Who Turned Out the Lights?

When interpreting the many wonders related in the Bible, classical Jewish commentators can often be divided into two opposing schools. At one extreme stand those who wish to enhance the supernatural dimensions in order to magnify the power of a deity who transcends the limitations of nature. Ranged against them are those who insist that our knowledge of God is rooted principally in the recognition that his universe is governed by eternally unchanging laws of nature and rationality; and hence any suspension of those laws would weaken the theological foundations of religious belief. 

It is to the latter group that I wish to direct my attention in this article. Over the centuries many distinguished Jewish exegetes and thinkers tried to understand the ten Egyptian plagues in ways that did not demand naive credulity or denials of observable experience. This was particularly difficult to do in the case of the ninth plague, that of darkness, concerning which the Torah states that it was tangible (according to the standard translations), that it lasted three days and that it affected only the Egyptians but not the Hebrews. The Torah also states “neither rose any [Egyptian] from his place for three days,” implying that it somehow prevented the victims from moving. All this is very hard to explain in terms of any normal optical or meteorological process. 

Perhaps the earliest formulation of a scientific approach to the question was that of the philosopher Philo Judaeus of Alexandria. He ascribed the plague to a combination of known scientific phenomena: a total solar eclipse that completely blocked out the sunlight, and extremely thick clouds.

Rabbi Moses Nahmanides would later stress that this darkness was not merely an absence of light such as we normally experience at nighttime, but a supernaturally palpable mist that descended from the heavens. Rabbi Obadiah Sforno would develop this idea, insisting on a fundamental difference between normal night air that is capable of absorbing sunlight at daybreak, and the darkness of the ninth plague that consisted of a dense substance whose texture is entirely impermeable to light. Abravanel explained that the Egyptian darkness consisted of the same dense hot winds that had blown away the locusts of the previous plague and now continued to hover over Egypt in the form of thick impenetrable clouds that blocked out sunlight. In a somewhat similar vein Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks preferred to ascribe the darkness to one of those seasonal sandstorms that blow into Egypt from the Sahara blocking out light and air for several days.

As regards the Torah’s statement that the Egyptians were unable to stand up during the three days of the plague, a well-known midrashic tradition understood this to mean that they were encased in a cement-like substance that physically prevented them from moving their bodies. Gersonides and Don Isaac Abravanel imagined it as a kind of toxic smog.

Several interpreters argued that the Egyptians’ inability to move during the plague was really a psychological symptom of their plight. Thus, Josephus Flavius wrote that the extreme density of the air caused people to perish not only due to respiratory difficulties, but also because they were shocked into immobility by terror at their predicament. This was also the view of the Apocryphal work “Wisdom of Solomon.” Abravanel illustrated this thesis by providing a thorough diagnosis of personalities who are overcome by a hysterical blindness after being traumatized repeatedly by intense suffering. This, he proposed, what happened to the Egyptians on a mass scale.

Many commentators posed the question: why didn’t the Egyptians just turn on the lights, or at least light lamps or torches in order to overcome the darkness? Josephus suggested that this option was not really available to them, either because the darkness was so thick as to overcome any puny man-made illumination, or because it was accompanied by a violent storm whose winds extinguished flame. Nahmanides compared the phenomenon to the way a fire subsides at the bottom of a deep pit or in “mountains of darkness.” (He did not relate this process to the presence or absence of oxygen, nor did he suggest that the Egyptians had difficulty breathing during the plague.)

The fact that the Israelites were immune to the darkness and “had light in their dwellings” would also appear to be inconsistent with any naturalistic reading of the story. Nevertheless some interpreters, like Abravanel, took it to mean that the darkness did not extend to the territory of Goshen where the Jews had their residence.

Philo, on the other hand, suggested that this detail might reflect a fundamental difference in moral psychology between crude heathens and enlightened monotheists. The former are stricken helpless when deprived of their faculty of physical sight, whereas the latter continue to maintain their moral compass as “beams of virtue” give continual direction to the “eyes of the soul.”

Deflecting the question of how the plague’s three-day duration could be measured if there were no intervals of light to differentiate between the days, Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra wrote that he personally had experienced such prolonged periods of utter blackness—up to five days—during his oceanic travels. Presumably he was describing dense maritime fog. Ibn Ezra travelled widely during his itinerant career, including some stopovers in northern France and perhaps England, so his mention of the “ocean” might literally allude to the Atlantic. 

Some traditional commentators took a similar approach of locating the darkness not in the atmosphere or geography of Egypt, but in the physiology of the Egyptians’ eyes. Thus Rabbi Jacob Meklenburg in his Ha-Ketav ve-ha- Ḳabbalah dismissed all the ingenious theories involving miraculous mists, uninterrupted nights or extinguished lamps; arguing instead that the Egyptians were afflicted with a kind of cataracts that grew as an opaque membrane that covered their eyes and filtered out light. 

The last word has not been said on the question, and perhaps the lively discussion at your Passover seder will provide an opportunity to shed new light on this venerable puzzle.

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• First Publication:
  • The Alberta Jewish News, Edmonton and Calgary, March 15, 2021, p. 22.

• For further reading:
  • Feldman, Louis H. “Josephus’ Portrait of Moses. Part Three.” The Jewish Quarterly Review 83, no. 3/4 (1993): 301–30.
  • Koskenniemi, Erkki. The Old Testament Miracle-Workers in Early Judaism. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen Zum Neuen Testament., 2. Reihe. Mohr Siebeck, 2005.
  • Langner, Allan M. “The Ninth Plague.” Jewish Bible Quarterly 29, no. 1 (2001): 48–55.
  • Roth, Norman Dennis. “Abraham Ibn Ezra: Highlights of His Life.” Iberia Judaica, no. 4 (2012): 25–39.
  • Sacks, Jonathan. Exodus, the Book of Redemption. 1st ed. Covenant & Conversation. New Milford, CT: Maggid Books & The Orthodox Union, 2010.
  • Schneider, Stanley, and Morton H Seelenfreund. “The Plague of Darkness: Hysterical Blindness?” Jewish Bible Quarterly 46, no. 3 (July 2018): 179–88.

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Make Mine a Grande Fig Latte

by Eliezer Segal

When the Bible wants to extoll the merits of the promised land, it often praises it as “a land flowing with milk and honey.” This phrase appears some twenty times in scripture, most often as an incentive for the Israelites to keep their faith in reaching that elusive destination. For me it conjures up an image of rivers coursing with creamy white liquid or with overflows from hives and honeycombs. As enticing as those reveries might be, they do not appear to conform to any actuality in the land of Israel either now or in previous eras.

Naḥmanides was puzzled that the holy scriptures were attaching so much importance to two seemingly random features of the Israeli agricultural landscape rather than more prominent crops like grapes and olives. Therefore, he argued that milk and honey should be understood as indicators of more fundamental assets in the country’s ecology. After all, in order to allow for the cultivation of healthy, milk-producing animals and luscious fruits, there is need for fertile meadowlands, pure water and fresh air. The milk and fruit juices are thus to be seen as benchmarks for the general agricultural abundance that extends to crops like grain, grapes, olives and cattle.

The Torah mentions honey—d’vash in Hebrew—in its enumeration of the seven agricultural species for which the land of Israel is celebrated. Rabbinic tradition understood it as date nectar. However, it was generally accepted that this identification need not necessarily be applied to the honey of “land of milk and honey.”

Indeed some interpreters suggested that the word ḥalav, which normally denotes milk, is alluding here to white wine, a usage that is attested in some ancient texts. Others point out that the word sometimes has a broader connotation of “best,” analogous to “cream” in some English idioms.

The identification of milk and honey in this context was indeed the subject of a dispute between sages during the era of the Mishnah. Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus stated that “milk” refers to juice from fruits, and “honey” to date nectar. On the other hand, Rabbi Akiva argued that milk and honey should both be understood in their normal senses as milk from animals and honey from bees. 

The Talmud collected some interesting eyewitness reports attesting to the literal fulfillment of the biblical hyperbole in their own generations. The Babylonian sage Rami bar Ezekiel claimed that on a visit to Bnei Brak he had observed goats grazing under fig trees. The fruit oozed with honey and the animals overflowed with milk, prompting Rami to declare that the mingling of these fluids was an aptly literal illustration of the biblical promise. It was also related that Rabbi Jacob ben Dositheus slogged through three miles of fig honey en route from Lydda to Ono. 

Rabbi Simeon ben Lakish reported that the flowing milk and honey of Sepphoris in the Galilee extended for an area of sixteen square miles. The Talmud remarked that, though milk and honey are to be found in other regions of Israel, Sepphoris was disproportionately blessed with that resource. The Jerusalem Talmud contains a dispute as to whether the entire land was equally blessed with milk and honey, or the phenomenon was restricted to specific regions.

