ENGLISH ABSTRACTS OF THE ENTRIES

The Death of Balaam son of Be’or

The story of Balaam’s death is based on two brief Biblical references (Numbers 31:8, Joshua 13:22) which record that the prophet Balaam son of Be’or, the enemy of the Israelites, was killed by the sword in the war with Midian. The midrash expands on this brief account, relating that Balaam used his magic powers to fly above the earth and elude capture. Pinchas son of Eleazar the priest or, according to other versions, Tzaliah son of Dan, mentioned the name of the Holy One, ascended to heaven, captured Balaam, and brought him down to earth. Balaam begged for his life but was finally killed by his captors.

Balaam ben Be’or, a prophet from Petor in Naharayim, is described in the Bible both as the prophet of God who faithfully delivers his words and as someone who sought to curse the Israelites and drove the daughters of Moav and Midian to prostitution with them. In the Book of Joshua 13:22, the name ‘magician’ was added to his title, referring to one who deals with black magic.

The Palestinian Talmud’s version (Sanhedrin 52a) opens with a description of the encounter with Balaam during the war. The presence of Balaam in Midian is explained by the fact that he came to claim his reward for the death of 24,000 Israelite men who died in Shittim because of his advice. Pinchas argues against him, saying that he was not worthy of his pay because he did not in fact fulfill his mission. The author goes on to portray Balaam as magically hovering over the fallen Israelites. After the High Priest Pinchas shows him his engraved head plate, Balaam’s magic is neutralized, and he comes crashing back to earth.

Pinchas therefore uses a holy magical device that nullifies the power of impurity. This post-biblical version depicts a struggle between two great magicians representing opposite powers. This version determined the later development of the theme. In the midrashic literature Balaam became the

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archetype of the deceptive wicked man who misleads the masses and harasses the people of God.

A reconstruction of a lost Midrash Yelamdenu published by Eliezer Halevi Greenhout in his Sefer Likkutim (Jerusalem: 1900) contains a version of the story probably dating to seventh century Palestine. This account describes Balaam’s hovering in the air in a language that recalls Moshe’s ascension to heaven. Here, Balaam, does not use black magic, but rather sees himself as faithful to God. When Pinchas pursues him, he finds him standing in front of the throne of God, seeking refuge like someone holding the horns of the altar. Pinchas captures him and brings him to trial before Moses and the Sanhedrin. This version has been copied several times in different contexts.

The story of Balaam has a special place in Kabbalistic literature. In the Zohar version of Parashat Balak it is said that all of Balaam’s intentions were evil. This version focuses on the unresolved tension between Balaam’s great spiritual powers, to which Chazal attest, and his negative role recounted in the Bible. The Zohar resolves this tension by explaining that Balaam’s strength stemmed from his control of the forces of impurity (sitra de-semola). These forces appear to be equal to the forces of holiness, but in actuality, they are inferior to them.

The Zohar’s version greatly expands the description of Balaam’s capture as a struggle between good and evil magical practices. The Zohar sees the unending drama of the struggle against evil as a matter of critical importance. It therefore continues the story by describing the actions of the snakes that came from the body of Balaam and how King Solomon learned to hunt them down.

The version of the Polish Talmudist and Kabbalist, Rabbi Natan Nota Shapira (1584-1633), appears in his posthumously published work, Megale Amukot (Kraków, 1637). The author was a key disseminator of Lurianic Kabbalah in Eastern Europe in the seventeenth century. Balaam appears in this version as a developing figure undergoing a process of tikkun (correction), though the writer qualifies this positive depiction.

The book Chemdat Yamim (Yemen, 1646-1660) by the 17th-century Yemenite Kabbalist and poet, R. Shalom Shabazi, is an esoteric commentary on the Torah. In this book, the writer refers to the sword with which Balaam was killed as a sword in which all the Amalekite enemies of the sons of Israel were killed through of all generations.

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In all the mystical and Kabbalistic versions, the motifs in the earlier versions are given a new symbolic-mythical significance, giving the story archetypical significance for later generations. This approach also permeates the versions of the later musar literature, such as the popular work, Kav haYashar (Frankfurt, 1705) by Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kaidanover, Av Beit Din in Frankfurt and Kraków.

In modern collections, there are six versions of the Death of Balaam, including literary revisions for educated readers and various didactic adaptations. The common tendency is to combine elements from different earlier versions, as reflected in Ginzburg’s 1911 English version. Ginzburg tells the story of Balaam’s death twice: first in the chapter entitled ‘The Complete Annihilation of Midian’, which describes the killing of Balaam as part of the campaign in which the kings of Midian are killed. The second account appears under the title, ‘The Gruesome End of Balaam’, which merges the versions of the Targum and the Zohar into a unified plot.

The theme ‘The Death of Balaam’ reflects a range of conceptions regarding this biblical figure. At one extreme lies the Aramaic Targum and the Zohar that present Balaam as an archetype of the eternal adversary, representing absolute evil. This figure is disguised as a prophet of the Lord, but it is only a temporary mask. He is ultimately revealed as a sorcerer driven by the forces of impurity and connected to them at the root of his soul. At the other end of the spectrum are the Midrash Yelamdenu and the Megale Amukot that present Balaam as a conflicted figure. Though he did indeed fight against the people of God, his closeness to God and his holiness were genuine. In his state of crisis, he sought to return to God and the sources of purity.

David – The Fool, the Wasp and the Spider

This theme celebrates the wisdom of the Creator. It tells of how David questioned why God created the fool, the wasp and the spider and then how each of these creations saved David over the course of his life. The oldest version of this theme is the Aramaic translation of Psalm 57, dating to the sixth–seventh century. According to this version, David wondered about the necessity of the spider. While hiding from King Saul’s soldiers

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in a cave, a spider came and spun webs on the cave’s opening. When his pursuers saw the webs, they moved on, assuming no one had entered the cave. Thus, David was saved from capture. The first version that presents all three parts of the theme is found in the Toledot [life of] Ben Sira, Ms. Or. 135 in the Bodleian Library, in Oxford, a text copied in the north of France in the 13th century. David questioned the reason for the creation of a fool who behaves like a madman in the market. Then, David evades capture in King Achish’s court by pretending to be a fool. David also doubts the necessity of the wasp, which does not produce honey and is harmful to bees. Later, when he sneaks into Saul’s army camp while everyone was sleeping, he was caught between the legs of Avner, Saul’s army chief. A wasp appeared and stung Avner’s legs. As a result, Avner stretched out his legs and released his grip, and David escaped.

This version appears in a framework story about Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, who heard about the wisdom of Ben Sira, who was only seven years old, and brought him to rule alongside him. Ben Sira rejected his offer, and the king agreed to release him on the condition that he answer twenty-two questions, including the twelfth question about the necessity of a fool, a wasp and a spider in the act of creation.

A well-known version of this theme is found in Midrash Tehillim (1-119), also known as Shocher Tov, which was completed at the latest in the eleventh century. A printed edition of it was compiled and edited by Solomon Buber (1891), based mainly on the manuscript of The Palatina Library, Parma, Italy Cod. Parm. 2552 (De Rossi 1232), a Spanish text from the 14th–15th centuries and seven other manuscripts, as well as the Constantinople printing (1512). This version tells only the ‘Fool’s Story’ from the cluster of the three stories.

