Let My People Floss

Did you know that Passover would not exist if it weren’t for a bad case of tooth decay? I was perusing the Los Angeles Times this morning and came across a very interesting article about the Jewish holiday we’re celebrating this week. Oh, did you think I meant today’s L.A. Times? True, the paper I was reading was dated April 4th but instead of the 2007 edition, I was reading the one that was published in 1907. I had been wondering how the Jewish community in L.A. celebrated the holiday a hundred years ago so I took a little Passover dip into the archives. Here’s how one local journalist described the holiday in 1907:

Commemorating the deliverance of the Jews from Egyptian bondage and their preservation from the Angel of Death that smote the Egyptian homes, the festival of the Passover was known as the Pesach. As it happened, the period of the Passion of Christ came within the celebration of the Jewish Passover.

The eight days of Passover begin on the fourteenth day of Nisan, Zionist calendar. The first two evenings are Seder nights, when the family gathering resolves itself into a love feast, at which prayers are chanted by the master of the house, and every person present responds to the blessings by partaking of unleavened bread and bitter herbs.

The youngest child in the house then asks four questions, and the master replies by reading anew the story of the deliverance. The last two days are observed strictly, while the intervening four days are termed “half holidays.” In orthodox homes, new tins, dishes, knives and forks are used during this period.

Most of the descriptions of Passover still rang true although I can’t say I ever heard the seder referred to as a “love feast!” The article then veered into a discussion of how the holiday was celebrated in Asia Minor among the Jews who had been living there for generations.

There is one place where, one may imagine, the unleavened bread is made much after the manner of that early time when the Jews fled from the Egyptians. This is in Asia Minor, where some of the people are very primitive in their customs. The earthen dish in which the bread is to be baked over a fire to twigs on the ground is cleansed so that not a particle of the leaven remains in it.

Associated with the Jewish festival of the Passover, there was formerly a rite of propitiation during pestilence. It consisted of sprinkling with blood the entrance to the house or tent.

I believe Asia Minor refers to an area that’s now part of modern-day Turkey. In 1907 there were still plenty of Jews living there but that was about to change. While Jews had been living relatively peacefully in the Ottoman Empire for quite some time, nationalist leaders started coming to power in the region beginning in 1910, whipping the population into anti-ethnic frenzies. All sorts of abuses were heaped on the Jews in Asia Minor from excessive taxation to blatant persecution and by the early 1920s most Jews had emigrated out of the area. I wonder if they still bake their matzah on the ground in earthen dishes.

But the article that really caught my attention appeared on the facing page under the headline, “Pharaoh Had a Toothache.” In this preposterous account of some recent finds by German archeologists, the author makes the claim that Biblical history might have been very different had it not been for some major dental problems at the top of the Egyptian hierarchy.

A learned Egyptologist, who has studied Menephtah’s mummy, declared that the Pharaoh who ruled when the children of Israel were delivered from Egyptian bondage suffered excruciatingly from toothache.

The acute agony he endured so angered Pharaoh, so “hardened his heart,” as the book of Exodus has it, that is was necessary to inflict ten plagues on his realm before he would consider to let Moses and the Israelite hosts go.

In a word, had there been good dentists in Egypt in those days, there would be no Jewish Passover now.

The Egyptologist writes in the Berliner Tagliche Rundschau that he has minutely examined the mummy of Menephtah, who, archeologists declare, ruled Egypt when the twelve tribes departed from it. Menephtah’s teeth at their best were very bad. Few remain and these are much decayed. They are full of cavities in which exposed nerves must have throbbed, throwing Egypt’s ruler into a savage temper, just that frame of mind in which a despot would order his slaves to make bricks without straw or build a pyramid.

Besides the major stretch in historical logic evident in the article, I was also surprised by the identification of Menephtah as the Pharaoh who ruled during the time of the Exodus. Who? Since most of my biblical knowledge comes not from the rabbis but rather the movies of Cecil B. De Mille, I remember only too well Yul Brynner’s portrayal of the ruthless Rameses II in the classic “The Ten Commandments.”

I thought that maybe research about the Pharaohs had evolved between 1907 and De Mille’s film fifty years later, but it turns out that many scholars still believed that Rameses’ successor Menephtah was the Pharaoh in question. Menephtah was Rameses’ 14th son but the only one to ascend the throne. His mother was not Nefritiri (who I can only picture as the lovely Anne Baxter) but another one of Rameses’ many wives. In all, experts estimate that Rameses had over 100 children (you go, Yul!). They also believe that it’s possible the Pharaoh of the Exodus was Menephtah’s son, Seti II (named after his grandpa who was played in the movie by Sir Cedric Hardwicke—an English actor who looked about as Egyptian as Queen Elizabeth). Scholars know that Seti II’s reign began in peace but ended disastrously and abruptly which would make sense in terms of the Pharaoh’s encounters with Moses and the Ten Plagues. Oh well, let’s just call it a day and proclaim Yul Brynner as the definitive Pharaoh who sparred so beautifully with Charlton Heston’s Moses. “So let it be written, so let it be done.”

We had a lovely seder last night at our friends’ Deborah and Gary’s house. Coming from an orthodox background where we didn’t even get to the food until after midnight, I enjoyed discussing much of the Passover story instead of speedreading through the Hagaddah. Leah had just returned from a trip to France yesterday afternoon and passed out shortly after Dayyenu since for her it was about 4 in the morning. She attended a Sephardic seder at her French grandparents’ Parisian apartment on Monday night and regaled us with descriptions of some of their Passover customs that are so different from our Eastern European traditions. Besides passing the seder plate over everyone’s head, a Sephardic custom I’ve heard about, Leah swears that at one point in the seder everyone went to the windows of their 5th story apartment in the tony 8th arrondissement and hurled lettuce leaves out of the window. What? I’m sure there is some explanation for this but I couldn’t help but think of the mostly Gentile population dodging through the streets of Paris as the city’s Jews pelted them with greens from above. Between that and the shoddy dental care provided to many French citizens, no doubt causing Pharaoh-like rages, it’s no wonder anti-Semitism is on the rise.

Comments

[V-Grrrl]

There's a series of children's books set in turn of the century New York City. My children adored listening to the "All of a Kind Family" stories on tape, and we all learned so much about Jewish customs and celebrations in the process. I enjoyed reading this...

[Churlita]

What an interesting post. I love the image of gentiles doding lettuce leaves.

[tamar]

New twists to the Passover seder "telling" abound, some delightful and profound. On my blog today, I posted about a custom born of feminist sensibilities, seeking inclusiveness in the story of scorned and forgotten populations.

[Emily]

When I had my horrible toothache a few weeks ago, it just made me want to go out and persecute all those who were not like me. What an absurd interpretation.

And, you know, the lettuce may just be a French thing. After all, they're the ones who have that Easter bell when so many of the rest of us in the world have the Easter bunny.

The Yul Brynner shot is something to feast on.

Happy Passover!

[shari]

I was so happy to read this-my childhood seders were led by my cousins' grandfather who always passed the seder plate over our heads (making sure to touch the top of each of our heads in the process) and I always wondered where that custom came from. Do you know what the explanation is behind this custom? I would love to know. It might be fun to incorporate some of these customs into next year's seder. I love the flinging of greens out the window image.
I was also addicted to reading the "All of a Kind Family" books when I was young and am glad to hear they are still being read (or listened to).

[elle]

this post was hilarious. you gotta love those de mille movies...no one does fake looking egyptians like the man himself. will forever have a soft spot for pharoahs and yul brynner as a result of TTC...biblical epics ROCK

[hamdey]

Manuscripts of Medicine at the Pharaohs

Egyptian doctors practices ranging from Embalming, to faith healing to surgery, autopsy corpse. What was divided Avcrac doctor and a magician in Egypt. Would not be unusual for patients to receive dressing for a dog bite, for example, raspberry puree, honey attributable said the wound in addition to the magic mantra for the patient to confusion. The art of healing which Khotab on many levels.

Use autopsy income from the practice of mummification overall for the Egyptians, while it was not possible to examine the mummified body of the cause of the disease which killed him. The evolution of the use of surgery also know Anatomy Ihnt practices statute and Egyptians. From such observations made cautious by medical practitioners first to Egypt, started practices satisfactory to both the status of religious rituals and the lives of ancient Egyptians.

Recipe for a healthy life, (which I almost always meant by a member of the religious sect that someone assumed ritual strict and systematic liquidation (which included many bath, time shaving his head often and body hair), and kept the restrictions against food raw fish and other animals thought to eat dirty .

Also, in addition to lifestyle Purifier, is what was rare for Egyptians to pass the dream analysis to find a cure or cause of the disease, in addition to the question about the priest to help witchcraft, this example clearly illustrates that religious and magical rites Rites cleared Shobaki in the healing process as well as to create style Life is true.

Fairly advanced medical practice in ancient Egypt, with Egyptian doctors will have a broad and excellent reputation.

I think that most Egyptians disease - at least those not caused by accident and clear - was the work of hostile forces: 'discount male or female, spirit or person is dead' It was for this reason that sorcerers, in addition to the physicians were interested in addressing the disease public.

Insect, especially Scorpion bites or snake bites, both very frequent in Egypt, was handled by sorcerers, while showing that there is not a panacea or ointment used, and while we have records of many wills, written on papyrus, magic magical devoted to these incidents.

Documents found that in addition to the many fascinating, useful in the villages and countryside, there is found much less primitive form of medicine. mor...........
http://www.hamdey.php0h.com/

[Dentists Rancho Cucamonga]

This is a very interesting fact. There many things happened in the past and some details of it are revealed by archeologist.