Gittin 57: Taking Customs Too Seriously; More Stories of War

We continue to hear colourful examples of how small events can lead to horrible bloodshed.

Before this, Onkelos bar Kalonikos, Titus's nephew, practiced necromancy to learn three things: the place of the Jews in the world to come, how he should behave in this world toward the Jewish people, and how anti-Semites are punished.  He asks both Balaam and Jesus of Nazarene (who is not the Jesus of Christianity but who was excommunicated by Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perahya after insulting an innkeeper's wife).  The punishments are surprisingly bad: being cooked in boiling semen or in boiling excrement.  Those are seriously frightening consequences!

On to the wars: first, we learn about the war that began because of a rooster and a hen.  In a town on Tur Malka, the King's Mountain, the villagers would put a rooster and a hen by the couple about to marry as part of the ceremony.  Roman officers saw the birds and removed them, as their presence was not permitted.  The custom was so important to the people of this town that they beat the officers, who told the emperor about the Jewish rebellion. Bar Deroma, who may have been Bar Kocheva, was a great fighter -- uttering words as a statement rather than a question to G-d, he was killed by a snake.  The emperor saw this gift and halted an attack on the Jews.  However, the people were so happy  that they celebrated until late at night.  The emperor saw those lights from afar and was insulted, thinking that the Jews were celebrating his loss rather than their 'victory'.  He began again his war.  

The mountain was filled with hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people in different villages. The Gemara discusses how a city might 'stretch' to accommodate people and 'shrink' when the population lessens.  Three towns were described by name and characteristics, including Kefer Dichrayya, the Town of Males, where women were said to have boys before they had girls and then would become infertile.

The Gemara then tells us that three rabbis sat together, speaking of Kefar Sechanya, a town in Egypt. They tell three stories, each of which describes either lascivious behaviour or a demonstration of sexual restraint.  The people there were said to be punished because they did not properly mourn for the destroyed city of Jerusalem.

Back to silly things leading to the destruction of cities, the rabbis tell of the city of Beitar which was destroyed because of a piece of wood in a carriage.  The emperor's daughter was travelling in a carriage that broke.  Her attendants cut down a tree for its wood to repair her carriage.  The tree was one of the cedars that were planted for boys or one of the cypress trees planted for girls - when married, those trees were cut to make their wedding chuppahs.  The people were so upset at the disruption of their custom that they beat the attendants, who reported Jewish rebellion to the emperor.   The was was so fierce that the blood in Beitar flowed to the sea.  

Speaking about the destruction of the first Temple, the Gemara teaches that Nebuzaradan, captain of the guard of King Nebuchadnezzar, killed 2,110,000 people.  In Jerusalem alone he killed 940,000 people on one stone until the blood flowed and touched the blood of Zechariah.  He then found the blood of Zechariah still bubbling up from the grave after being dead for years - it would not settle.  He forced people to explain, and they said that he was a prophet not appeased.  Nebuzaradan then attempted to settle Zechariah by killing others - great Sages, lesser Sages, even school children.  He then realized that if one Jew was not appeased by the killing of others, how might he be punished for killing so many?  He fled and was said to eventually convert to Judaism.  The Sages then teach about the descendants of Haman and others learning Torah in Bnai Brak.

The Gemara wonders whether four million or forty million people were killed in Beitar.  They speak about the descendants of Esau and the children of Edom.  A story is told of four hundred children who were captured to be sexual slaves.  The children wondered aloud if they would see the world to come if they were to commit suicide.  The eldest quoted a verse from Psalms that would allow such an act, and first the girls and then the boys jumped off of a cliff to their deaths.   Another story tells of a woman whose seven sons each refused to worship an idol at the command of the emperor, quoting different verses, and were killed one by one.  The mother watched all of this and then told her youngest son (as a parting kiss) to tell Abraham that he bound only one son but that she bound seven. She then died after falling from a building.  A Divine voice was said to call out, "A joyful mother of children" upon her death.  This is because she raised such devout children.

The Gemara ends with the beginning of a conversation about self-harm in the name of Torah.

It seems that today's daf holds the tension between glorifying righteous people's deaths and rebuking Jews who take customs too seriously and end up at war.  We have a great deal to learn from this today, where we continue to glorify 'victory' in war that upholds Torah law.  However, we also continue to take customs so seriously that we are willing to kill others and be killed for the sake of those customs.  Part of the difficulty today, I believe, is the possibility of reinterpreting Torah law so that fewer mitzvot are actually worth dying for.