The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origins of the Rabbinic ® Eruv

FROM SEPARATISM TO URBANISM: THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS AND THE ORIGINS OF THE RABBINIC ® ERUV

CHARLOTTE ELISHEVA FONROBERT Stanford University

The concept of the ®eruv appears to be one of the most radical innovations of rabbinic law ( halakhah), both with respect to biblical Sabbath law, as well as with respect to other interpretations and expansions of Sabbath law known to us from the later Second Temple period.1 In its fully developed symbolism the ®eruv, therefore, presents itself as one of the most important aspects of the rabbinicization of the Sabbath laws. At rst sight, this would seem to be an obvious claim, since we nd the rst attestation of this principle only in the Mishnah, with one possible exception in the Dead Sea Scrolls to be discussed shortly. Granted, the Babylonian Talmud does record a rabbinic opinion which attributes the origin of the ®eruv to King Solomon (b. ®Eruv. 21b) who is said to have Òordained ®eruvin and the wash- ing of handsÓ ( ) with the heavenly approval of a .2 However, this statement can hardly be accorded overt historical value, not least of all because the claim is attributed to a rst, resp. second generation ¾amora ( rst half of the third century ce).3

1 I would like to thank especially the following for their helpful comments on the manuscript version of this article: Daniel Boyarin, Hindy Najman, Ishai Rosen-Zvi, and Elliot R. Wolfson. I also received helpful remarks from Lawrence Schiffman and the anonymous readers of the manuscript. Further, I bene ted greatly from the discussion of a previous version of this article at the CJA Colloquium at Notre Dame University, March 26, 2003, as well as from discussions of some of the conceptual ideas at the ÒJewish Conceptions and Practices of Space,Ó convened at Stanford University, May 18–19, 2003. 2 Some manuscript versions of the text have . See also Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Eruvin 1:2 and 1:4. 3 J.N. Epstein appears to read this as historical information: Ò®EruvinÕ is an ancient takkanah, and is already connected to King Solomon, and they established the eruv already during the era of the (Second) Temple,Ó ( Introduction to Tannaitic Literature , Jerusalem: Magnes Press 1957, [Heb.]) 300. Aside from the problem of the historicity of such a statement, this disregards the fact that the attribution to Solomon is only ¾amoraic,

©Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2004 Dead Sea Discoveries 11, 1 Also available online – www.brill.nl 44 CHARLOTTE ELISHEVA FONROBERT

The Mishnah itself, of course, devotes an entire tractate ( Mishnah ®Eruvin) to this institution in its two main forms; the (Òboundary ®eruvÓ)which extends the distance beyond atownÕs boundary a Jew is allowed to walk, and the (Òdomain ®eruvÓ) or the ®eruv of court-yards by means of which a Jew is allowed to trans- fer objects from what is commonly translated as Òprivate domainÓ ( ) to another private domain. 4 As the companion to the pre- ceding tractate dealing with the laws of the Sabbath, 5 m. ®Eruv. can, at least in part, be read as developing the spatiality of the seventh day of the week. Indeed, supplementing HeschelÕs popular notion of the Sabbath as the Òpalace in time,Ó which forms the basis of his descrip- tion of Judaism as a Òreligion of timeÓ versus a Òreligion of space,Ó the rabbinic Sabbath has all the world to do with spatial practice and situating oneself and the community in space. 6 The cultural force of the rabbinic ®eruv as a practice of place mak- ing has not yet been fully and properly assessed. 7 The goal of the following re ections is to demonstrate that the rabbinic ®eruv as we know

namely by Rav Yehudah in the name of Samuel, the latter a rst generation ¾amora. Rather, the question to be asked is why Samuel would attribute the takkanah to Solomon. 4 A further form of an ®eruv, not to be considered here, is the (cook- ing ®eruv), the ritual act that allows one to prepare food for the Sabbath, even if Friday should happen to be a holiday. For basic information, see EJ 3.849–50. On the ambi- guity of the term reshut, see further below. 5 J.N. Epstein and others following him have argued that the two were originally one tractate, but then were divided into two, due to its length ( Tannaitic Literature , 300). See, however, A. Goldberg, The Mishna Treatise Eruvin (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1986, Heb.) who argues for an original division into two tractates, IX (Eng.) and 13 (Heb.). 6 A.J. Heschel, The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1951). He writes, for instance: ÒJudaism is a religion of time aim- ing at the sancti cation of time Ó (8, his emphasis). Further, Òthe meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time,Ó 10. Jon Schofer points out to me in oral communication that at the same time as juxtaposing space and time conceptually, Heschel thoroughly spatializes his analy- sis of time metaphorically. For a more differentiated discussion concerning second temple sources see L. Doering, Schabbat: Sabbathalacha und -praxis im antiken Judentum und Urchristentum (TSAJ 78; TŸbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999), esp. 47 –48. 7 This concept, which interrogates the relationship between difference, identity and place, is developed in Culture, Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology (ed. A. Gupta and J. Ferguson; Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1997), 6–15. The intersection of identity and space/ place is being explored in a number of different disciplinary discourses. E.g., Thinking Space (ed. Mike Crang and Nigel Thrift; London and New York: Routledge, 2000) for a collection of essays introducing a variety of approaches; The Geography of Identity (ed. Patricia Yaeger; Ann Arbor: