~48 min read • Updated Mar 30, 2026
The Exiles: 135–565 AD
In the realms of both the Islamic and Christian worlds, a distinguished people preserved their incomparable culture against every hardship. They found consolation for their hearts in the shadow of their faith, lived according to their laws and ethics, nurtured poets, scholars, learned men, and philosophers within themselves, and, between the two hostile worlds of Muslim and Christian, devoted themselves to carrying and transmitting the fruitful seeds of civilization.
The Bar Kokhba revolt was certainly not the last attempt by the Jews to regain the freedom of Judea, which Pompey and Titus had destroyed. During the reign of Antoninus Pius (61–138 AD), the Jewish people once again rose in rebellion for their freedom but achieved no success. Entry into their holy city was forbidden to them except on the mournful anniversary of the city’s destruction, when, upon payment of a tax, they were permitted to set foot in the city and lament beside the walls of their ruined Temple. In Palestine, where 985 towns were leveled and 580,000 men and women were killed during the Bar Kokhba revolt, the Jewish population was reduced to half its previous level, and the people had sunk so deeply into misery that their cultural life had almost completely died out. Despite all this, within one generation after the Bar Kokhba event, the Beth Din or Jewish National Council—a court composed of seventy-one learned rabbis and lawmakers—was established in Tiberias, synagogues and schools were opened, and hope once again rose.
The victory of Christianity brought new problems. Constantine, the Roman emperor, before his conversion to Christianity, legally placed the Jewish religion on an equal footing with the religions of his other subjects. After his conversion to Christianity, new hardships and difficulties were imposed on the Jews, and Christians were forbidden from associating with them. Constantine exiled the Jewish rabbis (337 AD) and considered the marriage of a Jewish man to a Christian woman a great crime. Gallus, brother of Julian the Caesar, imposed such heavy taxes on the Jews that many were forced to sell their children to meet his demands. In 352 AD, the Jews once again raised the banner of revolt and were crushed. Sepphoris was leveled to the ground, Tiberias and other cities were partly destroyed, thousands of Jews were killed, and thousands more were enslaved. In 359 AD, the situation of the Jews of Palestine had declined to such a degree and their connection with other Jewish communities had become so difficult that their Resh Galuta, Hillel II, was forced to relinquish the right they held to determine the dates of festivals for all Jews. In order that Jewish communities everywhere might have independence in determining the timing of these festivals, he published a calendar that is still in use among Jews worldwide.
With the accession of Julian, the Jews were relieved of these calamities for a short time. He reduced their taxes, abolished unjust laws, praised Hebrew charities, and recognized Yahweh as “the great God.” Julian asked the Jewish leaders why they had abandoned animal sacrifice. When they replied that, according to their laws, such an act was permitted only in the Temple of Jerusalem, he ordered that the Temple should be rebuilt and its construction costs paid from the state treasury. Jerusalem was once again opened to the Jews. They flocked to the city from every corner of Palestine and every province of Rome. Men, women, and children labored to rebuild the new Temple, and spent their savings and jewels to provide its furnishings. It is easy to imagine the joy of a people who had prayed for such a day (361 AD) for three centuries. But while they were digging the foundations of the building, flames of fire burst from the ground and killed several workers. Work was resumed with patience, but the repetition of the same event—probably caused by the explosion of natural gases—halted construction and discouraged the workers. Christians rejoiced at this event, which appeared to be a divine prohibition, while the Jews were bewildered and mournful. Then Julian’s sudden death occurred. The expenses allocated from the state treasury for this work were suspended. The old laws restricting Jewish activities were reestablished and made stricter. The Jews, once again driven out of Jerusalem, returned to their villages to pass their days in poverty and prayer. Shortly after this event, according to Jerome, the Jewish population of Palestine “became only one-tenth of its previous population.” In 425 AD, Theodosius II abolished the office of Resh Galuta of Palestine. Greek Christian churches replaced synagogues and schools, and after a minor riot in 614 AD, Palestine ceased to be under the leadership of the Jewish world.
The Jews should not be blamed for expecting to live more comfortably in countries where Christianity had penetrated less. Some moved eastward toward Mesopotamia and Iran and strengthened Babylonian Jewry, which had never disappeared since the “captivity” of the Jews in 597 BC. In Iran too the Jews had no right to hold government offices, but since all Iranians except the nobility were deprived of this right, this restriction caused the Jews less distress. In Iran the Jews were persecuted several times, but the taxes were not crushing, the government usually viewed them favorably, and the Iranian kings recognized and respected the Resh Galuta of the Jews. In that era the soil of Iraq was irrigated and fertile, and the Jews of that land became prosperous farmers as well as shrewd merchants. Some of them, including famous scholars, amassed wealth through brewing. Jewish communities in Iran grew rapidly because Iranian law permitted polygamy for reasons we saw in Islamic law, and the Jews practiced it. Two of the rabbis, Rab and Nahman, when traveling, usually promoted concubinage upon reaching every city and set an example of married life for the local youth in contrast to unrestrained sexual life. In Nehardea, Sura, and Pumbedita (in Mesopotamia) schools for higher education were established whose religious and scholarly views were cherished and respected throughout the entire period of the Jewish “dispersion.”