Rabbi Jacob Reischer found the account of Rami bar Ezekiel’s experience problematic. In such an obvious instance of flowing milk and honey, why did the Talmud trouble itself to record Rami’s associating it with the biblical image? Rabbi Reischer suggested therefore that there were some novel features in Rami’s declaration. Because the honey referred to in the Torah in connection with blessings, first fruits and other precepts is usually understood to be date nectar, there was something novel in his observation that the prospect of a land “flowing with milk and honey” also applies to fig honey. Alternatively, Rami might have been teaching us that when scripture speaks of milk and honey it does not refer merely to the individual items, but specifically to the mixing of the two fluids. These insights into the Torah’s meaning were disclosed to Rami only by virtue of his experience in Bnei Brak.

Rabbi Joseph Ḥayyim of Baghdad (the “Ben Ish Ḥai”) raised similar objections to the talmudic anecdote, and proposed a similar solution about the significance of mentioning fig honey. He noted further that goats are unlikely to graze around palm trees whose leaves and fruits are too high for them to reach. The animals did however congregate to nibble on the lower-hanging fig leaves, and in this way Rami bar Ezekiel could behold the blend of goat milk with fig honey.

Ever receptive to symbolic expositions, Rabbi Joseph Ḥayyim pointed out that according to a rabbinic tradition figs had been the forbidden fruit in the garden of Eden, so it is fitting that they should signify the divine forgiveness that allowed Israel to enjoy the bounty of the promised land. It is even more appropriate that the phenomenon should be concentrated in Sepphoris whose fierce and windy mountainous climate inspires contrition in the hearts of its residents. The sixteen-square-mile area symbolized this idea numerologically: the Hebrew word for heart—lev—has the value of thirty-two, so that sixteen aptly represents a broken or remorseful heart.

While much exegetical activity was directed towards identifying the milk and the honey, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch of Frankfurt focused his attention on the Hebrew root for “flowing” —ZWB—noting that it always refers to unnatural physiological discharges or to miracles. Only when speaking of the holy land does it denote agricultural bounty. Rabbi Hirsch inferred from this fact that the expression was not intended so much to praise the land’s natural fruitfulness as to remind the Israelites that their agricultural prosperity is conditional on fulfilling their religious and moral duties. 

From this he concluded that “the only real guarantee of liberty and independence is submission to the yoke of the Torah. The seal of the Torah’s authority is imprinted on the agriculture of the land of Israel.

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• First Publication:
  • The Alberta Jewish News, Edmonton and Calgary, April 22, 2021, p. 14.

• For further reading:
  • Feliks, Yehuda. Nature and Man in the Bible: Chapters in Biblical Ecology. London and New York: Soncino Press, 1981.
  • Hoppe, Leslie J. “‘A Land Flowing with Milk and Honey.’” The Bible Today 51, no. 3 (2013): 174–79.
  • Levi, Yehudah (Leo). “Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch—Myth and Fact.” Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought 31, no. 3 (1997): 5–22.
  • Levine, Étan. “The Land of Milk and Honey.” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 25, no. 87 (2000): 43–57.
  • Margaliot, Reuben. “18. Ereṣ Zavat Ḥalav u-Dvash.” In Ha-Miḳra veha-Mesorah: Ḳoveṣ Ma’amarim, 62–64. Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1962. [Hebrew]
  • Mikva, Rachel S. “Midrash in the Synagogue and the Attenuation of Targum.” Jewish Studies Quarterly 18, no. 4 (2011): 319–42.
  • Rust, Ehud. “Le-Mashma‘ut ha-Kinnui ‘Ereṣ Ḥalav u-D’vash’: ‘Iyyun ba-Parshanut.” ‘Al Atar, no. 6 (2000): 23–32. [Hebrew]
  • Stern, Philip D. “The Origin and Significance of ‘the Land Flowing with Milk and Honey.’” Vetus Testamentum 42, no. 4 (1992): 554–57.
  • Zevin, Shlomo Josef. “Devash.” In Talmudic Encyclopedia, edited by Shlomoh Josef Zevin, 7:195–201. Jerusalem: Talmudic Encyclopedia Institute, 1981. [Hebrew]

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My email address is: [email protected]

The Wanderer’s Guide to the Afterlife

by Eliezer Segal

This year the literary world is commemorating the seven hundredth yahrzeit of Dante Alighieri who died on September 14, 1321. Dante is best known for his monumental poetic tour of the afterlife, the Divina Commedia, a work steeped in Christian and classical cultures. Hardly a legacy that should leave an imprint on Jewish culture.

And yet there was at least one Jewish author, a contemporary and neighbour of Dante, who was deeply influenced by the Florentine master and also made outstanding contributions to Hebrew letters. Immanuel ben Solomon of Rome was born in 1261 and wandered through Italian communities working at diverse professions, sometimes under the patronage of affluent Jewish bankers. Though he composed poems in Italian, his best known achievements were in Hebrew.

What has survived from his Hebrew oeuvre is a collection entitled the Maḥbarot, stitched together in a picaresque narrative framework according to the medieval Arabic “makama” format. This literary structure had been popularized in Spanish “Golden Age” Hebrew collections such as Judah al-Harizi’s Taḥkemoni, and by European writers like Boccaccio and Chaucer.

There are numerous literary genres represented in the pages of Maḥbarot Immanuel, including the earliest instances of Hebrew sonnets that follow the prevailing Italian conventions. Alongside religious hymns and tributes to an ethereal Beloved, one can find raunchy tales of erotic conquests. 

Although the spirit of Dante is discernible throughout Immanuel’s works, the most striking analogy is the final twenty-eighth section of the Maḥbarot, entitled “Tophet and Eden,” consisting of a tour of afterlife abodes, composed in rhymed prose.

“Tophet” was a location in Jerusalem mentioned in the Bible in connection with “the valley of Gehinom” as the site of a monstrous child sacrifice cult, and it came to be identified as the place of punishment for deceased sinners. 

Dante wrote his Divine Comedy largely in response to his predicament as an exile from his beloved Florence. As a Jew, Immanuel was no stranger to exile. The Jewish community in Rome was expelled by Papal decree in 1321, forcing the impoverished poet into a life of wandering through Italy. His most significant stopover was in the town of Gubbio where he became intimate with members of Dante’s literary circle and was about to achieve some financial security thanks to a Jewish banker named Daniel. His hopes were frustrated by the deaths in the same year of both Dante and Daniel.

The introductory passage to “Tophet and Eden” recounts how, at the age of sixty, the vicissitudes of his life and the death of a friend impelled him to ponder his mortality and his prospects in the next world. Towards that end, he was provided with an elderly angelic guide named Daniel, who performed the role assigned to the Latin poet Vergil in Dante’s masterpiece. This seems perfectly reasonable, in that the biblical Daniel provides the most explicit scriptural statement about the fates of the righteous and the wicked in the next world, comparable to the tour of Hades found in Vergil’s Aeneid. Nevertheless, some scholars believe that Immanuel’s guide was his cherished patron —or maybe even an epithet for Dante Alighieri!

Dante’s work is divided into three parts: the Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise. Jewish tradition speaks of only two options: the paradise equated with the garden of Eden; and the place of torment, Gehenna or Tophet. The latter in fact has more affinities to the Christian Purgatory in that it is usually a temporary state designed to purge the sinners of their moral flaws to allow them entry into Paradise. At any rate, Immanuel’s work is limited to these two sections, both of which are considerably shorter than Dante’s. Immanuel’s meandering journeys through those domains lack the systematically graded structure that defined Dante’s depictions. 

Immanuel, though well aware of his own moral shortcomings, feels assured of admission to Eden by virtue of his commentaries to several books of holy scripture. Isaiah, King Solomon, Jeremiah and other prophets heap praises upon him as the only interpreter who has ever grasped the true meaning of their words.

He describes the sublime abode set aside for the “ten imperial martyrs” who were tortured to death by the Romans for teaching Torah in defiance of Hadrian’s decree, and continue to plead before the heavenly throne on behalf of their exiled brethren. To be sure, a place in Paradise is allocated as well for the righteous among the gentiles.

From a literary perspective, Hell is usually the more interesting place to write and read about. Immanuel’s roster of sinners includes such unsurprising categories as nefarious biblical villains, persecutors of Israel, and heretical philosophers. The medical profession is represented by Hippocrates (for refusing to share his wisdom), and Galen (for belittling Moses). Among the other evildoers who languish in the pits of flaming torment are many who enjoyed undeserved reputations for virtue during their lifetimes. Some persons who committed trivial-sounding infractions must now acknowledge the long-range consequences for which they are being held culpable. Immanuel directs caustic condemnations against uncharitable misers—I strongly suspect that has something to do with his own failures to attract generous patrons. 

The sufferers in Tophet also include some obnoxious characters from Jewish communal life— boorish cantors, persons who assert exclusive entitlements to synagogue honours, and voyeurs who peep into the ritual baths. Arguably, there is something distinctly Jewish about the way Immanuel focuses on the communal dimensions more than on individuals.

In one of his sonnets, Immanuel lamented impishly that Eden must be a dull place inhabited by desiccated crones, whereas the passionate beauties will all reside in Tophet. 

Comments of this sort earned him enough notoriety for the Shulhan Arukh law code to declare that “lewd works like Immanuel’s book…may not be read on the Sabbath—and are forbidden even on weekdays as instances of ‘sitting in the seat of the scornful.’”

Nonetheless, his guide to “Tophet and Eden” might well turn out to be the last travel book you’ll ever need.

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• First Publication:
  • The Alberta Jewish News, Edmonton and Calgary, October 4, 2021, p. 22.

• For further reading:
  • Alfie, Fabian. “Immanuel of Rome, Alias Manoello Giudeo: The Poetics of Jewish Identity in Fourteenth-Century Italy.” Italica 75, no. 3 (1998): 307–29.
  • Bonfil, Robert. Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy. Translated by Anthony Oldcorn. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
  • Brener, Ann. “The Scroll of Love by Immanuel of Rome: A Hebrew Parody of Dante’s Vita Nuova.” Prooftexts 32, no. 2 (2012): 149–75.
  • Cassuto, Moshe David Umberto. Dante ve-‘immanu’el [Dante e Manoello]. Translated by Menahem Dorman. Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1965. [Hebrew]
  • Enelow, H. G. “Immanuel of Rome.” The Jewish Quarterly Review 16, no. 2 (1925): 209–12.
  • Fishkin, Dana W. “Situating Hell & Heaven: Immanuel of Rome’s ‘Mahberet Ha-Tophet V’ Ha-Eden.’” Ph.D., New York University, 2011.
  • Geiger, Abraham. “Der Jude Manoello, der Freund Dante’s.” Hebraïsche Bibliographie 3, no. 15 (1860): 59–60.
  • Gollancz, Hermann. “Introduction: Dante and Immanuel.” In Tophet and Eden (Hell and Paradise): In Imitation of Dante’s Inferno and Paradiso, from the Hebrew, edited by Hermann Gollancz, 5–13. London: University of London Press, 1921.
  • Kahanoff, Ezer. “Interpreting Emanuel HaRomi’s Inferno and Heaven through Dante’s Divine Comedy.” Ketav ‘Et le-‘Iyyun u-Meḥḳar 6 (2000): 31–45. [Hebrew]
  • Lewis, Harry S. “Immanuel of Rome.” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 6 (1934): 277–308.
  • Nidler, Howard. “Dante, Emmanuel veha-Sofer ha-Yehudi.” Moznayim 57, no. 3 (1983): 34–45. [Hebrew]
  • Pagis, Dan. Change and Tradition in the Secular Poetry: Spain and Italy. The Keter Library: The Jewish People and Its Culture 5: Literature. Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House, 1976. [Hebrew]
  • Roth, Cecil. The Jews in the Renaissance. 1st ed. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1959.
  • Steinschneider, Moritz. “Immanuel: Biographische und literarhistorische Skizze #7.” In Gesammelte Schriften, edited by Heinrich Malter and Alexander Marx, 1:286–90. Berlin: M. Poppelauer, 1925.
  • Tchernichovsky, Shaul. Emmanuel ha-Romi: Monografia. Berlin: Eshkol, 1925. [Hebrew]

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My email address is: [email protected]

Drifting above the Law

by Eliezer Segal

Until the previous American administration, many of us simply accepted the premise that nobody is above the law as a foundation of a just and of democratic government.

Of course this has not always been the case. Until quite recently almost all societies were ruled by monarchs who ruled with some degree of absoluteness, or even claimed divine status. They were not elected by popular vote, nor were there effective mechanisms in place for enforcing their adherence to the law. 

It is debatable whether the Bible was actively commanding the appointment of kings, or merely conceding that monarchy is a permissible option. At any rate, its principal stress was on setting limits to royal power and ensuring that it is subordinated to the Torah. The prophet Samuel opposed the people’s demand for an institutionalized monarchy, which he saw as a betrayal of their trust in God; and he had to be prodded by the Almighty to accede reluctantly to their wishes. 

In the fourteenth century, Rabbi Nissim of Gerona outlined a theory of separate monarchical and judicial branches of government that should not trespass on each other’s area of authority. He deemed the judiciary to be primary in that it is charged with applying the laws of the Torah. Nevertheless, the king is assigned the authority to overrule judicial verdicts in order to protect the community—for instance, by applying extra-judicial penalties to serial criminals who would otherwise evade retribution on account of the cumbersome Jewish laws of testimony and “Miranda” notifications. According to Rabbi Nissim, Samuel’s objection was not so much to the Israelites’ demanding a king as to their wanting the king to exercise judicial functions.

Josephus Flavius told a story about young Herod son of Antipater who, while serving as governor of Galilee under the nominal kingship of John Hyrcanus, was indicted for killing a zealot resistance fighter without proper trial. The Jewish leadership warned the ineffectual Hyrcanus that Antipater and his sons were becoming the de facto rulers and must be halted before they became unstoppably powerful. 

Herod did submit to being tried before the Sanhedrin, but not without bringing along a cohort of armed supporters. This threat of violence did in fact succeed in intimidating all his judges and accusers except for a lone prosecutor named Sameas who vocally berated the spineless political and judicial leadership. Hyrcanus capitulated to Roman pressure to postpone judgment and thereby facilitate Herod’s escape. Josephus recounts that Sameas did achieve eventual vindication when Herod captured Jerusalem and killed Hyrcanus and the entire Sanhedrin—except for the embittered Sameas who had opened the gates to facilitate his entry into the city.

The Talmud recounted the same event, albeit with some changes in detail. In its version, the defiant defendant was the Hasmonean king Yannai [one midrashic tradition refers vaguely to “one of the Hasmonean kings”] and his prosecutor was Simeon ben Shaṭaḥ. It describes dramatically how Simeon turned to his right and left, only to find that his spineless colleagues had buried their heads in the sand like so many Republican senators. The Talmud has it that the cowardly judges later suffered divine punishments for their cowardice.

Babylonian sages adduced this episode as background to the Mishnah’s ruling that “a king does not judge and is not judged,” They explained that the ruling was not directed at righteous kings of the house of David, but only to the ‘kings of Israel,” evidently referring to the ruthless figures who reigned over the second Jewish Commonwealth and could intimidate potential judges from issuing honest verdicts. 

Outside the Jewish domain, ancient authors acknowledged that their kings were a law unto themselves.

The satirist Horace illustrated this truth by alluding to Sophocles’ story of how King Agamemnon had denied burial to the warrior Ajax and justified his cruel decision on the grounds that he was the king (“because I say so”), whereas the person who objected to him was a mere plebeian. End of discussion.

In this connection the commentator Pomponius Porphyry cited a Greek adage “moroi kai basilei agraphos nomos”; “for a madman or a king the law is unwritten.” Its apparent meaning is that these two classes of persons, albeit for different reasons, are outside the control of the laws that apply to everybody else. 

A very similar saying—in transliterated Greek (and with some grammatical awkwardness that is understandable from a rabbi who had been raised in Babylonia)—appears in the Midrash and the Jerusalem Talmud in an exposition by Rabbi Eleazar ben Pedat: “para basileos ho nomos agraphos”—for a king the law is not written. 

Rabbi Eleazar illustrated the point by means of a remarkable analogy: In the mortal realm, when a king issues an edict, he has the option of either carrying it out himself or delegating it to others. By contrast, the God of Israel does not impose commandments unless he is prepared to accept them upon himself (though in “unwritten,” voluntary status). The Talmud attached this bold remark to the words of the Torah, “They shall keep my charge… I the Lord consecrate them,” understood in the sense that the Lord is applying the same charge even to himself! For example, as Abraham bargained for the lives of the Sodomites, the Almighty “stood” respectfully before him in keeping with the precept “Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head and honour the face of the old man.״

A midrashic passage tells of a group of prominent first-century C.E. sages who preached this theme in Rome, and one wonders how it was received in the emperor’s own bailiwick. 

The Greek slogan about the law being unwritten, in the sense of its not being applicable to kings (or madmen), contrasts sharply with its usage in rabbinic teachings. Rabbi Eleazar interpreted that even the master of the universe subjects himself to the same laws that obligate humans.

In all likelihood, this was precisely the contrast that the Jewish sages were trying to highlight.

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• First Publication:
  • The Alberta Jewish News Digital edition, June 17 2021, Edmonton and Calgary.

