Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. The Hebrew Calendar: A marvel of ancient astronomy and math

3. The history of Rosh Hashanah, which wasn't always the 'new year'
1 - 2 Tishrei

4. Who was Gedaliah, and why do Jews fast for him?
3 Tishrei

5. The obscure origins of Yom Kippur
10 Tishrei

6. The history of Sukkot, once the most important Jewish holiday of all
15 - 21 Tishrei (until 22 Tishrei outside Israel)

7. How the end of Sukkot morphed into Shemini Atzeret and Simhat Torah
22 - 23 Tishrei

8. The astonishing real story of Hanukkah
25 Kislev - 2 or 3 Tevet

9. The history of Tu Bishvat: From legalistic debate to fruit-eating bonanza
15 Shevat

10. What is Purim? The history behind the Halloween of Jewish holidays
14 Adar (15 Adar in Jerusalem and other ancient walled cities)

11. The surprising ancient origins of Passover
15 - 21 Nissan (until 22 Nissan outside Israel)

12. The real story of Lag Ba'omer
33rd day of the Omer, 18 Iyar

13. The twisted history of Shavuot: Do modern-day Jews have it wrong?
6 Sivan (and 7 Sivan outside Israel)

14. The mystery of why Jews fast on Tisha B'Av
9 Av

15. Tu B'av: The Jewish Valentine's Day that came from prehistory
15 Av

1. Introduction

Like the Jewish religion itself, the Jewish holidays have developed over the time, evolving from generation to generation and adapting to the changing circumstances in which Jews have found themselves over the years. Here, Haaretz presents a collection of articles recounting the histories and particular aspects of the Jewish holidays, from the early reaches of their emergence through their morph into the holidays now familiar to modern-day Jews.

Rather than retelling biblical, Talmudic and rabbinic narratives, with these articles we aimed to uncover the real history of the holidays, based on accumulated research in the fields of comparative religion, Jewish history, textual criticism, and linguistics. Written from a playful but always loving perspective, this book is intended to engender a more mindful appreciation of our Jewish traditions, of the Jewish religion and of the Jewish people.

-Elon Gilad, Haaretz

2. The Hebrew Calendar: A marvel of ancient astronomy and math

The biggest marvel is how Iron Age Jews managed to adjust the lunar calendar to the solar one.

The Hebrew calendar is based on the cycles of the moon, not the solar cycle. Photo by AP

Israel's official calendar is the Hebrew one. According to Jewish counting, on September 24, 2014, we entered the Year 5775, that is - the supposed 5775th year since the world was created on Saturday night, October 6, 3761 BCE.

This reckoning was instituted by Maimonides in the 12th century, in the stead of the previous system Jews had used before, which counted from the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE.

Moving onto today: Israel's official calendar is the Hebrew one. Under law, official Israeli documents must have the Hebrew date on them. Moreover, holidays in Israel are determined according to the Jewish calendar, not the Gregorian one. Thus a given fest – say, Rosh Hashanah – will happen on the same date each year according to Jewish reckoning, but on a different day each year according to the Gregorian calendar. That is because the Gregorian and Jewish calendars don't coincide.

Even civil holidays in Israel, such as Jerusalem Day, are based on the Jewish calendar.

Yet in their day to day lives, most Israelis are completely unaware of the Hebrew date and lead their lives according to the Gregorian calendar. That said, a not-insignificant religious minority still adhere to the Hebrew calendar of old.

The Hebrew calendar is very complicated, because it has to align the solar year (365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46-seconds) with the lunar year (12 months of 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes and 3 seconds).

This means that it must make allowance for the fact that 12 lunar months are about 12 days shorter than the solar year. This isn’t easy.

If you get it wrong, even by a little bit, over time the two would slowly drift apart and you’d have your spring holidays in the fall.

An ancient limestone calendar

Like most ancient peoples, at first the Jews followed a strictly lunar calendar. Our earliest record of this is a 10th century BCE calendar found in the Canaanite town of Gezer (midway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv).

Regarding the "Israelite new year," this seems to have swung back and forth over the centuries. The Gezer calendar seems to place the "start" of the new year in the fall; by the time the Torah was redacted some four centuries later, the new year had moved to the spring. Today it's celebrated in the fall again. (It perhaps bears mention that the ancient Hebrews saw no need that we know of to mark the passing of an old year and start of a new one.)

Maybe calling the inscribed limestone tablet found at Gezer a "calendar" is an exaggeration. The etched stone, in either Phoenician or paleo-Hebrew (depending on who you ask) lists months (and month duos), which don't have proper names, just designated times of the year.

These months are referred to as “moon(s) of X” with X being the main agricultural activity of that month (or two months).

For example, the list begins in the fall with yarkhu asif, that is, “two moons of harvesting.”

As we said, some four centuries later when the Torah was being written, the year was considered to begin in the spring, with each month named by its ordinal number. Thus the spring month on which Passover fell was called the “first month,” the next month was the “second month” and so on.

The arrival of spring

The solar calendar is automatically in line with the seasons, but being some 12 days shorter, the lunar calendar is not.

The Bible doesn’t tell us how the lunar calendar was periodically adjusted to keep in line with the seasons. But it must have been, at least from the days of King Josiah and the centralization of the cult in Jerusalem (in the second half of the seventh century BCE). On Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot - which have specific Hebrew dates - the people of Israel were required to bring agricultural produce to Jerusalem; and if there had been "seasonal creep," in at least some years, there would have been no produce to bring as tithes.

It is almost certain this is how they adjusted for seasonal creep: At the end of the 12th lunar month, priests in Jerusalem determined spring had arrived. If spring was indeed deemed to have arrived, great: the new moon was a sign that not only the first month had begun but also a new year, and messengers were sent out to announce that Passover was two weeks away.

But if the priests decided that it was still winter, an additional “leap month” - or “embolismic month” as it's called - was added, and messengers would only be sent out a month later.

Thus the calendar was kept in line with the seasons. It is possible that this process was made more precise with the introduction of a sundial of sorts introduced by King Ahaz in the end of the eighth century BCE.

Jewish month - named for Babylonian god

It seems that before their banishment from the Holy Land and exile in Babylon, the ancient Hebrews hadn't given their months actual names. But after the Babylonian exile in the Second Temple period, the months began to be called by their Akkadian Babylonian names - which we use to this very day.

Some of these names are innocuous enough, such as Tishrei, meaning “beginning,” Marheshvan was shortened to Heshvan meaning “eighth month,” and so on. Other month names though are quite surprising: Tammuz for example originated with a pagan Babylonian god.

Dumuzi, right, the mythical pre-flood Sumerian leader believed to be the precursor to the Babylonian god Tammuz. Photo by: Wikimedia Commons

Another change that happened gradually in the Second Temple period was that the year was increasingly seen as beginning in the fall, as it is to this very day, and not in the spring as it was in biblical times.

The hand of imperfect men

At first the decision on when exactly one month ended and another began, and when a leap month was to be added, was in the hand of men. But in a gradual process spanning hundreds of years, a fixed system was devised, which we use to this day.

According to the Mishnah (redacted 200 CE), during the time of the Second Temple, witnesses would come to the Temple and report that they had seen the new moon. They would be grilled by priests, who would decide whether a new month had in fact begun.

If they decided it had, the priests would announce the new moon to the public.

Thus they would decide the length of each month and whether an embolismic month was to be added to the year. When the Temple was destroyed by Titus in 70 CE, these functions were taken up by the rabbinic council, the Great Sanhedrin, and more specifically by a subcommittee of three of the Sanhedrin members that would meet on the 29th of every month and receive witnesses and come to decisions regarding the calendar.

From Mishnaic times through to the ninth century CE at the latest, the Hebrew calendar gradually lost the errant human element and shifted to a fixed calendar based on predetermined rules and calculations.

Samuel the astronomer

A key figure in the process of formalizing the calendar from observation to calculation was the great Babylonian rabbi Samuel of Nehardea, who was a great astronomer. The Talmud quotes him as saying “I am as familiar with the courses of the stars as with the streets of Nehardea” (Berachot 58b).

Samuel developed the calculations necessary to determine the calendar without relying on messengers from Palestine, which, he explained, meant that Jews outside of Palestine no longer had to add an extra day to their holidays, though halakha still prescribes that these extra days should be kept just the same.

Throughout the leadership of Judah III (290-320 CE), the Great Sanhedrin continued to receive witnesses of the new moon, but only as a formality, and for the sake of preserving time-honored tradition. The decision was already made according to calculation.

Samuel's son and successor as Nasi of the Sanhedrin, Hillel II (330-365 CE) is credited with finalizing the fixed Hebrew calendar as we know it, though the rules we know today were only fully laid out in writing in the 9th century.

Morphing months

So how does it work? The basic Jewish year has 12 months with five months of 29 days, and five months of 30 days, which alternate. The two other months - Heshvan and Kislev - change from year to year, according to the rules elaborated below.

But not all Jewish years have 12 months. Seven out of every 19 years are "embolismic years," which means they have a 13th month, called "Adar Bet" or - a "second Adar".

Whether a year is embolismic or not is determined by its place on a 19-year cycle. Most years are “regular” 12-month years except for years 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17, and 19, which are embolismic.

Each year, whether embolismic or not, starts on Rosh Hashanah - the day the new moon of Tishri appears. But if one of four conditions called dekhiot (“postponements”) are met, the Rosh Hashanah holiday - and thus the beginning of the year - is postponed by a day or two. In practice, that happens in most years.

So what are these postponing rules? (1) If Rosh Hashanah falls on Sunday, Wednesday or Friday, it is postponed by a day. (2) If the new moon appears after noon, Rosh Hashanah is postponed by a day. If the new day is one of those in Rule 1, Rosh Hashanah gets postponed by two days. (3) In a regular 12-month year, that is one that isn’t embolismic, if the new moon of Tishri appears more than 20 seconds past 3:11 A.M. on a Tuesday, Rosh Hashanah is postponed by two days.

The last instance is an extremely rare one. (4) In years that follow an embolismic year, if the new moon appears on a Monday more than 43 seconds past 9:32 A.M. - then Rosh Hashanah is postponed by a day.

You might assume these one- or two-day postponements simply cause one or two days to be added to the last month of the year, Elul. Not so! In fact they were added six months in advance to the winter months of Heshvan and Kislev, which as we said, change in length from year to year.

Theoretically Heshvan and Kislev each have 29 days. But if the new year needs to be postponed by one day, the preceding Heshvan is expanded to 30 days and Kislev stays at 29.

If two days are to be added, then both the preceding Heshvan and Kislev have 30 days.

How is this calculated six months in advance? Because dekhiot can be and are calculated years in advance using moon charts and math. When calculating the calendar for the year to come, you can calculate what kind of year it will be well in advance, and monkey with the lengths of Heshvan and Kislev as needed.

That’s it. If you have the data on when the new moon will rise over Jerusalem for each year, information that is readily available online, you can calculate the Hebrew calendar yourself. Though, thankfully, you don’t have to. Shanah Tova!

3. The history of Rosh Hashanah, which wasn't always the 'new year'

Much of today's traditions originated with Babylonian worship, and you have to read this to believe how a calf's head morphed into gefilte fish.

Ancient Hebrews didn't venerate the New Year as they do today, including by blowing the shofar. Photo by Yaron Kaminsky

Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year, the day the Hebrew calendar begins. But that wasn't always the case.

In fact, the ancient Hebrews probably had no concept of when the year started at all. Nor did they give the months names: the Torah merely enumerating them - "the first month", "the seventh month."

Nowadays we celebrate Rosh Hashanah on the first day of the fall month of Tishrei. But in biblical times, that period was explicitly called "the seventh month". During the First Temple period (8th to mid-6th century BCE), the year began in the spring, on the first day of Nisan.

Also, when listing the holidays, the Bible always starts with the spring holiday of Passover, in the seventh month - Nisan.

Just because the ancient Hebraic year started on the first of Nisan doesn’t mean that day was marked in any special way. What was cause for celebration, the Bible tells us, was the new moon each month - that is, the first of the month. By "celebration," we mean that more animals were sacrificed at the Temple than usual. The new moon of Nisan was not marked differently. From what we know about the Israelite’s Canaanite neighbors, they didn’t pay any attention to the "new year" either.

