Posts
According to Kabbalah, there are four forces of impurity (anti-divinity, or kelipah). On Passover, when we celebrate our physical freedom, we also celebrate our liberation from these spiritual forces. Our physical departure from Egypt was a reflection of our spiritual one—we were pulled from the clutches of depravity and impurity and set on the path to receiving the Torah and connecting with God.
An early barita, a part of the Talmud left on the editor's floor, gives another reason. We were liberated from Pharaoh's four evil decrees: a) Slavery. b) The ordered murder of all male progeny by the Hebrew midwives. c) The drowning of all Hebrew boys in the Nile by Egyptian thugs. d) The decree ordering the Israelites to collect their own straw for use in their brick production. This pre dates Ha Nasi.
The words "cup of wine" are mentioned four times in Pharaoh's butler's dream (Genesis 40:11-13). According to the Midrash, these cups of wine alluded to the Israelites' liberation.
And, the four cups symbolize our freedom from our four exiles: The Egyptian, Babylonian, and Greek exiles, and the Roman exile. This was written circa 140 CE when Ha Nasi was 5 years old.
So we know Passover included 4 cups of wine. If the '' why'' is because this is how rich free men ate, and we tossed a spiritual spin on it, this would be consistent with all of Judaism. Our brit milah is Egyptian but we made it for all men, not just Pharaohs. Our Shabbat is every 7 days and is for spirituality and rest for all people, even our animals and servants, while for Hammurabi, they were bad-omen days, when Kings did not work or make decrees.
But I will leave you with this: the afikoman. If you look up dessert in a Hebrew dictionary you will not see this word, or try ordering afikoman with your Turkish coffee in Tel Aviv, you will have the restaurant in stitches.
The below authos gives you a hint when he mentions Greek symposia. While as a student for all my degrees at the U of Penn, I can assure you I never went to the symposia of which Ha Nasi knew. It was a drinking party, orgiastic, with both hetero and homo sexual behavior. And just as the below authors described the meal with washing, and food, and being waited on, so were symposia. But the below author "G" rated his lecture.
So what is an afikoman? It comes from the Greek word epikomen or epikomion [επί Κομός], meaning "that which comes after." The Greek word on which afikoman is based has two meanings, according to the Bavli Talmud and the Yerushalmi Talmud. Both Talmuds agree on the Halakah (stated in the Haggadah under the answer given to the Wise Son...and NB the Four Sons are discussed in both Talmuds and the Kaballah, and the simple son, is not called simple, but ''stupid,'' in Yerushalmi ) that no other food should be eaten for the rest of the night after the afikoman is consumed. The Babylonian Talmud explains that the word "afikoman" derives from the Greek word for "dessert", the last thing eaten at a meal. But I dare anyone to order epikomen at the Plaka one evening in Athens. A restaurant laughing in stitches is a universal language.
The Jerusalem Talmud, however, derives the word afikoman from epikomion, meaning "after-dinner revelry at a symposium." And the Rabbis were very clear what that entertainment meant.
Now it was the custom of Romans and Greeks to move from one party or banquet to another. We call it party-hopping and its rude and not Jewish. The Halakah prohibiting anything else being eaten after the afikoman therefore enjoins Jews to distinguish their Passover Seder from the pagan rituals of other nations and to stay with your one host and to discuss and study. The rabbis go into detail of a culinary nature to think of desserts to eat along with the last piece of matzah to entice Jews to stay put. And they talk about stuffed quail with pistachio nuts and dried apricots and other things. Remember, the Passover meal, was 4 cups of wine, lots of matzah, bitter herbs, some veggies and salt water, an egg, and charoset.
So our meal of freedom was modeled after the freemen of Greece. And leave it to us Rabbis to insert matzah, spirituality, prayer, and more matzah, and take out the naked dancing gals and young boys.
Try to have a sweet Pesach anyway, guys.
