פסח2

EFRAT ZARREN_Z

86

OIiAR

During the twelfth century, a. tall. hill not far from Jerusalern to be considered the bunal sIte of Samuel the pro h

came . . P et Already by the thirteenth cent.ury, a pIlgnmage was observed by Jews from as far away a~ Syna, Egypt, and Babylonia on the 28th of Iyar, which was said to have been the day that Samuel died. A letter written in 1489 recounts that the number of iI­grims was large and that they '?it large torches or bonfir~s." Another letter from 1537 mentIOns the custom of process_ ing with a Torah scroll from Jerusalem to the site of Samuel's tomb, during which participants would sing and recite prayers. According to a third account from the mid-sixteenth cen­tury, young boys received their first haircuts there, and an amount of money equal in weight to the hair was given to­wards the upkeep of the site. These contributions supported

the poor and most of the public institutions in Israel, includ­ing the academies where the rabbis in charge of religious regu­lations studied.

All this changed sometime between 1565 and 1570 When Muslim authorities forbade Jews to enter the tomb a;ea. In one stro~e, Jews lost a popular yearly pilgrimage from the nearby Dlaspora, as well as the main source of income for the po~r of Jerusalem, the public institutions of the Land, and es­

pecIally, the academies of learning on which the rabbis relied. The grave of Shimo B Yi h .

. . n ar oc al was therefore selected as an

alternative pIlgrimag ·t I f~

. . . e SI e. t 0 lered the advantage of being

sItuated In Gahlee a d fl.

t· n 0 a ready bemg the site for celebra-

Ions on Lag Ba'o h 8

th .. mer, tel th of Iyar, just ten days prior to

e annual VISIts to th t b

originally celebrated . e om of Samuel. All of the customs

thus trans~ d In Ramah at the tomb of Samuel were

lerre to the g. . . .

Meron.51 raveSIte of ShImon Bar Yochal III

Theories concerning the 0 .. ,~

among Scholars ngm oJ Lag Ba'orner

Few scholars accept th Hayarchi in the n e explanation given by Avraham

arne of Ze h h .

rac ya Haievi that the death of

OASSOVER TO SHAVUOT

FRoM .en 87

bbi Akiba's students stopped at Lag Ba'omer. How then did

Ra . d . h h

day come to be assocIate WIt sc olars?

the . L

Gaster, as we have seen, perceIves ag Ba'omer as akin to a "Jewish May Day."52 Gustav Dalman speculates that Lag B 'orner originally may have been the celebration of the ac­

a h.

al beginning of the summer, w Ich was marked by the early

tu . I·

. ·ng of the constellatIOn P ela des between the thirteenth and

flSI 53

the twenty-fifth of May. Some scholars posit even more fan­

54

ciful interpretations.A particularly intriguing theory comes from Joseph Derenbourg, who compares Lag Ba'omer to "mi­careme," a day observed midway through Lent when mourn­ing practices are relaxed.55 His theory is supported by the observation that in certain communities (as we saw), the mourning period was counted not from the second day of Passover counting forward, but from Shavuot backward, with the mourning practices commencing at Rosh Hodesh Iyar; under this system, it happens that Lag Ba'omer falls ex­actly midway within the mourning period. Thus, perhaps Lag Ba'omer is indeed a "mid-Lenten" relaxation of mourning within the S'firah season as counted from Rosh Hodesh Iyar until Shavuot.

THE S'FIRAT HA'OMER RITUAL TODAY

After the destruction of the Second Temple, it was impos­sible to perform the commandment of reaping and bringing the orner as an offering. But unlike other commandments de­pendent upon the land and the sacrificial system, rituals con­nected with the omer were not on that account discontinued. The actual offering was transformed into a synagogue ritual: every evening as part of the statutory worship, the days are cOunted aloud, along with a benediction affirming the inten­tion of performing the commandment of counting the orner.

In the Talmud, Amemar views the counting ritual as a means of remembering the destruction of the Temple,56 but most com­mentators take a more positive approach by attempting to

EFRAT ZARREN-ZOliAR

88

unting as a means of linking Passover t

understand t he co M " 0

h· Guide of the Perplexed, aImomdes perceives

Shavuot. In IS . f h

. n expression of yearmng or t e revelation ofthe countlflg as a Torah on Shavuot:

The Feast of Shavuot is the anniver~ary of the Reve~ation on · . In order to increase the Importance of thIs day We

Mount Smal. . " ' count the days that pass since the precedmg festIval, Just as one who expects his most intimate friend on a certain day counts the days and even the hours. This is the reason why w~ ~ount the Onter from the day of the Exodus until the day of the GIVIng of the Law. Indeed, the latter was the aim and object of the Exodus from

Egypt.57

Similarly, in Sefer Hachinukh (anonymous, prior to 1313) we find the idea that "we were commanded to count in order to imprint in our souls the great yearning towards the hon­ored and longed-for day, just as a slave yearns for a bit of shade." 58

As one might expect, Kabbalists saw the S'firah as a time of purification towards mystical union with God on Shavuot. Each day of counting was a further ascension from the impu­rities of Egypt to the spiritual heights of Mount Sinai. Each day brought further transformation of self from impurity to purity, from evil to good, from Pharoah to God.59

Most North American Reform congregations have aban­doned the practice of counting the orner, though some are reclaiming it, at least in part. But modern Conservative Juda­ism still includes it officially, as does Orthodoxy, and commen­tators today continue to find new meaning in it. Following Ame~ar's understanding of the counting as an expression of ~earmng for the restoration of Zion, the Conservative author­Ity Isa~c Klein proposes, "Today we translate [counting the orner] .mto a means of strengthening our resolve to reclaim ~e SOlI of the Holy Land and to work for the rebuilding of

.;o~ as a homeland for the exiled and as a center of spirituallhe lor Our people "60 Ad .

Kl' dd . optmg the Maimonidean perspective, f emba s that counting indicates "we want not only freedom rom ondage but als f d

o ree om for a purpose, i.e., to receive

0ASSoVER TO SHAVUOT

FRoM ~,

ral law at Mount Sinai and to practice it.,,61 Underscor­

the rnO'.

. the difference between the phYSical expenence of freedom iDg h t h . I .

Exodus versus t e me ap YSlca expenence of freedom

at t he . .

at Sinai, Orthodox RabbI Irvmg Greenberg states, "Counting

days becomes the bridge from the social liberation that oc­

the h' .

ed on Passover to t e constitutIOn of freedom accepted

curr and ratified at Sinai. Through the act of counting the orner, traditional Jews affirm that th~ purp~se of freedom (Passover) is to live the holy life and ethical regImen of the Torah.,,62 Re­form rabbis Elyse Frishman and Sandy Levine [Kinneret Shiryon] suggest that the period of the orner finds its parallel in the human stages of development from childhood through adolescence to adulthood. On Passover, we recall our slavery and childhood as a people; during the orner period, our wan­dering and adolescence lead us to Shavuot, when we achieve full-fledged adulthood through the receipt of freedom with re­sponsibility.63 And finally, counting the orner has returned as a means of marking personal spiritual growth-a Jewish reflec­tion of the more general turn to spirituality in the 1990s.64

NOTES

1.

Deut. 8:7-10.

2.

Nogah Hareuveni, Nature in Our Biblical Heritage (Kiryat Ono, Israel, 1980), pp. 28-64.

3.

B. B. B. 147a.

4.

Cf. Pharoah's dream, Gen. 41:6, and P. T. Shek. 5:1: "Once the whole world was scorched and they did not know from where to bring the grain offering."

5.

See, e.g., 1 Sam. 12:17-19.

6.

Hareuveni, Nature, p. 60. Cf. Jer. 5:24. . .

7.

H. Louis Ginsberg, "The Grain Harvest Laws of LeVItIcus 23:9-22 and Numbers 28:26-31," PAAJR 46-47 (Jubilee Volume, 1980): 141-54, and idem, The Israelian Heritage ofJudaism, Texts and StUdies of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America 24 (New York, 1982), pp. 42-83.

8.

Hareuveni, Nature, p. 52; Ginsberg, The Israelian Heritage,

p.49.

9. Baruch Levine, JPS Torah Commentary: Leviticus (Philadel_

phia, 1989), p. 158. .

10. Hareuveni, Nature, pp. 3~-43. Cf. Jaco~ Licht, Encyclopedia 'k ,. "omer " col. 300, tracmg the Israelite omer to an Ugarl't'

MI ra It, s.v. , . . Ie ritual for Baal. Licht cites R. De Vaux, Revue Blbltque 46 (1937): 526,

and T. Worden, YeWs Testamentum 3 (1953): 292-95.

11.

Hareuveni, Nature, pp.53-54.

12.

Lev. Rab. 27:5. Cf. Pesikta Rabbati, Piska 18, 4/5 (Braude, p.

386).

13.

Pesikta Rabbati, Piska 18, 2 (Braude, p. 381). Cf. Ecc. Rab. 1:3,1, and Pesikta d'Rav Kahana, Piska 8 (Buber, p. 59b).

14.

B. R. H.16a;cfEcc. Rab.1:3,1; 5:15,1. Song of Songs Rab.4:4,1; 7:2,2.

15.

Pesikta Rabbati, Piska 18, 1 (Braude, p. 380). Cf. Ecc. Rab. 1:3,1; Pesikta d'Rav Kahana, Piska 8 (Buber, 59a).

16.

M. R. H. 1:2.

17.

Song of Songs Rab. 7:2,2.

18.

Taan. 12b.

19.

That "shabbatot" in verse 15b refers to "weeks" is clear. Whether sabbatical week (Sunday to Saturday) or non-sabbatical week is in question. If it refers to a sabbatical week, "shabbat" in the preceding verse might mean Saturday and the S'firah period would begin on Sunday. If a·non-sabbatical week, it could begin on any day. Jeffrey H. Tigay, "Notes on the Development of the Jewish Week," Eretz Israel, vol. 14 (Jerusalem, 1978), suspends judgment for lack of biblical evidence, but notes Deuteronomy 16:9, where sheva shabba­tot shavuot decidedly refers to seven non-sabbatical weeks.

?O. Menachem Haran, Encyclopedia Mikra 'it, vol. 8, s.v. Shabbat­Mlmochorat Hashabbat, cols. 517-21. For further examples in which "shabb t" k

a was ta en to mean the last (festival) day of the Passover ;ee~, see 1. Van Goudoever, Biblical Calendars (Netherlands 1959). or mstances where it meant the first Saturday after the ~eek of

P

assover, see Baruch Lev' "Th 11 .

t . al P me, e emple Scroll: Aspects of Its Hls­

onc rovenance and Lit Ch

Sch I fi 0 erary aracter," Bulletin ofthe American °So or riental Research 232 (Fall 1978). For "shabbat" as the

fi

rst aturday after the h

Laws" 146 B . arvest began, see Ginsberg "Grain Harvest

,p. . ut see hiS lat . . 75

On "shabb t" er View, 10 Israelian Heritage, pp.74-. and the pen at as a replacement term for the old Assyrian sapatwmacontad calenda H'I

Origin of the W, k r, see I degard and Julius Lewy, "The 17 (1942-1943): ~~15;~d the Oldest West Asiatic Calendar," HUCA

o SsOVER TO SHAVUOT

FROM r'A

Sifra Emor 23:11,15, M. Hag. 2:4, M. Men. 10:3; B. Men 65b. Z1. urn Jerushalmi "after the first festal day of Passover" and

g

Cf. Talr"from the day after the festival day." Also cf. Philo. All cited

Onke os . .

. Van Goudoever, Blbbcal Calenda~s, p. 19. See also Josephus, Ant. ~10:5. For modern .commentar~ which supp~rts t.he Pharisaic view, see Louis Fin kelstem , .The Ph~rtSees: T)he SocIOlogical Background of Their Faith, vol. 2 (PhIladelphia, 1938 , pp. 643-48.

22.

Boethuseans may have followed the calendar of Jubilees. See

Encyclopedia Mikra'it, s.v. Shabbat-Mimochorat Hashabbat, p.518,

and Ginsberg, "Grain Harvest Laws," pp. 145-46.

23.

Van Goudoever, Biblical Calendars, pp. 19-21.

24.

B. Men 65b; Pesikta de Rav Kahana, Piska 8.

25.

M. Men. 10:3.

26.

Finkelstein, Pharisees, pp. 115-18, 641-54.

27.

Neither Josephus (Ant. 3:10:6) nor Philo (De Septenario, 21) hint that Shavuot memorializes Sinai. The earliest reference to the Ten Commandments being given on the sixth day of Sivan is in Yoma 4b. The earliest reference to the Torah being given on Shavuot is at­tributed to R. Meir (Ex. Rab. 31:16). Some scholars point to 2 Chron­icles 15:10-15 and Jubilees 6:1-21 as earlier references, but the evi­

dence is unclear.

28.

Finkelstein, Pharisees, pp. 643-44.

29.

Cf. B. Men. 65b, 66a; Lev. Rab. 28:4-6, Pesikta Rabbati, Piska 18 (Braude), Pesikta d'Rav Kahana, Piska 8 (Buber).

30.

Otsar Hageonim, ed. B. M. Lewin, vol. 7 (Jerusalem, 1936), Yeb. 327, p. 141.

31.

See Abraham Block, The Biblical and Historical Background of the Jewish Holy Days (New York, 1978), pp. 168-75, who actually credits later geonim (esp. Hai, d. 1038) with creating the S'jirah re­strictions to link the death of Rabbi Akiba's students to the Bar Kochba rebellion.

32.

Theodor H. Gaster, Festivals of the Jewish Year (New York, 1953), p. 52.

33.

A. E. Crawley, Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. 8 (New York, 1928), S.v. "May, Midsummer," p. 501.

34.

Lou Silberman "The S'firah Season: A Study in Folklore," HUCA 22 (1949): 224-27. . .

35.

Jewish literature also connects the dead with this time penod.

R. Akiva maintained that the judgment of the wicked in Gehinnom endures twelve months whereas R. Yochanan ben Nuri contended "From Passover to Sha~uot" (M. Eduyot 2:10).

92

36. Israel Abrahams, Jewish Life in the Middle Ages (New York

1985),pp. I84-85. . •

37. Olsar Hageonim, ed. Lewm, Yeb. 328.

38. Tllr, O. H. 493.

39.

Cf. Zerachiah ~aLevi (1125-1186, Spain!Provence) and Abraham Ibn HaYarc~1 (1155-1215, Provence/Spam), possibly the first to report the practice.

40.

Silberman ("S'firah Season") connects the custom to ancient Rome, where cutting hair was said to cause storms. His reconstruc_ tion seems inadequate in light of its late appearance in Our sources.

41.

"Lag" is a word made up of the letters lamed and gimel, Which have the numerical value of 33.

42.

Hamanhig 91b.

43.

See commentaries to Tur, 0. H. 493.

44.

Traced to an anonymous tosafist and cited by Joel Sirkes &rn~~QRm '

45.

See commentaries to Tur, O. H. 493.

46.

1. D. Eisenstein, Otzar Dinim Uminhagim (New York, 1917),

s.v. "Lag Ba'omer," p.188.

47. Jewish Encyclopedia, s.v. Omer, p.400.

48.

Gaster, Festivals oflhe Jewish Year, p. 58.

49.

Zohar, Idra Zuta, p. 296b. On the hillula (in English), see Julian

Morgenstern, "Lag Ba'omer-Its Origins and Import," HUCA 39 (1968): 82-83.