When the Book of Exodus (40:17) tells us that “the tabernacle was reared up” on the “first month in the second year, on the first day of the month", meaning Nisan, it doesn’t say that this was a holiday, which would probably warrant mention if it was. In fact nowhere in the Bible is the first of Nisan mentioned as a holiday (though there may be an exception in the Septuagint, as we will see).

The blood of a bullock

On the other hand, the first of Tishrei, celebrated as Rosh Hashanah nowadays, is mentioned as a holiday - albeit a very minor one. It is in no way a celebration of the "new year." Quite the contrary. Leviticus (23:24) says regarding that first day of Tishrei: “In the seventh month, in the first day of the month, shall ye have a Sabbath [as in "day of rest"], a memorial of blowing of trumpets, an holy convocation” (23:24).

The Bible does not list any special practices for the holiday beyond blowing trumpets and sacrificing some animals, though fewer than were sacrificed on the two major holidays - Passover and Sukkot. No specific reason is given for the blowing of the trumpets, nor are we told what we are supposed to remember.

It is possible that a deeper significance of the first of Tishrei has been lost in time. Alternatively, it is possible that the day was marked by blowing trumpets and messengers going out to the countryside just to remind the Israelites that Sukkot would be coming in two weeks, and they had that much time to come to Jerusalem with their tithes and sacrifices.

If so, that mean that the 1st of Tishrei, venerated today as the Jewish New Year, was nothing more than a satellite of the main event, Sukkot, as were Yom Kippur and Shemini Atzeret in ancient times.

The first day of Tishrei does have one other significance we do know of, based on the Book of Ezekiel. That prophet, at the very end of the First Temple period, prescribes that the Temple should be purified (naturally using the blood of a bullock, what else?) on the first of Tishrei.

Elsewhere the Bible says to purify the Temple's purification ahead of Sukkot on Yom Kippur, which is on the 10th day of Tishrei.

Ezekiel doesn’t mention Yom Kippur at all. But he does have a comparable purification rite on the first of Nisan, two weeks before Passover, in the version of his book preserved in the Greek translation called the Septuagint.

Ezekiel is also the first to use the phrase “Rosh Hashanah” (40:1), though for him it clearly does not refer to any holiday, rather just the beginning of the year.

Jewish months? Not exactly…

When and how did the months get names?

We don’t know what the religious life of the Jews was like during the Babylonian exile. But we do know that by the time the Jews returned to Israel, and at the beginning of the Second Temple period (516 BCE), Jewish religious practices had profoundly changed compared with the pre-exile era.

For one, the names of the months that we use to this very day are the Babylonian names. Tishrei for example is a Babylonian month whose name derives from the Akkadian word tishritu - “beginning.”

In addition, the Babylonians took their New Year’s Day celebrations very seriously. They called the holiday Akitu (from the Sumerian word for barley) and Resh Shattim, the Akkadian equivalent of the Hebrew Rosh Hashanah. This was celebrated twice a year, at the beginning of Tishrei and the beginning of Nisan, and lasted for 12 days.

We may postulate that Jews absorbed their veneration for the New Year from the Babylonian example. But it was not immediately apparent upon their return – the Jewish rituals developed over centuries.

It isn’t really clear when Rosh Hashanah began to be celebrated as a holiday in its own right, though clearly it was during the time of the Second Temple. All we can say for sure is that books written during this period, such as the Book of Jubilees and the Book of Maccabees, or the Dead Sea Scrolls, don’t mention any "Rosh Hashanah."

We first hear about it in the early rabbinic literature in the Mishnah and the Tosefta, both redacted at about 200 CE, and both having a tractate called Rosh Hashanah, dealing with the holiday and issues related to the calendar. It is in these texts that we first have elaboration on the importance of the holiday and its traditions.

For example, in the Mishnah we learn that the world was created on the first of Tishrei, though there is a minority opinion that it was on the first of Nisan.

It is in the Mishnah that we are first introduced to the main theme of the holiday, that of judgment: “On Rosh Hashanah all human beings pass before him [God] as sheep before a shepherd” (Tractate Rosh Hashanah 2).

This theme is elaborated upon in the Talmud, where we find Rabbi Kruspedai of 3rd century Palestine quoting his teacher Rabbi Johanan as saying: “Three books are opened on Rosh Hashanah: One for the utterly wicked, one for the wholly good, and one for the average class of people. The wholly righteous are at once inscribed, and life is decreed for them; the entirely wicked are at once inscribed, and destruction destined for them; the average class is held in the balance from Rosh Hashanah until Yom Kippur. If they prove themselves worthy they are inscribed for life, if not they are inscribed for destruction.” (15b)

The days in which the fate of the intermediate class stands in the balance have been known since the mid-14th century as “The Days of Awe.”

The shofar

The liturgy of the holiday, that is the prayers added to the regular daily prayer, prescribed during this rabbinic age, deals with three main themes: The kingship of God, which is borrowed from the Babylonian Akidu where kingship (of the king) was a major theme; recital of God’s great deeds; and blowing a musical instrument. At least the latter two were taken from the bible, as we discussed above.

Regarding that musical instrument, technically, the Bible doesn’t say what exactly is to be blown. It is the Mishnah that first tells us this should be a shofar, a horn, usually of a ram, though it could alternatively come from an antelope or other horned beast.

Well before the Talmud was redacted in 500 CE, a variety of traditions regarding exactly how and when the Shofar was to be blown arose in the different Jewish communities. Not knowing which was correct, the rabbis decided that all the different traditions should be incorporated.

Thus on Rosh Hashanah we have the T'qiah (a long blow), the sh'varim (three consecutive blows), and the teruah (nine fast blasts separated into three groups of three), all blown in different sequences at different stages of the day. These added up to 90 blasts, which were rounded up to the 100 blown today.

How Rosh Hashanah became a two-day celebration

Originally, Rosh Hashanah was a one-day celebration. How it came to be celebrated over two days is because of a communication problem.

The Jewish calendar is based on the lunar cycle. A new month began when the new moon rose. The rise of each new moon was determined by a rabbinic council in Jerusalem and later in Yavne, based on witness accounts. Messengers would then be sent through the land, delivering the news to the populace that the new month had begun.

But regarding Rosh Hashanah, celebration would have to begin immediately. By the time the news reached the farther-flung parts of Palestine, let alone elsewhere, the land, the day would be long over.

Holidays such as Sukkot and Passover didn't present a problem – they take place about two weeks after the start of the new month.

Later, when the calendar was no longer determined by council and the two-day holiday was no longer needed, (not to mention that people could look into the sky themselves), the rabbis decided to leave the custom anyway.

How now brown gefilte fish

All other well-known Rosh Hashanah traditions are later embellishments. The tradition of eating honey (to start the year sweetly) and a calf's head (so that we should finish the year ahead) began during the time of the Gaonim. Later the calf’s head would be replaced with fish heads, and that in turn got replaced among Ashkenazi Jews with gefilte fish. Sephardic Jews elected for other fish dishes such as chraime (a spicy fish stew in tomato sauce).

In Europe, during the High Middle Ages, the consumption of honey evolved into eating challah and fruit, which today has become almost universally apples dipped in honey. A new tradition of eating pomegranates on Rosh Hashanah arose at about the same time, based on the false belief that the number of seeds in a pomegranate is 613, the same as the number of Jewish commandments.

Tashlikh, emptying one’s pockets into the sea or river (or, when these aren’t accessible, a well) on Rosh Hashanah is first mentioned in the 15th century and is now a common tradition among observant Jews. This is supposed to symbolize the clearing of oneself of sin.

Sending greeting cards to family and friends began only in the 19th century, though now practice has all but disappeared. Today people send emails and (annoyingly) text messages instead. The traditional wishes are “Shana tova,” which simply means “good year” and for the more religious crowd, “Gemar chatima tova” - a wish that God find you virtuous and inscribe your name in the Book of Life.

Have a great (Jewish) year!

4. Who was Gedaliah, and why do Jews fast for him?

It was a time of upheaval in the Israelite domain, as the Babylonians and Egyptians struggled over the land, during which a little-known Judean official named Gedaliah briefly came to the forefront.

Jews fast on for Gedaliah, even if they don't know who he was. Photo by Ayala Tal

The third of Tishrei is a Jewish fast day for observant Jews, who abstain from food and drink from dawn to dusk. Less well known is why.

Gedaliah was a high-ranking official in the Judean court in Jerusalem, as had been his father before him, Ahikam, and his father, Shaphan.

Shaphan was the man who delivered the book of Deuteronomy to King Josiah after it was mysteriously discovered in the Temple during renovations, which is a good point to start our story.

In about 640 BCE, King Amon of Judah was assassinated, leaving his 8-year old son Josiah to rule the Judean Kingdom. After Josiah received the Book of Deuteronomy from Shaphan, he began a series of profound religious reforms that involved the centralization of the Jewish cult in the Temple of Jerusalem, and around one single god. Most households of the time seem to have been polytheistic.

Meanwhile, the world around tiny Judea was in flux. The Assyrian Empire, which dominated the region and had destroyed the northern Israelite Kingdom just some 70 years earlier, was disintegrating. In the south, Egypt - the other regional superpower - was recovering from the Assyrian rule it had shaken off, and was concentrating on rebuilding its former glory.

This was an opportune moment for the Judeans to do some empire building of their own, or at least that was the vibrant Josiah thought.

Pharaoh to King Josiah: Why are you here?

Taking advantage of the power vacuum, the Judeans began gobbling up the territories to the north of those that used to belong to the Israelite Kingdom. They may have been trying to reconstruct the unified kingdom of David and Solomon, which may or may not have existed, not that Josiah knew that.

Josiah didn't plan to accomplish this alone: he allied with a rising power in the east, the Babylonians, who were starting to eclipse their former overlords, the Assyrians.

Thus when in 609 BCE, Pharaoh Necho II led an army from Egypt up the Judean coast to aid the Assyrians in battle against the upstart Babylonians, Josiah led his army to Megiddo to block Necho’s path.

2 Chronicles quotes Necho’s ambassadors as telling Josiah: “What have I to do with thee, thou king of Judah? I come not against thee this day, but against the house wherewith I have war; and God hath given command to speed me; forbear thee from meddling with God, who is with me, that He destroy thee not.” (35:21) But Josiah did not heed the Pharaoh and was killed in battle in Megiddo.

Josiah was succeeded by his younger son King Jehoahaz, but not for long. Three months later, on his way back from battle, Pharaoh Necho paid Judea a visit. He took Jehoahaz into captivity in Egypt and installed his older brother in his stead as King Jehoiakim. Necho also exacted a huge levy of gold and silver.

Judea was now a client state of Egypt, but that too was not to last long.

A few years later In 605 BCE, the Babylonians, led by Nebuchadnezzar II, defeated the Egyptian army in Carchemish (in modern-day Turkey). From there, they made their way to the gates of Jerusalem and laid siege.

Having decided that he wasn’t ready to die yet, Jehoiakim swapped allegiances, paid Nebuchadnezzar a levy and gave some relatives over as hostages. Judea was now a vassal of Babylon, but once again not for long.

The Babylonians lose their cool

Three years later, after the Babylonian invasion into Egypt had failed, Jehoiakim once again felt the Egyptians breathing down his neck. He decided to switch sides once more and ally himself with Egypt.

At this point, the Jerusalem court was split between supporters of alliance with Babylon and supporters of alliance with Egypt. Apparently, Gedaliah was on the Babylonian side, but Jehoiakim didn’t listen, which proved to be a fatal miscalculation.

In 599 BCE Nebuchadnezzar II returned to Judea, and he was sorely vexed. He laid siege to Jerusalem, during which Jehoiakim was killed, and his corpse was flung over the walls.

Jehoiakim was succeeded by his son Jeconiah, who ruled the besieged Jerusalem for all of three months until the city fell. Jeconiah, his family and 3,000 of the city’s upper echelon were taken into captivity in Babylonia.

Two years later, in 597 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar placed Jeconiah’s uncle (Josiah’s son) Zedekiah on the throne of Jerusalem. But the new monarch decided to switch allegiances and side with the new Egyptian Pharaoh, Hophra, which led to another Babylonian siege of Jerusalem in 589 BCE.

When things started to look desperate, Zedekiah made a run for it, heading east down the Judean hills in the direction of the Dead Sea - only to be captured by the Babylonians. They killed his sons before his eyes, then blinded him so that their death would be the last thing he saw. Zedekiah joined his kin in captivity in Babylon, where he died.

The very brief rise of Gedaliah

Needless to say, Nebuchadnezzar had enough of these Judean troublemakers. He destroyed the Temple, sent the Judean urban classes into exile in Babylonia.

Then he placed one of the high-ranking officials of Jerusalem and member of the "don’t-side-against-the-Babylonians-what-are-you-crazy?!" faction - Gedaliah - as governor of the newly constituted Babylonian province of Yehud.

Gedaliah did not reign for long, though. Probably less than a year after his appointment, Ishmael son of Nethaniah, a Judean military commander and member of the royal family, led a group of captains to the administrative capital of Yehud, Mizpah, and assassinated Gedaliah during a feast, possibly for Rosh Hashanah.

Fearing Babylonian reprisal, the remaining Judeans fled into Egypt, ending Jewish autonomy in Judea.

During the long years of Babylonian Captivity, four fast days were established in memory of the destruction of Judea and the Temple. We first hear of these in the Book of Zechariah, when the Jews ask the prophet upon their return from captivity if they should continue to fast now that they had returned and rebuilt the Temple; or should they continue to mourn.

Zechariah tells them: “Saith the LORD of hosts; The fast of the fourth month, and the fast of the fifth, and the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the tenth, shall be to the house of Judah joy and gladness, and cheerful feasts; therefore love the truth and peace.” (8:19).

Rabbinic Judaism interpreted Zechariah's “fast of the seventh month” as a fast commemorating the assassination of Gedaliah. Tosefta Sukkah 6:10 (redacted at the end of the 2nd century) says: “The fast of the seventh [month] is on the third of Tishrei - the day Gedaliah the Son of Ahikam was killed.”

Later rabbis suggested that in fact, Gedaliah was killed on Rosh Hashanah, but since we cannot fast on that day, the fast was postponed to the first available day - the third of Tishrei. Either way, Jews have been fasting in memory of Gedaliah ever since.

5. The obscure origins of Yom Kippur

It is the holiest day in Judaism, yet its intent has markedly changed and its practice today is a far cry from the rites of ancient times.

An ultra-Orthodox woman scapegoating a chicken in preparation for Yom Kippur. Photo by Tomer Appelbaum

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is by far the most widely observed of Jewish holidays and fast days.

It is a solemn day. The synagogues are packed with men and, usually in a separate section, women – often dressed in white, all praying that their sins be forgiven. Many of the worshipers wear Crocs, as leather shoes are not permitted.

Outside, children on bicycles race down the streets that in Israel at least, for this one holiest day of the year, are vacated by cars. Nothing but the odd ambulance or police car moves (except in mixed and Arab towns).

Yom Kippur in Israel is a special day indeed, but it is a far cry from the Day of Atonement of old.

Whiff of Babylon

Just when Yom Kippur began has been hotly debated by academics for over a century. The main question is whether it happened during the First Temple period. The evidence seems to indicate that it did not exist then.

Writing just after the First Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians, Ezekiel seems unaware of Yom Kippur. It is not on his list of holidays to be observed when the Temple would be rebuilt.

Neither does Zecharia seem to have any notion of it when he instructed the Jews returning from captivity on observation of fast days. When Ezra reads the Torah to the returning Jews on the first of Tishrei, they learned that they need to prepare for Sukkot, but Yom Kippur is not mentioned. This is only proof of omission, but it’s all we have.

Thus, it seems that the three biblical mentions of the Day of Atonement (Numbers 29:7-11, Leviticus 16:1-34, and Leviticus 23:26-32) were inserted by priests during the Second Temple period to validate new rites added to purify the Temple in advance of the most important holiday in the Jewish calendar at the time, Sukkot.

The priests of the Jerusalem Temple who inaugurated Yom Kippur seem to have had the 12-day Babylonian festival marking the new year, Akitu, in mind, particularly the fifth day of Akitu, which has some striking similarities to Yom Kippur that are unlikely to be coincidence.

That fifth day involved a purification ceremony called kuppuru, which involved dragging a dead ram through the temple, supposedly purifying it of impurities. Kuppuru and its Hebrew cognate kippur meant “to uncover” or specifically in this case “to remove impurity,” which means a better translation of Yom Kippur to English would be "Day of Purification."

Preoccupation with sin

The purification of the Temple using an animal carcass was not the only similarity between Yom Kippur and the fifth day of Akitu. The two both share an occupation with sin, though they deal with it in a different way.

While in Jewish tradition, Yom Kippur is the only day the high priest enters the Holy of Holies, in the Babylonian tradition, the fifth day of Akitu was the only day the king enters the sanctuary of the god Marduk, accompanied by the high priest. Facing the statue of Marduk, the king would intone: "I have not sinned, O Lord of the universe, and I have not neglected your heavenly might."

In the Jerusalem Temple on the other hand, no statement of good behavior was made. On the contrary, the high priest confessed to all the sins of the Jews in the presence of God, in a strange and ancient ceremony: “And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions, even all their sins; and he shall put them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of an appointed man into the wilderness.” (Leviticus 16:21)

The original scapegoat

The Temple priests, the Zadokites, saw themselves as descended from Aaron and backdated their legal prescriptions to him.

The practice of transferring the disfavor of a deity to an animal that is then removed from the community, what we call a "scapegoat" based on the biblical passage above, was common in the ancient Near East. It was probably practiced by at least some of the Hebrews from time immemorial long before incorporation into Yom Kippur ritual.

The earliest known reference to the practice was found in Ebla (in what is today war-torn Syria), in 1975, at a site archaeologists called "Palace G." Among the texts found there dating from 2,400 to 2,300 BCE were two descriptions of a scapegoat ceremony, which are very similar to those found in the Jewish tradition. One reads: “We purge the mausoleum. Before the entry of Kura and Barama, a goat, a silver bracelet [hanging from the] goat’s neck, towards the steppe of Alini we let her go.”

An obscure origin for the fast

The biblical accounts of the Yom Kippur ceremonies are laconic. It is hard to know what exactly was done on that day. Even the act of fasting is not explicitly mentioned, just the phrase “ye shall afflict your souls,” which elsewhere in the Bible usually refers to fasting.

That is the only source for the most widely-practiced Yom Kippur tradition.

Thus to get a clearer view of what Yom Kippur was like in the Second Temple period we can only rely on the Mishnah, which was redacted over a century after the destruction of the Temple in 220 CE. Specifically, we should look in tractate Yoma, literally “The Day,” dedicated to Yom Kippur.

The Mishnah description - the first seven of eight Yoma chapters - is almost entirely about rites at the temple itself, nearly all officiated by the high priest himself. Only the eighth and final chapter deals with what everyone else is supposed to do on this holy day. Here is a summary of ancient Yom Kippur rites according to these chapters.

The High Priest's rites

A week before Yom Kippur, the high priest would leave home and move into the Palhedrin Chamber in the Temple compound, where he would spend the week studying and practicing the rites he was to perform. On the night before Yom Kippur, he would stay up all night studying Torah, lest he sleep and have a “nightly emission” which would render him unclean and thus unfit to perform the ceremonies, dooming all of Israel.

In the morning, the high priest would immerse in a mikveh and adorn special golden clothes. He would then proceed to offer the normal daily sacrifice (the Tamid): A lamb doused with oil wine and flour would be burned on an altar. On all other days this would have been performed by a lower-ranking priest.

After the sacrifice, the priest would remove his golden garments, wash his hands and feet in a mikveh twice and don a set of special linen garments. He was now ready for the next stage.

Purifying blood

A bull bought with his own money would be brought in and the high priest would rest his hands on its head and confess his and his family’s sins before God, pronouncing his name, the Tetragrammaton.

Upon hearing God’s name, which in all other contexts was prohibited, the crowd would prostrate themselves. Then the high priest would kill the poor beast and its blood would be collected in a bowl for further use.

From the altar, the high priest would go to the Nikanor Gate in the eastern side of the temple, to which two goats had been led by priests. Pulling lots out of a box, the goats were randomly assigned to God and to Azazel, a slight corruption of the name of a wilderness demon. The one assigned to Azazel would be marked with a red string tied to its horns.

The next step was the trickiest. The high priest would carry glowing hot embers in a special shovel held using his armpit while his hands were full of incense. He would enter alone into the Holy of Holies, which was a large empty room only entered by the high priest and only on Yom Kippur, and place the shovel, embers and incense in its middle. He would wait for the room to fill with the aromatic smoke, then leave.

Once outside, he was handed the reserved bowl of bull's blood and would enter again, this time flicking blood all over the room with his finger. He would leave the Holy of Holies and place the bowl with the remaining blood on a special stand at the entrance.

At this point the high priest would return to the Nikanor Gate, place his hands on the goat assigned to God and made a confession on behalf of the priestly class, once again pronouncing God’s holy name, at which point once again the crowd would prostrate themselves. Then he would kill the goat and its blood would be drained into a bowl.

This bowl of blood would be borne by the high priest to the Holy of Holies, where once again he would enter alone, sprinkle blood with his finger, exit and place the bowl on another stand.

Sanhedrin members preparing two sheep for sacrifice (2007).Photo by: Tomer Appelbaum

Standing between the two bowls of blood, the high priest would sprinkle their contents with his finger on the curtain obscuring the Holy of Hollies.

Next came purification of the golden incense altar. The high priest would pour the remaining goat blood into the bowl of bull blood. He would carry the blood mixture to the incense altar, and smear it with blood, then sprinkle some more.

This done, the high priest would return to the Nikanor Gate, place his hands on the head of the surviving goat and, pressing down, would confess the sins of all the People of Israel, once again pronouncing God’s name. During this, people in the crowd would make their own private confessions.

Sacrificing the scapegoat

Then the goat would be led into the wilderness by a specially appointed man, usually a priest, accompanied by the city’s dignitaries. Along the way they would stop at ten booths where food and drink were offered to the man, who would ritually decline.

At the tenth booth, the man and the goat would continue alone until reaching the top of a cliff in the Judean Hills. He would turn his back to the cliff, hoist the goat over his head and throw it down to its death.

While this was taking place, the high priest would disembowel the bodies of the bull and the goat. Once he was done the goat and bull would be taken to the Beit HaDeshen. Upon confirmation that the second goat was dead, the bull and goat carcasses would be burnt to ashes as the high priest exited the Nikanor Gate and entered the Women’s Courtyard, where he read the biblical passages describing the Yom Kippur sacrifices and rites.

After finished with this the high priest would make another wardrobe change, wash twice in a mikveh and put on another set of golden clothes. Once ready, he would go to the outer altar, where he would slaughter two rams and collect their blood into bowls, which he used to pour on the altar. Then he would disembowel the rams. Once this task was complete he would burn them on the altar, adding grain and wine.

Next up was the Musaf sacrifice, in which in a succession of animals were killed and burned: A bull, a deer, seven sheep, and yet another goat. Then the bowels of the bull and the goat from earlier in the day were burnt to ashes. After this, another ritual washing and change of clothes took place, and this time linen clothes were donned.

Now the high priest would return to the Holy of Holies and remove the shovel, embers, and incense. Then once again he would wash and change, into another set of golden clothes. Once dressed, he would sacrifice a lamb doused in flour and wine as a Tamid offering.

By this time it would be early afternoon and the day’s work was over. The dignitaries would retire to the high priest’s home, where they would celebrate with a feast.

As regards to everyone else, the Mishnah says that people must abstain from food and drink, from anointing themselves with oil, wearing sandals, and sex. The young and infirm may eat and drink, it qualifies.

Elsewhere the Mishnah provides more detail what the people may do and may not: for example, if a person is buried by a landslide, one should check to see if he’s alive so he can be rescued. If he isn't, the body must stay there until the next day.

Yoma ends with a discussion on whether all transgressions are remitted on Yom Kippur. It says that those transgressions carried out against other persons are not, while those against God are. This is the origin of the tradition of asking your fellow man for forgiveness on the days leading up to Yom Kippur.

Naturally, once the Temple was destroyed by Titus in 70 CE, the main function of Yom Kippur, purifying the Temple in preparation for Sukkot, could not continue. Instead a new form of Yom Kippur formed over the centuries, centered on acknowledgement of wrongs, atonement - and praying for forgiveness in synagogues.

