Daf Ditty Pesachim 53:: Theodosius of Rome "Todos Ish Romi"

Daf Ditty Pesachim 53: THEODOSIUS OF ROME "Todos Ish Romi"1
Lapin convincingly argues that the rabbis must be understood as firmly

embedded in the wider Roman and Byzantine world. 2
1
M. Vogelmann, in: Sefer Zikkaron li-Shelomo S. Mayer (1956), 196–200; M. Beer, in: Zion, 26 (1961), 238–40; S.
Lieberman, Tosefta ki-Feshutah, 5 (1962), 959–60.
2
The book thus also throws light on the dynamics of the monumental shifts that occurred in late antiquity. This is necessary reading
for students and scholars of both early Judaism and late antiquity."--Michael L. Satlow, Professor of Religious Studies and Judaic
Studies, Brown University
1
2
MISHNA: Apropos different local customs discussed in the first mishna in this chapter, this
mishna discusses various halakhot with regard to which there are different customs. In a place
where the people were accustomed to sell small livestock to gentiles, one may sell them. In a
place where the people were not accustomed to sell them due to certain concerns and decrees,
one may not sell them. However, in every place, one may sell to gentiles neither large livestock,
e.g., cows and camels, nor calves or foals, whether these animals are whole or damaged. The
Sages prohibited those sales due to the concern lest the transaction be voided or one side
reconsider, creating retroactively a situation where a Jew’s animal performed labor for the gentile
on Shabbat in violation of an explicit Torah prohibition. Rabbi Yehuda permits the sale of a
damaged animal because it is incapable of performing labor. Ben Beteira permits the sale of a
horse for riding, because riding a horse on Shabbat is not prohibited by Torah law.
The mishna cites another custom related to Passover. In a place where people were accustomed
to eat roasted meat on Passover evenings, outside of Jerusalem or after the Temple was
destroyed, one may eat it. In a place where people were accustomed not to eat outside Jerusalem,
one may not eat it.
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GEMARA: Rav Yehuda said that Rav said that it is prohibited for a person to say in modern
times: This meat is for Passover, due to the fact that one appears to be consecrating his animal
as his Paschal lamb, and he thereby eats consecrated items outside the permitted area. Rav Pappa
said: This prohibition against saying: This is for Passover, applies specifically to meat, which is
similar to consecrated meat; however, with regard to wheat, no, it does not apply. In that case, it
is clear that one is saying that the flour be watched for Passover.
The Gemara asks: And with regard to meat is that not the case? Is it really prohibited to say that
meat is for Passover? The Gemara raises an objection. Rabbi Yosei said: Theodosius [Todos]
of Rome, leader of the Jewish community there, instituted the custom for the Roman Jews to
eat kids roasted [mekulas] whole with their entrails over their heads on the evenings of
Passover, as was the custom in the Temple.
The Sages sent a message to him: If you were not Theodosius, an important person, we would
have decreed ostracism upon you, as it appears as if you are feeding Israel consecrated food,
which may be eaten only in and around the Temple itself, outside the permitted area.
The Gemara asks about the terminology used here: Could it enter your mind that this meat was
actually consecrated meat? That was certainly not the case. Rather, say instead:
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Doing so is akin to feeding Jews consecrated meat outside the permitted area, as due to its
resemblance to the Paschal lamb it could be misleading. The Gemara analyzes this statement: A
goat roasted whole, yes, it is prohibited; a goat not roasted whole, no, it is not prohibited. This
contradicts Rav, who prohibited roasting even ordinary meat.
The Sages say that this is the distinction: With regard to a goat roasted whole, there is no
difference if one said it is for Passover, and there is no difference if one did not say it is for
Passover. In either case, it looks like a sacrifice and it is prohibited.
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With regard to a goat not roasted whole, if one specified that it is for Passover, yes, it is prohibited
because it appears that he is consecrating it as a sacrifice. However, if one did not specify that it
is for Passover, no, it is not prohibited, as there is no need for concern.
RASHI
Jastrow
6
Come and hear: This was also taught by Theodosius of Rome: What did Hananiah,
Mishael, and Azariah see that led them to deliver themselves to the fiery furnace for
sanctification of the name of God during the rule of Nebuchadnezzar rather than worship idols
under duress?
They drew an a fortiori inference on their own from the plague of frogs in Egypt. With regard
to frogs, which are not commanded concerning the sanctification of the name of God, it is
written:
‫ ְוָﬠלוּ‬,‫ ְצַפ ְרְדִּﬠים‬,‫כח ְוָשׁ ַרץ ַה ְיֹאר‬ 28 And the river shall swarm with frogs, which shall go
-‫ ְוַﬠל‬m‫ וַּבֲחַדר ִמְשָׁכְּב‬,m‫וָּבאוּ ְבֵּביֶת‬ up and come into thy house, and into thy bed-chamber,
,m‫ וְּבַﬠֶמּ‬m‫ֲﬠָבֶדי‬ ‫; וְּבֵבית‬m‫ִמָטֶּת‬ and upon thy bed, and into the house of thy servants, and
.m‫ וְּבִמְשֲׁארוֶֹתי‬m‫וְּבַתנּוּ ֶרי‬ upon thy people, and into thine ovens, and into thy
kneading-troughs.
Ex 7:28
“And the river shall swarm with frogs, which shall go up and come into your house, and into
your bedchamber, and onto your bed, and into the houses of your servants, and upon your people,
and into their ovens and kneading bowls”
When are kneading bowls found near the oven? You must say that it is when the oven is hot.
