Who Knew?
Page 3
In the contest of wills, the Hellenists had on their side most of the money of the Jewish community. They also had a close relationship with the Greeks, who had begun the practice of deposing the high priests and installing priests who were more in keeping with their taste.
For their part, the Hasidim had a fierce commitment to traditional Judaism. Their huge following was increased by the amei ha-aretz, the ordinary poor and unlearned people of the land. It was this group who were most disaffected by the tax-collecting Hellenists, since taxation fell most heavily on the poor.3
As the conflict continued, the Hellenists began to realize that they were on the losing end in their struggle. In order to bolster their position, they appealed to the Greek king Antiochus.4 His response was a series of laws that virtually outlawed Judaism. Circumcision became a capital crime; the Temple was dedicated to Zeus; and the puppet priests abolished the traditional sacrifices and required the pious Jews “to make a symbolic sacrifice” on altars they regarded as pagan.5
When Jews refused to be subjected to these rituals, some were killed by the authorities. One such martyrdom took place in the town of Modiin. Protests grew into violence and a revolution commenced, culminating in the restoration of Jewish sovereignty, the cleansing of the Temple of its pagan sacrileges, rededication of the Temple, and the institution of the festival of Hanukah.6
________________
1. The anti-Hellenist second-century BCE group known as the Hasidim is not to be confused with today’s Hasidic movement, which originated in eighteenth-century Europe.
2. Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (New York: Harper and Row, 1987), 99, 101.
3. Ibid., 101–103.
4. Max Radin, The Jews among the Greeks and Romans (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1916), 124, 137.
5. Johnson, A History of the Jews, 104..
6. Ibid.
...a Jewish author’s work was set to music in many churches
Yeshua Ben Sira was a Jewish author who lived in Jerusalem circa 180–175 BCE. His work was written in Hebrew and translated into Greek by his grandson in Egypt, who added a preface. The Wisdom of Ben Sira (also called Sirach or the Book of Ecclesiasticus) is a text which was considered for inclusion in the Tanach (the Hebrew Bible, consisting of the Five Books of Moses, the Prophets, and the Writings), but it was instead relegated to the noncanonical writings called the Apocrypha.1 Three major works of Ben Sira are The Priestly Office, Now Praise the Lord, and Let Us Now Praise Men.
Ben Sira’s work This Is the High Priest has been set to music and has been used in Catholic churches for over four hundred years to honor popes and other high church officials.
Now Praise the Lord, a short hymnic passage, was adopted by the Anglican Book of Common Prayer more than four hundred fifty years ago and has been set to music by many composers in the English-speaking world. It has also appeared in German prayer books, and the composer Johann Sebastian Bach has used the chorale melody in his Cantata Number 92.2
It seems that this great Jewish purveyor of faith and wisdom is far more popular among Christian churchmen than among his own people.
________________
1. Manfred R. Lehmann, “The Book of Ben Sira,” http://www.manfredlehmann.com/news/ news_detail.cgi/141/0.
2. Baathia Bayer, “The Wisdom of Ben Sira,” Encyclopedia Judaica, CD-ROM Edition (Jerusalem: Keter, 1977).
...a devout pagan tried to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem
Following the death of Roman emperor Flavius Julius Constantius II in 361 CE, his nephew Julian the Apostate succeeded to the throne. Julian was referred to as an apostate because he was critical of the Christian Church and had abandoned Christianity in favor of a sort of modified paganism.
Julian wished “to protect the oppressed of all nations and religions, to promote the well-being of all his subjects...”1 This attitude would certainly put him in conflict with the Christians within the Roman Empire. Julian believed in the God of the Jews as being one of a number of gods, and he subscribed to the notion that this god had chosen the Jews as His very own people.
One of his first acts as emperor was to dispatch a letter to the Jewish congregations in which he reviled the practice of religious persecution and rescinded the special taxes levied against the Jews in favor of the Catholic Church. He further demonstrated his goodwill toward the Jews by allocating funds, materials, and workers to begin the reconstruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.
