Ulysses Essay 2 (4:11)

Chapter 1 (Telemachus) No. 2

“Malachi”

Stephen’s flat-mate is Malachi (“Buck”) Mulligan, a character who is supposedly based on Joyce’s companion (and later rival) Oliver St. John Gogarty. But why “Malachi”?

Malachi, the last of the prophets, was active in the land of Israel (around 420 B.C.E.) after the return of the Jews from the seventy year Babylonian exile and the construction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. His name means “my messenger” (also “my angel” – angels and messengers seem to be the same thing in Jewish thought). It is not a common given name in Israel, but there were two important Malachy’s (note the “y” spelling) in Irish history: the tenth century King Malachy the Great and the twelfth century reformer prelate, St, Malachy, who, so the tradition runs, had a gift for prophecy (see Gifford & Seidman, “Ulysses Annotated” – hereinafter “Gifford”). I first ran into Irish Malachy’s in 1996 when reading “Angela’s Ashes”, Frank McCourt’s inimitable bildungsroman about growing up dirt-poor in Limerick in the 1930s. Malachy was the name of Frank’s alcoholic father, as well as that of his next in line brother, and also of the latter’s son. (The middle Malachy is a well-known author and actor as well as being a Green Party politico who ran disastrously against Elliot Spitzer for the governorship of New York in 2005). It charms me that of all the names in the Tanach, the Irish have taken Malachi to heart.

Still although his book is only three chapters long, Malachi has an important place in Jewish tradition. Significantly, the bulk of the third chapter (Verses 4-24) constitutes the special Haftarah (selection from the Prophets) read in the synagogue on the Shabbat that precedes Passover. This Shabbat is known as “Shabbat HaGadol” (“The Great Shabbat”) apparently because it was on the Shabbat before the Exodus that the enslaved Israelites killed sacrificial lambs in open defiance of the Egyptian idolatrous worship of sheep. The blood of these lambs was used later that week to mark their door lintels, indicating that these were Israelite homes to be “passed over” so as not be struck with the death of their firstborns when the tenth and last plague was to beset Egypt on the eve of the Exodus. These events are termed “Pesach Mitzraim” (the “Egyptian Passover”) in Jewish tradition, but Jewish eschatology also envisions “Pesach Le’Atid” (“Passover of the Future”) as the messianic age when the final redemption will occur, an event which will be pre-announced by the reappearance of the prophet Elijah. This tradition is based on the final two verses of Malachi’s prophecy: “Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord. And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children and the heart of the children to lest I come and smite the land with utter destruction.’ (Malachi 3:23-24). (In Jewish tradition, when the Haftarah is chanted in the synagogue, the penultimate verse is repeated to end on a note of hope rather than of doom. The same custom is followed at end of the synagogal readings of the last chapters of Isaiah, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes and Isaiah).

Elijah - identified often as “the Tishbite” referring to his origin from the town of Tishbe in Gilead -  plays a prominent part in Jewish tradition. He is regarded as the ultimate peacemaker, not only closing the generation gap as prophesied by Malachi, but resolving disputes going back centuries. In fact one finds that when the rabbis of the Talmud could not resolve among themselves a controversy regarding some aspect of Jewish law, they resignedly admitted "Teyku” – an acronym accepted as standing for the initial Hebrew letters of   “Tishbi Ye’taretz Kush’yot U’ba’ayot” (“The Tishbite will resolve difficulties and problems”) – the idea being that eventually, at the end of the days, Elijah will decide the issue. But in Israel today the everyday meaning of “Teiku” is simply a tied result (as in soccer or chess) and few who use it prolifically are aware of its rabbinical etymology.

However, Teiku in its original Elijah context has a prominent place in the Seder ritual celebrated in Jewish homes on the first night of Passover (and outside Israel on the first two nights*) and it concerns the number of cups of wine that are to be drunk during the Seder service. Classically there are four cups: two before the festive meal (while “Pesach Mitzraim” is being expounded) and two after the meal (when “Pesach Le’Atid” is being contemplated and hoped for). The Midrash (the homiletic exposition of the Tanach by the Rabbis of the Talmud) explains that each cup of wine represents one of the four expressions of deliverance mentioned in Exodus: “…I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from their bondage. I will also redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments. Then I will take you for my people…” (Exodus 6:6-7).  The problem is that the next verse (Exodus 6:8) contains a possible fifth expression of deliverance: “And I will bring you into the land…” The Rabbis of the Talmud disagreed among themselves as to whether this fifth expression deserved its own cup of wine (since it was historically not a direct part of the exodus) and being unable to resolve their controversy announced “Teiku!” i.e. the issue was to be finally settled by Elijah when he makes his pre-messianic reappearance. So following the Seder dinner and the drinking of the third cup of wine at the end of the Grace after meals, a ceremonial cup of wine is placed in the center of the Seder table, the children are sent open the front door, and the children are told that Elijah (a la Santa Claus) has come to visit and has drunk from his cup. The subtext of all this fun is deadly serious. While Elijah’s anticipated coming obviously ties in with the hope for “Pesach Le’Atid” – the future time of messianic peace and justice – the opening of Jewish front doors in medieval Europe at Easter time just as the crucifixion was being marked and Christ-killer accusations were being cast at the Jews, could well have been aimed at refuting the “blood libel” that Jews used the blood of killed Christian children in the baking of the matzoth (unleavened bread) eaten during the Seder ritual and during the entire week of the Passover, by openly demonstrating to their Gentile neighbors that no Christian blood had been shed in the Passover preparations. Sadly but appropriately, the Seder text, the “Haggadah” (whose existence is vaguely recalled during the “Aeolus” episode by Bloom at noontime while he is delivering to the unappreciative editor of the Evening Telegraph a commercial advertisement that he has finally succeeded in canvassing), instructs that while the front door is open, the assembled Seder celebrants are to rise, to “greet” Elijah, and, departing from  the overall hopeful and optimistic mode of the Seder, to read together a collection of four verses from the Books of Psalms and Lamentations that cry out for revenge against the persecutors of the Jews: “Pour out your anger upon the nations which have not known you, and upon the kingdoms who do not call upon your name; for they have devoured Jacob and laid waste his goodly home” (Psalms 79:6-7). “Pour out your fury upon them; and let your blazing anger overtake them” (Psalms 69:25). “Pursue them with fury, and destroy them from under the heavens of the Lord” (Lamentations 3:66). This somewhat embarrassing and non-politically correct text has been edited out of the Reform Haggadah. Perversely, I myself rather like it. Texts are texts and where would be with a Lear who omitted these storm-tossed words (King Lear III:ii):

“Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks!
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Smite flat the thick rotundity o' the world!
Crack nature's moulds, an germens spill at once,
That make ingrateful man!

Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain!
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters:
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness;
I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children,
You owe me no subscription: then let fall
Your horrible pleasure: here I stand, your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man:
But yet I call you servile ministers,
That have with two pernicious daughters join'd
Your high engender'd battles 'gainst a head
So old and white as this. O! O! 'tis foul!”

And then the children are sent to close the door again and the Seder resumes its final happy chants and melodies.

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* Or “Yom Tov Sheni shel Galuyot” (“The Second Festival day in the Diaspora”), referring to the custom that outside the Land of Israel, Orthodox and Conservative (but not Reform) Jews celebrate the three major “pilgrim” festivals (Passover, Tabernacles and Pentecost for an extra day which originated after the Babylonian exile (586-516 B.C.E.) when Jews began living outside Israel. The Jewish calendar (like the Moslem one) is lunar based, and as the lunar month has roughly 29 ½ days (29.53059 days to be more precise) a Jewish month is either 29 or 30 days long, and thus a festival occurring in any month can occur on either of two possible days depending on when the new moon is sighted for that month. During the Second Temple period, witnesses who claimed that they had seen the new moon would come to the ecclesiastical court (“Beth Din”) and undergo a vigorous cross-examination to confirm the reliability of their evidence. If confirmed, the court would proclaim the “New Moon” and thus determine the precise date of the coming festival. The announcement would be transferred to outlying communities by messengers (and also by hilltop smoke signals) but there was no way that very distant Jewish communities (such as in Babylonia or Egypt) could be informed in time to celebrate the festivals on the right day. To ensure that these festivals were not celebrated one day early or late, a typically rabbinical solution was found – the festivals were celebrated for two days to cover both eventualities. In the 4^th century C.E. Rabbi Hillel II (not his second century predecessor who told an unbeliever that the Torah could be summarized in one sentence “What is distasteful to you, do not do to your neighbor – the rest is commentary – go and learn”) settled the issue by issuing an “all-time” calendar still in use today, and obviating the need for a second day holiday in the Diaspora. But custom in Judaism is hard to break, and the somewhat irksome double holiday celebration is still in force in Jewish communities all over the world. Of interest, Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) falling on the first of Tishri, is extended to two days in Israel as well, as there was no possibility  even within the bounds of such a small country to get the announcement across in such a short time. On the other hand Yom Kippur, with its twenty-five hour fast, is restricted to one day worldwide for obvious reasons, although. Shmuel Yosef Agnon, the Israeli winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature  in 1966, records in his inimitable anthology “The High Holy Days” that there were pious Jews in medieval Germany who in fact  observed Yom Kippur for two successive days (i.e., they actually fasted for forty-nine hours). Conversely the Mishnah (Rosh Hashanah 2:8-9) tells that Rabbi Joshua and Rabbi Gamliel II (who were rivals in the race for the presidency of the Sanhedrin after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E.) had differing opinions about the exact date of Yom Kippur in a certain year because of uncertain sightings of the new moon of Tishri . Eventually Rabbi Gamliel, who was then the nominal head of the Sanhedrin in the southern town of Yavneh, ordered Rabbi Joshua to appear before him on the day that Joshua had determined to be Yom Kippur while carrying his staff and his money-bag thereby openly desecrating “his” Yom Kippur. Apparently aware than the one of the main reasons that Jerusalem and the Second Temple had fallen to Titus’s Roman legions was the internecine strife among the Jews themselves, Joshua decided that national unity was paramount in these calamitous times. He accordingly came to Rabbi Gamliel’s court on the appointed day, bearing his staff and money-bag. At this display of humiliating and self-abnegating loyalty to the national cause, Gamliel stood up, kissed Joshua on the head, and said to him, “Come in peace, my master and my disciple: ‘my master’ in wisdom and ‘my disciple’ in that you have accepted my words.”