References to Jerusalem and Temple in Mishnah and Tosefta Berakhot

'THEY DIRECT THEIR HEART TO JERUSALEM' REFERENCES TO JERUSALEM AND TEMPLE IN MISHNAH AND TOSEFTA BERAKHOT

Alberdina Houtman

1. Introduction

n the discussion about Sanctity of Place in Judaism, the unique I position of the Temple is unchallenged; the sanctity of this building and surrounding courts being so great that it emanates to the whole City of Jerusalem. It is to be expected that this special status of Jerusalem and Temple will be reflected in tannaitic lit erature just as it is in the Hebrew Bible. 1 Elsewhere in this book Shmuel Safrai expounds upon the status of Jerusalem and Temple in the literature of the Tannaim in general. 2 The present paper fo cuses upon this status in one specific tractate of Mishnah and To sefta, namely tractate Berakhot. A few years ago, while working on my dissertation about the relationship between Mishnah and Tosefta, I chanced upon an odd phenomenon in Mishnah and Tosefta Berakhot. It appeared that while in Tosefta Berakhot the word Jerusalem occurs ten times, in Mishnah Berakhot it is totally absent. 1 A cursory check of the vocabulary of the complete corpora of Mishnah and Tosefta confirmed that this phenomenon was contrary to what was to be

1For the sanctity of the Temple in biblical literature, see e.g. the contribu tions of P.C. Beentjes and B.J. Schwarz in this book. See also K. Seybold, 'Jerusalem in the View of the Psalms' and P.C. Beentjes 'Jerusalem in the Book of the Chronicles', in: M. Poorthuis & Ch. Safrai (eds), The Centrality ofJerusalem, Kampen 1996, 7-14, 15-28. 2S. Safrai, 'Jerusalem and the Temple in the Tannaitic Literature of the First Generation after the Destruction of the Temple' 3See A. Houtman, Mishnah and Tosefta; A Synoptic Comparison of the Trac/ates Berakhot and Shebiit, Tiibingen 1996, 122. 154 ALBERDINA HOUTMAN

expected. 4 As it happens, there are 119 occurrences of Jerusalem in the Mishnah, as against 149 in the Tosefta. Taking into account that the Tosefta is about four times as large as the Mishnah, the Mishnah has, therefore, relatively more references. Furthermore it turned out that the distribution of the references between Mishnah and Tosefta is in general rather even, except for the case of trac tate Berakhot under consideration and for the three Baba tractates, Baba Qamma, Baba Me~ia and Baba Batra, where the Mishnah has only one reference to Jerusalem as opposed to fif teen references to it in the Tosefta. The present paper will examine in detail the specific case of references to Jerusalem in Mishnah and Tosefta Berakhot. 5 This investigation will consist of three parts: 1. Analysis and classification of the references to Jerusalem in order to determine their relevance for the issue of Sanctity of Place. 2. The tracing of parallels of the toseftan traditions to see where and how they are used in other rabbinic literature. 3. Engaging in similar word counts relating to the Sanctity of the Temple, in order to check whether the disproportion regarding Mishnah and Tosefta Berakhot is incidental or part of a pattern.

2. References to Jerusalem in Tosefta Berakhof'

In Ms Vienna of TBer, the word Jerusalem occurs ten times. 7 Moreover, in one of the passages involved, Tl:15, other names of Jerusalem, Salem and Zion, are also mentioned, as well as the ab-

4The check was carried out by means of the third edition of the CD ROM Judaic Classics Library. 5 At another occasion the references to Jerusalem in the Baba-tractates should be studied in the same manner as these references in Berakhot are studied in this paper, in order to compare the evidences. 6The basis for our study is Ms Vienna for the Tosefta and Ms Kaufmann for the Mishnah. 7i.e. Tl:15, T3:15, T3:16, T3:25, T4:9, T4:10, T5:22 (twice), T5:24 and T6:I.