Page 1
“He married a Cushite woman!”: attitudes towards blackness and the history of slavery in medieval judaism
Craig Perry, [email protected]
Some Background
1. Slavery in Judaism from Biblical times to the Middle Ages 3. Slavery in Islamic Egypt in the Middle Ages 4. Slavery in Jewish Egyptian Households, Community, and Economic Life
Some Framing Thoughts and Questions
1) Jewish slave owning in the medieval Islamic world demonstrates that Jews could be both subordinated members of a society (Islamic in the cases below) and lord dominion over groups (non-Muslim slaves).
Are there ways that Jews in the contemporary United States can be both marginalized (even, imperiled) and privileged?
2) Some medieval Jewish writings reflect the kinds of racial thinking that circulated in the medieval Islamic world and beyond. There were climatic theories of Blackness and human difference that authors used to make visible and other supposed innate differences between people appear natural (see also the curse of Ham below). Medieval Arabs (including Jews)
Page 1 Page 2 increasingly viewed sub-Saharan Africa as “the lands of the Blacks” (bilād al-sūdān). As this was one primary region where slave traders enslaved and sold people, authors sometimes conflated Blackness with slave origins. In other instances, Black Africans’ conversion to Judaism blurred or replaced such categories of difference.
To what extent has American Jewish culture resisted and been shaped by modern racial thinking whether anti-Black or as applied to other non-White groups?
3) How can the history of racial thinking and slavery in Judaism and Jewish life be used to think about present concerns, challenges, and opportunities?
Page 2 Page 3
Source 1.1- Numbers 12: 1-10. JPS (1985) translation from Sefaria.org. רֵבַּדְתַּו םָיְרִמ ןֹרֲהאְַו הֶשֹׁמְבּ תוֹדֹא־לַע הָשִּׁאָה תיִשֻׁכַּה רֶשֲׁא חָקָל הָשִּׁא־יִכּ תיִשֻׁכ ׃חָקָל Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman he had married: “He married a Cushite woman!”
Source 1.2 - Some medieval commentaries on Numbers 12:1. Translations from Sefaria.org.
Ibn Ezra (12th c. CE)
“Some say that Moses was king of Cush and took a Cushite woman. Onkelos renders Cushite, beautiful.
Moses and his Ethiopian Wife. Jacob According to Onkelos, Cushite is Jordaens. The Netherlands (ca. 1650) an honorific term. [Ibn Ezra states that praising someone with a negative term, e. g. as Onkelos does with Cushite, is illogical.] I believe that the Cushite woman is to be identified with Zipporah, for Zipporah was a Midianite. The Midianites are Ishmaelites and they live in tents...Because of the sun they do not have any whiteness at all. Zipporah was black and was like a Cushite.”
Rashi (d. 1105 CE) [cont…]
Page 3 Page 4
The Cushite Woman — “This tells us that all agreed השאה ישכה תיכ as to her beauty just as all agree as to the blackness of an Ethopian.”
Source 1.3 - Benjamin b. Jonah of Tudela, who wrote a Hebrew travel account in the late twelfth century that includes this report about the land between the Red Sea and the Egyptian city of Aswan (including modern-day Ethiopia, Sudan, and the medieval kingdoms of Nubia). Translation adapted from Marcus Adler (1907).
And from there to the land of Aswan is a journey of twenty days through the desert. This is Seba on the river Pishon (the Nile) which descends from the land of Cush. And some of these sons of Cush have a king whom they call the sultan of Abyssinia (also translated as Ethiopia). There is a people among them who, like animals, eat of the herbs that grow on the banks of the Nile and in the fields. They go about naked and have not the intelligence of ordinary men. They cohabit with their sisters and any one they find. The climate is very hot. A slave market in the Yemen. 13th c. When the men of Aswan make a raid into manuscript. French National Library, their land, they take with them bread and Paris. wheat, dry grapes and figs, and throw the food to these people , who run after it. Thus they bring many of them back prisoners and sell them in the land of Egypt and in the surrounding countries. An these are the black slaves, the sons of Ham.”
Page 4 Page 5
Sources 2.1 and 2.2 - Two letters (one a fragment) from the Cairo Geniza, a cache of manuscripts taken from the Ben Ezra synagogue in Old Cairo and now in Cambridge University Library in England.
