if she was wronged by community dignitaries. 

Rav Nahman remained unimpressed and disparaged her as a “pa‘ita,” a whiner or squawker. He ruled that according to Jewish law she was not entitled to the return of her boards, but only to monetary compensation. This was in keeping with a rabbinic enactment declaring that if a robber stole beams and built them into a house, he would not be compelled to dismantle the structure to remove the beams. That enactment had been introduced in order to facilitate the robbers’ potential repentance.

Rav Nahman’s insensitive treatment of the wronged lady might reflect his problematic experiences with the women in his life. His wife was the exilarch’s hot-tempered daughter Yalta who once responded to a slight by going on a rampage and smashing four hundred barrels of wine. His daughters were inclined towards lewdness and witchcraft. He was the author of some notoriously misogynistic quotes. It would therefore not be out of character for him to be insensitive to a woman suffering injustice.

The traditional commentators, however, were loath to attribute moral apathy to a revered talmudic sage, and they attempted in various ways to justify Rav Nahman’s curt response. Some explained that he was merely offering the lady helpful legal advice, pointing out that for various technical reasons she was weakening her case by submitting it too soon, on the first day of the festival.

Several authors focused on the woman’s reason for invoking Abraham and his 318 servants. As the hasidic master Rabbi Ẓevi Elimelech Shapira of Dynov put it, the Talmud would not have recorded her words unless they thought she was being especially insightful.

Rabbi Shapira remarked that she was not appealing to the merits of all three Hebrew patriarchs, but specifically to the first of them. She was alluding thereby to how divine mercy extended even to persons who were not descended from Isaac or Jacob. Thus, when Abraham’s outcast child Ishmael was dying of thirst in the desert, God heard his cries and provided water for him.

Furthermore, in kabbalistic symbolism Abraham is associated with the first day of Sukkot and with the moral quality of generosity [ḥesed]. Viewed in that context, the woman was stressing the sharp contrast between the patriarch’s ethical standards and those of the exilarch’s entourage: unlike them, after Abraham defeated Lot’s captors he assured the king, “I will not take from a thread even to a shoe-latchet, and I will not take anything that is yours.”

In Rabbi Jacob Ettlinger’s reconstruction of the story, Rav Nahman initially wanted to recuse himself from the case because according to Jewish law it is forbidden to adjudicate civil cases on festivals. The woman, however, misconstrued his silence and thought that he was exonerating the exilarch because the crime had been committed not by him but by his servants. It was in this context that she introduced the reference to Abraham and his servants. According to the sages, Abraham made a special point of paying his forces generously so as to forestall any larcenous temptations. Why, then, did the exilarch not follow Abraham’s example? It was only because of the woman’s vocal protests, which threatened to bring the rabbis into disrepute, that Rav Nahman felt compelled to break his silence and explain his reasoning.

Rabbi Zadok ha-Kohen of Lublin transformed the lady’s case into a poignant lesson about the fundamentals of Judaism. His starting point was a conception of a faith that springs from the depths of despair, an outlook that harkens back to the aged Abraham and Sarah giving birth to an heir long after they had exhausted any rational grounds for hope.

This was also evident when Abraham waged a hopeless-looking war against four mighty kings to rescue Lot. According to Jewish law, ownership is forfeited when one abandons hope of its recovery, and it was under that assumption that the king of Sodom sought to transfer Lot’s possessions to Abraham. The lady who challenged the exilarch’s authority was asserting proudly that like her ancestor Abraham she never gave up hope of obtaining justice. 

For good measure, Rabbi Zadok supported his thesis with some ingenious word-play. The Talmud identified 318 as the numerological sum for the name of Abraham’s servant Eliezer, a name that derived (as Moses explained when bestowing it on his own son) from the words “the God of my father was my help.” Rabbi Zadok further noted that the numerological value of “despair” [Hebrew: ye’ush] is 317—symbolizing the one crucial step that separates hopelessness from faith in divine deliverance. “For this is the totality of the Israelite personality, never to despair at all, for the Lord is always able to come to our aid.” 

This tale of a lone woman’s frustrating struggle against the Establishment thereby suggests to us a potential consolation in challenging times: It is precisely when circumstances appear utterly hopeless that we may have reason to hope for the advent of the redemption.

---

• First Publication:
  • The Alberta Jewish News, Edmonton and Calgary, October 10, 2020, p. 18.

