Rarely, although occasionally, a movie delivers on every one of those things. If I were to make a list of near-perfect films, it would include two that characterise better than any other the sort of layeredness of which I speak: Spike Jonze’s Adaptation. (2002), and Joel Coen’s Blood Simple (1984).

In the former case, Adaptation. possesses a self-recursiveness in both form and content that would make even Douglas Hofstadter weep. It is no surprise that the film was written by Charlie Kaufmann, whose flawed but brilliant directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York, succeeded in turning an entire movie in upon itself; layer under layer, recursively deep.

Blood Simple, on the other hand, was the directorial debut of Joel Coen. While the Coen Brothers have gone on to produce some of the greatest films that I have seen, there is nothing that matches Blood Simple for the complexity of its dialogue. Despite its poor acting and the occasional clunkiness of its camera work, there is scarcely a line in this film that doesn’t function on two, sometimes three, levels simultaneously. It is a masterpiece of screenwriting.

Yesterday evening, I watched a film that I had never seen before, and one that is layered in a manner that I had never previously considered. In a sense, it is as though every aspect of the film (its dialogue, its acting, its setting and its production) operates independently of every other. It is entitled Marat/Sade, and was directed by Peter Brook in 1967. It is a cinematic representation of a German play that was written by Peter Weiss in 1963, entitled (in English), “The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed By the Inmates of the Asylum at Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade”. The film (and the play on which it is based) is set in 1808, only fifteen years after the bathtub murder of French revolutionary, Jean-Paul Marat. It concerns a performance by the inmates of a lunatic asylum of the last hours of Marat’s life to an audience of powdered aristocrats.

The film works simultaneously on a number of different levels, and while it has a self-referential quality, it does not “swallow itself” in the manner of Kaufmann’s creations. Consider the different levels, both of the production itself and of its substance, in content and in form:

1. The Film (“Form”):

• Peter Brook, who directed the movie, was heavily influenced by Antonin Artaud’s surrealistic conception of Théâtre de la Cruauté: Theatre of Cruelty. It was his belief that theatre needed to show the audience uncomfortable truths, and force them to wrestle with things that they might otherwise avoid. While Michael Haneke took this concept to its absurd limit in his disgusting and artistically worthless Funny Games, Brook utilises it in a far more modest fashion. He presents Marat/Sade voyeuristically, the camera alternating between a dispassionate long-shot that shows the audience of 1808 in silhouetted foreground, and a passionate and involved series of close-ups that follow the individual players, and watch them as they garble their lines, behave inappropriately, and occasionally attempt to molest one another. Brook, who faithfully produces the original script, affects the form of the production, but not its content;

2. The Play (“Content”):

• Peter Weiss, who wrote the original play, was both a pacifist and, politically, a communist. His three-volume opus, The Aesthetics of Resistance, explores the interplay between art and political resistance, which is a theme that comes to the fore in “Marat/Sade” as well. There, he depicts the Marquis de Sade – himself renowned for having adopted a certain proto-Socialism – in his efforts to present his political opinions to an audience of dilettantes and effetes, whose only connection to the events of the French revolution was that it lay in the past, “in history”, and that things are “different now”. Weiss, who certainly had an influence on the form of his original theatrical production, influences the film directed by Brook in terms of its content only;

The Content of the Film/Play:

• The Marquis de Sade (Donatien Alphonse François) was, indeed, imprisoned at the asylum in Charenton, where he spent the final thirteen years of his life. Arrested on the grounds that his literature was pornographic and deranged (although he would better have been arrested on the grounds that it was contrived and poorly written), he has since become a symbol of individualism and the freedom of expression. It is also true that the Marquis was permitted by the asylum’s director to direct plays of his own composition with the inmates as his cast. It is there, however, that the historical verisimilitude ends, for while the Marquis did write some political pamphlets, there is no evidence to suppose that his performances at Charenton were of so overtly a political nature, and what little he wrote on the subject demonstrates that he was actually an admirer of Jean-Paul Marat, and not one of his detractors. So far as the depiction of his play in Marat/Sade is concerned, this play within a play itself operates on more than one level:

3. The Play Within a Play (“Form”):

• For a start, there is the fact of its being performed by lunatics (themselves played by the Royal Shakespeare Company with aplomb). As a result, we must separate the content of the play from its form, for the outer performance of the written material is what immediately captivates us. The leading lady alternates between the fierceness of her role as Marat’s executioner, and the slow, sad reality of her morbid psychosis. Marat, himself, seems unconcerned with his lines at times (requiring prompting in one instance from the Marquis), and settles instead for long periods of staring into space. Another protagonist, Monsieur Duperet, is forcibly restrained during part of his performance after having attempted to molest the leading lady, and in the film’s saddest moment, one of the unnamed characters breaks from his role and crawls around the floor, declaring that he is a thousand years old, “a mad, mad animal“;

4. The Play Within a Play (“Content”):

• Secondly, there is the content of the play itself: the assassination of Jean-Paul Marat. Portrayed as a man out of touch with the reality of the revolution, the play invites us to sympathise with Marat’s executioner and to welcome his death. Many of the lines that condemn the regime that survived him, as well as those that condemn the church as an instigator of bloodshed and as a crutch for the weak, were removed in advance by the asylum’s director, but kept in by the seditious Marquis. As such, there is more than one instance in which the director intervenes and the Marquis is forced to pause his play and change his players’ lines. In some instances, the actors persist in calling out those lines in any case, to the consternation of the asylum’s director who apologises to his audience.

The manner in which the director of the asylum, François Simonet de Coulmier, interacts with both the Marquis and his audience is but one of three ways in which the content of the play and its form are inextricably linked. In addition, there are a few occasions in which orderlies need to interfere with the proceedings, to wake up the leading lady, to restrain any growing disquiet, or to threaten an actor who is close to accosting the asylum director’s wife or daughter, both of whom sit within the large cage that houses the director, the orderlies, the Marquis and his cast. In addition, there are the instances in which the Marquis needs to interact with his players, either to restrain or to encourage them, and a visually striking scene in which he participates in the play’s production, narrating the events of the revolution on his knees, while he is mercilessly whipped with a woman’s long hair.

Consider, then, how layered is this production. On the one hand, we have the literal content: politically seditious, supportive of revolution, critical of Napoleon’s regime and condemnatory of the church. To appreciate its impact, we have the setting: an audience of powdered French aristocrats in 1808, who believe that the revolution was a thing of history and who dislike any intimation that the popular struggle continues. At the same time, however, we have the additional level on which the play is being performed, in which the asylum’s director need worry about more than just the feelings of his audience. Here we must consider the play’s form, with its cast of erratic and occasionally violent lunatics, all brought under the control of a man obsessed with torture and pornography.

On a third level, we must remember that this play was written, not in 1808 by the Marquis de Sade, but in 1963 by Peter Weiss. A witness to Nazism, Weiss utilised his play in order to remark upon the connection between artistry and resistance. At a time when the conflict in Vietnam was escalating (against which Weiss was later to demonstrate), the themes of madness and political disquiet, presented before an audience of silent onlookers, says much for Weiss’ opinions of the age in which he lived. Indeed, I get the feeling that he identified with the Marquis in this production, trying desperately to communicate something to his disaffected public, while at the same time remonstrating with the authorities who disliked any encouragement of sedition or dissent.

And then, on the fourth and uppermost level, there is the structure of the film itself. A homage to the likes of Artaud and his Theatre of the Cruel, Peter Brook invites us to participate, again, as spectators. Sitting in the seats of those in 1808 who watched the Marquis’ fictional production, so recently vacated by an audience of 1963, our intentions as viewers have not changed. Whether the content of the film remains politically or ideologically apt is of little import. It is the simple fact of our desire, as voyeurs, to watch it that Brook grapples with. When we subject ourselves to a film of this nature, we are not only asking to be entertained, nor to be educated. We are asking, on some level, to be shocked. As a statement, that is no less profound than the statement made by Weiss, nor that which Weiss put into the mouths of his madmen, torn between their two directors: the sociopathic Marquis de Sade, and the politically naive Abbé de Coulmier.

-

All things told, it’s an odd way to convey this theme. Rabbit hunting was never a popular sport amongst European Jews, with hunting for any purpose other than the utility of animals (food, clothing, etc) being halakhically forbidden as “צער בעלי חיים”: [causing] suffering to living creatures. Does this illustration merely testify to the appropriation of a non-Jewish trope, refashioned into a Jewish message? Are the rabbits supposed to represent Jews, fleeing from their non-Jewish persecutors? If the horseman is a wicked tyrant and his dogs the means of his oppressing Jews, then why do the rabbits not have a leader of their own? Is not the message of Pesach the liberation that occurred under Moses in particular? No matter which way I choose to configure it, this picture causes me consternation.

Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, in his remarkable Haggadah and History, presents pages from printed Haggadot over the course of the last five hundred years. Second only to the Torah itself, the Haggada has gone through more reprintings than any other Jewish book, and the variety of different editions over this last half-millennium alone is fascinating. Surprisingly, the image of the rabbit hunt is one that recurs. Here, for example, is an illustration from the Augsburg Haggada of 1534. As you can see, the rabbits are making their way under the fence, but are very close to being devoured by the dogs that follow immediately behind them:

Later within the same Haggada, the image reappears. This time, it is clear that the rabbits have escaped, that the fence now lies between them and their hunters, and that the theme of liberation is the one that is being conveyed:

Still, this doesn’t explain the origin of the motif. Why a rabbit hunt in particular? As Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi points out, it is actually an allusion to a sugya in the Babylonian Talmud, which appears in Pesachim 102b-103a. In that discussion, the issue is raised as to the order in which one must make the various necessary blessings, in the event that Pesach coincides either with the onset of Shabbat (as it does this year) or with Shabbat’s conclusion. The relevant section, which truly testifies to the fact that every Jew has his own opinion, reads as follows:

גופא יום טוב שחל להיות אחר השבת רב אמר יקנ”ה ושמואל אמר ינה”ק ורבה אמר יהנ”ק ולוי אמר קני”ה ורבנן אמרי קינ”ה מר בריה דרבנא אמר נקי”ה מרתא אמר משמיה דר’ יהושע ניה”ק שלח ליה אבוה דשמואל לרבי ילמדו רבינו סדר הבדלות היאך שלח ליה כך אמר רבי ישמעאל בר רבי יוסי שאמר משום אביו שאמר משום רבי יהושע בן חנניה נהי”ק אמר ר’ חנינא משל דר’ יהושע בן חנניה למלך שיוצא ואפרכוס נכנס מלווין את המלך ואח”כ יוצאים לקראת אפרכוס מאי הוי עלה אביי אמר יקזנ”ה ורבא אמר יקנה”ז והילכתא כרבא

When the festival occurs at the conclusion of Shabbat, Rav says [that the order of blessings is]: wine, kiddush, the candles and then havdala;
Shmuel says: wine, candles, havdala and then kiddush;
Rabba says: wine, havdala, candles and then kiddush;
Levi says: kiddush, candles, wine and then havdala;
The other rabbis say: kiddush, wine, candles and then havdala;
Mar, the son of Ravina, says: candles, kiddush, wine and then havdala;
Marta, in the name of Rabbi Yehoshua, says: candles, wine, havdala and then kiddush.
Shmuel’s father went to Rabbi [Yehuda haNasi] and he asked him, “How did the rabbis teach the order of havdalot?”
He was told, “Thus said Rabbi Ishmael the son of Rabbi Yosi, who spoke in the name of his father, who spoke in the name of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Hananiah: candles, havdala, wine and then kiddush.”
Rabbi Yehoshua ben Hananiah likened this to a king who is leaving while a governor is entering. We escort the king, and only afterwards do we go out to greet the governor.
What is the conclusion?
Abayyei says: wine, kiddush, “time” [a reference to the previously unmentioned blessing of thanksgiving - "שהחינו" - over enabling us to reach this season], candles and then havdala.”
Rava says: wine, kiddush, candles, havdala and then “time”.
The halakha is like Rava.

In this sugya, we have no fewer than eight different opinions and two different conclusions, each one of which is expressed by means of an acronym for the words wine (יין), kiddush (קידוש), candles (נר), havdala (הבדלה) and time (זמן). The resulting halakha, given in the name of Rava (which is a slight modification of the first opinion, given in the name of Rav) is thus conveyed by the acronym יקנה”ז, or yaknehaz. And as it is not uncommon for liturgical texts to feature halakhic information, there were many haggadot that were printed with this acronym, somewhere near the various blessings themselves.

Of course, a picture tells a thousand words, and as יקנה”ז (yaknehaz) sounds an awful lot like יאגן האז (yagn haz), which is Yiddish for “rabbit hunt”, the pictorial mnemonic in question came into existence. Although Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi doesn’t suggest as much, it would appear that this is another instance in which the metaphor is mistaken for the message. The development of the illustration into a motif that conveys the theme of escape, rather than merely a rabbit hunt with the word יקנה”ז beneath it, evidences both a distaste for the hunting of animals, as well as a certain confusion over why the Haggada appears to be advocating such a thing in the first place.

*

Wishing you all a festive season of liberation, whether you identify with the rabbit or the hound. For my part, I’m still sitting on the fence.

In Nadler’s article, he indicates the fact that Dracula is nowhere described as having been Jewish himself, although he does remark upon the similarities that he has to Jewish stereotypes:

“Rootless, of East European origin, dark-complected, and lustful for the money and blood of others. Assessing a wide range of themes in which blood and vampirism were evoked in late-19th-century European “scientific” thought (Social Darwinism and criminology in particular), Robinson argues that Stoker’s depiction of Dracula exploited widespread anxieties about the dangers posed by the flood (and the blood) of Yiddish-speaking immigrants to Great Britain.”

Is it a coincidence, then, that the individual whom Dracula enlists to assist him in his escape from England be none other than Immanuel Hildesheim: “a Hebrew of rather the Adelphi Theatre type, with a nose like a sheep, and a fez. His arguments were pointed with specie – we doing the punctuation – and with a little bargaining he told us what he knew” (Bram Stoker, Dracula, XXVI). Is it a coincidence that Dracula’s facial features may appear stereotypically Semitic, that his greatest concern lies in his accent divulging his East European origins, or that the vampire motif had long been employed for the characterisation of Jews as usurers? Nadler, in his review of Robinson’s book, seems to think that it is not. In fact, he even notes with interest the connection that Robinson creates between the fear of kosher slaughtering in the ethnic German population, and the ineradicable blood libel.

In the 1880s, for example, there was a widespread campaign in Germany to forbid any form of animal slaughter that was not preceded by electrical stunning. As Robinson notes (and I quote from Nadler’s review), “Jews supposedly took pleasure in their method of slaughtering, which strengthened their insensitivity and brutality. Propaganda depicted them as a “blood-drinking people,” erroneously positing that Jews drank the blood of their slaughtered animals.” I am sure that it goes without saying that animal blood is not something that religious Jews have ever consumed, and it is an unfamiliarity with Jewish religious law that strikes at the heart of such a depiction, as unfamiliarity strikes at the heart of all racial prejudices.

And yet, while it has long been contended that this same consideration automatically falsifies that version of the blood libel that is of greater antiquity – that Jews slaughter Christian children and use their blood for making food – such is not to be the case. While the libel is most certainly that, the reason that religious Jews would shun such a practise is the more commonplace aversion to murder, together with the fact that drinking human blood – if not necessarily unkosher – just sounds a little bit off.

With the approach of Purim, it is customary to deliver a “Purim Torah”: an halakhic or Talmudic exegesis, designed for the purposes of mockery. This year, I would like to share one of the most enjoyable halakhic exegeses (of this genre) that I have read: Yitayningwut’s discussion of kosher blood for Jewish vampires, found on his The Beis Medrash Blog. Rather than reproduce it below, I encourage you all to have a look at it in situ, for there are many other posts there that are also very interesting. For my part, I don’t think that I’m about to avail myself of this surprising leniency any time soon, but it pleases me to know that my options are open.

The Eternal Torah

The sad reality is that, every year, more and more young people in Australia are coming out of the closet and identifying as ***s. This is despite the existence of a clear verse in the Torah, condemning *** as an inappropriate lifestyle. The books that they read, the films that they watch, and every aspect of this ***-enabling country is only encouraging our youth to experiment with activities that are physically and morally harmful. Because I truly care about the moral bedrock of our society, I say that ***s should not be allowed to get married. While it is true that the Torah doesn’t actually condemn their marrying one another, it is clear that allowing them this liberty will only encourage their sordid lifestyle further, and God forbid a child be raised in such an unhealthy home. After all, everybody knows that being a *** is a choice. Trying to market it as a choice that one is entitled to make (when nothing can be more contrary to God’s will) is a travesty, and a clear indication of how low our society has sunk.

There are those who say that the Torah’s message should be reinterpreted. That perhaps it was being specific and referring only to particular activities. This is an ignorant assertion and should be completely ignored. While one who knows nothing of rabbinic law might read the relevant verse in this fashion, the truth is that the rabbis understood this prohibition as relating to both males and females. As such, the Torah deals with the sin of *** categorically. While we may no longer be allowed to actually kill these people (despite the fact that the Torah mandates the death penalty for their crime), granting them equality in the eyes of the law when all they need to do is change their sordid lifestyle is a crime unto God himself.

In a last-ditch attempt to make sacred the profane, there are those who liken the crime of *** to other “outdated” laws in the biblical literature, but they do this completely ignorant of the way that halakha works. The simple truth is that the rabbis of the Talmud did not see fit to recontextualise this particular law. If they didn’t reframe it, and make the crime of *** a phenomenon no longer in effect, then what gives us the audacity to do so? Not only that, but the law that pertains to *** is phrased in the negative! It is one thing to recontextualise a positive commandment, but another thing entirely to recontextualise a prohibition.

The number of ***s in Australia today is growing. The amount of ***-themed literature and film is on the rise. In my own neighbourhood, I see people who are proud of being ***s and it is time that rabbis take a stand. *** is disgusting. *** should still be illegal. ***s should not be allowed to marry, should receive no recognition for their activities, and should be dealt with by psychologists and counsellors only.

God’s holy Torah is immutable and in effect. If the rabbis of the Talmud didn’t recontextualise it, then who the hell are you?

- Exodus 22:17 (18 in the English).

