For Signs and for Seasons

By Eliezer Segal

A diverse collection of essays on the cycle of Jewish holy days. Each explores the interplay between the Torah and its interpretations by diverse types of personalities, ideologies and historical events. Written from a non-dogmatic perspective by an expert in Judaism, the essays were originally newspaper columns; they are designed to entertain and educate a wide audience with Segal's witty style.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Quid Pro, LLC
• Release date: Oct 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781610271066

Eliezer Segal

Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Calgary.

Book preview

For Signs

and

for Seasons

by

Eliezer Segal

The Alberta Judaic Library

Calgary • 2011

Quid Pro Books

Copyright © 2011 by Eliezer Segal. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the author.

Published in the 2011 digital edition by Quid Pro Books, at Smashwords.

ISBN: 9781610271066 (ePub)

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Eliezer Segal

Department of Religious Studies, SS 1314

University of Calgary,

Calgary, Alberta, Canada

T2N 1N4

[e-mail]

http://www.ucalgary.ca/~elsegal

LICENSE NOTES, Smashwords edition: This ebook is licensed for your personal use only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book, please purchase an additional copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

Contents

Introduction

The Sabbath

Passover

The Omer Season

Israeli Independence Day

Shavu’ot

Rosh Hashanah

Yom Kippur

Sukkot

Simhat Torah

Hanukkah

The Fifteenth of Shevat

Purim

First Publication

About the Author

Introduction

On the fourth day of the creation, according to the laconic words of Hebrew Bible: God said, ‘Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years’ (Genesis 1:14).

From the perspective of the ancients, the mysteries of the creation were not to be sought in impersonal laws of physics or even as a display of the magnificent divine omnipotence. Although they might have assumed that our world sits at the centre of the universe and that the progress of the human species was the Creator’s chief concern when fashioning our world, the sages of Israel could not bring themselves to believe that the elaborate courses of the sun, moon and stars in the heavens were needed merely to decorate the firmament or to provide illumination.

"He appointed the moon for seasons; the sun knows it’s going down" (Psalms 104:19) —

Rabbi Yohanan said: If for purposes of illumination, only the orb of the sun had to be created...

If that is so, then why was the moon also created? It was in order that the New Moons and New Years could be sanctified...

"And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years"—

"For signs—these are the Sabbaths; as it is written: Surely My Sabbaths you shall keep, for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I am the Lord who sanctifies you" (Exodus 31:13).

"...And for seasons—these are the festivals; as it is written: The feasts of the Lord, which you shall proclaim to be holy convocations, these are my feasts" (Leviticus 23:2).

"...And for days—these are the New Moons; as it is written: for the days of a month" (Numbers 11:20!).

"...And years"—these are the New Years. For the nations of the world will calculate them according to the sun, and Israel according to the moon.

(Pesiqta deRav Kahana 5:1)

A secular anthropological perspective would of course explain the Hebrew religious calendar as a way of bringing meaningful order to the chronological cycles that are created by the astronomical paths of the moon and the sun, and by the climatic and agricultural seasons that result from their motions. And yet the characteristic religious outlook of traditional Judaism interpreted the relationship in precisely the opposite direction: the cosmos itself was fashioned in order to provide visual guides for a life-rhythm that the Almighty imposed on human reality for reasons that may perhaps be inscrutable, but which ultimately succeed in lending to Jewish spirituality a depth of meaning without which it would be unrecognizable.

The signs, seasons, days, years and other units of Hebrew time have provided an inexhaustible wellspring of values, ideas, beauty and meaning for Jews whose lives have been shaped by its manifold cadences. Like virtually everything else associated with Judaism, the Jewish holy seasons have stimulated diverse interpretations and responses, in keeping with the many cultural, geographical and historical realities, the varied material circumstances—or the individuality and originality of gifted thinkers as they engaged with the intricacies of the religious calendar.

For Signs and for Seasons is a natural sequel to its companion volumes, Holidays, History and Halakhah, In Those Days, At This Time and Sanctified Seasons. Like those earlier books, it gathers together articles that were originally submitted for the holiday editions of the newspapers to which I have contributed. The vast majority of the chapters first appeared in my From the Sources column for The Jewish Free Press in my hometown of Calgary, Alberta.

Eliezer Segal

Calgary, Alberta

The Sabbath

A Fine Kettle of Fish

Since the primordial mists of Jewish antiquity, the impression has become solidly entrenched in our minds that a Sabbath meal is not quite complete without a serving of fish.

