Daf Ditty Taanis 19: Nicodemus/Nakdimon

This name derives from the Ancient Greek name “Nīkódēmos (Νῑκόδημος)”,
composed of two elements: “nīkē (νίκη)” (victory, success) plus “dêmos
(δῆμος)” (people, common people, district, country, land). In turn the name
means “victory of the people”.

One year, when the first day of Rosh Hashanah occurred on Shabbat, Rabbi Levi
Yitzchak of Berdichev (Chassidic Rebbe 1740-1809) ascended the podium in the
center of his synagogue and addressed the heavens:

"Master of the Universe! Today, all Your creatures pass before You like a flock of
sheep, and You pass judgment upon them. Two great books lie open before You,
the book of life and the book of death. The righteous are inscribed in the book of
life, and the transgressors are written in the book of death, G-d forbid.

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"But today is Shabbat. Did You not command in Your holy Torah that is forbidden
to write on Shabbat? True, it is permitted to violate Shabbat in order to preserve a
life, so You are permitted to inscribe the righteous in the book of life. But no such
clause permits inscribing those who have transgressed Your will in the book of
death. I therefore inform You, dear Father in Heaven, that according to the law
of the Torah, You must inscribe all Your children for a year of life, health and
prosperity!

Reb Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev

The mishna teaches another halakha with regard to fast days: If they were fasting for rain, and
rain fell for them before sunrise, they need not complete their fast until the evening. However,
if it fell after sunrise, they must complete their fast. Rabbi Eliezer says: If rain fell before
midday, they need not complete their fast; but if it rains after midday, they must complete their
fast.

The mishna relates: An incident occurred in which the court decreed a fast in Lod due to a lack
of rain, and rain fell for them before midday. Rabbi Tarfon said to the people: Go out, and
eat, and drink, and treat this day as a Festival. And they went out, and ate, and drank, and

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treated the day as a Festival, and in the afternoon they came to the synagogue and recited the
great hallel, to thank God for answering their prayers.

§ The Sages taught: Once all the Jewish people ascended for the pilgrimage Festival to
Jerusalem and there was not enough water for them to drink. Nakdimon ben Guryon, one of
the wealthy citizens of Jerusalem, went to a certain gentile officer [hegemon] and said to him:
Lend me twelve wells of water for the pilgrims, and I will give back to you twelve wells of
water. And if I do not give them to you, I will give you twelve talents of silver. And the officer
set him a time limit for returning the water.

Jastrow

RASHI

Steinzaltz

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Avot deRabbi Natan 6:

They say about the daughter of Nakdimon ben Gurion that her bed was worth twelve thousand
gold dinars, and that she would spend a gold dinar every week on cooking spices, and that she was
waiting for levirate marriage.6See Deuteronomy 25:5–10.

And why was he called “Nakdimon ben Gurion”?

Because the sun once came out (nakdah) for his sake. Once, the Jews were going up to Jerusalem
for a festival, and they did not have water to drink. [Nakdimon ben Gurion] went up to a [gentile]
general and said: Lend me the rights to twelve springs of water from now until a certain date in
the future, and if I do not give you back twelve springs worth of water, I will give you twelve bars
of silver. So they set a date. When the time came, the general sent a messenger, saying: Send me
either the twelve springs worth of water or the twelve bars of silver. He replied: Wait, the day has
still not ended. The general laughed at him and said: What, all year there has been no rain, and
today you expect rain to fall?

The general then went off to the bathhouse, quite pleased with himself. Nakdimon ben Gurion
went to the study hall, wrapped himself in a prayer shawl, and stood in prayer and said: Master of
the World, You know well that it is not for my own honor that I did this, nor for the honor of my
father’s house, but only for Your honor, so that there would be water for those going up to the
festival. Immediately, the sky filled with clouds and it began to rain so hard that it filled all twelve
springs of water and then some. He sent a message to the general, saying: Send me money for the
extra water you now have. The general replied: The sun has already set and the water that has
fallen is now in my property. He went back to the study hall, wrapped himself in his prayer shawl,
and stood in prayer and said: Master of the World, make a miracle for me at the end of the day as
You did at the beginning. Immediately, the wind blew and the clouds parted, and the sun was
shining. (The two met and the general said to Nakdimon: Now I know that the Holy Blessed One
does not disturb the order of the world except for your sake.)

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Summary

Introduction1

This mishnah discusses what happens if they begin to fast and then it rains on the fast day.

If while they are fasting rain falls: If before sunrise they do not complete the fast, If after
sunrise, they do complete the fast.

The fast actually begins at sunrise. Therefore if it rains before sunrise then the rain has begun
before the fast and there is no reason to fast. However, if it rains after sunrise they must continue
and complete the fast.

Rabbi Eliezer says: if before noon they do not complete the fast, if after noon they do
complete it.

Noon is when most people eat their mid-day meal, the main meal of the day. One who does not
eat until noon is not really fasting, even though he may not have eaten. Therefore, according to
Rabbi Eliezer, if it rains before noon it is as if they have not yet begun the fast and they do not
have to complete it. If it rains after noon they must complete the fast.

It happened that the rabbis decreed a fast in Lod and rain fell before noon. Rabbi Tarfon
said to them: go, eat and drink and make a holiday. They went and ate and drank and
observed the day as a holiday and at evening time they came and recited the Hallel
Hagadol.

In this section we have a story that illustrates Rabbi Eliezer’s halakhah and goes even further.
Not only did they end their fast, but they went out and celebrated the arrival of the rain. In the
evening they recited Hallel Hagadol, which is Psalm 136, which contains the line “He provides
food for all living creatures”, a line especially significant on the day when it begins to rain.

When to Cry Out

A very long Mishna makes up most of amud (a). 2 So far we have considered what people should
do when the rain has not fallen. But what about other calamities? This mishna tells us when to
"cry out" - when to declare immediate fast days. These might even be on Shabbat. It begins with
a description of crops that are problematic. At what point do we fast and "cry out"? From houses

1https://www.sefaria.org/Taanit.19a.10?lang=bi&p2=Mishnah_Taanit.3.9&lang2=bi&w2=English%20Explanation%20of%20Mi

shnah&lang3=en
2 http://dafyomibeginner.blogspot.com/2014/06/taanit-19.html

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collapsing to wolves being seen in inhabited neighbourhoods; from pestilence and blight to gentile
attacks and flooding rivers, we are allowed to cry out for help.

We also are shown several general examples of "crying out". Choni HaMe'aggel was asked by his
community to beg G-d for rain. He drew a circle around himself and said that he would remain
there until G-d brought rain to the community. When a light shower fell, he asked for more. When
copious amounts fell quickly, he asked for less. And then a steady amount of rain fell for a long
time. When the people asked him to beg G-d to stop the rain, he suggested that they wait until the
rain rose above the level of the Claimant's Stone. Shimon Ben Shettach, King Alexander Yannai's
brother-in-law and the Nasi, wanted to criticize Choni but could not do so because of the great
results.

Finally, this Mishna also speaks about when we should end our fasting if our requests are answered.

The Gemara begins to take apart this Mishna by examining the notion of vegetation that has dried
out. They look to signs of drying out. They wonder about how we might determine what is a food
shortage and what is a famine. The rabbis consider which types of rainfall might be helpful or
detrimental to the crops and to the trees; to the people and to the animals. They consider the time
of year that this might happen and the needs of the community at that time. A note reminds us that
we should not pray for rain in the summer months, because we are not to pray for miracles.

Any event that will result in death is cause to "sound the alarm" immediately. However, the rabbis
share their different opinions about when the alarm should be sounded around events that might
or might not result in death. And when trees might not produce fruit during the Sabbatical year,
we may need to sound the alarm immediately as well. Why would this be an emergency? Without
that fruit, the poor will starve. And so this is treated as an emergency as well. An alternative
interpretation is that we are sounding the alarm on behalf of the Gentiles who are not subject to
the laws of the Sabbatical year.

Finally, we Rabbi Elazar ben Parata teaches from a baraita that since the Temple fell, the rains
have not been sufficient for our needs. Steinsaltz shares two interpretations of this
statement. First, we learn that there may have been a prayer said in the Temple service that focused
on rainfall. Without the opportunity to say that prayer, we have not had enough rain. The second
interpretation suggests that the thread that was hanging in the Temple used to tell us whether or
not our sins were appeased by Azazel. We could see the string turn while and know that our sins
were forgiven and we could see the string stay red and know that we had to pray further for
forgiveness. Without this sign, G-d would have to find another way to show us that our sins were
not forgiven -- this would be done through withholding or 'playing with' the rain.

My Judaism does not expect G-d to hear my individual prayers - or even my community's
prayers. How would these rabbis explain G-d's response to the people's prayers on the Holocaust
that went unanswered? Instead, I participate in prayer that is less specific; dedicated to G-d's good

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will and our willingness to act in the name of that good will. Those prayers always are answered
- there is always some goodness present, even in the worst of times.

To take this one step further, I wonder if people who try to keep all of the mitzvot in today's world
believe that one mistake might be punished by G-d. Might they believe that they have that degree
of direct communication with G-d? If so, they would experience a very different way of living as
a Jew.

Rav Avrohom Adler writes:3

The Mishna teaches that there are certain circumstances in which we do not call for fasting that
becomes progressively more severe, but rather we immediately declare a series of fasts with the
strictest guidelines. Two cases listed in the Mishna are crops that grew strangely and if forty days
passed between the first rain (in its proper time) and the second rain. The reason for this is because
these are an affliction of food shortage. If rain fell for the crops and not for the trees, for the trees
and not for the crops or it rained for both but not enough to fill the pits that were used for drinking
water, we call out immediately.

Also included would be a situation where there is rain in all communities but one and when a city
is hit by plague or is surrounded by a non-Jewish enemy. The Mishna proceeds to list cases of
disasters where people everywhere are obligated to cry out because there is a good possibility that
these disasters will spread. For plagues that ruin the grain, a severe drought that tends to cause the
grain to yellow, locusts, wild animals and armies that are passing through we call out everywhere
because these catastrophes travel to other areas.

The Mishna cites an incident where the elders went down from Yerushalayim to their cities to
declare a communal fast because they saw the size of an oven mouth of plague damage on some
grain in the city of Ashkelon. They also declared a fast due to an incident when wolves devoured
two children on the other side of the Jordan River. Rabbi Yosi maintains that the fast was declared
because the wolves were seen in the city. The Mishna continues by listing cases that are so severe,
that we would even call out on Shabbos. If a city was surrounded by gentiles, a river threatening
to flood the fields and a ship that is in danger of sinking; we would call out even on Shabbos.
Rabbi Yosi disagrees and maintains that they would call out for help but not in prayer.

The Mishna states that we call out for any catastrophe that threatens the city except for an
overabundance of rain. The Mishnah relates the story of Choni HaMa’agel. In the course of a year
of drought, the Chachamim looked to Choni HaMa’agel and asked him to daven for rain. He
instructed the people to bring their ovens inside in order that do not dissolve in the rain. When his
first pleas did not produce rain, he drew a circle around himself and swore to Hashem that he
would not leave that spot until Hashem showed compassion on His children by ending the drought.
At first, rain began to trickle, and Choni insisted on rain that fill the water holes. When angry rains
began to fall, Choni demanded rains of mercy and blessing.

3 http://dafnotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Taanis_19.pdf

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Finally, the rains fell until flooding began, and the people were compelled to leave Yerushalayim
for the Temple Mount. They turned to Choni and asked him to pray that the rain should stop, which
he was reluctant to do. He told them to go and see if the stone which was used to announce lost
articles has been covered by water. (This stone was so high, that if it was covered, he would have
prayed for the rain to cease.) The story concludes with the words of Shimon ben Shetach who said
that Choni's words to Hashem were so presumptuous that he deserved to be excommunicated. But
he cannot be punished since he has such a close, personal relationship with Hashem, that He fulfills
your requests like a father to a son even after the son sins towards the father.

The Mishna discusses whether a fast should be completed if they were answered in middle of the
fast. If rain began to fall before sunrise, they are not obligated to complete the fast but if rain began
to fall after sunrise, they should complete the fast. Rabbi Eliezer disagrees and maintains that if
rain began to fall before midday, they are not obligated to complete the fast but if rain began to
fall after midday, they should complete the fast. The Mishna concludes with an incident that seems
to support Rabbi Eliezer’s viewpoint. The Chachamim declared a fast in Lod and it began to rain
before midday. Rabbi Tarfon said to them that they should do eat, drink and declare a festival.
They went out, ate, drank and made the day into a holiday and returned to the synagogues in the
afternoon to recite Hallel Hagadol.

The Gemora cites a braisa which states that they begin to fast if there is a delay in the third rains
and it is apparent from our Mishna that they would begin to fast even if there is a delay in the first
rains. Rav Yehuda explains that the Mishna is referring to a case where it rained in the proper time,
however they planted seeds but nothing grew or they grew strangely; that is when they cry out
immediately.

Rav Nachman distinguishes between a severe famine and a case where there is merely a food
shortage. When one particular city doesn’t have food but they can have food delivered from
another city through ships on a river, this is regarded as a food shortage and not a famine. If food
is in short supply in one city and must be imported from another city by land route with donkeys,
this condition is regarded as a famine since only minimal amount of food will be delivered.

The Mishna had stated that if rain fell for the crops and not for the trees, for the trees and not for
the crops or it rained for both but not enough to fill the pits that were used for drinking water, we
call out immediately. The Gemora explains each case. Light rain will be beneficial for crops but
not for trees. Heavy rains will be beneficial for trees but not for crops. Heavy and light rain came
but not enough to fill the water holes. There is an additional case listed in a braisa. If there was
enough rain to fill the water holes but not for the trees and crops, we would cry out immediately.
The Gemora explains this case that the rain descended in a heavy downpour which wasn’t
beneficial for the trees or the crops.

The Gemora cites a braisa detailing the times of the year at which different water shortages become
serious enough to necessitate fasting and crying out. If Pesach time came and there was insufficient
water for the trees, we would cry out. If Sukkos time came and there was insufficient water to fill
up the water holes (used for the animals and irrigation), we would cry out. Anytime there is not
enough water to drink, we call out immediately. We cry out only inside the effected location.

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There are certain diseases that we will cry out for if they cause death. Certain locusts that generally
come in large numbers, we cry out even if only a few were sighted. (19a) There is a braisa cited
that presents a dispute regarding crying out on account of the trees during the Shemitah year. Rabbi
Shimon ben Gamliel maintains that we would cry out because the fruits of the tree offer sustenance
for the poor people. If there is a shortage of drinking water, we cry out even during Shemitah.

Rabbi Elozar ben Parta said that since the Beis Hamikdosh was destroyed, rain does not fall
liberally. Some years there might be an abundance of rain and some years the rain that falls will
be inadequate. Some years the rain will fall in the appropriate time and in some years it will not
fall in its proper time. A year that rain descends in its appropriate time is compared to a servant
who received his weekly portion of grain from his master on Sunday and thereby has sufficient
time to bake the bread so he can eat it on Shabbos.

A year that the rain does not descend in its appropriate time is compared to a servant who received
his weekly portion of grain from his master on Friday and thereby does not have sufficient time to
bake the bread so he can eat it on Shabbos.

Nakdimon ben Gurion

The entire Jewish people were in Yerushalayim for the festival, but there was no water to drink.
A Jewish leader, Nakdimon ben Gurion, approached a Roman nobleman who lived there. "Lend
me twelve wells of water for the people," he told him, "and I will replace it with another twelve
wells of water [i.e. Hashem will replenish them for you;] and if not, I will pay you twelve bars of
silver." The nobleman agreed, and they set a date by which time the water must be returned. That
day came, and still no rain had fallen. That morning the nobleman sent a messenger to Nakdimon
ben Gurion. "Send me my water or my silver," he commanded. "I still have time. The whole day
is still mine," Nakdimon ben Gurion sent back. At noontime, he again sent a messenger. "Give me
my water or my money," he ordered. "I still have time," Nakdimon ben Gurion sent back. In the
late afternoon, he again sent a messenger. "Give me my water or my money," he ordered. "I still
have time," Nakdimon ben Gurion sent back. The nobleman had a good laugh on hearing this.
"Could it be," he chuckled, "that the whole year no rain falls, and now enough rain to fill my wells
will fall?" He went to the local bathhouse joyously rubbing his hands at the thought of twelve bars
of silver. At the same time, Nakdimon ben Gurion entered the Beis HaMikdash anxiously. He
wrapped himself in his tallis and stood in prayer. "Ribono shel Olam, You know that neither for
my honor, nor the honor of my father's house did I do this. I did it all for Your honor alone, that
the Jewish people may have water for the festival." Immediately, the skies filled with clouds and
a great rain fell, until the twelve wells overflowed with water. The nobleman hurriedly left the
bathhouse, bumping into Nakdimon ben Gurion as he left the Beis HaMikdash. "Give me my
change for the additional water you received," Nakdimon ben Gurion said to the nobleman. "I
know that Hashem turned the world over only for you," the nobleman answered, "but it won't help
you. You still owe me those twelve bars of silver, for that rain fell after sunset, and it's all mine."
Hearing this, Nakdimon ben Gurion quickly returned to the Beis HaMikdash, rewrapped himself
in his tallis and stood in prayer. "Ribono shel Olam, let them know that we are Your friends in this
world," he begged. The clouds then scattered, and the sun shone. "Were it not for that sun shining
through," the nobleman groaned, "that money would have been mine." "Buni was his real name

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and not Nakdimon," the rabbis taught. "He was called Nakdimon since the sun pierced ["nikdera"]
through the clouds for him.