Regrettably, not everybody understood what I was trying to say. Some thought that I was having a go at homosexuals, some thought that I was having a go at witches, and some thought that I was trying to imply that homosexuality is a type of witchcraft! By way of explaining the point that I was trying to make, consider the following reasons so often given by rabbis as to why homosexuality must not be tolerated in our society. I think this list is fairly exhaustive:

• The Torah’s condemnation of homosexuality is clearly stated (Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13);

• While the Torah only prohibits sexual intercourse between two men, the rabbis broadened the prohibition to include two women;

• The Torah describes homosexuality as a “toevah” (an abomination);

• The Torah relates homosexuality to the practices of Canaanites (as per the declaration in Leviticus 18:3, which precedes a string of prohibitions, one of which is homosexuality, and the declaration in Leviticus 20:23, which concludes a string of prohibitions, one of which is homosexuality);

• The Torah relates homosexuality to bestiality: the latter is forbidden in Leviticus 18:23, immediately after the prohibition of male homosexual intercourse;

• The penalty for homosexual intercourse is death;

• The rabbis of the Talmud never saw fit to mitigate this penalty, to recontextualise the prohibition, nor to limit its application;

• While the Torah does not speak of same-sex marriage, such a thing would be impossible: any marriage between two people of the same sex would lack kiddushin and be non-halakhic, and any permissibility granted for same-sex civil marriages will only encourage homosexuality and lead to children being raised in an environment conducive to illegitimate sexual experimentation.

And then, of course, there’s the real zinger:

Homosexuality has been illegal throughout the world for the longest time. Lifting it now to the level of heterosexuality is a slight against centuries of tradition.

-

Now let’s consider the prohibition of witchcraft:

• The Torah’s condemnation of witchcraft is clearly stated (Exodus 22:17/18, Leviticus 20:27, Deuteronomy 18:10-11);

• While some verses in the Torah only prohibit female practitioners of witchcraft, the rabbis broadened the prohibition to include men;

• The Torah describes witchcraft as a “toevah” (an abomination);

• The Torah relates witchcraft to the practices of Canaanites (as per the declaration in Deuteronomy 18:9, which precedes the prohibition of witchcraft);

• The Torah relates witchcraft to bestiality: the latter is forbidden in Exodus 22:18/19, immediately after the prohibition of witchcraft;

• The penalty for witchcraft is death;

• The rabbis of the Talmud never saw fit to mitigate this penalty, to recontextualise the prohibition, nor to limit its application;

• While the Torah does not speak of practitioners of witchcraft marrying, such a thing could be viewed as impossible: any marriage conducted in accordance with pagan or Wiccan traditions would lack kiddushin and be non-halakhic, and any permissibility granted for civil marriages between two such people will only encourage witchcraft and lead to children being raised in an environment conducive to illegitimate spiritual experimentation.

And while one never hears it, the following assertion is no less ridiculous than what one hears from those who lament the supposed proliferation of homosexuality:

Witchcraft used to be illegal. Justifying it now would be an insult to centuries of beautiful tradition, like the 16th and 17th centuries, when Europe and North America burned with a passion that surely ignites the spirit.

-

Let’s face it, Judaism seems to have developed something of a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in relation to the practise of witchcraft. The reason for this is that, deep down, nobody really cares too much about whether or not you think it’s awesome to hold a séance with your friends, to go dancing in the forest when it’s a full moon, or to ask questions of a dead rabbi by writing them down and sticking them in his books. You do your thing and I’ll do mine.

But when it comes to homosexuality, people just feel a bit yuck about the whole thing. That’s a perfectly normal reaction. It’s all part of growing up and being stupid.

If you cannot think of a good reason to stamp up and down and lament the proliferation of witchcraft-themed books and films, to decry the fact that kids these days are painting their fingernails black and listening to goth music (they’re still doing this, right?), to lament with anger this “witch-enabling” country of ours and to cry about the global witch agenda, then it might be time for you to exercise a little restraint in other areas as well.

After all, if neither the rabbis nor the Torah itself drew any real distinction between the two, it’s hardly worth pretending that your hatred of only one of them is fuelled by anything other than simple-minded prejudice. Time to give it a rest.

In the meantime, you might enjoy this truly outstanding article by Rabbi Shlomo Brody of Yeshivat haKotel. In it, he considers the role of the Zohar on Rabbi Yosef Karo’s formulation of the halakha, and appraises the author’s controversial Magid Mesharim as a treatise that testifies to his unifying of the two worlds:

Halakha and Kabbalah: Rabbi Joseph Karo’s Shulchan Aruch and Magid Mesharim
by Rabbi Shlomo Brody.

Amongst the great kabbalists and legalists produced in 16th century Safed, R. Yosef Karo clearly stands out as one of, if not the, most influential figure. Though his legal compendium Bet Yosef and code Shulchan Aruch, Karo helped shape the course of halakha for the next five centuries. Karo produced these works while the Zohar’s influence on the Jewish world greatly expanded, a process to which he contributed. In this essay, we will examine the impact of the Zohar on his halakhic jurisprudence. We will furthermore explore the influence of the personal revelation Karo received from his magid, as recorded in his spiritual diary Magid Mesharim.

[read more]

We spoke about Hardal: Haredi Dati Leumi (“Haredi Religious Nationalism”, for want of a better translation), which is modelled on the philosophy of Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Kook. The first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Palestine under the British Mandate, Rav Kook understood the State of Israel (even as a secular entity) as constituting “the beginning of the flowering of our redemption”. At least in theory, proponents of this philosophy serve proudly in the army and support Israel’s government, although the relatively recent withdrawal from Gaza did much to create a certain degree of factionalism within the Hardal camp.

At the other end of the spectrum, we looked at the breakaway group of Neturei Karta international, who split from Neturei Karta in Jerusalem after the death of its founder, Rabbi Amram Blau. Their very visible presence at Israel rallies, their vocal and financial support of Arab leaders who call for the destruction of Israel, and their attendance at Ahmedinajad’s Holocaust Denial Conference in Tehran have all done much in the way of fostering the misapprehension that Haredi Jews wish to see Israel disappear. (If you are interested, you can read transcripts of their speeches in Tehran on their website, where you can also find much information about their ideology.)

Between these two extremes, we spoke of a range of other groups: Shas, the two Ashkenazi political parties (chiefly Agudas Yisroel), the Edah haChareidis of Mea Shearim, and various groups (primarily Hasidic) who express views that align themselves with the Edah or with the mainstream faction of Neturei Karta. We looked at some historical background, particularly concerning the demographic nature of the Old Yishuv, as well as some of the religious Zionist settlement, but then followed the formation of key political groups and ideologies from 1912 until today. In so doing, one of the most important groups and ideologies centred on a key individual: Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, the former president of the Edah and the first Rebbe of Satmar.

Published in 1961, the Satmar Rebbe’s VaYoel Moshe (“And Moses Consented”, from Exodus 2:21) outlined his perspectives on Zionism and the State of Israel in the form of three essays, each of which had a formative impact on the philosophy of the Edah haChareidis. The second and the third deal with the impermissibility of returning to the land of Israel under the bureaucratic Law of Return (“מאמר ישוב ארץ ישראל”), and with the impermissibility of using the holy tongue for profane discourse (“מאמר לשון הקודש”). The first, and most important, essay is entitled “The Three Oaths” (“מאמר שלש שבועות”), and deals with his opinions concerning Zionism as a philosophy.

As with many religious Jews who opposed the State of Israel, the political philosophy of Zionism was understood by the Satmar Rebbe to have no basis within the traditional literature. An historically aberrant offshoot of the non-Jewish, post-Enlightenment philosophy of Nationalism, Zionism was seen to be a secular, European phenomenon that had no place within the hallowed halls of Jewish tradition, and no home on Israelite soil. What is more, its very existence was construed as being harmful to the continued survival of the Jewish people around the world. While these particular indictments do not necessarily impact upon apolitical Zionist models (such as the cultural philosophy of Ahad haAm), they were certainly related to the prevailing Zionist model, and the one that was formally instituted in 1948.

In demonstrating this idea, the Satmar Rebbe provided an exegesis on a midrash that is related in the Babylonian Talmud:

שלש שבועות הללו למה אחת שלא יעלו ישראל בחומה ואחת שהשביע בקדוש ברוך הוא את ישראל שלא ימרדו באומות העולם ואחת שהשביע הקדוש ברוך הוא את אומות העולם שלא ישתעבדו בהן בישראל יותר מדאי… בצבאות או באילות השדה אמר רבי אלעזר אמר להם הקדוש ברוך הוא לישראל אם אתם מקיימין את השבועות מוטב ואם לא אני מתיר את בשרכם כצבאות וכאילות השדה

This section, which occurs near the end of Tractate Ketubot, appears in the context of a discussion between Rabbi Zeira (who wanted to return to the land of Israel) and Rav Yehuda (who wanted to stop him). Rav Yehuda’s contention is that the exile can only end at such a time as God declares it to be over, and this is asserted in a back-and-forth fashion with the aid of various scriptural passages. The midrash that appears above, and that I translate below, relates to Song of Songs 2:7 – “I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or the wild does: do not stir up or awaken love until it is ready!” (NRSV). Based on the idea that this poem represents a highly-coded love song between God and Israel, the rabbis present the following interpretation:

Why are there three oaths? [ie: why is there a reference to making an oath in Song of Songs 2:7, 3:5 and 8:4?] One is that Israel should not ascend [to their land] by force, one concerns the Holy One’s adjuring Israel that they not rebel against the nations of the world, and one concerns the Holy One’s adjuring the nations of the world that they not oppress Israel too much…

“By the gazelles or the wild does” (2:7). Rabbi Eliezer’s interpretation: The Holy One told Israel, “If you keep these oaths – good. But if you do not, I permit your flesh like the gazelles and the wild does.”

