The Exodus of the Spirit

by Eliezer Segal

Passover is of course the historical celebration par excellence, celebrating the formative event in Jewish history, the Exodus of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery. The events commemorated in this holiday have had continual relevance to Jew and Gentile in all historical epochs, as a model for the understanding of their contemporary situations of national oppression, exiles and liberations.

For many Jewish thinkers over the ages the lessons of Passover and the Exodus were not exhausted in their historical memories. The central themes that dominate the holiday were seen as metaphors and symbols for many facets of individual human psychology and religious experience.

The Mixed Multitude

A pioneer of this symbolic approach to reading the Bible was the first-century philosopher and exegete Philo Judaeus of Alexandria. For Philo the whole of Scripture was a complex mesh of symbols which illustrate the abstract truths and mysteries of philosophy and moral virtue. His treatment of the Exodus account is consistent with this approach.

In formulas that echo the assertion of the Haggadah, that “each individual must regard himself as if he himself had escaped from Egypt,” Philo portrays “leaving Egypt” as an internal struggle that must be waged continually in every person’s life. It is the fight to liberate one’s mind from the temptations of the body, symbolized by Egypt, which is always trying to hold us back from the road leading to the freedom of virtuous living.

According to the Biblical account, even after leaving Egypt the zeal of the Israelites was constantly being impeded by the “mixed multitude” among them, who would bewail their fate and longingly recall the fleshpots of Egypt. For Philo there is a “mixed multitude” in each of us, a part of the soul that remains under the dominion of the passions and irrational thinking. In the wicked this element exercises control.

The mind of the wicked man is indeed a “mixed multitude” of conflicting opinions, forever being pulled in opposing directions by the many false ideas that strive to lead him away from the single path of truth and goodness.

As in the case of the historical Exodus, the spiritual liberation from control of our irrational desires cannot be accomplished in a single moment. The contradictory directions of the mixed multitude keep us wandering in a confused wilderness instead of travelling the simple and direct route to religious fulfilment. According to Philo the very name “Passover” signifies that the true lover of wisdom is always practising “passing over from the body and passions” in a quest to purify his soul.

Refined in Egypt

The idea that “Egypt” is more than a geographical locale, but also represents a metaphysical state of impurity, has roots in Talmudic literature. It is elaborated in the Jewish mystical tradition, in works such as the Zohar.

According to the Zohar the symbol of Egypt represents the “underside of wisdom” owing to its associations with magic and alchemy. The righteous must refine themselves by descending into the kiln of Egypt.

This is a pattern of spiritual development that dates back to Abraham, who had to sojourn in Egypt in order to test the strength of his new-found faith.

“It is the same [the Zohar concludes] with Abraham’s children. When the Holy One wished to make them unique, a perfect people, and to draw them near to him–had they not gone down to Egypt and been refined there first, they would not have become his special ones.”

Returning from Exile

In treating the Passover story as a set of symbols, the Jewish commentators and homilies were not, of course, denying the historical truth of the events–in this they differed from many classical Christian writers for whom the symbolic meanings of texts would often supersede their literal sense. Nonetheless, the historical and allegorical interpretations seem to exist on separate, parallel and mutually exclusive planes of meaning.

Some exegetes however were able to bridge this gap and dwell upon the close interconnections between visible history and the underlying spiritual levels. For Jews, it is argued, our fate as a nation is inevitably a reflection of the quality of our religious life. 

This point was effectively demonstrated in a comment attributed to the Hasidic preacher Rabbi Yehiel Mikhal of Zlotchov.

Rabbi Mikhal was once approached by a student who was troubled by the wording of God’s promise to Moses in Exodus 6:1 that Pharaoh would drive the Israelites out of Egypt “with a strong hand.” Why, the student asked, should a slave who is being offered his freedom need to be forcibly driven out? Won’t he run willingly from his slavery?

The Rabbi answered that Israel’s exile is always self-inflicted. Only when the Jews decide to release themselves can the demonic powers inside them be vanquished, and only then will the earthly rulers lose their power to subjugate Israel.

Concluded Rabbi Mikhal: Until Israel in Egypt declared themselves willing to return from spiritual exile, God was as it were powerless to help them. In the end, the sparks of holiness that were implanted in the enslaved Israelites awakened and were able to overpower the demonic forces of Egypt, which could not endure them any more and proceeded to drive them out.

This is a message that would appear to have particular relevance this year, as the world seems to be bursting out in freedom and liberation. We have seen testimony that the human spirit can overcome political oppression; but on the other hand, we must remain aware that the achievement of political independence, in the absence of a true spiritual emancipation, is not the full realization of freedom.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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When Jews Wore Turbans

by Eliezer Segal

News Item: 1990 — Baltej Singh Dhillon became the first Sikh officer in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to be allowed to wear a turban instead of the traditional “Mountie” hat.

