Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel

Some Talmudic passages read like a good detective story and this particular citation is an excellent case in point. Talmudic names can often sound alike and be a source of confusion to both the ancient as well as modern scholars. Names like Rebbe, Rab, and Rabbah all sound alike— but in the Talmudic literature they represent different personalities. We shall examine three narratives that are very similar in terms of their overall message.

The Talmudic editors attribute the following remark to Rabbi Judah HaNasi (135-217 C.E.). — the Redactor of the Mishnah. His comment concerns the status of the Aramean (Syrian) woman. Rabbi Judah offers these words of caution to his children:

• Do not dwell in Shekanzib (a Babylonian town located near the Tigris River) because its inhabitants are scoffers and will corrupt you to disbelief. Don’t sit upon the bed of a Syrian woman. Some say, that means: do not lie down to sleep without reading the Shema’; while others explain: do not marry a proselyte.[1]

The second passage involves the Sage named “Rab,” (“the great one”) whose real name was Abba Arikka (175–247 C.E.). Rab was an early Talmudist and expositors of the Mishnah and lived in Sassanid Babylonia. Abba Arikka helped establish the great academies of Babylonia around the year 220. As with the first narrative attributed to R. Judah HaNasi, Rab offers the following advice to his son Hiyya:

• Don’t take drugs, or try jumping over a brook, or extract your own tooth, or tease serpents, and don’t mess around with a Syrian woman![2]

A third passage points to a different teacher named Rabbah bar Nachamani (270-330 C.E.)who belonged to the third generation of Mishnah expositors known as the Amoraim. According to this version, he too offers advice to his children:

• Raba said to his children: Do not sit upon the bed of an Aramean woman, and do not pass behind a Synagogue when the congregation is praying. ‘Do not sit upon the bed of an Aramean woman’; some say that this means: Do not go to bed before reciting the Shema’; some say it means: Do not marry a proselyte woman; and some say it means literally [the bed of] an Aramean woman, and this rule was laid down because of what happened to R. Papa. For R. Papa once visited an Aramean woman. She brought out a bed and said: Sit down. He said to her: I will not sit down until you raise the cover of the bed. She raised the cover and they found there a dead baby. Hence the scholars said: It is not permitted to even sit down upon the bed of an Aramean woman.[3]

Some Talmudic historians think that it is unlikely that R. Judah, a Palestinian, would have had no occasion to warn his children against living in a town in Babylonia, nor could he have known the character of its inhabitants well enough to justify this warning; hence it is conjectured that “Raba” should be read here instead.[4] The evidence would seem to support this reading for the reasons we mentioned in the beginning of this blog.

Several questions must be asked:

What was the problem with a “Syrian woman”? Why did Raba[5] single out a Syrian woman and not a Babylonian woman, or a Roman woman, or some other nationality? Why is the rabbinic advice not to marry a proselyte also included in Raba’s comment? Conversely, one must ask the most obvious question: What would someone be doing alone in the bedroom of a Syrian woman in the first place?

The answer is obvious: he was either socializing with her, or he had plans to marry her! Raba felt that dating an Aramean woman might lead to marriage; such a development in their relationship would also mean that she would most likely convert to Judaism-a thought that really upset Raba since she was not converting to embrace Judaism-but rather to embrace a Jew. However, although many rabbis had a positive view of the proselyte, some of the Sages had concerns and reservations. Some felt that the Aramean women did not always have the best reputation when it came to morality. Raba felt that when you marry someone, you had best inspect a girl’s family. Therefore, it would seem that Raba was euphemistically instructing his son not to marry Syrian female proselyte. The subsequent story of R. Papa was brought in as an illustration why the rabbis felt suspicious about Syrian women in general. There is a considerable literature dealing with the Syrian woman (ארמית) in the Talmud.

Louis Feldman, the noted expert on Josephus, explains that the Jews of ancient Judea had firmly established itself in the Diaspora and inhabited many Syrian cities. Jewish men and non-Jewish women often interacted with one another in their business and social dealings. He notes that the Syrian women often felt jealous of the Jewish women’s social standing and naturally had many Jewish female friends. As one might expect, a considerable number of Syrian women of Antioch and other Syrian cities came to embrace Judaism. Given the animus that many Syrians felt toward Judaea and the Maccabean wars that had lasted for many years, the Syrian men did not take this development lightly. Suddenly, their wives started observing the Sabbath and holidays, along with the sundry dietary laws. Many of them undoubtedly lost their wives as well. Feldman explains how the animosity led to serious problems in the first century:

• The kindred inhabitants of Syria were similarly attracted to Judaism. On the eve of the great war against the Romans, says Josephus (War 2.559– 61), the inhabitants of Damascus were fired with a determination to kill the Jews but were afraid of their own wives, “and so their efforts were mainly directed to keeping the secret from them.” Eventually they slaughtered the Jews, but they kept their eyes on their wives’ reactions. The violence of the Syrians’ feelings would appear to indicate the Jews’ success as missionaries,149 inasmuch as Josephus specifically points out, in connection with the onslaught, that the wives had been almost universally converted to Judaism. This fact would be seemingly irrelevant, unless Jewish success in proselytism was indeed a major reason for the attack. That Judaism attracted women in particular may be due largely to the fact that they did not have to undergo excision, a major operation for an adult; but it may also be due to the relatively more elevated and respected position of women in the Jewish community. That Josephus, however, may be thinking primarily of “sympathizers” with Judaism rather than converts may be inferred from the statement (War 7.45) that the Jews of Antioch, Syria’s chief city, were constantly attracting to their religious ceremonies multitudes of Greeks and that the Antiochean Jews had, in some measure, incorporated these Greeks with themselves.[6]

The Arameans had long been enemies of the Jews and their ancestors fought alongside King Antiochus III the Great (Ἀντίoχoς Μέγας; c. 241 – 187 B.C.E.). Many of these men felt outraged that their wives were now identifying with the enemy! When Vespasian offered them the opportunity to exact vengeance and with the promise of booty, they eagerly complied.

As a modern and observant rabbi looking back at the details of this narrative, one thing seems fairly clear: the early rabbis took a very lenient attitude with respect to the rules of conversion, while others took a more critical look at prospective converts. Some medieval rabbis observed, it was sufficient that the Jewish community knew why a woman was immersing-irrespective whether there was a rabbinical court to watch or not! Some early Gaonic (ca. 589-1040) texts even suggest that a court of three people was not necessary for conversion. One intriguing text discusses the case of a person who was the son of an Aramean woman and the son of an Aramean man:

• A male proselyte who immersed for [the sake of purifying himself after] his nocturnal emission, and a maidservant who immersed for [the sake of purifying herself from] her menstrual impurity, the immersion is accounted for them [for conversion]. For there was a certain person whom they called “the son of the Aramean man,” [and] R. Joshua ben Levi said [about him]: “Did he not immerse for [the sake of purifying himself from] his nocturnal emission?” If he immersed for [the sake of purification from his] nocturnal emission it is considered good [for conversion]. There was a certain person whom they called “the son of the Aramean man,” for when his mother converted, she did not immerse, [and] R. Assi said [about her]: “Did she not immerse for her niddah?” If she immersed for [the sake of purification from] her niddah it is considered good. But now this is not sufficient [Warsaw ed. adds: with immersion for his nocturnal pollution, until he immerses for the sake of conversion], for the accepted normative law is that a convert requires three. What is the reason? “There shall be one law” is written regarding him, and he is not a [valid] convert until he is circumcised and immerses. [7]

However, once Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, the Jewish push to welcome proselytes came to a grinding halt for the Church threatened severe penalties upon anyone from the Jewish community wishing to attract members of the Christian community. The history of conversion to ancient Judaism is a subject that has not adequately been studied in the rabbinical seminaries. There is a tendency to view conversion only from the most strict and austere terms.

Religious politics obviously has a lot to do with the problem, but the paths defined in our tradition deserve to be heard by all who are interested in learning how to welcome the righteous “Jew by Choice” who wishes to join our faith community. It is doubtful whether the most famous proselyte of the Bible—Ruth—would have been accepted by today’s authoritarian religious leaders of the Haredi world.

As an addendum to the above discussion, I want to point out that even in more recent times, a number of Orthodox rabbis have taken a lenient view with respect to someone wishing to convert for the sake of marriage. One distinguished rabbi, R. David Tzvi Hoffman, one of the greatest rabbinical scholars of the early 20th century discusses a case that is familiar to many rabbis today. In one specific case, a Jewish woman who marries a gentile man and later discovers she is pregnant by him. It is unclear whether the woman’s family exerted pressure on the gentile husband to convert; or alternatively, he chose to do so for the sake of his wife. Rather than sending the couple away, Rabbi Hoffman found a way to welcome the woman’s husband to the Jewish fold. He explains:

“The Code of Jewish Law states, ‘We refuse any convert who comes to be converted because he desires a certain Jewish woman.[1] However, the school of Tosfot disputes this opinion in BT Yevamot 24b based on the well-known rabbinic story concerning the Gentile who appeared before Hillel and wished to convert so that he might become a High Priest. Obviously, the man had ulterior motives for converting. Nevertheless, Hillel still converted him. Another Talmudic story relates how a certain woman who came before Rabbi Hiyya and wanted to convert to Judaism so that she could marry a young Talmud scholar (BT Menachot 44a).

Notes:

[1] BT Pesachim 112b.

[2] BT Pesachim 113a.

[3] BT Berakhot 8b.

[4] This is mentioned in H. Freedman and Isidore Epstein’s notes to the Soncino Talmud on Tractate Pesachim and cites Jacob Obermeyer, Die Landschaft Babylonien im Zeitalter des Talmuds und des Gaonats (Frankfurt: am Main, 1929), 190-191.

[5] Rab’s real name was Abba Arikka (175–247 C.E, ). He was an early Talmudist and expositors of the Mishnah and lived in Sassanid Babylonia. Abba Arikka helped establish the great academies of Babylonia around the year 220. He is commonly known simply by the honorific title, Rav (or Rab, Hebrew: רב), which means “the great one.”

[6] Louis Feldman, Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World: Attitudes and Interactions from Alexander to Justinian (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1993), 328.

[7] Menachem Finkelstein, Conversion: Halakha and Practice (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, Ramat-Gan, 2006), 435.

[8] Adapted from Melamad Liho’eel YD. II: Responsa 83.