Meanwhile the dispersion of the Jews continued throughout the Mediterranean lands. Some joined the Jewish communities of Syria and Asia Minor. Others, despite the hostility of Greek emperors and the Resh Galuta, headed toward Constantinople. A group from Palestine turned south and went to Arabia, where they enjoyed peace and religious freedom alongside their Semitic kinsmen the Arabs. They occupied entire regions such as Khaybar, became almost equal in number to the Arabs of Yathrib (Medina), converted many to their faith, and prepared Arab minds for the acceptance of Jewish ideas that appear in the Qur’an. Some crossed the Red Sea and went to Ethiopia, where they multiplied so rapidly that, it was said, in 315 AD half the population of that region was Jewish. Half the shipping of Alexandria fell into Jewish hands, and their increasing progress in that excitable city kindled the flames of religious enmity.
Jewish communities expanded in all the cities of North Africa and in Sicily and Sardinia. In Italy their numbers were large, and although they sometimes suffered harassment from the Christian population, they were generally under the protection of pagan emperors, Christian emperors, Theodoric I, and the popes. In Spain, before Caesar, there were Jewish settlements, and without anyone disturbing them they grew and expanded during the rule of the pagan emperor. During the rule of the Arian Visigoths they enjoyed peace and comfort, but after Recared, king of the Visigoths of Spain (586–651 AD), accepted the Nicene Creed, the Jews were severely persecuted. In the land of Gaul, until the adoption of the strict decrees of the third and fourth Councils of Orléans (538, 541 AD)—that is, one generation after the victory of the orthodox Christian Clovis over that land, which had been ruled by the Arian Visigoths—no trace of the persecution of Jews is seen. Around 560 AD, the Christians of Orléans burned a Jewish synagogue. The Jews sent a petition to King Guntram of the Franks so that their synagogue might be rebuilt at public expense, just as Theodoric had done in a similar case. Guntram refused to do this, and for this reason Gregory of Tours said to him: “O sovereign whose great wisdom makes glory befit you.”
The dispersed Jews always straightened their backs against such calamities. With patience they rebuilt synagogues and renewed their life. They suffered, traded, lent money, prayed and hoped, multiplied and formed large populations. It was decreed that every community that settled should, at public expense, maintain at least one elementary school and one secondary school, which were usually both attached to the synagogue. Scholars were advised not to settle in a city lacking these schools. The language of prayer and instruction was Hebrew. The everyday spoken language was Aramaic in the East and Greek in Eastern Europe and Egypt. Elsewhere the Jews spoke the language of the local people. The main subject of Jewish education was religion. Secular culture was almost ignored at this time. The dispersed Jewish people could only sustain themselves physically and spiritually in the light of their own law, and for them religion meant learning and observing the law. The more attacks were made on the religion of their ancestors, the more its value and credibility increased in their eyes. The synagogue and the Talmud were the necessary refuge and support of a suffering and bewildered people whose life depended on hope, and whose hope depended on the faith they had in their God.
The Compilers of the Talmud
In the Temple, synagogues, and schools of Palestine and Babylon, the Jewish scribes and rabbis undertook the compilation of the vast body of principles of law and commentaries known as the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds. This group believed that Moses left not only a written and codified law in the Five Books for his people, but also an oral law that was transmitted from teacher to student and from generation to generation and had expanded over time. The fundamental dispute between the Pharisees and Sadducees of Palestine was whether this oral law was divinely revealed and therefore binding or not. After the dispersion of the Jews in 70 AD, when the Sadducean sect disappeared and the rabbis inherited the Pharisaic tradition, all orthodox Jews counted the oral law among the divine commandments and added it to the Five Books so that the total of these two would form the Torah or law by which they lived, and in reality their existence depended on it. The long thousand-year period during which the oral law was gathered, shaped, and codified as the Mishnah; the eight hundred years during which, through debate, judgment, and interpretation, two Gemaras—that is, interpretations of the Mishnah—were accumulated; the joining of the Mishnah to the smaller Gemara to create the Palestinian Talmud; and the linking of the Mishnah to the longer Gemara to produce the Babylonian Talmud—all are among the most complex and astonishing events in the history of human thought. The Bible was the literature and religion of the ancient Hebrews, and the Torah was the life and blood of the medieval Jews.
Because the law of the Five Books was codified, it could not meet all the requirements and needs of a Jerusalem without freedom, or a Judaism without Jerusalem, or a Jewish people without Palestine. The interpretation of the laws of Moses for application and guidance of the people in a new age or place was the responsibility of the teachers of the Sanhedrin before the dispersion of the Jews, and of the rabbis after that event. Their interpretations and discussions, along with the opinions of the majority and minority, were transmitted from one generation of teachers to the next. Perhaps to keep this uncodified tradition flexible, and perhaps to make memorizing it obligatory, it was never written down. The rabbis who interpreted the law, whenever necessity required, sought help from individuals who had taken upon themselves the arduous task of memorizing this law. In the six generations after Christ, the rabbis were known as Tannaim or “teachers of the oral law.” Since these rabbis had no equal in expressing and explaining the law, after the fall of the Temple they were both teachers and judges among the Jewish communities of Palestine.
