Check back here at 5pm Jerusalem Time (10am Eastern Standard Time) for a Live Stream of the fourth Talmud blog event:
The Talmud and its World:
Reading the Bavli Alongside its Late Antique Neighbors
A Text-based Conversation with Iranist Yuhan Vevaina (Stanford) and Mandaic Scholar Charles Häberl (Rutgers). Facilitated by Shai Secunda (Hebrew University).
The handouts are available here: Charles’, Yuhan’s. Questions for the speakers can be left in the comments section below.
With my book, The Iranian Talmud: Reading the Bavli in its Sasanian Context (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press) in production and due out later this year, I have finally been able to return to research I first conducted for my dissertation, which looked at the rabbinic laws of menstruation in light of Zoroastrian parallels. I hope to use the space of the Talmud Blog to think “out-loud” through some of the issues – large and small – that I suddenly find myself confronting as I turn this project into a book. What I will be presenting are readings, meditations about gender, and (formerly) personal thoughts connected to the larger questions of meaning that one is not really “allowed” to ask in academic discourse. I hope readers will indulge me this virtual confession booth, and that you will chime in with your thoughts and reactions along the way.
Filipp Malyavin, “Whirlwind” (1906).
Writing in the humanities is a consciously aesthetic form of expression. Yes, the register is critical, even “scientific.” But the truth is that most scholars study people and their cultural productions because humankind is at heart, beautiful and tragic, and ultimately, tragically beautiful. When the charity is absent, the writing does not just fall flat. It bubbles with a venom and scalds the reader.
What happens when the beauty of a certain facet of humanity – especially a religious phenomenon – comes off as unsavory and even disgusting to nearly everyone but the scholar who is totally devoted to its study? I carried this heavy feeling with me while writing my dissertation on the rabbinic laws of menstrual impurity in light of corresponding Zoroastrian texts. Why menstruation? Why impurity? Why gender politics and strange Zoroastrians, and the darkness of Babylonia, the distances between men and women, and particularly, the messiness of niddah with its rags, spotting and colors?
I recently came across a poignant midrash that I must have learned before yet it somehow never really registered. The text speaks foremost of the ever-relevant conundrum of finding something meaningful to say when the wellsprings have all dried up. I am sure it still speaks to contemporary rabbis racking their brains for sermon ideas during the harsh winter Sabbaths of Leviticus.
Leviticus Rabbah 19.3 ed. Margalioth 424
ר’ שמע’ בר’ יצחק פתר קרייה בפרשותיה שלתורה, אפעלפי שהן נראות כאילו כאורות כאילו שחורות לאומרן ברבים, כגון הלכות זיבה ונגעים, אמ’ הקב’ה הרי הן עריבות עלי. הה”ד וערבה לי”י מנחת יהודה וירושלם. תדע לך שהוא כן שהרי פרשת זב וזבה לא נאמרו באחת, אלא זו בפני עצמה וזו בפני עצמה, “איש איש כי יהיה זב מבשרו”, “ואשה כי יזוב זוב דמה”.
R. Shimʿon b. R. Yitzḥaq explained the verse [“(His locks are…) black as a raven” –Song of Songs 5:11] as referring to portions of the Torah. Even though they can seem as if they are ugly, as if they are too black to discuss in public – for example the laws of discharges and skin diseases – the Holy One blessed is He said: “They are pleasing (ʿarevot) to me”. This is what is said: “Then the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem shall be pleasing (ʿarvah) to the Lord” (Malachi 2.15). You should know that this really is true. For the portion dealing with the zav and zava were not said as one, rather this one by itself and this one by itself: “When any man has a discharge issuing from his member” (Leviticus 15:2); “When a woman has had a discharge of blood” (Leviticus 15:25).
Leviticus Rabbah is a homiletical Midrash, which according to one school of thought means that – even if only very distantly – it reflects a form of public discourse that took place in the quaint synagogues of late antique Palestine. One can almost see R. Shimʿon b. R. Yitzḥaq struggling mightily to find some comforting message for local synagogue attendees as they read Leviticus 15, with its bloody and seminal discharges. In frustration, he nearly admits that these parts of the Bible are nothing short of revolting – they are as “black” as a raven.
The genius of this passage is the way it non-judgmentally establishes a distinction between human and Divine aesthetics, yet at the same time questions the validity of the human view. The passage turns on the modifier “seem” and the question of aesthetic “truth.” In rabbinic aesthetics, black is seen as unattractive. Yet this beauty judgment is simultaneously turned on its head. The classical interpretation of the Songs verse “I am black but beautiful” is not far from “black is beautiful” since it calls into question the original aesthetical claim that black is not beautiful.
It is just as difficult to talk about hideous skin diseases, various bodily functions, and their governing rituals today as it was in the fourth century C.E. – although the reasons for this, in a secular age, may be different. Even in late antiquity there were rabbis who wished that Leviticus 15 was shorter (something not too difficult to achieve, given its chiastic structure of a. irregular male discharge; b. regular male discharge; a’. regular female discharge; and b’. irregular female discharge). Yet God is depicted as lovingly lingering over the very topics that humans prefer to rush through. The message of this midrash is that human revulsion at menstruation is understandable, but ultimately misguided and immature. God is able to recognize the beauty of these topics which people incorrectly see as “black.” Of course the midrash does not suggest how one is to gain an appreciation of the “pleasing” nature of menstruation.
There has been much writing about the laws of Niddah since the feminist turn in Jewish studies (which I suppose dates back to the 1970s). Some of the scholarship is apologetic, some openly hostile, and while some succeeds in striking a balance of sorts. I suppose the fact that these laws were – and remain – profoundly meaningful sites of religious experience for many women (and men?) should somehow lead the way to seeing its beauty. Even if the writing must be critical, and the male power-plays not shoved under the rug, there must be a way to achieve a beautiful, productive sympathy.
At the Talmud blog, we are interested in the Talmud wherever it is to be found – primarily in the academy but also in more traditional settings, midrashot for women, secular Israeli institutions, on Israeli televisions dramas, in South Korea, France, in the Islamic Republic of Iran….
This week, history was made when Dr. Ruth Calderon, a graduate of the Hebrew University Talmud department and head of Alma College, taught a passage of from the Bavli in her inaugural lecture in the Knesset – Israel’s parliament. Facebook and the Twittersphere have been abuzz with the news. Needless to say, the Knesset channel generally gets even less attention than C-Span does in the US. As one friend of the blog wondered, when was the last time a Talmud shiur went viral like this?
I am sure that the Talmud has been mentioned before in the Knesset, but I am equally sure that it has never been the center of a speech by an intellectual, non-Orthodox female Talmud scholar. Calderon is a master teacher, and though the passage was ultimately used to deliver a (humane) political message – it is the Knesset after all – it was done with genuine class and pedagogical skill. Calderon used an old volume from the grandfather of the head of her party – Yair Lapid – the quintessential, upper middle-class secular Israeli. She spoke forcefully of the need for all Israelis to return to the Talmud after a century in which the Bible had displaced its privileged place in the Jewish canon.
The image of a poised, learned woman teaching Talmud out of a weathered tome on the floor of the Israeli parliament was nothing short of inspiring. Many of us in Israel dream that Calderon will succeed in her goal of creating an educated Jewish Israeli public of both genders that is in touch with the one text that has sustained their people for so long. Let us hope.
Censorship, which is supposed to conceal, has the habit of doing just the opposite: To censor is to cover up, and covering up is conspicuous. Here are two cases in point that I recently stumbled upon:
(1) I’ve been lucky enough to spend a few early mornings a week studying at Havruta, a unique Beit Midrash located on Hebrew University’s Mount Scopus campus. A few days ago a student came over and pointed to a strange formulation at bPes 113a:
שבעה מנודין לשמים ואלו הן: יהודי שאין לא אשה, ושיש לא אשה ואין לא בנים, ומי שיש לא בנים ואין מגדלין לתלמוד תורה ומי שאין לא תפילין בראשו ותפילין בזרועו וציצית בבגדו ומזוזה בפתחו והמונע מנעלים מרגליו וי’א אף מי שאין מיסב בחבורה של מצוה
According to this passage, which is reproduced above from the Vilna edition, the first in the list of people divinely excommunicated is ‘a Jew who does not have a wife’. Since it is more than clear that the Talmud’s target audience is made up of (rabbinic) Jews, the emphasis on the lifelong bachelor’s Jewish identity is strange. Note also that this marker does not appear in the rest of the passage, which goes on to list the other offenders without noting their religious persuasion. A look at the manuscripts reveals that none record the reading “a Jew”, and even early prints omit it as well. Dikdukei Sofrim points out that the first printed edition that contains this ’emendation’ is the Basil ed. and that it reflects an act of censorship.
Some scholars might say that this reading has no real philological value, but surely it is still useful for understanding the habits of early modern censors. In this case, the change is more than the usual fare. It does not respond to an unflattering portrayal of Christians or Jesus. Rather, it reveals someone troubled by the Talmud’s internal discourse. Here, the very assertion that not getting married is grounds for divine excommunication is seen as a threat to Christianity. Clearly, the passage negates the view that the celibate life is the good life, yet I doubt that it was directed at Christians. By adding the word “a Jew”, the censor attempts to limit the scope of the talmudic statement to the Jewish community, and the lady doth protest too much, methinks.
In his Demonstrations, the fourth century church father Aphrahat felt the need to respond to Jewish views about virginity that irked some Christians (His second, carefully argued demonstration on the topic is worth reading in full, and should be compared with early Jewish biblical traditions, as Naomi Koltun-Fromm has recently done). Apparently, what Jews said about celibacy bothered at least one censor, over a millennium later. And the evidence remains in a variant in the classic, Vilna edition.
(2) On a dark, misty, and rainy day the other week, I participated in what could only be described as a Gothic tour of Beit She’arim together with my home institute. Beit She’arim was the place to be buried in ‘early’ late antiquity, whether you were of rabbinical or non-rabbinical bent, a Jew who heartily embraced figural art, or one who was less than enthusiastic about it. On the way out of the site, I came across a sign whose top, Hebrew half had been skillfully covered by a shiny, screwed-in piece of plastic:
One can still easily read the English text, which nicely highlights the mixing of Jewish and pagan themes in the funerary art. The fact that the English text remained undisturbed means that the censor, whoever he is, was only concerned with the ‘purity’ of (mono-lingual) Hebrew speakers. It was a cold day to begin with, but seeing this act of censorship, not in premodern Basil, but here in contemporary Israel, was chilling. Unlike Ophir’s example of ad-hoc censorship described in an earlier post, at Beit She’arim the censor’s perfectly cut, shiny piece of plastic screwed into an official sign had a certain authoritative feel. Apparently, someone at the parks authority permitted the censor to commit his sorry act. But what exactly the censorship reveals about the place of critical observations at Israeli historical sites – or lack thereof – I cannot know…
When I go abroad, I like to see art. Usually, something with presence and gravitas, as you might find at Washington’s National Gallery – a museum in which I once spent a precious 3.7 minutes with children before being asked by a guard, firmly but not unkindly, to leave. He was right. We were disrupting the quiet, spiritual serenity of taking in Great Art. A museum like that is a temple. The emotions swell, and sometimes, tears threaten.
Subtle, well thought-out modern art has a different set of effects. Even for an uneducated amateur like me, it can hit you deep in the gut and keep your thoughts back in the gallery long after your eyes have readjusted to the glare outside. Last week I found myself in the contemporary section of Hamburg’s Kunsthalle to see an exquisite exhibit entitled “Lost Places”. It was, really, a psychological thriller.
A lot of contemporary art uses what might be described as explicit, closed expressions of intertextuality to get the mind’s wheels turning. One type includes works that are sub-divided into different components and then given to develop certain, suggestive connections between the various parts. A work that has stayed with me from “Lost Places” is a video installation by Israeli artist, Omer Fast. Like some of his other pieces, Nostalgia I-III (2009) performs this sort of intertextuality remarkably well. The three sections of the installation had videos going simultaneously with surprising and unexpected connections. Here is the way the museum’s curator describes the piece, followed by a clip (until 3:00) that because of the limitations of the medium cannot do much justice:
Omer Fast (*1972, Jerusalem / Israel) explores the shifting meanings of places and the resultant unravelling of apparent certainties. A key stylistic device in his films and video works is the interview, which – as a seemingly realistic format – holds the promise of authenticity, but is invariably staged with actors. The three-parts of Fast’s video installation Nostalgia I-III (2009) are linked by the motif of a trap: in Nostalgia I (first room) we see a gamekeeper attempting to construct a trap using bent branches. Nostalgia II (second room, 2 monitors) shows a conversation between two actors in an office of the immigration authorities, whereby the issue of building a trap also becomes the pivotal point of the narrative. Nostalgia III (cinematic projection) is a 30-minute feature film in which the current geopolitical constellation has been inverted: in this scenario, Africa is the only safe place left in the world. Europeans try to enter an unnamed African country through a system of tunnels and repeatedly find themselves in situations where they are trapped and subject to the arbitrary practices of the police and other authorities. The multiple narrative levels of Fast’s Nostalgia deconstruct the apparent objectivity of history, nationality, justice and injustice.
For many, ‘explicit intertextuality’ is really no intertextuality at all, since intertextuality is a framework for understanding the complex and non-explicit relationship between widely disparate ‘texts’ realized synchronically. As Daniel Boyarin noted in Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash, ‘sources and traditions’ approaches cannot really be understood as employing a method of intertextuality. There are also problems with thinking about intertextuality when its realization is confined to a limited canon, like rabbinic literature, or especially to a single work of art. Instead, in works like Fast’s installation, the effect of the interconnections must be to remind viewers that the carefully curated intertextuality of the piece simply reflects the intertextuality of the everyday – or if you are religious, God’s intertextuality.
Regardless of what we’ll call them, theoretical methods that seriously probe the intersections between various parts of rabbinic literature on an intertextual axis can be nicely related to some of these expressions of contemporary art. Last year, I mused about how the redaction of the Bavli and its relationship to the culture that produced it can be illuminated by YouTube’s Life in a Day. Now, it occurs to me that Life in a Day‘s canvass is far too wide and overpopulated. Maybe its worth thinking about the redaction of the Bavli and its suggestive juxtapositions along the lines of a contemporary video installation like Fast’s, which take place within a single space. Within the confines of a tractate or pereq, the Talmud has multiple screens going, which you view when you walk into different ‘rooms’ or see things from different angles. The videos on the screens frequently intersect despite apparently broadcasting separate films. If you’ve joined daf yomi and have followed the tides of some of the early aggadot in the first chapter of Berakhot, you can see this with certain reocurrences, like the tangible presence of night and its various articulations. Reoccurrence however, is not merely restatement, and when one text is read in light of the other, sparks fly. The flip-side, of course, is that maybe like in Fast’s Nostalgia, the illuminations are little more than a trap. But that too is an illumination.
I cannot remember exactly when I initially heard about the first complete translation of the Babylonian Talmud into Arabic, but I can remember what I felt: excitement, bewilderment, curiosity, and, I must confess, the quickening of my liberal heart. From the first reports in the Western media, it soon became clear that the translation was not just a rip-off of prior renditions, but a massive and utterly serious undertaking. Yet like a summer rain that sweeps in to ruin an otherwise joyous party, many of the articles in the newspapers included the comments of a number of Israeli Middle East experts who, to put it mildly, raised doubts about the ecumenical nature of the translation. As a certain Dr. Esther Webman ominously intoned:
“The Talmud in the Muslim world is considered to be the main source of Jewish iniquity,” she said. “They highlight aspects of it which are not so flattering and put it at the forefront of their presentation of it. Essentially, they use the Talmud as a tool to accuse Jews of certain habits and traits, so it is portrayed as the epitome of the Jewish and the Zionist mentality.
And yet, I wondered then and I still wonder now why such immense financial and intellectual resources would be poured into this translation if the intent was merely to propagate anti-Semitic ideas about the Talmud. If the whole thing was just about antisemitism, well then anyone with a modem, the requisite computer savvy to cut and paste, and proximity to Kinkos can produce an impressive neo-classical anti-Talmudic tract within a few hours. Why the official backing of the Arab League, the hundreds of thousands of man-hours, and the purple prose?
Soon after the initial announcement, the Talmud Blog got to work. An Arabic translation of the entire Talmud was big news, with all sorts of political, theological, and scholarly implications (just think of how the Talmud can now be brought back to Iraq in the local language, and less romantically, of what this could ultimately do, in a different world, for the comparative study of Geonic and Islamic law). We contacted the Amman based Middle East Studies Center which was responsible for the translation and learned of how much the Talmud set costs (a prohibitive, if understandable $750.00). We then spoke with people connected to the National Library of Israel and Harvard’s Widener library about purchasing a complete set; we found someone studying in Amman who could enquire into whether a single copy might be purchased for a lower price and brought to Israel for Passover (it could not); we had the original advertisement translated into English; with the help of another scholar we discovered a link that contained much of the introductory material online; we were contacted about a working group forming at the National Library to assess the quality of the translation; and mainly, we waited.
In the meantime, subsequent news reports moved in two different directions. On the one hand, Aryeh Tuchman, who is an expert in anti-Semitic and anti-Talmud propaganda, found that the introduction to the translation was literally littered with classic anti-Semitic and anti-Talmud tropes. At the same time, the earnestness and unprecedented scope of the project – which supposedly included Christian speakers of Neo-Aramaic – came into relief. A working group to analyze the translation at the National Library of Israel is finally taking shape, and surprises may still await. But where do things currently stand?
For one, the ADL machine is up and running. I am well aware that the threat of a major, semi-official Arabic translation of the Talmud backed by official organs of Arab countries is not just an academic occupational hazard. Presumably, the Arabic translation of the Talmud will be the window by which most scholars, Islamic jurists, and plain old curious souls in the Arab world will access this central Jewish text. Accordingly, the ADL has issued a statement that briefly outlines some of the problems of the introduciton, and has even sent a dispatch to the Jordanian government requesting that immediate action be taken. And yet, the way this whole affair went down seems so very predictable: Arabs produce a translation of the Talmud with an introduction that states its aim as an endeavor to explain why the Zionists make life for Palestinians in the territories so miserable. The ADL condemns the translation, op-eds appear in the Jewish press, and we all go home. The fact that just last week, the vice-president of Iran, Mohammad-Reza Rahimi, delivered a totally confused (and, from a certain perspective, hilarious) discourse about how the Talmud encourages Israelis to flood Iran with narcotics (temporarily forgetting that Afghanistan borders Iran to the East) has seemed to confirm this narrative – even if Rahimi certainly did not read the Talmud in translation, Arabic or otherwise.
From my view, there is still plenty of room for further reflection on this affair, at least in two related respects. For one, consider for a minute the uses, in certain quarters, of Islamic studies in the West since 9-11. At some think-tanks and research centers, Islamic studies has come to center around a very specific set of questions, especially: ‘why do those turban-heads[sic] blow themselves up in crowded marketplaces and crash themselves into US and Israeli targets?’ The intriguing spiritual and intellectual history of Islam and the central role it has played in the evolution of rationalism (especially in Judaism!), its startling mysticism, etc etc etc are simply of no concern in those settings.
A personal anecdote: Some time ago I published an article in a popular Jewish magazine. My article was juxtaposed to a lengthy and fascinating piece on the massacre of the Jewish tribes in Medina – no doubt a worthy and important topic in Early Islamic history. But appended to that article was a very specific, directed discussion of why the violent aspects of Islamic history (and they are, to be sure, many) essentially precludes the possibility of any form of coexistence with Jews – particularly in regards to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The pair of articles drew a very straight line between a late antique massacre and the modern conflict. And my protestations won me a funny sort of ‘concession’ – the ability to draft an article about Jews and Sufis in a later issue of the magazine. In any case, this sort of thinking plagues a lot of the current discussion, even beyond the Arab world – such as in regards to Iran. It is all too easy to pontificate on the current tensions between Iran and Israel by elegantly referring to Iran’s pre-Islamic dualistic ‘us-them’ heritage, thereby skipping over thirteen hundred years of effervescent and incessant re-configuring of Iranian and Islamic culture in Iranian lands. I wonder, for just a moment, whether the Arabic translation of the Talmud is engaging in much of the same. As Aryeh Tuchman put it in that Jerusalem Post op-ed
Studying the Talmud to understand the mindset of modern Jews, let alone irreligious modern Jews, let alone the government of Israel, is like trying to understand the mindset of modern Catholics by studying Augustine.
A second point has to do with the way the Talmud is described in the ADL press release (and in the Arabic translation!) – “a sacred collection of Jewish law, ethics, philosophy and history.” It is certainly sacred and holy to the countless Jews who gave their sweat, tears, lives, and souls to plumbing its depths. But still, ‘sacred’ is a funny marker for the Talmud to anyone who knows it (or ‘her’, in the traditional androcentrism) intimately. The Talmud is not a pristine collection of canons containing stale legal pronouncements and theological reflections, but something far more dynamic, irreverent, and, sometimes, problematic. I know I am taking a risk here, but one would have be a pious fool to deny the fact that the Talmud does indeed house some of the problematic statements that anti-Semites ascribe to it – just as Patristics and Early Islamic literature offer up plenty of dubious things themselves. Once again, context is key.
If some Arabic-speaker living in the Middle East has even the beginnings of a desire to venture into the Talmud’s water with a charitable curiosity, he or she will certainly not understand the Palestinian-Israeli conflict any better. But what just might come into view is the complexity and beauty of a robust Jewish culture in late antiquity – and today. (Incidentally, some of the better Islamic studies programs in the academy have accomplished just that for non-Muslims studying Islam). Just maybe, the very desire that powered a massive translation project to render the Talmud in Arabic will actually engender the beginnings of an appreciation of the rabbinic mind – at least of the 99.99 percent which has nothing to do with the hermeneutics of שבו פה עם החמור. If something like that could happen with the Abbasids, maybe there is still hope today.
Relief of Ardashir I’s Investiture at Naqsh-i Rustam
The latest Iranica Antiqua has just been published online. The Talmud Blog generally does not announce the publication of every journal from the field of Iranian Studies (or Late Antiquity, Early Christianity, etc etc), even though this might be of use to Talmudists. But particularly in light of our previous treatment of the last Iranica Antiqua volume, the current issue deserves mention. In this issue, T. Kwasman offers readings of the Hebrew graffiti inscribed on Ardashir’s tunic at Naqsh-i Rustam that differ significantly from those previously suggested on this blog by Shaul Shaked. Now Shaked’s readings were extremely tentative, particularly given the fact that he was working from a poor photograph of the graffiti and that it was not for a scientific publication. But a number of Shaked’s point are worthy of serious consideration, and it is a shame that Kwasman did not mention them. Apparently, he does not count himself among the hundreds of regular readers of this blog (or 611 readers of that post); he did not discover Shaked’s readings through a Google search; or more likely, current academic discourse has yet figure out a way to include discussions from sources like blogs in scientific journal articles.
In any case, here is the way Kwasman read the graffiti (I was unable to provide some of the markings due to the limitations of WordPress):
A
1. [ז]כר[י]ה שמואל הכהן
2. בן | זכרי[ה]
B
1. X X רברבה חסן בן סהל בן חסן מן אד\ר
2. שנת
3. אל שד{ג} סמן
4. טוב
5. מרחשון
Some of the major differences in Kwasman’s rendition include his adoption of a different calendar that results in a 1741 CE as opposed to a 992 CE dating; his reading מן אד\ר rather than Shaked’s מזאר (Persian; ‘visit’); and the month מרחשון as opposed to Shaked’s מן חלון (from Hulwan). Kwasman seems to acknowledge the difficulty of the opening term רברבה, which Shaked rather brilliantly suggested should be jointed to the prior characters and read as הזר ברכה (a thousand – Persian hazar – blessings) – while still acknowledging the problematic final ב as opposed to כ. I would have loved to see some imaginative treatment of what it might mean for a Jewish Persian to visit Naqsh-i Rustam and carve his name on Ardashir’s tunic. Oh well, I suppose there’s little place for that in philological articles.
In the same issue, I also published an article that was written during the hot Israeli summer of 2010. It patiently (and rather boringly) attempts to date the named authorities in Zoroastrian Middle Persian writings on the basis of some stray historical references; rather problematic epigraphical data, and charting teacher-student relationships. It is interesting that to my knowledge, it is the first full treatment of the issue, and it took a foolhardy Talmudist like myself, informed by the way things are done in Rabbinics, to attempt it.
A few months ago, news broke in the Israeli media of an important manuscript trove that was discovered in Afghanistan. A spate of articles appeared in the press, each one covering just a bit more than the one prior it. Even Israeli television did not lost interest. With all the breathless reporting, the purple prose, and the melodramatic music playing in the background, it has been difficult to get a clear picture of what the value of the collection really is.
Last evening, Shaul Shaked delivered the annual Sara Soroudi lecture on Mount Scopus in a small, stuffy, and packed seminar room. In his unassuming and dignified manner, Shaked gave an initial report on the find, and presented some documents which he read and commented upon. First things first: The collection apparently stems from around Dareh-Usuf in the vicinity of Balkhs in Northern Afghanistan. Of course neither Shaked nor the other Israeli researches interested in the documents have themselves seen the cave in which the collection was supposedly found. However, Shaked said that his sources in the region, which he claims are trustworthy, did testify to having seen the specific cave that stored the documents.
We know that Jews lived in Afghanistan in the Middle Ages from inscribed gravestones in Kur, but until now we have had virtually no further evidence about the community. Documents have been trickling out for some time now, and particularly in the last two years. There seem to be some two-hundred fragments, though more turn up all the time. And the majority of the collection is held with dealers in London, though in some other locations as well – including Jerusalem. As of yet, all of the research has been done via photographs. The dealers have yet to make a deal.
The find is known as a geniza by name alone. Like the Cairo Geniza, its contents are haphazard and do not represent a planned archival storage. Other than that, there is no evidence that the cave in which the contents were allegedly stored was associated with a specific Jewish communal institution. Further, its contents do not seem to have accrued gradually, rather apparently as a result of one (emergency?) deposit. The texts are mainly in Judeo-Persian, but also in Hebrew, Aramaic, Judeo-Arabic, and Arabic proper (that is in Arabic script, and sometimes even written by Muslims).
Shaked provided a nice sample of documents, many of which were actually quite colorful and of interest beyond specialists. He discussed two piyutim that have yet to be identified. One poetically referred to a mosaic of nations of the world. Tafsirs were a favored genre in the Judeo-Persian world, and Shaked discussed two of them – one on Genesis and the other on Jeremiah. Both hewed very closely to the original Hebrew, and the tafsir on Jeremiah contained “Babylonian” vocalization on both the biblical text and the Persian translation. “Babylonian” vocalization is actually quite common in the documents, and seems to point to a ninth century CE dating.
In general, medieval Persian-speaking Jews were not particularly interested in rabbinic texts. Shaked did show, however, a few texts of interest to Talmudists. One was a fragment from the second chapter of Mishna Avodah Zara. It seems that the text is close to the known geniza fragments, which would then again imply that written Mishna fragments outside of the Babylonian Talmud stem from a Palestinian and not Babylonian tradition – even when they may well have been written down in Iraq. Mention was also made of fragments associated with Saadya’s commentary on Jeremiah and his responses to Hiwi, while a fragment was shown that refers to the ba’alei miqrayim – perhaps a reference to Karaites. In addition, a charming philosophical text spoke of the endless production of books and book learning. The apparent connection to the Muslim world could be seen in a hadith-like Arabic fragment from the collection; while a business ledger dated to the eleventh century provided a window into everyday life. Finally, a long and detailed letter recounted the story of a poor chap who fled Bamiyan due to accusations of improper business practices and Sabbath desecration. He had to leave his wife back in Bamiyan in order to go live in Razny, and he defends himself in the letter. And so, a nearly millennium old human interest story.