When to Recite Mashiv HaRuach U'Morid HaGeshem

RABBI MICHAEL TAUBES writes:4

When Paroh pleads with Moshe to pray to Hashem that He should stop the plague of Barad, hail,
Moshe says that when he leaves the city, he will spread out his hands to Hashem, and the plague
will indeed end (Shemos 9:29). The Pardes Yosef on this Posuk (Ibid.) takes note of the fact that
Moshe never says that he will actually ask Hashem to stop the hail, just that he will stretch out his
hands. When he does approach Hashem (Ibid. Pasuk 33), he indeed never specifically requests that
the hail and the rain stop; he merely stretches out his hands and the plague ends.

The Pardes Yosef (Ibid.) explains that although Moshe stretched out his hands in prayer, he did
not want to ask that there be no more rain or hail, because rain, of course, is generally necessary
and beneficial, and it is improper to request that something good should stop, even if there is too
much of it. Moshe therefore simply stretched out his hands, trusting Hashem to respond
appropriately to his silent prayer.

This idea that one shouldn't ask Hashem to take away something good is found in a Mishnah in
Taanis (19a) which describes different communal difficulties and tragedies because of which the
Chachomim would declare public fast days, featuring special Tefillos; the Mishnah (Ibid.) states
that they would never declare such a fast day if there was too much rain. The Gemara there (22b)
explains that this is because it is inappropriate to daven to Hashem because one has too much of a
good thing.

The Gemara (Ibid.) adds, however, that if the excessive rain is actually damaging or dangerous,
then one could daven for it to stop because it is then no longer a good thing.

The same Mishnah (Ibid.) then relates the famous story of Choni HaMe'agel who "persuaded"
Hashem to cause the rains to fall by "threatening" to remain standing in the circle he drew on the
ground until it would rain, which it then did, coming down at one point with such force that Choni
had to request that it fall in the proper measure.

The Gemara (Ibid. 23a) elaborates on this story, saying that when the rain fell very hard, Choni's
students asked him to daven that it should stop entirely, to which he responded that he had it by
tradition that one doesn't daven because of having too much of a good thing. He solved the problem
using only specific and precise language and actions.

The Rambam (Hilchos Taaniyos 2:15) and the Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chaim 576:11 and 577:1)
rule in accordance with all of the above. This issue of not asking Hashem to hold back something
good even when we don't need it is relevant to us today concerning our practice regarding the last
recitation of Mashiv HaRuach U'Morid HaGeshem in the spring.

4 No definitive Halacha LeMa'aseh conclusions should be applied to practical situations based on THIS Shiur.

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Based on the Mishnah at the beginning of Taanis (2a), the Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chaim 114:1)
writes that we start reciting this phrase in the second Beracha of the Shemoneh Esrei at Mussaf on
Shemini Atzeres. The Yerushaimi in Taanis (Perek 1 Halacha 1, 1b), discussing why we wait until
Mussaf, quotes a view that an individual should not begin to say it until he has heard it from the
Sheliach Tzibbur.

The Shulchan Aruch (Ibid. Sif 2) accepts this view; the Ramo (Ibid.) adds that prior to the silent
Shemoneh Esrei of Mussaf, an announcement is made to begin saying Mashiv HaRuach U'Morid
HaGeshem so that the Tzibbur will say it then too. This same Mishnah in Taanis (Ibid.) then
indicates that we stop saying Mashiv HaRuach at Mussaf on the first day of Pesach, and the
Shulchan Aruch (Ibid. Sif 1) rules accordingly. Here, however, no mention is made of any
announcements not to say Mashiv HaRuach any longer. In fact, the Ramo (Ibid Sif 3) writes that
the Tzibbur does indeed say it in the silent Shemoneh Esrei of Mussaf; only the Chazzan omits it
in the Chazoras HaShatz, and the Tzibbur, hearing the Chazzan's omission, then leaves it out
starting with Minchah.

The Taz (Ibid. Sif Katan 9) explains that this is because any announcement not to say this phrase
would be potentially confusing. The Magen Avraham (Ibid. Sif Katan 8) and the Be'er Heitev
(Ibid. Sif Katan 5), however, explain that this is really because an announcement not to daven for
rain would be like davening that Hashem should hold back something which is generally a
Beracha, and this is inappropriate.

Elsewhere, the Magen Avraham (Ibid. Siman 488 Sif Katan 4) actually quotes the aforementioned
Gemara in Taanis (Ibid.) which says that one shouldn't daven to Hashem because one has too much
rain as the source for this practice not to announce that people should stop saying Mashiv HaRuach
U'Morid HaGeshem. This idea may relate to an interesting question.

Why do we wait on the first day of Pesach until Mussaf to stop saying it? Why not stop already
the night before, at Maariv? The Yerushalmi cited above (Ibid.) discusses this question regarding
when to start saying Mashiv HaRuach on Shemini Atzeres, and explains that we don't start at
Maariv because not everybody is in Shul then. The Rosh in Taanis (Perek 1 Siman 2) elaborates,
saying that since people often stay home at night, those in Shul will therefore know to say it, those
at home will not, and as a result, different people will be doing different things, which is
inconsistent and thus improper.

The Rosh (Ibid.) says that this reason actually explains specifically why we don't stop saying
Mashiv HaRuach at Maariv on the first night of Pesach; the Ra'avad (Hasagas HaRa'avad on Ba'al
HaMaor to Taanis, 1b on the Rif Ot 2) says even more clearly that this reason applies only to the
first night of Pesach. In truth, however, this explanation is not needed. If no announcement is made
to stop saying Mashiv HaRuach, and the Tzibbur must first hear the Chazzan's omission of it before
they omit it, obviously it will be said by the Tzibbur at Maariv.

As for making the change during Shacharis, the same Yerushalmi (Ibid.) presents two reasons for
not starting to say Mashiv HaRuach then on Shemini Atzeres. First, people who were not in Shul
the night before may think, upon hearing it at Shacharis, that it was to have been said at Maariv

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too, and will make a mistake in subsequent years. Second, since an announcement to recite it must
precede the Shemoneh Esrei, at Shacharis no announcement is possible, because there can be no
interruption at all between the Beracha of Go'al Yisrael and the start of the Shemoneh Esrei; we
thus wait until Mussaf.

The Magen Avraham (Ibid. Siman 114 Sif Katan 1) cites both these reasons. If, however, no
announcement is actually made to stop reciting Mashiv HaRuach anyway, it would indeed be
possible to stop at Shacharis on the first day of Pesach, at least during the Chazoras HaShatz,
except for the first reason of the Yerushalmi (Ibid.) about causing confusion in subsequent years.

The Aruch HaShulchan (Ibid. Sif 4) adds that the Halachos should be consistent; if we start saying
Mashiv HaRuach at Mussaf, we should stop saying it at Mussaf as well, especially since there are
more people in Shul at Mussaf time who will take note of the change. The Mishnah Berurah (Ibid.
Sif Katan 2) does write, however, that if one did in fact recite Mashiv HaRuach at Maariv or at
Shacharis on Shemini Atzeres, his Shemoneh Esrei is still valid. It is worth noting that according
to the Minhag of those who daven Nusach Sefard (and many who daven Nusach Ashkenaz), Morid
HaTal is recited in place of Mashiv HaRuach U'Morid HaGeshem. That begins at Mussaf on the
first day of Pesach, and for that, an announcement should be made, as the Mishnah Berurah (Ibid.
Sif Katan 3) and the Aruch HaShulchan (Ibid. Sif 7) write.

All the same explanations would then hold true for both insertions, as the Taz (Ibid. Sif Katan 3)
implies. The Kaf HaChaim (Ibid. Ot 14) writes that the special Piyuttim recited by some before
the Shemoneh Esrei (or perhaps, we may add, the special tune used by the Chazzan for Kaddish)
may constitute a sufficient announcement for the Tzibbur to begin including the new insertion.

PUSHING ASIDE PROHIBITIONS IN ATTEMPTING TO SAVE LIVES

Zvi Akiva Fleisher writes:

Ch. 21, v. 1: "L'nefesh lo yitamo" – A Kohein is prohibited to defile himself to a dead human
body. The Tosfos on Bovo Metzia 114b d.h. "omar lei" asks, "How was Eliyohu permitted to
resuscitate the son of the Ishoh haTzorfosis by coming into contact with him (M'lochim 1:17:21)?
Since Eliyohu is a Kohein, he is prohibited to defile himself, as per our verse."

Tosfos answers that he was CERTAIN that he would be successful in bringing the child back to
life and was therefore permitted by virtue of the rules of "pikuach nefesh," saving one's life.
Technically he didn't save a life, but rather brought about the existence of a life, according to those
who say that the child had expired. However, this is also permitted, as per commentators on gemara
Shabbos 151b and Yoma 85b who derive from the words, "Tov she'y'chalel Shabbos achas k'dei
she'yishmor Shabbosos harbei" that this too is permitted.

Rabbi Eliezer Moshe Horovitz, Rov of Pinsk asks that even if Eliyohu wasn't certain, but even in
DOUBT whether he would be successful, he should have been permitted to defile himself, as per
the gemara Yoma 83a, that "sofik pikuach n'foshos docheh Shabbos." He answers that the
gemara Taanis 19a says that if a Jewish community becomes surrounded by enemies who want to

12
attack, it is permitted to blow trumpets with a signal to outlying Jewish communities to come to
their aid in battle even on Shabbos.

Rabbi Yosi says that a blast to indicate that they should assemble in prayer for their welfare is not
permitted. Rashi explains that this is not permitted, because to transgress the Rabbinical decree of
sounding instruments is not cast aside for prayer, which might be ineffective. We see from here
that although a call to arms might also not be successful, nonetheless the Rabbis only permitted
pushing aside prohibitions for physical help in attempting to save lives, and not spiritual. A Kohein
defiling himself to a dead body is even stricter than the Rabbinical prohibition.

Therefore Tosfos says that Eliyohu had to be CERTAIN that his prayers would be successful, since
his reviving the dead child was through prayer. Along the same line: The responsa of the Divrei
Yechezkel of Shinov has the following question raised: Is it permitted to send a telegram to a great
tzadik on Shabbos, to advise him that someone is gravely ill, so that the tzadik will pray for his
well-being? The Shinover Gaon answered that this is not permitted since it is a spiritual approach.

A subject relative to the above is if one may transgress a prohibition to attempt to save one's life
through bringing it about by way of a supernatural manner, such as a "seguloh." The basis for this
is a Mishneh Shabbos 67a.

Nakdimon Supplies Water to the Olei Regel Pilgrims

Rabbi Chanoch Gevhard writes:

It was a drought. The Jews went up to Yerushalayim for the Sholosh Regolim, but they had no
water to drink. Nakdimon ben Gurion, a wealthy man, saw this and went to the Roman governor
who owned water cisterns and said to him, "Lend me twelve of your water cisterns so that I can
give them to the pilgrims. I will return all the twelve cisterns of water and if I cannot, I will give
you twelve large silver bars." The silver was worth much more than the water. In fact, it was
enough to pay for porters to transport that much water from afar and even have a great deal left
over! The two made up a date by which Nakdimon would have to replenish the cisterns — or pay
the debt. This governor had not dug those cisterns, but had seized them from Jews. He ruled the
Jews and he was really responsible for the welfare of the people, but instead, he used the water to
luxuriate in baths, while the people were parched for water to drink. The date arrived, but no rains
had yet fallen. That morning, the governor sent a messenger to remind Nakdimon to pay, since it
hadn't rained and the basins were dry. "The day is not yet over," replied Nakdimon. "I still have
time." He sent a messenger again in the afternoon, and received the same reply. The sun was
leaning westward when he sent a third reminder, this time demanding, "Send me my money!" "It's
not dark yet," said Nakdimon. The governor mocked him, saying, "No rain has fallen all year long
and now you expect some to fall?" He entered the public bathhouse in a joyous mood, confident
that he would soon be receiving his money. At the same time, Nakdimon went off to the Beis
Hamikdosh.

The governor, it seems, gave the water to Nakdimon on loan and did not ask for payment at the
outset. It is possible that he was not an evil man at all and that he really was touched by the plight
of the olei regel. But it is more logical to assume that he felt that if rain hadn't fallen all winter

13
long, it would surely not fall after Pesach. And so, when he made the agreement with Nakdimon
he was almost certain that he would be paid with the money, and not the water.

Perhaps this is why, to begin with, he did not want to sell the water, but wished to appear
magnanimous and concerned for the welfare of the thirsty travelers and let them drink their fill for
free, knowing that Nakdimon would have to refill the cisterns anyway. When rain did not fall, he
realized that he could become very wealthy from the arrangement, far more than if he had sold the
water.

The due date arrives and the governor sends a messenger to demand payment. "Give me water or
silver," he says. He does not reveal his greedy heart. He speaks civilly and asks for water, but "if
you can't provide water, then give me money." He did not say what he was really thinking — that
he wanted the money.

Nakdimon was staunch in his faith in Hashem and even though no rain had fallen since he had
struck the bargain with the gentile, still he was not discouraged. Throughout the long day he
continued to trust that Hashem would yet save him and fill the cisterns with water. "Water or
money!" demanded the governor again at noon, and then once more in the late afternoon. When
Nakdimon still bided his time, the governor scoffed, "How is it possible? No rain has fallen all
year and you expect to fill the cisterns yet today, now? With no sign of impending rain?"

Nakdimon Requests Rain from Hashem

The governor expected to be a rich man within a very short time, and therefore entered the
bathhouse in high spirits. He wished to prepare himself for the riches that would soon be his. He
thus expressed a compounded wickedness.

Here are Jews thirsty for water prepared to pay a huge sum just to quench their thirst, while he had
so much water to spare that he could allow himself to bathe luxuriously for pleasure. He expected
to demand the full amount of the contract and not lower the price of the water, or wait a bit more.
He would collect the full price — a drop of gold for every drop of water, and would pour that into
his bath, so to speak.

At the same time that the governor entered the bathhouse in high spirits, Nakdimon ben Gurion
entered the Beis Hamikdosh. And even though as a rule, one does not go to the Beis Hamikdosh
empty-handed, without a sacrifice or some kind of tribute (a visit which is called bi'a reikonis —
see Yoma 53a), nevertheless, one who comes with a special request to be eased from suffering that
presses upon his heart, is not considered to be coming empty- handed. Shlomo Hamelech defined
the role of the Beis Hamikdosh: "Every prayer, every request which any person may have, to all
of your people, Yisroel, who knows each one the pain of his heart, and shall come and spread
out his hands to this House — You shall surely hear from Heaven, the Abode of Your residence,
and You shall forgive him... and You shall give that man according to the ways that You know
His heart" (Midrosh Aggada 38-39).

In such a case, the man is himself a sacrifice, as it is written, "The sacrifices of Hashem are a
broken spirit" (Tehillim 51:19). And with a broken heart, thoroughly saddened, Nakdimon ben

14
Gurion huddled in a corner and enveloped himself in a tallis, enshrouding himself as well in his
trouble, hoping and waiting for Hashem's deliverance. This, some say, is what enveloped him
(Tehillim 102:1; see Rashi there). He stood in prayer and said, "Master of the World; it is known
and revealed before You that not for my honor did I make this effort, nor for the honor of my
father's house did I do this, but only, solely, for Your honor, so that there be water for the olei
regel."

To utter these nice words is simple enough, but who can stand in the Beis Hamikdosh and declare
before Hashem, with full confidence: "I did not do this for my own honor, nor for the honor of
my father's house, but purely for Your Honor, Hashem?" He was positive that he had no ulterior
motive in his deed, not for future benefit, not to find favor with his people nor to prove his loyalty
to them.

He did not wish to make a public exhibit of concern and responsibility for the public. Whoever
could have acted as Nakdimon did, with his purity of heart, can also expect that Hashem will not
neglect or disappoint him.

Hashem Fulfills Nakdimon's Request

Indeed, his prayer was immediately answered. The skies darkened and filled with clouds which
released rain. The rain pelted down heavily, filling all of the cisterns to overflowing. Not only that
— it also washed down all of the caked mud that had been accumulated by the cisterns in the dry
years and left them clean.

One can reckon in which season this took place. This whole episode was for the benefit of olei
regel, which means it had to be before one of the pilgrimage festivals: Pesach or Succos or
Shavuos. In the beginning of the story, Chazal noted that it was a drought year, so that we can infer
that it did not take place Succos time, for if so, the drought would have referred to the previous
year [since rain only falls in the fall and winter in Eretz Yisroel].

