Ulysses Essay 43 (71:36)

Chapter 5 (Lotus-Eaters) No. 4

“Something like those mazzoth: it’s that sort of bread: unleavened showbread.”

Bloom follows Great Brunswick Street for one block eastwards before turning right into Cumberland Street, where he pauses under the overhead rail bridge to read the contents of the typed letter from Martha Clifford, his secret romantic correspondent. Martha is one of forty-four respondents to an ostensibly genuine (but implicitly titillatory) advertisement (“Wanted smart lady typist to aid gentleman in literary work.”) that Bloom had placed in the Irish Times under the pseudonym “Henry Flower”.  After rereading the letter (which has a flower attached to it by a pin) and feeling delighted by its overall tone which is suffused with overt desire on Martha’s part to take their relationship to a less platonic level (“…Oh how I long to meet you…Goodbye, now, naughty darling…”), Bloom carefully tears the letter into shreds which he scatters towards the road, and then enters All Hallows Church via its rear portal on Cumberland Street.

The church is almost empty except for a sodality group of crimson-haltered women  (probably members of a devotional society of the Sacred Heart) who are taking Communion from the officiating priest. Bloom thinks to himself that the church is “a nice discreet place to be next some girl.” Looking around he asks himself rhetorically “Who is my neighbour?” conjuring up “And you shall love your neighbor as yourself” which Jesus told his disciples was a fundamental rule, although secondary in importance to the commandment to love God with all one’s heart, soul and mind (see Matthew 22:36-40 and also Mark 12:30-31). Both commandments are taken almost verbatim from the Torah (Leviticus 19:1 and Deuteronomy 6:5), although the Hebrew term in Leviticus (“rei’acha”) which  is translated as “your neighbor” in  most English versions of the Tanach is more appositely translated as “your friend” or “your fellowman”. This more inclusive translation may explain why the fanatically nationalistic Rabbi Akiva, like Jesus, pointed out the primary importance of “Love your fellowman as yourself”: perhaps he wished to reinforce a widely held conviction that attributed the quite recent destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70. C.E. (and the simultaneous loss of Jewish independence) to vicious infighting among the Jewish sects defending Jerusalem – a phenomenon the Talmud termed “sin’at chinam” (“hatred without a cause”). Echoing Jesus, whether congnizantly or not, Akiva stated that “Love your fellowman as yourself” is “a great rule of the Torah” (Jerusalem Talmud, Tractate Nedarim 30b). But even prior to Jesus, the great humanist Hillel the Elder (110 B.C. to 10.C.E.) had taken Jewish altruism to its ultimate by replying to a mocking heathen who requested him to teach him the Torah while he stood on one leg: “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellowman. That is the whole Torah – the rest is commentary. Now go and study” (Mishnah, Tractate Avot, 1:14). And the heathen became a learned rabbi.

Thinking about who could be his “neighbour” in the church, Bloom fantasizes about meeting “that woman” (Martha Clifford?) at  midnight mass, an event which he imagines as being no less than “seventh heaven” (ultimate euphoria – the phrase derived from Islamic and Kabbalistic cosmology), but then he comes back to reality as he sits down on a corner pew and begins to pay detailed attention to the Communion ritual taking place around him: “…Then the next one: a small old woman. The priest bent down to put it in her mouth, murmuring all the time. Latin. The next one. Shut your eyes and open your mouth…They don’t seem to chew it, only swallow it down. Rum idea: eating bits of a corpse why the cannibals cotton to it…They were about him here and there, with heads still bowed in their crimson halters, waiting for it to melt in their stomachs. Something like those mazzoth: it’s that sort of bread: unleavened showbread. Look at them. Now I bet it makes them feel happy. Lollipop. It does. Yes, bread of angels it’s called. There’s a big idea behind it, kind of kingdom of God is within you feel…Thing is if you really believe in it.”

Bloom notes to himself – probably correctly –  the connection between the unleavened bread of the Eucharist and the unleavened matzot eaten by observant Jews during the Passover festival (“something like those mazzoth”), but incorrectly (if understandably) confuses both of these with an entirely different form of ritual unleavened bread, the “shewbread” (Hebrew: “Lechem ha’panim” – literally “bread of the presence”) which was a major item in the Temple ritual as dictated by the Torah: “You shall take fine flour, and bake it into twelve loaves [Hebrew: “challot”]; each loaf  [“challah”] shall be made of two tenths [of an ephah]. And you shall set them in two rows, six in each row, upon the pure table before the Lord…Every Shabbat it shall be set up regularly as an everlasting covenant with the people of Israel” (Leviticus 24:5-6,8). Since leavened bread was forbidden for ritual use (Leviticus 2:11) the shewbread “challot” loaves must have also been some type of matzot. After being replaced on Shabbat, the priests were allowed to eat the previous week’s shewbread loaves.

