The Image of the Black in Jewish Culture: A History of the Other (RoutledgeCurzon Jewish Philosophy Series)

THE IMAGE OF THE BLACK IN JEWISH CULTURE

The image of the black as ‘other’ in Jewish culture has its origins in biblical literature. This book traces how this image developed from its first formulations through to the age of discovery in early modern times, and is the first comprehensive study of this issue. It is based upon a thorough investigation of the relevant sources in biblical and rabbinical literature, and the various literary genres which evolved during the Middle Ages, such as biblical exegesis, travel literature, literature and poetry, philosophy, theology and halakah. Most of these sources have never before been studied in this context. The evolving image of the black in the history of Jewish culture is being traced here in the conceptual framework of recent postmodern theories of the ‘other’. The study focuses on the mechanisms by which an ethno-religious minority group, considered by the dominant majority to be the inferior ‘other’, identifies its own inferior other. Until recently most scholarly attention has been devoted to the attitudes towards the Jews as ‘other’; this is the first comprehensive discussion of the attitudes of the Jews to their own ‘others’. Abraham Melamed is Professor in the Department of Jewish History and Thought at the University of Haifa, Israel. His field of expertise is medieval and early modern Jewish philosophy, especially political thought and intellectual history. In recent years, he has been working on issues of gender and the attitudes towards the ‘other’ in the history of Jewish culture. He has published over forty scholarly papers on various topics in these fields, and has lectured widely both in Israel and abroad.

THE IMAGE OF THE BLACK IN JEWISH CULTURE A history of the other

Abraham Melamed Translated by Betty Sigler Rozen

TO OSHRA, NOA, YONATAN AND TAMAR, WHO WERE EDUCATED TO RESPECT ALL HUMAN BEINGS

First published 2003 by RoutledgeCurzon 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by RoutledgeCurzon 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Hebrew edition published by the University of Haifa Press, 2002 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. RoutledgeCurzon is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group © 2003 Abraham Melamed English translation © 2003 Betty Sigler Rozen All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Melamed, Abraham The image of the Black in Jewish culture: a history of the other / Abraham Melamed. (RoutledgeCurzon Jewish philosophy series) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Jewish literature–History and criticism. 2. Blacks in literature. 3. Blacks–Public opinion–History–To 1500. 4. Jews–Attitudes–History–To 1500. 5. Blacks– Relations with Jews–History–To 1500. I. Title II. Series. PN842 .M45 2002 809'.88924–dc21

2002073378 ISBN 0-203-22099-4 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-27570-5 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0–7007–1587–8 (Print Edition)

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements Note on the translated quotations

vii viii

Introduction

1

1 Dream and interpretation: ‘Two blacks, hideous to see’

9

2 Sources of the symbol: ‘I am black but comely’

15

3 In the Bible: ‘The children of Cush’

53

4 In the literature of the Sages: ‘Ugly and black’

60

5 In the cultural world of Islam: ‘Speech in its least developed form’

122

6 In the Latin–Christian cultural world: ‘Beasts in all their ways’

149

7 In the wake of exploration: ‘Naked and awash in lust’

196

Afterword

224

Notes Bibliography Index of sources Subject index

226 273 285 289

v

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In the course of my research and writing, I received the help of colleagues and friends who shed new light on some aspects of the work. Without their help this book would have been full of errors and difficulties: their assistance is gratefully acknowledged in the relevant notes. Some of my findings were presented at the annual convention of the Israel Historical Society, devoted to relationships with the other (Jerusalem, summer 1997), and at the European Society for Jewish Studies (Toledo, Spain, summer 1998). My thanks to the participants for their comments. There are two colleagues deserving of special thanks. One is Professor Ya’akov Shavit of the Jewish History Department of Tel Aviv University, who studies similar issues in the modern era. He read the entire early draft of the book carefully and made useful comments that improved it. Dr Shulamit Waller who, like myself, is a member of the Jewish History Department at Haifa University, went over the long chapter on the literature of the Sages several times, helped me find references in this great body of work, and with her professional understanding made it possible to clear the chapter of numerous difficulties in fields that were for me untravelled territory at the beginning of the research. Conclusions drawn from the research are, of course, mine alone. Many thanks to Betty Sigler Rozen, for her tasteful translation of the book, and to Oliver Leaman and Jonathan Price who were very helpful in the production of this book. I also want to thank the Research Authority of Oranim College for their financial assistance in preparing the translation. Last but certainly not least are the students in my MA seminar, ‘Relationships to the other in Jewish cultural history: women and blacks’, in our department at Haifa University in 1998. In this seminar, problems and texts cited in this book were studied and discussed. The stimulating discussions and original insights that the students provided helped clarify and focus my own understanding of many matters that the book deals with. I thank them all.

vii

NOTE ON THE TRANSLATED QUOTATIONS

For quotations translated from Hebrew and other languages, I used standard English translations when available. Occasionally I made changes which are indicated in the notes. Texts which had not been translated were translated by Betty Sigler Rozen and edited by me. As for the translation of the Hebrew word cushi, some translators prefer to use ‘Kushite’, ‘Ethiopian’ or ‘Nubians’ even when the context does not necessarily specify a particular ethnic group and/or geographic region. Even in cases when this might have been the original biblical meaning (such as Jer. 13: 23, for instance), it is clear that subsequent Hebrew readers understood it to denote the human group we call today ‘blacks’: that is, people whose skin colour is considerably darker than the light-coloured Europeans, who originated from Africa. Although in biblical Hebrew the term cushi denotes those who come from the place called Cush, most probably somewhere in northern Africa, maybe Nubia, south of Egypt, subsequent Hebrew readers, at least from the Talmudic period, were barely conscious of regional and intra-ethnic differences among them, if at all. They called cushi whomever is called ‘black’ today. It seems to me that at least in some of these cases the translator avoided the general usage ‘black’ for political motives. For this reason, and for the purpose of consistency, whenever the Hebrew word cushi appears it is translated into the current usage of contemporary English, i.e. ‘black’, ‘black person’ or ‘black people’, depending on the context.

viii

INTRODUCTION

A few years ago, when on sabbatical at an American university, I was asked to teach a course on medieval Jewish thought. In such a course, two naturally central texts are The Kuzari of Judah Halevi and Maimonides’s Guide to the Perplexed. In pivotal chapters of the two works, which appear in all relevant anthologies and are taught both because of their content and for didactic reasons, the black appears as subhuman, devoid of intelligence, whose place is somewhere between man and the ape (the Philosopher’s Speech in The Kuzari 1: 1 and the Parable of the King’s Palace, Guide 3: 51). Since this is such a sensitive point at American universities in our era of political correctness, I consulted the head of the department who indeed advised me not to teach these particular texts, to avoid trouble. The concern was that the texts, seemingly so remote and so irrelevant to current experience, would broadcast a message of Judaism as ‘racist’, especially to non-Jewish students, the more so to the blacks among them, creating a most difficult situation that might be exploited in current political struggles. American Jewry is very sensitive to the issue in view of the tensions between their own and the black community in recent years. Jewish material from medieval times that even seems ‘racist’ could become explosive in the hands of anti-Semites like the black Muslims. Such elements have already made good use of the fact that among the slave traders who transported, bought and sold blacks in America in early modern times, there were Jews. They would naturally ignore the small part the Jews had in the trade, normative at that time, as they would, just as naturally, the major role played by black Africans.1 Jewish sensitivity on this score is so great that American Jewish scholars expend great efforts on apologetic explanations of Jewish texts that seem ‘racist’, in which the black is the ultimate gentile (the goy), bestial and inferior. Typical is the attitude of these scholars to Aggadic Midrashim on the punishment of Canaan, dealt with in Chapter 4. In the end I decided to teach the texts, since to omit them would have been to evade confrontation with a central aspect of the medieval and the premodern world in general. I explained the attitude towards blacks as an outstanding example of the accepted, clearly hierarchic, premodern world view, not 1

INTRODUCTION

specifically a Jewish view. A hierarchic view in which the black is at the foot of the human ladder, if the black appears at all, was accepted from the end of the Hellenistic–Roman era. It was perceived as ‘scientific fact’ by intellectuals of the era as it was in Muslim, Christian and Jewish culture alike, and Jewish scholars acquired it from Greek and Arabic scientific and philosophical literature. Such ideas were not Jewish in origin, and the Jews were not the only ones who made use of them. Perhaps because most students in the course were Jewish and in any case there were no blacks (Afro-Americans) among them, the texts in question, in the context I taught them, produced no problems, despite our earlier doubts and misgivings. The event itself, however, deserves attention. Indeed, over the years in my courses on medieval Jewish thought, where The Kuzari was naturally a central text, the question of Halevi’s ‘racism’ arose, whether concerning the description of the black in the Philosopher’s Speech, in the very first dialogue or in the hierarchy of Creation (1: 31–43). Here there is a full exposition of the idea that Jews are above other humans, just as humans are above the animals in that they alone have won ‘the Divine matter’: that is, the ability to attain direct contact with the divinity, seen as ‘genetic’ in modern terms. Similar questions arose in the description of the black in Maimonides’s parable of the King’s Palace (Guide 3: 51). The secular Jewish student in Israel has great difficulty accepting it. S/he sees it as a clear example of traditional rabbinical Judaism’s withdrawal into exclusiveness, an attitude containing clearly ‘racist’ elements, and an additional reason to reject the traditional sources of Jewish culture. It is most difficult to explain to the ordinary student that this is but an expression of one scholar’s view, and that it must be understood in the historical and cultural context in which he functioned. Not only is the appellation ‘racist’ totally irrelevant to premodern culture, but the very fact that any Jewish scholar or group of scholars held such views in the period under discussion proves only that fact. It proves nothing necessarily about the attitude of ‘Judaism’, supposing that anything defined and objective can be identified as ‘Judaism’. In any case, such positions were not Jewish nor held only by Jews, but were to some extent and in some form held by the majority culture in which, or on the fringes of which, Jewish scholars worked. As a minority group, they were influenced by the majority culture that surrounded them in this and many other matters. I have assumed, then, that the images of the black in Judah Halevi and Maimonides are the result of the Islamic culture in which they functioned, which itself was influenced by ‘scientific’ concepts drawn from the Greeks. As we shall show later, they were no doubt influenced by contact with black slavery, widespread in the Islamic world of their time. The search for the source of the common position of these two thinkers on this subject, despite their disagreement on many others, led me back in time to examine the history of this phenomenon in Jewish culture. Eventually I found, to my initial surprise, that along with the external influences, there was an internal and significant Jewish tradition identifying the black as inferior other. It took shape in the writ2

INTRODUCTION

ings of the Sages, particularly the Aggadic Midrashim, and had a profound effect on images of the black among medieval and early modern Jewish scholars. In this case as in many others, their views combined rabbinical tradition with the attitudes of late Hellenistic–Roman culture and of medieval Islam. The result of my accumulated findings is this book. A principal finding in this research is that like so many other components of Jewish rabbinical culture, the image of the black as inferior other took shape in the writings of the Sages. As we show later, such an image is almost entirely absent from the Bible. While undoubtedly there were late Hellenistic–Roman external influences, the image was an authentic product of rabbinical culture and as such it had far-reaching influence, notably on the image of the black as inferior and other, and on the image of skin colour in general in Jewish cultural history, down to our own day. Some of the texts discussed are ‘indigestible’ for the reader of today, who is supposed to have been brought up with a liberal, egalitarian, democratic world view, and a rationalist way of thinking. The difficult sense of these texts cannot be obliterated by saying they express only external influences. No doubt these views are an organic part of rabbinical culture, not merely an ‘ornament’ brought in from outside. On the other hand, though rabbinical culture created such ideas like this, it would still be a mistake to say that Judaism is in essence ‘racist’, just as numerous patriarchal, chauvinist and sometimes downright misogynist elements do not prove that these are part of the nature of Judaism. It simply proves that various Jewish scholars and sages in different periods held such ideas, not that ‘Judaism’ as such necessarily identifies with them. The sources from which they develop are the usually subconscious psychological needs, and the economic and social interests, of the male elite, which are then given theological justification, in this case Jewish. Christian and Muslim scholars provided justifications from their own theology. The very fact that the image of the black as inferior other, like that of the woman, does not belong exclusively to Jewish culture, shows this clearly. Jewish scholars were influenced in these matters by cultures in which, or beside which, they functioned, as they themselves influenced their cultural surroundings, influences in many cases being mutual. These cultures had ‘racist’, patriarchal and even misogynist ideas no less – if not more – than the texts of Jewish scholars. What led to the development of such ideas was not necessarily the Jewish identity of their authors, but rather their primary human and gender identity, which precedes Jewish identity. They were first of all humans and males, and only afterwards Jews. Their primary identity dictated their positions regarding the other, whether gentile, woman or black. Some of the Sages who created rabbinical culture expressed no specific attitudes regarding gentile, woman or black from any Jewish world view, but rather as a result of psychological needs and social and economic interests. Not their Judaism, but rather their gender identity, dictated their position on woman’s nature and social status. Not the Judaism of the scholars, but rather their own skin colour as compared with that 3

INTRODUCTION

of other ethnic groups, dictated their attitude as to the nature and appropriate status of the black in human society. It was nothing more than the power mechanism of the relatively light-skinned male. These psychological, social and economic needs received theological dress – Jewish, Christian or Muslim – that reinforced the mechanism. We shall show that just because Jewish and Muslim scholars had complexions somewhere between light and dark, not truly white, they found it more necessary to distinguish themselves from the blacks, defining them as totally other and excluding them entirely. We confine ourselves to the Jewish mutation of the general human need for identity, which makes people define and exclude the inferior other, the black in this case, as a means of selfidentification. To prove that such a ‘racist’ attitude regarding blacks, or a ‘chauvinistic’ attitude regarding women, is inherent in rabbinical culture, one would have to show that its source is there, it is present there and only or for the most part there, that the very existence of this culture depends on such ideas and it contains no ideas of any other type. None of these conditions exists in our case. All premodern cultures were ‘racist’ or ‘chauvinist’ to one extent or another and in one way or another. A hierarchic world view dominated all of them, and our modern culture is still tainted with their perceptions to a great extent. Jewish culture was no exception either for good or for ill. The ideas are present to a greater or lesser extent in the Hellenistic–Roman, Christian and Islamic cultures – those with which Judaism had the greatest contact. Jewish culture certainly does not depend on such ideas. It is both possible and highly desirable to weed them out, and the culture would remain ‘Jewish’ in quality not only from the secular modern point of view but also from that of rabbinical culture that embraces all the variants of orthodoxy. Indeed, this is feasible from the cultural and even the Halachic viewpoint, because the history of premodern Jewish culture discloses some typically egalitarian and pluralistic ideas, though they are far rarer, which should not surprise us and prove nothing. In view of the typically hierarchic, ethnocentric (‘racist’) and androcentric (‘chauvinist’) nature of all the relevant premodern cultures, the fact that other ideas emerged even here and there, from the literature of the Bible through that of the Sages and through medieval Jewish literature, makes it possible. That being so, we make a special effort to avoid apologetics in dealing with these texts. It is not right to ignore them because as modern Jews we find them hard to accept, nor to try to blur their significance and implications, which may cause us to shudder, through apologetics. What even important and influential scholars or groups of scholars may have said during some period or other about the nature of the woman, the black or the gentile, backing their ideas up with theology – Jewish theology in our case – says nothing about the nature of Judaism and certainly does not make it a hater of blacks – or of women. What it does do is to reveal the mentality of a particular group of people at a given time, showing its psychological needs and social and economic interests, as well as 4

INTRODUCTION

the theological system used to give them legitimacy. This teaches us something about the power systems we use to this day, often subconsciously, and how to contend with them. We are better than our forebears at least in having greater awareness of subconscious motivations on the beliefs and opinions we create and act upon. Perhaps because of these new understandings we can produce different and more egalitarian human relationships, to which we too can give Jewish legitimacy. There is no reason, then, that a twentieth- or twenty-first-century Jew need feel responsible for, or guilty about, what was said or written by Jews, however important they may have been, on the nature of women, gentiles or blacks. Hence s/he does not have to hide them or, alternatively, to clean them up. Heaven forbid that we should adopt ideas that raise hackles in the modern reader, and rightly so, as part of our own Jewish identity, or reject one’s own Jewish identity since such ideas are so prevalent in the normative texts. What Rabbi Huna said in the name of Rabbi Joseph, or Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba, or Judah Halevi or Maimonides, is their responsibility and only theirs. They should be studied in the cultural and historical context relevant to them, while we draw our own separate conclusions. Just as R. Huna and Maimonides were first of all human beings, then males, and only thirdly Jews, children of their times, and they could hold certain views of the nature of gentiles, blacks or women, so we, children of our times who live to a large extent in a different system of beliefs and opinions, are entitled to reach different conclusions. As they could give Jewish legitimacy to their views, so we can do the same for a different view of human relationships, one that sees them as horizontal rather than vertical, egalitarian rather than hierarchic and descriptive rather than judgemental. Here otherness is only that, and is not necessarily identified with superiority or inferiority vis-à-vis the defining I. Such a view of interpersonal relationships can be defined as no less and possibly even more Jewish than any view that debases and excludes the other. Such ideas are found in premodern Jewish culture, even in texts and in the writings of the Sages who in other contexts expressed ideas that were pure ‘racism’ and ‘chauvinism’. Does the Creation story in the Bible not tell us that man (every human being!) was created in the divine image? Why should one prefer the second, patriarchal version of the creation of Adam and Eve (Gen. 2: 7–25) to the first egalitarian version (Gen. 1: 26–31)? We find the same attitude in the literature of the Sages. Mishnah Sanhedrin 4: 45, found in both Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds, states that it is for good reason that all people are descendants of the first man, so as to avoid disputes as to who is better that his fellow and thus to maintain peace on earth. On this Maimonides comments in Mishneh Torah, Sanhedrin 12: ‘all human beings are fashioned after the pattern of the first man yet no two faces are exactly alike. Therefore, every man may well say, “for my sake the world was created”.’2 The problem is that Maimonides himself said quite different things elsewhere about blacks in particular and gentiles in general. 5

INTRODUCTION

It is quite another matter when rabbinical authorities of our own time still voice such ethnocentric and clearly racist views. Rabbi Kook, for example, continued to maintain that slavery is a natural phenomenon, and hence legal and justified. He argued that it is no coincidence that the children of Ham, i.e. the blacks according to the Midrashic tradition, make up the large majority of those who are slaves by nature: for in the race [of Canaan] the baser qualities grew great while spiritual qualities dwindled, and so it actually happened that most slaves have always been the children of Ham … and in the best interests of morality it is fitting that baser human beings should submit to the superior ones.3 Ultimately, in his opinion, the nations of the world should submit to the people of Israel voluntarily because of the latter’s moral superiority. Such a position quite clearly adheres to the normative Jewish tradition described later on. When such views are still expressed in our own time, they should not be treated in a ‘scientific’ theoretical way, but rather in a boldly negative, judgemental fashion. It would be anachronistic to judge Judah Halevi or Maimonides who in the twelfth century expressed ideas that today are defined as ‘racist’. As previously noted, their positions were accepted and normative in all relevant cultures of their own time. But it is no longer so of scholars having rabbinical authority of any type, who continue to voice such views today. This is racism for its own sake, without quotation marks, and deserves full condemnation and total rejection, in specific relation to the Jewish world view. Until recently, all discussions of relationships between Jews and their others focused on attitudes of ruling majorities to Jews, identified as inferior others. Only in the last generation have researchers begun to look at the obverse question: Jews’ relationships to their own others both within Judaism, e.g. women, children, the disabled, and what today are called ‘ethnic communities’, and outside the ethnic–religious group, especially blacks, Arabs and non-Jewish women. Against this background, my book deals with developments in the image of the black as ultimate other in the history of Jewish culture. Since such an image expresses a need of the culture that creates it, it can tell us much about that culture’s psychological needs and mentality. In other words, the image of the black as it developed in the history of Jewish culture tells us something of the Jew’s self-image and self-definition in relation to the person the Jew considers superior or inferior. In the case of the black, the image is merely the negative of the observer group’s self-image. The black is only one other vis-à-vis the observer, in this case the relatively light-skinned Jewish male. A central characteristic in the image of the other, whoever s/he may be – the black, the woman or the gentile – is always the same: bestial, animal-like and lustful; i.e. ‘natural’ in the most negative sense of the word. The Jewish male is described in the same way by those who see him as 6

INTRODUCTION

other. Many images used to describe the black in this culture are similar or even identical to those that describe women, and often used in relation to both women and blacks together. Hence this book will relate in different contexts to images of women as compared to those of skin colour, since one who demeans another because of skin colour will not hesitate to do so on the basis of gender. Following the same logic of designation, one marked as other in this culture will be marked first on the basis of gender: the woman as other and inferior to the man; and secondly on the basis of race: the black woman as different and inferior to its own women. Having long been concerned with the question of woman as other in medieval Jewish thought, I published several research papers on the subject. At a certain point I noticed strong parallels between the image of the woman, the gentile and the black, particularly in the sexual context. Since each is set apart in different contexts as other and inferior, similar characteristics will necessarily be attributed to them. The parallels led me to trace the process further in a deeper examination of the image of the black as it developed in Jewish cultural history, and my book is the result. This is the first full, detailed discussion of the subject. Up to now it has been treated only in restricted contexts, notably those relating to the Midrashim on the sin of Ham and the punishment of Canaan, and their influence on the monotheistic cultures of the Middle Ages and early modern times. Furthermore, many of these discussions suffer from an overdose of apologetics, which we strive to avoid here. As may already be inferred, my discussion is influenced by the theoretical literature and research known as postmodern, which has developed the system of insightful concepts most useful in studying the images of others as marked by a primary designator, their sources and their significance. With that, I am only partially and selectively influenced by postmodern ideas, do not accept all their basic assumptions, and reject much postmodern criticism of the basic assumptions of modernism. I tend towards an outlook that might be described as neo-modernism, i.e. modernism adjusted to the new insights and sensitivities that postmodernism has developed, particularly as regards relationship to others, whoever they may be, of a primary designator, and generalizing them as equal partners in the normative cultural system. At the same time, I continue to base myself significantly on the fundamental universal insights of modernism as expressed by the Enlightenment: I take issue with the way certain postmodern trends have undermined them with relativistic tendencies that I find problematic, both epistemologically and for ethical reasons.4 A word is in order about the term ‘racism’. As a complete and defined world view it emerged with the development of modern anthropology in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the application of Darwin’s theory to subdivisions of the human group. Ideas termed ‘racist’ today have existed in premodern cultures from ancient times. In all, including the Jewish culture, such tendencies can easily be identified, granting as they do natural superiority to a particular ethnic group like the Jews, Greeks or Arabs. Of course the 7

INTRODUCTION

accepted attitude of all premodern cultures about the natural inferiority of blacks is clearly ‘racist’ from our point of view. But until modern times this was not a defined ‘scientific’ outlook. Hence it would be anachronistic to call any premodern attitude or phenomenon ‘racist’, even if it would be perceived that way through modern eyes. Judah Halevi was no ‘racist’ in the derogatory sense of the term for the simple reason that racism as a characteristic world view did not exist in his time. Moreover, the hierarchic ethnic perception he presented was the normative view of at least the great majority of learned people. They did argue about precisely which ethnic factor made for superiority or inferiority, each group seeing itself as the chosen people. There was no argument at all, however, about the hierarchic structure of reality, an axiom that was the theological basis for their view of reality, with all its clear anthropological and political implications. Argument was confined to whose place is where in the hierarchic order of living creatures. The racist outlook is entirely a product of modern anthropology, a ‘scientific’ outlook sharply opposed to the perception of equality, another product of modern culture. The latter assumes the common ancestry and potential equality of all people, above and beyond the differences in complexion and physiognomy. At the beginning of the twentieth-first century, the confrontation has not waned, even though the egalitarian outlook would seem to have prevailed, in view of the outcome of the Second World War. In premodern cultures there was no significant argument between the two outlooks. As both racism and egalitarianism as comprehensive world views are modern, in this book ‘racism’ will always be in quotation marks where a more apt expression cannot be found. It will be used to describe attitudes that have a clearly ‘racist’ significance for the modern reader, since they assumed natural superiority of one ethnic group and natural inferiority of the other, principally blacks in our context. Not setting the word off in quotation marks in relation to premodern times would be anachronistic and so necessarily misleading. This book follows the development of the image of the black from the earliest written Jewish culture – the Bible – until the beginning of the modern period. The discussion ends with the implications of the great voyages of discovery, especially in Africa, and the reappearance of black slavery, as regards the image of the black as completely ‘other’ in the Jewish literature of the period. At this time we see the first black iconographic figure in Jewish culture, and a special discussion will be devoted to it. This book will not deal with the image of the black in modern Jewish culture. This is a weighty subject in itself, one already much discussed by scholars in that field, particularly in the context of Jews and blacks in the United States.5 Nonetheless, Chapter 2 presents possible explanations of how the image of the black as inferior other in general and particularly in Jewish culture has evolved, and relates to modern occurrences of this phenomenon. In any case, images of the black as absolute other, as they have developed in Jewish cultural history from the literature of the Sages, will profoundly influence the way blacks appear in modern Jewish culture. 8

1 DREAM AND INTERPRETATION ‘Two blacks, hideous to see’

Book of the Seeker (Sefer ha-Mevakesh), written by Rabbi Shem Tov ibn Falaquera in the mid thirteenth century, describes the dream of a rich man who saw the purpose of his existence in satisfying his material needs, blatantly ignoring the spiritual goal of human existence. This is what the rich man dreamt: and the man began to dream; he saw himself walking in a desolate wilderness, naked and barefoot, hungry and thirsty. And he was stricken with terror and fear; he moaned like a lyre. Darker than the night was his visage, his body defiled with filth and upon his shoulder lay a heavy, fatiguing burden. Then two Blacks (cushim), hideous to see, ran after him brandishing spears to run him through. Running desperately away from them, he reached a mountain whose crooked course was covered with snakes. Along the mountain ran a path so narrow that there was no room to turn either to right or to left (Nu. 22, 26). Exerting himself mightily, he ran, without stopping to rest, until he reached the peak of the mountain. Thence he fell into a death pit, seared by scorching blasts from an endless fire which was never extinguished. Thereupon the man trembled violently and fell from his bed to the ground, wailing loudly. At the sound of his cries, all his comrades and old friends rushed to his side, and beholding the contortion of his face and body, they asked him to tell which evil has befallen him, and how it had taken place. They trembled exceedingly as he related his dream, and when they arose in the morning, they assembled various interpreters of dreams, seeking some explanation. But, behold, none could interpret the dream satisfactorily.1 The nightmare kept recurring, no interpreter of dreams could expound it and the man became deeply depressed. That is, no one could interpret it until there appeared ‘a blameless man, upright and pure in deeds’2 and explained the dream. This prophetic dream is presented as a parable of Maimonides’s first type, in which every detail corresponds to one in the situation it illustrates: 9

D R E A M A N D I N T E R P R E TAT I O N

This is the meaning of the dream. The episode wherein you beheld yourself walking about in the wilderness signifies that your doom is sealed, and you will be buried in a desolate wilderness. Your naked and barefoot state shows that you have no good deeds to protect you; your intense hunger and thirst can be attributed to your strong appetite for the accumulation of wealth and delightful pleasures. The blackness of your countenance can be understood to mean that your evil deeds will darken your face as you die. The defilement of your body with filth stands for the punishment that will be meted out to you for your sins. Your heavy burden represents your tremendous load of sins and iniquities. Moreover, the two black men who sought to kill you stand for your wicked actions and wicked thoughts which lead you to destruction. The mountain from which you fell symbolized your fall from your lofty position and descent into the pit of destruction and your deliverance into the hands of Tophet, whose fire is never extinguished. The narrow path indicates that one can only attain the world to come after great toil and exertion. Only he whose thoughts are pure, who has freed himself of bodily desires, may tread this path.3 The man repented, mended his ways and his dream changed accordingly: Some few days later he had another dream. He beheld himself walking alone in a wilderness. Suddenly brooks and springs appeared, and gardens and orchards with all species and trees. Two men, bright as the sky above the firmament, their faces gleaming like the stars, walked before him to guide and inform him, one on his right hand and one on his left. Soon they led him to a place so completely bathed in light that it contained no darkness, not even a shadow. So glorious was the splendor and brilliance that the tongue cannot tell of it. … Then he asked the two who guided him, ‘What awesome place is this? Happy is the eye that beholds it.’4 The dreams represent opposing human situations. The bad dream depicts a state of material existence in which man longs for material pleasures, neglects his intellectual soul and is qualitatively no different from the beast. The good dream represents the heavenly, angelic situation in which man rises above material needs and attains perfect cognition. What interests us is the metaphoric system, relating to skin colour, with which the author represents the two opposite conditions of human existence. Our working assumption is that the conscious or subconscious use of certain metaphors represents a world view in which the author expresses a value system accepted in his time. Even if he was not always fully aware of their significance, one may assume that these metaphors expressed well the normative positions and mentality of the cultural surroundings in which the author who chose them 10

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created his work. This is especially true when the representations appear in a dream which, at least according to Freudian theory, expresses subconscious attitudes. Falaquera’s metaphors and their significance will be the point of departure in our investigation of the image of the black as presented in Jewish thought and in general contexts. Comparisons are made with attitudes of the cultures that impinged on Judaism in those times – Hellenistic, Muslim and Christian. The detailed referents that the author gives for the bad dream enable us to understand those of the good dream. One is the obverse of the other, though for the bad dream we have the full analogy and referents while the good dream refers only to its main components (Table 1.1). The main components that interest us are those that present skin colour as a metaphor, although as we shall see, other motifs relate to them. Two depictions of skin colour appear. One relates to that of the dreamer, whose skin became black because of his evil deeds. The other relates to his two black pursuers who represent evil deeds in general. The very fact that in both cases evil deeds are represented by the colour black speaks for itself. In the first case, blackness is Table 1.1 The bad dream Metaphor walking in a desolate wilderness naked and barefoot hungry and thirsty

the blackness of your countenance the defilement of your body the heavy burden the two black men (cushi’im)

the pursuers the mountain from which you fell the narrow path

The good dream Referent the grave

Metaphor springs, gardens and orchards

Referent Paradise

the two people bright as the sky above the firmament

the angels

the place completely bathed in light

the next world

bereft of good deeds perpetual desire for material satisfactions your evil deeds the punishment the burden of sins and transgressions his wicked actions and wicked thoughts

evils that lead to destruction fall from your lofty position into the pit of destruction you can attain the world to come only after great exertion

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temporary. The fair skin that was damaged can regain its lightness if its owner repents of his evil deeds and does good. The dreamer, shown as one walking in the desolate wilderness, provides an explanation of why his skin grew dark: if he abandons the state of desolation and returns to the settled land, his sunburnt skin will grow light again. Later we shall relate to the metaphorical significance of the geographical spaces in which the narratives of the good dream and the nightmare took place. Not by chance is the man whose fair skin grew dark described as not simply dirty, but defiled in the most bestial way: ‘Darker than night was his visage, his body defiled with filth.’ Bodily filth itself contributes to blackening the skin, and a clean body becomes lighter. Cleansing the body of its filth represents cleansing the soul of material desires, and its purification. Skin colour and cleanliness, then, are associated metaphors. Dark skin colour is linked associatively with a desert existence and filth, while a light skin is identified with the return to civilization, with cleanliness and with purity. Here is the attitude of the civilizer, a clearly anti-primitivist position that prefers the ‘cultured’ and organized human condition to the natural state, which here signifies that which is negative, bestial, desolate, dirty – and black. Hence in the Midrash on the Song of Songs (1: 5) on the allegorical representation of ‘I am black, but comely’, there is a description of ‘the tents of Kedar’, in the desert, naturally, with the addition: ‘they appear from the outside to be ugly, black, and tattered’.5 Dark skin and bodily defilement represent evil, while fair skin and a clean body represent purification from evil and the attainment of good. In parallel fashion, one represents the bestial, ‘primitive’ aspect of human existence, while the other the ‘civilized’ condition. In the same place we find a Midrash which depicts this very process: We [the Israelites] shall say to you [the gentiles] to what we are to be compared: ‘It is to a prince who went forth to the wilderness around the town, and the sun beat on his head so that his face was darkened. He came back to the town, and with a bit of water and a bit of bathing in the bath houses, his body turned white and regained its beauty, just as before. So it is with me [the Israelites continue]. If the worship of idols has scorched us, truly you are scorched from your mother’s womb! While you are yet in your mother’s womb you served idols.6 Latin literature too contains such parallels. Lucianus coined the phrase ‘to wash the black man and [change him] to white’ as a metaphor for the futility of trying to change the unchangeable. Aesop gives the example of the black man who washed and scrubbed his skin to make it white, with no hope of success.7 Later Hebrew literature paraphrases this as: ‘One who threshes water in a mortar, washes a black man [in order to make him white] and sows water will toil to no avail’.8 The very use of the washing image assumes the link between black skin and filth, because one washes only what one thinks is dirty. Today too, one instinctively identifies white with cleanliness and black with dirt: hence the 12

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expression ‘shining white’, to which we return later. Moreover, the attempt, even the vain attempt, to change a prevailing condition makes that condition negative. One seeks to change only what is perceived as not good, although in the white man’s case filth is perceived as temporary and changeable, while for the black man, it is lasting and permanent. Jeremiah (13: 23) relates to the second case when he asks rhetorically, ‘Can the Black man change his skin?’: evil deeds always remain evil. The two black men in the dream conform to the stereotypes of the black in western culture – Islamic, Christian and Jewish alike – in that period and afterwards. A black complexion is instinctively associated with an ugly body, with great, violent physical strength: ‘Then two Blacks, hideous to see, ran after him brandishing spears to run him through.’ The dreamer is ‘running desperately away from them’. The escape motif is an excellent representation of the fear aroused by the black’s otherness, and the threatening stereotypic qualities associated with it. Showing this as natural, qualitative and unchangeable reinforces otherness and the fears it arouses. The good dream, by contrast, describes ‘two men, bright as the sky above the firmament’, angels representing what is good, and identified with ultimate lightness. While the two blacks are shown to behave with menacing violence that points to disaster, the two bright ones are presented as supportive, helpful and leading the dreamer on the right path. The blacks are depicted as subhuman, the bright and shining pair as above humanity. The dichotomy black/white = evil/good = bestial/angelic appears, then, in its entirety. The contrasting geographical spheres in which the dreams take place again express the dichotomy. The nightmare featuring the pair of blacks takes place in a dangerous, desolate wilderness that threatens human existence. By contrast, the good dream with the two men ‘bright as the sky above the firmament’ takes place in a paradise with ‘brooks and springs, gardens and orchards’, the perfect situation for a completely human existence. While in the good dream the wilderness itself becomes rich and fertile, the two blacks do not change into good angels: they are shown as those whose bestial nature is innate and unalterable. The man whose fair skin grew black under the hot desert sun, by contrast, can get his fair complexion back to the extent that he changes his place – a metaphor for his spiritual state. The dichotomy between the two places contrasted with one another by the mythic geography of western culture – wilderness as against blooming country – is a close parallel to the black/white dichotomy. The bad place is identified with man’s bestial nature, the good place with man the divine.9 Each develops in contasting geoclimatic surroundings that dictate the individual’s nature and characteristics. As we later explain, the anthropology of medieval time placed the black man’s territory at the outer edges of the settled world, in the hot south as a place unsuited to human habitation, which therefore produces inferior human beings. The mythic geography of the premodern period indeed tended to relegate subhuman creatures like devils and ghosts to the desert,10 and, by the same token, the blacks. 13

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H. Levin in his classic work The Power of Blackness, on the metaphorical world of nineteenth-century American authors, quotes from Edgar Allen Poe’s letters the story of M. Lewis, who chose to represent the villains in one of his plays as blacks, although there were no blacks in the region where the drama took place. Lewis’s enlightening explanation was that marking the villains as black would impress the audience more than showing them as ordinary white people. Combining the black man and the villain was undoubtedly intended to reinforce the spectator’s dread. As Levin so justly remarks, Lewis knew why this would happen but did not, or perhaps did not want to, relate to the matter specifically. Lewis even added that if he thought that giving them blue skin would impress the audience more, he would not hesitate to do so. However, such a possibility was, unsurprisingly, rejected out of hand, and the dramatist ‘contented himself’ with describing them as blacks, on the hidden assumption that, given the system of associations of his potential audience, it would make the desired impression. He preferred ‘aesthetic’ considerations to realistic description, but even if it was subconscious, the preference arose from an estimation of his audience’s prejudices which he did not hesitate to manipulate for ‘aesthetic’ reasons even if he did not share them.11 In Falaquera’s parable we find a complete parallel. The black man was used as an image of evil – temporary and permanent – out of ‘aesthetic’ considerations. However, the true reasons for doing so, conscious or subconscious, lie in the normative conceptual world of the cultural system in which the author functioned.12

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2 SOURCES OF THE SYMBOL ‘I am black but comely’

I Relating to skin colour this way was as common for the Jewish scholar of the thirteenth century as for the American author of the nineteenth and the Jewish author of the twentieth century – the result of a common system of primordial associations that distinguish between white and black as colours. In western culture in general, including Jewish culture, an associative tendency identifies black with negative phenomena, as something dusky, dark, blurred and hidden, thus threatening and frightening, and dirty (i.e. not white), ugly and repulsive. By contrast, light colour – white – has a wealth of interrelated positive associations with cleanliness, purity (Song of Songs 6: 10), lightness, clarity, that which is open and exposed (Joel 1: 7), purged of dross (Dan. 11: 35), and so necessarily beautiful, good and hopeful. Not by chance does the black garment symbolize mourning and widowhood, or moral baseness as in the Babylonian Talmud (BT) Kiddushin 40a, Bamidbar Rabbah 9: 42.1 White, on the other hand, represents purity and virginity,2 and hence is proper for a bride at the wedding canopy and for Hassidim on the Sabbath and on holidays. The black-plumed raven, not to mention the black cat, are signs of evil and of impending doom while the white dove represents peace and hope. Angels are identified as white and the Messiah will come riding on a white ass, but Satan is described as black.3 Above the gates of the inferno Dante found the following inscription written in dark characters (di colore oscuro): ‘Abandon every hope, ye that enter’ (Inferno 3: 9–10). Youth is associated with black hair, as in Mishnah Avot 3: 12: ‘those whose hair is black (tishkoret)’, interpreted by Maimonides as ‘When his hair was black that is, when he was young’,4 while old age is represented by white hair. Premodern culture unequivocally preferred age to youth, which was identified with the ‘bad’ colour and age with the ‘good’ one. Youth, associated with lust and desires of the flesh, was shown as black, i.e. bestial and wild, while age, identified with control of these appetites and the achievement of intellectual perfection, was represented as white, i.e. pure. As the Midrashic author states: ‘What a man does in his youth blackens his face in old age’ (BT Shabbat 152a). Hair colour changing from black to white serves as a metaphor for a positive change in the human condition. Falaquera gives this the clearest expression 15

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in his Book of the Seeker, where he represents the positive transformation from youth to age by associating the hair that grows white with the change of the black (defiled) clothing of youth for the pure white garment of age: As wave-like, youth’s years slip away, Signs of old age swiftly appear. When thy hair turneth hoary and gray Sin’s crimson stains must disappear. Remove, hence, the filthy garb of youth. Thy adornment, instead, the white garment of truth.5 True, black hair is sometimes seen positively, as a sign of beauty, health and youth, but the negative significance appears to grow stronger in the course of time. Song of Songs 5: 11 describes the beloved in a most positive way as having ‘locks black as a raven’, though the comparison with the raven presented a problem, given the negative image of that particular bird.6 The Sages interpreted it negatively: the very appearance of the symbol ‘black’ made the whole utterance negative from their point of view, the more so because of the link with the detested fowl.7 In any case, Jewish sources used hair colour, not skin colour, to distinguish between youth and age, and not by chance, since the latter would not have served to present youth negatively and age positively, since skin is light in childhood, while in later years it tends to grow darker. When the Sages represent the face as ‘black’, it is negative in contexts of poverty, bodily weakness and disease, as exemplified in a Midrash on the Song of Songs where disciples of the Sages are said to look ‘ugly and sallow (shehorim)’, i.e. poor and suffering in this world. In BT Sanhedrin 100b we find the same: ‘He who blackens (hamash’hir) his face for the sake of the study of the Torah in this world, the Holy One, blessed be He, will make his luster shine in the next’. In BT Ketubot 10b, for example, there is a story of a man who complained to his rabbi that he had intercourse with his bride and found no blood. In her defence, the woman declared that she was still a virgin: Rabbi saw that their faces were black (Rashi: with hunger), [and] he commanded concerning them, and they brought them to a bath, and gave them to eat and drink and brought them to the bridal chamber, and he had intercourse with her and found blood. Here ‘black’ faces were not only the result of hunger (compare Lam. 4: 8 and Sotah 12a: ‘His face grew black with fasting’) but of dirt. Hence the order not only to give the couple food and drink, but also to take them to a bath, making them ‘white’ once again, ie. healthy and clean. Like Falaquera, Rabbi Jacob Anatoli, author of the collection of philosophical homilies compiled in the same period, Goad of Students (Malmad ha-Talmidim), represented the state of one who repents and mends his ways as 16

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putting on garments that are not only white, but thoroughly washed. The washing process reinforces the shining, clean, pure quality attributed to the colour white. As such, washing is an apt metaphor of spiritual purification, as the poet said in Psalm 51: 9: ‘Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean; wash me and I shall be whiter than snow’ (also Isa. 1: 18). Bodily cleanliness is not only a condition for performing religious rites meant to cleanse the soul, as ‘and ye shall wash your clothes’ (Num. 31: 24; Ex. 19: 18 and elsewhere), but also for the purity of the soul attained at the same time. By contrast, the existential situation of the sinner is represented metaphorically as the wearing of black, dirty clothes (also BT Kiddushin 40a). As Anatoli says: As the wise man said (Eccles. 9:8): ‘Let thy garments be always white’, and continues. He wants his qualities to be without blemish. And on this matter [repentance], Torah commands the washing of clothes and the wearing of a fine white tallith because white represents good qualities. As against this, one whose lust governs him is commanded to wear black so that he will repent. Just as merit is compared to whiteness and light, so sins should be compared with blackness and darkness, as it is said (I Sam. 2: 9) ‘but the wicked shall be put to silence in darkness’.8 Indeed, colour symbolism associated certain phenomena perceived as essentially negative, then as now, with black, while positive phenomena were associated with white and its synonyms. The plague that slew millions at the end of the Middle Ages was appropriately named the Black Death. Depression and melancholy are identified in our Jewish sources with ‘black bile’ (marah shehorah), in accordance with the principles of Greek medicine that dominated medieval science. The system located the source of melancholy in the black fluid found in excessive amounts, at the expense of other fluids, when the body was in an abnormal condition, which led to mental imbalance in general and to depression in particular.9 That being so, one with paranoid tendencies is called in Hebrew to this day ‘one who sees black’ (roeh shehorot).10 Against this background macabre humour (humour = fluid, in the original Greek sense of the word) is said to be black humour, and an evil spell is called black magic. An unsuccessful day is a black day and a list of suspects a blacklist, while a marketing system that conceals taxes is a black market. Its profits are black money, the conversion of which into legal tender is called money laundering. Unskilled work is called dirty work, and the person who does it is, in Hebrew, ‘a black labourer’, doing the sort of work at which one gets dirty, which makes the worker ‘black’. Thus the marketplace expresses its low esteem for both the work and the worker. One in a respectable office job, by contrast, is said to be a white-collar worker. While the term comes from an old practice of wearing a white shirt when engaged in official business, it is no doubt a metaphor for the clean surroundings in which this work, which makes no dirt, takes place. It is ‘clean’ work and so the person who does it is perceived as superior to the 17

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performer of ‘dirty’ work. Extortion may be termed blackmail, and the black flag was in past times identified as the flag of pirates. Today it is a warning of stormy seas and it has metaphorical significance as well. By contrast, the white flag symbolizes ceasefire or surrender – in any event, the end of fighting. A white lie is one told with the praiseworthy aim of not hurting the feelings of another, whereas an ordinary, negative lie is ‘black’. A certain type of poisonous spider is appropriately called the black widow. Here is a fatal combination of the colour black and the widow, i.e. not an ordinary woman, naturally inclined to do ill, but according to a traditional world view one who, as a widow, is no longer in awe of her husband, indicating the intense danger inherent in her. In this case at least, the colour black indicates not only mourning, but a reminder that the creature is once again dangerous, her colour serving as a black flag. We shall find as we proceed many more parallels the culture has produced between the image of the woman and that of the person with dark skin. Even today, all-inclusive gloom and negative views are described as painting something black, and an especially dirty object is said to be black with dirt. By contrast, something especially clean is ‘sparkling white’. Really clean laundry is described as snow white, not merely white, and true statements in Hebrew are ‘clear as sunshine’. The link between the colour white and sunlight is clear, and will be discussed later on. An honest person is said to have clean (white) hands and a clear conscience, while an immoral person is said to have dirty hands and, accordingly, a blackened conscience. Indeed Webster’s Dictionary gives the following meanings for black: ‘complete darkness, a dark skin, pollution, corruption, depression’, and more of the same. Under the entry ‘white’, however, a fair skin and moral cleanliness, inter alia, appear. Similarly, Alkalai’s complete Hebrew dictionary under ‘black’ has the possibilities of the colour black, a dark skin, dismal, evil, etc., while under ‘white’ there are expressions like pure, shining and clean.11 Not only phenomena, but also behaviours and existential conditions perceived as negative have been designated as black. The author of Job uses the very same metaphor when he describes his miserable fate with overwhelming self-pity: ‘I went mourning without the sun … My skin is black upon me’ (Job 30: 28–30). Here is a group of metaphors that reinforces the picture of his deep depression: he walks in darkness and his skin has darkened too, despite the empirical fact that it is the sun that darkens the body, as the Song of Songs author notes in ‘I am black but comely … because the sun hath looked upon me.’ Job became black even though he walked in darkness. Moreover, the Hebrew expression ‘to blacken someone’s face’ (le-hash’hir panim) means to shame and show contempt in public. It is also used in the context of shaming oneself: ‘What a man does in his youth blackens his face in old’ (BT Shabbat 152a). Ben Sira uses the metaphor of a darkened skin to describe a woman’s evil influence, saying that a man can become black as a bear because of his spouse’s wickedness (Book of Ben Sira 25: 20). We find many identifications of this type in the Midrash on the Song of 18

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Songs. We have already related to the combination ‘ugly, black, and tattered’, while the expression ‘his locks are … black as a raven’, whose obvious meaning is positive, is given a strongly negative interpretation in the Midrash. One author sees in it a reference to the Sages who appear ‘ugly and sallow’: that is, poor and suffering in this life, though they will shine like torches in the world to come, meaning that they will become light in colour. Another Midrashic author sees in the ‘locks black as a raven’ an allegoric allusion to Torah passages that appear ‘too ugly and black to be mentioned in public’ because they deal with unmentionable themes of pollution and contamination, like running sores, menstrual defilement and birth, although they are fitting subjects (arevot in Hebrew, from the same root as orev, a raven) in God’s eyes.12 It is instructive to note that shahar, the Hebrew word for dawn, the beginning of light, and ‘grew black’ (Job 30: 30) are exactly the same, though they represent different and indeed totally opposite conditions. There is another example of the same designation of opposites with the same word in ‘for childhood and youth are vanity’ (Eccles. 11: 10), where shaharut is used as a synonym for childhood, and relates to the beginning of life. However, the source of the expression may be understood in two contradictory ways: either in the sense of dawn, the beginning of the day, hence as a metaphor for the beginning of life, or if it relates to black hair, it relates to childhood as against the white hair of old age. Here the two different senses symbolize the same meaning. The black–white contrast comes together not only when it makes use of the same root in the language, but also in the two equally possible meanings of shaharut in this text.13 A parallel phenomenon is to be found in the Sages’ wonderful oxymoron with its endless possible interpretations, which describes the Torah as written ‘in black fire’ (Devarim Rabbah 3: 13; Song of Songs Rabbah 5: 9), and R. Berakhiah said: ‘Consider the eye-ball; it is not through the white of it that one sees but through the black. Said the Holy One, blessed be He: “I created light for you out of the darkness” ’ (Vayikrah Rabbah 31: 8; Bamidbar Rabbah 15: 5). This is the metaphor of unity in contrast between white and black, light and shade, like that of the old painting technique of chiaroscuro, which goes far back into western history, to the ‘black snow’ of Anaxagoras in the fourth century BC and the ‘white raven’ in Latin literature, to Rilke’s enigmatic ‘black milk’, David Avidan’s highly charged image of ‘a black ray of sunlight’ and, finally, to François Trifault’s famous movie The Bride Wore Black, about a bride who was widowed.14

II It may be assumed that the associative identification of white with good and black with evil arises from primeval fears of the darkness and dangers of night, and the sense of relief and hope that came with the light of the rising sun. The threatening night is associated with black and the coming of day with white. A Hebrew word for the moon, the lesser light that rules the night, is levanah, 19

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meaning white and necessarily pure (Song of Songs 6: 10; the Midrash in Bereshit Rabbah 15: 3). The entire biblical story of Creation is based on this normative distinction. The act of creation is described as a transition from the negative state of darkness to the positive one of light. Darkness represents primeval chaos while light represents the order, logic and discipline that the divinity imparts to the created universe: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Now the earth was unformed and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters. And God said: ‘Let there be light’. And there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night.15 As the author of the Midrash (Bamidbar Rabba 15: 5) says: ‘I created light for you out of the darkness’. The Midrash which appears in Avot de’Rabbi Nathan 1: 15 well illustrated the fear which descended upon Adam when darkness fell in the first night after creation. He was scared that this was a punishment for his sins. Darkness is instinctively identified by him as punishment. The coming of light, on the other hand, was identified with divine mercy: When evening fell, the first Man saw the world growing dark as the sun set. He thought to himself, ‘Woe on me! Because I turned rotten, the Holy One, blessed be He, on my account brings darkness to the entire world’. But he did not know that that is how things are. At dawn when he saw the world grow light with sunrise, he rejoiced. He went and built altars. The author of Ecclesiastes (2: 13) repeats this motive with great force: ‘Then I saw that wisdom excelleth folly as light excelleth darkness.’ Here is a full dichotomy between wisdom = light / folly = darkness, with an unambiguous preference for the first over the second. Indeed, as we shall see in detail later on, in the history of western thought light is identified with cognitive processes and darkness represents ignorance. In the beginning of the Midrash on Song of Songs the author identifies darkness with evil deeds and links up various scriptural images to do so: Therefore: ‘He will stand before kings’: He will not stand before mean men [hashuhim] (Prov. 8: 15). This refers to the wicked: ‘And their works are in the dark’ (Isa. 29: 15). ‘Let their way be dark and slippery’ (Ps. 35:6).16 Not for nothing does Nehemiah (4: 16) write ‘in the night they may be a guard … and labour in the day’, when he describes the labour to rebuild Jerusalem after the 20

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Babylonian Exile. Day is for affirmative, constructive activity while night is for preventive measures; thus the description of the night watchmen in the Song of Songs (3: 4; 5: 7) to prevent acts thought to be immoral and therefore likely to take place under cover of darkness. The author of the Midrash in BT Sanhedrin 7b expounds ‘every man hath his sword upon his thigh because of fear in the night’ (Song of Songs 3: 8) as ‘fear of hell that is like night’. Night is perceived as fearful and threatening, fraught with disaster. It is to be guarded against and got through safely. Hence BT Hagigah 3b states: ‘Who is a fool, one who goes alone at night’. On this primeval distinction the members of the Judean Desert cult based their distinction between the Children of Light and the Children of Darkness. In the Havdalah blessing at the end of Shabbat we say: ‘who hast set a distinction between the holy and the mundane, between the light and the dark, between Israel and the other peoples of the world’. The dichotomy here is complete: holy = light = Israel / mundane = dark = other peoples. The passage in time between the holy condition of ‘light’ (= Shabbat) to the mundane that takes place in darkness (Saturday night) designates metaphorically the ethnic and theological hierarchy. Vayikrah Rabbah 6: 6 creates a clear dichotomy between Israel which exists in a condition of light and the gentiles who live in darkness. Later on we discuss extensively the identification of the inferior other as one in a state of ‘darkness’ and thence the designation of one with a dark skin as inferior. Similarly the expression ‘Dark Ages’ was once used to designate medieval times, underlining the negative aspects of the era in the eyes of those who used the term. Modern Israeli history uses the Black Sabbath not in the old sense of a witches’ orgy, but rather to mark the date of a particularly harsh event (the British arrest of Zionist leaders in 1946). How harsh the situation was is shown by changing the day into darkness, and Creation reverting to the darkness of chaos. The same is true of the seasons of the year. European culture, given the European climate, represents spring as the period of rebirth, identifying it with light and brightness, while winter represents death that is identified with the actual gloom and darkness of that season. A secondary association extends to the metaphorical use of shade or shadow. The shadow turns light into darkness, bright to dark and, by extension, positive to negative. Hence the expression ‘lights and shadows’ to describe a situation containing both positive and negative components, or ‘There are more shadows than lights.’ In the context of criticism, this means that negative aspects dominate the positive ones. ‘To cast a shadow’ means to cast aspersions, ‘to put someone in the shade’ is to diminish his/her importance, and to ‘live in someone’s shadow’ is a condition of self-disparagement. ‘A shadow of himself’ is one who shows the ravages of suffering, and ‘the shadow of a doubt’ indicates that there is some uncertainty in the statement of a particular case.17 The primary psychological associations raised by the dichotomy between day and night, light and darkness, extend to factual and metaphorical distinctions alike, between white and black as colours. One accepted assumption is that designating a particular colour with the Hebrew word for black (shahor) takes its 21

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etymological significance from descriptions of situations of darkness and gloom, as in Lamentations 4: 7–8: ‘their visage is blacker than a coal’. In the next stage, this dichotomy is extended to the perceived significance of skin colour.18 There are many similar examples in the later books of the Bible. In Lamentations, the ideal state of Jerusalem’s inhabitants before the Destruction and their condition after it is set forth in this dichotomy: ‘Her Nazirites were purer than snow, they were whiter than milk … their visage is blacker than a coal.’ In Song of Songs 5: 10 the beloved is described as ‘white and ruddy’ (white = of fair complexion; ruddy = healthy). The beautiful woman is identified with the sun and the moon, the sources of light: ‘Who is she that looketh forth in the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun’ (6: 10), whereas the woman who is ‘black but comely’ (1: 5–6) is on the defensive. Empirically, however, the reverse is true: the skin of one who is out in the sun becomes dark and one who is careful to stay in the shade – in relative darkness – keeps her fair complexion. Job, as we noted earlier, describes himself as one who walks in gloom without sunlight, but his skin is still black at least metaphorically, a sign of great suffering. In both cases, for the sake of the metaphoric identification of the beautiful and the good with light, and ugliness and evil with darkness, empirical truth is distorted. The Midrash on the sin of Ham is the locus classicus for the Sages’ image of the black, and that of the medieval exegetists. Here the punishment of Canaan for castrating his father Noah is said to be the change of his skin colour to black, since he prevented him from having sexual intercourse, which is supposed to take place out of public view, i.e. in darkness. As the author of Ruth Rabbah 2: 17 says: ‘Sexual intercourse should take place only at night.’ The sin prevented an activity that is supposed to take place in darkness and the punishment, which fitted the crime, blackened the skins of the sinner’s descendants. In this case, not only skin colour but also activities that the normative system considers bestial and seeks to keep out of sight, like sexual intercourse, are identified with the darkness of night. As BT Pesahim 112b states: Do not go out alone by night, do not stand naked in front of a lamp. … He who stand naked before a lamp will catch epilepsy, and he who has sexual relations with a light on will have children with epilepsy. There is another such example in Vayikrah Rabbah 25: 7 (also Midrash Shemuel 24: 2) on I Samuel 28: 8: ‘and they came to the woman by night’: ‘But was it night? No, but the expression teaches that the hour was as gloomy for them as night.’ Considering this associative context, it is no coincidence that the name of Lilith, the archetypical wicked woman, is derived from the Hebrew lailah (night), while the harlot described in Proverbs as seducing the innocent lad does so in the darkness of night: ‘In the twilight, in the evening of the day, in the blackness of night and the darkness’ (Prov. 7: 9) . Shakespeare describes his black mistress thus: ‘…as black as hell, as dark as night’ (Sonnet 147). Not only their skin colour but the native country of the blacks, Africa, is associ22

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ated with the darkness of night. According to the story in BT Tamid 32b, the elders of the Negev tried to persuade Alexander of Macedonia not to go to Africa since it lies ‘beyond the mountains of darkness’ (Pliny called these mountains mons nomine niger), that is to say, in a dangerous region difficult to cross.19 Hellenistic and Roman culture also identify black skin colour with the darkness of night. One of its appellations for the black (generally niger) is from the Latin nocticolor, having the colour of night. The Roman playwright Petronius called the black ‘darker than the night’, and in one case, ‘adopted son of the night’ (noctis alumnus).20 As a natural result, black skin and the physical features that generally go with it – kinky hair, a broad nose and fleshy lips – are considered evil, frightening, ugly, coarse and bestial, while light skin and the face and body features that generally go with it are considered beautiful, good, refined and even divine. It is no coincidence that one whose looks are completely compatible with the western ideal of beauty is said to look like an angel, from the associative assumption that outer appearance reflects the inner person. Early Greek culture and the Roman culture that followed it saw a link between physical beauty and moral perfection. The same phenomenon can be found also in rabbinic culture. The human body is perceived as the image of the society in which it exists. The way a society defines and describes the body is the way that members of that society describe themselves and their fellows. Roman culture developed an entire science, physiognomy, on this basis, and attempted to fit physical characteristics of the face and body to spiritual characteristics.21 Hence the person who was ‘white’ and ‘beautiful’ in accordance with the canonical norms would be described as good, cultured and moral, while the one who was ‘black’ and ‘ugly’ by these norms would be described in opposite terms: evil, primitive and by definition immoral. The proportion of melanin in his/her skin cells became the touchstone of the individual’s human quality. Various languages designate blacks either by their skin colour or their geographic–ethnic origin. Again it is no coincidence that most white cultures have used skin colour. Ethiopian in Greek means one whose skin shines; niger in Latin, noir in French, and schwarz in German have the same meaning as ‘black’ in English. The old Anglo-American word Negro, abandoned because of negative historical connotations and replaced by black, comes from the Latin niger. From the linguistic standpoint there is no difference at all between the two: both indicate dark skin instinctively identified, like its owners, with evil and dirt. Skin colour apparently became a means of identification in the first instance because it was so convenient. For the white designator it was easy to identify blacks first of all by their colour. But this means of identification carried with it negative associations. Moreover, as Davis points out, even in ancient times it meant associating the nature of slaves with that of blacks. In different cultures it was the practice to mark the skin of slaves so that they could be identified easily. In time the principle was carried to its extreme, and the skin of the black became the ultimate sign of slavery.22 Thus Caliban in Shakespeare’s The Tempest is the ultimate other – distorted 23

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in shape, lascivious and lustful, the offspring of Satan and a witch – and of course his skin is black. On top of that, his name sounds like an anagram of cannibal. Aaron the black Satan, the ultimate black, is similarly described in Titus Andronicus.23 Moreover, while the word for blacks in European languages like Latin, English and French relates to their skin colour, with the negative associations acquired over time, in other languages like German and from it Yiddish (and one of the English synonyms) the process was reversed. A word designating dirt and pollution came, as a result of aesthetic norms and values, to mean dark colour and to designate the black person. Not by chance do the German or Yiddish word schwarz and the English ‘swarthy’ and ‘sordid’ derive from the Latin sordes, meaning dirt, misery, baseness and neglect, though the original Latin meaning did not even hint at dark skin,24 an association that came from a later culture. Once black became identified as negative, the negative connotations of the Latin word were automatically appropriate to designate anyone identified as dark skinned, i.e. dirty.25 The process in reverse emerges from the history of the English word ‘fair’: it originally meant beauty and, later, a particularly light skin.26 Beautiful and fair become synonyms, like ugly and black. The Sages too often used the combination ‘black and ugly’. In Hebrew, the process took place under special historical circumstances. The biblical word for a black, cushi, has been used from that day to this. Differently from other languages, Hebrew did not designate the black by skin colour but by geographic and ethnic origin, as the descendants of Cush son of Ham son of Noah. His skin colour is not mentioned, nor were the original connotations of the name negative. Only much later, in the culture of the Sages, was cushi unambiguously linked with blackness and acquired the negative connotations that have remained with it ever since. Hence the word ‘black’ (shahor) has replaced it in recent years. A Hebrew nursery tune, ‘Cushi little doggy’, about a black dog with this dubious pet name, is no longer sung. The once popular children’s story ‘Ten Little Cushim’ is no longer told. Belatedly, Hebrew went over to the terminology of western languages that designates a person of African ancestry by skin colour – with all its primeval negative connotations. However, in contemporary culture these associations are changing and black as a colour is undergoing gradual rehabilitation. Parallel to this, because of the accumulated negative associations with black skin colour, other languages are using cushi in its original geographic and ethnic sense, calling blacks Africans or Afro-Americans. From this standpoint, Hebrew, because of changing social norms, has gone in the reverse direction from American English. Hebrew has an old verbal symbol related to geographic and ethnic origin which was originally neutral but acquired negative connotations over time, and came to relate to skin colour. In most languages, however, an opposite process is making the original negative meaning neutral or even positive. In American English, by contrast, the process went the other way, when a derivative of the Latin word for black, Negro, acquired thoroughly negative connotations for historical reasons. The word ‘black’, which means precisely the 24

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same, but lacks negative historical associations, has been substituted, or, alternatively, ‘Afro-American’ that harks back to the neutral, or even positive, biblical term cushi. But modern Hebrew tends more and more to identify blacks as Africans, obviously because of discomfort with the negative connotations of ‘black’, and the influence of American English. Just because these normative distinctions were created by people whose skin was at least relatively light, they fixed immovably the relationship to the other, the darker person. As early as the fourteenth century, the Muslim historian ibn Khaldun in Introduction to the Science of History (The Muqaddimah) states that it was white-skinned people who determined that the other, the dark-skinned person, was ‘black’, calling him by the insulting appellations associated with that word, to show his otherness – and his inferiority to those with fair complexions. As ibn Khaldun said with linguistic and anthropological sensitivity, ethnic groups with light skin are not named according to their skin colour since in their eyes their own colour was normative: The inhabitants of the first and second zones in the south are called the Abyssinians, the Zanj, and the Sudanese. These are synonyms used to designate the particular nation that has turned black. … The inhabitants of the north are not called by their colour, because the people who established the conventional meanings of words were themselves white. Thus, whiteness was something usual and common to them, and they did not see anything sufficiently remarkable and common to them, and they did not see anything sufficiently remarkable in it to cause them to use it as a specific term.27 The very fact that darker skin identified a person as other in the eyes of those with lighter skins, the otherness arousing fears and requiring separation, identified the dark person with all the qualities the lighter-skinned designators fear, shun and wish to regard as the complete opposite of themselves. Following Derrida’s well-known statement, a subject’s self-definition assumes the otherness of other persons.28 The clearer the otherness is, the clearer the subject’s self becomes. Relating to the other helps the subject bring the self into clearer focus. We learn who we are or, more precisely, who we wish to be and even more precisely, how we want to present ourselves before others, by stressing what we are not – or more precisely, how we do not wish to be defined.29 However, the distinction between subject and other is not merely between self and other, subject and object, designator and designated: it is the distinction between superior and inferior, what is better and what is not as good and hence who should rule and who should be ruled. The subject designates superiority by defining the natural inferiority of the other. Following Claude Lévi-Strauss’s theory that human societies always create a dichotomy between nature, perceived in a negative sense, and culture, defined as positive, the subject always claims to be identified with culture, while the 25

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other – be it woman or black, gentile or Jew – depending on the designator – will always be identified with nature in its negative sense, in terms like ‘primitive’ and ‘animal’. When the natural is identified with the negative and inferior, strong sexual lusts are attributed to these others, whose nature is held to be like that of animals. Once Christianity identified itself as ‘the spiritual Israel’, as against the Jews who in the eyes of Christians remained ‘the physical Israel’, they identified the Jews as those who remained on the physical plane of existence, the natural one in the negative sense of the term, and were therefore inferior to ‘the spiritual Israel’, which had succeeded in ascending above its animal nature.30 Without delving into the universality of such dichotomies, they make very useful explanations31 and are in any case thoroughly relevant in perceptions of the black – or the woman – in Jewish cultural history. In Philip Mason’s deeply insightful Prospero’s Magic, he presents the need to distinguish the other as different and hence inferior, on the basis of fundamental principles of Freudian psychology. All the same qualities the individual dislikes in herself/himself raise fears, so s/he tries to repress them and project them on the other, as defined on a gender, ethnic or class basis. The dark recesses of the designator’s subconscious mind are projected onto the other. Thus in some fashion the self is purged of characteristics that arouse its fear and feelings of guilt and inferiority, as it identifies those traits with the rejected and inferior other. The other becomes the id repressed by the superego. In the past, the practice was to project such negative characteristics onto Satan, or his Jewish manifestation, the Sitra Ahra, or onto the biblical scapegoat, and thus free oneself from them. Not by chance is Satan said to be black and ugly. Now that all three have disappeared from our consciousness, we are left with only the human other – the woman, the gentile, the Jew or the black – depending on who the designator is, on whom to project our ‘evil’ inclinations so we can be purified of them. The other becomes the negative of the self. 32 Those who call themselves ‘white’ are not strictly so empirically, but rather have varying degrees and shades of relatively fair skin, whether light brown, pink or yellow, in relation to what is perceived as dark skin. And the ‘black’ individual is not completely black either, but has skin of varying degrees of darkness in comparison to one designated as ‘white’. The need for an individual defined as ‘white’ to designate different groups as having ‘white’ or ‘black’ skin arises not only out of a technical need for definition that itself generalizes in a fashion that never corresponds to complex reality, but also out of the primordial associations aroused in the distinction between white and black. A man who defines himself as white although his skin is merely light in relation to that of others, does so, even subconsciously, because of the system of positive symbolic associations that white brings to his mind. If white is identified as good and beautiful, one who has a relatively fair skin defines himself as white, so he too may be associated with the good and the beautiful. He marks the other with the relatively dark skin as black in order to link him to the negative associations aroused by that colour. The other is then not only qualitatively different, but the complete opposite of 26

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himself, and hence naturally inferior. Someone who is the exact opposite of the beautiful and the good will, of logical necessity, be ugly and evil. Marking the relatively dark-skinned person as ‘black’ served the exclusion principle of the self-designated ‘white’. Hence the ‘white’ designator’s attitude to those of dark complexion was always a function of their darkness. The darker or the ‘blacker’ they were, the more bestial, ugly and evil they were thought to be by the primary designator. By contrast, the closer the skin shade was to the designator’s own, the better or perhaps the less evil the individual inside the skin was thought to be. The phenomenon exists not only among those whose complexion is defined as white, but also among groups who are ‘coloured’ to different degrees. There too the relatively lighter skin will always be preferred. For all, white is the positive symbol by which the shades that deviate from its canonical norms will be tested. Here too, ‘inferior’ groups adopt the standards of the ruling group, the arbiter of values. As Levin writes in The Power of Blackness, quoted in Chapter 1, black and white are actually not colours at all. White is a synthesis of all the colours, while black is the ‘non-colour’, the anti-colour.33 The exceptional characteristics of both served the interests of the ‘white’ ruler well. The man who identifies himself with the ultimate colour will regard himself as the ultimate human being, and the one who identifies with the ‘non-colour’ will be identified as ‘non-human’ or at least of lesser humanity. Since the perception of the premodern world was vertical – hierarchic – otherness was necessarily identified as either superiority or inferiority. At that time, it could not be imagined that two different things could possibly be accorded equal value and (if they were people) equal rights. The created world was graded from the spiritual world of the divine down to the material world of being and corruption. In each, every group had to take its proper place in the hierarchic system which was, of necessity, below some groups and above others – never on a level with any one of them. The very fact that X is different from Y but proves nothing else, no inevitable superiority or inferiority of one over the other, is a completely modern idea. Earlier, members of the dominant culture determined that if they were defined as X and the others as Y, they were superior to the others. This is how males determined their superiority over females, Jews over gentiles and the reverse, and all fair-skinned people over those with darker skins. The same psychological needs, economic interests and logical principles operate in each case. So ingrained are these stereotypes in western culture that not only the relatively fair skinned find it difficult to free themselves: dark-skinned people have also internalized ‘white’ canons of beauty. Michael Jackson, the world-famous entertainer, changed facial features and skin colour completely with a series of operations so that he would look more white, and more closely approximate the white idea of beauty: he is still a role model for black youth. Another dramatic instance is the little black girl in Toni Morrison’s famous story, who prayed that her eyes would turn blue.34 Psychological experiments in the United States 27

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show that not only white but also black children prefer to play with blonde dolls having Caucasian features, which they instinctively identified as prettier and better. Little black girls want blonde Barbie dolls. Research among children of Ethiopian origin has disclosed the same phenomenon in Israel. They, like their ‘white’ peers, preferred story characters with fair complexions, and linked positive adjectives to light colour. A study of popular culture among Ethiopian immigrants to Israel shows that they make fine distinctions as to skin colour: one perceived as light skinned is considered superior to one with darker skin.35 As part of their liberation process, the American blacks underwent a name change, from Negroes to blacks. First of all they demanded rehabilitation of the colour black as such. This was an essential step towards the next stage, becoming Afro-Americans, which identified them not by skin colour but by geo-ethnic origin. Rehabilitating the colour was a necessary precondition for rehabilitating the complexion and the people who have it. The battle cry of the black liberation movement in the 1960s and 1970s, ‘Black is beautiful!’, related first and foremost simply to the colour. That cry had to contend with generations in which quite different moral and aesthetic values had been internalized, and sounded at a time when, in western culture, a whole world of premodern normative associations about black–white relations was crumbling. Youth, identified with black, was now preferred over age, whose colour was white. White hair is now unfashionable not only for elegant ladies: many men too dye (darken) their white hair. It no longer represents wisdom and accumulated experience, but rather physical deterioration. The aesthetic ideal shifted from pallor to suntan. At one time complexion and class were closely related. Upper-class people were careful not to expose themselves to the sun so as to preserve their ‘beautiful’ white skin. It showed that they led a life of leisure which did not require them to expose, i.e. ‘dirty’, their skin. Thus they distinguished themselves from the lower social orders who, to make a living, had to ‘dirty’ themselves by exposure to the sun. Owing to changes in taste and democratization in western society, a suntan became the standard of beauty and the sign of economic advantage. It meant that one had the leisure to obtain it, or to pay for an artificial substitute. In the fashion world black was now ‘in’ and elegant or, if so desired, Bohemian and thrown together. No longer is it automatically identified with mourning and conservatism but is the mark of the careless Bohemian or of high fashion. Today every selfrespecting woman has an elegant, versatile ‘little black dress’. The problem is that changes in images of colour are imprinted more readily than changes in images of complexion. However, changes in images of the colour are an essential if not a sufficient condition for changes in images of complexion.

III The same psychological processes that operated on the image of the black other in western culture operated on the Jew. Frequently similar traits were attributed 28

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to them. The Roman historian Tacitus, for example, in his famous criticism of the Jews and their customs, presents them as wallowing in superstition, sexual promiscuity, idleness and indolence. It is ironic that Tacitus describes the Jews as ‘ignorant and base’ (Iudaeorum mos absurdus sordidsque). As indicated above, the Latin word sordes, which indicates baseness here, later came to signify a dark complexion.36 These are the very faults attributed to blacks for generations, even by Jews. Particularly prominent are the superior sexual powers that both Jews and blacks were said to possess, making them fearsome competitors for the ruling white male – people who had to be removed. Paradoxically, the inferior other, whether woman, black, gentile or Jew – depending on the designator – was always identified as having sexual drives more powerful that one who considered himself superior. The Jewish Sages maintained that the gentiles were sunk in promiscuity. An accepted explanation for circumcision in the Jewish tradition is that removing the foreskin reduces sexual desire. The uncircumcised gentile is therefore perceived as one whose sexual desires rule him. Promiscuity is seen to be linked to idolatry. Hence the rabbinical identification of the gentile as one ‘in darkness’, as we find in the Havdalah benediction ‘who divides the holy from the profane, light from darkness, Israel from the gentiles’. Israel is in light, the gentile in darkness. Hellenistic and Roman scholars like Tacitus make the same claim in reverse about the Jews.37 Both these groups made identical claims about women and blacks, as we see in descriptions of the black in rabbinical literature. Fear of the other concentrated on superior sexual powers, a myth that obviously arises from repressed sexual fears. It justifies the subjugation of groups perceived as dangerous due to the reservations, if not outright negative attitudes, about sexuality perceived as a bestial, insufficiently cultured facet of the human condition. A common psychological process projects onto others the designator’s fears in coping with his own sexual impulses: hence the traditional explanation of the circumcision as a means to reduce desire, i.e. to make man more cultivated. The uncircumcised gentile, by contrast, is perceived as one whose sexual lusts rule him, a dangerous competitor for mastery over the females. Ezekiel the Prophet (23: 20) in his famous parable of Israel’s desertion of God, describes the gentiles ‘whose issue (zirmah) is like the issue of horses’. The reader suspects an element of envy hidden behind the expressions of disgust. Thus we find in Bereshit Rabbah 80: 11: ‘When a woman is intimate with an uncircumcised person, she finds it hard to tear herself away.’ In Vayikrah Rabbah 25: 7 a Midrash explains the description of the gentiles in Ezekiel 16: 26 as ‘great of flesh’, to mean that their male organ was of abnormal size. Significantly, the prophet cites this in connection with the fornication of the daughters of Jerusalem with uncircumcised gentiles, and not simply gentiles but Egyptians. This immediately creates an association with blacks, since according to the Bible text Egypt is the brother of Canaan, a son of Ham who became black, according to the Midrashic legend, as a result of his sin. 29

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The other is identified with nature in its negative sense, the antithesis of cultivation. Hence the mythical sexual superiority of the other, far from being a mark of excellence, is proof positive of animal-like inferiority that must be curbed lest it undermine culture and good order. As Gilman states, sexuality is an absolute sign of otherness. Shakespeare’s Othello contains a consummate example when Iago, the villainous plotter, warns Desdemona’s father that Othello, the black devil, is about to violate his daughter, the white virgin (I, i, 85–86). ‘An old black ram is tupping your white ewe … the devil will make a grandsire of you.’38 The anti-Semitic literature of the Nazis is full of such descriptions, relating of course to the Jew. Many anti-Semitic texts and caricatures contain the swarthy, long-nosed Jew (the nose is an obvious phallic symbol, explained later) who exudes sexual lust, violating the chaste fairskinned Christian maid.39 Not by chance did the Nazis draw the extreme but obvious conclusion, marking both Jews and blacks as inferior but dangerous races condemned to annihilation. Both were identified by white society as different in appearance from the white European norm – the Jew with the long nose and the black with the broad one and both having darker skins – which necessarily made them inferior and ugly. Whoever deviates from canonical norms is a deviant. Both are identified not simply as other vis-à-vis the white person, but as having similar negative features. Exclusion also requires unification, generalization and negation. Moreover, since there were no blacks in areas where German culture prevailed, the Jew alone played the role of inferior other for the majority, the ‘white’ Christians, and was accordingly designated ‘the white Negro’. The need to so designate Jews grew as emancipation progressed (Plate 1).40 The common denominator of inferiority for

Plate 1

Left: The murderer Judah (from the Stürmer, No. 14, 1937). Right: Protection of the race (from the Stürmer, No. 25, 1938)

30

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Jews and blacks has a long history in western culture, going back to Augustine and on through the centuries to Voltaire. In Nazi-occupied Paris, cafés had signs that barred both Jews and blacks. The phenomenon went on in social clubs in the United States even after the Second World War. A strong European tradition, dating back to the Middle Ages, maintained that Jews were ‘black’ or at least swarthy, and finds sharp expression in modern anti-Semitic literature. Medieval Christian iconography frequently shows the contrast between the black figure of Synagogue and the white one of Church.41 The distinction was applied to the Jew in contrast to the Christian of northern Europe. Since Satan was identified as black and the Jews were perceived as his allies, they were also depicted as black. Many Jews too internalized this thoroughly anti-Semitic perception, as expressed in the debates in Jewish anti-Christian literature of the time. What was seen as their physical ugliness (the ‘long’ nose, the ‘flat’ feet, the ‘hairy’ body) were merely components of their ‘blackness’. As early as Hellenistic times, anti-Semitic literature maintained that the Jews were a band of lepers (having defective skin) who were expelled from Egypt (which made them blacks). Nazi scholars even asserted that the Jewish ‘race’ was the result of genetic miscegenation with blacks in the Hellenistic era: hence the similar swarthiness, physiognomy and dubious character traits.42 Proponents of the theory naturally assumed that this condition symbolized the inferiority and corruption on the part of Jews. Like the darker skin and hair, the deviant shape of the Jewish nose (Judennase) or, more precisely, its length, symbolized the moral turpitude of the Jew. A physical feature is once again perceived as a symbol of an internal quality and, specifically, nose length is seen to symbolize Jewish sexual degeneracy. Since ancient times, not only in popular culture but in medical literature, there was an associative link between nose length and that of the male organ, unrelated to descriptions of Jews. The nose is seen as a significant phallic symbol. Ovid declared: ‘Noscitur e naso quanta sit hast viro.’43 Freudian psychology too would make use of these ideas. In modern anti-Semitic literature in Europe the Jewish nose is perceived to signify the length of the sex organ, i.e. increased potency, while circumcision is regarded as maiming, another expression of the Jew’s natural degeneracy paralleled by the ‘deviant’ nose.44 The Greek ideal of beauty, as manifest in its classic sculpture, defined as aesthetic a light skin, a smooth body and a nose that is small like its anatomic parallel, the small (uncircumcised) male organ.45 The harmony attributed to these physical features was regarded as a sign of spiritual harmony. Anyone with different features – the Jew and the black – was necessarily perceived as unaesthetic, i.e. as not good. From this standpoint a common denominator was created between appearances attributed to the black and the Jew, and what this appearance represents for the white designator. For the black too, the myth of superior potency is based on the belief that his sex organ is particularly large. Many sources describe the black man as ‘a walking phallus’.46 There is a parallel, too, between the broad, non-normative foot attributed to the black, which appears in a question in BT Shabbat 31a, ‘Why do Africans 31

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have broad feet[?]’ (see also Avot de’Rabbi Nathan 16: 2), and the flat foot that appears in anti-Semitic literature from the Middle Ages, to features of the pseudo-scientific literature of the nineteenth and early twentieth century attributed to the Jews. In both cases, an associative link is immediately made with Satan’s cloven hooves.47 The Jew is identified as having full lips like the black, and being particularly hairy, in contrast with the smooth-skinned white European. This served them as proof positive of a bestial, apelike nature, and immediately provided another association with the hairy image of Satan.48 The white male European shows his fear of black and Jew alike in the attempt to define both as inferior others, so as to exclude and taboo them, thus nullifying the threat they pose, in his own eyes, to his mastery over white females. In Shakespearean tragedy the same stereotypes operate in the image of Othello, the ultimate black, and of the Merchant of Venice, the ultimate Jew. As Othello’s ‘sooty bosom’ (I, ii, 85–87) sets him apart from the Venetians, so the ‘devil’ Shylock is set apart by his black cloak.49 Perhaps that is why Shakespeare chose, even unconsciously, to call his devilish black character in Titus Andronicus by so Hebrew a name as Aaron.50 Indeed, in Shylock’s unforgettable words, ‘Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?’51 ‘Black’ could easily replace ‘Jew’ and convey the same message.52 That being so, the Jewish other wants to distinguish himself from the black other, as different and superior. Within the ‘non-white’ framework of otherness, there is a definitive hierarchic order of the other’s other.53 When the ruling majority culture – pagan, Christian or Muslim – placed the Jew along with the black in the group of inferior others, Jews increasingly tended to differentiate themselves from blacks. It began in the time of the Sages, continued with the medieval scholar and even the emancipated modern Jew, all of whom identified the black as the rejected other, to separate him from themselves and show their own relative proximity, if not superiority, to the fair-skinned ruling group: they had, after all, received a unique revelation and therefore theirs was an older, more developed culture. Following rejection, there is the psychological need not only to prove to oneself and others that one is not inferior to those who think themselves superior, but also to find groups even lower in the normative order. Some meagre consolation, some psychological compensation, comes from the sense that even if you accept the view of yourself as lower than others, there is still someone you can treat as inferior. It is a common phenomenon in mass psychology that repressed groups long to find and repress their inferiors. The common denominator between the repressed and repressing groups is the assumption that there are people who are even more inferior. In repressing those thought to be even lower than they are, two purposes are achieved: identification with the ruling oppressors and a salutary separation from those lower on the scale, placing themselves, at least relatively, in a higher position. People relegated to a middle station by the ruling power will always want to identify with those above – that is, with those who placed themselves above – not with those below. 32

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That being so, the Jew will seek to identify himself as far as possible with the dominant white male, or even as his superior, inter alia, to maintain the distinction between himself and his other, the truly inferior black. The Jew’s relationship to the ruling white (non-Jewish) male will always be ambivalent because of the tension between feelings of superiority and inferiority. Even the rabbinical scholar, with his sense of superiority as the Chosen of divine Providence, identifies one who is by nature a master as ‘German’, as does the Midrashic author of Bereshit Rabbah.54 He is full of admiration for the handsome, ‘cultured’ ‘sons of Japheth’, as stated in Pirkei de’Rabbi Eliezer 24: ‘Japheth and his sons are all white and handsome’.55 Following him, Abarbanel, for example, sounds a note of envy over Japheth (the Greeks, Romans and their European descendants).56 This stands out sharply against the rabbinical prohibition against praising the gentiles for their beauty. Here is how BT Avodah Zarah 19b–20a interprets the prohibition against any contact at all with the gentiles in the land of Israel in Deuteronomy 7: 1–2, which orders their utter destruction and concludes: ‘nor be gracious to them’. The Talmudic interpretation is ‘you shall not admire their grace’ (compare with Maimonides, Hilkhot Avodah Zarah 77: 14). Given such stern prohibitions, praising the gentiles’ appearance and culture is strange indeed. The very fact that such contact was explicitly forbidden shows that it was widespread, for prohibitions are not made against what does not exist. The very existence of such laudatory phrases indicates that some Jews had a low self-image, accepted the aesthetic standards of the dominant society and hence wanted to resemble its people, as far as possible. An outstanding medieval example appears in the anti-Christian polemics found in the Hebrew literature of that period. The very fact that the authors again and again strove to confront the claim attributed to the Christians that Jews were dark and therefore ugly, in comparison with Christians who were fairer and so more beautiful, shows clearly how much the subject worried them. They too seem to have accepted as an empirical fact that Jews had darker skins.56a And this happened in a cultural mentality, which they appear to have internalized, that dark and ugly was a sign of degeneracy and evil, while beautiful and fair represented good and purity. Further expressions of this phenomenon are found in commentaries of Rashi and Abraham ibn Ezra on Isaiah 52: 14: ‘As many were astonished at thee; his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men.’ Rashi says: When many nations looked upon them in their abasement and said, why is the appearance [of Israel] thus marred, they saw how much darker (hashuh to’aram) they were than other people, which our own eyes behold. 57. Most significant is Rashi’s acceptance of the Christian claim that Jews are darker than other people and hence ugly, as an undisputed empirical fact (‘which our own eyes behold’). He simply provides a theological explanation. 33

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The specifically polemic literature expresses this attitude in even greater detail. Also Rashi’s interpretation of ‘I am black but comely’ from Song of Songs explains the darkened skin as a sign of aesthetic and therefore of moral backsliding, as we shall see below. The polemic writings repeat the same arguments, since the authors copy from one another. Sefer Yosef ha-Mekaneh (Joseph the Zealous) written by Joseph bar Nathan Offiziel in northern France in the middle of the thirteenth century, contains the following dispute between an apostate Jew and the author’s father, R. Nathan: ‘I made you contemptible and base before all the people’ (Malachi 2: 9). Said a certain apostate to Rabbi Nathan: You are uglier than any people on earth, and our people are very handsome. He replied: Those big plums that grow along the Seine, what blossom do they have? He said to him, White. And what [colour] is the apple blossom? He said: Red. He answered: That is what we are, from a pure white seed, and our faces are dark (shehorim), while you are Edomites, a red race, conceived from menstruant women, so that you are yellow and red. Why so? Because we are in exile as it is said in Song of Songs (1: 6): ‘Look not upon me because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me: my mother’s children were angry with me; they made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard I have not kept.’ But when I kept my own vineyard I was most beautiful, as it is written: ‘And thy renown went forth among the heathen for thy beauty’ (Ezekiel 16: 14).58 There is a purpose in putting the words into the mouth of an apostate, who is trying to be as much as possible like the ruling group and has even joined it. To rationalize and legitimize this step, it is obviously in his interest to stress the aesthetic and hence moral inferiority of the group he has abandoned for a ‘higher’ one. What is instructive is that neither here nor in the other examples does the Jew deny the Christian claim that the Jews are ‘black’ and that dark skin is ugly. The Jew accepts the canonical norms as indisputable empirical fact. The argument is not with aesthetic judgement and not with the ‘facts’, but only with reasons and interpretations. What the apostate sees as proof positive of the Jew’s inferiority, due to the accepted link between outward appearance and internal quality, the Jew sees as quite the reverse – a sign of superiority – and provides a botanical example. As the plum has a white blossom and dark fruit and the apple a red blossom and lighter, red and yellow fruit, so the Jew is ‘white’ in essence though his complexion is dark – like the plum – since he was conceived in purity, and though the Christian has a lighter exterior (not precisely white, but ‘yellow and reddish’, i.e. blond and ruddy!) he is ‘ruddy’, i.e. dark in essence, since Christians lie with menstruant women. The author undoubtedly saw a link between the Christian’s ‘ruddy’ complexion, the circumstances in 34

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which he was conceived and the Midrashic identification of Christianity with ‘Edom’.59 According to the Jew, one should not look at the vessel but at its contents: the Jews are externally dark but internally ‘white’, while the reverse is true of Christians. But one senses that the Jew did not quite convince himself with his own argument and so added Rashi’s traditional, more radical view as regards skin colour: Jews were once ‘white’ and beautiful, their appearance in keeping with their internal nature, but became dark and ugly because of their sins. The commentary on ‘I am black but comely’, discussed later, gives Midrashic ornamentation to the claim. This assumption that the Jews were originally white and therefore handsome finds different forms of expression in the course of Jewish cultural history. The desirable woman in Song of Songs is ‘fair as the sun, clear as the moon’ (6: 10) while her beloved is described as ‘white [and ruddy]’ (5: 10).60 A story in BT Sanhedrin 92b relates that the young men of Israel going into exile were so handsome that the wives of the gentiles lost control of themselves, and the men had to be killed. In a Midrash in Bamidbar Rabbah 13: 10, we find: ‘“Thou art all fair, my love, and there is no spot in thee” (Song of Songs 4: 7) which speaks of Israel.’ Not by chance did Abarbanel understand that this beauty meant a white skin. In his commentary on Genesis 12: 11 on the descent of Abraham and Sarah into Egypt, following the Sages, he explains Abraham’s description of Sarah as ‘fair to look upon’ as ‘a woman fair to look upon … because her appearance was her whiteness (ha-loven shela)’. That is why Abraham feared lest the ugly, black Egyptians would kill him and take her. As it happens, this commentary has a much earlier predecessor that Abarbanel could not have known about. The apocrypha on Genesis found in the Dead Sea Scrolls describes the praise of Pharaoh’s ministers for Sarah’s beauty. Here too it is identified with white skin: ‘How beautiful her eyes are, how charming her nose and the whole radiance of her countenance. … How beautiful her bosom and how fine all her whiteness is.’ There are parallel Midrashim in the Aggadah (Bereshit Rabbah 40: 4).61 It turns out, then, that a long tradition associated Sarah’s beauty with light skin. The Sages depict the dichotomy between Jacob the ‘good’ (tam), who lives in tents, and Esau the ‘wicked’, a bestial ‘man of the field’ (Gen. 25: 27) by means of the primordial distinction between light and darkness: ‘And God called the light day. This is Jacob. And the darkness he called night. This is Esau’ (Bereshit Rabbah 2: 4). Abarbanel translated this distinction into differences in skin colour. In his commentary on the Torah portion ‘Toldot’ Abarbanel identified Esau, the archetypal father of Edom, i.e. the Christians, not as white but as ruddy, while Jacob, who is Israel, is said to have white skin. The difference in external appearances is, of course, perceived as expressing the huge difference in their internal quality: Esau and Jacob were of completely opposite dispositions since Esau was as red as a skin cloak, which showed his hot blood and smoldering temperament and thus red and black bile would overcome him. Jacob’s 35

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was quite opposite in disposition and nature because he was a white man (lavan), not red complexioned, and moreover had a smooth skin, the sign of an almost perfect temperament.62 Israel, then, is identified as the original white man and hence as even tempered and perfect in his qualities, while the Christian, identified with Esau, is ruddy and therefore necessarily hot blooded and quick to shed blood. Hence the author of Joseph the Zealous called the (northern) Christian ‘yellow and red’, not truly white. It is significant too that Esau is described as one ruled not only by red bile, which makes him red, but also by black bile, which blurs the distinction between him and those whose skin is black. Both Esau and the blacks, as we saw in Abarbanel’s commentary on Genesis 12: 11, are identified as ‘coloured’ by contrast with Israel, who is ‘white’. That being so, it is perhaps again no accident that his maternal uncle is ‘Lavan’ (‘white’ in Hebrew), and when Rebekah sends her son out of the way of Esau’s revenge, she does it on the pretext that he should not marry the impure, i.e. the non-white, daughters of Canaan, since Canaan is identified in the Midrashim of the Aggadah as black,63 but rather the daughters of his ‘white’ uncle who are like him (Gen. 27: 43–46; 28: 1–6), to preserve ethnic purity. Our sources also contain a more moderate version of this claim, according to which Jacob’s original complexion was between black and white, neither too black nor too white, as we find in Mishnah Taharot, Negaim 2:1: R. Ishmael said: the children of Israel, may I be their atonement, are like a box tree, neither too black (shehorim) nor too white (levanim), but in between. This perception is based on a pseudo-Aristotelian theory that the intermediate quality is the desirable one, the golden mean, and it certainly reflects the empirical reality of the complexion of the children of Israel, here depicted as ideal.64 However, even having accepted this attitude one could assume that their skin grew dark, i.e. became ugly, over the generations as a sign of their sins. The original colour of the skin of Israel, then, was ‘white’, according to the author of Joseph the Zealous and Abarbanel, or at least ‘neither too dark nor too light’, following R. Ishmael and others. Just as ‘for our sins we were exiled from our land’, so for our sins, our skin was darkened. The punishment is both in the geographical sphere and in skin colour. If the people of Israel repent and return to their land they will become white, or at least that middle shade, once again (i.e. they will meet the aesthetic ideal of Christian Europe!), and their external appearance will be congruent with their internal nature. The link between skin colour changes and geographic location is connected to the theory of climatic influences. Since the land of Israel is thought to be in a temperate ideal climate, the return to the land will of necessity restore their original skin colour. The author finds proof in a Midrash in Song of Songs Rabbah on the text 36

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‘Look not upon me because I am black’, which we encounter again and again. Indeed, as already noted in the Midrash on Song of Songs 1: 41, Israel is likened to a white-skinned king’s son who went out into the desert where sun and dirt darkened his skin. The white skin is likened to the original purity of Israel, and darkening and dirt to backsliding into idolatry. However, while Israel is represented as one who can become white again, i.e. repent of his ways, and ‘his body became white and his beauty returned’, the gentile’s black and dirty skin is an inherent quality, reflecting his internal turpitude: ‘You are dark from your mother’s womb.’ 65 This allegation is repeated in Sefer Vikuah Teshuvah la-Minim (A Book of Debate with the Gentiles), in which a Jew and a gentile argue: And if a gentile tells you, we are beautiful and you are not, tell him: Before our Temple was destroyed we were more beautiful, as you will find in Daniel where Nebuchadnezzar took Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah to stand in his palace, and found none among his own people so fair as they. And Jeremiah in the Scroll of Lamentations (4: 2, 5) says, ‘the precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold … brought up in scarlet.’ When our Temple was destroyed, that beauty was taken away, as it is also written in Lamentations 4: 2: ‘how they are esteemed as the work of the hands of the potter.’ And God is going to return us our beauty as it is said in Jeremiah, ‘Again will I build thee, and thou shalt be built, O virgin of Israel; thou shall again be adorned with thy tabrets, and shall go forth in the dances of them that make merry’ (31: 4).66 Again the Jew does not deny the Christian allegation that Jews are not ‘beautiful’. He gets into the same apologetic defence: originally they were ‘beautiful’, but became ugly because of their sins and from the tribulations of the Exile, to become beautiful again once they have repented, with the coming of the Messiah. Clearly, not being beautiful in this context has to mean not being truly ‘white’, since the two are bound together in the ideal of the Christian in the dialogue. A third example, evidently based on Joseph the Zealous, appears in Sefer Nizzahon Yashan, compiled in southern Germany and northern France (‘Ashkenaz’) by an unknown author in the early fourteenth century.67 It follows the formula ‘Know what to answer’, and presents the most radical formulation of the claim that the Jews are black and ugly, but with a new explanation: The gentiles ask and say: Why are most gentiles white and beautiful (levanim ve-iafim) and most Jews black and ugly (shehorim ve-keurim)? Answer them that it is like a fruit: when it begins to blossom it is white but when fully ripe it becomes black like those [a dark species] plums, while fruit that is red in the beginning will have white fruit, like apples 37

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or peaches. This proves to Israel that it is pure of menstrual blood, with no red whatever in the beginning. But the gentiles are not warned against such blood, and copulate [even] when they see blood, so there is red in the beginning: hence the fruit it brings forth is white, and they are white. And one should also answer: the gentiles fornicate in the beds of women by day, seeing beautiful faces and pictures and give birth to children that resemble them, as it is said: ‘And he set the [striped] rods which had piled before the flocks in the gutters in the watering troughs. … And the flocks conceived before the rods, and brought forth cattle ringstraked, speckled, and spotted’ (Gen. 30: 29–35).68 Differently from the author of Joseph the Zealous who wrote of ‘ugly’ Jews and only afterwards linked this to their dark skin, the author of Sefer Nizzahon Yashan constructs the ultimate parallel from the beginning: the gentiles are white and hence beautiful, while the Jews are dark and hence ugly. The basic difference between them is skin colour, from which the distinction between beauty and ugliness follows naturally. Nor does the Jew even dispute the ‘fact’ that Jews are ‘black’ in comparison with whites, nor the aesthetic judgement that follows. He simply explains the phenomenon with the argument of ‘the opposite appears true’, from the earlier book. Besides repeating its botanical parable, relating to the purity in which conception takes place among Jews and the defilement in which it occurs among Christians, the author brings up another point about the environment of conception. The basis is the accepted assumption of Greek medicine, and medieval medicine that stemmed from it,69 that if at the moment of conception, the couple think of certain subjects or look at certain objects, the character and appearance of the infant will be affected. Out of modesty, Jews have sexual intercourse in the darkness of the night (Ruth Rabbah 2: 17; BT Nidah 16b and parallel texts). That is why Jewish offspring are ‘black’. By contrast, Christians are fornicators by nature and copulate in the light of day, so their children are ‘white’. Their beauty is explained not only as following axiomatically from their whiteness, but also by the ‘fact’ that they look at beautiful pictures at the moment of conception, thus giving birth to beautiful children. This directly contradicts the practice of the Jews, forbidden to look at pictures and statues, who in any case have sexual intercourse in the dark, where they see nothing. The result is another case of the opposite appearing true: the Jews’ dark skin expresses their purity and morality, while the white skin of Christians expresses the contrary condition of sexual and moral corruption, being sunk in idolatry: they make images and look upon them when they satisfy their lusts by the light of day. As an illustration, the writer cites the Bible story in which Jacob influenced the colour of the flocks. Especially interesting here is that in Bereshit Rabbah 73, as we see later,70 a story is told of a black couple who gave birth to a fairskinned child. The Midrashic author attributes this unnatural occurrence, 38

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which he considers positive, to the fact that the woman was looking at a white mirror at the moment of conception. The compiler of Sefer Nizzahon Yashan, relating only to the original scriptural source, does not mention the Midrash directly, although the context indicates that he knew of it. This story had ramifications in late Hellenistic literature as well. Heliodorus’s Ethiopika contains a story of an Ethiopian princess who gave birth to a white-skinned daughter with blonde hair, meeting the highest standards of beauty in the Roman upper class. She explains this by her contemplation of an image of the fair-skinned Andromeda at the moment of conception. Andromeda’s appearance is no coincidence either, since in the original myth, Andromeda was the daughter of the Ethiopian queen Cassiopeia, so she it was whose fair image, before the eyes of another Ethiopian queen, is presented as causing the birth of a fair-skinned daughter!71 The author may have known some medieval version of this story. He deliberately replaced the black in the Midrash (and in the Hellenistic version) with the Jewish people as those whose dark colouring comes from looking at dark objects while having sexual intercourse modestly, in the darkness of night.72 In any event, in another case of the contrary appearing true, the dark complexion is ‘proof’ of Jewish modesty and genetic purity, while the ‘white’ skin of the Christians proves their sexual degeneracy and genetic contamination. The author sees the Christian taunting the Jew over his ‘black’ skin as acting like Balaam: he goes forth to curse and finds himself blessing, while the Jew still accepts the Christian’s ‘racist’ aesthetic norms. Interestingly, the author does not use the convenient argument ‘For our sins, we were expelled from our land’ – and lost our beautiful fair complexions too. From this standpoint his attitude is more extreme than the one in Joseph the Zealous and Abarbanel, where the original complexion of the Jews was assumed to have been fairer, and is to be regained when the Messiah comes. By contrast, the author of Sefer Nizzahon Yashan accepts completely the Christian assertion that the Jewish skin was originally dark and therefore always ugly, but with another ‘on the contrary’ argument, it seeks to show that the aesthetic inferiority of the Jews proves their moral and genetic superiority. Possibly it is no coincidence that these examples come from the north of France and southern German areas – where differences in skin and hair colour between Jews and Christians were easy to see. Even the Sages saw the ultimate white as ‘German’. I know of no awareness in a negative judgemental context of ‘dark’ Jewish skin among scholars within the ‘Sephardic’ or Mediterranean cultural area. Indeed, one would expect that in that region hair and skin differences between Jews and, say, Italians or Spaniards would be marginal at most. Indeed, when Abraham ibn Ezra and David Kimhi commented on Isaiah 52: 14, as did Abarbanel, unlike Rashi they did not relate specifically to skin colour but only to the Jew’s strange appearance in Christian eyes. Abarbanel did speak of the beauty of the children of Japheth, probably indicating some inferiority feeling, but without relating specifically to skin colour. The medieval Ashkenazi Jew, accepting the Christian view that dark skin is 39

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necessarily ugly, tried to extract the sweet from the bitter, and was in a state of ambivalent tension between inferiority and superiority feelings. He did not try to change the situation, which would in any case have been impossible in the historic and scientific circumstances of the time. Desire for change is a function of real possibilities to effect it, and when a situation cannot be changed, it tends to become legitimized. By contrast, the modern European Jew in the process of emancipation will not only accept as an empirical fact the white European Christian designation of himself as ‘dark’, and of other physical features that go with the colour as ugly or ‘uncultivated’. He will even conclude that he should resemble the white, ‘beautiful’, ‘cultivated’ European gentile as far as possible, following a familiar adage of enlightened Jewry: ‘Be a Jew at home and a human being outside.’ Changing historical and scientific circumstances made this increasingly possible, where ‘be a human being’ meant being like the white, European upper class male, the only basis of identification for the truly complete, fulfilled man.73 The very desire to be like someone else, even externally, shows a low self-image, since one who has a high self-image will not want to change it. From this standpoint, the emancipationist Jew, like the black, internalized the negative canonical image, not only as a binding norm but as indisputable truth. Just how intensely such a Jew had internalized the ‘black’ image is evident from the ideological and personal confrontations between Marx and his contemporaries. Marx, himself a converted Jew, called his rival Ferdinand Lasalle a ‘nigger Jew’, using the degrading American epithet ‘nigger’. In a letter to Friedrich Engels he describes Lasalle as a descendant of one of the blacks who attached themselves to the Israelites during the Exodus. As noted before, this was a characteristic claim of the proto-Nazi anti-Semitism of the time. But the very same insults were hurled at Marx himself by Bakunin, among others. Even his friend Engels affectionately called Marx ‘dear Moor’. Marx was quite aware of his relatively dark skin and naturally projected his inferiority feelings on Lasalle, to humiliate him. Even letters from Marx’s young wife are full of sexual innuendoes connected with the exotic hue of his skin.74 Hence too the emancipationist western European Jew, settled there a relatively long time, so sharply rejected the Ostjude, the eastern European Jew, ‘black’ in countenance and in clothing. ‘Cultivated’ European Jews had become a bit lighter, in their own eyes at least, and were afraid to be identified once again with the dark, ‘primitive’ east Europeans. Anyone coming from the east was instinctively identified as dark and primitive, by comparison with the light and enlightened western person. Hence the western Jew needed to differentiate himself as far as possible from the Ostjude, whose increasing presence threatened to make him, the cultured European, the rejected other once again. The more he separated himself from the eastern Jew and identified him as his inferior other, the more strongly he could identify with the white, cultured, Christian European. The Ostjude became the other of the western Jew. The same thing happened in the United States, when veteran Jewish immigrants of ‘German’ 40

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extraction shuddered at the appearance (in both senses) of masses of ‘dark’, ‘primitive’ Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe at the end of the nineteenth century, threatening the white European-American identity they had so scrupulously adopted. On the other hand, ordinary anti-Semites, who thought little of Jewish efforts to be white and cultivated, sought to identify western Jews with real Jews, who, as far as they were concerned, were the dark, primitive Ostjude.75 To be identified as far as possible as ‘human being’, in the sense defined earlier, western Jews of this type would seek to obliterate as much as they could any external sign of Jewishness, starting from residential neighbourhood, occupation and clothing, and concluding with an altered name and nose. The development of plastic surgery at the end of the nineteenth century enabled many to have ‘nose jobs’ to bring that feature closer to the normative ideal. The Jew who continued to identify as such by circumcision, ‘shortening’ his sex organ, would not hesitate to conceal his Judaism from outsiders by shortening its anatomical counterpart. Circumcision makes it possible to remain a Jew while confining that fact to the most intimate domain, while nasal surgery conceals the same fact, just as the circumcised sex organ is concealed. The point is not to be too visible, as visibility stresses otherness. One wants to be identified in public as ‘a person’, as an individual in one’s own right, not just as other, and certainly not as belonging to a group that one regards as ‘ugly’, meaning inferior.76 From this point of view, the old motto of the Jewish Enlightenment has been completely fulfilled: ‘Be a Jew in your home’ (the shortened, concealed sex organ) ‘and a human being when you go out’ (shortening the visible organ). Skin colour lightened and stature increased naturally with a change of place, the results of a different diet and life-style being completed by artificially bleached skin and hair. The American Jew of today does not resemble his relatively dark forefathers who came from eastern Europe two or three generations ago, but is just like the (white) American.77 Marriages with partners of WASP (white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant) descent complete the process: Jewish Americans, even those of Sephardi origin, are not likely to marry blacks or Hispanics. The present trend will not only blur Jewish otherness entirely, but will also obliterate the existence of Jews as other in the coming generations, making them ‘white’, non-Jews in every respect. By externally resembling the ruling white group that determines values, such a Jew is not only trying to improve himself, to become more ‘beautiful’ and hence ‘better’, given the perception of appearance as a sign of internal quality. He is at the same time trying to separate himself from the other’s other, the inferior black. While the Jew can blur external characteristics and ‘pass for white’, the black cannot, even if he straightens his hair and behaves ‘nicely’. Can the black change his skin? Even Michael Jackson managed to do so only in a limited fashion. This causes the Jewish other, on a more ‘respectable’ level of otherness, not only to distance himself from the black other, but also to efface his own external otherness completely, and to identify more and more with the perfect ‘white’, who is the black’s absolute other. This may in part explain the 41

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tensions that have developed in recent years between Jewish and black communities in the United States when the Jews, with their different genetic traits, succeed in doing what many blacks long to do but cannot – to resemble the ruling ‘whites’ as much as possible, and even assimilate completely with them. The New Jew of the Zionist ideal is undergoing a similar process in a different context. Again it is no chance that Sabras define themselves as New Jews, qualitatively different from the old Diaspora Jew not only in world view and life-style but also, as a necessary corollary, in external appearance and even in skin colour. The great rebellion against the galut (Diaspora – not as pejorative a term as the Hebrew in this context) appeared first as a radical change in external appearance. As an antithesis to the anti-Semitic archetype, stooped and physically degenerate, ugly and ‘black’, which even the Jews had internalized, appears Max Nordau’s ideal of ‘muscular Judaism’, and with it the tall, blonde, muscular Sabra who even has blue eyes, like the white European Christian model he ran from but still wants to resemble. The New Jew adopted the old anti-Semitic images of the galut, seeking to free himself by resembling as far as possible the white European Christian archetype who no longer rules him, and whom he will now compete with on his own home ground. Unsurprisingly, Paul Newman, the typical tall, blonde, blue-eyed white male, was chosen to play the Sabra hero Ari ben Canaan in the movie Exodus, the ultimate hero in literary fiction, at least for the American Jew who would like to identify with the New Israeli Jew, a copy of what he himself longs to be. In this way the new Israeli Jew tries to be ‘A Hebrew-speaking gentile’, resembling the model in conduct and in appearance, but no longer ruled by him.78 While the dark others of the emancipated European and American Jews were Ostjuden, and their even darker others were the blacks, ‘Afro-Americans’, the dark others of the Israeli Ashkenazi Jew, the original Sabra, are ‘oriental’ Jews, while the dark others of both groups are the Arabs. By no coincidence the Yiddish slang of eastern European immigrants to Israel once contained the vulgar epithet schwarze hayeh (black beast), meaning immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East. The other is identified first of all by skin colour visà-vis the designator, which then automatically brings in the ‘beast’, meaning someone whose condition is ‘primitive’ and natural in the negative sense: by contrast the designator sees himself as a child of the true culture. Here too we discern a series of others based on grades of ethnicism and culture, indicated inter alia by shades of complexion. As the New Israeli (Ashkenazi) Jew, like his European and American counterpart, wants to resemble the ultimate European model, so the ‘eastern’ Jew functions as the Ashkenazi’s other, while both place the Arab on the lowest rung, inferior to them all. By taking on the aesthetic and social norms of the ‘white’ Ashkenazi establishment, the eastern Jew wants not only to move up socially, but to break away from the associative link the establishment makes between him and the Arab as children of supposedly inferior ‘eastern’ culture. Both, as Jews, want to appear to the white European designator as more ‘progressive’ than the ultimate dark ‘primitive’ other. 42

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Only the ultra Orthodox (Ashkenazi) Jew maintains his physical otherness symbolizing moral and spiritual superiority not only from the gentiles but from Jews he condemns as ‘assimilating’ to one degree or another. But he too has his ‘black’ other. As the ‘non-religious’ eastern Jew serves the ‘not religious’ Ashkenazi as other, so eastern Jews becoming more intensely Orthodox adopt the dress, behaviour patterns and external appearance of Ashkenazi ultra Orthodox, and sometimes even outdo them in these particulars.