• For further reading:
  • Beer, Moshe. The Babylonian Exilarchate in the Arsacid and Sassanian Periods. Bar-Ilan University Series of Research Monographs in Memory of the University’s Founder and First President Professor Pinchas Churgin. Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1970. [Hebrew]
  • Brill, Alan. Thinking God : The Mysticism of Rabbi Zadok of Lublin. New York Jersey City, N.J.: The Michael Scharf Publication Trust of the Yeshiva University Press Distributed by Ktav Publishing House, 2002.
  • Elman, Yaakov. “Middle Persian Culture and Babylonian Sages: Accommodation and Resistance in the Shaping of Rabbinic Legal Tradition.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature, edited by Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert and Martin S. Jaffee, 165–97. Cambridge Companions to Religion. Cambridge UK and New York NY: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
  • ———. “Yeshivot Bavel u-Vattei Din Parsiyyim ba-Teḳufah ha-’Amora’it veha-Batar-’Amora’it.” In Yeshivot u-Vatte Midrashot, edited by I. Etkes, 31–55. Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History and the Ben-Zion Dinur Center for Research in Jewish History, 2007.
  • Faʾusṭ, Shemuʾel. Agadeta: Sipure Ha-Dramah Ha-Talmudit. Or Yehudah: Devir, 2011. [Hebrew]
  • Herman, Geoffrey. A Prince Without a Kingdom: The Exilarch in the Sasanian Era. Texte Und Studien Zum Antiken Judentum. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012.
  • Ilan, Ṭal. Mine and Yours Are Hers: Retrieving Women’s History from Rabbinic Literature. Arbeiten Zur Geschichte Des Antiken Judentums Und Des Urchristentums 41. Leiden ; New York: Brill, 1997.
  • Kaye, Lynn. “Protesting Women: A Literary Analysis of Bavli Adjudicatory Narratives.” Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies & Gender Issues, no. 32 (2018): 131–57.
  • Levinson, Joshua. “Enchanting Rabbis: Contest Narratives between Rabbis and Magicians in Late Antiquity.” The Jewish Quarterly Review 100, no. 1 (2010): 54–94.
  • Neusner, Jacob. A History of the Jews in Babylonia. Vol. Part 3: From Shapur I to Shapur II. 5 vols. Studia Post-Biblica 11. Eugene OR: Wipf & Stock, 2008.
  • Secunda, Shai. The Iranian Talmud : Reading the Bavli in Its Sasanian Context. 1st ed. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.
  • Valler, Shulamit. Massekhet Sukkah. A Feminist Commentary on the Babylonian Talmud, II/6. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009.

---

My email address is: [email protected]

With Rod or Whip

by Eliezer Segal

In light of current controversies over the legitimacy and scope of police departments, it might be instructive to glance at how some similar issues have been addressed in Jewish tradition. 

The modern Hebrew word for police: “shoṭer,” has a venerable biblical pedigree. The Israelites were commanded to appoint judges and shoṭerim in order to ensure a righteous society in their homeland; and yet the precise functions of the shoṭerare not stipulated. Comparisons with occurrences elsewhere in scripture and cognate languages indicate that it designated an administrative official. Ibn Ezra explained that they constituted the political leadership that was the source of judicial authority. The same term was used, for example, to designate the Hebrew officers (from the tribe of Levi, according to rabbinic tradition) whom the Egyptian taskmasters appointed to oversee the slaves.

Early rabbinic texts assigned the shoṭer the specific task of enforcing judges’ decisions by force —“with a rod or whip”—especially if the parties refuse to accept the verdicts. The Maharal of Prague explained that it would be beneath the dignity of judges to soil their hands personally in scuffles with recalcitrant litigants.

When referring to their own judicial structures the rabbis of the Talmud employed a more precise term: the “sh’liaḥ beit din” (agent of the court) whose job descriptions chiefly involved enforcing judges’ directives such as carrying out sentences.

Another category of enforcer mentioned in the Talmud and Midrash was the “agoranomos,” a prominent official in Hellenistic societies whose functions were adapted into the talmudic legal system. This was the market overseer who regulated—by force, if necessary—weights, measures and prices. 

Making allowances for the vagaries of the nomenclature, I shall be conveniently translating all those official titles as “police.”

Jewish biblical exegetes expressed differing opinions about the degree to which the Torah allows the police independent authority in the exercise of their duties. Rabbi Elijah Mizrachi astutely summarized two prevalent approaches: On one side stand those who regard the police as the main wielders of power. They are the ones who can coerce parties to obey the judges’ decisions, whereas (as argued by Rabbi Eleazar in the Midrash Tanḥuma) the courts only issue theoretical verdicts that might be disregarded by the citizenry. The alternate position held that genuine power lies exclusively in the hands of the judges, whereas the police possess no authority other than what the judges confer upon them.

Maimonides’ code of Jewish law blended the diverse functionaries from the biblical and talmudic sources into a cohort of police who circulate through the marketplaces to regulate prices and weights, with a mandate to impose corporal punishment on violators. 

But he also assigned them some duties for which there was no evident source in the earlier Jewish literature: For example, his police are authorized to actively patrol public areas—or even private residences—to forestall immodest partying, drinking and socializing between the sexes. Rabbi Jacob Zvi Mecklenburg ingeniously inferred such duties from the Torah’s stipulation that the judges and officers be appointed “throughout thy tribes.” 

However, it is more likely that Maimonides was drawing here not on Jewish precedents but on the norms of his Muslim environment where an official known as the “muḥtasib” was responsible for enforcing not only commercial integrity, but also personal morality and even religious orthodoxy and ritual practice. In fact these areas also fell under the jurisdiction of the ancient Hellenistic “agoranomos.” Nevertheless Maimonides refrained from assigning such intrusive authority to the Jewish policeman. 

