He replied, “One may not reply [to a question of Jewish law] in the bathhouse.”
When they exited, he said, “I did not come on to her territory, rather she came on to mine. It was not the case that they said, ‘Let us make a bathhouse as an adornment to Aphrodite.’ Rather they said, ‘Let us make an Aphrodite [statue] as an adornment for the bathhouse.’ Another thing, even if they said to you, ‘We will give you much wealth,’ you still would not enter your pagan temple naked or polluted, nor would you urinate in it. Yet this [statue of Aphrodite] stands before the gutter and everyone pees right in front of her!”
“The prohibition is only regarding images of the gods that are venerated as gods. That which is not venerated as a god is permissible to enjoy.”
Rabbi Gamaliel makes his point sharply. First, he displays his Jewish piety by refusing to engage in “Torah talk” while naked in the Roman bathhouse. Next, he disparages the behavior of those pagans in the baths toward the statue there. He demeans the questioner’s own religious piety, even as the oddly named Proculus son of Philosophus, presumably meant to represent a knowledgeable pagan, invokes a verse of Jewish Scripture. Finally, Gamaliel pronounces a general principle that became the norm for accepting pictorial art in Jewish settings, despite the so-called prohibitions of the Second Commandment:
“You shall not make a sculptured image or any likeness of what is in the heavens above or on the earth below . . . you shall not bow down to them or worship them.” (Ex. 20: 4–5)
As Rabbi Gamaliel interprets it, only those images that are actually designed as objects of worship are forbidden. Sometimes a statue is just a statue.
Mosaic Aphrodite in Sepphoris/Diocaesarea
The rabbis also loved telling tales of the Roman demimonde. These stories caricatured the Romans by focusing on their seamy side. In the earliest rabbinic commentary to the biblical book of Numbers (Sifre, Shelah, #115), the rabbis gleefully narrate a heartwarming story about a happy hooker. Not surprisingly, the love goddess Aphrodite again appears.
Numbers 15:37–41 serves as the final section of the daily Shema prayer, and so the paragraph commanding Jews to wear fringes, tsitsit, on the corners of their garments was very well known. The last verse of the paragraph begins and ends with the phrase, “I am the Lord your God.” This is just enough information for you to follow the story and get the punch line of this rabbinic joke.
Rabbi Nathan said, “Each and every commandment in the Torah has its reward. We can learn this from the commandment of tsitsit. It once happened that there was a man who was very careful regarding the commandment of tsitsit. He heard there was a prostitute in a harbor town who charged four hundred gold pieces as her price. He sent her four hundred gold pieces and made his appointment for her services. When the day came, he went and sat in her antechamber. Her maid came and told her that the man who had the appointment had arrived. She said, ‘Let him enter.’
“When he entered she spread before him seven beds of silver and a bed of gold at the very top. Between each one was a bench [subsellium] of silver, and the topmost was gold. But when he came to do the deed, his four tsitsit arose like witnesses and slapped him in the face!
“He immediately disengaged and sat down on the ground. She, too, climbed down to the ground and sat next to him. She said, ‘Agapé of Rome! I will not allow you to leave unless you tell me what flaw you saw in me!’
“He replied, ‘By the Temple service! There is no one as beautiful as you in the world. But the Lord our God commanded us a simple commandment wherein it is twice written, “I am the Lord your God.” The first time is to teach that God will reward us, and the second time teaches that God will also punish us.’
“She said, ‘By the Temple service! I will not allow you to leave until you write down your name, your city, and the name of the rabbinic academy where you learn Torah.’
“So he wrote what she desired and went on his way. She then arose and dispersed all of her wealth: one third to the government, one third she gave to the poor, and the final third she took with her to the rabbinic academy of Rabbi Hiyya. She asked him, ‘Rabbi, will you convert me?’
“He asked her, ‘Have you set your eye on one of my students?’
“She handed him the note that she was holding. Rabbi Hiyya called his student and said to him, ‘Rise now and take what you contracted for. When you first contracted for her it was forbidden. Now that she is converting, she shall be permitted to you.’