50. Avraham Ya'ari, "Toldot Hahillula Bameron," Tarbiz 31 (1965): 79-84.

51: Received wisdom is that the mystics of Tsfat sanctioned these practices, but the opposite was the case; Isaac Luria forbade merri­ment and celebration on Lag Ba'omer, preferring to make a pilgrim­~ge to Bar Yochai's grave on the ten days before Shavuot. See Ya'ari,

Toldot Hahillula Bameron," pp. 83-90. ~~. ~aster, Fest~~als ofthe Jewish Year, pp. 51-58. : Sdberman, Sefirah Season," p. 236, citing Gustaf Dalman,

Arbelt und S' . R

and 460-61. ute In alastina (Hildesheim, 1964), vol. 1, part 2, pp. 294

54. Silberman "s fi h S

(D . I' . ' e ra eason," p. 236 cites Hubert Grimme

as ISrae ItlSche Pfi 'Ii '

1907]) t th ngst este und der Plejandenkult [Paderborn,

,0 e effect that L B' . " . t

Babylonl'a lb' ag a orner IS remlDlscent of an ancien

n ce e ration i h. .

Morgenster L n onor of the victory of Marduk. Juhan

n sees ag Ba' . h

manna fell' th' orner as a celebration of the day on whlc lD e wdderness of Sinai ("Lag Ba'omer: Its Origin and

~----------------.

DASSOVER TO SHAVUOT

fRoM rn 93

t " pp 82-83). However, according to a more accurat d'

hnpor , . . e rea lDg of the Bible, manna fell not on the eighteenth of Iyar but rather on

the seventeenth.

55.

Derenbourg, "Le 33e de l'Omer," REJ 29 (1894): 149.

56.

Men. 66a.

57.

Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, trans.

M. Friedlander (New York, 1~81), Part 3, chap. 43, p. 211.

58.

Cited in Yom Tov Levmsky, Sefer Hamo'adirn, vol. 6 (Tel Aviv, 1955), p. 328.

59.

Ibid. Cf. Arthur Waskow, Seasons ofOur Joy (New York, 1982),

pp.168-9. . . . ..

60.

Isaac Klem, A GUIde to JeWIsh RelzglOus Practice (New York, 1979), p. 135.

61.

Ibid.

62.

Irving Greenberg, The Jewish Way: Living the Holidays (New York, 1988), p. 59.

63.

Elyse Frishman and Sandy Levine, Untitled term paper (widely circulated in the 1980s), Hebrew Union College-Jewish In­stitute of Religion (1980).

64. Kerry M. Olitzky, with Rachel Smookler, Anticipating Reve­lation, Counting Our Way through the Desert: An Orner Calendar for the Spirit (New York, 1998).

From Easter to Pentecost

MARTIN F. CONNELL

The few appearances of the word "Pentecost" in the New Testament have led to a common perception that the Christian feast of Pentecost has existed from the second half of the first century, when most of the books of that canon were written. But in the New Testament "Pentecost" is clearly the Greek designation for the Jewish observance of the fiftieth day after Passover, also known as the feast of Harvest.l None of the texts demonstrates that the day was a recognizably Christian feast during the second half of the first and early part of the second cent.ur~es. In fact, there is no extant evidence for a distinctively Christian observance of the feast until the end of the second century. This essay will consider the character of Pentecost at ~he time of its emergence as a Christian feast and will follow Its evolution into late antiquity and the early Middle Ages in ~rder to show the various liturgical configurations and narra­tives that .accompanied the observance of this celebration.

What IS striking about the late-second-century evidence that attests to the fir t Chr' . .

" . s Ishan observance of Pentecost ISh

t at It IS qUIte differ t f h .

en rom t e JewIsh observance as known

from the New Test .

. h f ament and from JewIsh sources. Unlike the JeWlS east whi h k

Ch . t' '.c mar ed the day of Pentecost alone, the

fIS Ian practice wh . fi

ua' . ' en It rst appears, marked a quin­

q geslma, a penod of "fift d " .

feast of E y ays mcluding and following the

aster. Moreover th

this II'tU . I ' e second-century authors treat

rglca season as t' .

every day in it bein 0 a lI~e of continual rejoicing, wIth the faithful w g bserved m a manner similar to Sundays:

ere to stand th

they were not p' ra er than kneel for prayer, and

ermltted to fa t .. . I

s on any day dunng thIS tIme. t

94

E STER TO PENTECOST

fROM A

h refore not a season which merely "filled in" the time

was, t e '. k d f E

n the festIval boo en s 0 aster and Pentecost· rather

betwee .. ' ,

son itself was the celebratIon, a contmuous observance

the sea of the paschal myst~ry. '" . Although the eVIdence for a dlstmchvely Chnstian mark­. f Pentecost does begin to appear in the late second cen­

lOgO. .

the witnesses to thiS protracted celebratIOn are not many.

tury, .' h A' A l' D

There are indicatIOns m t e sian cts 0 ralll and an indi­eet reference from Irenaeus of Lyons, as well as references by ~iPpOlytus of Rome and Origen in Alexandria.2 But it is Ter­tullian, in North Africa, who provides the fullest of the early testimony for the fifty-day period. After emphasizing the ap­propriateness of Easter for the administration of baptism, he goes on to say: "After this Pente~ost is a .most }oyfu~ period (laetissimum spatium ) for prepanng baptIsms, In WhICh also the resurrection of the Lord was frequently made known to the disciples, the grace of the Holy Spirit established, and the hope of the coming of the Lord was revealed."3 The ~eason, as Tertullian describes it, embraces the post-resurrectIOn ap­pearances and the ascension of the Lord, the gift of the Spirit, and the eschatological anticipation of the Lord's second com­ing. Thus, even though it is a season of paschal celebration, the span focuses not only on the resurrection but also on many

manifestations of the paschal mystery, including the sending of the Spirit.

In another place, Tertullian compares Christian feasts t~ pa­gan feasts: "Call out the individual solemnities of the natIOns, and set them in a row, they will not be able to make up a Pe~­tecost," again attesting to the fifty-day season.4 His char~cte~I­

zation of this time witnesses to its closeness to Sunday In SIg­nificance and liturgical observances.

We need to remember that the "paschal mystery" of the late second century was quite different from what was general~y observed from the fourth century onwards and from what IS

still observed in Christian communities today. Easter was then tYPologically centered on the narrative of the immolation of the lamb, as in Exodus 12, and on the narrative of the ~eath of Jesus, the New Lamb, which was the heart of the feast. The

. f Good Friday Holy Saturday, and Easter SUnd

tnduum 0 ' . ay

loped and so the Easter celebratIOn, as a fifty d

had not deve , . -ay d·d not highlight the mystenes of death and resurre

season, 1 c­. . utually exclusive ways. As the end of the fourth cen

tlOn 10 m . ­tury witnessed the gradual separatIOn of the paschal "mo­ments" before the celebratio~ of ~aste: (Palm Sun?ay, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, etc.), It was mevltable that thIS separa_ tion of the discrete narratives of the paschal events before the feast of Easter would influence the shape of the fifty days after Easter in a similar way. While it is commonplace to acknowledge that the integrity of the fifty-day season began to break down in the Course of the fourth century, this disintegration was not universal. The churches of Egypt, for example, seem to have been most faith­ful in maintaining the uninterrupted continuity of the fifty days. The Canons ofHippolytus, an Egyptian church order dat­ing from just before the middle of the fourth century, pre­scribes fasting after the "fifty days.,,6 The festal letters of Athanasius of Alexandria from 329 to 373, in which the bishop would announce the dates of the paschal celebrations for the coming year, testify to the "seven weeks" of paschal solem­nity. Such letters testifying to the seven weeks survive also from Theophilus, Patriarch of Alexandria from 385 to 412, and his successor, Cyril, who wrote the letters from 414 to 442. ~hile the content of Cyril's missives are far more preoccupied ~lth the Egyptian churches' struggles against heresies, par­tIcularly Nestorianism, he occasionally speaks of the "days of Penteco~t." Moreover, the rules of the Egyptian desert monks,

whose hves were spent on the margins of society and at a re­mov~ ~herefore from the liturgical practices of the major ChnstIan commu ·t· d . .

m Ies, a vocated ngorous fastmg, but the

rules also make it I h . . .

. c ear t at thIS ngonsm was suspended dur­mg the period between Easter and Pentecost 7 h The Egyptian faithfulness to the earlie~t configuration,t rough the fourth d fif h

. an t centuries at least may have been

umque, for we learn f . '

one w t rom two other WItnesses one eastern and

es ern, that th '

oesima wa d·. e span of the Easter season, quinqua­

o , S Ismtegrati I h .

ng e sew ere. These two complIcate

97

. ture somewhat, for the texts arising from their worship-the pIC unities-the churches of Jerusalem and of Turin

. g corom . d f ..

JO h n Italy-witness to a peno 0 tranSItIon from the

. nort er . .

III an to the celebratIon of Pentecost as a smgle day of

fifty-day sp observance.

Jerusalem

her daily chronicle of the liturgical events taking place

. IJO salem, the pilgrim Egeria details the liturgies which

)0 eru . d·" h fif· h d "

uinquageslmarum autem le, on t e tIet ay.

happen q. .

ibing everything that "IS done exactly accordmg to cus-

Descr ... h ld· h A

" he says that the vigil of Pentecost IS e 10 t e nas­

tom, s . .

tasis [church of the resurrection], s~ that the bIshop may read

the passage from the gospel which IS always read o~ Sundays,

that of the resurrection of the Lord." In the mor~mg all the

pIe assemble in the major church at the Martynum, where

peo .. ..

"the sacrifice [i.e., the euchanst] IS offered In the manner 1~

which it is customarily done on Sundays." She says that thIS

day is ritually unique in that the dismissal is moved up "so that

it is given before the third hour [about 9 a.m.]." Her narra­

tive continues with the rite immediately following the eucha­

rist:

All the people without exception, singing hymns, lead the bishop to Sion, but in such a manner that they are in Sion at precisely the third hour. When they arrive, there is read from the Acts of the Apostles that passage in which the Holy Spirit came down so that all tongues might be heard and all might understand what was

being said.8

The "sacrifice" is again offered, and afterwards the people

return to their homes, rest, eat lunch, and then ascen~ ~he

Mount of Olives "with the result that not a single Chnsuan

remains in the city for they have all gone." The faithful go first

to the Imbomon :'that is to the place from which the Lor~

, , ellS

ascended into heaven .... Then the passage from the gosp .

read which speaks of the ascension of the Lord; then there IS

~:......"'~~.

~ • .• w'r.: Jl.';!J\I~ DtS)~n om fI~"· \ ...... ?..~r~~"...,/

n~nmnm ",.,~~

a reading from the Acts of the Apostles which speaks of th ascension of the Lord into heaven after the resurrection."9 e

From Egeria's account here, it is apparent that the charact of the fifty days was still operative, for the day commemorat:~ the major narratives of the paschal season: the resurrection the descent of the Holy Spirit, and the ascension of the Lord. l~ That this day marked the end of the season is further con­firmed by Egeria's mention the following day that "everyone again observes the fast that prevails throughout the year,"ll signaling the end of the sacred paschal time by the resump_ tion of fasting. By itself, this text suggests that in the Holy Land at the end of the fourth century, the observance of quilt­quagesima still persisted. Yet Egeria's attestation in this case, as in quite a few others, is not so simple.

Just before her description of the fiftieth day is a brief ac­count of two rites celebrated on "the fortieth day after Easter, which is a Thursday." While later Christian observance of the ascension on the fortieth day after Easter might lead us to think that these rites in Jerusalem were similar, the evidence is far from clear. The first celebration is the vigil, while the other is on Thursday, the fortieth day itself:

The vigil is held in the church of Bethlehem, the church where the grotto in which the Lord was born is located. On the following day, this is, on Thursday, the feast of the fortieth day, the divine service is celebrated in the prescribed manner, and as a result the priests and the bishop preach, delivering sermons appropriate to the day and the place.12

. While those to whom Egeria wrote undoubtedly recog­Dlzed what she meant when she wrote about the "prescribed manner" and the narratives "appropriate" to the fortieth day afte~ Easter, this remains an enigma for us. But it is certainly possible t~at this second liturgy, on Thursday, commemorated the ascension of the Lord on the fortieth day as chronicled in t?e Acts of the Apostles. Thomas Talley ha~ argued persua­sively that the church of Jerusalem had to maintain two sepa­rate ritual tracts for its attending faithful, the local obser-

EASTER TO PENTECOST

FROM

es for the native worshipers, as well as the rites expected vane d· f ·th . h d··

·lgrims, nurture m al Wit tra ItlOns different from by pi h t · ·t th h· . .

of Jerusalem, w 0 came 0 VISI e Istoncal sites of the

those 1 C· 13 M· h .

life of JesUs in the Ho y Ity. Ig t Egena's chronicle have tured a time when two observances of the ascension were

cap . h k d .

taking place, one WhlC mar e It as one of the paschal mys­·es observed in the fifty-day season and another which

ten .

marked the feast accordmg to the Lukan chronology, i.e., on

the fortieth day after Easter? If the latter were what was in

fact occurring, this would signal the imminent dissolution of

the paschal season.

Turin

Gennadius of Marseilles is the only external witness to the northern Italian episcopate of Maximus of Turin, and-at the end of a long paragraph in which he lists the topics of the Torinese bishop's sermons-he tells us that Maximus "died during the reign of Honorius and the younger Theodosius,"14 which would be between 408 and 423 C. E. , just a few decades after Egeria's eastward journey in 383. Maximus's sermons provide a western document which, like Egeria's, presents two conflicting views of the post-Easter time.

Sermon 44 of Maximus clearly points to a quinquagesima, the season of paschal joy, or, in his words, "a continual and un­interrupted festival" (iugis et continuata festiuitas). He elabo­rates further:

The whole course of 50 days is celebrated on the model of Sunday, then, and all these days are counted as Sundays, since the resur­rection is a Sunday .. .. For the Lord arranged it that, just. as we mourned over His suffering with the fasts of a 40-day penod, so we would rejoice over His resurrection during the festivals of a 50-day period . ... But when He ascends to heaven after these days we fast again, as the Savior says: But the days will come when the

bridegroom will be taken from them, and then they will fast in those days. IS

While this sermon indicates that the paschal mysteries Wer all part of the fifty-day sea~on, "al.l counted as Sund.ays," an~ other sermon from the Tonnese bIShop, sermon 40, Indicates that the season was not being observed:

I believe that you know, brethren, why we celebrate this venerable day of Pentecost with no less joy than we accorded the holy Pasch, and why we observe this solemnity with the same devotion that we gave to that feast. For then, as we have done now, we fasted On the Sabbath, kept vigils, and prayed earnestly through the night. It is necessary, therefore, that a like joy follow a like observance.16

Obviously, there was some change in the observance of the Easter season in Turin during the bishop's tenure, for there would have been no fasting and vigil-keeping, as described in sermon 40, during the "continual and uninterrupted festival" described in sermon 44. Because the period of Maximus's epis­copate cannot be more tightly dated, one does not know how quickly the change took place.

Egeria's travelogue may suggest that there were two litur­gical customs for celebrating the narrative of the ascension, one according to the Lukan tradition which placed the occa­sion on the fortieth day after the resurrection, and the other which linked it with the end of the season on the fiftieth day. Maximus's western attestation reveals two liturgical configu­rations,one marking it as a season, the other seeing it as a feast day only, preceded by a fast and a vigil. This seems to indicate a breakdown of the original schema in late antiquity, though not yet universal if the Egyptian testimony is kept in mind.

