Part II
(continued from last week)

In an article on the Seder al-Tahwid liturgy, liturgical scholar Ezra Fleischer postulates that the Kiddush ceremony on the holiday was based on an earlier Mishnaic-era institution. The Mishnah in Rosh Hashanah 2:7 describes how the Sanhedrin, the high religious court of Talmudic-era Israel, consecrated the new month by declaring, “It is sanctified,” at which point the entire assemblage would respond in kind, “It is sanctified, it is sanctified.” This declaration was performed with pomp and publicity in order to make it clear that the final word in setting the Jewish calendar belonged to the rabbis of Eretz Yisrael and no one else. In the context of the Seder al-Tahwid, this ritual serves to highlight Nisan’s role as the first month of the Jewish lunar year, the beginning of this process of sanctifying the new moon.

If the first of Nisan is such an important date to both the Bible and Talmud, why is the day celebrated today only by this small Jewish community? To answer this question we must look to the Geonic period of Jewish history, corresponding roughly to the second half of the first millennium. Over the past decade, historians increasingly see this period as one in which a number of variations of Judaism were vying for supremacy. These included several schools of Jewish jurisprudence based in different geographic regions across the Mediterranean Diaspora. Two of the most prominent schools were the Babylonian (Minhag Bavel, based in Baghdad) and Palestinian (Minhag Eretz Yisrael) rites, as well as Karaite Jews who did not follow the rabbis at all but formed their own, non-rabbinic minhag or customary rules.

The Sanhedrin in Jerusalem was abolished in the fifth century by Byzantine decree. Its various successors could not recapture its prestige, and the rabbis of Eretz Yisrael gradually lost their power to sanction the new moon. The Karaites developed their own system for setting the calendar. But within the rabbinic tradition, in the absence of the Sanhedrin, the Babylonians and Palestinians often found themselves at odds.

The most notorious controversy between the two schools involved Saadiah ben Joseph Al-Faumi, the head of the Babylonian Academy better known as Saadiah Gaon, and Aharon ben Meir, the head of the Palestinian Academy. In 921-923, the two engaged in an extended and very public argument regarding the sanctification of the Hebrew year 4682 (921/22). While the core of this debate surrounded the complicated methods of calculating the Jewish calendar, it became a referendum on which academy, and by extension rite, would become authoritative in the Diaspora. Saadiah emerged victorious (historians Marina Rustow and Sacha Stern argue that his authority on these matters may have resulted from his mastery of Abbasid advances in astronomy).

In Palestine, however, the Jewish community, based in Jerusalem, continued to follow the Minhag Eretz Yisrael, which also exerted influence on other Near Eastern Jewish communities such as Egypt. The heads of the Jerusalem Academy still often insisted that the right to set the calendar rested solely with them. As late as the 11th century, Rabbi Evyatar Ha-Kohen, the head of the Palestinian Academy (partially in exile in Cairo) would declare:

“The land of Israel is not part of the exile such that it would be subject to an Exilarch (a title often applied to the head of the Babylonian Academy), and furthermore one may not contradict the authority of the prince (a title at times applied to the head of the Palestinian Academy), on the word of whom [alone] may leap years be declared and the holiday dates set according to the order imposed by God before the creation of the world. For this is what we are taught in the secrets of setting a leap year.”

All in all, the competition between Babylonia and Eretz Israel ended in a decisive Babylonian victory. This was due to several factors, not least of which is the fact that Babylonian Jewry experienced much more stability under Sasanian and later Islamic rule, while its Eretz Israel counterpart was constantly experiencing persecution and uprooting. The final death knell for Minhag Eretz Yisrael was delivered in July of 1099 when an army of Crusaders broke through the walls of Jerusalem and massacred the city’s Jewish inhabitants: its Babylonian-rite, Palestinian-rite communities and Karaite communities. With the destruction of its center began the decline and eventual disappearance of many unique Eretz Israel customs. It is only due to the discovery of the Cairo Genizah in the 19th century that scholars have become aware of many of those long-lost traditions and customs. At this time Babylonia’s prominence began to decline as the Sephardic communities of the Iberian Peninsula and the Ashkenazic communities of France and Germany were increasingly on the ascendancy. Both of these communities, however, maintained the Babylonian rite. (As Israel Ta Shma points out in his book on early Ashkenazic prayer, both the Sephardic and Ashkenazic rites have Eretz Israel elements. These are more evident in the Ashkenazi rite, probably due to the ties between the proto Ashkenazim and the Palestinian Academy in Byzantine Palestine.)

The latest evidence of the celebration of the first of Nisan comes to us from the 13th century and it would seem that even by this time it was all but stamped out by those who were determined to establish the primacy of the Babylonian school. This period coincides with the increased activism of Rabbi Abraham Maimonides, the son of Moses Maimonides, the great Spanish codifier of Jewish law. Rabbi Abraham, who championed standardization based on his father’s codification, exerted great pressure against the Synagogue of the Palestinians in Fustat, Old Cairo, to bring their ritual into line with Babylonian standards. He was for the most part successful, but, as we have already seen, this unique custom was retained (albeit in diminished form) among Egyptian Jews to this very day.

(To be continued next week.)

By Joel S. Davidi Weisberger

Joel S. Davidi Weisberger runs “Luach Libekha, Tablet Of Your Heart” (formerly Jewish History Channel), a grassroots group dedicated to the dissemination of Jewish history and culture (find them on Facebook). You can also get to know him at the wonderful Cong. Beth Tefillah in Paramus, where he serves as an assistant. He resides with his wife and son in Fair Lawn and would love to hear from you at [email protected].