Who Will the Messiah Be?

Classical Jewish eschatology has long held that there will eventually be a redeemer, in Hebrew moshiach (“anointed one”), who will bring salvation to the Jewish nation. In the context of the Bible, this is a title that can be conferred to more than one person. Jewish priests and kings are anointed to lead their people and even the Persian King Cyrus (not a Jew!), who freed the Jews from Babylonian captivity, is referred to as moshiach. But a more eschatological concept of the Messiah also emerges from the biblical texts — the idea that one person, a king descended from the great King David, will usher in an entirely new era of redemption for the Jewish people.

This idea has been entrenched within the Jewish belief system for at least 2,600 years.

Messianic Claims in Antiquity

By the late Second Temple period, references to the Messiah had proliferated throughout Jewish writings. As the Greco-Roman empire subjected the Jews to harsh and anti-Semitic decrees, there was a renewed sense of urgency to find a leader who would bring respite from suffering. Late biblical books such as Daniel along with other, post-biblical texts, known as the Apocrypha, offer explicit visions as to what the ultimate redemption would bring.

Understandably, this increase in messianic discussion brought an increase in messianic predictions and even the coronation of certain people as the Messiah. During the first few centuries of the Common Era, there would be scores of individuals claiming to be moshiach, the vast majority of them never able to amass any type of following. Perhaps the most famous example is that of Jesus Christ (literally, Jesus the Messiah). The majority of the Jewish community rejected this young charismatic Jew as moshiach though he amassed a large following among non-Jews and started a movement that has become one of the largest religions in the world today.

A century later, a man named Bar Kochba achieved much better traction in convincing the Jews of his anointed status. After the Temple was destroyed in 70 CE, the Jews were so badly beaten by the Roman empire that they had no fighting chance to drive the foreign rulers from Jerusalem. But several decades later in the early second century, Bar Kochba was able to rally troops, planning a general Jewish uprising against Rome. A few early local victories began to convince both the Jewish masses and some in the religious leadership, most famously Rabbi Akiva, that Bar Kochba was moshiach and would deliver the Jews from oppressive Roman rule.

As Bar Kochba and his uprising gained support from Jews hailing him as both a military expert and Messiah, more people would join the fight. The revolt began in earnest in 135 CE — and it was a disaster. Rome crushed the uprising and over half a million Jews were slain and hundreds of thousands more exiled.

After the failure of the Bar Kochba revolt, false messianic claims quieted for a few centuries. But hopes were not quashed. The Talmud, penned during this time, offered several predictions for the arrival of the Messiah, including the year 440 (Sanhedrin 97b) and 471 (Avodah Zarah 9b). In the mid 5th century, a man named Moses of Crete decided he was the one the Talmud had predicted. Swearing he would, like his biblical forbear, lead his followers through the water and back to the Promised Land, Moses convinced his fellow Jews to leave behind all their belongings and march directly into the sea. While Moses himself disappeared — some accounts argue that he perished in the sea, and others that he fled the scene — many of his followers drowned. Others, the lucky ones, only lost their belongings.

Karaite Messianism

The Karaites are a sectarian movement that rejects rabbinic Judaism, holding sacred only the Hebrew Bible and not the Talmud or other rabbinic writings. Many of the early influencers of this movement led messianic charges, promising to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem so they could return to offering sacrifices (rabbinic Judaism had replaced sacrifice with Torah study and prayer). Needless to say, none of these false messiahs succeeded and many of their followers were slaughtered in battle, deserted by their leaders. Some disappointed followers even ended up forming separate religious groups, such as the Yudghanites, vowing that their killed Messiah would return.

More Messianic Movements of the Middle Ages

Dozens of other examples scattered throughout the Middle Ages further elucidate Judaism’s long and tortured history of false Messiahs. In the 12th century, another “moshiach” named David Alroy (born Menahem ben Solomon) tried rising up against the Muslim empire. His chosen name alludes to his status as Messiah descended from King David; the name Alroy might mean “the inspired one.” David Alroy’s plan was lead the Jews back to Jerusalem, overthrow Muslim rule, and establish himself as their king. Ultimately, his revolt failed and he was assassinated. His followers, undeterred by his death, formed a Jewish break-off movement known as the Menahemists.

Yet another unspecified moshiach, discussed by Maimonidies, convinced many Jews in Yemen to give away all their possessions before he was slain. Then, unsurprisingly, in the rise and subsequent spread of Kabbalah towards the late medieval period, many other Jews would claim to be miracle workers and Messiahs similarly leading Jews to death, poverty, or out of the Jewish community.

The Most Famous False Messiah

Perhaps the most famous of all the false messiahs was Shabbetai Zevi, an early modern charismatic Jew who lived in the early Ottoman empire. Building off Kabbalistic messianic traditions, Zevi started to gain a following to whom he would teach esoteric and mystical Jewish ideas. As his following grew, Shabbetai Zevi began to perform open “miracles”, publicly chant the name of God, and eventually declare himself the Messiah. At first few accepted this messianic declaration but over time a variety of well-known Kabbalistic leaders embraced this young moshiach. Towards the end of his life, Zevi was imprisoned by the Islamic hegemony and given an ultimatum: be killed or convert to Islam. As he chose the later, thousands of his own followers also converted while others looked to the creation of a different religious movement known as Sabbatianism.

Conclusion

The idea of identifying the Messiah is still alive and well in the Jewish community today. Though for some Jews the Messiah represents a futuristic ideal, for others the concept is far more concrete. For example, many followers of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, leader of a Hasidic sect called Chabad, believe that he never died and is in fact moshiach.

For every example of a false Messiah written about here, there are dozens of examples not mentioned. In times of hardship and fervor, Jews have repeatedly believed the Messiah was identifiable and at hand — only to be disappointed. A detailed account of all the false Jewish Messiahs recorded in history could fill a book, and this precludes the mention of hundreds of claimants lost to the dustbin of history. While the setting and scope of each of these stories widely differ, they are united by failure and false hope — the vast majority causing death and destruction, loss of property, or conversion.

The post False Messiahs in Judaism appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

Iranian Jews similarly mark the holiday, but for centuries have also made a pilgrimage–throughout the year, but especially on Purim — to a shrine in the city of Hamadan where, according to tradition, Esther and Mordecai are buried. The origins and contents of this shrine are cloaked in legend and mystery.

Hamadan, known in antiquity as Ecbatana, is in the Kurdish region of Iran. Mount Alvand, which overlooks the city proper, hosted the summer residence of Persian royalty of the Achaemenid Empire (the period when the Purim story is believed to have happened). Tradition has it that Esther and Mordecai — after spending their final years at the royal resort — were buried in the city, next to one another, with a shrine constructed over their graves.

While the original shrine’s date of construction is unknown, its date of destruction, at the hands of Mongol invaders, purportedly occurred in the 14th century. Historian Ernst Herzfeld contends that the current structure may actually belong to Shushan Dokht, the Jewish queen of King Yazdagerd I (ca. 399-420 CE), who is credited with securing permission for Jews to live in Hamadan.

Herzfeld dates the current structure to 1602 CE, partly on account of its traditional Persian architectural style (known as Emamzadeh), which was ubiquitous amongst the shrines of Muslim religious leaders built in that era. In most cases, these buildings include an entry hall and a main square hall with a domed ceiling that surrounds the sarcophagus (stone coffin).

Earliest Reports

For centuries, Iranian Jews, Muslims, and Christians, particularly women praying for fertility, venerated the modest brick shrine. The first detailed accounts in the historical record are from Christian tourists in the 1800s and early 1900s. These records, which include outstanding illustrations, descriptions, and even photographs, were recently digitized–and provide a rare glimpse into the condition of the shrine in the past and the particular observances once held there.

One 19th-century visitor describes a marble plaque on the interior dome walls claiming that the structure was dedicated in the year 714 CE by “the two benevolent brothers Elias and Samuel, sons of Ismail Kachan.” Other visitors describe rooms covered in pilgrims’ graffiti in various languages as well as darkened by candle smoke; a stork’s nest sitting atop the shrine’s dome; and a prayer area within that was designed to enable worshippers to face the tombs and Jerusalem at same time.

They also recount that notes in Hebrew script were placed near the tombs, similar to how Jewish worshippers often tuck prayer notes into the stones of Jerusalem’s Western Wall. For Iranian Jews, who could reach Jerusalem only with great difficulty, the shrine served as a stand-in place at which to pray and weep.

Renovation

Until the 1970s, the shrine was hidden away in a crowded part of Hamadan, surrounded by houses, and accessible only through a narrow dirt alley. But in 1971, in honor of a national celebration of 2,500 years of Iranian monarchy, the Iranian Jewish Society commissioned architect Yassi (Elias) Gabbay to undertake a renovation.

Houses around the tomb were purchased and demolished, making the shrine accessible from the main street via a bridge Gabbay constructed over the new courtyard and a partially-underground synagogue chapel he also built, to complete the shrine complex. The subterranean chapel has a skylight in the shape of a Star of David that can be seen in Google Earth, quite possible making the Islamic Republic in Iran home to the only Jewish star visible from space.

The renovation did not significantly alter the shrine itself, or the grave stones cluttering the plaza outside the old shrine. (Some prominent local Jews had in the past secured burial plots outside the shrine, which they considered holier than plots in the main Jewish cemetery in Hamadan.)

One of the old structure’s remarkable features that Gabbay preserved is its front door, a massive piece of granite with a hidden lock. Less than four feet high, the stunted doorframe forces visitors to bow as they enter, in deference to the site’s holy occupants.

An outer chamber holds tombs of famous rabbis and provides access by means of an archway to the interior chamber. The interior chamber features Hebrew writing along the walls and holds two carved sarcophagi, supposedly marking the burial spots of Esther and Mordecai. This chamber also houses a cabinet with a 300-year-old Torah scroll.

The Contemporary Shrine

Today, Esther’s Tomb has lost some of its former splendor. Iranian authorities, for example, have removed an ornamented gate Gabbay had erected along the sidewalk using a geometric motif common in many mosques. The problem? Part of the classic motif forms a Jewish star — a fact regime officials apparently considered intolerable (unlike the fence, the Star of David skylight is not visible from street level). Gabbay himself lives in exile, having fled after the Islamic Revolution and restarted his architectural practice in Los Angeles, though he dreams of returning to see the site he transformed.

The question of whether the shrine actually marks the resting place of Esther and her uncle remains unanswered, and is perhaps unanswerable.  But one 19th-century Christian pilgrim offered her own insight on the effectual significance of the tomb and the 2,700-year-old Persian Jewish community that guards it:

“Beside the tomb of Esther the lowly race she saved have kept loving watch through all the weary ages. More wonderful than any ancient monument are these Jews themselves, lineal descendants, in blood and faith, of the tribes of Israel, and the only vestige of the truly olden time which entirely defies decay and dissolution.”

This article is dedicated to Sylvia Guberman ZT”L, a woman of valor in the spirit of Esther.

Reprinted with permission from the Diarna Project.

Diarna, “Our Homes” in Judeo-Arabic, is a project dedicated to digitally preserving Mizrahi (“Eastern”) Jewish history through the lens of physical location. Satellite imagery, photographs, videos, oral histories, panoramas, and even three-dimensional models, offer a unique digital window onto sites and communities disappearing before our very eyes. To begin your free trip — no passport or airfare required — explore Diarna’s website (http://www.diarna.org). Diarna wishes to thank Iranian-Jewish scholar Orly R. Rahimiyan for her careful and helpful reading of this article in draft form. 

The post Are Esther and Mordechai Buried in This Iranian Tomb? appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

The Importance of Covenant

The Israelites’ relationship with YHWH, however, set them apart from their neighbors.  This relationship was based on a covenant binding YHWH and Israel to one another through a series of obligations. Thus, the biblical authors depicted a direct correlation between the patriarchs’ (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) prosperity and their fidelity to YHWH.  Similarly, the deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt into the Holy Land is cast as being conditional on the Israelites’ following YHWH’s precepts. It follows that the biblical authors attributed the misfortunes that befell the Israelites (e.g. plagues and military failures, etc.) to the Israelites’ failure to comply with terms of this covenant.

The First Temple

The establishment of the Temple under David and Solomon (c. 1000 BCE) marked a major development in Israelite religion.  The Temple, intended to be the official focal point for Israelite religion replacing the family shrines and cultic places of earlier periods, served as a primary place for sacrifices, worship, and regular pilgrimages.  Perhaps most importantly, the Temple served as a symbol of YHWH’s presence among the Israelites, and by extension, divine protection.

Despite this effort to centralize the Israelite cult, biblical and archaeological evidence indicates that traditional cultic sites and family shrines continued to exist throughout the monarchy (c. 1000–587 BCE).

The biblical prophets played a special role in Israelite religion.    They fervently condemned religious infidelities, including the worship of foreign gods. They were also very vocal in their intolerance of social injustice, especially abuses of power committed by Israelite elites.  The eighth-century BCE prophet Isaiah went so far as to declare that religious practices, including sacrifice and observance of festivals, were meaningless as long as social injustices remained.

