Rosh Hashanah 34a ~ On the Uses of Urine

Yesterday, we learned in a Mishnah that the quality of a shofar may be improved by immersing it in wine or water. Today, we continue with this theme.

ראש השנה לד, א

וְאֵין חוֹתְכִין אוֹתוֹ — בֵּין בְּדָבָר שֶׁהוּא מִשּׁוּם שְׁבוּת, וּבֵין בְּדָבָר שֶׁהוּא מִשּׁוּם לֹא תַעֲשֶׂה. אֲבָל אִם רָצָה לִיתֵּן לְתוֹכוֹ מַיִם אוֹ יַיִן — יִתֵּן

And one may not cut the shofar to prepare it for use, neither with an object that is prohibited due to a rabbinic decree nor with an object that may not be used due to a prohibition by Torah law. However, if one wishes to place water or wine into the shofar on Rosh HaShana so that it emits a clear sound, he may place it, as this does not constitute a prohibited labor.

אֲבָל אִם רָצָה לִיתֵּן לְתוֹכוֹ מַיִם אוֹ יַיִן — יִתֵּן. מַיִם אוֹ יַיִן — אֵין, מֵי רַגְלַיִם — לָא

The Mishna continues. However, if one wishes to place water or wine into the shofar on Rosh HaShana, so that it should emit a clear sound, he may place it.The Gemara infers: Water or wine, yes, one may insert these substances into a shofar. However, urine, no.

So the Mishnah rules that a shofar may be bathed in water and wine because it helps to emit a clear sound. But urine may not be used to improve the quality of the shofar, because, as Abba Shaul goes on to teach

מֵי רַגְלַיִם — אָסוּר, מִפְּנֵי הַכָּבוֹד 

With regard to water or wine, one is permitted to pour these liquids into a shofar on Rosh HaShana in order to make its sound clear. However, with regard to urine, one is prohibited to do so due to the respect that must be shown to the shofar. Although urine is beneficial, it is disrespectful to place it in a shofar, which serves for a mitzva. 

Fair enough. But Abba Shaul’s lesson is just the beginning of the story of the beneficial properties of urine for the Temple service, and for people too.

From here.

We don’t bring Urine into the Azarah (Courtyard)

In the famous Mishnah known as Pittum Haketoret with describes the preparation of the incense in the Temple, there is a complicated list of eleven ingredients. And then comes this:

יֵין קַפְרִיסִין שֶׁשּׁוֹרִין בּוֹ אֶת הַצִּפּוֹרֶן. כְּדֵי שֶׁתְּהֵא עַזָּה. וַהֲלֹא מֵי רַגְלַיִם יָפִין לָהּ, אֶלָּא שֶׁאֵין מַכְנִיסִין מֵי רַגְלַיִם בַּמִּקְדָּשׁ מִפְּנֵי הַכָּבוֹד׃

Why was Cyprus wine employed? To steep the onycha in it so as to make it more pungent. Though urine might have been suitable for that purpose, it was not decent to bring it into the Temple.

This Mishnah, recited every day by most Sephardim (and many Ashkenazi services in Israel) explains that like its use for the shofar, urine was good at improving the quality of some Temple accessories, but, regardless, “it’s not decent to bring it into Temple” for that purpose. So just what are the properties of urine that make it sometimes useful?

The Properties of Urine

The vast majority of urine (90-96%) is made up of water, with the remainder made of organic and inorganic salts, and urea. That last one, urea, is very important. Urea, which comes from the breakdown of proteins, is by itself odorless and colorless, but is a terrific fertilizer. Over time, however, the urea is further broken down in ammonia and other compounds, which give older, stale urine its characteristic odor. And there is a long tradition of using urine to improve lots of things, including, it turns out, our health.

Sefer Moshia Hosim

The Italian Jew Abraham ben Hananiah Yagel (1553- c.1624) was by any definition a polymath. His works include not one but two lengthy encyclopedias, a manual of belief “audaciously adapted from a Catholic manual” and a work in praise of women. But Yagel was first and foremost a physician, and it was in this role that in 1587 he published his first work, a short tract on plagues called Moshia Hosim (The Savior of Those Who Seek Refuge).

