My latest visit to HUC library yielded 4 unique items that came from Cincinnati via interlibrary-loan. I knew nothing about these books when I ordered them, except that their titles and subjects appeared to reflect my interest in Talmudic women. Imagine my surprise and curiosity when what arrived were original PhD theses from long ago HUC students, whose work was typewritten [mostly by their mothers, who were thanked in the introductions] with corrections and Hebrew words entered by hand.
The oldest was "The Position of Women in the Talmud" by Leo Mannheimer, which was dated 1899. His goal was to refute the then current Christian position that, compared to Judaism, Christianity had improved the lot of women in the early centuries of the Common Era. I found his manuscript fascinating partly for the connection of these brown, faded, hand-typed pages to a Jewish man, and his mother, who lived over 100 years ago. Leo certainly had beautiful handwriting, and probably used one of the earliest fountain pens [patented in 1884].
Also fascinating was how a man of the 19th Century could write about the high status of Jewish women at a time when women couldn't vote, rarely attended college, and were excluded from positions of power in every religion, including Judaism. But Leo did manage to show that Jewish women led much better lives than their sisters in China and India, which is akin to proving that being stung by a wasp is better than being stung by a scorpion.
To quote from Leo's conclusions, coming after numerous Talmudic sayings about women, "These quotations show indisputably that the authorities of the Talmud were well aware of the flaws and weaknesses in the character and nature of women, that they recognized the possibilities of evil in her influence, and that did not ignore the disadvantages, physical and social, under which she labored because of her weaker constitution and traditional inferiority."
I don't think Leo Mannheimer, or anyone reading his PhD thesis, could ever have imagined that less than 75 later HUC would be ordaining women as rabbis, and less than 25 years after that, HUC would have women on its rabbinic school faculty.
My post about slavery has generated quite a bit of response, especially at the Historical Novels Society and Historical Fiction authors groups. Apparently nearly every author whose story takes place before modern times must decide how to deal with the ubiquity of slavery [or serfdom. One method, probably the most common, is to ignore the subject entirely by creating "free" characters and using the word "servant" instead of "slave." Since the slaves/servants are minor characters at best, there's no need to go into detail about their lives or actual status. And even less need for the main characters to think about them.
Another method, one that was roundly criticized, is to make the main character an anachronistic abolitionist who has great sympathy for slaves and wants to help free them. This is not to disparage novels where the author's purpose is to indict slavery's barbarity, such as Spartacus by Howard Fast [made into the 1961 movie starring Kirk Douglas; see ]or Isabel Allende's newly published Island Beneath the Sea that details the Haitian revolution.
But let's face it - the vast majority of free people in the ancient world were perfectly fine with slavery. Slaves may not have liked their situation, but they too viewed it as fate or "God's will". Some people were nobility and some slaves, just as some were men and some women, and such was the way of the world. Frankly, in those days a woman's lot was only slightly superior to a slave's. And Heaven help the female slave, unless she had some valuable expertise such as a midwife, baker, weaver, wetnurse, healer, etc.
A member of one group wrote that I shouldn't "romanticize the situation or have some gone-with-the-wind mammy character; it would be great to see a slave just not be okay with it and have no respect for friggin massa." My inclination at this point is include slaves among my characters, showing the wide disparity between how different slaves interact with their masters. Hisdadukh and her parents, for example, will not mistreat their slaves, but other characters will. Some slaves will be loyal and hard workers, particularly those with special skills who are treated well, while others will hate their masters,steal from them, and do as little work as possible. Plus all along the continuum between these extremes.
I'm nearly finished reading Lynn Cohick's Women in the World of the Earliest Christians - Illuminating Ancient Ways of Life, and it has opened my eyes to a difficulty I will need to overcome when writing about both Roman Palestine and Babylonia in the 4th century. Both societies practiced slavery, and it appears that there were almost as many slaves as free people. Jews were no different from anyone else in this regard, and thus were both slaves and slaveholders. In general the wealthy owned slaves and the poor were slaves; but this was not always the case, especially in the Roman world where there were some slaves who owned other slaves. Women slaves were in a particularly unhappy position, since they were subject to their master's sexual demands in addition to their other duties.
