Moses King of Ethiopia

by Eliezer Segal

News Item: 1984 — In “Operation Moses” 7,000 Ethiopian Jews were brought to Israel. News Item:May 1991– “Operation Solomon” airlifted almost all the remaining community to Israel.

None would question the appropriateness of the name that was given to the recent airlift of Ethiopian Jewry: “Operation Solomon.” The tale of King Solomon’s encounter with the Ethiopic Queen of Sheba is well-known to all readers of the Bible. 

Not so self-evident was the name of the earlier 1984 rescue which was entitled “Operation Moses.” The biblical connection between Moses and Ethiopia is not a strong one, being limited to a vague reference to Moses’ “Ethiopian wife,” a mysterious figure about whom we are told very little.

Jewish legend however fills in this episode in the prophet’s life in meticulous and romantic detail, relating that Moses actually reigned as King of Ethiopia for no less than forty years! 

According to this tradition Moses, in his flight from Egypt following his killing of the Egyptian taskmaster, wandered off first to Ethiopia, where he found himself in the midst of a civil war. It seems that while the legitimate king, named Kikanos, had been off on a foreign campaign, he had entrusted the homefront to the wily Balaam, who took the opportunity afforded by the king’s absence in order to execute a coup d’étât, fortifying the country against the returning monarch. Moses happened upon King Kikanos as he was laying siege to the capital city trying to recapture it, and was instantly appointed commander-in-chief. When Kikanos died soon afterwards, Moses was declared the new king and set to completing the liberation of Ethiopia, a task which had already dragged on for nine long years.

The most formidable of the enemy fortifications consisted of a barrier of venomous snakes and scorpions. Moses defused this “minefield” by having his soldiers unleash a volley of hungry storks who immediately swooped down upon the serpents and devoured them, allowing Moses’ forces to recapture the capital. As was the custom in antiquity, Moses was expected to contract a diplomatic marriage with King Kikanos’ widow Adoniah. Daunted by the prospect of intermarriage, Moses never consummated the union. Nonetheless he continued to reign as king of Ethiopia for forty years until his embittered queen aroused the population to remove this foreign ruler. Moses then proceeded to Midian where the biblical narrative resumes.

The story as I have described it is based on a work called the Sefer Hayashar, composed in Spain during the later middle ages. However versions of the story are found in Greek sources that date back to antiquity, except that instead of storks these versions refer to the ibis, the sacred bird of the Egyptians. These versions relate that the Egyptians’ reverence for these birds resulted from their association with this episode.

Between “Operation Moses” and “Operation Solomon,” we have been witnessing the dramatic conclusion of a long association between the Jews and Ethiopia.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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The First Rabbi on the Moon

by Eliezer Segal

News Item: 1991 — The comet Levy is visible in the night sky. A more famous comet named for the same American astronomer [Levy-Shoemaker 9] would later attract much attention when it dramatically collided with Jupiter in July 1994.

When a report in the Calgary Herald a few months ago announced the arrival of the comet Levy, my personal ethnocentric reaction was one of appreciation that a comet had been given such a fine Hebrew name. As it turned out, the comet was named for its discoverer David Levy, an amateur astronomer who used to live in Canada, but now scans the skies from his backyard in Tuscon, Arizona.

A Blessing for Comets

Comets have long been of interest to Jewish sources. The Mishnah prescribes a blessing for their sighting. The talmudic sage Samuel, a noted astronomer of his day, claimed that though he was as familiar with the paths of the heavens as with the streets of his home town of Nehardea, he felt himself ignorant in the face of the mysteries of the comets.

The name “Levy” has been given not only to a comet, but also to a crater on the moon; and not any ordinary Levy, but a “Rabbi Levi” no less! I presume that the crater in question was named after the 14th-century French Rabbi Levi ben Gershom known to Jews as “Ralbag” and to other as “Gersonides,” “Magister Leo Hebreus” or “Maestre Leo de Bagnols.” Ralbag is known for his popular commentaries on the Bible. Students of Philosophy know him better for his vigorous critique on various views of Maimonides and Aristotle, a critique which eventually paved the way for the radical views of Spinoza.