6. The history of Sukkot, once the most important Jewish holiday of all

Originating in harvest festivals, Sukkot became centered in Jerusalem. That was not to last.

Ultra-Orthodox men buying the four species ahead of Sukkot. Photo by Benedict Corazon / Bau Bau

The seven-day festival of Sukkot starts on the 15th of Tishrei. From ancient times, the holiday has been associated with temporary dwellings called "sukkot" in Hebrew, and "tabernacles" in English (which is the origin of the word "tavern") – which were not however part of the original festival at all.

Once upon a time, Sukkot was the most important holiday. The bible is replete with mentions of it, while barely mentioning other Jewish holidays at all. Not rarely it is merely called khag – holiday, with no other qualifier, which in and of itself reinforces the impression that this was the biggest holiday in ancient times. In further testimony to its ancient importance, Sukkot involved the largest number of animal sacrifices, according to the Bible.

In other words, in biblical times Sukkot was The Holiday: if an ancient Israelite could only make it to Jerusalem for one of the three annual pilgrimages (the other two being Passover and Pentecost), Sukkot would be it.

Based on its timing and the fact that it is frequently referred to in the Bible as "the holiday of ingathering," meaning harvest, we may assume that the holiday evolved from ancient agricultural religious practices. But over time it was formalized, centralized and given historical-national significance – that was fated to dissipate.

Natural evolution or deliberate selection?

We learn about the holiday’s new, formal significance from the Book of Kings (1 Kings 8:1-5), which narrates that the Tabernacle – the mobile sanctuary that Moses built in the desert to house the Ark of the Covenant - was brought to Jerusalem during the seventh month (Tishrei), and that many animals were sacrificed.

This is the first known description of the formal holiday of Sukkot, though it bears note that this account was probably written over a century after the fact, during the reign of King Josiah.

With that in mind, the story that the Tabernacle was brought to Jerusalem on Sukkot may or not be fanciful. It is possible that this was made up to justify a new pilgrimage holiday established as a part of Josiah’s push to centralize worship in Jerusalem.

Either way, during Josiah’s reign, Sukkot became a much greater holiday, but the tiny city of Jerusalem would have been unable to house the great multitude coming to worship in the Temple at once. Unable to find lodging, the pilgrims had to erect temporary dwellings – little huts that became known as sukkot.

With time the holiday became associated with the sukkot themselves. Later these huts were given a national-historical meaning, correlating the holiday with the Exodus, as is reflected in the (late) biblical passage: “Ye shall dwell in booths seven days; all that are Israelites born shall dwell in booths: That your generations may know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in booths, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.” (Leviticus 23:42-3)

One problem with this connection is that the Bible tells us that the Israelites lived in tents, not booths, during the Exodus.

Whatever the case, spending the week in a sukkah became a major theme in the holiday. However, that was secondary to the practice of the holiday rites during the time of the First and Second Temples.

As was the norm with all Jewish holidays, and the Jewish cult in general, the holiday centered on the Temple and specifically on animal sacrifice therein. Altogether 70 bulls were sacrificed during each Sukkot, as well as numerous other animals.

Goodly trees and joyous dancing

Another important theme of the holiday, from ancient to contemporary times, were the four species that the people were to bring to the Temple. These are enumerated in Leviticus: “Ye shall take you on the first day the boughs of goodly trees, branches of palm trees, and the boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook; and ye shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days.” (23:40)

Nehemiah seems to imply that these plants were to be used in the construction of the booths: ״And that they should publish and proclaim in all their cities, and in Jerusalem, saying, Go forth unto the mount, and fetch olive branches, and pine branches, and myrtle branches, and palm branches, and branches of thick trees, to make booths, as it is written.” (8:15) In fact this to this day is how the commandment in Leviticus is interpreted by the Samaritans.

At any rate, from the time of the Hasmonean Dynasty, probably in the first century BCE, Jews have interpreted this vegetation to mean: A citron fruit (etrog), a myrtle branch, a date frond, and a willow branch. These were ceremoniously carried by Jews participating in the Temple service and are used in prayer in synagogue on Sukkot to this day.

While the four species mentioned in Leviticus probably did include date fronds and willow branches, and may have included myrtle, the “goodly trees” were certainly not citrons, as these were unknown to the Israelites during the time of the First Temple.

Another important ceremony conducted during the Second Temple period was libation with water, ceremoniously brought from the Gihon spring outside Jerusalem and poured on the altar.

Every night, throughout the holiday a celebration took place at the Temple compound - Simkhat Beit HaShoeva. Great torches were lit, music was played, and people danced. The Mishnah tells us that this was a very joyous event, going as far as saying that a person who has not seen it had never experienced joy.

Also, every seven years (in the year following shmita), the king would ceremoniously read sections of the Torah to the people.

Developing new ritual after Temple's destruction

After the temple was destroyed by Titus in 70 CE, the Jewish religion went through a major change, and the heart of Sukkot - the temple sacrifices - could no longer be observed. Thus further emphasis came to be ascribed to the sukkah, the four species, and prayer.

Sukkot, which in the past were only erected in Jerusalem, arose wherever Jews were living.

The main body of work we have concerning Sukkot is the Mishnah (220 CE) and Talmud (500 CE) tractate Sukkah, which in addition to elaborating the temple services, include a great deal of discussion of what constitutes a kosher sukkah - and a proper citron.

While Jews were instructed to sleep and eat in the sukkah throughout the holiday, if the weather was inclement or there was some other external problem, one could forgo this observance. Halakha is quite lenient here, saying that you shouldn’t stay in the sukkah “if it makes you uncomfortable.” Thus to this day Jews in northern climes tend to eschew this tradition, while in more temperate places such as Israel, observant Jews will usually sleep, eat, and pray in their sukkahs all week.

There are rules governing sukkah size: it must not be too small (at least 22 inches wide, 22 inches long, and 31” high) nor too big (not more than 32 feet high). It must have at least three sides and must be covered by a roof made of plants, traditionally palm date fronds. It must provide shade but let in rain and the stars must be visible through the frond ceiling, not that one can see them in modern light-polluted cities. Its sides may be made of any material as long as it is strong enough to withhold the wind. It is customary to build the sukkah right after the end of Yom Kippur.

When praying in the sukkah or at synagogue the four species are ritually shaken in different parts of the liturgical service.

Visits by patriarchs and kings

Over the years, Sukkot gained new traditions not originating in the bible or in ancient rabbinic texts. For example, a tradition dating back to the time of the Gaonim is to recite prayers called Hoshanot - poems asking for different kinds of divine favor. They are recited twice a day on each of the days of the holiday.

On the last day, the congregation recites the final prayer, called Hoshanah Rabah - the Great Hoshanah, walking in a circle outside the synagogue and shaking the four species in their hands.

The Zohar, kabbalist literature from the 13th century, is the source of a tradition that on each day of Sukkot a biblical figure - Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joseph, and David - visit the sukkah. These are collectively called the Ushpizin, which is Aramaic for visitors.

In ultra-Orthodox circles, parties with music and segregated dancing are held during the nights of Sukkot. These are called Simkhat Beit HaShoeva, a throwback to the parties of the Second Temple period.

In modern times, Sukkot has created an industry with special markets selling the four species and sukkah kits springing up in the days preceding the holiday. Etrog importing has become quite the cut-throat industry.

In Israel the first day of Sukkot is a holiday and businesses are closed. School remains closed all week but stores reopen from the second day. Where once upon a time, Sukkot was The Holiday for Jews - today among the non-observant it's become mainly an excuse for the kids to play camping in the sukkah, and for the observant – it's just another holiday.

7. How the end of Sukkot morphed into Shemini Atzeret and Simhat Torah

From a ceremony winding down Sukkot to a celebration of the weather to dancing with the Torah scrolls - this holiday keeps reinventing itself.

Dancing joyously with the Torah on Simchat Torah, Mea She'arim, Jerusalem. Photo by Gil Cohen-Magen

The day after Sukkot is a distinct Jewish holiday called Shemini Atzeret.

Given that its name simply means "Solemn assembly of the eighth" (day of Sukkot), and that Sukkot is seven days long, we may postulate that in the dim reaches of history, it was considered the 8th day of the holiday but over time, became a separate event entirely.

Confused? Wait for it: Shemini Atzeret is both identical to the Jewish holiday of Simhat Torah and distinct from it - depending where one lives.

Let’s untangle this mess.

The bible barely mentions Shemini Atzeret and when it does, it's always in the context of Sukkot, which it follows.

Shemini Atzeret seems to have been a relatively late addition to the Jewish calendar. It may have been entirely unknown in First Temple times, going by the fact that the few mentions of it in the bible are in sections considered to be later additions, which were most likely written during the Babylonian Captivity (587-539 BCE).

The first mention of Shemini Atzeret is by Nehemiah: "Also day by day, from the first day unto the last day, he [Ezra] read in the book of the law of God. And they kept the feast seven days; and on the eighth day was a solemn assembly." (Nehemiah 8:18).

The Bible provides scant information on how Shemini Atzeret was marked or what it meant. Sacrifices were made in the Temple, servile work was prohibited as on Shabbat, and an assembly was held – but that’s it.

Rabbinic literature is a little more enlightening on the nature of the holiday during the Second Temple period: "On the eighth day the people were sent off [by the king] and they blessed the king and went to their tents happy and with goodly hearts for all the goodness that God did for David and his people Israel." (Tosefta Sukkah 4:17).

That would seem to indicate that at least originally, the holiday was simply a closing ceremony for Sukkot, with everyone meeting in the Temple and saying their goodbyes. Not so, say the rabbis: “It is a holiday unto itself” (Babylonian Talmud Sukkah 47a).

They elaborate that the traditions and commands of Sukkot and this "eighth day" are different. Specifically, while you are commanded to sit in your sukkah during the seven days of Sukkot, on Shemini Atzeret you aren’t. Plus, the sacrifices for Sukkot and Shemini Atzeret are listed separately.

The Rainmaker

If this holiday seems to have been short on content when the Temple was still around, the situation became even more dire after Titus destroyed the Temple and Jerusalem in 70 AD.

No longer could sacrifices be offered up to God. No longer was there a king to send the Jewish people home after pilgrimage.

This was a period in which Judaism was forced to reinvent itself. From a religion centered on the one Temple led by Zadokite priests, Judaism became a religion centered in synagogues wherever they might be. Worship was led by Pharisee rabbis, and it was up to them to pour new content into Shemini Atzeret, lest the holiday disappear completely.

The new form of Judaism that took shape over the centuries that followed - centuries covered in the Mishnah and the Talmud - saw a shift in emphasis. Instead of worshiping through sacrifice in the Temple, Jews began praying in synagogues. Instead of venerating the Temple in Jerusalem, Jews had a new portable temple - the Torah itself.

This metamorphosis would, over time, give new meaning to the holiday.

The Jewish daily prayer that took form during this time, the Amidah or Shemone Esrei, included a benediction for rain: "He causeth the wind to blow and the rain to descend." In Israel at least, which has a rainy season (winter) and a dry season (all other times), this was inapplicable during spring and summer. So each year, starting on Passover, by which time the rainy season has usually subsided, “dew” was substituted for rain.

The rabbis decided that Shemini Atzeret – taking place at the start of the fall, when precipitation may begin again - would be a good time to switch back to rain. Thus the holiday became associated with the start of the rainy season, and much of the additional praying done for the holiday centered on the theme of weather.

Babylon and Palestine: Enter Simhat Torah

As we have said, the Torah itself became a central focus of the Jewish religion after the destruction of the Temple, and it became the custom to read a different portion of the Bible each week.

During Talmudic times, two competing systems took form. The Palestinian system involved shorter weekly portions read in a three-year cycle. The Babylonian system was based on longer portions completed in an annual cycle.

The Babylonian system eventually won and is the system used today. This cycle, the rabbis of Babylonia decreed, ended and began on the second day of Shemini Atzeret.

Where did this second day come from, since up to now the holiday we were discussing was a one-day affair?

Well, due to the intricacies of the Jewish calendar, all Jewish holidays (except for Yom Kippur) were given an extra day outside of Israel - so that if you got the count wrong, you would still be celebrating on the right day too.