Many blessings,
Rabbi Arthur Segal
Jewish Renewal
Jewish Spiritual Renewal
Hilton Head Island, SC
Bluffton, SC
Savannah, GA
www.JewishSpiritualRenewal.org
A Short Snap Shot of Rabbi Arthur Segal
 Click to Order | THE HANDBOOK TO JEWISH SPIRITUAL RENEWAL: A Path of Transformation for the Modern Jew Rabbi Dr. Arthur Segal distills millennia of sage advice into a step-by-step process to reclaim your Judaism and your spirituality in a concise easy-to-read and easy-to-follow manner. If you find yourself wishing for the strength to sustain you through the ups and downs of life; if you want to learn how to live life to its fullest without angst, worry, low self-esteem or fear; or if you wish that your relationships with family, friends and co-workers were based on love and service and free of ego, arguments, resentments and feelings of being unloved...this book is for you. Price: $19.99 254 Pages Published by: Amazon's BookSurge |
| | |
 Click to Order | A SPIRITUAL AND ETHICAL COMPENDIUM TO THE TORAH AND TALMUD Rabbi Dr. Arthur Segal dissects each of the Torah's weekly sections (parashot) using the Talmud and other rabbinic texts to show the true Jewish take on what the Torah is trying to teach us. This companion to The Handbook to Jewish Spiritual Renewal: A Path of Transformation for the Modern Jew brings the Torah alive with daily relevance to the Modern Jew. All of the Torah can be summed up in one word: Chesed. It means kindness. The Talmud teaches that the Torah is about loving our fellow man and that we are to go and study. The rest is commentary. This compendium clarifies the commentary and allows one to study Torah and Talmud to learn the Judaic ideals of love, forgiveness, kindness, mercy and peace. A must read for all Jews and deserves a place in every Jewish home. Price: $24.99 494 Pages Published by: Amazon's BookSurge |
Welcome to Rabbi Arthur Segal's Jewish Spiritual Renewal bookstore. We invite you to create an account with us if you like, or shop as a guest. Either way, your shopping cart will be active until you leave the store.
You can purchase each book individually, but if you purchase them together as a set with the Tzadakkah Bundle, I will donate a portion of the sales price in your name to a tzadakkah of your choice, such as your synagogue.
Simply provide the donation information in the "Special Instructions" box during checkout. When doing so, please include the following:
- Name of Organization
- Contact Name and eMail Address
- Organization Mailing Address
- Organization Phone Number
Thank you for visiting.
-
(001) The Handbook to Jewish Spiritual Renewal
-
In The Handbook to Jewish Spiritual Renewal: A Path of Transformation for the Modern Jew, Rabbi Dr. Arthur Segal distills millennia of sage advice to reclaim your Judaism and your spirituality.
- Price : $19.99
-
(002) A Spiritual and Ethical Compendium to the Torah and Talmud
-
A Spiritual and Ethical Compendium to the Torah and Talmud dissects each of the Torah's weekly sections (parashot) using the Talmud and other rabbinic texts to show the true Jewish take on what the Torah is trying to teach us.
- Price : $24.99
-
(003) Tzadakkah Bundle
-
The Handbook to Jewish Spiritual Renewal and A Spiritual and Ethical Compendium to the Torah and Talmud. Purchase both books as a set, and I will donate a portion of the sales price in your name to the tzadakkah of your choice. -- Rabbi Segal
- Price : $44.98
The Mystery of the Four Cups
by Dr. Joshua Kulp
Imagine you are a Roman citizen, living in Caesarea in the second century of the common era. You have been invited to a banquet by a friend. Before you even enter the room, a servant helps wash your hands. Once you are in the banquet hall, you are shown to a couch, where you lay down, reclining on your left side. A servant mixes a cup of wine with water and hands it to you and you offer a brief libation to
Bacchus before you drink. A small table is placed in front of you with hors d'oeuvres, including lettuce and a delicious mixture of nuts, wine, and fruits. After the appetizers the tables are removed and new ones
are brought in, set with tasty dishes of meat and poultry. When you have completed your meal and thanked the gods, your host asks philosophical questions, some about the food, some on other topics.
You offer more libations and go home satiated with food and wine and the pleasure of good company.