It is not logical that the gentile would agree to such a deal, for the rainy season was imminent and
the cisterns may soon be filled. Besides, the definition of a `drought year' would not apply for no
rain would, in any case, have fallen in the summer. We can also eliminate Shavuos, for at that time
of year, Nakdimon would not have promised to fill the cisterns with (rain) water. It is already past
the rainy season and for rain to fall then would have required a miracle. If, therefore, it was Pesach-
time and rain had not fallen all winter long, then it would have been considered a drought year yet
Nakdimon could still hope that rain might yet fall, namely, the final rain, known as the malkosh.

For this he had the precedent of Yoel Hanovi who experienced a thoroughly dry winter, but in the
spring enough rain fell to turn the drought into blessing (Taanis 5a). The Surplus Water Belongs
to the Miracle- Maker It appears that not all the residents of Jerusalem greeted the rain that broke
the drought with joy.

The wicked governor did not rejoice at the rain. He would have preferred to see his constituents
suffering from hunger, while his pockets were bursting with much money. He would have liked to

15
wallow in the bathhouse, as was the Roman custom, and soak himself for hours (see Chovos
Halevovos 2:3: "In his leisure time, the batlan goes to the bathhouse.")

As soon as he entered the bathhouse, however, he noticed the raindrops on the window and rushed
outside quickly, even before having bathed. He had to intercept Nakdimon and tell him that he had
not fulfilled his part of the bargain since it was already too late. He would not be able to prove that
on the following day, but only at the onset of the rain, for then every passerby would be able to
testify that the sun had already set. It was necessary for the governor to rush quickly to Nakdimon
and show that night had already fallen. He didn't even have time to dry himself off, and who knows
if he took the trouble to put on all of his garments of office but perhaps wrapped himself only in a
towel. In any case, he ran swiftly and not quite respectably through the city streets.

Indeed, the Greeks tell the story of a distinguished scientist (Archimedes) who rushed out of the
bathhouse and ran through the city streets unclothed as, perhaps, in this case. 5 So we have the
governor rushing to intercept Nakdimon, as Nakdimon emerges from his prayers in the Beis
Hamikdosh. When they finally met, it is possible that Nakdimon already knew what the governor
wished to tell him, but he rushed to speak first, saying, "Pay me for the extra water. I gave you
back more than I took, for the cisterns were not filled to the top and now they are. You owe me. I
did you another good turn besides, because when a cistern overflows from strong, gushing rain, it
flushes the bad water out and keeps the good water in. Not only was the sediment at the bottom
flushed out, but the caked mud on the sides was also cleaned away and, in addition, the force of
the water actually increased the size of the cisterns so that now they can hold more water than
before!

"This would not have happened with a regular, mild rainfall. It happened because of the strong,
miraculous downpour. This is a supernatural rain, and it came because of my prayers," said
Nakdimon to the governor. "And so, the surplus water certainly belongs to me and you must pay
me for it."

Rain and Sun for the Sake of Hashem's Beloved Ones

The governor was reluctant to give up on the money he had so anticipated and said to Nakdimon,
"I agree with you insofar as the rain that fell just now was supernatural. I am aware that your G-d

5 Archimedes' naked run first appears, paradoxically, in the work On architecture by the first-century B.C. Roman designer-builder
Vitruvius. (Here, too, is the description that inspired Leonardo da Vinci's famous drawing of the Vitruvian Man.) Vitruvius was a
great admirer of classical Greek geometers, especially Archimedes. The great sage's notorious dash appears in Vitruvius' book right
after instructions on how to use the Pythagorean theorem to compute the optimum rise of a staircase. Where Vitruvius got this
story, almost two centuries after Archimedes' death, he doesn't say. But there it is - as stark as Archimedes supposedly was that
memorable day - the Latin word nudus.
Archimedes was naked and wet, Vitruvius tells us, because only moments earlier, he had leaped from his bath, elated at his flash
of insight into a puzzling problem. The Syracusan king, Hieron II, had given the royal metal-smith a specific weight of gold to be
fashioned into a splendid wreathlike crown. Now the king suspected that the completed crown, destined to adorn the statue of a
deity, had been cut with less valuable silver and that the smith had pocketed the unused gold. Hieron directed Archimedes to
establish the crown's makeup without sampling or defacing it in any way. https://www.thenakedscientists.com/articles/science-
features/archimedes-original-naked-scientist

16
upset the routine of the world for your sake. But that does not mean that I owe you money. On the
contrary: you owe me money — the full amount that we originally agreed upon. A deal is a deal,
and I am in the right; You owe me the money. The cisterns may have filled with rainwater, and I
am truly glad for that, but the sun has already set. Thus, the water that filled the cisterns is mine,
and you have no claim to it. You still owe me the money, because at the end of the day they were
empty." This dialogue took place on the road between the public bathhouse and the Beis
Hamikdosh. There the two stood in the dark, under the blackness; the sky was so overcast with
thick clouds that one could not see anything. It was impossible to tell if the sun had actually set or
not. Perhaps it was still light beyond those dark rain clouds?

Nakdimon turned around and went back to the Beis Hamikdosh. He again enveloped himself in
his tallis, and again stood in prayer before Hashem. And he beseeched, "Master of the World: I
beg of You, if You deem that I must pay I shall pay, for this is what we agreed upon, and I will
keep my bargain if I must. But when I first stated the price, I did so in my trust that You would
intervene favorably for Your children who come by foot to visit Your House, and do so joyfully,
out of their love for You (see Succa 49b) as it is written in Shir Hashirim, `How lovely are your
footsteps — those of the olei regel.' "Therefore, I plead with You, show that there are those who
love You in this world. Let everyone see that You are pleased that they make the pilgrimage. If
I must pay, so I shall, but the governor will be the one to gain and next time he will surely agree
to such an arrangement, but no one will know that You are pleased with Your children who love
You."

Nakdimon phrased his request thus, here, and not when he prayed for the rain, because rain can
fall and seem entirely natural. Those who believe that it fell because Hashem loves His people will
continue to believe, but the doubters will claim that it was an ordinary rain and not a sign of
Hashem's love for us. However, if the sun retraces its course, it will be a clear and definitive sign
that Hashem loves His children (Bei'urei Aggodos).

Nakdimon continued to plead: "I surely know that the rain fell because You love me and Your
people. But, I beg of You, just as You performed a miracle for me the first time, so, please,
perform one now, too. This second miracle will be much more prominent and obvious." And,
indeed, immediately after he had concluded praying, the wind began blowing from a different
direction. The clouds dispersed and lo! The sun became visible, shining in the sky, and everyone
clearly saw that the rain which had fallen, had fallen during that selfsame day.

The Governor is Forced to Admit His Lies

After Hashem swept aside the curtain of clouds and the last rays of the sun became clearly visible,
the governor could no longer maintain his argument. But he did not give up yet and said,
"Nevertheless, even though we were unable to see the sun set because of the heavy clouds, I still
maintain that according to my calculations, it should have set at that time. I cannot explain it,
but neither can I argue with the facts for I can see the sun with my own eyes. All I can say is
that you must admit: Had not the sun shone and illuminated the sky in the manner that it does
every day before it sets, I would have been able to extract your money from you."

17
From here Chazal say that Nakdimon was originally called by the name of Buni. Why was he
called Nakdimon? Because the sun shone (nokda), especially for his sake. Take note of the
governor's phrasing. He said, "My money" and not "Your money." He really believed that the
money rightfully belonged to him. Why? Because even though he saw the sun with his own eyes,
he was certain that the time of sunset had already passed, and he felt as if he had been cheated out
of money that was justifiably his.

We later see that he truly was correct and that his calculations were not inaccurate. The sun really
had already set, but in honor of Nakdimon, it retraced its course and went backwards in its orbit.
We might say, alternatively, that it stood still in the same spot in heaven without progressing.
Another possibility is that a brilliant object was suddenly visible through a hole in the clouds which
could lead one to believe that it was the rays of the setting sun. Either way, at the time of their
argument, it was already after sunset. But if this is so, why, truly, was Nakdimon not obligated to
pay? We see that the governor was right! He said, correctly, "My money."

According to the gentile reckoning, one day turns into the next at midnight. When the agreement
was made, the governor had in mind the rules by which he dealt in his daily transactions. This
time, however, because of the borderline time frame, he sought to gain the money by claiming the
turn of day according to the Jewish reckoning, even though he never transacted business dealings
that way. It is even possible that had it not been for the information supplied by one of his aides,
he would never even have known that Jews reckon the new day after sunset. Hashem purposely
waited until after sunset to test his reliability and honesty. Would his greed cause him to jump
from the rules of gentiles to the laws of the Jews?

But we see that the governor did not admit that he was taking advantage of Jewish law to which
he did not subscribe at all. Instead, he convinced himself that he was just and honest and that the
rain really did fall after nightfall. But no one agreed to justify him for they saw the sun still shining
and he was forced to keep quiet. He was told that one cannot hold the rope at both ends, for if he
had made an agreement whereby the date would change at midnight, would he have conceded that
he was prepared to lose because he was ruling according to Jewish laws? For sure — not!

He wanted to be safe on all accounts, and gain whichever way he could, arguing this way when it
was to his advantage, or the opposite when that was to his advantage, so long as he came out the
winner. Here, however, Hashem intervened and would not let him carry out his deceit. It was truly
for the governor's benefit, for he would have continued to lie and cheat up to half his lifetime, as
is written, "Men of blood and deceit will not live out half their days . . . " and then he would have
been caught. But when such a person wishes to deceive a tzaddik, Hashem will not allow it, even
if He has to stop the sun in its tracks. There is nothing too difficult for Hashem to do for the sake
of His beloved people, for those who keep His commandments.

Nakdimon — the Sun Was Beclouded and also Blazed for His Sake

It was taught: Ever since that episode, that rich man became known by a different name. Originally,
he was called Buni, and not Nakdimon. Why then was his name changed? Because the sun shone,
nikdera, for his sake. What is the root of this somewhat unusual verb? It is derived from the root
kodar, which means — cut an exact circle, as we find Chazal saying, "Vekadrin behorim" (Eruvin

18
35b). This means: to drill a hole. We also find by the wicked King Menashe that he `drilled' and
removed certain mentions from the Torah (Sanhedrin 103b). He cut out the name of Hashem from
the Torah and left everything around it intact, leaving a hole, so to speak. The same happened here.
Hashem did not waft away the clouds so that the sky would become light, but in a direct line from
their eyes and the horizon a hole in the clouds was `drilled' to admit a few rays of sunlight from
the setting sun.

There are other opinions as well as to the meaning of his name. Some say that nokda chama means
that it became a point, a nekudah; it remained stationery, like a point in heaven. In spite of the
passing time, the sun remained riveted in its spot, at the point of sunset. One might alternatively
explain that the sun did proceed as usual, but a point of light remained inexplicably behind to
illuminate their eyes. They were then misled into thinking that the sun had not set. However, if it
had stated "nokda," we might interpret it thus, as a point. But it is written nikdera, which refers to
the clouds that became dark (kodru) and the sun which drilled a hole in them. We can also interpret
the name Nakdimon from the word nikdema — it proceeded towards him, intercepted him. Then
we would have to translate the word as coming from kodem: it stopped the progress of its usual
orbit to come towards Nakdimon, as we find in the phrase, "A student who gets up early and arrives
early (makdim) at his master's doorway." Either way, it is obvious that the phenomenon occurred
for Buni's sake. And from that time, his name was changed to commemorate the event, to
remember the miracle that took place and the fact that Hashem loves His children, Israel.

From that time on, the olei regel would not need an interceder like Buni; they would come eagerly,
knowing that Hashem loves them so and that their deeds are favorable in His eyes. They would
come, trusting that Hashem would take care of their needs. This entire chapter in bitochon is
encompassed in the single name: Nakdimon.

Stopping the Sun — Three Times

Chazal taught: Three men experienced the miracle of nikdema — that the sun changed its orbit
and went backwards (instead of forwards). In their merit, time stood still. They are: Moshe,
Yehoshua and Nakdimon. By Yehoshua, it explicitly says, "On the day Hashem delivered the
Emori into the hands of Bnei Yisroel. And he said before the eyes of Yisroel: Sun in Giv'on —
halt, and moon in the valley of Ayalon. And the sun stopped and the moon stood, until the nation
was avenged." That is, until Yisroel took revenge from its enemies. This is what is written in Sefer
Hayoshor: The sun stood in midheaven and did not run its course as on a regular day (Yehoshua
10:12).

It is later explained precisely how long the hands of the astronomical clock were stopped because
of Yehoshua. And because of it, the Sages of his generation were given the opportunity to nullify
the false belief of the idolaters who worshiped the sun, the astrological signs of the zodiac and
their power over mankind. That is why they placed a figure of a sun over Yehoshua's grave, exactly
in the same form that the priests did in their temples of idol worship (Rashi, Shofetim 2:9). The
Jews did it, however, for precisely the opposite reason. The idolaters put up an image in order to
worship it, while the Jewish Sages placed such an image in order to show to one and all that the
sun has no independent power. Yehoshua, servant of Hashem, was able to arrest its progress by
the mere utterance of his mouth. How do we know that Moshe Rabbenu also stopped the sun?

19
Where in the Torah is there a hint to this happening? R' Elozor said: We learn this from the parallel
wording (gezeira shovo). It says that Hashem sent Moshe Rabbenu to war with the nations on the
border of Eretz Yisroel. He promised him, "On this very day, I will impose (ocheil) your fear and
dread upon the nations under the entire sky, who will hear of your fame and will become
overwrought with fear of you" (Devorim 2:25).

Even in the hearts of those nations distant from him. We later see that the facts substantiate this
fear, but here the gemora explains when this all began and the reason verifying it. It began when
all the nations of the world noticed that the sun had stood still. The more distant nations did not
know about the event that caused the sun to stand, but they certainly felt the difference of the sun
not shining when it was supposed to shine. They experienced it because it was not a matter of a
moment or two, but of several hours. Even without a clock, one could tell that there was something
unusual going on, an aberration in nature. In both places, the Torah uses the verb ocheil. By
Yehoshua — "Ocheil gadlecho (Yehoshua 3:4)" — when the standing of the sun was apparent to
the whole world. So by Moshe Rabbenu there was a similar occurrence. And from thence onward,
a fear of the Jewish people gripped the nations of the world.

Archaeological diggings, while not generally substantial, significant or reliable to us, show the
exact places where the heavenly bodies were worshiped in temples in ancient times, and where,
thousands of years ago, people sacrificed to the sun. In distant eastern countries were found
vestiges of national mourning that the people's god had disappointed them and refused to appear
at its appointed time in the morning. Ostensibly a strange story, but when one examines the globe,
one can see that at the time that it sets in Eretz Yisroel, it rises in that distant land. And if the sun
was arrested in Giv'on, it could not have appeared at its appointed rising place in the lands of the
Far East. The fright that the nations experienced is briefly mentioned in the Torah as "Ocheil teis
pachdecho."

The Widespread Publicity of the Sun's Arrest

R' Shmuel bar Nachmeini said: The tradition transmitted from generation to generation that a
similar occurrence took place with Moshe is mentioned in another place in the Torah: "Asya —
we derive it from — the word teis — to give — which appears in two places. It is written here, in
the war against the nations living in Canaan, `teis"' Hashem gave, delivered, them into the hands
of Moshe. And it is written there, when Yehoshua arrested the sun in Giv'on: `On the day that
Hashem delivered the Emori...' (Yehoshua 10:12).

From this parallel wording we can infer that the Torah is indicating that Moshe also arrested the
sun, a fact that was known, up till that time, by word of mouth. R' Yochonon said: The fact can be
learned from the written text itself, from the very simple rendition of the verse, for Hashem
promised Moshe that `...who will hear of your fame, and they will become overwrought and will
tremble before you.' When did this happen? When the sun nikdema, retraced itself, and was set
back for Moshe's sake. "Jerusalem was like an impure woman." Said R' Yehuda, "This is a blessing
of sorts [even though it is included in Yirmiyohu's lament of Eichoh]. For just as an impure woman
can be purified, so is Jerusalem able to make amends. "Which the nations will hear of your fame
and will become overwrought and will tremble before you." The entire world became fearful of

20
Moshe. When? We can only surmise that the nations in Moshe's vicinity feared him and were
terrified, as is stated in the exodus from Egypt, "Nations heard and became overwrought; terror
seized the residents of Peleshes. Then did the chiefs of Edom become frightened, the mighty ones
of Moav were seized with trembling. All the dwellers of Canaan melted with fear. Dread and fear
fell upon them" (Shemos 15:15). This long list only contains local nations, the Middle East. Bolok,
King of Moav, also expressed his entire nation's fear, and sought ways to offset the evil that was
to befall them (Bamidbor 25).