Apparently it was a rare household servant who received a salary; these people were usually all slaves. In Babylonia agricultural workers were hired, but in Palestine the rich landowners had slaves working their fields. According to the Torah, Jewish slaves were supposed to be freed by their Jewish masters after 6 years of service, but there is little evidence of this, and it's unclear whether the system in Babylonia was different from that in Palestine.
So how did one become a slave? The most common way was being born to a slave mother. Also impoverished parents sold their children, particularly girls, into slavery. Both Rome and Persia took war captives as slaves, and many Jews in Palestine were enslaved after the Temple was destroyed in the first century and after the failed Bar Kochba rebellion in the second. Those who couldn't pay their taxes ended up as slaves in both cultures.
In Babylonia, however, those who could not afford to pay the Sasanian poll tax became the slaves of whoever paid the poll tax for them. The rabbis - that is the wealthy ones - considered themselves to have performed a righteous act by acquiring a Jewish slave in this manner, even congratulating themselves for preventing the Jewish pauper from enslaved by a Persian. Nowhere in the Talmud is any indication of sympathy or empathy for either people forced into slavery or the slaves themselves. Rabbis had slaves and a few rabbis were slaves; indeed Rava's slave secretary was another rabbi.
Rav Hisda was a rich man, and thus his daughter certainly grew up in a household where slaves did all the hard work. Her food was cooked by slaves, her hair done by slaves, her clothes washed and mended by slaves, and when she ventured outside the family villa, she would have been accompanied by slaves. As a child, she and her siblings would have been cared for by slaves, and she would have considered owning slaves a normal part of life.
Yet somehow, I will need to address the fact that her view of slavery, the indifference she shared with everyone of her status in both Roman Palestine and Babylonia, is so at odds with how we view slavery today.
I still have to locate several journal articles that address the subject, but I think my initial research into Jewish life in Roman Palestine is complete. Now I expect you're wondering: if RAV HISDA'S DAUGHTER takes place in Sasanian Babylonia, why is Maggie expending so much energy on Roman Palestine, hundreds of miles to the west? Good question.
Most important is that I intend for my heroine Hisdadukh to spend several years [between husbands Rami and Rava] in Roman Palestine, most likely in the predominantly Jewish city of Sepphoris [today's Zippori] in the Galilee. This might seem an unlikely situation for a young Babylonian widow, however I have what I consider a plausible reason to place her there. According to the Talmud, Rav Hisda's colleague, Rav Huna, dies in Babylonia in 297 after having asked to be buried in Eretz Israel. Rav Hisda, an old man himself, decides to accompany Huna's body and attend the funeral. This presents Hisdadukh the opportunity to 1] ensure that her elderly father makes the journey safely, 2] make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land herself, and 3] avoid the suitors who are pestering her after Rami's death.
A second reason is the dearth of information about Jewish daily life in Sasanian Babylonia, compared with what we know about Jews in Roman Palestine at the same time. Many Jews traveled between the two empires, and surely many of their customs were similar. My task here is to decide what information about Jews in Palestine can be applied to Jews in Babylonia. The third reason, which is why I decided to place Hisdadukh in Sepphoris, is that the conflict between Jew, Jewish-Christian, and gentile Christian in Roman Palestine at this time is an important part of Western history, and how it resolved is crucial for how our world ended up like it is today.
So much for thinking that I was done with researching Roman Palestine; I just discovered a fascinating new book, Lynn Cohick's "Women in the World of the Earliest Christians - Illuminating Ancient Ways of Life."
