Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was an American writer, poet, author, editor, and literary critic best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. Widely regarded as a central figure of American Romanticism and Gothic fiction and considered the architect of the modern short story, he is credited as the inventor of the detective fiction genre as well as being a major contributor to the nascent science fiction genre. Even today, he and his works, which influenced literature worldwide, appear throughout popular culture, and the Mystery Writers of America presents an annual Edgar Awards for distinguished work in the mystery field.
Poe’s best-known fiction works are Gothic horror, and his most recurring themes deal with questions of death and other macabre topics, such as its physical signs, the effects of decomposition, concerns about premature burial, and the reanimation of the dead. He also wrote satires and humorous tales, often using irony for comic effect and to challenge cultural conformity.
In 1913, Ha-Poel Ha-Tzair (“the Young Worker”), a periodical published in Eretz Yisrael, published a six-part series on Sifrut Cholanit (“degenerate literature”) focused almost exclusively on Poe’s allegedly decadent and immoral work. Their position on Poe did not carry the day, particularly after Zev Jabotinsky, the great Revisionist leader, translated The Raven into Hebrew in 1914. Many people do not know that Jabotinsky was a respected author, critic, and translator and that his translation of The Raven went on to become one of the great classics of modern Hebrew literature. (While imprisoned by the British for helping to mount Jewish self-defense against an Arab uprising, Jabotinsky worked on what became a renowned translation of Dante’s Inferno into Hebrew.) Exhibited here are the front page and first page of Ha-Orev (“the Raven”), as well as two pages from his translation of Annabel Lee.
As a boy, Poe associated with several Jewish friends whose mothers inspired his later work. For example, the response of the Jewish mothers when they discovered that their children left the house on a cold day without their jackets is said to have led to the imagery of a still-beating heart under the floorboards in The Tell Tale Heart, and his House of Usher was named for a close Jewish friend, Asher, in which he describes a character as having “a nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations.” He was moved to write The Gold Bug in response to antisemitic allegations against his Jewish friends, and the idea for The Bells was his familiarity and fascination with the bells on the fringes of the High Priest’s tunic. Israfel was an obvious homage to Israeli felafel, and the correct verse associated with the spinning of the dreidel in Eretz Yisrael is Nes Gadol Haya Poe (“Poe was a great miracle.”)
A recent original draft of The Raven, which I replicate here only in part, was called The Sabbath Guest:
Once upon a Shabbat dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
over many a Talmudic volume filled with ancient Jewish lore.
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my front door.
“Tis the shamas,” I muttered, “tapping at my front door –
coming for Shabbat, nothing more.”
Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the month of Cheshvan,
and each separate fading candle left its shadow on the floor.
Eagerly I wished the challah; – vainly I had sought to swallow
My anxiety for the rabbi’s weekly shiur, as before –
For the wise, pious rabbi, whom I dreaded evermore –
Coming, with teachings to explore…
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
doubting, dreaming dreams no layman ever dared to dream before;
but the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
and the only words there spoken were the whispered words, “Torah’s core!”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the words, “Torah’s core!” –
Merely this and nothing more….
None of this is true, of course, but the truth is even more astonishing: In his short story, A Tale of Jerusalem (1832), which Poe first published in the Philadelphia Saturday Courier, he displays an astounding breadth of knowledge regarding Talmudic and Aggadic sources in general, and about practices and observances in the Beit HaMikdash in particular. Moreover, in his tale, he adopts the idiom and syntax of Hebrew and Aramaic during the Talmudic era with remarkable precision.
Being primarily Christian, America’s nineteenth century writers and poets often based their works upon Biblical themes and subjects but, in doing so, they betrayed a dramatic lack of familiarity not only with Rabbinic literature but also in their basic understanding of the Pentateuch, which was shaped by Christian theology and the St. James Bible. One conspicuous and surprising exception was Poe, who had been baptized into the Episcopal Church in 1812 and, as we shall see – for reasons unknown – dived deep into Jewish practice and tradition on a level unseen in other writers.
The story of A Jerusalem Tale, which draws upon an account that appears three times in the Babylonian Talmud (Sotah 49b, Bava Kama 82b, and Menachos 64b), tells the tale of how, during a time when there was a serious shortage of animals available for offering as a daily sacrifice in the Temple and, because there was a pervasive desperation to continue the time-honored Torah commandment of offering the daily sacrifice, a deal was stuck between Hyrcanus and Aristoblus, two brothers vying for the kingship of the Chashmonean monarchy. The story is essentially the same in all three versions, except that the Talmud in Sotah and Menachos place Hyrcaus outside the city walls while Bava Kama places him inside the walls.
