tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23921647597263607212024-03-19T07:26:37.925-04:00The Talmud BlogShaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06080086674500993959noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2392164759726360721.post-53268182662820704012011-07-06T07:50:00.005-04:002013-09-10T08:49:57.696-04:00Moving OnThe Talmud Blog is now live as a web log collective at <a href="http://thetalmudblog.wordpress.com/">www.thetalmudblog.wordpress.com</a>. Update your RSS feeds and what have you, and move on over. The (academictalmud.blogspot.com) blog will retain only a few, still relevant posts. And it will not be updated.Shaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06080086674500993959noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2392164759726360721.post-24532225497630896482010-06-06T04:33:00.004-04:002011-01-31T03:13:14.980-05:00Review: Maimonides in his WorldI have begun writing for a wonderful new magazine of Jewish history, <i><a href="http://www.segulamag.com/he/">Segula</a></i>. In the last issue, I published a review of Sara Stroumsa's book, <i>Maimonides in his World</i>. Since this issue is no longer current, I post it here. In the second, forthcoming issue, I have a more extensive article on Jewish Magic. Enjoy!<div><br /></div><div><h3 style=" ;font-family:'Times New Roman';font-size:medium;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;font-size:100%;"><i>Maimonides in His World:Portrait of a Mediterranean Thinker<br /></i>Sarah Stroumsa</span></h3><h3 style=" ;font-family:'Times New Roman';font-size:medium;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;font-size:100%;">Princeton University Press, 2009</span></h3><h3 style=" ;font-family:'Times New Roman';font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><span style="font-family:Garamond;font-size:100%;">Faced with a sophisticated yet uncomplicated gadget, the New York Times’ review of the iPad</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;"><sup>™</sup></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><span style="font-family:Garamond;font-size:100%;"> offers two assessments side by side – one for techies and the other for everyone else. As a piece of intellectual technology, Sarah Stroumsa’s erudite and accessible <i>Maimonidies in his World</i> deserves no less. The book<i> </i>is an exceptional work of critical scholarship that remains readable and relevant beyond the ivory tower. Indeed, its true significance might be found among a more general readership. As a number of scholarly reviews have already (positively) appraised the book, here we limit ourselves to discussing its importance for non-specialists, and particularly those for whom the Rambam was, as Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchick evocatively put it, “a permanent guest in the home.” </span></span></h3><p style=" ;font-family:'Times New Roman';font-size:medium;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;font-size:100%;">It has been more than half a decade since the eight-hundredth anniversary of Maimonides’ death, yet the publishing mill continues to spawn major Maimonidean biographies [Moshe Halbertal, <i>H</i><i>a-Rambam</i> (Jerusalem, 2009)], translations [Michael Schwarz, <i>Sefer Moreh Nevukhim</i> (Tel Aviv, 2008)], intellectual portraits [Joel Kraemer, <i>Maimonides: The Life and World of One of Civilization's Greatest Minds</i> (New York, 2010)], and even a so-called “Rambam diet” [David Zulberg, <i>The Life Transforming Diet: Health and Psychological Principles of Maimonides</i> (New York, 2007)]. Ecclesiastes’ warning against the endless making of books has been observed only in the breach. But in Stroumsa’s case, we are all the more fortunate.</span></p><p style=" ;font-family:'Times New Roman';font-size:medium;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;font-size:100%;"><i>Maimonides in his World</i> presents a fully integrated and contextualized figure. The attempt to separate Maimonides the philosopher from Maimonides the halakhist is smartly refuted. In addition, Maimonides is now located in what Stroumsa calls his Mediterranean Islamic context. Both the integration and contextualization of Maimonides are likely to be resisted by those who devote themselves to the traditional study of Rambam’s writings. But given Stroumsa’s mastery of the material and the way she consistently links the Rambam’s language to a rich lexicon of Arabic terms and Islamic ideas, the book’s conclusions are hard to avoid. Of course the unfortunate truth is that a book by a professor of Arabic philosophy published in English by a university press will never make it into the study halls where the Rambam is most venerated. But it should, and to its credit – it theoretically could. Despite the fact that <i>Maimonides in his World </i>derives from over twenty years of painstaking philological research on Hebrew and Arabic texts, like the iPad, the complex machinery is present, but elegantly tucked away.</span></p><p style=" ;font-family:'Times New Roman';font-size:medium;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;font-size:100%;">Using advanced linguistic and scholarly tools, Stroumsa demonstrates how virtually every one of Maimonides’ projects can be properly understood only in relation to broader trends in the Islamic Mediterranean. These include Maimonides’ polemics against the widespread theological approach of his day (<i>kalām</i>), his heresiography in which deviant Jews of the past and present are essentially depicted as Muslim heretics (<i>zandādiqa</i>), the creation of the <i>Mishn</i><i>e</i><i>h Torah</i> – a new primary<i> </i>source of Jewish law that eschews fundamentals (<i>furū‘</i>)<i> </i>and uncovers basic legal principles (<i>uşūl</i>). According to Stroumsa, the composition of <i>Mishn</i><i>e</i><i>h Torah</i> is to be connected with currents that Maimonides was exposed to under the Almohads during the years 1148-1165, as is his almost militant anti-anthropomorphism, his image of Messianic kingship (similar to the Islamic <i>Mahdī</i>), and his impatience with Ptolemaic astronomy. Maimonides’ famous position regarding animal sacrifices in the Temple, which are seen as but one step in the evolution of Judaism from its pagan past, is of a piece with the renewed interest in religious phenomenology. His denigration of <i>darshanim </i>and the uncritical use of <i>aggada</i> parallels Muslim assessment of preachers (<i>wu‘‘āz</i>) and religious storytellers (<i>qusşāş</i>). </span></p><p style=" ;font-family:'Times New Roman';font-size:medium;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;font-size:100%;">Maimonides’ vision of human perfection and an austere intellectual afterlife plainly reflects the dominant philosophical approach of his day. Famously, this approach engendered considerable problems for Maimonides both during his life and after his death, for if there is no need for the body after death, why would God have to resurrect the dead? One of the most original claims in the book is that Maimonides’ codification of this belief in his thirteen principles was neither an abandonment of his philosophical approach nor an attempt at synthesis. Rather, it was a shrewd strategy he hoped would allow him to avoid the discussion entirely. Unfortunately for his sake, he was mistaken.</span></p><p style=" ;font-family:'Times New Roman';font-size:medium;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;font-size:100%;">In Stroumsa’s capable hands, the image of Maimonides that emerges is not a portrait of a brilliant Talmud-centric Lithuanian Rosh Yeshiva; rather a kind of pre-Renaissance Renaissance man who was completely fluent in the philosophical discourse of his day and who attempted an unapologetic reading of Judaism using the prevailing intellectual tools of his day. The secret to Maimonides’ success, which Stroumsa sees as the culmination of prior attempts by Jewish philosophers, was his distinct ability to observe with cool, scholarly detachment all of the philosophical and religious traditions that preceded him – including his own Judaism. </span></p><p style=" ;font-family:'Times New Roman';font-size:medium;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;font-size:100%;">Pervasive self awareness is both the blessing and curse of modernity. However, when you are hundreds of years ahead of your time, it can only be experienced as a howling loneliness. Taking its cue from the popular saying “from Moshe (Rabbeinu) to Moshe (ben Maimon) there arose none like Moshe,” the final section of the book explores Maimonides’ idea of the “philosopher king” – a man who responds to the call for communal involvement, yet remains in philosophical contemplation. It is good to be king, but how lonely it is!</span></p><p style=" ;font-family:'Times New Roman';font-size:medium;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;font-size:100%;">The second half of the twentieth century saw Modern Orthodox Judaism – particularly in its American strain – attempt to fashion itself as a Maimonidean movement. Some continue to call for “Maimonidean reform” [Marc D. Angel, <i>Maimonides, Spinoza and Us</i>: <i>Toward an Intellectually Vibrant Judaism</i> (Woodstock, VT, 2009)]. At the same time, there has been hesitation about a pure “<i>imatatio Maimonides</i>,” with some questioning the wisdom and feasibility of community-wide emulation of this elite, intellectually unparalleled, and singular Jewish leader. In the future conversations that are sure to ensue about Maimonides’ place in contemporary Jewish life, Stroumsa’s portrait will be a most welcome, indispensible guide.