The Babylonian Exile

The Babylonian exile had a grave impact on Israelite religion.  The Temple was destroyed, the “eternal” Davidic dynasty interrupted, and the people driven from the land YHWH had given them.  Little is known about religious life during the exile except that solemn days were designated to mourn the loss of Israelite institutions.  The prophets attempted to soothe the pain of these losses by promising a glorious restoration, the promise of which was never fully realized.

The Second Temple

The return from exile witnessed efforts to unify the Jews by the likes of Ezra and Nehemiah (early leaders of the Second Temple period) including the canonization of scripture and reaffirmation of the covenant with YHWH.  Such measures, however, were countered by growing discontent, as evident from the apocalyptic writings of the period and the emergence of numerous sects.

The Pharisees and Sadducees were the two most prominent groups of the period.  The Pharisees, the presumed predecessors to the rabbinic tradition, promoted incorporating religion into every aspect of life and generally rejected Hellenism. The Sadducees, with ties to the priesthood, maintained their religious identity, but were more open to Hellenistic culture. Other groups, such as the Essenes (who some scholars associate with the Dead Sea Scrolls) held more radical beliefs. The early Jewish Christians were yet another significant Jewish sect–not yet adherents of a separate religion.

The Second Temple’s Destruction and the Emergence of Rabbinic Judaism

The destruction of the Temple, which had served as the religious and political center for the Jewish people, presented a major challenge. The Jews survived this crisis by giving new prominence to institutions that played only minor roles during the Second Temple period. Synagogues absorbed the role of the Temple as places for worship and learning; prayer took the place of sacrifice; rabbis sought to replace priests as teachers and guardians over the law.

The rabbis’ ability to adapt biblical traditions–including dietary laws, observance of Shabbat and the festivals, and worship–for life in exile enabled Judaism to survive the transition beyond the Temple period, and ultimately to persevere throughout the ages.  The Mishnah (a collection of law edited around the year 200 CE) and the Gemara (a commentary on the Mishnah, discussing its teachings and connecting it to the biblical text, compiled in approximately 500 CE), record opinions and discussions relevant to life in a world that no longer preserved Temple-based institutions and traditions.

Rabbinic authority, however, did not remain unchallenged.  In addition to references to resistance in rabbinic writings, there are numerous amulets and incantation vessels attesting to the use of magic among the Jews of this period.

The post A Crash Course in Early Jewish History appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

Maimonides was both a traditionalist and an innovator. Although he endured his share of controversy, he nevertheless came to occupy a singular, unquestioned position of reverence in the annals of Jewish history.

A Man of the World

Moshe ben Maimon was born in 1138 or late 1137. “Maimonides” is the Greek translation of “Moses, son of Maimon,” whereas the acronym RamBaM (רמבּ״ם) is its Hebrew equivalent. He grew up in Córdoba, in what is now southern Spain. Reared in a prosperous, educated family, the young Maimonides studied traditional Jewish texts like Mishnah, Talmud and Midrash under the tutelage of his father, Maimon. (An accomplished scholar in his own right, Maimon was the intellectual scion of legendary halachist [Jewish legal scholar] Isaac Alfasi.)

Maimonides also studied secular subjects like astronomy, medicine, mathematics and philosophy — a medieval “liberal arts” curriculum, so to speak. He was particularly captivated by the Greek philosophers Aristotle and Plotinus; their ideas persuaded him that reasoned inquiry was not only reconcilable with Judaism, but in fact its central discipline. Blessed with a prodigious memory and ravenous intellectual curiosity, Maimonides adopted an expansive view of wisdom. He had little patience for those who cared more about the prestige of scholars than the merits of their assertions and admonished his students: “You should listen to the truth, whoever may have said it.” (Commentary on the Mishnah, Tractate Neziqin)

Maimonides lived under Islamic rule for his entire life, and he both benefited and suffered greatly because of it. Maimonides spent his formative years in a society in which tolerant Muslim leadership catalyzed vibrant cultural exchange with its Jewish and Christian minorities. Islamic scholarship in particular influenced him, especially later in his life. Unfortunately, when Maimonides was 10 years old, a fundamentalist Berber tribe called the Almohads entered Córdoba and presented Jewish residents with three choices: conversion, exile or death. The Maimoni family chose exile, leaving Córdoba and eventually emigrating to Morocco in about 1160, when Maimonides was in his early 20s. Many scholars believe Maimonides may have outwardly practiced Islam during this period, not out of belief but in order to protect himself, and that he continued to practice Judaism secretly. In 1165, the Maimoni family set sail for Palestine. After a brief yet formative visit to the land of Israel, then under Crusader rule, they finally settled in Egypt in 1166 — first in Alexandria, and eventually in Fustat (part of present-day Cairo). Maimonides lived there until his death in 1204.

Mishneh Torah and Guide of the Perplexed

Despite his demanding schedule as a full-time physician, Maimonides wrote prolifically, composing philosophical works, ethical and legal response letters, medical treatises and, in his 20s, a commentary on the entire Mishnah. His most enduring masterworks are the Mishneh Torah and the Guide of the Perplexed. Although he wrote them at different times and for different audiences, modern scholars understand the Mishneh Torah and Guide to be highly interdependent. They project a unified and reason-based vision of the purpose of Jewish life.

Mishneh Torah (written 1168-1178)

Maimonides composed the Mishneh Torah (literally, a “repetition” or “second” Torah) over a 10-year period, continuing to edit it until his death. Comprising 14 books and nearly 1,000 chapters, it was the first ever comprehensive code of halakha (Jewish law). In writing the MT, Maimonides drew from earlier source, such as the Mishnah, Tosefta, Midrash and Talmud, with an encyclopedic memory and considerable attention to both intertextuality and literary aesthetics. His admiration for these works notwithstanding, he designed the MT to be so exhaustive and accurate that it would make all but the Torah itself obsolete. In his introduction, he instructs, “One should read the written Torah and then read [the MT]. Then he will know the oral Torah in its entirety, without needing to read any other text beside.”

In order to make the Mishneh Torah accessible to the entire Jewish world, Maimonides organized it topically and composed it in clear, concise Hebrew. In a radical departure from tradition, Maimonides omitted from the MT both the names of earlier scholars and most of their opinions, preserving only those rulings he deemed correct. Critics attacked him for this decision, spawning an even greater literature that grows even to this day. Among his fiercest critics was Abraham ben David, the Ravad, (c. 1125-1198) a great Provençal Talmudist who criticized Maimonides for omitting his sources, among other things. Nonetheless, the Mishneh Torah inspired important scholars such as Rabbi Jacob ben Asher (c. 1269 – 1343) and Rabbi Joseph Caro (c. 1488 – 1575), two of the most important later codifiers, changing the landscape of Jewish thought forever.

Guide of the Perplexed (written 1185-1190)

While he envisioned a broad audience for the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides intended the Guide of the Perplexed primarily for students accomplished in both Jewish studies and philosophy. Concerned that the Torah’s fanciful stories and anthropomorphic depictions of God might lead such students to doubt the compatibility of scripture and reason (hence their perplexity), Maimonides sought to demonstrate that the two could in fact coexist.

Unlike the MT, which is written in clear, accessible Hebrew, the Guide is written in a more difficult, less commonly understood Judeo-Arabic — the language of Jews living in Muslim lands at the time. In contrast to the Mishneh Torah, which is highly organized, the Guide, by Maimonides’ own admission, lacks any cogent order. Topics “… are scattered and entangled with other subjects…for my purpose is that the truths be glimpsed and then again be concealed, so as not to oppose that divine purpose..which has concealed from the vulgar among the people those truths especially requisite for [God’s] apprehension” (From the introduction to the Guide, as it appears in the 1963 translation by Shlomo Pines). Maimonides also seeded the Guide with inconsistencies, sometimes stating one thing but intending another. He believed that truly capable students would discern the “truth” in the end. His authorial circumlocutions were intended to safeguard particularly powerful and dangerous knowledge about God, creation, and the afterlife.

Theological Secrets and Controversies

Although he denied there was anything incompatible about Greek philosophy and Jewish teachings, Maimonides may nevertheless have secretly believed things that were anathema to normative Judaism. Scholars debate the particulars fiercely, though; we will likely never know all of his true views with certainty. We do, however, know the central points of contention.

In his Commentary on the Mishnah, Maimonides outlined 13 principles of Jewish belief, itself a controversial undertaking in predominantly non-creedal Judaism. (Many Jews sing a poetic adaptation of these 13 principles called Yigdal at the end of Shabbat prayer services each week.) Maimonides’ third principle is that God has no body. Although a universal premise today, it was not necessarily so in 12th-century Judaism. In fact, some medieval mystics even wrote treatises detailing the measurements of God’s body.

Maimonides taught that biblical descriptions of God are allegorical, intended to help humans better understand lofty matters. For instance, the Torah describes God’s finger (Exodus 31.18), hand (Exodus 9.3) and feet (Exodus 24.10). According to Maimonides, these descriptions are “…adapted to the mental capacity of the majority of humans, who recognize only physical bodies. The Torah speaks in the language of humanity. All these phrases are allegorical” (Mishneh Torah, Foundational Laws of the Torah, 1.9). Maimonides recognized that language is inadequate to describe a God who is beyond ordinary human cognition. Therefore, he famously proposed, in Guide of the Perplexed, describing God by negation: ‘God is not a physical body’; ‘God is not composed of distinct parts’, and the like.

Another main point of controversy is Maimonides’ account of creation. Normative Judaism understands the creation story in the first chapter of Genesis as creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothing). Aristotelian philosophy, however, posits that the universe is eternal, and thus was never “created” as such. Maimonides claimed to follow rabbinic tradition on this matter, but scholars disagree about what he really believed.

Finally, Maimonides’ opinions about the afterlife (See Mishneh Torah, Laws of Teshuvah, ch. 8) drew both admiration and scorn. He taught that in olam ha-ba (lit., ‘the world to come’) the souls of the righteous unite in perfect contemplation of God. Some critics accused him of rejecting the eventual, individual salvation of the righteous known as t’khiat ha-meitim (resurrection of the dead). One of Maimonides’ most outspoken detractors during his lifetime was Samuel ben Eli, the head of the Gaonic Academy in Baghdad. So problematic was the afterlife controversy for Maimonides that he eventually (c. 1190) wrote Treatise on Resurrection, to indicate that he did, in fact believe in the resurrection of the dead. Maimonides died in 1204 and was buried in Tiberias, in the north of Israel, in accordance with his wishes. An epitaph on his tombstone, which many people continue to visit, compares him favorably to his biblical namesake: “From Moses to Moses there never arose another like Moses.”

Recommended Reading about Maimonides

Halbertal, Moshe, trans. Joel A. Linsider. Maimonides: Life and Thought. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2014.

Kraemer, Joel L. Maimonides: The Life and World of One of Civilization’s Greatest Minds. New York: Doubleday, 2008.

Maimonides, Moses ( Isadore Twersky, ed.) A Maimonides Reader. New York: Behrman House, 1972.

Stroumsa, Sarah. Maimonides in His World: Portrait of a Mediterranean Thinker. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2009.

The post Maimonides (Rambam) and His Texts appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

The Greek‑speaking Jewish communities, which the immigrants from Spain and Portugal later called “Romaniots” or “Gregos,” were all under Ottoman rule at the time of the fall of Constantinople — renamed Istanbul — in 1453. The Arabic‑speaking Jews (“Mustarabs” in the idiom of the Iberian refugees), were the other important indigenous group. They lived in “Arabistan”–countries conquered mainly during the reign of Selim I (1512‑1520) and of his son Suleiman the Magnificent (1520‑1566). For all the Jews the conquest was a salvation, as their situation in the 14th and 15th centuries under Byzantine and Mamluk rule had been extremely difficult.

Haven for Jewish Refugees from Spain and Portugal

Then, in the wake of the expulsion from Spain (1492) and the forced conversion in Portugal (1497), tens of thousands of Iberian Jews arrived in Ottoman territories. As all that was required of them was the payment of a poll‑tax and acknowledgement of’ the superiority of Islam, the empire became a haven for these refugees.

From early in the 16th century, the Jewish community in the Ottoman Empire became the largest in the world. Constantinople and Salonika each had a community of approximately 20,000 people. Immigration from the Iberian peninsula, arriving in several waves throughout the 16th century, also transformed the character of Ottoman Jewry. Far more numerous than the local Jews, the Spaniards and the Portuguese soon submerged the Romaniots, and the indigenous population was assimilated into the culture and community of the new immigrants.

After the conquest of Constantinople, Muhammad II, wishing to aggrandize the city and make it into a capital befitting a great empire, brought into it many people from the provinces. This migration affected the Jewish community and changed the character it had acquired during the Byzantine period.

The economic and religious situation was indeed ameliorated; but many of the older Romaniot congregations disappeared, their memory preserved only in the names of several synagogues in Istanbul. The congregations which replaced them in the capital as well as in Salonika or in Tiriya in western Anatolia, were purely Spanish.

