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Dear Friends,
We hope you are enjoying your summer. This coming Thursday, one of the aAncient Israelite summer festivals is going to take place: the festival of the fifteenth day of the month of Av, which is called “Tu Be’Av”. The word “Tu” stands for the Hebrew letters èå, which represent the number 15 in the numerical value system based on the Hebrew alphabet, which you can read more about at the end of this newsletter.
Today, Tu Be’Av is a festival of love, similar to Valentine’s Day, and a very popular day for weddings. It has been known as such since the period of the Mishnah (approximately 2nd -3rd century C.E.), and we find the following description of the festival:
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Rabbi Simon son of Gamliel said: There were no days as good for Israel as the fifteenth day of Av and the Day of Atonement, on which the girls of Jerusalem would go out in borrowed white clothing, so as not to embarrass those who did not have any . . . and the girls of Jerusalem would go out and dance in the vineyards. And what would they say? Young man, look up and see what you choose, do not be tempted by beauty, but look at the family, for ‘Grace is deceitful and beauty is vain, it is the woman who fears God that shall be praised’” (Mishnah, Ta’anit tractate, 4:8)
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The source of this date as the time of the festival is not found in the Bible, however, in Judges 21:19-21, we read of a similar festival that goes back to a period preceding even that of the Judges. During the festival, the young girls of Shiloh would go out to dance in the vineyards. In this case, in the Book of Judges, we are also told that they found husbands, but it is not quite the romantic story that we would expect based on the later description of the festival in the Mishnah. I would like to present to you the events leading up to this description of the festival in the Book of Judges.
Towards the end of the Book of Judges, we are presented with a number of stories which all come to teach us one major lesson: the lack of central rule and of a king caused many problems, not only in the practical ruling of the people, but also in their moral situation. The repeated formula which is brought to describe the anarchy in the pre-monarchic period is:
áéîéí ääí àéï îìê áéùøàì àéù äéùø áòéðéå éòùä
In those days there was no king in Israel, every man did that which was right in his own eyes
(Judges 21:25)
By stating that every man did that which was right in his own eyes, the Bible wishes to emphasize that what the people thought to be right, was in fact very wrong, and brings a few stories demonstrating this. The longest and most central of the stories begins with a man and his concubine who wished to spend the night in the Benjaminite city of Giveah while on a journey. This story appears in Judges 19, and I hope to dedicate a separate newsletter to it. In short, for now, I will tell you that it turns out that the city of Giveah is in fact very similar to Sodom, and the man and his concubine are hosted by an outsider, but the locals demand to be allowed to sodomize the man. He then gives them his concubine instead, and she is tortured all night and later dies. The man then cuts her into 12 parts, sending them to all the tribes of Israel and demanding revenge of the Benjaminites. A bloody civil war is raged, led by the tribe of Judah, and eventually, the Benjaminites are defeated and their cities destroyed, with only 600 men surviving in the desert (Judges 20).
As part of the war, the Israelites pledged not to allow their daughters to marry the men of the Tribe of Benjamin. The Israelites now face a problem, because all the women of Benjamin were killed in the war, and if the surviving men of the tribe are not allowed to marry, the tribe will be wiped out. Two solutions are found for this: the first is to allow the Benjaminites to marry women from the city of Yavesh Gilead, because the city did not participate in the war and therefore did not make the pledge all the other Israelites were committed to.
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| The Benjaminites take the women of Yavesh Gilead, by Gustave Doré |
However, only 400 unmarried women are found in this city, and 200 of the Benjaminites are still left with no solution. This is when the elders suggest the following plan: the remaining men will go and abduct wives for them-selves during the festival, when the young women are dancing in the vineyards. When the families of these women complain, the Benjaminites are to take full responsibility, and not blame the elders (Judges 21). This obviously teaches us just how questionable the leadership of the elders was, reminding us why it is absolutely necessary to find a new kind of rule for the Israelites, which is found in the Book of Samuel, with the kingship of Saul and then David.
It is interesting that a festival mentioned only here in the Bible, and in a very negative context, was known as a festival of love and romance in later times. This goes to show us that the tradition of the festival – which is mentioned in Judges 21:19 as very ancient: “Behold, there is a festival of God in Shiloh every year” – is what lived on, and not the one unfortunate outcome of that festival, which happens to be the only biblical evidence we have of it. This is important in realizing that the Bible, with all its richness, does not always bring us the full description of everyday Israelite life and festivals, but only what is relevant for the biblical story, and while we as readers of the Bible might have one impression, the people who lived and breathed this tradition apparently saw Judges 21 as only one incident connected to the festival and not a representative of its usual character and virtue.
Have a great week!
The Biblical HebrewOnline Team
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This week, we will discuss a word from Rabbinic Hebrew, which is relevant to our discussion, but does not appear in the Bible.
âéîèøééä
Transcription: Gimatriya
Literal Meaning: Numerology, of the assignation of numeric value to letters
More about Gimatriya: Gimatriya is a word taken from Greek, and is found in Rabbinic writings as one of the legitimate ways of interpreting the bible. In that context, it means interpretation based on numerology and the equation of texts holding the same numerological value as bearing the same meaning. However, in its more basic sense often used in modern Hebrew, Gimatriya means the assignment of numerical value to letters, and it is in fact the method of writing numbers in many Jewish sources, as well as in counting the days of the month.
In this system, the first nine letters represent the numbers 1-9:
à - 1
á - 2
â - 3
ã - 4
ä - 5
å - 6
æ - 7
ç - 8
è - 9
The next nine letters represent the numbers 10-90:
é – 10
ë – 20
ì – 30
î – 40
ð – 50
ñ – 60
ò – 70
ô – 80
ö - 90
The last 4 letters represent the numbers 100-400:
÷ – 100
ø – 200
ù – 300
ú – 400
All these can be combined to create more complex numbers, of course: 11 would be éà, 25 would be ëä, and 690 would be úøö. You will notice that the number 15 which we mentioned for Tu Be’Av is strange: instead of using éä as we would expect, we use èå – 9 and 6. This is because the spelling éä is one of the ways of spelling God’s name, and in order to avoid using his name in vain, the math is done differently – 9+6 instead of 10+5. The same is true for the number 16, which is written as èæ. These are the only two such exceptions.
Exercises to practice your Gimatriya:
1.The Hebrew year we are in is (5)769. The 5 is usually not mentioned. What year are we in?
2. You were born on the 18th of the month. How would you write that number in Gimatriya?
3. Moses lived to be 120 years old. How would you write that in Gimatriya?
Answers:
1.úùñè
2.éç
3.֑
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