Pursuant to the agreement between these combatants for the throne, each day the Jews inside Jerusalem would lower gold dinars in a box down the wall, which those outside would take as payment for an animal that was sent back up in the bucket and quickly taken to the Beit HaMikdash to be offered as the daily sacrifice. All went well until a certain elder in Jerusalem familiar with Greek wisdom communicated to those outside the wall using words understood only by those who were proficient in Greek wisdom. Betraying those inside the wall, he explained to those outside the city that so long as the Jews were engaged in the Temple service, they could not be defeated because G-d would protect them. As a result, when the Jews lowered their gold dinars the following day, they received in return a pig which, of course, they could not use as a sacrifice in the Holy Temple.
As the three Gemarot tell the story, once the pig reached halfway up the wall, it dug its hooves deeply into the wall and Eretz Yisrael shuddered over an area of 400 by 400 parasa (a parsa is approximately 2.5 miles, so 400 parasa is about 1,000 miles, so the nation shuddered over an area of a million square miles – that’s some squealing pig!) The Gemara teaches two important lessons from the story: first, it is prohibited for a Jew to teach Greek to his son, and second, Jews may not raise pigs (even if they never eat them and sell them only to Gentiles). However, and perhaps more significantly, this incident heralded a deterioration of Jewish national and spiritual integrity which led inexorably to the destruction of the Second Beit HaMikdash years later.
The Yerushalmi (Jerusalem Talmud) at Taanit 4:5 tells the story a bit differently, but also adds some interesting details. First, while the three sources in the Babylonian Talmud take place in the era of the Chashmonaim, the Yerushalmi story is about the Roman siege of Jerusalem and, second, the Yerushalmi account specifically declares the tragedy of the end of the daily sacrifices:
R. Simon said in the name of R. Joshua ben Levi that at the time of the Hellenistic government, they lowered two boxes with gold to the Hellenists, who in exchange gave them two lambs to pull up. [see Exodus 29:38: “Now this is that which you shall offer upon the altar; two lambs of the first year, day by day continually… one…in the morning, and the other…at evening.”]…
Once they lowered them two boxes with gold and they gave them two pigs to pull up, but they did not manage to get to half the height of the wall when the pigs clawed the wall and jumped 40 parasa from the Land of Israel. At that time the sins caused that the perpetual sacrifice was stopped and the Temple destroyed.
Poe’s story begins with a discussion on the tenth of Tammuz amongst three characters named Abel-Shittim, Buzi-Ben-Levi, and Simeon the Pharisee regarding the need to hasten to the ramparts of the walls of Jerusalem overlooking the camp of the “uncircumcised,” who are waiting for them with the lambs to be used for the daily sacrifices. Abel-Shittim (which literally means “a grove of acacia trees”), is the name of a place in the plain of Moab (see Numbers 33:49); Buzi, from the name “Buz,” was the name of the prophet’s Yechezkel’s father (see Ezekiel 1:3); and Simeon means a hearkening (a man of the same name may be found in Ezra 10:31). Again, Poe’s knowledge of these facts and his incorporating them into his story is truly remarkable.
The three “Gizbarim” (money sub-collectors) argue about the reliability of their enemy in providing the animals necessary for the sacrificial offering. The Pharisee argues that haste is crucial because the heathens are fickle-minded, which has always been a characteristic of the worshippers of Baal, but Buzi Ben-Levi maintains that the Romans are only treacherous to the Jews and that the Ammonites were always very good at looking out for their own self-interests. As such, he argues, they can be trusted to provide the lambs for the altar, given that they are receiving the outrageous sum of thirty silver shekels per head. Abel-Shittim responds that Ben-Levi has apparently forgotten that the Roman Pompey, who is now besieging Jerusalem, may accuse the Jews of taking advantage of this arrangement to use the animals to feed their gluttonous selves, rather than using them for the spiritual ritual sacrifices.