Jewish Prosperity and Cultural Blossoming

Within the communities, the congregations were organized according to the geographic origin of their members. Grouped around synagogues, the Jewish organizations provided all the religious, legal, educational, and social services, thus creating an almost autonomous society. Until the end of the 16th century, these institutions were very flexible, allowing significant mobility within them. The geographic origin of its members soon lost its importance, and the development of the congregation was determined by power struggles between rich individuals or groups with conflicting interests.

Throughout the 16th century, the Jews in the Ottoman Empire enjoyed remarkable prosperity. The empire was rapidly expanding, and economic demand rose accordingly. Thus the Jewish population could easily enter into trade with Christian Europe, and into industries such as wool weaving that were only then beginning to evolve. Under the leadership of figures like Don Joseph Nasi and Solomon ibn Yaish, they could take advantage of their worldwide network of family connections and their knowledge of European affairs in order to promote the concerns of the Sublime Porte, as well as to protect their personal interests and those of their community.

This was also a time of cultural blossoming: Hebrew law was enriched by Joseph Caro’s Shulchan Aruch (the “Prepared Table”) which was to become the authoritative code for the entire Jewish nation, while from Safed in Palestine emerged the Lurianic Kabbalah of Ha-Ari, one of the most influential trends in Jewish mysticism. It seems that these communities of exiles, suddenly liberated from the danger of extinction, could give expression to an outburst of cultural forces which had been stifled by centuries of persecution.

Reprinted with permission from Eli Barnavi’s A Historical Atlas of the Jewish People, published by Schocken Books.

The post The Sephardic Exodus to the Ottoman Empire appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

While the notion that Jews control the world economy or banking system is an obvious canard, it is true that Jews have long been well-represented in the fields of finance and business. This is commonly attributed to the fact that for centuries, Jews were excluded from professional guilds and denied the right to own land, forcing them to work as merchants and financiers. However some academics contend that the historical evidence does not support this thesis and that Jewish financial success is instead due to the community’s high literacy rates.

Whatever its causes, Jewish business and financial success has more often than not been a major driver of anti-Semitism. Shakespeare’s Shylock character, a money lender who extracts a pound of flesh from a debtor who defaulted, is among history’s best-known caricatures of the Jewish businessman. That caricature lent a sinister undertone of greed and exploitation to Jewish financial dealings that would be invoked to justify anti-Jewish measures for centuries to come. Supposed Jewish control of the global financial system — a feature of what some call economic anti-Semitism — was a major theme in Hitler’s war against European Jews, Father Coughlin’s anti-Semitic rants in the United States, and the czarist forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.  Related slurs include claims that Jews are wealthy, greedy and stingy, obsessed with material goods and profit, and that they exploit their economic advantages to help their own people, to the detriment of the public good.

Origins of the Jews and Money Stereotype

Jews have been associated with moneylending for at least a millennia. The most common explanation for this has been the exclusion of European Jews in the Middle Ages from various guilds, their confinement to ghettos and restrictions preventing them from owning land. Additionally, medieval Christian theology held that charging interest (known as usury) was sinful, which kept many Christians from becoming financiers. The field thus came to be dominated by Jews. The historian Howard Sachar has estimated that in the 18th century, “perhaps as many as three-fourths of the Jews in Central and Western Europe were limited to the precarious occupations of retail peddling, hawking, and ‘street banking,’ that is, moneylending.” The fact that Christians regarded such occupations as incompatible with their religious principles fed the notion that Jews were morally deficient, willing to engage in unethical business practices that decent people had rejected.

An alternative explanation holds that the Jewish penchant for finance is a result not of professional exclusion, but the Jewish emphasis on learning and literacy. A number of scholars have posited versions of this thesis. In their 2012 book The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History, 70-1492, economists Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein contended that, with the destruction of the ancient temples in Jerusalem and the beginning of the Jewish Diaspora, Jewish continuity suddenly became dependent on widespread religious literacy. Those who educated themselves remained Jews, whereas those who did not assimilated or converted to other faiths. Over time, the Jewish community evolved into a uniquely educated population, which in turn incentivized Jews to abandon farming in favor of better-paying professions and businesses.

Evolution of a Stereotype

From the fact of Jewish overrepresentation in occupations that Christians largely regarded as degenerate emerged a stereotype of the Jew as the embodiment of commercial greed, exploiter of the poor and the source of economic pain and misery for the masses. Perhaps nothing did more to solidify this image in the European imagination than The Merchant of Venice. In this play, written in the late 16th century, Shylock is a Jewish moneylender who extends a loan guaranteed by a pound of flesh from the Christian merchant Antonio. When Antonio’s ships are lost at sea and he cannot repay the loan, Shylock summons him to court where, despite being offered twice the original loan as repayment, he insists on exacting his pound of flesh, which he plans to obtain by lopping it off Antonio’s body with a knife.

Though scholars disagree whether Shakespeare was reflecting the ingrained anti-Semitism of his day or offering a subtle critique of it, Shylock has become synonymous not merely with Jewish greed but with anti-Semitism generally, a perception deepened by early onstage portrayals of the character as a vengeful villain. Shylock had a lasting influence on the depiction of Jews in English literature and was used as a propaganda device by the Nazis. Dozens of productions of The Merchant of Venice were mounted in Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

Jews did hold prominent financial positions in Europe, which made them ready scapegoats in times of economic crisis. For centuries, so-called court Jews acted as the principal financiers for the European aristocracy’s projects. In the 1760s, one of those court Jews, Mayer Amschel Rothschild, established a banking business in Germany that would eventually grow into a vast international conglomerate and yield one of the largest family fortunes in world history. The Rothschild name became synonymous with Jewish financial power, invoked as shorthand for the secretive and outsized power Jews were alleged to wield over the economic fate of the world. Despite his own Jewish ancestry (his parents converted the family to Protestantism when he was a child) Karl Marx, the philosopher who first popularized the idea that capitalism is inherently exploitative, singled out Jews in particular for their role in promoting it.

As moneylending evolved into institutionalized banking, Jews continued to occupy major positions in the financial world. Across Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, Jews built a number of influential banks, further feeding anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. With mass Jewish immigration to the United States beginning in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Jews assumed prominent positions in the growing financial center of New York, establishing Salomon Brothers, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs and others. They also figured prominently in government financial positions. Between 1987 and 2014, the U.S. Federal Reserve was chaired by a succession of three Jews. Four of the eight men who served as U.S. Treasury secretary between 1995 and 2020 were Jewish. Three of the 12 presidents of the World Bank between its founding in 1946 and 2020 have been Jewish. Jews are also significantly overrepresented among the wealthiest Americans. Half of the 10 richest Americans in 2016 were Jewish, according to Forbes, despite Jews making up less than 2 percent of the U.S. population.

As a result, talk of “international bankers” is still widely regarded as a veiled form of anti-Semitism. When Donald J. Trump, campaigning for the presidency in 2016, charged that his rival, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, “meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers,” some saw an evocation of anti-Semitic stereotyping. Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, urged Trump in a Twitter post to “avoid rhetoric and tropes that historically have been used against Jews and still spur #antisemitism.”

Contemporary Manifestations

Not all invocations of Jewish financial prowess are malicious, and some are deeply admiring. In China, eagerness to mimic Jewish business success has driven a recent publishing trend purporting to reveal the secrets to wealth contained in ancient Jewish texts. Crack the Talmud: 101 Jewish Business Rules, 16 Reasons for Jews Getting Wealthy, The Secret of Talmud: The Jewish Code of Wealth and Secret of Jewish Success: Ten Commandments of Jewish Success have all been published in China in recent years.

In the West, however, talk of Jewish prominence in finance is more frequently pernicious. David Duke, the former KKK grand wizard, has repeatedly inveighed against Jewish “domination” of media and banking (along with the pornography industry and efforts to “de-Christianize” America). Eustace Mullins, a Holocaust denier who died in 2010, argued in several published works that the Federal Reserve was created by three Jewish “enemy aliens” to take over the American monetary system. The anti-Semitic website Jew Watch includes a page listing “International Banks & Jews Who Founded Them.” Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam has long claimed that Jews control the international financial system.

Such ideas have also been internalized by the general public. According to studies conducted by the ADL, substantial percentages of respondents in virtually every country surveyed believe Jews have too much power in business and international financial markets. Roughly half of respondents in France agreed with that idea, as did one-third of Germans and nearly three-quarters of Egyptians. Even in the United States, where anti-Semitism is fairly low by global standards, some 18 percent of respondents said Jews have too much power in the business world.

Given that Jews are well represented in banking, how does one recognize the line between acknowledging this fact and dealing in pernicious anti-Semitic canards? Writing after actor Seth MacFarlane drew criticism for joking at the Academy Awards that it’s best to be Jewish if you “want to continue to work in Hollywood,” journalist J.J. Goldberg offered one way to draw that line. As with the Jews and finance stereotype, MacFarlane’s bit was based in inarguable fact — by Goldberg’s count, more than 80 percent of top Hollywood studio chiefs are Jews. According to Goldberg, such talk veers into anti-Semitism when one speaks of “the Jews” controlling movies — the implication being that a corporate entity known as “the Jews,” acting as an organized group, is conspiring to exert its authority. It’s undeniable that Jews are disproportionately among the wealthiest Americans and overrepresented in top positions in the financial world, but it’s anti-Semitic, according to Goldberg, to say that “the Jews” are.

The post Jews and Finance appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

Want to learn Talmud with us? Daf Yomi is a program of reading the entire Talmud one day at a time, and My Jewish Learning offers a free daily email that follows the worldwide cycle. To join thousands and thousands of Jews on this learning journey, sign up here!

Like the Talmud Bavli, the Talmud Yerushalmi consists of two layers — the Mishnah and the Gemara. For the most part, the Mishnah of the two Talmuds is identical, though there are some variations in the text and in the order of material. The Gemara of the Yerushalmi, though, differs significantly in both content and style from that of the Bavli. First, the Yerushalmi Gemara is primarily written in Palestinian Aramaic, which is quite different from the Babylonian dialect. The Yerushalmi contains more long narrative portions than the Bavli does and, unlike the Bavli, tends to repeat large chunks of material. The presence of these repeated passages has led many to conclude that the editing of the Yerushalmi was never completed. Others, however, have argued that these repetitions represent a deliberate stylistic choice, perhaps aimed at reminding readers of connections between one section and another.

Comparing the Two Texts

While the Bavli favors multi-part, complex arguments, Yerushalmi discussions rarely include lengthy debate. For instance, both the Bavli and the Yerushalmi discuss the following Mishnah:

“For all seven days [of Sukkot], one should turn one’s Sukkah into one’s permanent home, and one’s house into one’s temporary home. . .”(Sukkah 2: 9).

The Bavli Gemara embarks on a long discussion of the validity of this statement in the Mishnah:

. . .The rabbis taught, ‘You shall dwell [in booths on the holiday of Sukkot]’ (Leviticus 23:42) means ‘you shall live in booths.’ From this, they said ‘for all seven days, one should make the Sukkah [temporary booth or hut] one’s permanent home, and one’s house temporary home. How should one do this? One should bring one’s nice dishes and couches into the Sukkah, and should eat, drink and sleep in the Sukkah.’ Is this really so? Didn’t Rava say that one should study Torah and Mishnah in the Sukkah, but should study Talmud outside of the Sukkah? (This statement appears to contradict the Mishnah’s assertion that during Sukkot, one should do everything inside the Sukkah.) This is not a contradiction. [The Mishnah] refers to reviewing what one has already studied, while [Rava’s statement] refers to learning new material [on which one might not be able to concentrate while in the Sukkah]” (Talmud Bavli Sukkah 28b-29a).

As proof of this resolution, the Bavli goes on to relate a story of two rabbis who leave their Sukkah in order to study new material. Finally, the Gemara suggests an alternate resolution of the apparent conflict–namely, that one learning Talmud is required to stay in a large Sukkah, but may leave a small Sukkah.

In contrast, the Yerushalmi offers very little discussion of the Mishnah:

“The Torah says, ‘You shall dwell in booths.’ ‘Dwell’ always means ‘live,’ as it says, ‘you will inherit the land and dwell there’ (Deuteronomy 17:14). This means that one should eat and sleep in the Sukkah and should bring one’s dishes there” (Talmud Yerushalmi Sukkah 2:10).

After this brief definition of terms and law, the Yerushalmi moves on to a new discussion.

Parallels Between the Two Talmuds

As might be expected, the Bavli quotes mostly Babylonian rabbis, while the Yerushalmi more often quotes Palestinian rabbis. There is, however, much cross-over between the two Talmuds. Both Talmuds record instances of rabbis traveling from the land of Israel to Babylonia and vice versa. Many times, the rabbis of one Talmud will compare their own practice to that of the other religious center. Early midrashim and other texts composed in Palestine appear more frequently in the Yerushalmi, but are also present in the Bavli.

Both the Bavli and the Yerushalmi follow the Mishnah’s division into orders, tractates, and chapters. Neither contains Gemara on all 73 tractates of the Mishnah. The Bavli includes Gemara on thirty-six and a half non-consecutive tractates. The Yerushalmi has Gemara on the first 39 tractates of the Mishnah. Some scholars believe that the differences in the Gemara reflect the different priorities and curricula of Babylonia and of the Land of Israel. Others think that parts of each Gemara have been lost.