The rabbis of Palestine, and the rabbis of the dispersed Jewish people, formed an unparalleled aristocratic class in history. Membership in such a class was neither hereditary nor exclusive. Many of them rose from the poorest strata of society. The majority of them, even after gaining international fame, remained craftsmen and earned their living by the work of their hands. Until nearly the end of this period, they received nothing in return for their teaching and judging. The wealthy sometimes made them secret partners in their business, or gave them a place in their homes, or chose them as husbands for their daughters to relieve them of the burden of toil. A few of them, because of the high status their communities granted them, fell into corruption. Some, by human nature, were subject to envy, hatred, anger, pride, and unwarranted criticism. This class was constantly forced to remind themselves that a true scholar is a humble man, if only with the argument that wisdom proceeds from the general to the particular. The people loved such men for their virtues and faults, praised them for their knowledge and sincerity, and transmitted thousands of stories about their judgments and miracles. To this day no people has honored the seeker of knowledge and the scholar as much as the Jews.
As the rulings of the Jewish rabbis grew more numerous, the task of memorizing them became more unreasonable. Three of the greatest Jewish rabbis—Hillel, Akiva ben Joseph, and Meir—tried to find classifications and various methods for memorizing these rulings, but none of their methods gained general acceptance. Chaos in the transmission of the law became a daily issue. The number of individuals who had memorized the entire oral law had dangerously decreased, and even this small number was scattered to distant lands with the dispersion of the Jewish people. Around 189 AD, in Sepphoris in Palestine, Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi followed and modified the work of Akiva and Meir, reorganized the entire oral law of the Jews, and, with some personal additions, wrote it down under the title of the Mishnah of Rabbi Judah. The general acceptance of this collection by the entire Jewish nation caused it, over time, to be recognized as the main or sole authoritative source of the Jewish oral law.
The Mishnah, or oral teachings, as it now exists is the result of numerous revisions, corruptions, and additions that have occurred since the time of Judah. Nevertheless, it is a concise and brief collection compiled for memorization through repetition and, therefore, frustratingly brief and obscure for someone without knowledge of Jewish history and background. The Babylonian and European Jews, as well as the Jews of Palestine, accepted it, but each school interpreted and explained its opinions according to its own will. Just as six “generations” (10–220 AD) of Tannaim (teachers of the oral law) participated in organizing the Mishnah, now in the same way six “generations” (220–500 AD) of Amoraim (interpreters) accumulated these two masses of interpretation, that is, the Palestinian and Babylonian Gemaras. The new teachers did to Judah’s Mishnah what the Tannaim had done to the Old Testament; in other words, they discussed the text, analyzed, interpreted, and revised it, and added the necessary explanations to make it suitable for the requirements and issues of their new time and place. Toward the end of the fourth century, the schools of Palestine harmonized their interpretations in the form known as the Palestinian Gemara. Almost at the same time (397 AD), Rabbi Ashi, who held the presidency of the Jewish academy in Sura, began compiling the Babylonian Gemara and worked on it for one generation. One hundred years later (499 AD), Rabina II, son of Samuel, also in the city of Sura, completed this work. If we remember that the Babylonian Gemara is eleven times the size of the Mishnah, then we understand why its compilation took a century. In addition, over 150 years (500–650 AD) the Saboraim (“reasoners”) revised this vast interpretation and applied the final corrections to the Babylonian Talmud.
The word Talmud means teaching. Among the Amoraim (interpreters) the meaning of “Talmud” was only the Mishnah, but in modern usage Talmud applies to both the Mishnah and the Gemara. In the Palestinian Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud the Mishnah is the same; they differ only in the Gemara or interpretation, meaning that the interpretation in the Babylonian Talmud is four times that in the Palestinian Talmud. Both interpretations are written in Aramaic, and the interpretation of the Mishnah is in new Hebrew, with many words borrowed from the languages of neighboring peoples. The Mishnah is concise and brief, expressing a ruling in a few lines, whereas both Gemaras deliberately tend toward verbosity and present the different opinions of the great rabbis on the Mishnah text, explain the conditions and circumstances that probably require modification of the law, and add material for clarification. Most of the Mishnah consists of Halakha or interpretation of the law, whereas the Gemaras can be divided into two separate sections: half are Halakha—that is, discussion of the law or additional explanations of it—and part are Haggadah (story). The word “Haggadah” is loosely applied to anything in the Talmud that is not Halakha. In general, Haggadah includes examples or stories that come for clarification, biographical fragments, history, medicine, astronomy, astrology, magic, and theosophy, and encouragement of individuals to chastity and observance of the law. Often, after discussion of a complex and tedious subject, a piece of Haggadah was narrated for the relaxation of the students of the sciences, such as the following story:
Rabbi Ami and Rabbi Assi were conversing with Rabbi Isaac Nappaha about every subject when suddenly one of them said to him: “Master, tell us some pleasant legends,” and the other said: “It is better if you explain one of the delicate points of the law.” When the rabbi began to narrate a story, he displeased the second, and when he explained one of the points of the law, he offended the first. Therefore he told this parable for the two of them: “I am like that man who had two wives, one young and the other old. The young wife plucked all his white hairs so that her husband might appear young, while the old wife plucked all his black hairs so that he might appear old. And in this way, between the desires of the two wives, the husband’s head became bald. Now I too have been caught between you two in the same way.”