The Stopping of the Sun — Publicized Throughout the World

We see that only the local nations were seized with fear, for they felt threatened. But distant nations
were not threatened by the Jews, and the news of the exodus had not even reached their ears. How,
then, did they hear about Moshe Rabbenu? The news could have reached them through traveling
merchants and desert travelers, but then it would have taken the form of a wondrous happening to
marvel at, a tale that would be embellished by every successive traveler to impress his listeners.
And when the news reached those distant lands, from various sources, the accounts would be
entirely different from one another. And surely, this would not cause those faraway people to melt
from fear.

The truth is that those distant nations learned about it through the arresting of the sun when time
stopped. For when the sun was arrested here in our area, it was arrested there as well. And this is
truly a frightening phenomenon. When the sun does not set at its appointed time, this throws the
world off kilter, which is truly terrifying. But those who lived close by, were afraid, in any case,
of the advancing camp of the Israelites which conquered nations as it progressed along its course.
In distant lands, however, the sun did not rise, and the people there had no way of knowing that it
would eventually resume its course. They thought the world was coming to an end, and they
became duly terrified, as anyone can imagine. A similar occurrence took place when King Ochoz
died.

The sun speeded up its progress and the day ended two hours earlier, resulting in a shorter day, as
at the poles. But when Chizkiyohu became ill, the sun paid back its debt, so to speak, and the day
was lengthened by ten additional hours (Sanhedrin 91:1).

ENDING A FAST EARLY WHEN THE "TZARAH" ENDS

Rav Mordechai Kornfeld writes:6

The Mishnah states that if a day of fasting was decreed due to a lack of rain and then rain falls
during that day of fasting, under certain circumstances (depending on what time of day the rain
falls) the fast does not continue. According to the Tana Kama, if the rain falls before sunrise, the
fast does not continue. According to Rebbi Eliezer, if the rain falls before midday, the fast does
not continue. Instead, the people eat and drink and treat the day like a festive Yom Tov, and in the
afternoon they recite Hallel. Once the fast has begun (according to the Tana Kama) or once most
of it has passed (according to Rebbi Eliezer), the entire day of fasting must be observed

6 https://www.dafyomi.co.il/taanis/insites/tn-dt-019.htm

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(Yerushalmi). According to this reasoning, if the community accepted an entire series of fasts due
to lack of rain, it is clear that there is no need to complete the series of fasts if rain falls.

The Gemara earlier (10b) teaches that if one was in the middle of a fast due to some threat (Tzarah)
which then passed, or if one was in the middle of a fast on behalf of a sick person who then
recovered, he must complete his fast. In addition, the Rishonim write that the Gemara there implies
that if his fast was part of a series of fasts which he had accepted upon himself, he must continue
to observe the entire series of fasts (RASHI there and Rishonim; see ME'IRI, however, who
disagrees).

What is the difference between the case of the Mishnah here and the case in the Gemara earlier
(10b)?

(a) The RA'AVAD (Hilchos Ta'aniyos 1:15) explains that whether or not one must complete the
fast depends on the nature of the Tzarah for which one is fasting. Only when one fasts for rain does
the fast end when the need ceases on the day of the Ta'anis. The day becomes a day of festivity
because the cessation of a drought is cause for great rejoicing. A lack of rain differs from all other
types of Tzarah. When rain comes and ends a drought, the threat of famine has ended. In contrast,
when one fasts for any other Tzarah (such as disease or disaster), even when the particular threat
passes there is still concern that it might return.

The GEVURAS ARI suggests that according to the Ra'avad's reasoning, in the case of other types
of Tzarah that end during the fast, one must continue to fast only when the Tzarah stops
and relief comes, since there is concern that the Tzarah might return. However, if one fasts on
behalf of a sick person and that person dies, the Tzarah has clearly finished and he should stop
fasting.

However, this conclusion is questionable. RASHI (10b, DH Al ha'Tzarah) points out that there is
another consideration to consider when the Tzurah ends. If one stops fasting when the Tzarah ends
with no salvation, he gives the appearance as though his fast is contingent on Hash-m's response
to his prayer; it appears as though he threatens Hash-m that he will continue to fast only if Hash-
m sends salvation. Since this is clearly disrespectful to Hash-m, one should continue fasting if a
Tzarah ends with no positive outcome.

The ROSH questions the Ra'avad's approach. Why does the Ra'avad say that the coming of rain
during a fast day marks the end of the drought (and Tzarah)? One stops fasting even when only a
little rain falls, even though it is not enough rain for the entire season. Perhaps no more rain will
fall for the rest of the season and the drought will return! (The Ra'avad apparently maintains that
such a situation would be considered a "new" drought.)

(b) RASHI (25b, DH v'Yiheyu) and other Rishonim explain that the type of Tzarah for which one
fasts makes no difference; all Tzaros are the same when it comes to interrupting the fast day.
Rather, the difference is whether one is observing an individual Ta'anis (a Ta'anis Yachid) or a
communal Ta'anis (a Ta'anis Tzibur). When one fasts as an individual, he must continue his fast
until the end of the day, but when he fasts together with the Tzibur, the fast ends when the Tzarah
ends (when it rains).

22
Several explanations are offered for this difference between a Ta'anis Yachid and a Ta'anis Tzibur.

1. The MAGID MISHNEH (in his first explanation) writes that the Chachamim were lenient with
regard to a Ta'anis Tzibur so as not to burden the entire community ("Tircha d'Tzibura").

2. The MAGID MISHNEH (in his second explanation) writes that when Beis Din decrees a
Ta'anis for the community, they include a condition that if it rains in the middle of the fast day, the
Ta'anis will be annulled. This condition is effective even when Beis Din does not explicitly declare
it, because of the principle of "Lev Beis Din Masneh Aleihen" -- unspoken conditions for
enactments of Beis Din are fully binding and effective. In contrast, when an individual observes a
personal Ta'anis, any condition which he does not verbally express is not binding because
"Devarim sheb'Lev Einam Devarim" -- thoughts in one's heart are not binding (until they are
verbalized).

3. The ROSH infers a different explanation from the wording of the RAMBAM. When the
community observes a Ta'anis Tzibur, they are obligated to recite Hallel ha'Gadol when Hash-m
answers their prayers. Since Hallel may be recited only when one is satiated and feels good (26a),
the people must stop fasting in order to eat so that they may fulfill their obligation to recite Hallel.
An individual, on the other hand, does not recite Hallel when his prayers are answered, and
therefore there is no reason for him to stop fasting in the middle of the day.

HALACHAH: The SHULCHAN ARUCH (OC 569) records as the Halachah the answer of
Rashi, as explained by the Rosh. The Shulchan Aruch adds, based on the Yerushalmi, that if the
Talmidei Chachamim decide to continue fasting nonetheless, the rest of the Tzibur is also obligated
to finish the fast.

If it is discovered that the Ta'anis was accepted in error -- that is, the Tzarah ended before the day
of the fast, and those who accepted the fast were unaware of it -- then even an individual does not
have to complete his fast.

If one was fasting on behalf of a sick person who died during the day of the fast, an individual who
was observing a Ta'anis Yachid must complete his fast (as Rashi says on 10b). Whether or not
a Tzibur must complete the Ta'anis Tzibur in such a situation is the subject of dispute among the
Acharonim (see MISHNAH BERURAH OC 569:5). Some rule that a Tzibur must complete the
fast (even if the person for whom they were fasting died before midday), based on the reasoning
suggested by the ROSH (that the only reason to stop fasting is in order to say Hallel, which the
Tzibur obviously does not say when the person died). Others maintain that the Tzibur may stop
the fast because the other two reasons mentioned above (1 and 2) still apply.

The SHA'AR HA'TZIYUN writes that perhaps one should be stringent and complete the fast
even though the Tzarah has ended. He writes that even according to the reason that Beis Din makes
the fast conditional upon the Tzarah persisting, Beis Din may stipulate that the fast will be annulled
only if Hash-m answers their prayers in a positive way. If the Tzarah ends without a clear salvation
from Hash-m (such as in the case of the sick person who dies), perhaps the fast is not annulled.

23
Steinzaltz (OBM) writes:7

The Mishnah that opens the third perek of Masechet Ta’anit teaches that there are certain
circumstances in which we do not call for fasting that becomes progressively more severe, but
rather we call for immediate hatra’ah. Included would be a situation where there is rain in all
communities but one (based on the passage in Amos 4:7), and when a city is hit by plague or is
surrounded by a non-Jewish enemy. In general, the appropriate response to any out-of-the-ordinary
situation of danger would be a hatra’ah, which may include prayer, shofar blowing, fasting, or a
combination of the three.

One exception to the rule is an overabundance of rain, when no public hatra’ah takes place. This
ruling brings the Mishnah to relate one of the famous stories of Honi ha-Me’agel. In the course of
a year of drought, the Sages turned to Choni ha-Me’agel and asked him to pray for rain. When his
first entreaties did not produce rain, he drew a circle around himself and swore to God that he
would not leave that spot until God showed mercy on His children by ending the drought.

At first a light rain began to fall, and Choni demanded rain that fill the cisterns. When angry rains
began to fall, Choni demanded rains of mercy and blessing. Finally, the rains fell until flooding
began, and the people turned to Choni and asked him to pray that the rain should stop, which he
was reluctant to do.

The story concludes with the words of Shimon ben Shetach, who said that Choni’s words to God
were so impudent that he deserved to be excommunicated. But how could he be punished for
having such a close, personal relationship with God?

Aside from the stories about him related here in Masechet Ta’anit, we know of Choni ha-
Me’agel’s death from Josephus‘ record of it in his Kadmoniyot ha-Yehudim, where he tells of how
Choni was killed during the civil war between supporters of Hyrcanus and Aristoblus. From
the Talmud Yerushalmi it appears that the well-known “Rip Van Winkle story” of Choni sleeping
for seventy years actually relates to one of Choni’s ancestors; however, from the stories that appear
on daf (=page) 23, it is clear that the mysterious powers and abilities were handed down in the
family through the generations.

His name – ha-Me’agel – is usually attributed to the circle (igul in Hebrew) that he drew in this
story. Rav Tzemah Ga’on says that he was named for this hometown – Miglu; others suggest that
he was known by his profession – tarring and flattening roofs with a roller (a ma’agilah).

The Gemara then relates the well-known story of Nakdimon ben Gurion, who is known from a
number of stories that appear about him in the Talmud as one of the wealthy Jews who lived
in Jerusalem at the time of the destruction of the Second Temple. (There appear to be references
to him in Josephus‘ works, as well.) While his Hebrew name was Boni – as is mentioned in the
Gemara – it was common for members of the upper class to have Roman names, as well. His
7 https://www.ou.org/life/torah/masechet_taanit1824/

24
Roman name – Nakdimon – is the subject of a Rabbinic midrash, as is related in the story told by
the Gemara.

One year, during a drought, there was no water available for the Jewish pilgrims who were coming
to Jerusalem for the holiday. Nakdimon ben Gurion approached one of the Roman officers with
an offer. He wanted access granted to twelve Roman cisterns on behalf of the Jewish pilgrims. He
personally guaranteed that the cisterns would be refilled by a certain date, or else he would pay
him twelve talents of silver. When the day arrived, the Roman officer demanded to receive either
the water or the silver. Nakdimon ben Gurion responded that the day was not yet over.

The officer ridiculed the notion of Nakdimon ben Gurion expecting the cisterns to be refilled in a
year of drought. Laughing, he went to the bathhouse, looking forward to his windfall. Nakdimon
went to the Temple and prayed to God that his concern for the Jewish people should not lead to
financial ruin. The skies filled with clouds and rain began to fall, filling the cisterns. Upon
completing their missions, Nakdimon and the Roman officer met outside in the rain. Nakdimon
pointed out that the cisterns were not only filled, but were overflowing, and he claimed that the
Roman owed him the overflow.

The Roman admitted that God had brought the rain on behalf of Nakdimon, but he argued that the
debt had not been paid on time, for the day was over! At this point, Nakdimon prayed and the
clouds dispersed, allowing the sun to peek through – nikdera hamah ba’avuro – proving that the
day was not over.

On a literary note, the Maharsha points out the contrast in the story, of the Roman officer entering
the bathhouse – the bet ha-merchatz – to bathe while people are desperate for water, whereas
Nakdimon exits the bet ha-Mikdash and demands that the excess water be made available to the
people.

R. Heather Miller writes:8

Today’s page opens with a series of mishnahs — in fact the entire third chapter of Mishnah Taanit
— that describes the various calamities that can befall a community which will then sound an
alarm (by blowing a shofar ) and fast. These include not only insufficient rain but also plague,
collapsed buildings, various kinds of blight that kill crops, dangerous animals, invading armies —
a list of some of the communal tragedies that could and did befall an ancient community. In fact,
the only item on the list that does not elicit this response, as we learn, is an overabundance of
rain. The mishnah then brings the famous story of Honi the Circle Drawer to explain that law.
(We’ll discuss it when the Gemara catches up in a few pages’ time.)

One thing we learn from this mishnah is that there are in fact many ways that rain can be
insufficient. For instance, you can have rain that:

Fell for the vegetation but didn’t fall for the trees.

8 Myjewishlearning.com

25
This is a gentle rain that serves small plants well, but doesn’t adequately soak the ground to supply
the needs of large trees.

Likewise, you can have rain that falls:

For the trees but not for the vegetation.

This kind of substantial rain penetrates deeply into the earth and nourishes tree roots, but
overwhelms smaller and more delicate plants. Both kinds of rain — light and heavy — are needed
to properly water the plants that feed people with grains, vegetables, fruits and nuts.

There’s more. The mishnah also notes that sometimes there have been rains that satisfy both trees
and vegetation but:

Not cisterns, ditches, and caves.

How might this be the case? If there isn’t an abundance of rain that properly accumulates into both
natural and human-made reservoirs, then there will not be adequate drinking water.

Our Gemara notes, by way of a beraita (early teaching), that it could also happen in the reverse:
rain would fall and fill the cisterns, ditches and caves, but not be good for the plants. As the sages
explain, this is what happens when the rain falls in a downpour. Picture a flash flood; this kind of
heavy abundance of rain washes quickly over the earth and rapidly fills these reservoirs but can do
significant damage to crops and other plants.

These rain alarms are sounded at different times depending on the need. So, for instance, the sages
worry about rain for trees leading up to Passover, because as they begin to bud in early spring is
when trees need rain the most. But they cry out for the rain that fills cisterns and caves at any time
when drinking water is needed.

Likewise, the alarm is sounded only in locations that are in need. Towns experiencing drought
blow a shofar and declare a fast — towns with sufficient rainfall do not. This practice is clearly
meant to be performed as needed, by those who need it, and not more than that.

The sages also explore the interesting question of whether or not the alarm is raised when rain is
insufficient in shmita (sabbatical) years — years during which the land is not farmed and allowed
to rest. One opinion holds that in those years the community only prays for rain to fill the cisterns,
but not to grow produce. However, Rabban Gamliel disagrees, stating that even in sabbatical years
the alarm is sounded if there is insufficient rain for the produce in the field, because this helps
along the crops that grow spontaneously and feed the poor.

This page reminds us that the sages clearly lived in tune with the rhythms of the natural world —
including the different kinds of rain that fall and the knowledge of how they will affect crops and
also the water supply. This knowledge is important, because sometimes the most severe
consequences of too little rain are not felt for some time. They also understood that weather
conditions are local, and each community must decide for itself when it is in danger.

26
Rabbi Johnny Solomon writes:9

In our daf post, I’d like to share a perspective which, though slightly further afield from many of
my regular daf insights, is sufficiently important that it justifies my doing so.

To begin with, I’d like to share a fascinating story found in the Mishna (Ta’anit 3:8) in our daf
(Ta’anit 19a) – with a curious parallel found in Josephus (Antiquities 14.22-24) - involving ‫חוני‬
‫ – המעגל‬Choni ‘the circle maker’ during a time of drought:

‘It once happened that they said to Choni the circle maker “Pray that rains should fall”. He said to
them, “Go our and bring in the ovens… so that they do not get ruined”. He prayed, but no rain fell.
What did he do? He drew a circle, stood within it, and said before God: “Master of the Universe!
Your children have turned their faces towards me, because I am like a member of the household
before You. I swear by Your Great Name that I shall not move from here until You have mercy on
Your children.” At that point, rain began to trickle. He then proceeded [to say to God]: “Not such
rains did I request, but rains that [can fill] water holes, ditches and caves.” The rains began to fall
with fury. He then said [to God]: “Not such rains did I request, but rains of good will, blessing and
benevolence.” Normal rain then began to fall until the Jews had to leave Jerusalem for the Temple
Mount because of the rains. [The people then] came and said to him, “just as your prayed [for the
rains] to fall, pray that they cease.” He said to them, “Go out and see if the ‘stone of the strayers’
has been covered with water [and if it has, I will pray that the rain cease]. Shimon ben Shatach
sent him [the following message]: “Were you not Choni, I would pronounce a ban upon you [given
the way in which you spoke to God through this seemingly miraculous event]. But what shall I do
to you? For you do not speak respectfully to God [and simply demand rain], yet He fulfils your
wish like a son who misbehaves towards his father yet his father fulfils his wish. Concerning
people like you, we are taught, ‘may your father and mother rejoice, and may she who bore you
be glad’ (Mishlei 23:25)”’.

Having now shared this extraordinary story, I would like to share a further remarkable story, again
involving prayer and miracles, involving another rabbinic scholar from around the same period
called Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa which is alluded to in the Mishna (Brachot 5:5) and which is
further explained in the Gemara (Brachot 34b) from which I will now quote:

‘Rabban Gamliel's son fell ill and he sent two scholars to request that Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa
should pray on behalf of the ailing son. As soon as Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa saw these two
emissaries approach, he went up the attic and begged divine mercy for the sick child. Having
finished his prayers he descended to the messengers and curtly told them to return to their master
for the fever had left the child. Skeptically, the two scholars asked: “Do you claim to be a
prophet?”. [To this, Rabbi Chanina responded]: “I am neither a prophet, nor the son of a prophet,
but I have a tradition that if my prayer is fluent in my mouth, then I know it has been favorably
received. And if not, then I know that my prayer has been rejected.” The two visitors made a note
of the exact time and returned to Rabban Gamliel. Upon their arrival they reported the entire
9 www.rabbijohnnysolomon.com

27
episode to their teacher and Rabban Gamliel exclaimed: “You have neither detracted nor added to
the exact time of his recovery for it happened just so - at that very moment the fever left him and
he asked us for some water to drink!”’.

Now that I have shared these two stories, I’d like to add a little more biographical information
about Choni, who lived in the Galilee region and who died around 63 BCE, and Rabbi Chanina
who lived in the Galilee region in the first century CE, leading Geza Vermes to the conclusion that
‘Jewish, and perhaps in particular Galilean, popular religiosity tended to develop along the path
followed by Choni… and Chanina. Compassionate, caring and loving, they were.. celebrated as
deliverers of the Jews from famine, sickness… and teachers of religion and morality’ 10

And why does he make this point? Because while many Christians speak of the uniqueness of the
miracles performed by Jesus, and while many think that the motif of being ‘a son of God’ was only
used by one particular person, an understanding of his time and place leads us to the conclusion
that there were a number of people originating from the Galilee region before and after his time
who spoke this way and also performed great miracles.

Yet, as we note from the response of Shimon ben Shatach in our Mishna, while miracles may be
impressive, they alone are not - and should not be - the basis for a faith. As the Rambam explains
in Yesodei HaTorah 8:1: ‘The Jews did not believe in Moses, our teacher, because of the wonders
that he performed. [In fact], whenever anyone's belief is based on wonders, [the commitment of]
his heart has shortcomings.’

Therefore, at a time of year where many Jewish children may hear references or stories about
Christianity in the media, and at a time in Jewish history where we have seen numerous attempts
by Christian missionaries to infiltrate Jewish communities, it is worthwhile for us to pay attention
to stories such as those found in our Mishna. In doing so, we do not negate the faith of others. But
what we seek to do is better understand the context of their stories, the rich history of our tradition,
and what should – and should not - be the basis of faith itself.

10
The Changing Face of Jesus p. 249 Published by Penguin UK, 2001

28
 Nakdimon Ben Gurion
Mark Kerzner writes:11

The series of fasts that we have spoken about earlier are only for rains that are coming late. The
rational is that this is a gradual worsening of the situation, which can be fixed. However, for serious
calamities they fast and cry out right away. What is considered a serious calamity? If the crops
grew abnormally and may be totally ruined, if the rains fell irregularly (too strong or too weak), or
any other natural or economic condition which may result in a dangerous food shortage.

Once all Israel collected in Jerusalem for a Festival, but, due to a drought, there was not enough
water for them to drink. Then Nakdimon ben Gurion, a very wealthy Jew, went to a Roman
patrician to borrow twelve wells of water. He promised to return the water by way of rains, and if
not - to pay twelve talents of silver (equal to about seven million dollars). The promised day has
come, but there was no rain. Thrice did the patrician send for his money, but Nakdimon argued
that he still had until the end of the day. Then the patrician went to the baths, preparing to celebrate,
while Nakdimon went to the Temple to pray. He said, "You know, God, that I did not do it for my
own - or my family's - glory," and the rains poured. And yet, the patrician claimed that the rain

11 https://talmudilluminated.com/taanit/taanit19.html

29
came after the the sun was down. So Nakdimon went back to the Temple to pray, and the sun has
shown through the clouds.

In general, the sun stood still for three people: Moses, Joshua and Nakdimon.

Speaking in a direct manner and complaining against Hashem in prayer is something which our
Gemara regarding Choni HaMe’agel describes as being highly inappropriate. 12

The Gemara (Berachos 32a) notes that Moshe also prayed in a direct manner towards the heavens,
following the incident when the Jews complained about the manna (Bemidbar 11:2). Rabbi Elazar
said: Moshe spoke with harsh direct words towards the heavens. Although the verse says that
Moshe spoke “‘‫ה אל‬to Hashem”, we should read it as if it says “‘‫ ה על‬- against Hashem.” Where
do our sages detect that there was an element of firmness and demand in Moshe's entreaty?

We must understand that the Gemara is not coming to criticize Moshe Rabbeinu for the manner in
which he dealt with this crisis, but rather to praise him. This particular expression of prayer (‘‫ה על‬
(does not always have to connote a direct and harsh prayer. In this context, it could be interpreted
to refer to the focus of Moshe's concern during this encounter as the Jews began to complain about
the manna.

Moshe detected that the Shechina must have been enduring distress due to the lack of trust which
the Jews had exhibited. As a result of this lapse, a fire had burned against a corner of the camp and
caused destruction. Moshe himself was also saddened by these events, but he aimed his prayers to
reflect the difficulty the Shechina must have felt.

This same insight can be used to interpret another incident which the Gemara in Berachos (31b)
describes. Chana, the future mother of Shmuel and a wife of Elkanah, was childless. The verse (I
Shmuel 1:10) reports that she was very bitter and that she davened “‘‫ ה על‬- against Hashem.” The
Gemara detects that her prayers were unusual, and apparently exceedingly direct. Yet, here again,
we must say that the verse is not coming to criticize Chana, but to praise her.

Although she was suffering due to her condition of being childless, she nevertheless directed her
attention to the fact that the Shechina must have been in torment due to her sadness. This was the
focus of her prayer, as she aimed her attention at the fact that the heavens must have been troubled
due to her plight. When a person is suffering, he can choose how to direct his prayers. On the one
hand, he can highlight his own personal pain and beseech Hashem for relief. On the other hand,
he can acknowledge that the Shechina itself is in a state of distress, ‫ כביכול‬.By broadening his scope,
a person can anticipate that his prayers will be answered in a multiple manner, corresponding to
the compounded nature of his concern not only for himself, but also that the condition of the
Shechina be relieved.

12 https://www.dafdigest.org/masechtos/Taanis%20019.pdf

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“I take an oath by Your Great Name that I will not leave here until You act mercifully towards
Your children,” etc. “You sin before Hashem and He does your will like a son who sins before
his father and he [the father] does his will.”

The Gemara Kesubos (1) relates that Hashem imposed an oath on the Jewish People that they
would not force the end of Rashi (2). ‫ – שלא ידחקו את הקץ‬days explains that the specific restriction
against forcing the end of days means that we may not implore Hashem with an overabundance of
supplications to bring the end of days.

The commentators (3) struggle to understand the exact parameters of this restriction. The first issue
is that it is not clearly defined what is considered a normal amount of asking for the end of days to
arrive and what is considered an overabundance. A second issue is that we do not find that the
Poskim address this interdiction and warn against crossing the line regarding supplications to bring
the end of days. Another difficulty is that tzadikim for generations have, in fact, invested great
amounts of time and energy attempting to end the exile and bring the end of days.

Righteous people rise in the middle of the night to recite and cry bitter tears for tikun chatzos.
Moreover, in each Shemoneh Esrei, tzadikim pour out their heart to bring the end of days, so what
then is included in the restriction mentioned in the Gemara?

The Yismach Moshe (4) explains that the restriction is to daven with an oath in the manner of
Choni the Circle-maker, who took an oath that he would not leave the circle until Hashem
answered his prayers. The only people who can daven in this style are those that fulfill the pasuk
which states5 , “Hashem, Your G-d, you should fear, you should serve Him and attach yourself to
Him.” One who follows the first half of the pasuk has the capacity to invoke the end of the pasuk,
“And in His Name you will swear.” This type of prayer, that is accompanied by an oath, is what
is restricted but davening in the normal fashion, including tikun chatzos, is not encompassed by
this restriction.

31
During the period that led up to the outbreak of World War I, tensions in Europe were at an all-
time high. The conflicting nationalistic aspirations of numerous groups threatened the stability of
all of Europe, and many monarchies were on the brink of civil war at home, and war over territorial
claims at their borders. During the summer immediately preceding the assassination of Archduke
Ferdinand in Yugoslavia that began World War I, Europe was aptly compared to a powder keg,
waiting for the spark to set it alight.

At that time, a number of gedolim proposed that a universal fast be declared over the Jewish
community and circulated a petition to garner support. When the matter became known, a certain
communal leader declared his vehement opposition. He publicly stated, “Right now, the Jewish
Communists, Socialists, Zionists, and Bundists are presenting an unprecedented affront to God.

Why should we, Orthodox Jewry, have to fast because of their sins?” The petitioners responded
with an obvious answer. “The Midrash says clearly that since we are all in the same boat, it doesn’t
matter if it is someone else’s fault that we are sinking because he has decided to drill a hole! To
save ourselves, we have to undo the damage made by the other person.”

And, as for not waiting for disaster to strike but rather trying to preempt it, they had a perfect
argument. “We find on Taanis 19a that Rebbe Yosi said that the sages didn’t declare a fast because
a tragedy had already happened. Rather, they declared a fast because they were able to see that a
potential tragedy was looming on the horizon. ‘They declared a fast because wolves had devoured
two young children on the far side of the Yarden. Rebbe Yosi said: They weren’t eaten, they were
seen…’ If the Chachomim felt that just spotting the wolves is enough of a reason to declare a fast,
surely our situation is no less threatening! And we pasken like R’ Yosi!”.

NAKDIMON BEN GURYON13

(first century C.E.), mentioned in one version of a tannaitic story (Sifre Deut. 305; cf. Mekh.
Bahodesh 1) concerning *Johanan b. Zakkai, as the aristocratic and wealthy father of a young
woman reduced to abject poverty and humiliation in the aftermath of the destruction of Jerusalem.

Like many figures mentioned in passing in the early tannaitic sources, the later talmudic and post-
talmudic aggadah transmits many elaborate legends concerning his life and the dramatic events in

13 https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/nakdimon-ben-guryon

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which he reportedly took part. According to the Talmud (Git. 56a) he was one of three celebrated
wealthy men of Jerusalem during the last years of the Second Temple.

Like his affluent associates *Ben Ẓiẓit ha-Kassat and *Ben Kalba Savu'a, Nakdimon studied under
the rabbis and was highly regarded by *Johanan b. Zakkai (cf. PdRE 2). Legendary accounts are
given of his wealth and philanthropy. On his daily journey to the house of study (the texts of that
period often confuse the house of study with the Temple), he had the whole way covered with
woolen carpets which he left lying there for the poor to take (Ket. 66b). Other accounts speak of
his daughter's excessive use of cosmetics (ibid.) and his daughter-in-law's expenditure on her
kitchen (Ket. 65a).

He was also regarded as a wonder-worker. During a water shortage he borrowed 12 cisterns filled
with water from a wealthy Roman official on condition that by a certain day he would either return
the cisterns full of water or pay 12 silver talents. On the evening of the last day of the appointed
time, in answer to his prayers, rain fell and filled the cisterns. When the Roman objected that the
sun had already set and the appointed time had passed, Nakdimon caused the sun to shine by means
of his prayer (Ta'an. 19b).

During the siege of Jerusalem, he and his two associates promised to supply the city for 21 years
with all necessary provisions. The Zealots, however, burned all the provisions so that need would
induce the people to fight against the Romans (Git. 56a). With the fall of Jerusalem, Nakdimon
lost all his wealth, and Johanan b. Zakkai met his daughter (Miriam; Lam. R. 1:16, no. 48, cf. Sifre
Deut. 305) picking out barley corns from cattle dung (Ket. 66b; Lam. R. ibid.). According to a
talmudic tradition his proper name was not Nakdimon but Boni (Ta'an. 20a).

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Hyman, Toledot, 948–9; J. Neusner, Development of a Legend: Studies on the Traditions Concerning Yohanan Ben
Zakkai (Studia Post-Biblica, vol. 16) (1970), 21–22, 235–38.

Nakdimon Ben Gurion and the Six-Day War: Hashem Still Loves
Us!
Rabbi Haim Jachter writes:14

Nakdimon ben Gurion triggered a fantastic miracle! The Gemara (Ta’anit 19b-20a) describes how
Nakdimon cried out to Hashem in desperate times to demonstrate that Hashem still loves the
Jewish people. In response, Hashem caused the sun to shine after it had set (translation adapted
from Sefaria.org).
The Sages taught: Once, all the Jewish people ascended for the pilgrimage Festival to Jerusalem
and there was not enough water for them to drink. Nakdimon ben Gurion, one of the wealthy
citizens of Jerusalem, went to a certain Roman officer [hegemon] and said to him: Lend me 12

14 https://jewishlink.news/features/43702-nakdimon-ben-gurion-and-the-six-day-war-hashem-still-loves-us

33
wells of water for the pilgrims, and I will give back to you 12 wells of water. And if I do not give
them to you, I will give you 12 talents of silver. And the officer set him a time limit for returning
the water.
When the set time arrived and no rain had fallen, in the morning the Roman official sent a message
to Nakdimon: Send me either the water or the coins that you owe me. Nakdimon sent a message
to him: I still have time, as the entire day is mine. At noontime the official again sent a message to
him: Send me either the water or the coins that you owe me. Nakdimon sent a message to him: I
still have time left in the day. In the afternoon he sent a message to him: Send me either the water
or the coins that you owe me. Nakdimon sent a message to him: I still have time left in the day.
That Roman officer ridiculed him, saying: Throughout the entire year rain has not fallen, and now
it will rain? He entered the bathhouse in a state of joy, anticipating the large sum of money he was
about to receive. As the master entered the bathhouse in his joy, Nakdimon entered the Temple in
a state of sadness. He wrapped himself in his prayer shawl and stood in prayer.
Faux olive-oils flooding the market with greasy lie
He said before God: Master of the Universe, it is revealed and known before You that I did not act
for my own honor, nor did I act for the honor of my father’s house. Rather, I acted for Your honor,
so that there should be water for the Festival pilgrims. Immediately the sky became overcast and
rain fell until the 12 cisterns were filled with water, and there was even more water, so that they
overflowed.
As the master left the bathhouse, Nakdimon ben Gurion left the Temple. When they met one
another, Nakdimon said to him: Give me the money you owe me for the extra water you received.
The official said to him: I know that the Holy One, Blessed be He, has shaken His world and
caused rain to fall only for you. However, I still maintain a claim against you, by which I can
legally take my coins from you, as you did not pay me on the agreed date, for the sun had already
set, and therefore the rain fell onto my property.
Nakdimon went back and entered the Temple, wrapped himself in his prayer shawl, and stood in
prayer. He said before God: Master of the Universe, let it be known that You have beloved ones
in Your world. Immediately, the clouds scattered, and the sun shined. At that time, the master said
to him: If the sun had not broken through the clouds, I would have had a claim against you, by
which I could have taken my coins from you.
In the terrible days of the brutal Roman occupation of Eretz Yisrael, Hashem boosted our morale
by showing He still loves us. Wealthy Jews such as Nakdimon ben Gurion were our only source
of relief from the heavy Roman yoke. Had Nakdimon, in his valiant efforts to help our people
perform aliyah l’regel, been shorn of his wealth, it would have dealt a crushing blow to our people.
The great miracle of the Six-Day War, only 22 years after the Shoah, may also be seen as Hashem
showing us He still loves us. At a time when it appeared that the sun had set on our people, Hashem
shined a new light/ohr chadash on Yerushalayim and the Kotel HaMaaravi to clarify that we
remain His beloved.
Neither the Nakdimon-triggered nes nor the Six-Day War solved all our problems. Roman rule
continued after the sun broke through in Jerusalem, and the War of Attrition and Yom Kippur War
followed not so long after the Six-Day War. Nonetheless, we express our gratitude to Hashem for
both of these Jerusalem-based miracles for providing a desperately needed reminder that Hashem
has “beloved ones in His world.” The fact that multitudes of Jews can, with Hashem’s help, visit

34
and pray at the Kotel HaMa’aravi more than 50 years later continues to broadcast the same
message.

Rav Asher Meir writes:15

POSTURE FOR TACHANUN OC Siman 21-221(se'if 2)

The Kitzur rules that during tachanun we should sit and lean over on our sides.