It would seem that most Canadian Jews were pleased with the recent decision upholding the Sikhs’ right to wear turbans in the RCMP. After all, many of us also have vested interests in keeping our heads covered as part of our own traditional religious observances. A skull-cap is of course easier to accommodate than a turban, as it may be discreetly placed underneath a Mountie hat.

But some of our ancestors were also turban-wearers. As with many items in Jewish history, this fact continues to affect us in some surprising ways.

To take a rather simple example: the daily prayers recited by observant Jews include a benediction praising God “Who crowns Israel with glory.”

Though the common practice currently is to recite this blessing in the synagogue, the original custom was to say it as one was getting dressed. The Talmud says clearly that one was to say it while wrapping the turban around his head. In fact, the commentators make a special point of noting that it is appropriate to make the blessing over other types of headgear as well…

Newcomers to Hebrew have to learn that the Hebrew word for “to wear” (labash) can be used for most garments, but a different verb must be used to indicate the wearing of a hat: habash. The verb actually means “to wrap” (and is the root of the word for “bandage” for example). Its origin dates back to a time when the only thing a well-dressed Jew would be likely to be wearing on his head was a turban, a long piece of cloth that would have to be wrapped around the head.

It appears that among the Jews of Babylonia the turban was felt to have special spiritual efficacy. It is told of one rabbi for whom the astrologers had foretold a life of crime, that as a counter-measure his mother insisted on his wearing a turban at all times. Once during his childhood, when it accidentally unravelled, he found himself unable to resist the temptation to take a bite at someone else’s dates.

In general it seems that the turban was viewed as the distinctive mark of Torah scholars, who saw their wearing such a head-covering as a sign of special piety.With the rise of Islam, the turban came to be considered the “crown of the Arabs” and the “badge of Islam.” The honourable status that attached to the wearing of a turban created problems for the Jews of Muslim lands.

Officially, Jews were considered a tolerated minority (dhimmis) whose social inferiority was to be enforced by law. In the 7th Century “Pact of Omar,” which defined the status of non-Muslims in the Islamic empire, the Jews and Christians agreed “not to attempt to resemble the Muslims in any way with regard to their dress, as for example with the…turban…”

As with similar dress restrictions that were often imposed upon their brethren in Christian Europe, this kind of law would often prove difficult to enforce, since Jews frequently developed amicable personal relationships with individual Muslims. The official authorities often responded to such social mingling by insisting that the Jews don identifiable apparel that would visibly indicate their inferior social position.

The Jewish turbans became a frequent target of Muslim reformist zeal. At times Jews were required to wear distinguishing marks on their turbans; on other occasions a limit would be set to the length of winding cloth that could be used for the turban (10 ells maximum, according to a decree of the Mamluk Sultan al-Malik al-Salih in 1354). The 16th century Sultan Murad III forbade the Jews altogether from wearing turbans.

Historians take the view that the frequency with which such regulations had to be repeated indicates how ineffective they probably were in real life.

Perhaps the most familiar turban in Jewish tradition topped the head of Rabbi Moses Maimonides, the noted 12th-century rabbi and philosopher. The same traditional portrait of Maimonides’ stern, bearded visage has been appearing on the title pages of his works since the beginnings of Jewish printing.

In spite of the portrait’s widespread acceptance, it has always seemed to me somewhat suspicious. It did not appear until many centuries after the Egyptian sage’s lifetime, and it is doubtful that such a picture would have been commissioned by Maimonides himself, who shared his society’s rigid disapproval of representational art.

My suspicions seemed to be confirmed a few years back when I visited Jerusalem’s L. A. Meyer Museum of Islamic Culture. There among the many fascinating artifacts was sitting a copy of the familiar portrait of Maimonides–except that according to the caption on the exhibit, it was a 16th century Turkish merchant!

It would seem that the early Hebrew printers in Venice or Constantinople, eager to supply their readers with a tangible likeness of the Egyptian Jewish scholar, had simply pulled out an available piece of “clip art” that conveyed a rough image, of what he might have looked like. That picture has defined our conception of Maimonides ever since.

And to think: If he were among us now, he could join the RCMP…

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Jewish Journalism:

Continuing the Tradition

by Eliezer Segal

The birth of a new Jewish newspaper is, we are justified in hoping, an occasion to be celebrated. While Jewish journalism is of course a relatively recent phenomenon by Jewish standards–“mere” centuries old– it is a channel of expression that has come to occupy an important and cherished place in most of our communities. 

