Chag Sameach and Happy Passover! We had two wonderful seders (Thanks
David and Maryn for hosting the first night!). For my seder prep, I came
across a fresh perspective on one of the stories within the
Haggadah. In the interest of learning something new every year,
I'm sharing it below. Enjoy!
Within the Haggadah's retelling of the late
night study of the five rabbis, it's not unusual to pick up on
the location of the story as a key element. The
Velveteen
Rabbi explains:
What were these rabbis doing in B’nei Brak, which was the hometown of Rabbi Akiva only?
Why didn’t their students join them in celebrating the seder? Why didn’t the rabbis themselves
notice the rising of the sun?
Context is everything. This story takes place during the rule of the Roman emperor Hadrian,
who ordered that the Temple be moved so he could put a temple to Jupiter on the Temple
Mount. In the year 123 of the Common Era, a guerilla insurgency began, which resulted in a
crack-down by the Roman authorities.
B’nei Brak was the headquarters of the rebellion against Roman occupation, a rebellion of
which Rabbi Akiva was a leader. Because of rebel activities, the Roman authorities had
forbidden gatherings of Jews. The seder described in this passage was a chance not only to
discuss the liberation from Egypt—but also to plan a strategy of resistance against Roman
occupation. The students were standing guard, ready to caution the rabbis to disband at
daybreak, lest they be caught.
This tale may be read as an encouragement to become so joyfully immersed in the seder that
we don’t notice the passing of time…and it may also be read as a story of how one liberation
begets another. Celebrating our freedom from servitude can be a radical act. It was Rabbi
Akiva, after all, who famously answered the query, “Which is better, study or action?” with the
response, “Study—if it leads to action.”
I recently discovered a new link to B'nei Brak, but to appreciate
it, we need to step back in time. In the span of Jewish history,
however, we're going back a mere 185 years; practically
yesterday.
The date is Thursday, June 11th, 1840, and the place is Staunton,
Virginia. Residents opened their copies of the
Staunton
Spectator, and General Advertiser to read of a gruesome murder
that took place 6,000 miles away in Damascus, Syria. The murder is
so violent that the newspaper didn't want to believe the account.
Some weeks ago we received the announcement of the murder of a Christian missionary and his servant at Damascus, but the details were so
horrible that we refrained from giving publicity to them, and hoped they could only have
been the invention of a disordered imagination inventing a tail too
frightful to be believed. However, the following letter proves that
the tale was too true.
The article describes in detail how Father Thomas was restrained, his throat
slit, his body hung upside down and his blood drained. His body was then dismembered and
his bones disposed of in the sewer.
The bones were discovered and those who perpetrated the crime
ultimately confessed. Their motive came down to a religious
obligation:
They all said that they were incapable of committing murder, but that
they had acted up to the precepts of their religion, in which it is
prescribed to make their Easter leavened bread with Christian blood.
Readers in New York City who picked up their May 18th, 1840 copy of
the Morning
Herald read about the same incident but from a dramatically
different
perspective. Yes, there was a missing Christian leader in
Damascus. However, claims that Jews murdered him were extracted
by torture. And the bones that served as
evidence in the case were anything but:
Official accounts from Beyroot, of the 15th
March, rectify the details of the Smyrna journals,
published in our paper [the Austrian Observer] of yesterday, respecting the
pretended murder of Father Thomas, the prior of
the Spanish convent at Damascus; the fact is nowise
proved, and the perpetrators of the deed are not
discovered. The medical men and surgeons,
charged by the local authorities with the examination
of the bones found in the sewers of the Jewish
quarter, have declared that the bones must have
been there a long time, and were bones of animals.
The Morning Herald put the charge in context by citing it as
an example of Blood
Libel:
If the persecution of the Jews at Damascus, as several
letters affirm, from the often-repeated assertion
that the Jews eat Christian blood at their Passover,
this merely proves that centuries cannot destroy
opinions repugnant to human nature, which are contrary
to the letter of the Jewish law.
The writer of the Morning Herald piece closes with this
point showing the cruel absurdity of the whole incident:
... in this instance, [the murder] is still more void of probability, as
the matter of Father Thomas took place in February,
whereas the Jewish Passover is in April.
As an aside, Blood Libel is a charge I associate with
medieval times. As this incident shows, I was way off.
It's gut-wrenching to read such a vivid account taking place in
what are effectively modern times. Even more alarming, the
Wikipedia
page on Blood Libel shows that the Damascus Affair, what the
above incident would become known as, was not an
outlier in either time or scope.
Turning back to the world of newspapers, the most notable response
to the incident was by the Times of London, which published
articles arguing all sides of the conflict. On August 17th, 1840
they took the unusual step of
publishing a nearly
complete English translation of the Haggadah. They did so
to
refute the claim that Jews use blood during Passover:
A correspondent has furnished the annexed very minute account of
this ceremony, which will be exceedingly curious in itself to most
of our readers, and has at the same time an evident bearing on the
Damascus case. It repels strongly the barbarous notion that human
blood, or blood of any kind, is essential to its celebration.
While I've come across a number of
low
resolution images of the August 17th edition of the Times, I've
yet to find a copy that's legible to persuse. Sefaria, thankfully, has
a translation
who's claimed source is the Times of London's text.