The Law
After these preliminaries, if we now attempt, in the utmost brevity and with comprehensive ignorance, to describe a summary of this extraordinarily vast Talmud that penetrated every aspect of medieval Jewish life, we must confess that our act is like picking up a pebble from a vast mountain and, since we have not grown up with such a tradition, our work will necessarily not be free of error.
Theology
The Jewish rabbis believed that the first duty of a person should be learning the law, both written and oral. “The study of the Torah has a greater reward than the rebuilding of the Temple.” “Every day that a person occupies himself with the study of the law, he should say to himself: ‘As if I received this today from Mount Sinai.’” The study of no other field is necessary. Greek philosophy and secular sciences can be learned only in the hour that is neither night nor day. Every word of the Jewish Bible is in reality the word of God. Even the Song of Songs of Solomon is a song inspired by God to describe, metaphorically, the bond of Yahweh with his chosen bride Israel. Since without the law moral chaos would prevail, the law must have existed from eternity “in the bosom or mind of God.” The Talmud too, since it is the interpretation of the law, is considered the eternal word of God, because it is a collection of laws that God orally conveyed to Moses, and Moses conveyed it to his successors. Its rulings are as binding as anything else in the Jewish Bible. Some of the rabbis, considering the Mishnah a later and revised form of the law, gave it a status above the Jewish Bible. Some rulings of the rabbis openly canceled laws of the Five Books or interpreted them in such a way that they became ineffective in meaning. During the Middle Ages (476–1453 AD), the Talmud was far more a reference for the Jews of Germany and France than the Jewish Bible.
The Talmud, like the Bible, takes for granted the existence of an omniscient and omnipotent God. Among the Jews there were occasionally skeptics, such as the scholar Elisha ben Abuyah with whom the pure rabbi Meir formed a friendship. But such elements were clearly a negligible minority of whom almost no one heard. The God about whom the Talmud speaks has an explicitly human form: he loves and hates, becomes angry, laughs, weeps, feels regret, ties amulets, and leans on a throne around which groups of seraphim and cherubim circle and read the Torah three times a day. The Jewish rabbis admitted that these human attributes were to some extent hypothetical. They said: “We borrow expressions that are peculiar to his creatures to apply to the Creator himself so that we may have help in knowing him.” It was not their fault that all creatures could only think in images. They also described God as the spirit of the universe, an invisible, penetrating, life-giving essence, beyond and yet present in the universe, beyond the world and yet present and watchful in all its particles and corners. This omnipresent divine essence, or in the rabbis’ terminology Shekhinah (dwelling), is especially real in holy places, persons, and objects, and in moments when a person is engaged in study or prayer. Nevertheless, this omnipresent God has no partner. Among the various imaginings, for Judaism the most detested idea is polytheism. Against the polytheism of pagan peoples and the apparent tritheism of Christian Trinity, Judaism emphasizes the issue of monotheism with all its fervor. This point is announced in the most famous and public prayer of the Jews known as the Shema Yisrael: “Hear, O Israel: Yahweh our God, Yahweh is one.” No Christian, no prophet, no saint should be placed on a level with him in his Temple or in his worship ceremonies. The rabbis, except in rare cases, did not permit mentioning his name to avoid blasphemy and magic. To avoid mentioning the sacred four-letter word “Yahweh,” they used the word Adonai (Lord), and even recommended that, instead of this word, titles such as “the Holy One” or “the Merciful” or “the Most High” and “Our Father who is in the heavens” be used. God is capable of miracles and, especially through the rabbis, brings miracles to manifestation. But these miracles should not be considered violations of natural laws, because there is no law except the divine will.
Every creature of God has a divine and beneficial purpose. “God created the snail as a remedy for scabies, the fly as a means of healing a bee sting, the mosquito as a remedy for a snake bite, and the snake as a salve for a wound.” There is a continuous relationship between God and man. There is no step a person takes in the course of his life that is hidden from God’s inescapable view. Every daily action or thought of a person is respect or disrespect to the divine presence. Man is descended from Adam, yet “Adam was first created like an animal with a tail.” And “until the generation of Enoch (Idris) the faces of human beings resembled those of apes.” Man is a mixture of spirit and body. His spirit is from God and his body is from dust. His spirit drives him to righteousness, and his body draws him to sin. Or perhaps his impure temptations arise from Satan and the vast host of unclean spirits that lie in wait everywhere. Nevertheless every possible act may ultimately be good. Man without his worldly inclinations might neither work nor reproduce. Among Jewish writings we encounter pleasant expressions such as: “Let us appreciate our ancestors, for if they had not committed sin, we would not have come into the world.”