After Egeria and Maximus, signs of the dissolution of the integrity of the "fifty days" appear in abundance. Instead of fin~ing all ~he paschal mysteries celebrated together during qumqua?eslma as parts of the one paschal mystery, evidence of the dIscrete celebration of each of these "moments" arises, particularly of the ascension of the Lord on the fortieth day after Easter and the descent of the Holy Spirit on the fifti­

eth day.

EASTER TO PENTECOST

101

fROM

The Feast of the Ascension on the Fortieth Day

The gospel text in whi~h Jesus says that the friends of the

·degroom do not fast whIle the groom is still with theml7 was

bTl b f f . d .

d to explain the a sence 0 astmg unng the span of the

use . h· S·

fifty-day seas~n. WhIle t e nsen aVlOr was.wit~ the commu­nity during thIS paschal season, the commumty dId not mourn, but celebrated. Yet once the Lukan chronology of the life of JesuS began to be observed and to shape the liturgical year, the absence of the Savior was assumed to have begun on the fortieth day rather than on the fiftieth. In Spain a canon from the early-fourth-century Council of Elvira indicates that some churches, unfamiliar with Greek and thus not knowing that the very word for the feast indicated its placement on the fifti­eth day, were celebrating Pentecost on the fortieth day after Easter. There are other indications from the fourth century­the Council of Nicea and Apostolic Constitutions, for exam­ple-that Spain was not the only place where this practice oc­curred.ls

Since the narrative content of the liturgy of the fortieth day after Easter as described by Egeria cannot be determined, one must look elsewhere for the first appearance of a distinct day commemorating the narrative of the ascension. The feast ap­pears in the preaching of John Chrysostom in Antioch and of Gregory of Nyssa, both at the end of the fourth century.19 In the West the feast is found first in the preaching of Chromatius of Aquileia, bishop of that northern Italian city on the Adriatic from 388 to 407.20 This feast, then, is known to communities in both Greek and Latin Christianity by the end of the fourth

century.

A puzzling additional piece of evidence appears in the

Diversarum hereseon liber of Filastrius of Brescia, a bishop,

like Chromatius, of northern Italy. This heresiology was writ­

ten between 383 and 391, and in it Filastrius states:

Through the year four fasts are celebrated by the Church: the first at Christmas, then at Easter, the third at the Ascension, the fourth

at Pentecost. In effect, we should fast at t~e birth of the Savior and Lord, then during the forty days leadmg up to Easter, like­. t his Ascension into heaven on the fortieth day after Easte

wise a . 21 r, then for the ten days until Pentecost, or later.

As difficult as this piece is to integrate into the develop_ ment, it is clear here that the ascension was celebrated on the fortieth day and that it was preceded and succeeded by fast­ing! Because there is no earlier evidence from Brescia, one does not know if quinquagesima had been the norm before this time and then broken up, or if the fifty-day season had never been the norm there.

The Feast of Pentecost on the Fiftieth Day

As the practice of observing a fifty-day paschal season was being eroded, an odd reversal was taking place in the transla­tion of the New Testament text of Acts 2:1 from Greek into Latin. While in the celebration of the liturgical year the fifty days were tending to become a fiftieth day, the fourth-century translations of the New Testament were rendering Acts 2:1 in a way that seemed to favor the opposite. According to the original Greek, the verse reads "On the day of Pentecost, each went to his own home." Yet some Old Latin versions, including Jerome's Vulgate of the late fourth century (which would be incomparably influential for a millenium and a half), changed the Greek singular "day" into the plural, cum complerentur dies pentecostes, "when the days of Pentecost were fulfilled." Had the language shift gone from the Greek plural.to a Latin singular noun in the fourth-century translations, this would have accompanied the liturgical shift from the "fifty days" to the "fiftieth day." But the Latin mistranslation actually re­flects the opposite of the evolution of the liturgical year. As the Latin biblical text moved to have "Pentecost" reflect the season, i.e., "the days of Pentecost," the season was becoming a feas~ day only, and in most Christian churches it has remained

so smce that early time.

EASTER TO PENTECOST

FRoM 103

The Octave of Easter

The final element that influences the dissolution of the sea­. the highlighting of the octave of Easter, the first week

son IS .' • Easter dunng which mystagoglCal catecheses were deliv­

a ter d to the newly baptized. The week was traditionally called

f .

ere . h hi'"

the octave in albis, I.e., w en t e new y lDltiated were dressed 'n white garments. I Egeria is among th~ earliest witnesses ~o the rise of the pas­chal octave, and her diary leads one to thmk that the practice was already fairly common at the time of her sojourn in Jeru­

salem:

The eight days of Easter are observed just as at home with us.The liturgy is celebrated in the prescribed manner throughout the eight days of Easter just as it is celebrated everywhere from Easter Sunday to its octave .... During the eight days of Easter, every day after lunch, in the company of all the clergy and the neophytes-I mean those who have just been baptized-and of all the aputac­titae, both men and women, and of as many of the people as wish to come, the bishop goes up to the Eleona.22

This octave, while attentive to the initiation rites, is but one more nail in quinquagesima's coffin.

The Feast of Mid-Pentecost

While the discrete celebrations of the ascension on the for­tieth day, the descent of the Spirit on the fiftieth, and the oc­tave for the initiates point to the imminent dissolution of the fifty-day season, there is evidence in the same period of an­other feast which suggests that the laetissimum spatium was still maintained in some communities. The celebration of "Mid-Pentecost" on the twenty-fifth day of the season points to the integrity of the earliest stratum of the quinquagesima. In the East the feast is found at the end of the fourth century, some time earlier than its mid-fIfth-century appearance in the

West.

104

Amphiloque, late-fourth-cen~ury bishop of !conium, is the

earliest witness to it, and he claimed that the celebration Was

"situated at the mid-point be~ween ~he resurrection and Pen­

tecost; it recalls the resurrectIOn, pomts to Pentecost, and an­

nounces the ascension, like the trumpet of a herald." A cen­

tury later Severus of Antioch attests to the existence of the

feast, and a Syriac hymn celebrating Christ the Mediator like­

wise survives in the eastern tradition regarding this liturgi_

cal midway point. The pericope for the feast, according to

Severus's homily, was John 7:14-"about the middle of the fes­

tival Jesus went up into the temple and began to teach"-the

same text which is attached to the feast when it is first found

in a Latin tradition.23

This Latin attestation comes in two homilies of Peter

Chrysologus, bishop of the church of Ravenna in northern

Italy in the second quarter of the fifth century. Peter's rhetoric

defends the celebration of Mid-Pentecost, indicating that it

had been part of the Ravennese tradition for some time but

that the faithful there did not appreciate its importance:

Even though some things seem hidden in their own deep mys­tery, nevertheless no solemnity in the church's worship is without benefit. The divine feast is not to be solemnized by our will but is to be kept for its own miracles . ... We have made our way so that we might arrive at the middle of this great solemnity, for Jesus, God and our Lord, consecrator of every feast, journeyed in the middle of the feast to enter Jerusalem.24

~erhaps the Christians in Ravenna had begun to tire of the mamtenance of this feast when they knew that other churches were beginning to observe the feast of the ascension on the

fortieth dav i e a d'

• J' .., ccor mg to the Lukan chronology, as we have seen In northern Italy already in the churches of Aquileia and Brescia. While we do not find the feast of Mid-Pentecost

subsequently in the chu h f R' ..'

. rc 0 avenna, Its later survival IS eVI­

dent In the medieval M'l d

I anese sacramentaries of Aribert anBergamo 2S A '1' .

. . . qUI elan codices of the sixth and seventh centu­nes lIst John 7:14 as the pericope in the fourth week after Eas­ter, when the feast of Mid-Pentecost would have occurred.

EASTER TO PENTECOST

FRoM

Conclusion

The span of the first five or six centuries of the Christian

faith seems to indicat~ a g~neral.mo~ement from the integrity of quinquagesima to Its dissolutIOn In late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, perhaps as a result of the same tendency to historicize the life of Jesus of Nazareth in liturgical celebra­tion that also brought Holy Week into being. From a continu­ous celebration of the paschal mystery that held together the resurrection, the post-resurrection appearances, the ascension, the descent of the Holy Spirit, and the mission of the disciples, the season began to break up from the late fourth century on­wards into a series of discrete festal observances, with the days in between becoming less and less significant.

NOTES

1. The apostle Paul, in his closing remarks in the First Letter to the Corinthians, writes, "I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost" (16:8, NRSV). Again as a marker of time, the evangelist Luke writes in Acts, "When the day of Pentecost had come" (2:1), and, later in the same book, that Paul "was eager to be in Jerusalem, if possible, on the feast of Pentecost" (20:16).

2.

See Robert Cabie, La Pentecote. L'evolution de La Cinquan­laine pascale au cOW's des cinq premiers siec/es (Tournai, Belgium, 1965), pp. 37-45.

3.

De baptismo 19.2.

4.

De idoLatria 14.7.

5.

See Christine Mohrmann, "Pascha, passio, transitus," Ephe­merides liturgicae 66 (1952): 37-52; and Paul Bradshaw's "The Ori­gins of Easter," in volume 5 of this series .

6.

Canon 22; see Paul F. Bradshaw, ed., The Canons of Hippoly-IllS (Bramcote, Notts., 1987), p. 27.

7.

See Cabie, La Pentecote, pp.61-76.

8. [tinerarium Aetheriae 43.1-3.

9.

Ibid. 43.4-5.

10.

Here I have recounted only those elements of the liturgi­

~al d~~ which are relevant to the present discussi.on. ~ccor~ing to gena s account, the day continued with various ntes, mcludmg the

MARTIN F. CONNEll

. f the catechumens; a ceremony with candles at the CI·t

blessmg 0 .. . y . other rite in the Martynum, wIth hymns, antIphons, blessings

gate,an . S··h . ,

and prayers; and lastly, another hturg~ at IOn, ~It . scnpture read_ . alms antiphons, prayers, a blessll1g, and dIsmIssal. At the end

mgs,ps , , d" d

all come forward "to the bishop shan , an return home around midnight.

11. itillerariunl Aetheriae 44.1.

12. Ibid. 42.

13.

Thomas 1. Talley,The Origins ofthe Liturgical Year (New York, 1986), pp.177-83.

14.

Boniface Ramsey, The Sermons ofSt. Maximus of Turin, An­cient Christian Writers 50 (New York, 1989), p. 2.

15.

Ibid., p. 110.

16.

Ibid., p. 99.

17.

Matt. 9:14-15; Mark 2:18-20; Luke 5:33-35.

18.

See Cabie, La Pentecote, pp.181-85.

19.

Ibid.

20.

Chromatius of Aquileia, Opera, Corpus Christianorum, series Latina 9a (Thrnholt, 1974), pp. 32-37.

21.

Filastrius of Brescia, Diversarum hereseon liber, Corpus Christianorum, series Latina 9 (Turn holt, 1957), p. 312.

22.

itinerarillm Aetheriae 39.1,3.

23.

See Cabie, La Pentecote, pp. 100-101.

24. Sermo 85.1; see also Sermo 85bis.

25. Cabie, La Pentecote, p. 103.

PART 3

Symbols and the Arts

in Sacred Celebration

A Symbol of Salvation in the Passover Seder

LAWRENCE A. HOFFMAN

This essay is intended as another contribution to our under­standing of the growth of the seder ritual. The subject of in­quiry, however, is not the liturgical text itself, but the symbolic importance attributed to that text by those who recited it in the first two centuries of the common era. More specifically, my interest here is a particular type of symbol which I shall call salvational, and define as words and actions understood by ancient worshipers to represent deliveran.ce.

How people are saved, what they are saved from, and, there­fore, what salvation means, are central questions in religious debate. Both Judaism and Christianity provide wide-ranging spectrums of possible answers. So we must not confuse a gen­eral human desire for deliverance with any particular dog­matic description thereof. "Salvation" is used here, then, in its generalized sense with no necessary connotations of either this or that, Jewish or Christian, theological system. As our study proceeds, we shall encounter evidence pointing to a par­ticular system, of course, but I leave it to the theologian to ex­plicate this data. My liturgical perspective obliges me to rec­

ognize the fact that participants in a ritual are usually not conscious of the experience itself. Ritual words and actions that awaken this experience are, by definition, "salvational," and I propose here to treat a certain class of words and actions, those which accompany the use of matsah at the Passover s~­der, to see if they are salvational in this general sense and If, therefore, matsah once functioned as a salvational symbol.

That the salvational symbolism of matsah was widely assumed

109

LAWRENCE A. HOFFMAN

at an early date is indicated by almost unanimous agreell1

. . h b' T ent

of post-Talmudic authontIes on t e su ~ect. hough they d 'not always speak explicitly of deliverance, they generally d refer to a common tradition identifyin~ matsah as a replace~ ment for the pesach, or Passover offenng, and according t

!O

Exodus 12:27, this offering was the symbol par excellence O~ salvation. "It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, because He passed over the houses of the Israelites, when He smote the Egyptians, and He saved our houses." Shibbolei Haleket, for example, calls it "a remembrance of the pesach" (zekher lape­sach),l as does the TU1; which says also, "comparable to the \ pesac"" (dumia d'pesach).2 Earlier still, Sherira Gaon (d. 969) explains why technical use of the bread of affliction (that is, matsah) is forbidden on Passover Day: "the bread of affliction comes at the time of eating pesach, and the pesach is eaten only at night,,;3 and his son, Hai (d. 1038), while discussing the pesach, makes a conceptual jump to matsah as if he were dis­cussing one and the same thing.4 To this day the Sefardic rite prefaces the eating of ajikoman-matsah-;iili--the-';:;ords:zaher

-1 (~~,ban pesach hane'ekhal al hasova, "a r;-~embran~~ of the Passover offering~eaten wlfiIe-'full:" Not all these authorities recognize the salvational symbolism illhere~tin the ;;n~ai;ah";;­p,esach" equation: but that is because the symbolic identifica­tl~n was made long before their time. They accepted it along with the rest of rabbinic lore, even though the emotive con­t~nt within it had already lapsed.5 We shall see that the expan­sion of the symbolic denotation of matsah to refer to the de­~unct Passover offering, and hence to the deliverance inherent ID t~at offering, was complete by the second century. SlDce Passover is known biblically as the festival of matsah (chag hamat t) ' .

. zo , It IS to be expected that matsah would playa

large role ID the sed E .

er. xactly where and how it would be iD-

I d

cued, however could b .