</span></p><p style=" ;font-family:'Times New Roman';font-size:medium;"><span style="font-family:Garamond;font-size:100%;">Dr. Shai Secunda is a Fellow at the Scholion Center for Interdisciplinary Jewish Research – The Hebrew University of Jerusaelm.</span></p></div>Shaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06080086674500993959noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2392164759726360721.post-22056028015072224892010-03-19T09:11:00.008-04:002012-03-19T07:04:47.429-04:00Notes towards Srugim and Talmudic Culture<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXL2w1qlI433mNY-enjHddWq09Xvd3S1yrkmeKujVq8BNIC7jPyJwgz0SSIKQOXbzLhehyZCwWlEz3nB5ORh-ivWIu-fP7csVg1GDDMBMGg5hfN3UdRGSzgdFnIiQbaFXEkQ51hcNjV1w/s1600-h/srugim_bolognese_fromaggio.png" style="font-style: normal; "><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451851557715749042" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 208px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXL2w1qlI433mNY-enjHddWq09Xvd3S1yrkmeKujVq8BNIC7jPyJwgz0SSIKQOXbzLhehyZCwWlEz3nB5ORh-ivWIu-fP7csVg1GDDMBMGg5hfN3UdRGSzgdFnIiQbaFXEkQ51hcNjV1w/s320/srugim_bolognese_fromaggio.png" border="0" /></a> I<span style="font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; ">nstability</span><br /><br />Despite the accolades that Srugim has received for achieving a kind of objective correlative that affords access to <i style="font-style: normal; ">dati </i>and <i style="font-style: normal; ">hillon </i>audiences, it simultaneously point to aspects of the dati/hiloni divide - especially in terms of perceptions of the Other. A number of episodes ago, Hodaya, the rabbi's daughter who left the fold and is now officially a "datlash," and finds herself in a relatively unfulfilled relationship with a fellow datlash. One depressing evening she heads out to a bar, alone, and phones her old boyfriend - the Hebrew U archeologist Avri who was the focus of a number of episodes last season. Avri was truly secular. Not a drop of datlash in him. The chemistry is still there, but Avri has found someone new. And as he repeats over and over again, his new girlfriend, unlike Hodaya, is stable. The scene sheds light on an interesting assumption. Pretty much all of the characters are, in their own way, unstable - especially in their obsessive and unending search for identity and the interplay between identity and religion. Hodaya is of course the perfect example. but the same could be said of the other characters, like Amir - the married man who is less happy with having to fake as an Ashkenazi, Roi with the questions of his sexual identity, etc. One episode poked fun of a hilonit trying to leave her cozy Tel Aviv world and "play" the complex experience of being religious - clearly a nod to the experience of Srugim's actors.<div><br />It is worth noting that Srugim assumes that there is an inherent instability in the religious experience- an idea that R. J. B. Soloveitchik famously celebrated in "footnote 4" of his <i>Halakhic Man</i>. From the staid mid-century confines of Orthodox America, R. <span style="font-size: 100%; ">Soloveitchik</span><span style="font-size: 100%; "> </span><span style="font-size: 100%; ">tried to demonstrate that being religious was no trip alongside the tranquil waters, but a tortuous, existential experience. At least in certain corners of the Modern Orthodox world, it seems this battle of perception was won.</span></div><div><br /><div style="font-style: normal; "><br /></div><div style="font-style: normal; "><b>Identity</b></div><br /><div style="font-style: normal; ">Speaking of identity, the questions of datlashim and borders came up as well. Hodaya's new boyfriend has no problem whatsoever with ordering shrimp. He is not dati, so what difference does it make if he transgresses the rules of Shabbat or eats creepy crawly things. But Hodaya is uninterested in the <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">treif</span>. Indeed, Hodaya is interested only in pursuing a traditional existential quest. So when she gets a tattoo on her back after wandering the streets of Tel Aviv, her datlash boyfriend is less than happy. It's an interesting way to think of the halakhic categories of mumar lehahis and mumar leteavon. The datlash boyfriend is essentially portrayed as a "mumar leteyavon." He is in it for the non-kosher food and premarital sex, while identity seems less a part of it. On the other hand, identity is Hodaya's obsession, and in order to concretize her new identity as secular she inscribes it as a sign on her body. I don't necessarily want to characterize Hodaya as lehahis - except in the sense that what she's doing is "for real" and not a temporary phase, in the passion of the moment. As much as possible, she wants her new secularism etched on her body, and soul. </div><br /><div style="font-style: normal; "><br /></div><br /><div style="font-style: normal; "><b>Trust and Believablity<br /></b></div><br /><div style="font-style: normal; ">Amir and Yefat have been having some marital problems. Not only in conceiving a child, but also in trust - from the banal to the serious. Amir crashes the car and tries not to tell Yefat, etc. etc. At the beginning of the episode entitled <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Shivah Neqiyim</span>, the glasses waiting to be immersed in the mikveh are still on the kitchen counter - Amir simply has not gotten around to do it. And Yifat has been taking hormonal supplements to play with her cycle since she's been having fertility problems - a matter of some controversy in Israel over the last few years (Menahem Mendel <a href="http://menachemmendel.net/blog/2006/12/10/rabbi-zera-under-attack/">posted </a>about it a while back). At Hodaya's insistence, Yifat considers rethinking when to begin counting the "shivah neqiyim". This is rather interesting since she is married to a Sefardi, who begin counting from the fourth (and not fifth) day of the onset of the period. But Amir loses trust in Yifat. He asks a Rav how one can trust one's wife that she has immersed in the mikveh and receives a lesson about notions of believability in Jewish law (the idea that a person is believed regarding "forbidden things" is actually derived from the menstruant's believability). It doesn't work for Amir and, he does everything to avoid the mikveh night since according to his (mistaken) calculation, Yifat has immersed too early. The irony is profound. The glasses that Amir finally ends up immersing are partially broken, while his wife, who has immersed properly is broken as well. Judging by the facebook comments on Amir's profile, he is not exactly the most beloved character right now, to say the least.<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Niddah</span><br />As for the Shivah Neqiyim themselves, it is interesting how Yifat, the woman, is less sure of the process of shivah nekiqiym than her husband, while at least according to the Bavli it was a female innovation.<br />In my dissertation I made a fairly radical claim that I have yet to receive a response to. I hope I will get some pushback when I publish it in article form. For further details, I would suggest looking there, but in short, I argue that by comparing the Bavli and the Yerushalmi we can see that the phrase "the daughters of Israel were stringent" is a Babylonian addition to a Palestinian kernel, which merely declares a woman a menstruant even upon seeing a small drop of blood. In tannaitic sources, shivah neqiyim need not refer to seven "clean" days without blood but a period of time that is divorced from relations. This is at least how it appears in Tannaitic Hebrew. R. Zera cited the tradition in the name of R. Huna, and it made it into Babylonia in slightly altered form. In Rava's circle it was not entirely clear what the decision was - a stringency of the women or one that was simply "folk" or rabbinic and connected to the tendency to blur the distinction between zavah and niddah - already apparent, in some respects in the Dead Sea Scrolls. There also was the factor of Zoroastrian practice which similarly preached a need to divide the period from purification and underwent a comparitive development. It is interesting how the sources are in fact much less clear regarding who was responsible for the innovation - pious women, rabbis, general "folk custom" etc. And the same dynamic can be found in the later history of hilkhot niddah which ossocilates between rabbinic concern, female stringencies occasionally looked down upon by the rabbis, "mikveh ladies" etc. As always, things are messier than they first appear. The texts testify to this - if you look closely enough.