This blog
post shares details of the Time's edition that corroborate the Sefaria text.
For example, both the blog entry and Sefari note that
Rabbi
Gamliel's 'Three Things' include an explanation that Christian
Blood isn't included in his list:
Rabbi Gamlieh saith, that whosoever doth not make mention of three
things used in the Passover hath not done his duty (Christian’s
blood is not mentioned): the paschal lamb, the unleavened cake, and
bitter herbs.
There's a similar comment at Yachatz,
when the matza is traditionally broken:
The master then breaks the middle cake in the dish, and, leaving one
half of it there, he lays the other half by for the offering, which is
nothing more nor less than a piece of the Passover cake, and it is
that which it is said human blood forms a portion of.
Other than these notations about blood not being used, and a few old
timey word choices, the
translation is surprisingly ordinary.
Except, that is for the way the story of the Five Rabbis is
translated. Check out how the readers of the Times of
London saw this passage on the 17th:
And thus it is related by Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Joshua, Rabbi Elazar,
the son of Azariah, Rabbi Akeba, and Rabbi Trapon, that they once
met (on the night of Passover, in a place inhabited by Jewish
proselytes, said to be descended from Haman) and continued
discoursing of the departure from Egypt all that night till their
disciples came, and said, ‘Instructors, it is time to read the
morning prayer.’
London readers didn't read about B'nei Brak, instead they were
provided with a
parenthesized equivalent: in a place inhabited by Jewish
proselytes, said to be descended from Haman.
I'd never seen this paragraph translated this way, and neither had
anyone at our seder. Two questions immediately came to mind: what's
the source of this equivalency, and why opt to include it?
The what is easy to answer. This idea that B'nei Brak is the
place inhabited by Jewish descendants of
(wicked, boo!) Haman comes from the Talmud. Sanhedrin
96b, verse 9 says in part:
The baraita continues: Among the descendants of Haman were those who
studied Torah in Bnei Brak.
...
Gittin
57b, verse 7 also mentions:
The Gemara adds that some of Haman’s descendants studied Torah in
Bnei Brak, ...
The why took some digging. Looking at the dialogue between
the chief
Rabbi defending the Jews in Damascus, and the Pasha accusing them,
I got the sense that their arguments took on, at times, an almost
technical air. Here's how the September
19th, 1840 edition of the Sunbury
and Shamokin Journal reports at least
part of their dialogue:
And of the Haman, the chief Rabbi of the city, he requested him to
sign the confession, saying, You surely killed him.
(Here follows the answer of the Rabbi, refusing to confess to a
falsehood, which was published in the extracts which appeared in The
Sun.)
The Pasha then said, 'At least sign to this, that by your law the
property of the Gentiles is allowed to you.'
The Rabbi answered, 'It is false.'
The Pasha answered, 'In the Talmud (as I am informed) it is said
from Habakkuk, 'He saw and spoiled the nations.'
The Rabbi said, 'This verse refers to the heathen idolaters, and the
despoiling of the Gentile is a heinous crime.'
In this context, one can almost hear the accuser citing the
Megillah as proof of how bloodthirsty Jews are. To which, the Rabbi
responds that the Talmud talks about the descendants of Haman
studying Torah.
While this hypothesis may earn points for creativity, it's way
off. The real reason why the Times editors arrived at this
translation was strictly practical.
The first English translation of the Haggadah was published in 1770
by Alexander
Alexander. In it, he faced the challenge of how to translate B'nei Brak:
[The] Hebrew name “Bnei Brak” consists of two words of
which the first, “Bnei”, can be translated as “children of”, while
the second, “Brak”, could be understood as the name of a person,
Berak, which was confusing for early translators.
In 1770, the first to translate the Haggadah into English (London),
Alexander, therefore translated that the rabbis “were entertained
amongst the children of Berak” and added the footnote that Berak is
“a place inhabited by proselytes, Jews descended from Haman.”
Years ago I printed
a copy of Alexander's Haggadah for use at our Seder. Sure enough,
in that copy the footnote is present:
The editors of the Times didn't use Alexander's translation of the
Haggadah; instead, they used a later one by Isaac
Levi. In Levi's translation he
took another approach to this translation:
A far less-known but extremely influential translator/ editor is
Isaac Levi, the third translator of the Haggadah into English. Isaac
took David Levi’s translations and “edited” them (making gross
mistakes along the way). In this instance, he reversed the English
“children of Berak” to the name Bnei Brak but instead of translating
it, he left the name in Hebrew. He didn’t touch the footnote:
This image
shows what the editors of the Times had to work with:
They were left with little choice but to swap the Hebrew for the
footnote, which gives us the translation we see today.
So we have Alexander and some no doubt hurried Times
editors to thank for the above translation.
I think, however, they were on to something with the phrasing
of their text.
Even in times of peril and persecution, like the Damascus
Affair, it serves us well to recite the story of the five rabbis with
Alexander's footnote in mind. That is, we strive not just to come
together in community, but to do so in the seemingly impossible
state of harmony with the descendants
of our enemies.
Equally important, the Times of London's Haggadah is here to remind us
that such a goal will only come about if take innovative and
creative action to get there.
This year
we are slaves. Next year may be free. Now we are here; next year may
we be in a B'nei Brak.