“To Ibrahīm, the slave-trader. (My letter) is being delivered to you so that he will purchase for the Diadem a servant girl. Take her and deposit her with someone convenient until she departs Cairo/Fustat for Alexandria. Deliver her and accompany her yourself. However much it costs for her provisions, renting her space on a ship, or otherwise—I (already) paid you. If there is a remainder from her price […] pay him with what you have and take […] your possession and deposit […] Yusuf, my associate […]”
T-S 8J10.9. ca. 12th c., Judeo-Arabic
Page 5 Page 6
A pregnant women writes to her uncle in southern Egypt:
“...Please buy from the slave importer a 5 to 6 year-old Black girl...”
T-S 13J21.18. Judeo-Arabic. 12th c.
Page 6 Page 7
Source 3.1-Moses Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, The laws of leavened and unleavened bread, 7:2. All MT translations from Eliyahu Touger and www.chabad.org.
“It is a commandment to inform one’s sons even though they do not ask. As it is said, ‘You shall tell your son...’ [Exodus 13:8] A father should teach his son according to the son’s knowledge. How is this applied? If the son is young or foolish, he should tell him: ‘My son, in Egypt, we were all slaves like this maidservant or this slave. [Emphasis mine.] On this night, the Holy One, blessed be he, redeemed us and took us out to freedom.”
Source 3.2-Moses Maimonides, MT, the laws of slavery, 9:8.
“It is permissible to have a Canaanite slave perform excruciating labor. Although this is the law, the attribute of piety and the way of wisdom is for a person to be merciful and to pursue justice, not to make his slaves carry a heavy yoke, nor cause them distress. He should allow them to partake of all the food and drink he serves. This was the practice of the Sages of the first generations who would give their slaves from every dish of which they themselves would partake. And they would provide food for their animals and slaves before partaking of their own meals...”
Page 7 Page 8
Source 3.3-Moses Maimonides, MT, the laws of slavery, 8:4.
“When a gentile king wages war, brings captives and sells them, a slave who is purchased in this manner is considered a Canaanite slave with regard to all matters. The same laws apply if such a king grants permission for anyone who desires to go and kidnap people from the nation with whom he is waging war and sell them as slaves, or if his laws state that whoever does not pay his taxes - or does such and such or fails to do such and such - may be sold as a slave, the laws he ordains are binding, and these individuals are considered Canaanite slaves.”
Page 8 Page 9
Source 4.1 - The bottom of a ketubba for the couple Yosef b. Shelomo and Karīma bt. Nusayr. The ketubba lists parts of her dowry, which includes “a Cushite slave-girl” worth 30 gold dinars that she inherited from her mother (approximately 15 months of living expenses for a middling Egyptian household). Aramaic and Arabic. Probably 11th c. CE. Egypt. Philadelphia: Halper 341r+Halper 348.
היראג אישוכ
Page 9 Page 10
Source 4.2 - A letter from a dying woman to her sister. Arabic. Date unknown. Probably twelfth century CE. Egypt. Jewish Theological Seminary: Elkan N. Adler Collection (ENA) NS 48.6.
“This is to inform you, my lady, dear sister—may God accept me as a ransom for you—that I have become seriously ill— with little hope for recovery—and I have dreams indicating that my end is near.
My lady, my most urgent request to you, if God, the exalted, indeed decrees my death, is to take care of my little daughter and make efforts to give her an education, although I know well that I am asking you for something unreasonable, as there is not enough money—by my father—for maintenance, let alone for education. However, she has a model in our mother, the saint.
Do not let her appear in public, and do not neglect her nurse (enslaved nanny), Saʿada, and her son, and do not separate them from her, for she is fond of her and I have willed the Black woman [referring to Saʿada the enslaved nurse] to her.
Page 10 Page 11
However, the younger enslaved maidservant, ʿAfaf, shall be given to Sitt al-Sirr—but nothing else—and this only after our debts to Abu Sa'd and others will have been paid. Cursed be he who acts against my dying wish.