From the evidence, the people associated with the documents seem to have known not only Judeo-Persian and Hebrew, but also Arabic, which may point to recent origins in Babylonia. Regardless, from the small sample that was shown, there is no doubt that the collection is extremely important for reconstructing the history and texture of life of c. eleventh century Afghani Jewry.
The problem of course is that nothing can really be published until the collection is purchased. And here one begins to wonder about matters that Shaked did not discuss: Have some of the dealers been feeding off of the media hype and inflating the prices beyond reason? There is no doubt that there are serious potential buyers out there interested in purchasing these truly important documents and making them available to scholars. But generally, buyers with the serious funds needed for a collection of this sort are not dumb, and they are not interested in paying far beyond the reasonable value. No doubt, antiquity dealers have a right to charge a handsome sum for a valuable collection, but it must be within reason. They should know that sales of this type are based essentially on trust. And let us not forget, they too have a responsibility to preserve the heritage reflected in the documents by making them available for research. If the documents are to finally reach scholars, it will take a dealer, or a group of dealers prepared to negotiate in good faith. There is simply no other way.
UPDATE: See Avraham Yoskovich’s comment in the comments section for a review of Haggai Ben-Shammai’s “companion” lecture at the National Library on Tuesday, May 1, 2012.
Lucas Cranach the Elder 'Untergang des Pharao im Roten Meer' (Germany, 1530)
Does God rejoice at the downfall of the wicked? Surely He wants the good to prosper and the wicked to perish. Yet, the destruction of God’s own creatures, regardless of some poor choices they may have made in the past, is also not a cause for Divine celebration. If one wishes to ascribe to a logical, binary scheme, the answer to this question can either be “yes” or “no”. But this is the Talmud Blog, where a rabbinic “yes, but…” / “no, but…” will do just fine. Indeed, rabbinic literature contains both views. On the one hand, R. Ishmael confidently responds to his students (preserved at Sifre Numbers 117) that indeed, God is happy when those who anger Him perish, while we also have a moving, anthropomorphic portrait of God’s pain at the wicked’s demise (mSan 6:5).
One of the better known talmudic passages that deals with this subject appears at bMeg 10b – towards the beginning of the so called Babylonian Esther Midrash (bMeg 10b-17a) which I am now teaching in the Hebrew University Talmud Department. The Babylonian Esther Midrash is a unique corpus. It is apparently the only complete midrash on a biblical book that was compiled in Babylonia, and as such it affords a rare window into Babylonian midrashic imagination. Scholars like Eliezer Segal have produced significant and lasting scholarship on the Bavli’s Esther Midrash. The primary tool in these scholarly endeavors is a kind of comparative criticism, that unfortunately ends up seeing the Bavli’s Esther Midrash as an essentially tone-deaf, pale reflection of Palestinian midrashic poetics. Blame it on postmodernism, but I see in the Bavli’s ‘belatedness’ the beauty of the mosaic, pastiche – in short, a textual realization of Late Antiquity.
The passage that interests me appears towards the beginning of a long list of ‘petihtot’ to Esther, which Segal has demonstrated derive mainly from Palestinian exemplars. Indeed, the vast majority of tradents are Palestinian sages. Further, in his assessment the full poetic punch of these petihtot is often effaced in the Bavli. This is true, but only if you consider Palestinian synagogal poetics as the sole form of legitimate poetry. Arguably, there is another kind of poetry that takes place in the processes of deconstruction and subsequent reconstruction which the Bavli performs on its Palestinian rabbinic heritage.
The point I have to make is a relatively, small, philological one. But I do think that it partially explains a formerly incomprehensible Yerushalmi and also contributes to a deeper understanding of the development of two passages in the Bavli. In any event, it has been far too long since the Talmud Blog had a post about a close, original reading of a sugya.
ר’ יהושע בן חנניה פתח לה פתחא להאיי פרשתא מהכא: והיה כאשר שש ייי עליכם להיטיב אתכם ולהרבות אתכם כן ישיש ייי עלי[כ]ם להאביד אתכם וג’
ומיחדי הקב’ה במפלתן שלרשעים
והכת’ בצאת לפני החלוץ ואומרים הודו לייי כי לעולם חסדו ואמ’ ר’ יוחנן מפני מה לא נאמ’ כי טוב בהודאה זו לפי שאין הקב’ה שמח במפלתן שלרשעים
ואמ’ ר’ שמואל בר נחמני אמ’ ר’ יונתן מאי דכת’ ולא קרב זה אל זה כל הלילה באותה שעה ביקשו מלאכי שרת לומר שירה לפני הקב’ה אמ’ להן הקב’ה מעשה ידי טובעין בים ואתם אומרים שירה לפני
אמ’ ר’ יוסי ביר’ חנינה הוא אינו שש אבל אחרים משיש דוקא נמי דכת’ ישיש ולא כת’ ישוש שמע מנה
R. Yehoshua b. Hanania introduced the section from here: ‘And it shall come to pass that as the Lord rejoiced over you to do you good, so the Lord will rejoice over you to cause you to perish’ (Deut 28:63).
Now does the Holy One, blessed be He, rejoice in the downfall of the wicked?
Is it not written, ‘as they went out before the army, and say, Give thanks unto the Lord, for his mercy endureth for ever (2 Chron. 10:21)’, And R. Yohanan said: Why are the words ‘for he is good’ omitted from this thanksgiving? Because the Holy One, blessed be He, does not rejoice in the downfall of the wicked?