The first Jewish journals in Europe were not newspapers, nor was their chief purpose to inform their readers about the latest events in the world or in their communities. The editors were out to educate their public and to expose them to new ideas.

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The Gatherer

The first important Jewish journal to make its appearance in Europe was the monthly Ha-Me’assef (“the Gatherer”) whose first issue was published in Königsberg Germany in 1784. This pioneering periodical was founded by disciples of the father of modern Jewish Enlightenment, Moses Mendelssohn of Dessau, and was devoted to the promotion of his ideas among the Jewish masses.

A distinctively Jewish complication that had to be dealt with was the choice of a suitable language for the publication. It was not enough to simply compose the articles in the language most easily understood by the readership. Had the editors of Ha-Me’assef taken that seemingly logical course, they would probably have chosen some form of Yiddish, the spoken language of most German Jews of the time.

Choosing a Language

This option was abhorrent to Mendelssohn and his Enlightened followers (the Maskilim) who had nothing but disdain for Yiddish, regarding it as a crude corruption of “real” German. Indeed a major plank in the Enlightenment platform involved weaning Jews away from Yiddish and teaching them “proper” German, which would facilitate their entry into mainstream German society.

Given this outlook, we might have expected them to compose their publications in German. This however was not possible because their target audience was not yet familiar enough with that language, and would inevitably be reluctant to pick up anything written in a non-Jewish tongue.

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Scriptural Purism

The only alternative now remaining was Hebrew. Traditional Jews would be likely to open the issues of Ha-Me’assef expecting to find conventional religious texts, the only type of material normally composed in the sacred tongue. Hopefully, by the time they caught on they would already have been won over to the ideology of Enlightenment.

While many of the Maskilim involved in the publication of Ha-Me’assef might have accepted Hebrew as merely a “second-best” alternative, they also had a positive agenda in promoting the sacred tongue. 

For the most part they disapproved of the neglect of Biblical studies that prevailed in the traditional yeshivah curriculum, which was overwhelmingly slanted in favour of talmudic learning. Rabbinic Hebrew was, to most of the Maskilim, akin to the despised Yiddish, an impure version of the classical Hebrew of the Bible. The writers of Ha-Me’assef strove to replace the talmudic Hebrew jargon with a stately, but inflexible, Scriptural purism.

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Like a Shtreimel

From these beginnings the Jewish journal or newspaper in whatever language quickly became an inseparable part of the communal landscape. Each ideological faction had its own organ of expression.

In such a context, moderation was not necessarily viewed as a virtue. Thus, the Warsaw Yiddish daily Moment (whose name has since been resurrected for a respected American Jewish periodical) was often criticized for its lack of editorial backbone. According to one quip, the newspaper would not offend a fly –out of fear that the fly might one day scrape up the two kopeks to buy the paper!

Another such barb expressed its wonder that the paper could continue to appear in spite of its indolent and lifeless staff. The strange phenomenon was explained by comparing Moment to an old shtreimel– When you put the tattered fur hat on a table, it moves by itself, powered by the lice that inhabit it…

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But Don’t Read It

In this polarized world of nineteenth-century Judaism, the emerging Orthodox movement soon found that it had to publish its own newspapers in order to counter those of their opponents. Some of the important Rabbis of the day took part in the publication of those newspapers. 

Nonetheless, in at least one instance a Rabbi had to warn his students not to waste their time reading his newspaper, since this would constitute bittul Torah, an unwarranted break from their religious studies.

The combination of strict orthodoxy and journalism could lead to some strange results. For example, Israel’s foremost “ultra-Orthodox” daily, Ha-Modia, has a strict policy of excluding all things sexual. 

In a recent instance, a report about a new drug that cures skin diseases happened to mention that the diseases in question were often sexually transmitted. The newspaper’s internal censor did not catch the offending sentence until the type was already set and ready for printing, when only the most minor changes could still be introduced. 

The result: A single-word emendation, according to which the diseases in question were “commercially transmitted!”

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Indeed, there will always be problems and challenges that are peculiar to being a Jewish newspaper. We wish the Free Press the best of luck in ably continuing the colourful traditions of Jewish journalism.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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By the Hanukkah Lights

by Eliezer Segal

Students of Jewish tradition have often noted the peculiar character of the religious celebration of Hanukkah. Whereas the history books tell us that the festival honours the heroism and ultimate victory of the Jewish rebels against their Hellenistic persecutor, the Talmudic tradition focuses on one legendary event, the miracle of the oil, as the central moment of the story.

Of course, Hanukkah is not the only holiday in the Jewish year that commemorates national liberation. Both Passover and Purim celebrate our deliverance from national threats. And yet the characteristic observance of Hanukkah–through the kindling of lights–is unique. This is a fact that has been remarked by traditional commentators.