Bread has major ritual significance in Jewish tradition and in Halakha. The Torah commands that a portion of any newly baked bread must be given to the priests: “…When you come into the land to which I am bringing you, it shall be that when you eat of the bread of the land, you shall set apart a portion as a contribution to the Lord (Numbers 15:18-19). The custom of giving gifts of bread to the priests of the Temple (along with other biblical instructions regarding the tithing of agricultural crops for the benefit of the priests and the Levites) ceased to have practical significance with the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E. However, in accordance with the opinions of the rabbis of the Talmud who wished to commemorate Temple practice, orthodox Jewish women (especially) continue to perform the ritual – termed “hafrashat challah” (“separation of the challah”) – by separating out a small part of any baked bread. After pronouncing the requisite blessing, this remnant (called the “challah”) is burnt up in the stove. Although the Torah confined the custom to the Land of Israel, the rabbis extended its use to Jews throughout the Diaspora, and in Israel today the ritual has been rejuvenated as a social practice even among non-observant women, who believe that “hafrashat challah” is endowed with mystical power to induce successful matchmaking, as well as providing an opportunity for feminist get-togethers.

Originally the Hebrew word “challah” referred to any loaf of bread, but modern Hebrew prefers the term “kikar” for a loaf of bread. The term “kikar” occasionally replaces  “challah” in the Tanach as well to denote a loaf of bread (e.g., Exodus 29:23) but is also used to describe a flat plain (such as the Jordan Valley – Genesis 13:10). Modern Hebrew has also adopted this latter meaning of  “kikar”, but has restricted it use so that it almost always denotes a town square or roundabout. Thus in November 1995, the name of the huge piazza fronting Tel Aviv City Hall was changed from “Kikar Malchei Yisrael” (“Kings of Israel Square”) to “Kikar Rabin (“Rabin Square”) following Prime Minister Rabin’s assassination by a fanatically right-wing Jewish assailant as he went to his car following a huge rally at the square supporting the Oslo accords, with their (so far unfulfilled) promise of an eventual division of the country into two states – Israeli and Palestinian.

The term “challah” is now in common use (and not only by Jews) to allude to the rounded and braided egg-enriched bread that Jews use for the obligatory festive meals eaten on Shabbat and festivals. Some traditions specifically add six braids, or two rows of six braids, to the challah, in token remembrance of the twelve shewbread that adorned the ritual table in the Temple. There are a variety of Yiddish terms for challah bread, and in South Africa we called it “kitke”, a term which is apparently unique to South African Jewry. The etymology of “kitke” may be related to the German word “kitt” meaning “putty”, apparently referring to the putty-like manner in which the braids of the challah are fashioned out of the egg-enriched dough by the baker.

But back to Bloom and his intermingling of the bread of the Eucharist rite with the unleavened “matzot” that Jews eat during the seven days of Passover spring festival, starting on the first night with celebration of the “Seder” – the Hebrew term for “order” (of items) . The question of whether the Last Supper was indeed a Passover Seder has stirred the imagination of both Jews and Christians, if somewhat ahistorically, but one cannot deny the cross-references between the Jewish and Catholic rites. On Seder night Jews read a text called the “Haggadah” –  Hebrew for “telling” – derived from the biblical injunction “And you shall tell your son on that day, saying ‘It is because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt’” (Exodus 13:8). The Haggadah starts with the sanctification over wine (“Kiddush” – the standard prayer that initiates all the obligatory meals on Shabbat and festivals) – and then moves to a dialectical question and answer discussion format starting after the recitation of the Kiddush, and introduced by the youngest child present who stands up to sing the prescribed “Four Questions” (in a traditional tune, nostalgically familiar to Jews the world over) relating to the various seder customs and foodstuffs. Thereafter follows a fairly drawn-out and open-ended exposition in Talmudic mode of the details of the exodus from Egypt by analyzing the relevant texts of the Torah. A good example is the manner in which Exodus 12:12 is analyzed. The text of the verse in the Torah reads, “On that night I  will go through the land of Egypt, and I will smite every firstborn in the land of Egypt both man and beast, and I will execute judgment against all the gods of Egypt; I am the Lord,” while the expanded Haggadah text tells us: “On that night I will go through the land of Egypt – I, and not an angel –  and I will smite every firstborn in the land of Egypt – I, and not a flaming seraph – and I will execute judgment against all gods of Egypt – I, and not a messenger – I am the Lord  – ” I am he, and no other.” This fourfold repetition of God’s oneness is almost certainly an  unequivocal rabbinical negation of Paulian Christianity and its fundamental belief in the divinity of Jesus and in the existence of the Holy Trinity. This rabbinical exegesis further serves to analogously also deprive Moses of any supra-human role in the exodus, to the extent that his name is mentioned only once during the whole recital of the Haggadah, and even then relegated to the minor context of a medieval hymn of gratitude (“Dayenu” – “It would have been enough”) that is sung uproariously during the first half of the Seder.