IV Since the origin of these images is so primordial, they are found in the very earliest writings. The text of Song of Songs 1: 5–6 relates ambivalently though not of necessity negatively to dark skin: ‘I am black (shehorah) and comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon: Look not upon me because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me.’ Here ‘black’ and ‘comely’ are synonymous positive images, reinforcing the speaker’s beauty in her own eyes. But she has to contend with the aesthetic norms that saw an advantage in light skin: hence the negative ‘Look not upon me …’.79 Indeed, elsewhere (6: 10) ideal feminine beauty is identified with white: ‘Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun?’ The very existence of such norms indicates the existential dread of anything identified with a darker complexion: hence the efforts to avoid it, and the attempts to have as light a skin as possible, to keep poles apart from those with dark skin, and as close as possible to the light-skinned people one wants to resemble. The subject here is suntanned skin, not natural blackness that cannot become lighter. Shrinking aesthetically from suntanned skin indicates a dread that the individual who has such a complexion could be identified with one who is naturally black – with all the negative aesthetic and moral connotations. The female voice in Song of Songs takes a stand against such norms. Her opposition indicates just how rooted, how accepted they were: hence the ambivalence in the text. Possibly she, the village girl, the true daughter of Israel, is speaking out against attempts of her city counterparts, the daughters of Jerusalem, to look like the gentiles, the fairer ‘children of Japheth’ and to accept their aesthetic standards, with all the theo-ethnic implications that their stance implies. She it is who represents the ethnic and religious pride of the dark-skinned and comely, an ancient version of ‘Black is beautiful’, against the normative dilemmas of those who want to identify with the light-skinned designator, accepting the gentile world view. The dispute over the relative aesthetic value of skin colour is also one of class and of values between the village and city girls, between ethnic pride and assimilation. We cannot possibly know exactly what colour skin the ancient Israelites had. However, from remarks like Jeremiah’s ‘Can the Black change his skin?’ one infers that his was much lighter than the black’s, though again we cannot know how much lighter. The fear of a skin too dark, expressed in the Song of Songs, may indicate that the Israelites were not entirely fair skinned, 43

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certainly not by comparison with the ‘Sons of Japheth’. Our quotation from R. Ishmael on the ‘in between’ shade of the Israelite skin points to the same conclusion. Hence the fear of too much sun, which, heaven forbid, might blur the distinction between ‘tanned’ and ‘black’. More examples are to come. The feminine speaker’s disruptive views on skin colour are entirely compatible with the anti-patriarchal elements in the highly ambiguous text of the Song of Songs, where there are clear indications of sexual acts, at least in the speaker’s dreams, and significant egalitarian elements: ‘I am my beloved’s and he is mine’ (2: 16). The woman is the main speaker, with a disruptive attitude to relationships between men and women, just as she challenges the accepted norms of beauty and skin colour, laid down by the male designator.80 It is no surprise that the Shulamit challenges the relationship between the sexes in her attitudes to the males in her life: her lover, and the brothers she tries to evade as they attempt to fulfil their traditional duty of protecting her innocence. By contrast, she confronts the daughters of Jerusalem on the aesthetic value of complexion. Indeed, we shall see later that historically skin colour has been a central component of the polemic literature on the nature of woman. It will be important, too, in the struggle among women for male favour. While the advantage of ‘white’ skin over ‘black’ was determined by the male designator, women took it for granted. Thus the Shulamit undermines aesthetic and value norms laid down by males and adopted by women struggling to survive in a maledominated world. She presents a clear challenge to the women who accept the rules of the game without question, as she does to the male designator. The Aggadic Midrashim of the Sages are quite different from the ambivalent Bible text. Their central formulations are in Shemot Rabbah 49: 2, in the Midrash on Song of Songs 1: 35–36, and the Aramaic translation of Song of Songs. Here there is a sharp dichotomy between ‘black’ and ‘comely’. While in the Hebrew Bible ambivalence is deliberate and one identifies a clear challenge as regards skin colour and female sexuality as well, the Aggadic Midrashim are entirely patriarchal and hence react negatively to the scriptural identification of black with comely. Sehmot Rabbah highlights this with a rhetorical question: ‘I am black and comely[?]’.81 It is quite clear to the author that the two represent irreconcilable opposites. Following Midrashic traditions, both versions interpret Song of Songs as a historical allegory of the relationship between the people of Israel and God. The ‘black’ image represents the evil deeds of Israel, while ‘comely’ the good deeds. The confrontation between ‘black’ and ‘comely’ represents Israel’s continuous internal conflict. Thus in Song of Songs Rabbah 1: 35 (also Bereshit Rabba 23: 11): ‘I am black’ in the wilderness, ‘How often did they rebel against him in the wilderness’ (Ps. 78: 40). ‘… but comely’: in the wilderness at the setting up of the tabernacle, ‘And on the day that the tabernacle was set up’ (Num. 9:15). ‘I am black’ in the deed of the spies, ‘And they spread an evil report of the land’ (Num. 13: 32). ‘… but comely’ in the 44

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deed of Joshua and Caleb, ‘Save for Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite’ (Num. 32:12). ‘I am black’ at Shittim, ‘and Israel abode at Shittim and the people began to commit harlotry with the daughters of Moab’ (Num. 25:1). ‘…but comely’ at Shittim, ‘Then arose Phinehas and wrought judgment’ (Ps. 106:30). And so forth with an abundance of historical biblical examples. The confrontation arising here between two shades of complexion represents the spiritual conflict between doing good and doing evil in God’s sight. The latter is consistently represented by a dark skin. Deliberately, the Midrashic author included the famous text from Amos 9: 7: ‘Are ye not as Blacks unto me, O children of Israel?’ His interpretation maintains the dichotomy, relating ‘ye’ to what precedes it as well as to what follows, as if it were written twice: ‘I am black, but comely’, Said the Community of Israel, ‘I am black’ in my view, ‘but comely before my creator’. For it is written, ‘Are you not as the children of the Blacks to me, O children of Israel says the Lord’ (Amos 9: 7) ‘as the children of the Blacks’ – in your sight, but ‘to Me, O children of Israel, says the Lord’.82 Even though the children of Israel are like the children of the blacks (ki’vnei cushi’im), i.e. they do evil in the sight of God, God has not annulled his covenant with them and in his eyes they are still the children of Israel. Medieval commentators tend to rely heavily on the Midrash and to ignore the original Scripture completely: Rashi, Nachmanides, Moses ibn Tibbon, Joseph ibn Aknin and Gersonides are some examples. Only Abraham ibn Ezra, as usual, disputes the Midrashic interpretation.83 With this single exception, all assume that black represents the physical and lightness (‘comely’) the spiritual, and that one who has sinned can once again rise to a spiritual state, even as skin blackened by the sun can become fair again in the shade. Since all assumed that black represented something negative, they had to get away from the literal meaning of the text and to accentuate the dichotomy between ‘black’ and ‘comely’. Rashi’s explanation is especially interesting, since he presents the simple meaning of the text as the story of a woman neglected by her husband because she became too suntanned and, in his view, grew black and ugly. This obviously fits in with the parable of sinful Israel neglected by God. The husband acts according to medieval and Talmudic aesthetic standards, and leaves his wife who looks too much like a black woman for his taste. Differently from the original biblical text, where the speaker emerges as one who controls her body and her sexuality, here she is a passive object under the thumb of the ruling male. No doubt there is a common denominator linking attitudes to women and to a complexion identified as dark. Both are identified by the ruling element who determines values, i.e. by the relatively light-skinned male, as ‘other’, either subordinated or rejected on the basis of sex and/or ‘race’: 45

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I am black but comely, etc. You are my friends, do not scorn me even if my spouse has left me because of my blackness. I am black because of the sun and comely because of my good features and figure. If I am black as the tents of Kedar that grow black in the rain when they are pitched in the desert, I can easily be washed and become like the tents of Solomon. This is the example, says Knesset Israel, to the gentiles. I am black in my deeds and comely in the deeds of my ancestors.84 The motif of the wife abandoned because she became too suntanned and hence ugly in her husband’s eyes appears as early as Bereshit Rabbah 18: 8 in connection with sending away the ‘strange wives’ in Ezra 9: 6ff. The Midrashic author raises the question of what made those who returned to Zion take foreign wives in the first place. The explanation comes in the form of a commentary on Malachi 2: 11–16: R. Hanan said: When Nehemiah came up from the land of exile [to Eretz Israel, he found that] the women’s faces had been blackened (nitpahamu) by the sun, so that [their husbands] had gone and married strange [i.e. heathen] wives, while these would go round the altar weeping. Thus Malachi says, ‘And this ye do a second time’ (2: 13), i.e. ye actually repeat [the sin committed] at Shittim! … The Holy One, blessed be He, said: ‘Who will accept weeping and sighing from them [the husbands]? Having robbed her, oppressed her, and deprived her of her beauty, thou castest her away! This Midrash does not even hint at the Song of Songs motif, but it too raises the issue of ‘I am black but comely’. Contrary to Rashi, who justified the husband’s leaving his ‘black’ and ugly wife, the passage above relates to ‘strange wives’ who are white, and censures the desertion of the Jewish wives whose skins were blackened in the desert sun. As in the original Song of Songs text from the Bible, here too the ‘black’ woman, the true daughter of Israel, is rehabilitated and preferred above the strange ‘white’ woman. A thirteenth-century commentary from Minhat Kana’ut is more forgiving: Solomon said, do not look upon me because I am black, an apology for the people so they would not treat her [‘a people’ is a feminine noun in Hebrew] with contempt because she did not attain to the same wisdom as Solomon. Not because of her indolence did this happen, but because she was forced into toils and troubles under the sun.85 While the more traditional commentators explained these verses according to the rabbinical analogy of the relations of Israel with God, Gersonides gives them an entirely Aristotelian interpretation, in the rationalist spirit. The dialogue between the Shulamit and the daughters of Jerusalem is a metaphor for 46

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the right relationship between the different parts of the human soul, according to Aristotelian and Maimonidean psychology. The Shulamit represents the intellectual soul, the highest power in the human spirit, while the daughters of Jerusalem represent the lower powers of the soul. ‘Black’ represents the intellectual soul in its primordial, unfulfilled states, while ‘comely’ indicates the potential for realizing its intellectual abilities. The Shulamit’s ‘blackness’ from the sun represents the influence of material needs that are ‘under the sun’, i.e. they are in the material world, and prevent the intellectual soul from realizing its full potential. While traditional interpretations identify the state of blackness with the sins of Israel, the philosophical one identifies it with the weakness of the intellectual soul. With that, the two interpretations have common elements, since according to Aristotle’s and Maimonides’s psychology and ethical theory, weakness of the intellectual soul allows it to fall into sin and, unfulfilled, it shows itself in dark skin colour. This in itself grants philosophical legitimacy to identifying the black as one totally lacking in intellectual abilities, as Judah Halevi and Maimonides do. Thus the dark-complexioned person is marked as one ruled by inferior, animal-like mental powers and hence is ‘bestial’ by nature. Interestingly, Gersonides maintained that the repeated syllable in the Hebrew word that describes the dark Shulamit (sheharhoret) indicates that she was not simply suntanned, but really dark. The biblical text, however, like modern Hebrew, uses that word for a woman with relatively dark skin, either naturally or because of exposure to the sun, not one who is truly ‘black’. Ibn Ezra, with his good common sense, says: ‘It is a doubling of little.’ Possibly Gersonides needed an exceptional interpretation to stress the primordial state of the intellectual soul. In any case, the darker the identified skin colour turns out to be, the more completely it represents the absence of an intellectual soul.86 Manasseh ben Israel in his Bible exegesis Conciliator, written in the mid seventeenth century, still goes into detail in the spirit of the Midrash of the Sages. Early and medieval Christian theology follow the same exegetic method. In Origen, Augustine and others the motif of the ‘black bride’ appears, based on these verses of the Song of Songs, and on several from the Psalms, but they use it to prove the superiority of Christianity to Judaism. Abelard of the twelfth century went even further in his letter to Eloise, when he explained by means of a Christian reading of Song of Songs Rabbah why she, the nun and metaphorical bride of Christ, wears black. Similar to the black Shulamit, Eloise in her black habit is identified as ‘black’ outside, but ‘white’, meaning pure and virginal, within.87 This instinctive identification of the ugly woman as black and the beautiful one as white appears often in the polemic literature on the nature of women, so popular in the Jewish culture of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Even earlier, Ben-Sira 25–26 links the dichotomic description of the good and evil woman with skin colour metaphors: related, however, to her influence on her husband. The evil woman blackens her husband’s face, while the good one 47

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lightens it.88 The literature on the nature of women originally based their use of this motif on negative interpretations of ‘I am black’, but the writers and poets involved related the negative commentary to the original scriptural source, making that negative too. Relatively dark skin in itself is described negatively and indicates darkness, ugliness and evil, while light skin is associatively identified with light, beauty and morality. This aesthetic and value system was accepted in the Islamic world of the time and influenced Jewish scholars as well. Whiteness of countenance is the first criterion for beauty in both Arab and Hebrew canons in Andalusia. Neither the skin of Arabs nor that of Jews living in areas of Arab culture was particularly white, and this may have raised fears of becoming like the blacks – and the desire to resemble white Europeans as much as possible. Even Roman culture idealized the northern woman with her light skin and blonde hair, while it regarded the same colouring in men as ugly and unmanly. Gentlemen preferred blondes even then. Possibly Roman fashion influenced later cultures. If that was so, it is no coincidence that a complexion perceived as too dark, i.e. ugly, is frequently described in terms used to depict the black. Such imagery is conspicuous in misogynic texts of woman haters, but also appears in texts by the ‘woman lovers’ who may appear to defend women from slander, but in the last analysis present in pure form androcentric, stereotypic views as to woman’s nature, appearance and social roles. As always, images related to gender and to skin colour go hand in hand, and physical features indicate internal values. Dark skin is identified as ugly, which indicates evil and corrupt qualities, while ‘beautiful’ light skin is, as usual, a sign of goodness and morality. There are many examples in this literary genre, whose prototype is Minhat ben Yehudah Soneh ha-Nashim (The Woman Hater) by Judah ben Shabtai of the thirteenth century. Here is how he describes the beautiful woman: ‘a maid so beautiful / innocent, without fault / pure as the sun and fair as Tirzah / shining forth like the sun’.89 In ibn Zebara’s Sefer ha-Sha’ashu’im of the same period, she is ‘a woman of good name, modest, pious and wise / beautiful and white (levanah), pure as the sun’.90 By contrast, Judah ben Shabtai describes the ugly, evil woman as ‘a woman ill-tempered / like a raven black / one lip on another lies like a sack’.91 Identifying the ugly woman with the black raven follows a long tradition of associating the raven with unfavourable events.92 The very use of this designation creates an association with the qualities of the black, heightened here by reference to thick lips. The association is strengthened in the wedding story in Judah Elharizi’s Tahkhimoni. Here a man is lured into marrying a woman without seeing her face before the wedding night, and the sight sends him into shock. His new wife is dark and ugly, with typical Negroid features. The oxymoronic motif of the black bride appears in all its glory: Her cheeks were faded / As if Satan plunged them into blackness / And worked with coal until I thought her a daughter of Ham / Her cheek 48

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like coal / Lips distorted like an ass’s … your lips like a bull’s … and your eyes like a smoldering log.93 The (relatively) dark-skinned and hence ugly woman is shown to have the features of blacks such as very thick lips and glistening eyes, so that the groom, i.e. the author, identifies her with the daughters of Ham, whose skin was blackened for ever because of his conduct with the drunken Noah.94 The stereotypes of the beautiful, fair-skinned good woman and the ugly, dark-skinned bad one exemplify the basic distinction between the white and the black woman, with all the negative associations it involves. Perhaps the outstanding illustration is found in Mahbarot Emanuel ha-Romi (Notebooks of Emanuel of Rome), written in Italy in the fourteenth century, on the very eve of the Italian Renaissance. Some notebooks are devoted to the nature of women, Emanuel placing himself in the camp of ‘woman haters’. Several times the beautiful woman is identified as white and fair, and the ugly one as dark and black. Thus the fair woman ‘fills the world with her glowing beauty … as the brightness of the sapphire’. By total contrast, the ugly woman is ‘anger and wrath and trouble / her looks darker than black … / In all Egypt I saw nothing as ill-favoured as she.’95 She is identified with the seven lean kine in Joseph’s dream (Gen. 41: 19). This designation of the woman as a cow, and an ill-favoured cow at that, is typical of the androcentric, almost misogynist approach so conspicuous in the poetry of Emanuel of Rome. There is too, perhaps, a hint at the Sages’ Midrash on Abraham’s and Sarah’s descent into Egypt, when at last Abraham discovers that Sarah is beautiful by comparison with the dark, ugly Egyptian women – we shall see more influences of this Midrash later.96 The dichotomy beautiful/ugly = light/dark runs like a thread through the second notebook. The good and beautiful Tamar is identified with light and a fair complexion, and the evil, ugly woman Bariah (an approximate Hebrew homophone for ‘evil creature’) with blackness, gloom and a dark skin. Elsewhere in the second notebook, ‘They saw a handmaid, burnt by fire [black]’, identified as having a satanic disposition. And in the sixth notebook: ‘What do you see in the black woman? / Anger and wrath and trouble … / And what is the good, honest woman? / Rosy or white.’ The twentieth notebook goes on: ‘For I have a dark drinking wife who loves lustful men.’97 The evil, ugly woman is identified as dark skinned and, as such, a servant who sins through promiscuity, deception, drink and devilishness, while the designation ‘good woman’ has the dichotomically opposite characteristics. Furthermore, the poet warns men against dark, ugly women who use makeup to lighten their faces to trap men: And how should you be lured by a woman seeming fair as the white moon / While in truth a white cloud covers her, for you are warned not to trust the whiteness of the doe / For how many black ones look white after they whiten themselves so / And then they capture and steal 49

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away / Lovers with the doe’s whiteness unknown ’til yesterday / Trust not the whiteness / My eye saw the blackest of black who from paint are now white.98 As usual in the poetic form dealing with the nature of women, the dark and therefore ugly woman is shown as one who deceives innocent men and snares them by artificially whitening her skin to ‘make the ugly ones fair and black ones white’.99 Obviously this reference to artificial whitening of the skin documents a widespread phenomenon, and illustrates accepted aesthetic norms. The man is engaged in typical double dealing. On one hand, he creates norms that lead women to ‘correct’ natural features thought to be ‘not nice’, so as to attract the male designator and thus better their marriage chances. But at the same time he castigates women for trying to deceive and conquer men – after they have internalized the male norms. We now reach the pinnacle in Emanuel’s oxymoronic description of the black bride, the prefiguring of which we saw in Elharizi. She who is supposed to be white and fair, suddenly appears as black and ugly: Let us look upon the bride, we may become captives to her charms / When we drew near and unveiled her / Woe – light to darkness came from her / For her skin was burned black upon her / Darker than black she appears / … We then beheld the bride’s face darker than scrapings of a pot / When the cantor rose to pray / and began ‘Creator of light’ / I raised my voice and screamed in my plight / At the cantor, and cried: How dare you, wretched man, say ‘Creator of light!’ Have you forgotten what the bride’s face looks like.100 Later on Emanuel describes a wedding where the bride is beautiful and the groom ugly. He is described thus: ‘For he looks like Cushan-rishathaim [‘doubly wicked’]’ and later ‘See the groom’s face, like a furnace, like Cushan.’101 A dark, ugly groom is said to resemble the scriptural Cushan (Judg. 3: 8–10). Even a Midrash of the Sages failed to create a direct link between Cushan’s wickedness and his complexion. For Emanuel the connection arose by association.102 Even where the dichotomy is reversed and the woman is described as good and beautiful and the man as wicked and ugly, skin colour remains the indication. Ugliness and evil, in man or woman, will always show forth in a dark skin. Again and again in medieval sources we see dichotomous symbols in which black is identified with negative and fair and white are identified with positive phenomena, in Islamic, Jewish and Christian cultures. Take for example what Abelard says concerning the dark lady of the Song of Songs: ‘As prosperity is marked by white, so adversity may properly be indicated by black.’103 In Jewish literature, following Islamic literature of that period, there is the parable of the black (i.e. stained, corrupted) silver of Bahya ibn Pakuda of the eleventh 50

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century, at the end of the introduction to Sefer Hovot ha-Levavot (Duties of the Heart). In the parable lies his rationale for writing the book: This is like the case of the expert astrologer, who, when he entered his friend’s house, sensed a treasure hidden therein. When he found the treasure, he saw that it consisted of blackened silver, its form altered by rust and dirt. He took some of it, treated it with salt and vinegar and washed it until it was restored to its original beauty and splendor. He told his friend to do the same with the rest of the treasure. As for me, I have longed to do the same with the treasures of the heart, namely, to uncover them and reveal the brightness of their virtues, so that he who desires to draw nearer to God may imitate this example.104 As stained silver that has lost its beauty and shine, and hence its value, can be restored to its original appearance by cleansing, and turn from black to white, regaining its value, so should the human soul. There is another example in Abraham ibn Hisdai’s Sefer Ma’azanei haTzedek, a thirteenth-century Hebrew version of al Ghazali’s Arabic: Of this the wise man says, heresy begins as a black spot. As long as it continues, it will blacken the whole heart. And faith begins as a white spot. As long as faith continues, the whiteness spreads. And when man has perfect faith, his whole heart whitens. As it is written, if your sins are red as scarlet they will become white as snow.105 Ibn Hisdai fits this Arabic image carefully to the scriptural one: ‘though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow’ (Isa. 1: 18). Here repentance is identified with the colour white not in connection with the light of day but with the colour of snow. While the image is different, the message is the same. In the fourteenth century, Gersonides remarks: ‘The contemplation of black objects arouses black bile [marah shehorah] (melancholy) and increases it.’106 Even looking at the colour black is perceived to cause mental illness. Latin literature offers several parallels: Post equitem sedet atra Cura, writes Horace, meaning ‘Behind the rider sits black Care’,107 meaning that however we may try to escape worries, identified with the colour black, we cannot evade them. Influenced by these classical images we still speak of blacklists and black looks, or may even say, ‘A black cat crossed my path.’ Maimonides frequently returns to the Platonic motif of the cave, which presents the processes of cognition as a transition from darkness to great light. As in the previously quoted passage from Ecclesiastes, light is identified with acquiring knowledge, and darkness with ignorance. Sight is only possible where there is light. Sight serves both as a necessary condition for any possible knowledge and as a metaphor for the processes of learning, while blindness maintains the state of darkness and signifies ignorance. It is no coincidence that both 51

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Hebrew and Greek verbs that describe the processes involved in knowledge originate from words describing the eye and seeing (Greek theorein, Hebrew iyyun, hitbonenut). Plato’s philosopher, to arrive at a clear understanding, had to leave the darkness of the cave for the light of the sun (Politea 7: 514–517). Consider as well Maimonides in A Guide to the Perplexed 3: 51: he who has no intellectual cognition at all of God is like one who is in darkness and has never seen light, just as we have explained with regards to its dictum: ‘The wicked shall be put to silence in darkness’ (I Sam. 2:9). He who apprehends and advances with his whole being toward the object of his apprehension, is like one who is in the pure light of the sun. He who has apprehension, but is occupied, is while he is occupied in this state like one who has a cloudy day in which the sun does not shine because of the clouds that separate it and him.108 We find the same motif in the lightning parable in the general introduction to the Guide, and in that of the blind man in the one chapter dealing with the messianic era (3: 11). It is also in the allegorical interpretation of the text ‘In thy light we shall see light’ (3: 52), and in the grand conclusion to the whole work, a mosaic of texts from Isaiah’s prophecies of deliverance: ‘The people that walk in darkness have seen a great light, on them in the land of the shadow of death, a light has shone.’ Against this background, he who has attained spiritual perfection is seen as having a white skin. Deliberately, the Godlike king (Guide 1: 46) is described as ‘white in appearance’ (elabitz).109 By contrast, when Maimonides illustrates the way sinners imagine the divinity (Guide 1: 1) he states: ‘He is, in their view, bigger and more resplendent then they themselves.’110 His superlative brightness represents absolute perfection for them. He who has not attained perfection is consistently presented as in darkness, and metaphorically depicted as one whose light skin has darkened: ‘O you who neglect your own soul so that its whiteness has turned into blackness through corporeal faculties having gained dominance over it’ (Guide 3: 54).111 Here Maimonides paraphrases the Song of Songs in a homiletic manner. Clearly he is speaking of the soul metaphorically, and certainly not about the skin colour of the person whose soul it is. But as in the case of Gersonides, the very choice of such a metaphor enables one to perceive a dark skin as a manifestation of the dark state of the human soul, while light skin indicates the capacity to go from darkness to great light. This is highly compatible with the allegorical Midrashic interpretation of Song of Songs, and completely parallels Falaquera’s description of the bad dream, which took its associations from the same cultural and intellectual reservoir. With this background it is not surprising that Maimonides frequently identifies the bestial man with the black, as we see later.

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3 IN THE BIBLE ‘The children of Cush’

The word ‘Cush’ or ‘Cushi’ in biblical literature is identified with the Nubians who lived to the south of Egypt, as in Isaiah 20: 4–6, and in time it came to indicate all Africans. This or similar names appear to have designated some Semitic tribes as well, as in Habakkuk 3: 7 and II Chronicles 14: 8–14. Some scholars identify accordingly the origins of the ‘Cushit’ wife Moses took during the wanderings in the desert (Num. 12: 1). There are different theories about these tribes’ origins and relationship to black Africans. One theory holds that they were nomads from Nubia or Africa, as in the case of Cushan-rishathaim (Judg. 3: 8). Others maintain that they were Semitic tribes with identical or similar names but of different ethnic origins. 1 A number of texts describe relations between the Israelites and Cushim. Besides those relating to ‘Cushim’ living in and around the land of Israel, the Bible documents contacts with persons of African origin, mainly through relations with Egypt, the invasion of southern Israel by black tribes and the black soldiers in armies active in Israel, if we so interpret II Chronicles 14: 9–12 and 16: 8. There were also diplomatic contacts, like the account given of the meeting of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba (I Kgs. 10) and economic ones (ibid.), as well as black slavery (II Sam. 18; Jer. 38–39). Some intermarriage may also have taken place, if we read the story of Moses and the black woman literally. ‘Cush’ or ‘Cushi’ also appears in the Bible as a given name (Yehudi the son of Cushi, Jer. 36: 14; Zephaniah son of Cushi, Zeph. 1: 1 and Cush the Benjamite, Ps. 7: 1). Possibly the source of the name, albeit a remote one, lay in the offspring of mixed marriages or in the black tribes that joined the Israelites. Against this background, we have many references to ‘Cushim’, besides those in a purely historical context, which may be divided into two literal and two metaphorical types: 1

2

Ethnic origin. In the genealogy of Noah’s sons’ offspring in Genesis 10 (compare with I Chron. 1) Cush is a son of Ham, whose descendants include Sheba and Nimrod. Place. Cush is defined as a land lying south of Egypt (Ezek. 29: 10). 53

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3

4

A metaphor for a far-away place. On several occasions, Cush is a metaphor for a distant and different place, at the ends of the earth: ‘Beyond the rivers of Cush’ (Isa. 18: 1) and ‘from India even unto Cush’ (Esther 1: 1; 8:9). A metaphor for another human situation. The black is seen by the speaker to be in a different type of human situation, at least as to external appearance. Familiar quotations include ‘Can the black (cushi) change his skin?’ (Jer. 13: 23) and ‘Are ye not as children of the black (cushi’im)?’ (Amos 9: 7).

Interestingly, most references are descriptive and not judgemental. Blacks are frequently placed in a positive context as brave fighters, particularly in connection with Egyptian military campaigns (e.g. Jer. 46: 9; Ezek. 38: 7; Nahum 3: 9). They are merchants in Isaiah 45: 14 and Cush is described as the land of precious stones (Job 28: 19). When the Scriptures want to emphasize that even the strongest nations will fall by God’s hand, Cush is their chosen example (Jer. 46 and elsewhere), undoubtedly in view of their image as valiant warriors. When the Psalmist expresses faith that all the nations of the world will serve God, he chooses Cush, home of black tribes: ‘Cush shall soon stretch out her hands to God’ (Ps. 68: 32). The Midrash on this text (BT Pesachim 118b) is a rare source in Talmudic literature that expresses a neutral to positive attitude to blacks. While the black is at times designated as different and other, ‘racial’ stereotypes are rare indeed. The conclusion is that the other is not necessarily inferior. In the Bible, the Canaanite plays the role of the inferior other: he it is who is near, familiar and perceived as an imminent danger, rather than the black, who is far away. Aside from two enigmatic cases, Jeremiah 13 and Isaiah 18, nowhere in the Bible is there a specific reference to the black’s skin colour, and certainly no reference to the negative qualities later attributed to it. The absence is significant. Since, historically, the later negative image was largely related to ‘black’ skin, not mentioning skin colour prevented a negative attitude to the individual concerned. In the Genesis genealogy, Cush is nowhere identified as having dark skin: rather the name appears to have been associated with his dwelling place. In Jeremiah’s ‘Can the black change his skin?’ the ‘Cushi’ is designated as one whose skin colour is different from the speaker’s and that of his audience, but nowhere is that skin described. It is cited as different and unalterable, but of no specified shade. Isaiah mentions the people who live ‘beyond the rivers of Cush’ as ‘tall’ (memushah) and ‘shining’ (memorath), the latter expression also used in describing the ‘bright brass’ utensils of the Temple (I Kgs. 7: 45). Clearly the reference is to skin colour, but it is not specifically identified as black. Moreover, the whole description, though highly enigmatic, is not necessarily negative. There appears to be more wonder in it than any negative attitude. Nowhere in the Bible, then, even in these isolated, enigmatic references, is it said that a ‘Cushi’ is one with black skin. What is said is that his (shining) complexion differs from that of the majority group. 54

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Were it not for this isolated evidence we could not even say with certainty that ‘Cushi’ in biblical Hebrew designates what it does in the post-biblical language. Perhaps following the trend of the Scriptures, the Septuagint translates ‘Cush’ and ‘Cushi’ as Aithiopia and Aethops, meaning ‘burnt (or shining) faces’ in Greek, and not actually black. It was one of the generally accepted names for blacks in the Graeco-Roman world at the end of the classic period.2 Isaiah and Jeremiah were obviously referring to people with dark skins. Since complexion was the first and clearest way to differentiate between human groups, it was usual to identify the black by his pigmentation.3 This found expression in Roman culture too: Cicero’s proverb states: ‘I know not if he is white or black’ (Albus an ater sit, nescio), indicating the greatest possible indifference to a particular individual, to the point where one does not know even the colour of his skin.4 Isaiah too, describing the ‘tall’ tribe, takes this direction, since it was usual in ancient times to describe blacks as particularly tall (or short).5 Neither prophet specifically stated that he meant dark-skinned people, probably because the fact was obvious to his hearers, who identified the ‘Cushi’ as quite different from themselves in external appearance. The absence of a specific reference to black skin, let alone any of the negative characteristics later associated with it, still speaks for itself. Moreover, the Bible generally identifies the land of Cush with southern Egypt, not with black Africa (e.g. Isa. 20: 4–6), and some of the ‘Cushim’ mentioned there are not African but Semitic tribes. Indeed, the biblical ‘Cushi’ does originally refer to geo-ethnic origin, and hence is an entirely neutral description. The Aggadic Midrashim of the Sages gave the word the negative connotation it took on later. Thus a close look at the biblical attitude to the black shows that it is descriptive and neutral, in special cases enigmatic and ambivalent, sometimes positive, and rarely if ever stereotypically ‘racist’. The genealogy of the birth of Cush is completely neutral, with no hint regarding his skin colour. There is no reference whatever – positive or negative – to special character traits, his or those of his descendants. Canaan, Cush’s brother, is punished by eternal slavery for the sin of his father Ham against his grandfather Noah (Gen. 9: 21–27). Cush himself is not mentioned, nor is there any reference to Canaan’s skin colour. The passage, however, became the locus classicus for perceptions of the black in the literature of the Sages and in the Middle Ages. The identification of Ham and his sons as dark skinned and naturally destined to slavery is post-biblical, the result of later historical and cultural circumstances, and is by no means to be projected anachronistically onto the Bible text itself. The descendants of Cush themselves dispersed to different places, not necessarily in Africa. Nimrod is described as ‘the mighty hunter before the Lord’ (Gen. 10: 9; I Chron. 1: 1, 9), his kingdom placed in the land of Shinar (i.e. today’s Iraq), not in Africa. In this case too, presenting him negatively, with the etymological interpretation of his name as a rebel against God, comes from a later Midrash with no basis in the Bible text. Identifying him as the son of the black-eyed Cush in itself created the Midrashic authors’ negative association 55

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that made it easier to depict him as a rebel against God in Bereshit Rabbah 37: 2: ‘Was then Esau a cushi? [He is so called] because he acted like Nimrod’.6 Here Nimrod is described as another son of Cush, but elsewhere he appears as the son of Shem (Gen. 10: 28) and Keturah (Gen. 25: 3), though this may possibly refer to other persons with the same name. But the descriptions of the Queen of Sheba, another descendant of Cush, are positive and full of wonder. From the enigmatic statements about Moses’s black wife one cannot be sure what Aaron and Miriam were complaining about. That it was her dark complexion is not at all clear from a literal understanding of the Bible text, and indeed it puzzled the Sages deeply, as we shall see later. Then Miriam was punished: she spread gossip about a matter connected with the black wife of Moses and her punishment, fitting the crime, was that her own skin turned white with a disease – ‘leprous as white as snow’ (Num. 12: 10). The sin was criticizing something concerning the black wife and the punishment was whitening the skin of the sinner, in contradiction to all the stereotypes! While Isaiah described repentance as becoming white as snow, this change was decreed against Miriam because of her sin. Whatever the reason that Aaron and Miriam are said to have complained about, the Bible text as it stands shows that God and Moses both took the part of the black woman.7 Although the genealogies mention Sheba as a son of Cush, there is no hint whatsoever of the Queen of Sheba’s skin colour, nor any characteristic of her external appearance. In I Kings 1: 10 and II Chronicles 9, she is presented not only as a rich woman with excellent abilities as a ruler and a diplomat, but a wise woman who tries Solomon with riddles. In short, she contradicts all the gender and skin-colour stereotypes that would develop later. Perhaps it was no wonder, then, that the Sages had trouble relating to her, and so ignored her almost completely. The only time they confronted the problem (BT Baba Batra 15b) they denied the possibility that she was a woman, while later sources negatively identified her with the figure of the she-demon Lilith.8 Such a combination of an independent, clever woman who tested King Solomon, crossing the accepted gender boundaries, and a daughter of Sheba son of Cush besides, necessarily aroused in the Sages such overwhelmingly negative associations that they identified her with Lilith, though there is no basis whatever for such an identity in the two biblical versions of the encounter. Such associations belong to another, later cultural mentality. In Isaiah as quoted above, there is far more wondering admiration of the ‘tall and shining tribe’ than rejection and contempt. In the Bible, great height is generally positive, indicating superiority, as in the familiar description of King Saul (I Sam. 9: 2), who was ‘from his shoulders and upward higher than any of the people’. Isaiah attributes this quality directly to the ‘Cushi’. In all cases, as in the widely used ‘beyond the rivers of Cush’, the very fact that these people lived far away, out of the range of daily contact and hence presenting no danger, made neutrality, even admiration, possible. Jeremiah’s ‘Can the black change his skin?’ is not negative. Like the spotted leopard, the skin is simply a poetic 56

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example of the impossibility of altering natural characteristics. The prophet makes no negative hint regarding the black, and certainly not regarding the leopard, whose spots cannot possibly be regarded as a fault: the two appear as parallel examples of the same natural state of affairs. Consider the well-known Roman proverb ‘To wash the black (and make him) white’, and the contrast is clear. The two sayings may appear parallel, but unlike Jeremiah, whose words are essentially descriptive, the Latin proverb is weighted with negative judgements. There are two qualitative differences between Jeremiah and Lucianus. One is that Jeremiah, whose complexion is lighter, asks a rhetorical question, assuming the empirical fact that skin colour cannot be altered and so makes no attempt to do so. In Lucianus, by contrast, the black himself stubbornly tries to change his complexion. Expressed here are clear feelings of inferiority and a sense of shame over skin colour, since no one would try to change any quality except that which they and the environment considered evil or ugly. The second difference is in the washing motif, which is very strong in Lucianus and totally absent in Jeremiah, who does not allude to a way that the ‘Cushi’ is to change his skin colour, since he recognizes it as an empirical, unalterable fact. As we have already seen, the washing motif assumes that black skin is dirty, since one washes only what is thought to be polluted. Jeremiah’s example, on the other hand, is simply descriptive. Only in comparing the black’s inability to change his skin with the Israelites’ inability to mend their ways is there a potential for a negative stance regarding the black. In addition, the sins of Israel here are linked to drunkenness and promiscuity, two characteristics later attributed to the black in particular, as we shall see on many occasions. One might conclude, as did Midrashic authors and medieval commentators, Abarbanel for example, that the analogy between the black and the evil deeds of Israel is no coincidence, and relates to the negative significance of the former’s skin colour. But this interpretation comes centuries later and is far from the original literal sense of the words. It is more a testimony to the value system of the commentators than to what the Bible text originally meant. While the prophet’s words are somewhat enigmatic, they do not automatically carry a specifically negative attitude to the black, especially since elsewhere (46: 9) Jeremiah refers to them as valiant soldiers, and King Zedekiah’s black slave too is described by the prophet as a most positive figure, as we note later on. Amos 9: 7, ‘Are ye not as children of the black unto me. O children of Israel?’, expresses a similar situation. The text is in a prophecy of destruction in which the prophet warns the children of Israel that God will treat them as he would any other sinful ethnic group. He makes the point of sinful Israel’s fate, which is that of other peoples such as the Egyptians and the Philistines, using the blacks as an example. ‘The children of the blacks’ exemplify alien, nonIsraelite ethnic groups. They typify the ethnic other, perhaps because of their special skin coloration. Later this will become the outstanding example of their inferiority. Here, however, it is not in a negative judgemental context, since the 57

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obvious message is that God will treat the sinful Israelites just like any other group, including the blacks. One of the isolated instances in which there is a clearly negative attitude to the black is in the prophecy of the destruction in Isaiah 20: 4–5: ‘So shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptian prisoners and the blacks (cush) captive, young and old, naked and barefoot, even with their buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt.’ But even here no negative characteristics are attributed to the black per se, but to the degradation he suffers as a result of defeat in war. Still ahead of us are the choice morsels that the Midrashic authors prepared from this isolated case, which they pounced on like a treasure, perhaps because it was the only one they found in the Bible that could be used literally. It appears to be about Nubians from southern Egypt and not about true African ‘Cushim’. However, the Sages obviously could not and did not care to make such fine distinctions. Cushan-rishathaim in Judges is also totally negative, though the text does not clarify the source of his name. At the same time, the epithet ‘rishathaim’ – ‘doubly wicked’ in Hebrew – is not presented as a natural outcome of the name, but of a particular act.9 A typical example of ambivalence towards the black appears in the story of Ebed-Melech (the king’s slave) the black in Jeremiah 38 and 39. The main character of these two chapters is a black with whom there is the most intensive contact. On one hand he appears as the stereotyped eunuch slave (38: 7), and presenting him as such speaks for itself, indicating that this identification existed in biblical times before it became characteristic of the Graeco-Roman period. Consider also the black youth, Cushi, sent to tell David of the death of Absalom (II Sam. 18). Describing him as a slave is not necessarily negative in itself in this context, since slavery can appear in a clearly positive connotation in Bible narrative. Moses was the slave of God and the children of Israel are described as liberated slaves. Indeed Jeremiah’s black Ebed-Melech is shown as a moral and assertive character, quite different from the stereotypes later used in describing black slavery. His initiative freed Jeremiah from the dungeon into which the king’s ministers (‘white’ Jews) had flung him and he it was who persuaded King Zedekiah to free the prophet. His concern for Jeremiah in extricating him from the dungeon without hurting him is the more conspicuous by contrast with the cruelty of the king’s ministers. Indeed, the king and his ministers are fittingly punished in the end, while Ebed-Melech is saved and God promises to free him in recompense for his mercy towards Jeremiah. That primal biblical motif, liberation from slavery, is fully expressed in the story of this black slave.10 In the literature of the Sages he appears as one of the seven human beings privileged to enter paradise in their lifetime (Kallah Rabbati 3: 54; Derech Eretz Zota 1: 6). When we strip away the layers upon layers of Midrashim of the Sages and the medieval commentaries and look directly at the Bible, then we find that the black is consistently portrayed as other and different, but rarely if ever as inferior and animal-like. True, the Bible text uses the archetypal dichotomy 58

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identifying darkness as negative and light as a positive, as in the story of Creation and Ecclesiastes, for example, but nowhere is the dichotomy projected either into metaphor or into reality that later related it to differences between light- and darker-skinned people. In the Song of Songs, composed at the Second Temple period, there is indeed ambivalence as to the aesthetic value of dark skin – here it is excessive sunburn rather than skin naturally dark – but there is no unambivalent negative attitude to an individual with dark skin. The ‘racist’ stereotype of the black, then, does not appear at all in Bible sources. Such interpretations will come later, from the literature of the Sages and, following them, in medieval commentary. One must beware of anachronisms, and refrain from looking at the Bible text through the eyes of later generations whose cultural mentality and values were different. A classic example is the way the Sages abstracted ‘I am black but comely’ from its textual sense and gave it an allegorical significance that emphasizes the dichotomy between ‘black’, which for them symbolized evil-doing, and ‘comely’, which symbolized doing good. We see the same process at work in the verse ‘locks black as a raven’, not connected with skin but with hair colour. While in the Bible this has unambiguously positive significance, the poetess depicting the fine appearance of her beloved, the two Midrashim based on it interpret the hair colour in an entirely negative way. The very appearance of the word ‘black’ creates a negative association, linking that colour with ugliness and evil. This leads us to the many parallels between Midrashic treatment of Bible texts which deal with woman, her nature, rights and roles and its treatment of the black. Scriptural sources are relatively more open regarding women than are the interpretations and applications that the Sages based on them as to women’s nature and social status.11 As for the black, while the Scriptures are descriptive and almost neutral about the black’s different appearance, the Sages and the medieval commentators in their wake make judgemental statements about the black’s inferiority. With both women and blacks, we find the Sages tend to close possibilities and to present marginal groups defined on the basis of gender or race and outside the male component of a society that is relatively light skinned – the section of the community that determines social values – as not only different but qualitatively inferior.

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4 IN THE LITERATURE OF THE SAGES ‘Ugly and black’

I In rabbinic literature the black appears for the first time in Jewish cultural history as not only other and different, but as a consequence, inferior too, and in this light the Bible texts about the black were expounded. For generations, these commentaries determined the image of the black in Jewish thought. The rabbinic viewpoint did not originate in Scripture, which, as we have shown, was generally neutral, sometimes amazed and in extreme cases ambiguous and enigmatic, but never totally negative. The expressions that appeared for the first time in rabbinic writings deviated in two ways from those the Bible used. For one, while the Bible does not identify the cushi unambiguously as one whose skin is dark, in the rabbinic literature such an identification begins to take definite shape. From the accumulated textual data to be presented later, it becomes clear that the Sages identified the word cushi with one whose skin was especially dark relative to the accepted norm. In most instances the term is not explained, but the context makes it clear that it relates to the individual referred to as ‘black’ today: the few specific explanations, moreover, identify the term with one whose skin is qualitatively darker from what is perceived as the norm. We see this in Mishnah Negaim 2: 1: ‘An intensely bright [white] spot appears dull in a white person (germani), and dull [white spot appears] bright on a black person (cushi).’ The ‘German’ is presented as the prototype of the light-skinned person, and the cushi as the antithesis, with particularly dark skin. Moreover, in the same Mishnah we have R. Ishmael’s now familiar words on the ideal intermediate shade of the Jews who are ‘neither too black (shehorim) nor too white (levanim) but of an intermediate [shade]’. The context makes it clear that ‘white’ refers to the German and ‘black’ to the cushi. At this early stage there is no negative value judgement of the kind found consistently in later times. Thus we find, with exemplary brevity in BT Bekhorot 45b, ‘The cushi is black (in Aramaic: ucmah)’, and in the Midrash on the sin of Ham and the punishment of Canaan in BT Moed Katan 16b: ‘A cushi is distinguishable (meshuneh) by his skin.’ He is linked to a specific skin colour, again qualitatively different from the norm. As a result Cush, which in the literal Bible text has only a territorial 60

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meaning, without any hint of a specific human complexion, is identified for the first time in Bereshit Rabbah 42: 4 as ‘black’ in every respect: ‘Cush because he was indeed a Cushi (black)’, based on their knowledge of the person’s geographical origin. Indeed, this Midrashic commentary associates his genetic identity with darkness, relating to the dark complexion and its negative moral significance at one and the same time. And in BT Baba Batra 97b, particularly dark wine is called ‘Cushite wine’. In rabbinic literature, however, the word seems to have had a broader significance than the one it later acquired. From medieval times, the word cushi is linked to specific characteristics, genetic in origin, like skin colour and facial features, to which negative moral and aesthetic qualities are attributed. In rabbinic literature this word, sometimes an epithet, may also designate one whose skin has darkened for a reason like sunburn, disease or dirt, not necessarily a black. Possibly this is similar to the present practice of calling people who have the external features of the black stereotype ‘Blackie’, ‘Sambo’, or some similar dubious nickname. Whenever the word appears in the rabbinic literature to designate someone whose skin is dark for other than genetic reasons, it is in a clearly negative context, and that fact speaks for itself. In the entire body of this literature, I found no evidence of significant differences between periods, places or literary genres. True, the early use of the term in Mishnah Taharot is neutral compared with the consistently negative value judgements of later times in the BT and the Midrashic compilations, but it is unique, and relates to the German, not only the black, as having an extreme skin colour, making it difficult to draw conclusions. Other Hebrew or Aramaic expressions used to designate people whose complexions were darker than the norm are: ‘If he has a black complexion (sh’marav hashuhin) … Is this not the case of one who is like a cushi?’ (BT Bekhorot 44b); ‘pitch black (tafu’ah)’ (ibid. 45b), ‘Dark like coal (mefuham)’ (JT Ta’anit 1: 6); ‘Black (shahor)’; or ‘One who blackens his face’ (mashhir panav)’ (BT Bekhorot 45b; Ketubot 60b; Eruvin 21a–b; Sotah 12a; Sanhedrin 100b; Song of Songs Rabbah 1: 41; Avot de’Rabbi Natan 25: 1). As the last source says: ‘It is a bad sign for anyone whose face blackens (mashhirot).’ In Aramaic we have ‘Dark (ucmah)’ (BT Bekhorot 54b; Ketubot 60b; Nedarim 50b). In the geographical context there is ‘Afrki’im (Africans)’ (BT Shabbat 31a). Both in Hebrew and Aramaic, the usage of these terms is always in a negative context of suffering, illness, hunger, ugliness and moral turpitude. The word ‘Africa’ as a geographical place name appears many times in rabbinic literature, in various transliterations. There is a long-standing debate among scholars whether this name relates to what we call ‘Africa’ today, and/or to certain places in Asia. It seems that the Sages made a distinction between ‘Cush’, which is contemporary black Africa, and ‘Africa’, meaning North Africa, although it seems that in time the latter term came to signify the whole continent. 1 While most biblical references are neutral or positive, in the rabbinic and later texts there is a clear tendency towards negative value judgements about 61

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the black and about anyone whose skin is significantly darker than the norm. Beyond the general human inclination to reject the other as opposite and negative, and the specifically Jewish negativism towards pagans and the monotheistic faiths that followed Judaism, the attitude emerging from rabbinic literature arose from economic and social norms that developed in the Hellenistic and Roman cultural world. The black image in Jewish culture developed much as it did in those contemporary cultures. Ancient Greek culture related to the black much as the Bible did. It too was surprisingly free from colour prejudice. As in the Bible, the blacks are described as a people from the ends of the earth. Their country, which the Greeks placed along the Nile somewhere south of Egypt, is described by Aeschylus as a fertile land of plenty, a veritable Eden.2 Their dark skin was associated from early times to climate, as ‘Ethiopian – oitho ops’, the Greek word meaning one with a burnt or shining face, just like the Shining Tribe of Isaiah. It does not necessarily refer to the complexion of the black, but to anyone with particularly tanned skin. Only later did the meaning narrow down to include only blacks. Hence their country also became known as ‘Ethiopia’, which at times referred to Africa in general. Aeschylus called Danaus’s daughters, who came from Egypt, ‘the sun struck maidens’ to explain their dark complexions.3 This brings to mind the poetess of the Song of Songs: ‘Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me.’ In both cases the description is neutral, even positive: the picture is entirely descriptive. Only later, as we shall see, was the climate theory used to legitimize the so-called natural inferiority of the black. Homer in the Odyssey maintained that the black’s skin colour did not prevent the black from being close to the gods.4 Herodotus in his history of the Persian wars states that the Ethiopians are the handsomest and the tallest people in all the world,5 just like Isaiah’s ‘tall tribe’. Xenophanes at the end of the sixth century BC , claimed that every tribe has a different picture of the divinity, which it sees in its own form and image. The Ethiopians are certain their god has a flat nose and black hair, while the Thracians are as certain that theirs has auburn hair and grey eyes.6 This cosmopolitan view must have come about because there were so many nonGreeks, including dark people from Egypt, in Athens in his time.7 The attitude to the black in Greek culture developed as an integral part of the attitude towards barbarians, i.e. non-Greek strangers, in general. While in the Homeric era the expression was a neutral description of a non-Greek who was not necessarily inferior, following the Persian wars the image of the barbarian as naturally inferior began a gradual development. From its original neutral descriptive significance the term ‘barbarian’ became totally negative and judgemental.8 Attitudes towards blacks as a subgroup of barbarians changed too. There were also economic factors. Since the earliest times, many slaves in the Middle East had come from black Africa. In ancient Egyptian pictures there are black slaves. The Bible documents this in the figures of the black Ebed-Melech mentioned in our Chapter 3. The number of slaves grew continuously in 62

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Hellenistic–Roman times: the majority were of Slavic or German origin and a minority were black. On the other hand, most of the blacks living in the empire were slaves, former slaves or people of inferior social position. Moreover, their conspicuous colouring identified them easily among those sold into slavery, so that subjectively they stood out among the other, larger groups. Thus ‘black’ and ‘slave’ became almost synonymous terms. The face of Middle Eastern slavery becomes darker and darker,9 socio-economic developments having their effect on the culture’s image of the blacks. The economic worth of the blacks is inversely related to the way society treats them. The more valuable an economic asset they are, the more they are described as animals. It was in the economic interest of slave traders and owners to advance ‘scientific’ and theological proof of the inferiority of the blacks to legitimize exploitation and define them as slaves by nature.10 Indeed, while in ancient Greek culture the black was described neutrally, even favourably, in later Hellenistic–Roman culture ambiguous and even negative expressions make their appearance. We have already noted Lucianus’s ‘to wash the black [and make him] white’, which was highly popular. After that there is the fable of Aesop where the black man rubbed his skin in vain to make it white. Juvenal provides this loaded proverb: ‘Whoever walks straight may mock the cripple, whoever is white-skinned may mock the black’ (Loripedem pecus derideat, Aethiopem albus).11 A clear and meaningful dichotomy is created in which the black is compared with a cripple and the white with a healthy, normal individual. Horace (Satires I: 4, 85) warns: ‘This [man] is black, O Roman beware of him’ (hic niger est; hunc tu, Romane, caveto). In Petronius’s comedy Satyricon, prisoners are advised to blacken their skins so that they will look like black slaves and so deceive their captors and escape. The black is automatically and negatively identified as a slave, just as the Jew in the same source is identified as circumcised. So it is in Lucianus, whose view of the black we have just seen: he identifies the slave with black skin thus: ‘His body [the free male] was neither black nor white, for the one [the white] befits a woman and the other [black] a slave.’ In the Romance of Alexander the Great by pseudoCalisthenes, the meeting between Alexander and the Queen of Ethiopia reminds one strongly of the Bible story of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. But the Ethiopian queen is quoted as cautioning Alexander not to draw wrong conclusions from her people’s dark skin, because in their souls they are fairer than the man with the whitest skin. The Ethiopians are shown to have internalized the aesthetic and value norm that prefers white skin. The image of the black who is white in spirit appears in different forms in later Roman culture. While Roman and Hellenistic scholars like Pliny and Heliodorus, who wrote Ethiopika, defended the image of the black, the very fact that they found it necessary to do so only proves that the negative image was deeply rooted. Otherwise, defence would be unnecessary. Then too, Heliodorus’s name, meaning ‘gift of the sun’, hints at his skin colour. Obviously he would have had a personal interest in defending the black.12 63

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Early Christianity was much influenced by these images. An outstanding example is the series of homilies on ‘the black bride’, from the Song of Songs, ‘I am black and comely’. Like the Sages and apparently following them, the church fathers present ‘black’ as a metaphor for paganism and evil-doing, while ‘comely’ was a metaphor for becoming a Christian, i.e. choosing to do good. St Jerome translated the Song of Songs into Latin accordingly in the fourth century. Earlier, the Septuagint Greek translation followed the Hebrew faithfully (melania eimi kai kale), and Origen’s second-century Latin translation was still nigra sum et speciosa, black and comely. St Jerome’s Vulgate version, however, is nigra sum sed formosa, black but comely: despite being black, I am still beautiful. Beauty no longer parallels black skin but exists in spite of this totally negative feature, just as in rabbinic literature. The Song of Songs, then, underwent ‘racist’ transformation along stereotypic skin-colour lines in the course of its translation into Latin, obviously because of the accepted standards of beauty in Jerome’s time. It is a fact that the Septuagint, translated into Greek by seventy Jewish elders, faithfully follows the Scriptures, which in this case shows a neutral if not a positive attitude towards dark skin, while the Christian translation into Latin displays a clearly ‘racist’ position. Some twelve centuries later, this rendition influenced the King James Version’s ‘I am black but comely’, and the classic English translation of the Scriptures adopted the stereotypic approach to the black dating back to the church fathers.13 The expressions found in rabbinic writings grant theological legitimacy to changing historical reality. While the Bible wrote of a people who lived far away, ‘beyond the mountains of Cush’, with whom there was no daily contact, in the time of the Sages contact appears to have been closer, in the socioeconomic circumstances previously described. The Sages not only knew the social and cultural reality of the Hellenistic–Roman world very well, but knew the Jew too owned slaves, including blacks. Twice the Jerusalem Talmud (hereafter JT) notes (Shabbat 6: 9; Yoma 8:5) that R. Judah Hanassi had a German, i.e. a white, slave. Moreover, in several instances to be quoted and analysed later there is clear evidence of black slavery, and attempts to give it theological legitimacy.14 The evidence that the Sages were well aware of slavery in general, and of black slavery in particular, indicates that it was present among Jews. This contact, with the fears it aroused and the need for complete separation it created, also contributed to the negative definition of the black. In the Mishnah the subject is barely discussed. Where the distinction is made (Taharot, Negaim) between white skin (‘German’) and black skin (cushi), it serves as a basis for discerning skin ailments and is totally neutral. No negative hint is directed at the black, who is described as a parallel to the light-skinned person. As R. Ishmael said there, the middle skin shade, neither black nor white and identified with the people of Israel, is the ideal. In the relatively early Midrashim, like Philo’s, there is as yet no reference to blackness in the discussion of Ham’s sin and Canaan’s punishment, while the blackening of Ham’s (or Canaan’s) skin is to become a central theme of later Midrashic interpretations 64

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of the Bible story. This is true too when Potiphar’s wife makes her first appearance as a black woman in a late Midrash (Shoher Tov) based on Psalms.15 References to the black in general, and the negative references in particular, continue to increase in the BT and especially in certain collections of Midrashic stories. Maybe this is because in the earlier period there were not yet any significant contacts with blacks and the image was not fully identified with slavery, nor with all the stereotypical elements it produces. As contact with black slaves increased, as blackness became more and more identified with slavery in late Hellenistic and Roman times, so later rabbinic writings gave greater expression to it. While such references are numerous in the BT, there are few in the JT. Nonetheless, some of the most important passages referring to the black appear in Bereshit Rabbah and Shemot Rabbah, and were written by Amoraim in Palestine. Furthermore, it is generally accepted that a substantial portion of the Aggadic Midrashim embedded in the BT originate in the land of Israel.15a In the thousand years and more that passed between the time the original Bible story of the sin of Ham and the punishment of Canaan was composed, and the era of the Aggadic Midrashim, the face of Middle Eastern slavery had grown much blacker. Jewish sources responded accordingly. While the Bible does not so much as hint at an identification of Canaan’s slavery with black skin, rabbinic literature identifies the black as a slave by nature, the archetypal son of Canaan. In recent years there has been lively discussion of attitudes to the black in Hellenistic–Roman culture. The findings of these research studies, and their differences of opinion, are highly significant for us, since one question that disturbs us is the degree of correspondence, perhaps even influence, there is between positions found in rabbinic literature and normative attitudes that developed in the surrounding Hellenistic–Roman culture. The greater the correspondence, the stronger the presumption of influence, even of reciprocal influence. Scholars have examined this emotionally loaded subject on the basis of unexamined and sometimes unconsciously held prejudices that influenced the sources they chose to study or to ignore, as well as the way they interpreted the sources. For example, G.H. Beardsley and others analysed the relationship to the black in Hellenistic–Roman culture making uncritical use of modern concepts like ‘race’ and ‘racism’. As a result, they imposed a system of modern concepts on its attitudes to the black, concepts in the main irrelevant to that culture’s world view, which led to some distorted interpretations of written and iconographic findings.16 By contrast, F.M. Snowden went to the other extreme. He is correct in criticizing those who imposed modern concepts of race relationships on early historical periods. He himself, however, makes the same mistake, but in the reverse direction. For ideological reasons he tries to prove, by fair means or foul, that the Hellenistic–Roman culture, and certainly early Christianity in following it, displayed the most egalitarian attitudes to blacks, especially when compared with later white, western cultures. Snowden makes a heroic attempt to soften the numerous negative statements about blacks in 65

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Hellenistic–Roman and early Christian literature, some of which our book quotes. It is not always clear whether these attempts arise out of naïveté or out of a deliberate attempt to blur the harsh reality at any cost. He concludes his Blacks in Antiquity with no less a remark than ‘The Greeks and Romans counted blacks in’, as did the early Christians.17 The colour and religious belief of this black Christian American appear to have distorted his view of the findings. If this idyllic picture were indeed correct, then the position found in rabbinic literature would have been conspicuously ‘racist’ in comparison with the Hellenistic–Roman culture, which, from Snowden’s description, was colour blind. Luckily for us, this scholar did not know and could not relate to the rabbinic discussion. But even Snowden had to admit that there was at least ‘a superstition in the mind of some with respect to the Ethiopian color’.18 This appears to have not only affected the few, but to have been at the very least a widely accepted cultural norm. Other scholars, like Owens, present a more complex picture. This is especially apparent in L.A. Thompson’s Romans and Blacks (1989). Thompson criticizes the two attitudes depicted above and tries to present a balanced position, free of personal, ideological or research biases. He rejects uncompromisingly any attempt to describe black images in Roman times in modern terms like race, which were totally alien to the Roman culture and mindset. At the same time, he declares that Snowden systematically endeavoured to obliterate the harsh significance of the negative comments on the black so widespread in Roman literature. Thompson opposes any attempt to generalize, maintaining that there are different facets to the question, and that every remark depends on its time, place and context. In the end, however, he agrees that at least in the elite culture of Rome, a totally ethnocentric and classcentred approach held sway, relating negatively and with contempt to every phenomenon not identified with the aesthetic taste, values, complexion and external appearance of the Roman designator. Anything that did not correspond to the designator’s self-image was immediately perceived as ugly, immoral and sometimes inhuman. However, Roman and modern culture differed qualitatively in that in the former the standard applied to the white northerner as it did to the black southerner. Every feature was compared with the Roman designator who had the intermediate complexion features and body build (albus) of the Mediterranean that were the ideal: inter negrum et pallidum. While Thompson vigorously denied the existence of ‘structures of the racist kind’, in Roman culture, he concludes from his findings that there was ‘active superstition’ in everything related to alien others, which applied more to blacks than to many other groups. He claims that the prejudice originated in dissent from all that was different and not Roman: all were homines barbari. As regards blacks the prejudice was stronger than it was against the white peoples of the north, for two reasons. One lay in colour symbolism: the prejudice that identifies black with negative phenomena and projects this on the black individual. The other was the identification of blacks with inferior socio-economic status if not with 66

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slavery. At the same time, Romans looked with disfavour on the fair skin, blue eyes and blond hair of northern European men, considering these features ugly and unmanly, although at least among the Roman elite especially white skin (pallor femineus) and blonde hair was thought an advantage for women. Gentlemen preferred blondes, even artificial blondes, then too. Obviously there was no attitude like this towards black women. Thus while there are examples of northern Europeans entering the higher ranks of Roman society through marriage in later imperial times, we do not know of a single case where blacks did so. Given the inferior socio-economic status of the great majority of blacks and the prejudice against their skin colour, if they made their way into Roman society at all, it was only into its lower ranks. Thus Roman reality saw blacks as totally other, though not on the basis of race, and this perception carried over into the culture of Christian Europe.19 Even on the basis of Thompson’s moderate conclusions, then, the rabbinic attitude fits in well with developments in Hellenistic–Roman culture in the later classical period and in early Christianity which influenced that attitude: there may even have been reciprocal influences. Given the strong resemblance of the position taken in rabbinic literature to the one that took shape in Hellenistic–Roman culture, the question of who influenced whom is something like the enigma of what came first, the chicken or the egg? In the parallel issue of the change in women’s status in Jewish culture between biblical and rabbinic times, there is a lively argument among scholars as to whether their position deteriorated because of ongoing processes in the Hellenistic–Roman world, or whether changes in the attitude of rabbinic culture to women influenced the milieu that surrounded it.20 The same question may be asked in regard to the black, but here the difference in attitudes is more significant. Attitudes towards women even in biblical times were completely patriarchal. The black, by contrast, was seen as enigmatic in the extreme case, positive in the best case, but almost never openly negative. In this area, then, it is clearer that changes in attitudes arose to a large extent from external influences. These, however, fitted in well with basic theological, patriarchal and hierarchical premises that emphasized God above man, man above the rest of Creation and, proceeding from there, stressed the superiority of males over females and Jews over gentiles. It is reasonable to assume that the image of the black in rabbinic literature was influenced by socio-economic factors and the cultural background of the world around it. At the same time, comparison shows that the attitude that developed within the rabbinic tradition was more extreme, not only by comparison with Snowden’s disproved thesis, but in comparison with Thompson’s as well, in two respects. First, Thompson continuously emphasizes the ‘active prejudice’ in the Roman world against white people from the north no less than against blacks. White skin, blonde hair and blue eyes were considered no less deviant and ugly than dark skin, kinky hair and thick lips by contrast with the Roman ideal of lightly ‘suntanned’ skin with facial features and body build of 67

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‘medium’ size. The upper classes, as we have noted, preferred white, blonde women, but considered the same traits in men ugly and effeminate, though blacks were considered more inferior. In rabbinic literature, by contrast, the ‘German’ – one who is especially light skinned – is much admired as one of Japheth’s ‘white and beautiful’ sons (Pirkei de’Rabbi Eliezer 24).21 This is in sharp contrast to consistently negative remarks about the blacks. While all rabbinic references to black slavery appear in a negative context, the isolated references to ‘German’ slavery are neutral. Aside from a factual report on their enslavement, no mention is made of any negative traits, while elsewhere those identified as ‘Germans’ are described in a most positive way as white, handsome and natural masters. Only R. Ishmael’s attitude parallels that of the Romans: he too sees both black and white skins as extreme, and the intermediate complexion of the Jews, obviously, as the ideal. But his position is both early and unique. Hence while Roman culture can be said to have related in the same way to the other, whether he (not she) was black or white, in rabbinic literature we find an ambivalent attitude to the handsome, white ‘German’, as compared with an unequivocally negative one to the black, the ultimate inferior other. Secondly, on the basis of a climate theory, the Romans assumed that the inferior psycho-physical traits of the blacks in the south and the whites in the north arose from harsh geographical and climatic surroundings. The climate theory assumes that while differences in external appearance and in character stem to a large extent from natural deterministic factors, change and improvement are possible. A long enough sojourn in another climate, along with sustained, conscious effort to become part of the majority society, will necessarily lead to a gradual change in the psycho-physical traits of a particular human group. Moving from the far north or south to the temperate climate in which Rome lies, and internalizing the mentality and the aesthetic and moral values of Roman culture, will necessarily lead, in time, to a positive change in both character and appearance, turning the people concerned into Romans in every respect. The climate theory made it legitimate to bring other ethnic groups into Roman society.22 The rabbinic position, by contrast, was totally deterministic, due to theological rather than scientific motives. The Midrashic interpretation of the story of Ham’s sin and Canaan’s punishment declared that their descendants were to suffer perpetual slavery and black skin for ever. Thus the curse of black slavery cannot be annulled: it becomes part of the natural order. According to the perceptions of the Roman world, therefore the black could eventually change his skin, at least in the metaphorical sense, while the rabbinic perception ruled this out completely. The difference appears to lie in the ‘missionary’ quality of Roman culture, which was open to the alien others to the extent that they agreed to internalize Roman values. Differently, because of the different historical circumstances of a small, dispersed ethnic group seeing itself as besieged, the cultural tendencies expressed in rabbinic literature show a strong tendency to withdrawal, and to regard aliens with great suspicion even if and when they agreed to internalize Jewish values. This was in marked contrast 68

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to Roman culture, with its sense of its own strength, which not only could allow itself to bring in other ethnic groups, but had an interest in doing so, if they would only absorb Roman values and do away with their unique differences. This situation, added to the ingrained stereotype of the colour black and the inferior socio-economic status of blacks in the society around them, led rabbinic culture to a virtually uniform position vis-à-vis the black, whom it identified as the ultimate inferior other. Hellenistic–Roman literature, then, showed a complex, ambivalent attitude towards blacks, while in rabbinic literature there was in effect a single, clearly negative stance towards them. Not by chance, then, does Jewish–Hellenistic literature like the histories of Josephus Flavius, which absorbed the cultural values of the surroundings so completely, provide virtually the only positive expressions about the black in the Jewish literature of this period. There is some research on rabbinic literature, relating in particular to the Midrashim on the punishment of Canaan and their subsequent influence on the image of the black in western culture. Most such references are marginal and superficial, referring to secondary, translated sources and are of no great value.23 Isaac’s article (1981) is the first one based on primary sources, and it discusses several of them in detail. There are, however, serious methodological errors, and his analysis of the Midrashim is extremely superficial. He bases himself uncritically on Snowden, and like him is excessively apologetic when he sets out to prove that rabbinic sources do not relate negatively to the black. Like him, he is utterly naive in interpreting the collection of Midrashim on ‘I am black and comely’, as well as those on Canaan’s punishment and Moses’s black wife. His methodological error is in treating all his sources, whether biblical, rabbinic or medieval, as a single entity. Astonishingly, he ignores the fact that these are texts of different types and periods that range over many centuries, necessarily reflecting different attitudes and responding to their respective socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. Instead of examining the development of Jewish sources on this issue over the generations, he lumps them all together, putting them in the wrong context, and ignores developing attitudes. A conspicuous example is ignoring the obvious difference between the literal Bible text ‘I am black and comely’ and its rabbinic interpretation, when the historical development is precisely the most interesting and significant point. Many of his mistaken conclusions arise from this methodological error. In recent years, young Jewish scholars in the United States have become increasingly interested in the black image in rabbinic literature, but most of them tend to apologetics. Their discussion is more influenced by political considerations arising from tensions between the American Jewish and black communities and the desire to disprove anti-Jewish claims that the Jews invented racism, than by objective, unbiased examination of the texts. Some of them, like Isaac, do intellectual acrobatics to ‘cleanse’ the rabbis of the charge of ‘racism’. Such an approach certainly adds nothing to the understanding of the texts and the mentality they reflect.24 69

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In relating to any issue discussed in rabbinic literature, we should beware of methodological error and steer clear of mistaken generalizations. The fact that a Sage, or even a group of Sages, at some period made a certain remark in one context or another, does not necessarily reflect the rabbinic world view or that of ‘Judaism’ on that subject. Each remark must be individually treated as reflecting the conscious or unconscious attitude of the Sage or group of Sages in question in its particular time and context. The principle holds good for any subject on which the Sages expressed any opinion whatsoever, including the issue we are discussing. On the other hand, one is not justified in escaping to the other extreme and avoiding generalization at any price, lest the generalization determine our reading of texts, distorting and oversimplifying a complex reality. A blanket avoidance of generalizations when conditions justify them is, in my view, an escape from researchers’ responsibility for the significance and implications of their work. Under certain conditions, generalizing may be the right and the effective methodology for a correct, relevant description of the cultural and mental characteristics of a given human group at a given time. For this, there are essential prior conditions. One is an accumulation of textual references to the issue, attributed to different rabbis, appearing in different contexts, in different kinds of texts, composed at different times and in different places at the same time. Secondly, there must be considerable ideological and mental closeness between different references to the issue at a particular time. The greater the number of textual references to the same issue, and the greater unity of attitude they express despite differences of context, the stronger the probability that we have before us an accepted normative attitude. I believe that all these conditions exist in our discussion, so that we are justified in using generalization methodology. The very fact that many different rabbis, in such different genres as Halachah, Halachic Midrashim and Aggadic Midrashim, expressed in many different contexts an opinion to which there were virtually no exceptions, speaks for itself. The accumulation of almost uniform statements and remarks made both deliberately and subconsciously, on the black in particular and on skin darker than the accepted norm in general, in my opinion constitutes without a doubt a clear viewpoint. In this case, then, the methodology of generalization is justified. At the same time we must be aware of its dangers and treat each text with the sensitivity it deserves. I believe there is a similar but not necessarily identical phenomenon in connection with the attitudes to women in rabbinic literature, but with a certain ambivalence almost totally absent in relations to the black. Then too, the sources provide us with many more instances to examine in the case of women, and more varied instances, and a reality more easily examined than it is where blacks are concerned. Still, on the level of principle there is a high level of parallelism. The resemblance is no accident, since a world view that sets the other apart on the basis of ethnicity and ‘race’ will incline to do so on a gender basis as well.

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II Discussions of the image of the black appear in various places and contexts in rabbinic literature. Careful analysis of these sources will reveal a developing attitude. Relevant Halachot and Halachic statements appear for the most part in BT Berakhot, Bekhorot and Sukkah. Aggadic Midrashim on the subject are concentrated mainly in three sources: the collection of Midrashim and stories in Shemot Rabbah 49: 2, and in Song of Songs Rabbah 1: 35–41, based on ‘I am black and comely’, and in several other places in that work, a collection of Midrashim in Bereshit Rabbah on the sin of Ham and the punishment of Canaan, and the collection on Moses’s black wife, appearing principally in BT Moed Katan 16b and in Sifre on Numbers, and many additional references. In Halachot appearing in BT Berakhot and Bekhorot, the black appears first in a list of deviant groups, the sight of whom requires one to recite a certain blessing (Berakhot). Bekhorot mentions him first in lists of those disqualified for certain functions because of their defects. The very fact that the black is placed within a deviant group worthy of deviant and frequently degrading treatment in itself indicates how the Sages regarded him. In BT Berakhot 58b (almost identical with Tosephtah Berakhot 86: 3; JT Berakhot 12) we find: If one sees a Black (shahor), a very red or very white person, a hunchback, a dwarf or a dropsical person, he says: Blessed be He who makes different creatures. If he sees one with an amputated limb, or blind, or flatheaded, or lame, or smitten with boil, or pock-marked, he says: Blessed be the true Judge! – There is no contradiction; one blessing is said if he is so from birth, the other if he becomes so. … Our Rabbis taught: On seeing an elephant, an ape, or a longtailed ape, one says: Blessed is He who makes different creatures. If one sees beautiful creatures and beautiful trees, he says: Blessed is He who has such in His world. There is a distinction here between three different blessings said on encountering different types of people, animals and plants: ‘Blessed … is He who makes different creatures’ is said on meeting people deviant by birth, or certain types of animals. ‘Blessed be the true Judge’ is said for persons with certain handicaps. ‘Blessed is He who has such in His world’ is said upon seeing positive, salutary phenomena like fine creatures and fine trees. The first blessing may seem neutral, perhaps even positive, but the groups linked to it necessarily make it negative. The second blessing obviously relates to negative phenomena, while the third certainly refers to positive ones. The black (Rashi defines cushi here as: ‘very black’ (shahor harbeh)) is included among people perceived as deviant from birth, like albinos, hunchbacks and dwarfs. Their deviance is presented as a negative quality placing them in an inferior human group, among the ‘abnormal’, to put it simply. These persons do not meet the accepted social

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norms which are ipso facto positive, so what fails to correspond with them is negative. Difference and deviance from everything defined as normative arouses dread in those who identify with the normative group: hence the psychological need to define the deviant as not only different but necessarily inferior, and to isolate him. ‘Blessed be He who makes different creatures’, then, is said specifically about these groups. Their deviance cuts them off from the norm, and the divinity is blessed for, in his infinite wisdom, unfathomable to mere morals, creating them too for some purpose. The blessing itself could be read as neutral, as thanking God for creating beings so different from one another, but the fact that the group includes only deviants from what is considered normal, healthy and beautiful, speaks for itself. The root meaning of ‘different’ (shoneh) has a descriptive–neutral significance, simply stating that X is different from Y. But one slight change of the Hebrew vowel turns the word into ‘strange’ (meshuneh), which may indicate a difference that is neutral or even favourable (e.g. BT Moed Katan 16b), but it may also be negative and judgemental. The very fact of being different makes one strange. I know of at least one instance in rabbinic literature where ‘strange’ is in an entirely negative context. Perhaps not by chance, it relates to the peculiarity of the black raven, and appears in the story of the sin and punishment of Ham (JT Ta’anit 1: 6). It is no coincidence that the group of those different by birth includes all those whose complexion does not meet the accepted norms, whether from what is defined as an inborn defect or from disease contracted afterwards: the black, the blemished and the albino. Being too white, like the albino, is considered negative, like being black. The ‘black’ quality – having a dark skin – is specifically perceived not merely as a different human situation but as an inferior one, in every respect like one born with a defect, e.g. the hunchback. Saying the same blessing when seeing certain animals as one says when seeing a person of deviant external appearance just reinforces the negative attitude towards the black and those in the same category. Putting the black first on the list of those over whom ‘Blessed be He who makes different creatures’ is said, and on the list of those disqualified because of a personal defect, reinforces the idea of deviance and inferiority. One could say that the black is first on the list for a neutral reason, since he is so obviously different, compared with other people, and perhaps this is so. But for whatever reason he heads the list, the result makes him the prototype of the deviant and inferior. Again, the blessing in itself may be seen as neutral, even positive: God is blessed for his richly varied Creation. But saying this both over deviant human beings and over animals, and only over them, conveys a negative message. Only for one crippled by illness after birth is there a blessing whose significance is even more negative. Anything positive in these two blessings relates to the unfathomable wisdom of God, who made his creatures with some purpose: the rabbis’ perception did not allow them to attribute to God the creation of phenomena perceived as evil, negative or entirely without purpose. 72

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The negative connotation, however, attaches firmly to the groups the blessings relate to. The healthy person with light skin is identified with the normative group, the goodly creatures and the goodly trees, over which one says, in doubly positive language, ‘Blessed be He who has such in His world.’ Whoever deviates from the complexion and external appearance perceived as wholesome and handsome is defined as a deviant and inferior. The dubious human combinations that include blacks have many parallels with the equally dubious combinations that include women. Indeed ‘Blessed is He who did not make me a woman’ has its parallel in ‘Blessed be He who makes different creatures.’ The adult (relatively) light-skinned male thanks his God for making him not only different from but superior to whoever is not part of the ethnic and gender group he identifies with, and for creating those inferiors to serve him. In the versions of blessing the new day, as they developed over the generations, the woman appears with the gentile, the ignoramus, the beast, the slave and the like, for whom the male thanks God ‘who hast not made me so’.25 While the black is never mentioned, ‘hast not made me a slave’ fits in well with his definition as a slave by nature that has its beginning with rabbinic literature. Other formulations like ‘hast not made me a beast’ or ‘unable to speak’, i.e. without mental powers, fits the image of the black in Islamic and Jewish medieval thought only too well, as we shall see later.26 Moreover, one frequently finds the black in groups of this kind, as we shall also see further on. The blessing said by women, ‘who hast made me according to his will’, could also be said equally well by blacks. Indeed in Manasseh ben Israel’s Mikveh Israel, written in the latter half of the seventeenth century, there is a story of a Portuguese Jew who from an Inquisition dungeon in South America prayed: ‘Blessed art thou O God who hast not made me an idolater, and not a barbarian or a black (negro) or even an Indian.’27 Here not only is the black specifically included, but given the new historical circumstances, the Indian is too. The early versions of this blessing made it possible to expand the list of human groups that the adult male Jew with his relatively light skin could thank God for differentiating him from, giving the prayer historical relevance. We find precisely the same phenomenon in BT Bekhorot 45b: [If one is like] a cushi, a labkan, a kippeah, a dwarf, a deaf-mute, an imbecile, intoxicated, or afflicted with plague marks which are clean – [these defects] disqualify in human beings but not in animals. … A cushi is one abnormally black-complexioned ( Aramaic: uhmah). Gihor is one who is [abnormally] white spotted in the face. Labkan is one who is [abnormally] red-spotted [in the face]. … A man abnormally whitecomplexioned (lavan) should not marry an equally whitecomplexioned woman (levanah), lest their offspring be excessively white-complexioned (bohek). A very dark-complexioned man (shahor)

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should not marry an equally very dark-complexioned woman (shehorah), lest their offspring may be pitch black (tafu’ah).28 The discussion is about groups disqualified from the commandment of redeeming the male firstborn. The Mishnah at the beginning of the passage merely notes who is disqualified, while the Gemera explains the precise identity of each group. Here too the black appears among the deviants – by birth and not by birth – and once again he heads the list. Their deviance prevents them from being consecrated to God, so they are released from the commandment of redeeming the firstborn. The list of deviants is very much like the one in BT Berakhot, but here fools, drunkards and other persons with defects are added. Again it reinforces the negative attitude to anyone it includes, including the black. The negative context is reinforced still further when the Gemara explains what conditions absolve people from redeeming their firstborn, though firstborn animals in that condition must be redeemed. From the context, the Amoraim do not appear to relate necessarily just to one we would now call a black, but also to people who for any reason of birth or illness have skin darker than the accepted norm. Otherwise there would be no point in the words of Rav Pepa (fifth-generation Amora, late fifth and early sixth century), advising a black man not to take a black wife, lest they have particularly black children. Now nobody was trying to prevent blacks from having children, and certainly interracial marriage was not being advocated to avoid the birth of offspring who were too dark. It seems, then, that particularly dark-skinned men, not necessarily blacks, were being advised to seek brides lighter than themselves, thereby avoiding the birth of very dark children. One whose skin was ‘white’ – too pale – was counselled not to take a bride with the same complexion, lest their offspring be ‘bleached’ (bohek). The black is identified as ‘abnormal’, like the albino. The desire expressed here is to preserve the lighter (though not too light) skin colour and to avoid blurring the difference between that shade and black skin, with all the negative characteristics attributed to it. No one would have given such advice unless they thought there was something aesthetically and hence morally negative about skin too dark or too light. The idea was to preserve the normative average, since any deviation is ‘abnormal’. One might possibly claim that the even-handed attitude to excessively light and dark skins shows a rejection of deviation from the norm, rather than an exceptional attitude to the black or anyone else whose skin is dangerously like his. The claim could be accepted if there was truly a balanced attitude, as in R. Ishmael’s comparison of black, white and the ‘ideal’ Jewish colouring. Here, however, there is a difference. The black is not compared with the ‘white’ but with the albino, whose skin is certainly perceived as abnormal, emphasizing the black’s abnormality in the eyes of the compiler of the text – in which the black always heads the list of deviants. Taken with the numerous other negative references to him, it is quite clear that he is the prototype of the deviant for 74

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technical reasons because he is conspicuous, by reason of numbers because there are so many more blacks than albinos, for instance, and because of a whole system of negative associations with the black image. The advice that black-skinned people should not mate with one another lest they produce offspring that are too dark recalls the strange story in Bereshit Rabbah 73: 10 of how Jacob outwitted Lavan in the matter of the speckled and ringstraked sheep,29 and in another version in Bamidbar Rabbah 9: 34 in connection with laws related to the suspected adulteress. Bereshit Rabbah tells the story of the reverse case, about a black couple to whom a white child was born: It once happened that a black man (cushi) married a black woman (cushit), begot a white-skinned (lavan) son by her. Thereupon the father took the child and went to Rabbi, asking him ‘perhaps he is not my son.’ ‘Did you have any pictures [of men] in your house’, he asked, ‘Yes’ he replied. ‘Black (shehorot) or White (levanot)?’ ‘White’, he answered. ‘This accounts for your white-skinned son’, he assured him.30 This story shows that under special circumstances a light-skinned child may possibly be born to dark-skinned parents. At the time, it was generally thought that if a mating couple or a pregnant woman thought of or looked at certain objects, this could have a positive or a negative effect on the appearance of the offspring. In this case, looking at the white statues or pictures accounted for the strange occurrence. Different versions of the story appear in Greek and in Hellenistic–Roman literature. Plutarch and Aristotle wrote of white Greek women who gave birth to black children. A frequently used Roman exercise for rhetorical training was arguing the case of a married white woman who gave birth to a black child. The rhetorical exercise was designed to prove that this did not necessarily indicate that the child’s father was black, nor that the woman had deceived her husband, heaven forbid, with a black man. Such a ‘proof’ was seen as an example of the persuasive powers of rhetoric, to be used in a sophisticated fashion to convince people to accept patently false allegations. Heliodorus’s Ethiopika contains an opposite story. A black princess gives birth to a white daughter because the mother was looking at an image of the fairskinned Andromeda when she conceived: Andromeda herself was born to an Ethiopian queen, according to the myth.31 The story in Bereshit Rabbah serves to illustrate the Bible story of Jacob, who caused the sheep to bring forth speckled and ringstraked offspring, i.e. white lambs with dark spots. How did he do it? He cut birch (livneh) branches, peeled the bark away in strips so the white wood would show through, and placed the rods before the trough where the sheep drank. The females who conceived brought forth speckled and spotted offspring (Gen. 30). The motif of using white-striped rods (Hebrew lavan = white) of a birch (Hebrew livneh) ties in 75

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with the name of Lavan, Jacob’s father-in-law and adversary.32 Just as the females of the biblical flock brought forth spotted offspring from looking at the peeled white rods, so the black couple produced a white child from looking at a picture of a white person. The context shows clearly that for the Midrashic author, while the birth of a white child to black parents is extraordinary, it is in essence positive, like Jacob’s actions, which the story serves to ornament. Isaac concludes from this that the rabbis had a positive attitude towards blacks, and no reservations about mixed marriages between them and whites.33 His basis for this is not clear, since the story is not about a mixed marriage but about a black couple. From the caution that appears in BT Bekhorot 45b, the rabbis were not happy about the possibility of the birth of children who were too dark, and would not have been indifferent to mixed marriages, which could produce such children. Besides, they forbade all mixed marriages, not only between different ethnic groups and peoples, but even between different classes of Jews. Just because they were so uncomfortable about the birth of children who were too black, they regarded the truly extraordinary case of the white child born to the black couple in a positive light, a positive deviation from the natural order. The black father was taken aback, and common sense led him to suspect that the white child was not his son but rather the result of his woman mating with a man of lighter complexion than her own. The rabbi he went to set aside the disturbing possibility, and gave it what he felt was an acceptable explanation. Thus the black man did not accept the birth of a white child to black parents, but the light-skinned rabbi he went to (in Bamidbar Rabbah 9: 34, identified with R. Akiva) legitimized it. Obviously he would have reacted differently in the reverse situation, as we find in BT Ketubot 60b, where a dark child born to a light-skinned woman is shown as an occurrence that is in itself negative.34 As far as he was concerned, turning the black into white was certainly positive, just as it was in the case of Jacob’s flocks. However, this is one of the few passages in rabbinic literature where the black male does not appear in a totally negative context, and even has positive qualities. This same black man, identified in the second version as ‘King of the Arabs’,35 is shown as an upright man disturbed by the possibility that his wife has deceived him. Refraining from hasty action, he consults a Jewish sage, in total contradiction to the stereotype of the black carried away by his lust. Possibly the rabbi legitimized what happened not only because of the belief in the influence on the unborn child of looking at certain objects, but for the sake of domestic peace. But the moral of the story remains the same: making the black white, even in defiance of the laws of nature, is not a negative phenomenon; on the contrary, it is purely positive. The positive elements, in which the story departs from the stereotype of the black male, may be present because he is identified as a king in the second version. But the attitude to the black woman is entirely stereotypic, even though in that version she too is a queen or a person of like rank. The Midrashic author seems to have felt that the positive factor of the black’s maleness overrides the negative one of his black76

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ness, while the negativity of the wife’s femaleness combines with and even reinforces her blackness. In a society that designates both black and female as ‘other’, one who is both will serve as the other’s other. The black woman is shown as passive, while both men – the black husband and the light-skinned rabbi – are the active figures in the story, with power to determine the fate of the woman and her baby. Designating the two male figures as communal leaders – rabbi and king – gives them a common denominator of mastery over the female and her children, beyond their otherness as to skin colour and religious–ethnic identity. The two men discuss the fate of the woman, but the black goes to the white (rabbi) for guidance. The ruling male identity group too is composed of ranks in which not only is the Jew above the gentile, but the lightskinned person above the black. The black male serves as the white male’s other, and the gentile as the other of the Jew. Obviously the rabbi identifies the black as a gentile, because he immediately asks him about the ‘pictures’, i.e. icons, in his home, presuming at once that the man is a pagan. According to the second story, even though he is a king, the black gentile accepts the superiority of the ‘white’ Jew and his authority as well, and comes voluntarily to consult him. The (black) woman is simply a passive image whose fate is discussed by men. Moreover, she is intuitively accused of adultery, the first possibility that occurs to her husband. Furthermore, in the second version the story is cited in connection with female adultery and the ordeal of the bitter waters (Num. 5). All of Bamidbar Rabbah 9 is about Midrashim on this episode, full of stories about women’s unfaithfulness and promiscuity and how to deal with them. It is important to note the emphasis on the woman’s looking at white forms, i.e. white pictures, statues or icons. The first version, too, refers to pictures of white persons in the black man’s home, but does not explicitly state that the woman looked at them and so gave birth to a white child. This, however, is explicitly stated in the second version, in the context of a discussion of the sotah, where it is stated that adultery at its worst occurs when a woman lies with her husband and thinks of another man. Possibly it is analogous to the woman contemplating white forms during sexual intercourse with her black husband, and hence the light complexion of the newborn child. If that is so, we are looking at a clear case of the tendency of the inferior ‘other’, in this case the black woman, who prefers the white designator, but has to be content with someone from her own inferior class. At least in her sexual fantasies, a black woman could think of a white lover when obliged to lie with her black mate, thence the light-skinned infant. Not by chance does the collection of Midrashim contain an accumulation of stories and references in which particularly black skin appears in negative contexts. Instinctively light-skinned men tended to relate sexual promiscuity to women and blacks. The combination of female and black serves only to reinforce this intuitive identification, the results of which will be evident later on. The associative identification of dark skin colour with the deviant, inferior and defective appears in various places and contexts in the Talmud. BT Sukkah 77

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34b and 36a discuss defective ethrogim that cannot be used: ‘A Cushite [i.e. dark-coloured] ethrog is invalid’.36 Why the normally yellow fruit is described this way is not clear. Was it brought from the land of Cush and therefore too dark? As Rashi expounds: ‘comes from the land of Cush and is black’. Whatever the cause, identifying it as black points to a defect that was reason to discard it. We see a similar phenomenon in an entirely different context in BT Shabbat 107b: Levi asked Rabbi: How do we know that a wound is such as is permanent? – Because it is written, ‘can the black (cushi) change his skin …’ Just as the skin of the black cannot turn, so a [real] wound one that does not turn [i.e. heal]. The Bible, as already noted, uses the black as an example of an unalterable state that in itself is not necessarily negative. The rabbis, by contrast, in the parallel that emerges between the wound and the black, provide a context that creates a negative association. Black skin is presented as a wound that does not heal – in every way a defect.

