Ascetic Fasting and the Dangers of Piety

For more on the traditional reasons for Jewish fasting, see Malka Z. Simkovich and Zev Farber, “Why Jews Fast,” TheTorah (2015). This article does much of the heavy lifting, but as my colleague Baruch Halpern once pointed out to me, the incomparable philosopher, Charlie Chan, once remarked: no barber shaves so close as to not leave room for another.

The Geonic and medieval tradition also has the Fast of Esther. Editor’s note: See discussion in Mitchel First, “The Fast of Esther’s 8th Cent. C.E. Origins,” TheTorah (2023).

In general, Rabbi Ishmael and Rabbi Akiva appear as literary characters in these works; these references do not preserve ancient traditions in their names.

The Hebrew here is from MS Vatican 228, and follows the transcription found in Peter Schäfer, סינופסוס לספרות ההיכלות [Synopse zur Hekhalot Literatur] Texte und Studien zum Antiken Judentum 2 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1981), §313–314. For a more accessible version, see ספר ילקוט הרועים הגדול (Jerusalem: Nezer Shraga, 2016), 122 [col. 2]. The emendations follow Michael Swartz, Scholastic Magic: Ritual and Revelation in Early Jewish Mysticism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 69–70. The English follows James R. Davila, Hekhalot Literature in Translation: Major Texts of Merkavah Mysticism, Supplements to the Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 20 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 350–351, with slight adjustments.

The language here channels that of Ezekiel, whose opening vision is the source of the Maaseh Merkavah (the vision of the divine chariot).

The final word shalom here is difficult to translate. I have followed Davila’s suggestion, but there are many other possibilities, including scribal error. Swartz renders the phrase “a totally dark house.”

The Hebrew here follows MS N8128 as transcribed in Schäfer, Synopse zur Hekhalot Literatur, §424. For a more accessible version, see ספר ילקוט הרועים הגדול, 72. The English follows Davila, Hekhalot Literature in Translation, 241–242 with some adjustments.

This is the text in MS M40 and the printed edition.

The text is playing off the contrast in the poetic opening of Moses’ song:

^{דברים לב:א} הַאֲזִינוּ הַשָּׁמַיִם וַאֲדַבֵּרָה וְתִשְׁמַע הָאָרֶץ אִמְרֵי פִי.

^{Deut 32:1} Give ear, O heavens, let me speak; Let the earth hear the words I utter!

Compare the treatment in Midrash Tannaim on Deuteronomy (Hoffmann ed.):

"האזינו השמ[ים] ואד[ברה]"—לפי שהיה משה קרוב לשמים היה אומ[ר] האזי[נו] השמ[ים].

“Give ear, O heavens, let me speak”—since Moses was close to the heavens [on the mountain], he said “give hear o heavens.”

"ותשמע הארץ"—לפי שהיה רחוק מן הארץ היה אומ[ר] ותש[מע] הא[רץ] אמרי פי.

“Let the earth hear”—since he was far from the ground, he said “let the earth hear the words I utter.”

בא ישעיה וסמך לדבר (ישעיה א ב) "שמעו שמים"—שהיה רחוק מן השמים, "והאזיני ארץ"—שהיה קרוב לארץ:

Isaiah came and followed this approach “Let the heavens hear” for he was far from the heavens, “and give ear O land”—since he was close to the ground.

Editor’s note: For some discussion of how Jewish tradition understood this verse, see Karen Winslow, “Moses Separated from His Wife: Between Greek Philosophy and Rabbinic Exegesis,” TheTorah (2023).

^{Kατά Λουκάς 4:1} Ἰησοῦς δὲ πλήρης πνεύματος ἁγίου ὑπέστρεψεν ἀπὸ τοῦ Ἰορδάνου καὶ ἤγετο ἐν τῷ πνεύματι ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ ^4:2 ἡμέρας τεσσεράκοντα πειραζόμενος ὑπὸ τοῦ διαβόλου. Καὶ οὐκ ἔφαγεν οὐδὲν ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις ἐκείναις καὶ συντελεσθεισῶν αὐτῶν ἐπείνασεν.

Translation from LCL 9, p. 133.