There is some ambivalence or inconsistency regarding the circumstances that warrant the police employing “rods and whips,” as distinct from merely arraigning defendants before the judges. The Torah ordained that perpetrators of involuntary manslaughter were allowed to flee to specially designated cities of refuge where they would be protected from the victims’ “blood avengers.” This fuelled intense rabbinic discussions to specify the distinctions between categories of premeditated homicide, unavoidable accidents, and manslaughter through negligence. In this connection Abba Shaul proposed in the Mishnah that a policeman (“agent of the court”) should be completely exonerated if he caused a death in the performance of his duties. He derived this from the fact that the Torah illustrates the law with a case of chopping wood in the forest, a purely discretionary activity. This implies that if the death occurred while performing one’s duty (including disciplining of children or students!), then there would be no liability whatsoever, not even as involuntary manslaughter.

In keeping with his view that agents of the court are authorized to use physical force in enforcing the law, Maimonides understood that the sages were speaking about a policeman’s unintentional killing of a suspect who was resisting arrest—including, apparently, one who had not been officially declared guilty. Only in such equivocal cases was it necessary for Abba Shaul to expound that the officer was not even punishable for manslaughter—but this was only because of his involvement in a Torah-mandated activity.

Maimonides’ arch-critic Rabbi Abraham ben David, the “Ra’avad” of Posquières, protested that there was no talmudic source for Maimonides’ interpretation. He therefore proposed a different understanding of the case, based on a scenario that is mentioned elsewhere in the Mishnah in connection with a court bailiff who caused a culprit’s death by fatally exceeding the number of lashes he was supposed to administer (although that source actually declares the bailiff guilty of manslaughter and subject to exile to a sanctuary city).

Underlying these discussions are differing views about the proper roles of police and the limits that should be set to their use of force. All this resonates strongly with our current controversies about public policy. I find no indication that the rabbis’ involvement with these questions arose in response to actual incidents, nor that they contemplated situations of deliberate police brutality. More probably they were doing their best to balance the practical necessity for law enforcement with their conviction that the police themselves must be answerable before the law.

---

• First Publication:
  • The Alberta Jewish News, Edmonton and Calgary, November 3, 2020, p. 14.

• For further reading:
  • Baron, Salo W. “The Economic Views of Maimonides.” In Essays on Maimonides: An Octocentennial Volume, edited by Salo W. Baron, 127–264. New York: Columbia University Press, 1941.
  • Blidstein, Gerald J. “Muḥtasib and Shoter—The Shape of Cultural Diffusion.” In Sobre La Vida y Obra de Maimónides: I Congreso Internacional (Córdoba, 1985), edited by Jesùs Pelaez del Rosal, 37–43. Córdoba: Ediciones el Almendro, 1991.
  • Foster, Benjamin R. “Agoranomos and Muhtasib.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 13, no. 2 (1970): 128–44.
  • Sperber, Daniel. “On the Office of the Agoranomos in Roman Palestine.” Zeitschrift Der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 127, no. 2 (1977): 227–43.
  • Taragin, Moshe. “She’liaḥ Beit Din She-Harag be-Shogeg.” Text, February 13, 2018. [Hebrew]

---

My email address is: [email protected]

Herod’s Day

by Eliezer Segal

The first-century C.E. Latin satirist Persius Flaccus devoted one of his poems to the theme that even persons who are ostensibly free will often enslave themselves to follies of their own making. A blatant example was the inclination to pursue silly superstitions, as exemplified by the widespread popularity of bizarre Jewish customs

A case in point: “When the Day of Herod comes round, … the lamps wreathed with violets and ranged round the greasy window-sills emit their thick clouds of smoke.”

Was Persius describing a particular Jewish practice, or was he merely rehashing a hodgepodge of stereotypical customs that had come to be associated with the Jews of Rome? The Jewish calendar contains no “Day of Herod,” nor is it likely that they would bestow such an honour on the infamous tyrant. On the other hand, Herod the Great was world-renowned as ruler of Judea, and it is conceivable that outsiders would treat his name as a generic identifier of the Jewish nation. Christian texts refer to his grandson, Persius’ contemporary, as “Herod Agrippa.”

For modern readers it might appear more plausible to associate Persius’ festive lamps with Shabbat, particularly as he goes on to mock the Jews’ consumption of fish—long recognized as a Sabbath delicacy—and mumbling incomprehensible prayers. We should bear in mind, however, that in ancient pre-electric times the kindling of candles had not yet become a recognizable ritual, but served primarily to provide illumination; hence its association with the day of rest would not have been obvious to Persius or his contemporaries.

Persius’s verses have provoked considerable debate among historians. Some propose that Herod like other ancient potentates, instituted a holiday to celebrate his birthday or the beginning of his reign.