Within the Yerushalmi, quoted sections of the Mishnah are labeled as “halakhot” (laws). Citations of the Yerushalmi text usually refer to the text by tractate, chapter, and halakhah. Thus, “Sukkah 2:10” (quoted above) means “Tractate Sukkah, Chapter 2, halakhah 10.” Some editions of the Yerushalmi are printed in folio pages, each side of which has two columns. Thus, Yerushalmi citations also often include a reference to the page and column number (a, b, c, or d). In contrast, the Bavli is printed on folio pages, and is referred to by page number and side (a or b). These differences result from variations in early printings, and not from choices within the rabbinic communities of Babylonia and the land of Israel.

In most editions of the Yerushalmi, the Talmud text is surrounded by the commentary of the 18th-century rabbi, Moses ben Simeon Margoliot, known as the P’nai Moshe. The P’nai Moshe clarifies and comments on the text of the Yerushalmi, in much the same way that Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo ben Yitzchak, 11th century) explains and discusses the text of the Bavli.

Medieval sources credit Rabbi Yohanan, a third-century sage, with editing the Yerushalmi. However, the fact that the Yerushalmi quotes many fourth and fifth-century rabbis makes this suggestion impossible. From the identities of the rabbis quoted in the Yerushalmi, and from the historical events mentioned in the text, most contemporary scholars conclude that this Talmud was edited between the end of the fourth century and the beginning of the fifth century CE. The codification of the Bavli took place about a hundred years later.

Cultural Concerns

The discussions of the Bavli and the Yerushalmi reflect the differing concerns of the cultures from which the texts emerged. A comparison of the narrative elements of the two Talmuds suggests that the rabbis of the Yerushalmi had more interaction with non-rabbis–both Jews and non-Jews–than the rabbis of the Bavli did. The Yerushalmi, produced in a place under Hellenistic control, reflects Greek influences, both in its language and in its content.

Traditionally, the Bavli has been considered the more authoritative of the two Talmuds. This privileging of the Bavli reflects the fact that Babylonia was the dominant center of Jewish life from talmudic times through the beginning of the medieval period. The first codifiers of halakhah (Jewish law), based in Baghdad in the eighth through 10th centuries, used the Bavli as the basis of their legal writings. Reflecting the prevalent attitude toward the Yerushalmi, the Machzor Vitri, written in France in the 11th or 12th century, comments, “When the Talmud Yerushalmi disagrees with our Talmud, we disregard the Yerushalmi.”

Today, there is renewed interest in studying the Talmud Yerushalmi. This interest reflects the current academic emphases on tracing the development of the Talmudic text, and on understanding the cultures that produced these texts. Many scholars attempt to learn about the history of the talmudic text by comparing parallel passages in the Bavli and the Yerushalmi. Comparisons between the two Talmuds also yield new information about the relative attitudes and interests of Babylonian and Palestinian rabbis.

The traditional approach to learning Talmud, which emphasized the legal elements of the text, tended to dismiss the Yerushalmi as incomplete and non-authoritative. Today, interest in the literary, cultural and historical aspects of traditional texts has prompted a rediscovery of this Talmud, and a willingness to reconsider its place in the Jewish canon.

<!–

Rabbi Jill Jacobs is the Rabbi-in-Residence for the Jewish FundS for Justice.

–>

The post Tale of Two Talmuds: Jerusalem and Babylonian appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

All this came to a screeching halt in 70 CE when the Temple was destroyed in a devastating war with the Romans. In its wake, rabbinic Judaism (the Judaism practiced by virtually all Jews today) and its central text, the Talmud, laid the foundation for Jewish ritual and worship in a world without the Temple. 

Though the Temple is long gone, it is far from forgotten. The construction of the Temple is described in great detail in the Hebrew Bible, and its practices are meticulously documented and parsed in the Talmud. An entire annual holiday — Tisha B’Av — is given over to mourning its absence from Jewish life. And a piece of the Temple — the western retaining wall of the platform on which it stood, called the Kotel or Western Wall — is today one of the holiest sites for Jews.

Even though remembering the Temple remains a central part of Jewish practice today, it can be difficult to grasp just how central the Temple was to ancient Jewish life. Here are 12 facts that help illustrate what the ancient Temple was really like, and what it has meant to Jews throughout history.

1. There were actually two Temples on the same spot

The first Temple, built by King Solomon in approximately 1000 BCE, was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. When the Persians conquered the Babylonians almost a century later, they agreed to let the Jewish leaders who had been taken into exile return to the land of Israel where they would rebuild the Temple. This Second Temple stood for hundreds more years, then was thoroughly renovated and expanded by Herod the Great in the last few decades before the beginning of the Common Era. The Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE.

According to Jewish tradition, both Temples were destroyed on the ninth day of the month of Av. Tisha B’Av (literally: Ninth of Av) commemorates the destruction of both Temples, as well as other disasters in Jewish history, both ancient and modern.

2. The Temple was built on a mountain that goes by many names

Jerusalem is in the hill country. The Temple was situated on one particular rise that goes by many names in the Hebrew scriptures. The Torah never identifies the mountain, but simply talks about “the place God will choose to rest His name” (e.g. Deuteronomy 12). 

The specific mountain is identified in Isaiah and the Book of Psalms as Mount Zion (e.g. Isaiah 60:14, Psalms 125:1). The biblical Book of Chronicles, however, calls it Mount Moriah (2 Chronicles 3:1). Micah 4:1 refers to it generically as Har Beit Adonai — meaning “The Mount of the House of the Lord.” Jeremiah 26:18 shortens this to Har HaBayit, “The Mountain of the House,” commonly translated as the Temple Mount. This last name, Temple Mount, is used frequently in the Mishnah and Talmud and other rabbinic literature.

3. The Temple stood on the spot where the world began

According to the Talmud, on the top of Mount Moriah is a foundation stone from which God created the whole world (Yoma 54b). This same foundation stone later lay under the Holy of Holies, the most sacred room of the Temple. Ancient interpreters also believed that more than a millennium before the Temple was built, the stone was the site of the Binding of Isaac.

4. The exact location of the Temple is still debated today

The Temple definitely stood on the Temple Mount — that has always been an agreed fact and has been confirmed by archaeologists. However, where exactly it stood is a matter of debate. Some believe that it was in the exact location of the Dome of the Rock, a Muslim shrine (highly recognizable on the Jerusalem skyline) which houses the foundation stone. Another view agrees with a statement in the Talmud (Berakhot 54a) which says it was aligned with the Eastern Gate, which would place it slightly north of the Dome of the Rock. There is also a theory that it was situated slightly east of the Dome of the Rock.

5. After the First Temple was destroyed, the priests returned the keys to God

Taanit 29a describes a remarkable scene that took place as the First Temple was being destroyed by the Babylonians:

When the Temple was destroyed for the first time, many groups of young priests gathered together with the Temple keys in their hands. And they ascended to the roof of the Sanctuary and said before God: Master of the Universe, since we did not merit to be faithful treasurers, and the Temple is being destroyed, let the Temple keys be handed to You. (Taanit 29a)

The priests’ final act of divine service was to throw the keys up to heaven, where a divine hand reached out of the clouds to catch them. Then the priests threw themselves into the flames consuming the Temple.

6. The Temple was enormous

Picturing something the size of a synagogue? Not even close. In the first century, when Herod renovated the Temple, he began by building a retaining wall around the Temple Mount and then constructing a platform over the top, turning the mount into a four-sided plateau 37 acres in area. 

Pictured: A 1:50 scaled model of the Second Temple and the Old City as it is believed to have looked in 66 CE. The model is located at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, Israel.

The Temple complex itself contained a series of courtyards surrounding the central room, the Holy of Holies, which was only entered once a year, on Yom Kippur, by the high priest. In addition to the large courtyards and Holy of Holies, the Temple complex contained many other storage and administrative rooms, plus numerous ritual baths for purification. The whole system was fed by an aqueduct that brought water from 10 kilometers away, and it was protected by high walls and a series of gates.

To get a sense of the scale, consider that the Kotel, the famous Western Wall that is a central Jewish holy site, is what remains of just a piece of the western side of the retaining wall built around the Temple Mount.

7. The Temple was messy — and smelly

The primary purpose of the Temple and its staff (the priests and Levites) was to offer sacrifices to God. It was open for business 365 days a year. Many of these sacrifices were animals that were brought live into the Temple and slaughtered in the courtyard before some or all of their flesh and/or blood was offered on the altar. On pilgrimage festivals, all of Israel came from near and far to offer sacrifices. As a result, the courtyard of the Temple ran almost constantly with animal blood, while the smell of sacrifices on the fire probably pervaded most of Jerusalem. (The smell was largely the point — that fragrant smoke is what went up to God.) 

Some sacrificial blood was carefully collected and sprinkled on the altar as part of the ritual. Much of it, however, was rinsed away via channels that were built into the floor and conducted it out to the nearby Kidron River. The water of this river, enriched by this blood, was sold to farmers as fertilizer (Mishnah Yoma 5:6). Despite this impressive ancient plumbing system, the Temple stones required regular deep cleaning. Mishnah Middot chapter 3 indicates that there was also a schedule for whitewashing the stones of the Temple, as well as the altar and ramp leading up to it. 

8. The Second Temple was missing a few key items

In Tractate Yoma of the Babylonian Talmud, the Gemara lists significant items in the First Temple that were not in the Second Temple:

The Ark of the Covenant, and the Ark cover upon it, and the cherubs that were on the cover; fire; and the Divine Presence; and the Divine Spirit; and the urim v’tummim (the stones in the high priest’s breastplate). (Yoma 21b)

Some of the most religiously charged items in the First Temple were apparently already lost to history in the time of the Second Temple. Whereas the first Holy of Holies contained the Ark of the Covenant that housed the Ten Commandments Moses had brought down from Sinai (both pairs: the one he smashed when he discovered the Golden Calf and its replacement), the second Holy of Holies stood empty. Likewise, the special stones the high priest used for divination purposes (urim v’tummim). Even God’s presence, this text suggests, which literally dwelt in the First Temple, was absent from the second.

There is a rabbinic legend (Shekalim 16) that the Ark of the Covenant was not destroyed with the First Temple, but secreted away beneath one of the flagstones in the floor of the Temple. When a priest accidentally discovered it and tried to tell others, God smote him before he could get the words out. Clearly, it was meant to stay hidden.

9. The Temple was a party zone

Think Jewish Temple worship was all serious business? Not at all. Joy was an integral aspect of Jewish worship. On Sukkot in particular, the Temple became the site of a carnival that, according to the Talmud, was unlike anything else around:

One who did not see the festival of water-drawing never saw celebration in his days. (Sukkah 51a)

The Talmud continues describing Simchat Beit Hashoevah, the water-drawing festival. During this nighttime celebration, golden candelabras hoisted onto poles burned so brightly they illuminated the entire city. The festival featured dancing, juggling, singing and a full orchestra of Levite musicians.

10. Synagogues are designed to mirror the Temple

Since it was destroyed for the second time in 70 CE, Jews have not been able to worship at the Temple. But elements of the Temple ritual are brought into Jewish practice, including in the architecture of the synagogue. The ark of the synagogue, which houses the Torah scrolls, mirrors both the Ark of the Covenant that held the original Ten Commandments and also the Holy of Holies, the chamber where it was stored — which was also screened by a curtain. The ner tamid, or eternal light, that hangs above the ark recalls the fire of the altar. And in synagogues where men and women sit separately, the women’s section is called the ezrat nashim, the courtyard of the women, as was the area of the Temple permitted to women.

As the synagogue mirrors the Temple, the prayers said inside it are explicitly linked to the sacrifices. In particular, the three traditional recitations of the Amidah each day — Shacharit (morning), Mincha (afternoon), and Maariv (evening) — parallel the sacrifices offered at those times in the Temple.

11. Real Temple treasures might still be in the Vatican

The Arch of Titus, a first-century monument built to celebrate the destruction of Jerusalem, depicts the Romans marching back to Rome after having destroyed the Second Temple. Their hands are full of treasure, including vessels of gold and silver and the famous seven-branched menorah made entirely of pure gold that was lit at all times in the Temple. Though these treasures have never been recovered, some speculate they may remain locked in the vaults of the Vatican.

12. Jews don’t agree about whether a Third Temple should be built

For thousands of years, Jews have mourned the destruction of the Temple on Tisha B’Av and prayed for its reconstruction. But it has never happened, even now that a Jewish state exists in the land of Israel. There are many reasons for this.

First, the Temple Mount is under Muslim authority and home to a sacred Islamic shrine, the Dome of the Rock. A Temple could not be built on that spot without destroying it. 

Second, not all Jews believe God has granted them authority to rebuild the Temple. Many hold that only God will build it. 