Now that I'm safely back from my last book tour promoting BOOK III - RACHEL [speaking at 100 events between September 2009 and May 2010], I finally have a nice long stretch of uninterrupted time to get cracking on RAV HISDA'S DAUGHTER in a more organized fashion. But first I want to finish reading all the material I photocopied at the HUC and JTS libraries , after which I'll determine what information I'm lacking and where/how I'm likely to find it. One good thing about my recent trip to NYC was all the time I had on trains and planes [and waiting for them] to read the many photocopies I brought with me, as well as those I made at JTS. Once I finish reading Gore Vidal's historical novel, "Julian," about the last pagan emperor of Rome, I think I'll be nearly done with researching Jewish life in Roman Palestine.
My last research post ended with the mention of Emperor Constantine, who converted to Christianity in 303 CE, an act that severely impacted the lives of his Jewish subjects. In 324, Constantine, emperor of the West, defeated Licinius, emperor of the East, unifying Rome and making a Christian the ruler of Palestine for the first time. Until then, the Jews there, while a troublesome, sometimes rebellious people, were acknowledged as practicing a legitimate religion, Judaism, The faith of Israel was but one national religion among many, and was granted appropriate rights and privileges by the Roman government.
But Christianity saw itself as the "new" Israel, and Christian Rome, with the Church as its partner, abandoned its previous tolerant attitude towards Judaism. When Rome was pagan, Palestine was one of its least important provinces, albeit an unruly one, but under Constantine, and his mother Helene, Palestine became the Holy Land. Jerusalem was no longer an unknown town in some backwater land to the east, but the Holy City, site of Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection.
Worse, according to Christianity, the Church represented the true Israel. Thus all the heritage of the biblical patriarchs, including the land of Canaan, was rightfully theirs. The emperors, the Church, and wealthy Christians took energetic steps to turn it into a Christian country in fact. Churches were built on "holy" sites [some replacing synagogues] and pilgrims flocked to visit them. Jews were in no position to object, and indeed, many struggled with their own crisis of faith as Christianity proposed new, compelling, interpretations of the scriptures that Jews previously considered theirs alone.
Judaism long asserted that God acted through history, and now the Christians pointed, not only to the destruction of the Temple, but to the miracle of Constantine's conversion as validation of their faith. Christians confronted Jews with the claim that Jesus was now what they claimed - king and savior of the world. And the miracle of Rome's conversion proved it. Palestine becomes more and more a Christian province, and within 100 years, Jews lose their political power. After the death of Patriarch Gamaliel VI in 425 CE, Rome appoints no replacement.
I'm writing from JTS library in NYC, where I'm doing some research for RAV HISDA'S DAUGHTER while I'm in town for some book events [nice that they have a large number of computers for students/visitors to use].
The next time I'm at shul I'll need to "bench gomel," as I was actually in Times Square Saturday night when the area was evacuated. In fact I was going to the theatre at 45th & 7th, less than a block from where the car bomb was found [saw "Billy Elliott" - which was marvelous]. I came up from the subway into a crazy scene, even for NY standards. Police and fire cars with lights flashing, police officers trying to move reluctant/annoyed tourists and theatre-goers out of the area.
Of course I couldn't get to 45th st, where the show's entrance was, so I moved along 46th st with the crowd, until I came to what I realized was the back door of the theatre. I banged on the door [what chutzpah] until someone opened it and I explained the situation to a man who replied that he'd get the manager. Now the other ticket holders realized they might get it, and began to congregate behind me. Eventually they opened the 46th doors and let us in, as there was no way anyone could get in on 45th st. They held the curtain for almost an hour, hoping the attendance would rise for the sold-old show, but finally the 'show must go on,' despite less than 1/3 of the seats filled.
When we got out, the police made us walk quickly to the edge of the evacuation area where I finally got on a subway back to my host's apt near Central Park. Of course she was frantic, since it was midnight and she only knew that I was going to see "Billy Elliot." At this point I learned that it was a real car bomb and how incredibly lucky I was that it had not only failed, but that there weren't a bunch more parked all around Times Square.