Following the rather informal Talmudic discourse on the events of the Exodus, to which everyone at the Seder table is encouraged to add their own insights, the Haggadah changes mode, and the central themes the Seder celebration are solemnly pronounced by quoting the authoritative statement of Rabban Gamliel, the president (Hebrew “nasi” – now the formal title of the president of the State of Israel) of the Sanhedrin  in the years following the crucifixion of Jesus,. In the Christian context, Gamliel is noteworthy as being the only Pharisaic rabbi to be named in the New Testament where, in the Acts of the Apostles, he is praised for preventing the killing of the apostles of Jesus after the crucifixion when they attempted to spread the gospel (Acts 5:34), and also as having been the teacher of Paul of Tarsus (Acts 22:3). Gamliel is venerated as a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church, and some traditions hold that he secretly converted to Christianity. A Catholic monastery in the Judean lowlands, Beit Jimal, is named for Gamliel, who is believed in Christian tradition to have been buried there. However, the importance ascribed to Rabban Gamliel in Jewish tradition, and especially his central position in the Passover Seder seem to belie any idea that he ever considered joining the breakaway “here and now” messianic sect that evolved after the crucifixion, even if was led by his erstwhile (star?) student, Paul of Tarsus.

Gamliel’s take on the Seder bears quoting in full:

“Rabban Gamliel used to say: anyone who has not mentioned these three things on Passover has not fulfilled his duty. They are: the Passover sacrifice; the matza; and the bitter herb.

“What is the purpose of the Passover sacrifice that our forefathers ate in the days when the Temple was still standing? It is because the Holy One, blessed be he, passed over the houses of our forefathers in Egypt, as it is said: “And you shall say: ‘It is a Passover sacrifice to the Lord who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt, when he smote Egypt, but spared our homes. And the people bowed down and worshipped’”

 (Exodus 12:27).

[The leader points to the matzot].

“What is the purpose of this matza that we are eating? It is because there was not sufficient time for the dough of our forefathers to rise, until the supreme King of Kings, the Holy One, blessed be he, was revealed to them, and delivered them, as it is said: ‘And they baked the dough that they took out of Egypt, unleavened loaves without yeast, because they were driven out of Egypt, and they could not tarry, and they had not made provisions for themselves’” (Exodus 12:39).  

  

[The leader points to the bitter herbs (“maror” in Hebrew)].

“What is the purpose of the bitter herbs that we eat? It is to recall that the Egyptians made bitter the lives of our forefathers in Egypt, as it is said ‘And they made their lives bitter with hard labor in brick and mortar, and all types of work in the field; they ruthlessly imposed work on them’”(Exodus 1:14).

Of the three items  that Gamliel considered the sine qua non of the Passover celebration – the Passover (or “paschal”) sacrifice of a lamb, the matza, and the bitter herb –– the paschal sacrifice ceased to be performed ritually by Jews after the destruction of the Temple. However, the Seder platter that adorns the post-exilic (and current) festive table displays, among other ceremonial items, a roasted shank bone (Hebrew “zeroa”) of a lamb (or even of a chicken or a turkey) to symbolically commemorate the ancient sacrifice. In order to avoid any confusion that the displayed item might indeed constitute the solely Temple-based paschal sacrifice, the zeroa  (unlike the matza and bitter herb) is deliberately not pointed to when its significance is narrated by reading Rabban Gamliel’s explanation in the Haggadah text, nor is it actually eaten. Nevertheless the paschal sacrifice continues to live on in the rituals of the ancient breakaway Samaritan sect (now only a small group some of whom still live near Nablus on the West Bank while others have moved to Israel proper and are concentrated in Holon, a southern suburb of Tel Aviv) who still perform the ceremonial paschal sacrifice by slaughtering and roasting lambs on the eve of their Passover celebration, and then eating the meat as the central item of their festive meal.