Back in biblical times, Nehemiah chided his community for purchasing fish from Tyrian merchants on Saturday. Later, when rabbinic texts wanted to illustrate the typical preparations for the approaching Shabbat, their favourite example was that of roasting a small fish. Several talmudic sages explained the prophet Isaiah’s exhortation to call the sabbath a delight as an allusion to eating fish treats.

Rabbi Joel Sirkes (d. 1640) reported that on late Friday afternoon the beadles of the major Jewish communities would proclaim the approach of the holy day by announcing that people should now proceed to cook their fish. Indeed, in most localities fish was a relatively inexpensive commodity, and from the perspective of Jewish law its preparation is quite straightforward, in that it does not require ritual slaughter, and can be served with either dairy or meat menus.

There are tales in the Talmud and Midrash that laud the virtues of simple Jews who were willing to incur exorbitant expenses in order to procure the choicest fish for the holy day. The ancient satirist Flaccus Persius poked fun at some of his fellow Romans who enjoyed partaking of Jewish fish.

The association between fish and the Sabbath was stressed in diverse ways in Hasidic lore. About the Ba’al Shem Tov himself it was related that his choice to reside in the town of Medzhibozh had been dictated primarily by the availability there of Sabbath fish. Hasidic teaching depicted the Sabbath as a foretaste of the World to Come, and cultivated numerous customs that were based upon that premise. According to a classic rabbinic myth, the righteous will ultimately enjoy a banquet at which one of the entrées will be leviathan, a magnificent fish! Accordingly, they concluded, it is fitting that we should make every effort to include a fish option on our menus in anticipation of that glorious feast. Stories were told about distinguished rabbis who humbled themselves by personally participating in the buying, preparation and cooking of the fish delicacies.

Unfortunately, when a commodity is known to be valued highly by its consumers, this can tempt unscrupulous merchants to gouge the prices, confident that people will have no alternative but to pay almost any exorbitant price that is being charged for their precious wares. Such a case was dealt with in a responsum by the seventeenth-century scholar Rabbi Menahem Mendel Krochmal of Nikolsburg. The gentile fishmongers, realizing that the Jews were prepared to pay premium sums for their Sabbath fish, hiked up the prices. The Jewish community countered with a two-month boycott, leading some individuals to inquire of the rabbi whether that policy might entail an unacceptable desecration of the Sabbath. Rabbi Krochmal had to remind his questioners that eating fish was not actually a formal religious obligation; but that even if it were, there were ample precedents of ancient rabbis instituting sanctions in situations of this sort in order to lower prices and protect the interests of the consumers.

A very different attitude was voiced by Rabbi Moses Ashkenazi of Vilna. He declared that the requirement to eat fish on Shabbat does indeed stem from the Torah, and pious Jews should therefore be ready to pay inflated amounts in order to fulfill that obligation, as they would be expected to do with respect to other hallowed mitzvahs.

In a similar confrontation that arose in the nineteenth century, Rabbi Abraham Teomim of Buczacz was asked to support a general boycott against overpriced fish, in order to safeguard the interests of the local poor. However, he refused to impose an inconvenience on the rich for the sake of the needy, as long as the price increase had not reached critical proportions—and that would not be the case until the inflation jumped one third beyond the normal price. At any rate, Rabbi Teomim argued in his finest Marie Antoinette spirit that if the poor could not afford fish, then they ought to find something else to dine on!

The opposing view had been vociferously argued by distinguished figures like Rabbis Abraham Gumbiner and Shneur Zalman of Liady. The latter pointed out nevertheless that eating fish was not mentioned in any of the standard codes of Jewish law, and was nothing more than a matter of local custom or preference.

Nevertheless, Jewish exegetical creativity took up the challenge of proposing ingenious rationales and sources for the practice of eating fish on Saturday. Some of those rationales were quite straightforward; for example, the Hebrew word for fish, dag, has the numerological value of seven, quite appropriate for the seventh day. [For those who are impressed by such things, we should point that the other Sabbath table staples also fit neatly into the pattern: wine (yayin)=70, and meat (basar)=700.]

The association of fish with water also evoked some well-trodden symbolic associations. Water is a familiar image for Torah, and hence the relationship between the fish and water is comparable to the one between Israel and the Torah. It reminds us that without our holy scriptures, we would perish like...fish out of water!

Certain kabbalistic interpreters found significance in the fact that fish (lacking eyelids) never close their eyes, and can therefore serve as fitting symbols for unceasing divine providence, which is said to be especially receptive to our needs during the Saturday