From the sources by Eliezer Segal: The one that didn’t get away

By Eliezer Segal

(AJNews) – The Talmud tells a story about a Jew known as “Joseph the Sabbath-honourer.” Joseph had a wealthy non-Jewish neighbour who had been advised by a “Chaldean” (that is, an astrologer) that Joseph would eventually possess his entire fortune. Hoping to avert this fate, the neighbour sold all his belongings to purchase a single precious gem that he stowed securely under his hat.

That was a bad plan.

One day, while crossing a river, the hat was blown into the water – where the jewel was gobbled up by a fish. The succulent fish was caught late Friday afternoon as the markets were closing, and the merchants realized that they were unlikely to find a purchaser. The only likely prospect would be Joseph, who would not forgo this opportunity to honour the Sabbath. This indeed is what happened, and Joseph was surprised to discover the jewel, which he was able to sell for an immense fortune.

The point of this story is not entirely obvious. The Talmud provides its own moral teaching in the guise of a mysterious old man who shows up at the end and declares “He who borrows from the Sabbath, the Sabbath repays him.” This seems to suggest that Joseph was a poor man who went into debt to cover his Sabbath expenses. It thus provides encouragement to other Jews who struggle to finance their religious duties.

More problematic is the position of the gentile neighbour whose perspective dominates the narrative. There is no indication that he was guilty of any misdeeds that would make him deserving of financial collapse.

It is particularly awkward that a Jewish religious tale should be founded on the accuracy of Chaldean astrological projections; though it must be noted that many ancient Jews shared the widespread belief in the influence of the stars (if only on non-Jews).

Midrashic works from the Land of Israel tell about a poor tailor in Rome who was so enamoured of Sabbath fish, and willing to buy one for an excessive price, that he found himself in a bidding war with a high-ranking Roman official. When called upon to defend his effrontery – and the suspicion that he possessed undeclared sources of income that allowed him to make such expensive purchases – he used the opportunity to explain the Jewish hope for divine forgiveness that results from their devoted observance of the holy days. This impressed the prefect, and the Jew was exonerated. In the end, he too was rewarded with the discovery of a precious jewel in the fish – no Chaldeans, no mysterious old men, no arbitrary bankruptcies.

A notable counterpart to the Joseph story is related by the historian Herodotus in the fifth century B.C.E.

Herodotus tells of the tyrant Polycrates who rose to power to become lord of the Aegean island Samos. His military, political and economic successes seemed unstoppable. However, his ally Amasis, king of Egypt, was disturbed by this winning streak. He wrote Polycrates a letter in which he voiced fears that such consummate success is likely to provoke the envy of the gods. It is preferable to enjoy a life in which prosperity and misfortune are mingled.

To counteract that danger, Amasis advised Polycrates to choose the possession that he valued most dearly and dispose of it irretrievably. Persuaded of the wisdom of that suggestion, Polycrates selected a precious emerald-and-gold ring, and ostentatiously cast it far out at sea in a public ceremony – where it was eventually gobbled up by a delectable fish, which was caught by a fisherman who decided that it was fit for a king and presented it as such to Polycrates. When the fish was cut open and its treasure revealed, Polycrates was initially delighted; but when he reported it to Amasis, the Egyptian recognized that this was really a disastrous omen, indicating that Polycrates’ doom was sealed. Amasis thereupon renounced their friendship, and Polycrates did eventually come to a violent and disgraceful ruin.

Though the Talmud’s story casts Joseph as the nominal hero, his role is an entirely passive one in which he never really learns the details of how or why the jewel ended up in his fish, other than as a reward or compensation for his diligence in sabbath observance – as repayment for “borrowing from the Sabbath.” Like Herodotus’ story, the main thrust of the talmudic plot is on how the jewel came to be cast into the sea and swallowed by the fish. The Greek religious mentality interpreted Polycrates’ situation in terms of beliefs like inexorable fate or divine envy, ideas that have no real equivalents in Jewish theology. These fundamental differences resulted in a narrative inconsistency when explaining Joseph’s neighbour’s unfortunate fate.

Although it is unlikely (albeit not completely impossible) that a rabbinic teacher in Babylonia would have been reading Herodotus, there is nonetheless some probability to the suggestion that the tale of the gem in Polycrates’ fish was in broad circulation in the Hellenistic regions in oral versions. We may imagine that creative Jewish preachers might have been tempted to use it for teaching about the importance of Torah values.

We have no sure way of reconstructing with confidence the exact process that guided our anonymous adaptor in this process. He may have commenced from the simple premise that a costly jewel inside a fish would be a fitting reward for a devoted Jew who made personal sacrifices to procure a worthy Sabbath fish. This could in turn have led him to ponder what was the best narrative trajectory for getting the jewel into the fish’s belly. The diverse elements taken from Herodotus and the world of Jewish religious values could be brought into a remarkably effective convergence.

In any case, we would all be well advised to exercise caution before swallowing a morsel of a delectable entrée.

And diversify your portfolio! Don’t keep it under your hat.

Eliezer Segal is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter.