Aphrodite and the Rabbis by Visotzky Burton L

Author:Visotzky, Burton L. [Visotzky, Burton L.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group
Published: 2016-09-12T16:00:00+00:00

Mosaic Aphrodite in Sepphoris/Diocaesarea

The rabbis also loved telling tales of the Roman demimonde. These stories caricatured the Romans by focusing on their seamy side. In the earliest rabbinic commentary to the biblical book of Numbers (Sifre, Shelah, #115), the rabbis gleefully narrate a heartwarming story about a happy hooker. Not surprisingly, the love goddess Aphrodite again appears.

Numbers 15:37–41 serves as the final section of the daily Shema prayer, and so the paragraph commanding Jews to wear fringes, tsitsit, on the corners of their garments was very well known. The last verse of the paragraph begins and ends with the phrase, “I am the Lord your God.” This is just enough information for you to follow the story and get the punch line of this rabbinic joke.

Rabbi Nathan said, “Each and every commandment in the Torah has its reward. We can learn this from the commandment of tsitsit. It once happened that there was a man who was very careful regarding the commandment of tsitsit. He heard there was a prostitute in a harbor town who charged four hundred gold pieces as her price. He sent her four hundred gold pieces and made his appointment for her services. When the day came, he went and sat in her antechamber. Her maid came and told her that the man who had the appointment had arrived. She said, ‘Let him enter.’

“When he entered she spread before him seven beds of silver and a bed of gold at the very top. Between each one was a bench [subsellium] of silver, and the topmost was gold. But when he came to do the deed, his four tsitsit arose like witnesses and slapped him in the face!

“He immediately disengaged and sat down on the ground. She, too, climbed down to the ground and sat next to him. She said, ‘Agapé of Rome! I will not allow you to leave unless you tell me what flaw you saw in me!’

“He replied, ‘By the Temple service! There is no one as beautiful as you in the world. But the Lord our God commanded us a simple commandment wherein it is twice written, “I am the Lord your God.” The first time is to teach that God will reward us, and the second time teaches that God will also punish us.’

“She said, ‘By the Temple service! I will not allow you to leave until you write down your name, your city, and the name of the rabbinic academy where you learn Torah.’

“So he wrote what she desired and went on his way. She then arose and dispersed all of her wealth: one third to the government, one third she gave to the poor, and the final third she took with her to the rabbinic academy of Rabbi Hiyya. She asked him, ‘Rabbi, will you convert me?’

“He asked her, ‘Have you set your eye on one of my students?’

“She handed him the note that she was holding. Rabbi Hiyya called his student and said to him, ‘Rise now and take what you contracted for.

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