Sin is natural, but guilt is not inherited. The Jewish rabbis accepted the theory of Adam’s fall and rejected the idea of inherent sinfulness and divine atonement. They believed that a person is punished only for his own sins. If a person in this world is tormented more than he deserves for committing sin, it may be because we are not fully aware of the extent of his sins. Or it may be that this severity of punishment is itself a great blessing, so that the suffering person may attain extraordinary rewards in Paradise. For this reason Akiva believed that a person should be glad in the face of successive misfortunes. As for death, it came into the world because of sin. Whoever is truly pure from any sin will never die. In the view of the Jewish rabbis, death was a debt that sinful man owed to the Creator of all beings. In one of the interpretations related to Rabbi Meir, an effective story about death is told:
When Rabbi Meir, after the afternoon prayer on a Sabbath, was engaged in his weekly sermon, his two beloved sons suddenly died at home. Their mother covered their faces with a sheet and refrained from mourning on such a holy day. When Rabbi Meir returned home after the evening prayer, he asked about his two sons whom he had not seen in the synagogue. His wife asked her husband to recite the Havdalah prayer (whose recitation marks the end of the Sabbath) and then brought the evening meal. Then the wife said: “I have a question for you. Once a friend gave me jewels to keep for him. Now he wants me to return them to him. Should I do so?” Rabbi Meir said: “Undoubtedly you must return them.” His wife took his hand, led him to the bed on which the bodies lay, and drew back the sheet. Rabbi Meir wept bitterly. His wife said: “They were with us for a while on deposit. Now their owner has taken back what belonged to him.”
The Jewish Bible had said little about eternal punishment and reward, but that idea now played a great role in Jewish theology. Hell was imagined in Gehenna or Sheol and, like Paradise, was divided into seven levels, each differing from the other in the type of torment. Only the most wicked individuals of the Jews were sent to such a hell, and even habitual sinners were not punished forever. It was believed that “all those who reach hell will rise again, except these three groups of people: one who commits adultery, one who publicly shames another, and one who falsely accuses another.” Paradise was called the Garden of Eden and was described as a garden having all kinds of material and spiritual blessings. Its wine was a vintage from the six days of creation. Its air was fragrant with the scent of flowers. The divine essence itself joined the saved in a banquet whose ultimate joy was seeing the face of the Lord. Nevertheless, some of the rabbis admitted that no one can say what secret lies beyond the grave.
Among the Jews, when speaking of salvation, the meaning was more the salvation of the people of Israel than the individual Jew. Since this people, because of apparently unreasonable cruelty, had been exiled to the corners of the world, they strengthened themselves with the belief that they were still the chosen and favored people of God. He was their father and a just God. It was impossible for him to break his covenant with Israel. Were they not the people to whom God had granted that heavenly book that both Christians and Muslims had accepted and honored? To compensate for such failures, the Jews, in the utmost despair, became so proud that their rabbis, who had elevated their people, were forced to speak in reproach to humble them. In those days, as in our era, the Jews longed to reach their original homeland and always considered the realization of such a thing with utmost eagerness as their supreme desire. They believed that: “Whoever walks four cubits in the soil of Israel will undoubtedly attain eternal life.” And “whoever lives in Palestine is free from sin.” “Even speaking about those who have settled in Palestine is considered Torah.” The most important part of the daily prayers, famous as the Shemoneh Esreh (eighteen blessings), included a plea for the appearance of the son of David, that king-savior who was destined to unite the Jews again as a free nation so that they might worship God in their Temple with their ancient songs and rites.
Religious Rituals
What distinguished the Jews of this age of faith and kept them a united people despite dispersion was not theology but religious rituals. And it was not a faith that Christianity had only expanded and Islam had borrowed a large part of, but a ceremonial law so intricate that only this proud and nervous people could show the humility and patience required to obey that law. Christianity tried to achieve unity through unity of belief among the children of man, whereas Judaism sought to achieve such a goal through unity of religious rituals. Abba Arika said: “The purpose of imposing the law was only that people, by observing it, might be disciplined and purified.”
First of all, religious rituals were a form of worship. When the synagogue replaced the Temple, animal sacrifice gave way to prayer and vow. But, as was the custom in the Temple, placing any statue of God or man was forbidden in the synagogue. Any tendency toward idolatry was avoided, and playing musical instruments—which was permitted in the Temple—was prohibited in the synagogue. Here Christianity separated from Judaism. Among the Semitic peoples a melancholic piety spread, and among Christians a melancholic art.
Prayer every day, and almost every hour, had turned the devout Jew into a religious experience. At the time of morning prayer, one had to tie amulets or prayers containing several verses from the Jewish Bible on the forehead and arms. No food could be eaten unless a short prayer was recited before beginning and a more detailed thanksgiving was offered to God afterward. But these home prayers were not sufficient. Only if religious rituals were performed together in one place could unity among the Jews be possible. The rabbis had carried Eastern exaggeration to the point of saying: “Prayer is heard in the court of the Most High only when a person has engaged in it in the synagogue.” The congregational prayer ritual generally consisted of the Shemoneh Esreh, the Shema Yisrael, the reading of verses from the Five Books and the books of the prophets and the Psalms of David, a sermon explaining points from the heavenly book, the Kaddish (prayers of praise and blessing for the living and the dead), and the closing prayer. This series of prayers and sermons still forms the main ceremony of Jewish worship in the synagogue to this day.
