The Judith-“Milchig” Chanukah Connection
by. Pearl Herzog
When Chanukah arrives, many Jewish tables will tastily testify to the custom of eating dairy products over the course of those special eight days. It is a custom cited by the Rama, Rabbi Moshe Isserles, who states in his glosses to the Shulchan Aruch (1) : “There are authorities (Kol Bo and the RaN) who say that one should eat cheese on Chanukah, because the miracle was performed through milk that Yehudis fed the enemy.” The Chofetz Chaim adds in his Mishna Berurah (2) on the words “that Yehudis fed”: “She was the daughter of Yochanan, the Kohen Gadol. There was a decree that every betrothed bride should submit to the dignitary first before the consummation of her marriage. She fed cheese to the leader of the oppressors in order to intoxicate him and cut off his head; and they all fled.”
According to tradition, Yehudis was a heroine of Chanukah who assassinated a general, Holofernes, by feeding him milk to put him to sleep. She then grabbed his sword, beheaded him and frightened the Assyrian troops away when they discovered they were leaderless.
Who was this Yehudis and what is the source of this account?
The Apocrypha (3), [or Sforim Chizoniyim, as they are referred to in Hebrew] are books that were not incorporated into the Tanach. One of the books of the Apocrypha contains the aforementioned story, and is in fact called the Book of Judith. Interestingly enough, however, instead of the story taking place during the time of Chanukah, which revolves around the Greco-Syrians (4), the apocryphal Book of Judith relates a story that took place in the twelfth year of the reign of Nevuchadnezzar, who, the document explains, ruled over the Assyrians in the great city of Ninveh.
But Nevuchadnezzar ruled the Babylonians, not the Assyrians.
Who was Yehudis in reality? Why was the Book of Judith not included in the seforim of Tanach? Why is Yehudis associated with Nevuchadnezzar? And finally, what role does her story play in the festival of Chanukah?
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The Torah as we know it has been unchanged for thousands of years. Our halachos regarding the writing of a Sefer Torah are so precise that we actually consider an entire Sefer Torah invalid and forbidden for use if even one letter in the entire scroll becomes distorted. Only after the error is corrected by a professional Torah-observant scribe can the Sefer Torah be considered valid.
As a result of our strict adherence to the laws of safrus with regard to our seforim kedoshim, we can be certain that the Torah that we read today is virtually identical to the ones read by our ancestors many, many centuries ago.
The discovery of scrolls in caves near the Dead Sea in Eretz Yisroel in 1947, which included all 66 chapters of Yishayahu, dating back over 2,000 years, has astonished scholars. They were not only amazed by the very existence of the Yishayahu scrolls but by the fact that the Yishayahu Dead Sea Scrolls were virtually identical to the text of Yishayahu that we possess today; the verses have not been distorted by the passage of time. Similarly, we can be sure that the text of the rest of our Torah has also not fallen victim to time.
Professor Lawrence Schiffman, an Orthodox Jew, is Chair of New York University’s Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and has authored many books relating to the Dead Sea Scrolls, including The Halakhah at Qumran. (5) (Qumran is the settlement closest to where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered.)
In another of his books published by Ktav Publishing House, (6) Professor Schiffman discusses the canonization of the Torah. He writes that a unified canonized Torah was available to Ezra the Sofer in about 440 B.C.E. In other words, the seforim that were considered Divinely inspired – meaning the authors had Ruach Hakodesh – are the ones that were incorporated into the Jewish canon.
First, the Chamisha Chumshei Torah text was established. Much later the ‘Neviim’ were added to what was considered to be “Holy Writ.” Finally, the Kesuvim, Writings, were incorporated into the canon, resulting in what we today call the Tanach.
During the second century of the Common Era, the Jewish rabbinic leadership discussed which seforim were to constitute the Tanach. Some, the Talmud informs us, were against including Shir Hashirim, but Rabbi Akiva insisted the Sefer be included. (7) In fact, he asserted that Shir Hashirim was considered Kodosh Kedoshim, the “holiest of the holies.”