Jacob’s Staff

The scientific world has recognized Rabbi Levi’s important contributions to the fields of mathematics, astronomy and navigation. This summer I had occasion to see some examples of his scientific creations in a remarkable exhibition held in Montreal entitled “Planets, Potions and Parchments.” This exhibition presented a rich assortment of books and artifacts illustrating the Jewish involvement with science from the Dead Sea Scrolls until the eighteenth century. The excellent catalogue of the exhibition is available at a number of Calgary book stores, and makes fascinating reading for anyone interested in either science or Judaica.

Visitors to the exhibition were given the opportunity to operate an instrument known as the “Jacob’s Staff,” a surveying tool consisting of a long rod with sliding plates, used to calculate angular distances with reference to the stars. Credit for the invention of the “Jacob’s Staff,” which became a necessary aid to medieval sailors, was claimed by Gersonides, who placed great emphasis on the need for empirical observation as a basis for astronomical research.

Gersonides’ observations caused him to raise serious criticisms against the prevailing astronomical theories of Ptolemy as regards the motions of the moon and the earth. These objections would eventually result in Copernicus’ complete overthrow of traditional astronomical theory. These contributions were recognized in the naming of a lunar crater in Gersonides’ honour.

The Science of Astrology

As with many medieval astronomers, Gersonides was a confirmed believer in the scientific validity of astrology. Appropriately, the Rabbi Levi crater on the moon can enjoy the company of another rabbinic crater, also named for a Jewish sage with an appreciation for astrological matters: Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra. The twelfth-century Ibn Ezra, who hailed from “Golden Age” Spain, loved to offer astrological explanations for Scriptural passages. He saw an astrological significance to the timing of the religious festivals, and compared the High Priest’s jewelled breast plate to the astrolabe, which made it a useful instrument for charting the future.

For Jews astronomy was rarely a mere academic interest. Some familiarity with the courses of the sun and moon was essential for proper observance of time-defined commands such as daily prayers and the holiday calendar. These calculations could be very complicated.

Some years ago Yale University Press sponsored a translation of Maimonides’ code of Jewish law, the Mishneh Torah. When the translators came to the section dealing with the rules for calculating the Hebrew calendar, they realized that this was no simple job of translation, but required specialized knowledge of mathematics and astronomy. One thing led to another, and in the end the short treatise had to be released as a separate volume with learned appendices by distinguished scientists.

The Jewish interest in astronomy has been a long and fruitful one. When the first Jew arrives on the moon he will hopefully feel that this too is, in some way, territory trodden by his ancestors.

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The Return of the Priestly Breast-plate

by Eliezer Segal

Several months ago an unscrupulous and underpaid columnist (myself) published in the pages of this newspaper an article purporting to describe the discovery of the breast-plate of the ancient Hebrew High Priest. Having discredited my veracity on the topic I must assure my readers that the information contained in this article is actually reliable and true.

As anyone knows who has ever seen an Indiana Jones film, the question of the fate of the lost Temple treasures is one that has long fascinated writers of fiction. Among the most distinguished of such speculators was none other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Conan Doyle composed a story entitled “the Jew’s Breastplate” which deals with a fictitious theft of the artifact from the British museum. The story was first printed in a magazine in 1899 and subsequently included in a collection entitled “Round the Fire,” published in 1908. The story is admittedly not one of his better known works, and has rarely been reprinted.

In 1913, there appeared in Piotrkow, Poland, a book entitled “Sefer Hoshen ha-Mishpat shel ha-Kohen ha-Gadol“–“the Book of the High Priest’s Breastplate.” The Hebrew volume told a story that was virtually identical to Conan Doyle’s with one significant difference: the hero was the 16th century Bohemian Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague, better known by his acronym “the Maharal.” In the story, the Maharal journeys to London in order to solve the mysterious theft of the breast-plate from the “Belmore Street” museum.