On the surface Purim and Hanukkah commemorate similar events, yet Purim is a day of feasting and rejoicing, while Hanukkah confines itself to the more ethereal ritual of candle-lighting. Why the difference?

This is a puzzle that was discussed by one of the great Talmudists of 16th-17th century Poland, Rabbi Joel Sirkes, usually known as the “BaH” (the acronym of his important legal commentary the “Bayit Hadash“). In this commentary Rabbi Sirkes proposes the following essential differentiation between the two ways of celebrating liberation:

The difference, he explains, cuts to the essence of each day’s meaning. Purim, like Passover, recalls a threat to the physical survival of the Jews. Haman’s plot was aimed against the Jews as a nation. He did not challenge them to abandon their faith or observances, but simply wished to get rid of them.

The persecutions of Antiochos, on the other hand, were of a different type. He did not want to kill Jews, but was concerned “merely” to pry them away from their religion. It was a campaign against the Jewish spirit, probably the first such threat in our history, and hence it is appropriate that it should be celebrated through lights, the least material of physical phenomena.

The Jewish commentators have drawn upon a rich set of associations in their efforts to explain the significance of the Hanukkah lights. Talmudic law emphasizes that light has the power to effectively spread the message afar, proclaiming the greatness of the Hanukkah miracle.

Several later commentators have compared the flames of the candles with the human soul itself, citing the words of Proverbs 20:27, “The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord.” For others, the lights are the lights of the Torah, in acordance with Proverbs 6:23: “For the commandment is a lamp and the Torah is light.”

Maimonides, on the other hand, compares the Hanukkah lights to the Sabbath candles, whose purpose is to radiate an atmosphere of peace. “Great is peace,” he concludes his discussion of the laws of Hanukkah, “for the entire Torah was given only to create peace in the world.”

In the mystical tradition, the Hanukkah candles partake of a metaphysical aura. They are nothing less than the primordial light fashioned by God on the first day of the Creation. According to Rabbinic legend this light, which preceded the creation of the sun and stars, was a spiritual illumination which allowed the first man to see to the ends of the earth.

The Hasidic master Rabbi Pinhas of Koretz noted that this primordial light illuminated the world for thirty-six hours, until Adam’s disobedience persuaded God to hide it away. Accordingly we kindle a total of thirty-six candles during the eight days of Hanukkah.

The midrash relates that after Adam’s fall God put the original light in storage, not to be removed until the Messianic era. It is through the same light of the Hanukkah candles, says Rabbi Pinhas, that the Messiah will one day redeem us, echoing the words of the Psalmist (132:17): “There have I ordered a lamp for my anointed one.”

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First Publication: 

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What’s in a Name?

by Eliezer Segal

A friend recently asked me to verify a theory he had heard, to the effect that the name of the Spanish town Toledo had originally been derived from the Hebrew Toledot, which denotes “generations” or “history.” While the idea immediately struck me as a historical impossibility, I felt that it nonetheless was deserving of further investigation.

A quick glance at the Encyclopedia Judaica did not uncover any support for that explanation of the name, but it did mention that a similar tradition was recorded by one of Spanish Jewry’s Jewish luminaries, the noted statesman and exegete Don Isaac Abravanel. Abravanel reports that the city of Toledo had been named by Jewish exiles following the destruction of the first Temple. The name by which it is usually referred in medieval Hebrew writings is “Tulitela” which Abravanel derived from the Hebrew root “tiltul,” which denotes wandering or exile.

The explanation is reminiscent of many similar traditions, all of which reflect the Jews’ firm conviction that their communities dated back to hoary antiquity. Accordingly there could be no doubt that Jews had been responsible for first assigning the names of the respective places. A similar theory derives the name “Polin” (Poland) from the two Hebrew words “po lin” “Rest here for the night!” reportedly uttered by early Jewish immigrants from Central Europe upon first reaching that land.

Though none of these supposed etymologies is likely to be historically authentic, it is true that some locales in Spain do bear Hebrew-sounding names. For example, the name of Cadiz is generally believed to be derived from the same root as the Hebrew “kadosh,” “holy.” The connection however is not a Jewish one, but goes back to the ancient Phoenicians, the great maritime empire centred in what today is Lebanon. The Phoenicians spoke a language akin to Hebrew and built colonies throughout the Mediterranean basin as far west as Spain.

Another important Phoenician port was Carthage, or as it was called in its original Semitic form “Keret Hadashah,” “New Town,” a popular name for ancient cities, equivalent to the Greek “Neopolis,” which in Italian became “Naples” and in Arabic “Nablus” (i.e., Shechem).