During the Amida prayer we stand at attention as we are summoned before our supreme
Commander; in the tachanun prayer, we fall on our faces as we beg the compassion of our merciful
Father in heaven. An erect posture is appropriate for service, as we demonstrate our readiness to
carry out God's will; a prostrate position is appropriate for supplication, as we demonstrate our
helplessness and need for salvation.

However, COMPLETE prostration is inappropriate. Such a posture is considered too demanding

- as though HaShem is obligated to answer our prayers, as long as we are worthy. (4) Furthermore,
it could seem as though we were bowing down in idolatrous fashion to some person or object, and
not to HaShem. In Jewish tradition such prostration as an element of worship is limited to the
Holy Temple, where it is obvious to all that it is the One God Who is being worshipped. (5)
Therefore, the custom is to cover the face with one sleeve, thus tending to one side.

VOLUNTARY PRAYERS (se'if 10)

Rav Ganzfried mentions that in our day is not customary to make a voluntary, non-obligatory
prayer. Yet, according to the Shulchan Arukh, we MAY make such a prayer as often as we like -
as long as such a prayer has something new in it. (2)

The idea of saying a voluntary Amida prayer seems strange. After all, if I have something I feel I
must tell God, why can't I just say it in the form of a personal petition? The mandatory content of
the Shemoneh Esrei prayer - establishing the foundations of our Jewish identity - seems to be
related to its mandatory times: the service God demands of us exactly this, to be regularly and
constantly working on ourselves to mold a Jewish personality conforming with tradition. Once
the prayer is outside the parameters of the regulated service, why should it require the usual
format?

15 https://haretzion.linnovate.co.il/en/halakha/studies-halakha/philosophy-halakha/simanim-21-22-additional-prayers

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The halakha seems to take this objection into account. A person may NOT say a voluntary Amida
prayer - but he MAY say a private petition and ensconce it within the Amida. In this way, a person
can emphasize that his PRIVATE desires are not mere whims but rather are embedded in the
bedrock of a Torah personality. In effect, the innovation is not a mere addition but rather is the
focal point of the new prayer.

The accepted custom reflects an intermediate position between the Shulchan Arukh's ruling, that
one may say a voluntary Amida without restriction, and that of the Kitzur, which says that we don't
say such a prayer at all. The custom is that if we are in doubt as to whether we are required to
pray - for instance, if we forgot if we prayed, or don't know if we are in a situation where
compensatory prayer is appropriate - then we may say the Amida and make a condition that if the
prayer is indeed required, it is a mandatory prayer, and if not, it is merely voluntary. (3)

ASKING OF GOD, DEMANDING FROM GOD

At the beginning of the siman we mentioned that complete prostration is problematic since it seems
to suggest that God MUST accede to our demands. Quite apart from the fact that this reflects
badly on us if God finds us unworthy after such a demand, the very MAKING of such a demand
on the Holy One, blessed be He seems problematic. This could be seen as ingratitude - or perhaps
even worse, a failure to accept God's will.

Indeed, there is an inherent religious tension between faithfully accepting God's decrees and
wanting to change them in order to carry out God's own work. Choni Ha-Me'agel [the circle-
drawer] "threatened" HaShem that he would not step out of his little circle until HaShem gave us
rain - and indeed HaShem answered Choni's prayer. But the leading sage Shimon ben Shetach did
not approve of this kind of prayer. (6) Rav Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev once "threatened"
HaShem that he would not go ahead with his prayers until He would ease the burdens of exile from
the Jews. But the Mitnagdim - the opponents of Chasidut - were very upset with Rav Levi
Yitzchak's conduct.

We need to remember that there are two distinct kinds of revelation of God's will. One is through
His word to our prophets, from Moshe Rabbeinu through the later prophets. The other is through
the reality in which we live. Every aspect of our lives is a revelation of God's will, since it is the
Almighty Who willed it into existence. These manifestations can contradict each other. HaShem
revealed Himself to Avraham as a Judge (7), but afterwards informed him of His plan to overturn
Sodom - conceivably a breach of justice. (8) The prophets foretold that our suffering and loyalty
to HaShem would bring an end to the exile, but the Jews of Europe saw no end in sight. It is this
CONTRADICTION which creates the possibility - and even the duty - of arguing with HaShem.

In other words, these "demands" of God are not expressions of denying His will but rather of
affirming it! We take God's will as it is revealed through our tradition very seriously, so much so
that when reality seems to contradict His word, we demand a reconciliation.

36
The halakha strikes a balance between the two kinds of Divine manifestation. As we beg for an
end to the sorrows of exile in our tachanun prayer, we take up the cause of prophetic revelation,
pointing out to God that in His Torah He promises that He will gather in the exile. But by
refraining from prostrating ourselves completely, we avoid being too brazen in our demands and
demonstrate that we reconcile ourselves to the fact that it is God's will that determines our current
situation.

16

Rav Yair Kahn writes:17

The 17th of Marcheshvan is a date which bears halakhic significance. 18 The mishna in
Ta'anit teaches: "If the 17th of Marcheshvan arrived and it had not yet rained - [special] individuals
began to observe three fast days." These fast days are of the lenient variety. Only eating and
drinking are prohibited, and the fast is limited to the daytime. If the drought continues until the
second week of Kislev, the type of fast days decreed is of the stringent type; it begins at night and
includes all 5 restrictions - eating and drinking, washing, anointing, marital relations and wearing
shoes. The gemara (Ta'anit 19a) limits this system of three fast days to a situation in which it had
not rained at all until the 17th, "but if the first rain had already fallen, and they had sown and either
the seeds had not sprouted or they sprouted but grew abnormally - we sound the alarm
immediately."

Rashi and Tosafot (18b, s.v. Matri'in) explain that "we sound the alarm immediately"
means putting the stringent fasts into effect right away. The rationale behind this explanation is
clear: if the fields were sowed and the first rains fell and then stopped, there is a danger that the
year's whole crop will be lost. However, if it has not rained at all, the grain will not reach a critical
stage until later in the season. Only then, in mid-Kislev, are the most stringent fasts decreed.

Our teacher Ha-gaon Harav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik zt"l has taught that a close reading of
the Rambam reveals an approach that is the opposite of that of Rashi and Tosafot. According to
the Rambam, a complete communal fast day with all of its stringencies is decreed only if there is
a total drought. However, if some rains had already fallen and then the rainfall stopped, a lenient
communal fast day is decreed - one which applies only during the daytime and without the added
stringencies. This approach demands an explanation.

16
Translated and adapted by Rav Eliezer Kwass
17 The following article is based on a shiur by our teacher the Gaon Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik zt"l printed in "Shiurim Le-zekher
Avi Mori", volume I, pp. 179-199.
18 https://etzion.org.il/en/halakha/orach-chaim/prayer-and-blessings/fasting-and-prayer-drought-and-crisis

37
 The Rambam sees the obligation to fast in times of trouble as based on Bemidbar 10:9:
"When you go to war in your land against an enemy that oppresses you, you should sound the
trumpets ("chatzotzerot") and be remembered before Hashem your God, and you will be saved
from your enemies." According to the Rambam this mitzva requires not only the blowing of
trumpets but also the broader obligation of prayer, of crying out to God. The sub-heading of
Rambam's Hilkhot Ta'aniot, the laws of fast days, reads, "There is a positive commandment to cry
out to God in any time of great trouble."

In the body of Hilkhot Ta'aniot the Rambam does mention that the mitzva involves the act
of blowing the trumpets, but it is clear that the true essence of this mitzva lies in crying out to God
in prayer. The sounding of the trumpets is only its external manifestation. Hilkhot Ta'aniot (1:1)
begins, "It is a positive biblical mitzva to cry out and blow the trumpets in a time of crisis."

It is upon this foundation that the Rambam (ibid., 1:4) places the rabbinic obligation to fast
in times of crisis: "And it is [a] rabbinic [commandment] to fast in the event of any crisis that
befalls the community until they are mercifully answered from Heaven."

According to this approach there is, apparently, no reason to distinguish between different
types of crises. The verse, "When you go to war in your land against an enemy that oppresses
you," is explained by the Sifrei: "How do we know that this war includes blasts of the wind
("shidafon") or grain disease ("yerakon")...? The verse says, 'against an enemy that oppresses you,'
("al ha-tzar ha-tzoreir etkhem") including any crisis ("Tzar" is seen to mean a crisis ["tzara"], not
only an enemy)." Once the mitzva is expanded to all types of crises, why distinguish one from the
others?

However, the Rambam does, in fact, distinguish between different types of crises. In the
first chapter of Hilkhot Ta'aniot (1:8) he writes: "These fast days declared because of troubles ... It
is permissible to eat at night even though the following day will be a fast day - EXCEPT FOR
FASTS OVER RAIN." In other words, fasts over lack of rain, in contrast to fasts declared because
of various other problems, begin at night. He writes in the third chapter (3:11): "On all community
fasts outside the Land of Israel it is permissible to eat the night before, like on other [minor] fast
days. For we only decree a fast day like Yom Kippur on the community in the Land of Israel, and
only because of drought." The extra prohibitions beyond eating and drinking (e.g. washing and
the like) are reserved for fasts during a drought and do not apply to fasts over other crises. [The
Rambam's source for this law is R. Yirmia bar Abba's statement (Ta'anit 11b): "There is no
communal fast in Bavel except for Tish'a Be-Av." See the Ramban's comments there.]

At the beginning of the second chapter (2:1) the Rambam lists those events which demand
the declaration of a fast day: "These are the crises over which the community must fast and sound
the trumpets - threat from enemies of Israel, war, plague, ... and drought." Further on in the chapter
(2:15,16) the Rambam elaborates: "What is meant by [fasting] 'over rain?' If there were excessive
rains to the degree that it distressed them - they should pray concerning them... If grain sprouted,
then the rains stopped and the crop began to dry out, they should fast and cry out [in prayer] until
rain falls or until the crop [totally] dries out."

38
 The subject of this last halakha in the Rambam is the situation we quoted at the beginning
of our discussion - grain which began to grow but whose growth was halted by the rainfall
stopping. In contrast to this situation, the Rambam, in the beginning of the third chapter of Hilkhot
Ta'aniot, describes a situation of complete drought: "If rain does not fall at all from the beginning
of the rainy season: If the 17th of Marcheshvan arrives and rain has not yet fallen, talmidei
chakhamim alone fast on Monday and Thursday and the following Monday ..."

The Rav, zt"l, divined the essence of these two halakhot from their placement in the
Rambam. The problem of rain that started and then stopped prematurely appears in the second
chapter, along with other crises like the sword, plague, wind and crop disease. Over these we fast
(a minor fast) immediately. In contrast, a drought involving a total lack of rainfall from the
beginning of the rainy season is brought in the third chapter. Only there does the Rambam
enumerate the order of fasts mentioned in the mishnayot of Ta'anit, culminating in the most
stringent. The Rambam apparently distinguishes between no rainfall and discontinued
rainfall. Why?

At the beginning of Hilkhot Ta'aniot (1:2,3) the Rambam explains the biblical source of
crying out in prayer and sounding the trumpets: "This is part of the process of repentance. When
a crisis comes and they cry out in prayer and sound the trumpets, all will know that trouble came
about because of their evil actions ... This will cause them to remove the trouble from upon
themselves. However, if they do not cry out and do not sound the trumpets and say, 'This is just a
natural occurrence, the problem is mere happenstance,' this is criminal indifference and causes
them to cling to their evil ways and will only bring on more troubles. This is what the Torah means
when it says, 'If you remain indifferent (be-keri) to me, then I will be indifferent to you in fury
(chamat keri)' (Vayikra 26:27-28). In other words, when I bring about a crisis so that you should
repent, if you say that it is a mere chance ('keri') I will add to it the fury of that 'chance'."

When the Rambam sets out to define the types of troubles which generate the obligation of
prayer and the sounding of trumpets, he uses terms which relate clearly to God's providence over
His creatures. It is as if God (as it were) is knocking on the doors of our hearts and asking, "Return,
return from your evil ways."

When there is no rain at all, the spiritual problem is on a completely different plane, and
there is, therefore, a need for a very different type of human reaction. In parashat Eikev (Devarim
11:10-12), the Torah says: "For the land to which you are going to, to inherit it, is not like the land
of Egypt which you left, where you sow your seed and then irrigate it with your feet like a vegetable
garden. The land to which you are passing over to go and inherit is a land of mountains and
valleys, where you drink water from the rain of the heavens. It is a land which Hashem your God
looks after; constantly Hashem your God's eyes are on it, from the beginning of the year until its
end."

These verses express the uniqueness of the Land of Israel where Divine Providence is felt
clearly and continually, and one of its main expressions is through rainfall. The Rav, zt"l, learned
from here that the lack of rain is a sign of the absence of the Divine Presence. When rain does not
fall at all - everything is dry, there is no voice from Heaven, no response. Total drought cannot be
included in the list of war-like crises, for war is an expression of Providence, a Divine reaction to

39
our deeds. This is not the case with a total lack of rain which expresses, God forbid, a state of
"hester panim," a hiddenness of the Divine Face. It follows naturally that the obligation and nature
of fasting for total drought are completely different from those that apply to "providential" crises
like war, plague, blight and the like. The prototype of such a fast is Tish'a Be-Av which
exemplifies the hiddenness of the Divine Presence.

Lately, we have witnessed much rainfall, yet one calamity follows the next. 19 It is our
obligation to properly assess the import of the events and to discern their spiritual
significance. Providence is, as it were, at our door, knocking - painful and shocking knocks - and
demanding, "Return to me and I will return to you." We have begun to cry out in prayer and to
sound the alarm, and we must continue. May it be that through the merit of our sounding of the
chatzotzerot, our prayer and our cries, we should be able to see the fulfillment of the promise at
the end of that verse in Bemidbar, "You will be remembered before Hashem your God and you
will be saved from your enemies."20

Why Even the Greatest Rabbis Can’t Be Trusted

19
The above was said at the end of a week in which two soldiers in Tzahal - Nachshon Wachsman and Nir Poraz, Hy"d - were
killed by terrorists, and twenty-two Jews were killed in a tragic terrorist attack in Tel Aviv - ed.
20 This article originally appeared in Alon Bogrim #5, Kislev 5755, pp. 107-109

40
 Talmudic thinkers debate the ethics of winning God’s favor, and when a holy
person can be too righteous

ADAM KIRSCH writes:21

In this week’s Daf Yomi reading, Chapter 3 of Tractate Ta’anit, the Talmud turned from the laws
of fasting to give us a feast of aggadah. This chapter, I learned from the Koren Talmud, is known
in early commentaries as the “Chapter of the Pious,” because it mostly consists of legends about
the great sages and their ability to work miracles with God’s help. In telling these stories, however,
the Talmud is also pursuing a serious ethical investigation: The rabbis are trying to determine
exactly what qualities enable men to win God’s favor. Just as important, the Talmud insists that
even the power of the pious is capable of being abused. The ability to coerce God can lead to hubris
and vanity—the vices that lie in wait for people proud of their own sanctity.

This is the lesson of one of the most famous anecdotes in the Talmud, which we read in Ta’anit
19a. During a bad drought, the people came to a holy man named Honi HaMe’aggel (“Honi the
Circle-Drawer”) and asked him to pray for rain. With a certain hubris, Honi told them to make
sure to bring their clay ovens inside, lest they be melted in the rain that his prayer was sure to
bring. When he prayed for rain, however, nothing happened. So Honi, acting rather like a child
who didn’t get his way, decided to manipulate God into doing what he wanted. “What did he do?
He drew a circle on the ground [thus explaining his name] and stood inside it and said before God:
Master of the Universe, Your children have turned their faces toward me, so I am like a member
of Your household. Therefore, I take an oath by Your great name that I will not move from here
until You have mercy upon Your children.” At this, a trickle of rain started to fall, but Honi told
God that it wasn’t good enough: “I did not ask for this, but for rain to fill the cisterns, ditches, and
caves.” Thereupon the rain started to fall in floods, but Honi wasn’t satisfied with this either: “I
did not ask for this,” he told God, “but for rain of benevolence, blessing, and generosity.” Finally,
having got the amount and quality of rain he wanted, Honi asked God to make it stop.

The story is told in such a way that we can’t help disliking Honi even as we admire him. He seems
too sure of his righteousness, too confident in his ability to get his prayers answered. Surely a pious
man is supposed to beseech God humbly, not order him around like a waiter in a restaurant until
he brings the right thing. That was certainly the feeling of Shimon ben Shetach, the leader of the
Sanhedrin; according to the Gemara, Shimon told Honi, “If you were not Honi, I would have
decreed ostracism upon you.” The reason is that, if God had not responded to Honi’s prayers—as
he might well have refused to do, for reasons of his own—Honi’s public challenge to God would
have led to the “desecration” of the name of Heaven. For a human being to set himself up as an
authority over God is a great sin—something that many religious leaders, even today, have a hard
time remembering.

