A rabbi who surprises by saying “Yes!”

Rabbi Gabriel Kanter-Webber

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I’m fasting on Thursday

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I think this is really important so am allowing you to choose a shorter option if you want to read it but want to have it finished by the time the toaster pops up.

The three-minute version

Students from Beit Shammai slaughtered students from Beit Hillel to swing a vote. This was bad. There was a fast day to remember this. It dropped out of custom. Our Jewish community still hasn’t learned the lesson, ie don’t use violence to silence others. I want to bring back the commemoration. Scroll down to find a source sheet and a creative liturgy (possibly featuring the first ever liturgical use of the word “mansplained”). And come to the Montagu Centre on Wednesday evening at 7pm to learn more, reflect on silencing behaviour in modern Anglo-Jewry and light a yahrzeit candle remembering the fallen Hillelites.

The eight-minute version

I doubt that more than a tiny handful of people (if any) have marked this occasion for centuries. By the 16th century, Joseph Caro, creator of the Shulchan Aruch, wrinkled his nose and said he’d never heard of anyone observing it.

But I think it’s time to bring back the Ninth of Adar, also known as The Fast of Hillel and Shammai.

A lot of genizah fragments, documentary leftovers from medieval Jewry, refer to the Ninth of Adar having been a fast day to commemorate a time “when controversy arose between Beit Hillel and the Beit Shammai: this was as difficult as the construction of the Golden Calf”.

But what was this controversy? Hillel and Shammai often disagreed, but always politely. Their relationship is held up as a glowing example of how people with different opinions can get on together. One allegory even depicts them as brothers, and their schools as being bound up in eternal friendship.

That depiction is sadly misleading. The reality was very different. Like, bloodbath different.

It all began in an attic, according to the Mishnah.

The sages were in the attic of Chananiah ben Hezekiah ben Gurion. When they had ascended, they took a vote, and Beit Shammai outnumbered Beit Hillel. On that day they enacted eighteen measures.

Then the drama began, according to the Bavli:

They stuck a sword into the beit midrash, and they said, “Anyone who wants to enter may enter, but nobody can leave.” And that day, Hillel was stooped and he sat before Shammai as if he was one of Shammai’s students. And it was as difficult for Israel as the day that the Golden Calf was made.

Finally, the Yerushalmi fills in some of the chilling detail:

Rabbi Yehoshua Oniya taught, “The students of Beit Shammai stood downstairs and began to slaughter the students of Beit Hillel.” It was further taught that six of them went upstairs, and the rest of them took positions with swords and spears. We are told that they decreed eighteen rules.

Medieval rabbis wrote prayers and laments about this atrocity. The Iranian poet Al-Bīrūnī even included it in an epic poem about Jewish customs. Some sources say 3,000 died. One suggests it was 28,000. These are clearly hyperbolic, but that just goes to show what a prominent event it was. Yet now it’s all but forgotten.

And actually, it’s a message that modern British Jewry desperately needs to hear. Actual physical violence along sectarian or political lines is thankfully rare in our community – though not unheard of – but other forms of silencing violence are prevalent. People get screamed at at communal events. People try to get political opponents fired. People are stalked online. People are relentlessly bullied in the hope of emotionally exhausting them into submission.

Beit Shammai silenced Beit Hillel because it was afraid of an open debate followed by a fair vote. Perhaps the swords were only carried by a small number of hotheaded students, but the scholars upstairs were happy to pass their eighteen decrees with the aid of the massacre below. Beit Shammai was silenced because its members dared to disagree.

I’m fasting on Thursday, this year’s Ninth of Adar. If you think that’s too hardcore for you, you have a couple of less extreme options –

  • Come to the Montagu Centre on Wednesday evening at 7pm, where I’ll be teaching about these events, followed by a short remembrance ceremony.
  • If you can’t make it, read the sources and hold your own ceremony. Resources are below, including this prayer I composed for the occasion:

Eternal God, God of wit and wisdom, God who speaks many words to many people: we stand before you shame-faced at our own arrogance. Each of us is created in Your image, with an inquiring mind and a creative soul, yet too often we have sought to suppress and muzzle our fellow human beings whose opinions and thoughts are different to our own.

On the Ninth of Adar, the voice of the House of Hillel was silenced, and 18 decrees were unjustly passed. True, not all of the Shammaiites acted with violence; some were in the attic passing the decrees. Yet all those who took part in the sham vote upstairs benefited from the butchery below. They preferred to see their colleagues stifled rather than tolerate a difference of opinion.

In memory of the 18 unjust decrees, now recall 18 unjust ways in which our own behaviour silences others and deters them from speaking their truth.

We have been 1violent and 2abusive. We have 3defamed. We have 4lodged malicious complaints. We have 5distorted. We have 6misused the memory of the Holocaust. We have 7given a platform to inciters of hatred, and we have 8reaped the benefit of those who seek to silence others’ voices. We have 9demanded absolute unity. We have 10patronised, and 11labelled, and been 12sectarian. We have 13further marginalised those on the edges. We have 14mansplained. We have 15interrupted. We have 16harassed and 17stalked. We have 18sought to create an emotional cost for others.