Carthage of course posed a serious threat to the imperial aspirations of Rome and came close to overcoming Rome altogether. In light of later Jewish suffering at the hands of “the wicked empire,” the defeat of Carthage should be viewed as something of a historical tragedy for Jews. 

An old history teacher of mine liked to point out a further dimension of the campaign: Had Hannibal succeeded in overrunning Rome, then chances are that the entire western world would today be speaking a language that is substantially identical to Hebrew!

The Talmudic Rabbis enjoyed suggesting Hebrew explanations for the names of the cities in which they lived, even if the names were obviously of Greek or Latin origin. For example, the name Tiberias, the Galilean town built by Herod to honour the emperor Tiberius, is explained in the Talmud as referring either to its beautiful view (tovah ra’ayatah), or to the fact that it sits at the navel (tibor) of the Land of Israel.

The process could work in both directions, and was indulged in by non-Jews as well. The first Greek-speaking travellers to Jerusalem were so impressed by the religious character of that city, dominated as it was by the Temple and the priests, that they never doubted that the name Yerushalayim came from the Greek “hiero” meaning “holy.”

Or to take a more recent example, a movement in nineteenth-century England wished to trace the origins of the ancient Britons back to the “ten lost tribes” of Israel. For these followers of the “British Hebrew” movement there was no question that the very name “British” was of Hebrew origin, a combination of the words brit (covenant) and ish (man)!

The quest for Hebrew etymologies did not cease with the migration of Jews to America though these were often voiced with tongue firmly in cheek. The very name “America” appears in some parodies of American Jewish life as Amma Reqa, “the empty people.” I personally have always been impressed at the appropriateness of the name of a popular Jewish seaside resort: Me-ami, “waters of my people.”

Closer to home, the Jewish agricultural settlement at Edenbridge, Saskatchewan was intended by its founders to be read as “Yidden-bridge,” the closest that the Canadian government would allow to an explicit reference to its ethnic make-up.

And who knows if, when the first Jewish exiles arrived at the junction of the Bow and Elbow rivers, they were not subjected to a volley of hostile arrows, causing them to name the place Kol Girei, (later: Calgary), Aramaic for “all the arrows?”

Presumably, their brethren to the north had a more fortunate experience, inspiring them to dub their new home “the land that He has given” –in Hebrew: “Adama natan” (which later became “Edmonton”).

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My email address is: [email protected]

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“…With This Ring”

by Eliezer Segal

In most respects the Jewish wedding ceremony is a very different affair from its Christian counterpart. Neither the huppah, the ketubbah, nor the traditional breaking of the glass have any equivalent outside Jewish practice. There is however one element that does seem to cross over religious and cultural boundaries, and that is the use of a ring in the ceremony.

In the Biblical and Talmudic sources, we find no explicit mention of betrothal by ring. The Mishnah rules that the betrothal is given legal effect by the groom’s transferring a sum of money or some other item of value to the bride or her representative. Cases cited in the Talmuds make reference to all sorts of objects that were used for that purpose, including fruits, cups and jewelry, as well as cash —but not rings.

By the Middle Ages, the use of the wedding ring had become a known practice among some Jews, and was identified as a custom which distinguished the Jews of the Land of Israel from their Babylonian cousins. This development is a natural one, since the Holy Land was then under Roman occupation and the exchange of wedding rings was an established Roman practice, described by ancient writers like Pliny and subsequently inherited by the Christians as well.

As in many similar instances, the Jews unconsciously adopted the customs of their environment. For the majority of world Jewry, who lived under the Persian or Arab empires, this was viewed as an exotic local idiosyncrasy. Over the years, the use of rings became the norm throughout the diaspora, until it was almost unimaginable to have a wedding without the groom reciting the familiar formula “Behold you are betrothed unto me with this ring, according to the law of Moses and Israel.”

Now, Jews have rarely drawn clear borders between their past and present. We like to portray the events of our history in terms that are familiar to us. This last observation also applies to descriptions of Jewish weddings in ancient sources.

In Jewish tradition the marriage ceremony par exellence was the revelation at Mount Sinai. Midrashic accounts dwell lovingly on the details: God was the groom and Israel the bride, standing beneath a huppah of clouds. The Torah is the eternal marriage contract, to which the heavens and earth are called to serve as witnesses.

One version of this story, an Aramaic embellishment of the Biblical account, waxes poetic: “The earth danced and the heavens sang, as the Lord betrothed the daughter of Jacob after liberating her from Egypt. Upon her fingers he placed five rings of light” [symbolizing the five books of the Torah]. 

Indeed, a later mystical work, the Tikkunei Zohar, claims that it was the circular emanations of divine power that came forth from God on that day that served as the model for the rings that are given to brides in subsequent Jewish marriages.