..' not e determmed by the simple pro­

cess of blbhcal ex . .

postbiblical. Whil:gesls, SlDce the institution of the seder was

b· , . proof texts, always desirable from the Rab­

IS perspective we f

that th I b' re requently found, it cannot be denied

e e a orate co I

mp ex of seder rituals revolving about

A SYMBOL IN THE SEDER

111

matsah derived ultimately from rabbinic creativity, not biblical

prototype. . To begin WIth, although of course anyone could eat unleav­

ed bread at any time during Passover, eating it to satisfy the

en I' .

commandment to do so was Imlted to seder eve,6 While con­suming it earlier that day was actually prohibited.7 R. Levi, a direct disciple of Judah Hanasi, indicates the severity of the prohibition by compar.ing t.he breaching ~hereof to someone who has intercourse With hIS betrothed, smce he cannot wait for the proper moment of marriage (nisu'in).8 Other regula­tions that we shall have to return to later were that the con­sumption of matsah was to cease at midnight, that one was to eat it while one was full, and that a certain minimum quan­tity known technically as k 'zayit ("the size· of an olive") was necessary.9

Nor were the occasions and manner of eating matsah during the seder left to chance. So successful were the tannaim in lay­ing down the succession of events by which the commandment was to be carried out, that we accept them as obvious today. The evening's proceedings were surrounded by matsah, as the recitation of ha lachma anya ("Behold the bread of affliction") initiated the festivities, and the eating of the ajikoman, now redefined as a piece of matsah, concluded them. In the interim, the matsah was apportioned for its various uses, according to an elaborate system; the matsah shel mitzvah, the piece eaten to fulfill the commandment, was introduced with the proper benediction', and Hillel, for one,chose to consume his matsah in a unique fashion that became traditional for generations.

How are we to account for all these ritual requirements? We could say, of course, that they were accidental developments having no consequence whatever; or even that some were con­nected in one manner or other, but that most were simply hap­hazard customs. But clearly, it would be improper to rule out the possibility of an overriding concern from which all the above-mentioned laws and rituals derived.

One such unifying concern is at hand. The development of aU this ceremony can be explained by the assumption that by

LAWRENCE A H

' OFFMAN

the first century matsah had acquired a symbolic valu h

' , , , e t at

went far beyond the role allotted to It III the biblical nar '

, ralIve

From a historical recollectIOn of the Exodus of the past 't h '

, " I ad

been transmuted mto a symbol of salvatIOn for the futu 10 Our task now must be to trace t hat novel adaptation andre, explain the numerous rules and rituals related to it. to

An ideal starting point is the afikoman. Though the ratio_ nale behind the well-known ordinance, ein ma!tirin achar hapesach afikoman, II may never be unearthed-indeed, syn­tactically, the sentence defies translation-there seems to be sufficient evidence to posit at least the general direction which investigation should take, The widespread diversity of rabbinic interpretation of afikoman stemming from the first amoraic generation12 lends credence to the belief that by the third cen­tury the institution was already so old as to have its origins shrouded in mystery, The Babli quotes Rav as interpreting it to be shelo y'akru meichaburah l'chaburah, participants should not move from group to group on seder night, an opinion ech­oed anonymously in the Yerushalmi,13 Samuel, on the other hand, refers the term to after-dinner eating, a view paralleled

by Hananiah bar Shila and R. Yochanan,I4 R. Sisi's son thinks the Pro~ibited entity is mini zenle1; the playing of music,I5

As ~Iverse as these views may seem, they all do, in fact, con­verge In the usual explanation of afikoman as after-dinner revelry,I6 This would explain why the Mishnah felt obliged to ban drinking extra wine between the mandatory third and

fourth cups and wh th b' ,

, yean IS mentIoned precisely before the

phrase regarding a/;k F'

, 'J' oman. eanng that after-dinner carous-

Ing would detract fro th I" , ,

, h' mere IgIOSlty due that night espeCIally

10 t IS early period wh d' '

' en mner preceded the recitation of the

H

aggadah and the t ' , ,

emptatlOn to escape a lengthy relIgIOUS

ceremony may h b

much d 'k' ave een great, the Mishnah first bans too

nn mg at the d f h ' ,

Ql'ter. proh'b't en 0 t e mght and then, immedwtely

')1, I I S revelry itself b h " , 17

The Tosefta k y t e phrase, em maftmn. , , ' terms as d ma es the same contextual link in even clearer

, oes t he Yerushal 'Th ,,,­

tirin as afte d' ml. e former interprets ein mar \

r-mner eat' d

tion "0 h 109, an then adds by way of explana­

, ne s ould occu '

py oneself wIth the laws of Passover all

A SYMBOL IN THE SEDER

, bt ,, 18 The latter explains that the ban on extra drinking nlgI' , d' because '" f d'lOner leads to

, ited to after mner, wme a ter

IS 1m , b f d'

kenness while wille e ore mner does not" and then

drun ' ,wing both laws to be related, turns immediately to the

kno ,F " 19 Th '

lation of ein mal tmn, at carouslllg was general at oc­

regu

casions like our seder can be gathered from a study of the sym­'a Il'terature20 and even, perhaps, from the New Testament

pOSI , , '

bere Paul berates the Connthlans for celebrating the Lord's

w 21

Supper unworthily, , We cannot go far wrong, then, If we summarize the initial ~onception of afikoman as follows, By the first century there was a home ceremony which marked the advent of Passover. Tbough it contained very little of the ritual and prayer now associated with the seder-Josephus has practically nothing to say about it-it can still be considered the seminal institution from which the later seder evolved, The paschal lamb, which bad been slaughtered that afternoon, was now consumed ac­cording to well-established regulations, and a rather unstruc­tured recounting of the Exodus and related lore took place, To avoid the possiblity of drunken revelry, it became customary to forbid too much drinking after dinner; for similar reasons, dropping in on various households all night, and enjoying such accoutrements of revelry as music and after-dinner gorging on delicacies, were forbidden, This latter sort of activity was en­capsulated in the concise phrase, ein maftirin achar hapesach afikoman, the word afikoman being derived from the Gree~,22 At this early date, the term afikoman had absolutely nothIng to do with matsah. How different the matter was only one century later, We suddenly discover a novel symbolic value adhering to matsa~, Though our tannaitic sources make no overt reference to thIS additional feature, the first-generation amoraim, (thir,d cen­tury) assume it in such a way as to place its earher eXIstence beyond doubt:

" , ue revelry"

After the pesach [IS consumed] one may not purs , ' , ,I';k ] Rav Judah saId

[that IS, em maftirin achar hapesach aJ' oman ", , S "0 e may not pursue

In amuel's name"" The Mishnah teaches, n

b

,

I

revelry after the pesaell"; [therefore] the prohibition applies to I "after the pesach." But "after the matsah" one may pursue rev_ elry.... Mar Zutra taught it this way: Rav Joseph said in the name of Samuel, "After the matsah one may pursue revelry.,,23

The issue before these amoraim was whether the ban

against pursuing revelry (ein maftirin afikoman) after the

pesach (achar hapesach) applies also to after ma/sah (acllar

hamatzah), a question that makes no sense whatever, unless we

assume that by the third century, matsah was equated with the

pesach. The same question could conceivably have been asked

about wine, charoset, maror, or anything else on the seder plate,

l'but it was not. The only questionable item was ma/sah, because matsah alone had taken on the additional significance of sym­bolizing the pesach. The evidence for the existence of this symbolic transforma­tion is overwhelming. We need only recall the regulations that grew up regarding the eating of ma/sah. All are legal paral­lels to laws regarding the pesach. With the latter, too, nothing was eaten either before nightfall or after midnight.24 With the pesach, as with matsah, k 'zayit (an olive's bulk) was the ac­cepted minimum quantity.25 And, as with matsah, the pesach was to cap off the meal, being eaten while one was full,26 No wonder, as we saw above, that post-Talmudic rabbinic literature simply assumes the equation of these two entities. To the sampling of geonic and post-geonic opinion already given,27 a citation should be added to indicate the continuation of this novel symbolism in the Palestinian as well as the Baby­

lonian tradition. In two places, the Yerushalmi asks whether the Passover offering of a servant or a woman overrides the Sabbath "work" regulations which might be construed as pre­venting such a sacrifice on the Sabbath. Immediately thereaf­ter, the Talmud inquiries, matzatan mah hi? "What about their '}"atsah?"'21! As with the Babli's discussion of afikoman, so here, 10 t~e Yerushalmi, the link between matsah and pesaeh is mamfest. The discussion of one leads automatically to a con­

sideration of the other.

This identity of symbolic denotation was at hand in Samuel's

A SYMBOL IN THE SEDER

that is, in the first half of the third century. That its origin ~~ earlier still can be argued on both logical and documen­ground' logical because the amoraim treat the equation

tary' . of matsah and pesach as a gIVen, assumed by one and all; and documentary because the Tosefta already prescribes that the

29

k'zayit matsah be eaten last.As for the exact point in time 'thin the tannaitic period when we would assume such a nov-

WI . .

elty to appear, the most ObVlOUS Impetu~ would seem to be

the destruction of the Temple cult, when 10 fact the Passover

offering ceased. Evidence from the New Testament, however,

raises the possibility of an even earlier origin:

For the tradition that I handed to you came to me from the Lord himself: that the Lord Jesus on the night of his arrest took bread and after giving thanks to God broke it, and said, "This is my body which is for you. Do this as a memorial of me." In the same way he took the cup after supper and said, "This cup is the new covenant sealed by my blood. Whenever you drink it do this as a memorial of me." For every time you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.,,30

If Paul understood the Lord's Supper to have been a seder, then he was already using matsah as a redemptive symbol by the sixth decade of the first century. It is of course true that, as many scholars have noted, the notion of a seder is not yet manifestly present; the seder aspect may, therefore, be an ad­dition of the evangelists, and we could then say that whereas bread itself was symbolic of salvation in Paul's time, matsah was so only tangentially, by virtue of its being a form of bread. There can be no doubt about Paul's use of bread as a salva­tional symbol, and as we shall see, such a conception of bre.ad was common to Jewish circles in Paul's time. In fact, this pnor equation of bread generally with salvation may account for

" hT~

the choice of matsah to fill the vacuum left by the pesac. . paschal lamb was, above all, a symbol of deliverance, speCifi­cally, the deliverance from Egypt, and it would have been natu­ral to elect something which already had salvational overtones to fill its place. . h

Wh "d 't of matsah Wit

ether or not one pOSitS the I entl y

a

LAWRENCE A. HOFFMAN

116

pesach by Paul's time depends on how one understands Pa I' words to the Corinthians. In any event, the link existed by ~hs time of the Gospels, for there the Last Supper is definitel e seder, where bread (matsah) is Jesus' body, and Jesus' bod Y. a

b31 E 'f h Y,m

turn, is the paschal. lam ., Ve?I, owever, the symbolic link is already present 10 Paul s wrItmg, we are probably justified in concluding that the spiritual vacuum created by the end of the Temple cult set the stamp of finality on the development. Whereas Jews previously had celebrated deliverance with a Passover offering, it was now the matsah that harbored this emotional appeal.

Both Christian and Jew now had a cohesive system of sal­vational symbols. For the Jew, this meal, characterized origi­nally by the pesach and now by matsah, recalled the deliver­ance of Egypt. For the Christian, it marked the salvation of the new covenant under the saving grace of the new paschal lamb, whose body was the matsah.32

The Talmud understands this novel symbolic value of matsah as being derived from the application of hermeneutic princi­ples to the biblical commandment to eat matsah along with the paschal lamb.33 The amoraim quoted in the discussion how­eve.r, lived three centuries later than the event in questio~, and, whIle the scriptural proximity of the words matsah and pesach may.not be entirely beside the point, we are surely justified in 100~IDg elsewhere for the prime motivation behind this sym­bolIc connection. As mentioned above, the missing link may

b: t~e general salvational symbolism already assumed to lie wlthm bread itself. Such a rabbip-ic utilization of bread has been described by Eugene Mihaly.~

. Amo~g the midrashim adduced by Mihaly are those selec­tIons WhICh picture the garden of Eden as replete with bread trees "a 1

. sarge as the cedars of Lebanon."35 Such texts should be VIewed together with the rabbinic argument over the proper term for the benediction over bread, motsi or hamotsi. Though

there are two recen . f h' . .

. Sions 0 t e latter discussion, each WIth Its

owdn vherslOn of the protagonists' positions both agree in the en t at '1 h '

morsl ec em min ha'arets., "brings forth bread from

the earth ". r .

, Imp les shehu atld lehotsi lechem min ha'arets, "that

A SYMBOL IN THE SEDER

. h Future He will bring forth bread from the earth " 36 I

tn t e J' • n

other words, the blissful state of the Garden of Eden will some

be replicated, and once more bread will grow from the

day . f h . I

round. Were It not or t e potentia error of merging the final g m of ha'olam (the word preceding motsi in the benediction)

me .

'th the initial mem of motsl-our text concludes-we would

WI . h d

. deed be duty-bound to omIt t e efinite article and use that

~:rm which anticipates future deliverance.

Further evidence for the salvational usage assigned to bread comes from the Lord's Prayer. Though it is beyond the scope of this paper to deal fully with the relationship of this early Christian prayer to its Jewish equivalent, the Kaddish, our purposes require our spending a moment on the phrase, "Give us this day our daily bread.'>37 Scholars have noted that the initial paragraph of the Kaddish parallels the opening of the Lord's Prayer, both being prayers for the speedy coming of the Kingdom.38 But the Lord's Prayer then apparently di­verges from this central eschatological theme by adding a number of additional petitions: daily bread, forgiveness, and freedom from temptation. The last two petitions, however, are clearly related to deliverance, since sin is the stumbling block to salvation. We are left, then, with the request for daily bread as the sale divergence from the main theme. But once it is realized that bread is salvational in overtone, even this appar­ently irrelevant insertion in the prayer is revealed as an ac­tual restatement of the basic idea itself. And, as a matter of fact, this is exactly how the early church understood it. The Greek, epiousion, is rendered by the Didache as "supernatural bread";39 Jerome calls it "bread for the morrow,,;40 Ambrose calls it "bread for the kingdom," and adds, "that is not the bread that enters the body, but the bread of eternallife.,,41~o ?ur Christian sources agree with the Jewish counterparts 10 Identifying bread as a symbol of deliverance.

. We can summarize the matter so far by saying that some­

\time in the first century this symbolic attribute of bread was

tra~sferred to matsah, and when the pesach, itself an age-old

deliverance symbol ceased niatsah took its place. The laws

regulating the eati~g of th~ pesach were accordingly applied

LAWRENCE A. HOFFMAN

to the consuming of matsah, and, since one such law was th

. d· at

a piece of the pesach be eaten Iast, It was eClded that a piece of matsah, k'zayit in bulk, be consumed at the end of the meal. This now became known as the afikoman.

With this background in mind, the other rituals and prayers connected with matsah fall into place. They too relate to the new understanding of matsah as a symbol of deliverance.

Consider, for example, the distribution of matsah during the seder. Though tradition is by no means unanimous on the sub­ject,42 our customary ritual specifies the utilization of three matsot to be divided in a specific way. At the beginning of the evening, one piece is broken in two, one half being set aside for the afikoman, and the other being returned to the plate. Of the two and one-half pieces now remaining on the plate, a whole one, or sh'lemah, is used for the motsi, the benediction over bread; the half, or p'rusah, is accompanied by the bless­ing over matsah; and the remaining whole one is generally used for korekh, the "Hillel sandwich." Both the number of matsot-three-and the allotment of them during the seder constituted with some minor differences the old Babylonian custom.43 The Palestinians differed in that they used only two pieces of matsah to begin with.44 The origin of the "Hillel sandwich" is generally explained by the story of Hillel, who, we are told, took liter~lly the biblical commandment to eat the pesach together with the matsah and maror 45 and therefore "used to combine all three of them together' and eat them.,,46 But the sages differed with him, so it became customary to fol­lo~ both the sages' habit of eating each food separately (along wIth the blessings involved), and also Hillel's habit of eating t?em all together (though without a repetition of the benedic­tions). So today, after we eat matsah and maror individually, we then combine them in a sandwich.

