Nazir 19 ~ The Convert Queen

נזיר יט, ב

 מעשה בהילני המלכה שהלך בנה למלחמה ואמרה אם יבוא בני מן המלחמה בשלום אהא נזירה שבע שנים ובא בנה מן המלחמה והיתה נזירה שבע שנים ובסוף שבע שנים עלתה לארץ והורוה ב"ה שתהא נזירה עוד שבע שנים אחרות ובסוף שבע שנים נטמאת ונמצאת נזירה עשרים ואחת שנה 

A story happened with Queen Helena. Her son went to war and she declared "If my son returns in peace from the war I will be a nezirah for seven years." Her son returned from the war and she was a nezirah for seven years. At the end of these seven years she went up to live in the Land of Israel, and Bet Hillel ruled for her that she must be a nezirah for another seven years [because Bet Hillel ruled that the time period of nezirut observed outside of Israel does not count.] At the end of the [second] period of seven years she became impure [which meant she needed to serve the entire period again], and so she was a nezirah for a total of twenty-one years...(Nazir 19b)

Queen Helena, Patron of the Second Temple

In this passage Queen Helena (died. c. 50 CE) becomes one of the few people identified by name in the Talmud as having become a nazarite. In fact she became a nazarite three times over.  But there is a lot more to her story.  Elsewhere in the Talmud (בבא בתרא יא, א) her son is credited with saving Jerusalem from famine (at least according to Rashi there). The Mishnah in Yoma (37a) records that the Queen dedicated a golden candelabra to the Temple, that was placed over the door which led into its the main courtyard. In addition she donated a tablet on which the section of the sotah (a woman suspected of adultery) was written. 

The Queen in the Writings of Josephus

While the Talmud records a number of stories about Queen Helena, the great Jewish historian Josephus provided some additional information about her life, which corroborates some of the stories told about her in the Talmud.

About this time it was that Helena, Queen of Adiabene, and her son Izates, changed their course of life, and embraced the Jewish customs, and this on the occasion following: Monobazus, the king of Adiabene, who had also the name of Bazeus, fell in love with his sister Helena, and took her to be his wife, and begat her with child. But as he was in bed with her one night, he laid his hand upon his wife's belly, and fell asleep, and seemed to hear a voice, which bid him take his hand off his wife's belly, and not hurt the infant that was therein, which, by God's providence, would be safely born, and have a happy end. This voice put him into disorder; so he awaked immediately, and told the story to his wife; and when his son was born, he called him Izates...

A certain Jewish merchant, whose name was Ananias, got among the women that belonged to the king, and taught them to worship God according to the Jewish religion. He, moreover, by their means, became known to Izates, and persuaded him, in like manner, to embrace that religion; he also, at the earnest entreaty of Izates, accompanied him when he was sent for by his father to come to Adiabene; it also happened that Helena, about the same time, was instructed by a certain other Jew and went over to them...

 But as to Helena, the king's mother, when she saw that the affairs of Izates's kingdom were in peace, and that her son was a happy man, and admired among all men, and even among foreigners, by the means of God's providence over him, she had a mind to go to the city of Jerusalem, in order to worship at that temple of God which was so very famous among all men, and to offer her thank-offerings there. So she desired her son to give her leave to go there; upon which he gave his consent to what she desired very willingly, and made great preparations for her journey, and gave her a great deal of money, and she went down to the city Jerusalem, her son conducting her on her journey a great way. Now her coming was of very great advantage to the people of Jerusalem; for whereas a famine did oppress them at that time, and many people died for want of what was necessary to procure food withal, Queen Helena sent some of her servants to Alexandria with money to buy a great quantity of corn, and others of them to Cyprus, to bring a cargo of dried figs. And as soon as they were come back, and had brought those provisions, which was done very quickly, she distributed food to those that were in want of it, and left a most excellent memorial behind her of this gift, which she bestowed on our whole nation. And when her son Izates was informed of this famine, he sent great sums of money to the men in Jerusalem...(Josephus, Antiquities, XX, 2.)