An unusual version of this theme is found in Ayuma ka-Nidgalot printed in Constantinople by R. Isaac ben Samuel Onkeneira in 1577, and is an interpretation of the maqâmah verses that describes a war of the letters of the alphabet on the question of which is the most important. The spider story interprets in this context what it is to be ‘concealed’.

As E. E. Urbach demonstrated, the various versions of this story sought to shape an anti-Gnostic conception of creation. The world, with all its components, was created for good. Even those elements which humans may perceive as superfluous or harmful play a critical role in the divine plan.

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The Legend of Two Brothers and the Site of the First Temple

This legend is about two brothers who inherited a field from their father. One brother had a wife and children and the other was childless. The brothers lived in peace with one another and worked hard to cultivate the field. At harvest time they made two equal piles from the grain they had gathered. That night the unmarried brother thought that his brother who had family should have received more than half the crop. The brother got up and moved some sheaves from his own pile to his brother’s pile. At the same time, his brother thought that his childless brother should receive more than him, since he had nothing to sustain him in his old age other than the fruits of his labors. The married brother therefore arose during the night and also transferred sheaves from his own pile to his brother’s pile.

In the morning the brothers got up and were surprised to see that the two piles were the same as before. On the following two nights the brothers again transferred sheaves to one another’s piles, until at one point they met in the middle of the field between the piles, each with a bundle of sheaves in his arms. Then they realized what had happened and what each brother was doing, and thus God chose that field to be the site of His dwelling place, because it symbolized true brotherhood. Some versions relate that King Solomon passed through the field that night and saw the meeting between the loving brothers, whose love was unconditional, and decided that he would build the Temple there.

The decision of where to place the First Temple is the subject of many legends. Even though early rabbinic literature contains many references to this question, the story of two brothers whose love and devotion to one another was the reason for the designation of their field as the site for the construction of the First Temple is not found in the Jewish and non-Jewish traditional folklore literature before the mid-nineteenth century.

The German Jewish author Berthold Auerbach first published the story in German in 1881. His mother related that she heard the story from the Rabbi of Nordstetten in southwestern Germany in 1800 or perhaps even earlier. This is the earliest evidence of the oral transmission of the legend of the two brothers and the site of the Temple.

Other evidence of this story was published in 1835 in the book by

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French journalist and intellectual Alphonse de Lamartine, documenting his journey to Palestine in the early 1830s, when he heard the story from Arab storytellers.

The version cited by Lamartine relates a story of two brothers who inherited a field and cultivated it together. Their concern for one another led them to go out at night and transfer wheat sheaves from their own pile to the brother’s pile. Their behavior pleased God, who decided that one day a Temple would be built there for the Jewish people.

A later Arabic version was documented in the 1860s by James E. Hanauer, a priest and folklorist born in Jaffa, in his book Folklore of the Holy Land (1907).

The characters in this version are twin brothers who did not go their separate ways in adulthood, and continued to work together in the same field. After they transferred seven sheaves to one another during the night and in the morning were surprised to see that the height of their piles of sheaves had not changed, Allah sent a prophet to them, to tell them that their unselfish love pleased God and that the field would therefore be a place of blessing for everyone.

These three folkloristic versions, which were recorded from oral traditions in the nineteenth century, represent three different offshoots of the story that differ from one another in their message and ideology. As noted, neither the Muslim stories nor the Jewish story have any earlier written record. The first written Jewish narrative version appears in Mikveh Yisrael (Livorno, 1851), composed by Israel Kushta as a reader for youths. This anthology of short stories was written in vowelized biblical Hebrew and was defined by Kushta as ‘a book of moral stories to educate youths.’ Kushta’s reader and the use of legends from rabbinic literature influenced later writers such as Ze’ev Yavetz and his contemporaries.

This story was also included in Sepher Ma‘aseh Nissim (Baghdad, 1890) edited by Shlomo Bechor Chutzin. Chutzin had travelled to Italy to acquire the printing fonts to take back to Baghdad, and apparently became acquainted with the book Mikveh Yisrael during his travels, as that book serves as the basis for his version, which is identical in every respect.

In August 1897, Auerbach’s version of the story was printed in Hebrew in Hatzefira, under the heading Aggadot Em, thus introducing Auerbach’s

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version to the repertoire of the Hebrew versions of this theme for the first time.

Louis Ginzburg included the story in his Legends of the Jews (Philadelphia, 1913) and expanded the biblical-era story with traditions from the Apocrypha and rabbinic literature, reinforcing the connection between the plot and King Solomon and its connection to the Book of Kings.

The story was also cited in Sephat Ameynu (Kraków, 1914), a book written by Moses Rath for teaching Hebrew language and grammar. This book contains two versions of the story, one titled ‘Two Brothers: An Arab Legend’ and the second under the heading, ‘The Story in Brief’. The two texts differ in language and style; the first is phrased in a high register and the second is colloquial.

After the publication of these versions in didactic readers, the story appeared in additional collections for youth and in the well-known literary collections of the early twentieth century, including those of Micha Josef Berdyczewski, MiMekor Yisrael (Tel Aviv, 1939) and Ze’ev Vilnai’s Agadoth Eretz Yisrael (London, 1929).

This story has an exceptional version documented from the Spanish Moroccan Jews’ oral tradition by the Spanish scholar Arcadio de Larrea Palacin in a collection of legends retold by Jews of northern Morocco. This version was translated into Hebrew and published a year later (December 23, 1955) in Omer, the daily newspaper for new immigrants. According to this version, King Solomon accepted the task of building the Temple. However, wherever construction was begun during the day, it was destroyed during the night. King Solomon understood this as a sign that God wanted the Temple built somewhere else. At that point the narrator switches to the description of the two brothers, one single and the other married, both living in the same house and working in the same field, and continuing the familiar progression of the story.

The uniqueness of this version is in the supernatural motifs in the plot: from construction that is done during the day miraculously destroyed at night to a king who understands the language of the birds. Another difference in the plot is the ending, in which the brothers give their plot of land to King Solomon as a gift.

The modern versions of the story, which were printed in various readers,

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are intended to foster the values of brotherly love and mutual responsibility of family members as universal values, as well as to promote the location and status of Jerusalem as a sacred site in general and the Temple Mount in particular, as an inseparable part of Jewish history and the connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel.

This story is a legend that relates to a fundamental element in Jewish culture – the choice of the location of the Temple as the sole spiritual and ritual center of the Jewish people in antiquity. The commonly accepted idea is that sanctity emanates from the finished structure to its surroundings, whereas the legend of the two brothers and the site of the Temple establishes an opposing concept, according to which the blessing emanates the blessed place to the structure that will be built upon it.

The site of the Temple is not determined by the actions of a well-known figure. On the contrary, it is an anonymous family in terms of its lineage and a simple family in terms of its occupation; two orphaned brothers who farm their land, and whose mutual affection and concern yielded lofty results for subsequent generations. Herein lies the value of this story, which establishes a religious connection to the site, based on criteria of superior human behavior and not by divine decree or arbitrary directive.

The genre of the story ‘The Two Brothers and the Site of the Temple’ is a legend about a place, whose purpose is to explain the meaning of the choice of a particular site for the construction of the most important edifice in the history of the Jewish people. It is interesting to note that the affinity to this place – whose purpose is to serve as a bridge between man and God – is actually formed via a connection between man and his fellow man. Thus, the field is transformed from an intermediary between brothers into an intermediary between man and his Creator.