Moshia Hosim  opens with a declaration that was both theological and medical: “Every wise person knows that reality is divided into three realms: the elementary, the divine, and the intellectual. Every part of the lower world is moved and influenced by the upper, as the rabbis stated in Bereshit Rabbah: There is no blade of glass that sways without having been controlled by a constellation that directs it to grow.” The origins of any plague therefore depended on the precise interactions of these three realms. The stars and constellations would cause the release of foul, poisonous air, “for nothing happens on earth without the influence of the heavens.”

While some plague were a divine punishment for sin, these were of a fundamentally different nature from others. Divinely sent plagues stuck suddenly and left no physical mark on their victim, unlike “naturally” occurring outbreaks. But whatever their celestial origins, certain groups like women and children were more vulnerable because of their humoral imbalance, as were naturally good-looking young adults. Yagel, like most of his medical contemporaries, understood that whatever agent it was that caused a plague, it could be transmitted through close physical contact. He cited the actions of three Talmudic sages who would be careful to avoid being bitten by flies during a pandemic, or who would not share food or close contact with a victim “for flies and birds transmit sickness from person to person.” Yagel prescribed a diet free of rich foods and avoiding sexual intercourse, both of which led to the dangerous condition of overheating. He also recommended theriac, a medieval concoction of herbs that was thought to be an antidote to all manner of poisons and diseases. “Do not fear the warmth brought on by theriac” he wrote, “for in small diluted doses it cannot harm anyone.”

The patient should dress in clean, comfortable clothes, “for they stimulate the sense of touch” and should be surrounded with sheets soaked in a mixture of vinegar and theriac, as well as fresh flowers and sweet-smelling roses “for they uplift the sprits of the sick.” Similarly the home should be clean, airy, and adorned with drawings “that make the heart happy.” The best time to undergo bloodletting depending on the complexion of the patient: those who were dark should have the procedure at sunrise, while those who were pale should do so at midnight, and the blood should be removed from the same side as the buboes. Regardless of when it was performed, the patient should first take a laxative.

And then there is this advice:

Avraham Yagel. Moshia Hosim. Venice 1587. 18a.

And there is the incredible thing mentioned in the first chapter of tractate Kerisut which states “and urine is good for it (the Temple incense).” In addition those who are learned about nature have taught that it is useful and good to take the urine of a young, handsome, and healthy boy, and to drink it each morning. It will filter out the bad air (that causes the plague).

Now some might use this as evidence that the rabbis of the post-talmudic era had no idea about medicine. But that is not the case. What this teaches is quite the opposite; that many were up-to-date with the very latest medical thinking - even if, by our standards, that thinking was quite wrong.

Everyone recommended drinking urine

The German medical historian Karl Sudhoff (1853-1938) made a career studying almost 300 plague texts from the early Middle Ages. He noted that in one Latin treatise on health written in 1405, “older patients who were sometimes counseled to drink a boy’s fresh urine might (understandably enough) feel some nausea.” Yup. And in the excellent recently published book Doctoring the Black Death, John Aberth, who seems to know everything about medieval Europe’s medical response to plague wrote that as an alternative to theriac, that ancient concoction that was supposed to prevent and cure any and all manner of diseases, people drank urine. For example in 1378, Cardo of Milan prescribed a potion “for the poor that combined the patient’s own urine with mustard, castor oil, pomegranate, juniper, sage and reddish, and which was to be boiled, clarified and strained, then taken morning and evening, five spoonfuls at a time. (205)” And an Italian physician named Dionysus Secundus Colle who recovered from the plague around 1348 had this to say (248):

I have seen women gathering snails and capturing lizards and newts, which they asserted that, once they had all been burnt down to a powder…they administered two drachmas of it in a boy’s urine, and they cured and persevered many, and afterward I was compelled to investigate [this sure myself] and afterwards I cured many.