<br /></div><br /><div style="font-style: normal; "></div></div>Shaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06080086674500993959noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2392164759726360721.post-31319555979482768562010-01-06T02:13:00.006-05:002012-03-19T07:17:23.348-04:00Stiched<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqT-WeLUZNxj0YiVbyRLxEDmqBTBRAnpFrhTkHYO8mSaLVdXhl8K9jXzf5d6IYW1rKzOdziwQImSu54Lds3mA_hyIalHoJyIyIE98SpADtGdgr5l01XQBnb_v4hp1bt5WFgWGB644WzUA/s1600-h/srugim.jpg" style="font-style: normal; "><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 125px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 320px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5423537792794343122" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqT-WeLUZNxj0YiVbyRLxEDmqBTBRAnpFrhTkHYO8mSaLVdXhl8K9jXzf5d6IYW1rKzOdziwQImSu54Lds3mA_hyIalHoJyIyIE98SpADtGdgr5l01XQBnb_v4hp1bt5WFgWGB644WzUA/s320/srugim.jpg" /></a> The much anticipated new season of the Israeli award-winning t.v. series, Srugim, is about to begin (January 10st), though <a href="http://yes.walla.co.il/?w=1/9401/1628060" style="font-style: normal; ">virtually</a>, it has already aired, following a few screenings and discussions in and around Jerusalem. The first season picked up prizes not just because of the generally good acting and artsy, sophisticated cinematography, but unquestionably, for the very novelty of screening a series about religious singles in Jerusalem. Srugim was reviewed and simultaneously praised and pilfered in the Israeli religious press, and as always, quality is in the eye of the beholder. Much of the wider audience saw in Srugim either a kind of ethnographic study of Israeli religious society whose success is to be measured by the lack of "mistakes" in accurately depicting a certain ethnographic reality (what we may call the <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105483/" style="font-style: normal; ">Stranger Among Us</a>" phenomenon" - good clip-on sidelocks, but did anyone notice how they did not check the eggs for bloodspots while baking, <em style="font-style: normal; ">etc. etc.</em>). In a similiar vein others, particularly the religious public, looked to Srugim and its religious director, Lazy Shapiro to represent halakha in its intracies, and to show the unbroken piety of the religious public. Of course Shapiro is interested in nothing but the creation of art and telling narratives of identity and community - of which the latter is quite problematic in the identity construction of older singles in the <em style="font-style: normal; ">dati</em> world. Shapiro's art reflects and refracts contemporary Israeli society in a myriad of ways.<br /><div style="font-style: normal; "></div><br /><div style="font-style: normal; ">The YES network on which Srugim airs has told us in no fewer words that מה שהיה היה, what was, was. Still, the series picked up from where it left off. D<em>ati-hiloni </em>issues continue to figure prominently and Srugim continues to have some new and interesting, if disturbing things to say. In this episode, Hodaya - the recently secular (or datl"ash, formerly religious) character - is still finding her place as a hiloni in Jeruslaem, and meets what turns out to be a fellow datlash at work, which by the end turns into something romantic - only confirming the truism that datlashim cannot mainstream into hiloni society. But what really does it mean to be hiloni, or formerly religious in Jerusalem? A difficult question indeed. Srugim seems to conceive of the issue as being largely about sex, with sexual initiation acting as the true initiation into secular society. Until Hodaya experiences sex she remains "dati" despite her previous Sabbath desecration. As Hodaya tells Yifat on her wedding day, she has still not done "anything". And so it goes. While the Datiim share their separate beds, and at that, only after marriage, hilonim experience something that datiim will never have - a different kind of sex. And yet, one cannot help but detect a look of dissapointment in Hodaya's contenance as she looked out that night on a suddenly cosmically changed Jerusalem. </div><div style="font-style: normal; "></div><br /><div>There is much to say, too little time, and work beckons, but I cannot ignore the talmudic angle in this first episode. Indeed, one might say that Srugim is another form of the talmudic "language" that has had an uneasy but rich relationship with the modern State of Israel and the Modern Hebrew language. Like a talmudic sugya, it's structure is that of a postmodern cinematic quilt (hence the secondary meaning of the title - not just woven yarmulkes, but woven-together narratives, like the Aramaic word for tractate, "<em style="font-style: normal; ">mesekhta" (</em>think <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0449467/" style="font-style: normal; ">Babel</a>). Aside from Hodaya's sorry tale, we also have simultaneously the much anticipated wedding between Amir and Yifat. At the end of last season Yifat finally gave up on Amir's roomate Nati and realized that her true love could be found with the divorcee, Amir. Of course it is then that Nati wants Yifat, but actually, Nati has no clue what he really wants. Nati's story is that while he is trying to be a good halakhic "best-man" and "watch" Amir as a <em>shomer</em>, his mother is dying in a hospital room with the rest of the family. The stories are gradually woven together. Yifat finds that she has had her period - a halakhic and sexual nightmare of immense proportions which requires all kinds of hoops and loops - the ring can no longer be handed directly to the bride, nor can the groom give her to drink of the wine. Worse, they need to spend their first week apart, generally with young relatives. Yifat is mortified and decides that though she and Amir will not actually sleep together, they will go through with the public aspects of the weddings as if nothing is wrong. What the rabbi doesn't know can't hurt him...Then, Nati's mother finally passes away and he bolts before he can sign his best friend's <i>ketuba</i>. We find Nati pulling back the cloth from his dead mother's face as Amir pulls the vale from on top of Yifat's head.</div><br /><div style="font-style: normal; "></div><br /><div style="font-style: normal; ">Is this episode's woven quilt merely about the cycle of life - weddings and funerals? Is it Nati's missed chances - Nati was uninterested in marrying Yifat so instead his roomate ends up marrying her - while Nati comes face to face with death and the mortality of being single (framed as dying a virgin in last season)?</div><div style="font-style: normal; "><br /></div><div style="font-style: normal; "></div><div style="font-style: normal; ">This blogger cannot ignore a talmudic passage in Bavli Ketubot 4a-5a - a sugya known affectionately by my <a href="http://www.blogger.com/www.adderabbi.blogspot.com">brother-in-law</a> as "pop's in the freezer"; That is, if the bride or groom's father (or mother) dies, the wedding goes on while the deceased close-relative is "in the freezer". After the wedding, they bury the body and then...then the bride and groom must take great care not to touch each other or be secluded with one another. So beyond the case of a bride menstruating, the other archetypal religious wedding nightmare is a death in the immediate family. In both cases, bride and groom need to be kept separate from one another for (at least) seven days. The sugyot in the talmud are, as is common, textually woven together. </div><br /><div style="font-style: normal; "></div><div><span style="font-style: normal; ">Some scholars, traditional and academic alike, have suggested that menstrual impurity in Judaism and other religions represents a kind of death of potential life, causing the need to separate though normally only physically. That is, while a husband and wife are normally "trusted" to keep to themselves during the wife's impurity, the threat of newlywed passion is too great to allow a new couple to stay together after either form of death - real or ritual - when sex or anything close to it is banned. Part of what the Bavli Ketubot </span><i>sugya </i>has to say is about the mingling of death and desire. </div><div><br /></div><div style="font-style: normal; "></div><div style="font-style: normal; ">Nati, who has in the end not married Yifat, is the would-have-been-groom who now experiences death, plain and simple. Amir on the other hand, experiences with Yifat a temporary death which keeps them from consumating the marriage at this point, though anyone invested in the show wishes them (that is, the fictional construct of Yifat and Amir) only the best.</div><br /><div style="font-style: normal; "></div><div style="font-style: normal; ">Srugim's weaving, as always, occupies the gap between halakhic reality and actual religious practice. Still, it somehow never loses the full symbolic gravity of the halakhic system. </div>Shaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06080086674500993959noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2392164759726360721.post-58670866915279274682009-09-08T05:10:00.012-04:002009-09-13T04:39:22.250-04:00Letter from Salamanca - I<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi841xN87J45u8CTk2KMcL51d7Q23g5-ZfWH2J_W97VzPfTlH42OzIkA3FAvvZfRFtxkZHJmNrMo4zrmi-PyzyLk9d5EFYRyV2-ujiP3rUXPVXZ0aY3UEuLp34DJMimEUg4UCSrMpcarpA/s1600-h/salamanca.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 143px; height: 107px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi841xN87J45u8CTk2KMcL51d7Q23g5-ZfWH2J_W97VzPfTlH42OzIkA3FAvvZfRFtxkZHJmNrMo4zrmi-PyzyLk9d5EFYRyV2-ujiP3rUXPVXZ0aY3UEuLp34DJMimEUg4UCSrMpcarpA/s320/salamanca.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5379024018005601394" border="0" /></a>Salamanca is a three hour long and scenic journey from Madrid through the Spanish countryside. The countryside is stunning with precipitous mountains giving way to rolling and sometimes barren hills, and then the proverbial Spanish plain which stretches as far as the eye can see. Indeed, the trip is unlike most post-airport drives across urbanized parts of the West - especially the Northeastern corridor of the United States - where tedious successions of Walmarts, Staples, Bestbuys and their ilk repeat themselves in various permutations <span style="font-style: italic;">ad nasuam</span>. On the way to Salamanca, you very quickly find yourself transported from the bustle, dirt and lights of Madrid. Poof, a journey worthy of physical and intellectual speculation.