The author of this story was one of the most popular Hebrew writers of the early twentieth century, Rabbi Yudel Rosenberg. Combining traditional rabbinical education and a broad general literary erudition, Rosenberg authored over twenty works while serving as Rabbi in various Polish communities. He was best known for his collections of wondrous tales about famous Rabbis, especially Hasidic masters. Most of these stories were works of out-and-out fiction, though usually not presented as such.

The Maharal was one of Rosenberg’s favourite protagonists and appears in several of his books. In fact, Rosenberg (who apparently believed himself to be a descendant of the Maharal) is responsible for inventing the one detail about the Maharal with which most people are familiar; the famous “Golem,” the artificial monster allegedly created by the Rabbi to save the Jews of Prague from anti-Semitic plots. So popular did this “super-hero” become that we find it difficult to believe that the story had no basis in either fact or legend before Rosenberg introduced it in a book published in Warsaw in 1909!

It appears that several of Rosenberg’s stories, whether about the Maharal or Rabbi Elijah Guttmacher the “Greiditzer Rebbe” or others, were really Judaized versions of popular whodunits and adventure stories.

The tale of the Priestly Breast-plate was in any case destined to be one of Rosenberg’s last stories. In 1913 he left Poland for Canada, where he took up rabbinical positions–first in Toronto, and later settling in Montreal–turning his attentions to more respectable rabbinic activities. From this point onwards, his production of stories ceases.

Rosenberg had presumably learned the important lesson that in Canada one cannot get away with publishing fictitious accounts about the High Priest’s Breast-plate.^[2]

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Note: Since the initial publication of this article, an important study appeared by Prof. S. Z. Leiman : “The Adventure of the Maharal of Prague in London: R. Yudl Rosenberg and the Golem of Prague.” Tradition 36, no. 1 (2002): 26-58. Through his thorough bibliographical research, Prof. Lyman supports the general picture that Yudel Rosenberg’s invented stories about Hassidic masters and famous rabbis. However. he also brings evidence that the association of the Golem to the Maharal of Prague is much earlier than claimed in my article– and can be traced back to the early 19th or late eighteenth centuries — still a long way from the Maharal’s lifetime.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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The Kol Nidre Controversy

by Eliezer Segal

The solemnity of the Kol Nidre ceremony is matched only by its puzzling character. Why should a legal ritual for the annulment of vows be inserted into the beginning of what is supposed to be a day of intense prayer? Why, for that matter, should vows be annulled at all? Should they not simply be fulfilled?

The institution of annulment is in itself an ancient one and is mentioned in some of the earliest passages in the Mishnah. A person, having committed him/herself to a vow, can come before a sage to be released from the vow. The release normally took the form of an interrogation whose purpose was to establish that the vow had been accepted originally without full awareness of its implications or consequences. Once it was established that the vow had been undertaken under mistaken premises, then the sage had the authority to declare it null and void.

The earliest rabbinic authorities were unclear about the origin of this institution. The Mishnah (Hagigah 1:8) includes it among the laws that “hover in the air and have nothing to support them”–i.e., they are part of the oral tradition, with no scriptural basis. Some conflicting views recorded in the Talmud try to find biblical support for the institution through some imaginative readings of several verses.

Among the medieval rabbis the status of the annulment of vows continued to be the subject of a dispute. Maimonides, while acknowledging that the institution is part of the oral law rather than a scriptural rule, enumerates it among the 613 commandments of the Torah. In order to do so he must explain that he is using the concept “commandment” in an unusual way: Not that any individual has an obligation to annul his or her vows, but rather the rabbinical court has the duty to deal with requests for annulment. Other commentators argued that this sort of rule cannot strictly speaking be termed a commandment, and that rabbis should be reluctant in promoting laxity in the fulfilment of religious obligations.

The existence of a “Kol Nidre” ceremony is first attested from the tenth century (Contrary to a widespread theory, there is no basis for the association of the ritual with the Spanish Marranos). The association of Kol Nidre with Yom Kippur probably reflects a popular feeling that unfulfilled obligations would impede the atonement process. The earliest versions of the ceremony are worded so as to retroactively absolve the vows of the previous year. This procedure was later modified in most rites, and changed into an annulment of next year’s vows.