• For further reading:
  • Ben-Shalom, Israel. The School of Shammai and the Zealots’ Struggle Against Rome. Jerusalem: Yad Itzhak Ben-Tsevi and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 1993. [Hebrew]
  • Cohen, Naomi G. “‘Agraphos Nomos’ in Philo’s Writings.” Daat: A Journal of Jewish Philosophy & Kabbalah 15 (1985): 5–20. [Hebrew]
  • ———. “The Jewish Dimension of Philo’s Judaism: An Elucidation of De Spec Leg Iv 132-150.” Journal of Jewish Studies 38, no. 2 (1987): 165–86.
  • Efron, Joshua. Studies on the Hasmonean Period. Studies in Judaism in Late Antiquity 39. Leiden ; New York: E.J. Brill, 1987.
  • Federbusch, Simon. Mishpaṭ ha-Melukhah be-Yisra’el. Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1952. [Hebrew]
  • Flatto, David C. “Justice Retold: The Seminal Narrations of the Trial of the Judean King.” The Journal of Law and Religion 30, no. 1 (2015): 3–35.
  • Goodblatt, David M. The Monarchic Principle: Studies in Jewish Self-Government in Antiquity. Texte Und Studien Zum Antiken Judentum 38. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (P. Siebeck), 1994.
  • Harvey, Warren Zev. “Liberal Democratic Themes in Nissim of Geronai.” In Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Culture, edited by Jay M. Harris and Isadore Twersky, 3:197–211. Harvard Judaic Monographs 8. Harvard University Press, 2001.
  • ———. “Rabbi Nissim of Girona on the Constitutional Power of the Sovereign.” Diné Israel 29 (2014): 91*-100*.
  • Heinemann, Isaak. “Die Lehre vom ungeschriebenen Gesetz im jüdischen Schrifttum.” Hebrew Union College Annual 4 (1927): 149–71. [German]
  • Kahana, Menahem. Sifre Zuta on Deuteronomy: Citations from a New Tannaitic Midrash. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2002. [Hebrew]
  • Kefir, Tziviah. “Yannai ha-Melekh ve-Shim‘on ben Sheṭaḥ (Sanhedrin 19a-b): Aggadah Amora’it be-Taḥposet Hisṭorit.” Ṭura 3 (1994): 85–97. [Hebrew]
  • Lieberman, Saul. Greek in Jewish Palestine: Studies in the Life and Manners of Jewish Palestine in the II-IV Centuries C. E. New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1942.
  • ———. “How Much Greek in Jewish Palestine?” In Studies and Texts, edited by Alexander Altmann, 1. Biblical and Other Studies:123–41. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1963.
  • Martens, John W. One God, One Law: Philo of Alexandria on the Mosaic Greco-Roman Law. Studies in Philo of Alexandria and Mediterranean Antiquity 2. Leiden: Brill, 2003.

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My email address is: [email protected]

The Fascination with Vaccination

by Eliezer Segal

Rabbi Pinḥas Elijah Hurwitz was an itinerant Lithuanian scholar whose travels took him to Galicia, Poland, Prussia, Holland, Hungary and England. In 1806 he published an expanded edition of his popular 1797 compendium titled Sefer ha-Berit, “the Book of the Covenant” in the Czech city of Brunn (Brno). Ostensibly a commentary on an obscure kabbalistic text, it actually served as an introduction to developments in modern science and philosophy. The author regarded knowledge of these subjects as prerequisites for the attainment of holiness, mystical perfection, and even prophecy.

In this connection Rabbi Hurwitz incorporated a detailed account of the very recent medical triumph in the battle against smallpox. He retold the tale of the English physician Dr. Edward Jenner of Gloucester who surmised in 1796 that the known immunity of dairy farmers and milkmaids to smallpox was a side-effect of their prior infections from cattle afflicted with cowpox, which was caused by a very similar microbial strain. Jenner therefore proposed to vaccinate humans with the same fluid from cowpox pustules that seemed to produce immunity in the milkmaids (he coined the term “vaccinate,” derived from the Latin for “cow”). This treatment proved to be astoundingly successful and became the basis for all subsequent inoculations in which a small quantity of a microorganism from a disease is injected into a body in order to stimulate the immunization process. Rabbi Hurvitz provided his readers with meticulous descriptions of the inoculation process and its physiological effects on the recipients, along with a firm assurance that the practice was universally effective and completely safe.

Indeed, many people were repelled at the prospect of being injected intentionally with viral matter, and hence the procedure gave rise to intense discussions among authorities on Jewish religious law. In his collection of responsa Zera‘ Emet (“seed of truth”) published in 1795, Rabbi Ishmael ben Abraham Hakohen of Modena was called upon to settle an ongoing communal controversy: One faction supported vaccination on the grounds that it was practiced by the royalty of the time, was sanctioned by prominent Italian rabbis and had a successful track record. Opposing them were those who questioned its effectiveness and insisted that “the portion of Jacob should not stir up the destructive powers by infecting people with a disease that is mentioned in the Torah as ‘infectious’ [dibbuḳ]” and might therefore be regarded as a form of divinely ordained retribution.”

A very similar disagreement underlay the publication of a work titled ‘Aleh Terufah (“leaf of healing”) by Alexander (Abraham) ben Solomon of Hamburg, a scholar originally from Nancy, France, who had resided for many years in the Hague and then migrated to London. ‘Aleh Terufah, published in 1785, was an expansion of a shorter essay written in 1768. Its author attested that his determination to devote a discussion to this topic was rooted in tragic events that beset his own family: His beloved young daughter had perished from the disease in Nancy—owing to the incompetence of the attending physician—and then a similar fate befell his son in the Hague.

Although these authors were apparently unaware of each other’s studies, the issues discussed by Ishmael and Alexander were remarkably similar. They devoted considerable intellectual effort to situating the controversy over vaccination within the complex talmudic rules governing the saving or risking of human life whether by active or passive means. For purposes of making informed decisions in critical situations, rabbinic discourse strove to define precise degrees of probability and doubt, and to distinguish between cures for existing ailments and prevention of potential afflictions in the future (though this last distinction had little relevance in an actual plague situation). 

Our authors concluded that the decision ultimately boiled down to whether, based on a consensus of competent medical opinion, it would be more dangerous to administer the vaccinations or to refrain from them. Indeed, a statistic that recurred in all their discussions—and was presumably an exaggerated one—claimed that only (or: not even) one in a thousand instances of inoculation is unsuccessful (but not that it is harmful), and that any failures can likely be blamed on the patients’ failure to properly follow the physicians’ instructions. 

The traditionalist religious mentality is often characterized by resistance to change of any sort, and by an unwillingness to acknowledge innovations that were not anticipated by the authoritative texts. The exciting scientific discoveries of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were thus viewed by many with great suspicion as threats to orthodoxy: If our sacred writings and wise sages did not mention smallpox vaccination, then it is not an acceptable therapeutic option. 

It was in order to fend off this static perception of scientific knowledge that our authors had to remind their readers of the unprecedented progress that science had recently made in several areas. Sefer Ha-Berit and ‘Aleh Terufah both cite the successful flights of manned hot-air and helium balloons as proof that science is constantly progressing, and “there was revealed to later generations what was concealed from the earlier ones.” 

Rabbi Hurwitz concluded gravely that “anyone who is remiss in this matter, to the point that their children are fatally afflicted with the illness, shall be brought to justice before the [celestial] tribunal and will indeed be punished in accordance with divine law…”

Ashkenazic tradition tended to be wary of medical science because it diminishes people’s mindfulness of their ultimate dependence on divine assistance. However, Alexander of Hamburg allied himself with the position of Maimonides who had denounced those who knowingly refrain from carrying out life-saving medical procedures. He compared such irresponsible fools to starving persons who refuse to accept nourishment because it supposedly compromises their absolute reliance on the Almighty. 

Alexander stressed that we ought to appreciate Dr. Jenner’s medical breakthrough as a special instance of divine compassion. We would do better to appreciate how God has alleviated the suffering of humankind by bestowing upon scientists the intelligence that enables them to discover a safe and effective cure for a deadly plague.

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• First Publication:
  • The Alberta Jewish News, Edmonton and Calgary, June 21, 2021, p. 15.