Third, Judaism has flourished for thousands of years without a Temple. Since the rabbis say that Torah study and prayer can replace Temple service, there is less urgency to bring back a Temple. And many Jews agree with Maimonides that sacrifices are no longer the best way to worship God. Early leaders in the Reform movement even named their houses of worship temples to signify they had abandoned the traditional Jewish longing to rebuild the Temple. 

There are, however, a minority of Jews who are preparing to build a Third Temple, by studying Temple worship practices and constructing implements to be used in the Temple when it is rebuilt.

The post 12 Things To Know About the Temple in Jerusalem appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

There were in fact several Jewish Temples on the same site over the course of centuries. Originally, the Israelites had a portable Temple, called the mishkan or tabernacle, which traveled with them in the wilderness until they settled in the land of Israel. About 1,000 years before the Common Era, King Solomon built the first permanent Temple on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem. This was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE and rebuilt about 70 years later when the Jews were allowed to return from exile. The Second Temple remained on that site for more than 500 years. It was radically renovated by Herod the Great in about 20 BCE. It was finally destroyed in 70 CE by the Romans.

The Temples were large complexes. At the center was the Holy of Holies, a sacred room only entered by the high priest on Yom Kippur. Beyond it were a series of courtyards arranged concentrically in order of decreasing sanctity. The First Temple and the earlier version of the Second Temple had fewer of these than the renovated version of the Second Temple designed by Herod. There were also rooms for many kinds of activities throughout the Temple complex.

This article lists some of the best-known ritual items in the Temple.

Ark of the Covenant

Inside the Holy of Holies was the sacred Ark of the Covenant, a large box which, according to legend, housed the Ten Commandments (and possibly also a scroll of the Torah). According to the Hebrew Bible, it was to be 2.5 by 1.5 by 1.5 cubits — or about 45 inches long and 27 inches square on the end (Exodus 25:10). It was supposed to be gilded all in gold and have four rings secured to the sides so two poles could be threaded through and used to carry it. The lid of the ark was called the kapparot, or “mercy seat,” and it was guarded by two gold cherubim perched on top of it.

According to tradition, the ark contained two sets of the Ten Commandments, the original set that Moses threw at the Golden Calf and broke into pieces, and the second set he retrieved after that incident. The ark was sometimes carried in front of the Israelite army and it was, for a time, captured by the Philistines. According to the Talmud, the location of the ark was already a mystery by the late Second Temple period.

Parochet (Curtain)

In the tabernacle and in earlier versions of the Temple, a special curtain separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the Temple complex. In many modern synagogues, the Ark has a curtain hiding the Torah scrolls from view, also called a parochet, in imitation of this original curtain.

Mizbeach (Altar)

The Temple sanctuary had a large altar for sacrifices. It was tall and square-shaped, with a flat top and four “horns” on the corners and a ramp on the south side leading up to the top. The top had a fire for burning sacrifices, and blood was often applied to different parts of the altar depending on the type of sacrifice offered.

Menorah

This seven-branched candelabrum stood outside the Holy of Holies and was kept lit day and night. It is for this reason that synagogues today often have a ner tamid, or eternal light, hanging near the ark where the Torah scrolls are housed (which imitates the Holy of Holies). The design, a center flame with three branched flames on either side, is the inspiration for the classic design of the Hanukkah menorah, or hanukkiah. 

Incense Stand

Incense was burned daily in the Temple to create a sweet smell for God — and possibly to cover the smell of the other sacrifices, as Maimonides suggests. The talmudic rabbis understood the incense to also be a kind of offering. A special stand was used for this purpose. On Yom Kippur, the high priest brought the incense into the Holy of Holies, where it created a kind of smoke screen over the Ark of the Covenant (Exodus 30:36).

The Torah gives a recipe for compounding the incense (Exodus 30:34) but rabbinic literature elaborates on this recipe with more ingredients and also indicates that the precise recipe was the province of the priestly family of Avtinas (Mishnah Yoma 3:11).

Showbread Table

The showbread, lechem panim or “bread of faces” in Hebrew, was a bread that sat out at all times in the sanctuary on a specially designated table (Exodus 25:30) as an offering for God. It was baked and replaced each week.

Mikveh (Ritual Bath)

Purity, of people and objects, was required in God’s house. Archaeological evidence suggests that the Temple complex was surrounded by many mikvehs where priests and pilgrims could immerse in order to purify themselves before entering. Today, Jews use mikvehs for a variety of purposes, including conversion and observing the laws of niddah.

The post Ritual Objects in the Jerusalem Temple appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

The term, derived from the Italian gettare, which refers to the casting of metal, was first used in Venice in 1516, when authorities required Jews to move to the island of Carregio (the Ghetto Nuovo, new ghetto), across from an area where an old copper foundry was located (the Ghetto Vecchio, old ghetto).

The ghetto in Venice was enclosed by a wall and gates that were locked at night. Jews had to observe a curfew, and were required to wear yellow hats and badges to distinguish themselves, a practice that the Nazis would later adapt in the 20th century. The ghetto in Venice was crowded, and therefore it was necessary to add new floors onto existing buildings, leading to the first so-called skyscrapers. While the 1516 law creating the ghetto limited Jews’ freedom of mobility, to some degree it was less severe than policies elsewhere in Europe, where Jews were often forced to leave altogether. Inside the confines of the ghetto, Jews had the autonomy to govern themselves and to sustain their own social, religious and educational institutions.

Though the term “ghetto” was first used in Venice, this was not the first instance of Jews being forced into segregated quarters. Compulsory segregation of Jews was common in medieval Europe, and these Jewish areas were later referred to as ghettos. The Lateran Councils of 1179 and 1215 advocated for the segregation of Jews. A ghetto-like community existed in 1262 in Prague, and by the 1400s became more common in other European cities. In 1460 the Judengasse (“Jews’ Alley”) in Frankfurt was established.

In 1555, Pope Paul IV issued the “Cum nimis absurdum” proclamation, which required the Jews of Rome to live in separate quarters and also severely restricted their rights, including what businesses they could engage in. The purpose of this edict was to encourage conversion to Catholicism, an act that would serve as a ticket out of the ghetto. The ghetto made a clear distinction to the wider society between those who were accepted” and those who were not. Though anti-Semitism was alive and well in the centuries that preceded this papal order, until 1555 the Jews of Rome had enjoyed freedom of movement. Under the papal order, they were relocated to a crowded and unsanitary area that regularly was flooded by the Tiber River. While the ghetto was a place of squalor, the rest of the city was being built up with magnificent churches. This contrast allowed the authorities to highlight the differences between Jews and Christians, making it seem as though the destitute living conditions of the ghetto were the natural consequences of denying the divinity of Christ. Though the ghetto was designed to segregate Jews, who were seen as a threat to Catholicism, it did not stop Jews and Christians from maintaining social and economic interactions; indeed Christians were allowed to enter the Roman ghetto during the day.

READ: The Church and the Jews

In the 18th century, as part of a broader effort to spread liberty and equality, Napoleon sought to liberate the Jews from the ghettos of Italy. In one instance, in Padua, the French emperor even declared that the street where the Jews lived be renamed in order to remove the word “ghetto.” Nevertheless, the Jewish ghetto in Rome was hard to eliminate. Even though the gates were taken down in 1848 (due to protests by Roman citizens allied with Jews), the ghetto did not officially cease to exist until 1870, when Italy was unified and became a modern nation state. This period of Jewish emancipation (beginning in the late 18th century, continuing through the early 20th century) led to the dismantling of ghettos across Europe.

Though by the 20th century Jews were no longer forced to live in ghettos, many continued to live in segregated quarters, in cities throughout Europe and the United States, including Warsaw, Prague, Frankfurt, the Lower East Side of Manhattan and the West Side of Chicago. Writers in the 20th century described many of these neighborhoods as slums, filled with poverty, violence, and iniquity.

In the 1930s, Nazi Germany reintroduced ghettos in the areas under its control, adding the notorious laws that would restrict Jews’ basic human rights and laying the groundwork for future deportations and the horrors of the Holocaust.

The term “ghetto” eventually was reappropriated to refer to poor, urban African-American neighborhoods, but was later deemed offensive, now often euphemized by the term “inner city.”

The post Jewish Ghettos of Pre-Emancipation Europe appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

Nevertheless, many Jews were disappointed. They had hoped that the Church might say that the Jews had in fact played no role in Jesus’ death.

Jews Lacked A Motive for Killing Jesus

Indeed, according to most historians, it would be more logical to blame the Romans for Jesus’ death. Crucifixion was a customary punishment among Romans, not Jews. At the time of Jesus’ death, the Romans were imposing a harsh and brutal occupation on the Land of Israel, and the Jews were occasionally unruly. The Romans would have had reason to want to silence Jesus, who had been called by some of his followers “King of the Jews,” and was known as a Jewish upstart miracle worker.

Jews, on the other hand, lacked a motive for killing Jesus. The different factions of the Jewish community at the time — Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and others — had many disagreements with one another, but that did not lead any of the groups to arrange the execution of the other allegedly heretical groups’ leaders. It is therefore unlikely they would have targeted Jesus.

READ: The Land of Israel Under Roman Rule

But the belief that Jews killed Jesus has been found in Christian foundational literature from the earliest days of the Jesus movement, and would not be easily abandoned just because of historians’ arguments.

The New Testament Account

In the letters of Paul, which are regarded by historians to be the oldest works of the New Testament (written 10 to 20 years after Jesus’ death), Paul mentions, almost in passing, “the Jews who killed the Lord, Jesus” (I Thessalonians 2:14-15). While probably not central to Paul’s understanding of Jesus’ life and death, the idea that the Jews bear primary responsibility for the death of Jesus figures more prominently in the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which have slightly different accounts of Jesus’ life.

Matthew, the best-known gospel, describes the unfair trial of Jesus arranged and presided over by the Jewish high priest who scours the land to find anybody who would testify against Jesus. Eventually, the high priest concludes that Jesus is guilty of blasphemy and asks the Jewish council what the penalty should be. “They answered, ‘He deserves death.’ Then they spat in his face and struck him” (Matthew 26:57-68). Matthew’s description of Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross (referred to by Christians as Jesus’ “passion”) has becomes the basis for many books, plays, and musical compositions over the years, and is prominent in Christian liturgy, particularly for Easter.

All four gospels suggest either implicitly or explicitly that because the Jews were not allowed to punish other Jews who were guilty of blasphemy, they had to prevail on the reluctant Romans to kill Jesus. Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, is described as basically sympathetic to Jesus but unable to withstand the pressure from the Jews who demanded Jesus’ execution. This idea is expressed most clearly in the gospel of John: “Pilate said, ‘Take him yourselves and judge him according to your own law.’ The Jews replied, ‘We are not permitted to put anyone to death'” (18:31).

In the most controversial verse in all the passion narratives, the assembled members of the Jewish community tell Pilate, “His blood be on us and on our children” (Matthew 27:25). This is the source for the Christian belief that later generations of Jews are also guilty of deicide, the crime of killing God.

Church Fathers and Thereafter

In the writings of the Church Fathers, the authoritative Christian theologians after the New Testament period, this accusation appears with even more clarity and force. One of the Church Fathers, Justin Martyr (middle of the second century), explains to his Jewish interlocutor why the Jews have suffered exile and the destruction of their Temple: these “tribulations were justly imposed on you since you have murdered the Just One” (Dialogue with Trypho, chapter 16).

READ: Jewish-Christian Relations in the Early Centuries

Throughout classical and medieval times this theme is found in Christian literature and drama. For example, in a 12th-century religious drama, entitled “The Mystery of Adam,” the biblical King Solomon addresses the Jews, prophesying that they will eventually kill the son of God. Here is a rhyming English translation from the original Norman French and Latin:

This saying shall be verified
When God’s own Son for us hath died
The masters of the law [i.e. the Pharisees or rabbis] ’twill be
That slay him most unlawfully;
Against all justice, all belief,
They’ll crucify Him, like a thief.
But they will lose their lordly seat,
Who envy him, and all entreat.
Low down they’ll come from a great height,
Well may they mourn their mournful plight.
(Translation from Frank Talmage’s Disputation and Dialogue)

Even into modern times, passion plays — large outdoor theatrical productions that portray the end of Jesus’ life, often with a cast of hundreds — have continued to perpetuate this idea.

In the Talmud

Interestingly, the idea that the Jews killed Jesus is also found in Jewish religious literature. In tractate Sanhedrin of the Babylonian Talmud, on folio 43a, a beraita (a teaching from before the year 200 C.E.) asserts that Jesus was put to death by a Jewish court for the crimes of sorcery and sedition. (In standard texts of the Talmud from Eastern Europe — or in American texts that simply copied from them — there is a blank space towards the bottom of that folio, because the potentially offensive text was removed. The censorship may have been internal — for self-protection — or it may have been imposed on the Jews by the Christian authorities. In many new editions of the Talmud this passage has been restored.) The Talmud’s claim there that the event took place on the eve of Passover is consistent with the chronology in the gospel of John. In the talmudic account, the Romans played no role in his death.

In Jewish folk literature, such as the popular scurrilous Jewish biography of Jesus, Toledot Yeshu (which may be as old as the fourth century), responsibility for the death of Jesus is also assigned to the Jews. It is likely that until at least the 19th century, Jews in Christian Europe believed that their ancestors had killed Jesus.

