Aphrodite and the Rabbis

by Burton L. Visotzky

  This rule seems counterintuitive. I might expect that unfitness should characterize unwanted books. Yet the rabbis wished to protect Jewish sacred texts from stains, book-worms, and vermin. To do so they declared that sacred texts would henceforth “render the hands ritually unfit” if they were touched. In the rabbinic mind-set, no one whose hands were unfit would then eat food when handling books, since by merely touching the food, it also became unfit—and therefore forbidden to consume. This prohibition kept people from eating anywhere near biblical texts. The result of affording this extraordinary degree of protection means that any book that “renders the hands ritually unfit” is considered canonical or sacred to the rabbis. The Mishnah cannot resist taking a poke at Homer in the contrast they make. The Torah is sacred, which must mean then that Homer is, in essence, secular and presumably not revered. So there!

  In truth, the works of Homer were revered by the Greeks much as was the Torah by the rabbis. The Palestinian Talmud (Sanhedrin 10:1, 28a) to some degree recognizes this when it declares that reading Homer is permissible. Yet the rabbis’ ambivalence is apparent when they explain that one who reads Homer is not reading a forbidden document, but rather it is like “reading a secular document.”

  In other Jewish legal contexts, Homer’s “secular” nature is contrasted by the rabbis to the sacred nature of Jewish texts. On the Sabbath, it is forbidden to carry objects from a private domain into the public domain. “But what if there is a fire on Shabbat?” the rabbis ask. Their answer is that the Bible must be saved. The Babylonian Talmud (Hullin 60b, following the manuscript readings) goes so far as to say that there are many verses of Scripture that seem random and uninspired and so might be thought appropriate “to burn as one would allow the books of Homer to burn” and not be saved on Shabbat. Yet they rule that in the end, all verses of Hebrew Scripture are essential Torah and must be saved, while Homer, alas, may not be saved. I think we can infer from this ruling that there were Jewish institutions that had both Torah scrolls as well as scrolls of Homer housed within them!

  Finally, in a poignant short narrative, the medieval Midrash to Psalms (1:8) imagines King David, purported author of all of the Psalms, yearning that his poetry will “be studied like the Mishnah is studied, and not merely like the songs of Homer.” What a lovely anachronism. David yearns for his poetry to be studied like the Mishnah, which in fact was composed twelve hundred years later than Psalms. What do all three works—Psalms, Mishnah, and the epics of Homer—have in common? They were regarded by their communities as sacred texts, each in its own fashion. And each was recited publicly, which is to say chanted aloud by memory.

  I told you the story about Bar Kappara and his public recitation of three hundred fox fables to spoil the feast that was given to appease him. The rabbis used fox fables, Aesop’s fables, animal narratives, motifs from the Alexander romances, snippets of Homeric narrative, whatever it took to get their point across. Of course, even while they employed well-known Greek fables, they also drew heavily on the store of fabulous animal narratives in the Bible, which includes both a talking snake (Gen. 3) and a talking donkey (Num. 22).

  One of the richest means the rabbis used to explicate complex ideas in simple, concrete, oral performance was the king parable. When the rabbis spoke about God, they did not employ lofty theology. Instead, they invoked a king parable, which opens with the phrase: “Let me give you an analogy. What does this matter resemble? A king of flesh and blood who . . .” There are hundreds of these king parables found through centuries of rabbinic literature. They provide a necessary rabbinic analogy to God, because unlike the Greeks, the rabbis did not develop an abstract theological vocabulary. Instead, they compared God to a human king, saying how God was either like or unlike that human monarch. Thus they were able to explain otherwise complicated notions in a memorable form. They also invoked these king parables to explicate verses of Scripture.

  Most rabbinic king parables had two parts (not unlike the fables of Aesop): first the parable (mashal) and then the moral to the story or analogue to the parable (nimshal). What is astonishing about the rabbinic composition of these king parables is that the overwhelming majority of them have fairly precise parallels in Greco-Roman literature. In 1903 a scholar named Ignaz Ziegler published an almost seven-hundred-page book laying out the rabbinic king parables and their Greco-Roman parallels. Even more amazing than the man’s thoroughness and breadth of knowledge was the fact that so many of the literary parallels were from Greco-Roman historical literature. In other words, the rabbis drew analogies to God by talking about the emperors and local Roman governors of their own eras. This is a daring means of expressing their theology; and it revealed the authors of these king parables to be utterly conversant with local Roman news. It is like a rabbi or minister preaching her sermon by making an analogy from the New York Times, if you could imagine that.