• For further reading:
  • Bazin, H. The Eradication of Smallpox: Edward Jenner and the First and Only Eradication of a Human Infectious Disease. San Diego: Academic Press, 2000.
  • Bradley, L. Smallpox Inoculation: An Eighteenth Century Mathematical Controversy. Matlock: University of Nottingham, Dept. of Adult Education, 1971.
  • Feiner, Shmuel. “‘Ki ‘al pi ha-Ṭeva‘ hayah i-Efshar Lehinnatzel mi-Mavet’: Maggefot ba-Me’ah ha-Shemoneh-‘Esreh bein Dat le-Mada‘.” In Pesaḥ, Pasaḥ u-mah shebbeineihem, 32–34. Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Faculty of Jewish Studies, 2020. [Hebrew]
  • Fontaine, Resianne. “Natural Science in Sefer Ha-Berit: Pinchas Hurwitz on Animals and Meteorological Phenomena.” In Sepharad in Ashkenaz: Medieval Knowledge and Eighteenth-Century Enlightened Jewish Discourse ; [Proceedings of the Colloquium, Amsterdam, February 2002], edited by Resianne Fontaine, Andrea Schatz, and Irene E. Zwiep, 157–81. Verhandelingen Der Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Afd. Letterkunde 189. Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, 2007.
  • Rosenblum, Noah H. “ha-Entsiḳlopediah ha-‘Ivrit ha-Rishonah: Meḥabberah ve-Hishtalshelutah.” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 55 (1988): 15–65. [Hebrew]
  • Rosenthal, Judah. “Teshuvor R’ Yishma’el b”R’ Avraham Yiṣḥaḳ ha-Kohen.” In Studies and Texts in Jewish History, Literature and Religion, by Judah Rosenthal, 513–32. Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 1967. [Hebrew]
  • Ruderman, David B. A Best-Selling Hebrew Book of the Modern Era: The Book of the Covenant of Pinḥas Hurwitz and Its Remarkable Legacy. 1st edition. The Samuel & Althea Stroum Lectures in Jewish Studies. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2014.
  • ———. “Some Jewish Responses to Smallpox Prevention in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries: A New Perspective on the Modernization of European Jewry.” Aleph, no. 2 (2002): 111–44
  • Zimmels, H. J. Magicians, Theologians, and Doctors: Studies in Folk Medicine and Folklore as Reflected in the Rabbinical Responsa. 1st Jason Aronson Inc. ed. Northvale, NJ: J. Aronson, 1997.

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My email address is: [email protected]

Beyond an (Eye-)Shadow of a Doubt

by Eliezer Segal

In the Bible and in subsequent Jewish and Christian traditions, the name Jezebel provokes very unfavourable associations. A native of Phoenicia, she continued to promote the pagan cults of Baal and Asherah during her reign as consort of the Israelite king Ahab (earning her an honoured status among some feminists as the alleged champion of a primordial goddess cult). She abused her authority by orchestrating the judicial murder of Naboth in order to confiscate his vineyard.

After Ahab’s death, the prophet Elisha appointed the commander Jehu to wrest the monarchy from that ignominious dynasty. After eliminating the heirs to the throne, Jehu proceeded to confront Jezebel in Jezreel. The deposed queen greeted the upstart with proud defiance. Jehu ordered that she be tossed disgracefully out the window and her mutilated corpse abandoned to the dogs in fulfillment of a curse by the prophet Elijah.

In describing Jezebel’s preparations for receiving Jehu, the scriptural account inserts an intriguing detail: “She coloured her eyes, and arranged her hair.” The laconic formulation does not explain exactly how Jezebel went about colouring her eyes, or what her purpose was in doing so. What the Hebrew text actually says is that she applied to her eyes something called “pukh.” The oldest interpreters seem quite certain when it comes to identifying the substance in question. The ancient Greek translation employs a verb “estimisato,” derived from the noun “stimmi.” This substance, known in Latin as “stibium” (stibnite), is identified as antimony, an element that was commonly used to lend a black or dark blue tinge to the eyelids. 

The medieval exegete and grammarian Rabbi David Kimhi of Narbonne equated pukh with kaḥol, a cosmetic well-known in rabbinic literature (the architects of modern Hebrew adopted it as the term for the colour “blue”). Crossword puzzle aficionados may recognize the word ‘kohl” as a synonym for eye-liner. Like many such terms in the cosmetic lexicon, this Semitic word entered European languages through the agency of Arabic traders who controlled much of the international commerce in those items during medieval times.

So what was Jezebel’s objective in prettying herself up for the confrontation with her nemesis Jehu? Gersonides’ preferred hypothesis was that, through her insistence on being elegantly groomed at her public appearances, Jezebel was proudly asserting her majesty as Israel’s legitimate sovereign—as was borne out in her subsequent diatribe against Jehu.

According to another possibility suggested by Gersonides, Jezebel was hoping to arouse Jehu’s compassion to spare her life. In a slight variation on that theme, Rabbi Meir Malbim supposed that she was hoping to elicit sympathy from one of the army officers who might be persuaded to protect her against the usurper. Rashi wrote that she was enhancing her physical charms as a means of seducing the new king to marry her and thereby perpetuating her hold on the throne. (As that old Frankie Laine song put it, “If ever a pair of eyes \ promised paradise \ it was you, Jezebel.”)

In keeping with the traditional stereotyping of Jezebel as an archetype of heathen depravity, Don Isaac Abravanel remarked that the application of eye shadow is the mark of a harlot. This claim is consistent with other passages in the Bible in which similar actions are stigmatized as licentious behaviour. Thus, in Jeremiah’s vision of the fall of Jerusalem, he scornfully depicts a personification of the rejected city tarting herself up in a futile attempt to entice her former paramours. “Though thou broaden thy eyes with pukh, in vain shalt thou make thyself fair; thy lovers will despise thee, they will seek thy life.” Ezekiel employed similar imagery, addressing Jerusalem as the wanton Oholibah who “bathed, painted your eyes, and donned your finery” to receive her companions. The Hebrew verb used here for painting eyes is “kaḥal.” 

In contrast to the prophets’ negative stance towards eye make-up, the sages of the Talmud had more favourable things to say about the practice. Rabbis Yosé and Yoḥanan touted it as a cure for an ailment referred to as “the daughter of the king,” which commentators understood as a demon that afflicts the eyes. The treatment also inhibits tearing and even enhances the growth of eyelashes.

At the end of the book of Job, the long-suffering hero is recompensed with the birth of a new daughter. The girl is named “Keren Happukh.” Rashi explained that the name alluded to the horn-shaped container used for eye-shadow. Rabbi David Altschuler in his Metzudat David commentary associated it with the metallic gleam of antimony.

The Talmud reports that in the land of Israel it was customary to praise a bride for being as graceful as a gazelle even though her charms are not enhanced by eye-shadow [keḥal], rouge or braided hair. As Rashi remarked, the point is not necessarily that she has no recourse to beauty aids, but rather that her intrinsic beauty does not really require synthetic embellishment. In this connection, Rabbi Jacob Reischer adduced the words of Proverbs: “Favour is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised.” 

The talmudic passage goes on to relate that the same praises that were addressed to brides were also sung to Rabbi Zera at his rabbinic ordination. 

Now it is quite obvious that Rabbi Zera was not being commended for going without mascara, and that the attribution of these qualities to him was intended metaphorically, as an appreciation of the genuineness of his scholarship and piety. According to Rabbi Samuel Edels (Maharsha), Rabbi Zera had no need for metaphoric eye-shadow because his character was authentically modest and decent, and his admirable qualities could shine through without any deceptive veneer. 

Maharsha contrasted him to pretenders who project outward images of righteous saintliness—like men who always keep their gazes lowered ostentatiously as if to avoid glancing at women. 

It remains an open question whether those sanctimonious frauds could have resisted the enticements of queen Jezebel’s darkly exotic eyes.

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• First Publication:
  • The Alberta Jewish News, Edmonton and Calgary, July 26, 2021, p. 9.

• For further reading:
  • Krauss, Samuel. Talmudische Archäologie. Vol. 1. 3 vols. Schriften von Gesellschaft zur förderrung der wissenschaft des Judentums. Grundriss der gesamtswissenschaft des Judentums. Leipzig: G. Fock, 1910.
  • Labovitz, Gail. “‘Even Your Mother and Your Mother’s Mother’: Rabbinic Literature on Women’s Usage of Cosmetics.” Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies & Gender Issues 23, no. 1 (2012): 12–34.
  • Murube, Juan. “Ocular Cosmetics in Ancient Times.” The Ocular Surface 11, no. 1 (2013): 2–7.
  • Preuss, Julius. Biblical and Talmudic Medicine. Translated by Fred Rosner. Northvale, NJ: J. Aronson, 1993.
  • Safrai, Chana. “Beauty, Beautification and Cosmetics: Social Control and Halakha in Talmudic Times.” In Jewish Legal Writings by Women, edited by Micah D. Halpern and Chana Safrai, 1st ed., 38–51. Jerusalem and Brooklyn: Urim Publications, 1998.
  • Trachtenberg, Joshua. Jewish Magic and Superstition: A Study in Folk Religion. New York: Behrman’s Jewish Book House, 1939.

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My email address is: [email protected]

Where the Wild Things Were

by Eliezer Segal

What exactly was the fourth of the ten plagues that were inflicted upon the Egyptians? It goes by the Hebrew name “arov,” but the Haggadah does not provide us with clues to its exact meaning.

The ancient Greek Septuagint translation, the writings of Philo of Alexandria, and the Greek version of the Torah by Aquila (composed under the supervision of prominent rabbis in the second century C.E.) all rendered the word as “kunumuia”: dog-fly, an insect pest that often plagued Egypt (and apparently still does).