- Tractate Ketubot 111a

The nations of the world (according to the Satmar Rebbe’s utilisation of this midrash) are obliged to persecute the Jews, but they are obligated to do so only to a certain extent. That obligation, however, only rests upon them insofar as the Jews keep their side of the bargain: that they should neither attempt to reclaim the land of Israel by force, nor rebel in any measure against their host nations. Should they break their oaths then the nations of the world are absolved from theirs, and the flesh of Jews becomes as the flesh of wild animals: free for the taking.

It was the conviction of the Satmar Rebbe – and the opinion of the Edah haChareidis – that Zionism, insofar as it constituted an annullment of the two oaths imposed upon the Jews, was responsible for having caused the Holocaust. Nothing so devastating (nor so historically unprecedented) as the Shoah could have happened without the sanction of God, and no sin could have been so deserving of annihilation than the crime of prematurely terminating the exile. What is more, there were allegations made by the Satmar Rebbe that Zionist agencies were even financially and politically responsible for the fate of their coreligionists in Europe. You can see an example of such claims on this website, some of which constitute a bizarre internalisation of statements made by Hitler himself (see, for example, this page).

Where does this allegation originate?

As reported recently in Vos Iz Neias (and with a tip of the hat to Hirhurim), Satmar Hasidim from Kiryas Joel, NY, recently celebrated the 67th anniversary of Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum’s escape from Nazi-occupied Hungary in 1944. The anniversary of his departure is celebrated on the 21st of Kislev (which, in 1944, was December 7th), and was a key event in the formation of his own anti-Zionist philosophy, as well as in the philosophy of Rabbi Amram Blau’s Neturei Karta. Rather than see the fact that the Satmar Rebbe was saved by a Zionist committee as ironic, the very manner in which he was saved added fuel to his fiery hatred of Zionism. It is my contention that allegations concerning Zionist complicity in the Shoah all centre around the transport that saved the Satmar Rebbe’s life.

In order to understand how this could be so, it is necessary to consider the fate of Hungarian Jewry during the Shoah.

By the time that the Final Solution caught up with the Hungarians, the 750,000 Hungarian Jews were the last sizable Jewish community left in Axis-controlled Europe. In the east were the mass graves of Romania and the Ukraine; in the south, shipments of Jews from Serbia, Croatia and Greece were being sent by the trainload to Auschwitz; to the west, the Reich and its conquered territories were Judenrein; to the north were the killing centres of Poland. Prof. Raul Hilberg describes the situation as follows:

When the Hungarian Jews looked at a map of Axis Europe at the beginning of 1944, they could see that all around them Jewish communities had been attacked and destroyed… Conversely, when a German official looked at his map in Berlin, he could see that everywhere “the Jewish problem” had been “solved,” except in one relatively small area: Hungary. And when he looked at Hungary, he could see the largest concentration of Jews who still survived in the German sphere of influence. Truly, the Hungarian Jews were living in a land island, enclosed and protected by a political boundary. The Jews depended on that barrier for their survival, and the Germans had to break it down.

- Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, Volume II (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1985), 796-797.

While Hungary’s government vacillated between being the willing and unwilling supporters of the Reich (both before and after the German intervention of 1944), the desperate Jewish community tried to bring their predicament to the attention of the West. In so doing, a Zionist committee was formed in 1943, known as the Aid and Rescue Committee (ועדת העזרה וההצלה). Headed by Dr Ottó Komoly, who was killed just before the arrival of the Red Army, and Dr Rudolf (Rezsö) Kastner, it aimed at rescuing those Jews who had escaped to Hungary from Poland, Slovakia and the Reich. These Jews, who were predominantly concentrated in the Carpathians, in Transylvania and in the countryside to the north of Budapest were all deported to concentration camps by July 1944. Ottó Komoly, who was the president, liaised with Hungarian sources in order to prevent their being sent to Auschwitz; Rudolf Kastner, his executive vice-president, liaised with the Germans.

Three distinct relief efforts were organised, each of which became legendary for different reasons: one for its failure, another for its implications, and the third for its success. As we shall see, the Satmar Rebbe owed his life to this third effort.

Their first plan was in consultation with the British, and involved the training of Hungarian Jewish paratroppers, living in Palestine, who could drop into Europe and form a partisan operation. The three paratroopers whom the British trained were Yoel Palgi, Peretz Goldstein and the poet, Hannah Szenes. They landed in Croatia on April 14th, 1944, and learning that Budapest was already occupied by the Nazis, the two men aborted their mission. Hannah Szenes continued on alone and was arrested on the 8th of July, tortured, tried for treason and then executed. She was 22 years old.

The second attempt occurred in May of 1944, when the Aid and Rescue Committee received detailed information as regards the number and the routes of the trains that were shuttling Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz. With the aid of a branch in Bratislava, the Aid and Rescue Committee had this information wired to Switzerland, with a request to bomb two or three railway junctions and disrupt the whole operation. While they were met with silence from the Allies, their tactic did succeed in temporarily slowing down the transports nonetheless. As Raul Hilberg notes, “history plays strangely with its participants”. Although the Allies showed no interest in disrupting those transports, the relaying of the message from American and British agencies in Bern to their respective countries was intercepted by Hungarian counter-intelligence. Not knowing where the message had originated, the Hungarians were nonplussed as to how its authors knew the exact location of all Hungarian and German agencies in Budapest, as well as the number of trains going to Auschwitz, and their respective routes. In fact, the Hungarians became so frightened of Allied bombing as a result of this interception that, for the next three months, their cooperation with the Germans could only be described as “reluctant”.

In October, however, the Germans deposed the Hungarian prime minister (the sixth, since the war began), and appointed the leader of the fascist Arrow Cross Party: a man by the name of Ferenc Szálasi. By this stage, Auschwitz was already in its liquidation stage, the train lines were no longer operative, and the remaining Jews of Budapest (itself, the only Hungarian Jewish community that was left) were either marched towards Austria, or ghettoised in the capital. By the time that Hungary surrendered to the USSR, over 180,000 of its Jewish inhabitants had been murdered. Almost all of the survivors were from Budapest.

That the number wasn’t higher is due to a number of factors: the fact that the Final Solution only reached Hungary at such a time as Germany had already lost the war, the concentration of Jews in the capital city, who – for various reasons – were saved until the end, and at least three wartime Hungarian prime-ministers who resented the Germans and whose intentions it was to delay the Final Solution of the Jewish problem as long as possible. Alongside these larger issues stands the heroic work of Raoul Wallenberg, who saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews at great risk to himself. Among them were my grandmother and her mother, who were spared the fatal march from Budapest to Austria as a result of his “discovering” that they held Swedish passports. By all accounts, it would appear that Raoul Wallenberg perished in a Soviet prison.

Smaller in its overall importance than these factors was the third rescue mission conducted by the Aid and Rescue Committee, which succeeded in saving the lives of just over 1,600 Jews – one of whom was Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum. Organised by Dr Rudolf Kastner, who liaised with Eichmann, a trainload of Jews (“Kastner’s Train”, as it came to be known) was sent to Switzerland instead of Auschwitz. The question is: what was Eichmann given in return?

Answering this question has proven to be tremendously difficult. After the war, Rudolf Kastner composed “The Report of the Jewish Rescue Committee in Budapest” (“Der Bericht des jüdischen Rettungskomitees aus Budapest”), in which he testified that Eichmann had agreed to the release of 600 Jews in exchange for 6.5 million pengö (= approximately 4,000,000 RM), who would then all be given safe passage to Palestine. Subsequently, Eichmann raised the number to 1,600 Jews, and although he sent them all to Bergen-Belsen instead, many of them subsequently arrived in Switzerland late in 1944. It was hypothesised, during Eichmann’s trial, that he raised the number on the suspicion that he may one day stand before a tribunal. In April of 1944, that was hardly a prophecy.

In 1960, Adolf Eichmann was interviewed by a former Nazi journalist, Willem Sassen. In this interview, which was subsequently published in Time Magazine, Eichmann recalled the events of the Kastner Train differently: according to Eichmann, Kastner made the additional promise of maintaining order in the camps, the better to facilitate the regular deportations to Auschwitz that were already underway. The last thing that the Nazis wanted was a second Warsaw Ghetto uprising, so in Eichmann’s words, “it was a good bargain”.

After having escaped from Auschwitz in April of 1944, Rudolf Vrba and Alfréd Wetzler drafted a report that described the layout of the camp and its use of gas chambers. Controversially, Rudolf Kastner has been accused by some of having suppressed the report, which would have otherwise led to tremendous unrest amongst the Jews and the possible escape of many. Indeed, it would appear that Rudolf Kastner received a copy of this report on the 28th of April, but that it was not something that he brought to the attention of regular Hungarian Jews. By the 7th of June, the Nazis had finished deporting the Jews of the Carpathians and Transylvania. Sturmbannführer Walter Höttl, who was one of the SS officers surpervising the forced evacuations of those two zones, describes them in the following way:

Without resistance and in submission, they marched by the hundreds in long columns to railway stations and piled into the trains. Only very few gendarmes were supervising the operation; it would have been easy to flee. In the Carpatho-Ukraine, which contained numerically the strongest Jewish settlements, the forbidding mountains and forests offered an opportunity for prolonged hiding. But only few removed themselves in this way from their doom.