The Pharisee, who belonged to “the Dashers” – whom Poe describes as “that little knot of saints whose manner of dashing and lacerating the feet against the pavement was long a thorn and a reproach to less zealous devotees” – responds that “by the five corners of that beard which as a priest I am forbidden to shave! Have we lived to see the day when a blaspheming and idolatrous upstart of Rome shall accuse us of appropriating to the appetites of the flesh the most holy and consecrated elements?”
Poe’s use of the term “the Dashers” to describe the kohanim, a pun on the Talmudic description of the priests as being quick – “kohanim zerizim hem” – is a particularly beautiful example of the depth of his knowledge of the Talmudic sources. Another example is his beautiful – and remarkably accurate – description of the daily sacrifice as “offerings for that altar whose fire the rains of heaven cannot extinguish and whose pillars of smoke no tempest can turn aside.”
Poe also exhibits remarkable knowledge about the landscape and structure of Jerusalem at the time of the destruction of the Second Temple, as he describes how the three associates hasten to the part of the city “which bore the name of its architect King David.” Poe describes Ir David as the most strongly fortified district of Jerusalem, being situated upon the steep and lofty hill of Zion, where a broad and deep trench, hewn from the solid rock, was defended by a wall of great strength erected upon its inner edge. “The wall was adorned at regular interspaces, by square towers of white marble; the lowest sixty, and the highest one hundred and twenty cubits in height” but “between the level of the ditch and the basement of the rampart, sprang up a perpendicular cliff of two hundred and fifty cubits; forming part of the precipitous Mount Moriah.”
As such, when the three companions arrive on the summit of the tower called Adoni-Bezek, the highest of all turrets around Jerusalem, and the usual place where the besieging army conferenced, they looked down upon the camp of the Roman enemy from an eminence “excelling, by many feet, that of the Pyramid of Cheops, and, by several, that of the Temple of Belus.” [Adoni-Bezek, “the lightning of the L-rd,” was the name of a king of Bezek, who was taken captive to Jerusalem during the conquest of Canaan (see Judges 1:5-7).]
Gazing from above at the vast throng, the Pharisee comments ruefully that “the uncircumcised [the besieging Romans] are as the sands by the sea-shore – as the locusts in the wilderness! The valley of The King has become the valley of Adommin.” [See Joshua 15:7, “the going up to Adummim” which, according to the Jewish Encyclopedia, was the steep road from the plain of Jericho to the hilly country around Jerusalem that formed part of the boundary of the land of the tribe of Judah.] Its name, Adommim (“the Red”), was a description of the color of the road.
Suddenly, a Roman soldier demands in a rough voice – “which appeared to issue from the regions of Pluto” – that they lower the basket with the shekels immediately. He is angry that, in violation of the agreement, the Jews were not on the ramparts at sunrise; “the god Phœbus [Appollo], who is a true god, has been charioted for an hour…do you think that we, the conquerors of the world, have nothing better to do than stand waiting by the walls of every kennel, to traffic with the dogs of the earth? Lower away! I say.”
Through the use of some crudely constructed machinery, the heavily-laden basket was carefully lowered and, when half an hour elapses with no response from the Romans, the Pharisee fears that he and his companions had arrived too late and that, as a result, the accursed Romans would not be sending up the sacrificial animals. Finally, they feel a weight in the basket, but the tense question remained: was this the promised animals – or perhaps something else? Finally, after another hour, the object at the end of the rope comes within view and, in a powerful use of narrative irony, Poe describes their elation:
…a ram from the thickets of Engedi, and as rugged as the valley of Jehoshaphat!…. A firstling of the flock; I know him by the bleating of his lips, and the innocent folding of his limbs. His eyes are more beautiful than the jewels of the Pectoral [the twelve jewels on the Kohen Gadol’s plate] and his flesh is like the honey of Hebron…. It is a fatted calf from the pastures of Bashan, the heathen have dealt wonderfully with us! – let us raise up our voices in a psalm! – let us give thanks on the shawm and on the psaltery – on the harp and on the huggab – on the cythern and on the sackbut!”[Most these instruments are from Daniel 3:5]
However, their joy ends quickly when the basket arrives within a few feet of the top of the rampart and they hear a low grunt that evidences a hog “of no common size.” They tumble the animal, the metaphor for all that is profane and sacrilegious in Judaism, back onto the heads of the Romans and cry “may G-d be with us!”