If in fulfilling the command to harass the Egyptians, the frogs entered burning ovens, all the more
so, we, who are commanded concerning the sanctification of the name of God, should deliver
ourselves to be killed in the fiery furnace for that purpose.
Apparently, Theodosius taught Torah in public, which indicates that he was a great man.
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Rabbi Yosei bar Avin said: Theodosius was one who cast the profits from merchandise into
the purse of Torah scholars. He would lend them money and enter into partnership with them so
they could open businesses, and that is praiseworthy, as Rabbi Yoḥanan said: Anyone who casts
merchandise into the purse of Torah scholars is rewarded and sits in the heavenly academy,
as it is stated:
‫ ְבֵּצל‬,‫ יב ִכּי ְבֵּצל ַהָחְכָמה‬12 For wisdom is a defense, even as money is a defense; but
‫ ַהָחְכָמה‬,‫ ַהָכֶּסף; ְו ִיְתרוֹן ַדַּﬠת‬the excellency of knowledge is, that wisdom preserveth the life
.‫ְתַּחֶיּה ְבָﬠֶליָה‬ of him that hath it.
Eccl 7:12
“For in the shadow of wisdom, is the shadow of money” One who provides Torah scholars with
money will merit being with them in the shadow of wisdom.
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Summary
Rav Avrohom Adler writes:3
The Mishna says that selling small animals to idolaters depends on the local practice - in a place
where they have a custom to permit the sale, it is permitted, but in a place where they have the
custom to forbid it, one may not. Everywhere, however, one may not sell large animals, including
calves and young donkeys, whether intact or broken. Rabbi Yehudah permits one to sell broken
ones, while ben Besairah permits one to sell horses.
In a place where the custom was to eat roasted meat on the nights of Pesach, we may eat it; in,
however, a place where the custom was not to eat it, we may not eat it. Rav Yehudah said in the
name of Rav: It is forbidden for a person to say, “This meat is for pesach,” for it looks like he is
consecrating his animal (as a sacrifice), and eating sacrificial food outside (of Jerusalem).
Rav Pappa said: This applies only by meat, but not by wheat, for he is saying (by wheat) that it
shall be guarded for the (festival of) Pesach.
The Gemora asks: And meat is forbidden? But it was taught in a braisa by Rabbi Yosi: Todos of
Rome instituted that the Jews of Rome should eat a kid that was roasted along with its entrails on
Pesach night. The Rabbis sent Todos a message, saying: If you were not Todos (a great scholar
and respected personage in the community), we would have excommunicated you because you are
causing Jews to eat kodashim - sacrificial meat, outside of Yerushalayim.4
The Gemora asks: Does it enter your mind that these animals were actually offerings? The Gemora
answers: The braisa meant that he was close to causing them to eat offerings outside (of Jerusalem).
The Gemora asks: Only a goat with its entrails alongside it was forbidden, but otherwise, it is
permitted? The Gemora answers: I will tell you: If its entrails are alongside, there is no difference
whether he stated (“This meat is for Pesach”), or he did not state; but if its entrails are not alongside,
then if he specified, it is forbidden; if he did not specify, it is not forbidden. Rav Acha learned this
braisa (concerning Todos) as the statement of Rabbi Shimon (and not R’ Yosi).
Rav Sheishes asked: It is well according to the one who learns it as the statement of Rabbi Yosi,
then it is correct; but according to the one who learns it as the statement of Rabbi Shimon, is it
correct? Surely, we learned in a Mishna: [If a person said, “I obligate myself to bring a korban
minchah from barley” (and all voluntary meal offerings are made from wheat flour, not barley),
he is required to bring a minchah made from wheat.]
Rabbi Shimon exempts him from bringing any minchah, for he did not donate in the ordinary
manner. Ravina said to Rav Ashi: And is it correct even according to the one who learns it as the
statement of Rabbi Yosi? Surely Rava said: Rabbi Shimon stated this according to the view of
3
http://dafnotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Pesachim_53.pdf
4
With this declaration the Sages meant that the roasted goats would be akin to sacrifices, and they should be prohibited to eat
because people will mistakenly assume that one can bring an offering outside of Yerushalayim.
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Rabbi Yosi, who maintained: A man is held responsible for his last words as well. Surely then,
since Rabbi Shimon agrees with Rabbi Yosi, Rabbi Yosi also agrees with Rabbi Shimon?
The Gemora answers: No: Rabbi Shimon agrees with Rabbi Yosi, but Rabbi Yosi does not agree
with Rabbi Shimon.
The scholars inquired: Was Todos, the man of Rome, a great man or a powerful man?
The Gemora cites proof from a braisa: Todos of Rome expounded the following as well:
Chananyah, Mishael, and Azaryah learned from the frogs that plagued Egypt that they should
allow themselves to be thrown into a fiery furnace to sanctify Hashem’s Name, rather than serve
idols.
They reasoned that if the frogs that were not commanded in the mitzvah of sanctifying the Name
of Hashem, and nevertheless, they did so anyway when they went into the hot ovens of the
Egyptians, certainly they who were commanded to sanctify Hashem’s Name should sacrifice their
life in order not to worship idolatry.
Rabbi Yosi bar Avin said: He put merchandise into the purses of Torah scholars, for Rabbi
Yochanan said: Whoever puts merchandise into the pockets of scholars will be privileged to sit in
the Heavenly Academy.