III Halachic sources, then, show a clear tendency to identify the black as peculiar among the nations, belonging to an inferior human group, thus linking his physical features with negative phenomena. Aggadic Midrashim dealing with the image of the black provide the ideological basis for this tendency. The most significant of these are the collections on the sin of Ham and the punishment of his son Canaan. As previously stated, they became the locus classicus of the black image in rabbinic literature and the medieval commentary that followed it, which, in turn, significantly influenced Christian and Muslim attitudes. Both Talmuds have versions of a baraita containing an Aggadic saying that complements the Bible story. In BT Sanhedrin 108b there is an especially enigmatic version: Our Rabbis taught: Three copulated in the ark, and they were all punished – The dog, the raven, and Ham. The dog was doomed to be tied, the raven expectorates [his seed into his mate’s mouth], and Ham was smitten (lakhah) in his skin. JT Ta’anit 1: 6 is more specific about the punishment of the three: Ham, the dog, and the raven misbehaved [by having sexual relations in the ark]. Ham went forth blackened (mefuham). The dog went forth dissulate in sexual conduct. The raven went forth different from all other creatures. 78

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Neither version of this Aggadic statement relates at all to the sin of Ham as it appears in the Torah and so has nothing to do with punishment for his biblical sin. Rather an earlier and different sin is under discussion – sexual intercourse in the ark. The JT version begins, ‘When he went into the ark the sexual act was forbidden to him … and when he came out it was permitted to him.’ There is no explanation why sexual relations in the ark should have been considered sinful. Other sources such as Bereshit Rabbah 31: 17 and in Tanhuma Noah and its parallels do provide some explanations. They relate to the difficulty of preserving modesty and privacy in the ark and on the rabbinic prohibition on sexual relations during mourning (for the annihilation of all other human beings in the deluge). The prohibition for the sake of modesty is parallel to the Halachic prohibition of sexual intercourse when lodging at an inn (BT Ketubot 65a; Bamidbar Rabbah 10: 8), though there is no direct biblical support for it. The Bible says that the animals entered the ark in pairs, male and female, making sexual intercourse possible. It seems, however, that these were to have taken place only after leaving the ark, and the prohibition may be inferred from two sources. There are two descriptions of Noah’s family’s entrance, and in both the men are separated from the women: ‘And Noah went in with his sons, and his wife and his sons’ wives with him into the ark’ (Gen. 7: 8, 14). By contrast, they left the ark in pairs: ‘Go forth of the ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons’ wives, with thee’ (Gen. 8: 16). BT Sanhedrin 108b and JT Ta’anit 1: 6 both conclude from this that sexual intercourse was forbidden in the ark. At the same time, the actual leaving of the ark in verse 18 is described like the entry, with the sexes separated. Moreover, the command to be fruitful and multiply appears immediately only after the exodus from the ark (9: 1). From this in itself, the rabbis would have concluded that it was forbidden while they were still inside.37 There were three who sinned and had intercourse in the ark, and were punished accordingly. The dog was ‘tied’, according to BT Sanhedrin. This expression may be interpreted in the sense of being tied to his mate when copulating, or being tied up with a rope. JT prefers the first version. The raven ‘spat’. The accepted interpretation is that he was punished for passing seed to his mate in his spittle. In this instance JT is the more enigmatic. It states that the raven came out most strange of all creatures, but does not state in what way it was strange. Ham, however, ‘suffered (lakhah) in his skin’ according to BT Sanhedrin. This version leaves what happened to his skin an enigma. However, it can easily be understood to mean that his skin grew dark, particularly in view of explanations given by later rabbinic sources. Another interpretation is that ‘suffered in his skin’ refers euphemistically to an injury to Ham’s sex organ.37a JT, however, expressly prefers the first possibility, ‘came out black’, meaning that his skin grew dark. All other rabbinic sources understand that the punishment of Ham (or Canaan) was the darkening of his skin. So do the later Midrashim like Bereshit Rabbah. In any case the very fact that the skin change is defined as a punishment, and described with a 79

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verb indicating suffering and injury, indicates a negative attitude to the new situation. Furthermore, the change is not temporary: it is a permanent injury like that of the dog and the raven. Vayikra Rabbah 17: 5 contains a parallel version but here Canaan, not Ham himself, is punished: ‘Just as when Ham castrated him [i.e. his father], Canaan suffered (Lakhah)’. Moreover, the association of Ham with sexual promiscuity and with the most contemptible animals like the dog and the raven typifies the way the black will be presented later on. In this context, ‘suffered in his skin’ could also be interpreted as an injury to his sex organ, significant in connection with Ham’s alleged sin as ‘measure for measure’. In fact, later Midrashim do relate this particular punishment to Ham or to Canaan, but, as noted earlier, JT Ta’anit and later rabbinic sources understand it as darkening of the skin. And so it is understood in Rashi and Yalkut Shim’oni 58: 8, which refers to the genealogical tradition that Cush descends from Ham: ‘Ham suffered (lakhah) in his skin and Cush came from him’, while in a Yemenite manuscript Talmud of the sixteenth century this meaning is added to the body of the text.37b Contrary to the literal Bible text, this interpretation links the punishment to Ham and ignores any specific connection to his son Canaan. Having transgressed the divine prohibition against sexual intercourse in the ark, Ham is described as one who put himself outside humanity, and is identified with the worst of animals, the dog and the raven, who are ruled by lust; the other is always regarded as ‘bestial’, and ruled by wild lustful drives. One can even find an etymological link between the Torah’s explanation for the deluge and Ham’s name: ‘the earth was filled with violence (hamas)’. This tradition links the punishment with a blackened skin, not slavery, though we have already noted the historical connection between the two. But the nature of the sin hints at slavery. BT Nidah 17a states that the prohibition against sexual intercourse in the presence of others does not include slaves, compared here with donkeys (hamor). Here we find another etymological link, this time between Ham and Hamor, which will be repeated in another context in BT Sanhedrin 70a, as we shall find below. The etymological link created here between Ham, hamas (violence) and hamor (donkey) only reinforces his bestiality. Since Ham did not preserve his modesty by abstaining from sexual relations in the ark, before others, his punishment fits the crime and he becomes a slave in whose presence sex is permitted. Again, not by chance is Ham in the same group as the black-plumed raven with its evil image in western culture. The dove, by contrast, frequently designated as white, represents something positive and hopeful, from the dove that Noah sent to see whether the flood waters had receded, to Picasso’s dove of peace. Here too the black bird has negative associations. In Song of Songs Rabbah 5: 8 the raven is selected as an example to demonstrate the impossibility of whitening black skin: ‘Were everyone in the world to try to whiten a single wing of the raven, they could not.’ The Latin saying ‘rarer than a white 80

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raven’ (corvo quoque rarior albo) indicates a peculiar person, different from everyone else, just as the white raven (corvus albus) is different from all the other, naturally black ones. The white bird (alba avis) is also the rare bird (rara avis).38 This is entirely parallel to the language of JT Ta’anit that the raven is ‘different (meshuneh) from all the animals’. ‘Different’ here has a clearly negative significance. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses (534–541) the raven is depicted as having had snow-white wings originally, but was punished with blackness for the sin of excessive chattering.39 Just as the black raven cannot change its plumage or its nature, so Ham who ‘suffered in his skin’ cannot make it light again. As JT Ta’anit describes the raven as stranger than all the animals, so in the Midrash on Moses’s black wife (BT Moed Katan 16b), the black is described as: ‘distinguishable (meshuneh) by his skin’. The black, like the raven, is depicted as unlike other creatures, the ultimate other whose skin colour signifies his inherent corruption. The system of identifications is completed in BT Pesahim 113b, where the Midrashic author makes an associative link between the raven on one hand and converts and slaves on the other, i.e. gentiles by origin: ‘Our Rabbis taught: Three love each other, vis.: proselytes, slaves and ravens.’ Accidentally or otherwise, the structure of the saying parallels Sanhedrin 108b: ‘Our Rabbis taught: Three copulated in the ark, and they were all punished – the dog, the raven, and Ham.’ The parallel with the dog is especially enlightening. If one understands ‘tied’ as the way the dog copulates, as JT Ta’anit expressly prefers, emphasis is on the dog’s sexual promiscuity and that of everyone placed parallel to it, like Ham and his descendants. As we shall see, the Midrashic authors of Bereshit Rabbah made their interpretations in this way. We have a classic case of measure for measure: the dog and everyone like it sinned through promiscuity and was punished by a humiliating form of copulation. By contrast, those who understand the Hebrew word to signify the dog tied with a rope emphasize its enslavement, and that of all those like it, such as Ham and his offspring. Either way there is massive reinforcement of characteristics later attributed to Ham and his black descendants: natural slavishness and sexual promiscuity. The motifs appearing enigmatically and very briefly in BT Sanhedrin, and briefly but more explicitly in JT Ta’anit, are extensively developed in Bereshit Rabbah 36–37. The Midrashic authors appear to be following the latter version. While both Talmuds relate to a sexual offence committed in the ark but not mentioned in the Bible, the Midrashim discuss Ham’s crime and punishment starting with a literal interpretation of the Scripture. Here for the first time in Jewish thought, we have the main characteristics of the black image in full. We quote only the relevant passages that identify Ham and his descendants with blacks and their traits: 36:6 The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Ham: ‘Thou didst bring thy father’s nakedness (ervah) into disgrace (bazitah): By thy life, I will requite (poreah) thee: ‘So shall the king of Assyria lead away the 81

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captives of Egypt, and the exiles of Cush, young and old, naked and barefoot, and with buttocks uncovered to the shame (ervat) of Egypt’ (Isa. 20: 4). 36:7 And he said: cursed be Canaan ( Gen. 9: 25): Ham sinned and Canaan is cursed! … But when Ham acted thus to him [Noah], he [Noah] exclaimed, ‘You have prevented me from begetting a young son to serve me, therefore that man [your son] will be servant to his brethren! … R. Huna also said in R. Joseph’s name: you have prevented me from doing something in the dark [i.e. copulation] therefore your seed will be ugly and dark-skinned (kaur ve’mefuham). R. Hiyya said: Ham and the dog copulated in the Ark, therefore Ham came forth black-skinned (mefuham) while the dog publicly (mefursam) exposes its copulation. R. Levi said: This may be compared to one who minted his own coinage in the very palace of the king, whereupon the king ordered: I decree that his effigy be defaced (ipahamu panav) and his coinage cancelled. Similarly, Ham and the dog copulated in the Ark. Therefore Ham came forth dark-skinned (mefuham) while the dog publicly (mefursam) exposes its copulation. 37:2 And Cush begot Nimrod (Gen. 18:8). This explains the text Shiggaion of David, which he sang unto the Lord, concerning Cush a Benjamite – ish Yemini (Ps. 7: 1). R. Joshua b. R. Nehemiah said in the name of R. Hanina b. Isaac: He [David] composed this with reference to the seat of Judgment of that wicked man. Was then Esau a Cushite? [He was so called] because he acted like Nimrod.40 The first passage relates to the principle of Ham’s punishment for his sin against his father Noah, measure for measure. He disgraced (bazitah) his father’s nakedness (ervah), which could be understood literally, as written in Genesis, to mean that he simply saw it. Or it could be read as a euphemism for one of the following: he sodomized his father, he castrated him or he lay with his mother. Ham’s descendants paid accordingly and were led into slavery ‘even with their buttocks uncovered, to the shame (ervat) of Egypt’. Quoting from Isaiah’s prophecies of destruction, the Midrashic author unequivocally identifies Ham’s descendants as blacks who will be carried off into slavery by the Assyrian king. ‘Young and old, naked and barefoot, even with their buttocks uncovered’ has the sole purpose of showing what base animals the black slaves were, and to stress the depth of their humiliation. This is the only text in the Bible where the black is shown in an unambiguously degrading way, and it was no accidental choice of the Midrashic author’s to use it. ‘The shame (ervah) of Egypt’ obviously creates a clear association with the revealed nakedness (ervah) attributed to Ham on one hand, and with the link between such prohibited acts and ‘the doings of the land of Egypt’ (Lev. 18: 3). 82

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Now according to biblical genealogy, Egypt (Mizraim) is the son of Ham and the brother of Canaan. Moreover, the punishment is deliberately described by the use of the expression ‘I will requite (poreah) thee’. This is a verb that the Bible uses in connection with violation of accepted custom and morality (Prov. 13: 18; 15: 33; etc.). It is used to describe wildness, rioting, exposure of hidden body parts and sexual promiscuity, activities in themselves identified with backsliding into idolatry. Not for nothing was it said in the episode of the golden calf: ‘And when Moses saw that the people were naked (perah)’ (Exod. 32: 25), for the worship of the idol Ba’al Peor is identified with sexual promiscuity, as in Numbers 25. Hebrew etymology links the words for wild, naked, rioting, uncovering the private parts and sexual promiscuity: all derive from two very similar roots, parah and pa’ar, and all are linked to the promiscuity of pagan rites.41 All, moreover, are associatively identified with the black descendants of Ham. The name of Pharaoh’s slave Potiphar, whom the Sages identified as a black slave, is etymologically explained as deriving from this same root: ‘Poti-phera, because he uncovered himself (po’er) in honour of idols’ (Bereshit Rabbah 86: 3). The second and more important passage expounds directly and in detail the story of the sin of Ham and the punishment of his descendants. The Midrashic author relates to two problems in the interpretation of the Bible text. First, how does one justify punishing children for the sins of their fathers: secondly, why of all Ham’s children is Canaan selected? The rabbis tried in various ways to confront these problems.42 On the basis of the Torah, ‘and [Noah] knew what his younger son had done to him’ (Gen. 9: 24), immediately after which Canaan’s punishment is stated, the Midrash concludes that Ham castrated his father, who, he suspected, was planning to bring other children, who would be competing heirs, into the world. Since Ham prevented Noah from having a young son to serve him in his old age, his own son Canaan and his descendants would henceforth serve Noah and his other sons. The fourth son was singled out (the three older ones were Cush, Mizraim and Phut (Gen. 10: 6)), and Ham, who kept Noah from fathering a fourth child, was punished as befitted his crime. Bereshit Rabbah speaks in euphemistic and hence enigmatic language of Ham disgracing (bazitah) his father’s nakedness, and afterwards of ‘that deed’. The context suggests castration, since Ham’s deed prevented his father from begetting, and only castration could do that. Elsewhere this is stated explicitly, in the version of Vayikrah Rabbah and the Aramaic translation of the Bible attributed to Jonathan b. Uziel, and in a detailed discussion in BT Sanhedrin 70a. Noah’s drunkenness and its tragic consequences are cited in connection with the dangers of excessive drinking. Here the question arises of just what Ham did to Noah: Rab and Samuel [differ.] One maintaining that he castrated him, whilst the other says that he sexually abused him. He who maintained that he castrated him, [reasons thus:] Since he cursed him by his fourth son, he must have injured him with respect to a fourth son. But he who says 83

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that he sexually abused him, draws an analogy between ‘and he saw’ written twice. Here it is written, and Ham the father of Canaan saw the nakedness of his father; whilst elsewhere it is written, ‘And when Shechem the son of Hamor saw her [he took her and lay with her and defiled her]’. As noted, the castration version arises because Noah did not beget a fourth son, though he planned to, so that, appropriately, Ham’s fourth son was punished. The Hebrew plays on the words ‘He damaged (kilkel) (Noah)’ and Ham ‘was damaged (nitkalel)’. The rape version is based on juxtaposing their story to that of Dinah, Jacob’s daughter and Shechem son of Hamor (Gen. 34: 2). Both incidents begin with the Hebrew ‘and he saw (ra’ah)’. Since Shechem first saw Dinah then raped her, so the Midrashic author ‘equates’ the two stories so that if it is said that Ham ‘saw’ his father’s nakedness, he committed rape. There might also be an etymological link here between Ham and Shechem ben Hamor, who both committed severe sexual offences. We already noted the etymological link between Ham, hamas (violence) and hamor (donkey). Here it is also connected to Shechem ben Hamor who committed similar sexual offences. Moreover, in the Torah seeing nakedness is not meant in its literal sense but as the far worse offence of forced and forbidden intercourse (Lev. 20: 17–20). The rape version is associatively linked to the Torah’s prohibition against ‘the doings of the land of Egypt’ from whence they came, and ‘the doings of the land of Canaan’, whither the children of Israel are going (Lev. 18: 3). These are identified as sexual acts forbidden because of the nature of the act itself and/or the identity of the participants. One such prohibition is the uncovering of nakedness, precisely as in the story of Ham. The rape of his father attributed to Ham was doubly forbidden – by its nature and because of the participants – and was an act of force to boot. Doubtlessly this interpretation of Ham’s act was also influenced by the discussion in Leviticus, since Egypt and Canaan, associated with such lascivious acts, were sons of Ham, and Canaan was the one punished, according to the Bible story. The act of raping the father is described through use of the Hebrew verb rabe’ah. It is used twice in Leviticus (18: 23; 20: 16), both times referring to sodomy with animals. The Midrashic author identifies it with male homosexuality as well. Indeed in Leviticus 18 the two appear one after the other, the link indicating severe sexual deviance. The author relates it then to all non-heterosexual activity, which is ipso facto forbidden, and in this Midrash it also involves force. Moreover, elsewhere in Midrashic literature the word ‘disgrace’ (bizui) is used to describe the act, in the specific sense of one man forcing a homosexual act on another one. One example is what is said about Pharaoh in Mekhilta de’Rabbi Ishmael (Beshalakh 3).43 Interpreting Ham’s sin as castrating or, alternatively, raping his father rationalizes Canaan’s slavery. The next statement rationalizes the change of skin 84

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colour. As a result of castration, Ham deprived his father of sexual intercourse, which should be carried out modestly, i.e. in darkness (Ruth Rabbah 2: 17 and parallel texts), so his skin became black as a punishment. Here too we find the analogy between the darkness of night and black skin, with all its negative and threatening implications. The fact that a skin made black is presented as the punishment for a terrible sin in itself expresses the Midrashic author’s negative attitude to anyone whose skin may be defined as ‘ugly and dark-skinned’ (literally charred, mefuham). While ‘charred’ describes skin shade it also indicates dirt, identifying the dark-skinned individual as dirty, with the clear implications of that state, especially in tandem with ‘ugly’.44 Moreover, it related not only to skin colour but to the facial and body features. The Midrash states that not only the skin of such a person is ugly but that he himself is both ugly and charred. Bringing the castration story into the Aggadic Midrash was intended to explain two difficulties in the literal text of the Bible. First, why of all four sons of Ham was Canaan singled out for punishment, and second, why was his punishment slavery? It was also intended to explain why he was punished by the darkening of his skin, which is not hinted at in any way whatsoever in the Bible. And while the Bible does hint at some sexual offence, there is no suggestion at all of castration: it simply states that Noah ‘knew what his younger son had done unto him’. Specifically and in context, Ham saw his father’s nakedness and did not turn away his face, ran to tell his brothers and that the matter became known to his father, obviously from Ham’s brothers, when the effects of drink wore off, and Ham was punished accordingly. The literal text links what Ham saw with what he ‘did’: he saw, did not turn his face away and ran to tell others. By contrast, the Midrashic author separated what Ham saw from what he did, seeing them as two consecutive, causally related events. This follows the logical fallacy of post hoc propter hoc – if two events followed one another, the first caused the second. Since seeing is not, strictly speaking, doing, the rabbis separated the two events and explained that what Ham did was to castrate his father. First he saw his father’s nakedness, the idea came into his mind and then he seized the opportunity of being alone with his drunken and thus incapacitated father, to castrate him.45 Such an interpretation solved another problem: how was it that while both Noah and his sons were commanded to be fruitful and multiply after they left the ark (Gen. 9: 1) the sons did so but Noah begot no more children? To ‘see nakedness (ervah)’ does appear elsewhere in the Torah (Lev. 20: 17, 18) as some type of sexual promiscuity, having no connection with the story of the drunken Noah, which can be easily understood in its literal sense. Moreover, nowhere in the Torah does the expression signify castration. Such an interpretation, then, does not necessarily arise from the literal Bible text, and is to a great extent the result of the fertile imaginations of these same Midrashic commentators. The Bible hints at no specific sin of promiscuity, certainly not at castration. As for defining Ham’s punishment as darkening his skin (BT Sanhedrin and JT Ta’anit) or that of his son (BT Sanhedrin, Bereshit Rabbah, Vayikrah Rabbah), or the sin as castrating his father (BT Sanhedrin, JT 85

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Ta’anit, Bereshit Rabbah), these are no more than commentaries that the authors of the Midrash developed independently. The Torah explains why Ham was punished, though not why that happened through his son Canaan, and not through one or all of his other sons. Nor does the Torah explain why the double punishment of darkening of the skin and slavery was meted out to Canaan. The Midrashic author felt obliged to resolve the issue and fill in the blanks, as it were, in the Bible story. They had two anchors in the Bible text. Given that Cush was the first son of Ham, father of Canaan (Gen. 10: 6), and Cush, as they understood it, was ‘indeed a Cushi’ (Bereshit Rabbah 42: 4), the rabbis concluded that Ham himself, and hence his other sons, were dark skinned. Moreover, the second brother was Mizraim (Egypt), which they saw as fitting well into the geographical context (Isa. 20: 4). But this deduction creates problems, since Canaan, not Cush, was punished. That being so, his skin should have been darkened, not Cush’s. Moreover, in the Bible Cush is nowhere identified as necessarily having dark skin, but only as a place: the first identification between the two is made by the Midrashic authors themselves. They saw Cush as dark skinned and logically gave both his father and his brother this characteristic. But having done so, they were left with the problem of singling out Canaan for punishment. It seems to me that to do so, they grasped at another ‘anchor’ in the Bible. Since Canaan was punished by slavery, by association they deduced that he became black as well, since in the socio-economic reality of their time, slavery was identified more and more with the black. Moreover, they identified the black and the slave, more than any other gentiles, as corrupted by sexual promiscuity. As we see in the description in Bereshit Rabbah 86: 3, ‘all slaves are suspected of immorality (ervah)’.46 The black is identified as the ultimate slave. Elsewhere Canaan himself is said to have commanded his sons to love depravity (zimah) (BT Pesahim 113b). If all slaves are suspected of immorality, then Ham behaved appropriately when he saw his father’s nakedness, and was appropriately punished. From the authors’ point of view, this was thoroughly congruent with the sexual crime attributed to Ham, for which his fourth son was punished by being turned into a black. Besides, this created the convenient associative parallel: slave = black = lasciviousness. On this scriptural ‘anchor’, then, the Midrashic authors fastened their story. Had they not developed stories like this about Ham’s sin, they would not have needed to rationalize the punishment. Both sin and punishment are put into a sexual context that does not necessarily come from the Bible text. While the sin may have had at least subconscious sexual associations, though of another type, the punishment as stated in the Bible has no sexual elements whatsoever. It appears, then, that introducing such virulent sexual components as castration into the scriptural narrative stemmed from the psychological needs – obviously subconscious – of the authors, not merely from the need for a rationale for the biblical punishment. The entire story expresses the sense of sexual inferiority that the light-skinned man feels before the black. Not by accident is 86

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the black, or he who is to become one, said (out of envy?) to have strong sexual desires. The very fact that Ham is described as lustful and sexually deviant makes it virtually inevitable that he will be identified as black. Here one should note the two parallel traditions about Ham’s sin, both in the sexual context: one in the ark and one after leaving it. Since the stories discuss two sexual sins of the same person, committed at different times, the traditions do not contradict but rather reinforce one another and the quality they describe. Ham is thus perceived as one who is by nature lascivious. The white man (Noah) is described as having been castrated by someone who is to become black as a result. The act of castration embodies the white man’s hidden fears of the tremendous sexual potency – as he imagines – of the black. The very idea of sexual competition raises fears of castration, i.e. a sense of impotence. That being so, the white male defines the black as a separate, inferior group and enslaves him so as not to jeopardize his power over his own females and his use of their fertility. Given the myth of black sexual potency, the white had no chance against him in this sphere. It was better, then, to put the black completely out of the running. Here is an additional example – but by no means our last – of the common denominator between sexism and racism. In parallel fashion, the act of castration subconsciously embodies the son’s rebellion against the great father. It is an attempt to nullify the source of his power over the young son, and to remove the fertility contest to the next generation. Leaving the ark, both Noah and his sons were commanded to be fruitful and multiply, and Noah begot no more children. In one interpretation, the contest is between the white and the black and in the other it is between father and son, while in both cases the son strives to neutralize his competitor for fertile females. Different strategies are used: the great father is castrated (another version says he was sodomized, which does not prevent him from competing for females, but is nonetheless a great humiliation) and the black enslaved. From Babylon to Greece, there are myths of the great father castrated by a son: Chronos, for example, was castrated by his son Zeus who then became the father of the gods. R. Hiyya bar Abba and R. Levi based the version in JT Ta’anit on this Midrash, though the source refers to another sin attributed to Ham. Both omitted the raven from the analogy but retained the full force of the one between the black and the dog. Possibly the raven was omitted because the Midrash does not mention that it was punished, simply that it became ‘different (meshuneh)’. The idea that the dog is ‘tied’ acquires the significance of a humiliating form of sexual intercourse. Since the analogy to the black is clear, the implications to his sexual habits are just as clear. R. Levi illustrates the sin of Ham with the story of a king who punished someone who ‘minted his own coinage’ inside the king’s palace. The story makes metaphorical use of a Hellenistic–Roman custom: rulers imprinted coins with their own image, so that stamping coins meant established sovereignty (moneta = monitin). This was a ruler’s privilege, so that any man who took it to 87

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himself was a rebel, and punished accordingly. The coin was invalidated and destroyed as the Midrash says: ‘his effigy be defaced (Hebrew itpahamu panav, literally ‘his face will be charred’) and his coinage cancelled (ipasel)’. Possibly ‘his effigy be defaced’ relates to blackening the face on the coin as a means of invalidating it. But a coin can be cleaned and restored, so that this must refer to the rebel’s face blackened as a punishment.47 R. Levi, then, used an image from the political reality of his time to accent the negative image of the black. He creates an association between one who was punished and ‘his face grew dark’ because ‘his coin was invalidated (ipasel)’, and the inclusion of blacks among the ‘invalid (pesulim)’ persons listed in BT Bekhorot 45b. The story of the rebel who stamped coins with his own image is perceived as an analogy to Ham and the dog having intercourse in the ark – in Noah’s territory – in treacherous rebellion against his authority. Such were the negative qualities associated with the gentile in general and with the black in particular. Accordingly, the next passage deals with the natural treachery attributed to the black. In the third passage R. Joshua explains in the name of R. Hananiah that Cush ben Yemini, who rebelled against King David, was not, heaven forbid, a black, but was given that name because he rebelled against David, like Nimrod ben Cush. The name cushi, then, is identified with treachery, and this trait with the slave (Bereshit Rabbah 86: 3), in associative identification of the slave with the black. As we shall see later, the rabbis generally tended to expound cush or cushi, which in the Bible is used as a given name of a Jew, as indicating his unique character, whether positive or negative. Except for the example above, Cush ben Yemini was identified as King Saul and the name was given a positive metaphorical significance. In view of the world view documented here, it is unimaginable that the man was really a black!48 The Midrashic expansion of the Bible stories on the sin of Ham and the punishment of Canaan created a difficulty totally absent from the Bible text, and the authors did not even try to resolve it. The Bible identifies Cush as one whose descendants settled somewhere south of Egypt, and at a later stage identifies the younger brother Canaan, doomed to eternal slavery, with the ethnic group that was Israel’s rival for control of the promised land. Originally this story was to have been a rationale for the attitude towards the Canaanites, and to legitimize the historical struggle against them. Hence the biblical attitude towards the blacks in their distant land, with whom contacts were marginal, may have been enigmatic but certainly not negative. Not so with the Canaanites. With them there was a daily struggle for survival and the attitude to them was overtly negative.49 The authors of the Bible texts, knowing the Canaanites at first hand, could not describe their skin as darker than their own, and certainly could not maintain that such a complexion was a negative attribute. The rabbinic Midrashim complicated matters when they established the link between Canaan and black skin. In their view there were two black groups, the descendants of the two brothers, Cush and Canaan. But they tended to ignore the biblical image of Cush son of Ham, and identify black skin with Canaan’s descendants only. They 88

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took the name ‘black’ away from Cush and imposed the skin colour attributed to him on Canaan and his offspring; the biblical Cush virtually disappeared. In the collection of Midrashim on the punishment of Canaan, the discussion focuses on the nature of Ham’s sin and the consequent punishments heaped on Canaan, including the blackening of his skin. Appropriate verses about Cush are linked to the Midrashim in order to describe Canaan’s new skin colour and the negative qualities attributed to it. The Bible verses now serve the Midrashic commentators to describe Canaan and his descendants, not the original Cush. Changing circumstances, including the disappearance of the historical Canaanite as the traditional enemy in the land of Israel, made it possible to make new, currently relevant use of his image. He could be identified with the negative image of the black African. Canaan, once a historical personage, becomes a myth. The totally negative image of the biblical Canaanite as the ultimate other made it easier to identify him with the black, and everything negative about him in the biblical image intensifies the negative attitudes in descriptions of the black in rabbinic literature.50 Indeed Canaan as he appears in rabbinic literature is entirely parallel to the image of the inferior black found, for example, in BT Pesahim 113b: ‘Five things did Canaan charge his sons: Love one another, love robbery, love lewdness, hate your masters and do not speak the truth.’ Rabbinic literature contains remnants of the old scriptural identity of the Canaanite. In Midrashim on the ownership of the land of Israel, the Canaanites appear from Africa and claim the land is theirs, but they seem to be Phoenicians who settled on the North African coast, not blacks. These, however, are exceptions to the general rabbinic practice from this time on of identifying Canaan with the prototype of the black slave. Even when he is identified as a Phoenician, he is located in north Africa.51 The last example I know of appears in Pirkei de’Rabbi Eliezer 24, a very late Midrash from the eighth or ninth century, which may already contain Islamic influences. At first reading it seems surprisingly different from the others: He blessed Noah and his sons, as it is said, and God granted them their gifts and bequeathed the entire world to them. He blessed Shem and his sons, black (shehorim) and comely, and granted them the entire cultivated world. He blessed Ham and his sons, black (shehorim) as the raven, and granted them the coast of the sea. He blessed Japheth and his sons, all of them white (levanim) and handsome, and granted them desert and fields. … Rabbi Akiva says that they cast off the yoke of heaven and made Nimrod, slave son of a slave, king over them so that the sons of Ham are slaves and woe to the land that is ruled by a slave. This text surprises for several reasons. First, there is no mention of punishment, but rather a positive statement is made, about a blessing given before Ham sinned. Only the last sentence relates to the punishment of Ham’s descendants. Secondly, both Shem’s and Ham’s descendants are described as ‘black’ 89

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(shehorim) by contrast with Japheth’s, who are ‘white and handsome’ (levanim ve-yafim). Black skin is attributed not only to Ham’s offspring, neither is it shown as negative, nor as a punishment, but in the positive context of a blessing. Only slavery, entirely separated from skin colour in this case, is later described as the punishment for the sin of Ham: this and not skin colour separates Ham from all the others. This Midrash follows the biblical source more closely than all the others, mentioning slavery as the sole punishment, while skin colour is cited as a blessing rather than a curse. This reading of the Midrash, correct in itself, led commentators such as Isaac to use it as a proof that Midrashic authors had a positive attitude to black skin.52 But this is simply the exception that proves the rule and, moreover, it has other facets that correspond closely to the general picture. Their black skin is presented as the trait common to the sons of Shem and of Ham, by contrast with Japheth’s sons who are identified with various European nations. Indeed, the colour white, antithetical to black, is identified with the ‘German’ (Bereshit Rabbah 76: 4). Compared with the fair children of Japheth, the children of Shem and Ham were both relatively dark, and Jews of the time were only too well aware of it. R. Ishmael described the Jewish complexion as ‘medium’, while here it is described in extreme and exceptional fashion as ‘black’ though ‘comely’. This awareness it was that led people who saw themselves as Shem’s descendants to separate themselves as far as possible from the darker offspring of Ham, and to try their best to resemble the white children of Japheth whom they considered beautiful. Here too the aesthetic virtues of the well-established stereotype that defines white skin as beautiful are clearly expressed. It serves only to emphasize prevailing reservations about the aesthetic value of black skin and the moral qualities associated with it. If white is beautiful, as indicated by the use of these two adjectives either as virtually synonyms or in a cause and effect sequence, their antithesis, black skin, cannot be beautiful, or at least it must be less beautiful. While the offspring of Shem and Ham have their dark skin in common, the adjective used to modify it is different in each case and highly significant. While Shem’s children are ‘black and comely’, Ham’s are ‘black as the raven’. The first obviously paraphrases the Song of Songs 1: 5 and is a positive statement. The description of Ham’s children, ‘black as a raven’, paraphrases the Song of Songs 5: 11, where it describes the beautiful black locks of the beloved. In its original context it too is a positive statement. But we have seen how the image of the black raven grew negative in time when linked to the complexion in general rather than to hair colour: this was the accepted view among Midrashic authors.53 Hence while the black sons of Shem are described in a context of fine appearance, the black sons of Ham are linked to the despised raven. The sons of Shem are comely despite their complexion, while the sons of Ham are like the raven because of theirs. There is now a common denominator linking the ‘black’, comely sons of Shem with the handsome white sons of Japheth. Both groups, despite their different skin shades, have positive aesthetic and moral qualities, while the sons of Ham are shown in a negative context. It 90

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seems, then, that the author of the Midrash was well aware that in his historical context those identified as Shem’s descendants were darker than those of Japheth and so distinguished between them. At the same time he took care to present the Semitic skin colour positively as he did that of Japheth’s offspring, who are the basis of identification, while the Hamatic complexion was depicted in the usual negative way. The completely white sons of Japheth are shown as handsome, the darker sons of Shem as comely, which is not quite so beautiful, and the very dark sons of Ham as like the raven, and linked to this they are presented as slaves. Thus despite the unique elements of this Midrash, it ultimately reaches the same stereotypic conclusions. They are linked to skin colour differences and what they represent, and fit in well with the whole system of symbols with which Noah’s three sons are identified throughout history. Later we shall see the medieval expressions of this motif. Jewish scholars of the Middle Ages and early modern times who copied, edited and eventually printed Pirkei de’Rabbi Eliezer had trouble accepting the designation of Shem as ‘black’, even though the source declared it comely, and altered the text to make Shem ‘white’ and to identify him with Japheth. By contrast, Ham’s blackness was reinforced. Later on we relate to expressions of this phenomenon in other rabbinic texts, which clearly manifest the development of the negative image of the colour black and of the human group to whom the colour is attributed.

IV There are other examples of the influence of the system of cultural associations, and norms on the authors of the Midrash. In all cases – and certainly if a real black is involved – dark skin is associated with disease, disability, pollution, physical ugliness and moral depravity, while light skin is identified with beauty, health, cleanliness and virtue. In Bereshit Rabbah 40: 4 there is a Midrash about the descent of Abraham and Sarah into Egypt. The authors had troubles explaining the verse: ‘And when he had drawn near to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, Behold, please, I know that you are a beautiful woman to look upon’ (Gen. 12: 11). And how was it that only at this moment, after they had lived together for so many years, did Abraham notice that Sarah was beautiful? What linked this ‘discovery’ to the descent into Egypt? Thus R. Azariah in the name of R. Judah b. Simon: [Abraham said to Sarah:] We have traversed Aram Naharaim and Aram Nahor and not found a woman as beautiful as you; now that we are entering a country whose inhabitants are black (shehorim) and ugly (keurim), say, I pray thee, thou art my sister, etc. If even in the land of the north, home of the handsome children of Japheth, Sarah was conspicuous for her beauty, so all the more in the south when they 91

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were to go down into Egypt, home of the ugly, black children of Ham. Here there is a total identity between dark skin and ugliness. The context makes it clear that if the authors of the Midrash identified the inhabitants of the south so very negatively, then those of the north were, implicitly, the complete opposite: beautiful and fair. Only on the assumption of such a dichotomy could the authors make their ‘all the more’ deduction, explaining why Abraham said those things to Sarah at that particular time. Associating the Egyptians with blacks, ‘I am black in Egypt’, appears in Song of Songs Rabbah 1: 35 in connection with the series of Midrashim on ‘I am black and comely’. Indeed, many times Cush in the Bible is identified with Egypt, or said to be near Egypt. Mizraim (i.e. Egypt) was brother of Cush. In Psalms (78: 51; 105: 23, 25; 106: 22) Egypt is always identified with the children of Ham. One may surmise that Abraham’s fear lest the Egyptians take his beautiful wife from him was based on the stereotypic Midrashic view of the powerful lust of those same ‘ugly blacks’ and on the biblical view of Egypt’s sexual promiscuity: ‘the doings of the land of Egypt’ (Lev. 18: 3). In this Midrash, Sarah is described as: ‘a beautiful woman’, and as such, the complete antithesis of the ‘black and ugly’ Egyptians. From this one infers, even if it is not explicitly stated, that her skin was significantly lighter then theirs. Since she is presented as the opposite of ugly, it follows that she must be the opposite of black. Again, it is not stated in so many words, but later in the Midrash (40: 5) Abraham is said to have hidden Sarah in a coffer, and when they opened it ‘the land of Egypt was irradiated (hivhikah) with her beauty’. Here Sarah is identified as exceptionally fair and, again, antithetical to the ugly blacks. In other sources Sarah’s beauty is explicitly linked to her white skin. The apocrypha on Genesis, found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, reads, ‘How beautiful all her whiteness (livnatah)’, while Abarbanel at the end of the fifteenth century describes Sarah as ‘a beautiful woman … since her beauty is her whitness (loven)’.54 The parallel between Sarah’s beauty and her white skin is complete. Emphasis on Sarah’s white beauty as against the lasciviousness of the black Egyptians is thoroughly congruent with the familiar European model of the potent African male’s lust after innocent white women, brought to a climax in Shakespeare’s description of the stormy relationship between Othello and Desdemona. The fact that Sarah is described in the Bible and in the Midrash (Gen. 15: 1; Bereshit Rabbah 45) as a lady who owns an Egyptian (i.e. ‘black’) female slave, only reinforces these associations, in their socio-economic context, as we shall also find in the story on the white matron and her black maid which appears in Song of Songs Rabbah. A later instance of identifying the Egyptians as ‘ugly and black’ comes from the Midrash on Psalms. Psalms 7: 1 ‘A song of David, which he sang to God on the words of Cush the Benjamite’, was used by the Midrashic authors where a dilemma existed as to the significance of the word cushi in the Bible. We have noted it in the Midrashim on the punishment of Canaan and we shall find it again in the enigmatic story of Moses’s black wife. By contrast, in this case, the 92

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Midrashic author makes an associative link between what is said of ‘Cush the Benjamite’, identifying him as King Saul, and the story of the unsuccessful attempt of Potiphar’s wife to tempt Joseph: What do the words ‘concerning the matter of Cush the Benjamite’ mean? According to R. Hinena bar papa, David said: ‘As the wife of Joseph’s master accosted Joseph saying ‘Lie with me’ (Gen. 39:7), and then complained: ‘The Hebrew slave, whom thou hast brought unto us, came in unto me to mock me’ (Gen. 39:17), so Saul complained: ‘My son hath stirred up my slave against me to lie in wait’ (I Sam. 22:8). And David went on: ‘Even as the black woman (ha-cushit), the wife of Joseph’s master, used lies against him, so Saul the Benjamite used lies against me.’55 The author makes the same judgement about the demands of Potiphar’s wife and Saul’s demand that his people support his struggle against David. In both cases, whoever is defined as a slave (eved) is described as rebelling against his lawful master. The Midrashim on the biblical significance of cushi generally identified Cush the Benjamite with King Saul (exept for Bereshit Rabbah 36–37, analysed earlier), ‘Benjamin’ providing the commentators with the anchor they needed, as Saul belonged to the tribe of Benjamin. But they also had to explain why Saul was described as black. Generally it was interpreted as a linguistic device where what is said is the very opposite of what is meant (leshon sagi Náhor), to show Saul’s particularly positive character, as we find, for example, in Sifre Zuta on Numbers 12: 1: Was Saul a cushi? Was he not a Benjamite? – But, just as a cushi is distinguished in his appearance (nikar be-maraiv) from all other people, so was Saul distinguished by his appearance and his actions (nikar bemaroh u-b-ma’asiv) from all of Israel.56 Here is the parallelism that made it possible to compare Saul with Joseph. As Saul was ‘distinguished by his appearance and actions’, ‘being taller than any of the people from his shoulder and upward’ (I Sam. 9: 2), so Joseph in the story about Potiphar’s wife was ‘beautiful in form, and of a beautiful appearance’ – all the more so when Joseph is critically described in the Midrash (Bereshit Rabbah 84: 7) as artificially adding to his height (‘lifting his heel’). In this sense Joseph too is perceived in the language of opposites as a ‘black’, because of his unique positive qualities. The metaphorical, i.e. the positive black, must contend with the real, negative black, ‘known by his appearance’, i.e. by his external appearance and skin colour, perceived as deviant. Joseph is described as one who withstood temptation, being ‘beautiful in form, and of the beautiful appearance’, since his aesthetic external appearance would indicate internal moral strength. 93

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What is especially interesting in this Midrash is the fact that the Midrashic author identifies Potiphar’s wife as a black woman. While Joseph, like Saul, is identified as the metaphorical cushi, in the positive sense, Potipahr’s wife is identified as the real Cushite woman, in the negative sense. The Bible text does not so much as hint at this. The earlier Midrashim containing the story (e.g. BT Yoma 35b; Sotah 36b; Avodah Zarah 3a; Avot de’Rabbi Nathan 16: 1; Kalla Rabbati 3: 42 and Bereshit Rabbah 76: 4) do not relate to it. True, in the last version the man who sold Joseph to Potiphar is described as black. But the reference is not to Potiphar but to the Ishmaelites who sold Joseph. Identifying Potiphar’s wife as a black woman, then, is a late and unique development, as far as I know. Clearly it was designed to highlight her negative character. Since this Midrashic collection is very late, from the ninth century, and was probably composed in southern Italy, it may already contain Muslim influences, as some scholars assume. This may be evident also in the description of Potiphar’s Cushite wife. The author uses an entire system of associations to establish this identity. The Bible describes Potiphar himself as ‘a eunuch of Pharaoh, chief of the executioners, and Egyptian man’ (Gen. 39: 1). Three elements in this description make it possible to identify his wife as black – his identification as a slave, a eunuch, and as an Egyptian. The author of this Midrash used the same anchors as those in the series of Midrashim on the sin of Ham and the punishment of Canaan. We have already noted the increasing identification of slave with black in late classical times, and we shall find many more examples in the Midrashim. Since this late Midrash probably contains Muslim influences, this might reflect the existence of black slavery in the Muslim cultural environment in the Middle Ages which will be discussed in the next chapter. Potiphar is identified as a ‘eunuch’ in the Bible source. Clearly, when read literally, it means that he was a slave; moreover when he is said to have a wife. However, the author’s system of associations identifies the eunuch as black, not only from ‘Ebed-melek the black man, of the eunuchs which were in the king’s house’ (Jer. 38: 7) but in the light of a historical reality in which slaves were often castrated, particularly those who worked around women. Moreover, the Midrashic authors may have understood from a literal reading of the Scripture that Potiphar was castrated after he had taken a wife. Indeed, according to the Midrash in BT Sotah 13b and Bereshit Rabbah 86: 3–4, Potiphar was castrated by God after he bought Joseph, with whom he wanted to satisfy his sexual needs. But Potiphar is not identified here as a black but as ‘an Egyptian’, who bought a slave from blacks – the Ishmaelites. In any case, this interpretation can explain the tireless efforts of Potiphar’s wife to seduce young Joseph, since her husband could no longer function sexually. Thirdly, as in the Midrash about Sarah’s and Abraham’s descent into Egypt, the Egyptian is instinctively identified as a black, since he is a son of Ham. Besides, marking Potiphar’s wife as a black reinforces the biblical description of her as one sunken in sexual promiscuity – and we have seen many examples of how blacks, especially black women, were perceived to have strong sexual lust – all the more so when this black woman is also described as a liar. Not saying the 94

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truth was considered to be one of the main characterizations of the slave, as in BT Pesahim 113b. Another connection to this system of associations which identified Potiphar’s wife as a black woman can be found in Vayikrah Rabbah 11: 17 where she is called ‘a bear’ (dov). It is possible that this relates to her dark skin. In the book of Ben Sira 25–26 we find a saying that an evil woman can darken her husband’s face ‘like a bear (dov)’. Possibly the association to the bear in this context stems from the dark fur of the bear and the vicious nature related to it (e.g. II Kgs. 2: 24). This system of associations that identifies the black as a slave by nature, sunk in sexual promiscuity, made it possible for the author of this late Midrash to make Potiphar’s wife a black woman in every respect. The dichotomy between the positive attitude to light skin as opposed to the negative one to dark skin, stronger still when relating to the skin of the black, with all the characteristics associated with it, is found in different rabbinic contexts, beginning with the Mishnah and ending with the late Aggadic Midrashim. The model appears to have been deeply rooted. In Mishnah Nedarim 9: 10, in the context of vows connected with marriages, we find the following: If one vow saying, ‘that I do not wed so-and-so for she is ugly!’ – yet she was in reality beautiful ; or ‘she is black (shehorah)!’ – although she was indeed white (levanah); ‘she is short’ – though indeed she is tall; he is permitted to take her, not because she was ugly and became beautiful, or dark and became fair, or short and became tall, but because the vow was made in error. BT Nedarim 65a takes up these points directly. The dichotomy here is clear: ugly black short

beautiful white tall

It is obvious that dark skin is identified with physical features as ugly and inferior. Further on, in BT Nedarim 66b, in the discussion of the physical characteristics of the comely versus the ugly woman, the latter is said to have thick lips, which are generally an ugly feature attributed to the black. The phenomenon reaches a peak in a Midrash in Bamidbar Rabbah. Chapter 9, which discusses the suspected adulteress and the trial by means of the bitter water (Num. 5). This is perhaps one of the most ‘sexist’ of the Aggadic Midrashim. The frequent use of normative images of skin colour is typical of the chapter; we have already discussed the Midrash on the black woman who gave birth to a white child that appears in one of its forms in this Midrashic collection. This is not surprising, since gender and ‘racist’ stereotypes come from the same mindset, so they frequently appear together. One who needs so many gender stereotypes will also make use of skin colour when discussing the ‘other’. Part of the punishment meted out to the woman whose shame is disclosed in 95

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the trial with the bitter waters is symbolized by the colour black: she will give birth to black offspring, her skin will become black and she will wear black clothes instead of white ones. The dichotomy in attitude to skin colour and related characteristics is expressed just as sharply in discussing the reward of the fertile woman who was proven innocent, by contrast with the barren woman who manipulated the trial to prove her innocence and so to gain a child. Thus the Midrashic author describes the reward of the fertile woman (9: 25): not only will she go on bearing children, but her offspring will be finer and she will give birth under better conditions. This version in Bamidbar Rabbah, compiled at a very late date, is certainly based on much earlier sources, such as the almost identical versions in Tosephta Sotah 2: 3, BT Berakhot 31b and JT Sotah 3: 4. Our discussion is based on the late version, with references to earlier variations, because of the special nature of the collection of the Bamidbar Rabbah Midrashim, which, coming later, will be more complete than the others: In fact, however, what is meant by ‘she shall be cleared, and shall conceive seed’ is that if she has hitherto suffered in childbirth she will henceforth be delivered with ease; if she gave birth to females she will now give birth to males; if she had dark children (shehorim) she will now have fair (levanim); if undersized ones (kezarim) she will have well-grown ones (arukim); if she had a child once in two years she will now have one every year; if she gave birth to one, she will now give birth to two. We have here a dichotomy of two contrasting situations – positive and negative: delivers with ease males fair children well-grown ones bears every year bears two

delivers with pain females dark children undersized ones bears every two years bears one

JT Sotha adds: ‘[bears] ugly [children] bears handsome [children]’. While fair skin is the positive side of the comparison along with handsome, well-grown male children,57 black skin is placed on the negative side, with ugly, undersized female babies (as in JT Sotah). The perfect child, the reward of the good woman, is thus identified as a full-sized handsome male (as in JT Sotah), with fair skin. Everything that differs from him, like the dark, undersized, ugly female infant, is described as inferior and defective, totally negative, the punishment of the wicked woman. Later in the chapter (9: 41) we find the formulation: ‘if she had ugly (keurim) children she will give birth to fair (levanim) ones’. The word ‘black’ (shahor) has been replaced with ‘ugly’ as one who is the opposite of fair. 96

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This version is similar to the one in JT Sotah: ‘[bears] ugly [children] bears handsome [children]’. The word ‘ugly’, then, indicates the word ‘black’. Indeed, as early as Bereshit Rabbah 36: 11 we find Canaan described as ‘ugly and charred’, while in the Midrash on Abraham’s descent into Egypt we have the combination ‘ugly and black’. By contrast, ‘comely’ indicates ‘white’. The dichotomy is complete. Elsewhere in the same chapter (9: 21) the punishment of the sinful woman is described as the darkening of her skin: The [bitter] water wrought various kinds of strange (meshunim) effects upon her. If she was white(melubenet) it turned her black (shehorah); if red, it made her green. A blackened skin signifies disease (as in BT Ketubot 9b). In 9: 33 the punishment of the sinner is described as putting off her white garments, representing purity, and putting on black ones that symbolize sin and punishment: ‘If she was covered with white (levanim) she is covered with black (shehorim). If she had upon her person ornaments of gold … they are removed from her so as to make her repellent.’58 In our Chapter 2 we noted the use of black clothes as a sign of mourning and degradation. In two places in BT the man overcome by his desires is told that he should ‘go to a place where he is not known, and put on black garments (shehorin), and wrap himself up in black garments, and let him do what his heart desires’ (Hagigah 16a, Kiddushin 40a). In each case, the transition from ‘white’ to ‘black’, whether in the colour of the infant, the adult or the clothing, indicates a transition from a positive to a negative state. We find the same phenomenon in another context in BT Ketubot 60b, where the Midrashic author lists activities that a pregnant (or nursing) woman should avoid in order to bear healthy children. He mentions, inter alia: ‘One who drinks intoxicating liquor will have black [i.e. ungainly, Aramaic: ucmi] children.’ The very fact that the birth of dark children is perceived as negative speaks for itself. It follows necessarily, then, that in the eyes of the author if the (light-skinned) woman conducts herself properly she will have healthy, i.e. light-skinned, children. Should she take strong drink she will be punished by having children with dark skin. The attitude of the Sages to excessive wine drinking is familiar: they associated it with promiscuity (BT Sotah 2a; Bamidbar Rabba 10: 8–9). Hence they set strict limits on women drinking wine, since their attitude was that women were naturally promiscuous (BT Ketubot 65a), and those who set aside the prohibitions were punished accordingly. Perhaps the author assumed a connection between the colour of wine and that of the infant. Indeed, in BT Baba Batra 97b, we find that particularly dark wine is called ‘black (cushi) wine’. The perceived link between drunkenness and skin colour is shown in BT Kiddushin 49b: ‘Ten kabs of drunkenness descended to the world: nine were taken by blacks (cushim).’ Once blackness is identified with drunkenness, the reverse assumption follows: that the (white) woman who drinks will have dark children. The negative act with its consequence may even 97

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contain an association with the sin of Ham and the punishment of Canaan whose skin became dark, all because of Noah’s drunkenness. While the birth of a black child to a white woman is perceived as negative, the reverse possibility is seen as positive.59 We have other examples where skin darker than the norm (not necessarily black) is identified with physical features perceived as ugly or at least less attractive than those perceived as ‘beautiful’ in men and women alike. In BT Shabbat 62b, there is a juicy description of the sexual promiscuity of Jerusalem’s inhabitants, which led to the destruction of the Temple. Euphemistically, the writer describes it in gastronomic terms. Both Hellenistic and rabbinic literature often use gastronomic metaphors to describe sexual activities. There is a strong association between having food and having sex. Both relate to the satisfaction of primary material needs, and both have a strong and immediate sensuous component. In both cases the woman is represented as one designed to satisfy the needs of her man, so gastronomic metaphors were a natural means to describe sexual activity. This ‘clean’ description of sex by describing eating serves the androcentric tendencies of the Midrashic authors well. Since a direct and detailed description of sexual activity in its varied positions were considered to be in bad taste, it was indicated by means of the most suitable normative activity.60 In this context too, dark skin is listed along with negative phenomena as follows: Rav Judah said in Rab’s name: The men of Jerusalem were vulgar. One would say to his neighbour, on what did you dine to-day: on wellkneaded bread or on bread that is not well-kneaded; on white wine or on dark [i.e. mustard coloured] wine; on a broad couch or on a narrow couch; with a good companion or with a poor companion? R. Hisda observed: And all these are in reference to immorality. The ‘feast’ serves as a euphemism for intercourse. (As Rashi puts it: a repast = sexual relations.) The woman, like the food and the furniture, is presented as an object that serves the male. Here too we have the clear dichotomy between more and less desirable female objects, by male standards. Women with dark skin and hair, though not necessarily black women, appear as less desirable. As always gender and colour stereotypes go hand in hand: well-kneaded bread bread that is not well kneaded white wine black wine a broad couch a narrow couch a good companion a poor companion

= a woman with a mate = a woman without a mate = a woman with white skin or hair = a woman with dark skin or hair = a plump woman = a thin woman = a good-looking woman = an ugly woman. 98

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Aesthetic norms appear to have changed over time. At one time, full-bodied women were preferred to thin ones. However, the preference for light over dark skin and hair has remained deeply rooted over the generations. There is another example in BT Nedarim 50b which relates to external appearances of a man. Here R. Samuel’s appearance is described in a humiliating fashion by a woman against whom he passed judgement, as ‘short, big-stomached, black (ucam, in Aramaic), and large teethed’. R. Samuel took this as an insult, the woman was excommunicated and died. The accumulation of evidence serves only to reinforce well-established gender, ethnic and aesthetic stereotypes. Furthermore, this accumulation of evidence shows a clear tendency in rabbinic literature to identify skin that is darker than the norm, and even more so the skin of blacks, as inferior and ugly. The peak is reached in the collection of Midrashim on the story of the sin of Ham and the punishment of Canaan, most of them in Bereshit Rabbah, which unambiguously identify Canaan as one whose punishment consists in the darkening of his skin and a fate of eternal slavery. The combination of slave = a black was clearly established. As previously stated, this serves as theological justification for the economic and social reality developing at the time throughout Mediterranean culture, where so many slaves were imported from black Africa. In this collection and in other Midrashim previously mentioned, the stereotypical image of the black takes the form it is to have in the Midrashic, literary and philosophical tradition of the Middle Ages: the black is identified as animal-like, ugly, dirty, lustful and lascivious, and by nature a treacherous slave. The whole combination of traits the rabbis attributed to the gentile – violence, cruelty, sexual promiscuity and the like61 – feed into the image of the black. He is the ultimate, definitive gentile. In BT Kiddushin 49b, as we have noted, he is also a natural drunkard: ‘Ten kabs of drunkenness descended to the world: nine were taken by blacks (cushim)’, which does not tell us why. Possibly the reason is related to the sin of Ham who saw his father sprawling naked and drunk and whose son Canaan was punished by being turned into a black slave and, according to this saying, a drunkard as well, all parts of the punishment fitting the crime. While the Midrashim relate to the blackening of Canaan’s skin, they do not connect it with drunkenness. But versions from BT Sanhedrin 70a, and Bamidbar Rabbah 10: 8 and 22, which deal with the dangers of excessive drinking, mention penalties for drunkenness, connecting it directly to the punishment of Canaan: ‘so wine caused … the world to be cursed’. BT Kiddushin and Ketubot, which state that a pregnant woman who drinks will bear a dark child, forge the link between drunkenness and the nature of the black, while the Midrash in Bereshit Rabbah closes the circle and establishes the connection between Canaan and the black. It is no coincidence that the Midrashic commentary on the story of the sin of Ham and the punishment of Canaan creates the link between drunkenness and sexual promiscuity, since both express the shattering of accepted social norms, the first establishing conditions that make the second possible: ‘for wine leads to idolatry’ (Bamidbar Rabbah 10: 8). Possibly the Midrashic 99

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authors noted Jeremiah’s ‘Can the black change his skin?’, which appears as an analogy for the sinners of Israel who have fallen into drunkenness and prostitution. In Greek culture as well we find the same associative link between the two.62 In BT Kiddushin, other nations, sometimes repeatedly, as well as the blacks, are described as having vices. They are contrasted with the Jews who may incline to evil in some form, but can always repent – unlike other peoples for whom evil-doing is inborn. This attitude is entirely ethnocentric but not necessarily ‘racist’. Accumulated evidence, however, shows that as a result of stereotypic identifications, the black was marked as totally other, the ultimate gentile. The operative conclusion after defining blacks as an inferior and separate group was to enslave them. The stereotypical system that identified them as bestial, black and ugly, slaves by nature, drunken and promiscuous to boot, took final shape.62a

V There are several direct testimonies to awareness in rabbinic literature of the link between blackness and slavery which evolved in the Hellenistic–Roman cultural world of its time. We have seen it in the collection of Midrashim on the punishment of Ham, and the identification of the wife of Potiphar, Pharaoh’s ‘slave’, as a black woman. There are quite a few additional examples; most appear in the Midrashic literature. BT contains two instances, both relating to blacks who served great rulers, and possibly the result of observation of the world around the Talmudic Sages. In each case, as we have already witnessed in examples from later periods, two blacks are involved: this seems to be a well-established topos. The first example appears in manuscripts, but disappeared – or was made to disappear – from the text of the Venice edition, the first printed edition of the BT. In BT Kiddushin 40a there is a story of a lady who tried to lead a man into sin, but he resisted the temptation. What helped him resist temptation, according to the printed versions, is described below: The next morning the Rabbis asked him, ‘who guarded you?’ Said he to them, ‘Two imperial [armour] bearers guarded me all night. It turns out from the Munich manuscript that the change of a single Hebrew letter in the printed edition removed the information that the emperor’s servants were ‘blacks’ (nos’ei, i.e. bearers, instead of cusha’ei, i.e. blacks). The original text obviously referred to black slavery in the Roman world, and possibly related to bodyguards of the emperor, who were often foreigners – Goths or blacks. The reference to blacks disappeared when the first letter in this word was changed from the Hebrew kaf to nun. Since these two letters are quite similar, it is possible that it was a scribe’s error. At the same time it is possible 100

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that the editor of the printed edition made the change deliberately, either because he failed to understand the presence of blacks under the circumstances, or because he wanted to adapt the text to the contemporary outlook. In any case, the original version, ‘Two imperial black (cusha’ei) armour bearers guarded me all night,’ expresses a clear knowledge of black slavery. Moreover, since the Midrash serves as a parable in which the black bodyguards stand for angels who saved the man from the temptation of the lady, we have here the language of opposites, where the blacks signify the pure white angels. We shall find another classic example of the same phenomenon in the Midrashim on Moses’s black wife. The two blacks appear here in the typical context of night, darkness and the attendant danger of sexual promiscuity, and not, coincidentally, in connection with the danger of female lust. But the blacks are positively shown as protectors from danger though in the capacity of slaves, servants of the emperor. The story illustrates the archetypical violence attributed to the blacks, though physical force serves here positive moral ends. Its context strengthens the assumption that this indeed is the original Talmudic formulation. The second example appears in BT Sukkah 53a, relating to the black scribes of King Solomon: ‘There were once two Cushites (cusha’ei) who attended on Solomon’, based on I Kings 4: 3: ‘Elhoreph and Ahiah the sons of Shisha, were the scribes’. The Midrashic authors appear to have identified Shisha as Shishak, King of Egypt, who attacked the Temple and carried off its treasures (I Kgs. 14: 25–26). Hence the association with the black, since in biblical genealogy Mizraim (Hebrew for Egypt) was the brother of Cush, and in Midrashic literature Egyptians are identified as blacks as in the story of the descent of Abraham and Sarah into Egypt. In the story of the two black scribes, Solomon tries to defend them from the angel of death. Some see this as evidence of a favourable attitude of the author towards them. But the example is entirely marginal even if it is true, especially since according to the story Solomon was not interested so much in the fate of the scribes as in his own power struggle against the angel of death. Most of the rabbinic awareness of black slavery appears, as previously stated, in the Midrashic literature. In Bereshit Rabbah 86: 3 the Midrash responds to the Bible story of the Ishmaelite’s sale of Joseph into slavery, to Potiphar (Gen. 39). The author saw this as an abnormal situation in which the natural slave, the Ishmaelite, sells the natural master, Joseph, and he responded in accordance with the situation in his own time: ‘Everywhere a white man (Germani, literally German) sells a black man (cushi), while here a black man is selling a white man! He is no slave.’ Joseph is explicitly designated as ‘German’, i.e. European, a fair-skinned natural master. The expression was obviously acquired from Latin culture, and like the Romans he identified northern Europeans as people with particularly light skin, by comparison not only with blacks but with themselves as somewhat darker Mediterranean people. In Mishnah Negaim 2: 1 the German is expressly stated to have particularly light skin. (Maimonides in his 101

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Commentary on the Mishnah explains that German means here ‘The name of he who is the whitest (al-shadid al-avitz)’.) We have seen such expression in Pirkei de’Rabbi Eliezer, depicting the children of Japheth living in the north as ‘white and handsome’. Hence the author of the Midrash described the perfect fairskinned man, Joseph, as ‘German’.63 By contrast with the Romans who saw the white ‘German’ as ugly and as inferior like the black, and hence a slave by nature, the Midrashic author sees the white German as having the perfect complexion and hence necessarily a born master. However, in two sources in JT (Shabbat 6: 9 and Yoma 8: 5) we did find that R. Judah Hanassi had a German slave, though this unique piece of evidence is completely neutral and the ‘German’ has no negative qualities apart from his condition of slavery. It contrasts completely with the negative descriptions of black slaves. In our Midrash, however, the German is described as a natural master and the Ishmaelite who sold him as a black, i.e. one whose natural condition is slavery. In the later Midrash on Psalms we find Potiphar’s wife herself identified as a black woman. That being so, according to the author the enslavement of Joseph is invalid, since it opposes the natural order of things. The same unnatural phenomenon is described in the name of the same author, R. Levi, in Midrash Kohellet Rabbah 10: 8: ‘I saw slaves on horseback and ministers walking on the grounds like slaves.’ Indeed Joseph quickly put slavery behind him when he demonstrated unique abilities not typical of the slave, but of the master. In this connection, the author describes typical slave behaviour, while Joseph’s, as described in the Bible, is the complete opposite (Bereshit Rabbah 86: 3): All slaves cause loss to their master’s house, but as for this one, ‘The Lord blessed the Egyptian’s house for Joseph’s sake’; all slaves are suspected of theft, but here, ‘And Joseph gathered up all the money … and Joseph brought the money into pharaoh’s house’; all slaves are suspected of immorality, but this one ‘Hearkened not unto her, to lie by her, or to be with her’; … All slaves are permitted to eat terumah through their masters, but this one caused his master to eat terumah. This behaviour, typical of the gentile slave, is also expressed in the words attributed to Canaan, punished by eternal slavery, by the Midrashic author in BT Pesahim 113b: ‘Five things did Canaan charge his sons: Love one another, love robbery, love lewdness, hate your masters and do not speak the truth.’ In this context the black is shown as the ultimate slave, with at least some of the traits attributed to the slave being related directly to the black as previously shown. In our sources the alien slave’s inclination to sexual promiscuity is particularly stressed in contrast to the natural modesty attributed to his Hebrew counterpart (e.g. in BT Avodah Zarah 65a). Joseph the Hebrew, by contrast, is shown as the ultimate master. Any change, and certainly that reversal of the natural order that caused Joseph to be sold into slavery, is shown as unacceptable in its very essence. 102

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Bereshit Rabbah 60: 2 expounds the story of Abraham’s slave, identified in the Midrash as Eliezer, who set forth to find a suitable bride for Isaac. There Eliezer is described as ‘a prudent servant’, following Proverbs 17: 2. The great understanding attributed to him showed itself in his awareness of his good fortune in being a slave of Abraham and no other, so that he showed Abraham great loyalty. To show just how terrible Eliezer’s fate could have been as a slave of someone who was not a natural master, the author states: ‘A prudent servant (eved)’ alludes to Eliezer. And wherein lay his wisdom? He argued thus: My curse lies upon me from aforetime: Perhaps a black man (cushi) or a Barbarian (barbar) will come and enslave me; then it is better that I be enslaved in this house [i.e. Abrhahm’s] than elsewhere. The expression ‘my curse lies upon me from aforetime’ refers to Noah’s curse that doomed Canaan to everlasting slavery. Eliezer is portrayed here, then, as a natural slave, a descendant of Ham. He should, then, have been identified as black, which he is not. As a natural slave, he desired to serve a natural master like Abraham, not some black who like himself is a natural slave and could not be a good master. To be the slave of a natural slave is perceived as a contradiction of the natural order. The combination of black with barbarian merely reinforces the definition of one born to be a slave. In Greek and as a result in Roman culture, the term was used for the stranger or alien, i.e. for the nonGreek and later for the non-Roman. The ‘barbarian’ was thus held to lack culture and to speak poorly in an incomprehensible tongue. In ancient Greece, in Homer, the word was neutral, and simply meant a non-Hellenic stranger. In the course of time the term became negative and judgemental, and the stranger an inferior. Aristotle expressed this well when he declared that only the Hellenes were entitled to be free and the others, the ‘barbarians’, were by nature destined to slavery.64 This identification of the barbarian as bestial and primitive, and hence a slave by nature, appears in rabbinic literature as well. Consider the example from BT Yevamot 63b, where the barbarians are described as those ‘Who go naked in the streets’ (as well as Bereshit Rabbah 42: 3 and Vayikrah Rabbah 11: 7). These changes of meaning from early to later classical times are closely parallel to changes in the meaning of ‘black’ in Jewish culture, where it moved from the neutral significance of the Bible to the negative judgemental connotations of rabbinic literature. Here too the ultimate other becomes inferior. Moreover, the change in the meaning of ‘barbarian’ in Greek culture closely parallels that of the word ‘gentile’ (goy) in Jewish culture. As among the Greeks blacks were merely a subgroup of barbarians, so in Jewish culture they were an inferior subgroup of gentiles. That word was neutral in the Bible and meant simply another people: it was even applied to Israel in a positive sense (Gen. 18: 18). When the word is used for the Cushite ‘terrible … tall and smooth people 103

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(goy)’ in Isaiah (18: 2, 7), it even expresses wonder and admiration. In postbiblical Jewish literature, by contrast, the word is identified with the non-Jew, so takes on the clearly negative significance of the inferior other, just as the word ‘barbarian’ did among the Greeks, especially when applied to the black subgroup. The Midrash specifically includes black and barbarian in the group born to slavery, who are unworthy of being masters, while the Aristotelian perception saw the Hellenes as naturally free people and barbarians in the group born to slavery. That perception in rabbinic literature regards Jews as free people by birth, slaves only to their father in heaven, while at least some of the gentiles, like the Canaanites in the Bible and blacks in the rabbinical context, are presented as slaves by nature. In each instance, whoever belongs to the preferred group, i.e. to the community of adult males with (relatively) light skin and of the preferred ethnic origin, is defined as a free man and a natural master. All the others are defined as at least inferior, beginning with their own women and continuing down to the more extreme cases of slaves by birth, like blacks. In any case, those not belonging to the select group are perceived as born to serve its members. Here too, as in the parallel between the black and the German, the rabbis adopted terms from the Hellenistic–Roman world, worked them into the Midrashic literature, and gave them scriptural legitimacy. The perception of the black as a natural slave is expressed once again in the same Midrash (Bereshit Rabbah 60: 3) in connection with the sign Eliezer determined so he could recognize the right bride for Isaac. The author brings additional examples from the Bible of instances when promises were made to people who would meet certain conditions. One is about Saul’s promise that the man who slew Goliath would receive great wealth and the king’s daughter as his wife (I Sam. 17: 25). In this connection the author notes that only God’s grace allowed David, rather than another man unworthy of the king’s daughter, to do the heroic deed, because the king would have been obliged to give his daughter as a wife to that man. It is no coincidence that the author illustrates this by means of the black and similar inferior types: ‘It might even be a black man (cushi) or an idolater or a slave (eved).’ The order distinguishes gradations of unacceptable mates on the basis of relative remoteness or special identity. The black is the remote alien, like the black in the Bible, the idolater is geographically closer, and the slave could even be within the household. As for identity, the black is ruled out on an ethnic basis, the idolater on the basis of religious beliefs and practices and the slave because of social status. In the technical Halachic context, this is nothing but a list of unacceptable marriage partners, but it has clear normative significance. The triple link in itself – black, idolater and slave – with the black first, expresses only too clearly what the author regarded as the black’s place in the universal order. Other versions of this Midrash appear in BT Ta’anit 4a and at the end of Vayikrah Rabbah 37: 4. The latter states, regarding the first girl whom Eliezer would meet: ‘If a Canaanite slave-girl, or a harlot, had come out’, and about Caleb son of Jephunneh’s promise regarding his daughter Achsah: ‘If a 104

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Canaanite or a bastard, or a slave had captured it’, and what parallels Bereshit Rabbah on Saul’s promise: ‘If an Ammonite, or a bastard, or a slave had killed him.’ The black is not mentioned here, nor in BT Ta’anit where the list is made up of the lame or blind person, the slave, the bastard and the unclean thing. We have already seen, however, that in this literature the black is consistently shown as the ultimate example of all varieties of disqualification: gentile, slave, persons with physical disabilities and those associated with sexual promiscuity (the harlot and the bastard). It is hardly by chance, then, that of all the gentiles only the black is named. His presence among the disqualified in the different Midrashic versions speaks for itself, particularly in view of the dubious qualities of the others on those lists. The most fascinating example of rabbinic awareness of black slavery and its effect on the rabbis’ world view is found in Song of Songs Rabbah 1: 31. At the very beginning of the associative Midrashic discussion of the verse ‘Do not look at me, that I am black’ (1: 39), the author draws a parallel with Proverbs 30:10, which also states, in the negative mode, ‘Do not slander a servant to his master.’ The association between dark skin and servitude, even metaphorically, is established at once. One may assume that the author is reacting to the historical reality he knows. The assumption is reinforced by this story within the Midrashic discussion: Said R. Isaac, ‘There was the case of a local noblewoman (kartanit)64a who had a black (chusit) female slave, who went down to draw water from the well with her friend. She said to her friend: “My friend, tomorrow my master is going to divorce his wife and take me as his wife.” The other said to her, “why?” “It is because he saw her hands blackened (mefuhamot) [i.e. dirty].” She said to her, “You big fool! Let your ears hear what your mouth is saying. Now if concerning his wife, who is most precious to him, you say that because he saw her hands blackened (mefuhamot) one time, he wants to divorce her, you, who are entirely scorched and black (mefuhemet u-shehorah) from the day of your birth, how much the more so!”’ The Midrash illustrates the triangular relationship between Israel, the God of Israel and the gentiles. It responds as well to the Christian claim that because of Israel’s sins and refusal to accept the true Messiah, the divinity rejected the people of Israel and replaced them with a new Chosen People. The counterclaim is that although the people of Israel have sinned, God does not replace them with another people (the Christians) whose sins are greater and continuous as well, while the people of Israel, despite their sins, can always repent. One may assume that the story of the black female slave is based on what the writer himself saw, testifying to the widespread presence of slaves from black Africa in the Middle East of his time. It is not clear whether the female slave served a Jewish or a gentile mistress. The story context makes it quite possible 105

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that her friend was a black slave too. In Song of Songs Rabbah there is much evidence of close acquaintance with later Hellenistic culture, and this story may be part of it, as it appears to show that the rabbis were well aware of the ever stronger link between the black and slavery. Commentaries on the relevant biblical texts were naturally influenced by it, and it was used too in the religious controversy with Christianity. Besides its value as evidence of contemporary social reality, this story highlights the image of the black as it was developing in rabbinic literature. This time, however, the black is female, which accentuates her inferiority, as indicated in the story of the black couple to whom a white child is born, discussed above. Again, this world view draws parallels between gender and ethnic – ‘racist’ definitions. Here all the marginal groups, defined by gender, ‘race’ and social status, combine in one individual – female, black, and a slave – by contrast with the representative of the ruling elite, the white male master. Marginal status here is seen to be permanent and unalterable. Even imagining the possibility of change is presented as complete foolishness, a distorted reading of reality. The black slave is presented, then, as utterly foolish. It is worth noting that her friend, who belongs to at least two inferior groups (female and a slave) if she was not black as well, shows her the mistake. This member of the marginal group is shown as one who has thoroughly internalized the social norms of the ruling elite. By contrast with her foolish companion, she is shown as a person of understanding, i.e. one who willingly accepts the norms determined by others that make her own marginality a natural fact of life. It is well known that the greatest achievement of any ruling establishment is to convince oppressed marginal groups that their situation is divinely ordained and thus to make them eager supporters of the status quo. It may not surprise us that such a defence of the status quo comes from another twice-marginalized slave, who may or may not have been black. In the latter case she would be one social step above the black slave and hence more committed to the social order and the need to convince the black slave that she was inferior even to her, and that there was no possibility whatever of a change. Only the black slave, who had nothing to lose because she was at the bottom of the social ladder, could imagine the fantastic – and subversive – possibility that her master would divorce his white spouse and take her, the black slave, in preference. Maybe she had been left with nothing but the ability to dream. It is interesting to compare the black female slave with the provincial lady (kartanit). She too is presented as a marginal figure whose husband, the master of the female slave, can divorce her, his lawful wife, if she loses his favour. But there are degrees of marginality. The master’s white wife is above the female slave in the social order. She belongs to just one marginal group (women) and as such she is in subjugation to her husband, but she has a black female slave in subjugation to her. That being so, it is foolish to assume that one higher on the social scale might be replaced by someone of lower status. Each of the three women in the story represents a different level of marginality. The provincial 106

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mistress belongs to only one. One female slave belongs to at least two, while the black female slave, who belongs to all three, is at the bottom of the scale. She is doubly oppressed, as a woman and as a black, the cheapest merchandise on the labour market, and is exploited both as a woman and as a worker. The black female slave, then, is placed at the lowest level of human existence. As noted earlier, the ‘other’ in any culture will always create his/her own other of the other.65 A woman in a society that sees her as ‘other’ will perceive a female slave as other of the other, while she, in turn, will see the black female slave as the other of the other of the other, in the lowest degree of otherness. Facing them is, of course, the individual at the opposite pole – the male, white master. The entire story deals only with the passive evaluations of females who, in the course of their work, gossip about what the master may or may not do. Though he makes no direct appearance, he is presented as the active and determining factor throughout, the one who decides the fate of the females who are subject to him, from his lawful wife down to the black slave. The lawful wife does not appear directly either. We have no information about her save for the dialogue of the two female salves going down to the well to draw water, from which we learn of the relationship within the household and receive contradictory appraisals of their significance. But while we have some detail about the personality, status and behaviour of the lawful wife, the master remains an enigma. We know nothing about him save his position as master. His absence from the story, the paucity of detail, and the unexamined assumptions about what he intends to do, all serve only to stress his total otherness from the three females, each of whom is at a different level of passivity and natural inferiority by comparison with him. The emphasis on their total otherness fits well into the allegory that the story illustrates, comparing the master to God. Darkness of complexion and its permanence serve here as a metaphor for the social status of each woman vis-à-vis the dominant white male. The black female slave is not only charred but her whole body is black from birth, permanently and unalterably. In this story we find our most complete description of the black in terms of skin: ‘you, who are entirely scorched (mefuhemet) and black (shehorah) from the day of your birth’. The skin of her fellow female slave may also be dark, but it is not specifically mentioned. From the negative fashion in which she describes her black companion’s skin, one may conclude that her own skin may be lighter, in relative terms. The provincial woman, their mistress, by contrast, is black over a limited area of her body, and only temporarily. Her hands are blackened, probably from doing some chore that is women’s work, and can be washed clean. We have seen many examples of the link between a dirty and dark skin, and between washing the skin and lightening it. The possibility that her husband might divorce her relates to the link between her dark – or dirty – hands and the reason for it – no doubt some work that she should not have undertaken, in his opinion, because of her status as his wife. The definition of both beauty and roles is determined by the ruling white male. In this sense the story is thoroughly suited to the entire collection of 107

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stories originating in the verse ‘Do not look at me that I am black.’ The white wife is on the defensive, her status endangered the moment her white skin becomes dark, even partially and temporarily, because of some dirt or exposure to the sun, and she finds herself in a position that might, heaven forbid, blur the distinction between herself and the black female slave. This story is an excellent example of the conflict between the principle of legitimacy and that of paternalism, which was an integral part of a slave-owning society, from the biblical story of Abraham and Hagar, down to the American south in the nineteenth century. The conflict was particularly acute where household slaves were employed. Such a situation created a chance of intimacy and the danger of blurring the distinction between slaves and the master’s family. The legitimacy principle expresses the interests of the master’s legal kin, particularly the wife and children, in protecting their greater privileges vis-à-vis the master than the slaves had. The family wanted to have maximum service from the slaves. However, this not only made them dependent on the slaves who became the actual masters, following Hegel’s well-known parable.66 It also carried with it a dangerous potential for excessive intimacy between masters and slaves. The interests of the legitimate family, therefore, lay in maximum exploitation of slaves while keeping them in a status inferior to their own in regard to the master. It involves avoiding any intimacy, such as concubinage, which would lead to illegitimate offspring who might compete for the master’s affection – and his estate. Paternalism stands in contradiction to legitimacy, representing as it does the interest of the master in establishing, preserving and reinforcing his control over all those under his authority, whether legitimate kin or slaves, even at the expense of blurring distinctions between them. Following this principle, the master can take concubines from among the female slaves, beget illegitimate children and give central administrative roles to slaves of his choice. In so doing he takes maximum advantage of the workforce at his disposal, reinforces the dependence of his legitimate kin, blurs status distinctions between them and his preferred slaves, creates competition between the two groups for closeness to himself, dividing, conquering and reinforcing his own mastery. While legitimate family members want to stress status differences between themselves and the slaves, the master wants to blur them. The slaves, at least the favourites among them, will have an existential interest in supporting the principle of paternalism against that of legitimacy. Competition with legitimate family members for the master’s heart – and bed – is virtually the only means of improving their status. The legitimate family might naturally react with violence in such a struggle for survival. The biblical story of Hagar and Sarah is a clear, even an archetypal example.67 Tension between legitimacy and paternalism, an existential condition in societies based on a slave economy, is clearly expressed in this Midrashic story. The black female slave who, as such, is in the lowest social stratum, presents herself as a rival of the lawful wife for her master’s favours, trying to exploit a 108

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weakening, temporary though it may be, in the wife’s status. No doubt, she prefers the principle of paternalism and places her entire trust in her real or imagined ties with the master. This is her only channel of escape from her bitter fate. The other female servant, who does not have temerity enough to use her sexuality to influence the master, perhaps for lack of the natural endowments, supports the status quo, defending the legitimate interests of the provincial lady. Given her different qualities, she uses different survival tactics, relying on benefit she may derive by supporting the mistress. Unsurprisingly, while the black female slave presents the option of marrying the master as a possibility, the other one sees it as a castle in the air, with no foundation in reality. The story does not indicate whether there are bases for the black woman’s hopes. In view of the norms of their society, such hopes were at the very least exaggerated. The master might have been ready to use her as a concubine, and perhaps deluded her into thinking he might marry her, while she in her ignorance convinced herself. He certainly would never make a black female slave his lawful wife. Considering that the story is presented as a parable in which the master is analogous to God, the mistress to Israel and the black female slave to Christianity, the author obviously preferred the legitimacy principle to paternalism. The legitimate interest of the lawful wife is preferred over the pretensions of the black female slave. According to the author, the master could not possibly prefer the black female slave over the white wife of his bosom. Since the former is black, the author sets aside any possibility of a change in the inferior social status for which nature destined her. The sexual, racial and social scale described in such detail serves the analogue of the story well. It provides a theological and ethnic analogy for ranking the other. The dominant white male represents God, the white wife the people of Israel who despite their sin remain Israel, the Chosen, while the black female slave represents the base nations of the world, particularly Christianity. The temporary blackened hands of the master’s white wife exemplify the sins of Israel. Just as her hands can be cleansed and return to their original white perfection, and her husband–master will love her once again, so Israel can repent and, in the words of the prophet: ‘Though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be white as snow’ (Isa. 1: 18). As usual, dark skin illustrates sin. In the wife’s case, however, soiling is temporary and can be cleansed, while the black female slave’s colour and the low status it signifies are as unalterable as the baseness of the gentiles. The divinity is marked by the most perfect combination the author could conceive of, which he would naturally have identified in himself: a dominant white male. The analogy with divinity is well served by portraying the master as absolute other, the ruling active factor who does not appear directly in the story, and about whom one can only gossip, or surmise what he may do. Israel, depicted as a woman, is inferior to God but superior to Christianity because she has light skin. Christianity, by contrast, is marked by the three characteristics of marginal groups: a female, a slave and, what is seen 109

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as worst of all, she is black. Metaphorically we find, then, that both the divinity and Israel are indicated by the colour white which represents purity (the complete otherness between the two is shown in the gender component and in the fact that Israel is destined to become soiled, while the divinity forever retains its ‘white’ purity). Christianity, by contrast, is identified with indelible pollution. The various gradations, gender, ‘racial’ and social, are not only theological–ethnic, but reflect reality as well. A world view that places human groups in a theo-ethnic hierarchic order will necessarily have a gender–ethnic social hierarchy in its own society. In the parable as in the analogue, the black is at the bottom of the scale. We have already noted that early Christian commentary, from Origen to Augustine, identified the theme of the black and comely woman in a way opposite to that of rabbinic literature. Each used the text to advance its own theological interests. For the church fathers, the story of the Shulamit was a parable for the process of accepting Christianity. Whoever becomes a Christian was originally ‘black’, i.e. a sinner, but became ‘white’ when he accepted Jesus as the Messiah. Despite their differences of opinion in this area, however, both sides agreed on one thing they perceived as obvious. Being black, and all the more so being a black female slave, represents for all the ultimate depth of degradation, as did the individual who bore these characteristics. The two religious groups took different positions as to who should be the metaphorical black female slave, each one using that epithet for the other. But there were no differences of opinion regarding the black female slave as representing the nether rung of inferiority.