Most leading rabbinic authorities were initially hostile to this custom. They noted that the public ceremony did not conform to the normal requirements for annulment of vows, which include individual interrogation and the expression of regret. The heads of the Babylonian academies flatly refused to give sanction to what they regarded as an unjustifiable disregard for the explicit biblical precept “If a man vow unto the Lord… he shall not break his word” (Numbers 30:2). They even refused to study the talmudic tractates that dealt with this topic.

Over the years however it became more and more difficult to resist the demand from people who had recklessly gotten themselves tied into obligations that they were now unable to fulfil. The phenomenon of vows has always been associated primarily with the common people, who would use them as a way of emphasizing assertions (even as it is common in English to preface assertions with such phrases as “Damn me if…” etc.). After the fact, the same people took their words seriously enough to be concerned that their unfulfilled vows would obstruct the efficacy of Yom Kippur.

In the end, the rabbis were compelled to make a difficult choice between insistence on respect for one’s word, and compassion for those real people who urgently needed such a procedure for easing their consciences and permitting their forgiveness.

The history of this very human dilemma is the story of the controversy over the “Kol Nidre.”

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Moses the Mailman

by Eliezer Segal

News Item: September 1991 — The Canadian Post Office workers are on strike.

The Jewish Free Press, like the rest of us, has been learning to cope with the recent postal strike. Efficient postal service is one of those things that is essential to modern society, but is not appreciated until it is disrupted.

Those of us who know some modern Hebrew will probably be familiar with the Hebrew word for mail: do’ar. The fact that there seems to be a “real” Hebrew word (as distinct from a Hebraized foreign term) should already suggest that the term goes back to our ancient sources. The origins of modern postal service, in the sense of the government-administered delivery of private letters, do date back to ancient times and it should not be surprising to find that mail service is mentioned in classical Jewish writings.

The word “do’ar” is taken from the Talmud, where it refers to a postal station. For example a passage in the Babylonian Talmud discusses how much time one ought to allow when sending a letter so that it will be delivered before Shabbat, and distinguishes between whether the recipient’s town does or does not house a do’ar office. It is evident that the talmudic rabbis who debated the question were used to enjoying the benefits of the Persian mail system.

Ancient authors often spoke admiringly of the elaborate Persian network of mail couriers. In a frequently quoted passage, the Greek historian Herodotus writes: 

There is nothing mortal that accomplishes a course more swiftly than do these messengers… It is said that as many days as there are in the whole journey, so many are the men and horses that stand along the road, each horse and man at the interval of a day’s journey; and these are stayed neither by snow nor rain nor heat nor darkness from accomplishing their appointed course with all speed.

There was however a negative side to this efficiency. The Talmud makes frequent mention of an institution known as the “angaria,” a forced conscription of pack animals by the government for purposes of mail delivery. The owner of the animal can never be certain that his beast will be returned, or in what condition it will be by then. It is as if the Post Office had the right to arbitrarily borrow your family automobile whenever it pleased. Jewish law has to deal with questions such as: Who bears the loss if the conscripted animal is a rented one?

The Midrash uses the image of a postal courier to illustrate the story of how Moses shattered of the tablets of the Torah when he saw the people worshipping the golden calf; on that occasion, Moses watched the holy letters flying away from the tablets, signifying that God had removed his sanctity from the tablets:

Moses [says the midrash] was like a postman who was delivering a royal decree to a certain town. As he was crossing a river the documents fell into the water and the letters were erased. What did the postman do? He tore them up [since they were no longer of any use].

It seems likely that the midrashic metaphor is rooted in the reality that then as now, not all letters got delivered intact.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Columbus’s Medinah?

by Eliezer Segal

October 14 is commemorated by many of our neighbours to the south as Columbus Day. Now this fact would not normally deserve mention in a Jewish newspaper. As we shall see in a moment, however, there has been some weighty scholarly debate over the possibility that Columbus, though undeniably a devout and zealous Catholic, might also have been the proud descendant of Spanish Jews. Ironically, this view has been championed by some patriotic Spaniards, who would rather have him a Spanish Jew than an Italian gentile.

