32 JUDAISM
14 APRIL 2022
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ASK THE RABBI Looking for answers? Send your question to Rabbi@RabbiSchochet.com ARE ONLY JEWS CONSIDERED HUMAN?
Dear Rabbi Someone at University mentioned to me recently that the Talmud says that only Jews are considered human beings but non-Jews are not. He insists that Jews are racist and we don’t have a right to complain about antisemitism as we bring it on ourselves. I don’t know the source of this Talmudic statement and just told him I don’t believe it says that anywhere and that he was just looking to find excuses for his hate. Can you enlighten me about whether such a statement exists anywhere? Jonathan Dear Jonathan There is such a quote in Tractate Yevamot 60b in which Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai cites a verse that says “adam” – loosely translated as human-beings, and says: “You (Jews) are called “adam” but non-Jews are not called “adam.” This Talmudic passage has often been cited by Antisemites that look to justify their inexplicable hatred against Jews. One of the most famous examples in which this Talmudic passage was quoted was at the trial of Mendel Beilis in Ukraine, in 1913 (read up on his story – a classic blood libel). The prosecution cited this Talmud to make the case that Jews would have no problem killing non-Jews as they don’t consider them human. The then Chief Rabbi of Moscow, Rabbi Yaakov Mazeh
offered the following response: “In Hebrew, almost every word has a singular and plural form: “Ish” is man; “Anashim” are men. “Isha” is woman; “Nashim” are women. “Har” is mountain; “Harim” are mountains, etc. There is one word which has no plural form: “Adam.” There is no word “Adamim.” So Adam can only be applied to a single person, not to many people. Hence, no nation can be called “Adam,” as each nation is comprised of many individuals. The exception are the Jews. The Talmud is teaching that there was something about the title Adam which could not apply to anyone besides the Jewish people. There may be millions of Jews around the world, but they’re called Adam, they are considered a single human being. This trial demonstrates the point. One Jew, Mendel Beilis, is accused of killing a child, but who is on trial? The entire Jewish world! Together with all of the Jewish texts from the beginning of time! Imagine,” he added, “if a Russian gentile was accused of murder. Would anyone entertain the idea of putting the entire Russian people on trial?! Moreover, even as one Mendel Beilis is put on trial, the entire Jewish world stands at his side like one man, all trembling for his welfare and willing to do everything in their power to free him.” (This explanation left a deep impact on the court. Ultimately Beilis was set free). If there is one message that Pesach drives home it is that we
Pesach RABBI DR RAYMOND APPLE
THE HAGGADAH LEFT MOSES OUT
Moses comes only once in the Haggadah, in an incidental quotation. It was the Jewish people who decided to leave him out. You would think it was logical to call Pesach the Festival of Moses. But big-noting Moses would have given the impression that it was he who took the people out of slavery. The sages insisted that G-d alone should get the credit; the Midrash makes G-d say, “It was I who brought the people out of Egypt – I and not an angel, I and not an agent, I and nobody else”. All
are one! We say it at the Seder: “One is the wise and one is the rebellious and one is the simple and one cannot ask.” We reiterate the “one” by each because each is one with the other. We are an Adam - a single organism. Look at the world today. When our brothers and sisters are in peril in Ukraine, we ask: “What can I do to help, spiritually, financially, and in any way possible?” And we step up. As for your University “friend,” tell him, that “in every generation they rise up against us,” (as we sing at the Seder) but we are still here to tell the tale. He and all the likes of him disappear into oblivion.
WHO LETS THE DOG OUT?
Dear Rabbi I was discussing with my husband about why we open our front doors on Seder night? I mean it’s cute but apart from keeping kids entertained, is it really that important? I’m afraid the dog will run out! Tabatha Dear Tabatha Do you know why pirates wore an eye patch over one eye? They would fight battles on the high seas. On deck, the sunshine over the open water is blindingly bright, but once a pirate swung himself over to the enemy ship, he’d often be forced to take the battle into the bowels of that other vessel. It takes about four minutes for the average person’s eye to gain “night vision” and
that Moses got in the Haggadah was an incidental nod. The next opportunity Moses had to become a hero was Shavu’ot, when it was he who ascended Mount Sinai to fetch the tablets of the Torah. One would think Shavu’ot would be the Festival of Moses. But the verdict was against him this time too, and Shavu’ot became the festival of King David. What gave David the edge was not his kingly status but the fact that G-d was the one who gave the Torah even though David founded the dynasty from whom Mashi’ach will emerge. Could not the case for Moses have outweighed this argument? Wasn’t he a great leader and poet, did he not mould Israel into a nation and launch Jewish history? Was it not he who established both the Written and the Oral Torah? But Moses was not a people-person. David had folk appeal; Moses was an authority figure whom everyone respected but did not always love as one of their own.
allow them to see in the darkness. Four minutes, when you’re fighting for control of a ship, is a long time. So the pirates would leap below deck and then tear off their eye patch, which enabled them to have instant night vision, since their eyes had already adjusted to murky darkness. Opening the door is about peering into the darkness and capturing a vision of the light that beckons. Hence we open the door and we speak of welcoming in Elijah who will be the one bringing that light. Rabbi Aryeh Levine, the Tzadik of Yerushalayim, used to visit prisons on the intermediate days of Pesach. On one such occasion he asked the inmates: “What did you do for Seder last
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Moses suffered on Shavu’ot as on Pesach – to give G-d the ultimate credit.
WHY NOT FOUR RABBIS?
There must be something wrong. There are four questions, four sons, four cups of wine – but five rabbis. To be consistent, the Seder should have four rabbis, not five. Let’s imagine that we could tell one of the rabbis to stay home, leaving only four to sit at the Seder table in Bnei Brak and talk about the going out from Egypt all night. Who were the five rabbis of the Haggadah? Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Yehoshua, Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah, Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Tarfon. They were five of the greatest sages of the Roman period. They somehow found new things to say about the Exodus each year even though none of them had ancestors who had been enslaved in Egypt (Eliezer, Elazar ben Azaryah and Tarfon were kohanim, Yehoshua was a levi, and Akiva was descended from non-Jews).
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night?” And they said, “We were able to do everything. We had matzah and wine and charoiset and bitter herbs. We had haggadot and we were able to sit and discuss all about the exodus story. We did everything. There’s only one thing we couldn’t do. When it came to that part where you are supposed to open the outside door to let Elijah the Prophet in, well – we’re in prison, so that wasn’t an option! Said Reb Aryeh to them: “You’re making a mistake. You don’t need to open doors. You just need to make a small opening in your heart. Everything else will come pouring in.” Mystically, it is a powerfully spiritual moment at the Seder to ask for whatever you want. Utilise it properly.
We probably would have expected a sixth sage to be there – Rabban Gamli’el, the rabbinic leader, but he was a difficult personality and the others wanted to depose him, and maybe the Bnei Brak meeting was a disguised anti-Gamli’el conspiracy, though the five rabbis did not all agree concerning how to handle the problem. If one rabbi could have been uninvited to the gathering, it could possibly have been Rabbi Tarfon, whose memory was not always completely reliable. But the question of how many rabbis there should be is artificial, and in the end it doesn’t really matter whether there were five rabbis or four. Rabbi Raymond Apple was for many years Australia’s highest profile rabbi and the leading spokesman on Judaism. After serving congregations in London, Rabbi Apple was chief minister of the Great Synagogue, Sydney, for 32 years. He lives in Jerusalem and blogs at http://www.oztorah.com