- Raul Hilberg, Destruction, 841 – citing Walter Hagen (Höttl), Die Geheime Front (Zurich, 1950), 39.

Was Rudolf Kastner, in his efforts to release 1,600 Hungarian Jews, complicit in the Nazi atrocities? In 1953, an amateur Israeli journalist named Malchiel Gruenwald, accused Kastner (who was at that time a spokesman for the Israeli Ministry of Trade and Industry) of collaboration with the Nazis. What is more, it was revealed that several spaces on the train were filled with Kastner’s relatives and friends.

Some of the judges on Israel’s Supreme Court were scathing, accusing him of having been a knowing accomplice to the Nazi destruction of Hungarian Jewry, who acted out of desire for personal gain. While the overriding sentiment, on which the court decided, was that he had been an unwilling and unknowing accomplice, he resigned from his job in disgrace. A thorough and fascinating description of the case was composed by Akiva Orr: “The Kastner Case, Jerusalem, 1955″, in Israel: Politics, Myths and Identity Crisis (London: Pluto Press, 1994), 81-116. The book can be downloaded from this link.

In 1958, the courts overruled their former opinion and acquitted Rudolf Kastner, but it was too late for him. A year earlier, in 1957, Kastner had been gunned down outside his house in Tel-Aviv. His killers (Ze’ev Eckstein, Dan Shemer and Yosef Menkes) served seven years each.

While this is not the only instance in which Jewish organisations “bartered”, for want of a better term, with the Nazis, and while Raul Hilberg demonstrates innumerable instances of near-complicity in the interest of self-preservation, the very central nature of a Zionist agency in this particular incident, and the fact that it fell in the direct experience of the Satmar Rebbe himself, makes it a viable candidate for the origin story to the Satmar and Neturei Karta myth: that the Zionists were not only responsible for the Shoah on a supernatural level, but that they were directly involved in the machinations of the Reich.

So far as Kastner is concerned, for whom I cannot help but feel a weight of regret, I would echo the sentiments of Judge Benjamin Halevy, whose indictment of 1955 was so beautifully expressed. Quoting Homer Virgil, he declared that

timeo Danaos et dona ferentes (“I fear the Greeks even when they bring gifts”). By accepting this present Kastner had sold his soul to the devil.

- Akiva Orr: “The Kastner Case, Jerusalem, 1955″, in Israel: Politics, Myths and Identity Crisis (London: Pluto Press, 1994), 81-116 (91).

For a start, and as I imagine that most people know already, Hanukkah is nowhere mentioned within the Hebrew Bible. Whether or not it appears within Christian Bibles depends entirely upon the denomination of Christianity: the two books of Maccabees, while make passing allusion to the festival, are deuterocanonical to Catholics and apocryphal to (almost) everybody else.

The following is the relevant passage in 1 Maccabees (4:36-59), dated to within the last quarter of the 2nd century (ie: 125-100) BCE. I have emphasised those parts of it that might resonate with traditional perspectives on the festival:

But Judas and his brethren said: ‘Behold, our enemies are discomfited; let us go up to cleanse the Holy Place, and re-dedicate it. And all the army was gathered together, and they went unto mount Sion. And they saw our sanctuary laid desolate, and the altar profaned, and the gates burned up, and shrubs growing in the courts as in a forest or upon one of the mountains, and the chambers (of the priests) pulled down; and they rent their garments, and made great lamentation, and put ashes on their heads; and they fell on their faces to the ground, and they blew the solemn blasts upon the trumpets, and cried unto heaven…

So they pulled down the altar, and laid down the stones in the mountain of the House, in a convenient place, until a prophet should come and decide (as to what should be done) concerning them. And they took whole stones according to the Law, and built a new altar after the fashion of the former (one); and they built the Holy Place, and the inner parts of the house, and hallowed the courts. And they made the holy vessels new, and they brought the candlestick in order to give light in the temple. And they set loaves upon the table, and hung up the veils, and finished all the works which they had undertaken.

And they rose up early in the morning on the twenty-fifth (day) of the ninth month, which is the month Chislev, in the one hundred and forty-eighth year, and offered sacrifice according to the Law, upon the new altar of burnt offerings which they had made. At the corresponding time (of the month) and on the (corresponding) day on which the Gentiles had profaned it, on that day was it dedicated afresh, with songs and harps and lutes, and with cymbals. And all the people fell upon their faces, and worshipped, and gave praise, (looking up) unto heaven, to him who had prospered them. And they celebrated the dedication of the altar for eight days, and offered burnt offerings with gladness, and sacrificed a sacrifice of deliverance and praise… And Judas and his brethren and the whole congregation of Israel ordained, that the days of the dedication of the altar should be kept in their seasons year by year for eight days, from the twenty-fifth (day) of the month Chislev, with gladness and joy.

- R.H. Charles (ed. and trans.), The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, Volume One: Apocrypha (Berkely: The Apocryphile Press, 2004), 81-82 – parentheses in the original; emphasis mine

This reference, while it might not exactly align with what we learn in Hebrew School, is not too far off. There is a reference to the name of the festival (Hanukkah meaning “dedication”), to the fact that it begins on the 25th of Kislev, the fact that it lasts for eight days, and the fact that it has something (something) to do with the repurification of the altar. There is no reference to the miracle of the oil.

There is a reference to the festival in 2 Maccabees as well but, like much of 2 Maccabees, it is rather strange. The text opens with a letter, containing an injunction to commemorate Hanukkah in Kislev, but refers to it as the festival as Sukkot instead, which is in the month of Tishrei. The second letter makes clear that we are speaking of the festival of the purification of the temple and that it should be celebrated on the 25th of Kislev, but it doesn’t name the festival, and it relates it to an event in the life of Nehemiah: approximately three hundred years before the Maccabees. The second chapter notes that Solomon had celebrated his dedication of the temple for eight days as well, so it is not surprising that certain scholars see the origin of this festival in a winter solstice that greatly predated the events to which it is usually attached.

Josephus mentions Hanukkah as well, but as with much of what Josephus says it’s unclear precisely what his sources are. For the most part, he relates a story not dissimilar from what we find in 1 Maccabees, but he adds a curious detail:

Now Judas celebrated the festival of the restoration of the sacrifices of the temple for eight days; and omitted no sort of pleasures thereon… They were so very glad at the revival of their customs, when after a long time of intermission, they unexpectedly had regained the freedom of their worship, that they made it a law for their posterity, that they should keep a festival, on account of the restoration of the temple worship, for eight days. And from that time to this we celebrate this festival, and call it Lights. I suppose the reason was, because this liberty beyond our hopes appeared to us; and that thence was the name given to that festival.

- Antiquities 7.7.323-325 (trans. W. Whiston)

That Josephus should have known of a tradition that Hannukah was in some way a “festival of lights”, but not known of any custom as regarded the actual kindling of candles, or of any miracle that related to the kindling of a lamp, is astonishing – and says much as regards what may be the late development of those traditions. To find them stated explicitly, we need to turn to the rabbinic literature next, and when we do we are hit with a resounding silence.

The following is the sum total of all references to the festival of Hanukkah within the Mishna, and I hope it explains everything you ever wanted to know about the festival:

Mishna, Tractate Bikkurim 1:6
הקונה שני אילנות בתוך של חברו מביא ואינו קורא רבי מאיר אומר מביא וקורא יבש המעין נקצץ האילן מביא ואינו קורא רבי יהודה אומר מביא וקורא מעצרת ועד החג מביא וקורא מן החג ועד חנכה מביא ואינו קורא רבי יהודה בן בתירא אומר מביא וקורא

One who purchases two trees from another’s [field], must bring [the first fruits to the priest], but he does not recite [the traditional formula, found in Deuteronomy 26:3, 5-10).
Rabbi Meir says, he brings them and he recites it.
Should the spring dry up or the tree be chopped down, he must bring [the first fruits to the priest], but he does not recite [the traditional formula].
Rabbi Yehuda says, he brings them and he recites it.
From the reaping [ie: from Shavuot] until the festival [ie: until Sukkot], he brings [the first fruits to the priest] and he recites [the traditional formula], but from the festival [of Sukkot] until Hanukkah he brings [the first fruits to the priest] but he does not recite [the traditional formula].
Rabbi Yehuda ben Beteira says, he brings them and he recites it.

-

Mishna, Tractate Rosh HaShanah 1:3
על ששה חדשים השלוחים יוצאין על ניסן מפני הפסח על אב מפני התענית על אלול מפני ראש השנה על תשרי מפני תקנת המועדות על כסלו מפני חנכה ועל עדר מפני הפורים וכשהיה בית המקדש קים יוצאין אף על איר מפני פסח קטן

There are six months on which emissaries would go out [in order to alert distant communities as to the sighting of the new moon]:
On Nisan, because of Pesach;
On Av, because of the fast [ie: Tisha b'Av, the ninth of Av];
On Elul, because of Rosh haShana [which occurs on the very first day of the following month];
On Tishrei, in order to align the festivals [of Yom Kippur, presumably, and Sukkot];
On Kislev, because of Hanukkah;
On Adar, because of the Purim.
And, when the temple existed, they would also go out on Iyyar, because of Minor Pesach (ie: the second Pesach, which is referred to in Numbers 9:10-11).