Jewish folk remedies continued to use urine as a medicine. Yudel Rosenberg (1859-1935) mentioned it as a treatment for swelling in his book published in Peitrikow in 1911:

Yudel Rosenberg. Rafael Hamalakh Peitrikow 1911, 70

Swelling: Where there are no pharmacies, a popular physician can dip a rag into the urine from young children, and place it repeatedly on the swelling. This sometimes helps.

So urine was thought to have many helpful properties. It helps the tone of a shofar, improves theTemple incense, and was once thought to be a cure for the plague. Still, we are unlikely to use it in any of these ways any time soon. And, as Abba Shaul noted, that’s probably a good thing.

Rosh Hashanah 26a~ How Does a Cow Grow Her Horn?

Among the several reasons given by the Talmud for not using the horn of a cow as a shofar, there is this one, stated by the great sage Abayye.

ראש השנה כו, א

שׁוֹפָר אָמַר רַחֲמָנָא, וְלֹא שְׁנַיִם וּשְׁלֹשָׁה שׁוֹפָרוֹת. וְהָא דְּפָרָה, כֵּיוָן דְּקָאֵי גִּילְדֵי גִּילְדֵי — מִיתְחֲזֵי כִּשְׁנַיִם וּשְׁלֹשָׁה שׁוֹפָרוֹת

This is the reasoning of the Rabbis: The Merciful One says to sound a single shofar, and not two or three shofarot together, but this horn of a cow, since it is comprised of layers, looks like two or three shofarot.

Rashi adds explains this passage like this:

גילדי גילדי - בכל שנה ושנה ניכרת תוספתו והוא כמין גלד מוסיף על גלד ראשון בתכליתו של ראשון תחילת השני

It grows in layers: The new growth can be seen every year. It is an additional layer over the first layer with each year adding another.

Stages in horn development in cattle(Bos taurus). (A)In the newborn calf there is no tangible protrusion on the skull, but the site of the future horn site is covered by a pair of hairy spots. Beneath the epidermis, mesenchymal structures and sebaceous glands accumulate. Elevation of the underlying frontal bone begins. (B, C) In the juvenile between 2 and 6 months of age a protrusion is visible and the primitive core develops under the epidermis and above the frontal bone. Keratinization has already begun on the epidermis. The core undergoes ossification and then is fused to the underlying protruding (dome-shaped) frontal bone. (D) From 6 months of age to adulthood, the frontal sinus enters the base of the core and pneumatization proceeds until 3 or 4 years of age. Keratinization continues incrementally on the epidermis. *It is not clear at what stage the periosteum is formed around the core bone. In the adult the core bone is overlaid by the periosteum. From Nasoori A. Formation, structure, and function of extra-skeletal bones in mammals. Biol. Rev. (2020).

A helpful paper from the School of Veterinary Medicine in Hokkaido, Japan published last year reviewed the formation, structure, and function of bony compartments like horns (and other bits too) in mammals. It tells you everything you need to know about how reindeer grow their antlers, giraffe their ossicones, and rhinoceri their incredible horns. It also details how cows grow their horns, so it seems the right place to look for help in understanding today’s page of Talmud.

In cattle, the horns begin early in gestation as primitive horn buds, but there is no ossification (the process by which something becomes bone) until after the calf is born. Then, a pair of primitive cores develop above the frontal area (see the figure above, B). These connective-tissue-like cores will later form the bony core of the horn. But these primitive cores have no adhesion to the underlying frontal bone until they fuse with it at around two months of age (C). Subsequently, the core begins to grow upwards and ossifies, and there are changes in the layer of skin over it, called the epidermis. which becomes keratinized to generate a hard surface. The middle of the growing horn has a hollow base much like the sinuses we have on our faces, so that, other than at its tip, the horn has a spongy hollow, structure (D). “Keratinization of the epidermis” this paper notes, “continues throughout the animal’s life and, depending on the species, the horns can take various lengths, sizes, and shapes.” There was some dispute as to whether a cow’s horn grows from the base of from the tip. But in their 1983 review paper The Interrelationships of Higher Ruminant Families with Special Emphasis on the Members of the Cervoidea, Janis and Scott conclude that “in fact, neither the core nor the sheath grow from the base.The bony core grows both from the tip and by appositional growth over the surface and the sheath is continually produced over the entire surface of the core.”