Here are a few of the interesting facts that have been raised in connection with this question:

*There is evidence that Columbus spoke Spanish while still living in Italy, an unusual situation unless his family had originated in Spain. Spanish-speaking Jewish refugees from the Inquisition were numerous in the Genoa area.

*The form “Colón” which Columbus adopted as the Spanish equivalent of his last name was not the expected form (which would have been”Colom” or “Colombo”). It was however a common Jewish variation on the name.

*Columbus was known to frequent the company of Jews and former Jews, among whom were some noted astronomers and navigators, as well as his official translator. Marranos figure prominently among Columbus’s backers and crew. Throughout his life he demonstrated a keen knowledge of the Bible and the geography of the Holy Land. In fact in one place he calculates the date from the destruction of the “Second House” [=Temple], counting from the traditional (and erroneous) Jewish date of 68 C.E., rather than the generally held 70.

*Columbus began the official report of his first voyage to America, addressed to Ferdinand and Isabella, with the following words:”And thus, having expelled all the Jews from all your kingdoms and dominions, in the month of January, Your Highnesses commanded me that…I should go to the said parts of India.” This is a strange fact to mention in this context, and it is not even correct: The order of expulsion was not signed until March 31st!

*The connections between the timing of Columbus’s voyage and the expulsion of Spanish Jewry are indeed curious. Historians have noted that, though Columbus was not scheduled to set sail until August 3rd, he insisted that his entire crew be ready on board a full day earlier. The timing becomes more intriguing when we consider that August 2nd 1492 was the day that had been ordained for the last Jews of Spain to depart the country. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were departing Spain on that black day. 

*When this coincidence of dates was first noted by the Spanish biographer S. de Madariaga, the English Jewish historian Cecil Roth supplemented it with a further “coincidence”: August 2nd 1492 coincided with the Ninth of Av, the Jewish fast of mourning for the destruction of the Jerusalem Temples! It was as if Columbus had arranged to remain on board ship for that ill-omened day, and to depart only afterwards.

It would be impossible, in the context of a short newspaper article, to enumerate all the evidence that has been adduced on this question. De Madariaga devoted a five-hundred page tome to proving this thesis. Some of the most important arguments are however summarized in the relevant entry in the Encyclopedia Judaica, written by the encyclopedia’s editor-in-chief Cecil Roth. While Roth himself expresses some scepticism about the explorer’s Jewish origins, it is significant that the entry is not preceded by the special sign that normally indicates articles about non-Jews.

Perhaps Columbus Day is, after all, a Jewish holiday.

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• Jewish Free Press, Oct. 14 1991.

For further reading: 

• Cecil Roth, “Who Was Columbus?” in: Personalities and Events in Jewish History, Philadelphia 1953.
• Salvador de Madariaga, Christopher Columbus, Being the Life of the Very Magnificent Lord Don Cristoból Colón, 1939.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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“With Righteous Judgment”:

Jewish Reflections on the Clarence Thomas Appointment

by Eliezer Segal

News Item: 1991 — The appointment of Clarence Thomas to the United States Supreme Court is accompanied by lengthy Congressional hearings, much of which focus on accusations of sexual harassment in his past.

During the recent debates over the confirmation of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, I found myself in the company of American relatives who remained glued to their televisions throughout. My initial reaction was disdainful; certainly no Canadian would ever develop such a fascination over a judicial appointment.

On reflection however I have come to consider the matter from the perspective of Jewish tradition, and my assessment has become much more favourable. Judaism has always prided itself in its legal system, and accordingly has paid much attention to the quality of its judges. More than this: We have gone so far as to place the tallit of religious and moral leadership upon individuals whose fundamental qualification is as judges–for this of course is the true meaning of title “rabbi,” that the individual so certified is deemed fit to serve as a judge in a religious court. All the other functions that we currently associate with the job of rabbi are either secondary, or recent innovations copied from Christian models.