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Mishna, Tractate Taanit 2:10
אין גוזרין תענית על הצבור בראש חדש בחנכה ובפורים ואם התחילו אין מפסיקין דברי רבן גמליאל אמר רבי מאיר אף על פי שאמר רבן גמליאל אין מפסיקין מודה היה שאין משלימין וכן תשעה באב שחל להיות בערב שבת

One may not establish a communal fast on the first of the month, on Hanukkah or on Purim, but if they began [fasting already], they may not interrupt it: the opinion of Rabban Gamliel.
Rabbi Meir says that even though Rabban Gamliel said that one may not interrupt it, he agrees that one may not complete it either [but that he must break his fast, one presumes, close to the hour at which it would otherwise be scheduled to end].
This is also the case with Tisha b’Av that falls on Erev Shabbat [- an unfortunate calendrical coincidence, which no longer occurs with the established calendars currently in use].

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Mishna, Tractate Megillah 3:4
ראש חדש אדר שחל להיות בשבת קורין בפרשת שקלים חל להיות בתוך השבת מקדימין לשעבר ומפסיקין לשבת אחרת בשניה זכור בשלישית פרה אדמה ברביעית החדש הזה לכם בחמישית חוזרין לכסדרן לכל מפסיקין בראשי חדשים בחנכה ובפורים בתעניות ובמעמדות וביום הכפורים

If the first day of Adar falls on a Shabbat, one reads the section [known as] Sheqalim ["Coins", Exodus30:11-16]; if it falls on a weekday, one commences with the previous [Shabbat, reading the section then] and pauses on the following Shabbat [and leaves until the Shabbat following that one the order that, otherwise, would be as follows]:
On the second [Shabbat of the month of Adar, one reads the section known as] Zachor ["Remember", Deuteronomy 25:17-19];
On the third [Shabbat of the month of Adar, one reads the section known as] Parah Adumah ["Red Heifer", Numbers 19];
On the fourth [Shabbat of the month of Adar, one reads the section known as] HaChodesh haZeh laKhem ["This Month, to You", Exodus 12:1-20];
On the fifth [Shabbat of the month of Adar], one returns to the regular order [of haftarot, persumably].
For all [of the following] one breaks off [from the regular reading and reads the sections described in a subsequent mishna, Megillah 3:6]:
The first days of the months, Hanukkah, Purim, fast days, appointed times [when, according to the Mishna in Taanit 4:2, segments of the population would make their way to Jerusalem in order to be present for the regular daily offerings] and Yom Kippur.

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Mishna, Tractate Megillah 3:6
בחנכה בנשיאים בפורים ויבא עמלק בראשי חדשים ובראשי חדשיכם במעמדות במעשה בראשית בתעניות ברכות וקללות אין מפסיקין בקללות אלא אחד קורא את כלן בשני ובחמישי ובשבת במנחה קורין כסדרן ואין עולין להם מן החשבון שנאמר וידבר משה את מעדי יי אל בני ישראל מצותן שיהו קורין כל אחד ואחד בזמנו

On Hanukkah, [one reads the section known as] Nesiim ["Princes", Numbers 7];
On Purim, [one reads the section known as] VaYavo Amaleq ["Then Amalek Came", Exodus 17:8-16];
On the first days of the months [one reads the section known as] BeRoshei Chodsheikhem ["One the First Days of Your Months", Numbers 28:11-15];
At the appointed times [that were mentioned above, one reads] the work of creation;
On fast days, [one reads the] blessings and the curses [Leviticus 26]. One may not break up the curses [and divide them between more than one reader], rather one person must read all of them.
On Monday and Thursday [mornings] and on Shabbat afternoons, one reads according to the regular order and does not raise [?] them from the count [ie: one reads portions from that which is going to be read the following Shabbat morning, and makes sure to actually reread them that following Shabbat - acc. to R' Obadiah of Bertinoro], since it says: “Moses declared the set times of the Lord to the Israelites” (Leviticus 23:44) – their commandment is that they should read every section in its season.

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Mishna, Tractate Moed Katan 3:9
בראשי חדשים בחנכה ובפורים מענות ומטפחות בזה ובזה לא מקוננות נקבר המת לא מענות ולא מטפחות איזהו ענוי שכלן עונות כאחת קינה שאחת מדברת וכלן עונות אחריה שנאמר ולמדנה בנתיכם נהי ואשה רעותה קינה אבל לעתיד לבא הוא אומר בלע המות לנצח ומחה יי אלהים דמעה מעל כל פנים וגו

On the first days of the months, on Hanukkah and on Purim, women may cry out [in lamentation, during a funeral] and clap their hands. On each of these [days] they may not wail. Once the deceased is buried, they may neither cry out [in lamentation] nor clap their hands.
What is “crying out”? When they all cry out as one.
[What is] “wailing”? When one declares and they all cry out after her, as it says: “Teach to your daughters a dirge, and each to her neighbor a lament” [NRSV, Jeremiah 9:19; v20 in English Bibles].
But in time to come, it says: “He will swallow up death forever and the Lord God will wipe each tear from every cheek” [Isaiah 25:8].

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Mishna, Tractate Bava Kama 6:6
גץ שיצא מתחת הפטיש והזיק חיב גמל שהיה טעון פשתן ועבר ברשות הרבים ונכנסה פשתנו לתוך החנות ודלקה בנרו של חנוני והדליק את הבירה בעל הגמל חיב הניח חנוני נרו מבחוץ החנוני חיב רבי יהודה אומר בנר חנכה פטור

A spark that flies out from under the hammer and causes damage: he is obligated [to make financial restitution].
A flax-laden camel that is walking in a public place, whose flax [is so bulky that it] goes into a shop and catches fire on the shop-owner’s candle and sets fire to the establishment: the owner of the camel is obligated. [But,] had the shop-owner left the candle outside, he is liable.
Rabbi Yehuda says, he is exempt if it is a Hanukkah candle.

From the foregoing, we can determine the fact that Hanukkah is celebrated in the month of Kislev (Rosh HaShanah 1:3), that between Sukkot and Hanukkah one does not recite the traditional formula over the first fruits (Bikkurim 1:6), that communal fasts are impermissible on Hanukkah – or, at least, they must be cut short (Taanit 2:10), that the day features its own special Torah reading (Megillah 3:4, 6), that women may not wail on Hanukkah during a funeral, and must desist from crying out and clapping after the body has been interred (Moed Katan 3:9) and – most importantly! – that there is such a thing as a “Hanukkah candle”, and that it is supposed to be left outside the shopfront (Bava Kama 6:6). It’s not exactly the Shulchan Arukh already, but at least we’re getting somewhere.

Now, if this were to be an exhaustive analysis of Hanukkah in the early rabbinic literature (and it is most certainly not), I would next have to note all of the references to this festival in the Tosefta, the Palestinian Talmud, the halakhic midrashim, and maybe even some of the midrash aggadah. As it is, I’m going to skip straight to the Babylonian Talmud, and as much as I would love to append Rav Saadiah Gaon’s description of Hanukkah from his siddur (the first ever written, for all of the year), that will just have to wait for a later post.

So! What does the Talmud have to say?

The relevant passage can be found in Tractate Shabbat 21a-23b, and can be divided into four sections. The first section concerns the material from which the Hanukkah wicks and oil can be made, the second concerns the procedure whereby one lights the candles, the third concerns the nature of the festival itself, and the fourth constitutes a smattering of unrelated laws, found amongst discussions of other Shabbat-related and temple-related topics:

1. The substance of the wicks and the oil

The Talmud presents three opinions, together with rationalisations of all three. The opinions are those of Rav Huna, Rav Hisda, and either Rav Matana or Rav (the Talmud is unsure):

Rav Huna declares that the same wicks and oil that are forbidden on Shabbat (due, it would seem, to their inferior quality) are also forbidden on Hanukkah, whether the day in question is a Shabbat or a weekday;

Rav Hisda declares that the same wicks and oil that are forbidden on Shabbat are forbidden on Hanukkah, but only if the day in question is a Shabbat. On days of Hanukkah that are not Shabbat, one may use whatever he wants as a wick and as oil;

Rav (or Rav Matana) declares that the same wicks and oil that are forbidden on Shabbat are permissible on Hanukkah, both on weekdays and on Shabbat.

What is the logic? According to the Talmud, the dispute centres around two Hanukkah-related laws: whether or not it is necessary to repair the candle after it goes out, and whether or not it is permissible to use the light of the candle for something else – reading, for example.

We can therefore assume that Rav Huna permits both, and therefore forbids the use of low quality wicks and oil on a weekday (low quality means that they will go out easily, and one might forget to repair them), as well as on Shabbat (being allowed to use the light for reading might mean that you forget that it’s a Shabbat and fix them if they go out);

We can assume that Rav Hisda holds that it is not necessary to fix the candle if it goes out, and that he therefore permits the use of inferior products on the weekdays of the festival, but that he permits using the light for other activities, making them unsuitable for Shabbat;

Finally, we can assume that Rav (or Rav Matana) both denies the necessity of fixing the wick, and disallows the usage of the light for other activities. According to him, therefore, such products are permissible on Hanukkah irrespective of the day of the week.

What follows this discussion is a brief interlude, the point of which is that it is better to learn new things as a child than as an adult, followed by a meta-discussion on whether or not Rav’s (or Rav Matana’s) position is tenable. The overall conclusion of this section is… Wait, you were looking for a conclusion??