The rules of purity or cleanliness rituals were far more detailed than these religious rituals. Cleanliness of the body was considered a prelude and means to purity of the inner self. The rabbis forbade their followers from living in a city without a bathhouse and gave them a series of instructions on bathing that almost had the character of medical education. Among them, they said that “if a person bathes with hot water and does not immediately wash himself with cold water, he resembles iron that is placed in a furnace and then not plunged into cold water.” The body, like iron, must become accustomed to heat and cold and become steel-like. After bathing, it was time to anoint the body. As soon as a person rose from sleep, before any food and before congregational prayer or any other religious ritual, he was obliged to wash his hands. Corpses of the dead, sexual acts, menstrual blood, childbirth, lice, pigs, and leprosy (or in other words various skin diseases) were all considered unclean according to religious rituals, that is, according to the laws of the Sharia. Persons who had become contaminated with any of these impurities had to go to the synagogue and perform the purification ceremonies there. A woman was unclean until forty days after giving birth to a boy and until eighty days after giving birth to a girl (that is, intercourse with her was considered forbidden). According to the decree of the Torah (Genesis, chapter 17, verses 9–14), every boy was to be circumcised on the eighth day of his birth. This act was considered a sacrifice to Yahweh and the making of a covenant with him, but the common practice of circumcision among Egyptians, Ethiopians, Phoenicians, Syrians, and Arabs indicates that circumcision was a hygienic measure in accordance with climatic requirements that served more for sexual gratification and excitability than the issue of purity. The ruling of the rabbis that no Jew should keep an uncircumcised male slave in his possession for more than one year is also evidence of this claim.
The Talmud sometimes resembles more a home medical handbook than a collection of rules of religious commandments. When it was compiled, they deliberately wanted it to be an encyclopedia of advice and guidance for the Jewish people. The Jews of the fourth and fifth centuries AD, like most Mediterranean peoples, gradually fell victim to a series of medical superstitions and resorted to a series of temporary treatments for the poor and those far from civilized centers. For this reason, large quantities of these popular treatments and medical superstitions entered the Talmud. Nevertheless, in the Babylonian Gemara we encounter very good descriptions of the stomach and larynx, the large windpipe, the lungs, the brain membranes, the genital organs, cheesy tumors of the lungs due to tuberculosis, cirrhosis or liver disease, and also extraordinarily accurate descriptions of many other diseases. The rabbis note that flies and drinking cups may be a means of disease transmission. They diagnose thinness of the blood as a hereditary disease and do not consider it advisable to circumcise an infant suffering from it. With such ideas, spells and instructions for repelling jinn, whom they considered the causes of diseases, are also mixed.
The rabbis, like all of us, were specialists in nutrition. The wisdom of human nutrition begins with the teeth. No matter how painful a tooth is, it should not be pulled, because “if a person chews food well with his teeth, his feet gain strength.” Vegetables and fruits, except dates, are recommended beyond measure. Meat is a luxury food and should be eaten only if it has been well washed. An animal must be slaughtered in such a way that it suffers less. Blood must be removed from the meat. Eating meat mixed with blood is a detestable act. Therefore the slaughter of animals for food must be entrusted to skilled persons, and these persons are obliged to carefully examine the intestines and organs of the animal to determine that the animal is not suffering from disease. Meat and milk, and foods prepared from these two, should not be eaten together on one table or even placed next to each other in the kitchen. One must abstain from eating pork. An egg, onion, or garlic that has been peeled and left overnight should not be eaten. Food should be eaten at the appointed time “not like chickens that peck at grains all day.” “Most people die from overeating rather than from undereating.” “Until the age of forty eating is beneficial; after the age of forty, drinking.” Moderation in wine drinking is better than complete abstinence. Wine is mostly a beneficial medicine, and “without it no joy or pleasure is obtained.” Finally, the rabbis, who pursued the subject of nutrition to its last stage, believed that “whoever lingers longer in the toilet will live longer,” and they recommended that after every act of relieving oneself a person should thank God.
Asceticism was rejected in the view of the Jewish rabbis, and this group encouraged their followers to enjoy the pleasures and blessings of the world as long as they did not commit sin. On certain blessed days and on appointed days, fasting was obligatory, but perhaps in this case too religion was used as a means for the health of individuals. Although even in the joys of the Jews traces of their sorrow and longing were evident, nevertheless, by racial wisdom, they occasionally entertained themselves by holding festivals and banquets. The rule was that “during a festival, a man must gladden his wife and family members” and, if he can, provide new clothes for them. The Sabbath, that is, the greatest Jewish innovation, was apparently a torment in the Talmudic periods. A devout Jew was expected to refrain from speaking as much as possible on the Sabbath, not to light any fire in his house, and to spend long hours in the synagogue in prayer. In a detailed treatise all the works that a person is permitted or not permitted to do on the Sabbath were mentioned in detail. But the ethical scrupulosity of the rabbis was more directed toward moderating the terrifying restrictions of asceticism than increasing them. This group, with complete insight, provided convincing reasons for all the actions that a person must perform on the holiday. In addition, the devout Jew found a kind of hidden joy in observing the old Sabbath rituals. For this reason, he began the Sabbath with a short ceremony known as Kiddush (sanctification). Around the father of the family, all his wife, children, and guests were gathered (because this was the best day of the week for entertaining friends). In such a situation, he would take a cup full of wine and, after reciting a prayer for blessing and instruction, drink a sip of it and then give it to the guests, his wife, and his children so that each might drink in turn. Then he would take the bread and, with a prayer to the Lord “who has created bread from the heart of the earth,” give thanks and offer a piece of it to all the individuals at the table. On the Sabbath no one was permitted to fast or mourn.