And R. Shmuel b. Nahamani said that R. Yonatan said, What is the meaning of the verse, ‘And one came not near the other all the night (Ex. 14:20)’? At that time the ministering angels wanted to chant their hymns before the Holy One, blessed be He, but He said, The work of my hands is being drowning in the sea, and shall you chant hymns before me?
R. Yossi b. R. Hinana replied: He himself does not rejoice, but he makes others rejoice. This is indicated also by the text, which writes yasis and not yasus, which proves [what we said].
(bMeg 11a, following MS Columbia; translation based on Soncino)
The opening verse is taken from the so-called “rebuke” section of Deut 28. The link between this verse and Esther seems to center on the threatening verb “cause to perish (להאביד)” in Deut 28:63 and its ubiquity in Esther, for example at 4:7. Apparently, R. Yehoshua understood the near destruction of the Jews in Esther as a realization of the Deuteronomic rebuke. Judging from the first three petihtot of Esther Rabbah which cite Deut 28:66-68 and other later Palestinian midrashic parallels, this was apparently not an unusual way of introducing the Scroll of Esther.
The rest of the passage, however, is somewhat peculiar, and as such has gained the attention of generations of scholars. I will focus on two issues: The Talmud objects to the depiction of God as rejoicing over causing the destruction of the wicked, since two midrashic interpretations demonstrate that God does not rejoice when the wicked are punished (following Yehoshafat’s defeat of the Moabites; and after the drowning of the Egyptians in the Red Sea – the latter an example of a startling Babylonian reversal which was used in medieval times to justify the absence of Hallel recitation after the first day of Passover, but that is for another time). The contradiction is resolved via a closer reading of the original verse from Deuteronomy, where God is now said merely to cause others to rejoice yet not rejoice Himself. In other words, the entire sequence was generated by an apparent misinterpretation of the original verse that did not conform to midrashic traditions about God not rejoicing at the downfall of the wicked, and the conclusion is essentially to read the verse more carefully. Further, as others have already pointed out (for example, E. Segal), the formulation of the original question “Now does the Holy One, blessed be He, rejoice in the downfall of the wicked,” is somewhat jarring, since nowhere in rabbinic literature do we find an entire generation of Jews referred to as “wicked”.
The passage bears a strong connection to a parallel at bSan 39b:
ויעבר הרנה במחנה
אמ’ ר’ אחא בר ר’ חננא באבוד רשעים רנה ובאבוד אחאב רני רינה
ומי חאדי הקב’ה במפלתן שלרשעים
והא כתי’ בצאת לפני החלוץ אומרים הודו ליי’י כי לעולם חסדו
ואמ’ ר’ יוחנן מפני מה לא נאמר כי טוב בפרשה זו לפי שאין הקב’ה שמיח במפלתן שלרשעים
ואמ’ ר’ שמואל בר נחמני אמ’ ר’ יונתן מאי דכת’ ולא קרב זה אל זה כל הלילה באותה שעה שטבעו מצרים בים ביקשו מלאכי השרת לומ’ שירה אמ’ להן הקב’ה מעשה ידי טובעין בים ואתם אומרים שירה לפני
א’ר יוסי בר’ חנינה הוא אינו שש אבל אחרים משיש דוקא נמי דכת’ ישיש ולא כתי’ ישוש שמע מינה
‘And there went out the shout throughout the camp’ (1 Kings 22:36).
R. Aha b. R. Hanina said: ‘When the wicked perish, there is song (Prov. 11:10)’, and when Ahab perished there was ‘song of songs’ (following MS Yemenite, hagadot hatalmud, and others).
Now does the Holy One, blessed be He, rejoice in the downfall of the wicked?
Is it not written, ‘as they went out before the army, and say, Give thanks unto the Lord, for his mercy endureth for ever (2 Chron. 10:21)’, and R. Yohanan said: Why are the words ‘for he is good’ omitted from this thanksgiving? Because the Holy One, blessed be He, does not rejoice in the downfall of the wicked?
And R. Shmuel b. Nahamani said that R. Yonatan said, What is the meaning of the verse, And one came not near the other all the night (Ex. 14:20)? At that time the ministering angels wanted to chant their hymns before the Holy One, blessed be He, but He said, The work of my hands is being drowning in the sea, and shall you chant hymns before me?
R. Yossi b. R. Hinana replied: He himself does not rejoice, but he makes others rejoice. This is indicated also by the text, which writes yasis and not yasus, which proves [what we said].
(b. San 39a according to another Yemenite MS, MS Herzog).
This passage appears at the end of the fourth chapter in tractate Sanhedrin, where the Mishna describes how, after conveying a sense of seriousness to witnesses, the court reassures them that their task is essential and worthy. One of the verses recited for the witnesses is Prov. 11:10: “when the wicked perish there are shouts of joy”. At bSan 39b, the Talmud cites a verse from I Kings (22:36) that describes the news spreading of (the wicked) King Ahav’s demise. R. Aha b. R. Hinina cites the verse from Prov and adds that when Ahav died there was even greater rejoicing. Note that the Yemenite MS Herzog is vocalized רִנֵי רִינָה. This leads into the same sequence that appears at bMeg 10b.