But whence the custom of a sandwich? Hillel had none.

Of his two matsot-he followed the Pale~tinian practice, of

c~urse-he must have used one piece for the motsi, and then­

sl~ce no matsah was used as afikoman in his day-he put a

slIce of pesach together with some maror on the second piece,

A SYMBOL rN THE SEDER

fulfill the commandment of eating matsah. But he did not ~~mbine two pieces of ~atsah to ~ake a san~wich, as we do. How then did the practice of maklOg a sandWIch arise?

The mystery disappears when one realizes that matsah, as a symbol of deliverance, to~k the place of the pesach after 70. Whereas Hillel could combme pesaeh, matsah, and maror, Jews after 70 had only matsah and maror available to them. So they took an extra piece of matsah, and now, with maror, matsah

ua matsah, and matsah qua pesaeh, they had a sandwich. UI­;imately, when the Babylonian practice of including a third piece of matsah on the seder plate became usual, this extra

47

piece came to be reserved for the purpose.

We can now turn to the seder's introductory reference to matsah, the recitation of ha laehma anya, "Behold the bread of affliction." Scholarly opinion on this prayer is summarized by Goldschmidt, who concludes that although the prayer in its present form is obviously a late combination of three-and in some rituals, four-independent formulas, an original proto­typical introduction forming the nucleus of our version can be posited for the period of the second commonwealth.48 The ex­istence of a pre-70 version is predicated both on linguistic grounds and on the inclusion in the penultimate line of what appears to be an invitation to join in offering a genuine pas­challamb (yifsaeh).49

Strangely enough, this scholarly consensus on the existence of such an early original version exists despite the fact that the prayer is found in no tannaitic sources, nor even in the Yerushalmi. The earliest possible reference to it is the Babli's recollection of Rav Huna's custom of opening the door "when he wrapped bread and inviting wayfarers to dine with hi~ by saying kol man dits 'rikh leitei v'yeikhul, "Let all who are m need come and eat,,·50 and even this is by no means a direct citation of ha laehm~ anya, at least not any version known to us, unless one assumes that Rav Huna deliberately transposed the verbs and changed the dialect from the Palestinian to the Babylonian.51 Scholars however, have generally assumed that Rav Huna was referri~g to our ha laehma anya, and, partly

I

•

LAWRENCE A HOFF

120 . IvtAN

because he used it regularly as an invitation to the Poor th

. . . , eyhave further assumed that suc h an InVItation was the pray ,

~ ~s

origip.al function on Passover.'

But let us analyze the incident of Rav Huna more cloSel As to the date of our prayer's origin, what evidence is the~ that Rav Huna was quoting an already existent prayer? Per­haps it was the other .way around, Rav Huna's .good deed being drawn on as a paradIgm for a later prayer. GIven the absence

of evidence in Palestinian sources, and the uncertain nature

of the Babli narrative, the assumption of a tannaitic ha lachma

anya is at least open to question and ought to require further

evidence of another nature before being taken as certain. Sec­

ondly, as to the function of the prayer, even if we grant that

Rav Huna was quoting an earlier prayer which he understood

to be an invitation to the poor, it still does not follow that the

prayer was composed for that original purpose.

Regarding the first question, I am inclined, nevertheless, to

accept a theory of first-century composition. I do so because

of external evidence from what we may consider unofficial li­

turgical sources. Students of ritual have long been aware that

the actual extent of available custom is not represented in

the Mishnah, say, or even the Tosefta or the Yerushalmi. These

books r~present only an isolated segment of contemporary us­

age. To Judge by the Babli, for example, we would have no idea

~f t?e ~ctual art of the synagogue, as archaeology has revealed

It. SImIlarly, none of the official tannaitic or amoraic texts give

us at·

rue estImate of the rnerkavah mystics or the range of p~pular superstition. It may be that official ritual did not con­tam ~ ha lachma anya; but unofficial ritual did even though-

as WIth the fifth f " '.

. . cup 0 WIne WhICh was champlOned by a certam segment of bb" " .

. ra miC 0pIOlon but omItted from the

MIshnah-the h l h ' .

'. a ac rna anya was not accepted Into the

offiCIal lIturgy of th d 53 U e se er. nfortunately we lack an abun­

dance of unofficial I"t . ' .

I urglcal texts from the tannaitic penod,b

ut we do have ev'd f

. I 1 ence rom a later time which in this case, IS a most as good: the genizah fragments. '

In .the Haggadah texts published by Abrahams ha [achma

anya IS to be fo d' f '

un In ragments two and twelve.54 Though it

OL IN THE S EDER

121

A SYMB

. that fragment twelve may reflect Babylonian usage, and

IS true . d h

h oretically be Viewe as an outgrowt of the Rav Huna

may t e .

've from the Babh, fragment two follows the threefold

narrat1 .' .

. . . n of "Four" QuestlOns tYPIcal of the Palestinian recen­

diVISIO d h . d' h'

. of the Mishnah, an t us In Icates t at m at least some

Sian . h I h .

Palestinian congregatlOns a .ac ~aanya was reCIted. It there-

formed part of the Haggadah In both Palestine and Baby-

f

are . h f h

Now it is unlikely that elt er 0 t ese two communities

Ion. , . . borrowed a prayer belongmg to the ntual of the other, since the known cases of this are few and are generally accompa­nied by polemical literature of the parties involved.55 We must, therefore, posit the passage's origins in a period that antedates the development of two alternative rites. Though this need not be as early as the first century, it is at least sometime in the tannaitic age, and we may certainly conclude that the absence of ha lachma anya in pre-geonic Palestinian sources in no way demonstrates a late Babylonian dating. So we have no reason to reject early dating, particularly, as we must now demon­strate, since such an early origin accords well with the theory that matsah was a symbol of salvation at the time. The assumption that ha lachma anya was merely an invita­tion to the poor, devoid of further symbolism, entails some problems. WhY~J200.L.~~.2ll.!g .b~ve ll~n_si.~le~~~~t., asl..<!.~__, . from obvious humanitarian reasons,. is_not cleJ!r, s~nce. Vie .g~t.~-.

~

.---,---,-, -.. .-...-­~~i~v~t.~~~£oo!.JQ sh~lf~_in_.all tl?-t: o_ther.~i~~v~~~~,nd ev~n If we assume the seder to have been of such monumental sig­nificance that the poor had to be included, as the Mishnah it­self may suggest (Pes. 10:1), the use of the word v'yi!sach (lit­erally, "let him offer a Passover sacrifice" or pesach) remains problematic. If the invitation dates from cultic times, we have the problem that it should have been recited before the pesach was slaughtered, since the law obligated those who ate it as ~ group to have already constituted a group at the time of Its sacrifice. And, if it was composed after 70, and the word v'yi!sach was taken metaphorically as an allusion to the whole ~a.ssover meal to which the poor were being invited, why ~as It Inserted in the proceedings after the Kiddush (the opemng Pr· . . d f b fore?S6

ayer that maugurates the day's sanctity) mstea 0 e .

..

LAWRENCE A. HOFFMAN

In other words, not only must we explain why such an invita_ tion to the poor existed at all, we must also explain its rathe strange location in the Haggadah t~xt. Again, the assumptio~ that the matsah was by now a salvatiOnal symbol equivalent to the pesach alleviates these difficulties, since it allows us to ar­rive at an altogether different notion of how this passage func­

tioned in the first place.

We know from both Josephus and the Rabbis that the pas­

challamb was sacrificed in companies and then eaten by those

who offered it.57 The Tosefta states clearly that only those who

were numbered among the original company could participate

in the feast.58 Because original ownership of the animal was

vital, the Mishnah even records a legal formula meant to fa­

cilitate joint participation in a single offering of debated own­

ership.59 Since the seder was a feast of celebrants organized

into companies, we can imagine the care that was taken to en­

sure that those present were legally entitled to consider them­

selves members of the fellowship.

Ha lachma anya is not an invitation to outsiders to enter the

group, but a formula of inclusion by which all those already

present-not just the poor-were made to constitute a com­

pany. We may date it just after the destruction of the Temple,

and understand it as an inclusionary formula adopted as a re­

placement of the one which would have been said were the cult

stilI a living reality. Thus, just as before, those present were in­

vited to consider themselves a legal company. Though there

was no pesach any more, there was rnatsah, and rnatsah was the

equivalent of the pesach. So the leader began the passage with

a reference to the matsah, perhaps holding it aloft. Since the

wh?le point of the seder was a recollection of the Egyptian

del~verance, both in itself and in its role of paradigmatic sal­

vatIOn for the future, the term for rnatsah used in the relevant

biblical narrative, lechem oni ("bread of affliction"), was em­

ployed. The meal was still held first, and our formula was

placed at that juncture where the pesach would have been

~at~n, ~ut not before Kiddush, since no new guests were be­

mg mVlted. Those who were already present were simply being

asked to formulate themselves as a company in the presence

A SYMBOL IN THE SEDER

the surrogate for the pesach. And since moreover

ofmatsah , . ' ,

. was a formula, not a prayer per se, It was spoken in the

thiS . vernacular, AramaiC. The absence of early texts does not enable us to say for sure which of the several lines. in our prayer were there from the be­ginning. However, there IS no rea~on to ~OU?t that, aside from the reference to a return from exIle, which IS an obvious later expansion of the theme, the passage wa~ not much different than it is today. We have (1) a reference (m the Yemenite rite, and going back at least as far as Maimonides) to the deliver­ance of old;60 (2) a reference to the lechern oni which our an­cestors ate; (3) an invitation to constitute a company, with an explicit mention of the pesach; and (4) a prayer for deliverance anew. In this collection of interdependent lines, whatever their original order, we have all the links in the new symbolism: rec­ollection of the old deliverance and anticipation of the new; the pesach as the original symbol of salvation, and its novel surrogate, rnatsah. Thus, matsah was used as a salvational symbol. It was held aloft as the seder began, precisely at that point where the lamb had been brought; and around it participants were constituted as a legal company, just as would have been required for a pas­challamb. Just as a piece of rnatsah here took the place of the lamb, so, elsewhere, it was selected to replace the pesach in the fashioning of the Hillel "sandwich." And when the ritual con­cluded, it was rnatsah in place of the paschal offering that was eaten last. That rnatsah took the place of the pesach and was sur­rounded by legalities hitherto applicable only to that offer­ing is, I think, easily established by the evidence I have put forward. But I have argued further that the choice of matsah rather than some other item on the seder plate was not a hap­hazard event. It followed from the fact that bread was already a salvational symbol in the common imagination. The use of bread as a symbol in both the Lord's Supper and in the early seder should be seen as two sides of the same coin. Jesus spoke directly to the Jewish context of his listeners. What else should symbolize the body of the new Lamb if not bread?

LAWRENCE A. HOFFMAN

Moreover, I think we err in over-rationalizing the symbOlic suggestions of matsah in thos.e formative years. ~cholarship has been too willing to paint a picture of a normative Jewish Com­munity that was spiritually stultifie~, congenitally unable to appreciate the religious moment. T.hls woul~ be a Jewish com­munity that did not take the promIse of dehverance seriously. That may indeed be the problem of secularized twentieth_ century Americans, but it surely was not a difficulty for the tannaim. The Mishnah is full of rituals which make no sense at all if we assume Jews approached their religious life with serene philosophical detachment. Only the contrary assump­tion, that Jews believed the Temple cult operated with neces­sary cosmic implications, can explain such matters as the in­tense preoccupation with the proper order of cultic minutiae,61 the preparation of the High Priest on Yom Kippur,62 and the care taken by him to say only a short prayer in the Holy of Holies, "lest he terrify Israel."63 It is similarly difficult to attach only metaphorical importance to such matters as criteria gov­erning the choice of a precentor for the fast day prayers,64 the activity of Honi Ham'agel,65 and rituals like the red heifer and the eglah arufah. 66 So, with the matsah, there seems no reason to deny that its redemptive symbolism was experienced imme­diately and deeply by those present.

We should see ha lachma anya, "Behold the bread of afflic­tion," as an obvious Jewish parallel to the institution of the Lord's Supper. IfChristians could hold up the bread of redemp­tion that was the body of Christ, their own paschal lamb, why should it be so hard to picture Jews doing the same thing with the bread that was simultaneously their own pesach and de­claring kol dikhfin yeitei v'yeikhul; kol ditsrikh yeitei v'yiJsach: that is, "Let all who hunger come and eat; all who are in need [of salvation] come and offer a pesach"? Perhaps their very action of constituting a sacrificial company would hasten the day of deliverance. As Rabbi Joshua himself said of Passover e~e, "On that night they were redeemed, and on that night they wIll be redeemed in the future."67

So the seder, from its very inception, was imbued with the

A SYMBOL IN THE SEDER

hope of imminent deliverance . .Matsah as a surrogate for the sach recalled the past and pomted to the future. Eventu II

pe b l' I " . a y

its salvational sym 0 Ism ost Its ImmedIacy, while other sym­bols were adopted in its place. What has been demonstrated here with rega~d to matsah c~uld be shown to be the case in later ages WIth such novel ntuals as opening the door for Elijah, concluding the seder with "Next year in Jerusalem," re­citing piyyutim which glorify the historic role of leit shimurim "the night of watching," and even reviving the fifth cup and associating it with Elijah. But the first such symbol of salvation was matsah, and it set the salvational tone of the seder for gen­erations to come.

NOTES

This essay was published originally as "A Symbol of Salvation in the Passover Haggadah," Worship 53, no. 6 (1979): 519-37.

1. Shibbo/ei Ha/eket, ed. Solomon Buber (1887;reprint ed.,Jeru­

salem, 1962), p. 188. ? 2. Tur, 0. H., #472, 477, 478.

3.

Sha'arei T 'shuvah, ed. W. Leiter (New York, 1946), #222.

4.

T'shuvot Hageonim, ed. S. Assaf (Jerusalem, 1942), #37.

5.

The Ashkenazim continued to see the Haggadah as salva­tional, but by their time the symbolism was different. Their interest became leil shimurim, the cup of Elijah, and an imminent return from exile. Cf. Rokeach, Hi/khot Pesach, #291; and references by Eugene Mihaly, "The Passover Haggadah as PaRaDiSe," CCAR ]ournal13, no. 5 (April 1960): 26-27, n. 118. For evidence of this pre­ponderant concern from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, see especially the art of the medieval illuminated manuscripts. Cf. Joseph Gutmann, "The Illuminated Medieval Passover Haggadah: Investigations and Research Problems," Studies in Bibliography and Booklore 7 (1965): 3-26; Mendel Metzger, La Haggada Enluminee

(Leiden, 1973). . 6. Mekhilta, ed. Horowitz (Jerusalem, 1960), Bo, p. 64. "The first D1ght it is obligatory; the rest of the days it is a matter of choice."

7. M. Pes.lO:l. The source here does not explicitly state that mat­sah Was the object of the prohibition, but we may assume that to be

LAWRENCE A. HOFFMAN

the case, since if ordinary leavened .food were the issue, the law would have stated the point at which eatmg must cease, not when it might

commence.

8.

P. Pes. 10:1.

9.

Though not all these laws are specified in tannaitic texts, they are all assumed by the amoraim and by authorities thereafter. As such, they have become an integral part of the codes and of Our seder today. The Mishnah's failure to stipulate them is due in part to the fact that much of this symbolic development occurred on a popular level and was not immediately stamped with authoritative approval. But no amora ever questions the validity of these customs, and state­ments of them go unchallenged just as if they were based on official recensions of tannaitic law.