Work was actually begun on restoring the ruined Temple. However, when the workers began to clear away the rubble from the previous structure, a series of fires erupted, taking the lives of some of the workers. Historians generally attribute the fires to suppressed gases suddenly coming into contact with the air. Devout Christians attributed the fires to God showing his displeasure at the process of restoring the Temple of the hated Jews.
When Julian went off to war against the Persians, the work completely stopped. Julian was killed on the battlefield by an arrow, probably launched by one of the disaffected Christian soldiers in his own army. So ended the two-year reign (361–363) of Julian the Apostate. Christian emperors again ruled the empire and returned to their habitual persecution of Jews and other non-Christians.
________________
1. Professor Heinrich Graetz, History of the Jews, vol. 2 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1893), 595–600.
...Jewish blacksmiths were blamed for insanity
Of all the reasons put forth for hating Jews, the most bizarre is being a blacksmith. In the early part of the sixth century, there was a sizable colony of Jewish blacksmiths in the country of Yemen. Because of their metalworking skills, they were considered sorcerers and were scorned by both their Christian and pagan neighbors.
Due to their close proximity, the Jewish smiths of Ethiopia and the Arabian Peninsula shared a similar pariah status. At that time of great susceptibility to superstition, metalworkers were associated with secrecy and sexual taboos.1
The Ethiopians had a word for the Beta Israel blacksmiths. They called them buda, possessors of the evil eye and Satanic powers. For centuries they had been accused of “being cannibalistic hyenas bred in hell.”2 Right up into the twentieth century, Jews in Ethiopia were blamed for spreading “buda-sickness,” poisoning souls, possessing young women, and causing blindness, consumption, insanity, and death. This is all directly related to blacksmithing and Jews.3
In the rare case of an Ethiopian Jew attempting to better his lot by converting to Christianity, he usually found himself worse off than before. To the Amhara, the people of northern Ethiopia, he was just a baptized Falasha4 and was therefore to be shunned. Rarely would he be able to find an Amharic girl who would consent to marry him. Worst of all, his fellow Jews would have nothing to do with him.5
By the late 1970s and early 1980s, most of the remaining Falashas in Ethiopia had immigrated to Israel, were free of the blacksmithing stigma, and were living as Jews in a free society.
________________
1. Louis Rapoport, The Lost Jews: Last of the Ethiopian Falashas (New York: Stein and Day, 1983), 99.
2. Ibid., 100.
3. Ibid.
4. “Falasha” is the name given to the black Jews of Ethiopia.
5. Rapoport, The Lost Jews, 168.
...Jewish women’s lib is two thousand years old
Because twelfth-century minors were not permitted to enter into contracts, it was commonplace for fathers of underage girls to enter into marriage contracts on their behalf. Very often, this practice led to great controversy in the family, especially if the girl had not been informed of the match.
While Muslim law was clearly on the side of the father in any dispute, it was not so among Jews. A marriage contract on behalf of a minor child was held in abeyance until the girl, now grown, would say, “I wish to marry this man.” If such a declaration was not forthcoming from the young woman, the marriage would not take place.1
Moses Maimonides himself came down
on both sides of the issue and said, “Although a father is permitted to contract a marriage for his minor daughter with whomever he likes, it is improper to do so, for our sages have disapproved of this.”2
Lest we get the idea that the champions of the rights of women are a twelfth-century phenomenon, we need to go back to the first-century teachings of Rabbi Akiva. When called upon to rule on whether a working wife’s earnings should belong to her husband, Rabbi Akiva put women’s liberation a giant step down the road to emancipation. While conceding that the wife’s earnings did indeed belong to her husband, he limited the husband’s claim to the cost of her personal upkeep; any additional earnings belong to her.3
Could Akiva’s ruling have been affected by the fact that his wife worked to put him through school?