This lesson is driven home by another story, in Ta’anit 20b, about Rav Adda bar Ahava. This holy
man lived in the Babylonian city of Nehardea, where he was famous for his sanctity. One one

21 https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/belief/articles/daf-yomi-89

41
occasion, Rav Huna had a store of wine inside a dilapidated building that he was afraid would
collapse. Cleverly, Huna invited Adda to stand in the building with him and discuss halakha while
workmen removed all the wine; he knew that Adda was under God’s protection, so that the
building would not collapse while he was inside it. Indeed, as soon as Huna and Adda left the
building, it fell down. But when Adda realized what Huna had done, he got angry, because of the
principle that “a person should never stand in a place of danger and say: A miracle will be
performed for me, lest a miracle is not performed for him.” No matter how confident you are of
God’s protection, it should never be taken for granted or publicly guaranteed, because it is not
man’s place to give God orders—a lesson Honi the Circle-Drawer evidently never learned.

Still, Shimon couldn’t deny that God had done everything Honi asked for. “What can I do to you,
as you nag God and he does your bidding, like a son who nags his father and his father does his
bidding. And the son says to his father: Father, take me to be bathed in hot water; wash me in cold
water; give me nuts, almonds, peaches, and pomegranates. And his father gives him.” This glimpse
of what spoiled children in the Talmudic era sounded like is oddly charming, and it paints an
appealing picture of God as an indulgent parent, rather than a stern judge or mighty king.

Other holy men, however, knew better ways to exercise their influence over God, without openly
daring him to refuse a prayer. In Ta’anit 23b, we read about Abba Hilkiyya, who was Honi’s
grandson and who inherited his grandfather’s holiness. “When the world was in need of rain they
would send sages to him, and he would pray for mercy, and rain would fall.” When the deputation
came to ask for rain, however, Abba Hilkiyya did not allow them to speak their request. Instead,
guessing what they were about to say, he and his wife went up to the roof and prayed for rain
secretly. Immediately, rainclouds began to form above his wife’s head. When Hilkiyya went back
downstairs and spoke to the visitors, he was able to point out that rain was already coming, so they
didn’t need to ask his help. Through this stratagem, he made it appear that the rain was not in
response to his prayer but was God’s own gift. This extreme modesty stands in sharp contrast to
his grandfather’s public challenges to God. And the modesty extended still further. When asked
why the clouds formed over his wife’s headfirst, Hilkiyya explained that she was an even better
person than he was: “When certain hooligans were living in our neighborhood, I prayed that they
should die, but she prayed that they should repent.”

Other holy men were not so careful to avoid the sin of haughtiness. Rabbi Elazar, the son of Rabbi
Shimon ben Yochai, is one of the most powerful sages in the Talmud. Back in Tractate Shabbat
we learned about how Elazar and his father spent years in a cave, buried up to their necks in sand,
learning the secrets of Torah. Now we read, in Ta’anit 20b, that Elazar’s “head was swollen with
pride because he had studied much Torah.” Once he was riding on a donkey when he met “an
exceedingly ugly person” who greeted him politely; but Elazar responded with a nasty remark:
“How ugly is that man. Are all the people of your city as ugly as you?” Immediately the man
shamed him by replying, “I do not know, but you should go and say to the Craftsman Who made
me: How ugly is the vessel you made.” This retort made Elazar repent his cruelty, and he begged
the man for forgiveness, which was granted on the condition that Elazar not be so haughty in the
future. After this episode, Elazar would teach, “A person should always be soft like a reed and he
should not be stiff like a cedar.”

42
All of these stories glorify Torah sages, who are the usual heroes of Talmudic stories. But some of
the tales in Chapter 3 make clear that even ordinary people can win God’s favor through ethical
behavior. Rava, we read, would “receive greetings from the Yeshivah on High”—the celestial
academy where the souls of dead sages resided—every year on Yom Kippur, and Abaye would
receive greetings every Shabbat; but a man called Abba the Bloodletter would get these greetings
every day. What made Heaven favor a man who plied the lowly trade of barber-surgeon? The
answer is that, when he let a woman’s blood, he made sure to cover her with a special garment so
that he never saw her bare skin. Moreover, he would receive payment in secret, so that poor people
didn’t have to be embarrassed if they couldn’t afford his fee.

A similar story is told about Rabbi Beroka Hoza’a, who stood in the marketplace with Elijah the
Prophet and asked Elijah which of the passerby were worthy of the World to Come. Elijah pointed
to a man who was not even wearing tzitzit. How could such a sinner deserve to go to Heaven?
When Beroka Hoza’a spoke to the man, it turned out that he was a prison guard, who devoted
himself to protecting Jewish women prisoners from the assaults of gentiles. He did not wear tzitzit,
he explained, because he passed as a gentile at work; in this way, he could get word of decrees
issued against the Jews and tell the community about them right away. This zeal for protecting
Jews made him even holier than those who devoted their lives to Torah. Piety pleases God, the
Talmud shows, but goodness pleases him even more.

Islam and Judaism on the importance of a few hidden saints

Allen S. Maller writes:22

The dominant view in both Islam and Judaism encourages knowledge of their respective sacred
scriptures and legal systems. Both religions also have a minor tendency that elevates and exalts
the small number (in every generation, usually only 60 or 40 Abdal in Islam, and 36 or 30 Tsadikim
in Judaism), of simple good-hearted people’s truly pious deeds of love.

Abu Hurayra said: “I entered the mosque, and Muhammad said to me, ‘Abu Hurayra, in this hour,
a man will walk through this door, who is one of the seven people of the world through whom
Allah diverts punishment from the Earth’s inhabitants. Just then an Ethiopian who was bald,
maimed, and carrying a container of water on his head entered through that door. Muhammad said,

22 https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/islam-and-judaism-on-the-importance-of-a-few-hidden-saints/

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“O Abu Hurayra, that’s him,” and then said to the man three times, “Welcome” This man used to
sweep and clean the Mosque.” (at-Tirmidhi in Nawadir, Asl #123) and Khatm al-Awliya p.443)

Most Islamic scholars would say this is not a certain Hadith. But it certainly is a beautiful,
compassionate Hadith, with a strong message to respect every human being; regardless of class,
status or physical appearance. This Hadith also expresses a special type of wisdom that comes, not
from academic books or learned scholars, but from the pious yearnings of the masses of good-
hearted, religious believers.

These yearnings are then expressed by sensitive scribes and preachers who expand them into
inspiring fables and pious beliefs. After all, “God made human beings because God loves stories.”
(Elie Wiesel) and “There are all kinds of stories. Some are taken from reality and processed
through inspiration, other rise up from an instant of inspiration; and become real after being told
again and again.” (Isabel Allende)

In both Islam and Judaism, a folk belief grew up in the Middle East, unsupported by the religious
scholars, that if it were not for a small number of very righteous people, the whole corrupt society
we live in would collapse upon itself. Neither the Torah nor the Qur’an explicitly proclaim such a
belief, but the concept does support the ideal that a few people who continue to live in righteous
purity, even when everyone else has become corrupt, can in some mystical way really make a big
difference in society’s survival.

Even today the whole earth seems to be filled with violence, cruelty, oppression and injustice. The
corrupt behavior of many political, economic, intellectual and even religious leaders is constantly
being exposed.

Of course, our generation is not the first to suffer from these widespread social, political, cultural
and national maladies; and religious people know that God is merciful and compassionate as well

44
as just. Indeed, the God, who is known to Muslims and Jews as: Ar-Rahman, Ha Rakhaman, the
Compassionate One; and Ar-Rahim. El Rakhum, the Merciful One, who shows patience and
forbearance in the face of widespread human inequity and sin, can be understood in many ways.

One explanation, that developed within some parts of both the Jewish and Muslim communities,
is that in every generation there are a small number of very special hidden saints (60 or 40 Abdal
in Islam and 36 or 30 Tsadikim in Judaism), whose souls are so kind, honest, trusting and righteous,
that for their sake alone, the rest of the society of sinful human beings avoids collapse.

Thus, the concept of the hidden saints emphasizes the importance God gives to a small number of
very kind and righteous people who serve as the supporting foundations of the civilized world; and
in some way known only to God, support human civilization against total disintegration.

Although this idea is not stated in the Qur’an or the Torah, some faithful believers find it to be an
inspiring concept. Thus, Abu Darda’ said: “When Prophethood ended — and they were the
supports (Awtad) of the world – Allah substituted in their place 40 men from the nation of
Muhammad called “Abdal” (Substitutes). Not one of them dies except that Allah replaces him with
another one, and they are now the supports of this world. The hearts of 30 of them contain the
same firm certainty (yaqin) which Prophet Ibrahim had.

“They did not succeed or rise above other people due to much fasting or prayer…but rather through
being honest, having noble intentions, and having sound wholesome hearts… They do not curse
anyone, or harm anyone, nor do they see themselves as being higher or nobler than anyone under
them, or envy those above them. They do not fake their humility… nor are they ostentatiously
impressed with themselves.” (Tirmidhi, Asl #51, and Ibn Abi Dunya K. Awliya, #57) from Abu-z
Zinad.)

45
Most Islamic scholars think the Ahadith relating to the Abdal is weak. And since acquiring
religious knowledge is highly valued in both Islam and Judaism, most Jewish and Muslim scholars
have rejected this elevation of religiously ignorant individuals. However, in my heart, I see the
need for religious scholars to increase the respect people in general, and the religious and educated
elite, in particular, should have for the many kind, simple, poor, good-hearted, righteous believers
in their own community.

This is especially true in our generation. I also see many parallels between this Islamic and Jewish
revolutionary concept that society is supported and sustained; not by the high and mighty, not by
the rich and famous, and surely not by the celebrities of sports and entertainment; but rather by a
small number of poor, hidden and rarely acknowledged saints.

Even more revolutionary, is that within the Muslim tradition some people explicitly included
Christians and Jews within the Abdal: Hudhayfa ibn Yaman said: “The Abdal in my community
in Syria, include 30 men on the path of Ibrahim (Jews and Christians)… And the group (of
righteous Awliya’) in Iraq are 40 men… 20 of them are on the path of ‘Isa (Christians), and 20 of
them (Jews) have been given some of the instruments which Khalifa Da’wud (David) was given.”
(at-Tirmidhi in Nawadir al-Usul (Asl. #51).

This and all following quotes come from the two-volume book Risala of Imam and Sufi Ibn
`Abidin; quotes online at As-Sunnah Foundation of America, in an article by Shaykh Gibril Fouad
Haddad titled Awliya and Qutb.)

According to Jewish folklore, these hidden saints number at least 36 in each generation. Called in
Yiddish lamedvovniks (36ers), they are responsible for sustaining and supporting the civilized
world. At times of great peril, a 36er could even make a dramatic appearance to defeat the enemies
of Israel, and then return to humble obscurity. The 36+ are unnoticed by other people because of

46
their humble nature, status, education and vocation. The 36+ figured in Kabbalistic folk legends
of the 16–17th centuries, and in Hassidic folklore from the end of the 18th century.

Yiddish proletarian writers in the 19th and 20th centuries expanded the folk tradition of the 36+
righteous people whose kind and simple role in life justifies the value of all mankind in God’s
eyes; by adding that if even one of them was missing from the minimum 36, society would come
to a bad end. For the sake of these 36+ hidden saints, God preserves our world even if the rest of
humanity degenerates to the level of total barbarism.

This idea is based on the story of Sodom and Gomorra in the Torah, where God told Abraham that
he would spare the town of Sodom; but only if there were at least 10 righteous people in it.

Since nobody knows who the 36+ are, not even they themselves, every Jew should honor and
respect all the kind, simple, honest, unselfish, hard-working and long-suffering people around us,
for one of them, may be one of the 36+. I think this lesson rings true for all religions. Unlike the
rich, the famous, the pious, the scholars, the powerful, the beautiful or the successful, who
everyone else thinks are very important, according to this concept, the 36+ are the really important
people, because without a few of the society could destroy itself.

The tradition of the 36ers, others say 30, is found in the Talmud where Rabbi Abbaye says: “there
are not less than 36 righteous people in the world who receive the Sakina-Divine
Presence” (Sanhedrin 97b and Sukkot 45b). ‘Not less’ is not a fixed number, and there may be
many more than 36 in some generations. These righteous people are usually and incorrectly called
men although it is much more likely that they are at least 18 men and 18 women since in Hebrew
the number 18 spells out life.

Ibn ‘Asakir (1105–1175) and Ibn Abi Khaythama narrate that Uthman ibn ‘Ata was having a
conversation with his father, who told him, “The Abdal are forty Insan (humans).” So Uthman ibn

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‘Ata said to his father, “Forty men?” and his father replied, “Do not say men, but rather say
humans, for there could be women among them.”

The number 36 is not the only number offered in this connection. Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai, the
central character in the Zohar, believed, “the world never lacks 30 righteous people” (Genesis
Rabbah 35:2) while Rabbi Simeon ibn Yehozadak says (Ḥullin 92a. and Midrash Psalms 5:5) “the
world exists by the merit of 45 righteous people”. Perhaps he meant 30 in the land of Israel and 15
in Iraq/Babylonia where Rabbi Simeon ibn Yehozadak lived. According to Rav Judah, the number
30 represents the number of “righteous gentiles among the nations of the world” (Ḥullin 92a).

Thus, some Rabbis felt that women and non-Jews should be counted among the hidden saints, just
as some Islamic sages have taught. All of these statements about the 30 or 36+ Tsadekim (saints)
are the views of individual rabbis. Their views never become part of Jewish law or general belief,
just as the Abdal never become part of the general Muslim belief. 23

The power of the prayers and tears of a kind and trusting 36+er to bring rain from God was rarely
mentioned in accounts from Europe about the 36+, because rain is not often needed in Europe. But
in the arid Near East both the 36+ Tsadekim and the Abdal 40 (or 60) share this trait. As ‘Ali said:
“The Abdal are in Syria, and they are 40 men. Whenever one of them dies, Allah substitutes
another in his place. By means of them, Allah brings down the rain, gives victory over enemies,
and diverts punishment from the people of Syria.” The following Jewish folktale from Syria
illustrates the theme of the power of a pure-hearted simple man’s righteous plea.

Once, in the land of Syria, there was a great drought. A rabbi called all the Jews of his village to
the synagogue. They prayed day and night, but still, no rain fell. Then the rabbi declared a fast and
asked God to answer their prayers. That night he heard a voice from heaven, saying, “God will

23See ‘Judaism and Islam as Synergistic Monotheisms: A Reform Rabbi’s Reflections on the Profound Connectedness of Islam
and Judaism’ by Rabbi Allen Maller (a collection of 31 articles previously published by Islamic web sites

48
send rain only if Rahamim, who always sits in the back corner of the synagogue, prays for it.” “But
he’s an ignoramus,” protested the rabbi “and I am not sure how kosher his home is.” Silence was
the response.

When Rahamim came to the synagogue the next day the rabbi said, “Tomorrow you will lead the
congregation in prayers for rain,” “But I do not know how to pray,” said Rahamim. “There are so
many others who know more than I.” “Nevertheless,” said the rabbi, “it is you who must lead the
prayers.” The following day the rabbi called all the people together to pray. The synagogue was
filled to bursting. All eyes were on the place where everyone expected to see the rabbi leading
them in prayer. How great was their amazement to see poor Rahamim standing up there before the
Holy Ark, holding a clay jar with two spouts in his hands?

“Now I ask that you pray with all your heart,” he told the congregation. So they opened the Ark,
where the Torah scroll was kept, and the people poured out their hearts to heaven, wailing bitterly
and beating their breasts. Then Rahamim lifted up his jar, first placing one spout to his eye and
then the other to his ear. Instantly there was a rumble of thunder and then the sky opened up,
drenching the earth with rain.

The rabbi later asked Rahamim, “Why did you bring that jar to the synagogue? What did you do
with it?”

“Rabbi, I’m a poor, ignorant man,” Rahamim replied. “What I earn as a shoemaker barely feeds
my many children. Every day they cry for bread and I have little to give them. When I hear their
cries my heart breaks, and I too cry. So I collect my tears in this jar. When you asked me to come
here to pray, I looked into the jar and said, ‘Master of the Universe, if you do not send rain, I will
break this jar in front of the whole congregation.’ Then I heard a voice that said, “Ask again when
you stand before the congregation. So I did; and I heard a voice say: ‘Do not break the jar’.”

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And then it began to rain; as a tribute to an unknown 36+er in the tradition of Honi HaMa’agal but
without his Hutzpah. (Ta’anit 19a).

Nicodemus helping to take down Jesus' body from the cross

(The Deposition, by Michelangelo)

Nicodemus (/nɪkəˈdiːməs/; Greek: Νικόδημος, translit. Nikódēmos) was a Pharisee and a member
of the Sanhedrin mentioned in three places in the Gospel of John:24

• He first visits Jesus one night to discuss Jesus' teachings (John 3:1–21).
• The second time Nicodemus is mentioned, he reminds his colleagues in the Sanhedrin
that the law requires that a person be heard before being judged (John 7:50–51).