Though we have seen that the use of wedding rings by Jews is a relatively late institution, copied from a Roman model, the authors of the above passages took it so much for granted that, for them, God himself could find no more suitable a way of expressing His eternal covenant with the people of Israel than by the symbolic gift of a ring.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Vashti: A Feminist Heroine?

by Eliezer Segal

Vashti has become one of the favourite heroines of the Jewish feminist movement. This much-maligned queen, the argument goes, should be appreciated as a positive rôle model, a woman who dared to disregard a royal decree that would have her displayed as a sex object before King Ahashverosh’s rowdy drinking companions. Her ultimate downfall should accordingly be viewed as a martyrdom to the cause of sexual equality.

The rabbis of the midrash were not so sympathetic to the fate of the queen. This attitude can partly be explained on the grounds of their belief in divine justice: God would not have allowed her to be punished unless she had in fact done something to deserve it. We cannot however deny that the sages shared a certain sympathy with the king’s basic assumptions. At one point they ridicule him for having to assert publicly “that every man should bear rule in his own house” (Esther 1:22), since this is so patently obviously as to go without saying!

However the rabbinic vilification of Vashti cannot be explained entirely as a manifestation of male chauvinism. We must keep in mind that the Jewish sages tended to view the heroes and villains of the Bible not as individuals, but as instances of recurrent historical patterns. Vashti, they learned, was in fact the great-granddaughter of the arch-villain Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon, who had destroyed the sacred Temple. Vashti’s ruin embodied the final stages of her grandfather’s defeat, as foretold by the prophet Isaiah (14:22): “And I will rise up against them, saith the Lord, and cut off from Babylon name and remnant, and offshoot and offspring.” Vashti’s downfall marked the final cutting-off of the Babylonian royal offspring, following a pattern of typological thinking that has been applied in recent days to the likes of Saddam Hussein .

It was of course not enough to have Vashti penalized for the sins of her ancestor. The Rabbis tried to show that she was culpable on her own “merits.” For one thing, they insisted that Vashti had actively continued to pursue her ancestor’s policies, lobbying against any royal inclination to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem.

In their determination to show how Vashti had deserved her fate, the Jewish sages followed the midrashic method of deducing her crimes from the nature of her punishment, assuming that God always metes out justice measure for measure.

A clue to her misbehaviour was the fact that the king’s summons to her had come “on the seventh day, when the king’s heart was merry with wine” (Esther 1:10). Surely this did not refer to the seventh day of the feast, since Ahashverosh had presumably been merry with wine from the beginning. The allusion must therefore be to the seventh day of the week, the Jewish sabbath. Vashti was ordered to appear naked before the King on a sabbath as a fitting punishment for enslaving Jewish maidens and forcing them to work on their day of rest.

The question remained: If she was really such a depraved creature, then why would she have declined an opportunity for exhibitionism? Here as well, the Rabbis had to add some supplementary details to the biblical narrative: Vashti was indeed willing to display her charms before the king’s drinking partners, but God had interfered by inflicting upon her a humiliating physical deformity. According to one view Vashti succumbed to leprosy. According to another one, the angel Gabriel came “and fixed a tail on her.”

This last possibility was widely understood as a euphemism for a miraculous transformation to male anatomy. This interpretation was too risqué for some readers, and the offending sentence had to be censored out of some editions of the Talmud. In Louis Ginzberg’s compendium of midrashic lore The Legends of the Jews, the passage appears (in the footnotes), but in Latin.

In its own way the midrashic tradition tried to “liberate” Vashti, portraying her as a wily politician, not merely a passive royal ornament. As the scion of a once-mighty royal dynasty, she would flaunt her pedigree in Ahashverosh’s face. She was also adept at subtle political manoeuvering. For example the fact that she held a separate feast for the ladies of the imperial nobility, rather than participating in the general festivities, was interpreted as a wise strategic move: In case a coup should be attempted during Ahashverosh’s celebration, she would have under her control a prestigious group of hostages to use as a bargaining card. We see, by the way, that the use of “human shields” as practiced by Saddam Hussein is not a recent innovation in that region of the world.

Whether or not these details justify her inclusion among the pioneers of women’s liberation,Vashti remains one of the most fascinating and enigmatic figures in the Purim story.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Baghdad: For Centuries a Major Centre of Jewish Life

by Eliezer Segal

News Item: January 1991 — Outbreak of the Persian Gulf War. An international coalition led by the United States attacks Iraq in response to Dictator Saddam Hussein’s invasion and annexation of Kuwait.

A number of times every winter I am asked about the peculiar scheduling of the petition for rain in the daily service, which the prayer-books instruct us to begin reciting from December 4th. I usually mutter some confusing reply about talmudic calculations based on autumnal equinoxes and other concepts that are not all that clear in my own mind.