Eating Roasted Meat on Pesaḥ Following the Destruction of the Temple

Steinzaltz (OBM) writes:5
One example of following the local custom that is discussed in the Mishna on our daf deals with
a Pesah issue. Following the destruction of the Temple, what is the best course of action? Should
we eat meat at the seder roasted in commemoration of the Passover sacrifice that had to be roasted
(see Ex 12: 8-9) or would doing so present a problem because it would appear that the sacrifice
was being eaten outside the precincts of Jerusalem? The Mishna rules that either of these customs
can be followed, each in the community where it is the accepted tradition.
Rabbi Yosei said: Theodosius [Todos] of Rome, leader of the Jewish community there, instituted
the custom for the Roman Jews to eat [goat] kids roasted [mekulas] whole with their entrails
over their heads on the evenings of Passover, as was the custom in the Temple. The Sages sent a
message to him: If you were not Theodosius, an important person, I would have decreed
ostracism upon you, as it appears as if you are feeding Israel consecrated food, which may be
eaten only in and around the Temple itself, outside the permitted area.
While the tanna’im of the Mishna apparently knew him well, Todos was not a well-known
character to the amora’im of the Gemara, who ask whether the reluctance to place him under ban
stemmed from the fact that he was a talmid hakham, or, perhaps, because he was a powerful figure
who could not be punished. The Hatam Sofer points out that this is not merely a theoretical
5
https://steinsaltz.org/daf/pesahim53/
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question, but a practical one from which we can deduce that a talmid hakham should not be
punished for making an error, but should simply be warned about it.
In response, the Gemara offers two stories about him.
The first story quotes Todos as teaching an aggadic homily, in which he explained the actions of
Hananiah, Misha’el and Azariah who allowed themselves to be thrown into a fiery furnace
(see Daniel chapter 3 ) by comparing their situation to that of the frogs of the second of the ten
plagues in Egypt who willingly jumped into burning ovens (see Ex 7:28). According to this story,
since we have records of Todos teaching Torah publicly, apparently, he was a scholar.
Rabbi Yossi bar Avin relates the second story, that Todos was someone who supported Torah
scholars by lending money or merchandise to them, thus allowing them to support themselves. It
should be noted that the Rambam lists eight levels of charity (see Rambam Hilkhot Matnot
Aniyim 10:7) ranging from giving a hand-out to a poor person to offering assistance in a secretive
way. The highest level enumerated is someone who enters into a partnership with a poor person,
allowing him to become self-sufficient, which, apparently, was Todos’ relationship with the Torah
scholars in his community.
THEODOSIUS OF ROME "Todos Ish Romi"6
The spiritual leader of the Roman Jewish community some time during the late first
century C.E. Yose b. Ḥalafta relates that he instituted in Rome on the nights of Passover the eating
of "helmeted goats," i.e., goats roasted with entrails and legs on the head, like a helmet, the manner
in which the paschal lamb was sacrificed.
They (i.e., the sages, not Simeon b. Shetaḥ, as in Ber. 19a) sent to him, declaring that were he not
Theodosius, they would have declared a ban against him, because he was "making Israel eat
sacred flesh outside[the Temple]" (Pes. 53a; cf. Tosef., Beẓah 2:15).
This story demonstrates the degree to which the central religious authorities in Palestine (probably
Gamaliel and the bet din at Jabneh) kept a strict check on Diaspora Jewry. In the amoraic period,
the question arose whether Theodosius was a "great man" (gavra rabba) or merely a "powerful
man" (ba'al egrofin).
They proved that he was a "great man," citing a teaching of his: "What did Hananiah, Mishael and
Azariah see that they delivered themselves for the Sanctification of the [Divine]Name into the fiery
furnace…–" It is surely indicative that the only teaching recorded of this prominent Diaspora leader
deals with the problem of "the sanctification of the Name" (implying martyrdom), one no doubt of
very topical import.
According to another amoraic tradition, Theodosius gave financial support to scholars (Pes. 53b).
6
M. Vogelmann, in: Sefer Zikkaron li-Shelomo S. Mayer (1956), 196–200; M. Beer, in: Zion, 26 (1961), 238–40; S.
Lieberman, Tosefta ki-Feshutah, 5 (1962), 959–60.
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Sara Ronis writes:7
In the Talmud we mostly encounter rabbis living in the Land of Israel and Babylonia because that
is where the two major rabbinic centerslay. But the Jewish community of late antiquity extended
far beyond these two regions — including all the way to Rome, where (as we learn on today’s daf)
the Jewish community had many of its own unique customs.
By the time of the Talmud, Jews had been living in Rome for hundreds of years. Today’s daf
introduces us to one of their leaders: Todos (Theodosius) of Rome. Don’t be fooled by his Latin
name; Theodosius is a Jewish leader deeply engaged in Jewish law and Torah.
After the destruction of the Temple, when offering a paschal lamb was no longer possible, the
rabbis ordered that people cease eating lamb altogether on Passover so as not to give the
appearance of eating sacred meat when it was not possible to properly sacrifice the lamb. But, as
we learn in a mishnah on today’s page, some communities continued to enjoy roasted meat on
Passover.
Theodosius of Rome apparently took it a step further and “instituted the custom for the Roman
Jews to eat lambs roasted whole with their entrails over their heads on the evenings of
Passover.” (You might not want to picture that too carefully; because of the entrails hanging
around the head of the lamb, this delicacy was called “helmeted lamb.”) In other words,
Theodosius instructed his community to eat something that was meant to explicitly mimic the
paschal lamb served in ancient Jerusalem, directly contradicting the rabbinic prohibition on eating
roasted lamb on Passover in the post-Temple world.