Hillel’s Devotion to Torah Study

The Talmud relates that every day Hillel the Elder would earn half a dinar for his work. He would give half of that sum to the guard of the Beit Midrash to pay for his entrance to the study hall, and would spend the other half on the living expenses for himself and his household. One day

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he could not find any work and the guard of the Beit Midrash would not let him in. Hilled climbed onto the roof and clung to the oculus (chimney-skylight) to hear the words of Shemayah and Avtalyon, who were the greatest teachers of that generation. That day was a Friday in the winter month of Tevet and snow fell during the night. When morning came, Shemayah asked Avtalyon why the study hall was still dim at that hour of the day, when the sunlight usually entered through the skylight. Was it a cloudy day? They looked up and saw a human figure covering the opening. When they went up to the roof they found Hillel with three cubits of snow piled on him. They removed the snow, washed and rubbed his body with oil, and seated him near the fireplace to warm him. They said that he was worthy of their violating the Sabbath to revive him.

This first version of this story appears in the Babylonian Talmud (Yoma 35b), and has no parallel in other early rabbinic literary sources. Hillel lived in the first century CE and this story was only written down in the Babylonian Talmud about four hundred years later. It is therefore difficult to determine the extent to which this version reflects a narrative tradition from close to the time and space in which the events described took place. The story appears in a trilogy whose common theme is the obligation to study Torah regardless of one’s circumstances. The Talmudic discussion presents three characters: one poor, one rich and one evil. Each of the three evaded the obligation to study Torah on the grounds of his particular circumstances, and each of them is countered by a story that invalidates their reasoning.

The story opens with the introduction of three sets of characters: the sages in the Beit Midrash, who teach and decide rulings; their students who are able to pay their tuition; and the poor who are outside the circle of Torah scholars and cannot afford to attend the study sessions. The Beit Midrash threshold and the guard appointed over it represent the dividing line between the inner space of the study environment and its students and the outer space of the world, whose inhabitants must remain outside the realm of Torah study.

Hillel, the story’s protagonist, ascends to the roof of the Beit Midrash, which has a circular opening (oculus) similar to those found in the domes of Roman buildings of that period, and which is the outlet for the smoke accumulated inside (hence the Talmud calls it a chimney). This opening also allowed light into the building and Hillel could listen to the scholarly

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discussions unfolding below. Hillel’s listening through the open skylight is symbolic of an open eye and an attentive ear ‘observing from above’ and is a kind of paradoxical advantage afforded to the poor Babylonian scholars who learned from a distance and renewed the teachings of Shemayah and Avtalyon and the sages of the previous generation.

This version of the story preserves the strains of a dispute between Shammai and Hillel, who represented the elitist and anti-elitist approaches, respectively, albeit based mainly on morals and qualifications, and less on economic standing. In Avot de-Rabbi Nathan (version 1, 3), from the seventh century, the story retains the strains of this dispute, as Shammai says that scholars must have both illustrious lineage and wealth, while Hillel opines that every person may study the Torah, even if he is a sinner.

The version in Hibbur Yafe me-ha-Yeshuah (The Book of Comfort) written by R. Nissim of Kairouan in Judeo-Arabic in the eleventh-century, follows the Babylonian version, but the concise language of the Babylonian version is transformed into expansive language that fills the gaps in the original version. R. Nissim’s version also elaborates on the motive for climbing on the roof and remaining there during harsh weather, with the addition, ‘And his passion for listening to words of Torah was so great that he was not afraid.’ This addition also magnifies Hillel’s dedication to learning to the point of ignoring the surroundings. Many other versions followed R. Nissim’s literary approach, elaborating on the story and contributing greatly to spreading it as a folk tale.

The Babylonian version was copied into the medieval anthologies of midrashim on Genesis: Yalkut Shim‘oni (section 145) by Rabbi Shimon Hadarshan of Frankfurt in the late twelfth century; Yalkut Talmud Torah by Rabbi Ya‘akov Haskily in the early fourteenth century; and Midrash ha-Gadol by Rabbi David Ben Amram ha-Adani in the fourteenth century.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, this theme is present in Yiddish folklore. Its prominence is evident in the Paris manuscript, 589 (47a-47b), which contains two different versions of the story. It seems that the molding of Hillel’s character as a simple, day-laborer was suitable for the folk tale and that the ideas expressed in this context were consistent with the didactic aims of the editors. In these versions, there is a marked tendency toward folklorization, and they are characterized by their simplistic language style.

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The Warsaw manuscript 281 (34b) version, from the 17th century, has an added description of Hillel that is not only a physical description, but also a unique literary mechanism in and of itself. Hillel is described as being covered in boils and when Rabbi Akiva sees him, he exclaims, ‘Woe is me that I am seeing you this way.’ The author of the version intimates that this description was drawn from the story of Nachum Ish Gamzu, of whom it was said that he was ‘blind in both eyes, missing both his hands; had had both his legs amputated and his whole body was covered in boils. Rabbi Akiva said to him: “Woe is me that I have seen you in this way”.’ (Babylonian Talmud, Ta’anit 31a). The addition to Warsaw manuscript 281 shifts the focus of the story from Hillel’s exemplary devotion to Torah study to his continued faith in God despite his ill health.

The Memoirs of Glückel of Hameln (1691-1719, Jerusalem edition: 2006), written in Yiddish, mention three moral basics that are demanded primarily of the poor: distancing oneself from money; overcoming the temptation to obtain money in inappropriate ways; and faith in God’s good providence. In this spirit, Glückel’s version focuses mainly on the beginning of the Hillel story, in which his attitude towards money is mentioned as an example of the moral virtues demanded from the poor. Devotion to the study of Torah is merely proof that Hillel preferred poverty to wealth, held the proper degree of faith in God, and was not tempted toward ill-gotten gain.

The version of Rabbi Yaakov Culi in Yalkut MeAm Lo‘ez (Constantinople, 1730) mitigates the claims implied by this story. Instead of total devotion to Torah study, the author makes do with setting fixed times for Torah study.

The version in Sidduro Shel Shabat (Mahilyow, 1813) by the Hasidic Zaddik R. Chayyim of Czernowitz, even though it is identical to the Babylonian version, is fraught with additions inserted by the copyist. The main ones are: one who yearns to learn Torah is satisfied with what he has, such that one could say that his livelihood is always present; the Hasidic tendency to an ecstatic state of soul, whereby adherence to God and His Torah, i.e., the spiritual world, eliminates the sufferings of the believer in the real world. It is possible that this version was incorporated into the prayer book in order to present Hillel as a figure who achieved that ecstasy, in addition to being devoted to Torah study.

The version in ‘Oseh Phele (Livorno, 1864), by Yosef Shabtai Farhi,

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contains a unique narrative element that cannot be found in any other version of this story, and that is the removal of the guard from the Beit Midrash. The version in Mikveh Yisrael (Constantinople, 1851) by R. Yisrael Kushta, could be considered as the first modern edition of this story. The author served as rabbi in his city, was a Hebrew writer, commentator and editor in the spirit of modern Jewish scholarship. His version expands the story and conducts an intertextual discourse with various sections of the Bible. The version of R. Yisrael Kushta excels in its dramatic style, particularly in its description of Hillel’s ascent to the roof of the Beit Midrash at night.

Modern versions such as in the collection Kol Aggadot Yisrael (Piotrków, 1898) by Israel Benjamin Levner are literary adaptations with didactic underpinnings. The anthologies compiled by the Hebrew author Micha Josef Berdyczewski are a literary phenomenon in and of themselves. Volumes of the German collection Der Born Judas began appearing from 1916 onward. The materials used to create the version in this collection were presented in the Hebrew anthology Mimekor Yisrael, published in 1943.

The story of ‘Hillel’s Devotion to Torah’, whose first version is in the Babylonian Talmud (Yoma 35b-36a), belongs to a genre of legends about the early lives of the sages – similar to the stories about R. Akiva and R. Eliezer ben Hyrcanus. The multiplicity of versions of these stories in the Talmud and in the post-Talmudic literature points to the popularity of this genre. The common element in the stories about these sages is that until adulthood they were not involved in studying Torah at all, and embarked on their studies despite the obstacles that the surrounding society had set before them. These stories are consistent with a format commonly found in the stories of the origins of heroes in folk literature, heroes whose birth and education involved overcoming great hardships and had its own spiritual significance. The hero’s special character ensures that even if he is of lowly origins, his adherence to a high social ideal leads to his acquiring greatness.

The Earlier Years of Eliezer Ben [the Son of] Hyrcanus

The early years of R. Eliezer ben Hyrcanus is the story of the initiation of the Tanna Rabbi Eliezer the Great. Until his twenties, he was a farmer.

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He plowed on a hill in his father’s farm, while his brothers plowed the flat ground. Later, when his cow died during the plowing, he left his father’s home and, against his father’s will, went with nothing to Jerusalem to fulfill his desire to study Torah. While in Jerusalem Rabbi Eliezer kept secret his relationship to his wealthy father. He suffered from hunger and poverty, and was nourished for many days by eating earth clods.

Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai and his students only noticed his distress due to the foul smell of his breath. When ben Zakkai learned of Eliezer’s situation and background he blessed his disciple that just as his mouth gave off a bad smell, in the future it would produce outstanding Torah wisdom. With the passing of time, his father Hyrcanus went to Jerusalem with the intention of depriving his son of his possessions and was taken to a Beit Midrash where his son gave a sermon before Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai and the honorable people of Jerusalem. When he saw the greatness of his son, he retracted his first intention and decided to leave his son with all his possessions and disinherit his other sons. Rabbi Eliezer asked that his brother’s share of the inheritance not be diminished.

The theme of ‘The Early Years of R. Eliezer’ belongs to the genre of the ‘Acts of the Sages.’ It presents the relationship between the world of the Beit Midrash and the outside world as a confrontation between the value of Torah study and the values of livelihood, family relations and other social institutions. Within this genre, there are stories about the beginnings of great Torah scholars of low origin, some of whom began their studies at a very late age, such as R. Hillel, R. Akiva and Resh Lakish.

The origin of the thirty-three versions of the story derives from three master forms: (a) Bereshit Rabba and of Avot de-Rabbi Nathan version A; (b) The second recension of Avot de-Rabbi Nathan and Pirkê de-Rabbi Eliezer; and (c) Midrash Tanchuma.

The story of Bereshit Rabba recounts a historical period of renewal of the rule of the procurators in Judea (the period of the Second Commissioners 66-44 CE) after the death of Agrippa during the reign of Gessius Florus, in which the Great Revolt against Rome broke out. The story seeks to point out the opposites of an ideal reality that is contrary to the hatred of the brothers that prevails in the period described, and to place the example of Abraham’s loyalty to Lot ‘his brother’ (in the language of brotherhood, according to

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Genesis 16:14). Along with this homily, the story of the initiation presents an exemplary example of brotherly love of Rabbi Eliezer for his brothers; was not jealous of their wealth, did not harbor hatred and did not wish for them to be deprived of their future inheritance.

The two versions of Avot de-Rabbi Nathan interpret the Mishnah in Tractate Avot (1: 4): ‘Stay in the dust of the feet of the Sages and drink thirstily for their words.’ The story comes to point out the similarity between the two figures of Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Eliezer, both of whom went from being simple agricultural laborers to becoming great Torah scholars. Both versions of Avot de-Rabbi Nathan especially develop the metaphor of absorbing words as a form of eating and drinking in a more expanded manner than in other versions. Avot de-Rabbi Nathan A elaborates on the description of the Beit Midrash in Jerusalem and on the great difficulty in finding a place to sit in it at a time when exalted sages are teaching. Avot de-Rabbi Nathan B comes to interpret the expression ‘Thirstily drink their words’ in Pirkê Avot (1:4). The exposition in this version tells that Eliezer, twenty-eight years old, was ‘groveling in the rocks’ and crying. When his father offered him to come and plow in the field, he would cry there too. He tells his father that he was crying because he wants to study Torah. In this version, the conflict between father and son is moved from the realm of external relations – as in Bereshit Rabba – to the consciousness of the son. The father appears to be troubled by the son’s crying, and the son repeatedly reveals his heart to his father. The main question is therefore whether the son will choose the path of family life as a farmer or turn to Torah study. Avot de-Rabbi Nathan B presents Rabbi Eliezer and then his disciple, Rabbi Akiva, as a new model of the Tanna, a Talmid Chacham (student of a sages), whose origins are not among those who study Torah. Their personality is a mixture of the figure of the common man whose dedication to Talmud Torah derives from special qualities he sometimes reveals in himself and sometimes with the aid of a divine revelation (Elijah).

The Tanhuma, edited by Solomon Buber (Tanhuma ha-Kadum ve-ha-Yashan), distinguishes the other versions of the theme by the fact that the story is associated with a genre of legends of Churban (The destruction of the second Temple). In this version, the events of the Great Revolt are depicted as a prominent feature of the story. When Hyrcanus went with his

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sons on a journey they encountered Roman soldiers and fled from them. Hyrcanus and his sons fled with all their possessions to one place and Eliezer fled to Jerusalem and chose to come to the city while under siege. He came to her gates ‘and took not a loaf of bread and nothing but nothing but entered Jerusalem penniless.’ This entrance into the city echoes the arrival of the Messiah to Jerusalem, as described in Zechariah (9:9). This version therefore presents the protagonist as someone who gives up the wealth of his family and makes an exemplary pilgrimage to the Holy City.

During the transmission of these versions from one generation to the next, the copyists and the editors chose the appropriate emphasis on their religious and historical views. Some preferred the mystical aspect revealed at the end of the story, and some preferred to emphasize the intergenerational conflict, such as in the versions of modern Hebrew literature. In any case, it is clear that all of them were aware that the story of the beginning of Eliezer ben Hyrcanus coincides with its deep pattern and messages to the stories about the beginning of Rabbi Hillel and the beginnings of Rabbi Akiva. This is a repeating pattern story of ‘late initiation’ of the sages who entered the Beit Midrash and recognition of their status at a later age, and because of their devotion to the study of the Torah they became leaders of halakhah for their generation and future generations.

The Test of the Chosen Dream

The story of the ‘The Test of the Chosen Dream’ is common in oral traditions in the early Middle Ages both in Christian and Muslim culture. Medieval legends scholar Albert Wesselski noted that he had to forgo a detailed historical account of the bibliographical material on this story due to the vast and varied literature on the subject.

The Jewish versions in the Christian sphere were created in the framework of a satirical tradition that ridiculed the image of Jesus, and the censorship that prohibited the printing of anti-Christian material therefore prevented printing these versions, even after they had been copied in multiple manuscripts.