We can conclude therefore that the horn of a cow does indeed grow continually, although not annually, like the rings of a tree. Abayye, who died in 337, knew cows. But there is one problem with his explanation. Sheep belong to the same family as cows. It is called the Bovidae and includes cattle, sheep, and antelope, as you can see below in the diagram from a group of Israeli researchers. And sheep grow their horns just like cattle, which means that they also grow them “גִּילְדֵי גִּילְדֵי" or in layers. Which would make them just as forbidden as cow’s horns. Just don’t tell that to the person who blows shofar.

From Dekelet al. Dispersal of an ancient retroposon in the TP53promoter of Bovidae: phylogeny, novel mechanisms, and potential implications for cow milk persistency. BMC Genomics (2015) 16:53.

Rosh Hashanah 25 ~ The Length of the Lunar Month

ראש השנה כה, א

תָּנוּ רַבָּנַן: פַּעַם אַחַת נִתְקַשְּׁרוּ שָׁמַיִם בְּעָבִים, וְנִרְאֵית דְּמוּת לְבָנָה בְּעֶשְׂרִים וְתִשְׁעָה לַחֹדֶשׁ. כִּסְבוּרִים הָעָם לוֹמַר רֹאשׁ חֹדֶשׁ, וּבִקְּשׁוּ בֵּית דִּין לְקַדְּשׁוֹ. אָמַר לָהֶם רַבָּן גַּמְלִיאֵל: כָּךְ מְקוּבְּלַנִי מִבֵּית אֲבִי אַבָּא — אֵין חִדּוּשָׁהּ שֶׁל לְבָנָה פְּחוּתָה מֵעֶשְׂרִים וְתִשְׁעָה יוֹם וּמֶחֱצָה וּשְׁנֵי שְׁלִישֵׁי שָׁעָה וְשִׁבְעִים וּשְׁלֹשָׁה חֲלָקִים

The Sages taught in a baraita: Once the sky was covered with clouds, and the form of the moon was visible on the twenty-ninth of the month. The people thought to say that the day was the New Moon, and the court sought to sanctify it. However, Rabban Gamliel said to them: This is the tradition that I received from the house of my father’s father: The monthly cycle of the renewal of the moon takes no less than twenty-nine and a half days, plus two-thirds of an hour, plus seventy-three of the 1,080 subsections of an hour.

According to Rabban Gamliel, a lunar month cannot be shorter than 29 days, 12 hours and 792 chalakim (where one chelek is 1/1080 parts of an hour). If witnesses claim to have seen a new moon before this time has elapsed after the previous new moon, they must be mistaken. According to the medieval commentator Menachem ben Solomon (1249–1315)known as the Meiri, this period is also the longest period for a lunar month.

How the Lunar Month varies

The average length of a lunar month, that is, the period between two new moons, is 29.53059 days, which is 29 days 12 hours and 44 minutes. But this is an average, and the actual length of the month varies. This is because the moon’s rotation around the earth is not uniform. When the moon is closest to the earth (called the lunar perigee) it speeds up, and when it is furthest from the earth (at the lunar apogee) it slows down, though only by a little in each case.

From here.

Here are the lengths of the lunar months for this calendar year. Note the longest month marked in red, and the shortest month, shown in green. They differ by six hours and twenty minutes!