הִתְקַפְנוּ, בִּזִּינוּ, הִשְׁמַצְנוּ, הִתְלוֹנַנּוּ בּאוֹפֶן מַרְגִּיז, סֵרַסְנוּ, עִוִּינוּ אֶת־זִיכְרוֹן הַשּׁוֹאָה, נָתַנּוּ דּוּכָן לִמְחַרְחֲרֵי שִׂנְאַת חִנָּם, הִרְוַחְנוּ מִמַּשְׁתִּיקֵי קוֹל, תָּבַעְנוּ אַחֲדוּת דֵּעִים, הִתְנַשֵּׂאנוּ, סִוַּגְנוּ, עָשִׂינוּ כִּתָּתִיּוּת, הוֹשַבְנוּ בִּסְפָר, הִסְגְבַרְנוּ, קָטַעְנוּ, הִטְרַדְנוּ, צַדְנוּ, יָצַרְנוּ עֲלוּת רִגְשִׁית

Resources

Welcome to Historic Birmingham Hilton Metropolis (the Limmud sketch 2019)

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Welcome to the site of the former Birmingham Hilton Metropole, once a flourishing centre of Jewish learning, sadly and mysteriously burnt to the ground by dozens of people simultaneously lighting unauthorised oil-fuelled channukiot one winter night over 300 years ago.

Excavations began here in 2297, and the historians still keep discovering more and more discarded handouts and purple lanyards. Who knows, you may be lucky and find a valuable artefact yourself!

This self-guided walking tour will take you around the fascinating finds that archaeologists have been making across the site, much of which as been reconstructed as it was in its heyday.

To begin, enter the main lobby. You’ll notice that the doorway is now an open arch. Originally, this would have been a ‘revolving door’: a spinning glass plate which would only allow a few people in at a time before stopping abruptly and causing a pile-up. It is thought that trapping people inside this door may have been a form of population control.

Turn left. At the end of the corridor, you will find the lifts. These were a unique form of transport in early 21st-century Britain: unique in that they were literally compulsory because, for some reason, this building was constructed without stairs. It is thought that, at peak times, the wait for a lift could be over one hour (six hours for Ashkenazi Jews), and there are historical accounts of brawls and fisticuffs over who should get priority in the lifts’ use when they did arrive.

Those who were waiting, though, would be well-looked-after. To the left of the lifts would have stood a Tea Station. For decades, archaeologists have been unearthing a steady stream of plastic-coated cardboard cups from this area. Interestingly, though, there is no evidence that there was ever any hot water.

When you’ve finished exploring this area, turn around and go down the corridor to your left. This was known as the Red Corridor, possibly a reference to the animal sacrifices that took place in the Meat Dining Room behind the glass panels. In later years of the building’s history, this space was renamed the Alternative Dining Experience, probably as a form of apologism for the animal slaughter that continued to take place.

Go into one of the rooms opposite. Take a seat. Imagine yourself a British Jew from the past, sitting down ready to learn from one of the era’s most celebrated and inspiring speakers. And then… hear that? That’s the sound of the lecture in the room next door, far better amplified than your chosen teacher. You can’t hear your chosen teacher at all, in fact. And whoever’s speaking next door is getting far better reactions, too: louder laughs, more applause, appreciative sighs. Some records suggest that participants learned far more through the walls than they ever did from the lecture actually going on in the room they were in.

You’ll also notice that these rooms are quite small. These were thus reserved for the most popular and sought-after speakers, and students would sit on every vacant inch of floor to ensure that they could hear what was going on in the room next door. Latecomers who could not find space would, by tradition, glower at those who had made it in, and sulkily stand by the entrance door, leaving it open so as to let noise in from outside.

Go back to the beginning of the Red Corridor, turn left, and keep going until you reach a clearing on your left with two enormous rooms on its far side. This is the Yellow Area. This is where a small, select group of participants would be allowed to attend a formal channukiah lighting each evening. Archivists believe that this space was the equivalent of the Holy-of-Holies in the Second Temple: not just anyone could wander in and be present for the lighting ceremony. Entrance was strictly controlled and common folk were turned away. Imagine their cries of frustration and disappointment. “I can just squeeze in at the back!” was a standard plea. But this was not their place, and they were not admitted.

Keep going along this corridor (it bends to the right) until you reach another clearing with an even more implausibly large room on the left. This is The Monarch’s Dining Room. Despite the astonishing size of the space, only the king or queen of the day would have been allowed to eat here. Everybody else would queue up outside – with varying degrees of patience – and take it in turns to enter, pay homage to the queen, and leave gracefully. The queen herself, meanwhile, must have had a prodigious appetite. Handwritten kitchen records from the head chef, Coeliac Cline, found in a local geniza, show that on a single day in December 2019, The Monarch’s Dining Room got through more than 1,000 jacket potatoes, 700 cups of soup, and 1,300 packets of vaguely onion-flavoured kosher crisps. (It is thought that the total amount of individual E-numbers in these crisps may have been four or five times that.)

Participants would not, however, have drunk much. Glass fragments that have been painstakingly reconstructed suggest that although orange juice was available, it was stored in tanks with complicated tap mechanisms which required at least three hands to operate. And, this being a time before the great Explosion and the consequent genetic mutations, 21st-century Britons would have only had two hands.

This brings us to the end of our tour of Historic Birmingham Hilton Metropolis. We hope this has given you an insight into what life would have been like in the home of Anglo-Jewish life in the distant past.

Remember that your entrance tickets are also available for other historic sites in our group for the rest of 2314:

  • JWtree, formerly a community centre, and home to some of the last remaining natural plant life in the south of England.
  • Bevis Marx Synagogue, which hosted the inaugural meeting of the Jewish Communist Party of Great Britain, paving the way to their 14-year stint in power.
  • Grodzinski & Johnson’s, site of a 20th-century bakery which we believe was, uniquely, jointly run by an old Anglo-Jewish family and the Prime Minister of the day. Visit on the first Sunday of each month for one of our family activity days: try your hand at baking a traditional bagel, learn to plait a holler bread, and maybe your kids will even meet ‘Boris Johnson’ on his way to Brussels to request another Brexit extension.

We hope to see you again soon!