VI Another group of Midrashim shows how the black appears in the eyes to the Sages, based on the enigmatic biblical story of Moses’s black wife (‘the Cushite woman’: Num. 12: 1). Sifre and Sifre Zota on Numbers 12: 1 and BT Moed Katan 16b relate to it in detail, while the later sources, Bamidbar Rabbah and Midrash Tanhumah, do not deal with this problem at all. The common point of departure is the problem of commentators when they had to identify Israelite individuals mentioned in the Bible who were called cushi. The Sages could not accept the possibility that the Bible was simply and literally referring to blacks, and certainly not that the prophet Zephaniah was literally ‘the son of Cushi’ (Zeph. 1: 1). Hence they required far-fetched interpretations in which the word metamorphosed from the totally undesirable literal sense with its negative connotation, through an interpretation that gave it an opposite metaphorical significance that they found positive. The Midrashic authors found their habit of expounding names an effective tool in the creative interpretation of the biblical text. Hence their need for intricate allegories regarding the name cushi does not necessarily prove a negative judgemental attitude, because they did that in many other instances: the method they used in this case does. Moreover, 110

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their consistent and persistent difficulty with the literal meaning of the biblical cushi speaks for itself. When BT Moed Katan discusses the significance of the word cushi in general, using as one of the examples the image of Moses’s black wife, the largely parallel and earlier versions in Sifre and Sifre Zota on the book of Numbers focus and elaborate on the image of the black wife in the direct textual context, noting other places in the Bible where the word cushi occurs. The Moed Katan version is as follows: Hence it is written, ‘Shiggaion [= error] of David, which he sang unto the Lord, concerning Cush a Benjamite’ (Ps. 7: 1). Was Cush that Benjamite’s name? And was not his name Saul? – But, just as a Cushi is distinguishable (meshuneh) by his skin, so was Saul distinguished (meshuneh) by his deeds. In like manner you explain ‘… because of the Cushite woman that he had taken to wife’. Was she a Cushite [woman]? Was not her name Zipporah? But as a Cushite woman is distinguished (meshunah) by her skin so was also Zipporah distinguished (meshunah) by her deeds. In like manner you explain: ‘Now Ebed-Melek the Cushite … heard’ (Jer. 38: 8). Now was his name Cushite? was not his name Zedekiah? But as the Cushite is distinguishable by his skin so was Zedekiah distinguished by his deeds. In like manner you explain: ‘Are ye not as the children of the Cushites unto me, O children of Israel, saith the Lord?’ (Amos 9: 7). Now is their name [children of] Cushites? Was not their name [children of Israel]? The truth is that as the Cushite is distinguishable by his skin, so are Israel distinguished by their ways from all other nations. Sifre Zota on Numbers 12: 1 reads thus: ‘because of the Cushite woman’, was she a Cushite [woman]? Was she not a Midianite? But as a Cushi is distinguished (nikar) in his appearance from all people so was Zipporah distinguished (nikeret) in her appearance and her deeds from all woman. He also says: ‘Shiggaion [= error] of David, which he sang unto the Lord, concerning Cush the Benjamite’ (Ps. 7: 1). Was Saul a Cushi? Was he not from the tribe of Benjamin? But, just as a Cushi is distinguished (nikar) in his appearances from all people, so was Saul distinguished (nikar ) in his appearance and deeds from all of Israel. In like manner he explains: ‘And Ebed Melek the Cushi … heard’ (Jer. 38: 8). Now was Baruch ben Neriah a Cushi? But as a Cushi is distinguished (nikar) from all the people by his appearance, so was Baruch ben Neriah distinguished (nikar) in his appearance and his deeds from all Israel. In like manner he explains: ‘Are ye not as the children of the Cushites unto me, O children of Israel, saith the Lord?’ (Amos 9: 7). Now, Are the children 111

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of Israel Cushites? The truth is that as the Cushi is distinguished (nikar) by his appearance from all people, so were Israel distinguished (nikarin) from all the people by their love of the Lord. R. Joseph said: There is a woman who is beautiful when she is young and becomes disfigured (mitnavelet) when she gets old. How do you know that Zipporah was beautiful when she was young and beautiful when she was old? He said: ‘because of the Cushite woman’. R. Judah says: You have a poor [woman] who is the daughter of a poor [woman] who does not know how to behave in a regal fashion when she is in a distinguished position, whence you know that Zipporah was a ‘Cushite’ when she was poor and a ‘Cushite’ when she gained regal status? He said: ‘Because of the Cushite woman’. How do you know that Moses took her for this purpose? Because it is said: ‘Because of the Cushite woman’.68 As in the story of Canaan’s punishment, the Sages also had to contend with the lacunae in the enigmatic story of Moses’s Cushite wife. Even Aaron and Miriam were publicly critical about something related to her, and what it was is not at all clear from the Bible. The Midrashic authors, then, found an explanation. Dealing with the word cushi was, as far as they were concerned, a necessary prior condition for understanding the attitude of Miriam and Aaron. The authors had a double problem with Moses’s wife as ‘a Cushite woman’. First of all, Zipporah, Moses’s wife, was a Midianite, daughter of Jethro, and the Midianites were not blacks. The possibility that the Cushite wife may not have been Zipporah, but another one whom Moses took, was rejected out of hand, although the Bible allows it, and some commentaries and translations understood the text in such a way. In Hellenistic–Jewish literature in Aristophanos, Josephus Flavius (Antiquities II, 238–253) and other sources we find different versions of Moses’s military expeditions in black Africa while a prince in Pharaoh’s court, and of his marriage to a black princess who fell in love with him. Such stories appear in medieval literature too. The common point of departure could be an attempt of all authors to understand and to flesh out the enigmatic story. As such these stories may be regarded as Aggadic Midrashim of a sort, attempting to decipher and complete what the Torah relates with enigmatic brevity, and, as they do so, adapting it to current needs. Another possibility is that the Hellenistic or Egyptian–Hellenistic story developed separately. An example of stories that appear to have been widespread in the Judaeo-Hellenistic world may be found in the Palestine Aramaic translation of Numbers where ‘Cushite woman’ is regarded as ‘the Queen of Cush’ whom Moses once married, but later sent away. A few other translations as well hint at this possibility, as we shall see later. It is no coincidence that although the rabbinic Midrashim contain stories on Moses’s life in Pharaoh’s court, this episode is not found in any of them. While the story of little Moses playing with Pharaoh, removing his crown and placing it on his own head served the theo-ethnic purposes of the Sages well, the one about Moses’s African wife would have been of dubious value, so they ignored 112

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it. For both social and political reasons, the story that kindled the imagination of Hellenistic–Jewish scholars was rejected out of hand by the authors of the Midrashim.69 It was unthinkable that Moses had more then one wife, especially that he had a foreign wife, and a black one to boot. The possibility is a total contradiction of the unique figure that emerges from Midrashic literature, of a man who lived apart even from his one and only wife (e.g. BT Shabbat 87a; Pesahim 87b; Yevamot 62a; Avot de’Rabbi Nathan 9: 2). Hence it was not even discussed. According to some of these sources, Moses’s celibacy aroused Miriam’s criticism, in her defence of the conjugal rights of his one wife. There is a tradition that Pinhas the priest criticized Moses for taking a foreign wife (BT Sanhedrin 82a–b and parallels). Another tradition relates that Moses divorced his one wife Zipporah (Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Jethro 1), who was a foreigner but closer than a black. This would be all the truer regarding one described as ‘a Cushite woman’. That Moses could have had a foreign wife who was black, even as a second wife, was impossible by definition as far as they were concerned. A parallel situation exists in the way the Sages ignored the biblical story of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, obviously for similar reasons, though it fired the imagination of scholars of the later classical era and of the Middle Ages, in another theological and cultural milieu. In her case too, the loaded combination of a powerful and wise woman of foreign ethnic origin, who, moreover, as a descendant of Sheba son of Cush had dark skin, obviously had connotations so negative that they preferred to ignore the entire story. The sole reference to the Queen of Sheba in BT (Baba Batra 15b) wipes out the problem by denying that she was a woman. While in later Jewish and Muslim versions the Queen of Sheba is punished for her effrontery in crossing gender boundaries and is sent back in the end to her appropriate female status, the Sages solved the problem by making her a man in every respect.70 By contrast, the single example I know of where there is an unambiguously positive portrayal of blacks – not simply blacks but black women – in rabbinic literature is in the description of the kingdom of the wise women in Africa. In a story of Alexander the Great, in BT Tamid 32b, we are told that Alexander insisted on visiting Africa despite its dangers, and reached a city populated entirely by women. The women amazed him with their wisdom. Before he left he wrote on the city gates: ‘I Alexander of Macedon, was a fool until I came to the city of women in Africa and learned wisdom from the women.’71 What astonishes here is the extraordinary coming together of the wisdom of women with the wisdom of blacks, when the two usually combine to produce completely opposite associations. An influence from some Hellenistic source must be at work, although these sources too had similar stereotypes relating to blacks and to women, and the very fact that the story is cited speaks for itself. There seems to have been some possibility of accepting such an encounter between a gentile like Alexander and wise black women, taking place as it did at a safe distance. The rabbis could not do so in the case of King Solomon and 113

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certainly not in the case of Moses, giver of the Torah. In any case, this example is totally exceptional. Be that as it may, once they had ruled out the possibility that Moses had a second wife, the rabbis had to deal with the possibility that the first and only one was black. This too was rejected out of hand. The very fact that they would not even examine such a possibility favourably expresses only too well the system of stereotypes that influenced the Midrashic authors. The fact that Moses’s wife was a Midianite could be digested somehow. The Midianites were at least ethnically close to Israel and Jethro had much to his credit, but a Cushite wife? That was much too much. Moses could not possibly have sunk so far, literally, as to take a black wife. Therefore, while Josephus Flavius described the blacks as a nation like all other nations, so that Moses could have married a black princess, the rabbis rejected the possibility out of hand. That being so, the authors had to get away from the literal meaning and interpret the word cushi metaphorically: ‘And was she indeed black (cushit)?’, a version in Sifre on Numbers asks rhetorically. BT Moed Katan evades the issue even more when it describes the word cushit as unrelated to an ethnic description, but simply the woman’s name. Both commentators, then, maintain that the expression cushit simply designates the uniqueness of Moses’s wife. As the black is distinguished from others by his unique appearance, so Moses’s wife was distinctive in appearance and in her actions, and in this respect was like a black. To make this point the Midrashic authors bring in a string of verses from different places in the Bible about people named cushi. Since as far as the authors were concerned, these people could not have been blacks, they concluded that the name was allegorical, and signified uniqueness. Again, the very fact that in each case the possibility of understanding cushi literally was rejected out of hand, in itself reflects prejudice. In ‘Cush ben Yemini’, both sources identify Saul, indicating his appearance and his deeds, which were unique in all of Israel. Especially interesting is the version in Sifre on Numbers: ‘Was Saul a cushi?’ But, just as a cushi is distinguished by his skin, so was Saul distinguished by his appearance, as it is said: ‘taller than any of the people from his shoulders and upward’ (I Sam. 9: 2). Not simply his uniqueness marks Saul as a metaphorical cushi but his great height: both in the Bible and in Greek and Roman literature, blacks were seen as especially tall. The rabbis employ the same solution elsewhere for the use of cushi in relation to certain people like Baruch son of Neriah, whom the Midrash for some reason identifies with ‘EbedMelek, the black (cushi) man’ (Jer. 38: 7), and for entire groups pf people, as in the words of Amos: ‘Are you not like the sons of the blacks (Cushi’im)?’ The explanation regarding Ebed-Melech is particularly interesting, since in the Bible there is no link whatsoever between him and Baruch son of Neriah. True, the Midrashim were used to linking various characters and identities as a means of fleshing out a character. But what may have disturbed them here was the exceptionally positive way in which the Book of Jeremiah presents Ebed114

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Melech the black slave. They would have had trouble reconciling it with their own negative images, and so had to identify him with Jeremiah’s faithful scribe, deciding to give cushi a positive, metaphorical significance. In any case, the explanation–solution they found necessary to offer for a non-existent problem is an excellent example of their mindset on the subject. In Psikta Rabbati 26, as well, we have: ‘And Ebed-Melek the black (ha-cushi) heard … and why was he called cushi? Since the black is recognized by his skin and he was recognized by his good deeds in Zedekiah’s palace.’ In the Midrash on the sin of Noah as we have seen, the name ‘Cush son of Yemini’ is explained allegorically. There, however, he is not identified as Saul but as a traitor among David’s men, so the expression indicates the vices, like treachery, commonly attributed to the black slave. By contrast, in the Midrash on Moses’s black wife, given its context, the name is positively interpreted as indicating superiority to the community in general. In at least one place, however, in the Shoher Tov Midrash on Psalms, Saul is negatively identified as cushi not only in the language of opposites, but in connection with his evil deeds. Since Saul ‘changed his skin’ and did evil in the sight of the Lord, he is metaphorically a cushi, the black being identified with evil inclinations. Thus also ‘Are you not like the sons of the Cushi’im?’ acquires a double meaning in Song of Songs Rabbah, while here it has an entirely positive significance: it represents the uniqueness of Israel, the Chosen People. While Sifre on Numbers uses the expression ‘distinguished by his appearance (nikar be’Marehu)’, the Moed Katan version is ‘distinguished (meshuneh) by his skin’, Again and again the black is identified as nikar and meshuneh (Hebrew for distinguished, different, conspicuous, peculiar, strange, odd) in these texts. One notes that here it may be used in its positive sense of ‘preference’, rather than necessarily express strangeness or oddity. The expressions nikar and meshuneh have precisely the same meaning here, although the possibility of understanding meshuneh as ‘oddity’ does exist, as shown in the example of the raven in rabbinic literature, which emerged from the ark: ‘stranger (meshuneh) than all the animals’, i.e. it became black (JT Ta’anit 1: 6). The Moed Katan version emphasizes the black’s uniqueness in the colour of his skin. Although as in the Bible, nowhere is it said that the Cushite woman is indeed black, her identification here as ‘distinguishable (meshunah) by her skin’ and the Cushi as ‘distinguished by his skin’ leads to that conclusion, just as BT Sanhedrin on Ham who ‘suffered in his skin’ and the parallel JT Ta’anit version on the raven do. Furthermore, the entire network of associations that surround them is based on this premise. The Midrashic author shows the two pairs of examples as similar, and concludes that just as they do not refer to an actual black but are a metaphor for special, unique qualities, so the same is true regarding the correct reading of the Torah on Moses’s black wife. Since the Midrashic authors could not accept the idea that she was actually black, and required a positive connotation for what she represented, they had to resort to a stratagem and explain the expression as the language of opposites 115

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(leshon sagi na’hor) using peculiarity to mean uniquely positive qualities. Stereotypical attitudes to blacks led these and other authors to such non-literal, far-fetched explanations. One notes, however, that the black character in him/herself does not represent anything positive, but rather something conspicuous because it is different. Showing the black as so very different ipso facto indicates a stereotyping. Hence since the black stands out because s/he is so (negatively) different, everyone whom the biblical text calls cushi but is, obviously, not really a black, is entirely positive in character. The parallel thus emphasizes the complete difference between the unique white person and the unique black. As the black is different and qualitatively inferior to the rest of humanity, so the white individual or group of high quality is different from every other white person. We saw the same thing in the Midrash in BT Kiddushin 40a, on ‘Two imperial black armour bearers’ where the black bodyguards of the parable are nothing other than a language of opposites for the pure white guardian angels they represent. Both versions state that the cushi is recognized by his skin, i.e. by external appearance. Of the black wife and all the others compared with her in Moed Katan, it is said that they are recognized by their deeds, and in Sifre on Numbers, by their appearance and their deeds. One should not conclude, however, that the Midrashic author did not think the black was recognizable, i.e. different, as regards deeds as well: he simply followed the principle that the first criterion was complexion. This in itself was enough to distinguish the black clearly from others, as from it followed the dubious deeds attributed to him. For the Moed Katan authors, it sufficed to state that the black is recognized by his actions and not by his appearance. Possibly this version tried to emphasize that while the black is recognized negatively because of his looks, the people of Israel are recognized and distinguished by what is truly important: their good deeds. The author of Sifre on Numbers adds the difference in appearance too. Further on, R. Yosi and R. Judah interpret the repetition in Numbers 12: 1: ‘And Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses, Because of the black woman whom he had taken. For he had taken a black woman.’ R. Yosi expounds the repetition as regards the appearance of the woman described as Cushite. There are women, he says, meaning the great majority, who are attractive in their youth and become ugly as they grow older. He uses the very strong expression ‘they become disfigured (mitnavelet)’. Moses’s wife, who is called ‘Cushite’ and whom he of course identifies with Zipporah, was beautiful in her youth and remained so in old age, differently from most women. The first reference to ‘a Cushite woman’ refers to her special beauty in her youth, while the second related to her beauty during and despite old age. R. Judah relates to the change in her social status: she was poor in her youth and gained regal status as a result of her marriage. His interpretation relates the first ‘Cushite woman’ to her exceptional quality in youth, despite her poverty, while the second relates to the quality she had when she was older, having attained regal status, and knowing how to act accordingly, despite her lowly origins. 116

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Once again we see an example of the natural link between gender and ethnic stereotypes, with the addition this time of one related to age. This same socalled Cushite woman is presented as a passive sex object, one whose social status depends on that of her husband. The old woman is represented as ‘disfigured’, in sharp contrast with the accepted depiction of elderly men, to whom age brings dignity and honour. In Roman literature too, there is the same link between black women and female old age. The most unattractive woman is described as one both black and old.72 The old black woman is identified as the other of the other (= the black woman) of the other (= the woman), in the eyes of the male designator. She is on the lowest level of otherness, one who is of no use whatever, even as a sex object. The ordinary woman, i.e. most women, is shown as growing ugly in old age; that is, when she ceases to be a sex object, losing the central component of her raison d’être, and she also has trouble behaving properly when her husband’s changing social position gives her regal status. Moses’s Cushite wife is shown as one of the select few who, thanks to her unique qualities, succeeded in overcoming her natural condition as a woman, so it was natural to call her ‘Cushite’. The ordinary woman is like the real Cushite woman, while the one who rises above her nature is metaphorically called ‘Cushite’: she is exceptional as regards her gender, as the Cushite is exceptional as regards other people. The problematic combination ‘Cushite woman’, then, acquires complete parallelism with woman = Cushite.73 Aramaic translations of the Torah, dating from about the same time, contain an instructive example of the difficulties the rabbis had with the significance of what was said about the Cushite woman. The three principle translations contain three different strategies for dealing with the dilemma, obviously as a result of rabbinic influence on this textual problem. The first and most extreme strategy, which both ignores part of the literal text and replaces it with the interpretation, appears in the Onkelos translation, as follows: And Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses, because of the fair woman (itata shafirta) whom he had taken, because the fair woman (itata shafirta) who had been sent away he had taken. Onkelos completely ignores the word ‘Cushite’ from the Hebrew and in accordance with his well-known rendering of the interpretation, substitutes shafirta, i.e. a beautiful woman. In this respect, he follows in the footsteps of the Midrashim we have analysed, which see the word ‘Cushite’ simply as a parable of the beauty of Zipporah, Moses’s wife. But he goes even farther, ignoring the loaded word entirely, not merely giving it a far-fetched explanation. Following the same explanatory logic, he translated ‘like the children of Cushites’ (ki-vnei cush’im) (Amos 9: 7) as: ‘ke-vanim rahimin’ (i.e. children upon whom divine mercy is bestowed); that is, he transmitted the accepted interpretation of the Sages for this expression, identifying the Cushites as the children of Israel, into 117

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the obligatory translation of the prophet’s words, thereby ignoring completely the original expression.74 The expression ‘had been sent away’ (denasiv rahik) which Onkelos inserted into the translation, does not appear in the Hebrew Bible. It may relate to the Midrashic story that Moses abstained from his lawful wife, and possibly hint at the parallel Hellenistic tradition which appears in later translations. The second, more moderate strategy appears in the Jerusalem translation (pseudo Jonathan) as follows: And Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses about the Cushite woman (ita cushieta) whom he had taken. But observe, the Cushite wife was not Zipporah, Moses’s wife, but a certain Cushite woman, of a flesh different from every creature; whereas Zipporah, the wife of Moses, was of a comely form and beautiful countenance (shafira), and more abundant in good works than all the women of her age. This is a combined version. The phrase ‘Cushite woman’ (ita cushieta) appears in the translation too. The translator functions as a commentator as well, and as such he follows the rhetorical question of the Midrashic author, and answers it: Zipporah was designated ‘Cushite’ in the metaphorical sense, to indicate her uniqueness. Just as the Cushite woman is identified as one whose skin is different from that of any other creature, like her, Zipporah is presented as more beautiful, and the doer of more good deeds than any other woman of her years. The third strategy is followed in the Palestine translation, where the literal meaning is retained, on the basis of the Hellenistic story of Moses’s African adventures. The translator ignores the efforts of the Sages to rule out the possibility that the woman was indeed black. In his version she was not simply black, but none other than Queen of Cush. But he is not able to accept the story literally either, and he adds reservations that do not appear in the version we find in Josephus Flavius: And Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses words that were not becoming with respect to the Cushite woman (itata cushita) whom the Cushites (Cushaee) had caused Moses to take when he had fled from Pharaoh, but whom he had sent away because they had given him the queen of Cush (malkata decush), and he had sent her away. One reservation is that the marriage was forced on Moses against his will. The second is that Moses did not consummate the forced marriage, heaven forbid, but sent the woman away. For safety’s sake, he repeats twice that Moses left her. Thus, while he preferred the Hellenistic expansion of the literal biblical text and did not comment on the Sages’ interpretation, this translator frees Moses from responsibility, depicting him as one who did his best to extricate himself from a forced marriage in which he was completely passive, and actively avoiding its 118

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consummation. As regards Zipporah as well, there is Midrashic tradition that Moses divorced her, and this is all the more likely regarding the black wife. Thus despite the use of the Hellenistic story, Moses’s purity is preserved, ruling out the possibility that there was an actual marriage with the black woman. We find then, that the Aramaic translators of the Torah usually went along with attempts of the Midrashic authors to rule out what they saw as a horrifying possibility, that Moses really married a black woman. Onkelos and pseudo Jonathan explicitly interpret ‘a Cushite woman’ as a parable for the special qualities of Moses’s wife, unique among women. Even the Palestine translation, which used the literal Bible text as well as a Hellenistic story about Moses’s African romance, could not go the whole way, and in the end it rescues Moses from the cruel fate of having a black wife. The negative connotations that the image of the black acquired at this time, along with the theological perception of Moses as one who put aside the material vanities and even lived apart from his one legal wife, made this totally impossible. Since the Aramaic translations in their original oral form served to explain the Bible text to congregations in the synagogues, the later written version teaches us something about how the beliefs and opinions of the Sages were passed on to this large target population. In our case it obviously gave theological legitimacy to a structured system of stereotypes about the black. Hellenistic Jewish scholars who were active in a different cultural framework had less difficulties with the problem of Moses’s black wife. Josephus Flavius, as indicated, literally accepted the possibility that Moses married a black woman. The historian Demetrius tried to solve the problem by identifying the black woman with Zipporah. Like the Sages, he had difficulties in accepting the possibility that Moses took an additional wife and that his wife was a gentile. His creative solution, however, was different than the Sages’. While the Sages solved the problem by the metaphoric meaning they ascribed to the expression ‘a Cushite wife’, Demetrius found another solution on the basis of a biblical genealogy he devised. According to this genealogy Zipporah was an offspring of the sons of Keturah and Abraham who were sent by their father ‘unto the east country (eretz kedem)’ (Gen. 25: 6). This country is identified by Demetrius as the land of Cush, hence the identification of the black woman with Zipporah. To this invented genealogy Demetrius connected the Hellenistic story of Moses’s escape from Egypt to the land of Cush and his romance with the black woman, which he identified with Zipporah. Thus he achieved a creative solution which very well suited the Sages’ opinion, even in a more perfect manner: Since the black woman is identified here with Zipporah, and Zipporah is described as a legal and direct descendant of Abraham, it necessarily follows that Moses had only one wife, a pure daughter of Israel. This means, however, that Demetrius had to accept her blackness literally. Since he worked in an Hellenistic cultural environment this possibility was acceptable for him, like Josephus. By this, however, he identified the Cushite woman as a legitimate daughter of Israel, a possibility which surely would have been abhorrent to the Sages.74a 119

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To the Jewish theological image of Moses, Philo added Greek perceptions, making the Lawgiver into a Platonic philosopher–king. In The Life of Moses Philo presents him as a philosopher ‘whose ambition it was to live only in his soul and not in his body’ (1: 29). As a result, he completely ignores the black wife. In the Allegories 2: 67, by contrast, he makes use of the Hellenistic story that took the black wife literally. But in the spirit of his own view of the spiritual image of Moses, he explains that while Miriam was ruled by sensual perception and, having external material impressions only, was negative towards the woman’s dark skin, Moses, with his higher spiritual characteristics, could look beyond her skin to her uniquely positive nature.75 Thus Philo ultimately adopts the view of the commentaries that the Bible used the language of opposites when it mentioned ‘a black woman’. By contrast with all these, the Septuagint and the Vulgate translated ‘a black woman’ literally (uxorum eius aethiopissam in the Vulgate), without any twisting and squirming. One recalls, however, that the Vulgate translation of ‘I am black and comely’ from the Song of Songs is a judgemental commentary.76 It would seem, then, that these translators have not so much a different attitude to the black, as a different view of the figure of Moses. The Sages and the Jewish translators into Aramaic had the utmost difficulty with the idea that Moses had another wife and/or that she was black. This was unthinkable in their theological world view just as it was in Philo’s Platonic-philosophical one. Steeped in Hellenistic–Roman culture, the Septuagint and Vulgate translators seem, like Josephus Flavius, to have had fewer inhibitions. The story of Moses’s African wife would have fitted in well with their romantic and political concepts. It was, after all, quite acceptable for great rulers to take wives or concubines besides their lawful spouses. Indeed, considering their stereotypic view of the lustful and passionate black woman, as we find her in the Midrashim, they would have found such an alliance a compelling and realistic possibility. We have already seen parallels between gender and skin colour stereotypes. Just as the black is perceived as naturally inferior so is the woman, in the world that represents the interests of the light-skinned male. He sees the woman, like the black, or any other marginal group that he does not identify with, as created to satisfy his needs and serve his interests. Furthermore, he justifies this attitude theologically. The combination of gender and ethnic or ‘racial’ politics is a tried and true mechanism for reinforcing his control. We have seen clear examples of this in the commentaries on ‘Look not upon me that I am black’, in the story of the black couple who produced a white child and in the Midrashim on Moses’s black wife. Moreover, some of the characteristics attributed to the black, like promiscuity, are also attributed to women. Typical is the saying from Midrash Ma’asei Torah: ‘If you can find a pure white raven, you can find a truly virtuous woman’.77 Parallel to the biblical statement that the black cannot change his skin, we have already cited Roman and rabbinical sayings to the effect that the black raven cannot whiten its plumage. A white raven represents an extraordinary phenomenon, in fact an impossibility, an oxymoron, like a white black 120

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man. For the Midrashic author the raven is a parallel to the nature of woman. As the raven cannot whiten its plumage, so woman cannot be truly virtuous. We have already noted that the raven, just like the black, is perceived as a dubious creature, whose colour indicates its character only too well,78 and woman is compared to it. As previously noted too, Ovid (Metamorphoses II 534–541) tells of the raven punished for its sin of chattering too much by having its snow-white feathers turn black: in our sources woman is accused of the same sin in the story of creation of Eve, who was not created from the mouth of Adam ‘lest she be a gossip’ (Devarim Rabbah 6: 11), but to no avail. How ironical that the Bible text it cites about the talkative nature of woman states: ‘And Miriam spoke’, i.e. she sinned in the matter of the black wife! Women are depicted as prone to lust, just like the black, and as chattering creatures, just like Ovid’s raven. The very comparison of the black raven (= the black), as being of a dubious nature, clearly explains the attitude of the Midrashic authors to women. To put it differently, the parallel between the impossibility of a woman being truly virtuous and the plumage of the raven that can never become white expresses nothing except how the authors regarded anyone with dark skin. As far as they were concerned, the woman and the raven (= the black) were two of a kind. It may not be entirely coincidental that Freud, bewildered by female psychology, chose to call female sexuality ‘the dark continent’ of psychology.79 Views of the natural inferiority of marginal groups, different from those which the ruling elite identify, and hence perceived by the elite as having been created to serve them, are universal, and appear in every culture. They express primordial psychological needs such as deeply rooted economic interests, and have been embedded in human consciousness throughout history. There is nothing unique, then, about their appearance in Jewish culture. At least as regards blacks, this appears to be the result of norms emerging in the Hellenistic–Roman world rather than an independent development. As the attitude towards women did not follow from the specifically Jewish nature of Jewish thought, but rather from the male identity of its exponents, so their attitude to the image of the black was not the product of their Judaism but of their relatively less pigmented skin. Those whom historical circumstances brought to the centres of power (relatively light-skinned males) determined and dictated the social norms according to their own psychological and economic needs. This had to be done to justify and perpetuate their control over those outside their identity groups, particularly vis-à-vis the world outside. The most effective way of maintaining the status quo was to persuade the others of their natural otherness and inferiority, thus making them willing collaborators with the ruling establishment. The attitude that Jewish scholars developed, then, towards women or blacks did not arise from their Jewishness, but from their gender and ethnic identity, which, almost inevitably, dictated their world view. From this standpoint it is safe to say that gender and ethnic components of identity preceded religious and theological ones, and almost inevitably dictated them. 121

5 IN THE CULTURAL WO RLD OF ISLAM ‘Speech in its least developed form’

I In the transition from late classical times to the Middle Ages, Jewish communities spread out between the Middle East and southern Europe. They brought with them the world of images that developed in Talmudic literature and adopted the ‘racial’ and ethnic stereotypes of the regions in which they now lived. Blacks continued to be identified as descendants of Canaan, slaves by nature. With the development of slave markets in those regions, another ethnic group of natural slaves was identified: the Slavs of southeastern Europe, mainly from the Balkans. From now on the two separate groups would be considered the children of Canaan: the blacks (cushim) were his black children and the Slavs his white ones. Indeed this is the source of the word ‘slave’ in some European languages (sclave, esclave, schiavo). The word for ‘eunuch’, too, comes from the same source, e.g. the Arabic sakhab. Some Slavic slaves were sold to Jews. In Jewish sources from this period, like The Itinerary of Rabbi Benjamin of Tudella, the land of origin of these slaves was called ‘Canaan’: ‘Sclavonia, called by the Jews who inhabit it “Canaan” because the inhabitants sell their children to all nations.’1 Such was the judicial and theological sophistication of scholars in all three monotheistic religions that they could put two completely different ethnic groups into a single status unit of slaves by nature, the legal heirs of the archetypal Canaan.2 The ‘white Canaan’ phenomenon was concentrated mainly in southern Europe. Until early modern times, most slaves in southwestern Europe came from Slavic lands. In the Middle East, where most Jews lived, however, the old tradition of black slavery continued and grew even stronger, especially in the wake of the Arab conquest. All branches of Jewish thought flourished in the lands of Islamic culture, at least until the end of the twelfth century, and left their mark on Jewish philosophy, theology and literature in the Christian lands of southern Europe in the late Middle Ages, as we see later. Hence our discussion of the black image in medieval Jewish thought focuses first of all on the Islamic cultural world and its branches. In his classic work Race and Color in Islam (1971), Bernard Lewis makes fun of the naive, tendentious approach, like Arnold Toynbee’s, that saw Islamic 122

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society as a seemingly colour blind, interracial Utopia, in the way that Snowden described Hellenistic–Roman society. Even an individual whose knowledge of Arabic literature does not go beyond a condensed version of A Thousand and One Nights can see how dubious this myth is. The story frame itself shows the primeval dread of the light-skinned male regarding the assumed sexual prowess of the black, and his fear lest the black take his women from him. The black stereotype is widespread in A Thousand and One Nights, where he is generally presented as a slave and servant in different capacities. The most instructive example is the story of the black slave who lives an honest, moral life: at the moment of his death his skin becomes white. Here is a clear example of the instinctive identification of black skin colour with evil and ugliness, and white skin with beauty and purity. This image of the black was the accepted one in Islamic culture. While the Koran itself in no case identifies the slave with the black, even there one finds stereotypic connotations of the colours white and black.3 The Koran and early Arabic literature were to a large extent indifferent to racial differences and judgemental distinctions on the basis of skin colour, but that situation soon changed. From the eighth century, Islamic literature begins to identify the black negatively, in view of the emerging social reality in Muslim society, where captives from black Africa became a central element of the phenomenon of slavery. While there were considerable numbers of Slavic slaves in areas of Islamic culture, slavery was identified principally with the black, as over the course of time the whites in this category became fewer and fewer. They were more esteemed than black slaves, and their market value was much higher. The black found himself at the lowest level even within slave society. Just as the slave was identified as other by the free Muslim, the black was so identified by the white slave. Indeed, while the white slave was called mamluk, i.e. one who belongs to another, the black was simply abd, a slave. The term, however, soon came to be used only for the black slave, and in time even for blacks who were not slaves. The history of this word shows clearly how the identity between black and slave became complete. The parallel of black = slave, which began to develop in Hellenistic–Roman times, reached completion.4 We find an outstanding example of this in the black poet Suhaym (died 660), who was born a slave. (His name, an ‘affectionate’ nickname, means ‘little black’.) In a poem he writes: Though I am a slave my soul is nobly free Though I am black of colour my character is white.5 The early appearance of such an idea, developing in classical culture and emerging now in the world of Islam, only goes to prove how completely the black himself internalized the world of stereotypes of the ruling majority, which granted it moral and aesthetic superiority. Later we shall see the marks of this image on Jewish culture of the time.

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These images were greatly influenced by travel stories from black Africa from a wide-ranging geographical literature. Blacks appear in these tales as primitive, pagan cannibals who go about naked. This literature influenced Jewish travel tales like those of Eldad ha-Dani and The Itineraries of Rabbi Benjamin of Tudella.6 Islamic scholars found ‘scientific’ backing in Greek literature, particularly in texts about the theory of climate. Greek medical and geographical literature on the subject, particularly the essays of Galen, were translated into Arabic in the great translation project of the eighth to the tenth centuries, and their influence was immense. As we shall see later, this literature concluded that blacks were naturally inferior because of the extreme climate of the region in which they lived. The theory appears in full in al Kindi, al Massoudi, ibn Sina, al Farabi, ibn Khaldun and other scholars.7 Jewish thinkers like Judah Halevi, Abraham ibn Ezra and Maimonides would follow them. Parallel to the climate theory that explained black inferiority from environmental causes, there emerged a genealogical theory based on the descent of the blacks from a common ancestor. Its propagators identified the common ancestor as Ham whose skin became black because of his sin. The story appears in early Islamic traditions, and possibly its source – direct or indirect – lies in early Christian versions of Midrashim of the Sages, to which we referred earlier, although one cannot always be sure which came first and hence who influenced whom. Some scholars think there are Midrashim that show the Koranic influence, not vice versa. The dating of the story collections, not precisely determined as yet, is part of the issue, and some of these are composed of much earlier material. The Koran itself (11: 48) refers to this tradition, but refrains from the explicitly ‘racial’ associations the Sages employ in the Aggadic Midrashim to interpret the Bible text. By contrast, in popular Arabic literature of the Middle Ages, banu Ham (children of Ham) become synonymous with Sudan, i.e. the blacks. Here too, as in the older Jewish tradition, the children of Ham were transferred from Canaan to the land of the blacks, bilad al-Sudan. We find a typical example of the way this type of commentary develops in the tenth-century Persian historian Tabari, who wrote one of the most important historical essays on medieval Arabic culture: Ham begot all blacks (al sudan) and people with crinky hair. Yafit [Japheth] all who have broad faces and small eyes (that is, the Turkish peoples) and Sam [Shem] all who have beautiful faces and beautiful hair (that is, the Arabs and Persians); Noah put a curse on Ham, according to which the hair of his descendents would not extend over their ears and they would be enslaved wherever they were encountered.8 Such popular genealogies are more an expression of contemporary balances of power than an exact description of the origin of the peoples involved. Indeed, we shall find completely different versions of the genealogies in medieval Jewish literature. One notes that in the Islamic tradition, Ham himself is presented as 124

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the one punished by his skin becoming black, not his son Canaan, so that all his children became black as a punishment.9 The same is true in Jewish medieval commentaries. Muslims too, then, used those Jewish sacred texts with which they were familiar at the time, to give theological legitimacy to a social and economic reality. Generally we find climate and genealogical theory together in descriptions of black inferiority, despite the disparities between the two.10 Ibn Khaldun was one of the few Islamic scholars to reject the latter. He presented a full theory of climate to explain the inferiority of blacks, while rejecting totally the idea that they were the descendants of Ham, and with it the theological explanation of their blackened skin and natural disposition to slavery. In ibn Khaldun’s view, the ‘scientific’ climate theory is the only objective one, and is sufficient. He laughed away the genealogical explanation on textual and scientific grounds. The very sharpness of his reply shows how widespread was the Islamic version of the Aggadic Midrash on the punishment of Ham: Genealogists who had no knowledge of the true nature of things imagined that Blacks are children of Ham, the son of Noah, and that they were singled out to be black as the result of Noah’s curse, which produced Ham’s colour and the slavery God inflicted upon his descendents. It is mentioned in the Torah that Noah cursed his son Ham. No reference is made there of blackness. The curse included no more that that Ham’s descendants should be the slaves of his brothers’ descendants. To attribute the blackness of the Blacks to Ham, reveals disregard of the true nature of heat and cold and of the influence they exercise upon the air (climate) and upon the creatures that come into being in it. The black colour (of skin) common to the inhabitants of the first and second zones is the result of the composition of the air in which they live, and which comes about under the influence of the greatly increased heat in the south.11 Ibn Khaldun accuses the genealogists of scientific ignorance and of accepting what he calls legends as scientific truth. Further on he calls the genealogical explanation ‘fiction’. Identifying blacks as Ham’s descendants is rejected first on the basis of the Bible text, and secondly for scientific reasons. The Bible source does not mention skin colour, but only the punishment of slavery. Obviously the philosopher was unaware of the influence of the Aggadic Midrashim on the Islamic genealogical perception, and in any case he would have rejected it on scientific grounds. While he agreed that genealogy had a significant effect on the heredity of future generations, he rejected out of hand the idea that it was the only influential factor. A single cause for natural phenomena seemed scientifically unacceptable to him. In his view, environmental factors were no less important and over time they could affect the components of heredity. Against this background, ibn Khaldun reached the revolutionary and potentially 125

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egalitarian conclusion we noted in Roman culture, that moving to another climate zone would eventually change both skin colour and psychological and physical traits. The skin colour and heredity of the blacks, like those of any other human group, would change gradually after sufficient time in another climate. Removal to a temperate zone would gradually lighten the black’s skin colour and give him balanced, i.e. positive psychological and physical, characteristics. Such a scientific assumption is certainly incompatible with the genealogical theory that regarded black skin as an everlasting punishment for ancestral sin, which explains neither the nature of the phenomenon nor its duration. One notes, however, that ibn Khaldun’s position was exceptional. Most Islamic like Jewish scholars combined climatic elements with theological and genealogical ones, despite the incompatibilities, to prove the natural inferiority of the black, thus legitimizing his enslavement both theologically and scientifically, and at the same time serving their own economic interests and psychological needs. There were, nonetheless, in Islamic history instances of free blacks and even of slaves who rose to political and economic greatness. One can even find favourable passages in Islamic literature where blacks are defended against their critics, though these generally relate to specific blacks rather than to the group as a whole. Moreover, if someone found it necessary to rise to their defence, it proves a need to do so, i.e. that in general blacks were perceived as naturally inferior. These were the exceptions that proved the rule. Muslim society was totally stratified, and blacks found themselves at the bottom of the ladder, even among the slaves.12

II Jewish scholars who worked within the Islamic cultural world, at least till the end of the twelfth century, were naturally influenced by the image of the black as it evolved there. Not only were they well aware of the centrality of black slavery to the socio-economic structure of Islamic society, and of the Jewish and general literature on the subject, but black slavery also penetrated the upper stratum of Jewish society. Halachic sources compiled in Islamic countries in the early Middle Ages, like Sefer ha-Shetarot by Rav Hai Gaon, and Sefer Halachot Gedolot, relate specifically to black slavery, dealing with the question of how a Jew should treat his Gentile slave. Sefer ha-Shetarot mentions slaves from various countries, among them avda zanagah, an accepted designation of the black Africa slave in medieval Arabic. According to Goitein’s findings in the Genizah, owning slaves, including black slaves, was accepted among upper class Jews. Cases are also known where Jews made sexual use of black women slaves, although the practice, which Islam allowed, was forbidden by the Halachah.13 Testimony to this is found in Maimonides’s critical attitude in Mishneh Torah, Gifts to the Poor, 7: 17 (also in his commentary on Avot) which is based on the saying of Avot 1: 5: ‘Let the poor be members of your household.’ Maimonides points out: 126

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The Sages have commanded that one have poor people and orphans as members of his household rather than slaves, for it is better for him to employ the former, so that children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob might benefit from his possessions rather than children of Ham. Considering that in the Midrashic tradition and the Islamic one that followed it, sons of Ham were identified with blacks, and many slaves in the region of Islamic culture at that time were blacks, it is reasonable to assume that Maimonides refers to them. He is critical of the phenomenon which according to his testimony was indeed widespread, at least in certain circles. However, he does not criticize employing slaves who are children of Ham, but rather preferring them over the poor and the orphans of Israel, in keeping with ‘The poor of your own town first.’ In later commentaries on this Mishnah from Avot – Bartenura’s and others – there is further evidence of the practice. The nature and abilities of blacks, including the extent to which they belonged to ‘civilized’ human society, was obviously of no intrinsic interest to Jewish scholars. For the social and economic reasons above, the subject seems to have interested Muslim scholars more. At the same time, the subject came up naturally in scientific discussion of the time, especially in climate theory, which had far-reaching theological implications, and in medieval commentary on the Bible and the Aggadah. When medieval scholars confronted and enlarged upon Bible texts like the story of Ham’s or Canaan’s punishment, and Moses’s black wife, and the Aggadic Midrashim based on them, they had to relate to the image of the black. Such discussion was based on contemporary Muslim literature on one hand, and positions formulated by the Sages on the other. There would naturally be an input from personal observation and experience, since most scholars came from the high social stratum that owned slaves. The almost uniform image of the black presented by medieval Jewish scholars combines all the above.14 The attitude to blacks received its outstanding expression in two well-known examples from the Jewish literature of the period: Judah Halevi’s Kuzari and Maimonides’s Guide to the Perplexed; the first was written in Muslim Spain in the middle of the twelfth century and the second in Egypt at the end of it. Another, more marginal example is Moses ibn Ezra’s Book of Discussions and Deliberations, written at about the same time. Though Halevi and Maimonides held widely differing theological and philosophical views, they took virtually identical positions on the subject of our discussion, because it was the accepted, even the accepted Jewish, view of their time. Moreover, both of them and ibn Ezra too give examples from the climate theory. Indeed in a commentary on the Kuzari entitled Kol Yehudah and written by Judah Muscato in the sixteenth century, he combines what Halevi and Maimonides wrote on the nature of the black, quoting the latter to reinforce the claim of the former.15 Even in ancient times, climate theory was used to explain the difference between peoples in general, and the skin colour of blacks as well as their facial features in particular. Homer himself attributed it to the power of the sun in the 127

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southern regions where they lived. Ovid (Metamorphoses 2: 227–240) explains the darkened skin of the inhabitants as the result of the runaway horses of the sun, who set the country afire and caused terrible heat. Here is climate theory in mythological dress: The Aethiops then turned black, so men believe, As heat summoned their blood too near the skin. Then was Sahara’s dusty desert formed, All water scorched away. Then the sad nymphs Bewailed their pools and springs.16 As noted before, the very use of the term ‘Ethiopian’ – a person with a burnt face – to designate blacks indicates awareness of climatic influence. The poetess of the Song of Songs has it as well, presenting a direct cause and effect relationship between skin colour and the strength of the sunlight: ‘Do not look at me that I am black, that the sun as looked upon me.’ Indeed, there is a well-founded assumption that the Hebrew word now translated as ‘black’ (shahor) in biblical Hebrew meant ‘the colour of something burnt’. As a result, it came by derivation to mean whatever is of that colour, whether skin, hair or anything else.16a Should this assumption be correct, we have here a clear example of the awareness of climatic influence, since ‘black’ skin colour is thus explained as skin ‘burned’ in the blazing sun. At this stage, however, the theory was used in neutral descriptions of differences in external appearance and customs among different peoples, not to prove that some of them were inferior and others superior. Talmudic literature also contains an outstanding example of this in several versions. In BT Shabbat 31a, and in Avot de’Rabbi Nathan 15: 2, there is a Midrash on Mishnah Avot 2: 10: ‘be not easily provoked’. This directive is explained by means of a story about a man who tried to anger Hillel the Elder by waking him up at night again and again to ask obvious questions, but Hillel answered him with patience and did not allow himself to be provoked. Many questions relate to the body build of different peoples, and Hillel’s explanations to differences in geography, climate and culture. As for the special characteristics of blacks, in this case the very broad feet attributed to them, we find the following conversation: He asked: ‘Why are the feet of Africans wide?’ ‘My son, you have asked a great question’, said he: ‘because they live in watery marshes.’17 In the reply attributed to Hillel the Elder we find a ‘scientific’ descriptive explanation of the phenomenon: it is not judgemental and does not mock. This is the only instance I know of in Talmudic literature of an attitude to the black without a hint of negative judgement. A phonetic similarity is created here between the scriptural mei afsai’im (Ezek. 47: 3), the place where water reaches the knees, and the name of the continent: Africa, whose tropical regions where the blacks lived were abundantly watered. The structure of the black man’s foot 128

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was explained ‘scientifically’ by his need to walk through water, and not as any kind of infirmity. Such an approach was typical of Hillel the Elder, as we know from the writings of the Sages. In the course of time the climate theory became judgemental rather than descriptive. The process paralleled and took place against the background of the change in attitude to the ‘barbarians’ in Greek culture. While in the preAristotelian period the distinction between different climates and between peoples was descriptive, since Aristotle the distinction became judgemental, on the basis of his theory of the golden mean. Under the influence of ethical theory, which assumed that intermediate behaviour between two extremes was the optimal one, it was applied to other areas. Thus Aristotelian political theory held that states of average size were best, and that power should be held by the middle social class. Similarly in the climate theory, a median temperate climate was considered ideal. The anthropological assumption at the basis of this theory is that individuals’ physical features and behaviour are conditioned by the climate in which they were born and live. Extreme climates – too cold or too hot – will necessarily produce people with extreme tendencies, while a temperate climate will give rise to handsome people, strong of body and mind, who have an advanced culture as a result. Thus the ancients divided the northern hemisphere that they knew into seven climatic regions: there were three cold regions in the north, three hot regions in the south, and the fourth, the ideal temperate climate, lay in between. One notes that in classical times and, as a result, in the Middle Ages, life was assumed to be possible only in the northern hemisphere. Existence in the southern hemisphere was considered impossible, whether because the earth there was thought to be sunk under water, or because the heat below the equator was assumed to be unbearable, or on the basis of the law of the antipodes: unaware of gravity, people assumed that whoever went south of the equator would simply fall off. Only after the fifteenth- and sixteenthcentury voyages of discovery were these beliefs dispelled.18 After Aristotle,19 the climate theory was enlisted in affirmation of the idea that the Hellenes were superior to the barbarians. Greece was identified as the land of median climate, and thus the only one that produced true, naturally free human beings. All other people, whether living in the hot south or the cold north, were identified as naturally inferior barbarians, beasts in human form, created for slavery. Outstanding examples of this are found in Philo, Hippocrates, Galen and others, and from them Roman culture absorbed the theory. Italy was then identified as the land of ideal climate and the Romans as the ethnic group with the ideal, balanced psycho-physical structure.20 The Sages too assimilated the concept, and used the climate theory to prove the unique excellence of the people and the land of Israel, and noted (BT Baba Batra 158b) ‘the climate of the land of Israel makes one wise’.21 The outlook was thoroughly absorbed in the world of Islamic thought, and clearly stated in al Kindi, al Razi,22 al Massoudi,23 ibn Sina, al Farabi, ibn 129

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Rushd,24 and many others.25 Islamic scholars used the theory to prove the special excellence of the Arabs and their lands, whether Iraq or the Arabian peninsula. Each used the climate theory to prove the superiority of the country and ethnic group to which they belonged, and this will make for a rich history later on.26 Thus the theory came to the attention of Jewish scholars living in the Islamic cultural world. Signs of Hippocrates’s book discussing ‘the air, the waters and the places’ have been identified in Halevi’s Kuzari,27 while Maimonides quoted Galen’s climate theory directly in his noted medical treatise Pirkei Moshe.28 Using different means, Jewish scholars compared expressions of the climate theory in the philosophy of the Sages with those in contemporary Islamic culture, to prove the uniqueness of the people and the land of Israel.29 Interestingly, while the first descriptive stage of the climate theory from Homer to Ovid relates specifically to climate effects on the skin colour of the blacks, the second, judgemental stage from Aristotle to Galen refers to the superiority of the Greeks and the inferiority of natives of north and south in general, without referring to blacks as such. At the same time, citing the natural inferiority of inhabitants of the hot south at least includes the blacks, if it does not point specifically at them. Moreover, users of the climate theory descriptively in referring to effects of climate and geography on the complexion of the blacks (Homer, Ovid) or on their foot structure (Rabbi Hillel), for example, mention no defect of character or conduct that might arise from their surroundings. They described mainly physiognomy, this too neutrally, and without any degrading remarks. By contrast, those who used the judgemental version of the climate theory related negatively not only to physiognomy but to character and conduct, even if they did not specifically mention the blacks. Following the Greek tradition, most Muslim scholars display the same attitude.30 Al Farabi in his The Political Regime, in its Hebrew translation by Samuel ibn Tibbon in the early thirteenth century, titled Sefer ha-Hathalot, writes: Finally, there are the men who are bestial by nature. But the bestial by nature are neither political beings nor could they ever form a political association. Instead, some of them are like gregarious beasts and others are like wild beasts, and of the latter some are like ravenous beasts. Therefore some of them live isolated in the wilderness, others live there together in depravity like wild beasts. … There are to be found in the extremities of the inhabited earth, either in the far north or in the far south. They must be treated like animals. Those of them that are gregarious and are in some way useful to the cities, should be spared, enslaved, and employed like beasts of burden. Those of them from whom no use can be derived or who are harmful, should be treated as one treats all other harmful animals.31 Creatures living in zones of extreme climate in the north or south are presented as animals in human form without any intellectual potential, which is what 130

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distinguishes man as such in the Aristotelian tradition. Hence they are incapable of creating a decent human society. This grants Aristotelian legitimacy to the view that they are slaves by nature, to be treated as beasts of burden where they can be productive, and as wild beasts when they cause damage. Though not mentioned directly, identifying these subhuman creatures as living in the far south necessarily identifies them as blacks, or at least includes blacks. Indeed the same characteristics were used to describe blacks in late classical culture and, following them, in Islamic culture, as shown before. In ibn Sina, by contrast, the unambiguous identification of bestial creatures with certain human groups from remote and extreme areas merely includes the blacks: And they are slaves by nature, like the Turks and the blacks (al Zanj). And in general those born and nurtured in the climates other than the perfect ones, are likely to produce peoples of a moderate character, healthy and intelligent.32 Perhaps the fullest and most structured expression of this theory in medieval Islamic thought appears in ibn Khaldun’s The Muqaddimah (An Introduction to History), in the fourteenth century. Living as he did after Muslim influence on Jewish thought in the Islamic world had reached its peak, he did not influence it, unlike ibn Sina, al Farabi, ibn Rushd and others. Nonetheless, the structure and the detail of the theory, his critical confrontation with the entire tradition of climate theory as it had developed until his time, and the radical implications of his position, justify close scrutiny before going on to discuss how Jewish scholars confronted and used such ideas. Moreover, as noted before, ibn Khaldun rejected scientifically the genealogical theory of the Sages that saw blacks as descendants of Ham, accursed for his sin against his father. Ibn Khaldun explains the difference in the appearance of different human groups, their skin colour, their psycho-physical structure and their culture as the necessary result of a combination of two basic factors: their genealogy33 and environmental circumstances, i.e. the geographical and climatic conditions in which they developed and now exist. He sees climate as a highly important though not the only factor. This is what he says about people living in the fourth, temperate zone: The human inhabitants of these zones are more temperate (well proportioned) in their bodies, colour, character qualities, and (general) conditions.34 Against this background, ibn Khaldun describes the bestial nature and ‘primitive’ way of life of those living in zones of extreme climate as follows: The inhabitants of the zones that are far from temperate … are also farther removed from being temperate in all their conditions. Their 131

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buildings are of clay and reeds. Their foodstuffs are durra and herbs. Their clothing is the leaves of trees, which they sew together to cover themselves, or animal skins. Most of them go naked. The fruits and seasonings of their countries are strange and inclined to be intemperate. In their business dealings, they do not use the two noble metals, but copper, iron, or skins. … Their qualities of character, moreover, are close to those of dumb animals. It has even been reported that most of the Blacks of the first zone dwell in caves and thickets, eat herbs, live in savage isolation and do not congregate, and eat each other. The same applies to the Slaves. The reason for this is that their remoteness from being temperate produces in them a disposition and character similar to those of the dumb animals, and they become correspondingly remote from humanity. The same also applies to their religious conditions. They are ignorant of prophecy and do not have a religious law … (Religious) scholarship is lacking among them. All their conditions are remote from those of human beings and close to those of wild animals.35 In addition, he describes blacks as by nature impulsive, merry and light-headed due to climatic influence, like one who has drunk too much wine.36 Furthermore, he believes that because of their bestial character, they are naturally fitted for slavery: Therefore, the Black nations are, as a rule, submissive to slavery, because (Blacks) have little (that is essentially) human and have attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals, as we have stated.37 Ibn Khaldun, following convention, describes not only blacks, but inhabitants of the northernmost climate zone as bestial and inferior by nature. Identifying the hot south with black skin, he similarly links the cold north to white skin. White skin is not the positive opposite of black, but a contrasting and equally negative extreme.38 But it is blacks particularly whom he describes as naturally ‘submissive to slavery’. Hence in his opinion a median skin shade, between black and white, which he identifies with the inhabitants of the fourth zone, is the ideal.39 The Aristotelian theory of the golden mean is applied to skin colour. Defining the ideal complexion in this way naturally serves the ethnic interest of ibn Khaldun in identifying the Arab lands and their inhabitants with it (and following his theory, the Chinese as well!40) as having an ideal, median skin colour. The position he puts forward here is exceptional in the history of climate theory. Usually even inhabitants of the middle zone between what were defined as ‘black’ and ‘white’ sought to identify as far as possible with the ideal white and distance themselves from black skin colour with all its negative associations. Ibn Khaldun, however, self-confident radical that he was, saw the 132

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shade intermediate between white and black as ideal. He rejects white skin just as he rejects black skin. Against this background, he also rejected the genealogical theory that linked black skin to the punishment of Ham. Moreover, he held that moving to another climate zone, and staying there long enough, would bring about gradual changes in heredity, including the skin colour of the migrant group, for blacks as well. There would be a gradual psycho-physical change too: Blacks from the south who settle in the temperate fourth zone or in the seventh zone that tends towards whiteness, are found to produce descendants whose skin gradually turns white in the course of time. Vice versa, inhabitants from the north or from the fourth zone who settle in the south produce descendants whose colour turns black. This shows that colour is conditioned by the composition of the air.41 That being so, the black’s complexion, the character flaws imputed to him individually and the primitive elements of his culture are not the result of some eternal punishment for an ancestral sin, and not an inherited fate, but rather, to a large extent, the result of changing geographical and climatic circumstances. Moving to another zone may in time lead to a change in the black’s colouring, in this case for the better, in the same way that it can change the skin colour and psycho-physical characteristics of any other group of people, for better or for worse, depending on where they settle, the length of time they stay and the effort they expend on changing and improving themselves. From that standpoint, according to ibn Khaldun, blacks are no different from any other human group. Thus despite his stereotypical view of their current situation, there is at least a considerable potential for egalitarianism, since that situation is not perceived as immanent or unique, but rather as the result of changing geographical and climatic circumstances. With that, the state of being black, from skin colour, through natural fitness for slavery, to lack of a revealed religion, is described as negative and necessarily inferior. The only chance for blacks to improve themselves is to wipe out their blackness and become something else, something resembling the dwellers in the fourth climate zone. As far as that goes, the totally white people of the north are no different. Both Slavs and blacks are represented as inferior, primitive and slave like by nature. The human ideal is ibn Khaldun’s own group that lives in the fourth climate zone. Anyone who does not belong to it is seen as necessarily inferior. All inferior groups, however, may join the preferred one, and that is where ibn Khaldun’s theory is radical, almost egalitarian. But joining requires full internalization of aesthetic norms and maximum eradication of hereditary differences – which is the conservative facet of the theory. In any case, ibn Khaldun’s radical stance was exceptional among both Muslim and Jewish scholars of his time and place. The great majority saw the black, like the Slav, as naturally and forever inferior and unable to change, and 133

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found theological support in the genealogy from the Midrashim on the punishment of Canaan. Even Maimonides, despite his far-reaching rationalism and his contribution of a few arguments that ibn Khaldun used, remained, generally speaking, anchored solidly within the normative position. There is, as mentioned earlier, significant internal tension between the scientific–climatic theory and the theological–genealogical one. For the sake of internal logic, the former had to allow at least for the theoretical possibility of gradual change in skin colour, along with changes in the accompanying psychophysical characteristics, as a result of a long enough stay in a different climatic zone and conscious internalization of its accepted cultural norms. The genealogical theory, on the other hand, assumed that skin colour and the psycho-physical characteristics that go with it are eternally fixed. The theological argument about the eternal punishment of Ham (or Canaan) and their descendants certainly requires the latter assumption. Most philosophers accepted both theories and tried to combine them somehow, ignoring, perhaps consciously, the contradiction between the two. On the basis of the climate theory, ibn Khaldun denied the relevance of the theological one out of hand, though not the role of heredity elements in the formation of human groups. Indeed, except for him, all the philosophers ignored the possibility of change after moving from one climate zone to another, despite the internal logic of the climate theory that postulated it, since such a transition raised the possibility of changing the psycho-physical traits of a group, which the theological assumptions and world view ruled out completely. With that, all agreed about the inferiority of the blacks (and of the Slavs in the north!). The argument revolved around whether the blacks (or the Slavs) could change their animal-like nature and become ‘normal’ people (ibn Khaldun) or whether the inferiority was permanent and unalterable (all the others). At the same time, even exponents of the former view held that the original traits of both groups were inferior and even bestial. From that standpoint, there was no argument between them about the nature of the black. The internal logic of the climate theory, based as it was on the Aristotelian golden mean, required the assumption that the median skin shade, neither ‘white’ nor ‘black’, was the ideal. If dark skin was associated with extremely hot climate, and very light skin with extreme cold, both were to be equally regarded as deviations from the norm. Indeed we have seen that the northern Slavs, like the southern blacks, were perceived as innately inferior and thus as natural slaves. This is to be expected not only from the logical basis of the theory, but from the ethnic interest of those who supported it at the time, i.e. those living in the area of Islamic culture, whose skin was certainly lighter than black, but darker than the Slavic white. If the scholars of the time saw their own temperate Middle East or Mediterranean climate as ideal, they should have seen their skin shade in the same way. We saw an instance of this in R. Ishmael, who identified the ideal complexion as the ‘intermediate’ one of Israel, neither white nor black (Mishnah Nega’im 2: 1). We found a parallel in Roman culture, 134

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deriving a logical and ethnically convenient conclusion from the climate theory, that the skin of northern Europeans and that of the blacks from the south are equally inferior, while their own inter negrum et pallidum was the ideal. However, apart from ibn Khaldun, who derived the logical conclusions the climate theory required, and refused to look at theological considerations or accepted prejudices in favour of white skin, most scholars in the Islamic cultural world were conditioned by thoroughly internalized aesthetic norms and thus identified white skin, not their own median shade, as the ideal, though this clashed both with the climate theory and their ethnic interests. At the same time, they saw their country, their religion, their language and their culture as ideal. But as regards skin, they were conditioned by primordial aesthetic stereotypes, and developed corresponding inferiority feelings about their own. Even those who did not like excessively white skin preferred it to black, always the most negative. When it came to feminine beauty in particular, white skin was an ideal. Moreover, a too white skin could change up to a point, over the generations, with a warmer climate, suntan and mixed marriages, more readily than black skin.42 Thus while the climate theory made blacks and Slavs equally inferior and to the same extent slaves by nature, primordial associations with their skin colour made the blacks the lowest of all human beings. No wonder, then, that a Slav was worth many times more than the black on the slave market.

III We find clear traces of normative discussions like those of ibn Sina and al Farabi in Moses ibn Ezra, Judah Halevi and Maimonides, who read the material in the original Arabic and combined it with the Jewish textual tradition. Following Hebrew translations like those of the ibn Tibbon family from Arabic and Judaeo-Arabic, these ideas found their way to Jewish scholars in the southern part of Christian Europe, as we shall see later. In the Book of Discussions and Deliberations, his essay on Hebrew poetics, ibn Ezra mentions blacks three times, always in stereotypic fashion. Two are part of an argument that the temperate climate of the Arabian peninsula gives even its lowliest inhabitants purity of speech: There is a natural advantage in speech: for men and women, as well as for children, the maimed, the backward and the blacks (damha) in the community, [even] for the wild men of the desert and the least of the peasants. This is a blessing from their star and from the climate and air of their country. … Hence their speech is not so dry as that of the Ethiopians (al habasheh) nor so wet as the speech of the Slavs.43 He relates to two black groups: the dark-skinned Arabs of the Arabian peninsula (damha) and black Africans (al habasheh). Even the black Arabs are presented as purer in their speech, not because they are black but in spite of it. 135

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The very fact that they are grouped with others identified as inferior, like the backward, the wild men of the desert and the least of the peasants, speaks for itself. From this standpoint, ibn Ezra reminds one of the combinations found in the writings of the Sages, who also mention blacks and women in the same breath as the most inferior and dubious human groups. As for the black Africans, following the climate theory, he shows them as natives of southern Ethiopia and hence, like the Slavs in the wet north, necessarily inferior in the purity of their speech to the inhabitants of the Arabian peninsula, the only ones, according to this theory, to have been blessed with an ideal climate, neither too dry nor too wet. Differently from other Jewish scholars, ibn Ezra accepts the Islamic version of the ideal climate, and does not claim that it is to be found uniquely in the land of Israel, whose special quality has another basis.44 However, he places the black African in the inferior geographical location accepted by all who used the theory, whatever their differences of opinion as to who precisely lives in the balanced climate. The common denominator created between blacks and Slavs comes as no surprise, since both are perceived as natural slaves in the Islamic culture of the time. Indeed, Jewish scholars generally considered the children of Japheth to be the Greeks, not the Slavs from the cold north, this in the context of biblical genealogy. Ibn Ezra presents the climate theory in its Islamic context, which is quite different from the one accepted in Jewish thought. As for the black, he is where everyone feels he belongs. Elsewhere in the Book of Discussions and Deliberations ibn Ezra offers a Jewish version of the black slave with a white soul. Originating in Hellenistic–Roman culture, this image was popular in Islam, from which the author obviously absorbed it. This is the only example I know of in Jewish literature of this period. In presenting it he rejects the argument that ‘The best poems are written by people of status and the worst poems by slaves.’ In so doing he accepts the egalitarian view that ‘The virtue of men lies in their wisdom, not in their ancestry.’ To prove his point, he brings in the story of the black slave who by virtue of his character and poetic talents became white and free in spirit, despite his black skin: There stood the poet, and he a black slave (abd asud), sang his song in honour of an important ruler, who gave him many gifts and benefits. When remarks were made he answered: Though he is a slave, his song is free, and though he is black (asud), his praise shines white (avitz).45 Using such an image to show that a man is measured by his talents, not by his origin, would appear to show an egalitarian attitude. But identifying the black in the accepted way, as a slave, and using the conventional negative associations of black, and positive associations of white, is thoroughly stereotypic. The slave status and skin colour of the black are not presented as irrelevant, but as 136

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components of inferiority, despite which this particular person has been endowed with talents. Moreover, the black slave is outstanding in a sphere generally considered appropriate for his group: writing and performing a song or poem. In the Kuzari 2: 65, we find a description of the decline of music: ‘It has deteriorated and servants and half-crazy people are its patrons.’ While Halevi does not identify the singers as blacks, in ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew translation, they are said to be slave women and ugly people, which immediately makes that association. In fact, the history of western culture to this day commonly attributes special musical talent to blacks, as an integral part of the stereotype that depicts them as ‘childish’ and ‘irrational’.46 Halevi’s single direct reference to the image of the black occurs in the first chapter of the Kuzari, in the speech of the Philosopher who represents the Aristotelian–neo-Platonic scientific world view accepted among learned people of his time. While Halevi did not agree with the Philosopher’s theological conclusions, his general scientific world view was basically the same. The reference appears in the deterministic–climatological–astrological theory at the beginning of the speech, according to which a person’s character, talents and conduct are necessarily determined by a combination of hereditary, astrological and climatological factors: In every man we find united physical and intellectual qualities deriving from his parents and other relations not discounting influence of winds, countries, foods and water, spheres, stars and constellations. The Philosopher illustrates this argument by means of a distinction between two dichotomous groups of the human species: Therefore, every individual on earth has its complete causes; consequently an individual with perfect causes becomes perfect and another with imperfect causes remains imperfect, e.g. the black (al habashi) is fit to receive nothing more than human shape and speech (i.e. intellectual potential) in its least developed form; the philosopher, however, who is equipped with the highest capacity, derives therefrom moral, intellectual and active advantages, so that he wants nothing to make him perfect.47 Showing the black as the archetype of those at the bottom of the human scale (if indeed he is worthy to be included in the human species!) speaks for itself. He is presented as the complete antithesis of one who has complete human potential – one who lacks such potential altogether. As in al Farabi and others, the black is shown as a beast in human form, his outward shape and form his only human characteristic. He is totally lacking in the intellectual abilities, which, according to the Aristotelian theory accepted in medieval thought, made man distinctively human. Like Moses ibn Ezra, Halevi uses the term el 137

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habashi for the black, an accepted name in the Islamic cultural world of the time, for those who inhabited Habash or Ethiopia, and later for blacks in general.48 Thus Halevi’s Philosopher too presents the classic ‘racial’ stereotype of the black, and the author shows it as an indisputable fact in his only direct reference to the subject. Obviously he would have absorbed it from the Islamic thought of his time.49 By contrast, at the beginning of the discussion between the Khazar king and the Jew, when the latter emphasizes the unique and superior heredity of the Jews, he notes incidentally that if the Torah would have been binding on us from the act of Creation, all human beings – black and white – would have been equally obliged to obey it: If the Torah were binding on us because God created us, the white (al avitz) and the black man (al asud) would be equal since He created them all. But the Torah [is binding] because He led us out of Egypt and remained attached to us. For we are the pick of mankind.50 Seemingly in contradiction of the Philosopher, the Jew says that in Creation itself, white and black are equal, but the context of this radical statement puts it into the correct proportion. By comparison with the special heredity of the Jews, non-Jewish whites as well as blacks are conspicuously inferior. The difference between them is erased in comparison with the distinctive superiority of the Jews. Within the non-Jewish group, however, the vast difference between blacks and whites returns to its usual proportions, and blacks appear as inferior from birth, as the Philosopher states. Paradoxically and so very characteristically, in order to stress the superior heredity of the Jews, Halevi was prepared, for the argument’s sake only, to nullify the difference between white and black. Particularistic interest, it seems, overcame even his most deeply rooted prejudices. In several places Halevi presents the scriptural genealogical theory of the origin and descent of various peoples from the sons of Noah, linking it for the first time in medieval Jewish thought with the Greek climate theory so as to explain the differences between the character and traits of different peoples. In this context, the sons of Noah settled in different parts of the world, whether in the south, the north or the temperate climate zones, and the geo-climatological conditions in those places dictated ethnic character. The sons of Ham settled in the hot south, which necessarily determined their nature. The name Ham and the Hebrew word for hot (ham) are identical, and there is an obvious similarity between this adjective describing the climate and hum, brown, the skin colour of the people. There is a linguistic link as well as a cause and effect relationship among the three. The climate dictates the ‘hot’ disposition of Ham’s descendants and also their ‘brown’ skin. Later on, phonetic identity will be shown to indicate an etymological relationship. As we have seen, the Sages identified Ham’s sons in general and Canaan in particular as the ancestors of the blacks as 138

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did early Christianity and, later on, Islam. The link between the Greek climate theory and Bible genealogy appears even in ancient Jewish writings. Thus Sefer ha-Yovelim: Japheth’s land in the north is cold, and Ham’s in the south is hot, while the land of Shem is neither hot nor cold, but a blend of cold and heat.51 In keeping with the Jewish version of the theory, the land of Shem is in the temperate zone, hence the special characteristics of its children. Halevi himself combines Greek climate theory with biblical genealogy to establish the unique nature of the people and the land of Israel.52 This is what interested him. What interests us is the image of the nature of the black as it emerged from these attempts of his to establish it ‘scientifically’. Within the discussion of transferring the ‘Divine matter’, that special hereditary factor of the Chosen People that makes direct contact with divinity possible, Halevi describes developments in Noah’s time as follows: Shem [was] the pick of Noah’s; accordingly he inherited the temperate zone, the center and jewel of which is the land of Israel, the land of prophecy, whilst Japhet turned toward the north, and Ham towards the south.53 Ham, who went out to the hot south with its extreme, unbalanced climate, was the ancestor of the blacks, according to Midrashic tradition. We have read Halevi’s description of the nature of the black in the Philosopher’s speech, where it combines scriptural genealogy as the Sages developed it and Muslim scholars absorbed it, with the climate theory and perception of the black character, as they migrated from Hellenistic into Islamic culture. A century earlier we found the Muslim historian Tabari using the genealogical theory to prove the superiority of the Arabs, Shem’s children. Halevi used the same theory, combining it with that of climate, to prove the superiority of the Jews, Shem’s children. While each identified the favourite children differently in keeping with his own theo-ethnic interest, both agreed on the inferiority of the children of Ham, identified with the blacks. Like Halevi and every scholar of the period, Maimonides too regarded the climate theory as scientific truth. Differently from Halevi, however, he refrained from using it to prove the superiority of the land and the people of Israel, because he had a different view of what made them unique.54 In his medical aphorisms (Pirkei Moshe be-Refuah), he quotes the climate theory as it appears in Galen and al Farabi directly, and in complete agreement. From the quotation it is quite clear that he identifies people from extreme climates with physical ugliness, and with intellectual and cultural inferiority:

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Abu Nasser Alfarabi, in his Book of Elements has already mentioned that people living in temperate climates are more perfect in their intelligence and, in general, have more pleasant forms, that is, their shape is more orderly, the composition of their organs is better and their constitution is better proportioned than people living in the far northern or southern climates.55 Neither here nor in al Farabi’s Political Regime, previously quoted, is there any direct mention of blacks, but clearly the reference to those in the far south is to them, or at least includes them. By contrast, when he uses the climate theory in the parable of the King’s palace in The Guide of the Perplexed 3: 51, there is a direct, unambiguous reference to blacks as inhabitants of an extremely hot climate, whence their natural inferiority. This parable presents the various steps and stages towards an understanding of the true God. The groups farthest away from the King’s palace, the ones with no chance of knowing the true God, are those ‘outside the city’, i.e. those who have no organized human framework: Those who are outside the city are all human individuals who have no doctrinal beliefs, neither one based on speculation nor one that accepts the authority of tradition: such individuals as the furthermost Turks found in the remote north, the Blacks (al sudan) found in the remote south, and those who resemble them from among them that are with us in these climes. The status of those is like that of irrational animals. To my mind they do not have the rank of men, but have among the beings a rank lower than the rank of man but higher than the rank of apes. For they have the external shape lineaments of a man and a faculty of discernment that is superior to that of the apes.56 Maimonides, then, identifies the blacks as one of these not completely human groups, like those he designates as ‘Turks’ or ‘Indians’ (Guide 3: 29),57 who exist on the geo-climatic fringes of settlement and hence are at a low level of development, in an intermediate stage between man and ape as to both external appearance and intellectual ability. As accepted in the anthropology of medieval Islam, Maimonides identifies both the blacks (3: 51) and the Indians (3: 29) as dwellers in the south.58 In ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew translation they are designated as ‘wanderers’ (meshotetim), i.e. nomads living outside any political framework. The inclusion of nomadism is no coincidence, since settled dwelling was considered a necessary precondition for an organized human society within a framework of law. Bestiality, then, expresses itself in three interlinked contexts: physiognomy, intellectual awareness and political organization. As for physiognomy, the not fully human groups dwelling in extreme, outlying regions, including the blacks, are described in this passage as resembling men more than apes in external appearance, implying that they still have clearly ape-like qualities. Thus in Pirkei Moshe the inhabitants of extreme 140

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climate areas are depicted as less handsome and less physically perfect than those of temperate climates. As always, external appearance is seen as an indication of moral and intellectual development. As far as the designator is concerned, the aesthetics of physical appearance are in direct relationship to the ethics of the soul. An appearance regarded as not aesthetic, i.e. not in keeping with the designator’s concept of beauty, will necessarily indicate to him a lack of morality and intellectual ability. According to the Aristotelian outlook of Maimonides, there is a necessary relationship between political and intellectual perfection. The uniqueness and superiority of humankind to other living things expresses itself in the combination of intellectual qualities with the need for a political existence. The two are linked, because without making intelligent use of his intellectual potential, man cannot maintain a proper political organization. He needs it to reach a knowledge of God, but without it the very survival of the human race is placed in danger.59 One must recall that as far as Maimonides was concerned, the absence of a political order necessarily meant the absence of any revealed religion – the only means whereby man could reach a decent social order. From this point of view Maimonides’s position is much like the one that appeared later in ibn Khaldun.60 Identifying blacks as one of the groups without a full intellectual potential, without a true, revealed religion, and therefore unable to maintain an organized social structure, necessarily places them in a subhuman position, somewhere in the biological space between man and ape. Another aspect of the climate theory that becomes evident here is that not only the blacks but everyone living in a zone of extreme climate – hot or cold, south or north, too black or too white – is described as equally inferior, giving ‘scientific’ legitimacy to Slavic as to black slavery. While Jewish tradition identified the peoples of the north as ‘the children of Japheth’, owing to Islamic cultural influence they were at times also identified as slaves, as in Moses ibn Ezra, or as ‘Turks’ in ibn Sina, and, following him, in Maimonides. At the same time, as we find in the latter’s Halachic writings, as the image of the black in his writings shows, and in keeping with the Islamic culture of the time, the black is presented as the ultimate inferior. Even inferior groups have their hierarchy. The other must have an inferior other – and he is always the black. Clearly Maimonides was influenced by the Islamic cultural world of his time. His remarks run parallel to those of al Farabi in the Political Regime, previously quoted, on those who are bestial by nature, unable to create a political association, who only somewhat resemble human beings, and who live in the far south or the far north.61 His remarks in Pirkei Moshe, as quoted above, are based directly and specifically on al Farabi. We know that Maimonides was familiar with his works, including this one, as he mentions with admiration in his famous letter to Samuel ibn Tibbon.62 While al Farabi does not mention blacks specifically, his reference to people with an animal nature living in the hot south refers (also) to them. Moreover, the very same reference appears in a 141

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parallel passage from ibn Sina, cited previously.63 As the late L.V. Berman once noted,64 there is the strongest resemblance between what Maimonides wrote and the ibn Sina source, a similarity that raises questions, even though Maimonides chose a different accepted designation for blacks. In the same letter to ibn Tibbon, Maimonides writes favourably of ibn Sina and advises his correspondent to read him, although he himself prefers al Farabi.65 Another possible source for Maimonides was identified lately in the essay on ethics Tahdhib alAkhlaq (Reforming the Character) by the Muslim scholar of the tenth and eleventh centuries (died 1030), Ahmed ibn Muhammad Miskawayh.66 His wording is almost identical with that of Maimonides, much more so than ibn Sina’s, and appears in a similar context: The first rank in the human realm, which touches the limit of the animal realm, is the rank of the people who dwell in the farthest parts of the inhabited world both to the north and to the south such as the remotest Turks in the country of Gog and Magog and the remotest blacks (al zanj) and similar nations which are distinguished from apes to a slight degree only. Then the faculty of discernment and understanding grows in men until they reach the central climes where intelligence, quickness of understanding, and the ability to acquire virtues are produced in them.67 However, while Maimonides refers to ibn Sina and al Farabi, nowhere does he do so in Miskawayh’s case, and no evidence of the latter’s influence on Jewish thought of this period has been identified. At the same time, the great resemblance between the passages speaks for itself, unless the two based themselves on some common source, which is of course possible. The one difference between Maimonides and Miskawayh is the term that each used for blacks. While Miskawayh, like ibn Sina, used al zanj, Maimonides preferred al sudan. The only element in al Farabi and ibn Sina not found in Maimonides is the description of blacks as slaves by nature, although the conclusion that slavery is natural to them arises, and he refers to it too in Gifts to the Poor 10: 17. Neither is there any reference to slavery as natural to blacks in the above passage from Miskawayh. This merely augments the possibility that Maimonides based himself on him, although they may have used a common source. Maimonides preferred, as just noted, the term al sudan, one of the accepted designations of the black in Islamic culture. Arab sources of the time called the blacks habashi or al sudan. The first name refers to the Ethiopians and their neighbours in the Horn of Africa region, and we have already seen that Moses ibn Ezra and Halevi used this term to designate blacks in general. The second term refers to blacks in general, and derives from the Arabic word for the colour black. As the Arabs spread out deep into black Africa, the language acquired new words for different black ethnic groups, like al zanj, originally the Bantuspeaking people in East Africa, south of Ethiopia, and eventually used to 142

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designate all blacks, as in ibn Sina. Tabari, on the other hand, like Maimonides, preferred the term al sudan.68 Some scholars made precise distinctions between the various black groups, while others, including Maimonides without a doubt, preferred to designate all of them as al sudan.69 Neither a geographer nor an anthropologist but a theologian, for him the subject was irrelevant. He had no interest in distinguishing between subgroups of blacks, so collected no information on the subject, though it was available to him.70 At the same time, using a generic term for such a large human group, ignoring the variety and the differences between its components, expresses, even if subconsciously, a stereotyped attitude to the inferior other, perceived as a homogeneous mass, with no distinctive ethnic or individual characteristics. Its attributes are all racial generalizations, just like the argument that all Chinese – or Jews – look alike. When an entire group is seen as uniform, with fixed stereotypical qualities and with no differences between the component subgroups or individuals, that group is inevitably presented as inferior. Maimonides, however, does not mention just what kind of climate in the south is inhabited by these blacks – or Indians. From what he says, we know only that in this zone, as in the far north, the climate is difficult and extreme, unlike the moderate one where he himself lives. This is what ibn Sina describes, also negatively, as ‘climates other then the perfect ones’.71 Nor does Maimonides explain the difference between a northern and a southern climate. However, in climate theory tradition the south is identified as the hot climate, the north as the cold one. Indeed, the dark skin of the blacks is explained by the intensity of the sunlight in their region. Sometimes the hot climate area is identified with the tropics, as in Avot de’Rabbi Nathan, but generally as desert. Perhaps this is because many blacks encountered by Mediterranean peoples came from desert areas around the Sahara, while contact with the inhabitants of tropical Africa was much more limited.72 Unsurprisingly, then, in the passage quoted above, al Farabi compared the inhabitants of extreme climates to ‘desert animals’.73 In fact, on several occasions Maimonides describes desert existence as bestial and unfit for human beings. For example: For the desert was, as stated in Scripture, a place ‘wherein were serpents, fiery serpents, and scorpions, and thirsty ground where there was no water’ (Deut. 8:15). Those are places that are very remote from cultivated land and unnatural to man.74 Those who live in hot desert areas, then, like the blacks, are incapable of maintaining an ordered human society, and are thus not defined as truly human. In contrast with Halevi, with the genealogical traditions in Islamic literature and with so many Jewish scholars afterwards, Maimonides made no use of the genealogy as an argument, never linking the natural inferiority of the black in its climatological context with the genealogical tradition of Noah’s sons. Even 143

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though he made extensive use of Aggadic Midrashim when they served his needs as a commentator,75 he did not use them in this case. Possibly he was aware of the tension between the theo-genealogical argument about the nature of the black and the geo-climatological one, and his scientific, rationalistic outlook made it hard for him to tie them together. That may have led him to ignore the Sages’ genealogical theory, despite its popularity in the Jewish and the Moslim cultural worlds. From this standpoint, he took on the radical outlook of ibn Khaldun, but while the latter criticized the genealogical theory sharply, Maimonides simply ignored it, refraining from using it to reinforce climate theory conclusions as to the black’s natural inferiority. We may be looking at a case of silence as an admission, obviously for political reasons, so as not to cast doubt on the authority of the Sages and on the binding status of the Aggadic Midrashim. From his point of view, the geo-climatic theory was quite strong enough to establish black inferiority. The very fact that he based himself on that alone creates a theoretical possibility with radical implications, of changing the characteristics and thus the status of the blacks, as we saw in ibn Khaldun. Maimonides, however, does not relate to this possibility, except for one case discussed later. Against this background, it comes as no surprise that Maimonides includes clearly stereotypical images of the black, taken from the Sages, in his Halachic treatises. Thus in Hilchot Berakhot 10: 12: One who sees a black (cushi) person or a person with an unusual (meshunin) face or limbs makes the blessing, ‘Blessed art Thou, Lord, our God, King of the Universe, Who has changed his creatures.’ One who sees a blind person or an amputee, or one afflicted with boils, or white blotches, etc., makes the blessing, ‘Blessed art Thou, Lord, our God, King of the Universe, Who is the true judge.’ But if they were born thus, one makes the blessing, ‘Blessed art Thou, Lord, our God, King of the Universe, Who has changed his creatures.’ So also if one sees an elephant or an ape or a monkey, one makes the blessing, ‘Blessed art Thou, Lord, our God, King of the Universe, Who has changed His creatures.’ This version follows BT Berakhot 58a, and the image of the black is characteristic of the way the Sages saw it.76 However, there are two differences between this version and Maimonides’s shorter one, both of which present the black even more negatively. The first difference from the Berakhot version is that Maimonides gives no long and detailed list of various cripples at the sight of whom one says the blessing ‘Who has changed His creatures’. He simply mentions the black as an example of those deformed in face or body. Obviously he gave just one example for the sake of brevity and chose the black because he appears first in BT Berakhot, without any special intent. The black heads that list and is the example Maimonides selects as the easiest to explain. But the fact 144

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that he chose the black to exemplify the cripple, rather than the albino, the hunchback or the dwarf, speaks for itself. Moreover, he shortened only the first blessing where the black appears, and not any of the others. Even assuming that his motives were purely technical, ultimately the black is shown as the archetypal cripple, i.e. one who does not meet the standards that define a healthy, attractive, normal individual. Considering the way Maimonides described the black in the parable of the king’s palace and elsewhere, and the norms of the Islamic and Jewish cultural world, selecting the black to represent cripples of all kinds is quite logical. Secondly, the black in this version is an example of every one who is ‘unusual’ (meshunin) on the basis of ‘Blessed. … Who has changed (meshaneh) His creatures.’ The word meshunin designates briefly all the subgroups of cripples in the Berakhot list, which Maimonides subsumes under the one general designation. The expression as such does not appear in the original Berakhot version, and is an independent addition of Maimonides, based on the blessing as formulated by the Sages. As mentioned in connection with BT Moed Katan 16b, using a word derived from ‘different’ designates neutral difference, not necessarily superiority or inferiority. But there is a possibility, fully exploited in modern Hebrew, of understanding the word in its negative, judgemental sense, as meaning one who does not meet certain accepted norms, and is ‘different’ in a negative sense. This is definitely a possibility: as early as Maimonides those who differ from a norm become negatively ‘different’ – and are represented by none other than the black. An additional example of the negative use of the black in the Halachic discussions of Maimonides is found in Hilchot Lulav 8: 8, based on BT Sukkah 32b, analysed previously. Maimonides comments and expands on it: ‘A citron is ineligible for use if it is swollen … black, white. … If however they are black, resembling the hue of a black person (cushi), they are ineligible for use anywhere.’ The ethrog is rejected owing to a blemish of a colour linked associatively with the skin of the black. Such expressions in the Halachic writings of Maimonides do not merely follow what the Sages wrote. We know how extremely selective he was in the material he gathered in Mishneh Torah, even exercising his own editorial judgement in ordering it. Thus expressions about the black within Halachic discussions clearly illustrate his attitude to them, and, moreover, are congruent with those he put forward in previously mentioned scientific and theological writings. At the same time, Mishneh Torah is the only place where Maimonides makes a neutral, though marginal, reference to blacks. In Laws of Forbidden Intercourse 12: 25, he deals with permission to marry outsiders of various types. He follows the discussion in Mishnah Yadayim 4: 4 (see also Toseftah to Kiddushin 5 in BT Berakhot 28a) about the ban against bringing the Ammonite and the Moabite into the congregation of Israel until the tenth generation (Deut. 23: 4). The Sages actually annulled this in view of historical circumstances, in which peoples mingled and lost their original ethnic identity. Since in effect the 145

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Ammonites and the Moabites no longer exist the ban is no longer relevant. Following the Sages’ discussion step by step, Maimonides quotes the same examples. He mentions as well that in Egypt too different ethnic groups have combined and are still doing so: the Egyptians of his own time have an ethnic identity quite different from that of the ancient Egyptians. But he adds another example: ‘a black (cushi), or of any other nation’. Introducing the blacks here documents the historical circumstances in Egypt in his time, when contact with them was close. One may reasonably assume that he refers to blacks who are not slaves, since there are different laws for marriage with slaves. Maimonides appears to have added the blacks as an up-to-date example for the application of this particular law, since the examples from the Bible are no longer relevant. His use of the blacks proves that they were a prominent ethnic group in Egypt at the time, the more conspicuous because of their skin. This addition has a double significance. On one hand, the black is once again stereotyped among contemptible peoples who always appear in a negative context both in Scripture and in rabbinic literature. On the other hand, removing the ban, with the authority of the Sages, makes the black, provided he officially converts to Judaism, acceptable as an equal in the congregation of Israel. Since the Ammonites and the Moabites were a historical anachronism while the black was a real presence, this possibility had practical significance, placing the properly converted black on the same footing as any other Gentile of the same status. As previously noted, Maimonides, like ibn Khaldun and others, based the otherness and hence the inferiority of the black on the climate rather than the theo-genealogical theory, already giving him a theoretical chance to join the community. There was now Halachic legitimacy for doing so. However, whether for geo-climatic reasons of migration or theological reasons of conversion, which would obliterate his blackness as far as possible, there was little chance for him to be accepted as he was, as an equal. But this was of no concern whatever in premodern culture. Another interesting aspect is that Maimonides defines the blacks here as a mixed ethnic group and not as a pure ‘race’, though he voices no opinion as to the significance of the fact. In itself, the fact that they were ‘mixed’ made change possible. Undoubtedly this passage innovates significantly, but it stands alone. It is the only place in the entire corpus of his writings, certainly the Halachic ones and even his more philosophical works, where there is such an egalitarian approach to the black. All other references present a diametrically opposed attitude, and even those just discussed have a double significance that fits in only too well with the views he expresses elsewhere. We have already noted Maimonides’s frequent use of dichotomous symbolism such as light and darkness, white and black. Following common practice, he projects these onto skin colour. He describes one who prefers material perfection to that of the intellectual soul following a Midrash on the Song of Songs, metaphorically, as one whose white skin has become black (Guide 3: 54).77 Here too Maimonides has a stereotypical perception of the black. 146

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There is another reference to the subject in an essay on logic, written in his youth. In his Treatise on Logic (Milot ha-Higayon) 10: 2 he cites skin colour as an instance of an external quality that attached to an object but is not qualitatively part of it. Black colouring is presented as a quality that may appear in certain people but is not an essential part of their significance as human beings: Thus, movement in the case of man is more general than the species; whereas blackness (alsud, shaharut) is both more limited than the human species, which is not all black (asud, shahor), and also more general, since it is found also outside of man; because blackness and motion and their like are called accidents. There are two kinds of accident: one inheres per-pitch and the whiteness of snow and the heat of fire; and the other is a separate accident like the standing or sitting of a person, or the heat of iron or stone.78 The colour black is mentioned in relation to people not only as an example of something that is separate (separabilis), meaning that it does not persist. It occurs in some people only, and not only in people. In pitch, for example, it is defined as a persistent quality, because it is always present in the substance defined as pitch. The first illustration is true of human beings in general, but not in that subgroup of blacks. Maimonides himself states that black colour is an instance of a separable quality in the human species: ‘which is not all black’. It follows that for one who is completely black, i.e. the black person, the colour exemplifies a permanent (inseparabilis) quality, as it is in pitch. Moreover, in a slightly different version of ibn Tibbon’s translation, black skin colour is said to be a permanent quality ‘for the black person only’.79 Since where the black is concerned, black skin is a permanent or persistent quality, it necessarily expresses certain characteristics perceived as unique to people with such a complexion. Indeed, David Kimhi responds to this in his commentary on Jeremiah 13: 23, ‘Can the black change his skin?’, saying that ‘his blackness is natural to him; it is no coincidence and will never leave him’. In his rational and universal world view, Maimonides differed significantly from the particularistic norms of Jewish and general contemporary culture, as clearly presented by Halevi. This is manifest both in his view concerning the possibility of joining and the degree of belonging to the Jewish people in particular, and in the general definition of who belongs to the human group. The first question depends on the definition of a human being, since only a human being has that option. In Maimonides’s opinion, everyone with intellectual potential, who perfects his virtues and develops his intellectual ability to its maximum, may belong to the community of believers. By contrast with Halevi, he did not restrict that community to those who attained ‘the Divine matter’ by virtue of heredity, i.e. the adult males of the faith of Moses. He opened up the possibility to everyone who would join freely and take the Torah and its commandments upon himself. Halevi is far more particularistic, with his reservations about the 147

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gentiles joining the Jewish people. In his famous words to the Khazar king, he informs him that even if he converts to Judaism he will never fully belong to it, since he lacks the right hereditary substance. Contrast the view of Maimonides, who saw in R. Ovadiah a convert, a Jew in every respect, more Jewish than many Jews by birth, and came out sharply against those who treated him with contempt.80 Maimonides was prepared to include gentiles who converted of their own free will, and even women,81 in the unique group of believers in the unity of God. Every individual who could reach an intellectual cognition of the divinity, at least on an elementary level, and willingly take upon themselves the Torah and commandments, whether Jew or gentile by birth, male or female, could belong to the congregation of believers. Not so the blacks: Maimonides had difficulty including them in the human group altogether. In some places, Maimonides displays an outstandingly egalitarian outlook on the question of belonging to humankind in general. Following BT Sanhedrin 37a, he states in Mishneh Torah, Sanhedrin 12, that ‘all human beings are fashioned after the pattern of the first man yet no two faces are exactly alike’. Therefore, every man may well say: ‘for my sake the world was created’. The assumption that human beings are created equal, although their faces are different, could have served as a basis for an ideal theory of equality among all human groups. But Maimonides, as we know, defined ‘human being’ following Aristotle, as one with intellectual potential. Since blacks and a few other ethnic groups were perceived as lacking elementary intellectual attributes, they were of necessity barred from membership in humanity. Everyone defined as human, at least according to this statement, was perceived as at least potentially a descendant of Adam, the first man. The definition, however, did not include blacks and their ilk, who were thus necessarily perceived as inferior to ‘human beings’ in the hierarchy of Creation. Furthermore, elsewhere in Maimonides’s writings we can find quite different and clearly negative statements about the nature and hence the rights of the gentile, even though he is defined as ‘human’ in every respect, and all the more so when it comes to the black. While in Laws of Forbidden Intercourse blacks are added to the list of the converted who can enter the congregation immediately, this is a unique example, contradicting what the author wrote elsewhere, and is in itself ambivalent. Even the universal rationalism of Maimonides had its limit, and the limit was radical enough in the light of the accepted norms of Jewish and Islamic society of his time. At least in his more esoteric hints, he opened the way for possible equal participation of women at some more perfect future time. Not so, however, as regards the black. Without a doubt, and without surprising us at all, the black remained far beyond the pale. Although Maimonides’s theological and philosophical perceptions were so different from those of Halevi, both could hold the same position as regards the black, whom medieval anthropology regarded as not fully belonging to humanity, and existing somewhere in zoological space between man and ape.