Lengths of the lunar months in 2021
Successive new moons	Length of lunar month
Dec 14, 2020, to Jan 13, 2021	29 days 12 hours 44 min
Jan 13 to Feb 11	29 days 14 hours 06 min
Feb 11 to Mar 13	29 days 15 hours 15 min
Mar 13 to Apr 12	29 days 16 hours 10 min
Apr 12 to May 11	29 days 16 hours 29 min
May 11 to Jun 10	29 days 15 hours 53 min
Jun 10 to Jul 9	29 days 14 hours 24 min
Jul 9 to Aug 8	29 days 12 hours 34 min
Aug 8 to Sep 6	29 days 11 hours 02 min
Sep 6 to Oct 6	29 days 10 hours 14 min
Oct 6 to Nov 4	29 days 10 hours 09 min
Nov 4 to Dec 4	29 days 10 hours 28 min
Dec 4, 2021, to Jan 2, 2022	29 days 10 hours 50 min

The corrupted text in today’s Page of Talmud

In bis book Calendar and Community, the British scholar Sacha Stern pointed out that the period of the lunar moth, called a lunation, is exactly the same as in the present day rabbinic calendar. “However, the phrase אֵין חִדּוּשָׁהּ שֶׁל לְבָנָה פְּחוּתָה (‘not …less than’) which implies a minimal value, is inappropriate for what should represent a fixed value.” He continues:

Moreover, the mean lunation is totally out of context in this passage. The context of this passage is the Mishnaic, empirical calendar, which is based on the appearance of the new moon; calculation of the molad is therefore irrelevant. R. Gamliel was only establishing that the moon could not have been sighted before the 29th day of the previous month. All he could have stated, therefore, was the minimal number of days in an empirical lunar month.

Other scholars like David Gans (1743), Hayyim Slonimsky (1852) and Hayyim Yehiel Bornstein (1904) also recognized this problem. Stern therefore suggests that the text we have in our Talmud is a later addition.

Originally the text would have read: אֵין חִדּוּשָׁהּ שֶׁל לְבָנָה פְּחוּתָה מֵעֶשְׂרִים וְתִשְׁעָה יוֹם (‘not after less than 29 days’) - and no more. The interpolation שְׁנֵי שְׁלִישֵׁי שָׁעָה וְשִׁבְעִים וּשְׁלֹשָׁה חֲלָקִים (‘and a half, two-thirds of an hour and 73 parts’) would have been made by an editor who thought that the mean lunation - not the minimal number of days in the month - was meant in this passage. The absence of manuscript evidence does not undermine this argument; it only suggests that the interpolation must have been made relatively early, perhaps in the late Geonic period.

The origin of 29-12-793

If Professor Stern and his intellectual predecessors are correct, the origin of the 29-12-793 period for a lunation is not in fact in the Talmud. So where does it come from? In the twelfth century Rabbi Avraham bar Hiyya acknowledged that the calculation is identical to that found in the Almagest, a Greek language compendium on mathematics and astronomy which was composed by Ptolemy in the second century. In that book Ptolemy gives the lunation in the standard Babylonian sexagesimal system as 29d, 31i, 50ii and 20iv, (where one i=1/60 of the day, one ii is a sixtieth part of that and so on). It is exactly the same length as the rabbinic lunation. Rabbbi Avraham bar Hiyya claimed that Hipparchus (the second century B.C.E scholar who Ptolemy used has his source) had taken this value from the Jewish sages - the ancestors of Rabban Gamliel referred to on today’s page of Talmud. But, as Sacha Stern noted, “it seems far more plausible to assume on the contrary, that it was the rabbis who borrowed their lunation from Ptolemy.” This assumption led a number of Jewish scholars to conclude that the molad calculation of 29- 12-793 could not have been instituted before the ninth century.

This is because Ptolemy’s Almagest was not known to astronomers in the Near East before its translation into Arabic in the early ninth century…It is likely that Ptolemy’s calculation of the conjunction was only then transmitted to the Jews, who soon incorporated it into the fixed rabbinic calendar. Although somewhat conjectural, this theory remains completely plausible, particularly as evidence of the present day molad calculation only begins to emerge in the ninth century.

Stern also admits that it is also possible that rabbinic calendar makers took their lunation period of 29-12-793 directly from the Babylonians, without resorting to Ptolemy’s Almagest. If that happened, “the rabbinic lunation could have been adopted long before the ninth century.” Either way, we got it from the Babylonians.

