Nehar Deah

Emor

What is “from the morrow of the Sabbath”?

In the Torah portion of “Emor” we find a list of the special days in the year together with their sacrificial offerings and commandments. Among these is a series of offerings stands out and the dates upon which they are to be brought is not stated explicitly: the bringing of the omer and the bringing of the bikkurim (first fruits of the season). The bringing of the omer (which is explained by the sages as being a specific measure, a tenth of an ephah [according to Shemot 16:16 et al]) makes it permissible to eat the new produce of that year: “Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: When you come to the land which I give to you, and you reap the it’s harvest, then you will bring the omer of the first fruits of your harvest to the priest. And he will wave the omer before God to be accepted for you; the priest will wave it from the morrow of the Sabbath.” (Vayikra 23:10-11). After that, the time for bringing the bikkurim is mentioned, which is dependant on the day on which the omer is brought: “And you shall count for yourselves from the morrow of the Sabbath, from the day you bring the waved omer, there must be seven complete Sabbaths, until the morrow of the Sabbath you will count fifty days; and you will offer a new flour offering. From your dwelling places you will bring the wave bread … bikkurim to God” (ibid, verses 15-17). The Torah determines that an omer must be waved at the beginning of the harvest, but it doesn’t state from which produce the omer must come and when? With respect to the bikkurim, it is also not stated from which ingredients the bikkurim bread must be brought and when this must be done. In terms of the question of which type of produce the text intended to be used in these two laws, both those who lived in the Second Temple times and the Sages agreed that the waving of the omer should be from the barley harvest (and see, for example, the Aramaic translation of Ruth 1:22, according to which Naomi and Ruth reached Bethlehem on the day that Israel began harvesting the “wave omer from barley”), while the bikkurim refers to the wheat harvest. However, from very early times, there has been disagreement with respect to the question of timing, and from here onwards we will deal with this issue.

According to the Torah an omer of produce must be brought to the Temple at the start of the harvest, “from the morrow of the Sabbath”. But what is this “Sabbath”? It seems that it is not coincidental that these special events do not have an exact date, in contrast to the rest of the festivals in the Torah, which have a strictly set day and month. It appears that the reason for this is that the harvest does not fall at exactly the same time every year but rather is dependant on the ripening of produce. Therefore the Torah determined that at the start of the harvest, maybe after the completion of the first week of the harvest, the omer should be brought and fifty days after that the bikkurim would be brought.

In the times of the Second Temple, a virulent dispute arose around the question of the date for the bringing of the omer. The detachment of the law from any fixed date was difficult for those who followed Halacha (Jewish law) strictly and therefore they wished to interpret the “from the morrow of the Sabbath” as a fixed date in the year, and not as a variable date dependant on the ripening of the harvest. A place to anchor this fixed date was found in Passover, which is mentioned together with the bringing of the omer (Vayikra 23:4-8). The Pharisees explained the expression “from the morrow of the Sabbath” as being 16 Nissan, the day after the first day of Passover, and therefore “Sabbath” was understood as “festival”, meaning Passover. In contrast, other interpretive methods understood the word “Sabbath” as meaning the seventh day of the week, which comes after six weekdays. These methods also connected between the omer and Passover, but in different ways. According to one method, it is supposed to be the intermediate Sabbath of Passover, while according to the other method, it is the Sabbath after the seven days of Passover.

This was not a dispute without implications, as the date of the festival of Shavuot (Weeks) is dependant on it, so that the ordinary weekday of one sect is likely to be a festival day (on which creative work is prohibited) of another. According to the Mishna, the omer was harvested and offered publicly, and this was in order to emphasize that one should follow Pharisaic tradition: “How would they do it? Those sent out by the court of law would go out on the eve of the festival … and all the nearby towns would gather there in order that it be harvested with great ceremony … why so much [effort]? Because of the Bitusim [=who rejected the authority of the oral law] who would say: the omer should not be harvested at the conclusion of the festival [first day of Passover]” (Menachot 1:3).