Not surprisingly, the rabbis were not pleased:
The sages sent a message to him: If you were not Todos (i.e. an important person) we would
have decreed ostracism upon you, as it appears as if you are feeding Israel consecrated food
outside the permitted area.
So although it was against their principles, because of his status the rabbis allow Theodosius’s
ruling to stand in Rome. Perhaps they felt they could not exert enough authority or influence to
overturn him. Or perhaps they valued preserving local Jewish customs (as today’s mishnah hints).
The incident leads the Talmud’s redactors to ask whether we should understand Todos as righteous
or evil. To answer that question, it recounts another of his teachings:
Come and hear: This was also taught by Todos of Rome: What did Hananiah, Mishael, and
Azariah see that led them to deliver themselves to the fiery furnace for sanctification of the
name (i.e. to martyr themselves)? They drew a kal v’chomer inference on their own from
the plague of frogs in Egypt. With regard to frogs, which are not commanded concerning the
sanctification of the name of God, it is written: And the river shall swarm with frogs, which
7
Myjewishlearning.com
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shall go up and come into your house, and into your bedchamber, and onto your bed, and into
the houses of your servants, and upon your people, and into their ovens and kneading
bowls. (Exodus 7:28) When are kneading bowls found near the oven? You must say that it is
when the oven is hot. If in fulfilling the command to harass the Egyptians, the frogs entered
burning ovens, kal v’chomer (all the more so) we, who are commanded concerning the
sanctification of the name of God, should deliver ourselves to be killed in the fiery furnace
for that purpose.
Todos uses the kal v’chomer method of rabbinic argument (we explained it here) to offer a
profound Torah insight. He shows that the biblical Daniel’s three companions learned they must
enter the fiery furnace and face certain death for God’s sake from the frogs sent as a plague upon
Egypt who themselves willingly entered ovens to do God’s bidding. Theodosius’s teaching is also
deeply relevant to his own diaspora community, focusing as it does on how Daniel’s three friends
acted when living in exile at the center of a sometimes-hostile Babylonian empire. Quoting such a
teaching in his name suggests the rabbis viewed him as righteous.
Rabbi Yosei bar Avin agrees with this assessment. He states that:
Theodosius was one who cast the profits from merchandise into the purse of Torah scholars
(financially supported them) as Rabbi Yohanan said: Anyone who casts merchandise into
the purse of Torah scholars is rewarded and sits in the heavenly academy, as it is stated: For
in the shadow of wisdom, is the shadow of money. (Ecclesiastes 7:12)
For Rabbi Yosei bar Avin too, Theodosius certainly sounds like a righteous man, even meriting to
sit in the yeshiva shel ma’alah, the heavenly beit midrash.
Though Romans famously thought that Rome was the center of the world — the proverbial
meeting point of all roads — for the rabbis it was the distant representative of an oppressive empire.
And yet, here we have a peripheral Jewish communal leader, with a non-Jewish name, instituting
rules that are troubling to the rabbis, whom they nonetheless uphold, along with his teachings, as
righteous. The rabbinic world turns out to have been bigger than we might have imagined.
And in fact, even today Roman and Italian Jews maintain their own nusach, or liturgical rite,
among other distinctive traditions.
13
'The Plague of Frogs,' engraving by Gerard Jollain (1670).
Yakov Z. Meyer writes:8
In the Talmudic period, Todos of Rome was one of the leaders of the Jewish community living in
the capital of the Roman Empire. He is referred to in Tractate Pesachim of the Babylonian Talmud
in connection with a controversial religious ruling he made for his community: obligating Rome’s
Jews to eat roasted goat meat at the Passover seder in order to continue the tradition observed
during the period of the Temple in Jerusalem, and related to the Passover sacrifice. The ruling ran
counter to the rabbinical prohibition on consumption of sacred meat outside the Temple area.
In response, the sages at rabbinical academies in Palestine sent Todos a message: “It is only
because you are Todos that we are not decreeing upon you a sentence of excommunication for
having ordered Jews to eat sacred meat outside the Temple area”
In our daf it is asked why the sages did not excommunicate Todos: because he was a “great
individual,” or because he was a powerful leader who inspired fear in the sages’ hearts? The
Gemara replies that he was a great individual (a logical response, considering the unlikelihood that
the power of a Jewish community leader in Rome could have had any impact on Palestinian Jewry).
As proof of his learnedness, the Gemara cites one of his homilies, which addresses a verse in this
week’s Torah reading, Parashat Va’era (Exodus 6:2-9:35).
“Todos offered the following commentary on Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, who were willing
to die as martyrs in the flames of a furnace in order to sanctify God’s name. They felt they must
8
https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/portion-of-the-week/.premium-parashat-vaera-do-like-the-frogs-do-1.5360956
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be prepared to martyr themselves, seeing that this is what the frogs in the Plague of the Frogs in
Egypt did. In their discussion, they asked what the Torah says about these frogs, who were not
commanded by God to martyr themselves in sanctification of his name. Their answer is that it is
written in the Torah, ‘And the river shall swarm with frogs, which shall go up and come into thy
house and into thine ovens, and into thy kneading-troughs’ (Exodus 7:28). When are kneading-
troughs placed beside the oven? When the oven is hot. If the frogs, who were not commanded by
God to martyr themselves to sanctify his name did nonetheless martyr themselves, then, so the
three would-be martyrs concluded, they must do the same” (Babylonian Talmud, Tractate
Pesachim, p. 53b).
Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, the Book of Daniel tells us, were prepared to martyr themselves
rather than bow down to a statue of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. In his homily, Todos
reconstructs the religious debate in which the three engage and which leads them to the decision
that they must be prepared to die as martyrs. (As Daniel informs us, they are miraculously saved
from the flames.)
When God smites Egypt with the Plague of the Frogs, Moses informs Pharaoh that the frogs “
shall go up and come into thy house, and into thy bed-chamber, and upon thy bed” (Exodus 7:28).
Moses also tells the Egyptian ruler that the frogs will come “into thine ovens, and into thy
kneading-troughs” (Exodus 7:28). A kneading-trough is a vessel in which dough is placed before
being put in the oven for baking. From the juxtaposition of the words “ovens” and “kneading-
troughs,” Todos deduces that the frogs jumped into the oven when it was already hot and ready to
receive the dough.
If the frogs, who were not commanded by God to martyr themselves in order to sanctify his name,
jumped into the burning ovens without hesitation, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah felt it stood to
reason that they must do the same.
The citing by Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah of the example set by the frogs in Egypt as grounds
for their courageous decision seems initially an instance of pure satire and could thus be expected
to lead the reader to feel critical of Todos’ homily.
If Todos wanted an example that could have guided the decision of Hananiah, Mishael and
Azariah, he should have instead chosen an instance that is not so farcical as the frogs’ decision in
Egypt. For instance, he could have, for example, cited, “but I will be hallowed among the children
of Israel” (Leviticus 22:32), concerning which the sages comment: “When God says that ‘but I
will be hallowed,’ it stands to reason that individuals should be willing to offer themselves as
martyrs in order to sanctify his name. Does this mean that individuals should martyr themselves
when no one can see their act? No, it is written in the Torah ‘among the children of Israel,’ which
means that the act should be carried out in public” [Sifra, Parashat Emor, chapter 9, section 4].
In other words, Jews must be prepared to martyr themselves in public in order to sanctify God’s
name.
This midrash and others like it reflect the difficult political situation in which the sages found
themselves during their lifetime. In certain cases, the sages obligate a Jew to agree to become a
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martyr; in other cases, they praise martyrs who have given their lives to sanctify God’s name and,
in other cases, they grieve for the bitter fate the martyrs have taken upon themselves in their
willingness to endure such a harrowing experience. However, the sages never ridicule the act of
martyrdom.
In contrast, Todos presents an alternative to the sages’ approach. He lived far away from them, in
Rome, and led a community whose members followed an alternative to the Temple praxis (or the
post-Temple praxis of mourning over the Temple’s destruction – it is difficult to determine during
which period of time Todos lived).
The Talmudic discussion does not dissipate the doubts as to the nature of Todos’ status. Did the
sages not excommunicate him because he was a learned Talmudic scholar – that is, a great
individual – or because he was a powerful leader whom the sages feared?
Although the Talmud generally prefers to provide a binary response to such questions, a hint as to
Todos’ interim status as an esteemed Talmudic scholar who operated outside the conventional
system might be found in the assertion, “It is only because you are Todos that we are not decreeing
upon you a sentence of excommunication.” That assertion is an echo of a similar statement
regarding Honi Hame’agel (Honi the Circle-Drawer) that appears in Tractate Taanit in the
Babylonian Talmud. After Honi seems to have forced God to bring rainfall, Simeon, son of
Shetach, declares, “It is only because you are Honi that I am not decreeing upon you a sentence
of excommunication. However, I am powerless, because you ingratiate yourself before God, who
seems to do what you wish. You are like a son who ingratiates himself before his father so that the
latter will do what the son wishes.
“Concerning your actions, it is written in the Torah, ‘Let thy father and thy mother be glad, and let
her that bore thee rejoice’ [Proverbs 23:25]” (Mishnah, Tractate Taanit, 3:8).
Like Honi, who preceded him, Todos was a different breed of saint – one of the common people,
someone who operated outside the system and did not play according to the sages’ rules. Like
Honi, Todos redefines his relationship with the public and with God, who grants this saint’s actions
divine approval. Only a person like Honi can escape the fate of being excommunicated by the
sages; similarly, only a person like Todos can evade the fate of being excommunicated. However,
unlike Honi, Todos goes one step further than the establishment of an alternative to the sages: He
actually criticizes them directly.
It is in this light that one should read Todos’ above-mentioned discussion of the religious issue of
martyrdom as a satire directed against the sages. In Todos’ homily, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah
represent the sages of the Holy Land who deduce the laws of martyrdom not from the verses that
define what is meant by the sanctification of God’s name but rather from the frogs in the Plague
of the Frogs in Egypt. This satire is included in the Talmud as a foundation stone in the debate as
to whether Todos was a great individual or merely a powerful leader.
The fact that he knows how to imitate the game the sages play with regard to religious rulings
enables the Talmud to grant him the benefit of the doubt and to describe him as a great individual.
Todos' astute satire indeed proves that he was a particularly clever person who was a great
individual and who, despite the Talmud’s refusal to call him a powerful leader who inspired fear
16
in the sages’ hearts, was indeed a powerful person whose powerful homilies easily crossed the
Mediterranean to penetrate the thick walls of Talmudic debate in Tractate Pesachim.