The author of the Book of Judith is unknown to us. Some believe Elyakim, the Kohen Gadol who appears in the book, was actually the writer. Probably because it was never considered divinely inspired and hence part of the Tanach, the Hebrew original eventually disappeared. We are aware of its original existence only because of the translations of it that exist. A Greek version of the book, which has been included in the Christian Bible, seems an obvious translation from the Hebrew, as many of its idioms are particular to Hebrew.(8)
According to the story related in the scroll, Holofernes, an Assyrian general, surrounded a village called Bethulia as part of his campaign to conquer Judea. After intense fighting, the water supply of the Jews is cut off and the situation becomes desperate. Yehudis, a pious widow, tells the city’s leaders that she has a plan to save the city. She approaches the enemy camp and pretends to surrender. Holofernes is smitten by her beauty and invites him to his tent, where she plies him with wine. When he falls into a drunken sleep, Yehudis beheads him and escapes from the camp, taking the severed head along with her.
When Holofernes’ soldiers find his corpse, they are overcome with fear; the Jews, on the other hand, are emboldened by the assassination and launch a successful counterattack. The town is saved, and the Assyrians are defeated.
According to the chronology of the Book of Judith, in the 12th year of his reign, Nevuchnezzar, king of the Assyrians, who ruled in Ninveh, conquers King Arphachad and undertakes military campaigns against Egypt, Judea,Media and Ectabana with the aid of his general Holofernes.
Nebuchadnezzar was king of Babylon, but he was never called “king of Assyria,” nor did he have his capital at the Assyrian capital Nineveh, which was destroyed in 612 B.C.E. by his father, Nabopolassar. Nevuchnezzar conquered Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E., several hundred years before the story of Chanukah took place. Any participation by the historical Nebuchadnezzar in the story of Yehudis is a chronological impossibility.
For this reason, many scholars consider the Apocryphal Book of Judith a historical novel.
In his Hebrew book, Binu Shnos Dor VaDor, Rabbi Nathan D. Rabinowich devotes a chapter (9) to the story of Yehudis and its association with Chanukah. He writes that those Rishonim who refer to the story of Yehudis and its connection to the Chanukah miracle relied on sources that they had available to them, but because of our sins these have disappeared from us. He claims that one source the Rishonim had access to was the original Book of Judith, about which there is no question, it was originally written in Loshon Hakodesh.
In addition to the chronological impossibility of the apocryphal Book of Judith, Rabbi Rabinowich raises two more issues that would indicate the apocryphal book of Judith as it exists today cannot be the correct version associated with the Chanukah story.
According to the Book of Judith, Judith was the wife of Menasseh and the daughter of Merari who descended from the tribe of Shimon; the Rishonim (10) identify Judith as the daughter of Yochanan Kohen Gadol. The second issue Rabinowich raises is, there is no mention of milk or cheese in the apocryphal book of Judith, only wine.
This raises the questions: If we don’t use the apocryphal Book of Judith as a source, then from where do we derive our custom of eating cheese and dairy products on Chanukah? And why do we attribute the story of Judith to Chanukah?
We cannot find any midrash that mentions the story of Yehudis. Both Josephus and the Book of the Maccabees, which relate the story of Chanukah, make no mention of the story of Yehudis, although they do refer to the account of Chanah and her seven sons.
And in the Al Hanissim prayer that we recite on Chanukah, there is, likewise, no mention of the story of Yehudis.
It seems, concludes Rabbi Rabinowich, (11) that the midrash the Ran cites about the association of Yehudis and cheese to Chanukah is missing from us.
Benchers distributed at weddings during the Chanukah season sometimes contain “Maaseh Yehudis,” a Modern Hebrew version of the Apocryphal Book of Judith, in which Holofernes is called a king of Greece, not Assyria. Interestingly enough, although the widow is called the daughter of Be’eri in “Maaseh Yehudis,” as she is in the apocryphal Book of Judith, the publisher of the benchers did include in parenthesis the fact that there are discrepancies regarding the identity of Yehudis as being the daughter of Yochanan Kohen Gadol.