The Torah speaks in several places of the requisite qualities of a Jewish judge. For example:”They shall judge the people with righteous judgment. Thou shalt not wrest judgment; thou shalt not respect persons; neither shalt thou take a gift …” (Deuteronomy 16:19-20). For Rashi this was not going far enough. We do not need the Torah to tell us that a judge must be honest and competent in the performance of his duties. What the Torah is demanding must be more than this: that the judge be upright in all aspects of his life.

Maimonides compiled an imposing list of qualifications for members of a Jewish court. In addition to various intellectual achievements (which include expertise in medicine, mathematics and astronomy), he insists that they must be “free from all suspicion with respect to conduct” even in areas that do not bear directly on their judicial activity.

Thus the sort of meticulous investigation into a candidate’s personal behaviour that characterized the recent American Senate hearings would not have been out of place in a Jewish judiciary.

Who, in a Jewish legal system, would have been responsible for the appointment of the new judge? This was often a source of intense controversy among different factions in the Jewish community, a controversy which was fuelled by the dual nature of the institution, which is at once an administrative and religious one. At various points in history both the religious and the secular leaderships would insist on the right to appoint new members of the court. As a result of such disputes during the talmudic era, it became necessary for a new appointee to receive confirmation from both the head of the Yeshivah (representing the religious branch) and the Nasi or Exilarch (representing the secular branch).

With the decline of the centralized administrations of the ancient world, the appointment of communal judges and rabbis came more and more to be a prerogative of the secular communal leadership. Under the new arrangement the judge was often a salaried employee of the community over which he was supposed to hold authority. This situation produced considerable discomfort among the judges concerned.

We can discern some of these hesitations in the following remarks by Rabbi Ephraim Luntshitz, a noted preacher in 16th-17th-century Poland. In commenting on the wording of Deuteronomy 16:18 “Judges and officers shalt thou make…and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment,” he is bothered by the shift in focus from “thou” to “the people.” Rabbi Luntshitz interprets this as a separate warning to those community leaders involved in the appointment of judges, that they must take care to hire individuals who will exercise authority not only over the general public, but even over those very leaders who hold the power over the appointments. Rabbi Luntshitz bluntly contrasts this ideal with the reality of his own generation, where communal leaders abuse their authority by appointing judges whom they can hold under their thumbs.

The uneasiness expressed by Rabbi Luntshitz is probably not unlike that felt by American judges in the face of the political pressures that threaten to compromise their authority and integrity.

It seems to me that as Jews we do have much to learn from the intense involvement of the American public in the selection of its judges. They have learned the ancient Jewish truth that a society can be judged by the quality of its judges.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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Happy Birthday

by Eliezer Segal

The Jewish Free Press recently celebrated its first birthday. While anticipating the magnificent staff party, I have taken to wondering what Jewish sources have to tell us about birthdays and their celebration.

One of the first Hebrew expressions any modern Jewish child learns is the word for “birthday,” yom huledet. This phrase goes back to the Bible, to the story of how Pharaoh held a feast on the occasion of his own birthday, at which he restored his chief butler and hanged his baker, in conformity with Joseph’s predictions (Genesis 40:20).

In the midrash and in some of the ancient Aramaic translations, the word used to render “birthday” in that passage is “genosa,” which is the Greek word for birthday. The “genosa” is listed in the Mishnah among the idolatrous religious celebrations on which Jews are directed to avoid dealings with their pagan neighbours. The Mishnah lists both the Greek and Hebrew terms for birthday, a fact which the Palestinian Talmud explains as intended to include both royal and individual birthdays; the former were considered public observances, whereas the latter were observed as idolatrous rites by individuals. It is the Greek term that appears most frequently in the talmudic sources, suggesting that birthdays were considered a foreign practice, not a Jewish one.

In actuality, most of the birthdays mentioned in the Talmud were of the royal variety. We have already mentioned Pharaoh’s, and some midrashic traditions claim that Ahasuerus’ big party at the beginning of the Book of Esther was also a birthday celebration. This is in keeping with the norm in the Roman Empire, where the Emperor’s birth would be commemorated in an obligatory religious ceremony, since the Emperors claimed to be gods. The association with Emperor-worship probably resulted in the birthdays’ being held in grave disfavour by the ancient rabbis.