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I In Jewish culture after Maimonides, the black image found its way into travel literature, medieval Aggadic commentaries, Bible commentary, prose and poetry, philosophy and science. Some of these distinctions are arbitrary, given the nature of medieval culture, where boundaries between literary genres were blurred. Many texts are on the borderline between philosophy, literary prose and poetry. Falaquera’s Sefer ha-Mevakesh, with which I began this book, and where harsh stereotypes identify the threatening black as ultimate other, is an outstanding example. In other texts, such as Isaac Abarbanel’s commentary on the Bible, where we find one of fullest and most important expressions of the black image in Jewish thought in the late Middle Ages, there are philosophical and scientific discussions in the guise of biblical commentary. An examination of texts will show us that all these literary forms project the image of the black that Jewish scholars in Latin–Christian Europe inherited from the rabbinic tradition on one hand and Greek and Islamic culture on the other. Differently from Jewish scholars in the Islamic cultural world, those in lands of Latin–Christian culture in the late Middle Ages had virtually no contact with blacks, except perhaps for travellers who reached North Africa and the Middle East, like Benjamin of Tudella and R. Ovadiah of Bartenura, and a few scholars active in the southern part of Christian Europe, from the latter half of the fifteenth century, when black slavery reappeared as a result of Portuguese conquests in West Africa. Before that, medieval slaves in southern Europe were white Slavs, from which in fact the word ‘slave’ in various European languages derives. Since black slavery came relatively late to Europe, following the Portuguese voyages of exploration,1 Jewish scholars there relied far more than their counterparts in the Islamic world on literary sources – the Aggadic Midrashim, science, theology and literature – rather than on any personal eyewitness experience. Moreover, their interest was indirect, a by-product of geo-theological issues like the climate theory, the whereabouts of the Ten Lost Tribes, and places relevant to commentary on the Torah and Aggadah. At the same time, like their predecessors in the Islamic cultural world, their outlook was sharply defined and thoroughly stereotyped. One assumes that in the 149

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absence of direct contact with blacks, the stereotype became as mythical as anti-Semitism in places where there are no Jews. There are several accounts of direct encounters with Africans, but all were with Christians or Falasha Jews, not with true African blacks. The writings of a few Italian Jewish travellers visiting the land of Israel and its region in the fifteenth century testify to this. The letters of R. Ovadiah of Bartenura from the land of Israel to Italy, after he settled in the former country in the mid fifteenth century, report on such meetings. In a detailed description of Jerusalem, he notes that the city attracts pilgrims of different faiths from different lands. Among these he mentions pilgrims from the land of Prester John, i.e. Ethiopia, who told him of the Ten Lost Tribes, living in that area.2 He goes on to report on an encounter with black Jews from the Ten Tribes, captured in battle, sold into slavery and brought to Egypt: ‘They are only somewhat black (shehorim), and not like the [true] blacks (benei cusi’im).’ One may assume that R. Ovadiah refers to Jews from Ethiopia, i.e. Falashas. The ensuing discussion as to whether they are rabbinic or Karaite Jews bears out the assumption.3 In a letter from the land of Israel from R. Israel Ashkenazi to R. Abraham of Perugia there is an account of a black Jew ‘almost like a black (cushi)’ who was captured, enslaved and redeemed by Jews from Alexandria. This man told his rescuers of the legendary Jewish kingdom said to exist in Ethiopia. In the same period, R. Moses Basulah described the Jew from the land of Cush in just such an enigmatic way.4 These descriptions may be compared with that of the early sixteenth-century Italian traveller Ludovico Vartima, who described the Ethiopian Jews as ‘black rather than any other colour’ (piu negri che da altro colore).5 None of these are encounters with true black Africans, but with black Christians from Ethiopia, said to have come from Prester John’s legendary kingdom, or black Jews, supposedly from the Ten Lost Tribes. From either group they could have heard about black Africans. Neither R. Ovadiah nor R. Israel Ashkenazi, however, goes into this at any length because it did not interest them, while others regarding whom there is no documentation of direct contact with Africans give their detailed, thoroughly stereotyped descriptions of the black African, as we shall see further on. As to David Reuveni, he himself may have been of Falasha origin, as Cassuto once suggested, though the point is debatable, even if contemporaries described him as having particularly dark skin. Gedaliah ibn Yehiah went even further, depicting him as ‘dark as a black’ (shahor ke-cushi), in precisely the same way as other sources describe Ethiopian Jews. This fact in itself requires investigation.6 If the assumption is true, then we have a unique instance in which an African Jew describes blacks. Such a description should have been one of an eyewitness, but clearly, as we see later, Reuveni’s picture contains quite fantastic stereotypical elements. Discussion of the subject continues to be conditioned mainly by the sources on which Jewish scholars in the Islamic world relied. Influence from Latin–Christian sources was negligible, if it existed at all, for the simple reason that at the time the issue was marginal. Moreover, the little discussion there was 150

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was either inaccessible to Jews or of an entirely Christian theological nature, so that ipso facto it could not have any significant influence on them. Only in the mid fifteenth century did black slaves from West Africa appear in Europe, and only then did the question of black slavery and its legitimacy arise. It is no coincidence that the myth of the punishment of Ham (or Canaan) appears in Christian literature only then, and, as usual, grants theological legitimacy to economic interests.7 By this time it was a significant and central motif in Jewish and Islamic literature. While the few earlier references in Christian literature related to the geographical distribution of Noah’s three sons, some also create a link with the story of the Three Wise Men, one of whom was black, who came from the ends of the earth to greet the infant Jesus in Bethlehem. The motif is widespread in Christian iconography. None of these sources mentions the black image of Canaan and his descendants.8 There is a complex discussion of the legal and theological status of slavery, though unconnected with black slavery, which did not exist in that milieu at the time.9 Differently from the Islamic cultural world, medieval Christianity’s encounters with blacks were marginal indeed, though in the later Middle Ages representatives of the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia had some contacts with Europe.10 With that, such references as there are in Christian literature express all too well the accepted stereotypes of the black that the church fathers acquired from later Hellenistic–Roman culture. We have already mentioned Jerome’s translation of the Song of Songs, ‘I am black but comely’ (negra sum sed formosa), which changed the meaning of the original as far as black skin colour was concerned, from a positive attitude to one with reservations. Here the views of the church fathers were similar to those of the Sages, by whom they were no doubt influenced. The church fathers, however, put the Song of Songs text through a Christian transformation, seeing in the ‘black bride’ motif an expression of the process whereby a convert to Christianity, originally ‘black’, i.e. a sinner, becomes white and pure by recognizing Jesus as the Messiah. Augustine specifically identified ‘Ethiopian’, i.e. black, as the nations who were ‘black’ before their salvation, becoming ‘white’ by accepting Christianity.11 In the early Middle Ages, Satan began to be identified as black, and in some places as a black dog or cat. We find this in Jewish sources too.12 In the travel literature of this period too there is a certain negative reaction to the image of the blacks, generally in connection with the search for the lost Prester John, originally placed somewhere in Asia, while in the late Middle Ages his image, painted black, moved to Ethiopia.13 While Jewish scholars in Christian countries had virtually no direct contact with blacks, theirs was a rich Jewish, Greek and Arabic textual heritage, dating from the Aggadic Midrashim of the Sages, through Greek science and philosophy mediated by Islam, and including medieval Arabic prose and poetry. They were bound to relate to the issue, since they were intensively occupied in commentaries on the Bible and the Aggadah, and in geo-theological problems like the climate theory and the whereabouts of the Ten Lost Tribes. The 151

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attitudes of the Sages on one hand and of Islamic culture on the other necessarily conditioned their own. In this as in other matters that Jewish culture dealt with in the late Middle Ages, they were conditioned to a great extent, until the threshold of modern times, by that conceptual world, even after the shift of Jewish cultural centres to the southern part of Christian Europe began, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.14 As already noted, important descriptions of the black as seen by Islamic culture appear in travel literature and geography books.15 Medieval Jewish travel works provide several examples. They appear in the stories of Eldad the ha-Dani, composed in the ninth century, the travels of Benjamin of Tudella in the latter half of the twelfth, in R. Ovadiah of Bartenura’s journey, committed to writing in the latter half of the fifteenth century and in the stories of David Reuveni, composed in the first half of the sixteenth.16 I shall relate to all these together, despite the time span involved, as they belong to the same literary genre and the passage of time did not bring with it any qualitative difference in the black image. Reuveni’s story, though written after the great geographical discoveries in Africa, is still an organic part of the medieval tradition. It makes no reference to the discoveries that brought renewed intensity to discussions of the black image, as seen later in Iggeret Orhot Olam (Letter from the Roads of the World) by Abraham Farrisol, written shortly afterwards.17 We are not interested in the historical or geographical accuracy of the description, but rather in the black image it projects. Moreover, most of the writers clearly did not base what they wrote on firsthand knowledge, but rather on information acquired from the geographical and travel literature of their time. There is a clearly fantastic element in the stories of Eldad ha-Dani and David Reuveni, and while Benjamin of Tudella got as far as Cairo in his journeys throughout the Mediterranean lands, he visited neither the east nor black Africa, and his impressions from those places are based on rumours and on stories he collected on his way, obviously from Islamic geographical writings. What they wrote, then, fitted in with the contemporary perception of the black. Most researchers of these texts had doubts about the accuracy of the geographical and anthropological descriptions they contain. We, however, are not interested in the ‘factual’ accuracy in this travel literature but rather its images of the black, what the sources are and what world view they represent. Moreover, as stated before, the knowledge of most of the authors is at best secondhand, and even an author who had direct contact with blacks transmuted his knowledge through his mental and ideological prism.18 Ovadiah of Bartenura was one of the very few who wrote of such direct encounters, but he referred either to black Christians or to Jews from Africa, not true black Africans, and in any case his relation to the subject was marginal. His writings are important not because of the black images they contain, but because they constitute very rare testimony about meeting people who actually came from Africa. Many references to blacks in this literature appear in the context of traditions about the whereabouts of the Ten Lost Tribes, which kindled the 152

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messianic imagination of Jews throughout that period. Until the seventeenth century the Lost Tribes were said to live in the east, deep in central Asia, or in the south, in Africa. Traditions that identified the Lost Tribes, or some of them, in Africa, linked discussions of the subject to the parallel Christian tradition of Prester John, who established a virtuous Christian kingdom somewhere in Asia or Africa, and was to come to the aid of his European co-religionists in their struggle against the Muslim infidels. In the late Middle Ages the kingdom was generally identified with Ethiopia, and he was even identified as an Ethiopian. At the same time, Jewish scholars began to place the Lost Tribes beside his kingdom.19 Knowledge accumulating about a black Jewish community in Ethiopia, and the occasional contacts with black Jews from Egypt, helped transfer the messianic search for the Lost Tribes to Africa.20 Quite naturally, the travellers and other scholars who dealt with the issue related to the country where the Lost Tribes were thought to be and the people who lived there, giving stereotypical descriptions of the nature and appearance of the blacks. The only Jewish traveller who continued to place the Lost Tribes exclusively in the east was Benjamin of Tudella,21 but he nonetheless presented the most complex picture of the black to be found in this literary genre, under the influence of Arabic geographical works and of medieval Midrashic and theological literature. In the seventeenth century the search for the Lost Tribes moved to the New World. Manasseh ben Israel ‘proved’ they had been identified in South America – a lighter skinned tribe among the dark natives of that continent.22 Eldad ha-Dani relates twice to the blacks and their country, in one case as the home of some of the Lost Tribes. Following a tradition he cites, four tribes – Dan, Naphtali, Gad and Asher – wandered south and reached the land of Cush, where they settled. Eldad has several versions of this story. What interests us is not the description of the four tribes but the accompanying references to the blacks and their country. References to blacks as such are entirely marginal. In his main version, Eldad tells of many wars between the Lost Tribes and their black neighbours, about whose character, appearance and life-style he gives no details.23 Perhaps the only allusion to the character of their black enemies is that their expeditions of war and plunder are always defeated by the Lost Tribes, obviously owing to genetic and cultural superiority over these anonymous blacks who, just as obviously, are totally primitive. The absence of any description of these blacks is dictated by the defined purpose of such a book, but also expresses the attitude that they are not even worth a specific description. Elsewhere, when they are described, it is in the accepted stereotype. By contrast, there is a short description of the land of Cush, repeated in two shorter versions of the story of the Lost Tribes in Africa. The idyllic picture is like the one from Greek sources that show the place as a Garden of Eden: Until they reached the rivers of Cush, and found a broad and goodly land, fields and vineyards, gardens and orchards. And the inhabitants 153

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of the land did not prevent the children of Dan from settling among them for many years, until they multiplied exceedingly.24 Such a description fits in well with traditions handed down from ancient times, which identified Cush or Ethiopia as the lost Eden, and are found in other Hebrew sources, like Ovadiah of Bartenura.25 The problem is that this idyll fits neither the climate theory that places Cush in a land of extreme heat, nor the bestial image of the black that Eldad presents elsewhere. Inevitably, the ‘broad and goodly land’ would have to bring forth superior people. As mentioned previously, however, there are alternative descriptions of the land of the blacks. One shows it as an arid desert and the other as a lush, tropical land, both as hot areas that lie along the equator. Scholars used one version or the other, according to the native land of those blacks they met, or of whom they had knowledge. Elsewhere in his stories, Eldad tells how he himself was captured by the blacks, who in this context are classically stereotypical: And they are black negroes (cushim shehorim), so very tall, with no covering upon them, because like beasts they are, and eat human beings.26 Here is the full stereotype – especially tall,27 going about naked with all the associated sexual connotations, behaving like beasts, and cannibals. To highlight the last point, Eldad reports that his travelling companion, a sturdy fellow, was quickly slaughtered and eaten by the blacks, while he was fattened up for the slaughter but managed to outwit his captors and escaped to tell his tale.28 The black as cannibal is typical of this literary genre, and appears in David Reuveni, and in many other examples.29 All serve to emphasize the bestiality of the blacks and their complete otherness from the rest of humanity. The fact that the writer managed to outwit them shows, in his view, not only his ability but their natural stupidity. Unlike the stereotypical generalizations in the theological–philosophical literature of Judah Halevi and Maimonides and in other stories of Eldad haDani, Benjamin of Tudella’s description is complex and ambivalent. He is well aware of different groups of blacks from different regions and his attitude to them is ambivalent, not totally stereotyped. Ultimately, however, he gives us the characteristic portrait of the black. Benjamin notes two ethnic groups that he calls blacks, identifying them by their skin colour. One lives somewhere on the west coast of India, the other in Africa. Maimonides does something similar, on one occasion identifying the inhabitants of the hot south as Hodim (Indians) (Guide 3: 29) and on another as Cushim (blacks) (3: 51).30 The phenomenon seems to have been widespread: we find a similar example as early as Homer’s Odyssey.31 In Hebrew as well as Latin and Christian sources it was common to confuse India with Cush, and 154

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sometimes Hindika is used in the sense of southern Cush. It is found in various Midrashim, and in the commentaries of Rashi and Abraham ibn Ezra on the Bible and the Talmud. The same occurs in Virgil, in several of the church fathers and in some medieval scholars.32 In the Catalonian Atlas, drawn in the mid sixteenth century by a Jewish cartographer, there are two black kings, one in Africa and the other in the vicinity of India.33 This was because the southern hemisphere was virtually unknown at the time, and the outlines of the continents and oceans still lay in the misty region between geography and myth. India was sometimes perceived as bordering directly on Africa, or even included in southern Africa. The entire region was believed to have a hot climate, and the dark complexion attributed to all its inhabitants served to blur geographical details even further. Benjamin of Tudella describes the group on the west coast of India thus: It is the beginning of the sun worshippers’ kingdom. They, the children of Cush, contemplate the stars, and they all are black.34 These children of Cush are described as pagans, worshipping the sun and practising astrology. There is no explanation for their worship of the sun in particular, although from the context one may conclude that it is because the hot climate dictates their beliefs, their way of life – and their complexion. They are described as practising black magic, believing in Satan, and following such idolatrous customs as burning people alive. On the other hand, they are not described as beasts in human form, the way blacks appear in the theological–philosophical literature of the time, but as diligent, honest merchants living in a country where the rule of law prevails, and their king is said to be a tzaddik, a righteous ruler. Their country is depicted as an important producer and exporter of spices. There is also a detailed description of the way they mummify their dead, which requires advanced scientific knowledge.35 The fact that these were not black Africans, but dark-skinned inhabitants of India, made it possible to show them in this relatively favourable way. Here Benjamin notes that the Jews in this region, apparently the Jews of Cochin, are black Jews: ‘All the inhabitants of the country are black (shehorim), the Jews as well.’36 The second group, by contrast, living in Africa itself, somewhere south of Egypt, are ultimately described according to the black stereotype: And from there to the land of Assuan, a foot journey of 20 days across the desert that reaches the river Pishon, descending from the land of Cush, where there is a king they call the sultan of Ethiopia. Some are beasts (behemot) in all their ways, eating grass on the bank of the Pishon, going about naked in the fields, and, unlike other people, they regard not whether a man lie with his sisters or anyone else. This is a very hot country and, when the people of Assuan come to raid their 155

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land they throw bread and wheat and raisins and figs at them, and after they have eaten they are taken prisoners and sold as slaves in Egypt and in all the kingdoms around: these are black (shehorim) slaves, the sons of Ham.37 In biblical terms, the land of Cush is identified as the desert of Sheba, on the banks of the Pishon river, somewhere south of Egypt. It was usual in medieval Hebrew literature to call the Nile ‘Pishon’, as Saadia Gaon and Rashi did.38 Only ‘some’ are described as beasts in human form, following the accepted formulation we found in Judah Halevi and in Maimonides. Most of the discussion, however, relates to these apparently few people. The only reference to the others deals with their political system: ‘There is a king they call the sultan of Ethiopia.’ The majority, then, are described as living under an orderly political regime, like other people – but this is the only reference to the greater part of society. Most of the discussion is devoted to the ‘bestial’ minority that attracts the greatest interest and becomes a general hallmark for that human group. In the end, then, Benjamin of Tudella, despite his empirical awareness of the varied modes of black existence, identifies them as bestial and subhuman ‘beasts in all their ways’. In a most surprising way, it brings to mind what Maimonides will write at the end of Chapter 2 of the Guide, about the punishment of Adam after his sin: ‘And God reduced him, with respect to his food and most of his circumstances, to the level of the beast.’39 As Psalm 49: 13 states: ‘Like beasts in their folly.’ But while in Maimonides the resemblance to the beast is temporary, the result of the fall from Eden, Benjamin of Tudella describes it as a permanent condition for the black. The blacks said to be so primitive are of course presented in an entirely negative and judgemental way. First of all they eat grass – vegetarians who feed on what they find and do not farm, do not produce food by their labours. In the Greek political tradition accepted in medieval thought, producing food by farming marked the beginning of ordered human society. Agricultural development requires permanent settlement with a division of labour and produce, which in itself requires a high level of socialization and political organization.40 All these are absent. Blacks are depicted as living off what nature provides, just like other animals. While medieval Jewish culture offers some idyllic descriptions of vegetarian existence in the natural, pre-political state,41 Benjamin of Tudella is unequivocally negative, identifying it with the mode of existence of the blacks. That he chooses to describe the blacks who eat grass is no coincidence. In the story of Creation, man was given not only the grass of the field, but the fruit trees and the animals, while the other animals received only ‘every green plant’ (Gen. 1: 30). Identifying blacks as eaters of grass groups them with the beasts, as distinguished from human beings. The description continues by showing how blacks are tempted by agricultural produce brought down from the north, simply stressing the inferiority of their existence in the natural state. Interestingly, blacks are sometimes described as cannibals, as in Eldad ha-Dani 156

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and David Reuveni, while in other sources, like Benjamin of Tudella, they are the complete opposite, eaters of grass. In either case, they deviate sharply from accepted, ‘average’ habits of human beings who eat other animals: they go either to one extreme, eating grass, or to the other, cannibalism. Even gastronomically, blacks are shown as subhuman. Moreover, Benjamin presents blacks as primitives who go about naked in the ‘fields’; that is, they carry out unrestricted sexual relations with any female they may find, even incestual relations, meaning that they do not recognize the institution of the family as ordered human society knows it. The blacks as totally given to lust is a picture now familiar to us from Talmudic literature. Benjamin attributes the same sexual characteristics to other exotic peoples, the Druse, for example, whom he describes as ‘awash in lust’. His juicy description of their supposed sexual practices, including incest, is just like the one of the blacks.42 This is thoroughly compatible with the phenomenon we discussed at length of the identity of one marked as inferior other, expressing deep-seated fears of his supposedly superior potency: hence the attempt to nullify it as bestial inferiority.43 The use of the term ‘in the fields’ is in itself significant. Following the Bible story of Cain who slew Abel ‘as they were in the field’ (Gen. 4: 8), medieval Jewish thought perceived existence in the field as bestial, the prepolitical state of man, outside the fear imposed by the rule of law. Esau too, prototype of the gentile in Midrashic literature, is described in the Torah as a ‘man of the field’ (ish sadeh) as opposed to Jacob, the civilized, who ‘lives in tents’ (yoshev ohalim) (Gen. 25: 27).44 The last characteristic that Benjamin, like Judah Halevi and Maimonides, relates to blacks is the absence of intellectual potential: ‘and they do not have intelligence (da’at) like other human beings’. Since medieval science believed in the Aristotelian system, which considered human beings a species separate and superior from other animals because they have an intelligent soul, one who lacked such potential was of necessity not human, but subhuman. Benjamin mentions this specifically. The absence of intellect is not only compatible with the blacks’ other characteristics, like existence in the field without a proper family or political framework, and unbridled lust, but in itself necessarily prevents them from having a social order and from controlling their physical desires. Such a description of the blacks shows them to be slaves by nature. Benjamin expresses full awareness of black slavery in the Islamic world of his time. In portraying the nature of the black as he does, he legitimizes it ‘scientifically’, while his conclusion ‘these are black slaves, the sons of Ham’ provides the theological legitimacy. They are sons of Ham, hence destined to slavery. In saying so, Benjamin follows the Midrashic tradition accepted in the Muslim and Christian culture of his time. Interestingly, while white Slavic slaves were called ‘Canaan’, after Ham’s sinful son,45 black slaves in regions where Islamic culture prevailed were called ‘sons of Ham’, not sons of Canaan. Possibly here Benjamin follows another Islamic tradition that identified blacks as sons of 157

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Ham in general, not only of Ham’s son Canaan, which states that Ham’s children were punished by blackening their skin and by eternal slavery, an idea we shall find in the discussion that follows. Like Judah Halevi, Benjamin chose to call the blacks El habash. Later on he says: ‘And it is from the land of Cush, called El habash.’46 As noted before, in Arab geography it was the accepted name particularly for the inhabitants of the Horn of Africa, south of Egypt, which is indeed the region Benjamin discusses. It would be natural for him to do so, though Halevi uses the term for blacks in general.47 Although David Reuveni’s story was composed in the sixteenth century, after the great voyages of discovery had started, it nonetheless belongs entirely to the medieval context, since it continues to place the blacks exclusively in the area of Ethiopia in the medieval manner, and shows no awareness of the great explorations already described in Iggeret Orhot Olam by Abraham Farissol, written shortly afterwards, and which we discuss in the next chapter. David Reuveni gives a detailed account of his sojourn in the land of Cush, in the region of Ethiopia, in the company of the king: it is a blend of fact and fantasy. Scholars are still deliberating its authenticity, which is not the theme of our discussion: the image of the black that emerges from it is. We have a description of a highly developed political and legal system in a nomadic royal court. Beyond that, however, the description of the blacks is completely stereotypical. There is great emphasis on ‘primitive’ living conditions – their customary nakedness interested the author very much – the ornaments and jewellery, gastronomic customs that included eating animals he considered unclean, and cannibalism.48 An instructive story relates to a sexual temptation of the author, when the king sent him a gift of several naked slaves and handmaids. His lust all but overcame him and he nearly had intercourse with one of the handmaids, but at the last moment his better self triumphed and he rejected the royal gift. Here is how he tells it: After that the king sent to my home four virgin handmaidens and four slaves, all of them naked. … And the four stand before me completely naked, and I gave each of them a garment to cover their private parts. That night the evil inclination stood on my right to tempt me with a beautiful maid from among them, and I raised her to my bed. Afterward the good inclination triumphed and said to me: ‘See whence you come and whither you are going, and what this deed is that you want to do.’49 This is a fine example of the European man’s ambivalence as he instinctively associates naked blacks with strong sexual lust and is tempted, though in the end his better nature prevails, i.e. the superego, a mark not only of his Jewish identity but of the European mentality that taught him to repress his sexual desires. The naked black is identified with the id, i.e. with unbridled lust, but 158

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the finest, most highly cultured individual, the (white?) Jew, controls his lust, an obvious mark of his superiority. There is a clearly ambivalent element – envying the blacks for what they allow themselves, as they, the cultured whites, shrink back at the last moment.50 Once again we have the archetype of the ultimate inferior other based on the familiar sexual otherness linked to ethnicity and status – the black handmaid, described as usual as completely passive, one destined only to give sexual and other services to her masters, the very same phenomenon found in the Aggadic Midrashim. If this reading of the text is correct, it may also bear witness to the true extraction of the man who called himself David Reuveni. His is an ‘Ashkenazi’, i.e. a totally European, view of the ‘primitive’ non-European native, neither white nor a monotheist. Eshkoli’s conclusion from an analysis of Reuveni’s Hebrew, that he was in fact an Ashkenazi Jew by birth and education, is reinforced from this unexpected direction.51 Eventually the author leaves the land of Cush with a black slave whom he sells in Egypt.52

II Among the black images already cited from the prose and poetry of this era is the one from Falaquera, of the nightmare of the two menacing blacks who symbolize evil qualities. Further on, we saw how the dichotomy of the beautiful ‘white’ woman and the ugly black one was internalized in literature and particularly in the Hebrew poetry of this time, beginning with Judah ben Shabetai’s Soneh ha-Nashim (The Woman Hater), and concluding with the pamphlets of Emanuel of Rome.53 In medieval Jewish folk literature, much of it translated and reworked from that of the Islamic or Christian culture in which Jews lived,54 there is no lack of examples. One story describes a meeting between a man searching for his wife, who has disappeared, and a black man, in the woods. The latter gets full stereotypical treatment. He is big, black and hence ugly, arousing terrible fear by his very otherness: ‘a black (shahor) man, very tall and most ugly … and the man feared and dreaded, for he had seen no one like him’. The black is described again and again as ‘the huge (gadol me’od) man’ whom ‘he feared terribly’.55 The man meets the black in a great forest after ‘a six-day journey’, and in the end the black leads him to hell. Again the black’s wild, bestial, anti-civilized nature is stressed, and linked to a frightening aspect of nature, outside any cultural framework. A story in the Hebrew version of Mishlei Sandebar (The Proverbs of Sandebar) is called ‘The beautiful maiden and the black (cushi)’. The beautiful maiden is married off to an old man who forbids her to leave his house. In his absence, through her handmaid, she invites a troop of dwarfs to the house to amuse her. When her husband came home unexpectedly, she killed them with the handmaid’s help, so they would not be found out. The young wife orders her servant 159

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to find a porter ‘without understanding (be’lo da’at)’ to get rid of the bodies. The story continues thus: And she found a black (cushi) and brought him to her. And she said to him: ‘Lie with me.’ After he lay with her, she said to him: ‘Take this sack to the river and throw it in, and then come back to me and I shall take care of you.’ He did her bidding, until he had taken them all away and thrown them into the river. See and understand the deceit of women.56 Here we have a parallel system of stereotypes that complements the earlier description. The lady directs the handmaid to hire a porter ‘without understanding’, and the latter, unremarkably, finds a black for the task. He is thus identified as a kind of beast in human form, with great physical strength but without understanding, who is therefore able to fill his role obediently, getting rid of the bodies in the best possible way, and without too many questions. The young woman takes advantage of the opportunity to have intercourse with the black, obviously against the background of his superior potency, certainly by contrast with her aged spouse. Quite characteristically, the stereotyped description of the black is paralleled by an equally stereotyped one of a treacherous woman with powerful sexual desires, who succeeds in deceiving her innocent old husband. Sefer ha-Meshalim (The Book of Parables), a rhymed work by the poet Jacob ben Elazar, who lived and worked in Christian Spain in the early thirteenth century, contains a particularly harsh example.57 In typical fashion, ben Elazar stresses two accepted images of the black with which we are already familiar: the violent, menacing black male, exactly as he appears in Falaquera, and the promiscuous black woman. Each sex is associated with its most typical vice. Identifying them as blacks simply intensifies the vice and pushes it to its extreme. Generally, as we have often noted, the attitude to blacks corresponds with the attitude to women, since both stem from the same world view. Not so in this case. Scholars have stressed the innovation, even the daring here, at least as far as Jewish culture of the time is concerned, regarding human sexuality, by showing a woman as active and assertive in this sphere as a man.58 In the black stereotype, however, there is no change, which shows how completely the culture had internalized it. The first story tells the adventures of a young man called Maskil (‘learned’), who has heard that there are beautiful women in Arabia, and travels there to find love. He meets and falls in love with a maiden called Pninah, and the pair go to take their pleasure in the bosom of nature. Suddenly an enormous black man, violent and menacing, appears before them. Deliberately, the author places his story in ‘the land of the Arabs’, which in the west creates an association with the erotic east. The location also provides a suitable backdrop for the appearance of the black, whom the Latin west identifies with the Moors of 160

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northwest Africa, their sworn enemies, reinforcing negative attitudes. Here is how the author describes the dramatic encounter: And they festively did dine / And drank a quiet glass of wine / And here is a wind / A growling sound / Dust and ashes / Trumpet and shofar blare / Depths shook, hills tumbled everywhere / They saw and dreaded / Saw and feared / They shook where they stood / Bitterly they cried out / And in a circle went about / From the river bank Maskil shook, then rose / And the first, out he goes / Robed in pride and strength a horseman rose / His voice as mighty waters / Ever closer flows / Here is his huge form / He strikes out and he is black (shahor) / Frightened, he then falls back / And he said: ‘This black (cushi) came but to take my soul’ / He’s huge, six fingers on each foot and hand / Crush forts and cities into sand / His height the hills will overtop / His breadth a zeret and six amot, His face red as embers / Fire-eyed / Like a deer he flies / He said: ‘This can only be a ghost / An evil spirit comes from his throat’ / And the black (cushi) to Maskil now cries out / ‘Woe, Maskil – cease your frolic with the doe / And for a prize, keep you your soul’ / When he heard the black (shahor) man’s words / With anger frothing, he said, he swore / He who put light in Pninah’s face / And in your face / And made her face to light desire / And you he made most strange, bizarre / Before you again see the doe / Your soul will from your body go.59 The passage opens with a powerful dichotomy: the tranquil lovers in the bosom of nature, and the terrifying hubbub surrounding the appearance of the black. At the same time, the lovers in nature, beyond the bounds of organized culture, provide a frame of reference for the appearance of the threatening black man. As usual he is huge.60 Again and again, the author stresses how dirty and ugly the black’s complexion is in the eyes of the white observer: ‘Red as embers / Fire-eyed’ and the like.61 The images ‘six fingers on each foot and hand. … His breadth a zeret and six amot’ to depict the black’s physical prowess, along with a subsequent description of his clothing and armour: ‘In scaled armour is he clad / A copper helmet on his head’,62 hint at Goliath as pictured in I Samuel 17: 4–5 and I Chronicles 20: 6. The system of associations was obviously intended to reinforce the reader’s sense of the dread that the violent black aroused in the innocent young couple. If the black is identified with the gigantic Goliath, then the ‘white’ youth is associatively linked to handsome ‘little’ David, ‘ruddy, with beautiful eyes and good form’ (I Sam. 16: 11–12), the complete opposite of the black. Not by chance is the youth called Maskil, a name often identified with David in the Psalms. With such an identity, the results of the verbal and physical confrontation are a foregone conclusion. When the ‘white’ observer refers to him as a ghost and an evil spirit, then later as ‘a son of devils’, appropriately horned, ‘whose nostrils breathe smoke’,63 it is only to show his total otherness 161

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from anything human, his place among the ghosts and devils, again reinforcing the fear he inspires. Not for nothing does the author paraphrase for us ‘Blessed is He who varies the forms of His creatures’, which, as already noted, puts the black at the head of the list of deviants, for which God must be blessed because he created them so very different. The black is shown as threatening to take the white male’s woman from him. Here is a clear expression of white dread of the mythically superior potency of the black, just as in the stories of A Thousand and One Nights. The young man of course goes out to do battle, although his strength is not equal to his opponent’s, just like David before him, this time to defend the innocence of the ‘white’ female, i.e. to defend his possession of her. As usual in such tales, two men struggle for the ownership of the passive female, who can do nothing but encourage her beloved. Nonetheless, one notes that here the woman’s role is relatively active. She is seen to keep a level head even in the terrifying circumstances, calms and encourages her frightened partner somewhat and gives him instructions in the course of events.64 The black is not only violent and ugly, but has powerful lusts, and wants to assault the innocence of the virtuous white female – precisely as Iago described Othello to Desdemona’s father.65 The verbal battle becomes a physical one. The black is depicted as bragging about his strength and taunts his weak white rival, just as Goliath did David: And the black grew wroth / Bragging words spilled forth / Until his tongue was torn in two / And spittle down his beard poured too / Angry, furious he became / And said: ‘You’d know had you been told my name / That if you thought to fight with me / That I am named Cushan, and black / World heroes before me went up in smoke / And to fight with Cushan-rishathaim (doubly wicked) think you? / For the sake of a womb or two?’66 The young man responds, following the pattern of David and Goliath. But while David fought for mastery of territory, this young man fights for mastery of his mate. The powerful motivation to save her, i.e. to keep the female they are fighting over entirely for himself, his youth and agility against his rival’s heavy awkwardness ultimately decide the battle. He kills the menacing black, takes his mate as his wife, making his ownership of her complete, and the couple ultimately return to their initial Utopian condition: And the black ran in furious strength / Maskil too rose in bitter spirits / Struck the black man with his spear / Saw his mighty stroke, his evil intent / Slew him and his bowels spilled out / His head upon his body fell / And Pninah with joy and cheers did rise / Hosts [of angels] sing out praise / And the pair to the bank returned, to rustic meal / And both did drink of love their fill / Not denying their desires / And he did take her for his wife / Their love waxed ever stronger / Frolics there 162

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were and flutes did play / They left the river and flowers / For the tent of their joys / And when they passed the black and saw his flesh like embers / Dry as sticks / They took stones from all around / And piled them on him on the ground / Calling it to this day ‘The Black’s Mound’ / And Maskil with Pninah gone their ways / In tranquil sympathy lived their days / Days of peace and years of joy.67 The second story is about the adventures of old, hypocritical Akhbor, who pretends to be simple and humble, preaching to whoever will listen that they should depart from sin and mend their ways. But in the privacy of his home he lives a profligate life. The narrator follows him, hides in his house and sees his true face. He finds the old pretender taking his pleasure with four white girls, no less! As if this were not enough, after dismissing them the old lecher invites in a black woman. At this point the narrator can no longer control his anger, springs from his hiding place, prevents the deed, and berates the old man for his immorality. Clearly the author considers the aged adulterer’s earlier conduct bad enough, but he reached veritable depths of immorality in his relations with the black woman. Here is how he tells it: And when they left he whispered a call / From her room a woman, all black (cushit), came / Her lip like an ember from the fire / Her eyes like glowing coals / Nostrils open wide / And he said, ‘Now for all the fornications!’ / And their evil deeds did so enrage me / I struck and stripped them of their clothes. I left them naked and despoiled / Jealous was I of their lustful deeds.68 The act leads to a sharp verbal confrontation between the author and the adulterous old hypocrite, regarding the relative worth of black and white women. The author upbraids the old man sharply for what he defines as his strange and bestial lust for black, meaning ugly, women, whom he prefers to white ones, who by definition are beautiful. In doing so, he naturally bases himself on the ideal accepted in literature as it was in Arab and Hebrew–Andalusic society, where a light, pure complexion was a first condition for female beauty. We have already found in earlier poets like ben Shabetai and Elharizi expressions that mark the dark woman as ugly by associating with her the features that identify black women.69 The old lecher Akhbor, however, undermines the accepted norms of female beauty, exalting the physical and sexual virtues of the black woman. He laughs at the author, whose rejection of the black female is simply the result of ignorance about love-making. If he knew anything about it, he would understand where black women excel: Hands off, I say / Why do this to your servants? / Is there no heart for those burning / By the fig-like gates. … by day my loins would throb / In secret I bypass the gates / But they refresh me as a balm / Learn the 163

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cure O ye who burn! … Why disdain a beautiful black, not gaze upon her black splendour? / I choose the black and not the white / Her hue brings to mind a blight.70 Against the aged adulterer, the author presents the normative position: How can a stinking black girl / Compare to one scented with myrrh? / Pure as a rose in desiring hand / A joy and beauty to every eye / For the black woman has no mind / She lures, she roils and she rebels / Tell each black female to her face / Back with you to your native place!71 The narrator presents the conventional picture of the black woman (shehorah, sheharhoret, cushit). She is ugly by western standards, ‘Her lip like an ember from the fire / Her eyes like glowing coals / Nostrils open wide’, by contrast with the white woman who is ‘Pure as a rose in desiring hand / A joy and beauty to every eye.’ The black woman is said to stink, while the white one smells of myrrh. The external characteristics are a clear sign of character. The black woman is shown as stupid, immoral and sunk in lust. ‘For the black woman has no mind / She lures, she roils and she rebels.’ One notes the generalizations attributing the qualities to all black women, recalling that all such blanket statements stress the inferiority of their subjects. Naturally, from the viewpoint of the ‘white’ male who tells the story, the very fact that it is about a black woman, the other’s other, serves merely to emphasize her inferiority. His blunt advice to the black woman, ‘Back with you to your native place!’, is but a logical conclusion. She must go back to where she came from, and not push herself into the place of those above her in the order of Creation. The old man’s defence of the black woman is most interesting. On one hand, the narrator chose to express a ‘subversive’ position with a statement (not his own) that the black woman is superior to the white one, though from an absolutely male viewpoint. The old man is highly positive about the black woman’s ‘black splendour’. Contrast this with the white woman, whose skin colour he rhymes with ‘blight’, i.e. with ugliness and illness. It is quite clear to him who wins the beauty contest, and he is in diametric opposition to the narrator. Moreover, the old man has no qualms about stressing the intrinsically superior sexual traits and abilities of black women. ‘The gates’ here is a euphemism for the female sex organ, a balm that cures. The same is true for the metaphor ‘the figlike gates’, where the female organ is described in terms of a sweet, ripe fruit, whose taste brings great pleasure.72 After all, the old man is laughing at the narrator who, simply for lack of sexual experience, cannot understand the advantage of having intercourse with a black woman. He upbraids him: ‘Learn the cure O ye who burn!’ He places himself in the position of an expert with long and varied sexual experience with different types of women, by contrast with the narrator’s ‘virginity’. Giving ‘air time’, as it were, to a ‘subversive’ position that prefers the black 164

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to the white is one of several unique features in this text. At the same time, from the point of view of the author who puts the words into the old man’s mouth, the real meaning is clear. First, identifying the speaker as an aged adulterer already puts his words in a negative light, makes them outrageous and deceitful, as the author later maintains, and the old man is severely punished later for what he did and what he said. While the old man stresses the advantage of long and varied sexual experience, laughing at the narrator’s lack of virility, the latter sees in the comparison the old man’s degeneracy vis-à-vis his own exceptional virtue. Secondly, such emphasis on the sexual abilities of the black woman, without a parallel description of the white woman, merely brings up once again the old stereotype of powerful black sexual lusts, the more so in the black woman. Indeed this black woman is shown as one who could do what the four white women together could not. The black is once more identified with the natural state in its negative bestial sense, as compared with the exalted and presumably ‘cultured’ condition of the white man. The white woman, despite the exceptionally free fashion in which this text depicts her, and despite the free and assertive conduct of the four white nymphs in this particular story, is not shown as having strong sexual desires, but in the traditional passive way: ‘Pure as a rose in desiring hand.’ Possibly the author felt the need, even subconsciously, to return here to the standard description of the ever so chaste white woman, in order to show the complete otherness between her and the black. Hence even the ‘subversive’ position is couched in the best stereotypical terms. Nonetheless, the old man’s praise of the black woman constitutes no inconsiderable element of subversion. We have here a complex expression of jealousy intertwined with fear of the acts that could be performed with the black woman, by contrast with the white ones. Not by accident does the narrator declare: ‘Jealous was I of their lustful deeds.’ This is ambivalent jealousy. He is jealous in the traditional sense of righteous wrath against the sinners, so richly deserving of punishment, and he is jealous in the ordinary sense – still jealous – of what they allow themselves to do, while he dares not do it. At the same time, this extraordinary text shows white women who are liberated and active sexually: this too may express, possibly in a subconscious way, the narrator’s own unfulfilled lusts, given the repressive norms of the Jewish–Christian society he lived and worked in. The confrontation between the old man and the narrator who saw him in action ends with a sharp exchange: ‘And he said to him: “What gain you, Akhbor / From drinking dark (shihor) waters?” / He answered thus: “Whoever loves fair women / Is riding on white she-asses.”’73 Sex with white women is thus likened to riding on a donkey. The narrator is so shocked that he cries out bitterly. The four white handmaids with whom the old man was taking his pleasure reappear, and each in turn makes fun of his performance. They are insulted not by his adultery, in which they themselves participated willingly and, according to the text, enjoyed thoroughly,74 but because he preferred the black woman. This they could not pardon: 165

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And they laughed at his long white beard / They knew not nor understood / That a white woman (barah) was for him as a black (shehorah) one / A black one as a fair one (orah) just as good / His lust for black women – so dark (afelot) are they – was not understood.75 In the end they beat the old man to death. The writer justifies their violence, described in gruesome detail, as a punishment befitting the sinner: ‘And they judged him by the law of adulteresses’.76 Since they could not have punished him for committing adultery with themselves, clearly his sin, as they saw it, lay in preferring the black woman. The author is shocked by the old man’s sexual behaviour in general, but it is the white women who put him to death so cruelly, with the author’s full concurrence, simply because the old man preferred a black woman to them. From the point of view of the male narrator, this is feminine jealousy made manifest. Ultimately the four white women are rewarded for their good deed with four young, attractive husbands whom they marry and with whom they live happily ever after.77 The black woman, by contrast, vanishes from the story much earlier. The last time she is mentioned, the narrator strips her naked, together with the adulterer, as we have already seen. Being stripped naked is significant punishment, both because she is black and because she is a woman. As a black, it returns her to her natural animal state. As a woman, she is now subject to the laws against wanton females. It indicates the patriarchal need to control women’s bodies and their sexuality by distinguishing between ‘decent’ women who are under the protection of men, and ‘wanton’ women who are not. Just as ‘decent’ women must cover themselves when they go out into the public domain, so women thought to be ‘wanton’ are publicly stripped, following a principle of symmetry that a woman who does not preserve her modesty is seen to invite such humiliation. This finds harsh expression in Hosea 2: 4–5 in the violent punishment of the adulteress to whom the Jewish people is compared: ‘let her put away her harlotry from her face … that I not strip her naked, and set her out as in the day that she was born’. It is repeated in all its force in the story of the black woman’s punishment – for the sole sin of daring to compete with white women.77a As always, the combination of female and black makes the attitude to her even more severe. With this humiliating act, the black woman disappears from the story. She becomes superfluous, and not worth any further attention, even of a punishment like the old man’s. As the narrator tells her, ‘Back with you to your native place!’ Characteristically of this kind of literature, men argue about the relative ‘market’ value of different types of women. The dichotomy popularly perceived between ‘white’ skin and beauty as against ‘black’ skin and ugliness in medieval Jewish literature is already familiar.78 Here, however, it is more extreme, dealing with the relative value of white and black women, making for a qualitative difference between this story and the usual normative discussions. Generally speaking, we know that the argument over women’s value takes the male point 166

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of view and is written for a male audience, with an entirely male perspective on women’s nature and roles. What makes the woman beautiful is also perceived from a purely male viewpoint. Moreover, the woman is always presented as an object examined and evaluated from the male observer’s vantage point. This story, however, is unique in that the argument between two men over the relative quality of the white and the black woman is joined by the four white women, who not only take control of the verbal confrontation, but decide the fate of the old lecher who preferred the black woman to themselves, slaying him brutally. At the same time they display what men consider characteristic feminine qualities: the author describes them and gives them lines to speak containing words like envy, spite, cruel chatter and powerful lust. Their assertiveness and active roles are extraordinary. But even their unusual activities are not cited in defence of women and their rights, but rather to show the position of strength white women enjoy vis-à-vis the black one. The reference is not to rights of women as such in relation to men, though these women show tremendous assertiveness for their times, even sexually. Such an idea could never have occurred to them, given the cultural milieu and mentality in which they lived, and would not even have crossed the mind of the male author. It was merely a struggle for control in the market of sexual relations. They perceived the black woman as a dangerous and illegitimate competitor in the struggle for the male ‘market’, perhaps just because they too had internalized the stereotype of black, and especially black female, lust, augmenting their dread of black competition. Thus they would go to any lengths to eliminate it, to punish and literally to do away with the man who dared prefer a black woman to them. The four white women did not compete with one another. The way they joined forces was amazing. First they all entertained the old lecher, secondly all chased the black woman away, thirdly all helped kill the man who preferred her and finally all together sought and found a good match for each of them. White women unite here against the black threat. In this culture the woman is the man’s ‘other’, while the black woman is the white one’s ‘other’, i.e. the other’s other. The other will always seek to set her/himself apart as much as possible from her/his other, to attain a higher level and identify as far as possible with the primary designator, and so reinforce her/his competitive advantage. When competition develops between white women and the black one for control of the male market, the former place interests of race above those of gender. The ‘white skin’ identity takes precedence over the feminine one. They prefer to cooperate with white men, like the author, against the black woman, rather than with her against the male group. To protect and preserve their status on the existing social scale, they will cooperate with the norms accepted by the ruling ‘white’ male sector, represented by the narrator, rather than with someone of lower social status, like the black woman. The purpose is to separate themselves from one defined as beneath them, and to stress their own superiority in the competitive white male market. As in the Midrash on the black 167

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bondwoman,79 to preserve her place on the social scale, the white woman prefers to identify with the male designator, taking care to differentiate herself from the black woman, and to put her in her proper place in the order of things. In this story too, the black woman finds herself the other of the other, on the lowest rung. As in other texts of the period, those of Falaquera, ibn Shabetai or Emanuel of Rome, here too little use is made of biblical references to the black, except for the rather odd one to Cushan-rishathaim. Midrashic images are almost entirely absent, though the authors would naturally have been familiar with them. Massive use is made of Midrashic sources that deal with the image of the black in medieval commentary, as shown before. However, they barely appear in this type of literature. A rare exception is Elharizi’s remark that the dark face of the black bride identified her as a daughter of Ham: ‘And worked over with coal / Till I thought her a daughter of Ham.’ One assumes that the author’s choice of genre affected his selection of sources. Moreover, in this genre the influence of the surrounding Islamic or Christian culture was decisive, weakening that of relevant Jewish sources. It was not a question of whether the sources were accessible, but rather of their suitability for the literary genre that authors chose to use. It is entirely clear that the black images used by ben Elazar stem from Islamic literature,80 bringing to mind at once the stories from A Thousand and One Nights. Although this famous work was composed later, it is known to contain materials from much earlier sources. Indeed, we find in A Thousand and One Nights a story similar to the one about Akhbor the old adulterer. The longest story in A Thousand and One Nights tells of a man who has six concubines of different races and different complexions, including a black one.81 The assumption is that it was added later to the collection. However, so much of the material bears the stamp of earlier sources and this particular story is so very like ours that it was most probably based on an earlier source. Knowing as we do that ben Elazar was fluent in Arabic and at home in its literature, that he translated from Arabic into Hebrew, and that he even hints in this story at Arabic sources, there is surely a strong probability of direct Arabic influence.82 Two additional sources in Sefer ha-Meshalim describe the black in ways typical of medieval Arabic literature of this type, and are based on the historical reality of the Islamic world at the time. In one story, a black youth is purchased as a slave for a beloved wife.83 He is described as an object that can be bought, just like the jewels and the horse purchased for her. Elsewhere the black guardians of the harem are described thus: ‘He saw their shining faces / And their mocking eyes / And two blacks confronted him / Taunting in burning hatred, tormented him with their arrows.’84 We are returned once more to the two menacing blacks in the dream of Falaquera’s seeker. At the same time, while the Arabic source of the images is clear, the same view of the black existed in the Latin–Christian world in which ben Elazar lived and worked. That being so, despite the different sources, we have here in the form of the 168

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maqamah the same world view that isolates and subordinates the black other, the one found in Talmudic sources too, and in the medieval commentaries on them. It may be true that we have here ‘for the first time in a Hebrew maqamah a prejudice with a racial background’.85 But this same prejudice had been firmly built into Jewish culture for centuries and this is no more than a reworking of it, an additional variation on the theme in maqamah form, based on Arabic sources.

III In the Aggadic Midrashim composed and collected in the Middle Ages and based on those of the Sages, there is but little reference to this subject. Yalkhut Shim’oni and Yalkut ha-Makiri deal with it extensively in connection with the story of Moses’s black wife. But they followed the Aggadic Midrashim of the Sages faithfully and add nothing new.86 The only medieval Aggadic Midrash where I found a new approach that added its own layer of commentary is Tanhuma (Noah 13: 29), and, following it, Midrash Bereshit Zota, by R. Samuel bar Nissim in the early thirteenth century. About Ham’s sin, we find this: And the Sages said, Ham’s eyes that saw his father’s nakedness became red. Having told of it, his lips were stung and swollen. He did not look away, so the hair of his head and beard were singed. Not covering his father’s nakedness, he goes naked all his life and his foreskin withered.87 This follows the Talmudic source only in a general way. As we found before, in the various Talmudic versions the Sages usually said that as a result of his sin, the skin of Ham’s face darkened and he became ugly. That is the basis of the medieval story, which specifies a separate punishment for each component of Ham’s sin, which together form a detailed physical stereotype of the black. One assumes that the writer took at least some of the characteristics from contemporary non-Jewish literature. The Islamic historian Tabari, as noted earlier, characterized the children of Ham as black, with tightly curled hair, saying specifically that Noah cursed Ham by declaring that his descendants’ hair would never grow over their ears, and that they would be slaves for ever. Like Tabari, the Midrashic author cites features attributed to blacks, but for some reason refrains from mentioning skin colour.88 He took the images from the literature of the time and mounted them, point for point, on the components of Ham’s sin. Moreover, red eyes were attributed to blacks both in Islamic and in Christian literature. The physiognomy theory, a theory that assumed that physical features indicate certain character traits, is clearly in evidence. The punishment for not covering his father’s nakedness is interesting. Usually a particularly large sex organ, perceived to indicate sexual promiscuity, is attributed to the black.89 Here it is said to have withered, possibly because the 169

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original Midrashic context attached sexual significance to not covering the organ, associating that state with sodomy. Hence the only originality in the medieval Midrash is in presenting the black in even more extreme fashion than the Sages do. The same is true of medieval commentary on the Bible. Most commentators – Rashi, Kimhi, Nahmanides, Sforno and others – do not even relate in their commentaries on the sin of Ham (Gen. 9) to the Midrashic layer that established the natural slavery of the black, laying the basis for the black stereotype in medieval thought. The only one who does relate to it is Abraham ibn Ezra in approximately the middle of the twelfth century, though he disagrees sharply with the reasons the Sages gave for black slavery. The departure from tradition had nothing to do with the attitude of the Aggadic Midrashim to the black: medieval commentary is as harsh and sometimes harsher. Medieval commentators were significantly influenced by the Sages, but faulted their commentaries for deviating so widely from the Bible text. By contrast, they themselves, particularly the Sepharadim among them, distinguished clearly between Peshat (literal meaning) and Derash (allegorical interpretation). They generally favoured the former, at least in its more moderate sense, trying not to attribute to the Bible passage attitudes it did not express, although they did add comments relating to their own times. Their reservations regarding the Sages’ commentaries, then, were not because of the bias regarding the black, but because of disagreement on methods of interpretation. This found its ultimate expression in ibn Ezra’s sharp negation of the authoritative rabbinic commentary on the story of the sin of Ham: Some say that blacks (cushim) are slaves because Noah cursed Ham, but they forget that the first king after the Flood was Cush, and it is written that the beginning of his kingdom was Babel (Gen. 10: 10). In the story of Abraham and Sarah’s descent into Egypt, and the one about Moses’s black wife, ibn Ezra disagrees, often sharply, with the Midrashic layer of commentary. Later we shall look at his original solutions. The fact that he does not always identify his sources directly, preferring the enigmatic ‘some say’ – though he surely knew the Midrashic stories well – is an attempt to avoid direct criticism of the Sages, just because he disagreed so thoroughly with their interpretation. But it by no means indicates that he disagreed with the accepted stereotypes of the black. He accepted them, as all the others did, as we shall see from his own original interpretation of the story of Moses’s black wife. Nor does he disagree with the concept of black as slave, only with the reasons the Sages gave for it – a disagreement over methodology, not a different view of the black. He perceived black slavery as an indisputable fact of nature. Nor does the general avoidance of the Midrash on the sin of Ham by medieval commentators express their disagreement in principle with the Sages’ attitude to blacks, but rather with the Sages’ system of commentary. Thus in reference to the black, 170

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whether in the Bible (Moses’s black wife) or in the Midrash (Abraham and Sarah’s descent into Egypt) most medieval commentators maintained the position of the Sages, and were sometimes even more extreme. In their commentaries on Genesis 12: 11, most medieval commentators echo the wonder of the Midrashic authors as to why Abraham should become aware of Sarah’s beauty precisely in the context of their journey into Egypt.90 Rashi follows Bereshit Rabbah directly, but adds to it: Long have I known that you are beautiful, and now we are coming among those who are black (shehorim) and ugly (mechoarim), brothers of the blacks (cushim), who are unaccustomed to [seeing] a beautiful woman. While Bereshit Rabbah does not so much as mention blacks (cushim), simply describing the Egyptians as ‘ugly and black’, Rashi identifies them explicitly as ‘brothers of the blacks’. Nahmanides adheres to Rashi’s commentary without even mentioning the Midrashic source. While David Kimhi does not identify the Egyptians as true blacks, or even specifically as having dark skin, he gives full prominence to the usual stereotypes of the ugly, lustful inhabitants of the south: The people of Egypt are not handsome like those of Canaan, but are ugly, for they are people of the south and steeped in lust.91 Not by chance does Kimhi emphasize their lust, since it explains Abraham’s fears that the Egyptians would desire his beautiful wife. Only Abraham ibn Ezra, as usual, disagrees with the Sages, though here he does not say so explicitly. Rather he brings in a ‘scientific’ and neutral explanation, in the spirit of the climate theory, without identifying the Egyptians as either dark skinned or blacks: And while there was beauty like Sarah’s in her own country, in Egypt and the south there was none such, because the air there brings about changes. Once again, there is no disagreement with the Sages’ view of the black, but with their system of commentary.92 The interpretations of Numbers 12, on the black wife, constitute one of the most interesting discussions of the subject in medieval Bible commentary. Nahmanides and Sforno elected to ignore the issue, perhaps because of the difficulties it presented. Rashi, Abraham ibn Ezra and R. Samuel ben Meir (Rashbam), by contrast, confronted it on the basis of commentaries of the Sages and Aramaic translations, making their own additions as well. Ibn Ezra approaches this question too in a most interesting way. He presents the possible interpretations one at a time, examines each one, and finally 171

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retreats into the safe haven, as it were, that the ‘black wife’ was none other than Zipporah, Moses’s one and only spouse. This appears to be an entirely conservative conclusion, based on the refusal in principle even to entertain the very idea, the scandalous possibility, that he indeed took another wife, let alone that she was black. But to reach such a conclusion he needed this thoroughly original interpretation: Some say that Moses ruled over Cush and took a black wife (cushit), translated [into Aramaic] as a fine woman (shapirta), the reason being the use of a term of honour. While the Ishmaelites call pitch white we use for the skin [colour] the language of opposites (sagi nahor). However, it is not possible that a name used in praise should be turned into blame. Some say that Cush the Benjamite is Saul, and also ‘as the children of the Blacks’. I have already expounded this, and it is clear to me that the black woman (cushit) is Zipporah because she is a Midianite, and the Midianites are Ishmaelites dwelling in tents and it is written that the tents of the land of Midian did tremble from the heat of the sun. Because of the burning sun, none of them are white, and Zipporah was dark (shehorah), resembling a black woman (cushit): this is what is meant by ‘he took a black wife’. So said Miriam, and how weighty are the words of our forebears who said of the elders, happy are they and woe to their wives. Behold, they suspected Moses of avoiding Zipporah’s bed only because she was not beautiful.93 The first possibility that ibn Ezra examines is the Hellenistic tradition that Moses took another wife, who was black. Like the Sages, he rejects it out of hand with a contemptuous ‘some say’, as unworthy of attention. That Moses may have taken another wife in preference to Zipporah, and a black wife at that, was a totally improbable possibility for theological (a second wife) and ethnic (a black) reasons alike. The second possibility, that ‘a black woman’ meant a beautiful one in the language of opposites, is examined seriously, since no theological or ethnic impediment is involved, and the Sages and the translators into Aramaic frequently used it. After examination, however, ibn Ezra rejects it despite the popularity it enjoyed in the Aggadic Midrashim. The possibility that ‘a black wife’ meant a beautiful one is thus rejected. He maintains that while one may indicate a negative state like blindness with its positive opposite (sagi nahor, meaning full of light), it is totally illogical in his opinion to use a negative opposite, like ‘a black wife’, to indicate a positive state like beauty. In the aesthetic values of his world, it would be logical to use the language of opposites to call pitch white, but not vice versa. It would be logical to call a black woman a beautiful one, but again, not vice versa. The positive is not designated by a negative term, and blackness is by definition negative. Ibn Ezra did not select his examples at random, and they serve his argument well. His attitude that darkness/light = black/white dictates his view of skin 172

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colour. Blindness is perceived as a negative state of darkness that can be described in the language of opposites as full of light, but the reverse is not true. A black woman may be called beautiful, but never the reverse. Hence while the Sages, despite their prejudices, did not hesitate to interpret ‘a black wife’ as a description of Zipporah’s particular type of beauty, ibn Ezra ruled it out. At the same time, he agreed with the Sages and the translators into Aramaic that the term did not refer to any wife but Zipporah, and certainly not, perish the thought, to a black one. But while the former took the term as a reference to Zipporah’s beauty, ibn Ezra related it to her skin. The Sages rejected such an idea with a shudder, as one Midrash asks in rhetorical indignation, ‘And was she indeed black?’94 By contrast, ibn Ezra regarded this as the most reasonable interpretation. Since Zipporah was a Midianite, and the Midianites were Ishmaelites who dwelt in tents in the desert where the sun burns hot on their skin, Zipporah’s skin was dark, like a black woman’s. To support his argument, ibn Ezra based himself on a verse from Habakkuk: ‘and the curtains of the land of Midian did tremble’ (Hab. 3: 7). In several respects, this excerpt from the Bible verse fits in with the climate theory description of the effects of a hot climate, which darkens the skin. It appears within a description of the power of the divine light that is to appear from Teman, i.e. from the south. While the prophet’s is a metaphorical description of the intensity and effect of the divine light, ibn Ezra interprets it in the literal climatic sense of the strong sunlight and hot wind from the south that darken the skin. We have noted the use of the climate theory in just that context in the descent of Abraham and Sarah into Egypt. Moreover, the beginning of the verse, which ibn Ezra does not quote, links the description of the curtains of the land of Midian directly to that of the land of Cush (or of nomadic black tribes who reached the southern reaches of the land of Israel): ‘I saw the tents of Cushan in affliction: and the curtains of Midian did tremble’.95 Thus ibn Ezra finds biblical authority for the connection he makes between Midian and Cush, and between Zipporah and the black wife. The motif of the tents and curtains of dark-skinned desert dwellers appears in a similar context in Song of Songs 1: 5: ‘I am black and comely … as the tents of Kedar as the curtains of Solomon.’ We have seen the metaphorical treatment of these verses in the Midrash.96 This is how ibn Ezra went forth to bless but, in the end and despite himself, was found to curse. He set out to eliminate the scandalous possibility that Moses may have taken a second wife – even a black one – in preference to Zipporah. Rejecting the classic solution of the language of opposites, though it did away with that possibility, ibn Ezra ultimately identified Zipporah herself as perhaps not quite black, but dark skinned: ‘resembling a black woman’. This provides a rationale for Moses’s avoidance of sexual relations with his wife, which was, according to certain Aggadic Midrashim, the primary reason for Miriam’s complaint. Following the Midrash in Sifre Zota 12: 4, ibn Ezra presents Moses as one who separated himself from his family in general and 173

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from his wife in particular, to make sure he could carry out and maintain his prophetic role, which required him to cut the bonds of material vanities, even the legitimate sexual needs of his wife.97 The Midrash in question, however, focuses on why Moses shut himself up alone in the tent, without any connection to the matter of the black wife. Ibn Ezra makes the connection, showing that Moses’s only wife was ‘black’, i.e. she had a dark complexion, making it easier for him to carry out his mission as a prophet. While Moses was concerned with filling his prophetic role, and so kept away from his wife and his family, Miriam, according to the Aggadic Midrashim, was concerned with her own and Aaron’s prophetic interests in particular, and the unity of the family in general.98 Miriam did not believe Moses regarding the real reason he was estranged from his wife, since other prophets like Aaron and herself were not forbidden to have sexual relations. Thus ibn Ezra explains the words of Miriam and Aaron: ‘Hath the Lord indeed spoken only by Moses?’ (Num. 12: 2). He depicts Miriam as suspecting that this was an excuse to avoid marital duty, since he no longer desired his wife because of her ugly skin: They [the women] suspected that Moses avoided lying with Zipporah [only] because she was not attractive. … She showed proof that this was not the sanctification of the Name because they too were prophets and sexual relations were not forbidden them.99 Zipporah, dark as a black woman, is also described by ibn Ezra as ugly, which made it easier for Moses to resist the temptation of intimate relations with her, and to preserve his purity as a prophet. While the Sages metaphorically interpreted ‘a black woman’ to mean the unique beauty of Moses’s wife, ibn Ezra shows it in an opposite fashion. In his view the phrase is not a metaphor, but describes the empirical state of her dark skin and her ugliness. All, however, was for the best. This state of affairs made it easier for Moses to preserve and strengthen himself as a prophet. Since the black wife is identified directly with Zipporah in the literal sense, possibly ibn Ezra, like other commentators, was explaining that Moses had distanced himself from her because of references elsewhere (Exod. 18: 2) to Moses sending her away. Not for nothing does Ibn Ezra make the parenthetical remark ‘happy are they [the elders] and woe to their wives’, because men like Moses are no longer interested in material vanities. Following sex stereotypes, the men are described as able to overcome their sexual needs, at least in old age, while their wives, even when they are old, still have them. This combination of stereotypes – the elder as ‘other’ to the black and to the woman – fits in well with the Midrash in Sifre Zota on Numbers, where the old (black) woman is described as growing ugly. While she is depicted in negative terms, the old man is generally shown in positive ones: this happens unambiguously here. Age stereotypes combine with those of gender and skin colour, all as the designator – the light-skinned, relatively young male – sees them. 174

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Zipporah ‘resembling a black woman’ fits the accepted stereotypes well. The dark complexion is seen as necessarily ugly, even revolting in the sexual sense. ‘Black’ Zipporah with her unsatisfied sexual desires accords well with the myth of lustful blacks, especially the females, even the aged females, among them. The ‘white’ Moses is shown as the one who conquers and surmounts sexual needs. As always, sexual and racial stereotypes go hand in hand.100 Given the realistic direction in which he relates to the literal text, no wonder that ibn Ezra’s commentary on the Song of Songs has reservations about the Midrashic identification of ‘black and comely’ as a metaphor in the language of opposites. His remarks are sharp, clearly criticizing Rashi when the latter expounds the female form of ‘black’: Some say she is beautiful, like the black wife (Num. 12: 1), and that because of her beauty the mother feared the evil eye would gain power over her so she was called Cushit and black. We have no need of such an explanation either of the black woman (cushit) or of the word black (shahor), because she says of herself, Look not upon me that I am black (sheharhoret). In this common-sense interpretation, he departs boldly from the tendency of other medieval commentators on Song of Songs, who for theological reasons adhered to the far-fetched explanation of the Sages, even to identifying ‘comely’ with God’s service and ‘black’ with sin. In his commentary on the story of the black woman analysed above, ibn Ezra cites the prophet Amos, ‘Are you not like the sons of the Blacks?’, to show that a negative expression cannot be used positively. Hence he denies that the comparison with the blacks may be understood in a positive sense, even though some commentators had done so. Thus ibn Ezra’s commentary on the Book of Amos (9: 7) cites an interpretation he attributed (apparently by mistake) to the tenth-century Karaite commentator Japheth ben Eli: ‘Black women are promiscuous (hefker), and no one knows his father.’ Differently, this does not compare black servitude with Israel as servants of God: we have already seen that ibn Ezra rejects the Midrashic interpretation of the story of Ham’s crime and his descendants’ punishment with eternal slavery. Moreover, the comparison between Israel and the blacks could indeed be interpreted positively as some commentators in fact did. Ibn Ezra, ruling out this possibility from the start, does not use the accepted stereotype of blacks as slaves by nature. However, he does use another stereotype, their sexual promiscuity, especially that of their women, and as we have seen so many times, the two are closely linked. In this context the statement reinforces the complete otherness that exists between Israel and the blacks. While the people of Israel are noted for their sexual purity and know even their first ancestor, Jacob, for ‘Is there not one father to us all?’ (Mal. 2: 10), the blacks, because of their women’s notorious promiscuity, do not know their fathers. In another commentary on Amos, he remarks tersely about 175

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blacks: ‘They are peculiar (meshunim).’ This paraphrases the Midrash in BT Moed Katan 16b, of which the medieval collections of commentaries contain different versions, and where the peculiarity relates to their skin colour. Here blacks, like Israel, are shown as different from all other peoples of the world. By contrast with his earlier commentary that stresses the complete otherness of the Jews from blacks, in this one ibn Ezra highlights a common denominator. But while Israel’s difference is perceived as good, that of the blacks is perceived as negative, since ‘peculiar in his skin’ is always seen in the context of ugly inferiority.100a Differently from ibn Ezra, Rashi and Rashbam, who worked within the Ashkenazi cultural world, each adopted his own solution from Midrashic literature, with Rashi adhering directly to the rabbinic solution that ‘black woman’ is a metaphor for the unique beauty and good deeds of Moses’s wife. Moreover, he claims it is a defence against the evil eye: ‘Because of her comeliness she is called a black woman (cushit), as one might call a handsome son Blackie (cushi), so that the evil eye will not gain power over him.’101 Rashi appears to follow the Moed Katan version: ‘Was she a Cushite [woman]? Was not her name Zipporah?’ With that, he relates to the tradition of sending away the black wife, making no effort to reconcile the patent contradiction between the two versions. He reacts in the same way to the story in BT Sukkah 53a on the two black officials of King Solomon. Here too the word ‘black’ is identified with the language of opposites, and is said to signify that they were handsome. According to Rashi, their fine appearance is the reason Solomon took pity on them and tried to drive away the Angel of Death. Rashbam, by contrast, adopts the Jewish–Hellenistic version that tells of an additional wife that Moses took during his African journey, a theme also found in medieval Jewish literature. But he does not accept this version in full, and following the Aramaic translation Rashbam introduces two modifications to it. One is that this wife was forced on Moses against his will, and the other that Moses avoided consummating the marriage and took the first opportunity he could find to send the wife away. He has two other reasons for rejecting the argument that the story is about Zipporah. One is based on Sifrei on Numbers, that Zipporah, as we know, was a Midianite. He strengthens it with a genealogical note to the effect that Cush was a descendant of Ham, while the Midianites are descended from Keturah and Abraham. While ibn Ezra linked Midian to Cush if not by descent, at least by common climatic influences, Rashbam uses genealogy to distinguish sharply between Cush son of Ham, and Midian, the offspring of Keturah and Abraham. While it is inconceivable that Moses could have married a descendant of Cush, a descendant of Keturah and Abraham would have been quite acceptable, particularly in the case of Jethro’s daughter.102 We find a similar tendency in medieval commentaries on Psalm 7: 1 on Cush the Benjamite. These generally appeared with Midrashim on the black wife, and in consequence, in such medieval collections as Yalkhut ha-Makhiri, where 176

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the Midrashic source is repeated almost word for word. David Kimhi stands out in this respect, as he combines all the commentaries in a thoroughly eclectic fashion: The Sages said (Moed Katan 16b) that in this Psalm Saul was called Cush because he was handsome, like the black wife (Num. 12: 1) in the Targum: ‘she was beautiful’ and so say all the commentators. And it is said that they called him Cushi like the black man who cannot change his skin, as Saul did not change from his hatred towards David. And so it is said (Jer. 13: 23): Can the black man change his skin, or the leopard his spots, then you too can amend your evil ways. Kimhi had no problem in combining the favourable comparison of Saul to the black using the language of opposites, as a sign of his fine appearance, with the negative comparison signifying Saul’s unalterable hatred for David. However, he was sufficiently honest to note ibn Ezra’s disagreement with such broadly interpretive comments. Indeed, here, as in the story of the black wife, ibn Ezra did not hesitate to laugh at the Midrashic acrobatics performed in the effort to give Cush the Benjamite an identity that accorded with its own theo-ethnic world view. Expounding the verse, he says, with the utmost common sense: ‘Truly Cush was a Jew, that was his name, and he was of the tribe of Benjamin.’ As simple as that. We find this same rational explanation that ignores the system of associations with the term ‘black’ in Kimhi’s explanation as to why the youth sent to announce Absalom’s death to David is called Cushi (II Sam. 18): ‘He was of the sons of Cush and converted to Judaism, or he may have been an Israelite but dark (shahor) as a black (cushi), and so was called Cushi.’ Abarbanel’s commentary on II Samuel 19 makes the same interpretation. Interestingly, this is perhaps the sole place in Bible commentary without any of the accepted, judgemental stereotypes of the black, though the Bible text, stereotypically, identifies him as a slave, possibly because such identification did not raise theological or ethnic problems. Despite their reservations about far-fetched Bible commentary in the manner of the Sages, in the end the Bible commentators of the Middle Ages expressed views on the nature of the black much like those in Midrashic literature, and were sometimes even more extreme. Here we should distinguish between their attitude to the Midrashic style of commentary, and acceptance of the basic theo-ethnic assumptions of the rabbis, with all the implications. As to the former, some (Sephardic scholars in particular) had significant disagreement with the Sages’ approach, but accepted their assumptions in full and even supported them ‘scientifically’, influenced by the Greek–Islamic culture that surrounded them. We saw a clear example of this in their interpretations of ‘I am black and comely’. Apart from ibn Ezra, whose simple, literal explanations as a rule diverged sharply from Midrashic commentary, almost all medieval 177

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commentators followed the Sages religiously, if only because of the theological problems posed by Song of Songs. Thus despite disagreement with the Sages’ far-fetched explanations, in everything related to the nature and status of the black, medieval commentators adhered closely to their attitude. Tending to relate to the Bible as an authentic historical source outside their own times, they differed from the Sages who regarded it as ahistoric – entirely outside history. But medieval scholars did not express this outlook in the images of the black they created. Ultimately they reinforced the accepted, totally ahistoric stereotype then perceived as scientific truth carrying theological legitimacy with it.

IV In Isaac Abarbanel’s commentary on the Bible we have the most complete and clearly formulated expression of attitudes to the black in literature of this type. His system, both philosophical and very detailed, covered most biblical references to the black, providing the most complex as well as the most complete picture to be found in medieval Bible commentary. Since he is the last great commentator of that period and based himself on the system of Talmudic and medieval scholars on one hand, and on accepted scientific theories from Greek and Islamic sources on the other, an analysis of his discussion is an appropriate way to sum up this stage of our own. Abarbanel’s main discussion of the subject appears where he expounds the story of Noah’s sons, which we focus on here. Some other references are scattered through commentaries on the story of Abraham’s and Sarah’s descent into Egypt and on Moses’s black wife, as well as his response to Amos’s ‘Are you not as the Blacks’, Jeremiah’s ‘Can a black change his skin’ and similar texts. The position he takes in all of these is the natural outcome of his detailed discussion of Genesis 10, so we refer to them in that context. Abarbanel’s point of departure is the time-honoured philosophical–theological theory of the three natures of man: the animal, the human and the divine. All of human history is presented as an unending struggle between the three. Man is naturally destined to sink into the domain of his animal soul with its lust for material things, and he must strive towards the intellectual soul that will elevate him to the level of the divine. Abarbanel divides ethnic groups accordingly. Each is controlled by one part of the soul: the animal, the human or the divine. This situation necessarily controls the character and activities of the human group in question. His discussion of the development of human society since Creation is based on this threefold distinction. The continuous struggle between the three natures repeats itself at each stage of human history. Abarbanel identifies it with three types of trees in the Garden of Eden, the three sons of Adam and now with the three sons of Noah. The struggle among the three natures of man dictates human history and genealogy: 178

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See then that Noah had three sons, as Adam did: as the Sages wrote they are three. If [theirs is] animal life they lean to the material pleasures of eating, drinking and copulation, like animals and those who work the land. And if [it is] political life the pleasure and virtue are in a man’s own conduct and that of his house and his state are restraint and honesty in judgement. And if [they live] an intellectual life it is through rational contemplation and intellectual inquiry.103 Each of Noah’s sons, like each of Adam’s before them, is shown as representing the power of one of these three natures. Ham, the father of Canaan and Cush, represents the rule of the animal nature. Japheth, father of the Greeks and Romans, represents the political soul while Shem, ancestor of Israel, represents the rational soul. We are interested in his description of Ham and his descendants. What we find is the ultimate, definitive stereotype of the black in Hebrew literature, the fruit of centuries of development: And see, Ham displays the animal life, so that seeing his father’s nakedness he did not spare his honour. As an ignoramus he knew not the fine qualities of honouring father and mother and the matter of nakedness. … And of Ham he said Canaan shall serve them, meaning that Ham’s favourite son Canaan would serve Shem and Japheth. Just as the philosopher [= Plato] in his book on the leadership of the state [= The Republic] assigns this to sages, the lust for power and mastery to another class and to tillers of the soil the lust for servitude and domination. Accordingly the word Canaan comes from the [Hebrew] word surrender (hachna’ah), as I have explained that animal life serves the good life and surrenders to intellectual life. Ham is so called both because his heart grew hot [ham = hot in Hebrew] within him to pursue his lusts or because he is as dark (shahor) and ugly (mecho’ar) as a black (cushi) in complexion and feature and qualities, signifying the opposite of Japheth who is fine of form and conduct. … And you shall see how the qualities of the three ancestors are found in the nations that sprang from them: thus from Ham come Cush and Egypt and Phot and Canaan all of whom to this day are ugly in appearance, dark (shehorot) in form as a raven, awash in lust and drawn to animal pleasures, lacking intelligence and knowledge and statesmanship and the qualities of virtue and heroism. … It follows that the three sons of Noah each displayed the interest and the character of [one of] the three ways of life, and their issue followed in their footsteps and had their qualities.104 Abarbanel grafts the philosophical–theological distinction of the medieval Aristotelian school as to the eternal struggle between the three natures of man and the ethnic groups that represent each of them onto the Bible story he read through the mediation of the Sages. Ham and his descendants are identified 179

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with the rule of the animal soul and the weakness, if not the total absence, of the rational human soul. The group where the animal soul rules is defined a priori as a group that behaves like animals,105 and like them is ruled by the search for immediate and unbridled satisfaction of material desires for food, drink and copulation. Ham’s animal nature is thoroughly proven when he sees his father Noah’s nakedness. Differently from the Sages, who saw in the nature of Ham and his descendants a punishment for his sin, Abarbanel, basing himself on the theory of the three natures of man, reverses the order and presents Ham’s sin as the result of his original nature. According to the Sages, Ham and his descendants became like animals because they sinned. According to Abarbanel, however, they sinned because of their original animal-like nature. Abarbanel resolves the question that troubled the Sages, as to why Canaan specifically was punished by everlasting slavery, when he states that Canaan was the favourite son and his punishment dealt a greater blow to his father. Another possibility that Abarbanel puts forward earlier assumes Canaan was with Ham and took part in his deed.106 At the same time, preferring ‘science’ to purely theology, Abarbanel ultimately includes all Ham’s descendants, not only Canaan, in the inferior group of black slaves. Abarbanel does not explain the slavery of Canaan against the background of the Sages’ Aggadic Midrashim, but derives it from the theory of the threefold soul. He bases himself on ‘the philosopher in his book on the leadership of the state’, i.e. on Plato’s Republic, with its theory that the working class must obey the soldier-guardians and they in turn must obey the ruler-philosophers. The immediate text he used was the medieval Hebrew translation of Averroes’ commentary. Since the animal soul must be ruled by the political soul, which must obey the ruler-philosophers, it follows that it is best for those with animal souls – Ham, Canaan and their black descendants – to be ruled by those governed by the soul’s higher regions, i.e. the children of Japheth and all of them by the descendants of Shem. This hierarchical picture of the world places the children of Ham and their black descendants at the bottom of the system, slaves to all the others.107 The concept of the natural slavery of Ham’s black descendants provides Abarbanel with an explanation for Amos 9: 7, ‘Are you not like the sons of the Blacks?’ As blacks are by their nature slaves for ever to their masters, so the people of Israel are for ever slaves to their God and must obey him: And the matter of ‘like the sons of the Blacks’ … it is the Lord telling His people that you the children of Israel are to me as the blacks, sons of Cush son of Ham, who are slaves to their masters forever, so you are My slaves, since I raised you up out of Egypt.108 Abarbanel, as usual,109 gives etymological significance to each name. Canaan derives from the word k’niah, Hebrew for surrender, since he and his descendants are destined by nature to enslavement to those above them on the scale of 180

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Creation. As for the significance of Ham’s name, Abarbanel cites two complementary possibilities, both from hom, Hebrew for heat. The first relates to the animal-like nature of his descendants: ‘His heart grew hot (ham) within him in pursuit of his lusts.’ This is rooted in the theory of dispositions from Greek medicine, which the medieval world accepted as scientific truth. This psychophysical theory assumes that the composition of four body fluids (blood, plasma, green bile and black bile) and their proportions dictate the individual’s emotional makeup. Each affects human conduct differently. A physically and emotionally healthy person is one with a quantitative balance between the four fluids, producing mental balance and avoiding the negative results of too much influence of one or the other of them. Ham is described as one ‘whose heart waxed hot (ham) within him’. A hot disposition is associated with too much blood fluid, leading to excessive anger and irritability.110 Remnants of the theory exist to this day. We say that one quick to anger is ‘hot blooded’, or that ‘The blood went to his head.’ The original meaning derives from the theory current in the Middle Ages that the amount of blood was so great that ‘it went to the head’, following the principle of fluids in joined vessels. Ham had a hot disposition and thence the etymology of his name, according to Abarbanel. Thus Ham and his black descendants are shown as having a psycho-physical imbalance, a physical illness that leads to mental disturbance, making them unable to control their animal lusts. The second possibility refers to the effect of the climate factor on the external appearance of Ham’s descendants, i.e. to their dark skin (hum). Abarbanel quotes the phrase ‘every black sheep’ which appears in both Genesis 30: 32 and 35, and relates to the confrontation between Jacob and Lavan. In Bereshit Rabbah we saw the link between the image of the black and this Bible story.111 Abarbanel held that the name Ham also derived from hum, meaning dark skinned (in Aramaic ukhma, as in BT Bekhorot 44b, meaning a black).112 The dark skin is an effect of the climate in the lands of the children of Ham. The two etymological explanations are interlinked, then. The immoderately hot (ham) climate not only dictates skin colour (hum) but also gives the children of Ham a ‘hot’ immoderate psycho-physical structure (ham). Abarbanel thus creates parallels between the three parts of the soul, the three natures of human beings, the three sons of Noah, and the climate theory. Having made the threefold distinction, he brings in the three continents among which man was dispersed after the Tower of Babel. The descendants of each of Noah’s sons settled on different continents, a fact that dictates their character and conduct: Japheth went to cold Europe, Shem to the moderate climate of Asia and Ham to hot Africa: ‘And we know that our Sages of old divided the world into three parts … and the hot part is called Africa which fell to the lot of Ham.’113 Further on Abarbanel gives a detailed description of the African lands where Ham’s black descendants settled, based, he claims, on the documentation of Josiphon: 181

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The blacks (ha-cushim ha-shehorim) are descended from Cush and live in Ethiopia, which is beyond Mauritania, a great land that lies in the east, as Josiphon has written. From Mizraim [Hebrew for Egypt] the Egyptians are descended. From Phot, wrote Josiphon, the Lybian people in Africa descend: at first he was called Phot and later took the name of a grandson of his called Lybio, hence his country is called Libya. Canaan, the fourth son of Ham settled in the land of Canaan which the Hebrews later took. Saba son of Cush is descended from the Sabaim in Greater Arabia [the Arabian peninsula] which is divided between the land of Egypt and the land of Canaan. Havilah son of Cush from whom the peoples called Gitolish are descended live in Africa. From Sabatah son of Cush the Sabatinish descend, whom the Greeks call Ashtabari. Ra’amah and Sabatkhah sons of Cush said that the people of Ethiopia in the east are descended from them.114 According to this theory, which continues beyond this quotation, some of Ham’s descendants eventually settled outside Africa in adjacent areas of Asia. The geopolitical reality, of which Abarbanel was thoroughly aware, did not allow him to place Ham’s descendants outside Africa though his theoretical structure required it. Canaan’s case is particularly interesting. Biblical documentation dictated that Abarbanel should place Canaan in the land of Israel, even though Bible genealogy and the climate theory relate to descendants of Ham who settled in Africa. We have already seen the difficulties the Sages had in linking biblical Canaan with the image of the black.115 Here once again, as on previous occasions, aware though he was of subgroups of Ham’s black descendants settled in different regions of Africa and beyond it, Abarbanel gives a uniform stereotypic description of all blacks, completely obliterating all differences of physiognomy and culture between these subgroups. Again, such uniformity is enforced on groups considered to be naturally inferior. Since the inferior group is so completely other, it must be totally uniform. At the same time, one notes that the tendency to unify may serve conflicting purposes, depending on the group that undergoes the process. The uniformity of the ‘other’ perceived as inferior is designed to stress its inferiority. By contrast, in the author’s group (the children of Shem) or the ‘other’ he wishes to identify with (children of Japheth), uniformity highlights superiority. As Abarbanel says of their sons and their descendants (the Greeks and Romans): ‘All are handsome and of a beauty whiter than milk.’ Even the etymological argument defines the characteristics attributed to the black in this tradition: an animal soul, uncontrollable lust arising from a psycho-physical imbalance, slaves by nature, and dark skin defined by Abarbanel as having a sharply negative significance both as a value and from the aesthetic standpoint. The black is necessarily ugly, stupid, primitive, lustful – and truly subhuman: ‘as he is dark and ugly as a black as to his skin, his 182

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features and his qualities’. And he continues: ‘They [the descendants of Ham] are all to this day ugly to look upon, black as the raven, awash in lust and drawn to animal pleasures, without intelligence, with no political organization or qualities of heroism.’ In the accepted way, ugly external features are perceived to reflect spiritual distortion and moral corruption. By contrast, Japheth’s children are lovely to look at and their customs are fine. The stereotype generalizes that ‘all’ children of Ham have the same qualities ‘to this day’: it is not simply history, but current reality as well. This may be a direct reaction to black slavery as it returned to southern Europe in the wake of the Portuguese exploration – and exploitation – of West Africa in the second half of the fifteenth century. As one involved in the politics and economics of the Iberian peninsula, with good connections in the royal court of Portugal besides, Abarbanel would certainly have been aware of the phenomenon. Unequivocal proof may be found at the end of his commentary on Amos’s ‘Are you not like the sons of the Blacks’, where Abarbanel refutes the statement he found in Abraham ibn Ezra, where black women are said to be notoriously promiscuous, according to the familiar stereotype: And Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra wrote in the name of Japheth that the women of the blacks are promiscuous (hefker) and not one knows his father … I know not who told Japheth of this custom he recalled, of the promiscuity of black women, because in my native land I saw many peoples whose women belong only to themselves, unless their enemies rule over them as prisoners, and in this they are no different from other peoples.115a We see, then, that Abarbanel was familiar with the appearance of black slavery in Portugal during the second half of the fifteenth century. Interestingly, here at least direct empirical observation undermined ingrained stereotypes, whereas usually it served to reinforce them, as we note in the next chapter in Jewish responses to renewed contact with Africa following the great voyages of exploration. However, Abarbanel himself reiterated the stereotypes elsewhere in his great Bible commentaries: in his commentary on Ham’s sin and punishment he maintains that the black has a bestial nature ‘to this day’. Since the Genesis commentary with its completely stereotypical position dates from 1505, just after Abarbanel completed those of the later prophets, and only a few years before his death, the remark at the end of the commentary on Amos represents no significant change in his position, but is merely unusual, though fascinating in itself. Moreover, he rejects ibn Ezra’s contrast between Israel and the blacks on the basis of their sexual conduct, though fully identifying blacks as slaves by nature. This view, appearing in the commentary of Ham’s crime and punishment and reinforcing parallel discussions elsewhere, is Abarbanel’s authoritative one on the subject. We have before us an excellent example of grafting the Midrashic and Hellenistic–Roman anthropological associative systems onto the image of 183

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blacks with whom the writer and his contemporaries came into direct personal contact. We shall see it again in the writings that followed the great geographical discoveries. In any case, it is a clear instance of combining expressions and elements from the Sages’ descriptions of the black, e.g. their interpretation of ‘[hair] black as the raven’, with those from the ‘scientific’ philosophy of Aristotle and Galen, already noted in Judah Halevi and Maimonides, about the black who lacks the intellectual potential that alone marks man as man. The sole purpose of Abarbanel’s deliberate comparison between the black and ugly descendants of Ham and the white, beautiful, cultured descendants of Japheth is to reinforce the negative designation of the black: ‘The opposite of Japheth, with his fine customs, of a beauty purer than milk.’ Here too external aesthetics, especially complexion, indicate internal qualities. Not by chance does Abarbanel stress lightness of skin, using an expression from Lamentations 4: 7: ‘Her Nazirites were purer than snow; they were whiter than milk.’ Here and elsewhere, Abarbanel is seen clearly as an enthusiastic admirer of the Greeks, the Romans and their European descendants.116 What emerges from it is the extent of the European Jew’s inferiority feelings vis-à-vis the sons of Japheth he longs to resemble, to be as ‘beautiful’, ‘cultivated’ and ‘white’ as they. This may even be the reason he stresses the total inferiority of the blacks, separating himself from them as far as he possibly can. But at the head of the human hierarchy, as those truly chosen of God, stand the children of Shem, i.e. Israel. As previously noted, such popular genealogies expressed an ideological position rather than any description of the actual descent and distribution of different peoples. Various ethnic groups used them, as they used the climate theory, to prove their superiority over other groups ‘scientifically’. Indeed, while the Islamic historian Tabari used the genealogies to prove the superiority of the Arabs,117 Abarbanel used them to prove the superiority of the Jews, Shem’s legitimate heirs. Each group identified Japheth’s and Shem’s descendants differently, according to its specific ethnic and theological interests, and the historical reality in which it functioned. While Tabari contemptuously identified the Turks as the seed of Japheth, Abarbanel admiringly identified them with the Greeks and Romans and their European descendants. While Tabari identified the Arabs and the Persians (the Muslims) as Shem’s legitimate issue, for Abarbanel the legitimate children were the Jews. By contrast, both were in full agreement about Ham’s descendants, identified as the blacks, described them in a similar way, and had the same opinion of them. Despite ethnic and theological differences of opinion, neither had any doubt about the natural inferiority of the blacks. It was a deeply rooted cultural norm, beyond any differences of opinion. While Tabari used genealogies to legitimize existing power relationships ‘scientifically’, Abarbanel, like Judah Halevi before him, used them to give ‘scientific’ legitimacy to power relationships that would, they thought, exist in some messianic future. Internally, within the Jewish group, this was both compensation and consolation for its inferiority in 184

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current power relationships; externally it functioned as an apologetic theological argument. Significantly, while the Sages explain Canaan’s servitude and darkened skin theologically, as punishment for Ham’s sin, Abarbanel describes it as the natural and necessary result of genetic and environmental circumstances. In this he departed from the historical and theological perceptions of the Sages accepted in medieval thought, in favour of an almost modern concept of natural environmental influences, influenced by humanistic tendencies, as expressed in his general concept of history.118 That being so, unlike the Sages he included all the descendants of Ham – Cush and Phot and Mizraim, not only Canaan – in the group of animal-like blacks. At the same time, and again following the Sages, medieval Bible commentary and accepted scientific theories, he continues to describe this vast human group in the harshest judgemental terms. Like the Sages, Abarbanel depicted the animal-like state of the blacks as both natural and permanent, not as the result of changing existential circumstances. There were some differences of opinion between him and the Sages as to the factors – natural or theological – that led to the inferiority of Ham’s descendants. But there were no differences of opinion as to the black image, whose inferiority was presented as a permanent, even an everlasting, state. This view of the black served as the theoretical basis for Abarbanel’s interpretation of the Bible texts and Midrashim. We have already noted his explanation of Amos: ‘for you are as the children of the blacks’, and it finds expression elsewhere too. In his interpretation of Genesis 12: 11 about the descent of Abraham and Sarah into Egypt, Abarbanel adds his own layers to those of the Midrash and of the Middle Ages: And as he approached Egypt doubt assailed him once again, when he saw that the Egyptians, men and women, were ugly and black (shehorim) as the raven. Then he said to Sarah his wife, I have always known that you are a beautiful woman, that is, when we were beyond the [Euprhates] river and in the land of Canaan too, where all the women are so, I knew that you were as beautiful as the others, [though] with no recognizable advantage over them. But now that we are in the land of Egypt where the men and women are all as dark (shehorot) and as ugly as blacks (cushim), I mean to say that now I know and I feel how beautiful you are as compared with the Egyptian women, as a thing is known by its opposite, so that he said you are beautiful to look at, and did not say a beautiful woman, since to look at means her whiteness (loven), but the Egyptian women are not prevented from being beautiful, even if they are black (shehorot), because of their fine form.119 In several respects, Abarbanel adheres to the black stereotype when he bases himself on the accumulated commentaries of the past. However, he interprets them with a difference. While Bereshit Rabbah states that Sarah’s beauty 185

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exceeded that of the daughters of the north, and certainly that of the black Egyptian women, Abarbanel maintains that while they were beyond the river and in Canaan too, Sarah was no more beautiful that the local women. Her beauty stood out only in relation to the ugly, black women of Egypt. Thus Abarbanel blurred the difference between Sarah and the northern and Canaanite women, all of whom are shown as equally beautiful, stressing, by contrast, the inferior, ugly daughters of Egypt. Showing the daughters of the north to be no less beautiful than Sarah accords well with the superlatives Abarbanel used to describe the children of Japheth. Indeed, differently from his predecessors, he identifies Sarah, like the other daughters of the north, as having white skin and so as necessarily beautiful, by contrast with the black and so necessarily ugly daughters of Egypt. He presents Sarah as ‘beautiful to look upon’, and the daughters of Egypt as having a ‘fine form’. Sarah’s beauty relates to her light skin, while the fine form of the Egyptian women relates to their figures, though as regards complexion, they are explicitly defined as ugly. Abarbanel, then, is prepared to recognize that black Egyptian women have fine figures, but they are nonetheless shown as ugly because of their black skin. All too well, this indicates the ambivalent European attitude to black women, animal-like and ugly, though at the same time desirable sex objects. Christian literature of the Middle Ages is ambivalent too, as seen in Abelard’s well-known letter to Eloise, where he expounds the difficult passage, indeed an oxymoron as far as he is concerned: ‘I am black and [= but] beautiful.’ Here is how he explains the dark Shulamit’s words: ‘By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loves’ (Song of Songs 3: 1): Indeed, the disfigurement of her blackness makes her choose what is hidden rather than open, what is secret and not known to all, and any such wife desires private, not public delights with her husband, and would rather be known in bed than seen at table. Moreover it often happens that the flesh of black women is all the softer to touch though it is less attractive to look at, and for this reason the pleasure they give is greater and more suitable for private than for public enjoyment, and their husbands take them into a bedroom to enjoy them rather then parade them before the world.119a Ambivalence is resolved here by concealing what is ugly from sight, i.e. dark skin and what goes with it, but secretly to enjoy the positive qualities of the black woman, in this case her skin so soft to touch. This ambivalence is even sharper in Abarbanel’s case as he describes the negative qualities of the black Egyptian women in more extreme fashion than anything we have yet found. While the Sages described the Egyptians as ‘ugly and black’, and Rashi added ‘brothers of the blacks’, Abarbanel adds ‘black as a raven’ with all the negative implications attached to that expression: we have noted his description of Canaan as ‘black as a raven’. Bringing in all the nega186

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tive components from other sources serves but to reinforce his presentation of the stereotyped black. Following the Midrashic tradition, however, he relates them to the dark Egyptians, ‘brothers of the blacks’, and not to true black Africans. But as this is an ideological system of images and does not depict an anthropological condition, such distinctions make no difference. In accordance with the world view behind it, all persons described as black are identified the same way. As for the story of Moses’s black wife, Abarbanel considers the various possibilities. For the ethnic and theological reasons already given, he rejects out of hand the story of the second wife, the black princess Moses wed on his African journey: ‘The commentators have set it aside and it is not to be relied on.’120 The possibility favoured by the Sages and by the Aramaic translators, that ‘black’ was a metaphor for the special beauty and fine character of Zipporah, is not mentioned even briefly, though ibn Ezra, whom Abarbanel follows, took the trouble to disprove the idea that ‘a black wife’ could possibly have positive metaphorical significance in the language of opposites. Though Abarbanel’s practice was to quote freely from earlier commentators, this possibility seemed so far-fetched as not to be worth mentioning. Eventually he accepts ibn Ezra’s unique interpretation, though contrary to his custom he does not cite the source. But he is even more extreme. Zipporah herself is identified simply as a black woman. Her repulsive appearance, which accords with the purest of stereotypes, is said to be one reason that Moses estranged himself from her: She was black (cushit) as a raven, for Zipporah was from Midian and black (shehorah) like all the Midianites, who are black Ishmaelites from the force and the heat of the sun and perhaps Moses avoided her because she was not proper in his eyes.121 While ibn Ezra’s Zipporah was ‘dark and like a black woman’ because of climatic conditions in the desert habitation of the Midianites, which are like those of Cush, Abarbanel states: ‘for Zipporah was from Midian which is the land of Cush and was black’.122 Midian is now transposed to Cush and accordingly Zipporah no longer merely resembles a black woman, but is no more and no less than a black woman in all respects. Nonetheless, Abarbanel does not mention Midian in his genealogical and geographical description of the distribution of Ham’s descendants.123 But he does mention that some of Ham’s black descendants settled in Asian regions bordering on Africa. He might have included the Midianites, as ibn Ezra did, as a people close to the blacks in climate and complexion, perhaps even by descent, though not identical with them, thus softening the significance of the fact that Moses took ‘a black wife’. Besides which, according to the Bible, the Midianites stemmed from the children Keturah bore to Abraham (Gen. 25: 1–4). Abarbanel, however, goes to the extreme of stressing that Midian was in Cush, making Zipporah a black woman in every way. 187

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That being the case, one may ask why Abarbanel shrank from identifying the black wife with the African princess. In each case, a black woman was involved. What is more, the second wife was at least a king’s daughter and not just some desert shepherdess. He seems to have been much troubled by the possibility that Moses took – even that he was forced to take – a second wife. It raised hackles, just as it did with the Sages, for it undermined the sacred image of Moses as one who set material things aside and lived in a perpetually pure, prophetic state. Since Abarbanel stressed in many instances the uniqueness of Moses as a prophet, and of his divine mission,124 the possibility of a second wife was for him totally unreal. Explaining and in effect justifying Moses’s alienation from his one wife, he simply could not entertain the possibility that the Lawgiver had two wives to satisfy. It might even have destroyed him as a prophet. By contrast, identifying Zipporah as simply a black woman paradoxically helped Abarbanel stress Moses’s prophetic uniqueness. This serves to explain Moses’s alienation from his wife. Other explanations relate in the accepted way to his innate modesty and the exigencies of the prophetic role. But as Miriam did not accept this last reason, because she and Aaron were prophets too and were not forbidden sexual relations, neither did she accept the argument that Moses suddenly left his lawful wife because he found her repugnant: And they would answer each of these [arguments] and Miriam and Aaron would talk about Moses and the black wife he took. That is to say, of the way Moses insulted his wife by separating from her. And if he did this because Zipporah was dark as a black woman (shehorah kecushit), she was black (cushit) when he married her – can a black change his skin – having taken her and begotten sons with her. Since that is so, what has come over him to separate from her: her blackness did not just happen now. It would have been better had he not taken her because she was black rather than separating from her after so many years.125 Abarbanel has some empathy for the argument he puts in Miriam’s mouth. After Moses took Zipporah as a wife, though she was black or like a black, lived with her for years and begot sons with her, it was neither logical nor decent for him to stop doing his marital duty now, as if she had suddenly turned into a black woman, or as if he had just found this out and changed his mind. Abarbanel would seem to have preferred that Moses had not married her in the first place because of her blackness: ‘It would have been better had he not taken her because she was black.’ He thoroughly agrees with Miriam that after he married her, he has obligations to her. But Abarbanel’s view is that Moses’s obligation to the people of Israel takes precedence over the one to his black wife. In any case, like ibn Ezra, he is convinced it was all for the best. Zipporah’s black ugliness made it easier for Moses to distance himself from worldly vanities, and to fulfil his prophetic mission. 188

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Abarbanel did not accept the argument he attributed to Miriam, that a prophet was not required to abstain from sexual relations, since both she and Aaron prophesied and were not enjoined to celibacy. As far as Abarbanel was concerned, this might be true for an ordinary prophet but certainly not for one so totally unique as Moses. He thought, like many other commentators, that even to compare her prophetic gift with that of Moses was characteristic female effrontery. On the other hand, he had a measure of empathy for her defence of Zipporah’s lawful rights, even if she was black. But since it made it easier for Moses to fulfil his prophetic mission, he felt that her repulsive blackness was all to the good. We conclude with Abarbanel’s commentary on Jeremiah 13: 23: ‘Can the black change his skin.’ On the basis of his negative, stereotypical description of the black’s character and external appearance, Abarbanel was capable of drawing a parallel between his inability to change his ugly complexion and the people of Israel’s inability to repent of their sins: ‘You are so accustomed to your wickedness that it has become as natural to you as blackness is to the black.’126 This completely alters the literal meaning of the Bible text, which does not relate negatively to the black, and certainly not to his skin colour. It is simply the result of the negative image of the black as it developed over later generations.

V In the works of scholars in the later Middle Ages we find a number of marginal and widely dispersed references to the subject, for the most part stereotyped. We shall relate now, however, to references that deviated from the accepted stereotype in various ways. A somewhat exceptional position appears in the supercommentary of the fourteenth-century scholar, R. Joseph Tov Elem, on ibn Ezra’s commentary on the Torah. Concurring with the climate–astral theory of ibn Ezra as to the uniqueness of the land of Israel, of geo-climatic influences on human physiognomy he has this to say: Although we have said that the way of the world does change, we do find some differences, for the inhabitants of the south are black (shehorim) and those of the north are white (levanim) and those who live between the two are intermediate. We have found too, even in the same city, one person who is tall and another short, one white and one black, and so forth. This is not from the Creator, blessed be He but from His creatures according to the strength they received from the heavens and from their place on earth, for inhabitants of the mountains will be overcome by cold, and those in the valley by heat, and so other circumstances have their consequences.127 Not applying the climate theory to the nature of the black, as Judah Halevi, Maimonides and Abarbanel did, Elem’s theory is entirely neutral, in the spirit of 189

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Greek pre-Aristotelian thought, or of ibn Khaldun. It recalls ibn Ezra’s neutral climate explanation of the appearance of peoples of the south. Elem specifically states that differences are not the result of direct divine intent, but are the deterministic consequence of astral and climatic factors. While he attributes black-like white skin to geographic and climatic factors that are in turn influenced by astral circumstances, he attaches no negative significance to it. What he writes is purely descriptive and non-judgemental. Unlike all the others, he mentions no differences of character or abilities, and certainly no inferiority that accompanies skin colour. This he presents as an external feature of physiognomy just like height, with no qualitative significance, positive or negative, regarding character and nature. Just as differences in stature are natural and have no relation to abilities and character, so differences in complexion, found even within the same city, are natural too. The only possible hint, no doubt a subconscious one, of showing blacks as inferior lies in the dichotomy tall/short = white/black. As previously shown, from the time of the Bible height has been perceived as a positive quality aesthetically preferable to shortness and so served, like the colour white, as a metaphor for positive values. We found an identical dichotomy in the Midrash Bamidbar Rabbah 9: 25.128 Hence the parallel between high stature and white skin and low stature and black skin fits accepted stereotypes. Nonetheless, we have shown more than once that especially great height was often attributed to blacks.129 This, then, is the only hint of a stereotyped attitude to blacks in this work, and it too is completely unintentional in its context. In addition, Elem places blacks in the same position as the white skinned as residents of intemperate, i.e. imperfect, climates, who are therefore inferior to the children of Israel who live in the temperate zone, in the land of Israel. Hence they are neither black nor white, but enjoy the ideal state as regards skin colour,130 and heredity as well. Elem’s use of the climate theory, then, does not lead to the accepted stereotypical description of blacks as naturally inferior. Quite the contrary: it places them, paradoxically, in a position of full equality with those having white skin, so as to show the superiority of the people of Israel to both groups. While Abarbanel, for example, unambiguously stressed the superiority of white northerners over black southerners, Elem presents them as equals. One should note that Elem was obviously quite unaware of the radical implications of his words as regards an egalitarian attitude towards blacks, a subject in which he was not especially interested. They were simply a result of his view of the theological and geographical uniqueness of the land of Israel and the innate superiority of the Jews. Where that was concerned, he identified completely with Judah Halevi, who also maintained that whites and blacks were created equal.131 Nonetheless, the unexpected and certainly the unpremeditated result of what he wrote was an egalitarian presentation of the blacks, who were at least equal to the whites, all vis-à-vis the natural superiority of the people of Israel. There is virtually no reference to the subject in kabbalistic literature. The Zohar contains a short, isolated reference to the collection of Midrashim on the 190

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black wife, but only as an illustration of the metaphoric use, in the language of opposites, of images of black and white, light and darkness.132 A particularly interesting reference to the black wife appears in R. Abraham Azulai, a seventeenth-century scholar, in discussing the uniqueness of the land of Israel. Given the kabbalistic tendency to sexualize the relationship between the Holy Land, which represents the female element, and its Jewish inhabitants, who represent the male element,133 Azulai explains the Bible’s documentation of the different fates of the patriarchs as the result of differences in the degree of their sexual purity. Only he who preserved his sexual purity completely, not yielding to temptation, like Jacob, was privileged to have his (mummified) body buried in the land of Israel. As for Joseph, only his bones were buried there, because he was tempted by Potiphar’s wife, escaping only at the last moment. Moses the Lawgiver, by contrast, despite his extraordinary merits, was not privileged to be buried there because he took a black wife, although he did not consummate the marriage. Azulai cites this in the name of Rabbi Kalonimus, which means that the ideas were current in an earlier kabbalistic tradition: Joseph’s body was not buried in the Land of Israel, only his bones, because of the drop of seed that escaped him in the affair of Potiphar’s wife, but since the act was not completed, he was buried in the Land of Israel. Although from Moses the Lawgiver not a drop of seed escaped, he took a black wife so that not even his bones were buried in the Land of Israel. For the Land of Israel is called a God-fearing woman, but Jacob the Patriarch, peace be unto him, because Timna, Esau’s concubine asked him to marry her and he did not desire her, he was privileged to be buried in the Land of Israel.134 Azulai bases himself on a long kabbalistic tradition that discusses this matter,135 but he it was who introduced the black wife. It is interesting to note that Azulai completely ignores the Midrashic tradition that interpreted the term as a reference in the language of opposites to Moses’s one and only wife, Zipporah. He preferred a version from a Jewish–Hellenistic source in which Moses took a black wife but did not consummate the marriage. The story was current, as we have noted, in medieval Jewish literature.136 Azulai would obviously have preferred this version because it supports the kabbalistic explanation as to why Moses did not deserve to be buried in the Holy Land. The Midrashic solution to the problem of the black wife, which appears briefly in the Zohar, was of no help in explaining why Moses was punished most severely, because it ‘absolved’ him of all guilt. The Judaeo-Hellenistic version, however, accepted the Bible text about Moses’s black wife literally, ultimately clearing his name by stating that the marriage had been forced on him, that Moses never consummated it and that he abandoned the black wife at the first opportunity. However, in the kabbalistic version that Azulai mentions, Moses is held responsible for the marriage and thus was punished severely in comparison with the other fathers of 191

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the nation, although in this version too Moses deliberately avoids consummating the marriage: ‘not a drop of seed escaped’. And yet he was punished. Azulai’s interest as a commentator in this context, then, obliged him to depict Moses’s act in the severest terms. This contrasts sharply with the entire previous tradition, in which both Midrashic literature and Judaeo-Hellenistic sources bend over backwards to sanctify Moses’s image. It is abundantly clear why Jacob earned the privilege, since in this version he withstood temptation completely. The comparison between Joseph’s fate and that of Moses, however, is puzzling. Joseph was tempted by Potiphar’s wife, and according to the version Azulai adopts, he fled in the midst of sexual relations with a married woman. This is by no means the literal message of the Bible text, according to which it would be easy to show that Joseph withstood temptation like a hero, even as Jacob did. This is indeed the version found in Bereshit Rabbah 87: 10, and Vayikrah Rabbah 23: 10. But it does not explain why Joseph’s fate differed from Jacob’s. Hence Azulai maintains that Joseph indeed yielded to temptation. The basis is a different Midrashic tradition according to which Joseph at first responded willingly to the blandishments of Potiphar’s wife, and only at a very late stage did he shrink back and flee for his life. Midrashic literature is replete with criticism of young Joseph’s behaviour, and particularly of his excessive preoccupation with his appearance. The handsome Joseph is sometimes described as arrogant and boastful. There are even claims that as a result, the involvement with Potiphar’s wife was his own fault. The Midrash in BT Sotah 36b expounds the Bible text that Joseph went into Potiphar’s house to do his work in the sense of having sex with the mistress. Moreover, Midrash Tanhuma 9 states explicitly that he went to the bed of the mistress. By stating that Joseph indeed sinned in ‘the drop of seed that escaped him in the affair of Potiphar’s wife’, Azulai follows this tradition. But he makes the deed less reprehensible by claiming that Joseph fled at the last moment ‘since the act was not completed’. As a commentator he required on one hand a tradition that looked severely on Joseph’s transgression, to explain why Jacob was preferred above him, but on the other he had to play down its consequences, to explain why Moses was more severely punished. But the commentator’s problem remains. Moses did not yield to temptation. He merely sinned in entering a forced union with a woman (unmarried) and, according to the version Azulai quotes, the marriage was not consummated. Logically, one can argue that Joseph defiled himself more than Moses did and therefore he it was who should have been prevented from having any ‘sexual’ contact with the pure and lawful wife, which is the land of Israel. But since the Bible states that Moses’s punishment was greater than Joseph’s, Azulai had to present the sin of Moses’s marriage with the black woman in a worse light than any commentator before him, following the principle of justice in punishment. One may assume that from his point of view identifying her as a black woman, with all the negative connotations involved, served as an adequate reason for severity towards Moses. Indeed, Azulai, who had to show relative lenience 192

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regarding what Joseph did, made no mention of the Midrash on Psalm 7: 1, in the version that identifies Potiphar’s wife as black.137 This would have shown Joseph’s sin as worse, rather than mitigating it. Moses’s case was different. Actually marrying a black woman even without consummation was associatively perceived to make his act more reprehensible. The history of Jewish thought provides various explanations as to why Moses was punished. Generally they are based on the Bible (Num. 20: 12ff.) on the sin of anger in the episode of the waters of Meribah. Maimonides, for instance, stresses the magnitude of Moses’s sin since his uncontrolled anger showed the masses a distorted picture of God’s ways: hence his punishment was severe.138 Azulai, however, brings in a new idea not even hinted at in the Bible text. He needs such an explanation because of the metaphorically sexual context, as the kabbalah perceives it, of the relationship between the land and the people of Israel, which requires a direct link between the fate of the fathers of the people as regards the land of Israel, and their sexual purity. Marrying a black woman, even without consummating the marriage, with all the negative association that her blackness entails, was for Azulai an adequate explanation for Moses’s severe punishment. Our final example in this context is that of Yohanan Alemanno in his great treatise Hei ha-Olamim (The Eternal) composed in Florence towards the end of the fifteenth century, at the height of the Renaissance. The discussion took place on the frontier, as it were, between the Middle Ages and modern times, and contains a typically eclectic combination of accepted medieval views and the new geographical and anthropological information that began to accumulate following the first great discoveries of the Spanish and the Portuguese in Africa. (Their influence will be discussed in our next chapter.) As a result, we find an ambivalent attitude to blacks, due to an approach more anthropological and descriptive than homiletic–theological and judgemental. In the fifth part of his treatise Olam Ha-Mivhan Alemanno maps out the distribution of humankind, beginning with the lowest segment, where people are like animals, and ending with the upper extreme, identified as people of intellect. In this context he presents a detailed anthropological discussion of various human groups. He describes ‘primitive’ groups inhabiting regions of extreme climate, but differently from medieval anthropology, he almost never identifies them as blacks and never relates to their skin colour. His descriptions are much like those found in the works of medieval scholars and travellers, on whom he bases himself directly. His description reminds one more of the relatively neutral passages in travel literature like those of Benjamin of Tudella than of the judgemental descriptions in philosophical–theological literature. However, one primary, central element in both these genres is absent here, and that is skin colour: And as we find in the writings of great men who have told us about the nature of lands and their peoples, they say that those living around the 193

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equator, twelve degrees on either side, have summer and winter twice a year. They content themselves with the herbs of the field, and do not have iron to make weapons of war. They are weak and fearful, humble and not aroused to seek out great deeds, any special pleasure or any power.139 The accepted theory that we found in al Farabi, Judah Halevi and Maimonides speaks of ‘desert people who do not have the nature of human beings, but only the outward image, form and powers of speech without the inner ability’.140 Here, however, there is no reference to skin colour, although Halevi and Maimonides in the Guide, from which Alemanno quotes directly, explicitly identified these people with the blacks. The only human group that Alemanno identifies directly with blacks is the dwarfs. But his description, taken from the geographical literature of the period, is not only neutral and descriptive in nature, but emphasizes positive elements: And turn your mind to consider the community of dwarfs (nanasim) in the land of Cush, renowned for their wisdom and intelligence. They also trade in gold dust and crystal found in their country, though they are dwarfs, all of them but a zeret (little finger) and a half in height, they live but a thousand seven hundred days, go about naked all their lives [even] when they are in contact with people.141 In typical fashion, when Alemanno relates to ‘primitive’ peoples in general, he never identifies them specifically with blacks. This he does only in relation to a particular subgroup of blacks, the dwarfs, obviously referring to the pygmies. This was characteristic of travel literature in general, which tended to differentiate descriptively between different black subgroups, as we noted in Benjamin of Tudella, for example, and differently from philosophical–theological writing, which generalized judgementally about all blacks, whom they saw as inferior, and so paid no attention to the significant differences between subgroups.142 In two different versions, the pygmies are favourably described as a nation of hardworking traders with an advanced material culture. While they are specifically identified as blacks, no specific reference is made to their skin colour: certainly there is no negative association with it. We find, then, that Alemanno consistently avoids identifying ‘primitive’ human groups living in equatorial Africa as blacks. He does not refer to their complexion or relate to it negatively, as was usual in all literary genres in the Middle Ages. When he does identify a group as black, his attitude is somewhere between neutral and positive. At the same time, his view of all these groups, including the blacks, is that they are ‘primitive’, and that they belong at the low end of the human continuum. With all that is positive in his description of the pygmies and their culture, not by chance does he stress its material aspects because in his view they have no ‘spiritual’ culture whatever. When Alemanno 194

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says that they are ‘renowned for their wisdom and intelligence’, he does not refer to intellectual abilities, but rather to their practical wisdom. In fact, as he says at the end of his second version: ‘and there is also in them a natural lack of stature as regards the animals and at the same time they are far superior to the animals’. They are specifically identified as being low on the scale of humanity, so they are compared to other animals and not to human beings, so as to provide some explanation as to why they are thought to belong to the human race. In any case, even if they had intellectual potential, their very short life span would not have enabled them to fulfil it, since a relatively long life was considered a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for its fulfilment in medieval thought. Those black pygmies are also stereotypically described as going about completely naked, even in the presence of other people, which was considered, as we already found, as a sign of their moral degradation and sexual promiscuity. As against all these ‘primitive’ human groups he presents further on ‘people who are as full of knowledge, wisdom and intelligence as the angels of God, and their intelligence is ever in use’.143 Finally, although travel literature influenced Alemanno in a descriptive, even in a positive, direction, he is still fixed in perceptions of the medieval world. Like Judah Halevi, he places the blacks, but not only the blacks, in a group at the low level of the human scale, near the other animals. He contrasts them with those who have the intellectual potential that makes people truly human. At the same time, the influence of travel literature that may have included works appearing in the wake of the great discoveries in Africa of the late fifteenth century led to a more complex, less stereotypical attitude. We shall now go on to see how the exploration of Africa and America, and the new travel literature that followed it, affected the perception of the black as ultimate ‘other’ in the Jewish literature of early modern times.

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I Following the great geographical discoveries of the Portuguese and the Spanish, from the middle of the fifteenth century, Europeans first came into direct contact with non-European human groups that were neither white nor Christian. The first encounters were along the western and southern coasts of Africa, and subsequent ones in America. The Europeans arrived with the entire system of anthropological associations developed since ancient times, and grafted them onto the non-European, non-white and non-Christian people, of dubious humanity in their eyes, whom they met. And as they tried to identify places in Africa or America as the lost Eden, the lost Atlantis or the kingdom of Prester John, in which lay the land of the Ten Lost Tribes, so they grafted the black image, developing in Europe since Hellenistic times, onto the darkskinned human groups they met. Following the exploration of the West African coast, the Portuguese began to import black slaves from that region, particularly from Guinea. These gradually replaced the Slavic slaves, a trade that dwindled and eventually disappeared owing to changing political conditions in Russia and the Balkans. While slavery in medieval Europe had been identified with ‘white Canaan’, i.e. the Slavs, from which the very word for slave (sclave) is taken, in the mid fifteenth century its black period began. Christian Europe started to apply the same standards to blacks as Islamic civilization had used hundreds of years earlier. Indeed, until the end of the Middle Ages, Christian commentators took little interest in Jewish and Muslim commentary on the sin of Ham. If they did relate to it, it was directly to the biblical account, which occasionally served them to explain the phenomenon of slavery, but was not linked in any way to skin colour, which was brought in for the first time in the mid fifteenth century, with the increase in black slavery in Europe. As in Islamic culture, the story of Ham, filled out with layers of commentary, served as theological legitimation for black slavery. In Renaissance culture, scholars carried on a lively theological and scientific discussion of Noah, and of the significance of Ham’s sin and Canaan’s punishment. Theologians tended to accept the descent of the blacks from Noah (or from Canaan) and some even claimed that the monkeys descended from him 196

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too. Other scholars, more rationalist and ‘scientific’, tended to reject the theological explanation, preferring the climate hypothesis. Following the discovery of America and the establishment of the first European colonies there in the seventeenth century and later, the focus of black slavery shifted to America. While in Europe there was some return to the use of white slaves, and slavery was once more a mixed race matter, in America, for economic reasons, it became purely and entirely black. Particularly in Protestant North America, black slavery received its definitive theological legitimacy from the Midrashic commentary on the punishment of Canaan.1 Following the voyages of exploration, a new literature of geography, cosmography and travel developed. Authors from European countries began to describe in detail the new, wondrous and diversely populated world now revealed to Europeans. Their characterization of the (sub?)human beings they found in Africa and America was no doubt much influenced by traditional images of the non-white, non-Christian and non-European other, in their own culture. This was no neutral anthropological description, but rather to a large extent a grafting of old prejudice onto new anthropological information. Here too blacks are placed on the lowest rung of the ladder, the other of the other. Even Columbus, like other travellers, remarked on the light skin and handsome appearance of the Indians, as compared with the African blacks.2 Jewish scholars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries followed their lead. Here Jewish geographical literature undergoes a change. It no longer focuses exclusively on descriptions of the land of Israel, but describes all the newly discovered lands, even where there is no link to the Jewish question. These aroused the curiosity of Jewish authors who assumed that their public would find the subject of great interest. They described the geographical and anthropological discoveries in Africa and America through very free translations of works in other languages. These were condensed and adapted to the interests of Jewish readers, introducing Jewish motifs and downplaying the Christian emphases of the originals, so that they almost became independent compositions.3 The first Jewish reaction to direct contact with blacks is found in the anthropological descriptions of Yohanan Alemanno, with the updating emphasis of Abarbanel, to the effect that ‘They are all to this day ugly to look upon, black in form as the raven, and awash in bestial lust, lacking intelligence.’ At the end of his commentary on Amos, Abarbanel went so far as to disprove the stereotypical view that black women tend naturally to promiscuity, claiming that his observation of black slaves in Portugal before the country expelled its Jews showed that blacks behaved in this regard just like other people. As noted before, this was an exceptional instance in which empirical observation dispelled ingrained stereotypes, even though later Abarbanel himself continued to employ them. Following the renewal of black slavery as a result of Portuguese conquests on the west coasts of Africa, some Jews came into direct contact with actual blacks as slave owners, and later as slave traders. One interesting 197

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phenomenon is the employment of black and mulatto slaves by crypto Jews, secretly adhering to their religion in Spain and Portugal, as well as in their American colonies. Inquisition trials give us considerable legal documentation on the crypto Jews’ contacts with these slaves, who frequently informed on their masters. In Hayei Yehudah, the well-known autobiography of R. Judah Arieh (Leone) de Modena, written in Venice in the first half of the seventeenth century, he tells of his son who went out to Dutch-held Brazil, reporting from there to his father on his economic success. Among other things he reported that he owned black slaves (avadim cushim). That same son returned penniless to Venice after the Portuguese conquest. Such information would naturally reinforce existing stereotypes. Black converts to Judaism (judeo negro) who joined the Jewish congregation of Amsterdam in the seventeenth century constituted another phenomenon. They were treated even worse than ‘regular’ converts, in direct contravention to what the Halachah enjoins, and to the treatment black converts received in regions where Islamic culture held sway. Resolutions were passed to bar blacks from positions of honour in the community and synagogue, and later they were even buried in a special section of the Jewish cemetery, except for those married to light-skinned people and the children of such marriages. This served to keep them at a distance from other members of the congregation not only in life, but also after death. The policy itself indicated that blacks were converted, and that those who married Jews or the issue of such marriages were treated better than those who simply converted. The policy arose naturally not only from the general psychological and cultural factors discussed in Chapter 2, but also from the specifically political ambition to preserve the respectability of the congregation in the eyes of the Christian public and its officials.4 Contact with these different types of blacks naturally affected the development of the black image in the world view of enlightened Jews of the time.

II The first Jewish writing that describes the doubtfully human groups in recently discovered geographical areas is Iggeret Orhot Olam, by Abraham Farrisol, first published in 1525. For the first time, the discovery of America is mentioned in Hebrew literature.5 Farrisol’s discussion is not only the first of its kind, but almost unique in the level of detail it provides on black anthropology. Apart from the previously mentioned asides of Alemanno and Abarbanel, and later by R. Isaac Karo and David Ganz, we know of no other significant discussion of the subject in Jewish literature at the beginning of the modern era. This creates a methodological problem as to how representative his position is. By contrast, the Sages and medieval literature make many references to the issue, which makes it possible to conclude with relative certainty what the position of Jewish culture was in those periods. Farrisol’s discussion, however, is the only comprehensive one I know for the later era, so one should make the most of it, even 198

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without assuming that it represents a generally accepted contemporary view. At the same time, recalling that Farrisol faithfully followed the descriptions in contemporary geographical literature, and that his book was very popular among Jewish readers, one assumes, reasonably, that it represented the world view of the Jewish cultural elite of that era. Moreover, although the attitude is based on then current anthropological descriptions of blacks, it is congruent with the accepted rabbinical and scientific position in the Middle Ages. The above-mentioned information on the contacts of Jews with black slavery simply reinforces the conclusion. Later on we shall relate to changes regarding the black image made at this time in the printed version of the Talmud, and to the first iconographic references to the black image in Jewish culture. All will reinforce the assumption that we are looking at a representative position. Farrisol generally follows his Italian source faithfully, but still makes frequent use of the ancient texts of Ptolemy and others, even if his sources may not be mutually compatible. This is essentially an aggregation of old and new material into which Jewish motifs have been introduced, adapted, as previously stated, to the interests of Jewish readers. Aside from the first chapters, geographical in essence, Farrisol’s discussion of black anthropology is based entirely on the popular book by the Italian author Francanda Montalboddo, Lands recently discovered in the new world (Paesi novamente retrovati e novo mundo da Alberico vesputio fiorentino), first published in 1507, with many later editions. Montalboddo based himself on accounts of discoveries that he assembled from different sources. According to Ruderman’s findings, chapters 15–25 of Orhot Olam, which contain Farrisol’s main discussion of black anthropology, are based almost completely on Paesi.6 While, as previously stated, medieval Jewish scholars in the region of Latin–Christian culture were hardly influenced by Christian writings, in Farrisol we find massive influence from the Christian sources of his time. In his introduction, he maintains that Ptolemy, the great ancient geographer and astronomer, never discussed black Africa, ‘lower Cush’ as Farrisol calls it (as distinguished from North Africa – upper Cush), and that he had no information about it. This follows from the assumptions of the climate theory, according to which in and below the equatorial area, as in extreme northern regions, extremes of climate make life impossible: And the first scholars said that the southeast corner is entirely beyond the equator. … On the blazing sun and the great heat there where there is no settlement the king [Ptolemy] wrote nothing. He simply called lower Cush Terra Incognita. And the kingdoms in the sea that surround Africa and these islands he called Insuli Fortunati. And of that sea that surrounds all the land of Cush he wrote nothing whatever. But the north side, the upper sphere from east to west, which is a quarter of the continent, is a settled place known to all the scholars who divided it into climate [regions], degrees and sections. Their studies of the truth 199

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related to this area, for even in this northern extreme [of the continent] as its coolness diminishes so does settlement, to the point where it becomes a desolate wilderness.7 But Farrisol is already aware of the revolutionary significance of the new geographical discoveries that demolished the scientific hypotheses of the ancients: Indeed, in those days it happened that man began to increase all over the earth, settlements multiplied, the wilderness was settled, forests felled and cleared, and bodies of water dried up, human settlement having spread to the four corners of the earth, crossing the boundaries laid down by the ancients to settle everywhere in the world in places the ancients never mentioned, in particular the wise King Ptolemy. From him these new settlements were concealed: on which, God willing I shall expound.8 In the body of the work, Farrisol describes the new geographical and anthropological knowledge in detail. What interests us, of course, is the way he presents the black inhabitants of Africa. In his second chapter, Farrisol distinguishes between the continents, at this stage limiting himself to the three that were long familiar – Asia, Africa and Europe – although the existence of America was already known, and he would refer to it later on. Farrisol links the three continents associatively with the biblical distinction between the three sons of Noah, and the commentaries around that tradition. Accordingly, in the usual way, he places Ham’s descendants in Africa: For this whole northern area of settlement from east to west is divided into three parts, Europe, Africa and Asia. This is all but indicated by Shem, Ham and Japheth, the three sons of Noah who spread out all over the earth. Asia was for Shem, Africa for Ham and Europe for Japheth. … And it is known that the blacks [Cush] are of the sons of Ham, in Africa, especially in [the part] called Ethiopia, which is the land of Cush.9 Later in the chapter Farrisol details the borders of Africa in detail, showing himself to be familiar with the Cape of Good Hope. Interestingly, while he is aware of the discovery of America and will relate to it further on, he did not include it in the general description of the continents of the world, and continues to use the threefold Asia–Europe–Africa distinction, obviously because this fitted the traditional theory of the territories where the three sons of Noah and their offspring settled. Noah did not have a fourth son who could have been sent to settle in America. Eventually this problem too would be solved. When Asia and America were found to be close together across the 200

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Bering Straits, the conclusion would be reached that the descendants of Shem crossed the Straits to America, whose native people were their offspring.10 Here Farrisol is typical of the Jewish scholars who, however enthusiastically they reacted to the great geographical discoveries, still had trouble assimilating them to the traditional theory of the geographic and climatic centrality of the land of Israel.11 In the conventional way, Farrisol identifies lower Cush with the extremely hot first type of climate, the hottest of all the seven types. At the same time, he can no longer accept the old Ptolemaic assumption that human life is not possible in such harsh regions. The old geo-climatic assumptions begin to lose their value, and certainly their anthropological significance, since despite the prevailing heat there, human settlement is extensive and developed. Farrisol gives many detailed geographical accounts about Africa, and the sea routes to its coasts discovered by the Portuguese, and displays considerable knowledge of the interior of the continent.12 Here is no longer terra incognita, as ‘King’ Ptolemy called it. Africa is called ‘this black continent’,13 ‘black Ethiopia’,14 or simply Africa.15 Following his geographical descriptions, Farrisol concentrates on an account of the crops and barter on the continent, its trade and trade routes. He even relates to black slavery within Africa itself,16 making detailed distinctions between its different regions. This is typical of geographical and travel literature, differing in that respect from philosophy, which, as we have noted, was more inclined to generalized stereotypes.17 By contrast, however, from the moment Farrisol relates to the character and customs of the blacks he too, like his Italian source, tends to generalize. Well aware of Africa’s huge size, its geographical and climatic variety, and of the ethnic subgroups inhabiting the different regions, he notes that in Capo Verde there are ‘great outlets … and many settlements’,18 while Senegal is ‘the first kingdom of the blacks, and [there are] many peoples and towns of great length and breadth within these kingdoms’.19 That being so, one might assume significant cultural differences, as there are in different parts of Europe. But Farrisol ignores them almost completely. Occasionally he does make an enigmatic remark about the specific characteristics of different African groups: ‘In Capo Bianco the people are lean’, while in Senegal there are ‘black people of heroic [build]’.20 Generally speaking, however, references to the culture of the blacks are generalized and stereotyped: he himself notes that he generalizes, and cannot go into minor details in a work of this type.21 The fact that the descriptions of human societies in America are similar if not identical to those of African blacks, especially as regards sexual behaviour, serves only to accentuate how he follows the lead of his Italian model in stereotyping the non-white, nonEuropean. Not only are all blacks alike, all non-whites are alike. Thus Farrisol describes the American Indians, whose complexion is not white, as kinds of blacks: ‘Those peoples are all blacks and incline to a reddish hue.’22 Here is how he describes the first impression of the Europeans, the Portuguese seamen who sailed the west coast of Africa in search of a short route to India, and encountered the peoples of Africa: 201

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And they began to find on this continent to the left of the sea [the Atlantic Ocean] many settlements of black people … who go about naked and call themselves Azania.23 Two characteristics stood out at once in European eyes: the Africans’ black skin (shehorim) and the fact that they went naked. One notes, however, that this simply describes what they found, and offers no negative judgemental remarks. Moreover, Farrisol offers elsewhere an adequate explanation for the nakedness of the blacks: ‘There is never any cold there [and] all of them go naked.’24 Thus their nakedness is not necessarily taken to imply moral turpitude, as we might have expected, but is the natural result of the climatic conditions. On the other hand, the fact that Africans are instinctively described first of all as black and naked is characteristic of the stereotype.25 Indeed, further on we shall see how Farrisol creates a direct causal link between their nakedness and the fleshly lust attributed to blacks. This ambivalent attitude finds harsh expression in two places where he describes the way of life of these same blacks in some detail: And in all these provinces they have no houses nor stone walls nor locked doors. They simply live in clusters of villages, naked men and women awash in lust. And the women have an evil custom of making of their two breasts four, done when they are still of tender years, with weights hung on the breasts to draw them down. After that string is tied to the breasts with great force, till a crack forms, and this is beauty according to their custom.26 The next excerpt contains a more detailed account of the customs of these same blacks: here too the high point is their sexual customs. This is the fullest and most detailed account of black anthropology in any Hebrew source, and as such worth quoting at length: It is right and proper that we should inform [our readers] sufficiently about the customs of these provinces and peoples, both in general and in detail, to satisfy their desire, as it is said, according to what the discoverers have written. These provinces are ruled by many ministers, all who willingly set over themselves and support one king. They pay taxes to the king in horses and cattle and fowl and all kinds of legumes and they have no stones for making bricks nor limestone nor marble. And the king has 30 or 40 wives dispersed among the villages, for the king has no permanent abode, but wanders about, sometimes in one province, sometimes in another. Each province is obliged to provide for all the king’s wives, and for the slaves and concubines that serve them. When it is their turn for the king to come to them, the ministers will give the wives gemstones and pearls to hang on their necks and 202

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their bodies, for both males and females are barely clothed, and cover themselves with a garment of down that is thrown over them. For in these lands there is never any cold or any autumn, only at times a slight coolness, like in the Italian provinces in April, and the rain that falls there is tepid. Their bodies are very clean and it is their custom to bath four or five times a day, before each time they eat. Perhaps of these the prophet said, those who sanctify and purify themselves to the gardens. They talk much and have loud voices, and a short time ago they began to build ships for their own needs, from the day they saw the ships and the fishing boats of the Christians, for they do not leave their own isles and are abler than any other people to sail the seas. Besides that, they made themselves pleasure ships, well built and beautifully decorated. And their king is not called a king, as ours is, but rather poor and needy, for according to right custom among them, the king has no portion or inheritance in the kingdom, and is given only what he needs for himself and his wives, and no more … and the entire province is awash in lust. Men are jealous of their wives and seek to increase their potency through remedies, so they enlarge and inflate the size of their organ by means of herb salves or animal [insect] stings. It is known that their women, when they look upon a man, will not want one whose organ is undersized with a small head, and this custom prevails in many places in the east that we shall describe.27 In both cases Farrisol speaks in generalities: ‘all these provinces’, ‘the customs of these provinces and peoples’. In both cases the blacks are described as having a culture that is ‘rural’ and ‘primitive’, always in comparison to that of the Europeans. Farrisol reiterates28 that owing to encounters brought about by the great geographical explorations, Africans are more and more influenced by the material culture of the Europeans, and adopt their scientific knowledge, especially in farming, navigation, dress and building. Although these statements are in the main descriptive, not judgemental, it is quite clear which culture is perceived as superior and worthy of emulation, at least in its material aspects. Farrisol’s attitude to the social and political structure of African societies, and to their customs, is thoroughly ambivalent. The tension between the European attitude to the non-white, non-European and non-Christian societies they met as they explored Africa and America is clearly expressed. There was a continuous mental struggle between the images of the ‘good savage’ (bon sauvage) and the ‘evil savage’ (mauvais sauvage). On one hand there was a clear sense of cultural and racial superiority to these unfortunate primitive creatures of uncertain humanity, living out their animal-like existence: hence the desire to bring them Christianity, i.e. culture, and to save their souls. On the other, contact with the ‘noble savages’ living what appeared to be a Utopian existence, simple, natural and uncorrupted by the greed and violence of the society that called itself cultured, aroused various scholars to sharp criticism of the 203

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customs of contemporary Europe, and a romantic longing to return to the prepolitical Utopia supposedly represented by the ‘noble savages’. Political literature such as Thomas More’s Utopia reflects this clearly. Here we have two diametrically opposite views of the natural state or condition. Anyone who identified the natural, pre-political state as ideal, the golden age of humanity, tended to see the blacks or the American Indians as noble savages. Whoever saw the natural state as animal-like and bestial, from which social organization and institutions delivered humankind, saw these groups as evil savages. The same scholars might even be ambivalent, and lived in a state of tension that pulled them in two opposite directions.29 This is quite clear from the way Farrisol translated his Italian source into Hebrew and into the concepts of the Jewish reader. The political structure of African society is described without any negative value judgements. Moreover, there is even criticism of European monarchies, hence the almost favourable view of the African alternative, shown as an aristocratic regime with democratic traits. According to this description, the rulers of the provinces (‘ministers’) chose the king according to their own views: they ‘willingly set over themselves and support one king’. The monarchy, then, is not necessarily dynastic, and each king is chosen anew by the ministers, his rule dependent on their goodwill and cooperation. As a result, despite the king’s ceremonial status, his actual authority is limited: ‘their king is not called a king, as ours is … for according to right custom among them, the king has no portion or inheritance in the kingdom, and is given only what he needs’. The ablutions of the Africans are described as unequivocally praiseworthy, but Farrisol ‘Judaizes’ the text when he links it to Isaiah 66: 17: ‘those who sanctify themselves and purify themselves to the gardens’. This imparts a negative judgemental value to the description, which the prophet connects with the punishment of sinners, ‘eaters of swine’s flesh and the hateful thing, and the mouse – these are cut off together, says Jehovah’. Indeed, differently from the purification customs of Jews in connection with sexual intimacy, those of the blacks are linked to their eating habits. This is no doubt why Farrisol chose to quote this particular verse, though in so doing he attached a negative significance even to the ablution ceremonies of the blacks. Considering the way Farrisol depicts the sexual mores of the Africans, he could not possibly link them with any type of purification ceremony. His descriptions reappear in detail a number of times, and contain clearly ‘pornographic’ characteristics that indicate considerable interest in that topic: he did not have to translate everything the Italian original contained into Hebrew. The fact that he did not censor his source to protect the moral purity of the potential Hebrew reader, that he repeats the detailed descriptions quoted above and those from other sources, serve only to show how much the subject fascinated Farrisol himself, even though he was an old man when he wrote the book.30 While he did feel obliged to express disgust over these bestial customs, it did not prevent him from making these accessible to the interested reader of 204

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Hebrew. On the contrary: he seems to have assumed that the Hebrew readership, which would have been entirely male, was truly interested in such descriptions, so he made them as detailed as he did. As he says in the preface to the entire essay, he composes the entire work ‘to grant the reader’s wish in a willing spirit’, taking pains to state once again at the beginning of the long passage quoted above, that he has chosen to present black anthropology so as to ‘satisfy the readers’ desires’, apparently in both senses of the phrase. It appears that with all his obligatory expressions of disgust, between the lines one sees the signs of at least some envy of the superior sexual performance of these same Africans, and of the desire their women display. As we have already noted extensively, since the Aggadic Midrashim of the Sages it was usual to attribute high sexual potency to blacks, and with it, sexual corruption. The perception of the so-called bestial practices is sharply negative, and is seen, moreover, to prove the natural inferiority of the blacks. But at the same time it is a repressed expression of fear and envy. It was precisely this sexual repression that was so normative in Judaeo-Christian morality that made Europeans react with such curiosity, even a kind of voyeurism, to reports of sexual freedom they supposed that non-European, non-whites enjoyed. We already noted this in the twelfth-century descriptions of Benjamin of Tudella.31 Such a reaction to the sexual mores of non-Europeans (not only blacks) typifies European encounters with exotic human groups as the result of the great geographical discoveries. Henry Baudet, in his classical description of that encounter, notes: Indeed, sexual licentiousness must have been a factor of extraordinary significance in the whole complex of exoticism and primitivism. One is inclined to believe … that the exotic nakedness and sexual freedom reported by so many travelers must from the outset have fascinated a Christian Europe hemmed in by so many strict moral rules. Historians have probably erred in neglecting this subject.32 Farrisol noted on several occasions that the blacks in Africa went about (almost) naked as the natural result of the hot climate. But elsewhere he creates a direct link between their nakedness and their deplorable sexual customs, thus giving nakedness an inherently negative significance: ‘naked and awash in lust’. Being awash in lust (zimah) is presented as the inevitable result of going naked. The cosmetic changes that women make in their breasts is descriptively presented as corresponding with African ideas of beauty: ‘this is beauty according to their custom’. However, the link with their reprehensible sexual practices attaches a dubious significance to such concepts of beauty. The detailed description of African techniques to enlarge the male organ so as to increase pleasure in intercourse, and presentation of males as sex objects while women actively initiate sexual ties, exemplify clearly the mingled rejection, dread and envy aroused by what Europeans, trained in the repression enjoined by Judaeo-Christian morality, identified as sexual freedom or promiscuity. As 205

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Farrisol sums up one such passage: ‘Great fornication (ni’uf) goes on there, with no shame or disgrace, because it is an important commandment (mitzvah) for them.’33 As noted earlier, one traditional stereotypical element in the description of the black was the extraordinarily large sex organ which, obviously, symbolized their excessive sexual potency in the eyes of the white designator. What is discussed here, however, is not a naturally large organ, but one enlarged artificially, though the significance is the same.34 The voyeuristic nature of the observations is conspicuous, and repeats itself in passages like this one: They have no shame in the torrent of their lust that rules them, and the women lie [with men] almost in public like our wanton harlots. What is more, the women will look about and desire men whose organ is heavy, and [the men] seek to enlarge it by using salves and stings. And the naked women will go about, decorated with paints, only a bit of their buttocks and their organ covered with a long, narrow garment of feathers. They engrave their flesh with deep scratches: some on their thighs, some have images of animals [cut into] in their breast. … And I did not know if this was for some pagan rite, or a beauty custom: only the woman’s face will not be altered.35 The same ambivalence is found in the description of the African expertise in witchcraft: ‘For all the inhabitants of the provinces, the men and their wives, are wizards and witches and casters of spells. … Because the wisdom of witchcraft which in our case is obscure hints, is [open and] easy with them.’36 Even the reference to them as worshippers of idols in the description of an ethnic group in East Africa, is descriptive rather than judgemental: In all the provinces they worship graven images, idols of wood and stone, and they are black with expressionless faces scarred with fire. … And they go naked and cover themselves with the bark of trees and have no weapons save for bows that fling arrows, and stones that they throw. Their staple food is rice bread.37 Another conventional characteristic Farrisol associates with blacks is cannibalism: And they found wicked black people called cannibals, whose vessels … sail far away to the islands and kidnap men and women to eat them. They will often castrate the men, tie them up and stuff them with food to fatten them, and then they slaughter and salt them, as Christians do hogs.37a This description, including the fattening of the unfortunate victims, is familiar from the descriptions of the black in European literature, like the medieval 206

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travel works of Eldad ha-Dani. Such was the picture of the black African that the educated Jewish reader obtained in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and it no doubt fitted in well with the images found in the Midrashim and in the scientific literature of medieval culture.

III In the course of time, Jewish scholars began to confront the theological problems created by the great geographical discoveries, like the relationship between the ancients and the moderns, and the significance of the uniqueness and centrality of the land of Israel. Given the new geographical knowledge, the stereotyped image of the black would come up on the fringes of the discussion. Examples occur in the writings of R. Isaac Karo in the early sixteenth century and in David Ganz towards the century’s end. Both relate to it within the climate theory, and the argument regarding the unique climate of the land of Israel, now undergoing changes in the light of the new knowledge. Karo, a native of Toledo and one of the Portuguese exiles (died in the east, possibly in Jerusalem, in 1535), notes in one of his sermons dealing with the value of burial in the land of Israel: And ask not how it is that Eretz Israel is the heart of the world. The answer is that the whole world is like a single man, the Garden of Eden is the head of the world, intelligence being in the head. The tree of knowledge is in Eden, thus in the head. And Eretz Israel is the heart, and Egypt the genitals, as it is said, you have come to see the bareness (ervah) of the land. And Guinea is the feet, which are ugly.38 Karo grafts onto the climate theory the medieval perception of the cosmos, expressed in each of its elements as a single human being. He then attaches the organic theory relating to the human body to the climate theory. In each he identifies a square structure composed of a head, a heart, genitals and legs, with their climatic–geographical parallels. Eden is identified with the head, the seat of intelligence and Eretz Israel with the heart, the geographical centre. Egypt is identified with the genital area on the basis of ‘you have come to see the bareness of the land’ (Gen. 42: 9), while Guinea in black Africa is the legs and feet. This analogy of Karo’s may come from the Midrash in BT Sanhedrin 38b: The body of Adam, the first man, is from Babylonia, his head from Eretz Israel and his organs from the other lands. His sexual parts, said Rav Aha, are from Akra De’agma [a Babylonian city noted for its sexual corruption]. Karo appears to have applied the anatomical analogy from this Midrash to other geographical regions, fitting into the context of the geographical knowledge of 207

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his own time. What interests us is the fourth region and the characteristics attributed to it: ‘Guinea is the feet, which are ugly.’ Obviously the specific reference to Guinea and not to Africa in general would have come to him through knowledge of the Portuguese conquests in West Africa and the impression that Europeans took away from the encounter with the people there. The brief description of Africa and its inhabitants is stereotyped, and points clearly to Midrashic sources. Guinea is identified as a region similar in nature to the feet, i.e. to the most inferior, material and earthbound part of the body, in direct contact with the earth and with all the symbolic associations that such contact involves. Ontological inferiority is indicated by identifying the feet as aesthetically ugly: as always, moral status is linked to aesthetics. What is perceived as ugly is also bestial and inferior. This in itself recalls the Midrash that describes Canaan the Cushite as ‘ugly and black’ (Bereshit Rabbah 36: 7), and fits in well with Karo’s commentary on the black wife of Moses. Karo rejects the Midrashic description of the black woman as beautiful, in the language of opposites, and in fact identifies her as an ugly woman whom the unassuming Moses took only for the purpose of begetting children. Identifying the land of the blacks with the feet also brings to mind R. Hillel’s answer to the question ‘Why are the feet of Africans wider than those of any other people?’ He answers that it was the result of living in the tropics where it was common to walk in water (BT Shabbat 31a; Avot de’Rabbi Nathan 15: 2). Clearly this system of associations from the Midrashim affected Karo’s identification of Guinea, i.e. the people of Africa, with the feet that are the most earthbound and the ugliest part of the human body. We find another example of this phenomenon in the astronomical and geographical treatise of David Ganz, Lovely and Pleasant (Nehmad ve-Na’im), written at the end of the sixteenth century. In connection with the theological and climatic uniqueness of the land of Israel, he refers to Abraham ibn Ezra: ‘And I have found in the words of the scholar [ibn Ezra] that a wise man is not to be found in the land of the black (eretz cushi), which is not so of Eretz Israel which is the mean of all seven climates.’39 The Jew living on the threshold of the modern scientific revolution still relied upon geographical and anthropological theories of the Middle Ages. As far as he was concerned, the ancients and medieval authorities simply confirm the new geographical findings, with which he was familiar. If the land of Israel was still in the ideal climatic region, then Africa must be in one that was quite the opposite, the most immoderate and unbalanced one. That said, since the land of Israel’s climate produces wise men, then in an unbalanced climate not one wise man will be found. Hence the black is still presented as the prototype of one lacking mental abilities, as in Judah Halevi and Maimonides: the antithesis of the philosopher in the natural order of things. Ganz, however, was already conscious of the anthropological findings of the great geographical discoveries. He describes in detail the African coastline and the oceans around it, and 208

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compares between the complexion of the African blacks and that of the inhabitants of Peru. He concludes that the Africans are darker due to the warmer climate in which they dwell.40 Another subject once again on the agenda due to the messianic longings aroused by the Spanish exile, and subsequently influenced by the geographical discoveries, was the whereabouts of the Ten Lost Tribes. Until this time traces of them were sought in the conventional directions of Asia and Africa. Following the discovery of America, however, the search began among its native inhabitants.41 If they are ‘all blacks and incline to a reddish hue’, as Farrisol describes them,42 how could they possibly be the Ten Lost Tribes, as a few Christian scholars insisted? In fact, Manasseh ben Israel, who maintained in The Hope of Israel (Mikveh Israel) that some of the Lost Tribes found shelter in the New World, had to confront the problem of their complexion, and found an original solution. He wrote his work following the hypothesis put forward for the first time in the early seventeenth century by a few Spanish missionaries and English theologians, who identified the American Indians as the descendants of the Lost Tribes.43 The possibility of finding the Lost Tribes in America was elating, but identifying them with the ‘primitive’ dark-skinned Indians was more than the Jewish scholar from Amsterdam could digest. Then ben Israel heard fantastic tales from a Jew named Montesinus recently arrived from the New World: this man identified the Lost Tribes with a tall, handsome, almost white people, with truly European manners, and these supplied the solution. Ben Israel quotes Montesinus thus: These people are somewhat tanned by the sun, and some let their hair grow long. … Others wear their hair as we do, short and smooth. They have fine stature, handsome features and a good build.44 Here is a person of outstanding appearance according to the European ideal. These people were just somewhat ‘tanned’ but in essence white, tall45 and handsome, and not by chance are they said to ‘wear their hair as we do’. Montesinus found they had a few customs that reminded him of Jewish commandments. From there on it was but a step to the conclusion that they descended from the Lost Tribes hiding somewhere in the vastness of South America. From the conceptual world of Montesinus as presented by ben Israel, it was clearly impossible for him to depict Jews as dark skinned. According to this story, Montesinus declared to ben Israel that from the dungeon of the Inquisition, he prayed to God to deliver him, using his version of the morning prayer: ‘Blessed art Thou who hast not made me a pagan, nor a barbarian, nor a black nor even an Indian.’46 We have already shown the significance of the various adaptations of ‘hast not made me’, into which it is so easy to introduce the word ‘black’.47 Here we see it in practice, with ‘Indian’ added to the list. 209

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The ultimate Jew, then, is identified not only as not a woman, not a gentile and not a black, but also not an American Indian. From the start, the possibility of identifying the lost Jews with anyone who was non-white and non-European was ruled out. Manasseh ben Israel rejected the possibility raised by a few Christian scholars that the Canaanites, ‘black’ according to Midrashic tradition, wandered until they reached America after Joshua defeated them and expelled them from Canaan, and that the Indians are their descendants.48 Nevertheless, the possibility that some descendants of the ‘white’ Lost Tribes found their way to America thrilled their imagination. Following the testimony of Montesinus, ben Israel rejects out of hand the possibility of identifying the lost Israelites with certain Indian tribes.49 It was not respectable enough. As for the Spanish missionaries and the English theologians, their anti-Jewish prejudice and their prejudice against non-whites each ‘fed’ the other. We have already seen that a strong tradition in the polemic literature of the Middle Ages maintained that Jews were naturally ‘swarthy’. Certain Jewish scholars like Rashi and anti-Christian polemicists in the late Middle Ages accepted this argument, attempting to gain some advantage from it.50 While ben Israel had trouble identifying Jews as dark skinned, he could, however, accept the argument of Abarbanel, among others, that the Jews were originally light skinned, but their complexions had grown dark as a punishment of their exile. As far as he was concerned, the descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes, supposedly living in South America, still resembled the original lightskinned Jews, unlike the ones he knew who had undergone the vicissitudes of the destruction of the Second Temple, and the exile. The former were only ‘slightly tanned’. His idyllic description of the wisdom and morality of these long lost Jews in America was certainly congruent with the idea that their original ‘white’ complexions had been preserved. This problem did not exist when the Lost Tribes were said to be in Africa. Since this identification was originally made by Jews, no one would have contemplated the unthinkable possibility of identifying them with the blacks, or even with the Falashas. The offspring of the tribes living in Africa, mainly in Ethiopia, were depicted as a separate ethnic group that sometimes even fought the blacks and even influenced them by their customs: circumcision, for example. Thus Manasseh ben Israel himself described them.51 In America the situation was different, since here Christians first identified the Jews with Indians, so that a Jew like ben Israel felt the need to distinguish the Jews from them. He accepted the original Christian contention that some part of the Lost Tribes did in fact find refuge in America, at the same time refusing to identify these Jews with the Indians. Ben Israel, then, was looking for a more respectable solution to the question of how to find the tribes lost in America, without identifying them, heaven forbid, with the dark-skinned Indians. Montesinus’s tale furnished that solution. The crowning argument, as he saw it, in favour of the hypothesis that the 210

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descendants of the Lost Tribes were in fact in America but were not, heaven forfend, Indians, lay in their skin colour: that the Indians are dark-skinned and beardless. By contrast, there are in the New World people who are white-skinned and bearded … who are quite different people, and it is almost sure they are Israelites.52 Besides skin colour, there is the difference between the bearded and the beardless. Since a carefully tended beard was according to premodern cultural norms the sign of manliness, emotional maturity and wisdom,53 the distinction is obviously a value judgement. The fact that Indians are designated as beardless labels them not as men, but rather as children. Here we have not only two separate groups, but a clearly hierarchical relationship between the superior white Israelites with their beards, and the inferior dark-skinned, beardless and hence infantile Indians. In fact, ben Israel solves the problem of how Indians who are not Jews have customs like the Torah commandments: circumcision, ritual ablutions, levirate marriages, mourning rites and a jubilee year, for example. He assumes they learned them from the Jews concealed somewhere in the vast continent. The white Israelites, then, are presented in the completely paternalistic way so typical of this literary genre, as educators and purveyors of culture to the dark-skinned Indians.54 Again and again in the text, these lost Jews are identified first of all on the basis of skin colour. In the testimonies ben Israel advances to prove the existence of a separate, genetically and culturally superior group, white skin is always the principal characteristic and the final, convincing argument: ‘a white people, all tall and well built, with beards like the Spaniards, courageous’, ‘bearded white men who know [the rules of] negotiation and courtesy’,55 ‘their skin was white, their hair reddish and they wore long silk clothes’. These are distinguished from ‘inhabitants whose skin is dark’. Later on there appears ‘a crowd of people with white skin and auburn hair, tall, most richly dressed, with long cloaks and long beards’,56 ‘bearded white people, wearing long clothing, showing great wealth’,57 ‘white, bearded men who were here before the Incas’.58 Defining them by skin pigment is the easiest way to distinguish between ethnic groups, so it was always of first importance. At the same time, the very repetition of these characteristics simply proves how important this trait was to ben Israel, and how important for him to prove that the lost Jews were not darkskinned Indians, heaven forbid, but respectable white people, true Europeans. His traditional interpretation of ‘I am black and comely’ from the Song of Songs found in his Conciliator also expresses the reservations ben Israel had about dark skin.59 The other characteristics in these descriptions should also be noted. They simply reinforce the preference for the white-skinned group over all the others. We have already mentioned height, and the beard. There are also three others: one is reddish hair. It is not entirely clear why the lost Israelites are described 211

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three times as having this hair shade. Indeed, the Bible attributes this hair shade (admoni) to Esau, also called Edom. His red colouring is perceived to represent a bad disposition, different from that of good, ‘white’ Jacob.60 Possibly ben Israel sought to create a link with King David, who is described as ‘ruddy, with beautiful eyes, and good form’ (I Sam. 16: 12; 17: 42), as well as the picture of the beloved in the Song of Songs 5: 10: ‘My beloved is white and ruddy’, though ‘ruddy’ here is a component of a pure light skin, and not a hair colour. Indeed, the beloved’s hair is described as black as the raven (ibid. 5: 11). Possibly because the Indians’ hair was black, ben Israel preferred to show that of the lost Jews as reddish, to distinguish them from the Indians. In this context, identifying the Jew as ‘white [skin colour] and ruddy [hair colour, like David’s]’ served his purpose better than ‘his locks are black as the raven’. In any case, in the context it is clear that ben Israel saw reddish hair as a positive aesthetic attribute and used it to reinforce the perfect picture of the lost tribes in America. So far we have described the outward appearance of these hidden Jews: white skin and reddish hair, with a respectable height and beard. Ben Israel also adds some cultural characteristics: they wear beautiful clothes made of expensive cloth, and have excellent manners: ‘They know [the rules of] negotiation and courtesy’, behaving themselves well, ‘in the Spanish manner’. That is, they are identified with the normative ‘cultured’ European, who was the ultimate model for Jews like Manasseh ben Israel. Describing them as well built, courageous and very rich rounds out the idyllic description. The argument that they settled in America even before the Incas gives them pride of place, and certainly separates them genetically and culturally. Moreover, it was they who originally brought customs and ceremonies identified as Jewish to America, which the natives copied. Ben Israel’s need to deny so energetically the ‘anti-Semitic’ allegation that Jews have relatively dark skin, a feature so easy to identify with the ‘primitive’ natives, shows how strongly he feared just such an identification, perhaps also because of the increasing black and mulatto conversions in the Amsterdam Jewish community. While the medieval Jewish scholar agreed that Jews were ‘swarthy’, and tried to show that it indicated genetic and moral superiority, Manasseh ben Israel, so deeply rooted in the western European culture of his own time, categorically denied such a possibility. He had an obvious psychological need, and an interest in identifying the Jew as a person of true culture, i.e. as a total European. Identifying with his designators in the majority Christian culture, he had to be more European than they, and to identify the Jew as the ultimate cultured European, hence ‘white’ in every respect.

IV The crystallization of the negative image of dark skin, which included a negative image of the black, showed itself clearly in the editing of rabbinic texts in 212

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the late Middle Ages and early modern times, particularly when they first appeared in print. I know of three instances of such changes, made deliberately or unwittingly, to adapt the text to contemporary skin colour images. In one text the word black (cushi) was left out, in another it was added and in the third, skin colour imagery was changed. The first comes from BT Kiddushin 40a, where the printed version tells of ‘two bodyguards (nosei) of the emperor’, while in the Munich manuscript, which is closer to the original, we find ‘two blacks (cusha’ei) of [belonging to] the emperor’. In this case, leaving out the black seems to be a copying or editorial error in the replacement of a single letter, or it expressed a tendency to adapt the text to the conceptual world of the reader of that time. In the other two cases the change is clearly deliberate, each influenced in a different way by skin colour imagery. Pirkei de’Rabbi Eliezer 24 contains the Midrash on Noah’s blessings to his sons. Shem and his sons are described as ‘black and comely’ (shehorim ve-naim), Japheth and his sons as ‘white and handsome’ (levanim ve-yafim), while Ham and his sons are ‘black as the raven’ (shehorim ka-orev). In the original, Shem’s blackness is expressed in a positive way, by association with ‘black and comely’ in the Song of Songs, though Ham’s blackness becomes negative through association with the raven. This, however, did not satisfy the copiers and compilers of the printed versions. They found it hard to accept Shem as black, with the concomitant danger of blurring the difference between him and Ham. As a result, some versions tended to ‘whiten’ Shem. As early as the thirteenth century, a manuscript described Shem as white. In the Venetian edition (second printing, 1544) and in the second Venetian edition (1608) the original version appears in the body of the text. In the table of contents, however, we find ‘blessed Shem and Japheth with whiteness (lavnut) … and Ham with blackness (shaharut)’. Shem becomes white in all respects, and instead of the dangerous common denominator with black Ham, he gets to resemble the attractive white Japheth. In parallel fashion, Japheth’s whiteness becomes more positive in the early printed versions (Constantinople 1514, Venice 1544 and Sabbioneta 1567), when the adjective ‘handsome’ (yafeh) is added to ‘white’. Furthermore, the ambiguous description given of Ham as ‘black as the raven’ is replaced instead by the unequivocal ‘black and ugly’. Jews were trying to resemble the fair white Japheth, i.e. the European identified as the model to emulate, and thus more handsome and ‘cultured’, a process discerned elsewhere as well.60a The third and perhaps the most instructive example lies in the history of the censorship of BT Makkot 24a–b, from early printings in the later years of the sixteenth century, which show clearly the historical development of black stereotypes in western culture, Christian and Jewish alike. This change may have influenced one of the first iconographic descriptions of the black in Jewish culture, as it appears in the Venetian Haggadah (1609). The change of a single word in the printed version of the BT source displays the entire phenomenon in astonishing microcosm, as it unfolded in early modern times. 213

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In the Vilna edition of BT Makkot 24a–b, we find this story from the legends of the Destruction: Long ago, as Rabban Gamliel, R. Elazar b. Azariah, R. Joshua and R. Akiva were walking on the road, they heard the noise of the crowds of Rome [on travelling] from Puteoli, a hundred and twenty miles away. They all fell a-weeping, but R. Akiva seemed merry. Said they to him: Wherefore are you merry? Said he to them: Wherefore are you weeping? said they: These blacks (cushi’im) who bow down to images and burn incense to idols live in safety and ease, whereas our Temple, the ‘Footstool’ of our God is burned down by fire, and should we then not weep? He replied: Therefore am I merry. If they that offend Him fare thus, how much better shall fare they that do obey Him! The context makes it clear that the story is not particularly or exclusively about blacks, but about the Roman gentiles who were idolaters. In a parallel that appears in Sifre on Deuteronomy we find: ‘that the gentile (goy’im) idolaters sacrifice to [their] gods’. In all manuscripts of this work, the wording is the same.61 So it is in the parallel Midrash in Lamentation Rabbah 5: 17, both in the printed versions and in the surviving manuscripts, and consequently in medieval Midrashic collections like Yalkhut Shim’oni, that were copied from them. In fact, the Munich manuscript of BT Makkot, from the fourteenth century and the first printed edition (Venice 1520), contains similar versions: ‘the place where those gentiles bow down to idols’ (MS Munich), and ‘those gentiles who bow down to graven images’ (Venice). Given that, in context, the reference is not to blacks but to the Roman gentiles in general, and that in the early versions of BT Makkot and their parallel Aggadic Midrashim the word ‘gentiles’ (goy’im) appears, one reasonably assumes that this is the original version. By contrast, in the Vilna edition in common use today, blacks (cushi’im) has already been substituted for gentiles. The question, then, is why and in what circumstances was the wording changed and, in view of our own discussion, what does the change mean? As we know, the Vatican establishment was very suspicious of the printing of any Jewish theological and Halachic works that they thought might possibly contain contempt or negation of Christianity. The uncensored Venetian edition that still contained the original wording of the story as it appears in BT Makkot was burned as a result in 1553. Following that, it was forbidden to publish or to possess the Talmud, and the Vatican censored Jewish works that appeared in print. The Basle edition of the BT (1578–1580) was the first version to be officially approved for publication, after rigorous treatment by the Vatican censor, Marcus Marino. Every expression that in his opinion showed contempt for nonJews or their customs was either changed or erased. As a result, he removed the entire tractate Avodah Zarah (idol worship), which is full of such remarks. Most 214

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of the censorship process, however, involved erasing words or even entire passages, or replacing them with expressions seen as harmless from the Christian viewpoint. Even the word ‘Talmud’, for example, was replaced by ‘Six Volumes’, ‘Gemara’ or the like. ‘Rome’ or ‘Greece’ in descriptions of idol worship was replaced by ‘Babylonia’. The word for gentile, goy, was sometimes replaced by Cuti meaning in biblical Hebrew Samaritan in particular or gentile in general, or even by Cushi (black). This is what happened to the story in BT Makkot. The original portrays the idolatrous Romans very harshly, quite naturally creating an instant association with Christianity. Since it is well known that the Halachah perceived Christianity, differently from Islam, as idolatry in every respect, the original version of the story was intolerable from the Christian standpoint. In this particular case, however, the Catholic censor decided to substitute ‘black’ for ‘gentile’, determining the formulation that eventually appeared, with minor changes, in the Vilna edition: ‘These blacks (cushi’im) who bow down to images and burn incense to idols.’62 Clearly, then, it was the censor who found it necessary to replace the dangerous word ‘gentiles’ with one that would blur the original context of the story, which he found anti-Christian. As noted earlier, in other parts of the Talmud as well and in collections of Aggadic Midrashim, the word ‘gentiles’ was replaced for the same reason. The question remains as to why it was replaced by ‘blacks’ rather than another expression, and what the implications of this particular choice were. In other editions of BT Makkot, different solutions were chosen. One possibility was simply to leave out the word that identified the congregation of idolaters, as in the Wilhermsdorf edition of 1796, where they became ‘those people bowing down to idols and burning incense before [false] gods’. Elsewhere ‘gentiles’ was replaced by the equally non-committal Cuti’im. Possibly that word served as a transition to Cushi’im. While only one Hebrew letter was changed, that change was highly significant, even if we allow for the possibility of a proof-reader’s error. Changing ‘gentiles’ into ‘blacks’ was logical in view of the purpose for altering the text. It removes the perilous associative identification of Christian Rome with idolatry, and projects it safely onto a group that the Christians designated as inferior others, who worship idols. Differently from the Cuti’im, an unknown ancient people long since disappeared, the blacks had a significant current presence. They even constituted a common factor in the attitudes of Judaism and Christianity. As we have seen, all the monotheistic religions designated the black as inferior and animal-like. This identity would grow stronger and more powerful in the European–Christian cultural ambience in this new period, following the great geographical discoveries in Africa and the consequent reappearance of black slavery in southern Europe. The censorship solution that replaced the ‘gentile’ with the ‘black’ created a fascinating paradox. The ordinary Christian, no less than the Jew, identified the black with all kinds of barbarity, including idol worship, so could identify with the amended version. The Christian censor could now refer to the corrected 215

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text as if it referred not to ‘white’ Romans who had become identified with Christianity, heaven forbid, but only to the blacks in Rome. By contrast with the ‘white’ Romans, in the censor’s opinion, the latter were idolaters by their very nature. Indeed, we find that in ancient Rome there was a very large black community of slaves and freedmen of low status.63 In southern European cities in the sixteenth century too there were large black communities, mainly slaves from Africa, whose presence influenced the stereotype system of ordinary Christians.64 However unintentionally, the substitution created a parallel between ‘gentile’ and ‘black’. From this standpoint, the censored Talmudic text acquired, paradoxically, two different and even contrary meanings. One was relevant for the Christian censor, who chose it deliberately, and the other for the Jewish reader of whom that Catholic official was totally unaware – for whom the text was now completely changed. Every one of the possible meanings answered conflicting needs of the potential reader, and fitted in with his system of cultural associations. For the Christian reader, the text referred literally to the ‘black’, different from and inferior to him, thus making it unthinkable that ‘black’ hinted in any way at himself. For him the story is now logical and no longer offends his cultural and religious sensibilities. From the Jewish viewpoint, by contrast, even if one did not know the original version or its Midrashic parallels, and more so if one knew them, a clear analogy was drawn between ‘gentile’ and ‘black’. The Sages, as we noted earlier, frequently identified the black as the total embodiment of the gentile. For the Jewish reader nothing had changed, since in the world of his cultural associations the black is merely the ultimate gentile. From the Christian censor’s cultural and religious viewpoint, the text was now purified and innocuous. He obviously had no idea, however, that in reference to the cultural mentality of the Jewish reader, he, like Balaam, had blessed what he was called to curse (Num. 24). The anti-Christian message was even strengthened when the Christian not only was associated with the pagans, but became ‘black’ in every respect, at least metaphorically. The black image, as rabbinic tradition inculcated it into the Jewish reader and which the Christian censor would not have known about, made it possible to find that image where the original Talmudic version would not have identified it, as in this story. There is at least one case where the Aggadic Midrash made this connection directly. Bereshit Rabbah 37: 2, interpreting the meaning of the name of Nimrod son of Cush, states: ‘And was Esau a black? But his act was like the act of Nimrod.’ Genealogically, Nimrod was identified as a black and his rebellion against God, which the Midrashic author states is indicated by his name, is associatively perceived as the result of an inferior black trait. While Esau was not genetically black, he is metaphorically identified as such because of the way he behaved. The Midrashic author gives a pointed hint that Esau is a reference to the Romans, designating the Romans as blacks. Since the Christians are identified as the heirs and successors of the Romans, they share this identity. A 216

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similar phenomenon can be traced in Vayikrah Rabbah 6: 6 where the Romans are specifically identified with darkness, hence their possible association with the blacks, as we found in Chapter 2. Thus although Jews for obvious reasons rejected the Basle printed edition and tried not to use it, the Jewish reader could nonetheless easily identify with the censored Christian version of this story, understanding it in a way that the Christian censor would not have imagined. For the Jew, the censored version that found its way into the Vilna Talmud was indeed authoritative: considering the normative position of the Sages, the black could easily be identified as the ultimate gentile. Perhaps this is why the version remained in the Vilna printing, despite the reservations regarding the Basle edition. In any case, both aspects – the message to the Christian reader and the Jewish reader’s contrary understanding of it – had the same result as regards the image of the black. This phenomenon had a fascinating result in iconography, appearing shortly after the altered printed version of BT Makkot. The famous Venetian Haggadah (1609, 1629) contains an illustration at the bottom of the page that begins ‘Pour out Thy wrath.’ It depicts the text that follows, composed of Bible quotations and added to the second part of the Haggadah in the early Middle Ages:65 Wherefore should the nations [gentiles] say, Where, then is their God? But our God is in the heavens, He doeth whatsoever He pleaseth. Their idols are silver and gold. They have mouths but they speak not etc.66 The illustration in Plate 2 shows black idolaters. The caption below reads, in the Italian Jewish vernacular, ‘Let the foolish nations perish, who serve devils and believe in witchcraft [raising the dead].’ That language even gave the magical act of raising the dead, with its clear links to idolatry (Maimonides, Hilkhot Avodah Zara 77: 11, 13), a name that linked it to a black source: negromanzia. Blacks became identified with such activity within the Christian culture of the time. The source was popular etymology that associated the similar phonetic sounds of the Greek nekros, a dead body, and ‘negro’. Clearly this was no mere language error, but an associative link with the accepted cultural image of the black, with which the artist/printer of the Venetian Haggadah so clearly identified. The illustration shows two groups: white and black. The white images on the left are magicians and wizards raising the shrouded dead, and pronouncing their spells by means of scorpions, snakes and lions. The black images on the right, wearing turbans, are engaged in some ritual that involves idol worship. Five naked black children, who may possibly represent devils, dance around the fire. To identify the raising of the dead with the activity of blacks, negromanzia, as the caption below the picture does, confirms their connection with idolatry. Hayim Yerushalmi once assumed that the idolaters are identified with the ancient Egyptians themselves, in connection with the story of the exodus from 217

Plate 2

The Venetian Haggadah (1609), p. 33

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Egypt told in the Haggadah.67 If that is so, it fits in well with the biblical association and even better with the rabbinic one, of the blacks with the Egyptians.68 However, in no other illustration in this Haggadah are the ancient Egyptians portrayed as blacks. Thus the picture of the black here has yet to be explained, which brings us back to the development of the black image in rabbinic literature. The turbaned black was an image frequently found in the art of the period and indeed the illustrations in this Haggadah include many examples of contemporary Italian artistic influence.69 Here we find a unique historical example of transmuting a textual image into iconographic form. The process was similar to what happened in the tractate Makkot: the pagan gentile from the text becomes black in the iconographic illustration. The accompanying text itself is a mosaic of Bible verses different in source and structure from the Talmudic legend of the Destruction and its Midrashic parallels, but the message of the two texts is identical. In both instances, there is amazement that pagan gentiles whose gods are statues made by men are so sure of themselves and antagonize the God of Israel, while Israel itself is sunk in woe. Quite possibly the anonymous illustrator of the Venetian Haggadah and/or the printer/editor knew the story from Makkot in its censored version, first published no more than thirty years earlier, and they themselves transformed the gentile in the text into the black in the picture. Considering the basic identity between the message of both texts, and that in both the gentile was replaced by the black, and that the Venetian Haggadah appeared a few decades after this printed edition of the BT, it is quite plausible that one influenced the other. Parallel versions, however, make the possibility a likelihood, but are by no means a proof. Even if there is no direct influence, the fact that here too the gentile idolater becomes black shows how deeply rooted the system of images was among Jews and Christians alike. Moreover, no censor was involved, for the textual source identifying the gentile idolater was not changed at all. In this case, then, the change arose from the system of associations of the editor/printer and the artist: perhaps quite unaware, they made the decision to depict some of the gentile idol worshippers as blacks. Research on the iconography of the Venetian Haggadah shows it to be full of images of clearly Midrashic origin, which cannot be explained from a knowledge of the Bible alone.70 It is thus obvious that the anonymous artist, or whoever directed him, knew this literature, including the numerous Midrashim that developed images of black inferiority within rabbinic culture. Differently from other illustrations in this Haggadah, this one cannot be regarded as based with certainty on any particular Aggadic Midrash, unless it is seen to illustrate the story in BT Makkot itself, in the censored version that substituted ‘black’ for ‘gentile’, for we did find the two texts with identical messages in BT Makkot and in ‘Pour out Thy wrath’ of the Haggadah. In any case, internalizing the black image from rabbinic literature in general would certainly have influenced, even subconsciously, the portrayal of the idolatrous gentiles as blacks. 219

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We see, then, that quite possibly censoring the BT text in the Basle printed edition influenced the iconographic description of idolaters in the Venetian Haggadah as blacks. Even were this not so, the resemblance between the two processes stems from a common, deeply rooted culture and from common values. However, the identity of the Venetian printer and our information about him reinforces the assumption of a direct link. Though the illustrator remains anonymous, the details we know about the printer shed light on the entire process. Israel Ben Daniel Hazifroni was well known as a printer in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. He was active in Basle from 1578 to 1583, where he printed the Basle edition of the BT (1578–1580) for the Christian printing establishment of Forbenius. At the century’s end he moved to Venice, where he published this Haggadah.71 As the man who printed the Basle edition, it is most reasonable to assume that he would have been involved in, or would at least have known about, the reasons and the process of censoring the text, including the replacement of ‘gentile’ with ‘black’ in BT Makkot. It is quite possible that this involvement and knowledge directly influenced the decision to portray the idolatrous gentiles in the Venetian Haggadah as blacks. Indeed, it appears to be the only printed, illustrated Haggadah in which the black appears as an idolater. The Prague Haggadah, for example, the first to appear in print (1521), depicts various gentiles, but not blacks. Differently from other cultures where abundant iconographic sources parallel the written texts, and so the aesthetic and value norms of a human group at a given time may be inferred, Jewish culture, forbidden to make images and likenesses, provided few iconographic sources before modern times.72 While Hellenistic–Roman, like Christian medieval and early modern, cultures abound with iconographic portrayals of the black, from which researchers can study the black image and status in those societies, in Jewish culture we must make do with textual sources.73 The situation starts to change in the early modern period: as Jewish society begins to secularize and has closer ties to the surrounding culture, so Jewish sources tend to express themselves more and more in iconography. There is another, earlier example of the black image in Jewish iconography early in the modern era. The illustrated Rothschild mahzor (festival prayer book), compiled in Florence in 1492 for Elijah ben Joav Vigevano of the famous Gallico family, contains an illustration for prayers on the Ten Days of Penitence in which two human figures appear in separate medallions. In one there is a white European, dressed in the style of the Italian Renaissance. In the other is a black wearing a coloured turban and an earring, as we found in the Venetian Haggadah. Flanking the black are wild animals, a lion and a cheetah, which may hint at the man’s African origin (see Plate 3). The precise significance of these motifs is not clear, but E.M. Cohen, who analysed them, believes they may represent the sins one confesses in these prayers.74 Each image seems to represent an opposing, symbolic stereotype. The European figure represents the ideal light-skinned European male, blond, young 220

Plate 3

The Rothschild mahzor (Florence 1492), plate 10

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and handsome, dressed and coiffured in the height of fashion. The black image represents the stereotype of the ugly black with a flattened nose and thick lips that are almost grotesque. His dress is what the artist thinks the black wears: an eastern turban and a large, conspicuous earring. These were no doubt items of dress and ornament conventionally associated with blacks, but possibly the exaggerated earring had the additional function of reinforcing the stereotype. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Christianity developed a negative attitude to earrings, identifying them with lust and promiscuity, so that decent Christian women were forbidden to wear them. Earrings began to mark those who wore them as people to be shunned by society, and were thus permitted to those identified as inferior others: Jewish women and prostitutes. Like so many similar prohibitions, it was a decree the community could not obey. Christian women found it difficult to renounce the pleasure of wearing earrings, and eventually they came back. Against this background, inter alia, certain Jewish communities of the time established regulations against excessive use of ornaments. The other will always seek to conceal his/her otherness, so as not to be conspicuous.75 Possibly, then, making a prominently large earring part of a black image served to accentuate this inferior otherness. Here the black joins the ethnic and social groups designated as other and inferior. The background on which the two images appear also presents contrast and dichotomy, and may have been intended to highlight the differences between them. The medallion that contains the white man is drawn on a light background full of floral decorations, while the black man’s medallion is on a dark blue ground decorated with stars. Significantly, it is the only dark area on a very light page. The background within each medallion also fits into this structure. In the white man’s medallion it consists of light blue sky with clouds, while in the black man’s it is dark green, possibly an allusion to the African jungle, a hint reinforced by the flanking lion and cheetah. The beasts squat on ground that appears to be a desert, while the background of the black man, as just noted, may represent a jungle. Both point to typical features of African geography. Quite possibly the contrasting background drawings express the contrast between day, represented by the white man, and night, represented by the black one. We have already gone into considerable detail on the symbolic use of day and night historically. Cohen’s research shows that such motifs appear in Christian iconography to represent sins, but their use in the Jewish art context requires further study. Bearing in mind the internalized symbols discussed throughout this book, it may be that the white man, identified with day, represents goodness and repentance, while the black, identified with night and darkness, represents sin. If this hypothesis is right, the black man appears once again in the conventional, stereotyped context. According to the above scholarly evaluation, this leaf was decorated by a group of illustrators whose drawings appear elsewhere in the mahzor. They are very close to Jewish tradition and would have had to know Hebrew. The illustrator, then, may have been a Jew, which was most unusual in this period.76 222

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These early examples thus serve only to reinforce the image of the black as it so consistently appears in written sources throughout the history of Jewish culture, as documented above. The drawing of the black man fits in well with the entire system of associations that developed up to this point: he is black and ugly, identified with the darkness of night, superstitious and engages in witchcraft and idolatry. He is the designated antithesis of the cultured individual. The iconographic image is most important because, added to the oral transmission of knowledge, it made it easier to imprint images on the broad public among Jewish believers who did not read Hebrew or any other language fluently. The Venetian Haggadah circulated widely, and was issued and reissued in various Jewish languages for hundreds of years. Moreover, its woodcuts, including the one of the black idolaters, were acquired by other printers and frequently appear in other editions of the Haggadah in succeeding centuries.77 Thus the iconographic image of the black in Jewish culture was circulated, influencing the world view of those who read or heard about it, or those who just looked at pictures.

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Manasseh ben Israel’s need not to identify the Lost Tribes said to have been found in America as dark Indians, heaven forfend, but as white Europeans, expresses so well the longing of the educated European Jew to identify as completely as possible with the culture of the white European majority. From here it was but a step to the longing of the Emancipation, to be ‘a Jew in your home and a human being outside’. We found the idea illustrated in the Rothschild mahzor, compiled in Florence at the height of the Italian Renaissance: sin is represented by the ‘primitive’ black surrounded by the darkness of night; goodness and repentance by the white, handsome ‘cultured’ European, the model for the educated Jew. Later on, this model related not only to cultural, social and economic absorption, but also to altering certain elements in the Jew’s external appearance, from shortening the nose to lightening or bleaching the hair and complexion. This longing to resemble the white European designator at least externally, as closely as possible, demanded the complete rejection of everything that identified the old ‘black’ Jewish image. As we noted, precisely this identification of the Jew as inferior other by the majority culture – be it pagan, Muslim or Christian – increased the psychological need to define and confine the other’s other, which, for the varied reasons we have discussed, was so frequently people with darker skin. And since the white designator, from medieval Christianity to present-day anti-Semitism, tended to stress the common features of Jew and black, both in appearance and in their so-called ‘animal’ behaviour, defining both as inferior other, the Jew would stress his otherness vis-à-vis the black, and attempt to show how similar he was to the white European designator, if not his superiority over him. These needs of group psychology influence the complex, ambivalent relationship of the American Jew to the Afro-American to this day, just as they do the loaded relationships within Israeli society between ‘Ashkenazi’ and ‘Sephardic’ or ‘Eastern’ Jews, and between all of them and the Arabs: in Israel the other’s other. In all such systems of relationships, shades of skin colour are significant, like the symbolic differences they indicate, as described throughout this book. It is no coincidence that Shem Tov ibn Falaquera, rabbinic Jew of the thirteenth century, and Amos Oz, secular Israeli author of the late twentieth 224

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century, though functioning in such different cultural worlds, write astoundingly similar descriptions of the ‘white’ Jew’s nightmare. S/he is attacked by a violent dark-skinned pair who threaten their peace of mind. The historical development of Jewish culture’s attitude to the dark-skinned other explains this phenomenon.

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Introduction 1 E. Faber, Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight (New York, 1998), and note 5 of this chapter. 2 See the well-known dispute between Rabbi Akiba and Ben Azzai on the great principle of the Torah, Safra Keddoshim 4: 12, and the fascinating differences in the variants of the renowned rabbinic saying; see in E.E. Urbach, ‘ “He Who Saves a Single Soul”: Evolution of a Formula: Adventures with Censors and Printers’, Tarbiz 40 (1970–1971), in Hebrew, pp. 268–284. On the other hand, the tendency to describe Judaism as an essentially democratic, egalitarian religion or culture distorts traditional sources, and is based on apologetics. For example, using Malachi 2: 10 ‘Is there not one father to us all? Has not one God created us?’ to prove that Judaism is egalitarian and universal, when the prophet refers only to Israel; S. Greenberg, ‘Judaism and the Democratic Ideal’, Judaism 20 (1966), pp. 1–16, is a classic example. 3 Abraham Isaac ha-Cohen Kook, Iggrot ha-Ra’iah, Vol. 1 (Jerusalem, 1962), p. 102, and another detailed discussion in the same spirit, pp. 90–95. 4 E. Gellner, Postmodernism, Reason and Religion (London and New York, 1992). 5 See the survey of new literature on the subject, with bibliography: H. Brackman, ‘Through the Prism of Race and Slavery’, Association of Jewish Studies Review 24, (1999), pp. 325–336.

1 Dream and interpretation: ‘Two blacks, hideous to see’ 1 Shem Tov Falaquera, The Book of the Seeker (Sefer ha-Mevakesh), translated and edited by M.H. Levine (New York, 1976), p, 21. 2 Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, translated with an introduction and notes by S. Pines (Chicago and London, 1963), Vol. 1, pp. 12–13. 3 The Book of the Seeker, op. cit., pp. 22–23. 4 Op. cit., pp. 23–24. 5 Song of Songs Rabbah 1: 38, translated by J. Neusner (Atlanta, 1989), p. 95. 6 Ibid., 1: 41, p. 100. Compare with the Midrash in Bereshit Rabbah 18: 8 about women who became suntanned in the desert, then were deserted by their husbands for gentile wives in the time of the Return to Zion. See Chapter 2, p. 46. Indeed in Song of Songs Rabbah 1: 5, we find a system of biblical associations discussed later regarding the sins of Israel, based on ‘I was blackened in the desert’. 7 F.M. Snowden Jr, Blacks in Antiquity (Cambridge, MA, 1970), pp. 5, 17; J. Nederveen Pieters, White on Black, Images of Africa and Blacks in Western Popular Culture (New Haven, CT, and London, 1992), pp. 195–198. Pieters deals with the

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9

10

11 12

modern history of the motif, beginning with the Renaissance, stressing its use in the modern advertising industry. He ignores its early expressions, starting from classical times. Inter alia, he cites the example of the Goths who captured a black soldier fighting in the Muslim army in the battle for Cordova and since they had never seen a black, thought he was dirty and washed him to clean him up and whiten him. The source appears in H.W. Debrunner, Presence and Prestige: Africans in Europe (Basle, 1979), and on the same matter in E.D. Jones, The Elizabethan Image of Africa (Virginia, 1971). Asher of Viterbo, Minhah Hadashah (Venice, 1748), 5a. Quoted by G. Alkoshi in A Collection of Latin Proverbs and Sayings (Jerusalem, 1982), in Hebrew, p. 421. Also in Midrash Ma’asei Torah 4; in J.D. Eisenstein, Ozar Midrashim (A Treasury of Midrashim, Vol. 1 (Newark, NJ, 1915), p. 171: ‘And the Sages say that if a man washed a sack and it became white, so knowledge can be found among fools’. Compare with the proverb in Song of Songs Rabbah 5: 8, op. cit., Vol. 2, p. 113: ‘If everyone in the world got together to bleach (le-halbin) one wing of a raven.’ For the proverb about the raven, see Chapter 4, notes 38–39. Compare also with Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, Act IV, Scene 2, lines 100–101: ‘All the water of the ocean / Can never turn the swan’s black legs to white’, quoted in E.R. Sanders, Lost Tribes and Promised Lands (Boston, 1978), p. 247. Compare with Mishnah Avot 3: 21. See also A. Shinan, ‘Of the Desert in the Literature of the Sages’, in the collection Lekhtekh Aharei be-Midbar (Thou Hast Followed me in the Wilderness) (The President’s House Group for the Study of the Bible and Jewish Sources, Jerusalem, 1995), in Hebrew, pp. 32–46. For example, Maimonides, Guide 3: 46 and elsewhere. Also A. Melamed, ‘Maimonides on the Political Nature of Man – Needs and Obligations’, in M. Idel, D. Diamant and S. Rosenberg, eds, Minha le-Sarah (Jerusalem, 1994), in Hebrew, particularly pp. 314–316. H. Levin, The Power of Blackness (New York, 1985), and more recently, T. Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (Cambridge, MA, 1992). The motif of two physically powerful black men appears briefly for the first time in BT Kiddushin 40a. See also Chapter 4, Section V. This dream that parallels to a surprising degree the one in Falaquera appears in I.J. Singer’s The Chernovsky Family (1943), where it describes the self-image problems of the German Jew who longs to identify with the cultured ‘white’ German, but is terrified of his ‘black’ eastern Jewish image, a theme discussed in detail in Chapter 2. The hero has a nightmare in which a threatening black attacks him. See dream description and textual analysis in S.L. Gilman, Jewish Self Hatred (Baltimore, MD, and London, 1986), pp. 362–365. Compare with the (day?)dream of Hannah, heroine of Amos Oz’s My Michael (Hebrew original Tel Aviv, 1968), pp. 35–36ff. It recalls Falaquera in amazing ways. Here as well two men (twins) come out of the desert, they are ‘dark and supple’ and one of them is ‘taller than the other with a darker face’. One has a sharp, shining knife and both act with frightening violence, though Hannah’s dream adds a sexual component absent from Falaquera’s – natural because the dreamer is feminine – given the strong associative link between violence and sex. We shall find more such links as regards everyone whose skin is darker than the designator’s. The fact that dreams with such similar elements appear in works so different, from different times, by authors who cannot be assumed to know each other’s works or to be directly influenced by them, simply proves what deep roots the images have in the human mental structure. We discuss their role in Chapter 2, including that of the Arab as the Israeli’s dark other, so clear in Hannah’s dream. There is another example of this image of the black in contemporary Jewish literature, though not in a dream, in N. Ragen’s The Sacrifice of Tamar (Hebrew translation Akedat Tamar by A. Paz) (Jerusalem, 1997). An Orthodox Jewish woman is raped by a black man (pp. 24–27)

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in a way that fits all the deeply rooted stereotypes of the black. The motif of a white woman bearing a black child is there as well: we find it, or its opposite, in Hellenistic literature and in the Aggadic Midrashim. See Chapter 2, Section III, Chapter 4, Section II.

2 Sources of the symbol: ‘I am black but comely’ 1 See in J. Anatoli, note 8. Another example is the dark clothing forced on Jewish men in Islamic countries to emphasize their inferiority. A recent theory relates this to the black colour of Saturn in Islamic astrology, which associated that planet with the Jews. See P. Shinar, ‘Saturn and the Jews, Venus and Islam as Seen by an Astrological-Magic Arabic Source from the Eleventh Century’, Ha-Mizrah heHadash 40 (1999), in Hebrew, pp. 9–32. Islamic astrology links Saturn with the colour black, with everything ‘black and foul-smelling’, with ‘every black and ugly beast’, and thus also with the Jew. Venus, on the other hand, the shining morning star (Arabic, Zaharah) is linked to Islam, creating an association with fine qualities and light colours. See note 9 below. 2 See Falaquera, note 5, and Anatoli, note 8 below. 3 W.M. Evans, ‘From the Land of Canaan to the Land of Guinea: the Strange Odyssey of the Sons of Ham’, American Historical Review 85 (1980), p. 39; Sanders, op. cit., pp. 106–107. 4 As to the meaning of the Hebrew tishkoret, see details in Maimonides’s Commentary on Avot, edited by M.D. Rabinovitz (Jerusalem, 1961), p. 92. Other commentators offered other meanings. Rashi even claimed that, on the contrary, it referred to an old man. Rashi and Maimonides took different positions because of the different body parts with which they associated the blackness. While the latter linked it with hair and hence related the term to youth, Rashi linked it with skin colour and thus with old age. See note 13 below. Rashi also argued that ravens are white when young and turn black when they mature. See commentary on BT Ketubot 49b. See below, Chapter 4, note 38. For another example of linking black hair with youth, and white hair and baldness to old age, see BT Nedarim 30b. 5 Seeker, op. cit., p. 5. Compare also to Alilot Alexander Mokdon (Tales of Alexander the Great), edited by Y. Dan (Jerusalem, 1969), p. 25: ‘and he disguised himself and put on filthy clothes and escaped in the night … and put on fine white linen and silk in the manner of their monks, the hermits of the desert’. 6 The Midrashic author in BT Hagigah 14a contrasts the verse from Daniel referring to the ideal colour of white hair (7: 9) with black as ideal hair colour in the Song of Songs. He solves the problem thus: ‘There is no contradiction: one verse [refers to God] in session, none is more fitting than an old man, and in war none is more fitting than a young man.’ For the negative images of the raven, see above, Chapter 1, note 8 and Chapter 4 below, notes 38–39, 78. 7 See below, and note 12. 8 Jacob Anatoli, Malmad ha-Talmidim (Goad of Students) (Lyke, 1866), p. 153a. BT Kiddushin 40a: ‘R. Il’ai the Elder said: If a man sees that his [evil] desire is conquering him, let him go to a place where he is unknown, don black and cover himself with black, and do as his heart desires, but let him not publicly profane God’s name’, and in Hagigah 16a. See also Judah Elharizi, Sefer Tahkhimoni, Vol. 1, Part 2: 3: ‘The garments are pure and the deeds black / Their head coverings white and beautiful, their actions filthy’. 9 Melancholy was explained, inter alia, by the influence of Saturn, identified with black and with the Jews. See Shinar, note 1 above, and R. Klibansky, E. Panofsky and F. Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy (London, 1964); E. Zafran, ‘Saturn and the Jews’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtland Institutes 42 (1979), pp. 16–27. But one who has

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10

11

12

13

14

15 16

17

too much white bile is also described as mentally ill. See also R. Tuviah ha-Cohen, Sefer Ma’aseh Tuviah (Crakow, 1906), pp. 65–67. In a contemporary Hebrew collection of humour Zo Eretz Zo (You Call This a Country?) under the caption ‘He sees black’, a white male is shown joyfully eyeing a group of naked African women. See B. Michael, H. Marmari, K. Niv and E. Sidon, Zo ha-Aretz Zo (Jerusalem, 1975), p. 146. A joke like this exemplifies the associative links between the negative significances attributed to the colour black and those attributed to black skin. Moreover, there is the stereotypical sexual association to the nakedness of the black women, illustrating our hypothesis. L.A. Thompson, Romans and Blacks (London and Oklahoma, 1989), pp. 110–113; D.B. Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (London, 1970), p. 482; H. Baudet, Paradise on Earth, translated by E. Wentholt (New Haven, CT, and London, 1965), p. 30; D.C. Allen, ‘Symbolic Color in the English Renaissance’, Philological Quarterly 15 (1936), pp. 81–92; G.K. Hunter, ‘Othello and Colour Prejudice’, Proceedings of the British Academy 53 (1967), pp. 139–148; Levin, op. cit.; Pieters, op. cit., p. 196. See detailed discussion of the significances, sources and biases regarding ‘white’ and ‘black’ in biblical and Mishnaic Hebrew: A. Brenner, Colour Terms in the Old Testament (Sheffield, 1982), esp. pp. 81–99, 121–123, 180–182. Also T. Golan, Black–White, White–Black: An Introduction to Contemporary Africa (Tel Aviv, 1986), in Hebrew, p. 13. Interestingly, in the Arabic–Hebrew dictionary such identifications of black and white are absent. See A. Sharoni, The Complete Hebrew–Arabic Dictionary (Tel Aviv, 1987), Vol. 1, p. 113. For images of black as a colour and of black skin in Islamic culture, see Chapter 5. Song of Songs Rabbah, op. cit., Vol. 2, p. 115. See also BT Eruvin 21b–22a; ‘Black as a raven (shaharut ke-orev), With whom do you find these? With him who for their sake rises early [to go] to, and remains late in the evening (ma’ariv) for schoolhouse. Rabbah explains: [you find these only] with him who for their sake blackens (mashhir) his face like a raven (orev).’ The verse, however, is interpreted otherwise, the word yaldut (childhood) selfevident, while shehorot, i.e. black, is interpreted to mean old age. See e.g. Rashi, note 4 above. Rashi relates blackening to facial complexion, so associates the word with old age, differently from relating it to hair colour, where it indicates youth. For combinations found in European culture, see Levin, op. cit., p. 14. For David Avidan, see Mashehu beshvil Mishehu (Something for Somebody) (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, 1964), from ‘An old farewell song’ that opens the collection, on an unnumbered page. Compare with R. Judah ha-Nagid, ‘And today – a day of mist and darkness / And the sun like my heart is black’, quoted by J. Schirmann, A History of Hebrew Poetry in Spain and Provence (Toldot ha-Shirah ha-Ivrit be-Sefarad u-veProvence), Vol. 2 (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, 1956), p. 48. For the image of the bride in black, see the Christian tradition of ‘the black bride’, based on an allegorical interpretation of Song of Songs: ‘I am black and comely’, note 86. See Levin’s discussion, op. cit., p. 29. Song of Songs Rabbah 1: 1, op. cit., p. 38. Compare with the dramatic picture of the dread aroused by the plague of darkness in Philo’s Life of Moses 1: 123. Philo, with an English translation by F.H. Colson, Vol. 6 (London and Cambridge, MA, 1959), pp. 339–340. See the claim that the dichotomy light/darkness = white/black in almost all if not all human languages in B. Berlin and P. Kay, Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution (California, 1969). Brenner, op. cit., p. 94, has some reservations about the dichotomy in biblical Hebrew, particularly as to white, though not to black. In biblical literature the word zel (shadow, shade) frequently depicts the brevity and vanity of man’s material existence: ‘For who knows what is good for man in this life, the number of days of his vain life? Even he makes them like a shadow’ (Eccles. 6: 12);

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19 20

21

22 23 24 25 26 27

28 29

also Job 8: 9; Ps. 144: 4. In these instances, the shadow metaphor relates not to light and darkness but to man’s sense of time. As the shadow state is temporary, ever passing away, so is man’s life on earth. In both cases, however, the shadow is a metaphor for negative situations. Shadow is shown as hiding the light and by nature unstable, so that both meanings are negative. By contrast, the shade/shadow metaphor appears frequently in the positive sense of shelter and protection, as in ‘he … shall abide in the shade of the Almighty’ (Ps. 91: 1 and elsewhere). For the sources of the Hebrew word for black (shahor), see Brenner, op. cit., esp. pp. 97, 105. See also the classic analysis of the Third World philosopher Franz Fanon, of the influences of colour images on the negative perception of blacks in western culture. Gilman, op. cit., pp. 5–6, quotes and analyses this. See also the assumption about the influence of cultural designations of the colours white and black on images of skin colour in children. The study of Munitz et al. describes this, note 35 below. See Talmudic Aggadot on Alexander in Dan, op. cit., p. 19. Snowden, op. cit., pp. 36–37. It is mistakenly assumed that the Greek word mauros, meaning black, is the source of the accepted name for the inhabitants of northwest Africa (Mauri, Moors) and Mauritanians. See J.P.V.D. Balsdon, Romans and Aliens (London, 1979), p. 59. For designating Moors as blacks, see also Pieters, op. cit., p. 125. S.L. Gilman, ‘The Jewish Nose: Are Jews White? Or, the History of the Nose Job’, in L.J. Silberstein and R.L. Cohen, eds, The Other in Jewish Thought and History (New York and London, 1994), p. 367. For classical physiognomics, see Thompson, op. cit., pp. 104–105, and in particular E.L. Evans, Physiognomics in the Ancient World (Philadelphia, 1969). For the perception of external appearance as an indicator of inner quality in the history of Jewish culture, see e.g. BT Kiddushin 72a, the Midrash quoted above about the king’s son: ‘his body turned white and regained its beauty’, i.e. became once more good, cultivated and moral; in J.L. Kugel, In Potiphar’s House (San Francisco, 1990), p. 67; also Judah Abarbanel, The Philosophy of Love (Dialoghi d’Amore), translated by F. Friedeberg-Seeley and J.H. Barnes (London, 1937), p. 58: ‘And for as much as love desires beauty and is born of Reason as she discerns the beauty, goodness and lovability of a person’, and, put negatively, the Midrash Shoher Tov on Psalm 7: ‘A wicked man who sins is like an ugly woman with a polyp in her nose.’ Not by coincidence is the wicked male compared to an ugly woman with an aesthetic defect besides. Davis, op. cit., pp. 64–65, 480–482. Gilman, Self Hatred, p. 14. See below Shakespeare’s descriptions of the Jew and the black. For the Roman cultural attitude to the black, see below, Chapter 4, Section I. See Sanders, op. cit., p. 246, for Shakespeare’s repeated use of ‘foul’ as regards the black in Titus Andronicus. Sanders, op. cit., p. 246. Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, translated from the Arabic by F. Rosenthal (London, 1958), Vol. 1, pp. 171–172. See also Snowden, Before Color Prejudice: The Ancient View of Blacks (Cambridge, MA, 1983), p. 7. In this connection Davis notes, op. cit., p. 67, that classical Chinese culture regarded foreigners as necessarily inferior, particularly those with dark skin. The Chinese even regarded the Persians as ‘blacks’. Medieval Arabic has several words for the black. Some are based on skin colour (sudan), some have a geo-ethnic basis (Habash, el zanj) while others are socio-economic, identifying blacks as slaves (abed). See Chapter 3. J. Derrida, ‘Deconstruction and the Other’, in R. Kearney, ed., Dialogues with Contemporary Thinkers (Manchester, 1984); Silberstein and Cohen, op. cit., p. 181. Silberstein and Cohen, op. cit.

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30 H. Eilberg-Schwartz, People of the Body (Albany, NY, 1992), editor’s introduction, p. 5. 31 R.S. Kraemer, ‘The Other as Woman’, in Silberstein and Cohen, op. cit., pp. 126–131, and its bibliography. 32 P. Mason, Prospero’s Magic: Some Thoughts on Class and Race (London, 1962), p. 57. See also Pieters’s detailed discussion, op. cit., Chapter 12, esp. pp. 172–173. His thesis is in essence the same when he bases himself on D.O. Mannoni, Prospero and Caliban: The Psychology of Colonization (London, 1956). More recently, J. Young Gregg, Devils, Women, and Jews: Reflections of the Other in Medieval Sermon Stories (Albany, NY, 1997), pp. 189, 239. On identification of the black Ethiopian as Satan in medieval Christian culture, see op. cit., pp. 32–33, 240–241. 33 Levin, op. cit., p. 29. 34 Morrison, The Bluest Eye (New York, 1994). 35 S. Munitz, B. Priel and A. Henik, ‘Color, Skin Color Preferences and Self Color Identification Among Ethiopian and Israeli-Born Children’, Israel Social Science Research 3, 1–2 (1985), pp. 74–84. See recent research findings on the popular culture of Ethiopian immigrants in Israel, H. Solomon, ‘The Transformation of a Racial Identity: From Ethiopia to the Promised Land’, Jerusalem Studies on Jewish Folklore 19–20 (1998), pp. 125–146 (in Hebrew); and in Pieters, op. cit., p. 11. 36 Tacitus attacks the Jews in his History, Book 5, pp. 2–4. See English translation in M. Stern, ed., with his introduction and commentary, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism (Jerusalem, 1980), Vol. 2, pp. 1–6. See A.M.A. Hospers-Jansen, Tacitus over de Joden (Groningen, 1949) with detailed English summary. See also Y. Levi, ‘Tacitus on the Ancient Origins and Character of the Jews’, in his collected essays Olamot Nifgashim (Jerusalem, 1960), in Hebrew, pp. 115–196. See Jewish reaction to Tacitus’s attacks in A. Melamed, ‘Simone Luzzatto on Tacitus: Apologetics and Ragione di Stato’, in I. Twersky, ed., Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature (Cambridge, MA, 1984), Vol. 2, pp. 143–170. For a general picture of the stereotypical Roman attitude towards the Jews in general, see Balsdon, op. cit., p. 67. On the same phenomenon in medieval Christian culture, see Young Gregg, op. cit., with its parallel images of the woman and the Jew, ‘feminizing’ the Jew. 37 For the Sages’ attitude, see I. Cohen, ‘The Legal and Actual Attitude to the Gentile in Tannaic Times’, doctoral thesis at the Hebrew University, in Hebrew (1975); ‘The Life of the Gentiles – Its Value and the Attitudes to it in Tannaic Times’, Hagut – Me’asef le-Mahshevah Yehudit (Collected Articles on Jewish Thought) (Jerusalem, 1974–75), pp. 132–191; ‘The Image of the Gentile as Evaluated in Tannaic Times’, Eshel Be’er Sheva 2 (1979–1980), in Hebrew, pp. 124–125; M.L. Satlow, Testing the Dish: Rabbinic Rhetoric and Sexuality (Atlanta, 1995), p. 151, and pp. 156–157 on the rabbinic contention that women are more likely than men to become promiscuous. On the claim that circumcision was intended, inter alia, to reduce the desire to copulate, see e.g. Maimonides’s commentary in Avot 5: 17 and Guide 3: 49. See also Chapter 6, note 89, R. David Kimhi’s commentary on Genesis 17: 11 and Nahmanides on Genesis 17: 9. 38 Sanders, op. cit., pp. 251–252; Pieters, op. cit., 172–174. Early modern European art contains many instances where the lady’s white skin contrasts sharply with that of the black slave. Pieters, op. cit., p. 126. See discussion of motives for emphasizing the excessive sexuality of the other, especially the black other, Pieters, op. cit., Chapter 12; also Gilman, Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Madness (Ithaca, NY, and London, 1985), and Satlow, op. cit., p. 325, with additional bibliography. 39 Gilman, Self Hatred, pp. 8, 366; Young Gregg, op. cit., many instances. Pieters, throughout his book, presents visual examples from modern western culture, though rooted in earlier sources, where the black is shown as closer to nature, emotional, with strong sexual drives, childish, musical, physically powerful (an athlete in

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40 41

42 43 44 45

46

47

48 49 50 51 52

contemporary terms), naturally lazy, etc. The Israeli mentality relates in the same way to the Arabs, e.g. Hannah’s dreams in Oz’s My Michael. See Chapter 1, note 3 above. Gilman, op. cit., pp. 7, 207. For identification in European culture of Jews and blacks as naturally inferior, with additional examples, see Goldenberg, p. 21, and remarks there. For example, the Jew is identified as the ‘white black’ (‘white nigger’), and the black as ‘the black Jew’. A 1930s graffito declared: ‘A Nigger is a Jew turned inside out.’ On the dichotomy between the white European and the ‘black’ Jew see Gilman, op. cit., p. 7. See also the additional bibliography. See identification of Christianity with white skin and its absence with the black, Augustine, Chapter 6, note 13 below; and use of such dichotomies in Young Gregg, op. cit., p. 178. Gilman, ‘The Jewish Nose’, in Silberstein and Cohen (note 21 above), pp. 368–372, and Gilman, Self Hatred, p. 7; Pieters, op. cit., pp. 145 and 217–218, on modern links between anti-Semitism and anti-black attitudes. Gilman, ibid., p. 387; J. Geller, ‘(G)nos(e)ology: The Cultural Construction of the Other’, in Eilberg-Schwartz, op. cit., p. 248. Gilman, ibid., pp. 387–388, Self Hatred, p. 363, and detailed argument in Geller, note 43 above. D. Boyarin, ‘The Great Fat Massacre: Sex, Death, and the Grotesque Body in the Talmud’, in Eilberg-Schwartz, op. cit., pp. 86, 96–97, and its additional bibliography. The excerpt from BT Baba Metzia 84a, which Boyarin analyses here, deals expressly with the size of the male organ of some of the Sages, in the context of proof that they actually fathered their offspring, i.e. of Israel’s genetic continuity. This considering the fact that they are described as exceptionally fat. But possibly a detailed discussion like this points to an ‘anti-Semitic’ myth as to the sexual prowess of the Jews, a myth that influenced even the Sages, to the point that they related it to themselves. See Vitruvius’s parallel claim that related the proportional facial and body structure to the Romans, Thompson, op. cit., p. 101. Sanders, op. cit., pp. 343–344; Thompson, op. cit., pp. 107–109, Balsdon, op. cit., 218, 234; Pieters, op. cit., pp. 175, 218, on the Nazi ideology that associated the phenomenon with Jews and blacks. Various English scholars in early modern times claimed that the large sex organs they associated with blacks were the result of Canaan’s sin. Davis, op. cit., 486–487. Medieval Hebrew commentary argues the opposite, that the sin caused the sex organ to wither: see below, Chapter 6, note 84 and by contrast, Farrisol’s descriptions in Chapter 7, notes 22–35 below. Such images appear even today. Compare the description of the black slave displaying his sexual prowess in A.B. Yehoshua’s Mas’a el Tom ha-Elef (A Journey to the End of the Millennium) (Tel Aviv, 1997), e.g. pp. 280–282, 296–297. Yehoshua himself does not appear free of stereotypes, unless we assume his description is ironical, as seen through the eyes of those times. Gilman, ‘The Jewish Body: A Foot-note’, in Eilberg-Schwartz, op. cit., p. 229. Here foot structure appears to be the common denominator between Jews and blacks. For the black, see Balsdon, op. cit., p. 218; Pieters, op. cit. p. 181. Pieters notes that flat feet are frequently attributed to rapists and other criminals: the association is clear. Gilman, Self Hatred, p. 8. See also note 62 below. See note from the Hebrew edition of The Merchant of Venice, translation and notes by A. Oz (Ramat Gan, 1975), p. 148. See general discussion in Mason, note 38 above. The significance of this image, in Sanders, op. cit., pp. 246–247. The Merchant of Venice III, i. Sanders, op. cit., p. 249.