During the year there were several blessed days when, whenever one of them arrived, it was necessary for the believers to perform special duties or take timely rest. Passover, which began on the fourteenth of Nisan (April), was in memory of the eight days when the people of Israel had fled from Egypt. In the Torahic ages, this festival was known as the “Feast of Unleavened Bread,” because the Jews had fled from Egypt when their dough had not yet risen. In the Talmudic periods, this festival was called Pesach or in other words the “Feast of Passover,” because Yahweh, who condemned the newborn of Egypt to death, had “passed over” the newborn Jewish infants whose fathers and mothers had marked the lintels of their houses with the blood of a lamb. The Jews celebrated the first day of this festival by eating the Passover meal (or Seder). Every father had the role of religious leader for his wife and children and participated with them in ceremonies whose main purpose was to remember the bitterness and failures of the time of Moses and, through question and answer, to narrate to the young members of the family the events he had committed to memory. When the Feast of Weeks arrived, that is, seven weeks after Passover, the Feast of Shavuot was held in honor of the harvest and the revelation to Moses on Mount Sinai. On the fifteenth day of Tishrei—the seventh month of the religious calendar and the first month of the Jewish civil calendar, that is, approximately at the autumnal equinox—the Jews celebrated Rosh Hashanah, that is, the New Year and the rising of the new moon, and, in memory of the giving of the Torah, they blew the ram’s horn (shofar or kerna) to call all the people to repentance and to give them hope for the arrival of the blessed day when such a blast would call all the Jews of the world to worship their God in Jerusalem. From the night before Rosh Hashanah until the tenth day of Tishrei were days of repentance and seeking forgiveness. All these ten days, except the ninth, the pious Jews spent in prayer, and on the tenth or Yom Kippur, that is, the Day of Atonement, from sunset to sunset the next day, they had no right to eat, drink, wear shoes, work, bathe, or have intercourse. They spent the entire day in the synagogue in prayer and supplication and lamented and sought forgiveness for their sins and for the rest of the Jewish people, even for the worship of the Samaritan calf. On the fifteenth day of Tishrei, Sukkot or the Feast of Tabernacles was held. For one week the Jews had to live in temporary booths, and apparently this act was a sign of the solution of the forty-year dwelling of their ancestors in booths that they had erected in the wilderness. After the dispersion of the Jewish people, performing this tradition of fruit-gathering or booth-dwelling became very difficult, and the Jewish rabbis, with good intention, interpreted the Hebrew word sukkah as meaning any kind of dwelling or shelter. On the twenty-fifth day of the month of Kislev (December), that is, the ninth month of the Jews, and one week after that was dedicated to the Feast of Hanukkah or the custom of dedication. This festival was in memory of the event of 165 BC when Antiochus Epiphanes defiled the Temple and the Maccabean family purified it. Finally on the fourteenth of Adar (March), the Jews celebrated the Feast of Purim (lots), which indicated the salvation of their ancestors from the plots of Haman, minister of Ahasuerus, in the story of Esther and Mordecai. On such a day the Jews spread the table of drinking and feasting and gave gifts to one another, and congratulated the festival. Rabba, one of the Jewish rabbis, had said about the status of this festival that a Jewish person on such a day should drink so much that he can no longer distinguish between “Cursed be Haman!” and “Cursed be Mordecai!”
From what has been said about these Talmudic-period Jews, one should not imagine them as a bunch of bitter people who, because of their talents, were envied and suffered under sorrow, were driven to every shore by the storms of beliefs, and wandered in anticipation of the homeland of their ancestors—which had been forcibly taken from them. On the contrary, these men held their heads high against oppression, and in the midst of dispersion, humiliation, and poverty. With eagerness they became filled with joy from the bitterness and hardship of life, the fleeting beauty of women whose backs were bent under the burden of responsibility, and the enduring glory of the earth and sky. From the words of Rabbi Meir it is that “every day a person should thank God a hundred times.” From another famous saying that should be hung in the ears of all of us is this: “Four steps of walking without bowing the head is an insult to the station of the Most High, for has it not been written that the whole earth is full of his glory?”