Learning Responsibility from the Frogs
Rabbi Yehonasan Gefen writes:9
After the first plague of blood, Moses warned Pharaoh that if he continues to refuse Moses' request
to let the Jewish people leave Egypt, then there would be a new plague: "And the river will swarm
with frogs; they will rise up and go into your homes, your bedrooms; onto your beds; and in the
homes of your servants and your people; and into your ovens and your kneading bowls." (1) After
Pharaoh's refusal, the frogs did indeed swarm all over Egypt, including into the ovens of the
Egyptians.
The Gemara tells us that several hundred years later, the actions of the frogs who entered the ovens
served as a lesson to three great men; Chanania, Mishael and Azariah. They lived in Babylon under
the rule of Nebuchadnezzar. He made a decree that everyone must bow to a statue in his image,
and the punishment for not doing so was to be thrown into a fire. The law states that one must give
up his life rather than worship idols, however, the commentaries explain that bowing to this image
did not constitute actual idol worship.(2)
Therefore, technically speaking, it was permissible to bow to the image, and most of the Jewish
people did so. However, Chanania, Mishael and Azariah learnt from the example of the frogs who
went into the ovens in Egypt, that they too should be prepared to be thrown into a fire. They
reasoned that the frogs who were not commanded in the Mitzva of Kiddush
HaShem (sanctification of God's name), nonetheless were willing to go into a burning oven for the
sake of sanctifying God's name. All the more so (kal v'chomer), they, who, as human beings, were
commanded in the mitzvah of Kiddush HaShem, should be willing to be thrown into the fire.(3)
The Darchei Mussar points out a great difficulty with this Gemara. The three men's reasoning was
based on the fact that the frogs were not commanded to die for the sake of Kiddush HaShem, whilst
they were commanded to do so. However, Moshe's informing of Pharaoh that the frogs would
enter their ovens constituted a command for the frogs; accordingly, the frogs were commanded to
go into the ovens. That being the case, how could Chanania, Mishael and Azariah learn from the
frogs that they should allow themselves to be thrown into a fire?!
He explains that whilst God did command the frogs to go into the ovens, He did not restrict the
command to ovens - the bedrooms, beds, and kneading bowls were included in the list of the places
where the frogs could go to. Therefore, each frog had the choice as to where they would go - he
could conceivably decide that he would choose the more comfortable option of going to the bed
9
https://www.aish.com/tp/i/gl/185799812.html
17
or kneading bowl. Nonetheless, many frogs did indeed choose to risk their lives in order to ensure
that God's command was fulfilled. Since each individual frog was not commanded to go into the
fire and yet many of them still did so, Chanania, Mishael and Azariah learnt that all the more so
they should be prepared to be thrown into a fire.(4)
The Darchei Mussar continues that we learn a fundamental lesson from the actions of the brave
frogs who went into the ovens. It was possible for them to shift the responsibility onto other frogs,
however they declined the comfortable option and as a result, contributed to the enhanced
sanctification of God's name. So too, he writes, that when a person is given the opportunity to
perform a certain Mitzva he should not seek to shirk the responsibility placed upon him by hoping
that someone else will undertake the mitzvah. Rather, he should view this as a golden chance to
sanctify God's name. Sadly, it is not uncommon for a person to tend to view such opportunities as
burdens. This attitude seems to be fundamentally against the Torah outlook.
The Torah strongly espouses taking responsibility when things need to be done. The Mishna in
Pirkei Avot states: "In a place where there are no men, strive to be a man." This applies in both
minor daily occurrences and less common but more significant occasions. For example, there may
be a general request for people to help in a certain endeavor, it is praiseworthy to assume the
responsibility without waiting for others to do so.
On a larger scale, there are numerous major problems facing the Jewish world today (5) - instead
of waiting for others to take responsibility to rectify these problems, a person should see if there
is anything he can do himself. On one occasion, some American Torah students living in Israel
discovered that a significant amount of Americans living in Israel were living in extreme poverty
but were too ashamed to tell anyone. Rather than merely expressing sympathy for these people, a
few men undertook to create a new charity (known as Got Chicken) aimed at providing basic
necessities for people in dire need.
We have seen how praiseworthy it is to take responsibility and avoid waiting for others to do so.
If any more incentive is needed, the continuation of the story of the frogs shows what happened to
the frogs who went into the ovens.
After the plague stopped, the Torah states: "The frogs died from the houses, from the courtyards
and from the fields." (6) The Baal HaTurim and Daat Zekeinim point out that there is no mention
of the deaths of the frogs who were in the ovens. They explain that they were spared as a reward
for their self-sacrifice. We see from here that taking responsibility to do God's will brings only
good. May we all merit to take responsibility and reap the rewards.
NOTES
1. Shemot, 7:28.
2. See Tosefot, Pesachim, 53b, dh: Mah rau.
3. Pesachm, 53b.
4. Darchei Mussar, Va'eira, p. 105-6.
5. Just a few examples are the rate of intermarriage, children leaving Torah, people's difficulty in finding shidduchim, and severe
financial hardships.
6. Shemos, 8:9.
18
Siege and destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans.
Painted c.1504
Rome and its Jews

The Jewish community of Rome is probably the oldest in the world, with a continuous existence
from classical times down to the present day.10 The first record of Jews in Rome is in 161 b.c.e.,
when Jason b. Eleazar and Eupolemus b. Johanan are said to have gone there as envoys from Judah
Maccabee. The Roman Jews are said to have been conspicuous in the mourning for Julius Caesar
in 44 b.c.e. on the death of Herod in 4 b.c.e. 8,000 native Roman Jews are reported to have escorted
the Jewish delegates from Judea who came to request the senate to abolish the Herodian monarchy.
