Connecting the Land and the Book: the Omer and Ethics of the Fathers

A table for counting the Omer

In ancient Israel the first sheaf of the barley harvest was cut on the second day of the Passover festival and a measure of the grain, an “omer”, was taken to the Temple as an offering.   From this date Jews count the seven weeks that lead up to the festival of Shavuot -“the Feast of Weeks”.

“You shall count for yourselves, from the day after the Sabbath, from the day when you bring the Omer as a wave offering, seven complete weeks.  To the day after the seventh week you shall count fifty days ...” Leviticus 23, 15

During these early summer weeks between Passover and Shavuot it is the custom to study the six chapters of Pirke Avot, the Ethics of the Fathers, one chapter each Shabbat.  Ashkenazim continue to study these chapters of the Mishna until the Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah.

Pirke Avot opens by tracing the line of transmission of the Oral Law from Moses via the Prophets, who received their inspiration directly from G-d, to the Sages, the Rabbis and teachers who discussed and expounded the Law on the basis of texts and the oral tradition which they received from their predecessors.

“Moses received the Torah at Sinai and handed it on to Joshua; Joshua to the elders; the elders to the prophets; and the prophets handed it on to the men of the Great Assembly. ...” Pirkei Avot 1,1

Shimon HaTzadik was the last of the men of the Great Assembly.  From him the tradition was passed on to a man called Antigonos from Socho.

“Antigonos of Socoh received from Shimon HaTzadik.  He used to say: Do not be like servants who serve their master on condition of receiving a reward, but be like servants who serve their master not on condition of receiving a reward; and let the fear of Heaven be upon you.” Pirkei Avot 1,3

Socoh


Across the Elah Vally towards Sochoh. Photo: Ram Eisenberg

Tel Socoh lies in the Shefela, the low hill country of Israel, in the Elah Valley near Azekah.  In

ancient times this was the border area between Israelite and Philistine held territory.  Socoh is mentioned four times in the Bible.  It was part of the inheritance of the tribe of Judah, fortified by King Solomon’s son Reheboam and later captured by the Philistines.  Most famously it appears in the dramatic story of David and Goliath. 

“The Philistines assembled their forces for battle; they massed at Socoh of Judah, and encamped at Ephes-dammim, between Socoh and Azekah.  Saul and the men of Israel massed and encamped in the valley of Elah.” 1 Samuel 17,1

The rest of the story is well known.  The Philistines send out a champion, the huge Goliath of Gath, to challenge the Israelites to single combat.  No-one dares to take up the challenge until the young David, who has been sent from Bethlehem to bring supplies for his brothers in Saul’s army, accepts.  Goliath is scornful but David, armed only with his faith in G-d and his sling and a bag of stones, kills him with a single sling-shot.

A lemelech seal

More than 300 years later, in 701 BCE, the Assyrians under the leadership of Sennacherib attacked the cities of Judah and besieged Jerusalem.  Amongst the archaeological finds from this time are more than 2,000 seal impressions on the handles of large storage jars, known as Lemelech stamps because of the Hebrew letters למלך (LMLK) found on them.  LMLK means “for, or belonging to the king”.  One theory is that these jars contained emergency military rations collected in anticipation of the Assyrian siege.  As well as the letters LMLK each of the seal impressions included the name of one of four towns; Hebron, Ziph, MMST and Socoh.   We don’t know all the details but we do know that Antigonos’ home town of Socoh must have been a place of some significance.  Last year, for the first time, a team from Tel Aviv University carried out excavations at Socho hoping to learn more about the part Socho played in the administration and economy of Judah.  



Spring on Givat Haturmusim

Nowadays Tel Socoh is most popularly known as Givat Haturmusim, Lupin Hill.  It is a glorious place to walk and to picnic especially in the early spring when there is a brilliant display of wild flowers. 

From Antigonos the tradition was passed through five pairs of rabbinic teachers who lived in successive generations during the time of the Second Temple.   Each of these rabbis offers us ethical advice.  The second of these pairs of sages were Yehoshua ben Perahya and Nittai the Arbelite.

“Yehoshua ben Perahya and Nittai the Arbelite received from them. ... Nittai the Arbelite used to say: Keep far from a bad neighbour, do not associate with a bad person, and do not despair of Divine retribution.” Pirkei Avot 1, 6-7 

The Arbel 

Ruins of the Arbel synagogue. Photo: Bukvoed

The rocky cliff of Mount Arbel rises for 380 metres and looks down from the west over the Sea of Galilee.  Just south of the cliff lie the remains of the Talmudic village where Nittai lived and of its synagogue.  Modern Moshav Arbel is nearby. 