Thus, when eventually the Babylonian annual cycle was adopted in the Holy Land, probably in the 13th century, the cycle began and ended a day before the rest of the world, on the first and only day of Shemini Atzeret. This difference between Israel and the Diaspora exists to this day.

Middle-Age branding genius

During the Gaonic period following the redaction of the Talmud (500 CE), Jews underwent a process of adapting to this change in the status of Shemini Atzeret, and the holiday began to receive all kinds of names, including “The Day of the Book” and “The Ending Day.” Eventually someone came up with the catchy title “Simhat Torah,” meaning to celebrate Torah, or take joy in it.

This name first appears in the 7th century CE, but only became commonly accepted in the 10th.

Simhat Torah didn't just spontaneously come into being. It gradually evolved from Shemini Atzeret.

It was in the Diaspora, where Shemini Atezret stretched two days, that the two holidays started to become distinct. Shemini Atzeret became more and more about the rain and Simhat Torah became more and more about the Torah. Different traditions began to appear in different congregations; some vanished, others took hold and are a part of Simhat Torah to this day.

Example of traditions that started appearing in the Middle Ages and are now universally observed by Jews the world over are the special honor given to the person who reads (or recites the benediction before someone else reads for him) the first and last parts of the Torah.

In many congregations, these people are expected to give a hefty donation to the synagogue and hold a celebration at their home after the prayer service. In all communities the Torah scrolls are taken out and paraded around the synagogue accompanied by dancing, singing, waving of flags and just general jubilation. It is a very joyous event.

8. The astonishing real story of Hanukkah

Surprise: It has nothing to do with a miraculous oil supply.

This is the type of oil lamp used in ancient times and nowhere do Jewish sources say it stayed alit for 8 days. Photo by Moshe Gilad

The real story of Hanukkah begins with a revolt, for reasons that would resonate to this day – gross inequality and religious coercion. Rather less well-known is that the holiday originally had nothing to do with a miraculous oil supply but rather involved ousting foreign rule and slaughtering Hellenized Jews.

Back in the days before the Maccabean Revolt, Judea was semi-autonomous, but was firmly under the control of the Seleucid Empire, led by Antiochus IV Epiphanes. The moneyed elite of Judea had become largely Hellenized, taking up the dominating culture of the day.

But not everyone enjoyed the comforts of “modernity.” The inequality led Jewish zealots to oppose the sweeping cultural changes in Judea. The alarmed Hellenized Jews called for the emperor's help; and the emperor did send troops to entrench Hellenization even further. Thus the war known to history as the Maccabean Revolt began.

After some years of guerrilla warfare under the leadership of Judah Maccabee, Jewish independence was regained. Jerusalem was freed. The Hellenized Jews were slaughtered and the Temple was rededicated.

That, we are told, took place on the winter solstice on the 25th day of Kislev, 160 BCE.

Celebrating the Temple

Our earliest source on the celebration of Hanukkah is the Book of Maccabees I, written at the end of the 2nd Century BCE. It tells us: “And Judah and his brothers commanded that all the people of Israel shall celebrate the holiday of the dedication of the Temple on the 25th day of the month of Kislev, every year in praise and thanks to God.”

The later Book of Maccabees II - written in Alexandria, in Greek, in 124 BCE - tells us the holiday was celebrated as a second Sukkot. That may explain why the holiday lasts eight days. That is, simply, the length of Sukkot, which is a harvest festival, and possibly Hanukkah began as one as well. Some researchers suggested that the holiday coincides with the end of the olive-oil making season, which could explain the oil-centeredness of the holiday.

Moving onto the Mishnah, which was redacted in 220 CE but encompasses tradition spanning generations - Hanukkah is mentioned only in passing. There is no special tractate. Some think that's because it wasn’t an important holiday back then. Others suggest Hanukkah was so widely celebrated that it wasn’t worth mentioning.

What the Mishnah does tell us, is that messengers were sent out to far reaches to tell people in advance when the holiday was to be celebrated. During it, mourning practices were forbidden and special Bible portions were read. There is only one reference to candle-lighting and even that is in the context of a legal matter. Bottom line: The defendant was not found liable for damage caused by a fire he accidentally started when lighting a candle at the entrance to his shop for Hanukkah.

Pharisees trump the Sadducees, as usual

Nor does the Talmud - compiled around 500 CE but containing writings spanning centuries - have a separate tractate on Hanukkah, but it does provide more information on the holiday. This is where we first learn that candles were lit for eight days.

But why? Today only one explanation is offered: the miracle of the oil, enough for one day but lasting for eight. The Talmud, however, offers other possibilities: that it took eight days to get oil in from the countryside, or that there were eight spikes found in the Temple which were converted into a menorah.

The eight-day progression of the candle lighting also appears in the Talmud for the first time. But today's practice of starting with one candle (and the shamash) and building to seven (and the shamash) was not necessarily the norm.

That is the norm introduced by the Pharisees: that each day an additional candle be lit. But the Sadducees argued that one should start with a full menorah, and take away one candle each day. As is usually the case, Judaism sided with the Pharisees.

Liturgy takes shape, sort of

During the time of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages the liturgy of the holiday started taking form. Several special prayers were composed for the holiday. One is “Al Hanisim” (About the miracles), a prayer of thanksgiving to God for the miracles he had bestowed on his people.

Intriguingly, this prayer was canonized with a small factual error in it. Mattathias, the patriarch of the Hasmonean clan that led the Maccabean revolt, is named in the prayer "Mattathias son of Johanan the high priest". But although Mattathias’ father was in fact called Johanan - he was not the high priest.

The anonymous composer of this prayer was led to error by a book on the Maccabees called "Megillat Antiochus," which is riddled with factual mistakes.

The song “Maoz Tzur,” which is traditionally sung after the candle lighting, was composed in the 13th century. Other songs would follow.

Beheaded generals and gambling

Sometime during the Middle Ages, it became a tradition for Jewish women to eat dairy products on the holiday in recognition of the heroism of Judith, the Jewish heroine of the Book of Judith.

Now, Judith had become associated with the Maccabees even though according to the account of the apocryphal Book of Judith itself, she lived hundreds of years before them.

At any rate, according to the story, when infiltrating the enemy camp, Judith, for reasons of kashrut, ate no meat: she confined herself to dairy products, while she ingratiated her way into the tent of the enemy general Holofernes, who she beheaded, thus saving her people from certain destruction.

In Eastern Europe, the dairy diet took the shape of eating latkes, which were cheesy pancakes. Only later in the mid-19th Century, when Russian farmers began growing potatoes, did latkes take the form of the potato pancakes that we know today.

The tradition of spinning dreidels on Hanukkah is also a product of the Middle Ages.

The dreidel was simply a gambling game, with the letters on the dreidel not denoting "nes gadol haya sham" (A great miracle happened there) as we say today. Rather, each letter stood for a Yiddish word having to do with the game: nun was for nicht (nothing), gimel was for ganz (all), shin was forstell ein (put in), and hei was for half (half) – which indicated what one must do after each turn. The rules are those of an earlier non-Jewish gambling game called teetotum.

The tradition of eating fried doughnuts, or sufganiyot as they are called in Israel, is an even later addition to the holiday. It first appeared attested in Morocco in the end of the 18th Century, though it is widely attributed to the father of the Rambam, Rabbi Maymon, who lived in Iberia hundreds of years earlier.

Finally, Hanukkah has always been a minor holiday in Jewish tradition. That's because while other holidays are sanctioned by the Bible and thus are seen as divinely ordained, Hanukkah is post-biblical: it was ordained by rabbis. It seems to have gained its importance in the 20th Century in the United States, mainly because it tends to coincide with Christmas. And this is how the holiday got its present shape with dreidels, latkes, sufganiyot and menorahs, and lest we forget - gifts.

9. The history of Tu Bishvat: From legalistic debate to fruit-eating bonanza

The Bible didn’t mention the holiday, but holy men in the Middle Ages made sure it became a celebration resembling the Passover seder.

The Salonika Jewish community celebrating Tu Bishvat. Fruits and nuts galore. Photo by Daniella Uziel

Tu Bishvat is a late addition to the Hebrew calendar. The holiday is nowhere in the Bible and first appears in the Mishna. We’re told that each year actually has four Rosh Hashanahs – four starts to the year.

One is for measuring the reigns of kings and determining the holidays, one is for setting livestock tithes, one is for counting the years and religious regulations on plants, and one is the Rosh Hashanah of the Tree, which became what we call Tu Bishvat.

At this point, during the Second Temple period, the date on which the holiday fell was in dispute. According to the Mishna, the House of Shammai school of thought put the holiday on the first day of the month of Shevat, while the House of Hillel put it on the 15th of the month.

Actually, the word “holiday” is misleading – there was no celebration or tree planting. Fruit picking was the issue. The day merely determined whether the tithes were calculated as tithes of one year or the next, with the border being either the 15th or the first day of Shevat. It was simply a technical and legalistic matter.

The House of Hillel won most debates with the House of Shammai, so the holiday falls on the 15th of Shevat. This is what gives the holiday its name. Hebrew letters began to be used to represent numbers, and 15 was represented by the letters tet (9) and vav (6), which are read as tu.

By the High Middle Ages, 1100 to 1300, Tu Bishvat was no longer a pure legalistic matter. It became something of a holiday, though just barely. The main change was that the Tachanun (Supplication) prayer was not recited in synagogues. In 17th-century Europe it became a tradition for schools to close on Tu Bishvat.

The main innovation that turned Tu Bishvat into a holiday was accomplished in Safed in the 16th century by Isaac Luria Ashkenazi, the father of contemporary kabbala. He and his disciples enacted a tikkun (correction) that made Tu Bishvat a day of celebrating and eating fruit. A book by an anonymous disciple took things further, adding a ceremony resembling the Passover seder.

These traditions spread to neighboring countries and slowly were adopted by most Sephardi communities, as well as some Ashkenazi communities. Under the new tradition, people met at a synagogue or at the home of a community dignitary. The tables were covered with white tablecloths adorned by candles, myrtle, fruit and plants, as well as pitchers of red and white wine.

Thirteen biblical passages on growing plants were read, agriculture-related Talmudic passages were studied, a special prayer was recited and four glasses of wine were drunk. Each was accompanied by a different fruit, nut or other bounty of the land.

This was the case with Sephardi Jews; Ashkenazi Jews did things differently. Only a shadow of the merriment made its way to the north. During the 19th century it became tradition in many Ashkenazi communities to eat dried fruit sent from the Holy Land. At heder, where Jewish boys received their education, the days leading up to Tu Bishvat were often dedicated to fanciful teachings on the great bounty of the Land of Israel.

These traditions continued into the 20th century, when the rise of Zionism and the founding of the Jewish National Fund gave the holiday a new twist. Jews in the Diaspora – especially in North America – were encouraged to donate money for the planting of trees in Israel, and in Israel trees are still planted across the country, usually by schoolchildren.

The tradition to eat fruit took an ironic turn over the years. The dried fruit eaten by Israelis during, before and after Tu Bishvat is almost always imported from abroad, usually from Turkey. So in recent years religious groups have called for another correction. They want the dried fruit to be thrown out so that Israel’s wonderful fruit can be eaten fresh.

10. What is Purim? The history behind the Halloween of Jewish holidays

What is Purim's origin? When did it begin? Why do many Jews dislike it? – and is the underlying tale of love, murder and betrayal true?

Masquerading was a relatively late addition to the Purim festivities, celebrating the Jews' rescue from genocide thousands of years ago. Photo by Alex Levac

Purim is the most mysterious of Hebraic holidays. It suddenly appeared in the second century BCE, though many Jews ignored it for centuries. And the origin of the holiday, let alone its flagship text - the Book of Esther - is just as baffling.

The first reference to Purim is in the deuterocanonical book Maccabees II (15:32), which merely says that on the 14th of the Jewish month of Adar, Jews celebrated a holiday called "Mordecai Day." Clearly the holiday was celebrated in at least some Jewish communities as early as 124 BCE, when this book was written in Alexandria.

The Jewish historian Josephus, writing in the first century CE also mentions the holiday, noting that it was widely celebrated.