  Two examples will suffice. The first is a commentary on the first verse of Genesis (which I will translate following its original Hebrew word order, so you get what the rabbinic Midrash is driving at):

  “In the beginning / created / God / the heaven / and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). Rabbi Yudan quoted Aquila, “ ‘This one is fitting to be called God.’ In the way of the world, a king of flesh and blood is praised [mitkales] in a city before he has built public baths [demosiaot] and before he has given them waterworks [phraktasia].”

  Shimeon ben Azzai said “[a king of] flesh and blood mentions his name and then his works [ktisma]: so and so augustali, the most illustrious [ho lamprotatos]. But the Blessed Holy One is not so, rather only once God has created the needs of the world does God mention his name, ‘In the beginning created,’ and only then does it say ‘God.’ ” (Gen. Rabbah 1:12)

  I am fortunate that Rabbi Lieberman unpacked this story in detail. First, let us note that one of the sages quoted is named Aquila. This is not only a good Greek name, but this Aquila was a convert from a pagan religion who is reputed to have translated the Torah into Greek. All of the words above in italics are, in fact, Greek words transliterated in the Hebrew text. When the king is praised, the term used, mitkales, comes specifically from praise of the Roman emperor. As soon as the Roman emperor appeared in a town, folks lined the road shouting, “Ho Kalos!” (This one is Good!). Aquila says of God, “This one is fitting to be called God.” In so doing he contrasts God with the flesh-and-blood Roman emperor—who more often than not was deified by the Roman senate. The usual public works bestowed upon a town are listed: public baths and waterworks. Imperial funds or extremely wealthy townsfolk paid for the aqueducts and the baths in most towns; they were simply too expensive to build otherwise. These public works, called ktisma in Greek, were uniformly praised and listed in detail on imperial statues throughout the Roman world.

  When Shimeon ben Azzai talks about how the Roman grandees are listed along with their titles, he may as well be reading from monumental inscriptions or perhaps even from a synagogue donor plaque. To be called an augustali (minor Augustus) was not just idle praise; it was a title bestowed by the Roman emperor and noted on statues and tombs. The same is true of the title “most illustrious.” In Latin this would be a vir clarissimus, and in Greek it would be ho lamprotatos, just like in our Midrash. The rabbis took note of the world around them and knew who was who. The title lamprotatos actually appears in the Greek donor mosaic of the Hammat Tiberias synagogue!

  The rabbis not only knew who was who, they also knew what was what. The same fifth-century Midrash tells the following story to comment on Genesis 2:1, “The heaven and earth were finished.”

  Rabbi Euphos expounded in Antioch, “finished” means smitten or put an end to. This is like a king [of flesh and blood] who enters a town and the townsfolk praise [kilsu] him, and their praises [kilusin] pleased him. So he increased the races and the chariots [ayniokhos]. Later they angered him, so he decreased the races and the chariots [ayniokhos].

  Our Rabbi Eu
phos (a Greek name meaning “good light”) is in the city of Antioch, which we visited earlier. There, he teaches about how God “finished off” the works of creation, much like the emperor brought an end to the imperial games and fired the charioteers. Again, the terminology is in Greek, transliterated into the Hebrew text. A fourth- to fifth-century Roman history work (Scriptores Historiae Augustae) reports that the citizens of Antioch supported a pretender to the throne who sought to overthrow Marcus Aurelius Antoninus and deify himself instead. It states about Antoninus (remember him?), “He nevertheless pardoned the citizens of Antioch . . . but he did abolish their races and public entertainments.” It seems the rabbis’ king parables were ripped from the headlines.