The Queen in the Writings of Jacob Neusner

In 1964 the (then young) historian Jacob Neusner published a paper in the Journal of Biblical Literature titled The Conversion of Adiaben to Judaism: A New Perspective.  Neusner claimed that the account of Josephus about the conversion of Queen Helena and the Adiabene's ruling family to Judaism "cannot reasonably be rejected,"  and he located Adiabene in ancient Assyria, in what is today called Armenia.  He reminded his readers that the Queen was married to her brother Monobazus (which is apparently what royalty did in that part of the world) and that it was Monobazus who was first converted to Judaism.  But he goes one step further, and asks what political motivation lay behind this conversion.

His answer is this: the Jews of the Near and Middle East in the first century were "a numerous and politically important group" and "in Armenia, as well as in other areas, Jewish dynasts held power, if briefly..."  In addition, "Palestinian Jewry was a powerful and militarily significant group. It was by no means out of the question for Palestine to regain its independence from Rome, perhaps in concert with the petty kings of the Roman orient." By converting to Judaism, the House of Adiabene might position itself as a powerful player should the Roman empire fall. In this way, noted Neusner, Queen Helena and her royal house were repeating a maneuver made half a century earlier by Herod, who, while remaining loyal to Rome, had "tried to win friends in other Roman dependencies, as well as Babylonian Jewry." In fact the Adiabenes went a step further than had Herod, and encouraged the revolution against Rome in 66 CE. They may have done so, suggested Neusner, in order to gain the throne in Jerusalem itself.

 If the Jews had won the war against Rome, who might expect to inherit the Jewish throne? It was not likely that Agrippa II could return to the throne, for he and his family were discredited by their association with Rome and opposition to the war. Some Jews probably expected that the Messiah would rule Judea, but this could not seriously have affected the calculations of the Adiabenians. Indeed, from their viewpoint, they might reasonably hope to come to power. They were, after all, a ruling family; their conversion could not matter to the Palestinian Jews any more than Agrippa I's irregular lineage had prevented him from winning popular support. Their active support of the war, their earlier benefactions to the city and people in time of famine, their royal status, and the support they could muster from across the Euphrates, would have made them the leading, if not the only, candidates for the throne of Jerusalem.

Queen Helena's Final Resting Place

Neusner concedes that the conversion of Helene and Izates was not only a political act. Rather, he suggests that it is important to take note of the political consequences of their religious action.  It would seem, though, that Queen Helena's family recognized the deeply religious consequences of her decision to embrace Judaism.  Josephus later records that when, having returned to Adiabene, the Queen died, her son "sent her bones...to Jerusalem, and gave order that they be buried at the pyramids their mother had erected" (Josephus, Antiquities, XX, 4). This suggests that, whatever else it was, Queen Helena's conversion was also recognized by her family as a religious act; her son recognized her connection to Jerusalem, and arranged for her to be interred there, near what is now the American Colony Hotel. Today, we remember the Queen with a street named after her in downtown Jerusalem. We also remember her as a woman who donated much to the Second Temple, and perhaps too, as the convert Queen who became a nazarite.

Tu Bishvat ~ The Oldest Palm Tree and its Roots

According to the Hebrew calendar, this Sunday night is the fifteenth day of Shevat, and is celebrated as the New Year for Trees. In honor of this we present a re-post about the roots of the date palm tree, with a terrific new ending.

בבא בתרא כז ,ב

אמר עולא אילן הסמוך למצר בתוך שש עשרה אמה גזלן הוא ואין מביאין ממנו בכורים עשרה אמה... ותו לא והא תנן מרחיקין את האילן מן הבור כ"ה אמה אמר אביי מיזל טובא אזלי אכחושי לא מכחשי אלא עד שש עשרה אמה טפי לא מכחשי

Ulla said: An individual who owns a tree that is within sixteen cubits of a boundary is a robber, [since it draws nourishment from the neighbor’s land,] and one does not bring first fruits from it, [since that would be a mitzva that is fulfilled by means of a transgression]... But do roots extend sixteen cubits and no more? Didn’t we learn in a Mishnah (25b): One must distance a tree twenty-five cubits from a cistern? [This indicates that tree roots reach more than sixteen cubits.] Abaye said: The roots extend farther, but they drain the earth of nutrients within sixteen cubits; with regard to an area any more distant than that, they do not drain the earth.