Yet it seems the holiday failed to gain acceptance by all Jews until the early Middle Ages. For example, Esther is the only megillah not found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, indicating that the desert community didn’t consider it canonical. Yet the Mishnah tells that at least from the time of the Bar Kochba revolt (132–136 CE), reading the Book of Esther on Purim was considered a mitzvah.

But is it Jewish?

The Talmud itself refers to some who doubted whether Purim should be celebrated as a Jewish holiday. Still, clearly by the time of the Mishnah and Talmud, Purim was ascendant: More translations and exegeses of the Book of Esther can be found in this period than on any other biblical text.

The holiday's origin is heatedly disputed. A number of pagan holidays - Greek, Persian, Assyrian and Babylonian - have been suggested as candidates, but none really suits.

The story of the Book of Esther as it appears in the Hebrew Bible is as follows: Ahasuerus, king of Persia, wants his wife Vashti to show off her beauty before his guests. She refuses. Ahasuerus’ servants hold an ancient version of “The Bachelor,” bringing the most beautiful women of the kingdom. One is Esther, the eponymous hero of the book, an orphan raised by her uncle Mordecai.

After his niece becomes queen, Mordecai discovers a palace plot to assassinate Ahasuerus. He tells the king, who has the plotters killed.

At about this period, one of the king’s viziers Haman rises to supremacy. Everyone, including the other viziers, must bow before him. Mordecai refuses. Furious, Haman somewhat overreacts, deciding not only to have Mordecai killed but all of the kingdom’s Jews as well. To choose a propitious day to hold this genocide, he holds a lottery and the 13th of Adar is chosen.

Hearing of this, Mordecai urges Esther to talk to the king and have him rescind the execution orders sent throughout the kingdom. Although approaching the king uninvited was perilous, Esther fasts for three days, then does it, inviting him and Haman to a banquet.

At the banquet, the king asks Esther what she wanted. She wants only one thing: that he and Haman come to another banquet the next day.

That night, the king couldn't sleep. Presumably to help him relax, he asks his servants to read to him from the kingdom chronicles.

As it happened, the servants read how Mordecai saved him from certain death. He asks how Mordecai was rewarded and is told - he wasn’t.

The next morning Haman rushes into the king’s chamber to ask for permission to execute his evil plot, but the king preempts him ״What shall be done unto the man whom the king delighteth to honor?” Haman, thinking the king was talking about him, told him that such a man should be paraded in the streets of the capital on a horse in splendor with a man walking in front announcing that this is what happens to men who the king “delighteth to honor.”

Naturally, he was frustrated when the king ordered that be done to Mordecai, not to him, but he carried it out as commanded.

That night he went to Esther’s banquet, where Esther told Ahasuerus about Haman’s plot. The king stormed out in anger.

Later, Haman went to Esther’s room to beg for mercy but as he lay prostrate on her bed begging, the king walked in and mistook what he has seen as an attempt by Haman to rape his wife. He ordered Haman be hanged, and ordered that Jews throughout the kingdom protect themselves from those who come to kill them, as the orders could not be rescinded any more.

On the 13th of Adar and on the next day, Jews around the kingdom killed thousands of their attackers. But they themselves were saved.

An elaborate fairy tale?

The historicity of this story is highly contested. Proponents note the great detail in dates, names and objects mentioned, even to seemingly unimportant aspects of the story. They also argue that the description of court life fits what we know about the Persian court from other sources.

But it's still unlikely. No other ancient texts tell anything like this story, critics snort. Nor does Ahasuerus' character fit any of the known Persian monarchs (though some supporters think he's Artaxerxes). And the most convincing argument against the story's veracity is that a Persian king would have never married an orphan of unknown parentage.

The Mishnah is the first text to prescribe how Purim is to be celebrated - the Book of Esther is to be read in public. The Talmud (redacted 500 CE) augments the tradition of reading the Book of Esther in public with drinking wine, making merry - and giving gifts to the poor. That is prescribed in the Book of Esther itself, but seems to be a later addition to the book. Neither that practice nor the name "Purim" itsef appear in the earlier version of the Book of Esther, which we know from the Greek translation in the Septuagint, dating from the second century BCE.

Of special importance in the Talmud is drinking wine on Purim. We are told one should drink so much that one can't tell the difference between the evil Haman and the good Mordecai.

Sometime in the late 5th century, celebrating Jews began to burn Haman in effigy. This often got them in trouble with their Christian neighbors, who sometimes thought the effigy burnt was of Jesus. This tradition has died out.

A later tradition, that of fasting on the day before Purim in commemoration of Esther’s fast, called Ta'anit Esther, first appears in the writings of Rabbi Akha in the late 6th century.

It was the Tosafists, German and French rabbis of the 13th Century who first mention the act of making noise to blot out the name of Haman (with noise) while reading the Book of Esther in public. At first this was done by stomping one’s feet. Later people started using ratchets (also known as groggers).

Enter the Batman costume

But the most widely observed Purim traditions are dressing up and masquerading. These began in 13th century Renaissance.

Purim is celebrated at roughly the same time as the Venice Carnival and other Italian celebrations that began at about that period. First to mention these traditions was Kalonymus ben Kalonymus, who wrote of this tradition with some contempt. Still, it spread from Italy to the rest of the Jewish world within two or three centuries.

Baking "hamentachen" (Haman pockets) stuffed cookies began in Europe during the early modern period. At first these were filled with poppy seeds: today Israeli bakers vie to be creative.

In 18th-century Eastern Europe a tradition of performing whimsical plays called Purim spiels began. That birthed a tradition still carried out in some communities.

In Israel, in the 20th century, a new tradition was formed - the Adloyada. This is a street parade featuring floats. The first Adloyada was held in Tel Aviv in 1912.

11. The surprising ancient origins of Passover

The holiday we know today began as two distinct ones, one for nomadic herders and one for farmers. Neither involved Egypt.

Roasting a sacrificial sheep over an open pit at the Samaritans' Passover celebration at Gerizim. / Photo by Nir Keidar

The Passover Seder is one of the most recognized and widely practiced of Jewish rituals, yet had our ancestors visited one of these modern-day celebrations, they would have been baffled.

Not only does our modern Seder wildly diverge from the Passover of old: during antiquity itself, the holiday underwent radical changes. Below we chart as best we can - considering the shortage of historical documentation - the origins of Passover, from the dawn of Israelite people to the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, and the consequent establishment of the embryonic Passover Seder, which modern Jews would recognize.

As the centralized Israelite state took shape about 3,000 years ago, , the religion of the people varied from place to place and took variegated forms, hints of which we can see in the Bible, virtually the only historical narrative we have of this period. Among the different folk beliefs and frankly polytheistic practices these proto-Israelites practiced, the springtime rites seem to have had special status. Two of these rituals would later become subsumed by Passover: Pesach and Hag Hamatzot.

Pesach was a pastoral apotropaic ritual, that is: its purpose is to ward off evil. It was carried out by the semi-nomadic segment of Israelite society that subsisted on livestock. Spring was a critical time of the year for them, a time of lambing and a sign that soon they would have to migrate to find a summer pasture for their flock.

In order to protect their flocks, and families, from the dangers ahead, they would slaughter their flock’s newest addition as an offering, either a lamb or a kid, in a bloody ritual followed by a family feast.

The origin of matza

Hag Hamatzot, on the other hand, was celebrated by the settled segment of Israelite society, who lived in villages and who drew their subsistence from farming. For them too spring was crucial, meaning the start of the harvest, of the cereals on which they depended.

Of the cereals grown by the ancient Israelites in this period, the first grain to be ready for harvest was barley. Although this made for inferior bread, it was highly prized: not rarely, by the spring harvest, the last year’s stores had been already depleted and hunger took grip of the land.

This new bread would have been unleavened, as the leavening used at the time was a portion of dough set aside from the last batch of bread. But this would have been unavailable due to the gap created by the empty stores. Add to this the fact that barley flour hardly rises anyway, and that the baking techniques of the time would have made even the superior bread made of wheat flour flat and hard, and you’ve got matza.

Still, when hungry, even matza is a cause for celebration and one could imagine that the communal threshing grounds were filled with joy, cheer, and jubilation.

The holidays are merged

As the monarchy was established and a centralized religion took form, the two holidays began merging into one. The process was a gradual one, which culminated in both converging to the full moon in the middle of the spring month of Nisan.

The location of the celebrations was moved from the home and the community to the Temple in Jerusalem.

No doubt, an important milestone in this process took place in the reforms of the 16-year-old King Josiah in 622 BCE, as described in chapter 22 of the Second Book of Kings.

We are told that Josiah ordered the temple be renovated. and that During this process, as Hilkiah the high priest was clearing the Temple’s treasure room, “The Book of the Law,” - believed to be an early version of the Book of Deuteronomy - was found. This led to a series of reforms carried out by Josiah to bring the land into accord with the newly -discovered divine ordinances.

A major part of these reforms was the reform of Passover: “And the king commanded all the people, saying, Keep the passover unto the Lord your God, as it is written in the book of this covenant.” (23:21)

It was no longer supposed to be a family affair but a centralized national observance: the Book of Deuteronomy clearly stipulates that the Pesach sacrifice may not be made “within any of thy gates” but rather at the Temple. (16:5-6)

Pilgrimage to Jerusalem

Following Josiah’s reforms, the holiday took the form of a mass pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The people would bring their paschal lamb (or kid) to be sacrificed at the Temple.

The feast of unleavened bread began the day after. All were commanded to avoid eating leavened bread for a week, though it seems that this wasn’t accompanied by any special practices in the Temple; the Israelites would probably have followed this precept on their way home and at their homes themselves.

Not much more is known about the celebration at this time. This was apparently the time in which the story of the exodus from Egypt was introduced. But this form of practice didn’t last long. In 586, BCE the Babylonians sacked Jerusalem, the Temple was destroyed and the period in Jewish history called the Babylonian Captivity began.

Bondage in Babylon

It is during this time, when the elite of Judean society was in the relatively literate and cosmopolitan Babylonia and had they had no Jerusalem Temple on which to focus their religious fervor,, that the writing of many of the Biblical texts took place. This includes the Book of Exodus, the central tale of Passover. Among other things, the story would have united the people and appealed to its writers themselves, as they found themselves in bondage in a foreign land, hoping to be delivered by God and returned to their homeland.

They were indeed delivered, in 538 BCE, when Cyrus the Great, King of Persia, defeated the Babylonians, and proclaimed that the Jews could return to their homeland and rededicate their temple. Upon their return and the dedication of the new temple in 516 BCE, the holiday of Passover was reinstated. “And the children of the captivity kept the passover upon the fourteenth day of the first month...and kept the feast of unleavened bread seven days with joy.” (Ezra 6:19-22)

Following the rededication of the Temple, the Judeans would come to Jerusalem a few days before the holiday each year. They would prepare for the holiday by going through rigorous purity rituals. Entering the Temple compound in groups, the head of each household would hand their animal offering to the priests, who killed the animal, drew its blood and sprayed it on the altar. Then the carcass was returned to the family that had given it and they would roast it and eat it within the confines of the Temple.

The next day the people dispersed, though they would continue to eat unleavened bread for another week.

This form of Passover continued until the Maccabean Revolt erupted in 167 BCE. The celebration of Passover at the Temple had to stop, briefly, until Jerusalem was recaptured by the Maccabees and the Temple was rededicated in 165 BCE. At this time Passover underwent further change.

The Hasmonean reform

Under the new Hasmonean regime, the sacrifice of the Pesach offering was done by the head of the household himself, not by the priests. On the other hand, during the week following Pesach, special sacrifices were given, and these were sacrificed by the temple staff - the priests and the Levites.

Another innovation that seems to have arisen under the Hasmonean Dynasty was the singing of songs praising God and the drinking of wine during the family meals, as well as some kind of public celebration at the end of the week of Hag Hamatzot.

The civil war that resulted from the murder of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE led to the demise of the Hasmonean Dynasty and the ascent of Herod the Great to the Judean crown in 37 BCE, as a puppet ruler of Rome. This had little effect on Passover, which continued pretty much as it was under Hasmonean rule. However, the vast numbers of Jews coming from throughout the Roman Empire forced change, as there was no longer room for everyone to have their paschal mean within the confines of the Temple. The rules were relaxed to the extent that the meal could be eaten anywhere within Jerusalem.