In the year 38 BCE Mount Arbel was the site of a spectacular battle between Herod the Great and Jewish rebels.  Herod had returned from Rome where he had been proclaimed King of the Jews.  Now, to take control of his kingdom, he had to defeat the Hasmonean Matathias Antigonos and his Parthian and Jewish supporters.  The last rebels still in the Galilee had barricaded themselves in caves in the almost vertical face of Mount Arbel.   The approach to these caves was so steep and dangerous that at first Herod was confounded.  He embarked on a creative and daring plan. 

“He lowered the strongest of his soldiers in cradles down the side of the cliff until they reached the mouths of the caves; they then slaughtered the bandits with their families and threw firebrands at those who proved awkward.” Josephus, The Jewish War 1, 315



Arbel Cliff. Photo: Lior Golgher

Herod was not known for his mercy but Josephus records that he tried to save some of the rebels offering them the chance to surrender.  They fought to the death rather give themselves into his hands.  One old man expressing contempt for Herod killed his own wife and seven children before throwing himself over the precipice.

Today the Arbel National Park and Nature Reserve offers wonderful landscapes, rare and beautiful
flora and fauna, spectacular views and a glimpse into the history of the Land.

In Memory of the Jews of Greece for Yom Hashoah

“I will give them, in My House and within My walls, a monument and a name (Yad Vashem) better than sons or daughters.  I will give them an everlasting name which shall not perish.” Isaiah 56, 5.

Hall of Remembrance,Yad Vashem.
Photo: Berthold Werner 

As night falls this Wednesday in Israel Yom Hashoah - Holocaust Memorial Day will begin.   A state ceremony will take place that evening in Warsaw Ghetto Square at Yad Vashem.  The President and the Prime Minister will speak.  The Chief Rabbis will recite prayers.  Six torches will be lit, each one by a survivor in memory of the six million Jews, almost two thirds of European Jewry, who were murdered in the Holocaust. 

Flags will fly at half-mast that day.  Places of entertainment will close for 24 hours.  The main television channels will broadcast only programmes related to the Holocaust.  The radio stations will carry sombre music.  At 10.00 o’clock on Thursday morning sirens will sound calling the whole country to come to a standstill and to observe two minutes silence in memory of those who died.

Batis Family Plaque
Memorial Cave, Yad Vashem

Millions of Ashkenazi Jews from northern and eastern Europe were murdered during the Holocaust but its terrible impact also reached Italian Jewry and the Sephardi communities of Greece, the Balkans and even North Africa.  One of the survivors who will be lighting a torch at this year’s state ceremony is Artemis Miron.  She was born in Ioannina in Greece.  Her father, Iosif (Pepo) Batis, was arrested, shot and killed in 1943.  Her mother and brother were murdered in Auschwitz in 1944.  Artemis herself survived forced labour in Auschwitz and death marches to Ravensbruck and to Malchow. 

The Jewish community in Greece is the oldest in mainland Europe dating back more than 2,000 years.  The first written record of Jews there is from about 300 BCE.  Synagogues have been discovered from the second century BCE.  In Jerusalem two synagogues have been established by Jews from Greece; one in the Ohel Moshe neighbourhood in Nahlaot and one in the Sephardi Orphanage near to the neighbourhood of Even Israel. 

Beit Knesset Beit Avraham VeOhel Sarah:

Plaque on the wall of
Beit avraham VeOhel Sarah

Ioannina is in North West Greece where Albania, Yugoslavia and the Ionian Sea meet.  There was already a Jewish community there in the days of Alexander the Great and it was in its day the largest Jewish community in Greece.  The community spoke Judeo-Greek (Yevanic) and used the Romaniot rite of prayer, an ancient rite that dated back to Byzantine times. 

Entrance to Beit Avraham VeOhel Sarah

Avraham and Sarah HaCohen came to Jerusalem from Ioannina in 1925.  They had no children.  Avraham died later that year and his widow decided to consecrate their house as a synagogue for Jews from Ioannina whilst she was still alive.  She died 14 years later in 1939 but until then she lived in a modest room at the side of the synagogue.  Nowadays Sephardi Jews pray in this synagogue.  There is no-one to speak Yevanic and the Romaniot rite is almost never heard here. Many religious items from the original community are preserved in the synagogue.