From the first to the 19th centuries, the level of tension between Jews and Christians was such that both groups found the claim that the Jews killed Jesus to be believable. Thankfully, in our world it is heard less frequently. But we should not be surprised if it persists among people who take the stories of the New Testament (or of the Talmud) as reliable historical sources.

To read this article, “Who Killed Jesus?” in Spanish (leer en español), click here.

The post Who Killed Jesus? appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

Akiva’s wife, who one source refers to by the name Rachel (according to Reuven Hammer’s 2015 biography Akiva: Life, Legend and Legacy ) was an instrumental force in his development as a scholar. While earlier sources in the Jerusalem Talmud (third to fifth centuries CE) have little to say about Akiva’s wife, other than that she suffered in order to support his Torah study (even going so far as to sell her hair in order to do so), the Babylonian Talmud (sixth century CE) fills in the gaps by crafting a portrait of a woman devoted to her husband and determined to cultivate his innate intellectual talents. Akiva married the daughter of his wealthy employer, Kalba Savua, for whom he worked as a shepherd. In response to their marriage, Savua disowned his daughter and cut her off financially, presumably objecting because of Akiva’s lowly economic status. Although the two were impoverished, Akiva’s wife encouraged him to study Torah (one source relates that his studying Torah was a condition she insisted upon in order to marry him), and through a combination of his own gifts and volition and her support he educated himself and grew to become a recognized scholar.

What we know of Rabbi Akiva is more legend than historical fact, and these legends serve to fill in the outlines of a character who represents the quintessential scholar and lover of Torah. An oft-cited source in Avot de-Rabbi Natan relates the following story:

What was the beginning of Rabbi Akiva? They say that he was 40 years old and had not learned a thing. One time, he was standing at the mouth of the well and said, “Who carved this rock?” They said to him, “The water that consistently falls on it every day.” They said to him, “Akiva, did you not read water wears away stones (Job 14:19)?” Immediately Rabbi Akiva ruled… : Just as the soft sculpts the hard, words of Torah, which are as hard as iron, will all the more so carve my heart/mind, which is but flesh and blood! Immediately he returned to learn Torah. (Avot de-Rabbi Natan, commentary on Pirkei Avot 1:4, translated by Rabbi Kelilah Miller)

The Mishnah relates the following story that demonstrates Akiva’s deep commitment to Torah:

The Sages taught: One time, after the Bar Kochba rebellion, the evil empire of Rome decreed that Israel may not engage in the study and practice of Torah. Pappos ben Yehuda came and found Rabbi Akiva, who was convening assemblies in public and engaging in Torah study. Pappos said to him: “Akiva, are you not afraid of the empire?”

Rabbi Akiva answered him: “I will relate a parable. To what can this be compared? It is like a fox walking along a riverbank when he sees fish gathering and fleeing from place to place. The fox said to them: ‘From what are you fleeing?’ They said to him: ‘We are fleeing from the nets that people cast upon us.’ The fox said to them: ‘Do you wish to come up onto dry land, and we will reside together just as my ancestors resided with your ancestors?’ The fish said to him: ‘You are the one of whom they say, he is the cleverest of animals? You are not clever; you are a fool. If we are afraid in the water, our natural habitat which gives us life, then in a habitat that causes our death, all the more so.’

The moral is: So too, we Jews, now that we sit and engage in Torah study about which it is written: “For that is your life, and the length of your days” (Deuteronomy 30:20), we fear the empire to this extent; if we proceed to sit idle from its study, as its abandonment is the habitat that causes our death, all the more so will we fear the empire.” (Berakhot 61b, Translation from the William Davidson Talmud via Sefaria.org)

Rabbinic Achievements

Akiva developed as a sage during the period after the destruction of the Second Temple (70 CE), a time of transformation for the Jewish community as Rabbinic Judaism began to take shape. Since the Temple no longer served as the focal point of Jewish life, the Sages (who later became known as rabbis) reconstructed Judaism with Torah study at its center. The rabbinic academy at Yavneh, near what is now the Israeli city of Tel Aviv, became the new center of Jewish life, while other academies sprung up across the land of Israel. Akiva studied with Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrkanus and Rabbi Joshua at a rabbinic academy in Lod for 13 years. He was ordained in 93 CE by Rabbi Joshua and then became a teacher in his own right, founding his own academy in B’nai Brak. Rabban Gamliel II, the nasi (“prince” or leader) of the Jewish people, who, according to Hammer, treated Yavneh as “a semi-autonomous Jewish government,” appointed Akiva as an organizer and representative of the Jewish people and also as a judge in the rabbinic court.

Akiva, Hammer notes, was the first rabbi to assert that the Torah in its entirety (not just the Ten Commandments) came directly from heaven. His methodology in interpreting the Torah was highly meticulous and detailed; one legend relates that the reason God placed “crowns” on the letters of the Torah, a calligraphic detail, was so that Akiva would later find meaning in these ornamental marks. He was also known to have been well versed in mystical studies and practice, as exemplified by the famous legend of the Pardes, in which four rabbis enter the so-called mystical paradise and Akiva is the only one to survive the experience unscathed.

Akiva helped to systematize the Mishnah, which was still in development at the time. “The Mishnah as we know it is ascribed to the work of Akiva as interpreted by his students,” notes Hammer in Akiva: Life, Legend and Legacy. Akiva organized and categorized these uncollected oral teachings in order to make them easier to memorize and pass down. His work, and that of his disciples, would help to establish Rabbinic Judaism as the new normative version of Judaism that would last to this day. Considering he accomplished this task at the same time that Christianity was evolving from a fringe Jewish sect into a competing religion, Akiva’s work was a major achievement in this history of Judaism.

Martyrdom

Though Rabbinic Judaism would ultimately take the place of the Temple, during the period after the destruction of the Second Temple Jews still hoped and prayed that the Temple might be rebuilt. This hope eventually took the form of military resistance to the Roman Empire’s oppressive anti-Jewish laws. Shimon bar Kosiva, also known as Bar Kochba, led the rebellion. According to the Jerusalem Talmud, Akiva believed that Bar Kochba was the Messiah. However, there is no historical evidence of Akiva taking part in the revolt. Akiva was eventually imprisoned for publicly teaching Torah, a practice the Romans forbade. There are multiple accounts of his death. The Jerusalem Talmud relates that when Akiva stood before the Roman judge Tineius Rufus, the time to recite the Shema prayer (another forbidden practice) had arrived. Akiva recited the Shema with a smile. When Rufus asked him why he smiled, Akiva replied that all his life he had read the verse, “And you shall love your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your possessions,” but was never able to fulfill the obligation to love God with all his soul — that is, his life — until now. Other accounts relate a similar dialogue taking place while Akiva was being tortured to death, thereby establishing the legend that Akiva was a martyr who died while standing up for his right to practice Judaism in the face of oppression. Whichever account is accurate, Akiva became a legendary figure who represents the love of Torah and devotion to Jewish identity and practice against all odds.

Books About Rabbi Akiva

Holtz, Barry W. Rabbi Akiva: Sage of the Talmud (2017)

Hammer, Reuven. Akiva: Life, Legend, Legacy (2015)

Nadich, Judah. Rabbi Akiba and his Contemporaries (1998)

The post Who Was Rabbi Akiva? appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

At age 17, Rashi received an education in the yeshiva of Rabbi Yaakov ben Yakar in Worms, where the “Rashi Chapel” was built years after his death (this chapel was subsequently destroyed during the German occupation in World War II, and rebuilt in 1950). At age 25, he returned to Troyes, where he became a rabbi. Since rabbis were not yet paid officials at this point in time, Rashi also worked with his family in the local vineyards. In 1070, he founded a yeshiva where he taught many disciples, some of whom would also go on to become prominent Jewish scholars. In 1096, Rashi witnessed the massacre of friends and family members at the hands of Crusaders en route to the Holy Land. He died in 1105 in Troyes.

Rashi’s Major Works

Rashi’s best-known works are his comprehensive commentaries on the Bible and the Babylonian Talmud. All editions of the Talmud published since the 1520s have included Rashi’s commentary in the margins. His commentaries on the Bible have become a foundational element of Jewish education to this day; they are often taught side by side with the Torah when students begin learning in yeshivas and Jewish day schools. Rashi’s commentaries on the Bible are based on the Masoretic text, a version of the Bible compiled by scholars between the seventh and 10th centuries, in which they clarified pronunciation by establishing a vowel notation system. In preparing the Masoretic version, the scholars also tallied the number of times particular words appeared, presumably in an effort to determine those words’ significance.

In addition to his commentaries, Rashi also produced responsa on a range of Jewish legal questions as well as writing devotional poetry.

Rashi’s Signature Style

Rashi’s commentaries combine an explanatory style that elucidates the simple meaning of the text (known as pshat) and an interpretive style that elaborates further (known as drash). He collects, distills and weaves in classical rabbinic interpretations, while adding his own perspectives. There is some debate about Rashi’s accessibility to the general reader. Because his language is clear and concise, his work is often characterized as intended for the masses. However, his conciseness assumes that the reader has some foundational knowledge and that he therefore did not have to explain everything in detail.

Rashi is known for his clarity of style, his conciseness, and his ability to shed light on obscure ideas. Writing primarily in Hebrew, he occasionally coined his own terms in his commentaries. He also frequently translated Hebrew terms into French, writing the French in Hebrew script (these terms were known as la’azim), as a way to instruct his French-speaking audience, especially on subjects that impacted daily life, such as Shabbat observance, the laws of kashrut and relations with non-Jews.

Rashi’s Impact

Rashi’s writings and his methods of interpreting texts spread rapidly and influenced all successive rabbinic commentaries. Thanks to his many disciples who shared his work, his writings and his approach to text study quickly came into use in Jewish communities all over France, and during his lifetime spread to northern Europe. Within a century his work spread farther to other countries. In fact, the world’s first printed book in Hebrew was Rashi’s commentary on the Bible, printed in Reggio, Italy, in 1475.

Among Rashi’s disciples were his family members, who became well-known Talmudists in their own rights. His son-in-law  Isaac ben Meir, known as Ribam, along with his grandsons Samuel ben Meir, known as the Rashbam, and Jacob ben Meir, known as Rabbenu Tam, all transmitted and expanded upon Rashi’s teachings. Building on Rashi’s approach, Rabbeinu Tam’s Sefer Ha-Yashar (Book of the Just) introduced a new form of interpretation that became associated with the literature of Tosafot, Hebrew for “additions.” The literature of the Tosafot analyzes a text from many angles, raises objections to arguments and offers possible solutions. This differs from Rashi’s style of presenting clear and simple explanations for textual questions.

Much other Jewish scholarship was directly influenced by Rashi’s work, including the Sefer Ha-Pardes (Book of Paradise), which presents responsa by Rashi’s contemporaries and disciples; the Sefer Ha-Orah (Book of Light), which was compiled from works in the 12th and 14th centuries; the Sefer Issur Ve-Heter (Book of Things Prohibited and Permitted); and the Mahzor Vitry, which includes legal rules and responsa. In addition, Rashi’s commentaries spawned over 300 “super-commentaries” (commentaries on his commentary).

Rashi’s influence extended beyond the Jewish community. The biblical commentaries of Franciscan monk Nicholas de Lyra, born in 1292, depended heavily on Rashi’s work; de Lyra’s work later influenced Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation. Rashi’s commentary on the Bible was translated into Latin by Christian scholars in the 17th and 18th centuries, and was translated into German in 1838.

Though his work is not considered to be philosophically original, unlike the work of someone like Maimonides, Rashi has exerted the widest influence of any other Jewish commentator on subsequent Jewish literature and remains a fixture in Jewish learning to this day.

The post Who Was Rashi? appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

Under Two Empires: Muslim and Christian

Under Islam, the laws governing Jewish life were set forth in the Pact of Omar. This contract, established in the seventh century, required non-Muslims to abide by a host of discriminatory regulations, such as rising in the presence of Muslims and dressing in distinctive garb. The medieval Islamic empire included, at various points, significant Jewish communities like Toledo, Constantinople, Salonika and Jerusalem.

Jews living in Christendom — in places like Rome, Worms, Cracow, or, after, 1248, Spain — were subject to the laws of both church and state. Under Islam, there was no separation between church and state, so Jews expected uniformity from Muslim leaders. Under Christianity, the separation of church and state, coupled with the absence of unified religious law regarding Jews, led to arbitrary application of policy and punishment.

Early medieval Judaism was guided by the heads of the rabbinical academies (yeshivot), known as geonim. Decentralization of rabbinic Judaism paralleled the breakup of political unity in the Islamic empire in the eighth and ninth centuries. Thereafter, local academies and rabbis gained prominence.

Under Christianity, Jews were organized as independent self-governing units known as kehillot (communities). Each kehillah was geographically based and supported its own synagogue, courts, and educational system.