2. The procedure of lighting the candles

There are two discussions in this section, the first of which concerns the procedure by which the candles, themselves, are lit, and the second of which concerns the placement of the candelabrum (the hanukkiah):

The rabbis teach that the obligation of lighting candles on Hanukkah rests on the head of the household, who lights on behalf of his family. Nonetheless, those who are expedient (or those who beautify the commandments, depending on your favourite etymology of mehadrin) will light one candle for each member of the household. Those who are particularly expedient (mehadrin min hamehadrin) will do one of the two following things:

a) According to the school of Shammai, they will start by each lighting eight candles, then diminish the number by one every evening, lighting seven on the second night, six on the third and so on. The final night of Hanukkah, every member of the household lights a single candle;
b) According to the school of Hillel, they will start by each lighting a single candle, then increase the number by one every evening, lighting two candles on the second night, three on the third and so on. The final night of Hanukkah, every member of the household lights eight candles.

The Talmud goes on to discuss the nature of this particular dispute between the schools of Shammai and Hillel, and their respective philosophical views. Here, as in most instances, the halakha follows the school of Hillel (although the Talmud doesn’t say so, and we are left – again – without a clear conclusion. You might have to get used to that).

The second discussion in this section concerns the placement of the hanukkiah, which – as we saw in the Mishna (Bava Kama 6:6) – needs to be public.

The rabbis teach that it is necessary to place the Hanukkah candle outside the house, on the doorstep. Should one live in an upper storey, one places it at a window that overlooks a public space. In times of danger, when one doesn’t wish to advertise the fact that one is lighting Hanukkah candles, one is allowed to place the hanukkiah inside, on a table. In agreement with the view expressed above by Rav/Rav Matana (that the Hanukkah candles cannot be used for any other purpose), an additional candle is necessary if one requires light, but a fireplace is considered sufficient for all but an important person (אדם חשוב).

At this particular juncture, you’re probably wondering the same thing that I’m wondering, and it’s nice to know that the rabbis are wondering this as well. In amongst all of these discussions, we haven’t once answered the most basic question of all, which is the question that the Talmud asks next: “מאי חנוכה”

3. What is Hanukkah – or, as I prefer to translate it, “What the hell is Hanukkah anyway?”

Given the incredible importance of this particular question, I feel that it is worthwhile to present what the Talmud says directly:

תנו רבנן בכ”ה בכסליו יומי דחנוכה תמניא אינון דלא למספד בהון ודלא להתענות בהון שכשנכנסו יוונים להיכל טמאו כל השמנים שבהיכל וכשגברה מלכות בית חשמונאי ונצחום בדקו ולא מצאו אלא פך אחד של שמן שהיה מונח בחותמו של כהן גדול ולא היה בו אלא להדליק יום אחד נעשה בו נס והדליקו ממנו שמונה ימים לשנה אחרת קבעום ועשאום ימים טובים בהלל והודאה

The rabbis taught: On [ie: from] the 25th of Kislev, there are eight days of Hanukkah, on which it is forbidden to eulogise or to fast, since when the Greeks entered the sanctuary they contaminated all of the oil in the sanctuary, and when the Hasmonean monarchy prevailed and defeated them, they checked but could only find one container of oil, with only enough to burn for one day, lying with the seal of the high priest. A miracle occurred for them and they lit [the lamps] with it for eight days. A subsequent year, they established these [days] and they made them a festival with praise and thanksgiving [ימים טובים בהלל והודאה].

This, in a nutshell, has become the official Hanukkah story. We now have all of the key ingredients: the name, the date and the mythology. As with the story of the 72 sages who wrote the Septuagint, it is fascinating to see this one grow, but unlike that particular tale, we’ve very little to go on besides the sources that I’ve listed here. References within the Tosefta, the Palestinian Talmud and the midrash, as mentioned before, will have to wait for another time. Meanwhile, it’s worth noting the fact that the Talmud’s story doesn’t stop quite yet. So far as Hanukkah-related legislation is concerned, the Talmud continues by noting a variety of other laws, found over the next couple of pages.

These laws concern the placement of the candles (their height from the ground, as well as which side of the door they are to be placed at), the explicit impermissibility of using their light for any mundane activity (the example given is of counting money), the legality of using a Hanukkah candle in order to light another Hanukkah candle, the nature (and the number) of any blessings to be recited by those who are lighting them and those who are witnessing them being lit, and the extent of the obligation:

• Guests who are lodging overnight are obliged to light their own candles, according to Rabbi Sheshet, although Rabbi Zeira qualifies this assertion;
• Women are allowed to light their own candles, according to Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi, as they also benefitted from the miracle;
• Deaf-mutes, people who are mentally incompetent and children are all disqualified – as they usually are.

So far as whether or not any or all of the laws mentioned here are still current, the development of the halakha is such that, were one to gain a true insight into the evolution of this festival, one would need to consult the traditional commentaries and meta-commentaries, compendia and responsa. That would best be left for another time, and to one with greater textual competence than myself.

From Panini to Ramanujan, India has had more than its fair share of brilliant individuals, although the feats performed by Dr R. Ganesh are sui generis. The only way that I can translate them into a culture similar to my own is by imagining the following:

A performer stands upon the stage; before him is his audience. As a feat, he must compose a poem on a theme to be determined by a random audience member, and do so in a strict metrical arrangement. What is more, he must compose this poem only one syllable at a time, and between each syllable, the audience member who suggested the theme must call out a syllable that he is not allowed to use next. He progresses in such a fashion until he has concluded the first line, at which point he is offered a new challenge. The new challenges mount up, between each of which (and without the aid of writing anything down) he must return to the original challenge and, in similar fashion, add another line to it. The challenges that are interspersed throughout include answering random questions from the audience, composing poems on specific themes (again, constrained by metre), adding lines to poems that are given to him, recognising the provenance of quotes that are called out from the audience, composing verse that contains specific sounds that are words in other languages but which must be included as morphemes in the speaker’s own tongue, and completing a magic square to certain specifications. This last challenge, like the first, is broken up and interspersed around others.

This all sounds like quite a mess, and I would have enough difficulty completing even the first of those tasks without being distracted by so much as one of the others. Apparantly, Dr. R. Ganesh is quite adept at this particular feat of memory, which is called an “avadhana“, and his ability to do it with one hundred parallel questions (a “shatavadhana”, instead of the traditional eight) has led to his being named a “Shatavadhani”.

Reading this got me to thinking about feats of memory in general, and it was but a small step from there to the world of the yeshiva in particular. I am reminded of a parlour trick, for want of a better term, that had some measure of popularity for a time. Known by many as “the pin trick”, it involved choosing a random tractate of the Talmud, opening it to a random page, and then placing a pin through one of the words: the person who was “performing”, so to speak, would be told the tractate, the page and the word, and would then disclose exactly which word it was going to go through on the other side of the page. In order to make the enormity of this feat clear, the Babylonian Talmud comprises a vast corpus of legal and dialectic literature, spanning almost 2,700 double-sided pages of unvocalised, unpunctuated Aramaic text. To perform a feat like this – and one which was looked down upon by many members of the establishment – it is necessary to have committed the entire Talmud to memory. Such a skill relies greatly on natural gifts, but is also an indication of an incredible time spent in the pursuit of Talmudic fluency.

While I am disinclined to minimise in any respect the performance of such a feat, if I were to say anything to its detriment I would note that it is uncreative. While it testifies to the practitioner’s incredible familiarity with the corpus, it says nothing at all for his comprehension. In that respect, more popular amongst many individuals (particularly in Lithuania) was the delivery of a pilpul: a Talmudic homily that linked together a large number of Talmudic discussions and meta-discussions, commentaries and super-commentaries. In many respects, this practice served the same purpose as the pin trick: to demonstrate the acumen of the “performer” by revealing his incredible feats of memorisation, and to show that he was possessed of a keen and analytical mind.

To demonstrate just how ingrained such attitudes are, within the Haredi world today, consider the following example. Just down the road from one of the yeshivot at which I studied in 2003 was a kindergarten. There were signs in the street around it, advertising it as a good place to send your children. Not one of the signs mentioned the conditions of the rooms, the quality of the equipment, the professionalism of the staff or even the rates. Instead, they all asked a simple question: “Do you want your sons to know Shas?”

Shas, which is an acronym for Shisha Sedarim (ששה סדרים, “six orders”), refers to the Babylonian Talmud. It is certainly no mistake to think that a young man need start (reasonably) early if he wishes to truly master this corpus, and must learn to work diligently in the process. While I applaud the enthusiasm of the parents, I do think that kindergarten might be a little bit too early.

During my time in yeshiva, I heard of young men who lived locally and who had completed Shas in time for their bar-mitzvah. While that was certainly rare, completing it in time for their twentieth birthday was not. What is more, there were a number of young men, ranged through their twenties and thirties, who appeared to know large sections of it off by heart. If I were to be cruel, I would say that they didn’t appear to know anything else.

There are a number of different sociological factors that come into play here. Central, in many respects, is the sense of loss that follows in the wake of the Shoah. Whole communities of learned, Torah-observant Jews were shuttled by the trainload to Chełmno and Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor, Majdanek and Auschwitz. Libraries, like the famed collection at the Chochmei Lublin yeshiva, were put to the torch. Despite the fact that more people are learning Torah today than have ever been learning Torah in the past, the sense that one needs to rebuild something is pervasive.