There are nevertheless some more favourable references to birthdays, as in the following midrash, which comments on God’s declaration that, following the Exodus from Egypt, Nisan (the month in which Passover falls) should henceforward be counted as the first month.

This is analogous to the case of a king to whom a son was born. He ordained that date to be a holiday. Subsequently the son was abducted, and he remained in captivity for a long period. Some time later, the son was ransomed, and the king began to celebrate that date as if it were a birthday. Similarly, before going down to Egypt the Israelites used to celebrate a past event [i.e., the creation of the world]. Subsequently they went down to Egypt and experienced slavery, and God performed miracles for them and they were redeemed. They now began to count the months from that date.

The point of the parable seems to be that, though one’s birth is a fine thing to celebrate (even as we mark the birth of the world on Rosh Hashanah), the anniversary of a subsequent achievement (like the Exodus) can take its place as more fitting occasion for festivity.

It is therefore entirely appropriate to wish the folks at the Free Press a hearty mazal tov on this anniversary of their accomplishment.

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Hellenism Revisited

by Eliezer Segal

The villains of the Hanukkah story are identified as “Hellenizers.” As with many villains of history, our sources are not very interested in the details of their ideology, beyond the fact that they came into a fateful conflict with our ancestors.

The phenomenon of Hellenism nevertheless presents certain difficulties which are deserving of our attention. For example, many of us are puzzled by the fact that the same Hasmoneans who led the struggle against Antiochos and his collaborators so quickly established a state that was itself modeled along Hellenistic lines. The same holds true to some degree for the literature of the Talmud and Midrash, which is filled with thousands of Greek words and reflects intimate familiarity with Greek society and customs. Both the Hasmonean kings and the talmudic rabbis were likely to bear Greek names. If Hellenism was the enemy, then how could loyal Jews have been so tainted by it?

The truth is that Hellenism is a much more complex phenomenon than is allowed for by the school-book accounts of the Hanukkah story. As understood by historians the term does not refer to the actual culture of ancient Greece, but to a synthesis between Greek civilization and that of the ancient Middle East.

When Alexander the Great’s armies overtook these regions, Greek colonies were set up in order to spread the benefits of Civilization to backward Semitic peoples. In practice, this would usually take the form of communities of Greek merchants or soldiers trying to maintain an Athenian life-style on Egyptian or Judæan soil. The process was not one-directional however. Over a few generations, the original Greek settlers (who were not usually scholars or philosophers) would become assimilated and intermarried into their surroundings, soaking up many of the features of the local culture. It is this mixture of Greek and Middle-Eastern elements that is designated in the word “Hellenism.”

Last summer, a participant in a computer network devoted to the study of ancient Judaism requested from his colleagues that they share their characterizations of Hellenism. Several of the responding scholars offered the same analogy: the status of English-language culture in contemporary Israel. Thus, most Israelis are familiar with Coca-Cola(TM), television shows and American consumer technology, but are far less likely to have read Shakespeare or Thoreau.

This description accurately parallels the situation in ancient times as regards Hellenistic culture. Talmudic literature uses an extensive Greek vocabulary for utensils and political institutions. There is however no evidence that the rabbis had read Plato or Sophocles. While Homer is apparently mentioned in the Mishnah (but only to forbid reading him), the only major philosopher to be mentioned is Epicurus, not so much as an individual but as a synonym for atheism or heresy.

This pattern held true for the Maccabean period as well. The Maccabees, like the rabbis, were “Hellenists”–but they knew to draw the line when foreign ideas threatened sacred Jewish values and practices. It should be noted though that even the “real” Hellenists against whom the Maccabees were fighting were probably not trying to establish real Greek paganism in Jerusalem, but merely what they perceived to be a modified version of Judaism that would be more acceptable to Hellenistic conventions.

This less simplistic understanding of Judaism and Hellenism is of more than antiquarian interest. It may provide us with a more realistic criterion for applying the lessons of Hanukkah, and in making the complex choices between the mixed Jewish and “Hellenistic” options which actually confront us in our daily lives.