Beyond Gamliel’s three major components of the Passover celebration, a fourth  important of aspect of the Seder ritual is the drinking of four obligatory cups of wine, each one at a different climactic point during the reading of the Haggadah – the first to sanctify the festival (the Kiddush) at the beginning of the Seder; the second to unanimously celebrate the deliverance from Egypt just before the festive meal is served; the third to round off the recitation of the Grace following the meal; and the fourth after chanting the Hallel psalms of praise (Psalms 113-118). (For a fuller discussion of the significance of the four cups of wine drunk at the Seder, see Essay 2 – “Malachi”).

There is no doubt that the Last Supper, as recorded in the New Testament, was definitely a Passover celebration, although its timing is vague. The well-known text from Matthew reads: “On the first day of [perhaps better translated from the Greek as ‘On the first day before’] the Festival of Matzot, the disciples came to Jesus , and asked: ‘Where do you want us to prepare for you to eat the Passover?’ ‘Go into to the city,’ he replied to them, ‘to a certain man, and say to him: “Our teacher says. ‘My time is at hand; I will observe the Passover with my disciples at your house.’”’ The disciples did as Jesus had commanded, and prepared the Passover. That evening he sat with the twelve.” (Matthew 26:17-20). In the references to the celebration of Passover by Jesus and his disciples one can identify three possible aspects of the biblically decreed  Passover celebration: first, the (unleavened?) bread that Jesus informs his apostles will constitute his body (in Leonardo’s Last Supper the bread on the table looks like typically risen leavened bread); second, the wine drunk by the celebrants which will become Jesus’s blood, and third, the paschal lamb (“to eat the Passover” – see above in Matthew 26:17) which, however, is later pronounced to be Jesus himself, offered up as the ultimate  paschal sacrifice (“agnus dei”) on the first day of the festival, as Paul states in his Passover-based exhortation: “Get rid of the old leaven so that you will be new dough: you will then be like matzot, for behold our paschal lamb has been sacrificed – the Messiah” (I Corinthians 5:7). Unlike the bread and wine, the bitter herbs do not appear in the New Testament descriptions of the Last Supper, although the Torah specifically instructs that the paschal sacrifice is to eaten together with matza and bitter herbs (Numbers 9:11) on the eve of Passover. Be that as it may, the New Testament tells us: “While they were eating, Jesus took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and giving it his disciples, said, ‘Take and eat; this is my body.’ Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you, for this my blood of the covenant, which will be shed on behalf of many for the forgiveness of sins.’” (Matthew 26:26-28; and compare Mark 14:22-24; Luke 22, 17-20; I Corinthians 11:23-25). As an aside, it’s worth noting that Jesus must have made the two Jewish blessings that the Mishnah prescribes  before eating bread and wine and still said by orthodox Jews the world over: “Blessed are you, our God, Lord of the universe, who brings out bread from the land,” and “Blessed are you, our God, Lord of the universe, who created the fruit of the vine.” On the other hand at all Shabbat and festival meals, including the Passover seder, the opening blessing on the wine (Kiddush) precedes the breaking of the bread (or matza).

Also parenthetically, it is of note that the Last Supper took place on a Thursday evening (recalled in the celebration of Maundy Thursday on the day preceding Good Friday) and in this connection  it is interesting that the later (fourth century) Hillel II, who finally structured the lunar-based Jewish calendar, organized it in such a manner  that seder night will never occur on a Thursday evening and hence the first day of Passover will never fall on “Good Friday” or any other Friday. The ostensible reason for this arrangement is to prevent the post-biblical minor autumn holiday of Hoshanah Rabbah from occurring on a Shabbat, as one of the rather picturesque traditions on this holiday is to beat willow twigs on the ground until their leaves come off, kabbalistically symbolizing the elimination of sin and the hope for rain in the coming winter (the willow-beating activity, however, being obviously forbidden on Shabbat), but maybe Hillel II had a deeper agenda in mind which he preferred not to articulate: to draw a clear distinction between the Passover seder and the Last Supper and the subsequent crucifixion.

In any event, to put it all together, one can infer that since the Last Supper took place some forty odd years before the destruction of the Temple, the Passover celebration in Jesus’s time would have  centered on the paschal sacrifice and thus would have been quite different from our current post-exilic rabbinical seder, which has its roots in the years following the destruction of the Temple. So the question as to whether the Last Supper was a seder is actually irrelevant, but there is no doubt that Bloom was right in making the historical and theological connection between the unleavened bread of the Eucharist and the matzot eaten by Jews during the Passover festival.

And during the shiva week of mourning following Yitzhak Rabin’s 1995 assassination, Israel radio played the “agnus dei” theme from Bach’s B Minor Mass every half hour. To this day it rings in my ears.