The Root Systems of the Date Palm Tree

While the Talmud doesn't specify the kind of tree that must be distanced from others, in Mesepotamia the most likely candidate was the Date Palm, Phoenix dactylifera. These trees grow to a height of 75 feet, and you've seen plenty of them if you've driven south towards Eilat.  Here is their root system:

USDA image from Chao. C, Krueger R. The Date Palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.): Overview of Biology, Uses, and Cultivation. Hort. Science 2007 42(5); 1077-1082.

To whom shall we turn to get information about the size of that root system? The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, of course.  According to a helpful document by a member of their Date Production Support Programme, "Roots are found as far as 25m from the palm and deeper than 6m, but 85 percent of the roots are distributed in the zone of 2 m deep and 2m on both lateral sides in a deep loamy soil." But the 25m (82 foot) roots are an extreme. Most of the roots extend about 10m (about 32 feet).

Table from here.

It would appear that Abaye was referring to the average reach of the zone II roots. Assuming that a talmudic amah is between 48-57cm, Abaye's figure would put the zone II distance of at 7.6-9.1 m. That's right in keeping with the 10m average figure from the UN document. It is good to know that on these important matters, the UN and the Jewish People are in agreement.

“צַ֭דִּיק כַּתָּמָ֣ר יִפְרָ֑ח כְּאֶ֖רֶז בַּלְּבָנ֣וֹן יִשְׂגֶּֽה׃

The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree”

— (Psalm 92:12).

Now, about that oldest palm tree

In recent post, the Hebrew University published a fascinating piece called The Magical Reincarnation of the Ancient Date Tree. In 1963, Professor Yigal Yadin found some seeds from a palm in the ruins of Herod’s palace on Masada. After some radiocarbon testing, they were dated to around 155 BCE and 64 CE, making them around two thousand years old. These ancient seeds were held at Bar-Ilan University, waiting for a clever person to see if they could be re-animated into baby palm trees.

In 2005, that person turned up. She was Dr Elaine Solowey of the Arava Institute in the Negev. To get the seeds into a suitable state to germinate, Dr Solowey, an expert in endangered medical herbs, incubated them in a baby’s bottle warmer, and slowly hydrated them. Then some growth hormones and fertilizers were added, and… a baby sapling sprouted. Dr Solowey named the sapling Methusalah, after the person who had the longest lifespan recorded in the Bible: 969 years. A male sapling later grown from the same batch of seeds was named “Adam”, and a female sapling was named Hannah. The trees flourished and produced dates, which were later harvested.

(These old-new palm trees were once listed by the Guiness Book of Records, but they are not the oldest trees in the world. This title went to to a bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva) known as Prometheus. In 1963 it was cut down (!) from Mt Wheeler in Nevada. After counting its 4,867 yearly rings, and adjusting for slower growth rate due to the harsh environment in which it grew, the tree was estimated to have been an incredible 5,200 years old.)

So next time you are near Ketura just north of Eilat, take a detour and go visit Methusalah and his siblings. Actually, it is a wonderful activity for this Monday, Tu Bishvat. Say hi from me.

Dr. Elaine Solowey (left), Methuselah (center) and Dr. Sarah Sallon, (right), circa 2008. Courtesy of the Arava Institute. Image from here.