Among the scholars who have weighed in on this question, a surprising number have tried to identify Herod’s Day as Hanukkah. More than the Sabbath, that holiday was marked from an early time as the “feast of light.” Persius’s contemporary Josephus Flavius was the first to designate Hanukkah in that way, suggesting that it symbolized how the Jews’ right to worship was “brought to light.” 

At first sight this thesis sounds patently absurd. After all, Herod was the implacable foe of the Hasmonean dynasty whose exploits are celebrated on Hanukkah. He was haunted throughout his reign by the spectre of the Hasmoneans whom he always regarded—with much justification—as his rivals for the loyalties of the Jewish nation . He was zealous to the point of paranoia in assassinating all vestiges of the Hasmonean royal family, including his beloved wife Mariamne. In light of these facts it seems impossible to imagine how anyone, even an ignorant Roman satirist, could confuse Hanukkah with a “Day of Herod.” 

Nevertheless, there are a number of circumstances that might indicate a tangible connection between Herod and Hanukkah. Some argue that the despot instituted a new celebration precisely in order to eclipse the more modest achievement of his Hasmonean predecessors who had rededicated the Temple after its defilement — but unlike Herod, had done nothing to enhance the relatively modest edifice inherited from Ezra and Nehemiah. 

Like the Hasmoneans, Herod celebrated the completion of his Temple with a joyous dedication festival at which countless offerings were sacrificed. In recounting this event , Josephus comment ed on the auspicious correspondence of events, that the completion of the Temple’s construction coincided with the anniversary of the beginning of Herod’s reign. 

Although Josephus does not provide us with the precise date, he records elsewhere that Herod was officially appointed King of Judea by Antony and the Roman Senate in the middle of winter 40 B.C.E. Given that it was on the twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, the day before Hanukkah, that the prophet Haggai announced the establishment of the second Temple, we may note how convenient it would have been for Herod to link his own crowning achievement to that auspicious date. 

This has led some scholars to speculate that, rather than attempting to suppress Hanukkah as a subversive outpouring of pro-Hasmonean sympathies, Herod instead chose to appropriate it by redirecting it to a commemoration of his own accomplishments

Accordingly t he transformed festival was so strongly associated with his reinterpretation that it came to be known in some circles as “Herod’s Day.” (Prior to this time, the sources state that Hanukkah was celebrated in a manner analogous to Sukkot, with the waving of palm-fronds expressing the victory over their enemies.) 

As it happens, light and fire festivals were celebrated during this season in the Roman empire. After all, the winter solstice marks the turning point at which the daylight hours cease diminishing and the days begin to lengthen. This occasion was celebrated as the birthday of the sun god, and the lighting of lamps or tapers was a common feature of those rituals. If we bear in mind Herod’s well-known sympathies for Rome and its culture, it is fully consistent with his character and policy that he would try to encourage the Jews to observe a winter festival like those that were being observed by loyal Roman subjects throughout the empire. 

While the Jewish lunar calendar could not include a date that would always coincide with the winter solstice, it is a convenient coincidence that the solstice occurs on December 25 of the Julian solar calendar and Hanukkah begins on the twenty-fi f th of the lunar month Kislev. Similar patterns were discernible in other Roman provinces, as local winter festivals were reinterpreted to correspond with the official birthday of the solar deity, and the lighting of fires or candles w as incorporated into the seasonal festivities. The progressive strengthening of the light, which we emulate when we increase the numbers of the candles each night, is consistent with the themes of the Roman rituals honouring the prevailing of light over darkness.

And so in the interest of cultural pluralism, let us extend our warmest season’s greetings to devotees of the ancient despot as they gather in the smoky aura of their “Herod Day” lamps.

---

• First Publication:
  • The Alberta Jewish News, Edmonton and Calgary, November 25, 2020, p. 23.

• For further reading:
  • Benovitz, Moshe. “Herod and Hanukkah.” Zion 68, no. 1 (2003): 5–40. [Hebrew]
  • Derenbourg, Joseph. Essai sur l’histoire et la Géographie de la Palestine d’après les Thalmuds et les Autres Sources Rabbiniques. Hildesheim: Gerstenberg, 1975.
  • Harvey, R. A. A Commentary on Persius. Mnemosyne, Bibliotheca Classica Batava. Supplementum 64. Leiden: Brill, 1981.
  • Horbury, William. “Herod’s Temple and ‘Herod’s Days.’” In Templum Amicitiae: Essays on the Second Temple Presented to Ernst Bammel, edited by William Horbury, 103–49. Journal for the Study of the New Testament, Supplement Series 48. Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991.
  • Krauss, Samuel. “La Fête de Hanoucca.” Revue des Etudes Juives 30 (1895): 24–43, 204–19.
  • Rankin, Oliver Shaw. The Origins of the Festival of Hanukkah. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1930.
  • Schwartz, Daniel R. Agrippa I: The Last King of Judaea. Texte Und Studien Zum Antiken Judentum 23. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1990.
  • Stern, Menahem. Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism. Fontes Ad Res Judaicas Spectantes. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1974.

