Avodah Zarah 037

1:
I am going to depart from my wont at this juncture as, as an introduction to this chapter, present here a message that I received from Ronen Lautman. Ronen writes:

I am surprised that there are not more prohibitions concerning what is permitted to sell to a non-Jew. If there is so great a concern lest Jews become assimilated that Jews were forbidden to eat with non-Jews "because of intermarriage" then it would be logical to forbid Jews to host non-Jews or to invite them to a meal – also "because of intermarriage". Why is there no such prohibition?

Ronen is right that the first two chapters of our tractate have been concerned with keeping Jews far from commercial contact with non-Jews. One would have thought that the tractate would have begun with the issue of non-Jewish religion and its observances. (As we shall see, this is the subject of our present chapter, Chapter 3.) So, why was pure friendship not prohibited?

It seems to me that the answer is very simple. In the reality of society in Eretz-Israel in Tannaïtic times and later – right up to the end of the Byzantine period (around 600 CE) the dichotomy between the peoples was so great that social interaction between them based on simple friendship and good neighbourliness was unexpected to such a degree that it was not thought necessary to regulate such a possibility. Jews and non-Jews did not mix socially. They might meet for commercial purposes but for social purposes it was almost unheard of.

2:
Thus, having regulated the main relationship between Jews and non-Jews in Eretz-Israel in the Talmudic period, commercial contact, our tractate now turns to the nitty-gritty of pagan worship itself. Jews, of course, would not attend pagan 'services' as such, but most of the ceremonial connected with the Graeco-Roman deities was public – in the basilicas, in the town squares and in all public and quasi-public buildings. Thus it was well nigh impossible for a Jew to walk through his town without coming into contact – at least eye-contact – with some form or other of pagan worship.

3:
The problem was the fact that Romans (and their Byzantine successors) did not distinguish between mortal great ones and divine powers. Both were celebrated with statues and other forms of artistic representation. So a statue in the town square or in the main hall of the local basilica might be a representation of the emperor, or a local dignitary, or a mythical hero, or a god of some kind. How was an observant Jew to distinguish between them?

4:
The term that our mishnah uses, 'figures' is actually meant to indicate any artistic representation: be it a statue, a bas-relief, a picture or an icon such as are to be found in Byzantine churches. For the sake of convenience we shall refer to statues from now on.

5:
Our mishnah presents three views concerning such statues: that of Rabbi Me'ir, that of Rabban Shim'on ben-Gamli'el and that of the rest of the sages.

6:
The most stringent view is that of Rabbi Me'ir. (We have noted in several previous shiurim that this sage took a very stringent view regarding non-Jewish contacts in general.) Rabbi Me'ir says that all statues are idolatrous and no Jew is permitted to derive any benefit from them. Thus Rabbi Me'ir would not distinguish between a statue of the current emperor and a statue of Pallas Athene, for example: both are equally idolatrous in his view. His reasoning is that there are pagan celebrations associated with all of them at least one day in every year. He is probably thinking of ceremonies associated with the accession day of the emperor. Today, we would think of such ceremonies as civil ceremonies, but, of course, they did have a religious element to them.

7:
The rest of the sages – whose view is accepted halakhah – seek to limit that all-encompassing prohibition. They hold that statues may be considered 'non-religious' unless the figure is holding something in its hand – a staff, a bird or an orb. Rabban Shim'on ben-Gamli'el essentially agrees with the sages (against Rabbi Me'ir) but holds that one must beware of a statue that has anything at all in its hand, not just the three things mentioned by the sages.

To be continued.

In AZ 035 we learned that one may not drink milk that had been milked by a non-Jew unless there was a Jewish supervision. Mauricio Dourado writes:

I was studying the last lesson and I've got a doubt on whether the commandment on kosher milk was also applicable to powdered milk or is restricted to liquid. Also: the purpose of this commandment is only to avoid unrightful mixtures? I mean, is it only to prevent a non-Jew from mixing milk from non-kosher animals to milk from kosher ones?

I respond:

Powdered milk that is derived from a non-kosher animal is prohibited just like the liquid form of the same milk. Therefore supervision is necessary of ensure that the original milk, from which the powder was derived, was kosher. But I must add here a further caveat. Even if the original milk was kosher the powdered form might not be if other ingredients were not kosher or if the machines used to manufacture it were also used for non-kosher milk products. (Of course, in Talmudic times there was no such thing as powdered milk.)

In answer to Mauricio's second question: it is not a question of mixing kosher and non-kosher milk. The presence of non-kosher milk in a milk mixture would render the whole mixture not kosher. The prupose of the rule is to ensure that the milk which is delivered to the Jew is from a kosher animal.