<br /><br />Just a few days before the bulls began to tear up Spanish streets and stadia, the seven hundred year old University of Salamanca held a conference entitled, "Poets, priests, scribes and (e-)librarians. The transmission of holy wisdom in Zoroastrians," in the sixteenth century abode of the faculty de philologia. Avestan scholars from three continents met to discuss the transmission and reception of the Avesta from antiquity, when it was transmitted orally, to the medieval codices, modern printing press, and now, electronically. There were also some discussions of Pahlavi (Middle Persian) adaptations, translations, and reformulations of Avestan texts.<br /><br />The Zoroastrian High Priest of Bombay, Dastur Firoze M. Kotwal was there, and the enormous bird nests left undisturbed on the upper columns inside the Faculty de Philologia may of reminded him of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Silence">Tower of Silence</a>, and of home. The Dastur seemed to enjoy the conference, shared a beer (Spanish, cold) with some of the younger generation in Salamanca's Plaza Mayor. Otherwise, he kept to himself.<br /><br />Essentially, the conference was a showcase for Alberto Cantera's impressive <a href="http://ada.usal.es/">Avestan Digital Archive</a>. ADA is run out of University of Salamanca, directed by Cantera, and powered by his own five member team - doctoral students, of course. A while back I made mention of the ADA's sister site, www.videvdad.com, on MM's blog in order to show how far Zoroastrian studies had come. I admit now that my impressions were rather patronizing, as if Zoroastrian Studies had some "catching up" to do re: digitalization when compared with sites like JNUL's digital library and Shamma Friedman's Lieberman Project. At this point, the student has surpassed the master, perhaps revealing that she was never a student to begin with. The site is well on its way to providing a definitive place for Zoroastrian philological research.<br /><br />But the conference was also a steady stream of papers read, mumbled, pantomimed, and sometimes enthusiastically performed. There is room for the scholarly study of the academic paper - perhaps by oral-performance theorists. Unfortunately, for many an academic, there is the sense is that the conference paper has ontological meaning - thus it takes up many more pages than the allotted twenty minutes allow, and it also contains footnotes, which of course conference participants don't read. The paper exists, yet no one has access to it in its entirety save for the performer. But more, anon.<br /><br />There were two moments that jolted the conference from its general predictability. First was Dr. Yuhan Vevaina's (Harvard University) paper, which was ostensibly about "transmission and agency" in the Pahlavi translations/commentaries to the Avesta, but was really a post-modern critique of Avestan philology. Vevaina's point had to do with the way Avestan scholars look to the Pahlavi translations as, at best, poor renditions of the Avestan original instead of new creations that are trying to do something new. Interestingly, Vevaina has used some recent work on Midrash in his research for methodological framing. There was of course much more. The ironies of this critique taking place in the sixteenth century faculty de philologia building were lost on few. (I hope to devote further discussion to Vevaina's work when/if it is made available online in the near future at ADA's website).<br /><br />The second moment was a toast at the galla dinner, that quickly turned into a related critique of the narrow philological study of ritual texts, courtesy of <a href="http://www.michaelstausberg.net/">Prof. Michael Stausberg</a> (Bergen). (Both Vevaina and Stausberg are editing Blackwell's companion to Zoroastrianism, and I will be submitting an article to that volume aith Yaakov Elman on Judaism's intersection with Zoroastrianism). Stausberg's toast was truly a roast aimed not just at the conference organizers, but at the conference participants as well. All in good fun, but the laughter ranged from healthy to nervous (shades of Dick Van Dyke, and more). It is telling that the two were seated at the same table during the gall dinner<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3fyArV2vc4vfQdv4TPi6GIi4cz5lIo8EtGX4VtUl1LuH2ourG5UIfqwFwOjgnCqutCAssA0LxqLPLc0fVNmCnMb7xQPNNvDpIXoL6QxANfdIuzHpHZQZG-g0dKRjkFI186wAqr3zVbq4/s1600-h/stausberg.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 123px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3fyArV2vc4vfQdv4TPi6GIi4cz5lIo8EtGX4VtUl1LuH2ourG5UIfqwFwOjgnCqutCAssA0LxqLPLc0fVNmCnMb7xQPNNvDpIXoL6QxANfdIuzHpHZQZG-g0dKRjkFI186wAqr3zVbq4/s200/stausberg.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5380865033338523858" border="0" /></a> <br /><span style="font-size:78%;">Michael Stausberg, laughing</span><br /><br />...as was I:<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC80ccqv2zwZ-eLmR1ULOPJ2lidZ5FmeQsF9HZWiC402qP61TIWbePANNNrAthJE9ipNgPIuFq6pfIstTIls8dAWcccHxno-IbivSJRkkojaDcTQFawq0xdap3WWkY68_TLaJQEjtm7Nk/s1600-h/shaiyuhan2.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 150px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC80ccqv2zwZ-eLmR1ULOPJ2lidZ5FmeQsF9HZWiC402qP61TIWbePANNNrAthJE9ipNgPIuFq6pfIstTIls8dAWcccHxno-IbivSJRkkojaDcTQFawq0xdap3WWkY68_TLaJQEjtm7Nk/s200/shaiyuhan2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5380865899439983186" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">Yuhan Vevaina and Shai Secunda. A chuckle, a critique.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2392164759726360721.post-81385499745951023772009-07-05T21:35:00.014-04:002009-07-08T20:48:48.293-04:00The Dank Weight of History<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj79VP4FPmgdpjKTwjwILER3HSuc7l3Bt_bu00UwpDpW8YUs0QK4LT0nIYaIS2gGy7a0N0gj-3o0zheghKcUymn3OcrXJ_AMgXAh65YOQHj7hISiFS5HXFRlJedhEVcK161JAGg-2GwZ8A/s1600-h/800px-Sterling_Memorial_Library_stacks.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj79VP4FPmgdpjKTwjwILER3HSuc7l3Bt_bu00UwpDpW8YUs0QK4LT0nIYaIS2gGy7a0N0gj-3o0zheghKcUymn3OcrXJ_AMgXAh65YOQHj7hISiFS5HXFRlJedhEVcK161JAGg-2GwZ8A/s320/800px-Sterling_Memorial_Library_stacks.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5355528498618097378" /></a><br />DISPATCH FROM THE BABYLONIAN COLLECTION<br /><br />For the past few days and the next several weeks, I have exchanged my chair in a typical, if minuscule, academic office for another less comfortable wooden thing in a major university antiquities collection. Instead of holding a volume of Talmud in my hands, more often then not I find myself gingerly examining artifacts (what else, magic bowls and Sasanian seals) and thinking of the ancients who owned them over a thousand years ago. Along the way, the process has opened up for me a new way of thinking about the tangible age of the world and how we, as academics, try to find our way in it. Beyond their original producers and consumers, like all artifacts the bowls also represent the people who discovered them a hundred(+) years ago, the dealers, collectors, shippers, curators, restorers - the host of characters that contributed to the process of placing a few of them into my hands during this unusually cool summer. Now, a jaunt over to the stacks has itself become a historical journey. Many of the books that I regularly use, for better or for worse, have not been checked out of the library for decades or more. And the stacks are dank, not just with the smell of aging books but the very weight of history: The history of scholarship, learning, and ultimately the way we think now. Like most Talmudists in the wake of Boyarin, I've read the works of that secular prophet, the <a href="http://www.michel-foucault.com/">"archaeologist of knowledge"</a>, and his descendants, and I know that scholarship of ancient things is not ancient at all, but an inquiry into things current. So my epiphany in the stacks and in the Babylonian collection is not a revelation of knowledge per se, but an experiential one. Truthfully, this feeling waxes and wanes with the change of seasons and semesters. And sometimes the apology of historical continuity and meaningfulness, especially in terms of the history of ideas, falls flat and limp. As some of you have argued, this is apparently the pervasive angst of many scholars, but especially Talmudists. On the other hand, Talmudists do hold the keys to the "ground zero" of meaning and experience in Judaism. What Jews do and think today is closely linked to particular textual movements in the Bavli (of course mediated by later ways of thinking and experiencing), and we can explain the phenomena fairly well.<br /><br />With all due respect, I think that historians who need to write op-eds about current affairs like talking heads are not doing anyone a service - even, and especially, when they are <a href="http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/metadata.epl?mode=synopsis&bookkey=29159">great historians</a>. <br />They are often not equipped to talk about current events directly, and in any case it is unnecessary. There are those who care about the ancient world and texts for reasons of curiosity and spirituality. This is particularly true in the Jewish community - especially amongst those who make Jewish learning a regular part of their schedule. For this (growing) demographic, the role of the Talmudist almost self evident. <br />There are still a number of real challenges: For the philologically-inclined Talmudist, there is the sense that the Bavli does not read like an open book (even after looking at commentaries and translations). There are manuscripts to be consulted, linguistic analyses to be performed, and textual layers to be peeled away from earlier sources before one can even approach the truth(s) of the text. This partially explains the paternalism endemic to the relationship between Talmudists and the Jewish community, and yes, that paternalism is a problem. Somehow we need to conceive of a way to break down the town and gown barrier, which will include genuine respect for the "community of learners" and the weight of tradition (rishonim, methods of learning) etc. But the dance is that we cannot avoid the fact that some of what we have to say is grounded in real "scientific" analysis and is not simply another "wort" (on the other hand, much of what we have to day is not scientific and we need to admit this). We cannot apologize for this or for the theological challenges inherent in the process. We can only ease the process.<br /><br />As for those in the Jewish community who are not already engaged in some capacity in Jewish learning, I have little to say. The problem is particularly acute in the US, where the geographic distance from the rest of the world and the chronological gap between us and the ancients is enormous. It contributes to a lack of curiosity in the past (See <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=Mb0tAAAACAAJ">this </a>preface). Still with the "sexiness" of edgy Jewish learning, maybe the Talmud can also find its way.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2392164759726360721.post-46551718032843876562009-06-26T11:35:00.009-04:002009-06-29T16:24:25.892-04:00Picking up the PiecesShall we finish things off? Dan Levene (Southampton) and Matthew Ponting (Liverpool) gave a presentation that was methodologically significant for the conference but dealt with Mishna and Palestine. In short, they discussed a startling set of data in Roman Palestine where unlike all other metalworking sites after the introduction of brass, there is very little chemical mixing between the brasses and the bronzes. This implies that there was pretty much no zinc around in the shops and they were quite conservative in their opposition to brass. It requires a concerted effort between the shops and the "scrap-metalers". This seems to be confirmed by the lists of objects in m. Keilim (especially 11-13), but why is another question. Probably had something to do with purity, but that was not the purpose of the talk.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWETFcfOHMrnxn96wedqaYgQj7ePtHvRlvBALsz4uFsgd4Mtz07mUfBZxGg3dtvR2cuNbqzuNeJdeRFdjvs-egHNtqOd14pcZv3CT3kppVMSppnIo0D-Bp_0Xl047ZF3N021R0l84Gd-8/s1600-h/pb.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 75px; height: 75px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWETFcfOHMrnxn96wedqaYgQj7ePtHvRlvBALsz4uFsgd4Mtz07mUfBZxGg3dtvR2cuNbqzuNeJdeRFdjvs-egHNtqOd14pcZv3CT3kppVMSppnIo0D-Bp_0Xl047ZF3N021R0l84Gd-8/s320/pb.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5351665362095780162" /></a>After a few rice cakes and peanut butter (stay tuned for the "department of British entertaining), it was back to antiquity, and cedars at that. Michael Stone basically cataloged this tree in literature, ancient and late antique, and demonstrated the way in which its pairings with things like vines was literary and not botanical. The most entertaining moment was, of course, a Gafni one. There is a Yerushalmi passage that describes how Bar Kokhba tested incoming troops - by taking off their fingers. The rabbis disapproved and suggested that he have the soldiers try to uproot cedars from the backs of horses. Gafni has a colleague who argued that the story must be fictive, as cedars don't grow in the land of Israel! (talk about old school historical scholarship!). In retort, Gafni replied that there are no cedars left in Israel since they were uprooted - by Bar Kokhba's soldiers. <br /><br />The very calendrical Sacha Stern gave a talk about calenders, which we will have to get to later. And I had to miss Sabah Alidihisi's talk about the Mandaeans in order to catch my flight - any conference goers reading this who might want to fill in the blank?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2392164759726360721.post-17049577547187072382009-06-26T10:13:00.007-04:002009-07-10T17:14:56.500-04:00Bowling for the Bowls<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiprZGtu2QiWOfCzO1nQFBMmxp7gXHUqGPrJn7nNWdk3uzmKbTp32P_j9fIaIn74S0rq5JD21dtUNIidbb30tuyDXm59F3O3nZiHGVpxC5JBeZZdH3DAeD0zgOywsl0TwbcBvQNz22YKro/s1600-h/get.gif"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 310px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiprZGtu2QiWOfCzO1nQFBMmxp7gXHUqGPrJn7nNWdk3uzmKbTp32P_j9fIaIn74S0rq5JD21dtUNIidbb30tuyDXm59F3O3nZiHGVpxC5JBeZZdH3DAeD0zgOywsl0TwbcBvQNz22YKro/s320/get.gif" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5351659383585089250" /></a><br /><br />Day two the conference took an archaeological turn. Siam Bhayro (Exeter) discussed certain aspects of Jewish divorce documents in the Judaean desert, Gaonic descriptions, the Cairo geniza, and the Aramaic incantation bowls. A well known law expressed by Abaye at b. Gittin 85b discusses some funny orthographic requirements for divorce documents. <br /><br />אמר אביי: האי מאן דכתב גיטא, לא לכתוב ודין דמשמע ודין אלא ודן, ולא לכתוב איגרת דמשמע איגרת אלא אגרת, ולא לכתוב לימהך דמשמע לי מהך, ולא לכתוב למחך דמשמע כי חוכא, דיתיהוייין דיתיצבייין תלתא תלתא יודי"ן דמשמע תהויין ותצביין, ולורכיה לוי"ו דתירוכין ולוי"ו דשבוקין דמשמע תריכין ושביקין, ולורכיה לוי"ו דכדו דמשמע וכדי, ולא ליכתוב לאיתנסבא דמשמע לא יתנסבא אלא להתנסבא. <br /><br />Bhayro discussed three of these: The requirement to write ודן instead of ןדין, to write אגרת instead of איגרת, and to elongate the wuw in תירוכין and שבוקין. Abaye's statement is obviously prescriptive, and Bhayro tested whether this was followed at various stages in Jewish history. An interesting linguistic discussion ensued from his discussion of a related document from the Judaean desert, Murabba'at 19, which Milik transcribes as having בדין, and understands as ב + דין. The problem is that a temporal adjective is not suited for a legal document of this sort. One would expect something like "hereby." More problematic is the fact that Milik's reading is a reconstruction to begin with. In other words, the old case of a reconstruction that then creates problems which need to be solved. Bhayro suggested כדין which is performative, fits the context much better, and means something like "I hereby (lit., thus), in according with this... In other words כ the preposition and דין a demonstrative pronoun. Even though this is not identical to the rabbinic ודין, it still seems to relate to the rabbinic conception of the document. <br /><br />The march of history: Geniza gittin show a mixture of observance and neglect of these principals. So T-S 19J2.5 r. 15-17 (11th century Fustat, Egypt) has them, while T-S 10J2.2 r. 14-16 writes כדין. However, the absence of witnesses makes one wonder if it was ever used. Still, T-S 10J2.31 r. 11-13 was validated with witnesses, and like T-s 10J3.7 r. 7-9 has כדין, with a yod.<br />This brings us to bowls, which were sometimes conceived of as a divorce document with which to banish certain demons (particularly our old friend , Lilith). You see, demons did not simply invade the home or body, but actually contracted a certain kind of marriage, perhaps in the rabbinic mind effected through relations (m Qiddushin 1:1). And the only way to terminate the marriage is through death or divorce. And indeed, some bowls followed divorce document requirements. The precise dates in some bowls (mentioned by Shaked) points in this direction, as does the lengthened wuw in תירוכין in Schoyen 1927/39:8, and 2053/165:9-10. Still there is little consistency, and one of the latter retains the yod in איגרת.<br />The provocative point that was made is that not only were rabbis "consumers" of the bowls, as we learned from Shaked, but rabbinic scribal culture seems to have been connected with bowl production culture as well. References to rabbinic literature in the bowls are well known, but less known is the scribal artistic level of <span style="font-style:italic;">some </span> bowls. This makes it likely that rabbinic scribes, schooled in the rabbinic scribal arts, were moonlighting as bowl producers. <br />Discussion following the paper involved M. Geller advancing a fascinating possibility - that Abaye's discussion of funny orthographic requirements moves in the opposite direction - from the world of magic where this kind of precision is need to divorce documents. Abaye is associated with magic in the Bavli, and even seems to push back against proto-rationalism [b. Hullin 105b, see Y. Elman, "The world of the "Sabboraim" : cultural aspects of post-redactional additions to the Bavli," in J. Rubenstein, ed. <span style="font-style:italic;">Creation and Composition</span> (Tuebingen, 2005)]<br /><br />With the audience energized after a coffee break, Naame Vilozny (Hebrew U) kept the ball rolling with a fascinating discussion of the iconography of the bowls - a sorely understudied aspect of the bowls. Part of the value of the two main pools of Jewish Babylonian archaeological remains is the iconagraphy in the seals and in the bowls. The bowls contain many pictures of demons, and some parallel talmudic passages. Bowls contain:<br />1.) human images mixed with angelic characteristics, which corresponds to b. Hagigah 16 and efforts (b. Gittin 66a) to compare and contrast demons and humans. <br />2.) Pictured with bird feet. Here there is some correspondence to the text of bowls - like דקריא כלילי כי (גבר) מידמיא להון כבני אינשא. And this seems to be a holdover from ancient conceptions - like Lamashtu amulets. This are numerous talmudic paralels, like the b. Berakhot recipe for seeing demons, and the b. Gittin version of Solomon and Ashmedai. In the bowls the most common way this is done is with three straight lines pointing downwards.