---

My email address is: [email protected]

Forces of Nature

by Eliezer Segal

The original significance of the Fifteenth of Shevat [“Tu BiShvat”] was to demarcate the agricultural year to which a fruit belongs, since tithes and other religious laws apply separately to the crops of each year. The Mishnah situated the dividing line for trees in the month of Shevat which occurs towards the middle of the Israeli rainy season. The School of Hillel, whose position was accepted as normative, placed it on the fifteenth day of that month.

As regards the reason for selecting this date, Rabbi Hoshaiah in the Talmud explained that by this stage most of the year’s rain can be assumed to have fallen; hence the older fruit derived their sustenance from the previous year, whereas subsequent fruits belong to the coming year. Rashi explained that the trees’ reliance on the new water is recognizable by the flow of their sap.

Commentators differ whether the operative consideration is the number of days between the onset and termination of the rainy season, the volume of rainfall, or the change in temperature. All of the above positions accept the premise that the relevant transition occurs on the fifteenth of Shevat 

But wait. The months on the Jewish calendar are calculated by a lunar cycle in which twelve months of twenty-nine or thirty days add up to 354 days—whereas the natural seasons that govern rainfall, plant growth and temperature are based on the 365-day solar year! Indeed, talmudic sages raised the question of whether “Shevat” was being used here in its normal sense as a lunar month, or as a designation for a date one month into the solar winter season (known as the “teḳufah of Tevet”). They concluded that the reference was to the lunar month of that name. Indeed the new year for trees would commence on the same date even in a leap year, when an extra month is inserted and the lunar year is seriously out of sync with the solar teḳufah.

A Babylonian Gaon observed that Shevat marks the time when trees awaken from their winter dormancy, beginning to soak up fluids and come alive. This stage, which would qualify as an appropriate “new year of the trees,” occurs around the midpoint of “Shevat” of the solar cycle (around January 30).

The Tosafot expressed astonishment at the Talmud’s preference for a lunar date even though the ripening of the fruit follows the sun. It is perhaps typical of their thinking that they relied less on empirical observation of the botanical facts than on scriptural prooftexts. They invoked the words of Deuteronomy about “the precious fruits brought forth by the sun”; but noted that the same text goes on to speak of “the precious things put forth by the moon.” Ultimately they conceded that “in most calendar-related matters Israel reckons according to the moon.”

Rabbi Moses Sofer of Pressburg (“Ḥatam Sofer”) found this explanation inadequate. He cited Rashi’s comment to Deuteronomy that the influence of the moon is limited to vegetables that grow from the earth like cucumbers and gourds; whereas trees follow the rhythms of the sun. It is thus quite possible that the date of the fifteenth of Shevat might arrive—as in a leap year—before the tree’s sap has begun to flow. 

The Talmud taught elsewhere that “the year follows the moon,” which Rashi explained in the sense that we follow the months as they would have been if the year had not been intercalated. For the sake of convenience we call this month Shevat, but the decisive date should be determined by the climatic conditions.

“If this is so,” writes Rabbi Sofer, “then what difference does it make whether or not in most years it is designated as Shevat, seeing that in any case the chill of Tevet persists during Shevat, so that there is no sap in the trees and they are not ripening —and yet the tithing follows the year of the ripening! Under the circumstances, what grounds are there for declaring the new year in Shevat?” And even if (as the Tosafot asserted) Jews follow lunar chronology for other purposes, that should not warrant a violation of Tu BiShvat’s botanical basis.

Several authorities cited a passage from the Jerusalem Talmud in which Rabbi Hoshayah admonished the witnesses to the sighting of the new moon by reminding them that their role in determining the dates for the beginnings of months had tangible legal consequences. This was true not only in civil matters (such as defining rent periods), but even for capital cases; for by determining a person’s birthday, they might also be defining whether an offender is an adult or a minor. In the latter instance, even though the formal ages of twelve years for a female or thirteen for a male are supposed to serve as indications that the person has matured physically—in practice the law subordinates the physiological processes to the authority of the court charged with regulating the calendar. 

In support of that principle Rabbi Abin expounded the words of Psalms: “unto God that performeth [gomer] all things for me,” which could be interpreted to mean “God completes things according to me,” in the sense that the Almighty sometimes defers to the decisions of my [=human] authority.” Accordingly Rabbi Solomon Ibn Adret concluded, “whatever an earthly court declares is confirmed by the celestial court.”

Scholars like Rabbis Judah Mintz and Shabbetai Cohen inferred from this that the holy Torah can override scientific evidence in the realms of physiology, botany or climate—or at least warrant reinterpretations of the empirical data.

The Ḥatam Sofer’s theological position resonated with some later Jewish traditionalists, and perhaps we should blame him and his followers for the outlook, current in some communities, that scientific standards of public health must yield to the religious benefits of superspreader weddings, funerals or yeshivah classes.

---

• First Publication:
  • The Alberta Jewish News, Edmonton and Calgary, January 11, 2021, p. 13.

• For further reading:
  • Feliks, Yehuda. Agriculture in Eretz-Israel in the Period of the Bible and Talmud: Basic Farming Methods and Implements. 2nd revised. Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 1990.
  • ———. “The Fifteenth of Shevat: Halakha and Reality.” Tarbiz 46, no. 3–4 (1977): 181–211.
  • Goldreich, Y. “The Dispute Concerning the Date of the New Year for Trees: A Climatic Point of View.” Jewish Quarterly Review 74, no. 1 (1983): 80–87.
  • Kahana, Maoz. “The Chatam Sofer: A Decisor in his Own Eyes.” Tarbiz 76, no. 3/4 (2007): 519–56. [Hebrew]
  • Schreiber, Aaron M. “The Ḥatam Sofer’s Nuanced Attitude Towards Secular Learning, ‘Maskilim’, and Reformers.” The Torah U-Madda Journal 11 (2002): 123–73.
  • Sochovolsky, Avraham. “Hashpa‘at ha-Ṭeva‘ ba-Halakhah ve-Hashpa‘at ha-Halakhah ba-Ṭeva‘.” Lema’seh! Contemporay Halacha. https://www.toraland.org.il/2022. [Hebrew]

---

My email address is: [email protected]

Will the Real Ahasuerus Please Stand Up?

by Eliezer Segal

Once upon a time, one of the foremost Jewish communities in the world was found in a land whose head of state was notorious for his exasperating inconsistency. He was forever surprising his subjects with volatile shifts in mood and in policy. 

His frequent attitude-changes were paralleled by his erratic relationships with the women in his life. He was married more than once, and had no hesitations about publicly humiliating women; though he appeared genuinely devoted to his current First Lady.

As regards the Jewish citizens of his domain, his attitudes were no less baffling. On the one hand, he had no visible objection to counting Jews among his top political advisors, nor even to having them married into his family. And yet this very same leader could also be observed in the company of the most unsavoury anti-semitic rabble-rousers who had no difficulty in rallying him to oppress the ethnic minorities that were scattered through his land. 

Such, then, was the exasperating personality of the Persian emperor Ahasuerus, or Xerxes, whose reign provides the historical setting for the events of the Purim story. 

The Jewish heroes of the story, Esther and Mordecai, are generally painted as virtuous and loyal to their faith; whereas the main villain, Haman, is irredeemably wicked. 

And yet Ahasuerus does not lend himself neatly to such stereotypical classification. Initially he seems to be a passive dupe in Haman’s plot, but he later shifts sides completely when confronted by Esther. Indeed, the Talmud records a dispute between the two prominent third-century sages Rav and Samuel as to whether the king was a wise ruler or a fool. Their disagreement was prompted by the Megillah’s statement that Ahasuerus first held a banquet for the people of his empire, and only afterwards convened a feast for the residents of Shushan, his capital. One side argued that it was strategically wiser for him to curry the goodwill of the provincials, since the loyalty of the locals was more readily assured. The opposing side believed that it was more prudent to surround himself with allies who could defend him in the event of an uprising by the outsiders. 

How are all these contradictory tendencies to be reconciled? 

Rabban Gamaliel in the Talmud characterized the king as essentially a “hafakhfekhan”: fickle and volatile. This assessment of his personality informed Esther’s strategy when she invited Haman to the banquets at which she exposed his treachery before Ahasuerus. As Rashi understood it, the very fact of Haman’s meeting a person on repeated occasions would feed the king’s paranoia, and eventually provoke him to reverse his attitude toward Haman from one of trust to extreme hostility. (Can you imagine a modern political leader constantly turning against his top appointees?…)

The eleventh-century French exegete Rabbi Joseph Kara was convinced that Ahasuerus had an impulsive personality that—especially while under the influence of alcohol—would constantly leap about from one mood-swing to the next without any logical pattern. This psychological profile was evident in the king’s reaction to Vashti’s disobedience, when he summoned the queen to display her charms before the guests at the royal banquet. Rabbi Kara sides with the queen in her attempt to uphold the dignity of her royal station, and criticizes Ahasuerus for reacting hastily out of unrestrained rage when he should rather have allowed himself some time to sober up. 

This episode convinced Mordecai that they were dealing with a rash monarch who could be counted on to be unpredictable. For this reason, according to Rabbi Kara, Mordecai urged Esther to take immediate measures while she was still in the king’s favour. “Lest God forbid, today or tomorrow he might become angry at you and depose you. Therefore, while you are still in his good graces, approach him and entreat him on behalf of your people.” 

It was out of similar considerations, suggested Rabbi Jacob Reischer, that Esther had insisted on Haman’s presence at the dinner at which she intended to expose him. This tactic would not allow the capricious Ahasuerus any time to undergo a subsequent change of heart. The weak-willed ruler would be open to convenient manipulation, whether by Haman or by Esther.

When Esther did finally inform the king of the peril to which her people were being subjected, he reacted in astonishment, “Who is he, and where is he, that durst presume in his heart to do so?” It sounds as if he was entirely unaware of the horrible threat that he had himself authorized.