All versions of the story describe three people who embark on a journey.

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When they camp for the night, they discover that their food supply is all but gone, and they are left with only the smallest rations, enough for only one. They consult with a local, who suggests that they go to sleep; upon waking they would share their dreams, and the most beautiful dream described would award the dreamer with the food ration. And so it was: when morning came, the three shared their dreams, to decide which was the most beautiful.

The first described a dream in which he ascended to heaven and saw the sights of the Garden of Eden and the host of angels therein. The second dreamed that he had gone to hell and had witnessed the horrors of terrible demons. The third said: ‘In my dream I saw the two of you, and behold, one of you came to the gates of heaven, and dwelled in the supernal worlds, and the other came down from hell, and saw the subterranean worlds. And so, I realized you no longer needed the food and I ate it myself.’

The first printed version of this story appeared in an anonymously authored book with a Hebrew and Latin title, Historia Jeschuae Nazareni, in an edition by Johannes Jacobus Huldricus (Leiden, 1705). This is a later edition of a book which was compiled in a volume entitled Tela ignea satanae, printed by the Johann Christoph Wagenseil (Altdorf, 1681).

These two printed editions are based on several copies of the Jewish composition in manuscripts, attesting to its oral and written transmission, presumably from the ninth century. This version here is a considerably late document of a literary phenomenon prevalent among Jews for hundreds of years and was eventually printed by Christian scholars who sought to prove an unequivocal anti-Christian Jewish attitude.

The prominent motif in the story is the attribution of cunning to Judas Iscariot; this trait is congruent with the tradition of condemnation in the New Testament on the one hand, but ridicules the superiority of his two companions, Jesus and Peter – the Messiah and the founder of the Christian Church – on the other. His cunning is not presented as an extraordinary act of injustice, but rather as an ironic mockery, which ridicules both champions. In the compilation, the story is placed amidst narratives in which Jesus was ridiculed by common people: he asks for food, or water, or assistance, and is mocked and teased that the ‘Son of God’ performs miracles but cannot help himself.

The full Jewish version of this book, Sefer Toledot Yeshu, published in the

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scientific edition of Samuel Krauss, Das Leben Jesu nach jüdischen Quellen (Berlin, 1902), is a derisive reference to the Christian Evangelical tradition of the birth and death of Jesus Christ. The Hebrew composition includes dialects and expressions in Aramaic and is written in medieval Hebrew.

The stories use motifs from the New Testament, adding, subtracting, and altering them in order to portray the Christian Messiah as a bastard and son of an impure mother, an ordinary man whose life and death were contemptible. In the printed version of 1705, the narrator describes the journey of Jesus, Peter, and Judas Iscariot and their stay at a roadside inn; the stolen food in this version is roasted goose.

The prominent mocking element in the satirical tradition of Toledot Yeshu has led to a republication of the story in the modern era, primarily in collections characterized as humorous or include folk tales. While early sources were common in Arabic-speaking Eastern countries, the first modern printed versions appear in Eastern Europe. The first was printed by cantor and bibliophile Samuel Ben Shemarya Fidget, member of the Karaite community and resident of the Crimea, who included the text of this story in his book Davar Dabur (Warsaw, 1906). In his book, he presents two versions under the title ‘Two Dreams in One Style’.

The modern processing of the content of the dreams reflects the reality of literary processor Shmuel Fidget’s era. He describes the dreamer as one who viewed himself as the head of the ‘Sheik Ul Islam’, the high priest of the Turkish kingdom. The geographical proximity of the Crimea to Turkish sovereignty left an impression on this version. The second version by Shmuel Fidget in his book Davar Davor, entitled ‘Second Dream in the First Style,’ is an excellent literary adaptation that further emphasizes the unreasonable relationship between the realism of social space and the content of dreams. The protagonists of this version are three thieves; each had a little flour, used to bake in a distant place on one small cake field.

The compilations of popular jokes in Yiddish and Hebrew that began to appear in the second decade of the 20th century, inspired by the idea of the collections of Hayim Nahman Bialik, are a unique literary phenomenon. The story of the Chosen Dream was included in the collection of Yehoshua

Chune Ravnitzky, Bialik’s former co-editor. Ravnitzky himself edited the collection Yidishe vitsn (Jewish Jokes) (Berlin and Odessa, 1922).

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Emmanuel Olswanger, who edited the famous anthology Die polnische Juden (Berlin, 1919) with S.Y. Agnon, also edited the collection Rosinkess mit Mandlen: Aus der Volksliteratur der Ostjuden (Basel, 1931). In this collection, he included Ravnitzky’s version in German translation. This anecdotal version was also printed in the representative collection of Naftali Gross, Mayselekh un mesholim (New York, 1955). Gross’s version bears the name ‘The three Tailors’.

The story expresses popular folk stigmas about the culture of Eastern European Jewry, in which Polish Jews are considered to be great scholars, Galician people sentimental and the Lithuanians practical. The tailor from Lithuania, the practical and wise man, fools his friends, and initially does not intend to participate in the dream test.

The printed Jewish versions of this story in Arabic-speaking countries present the same structure that we find in the fiction of Eastern European Jews, but they have their own special characteristic that links the story to a larger genre of ‘interfaith competition’.

The first printed Jewish version was presented in the book Kitab Daudiya: Malhi Adbiyah [Book of David’s Flowers] (Baghdad, 1929) by Daud ibn Salman Zemach, the poet and researcher of Babylonian Jewry. In this version, the participants in the journey are a Jew, a Muslim, and a Christian who financed their expenses from a shared fund. At the end of the journey, there were a few coins left. They bought a special dish and placed it in the basket and decided that whoever dreamed the most beautiful dream would have it. The association of the three heroes with the three religions is intentionally planted in order to portray the members of the other faiths as embodying a ‘false dream’ while the Jew goes to bed and recites the Shema. The Jew’s cleverness is also connected to his moral victory in this competition, which is expressed in honesty and devotion to the Jewish religious faith.

A broader version is presented by the scholar and historian of the Jews of Babylon, Avraham Ben Yaakov, in the journal Yeda Am. In this version, it is a rabbi from Jerusalem who attributed the place of action to Constantinople. These two versions, one from Baghdad and the other from Constantinople, were presented in this issue of Yeda Am with a third version from the Yemenite Jews. Despite the fact that the geographical distance between the

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origin of the versions is very large, the extent of linguistic sharing (Judaeo-Arabic dialects) and the cultural similarity between them results in a great deal of ideas that are common to all of them.

It seems that the creators of these versions are not concerned about the integrity of the heroes, and they tell a story that is farcical. The figure of Elijah is interesting in itself, in its grave and threatening design, which has an affinity to the biblical character of the Ba‘al prophet’s slaughter and has no parallel in the dream stories of the Muslim and the Christian. It is possible that in this scene the tone of hostility towards the other religions is apparent, in which the story’s narrators found justification for this act of cunning.

The multitude of oral versions in relation to the minimal number of printed versions and their absence from the early 20th century (with the exception of Toledot Yeshu) attests to a theme of a distinctly popular character and reflects the fact that preservation in the communal consciousness is usually accomplished orally rather than in writing.