Two great cultural sub-communities of Jews developed. Ashkenazim trace their family roots to the German lands. Sephardim trace their ancestry to the Iberian peninsula (Spain and Portugal). Culinary and religious customs differed between them, but both groups looked to Jewish law to shape their religious lives.

The Crusades

With the exception of the Golden Age in medieval Spain, when Muslims and Jews cohabitated peacefully and productively, the Middle Ages was a time of tense relations between faiths. The Crusades to “liberate” the Holy Land from Islam, which commenced in 1095 and lasted for three hundred years, saw marauding crusaders devastate Jewish communities in Europe as they made their way to Palestine.

Medieval Jewish Scholarship

Medieval Jewish thought was affected by living as a minority under the rule of other religions. The medieval scholar Joseph Caro authored the Shulchan Aruch, the most definitive and popular compilation of rabbinic law as a means to guide a confused nation in exile regarding the practices of daily religious life. The work of Moses Maimonides, the most eminent Jewish philosopher of the period, also aimed to synthesize religious law and to demonstrate the compatibility between secular and religious learning.

Social History

The medieval Jewish household was urban, literate and consisted of one nuclear family. Under Islam, polygamy was not uncommon among Jewish families. Most medieval Jews were engaged in commerce, as merchants or moneylenders; women were also involved in these trades.

The post Crash Course in Medieval Jewish History appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

In 1492, Spain expelled its Jewish population. The sizable Jewish community was given three months to liquidate its property and leave. Two places offered immediate relief: Portugal and the Ottoman Empire. However, as the political situation across Europe shifted, new opportunities for Jewish settlement materialized, particularly Holland, which emerged from the 80 year Wars of Spanish Succession as an independent nation in 1648.  

The Dutch: Tolerant Traders

Dutch principles of religious toleration were born out of the exigencies of warfare and the need to establish peace among her religiously heterogeneous population. New Christian skills and contacts were welcomed during the protracted warfare with Spain. Article XIII of the Treaty of Utrecht, which ratified the union of the northern provinces, declared that no one was to be prosecuted for his religious beliefs. Although this clause was intended to benefit the Protestants and keep peace among Christians, it provided the legal basis upon which Jews immediately began to take up residence and seek recognition in Holland. There the Sephardim would find the ideal conditions to create a New Jerusalem.

The Dutch capital was the emporium of 17th-century Europe, her harbor teeming with ships brimful of goods from the Americas and the Far East. Her people eagerly invented themselves as a new nation; beguiled by commerce and its possibilities, they were nonetheless characterized by sobriety of behavior and distaste for both superstition and any pretension of nobility. The city’s great wealth was based on three factors: her fleet, her thriving trade, and a policy of tolerance that attracted some of the most enterprising and ambitious souls on the Continent….

Amsterdam: A New Jerusalem

In this newfound mercantilism, marranos [crypto-Jews; Jews who converted to Christianity but continued to practice Judaism in secret] became especially prominent. In 1604 a certain Manuel Rodrigues de Vega petitioned the city’s burgomasters to be allowed to establish silk mills there along with two other Portuguese Jews. In short order, the Sephardim would develop not only the domestic silk industry but also the silk trade, much of the tobacco trade, and commerce in sugar, corals and diamonds. Eventually, Sephardic poets, dramatists, calligraphers and copper-etchers would also be found alongside the customary merchants, bankers, and physicians.

Now that it seemed the Jew could finally cease their wanderings, they began to pour into Holland from Spain, Italy, Portugal, Germany and Antwerp. At first, religious services were held inconspicuously in private homes as well as the residence of Samuel Pallache, a Sephardic Jew who was Morocco’s ambassador to the Netherlands from 1612 to 1616.

To a certain extent, the position of the Jews was regularized in 1597 when burghers’ rights were granted to members of the “Portuguese nation” in Amsterdam. It was not until 1606 that one finds the first official reference to Joodche Gemeente (the Jewish congregation), but by 1609 the Sephardic community numbered 200 souls and supported two synagogues. A decade after, a third house of worship would be founded….

Jews Fascinated Their Dutch Neighbors

Ironically, it became better to be known in Amsterdam as a Jew than as a “Portuguese merchant,” thanks to anti-Iberian sentiment after the breakaway from Spain. Many Dutch intellectuals became fascinated with the somewhat exotic inhabitants of the Jewish quarter and sought them out for conversation.

At the outset of his career, Rembrandt, young and unknown, sketched many of his Portuguese neighbors, including Menasseh ben Israel [eminent rabbi and scholar; who petitioned Oliver Cromwell for the readmission of the Jews to England in 1655-6]. Conversely, the Sephardic Jews reaped the benefits of the lively intellectual life created by Amsterdam’s savants, who eagerly cultivated theology, philosophy, jurisprudence, mathematics and oriental languages.

The Jewish Printing Capital of Europe

In 1617,the heads of the Jewish school voted to establish a printing press. Within the decade, several private Hebrew presses were also set up including that operated by the renowned intellectual Menasseh ben Israel. During its first twenty years, his multilingual press produced more than sixty titles, including Bibles, prayerbooks, and his own original works. Well known among the philosophers, scientists, and theologians of Amsterdam, he gave sermons that attracted flocks of Christians as well as Jews, and would even represent his enterprise at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1634. By this time, since Hebrew printing had decayed in Venice, Amsterdam was effectively the Judaic printing capital of Europe…

Lisbon on the Amstel

Meanwhile, in contrast with the Sephardim in the Ottoman Empire, the Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam remained deeply immersed in Spanish and Lusitanian high culture as it evolved in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. While the Ottoman Sephardim distinguished themselves by continuing to use medieval Spanish in everyday speech, writing this Ladino in Hebrew characters and incorporating Hebrew words and expressions, the Amsterdam Sephardim used the living Spanish or Portuguese of his day, constantly changing linguistically and written with Roman characters.

In fact, the culture of the Portuguese Jewish émigrés bore so few traces of the traditional Hebrew spirit that most of its members knew no Hebrew at all when they arrived in Amsterdam. They had to be laboriously schooled as adults by the community’s tutors and rabbis. As surviving lists of private book collections show, they continued their interest in Iberian literature, which was a main source of their shared community pride. They created something of a miniature Lisbon or Madrid on the banks of the Amstel, on Jodenbreestraat, populated by poets and dramatists writing in Spanish and Portuguese as well as men resembling Jewish hidalgos (Spanish noblemen of a lower rank), who preserved the manners of the nobility and retained their solidarity with other Iberian Jews.

For all of their sophistication and pride in their secular heritage, however, most continued to harbor well-founded fears of the Inquisition. Even in Amsterdam, Sephardic Jews used aliases in business, if only to protect relatives and business associates who had remained behind in Iberia.

Reprinted with permission from The Jews of Spain: A History of the Sephardic Experience (The Free Press).

<!–Jane S. Gerber is a Professor of History at City University of New York. Her book, The Jews of Spain: A History of the Sephardic Experience, won the 1993 National Jewish Book Award for Sephardic Studies.

–>

The post Sephardic Jews in Amsterdam appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

The revelation at Sinai is among the most significant events in the Jewish tradition — and, in fact, can be said to have been the start of Jewish (as opposed to Israelite or Hebrew) tradition. Most plainly, it was the moment when God’s will, distilled through the Torah’s myriad laws, was expressly communicated to human beings. For the ancient Israelites, Sinai was the moment when a people forged through the shared experience of Egyptian bondage became united by a common religion. Sinai also represents something remarkable not only in Jewish history, but in the entire history of religion — a deity entering a covenant with a group of human beings in which both parties are bound by mutual commitment.

What Actually Happened at Sinai?

The principal record of the encounter between God and the Israelites at Sinai is contained in the Book of Exodus, beginning in chapter 19. The telling continues for many chapters thereafter, during which Moses ascends the mountain multiple times. Some aspects of this encounter are retold in the Book of Deuteronomy. 

As chapter 19 of Exodus begins, we find that the Israelites, recently freed from slavery in Egypt, are encamped at the foot of Mount Sinai. God then tells Moses to convey the terms of the covenant into which the Israelites are invited: If the people keep God’s commandments, God will make them a treasured people and a holy nation. Moses relays these terms to the elders, who accept them, vowing to do whatever God commands. Moses then tells the people to prepare themselves for three days by abstaining from sex, maintaining a state of purity and washing their clothes. 

At dawn of the third day, God descends on the mountain in a dense cloud amid thunder and lightning and the sounding of the shofar. The text describes the scene this way: “Now Mount Sinai was all in smoke, for God had come down upon it in fire; the smoke rose like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled violently. The blare of the horn grew louder and louder. As Moses spoke, God answered him in thunder.” (Exodus 19:18-19)

God then speaks the Ten Commandments aloud. This frightens the people, who are afraid that hearing God’s voice will lead to death. They beg Moses to speak to them instead, and promise they will obey his commands. Moses reassures them there is no need to be afraid. The people then remain at a distance while Moses returns into the cloud. 

Over the next several chapters, the text records a large body of criminal, civil and religious laws that were promulgated at Sinai. When that is complete, God again beckons Moses to come near. Moses repeats all the laws to the people, who agree to follow them, then writes the laws down, constructs an altar and performs sacrifices to God, and reads the laws out loud again. 

After all this, Moses is summoned to ascend the mountain again to receive the tablets upon which God has inscribed the laws. For 40 days, Moses communes with God on the mountaintop, receiving a detailed body of laws concerning the construction of the Tabernacle and the sanctification of the priests and their clothing. Meanwhile, the Israelites are getting restless out of despair that Moses may not return. So they pool their gold to construct a calf to replace the God they feared had abandoned them. This enrages God, who threatens to annihilate them. But Moses successfully intervenes, reminding God of the promise to make the Israelites as numerous as the stars. But when Moses descends the mountain and sees for himself what the people have done, he is enraged and hurls the tablets to the ground, shattering them. After destroying the idol, he ascends the mountain again for a second set of tablets. This time, when he returns to the people his face is radiant and the people are afraid to approach him. But Moses reassures them and relays to them all that God had told him.

The Significance of Revelation

The revelation at Sinai marks the beginning of Judaism as a revealed tradition oriented around a sacred scripture. Though Jewish tradition holds that the patriarch Abraham and his family — the first Hebrews — observed Torah laws, revelation is the first time those laws were enumerated and written down. 

Moreover, revelation is the source of the Jewish claim that its traditions are divinely ordained. Later Jewish traditions state explicitly that not only did Moses and the Israelites receive the written word of God, but even the Oral Torah — the vast collection of commentaries, explanations and extrapolations of those laws recorded in the Mishnah, the Talmud and the later legal codes — was revealed at Sinai as well. The claim that the Torah is a faithful transmission of what was given to Moses at Sinai is made in the Mishnah (Avot 1:1) and is the eighth of Maimonides’ 13 Principles of Faith.

The revelation was also the first — and arguably, the only — time in which a people entered into a deal with God. The terms of that covenant are spelled out in Exodus 19:4–5. God promises that if the people obey the commandments, they will become God’s treasured people, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has observed, the covenant “set moral limits to the exercise of power … [and] established for the first time the primacy of right over might.”

Commemorating Revelation in Jewish Tradition

Seven weeks after Passover, which celebrates the Exodus from Egypt, Jews commemorate the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai during the holiday of Shavuot, when it’s traditional to stay up all night studying Torah. Jews also read the Book of Ruth on Shavuot, in part because Ruth’s commitment to her mother-in-law Naomi and her decision to join the Jewish people resonates with Israel’s entrance into the covenant at Sinai. In Sephardic communities, it is customary to read a special ketubah l’shavuot, a symbolic marriage contract between God and the Jewish people — a practice that, following imagery found in the prophets and elsewhere, imagines the revelation at Sinai as a joyful wedding between God and God’s chosen people.

Revelation at Sinai is also given a prominent place in the daily Jewish liturgy. The three blessings that surround the Shema are built on the themes of creation, revelation and redemption. These blessings reflect the Jewish view that history is played out in three acts, beginning with the creation of the world, shifting decisively with the revelation at Sinai, and one day drawing to its successful conclusion with the coming of the messiah.

The post <strong>Revelation at Sinai</strong> appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

Several other names are given for Mount Sinai in the Bible, including har ha-elohim and har adonai (both translated as “mountain of God”). The Torah also makes several mentions of a mountain called Horeb, which the Talmud notes is Sinai’s true name. Exodus 3:1 refers to Horeb as the “mountain of God,” an appellation also used in connection with the account of the revelation at Sinai in Exodus 24. And in Deuteronomy, Horeb is named several times as the site where God spoke to the Israelites and made a covenant with them. Horeb is also the site where Moses had his encounter with the burning bush.

The biblical account of what transpired at Sinai is sprawling, narrated over many chapters in multiple books of the Bible, with some inconsistencies among them. According to the text, Moses ascends the mountain multiple times and receives two sets of tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments, along with other laws pertaining to the building of the Tabernacle. Other laws were given in the Tabernacle itself at the foot of the mountain. Jewish tradition teaches that not only was the text of the Five Books of Moses (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) delivered at Sinai, but also the entirety of the Oral Tradition that was only centuries later written down, beginning with the redaction of the Mishnah. Thus, the entirety of Jewish legal and ethical law can be said to trace back to the encounter between God and Moses at Sinai.