Poe clearly understood that the Biblical injunctions against pigs are usually thought of chiefly as dietary laws, but that, as Deuteronomy 14:8 provides, “The swine… is unclean unto you: ye shall not eat of their flesh, nor touch their dead carcass.” Clearly the prohibition concerns more than what may be eaten, and involves a broad range of ceremonial conduct. The attitude of Jews toward swine has frequently seemed amusing to those who do not understand it, and Poe made the most of this in his recounting of an historical incident. Many readers miss the point that even in the depths of their perfidy, the Romans played a clever trick upon the Jewish defenders of Jerusalem because in the eyes of the legalistic Romans, who professed a modem of respect for all deities – including those of their enemies – they acted entirely properly. This is because, to their way of thinking, a hog was a highly acceptable, even preferable, sacrificial victim given that a boar, a ram and a bull were offered in the great Roman purification ceremony.
Poe’s fascinating story begs the question: what was there is his background that led to such surprising and seemingly inexplicable familiarity with Talmudic lore? It would also be interesting to learn why he chose to write a story about this particular incident, but I have not found any sources on point. However, historians and commentators are almost unanimous in concluding that Poe wrote A Tale of Jerusalem as a parody of Zillah: A Tale of the Holy City (1779), an historical fiction by English writer Horace Smith set in about 337 BCE during the Second Temple era when Herod the Great, aided by Mark Antony, overthrew King Aristobulus. The story follows Zillah, the daughter of the Sagan (Deputy Kohen Gadol) on her travels and adventures who, like the other Jewish characters, quotes the Bible on every possible occasion.
Many authorities argue that the incident that Poe describes so comprehensively in Tale of Jerusalem is drawn from a story told by the protagonist’s aged nurse in Zillah who, recalling the siege of Jerusalem, says:
When the Holy City was besieged, not many years agone, they let down in a basket, every day, over the walls, so much money as would buy lambs for the daily sacrifices, which lambs they drew up again in the same basket. But an Israelite, who spoke Greek, having acquainted the besiegers that so long as sacrifices were offered, the city could not be taken, the profane villains popped a hog in the basket instead of the usual victim, and from that time we have been accustomed to curse every one that could speak Greek.
I would argue, however, that on its face, the Zillah account is far closer to the Talmudic versions of the story than Poe’s tale.
* * * * *
In Palestine, an essay he published in Southern Liberty Magazine (February 1836), Poe displays his great interest in, and knowledge of, the political and Biblical history and geography of Eretz Yisrael.
He begins by explaining that Palestine, which has also been called “The Holy Land” because, he says, of the birth, life and death of the Christian Redeemer – of course, Jews called Eretz Yisrael the Holy Land many centuries before Jesus – derives its name from the Philistines who inhabited the coast of Judæa. He describes how it was bound on the north by Syria, on the east by the Arabia Desert, on the south by Arabia Petrea, and on the west by the Mediterranean (not that far off from the precise borders described in the final chapters of The Book of Joshua) with the principal divisions of the country being the Galilee to the north, Samaria in the middle, and Judea in the south.
Poe next describes how the Jews, under the Turkish yoke, experience oppression and evidences the visible effects of “the divine displeasure, not only during the reign of Titus, and afterwards in the inundations of the northern barbarians, but also of the Saracens and Crusaders” which “are more than sufficient to have reduced this country, which has been extolled by Moses…for its fecundity, to its present condition of a desert. He goes on to describe in some remarkably accurate detail the Biblical histories of the Galilee (Upper and Lower), Samaria, and Judea, including their inhabitants, and the Hebrew tribes in the land. He also discusses the geography, terrain, and characteristics of the Jordan River and the Dead Sea and examines some of the legends associated with the origins of the former, concluding that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by a volcano and leaving G-d entirely out of the equation.
He explains that the mountain range “Levanon” [Lebanon], famous for its cedars, is named for its snowy [“lavan” – white] summits, and that the land between the Levanon mountains and the north of Galilee is so awesomely beautiful that some have called it “a terrestrial Paradise” – “the trees are always green, and the orchards full of fruit.” He goes on to discuss the principal towns throughout Eretz Yisrael and their origins and the biblical history of the early prophets in the land.
While there is nothing astonishing or even new in this narrative, it is still beguiling to contemplate that Poe devoted time to – and, again, demonstrated his proficiency with – these subjects, so far from the work for which he is renowned worldwide. Finally, some authorities contend that it was his work on Palestine that stimulated the interest that led him to write A Tale of Jerusalem.