________________
1. S. D. Goiten, A Mediterranean Society: An Abridgement in One Volume (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 370.
2. Ibid., 371.
3. Simon Noveck, ed., Great Jewish Personalities in Ancient and Medieval Times (Clinton, MA: Pioneer Press, 1959), 141.
WESTERN EUROPE:
Trying to Fit In
...Jews of Spain were expelled at least four times
The Iberian Peninsula was a place where Jews lived and thrived for hundreds of years. However, it was also a place from which Jews were often expelled. In fact, Jews were expelled from or outlawed in Spain at least four times!
In 613 the Visigoth Christians ordered that all Jews must either be baptized or leave the kingdom. In 638 the Sixth Council of Toledo ruled that only Christians might reside in Spain. Many Jews, however, went underground or secretly moved to other parts of Spain.1 Between 672 and 680, Jews were expelled from many parts of Spain. In 681 the Twelfth Council of Toledo ruled that all Jews must accept baptism. Those who refused were to receive various punishments including confiscation of property and/or expulsion. They were also forced to sell their land holdings purchased from Christians at a price fixed by the government.2
In 1146, a fanatic Muslim group called the Almohads conquered much of Spain. Judaism was outlawed and synagogues and yeshivas were closed. Many Jews fled to Christian Spain or became secret Jews.3
As the Christians slowly expelled the Muslims from Spain, and as the various kingdoms of Spain became consolidated under a single ruler, conditions for Jews steadily worsened. The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries saw the long decline of the Jews of Spain. Riots, murders, forced conversions, confiscations, and disputations all led the way toward the final expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492.4 As always, those who became sincere Christians were allowed to stay.
________________
1. “Spain,” Encyclopedia Judaica, CD-ROM Edition (Jerusalem: Keter, 1997), 1.
2. Ibid., 2.
3. Ibid., 4.
4. Ibid., 7–13.
...Christian laws gave new meaning to a Jewish prayer
In ancient days some Jewish people would make a vow that if God would help them out of some difficult straits, they would perform some service to God in return. Since most of these promises were rashly given without adequate thought, the rabbis instituted a prayer entitled Kol Nidre (all the vows) to be said at the beginning of the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) service. This prayer is a renunciation of any vows a person may have made during the year. Many Jews, however, objected to the prayer. They complained that it would give Christians a positive proof that the word of a Jew was not to be trusted.
During the reign of Charlemagne, ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, a Jew involved in a court case requiring testimony was to be subjected to a humiliating ceremony involving the use of the Torah, the scroll containing the Five Books of Moses. Taking an oath on the Torah scroll is prohibited by Jewish law for all but the most sacred of occasions. But the Christian laws did not stop there. The Jew was required to hold the Torah in his hand, and wearing a girdle of thorns, descend into a pool of water. He was then required to spit on his penis three times and invoke the punishments mentioned in the Torah if his testimony were to be proven false. Moreover, a Jew was required to bring anywhere from four to nine witnesses, according to the importance of the case, while a Christian was only required to bring three witnesses.
These laws, modified somewhat from time to time and from country to country, remained in force until the nineteenth century. Prussia was the last country to abolish these practices in 1869.1 However, the Kol Nidre prayer had now acquired a new significance. The humiliating and sacrilegious vows required under Christian laws were truly oaths to be renounced! Kol Nidre remains today as the most recognized of all the prayers of the Yom Kippur service.
________________
1. Mark Waldman, Goethe and the Jews: A Challenge to Hitlerism (New York: Putnam, 1934), 26.
...Charlemagne changed the market day so Jews could trade
During the reign of Charlemagne, king of the Franks and emperor of the Holy Roman Empire (768–814), Jews prospered greatly. Because of their extensive contacts in the Muslim world, almost all of the French trade was in Jewish hands. During this time, Jews could freely migrate into the realm.1 So great was Jewish influence in trade that the city of Lyon moved its market day from Saturday to another day to accommodate the Jews, who would not trade on the Sabbath.2
Charlemagne recognized the value of the Jews and protected them to the extent that the pope, who believed that Jews should not prosper, argued with Charlemagne to rein in the Jews. Charlemagne would not bend, although while Christian merchants were taxed one-eleventh of their income, Jewish merchants paid one-tenth.