During the fateful days of the Gulf War the more basic significance of this date comes to mind in all its irony: We are actually praying for an abundant rainfall for Iraq!

Surprising as this might sound in today’s circumstances (especially when we keep in mind the terrible drought that troubled Israel this year), this fact underlines the special connection that has always existed between the Jewish people and that part of the world currently known as Iraq. This was the birthplace of Abraham and the land to which the Judæans were exiled after the destruction of the First Temple. Scholars believe that this was where the Torah underwent its final redaction.

The fact that Jews throughout the Diaspora continue to define their winters according to the Iraqi climate testifies again to the decisive influence of the Iraqi (or, as known in other times: Babylonian, or Mesopotamian, etc.) Jewish community. It was the Babylonian Talmud that was recognized as the highest legal authority for Jews throughout the world, and it occupied a place of such centrality in their studies that the Babylonian landscape was at times more real for many Jews than their own.

Let me illustrate this vast subject by limiting myself to a few comments about the Jewish involvement with Iraq’s capital, Baghdad. Now, the history books tell us that the history of Baghdad did not commence until the year 763 when it was built as a new military outpost by the Caliph al-Mansur. However students of the Talmud are familiar with a third-century Rabbi Hanna Bagdata’a. For Rashi, writing in eleventh-century France, it was obvious that this rabbi was a native of Baghdad. Modern scholars are not ready to automatically reject that identification since Muslim Baghdad was likely built upon an already existent town that may well date back to talmudic times, as evidenced by its Persian name.

By the 10th century the major Babylonian institutions, including the great talmudic yeshivahs of Sura and Pumbedita and the court of the Exilarch, had all relocated to Baghdad in order to be closer to the seat of the Islamic Caliphate, which was the most powerful political force in the western world. It was through their official recognition by the Baghdadi Caliphs that the Babylonian Jews were able to impose their religious leadership and their Talmud upon most of the Jewish world.

During the zenith of Iraqi-Jewish dominance it was inconceivable to many Jews that Baghdad had not always been a major Jewish center, and some talmudic sources were rewritten to reflect that perception. According to one such tradition Rav, the original founder of the venerable talmudic academy at Sura, had really intended to go to Baghdad, but had been tricked into staying by the mother of one of his students, who did not want to be parted from her son. The woman in question had approached the scholar asking how much milk would be needed to cook a portion of meat. Shocked by this display of halakhic ignorance, Rav concluded that his presence was needed in such a Jewish wasteland, and so he stayed there.

I recently had a look at a fascinating medieval Hebrew text, which claims to describe how the vessels from the first Temple in Jerusalem had been hidden away prior to its destruction by the Babylonians. “All of these vessels were concealed and interred in a tower in the land of Babylonia, in a city named Baghdad.” The source, by the way, states that the hiding places of these vessels were recorded on a copper tablet. This legend is particularly interesting when we note that a copper scroll containing a treasure map indicating the hiding-places of Second Temple artifacts (possibly reflecting a plan that was never executed) is one of the most enigmatic documents to be discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls.

All these sources testify to the strength of the historical Jewish connection to Iraq and its capital, a fact which only serves to intensify the tragedy of the current situation, when a self-styled Nebuchadnezzar has again tried to aim his deadly arrows towards Jerusalem.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Red Sea, Reed Sea…and the Persian Gulf

by Eliezer Segal

The conclusion of Passover has traditionally focused on celebrating the miraculous parting of the Red Sea. There will certainly be some purists among my readers who are already jumping to correct me: The Hebrew “Yam Suf” should be rendered more precisely “the Sea of Reeds,” a translation which has been adopted by some recent English biblical commentaries.

I have heard the accusation that the common English usage of “Red Sea” is nothing more than the result of the ignorance of early Bible translators, or perhaps an old typographical error. This is not the case at all.

Actually, the name “Red Sea” is a lot older than the English language, and can be traced at least as far back as the 5th-century B.C.E. Greek historian Herodotus. It is used standardly in the Septuagint, the oldest Greek translation of the Bible, and by Jewish writers such as Philo and Josephus Flavius.

If one reads these ancient authors one soon realizes that the body of water being referred to is not necessarily the one which currently bears that name. It seems to be applied to the entire maritime area between Africa, Arabia and south Asia, extending at times as far as the Indian Ocean.

Some of the sources make a clear distinction between the more expansive Red Sea and the smaller Reed Sea. The latter lies in the region between Arabia and the Egyptian coast, especially in the Gulf of Eilat–the area that we normally think of now as the “Red Sea.”