This Greco-Roman symposium is nearly a perfect echo of the seder as we know it from the Mishnah, which was composed in the same era. The Greco-Romans offered libations, we recite blessings. The Mishnah
describes servants washing participants' hands. The Greco-Romans reclined as they ate off small tables; the Mishnah says, "Even a poor person should not eat until he has reclined." We, like the Greco-
Romans, eat lettuce and a mixture of nuts, wine, and fruits. And most importantly, both the seder and the symposium were an opportunity for discussions often based on the foods at the table. "Rabban
Gamaliel says: Whoever has not explained these three things on Pesach has not fulfilled his obligation: the Pesach sacrifice, the matzah, and the bitter herbs." When the Temple was destroyed in 70 CE, and sacrifices were no longer possible, the Jews searched for a replacement for the sacrificial meal. Their solution was to celebrate Passover with the type of formal, organized meal with which they had become familiar, the Greco- Roman symposium. Thus, the elements of the seder that differ from a Greco-Roman
symposium are all the more striking, although some are fairly obvious. For example, children would not have participated in symposia. The rabbis, in contrast, saw Pesach as a prime opportunity to fulfill the
Torah's commandment "and you shall tell your child on that day." Poor people would not have participated in symposia, whereas the Mishnah begins its description of the seder saying "even a poor person should
not eat until he reclines." On the other hand, Greeks and Romans often engaged in drunken revelry at the end of a meal, behavior explicitly prohibited by the Mishnah. But perhaps the most important feature of the seder – the four cups of wine – does not have a parallel in Greco-Roman custom and cannot be explained easily. While ancient peoples usually celebrated with wine, symposium literature never records that precisely four cups were drunk. Scholarly attempts to answer why the Mishnah insists on the number four have not been convincing. A popular theory is that the number three was problematic because of the Christian trinity. The problem is that in the original version of the Mishnah, the Mah Nishtanah – what we call the Four Questions – consists of three questions, not four, and Rabban Gamaliel mandates the three food items to be mentioned. Furthermore, Christians did not develop thenotion of the trinity until after the Mishnah already had been composed. Recently, scholars have arrived at a better answer to solve the puzzle. The notion of four cups is first mentioned in Tosefta Pesahim 10:1, a second/third century text slightly older than the Mishnah. The Tosefta reads: "And they should provide him [the poor person] with not less than four cups of wine that together have a quarter of a log." The Tosefta clearly is directed at those who give out charity – they are to provide a poor person with enough wine for four cups on Pesach,
and each cup must have a minimum measure. The Tosefta does not mention the four cups of wine again, leaving us to wonder why this specific number. The most obvious answer would be so the poor
person could fulfill the commandment of drinking four cups at the seder. However, it is odd that the Tosefta never mentions when you are to drink the cups, as the Mishnah does. And if the Tosefta is an
earlier text than the Mishnah, we cannot assume that it relies on familiarity with it. Anyone reading just the Tosefta would not know why there are four cups. The answer may be quite simple – the poor person must be provided with enough wine for a proper celebration. Four cups of wine is a generous enough measure to allow for true rejoicing. Furthermore, since each cup contains a quarter of a log of wine, four cups add up to
a full log, which signifies completion. The radical transformation of the four cups from something that aids in
rejoicing to a ritual in itself takes place in the Mishnah. Rabbi Judah Hanasi, the editor of the Mishnah who lived in Tziporri at the end of the second century, punctuated each point of the seder with a cup of wine. Kiddush is recited over the first cup. The second cup accompanies the mitzvah of retelling the story of the Exodus, the third cup accompanies birkat hamazon, grace after the meal, and we drink the fourth after we recite hallel. Each cup now accompanies another ritual and becomes a ritual in its own right. Rabbi Judah Hanasi transformed what originally was a means by which to gladden the participant's heart to the meal's organizing principle and thereby heighten the celebration of the Exodus. The four cups are what makes the seder a seder, an organized meal, and Rabbi Judah Hanasi properly can be called the inventor of the
seder. He accomplished this largely through the four cups. This provides us with a larger window into how Judaism develops. Judaism always has been, and cannot help but be, influenced by the cultures that surround it. But Jewish practice is a lot more than a reflection of external culture. Judaism is a textual/traditional culture, built on the study of previous texts and customs. In each and every
generation, Jews transform these texts and customs into even richer and more meaningful practices. Wine at the seder is a perfect example. Rabbi Judah Hanasi ritualized these four cups to punctuate
and organize his innovative seder. The fact that these four cups are still a main focus of our seder ritual is testimony to Rabbi Judah Hanasi's success.
.
Worried about job security? Check out the 5 safest jobs in a recession.