10.

Cf. Mihaly, "The Passover Haggadah," p. 26; and Solomon Zeitlin, "The Liturgy of the First Night of Passover," IQR, n.s., 38 (1947 11948): 456. Both authors discuss this salvational symbolism, but Zeitlin understands it as referring specifically to physical deliv­erance, while Mihaly calls matsah "the food of inner spiritual libera­tion."

11.

M. Pes. 10:8.

12.

Pes. 119b; P. Pes. 10:4, 6.

13.

Pes. 119b;P. Pes. 10:4.The Yerushalmi cites this as an explana­tory note to the answer given the foolish son. The Mekhilta lacks it. Cf. Mekhilta, ed. Horowitz, Bo, p. 73.

14.

Pes. 119b. Bahr thinks it means simply dessert, but does not account for other interpretations in rabbinic literature. See "The Seder of Passover and the Eucharistic Words," Novum Testamentum 12 (1970).

15.

P. Pes. 10:6.

16.

See, for example, Ben Yehudah, Thesaurus 1:348, n. 5.

17.

M. Pes. 10:7, 8.

18.

T. Pes. 10:11.

19.

P. Pes. 10:6.

20.

S. Stein, "The Influence of Symposia Literature on the Liter­ary Form of the Pesach Haggadah," lIS 8 (1957): 2l.

21.

1 Cor. 11:20,27.

22.

Perhaps epi komon. See Ben Yehudah, Thesaurus 1:348. Daube (He That.Cometh [London, 1966]) takes issue with this etymology and suggests IDstead afikomenos ="the coming one," a messianic symbol

(p. 14~. The alternative, epi komon, meaning "off to a crawl," he ar­gues, IS absurd (p. 8). But on purely etymological grounds neither is

A SYMBOL IN THE SEDER

preferable, and epi komon need not .mea~ simply "off to a cr~!." be prefers afikomenos because, pnmanly, the matsah as a{;~

DaU d h·· . ~. oman

is tsafun == hidden away, an t IS Imphes the doctrine of a hidden messiah whom we aw~it. I prefer translating afikoman as after-dinner carousing since (a) thiS accounts for all the Talmudic interpretations: music, dessert, and going from house to house; (b) such carousing is documented in Jewish, Christian, and pagan sources of the time.

(c) it need not imply that the ein maftirin phrase of the Mishnah i~ an "arcane pronouncement" intended for the wise, as Daube would have it (p. 9); this is a doubtful hypothesis, since the parallel text in the Palestinian Tal.mud utilize~ this as an answer to the simple, not the wise! and (d) It allows an IDterpretation of the afikoman be­fore the time when the word became equivalent to a piece of matsah, whereas emphasizing tsaf un ("hidden away") does not.

23.

Pes. 119b / 120a.

24.

T. Pes. 5:2, 13.

25.

M. Pes. 8:7; T. Pes. 7:6. Cf. P. Pes. 5:3 where, regarding the pe­sach, the Mishnah's phrase, shelo l'okhlav, is interpreted as she'einan y'kholin le'ekhol k'zayit.

26.

T. Pes. 5:3.

27.

See notes 1-4 above.

28.

P. Pes. 8:1; P. Kid. 1:7.

29.

T. Pes. 1:32. The Tosefta already equated afikoman with rnat­soh, not revelry. The amoraic search for an interpretation of ein rna/tirin .. . afikoman is no evidence that they did not know of a final piece of matsah as afikoman. Their concern was not the final piece of rnatsah which they took for granted, but the original intent of the mishnaic ordinance, which might have carried additional conse­quence for them. In fact, that so many of them interpret the clause as a prohibition against additional eating is a clear indication that by their time afikoman was matsah, something one ate.

30.

1 Cor. 11: 23-26.

. 31. There is no need here to enter extensively into the peren­Dial complex of questions regarding the relationship of Mark 14 to 1 Corinthians 11; the debate as to whether or not the Last Supper was originally a seder· the stage of development of the theological iden­

tifi '

. . cation of Jesus as the Lamb of God, and so on. For our purposes It IS enough to note that in his letter to the Corinthians, Paul neither specifies a seder nor use~ the word for matsah. On the other hand, in 1 Corinthians 5:7, Christ is already called "our Passover, sacrificed

for Us " d . h·d of

, an verse 8 specifically connects the feast With tel eas

a

LAWRENCE A. HOFFMAN

'unleaven'ment. So the salvat~onallin~ between J~us' body and the pesach is present in Paul, as IS th.e pn?r connectIOn between Jesus' body and bread, though the speCIficatIOn of a seder and the notion that Jesus would have used matsah may or may not have been so early. The scholarship on the question is vas~, but see the bibliog_ raphy in the International Dictionary of ~he BIble, s .. v. "Lamb," "Last Supper," and "Lord's Supper," and espeCIally, Joachl~ Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words ofJes/lS (New York, 1966). The vIew that Jesus is the pesach reaches its zenith in John, where the date of the cruci­fixion is given as the 14th of Nisan, the date when the pesach would have been offered. From then on, the church fathers seem to assume Jesus' death to be functionally equivalent to the Passover sacrifice. See, for example, Justin Martyr, Apology 1, 66:3, cited in Zeitlin,

"The Liturgy of the First Night of Passover," p. 446. "For the Pascha was Christ afterward sacrificed . ... As the blood of the Passover saved us who were in Egypt, so also the blood of Christ will deliver those who have believed from death."

32.

Though the symbol of wine is technically outside the scope of this paper, mention should be made of its role in the symbolic system. Rabbi Tarfon's fifth cup may have already been viewed as a reference to future redemption, and a parallel redemptive role can be seen in the wine mentioned in the Lord's Supper narrative (1 Cor. 11:25; Mark 14:24). The New Testament's connection between wine and blood is echoed by the Yerushalmi's statement that charoset, made with wine, is zecher ledam (P. Pes. 10:3), and even by the Bible, where wine is dam anavim (Gen. 49:11). Cf. Zeitlin, "The Liturgy of the First Night of Passover," pp. 437-38, where this aspect of charoset is discussed. Note, too, that it was the blood of the paschal lamb, smeared on the door posts, that saved, and the blood of Christ that marks the new salvation for Christians. Even the instruction, "Do this in remembrance of me" (1 Cor. 11:24), may have a parallel in the usual phrase from the kiddush, zekher litzi'at mitzrayim ("in remem­brance of the Exodus from Egypt"), the latter pointing to the para­digmatic redemptive event for Jews, the former to that for Christians. A study of the rabbinic use of the word zekher, as in the halakhic technical term zekher ladavar, certainly indicates a symbolic "point­ing towards" rather than mere remembrance. For a perspective link­ing Jesus' words with Hillel's practice, see Jakob Petuchowski, "Do This In Remembrance of Me," JBL 76 (1957): 293-98.

33.

Pes. 120a. The biblical verse is Num. 9:11.

A SYMBOL IN THE SEDER

129

34. Mihaly, "The Passover Haggadah," pp. 26-27.

35. B. R. 15:7.

36.

B. R. lS:7, Ber. 38a / b.

37.

Matt. 6:11; Luke 11:3.

38.

See David de Sola Pool, The Kaddish (New York, 1929), ap­pendix 0, pp. 111-12.

39.

Didache, chap 8.

40.

Jerome, Commentary on Matthew 6:1l.

41.

Ambrose, Sacraments 4:5.

42.

The rishonim, trying to harmonize a variety of legal consid­erations culled from both Babylonian and Palestinian tradition, in­vented several options in the utilization of matsah. See the lengthy discussion in the Tw; 0. H ., #475 /476. But these variations in no way prevent our reconstruction of earlier practice, which emerges as be­ing basically identical to our custom today.

43.

Cf. responsa by Moses Gaon in Otsa,. Hageonim, ed. B. M. Lewin (Pes. #340; Natronai Gaon in Sha'arei T'shuvah, ed. W. Leiter, #280; and Amram Gaon in Seder Rav Amram, ed. Daniel Gold­schmidt (Jerusalem, 1971), p. 116. See also an attempt to justify the Babylonia custom vis-a-vis the Palestinian counterpart in Olsar Hageonim, Pes. #326. They insisted on following Rav Papa's prece­dent (Ber. 39a) of saying the motsi with both p'rusah and sh'lemah in hand, though the p'rusah was referred to the second benediction, so nothing was eaten until after both blessings had been recited. Cf. Louis Ginzberg, Geonica (New York, 1909), 2:179, and references there, especially, Shaarei Simchah, ed. Bamberger (Furth, 1961),

2:103.

44.

Cf. Olsar Chilluf Minhagim bein Anshei Mizrach llv'nei Erels Yisrael, ed. B. M. Lewin (Jerusalem, 1942), #21; Haggadah Sh'lemah, ed. M. Kasher (Jerusalem, 1961), pp. 61-62.

45.

Num.9:1l.

46.

T. Pes. 2:14. .47. The geonim do not seem to have specified this use for the thIrd malsah yet. Sherira, the only gaon who devotes some space to What he does with it, says that he reserves it for birkat hamazon (the after-dinner Grace) because of the Talmudic adage (San. 92a), "One who leaves no bread on his table will never see a sign of blessing." ~o.he, like his predecessors, used the same matsah both for the ma­

Jonty practice and for Hillel's korekh. Sherira's explanation is part of his justification of the Babylonian usage of the matsot, in the face

LAWRENCE A HOFF

130 . MAN

of Kairuwan Jewry's recognition that Palestinian Jewry used

. '1 N h Af . . only

two. Aifasi, coming fr~~l a smu ar ort nca~ environment, later ruled with the Palestmlans that two were sufficient.

48.

Daniel Goldschmidt, Haggadah Shel Pesach V 'loldoteha (Je­rusalem, 1960), pp. 7-9.

49.

Cf. Leopold Zunz, Had'rashol B'yisrae/, 1892, trans. Chanoch Albeck (Jerusalem, 1947), p. 61; The Passover Haggadah, ed. N. Glatzer (New York, 1953), p. 20.

50.

Tann. 20b. The next source, chronologically, is a geonic re­sponsum of the ninth century, which, however, described the prayer as ancient, minhag avol. (Olsar Hageonim, ed. Lewin, Pes. #304).

51.

Stein, "The Influence of Symposia Literature," p. 30.

52.

Stein, ibid., p. 31, for example, assuming that the prayer was an invitation to the poor, is led to celebrate "the popular element (within Judaism) represented by the wide opening of doors, as ex­pressed in the kol dikhfin. ... " But he himself says that the Greco­Roman banquets from which the seder evolved knew no such invita­tion to the masses. The hypothesis that the Jewish equivalent, the seder, adopted such a democratic character, is pure speculation.

53.

Goldschmidt is aware of this unofficial origin, and labels the passage "the custom of the people, not a legal decision of the sages." See Goldschmidt, Haggadah Shel Pesach V 'loldoteha, p. 9.

54.

Israel Abrahams, "Some Egyptian Fragments of the Passover Haggada," JQR 10 (1898): 44,50. The evidence from other fragments is not unanimous, but this is to be expected, since our passage was at most an unofficial option. Thus, fragment ten (p. 49), though not complete, seems as it stands to lack ha lachma anya, as does the frag­ment published by Goldschmidt, Haggadah Shel Pesach V'toldoleha,

p. 77. The other fragments do not begin until midway through the Haggadah, and thus offer no evidence either way.

55.

The K'dushah and the problem of payyetanic insertions in the t'fillah are cases in point. Cf. Louis Ginzberg, Ginze Schechter (New York, 1923),2:552-55, and Olsar Hageonim, ed. Lewin, Ber. #169.

56.

See discussion by Goldschmidt, Haggadah Shel Pesach V'lol­dOleha, pp.8-9.

57.

Josephus, Ant. 3:10; Mekhilta, ed. Horowitz, Bo, p. 254.

58.

T. Pes. 5:2.

59.

M. Pes. 1:9, 10.

60. Cf. Goldschmidt, Haggadah Shel Pesach V'loldoteha, p. 8;

Kasher, Haggadah Sh'lemah, introduction, p. 106, and Haggadah text, p.4.

A SYMBOL IN THE SEDER

M. yoma 5:7. "If the actions were performed out of 0 d .

61 . " r er, It . 'f nothing had been done at all.

IS as I

62.

M. Yoma, chap. 1.

63.

M. Yoma, 5:1.

64.

M. Taan. 2:2.

65.

M. Taan. 3:8.

66.

M. Parah, chap. 3; M. Sotah, chap. 9

67.

Mekhilta, ed. Horowitz, Bo, p. 52.

Haggadah Art

JOSEPH GUTMANN

Three distinct traditions of Haggadah illumination had de­

veloped by the early fourteenth century in Latin Europe: the

Sefardi (Spain and Southern France), the Ashkenazi (Ger­

many, Northern France, and Northern Italy), and the Italian.

Before the fourteenth century only stylized symbolic sketches

of the maror leaf and matsah are encountered, in eleventh-to

twelfth-century manuscript pages from the Cairo Genizah. As

a rule, ~aggadahs produced in Islamic countries were not il­

lustrated. It· .. " : ~. ," -;. (

-~

..,. , ........... The Haggadah as an indep~nd~nt illustrated book may have-been stimulated by the contemporary emergence of private LatinJiturgical books such as the Psalter and Breviary. By th~ _thirteenth century monas teries no longer had amonopoly on _~o~k prod~tion. The social and economic growth of town li"fe in Europe: the rise of universities, and the emergence of a new burgher class spurred an increasing demand for private Chris­tian illuminated books, a demand met by lay artists in the

n~wly established craft guilds. !.he Haggadah, along ~i!?~

~lble and Machzor, became for Jews in contem oreir Europe

~ favorite t.ext for illustr-ation. ----­

The Haggad~h illust~ations form a visual accompaniment to t~e.recitation of the Passover seder liturgy. The picture cy­cle IS 10 some sense a sacred repetition a visual reenactment, of the !ewish communal past, present,' and future. The Hag­gadah,1O most periods, was not intended for the synagogue but f~r the assembled family participating in the seder~The m~­cheval J1:agg~dah_wa~. ofl~!!.com~_is~i0f!e~'-py ~~alt!J.Y)I!~ivid~ als and made t~r t!J.~lr_pr!vate use. Often the Haggadah manu­

132

133

. t shared the fate of their Jewish owners wandering from

scnp s ' .

d to land, frequently far removed from theIr place of ori-

Ian h f . -,~

gin. They became t e ?roperty 0 . p~lvate JUdaic~ collectors '"' \_ d at times were acqUIred by ChnstIan monastenes and pri-_.,./--'

an -'T1 d U .

te Christian collectIOns-1.0 ay, many outstanding Haggadah'" ) W d-Jd'

manuscripts are foun III great u alca collections like the n British Library in Lond?n, .the Bodleian Library in Oxford, e,/ '''-' and the Biblioteca PalatIlla III Parma, Italy.

For the most part, the ex_t.ant ~~ggad~_manuscripts were de~d by Christ0 ns, ~~ ~he. craft guilds-~e-ie-geneially-'­closed to Jews, who, with few exceptions, were unable-rool5t1lin .. th~ requisite artistic traini~g. Thus it is ~_ot surprising that the -­format of the Haggadah is similar to that of Chnstlanservice bo~s-and t-hat their decorations f611ow--tb'-eCliristta'n-artlstlc ~onventions of the late Ron:an~~<lue, G_othic, a-nd ReIlalssance styles. Distinctly Chris!~~ mot,ifs such as halos, female angels, and hands bestowinlL!he _Christian benediction a so appear. The very Hebrew script itself at times takes on the contours of the Gothic and Renaissance scripts. In spite of the brutal persecutions of Jews, the illustrations unmistakably spell out the intimate bond between Jewish and Christian societies in Europe, and reveal the strong impress of the Christian milieu.

Over fifty fourteenth-and fifteenth-century illustrated Haggadah manuscripts are extant. Many of the Spanish and Ashkenazi Haggadah manuscripts have appeared in facsim­ile editions.l In addition, a catalogue raisonne of Spanish Haggadah manuscripts in the British Library and a catalogue raisonne of most liturgical and biblical images have been pub­lished,2 but in this article, I have avoided using names assigned ~o Haggadah manuscripts in the British Library catalogue and 10 recent pUblications. Such labels as "Sister of the Golden Haggadah," "Brother" to the Rylands Spanish Haggadah, and

"D

. ragan Haggadah" are largely misleading and somewhat ar­bitrary.3. Despite these extensive publications, many research problems remain, as very few Haggadah manuscripts are dated. In order conclusively to determine the artist, the locale, and the date of the miniatures in Haggadah manuscripts, it is necessary to examine contemporary Christian manuscript illuminations.

134

Other vital questions, too, await satisfactory solutions. We are not altogether sure, for instance, even of ~hen, ~h~re, and Why the illustrated Haggadah first emerged In Chnstlan Wester

n

Europe, and how the production of Christian private bOOk influenced the appearance of private Jewish ones. s

As a summary statement of what we do know and what we do not, I will isolate several major issues that have exercised researchers since the study of illustrated manuscripts began.

1. Were the medieval Haggadah miniatures dependent on an­cient, but now lost Jewish manuscripts?

This issue has been much debated in recent years. Some scholars have claimed that medieval Haggadah illustrations may be based on now lost illustrated Jewish manuscripts from Greco-Roman antiquity. This attractive theory was tena­ciously advocated by the late Kurt Weitzmann and his disci­ples, but the possibility that illustrated Septuagint scrolls and/ or illustrated Josephus manuscripts existed and were em­ployed as models by Jews and later by Christians is, at the pres­ent state of our knowledge, no more than an argumentum ex silentio, with little actual evidence to substantiate it. We have yet to find an ancient Greco-Roman manuscript that contains

a. full cycle of illustrations to accompany a literary text. An­CIent textual sources make no mention of extensive illustrated classical texts. While it is true that illustrated Christian manu­scripts served as significant sources of inspiration for medieval chur~h cycles, whether executed in stone, mosaic, or paint, nothmg p~rallel is known in Greco-Roman antiquity.

~ooks, It must be pointed out, played a different role in the JewIsh and Christian traditions from what had obtained in the Greco-Roman world. No Greco-Roman book to the best of ~y ~nowledge, was ever canonized or consid~red a divinely

mspued " I

. . spmtua vehicle. Thus no book similar to the canon-Ized BIble of the Je . h d " d

Th . WIS an Chnstlan worlds ever emerge . 'l~ b~ok m the GrecO-Roman civilization was primarily a

u I Itanan obiect t t d

• J,no a conveyor of holy words. Since it serve

a practical purpose "

. ,wntmg and/or reading the book was not

considered an act of I" .

re IglOuS ment and could be assigned to

BAGGADAH ART

135

slaves and others of low status. Rhetoric, not reading or writ­. g was praised as the preferred mode of communication for

10 , .•

eaple of high status. Fresco pamtmg rather than manuscript ~lustration was very popular in the Greco-Roman period, as is certainly evident in the amazing painting cycle which ap­pears in the Dura-Europos synagogue. To argue, however, that the depictions are based on lost manuscript illustrations by drawing superficial comparisons with medieval depictions has oot proven convincing.

Let me cite one instance of an assumed relationship be­tween the Dura synagogue and medieval Haggadah manu­script illustration. In the Dura synagogue scene as well as in Spanish Haggadah manuscripts, a nude female figure is de­picted standing in a river. In both cases, the illustrations refer to Moses' rescue from the Nile river by the Egyptian prin­cess. Close examination of the Dura scene and the Spanish Haggadah illustrations quickly dissolves the apparent similar­ity. In the third-century Dura synagogue, the princess is hold­ing the child Moses and appears to be passing the child to Miriam and Jochebed. In the Spanish Haggadah manuscripts of the fourteenth century, no baby is being handed to another figure and usually three nude female figures are in the water. Aside from the fact that these illustrations are separated in time by over a thousand years, we find that they are based on different literary traditions. The Dura scene appears to illus­trate the Targum rendering of the story, which recounts that the princess, suffering from leprosy, was divinely persua~e~ to bathe in the Nile. She was miraculously cured of her affliction When she touched the basket containing Moses.

The medieval depictions bear little resemblan~e to t?e Dura scene, but are closely modeled on earlie~ S~amsh Chns­tian illustrations. Although the Christian artIstIC ~odels ~re on hand, I have been unable to find Christian or Jewls~ medIe­val literary sources to explain the renderings. What IS clear, however, is that the medieval Haggadah scenes are ba~ed on

. . I' I . common WIth the

Chr' Itt e 10

Ishan models and In fact have . f this scene and oth-

Dura synagogue painting. On the basIS a ..

t' stic tradItion can ers, no convincing claim of an unbroken ar 1

136

be established that would not only link the Jewish and Ch .

fls­

tian depictions to the Dura synagogue, but prove the ex'

. IS­tence of ancient Jewis~ manuscnpt.s that served as vehicles

of transmission. Most likely the artists at Dura and in oth

. . er Greco-Roman places worked from plctonal guides and not

from manuscript illustrations.4

2. What are some remaining probLems ofthose Haggadah manu­scripts that are aLready researched?

The earliest extant Ashkenazi Haggadah appears to be the .: ~-., Bird's Head Haggadah, probably made in the Rhineland re­, gion around i"3oo. The scribe was Menachem-;hut the artist is ­unknown. The illustrations are for the m()st part ioc atect in the

,L.           \ ~argins-a practice found in earlier Greek manuscripts and

/ '-'

,               -one that will continue in later Ash-kenazi Haggadahs:-The il­lustrations can roughly be arranged in three groups: (1) those that deal with historical events centering on the Exodus from Egypt; (2) those which depict ceremonial scenes such as the preparations for the Passover celebration, the baking of matsah, the washing of hands, the consumption of the sym­bolic foods, and the Kiddush blessings and drinking of the wine; and (3) a few illustrations that have eschatological sig­nificance. There are anomalies, however. Depictions common in later Ashkenazi Haggadah manuscripts such as the rescue of Moses and the Ten Plagues are absent. Some scenes are very unusual, such as carrying the dough during the Exodus, and Moses handing the Israelites five tablets (alluding perhaps to the five books of Moses) instead of the customary two tab­lets of the Commandments. Whether some illustrations re­veal indirect influence by Byzantine models, or whether these Byzantine elements had already been absorbed in Latin manu­scri~ts and thus entered our Haggadah directly from these Latm sources, deserves investigation.

This Haggadah also contains such eschatological scenes as the "Entry of the Righteous into Paradise." Three bearded men are led by an angel through a gate probably illustrating the.verse, "This is the gate of the Lord ~he righteous may en­

ter It" (P I 118'   ' . .

sa m .20). Another scene shows a Gothic bUlldmg

HAGGADAH ART

labeled Jerusalem with a figure standing within it a d th

.' . Th '   n 0 ers

pomtmg to It. e meanmg of this depiction I'S n t t'

. 0 cer am, but It ~lay allude to the New Jerusalem or the Heavenly Jeru­salem. Our Haggadah is one of many manuscripts made in Ger­many betw~en 1250 ~nd 1350 which feature people with the faces of ~Dlmals. or birds: .:rhese~2.~halic figures have yet t~be satlsfactonly explamed. We note that Christian manu­scripts show the four evangelists with human-bodies and the ­heads of the~r respective symbolic ·anun~-,s. The meaning of t!1ese figures m Hebrew manuscripts is not clear, and the theo­ries o~e~ed to date are not convfndng.To-~E.at extent feg~i­"u~roscnptlOn. or fe~r of ~_e ima~~~~on of ChristTan prac­

o !lces, or Jewish cancature and self-deprecatIOn are involveaor-­

~ -,

whether the practice is rooted in mystical Judeo-Germa-fcpie­qsm or a combination of the above, is worthy of In-oepth-in-=-­vestigation.6

The Darmstadt Passover Haggadah, one of the best known German manuscripts, has been reproduced twice in facsimile editions. It is a unique Haggadah manuscript in that its minia­tures reveal few iconographic parallels to other extant pictorial cycles found in both earlier and later Haggadah manuscripts from medieval Germany. We look in vain for scenes depicting the preparations for the seder, the symbolic foods, or the bak­ing of the matsah; not even an illustration as common as the four sons-the wise son, the wicked son, the simple son, and the son unable to ask-appears next to the Hebrew words de­scribing the sons.7 The Exodus from Egypt and the building of the store-cities Pithom and Raamses are also absent. Were it not for the fine Hebrew script, we would be hard put to iden­tify this manuscript as distinctly Jewish. A full-page illustra­tion surrounding the text beginning with the words "pour out Your wrath" from Psalm 79:6 is shown.

Many German Haggadah manuscripts customarily depict the arrival of Elijah and/or the Messiah, but in the Darmstadt Haggadah we find a puzzling seder scene with nine men, only one of whom wears a pointed Jew's hat. The books on the table are closed. Flanking the seder in a rib-vaulted architectural

...

setting are women, each with an open book on her lap. The many interpretations given this and such other scenes as the Fountain of Youth and the Stag Hunt are not persuasive. All we know is that the Haggadah was written by Israel ben Meir of Heidelberg; its miniatures were probably made in an Upper Rhenish Christian workshop during the second quarter of the fifteenth century. In 1391 Jews were driven from Heidelberg, and the Haggadah text may have fallen into Christian hands. It is apparent that the illuminator had little or no knowledge of the Hebrew text and was unacquainted with any tradition of Haggadah illustration. Thus the Darmstadt Haggadah re­mains a fascinating and enigmatic manuscript.s

The Erna Michael Haggadah in the Israel Museum is pa­

leographically related to the Darmstadt Haggadah. Like sev­

eral other Ashkenazi Haggadah manuscripts of the fifteenth

century, it is large in format. Its text dates from early fifteenth­

century Germany, but I agree with the Metzgers that the "il­

luminations were either painted or heavily repainted in the

nineteenth century in a medieval style which is rather vague

where architecture, figures and costume are concerned.,,9

The Washington Haggadah is probably a German manu­

script made around 1478 and linked with Joel ben Simeon, a

Jewish scribe-artist who may have been born in Germany and

who settled in northern Italy. He may have had a workshop

where over fifteen manuscripts were produced during the sec­

ond half of the fifteenth century. Joel is extremely important.

We know the names of many centers of medieval Christian

manuscript production and are familiar with the names of

many medieval Jewish scribes, but we have little information

about centers of Hebrew manuscript production. Many medie­

val Jewish scribes are known to have sometimes traveled. Of

Jewish ~rtist-scribes, however, we have scant and disputable in­

formatIOn. Only the enigmatic Joel ben Simeon stands out. Yet

w.e cannot co~pletely account for the many variations in the signatures of hiS manuscripts. Sometimes Joel refers to himself ~s a scribe (soter), at other times as a copyist (lav/ar) or an art­IS.t (zayyar). We cannot fully explain why some manuscripts ob­vIOusly not written by Joel or his workshop still contain col-

Ii.\GG.-\ O.-\H .-\1<r 139

red p ':-l1 dr:,win~~ ,th~H ':<t',-'m I.'itl~l' l' (\) hdl.)lJl~ to hi ' workshop ~r 10 h:1Y':-";.";.'1. 1 lh'n.'('d hy h,l~ 1lI~IIIl\:ilTipt:i, The different '-r,'c "l Y .. :r:,,; 11 'd:, u:,('d 11\ :i\Jml~ l)f his si~ncd manu­

arn~ ". ' , ,

.p....,.-, h'~\'~ ''' n,"': N " 1 '."'mr'k ld\' , ,dCntllwd."1

c;cn ..

I

~ Sc\'~r: H.,~.::~~ :,,'5 '1 th.:.-:i\.'\.'~)mi hnlf nf Ih(' Iifll}cnl'h cen-IUI\' :1r~ n ': -:: _::-r1 '01lS :'\"ii,-('~ likl' t h(' Dnrlll:il'lldt Haggadah or Sp :sn H2~:,"hh 1 :m l:<'ript:'. Th~y cl.lIItain many col­ore Ii 3.fi!.1'"!"" )' :.:s:-~d ':3 that 1'1.'\,(':11 an unpretentious, lively folk -' :1!'2Cl~:-:.s..':: hu::, ~:-, Til;:-"t' unusual illustrations have yet to l7-~ c...' -?~~j wi:.n :~;." fdigi~'1us and secular manuscripts made :r.sd.:m ;'~hc'r clnss. The folk humor and nai,-e '-~:-3IT.~~-:-~r.~: ~~ :-rGdi e common in contemporary Chris ':ill =Jl.:'= :~:s. -~ -' ~-med \'erses that accompany the HaR.~cricii: -"~?2c.~::5 _-c>' ~,,-a fashion also current in COD­lemp<:lr-a: ;;; riprs, Furthermore, the wine­spane'N .4.sd-=-= ·r H<.:~G(ldahs with their unsophisticated folk ch-c.,.i"T_ ' c~-;, 'r: tn2 .. ey, like their contemporary Chris­tian cmm-erpE.l.l:S_ 7·-ere n intended for display so much as to be read an~ (L~~c.:.