  Greek folk sayings and tales were also among the currency of rabbinic story telling. As a case in point, many rabbinic texts tell the story of a woman who went over to her neighbor’s house so they could bake bread together. Because she was leaving her house, she rolled three coins into her apron, just in case. When they went to knead the dough, however, she put the coins on the counter and accidentally rolled them into the dough. When the bread came out of the oven she took her loaves but then noted that her coins were missing. Her neighbor swore on the life of her son that she did not have the coins. The son died. When the first neighbor went to console her, the foolish mourner brought up the missing coins and swore on the life of her second son. He died. The same thing happened to her third son. The moral to the story is related in Aramaic: “This is what folks say: whether right or wrong, flee from an oath!” (Lev. Rabbah 6:3). The exact same formula is invoked in a collection of Greek proverbs. Folk sayings are fungible from Greek to Aramaic.

  Equestrian Marcus Antoninus—Capitoline Museums, Rome

  Again and again, the rabbis employed the methods of the Roman world they lived in to deliver their Jewish message. Proverbs, rhetoric, fables, interpretation, symposia, narratives: all came directly from the Roman repertoire. Greek and Roman education and culture was as much the turf of the rabbis as the borscht belt was to Jewish comedy. As they themselves might have said, Excelsior!

  Chapter VI

  How Many Languages Does a Jew Need to Know?

  “Ay, he spoke Greek.”

  —SHAKESPEARE, Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene 2

  As a fifteen-year-old, I made my first visit to Israel. I wandered the streets, carefully sounding out the letters on store signs, proud of my ability to read the alphabet and, often enough, translate the words. One sign read in Hebrew, sefarim, and I knew that meant “books.” Another sign read, falafel, which no longer needs translating, although it was a mystery back then. Yet another read, bank, which actually meant “bank.” Kafe meant “café.” And televisia meant “television!” That last sign was a hard nut to crack, for it had so many letters and required pronunciation out loud to reveal its meaning.

  I invoke the ascendancy of English vocabulary in Israel and, while we’re at it, elsewhere around the world as an example by which I can highlight the dominance of Greek in Roman Palestine. The preponderance of English usage points to the outsized influence American culture has today. Given the state of television and Hollywood, this is a decidedly mixed blessing, and I suppose the ancient rabbis might have felt the same way about the Greco-Roman influences, such as theaters and gladiator spectacles. That said, the rabbis were not shy about deploying Greek for the mot juste or using Latin terms when speaking of the military or court system. They achieved a certain je ne sais quoi when they trotted out Greek, much like we do when using French or, perhaps still, even Latin. As a lawyer might say, res ipsa loquitur; it speaks for itself.

  But just how loudly did Greek and Latin speak within the ancient Jewish communities? Did every Jew know Greek? Or perhaps most rabbis lamented, like Shakespeare’s Casca, “but, for mine own part, it was Greek to me.” All told, we are talking about thousands of Greek words entering the rabbinic lexicon—enough to make it clear that every rabbi must have known at least some Greek, even those who were not fluent. Still other rabbis and Jews of Roman Palestine, we shall see, most probably spoke Greek as their primary language. Roman Palestine was a trilingual society in the first two centuries CE, with more Hebrew in the south, more Aramaic in the villages, and more Greek in the big cities. Over time, Hebrew usage diminished and became more academic, so that the concentration of Jews in the Galilee during the third through sixth centuries CE spoke primarily Aramaic and Greek, depending on where they lived and to whom they were speaking.

  The synagogues of Roman Palestine were not exactly like the ones we attend today, even though I might argue that in our own sanctuaries there is a similar mixture of Hebrew and English, with the mix shifting in ratio from Orthodox to Reform synagogues. Not so very long ago, Yiddish was a third language in the American synagogue linguistic mix. But, as I move away from this inexact analogy, I will argue that the rabbis of the Talmud and Midrash—that is, the Jewish literature that still exists from the ancient period—had far less to do with synagogue life than do rabbis now. There is a growing consensus that the rabbis named in ancient Jewish literature were primarily academics, confined to their disciple circles. Synagogue leadership depended on others: some who were laity (like today’s synagogue board members) and others who were perhaps some kind of clergy (but we do not know much more about them). These synagogue leaders spoke Aramaic and Greek. In the previous chapter alone we saw the use of Greek words like ho kalos (the Good); augustali (most august); ho lamprotatos (most illustrious), and this last example came from a synagogue floor in Tiberias, a large population and rabbinic center in the Galilee.