Perhaps the best illustration of Charlemagne’s relationship with the Jews is exemplified in the following event. The church had a strict law forbidding Jews from taking Church artifacts as a pledge for money borrowed. Penalties for infractions were severe. Charlemagne turned the law around. If a church official gave a Church artifact as a pledge for money borrowed, the offending official was penalized and the Jew involved was not charged.3
It is little wonder that Jewish immigration into the realm of Charlemagne greatly increased during his time on the throne, and the rise of Ashkenazic Jewry in Europe is traced to his reign.4
________________
1. Eliot Rosenberg, But Were They Good for the Jews? Over 150 Historical Figures Viewed from a Jewish Perspective (Secaucus, NJ: Carol, 1997), 40.
2. Max L. Margolis and Alexander Marx, A History of the Jewish People (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1927), 349.
3. Professor Heinrich Graetz, History of the Jews, vol. 3 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1894), 142.
4. Berel Wein, Herald of Destiny: The Story of the Jews in the Medieval Era, 750–1650 (New York: Shaar Press, 1993), 50.
...a Jew commanded a Muslim army
Samuel Halevi (Samuel Hanagid)1 was born in 993. He received an excellent Jewish education and learned the Arabic language and the Muslim holy book, the Koran. In 1013 he fled the Berber takeover in Cordoba, Spain, and settled in another Spanish city, Malaga, where he opened a spice shop near the palace.
After a time, the maidservant to the vizier, the highest-ranking member of the court of King Habbus of Granada, employed Samuel to write letters for her to the vizier while he was away. The vizier, Abu al-Kasim, was impressed by the wisdom of the letters and asked the maid who the letter writer was. She told him about Samuel and the vizier hired Samuel to work for him.
Samuel became the key advisor to the vizier, who served as the conduit for Samuel’s advice from himself to the king. When the vizier became ill and was near death, the king bemoaned the fact that he was losing such a wise counselor. Al-Kasim assured the king that the Jew Samuel was the real source of the wise counsel the king had been receiving. Following the death of al-Kasim, King Habbus appointed Samuel vizier and chief councilor.2 One of his major accomplishments in this position was the financing, creation, and distribution of books of holy writ, not only to the Jews of Spain, but to people all over North Africa and as far away a
s Palestine. Moreover, in addition to his duties of statecraft, and being the nagid, Samuel was one of the foremost poets of his day.3
The position of vizier eventually led to his appointment as commander of the king’s army. He served in that position from 1038 to 1056. In one of the battles, Samuel gained a victory over a particularly vicious Slav ruler and his fanatic Arab vizier. This led to the institution of a Spanish Purim.4 Sixteen of the eighteen years Samuel commanded the army were spent in warfare. Worn out by the constant combat, Samuel died in 1056.5
Samuel Hanagid had the distinction of being a Jew leading a Muslim army while also serving as nagid of the Jewish community.
________________
1. Nagid is a Hebrew word for ruler or leader.
2. Jacob R. Marcus, The Jew in the Medieval World: A Source Book, 315–1791 (New York: Atheneum, 1938), 297–98.
3. “Samuel ha-Nagid,” and “Ismail Ibn Nagrel’a,” Encyclopedia Judaica, CD-ROM Edition (Jerusalem: Keter, 1997).
4. Purim is a Jewish holiday celebrating the deliverance of the Jewish people from great danger. It commemorates an incident in ancient Persia, but there was also another such observation in Cairo, Egypt.
5. “Samuel ha-Nagid,” Encyclopedia Judaica.