Arguably the most common trend among the Jewish commentators was to paint the king as a malevolent villain. Although it was Haman who instigated the edict to murder the Jews of the empire, these interpreters felt that Ahasuerus was not just casually signing a document that had been placed on on his desk, but that he was in fact a willing collaborator in the scheme. 

The king comes across as even more nefarious in the commentary of Rabbi Zechariah ben Saruḳ, an exegete who lived in Spain and north Africa in the fifteenth century. Rabbi Zechariah was an admirer of Aristotle, especially of the philosopher’s Politics; however his depictions of the ancient Persian government might owe more to the events of the Spanish Inquisition and expulsion from Iberia (his commentary to Esther was completed in Algiers in 1493). According to Rabbi Zechariah’s interpretation, when Haman approached the king he was only requesting permission to outlaw their religion and to confiscate their property; but it was Ahasuerus who expanded that original decree into a broad mandate “to destroy, to kill, and to cause to perish, all Jews,” with the expenses of the campaign being borne by the government.

From this we may conclude that Ahasuerus was an active participant in the persecution of Persian Jewry.

Or then again—he might have been just a weak-willed, vacillating figurehead who was led along by his advisor.

But on the other hand, maybe I’ll see it all differently next year…

---

First Publication:

• The Alberta Jewish News, Edmonton and Calgary, February 22, 2023, p. 20.

For further reading:

• Segal, Eliezer. The Babylonian Esther Midrash: A Critical Commentary. 3 vols. Brown Judaic Studies 292–294. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993.
• Walfish, Barry. Esther in Medieval Garb: Jewish Interpretation of the Book of Esther in the Middle Ages. SUNY Series in Judaica. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993.

---

My email address is: [email protected]

Mysterious Mordecai

by Eliezer Segal

In the annals of English literature, the most prominent bearer of the name “Mordecai” was a Jewish character who played a central role in Daniel Deronda, the last novel published by Ms. Mary Ann Evans, better known by her pen name George Eliot.

Mordecai Cohen appears there as the mentor who inspires the novel’s eponymous hero to delve into Jewish tradition and ultimately devote himself to gathering the dispersed Jews into a proud independent nation on their native soil. Eliot’s outspoken anticipation of classic Zionism was published in 1876, some two decades before Herzl’s The Jewish State.

Eliot took great care in crafting every detail in her works, so it seems fitting to seek significance in her choice of this particular name for her character. Although she was a rationalist who rejected the dogmatic Christian orthodoxy in which she was raised, the stories and personalities of the Bible strongly influenced her craft. It is therefore not unreasonable to scrutinize Daniel Deronda in search of motifs deriving from scriptural sources. 

I can think of several possible associations between Mordecai Cohen and his biblical namesake. 

The character referred to throughout most of the novel as Mordecai was really named Ezra (Mordecai is his middle name), a designation that he resumes in the closing chapters. This duality of names is not adequately explained, apart from its helping to postpone the discovery of his true identity until the plot is ready for it. 

Recent scholarship has argued that the biblical Mordecai and Ezra exemplified contrasting responses to the realities of Jewish exile. Mordecai strove for full integration into the gentile culture, prompting him to serve in the Persian government and even to encourage Esther’s marriage to the heathen monarch. Ezra, by contrast, participated in the return to Zion, the rebuilding of the Temple and restoration of Jewish sovereignty, while insisting that Jewish men divorce their non-Jewish wives. 

Perhaps by means of this double naming Eliot wanted to express two different dimensions of the modern Jewish engagement with the outside world: Though the Mordecai-like goal of integration into the broader society might be a desirable one, ultimately it is only a first step toward fulfilling Ezra’s ideal of an independent polity in which Jews can live according their own laws and values (in contrast to the eternally “wandering Jew” who was named Ahasuerus in Christian legend). 

The book of Esther derives the name of the festival Purim from “pur,”referring to the lottery that Haman cast to determine the date of the Jews’ destruction. Indeed, gambling plays an important part in Daniel Deronda. The story opens in a casino as Daniel casts a disapproving gaze at the lovely Gwendolen’s roulette-playing. Towards the book’s end, the Jewish heroine Mirah confronts her unscrupulous gambling-addicted father Lapidoth. This seems to reflect the author’s disapproval of passive reliance on chance rather than the exercising of moral autonomy.

Yet the biblical tale and the Victorian novel share a puzzling ambivalence as regards the respective roles of human initiative and supernatural control over the affairs of mortals. The book of Esther contains no explicit mention of God, but traditional readers discerned the intricate divine operation behind the scenes in the form of what Nahmanides and other Jewish theologians termed “hidden miracles.” Similarly, Mordecai in Daniel Deronda displays an ability to foretell major and minor events with an accuracy that seems prophetic, but might derive from his keen psychological insights. By the book’s conclusion numerous serendipitous coincidences reveal themselves to have been necessary for the realization of Mordecai’s plans and the tidy unfolding of this archetypically Victorian storyline. Given Eliot’s ambivalent and changing attitudes toward religion, rationalism and moral responsibility, it is unclear how we are intended to interpret this theme.