<br />3.) Long tangled hair (also a feature of Lamashtu), and Iranian conceptions as well. Lilith, of course, is depicted as having long hair (b. Eruvin) and a Sasanian amulet from the 5th century held in the Met is a good example of this.<br />4. Goat horns and animal ears. Goats and demons have been together for millennia. Goatmen and horned Shahmaen are depicted in remains from 3000BCE, and this is true in ancient Iranian texts (not as old) and in Phoenician conceptions (Pazzuzu) as late as the 6th century BCE. The biblical scapegoat may point in this direction and there are other references in the Bible. Incredibly, there is a close textual link between a Dead Sea Scroll passage (11Q 11) which describes horned beings פניך פני [שו]ר? וקניך קרני חט[ו]ם. This line more or less shows up in magical texts from the geniza and in the bowls as well. The horns also corresponds to b. Gittin description of the קטב ישוד צהרים.<br />5.) Bound figures appear in the bowls. This motif already appears with the binding of Nuzi. We're talking about shackled legs, hands crossed over the chest and bound - iike depictions of Assyrian prisoners of war and also some female figurines from Egypt. Cf. Ashmedai (again, b. Gittin 61a-b) where Ashmedai is bound by the name of God. <br />6. The bowls have figures holding weapons (left hand) and palm branches. These seem to be depicting the sorcerers instead of the demons. They are not bound, and do not have any of the above characteristics. The palm was an important symbol in Assyrian art, but here it's use is reminiscent of the waving of the lulav (Sukkah 35b) which restrains evil spirits. These images can be found in bowls in the Penn collection and the Schoyen collection.<br />As expected, the images sometimes match up with talmudic conception, and sometimes do not. More work needs to be done on the bowls, but oh boy, do they create an impression. The ooh's and awww's were frequent during this talk.<br />In the Q+A Saint John asked about non-magical figures in some Mandaic bowls, and again, the Derekht Eretz principle ruled the day. Others suggested parallels with the Greek Magical Papyri. Naama agreed that there were similarities, but in her assessment the most significant influence on the art is from ancient Babylonia. This suggests that the bowls continue a very old, indigenous tradition now inscribed on new objects, with new magical heroes (i.e. R. Yehoshua b. Qarha). The more things change, the more they stay the same.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2392164759726360721.post-88927517133123064492009-06-25T13:59:00.014-04:002009-07-10T17:19:19.228-04:00Naming Names<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYhA9rQnEfWbqdlGdwxJNrgnkz4WY4M55gao9HcnL5T6N7JDEYVy7ZZRAD8UtuthOmDprEI4lTAAaHnbQEWGQSZA6d1ryccg2mjsR8gG8AxorFRo_6Y4lXv8K0RJXYOhNZKl7rbBQBVYk/s1600-h/75px-Valerie_Plame_BrownU.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 75px; height: 70px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYhA9rQnEfWbqdlGdwxJNrgnkz4WY4M55gao9HcnL5T6N7JDEYVy7ZZRAD8UtuthOmDprEI4lTAAaHnbQEWGQSZA6d1ryccg2mjsR8gG8AxorFRo_6Y4lXv8K0RJXYOhNZKl7rbBQBVYk/s320/75px-Valerie_Plame_BrownU.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5351331646564985138" /></a> A few years ago when <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/05/09/050509ta_talk_hertzberg">"Matt and Judy"</a> were under extreme pressure to start "naming names" in the Valerie Plame CIA leak investigation, Shaul Shaked delivered a paper at Hebrew U where he too set out to do just that - in other words, name certain rabbis as clients and "targets" in the Aramaic Incantation bowls. I was out of town at the time and when I returned, I begged for the transcript, but to no avail. The paper was not yet ready for circulation, and I would have to wait, which I did, but patiently, which I did not. Four years later at the UCL conference there was an encore performance which did not disappoint.<br /><br />In fact, Shaked was interested in more then merely naming names in the bowls. He began with a discussion of the few dozen Sasanian Jewish seals in collections around the world, which he has published and which have recently been (re)analyzed in Daniel M. Friedenberg's somewhat pretentiously titled <span style="font-style:italic;">Sasanian Jewry and Its Culture</span> (University of Illinois Press, 2008) A well known example is the seal of Huna b. Natan in Haifa University's Hecht collection. The seal depicts the usual lulav and etrog, but also an object in the center that Shaked identified as an incense shovel. Decades ago it was suggested that the seal was that of our very own Huna b. Natan [though this is questioned in Geoffrey Herman's dissertation on the exilarch (Hebrew University, 2005)], and Shaked used his discussion about the Huna b. Natan seal and others similar to it in order to advance the following argument: We can't be completely sure that the owners of the seals are to be connected with the names familiar to us from rabbinic literature - especially when the names are common, like Huna and Natan. Still there is something to be said for the fact that only somewhat important people would have had seals to begin with. This narrows the pool significantly. A similar kind of argument can be made for the bowls. Of course the bowls were owned by virtually everyone. Rich, poor, mighty and meek. But the title "rabbi" that appears before certain names limits the number of possible "matches" significantly. In amoraic Babylonia, it does seem that R. meant more than simply teacher. The challenge however with names in the bowls is that as in most healing contexts, we usually have the mother's name instead of the patronymic, while in rabbinic literature it is the father's name that rules that day.<br />On to the main event:<br />1. R. Aha b. Rav Huna is named in a bowl in the Schoyen collection as a neighbor that abutted the field of the bowl's client. There are a couple of amoraim of this name, one in the 4th century and the other in the 6th. So this revelation is not so exciting, as it merely shows that rabbis lived next to people who used magical bowls. <br />2. Rav Dimi Bar Sarah appears in a few bowls. Again, 4th or 6th centuries.<br />3. Rav Sehora b. Immi appears in Dan Levine's archive.<br />4. BM 040A. Mar Zutra b. Ukhma was misidentified by Segal in his collection of British Museum bowls as merely a pejorative for the person who was being "targeted" by this aggressive bowl ("Mr. Small the son of Black)" This is highly unlikely (a) because Mar does not simply mean Mr. in Aramaic but someone of importance, (b) because magic requires precision, and there is no way a nickname would have been used, (c) because these names are common anyway - not unlike Klein and Schwartz! Just as Schwartz is not a pejorative but a real last name, so is Ukhma. In this case, the name is extremely common and there were numerous Mar Zutra's in rabbinic literature throughout the generations. This raises the possibility that it is just some important Zutra out there, but no one in rabbinic literature.<br />5. Rav Ashi b. Mahlafta (Tarshish bowl JA1). A Rabbi of this name appears in the Bavli and seems to have lived at the end of the fourth to early fifth centuries. Incidentally, he was a contemporary of Huna b. Natan. This case is probably the most significant, since Ashi is not a common name, and only one person in rabbinic literature, of extreme importance for talmudic history, carries the title. <br />The text of the bowl is itself fascinating. Typical beginning:<br />אסו[תא] מ[ן שמיא תהוי לר]ב אשי בר מחלפתא... <br />but things quickly get interesting. There is a visionary, hekhalot poetic section about God:<br />"? is his name, ש is his name, Amotz is his name, rwy is his name, Raziel is his name....King of king of kings is his name, kzyh is his name, which burns he repairs (it) above and over the highest heavens, in the palace of fire and hail, including its chariots and the heaven..."<br />There also is a very long section about the splitting of the sea which is midrashic in nature. Shaked suggested that the bowl's client, Rav Ashi, may have had input in the decision of what to include in the bowl. The text ends with אשבעית וא[...]מית ואומיתי על רוחא בישא דשלטה בה ברב אשי בר מחלפתא דתיעידי ותיזח ותיקפץ ותיגלי מן רב אשי בר מחלפתא מן יומה דין ולעלם אמן אמן סלה<br />6. Finally, we have a Rav Yosef b. Imma de-Immah in a bowl which seems to have come from Borsippa, Iraq. This bowl was published by Harviainen, "Syriac Incantation Bowl in the Finnish National Museum: A Specimen of Eastern Amamaic Îkoineâ," Studia Orientalia 51 (1982), but Shaked offered a new reading and translation. Harviainen had read Jesus into the divine names in this bowl, but Shaked considers this highly speculative. Unfortunately, there was not enough time to look at this bowl in detail.