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53 See theories on ‘the other’s other’ in relation to women: R.S. Kraemer, ‘The Other as Woman: An Aspect of Polemic Among Pagans, Jews and Christians in the GrecoRoman World’, in Silberstein and Cohen, op. cit., pp. 121–144, with additional bibliography. 54 The Midrash is discussed in Chapter 3, Section III. JT Shabbat 6: 9, Yoma 8: 5, contains unique evidence about the ‘German’ slave of R. Judah ha-Nassi: see Chapter 4, p. 102. 55 See Chapter 4, pp. 89-91 56 See Chapter 6, note 116. 56a We have little evidence from Jewish sources as to the appearance, including the complexion, of specific Jews. This begins to appear with the Renaissance, when the gradual change of cultural mentality made such descriptions acceptable. Earlier there were only stereotypical descriptions of the Jew, e.g. in the autobiography of R. Judah Arieh Modena from the first half of the seventeenth century. See The Autobiography of a Seventeenth-Century Venetian Rabbi, Leon Modena’s Life of Judah, translated and edited by M.R. Cohen (Princeton, NJ, 1988). Modena describes his father’s appearance thus: ‘He had a dark complexion’ (panaiv me’mareh sheharhar), op. cit., p. 94. See also the way he described his son: ‘His face was not pale’ (lo lavan be-panaiv), op. cit., p. 112. That R. Judah found their relatively dark complexion worth mentioning shows its importance for him. The question is what this meant. Did he compare it to the complexion of other Jews or to Venetians in general? See descriptions of David Reuveni’s dark skin by sixteenth-century Italian scholars, and arguments as to its significance, Chapter 6, note 6 below. Another example of interest is the external appearance and complexion of a person, see in Joseph Shlomo del Medigo’s Sefer Ilem (Odessa, 1864), p. 42: ‘You urged me to describe his nature, colour (tzivo’), race (gize’o), history, travel, beheviour and opinions.’ 57 Compare the comments of R. Abraham Ibn Ezra and, following him, David Kimhi, on this verse. Both stress, generally, the peculiar appearance of the Jew in gentile eyes, but do not mention skin colour. On this matter, see below. Another example is found in Rashi’s comment on Psalm 9: 1: ‘To the chief musician, To die for the Son (la’ben), a Psalm of David’. Jewish commentators were puzzled about the Hebrew la’ben. If it meant the son of David, then which son – Absalom or another son? Moreover, Christian commentators gave the psalm a completely Christological significance. Rashi’s commentary appears to respond to the Christian interpretation. He rejects the possibility that the text refers to a son of David, apparently because of the possibility of a Christological significance. Hence he reads la’ben not as ‘the son of’ but as le’halbin, meaning to whiten, so interprets it thus: ‘And I say to the chief musician on the future death of la’ben, when the childhood and the black hair (shaharutan) of Israel have grown white (itlaben), their justice will be revealed.’ For shaharut, the word for black hair and youth appears as a synonym for childhood (signifying morning or the beginning of life, and the parallel significance of the dark hair of youth, see discussion above). In this context the text means that when Israel progresses from childhood to wisdom (binah), with its similarity to the words for ‘white’ and ‘whiten’, then its justice will be revealed. See E. Shereshevsky, ‘Rashi and Christian Interpretations of the Bible’, Jewish Quarterly Review 61 (1970), pp. 76–86, on this text on p. 78. However, where our subject is concerned, Rashi and other Jewish scholars who took part in anti-Christian debate at this time created an association: the people of Israel as sinners are in the ‘black’ condition of childhood, i.e. their skin darkened as a result of their sins, and when they repent it will become white again, at least metaphorically. 58 R. Joseph bar Nathan Offiziel, Sefer Yosef ha-Mekaneh (Book of the Zealous Joseph), edited by J. Rosenthal (Jerusalem, 1970), p. 95. 59 See also Bereshit Rabbah on Toldot, and Abarbanel’s commentary, note 62 below. 60 For significance of ‘red’, see Chapter 7, note 56.

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61 Analysis of this Midrash in Chapter 4, Section III, and in note 54. N. Avigad and Y. Yadin, eds, Megillah Hitzonit le-Bereshit me-Megillot Midbar Yehudah (An Apocryphal Scroll on Genesis from the Dead Sea Scrolls) (Jerusalem, 1957), Aramaic source p. xx, Hebrew translation p. 36. The text is quoted in A. Shinan, Olamah shel Sifrut haAggadah (World of Aggadic Literature) (Tel Aviv, 1987), pp. 56–57. 62 Abarbanel, Perush le-Sefer Bereshit (Commentary on the Book of Genesis) (Jerusalem, 1979), pp. 295, 297. Indeed, not accidentally does ‘white’ Jacob describe the difference between himself and ‘red’ Esau thus: ‘My brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man’ (Gen. 27: 11). For the stereotypical association of the white-skinned person as smooth and the non-white as hairy and hence animal-like, see note 48 above. 63 As to identifying Canaan as black, see detailed discussion in Chapter 4, Section III. Abarbanel places dark skin, black or red, in the same ‘non-white’ category, op. cit., p. 328. See below Chapter 6, note 108. Interestingly, in Haim Guri’s poem ‘The Smell of the Fields’, Esau is depicted as doing hard labour. See Mahbarot Elul (Notebooks of Elul) (Tel Aviv, 1985), p. 20. For the significance of ‘dirty [Hebrew ‘black’] work’ in our context, see above. Lavan in our sources is identified as a negative character, e.g. in Bamidbar Rabbah 10: 14 on Lavan, ‘wickedness burnt into him’. On the claim that the Jewish complexion was originally white, Eshkoli quotes a Falasha Jew on the belief current in his community that while Ethiopian Christians are born black, the Jews are born white but their skin darkens because of the climate: if they stay long enough in a temperate climate their skin will get lighter. See note 35 above. 64 J. Preuss, Biblical and Talmudic Medicine, translated and edited by F. Rosner (New York and London, 1978), pp. 76, 166. Also A.A. Halevi, Erkhei ha-Aggadah ve-haHalakhah le-Or Mekorot Yevaniim ve-Latiniim (Values of the Aggadah and the Halakhah in the Light of Greek and Latin Sources) (Tel Aviv, 1979), p. 28. On the history of the medium shade rather than white as ideal, see below Chapter 5, Section II. By contrast in Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer 24, the sons of Shem, including Israel, are described as ‘black and handsome’. This is the only place I know of where they are described as originally ‘black’ and this has a positive connotation. See below Chapter 4, Section III. 65 See above Chapter 1, Section V, and the Midrash on the black handmaid, Chapter 3, note 68 with analysis of the text. 66 Joseph the Zealous, op. cit., p. 95, note 1. 67 Sefer Nizzahon Yashan, edited by M. Breuer (Jerusalem, 1978), preface, pp. 21–23. 68 Ibid., p. 192, also D. Berger, ed., The Jewish–Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 1979), Hebrew text p. 159. Berger’s version differs in a few details from Breuer’s, though not meaningfully, on our subject. See note on p. 340. Also H.H. Ben Sasson, Toldot Am Israel (History of the Jewish People), Vol. 2 (Tel Aviv 1969), p. 168. In one place, however, the writer claims that Christians tend to have more skin ailments than Jews, Berger, op. cit. Dark skin indicating inner ‘whiteness’ appears in Christian writings of the time as well. Abelard of the twelfth century, for example, uses the Christian interpretation of Song of Songs Rabbah to prove that the black habit of the nun, metaphorical bride of Jesus (‘the black bride’), represents the condition of virginal purity. See: The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, translated with an introduction by B. Radice (Harmondsworth, 1985), pp. 138–141. I cite from pp. 138–139: ‘The Ethiopian woman is black in the outer part of her flesh and as regards exterior appearance looks less lovely then other women; yet she is not unlike them within, but in several respects she is whiter and lovelier, in her bones, for instance, or her teeth. … And she is black without but lovely within; for she is blackened outside in the flesh because in this life she suffers bodily affliction through the repeated tribulations of adversity.’ See also note 87 below. In our case, Jewish scholars applied the motif to their own needs.

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69 A.E. Hansen, ‘The Medical Writers’ Women’, in D.M. Halperin et al., eds, Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World (Princeton, NJ, 1990), pp. 309–338. See also Preuss, op. cit., note 64 above, pp. 391–392, and Boyarin’s article (note 45 above), p. 82 and additional bibliography; Halevi, op. cit., pp. 197–205, and more recently, Satlow, op. cit., pp. 311–312. He maintains this tradition was accepted in Hellenistic–Roman as in Jewish literature, but while in the Roman tradition the spiritual state of the woman at conception had an influence, Jewish tradition stressed that of the man. Aggadic Midrashim using the story relate it to the woman, as in Hellenistic–Roman sources. See below. This strengthens the assumption of the story’s Hellenistic–Roman origin. See below note 71 and Chapter 4, Section II. 70 See analysis of this Midrash, Chapter 4, notes 30–33. 71 Sanders, op. cit., p. 52; Thompson, op. cit., pp. 32, 132, 136; Preuss, op. cit., pp. 391–392. For the Andromeda story see E. Hall, Inventing the Barbarians (Oxford, 1989), pp. 141–142. See below, Chapter 4, notes 29–33. Breuer and Berger do not relate to these sources. 72 Some Christian scholars of the Renaissance used this to explain why a dark-skinned child was born to Ham. They claimed that both Ham and his wife were white, but his wife thought of something black when she conceived Cush. See D. Cameron Allen, The Legend of Noah (Urbana, IL, 1963), p. 119. This differs from the more generally accepted Midrashic position that the skin colour change was a divine punishment for Ham’s sin. See Chapter 4, Section III. 73 Gilman, Self Hatred, p. 15. 74 For details see Gilman, ibid., 206–207. 75 Ibid., pp. 15, 133, 363–364. 76 Gilman, ‘Jewish Nose’, op. cit., pp. 387–394. 77 Ibid., pp. 375–376. 78 D. Biale, Eros and the Jews (New York, 1992), Chapter 8. This chapter appeared as an article in People of the Body, pp. 283–307. See more recently and extensively O. Almog, Ha-Tsabarim (The Sabras), in Hebrew (Tel Aviv, 1997). 79 There are parallels in other literatures of the ancient world, e.g. in Aeschylus The Seekers of Shelter, pp. 496–497, the words of the dark-skinned Danaos: ‘I look strange to your people, [with] black waves [= the Nile] and from Enarchus [a Greek river] different peoples have come’; Halevi quotes this in Olamah shel ha-Aggadah (The World of the Aggadah) (Tel Aviv, 1972), p. 81 and note 5. See also Chapter 5, note 2 below. Compare with the Prince of Morocco in The Merchant of Venice, Act II, Scene 1: ‘Mislike me not for my complexion / The shadowed livery of the burnished sun / To whom I am a neighbour and near bred.’ See textual analysis in J. Zakovitz, ‘Song of Songs – the Riddle of Riddles’, Et ha-Da’at 2 (1998), in Hebrew, pp. 12–14. He relates to the negative connotation attached to black skin to the dryness attributed to it, not to images of the colour itself. In this connection see the links between the Hebrew verbs shazaf, saraf and shadaf, comparing Genesis 41: 6, Job 30: 30 and Lamentations 4: 8. See also the French art edition of Song of Songs (L’edition d’art par A. Piaze, Paris, 1931) with illustrations by F. Kupka, who portrayed Shulamit as dark skinned. In Song of Songs Rabba 1: 37 (op. cit., p. 94) the daughters of Jerusalem are portrayed by means of Ezekiel 16: 61: ‘and I will give them unto thee for daughters (le’vanot)’. Perhaps the Midrashic author associated the white skin colour attributed to the daughters of Jerusalem (since le’vanot can read both as ‘daughters of’ and ‘white’) as an antithesis to the black Shulamit. 80 P. Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Philadelphia, 1978), p. 161. I. Pardes, HaBriah le-Fi Hava (Creation According to Eve) (Tel Aviv, 1996), pp. 93–110, and in Brenner, op. cit., pp. 98, 121–123.

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81 Song of Songs Rabbah, op. cit., pp. 92–93. While in Shemot Rabbah 49: 2 the colour black represents Israel’s sins, the other colours in the story of the sanctuary represent their fine qualities. See an additional version in Bereshit Rabbah 23: 11. Heinemann relates to this Midrash, but follows the Sages’ system of opposites. He ignores the significance of these particular metaphors. See J. Heinemann, Darkhei ha-Aggadah (Paths of the Aggadah) (Jerusalem, 1954), p. 53. 82 Song of Songs Rabbah, op. cit., p. 92. See the Aramaic Eretz Israel translation which appears to have taken final form in early Islamic times: ‘When the children of Israel made the golden calf, their faces darkened (etkadru) like those of the blacks (benei cush) … but when they repented and their sin was forgiven, their faces once more shone like those of the angels.’ The dark complexion associated with black people creates the dichotomy between evil and the angels who represent good deeds. See R.J.A. Loewe, ‘Apologetic Motifs in the Targum to the Song of Songs’, in A. Altmann, ed., Biblical Motifs, Origins and Transformations (Cambridge, MA, 1966), pp. 159–196. Discussion of our verse on p. 175. 83 ‘Rashi’s Commentary on the Song of Songs’, I. Rosenthal (New York 1959), pp. 21–23. Nahmanides and ha-Rokeah on Song of Songs (Pieterkov, 1901, Jerusalem, 1968, photo reproduction Jerusalem, 1968), pp. 12–13. Moses Ibn Tibbon’s Commentary on the Song of Songs (Lyke, 1874), p. 71a. A.S. Halkin, translator and editor, R. Joseph Judah ben Jacob ibn Aknin, Hitgalut ha-Sodot ve-Hofa’ot haMe’orot (Revelation of the Secrets and Appearance of the Lights), Commentary on Song of Songs (Jerusalem, 1964), pp. 36–43. By contrast, R. Abraham ibn Ezra, Mikra’ot Gedolot, Song of Songs 1: 5: ‘Black (Shehorah). Some say that she is beautiful, like the black (cushit) wife (Num. 12: 1) for she was so beautiful that her mother feared for the evil eye. Thus she was called ‘black’ (cushit ve-shehorah). We have no need for this explanation for the black (cushit) wife, nor for the word black (shehorah), because she herself says do not look upon me that I am black … doubling what is [worth] little.’ For ibn Ezra’s sharp disagreement with the Sages’ commentary and its influence on his interpretation of biblical image of the black, see below, Chapter 5, Section III. For the commentary on the word meaning ‘black and comely’ see below the opposite interpretation in R. Levi ben Gershom. See also ibn Ezra’s alternative interpretation: R. Abraham ben Meir Ibn Ezra of Spain, Commentary on the Song of Songs, edited by H.J. Matthews (Oxford, 1874), pp. 9–10. My thanks to Dr Meira Polliak for calling it to my attention. 84 Rashi’s commentaries, op. cit. On his interpretation of the Song of Songs, this verse in particular, see S. Kamin, ‘Rashi’s commentary on Song of Songs and the Jewish–Christian Debate’, Shnaton le-Mikrah u-le-Heker ha-Mizrah ha-Kadum 7–8 (1984), pp. 218–248, esp. pp. 239–244. Ibid., Peshuto shel Mikrah u-Midrasho shel Mikrah (Bible Text and biblical Commentary) (Jerusalem, 1986), pp. 250–256. I. Rosenthal, ‘Rashi’s Commentary on Song of Songs’, in an anniversary volume for S.K. Mirsky (New York, 1958), op. cit., pp. 15–59. 85 Minhat Kana’ut (Jerusalem, 1968), Vol. 2, p. 85. 86 Levi ben Gershom, Perush Hamesh Megillot (Commentary on Five Scrolls) (Königsberg, 1860), commentary on Song of Songs 1: 5–6. A critical edition of the commentary appeared lately in English: M. Kellner, ed. and trans., Commentary on Song of Songs by Levi ben Gershom (New Haven, CT, 1998). The Hebrew edition was published recently by Bar Ilan University Press. 87 E.H. Lindo, ed., Manasseh ben Israel, Conciliator (London, 1842), Vol. 2, pp. 293–294. On Christian comment on the motif from Song of Songs, see E.E. Urbach, ‘The Homilies of the Sages and Origen’s Commentary on the Song of Songs, and the Jewish–Christian Debate’, Tarbiz 30 (1961), pp. 147–170; S. Kamin, ‘Rashi’s Commentary on Song of Songs and the Jewish–Christian Debate’; R. Kimmelman, ‘Rabbi Yohanan and Origen on the Song of Songs’, Harvard

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88

89

90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97

Theological Review 73 (1980), pp. 567–595; and P.H.D. Kaplan, The Rise of the Black Magus in Western Art (Ann Arbor, MI, 1985), p. 23. See too Snowden’s erroneous interpretation of these texts, op. cit. pp. 188–200, and Thompson’s, op. cit., pp. 134–136. See The Letters of Abelard and Eloise, op. cit., pp. 138–141, and note 68 above. Christian writers from Origen to Abelard identified the black Shulamit with Moses’s black wife. See Chapter 4, note 13 and Chapter 6, note 11 on such commentaries in medieval Christian literature. Abraham ibn Ezra attacks this sharply. I know of no such Jewish commentary, so possibly ibn Ezra is responding to that of Christians. See Mikra’ot Gedolot on Song of Songs 1: 5. See note 83 above. Like most Jewish commentators (apart from Gersonides, below), ibn Ezra identifies the ‘black and comely’ as suntanned rather than black, hence the denial that she is the black wife. Sefer Ben Sira ha-Shalem (The Complete Book of Ben Sira), edited by M.Z. Segal (Jerusalem, 1953), pp. 25–26, 155–156, and text analysis pp. 157–159. For the debate on the nature of woman in general see D. Pagis, ‘The Poetic Debate on the Nature of Women’, Mehkarei Yerushalayim be-Sifrut Ivrit (Jerusalem Studies in Hebrew Literature) 9 (1986), in Hebrew, pp. 259–300; J. Schirmann, Toldot ha-Shirah ha-Ivrit be-Sefarad ha-Notzrit u-ve-Drom Zarfat (History of Hebrew Poetry in Christian Spain and Southern France), updated and completed by E. Fleischer (Jerusalem, 1997). For the archetypal dichotomous distinction between ‘the white woman’ and ‘the black woman’ see also N. Abarbanel, Havah ve-Lilit (Eve and Lilith) (Ramat Gan, 1994), p. 15. The author does not relate to the source and significance of skin colour designations, but only to images of woman. As we have seen and are to see again, the two are linked. On idealization of the blonde white woman in the elite culture of Rome, see Chapter 4, Section I, and Thompson, pp. 112–123. Compare to Shakespeare’s ambivalent description of the black mistress, Sonnets 127, 130, 131, 132, 144, 147. In Sonnet 127 she is identified with the black raven. See note 92 below. R. Judah ben Shabtai, Minhat ben Yehudah Soneh ha-Nashim (Offering of Judah the Woman Hater), edited by B. Hos, doctoral thesis at the Hebrew University (1992), Vol. 2, p. 13, and also p. 20: ‘And they followed the maiden / So fair and so innocent / Who came and stood like the ascending dawn / Like the rising sun.’ Schirmann, op. cit., Vol. 2, p. 20. Minhat Yehudah, p. 25, quoted in Schirmann, ‘The story of an old hypocrite’, in his collected articles, Le-Toldot ha-Shirah ve-ha-Drama ha-Ivrit (On the History of Hebrew Poetry and Drama) (Jerusalem, 1979), p. 388. For the tradition of commentary on the black raven, see Chapter 4, notes 39, 77–78. Schirmann, op. cit., Vol. 2, p. 120, line 109, and in the above article in ‘The story of an old hypocrite’. On thick lips that mark ugliness see also BT Nedarim 66a. On the tradition of commentary on the darkening of Ham’s (or Canaan’s) skin as punishment, see Chapter 4 on rabbinic literature, and Chapter 5 on medieval Islamic and Jewish literature. Mahbarot Emanuel ha-Romi (Notebooks of Emanuel of Rome), edited D. Yarden (Jerusalem, 1957), Vol. 1, p. 36. Analysis of this Midrash in Chapter 4, section IV, Chapter 6, section III. Emanuel of Rome, 1st quotation Vol. 1, p. 43, 2nd quotation p. 116, op. cit., 3rd quotation Vol. 2, p. 365. See also below, quotation in note 99, where the dark woman is described as a ‘wretched bondmaid’. By contrast, Abraham of Sartiano’s Soneh Nashim (The Woman-Hater), to prove that all women are alike, uses this example: ‘The king’s daughter and the poor … black woman (cushit) with a white one (levanah)’; Neubauer, ‘Zur Frauenliterature’, Israelitische Letterbode 10 (1884), p. 99. For him, the negative nature of feminine identity as a whole wipes out class or

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98 99

100 101

102 103 104 105

106 107 108 109 110 111

skin colour differences. Generally, the latter were perceived to augment either the positive or the negative in that image. Here they are obliterated by the utter negativity of the female character. See too Judah Sommo’s poem, also of the sixteenth century, this time in praise of women. To illustrate the saying ‘Whoever finds fault, finds his own fault’, he uses the skin colour image: ‘From the walls of your house are you known / One [who is] like coal (pehami) sees black (sheharhoret) / In his companions but recalls not his own blackness (shaharuto)’, ibid., p. 128. Not by chance does black illustrate the fault. Emanuel of Rome, Mahbarot, ibid., Vol. 2, p. 291. Ibid., and in Vol. 2, p. 365: ‘What do you here, wretched bondmaid, looking through the window? You shall never whiten (talbini) your black (shaharut) skin until you [can] whiten (talbini) pitch!’ The woman with relatively dark skin, trying to whiten it artificially to fit the male designator’s concept of beauty, is instinctively identified as a ‘bondmaid’. The text also creates a direct association with the harlot in Proverbs 7. Again the parallel: black = bondmaid = harlot. Ibid., pp. 373–374. Ibid., p. 374. For the case of the black husband and the white wife, see also the 5th Notebook, Vol. 1, pp. 102–103: ‘This woman is an artist’s work / And her husband will not mar it with a mark of coal / You could not pick her out, should she mingle with the angels / Her husband – had he wings – would be thought a raven.’ For Midrashim and medieval commentary on the name ‘Cushan-rishathaim’ see below, Chapter 3, note 9 and Chapter 6, note 63. D. Yarden interprets this in Emanuel as ‘Dark as a black and evil’, ibid., notes. The Letters of Abelard and Eloise, op. cit., p. 139. See note 87 above. Bahya ben Joseph ibn Pakuda, The Book of Direction to the Duties of the Heart, translated from the original Arabic version with introduction and notes by M. Mansoor (London, 1973), p. 105. Abraham Ibn Hisdai, Sefer Ma’azanei ha-Tzedek (Book of the Scales of Justice), edited J. Goldenthal (Leipzig and Paris, 1839, photo rep. Jerusalem, 1975), p. 81. For the source of al Ghazzali’s metaphor see H. Lazarus-Yafeh, Studies in Al-Ghazzali (Jerusalem, 1975), pp. 312–320. Perush ha-Torah le-Rabbenu Levi ben Gershom (Torah Commentary by Rabbi Levi ben Gershom), edited by I.L. Levi (Jerusalem, 1992), p. 127. Elkoshi, op. cit., p. 366. Maimonides, Guide, op. cit., 2, p. 625. Ibid., 1, p. 97. Ibid., 1, p. 21. Ibid., 2, pp. 635–636. See also in the will attributed to Maimonides in which the negative consequences of controversy are described as follows: ‘I have seen the white (levanim) become black (hush’heru)’, I. Abrahams, trans. and ed., Hebrew Ethical Wills (Philadelphia, 1976), p. 111.

3 In the Bible: ‘The children of Cush’ 1 2 3 4 5

See below, note 9. Snowden, op. cit., Preface. Ibid., pp. 2, 9. Elkoshi, op. cit., p. 33. Snowden, op. cit., p. 8; Balsdon, op. cit., p. 59; also Herodotus below, Chapter 4, note 5. Both medieval and early modern literature, following biblical and Hellenistic–Roman images, described blacks as extraordinarily tall. See Sanders, op. cit., pp. 7, 48, 51, 58, 64. See medieval Hebrew literature, e.g. Eldad ha-Dani, Chapter 6 below, note 27, and Jacob ben Elazar, ibid., note 36.

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6 See below, Chapter 4, note 40. 7 Compare his remark with Sanders’s, op. cit., p. 48. 8 See the legend of the Queen of Sheba in which Solomon found her legs were hairy when he raised her skirts, cited by Micah Ben-Gurion (Berdichevsky) in Me-Makor Israel (Tel Aviv, 1966), p. 61. The story later serves as a basis for identifying the Queen of Sheba with Lilith, Satan’s wife, who lures innocent men into her net, a physical example of violating the accepted boundaries of gender. However, it does not refer to the Queen’s skin colour, despite the biblical statement that she is the daughter of Sheba son of Cush. Perhaps her violation of gender barriers so preoccupied scholars that they ignored her complexion, though their perceptions linked the two. At the same time, identifying her with Lilith in itself relates to skin colour, because Lilith derives from the Hebrew lilah (night), and the Queen of Sheba was a descendant of Cush. See also G. Scholem, ‘New Chapters on Lilith and Ashmedai’, in his collected articles, Mehkarei Kabbalah, Vol. 1, edited by J. Ben Shlomo (Tel Aviv, 1998), pp. 201–224. L.H. Silberman, ‘The Queen of Sheba in Judaic Tradition’, in J.B. Pritchard, ed., Solomon and Sheba (London, 1975), pp. 65–84; M. Delcor, ‘La reine de Saba et Salomon: quelques aspects de l’origine de la légende et de sa formation, principalement dans le monde juif et ethiopien, a partir des textes bibliques’, Traduccio de la paralua: miscellania Guiu Camps, a cura de F. Raurell et al. (Barcelona, 1993), pp. 307–324; J. Lassner, Demonizing the Queen of Sheba: Boundaries of Gender and Culture in Postbiblical Judaism and Medieval Islam (Chicago and London, 1993); also Pieters, op. cit., pp. 25–26, on favourable presentations of the Queen of Sheba in medieval Christian iconography – as a blonde! Her face appears to have been painted black at a later date. Pieters does not refer to this irony. See J. Devisse and M. Mollat, The Image of the Black in Western Art, Vol. 2 (New York, 1979), pp. 34–37. 9 According to one theory, Cushan was the leader of a nomadic black tribe from Egypt and that settled in southern Eretz Israel. Compare also Habakkuk 3: 7 and II Chronicles 14: 8, 21: 16. See also entries ‘Cushan’ and ‘Cushan-rishathaim’ in Encyclopedia Mikra’it (Bible Encyclopedia), Vol. 4, pp. 70–73, and the Judaica, Vol. 5, p. 1175. In any case, combining ‘Cushan’ with ‘rishathaim’ created an immediately negative association. See BT Sanhedrin 105a and, following these, Rashi and Abarbanel (Commentary on Judg. 3: 8): ‘Cushan-rishathaim got his name because of his evil deeds’. However, the reference appears to be to the second rather than the first part of his name. By contrast, Emanuel of Rome uses the expression in the sense of black and evil. See above, Chapter 2, note 97 and in Jacob ben Elazar below, Chapter 6, note 66. In the treatise of R. Yedayah Badrashi of the thirteenth century, Ohev ha-Nashim (Lover of Women), a reaction to Judah ben Shabtai’s Woman Hater (Chapter 2, note 88 above), appears a tale about the king Cushan-rishathaim who married a wicked woman. This serves as an anchor for the traditional debate on the nature of women, when the black Ben Akhran presents the misogynist’s view. The text contains no reference at all to characteristics of the black, except for the unexplained use of these particular names. The full text appears in Tif’eret Sevah, an anniversary volume marking Yom Tov Lipmann Zunz’s 90th birthday (Berlin, 1884), pp. 1–19. 10 See Sanders, op. cit., p. 48, and the subject in general in R.A. Bennett, ‘Africa and the Biblical Period’, Harvard Theological Review 64 (1971), pp. 483–500; E. Ullendorf, Ethiopia and the Bible (London, 1968); and the entries ‘Cush’, ‘Cushi’, in the Bible Encyclopedia as well as Pieters on favourable remarks about the black in biblical literature, ibid., p. 24. These are essentially correct, but he no doubt exaggerates when he claims a culture with ‘a love or preference for things Ethiopian’. Elsewhere, however, he accepts uncritically the judgemental interpretation of Jeremiah’s ‘Can the Ethiopian change his skin’ (ibid., pp. 195–196) and of the

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poetess’s words in Song of Songs: ‘Look not at me’ (ibid., p. 61). The biblical usage here was neutral, even positive, as previously explained: Pieters is not even aware that this is a later commentary. See also Snowden’s survey, Before Color Prejudice, pp. 44–46. Snowden assumes that Miriam and Aaron complained about Moses’s wife because she was black, ibid., p. 44. Such a conclusion in no way derives from the literal Bible text. Snowden, too, compares Jeremiah’s ‘Can the Ethiopian change his skin’ with the Latin adage, drawing the same conclusion from both, a mistaken one in my opinion, ignoring the negative judgemental aspects of the Latin, which are entirely absent in Jeremiah. See also Afro-American commentary in C.H. Felder, ed., Stoney the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation (Minneapolis, 1991). 11 See e.g. J. Wegner, Chattel or Person? The Status of Women in the Mishnah (New York, 1988).

4 In the literature of the Sages: ‘Ugly and black’ 1 Recently on this matter, additional bibliography of J. Shavit in ‘What is Africa in the Talmud? A Short Voyage in Imaginary Geography’, in Y. Ben Artzi, J. Bartal and A. Reiner, eds., Nof Moladeto, Mehkarim Geografiim shel Eretz-Israel u-be-Toldoteiah (Scenes of his Country, Geographical and Historical Studies on Eretz Israel), in honour of Joshua ben Arieh (Jerusalem, 2000), pp. 75–91. See also David Ganz’s remark that Africa in the Talmud does not relate to the continent, but to another place; see below, Chapter 7, note 40. 2 See Homer’s Odyssey, translated by E. Rees (New York, 1960), book I, p. 4: ‘the faroff Ethiopians, remotest of men – some live where Hyperion sets, some where he rises’. For his distinction between the two groups of Ethiopians, see Chapter 5, notes 56–58 below; Chapter 6, notes 30–33; also H.C. Baldery, The Unity of Mankind in Greek Thought (Cambridge, 1965), pp. 19, 22. 3 Baldery, op. cit., p. 18; Halevi, World of the Aggadah, p. 8; see Chapter 2, note 79 above. Compare with Ovid’s Metamorphoses 2: 235–247: ‘The Aethiops then turned black, so men believe / As heat summoned their blood too near the skin. / Then was Sahara’s dusty desert formed, / All water scorched away. Then the sad nymphs / Bewailed their pools and springs.’ See below, Chapter 5, note 16. 4 Baldery, op. cit., p. 10. 5 Sanders, op. cit., pp. 47–48. For height imagery see Chapter 3, note 5 above, with cross-references. 6 Baldery, op. cit., p. 17. 7 Ibid., p. 33. See also Pieters, op. cit., pp. 23–24, and Hall, op. cit., pp. 139–143, 172–174. 8 Ibid., Chapter 2. Also Pieters, ibid., p. 31. See below as well. 9 Evans, op. cit., pp. 25–27. For the development of ancient Greek cultural attitudes to the barbarians, see Hall, op. cit., in particular pp. 3–13. 10 Davis, Problem of Slavery, op. cit., pp. 488–489. Sanders, op. cit., p. 524 and note 18, with additional bibliography. 11 Thompson, op. cit., pp. 45–46, Alkoshi, op. cit., p. 255. 12 These are simply examples, though in my opinion representative ones. For Petronius, see Sanders, op. cit., pp. 48–52; Baldeson, op. cit., p. 217. As for Lucian, see Hephrasitus 41, and also The Dancer 75, quoted in Halevi, op. cit., p. 28. As for Horace, see Hunter, ‘Othello and Colour Prejudice’, op. cit. On the claim that white skin suits a woman, but not a man, see Thompson, op. cit., p. 132; Baldson, op. cit., pp. 215–216. On a medium shade rather than white skin as the ideal, see below, Chapter 5, Section II. On Ethiopika see Sanders, op. cit. Davis, op. cit., p. 65, gives as an example a similar story about a black slave praised by his Roman master because

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while the sun had blackened his skin, his soul was white. Westermann offers this as proof that while Roman society was sensitive to class differences, it was totally colour blind. See W.L. Westermann, The Slave Systems of Greek and Roman Antiquity (Philadelphia, 1955), pp. 35, 104. Davis justifiably denies that this is an example, and he derives the same conclusions as we do. See also Thompson’s treatment of this motif, op. cit., pp. 40, 43, 103–104, and Balsdon, p. 219. See below disputes among scholars over this question. Compare the claim of a black Muslim poet and the English poet William Blake, below, Chapter 5, note 5. The same claim has been found among medieval Jewish scholars, see above, Chapter 2, Section III. On Pliny and Heliodorus, see Sanders, op. cit., pp. 49–50. 13 Urbach, ibid. On Snowden’s analysis of the writings of the church fathers, op. cit., pp. 188–200. By contrast, see Thompson’s analysis, op. cit., pp. 134–136. Pieters was not even aware that the Latin translation of Song of Songs was a commentary that changes the meaning of the literal text, op. cit., p. 61. Similarly, he was unaware that Jeremiah’s ‘Can the Black change his skin’ was originally a description, its judgemental significance added later, op. cit., pp. 195–196. As for the Aggadic Midrashim of the Sages, see Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, Section IV above. See also E. Isaac, ‘Genesis, Judaism and the “Sons of Ham” ’, Slavery and Abolition 1 (1980), p. 11. Isaac accepts Snowden’s interpretation uncritically. For criticism of Isaac’s method of analysing Midrashic texts, see below. On the Christian approach, see also Hunter, op. cit. See also Dante’s use of this biblical image in The Divine Comedy, Paradiso 27: 136–138. See H.D. Austin, ‘Black but Comely’, Philosophical Quarterly 15 (1936), pp. 352–357. 14 There is evidence of this possibility in the Aggadot analysed below. On references to slavery in rabbinic literature, see E.E. Urbach, ‘Laws on Slavery as a Source of Social History of the Second Temple and Talmudic Periods’, Zion 25 (1960), in Hebrew, pp. 141–189. Urbach declares that enslaved aliens were very common in Eretz Israel from the Hasmonean period to the Bar Kokhba rebellion. Given the increase in black slavery in the Greek–Hellenistic–Roman world of the time, one assumes there were black slaves among them. Urbach does not relate to that possibility nor the evidence of it. See below. See also Evans, op. cit., p. 22, and notes. Both Klausner and Baron state that black slavery was accepted in Herodian times and that black concubines were preferred, though they do not document this. See J. Klausner, ‘The Economy of Judea in the Period of the Second Temple’, in M. Avi-Yona et al., eds, The Herodian Period, Vol. 7 of The World History of the Jewish People, edited by C. Roth (Jerusalem, 1975), p. 194; S.W. Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews (New York and Philadelphia, 1966), Vol. 2 (1969), p. 238. As to the Sages’ awareness of black involvement in the life of the Roman Empire, see e.g. the report on black soldiers in the imperial army: Psikta de-Rav Kahana, edited by J.J. Mandelbaum (Newark, NJ, 1962), pp. 89–90: ‘And the evil empire even recruits soldiers from every people. One Samaritan (cuti) comes and enslaves, as [the empire] enslaved his whole people, one black (cushi) comes and enslaves, as [the empire] enslaved his whole people.’ (In Bereshit Rabbah 76: 5 there is a more general version that does not mention the peoples, including blacks, whom the Romans enlist: ‘This evil empire recruits soldiers from all the peoples of the world’. See note 61 below.) On the strengthening of negative stereotypes as a result of closer contact with the other, see the opposite contention in Thompson, op. cit., pp. 117–118, that the more closely one is acquainted, and the more details one knows about the group of ‘others’, in this case the blacks, the less likely one is to generalize and to be negatively judgemental, and stereotypes will weaken. I am not sure that reality affirms the theory. Indeed Thompson himself states as he sums up the book (p. 159) that in modern society the opposite is true as regards the black: the closer the contact, the stronger negative stereotypes become, but in his view, this was not so in Roman times, particularly

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among the lower classes. Since his chapter is based on an analysis of rabbinic sources, one should note the methodological problem. The Aggadic Midrashim were composed over a long period, from the second century (Sifra, Sifri etc.) to the early Middle Ages (Tanhuma etc.). Changing times changed views in various areas. However, it is impossible and indeed irrelevant to order the discussion chronologically. It is impossible, because there are still differences of opinion as to the exact time when these Midrashim were composed, edited and compiled and it is generally accepted that later ones include a large amount of much earlier material, so it is difficult to ascertain what precedes what. Moreover, it is irrelevant because of the unanimity in rabbinic opinion on this subject, as will be shown in detail later, so that the difference in time is of no real significance. Hence expressions regarding the black image in rabbinic literature will be discussed for the period as a whole, in accordance with their contexts, deliberately ignoring chronology. This is relevant here only in relation to outside influences on later Midrashic literature, such as those of the Koran. See below, Chapter 5, note 8. Only Aggadic Midrashim that we know with certainty were composed after the early Middle Ages (after the eleventh century) and contain new expressions on the subject (and these are few) will be discussed in Chapter 6. See below. 15 For Philo, see S. Belkin, Midrashei Philon (Philo’s Midrashim), Vol. 1 (New York, 1989), pp. 100, 216–221. The same phenomenon is evident in Josephus Flavius, Antiquities 1: 2, 6. With that, Philo interpreted the story of Moses’s black wife allegorically, see below note 75. However, the problem may have been not that the wife was black, but the possibility that Moses had two wives, which was incompatible with Philo’s view that Moses set aside material vanities. See below. On Potiphar’s wife, see below, note 55. As for Philo and Flavius, this may show not only that the negative view of the black was a later development, but that Hellenistic-Jewish literature expresses itself differently from that of the Sages. However, since both contain the same images of the black, one assumes that chronology was the dominant factor. 15a Satlow, who recently examined the Sages’ attitude to expressions of human sexuality, concluded that those of the Eretz Israel Sages, appearing in JT, are systemically closer to those of the Hellenistic–Roman cultural world than those of the Babylonian Sages, whose attitude differed on various points, and was influenced by a cultural milieu of which we know little: Satlow, Testing the Dish, op. cit., pp. 315–316, 331. The attitude to blacks, despite parallels with the attitude to women, is more complex, most expressions of it appearing in the Aggadic Midrashim of BT, and hardly any in JT, though it is assumed that most Aggadic Midrashim in BT came from an Eretz Israel source. See Shinan, op. cit., p. 15. In any case, in my opinion there was certainly a clear influence of late Hellenistic–Roman culture, and the assumption that most Aggadic Midrashim in BT originated in Eretz Israel simply reinforces that view. 16 G.H. Beardsley, The Negro in Greek and Roman Civilization: A Study of the Ethiopian Type (Baltimore, MD, 1929). For Thompson’s criticism of this and other studies, see his Chapter 1, op. cit. 17 Snowden, op. cit., p. 180. In his later book too, Before Color Prejudice (1983), he goes back to this view. See Thompson’s criticism of Snowden’s claim, ibid., Chapter 1, esp. pp. 27, 42–43, 45, 54–55. See the short but telling criticism of Snowden in Cohen (note 54 below), p. 51, note 17. See also above the Davis–Westermann argument on this question. Pieters gives a brief argument similar to Snowden’s, claiming that ancient culture – biblical, Greek and Roman – expressed a positive attitude to blacks, op. cit., pp. 24, 29. According to him, the point of change for the worse was the rise of Christianity. Hence Pieters identifies the Aggadic Midrashim unfavourable to blacks as medieval, rather than from the later period of the ancient world (op. cit., p. 44), to fit his theory. He relies uncritically on secondary sources,

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18 19 20

21

22 23

24

25 26 27 28

on Isaac (see criticism of his theories in Chapter 5, note 14 below). He also pushes the point of change in Jewish sources forward to the Middle Ages. Apparently, while Pieters seeks to absolve classical culture of ‘racism’, Snowden, who had clearly Christian interests at heart, tries to rehabilitate early Christianity, and in his view the change came in early modern times. Snowden, op. cit., p. 180. Thompson, op. cit., throughout the book and in the conclusion. Balsdon, op. cit., stresses the ethnocentricity of the Romans regarding other peoples and cultures throughout his book. For the attitude to blacks, see esp. pp. 215–219. For the claim that Judaism influenced its Hellenistic and Roman surroundings, see L. Swindler, Women in Judaism: The Status of Women in Formative Judaism (New Jersey, 1976), pp. 7–9, 22–24, 167–169; T. Friedman, ‘The Shifting Role of Women from the Bible to the Talmud, Judaism 36 (1987), pp. 479–487; L.L. Brunner, From Eve to Esther: Rabbinic Reconstructions of Biblical Women (Louisville, KY, 1994), pp. 17–18, note 4. See above, notes 54–55 and below, Chapter 4, Section III. Comparing Jewish and Roman sources, one notes that while the Hellenistic–Roman world view finds both written and iconographic expression, for familiar reasons the Jewish view is expressed in writing only. But interpretation is even more difficult with iconography than with written sources. See this methodological problem in Thompson, op. cit., p. 25. The first Jewish iconographic sources I know of to depict blacks are the Rothschild mahzor produced in Italy in the late fifteenth century, and the Venetian Haggadah, early seventeenth century. See below, Chapter 7, Section IV. Thompson, op. cit., pp. 100–101. See Evans, op. cit., above, pp. 26–27; Sanders, ‘The Hamatic Hypothesis, Its Origin and Functions in Time Perspective’, Journal of African History 10 (1969), pp. 521–532, and others. See Isaac’s criticism, op. cit., in particular p. 16, note 39. He notes rightly that some scholars (like E.R. Sanders) do not distinguish as they should between rabbinic and medieval sources, though he himself makes the same methodological error in failing to differentiate between biblical and rabbinic sources. See below for criticism of Isaac’s interpretation of relevant texts. Isaac, op. cit., note 39. Recent studies are in my view quite apologetic. See D.H. Aaron, ‘Early Rabbinic Exegesis on Noah’s Son Ham and the So-Called “Hamatic Myth” ’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 63 (1993), pp. 721–759; D.M. Goldenberg, ‘The Curse of Ham: A Case of Rabbinic Racism?’, in C. West and J. Salzman, eds, Struggles in the Promised Land: Towards a History of Black–Jewish Relations in the United States (New York, 1997), pp. 21–53; B. Braude, ‘The Sons of Noah and the Construction of Ethnic and Geographical Identities in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods’, William and Mary Quarterly 54 (1997), pp. 103–142, esp. 129–130. See also a recent master’s degree thesis presenting a far more balanced picture: J. Schorsch, ‘The Black Mirror: Tracing Blackness and Otherness in Premodern Jewish Thought’, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA (1995). B. Vider, ‘On the Blessings “Gentile-Slave-Woman”, “Ignoramus” and “Beast” ’, Sinai 85 (1979), in Hebrew, pp. 97–115. See below, Chapter 5, Section III. M. Dorman, Manasseh ben Israel (Tel Aviv, 1989), p. 130. See below Chapter 7, note 46. See also the preceding Gemara (Bekhorot 44b) on the argument over rejecting one ‘whose looks are black (hashuhin)’, and whether this refers to an actual black. The Mishnah here lists the defects that bar a priest from performing sacerdotal functions. The discussion is about a defect of the testicles, and relates to the meaning of ‘crushed testicles’ (Lev. 21:20). It is explained by a system of commentary known as ‘take away, add and interpret’, i.e. R. Hanina arrived at an exegetic solution by

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substituting the last letter from the Hebrew (‡) for ‘crushed’ (maruah) with the first letter (à) from ‘testicles’ (ashace), and vice versa, and the result – two words meaning ‘whose looks are black’ (she’maraiv hashuhim). The next question is whether this means an actual black. One Sage thought it did, while others thought that R. Hanina was not referring to a black, but to one whose complexion was darker than the norm and thus identified as a defect: the black’s skin, after all, is natural, so cannot be designated as a defect. In any case, skin darker than the norm is marked as a defect. Moreover the discussion of the dark-skinned individual in general and the black in particular relates to defective sex organs, which fits in well with the accepted stereotypes. The Aramaic tafu’ah, used here for dark skin, also designates a moist state (e.g. in BT Berakhot 25a). In certain places rabbinic literature links ‘especially dark skin’ and the description of the black as flat-footed, seemingly because, in the tropical climate, he has to walk in damp places. See below, Chapter 5, note 17. 29 See above, Chapter 2, p. 39. See also use of the story in The Merchant of Venice, Act I, Scene 3, op. cit., and in the context of the play’s colour metaphors, ibid. (notes to the Hebrew edition), p. 148. 30 See another version in Bamidbar Rabbah 9: 34: ‘ It is this one, who has met another man and set her eyes upon him, and while she carries on intercourse with her husband, her heart is with him. The king of the Arabs put this question to R. Akiva: “I am a black (cushi) and my wife is a black (cushit), yet she gave birth to a white (lavan) son. Shall I kill her for having played the harlot while lying with me?” Said the other: “Are the figures painted in your house black (shehorot) or white (levanot)?” “White,” said he. The other assured him: “When you had intercourse with her she fixed her eyes upon the white figures and bore a child like them. If you are surprised at such a possibility, study the case of our father Jacob’s flock, which were influenced in their conception by the rods; as it says, ‘And the flocks conceived at the sight of the rods’ (Gen. 30:39).” The king of the Arabs acknowledged the justice of R. Akiva’s argument.’ See Preuss, op. cit., p. 392. This portion of Bamidbar Rabbah is full of negative images of the colour black. See above, and note 57. For ‘white figures’ see the story of Rabban Gamaliel, BT Avodah Zarah 43a. For significance of the colours in the Bible story, see Brenner’s detailed discussion of biblical colour concepts, op. cit., pp. 83–86. A revised version of the story appears in Jewish musar (morality) literature at the end of the Middle Ages in R. Judah Keltz’s Sefer ha-Musar (photo rep. Jerusalem, 1973), a shortened version of R. Israel Elnekaveh’s Sefer Menorat ha-Maor (Book of the Lighted Lamp). That version contains some instructive innovations (p. 171): ‘And they already brought that lady (matronita) who gave birth to a black (shahor) son, and she and the king so white and fair. The king thought to slay her, until there came one who said, perhaps she was thinking of a black (shahor) man during the sexual act. Indeed, they looked and found black pictures and icons in the chamber where the act took place, and she said that she used to look at the pictures and think about them at the time of coition, and this is the story of the speckled rods.’ This version appears closer to the one in Bamidbar Rabbah, since both tell of a king and his queen, while Bereshit Rabbah is about an ordinary husband and wife. The story connects as well with the biblical one of Jacob and the flocks of Laban, which is the significance of ‘story of the speckled rods’, otherwise puzzling. But the author reversed matters. While both versions of the Midrashic source talk of a black couple to whom a white child was born, here a black child is born to parents who fit the white stereotypes: they are handsome, and a king and his lady to boot. It is like Hellenistic and Roman versions (note 31 below), which may have influenced it, an example of the ancient belief, documented several times in the Talmud, that if one thinks of sin during coitus, the child will be defective – and the black child is an example. See also the peculiar discussion in BT Baba Kama 80b concerning the

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differences between a white (hivrah) and black (‘uchmah) cat, and the status of a black cat born to a white one. 31 For examples from Plutarch and Aristotle, see A.A. Halevi, op. cit., pp. 417–418. For the rhetorical device, see Balsdon, op. cit., p. 18. For the story in Heliodorus, see Sanders, Lost Tribes, pp. 50–51; Preuss, op. cit., p. 392. The motif appears in Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus as well (Act IV, Scene 2), where the birth of a black infant to a white mother is described in a manner so harshly negative. See also in European gynocological literature, Y. Bar-On, Ro’ot et ha-Nolad-leda re-Yelud likrat ha-Idan ha-Moderni (Haifa and Tel Aviv, 2001), p. 136. Compare the motif of the birth of the black child to a white (Jewish) woman in Ragen, op. cit., in particular pp. 196–197, 272–273. 32 However, the Sages described Lavan negatively as ‘burnt white with wickedness’ (Bereshit Rabbah 60: 7) and parallels. See Isaac, ibid., p. 15, note 25. 33 Isaac, ibid. 34 See analysis on p. 97 below. 35 Contrast the story in Bamidbar Rabbah 2: 26: ‘A story is told of Simeon, son of Kimhith, that he once went for an interview with the king of the Arabians, and a streak of saliva from the latter’s mouth spurted on to the former’s garments and they declared him unclean.’ Since the Arab king is identified in another version as a black, perhaps his blackness is linked to his ability to defile. In both versions of our story, however, the black husband is positively presented. 36 See the argument as to why a ‘black’ ethrog is rejected, BT Sukkah 36a: ‘An ethrog which is swollen, decaying, pickled, boiled, and Black (cushi), white or speckled, is invalid. … A Black (cushi) ethrog, is invalid, But has it not been taught, If it is Black (cushi), it is valid, if it is like a Black (cushi) it is invalid? – Abaye answered, In our Mishnah also we learned of one that is like a Black (cushi). Raba answered, There is no difficulty, The former refers to us (i.e. Babylonia), the latter to them (i.e. Eretz Israel).’ It seems that the Mishnah rejects the black, but the baraita only what resembles the black. The technical Halachic context of the issue does necessarily make it an expression of a negative attitude to the black, since the ‘black’ ethrog is not necessarily rejected because it is inferior, but because it does not meet the ‘objective’ characteristics of an acceptable ethrog. Nonetheless, in the context of the numerous other remarks in rabbinic literature about blacks, here too blackness indicates the non-normative. See Rabbenu Hananel: ‘He who resembles a black man (cushi) appears to be unacceptable, but the black (cushi) ethrog is acceptable.’ Rashi, with cultural sensitivity, remarks that the Mishnah says ‘The black (cushi) ethrog is unacceptable’ because Eretz Israel was not familiar with Africa, while in Babylonia it was stated ‘The black (cushi) is acceptable (but) that which resembles him is not’, because they knew blacks, against the background of the biblical statement that Nimrod son of Cush settled in the land of Shinar. See above, Chapter 3, p. 55. Rashi appears to have understood the psychological fact that the more the other is perceived as alien, and is unknown, the more fears he arouses and the more necessary it becomes to show him as inferior. See Chapter 2 above. 37 See Preuss, op. cit., p. 260. Indeed, English scholars of early modern times interpreted the ban on sexual relations in the ark as dictates of modesty: Ham defied the ban so his skin became black. See Allen, op. cit., p. 77; Sanders, op. cit., pp. 223–224. 37a As to the raven’s punishment, see Preuss, op. cit., p. 460. For the argument that the expression ‘suffered in his skin’ indicates an injury of the sex organ, see H. EilbergSchwartz, God’s Phallus and Other Problems for Men and Monotheism (Boston, 1994), Chapter 4. The author relates to the body of sexual inferences in the Midrashic story of Noah and his sons, but not to skin colour.

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37b R. Margaliot, Margalit ha-Yam, Masekhet Sanhedrin (Jerusalem, 1958), Vol. 2, p. 194. Braude, op. cit., p. 130, note 60. 38 Alkoshi, op. cit., pp. 32, 113, 400. See also above, Chapter 1, note 8. See also the parallel in Jewish literature. See also the highly ambivalent attitude to the raven in Bereshit Rabbah 33: 5: ‘And he [Noah] sent forth a raven (Gen. 8:7) … thus it is written, He sent darkness, and it was dark (Ps. 105: 28)’. One should note that the Hebrew orev (raven) may derive from erev (evening) when darkness comes. See Brenner, op. cit., p. 97. See the development of this motif in Midrashic literature: Vayikrah Rabbah 19: 1 and Midrash Shemuel 5: 2. In both places using the raven as the embodiment of darkness and cruelty receives a positive meaning in the context of Torah study, when the scholar studies long hours, deep into the night, and is willing to be cruel to his children and neglect them in order to devote himself completely to the study of the Torah. BT Ketubot 49b, on the other hand, when discussing the fathers’ duty to feed their children, brings as an example Psalm 147: 9: ‘He giveth to the beast his food And to the young ravens which cry.’ A distinction is being made here between the attitude towards white and black ravens. Rashi explains that parent ravens neglect their young offspring because they are white, and they do not recognize them. When they grow older the young ravens turn black, and their parents recognize them and take care of their needs. Here the black is preferred to the white, but this for specific empirical reasons, not from metaphoric reasons. Bible commentary of the Middle Ages argued that the prohibition against eating unclean fowl (like the raven) is the result of the unwholesome psycho-physical effects in increasing the amount of black bile. See Nahmanides’s commentary on Leviticus 11: 13: ‘For the mark of unclean fowl is that they are bird of prey, and every bird of prey is always unclean. And as our Sages of blessed memory said, the Torah distanced us from it because its blood is hot, it is cruel, black (shahor) and rough, and creates the hot black bile (marah shehorah) that puts cruelty into the heart.’ Here the full metaphor of the colour black is related to the bird: the unclean raven is black and eating it is forbidden because it would cause an increase of black bile. For the motif of the black raven in Latin literature, see Thompson, op. cit., p. 36 and note 39 below. For its use in Islamic culture, see B. Lewis, Race and Color in Islam (New York, 1971), p. 68. Lewis reports that a certain caliph in the early Middle Ages distinguished between white and black eunuchs. The black ones were called ‘the ravens’ (ghurabiyya), obviously because of the traditional image of the black raven. See Young Gregg for identification of Satan with the raven and other black animals in medieval Christian culture, op. cit., pp. 32–33. Compare with the same imagery in connection with the black in nineteenth-century American literature. See Levin, op. cit., p. 32. 39 Metamorphoses 2: 534–541, ‘The raven once had been a silvery bird, With snowwhite wings, pure as the spotless doves. … His ruin was his tongue; his chattering tongue / Turned the white colour to its opposite.’ 40 See an additional version of the Midrash in Vayikrah Rabbah 5: 17, referring to the punishment of Canaan in general, but without mentioning slavery or blacks. For Nimrod and the rabbinic transformation of his image, see above, Chapter 3 and note 6. The associative link between Nimrod and Cush appears in Bereshit Rabbah 44: 4 (with a parallel version in BT Eruvin 52a) in the Midrash on: ‘And it came to pass in the days of Amraphel king of Shinar’ (Gen. 14: 1). Both are portrayed as rulers of Shinar. Nimrod is represented in Genesis 10: 8 as the son of Cush. Cush is linked to Amraphal through the etymological association with afelah (darkness in Hebrew), referring to Cush and the darkness of his skin, with all its negative connotations, and to Amraphel by means of the root of his name, which, according to the Midrashic author, refers to his evil deeds. There is a parallel process regarding the images of Jacob and Esau. While the literal Bible text is highly enigmatic, and it can be read

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41

42 43

44

45

with Esau as the positive character and Jacob the negative one, the Midrashic authors reversed matters and based a purely theo-ethnic dichotomy on it. For Esau as ‘black’ or ‘red’ as against ‘white’ Jacob, see Chapter 2 above, notes 62–64. See Maimonides’s description of pagan rites in his letter to Ovadiah the proselyte, Iggrot, op. cit., Vol. 2, p. 239. See also the meticulous caution practised in the Temple to avoid exposing the sex organs, even accidentally and unintentionally, Mekilta de’Rabbi Ishmael, Jethro 11. See discussion in Isaac, op. cit., pp. 4–5. Mekilta de’Rabbi Ishmael, Beshalackh 3: ‘And some say I shall draw my sword means I shall empty my sword, that is, will lie with their males. … And because his [Pharaoh’s] heart filled with pride, God, blessed be He, humiliated him and shamed him (bizuhu) in the eyes of all the nations.’ See the meaning of bizuhu in Satlow, op. cit., p. 218, and pp. 203–205, the general discussion of Ham’s sin and punishment. A similar-sounding Aramaic word (sheabzui) is used to signify testicles. See Shinan, Targum ve-Aggadah Bo (The Targum and the Aggadah) (Jerusalem, 1993), p. 150. See synopsis of the discussion of Ham’s sin in Abarbanel’s commentary on Genesis, p. 159: ‘And our Sages have various opinions. Some say he castrated him and some say he mated with him (rib’o), from whence R. Abraham Ibn Ezra took what he wrote, that there may be another disgrace (kalon) that is not mentioned in the Torah.’ The interpretation of Christian theologians of the Renaissance and early modern times was that Ham either castrated Noah or made him impotent in some other way. One interpretation even stated that ‘to see your father’s nakedness’ meant committing incest with one’s mother, so that Canaan was the result of incest between Ham and his mother, Noah’s wife, and was punished for it. See Allen, op. cit., pp. 77–78. There was even a medieval Christian tradition claiming that eventually a fourth son, called Jonathan, was born to Noah. See S. Gero, ‘The Legend of the Fourth Son of Noah’, Harvard Theological Review 73 (1980), pp. 321–330. Isaac’s claim that, within limits, mefuham (blackened) may be understood as shahor (black) is surely an unnecessary understatement. Aaron and Braude as well seek to weaken the meaning, which I consider unambiguous, of ‘blackened’. The obvious word play, Ham-mefuham, makes no difference whatever to the perfectly clear meaning, which is ‘blackening’, in the negative context of dirt, humiliation, low socio-economic status and idol worship. See e.g. Tosefta Shabbat 5: 13; BT Berakhot 28a. Compare with the story of R. Akiba’s encounter with the blackened man, Kallah Rabbah 80: 2, and parallels. In thoroughly stereotypical fashion, the sinner tormented in hell is described as entirely blackened. The Vitry Mahzor contains a version of this story that describes a ghost as ‘a certain man who was naked and black (shahor) as coal (peham)’. The blackened man of the Aggadic Midrash had become an authentic black, and, stereotypically, naked as well. See the Vitry Mahzor, edited by J. Horowitz (Jerusalem, 1973), pp. 112–113. There are additional examples of the demonic significance of the colour black. See the peculiar ‘medical’ advice in BT Gittin 67b, which prescribes a special use of a black (’uchmati) hen to treat persistent fever. Also BT Berakhot 6a, in which it is suggested that if one covers one’s eyes with a powder made of the baked placenta of a black she-cat, daughter of a black she-cat (shunrarta ’uchmatah bat ’uchmatah), one will see the devils and demons which supposedly surround men all the time. The Midrashic author created no link here between drunkenness and blackening of the skin, though it existed elsewhere. See below. See parallels between the castration version, Vayikrah Rabbah 17: 5: ‘Just when Ham castrated him, Canaan suffered (lakah).’ There is no direct allusion to a change of complexion, but the word lakah points toward BT Sanhedrin 108b, ‘Ham was smitten (lakah) in his skin’, analysed above and shown there to refer to debasing the colour of the skin, or parts of it, as

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46

47

48

49 50

51

punishment for sin. See in medieval Christian culture, Young Gregg, op. cit., pp. 33, 241. See analysis of this Midrash above. See also Baba Metzia 71a, concerning a Jewish woman purchasing a slave: ‘A Hebrew slave she deems to be self-respecting (tzaniah), whereas a Canaanite slave she deems unreservedly dissolute (paritz).’ For identification of blacks with slavery, one notes that European literature once maintained that the black is by nature idle and lazy, the result of living in a tropical climate where unaided nature could supply his needs. Slavery was thus justified as an educational means of habituating the black to work. See Pieters, op. cit., p. 199. See analysis of S. Kreuss, Paras ve-Romi ba-Talmud u-ve-Midrashim (Persia and Rome in the Talmud and the Midrashim) (Jerusalem, 1948), p. 65. Kreuss ignored the issue of Canaan’s blackened skin, and the fact that the story of the king determining reputation only serves to ornament the story. Negative designation of ‘Cush the Benjamite’ was unusual in Midrashic literature, which generally identified him positively with King Saul. See below, notes 55, 68. For the changed image of Nimrod, see note 40 above. BT Eruvin 95b discusses the positive time-related commandments and women, and the Sages did not relate to Michal being a ‘daughter of Cushi’. The reference is obviously to Michal daughter of Saul, whom a verse in Psalms identifies as ‘Cush the Benjamite’, hence the name. Isaac pounces on this as on a treasure, as reinforcement for his apologetics, which maintain that the Sages took an egalitarian and respectful approach to the black. However, such a view is unfounded, since there is no reference whatever to a black woman, but to Michal daughter of Saul. R.L. Cohen, ‘Before Israel: The Canaanites as Other in Biblical Tradition’, in Silberstein and Cohen, op. cit., pp. 74–90. Op. cit. I disagree with Isaac (pp. 4–5) that the Sages interpreted this text as they did to make a distinction from Canaan, towards whom they were negative, and Cush, to whom they appear to have related positively. Isaac deduces from the fact that only Canaan of all Ham’s sons was punished, while the others, including Cush, were not, that the Sages’ attitude towards black peoples was positive and that they were ‘freed’ from Canaan’s punishment. However, it was the Bible that states that only Canaan and his descendants were punished, while the other brothers, including Cush, were not – not the Sages. The Bible does not so much as mention skin colour, as shown previously. The Midrashic authors introduced this motif, with all its related prejudices, to the story of Canaan’s punishment. They either ignored the image of Cush, or combined it with their new theories of Canaan as black, as previously noted. This is just another example of how Isaac confuses the Bible sources with the Midrashim of the Sages, which reflect a different world in many respects. See BT Sanhedrin 91a and parallels in Vayikrah Rabbah 17: 5; Bamidbar Rabbah 17: 5 and Mekilta de’Rabbi Ishmael Bo 18. In all of them, they are identified as Canaanites who received Africa as a substitute for Eretz Israel, but in this particular context the reference appears not to be to blacks but to the Phoenicians who settled in North Africa. Even the Bible identifies the Phoenicians as Canaanites (e.g. Isa. 23), and the Sages follow these sources. In keeping with Hellenistic–Roman culture, they identified Africa with North Africa in particular, since that area was very well known at the time, while the southern parts of the continent remained shrouded in mist. See evidence of R. Akiva’s visit to Africa in connection with his travels in various parts of the Roman Empire (BT Rosh Hashanah 26a and Sanhedrin 93b, Menahot 34b). Here too the reference is obviously to North Africa. The Phoenicians as we know established their empire in northern Africa, in what is modern Tunisia. See Isaac, op. cit., p. 14, note 8, and recently in Shavit, note 1 above, in particular p. 77, with its additional bibliography. The Sages, however, generally identified Canaan as one whose skin had blackened, and who had become an eternal slave, i.e.

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53 54

55

56 57

the stereotype of the black African. Even the BT Sanhedrin version, identifying the Canaanites with the Phoenicians, quotes the Bible story on the punishment of Canaan, on which the Sages based this series of Midrashim. Thus even if in certain contexts the Sages identified the African Canaan with the Phoenicians, he generally served as an archetype of the black slave. In this way the motif found its way into medieval thinking, as we note at length later. In any case, in this context too, Canaan – Phoenician or black – is geographically identified with Africa. Isaac, op. cit., p. 25. This is the commentary of R. David Luria in Lithuania in 1852: ‘To Shem and his sons, black (shehorim) and handsome (na’im), the language of the Bible (Song of Songs 1: 5) says black and comely, and Israel are the sons of Shem who are called black and comely. And in Chapter 2 of Negaim it is said that the Children of Israel are like boxwood, neither black (like the cushi son of Ham mentioned there) nor white (like the German son of Jaffet mentioned there), but of an intermediate [shade]. And how come they are not black (shehorim)? Since white (levanim) [people] like the above-mentioned sons of Jaffet cannot be called black. He reiterated thus “and handsome” which means that blackness (shaharut) for them is associated with being comely (navah) (which means intermediate) and not like the skin of the sons of Ham described above.’ Isaac ignores this fact completely, presenting the Sages’ position as a biblical one instead of as a commentary. See op. cit. See R. David Kimhi’s commentary below, Chapter 6, note 91. Compare this with Isaac going to Abimelech (Gen. 26: 7–12). For analysis of the Midrash, see J. Zakovitz and A. Shinan, Avraham ve-Sarai be-Mitzra’im (Abraham and Sarai in Egypt) (Jerusalem, 1983), p. 24. See also Tanhuma, Lekh lekha, 5, Zakovitz and Shinan, ibid., p. 25, which states: ‘Sarai’s reflection in the river was as the rising sun’. Here too, beauty is clearly associated with brightness and light. See also M. Neihoff, ‘Associative Thinking in the Midrash’, Tarbiz 63 (1994), in Hebrew, pp. 339–359, as well as A. Kosman’s response, ‘More on Associative Thinking in the Midrash’, Tarbiz 63, 3 (1994), in Hebrew, pp. 443–450. While Neihof quotes the description of the Egyptians as ‘ugly and black’, she makes no reference to its significance: nor does Kosman’s response. For apocryphal versions of the Genesis story and that of Abarbanel, see above, Chapter 2, note 61. Shinan’s World of Aggadic Literature, op. cit., pp. 56–6, discusses the apocrypha text. The author points out that nowhere in rabbinic literature is there so detailed a description of Sarah’s beauty (nor of any other woman’s). The same claim is made in the introduction to the printed edition of the apocryphal Genesis scroll, op. cit., p. 22. The description no doubt reflects the Hellenistic–Roman ideal of female beauty, as the author of the scroll perceived it. S.J.D. Cohen, ‘The Beauty of Flora and the Beauty of Sarai’, Helios 8 (1981), pp. 40–53, esp. pp. 45–46, refers to Sarah’s unique beauty as described in other Talmudic sources (e.g. BT Megillah 14b, Baba Batra 58a), where skin colour is not mentioned. Shoher Tov’s Midrash on Psalms, Baber edition (photo rep. Jerusalem, 1977), commentary on Psalms 7: 1. See discussion on the original biblical meaning of the verse, with reference to Aggadic Midrashim, in R.R. Hutton, ‘Cush the Benjaminite and Psalm Midrash’, Hebrew Annual Review 10 (1986), pp. 123–137. For the entire complex of stories and Midrashim on the Bible story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife, see Kugel, op. cit. This author does not refer to this Midrash, so does not deal with the significance of identifying Potiphar’s wife as a black. See also Satlow, op. cit., p. 259. For the use and interpretations of the verse, see discussion of the Torah portion Noah, above, note 47, and for the story of the black wife, below, note 68. On height, see Chapter 3, note 5 and cross-references. The Aggadic Midrashim provide another example of the complete dichotomy, though with no reference to skin colour, in Eisenstein, op. cit., p. 243, in the creation of the unborn child: ‘And what will befall this drop is at once decreed by God, blessed be He, according to His

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59

60

61

62

will: a hero or a weakling, tall or short, male or female, stupid or wise, rich or poor, but whether righteous or wicked is not decreed, as it is said, all is from God save the fear of God.’ Compare the parallel in Rashi’s commentary on BT Berakhot 33 below, Chapter 6, note 101, which refers to skin colour as well. On the bitter waters, see A. Destro, The Law of Jealousy: Anthropology of Sotah (Atlanta, 1989). Also Satlow, ‘ “Texts of Terror”: Rabbinic Texts, Speech Acts, and the Control of Mores’, Association of Jewish Studies Review 21 (1996), esp. pp. 276–285. For changing a white garment to a black one, see Satlow, op. cit., p. 278 and note 19. On the symbolism of clothing colour in general, see Chapter 2 above, Section I. See also the Mishnah, Sotah 1: 6; BT Sotah 8b. For attributing drunkenness to the black in particular, see below. See the Midrashim on the black woman who bore a white child, notes 29–31 above. On the drinking woman who will bear dark children, see S. Valler, ‘The Number Fourteen as a Literary Device in the Babylonian Talmud’, Journal for the Study of Judaism 26, 2 (1995), p. 181. The author notes that taking strong drink still belongs to the list of activities that give the unborn infant traits thought to be negative. Identifying drunkenness with the black, one whose skin is ‘dark’, in other places too, reinforces the conclusion. On use of these metaphors in rabbinic culture, see E.Z. Melamed, ‘Euphemisms and Epithets in the Mishnah’, Leshonenu 47 (1982–1983), in Hebrew, pp. 3–17; J. Nacht, ‘Euphemismes sur la femme dans la litterature rabbinique’, Revue des études juives 59 (1910), pp. 36–41; Satlow, ‘Texts of Terror’, op. cit., pp. 276, 281–285; Testing the Dish, op. cit., p. 152. Analysing the above Midrash, for some reason the author identifies white wine as inferior and red as preferable, though the dichotomy between positive and negative points in the opposite direction. See also BT Baba Batra 97b, where dark wine is called ‘black wine’. On the use of such metaphors in Greek culture see P. Dubois, Sowing the Body: Psychoanalysis and Ancient Representations of Women (Chicago, 1988). I find some of her conclusions, particularly those regarding Plato’s attitude to women, unacceptable, but her analysis of the food imagery as metaphors for sexual relations is most illuminating. M.M. Henry, ‘The Edible Woman: Athenaeus’s Concept of the Pornographic’, in A. Richlin, ed., Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome (New York and Oxford, 1992), pp. 250–268. For an example from medieval Jewish literature, see below, Chapter 6, note 72. See above, Chapter 2, note 37. See also BT Nazir 38a, on discussion of the laws about the Nazirite’s hair. Reference is made to ‘hair of the blacks (cushi’im)’, a hairstyle associated with blacks, in itself another example of the Sages’ awareness of the black presence in the Hellenistic–Roman cultural area, and of black customs. Moreover, it is another example of the black as the ultimate gentile, since growing the hair long was held to be a gentile custom forbidden to Jews. For drunkenness attributed to blacks, see ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah, op. cit., p. 174. where, in his opinion, the haste and thoughtlessness that mark the behaviour of the black bring to mind traits of the drunkard. For ibn Khaldun’s position in general, see below, Chapter 5. Elsewhere, the Sages found a causal relationship between drink and promiscuity. In the beginning of Sotah (2a), the Gemara asks why this tractate follows Nazir, rather than vice versa. The answer is that Sotah deals with promiscuity while Nazir deals with abstaining from wine. Since excessive drinking of wine frequently leads to promiscuity, the tractates are ordered as they are. See this linkage in the Sages in Satlow, Testing the Dish, pp. 150, 253. For the link between women and wine in rabbinic literature, see Waller, Nashim ve-Nashyut be-Sipure ha-Talmud (Women and Womanhood in the Talmud), op. cit., Chapter 5. For the link between drunkenness and promiscuity in Greek culture, see R.F. Sutton Jr, ‘Pornography and Persuasion on Attic Pottery’, in Richlin, Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome, op. cit., p. 8.

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62a In rabbinic literature I found only two examples of a neutral to positive attitude to the black. One is in BT Tamid, on Alexander the Great’s encounter with wise black women in Africa, see below, note 71, and in the Midrash in BT Pesahim 118b, on Psalm 68: 32: ‘Egypt is destined to bring a gift to the Messiah. He will think not to accept it from them, but the Holy one, blessed be He, will instruct him: “Accept it from them; they furnished hospitality to My children in Egypt.” Immediately, nobles shall come out of Egypt [bringing gifts]. Then Ethiopia (Cush) shall argue with herself: “If those [the Egyptians] who enslaved them are thus [treated], how much the more we, who did not enslave them!” At that time the Holy One, blessed be He, shall bid him: “Accept it from them.” Straightway Ethiopia (Cush) shall hasten to stretch out her hands unto God.’ Since this adheres to the biblical source and relates not to any contemporary phenomenon, but to the coming of the Messiah, it lacks this literature’s usually negative associations with the black. However, the Messiah is described as he who might refuse to take gifts from the Egyptians – and the Cushites. He is reprimanded by God in this Midrash, and ordered to accept their gifts willingly. See also the Schechter Genizah I, 86: ‘Said Isaiah about what is to come: a German (Germani) [white person] holds the hand of a black (cushi) [and a black] comes and holds the hand of a German, and hand in hand they come and bow down before Israel.’ The Midrash here interprets Isaiah 66: 19. This too is in a messianic context, and therefore is relatively positive. The common denominator, moreover, that links the black and the ‘German’ white person results directly from their inferiority as contrasted with Israel’s superiority. Compare with the same phenomenon in Judah Halevi (below, Chapter 5, note 50) and Elem (below, Chapter 6, note 131). Goldenberg makes much of this Midrashic passage as a convincing example of the Sages’ positive attitude to blacks, a claim that is obviously unfounded. 63 On the distinction between ‘German’ and ‘black’, see above, note 62a. Rashi indeed interpreted it as ‘German’ because Joseph had very white skin in contrast to the black Ishmaelites. Compare also Mishnah Taharot, Negaim 2: 1, where the word ‘German’ appears with the same significance. 64 See notes 8–9 above, esp. Hall’s discussion. 64a This version specifies a city woman (kartanit), while others mention a Carthaginian woman. (One Hebrew letter differentiates between the two.) The latter reading does not rule out the possibility of a Jewish woman from Carthage. If it is the correct one, it refers to a woman in North Africa, where black bondwomen would naturally have been even more common. 65 For attitudes to the other, see Chapter 2, Section III above. For the black woman on the lowest rung of the ladder, see Pieters, op. cit., p. 178. On the link between this Midrash and the Jewish–Christian debate, see Kamin, ‘Rashi, the Literal Bible Text’, op. cit., p. 250 and note 89. 66 G.L. Kelly, ‘Notes on Hegel’s “Lordship and Bondage” ’, Review of Metaphysics 19 (1966), pp. 170–182; Y. Klein, Ha-Dialektikah shel ha-Adon ve-ha-Eved (Dialectics of the Lord and the Slave) (Tel Aviv, 1978). 67 Evans, op. cit., pp. 20–21. See also S.D. Goitein’s conclusions in his A Mediterranean Society, Vol. 1 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1976), p. 135. Pieters describes a parallel in the American south where white men’s ties with black slave women not only humiliated their wives, but undermined the wife’s status in the household. Thus white wives too, not only white masters, had an interest in severe restrictions on black slaves, Pieters, op. cit., pp. 174–178. For white women’s struggle against black competitors for the heart and bed of the white master, see also medieval Hebrew literature below, Chapter 6, Section II. 68 Sifre on Numbers and Sifre Zota, H.S. Horovitz edition (Jerusalem, 1966), p. 274. Contrast with the version in Sifre, Be-ha’alotcha 97, ibid., pp. 98–99. Identifying Iscah as Sarah from the Bible was meant to strengthen the identity of the black wife

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70 71

72

as Zipporah. The Midrash describes Sarah as white and beautiful by contrast with dark, ugly Egyptian women, while Zipporah is described as in fact the opposite of the black woman, i.e. white and beautiful. For Saul as Cush the Benjamite, see note 55 above. Early and medieval Christian literature has a tradition identifying the black wife with the black and comely woman of Song of Songs. Quoted in Urbach, ‘The Homilies of the Sages and Origen’s Commentaries on the Song of Songs’, op. cit., p. 161: ‘And I marvel at you, O daughters of Jerusalem, that you shun me because of the colour of my skin. How do you not remember what is written in your own Torah about what happened to Miriam when she spoke against Moses for taking a black wife? I am black because of my dishonourable descent, but beautiful because of my repentance and my faith, because I have acknowledged the Son of God.’ Also in The Letters of Abelard and Eloise, op. cit., p. 138: ‘The bride in the Canticles, an Ethiopian (such as the one Moses took as a wife) rejoices in the glory of her special position.’ The needs of Christological commentary transform the suntanned woman of the Bible text to a black in every respect, identifying her with the black wife. See also above, Chapter 2, note 87. I know of no such link in Jewish commentary, and Abraham ibn Ezra opposes it sharply. Indeed, except for Gersonides above, Chapter 2, note 86, Jewish commentators declared the Shulamit to be sunburned and did not designate her as actually black, so had no need to identify her with the black wife. T. Rajak, ‘Moses in Ethiopia: Legend and Literature’, Journal of Jewish Studies 29 (1978), pp. 111–122; Before Color Prejudice, op. cit., pp. 53–54; A. Shinan, ‘From Artephanus to Sefer ha-Yashar: History of the Legend of Moses in Cush’, Eshkolot 2–3 (1977–1978), in Hebrew, pp. 53–67. See esp. pp. 59–60 for the argument on the biblical expression ‘black wife’ and the link between the Bible story and the Hellenistic legend of Moses’s black wife. I am not sure that the two developed separately. As to why the Sages rejected the story as it appeared in Jewish–Hellenistic literature, and similar conclusions, see op. cit., pp. 66–67. See a similar development of the Bible story on the meeting of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, Shinan, The World of Aggadic Literature, op. cit., pp. 44–46; E. Yassif, Sippur ha-Am ha-Ivri (The Hebrew Folk Tale) (Jerusalem, 1994), pp. 62–64, and Shavit (note 1 above), p. 91. See bibliography on this subject above, Chapter 3, note 8. Appears in Dan, Tales of Alexander the Great, op. cit., pp. 176–177 and Shavit, op. cit. Another version of this story appears in Vayikrah Rabbah 27:1, but here the story takes place in a place called Kartagina, which is situated ‘behind the mountains of darkness’. It may be that ‘Kartagina’ here literally means ‘The city of women (kartagini)’, In this context the story has a clear connection to matters of gender, but not to skin complexion. However, the historical Cartagho was in Africa, and this place is situated here beyond the mountains of darkness. It is perhaps not coincidental that immediately following this story a different story appears, which takes place in ‘the state of Afriki’ (which, as indicated, does not necessarily mean the Africa known to us), but this story does not relate at all to matters of gender. See e.g. Maimonides, Hilchot Talmud Torah 6: 9, on the appropriate treatment of an old man. Even if not a scholar, even if he is a gentile, he is to be honoured. His associative links to old women are a sharp contrast. He identifies serious theological errors with ‘old wives’ madness’. See the letter on the resurrection of the dead in Iggrot ha-Rambam (Letters of Maimonides), J. Shilat edition (Jerusalem, 1987), Vol. 1, p. 341. For the attitude of Roman culture, see Thompson, op. cit., p. 136. The sharply contrasting stereotypical descriptions of old men and old women are simply an extreme result of the normative difference in attitudes to men and to women. Old age is perceived as accentuating the differences between the sexes: in the man’s case it operates favourably, in the woman’s case negatively. Here too, outward physical appearance, as in the case of the ugly old woman, is a symbol of her spiritual distortion. There are many examples. See S. Shahar, Ha-Horef ha-Oteh Otanu, Ziknah

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be-Yemei ha-Beinayim (Winter Comes Upon Us, Old Age in Mediaeval Times) (Tel Aviv, 1995), pp. 62–63, 70–71. While rabbinic literature contains stories that relate negatively to old men, these are about common folk as distinguished from scholars, whose old age is always depicted positively (e.g. BT Shabbat 152a). Since this literature virtually never describes women as wise, they will never be described positively in old age. 73 Isaac, op. cit., p. 8 sees in the Midrash on the black wife proof that the Sages had a positive attitude to blacks. Obviously I disagree. These Aggadic Midrashim do not allude to the significance of Miriam’s sin. For Midrashim on Miriam, see: D. Steinmetz, ‘A Portrait of Miriam in Rabbinic Midrash’, Prooftexts 8 (1988), pp. 35–65. See also H.H. Cohen, Zekhuyot ha-Adam be-Mikrah u-ve-Talmud (Human Rights in the Bible and the Talmud (Tel Aviv, 1988), pp. 29–30. Cohen rightly points out that the Bible text does not relate negatively to taking the black wife, though he attributes Miriam’s and Aaron’s criticism to the fact that the wife was black, while this is completely absent from the literal text. Thus the text is even less ‘racist’ than he describes. His short explanation of the Midrash on the subject is right, in my opinion. Cohen notes that Maimonides cited the Hellenistic story of Moses’s marriage to a black woman in Africa. I do not know his sources, and I found no such reference in Maimonides’s writings, though medieval scholars knew the story well. See below, Chapter 6, Section III; Satlow, Testing the Dish, p. 105. This author also mistakenly assumes that the literal Bible text identifies Zipporah as the black wife, though that identification comes from the Aggadic Midrash. 74 J. Komelosh, Ha-Mikrah be-Or ha-Targum (The Bible in the Light of the Targum) (Tel Aviv, 1973), pp. 209–210. For Aramaic translations of the story of the black wife, see Shinan, Targum ve-Aggadah Bo, op. cit., p. 94. The English translations of the Aramaic versions are quoted from: The Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan ben Uzziel on the Pentateuch with the Fragments of the Jerusalem Targum, translated from the Chaldee by J.W. Etheridge (New York, 1968), pp. 275; 376–377. 74a Y. Guttmann, ha-Sifrut ha-Yehudit ha-Helenistit (Jerusalem, 1959), pp. 136–37. 75 Philo, translated by F.H. Colson and G.H. Whitaker (Cambridge, MA, 1962), Vol. I, p. 267. 76 See above, Section I. 77 Midrash Ma’asei Torah 4, Eisenstein, op. cit., p. 171, quoted in Elkoshi, op. cit., p. 113. 78 Above, notes 38–39. 79 Pieters, op. cit., pp. 15–17. As he notes elsewhere (p. 220) it is no coincidence that in feminist literature the woman is described as ‘the white slave’.

5 In the cultural world of Islam: ‘Speech in its least developed form’ 1 For identifying Slavic slavery with Canaan, see Masa’ot Benyamin me-Tudela (The Journeys of Benjamin of Tudela), edited by A. Asher (London, 1840), Vol. 1, p. 111, and notes in Vol. 2, pp. 226–229. On slaves employed by Jews, see Assaf, ‘Slave Trade in the Middle Ages’, op. cit. See also below, note 13. Assaf reports evidence of black slavery among Jews in the Islamic cultural area, though not in the Christian area in the late Middle Ages. For the latter, see C. Moskin, ‘Gentile Slaves and Servants in Medieval Ashkenaz’, Turah 1 (1989), pp. 235–245, which does not mention black slavery. 2 See Evans, op. cit., pp. 22–25. 3 Lewis, op. cit., 55–56, 100–101. Toynbee’s naive opinion indeed misled scholars. Following him, Schirmann once thought that the image of the black in the thirteenth-century Hebrew poet was Latin–Christian in origin, since according to

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5

6 7

8

9

Toynbee Islam was colour blind. Schirmann changed his view only after he read Lewis on that subject. See below, Chapter 6, note 80. In this connection, see the description in Schirmann–Fleischer, Toldot ha-Shirah ha-Ivrit be-Sefarad ha-Notzrit uve-Drom Zarfat (History of Hebrew Poetry in Christian Spain and Southern France; hereafter Schirmann–Fleischer), op. cit., p. 237: ‘The Muslim religion did not differentiate between blacks and whites, and held that all believers were equal before God, regardless of their skin colour. Many caliphs and prominent persons accepted this view both in theory and in practice, and gathered black women into their harems. Nevertheless, many Muslims did not act according to their law and treated blacks scornfully.’ The first part of the statement is certainly true, but the conclusion that taking black women into harems indicates the egalitarian attitude of these same caliphs and prominent people and shows great naïveté, since it simply proves the accepted stereotypes of the status and role of women, black women in particular. Moreover, white concubines were more valuable than black ones. See Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, op. cit., pp. 130–144. See a later expression of the tradition identifying blackness with slavery in a Yemenite Hebrew version of the popular folk tale about the princess who could not solve her suitor’s riddle, as recorded from a narrator in Israel. See also in Yassif, op. cit., p. 482: ‘Masoud was a poor boy from a small town. His parents begged in the marketplace, but tried to give their son a good education. … One night Masoud prayed to God to turn him into a black (cushi), so he would be sold as a slave, and could give the price paid for him to his parents, so they could support themselves decently. The next day Masoud saw that he was completely black (shahor).’ The very late appearance of this identification simply proves how deeply rooted such stereotypes were. As Yassif notes, following the researcher of Jewish folklore, D. Noy, Jews clearly adopted the story from a local Arabic tradition, not even bothering to ‘judaize’ it. Interestingly, here is the opposite motive from giving the good black man a white skin as a reward for good deeds. See the story from A Thousand and One Nights about the good black who, after his death, became white. In the Yemenite story the light-skinned boy became black to solve economic problems, for otherwise he could not be a slave and thus provide for his family. Lewis, op. cit., p. 11. Compare the black princess’s claim in Heliodorus’s Ethiopika to Chapter 4, note 12 above. A similar claim appears in Jewish disputation literature of the Middle Ages. See above, Chapter 2, notes 66–68. See the emergence of this image in Jewish culture in Moses ibn Ezra, note 45 below. Compare with the English poet William Blake’s black boy: ‘And I am black but O! my soul is white’, quoted in Gilman, Self Hatred, pp. 133–134; Davis, op. cit., p. 65; Thompson, op. cit., p. 44; and Pieters, op. cit., p. 61. See below, Chapter 6, Section I. See on the literature on this subject in ibn Khaldun, op. cit., pp. 172, 175; Sanders, op. cit., pp. 55–56; N. Levzion and J.H.P. Hopkins, eds, Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History (Cambridge, 1981), and S. Harvey, ‘A New Islamic Source of the Guide to the Perplexed’, Maimonidean Studies 2 (1991), pp. 39–41. Evans, op. cit., p. 33 and note 7, with other examples in Levzion and Hopkins, op. cit., pp. 15, 20–21, 23, 35, 94. For the argument on the Koran–Midrash relationship as to which was the earlier, and within that, the question of influence, see Kugel, In Potiphar’s House, pp. 34–35. Some researchers contend that the primary source of the Midrashim on Joseph in Potiphar’s house is early Islamic, op. cit. With that, one reasonably assumes that the complex of Midrashim on the punishment of Ham, or Canaan, and the blackening of his skin, are of rabbinic origin, since the first example of this tradition is in BT. See discussion with traditions regarding the Queen of Sheba in Lessner, op. cit., 122–124. Lewis, op. cit., pp. 66–67; Encyclopedia of Islam (new edition), Vol. 3, 104–105.

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10 For tensions between them see below, Section II. 11 Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah, op. cit., pp. 169–170. See also L.E. Goodman, ‘Ibn Khaldun and Thucydides’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 92 (1972), p. 252; a general discussion of ibn Khaldun’s theory of history in M. Mahdi, Ibn Khaldun’s Philosophy of History (Chicago, 1964). Mahdi writes of ibn Khaldun’s attitude to ‘primitive’ societies, but does not mention his discussion of blacks and their traits. For Maimonides’s possible influence on him, see S. Pines, ‘Ibn Khaldun and Maimonides: A Comparison Between Two Texts’, Studia Islamica 32 (1970), pp. 265–274. 12 Evans, op. cit., p. 31; G.E. von Grunebaum, Medieval Islam (Chicago and London, 1966), pp. 209–211. For positive expressions see J. Sadan, ‘Debate in Literary and Religious Writing’, in H. Lazarus-Yafeh, ed., Sofrim Muslemi’im al Yehudim ve-Yahadut (Muslim Authors on Jews and Judaism) (Jerusalem, 1996), pp. 39–40, in the Jewish context. See also N.R. Aloni, ‘The Kuzari: A Jewish War of Independence Against Arabiyyah’, Eshel Be’er Sheva 2 (1980), in Hebrew, p. 127. 13 S. Assaf, ed., Sefer ha-Shetarot le-Rav Hai Gaon (Jerusalem, 1930), p. 28; Sefer Halachot Gedolot (Jerusalem, 1992), Hilchot Nahalot, p. 539. See discussion of the subject in S. Assaf, ‘Slaves and the Slave Trade in the Middle Ages’, Zion 4 (1939), in Hebrew, pp. 91–125. Goitein, op. cit., p. 135; Judaica 14, pp. 1660–1662. For identifying avda zangah as an African slave (Sefer Halachot Gedolot contains the expression zangai) see below, and note 66. See also, more recently, M. Gill, BeMalchut Ishmael be-Tekufat ha-Gaonim (In the Land of Ishmael in the Time of the Gaonim), Vol. 1 (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, 1997), pp. 603–610. Gill too bases himself on evidence from Sefer ha-Shetarot, p. 604. He maintains that ‘The slaves brought from Africa were of special type, distinguished by their skin colour.’ See another example from Egypt in the early sixteenth century, in the response of R. David Ben Zimrah, when asked if a Jew could rely on the search for hametz conducted by his Canaanite slave woman. He replied that while Talmudic law permits it, nonetheless bondwomen in Egypt are ‘a curse of the pagans’, their conversion being but superficial because they preferred serving Jews to serving Muslims and knew this required conversion; one must be strict on this point and not allow it. These bondwomen were black Africans, because at this time they were the only type of female slave allowed to Jews. See Z. Zohar and U. Sagi, Giur ve-Zehut Yehudit (Conversion and Jewish Identity) (Jerusalem, 1995), pp. 176–177. The strictness was not a direct result of their skin colour but because they were identified as pagans. However, identifying blacks as pagans and the consequent attitudes towards them fits in well with normative positions. While black slavery was then reappearing in the west (see below, Chapter 7, note 4), in Muslim Egypt of the sixteenth century it clearly continued a medieval practice. Maimonides does not discuss black slavery in particular in his Laws of Slavery (Hilchot Avadim), but he does relate to it in other places, see below. 14 Isaac’s claims that the medieval concept of the significance of Ham’s punishment, and that hence the attitude towards blacks does not necessarily stem from the rabbinic position, are entirely wrong. Isaac deals with the biblical source and the Midrashim of the Sages as a whole, separating them from the medieval discussion of the subject. Reality is quite the opposite: the Bible position that does not mention skin colour must be distinguished from the rabbinic one, on which the medieval position was directly based, which identified Ham’s punishment as the blackening of his skin. Pieters follows Isaac’s error, which suits his view on the development of attitudes to the black in Roman and Christian culture. See above, Chapter 4, note 18. 15 See Muscato’s commentary, Sefer ha-Kuzari with Commentary by Kol Yehudah: (Warsaw, 1871), reprinted in Israel in 1959, pp. 30–31: ‘And forget not that those blacks (cushi’im) [the ones Judah Halevi referred to] were included by the Teacher

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[Maimonides] among people who have no religious law, either through theory or through revelation.’ 16 See Chapter 4, note 3. Compare the words of the Moroccan prince in The Merchant of Venice, Act II, Scene 1. See also Sanders, op. cit., p. 248. For the climate theory in ancient Greek thought, see also Hall, op. cit., pp. 172–174. 16a Brenner, op. cit., p. 99. 17 Avot de’Rabbi Nathan (Jerusalem, 1988) 16:2, p. 78. Compare with BT Shabbat 31a: ‘Why are the feet of the Afrikans (Afriki’im) wide?’ … ‘Because they live in watery marshes.’ This may be why the Aramaic tapuah also means ‘moist’ (BT Berakhot 25a) and particularly dark skin as well. See BT Bekhorot 45b: ‘A very dark-complexioned man (shahor) should not marry an equally very dark-complexioned woman (shehorah), lest their offspring may be pitch black (tafuah).’ On the meaning of these, see above, Chapter 4, note 28 and discussion there. See meaning of tafuah in Otzar Lashon ha-Talmud (A Dictionary of Talmudic Language), Vol. 15, p. 287. 18 See ibn Khaldun’s definitive description, op. cit., pp. 167–168, and the discussion of the subject, A. Melamed, ‘The Discovery of America in Jewish Literature of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, in M. Eliav-Feldon, ed., Be-Ikvot Columbus: Amerika 1492–1994 (In the Footsteps of Columbus: America 1492–1992) (Jerusalem, 1997), pp. 443–464; and Melamed ‘From Navel to Heart: Eretz Israel and the Climate Theory in Jewish Thought in Early Modern Times’, in A. Ravitzky, ed., Eretz Israel be-Hagut ha-Yehudit ba-Et ha-Hadashah (Eretz Israel in Modern Jewish Thought) (Jerusalem, 1998), pp. 42–53. 19 Aristotle, Politics 7: 6; Ethics 7: 5. 20 See details in Halevi, Values of the Aggadah and the Halakhah, op. cit., p. 59; Melamed, ‘Climate Theory’, op. cit., p. 54. For the influence of that theory in Greek and Roman culture and its influence on the image of the black, see Baldeson, op. cit., pp. 59–60; Thompson, op. cit., pp. 100–101, 125–129. 21 Halevi, op. cit.; Melamed, ibid., p. 55. 22 S. Pines, ‘Shi’ite Terms and Conceptions in Judah Halevi’s Kuzari’, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 2 (1980), p. 204. 23 N.R. Aloni, ‘Moses Ibn Ezra’s Response to Arabiyyah in Sefer ha-Diyyunim ve-haSihot’, Tarbiz 42 (1973), in Hebrew, pp. 49–99. 24 For ibn Sina, see below, note 32, as well as ibn Khaldun’s quotation from ibn Sina, op. cit., p. 171. On al Farabi, see below, note 31. On ibn Rushd see E.I.J. Rosenthal, ed., and translation, Averroes’ Commentary on Plato’s Republic (Cambridge, 1969), Hebrew text, p. 27. 25 For ibn Khaldun, see below, notes 33–41. For additional examples, see Harvey, op. cit., pp. 39–41. 26 Melamed, ‘Climate Theory’, p. 54. 27 A.R. Altmann, ‘Judah Halevi’s Climate Theory’, Melilah 1 (1944), in Hebrew, pp. 1–17; Melamed, op. cit. 28 See below, note 55. 29 Altmann, op. cit.; Melamed, op. cit. 30 Lewis, op. cit., pp. 33, 36. 31 Sefer ha-Hathalot (Book of Beginnings) of Abu Nasser al Farabi, in Sefer he-Assif, edited by Z. Filipovsky (Leipzig, 1849, photo rep. Tel Aviv, 1970), p. 47. See Harvey, op. cit., pp. 39–40, and Maimonides’s quotation from al Farabi, Pirkei Moshe below, note 55. 32 E.Z. Berman, ‘Ibn Bajja and Maimonides: A Chapter in the History of Political Philosophy’, doctoral thesis, Hebrew University (1959), pp. 69–70; E.I.J. Rosenthal, Political Thought in Mediaeval Islam (Cambridge, 1968), pp. 154–155; Lewis, op. cit., p. 29; Harvey, op. cit., pp. 40–41. See also in Miskaviah, Harvey, op. cit., and below, note 65.