But this massive influx of Jews to Jerusalem made the Roman authorities uneasy. Several sources from this period report that the Jerusalem garrison was fortified during Passover to prepare for any unruliness.

The Passover meal in this form was the meal described in the New Testament as Jesus’ last supper.

In 66 CE, religious tensions between Greek and Jewish citizens, and protests over the heavy tax burden, boiled over into the Jewish rebellion against Rome. This rebellion was put down in 70 CE. Roman legions under Titus retook Jerusalem, destroying the Temple and much of the rest of the city. Passover was never to be celebrated as it had been again.

In Yavne, a rabbinical school lead by Rabbi Johanan ben Zakai and Rabban Gamaliel II, set out to forge a new Judaism adapted to a post-Temple world. Among their innovations, which were later redacted into the Mishnah, was the embryonic form of the Passover Seder we know and celebrate today.

12. The real story of Lag Ba'omer

Once upon a time this day marked the end of a terrible plague. Then revisionism got involved.

Lag Ba'omer in Modi’in Ilit, May 17, 2014. Gil Cohen-Magen

Lag Ba'omer is a minor Jewish holiday that traces back not to antiquity, but to the Middle Ages. Marked on the 18th day of the Jewish month of Iyar, the modern festivities include making a bonfire and roasting potatoes, franks, marshmallows and other fire-friendly foods on the flames. Few may realize it, but what we're celebrating is the cessation of a vicious plague that carried off tens of thousands of yeshiva students more than 1,000 years ago – maybe.

Though the holiday is relatively new, this story starts in biblical times, when Jews were commanded to count the 49 harvest days from Passover to Shavuot. This was called Sefirat Ha'omer (The counting of the Omer). Lag Ba'omer is simply the 33rd day of this count, with Lag – lamed gimel – being the way Jews write the number 33.

Back then, the 33rd day of the Omer had no special significance.

However, since the 9th century, these 49 days became days of mourning over the deaths of the 24,000 students of Rabbi Akiva, who, according to the Talmud (Yevamot 62b), died between Passover and Shavuot of a plague. Thus, during the Omer, traditional Jews observed mourning rituals, which included a ban on shaving, getting haircuts or getting married. (When the Jewish communities in the Rhine Valley were decimated in 1096 and 1146 during the days of the Omer, these slaughters were added to the mourning observance.)

Back to the plague: In 13th-century Spain, the Talmudist Menachem Meiri wrote in a commentary on the Tractate Yevamot that according to a Gaonic tradition, the plague ended on Lag Ba'omer. That, therefore, was reason to mark the day with a celebration.

Mystical traditions

We first hear of celebrations marking that 33rd day of the count in the 15th century, in the writings of the important German rabbi Yaakov ben Moshe Levi Moelin, though it is not exactly clear in what way the day was marked.

In the 16th century, Rabbi Isaac Luria (“Ha'Ari”) decided that Rabbi Simeon bar Yochai, who according to (a false) tradition wrote the Kabbalistic book the Zohar, died on Lag Ba'omer, and on his deathbed he revealed to his disciples mystical traditions. From that time, Lag Ba'omer has been marked specially at Mount Meron, where bar Yochai is believed to be buried.

The Meronite celebration includes giving 3-year-old boys their first haircuts, lighting bonfires, singing and dancing.

Why the bonfire? It isn't about cooking; it's that fire symbolizes the light that is wisdom, spread by the great Rabbi bar Yochai.

Children were and still are given bows and arrows to play with. This is likely due to influence of non-Jewish neighbors, but is explained by a midrash, which claims that, during the lifetime of Rabbi Simeon bar Yochai, no rainbows appeared. Thus, since the Hebrew word for rainbow and bow are one and the same – keshet – playing with bow and arrows is seen as a way of celebrating the life of the great sage.

This Meronite mode of celebrating Lag Ba'omer slowly spread from Safed to the rest of the Holy Land during the 17th century. In the 18th century it began to be practiced among Sephardi communities and later that century among Hasidic Jews in Eastern Europe. At some stage, Lag Ba'omer began to be celebrated as “Scholars’ Day,” with Jewish students getting the day off and going hiking and the like.

The Zionist reinterpretation

In the 19th century, Nachman Krochmal and other Jewish scholars began to hypothesize that the Talmudic verse concerning the death of the 24,000 students of Rabbi Akiva was a veiled reference to their death in battle, as part of the Bar Kochba revolt against the Romans (132–136 CE) and not a mysterious plague. This explanation is not too dubious, considering the fact that Rabbi Akiva and Bar Kochba were contemporaries and that the former supported the latter. This interpretation was adopted by the Zionist movement in the 20th century.

The old religious rituals were reinterpreted to have secular historic meanings: Lag Ba'omer was celebrated because on that day Bar Kochba achieved a victory over the Romans, bonfires were lit because that is how this victory was signaled throughout the land, bow and arrows were used because that was one of the weapons Bar Kochba’s forces used to fight the Romans, and so on.

Thus, in our times the holiday is celebrated in three distinct ways: Secular Jewish children hold bonfires supposedly celebrating Bar Kochba; religious Jews celebrate the life of Simeon bar Yochai, in a great celebration drawing hundreds of thousands atop Mount Meron, but also in lesser celebrations elsewhere in Israel and abroad; and thirdly, Israeli universities took the old tradition of Lag Ba'omer as “Scholars' Day,” creating student day celebrations on campuses.

13. The twisted history of Shavuot: Do modern-day Jews have it wrong?

According to the Bible, Shavuot isn’t exactly a real holiday. What changed?

Painting by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (1794 – 1872). Photo by Wikicommons

The Jewish holiday of Shavuot has been through so many changes and adaptations over the centuries that the holiday Jews celebrate today is almost certainly nothing like the one it’s based on. After all these years, it’s unclear what the real date of the holiday is, and even what it’s named. In fact, according to the Bible, Shavuot may not be a holiday at all.

So what do we know about the twisted history of Shavuot?

Shavuot has its origins in the ancient mid-summer harvest celebrations of the Canaanites, the ancient people from which Israelite society sprang during the Bronze Age. These early religions’ celebrations, in which revelers rejoiced in the harvesting of wheat, were local affairs probably celebrated in communal threshing grounds, where the wheat was separated from the chaff, and other cultic sites.

All that started to change in the 7th and 8th centuries BCE, when the Jerusalem monarchs and priesthood consolidated power, bringing formerly separate tribes under the helm of one ruler. As part of this program, they co-opted these local affairs and supplanted them by unified rites that could only be performed in the Temple in Jerusalem. This program would create a sense of peoplehood for the people of the land and enrich the coffers of both palace and Temple.

Shavuot is referenced as one of the three pilgrimages or “Shloshet Haregalim” in the Book of Exodus, which was probably written during the exile in Babylonia. But in its earliest stages, during the First Temple period, Shavuot was an appendage to Passover, the first of the two major agricultural holidays. Shavuot marked the end of the festival (Atzeret) of the 50-day period called the Omer, between the harvest of barley – Passover - and the harvest of wheat. Sukkot, the second agricultural holiday, involves the same pattern, in this case with a seven-day period between the start of the holiday and the Atzeret.

Since Shavuot is not a holiday in its own right, according to the Bible, we don’t actually know the exact date of the celebration - only that it comes 50 days after Passover, which begins on either the sixth or seventh day of the Hebrew month of Sivan, depending on which rabbis you ask.

It doesn’t have a set name either - it is cited as The Festival of Weeks (Exodus 34:22, Deuteronomy 16:10), The Festival of Reaping (Exodus 23:16) and The Day of First Fruits (Numbers 28:26).

Shavuot and Passover indeed share many customs. For example, matza, unleavened bread made out of the first crop of barley, plays a major part in Passover, and leavened bread made out of the first crop of wheat, “wave loaves,” are a major part of Shavuot. Two of these specially prepared loaves – “they shall be of fine flour; they shall be baked with leaven; they are the first fruits unto the Lord” (Leviticus 23:17) – would be brought to the Jerusalem Temple by each Israelite farmer. And the farmers would present the loaves to the priests while chanting a Hebrew text reaffirming the fealty to God and the common history of the tribes (i.e. the Exodus and conquest of the land promised by God), who in turn offered them to God.

This would have been a complicated, bloody, and expensive ceremony. The Bible explains that the loaves were “waved before The Lord” together with wine and a complicated array of animal sacrifices, much like those sacrificed on Passover - seven lambs, two rams and two goats.

But this form of the holiday could not last, and like so much of the Jewish religion it had to be adapted to the new realities that faced the Jewish people after the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 CE. With no temple to make a pilgrimage to, and no place in which to offer sacrifices to God, Judaism was being reshaped under the guidance of the rabbis.

It was the rabbis of the first decades after the destruction of the Temple who changed the significance of Shavuot and proclaimed that Atzeret, as they called it, was the celebration of the giving of the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai.

“All agree in respect to Atzeret that it is required because on that day the Torah was given,” Rabbi Eliezer ben Hurcanus is quoted in the Talmud as saying during the early second century CE (Pesachim 68b). Eliezer based this assertion of an ancient tradition that placed the giving of the Torah in the month of Sivan, a tradition that appears in the apocryphal 2nd century BCE Book of Jubilees, and that is based on a passage in the Book of Exodus that reads: “In the third month, when the children of Israel were gone forth out of the land of Egypt, the same day came they into the wilderness of Sinai” (19:1).

From the 2nd century on, Shavuot began to focus on the Torah. The Torah portions read on the holiday revolve around the theophany, the physical manifestation of God, atop Mount Sinai, namely the receiving of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 19-20).

Aside from these readings, few traditions were assigned to Shavuot during late antiquity (after 70 CE) and the early Middle Ages. This began to change during the Middle Ages, however. This is when traditions such as the act of decorating synagogues with greenery first became associated with Shavuot. This particular custom is said to have its roots in a midrash about the giving of the Torah according to which before the Torah was given on Mount Sinai the entire mountain blossomed.

Other traditions that took shape during the Middle Ages included the tradition of inducting young Jewish boys to Hebrew school on Shavuot, so that they could begin receiving the Torah on the anniversary of the giving of the Torah. It is likely that this is how dairy became associated with Shavuot: When families celebrated their boys’ induction into Hebrew school, Jewish mothers most likely served dairy rather than meat, since it is less expensive.

But as time went by, ex post facto explanations of why dairy food was eaten on Shavuot began to arise. One of these explanations was that when the Torah was given to the Jews in the desert, they couldn’t prepare a meat meal according to the new commandments right away, so a dairy meal was made instead. Another explanation is based on one reading of the erotic Song of Songs verse: “Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb: honey and milk are under thy tongue.” According to this particular reading of the verse, it is not the lips of a lover but rather the Torah itself that is likened to honey and milk. If that is true, what better way, the explanations goes, to celebrate the receiving of the Torah than by eating cheese blintzes.

An even later tradition to become associated with Shavuot is that of all-night Torah study sessions. The tradition started in the 16th century by Rabbi Joseph Caro. Later, under the influence of the Kabbalah revolution of the Ari, these were dubbed “Tikkun Leil Shavuot,” which is what they are called to this very day.

A surprising twist on the story of Shavuot came in the 20th century, when Jews, mostly from Eastern Europe, started to settle Israel and establish agricultural communities. Suddenly, Jews were once again tilling the land and reaping wheat in the summer. In the Kibbutz Movement, Shavuot was resurrected as an agricultural holiday and adapted to these Jews’ socialist ideology. The agricultural produce was presented - not to God or priest but to the community itself - in jubilant processions featuring singing and dancing. This secular, agricultural take on Shavuot spread across Israel, even to the cities, but as time went by and agriculture played a smaller part in Israeli life, the celebrations became more modest. Today celebrations of this kind are less common and largely used as a photo-op for dressing children in white clothes and putting wreathes of flowers on their heads, much like the old European May Day festivals.

While religious Jews still celebrate Shavuot as the holiday of the receiving of the Torah, among secular Israeli Jews little is left of Shavuot. For most, the only tradition to survive to this day is the coincidental connection with dairy products – for many, if you do anything to celebrate the holiday, you probably eat some cheesecake.

14. The mystery of why Jews fast on Tisha B'Av

The Prophet Zechariah, for one, seems to think we should be celebrating the construction of the Second Temple, not mourning the loss of the first. But that was then.