It is likely that the Red Sea was so named by ancient sailors as a result of the peculiar colouring created by the mountains, corals and desert sands (though the Egyptians called the same body of water the “Green Sea”); whereas the “Reed Sea” takes its name from the papyrus reeds and bulrushes that proliferated along the nearby Nile.

The distinction between the two seas is made very clearly in a remarkable document preserved among the “Dead Sea Scrolls” that is known to scholars as the “Genesis Apocryphon.” This Aramaic text retells the stories of the Hebrew Patriarchs, much of it presented as an autobiographical account narrated by Abraham himself.

In one episode, Abraham tells us how he travelled along the frontier of the land which God had promised him, progressing from the Gihon River (apparently identified with the Nile), to the Mediterranean, south Lebanon and along the Euphrates River. Following that river through what is now Iraq Abraham arrived at the Red Sea in the east, which he traced through to “the tongue of the Reed Sea, which goes forth from the Red Sea.”

From this itinerary it is evident that the Reed Sea is an inlet of the Red Sea. The fact that Abraham reached the Red Sea from the mouth of the Euphrates shows us that what is being referred to is in fact none other than the Persian Gulf!

The implications are quite remarkable. While I do not believe that we necessarily have to begin speaking of the “miraculous parting of the Persian Gulf,” it is intriguing to observe that the story places both Iraq and Saudi Arabia within the perimeters of the Promised Land, a view which will warm the heart of the most extreme Israeli right-wingers.

As for myself, I will be perfectly satisfied if people simply stop correcting me whenever I speak of “the Red Sea.”

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My email address is: [email protected]

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On Matriarch Rachel and Mother’s Day

by Eliezer Segal

There is a sort of Mothers’ Day that is observed in Israel, especially among the pre-schoolers. This occasion, on which the toddlers are usually guided in making crafts for their mothers, is observed on the eleventh of the Hebrew month of Heshvan (around October or November). It is a rather modest affair, lacking both the strict halakhic definition of a full-fledged religious holiday and the commercial hype of its American counterpart. 

The choice of this date is an intriguing one. It falls on the traditional date of the death of the matriarch Rachel. I have not yet succeeded in tracing the derivation of this date, which is not mentioned in the Bible or talmudic literature . Some medieval authors cite an obscure “midrash” that lists it (without explanation) as the date of Benjamin’s birth; and Rachel died giving birth to Benjamin.

In the sixteenth-century, the Spanish Expulsion brought many Jews to the soil of the Holy Land. The Kabbalists had a special penchant for visiting the graves of the righteous, and evolved detailed calendars for pilgrimage to the burial sites of pious Jews of earlier times, including Rachel’s Tomb on the road to Bethlehem. The eleventh of Heshvan was likely selected as a date for such a pilgrimage. There are some older midrashic traditions to the effect that two other Hebrew matriarchs, Sarah and Rebecca, died around the same time of the year.

The transformation of Rachel’s Yahrzeit into a “Mothers’ Day” raises the question: What is there in Rachel’s life and personality that makes her a suitable embodiment of the Jewish ideals of motherhood? Like many Biblical heroines, Rachel did not have an easy time achieving motherhood, and for much of her married life had to resign herself to watching her sister Leah bear Jacob many children, until she herself finally gave birth to Joseph. Not long afterward she expired while giving birth to Benjamin. 

While she did not have much opportunity to enjoy the blessings of motherhood–or perhaps precisely for this reason–the prophet Jeremiah depicted her poetically as the archetypal mother of the nation. It was she who wept as her children were sent off into exile, and who would most rejoice at their return from captivity. In Jewish folklore and in the mystical tradition Rachel was identified with the Divine Presence (the Shekhina), and came to be depicted as the spiritual mother of the entire Jewish people, following the fate of her children through their wanderings and remaining inconsolable until their reunification. 

The commemoration of Rachel’s Yahrzeit came to be observed with particular intensity among Ashkenazic women. This can be seen in the tradition of Tekhinnes, the Yiddish prayers which constituted a vital part of women’s day-to-day religious life, and often made reference to pious Jewish women of earlier ages. The Tekhinneh literature developed an elaborate set of prayers for Rosh Hodesh, the first days of the each Jewish month (which had previously been observed as women’s holidays). One of the populartekhinnes for the month of Heshvan contains a touching appeal to Rachel, bidding her to strike on the heavenly Gates of Mercy in order to intercede before God to insure that he fulfil his pledge to her, to deliver her children from exile: Just as they passed by Rachel’s grave on their way out of the Land of Israel, so will they now pass by on their return to their land.

The important themes that are embodied in the life of the historic Rachel, as well as in her stature as a national symbol, make her a worthy figure upon which to focus a Jewish Mothers’ Day.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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