Menashe’s conquest of the Gilad and acceptable Haredi discourse

The Gilad

The book of Bamidbar (Numbers) leaves us with two open questions regarding the tribe of Menashe.

1. In the first census (2:35) the number 32200 is given, while the second census, 40 years later (26:35), gives the number 52700.  This large increase occurred in spite of the fact that the number of Israelites as a whole slightly decreased in the aforementioned period (603,550 to 601,730).

2. The tribes of Reuben and Gad alone approached Moses with the request to remain of the East Bank of the Jordan.  After their request was granted conditionally and they began to build their cities,  (Chapter 32) Menashe then enters the picture, with the story of how Menashe’s own grandchildren conquered the Gilad.  When did this conquest take place, and why did the half of the tribe that remained on the East Bank go unmentioned in the beginning of the narrative?

Some of the earlier commentators (Peirush Kadmon al Divrei Hayamin; Rabbi Yehudah Hachasid al Hatorah) claim that Joseph’s descendants were permitted by the Egyptians to return to their holdings in the East.  Religious Zionist commentators (R’ Yehudah Kil in the Daat Mikrah series, R’ Yoel bin Nun and R’  Yaakov Medan) took this idea as the key to our story.  They claim that half of Menashe left Egypt quite early, and were disconnected from the rest of the Israelites until the battles in the 40th year of desert sojourn.

The idea that the Egyptians sent their Josephene allies (this may have occured before the enslavement of the Israelites) over to the Gilad makes sense, as this would provide a buffer between the “King’s  Road” and Egypt-controlled Canaan.

I spoke to Rav Medan after he published this in Makor Rishon two years ago, and he expected a major backlash from circles (within the Religious Zionist community) that would find such an approach unacceptable. Not only did this not really occur, but the Haredi Mishpacha (Hebrew, 14 Nissan 5772) published an article along the same lines (giving full credit in the footnotes to the above mentioned sources).

The idea that a mainstream Haredi publication is willing to write that not all Israelites left Egypt, nor were they present at Mount Sinai, is not something that should go unnoticed, and raises questions of how Tanach will be studied and understood in Haredi circles in the future.

I hope to post sources as soon as I get my hands on them.

Parade postponed

Amazing story of how a parade in 1788 New York in support of ratifying the new Constitution was postponed due to Shiva Asar B’Tamuz.  Besides the fact that the constitutionalists showed such great respect and sympathy for the small Jewish community, what surprised me was how a community that didn’t have rabbis or any institutions of higher learning was still so in sync with Jewish observance and the calendar that a minor fast day would be an issue in the first place.

Samaritan Temple Site on Mt Gerizim now National Park

(Sorry no English yet from the Parks authority on this.) Hopefully I’ll blog  on the Samaritans soon. For now I would just like to point out that this is the first National Park declared beyond the Green Line since 1994.

Seventeenth of Tammuz in Post Six Day War Religious Zionism

The Talmud Bavli  (RH 18) considers the 3 minor fasts that relate to the events around the destruction of the Temples  to be optional, with the exception being a  period of severe persecution.

Tosfot rules that these fast days are now obligatory, due to fact that the Jewish people as a whole had accepted them upon themselves, formalizing a reality that Halachic communities were already observing. These fasts have been accepted in all Halachic communities until the present.

After the Six Day War, Hatnuah LiYahadut Shel Torah  (maybe Elli Fischer or one of my translator friends can take a shot at translating that one)  felt that times had changed and the Fast of the Seventeenth of Tammuz was no longer binding.  The movement was founded in 1966 by Religious Zionist intellectuals who felt that the Halacha had to be brought in sync with the reality of the existence of  a Jewish State.  Hence the Seventeenth of Tammuz, coming less than seven weeks after the Six Day War, presented them with a unique opportunity.

As the fast was theoretically optional, they felt that as (they then believed) the Divine Presence was being restored in Jerusalem, the Halacha no longer mandated a fast. (These ideas were written up in Mehalchim, the group’s short- lived journal,  in 1969)

The group organized a minyan annually on the Seventeenth of Tammuz, twice in private homes (1967, 69) and once at the Kotel (1968) for a regular weekday non-fast davening.   In 1968, a Thursday, the group publicly read the  Torah reading from the weekly parsha.  In 1969 there was some discussion about whether Tachanun should be omitted, which would be going a step further indicating that the day is now of a semi-festive nature.  At the end they agreed to follow the position of their host, R Prof. Aurebach, and recited Tachanun.

After 1969 this whole business seemed to have petered out.  Even with all of the excitement after the Six Day War,  only one small group was willing to allow for any such change, and even they only existed for a short time.  Neither Religious Zionist nor any Chabad faction is willing to deviate from the Shulchan Aruch on these matters. The irony is that the only “group” that do not fast as a matter of course are the Briskers, the anti-Zionist branch of the Soloveitchik family.

The Secret of Susya

Susya, in the Southern Hebron Hills region, was home to what may have been quite an enigmatic Jewish community for hundreds of years. Not mentioned in Rabbinic texts, it was settled in the Byzantine era.

Its synagogue has one of the best kept mosaics from Jewish Eretz Israel at the time:

It is a transverse synagogue, meaning its entrance is on the east side while the synagogue faces north.  Such is the case for other synagogues in the region as well. The only known transverse synagogue where the entrance faces east but the direction faces south was found in Hammat Gader.  The source for an eastern entrance regardless of the direction of prayer is a Tosefta in Mesechet Megillah (3:14), due to the fact that the entrance to the Heichal of the Temple was in the east.

What makes Susya most unique is the large amount of mikvaot discovered there.

  One of Susya’s many Mikvaot

28 have been discovered to date, and the site has only been partially excavated.

Why was there such a need for so many mikvaot?  During the Second Temple period, as well the period between the Great Revolt and that of Bar Kochva, ritual purity was a focal point of Jewish observance.  These required all who came into contact with the dead to be purified by the ashes of the para aduma .  It is likely that the many of the ashes survived the Great Revolt but not that of Bar Kochva. Hence most Jews were unable to be ritually pure anyway, and as a result the need for mikvaot  in the country as a whole was drastically reduced.

The only other sites with large amounts of post-Bar Kochva mikvaot discovered are Tziporri and Bet Shearim. Although it can’t be determined at what point these mikvaot, that were continuously settled from the second century until the middle of the fourth, fell into disuse, Ulah’s comment (Chagiagah 25a) that “there are those who purify themselves in the Galil” indicates that some individuals in the north still had access to the ashes of the para adumah at the end of the 3^rd century. The fact that the Talmud Yerushalmi doesn’t have any Gemara for Seder Taharot (besides several  chapters of Niddah)  indicates that these laws were no longer relevant as a whole in the Amoraic period.

Susya was only settled – and its mikvaot built – in the fourth century, long after we have no record of ritual purity being practiced anywhere.  Moreover, it isn’t clear when these mikvaot fell into disuse.  In his dissertation Dr Yonatan Adler entertains the possibility that ritual purity was kept in its entirety in this remote hamlet until the Arab period in the seventh century!

Another possibility is that this town, whose mosaic indicates a large amount of Kohanim, continued to immerse before eating even though they were ritually impure due to the lack of  Para  purification.  Dr. Doron Sar Avi claims that the reason why the transverse synagogues were popular in the South Hebron hills region is because the dearth of Sages in the area resulted in a more traditional society which lacked the dynamic Halacha which evolved in the North and in “Babylonia”.   This may also be the reason why mikvaot were in use in Susya for immersions that may have been Halachicly irrelevant.