Beit Haknesset Kahal Tzion:

Salonica, The Fortress

Salonica, Thessaloniki, is Greece’s second largest city.  In 1492 thousands of Sephardi Jews settled in Ottoman Greece, many of them in Salonica, following their expulsion from Spain and Portugal.  They quickly became the dominant group and their Judeo-Spanish language (Ladino) became the predominant language of Greek Jewry.  The Sephardim developed Salonica into a major commercial centre.  In the last quarter of the 19^th century 56% of the city’s population was Jewish.  They were so influential that the city virtually shut down each Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath.  Salonica became known as the Jerusalem of the Balkans or as “la madre de Israel” – the mother (city) of Israel.  A street near my home in south Jerusalem is called Kedoshei Saloniki – the holy ones of Salonica.  It is dedicated to the memory of the 50,000 Salonica Jews who were murdered in the holocaust. 

The Sephardi Orphanage, Jerusalem

The Sephardi Orphanage in Jerusalem was established by the Jaffa Road near Even Israel in 1908 by two Bukharian families.  There have been synagogues in the orphanage building ever since its foundation.   In the early days of the 20^th century Jews from Salonica came to settle in Even Israel.  They established a community centre and a synagogue.  At first the synagogue was in the home of Ezra Benveniste.  In the 1920s the community of “Olei Salonica” (immigrants from Salonica) moved their synagogue to the ground floor of the orphanage where it flourished for thirty years until it joined with another synagogue founded there by a Sephardi religious Zionist association called Al Hamishmar (Standing Guard).  Services are still held there every day.

Postscript:

The destruction of Greek Jewry began in 1943.  By the end of the Second World War 60,000 Greek Jews, 86% of the pre-war population had been killed.  Today only about 5,000 Jews live in Greece most of them in Athens and Salonica.  There are just 35 Romaniot Jews alive in Ioannina.

From Cochin in Southern India to Nevatim in Southern Israel

One of the best things about Israel is the diversity that exists in such small country.  People from five continents have come to settle here and the country is home to communities from many different cultures and religions.  I love to show people aspects of Israel that they haven’t seen before.

There are many cultural gems here.  One of these is Moshav Nevatim  Just to the east of Beer Sheva, Nevatim was originally founded as a kibbutz, together with ten others, one Saturday night in October 1946.  It was part of a determined attempt to establish a Jewish presence in the Negev in anticipation of the partition of Palestine.  During the War of Independence in 1948 the kibbutz was besieged by the Egyptian army.  It was kept supplied with food and other essentials by air-drops.  Nevatim survived the war but was abandoned soon afterwards.

In 1954 Nevatim was re-established as a moshav by Jews from Cochin on the Malabar Coast in Southern India.  Cochin was the oldest of the Jewish communities in India.  The tradition is that Jewish traders called here during the time of King Solomon.  Exiles from the Kingdom of Judah settled here soon after the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE and were joined by refugees fleeing after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE.  They settled first in the ancient port of Cranganore near to Cochin.  Here they received protection from the Hindu rulers and were granted special privileges that were recorded on copper plates (known as the “Sasanam”) that were given to the community.  The Hindu king gave the Jews permission to live freely, build synagogues, and own property "without conditions attached" for "as long as the world and moon exist". The area where they lived in came to be known as ‘Jew Town’.

The Sasanam

In the 14^th century the port of Cranganore silted up and trade moved to the smaller port of Cochin.  In the 16^th century the established community was joined by Sephardic Jews fleeing from the Iberian Peninsula.  It’s perhaps not surprising that in India, the home of the caste system, the two communities did not mix.  The older established Malabar community, who became known as the Black Jews, were seen as inferior by the newcomers, the Pardesi or White Jews.  They maintained separate synagogues.  The Pardesi Jews did not even allow the Malabar Jews into their synagogue.  Needless to say they did not intermarry.  By the early 20^th century most of these divisions had disappeared thanks largely to the efforts of Abraham Barak Salem.

An Indian Jewish Family in Cochin

There were eight synagogues in Cochin.  The Black Jews had seven and the White Jews one, the Pardesi synagogue.  Only the Pardesi synagogue is still open.  The interior of the 16^th century Kadavumbagam synagogue was brought to Jerusalem in 1991 and reconstructed in the Israel Museum where you can see it today.

Most of the Jews have left Cochin and have settled in moshavim and in cities in Israel.  At Nevatim they have built a heritage centre for Cochin Jewry with a museum, a film presentation of their history and a beautiful synagogue.  Arrange your visit in advance and you can enjoy a delicious meal of kosher Cochini food.