Some in whom the desire for studying wisdom is more deeply implanted even only after three days remember to take food. ^4:35 Others so luxuriate and delight in the banquet of truths which wisdom richly and lavishly supplies that they hold out for twice that time and only after six days do they bring themselves to taste such sustenance as is absolutely necessary. They have become habituated to abstinence like the grasshoppers who are said to live on air because, I suppose, their singing makes their lack of food a light matter.

Other examples are sex and fancy clothing. For more on ascetic fasting in Judaism, see Eliezer Diamond, Holy Men and Hunger Artists: Fasting and Asceticism in Rabbinic Culture, (Oxford University Press: Oxford and New York), 2004.

The fuller Yerushalmi passage (in a section I omit for brevity) contains a near parallel to the tragedy of Tantalus, son of Zeus, who was damned to stand in a lake with fruits and was unable to satisfy his thirst or his hunger. (Robert Graves, The Greek Myths, London: Penguin Books, 1960, 25ff.) Compare Works of Lucian of Samosata: Dialogues of the Dead, chapter 17 (The University of Adelaide Library University of Adelaide. South Australia 5005). Also see Rashi’s gloss to b. Sanhedrin 44b whose shortened account makes no mention of the ostentatiously fasting woman. While this Hebrew source seems remotely dependent on the Aramaic y. Sanhedrin 6:6 (with glaring omissions), the commentator makes no mention of the source of his information. The Yerushalmi passage drew the attention of Saul Lieberman, “On Sins and Their Punishment,” in Saul Lieberman, Texts and Studies (New York: Ktav, 1974), 33–35.

If the son of Yossi Ha-Galilee is meant then the proper reading is Eliezer (and perhaps so) and he is a tanna (c. 140 C.E.) but I suspect this text is referring to an Eretz-Yisrael amora. He and Yossi ben Hanina (c. 260 C.E.) appear in j. Kiddushin (end 1:9) in a discussion of how sins are weighed to enter the World to Come.

Qorban Edah commentary to j. Sanhedrin 6:6 renders “by the lines of her hairs.”

Rabbi Shimshon, author of Tashbetz, seems to have a fuller textual reading here “the fire of Gehenna would go out from one of her ears to the other.” Instead of her private fast purifying her from misdeeds, the sins of the general public, who now enter hell, are now contributing to her sufferings. She herself opened this door by making her fast public.

For consideration that the reading of the Hagigah text primary, see Saul Lieberman, “On the New fragments of the Palestinian Talmud,” Tarbits 46 (1977): 91–96. Of course, here too like in the Yerushalmi text (Hagigah 2:2/Sanhedrin 6:6) the point is that one is fasting voluntarily when others are not.

Jastrow (s.v. QZZ, strike a balance/ mark down) thinks it means she would count one day’s fasting as two.

One is tempted, by association, to draw a line connecting Miriam to the pharisaic-ascetic woman of m. Sotah 3:4.

Here sha’ah does not mean an hour but a fraction of an hour.

לִטֹּל אֶת הַשֵּׁם—that is, the reputation of the extremely devout.

See b. Ta’anit 10b and j. Ta’anit which 2:9 cite tannaitic statements concerning those who would make themselves as the “Worthies” (Yeḥidim), in an attempt at garnering praise. Rabbenu Hannanel and Rabbi Menahem Meiri phrase this as yohara (obnoxious boasting) and Rashi, using a term that is shade worse, gas ruaḥ, “haughty in spirit.”

Such trespass was ruled legal by the rabbis although it did infringe on the owner’s property.

Literally: who points out himself by a finger.

Here both the ascetic and the scholar are specified.

This is noted by R. Moses Margolies in his commentary (Pnei Moshe) on this story.

The work is often referred to as the Tashbetz Qattan, “The Small Tashbetz” to distinguish it from the more famous and larger Tashbetz by Shimon bar Tzemah (1361–1444), even though this work post-dates the smaller and more obscure text by over a century. The Tashbetz Qattan has many textual versions, and not all of them include this story. For a discussion of why the Tashbetz has such a complex textual history, see Shmuel Menachem Mendel Schneerson’s introduction to his new (quasi-critical) edition to the text ספר תשב"ץ קטן published by Machon Torah she-be-khtav. Schneerson’s edition, based on MS London 130/20 [National Library 46420] does not contain this passage, but it appears in the first printing, Cremona, which is the basis for the quote above.

Here again the wording (“one who fasts”) and context suggests voluntary rather than statutory fasting.