Rabbi Amnon of Mainz

Rabbi Amnon of Mainz was a very handsome, wealthy, dignified man who was known for his wisdom. The bishop and the rulers of the city envied him and tried repeatedly to persuade him to convert to Christianity, but he persistently declined. When these attempts became more frequent, Rabbi Amnon told the city’s bishop to allow him time to consider the proposal and that he would give a response after three days. As soon as Rabbi Amnon exited the bishop’s presence, he regretted what he had said, as it indicated that he had might have some doubt of his beliefs and an implicit willingness to convert. His deep remorse that this had happened caused him to become ill and bedridden, so much so that he did not want to leave his house even when the three days had passed and the time had come for him to appear before the bishop. The bishop sent messengers to bring him, but Rabbi Amnon refused to go with them and was eventually brought to the bishop by force. When he stood before the bishop, Rabbi Amnon declared that he wished to sanctify God’s name for what he had said and demanded that his tongue be cut out as punishment for his weakness, but

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the bishop ordered instead that his fingers and toes be cut off, one joint at a time. As each joint was cut he was asked if he was ready to renounce his faith but Rabbi Amnon accepted this terrible suffering with love and clung to the name of God. He was then sent home on a shield, with all his joints salted and beside him.

On Rosh Hashana, Rabbi Amnon asked to be carried on his bed to the synagogue with his salted joints and to be placed beside the cantor. When the time came to recite Kedushah, Rabbi Amnon asked the cantor to wait so that he could sanctify God’s name aloud, and he recited the piyyut, u-Netane Tokef and justified the torture that had been decreed upon him. When he had completed this recitation, his soul departed this world.

Some of the versions of this story of Rabbi Amnon’s martyrdom for the sanctification of God’s name (Kiddush HaShem) relate that three days after his death, Rabbi Amnon appeared to Rabbi Kalonymus Ben Meshulam in a dream, taught him the u-Netane Tokef prayer and ordered him to teach it throughout the Diaspora.

The traditions of exemplary legendary figures who sacrificed themselves for Kiddush HaShem, refused to convert and were subjected to the terrible torture of parts of their body being amputated predate the story of Rabbi Amnon of Mainz. A typical example of this is in Megillat Achima‘atz (Italy, 1054). In this composition, the protagonist Tufillo was faced with a demand to convert to Christianity and died sanctifying God’s name. Tufillo was tortured; his hands and feet were cut off and he was thrown into prison and died on Yom Kippur. The name Amnon, which recalls the word emunah (faith/belief) may have been inspired by an Italian tradition of a man named Amnon from the city of Uriah, who died for Kiddush HaShem.

The most common version of the legend of Rabbi Amnon of Mainz first appeared in the book Or Zarua (Ashkenz, 13th century), by Rabbi Yitzchak ben Moshe of Vienna. The earliest edition of this work is in Rosentliana Ms. 3, which was copied in the first half of the thirteenth century. This is a work of extensive halakhic scope, and the legend appears toward the end of the section on the laws of Rosh Hashana.

At the beginning of the story, the author notes that he found the legend in a manuscript by Rabbi Ephraim of Bonn (one of the sages of Ashkenaz in the second half of the twelfth century). A stylistic comparison of the narrative

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text to the known style of R. Ephraim corroborates the authenticity of this note.

Until the nineteenth century, when the first edited literary version appeared (published by Leopold Stein in 1834), most of the versions followed the original, with little or no changes to the language and style. The attribution of this legend to Rabbi Ephraim of Bonn appears only in Or Zarua and is absent in almost all the other medieval versions. The stylistic connection of all the medieval versions to Or Zarua’s version is evident in the biblical style and in the juxtaposition of the story to u-Netane Tokef. This clear and concise text was canonized shortly after its initial publication, and this may also be due to its attribution to a manuscript by an authoritative figure such as R. Ephraim of Bonn.

All the medieval versions up until the fourteenth century present a story of intense religious conflict between the Jewish and Christian elite. This tension is embodied in the relationship between the wise and handsome rabbi, the bishop and the city elders. This relationship entails more than just hostile feelings, and there is actually familiarity and a measure of attraction between these elites. This attraction – which later versions interpreted as the envy of the bishop and ministers against the pedigreed, handsome, wealthy and charismatic Jew – led to attempts to convert him.

Two short versions from the beginning of the fourteenth century; London Ms., David Sofer 5 of 1301 and Parma Ms. 3006 (De Rossi 654) of 1304 offer a new and abbreviated narrative that does not preserve the style of Rabbi Ephraim of Bonn. The two identical versions are particularly short, and the protagonist is presented as an old man, rather than as Rabbi Amnon. Similarly, the bishop is replaced by the kaiser. The punishment imposed on the protagonist in these versions is the amputation of his limbs and the gouging of his eyes. The tension between the Jewish and Christian elites in an urban setting (the city of Mainz) is replaced by a broader and more general conflict between an ordinary Jew (perhaps even a weak one, considering of his old age) and a remote empiric authority.

The question regarding the root of the conflict between the high-ranking Jew and the bishop troubles the authors of all the versions, and occasionally slight changes can be found in its explanation. In this respect, it is interesting to note the change that appears in Oxford Bodl. Ms. 182 (Neubauer 2575)

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written in Italy in the fifteenth century. This version states that ‘the bishop and his ministers decided to force him to convert,’ but aside from the coercion there is an offer that he ‘leave his faith and become one of them in greatness and power.’

The exception to all the versions until the late Renaissance is a version printed in Siddur of Ashkenaz and Venice (1568). This version exhibits the adaptation of the content and style in the spirit of the late humanist Renaissance in Italy. This version was also included in Seder Selichot (Prague, 1587). Amnon’s social status is indicated by the proximity of his home to residences of the scholarly elite around him – below the philosopher’s apartment. In addition to this proximity to cultural status, the text emphasizes Rabbi Amnon’s closeness to high authoritative status via the words of the overlord, who says that he loves Amnon. The hero is not a tortured martyr, but rather a Renaissance figure, a thinking humanist, whose relationships include the local leadership.

The social relationship shaped by the narrator is therefore ambivalent; Amnon is wise and rich and ‘loved by his overlord,’and the ruler is not ‘oppressive’ or an ‘adversary,’ as in the medieval versions, but is rather ‘king,’ ‘lord’ or ‘ruler.’ This version is an epic narrative expansion of the medieval texts and a storytelling form that is as vivid and detailed as possible. In this version, Amnon is sentenced to torture that includes the gouging of his eyes and excision of his tongue, and therefore lacks the final section about his recitation of the piyyut. Instead there is an abstract statement that the recitation of piyyut was based on this incident.

The canonical status of Or Zarua version is also reflected in the archaic Yiddish versions of this story; the Paris Ms. dated 1557; and the version of the Mayse-bukh (Basel, 1602). These versions are faithful translations of the Or Zarua version, in spite of the linguistic transition from classical biblical Hebrew to the Yiddish vernacular.

The first and most important of the modern versions is that of Leopold Stein, Amnon: Eine jüdische Legende (Würzburg, 1834). Stein, a rabbi and liberal intellectual, was appointed rabbi of Frankfurt in 1848. His text is the first of this new version of the story in German, and the adaptation to the unique shift in the tradition of its composition in the first half of the nineteenth century. Stein gave the ancient legend of the saintly Rabbi

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Amnon of Mainz a new literary format by composing a new poem with twenty-five stanzas, each of which has between five and twenty-five lines. His style is classic and ornate, meeting the requirements of internal rhythm, iambic meter and the musical rhyme.