The differences in interpretation of the date for bringing the omer are connected to the basic difference between the various sects in the times of the Second Temple: the calendar. The Pharisaic calendar was a lunar calendar, determined by months of the year which are dependant on the moon, and it was adjusted to the solar calendar but having leap years, with the addition of an extra month, every few years. In contrast, other groups during the Second Temple period, among them the Judean Desert sect, had a calendar based strictly on the solar year. According to this calendar there was a fixed number of days in the year, 364 days: twelve months of thirty days, and then four additional days (a “tekufa” [period] day every three months). In this calendar the first day of the first month fell on the fourth day of the week and all the festivals always fell on a fixed day in the week. According to this system, and in light of the interpretation of “from the morrow of the Sabbath” as the Sabbath after the seven days of Passover, the day of the bringing of the omer always fell on the first day of the week, the 26th day of the first month and the festival of Shavuot, which is dependant on it, fell on the 15th day of the third month.

The polemic over the interpretation of “from the morrow of the Sabbath” and the timing of the bikkurim continued even after the Second Temple period. During the ninth century a new movement in medieval Judaism, the Karaites, began to develop. Significant similarity exists between the Karaites and the sects who opposed the Pharisees in Second Temple times and the connection between them is obvious.

The Karaites established their calendar in a special manner: they continued to determine the new month according to the actual sighting of the moon, and not according to predetermined calculations, and they set leap years according to the state of the produce in the land of Israel, and according what is written by the Karaite Benjamin Nahawendi: “If the barley harvest is ripe in the month of Nissan, in order that they could offer from it the omer within the seven days of Passover - the year was correct. And if the harvest was not ripe … the year was made into a leap year”. In this way the Karaites solved an additional problem. Setting the date for bringing the omer close to Passover, which is not connected to the ripening of crops , is likely to create difficulty, since not every year are the crops ripe close to 16 Nissan. By establishing leap years, the Karaites ensured that Passover would always fall close to the time of the ripening of the barley. Hundreds of years before this the Pharisees dealt with this problem in another way: the Mishna tells, that on occasion they would bring the omer from a place far from Jerusalem, as long as the barley was already ripe there (Menachot 10:2).

In addition to the general dispute over the calendar, the Karaites also disagreed with the Sages as to the date on which the omer was to be brought. They too claimed that the expression “from the morrow of the Sabbath” should be interpreted as being the seventh day of the week, but according to them it was intended to be the intermediate Sabbath of Passover. Among those involved in the polemic was Rabbi Sa’adiya Gaon, who lived in the tenth century, and the Karaite Salomon ben Yerucham answered him in a rhyming composition called “The Book of the Wars of God”, with a statement that the Torah did not give an exact date, as did the Parisees and those who follow them: “And He did not say on what day of the month he surrounded your festivals / To announce to all among your congregations / That the festival of harvest does not have a fixed date among your months”. We therefore see how unclear language in the Torah, with respect to the date for bringing the omer and the festival of Shavuot, which may result from practical considerations - that these occasions are dependant on the time of the ripening of produce - brought about, on more than one occasion, severe discord between various streams in the Jewish nation whose paths were all lit by the Torah.

Literature of the Sages - The Aramaic Translation of the Scroll of Ruth

The world of Aramaic translation is made up of many works. As well as the translations of the Torah (which were dealt with extensively in the central discussion of “Nahardeah” on the Torah portion of “Beshallach”), most of the other books of the Bible have also been translated into Aramaic. The Five Scrolls were probably translated in order that their public reading could be accompanied by translation, as the public were not always fluent in Hebrew and required a translation-elucidation in their own language.

The Scroll of Ruth is read, at least since the time of the Geonim, on the festival of Shavuot (Weeks), and it was probably translated to Aramaic towards the end of the period of the Sages in the region of the Land of Israel. The translation of Ruth tends to be literal and only occasionally does he add to the verse being translated, and these additions usually in line with the Sages in terms of Aggada (folklore) and Halacha (Jewish Law). We can probably state that the translation of Ruth s probably the most literal from among the Scrolls.

Among the Aggadic augmentations in the translation, it is worthwhile to mention the long introduction with its list of “The Ten Famines that were Decreed to Come to the World” from the times of Creation up till Messianic times. Among them he mentions the famine in the times of Abraham (Bereishit 12), Isaac (ibid, 26) and Jacob (ibid, 43) and also the famine mentioned at the beginning of this scroll (“And it was in the times that the judges judged and there was a famine in the land”), the famine in the times of Elijah the prophet (Kings-I 18) and in the times of Elisha (Kings-II 6) and the last famine at the end of days, when there will be in the world “a famine not for bread and a thirst not for water, but to hear the words of the prophecies of God” (compare Amos 8:11).