“If this is the reward for the commandment of tsitsit in this world, in the World to Come, I cannot even imagine!”
The joke demands some commentary, for even with a clever punch line, it remains a subtle narrative about the marriage of Judaism and Hellenism, both literally and figuratively. As we have come to expect, there are Greek words dotted through the story. The first, subsellium, is a technical term in both Greek and Latin for a small bench or step stool—the means of ascending from one bed to the next. When the beautiful woman is rejected after the bizarre comic incident with the ritual fringes (think Three Stooges slapstick), she uses a vow formula, swearing: “Agapé of Rome!” Agapé means love, in this case, a nickname for the love goddess Aphrodite. Our pretty prostitute takes her vow on the name of her patroness/goddess, while the hapless rabbinical student takes his vow “by the Temple service.” His is a remarkable vow, given the reality of the Jerusalem Temple lying in ruins. Perhaps it represents the state of his male, er, ego at that moment.
Nevertheless, following their joint witness of what they take to be the mini-miracle of the slapping tsitsit, the prostitute herself is moved to switch her allegiance and she, too, vows “by the Temple service.” This is the first step in her conversion process. Next she depletes her great wealth by paying off the government in bribes to allow her to give up her profession—no doubt prostitution was a lucrative form of bribery income for the local officials. She spends one-third of her wealth on the poor—a benefaction common enough in the Jewish community but virtually unheard of among pagans. Finally, she comes to Rabbi Hiyya, who sagely discerns what has happened.
Every time my own rabbinical students read this story in its original Hebrew they stop at this point in the narrative and finally declare it too unbelievable. They simply cannot credit that the student who hired the prostitute would be stupid enough to give her his real name, let alone the name of the seminary where he studied! In our ancient rabbinic fantasy, however, Rabbi Hiyya not only susses out what happened, but then turns the woman over to the young man whose tsistit reminded him that the paragraph of Numbers says,
“These shall be your tsitsit, that you may look at them and recall all of God’s commandments and observe them, so that you do not go astray after your heart and eyes, lusting after them.” (Num. 15:39)
The Hebrew word I translate in the biblical verse as “lusting” shares the same Hebrew root as the word for “prostitute” in our story. Although Rabbi Hiyya nowhere actually says his disciple may now marry the new convert, everything we know about rabbinic morality makes it clear that this must be the end of the story. The devotee to Aphrodite will come into God’s house. Greco-Roman Hellenism will enter the rabbinic academy and be permitted. They will happily marry; and in the world to come, who can even imagine?!
Chapter VII
Love of Wisdom and Love of Law: In Pursuit of Philosophy and Justice
It wasn’t all love all the time among the rabbis. Their culture was based on disputation—on virtually every one of the over five thousand pages of the Babylonian Talmud* you will find rabbis arguing with one another. Theirs was—in a memorable phrase from Pirke Avot, a tractate of the Mishnah, which is the backbone of the Talmud—“an argument for Heaven’s sake.”
The stakes of the argument varied. Study was a form of divine service; and to the rabbis, argument in study was as much a way of sharpening the intellect God had granted them as it was of rea
ching a result. Rabbi Hama bar Hanina commented on the verse that reads: “‘As iron sharpens iron’ (Prov. 27:17)—just as one knife blade sharpens against another, so do two disciples of the sages sharpen one another” (Gen. Rabbah 69:28). For the most part, rabbis embraced dialectic—it was a path to exploring the parameters of Jewish law, while at the same time a path to knowing the One Who Spoke and brought the world into being. The dialectical mode of reasoning was often the end in and of itself. The rabbis reveled in what Greeks and Romans called Socratic dialogue. Argument, dispute, dialectic—these were the closest the rabbis came to philosophy, per se.
There were times when the stakes of the argument seemed very high. Early in the history of the rabbinic movement, arguments between prominent rabbis sometimes threatened to bring down the entire enterprise. It was one thing to strenuously argue a point. But there were occasions when the argument verged on the point of no return. Haven’t we all found ourselves at that precipice at one time or another? Sometimes, we do not even recall what the argument was about when it is finally over. But sometimes, arguments lead to a rupture in relations—and some of these can last many years. It’s hard to walk back words spoken in anger.
We also know of political arguments, in which debate is a struggle over minutiae that seem to grow larger with every second they are disputed. In the very first generation of the rabbinic movement, in the aftermath of the destruction of Jerusalem, such an argument broke out between two of the great leaders of the rabbis. The disagreement quickly escalated to become a matter of power politics, which had potentially dire consequences for the survival of Judaism. On one side of the argument was a family dynasty: old money, well-connected, led by the brash young patriarch Rabbi Gamaliel. His opponent, Rabbi Yehoshua, was elderly, wise, and well-loved by his colleagues. He earned a paltry income digging peat moss to make charcoal and was, in theory, the second in command to the patriarch. Their argument would be akin to the president and vice president of the United States having a public dispute.
The debate was about how and when to proclaim the not-yet-regulated Jewish calendar. The year’s cycle of months was based on the moon. Since it could be seen in the sky, it seemed a fairly easy thing to declare the new moon every month. This declaration determined on what day any holiday in that month might occur. Once witnesses came to the court and testified that they had seen the new moon, it was duly sanctified by the courts. This ancient method is still used by Muslims to determine the Islamic calendar today. The idea of having witnesses testify to what they saw in the sky predated the ability of ancient Jewish astronomers to calculate the calendar. The trouble came when the witnesses were less than reliable about what they saw. Let’s let the Mishnah tell the story:
Once two witnesses came and said, “We saw it early morning in the East, and early evening in the West.”
Rabbi Yohanan ben Nuri said, “They are false witnesses.” Yet when they came to Yavneh, Rabbi Gamaliel accepted their testimony.
In another instance witnesses testified, “We saw it in its time, but on the night of its ‘birthing’ it was not seen.” Rabbi Gamaliel accepted them.
Dosa ben Harcinus said, “They are false witnesses! How can one testify that a woman has given birth and on the morrow her belly is still between her teeth?”
Rabbi Yehoshua said to him, “I agree with you.”
The quiet agreement of Rabbi Yehoshua with his colleague Dosa sets the conflict aflame. Now there is a very public power struggle between the two leading rabbis.
First, let me explain the text of this conflict, so we can see what they are arguing about so passionately. To see the new moon, you would ideally witness the thin sliver of the old moon one night, on the bottom left of the waning moon, and the thin sliver of the new moon the very next night, at the bottom right of the newly waxing moon.
The first set of witnesses said they saw the new moon in the early morning with the sunrise. Looking east, into the sun, they simply could not have seen the thin sliver of the new moon. Its narrow crescent would have been indiscernible in the glare of the rising sun. The same is true that night—they claim to be looking west into the setting sun, so they could not have seen the slight arc of the newly “born” moon.
The second set of witnesses offered even worse testimony. They said they saw the old moon but then said that on the night when they should have seen the new moon, “it was not seen” (I love their passive voice: mistakes were made). This is the worst possible testimony they could have offered! They basically said in court: we saw nothing. Therefore, one should conclude, they have no testimony. Yet Gamaliel said, “Hey, close enough. Let’s call it a new moon.” No wonder Rabbi Dosa not only called the witnesses false but piquantly described the birthing moon as though it were a birthing mother—you can’t say it gave birth if the next day she is still carrying so high that her belly is, as it were, between her teeth. No baby, no new moon, no new month. And Yehoshua, who also had had enough of Gamaliel’s shenanigans, sided with Rabbi Dosa, publicly disagreeing with Gamaliel. This was a strong challenge to his power, as it was over a potent issue—regulating the calendar and holidays.
If it were a game of poker, Gamaliel would be deemed to be holding a very bad hand. Yet Gamaliel, player that he was, turned and commanded Rabbi Yehoshua regarding the month of Tishri, when the holiday of Yom Kippur (the holiest day of the Jewish calendar) fell on the 10th of the month:
I decree that you must appear before me with your walking staff and wallet on Yom Kippur as it falls according to your calculation.