There are additional motifs in Daniel Deronda that echo those of the Megillah. For instance, the central plot concerns a tragic marital conflict between two strong-willed aristocrats that is reminiscent of the story of Vashti and Ahasuerus.

According to a convention in the Hebrew and Yiddish literature of the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) movement, the name Mordecai—usually paired with the European name Marcus—was assigned to virtuous exponents of enlightened modernity, young men whose Hebrew literacy and commitment to Jewish tradition were combined with proficiency in European culture and, ideally, to the corridors of political power; even as the ancient Mordecai the Jew had served faithfully in the court of Ahasuerus, and as subsequent “court Jews” had utilized their influence to defend the interests of their coreligionists. These valiant depictions of enlightened Mordecais may have arisen in reaction to a longstanding convention in Purim parodies (shpiels) of portraying Mordecai as “Mondrish,” a comical buffoon.

Eliot had before her a tangible embodiment of such an enlightened “Mordecai-Marcus” in the person of her friend Dr. Emanuel Oscar Deutsch, scion of an intensely traditional rabbinic family from Silesia, who became a respected academic authority on Semitic languages and held a position at the British Museum. Deutsch achieved celebrity for an appreciation of the Talmud that he published in an influential English intellectual journal, an article that became a best-seller and succeeded in stemming the generally negative assessments of the Talmud that had been prevalent in British society. 

Deutsch was the main source for the novelist’s impressively accurate depictions of Jewish texts and practices, her serious study of Hebrew, and her conversance with efforts to revive autonomous Jewish communal life in Palestine. Like Eliot’s Mordecai, Deutsch was afflicted prematurely with a disease that ended his life early in Alexandria, Egypt, while en route to the land of Israel.

One commentator observed that Eliot’s Mordecai resembles his biblical namesake in that they both awaken the Jewish identities of crypto-Jews—the scriptural Esther who “had not shewed her people nor her kindred,” and Eliot’s Deronda who was previously unaware of his Hebrew lineage.

So too, Deutch’s pupil Mary Ann Evans rose to prominence (under an assumed name) as both a reigning dignitary of English literature and as an influential advocate for the Jewish nation.

---

• First Publication:
  • The Alberta Jewish News, Edmonton and Calgary, February 8, 2021, p. 20.

• For further reading:
  • Baker, William. “George Eliot and Hebrew—Some Source Materials.” Studies in Bibliography and Booklore 11, no. 1/2 (1975): 75–84.
  • ———. “The Jewish Elements of George Eliot’s ‘Daniel Deronda’ – a Study of George Eliot’s Interest in and Knowledge of Judaism.” Ph.D., Royal Holloway, University of London, 1970.
  • Claggett, Shalyn. “George Eliot’s Interrogation of Physiological Future Knowledge.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 51, no. 4 (September 22, 2011): 849–64.
  • Edelmann, R. “Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew: Origin and Background.” Proceedings of the World Congress of Jewish Studies 4 (1965): 111–14.
  • Himmelfarb, Gertrude. The Jewish Odyssey of George Eliot. New York: Encounter Books, 2009.
  • Koller, Aaron J. Esther in Ancient Jewish Thought. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
  • Levenson, Alan T. “Writing the Philosemitic Novel: Daniel Deronda Revisited.” Prooftexts 28, no. 2 (2008): 129–56.
  • Modder, Montagu Frank. The Jew in the Literature of England to the End of the 19th Century. New York: Meridian Books, 1960.
  • Nemoianu, Virgil Martin. “The Spinozist Freedom of George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda.” Philosophy and Literature 34, no. 1 (2010): 65–81.
  • Orr, Marilyn. George Eliot’s Religious Imagination: A Theopoetics of Evolution. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2017.
  • Rosenthal, Jesse. “The Large Novel and the Law of Large Numbers; or, Why George Eliot Hates Gambling.” ELH 77, no. 3 (2010): 777–811.
  • Stone, Wilfred. “The Play of Chance and Ego in Daniel Deronda.” Nineteenth-Century Literature 53, no. 1 (1998): 25–55.
  • Szmeruk, Ch. “The Name Mordecai-Marcus — Literary Metamorphosis of a Social Ideal.” Tarbiz 29, no. 1 (1959): 76–98. [Hebrew]
  • Temple, Mary Kay. “Emanuel Deutsch’s Literary Remains: A New Source for George Eliot’s ‘Daniel Deronda.’” South Atlantic Review 54, no. 2 (1989): 59–73.
  • Ward, Bernadette Waterman. “Zion’s Mimetic Angel: George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda.” Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 22, no. 2 (2004): 105–15.
  • Wisse, Ruth R. “The Zionist Fate in English Hands: From George Eliot to A. M. Klein.” In The Modern Jewish Canon: A Journey Through Language and Culture, by Ruth R. Wisse, 237–66. New York: Free Press, 2000.
  • TeleTime. Ruth Wisse Teaches Daniel Deronda: 6. Jewish Nationalism. Educational Video, 2017.

---

My email address is: [email protected]