Two synagogues were seemingly founded by "freedmen" who had been slaves of Augustus (d. 14
c.e.) and Agrippa (d. 12 b.c.e.) respectively and bore their names. There was also from an early
date a Samaritan synagogue in Rome which continued to exist for centuries. Although the position
of the Roman Jews must have been adversely affected by the great Roman-Jewish wars in Judea
in 66-73 and 132-135, the prisoners of war brought back as slaves ultimately gave a great impetus
to the Jewish population.
10
19
From the second half of the first century c.e. the Roman Jewish community seems to have been
firmly established. A delegation of scholars from Eretz Israel in 95-96, led by the patriarch
Gamaliel II, found as its religious head the enthusiastic but unlearned Theudas. The total number
of Jews in Rome has been estimated as high as 40,000, but was probably nearer 10,000. Besides
the beggars and peddlers, there were physicians, actors, and poets, but the majority of the members
of the community were shopkeepers and craftsmen (tailors, tentmakers, butchers, limeburners).
With the adoption of Christianity by the Roman emperors the position of the Jews changed
immediately for the worse. While Judaism remained officially a tolerated religion as before, its
actual status deteriorated, and every pressure was brought on the Jews to adopt the now-dominant
faith. In 387-388, a Christian mob, after systematically destroying heathen temples, turned its
attention to the synagogues and burned one of them to the ground.
Following the fall of the Roman Empire in the west, the Christian bishop of Rome, the Pope,
became the dominant force in the former Imperial city and the immediate neighborhood, with
moral authority recognized, to a greater or lesser degree, over the whole of western Christendom.
Hence, over a period of some 1,400 years, the history of the Jews in Rome is in great part the
reflection of the Papal policies toward the Jews. However, down to the period of the counter-
reformation in the 16th century, there was a tendency for the Papal anti-Jewish pronouncements
to be applied less strictly in Rome than by zealous rulers and ecclesiastics abroad, while on the
other hand the Papal protective policies were on the whole followed more faithfully in Rome itself
than elsewhere.
The anti-Jewish legislation of the fourth Lateran Council (1215) inspired by Pope Innocent III does
not seem to have been strictly enforced in the Papal capital. There is some evidence that copies of
the Talmud were burned here after its condemnation in Paris in 1245. The wearing of the Jewish
badge was imposed in 1257 and the city statutes of 1360 ordered male Jews to wear a red tabard,
and the women a red petticoat.
20
Via Rua in Ghetto, (rione Sant'Angelo),
by Ettore Roesler Franz (c. 1880)
The entire tenor of Roman Jewish life suddenly changed for the worse with the counter-
reformation. In 1542 a tribunal of the holy office on the Spanish model was set up in Rome and in
1553 Cornelio da Montalcino, a Franciscan friar who had embraced Judaism, was burned alive on
the camp Dei Fiori. In 1543 a home for converted Jews (house of catechumens), later to be the
scene of many tragic episodes, was established, a good part of the burden of upkeep being imposed
on the Jews themselves. On Rosh Hashanah (September 4, 1553) the Talmud with many more
Hebrew books was committed to the flames after official condemnation. On July 12, 1555, Pope
Paul IV issued his bull, "Cum nimis absurdum", which reenacted remorselessly against the Jews
all the restrictive ecclesiastical legislation hitherto only intermittently enforced. This comprised
the segregation of the Jews in a special quarter, henceforth called the ghetto; the wearing of the
Jewish badge, now specified as a yellow hat in the case of men, a yellow kerchief in the case of
women; prohibitions on owning real estate, on being called by any title of respect such as signor,
on the employment by Christians of Jewish physicians, and on dealing in corn and other necessities
of life; and virtual restriction to dealing in old clothes and second-hand goods. This initiated the
ghetto period in Rome, and continued to govern the life of Roman Jewry for more than 300 years.
Occasional raids were made as late as the 18th century on the ghetto to ensure that the Jews did
not possess any "forbidden" books – that is, in effect, any literature other than the bible, liturgy,
and carefully expurgated ritual codes. Each Saturday selected members of the community were
compelled to go to a neighboring church to listen to conversionist sermons, running the gauntlet
of the insults of the populace. In some reactionary interludes, the yellow Jewish hat had to be worn
even inside the ghetto.
21
The Mouth of Truth, or Bocca della Verita, is the image of a man’s face carved
in marble.11
On the accession of Pius IX in 1846, the gates and walls of the ghetto were removed, but thereafter
the once-kindly Pope turned reactionary and relentlessly enforced anti-Jewish restrictions until the
end. During the Roman Republic of 1849, under Mazzini, Jews participated in public life, and
three were elected to the short-lived constituent assembly; but within five months the Papal
reactionary rule was reestablished to last, without any perceptible liberalization, until the capture
of Rome by the forces of united Italy in 1870. On October 13 a royal decree abolished all religious
disabilities from which citizens of the new capital had formerly suffered, and the Jews of Rome
were henceforth on the same legal footing as their fellow Romans. It was only during the period
after World War I, with the remarkable development of Rome itself, that Roman Jewry may be
said to have regained the primacy in Italian Jewish life which it had enjoyed in the remote past.