Philo discoursed at length, seemingly from personal experience, on the malevolence of this insect, which epitomized the worst traits of both dogs and flies. Under normal conditions “it shoots in from a distance with a whizzing sound like an arrow, and when it has reached its mark it pierces very closely with great force… But these dog-flies were prompted by the Almighty to be even twice as treacherous and hostile against the Egyptians.”

Most non-Jewish translators, including the King James English version, translated arov as “flies” or another insect species. This option also had Jewish advocates, such as Rabbi Solomon David Luzatto (Shadal) of Trieste. Shadal reasoned that it must refer to tiny creatures because larger animals could have been kept out of people’s houses by strong doors and barriers. He understood that when the Torah speaks about the arov “devouring” the Egyptians, the expression should be read as hyperbole, as we speak of being eaten alive by insects.

However, most of us were brought up on the assumption that arov alludes to an incursion of diverse kinds of wild beasts. It’s an occasion for children to pull out the lions, tigers and bears that have been lying in their toy-boxes since reading about Noah’s ark; and it generates some vivid artwork in illustrated Haggadahs.

This is indeed in keeping with Rashi’s explanation of the original passage in Exodus: “All manner of evil beasts, snakes and scorpions mixed together [“be-irbuvia,” from the same root as arov].” He cites a midrash that compares the strategy underlying the Egyptian plagues to conventional siege tactics that seek to throw the enemy into a panic with horrifying noises. In the Midrash, Rabbi Simeon ben Lakish referred to the fourth plague as a “mixture of birds and animals.”

As we see, Rashi took his cue from the root meaning of the word: “mix.” He did not really enter into the question of which species of beasts made up the mixture. (It is in fact most interesting to compare the varied examples of animals that different commentators included in their lists of arov species.)

Other French exegetes of the period, such as Rabbis Joseph Kara and Samuel ben Meir (Rashbam) narrowed the zoological range of arov candidates—to wolves and other beasts of the night. They adduced texts in Jeremiah and Zephaniah in which the prophets spoke of the retribution that will be inflicted on the wicked when “a wolf of the evenings shall spoil them, a leopard shall watch over their cities: every one that goeth out thence shall be torn in pieces.” In Hebrew the “wolf of the evenings” is ze’ev ha-‘aravot, employing the Hebrew root “arov.” Rashbam explained that nocturnal predators are the most deadly and fearsome.

For some interpreters, the vital clue to identifying the arov was the verb employed by the Torah when God threatened to unleash them on Egypt: “I will send arov.” Maimonides’ son Rabbi Abraham assembled several scriptural. passages where the verb “to send” is applied to wild beasts. For instance, in Moses’s admonitions in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, he threatens the disobedient Israelites that the Lord will “send beasts upon them.”

Formulating an idea that would be shared by several subsequent authors, Rabbi Abraham located the significance of this detail in the fact that, unlike other plagues, this one did not involve the creation of miraculous new beings with which to chastise Pharaoh, but rather modifications to the behaviour of existing species. Normally, nature maintains a balance in which wild creatures occupy a separate domain and restrain themselves from intrusions into human habitations. However, on this unique occasion God chose to suspend those restraints and thereby “send” the creatures into the Egyptian population centres and private residences. It was in this sense that it was deemed a miracle when large numbers of animals broke out of their normal nocturnal enclaves and made their way by day into the Egyptian habitations.

Rabbi Bahya ben Asher pointed out that, unlike most of the other plagues, the word “arov” is acompanied by the definite article. This indicates that they were not new creations but the same beasts that had been there all along; however it was only now that were they unleashed to assail the Egyptians. Rabbi S. R. Hirsch claimed that the miracle consisted of removing the animals’ fear of humans.

(Rabbi Isaiah Berlin took a contrasting view, suggesting that beasts that had hitherto been tame and docile were now miraculously transformed into vicious predators.)

Several authors offered reasons why this plague was particularly appropriate. For instance, Rabbi Jacob Zvi Mecklenburg discerned poetic justice in the choice of animals to serve as weapons against the Egyptians, when viewed in the context of the veneration of zoological forms that was so central to their idolatrous religion, with its menagerie of sacred bulls, cats, crocodiles and the like.

Don Isaac Abravanel found a measure of divine justice in the way that the animals (with a little help from angels of destruction) confined the Egyptians captive to their homes and fields, in retribution for Pharaoh’s own treatment of the Israelites. The same type of Egyptian “hospitality” that he had imposed on his unwilling Hebrew guests, Pharaoh was now forced to extend to the savage arov as they stampeded “into the house of Pharaoh, and into his servants’ houses, and into all the land of Egypt.”

And the uninvited guests probably behaved like a pack of rowdy party animals.

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• First Publication:
  • The Alberta Jewish News, Edmonton and Calgary, March 22, 2023, p. 38.

• For further reading:
  • A Commentary on the Book of Exodus. Translated by Israel Abrahams. 1st English ed. Publications of the Perry Foundation for Biblical Research in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1967.
  • Rendsburg, Gary A. “Beasts or Bugs?: Solving the Problem of the Fourth Plague.” Biblical Review, no. 2 (2003) 18-23.

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My email address is: [email protected]

Making the Desert Bloom

by Eliezer Segal

Perhaps some of my readers will be observing “Bloomsday” on June 16. This is the date on which the events of James Joyce’s novel Ulysses take place. The book recounts the banal doings of its hero, Mr. Leopold Bloom, as he goes about his business and diversions in various locations in Dublin on that day in the year 1904. 

As his name might suggest, Bloom was of Jewish lineage, though he had converted to Christianity no fewer than three times. Nevertheless, his acquaintances all regarded him as a Jew, for better or for worse, as did he himself. At any rate, the novel is packed with references to Jewish culture and history, much of it mashed up and tossed about in the author’s experimental stream-of-consciousness style. The Judaic references in Ulysses are not confined to the Bible or ancient Hebrew texts. For example, it occasionally alludes to links between biblical Moses and his later namesakes Maimonides, Mendelssohn and Montefiore. 

I find it remarkable that Ulysses contains several mentions of the Zionist movement which was still in its infancy in 1904, barely seven years after the first Zionist Congress in Basel. One particular instance took the form of a leaflet that Bloom picked up early in the narrative. It promoted a project called “Agendath Netaim,” which offered an opportunity to invest in a model farm at Kinnereth on the lakeshore of Tiberias.” He begins reading the advertisement in a very non-kosher butcher shop run by one Dlugacz, presumably a Jew, as he is awaiting his breakfast order of pork kidney; and he retains it throughout the day. The newspaper cutting is mentioned more than a dozen times in the novel. 

Anybody familiar with Hebrew will recognize “Agendath” as a corruption of “agudath,” = “association.” Although it can be easily explained as a copyist’s error, the sort we would now blame on a computer’s auto-correct function, Joyce scholars devoted much energy and erudition to determining whether to ascribe it to Joyce himself—either as a mistake or as an intentional pun of the kind that permeates his writing—or to the typesetters.

In the advertisement, the contact address was given as “Bleibtreustrasse 34, Berlin.” In reality, however, that enterprise was established in 1905 (a year later than the date of the story), and the office at that address would not exist until 1907 or 1908 at the earliest. In 1910, the company was officially registered with the Turkish authorities, and its mandate was outlined in a Hebrew pamphlet published in Constantinople in 1910. 

By 1912 the newly erected building in Berlin housed several offices devoted to selling real estate in Palestine, including the “Tiberias Land and Plantation Corporation, Ltd.” The various enterprises promoted by these corporations, whether marketed as financial investments or as opportunities for personal fulfilment, strove to persuade potential investors to purchase lands from the Turkish government with prospects of lush farms, sanatoriums (presumably built upon the famous hot springs of Tiberias) and orchards brimming with olives, oranges, almonds and citrons. The mission of Agudat Netaim was to lay the groundwork for economically viable agricultural settlements that would then be sold at a profit to potential immigrants. Several prominent Zionist leaders were counted among the directors and investors in Agudat Netaim, which continued to function for several decades. Joyce would have known something about projects of that sort from a collection of essays on Zionist theory and practice published in 1916, of which he owned a copy. 

As a sensitive and knowledgeable intellectual living amidst the complexities of modern European society, we hardly need to seek special justifications for Joyce’s choice of a “wandering Jew’ in Dublin as a contemporary exemplar of the Ulysses of classical myth. His fascination with the Jewish question was cultivated during the central period of his life that he spent teaching English in Trieste. Trieste then belonged to the Hapsburg (Austro-Hungarian) empire, and was a major cultural hub with a cosmopolitan Jewish populace. Joyce’s social circle included several close Jewish friends and students. 