This work is tailored to the new situation of Western European Jewry and is informed by the profound format of many works in the spirit of the Hebrew and German Enlightenment following the enactment of Emperor Joseph II’s Patent of Toleration in the Hapsburg Empire in 1781. Stein ends the story with a tragic romantic epilogue of an encounter between two impulses of religious fanaticism and completely deletes the description of amputations. In addition, the German prince is depicted as secretly shedding a tear when Amnon was taken to prison, where he contracted a fatal disease.

The poetic version of Rabbi Amnon by Shimon Shmuel Frug was published in Russian in 1897 and translated into Hebrew the following year by Jacob Kaplan (Warsaw, 1898). Frug’s version is an integral part of his literary work as a Hibbat Zion poet and is very far from the original version that was canonized in Hebrew literature.

A version that is an important testimony to the vitality of the story in the East was published by Rabbi Elazar Iraqi HaCohen, an anthologist and owner of the Jewish publishing house in Calcutta, in Sefer ha-Ma‘asiyot (Calcutta, 1842). This anthology was reprinted by Rabbi Shlomo Bechor Huzin (Baghdad, 1852).

The first appearance of this story in modern Hebrew literature is the adapted version by Micha Josef Berdyczewski in his collection Ozar ha-Aggadah (Berlin, 1914). In his version he presents the conflict between the Jewish protagonist and the gentile antagonist in a philosophical debate that developed between the Jewish sage and the king ‘who knew many languages and was well-versed in books and sciences.’ It is this debate that leads to Rabbi Amnon’s decision to go to his home and reflect for three days. Berdyczewski then traces the same narrative process that appears in the versions he cites as his source. The use of the philosophical debate as the basis for the whole story attests to the special influence of the time he spent in Breslau and Berlin – when he integrated into the cultural climate of the Chochmat Yisrael of his time.

The versions in German, in Allerlei Geschichten (Frankfurt a. M., 1929)

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by Berta Pappenheim and in English, in Ma‘aseh Book (Philadelphia, 1934) by Moshe Gaster, are part of anthologies that make the archaic Yiddish composition accessible to contemporary readers, and the importance of these anthologies lies in the continuous dissemination of these narrative materials from the early sixteenth century.

The version by Elsa Schubert-Christaler (1891–1981) in German is a translated adaptation of the story in Jüdische Legenden (Heilbron, 1929). The Jewish writer who declared in her youth that she held Christian Evangelist views, expressed her special interest in Judeo-Christian relations, as reflected in the selected works in her book. She states that her versions are not a literal translation but rather a depiction of the story.

The version by the S.Y. Agnon in the collection Days of Awe (Berlin, 1938) is faithful to the version in Or Zaru’a. Among the various Yiddish versions, that of Yudel of Mark in Der Yidisher Poyps (New York, 1947) should be viewed as the embedding of the story into a broader narrative context – a description of the reality in medieval Jewish communities. This is a Yiddish translation of the Or Zarua version without significant changes.

In the second half of the twentieth century, we find additional layers of meaning, connecting the story to contemporary events, which resituate the story in the context of Kiddush HaShem. One example of this is the attempt to perceive the story of Rabbi Amnon as a model for the sanctification of God’s name in the book Kiddush HaShem, which addresses the destruction of the European Jewish communities in the Holocaust. Sometimes, however, this same story has the opposite message, that there is no value in dying for the sanctification of God’s name.

A Treasure under the Bridge

A poor man dreams that a treasure lies somewhere under a bridge. He goes to that place and digs for the treasure. He almost despairs of finding the treasure, but meets a man who tells him that he, too, dreamed of a treasure, but was not tempted follow false dreams and did not seek to search for it. Yet, he tells that in his dream he saw the poor man’s house and the exact place where the treasure was hidden. When the poor man heard this, he

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hurried back to his house and found the treasure exactly where the man had described it. The poor man benefited from the treasure for the well-being of his family, and also donated to the poor people of his community.

In the Hasidic version of this story, a poor man comes to Israel Ba‘al Shem Tov who tells him about a hidden treasure under a bridge. When the poor man reaches the bridge, he does not find any treasure. Yet there he met a poor tailor who looked just like him. The poor man returns to his house, finds a treasure there, while the tailor stays at the bridge and finds a treasure there.

After discovering the hidden treasures, each of the two feels that he has to divide his windfall with his friend. They both go toward each other and meet halfway, and do not know what to do with what his friend had earned. Finally, they decide upon marrying their children to each other and making the treasure a dowry for the couple.

This story is rooted in an earlier account which tells of a man who presents a question that concerns a cryptic dream (She’elat Halom) to a wise sage. The sage directs the dreamer to the place of treasure. This anecdote appears in four versions of the ancient Midrash and the Talmud; Talmud Yerushalmi, Ma‘aser Sheni, 4:6; Bereshit Rabba 24:15; Echa Rabba, Buber edition, chapter 1, pp. 27-28, AE; and a version in the Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot, 110b.

In most of these old versions, the sage before whom the dream question is posed is the fourth-generation Tanna Yosef ben Chalafta, except in Echa Rabba in which Rabbi Akiva is the dream interpreter. In the Babylonian version, Rabbi Yishmael interprets the dream.

The forty-one Hasidic versions of ‘The Treasure under the Bridge’ constitute the majority of the examples of this theme. This category includes Hasidic literature, modern neo-Hasidic collections, some of which were later incorporated into Modern Hebrew literature, as well as performance versions that are part of a modern popular culture.

The Hasidic versions contain the substructure pattern of the story as described in the Midrash and the Talmud, but include motifs and motifemes that were first introduced in the Arab and later European spheres. In this section there are three main traditions: the one that attributes the story to Ba‘al Shem Tov and its first formula appears in the book Devarim Arevim

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(Munkacz, 1902). The most prominent element in this version, which cannot be found in other Hasidic versions or in international versions of this story, is the narrative symmetry that constitutes it. Two heroes are ordered to go to the place of treasure, and their adventures are being told in the same manner and language equally.

According to the second tradition, that of Przysucha as printed in the Book Simchat Yisrael (Piotrków, 1910), the realistic materials are prominent more than any other version. This version posits the hero as an historical figure of a seventeenth-century, as one of the wealthiest of Krakow. The story about him appears in Eastern European Jewish surroundings even before the beginning of Hasidism, and the space described in it is historical in every respect. The bridge mentioned is the Karl’s Bridge in Prague at the foot of the fortress that was used by the rulers of the city. Apart from that, this version tells a story whose realistic background is based on a realistic object, the synagogue in Krakow that Rabbi Isaac built in 1644.

Parts of the story seem destined to present the history of this place and explain its name, and therefore the story seems to belong to a genre of etiological stories. However, the realistic background does not testify to the history of the story. The discovery of the treasure is not a historical fact, since R. Isaac’s father, Rabbi Ya’akov, was himself rich.

The third narrative tradition, of Bratslav Hasidism, originated parallel to the Przysucha version, and differs from it in many details, although a similar view of the sacred work and the attitude toward the Zaddik operated in these two sociological religious areas. It is possible that the Bratslav version originally evolved from Przysucha, changed in several details in Bratslav Hasidism and was attributed to R. Nachman.

The first version in the Bratslav branch is attributed to R. Nachman of Bratslav and was printed in the autobiographical work of the Bratslav publisher Shmuel Horowitz, the Yemay Shmuel (Schocken, Jerusalem Ms, 1933). In the story attributed to R. Nachman, the city of Vienna replaces the city of Kraków as a central, although distant, metropolis. This change is a reflection of the historical reality of the beginning of the nineteenth century, the time of R. Nachman of Bratslav.