And so, on Chanukah, when you partake of dairy delicacies in the name of Chanukah’s heroine, be aware that although the minhag is clearly a minhag Yisrael, its source is hardly clear-cut.(12)
Notes
1)Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 670:2
2)Ibid.In The Customs Associated with Joy on Chanukah and Their More Obscure Sources Seforim.traditiononline.org/index.cfm/Chanukah Rabbi Eliezer Brodt who lives in Yerushalayim states “R. Avrohom Saba (1440-1508) in his work on Megilas Esther, Eshkol Hakofer, (p. 40) writes
כמו שאמרו בירושלמי על בתו של ר’ יוחנן שהי’ בימי היונים וגזרו על כל בתולה שתבעל להגמון תחלה… ויהי כאשר נתפסה בתו של ר’ יוחנן להבעל להגמון אמרה לו שקודם שישכב עמה היא רוצית שיאכלו וישתו ביחד והאכילתו תבשיל של גבינה… ונרדם והוציאה סכין… ונעשה נס לישראל… ולכן תקנו לאכול תבשיל גבינה בחנוכה זכר לאותו נס.Rabbi Brodt elaborates: The Chanukas haBayis also writes to eat Milchigs (p. 136). Chaim Chemerinsky [early 1900’s] also writes that in his home they specifically ate dairy products during their seudah on Chanukah (Eiyuriti Motele p. 181).”
3) Apocrypha (ἀπόκρυφα) in Greek means those having been hidden. Greek infinitive (ἀποκρύπτειν) Apokruptein
4)Although we refer to the enemy in Hebrew “Yevanim” (Greeks), they were called Greco-Syrians to differentiate them from the Greco-Egyptians, Thracians and Macedonians. After the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C.E. his generals divided his empire into four kingdoms. Judea became part of Greco-Egypt.
5) part of a series (volume 16) of Studies in Judaism in Late Antiquity, Edited by Jacob Neusner, Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1975.
6) From Text to Tradition: A History of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism, Hoboken, N.J. (Ktav) 1989
7) Mishna Yadayim 3:5
8)The frequent use of the Greek word “sfodra” for the Hebrew Me’od and even its repetition,epi polu sfodra for “me’od, me’od.
“In the days” of (Biyemei in Hebrew) which is written in Greek en tais Hemerais.
“Let not thy eye spare” etc. (Judith 2:11; compare with Sefer Yechezkel Ezekiel 5:11, etc. Velo Tachos Eini); “as I live” (in an oath, Judith 2:12);
G-d of heaven” Elokei Hashamayim,(Judith 5:8; 11:17);
Pnei Elokim, “the priests who serve in Jerusalem before the face of our G-d” (Judith 11:13).
There are cases also of mistakes in the Greek text due to wrong translation from the Hebrew, as in Judith 1:8 (where for “nations” read “cities” or “mountains”); Judith 2:2 (where for “concluded,” Hebrew wa-yekhal, read “revealed,” wa-ye-ghal); Judith 3:1,9,10. See Book of Judith, International Standard Bible Encyclopedia Online.
9) Feldheim Press, Jerusalem, 1985 pp.80-105
10) Ibid. page 89
11) Rabinowich cites the Ramban in Devorim 24:14 to demonstrate that Nahmanides had access to a copy of the Syriac translation of the Book of Judith. [The Ramban actually called the scroll Shoshan and not Judith because the two wereattached to each other and the first of the combined two was Shoshan(ah)- Book of Suzannah, another apocryphal book.] The Ramban only quotes this book, not to associate it with Chanukah but to explain the translation of the word “Tisamer”.
12) Rabbi Eliezer Brodt does not consider it clear that one can use the the Book of Judith as a source because, he states, many have written that the event in question did not even happen during Chanukah. The Meor Eynaim (end of ch 51), R. Yehudah Aryeh Modena (Shulchan Orach, p. 83), R. Yakov Emden (Meor Uketziah beginning of Hilchos Chanukah) and the Oruch Hashulchan (siman 670, 8) all write that the event did not take place on Chanukah.
Dr. Pearl Herzog teaches Jewish History at Kean University. She can be reached at Pherzog769@aol.com.
Judith with the head of Holofernes by Cristofano Allori