Nonetheless, it is widely held that there was another, more immediate motive underlying his decision to focus his story on a Jewish hero. Ireland at the time was, after all, undergoing tensions that were very similar to those of the Jews. Although—in contrast to the Jews—most Irish folk were dwelling on their native soil, they also experienced a history of religious and cultural persecution. 

In one of his associative rants, Bloom fantasized about the interwoven histories of the two peoples, their languages and literatures, a theme that he traced back to the division into languages as described in the biblical myth of the tower of Babel. In this extraordinary passage, he made reference to “the presence of guttural sounds, diacritic aspirations, epenthetic and servile letters in both languages.” He surveyed the kindred literatures of the two peoples, “comprising the works of rabbis and culdees, Torah, Talmud (Mischna and Ghemara), Massor, Pentateuch, Book of the Dun Cow, Book of Ballymote, Garland of Howth, Book of Kells.” Each nation dreamed of ultimate “restoration in Chanah David of Zion and the possibility of Irish political autonomy or devolution.”

Joyce went on to declare: 

What anthem did Bloom chant partially in anticipation of that multiple, ethnically irreducible consummation?

Kolod balejwaw pnimah

Nefesch, jehudi, homijah.

The familiar  Zionist anthem “HaTikvah [=the hope]”, which had been composed in 1878 and officially adopted in 1903, was thus known in June 1904 to Leopold Bloom (at least its opening lines), and to Joyce by 1920. It speaks of the dispersed nation’s enduring hope 

to be a free nation in our land, 
The land of Zion and Jerusalem.

As it happened, the song that would be adopted in 1926 as the anthem of free Ireland expresses uncannily similar sentiments, proclaiming that 

Some have come from a land beyond the wave, 
Sworn to be free, no more our ancient sireland,
Shall shelter the despot or the slave.

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• First Publication:
  • The Alberta Jewish News, Edmonton and Calgary, March 22, 2023, p. 38.

• For further reading:
  • Bell, M. David. “The Seach for Agendath Netaim: Some Progress, but No Solution.” James Joyce Quarterly 12, no. 3 (1975): 251–58.
  • Bulhof, Francis. “Agendath Again.” James Joyce Quarterly 7, no. 4 (1970): 326–32.
  • Byrnes, Robert. “Agendath Netaim Discovered: Why Bloom Isn’t a Zionist.” James Joyce Quarterly 29, no. 4 (1992): 833–38.
  • Davison, Neil R. James Joyce, Ulysses, and the Construction of Jewish Identity: Culture, Biography, and “the Jew” in Modernist Europe. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
  • Emanuel, Noga. “‘What Is Your Nation, If I May Ask?’: Antisemitism and Zionism in James Joyce’s Ulysses.” Fathom, June 2022.
  • Hyman, Louis. “Letters to the Editor.” James Joyce Quarterly 13, no. 4 (1976): 486–88.
  • Katz, Yossi. “An Internal Zionist Dispute on Jewish Settlement Outside the Land of Israel: The Case of Turkey (1911—1912).” Zion 49, no. 3 (1984): 265–88. 
  • Nadel, Ira Bruce. Joyce and the Jews: Culture and Texts. Florida James Joyce Series. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996.
  • Parish, Charles. “Agenbite of Agendath Netaim.” James Joyce Quarterly 6, no. 3 (1969): 237–41.
  • Reizbaum, Marilyn. James Joyce’s Judaic Other. Contraversions : Jews and Other Differences. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1999.
  • Wicht, Wolfgang. “Another Side-Street Off ‘Bleibtreustrasse 34.’” James Joyce Quarterly 48, no. 1 (2010): 154–56.
  • ———. “‘Bleibtreustrasse 34, Berlin, W. 15.’ (U 4.199), Once Again.” James Joyce Quarterly 40, no. 4 (2003): 797–810.
  • Williams, Edwin W. “Agendath Netaim: Promised Land or Waste Land.” Modern Fiction Studies 32, no. 2 (1986): 228–35.

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My email address is: [email protected]

Visually Challenged

by Eliezer Segal

A novel that I read recently made several references to a maxim, “in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” That saying shows up with considerable frequency in modern European writing. In the eighteenth century, J-J Rousseau invoked it to explain his success as a music teacher though lacking any notable talent: “‘Dans le royaume des aveugles les borgnes sont roi’—“I passed here for an excellent master, because all the rest were very bad ones.” H. G. Wells even published a story titled “The Country of the Blind” about a remote South American community whose members were all congenitally blind, and a sighted outsider wrongly deluded himself that he was their ruler.

The expression caught my attention because I was familiar with it from the midrashic compendium Genesis Rabbah where it appears in Aramaic, attached to a teaching by a second-century Galilean sage. The reading in the best manuscript goes “in the neighbourhood of the blind they call a one-eyed person ‘great one’.” Other texts have it as “…they call a one-eyed person ‘rich in light,’ and a small person ‘great one’.”

Indeed, the expression “rich in light” [sagi nehor] is used in the Talmud to designate blind persons, and in later usage it became the standard euphemism for, well, euphemisms.

The adage makes its appearance in the midrash in connection with an interpretation that is familiar to traditional Jewish readers from Rashi’s commentary to Genesis. Concerning the Torah’s statement that Noah was “perfect in his generations,” Rabbis Judah and Nehemiah disagree whether the phrase “in his generations” is intended to enhance the hero’s merits or to detract from them. (The same disagreement is brought in the Talmud in the names of Rabbis Simeon ben Laḳish and Yoḥanan.)

Rabbi Nehemiah praised Noah for maintaining his virtue even in his wicked generation. On the other hand, Rabbi Judah argued that Noah appeared righteous only when compared to the wicked heathens of his time; however, if he had been a contemporary of the virtuous Israelites who flourished in the days of Moses or Samuel, then his moral stature would not have been particularly impressive. It was to illustrate this opinion that the midrash cited the proverb about one-eyed persons being perceived as “rich in light” in comparison to the fully sightless.

I doubt that the popularity of this adage in European languages can be ascribed to widespread familiarity with ancient rabbinic literature. Indeed, my searches for its origins generally linked it to a more recent source—the eminent Dutch theologian and humanistic scholar Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466 – 1536). Erasmus compiled a vast collection of Latin proverbs known as the “Adagia”. One of the sayings that appeared there was “Inter caecos regnat strabus” [among the blind, a person who squints will rule].

Did Erasmus know Hebrew or acquire familiarity with classic Jewish literature? To be sure, he attached great value to the study of ancient languages and was one of his generation’s foremost authorities on Greek text—but he himself never mastered Hebrew.

He was in general a champion of religious tolerance and was opposed to forcibly converting or persecuting Jews. When European theological circles were torn by the fierce “battle of the books” in which the distinguished Christian Hebraist Johann Reuchlin came to the defence of the Talmud and Kabbalah against accusations by the apostate Johannes Pfefferkorn, Erasmus sided with Reuchlin. However, that probably did not reflect any real sympathies toward rabbinic Judaism, but had more to do with his respect for an esteemed friend and colleague and his antipathy to the boorish Pfefferkorn.

Erasmus’s personal attitude to Hebrew literature was expressed in his admonishment to a Judaophile Hebrew scholar: “I see that nation filled with the most frigid fables, casting forth nothing but various smokes: Talmud, Kabbalah, Tetragrammaton, ‘Gates of Light,’ inane names… I am afraid that by this opportunity the head of the plague that was formerly stifled may rise up. And would that the church of the Christians did not give so much preference to the Old Testament!”

Elsewhere too, Erasmus voiced his trepidations that the respect that Christian Hebraists were extending to Jewish writings (especially the Kabbalah) might lead to a rebirth of that rejected nation. He found little attraction in the ritualistic “Old Testament” in comparison to sublime Christian spirituality.

In fact, Erasmus’s Latin adage most likely reached him, as did much of the material in his anthology, in a Greek version that he heard from his friend Arsenius Apostolius, a scholar from Crete who migrated to Italy when Byzantium fell to the Ottoman Turks. The Greek proverb had previously been cited in an ancient commentary to Homer’s Iliad.

The proverb was even paraphrased in an English text that might have antedated Erasmus’s Adagia. The poet laureate John Skelton published a number of satirical broadsides denouncing his former ally Cardinal Wolsey, and in one of these works, titled “Why Come Ye Nat to Courte?” (1522), he ridiculed Wolsey for claiming to be the equal of King Henry VIII. In that connection Skelton wrote:

Yet proudly he dare pretende

How no man can him amende

But haue ye nat harde this

How an one-eyed man is

Well-syghted

when He is amonge blynde men.

That is to say, the cardinal’s inflated pretensions are only imaginable if he is comparing himself with his intellectual and social inferiors.

As Rabbi Jacob Reischer suggested, the midrashic appraisals of Noah are not necessarily contradictory. His uprightness was quite exemplary in the context of his depraved society, even though his spiritual stature would have benefited further from a community of spiritual mentors.