To gi....-e ~ :rre ~:;om9.e~: A t the point in the seder when the display of ' he:-herbs is called for we sometimes find a man humorot!S~-po:.millg (0 his wife, in allusion to the verse in Ec­clesiastes I=-6 hat a bad \yoman "is more bitter than death:' To accompany the words in the Passover Haggadah, "you open [the conversation] fOT him" in reference to the fourth chilJ who is unable to ask the prescribed questions, we find .It tim~~ a literal representation of an adult who pries open thl:' iu\.\,')u.­petent son's mouth "'lith his hands. Next to the text. "in VI:'I:, generation one must look upon himself as if he pt'l1'\lmilly l,-.~ F come forth from Egypt,' artists in these Ashkemr i H''-~";'' :~ , of the fifteenth centurv sometimes literally (kpkt "\~. ',,), "looking at himself" in -a mirror.'2

Many of the surviving Spanish Haggadah maml~ ,'r ~ X'iI~ from fourteenth-century Catalonia. On0 of Ih' '

~ t\ ...'~' ;t Catalo ' , i"'~"

man manuscripts from the Nrst quart 'r ~', ' •. teenth century is the so-called Golden IllIggm\~\h, te.en full-page, framed illustrations, divkkd in'" ;'­Like most Spanish Haggadahs (as 0ppllSl1\! h' tl,' \ ' ". '" "

JOSEPH GUTM

ANN

nes where the illustrations embellish the words and

a              , ) h '11' ap_

Pear side by side with them , tel ustratIOns precede the t

.               d . ext

proper and are largely unreIated t? It, an . m~lude or even fea­

ture a cycle of biblical scenes. ThIs practIce IS similar to wh

(' we find in contemporary ~atin Psa.lt~rs. T~e Golden Haggada~

, <.-especially, with its splendId GOthIC Illummations, reflects the

\ circumstance that Spanish Jewish aristocrats had access to

of Christian courtly circles and imitated a Christian practice of having private liturgical books beautifully illuminated. J'he Golden Haggadah contains biblical illustrations from Genesis ( and Exodus, while most other Spanish Haggadahs are confined \ to Exodus scenes. The biblical scenes also have Jewish legen­. dary depictions, such as Abraham in the fiery furnace, Joseph ._ being shown the way to Dothan by an angel, and the Israelites

.-;: '~      coming out of Egypt with hands raised. Among the ritual scenes found in the Haggadah text are the customary large green leaf, the maror, and a large, decorative, geometric roun­del symbolizing the matsah. 13

( The best known illustrated Spanish Haggadah is the '-Sarajevo Haggadah. Made in the third quarter of the four­/ teenth century in Catalonia, it has been reproduced in facsim­r}'" ile editions three times-the earliest in 1898. Its sixty-nine ) miniatures prefacing the text range over the entire Pentateuch \ from Creation to the death of Moses. Most unusual in this r Haggadah is the fact that a Jew is shown resting on the

Sabbath, whereas in Christian art it is God who rests on the seventh day of Creation. Also the faces of the angels are cov­ered by their wings. Although these miniatures have been re­searched, there are still many aspects of their iconography that demand investigation.14

The earliest Italian-rite Haggadah has recently been identi­fied and dated to the first quarter of the fourteenth century. Its stylized figures are intermingled with dragons and gr~te~­queries. Its marginal illustrations reveal both ritual and blbh­

cal scenes. IS

Another late-fourteenth-century Haggadah from Lom­bardy has recently been analyzed. The theory that the pro­ducer of the so-called Schocken Haggadah had access to span­

ish Haggadah manuscripts .is not e?tirely convincing. The Binding of Is~ac scene, for mstanc~, IS based on well-known !ian ChristIan models and bears httle resemblance to Span-

Ita . . 16

ish Haggadah IllustratIOns.

3. Are unique Jewish customs depicted in Haggadah manu­scripts?

In Spain we find a number of distinctly Spanish-Jewish cus­toms depicted. A fourteenth-century Spanish miniaturel7 re­veals a Passover seder at which the paterfamilias places a ,," cloth-covered basket (sal) co~taining symbolic foods like Qj' matsah on the head of the chIld seated next to him as Ha \~ 2 lachma anya ("This is the bread of affliction ... ") is recited. ~'<? The basket is placed successively on the head of each person /!' at the table. One of the many explanations given is that it is a

.r:

symbolic reminder of the Exodus from Egypt where, in their haste to leave, the Israelites "took their dough before it was leavened, their kneading bowls wrapped in their cloaks upon rr their shoulder" (Exod. 12:34).18

r •

We also find an illustration of the Spanish custom of public (~" distribution of the matsah and charoset. One miniature shows the Haggadah being recited in the synagogue-a practice in­tended for the benefit of those who were unable to read the text.19 It may also be that the large number of piyyutiQJ (addi­tional poetry) included in the surviving Spanish Haggadahs

c were intended to be read in the synagogue. Unique, too, in ._

t.

r", ~ Spanish Haggadah manuscripts is the depiction of a winged

r ~ angel or simply a hand pouring a cup full of blood on the as­(j sembled group below. This scene is next to Sh'!okh ("Pour out

.:'1. ~ y~ur wrath ... "), and Spanish commentators explain that God

, ,(\ WIll pour out four cups of wrath over idolators.2° ~.

," ()J In fifteenth-century Ashkenazi manuscripts it became cus­\ ,q' lJ tomary to depict the arrival of the messianic guest. Sometimes '<. ---~he head of the household is seen opening the door as Sh'!okh IS recited, and holding the prescribed cup of wine. He g~eets

tCl

.' ,e;,. the messianic visitor-a bearded old man seated on a nchly

adorned ass, While several people, perhaps symbolic ~f the

" ( ~~~sehold of Israel, are shown riding with the MessIah to

, 'i,

.) ~ ) r ,.

:\, ':-,~

,.

. .

,

. f'>(

( 0 , 1,­

')

.) (

".

redemption in the land of Israel. These i~a~es may, in part, serve as a theological r~sponse to t~~ ~~~l~~lan Palm Sunday practice of having Chnst, the meSSlamc redeemer, seated on his Palmesel, the messianic ass. These life-size Christ figures were-wheeled on carts in liturgical procession through the town roads to the church interior-an evocation of Christ's tri­umphal entry into Jerusalem. The Ashkenazi images were per­haps meant to deny the Christian messianic claim that the Messiah had already appeared and to emphasize the Jewish

21

belief that the Messiah has not yet come. Frequently, Ashkenazi Haggadahs have illustrations of the

head of the house, who holqs a cup in his left hand, curving the

r,

fingers of his right hand' i\n"~ard toward the palm as he raises -(i' . this hand toward the flames of the so-called Judenstern, an oil_ r ,,;;" burning, star-shaped Sabbath lamp. These depictions reflect L) ~( the prevalent Ashkenazi custom of holding the right hand up (~

_"'" to the light to look at the fingernails when reciting the blessing ,/

-(

. over light at the Havda/ah ceremony, performed Saturday eve--:-' ning at the conclusion of the Sabbath, and intended to mark the separation between Sabbath and weekdays as well as be-­tween light and darkness.22 In Italian-rite Haggadah manuscripts we find that at Ha .c.

I laehma anya ("This is the bread of affliction ... ") it was cus-.' ' ;; tomary for all participants at the seder to raise a basket .\-~ (k'arah),23 which contained those symbolic foods still common '

today (like matsah and maror), but also some we no longer use which were staples long ago: meat, fish, and an egg, standing for mythic messianic monsters. The egg was symbolic of Ziz (a bird), the meat was symbolic of Behemoth (a beast of the fields), and the fish stood for Leviathan. These three messianic II~ beasts had been stored away for the righteous in the world to t"

I

come. On the night of Redemption, when Jewry anxiously . ) awaited the ushering-in of the messianic age, how appropriate that these symbols in the seder basket should have reminded all present of the delights of the messianic banquet they would . ~

enjoy in the world to come.24

The height of Haggadah manuscript illustrations occurred in fourteenth-and fifteenth-century Europe. With the inven­

.<

. ,­

..'-, .. t

I

If

\ r'

HAGGADAH ART

143

tion of the printing press, however, printed editions with illus­trations gradually began to appear from the sixteenth century on, and the illustrated manuscript began to disappear. It was only in the eighteenth century in central Europe that Court Jews and other wealthy Jews again commissioned illustrated Haggadah manuscripts, most of whose creators copied the il­lustrations in printed Haggadahs.25

NOTES

I am grateful to Prof. Stanley F. Chyet for reading this article

and making valuable suggestions for its improvement.

1. Spanish facsimiles: B. Narkiss, The Golden Haggadah (Lon­don, 1970); E. Werber, The Sarajevo Haggadah ' (Beograd, 1985);

R. Loewe, The Rylands Haggadah (London, 1988); G. Sed-Rajna,The Kaufmann Haggadah (Budapest, 1990); E. Cohen et al., The Barce­lona Haggadah (London, 1992). Ashkenazi facsimiles: M. Spitzer et al., The Bird's Head Haggada (Jerusalem, 1957);J. Gutmann et al., Die Darmstadter Pessach-Haggadah (Berlin, 1972);D. Goldstein, The Ashkenazi Haggadah (New York, 1985); M. M. Weinstein et al., The Washington Haggadah (Washington,1991): . . . .

2. B. Narkiss, Hebrew Illuminated ManUSCripts m the British Isles.

A Catalogue Raisonne. The Spanish and Portu?ues~ ~anuscri~ts. vo~. v k 1982).See reviews by D. Sperber In BlbllOteca Omntalts

1 (N

ew lor, 'd" I 29

41 (1984): 158-62, and T. Metzger, Cahiers de civilisation ~l~ leva, e (1986): 393-95. See also M. Metzger, La Haggada enlummee (Lelden, 1973), and review by J. Gutmann, Art Bull~ti~ 58 (1976):440-42. Cf: also J. Gutmann, Hebrew Manllscript Pamtmg (New YOrk,.19~8~

B. Narkiss, Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts (Jerusalem, 1969~_D,\ . .' h M 'ddl Ages (New York, 1982) J. Gut;)

M Metzger JewIsh Lil'e m te l e _ .

. , ~. H dah' InvestIga­

mann "The Illuminated Medieval Passover agga . tions ~Dd Research Problems," Studies in Bibliography and Booklore

7 (1965): 3-25 ..

3. Metzger, Jewish Life, p.299. S gue' A Re-evaluat­

4. J. Gutmann, ed., The Dura-Europos Y~;!~e h~S' Jewish An­ion (1932-1992) (Atlanta, 1992). J. Gutman~, or 6eatio?" in Gut­tiquities in Twelfth-Centur~ ~rt: Re~~v~;~from Antiquity to the

mann, Sacred Images: StudIes m Jewls 1 434-41

Middle Ages (Northampton, 1979), IX, pp. .

JOSEPH GUTMANN

5. Spitzer, Bird's Head Haggadah. . .

(f). Narkiss, "?n ,~~e Zoocephahc Phenomenon IU Medieval

Ashkenazi Manuscnpts, m L. Sleptzoff et aI., eds., Norms and Varia_

tions ill Art: Essays in Honor of Moshe Barash (Jerusalem, 1983), pp.

49-62.

7. M. Friedman, "The Four Sons of the Haggadah and the Ages f Man " Jewish Art 11 (1985): 16-40. In Christian art these figures

o , h'

do not appear separately, as in Haggada manuscnpts, but on one

page, linked with the ages of man and the temperaments.

8. Gutmann, Darmstadter Pessach-Haggadah.

9. Metzger, Jewish Life, p. 299. Narkiss, Hebrew Illuminated

Manuscripts, pp. 116-17.

0,\Weinstein, Washington Ha~gadah. . .

11.

-B. Narkiss and G. Sed-Rajna, Index of JewIsh Art (MUnIch, 1981), 2:1-3-Yahuda Haggadah, The Hileq and Bileq Haggadah, The Second Nuremberg Haggadah. Cf. K. Kogman-Appel, "The Sec­ond Nuremberg Haggadah and the Yahudah Haggadah: Are They Made by the Same Artist?" Eleventh Congress of Jewish Studies, Di­vision D, vol. 2 (Jerusalem, 1994): 25-32. I

12.

Gutmann, "Illuminated Medieval Passover Haggadah," p. 18.. -;!? .

13.

Narkiss, Golden Haggadah. K. Kogman-Appel, "Die Modelle'\ /

des Exoduszyklus der Goldenen Haggada," in C. Thoma et al.,luden­

tum-Ausbli.cke und Einsichten. Festgabe fuel' Kurt Schubert ZUni

siebzigsten Geburtstag (Frankfurt/Main, 1993), pp. 269-300.

14.

Werber, Sarajevo Haggadah. 1. Kogman-Appel, "Der Exo­

duszyklus der Sarajevo Haggada: Bemerkungen zur Arbeitsweise

spaetmittelalterliche juedischer IIIuminatoren und ihrem Umgang

mit Vorlagen," Gesta 35 (1996): 111-27. ~~. Metzger, "1\vo Centuries (13th-14th) of Hebrew Manu­script-Hlumination in Italy," in A. Ebenbauer and K. Zatloukal, eds., Die Juden in ihrer mittelalterlichen Umwelt (Vienna, 1990), pp. 131-46. Mendel Metzger is preparing a major study, The Rite and Iconogra­phy ofthe Haggadah in /taly.

:~. : Zirlin, "The Schocken Italian Haggadah of c.1400 and Its OngIn, Jewish Art 12113 (1986/87): 55-72. 1l\Metzger, Jewish Life, p. 262, ill. 378. ~T. Preschel, "A Strange Seder Custom and Its Origin," in V. D. Sanua, ed., Fields of Offerings. Studies in Honor of Raphael Patai (London and Toronto, 1983), pp. xvii-xx (in Hebrew).

19.

Gutmann "Illu ' d M . " 18

' mInate edleval Passover Haggadah, p. .

20.

J. Gutmann, "The Messiah at the Seder: A Fifteenth-Century

HAGGADAH ART 145

Motif in Jewish Art," in Sh. Yeivin, ed., Studies in Jewish History Pre­sented to Professor Raphael Mahler on His Seventy-Fifth Birthday

(Merhavia, 1974), p. 36.

21. 1. Gutmann, "Return in Mercy to Zion: A Messianic Dream in Jewish Art," in Gutmann, Sacred Images, XVII, pp. 240-41; and

E. Lipsmayer, "Devotion and Decorum: Intention and Quality in Medieval German Scripture," Gesta 34 (1995): 20-27.

22. Gutmann, "The Illuminated Medieval Passover Haggadah,"

p. 18.

23. Metzger, Jewish Life, pp. 137, 139.

24. Hamburg Staats-und UniversiUitsbibliothek, Cod. Hebr. 155, fol. 10, and 1. Gutmann, "Leviathan, Behemoth and Ziz: Jewish Mes­sianic Symbols in Art," in Gutmann, S!!...cred Images, XVIII, pp.

219 ff.

25. Y. H. Yerushalmi, Haggadah and History (Philadelphia, 1975);

H. Friedberg, "The Unwritten Message-Visual Commentary in Twentieth-Century Haggadah Illustration," Jewish Art 16/17 (1990/ 91): 157-71; H. Peled-Carmeli, Illustrated Haggadot ofthe Eighteenth

Century (Jerusalem, 1983).

Passiontide Music

ROBIN A. LEAVER

LITURGICAL ORIGINS OF MUSIC FOR HOLY WEEK

The practice of the fourth-century eastern church would see.m to confirm an earlier usage in which all the passion nar­ratives (Matt. 26-27; ~ark 14-15; Luke 22-23; John 18-19) w(ere read. on Good Fnday. The Spanish abbess or nun, Egeria

or Ethena), d.escribed the observance of Good Friday in Je­rusalem. At midday the following meditation began:

First, whichever Psalms speak of the Passion are read. Next, there are ~eadings from the Apostles . . . wherever they speak of the PassIOn of the Lord. Next, the texts of the Passion from the Gos­pels are read. Then there are readings from the prophets where they said that the Lord would suffer; and then they read fr~m the Gosp.els where He foretells the Passion. And so, from the sixth to

the mnth hour passag f S ' .

, es rom cnpture are contInuously read and hymns are sung to sh th

. ,ow e people that whatever the prophets had said would come t .

o pass concermng the Passion of the Lord can be shown . .. to have taken place'!

The earliest evidenc f th l' .

. e 0 e Iturglcal use of the passion nar­t

ra lVes therefore su t h

the canfll f gges stat the context was musical, with hy I a Ion of the scriptures and the singing of psalms and

mns.

The essentially c .

passion ' . ommemoratlve nature of the use of the narratives 10 the G d F 'd

church gave 1 00 n ay liturgy of the eastern

p ace to more pd' . nl

Instead of all b . . e agoglcal concerns In the yyest. emg associated with the Good Friday liturgy,

146

PASSIONTIDE MUSIC

147