Nazir 4b ~ A Real Nazir

נזיר ד,ב

אמר שמעון הצדיק מימי לא אכלתי אשם נזיר טמא חוץ מאדם אחד שבא אלי מן הדרום יפה עינים וטוב רואי וקווצותיו סדורות לו תלתלים אמרתי לו בני מה ראית לשחת שער נאה זה אמר לי רועה הייתי לאבי בעירי והלכתי לשאוב מים מן המעיין ונסתכלתי בבבואה שלי ופחז יצרי עלי וביקש לטורדני מן העולם אמרתי לו ריקה מפני מה אתה מתגאה בעולם שאינו שלך שסופך להיות רמה ותולע העבודה שאגלחך לשמי' עמדתי ונשקתיו על ראשו אמרתי לו כמותך ירבו נזירים בישראל עליך הכתוב אומר איש כי יפליא לנדור נדר נזיר להזיר לה

Shimon the Zaddik said: In my entire life, I ate of the guilt-offering of a defiled nazirite only once. [Shimon was afraid that those who vowed to become a Nazir did so for the wrong reasons, and so he would refuse to eat from the sacrifices they brought.]  This man [whose sincerity was beyond question] came to me from the south; he had beautiful eyes and handsome features with his locks heaped into curls. I said to him: 'Why, my son, did you destroy such wonderful hair?' He answered: 'In my town I was my father's shepherd, and when I went to draw water from a well  I used to gaze at my reflection [in its waters]. Then my evil inclination took over me, and tried to banish me from the world [in the pursuit of sin].  I said to my evil inclination: "Empty one! Why are you conceited in a world that is not yours,  where your end is with worms and maggots. I swear I shall shave my hair for the glory of Heaven!"' [Shimon the Zaddik continued:] Then I stood, and kissed his head and said to him: 'May there be more nazarites like you in Israel. It is about a person like you that the verse (Numbers 6:2) says: "When a man shall clearly utter a vow, the vow of a nazirite to consecrate himself unto the Lord." (Nazir 4b.)

The tractate we are now studying, Nazir, contains the discussions and laws that apply to a man or woman who makes a vow of asceticism, and become a Nazarite. For as long as the vow is in place, such a person is forbidden to drink wine (or consume any grape products,) must not come in contact with the dead, and must not cut his (or her) hair.  At the end of the period of Nezirut, several offerings are brought  to the Temple in Jerusalem.  It's all rather theoretical, but ascetics are still found today, and a Nazir lived in Jerusalem and died less than fifty years ago.  

In 2007 Yehuda Bitty wrote a PhD thesis on the work of David Hacohen (1887-1972), who was better known as The Nazir, because of a life of asceticism he had followed.  The thesis, "Philosophy and Kabbalah in the Thought of Rabbi David Cohen," is a study of Hacohen's work קול הנבואה (The Voice of Prophecy) and gives us an insight into the teachings of the Nazir. (Another paper describing the work of Hacohen was published in Tradition. You can find it here.)

David Hacohen - The Nazir

David Hacohen as a young nazir

צילום: מכון נזר דוד

David Hacohen was born into a rabbinic family near  Vilna in 1887 and was given a traditional education in the local cheder and various Yeshivot (including Volozhin and Slobodka). Hacohen read secular works too - as a student Volozhin ("they did not damage me or my studies") and later he made a point of learning Russian grammar and of reading some works of the maskilim.  In 1909 he made his way to the newly opened academy of Baron David Ginzburg (d. 1910) in Saint Petersburg, where  he was exposed to courses in history, the philosophy of world religions, and near eastern religious ethics, to name but a few.  But his heart was set on traditional Jewish works, and he returned to the Bet Midrash, though he continued to study secular books and later spent time at the University of Freiburg where he studied philosophy. 

“I am a Jew, and the traditional education in the old Bet Midrash, whose spirit I have absorbed to my inner core,..gives me great happiness. All my previous work has been as if in a hallway, leading me, slowly, back to the old the Bet Midrash ”

— David Hacohen. Hamenahel. p58

Bitty's PhD notes that sometime around 1920 he started to exhibit ascetic tendencies: he avoided contact with others, and he abstained from eating meat (which is not a requirement of a Nazir) and stopped cutting his hair.  His lack of sleep and food caused him to be hospitalized, but he did not  waver in his decision.  "Little by little" wrote Bitty (p128) " he separated himself more and more from worldly matters, and began to feel a contradiction between the world and himself. "Later, he would fast on a regular basis, he stopped wearing leather shoes, and he completely refrained from speaking for forty days before Yom Kippur, all of this, apparently, in an effort to obtain the gift of prophecy...