<br /><br />The drama of it all derived primarily from the supposed revelation that rabbis were engaged in magic. This is not news, especially after Gideon Bohak's recent book. But there is something sublime about coming into "contact" with the rabbis that we engage in study - their names now engraved in real objects that they (may) have left behind. The irony here is that we have almost nothing of that sort in Roman Palestine, maybe even including this blog's banner (See Steven Fine's recent discussion). The sense was palpable that the enormous number of bowls which still have not been published hold tremendous potential. Michael Morony wrote just a few years ago that the data contained in the bowls is valuable for everyone - not only "magician colleagues". Shaked alluded to other fascinating features in some of these bowls - including dates which could have been included because some of the bowls were seen as divorce documents (more on that, later). <br /><br />Fear not, the requisite skepticism was voiced in the Q and A. But these small findings are, at least for me, of great importance. What now needs to happen is for Talmudists to get involved and go over the material carefully, in concert with scholars of the bowls. Any volunteers?<br /><br />UPDATE: There seem to be more "Ravs" in the bowls. Just came across a Rav Mari b. Mamah in British Museum 024A-024b. This bowl is a divorce document and even features four (! - a kohen?!) witnesses: <span style="font-weight:bold;">Rav </span>Rivay b. Marti, and Tzeruiah b. Shiltay, Barbe'ammeh b. Mesharshetana and Qanyah b. Nahlat.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2392164759726360721.post-68103252563939657022009-06-23T17:02:00.018-04:002009-06-29T16:22:20.368-04:00A Day at the Races<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxQdC5CmLSKNnzc4mCxQvupP10SeItrsOB24ziNlOOk0tBkKb1AbGUoS-8nNr4Wcb7Ee2b8S0RNWT_9xTNSGZI29VPANCQTejX8EtZmePJtmM8iN-u9LwhcyU8hC2Y-us5hG8Hg_Z5zgA/s1600-h/jamshid.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 103px; height: 83px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxQdC5CmLSKNnzc4mCxQvupP10SeItrsOB24ziNlOOk0tBkKb1AbGUoS-8nNr4Wcb7Ee2b8S0RNWT_9xTNSGZI29VPANCQTejX8EtZmePJtmM8iN-u9LwhcyU8hC2Y-us5hG8Hg_Z5zgA/s320/jamshid.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5350775050493309938" border="0"></a> No wooden engraved "זכור ימות עולם" hovered over the lecturers today in UCL's nondescript J.Z. Young Lecture Theater. But speaking of cut wood, Richard Kalmin traced a motif recognizable to Talmudists from b. Yevamot 49b-50a and y. Sanhedrin 10:2 (28c) - Menashe's murder of the prophet Isaiah after the latter attempted to escape harm by hiding in a cedar tree. How did Menasheh do it? Well, he sawed him in half of course! Kalmin masterfully traced the tale in its various permutations: (A) 1st to second century Ascension of Isaiah (1:7-10; 3:6-10) as the earliest version we have, (b) the fourth century, Syrian Acts of Sharbil (ed. William Cureton), (c) Tabari (ed. Perlmann, p. 41), (d) Shahnameh, to name a few of the stops along the way. Kalmin was careful to point out the differences in the versions, and he argued for a messy, thick development begun in the "West" in the Ascension of Isaiah, taken up by later Christian sources, the Yerushalmi, and then on to the "East" - including the Bavli, Middle Persian expansions on the Yima myth and the Persian Epic (Firdowsi's Shahnameh). Apparently, the development here confirms Kalmin's theory of the direction of (growing) influence from West to East in the fourth century. But some reservations do need to be voiced about this kind of East-West bifurcation. To Yaron Eliav's protestations, Kalmin initially assumed a vast territory of shared culture. However he backed away by saying that the whole thing needs to be nuanced.<br /><br />I can't do it all for you here, and you'll need to wait for the conference volume (to be published by Brill). In the meantime, the usual, exciting textual nugget: Manuscripts of the Bavli Yevamot passage describe Isaiah's tekhelet as "giving away" his hiding place by sticking out of the tree. And wouldn't you know it, Tabari writes: "As Isaiah finished his speech, they turned upon him to kill him, but the prophet fled from them. A tree that he passed split open, and he entered it. <span style="font-style: italic;">But Satan caught him and seized a fringe of his garment, which he showed to the pursuers</span>...<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGb_K4MwuvqX5wftvCHYmYA1ePQj1JnAvb2ehdnM3qOCSLiu55zU0uA4l_U1UWx5Rx58KxMZunCxo5cQNUgeE54Qj-IfgQWs4cJp2mGnd1DR0VcMHiNUEj2LOubINl4SsqpvHgIUnhxp0/s1600-h/arch+of+kisra.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGb_K4MwuvqX5wftvCHYmYA1ePQj1JnAvb2ehdnM3qOCSLiu55zU0uA4l_U1UWx5Rx58KxMZunCxo5cQNUgeE54Qj-IfgQWs4cJp2mGnd1DR0VcMHiNUEj2LOubINl4SsqpvHgIUnhxp0/s320/arch+of+kisra.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5350777813612530418" border="0"></a><br />On to Yaakov Elman's favorite city, Ctesiphon. Elman painted an extremely vivid picture of Jewish luxury shopping in the Persian winter capital based on talmudic evidence and a "late" late antique Chinese description. The use of documents and seals (so he and Geller decided to interpret חותמות) demonstrates that cash was not used to effect the transfer of these goods, rather a document - in contrast to rabbinic law. Thus, according to Elman, a lot of the seemingly relevant talmudic discussions are "academic" in some sense. Still, what is encoded therein? For this we'll have to wait for Elman's forthcoming article(s) in the Bulletin of the Asia Institute, which will outline the identity politics in the Bavli and Middle Persian literature. I have seen this paper (70+ plus) and can attest that there is a lot of material on the topic.<br /><br />It doesn't get much better than a senior curator at the British Museum giving you a guided tour of Ctesiphon, Mahoza, and the land "behind" them using Google Earth and other impressive images. Appropriately called <span style="font-style: italic;">St</span>. John, Prof. Simpson, went through everything in extreme detail. Forgive me, but the hour is late...Wealth generated by farming in the surrounding area, (Ammianus' "smiling orchards"), immensely thick walls (which we saw) with horseshoe towers, a round city, but divided into rectangular blocks, all streets "paved" by questionable materials like refuse. Tight, tight space, with access to some houses via 1.5 meter wide alleyways. Houses made of mudbrick, though vaulted reception rooms in the nicer ones and fired brick in public buildings. In the countryside the story was all about taming the rivers through an incredible network of canals. The Saint told us that the salination problem discussed in R. Adams' influential work (The Land Behind Babylonia) was "overatated" and the officials usually figured out how to fix this challenge; the materials goods, some of which were luxury items and distinctly Sasanian (like the silver bowls, and those almost prophetically minimalistic glass bowls)<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyH3npWuvbG59QcxfliRHQc5xGBwtvCElMjyZ2eJum5Zkxy-sDjzNWs0RKPMVKZO5mkLO_Ahi2o54Jk9Pcd__h4tLuYJ_BkzlqJ67CNpTRUB2MLOTfjlkL3TNMnGQSxYLqtVfU6VFS20w/s1600-h/sasanianglass.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 145px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyH3npWuvbG59QcxfliRHQc5xGBwtvCElMjyZ2eJum5Zkxy-sDjzNWs0RKPMVKZO5mkLO_Ahi2o54Jk9Pcd__h4tLuYJ_BkzlqJ67CNpTRUB2MLOTfjlkL3TNMnGQSxYLqtVfU6VFS20w/s320/sasanianglass.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5350781086993153442" border="0"></a> [The image on the left is a recreation by a Japanese artist, which is currently on display in the British Museum and was received by the Saint himself]<br /><br />, but some common to the WHOLE broad region - from Scotland to the Eastern reaches of the Sasanian empire - such as hairpins. And the pearls, which images confirm that people used tg "drip"!...What can I say, some of this has already been collected in Oppenheimer's Babylonian Judaica, but to see these images on the big screen was...<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhio_AJC_myJB6Z2OzTLVeVrYq_Qr_-t_NMlZTR_5jGBZdBs0cW3gXq6WEVpnVm1WHm6H50BDIBmfsUvzGgoswBDqAQW_cNaJoMOKwgHFbaPRBAHfH0CzBPQu0pfS7mb9olBQHTKDXxmZU/s1600-h/denBowk.JPG"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 226px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhio_AJC_myJB6Z2OzTLVeVrYq_Qr_-t_NMlZTR_5jGBZdBs0cW3gXq6WEVpnVm1WHm6H50BDIBmfsUvzGgoswBDqAQW_cNaJoMOKwgHFbaPRBAHfH0CzBPQu0pfS7mb9olBQHTKDXxmZU/s320/denBowk.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5350781696944515362" border="0"></a><br />like meeting your "den" in Iranian heaven.<br /><br />I spoke about the bei abedan and attempted to accomplish two things. I accepted Shaked's etymology of (a)bag-dan - a temple, which incidentally is confirmed in an early Gaonic tradition and one part of R. Hananel. I studied the talmudic sources in detail and emphasized their "constructedness" via source-criticism and the like. The accounts of Rav and Shmuel at b. Shabbat 116a are clearly modeled on the preceding Toesftan baraita, and most of what we can know here (and in the anachronistic accounts of b. Shabbat 152 and b. A.Z. 17b) tells us more about circulating oral traditions regarding the place than about the specific activities of tannaim and amoraim. But fear not, we still are able to correlate the institution and its activities with another cultural construction in Sasanian Iran - that of the effort of Sasanian kings to seek out the books of other nations, "refit" them with the Avesta, and dispute their inclusion in the newly expanded canon, which was stored in a special gubernatorial treasury. I also noted a small parallel to b. Taanit 24b, which according to MS Herzog (Yemenite) describes Shapur II's effort to engage in "disputation (Iranian "paykar")" with the Jews, and the same word used in regard to the same king in the Middle Persian passage in the Denkard (a Zoroastrian encyclopedia) about collecting the traditions of the Avesta. <br />M. Geller added to the discussion by suggesting the possibility that the institution was a holdover from Neo-Babylonian times.