Reading psalms on Tisha B'Av at an immigrant absorption center in Israel (July 2013). Photo by Eliahu Hershkovitz

Tisha B’Av is a Jewish day of mourning. However, what exactly we are mourning for, and why we're doing so on this date, the ninth day of the Jewish month of Av, is somewhat mysterious.

The general consensus these days is that we're mourning for the destruction of both the first and second Temples, as well as a host of other travails that befell the Jewish people over the ages. But how that came to focus on this day is unknown.

What's sure is that sometime in the summer of 587 BCE, Babylonian forces besieged Jerusalem. They eventually breached the great stone walls protecting the city, plundered the First Temple, and set it ablaze. The Jews were taken into captivity in Babylon where famously “we wept, when we remembered Zion” (Psalm 137:1).

During the 50 years the Jews stayed before being allowed to return to Jerusalem by King Cyrus of Persia in 538 BCE, four fast days were established in memory of the First Temple’s destruction. One was in the month of Av. Which day in Av, we don't know.

It seems that unusually, these fast days were established from the “bottom up" - meaning, they began among the people, instead of being handed down from on high by religious authorities. Support for that thesis appears in the Book of Esther. When talking about the grassroots origin of Purim, the author says exactly that about the fast days: “…as they had decreed for themselves and for their seed, the matters of the fastings and their cry” (Esther 9:31).

Perhaps that non-centralization of the fasts is why, after the Jews returned to Jerusalem and rebuilt the Temple, they were at odds as to whether or not to continue mourning rites, with their independence regained and the Temple rebuilt.

Should I weep or be gladdened?

The earliest reference to these four days of fasting is found in the Book of Zechariah, written during these first years of return to Israel. Chapters 7 and 8 are essentially the prophet's answer to the Jew’s question: “Should I weep in the fifth month [Av]?” (Zechariah 7:3)

The closest thing Zechariah gives to an answer - apparently, "No, we should celebrate" – is this: “The fast of the fourth month, and the fast of the fifth, and the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the tenth, shall be to the house of Judah joy and gladness, and cheerful feasts” (Zechariah 8:19).

At this point, it bears mention that the fast day in Av may not have been the 9th. The above quote is the only one we have on the subject and Zechariah only gives the month, not the date.

How people marked the destruction of the First Temple (or its rebuilding) in Av during the time of the Second Temple is not clear. Some evidence indicates they fasted; other evidence indicates precisely the opposite – that they celebrated its rebuilding.

Evidence for mourning appears in Mishnah Rosh HaShanah 1:3, which tells that at the start of the month of Av, messengers would be dispatched from the Temple to inform the Jewish communities when the mourning should commence.

On the other hand, another account (Mishnah Ta’anit 4:5) that during the Second Temple period, the 9th of Av marked a sort of ancient Arbor Day, an agricultural holiday celebrating trees.

The bottom line is that we don't know if the Second Temple Jews celebrated a feast on the 9th of Av and fasted on a completely different day in Av. Possibly Zechariah was bemoaning the insistence on mourning a temple that had already been rebuilt, and wanted Jews to stop doing that right away.

In any case, observant Jews today think Zechariah was referring to the End of Days, which is when the fast days should turn into festive days.

When the Temple was destroyed

As we said, another issue shrouded in mystery is when exactly these four fast days marking the destruction of the First Temple took place.

Today we mark the fast day on the 9th of Av, but that may be because we don't know on what date the Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed. Biblical accounts of the destruction contradict one another. The Book of Kings says it happened on the “seventh day of the month” (2 Kings 25:8), while the Book of Jeremiah has it “in the tenth day of the month” (Jeremiah 52:12).

The earliest accounts dating the day of mourning for the First Temple to the ninth of Av are after the destruction of the Second Temple. We could surmise that the ninth was chosen because that was the date that the Second Temple was destroyed by Titus in 70 CE. But it seems, that was not so. The only contemporaneous account dating the destruction of the Second Temple is that of the Jewish historian Josephus, who says in “The Wars of the Jews" that it happened on the 10th of Av.

This dating problem did not elude the rabbis of the Mishnah: "The law would have it that we would mourn on the 10th, the day the house of our god was burned, but why on the ninth?" They then answer their own question: “On the seventh they entered it, on the eighth they circled it, on the ninth they lit the light and on the tenth it burned."

Rabbi Jochanan remained unconvinced. "Had I lived in that generation [which decided on the date] I wouldn't have set it to the tenth." (Ta'anit 4:9)

False messiah fans the fire

Several generations later, during the period of the Babylonian Talmud, the date of Tisha B'Av was imbued with more disasters, to give it even more gravity. This was apparently due to some laxity in execution during later generations, as attested by an account that Yehuda HaNasi sought to abolishing the fast (Megillah 5b): "On the ninth of Av our ancestors were sentenced to not enter the land [punishment for the doubt of the 12 Spies], and the temple was destroyed for the first and second time, and Beitar was captured [thus ending the Bar Kokhba Revolt in 135 CE] and the city [of Jerusalem] was destroyed."

It is in the Talmud that many of the traditions associated with Tisha B’Av to this day were set. Reading the Book of Lamentations, sprinkling ashes on the food you eat before the fast begins, sitting on low stools, eschewing leather shoes, and so on. During post-Talmudic times these mourning rites became more and more vigorously observed and new traditions were added, including draping the Torah scroll in black and lighting the synagogue dimly on that day, as well as the chastisement of the congregation by an elder.

Come the 17th century, the kabbalist Sabbatai Zevi announced that he was the Messiah and gained a huge following by Jews around the world. Among other things, he announced that Tisha B’Av would become a day of celebration as foreseen by Zechariah. When Jews became disillusioned with Sabbatai Zevi after his forced conversion to Islam in 1666, Tisha B’Av was taken up anew with new vigor, with extreme public mourning rites being viewed as a badge of orthodox piety.

During the reform movement in the 19th century, some groups (mostly in Germany) favored reinterpreting Tisha B’Av as a day of celebration - as it was the Temple's destruction that turned the Jews into a people of priests destined to minister to the people of the world. Over time, this set of traditions was abandoned.

The State of Israel marks Tisha B’Av eve by closing businesses. Programming on television and radio turns somber. But in contrast to Yom Kippur, most Israeli Jews do not observe the fast.

15. Tu B'av: The Jewish Valentine's Day that came from prehistory

Dying for the Golden Calf? Celebrating tribal intermarriage? Or, simply, marking the summer equinox? Whatever its origin, latter-day Zionists liked this holiday.

"...and catch you every man his wife of the daughters of Shiloh, and go to the land of Benjamin." John Everett Millais, 1847. Photo by Wikimedia Commons

On the 15th of the summer month of Av, under a full moon, young Jewish men and women dressed in white would go out and dance in the vineyards of ancient Judea.

That is practically all we know about this most ancient of holidays.

We know it because of a single passage in the Mishnah, quoting Simeon ben Gamliel: “No days were as good for Israel as the 15th of Av and the Day of Atonement, on which the sons of Jerusalem would go out in borrowed white clothes...and the girls of Jerusalem would go out and dance in the vineyards” (Ta’anit 10).

The question is why. There are a few clues.

There's something about marriage

What was this dancing about? The sages of the Talmud were evidently somewhat puzzled by this, since the Talmud gives us six different answers.

According to Rabbi Judah bar Ilai, Samuel of Nehardea said that the holiday was an annual celebration of the day the prohibition was lifted on intermarriage among the 12 tribes, which is described in the story of the Daughters of Zelophehad, Numbers 36. Intermarriage among the ancient Israelite tribes was forbidden: "This is the thing which the LORD doth command concerning the daughters of Zelophehad…only to the family of the tribe of their father shall they marry: So shall not the inheritance of the children of Israel remove from tribe to tribe."

Rabbah bar Hana got more specific. He said that Rabbi Johanan bar Nappaha said the 15th of Av marks the end of a prohibition to marrying the daughters of the tribe of Benjamin, as described in the Book of Judges, no doubt due to the passage in that story that reads: “And see, and, behold, if the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in dances, then come ye out of the vineyards, and catch you every man his wife of the daughters of Shiloh, and go to the land of Benjamin.” (21:21)

Forgiven for the Golden Calf

Then there's the theory that Tu B’Av marks the day on which the generation sentenced to die in the desert for the sin of the Golden Calf stopped dying. This view was propounded by Rabbi Dimi bar Yossef, based on Rabbi Nachman.

According to a midrash found in the Jerusalem Talmud (Ta’anit 4) and other rabbinic texts people would die by the thousands on each Tisha B’Av, the 9th of the month. This created a logistical nightmare. To cope with burying the huge numbers of dead, Moses decreed that every person would dig his own grave, and sleep in it on the night of Tisha B’Av. The next day, survivors would just have to cover those that had died during the night.

According to this midrash, when on a certain Tisha B'Av no one died and the punishment seemed to have ended, Moses kept the people sleeping in their graves for another six days - until Tu B’Av, when the full moon indicated to the people that they hadn't miscounted the days and that the punishment was truly over.

Pilgrimages and slaughter

A fourth theory was propounded by a Talmudist called Ulla, who said that Tu B’Av was an anniversary of a decision by King Hoshea, the last Israelite king, voiding the decree of King Jeroboam 50 years earlier that banned pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem.

The fifth idea – quite the anachronism - is from Rabbi Matana, who said that Tu B’Av marks the day the Romans allowed the Jews to bury the thousands of people slaughtered in Beitar at the end of the Bar Kokhba Revolt. According to tradition, the city was taken by Roman soldiers on Tisha B’Av 135 CE, and as punishment for the Jews' insubordination, they wouldn’t let the Jews bury the dead for six days. God is said to have miraculously preserved the bodies from rotting during that time.

The last answer given by the Talmud, and most likely of the lot, is that of Rabbi Jacob Bar Acha. He postulates that Tu B’Av marks the Summer Equinox, the point of which the days start getting shorter and the dry season nears its end. According to Bar Acha, Rabbi Yissa said that Tu B’Av was the last day to chop down firewood for the Temple. This tradition – of celebrating the end of the wood-cutting season with song and dance - was still being observed by Syrian peasants in some towns in Syria in the 20th century.

Sun, worship and wine

If this is in fact the case, it seems that Tu B’Av predates Judaism itself, preserving an ancient form of sun worship, possibly coupled with an agricultural holiday celebrating the grape harvest that coincides with the Summer Equinox. We have no direct evidence for this ancient celebration.

Over the generations, Tu B’Av was a minor Jewish holiday. The only tradition that was preserved over the ages was omitting "Tachanun" - a somber part of the daily prayers omitted on other holiday and joyous days.

But come the 19th century, and especially in the 20th century, certain Zionist writers yearned for the rebirth of ancient Jewish and Canaanite traditions and holidays in the reborn Jewish State.

Tu B’Av, which at least in the Mishnah appears to be a celebration of youth, romance and dancing, seemed like a perfect candidate for revival.

The first Hebrew novelist, Prussian-born Abraham Mapu, wrote in his novel “Ayit Tzavua” (which has been translated as "Hypocrite Eagle") about celebrating Tu B’Av on the coast of the Sea of Galilee. The poet Y. L. Gordon wrote a poem describing the celebration of Tu B’Av in the vineyards of Ein Gedi. The author A. L. Levinsky wrote, in a futuristic story taking place in Israel in the year 2040, about celebrations of Tu B’Av, and that's just a few examples.

The Jews settling in Palestine marked the day spasmodically. On Tu B’Av 1925, an annual celebration of the youth in the Jezreel Valley kibbutzim was established, in the spirit of ancient times. But the concept fizzled very quickly. During the 1920s and 30s, parties took place on Tu B’Av in Tel Aviv, with the celebrants wearing white. The holiday didn’t gain traction. There were sporadic parties and events on Tu B’Av during the first four decades of the State of Israel, but they were rare.

Then come the 1990s and mad marketing: retailers, party promoters, restaurateurs, flower growers and chocolate manufacturers saw the light, and started promoting the “Jewish Valentine's Day.” Their efforts have had only moderate success: the “real” Valentine's Day is still far more popular. That said, the holiday seems to get more popular by the year, and why not. There's nothing wrong with another day to celebrate love.