In 1919 David Hacohen attended a conference in Switzerland organized by  Agudas Yisrael, (The World Congress of Ultra-Orthodox Organizations), in order to meet Rabbi Avraham Isaac Kook (a meeting that was recently described in detail here). Hacohen was quickly won round to the mystical Rav Kook and his equally mystical interpretations of the fledgling zionist movement.  

“והנה בקר השכם ואשמע קול צעדים הנה והנה, בברכות
השחר, תפלת העקדה, בשיר וניגון עליון, משמי שמי קדם, ‘וזכר לנו אהבת קדמונים’, ואקשיב, והנה נהפכתי והייתי לאיש אחר. אחרי התפלה, מהרתי לבשר במכתב, כי יותר מאשר פללתי מצאתי, מצאתי לי רב
“The morning came and I heard footsteps pacing here and there, the morning blessings, the akedah recital, in such a lofty song, from the primordial heavens, recalling the love of our ancestors. I listened, and I was transformed and became a new and different man. After these prayers, I hurried to write down that I had found more than which I had prayed for—I had found a Rebbe.””

— David Hacohen, Introduction to Orot Hakodesh (Jerusalem 1985).

David Hacohen later settled in Israel and became a lifelong student of Rav Kook, whose work he later edited. Hacohen had two children: a daughter Tzipia, who married Shlomo Goren, (later the Chief Rabbi of the IDF and, even later, Chief Rabbi of Israel) and a son, Shea'ar Yishuv Cohen, who served as Chief Rabbi of Haifa.

It was in Jerusalem that a young Reform rabbi named Herbert Weiner (d. 2013) interviewed The Nazir. Weiner described that meeting in a his classic book Nine and a Half Mystics; The Kabbalah Today (Collier Books New York, 1969.) 

...there was something cherubic about the Nazir's appearance.  Although no-longer young, his bespectacled blue eyes had an open childlike expression...Long locks of his gray-blond hair reached down to the shoulders of his red bathrobe and a bushy beard framed his long thin face.  

The Nazir on Science

Weiner tried to coax the Nazir into revealing a mystical teaching, and, somewhat reluctantly, the Nazir agreed. It is fascinating to read what the Nazir taught, because he described the difference between Judaism and western science:

Shema- come hear...the logic that is based on the sense of hearing rather than seeing, that is what characterizes our teaching.  And do you know what the Greek word theoria, 'theory' comes from? Is is derived from the Greek word theatric. Theory, in Western philosophy, connotes then, what can be seen, visualized, beheld.  But the Hebrew way of apprehending truth is based on acoustical sense.  "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One." "Speak unto the Children of Israel..." Does the gentleman understand the difference between the Hebrew and the non-Jewish, Western way of perceiving truth? The latter wants to identify truth with what can be conceptualized, seen - either in the mind or in a bodily sense.  To the Jew, identification of truth with that which can be seen is the beginning of idolatry. Do you understand? 

Weiner confesses that "I was not sure that I did fully understand the rabbi's point."  Yehuda Mirsky's recent biography of Rav Kook (p.189) notes a similar reaction from the great academic scholar of Kabbalah, Gershon Scholem:

Scholem also made the acquaintance of Ha-Nazir, who left a deep impression on him, saying, "I had thought there were no more Kabbalists, and here in Jerusalem there walked a living Kabbalist, creating Kabbalah in our times."  Yet, Scholem added, "All my efforts to get to the bottom of his thinking came to naught."