There are a number of legends about Sinai, perhaps the best-known of which is in the Midrash (Bereishit Rabbah 99), which relates that at the time of the giving of the Torah, other mountains came complaining to God that they were more worthy of being the site of revelation. God responded that while the other mountains might be lofty, they were also the site of idolatry, while Mount Sinai was not. As the Talmud confirms (Sotah 5a), God chose Sinai precisely because its lowly peak made it a symbol of humility.

Another story, related in the Talmud (Shabbat 88a), plays off the Torah’s statement that at the time of revelation, the Israelites stood at the foot of the mountain (b’tachtit ha-har, in Hebrew). Rabbi Avdimi bar Hama bar Hasa rereads that phrase as indicating that God “overturned the mountain above like a tub, and said to them: ‘If you accept the Torah, excellent, and if not, there will be your burial.’” This teaching has inspired significant commentary seeking to recast what appears to be God’s coercion of the Jewish people into accepting the Torah. Among the many suggestions is that rather than threatening the people, suspending the mountain above them as intended as protection from the intensity of God’s presence during the revelation. 

The Talmud also speculates about the origins of the name Sinai. The rabbis suggested the name could be related to miracles (nissim), omen (siman), and hatred (sina), the latter indicating that Sinai was the place from which hatred descended upon the nations that did not accept the Torah. Later commentators have suggested that the name is etymologically linked to the Hebrew word sneh, or bush, a reference to Moses’ encounter at the burning bush. 

Today, the mountain known as Sinai (or Mount Moses in Arabic) is a tourist destination in the town of Saint Catherine, in the southern part of Egypt’s Sinai peninsula. The Eastern Orthodox Saint Catherine’s Monastery, among the oldest in the world, is located at the town’s eastern edge. 

The post Mount Sinai appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

The historical veracity of this tale is questionable, but the talmudic narrative encapsulates an important shift in the political and religious life of the Jewish people following the destruction of the Second Temple. The story of the founding of Yavneh represents the birth of rabbinic Judaism, a way of life focused on Torah and Jewish law, rather than Temple worship or political sovereignty.

From a distance of 2,000 years, it appears that this shift in priorities enabled the spiritual wealth of Israel to become migratory, based on Torah study, not on the location of an altar or a King’s palace — Jerusalem to Yavneh, to the North of Israel, to Babylonia, and finally throughout the Diaspora. Were the rabbis willing to remodel the former Jewish kingdom into a wandering people unified only by a shared text? Were they enthusiastic about this shift, which empowered scholar over priest and King? Or was the founding of Yavneh a contingency plan, meant to preserve Jewish identity during the years of Roman rule, always awaiting a return to Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel?

The stories told in the Talmud and Midrash offer a window into the rabbis’ perspectives, many of whom were already living comfortably in the Diaspora at a distance of hundreds of years from the Temple’s destruction.

The Bar Kochba Revolt

If the story of the founding of Yavneh suggests that the rabbis were content to leave the institutions of Statehood and Temple in the past, the figure of Rabbi Akiva — who lived two generations after Ben Zakkai — complicates this narrative.

Akiva supported the Bar Kochba Revolt (132-136) and even believed that Bar Kochba himself would be the Messiah. In one famous vignette in the Talmud, Akiva is walking with a group of his colleagues near the ruins of the Temple. The group witnesses a fox running over the desolated Holy of Holies. While his companions cry, Rabbi Akiva laughs. The other sages balk at his reaction, but he explains: “Now that I have seen the prophesies of destruction fulfilled, I believe that the prophesies of redemption will be as well.” (Makkot 24b)

For Akiva, the promise of redemption is very real — and, indeed, lurking right around the corner. The paradigm of destruction followed by Messianic redemption was deep-seated in rabbinic thought. Their expectations were molded by the experience of the destruction of the First Temple, which led to the  Babylonian exile but was swiftly followed by a return to Israel and the building of the Second Temple. Some historians suggest that the supporters of Bar Kochba were anxiously anticipating Bar Kochba’s victory to lead to such a restoration.

However, Akiva’s support for the rebellion is judged foolhardy by the majority of sages. In response to Akiva’s belief in the Messiah’s nearing, one colleague scoffs: “Akiba, grass will grow out of your jawbones [out of your grave], and he will still not have come.” (Lamentations Rabbah 2:5 & Jerusalem Talmud, Ta’anit 4:8). Lamentations Rabbah briefly records Rabbi Akiva’s optimism, but the narrator swiftly crushes this spirit by brutally recounting the story of the defeat of the revolt, as well as criticizing Bar Kochba.

Passively Awaiting the Redemption

Though we can’t pinpoint a specific moment of change, rabbinic thought came to accept the reality of subjugation. The Talmud describes a contract of sorts in which the Jews swear not to return to Israel by force, not to rebel against the nations, and not to extend or prematurely shorten the length of their exile; God then promises to prevent the subjugating nations from overly oppressing the Jews while they live under foreign rule. (Ketubot 110b-111a).

Does the rabbinic acceptance of exile mean that the rabbis of the Talmud abandoned the idea of Israel as the singular spiritual capital? There is no simple answer. Following Bar Kochba’s rebellion, yeshivas (houses of study) continued to flourish in both Israel and Babylonia. In fact many talmudic texts describe rabbis traveling back and forth, fueling a friendly rivalry between these two centers of Judaism. While some rabbis in the Talmud extol the value of learning in Israel, and make decrees against those who would leave, Babylonian rabbis place such a premium on their yeshivas that they too forbid their students to leave Babylonia (Ketubot 110b).

An Abiding Love for Israel

Talmudic descriptions of the exceptional nature of the Land of Israel are split as well. The Talmud’s statement that “It is better to live in Israel even when it is overrun by non-Jews” seemingly encourages Jews to remain in Israel even as the Jewish population there began to dwindle (Ketubot 112). On the other hand, the Talmud describes the Land of Israel as a magical place, where cake and silk clothing grow straight from the ground (Ketubot 111b). This type of description propels the Land of Israel into a myth, a place of perfection and fantasy, reserved for a far-off redemption.

Perhaps it is possible to discern two streams of rabbinic thought — one holding on to a realistic dream of strengthening Jewish settlement in the land; the other content to live in the Diaspora and relegate Israel to a distant reverie, symbolizing an eschatological end of days.

Even as he established his yeshiva in Yavneh, Johanan Ben Zakkai’s facile acceptance of Roman rule perhaps belies his true feelings. He flatters the Roman general with a verse: “Jerusalem will be captured by a ‘mighty one’.” While Johanan’s meekness towards Rome wins the Jews a modicum of protection, the subtext of his flattery is quite subversive. In its original biblical context, “the mighty one” refers to the Jewish messiah, not to a foreign conqueror! It is as if Ben Zakkai is actually teasing the Roman general–who is unfamiliar with the Bible — saying: We will accept your temporary rule, study our Torah, and bide our time.

The post Judaism after the Temple appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

A relief from Asia Minor shows two individuals worshiping at an altar before a bull. Figurines of bulls and calves have been found at several Canaanite sites. At least one was also found at an Israelite site, in the Samaria hills. In some of these, the bull or calf represents a deity — usually a storm god — directly. At other times it represents the deity’s mount, signifying the deity indirectly.

Aaron’s Motivation and the People’s Request

It is unlikely that Aaron intended the calf to represent another deity, since he proclaimed a festival in honor of YHVH [God] when he finished making it (Exodus 32:5). At first glance the people’s declaration, “This is your god, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt” (Exodus 32:4), seems to imply that they took it as a depiction of YHVH.

But in their request to Aaron to make them a god, they explained that they wanted a god to lead them because they did not know what had become of Moses, who led them out of Egypt (Exodus 32:1). This seems to imply that they wanted the calf to replace Moses, apparently in his role as mediator of YHVH’s presence to the people.

In other words, they did not intend the calf to depict YHVH but to function as the conduit of His presence among them, as Moses had functioned previously. Many scholars believe that the calf did so by serving as the pedestal or mount on which YHVH was invisibly present, as did the cherubs in the Holy of Holies. This conception of the calf is illustrated by ancient images of a god standing on the back of a bull or another animal.

According to this interpretation, the declaration “This is your god” is not an exact quotation of what the people said at the time, but a paraphrase of their words based on hindsight, reflecting the way they ultimately treated the statue. In any case, it is clear from Exodus 32:8 that even if Aaron or the people had legitimate intentions, the people immediately fell to worshiping the calf and violated the Decalogue’s prohibition against worshiping idols.

King Jeroboam’s Calf Shrines

Some scholars believe that the entire golden calf story is a pejorative recasting–also based on hindsight–of a northern cult legend about the origin of the golden calves that Jeroboam erected in Bethel and Dan (I Kings 12:2‑33). In this view, Jeroboam’s calves were originally intended as pedestals or mounts for YHVH, like the cherubs, not as idols.

With the passage of time people began to venerate them, as shown by Hosea’s complaint that people were kissing calves (Hosea 13:2). This development may have been facilitated by the fact that the calves were not kept hidden, as the cherubs were in the Holy of Holies, but stood outdoors in sanctuary courtyards and were visible to the public. This development is analogous to what happened with the copper serpent that Moses made as a charm for healing snakebites: by the time of King Hezekiah, people began to worship it and it had to be destroyed (Numbers 21:4‑9, see 2 Kings 18:4).

A Once Positive Story, in a Different Light

According to this theory, the story of Aaron’s golden calf originated as a legend about the origin of (one of) Jeroboam’s calves, and originally described its manufacture approvingly, comparable to the account in Exodus about how the people contributed raw materials with which Bezalel and his staff fashioned the Ark and cherubs and the rest of the Tabernacle, following designs provided by God (Exodus 25-27, 35-39). Aaron’s statement that he threw the gold into a fire and “out came this calf” (Exodus 32:24) implies that the calf was manufactured with supernatural assistance, which supports the view that the story was originally an approving one.

Later, after Jeroboam’s calves came to be treated as idols, the manufacture of calves was seen in hindsight to lead inevitably to idolatry and the story about Aaron’s calf was revised to show the phenomenon as sinful from the outset. This, the theory goes, is the version that appears in Exodus and is reflected in Deuteronomy.

Reprinted from The JPS Torah Commentary: Deuteronomy with permission of the Jewish Publication Society

The post The Golden Calf appeared first on My Jewish Learning.

By the time of the monarchy (c. 1020 BCE), there is extra-biblical evidence for some biblical material. The monarchy included the reigns of Kings Saul (c.1020-1000 BCE), David (c.1000-961 BCE), and Solomon (c. 961-928 BCE), during which the twelve tribes united and Israel, with Jerusalem as its capital, emerged as a major power in the region.

After Solomon’s death, the kingdom split into Judah (the southern kingdom, including Jerusalem and the Temple) and Israel (the northern kingdom). Israel was invaded and occupied by Assyria in 722 BCE. In 586 BCE, Judah was invaded by the Babylonians, and Jerusalem (including the Temple) was destroyed. A number of Jews were taken to Babylon in captivity.

From 538 (when the Temple was rebuilt) until 70 CE, Palestine came under the rule of several empires, including Persia, Greece, and Rome. During a brief period of self-rule, the Hasmonean dynasty—including the Maccabees and their descendants—ruled the area.

After the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE, Roman rule continued in Palestine until the empire crumbled. The Persians, Byzantines and Arabs alternately held control of the land through the seventh century CE.

Religious, Cultural and Intellectual History

The ancient period witnessed the formation of the basic institutions and ideas of Judaism. The final redaction of the Bible occurred during the second half of the sixth century BCE.  Originally led by priests and centered on the Temple in Jerusalem and its sacrificial system, and inspired and challenged by prophets, Judaism evolved into a post-prophetic religion that could function in the Diaspora, with local places of worship–synagogues– and religious leaders and teachers–rabbis–in many locations.

From the first through seventh centuries CE, rabbinic sages composed works of halakha (Jewish law) and aggadah (narrative expositions of biblical passages and other stories). Standardized liturgy emerged. Major halakhic works include the Mishnah and Tosefta (from the first and second centuries), and the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds (from the third through sixth centuries). Works of midrash, drawing additional interpretations from the biblical text, produced both legal and narrative material.

Intergroup Relations

Christianity, emerging after the turn of the millennium, operated first as a Jewish sect (in a time of active Jewish sectarianism) and ultimately as a separate religion. Relations were tense between adherents of Judaism and Christianity in the ancient world. Despite Mohammed’s initial interest in converting the Jews, Islam, which emerged in the seventh century CE, eventually tolerated Jews as a minority.

Social History

From the third century BCE on, the majority of Jews lived outside ancient Palestine, many in large cities throughout the Roman Empire. Ancient Jewish society in the land of Israel was chiefly agrarian. Men worked in various aspects of farming, artistry and trade, while women organized and maintained the home. Formal education was available for boys beginning in the first century CE.

The post Ancient Judaism 101 appeared first on My Jewish Learning.