“Whether the molad calculation was borrowed from Babylonian astronomers, or from an Arabic translation of Ptolemy’s Almagest that would have been made at the ninth century Abbasid capital of Baghdad, in the heartland of Babylonia, the geographical origins of this molad would have been the same. It was in Babylonia, indeed, that this molad would have become known to the Jews and incorporated into the present-day rabbinic calendar. ”

— Sacha Stern Calendar and Community. Oxford University Press 2001; 209-210.

Where does that 1/1080 measure come from?

In 1989, shortly before his death, Otto Neugebauer (d. 1990), who was described as “the most original and productive scholar of the history of the exact sciences, perhaps of the history of science, of our age” published a paper that reviewed the transmission of the standard Babylonian value for the lunation. In it, he noted that in the third century B.C.E (!) in Mesopotamia, there existed a small unit of measure called “barleycorn” which represented a fraction of 1/6 of a finger breadth. The finger breadth is in turn a faction of a palm, and the palm of the cubit, so that 1 cubit = 180 barleycorns. But, noted Neugebauer, “measures can lose their specific meaning and become terms for fractional parts in general….Similarly, the barleycorn, embedded in a sequence of sexagesimally arranged units, retains only its fractional significance as 18 units of 60ths, ie 1/1080.” And so the Babylonians used this measure, which we inherited as halakim (parts). representing 1/1080 of an hour.

The Babylonians also discovered the nineteen year cycle around 600 B.C.E. which today is known as the Metonic cycle. It is is the period after which the phases of the moon recur at the same time of the year. They kept careful records of the time for a number of lunar cycles, and used these to calculate the average lunation. These were later adopted by the Romans. And by us.

No, It’s not a miracle

Some organizations, keen to spread the word about Judaism, have looked to today’s page of Talmud as proof of the divine origins of the oral law. Here is an excerpt from the Aish Hatorah Discovery Book:

So just how long is a lunar month, according to the reckoning of the Talmudic sages? The Talmud in Rosh Hashanah 25a tells us: Rabban Gamliel said...I have it on the authority of my father’s father that the renewal of the moon takes place after not less than twenty-nine and a half days, two-thirds of an hour and seventy-three parts of an hour.

Okay, class, you do the math. Two-thirds of an hour remembering that an hour is divided into 1,080 parts equals 720 parts. Add to that another 73 parts and you have 793 parts. So that according to the ancient calculation of the Sages of the Talmud, a lunar month is 29 and days plus 793 out of 1,080 parts of an hour. 793 out of 1,080 equals 0.734259 hours, which equals 0,03059 days. Add to that 29.5 days, and the average length of the lunar month according to the Rabbis is 29.53059 days.

What is so incredibly amazing about all this is the fact that, in our own times, the scientists and researchers at NASA have spent years of research using satellites, hairline telescopes, laser beams and supercomputers and all this in order to determine the exact length of the synodic (lunar) month. And the calculation they came up is that the length of the lunar month is 29.530588 days. The difference between this figure and that used by the Sages is .0000006, or one sixth millionth of a day!!!

Incredible! How could the Sages of millennia ago have been able to calculate the exact length of the lunar month with such incredible precision, enabling them to accurately and successfully balance the solar and lunar cycles for so many thousands of years?! With absolutely no modern technological tools and equipment, how could the Rabbis of old have had access to such accurate information way ahead of their time?! [Can you say G-d?]

We actually have a tradition, based on an ancient Midrash, that when G-d commanded Moses regarding the establishment of the calendar and the Jewish holidays based on the sanctification of the New Moon, He also gave to Moses all the secrets and vital information necessary to accurately calculate and balance the solar and lunar cycles.

Maybe accepting the Torah as G-d’s truth doesn’t require such a leap of faith after all?