Apparently, Hacohen's work is very difficult to understand. For many of us, his lifestyle choice was was perhaps no less difficult to comprehend.  He chose a path of asceticism which, like the shepherd in today's daf, seems to have been a calling he had to follow.  But his choice was one of which Maimonides would have approved.  Echoing the passage from today's page of Talmud, Maimonides wrote that one who undertakes to become a nazir for the wrong motives is called a רשע -wicked- but 

one who undertakes a vow to God through a path of purity is called "pleasant" and "praiseworthy" and about such a person the Torah wrote "...for the crown of his God is upon his head...he is holy to the Lord" (Numbers 6:7-8). And the text equates such a person with being a prophet, as it is written "And I raised up your sons for prophets and your young men for nezirim." (Amos 2:11) (משנה תורה הל׳ נזירות 10:14).

Nedarim, Vows and Curses

Today we reach the end of the tractate Nedarim, which featured many in-depth discussions on the meaning of words and how they are to be taken seriously. So seriously do we take the concern of inadvertently vowing to do something and then failing do follow through, that the very first words of the Yom Kippur service, Kol Nidre, are a nullification of any and all future vows that may be uttered over the coming year. It has become part of Jewish tradition that on the days leading up to Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur, a ceremonial “release from vows” - hatarat nedarim - is performed.This much is familiar to most readers of Talmudology. But how many are familiar with another ceremony, this one called hatarat klallot - the nullification not of vows, but of curses?

The Old Jewish Cemetery in Marrakesh.

Hatarat Klallot in Marrakesh

A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to accompany a group of students from Yeshiva University’s Sacks-Herenstein Center for Values and Leadership on a trip to Morocco. It was while we were volunteering to help restore the Jewish Cemetery that one of the students found several printed leaves titled “Hatarat Klallot” in the community geniza, With the permission of the authorities, the student and I took several of these texts as souvenirs of a sort. But they are much more than that.

As you can see form the text above, the ceremony closely follows the language and style of the much more familiar hatarot nedarim that is performed to this day. But instead of announcing our regret at having vowed and then failing to follow through, hatarot klallot asks us to be released from any curses that others may have placed on us, or that we placed on others.

The text appears to have been composed by Rabbi Chaim Yossef David Azulai, better known by his acronym as the Chida (1724-1806) and may be found in his Tziporen Shamir. The Chida was born in Jerusalem from Moroccan ancestors, and while he was a noted talmudist, his world view was profoundly shaped by the Jewish mystical tradition, known as Kabbalah. Here are the opening words of his Hatarat Klallot (there are various versions), which is recited in front of three others who serve as a makeshift court:

We ask your honors to release us from any curses or rebukes, or forbidden things, or bad dreams and their bad interpretations, and any judgements against us, or any opportunity for bad things to occur, and any harsh or evil decrees, and all evil eyes that may have been cast against us or against any members of our households…

And the acting judges reply:

In the name of the heavenly court and in the name of the earthly court we hereby release you…from the effect of any curse or ill will or evil or any vow or any promise [made against you]…There is no longer any rebuke or any harmful phrase or witchcraft or nightmare or an evil interpretation of dreams. There is to be no trial [of you], there is no opportunity for evil, there are no bad strange thoughts or evil daydreams [against you]. There are no evil decrees, there is no evil eye cast by a man and none cast by a woman. There is no evil eye cast by those who hate you or those who love you. They are all annulled and decreed to be ineffective, as useless as a piece of broken pottery, a thing of no material substance. All types of evil eye are hereby removed from you and from your homes and are cast into the depths of the ocean…

The Chida wrote that this was to be recited before Rosh Hashanah, but if you look carefully at the small print at the top of the image you will read:

It is the custom to say this in the Jerusalem synagogues of Bet El… and in those from the west [i.e. Morocco] every Friday before Shabbat

Presumably this was also a widespread custom in Morocco itself, or at least in Marrakech, where we found a dozen or so of these printed sheets in the geniza.

As we close Nedarim let us pause to remember the power of words to commit, their power to release, their power to curse, and their power to reassure that the future will be bright.