It is now easier to understand why the passage refers to “the wicked” – for Ahav’s wickedness was infamous. Yet, in certain respects the bSan passage is even more problematic than its bMeg parallel. The verse from Deuteronomy is not even quoted, but is nevertheless presumed in R. Yossi’s closing exposition. And the opening question (‘Now does the Holy One…rejoice in the downfall of the wicked’) is almost incomprehensible, for where do we see God himself rejoicing at Ahav’s death? On the other hand, there is reason to assume that the bSan passage is “primary” to the one in bMeg in the sense that the initialbuilding blocks of the passage were composed within the discursive context of bSan (yes, I am aware of Zvi Septimus’ article). This can be demonstrated since specifically bSan seems to have developed out of a parallel Palestinian passage preserved in the Yerushalmi that also appears as a comment on the same Mishna:
כת’ “ויעבר הרינה במחנה”.
מהו “הרינה”. הריני.
וכן הוא או’ “בצאת לפני החלוץ” וגו’. ללמדך שאף מפלת הרשעים אינה שמחה לפני המקו’ם.
It is written ‘And there went out the shout throughout the camp (1 Kings 22:36)’.
What is “the shout” – hareni.
And it also says, ‘as they went out before the army (2 Chron. 10:21)’ etc. To teach you that even the downfall of the wicked is not a joy before Omnipresent.
It seems clear that there is some relationship between the ySan and bSan passages. The Yerushalmi comments on the same Mishna, quotes the same verse from 1 Kings and then cites the same midrash on 2 Chron 10:21 (which first appears in the Mekhilta Beshalah, Shira parsha 1, p. 118). Yet, on the whole, the meaning of this short Yerushalmi passage has eluded interpretation, particularly the first line. What does the word הריני mean here, and what does it add to the verse from 1 Kings?
Not surprisingly, the traditional commentators try to apply the Bavli parallel to the Yerushalmi, and they suggest that the definite article (הרינה – the shout of joy) is interpreted here to refer to the great joy felt at the demise of the wicked. Neusner’s translation emends the text accordingly “What is this cry (HRYNH)? Lo, it is a song (HRY RYNH).” On the other hand, the Mohr Siebeck translation suggests a reading of חרון – anger. This seems to be based on the second line of the Yerushalmi, which cites the Mekhilta about God not fully rejoicing at the defeat of Moab. Since the latter is apparently linked to the first line with the words “and it also says (וכן הוא אומר),” one might assume that the first line about “the shout” should also convey the same message of Divine displeasure at the downfall of the wicked.
In fact, the words “וכן הוא אומר” should actually be read “וכאן הוא אומר” (“and here it says”), and they merely represent a direct though shortened quotation of the Mekhilta passage according to the best witnesses. As for the first sentence “מהו הרינה – הריני” the final word might perhaps be read as הרינו and represent a regressive assimilated form of הפעיל צווי הרנינו – ‘(you, pl.) Rejoice!’ As such, the Yerushalmi interprets 1 Kings 22:36 to mean that God is telling the Jews to rejoice (הרנינו) at Ahav’s death. This then is juxtaposed to the midrash from the Mekhilta where God does not fully rejoice at the defeat of Moab. The tension between these two positions, however, is unresolved.
This brings us back to the bSan parallel. If the original, Palestinian set of amoraic comments on mSan 4:5 contains two apparently unreconciled views of the Divine reaction to the demise of the wicked, the Bavli turns this material into a dialectical sequence. Thus, originally, the comment on the verse from 1 Kings attributed to R. Aha b. Hinina (אחא בר חננא – a name which looks suspiciously close to “” אחאב רני רינה as indeed is made clear in a variant preserved in geniza fragment CUL: T-S Misc. 28.201) apparently refers to God commanding rejoicing at the demise of the wicked Ahav. Notwithstanding the vocalization of MS Herzog, perhaps originally the term was to be read רנו רינה and similarly represent a regressive assimilation, now of the פיעל צווי form רננו. Either way, the Bavli explicitly interrogates this midrashic understanding of 1 Kings, since in two places God is seen as not rejoicing at the downfall of the wicked. The Bavli’s answer, based on Deut 28:63, now works perfectly. God himself does not rejoice, but he causes others to rejoice – precisely as we see in the midrashic reading of 1 Kings 22:36 explicitly preserved in the Yerushalmi though only residually in the Bavli.
In short, we have a passage at bSan 39b that seems to, artfully, make use of a cryptic Palestinian text that juxtaposes God’s command to rejoice at Ahav the wicked’s death with his lack of joy at Moav’s defeat. This is turned into a series of questions that clarify where Divine joy at the downfall of the wicked is to be located – not within the godhead itself, rather in divine encouragement to rejoice. A philosophically fascinating proposition.
At last, this sequence intersects with bMeg 10b, where the citation of Deuteronomy 28:63 as a frightening petihta to Esther seems to elicit the need to ‘soften’ the troubling notion that God Himself rejoiced at the near destruction of the Jews in the Purim story. No, God Himself did not rejoice. But he did encourage others to do so in carrying out their awful, destructive task.
Purim Day, Thursday, March 8, 2012
Modiin, Israel
Anyone on the inside knows that academia in general is full of intrigue, that Jewish studies is really one big ‘Spy vs. Spy’ episode, and that the Talmud Department is, well, the stuff of an oscar-nominated film.
This one is really too good to make up. The Talmud Blog’s most connected, most secretive informant, BM, who has made a name for himself in Jewish studies in every so many ways, just emailed me that a missing Daf from tractate Megilla of the Babylonian Talmud has just been discovered. This of course is from smack dab in the middle of the Babylonian Esther Midrash, and it certainly fills in a lot of missing blanks. It was discovered by an accomplished, traditional Jerusalem scholar, AB. I know what you’re thinking, another Friedlander Yerushalmi on Kodashim. But THIS, in fact, is the most exciting news in the field, even more than Menachem Kahana waving around the title page of some secret, Jerusalemite manuscript catalog. So go ahead, scroll down.
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