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My email address is: [email protected]

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When the Dead Rise

by Eliezer Segal

A colleague of mine in the University of Calgary Religious Studies Department approached me a while back in a state of considerable agitation. He (a non-Jew) had been teaching an introductory class on Judaism and, when he began speaking about the Jewish belief in resurrection of the dead, had been stubbornly attacked by a Jewish student who insisted that “Jews don’t believe in that sort of thing.” The experience repeated itself not long afterwards in conversation with a Jewish friend who mentioned how some of the media reports of Robert Maxwell’s burial on Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives had noted that Jews traditionally believed that those who were buried in that spot were guarantied to be first in line when the dead were revived in the Messianic era. “Is that really true?” my friend asked me. “I thought Jews didn’t go in for that sort of thing.”

I am certain that both these incidents reflect a similar phenomenon among contemporary spokespeople for Judaism, many of whom have no qualms about selling their personal opinions as those of Judaism. Unfortunately the state of Jewish literacy in our communities does not allow many of us to distinguish between facts and opinions.

With respect to the subject at hand, let me assure you that the belief in resurrection–i.e., that at some point in the future the dead will be restored to their physical bodies– has been a tenaciously held belief among Jews since at least the second century B.C.E. The books of Daniel and Maccabees, both composed against the background of the Maccabean revolt, refer to this idea explicitly, in the latter as a means of motivating people to acts of martyrdom. Josephus Flavius singles out this belief as one of the distinguishing ideas of the Pharisees, as against other Jewish movements which came to be regarded as heretical. The Mishnah, in an untypical foray into the realm of dogmatics, lists resurrection among the beliefs whose denial will cause you to forfeit your place in the World to Come. From then on there is scarcely a Jewish thinker who does not adhere to this idea, which is reaffirmed thrice daily in the liturgy. The belief also gets inherited by the Christians and the Muslims.

I suspect that the self-proclaimed authorities on Judaism who have denied the existence of this idea were troubled because they had been brought up on the maxim that Judaism, unlike Christianity, is not obsessed with the afterlife, but prefers to focus on this world. I believe that that statement is generally true, but that there remains quite a bit of room between a belief and an obsession.

In fact, I think that it is profitable to look at the belief in resurrection, as with any eschatological or metaphysical idea, not so much for what it says about the dead (though our sources are full of whimsical speculations on what we will be wearing then, how we will be transported to the Land of Israel, and what will happen to remarried widows when they find themselves with multiple husbands), as for what it teaches us about the Jewish perceptions of life itself. 

I have often wondered how Jews arrived at such an unlikely afterlife idea. Would it not be simpler to believe that we survive death in pure spiritual, disembodied forms? That after all was the ideal that was promoted by the ancient Greeks, one that is more befitting a spiritual religion.

Perhaps it is precisely this point that prompted our Pharisaic ancestors to promote belief in physical resurrection. The Greeks, as we are aware, had a decidedly negative attitude towards their bodies and anything physical. The philosophical tradition, much of which has been inherited by Western cultural values, tended to look upon the body as an impediment to true spiritual or intellectual perfection. In their opinion, one’s physical and material substance are unfortunate facts of life that we should do our best to minimize or undo through self-denial and withdrawal from the world.

We should note that Jews were not entirely immune from such thinking. A philosophical mind like Maimonides, though including the belief in resurrection among his “thirteen principles of faith,” was understood by his contemporaries to be lukewarm in his commitment to the idea. As a rationalist it is clear that he would have been better disposed to an intellectual, rather than a physical, survival. In the end he describes the resurrection as a temporary affair, following which people will die again and (if they make the grade) survive as abstract souls. 

These negative evaluations of material existence, as promoted by the Greek philosophical tradition and its Jewish sympathizers, were precisely the kinds of ideas that talmudic Judaism was denying in its assertion that our physical being is not a tragedy but part of God’s ideal plan for the world. What greater proof of this can there be than the fact that even in the next world we will have bodies?

There is much more that could be said about the values and ideas that are contained in this “dogma.” Whether or not one chooses personally to believe in physical resurrection, we should recognize honestly how central the belief has been as an expression of Jewish attitudes to life.

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