Text here must intend just private, voluntary fast days which require only not eating, unlike public ones (see Lieberman’s edition of Tosefta Taʿanit 2:4) kept in Second Temple times by Pharisees and some others (Mt 15:14) which could involve not washing and not anointing (even to this day like 9 Ab 5th month and 10 Tishrei 7th month both given in Zech 18:19 and explained in b. Rosh Hashanah 18b) where all fasted.

^{Κατά Μαθθαίον 6:16} Ὅταν δὲ νηστεύητε, μὴ γίνεσθε ὡς οἱ ὑποκριταὶ σκυθρωποί, ἀφανίζουσιν γὰρ τὰ πρόσωπα αὐτῶν ὅπως φανῶσιν τοῖς ἀνθρώποις νηστεύοντες· ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν, ἀπέχουσιν τὸν μισθὸν αὐτῶν. ^6:17 σὺ δὲ νηστεύων ἄλειψαί σου τὴν κεφαλὴν καὶ τὸ πρόσωπόν σου νίψαι, ^6:18 ὅπως μὴ φανῇς τοῖς ἀνθρώποις νηστεύων ἀλλὰ τῷ πατρί σου τῷ ἐν τῷ κρυφαίῳ· καὶ ὁ πατήρ σου ὁ βλέπων ἐν τῷ κρυφαίῳ ἀποδώσει σοι.

The rhetoric follows a set form established in Mt 5: vv. 2–4, 5–6), namely, “Do X privately and do not do it for publicity.”

Holger Zellentin, “Rabbi Lazarus and the Rich Man: A Talmudic Parody of the Christian Hell (j. Hagigah 2.2, 77d and j. Sanhedrin 6.9, 23c)” in Knowledge of Religion as Profanation, ed., Asaph Ben-Tov and Martin Mulsow (New York, London: Springer Publishing Company, 2019), 24, has already noted this affinity of Matthew to the Yerushalmi. Indeed, it is well established that New Testament insistence on privacy in Charity (Matt. 6: 3-4), Prayer (Matt. 6: 5-6), Fasting (Matt. 6: 16-18) shares much in common with Talmudic sources recorded much later than the Christian document. See discussion in, Herbert Basser, The Mind Behind the Gospels: A Commentary to Mathew, ch. 1–14 (Brighton: Academic Studies Press, 2009), 169–182.

Editor’s note: See discussion in Flora Brooke Anthony, “The Magicians Khamwaset and Meryra,” TheTorah (2017).

The idea of weighing positive and negative deeds is common to Egyptian and Jewish texts (Test. Of Abraham). The idea of a huge portal is also found here. Weighing souls was also common in Greek sources (i.e. psychostasia).

English from Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature 3: The Late Period (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1980), 140–141. See Yalkut Shim‘oni (Torah: Vayelekh) 940 for a parallel to this image of a pivot in the eye. Note the discussions of our Yerushalmi passage as based on its approximate Demotic antecedent in Hugo Gressmann, Vom reichen Mann und armen Lazarus. Eine literargeschichtliche Studie (Abhandlungen der Königlich preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften: Philosophisch-historische Klasse, 1918), 3-89, and the proposed Hellenistic antecedents (contrary to Gressman) in Martha Himmelfarb, Tours of Hell: An Apocalyptic Form in Jewish and Christian Literature, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1983), 81. For proposed parallels in tales by “Christian Desert Fathers,” see Jean-Claude Guy, Les Apophtegmes des pères: collection systématique (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2005), 96-105 (18.45). Holger M. Zellenten [“Rabbi Lazarus and the rich man”, above n. 12] argues the Talmudic details derive from the works of Christian Desert Fathers.

Such stories must have been passed on by word of mouth in antiquity and eventually were told in Jewish pietistic circles in Judea and Galilee as part of their “tales of afterlife” lore. That Greco-Egyptian magic was part of a Western mystical complex including late-antique Jewish Palestine see for example, Gideon Bohak, “The Jewish Magical Tradition from Late Antique Palestine to the Cairo Genizah,” in From Hellenism to Islam: Cultural and Linguistic Change in the Roman Near East, eds., Hannah M. Cotton, Robert G. Hoyland, Jonathan J. Price and David J. Wasserstein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 324-339.