There may be lots of good reasons to follow traditional Jewish practice, but, contra Aish Hatorah, the knowledge of the length of the lunar month is not one of them. It was an inheritance we took from the Babylonians, and unless Aish is suggesting that God revealed the average length of the lunar month to them, knowing the history of the Jewish lunation reveals something else and just as impressive. It is the ingenuity of the human mind.

Rosh Hashanah 24b ~ Starry Images in Synagogues

On today’s page of Talmud, the Mishnah tells the story of Rabban Gamliel who had some special charts which he used to question the witnesses who claimed to have seen the new moon:

ראש השנה כד, ב

דְּמוּת צוּרוֹת לְבָנָה הָיוּ לוֹ לְרַבָּן גַּמְלִיאֵל בְּטַבְלָא וּבְכוֹתֶל בַּעֲלִיָּיתוֹ, שֶׁבָּהֶן מַרְאֶה אֶת הַהֶדְיוֹטוֹת, וְאוֹמֵר: הֲכָזֶה רָאִיתָ אוֹ כָּזֶה

Mishnah: Rabban Gamliel had a diagram of the different forms of the moon drawn on a tablet that hung on the wall of his attic, which he would show to the laymen who came to testify about the new moon (but were unable to describe adequately what they had seen). And he would say to them: Did you see a form like this or like this?

The Talmud asks why these charts with pictures of the moon were permitted. “Isn’t it written: “You shall not make with Me gods of silver, or gods of gold” (Exodus 20:19), which is interpreted as teaching: You shall not make images of My attendants, i.e., those celestial bodies that were created to serve God, including the sun and the moon?” This introduces an interesting discussion about precisely what images of the sun, the moon, and the stars are permitted. After a couple of tangential discussions, the Talmud gives three reasons why Rabban Gamliel was permitted to keep these charts: First, he was always surrounded by other people, so there was no suspicion that he would be worshipping the images. Second, perhaps the image of the moon was incomplete (דִּפְרָקִים הֲוָה), and it is only complete images of the moon that are forbidden, and finally perhaps he kept these charts to study and learn from them. This would be permitted “as it is written: “You shall not learn to do (לֹא תִּלְמַד לַעֲשׂוֹת) after the abominations of those nations” (Deuteronomy 18:9), which indicates that you may learn to understand and to teach.”

The Code of Jewish Law, the Shulhan Arukh codifies these rulings:

שולחן ערוך יורד דעה 141:4

וצורת חמה ולבנה וכוכבים אסור בין בולטת בין שוקעת ואם הם להתלמד להבין ולהורות כולן מותרות אפי' בולטות (ויש מתירין בשל רבים דליכא חשדא) (טור בשם הרא"ש)

It is forbidden to make any kind of model representation of the sun, the moon and the stars, whether in positive or negative relief, but if the models or images are to study from, they are all permitted.

It is clear from the Shulhan Arukh that it would be forbidden to make images of the sun and the moon and the stars as decorations. And yet this is precisely what has been uncovered in several ancient synagogues in Israel.

The Zodiac in the Shul

As a recent article published in Ha’artez noted, there are at several ancient synagogues in which pagan images of the zodiac can be found on floor mosaics. For example, they are the synagogues in Zippori, Hammat Tiberias, Hosefa (Usfiyya) and Huqoq in the north, and in Susya and Naaran in Judea. Perhaps the most famous is the excavation in Beit Alfa. Here is its mosaic:

In the center, wrote the eminent Israeli archeologist Rachel Hachili, the sun god  - Sol invictus - is represented by his bust and crown, his horses by their legs and heads, and his chariot by its front and two wheels.  Let us let Prof. Hachili walk us through the typical features of these remarkable mosaics:

The outer circle of the design contains the 12 signs of the zodiac, identified with the 12 months of the year. Aries is the first sign, being the first month of spring. According to his position in the circle, we see that at Nacaran and Husaifa the goes clockwise, while at Beth-Alpha and Tiberias, it goes counterclockwise. The signs (representing months) do not correspond to the seasons except at Tiberias and Antioch, where the zodiacal signs and seasons are coordinated, although at Antioch we have the personifications of the months rather than of the zodiacal signs.

There are a number of differences between these Jewish images of the Zodiac and those found in Roman Temples, but she noted that “by comparing the zodiacs of the four Jewish synagogue mosaic floors and tracing their origin and development from Roman art, it may be concluded that the Jewish zodiacal panel is a liturgical calendar. In every Jewish calendar, the form, composition, and balance of the three-part scheme are identical, suggesting the existence of a prototype…The design has its roots in the art of the preceding period with the two major designs which are part of the Jewish calendar: the astronomical zodiac and the agricultural calendar.

The Jewish scheme unified both of these into the distinctive design of the seasons, zodiacal signs, and sun god, signifying a liturgical calendar. When the synagogue replaced the Temple, the annual ritual acts, performed by the priests, were represented symbolically in synagogue art. The calendar became the frame of the annual rites now enacted by the community. Thus, it was guaranteed a central location in Jewish synagogue mosaic floors.

“Clearly by the time of these synagogues, the fourth to sixth centuries C.E., the local Jews were comfortable with representational art. They would have presumably objected to representations of pagan gods, however, hence the solar deity in the synagogues was meant to represent the God of Israel, most scholars agree.”

— Ha'aretz, September 16, 2020

Hellenists or Mainstream?

Some have seen these mosaics as evidence that the synagogues with them practiced a different form of Jewish worship. “It was not Rabbinic Judaism, which would eventually become Judaism as we know it” wrote Elon Gilad and Ruth Schuster in their article in Haaretz, “but at the time was only taking shape on the sidelines of the Jewish world. The Jews who prayed in these and other synagogues belonged to what was then the mainstream of Judaism but is now long forgotten: Hellenistic Judaism.” They suggest that “these shuls and their mosaics only seem strange when compared to the later synagogues of Rabbinic Judaism, but they are perfectly in line with the Roman cults of the period. Indeed, Hellenistic Judaism is best understood as a Roman cult.”

Gilad and Schuster continue:

The evolution of Judaism is quite similar to the evolution of biological species. It's not a neat progression from First Temple Judaism to Second Temple Judaism and then to Rabbinic Judaism, as Jewish history is often viewed. Rather, the religion evolved with time and some forms were false starts, while others spread and continue to evolve to this day, like Rabbinic Judaism, Christianity, Samaritanism, and Karaite Judaism.

To return to the metaphor of the dinosaurs and the tiny furry animals from which we evolved, we could say that Hellenistic Judaism with its zodiac mosaics was like the dinosaurs: great at the time but destined to go extinct – in the calamitous Early Middle Ages. It was the small, at the time almost imperceptible, Rabbinic Judaism that survived these disasters and became the Judaism of later periods, much like the rodents that survived the dinosaur-killing disaster from which we eventually evolved.

But others are not so sure. In his classic work Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period, the archeologist Erwin Goodenough (1893-1965) wrote that “the Zodiac in the synagogues, with Helios in the center, accordingly, seems to me to proclaim that the God worshiped in the synagogue was the God who had made the stars, and revealed himself through them in cosmic law and order and right, but who was himself the Charioteer guiding the universe and all its order and law.” He continued:

Actually the floor of Beth Alpha as a whole, the only one that shows the zodiac in its full original setting, seems to me to outline an elaborate con­ception of Judaism. In the center is presented the nature of God as the cosmic ruler. Above are the symbols of his specific revelation to the Jews, primarily the Torah in the Torah shrine; below in the sacrifice of Isaac is, I suspect, the atonement offered in the Akedah. All this is surrounded by familiar mystic symbols: birds, animals, and baskets within the intersticies of the vine. At the top of all inconspicuously stand the little fish and the bunch of grapes.

We are unlikely to ever determine which explanation is correct, but the zodiac mosaics certainly represented a Judaism quite different from that described in todays’ page of Talmud, in which there is an almost absolute prohibition against making images of the sun, the moon and the stars. Once upon a time, these images were part of synagogue decorations.