Most authors cite the half-blindness metaphor in a cynical sense, to belittle heroes and leaders who only appear admirable when compared to ones who are utterly inferior. As far as I know, Jewish tradition is unique in envisioning a more hopeful prospect—that persons whose achievements are blurred by the mediocrity of their times might yet rise to visionary clarity when supported by a more ennobling milieu.

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• First Publication:
  • The Alberta Jewish News, Edmonton and Calgary, January 24, 2022, p. 14.

• For further reading:
  • Barker, William, ed. The Adages of Erasmus. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001.
  • Crusius, O. “Ueber die Sprichwörtersammlung des Maximus Planudes.” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 42 (1887): 386–425.
  • Gundersheimer, Werner L. “Erasmus, Humanism, and the Christian Cabala.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 26, no. 1/2 (1963): 38–52.
  • Lieberman, Saul. Greek in Jewish Palestine: Studies in the Life and Manners of Jewish Palestine in the II-IV Centuries C. E. New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1942.
  • Markish, Simon. Erasmus and the Jews. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.
  • Ménager, Daniel, and Erika Rummel. “Erasmus, the Intellectuals, and the Reuchlin Affair.” In A Companion to Biblical Humanism and Scholasticism in the Age of Erasmus, 39–54. Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 9. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2008.
  • Rosenthal, E. S. “The Giv‘at ha-Mivtar Inscription.” P’raqim: Yearbook of the Schocken Institute for Jewish Research of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America 2 (1974 1969): 335–73. [Hebrew]
  • Tiersot, Julien. “Concerning Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the Musician.” The Musical Quarterly 17, no. 3 (1931): 341–59.
  • Tosi, Renzo. “Dall’antico al moderno. variazione di topoi proverbiali nella tradizione italiana.” Nuova Corvina 26 (2014): 78–88.
  • Walker, Greg. John Skelton and the Politics of the 1520s. Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History. Cambridge: University Press, 1988.

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My email address is: [email protected]

Fuel for a Festival

by Eliezer Segal

It is no easy matter to initiate a new holiday.

Although the ancient Israelites could base their festival calendar on spectacular miracles and prophetic revelations, later generations could face more difficult challenges when it came to establishing days to commemorate more recent occurrences. 

We see how Jewish communities today cannot reach a consensus regarding the observance of civil or religious holidays to commemorate the Holocaust or the founding of the state of Israel. Even where a date has been determined, there is rarely much agreement about the proper mode of observance. Similar issues arise in connection with assorted war memorials, the days of Truth and Reconciliation and similar occasions.

Problems of this sort arose in the second century B.C.E. when the Jewish leadership decided to institute an annual festival to memorialize the triumph over the Seleucid persecutors and the rededication of the defiled sanctuary in Jerusalem. The main chronicles that we have of the  Ḥanukkah saga, the First and Second Books [1 and 2] of Maccabees, were likely composed for that purpose: to convince the Jews of Israel and the diaspora to adopt this new holiday.

In fact, 2 Maccabees opens by quoting two letters that were sent from Jerusalem to the Jews of Egypt urging them to adopt the new holiday. It is not clear what the relationship is between those letters and the book’s main narrative, which was abridged from a five-volume history by a certain Jason of Cyrene.

The second of those letters is an enigmatic document that introduces several surprising details. Some of these items deviate so significantly from the mainstream account as to suggest that they were garbled in transmission; whereas other details offer valuable glimpses into how contemporary Jews regarded the religious significance of Ḥanukkah and its links to earlier milestones in Israel’s sacred history.

The document opens: “Inasmuch as we are about to celebrate, on the twenty-fifth of Kislev, the purification of the Temple, we thought we ought to let you know, so that you too might celebrate it as the Days of Tabernacles and the days of the fire, as when Nehemiah, the builder of the temple and the altar, brought sacrifices.” Other than the starting date, which coincides with that of the Rabbinic Ḥanukkah, there is scarcely a word in this passage that does not strike us as surprising or problematic.

Let us examine a few of these matters.

Arguably, the central point of the celebration in this version of the story consisted of the restoration of the fire to the sacrificial altar. 

The focus on the purification of the Temple is indeed consistent with the general tenor of 2 Maccabees, whose narrative is focused largely on the Jerusalem Temple and the priesthood. There is less emphasis on the military exploits of the small band of Jewish warriors against the massive Greek forces. 

The comparison of the new holiday with Tabernacles (Sukkot), which does not fall in Kislev, has stumped generations of scholars. Some emend the Greek text slightly so that the comparison relates only to their eight-day length. Others point to a passage that told how, during the war, the Jewish guerrillas had been compelled to spend Sukkot “like wild beasts in the mountains and in the caves” —though the same problem would presumably have applied to all the holidays during the three-year campaign.

In any case, there is no suggestion here that the newly declared holiday was yet named Hanukkah or “feast of dedication.” The alternative is “days of fire.” This resembles the modern usage “festival of lights” that derives from the rabbinic association with lamps and candles. 

In reality, to understand the importance of fire, we must look not to the candelabrum (as in the familiar legend from the Babylonian Talmud) but to the altar itself. According to the Torah, back in the days of Moses an elaborate seven-day process of consecrating the priests and the tabernacle culminated on the eighth day, when “the glory of the Lord appeared unto all the people. And there came a fire out from before the Lord.” This heavenly fire continued to burn in the Israelite sanctuaries through much of the biblical era.  The Bible also tells how the same miracle occurred at the inauguration of Solomon’s Temple in a celebration that overlapped Sukkot, when “the fire came down from heaven…and the glory of the Lord filled the house”; and then “on the eighth day he sent the people away.” 

A tradition unique to the letter in 2 Maccabees stated that, when the first Temple was destroyed, some pious priests hid its most sacred furnishings—including the altar and its heavenly flame—in a deep cistern! After the second Temple was built, the descendants of those priests found in the cistern a liquid substance that, when ignited by sunlight, burst into flames on the altar. Nehemiah instructed that the remaining fluid be poured out to be absorbed into large rocks. The miracle became so famous that the Persian king established a lucrative shrine in its honour. 

The text adds that Nehemiah and his companions named the flammable liquid “nephthar” allegedly from a Hebrew root designating release or purity; which evolved into “naphtha,” the Greek and Latin term for a combustible liquid hydrocarbon mixture.

The author of 2 Maccabees did not state that Judah Maccabee found that original divine fire and restored it to the new purified altar. He did however write later that they made use of fire produced from flint, which might well have derived from those rocks that Nehemiah had doused in the lighter fluid. 

Taken together, all these historical and legendary details demonstrated that the new festival celebrating the Temple’s rededication was in fact an integral link in an age-old chain of events that extended from the appearance of the supernatural fire in Moses’s Tabernacle, through the temples of Solomon and Nehemiah, and their commemorations in eight-day celebrations.

And as a special bonus, they might even hold the secret of an affordable energy source.

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First Publication:

• First Publication:
  • The Alberta Jewish News, Edmonton and Calgary, December 6, 2022, p. 38.

• For further reading:
  • Bergren, Theodore A. “Nehemiah in 2 Maccabees 1:10-2:18.” Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Period 28, no. 3 (1997): 249–70.
  • Goldstein, Jonathan A. II Maccabees. Vol. 41A. Anchor Bible. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983.
  • Kosmin, Paul. “Indigenous Revolts in 2 Maccabees: The Persian Version.” Classical Philology 111, no. 1 (January 2016): 32–53.
  • Noam, Vered. Megillat Ta‘anit: Versions, Interpretation, History. Between Bible and Mishnah: The David and Jemima Jeselsohn Library. Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi Press, 2003. [Hebrew]
  • ———. “The Miracle of the Cruse of Oil: The Metamorphosis of a Legend.” Hebrew Union College Annual, January 1, 2002.
  • Nodet, Étienne. “La dédicace, les Maccabées et le Messie.” Revue biblique 93, no. 3 (July 1986): 321–75.
  • Regev, Eyal. “Ḥanukkah and the Temple of the Maccabees: Ritual and Ideology from Judas Maccabeus to Simon.” Jewish Studies Quarterly 15, no. 2 (2008): 87–114.
  • ———. The Hasmoneans: Ideology, Archaeology, Identity. Journal of Ancient Judaism  Supplements 10. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013.
  • ———. “The Hasmoneans’ Self Image as Religious Leaders.” Zion 77, no. 1 (2012): 5–30. [Hebrew]
  • Ron, Zvi. “Antecedents of the Hanukkah Oil Story.” Review of Rabbinic Judaism 18, no. 1 (January 2015): 63–74.
  • Schwartz, Daniel R. 2 Maccabees. Commentaries on Early Jewish Literature. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2008.
  • Wacholder, Ben Zion. Eupolemus: A Study of Judaeo Greek Literature. Monographs of the American Jewish Archives 3. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion., 1974.

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My email address is: [email protected]