  In nearby Caesarea, the Talmud (p. Sota 7:1, 21b) reports that a congregation not only had Greek inscriptions but recited the Shema in Greek! This is worth notice not only because recitation of the Shema is central to Jewish liturgy, but also because it is made up of passages from the Torah itself, so we might have expected the synagogue members in Caesarea to know the prayer in the Hebrew original. When Rabbi Levi sought to put a stop to the practice, Rabbi Yosé rebuked him and said, “Just because they cannot read Hebrew letters you wish them to not recite at all? Rather, they should recite it in whatever language they know.”

  I would have expected Hebrew from the Jews at least in their prayers and their public reading of what is, after all, Hebrew Scriptures. Yet in a synagogue in the Land of Israel, in a major center of rabbinic learning, there was a congregation of Jews who prayed in Greek because they could not, in fact, read Hebrew. Nor, apparently, could the Jews of Caesarea even recite in Hebrew by memory, like a bar mitzvah boy today might, as they did not speak the language sufficiently to do so.

  The same passage of the Talmud makes clear that some rabbis thought one should pray in synagogues in Greek or in whatever language they “could make known their hearts’ desires.” I assume that the rabbis thought God could understand Greek as well as Hebrew. But still, I find it somewhat surprising that in the heart of the Land of Israel there was such ignorance of Hebrew. While I am used to such a lament here in America, I did not expect to hear rabbis kvetching about lack of Hebrew back in the fourth century CE in the Galilee. Further, the Talmud says that Jews should recite the blessings after eating food “in whatever language they employed to acknowledge the One Whom they were blessing.” If the Jews did not use Hebrew in synagogues, there was little chance they would do so when praying at home. But this rabbinic concession to Greek usage in prayers indicates just how much Greek outweighed Hebrew in the Land of Israel.

  The case for using Greek during prayer goes further. As in water-parched California, the Jews of the Land of Israel were somewhat obsessive about rain. In their Hebrew prayers they prayed for “rain in its season” or for vivifying “dew” during the hot summer months, as Jews still do today in drought-stricken areas. But the mid-third century Galilean rabbi Resh Lakish noted (p. Shevuot 3:10, 34d), “One who sees it is beginning to rain and says kyrie poly brekson, is taking an oath
in vain. . . .” You may infer from the word kyrie at the beginning of that short prayer that this entreaty was uttered in Greek. Resh Lakish declares it “an oath in vain” not because it is in Greek, but because once the rain has begun, the die has been cast. To pray for the nature of the rain to change from light rain, say, to abundant rain would be to take God’s name in vain. Indeed, the Greek of the too-eager petitioner means: “God [kyrie] let much [poly] rain fall.” You can almost hear The Band sing it: “rainmaker . . . let these crops grow tall.”

  In the Land of Israel in the Roman era, then, the language of prayer was often the primary spoken language of the one who was praying. This was recognized by the rabbis, who, while they preferred to pray in Hebrew—what they called The Holy Tongue—accepted that prayers should be uttered in the language of “ones heart’s desire.” Practically, this meant Greek for the larger urban centers.

  Oddly enough, a Greek word or two has even snuck into the Hebrew prayer books that traditional Jews use to this day, whether here in America or in the modern State of Israel. When the standard prayers were being formulated, the emperor was the central a figure in the Roman world. So there are many instances of the rabbis employing the vocabulary of imperial etiquette. When the emperor visited a town, the citizens came out to greet him, shouting, Ho Kalos! Whether it was true or not, they were proclaiming of their ruler that he was “the Good.” This same proclamation, Ho Kalos, has made its way into rabbinic Hebrew and appears in Greek, conjugated as though it were a Hebrew verb; it appears in Jewish prayer books as ulekaleis, part of a string of verbs with which Jews declare the desire to praise, extol, glorify, and proclaim the Goodness of God.

  I was taught many years ago that this strangely Hebraized loanword from Greek is one of but two in the formal Hebrew liturgy. The other loanword from Greek found in the Jewish prayer book is invoked only on certain fast days. On those occasions when some historical tragedy is recalled and mourned, Jews bemoan that they were overrun by legionot, the Roman legions. It is an irony that even when the rabbis recall Rome as the ancient enemy, the Greek language of the majority society seeps into the otherwise Hebrew liturgy.