Talk about cojones! The man had nothing but deuces, if that, and he commanded Yehoshua to show up before him on the very day Yehoshua deemed it to be Yom Kippur! It was as though Rabbi Yehoshua determined that the holy day of Yom Kippur was on Tuesday and, according to Rabbi Gamaliel, it should be on Thursday. Gamaliel commanded Yehoshua to show up on Tuesday as though it were just another work day. This was pure power politics. Gamaliel was really making Yehoshua knuckle under to his authority. But the way he did so is curious. Why did he command that Yehoshua appear with “staff and wallet” on Yom Kippur? Why not say, “Let’s have lunch together” on a day when eating was expressly forbidden? Of all the things he chose to command, why these two things? It is true that one should not handle money on Yom Kippur, but it is a minor prohibition. And there are surely rabbinic legal circumstances under which it would have been permissible for Yehoshua to carry his walking stick—for example, within a walled city or enclosure. What is the significance, then, of commanding him to show up on Yom Kippur carrying his staff and wallet?
Here, the Greek philosophers come to our assistance, for the staff and wallet were the universally recognized symbols of their calling. Diogenes Laertius, in his Greek work Lives of Eminent Philosophers, writes of Antisthenes, “And he was the first . . . to take up a staff and a wallet. . . .” The great Cynic philosopher Crates writes to a new mother about her baby, “Rock him in a cradle . . . dress him not with a sword . . . but with a staff and a cloak and a wallet, which can guard men better than swords.” In his turn, Diogenes the Cynic writes to his own father, “Do not be upset, father, that I . . . carry a wallet over my shoulders and have a staff in my hand.” Rabbi Gamaliel is commanding Rabbi Yehoshua to carry the very signs that identify him as a rabbi and sage, that is to say, a philosopher. Gamaliel forces Rabbi Yehoshua to kowtow publicly bearing the symbolic garb of his office.
Let’s leave behind the new moon and even the politics of the first generation of rabbis. But just to satisfy your curiosity, know this: Gamaliel won this argument when the great yet conservative Rabbi Aqiba sided with him on this issue. Aqiba said, “We cannot question authority as we will undermine the entire edifice. We may as well question Moses’ authority.” Rather than risk a split in the rabbinic community just as it was gaining its voice, Aqiba counseled acquiescence. So Rabbi Yehoshua and his colleagues lost the day, and Yehoshua appeared before Gamaliel
as commanded. But you should also know that when Gamaliel publicly humiliated Rabbi Yehohshua yet again, the other rabbis deposed Gamaliel from office!
Like the Stoics, Epicureans, Neo-Platonists, Cynics, and the like, the rabbis lived their philosophy and borrowed both Greco-Roman philosophical garb and ideas to present their ideology as one that Jews would adhere to. In the early centuries of the rabbis, they consistently presented themselves as the type of intellectual group that Romans found comfortably familiar and respectable. Philosophers not only were distinctive in their modes of living and their dress, but they proudly advertised their intellectual lineage, by listing their teachers and their teachers’ teachers to all who came to hear them. Indeed, the rabbinic tractate Pirke Avot produced a similar “chain of rabbinic tradition” in order to buttress the intellectual fitness of Rabbi Yehoshua and the other disciples of Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai to lead the rabbinic movement, in contrast to the dynastic succession of the Gamaliel family. In trotting out this “chain of tradition,” the Mishnah is actually adopting yet another Greco-Roman philosophical method.
Crates the Philosopher—Museo della Terme, Rome
Pirke Avot opens its “chain of tradition” by stating,
Moses received the Torah from Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua.
Joshua to the Elders.
The Elders to the Prophets.
The Prophets transmitted it to the men of the great assembly. . . .
Simeon the Righteous was among the remnant of the great assembly. . . .
Antigonus of Sokho received it from Simeon the Righteous. . . .
Yosé ben Yoezer of Tzerida and Yosé ben Yohanan of Jerusalem received it from them. . . .
Hillel and Shammai received it from them. . . .
Aphrodite and the Rabbis Page 13