Jeffrey L. Rubenstein

Purim, Liminality, And Communitas

“Fever is no sickness and Purim is no holiday.” So runs a surprisingly self-reflective proverb concerning the festival of Purim, the strangest Jewish holiday. Ostensibly the celebration of the triumph of the Jews over the wicked Haman described in the Book of Esther, at a popular level something much larger and far more complex is going on. Folk customs throughout history have always transcended the celebration of the triumph of Mordecai and Esther. Elaborate pageants, grotesque masks, drunken revelry, noisemaking, buffoonery, burning of effigies, costume parades, feasts with special delicacies, and every manner of carousing and merrymaking have characterized Purim since rabbinic times. A diverse body of Purim literature has accumulated, including drinking songs, short stories, parodies, and intricate plays.

From Mythic Motifs to Sustained Myth: The Revision of Rabbinic Traditions in Medieval Midrashim

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in the mythic dimension of rabbinic thought. Much of this work emerged from debates between scholars of Jewish mysticism over the origins of kabbalistic myth. Should these origins be sought in external traditions that influenced medieval Judaism or within the rabbinic tradition? As is well known, Gershom Scholem claimed that the rabbis rejected myth in order to forge a Judaism based on rationality and law. Moshe Idel, on the other hand, argues that mythic conceptions and specifically the mythicization of Torah appear in rabbinic literature. While the medieval kabbalists elaborated and developed these ideas, they inherited a mythic worldview from the rabbis. Scholars are now increasingly likely to characterize many classical rabbinic sources as mythic. Medieval myth need not have been due to external influence, but should be seen as an internal development within Judaism. Despite the appearance of mythic thought in rabbinic literature, however, a tremendous gulf remains between rabbinic and kabbalistic myth. The full-blown theogonic and cosmogonic myths of the kabbalists, the complex divine structure of the Sefirot , and the detailed expressions of the theurgic effect of ritual (that is, the effect that specific rituals have upon God or the Sefirot ) represent a mode of mythic thinking far more comprehensive than that of the rabbis. In rabbinic literature one finds mythic motifs—succinct, independent, and self–contained expressions—not fully developed myths. How exactly did rabbinic myth develop into medieval mystical myth?

King Herod in Ardashir's Court: The Rabbinic Story of Herod (B. Bava Batra 3b–4a) in Light of Persian Sources

The Bavlis story of Herods rise to power, murder of the Hasmonean family and of the rabbis, encounter with Bava b. Buta, and construction of the temple, found at Bava Batra 3b-4a, has long puzzled scholars. Many aspects of this story diverge from Josephuss account, our main source for historical knowledge of Herods life and deeds. This paper argues that the storyteller has been influenced by Persian sources from the Sasanian period. Important elements of the Bavli story were modeled on the account of the rise of Ardashir, founder of the Sasanian dynasty, as recounted in a Sasanian text known as the Karnamag i Ardashir i Pabagan, “The Book of the Deeds of Ardashir son of Pabag.” The rabbis understood the transition from the Hasmonean to Herodian dynasties through the prism of the transition from the Parthian to Sasanian dynasties. They identified Herod with Ardashir, and constructed a story of Herods usurpation and rise to power on the basis of Ardashirs usurpation and rise to power as recounted in Sasanian sources.

Alon Goshen-Gottstein. The Sinner and the Amnesiac: The Rabbinic Invention of Elisha Ben Abuya and Eleazar Ben Arach . Contraversions: Jews and Other Differences. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000. xii, 416 pp.

In The Sinner and the Amnesiac, Alan Goshen-Gottstein returns to the question of rabbinic biography with a comprehensive study of all traditions about Elisha ben Abuya, also known as Aher, “the Other.” (One chapter is devoted to the few traditions of R. Eleazar b. Arakh, a sage who reportedly forgot all his knowledge of Torah.) Goshen-Gottstein also provides a thorough summary of the secondary literature on Elisha, whom scholars variously have portrayed as a mystic, gnostic, apostate, philosophical atheist, and heretic. He appends a complete Hebrew version of the main Bavli story of Elisha including all manuscript variants.

Michael Berger. Rabbinic Authority. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. xii, 226 pp.

Understanding the authority of “the rabbis,” the sages of the Mishnah and Talmud who lived during the first five centuries of the common era, has always been a tricky business. The sages grounded their authority on the concept of the dual Torah—the belief that God revealed to Moses, in addition to the written Torah, an oral Torah, which was passed down in an unbroken chain from generation to generation. However, the emergence of Jewish historical consciousness during the Enlightenment rendered this view difficult to maintain. The rise of critical biblical studies revealed a gap between the religion of the Bible and Rabbinic Judaism. On what basis, then, are the pronouncements of the talmudic sages authoritative for subsequent generations of Jews?