24 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicodemus

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 • Finally, Nicodemus appears after the Crucifixion of Jesus to provide the customary
embalming spices, and assists Joseph of Arimathea in preparing the body of Jesus
for burial (John 19:39–42).
An apocryphal work under his name—the Gospel of Nicodemus—was produced in the mid-4th
century, and is mostly a reworking of the earlier Acts of Pilate, which recounts the Harrowing of
Hell.
Although there is no clear source of information about Nicodemus outside the Gospel of John,
Ochser and Kohler (in an article in The Jewish Encyclopedia) and some historians 25 have
speculated that he could be identical to Nicodemus ben Gurion, mentioned in the Talmud as a
wealthy and popular holy man reputed to have had miraculous powers. Others point out that the
biblical Nicodemus is likely an older man at the time of his conversation with Jesus, while
Nicodemus ben Gurion was on the scene 40 years later, at the time of the Jewish War.

NICODEMUS = NAKDIMON BEN GURION?

Rakovsky writes:26

Nakdimon ben Gurion was one of Jerusalem's three leading wealthy "Counselors", and belonged
to one of Jerusalem's wealthiest families. (See: Lamentations Rabbati 1.5, Gittin 56). In the mid-
1st century AD, Nakdimon provided water for Jerusalem's festivals. The Talmud (Taanith, chapter
3) relates that Nakdimon once borrowed 12 wells of water from a heathen Master in a dry year,
risking 297 kg of silver if the wells weren't refilled by a certain date. On the day for repayment, he
went to the Temple, wrapped himself in his cloak, and prayed: "Creator of the Universe! It is
known to Thee, that not for the sake of glory for me... but for the glory of Thy name, that the
pilgrims in Jerusalem might have water, did I borrow those wells." Rain fell, the 12 wells refilled,
but the day's sun had already set, so the Master demanded the silver. Nakdimon returned and
prayed in the Temple "Creator of the Universe! Announce to the world that Thou hast favorites
here on earth!", and the sun reappeared to satisfy the promise. The Taanith concludes:

"We have learned in a Boraitha: His name was not Nakdimon, but Boni, and he was called
Nakdimon because on his account the sun hastened. The rabbis taught: 'For the sake of each
of three men alone the sun shone, and they are Moses, Joshua, and Nakdimon ben Gurion.'"

25See, for instance, David Flusser, Jesus (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2001), 148; idem, "Gamaliel and
Nicodemus", JerusalemPerspective.com; Zeev Safrai, "Nakdimon b. Guryon: A Galilean Aristocrat in Jerusalem" in The
Beginnings of Christianity (ed. Jack Pastor and Menachem Mor; Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2005), 297–314.
26 https://discussions.godandscience.org/viewtopic.php?t=34757

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Tractate Erub 3(4):17 says that the Gurion family's estates were in Ruma, Lower Galilee.

The Talmud (Gittin 56, 5th century) lists Nakdimon ben Gurion as one of three Counselors at the
beginning of the Roman Siege of Jerusalem (70 AD). Howebver, it lists the two other counselors
by their last names (ben -------), so listing him by his first name could be an error. Lamentations
Rabbati 1.5, written in 650 AD, instead lists those two counselors by their last names (ben -----),
and then lists two more: his son "ben Nakdimon" (who was in fact named Gurion), and "ben
Gurion," who could be Nakdimon ben Gurion himself or his grandson (Joseph ben Gurion). Since
his son and probably grandson were leaders in 70 AD, Nakdimon would probably be 50-80 years
then, making him 10-40 years old in Jesus' time.

Flavius Josephus records that Nakdimon's son Gurion ben Nakdimon negotiatied with Roman
garrisons at the beginning of the war, and the negotiations resulted in the garrisons' surrender.
Gurion's son Joseph was a leader of the defenders of Jerusalem. (Wars of the Jews II, 20 and IV,
3,9)

Gittin 56 records that the Zealots destroyed Nakdimon's stores of supplies (wood or food) during
the Siege(70 AD) because he offered them to Jerusalem to outlast the siege, but the Zealots wanted
Jerusalem to fight instead. The offer of food or wood shows he was generous.

Ketsubos(also called Ketubot) 66-67 and Avot of Rabbi Nathan (Chapter 17) records that a
pharisee named Zakkai saw Nakdimon's daughter starving and pulling grain from non-Jews' cattle
dung. Zakkai asks her what happened to her father's wealth. She answers with what she calls a
"proverb current in Jerusalem" about how to keep money you must give it away. The proverb
sounds somewhat Christian. Zakkai is sad to see her so poor, but it doesn't seem that he helps her
- he not only agrees with the idea of the proverb, but considers it God's punishment because the
family failed to "know" God's ways and be generous enough. The story sounds somewhat
allegorical, but it does suggest that his family became destitute and that no one was helping them
out of their condition, since she is apparently trying to gather "food" by herself. The pharisee
Zakkai's juestification for not helping them would be that their punishment is justice. (although in
Christianity we are supposed to help people whether they got their sicknesses or poverty as a
punishment or not.) The Talmud then asks how anyone can consider Nakdimon ungenerous. It
portrays his generosity as such that when he went to study, servants would put clothes under his
feet for him to walk on, and then poor people would take the clothes. It seems to be an extreme
joke to talk about walking on people's clothes, so the Talmud actually admits that he was generous,
but then tries to deride his generosity and says that he was not generous enough. Further, the
Talmud never answers Zakkai's question - what exactly happened to ALL Nakdimon's wealth. The
storehouses' destruction is only part of an explanation.

SUMMARY

Nakdimon ben Gurion was:

a Counselor, a ruler
very wealthy

52
generous
friendly with Jerusalem's heathen rulers
someone who believed in miracles and believed that they show someone to be God's favorite.
devout and one who studies.
from Galiliee
10-40 years old in Jesus' time.
probably lived until the Siege of Jerusalem (70 AD)
lost 100% of his wealth during the Siege of Jerusalem without sufficient explanation in the
Talmud
his loss of wealth is portrayed as justice in the Talmud

CLUES:

The Jewish Encyclopedia (1906 ed.) comments that the Talmud's fourth "disciple" called "'Boni'
[is] ...probably the Nicodemus mentioned by John", since Nakdimon's real name was Boni.
Nicodemus could also be "Nakai", since Nak-- (innocent) is the prefix in the name Nakdimon.
Christian tradition records no other disciples of Jesus named Nicodemus or Boni, but it does
consider Nicodemus a martyr.

The High Priest Annas II waited until the Roman goverrnor's absence to execute Jesus' brother
James in 62 AD.

Since Nakdimon was close enough to the Romans that he could borrow 12 wells of water from
them, the Sanhedrin would have been less likely to execute him under Rome. The Romans lost
control in AD 70.

PUTTING THE PIECES TOGETHER

The inconsistencies are that the Bible and tradition suggests that

Nicodemus:

probably died before Gamaliel (50 AD)

was possibly already old in 33 AD

53
but the Talmud suggests that
Nakdimon ben Gurion:
was 10-40 years old in Jesus' time.
probably lived until the Siege of Jerusalem (70 AD)
lost 100% of his wealth during the Siege of Jerusalem

Otherwise, the pieces match (?)

NICODEMUS AND THE GURION FAMILY

Richard Bauckham writes:27

27 OUP The Journal of Theological Studies , APRIL 1996, NEW SERIES, Vol. 47, No. 1 (APRIL 1996), pp. 1-37

54
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–

60
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Gruen arrived in Palestine in September 1906. Working as a laborer, he became
politically active in the Poalei Zion party and was soon elected chairman.

In 1910 he joined the party organ Ha'ahdut, beginning his long writing career.
He changed his name at that time to the Hebraic David Ben-Gurion, after a
defender of Jerusalem who died in 70 A.D.

David Green became David Ben-Gurion, adopting the surname of a historical

figure – a wealthy philanthropist named Nakdimon Ben-Gurion who had lived in
Jerusalem in the period preceding the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E.

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Cubic Muse writes:28

Two outstanding traits leap out at me from Joyce’s Ulysses: its world-building ambitions and its
interior streams of consciousness. One is physical, the other psychological. The novel is set in
Dublin in 1904 and it recreates the city in such convincing detail that the reader comes away with
an intimate sense of Dublin’s harbours, fortresses, streets, pubs, newspaper offices, theatres, and
residential areas, as well as having a sense of the many personalities who interact within the city:
the gossips, wits, bullies, bigots, educators, school children, rebels, flirts, drunks, artists and
outsiders. The city is alive with activity and its portrayal is kaleidoscopic and encyclopedic.

You can hardly read a current book that doesn’t contain some form of stream of consciousness.
What’s unique about Joyce’s method is how he differentiates one character’s thoughts from
another’s and how these unique streams of consciousness evolve and change under the influence
of others and under the influence of the city around them. Internal monologues pop disconcertingly
and uncontrollably out of the descriptive text that embeds them. The book is a fascinating give and
take of action and reflection, past and present, spoken and unspoken.

28 https://cubicmuse.com/?p=3447

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The plot takes place in a single day as multiple characters roam and crisscross paths in the city of
Dublin. There is the super sensitive Stephen Dedalus, budding novelist and teacher who finds
himself homeless after an altercation with an egotistical roommate, stately plump Buck Mulligan.
Mulligan is a medical student who fancies himself a patron of literary talents such as Stephen, but
tends to ungraciously upstage others with mocking jibes and snobbish quotes.

There is Leopold Bloom, half-Jewish advertising salesman for a local newspaper. Bloom is
introduced to the reader: Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and
fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with
crustcrumbs, fried hencods’ roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to
his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.

73
 “”Mr Leopold Bloom

Doug Pope writes:29

We first meet 38-year-old Mr. Leopold Bloom in his home at 7 Eccles Street in Dublin at 8 a.m.,
just as Stephan Dedalus is breakfasting with Mulligan and Haines in the Martello tower a few
miles away on the Dublin seacoast. Bloom too is thinking of food (especially the kidneys and
other internal organs that he fancies) while giving his cat a saucer of milk.

Bloom, as we later learn, is the son of a Hungarian Jew (Rudolph Virag) and an Irish Protestant
mother (Ellen Higgins). Rudolph, in an apparent attempt to conceal his Eastern European origins,
had changed his surname from “Virag” (“flower” in Hungarian) to the quasi-equivalent “Bloom”
after immigrating to Ireland.

(Bloom in fact gives himself the pseudonym “Flower” in his clandestine and sexually redolent
correspondence with Martha Clifford, a woman some time back had responded to Bloom’s ad
requesting a typist).

Since orthodox Jewish law (“Halakha”) unequivocally specifies that Jewishness is a matter of
matrilineal descent (i.e. the religion of one’s mother determines if one is Jewish or not), Leopold
would not be considered Jewish by orthodox rabbis, and in fact would need to convert to Judaism
if he wished, for instance, to undergo a Jewish religious marriage with a Jewish woman.

Nonetheless his semi-Jewishness is central to his character, and it is obvious that to his Irish
acquaintances he is as indubitably (and often as despicably) Jewish as Shylock; in fact to some of
them he is not even really an Irishman, although he was born and bred in Ireland. Bloom himself
was not circumcised, as becomes apparent in later episodes, and in fact reconverted from his
father’s Protestant religion to Catholicism so as to be able to undergo a church marriage with his
wife-to-be, Marion (Molly) Tweedy who was born in Gibraltar. Her father, Major Brian Tweedy,
an Irish Army officer stationed in Gibraltar, married Lunita Laredo, a Spanish Gibraltarian, and
there are some hints that Lunita may have been a Sephardic Jewess, in which case Molly Tweedy
would paradoxically have been considered Jewish by Halakha, as would have been her children
Milly – the Blooms’ teenage daughter – and Rudy, their son who died at the age of eleven days,
ten years prior to the action of Ulysses.

Rudolph Virag’s choice of the name “Bloom” to indicate non-foreignness, if not Irish
indigenousness, is somewhat surprising. Joyce must have been aware that “Bloom” or “Blum” was
a common Jewish surname in both western and central Europe and he surely knew that in 1914,
eight years before the publication of “Ulysses”, the outspokenly Jewish Léon Blum had acceded
to the leadership of the Socialist party in France (of which he was later to be three times Prime
Minister). Still, where would twentieth century literature be if Mr. Virag had decided to confer on

29Ulysses Essay 30 (48:1) Chapter 4 (Calypso) Note 1 http://ulyssesjudaism.blogspot.com/2018/04/ulysses-essay-30-481-chapter-

4-calypso.html

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himself and his offspring a more unequivocally Irish name such as “O’Connor” rather than
“Bloom”, and our protagonist would consequently have been called Leopold O’Connor? As they
say in Yiddish “past nit” (“it wouldn’t do”).

But let my imagination wander.

What if Leopold Bloom, mildly sympathetic with the Zionist cause – as becomes apparent a little
later in this chapter – would sometime in the future have grown weary of the subliminal anti-
Semitic atmosphere of Catholic Dublin and had decided to emigrate to Palestine to join the early
Zionist pioneer farmers toiling to rejuvenate the arid landscape surrounding the Lake of Galilee,
as described in a newspaper advertisement that he reads soon after breakfast?

Having arrived in Ottoman Palestine, he might well have met David Ben-Gurion, later to be the
first Prime Minister of the State of Israel, who himself had emigrated from Plonsk in Russian
Poland to Palestine in 1906. One year later Ben-Gurion, the effete and well born son of a bourgeois
lawyer, had moved from the central agricultural village of Petah Tikvah where he had been picking
oranges for his livelihood to the nascent kibbutzim in the Galilee where he labored on road
construction. Ben-Gurion was born David Grün (or Green), and on arriving in Palestine his first
action was to Hebraize his name, thereby emulating the determination of many of the early Zionists
to discard any semblance of the Yiddish culture that characterized Jewish exilic existence in
Eastern European.

David Green became David Ben-Gurion, adopting the surname of a historical figure – a wealthy
philanthropist named Nakdimon Ben-Gurion who had lived in Jerusalem in the period
preceding the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E. The Talmud relates that Nakdimon
Ben-Gurion (in stark contrast to the sworn socialist David Ben-Gurion) was so rich that he gave
his daughter a dowry of ten thousand golden dinars, and that he used his wealth to feed the
starving citizens of Jerusalem when it was under siege by Titus’s Roman legions prior to the
breach of its walls and its eventual total destruction (Babylonian Talmud Tractate Gittin 56a).
The Talmud also notes that Nakdimon Ben-Gurion, together with some of his wealthy
colleagues, was in favor of a compromise with the overwhelmingly more powerful Roman forces
but that the Jewish extremists (sadly) won out in a vain messianic belief that God would not
allow his Temple to be destroyed a second time.

Perhaps David Ben-Gurion, when acceding to the proposals to partition Palestine – both in 1937
when he accepted the Peel commission’s recommendation to give the Jews in Palestine a tiny state,
and in 1948 when he declared the establishment of the State of Israel in accordance with the more
generous November 1947 United Nations partition vote (in contrast to the “all or nothing”
uncompromising stance of the anti-socialist and ultra-nationalist Jabotinski-Begin “Herut” faction)
– looked to Nakdimon Ben-Gurion’s pragmatic attitude as his exemplar. In any event the name
“Ben-Gurion” (“lion cub”) befitted his role as Israel’s Prime Minister and Minister of Defense
during the 1948-49 War of Independence and the 1956 Sinai Campaign.

One of Ben-Gurion’s first actions on becoming Minister of Defense was to demand that all the
generals of I.D.F. also Hebraize their names. Thus Yigael Sukeinik the Deputy Chief of Staff (and
later eminent archeologist) became Yigael Yadin (“he will judge”), and Yigal Peikowitz,

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commander of the Southern Front, became Yigal Allon (“oak tree”). The famed Moshe Dayan was
spared a name change because his father, Shmuel Dayan, like Ben-Gurion an early Zionist pioneer
in the kibbutzim of the Galilee, had already changed his unpronounceable Ukrainian surname –
Kitaygordosky – to the short and euphonious Dayan (the traditionmal term for a rabbinical judge,
somewhat out of keeping with the hedonistic lifestyle of the thoroughly atheistic General Moshe
Dayan).

So how would Bloom have Hebraized his name if after meeting Ben-Gurion in the first decade
of the twentieth century he had been persuaded to do so by the Zionist leader? The Hebrew word
for a bloom or a flower is “perach” but this not a popular surname in Israel perhaps because
“frecha”, whose Hebrew spelling is close to that of “perach”, is a slang term for a woman who
exhibits bad taste and boorish behavior. More likely Bloom would have chosen “Nitzan” (“a
bud” or “a blossom”), taken from the description of spring in the biblical Song of Songs (2:12):
“Ha’nitzanim nir’u ba’aretz” (“The first blossoms have appeared in the land”) – appropriate
for the Jewish rebirth in the Land of Israel, and today a popular boy’s name in modern Israel,
as well as a common surname adopted by many “Blums” and “Blooms”.

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