The Ethics of the Talmud
The Talmud is not a work of art. The arduous task of fitting the thoughts of a thousand years into a framework free of contradictions was very difficult even for a hundred patient Jewish jurists. The sequence and continuity of several treatises is clearly wrong. Several chapters have been mistakenly included in treatises that have no connection with the subject. Subjects are discussed and suddenly the speech is cut off, and then taken up again without introduction or rule. This book is not the product of the deliberation of religious scholars, but their passionate breath itself. All recorded opinions and contradictions are often left unresolved. It is as if we have blinked and crossed the distance of fifteen centuries to eavesdrop on the most intimate discussions of the Jewish academies and hear what Akiva and Meir and Judah ha-Nasi and Rab are saying in the midst of their debates. If we remember that we are like a fly in the arena and the scribes of the Talmud have snatched the statements that happened to flow from the tongues of these persons and others and placed them side by side without any logical sequence and thrown them toward us through the ages, then we can forgive their method of solving the moral problems of their people, their sophistry, myths, astrology, demonology, superstitions, magic, miracles, numerology, inspired dreams, and loads of discussion raised to prove an ounce of imaginary fancy, and finally the consoling pride that forever heals a sterile hope.
If the severity of these laws, the inquisitive scrutiny of these regulations, and the severity of the punishment that is peculiar to Easterners for violating them offends our feelings, we should not take this subject too much to heart. The Jews themselves did not claim to follow all these commandments, and their rabbis, where there was a gap between their teachings for perfection and human weaknesses, ignored the pages of religious commandments one by one. The words of one wise rabbi were that “if the children of Israel observe the customs of only one Sabbath as they should, their savior, the son of David, will appear immediately.” The Talmud was not a collection of laws for absolute obedience, but a collection of the opinions of the Jewish rabbis that had been compiled to guide believers who worshiped with leisure. The uneducated masses only obeyed a few selected commandments of the law.
In the Talmud great importance was given to religious rituals. But this subject to some extent represented the reaction of the Jews against the efforts that the Church and the government made to force them to abandon the law. Religious rituals were the mark of identity of the people, the bond of unity and connection, and a mark of defiance against a world that never had generosity. Throughout these twenty volumes of the book, here and there, we encounter words indicating hatred toward Christianity. But this rebuke and reprimand is against a Christianity that had forgotten the gentleness of Christ and harassed the followers of the faith that Christ had commanded to be practiced. A Christianity that in the view of the rabbis had abandoned monotheism, that is, the inseparable essence of that ancient faith. Among all these ceremonial ambiguities and contentious roots, we encounter hundreds of wise advices, points indicating perfect insight, and sometimes expressions that recall the grandeur of the Old Testament or the mysterious delicacy of the New Testament. The strange humor that is one of the characteristics of the Jews lightens the heaviness of the long sermons. Such as the witticism attributed to one of the rabbis who describes how Moses entered Akiva’s school in disguise and sat in the last row among the students and was astonished that that high teacher was quoting numerous laws from the collection of the commandments of Moses that had never occurred to the original scribe of those commandments.
For 1,400 years the Talmud was the main core of Jewish education. Every Hebrew student for seven full years, seven hours a day, immersed himself in the sea of its study, recited it aloud, and committed it to memory through ear and eye. Just as the followers of Confucius inscribed the teachings of their prophet on the tablet of the mind, in this case too the mind and character of the student, as a result of the discipline of Talmud study and the penetration of its knowledge, was nurtured. The teaching method was not only reading and repetition, but also debate between teacher and student, and student and student, and the application of ancient laws to the requirements of the new age also helped this purpose. The result of these exercises was sharpness of mind and strengthening of memory that in many cases where clarity, concentration, persistence, and precision were necessary gave the Jewish individual an advantage and, at the same time, naturally limited the field of thought and freedom of his mind. The Talmud tamed the excitable nature of the Jew, prevented his sense of individualism, and molded his nature in the framework of loyalty and stability among his people and family. Perhaps the “yoke of the law” prevented the flight of fertile minds, but it was in the light of this very law that the entire Jewish people were saved from the abyss of destruction.
The Talmud is never understood except by the standard of history, and from this view it was the means of salvation for a people that was exiled, wretched, oppressed, and in danger of complete disintegration. What the Jewish prophets had done at the time of the Babylonian captivity to strengthen the morale of that people, the rabbis did in a more extensive form at the time of this dispersion. They were forced to regain self-respect, establish order, preserve faith and ethics, and rebuild physical and mental health after such a crushing disintegration. With the help of this heroic discipline, and this re-rooting of the wandering Jews in their tradition, stability and unity were finally reestablished over centuries of sorrow and wandering on continents, so that the German poet Heine said the Talmud was for this people a “portable homeland.” Wherever the Jews settled—even if they had the status of dreaded settlers in the heart of foreign lands—they were able to once again release themselves in a world belonging to them and, by purifying their minds and hearts in the ocean of the law, associate with their prophets and rabbis. It is no wonder that they loved this book, which to us is a hundred times more chaotic and varied than the work of Montaigne. They preserved even its fragments with intense love, read pieces of this vast handwritten work in turn, and in later centuries paid large sums to have it printed completely and perfectly. When kings and popes and parliaments banned or confiscated or burned it, tears of regret fell from their eyes. When they heard that Reuchlin and Erasmus had spoken in its defense, they rejoiced. And even in our own era, they made this book the most precious property of temples and homes, a refuge and source of consolation, and the prison of the Jewish spirit.
Written & researched by Dr. Shahin Siami