<br /> <br />But alas, my jetlag caused me to miss Maria Macuch's lecture on the particular difference between קרן and פירות in the Sasanian lawbook - in contradistinction to Roman Law. She noted the parallel to MP xweshih (ownership) and darishn (possession) and suggested that the talmudic discussion about this distinction, even though it is attributed to R. Lakish and R. Yohanan, nevertheless seems to be informed by this knowledge.<br /><br />Albert de Jong problematized the problematization(!) of Gnosticism in Mesopotamia, as Karen Kings' thesis (and her supporters) leaves Manichaeaism, Mandaeism and other Mesopotamian Gnostic like religions in a kind of academic no-mans land and only takes aim at its use in Early Christian polemics and their modern scholarly descendents. de Jong took up Shaul Shaked's suggestion (and good old JZ Smith) that Gnosticism is not a religion, nor is it a heretical category for orthodox Christians, but a kind of system, like mysticism. He was left with many more questions than solutions, but at least put a lid on Kings' extremist diatribes, which brand anyone who uses the term 'Gnostic' a "colonialist pseudo-scientist" - ouch!<br /><br />Theordore Kwasman did the loanword thing and crunched some serious numbers, which I cannot do for you here since there wasn't a handout. The work is exciting but preliminary, and it is unclear whether he will be the one to continue it as the paper was written "at the request of a colleague, Geller!" In general, he followed Derekh Eretz' advice to "teach your tongue to say 'I don't know'," which seems to have rattled some of the "enthusiasts". But enough said.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj37QXyQI3cZoT1Yk9QkJSwVVggT1ht-566hhUL1JFWQiyElwo3LV9e8AGmhgDTQChEckgRaiGQoFO525fxkEEYAfLOzkW-wrz2bxlTT2TrZiQURZWSKYxeokAkUsEpCNbJW-IKxH4ONRc/s1600-h/Bet+She%27an+12--public+toilet.JPG"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj37QXyQI3cZoT1Yk9QkJSwVVggT1ht-566hhUL1JFWQiyElwo3LV9e8AGmhgDTQChEckgRaiGQoFO525fxkEEYAfLOzkW-wrz2bxlTT2TrZiQURZWSKYxeokAkUsEpCNbJW-IKxH4ONRc/s320/Bet+She%27an+12--public+toilet.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5350652525346876770" border="0"></a><br />Yaron Eliav closed the deal with a fascinating discussion about the perception that Palestinian Jews had of Babylonia, and included an important caveat about what material culture means, which is a matter of great significance for this conference. For Eliav, it does not mean archaeology, rather the study of how people of the past engaged with and conceived of the material world around them. In that sense it stands at the intersection between archaeology and textual study. And this was what Samuel Krauss, the man for who's achievements this conference is being held, wanted to do. Eliav argued that Palestinians accessed the Babylonian Other through literary traditions (Josephus' stories, rabbinic oral traditions) and also through encounters with physical people - the nehotai and Babylonian immigrants. He discussed a few cases about how this worked, including R. Gamliel's "I love the Persians for three things" statement at Berakhot 8b). It was good fun, with a humorous picture of <br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiYJfj5hjTIAGiBSDV_PUwJajKs3exsDeuK9JxYD8zpqgl0Z2upFAXOSKSr7FM8tEBaSg0iAbjtw-8j6HqjxeJVBFbaur_415oeBbLOmFvlw3s4_obLcWe1zIWvpK3SM7G4MNS5IL0dTA/s1600-h/Triclinium.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 124px; height: 99px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiYJfj5hjTIAGiBSDV_PUwJajKs3exsDeuK9JxYD8zpqgl0Z2upFAXOSKSr7FM8tEBaSg0iAbjtw-8j6HqjxeJVBFbaur_415oeBbLOmFvlw3s4_obLcWe1zIWvpK3SM7G4MNS5IL0dTA/s320/Triclinium.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5350784586893041314" border="0"></a><br />Roman's eating like pigs ("but don't think that all Roman's ate like pigs"), and of the public latrines in Roman Palestine with a few pictures of Beit Shean. The nugget: <br />Genesis 10:10<br />וַתְּהִי רֵאשִׁית מַמְלַכְתּוֹ בָּבֶל וְאֶרֶךְ וְאַכַּד וְכַלְנֵה בְּאֶרֶץ שִׁנְעָר: <br />is interpreted in Genesis Rabbah as follows: <br />ותהי ראשית ממלכתו בבל וארך ואכד וכלנה הדס ונציבין וקטיספון <br />These cities are on a line from NW to SE, i.e. the route by which Palestinian Jews traveling to Babylonia would have encountered the places. It testifies to their construction of geography (the ultimate material culture, the terra firma) according to their experience - as opposed to b. Yoma 10a, where the places are simply located in Meishan. Gafni, on the other hand, suggested a word size organizing principle.<br /><br />Next time, some actual objects - especially bowls.<br />Signing off.<br /><br />DISCLAIMER: All mistakes and omissions, mine. All zany image choices, mine.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2392164759726360721.post-43056488715008330482009-06-22T17:56:00.005-04:002009-06-29T16:21:52.928-04:00Remember the Days of Old<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDMRzUcQWhSb7Me0gnHrkZMCFxE6MhR2Jx372agfdmWNivE0zJh9a8Cq5DNoRhqAz3iysQB0LYvRynqKDvY4XRdHpdUVyO9tXxTGQjhL6UaQ0MMS7AJI6vWCF04tTdmqygXfRVY7k_raU/s1600-h/GordonTucker.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDMRzUcQWhSb7Me0gnHrkZMCFxE6MhR2Jx372agfdmWNivE0zJh9a8Cq5DNoRhqAz3iysQB0LYvRynqKDvY4XRdHpdUVyO9tXxTGQjhL6UaQ0MMS7AJI6vWCF04tTdmqygXfRVY7k_raU/s320/GordonTucker.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5350287515268003282" /></a><br /><br />UCL's Gustave Tuck Lecture Theatre, like the book of Deuteronomy, exhorts its <br />audience to remember the days of old. For over an hour, a sizable crowd did just that. But we remember what we already know. <br /><br />Gafni's talk, the majority of which had already been published, described the means by which late antique Babylonian Jews employed local geography in the service of identity formation. Instead of longing for Zion, some Babylonian Jews, from Rav Yehuda to Pirqoi b. Baboi decided that they already occupied it. The Shekhina could be found in certain synagogues, discussion of pedigree led to the drawing of boundaries reminiscent of the Holy Land, Jews could be buried guilt-free in Bavel (well, almost), and like Eretz Yisrael there was a prohibition against abandoning Babylonia. In a way, after the destruction of the temple this development was inevitable. Knowledge became more important than space, and since it is also transportable, it could pick up and go and the space must follow. But in a way, Babylonian Jews believed more than that - that they had come back to the homeland. Bavel was Adam's birthplace, Abraham's territory, and full of enough sites to make a pious pilgrim drool (Arabic historians and Benjamin of Tudela tell us about pilgrims to the lion's den,and the ninth chapter of Bavli Berakhot has some good examples). Not just Philo's Alexandria - a second city to mother J-lem, but the mother city itself. <br /><br />There were still some fascinating new nuggets, especially the attempt to reconstruct the Palestinian-Babylonian debate across the centuries in detail. Babylonian Jews called Bavel "Zion," so Palestinian Jews spoofed the verse כי מבבל תצא תורה. Babylonians countered that indeed, in certain respects they WERE the new Zion, and they were merely being sent back to their parents' house after misbehaving, to which Palestinians shot back with a brilliant counter-narrative: When God sent the Jews back to Babylonia, he was like a king banishing his daughter with instructions to keep her jewelery on so that they she might remember what it was like to be a princess. The jewels are the mitzvot, which are observed as mere practice in the diaspora (shades of Nahmanides!). But look at the language used to express this idea - it plays on the word "Zion"<br />כך אמר להם הקב"ה לישראל בני היו מצויינין במצות שכשתחזרו לא יהו עליכם חדשים, הוא שירמיה אומר הציבי לך <span style="font-weight:bold;">ציונים</span> שימי לך תמרורים וגו', הציבי לך ציונים אלו המצות שישראל מצויינים בהן, <br />(Yalkut Shimoni 869)<br /><br />In the questions following the talk, it became clear that what Gafni described for Babylonia was the very story of Jewish history: "The Jerusalem of Spain," "the Jerusalem of North Africa," "the Jerusalem of Lithuania," etc. etc. Rather ironically, one Brit in the audience called out "just like Williamsburgh". <br /> <br />Gafni used Babylonian history to help us recall what Jews the world over already know in their bones. That like it or not, Zion is constantly recreated. For a large audience of non-specialists his lecture was, as usual, a spectacular performance (with the usual good jokes, asides, and banter). As such scholarship must be, it also was a journey of self discovery. <br /><br />DISCLAIMER: <span style="font-style:italic;">The account is my own - and after some drinks with colleagues at the pre-reception. All mistakes should be attributed to this blog and not to the lecturer.</span><br /><br />BiblioBlography:<br />Gafni, Isaiah M. "Talmudic research in modern times : between scholarship and ideology" in Jüdische Geschichte in hellenistisch-römischer Zeit (1999), 133-148<br /><br />idem., Talmudic Babylonia and the Land of Israel : between subservience and assertiveness Te’uda 12 (1996) 97-109<br /><br />idem. Expressions and types of "local patriotism" among the Jews of Sasanian Babylonia Irano-Judaica II (1990) 63-71<br /><br />Rubenstein, Jeffrey<br /> התמודדות עם מעלות ארץ ישראל : ניתוח סוגיית בבלי, כתובות קי ע"א - קיב ע"ב מרכז ותפוצה (תשסד) 159-188Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4