(I say this), for I have noticed more than once that you like the elder one more than the younger one; however, you know well that I took an oath more than once—and the last one in her presence—that I shall not will anything to Sitt al-Sirr, for reasons that I cannot mention, but which you know.
My lady, let Abu al-Barakat—may I be his ransom—come and treat me, for I am in a very serious condition. Please do not act against anything I have mentioned to you. Cursed be he who separates the old servant from my younger daughter, by selling her or otherwise. My lady, only God knows how I wrote these lines!”
Page 11 Page 12
Source 4.3 - A record of court proceedings and testimonies. Arabic. Egypt. 1093 CE. Cambridge University Library, T-S Misc.27.4.23+29. Translation adapted from Mordechai Friedman, Ribui Nashim (1986).
“...(Our) m(aster) Eli b. Japheth, known as Ibn al-[....] appeared (in court) [...and testified that he had purchased] in Ascalon a Nubian slave girl called ,b[...], for (household) sendee [...] The daughter (of the slave woman) died, and he, subsequently, wrote a deed of manu[mission...] He married her with a marriage contract (ketubba) and qiddushin, and she bore him [a daughter...] This was in the presence of the Muqaddam (a Jewish judge).... [who was] at that time in Ascalon, and that [...] concerning this without questioning and without doubting and without....”
The document is fragmented here but Friedman's edition makes clear that the court wanted to ascertain, or verify, the circumstances of Eli ,s marriage and the timing of a second daughter's birth (a girl named Milah). Witnesses come forth who confirm the sequence of events including the slave woman's
Page 12 Page 13 manumission and the birth of Milah “some time” after the emancipation.
“Then when [the judge heard] that her birth had been in sanctity, he permitted her to enter the congregation of Israel [...] And with this, she ordered us to write a court record concerning this for him to be in [his (Eli’s)] hand [as evidence...for marriage by] qiddushin and by marriage contract (ketubba) in Israel.”
Source 5 - Ṣāfī the enslaved factotum of the head of the rabbinic academy in Cairo confronts a Jewish merchant (Abū Saʿīd, also known as Ibn Jamāḥir) in the Sudanese Red Sea port of ʿAydhab. Arabic. 12th c. T-S 12.582. Translation adapted from S. D. Goitein (1950).
“This deposition was made before us, we, the witnesses signing below. This is what happened: We were present in cAydhab on Tuesday, the 21st of the month of Tevet of the year [....], when Abu Sacid b. Mahfuz, known as Ibn Jamahir, appeared before the chief of police, launched a complaint against Safi, the slave- agent of the elder Abu Sacid b. [... ], and appealed for help against him.
Page 13 Page 14
The chief summoned the slave Safi, and the aforementioned Abu Sacid procured as witnesses Muslims, some of those with whom he used to associate. They testified in favor of Abu Sacid that this Safi made false accusations against him, and that Safi had said words which cannot be repeated to the aforementioned Abu Sacid, that he called him bad names, saying: “You had a slave girl, made her pregnant, and when she bore you a boy, you abandoned her together with her b[oy] in Berbera [Somalia].” Abu Sacid appealed to the chief for help and demanded satisfaction from his adversary Safi.
Upon this the chief of police sent a herald to assemble the Jews who happened to be in the town and to bring them before him. Some hid themselves, others were brought into his presence by police. When the chief saw that Abu Sacid persisted in his demand for satisfaction, he ordered Safi to be flogged. But Safi protested, and shouted: “I am the slave-agent of the head of the Jewish community of Egypt, the head of the yeshiva.” While Abu Sa'id declared: “I shall not renounce my claim.” After the flogging, Safi was put in jail in the presence of his adversary, who had appealed to the chief for help, and in the presence of all the Jews who had come to the audience hall.
Before the flogging of the slave Safi one of the Maghrebi merchants had gone to the chiefs house in order to save the slave. But when Abu Sa'id Ibn Jamahir learned that he wanted to save the slave, he began to incite some Muslims against the stranger; they gave him trouble and (threatened] him with fines and other matters, after having made false accusations against
Page 14 Page 15 him. Safi was set free from jail only after incurring loss of money. This is what happened. We wrote it down during the last ten days of the month of Tevet of the year of the Creation in the city of cAydhab, which is situated on the shores of the Great Sea…”
Page 15