One of the most prominent modern versions is the appearance of the story in the writings of S.Y. Agnon. Agnon cites the story in the well-known

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German collection Das Buch von den polnischen Juden (Berlin, 1919), which he edited along with Aharon Eliasberg. There it is brought as a typical example of the stories of Polish Jewry. His version of the story follows the Przysucha version.

In the versions of the theme ‘Treasure under a Bridge’ different messages operate according to the origin of the versions. In the first section of the Talmudic and Midrashic versions, there is a need to establish a position regarding the status of the dream regarding the conduct of real life. The versions in the Hasidic tradition emphasize the value of the Zaddik, the power of devotion to the righteous mission, and the transformation that the believer undergoes from the stage in which he is devoted to this mission. This message lies in ‘standing on the bridge’, that is to experiment with walking to a distant place, and then awakening to the truth in a symbolic place of transition from blindness to a state of knowledge, like crossing a bridge.

The Flute

A villager would pray during the high holidays in the synagogue of the Ba‘al Shem Tov. His little son did even know the alphabet and was unable to study Torah and pray. When the child reached the age of thirteen, the father took him to the synagogue on Yom Kippur, so that he would not unwittingly eat on the holy day. Without his father’s knowledge, the child hid a flute in his pocket, the one he used when he was grazing the flocks in the field. The boy sat for hours beside his father and could not pray, and asked him to let him play the flute. The father panicked and warned him not to do so. The child kept quiet until the afternoon prayer, and again asked his father to allow him to blow the flute. The father was very angry with him and physically prevented him from removing the flute from his pocket. Finally, during the closing Ne‘ila prayer the boy managed to extract the flute from of his pocket and began to play. The worshipers were shocked, and his father cursed him loudly. However, when the Ba‘al Shem Tov heard the flute, he declared that the boy had elevated the prayers of the entire congregation. Even though the boy was entirely ignorant, a yearning

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for the divine burned within him and his tune expressed the inner truth of his heart. It is this purity of intention that God desires most. Therefore, his pure music was pleasing to God and through it, the prayers of the entire congregation were raised and accepted in heaven.

The first version of the story ‘The Flute’ was published by Yaakov Meshulam Natan Margaliot, the head of the rabbinical court of Berdychiv. He received the stories of the Ba‘al Shem Tov from his father, who in turn heard them from his grandfather, who was a member of the Ba‘al Shem Tov’s circle. Margaliot collected these stories in the book Kevuzat Ya‘akov (Berdychiv, 1896).

This first version of ‘The Flute’ depicts typical realistic scenes in the life of the rural and urban communities from which Hasidism developed into a popular religious movement. The opening of this version places this reality on the polarization between the supreme holiness that exists in the public space of the Ba‘al Shem Tov’s synagogue and the low and despicable existence of the father and son.

The story is intended to obscure the line of distinction between ‘holy’ and ‘secular’; The shepherd boy associates with the lowly animals, but he is also the ‘Shepherd of Israel’. The story is about a conflict between the desire of the father and that of the son. Despite the incompatibility of their practical intentions, the plot brings them to a paradoxical convergence of their desires and their realization. This contrast is perceived not as an antinomy of values that are incompatible with each other, but as a condition for the development of the wondrous, perhaps even exemplary, act of the child.

The conflict in the story reflects the kabbalistic-Hasidic conception of the tension between hesed (Grace) and din (Judgment). On the side of hesed stand the Ba‘al Shem Tov and the boy, who embody the power to ‘elevate’ prayer so that it is accepted in heaven. Against them stand the father and the other worshipers, who embody the attribute of din and inhibit the prayers and their acceptance. This tension comes to a head when the boy is dropped from his father’s grip and he breaks out in song. The story is thus centered on the intensity and anticipation that builds over the course of the Yom Kippur prayers. This moment is deliberately set at the end of the day’s ritual.

The first modern version of this Hasidic story is that of Sholem Asch, the ‘The Bumpkin Zaddik,’ written in Hebrew and published in the Zionist

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newspaper Ha-Zefira (Issue 193, Warsaw, Elul 1904). In style and content, the story expresses Asch’s modern-romantic tendency to valorize innocent youth and the unspoiled natural world, over the world of culture and mature knowledge.

Asch chose to completely omit the final scene with its uplifting Hasidic message. He cuts off the story precisely at the point of the rift between the hero and his community. The story is about the loss of an unbroken world uniting the innocent worshiper, the child of nature, and his halakhic community. Asch ends the story with the sentence: ‘But the Zaddik was no longer in the synagogue ...’ expressing the impossibility of restoring the community of believers to its former glory.

After the publication of the Hebrew version of the story by Asch, a Yiddish version by Micha Josef Berdyczewski appeared. This version should be seen within the framework of Berdyczewski’s larger project of collecting Hasidic stories which resulted in his anthology, Sefer Chasidim (Warsaw, 1900). Berdyczewski extended the tension between father and son to the celestial plane of the struggle between the defending and the accusing angels of the heavenly court. At the end of the story, the Ba‘al Shem Tov explains to the congregation that the boy’s music which had so enraged them on earth had had a decisive role in the battle on high, leading to a triumph of the defending angels over the accusers.

Ansky (Shloyme Zanvl Rappoport) produced a version of the story entitled ‘Prayer,’ which is of great literary and historiographical significance. Ansky came from a Hasidic family and had firsthand knowledge of the Hasidic narrative material. Ansky also brought his socialist political leanings to his work as well as the vast knowledge he gained through his extensive fieldwork as the head of Baron David Günzburg’s Jewish ethnographic project.

The story gained further prominence through its inclusion in the book Yamim Noraim (Days of Awe) by S.Y. Agnon (Jerusalem, 1938). Agnon placed the story in the context of the laws of shofar on Rosh Hashana, thereby drawing comparison between the boy’s playing of the flute and the blowing the shofar. The story was also included in the collection of Martin Buber first published in German, Das verborgene Licht (Frankfurt a. M., 1924) and later in an expanded edition in Hebrew, Or ha-Ganuz (Jerusalem, 1946). Buber saw this story as central to understanding the key teachings of Hasidism.

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By the middle of the twentieth century, the story was retold and rewritten in many versions. The story expresses a range of Hasidic theological ideas, especially the idea of shifting from normative prayer to prayer with a linguistic-sound element. The ideological foundation that is common to all the versions of the story reflects the Hasidic concept of Kevodo Male Olam (‘His glory is fills the entire world’). The secular is the hallmark of the sacred, and the more profane and disagreeable it appears, the more it serves as a platform for greater holiness. In the Habad versions, the image of the profane became even more disgusting as an expression of the dominance of this idea in the Habad doctrine.

Many aspects of this narrative theme clearly reflect Hasidic ideas. In particular, the story reflects the Hasidic concept of the importance of intention in prayer in general, and the value of ‘innocent prayer.’ Many versions are neo-Hasidic adaptations. These neo-Hasidic artists placed the idea of emotional spontaneity at the center of their versions. This is an ideal of ‘religious simplicity’, which is freed from the doctrine and the dogmatism of halakhah. These elements are distinct characteristics of the theme, which, in most of its versions, imply an antinomian stance which seeks out actions of pure holiness.