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33 Ibn Khaldun, op. cit., pp. 169–170. 34 Ibid., p. 167. 35 Ibid., pp. 168–169. For cannibalism attributed to blacks, see also below, Chapter 6, notes 26, 29. 36 Ibid., p. 174. Compare the Sages on the black’s tendency to drunkenness, Chapter 4, notes 58, 61 above. 37 Ibn Khaldun, ibid., p. 301. 38 Ibid., pp. 171–172. 39 Ibid., p. 167. 40 Ibid., p.168. 41 Ibid., p. 171. 42 For the dominant tendency in Islamic culture, see Sanders, op. cit., p. 56. For the Roman position, see Thompson, op. cit., pp. 100–101, 125–129. For the emphasis on light skin as a standard of female beauty in Islam, see above, Chapter 2, note 88. 43 R. Moses ibn Ezra, Sefer ha-Iyyunim ve-ha-Diyyunim, edited by A.S. Halkin (Jerusalem, 1975), pp. 30–31. On the climate theory in ibn Ezra in general, see Aloni, ‘Moses Ibn Ezra’s Response’, op. cit.; Melamed, ‘Climate Theory,’ op. cit., pp. 57–58. 44 Aloni, op. cit.; Melamed, op. cit. 45 Ibn Ezra, op. cit., pp. 198–199. For this image in Islamic culture, see above, note 5. 46 Judah Halevi’s ha-Kuzari, as translated by R. Judah ibn Tibbon, 2: 65. For attributing these traits to blacks, see Pieters above, Chapter 2, note 39. See also Maimonides’s critical view of music as an occupation arousing lust, linked to excessive drinking and lost control over one’s impulses. Such an attitude to music and song made it easier to relate those talents to blacks. See Iggrot, op. cit., Vol. 1, pp. 428–429. 47 Both passages, ha-Kuzari 1: 1, edited by I. Heineman, in Three Jewish Philosophers (New York, 1969), p. 28. 48 See below, note 68. 49 Pines, ‘Shi’ite Terms’, op. cit. 50 Ha-Kuzari 1: 27, op. cit., p. 35. 51 Sefer ha-Yovelim (The Book of Jubilees) (Vienna, 1870), 8: 30. See also Halevi, Values of the Aggadah, op. cit., p. 59; Melamed, ‘Climate Theory’, op. cit., note 14. 52 Altmann, op. cit.; Melamed, ibid., pp. 55–57. 53 Ha-Kuzari 1: 95, op. cit., p. 46. See also 1: 63, p. 37. 54 Melamed, ‘Climate Theory’, pp. 58–63, and other articles in that collection. 55 The Medical Aphorisms of Moses Maimonides, translated and edited by F. Rosner and S. Muntner (New York, 1971) 25: 58, Vol. 2, p. 202. 56 Guide, op. cit., 3: 51; II, pp. 618–619. 57 Ibid., p. 515: ‘as for instance the infidels among the Turks in the extreme north and the Hindus in the extreme south’. 58 From early classical times it was common to confuse the inhabitants of India and African blacks. See details below, Chapter 6, notes 30–33. 59 See details in Melamed, ‘Maimonides on the Political Nature of Man’, op. cit., pp. 292–333. 60 Above, note 35. 61 Above, note 31. 62 Iggrot ha-Rambam, op. cit., 2, p. 553. 63 Above, note 32. 64 Above, note 32. 65 Iggrot, ibid., 2, pp. 553–554. 66 Harvey, op. cit., pp. 36–41. 67 Ibid., p. 37.

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68 See ibn Khaldun’s discussion of the names given to blacks, Muqaddimah, pp. 171–172. 69 Lewis, op. cit., pp. 29–30. 70 See detailed discussion of Arabic geographical literature of the time, Levzion, op. cit. 71 Note 32 above. 72 See below, Chapter 6, Section I. 73 Above, note 31. 74 Guide 3: 50, op. cit., p. 616. See Melamed, ‘Climate Theory’, op. cit., p. 60, also ‘Political Nature’, op. cit. 75 S. Klein-Breslavi, Perush ha-Rambam le-Sippur Bri’at ha-Olam (Maimonides’s Commentary on the Story of Creation) (Jerusalem, 1978), pp. 47–51. 76 See above, Chapter 4, pp. 71–75. 77 See analysis of the text above, Chapter 2, note 111. 78 Maimonides’ Treatise on Logic, translated by I. Efros (New York, 1938), 10: 2, pp. 52. See also Kapah’s new translation that includes the Judaeo-Arabic original: Biur Melechet ha-Higayon le-Rambam, edited by J.D. Kapah (Kiriat Ono, 1997), pp. 130–131. Compare with Guide 2: 13, op. cit., p. 281, and A. Melamed’s discussion, ‘Non-coincidental Incidents: The Meaning of the Phrase “The Tall White Man as Gray-Haired”, in Maimonides’s parable of the King (Guide 1: 46)’, in A. Ravitzky, ed., Me-Romi le-Yerushalayim (From Rome to Jerusalem), a commemorative volume for Joseph Baruch Sermoneta (Jerusalem, 1998), in Hebrew, pp. 47–71. 79 Milot ha-Higayon, translated by Moses Ibn Tibbon and edited by H.J. Roth (Jerusalem, 1965), note on p. 65. See in this connection R. David Kimhi below, and R. Joseph Albo, Sefer ha-Ikkarim (Book of Principles), edited and translated with notes by I. Husik (Philadelphia, 1946), 2: 10, Vol. 2, pp. 54–55: ‘The term one applies to that which gives specialization and separation to an existing thing by which it is distinguished from another. Thus, the term one is applied to a collection of many different individuals, because they agree in a certain matter. … Because they have one accidental element in common, such as religion among the Ishmaelites or Blackness (shaharut) among blacks (cushim).’ See also Maimonides’s use of Jeremiah’s ‘Can the Black change his skin’ as a departure from the natural order of things, i.e. a miracle, in the epistle on resurrection. Iggrot ha-Rambam, Vol. 1, p. 366. 80 Iggrot 1, pp. 238–241. 81 A. Melamed, ‘Maimonides on Women: Formless Matter or Potential Prophet?’, in A. Ivri et al., eds, Perspectives on Jewish Thought and Mysticism (Amsterdam, 1998), pp. 99–134.

6 In the Latin-Christian cultural world: ‘Beasts in all their ways’ 1 Above, the beginning of Chapter 5 and note 1. 2 M. A. Hartom and A. David, Me-Italia le-Yerushalayim, Igrotav shel R. Ovadiah meBartenura me-Eretz Israel (From Italy to Jerusalem, Letters of R. Ovadiah of Bartenura from Eretz Israel) (Jerusalem, 1997), in the body of the text, p. 74. On the kingdom of Prester John, see below, note 13. This edition of the Letters was first published in H. Beinart, ed., Jews in Italy: Studies Published for the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of M.D. Cassuto (Jerusalem, 1988), the Hebrew section, pp. 108–124. See also the story of Samson of Kozi, captured and taken to Africa to be sold into slavery. See Me-Makor Israel, op. cit., p. 258. 3 Ibid., p. 74, and again in the second letter, pp. 85–86, on meeting Jews from Aden who told of the lost Jewish tribes in Africa. He describes the Aden Jews as dark skinned: ‘and the people there are inclined to be somewhat black’ (notim el hashaharut meat), op. cit., p. 86. See also the preface, op. cit., p. 26. See also Bartenura’s

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4

5 6

7 8 9 10 11 12

13 14

interpretation of Mishnah Avot 1: 5, following Maimonides, ‘Let the poor be members of your household’: ‘For it is better that the children of Israel might benefit from your possessions rather than slaves descended from Canaan who do not belong to the sons of Israel.’ ‘Slaves descended from Canaan’ may be either Slavs or blacks. Benjamin of Tudela also wrote of black Jews, but in India, who would obviously have been Jews of Cochin. See below, note 36. On Ashkenazi’s evidence, see A.Z. Eshkoli, ed., Sipur David ha-Reuveni (The Story of David Reuveni), 2nd enlarged edition with introduction by M. Idel and A. Lipiner (Jerusalem, 1993), p. 54; A. David, ‘R. Israel Ashkenazi’s Letter from Jerusalem to R. Abraham of Perugia’, Alei Sefer 16 (1990), in Hebrew, pp. 95–122. For Moses Basulah, see Eretz Zion ve-Yerushalayim, Masa’ot Eretz Israel le-Rabi Moshe Basulah baShanim Ra-Pa–Ra-Pag (Zion and Jerusalem: The Journeys in Eretz Israel of R. Moses Basulah in the Years 1421–1423), compiled and edited by A. David (Jerusalem, 1999), p. 32. See English translation p. 108 and note 5 there. See below, note 53. On the disputed point raised by Cassuto, see ‘Who Was David ha-Reuveni?’, Tarbiz 32 (1963), in Hebrew, pp. 339–358. On the argument, see Idel’s introduction, op. cit., p. xxiii. Several of Reuveni’s contemporaries described him as dark skinned, e.g. Daniel of Pisa: ‘of dark appearance’ (shahor ha-mareh), Eshkoli, op. cit., p. 151. Abraham Farissol called him ‘swarthy’ (sheharhar), op. cit., p. 155. Gedalya Ibn Yahaiah simply said he was ‘black as a Cushi’ (shahor ke-cushi), op. cit., p. 163. Thus some have identified him as a Jew from Yemen or from India. Eshkoli, by contrast, having analysed Reuveni’s Hebrew, was convinced he was an Ashkenazi, op. cit., p. 220. If indeed he was, it simply affirms the description of central and eastern European Jews as relatively dark skinned, certainly compared with local Christians – the background of the myth of the ‘swarthy’ Jews. See above, Chapter 2, pp. 33–40. The fact that Italian Jews like Farrisol and ibn Yehaiah noted his dark skin reinforces Eshkoli’s view, which is further validated by Reuveni’s stereotypical European description of the black. See below. Evans, op. cit., p. 34. See also details in Sanders, from Portuguese literature, pp. 62–62, 223–224, and from English literature, pp. 333–344. Kaplan, op. cit., pp. 31–34. R.W. Logan, ‘The Attitude of the Church Towards Slavery Prior to 1500’, Journal of Negro History 17 (1932), pp. 466–480. See detail in Eshkoli, op. cit., pp. 17–20. See above, Chapter 4, notes 16–17; Young Gregg, op. cit., pp. 32–33, 240–241. Abelard’s letter to Eloise, Chapter 2, note 87 above, contains an instructive Christian commentary. Sanders, op. cit., pp. 106–107. Similar motifs are found in Hebrew literature, e.g. Joseph de la Reina’s story describing pious men attacked by a large black dog and black bitch, who were none other than Sama’el and Lilith, from Me-Makor Israel, op. cit., p. 280. This is another version of the two violent, threatening blacks that we have noted several times. For identifying black dogs (and other black animals) with Satan in medieval Christian culture, see Young Gregg, op. cit., pp. 32–33. Kaplan, The Black Magus, op. cit., esp. pp. 61–62; Sanders, ibid., esp. pp. 106–107, 166, 211, etc. See above, Chapter 2, note 87 and Chapter 4, notes 13, 68. On this subject in general, see Melamed, ‘Aristotle’s Politics in Jewish Thought of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance’, Pe’amim 51 (1992), in Hebrew, pp. 62–63. Schirmann once assumed that the ‘racist’ attitude expressed by the poet Jacob ben Elazar in Sefer ha-Meshalim (Book of Sayings) was of Christian origin, since, following Toynbee, he thought that Islamic culture was in essence egalitarian. His opinion changed after studying Lewis’s research on blacks in Islam. Eventually he concluded

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15 16 17 18

19

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

that ben Elazar’s sources, in this matter at least, were Arabic, not Christian–European. See below, note 80. Lewis, op. cit., pp. 29–38. On Jewish travel literature in general, see Adler’s old survey: E.N. Adler, Jewish Travellers (London, 1927), and Y. Levanon, The Jewish Travelers in the Twelfth Century (Lanham, MD, 1980). The latter contains no reference to our subject. See below, Chapter 7, Section I. Eshkoli deliberates these matters at length in connection with David Reuveni, op. cit., Chapter 4. See also R.L. Hess, ‘The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela: A Twelfth Century Jewish Description of North-East Africa’, Journal of African History 6 (1956), pp. 15–24, with the discussion and criticism of Hess’s claims in Levzion, op. cit., pp. 135–136. None of these researchers related to the aspect we deal with. For Prester John, see above, note 13. For literature on the Ten Tribes and the changes in the tradition at this time, see A. Gross, ‘The Ten Tribes and the Kingdom of Prester John: Rumours and Searches Before and After the Spanish Exile’, Pe’amim 48 (1991), in Hebrew, pp. 45–51; Melamed, ‘The Discovery of America’, op. cit., esp. pp. 460–464. See the link between the two traditions in R. Ovadiah of Bartenura, op. cit., pp. 74–75, 86. Eshkoli, op. cit., pp. 47–64. Masa’ot Benyamin, op. cit., p. 72. See below, Chapter 7, section III. See discussion of the way of life of the Ten Tribes, in Eshkoli, op. cit., pp. 8–25, and preface, xxxiv–xxxv. Ibid., p. 44. The second version is almost identical, op. cit., p. 56. The main version appears on p. 26. Compare with Greek descriptions, above, Chapter 4, note 2. See e.g. R. Ovadiah of Bartenura, op. cit., pp. 85–86. See details in A. Epstein, ed., Eldad ha-Dani (Pressburg, 1891), note on pp. 35–36. Ibid. For cannibalism attributed to blacks, see ibn Khaldun: ‘They eat one another’, above, Chapter 5, note 35. Compare Farissol’s descriptions of Indian American cannibalism, below, Chapter 7, note 22, and of black cannibalism, ibid., note 37a. See Chapter 3, note 5. Eldad ha-Dani, op. cit., p. 23, and another version with different details but the same message, ibid., p. 63. See references in the index of Sanders, op. cit., and discussion with numerous examples in Pieters, op. cit., pp. 113–222. Inter alia he cites an early modern French story about a white man captured by black Africans who fatten him in preparation for a feast. In its details the story is much like that in Eldad ha-Dani. The motif seems to recur, with another example in Farissol, below, Chapter 7, note 37a. Black cannibalism in Hebrew sources is described in Eshkoli, op. cit., p. 20. Above, Chapter 5, notes 56–58. Above, Chapter 4, note 1. See details in notes in Epstein, Eldad ha-Dani, op. cit., pp. 34–35, and recently in Shavit, ‘What is Africa in the Talmud?’, op. cit., p. 87. Sanders, op. cit., p. 6. Masa’ot Benyamin, op. cit., p. 90. Ibid., pp. 90–94. Ibid., p. 92. Ibid., pp. 96–97. Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 194. Guide 1: 2, op. cit., I, p. 26. See discussion in Melamed, ‘Maimonides on the Political Nature of Man’, op. cit., esp. pp. 294–299.

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41 Melamed, ‘Man’s Place in the Universe: Human Dignity in Jewish Thought in Spain and Italy in the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance’, Italia 3 (1982), in Hebrew, pp. 57, 64. 42 Masa’ot Benyamin, op. cit., p. 29. 43 Above, Chapter 2, Section III. Pieters cites Benjamin of Tudela as a typical example of medieval culture, quoting Gilman, op. cit., p. 172. See also D.H. Aaron’s discussion, op. cit. I disagree with his apologetic conclusions. 44 Melamed, ‘Man’s Place in the Universe’, op. cit., p. 55; ‘Maimonides on the Political Nature of Man’, op. cit., p. 315, esp. note 58. 45 Above, Chapter 5, note 1. 46 Masa’ot Benyamin, op. cit., p. 97. 47 Ibid., notes to p. 194, Vol. 2, and in Hess’s article, p. 20. There is a brief reference to the sources of this description of the black, but the influence of the black image in Midrashic and Islamic literature is ignored. Hess attempts to see in this some kind of distorted impression made by certain ‘primitive’ black tribal customs. For example, he explains the remark on their lack of knowledge as lack of communication. In my opinion, Benjamin of Tudella fitted fragmentary knowledge acquired from various sources onto the accepted image of the black in the Jewish and general culture of his time, not basing himself on any firsthand observation. See also Levzion’s criticism of Hess’s claims, above, note 18. 48 See Eshkoli’s entire discussion, op. cit., pp. 21–27. 49 Ibid., pp. 9–10. 50 See Baudet’s telling remark below, Chapter 7, note 32. 51 Above, note 6. 52 It is interesting to compare Ludovigo Vartima, the early sixteenth-century Italian traveller, when he describes the Ethiopian Jews as very much like blacks in general. They are depicted as going naked and their skin is closer to black than to any other colour (sono piu nigri che de altro colore). Moreover, he says that they kill every Muslim who falls into their hands, skinning him alive. Here too the question arises as to what extent these ‘facts’ are the influence of ethnic and other stereotypes. See Eshkoli, op. cit., p. 60. 53 See above, Chapter 2, Section IV, and notes 88–98. 54 On this matter in general see Yassif, Hebrew Folk Tales, op. cit. See additional example in the collection compiled by Joseph ben Shabtai Farhi, Sefer Oseh Fele (The Book of Wonders) (Livorno, 1902, photo rep. Jerusalem, 1954), p. 98. ‘And behold, a black slave (eved cushi) came, a written message in his hand, one the king their father had sent them.’ 55 H. Pesach and A. Yassif: Ha-Abir, ha-Shed ve-ha-Betulah, Mivhar Sippurim Ivri’im meYemei ha-Beinayim (The Knight, the Devil and the Virgin, Selected Hebrew Stories from the Middle Ages) (Jerusalem, 1998), pp. 21–22. 56 Ibid., p. 84; Tales of Sendebar, edited by M. Epstein (Philadelphia, 1967), pp. 306–397. 57 Jonah David, ed., Sippurei ha-Ahavah shel Ya’akov ben Elazar (hereafter Book of Sayings). For studies of this text, see the research of Schirmann, Toldot ha-Shirah haIvrit be-Sefarad u-ve-Provence, Vol. 2 (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, 1956), pp. 207–210; Schirmann–Fleischer, op. cit. (revised and completed by Fleischer, Jerusalem 1997), pp. 223–255, and cross-references in Chapter 5, note 2. 58 Schirmann, op. cit., pp. 207–208; Schirmann–Fleischer, op. cit., pp. 228–229, 231–232, 239. 59 Book of Sayings, op, cit., pp. 51–52. On this story, see Schirmann, op. cit., p. 208, Schirmann–Fleischer, op. cit., p. 229. For identifying the Moors both as Arabs and as blacks, see Pieters, op. cit., p. 125.

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60 See also following, p. 52: ‘You trusted your height / And relied on your might / For with your stature your genius ebbed’, and p. 55: ‘For you knew that war is waged with cunning / Not with fine build and height … and you thought [that] a fine figure, a man of height would have might.’ We have already referred to the significance of the height attributed to the black. 61 See again details of the ugly, frightening image of the black, op. cit., p. 52. 62 Ibid., p. 53. 63 Ibid., p. 52. 64 Ibid., p. 52: ‘Let them not frighten you. / His might, his huge tongue / Put on strength / Amalek to fight … And Pninah too went forth and stood by his side / To see what would him betide.’ 65 See above, Chapter 2, pp. 29–32. 66 Book of Sayings, op. cit., p. 52. See use of the biblical Cushan-rishathaim in such literature. See above, Chapter 2, notes 98–99, Chapter 3, note 9. 67 Ibid., p. 55. See a brief description of this story in R. Scheindlin, ‘The Love Stories of Jacob ben Elazar: Hebrew Literature and the Romance’, in Proceedings of the Eleventh World Congress of Jewish Studies, Section 3, Vol. 3 (Jerusalem, 1994), in Hebrew, pp. 16–20. The author completely ignores that the ‘giant on the mighty horse’ is identified as a black (ibid., p. 17), though that is central to the tale. Nor does he refer to its sources or significance. For a possible reason, see below, note 80. 68 Ibid., p. 82. See this story in Schirmann, op. cit., pp. 208–209; ‘The Story of an Old Hypocrite’, in Schirmann, op. cit., The History of Hebrew Poetry and Drama, pp. 375–388; Schirmann–Fleischer, op. cit., pp. 230–231. 69 Schirmann, ‘Old Hypocrite’, op. cit., p. 388. Schirmann–Fleischer, op. cit., pp. 230–231 and note 42. Compare with Elharizi, ben Shabtai, ibn Zabara and Emanuel of Rome, Chapter 2 above, notes 88–102. 70 Book of Sayings, p. 82. 71 Ibid. The same sort of criticism of ‘deviant’ men who for some reason prefer ugly black women to beautiful white ones is found in late Roman literature. See Thompson, op. cit., p. 136. 72 For our earlier reference to food and eating as euphemistic metaphor for sexual intercourse, see above, Chapter 4, note 60. 73 Book of Sayings, p. 82. 74 Ibid., pp. 80–81. For example, ‘Said the girls unto him: “The rhymes of all your songs / All so charming, so fine!” And he rose to the frolic / From lap to lap seemed to tumble / And rose up to play / In his heart’s joy danced / Like flame burning away’, etc. 75 Ibid., p. 82. 76 Ibid., p. 84. 77 Ibid., pp. 85–86. 77a Pardes, op. cit., Creation According to Eve, op. cit., pp. 104–105; more broadly on the same matter, G. Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy (New York, 1986). 78 Chapter 2 above, Section IV and notes 88–98. 79 Compare the Midrash on the black maid, above, Chapter 4, Section IV and note 67 there, as compared with parallel phenomena in the American south. 80 For the quote from Elharizi, see above, Chapter 2, note 93. At one time Schirmann, op. cit., p. 209, thought that ben Elazar’s ideas came from a Christian source (see note 14 above). Wrote Schirmann: ‘He [ben Elazar] holds to a racist opinion that is alien to Islam, but thoroughly explained in the Spanish-Christian setting.’ Also Schirmann, ‘Die Neger und die Negerin’, MGWJ 83 (1939), pp. 481ff. The issue was destroyed by the Nazis at the time, but reprinted in Tübingen in 1963. In time, Schirmann changed his view in circumstances described in ‘Old Hypocrite’, p. 386. On the entire matter see Schirmann–Fleischer, p. 237 and notes

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81 82 83

84 85 86

87 88

89 90 91

92

62–63 there. Scheindlin (note 67 above) stresses elements from the romance literature rather than from the Arabic, in his correct understanding of the Book of Sayings. Even if it is true, however, it is irrelevant in our context, since clearly the source of the images of the black is Islamic, which may be why Scheindlin’s article ignores the matter. A recent theory claims that some of ben Elazar’s materials derive from a maqamah composed by Maimonides’s student Joseph ben Simon. This merely strengthens the assumption that ben Elazar was influenced by Arab or Judaeo-Arab culture. See J. Yahalom, ‘ “Said Tuviah ben Zedekiah”: Treatise of Joseph ben Simon in Honour of Maimonides’, Tarbiz 66 (1997), in Hebrew, pp. 544–560. Schirmann–Fleischer, op. cit., p. 234, and note 52. Ibid., p. 233. Book of Sayings, p. 58: ‘And said he, “Buy this girl and deck her out / Beyond pearls is her worth.” He hastened to buy her fine things / On her fingers rings / For her head the finest coverings / A good mule, a hundred fifty for a horse / A black boy (na’ar cushi) they dressed in finery / Three hundred was the total cost.’ Ibid., p. 81. Schirmann–Fleischer, op. cit., p. 231. Yalkhut Shim’oni, Be-Ha’alotkha 12. Yalkhut ha-Makiri on the Book of Psalms. Baber edition (Berdichev, 1889), p. 21. Yalkhut ha-Makiri relates in this connection to Psalm 7: 1 on Cush the Benjamite, linking him associatively to the story of Moses’s black wife. See below for medieval commentary on this verse. Midrash Bereshit Zota by R. Samuel Bar Nissim of Snuth, edited by M. ha-Cohen (Jerusalem, 1964), p. 41. Above, Chapter 5, note 8. Aaron and Goldenberg maintain that it does not necessarily refer to a black. I think that the entire tradition of the Midrashim on Ham (or Canaan), the resemblance to Tabari’s text and the particular traits attributed to Ham all identify him as a black. Besides, Goldenberg himself maintains, and documents it thoroughly (p. 29 and note 18), that it was customary in Islamic and in Christian literature to depict blacks as having red eyes, as shown in this text too. The fact that R. Samuel spent his last years in the east and was proficient in the Arabic language and its literature (see ha-Cohen’s introduction, p. 20) increases the probability of influence by the norms of that culture. In medieval Hebrew literature there is considerable use of Midrashic Aggadot about the black. See esp. the Midrash on the black woman who bore a white child (or vice versa), above, Chapter 2, notes 68–71; Chapter 4, note 30. Chapter 2, note 46. Above, Chapter 4, Section III. See also Kamin, Peshuto shel Mikrah, op. cit., pp. 151–52. ‘The children of the land of Canaan’ does not refer here to Canaanites in the narrow sense of the word, but to all the inhabitants of Eretz Israel. For the meaning the Sages attached to ‘Canaan’ see Chapter 4 above. My thanks to Dr Meira Poliak of the Bible Studies Dept. at Tel Aviv University for reading the sub-chapter dealing with medieval Bible commentary, and for her remarks, which helped me clarify the discussion. Maimonides relates twice to this Midrash in his Perush le-Avot 5: 17 and in Guide 3: 49. Both cases point out the caution and the abstinence of Abraham, who only then noticed that Sarah was a beautiful woman. Neither explains why it happened precisely then, and there is no reference to the Sages’ remarks on the complexion and character of the blacks. See J. Stern, ‘Maimonides on the Covenant of Circumcision and the Unity of God’, in M. Fishbein, ed., The Midrashic Imagination (New York, 1993), pp. 136–154. With that, Maimonides explains the commandment of circumcision as an attempt to weaken lust. Abraham only then noticed

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Sarah’s beauty because he had circumcised himself. The black Egyptians, by contrast, being uncircumcised, were awash in lust, thus putting Sarah in danger. See Chapter 2 above, pp. 29–31. 93 Mikra’ot Gedolot, Numbers, 35b. R. Isaac Karo in the sixteenth century had similar reservations as to the Sages’ commentary on the black wife: see below, Chapter 7, note 38. 94 Above, Chapter 4, Section IV, and note 68. 95 See above, Chapter 3, note 9. 96 Above, Chapter 1, note 5. 97 Steinmetz, ‘Miriam’, op. cit., pp. 49–50. 98 Ibid. 99 Mikra’ot Gedolot, Numbers, 35b, op. cit. The story of the black wife is mentioned briefly, once, in the Zohar, 2: 130a, in connection with the language of opposites in descriptions of light and darkness. 100 See remarks of David Ganz in the late sixteenth century, which he attributes to R. Abraham ibn Ezra. See below Chapter 7, note 39. I have not yet identified the specific source in ibn Ezra’s writings, though these remarks are in the same general spirit. 100a The two commentaries of R. Abraham ibn Ezra to the Minor Prophets: the first, pp. 261–262, and the second pp. 312–313 and notes there. See Abarbanel’s innovative use of these texts below, note 115a. 101 Mikra’ot Gedolot, op. cit., Numbers, 35b. For research on Rashi’s Bible commentary, see above, Chapter 2, note 84. For Rashi’s commentary on the black wife, see Kamin, op. cit., pp. 217–222. There is no reference to our problem, which is changing images of skin colour. For commentary on ‘I am black and comely’ in Song of Songs, see above, Chapter 2, Section IV. See also Rashi on BT Berakhot 33: ‘Everything that befalls man is from God, whether he is tall, short, poor, rich, wise, foolish, white (lavan), black (shahor) – all is from heaven. But whether righteous or wicked is not from heaven.’ Rashi makes characteristic use of the type of dichotomy found in writings of the Sages, whose significance we discussed earlier. 102 Op. cit. On R. Solomon ben Moses’s (Rashbam) Bible commentary, see A. Twito, ‘Rashbam’s System in Torah Commentary’, Tarbiz 48 (1979), pp. 248–273. On the story of Moses’s marriage to the black princess as it appears in medieval Jewish literature, see Sefer ha-Yashar, ed. Samuel ben Joseph (Berlin, 1923), pp. 247–248. According to this version as well, Moses did not consummate the marriage, op. cit., p. 254. In this long story, no mention is made of the Cushites’ skin colour, and they are positively depicted, in the Jewish–Hellenistic spirit of the tale. See also Komelosh, The Bible in the Light of the Targum, op. cit., p. 211. Another version of the story, in the same spirit, appears in Shinan’s ‘The History of Moses: A Question of the Time, the Sources and the Nature of the Medieval Hebrew Story’, Ha-Sifrut 24 (1977), in Hebrew, pp. 100–116. The story of Moses and the black princess is on p. 111. See also Drashot Rabbi Ibn Shu’eib al ha-Torah ve-al-Mo’edei ha-Shanah (Sermons of Rabbi J. ibn Shu’eib on the Torah and the Holy Days), ed. Z. Metzger, Vol. 2 (Jerusalem, 1992), pp. 346–347, and the Torah commentary of R. Nissim of Marseilles, below, note 138. See also commentaries in Hizkuni 456 and the Torah Commentaries of Rabbenu ben Manoah 76, 88, which put forth different possibilities of interpretation, without deciding in favour of any of them, including the story of the black princess whom Moses wed. R. Hezekiah relates directly to the Chronicle of Moses. Moreover, he makes an etymological link between the verse in the Torah portion Ha’azino, ‘you grew fat, thick and stubborn [Heb. kashitah]’ (Deut. 32: 15), and cushit in the sense of a handsome woman, since the ‘fat’ woman was perceived at the time as handsome, so that Moses was attracted to her, according to the Hellenistic version of the story. At the same time, one recalls that in the Bible

264

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103 104

105 106 107

108

109 110

111 112 113

sense, to grow fat was to abandon one’s God, i.e. to fall into idolatry: the association is clear. Compare with pictures of the marriage of Moses and the African princess in medieval Christian art: Devisse and Mollat, The Image of the Black in Western Art, Vol. 2, op. cit., p. 43. Abarbanel, Perush le-Sefer Bereshit (Commentary on the Book of Genesis) (Jerusalem, 1979), p. 170. See details on entire subject in Melamed, ‘Man’s Place in the Universe’, op. cit. Commentary on Genesis, op. cit., pp. 170–171. Another example of Midrashic use of the black raven image, and comparing it to the black, at about this time appears in The Responsa of R. Shim’on ben Zemah (Lemberg, 1891; photo rep. Jerusalem, 1998), Vol. 2, p. 163. Rashbaz (1361–1444) presents this in an answer dealing with release from a forced vow. He illustrates with a logical statement: ‘And I know you are adept in the rules of logic, and one who says the blackness (shaharut) of the raven is like the blackness (shaharut) of the black man (cushi) need not have the raven talk like a black (cushi).’ For the significance of including tillers of the soil in the ‘bestial’ group, see Melamed, ‘Man’s Place in the Universe’, op. cit., pp. 64–65. Commentary on Genesis, op. cit., p. 169. Abarbanel does not use the accepted Midrashic claim that Canaan was punished because he was Ham’s fourth son, Ham having prevented his father from begetting a fourth son. For Abarbanel’s class theory, see Melamed, ‘Man’s Place in the Universe’, op. cit. On the perception of natural disposition to slavery, see e.g. R. Jacob Anatoli of the thirteenth century, in his collected homilies, Goad of Students, op. cit., p. 151b: ‘And it is known that the household of a man [consists of] the slaves, the children and the wife, all three are his personal possessions, [though] his relationship and responsibility to them are not of the same degree. For the slave is of the lowest degree, since he comes from outside to do all the mean and dirty work: cleaning the house, taking out the wastes and such. And [any] love of master to the slave relates only to profit, so that his sole responsibility is to preserve him from hunger … so that he will not die and [the master] will not lose [the fruits of] his work. The slave serves him out of fear or for the sake of reward: there is no love between them except as regards advantage, and this is the least love, since love cannot exist except in the heart.’ Anatoli makes no reference to the slave as a black. Perush al Nevi’im ve-Ketuvim (Commentary on the Prophets and the Hagiographa) (Tel Aviv, 1960), pp. 106, 108. ‘And while commentators interpret this prophecy variously, they differ a great deal from my commentary, because Rashi interpreted, For you are like the children of the Cushites (ki-bnei cushi’im) to me, so why should I not break my covenant with you since you do not return to Me. You came as children of Noah, like the blacks (cushi’im) whom you resembled, as it is said, Shall the black man (cushi) change his skin.’ In Rashi’s commentary, the blacks are described not merely as natural slaves but as naturally treacherous, as we noted in Talmudic literature too; hence the analogy. See e.g. his great etymological discussion on the Creation, op. cit., pp. 98–100. See e.g. ibn Tibbon’s translation of Maimonides’s Eight Chapters: ‘Disputes that will come from the extremes of his character and his hot (hom) disposition.’ Eight Chapters, 4. Hakdamot le-Perush ha-Mishnah (Introduction to Commentary on the Mishnah), edited by M.D. Rabinovitz (Jerusalem, 1961), p. 170, with explanation in note there. See details above, Chapter 3, note 30. See also his remarks in commentary on Genesis 30, op. cit., p. 328: ‘brown colour which is black or red’. See above, Chapter 4, note 28. Commentary on Genesis, op. cit., p. 168.

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114 Ibid., pp. 173–174. Sefer Yosifon itself contains no reference to the matter. As usual in this literary genre, the book opens with ancient genealogy, differentiating between the children of Ham and Japheth, as related, however, to its own discussion. Sefer Yosifon gives details only about the children of Japheth and where they settled, and does not relate to Ham at all. See Sefer Yosifon, edited by D. Flusser (Jerusalem, 1979), p. 3 and editor’s note. However, the description has many parallels in Flavius’s Antiquities 1, pp. 130–139, and this may be Abarbanel’s direct or indirect source. Possibly he or whoever edited his commentaries for printing confused Josiphon with Josephus Flavius. Regarding the genealogies in both books, see Braude, op. cit., pp. 111–112. 115 Above, Chapter 4, Section III. 115a Commentary on the Later Prophets, p. 109. On ibn Ezra’s interpretation, see above, note 100a, and Goldenberg’s discussion. In this example he sees proof positive of Abarbanel’s attitude to blacks, while such a contention is entirely unsubstantiated by what Abarbanel says elsewhere. 116 See also p. 171ff.: ‘And indeed the children of Japheth, from whom the Greeks and the Romans descend, how fine are the acts of this nation, their custom, their policy and the heroic way they bear themselves. All are handsome, their fair appearance whiter than milk, redder than pearls.’ The entire matter is discussed in Chapter 2 above, notes 54–56. 117 Above, Chapter 5, note 8. 118 See details, with additional bibliography, in A. Melamed, ‘The Perception of Jewish History in Italian Jewish Thought of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: A Re-examination’, Italia Judaica 2 (Rome, 1986), pp. 139–170. 119 Commentary on Genesis, op. cit., p. 194. 119a Letters of Abelard and Eloise, op. cit., p. 140. See also Chapter 2, note 87. 120 Commentary on the Torah, op. cit., Numbers 19, p. 11. 121 Ibid. 122 Ibid. 123 Above, note 82. 124 See Commentary on the Torah, Numbers 19, op. cit. 125 Ibid., p. 11. See the same claim in Hizkuni 456: ‘Why did he now separate from his wife if she was not black, for he wed a black woman, meaning that she was ugly when he married her but he did not abandon her, though he did so now, because of her ugliness.’ 126 Commentary on the Prophets and the Hagiographa, op. cit., p. 343. 127 Zafnat Pa’anah, edited by D. Herzog (Berlin, 1930), Vol. 2, p. 83. See also D. Schwartz, ‘Land, Place and Star: The Status of Eretz Israel as Perceived by the Neoplatonic Circle of the Fourteenth Century’, in M. Halamish and D. Ravitsky, eds, Eretz Israel be-Mahshavah ha-Yehudit (Eretz Israel in Jewish Thought), op. cit., p. 143, note 21. 128 Above, Chapter 4, note 57. 129 Above, Chapter 3, note 5. Though blacks were usually described as exceptionally tall, they were also described as exceptionally short. 130 As R. Ishmael once declared, in Mishnah Taharot, Negaim 2a, ‘The children of Israel are neither black nor white, but in between.’ See above discussion in Chapter 2, Section III and note 64. 131 Above, Chapter 5, note 48. 132 Zohar 2, 130a. 133 M. Idel, ‘Eretz Israel in Jewish Mystical Thought in the Middle Ages’, in Eretz Israel in Jewish Thought, op. cit., esp. pp. 199–200. 134 R. Abraham Azulai, Hesed le-Avraham (Lvov, 1863), p. 22a. See Idel, op. cit., p. 199.

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135 Idel, ibid., pp. 198–199. 136 Above, Chapter 3, Section IV and note 55. 137 See discussion of this Midrash in Chapter 4, section IV and note 55. On the Midrashim about Joseph and Potiphar’s wife, see Kugel, In Potiphar’s House, op. cit. On different versions as to whether Joseph actually succumbed to temptation, see op. cit., Chapter 4. Indeed, in Legends of the Talmud both are said to have gone to bed naked. See E.Z. Melamed, Midrashei Halachah (Jerusalem, 1986), p. 478: ‘shows that both got into bed naked’. 138 Maimonides, Eight Chapters 4. Introduction to Commentary on the Mishnah, op. cit., pp. 172–173. See also Sefer Ma’aseh Nissim (Book of Miracles), Torah Commentary of R. Nissim of Marseilles, edited by H. Kreisel (Jerusalem, 2000), pp. 387–388. The commentary, compiled in the early fourteenth century, explains that the priesthood was given to Aaron and his sons and not to the sons of Moses because Moses took a black wife, identified as additional to Zipporah. In typically negative stereotypical fashion R. Nissim writes of the black wife: ‘And needless to say one should keep away from “a harlot and a dishonoured woman”. And this was a special commandment for the priests, since they ask of God with the Urim and Thummim, and they are the prophets, and the condition [of a prophet] is perfection. Aaron and his sons received the priesthood because “he took the sister of Nahshon to him for a wife” (Exod. 6: 23), not the sons of Moses, for “he took a black wife” besides Jethro’s daughter.’ 139 Yohanan Alemanno, Hei ha-Olamim, Mantua manuscript 801, fo. 334. Compare with Benjamin of Tudella, above, note 37. See also the description of a ‘savage’ in Hei ha-Olamim, fo. 332. ‘And your heart will know the people that resemble beasts. For he is hairy as a cloak of hair. He goes about naked, unclothed, with no covering for his skin during the cold [season]. In green fields he lies without any food to satisfy his hunger. When he gets hungry, he takes the fruit and the grass of the earth that he finds, with river water to slake his thirst. He lies down on the ground when sleep overtakes him’, and more in the same vein. But nowhere is the ‘savage’ specifically identified as black. 140 Op. cit., fo. 333. Compare with Chapter 5, note 31, and Maimonides, op. cit., note 56. 141 Hei ha-Olamim, fo. 333, with further details on fo. 334. ‘And at the first extreme there were the pygmies. They said that in the great and wide land of Cush are pygmies the size of a finger and a half, having intelligence and living in tunnels of earth, and feeding on butter, milk and cheese. And there pearls are born and gold is found. Their main occupation is bartering their merchandise with traders, without speech and merely by gesture … and according to rumours we heard, they live but six or seven years. And they have strength to make war and the prophet, mentioning them, called them dwarfs, seeing them as naturally defective because of their [short] stature and [short] life, but with that, far above the animals.’ 142 Above, Section I. 143 Hei ha-Olamim, fo. 334.

7 In the wake of exploration: ‘Naked and awash in lust’ 1 Evans, op. cit., pp. 34–35; Baudet, Paradise on Earth, op. cit., pp. 29–30; A.J.R. Russel-Wood, ‘Iberian Expansion and the Issue of Black Slavery: Changing Portuguese Attitudes, 1440–1770’, American Historical Review 83 (1978), pp. 16–42; J.H. Sweet, ‘The Iberian Roots of American Racist Thought’, William and Mary Quarterly 64 (1997), pp. 143–166 and other articles in that volume. See also expansions in Sanders, op. cit., and Braude, op. cit.

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2 B.S. Penrose, Travel and Discovery in the Renaissance (Cambridge, 1960); P.G. Adams, ‘The Discovery of America and European Renaissance Literature’, Comparative Literature Studies 13 (1976), pp. 100–115. See also articles in F. Chiapelli, ed., First Images of America, Vol. 1 (Berkeley, CA, 1976); Baudet, op. cit., pp. 30–31; Melamed, ‘Discovery of America’, op. cit. 3 Melamed, ‘Discovery of America’, op. cit., p. 446 and note 11. 4 For testimony about Marrano Jews who employed black slaves in early modern times and the advantage taken of this by the Inquisition, see J. Schorsh, ‘Jews, Judaism, Blacks and Christianity According to the Early Modern Inquisitions’, Luso-Brazilian Review (forthcoming). My sincere thanks to the author for a prepublication copy of the article. We have an instructive example of the white (Christian) designator using the (black) other’s other to identify and repress the other’s (the secret Jew’s) imitation of the designator himself. On Jewish slave traders, see Sanders’s note, op. cit., p. 372. He relates to the seemingly strange phenomenon that there were Jews among the slave merchants of early modern times. He asks how those perceived as inferior and without rights until so recently (and most of their people were still without rights) could so speedily make themselves masters of those they considered inferior. Sanders finds economic and psychological reasons: there were even black African slave merchants who took an active part in selling their fellow blacks into slavery. The deplorable fact is that in that time few people saw slavery as a moral problem. Therefore the normative perception of blacks as naturally inferior in the history of Jewish culture would obviously have made it easier for slave merchants to pursue their trade. See above, Introduction, note 1. On the evidence of R. Judah Arieh of Modena, see The Autobiography of a Seventeenth Century Venetian Rabbi, op. cit., p. 156. For evidence of the use of black concubines, see above, Chapter 5, note 13, though this continues medieval custom in Muslim Egypt, differently from the renewal of black slavery in the west in modern times. For attitudes to black converts in the Jewish community of Amsterdam, see Y. Kaplan, ‘Political Concepts in the World of the Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam During the Seventeenth Century: The Problem of Exclusion and the Boundaries of Self-Identity’, in Y. Kaplan et al., eds, Menasseh ben Israel and His Times (Leiden, 1989), pp. 58–59; ‘The Self-Definition of the Sephardic Jews of Western Europe and Their Relation to the Alien and the Stranger’, in B.R. Gampel, ed., Crisis and Creativity in the Sephardic World 1391–1648 (New York, 1997), p. 126. 5 D.B. Ruderman, The World of a Renaissance Jew: The Life and Thought of Abraham ben Mordecai Farissol (Cincinnati, 1981), Chapter 11; Melamed, op. cit. 6 Ruderman, op. cit., pp. 134–135, 231. 7 Abraham Farrisol, Iggeret Orhot Olam (Letter from the Roads of the World) (Prague, 1793), p. 1a and Chapter 13. 8 Ibid., p. 1. 9 Ibid., p. 2a, with continued discussion of the Jewish and Christian sources of this issue. 10 See in Menasseh ben Israel: Melamed, ‘Discovery of America’, op. cit., pp. 461–464. 11 Melamed, ‘The Climate Theory’, op. cit., p. 74, and at greater length in ‘From Navel to Heart’, op. cit. 12 See details in the Iggeret, Chapters 6, 13, 15–23. 13 Ibid., pp. 32a, 34b. 14 Ibid., pp. 32a, 39a. 15 Ibid., p. 37a. 16 Ibid., p. 38a. 17 Above, Chapter 5, p. 143; Chapter 6, p. 154. 18 Iggeret, op. cit., p. 32b.

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19 Ibid., p. 39b, and also 42a: ‘And they have large, long and broad settlements too numerous to count.’ 20 Ibid., p. 38b. 21 Ibid., p. 42a. 22 Ibid., p. 53a: ‘The tribes there are all black (shehorim), tending to a reddish hue (admumiyot), with red eyes and faces of flame. They go about naked until the day they die, living in holes and burrows in the ground and in dwellings like succot with a fence around them. Their buttocks are bare, with all their private parts showing, front and back, with no covering or trousers. The women serve as beasts and all of them are ardent in copulation. Moreover, they do as the lowest of the women want and use ointments and even animal stings to increase the size of their organ and after that the women lie with them. A man will lie with his mother, a brother with his sister or with anyone at all, for they have neither law nor ruler nor divinity, but simply act according to nature. Neither have they any personal possessions nor property, because everything is free for all there. They eat and provide for themselves together, lying with the women passing by, then letting them go wherever they want. Sometimes hate and competition will come among them, and they will fight one another with bows and arrows, with stones and other weapons, because they have no [fire]arms. There is no iron in that entire kingdom, and the victors will trap their enemies, slaughter them and eat them: sometimes they will salt them away as the cannibals do, as they enjoy eating human flesh. These tribes are very healthy, the air and the winds blowing there are salubrious, so that people may live longer than 150 years.’ Compare with the parallel description of black Africans below, note 27. While the descriptions differ, they are very similar as regards sex mores. Compare with Eldad ha-Dani’s description of black cannibalism above, Chapter 6 and note 26, and in Reuveni, op. cit., note 48. 23 Farrisol, Letter, op. cit., 32a. 24 Ibid., p. 38a and again 29a: ‘And in those realms there is never any cold nor any autumn, only the very slightest bit.’ 25 Compare with contemporary Portuguese travel literature, Sanders, op. cit., p. 58. 26 Iggeret, op. cit., end of Chapter 19, p. 38. 27 Ibid., pp. 39b–40a. Compare with note 22 above. 28 Op. cit. See also p. 41b. 29 See discussion, with additional bibliography, in M. Eliav-Feldon, ‘The New World – Utopia or Paradise Lost?’, In The Footsteps of Columbus, op. cit., pp. 117–126. See also articles in First Images, op. cit. 30 The same claim can obviously be made about those who choose to study just such texts! 31 Above, Chapter 6, note 42. 32 Baudet, op. cit., p. 48, and in Sanders, op. cit., pp. 104–105. 33 Iggeret, op. cit., p. 40b. 34 Compare with Sanders, op. cit., pp. 343ff. 35 Letter, op. cit., p. 41b. Compare with descriptions of the sexual depravity of nonwhite women in the travel literature. Sanders, op. cit., pp. 104–105. 36 Iggeret, op. cit., p. 40a. 37 Ibid., p. 43a. 37a Ibid., Chapter 18, p. 36a. 38 S. Regev, ed., Drashot R. Itzhak Karo (Sermons of R. Isaac Karo) (Ramat Gan, 1996), p. 190. See also ‘The Land of Israel in the Philosophy of R. Isaac Karo’, Me-Mizrah u-me-Ma’arav 6 (1995), pp. 7–31. The author quotes this statement but does not discuss its significance as regards Guinea. For the renewed confrontation with the issue of Eretz Israel’s centrality, given the influence of the great explorations, see Melamed, ‘The Climate Theory’ and ‘From Navel to Heart’, op. cit. In interpreting

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39

40

41 42 43

44 45 46 47 48 49

the Bible story of Moses’s black wife, Karo, like Abraham ibn Ezra before him (above, Chapter 6, note 93) rejects the rabbinic interpretation of ‘black wife’ as ‘beautiful wife’ in the language of opposites. In fact he identifies the black wife as an ugly woman whom the humble Moses took only for the need to reproduce, so that he would not be tempted by a beautiful (i.e. white) woman to intimacies beyond those needs. See R. Isaac Karo, Sefer Toldot Itzhak, Vol. 2 (Jerusalem, 1994), p. 369: ‘And of this it is said that Moses was a most humble man, that is, in his whole life he did not see if she was beautiful or ugly … And why use the word “black woman” (cushit) for her beauty, when the word [black] means the opposite? And if you say it is the language of opposites, in the language of the Sages we found this and not in the language of the text, and they seem to be using the evil tongue who say, if he had wanted beauty he would have taken it, and in fact he took a black woman (shehorah), teaching that he was not thinking of beauty, but only of the commandment to be fruitful and multiply.’ David Ganz, Sefer Nehmad ve-Na’im (Yasnitz, 1743), p. 33b. This position typifies the perception of the black in medieval culture, and definitely appears in ibn Ezra. See above, Chapter 6, section III and note 101. I have not yet found the direct source. On Halevi’s and Maimonides’s attitude see above, Chapter 5. Ganz describes Africa in Nehmad ve-Na’im, ibid., 3: 71, pp. 27–28. He notes that Africa mentioned in the Talmud is not necessarily the continent but another place. See above, Chapter 4, note 1. In Tuviah ha-Cohen’s encyclopaedic Sefer Ma’aseh Tuviah the author repudiates the theory of climate, following the great geographical discoveries. See in detail in Melamed, ‘From Navel to Heart’, op. cit. This also necessarily repudiates the theory of the natural inferiority of the blacks, at least from the ‘scientific’ point of view, although he could still support it by theological arguments. In any case, Tuviah does not mention the blacks specifically in this context. See Sefer Ma’aseh Tuviah (Cracow, 1906), pp. 61–62. Africa is mentioned by him in the other context, that of the search for the Ten Lost Tribes, where he follows the Christian traditions on the Ethiopian kingdom of Prester John, but he does not go into any details concerning the blacks. Ibid., p. 62a. See details and additional bibliography, Melamed, ‘Discovery of America’, op. cit. Ibid., p. 22. C. Roth, A Life of Menasseh ben Israel (Philadelphia, 1945), pp. 182–183; A. Nehar, David Genz u-Zemano (David Ganz and his Time) (Jerusalem, 1982), pp. 159–160. Eilberg-Schwartz (People of the Body, op. cit., pp. 32–37) refers to Ben Israel’s discussion, but ignores the fact that unlike some English scholars, he does not identify the Jews in America with the Indians. In any case, there is no reference to skin colour, but only to a similarity of religion and customs. See also Sanders, op. cit., p. 187. On pp. 363–364 Sanders mentions the story of Montesinus, ignoring, however, its skin colour element, though that story gives it considerable space. See also R.H. Popkin, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Indian Theory’, in Y. Kaplan et al., eds, Menasseh ben Israel and His World (Leiden, 1989), pp. 63–82; R. Cogley, ‘John Eliot and the Origins of the American Indians’, Early American Literature 21 (1986–1987); and Braude, op. cit., pp. 103–104. Mikveh Israel, Dorman edition, op. cit., p. 132. See above, Chapter 3, note 5 and Chapter 6, note 27. Indeed R. Ovadiah of Bartenura describes the Lost Tribes, whom he places in Africa, as ‘a tall people with the stature of giants’. From Italy to Jerusalem, op. cit., p. 76. Mikveh Israel, op. cit., p. 130. Above, Chapter 4, p. 73. Mikveh Israel, op. cit., p. 169. Ibid., p. 137.

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50 Above, Chapter 2, notes 31–43. 51 Mikveh Israel, op. cit., p. 150. Compare Azariah di Rossi, Me’or Einayim (Vilna, 1866), p. 192. However, scholars like Ovadiah of Bartinura described these Jews as dark skinned, as he did the Jews of Aden: From Italy to Jerusalem, op. cit., pp. 75, 86. See also Benjamin of Tudela on the black Jews of India, above, Chapter 6, note 36. 52 Mikveh Israel, op. cit., p. 139. 53 See Melamed, ‘Non-coincidental Accidents’, op. cit. On the meaning of the beard in Jewish culture see A. Horowitz, ‘On the Significance of the Beard in Jewish Communities’, Pe’amim 59 (1993), pp. 121–148. W. Fisher, ‘The Renaissance Beard: Masculinity in Early Modern England’, Renaissance Quarterly, 54, 1 (2001), pp. 155–87. 54 Mikveh Israel, op. cit., pp. 138–139. 55 Both quotations, ibid., p. 141. 56 The three quotations, ibid., p. 142. 57 Ibid., p. 143. 58 Ibid., p. 144. 59 Above, Chapter 2, note 86. 60 See e.g. Abarbanel, above, Chapter 2, note 62. 60a On the story in Kiddushin, see above, Chapter 4, Section V. On analysis of the Midrash in Pirkei de’Rabbi Eliezer, see above Chapter 4, Section III. See discussion of changing versions and their significance in Schorsh, ‘The Black Mirror’, op. cit., pp. 141–144. On the Jewish longing to resemble Japheth, i.e. the white, handsome, cultured European, see detailed description above, Chapter 2, Section IV and this chapter, Section III. 61 My thanks to Dr Anat Taran who called my attention to this source, and to the late Dr Meir Ayali who examined the various versions of the story for me, pointing out the illustration in the Venetian Haggadah. Thanks, too, to my former student Sagit Mor who helped find the quotations from different editions of BT Makkot. For the different versions, see S.Z. Rabinovitz, Sefer Dikdukei Sofrim, Masekhet Makkot (Munich, 1879), p. 59. 62 On censorship in the Basle Talmud, see W. Popper, The Censorship of Hebrew Books (New York, 1899), pp. 53–63, Judaica, 5, pp. 276–281, as well as Rabinovitz’s ‘note on the Printing of the Talmud’, an appendix to Sefer Dikdukei Sofrim, Vols 7–8 (Munich, 1877), pp. 68–69. See recent summary of all the material: M.J. Heller, Printing the Talmud: A History of the Earliest Printed Editions of the Talmud (New York, 1992), Chapter 15. No parallel change was made in versions that appear in collections of Aggadic Midrashim, beginning with Sifrei Devarim and ending with Yalkhut Shim’oni, possibly because Vatican censors were less interested in them than in the BT. Nonetheless, printed collections of Midrashim like Yalkhut Shim’oni were censored. See Judaica, ibid., and D.W. Amran, The Makers of Hebrew Books in Italy (Philadelphia, 1909), esp. p. 257. 63 Above, Chapter 4, Section I, esp. note 19. 64 On ‘Pour out Thy wrath’, see D. Goldschmidt, Ha-Haggadah shel Pesach ve-Toldotehah (The Passover Haggadah and its History) (Jerusalem, 1977), introduction by B. Narkiss; Y.H. Yerushalmi, Haggadah and History (Philadelphia, 1975), pp. 39–43. 65 The Venetian Haggadah, p. 33. Yerushalmi, ibid., p. 47; Heller, op. cit., pp. 262–263. 66 See a short description of the illustration in Narkiss, ibid., pp. 10, 18. For some reason Narkiss defines the illustration as ‘eschatological’ in the explanation of Plate 47; also C. Roth, ‘The Illustrated Haggadah in Print’, Areshet 3, in Hebrew, pp. 7–30. See description of the picture, op. cit., p. 20: ‘Here we see Pharaoh bathing in the blood of Hebrew infants, surrounded by necromancers. They appear as Negroes with black faces.’ For some reason Roth confused two illustrations. On p. 18 is the picture of Pharaoh bathing in the blood of Hebrew infants, with the necromancers around

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67 68 69 70

71 72

73 74

75

76

77

him. But the latter are light skinned, while only in our illustration, on p. 33, do blacks appear. There is no description at all of Pharaoh. See also A.M. Haberman, Ha-Haggadah ha-Mezuyeret, Kitvei Yad ve-Sifrei Defus (Zefat, 1963), p. 20. On the link between Egyptians and blacks, see above, Chapter 4, beginning of Section IV. My thanks to Prof. Luisa Pritti Cuomo for her help in deciphering the Judaeo-Italian text. See examples: Devisse, The Image of the Black, op. cit., Vol. 2, pp. 135, 150, 177, 206, 245, 247, etc. On Italian influences in illustrations in the Venetian Haggadah, see Narkiss, op. cit., p. 12. See beginning of the chapter and description of this contact on the appearance of the black in Italian art in Devisse, op. cit. On Midrashic sources of illustrations in the Venetian Haggadah, see M. Ayali, ‘Halakhah and Aggadah in Illustrations of the Haggadah’, in his collected writings Ke-Revivim (Tel Aviv, 1996), pp. 236–249, esp. 219–242, on Midrashic motifs in the Venetian Haggadah: our illustration is not mentioned in this article. See also Narkiss, op. cit., pp. 10–13; Roth, op. cit., pp. 19–22. Amran, Makers of Hebrew Books, op. cit., pp. 291, 356; Judaica, Vol. 13, p. 1104; Vol. 16, p. 1019; Narkiss, op. cit., p. 7; Roth, ‘Illustrated Haggadah’, pp. 19–22; and Heller, op. cit., pp. 262–263. The ban is not so sweeping as is sometimes thought. Maimonides, for example, says that the prohibition against picturing the human form is valid only for statues or reliefs; that is, when there is a third dimension apparent to the touch: it does not apply to an ordinary drawing. In his view the Halachah does not forbid pictures of the human form, and certainly not of animals and natural phenomena, which may be shown in relief or in statues as well. See Hilchot Avodah Zarah 3: 1–11. See also an enlightening discussion that undermines preconceived ideas, in Ayali, op. cit. See also Chapter 4 above, note 21. The Rothschild Mahzor (New York, 1983), plate 10. On the iconographic background, see E.M. Cohen, pp. 41–56, with descriptions of this page on pp. 52, 56. Compare with pictures of the black in Christian iconography of the period, above, note 68. Interestingly, the writer chose the term ‘Moor’ rather than ‘black’, perhaps for reasons of political correctness. My attention was called to this source by the Master’s thesis of J. Schorsch, mentioned above. D. Owen Hugues, ‘Distinguishing Signs: Earrings, Jews and Franciscan Rhetoric in the Italian Renaissance City’, Past and Present 112 (1986), pp. 3–59; R. Bonfil, BeMar’ah ha-Khesufah, Hayei ha-Yehudim be-Italiah be-Yemei ha-Renaissance (The Silvered Mirror – Life of the Jews in Italy during the Renaissance) (Jerusalem, 1994), pp. 90–91. See Cohen, The Rothschild Mahazor, op. cit. Prof. Kurt Schubert of Vienna, who with his wife Ursula Schubert specializes in Jewish iconography of the Middle Ages, informed me in a letter (6 June 1998) that neither of them knows of additional examples from Hebrew manuscripts where the gentiles are depicted as blacks, although one finds the Egyptians so depicted. Schubert thinks this may be due to Jewish influence. See K. Schubert, ‘Jewish Traditions in Christian Painting Cycles: The Vienna Genesis and the Ashburnham Pentateuch’, in H. Schreckenberg and K. Schubert, eds, Jewish Historiography and Iconography in Early Medieval Christianity (Minneapolis, 1992), pp. 211–260, esp. pp. 213–215 and Plate 47. Schubert analyses the picture showing the sin of Ham and the punishment of Canaan, and concludes that Midrashic–rabbinic influence is highly probable. Neither the picture nor Schubert’s comment, however, mentions skin colour. See Yerushalmi, op. cit., pp. 42–43, and Heller, op. cit., p. 262.

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284

INDEX OF SOURCES

Hebrew Bible, Rabbinic Sources

Biblical Passages Genesis 1:1–5 20 1:26–31 5 1:30 156 2:7–25 5 4:8 157 6:11 80 7:8 79 7:14 79 8:7–13 245 8:16 79 8:18 79 9 54, 170 9:1 85 9:21–27 55 9:24 83 9:25 82 10 53, 178 10:6 83, 86 10:8 246 10:9 55 10:10 170 10:28 56 12:11 35, 36, 91, 171, 185 14:1 246 16:1 92 17:11 231 17:9 231 18:8 82 18:18 103 25:3 56 25:1–4 187 25:6 119 25:27 35, 157 26:7–12 249 27:11 234

27:43–46 36 28:1–6 35–36 30 75, 244 30:32–35 181 30:29–35 38 34:2 84 39 101 39:1 94 41:6 235 41:19 49 42:9 203 Exodus 6:23 267 18:2 174 19:18 17 32:25 83 Leviticus 11:13 246 18:3 82, 84, 92 18:23 84 20:16 84 20:17–20 84, 85 21:20 243 Numbers 5 77, 95 9:15 44 12 171 12:1 53, 110–120, 175, 177, 236 12:2 174 12:10 56 13:23 44 20:12 193 25 83 25:1 45 31:12 45 31:24 17 32:12 45

285

Deuteronomy 7:1–2 33 8:15 14 23:4 145 32:15 264 Judges 3:8–10 50, 53 I Samuel 2:9 17 9:2 56, 93, 114 16:11–12 161, 212 17:4–5 161 17:25 104 17:42 212 22:8 93 28:8 22 II Samuel 18 53, 58, 177 I Kings 1:10 56 4:3 101 7:45 54 10 53 14:25–26 101 II Kings 2:24 95 Isaiah 1:18 17, 51, 109 18:1 54 18:2 54–55, 104 18:7 54–55, 104 20:4–6 53, 55, 58, 82, 86 23 248 28:15 20 45:14 54 46 54 52:14 33, 39

INDEX OF SOURCES

66:17 204 Jeremiah 13:23 ix, 13, 43, 54–57, 147, 177, 189 31:4 37 36:14 53 38–39 53, 57–58, 62 38:7 94, 114 38:8 111 46:9 54, 57 Ezekiel 16:14 34 16:26 29 16:61 235 23:20 29 29:10 53 38:7 54 47:3 128 Hoshea 2:4–5 166 Joel 1:7 15 Amos 9:7 45, 53, 54, 57–58, 111, 117, 175, 180 Nahum 3:9 54 Habbakuk 3:7 53, 173 Zephaniah 1:1 53, 110 Malachi 2:9 34 2:10 175, 226 2:13 46 Psalms 7:1 53, 82, 92–93, 111, 176, 193, 230 9:1 233 35:6 20 49:13 156 51:9 17 68:32 54 78:40 44 78:51 92 91:1 230 105:28 245 105:53 92 106:22 92 106:30 45 144:4 230 147:9 246

Proverbs 7 238 7:9 22 8:15 20 13:18 83 15:33 83 17:2 103 30:10 105 Job 8:9 230 28:19 54 30:28–30 18 30:30 19 Song of Songs 1:5 34, 59, 64, 90, 173, 236 1:5–6 22, 43, 1:6 34, 62, 2:16 44 3:1 186 3:4 21 3:8 21 4:7 35 5:7 21 5:10 22, 35, 212 5:11 16, 19, 90, 6:10 15, 20, 22, 35, 43 Lamentations 4:2–5 37 4:7–8 22 4:8 16 Ecclesiastes 2:13 20 6:12 229–230 9:8 17 11:10 19 Esther 1:1 54 8:9 54 Daniel 7:9 228 11:35 15 Ezra 9:1 46 Nehemiah 4:16 20 I Chronicles 1 53 1:9 55 20:6 161 II Chronicles 9 56 14:8 237

286

14:8–14 53 14:9–12 53 16:8 53 21:16 239

Rabbinic Sources Tannaitic Midrashim Mekilta de’Rabbi Ishmael Beshalah 3 84, 247 Jethro 1 113 Jethro 11 247 Bo 18 248 Sifre Be-Ha’alotkha 99, 110, 251 Sifre Zuta Be-Ha’alotchah 12:1–4 93–94, 110–117, 173, 174 Mishnah Nedarim 9:10 95 Sotah 1:6 250 3:4 96 Sanhedrin 4:45 5 Avot 1:5 258 2:10 128 3:12 15 3:21 227 5:17 231 Negaim 2:1 36, 60, 64, 90, 101–102, 134, 251 Yadayim 4:4 145 Tosefta Berakhot 86:3 71 Shabbat 5:13 247 Sotah 2:3 96–97 Kiddushin 5 145 JT (Jerusalem Talmud) Berakhot 12 71

INDEX OF SOURCES

Shabbat 6:9 64, 102, 233 Yoma 8:5 64, 102, 233 Ta’anit 1:6 61, 72, 78–81, 87–88, 115 Sotah 3:4 96 BT (Babylonian Talmud) Berakhot 6a 247 25a 244, 256 28a 145, 247 31b 96 33a–b 264 58b 71–73, 144–145 Shabbat 31a 31–32, 61, 128, 208, 256 62b 98–99, 87a 113 107b 78 152a 15, 18, 253 Eruvin 21a–b 6–1 21b–22a 229 52a 246 95b 248 Pesahim 87b 113 112b 22 113b 81, 86, 95, 102 118b 54, 251 Rosh ha-Shanah 26a 248 Yoma 35b 94 Sukkah 34b 77–78, 36a 245 53a 101, 176 Ta’anit 4a 104–105 Megillah 14b 249 Moed Katan 16b 60, 71, 72, 81, 110–117, 145, 176 Hagigah 3b 21

14a 228 16a 97, 228 Yevamot 62a 113 63b 103 Ketubot 9b 97 10b 16 49b 246 60b 61, 76, 97, 99 65a 79, 97 Nedarim 30b 228 50b 61, 99 65a 95 66a–b 237 66b 95 Nazir 38a 250 Sotah 2a 97, 250 8b 250 12a 16, 26, 61 13b 94 36b 94, 192 Gittin 67b 247 Kiddushin 40a 15, 17, 97, 100–101, 116, 213, 227, 228 49b 97, 99–100 72a 230 Baba Kama 80b 244 Baba Metzia 71a 248 84a 232 Baba Batra 15b 56, 113 58a 249 97b 61, 97 158b 129 Sanhedrin 7b 21 37a 5, 148 38b 207 70a 80, 83, 99 82a–b 113 91a 248 92b 35 93b 248 100b 16, 61

287

105a 239 108b 78–81, 247 Makkot 24a–b 213–220 Avodah Zarah 3a 94 19b–20a 33 43a 244 65a 102 Menahot 34b 248 Bekhorot 44b 61, 181, 243 45b 60, 61, 73–75, 88, 256 Tamid 32b 23, 113, 251 Nidah 16b 38 17a 80 Small Masachtot Avot de’Rabbi Nathan 1:15 20 9:2 113 15:2 128–129, 130, 208 16:1 94 16:2 32, 255 25:1 61 Kallah Rabba 3:42 94 3:54 58 80:2 247 Derech Eretz Zuta 1:6 58 Aggadic Midrashim Bereshit Rabbah 2:4 35 15:3 20 18:8 46 23:11 236 31:17 79 33:5 245 36:7 208 36:11 97 36–37 81–82 37:2 56 40:4 35, 91 40:5 92 42:3 103 42:4 61, 86 44:4 246

INDEX OF SOURCES

45 92 60:2–3 103–104 60:7 245 73 38 73:10 75–77 76:4 33, 90, 94 76:5 241 80:11 29 84:7 93 86:3–4 83, 86, 88, 94, 101–102 87:10 192 Bereshit Zuta 41 169–170 Shemot Rabbah 49:2 44, 71, 236 Vayikrah Rabbah 5:17 246 6:6 21, 217 11:7 95, 103 17:5 80, 247, 248 19:1 246 23:10 44, 192 25:7 22, 29 27:1 252 31:8 19 37:4 104–105

Bamidbar Rabbah 2:26 245 9 77, 95–96 9:21 97 9:25 96, 190 9:33 97 9:34 75–77, 244 9:41 96–97 9:42 15 10:8 79, 99–100 10:8–9 97 10:14 234 10:22 99 13:10 35 15:5 19, 20 17:5 248 Devarim Rabbah 3:13 19 6:11 121 Midrash Shmuel 5:2 246 24:2 22 Shir ha-Shirim Rabbah 1:1 20 1:5 226 1:31 92, 105–110 1:35 44–45, 92

288

1:35–36 44 1:37 235 1:35–41 71 1:38 12 1:41 37, 61 5:8 80–81, 227 5:9 19 Ruth Rabbah 2:17 22, 38 Koheleth Rabbah 10:8 102 Midrash Tehillim (Shoher Tov) 7:80 92–93 Pirkei De-Rabbi Eliezer 24 33, 68, 89–91, 213 Tanhuma Noah 13:29 169 Noah 14 79 Lech-Lechah 5 Va-Yeshev 9 192 Yalkut Shimoni Noah 80 Be-Ha’alotkha 12 263 Yalkut ha-Makiri On Psalms 7 176 On Psalms 21 263

SUBJECT INDEX

Aaron 56, 112, 116–118, 174, 188, 240, 253, 267 Abarbanel, Isaac 33, 35–36, 39, 57, 92, 149, 177, 178–189, 190, 197, 198, 210, 239, 247 Abel 157 Abelard and Eloise 47, 50, 186, 234, 252 Abraham 35, 49, 91–93, 97, 101, 103, 108, 119, 127, 170–171, 176, 178, 185–186, 187, 263–264 Abraham of Perugia 150 Abraham of Sartiano 237 Absalom 58 Achsah 104–105 Active superstition 66–67 Adam 5, 121, 148, 156, 178–179, 207 Aeschylus 62 Aesop 12, 63 Africa, Africans 1, 8, 21–22, 24–25, 31–32, 53, 61, 62, 89, 89, 99, 105, 112, 118, 120, 123, 126, 128, 135, 142–143, 149–150, 151, 152–153, 154, 155, 158, 176, 181–182, 183, 187–188, 194–195, 196–197, 199–208, 216, 222, 249, 251, 252, 253, 255, 258, 270 Afro-Americans 2, 25, 28, 42, 224, 240 R. Akiva 76, 89, 214, 226, 244, 247, 248 Al Farabi 124, 129, 130–131, 135, 137, 139, 140–141, 142, 194; see also Sefer ha-Hathalot Al Ghazali 51; see also Sefer Ma’aznei Tzedek Al Kindi 124, 129 Al Massoudi 124, 129 Al Razi 129 Albo, Joseph 258; see also Sefer ha-Ikkarim Alemanno, Yohanan 193–195, 197, 198, 267; see also Hai ha-Olamim

Alexander the Great 23, 63, 113 America 73, 108, 153, 195, 196–198, 200–201, 203, 204, 209–212, 224, 270 Amrafel 246, Anatoly, Jacob 16–17, 265; see also Malmad ha-Talmidim Anaxagoras 19 Andromeda 39, 75 Anti-semitism 1, 29, 30–32, 40, 41, 212, 224, 232 Apes 140–141, 148 Apocrypha on Genesis 35, 92 Apologetics 7, 69, 185, 226, 248 Arabs, Arabia 6, 7, 42, 48, 122–148, 160–161, 168, 182, 224, 227, 232; see also Culture: Muslim Ari ben Canaan 42 Aristotele, Aristotelianism 36, 46, 75, 104, 129, 130, 131, 137, 141, 148, 157, 179, 184, 190 Artephanus 112 Ashkenzi, Israel 150 Astrology 137, 228 Augustine 31, 110, 151 Avidan, David 19 R. Azariah 91, 214 Azulai, Abraham 191–193 Badrashi, R. Yada’ayiah 239 Baer 18, 95 Bakunin 40 Barbarians 66, 73, 103–104, 129 Baudet, H. 205 Beardsley, G.H. 65 Ben Azzai 226 Ben Elazar, Jacob 160–169, 259, 262–263; see also Sefer ha-Meshalim Ben Eli, Japheth 175, 183

289

SUBJECT INDEX

Ben Israel, Manasseh 47, 73, 153, 209–212, 224, 270; see also Mikveh Israel Ben Neriah, Baruch 111, 114–115 Ben Shabetai, Judah, 48, 159, 163, 168, 239; see also Soneh ha-Nashim Ben Sira 18, 47, 95 Ben Zemah, Shimon 264–265 Ben Zimrah, David 255 Benjamin of Tudella 122, 124, 149, 152, 153, 154–158, 193, 205, 259 Berman, L.V. 141–142 Bestiality, bestial men, 12, 13, 15, 23, 35, 47, 80, 130–131, 132, 140, 143, 154, 155, 156–157, 180–183, 186, 202–206, 208; see also Sexual promiscuity Bible: Arameic translation see Onkelos; Greek translation see Septuagint; Jerusalem (pseudo-Jonathan) translation 118–119; King James translation 64; Latin translation see Origen, Jerome, Vulgate; Palestine translation 112, 118, 236 Black converts 198, 212, 268 Black maid 105–110, 167–168 Black Muslims 1 Black wife (of Moses) 53, 56, 69, 71, 81, 92, 101, 110–120, 127, 170–176, 178, 187–189, 191–193, 208, 251–252, 253, 266–267, 269; see also Zipporah Blake, William 254 Blond hair (natural and artificial) 28, 39, 41, 42, 48, 67, 98–99, 224, 239 Boy, black 58, 177 Bride, black 47, 50, 151 Cain 157 Caleb ben Jephunneh 45, 104 Canaan (son of Ham), sons of Canaan 1, 5, 22, 29, 36, 55, 60, 64, 65, 68, 69, 71, 78–91, 92, 94, 97, 98, 99, 102, 103, 112, 122, 125, 127, 134, 138, 151, 158, 171, 179–180, 182, 186, 196–197, 208, 210, 246, 248, 249, 258, 263, 272 Canaan, white 122, 157–158; see also Slavery: white Canaanites 88–89, 104–105, 248 Cannibalism 24, 154, 156–157, 158, 206–207, 260 Cassiopeia 39 Castration 22, 83–85, 87, 247; see also Eunuch

Cat, black 15, 151, 244, 247 Christianity see Culture: Christian Chronos 87 Chushan-rishata’im 50, 168, 239 Cicero 55 Circumcision 29, 31, 210, 211, 231, 263 Climate, climatological theory 13, 36, 68, 124–126, 127–135, 137, 138, 139, 140–144, 146, 149, 151, 154, 155, 181, 189–190, 193–194, 201, 208–209, 270 Colour symbolism 17–18, 66 Columbus 197 Cush 24, 53–56, 58, 60–61, 64, 78, 80, 82–83, 86, 88–89, 92, 119, 150, 153, 154, 155–156, 158, 159, 170, 172, 176, 177, 179, 182, 185, 187, 194, 199–201, 216, 235, 239, 246, 248, 251–252, 267 Cush ben Yemini (Cush the Benjamite) 53, 88, 92–93, 111, 114, 172, 176–177, 248; see also Saul Culture: Christian, Christianity 2–4, 11, 12, 26, 31, 50, 64, 65–66, 110, 149–225; Hellenistic–Roman 2–4, 11, 23, 31, 39, 48, 55, 57, 63–69, 75, 87–88, 98, 103–104, 118–119, 120, 123, 125–126, 129, 136, 151, 183; Greek–Hellenistic 62–63, 75, 98, 100, 103–104, 120, 124, 129, 134–135, 138–139, 156, 181; Muslim 2–4, 11, 12, 48, 50, 94, 122–148, 157, 196, see also Arabs Dante 15 Darwin 7 David 58, 88, 92–93, 104, 111, 115, 161–162, 177, 212, 233 Davies, D. 23 Debate on the merit of woman 44, 47–50, 166–168; see also Soneh ha-Nashim Dela Reina, Joseph 259 Demetrius 119 Derrida, J. 25 Desdemona 30, 92, 162 Desert (wilderness) 9–13, 44, 143, 154, 156, 222, 226 Dinah 84 Dog 78–79, 81–82, 259 Drunkenness 49, 83, 85–86, 97–98, 99–100, 250, 257 Druse 157 Earrings 220–222

290

SUBJECT INDEX

Ganz, David 198, 207, 208–209 Gender 3–4, 5, 6, 7, 18, 26, 27, 29, 44–50, 59, 67, 70, 73, 76–77, 98–99, 105–110, 116–117, 120–121, 160–169, 174, 237, 239, 252 Genealogy 55, 119, 124–125, 131, 134, 136, 138–139, 143–144, 146, 178, 184, 216, 265 Gentile (goi) 1, 2, 5, 12, 26, 27, 29, 33, 37–38, 42, 43, 67, 73, 81, 99, 100, 103–104, 105, 109, 146, 148, 214–216, 219, 220, 250; see also Idolatry German (Germani, i.e. white person) 33, 39, 60, 64, 68, 90, 101–102, 104, 249, 251 Gersonides (Levi ben Gershon) 45, 46–47, 51, 52, 252 Gillman, S. 30 Goitein, Sh. 126 Goliath 104, 161–162 Guinea 207–208, 269 Guri, Haim 234

Ebed-Melech 58, 62, 94, 111, 114–115 Ebel 157 Eden, Garden of (Paradise) 11, 62, 153–154, 156, 178, 196, 207 Edition, Bazel (of the BT) 213–220; see also Zifroni, Israel Edition, Vilna (of the BT) 100, 213–215, 217 Edom 35–36, 212; see also Esau Egalitarianism 4–5, 44, 136, 148, 226 Egypt (Mizraim), Egyptians 9, 31, 35, 49, 53, 54, 55, 57, 58, 62, 82–84, 86, 88, 91–94, 97, 101, 102, 119, 127, 146, 150, 153, 155–156, 158, 159, 171, 173, 178, 179, 182, 185–187, 207, 219, 250–251, 255, 264, 272 Eldad, ha-Dani 124, 152, 153–154, 156, 207 Elem, Joseph 189–190 Elharizi, Judah 48–49, 50, 163, 168; see also Tahkhimoni Eliezer (Abraham’s servant) 103–105 Elijah ben Isaac from Vigevano 220 Elnekave, Israel 244; see also Sefer Menorat ha-Maor Emancipation 30, 32, 40–42, 224 Emanuel of Rome 49–50, 168, 238, 239; see also Mahbarot Emanuel ha-Romi Engels, Friedrich 40 Esau 35–36, 56, 82, 157, 191, 212, 216, 234, 246; see also Edom Eshkoli, A.A. 159, 234 Ethiopia, Ethiopian (Habash, Habashi) 23, 28, 39, 55, 62, 63, 75, 128, 135, 136, 138, 142–143, 150, 151, 153, 154, 155, 156, 158, 182, 200–201, 210, 234 Ethiopika 39, 63, 75; see also Heliodorus Eunuch 94, 122, 246; see also Castration Evans, W.M. 66 Eve 5, 121 Exclusion 4, 27, 30, 70, 72 Exile 21, 37, 39, 42, 46 Falasha 150, 210, 234 Farrisol, Abraham 152, 158, 198–207, 259; see also Iggert Orhot Olam Feet (flat) 31–32, 128–129, 207–208, 232 Flavius, Josephus 69, 112, 114, 118–120, 242, 266 Freud, Freudian 11, 26, 31, 121 Galen 124, 129, 130, 139, 184

Hacohen, Tuviah 270 Hagadah, Venice 213, 217–220, 223; see also Zifroni, Israel Hagar 92, 108 R. Hai Gaon, 126; see also Sefer Halachot Gedolot Hai ha-Olamim 193–195, 267; see also Alemanno Halevi, Judah 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 47, 124, 127, 130, 135, 136–139, 142, 143, 147–148, 154, 156, 157, 184, 189, 190, 194, 195, 208, 255; see also Sefer ha-kuzari Ham, sons of Ham 22, 24, 29, 48–49, 53, 55, 60, 64, 65, 68, 71, 78–91, 92, 94, 98, 99, 103, 124–125, 127, 131, 133, 134, 138–139, 156, 157–158, 169, 170, 175, 176, 179–185, 196, 200, 213, 235, 245, 247, 248, 249, 255, 263, 265, 272 Hamor (donkey, ass) 49, 84, 151 R. Hananel 245 R. Hanina 82, 88, 243–244 Havdalah 21, 29 Hayei Yehudah (Life of Judeah)198; see also R. Judah of Modena Hegel 108 Heliodorus 39, 63, 75; see also Ethiopika Hellenism see Culture: Greek–Hellenistic Herodotus 62

291

SUBJECT INDEX

Indians (American) 73, 197, 201, 204, 209–212, 270 Inquisition 198, 267–268 Intellectual potential; perfection; intelligence 130–131, 137, 141, 157, 178, 180, 183, 184, 195, 208 Isaac 104, 127 R. Isaac 105 Isaac, E. 69, 76, 241, 247, 248, 253, 255 Ischa 251; see also Sarah R. Ishmael 36, 44, 60, 64, 68, 90, 134 Ishmaelites 94, 101, 187 Islam see Culture: Muslim

Hierarchy 1–2, 4–5, 8, 27, 32–33, 67, 105–110, 148, 164, 178, 179–180, 184 Hilkhot Avodah Zarah 33, 217, 272; see also Maimonides Hilkhot Berakhot144–145; see also Maimonides Hilkhot Issurei Bia’a 145–146, 148; see also Maimonides Hilkhot Lulav 145; see also Maimonides R. Hillel the elder 128–129, 130, 208 Hippocrates 129, 130 R. Hiyya bar Aba 5, 82, 87 Hizkuni 264, 266 Homer 62, 127–128, 130, 154; see also Odyssey Homosexuality 84 Horace 51, 63 Ibn Aknin, Joseph 45 Ibn Ezra, Abraham 33, 39, 45, 47, 155, 170–177, 183, 187, 188, 189–190, 208, 236, 237, 247, 252 Ibn Ezra, Moses 124, 127, 135–137, 142; see also Sefer ha-Iyyunim ve-ha-Diyyunim Ibn Falaquera, Shemtov 9–14, 15–16, 52, 149, 159, 168, 224; see also Sefer haMevakesh Ibn Hisdai, Abraham 51; see also Sefer Ma’aznei Tzedek Ibn Khaldun 25, 124–126, 131–135, 144, 146, 190 Ibn Pakuda, Bahya 50–51; see also Sefer Hovot ha-Levavot Ibn Rushd (Averroes) 129, 130, 180 Ibn Shu’eib, Joel 264 Ibn Sina 124, 129, 130, 135, 142–143 Ibn Tibbon, Moses 45, 135, 147 Ibn Tibbon, Samuel 130, 135, 140, 141, 142, 265 Ibn Yahiah, Gedaliah 150, 259 Ibn Zabara, Joseph 48; see also Sefer haSha’ashu’im Iconography 8, 151, 217–223, 243, Idolatry 29, 73, 83, 99, 104, 214–216, 217, 220, 223, 247, 264; see also Gentile Iggeret Orhot Olam (Letter from the Roads of the World) 152, 158, 199–207, 268–269; see also Farrisol, Abraham Iggeret Tehiat ha-Metim (Epistle on Resurrection) 252, 258; see also Maimonides India, Indians 140, 154–155, 258

Jackson, Michael 27, 41 Jacob 35–36, 38–39, 75–76, 84, 127, 157, 175, 181, 191–192, 212, 234, 246 Japheth, sons of Japheth 33, 39, 43, 44, 89–91, 102, 124, 139, 141, 179, 181–184, 186, 200, 213, 249, 265, 266 Jerome 64, 151; see also Vulgate Jesus 151 Jethro 114, 176, 267 Jew: American 1, 40–42, 69, 224; Ashcenazi (East European, Ostjude) 40–42, 224; Oriental (Sefardi) 41–43, 224; Western 40–42, 224, 227 Jewish–Christian Polemics 31, 33–40, 105–110, 233 Joseph 49, 93–94, 101–102, 191–193 R. Judah 112, 116 R. Judah ben Simon 91 R. Judah Hanassi 64, 102 R. Judah of Modena 198, 233; see also Hayei Yehudah Juvanel 63 Kabbalah 190–193 R. Kalonimus 191 Karo, Isaac 198, 207–208, 269–270; see also Sefer Toldot Isaac Kartanit 105–110, 251 Keltz, Judah 244; see also Sefer ha-Musar Keturah 56, 119, 176, 187 Kimhi, David 39, 147, 170, 171, 177 R. Kook, Abraham 6 Koran 123, 124, 242 Land of Israel 130, 139, 190, 191–192, 197, 201, 207, 208, 269–270 Lasalle, Ferdinand 40 Lavan 36, 75–76, 181, 245

292

SUBJECT INDEX

R. Levi 82, 87–88, 102 Levi-Strauss, C. 25–26 Levin, H. 14, 27 Lewis, B. 122–123 Lilith 22, 56, 239, 259 Lucianus 12, 57 Luria, David 249 Magus, Black 151 Mahbarot Emanuel ha-Romi (Notebooks of Emanuel of Rome) 49–50; see also Emanuel of Rome Mahzor Rothschild 220–222, 224 Mahzor Vitri 247 Maimonides (Moses ben Maimon) 1, 2, 5, 6, 9, 15, 33, 47, 51–52, 101–102, 124, 126–127, 130, 134, 139–148, 154, 156, 157, 184, 189, 193, 194, 208, 217, 228, 238, 253, 256, 257, 259, 262, 263, 272; see also Hilkhot Avodah Zarah; Hilkhot Berakhot; Hilkhot Issurei Bia’a; Hilkhot Lulav; Iggeret Tehiat ha-Metim; Milot haHigayyon; Mishneh Torah; More Nevukim; Pirkei Moshe; Shemonah Perakim Malmad ha-Talmidim (Goad of the Students) 16–17, 265; see also Anatoly, Jacob Marino, Marcus 214–215 Marrano (Crypto Jews) 198, 268 Marx, Karl 40 Mason, P. 26 Melancholy (black bile) 17, 35, 51 Messiah 15, 37, 39, 105, 110, 151, 251 Metamorphosis 81, 121, 128, 246; see also Ovid Michal Bat Cushi 248 Midian, Midianites 114, 172–173, 176, 187 Mikveh Israel (The Hope of Israel)73, 210–212; see also Ben Israel, Manasseh Milot ha-Higayyon (Treatese on Logic) 147; see also Maimonides Minhat Kana’ut 46 Miriam 56, 112, 116–118, 121, 172–174, 188–189, 240, 252, 253 Mishlei Sandebar (Tales of Sandebar) 159–160 Mishneh Torah 5, 126–127, 145, 148; see also Maimonides Miskawayh 142 Misogyny 3, 48, 49 Modernism 7

Montelbodo, Francanda 199 Montesinus 73, 209 More Nevukim (Guide to the Perplexed) 1, 2, 52, 127, 140–144, 154, 156, 194; see also Maimonides More, Thomas 204 Morrison, Toni 27 Moses 83, 112–120, 147, 171–176, 187–189, 191–193, 208, 252, 253, 265, 267, 269 Muscato, Judah 127, 255 Nahmanides (Moses ben Nahman) 45, 170, 171 Nazism 30–31 Negromanzia 217 Neo-Platonism 137 Newman, Paul 42 Nimrod 53, 55–56, 82, 88, 216, 246 Nissim of Marseilles 264, 267; see also Sefer Ma’aseh Nissim Noah 22, 24, 49, 53, 55, 78–91, 98, 115, 125, 138, 143, 151, 169, 170, 178–180, 196, 200, 213, 246, 247 Nordau, Max 42 Nose (long) 30–31, 41, 224 Odyssey 62, 154; see also Homer Officiel, Joseph bar Nathan 34–35, 36; see also Sefer Yosef ha-Mevakesh Old age 15–16, 112, 117, 252 Onkelos 117–118, 119 Origen 64, 110 Othello 30, 32, 92, 162 Ovadiah of Bartenura 127, 149, 150, 152, 154, 258–259, 271 Ovadiah the Convert 148, 246 Ovid 31, 81, 121, 128, 130; see also Metamorphosis Oz, Amos 224–225, 227, 232 Patriarchy 3, 5, 44, 67, 166, Petronius 23 Phallus 29, 30, 31, 41, 79, 169, 203, 206, 232 Pharaoh 83, 84, 94, 112, 247, 271 Philistins 57 Philo 64, 120, 129, 242 Phisiognomy 8, 23, 31, 130, 140, 169 Phoenicians 89, 248–249 Phut 83, 179, 182, 185 Picasso 80

293

SUBJECT INDEX

Pinehas 45 Pirkei Moshe (Medical Aphorisms) 130, 139–141; see also Maimonides Plato 51–52, 179–180, 250 Pliny 23, 63 Plutrach 75 Poe, Edgar Allen 14 Polemic, Jewish–Christian 31, 33–40, 105–110, 233 Polemic, on the merit of women 44, 47–50, 166–168; see also Soneh haNashim Political correctness ix, 1, 272 Portugal, Portuguese 149, 183, 196, 197–198, 207 Post-modernism 7 Potiphar 83, 93–95, 100, 191–193 Potiphar’s wife 65, 93–95, 100, 102, 191–193 Prester John 150, 151, 153, 270 Pseudo Calisthenes 63 Ptolemy 199–201 Rabbi 16, 78 Racism 1–2, 6, 7–8, 30–31, 55, 69, 95, 100, 106, 120, 242 Ragen, Naomi 227–228 Raven: black 15, 16, 19, 48, 78, 80–81, 89–90, 120–121, 183, 184, 186, 187, 212, 213, 227, 229, 238, 245–246, 265; white 81 Rebekah 36 Reuveni, David 150, 152, 157, 158–159, 259 Rilke 19 Rome see Culture: Hellenistic–Roman Ruderman, D. 199 R. Saadiah Gaon 156 Sabra 42 Samson of Cozi 258 R. Samuel ben Meir (Rashbam) 171, 176 R. Samuel bar Nissim 169–170, 263 Sarah 35, 49, 91–93, 101, 108, 171, 178, 185–186, 249, 251–252, 264 Satan 15, 26, 31, 32, 48, 49, 151, 239, 246 Saul 88, 93–94, 104, 105, 111, 114, 115, 172, 177; see also Cush ben Yemini Sefer Halachot Gedolot 126; see also R. Hai Gaon Sefer ha-Hathalot (The Political Regime)

130–131, 140–141; see also Al Farabi; Ibn Tibbon, Samuel Sefer Hovot ha-Levavot (Duties of the Heart) 50–51; see also Ibn Pakuda, Bahya Sefer ha-Ikkarim (Book of Principles) 258; see also Albo, Joseph Sefer ha-Iyyunim ve-ha-Diyynim (Book of Discussions and Deliberations) 127, 135–137; see also Ibn Ezra, Moses Sefer ha-Kuzari (The Kuzari) 1, 2, 127, 130, 137–139; see also Halevi, Judah Sefer Ma’aseh Nissim 267; see also Nissim of Marseilles Sefer Ma’aseh Tuviah 270; see also Hacohen, Tuviah Sefer Ma’aznei Tzedek 51; see also Al Ghazali, Ibn Hisdai, Abraham Sefer Menorat ha-Maor 244; see also Elnekaveh, Israel Sefer ha-Meshalim (Book of Proverbs) 160–169; see also Ben Elazar, Jacob Sefer ha-Mevakesh (Book of the seeker) 9–14, 15–16, 149; see also Falaquera, Shemtov Sefer ha-Musar 244; see also Keltz, Judah Sefer Nizzahon Yashan 37–39 Sefer ha-Sha’ashu’im 48; see also Ibn Zabara, Joseph Sefer ha-Shetarot 126 Sefer Toldot Isaac 269; see also Karo, Isaac Sefer Vikhua Teshuvah La-Minim (A Book of Debate with the Gentiles) 37 Sefer Yosef ha-Mekaneh (Book of Joseph the Jealous) 34–35, 36, 37, 39; see also Officiel, Joseph bar Nathan Sefer Yosifon 265 Sefer ha-Yovelim 139 Sefer ha-Zohar 190–191 Septuagint 55, 64, 120 Sexual promiscuity 6, 24, 29, 31, 38, 39, 49, 78–89, 92, 94, 99–100, 102, 105, 120–121, 157, 158–159, 160–169, 175, 180, 182–183, 186, 191–193, 195, 197, 201–206, 229, 231; see also Bestiality Sforno, Ovadiah 170, 171 Shadow 21, 229–230 Shakespeare 22, 23–24, 30, 32, 92, 162, 230, 235, 237, 244, 245 Sheba 53, 56, 239 Sheba, Queen of 53, 56, 63, 113, 239, 252 Shechem ben Hamor 84

294

SUBJECT INDEX

Shem 89–91, 124, 139, 179–182, 184, 200–201, 213, 249 Shemonah Perakim (Eight Chapters) 265; see also Maimonides R. Shlomo Izhaki (Rashi) 16, 33–34, 39, 45–46, 71, 78, 80, 98, 155, 156, 170, 171, 176, 186, 210, 228, 229, 233, 239, 245, 246, 251, 264, 265 Shylock 32, Slave trade 1, 267–268 Slavery 1, 8, 23, 58, 62–63, 64, 67, 68, 80–82, 84, 86, 88, 89–90, 94–95, 99, 100–110, 122–123, 125, 126–127, 129, 132–135, 136, 141, 149, 157, 159, 168, 170, 177, 180, 183, 185, 196–198, 199, 216, 241, 248, 254, 255, 258, 265; white 64, 102, 122–123, 149, 157, 196–197 Slavs 63, 122–123, 133, 135–136, 141, 149, 157, 196, 258; see also Slavery: white Snowden, F.M. 65–66, 67, 69, 240, 242 Solomon 53, 56, 63, 101, 113, 173, 176, 239, 252 Sommo, Judah 237–238 Soneh ha-Nashim (Women’s Hater) 48, 159, 237; see also Abraham of Sartiano; Ben Shabetai, Judah Soul, intellectual 47 Spain, Spaniards 196, 209, 210, 211 Stereotypes 13, 27, 32, 55, 61, 65, 69, 90, 95, 99, 100, 116, 120, 137, 143, 146, 149, 154, 174–175, 177, 178, 183, 189, 195, 197, 198, 201, 202, 206, 208, 216, 220, 222, 252 Subversion 43–44, 106, 164–165

Sudan 124, 142 Tabari 124–125, 169, 184, 263 Tacitus 29 Tahkhimoni 48; see also Elharizi, Judah Ten Tribes 149, 150, 151, 152–153, 196, 209–212, 224, 270 Thompson, L.A 66–68 A Thousand and One Night 123, 162, 168, 254 Toynbee, A. 122–123, 253–254, 259 Trifault Francois. 19 Turban 219, 220–222 Turks 124, 131, 140, 142, 184 Varitima, Lodovico 150, 262 Virgil 155 Voltaire 31 Vulgate 64, 120; see also Jerome Xenophanes 62 Yago 162 Yehoshuah, A.B. 232 R. Yosi 116 Youth 15–16, 227 Zanj 25, 126, 131, 142 Zedekiah 57, 58, 111, 115 Zeus 87 Zifroni, Israel 220; see also Hagaddah, Venice; Edition, Basel (of BT) Zionism 42 Zipporah 111–120, 171–176, 187–189, 191, 252, 267; see also Black wife

295