Secondarily to that, although intimately connected with it, is the success of the Lithuanian approach to Torah study. Between the death of Rabbi Moshe Sofer in 1839 and the outbreak of the first world war, there were over two hundred yeshivot in Hungary. In the minds of many people, however, the yeshivot of Lithuania and Poland (institutions like the Mir, Novaradok, Ponevezvh and Volozhin) were rabbinic institutions par excellence. The differences between the two styles of institution are noteworthy: while Hungarian yeshivot featured holidays during the year, allowing students to spend time away from the study hall, the Lithuanian yeshiva system emphasised the need for perennial learning. While the Hungarian yeshiva system had a focus on tutelage and regular examinations, the Lithuanian yeshiva system placed its focus on individual study with a study partner (a chavruta). While Hungarian rabbis were renowned for their cogent responses to legal questions, Lithuanian rabbis were renowned instead for their dialectic analysis and their feats of memory. Heads of Lithuanian yeshivot, as a general rule, did not decide on matters of law.

[If you are interested in reading more about Hungarian yeshivot, I append links to two excellent articles that appeared in Jewish History (1997): "On the Hungarian Yeshiva Movement", by Rabbi Prof. Mordechai Breuer, and "Hungarian Yeshivot, Lithuanian Yeshivot and Joseph Ben-David", by Prof. Shaul Stampfer.]

To all things, of course, there is a limit. Defining the uppermost boundary of Lithuanian analysis is the school of Brisk: a method of intense dialectical analysis that is likened by its detractors to chemistry. Its origins can be found in a collection of discourses on the Rambam’s Mishne Torah, composed by Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik (the Brisker Rav), who was the Rav at Brest-Litovsk in Belarus – “Brisk” in Yiddish. While the Rambam’s reliance on the Palestinian Talmud and other non-Babylonian sources is no secret, the Brisker Rav’s attempts to align the Mishne Torah with the Babylonian Talmud resulted in a tremendously conceptual presentation of the halakha, breaking individual discussions in the halakhic literature into their constituent components and aiming at a philosophical appraisal of the Torah’s underlying mechanics. Those who oppose such an approach nonetheless recognise the greatness of his work, and a conceptual approach in non-Brisk circles, while it is not the norm, is also reasonably common.

Supporters of this school may see its true origins in the writings of the Brisker Rav’s father, Rabbi Yosef Dov Soloveitchik (1820-1892), who penned a collection of analytical discourses on the Mishne Torah and on the Torah itself, entitled “Beis haLevi”. He was the great-grandson of Rabbi Chaim ben Yitzchak (“Chaim Volozhiner”), who founded the yeshiva in Volozhin and who was himself a disciple of the Vilna Gaon, Rabbi Eliyahu ben Shlomo Zalman (1720-1797). The methodology of the Vilna Gaon and of his disciples was one of extreme memorisation, and it is said of the Gaon (the Gra, as he is known) that if given the name of a Talmudic sage and the name of a chapter of the Talmud, he was able to declare the number of times the former appeared within the latter. In the school of Brisk, the two approaches of memorisation and analysis came to a head: two characteristics, while not always approved of in the extremes to which the Brisker Rav took them, that are admired and striven for in the Ashkenazi Haredi world today.

The intensity and the devotion of these people, and the limits to which they have succeeded in memorising so vast a body of literature, are most certainly beyond the norm. One individual in our own age who has accomplished such a feat is haRav Ovadiah Yosef, the former Sephardi Chief Rabbi of the State of Israel and the spiritual leader of the Shas party. He has attained a degree of memorisation and fluency across the vast bulk of Jewish legal literature to an extent unparalleled since the Rambam himself. Nonetheless, his lack of analysis is one of the several factors (according to Dr Marc Shapiro, one of the major factors) in his being so disrespected by the Ashkenazi Haredi establishment. For those who model their education system on the Lithuanian yeshivot, analysis is as integral as memorisation.

For my part, I fear that the analysis in which they take such pride is in many respects as uncreative as the pin trick that so many of them disparaged. While it contributes a great deal to certain philosophical conceptualisations of the halakha, it does nothing in the realm of advancing Jewish legislation in practice. Like the shatavadhana of Dr R. Ganesh, it is impressive to behold, and a true testimony to the brilliance of he who can execute such feats of memory and analysis. Like the shatavadhana of Dr R. Ganesh, however, it remains no more than a performance.

Social philosopher, political critic, agent provocateur, contrarian par excellence: a man who spoke his mind freely, refused to suffer fools gladly, and brought the full weight of his intellect into the formation of his convictions, behind which he stood until the end. Christopher Hitchens succumbed to esophageal cancer just two days ago. He was 62 years old.

Wikipedia is cruel. No sooner had Vanity Fair released the details of his death than verbs were changed to past tense and a new date was appended to his photograph: a flourish of finality that may have even borne a trace of satisfaction. We are all of us slain by time.

What can one say about the man? He never shied from an argument. When, after a long and colourful career as commentator on the major political events of his time (during which he was most famous for having moved from the left into the neoconservative camp), he reinvented himself as a horseman of the apocalypse. After writing God is Not Great, Hitchens went on a tour of America’s bible belt, engaging priests and politicians, evangelists and scholars in debate after scathing debate. It is fair to say that in the game of words, Hitchens was better armed than his opponents. I never saw him falter.

Unlike most people, Hitchens never tired of insulting those whom he despised, even after they were dead. When Jerry Falwell died (a man whom Hitchens labelled a “little toad”, a “faith-based fraud”), he quipped that if he’d only been given an enema first, they could have buried him in a matchbox. While the world mourned Princess Di, Hitchens declared her a childish degenerate, whose sordid relationships and reckless behaviour got her killed. Most famously, if only because he dedicated his The Missionary Position to her, he indicted Mother Teresa as a fanatic, a friend of poverty, a fundamentalist and a fraud.

Let us therefore not spare Hitchens in his own passing. Anything for him but tired platitudes. He was rude, he was self-righteous, he was conceited. He made racist jokes, smoked cigarettes by the carton, believed women incapable of being funny, and was never without a glass of scotch. He was erudite and exceedingly eloquent. An opinionated and highly-gifted raconteur, he was born to be a public speaker, a scholar who spoke truth to power, and in many ways a genius. He was witty, he was forceful, and he was proud. Most importantly, about so many of the issues to which he lent his tongue and his pen, he was right.

Israeli poet, Yehuda Amichai, composed a variation on the El Male Rachamim (אל מלא רחמים, “God full of mercy”): a prayer, traditionally recited at Jewish funerals. Whether it is perfectly or imperfectly suited to the passing of Christopher Hitchens, I leave up to you. My faulty translation does not in any way reflect the beauty and the cleverness of the original.

אל מלא רחמים

אל מלא רחמים
אלמלא האל מלא רחמים
היו הרחמים בעולם ולא רק בו
אני, שקטפתי פרחים בהר
והסתכלתי אל כל העמקים
אני, שהבאתי גוויות מן הגבעות
יודע לספר שהעולם ריק מרחמים

אני שהייתי מלך המלח ליד הים
שעמדתי בלי החלטה מול חלוני
שספרתי צעדי מלאכים
שלבי הרים משקלות כאב
בתחרויות הנוראות

אני שמשתמש רק בחלק קטן
מן המילים במלון

אני, שמוכרח לפתור חידות בעל כורחי
יודע כי אלמלא האל מלא רחמים
היו הרחמים בעולם
ולא רק בו

God, Full of Mercy

God full of mercy,
If only God were not full of mercy,
There would be mercy in the world and not just in him.
I, who plucked flowers on the mountain,
Who gazed out over all of the valleys,
I, who brought corpses from the hilltops,
I can tell you that the world is void of mercy.

I, who was the king of salt beside the sea,
Who stood against my will before my window,
Who counted the footsteps of angels,
Whose heart lifted weights of anguish
In dreadful contests.

I, who use but a tiny portion
Of the words in the dictionary.

I, who am forced to decipher riddles,
I know that if only God were not full of mercy
There would be mercy in the world
And not just in him.

To a man who declared himself, not an atheist but an anti-theist, a man who believed the very notion of God to be inherently evil, who never despaired of the fact that death was to be nothing more nor less than what the naked logic dictates – a man for whom the very notion of a “deathbed confession” would be a slanderous insult – I wish him, in the strictly etymological sense,

Requiescat In Pace
ינוח בשלום על משכבו
≈ Isaiah 57:3

It’s always exciting to see artifacts that relate to material that we read in the biblical literature, but it’s also always entertaining to witness people getting carried away with their significance. Take, for example, Stephen Flurry. He is the executive editor of The Trumpet, which is a publication by the Philadelphia Church of God, but is also the president of the Herbert W. Armstrong College in Edmonton, which has been funding Dr Mazar’s excavation. His reaction to the bullae, while slightly more circumspect in 2008, was to declare that “we are honored to be involved in Dr. Mazar’s work. These tiny artifacts validate Jeremiah’s account and provide overwhelming proof of the accuracy of the biblical record.” [link] Overwhelming proof indeed! In fact, if you look at the bullae very closely, you might be able to make out the fine print that can only be seen by those of us who are truly pious, in which the coins refer to the tossing of Jeremiah into a well. You can’t see it? Pray harder.

But I shouldn’t tease. After all, this is how The Trumpet describes itself:

The Trumpet uses a single overarching criterion that sets it apart from other news sources and keeps it focused like a laser beam on what truly is important. That criterion is prophetic significance. The Trumpet seeks to show how current events are fulfilling the biblically prophesied description of the prevailing state of affairs just before the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

They’re right about one thing. That really does set them apart from other news sources.