Another example of an Aggadic addition found in the translation, is the determination that Boaz conquered his desires when he met Ruth on the threshing floor, “as Joseph did, when he refused to approach the wife of his Egyptian master, and as the pious Paltiel son of Laish, who stabbed a sword [into the ground] between himself and Michal daughter of Saul, wife of David, and refused to approached her” (3:8). This tradition - which mentions, in a single breath, Joseph, Paltiel (see Shmuel-II 3:15) and Boaz - is known to us from the Babylonian Talmud (Sanhedrin 19b) and it is reasonable to assume that the translator took it from there. Those parts of the translation which deal with Halacha are especially interesting, since there are sometimes traditions mentioned that are not strictly in line with what is accepted in the world of Halacha. Therefore, for example, the translation tells of Naomi who teaches Ruth the laws of Judaism (1:17). Among other things she lists for her the four types of death penalties enacted the courts of law: stoning, burning with fire, death by the sword and hanging from a tree. It is apparent that the translation brings hanging, but does not mention strangulation. Due to this deviation from what is accepted, there were arguments among the commentators on the translation and its researchers as to the quality of the text. There are those who see the translation as being a “translation of a commoner”, that is a translation of simpletons and ignoramuses which cannot be depended on, and there are those who see it as a translation from a sect which deviated from commonly accepted Halacha. Others saw it as in fact being evidence of this being an extremely early tradition, dated to before the final e determination of the four death penalties of the courts of law. With the coming of the Messiah son of David, whose grandfather’s birth is described in the scroll of Ruth, all these questions will be answered.

History - The Karaites

A Jewish sect, whose members are also called “Bnei Mikra” (Children of the Bible), which did not accept upon themselves the authority of the Oral Law, made up of the Mishna, Talmud and the Halacha that was enacted as a result of them. The origins of the Karaite movement are linked with Anan ben David, who spoke out against the authority of the Geonim, heads of the Babylonian academies, towards the end of the eighth century. Naturally the reasons brought for Anan’s actions are described differently by the Karaites on one hand and “Rabbinic” Jews, who received their learning from the Geonim, on the other hand. According to the Karaites, Anan ben David protested the distancing of the Halacha as laid down by the Geonim, from the literal meaning of the biblical text, and he claims that they falsified the truth. “Rabbinic” Jews claimed the source of the dispute was Anan’s desire to usurp the leadership. Anan, according to them, was the oldest son of a leader of diaspora Jews, but when he died the Rabbi specifically chose a younger son to fill his position, and due to this Anan rebelled. However, in order not to seem to be rebelling in the eyes of the Moslem rulers, Anan claimed that the dispute between himself and the “Rabbinic” Jews was an intra-Jewish dispute over religious principles. Those who followed Anan where first known as “Ananiim” (Ananists), and together with other groups who also did not accept upon themselves the Oral Law, they eventually formed a cohesive group known by the name “Karaites”.

During the ninth century Karaite communities were establish in the central and eastern regions of the Moslem world. In the tenth and eleventh centuries there was a “Golden Age” of Karaism. This was a period of establishment, both in socio-geographic terms and in terms of the quality and variety of its literary works. In Jerusalem, for example, the position of the Karaites was so powerful, that they forced the yeshiva (religious studies institution) and its leaders to uproot and move to Ramle. The Karaites also gained special status in the courts of the oriental rulers, especially in Egypt, where they served as tax collectors, doctors and clerks. In the same centuries, the basic character of Karaism was established through the writings of its leading spokesmen -Salomon ben Yerucham, Kirkisani, Sahl ben Matzliach, Yefet ben Eli and many others - who authored commentaries on the Bible, books of polemics and publications, literature dealing with religious law, dictionaries and grammar texts and other related works.

Ongoing Karaite activity also took place in Eastern Europe. We know of their yeshiva in Crimea from the thirteenth century and we hear already of their communities in Poland and Galicia from the fifteenth and sixteenth century. When the majority of the territory they lived in was captured by the Russians in the second half of the seventeenth century, the Karaites were granted special dispensations which differentiated between them and “Rabbinic” Jews and exempted them from the taxes imposed on the Jews. In 1863 they even gained full equal rights in Russia, at a stage when the status of the rest of the Jews was at a low point. Attempts by the Karaites to prove the antiquity of their yeshiva in the Crimea brought them to claim that they reached this area as far back as the seventh century CE and that the Kuzari in fact converted to Karaism.

Most of the Karaites immigrated to Israel between 1950 and 1960 and they number about 10,000 people living mainly in the region of Ramla.