A few days after the Germans captured Rome (Sept. 9-10, 1943), Himmler ordered immediate
preparations for the arrest and deportation of all Jews in Rome and the vicinity – over 10,000
11
Located in the entrance of the Santa Maria in Cosmedin Church since the 17th century, the sculpture is thought to be from the
first century. Legends of its origins range from being a part of an ancient fountain, to a church, to a manhole cover, but the strangest
part of all is its powers as a lie detector. As far back as the Middle Ages, Romans believed that if you told a lie with your hand in
the sculpture’s mouth, your hand would be bitten off!
22
persons. H. Kappler, the S.S. commanding officer in Rome, first extorted 50 kg. of gold from the
Jewish community, to be paid by September 26 (on 36 hours notice), with a warning that 200 Jews
would otherwise be put to death. The gold, which was collected among the Jews without resorting
to outside aid, was delivered on time. Nevertheless, on September 29 a special German police
force broke into the community offices and looted the ancient archives; and on October 13 looted
the excellent and priceless libraries of the community and the rabbinic college. On October 16 a
mass hunt down of Rome's Jews was carried out by German forces, who under Kappler and
Dannecker's orders made house-to-house searches on every street, and arrested all the Jews – men,
women, and children. Some of the population assisted Jews in escaping or hiding, but nevertheless
1,007 Jews were caught and sent to Auschwitz where they were killed (Oct. 23, 1943). From then
on, until June 4, 1944, the day of the liberation, the methodic roundup of Jews hiding in the
"Aryan" homes of friends or in catholic institutions continued. In this latter period over 1,000 Jews
were caught and put to death at Auschwitz. A total of 2,091 Jews (1,067 men, 743 women, and
281 children) were killed in this manner. Another 73 Jews were among the 335 prisoners executed
in the fosse Ardeatine, outside Rome, as a retaliatory measure against Italian partisan action against
the Nazi occupants in Rome.
The rector of the German church in Rome, Bishop A. Hudal, made futile attempts to defend the
Jews. The pope was requested publicly to denounce the hunt for Jews, but he did not respond,
although he agreed to the shelter offered to individual Jews in catholic institutions including the
Vatican.
23
At the end of the war the Jewish population of Rome was 11,000. In the following years the number
increased due mainly to the natural increase, and in 1965 reached a total of 12,928 (out of a total
of 2,500,000 inhabitants). After the Six-Day War in the Middle East (1967), about 3,000 Jews
arrived from Libya. Some of them subsequently migrated to Israel, but the majority were absorbed
by the community. The community of Rome is the only one in Italy that shows a demographic
increase, with a fertility rate not far below that of the Italian population as a whole, a fairly high
marriage rate, and a limited proportion of mixed marriages. On the other hand, the general cultural
and social level is inferior to that of the other Italian communities. Apart from the great synagogue
of Italian rite, there are two prayer houses of Italian rite, an Ashkenazi synagogue, and two
synagogues of Sephardi rite. Among the Jewish institutions there is a kindergarten, an elementary
school, and a high school. There are many relief organizations, an orphanage, a Jewish hospital,
and a home for invalids. Rome is the seat of the chief rabbinate of the union of the Italian Jewish
communities, and of the Italian rabbinical college. In the 1970s the following Jewish journals were
published: Israel, Shalom, Karnenu, and Portico d'Ottavia.
The Torah of Rome
Tal Ilan writes:12
12
Jewish Studies Quarterly Vol. 16, No. 4 (2009)
24
Leonard Rutgers13 has made a most impressive attempt to identify something of the literary
output of the Jews of Rome. He identified two compositions, written in Latin, which show an
interest in and an interaction with topics uniquely Roman, yet which are patently Jewish in
character. These two compositions, he maintained, are part of the literary output of the Jews of
Rome from antiquity, and the only one which have come down to us.
The compositions he identified as Jewish are the Collado Legum Mosaicarum et Romanarum,
which is a comparison of the laws of Moses with Roman law, and the Epistola Anne ad Senecam,
namely the letter of a certain Annan to the philosopher Seneca. The first of these compositions
shows a keen interest in Roman law and the second a proclivity for philosophical discourse, and it
is also (certainly pseudepigraphically and probably secondarily) associated with the Roman stoic
philo.
There are basically four early traditions about the rabbis and Rome in the tannaitic layers and I
shall begin with them.
a. The Elders of Rome:
The Mishnah preserves a tradition about idolatry assigned to the Elders of Rome (mAvodah Zarah
4:7). In this tradition, they explain why God refrains from destroying the objects of idolatrous
adoration (i.e., the sun and the moon). This is not really a halakhic dictum. In the Tosefta parallel
to this tradition, the same discussion is described as a dispute between elders and (presumably
Roman) philosophers (tAvodah Zarah 6:7). Who are these elders of Rome? Could they represent
an authentic group of Jewish-Roman leaders? To argue for such a position is somewhat hazardous,
but perhaps there is some justification for placing the following evidence side by side with it. In
the Jewish catacomb inscriptions from Rome, the title gerusiarch is one of the most common. This
title refers to the leader of the gerusia, namely a Jewish council of elders (from the Greek - geron)
in Rome. It has recently been argued that such a central council may have run the affairs of the
entire Jewish community in the city.
Thus, the association of elders with the Roman Jewish community is not altogether implausible.
Gerusiarch is a Greek title that implies "leader of the elders." This title is recorded for persons in
Rome. However, the more common Greek designation for elder is presbyterus, and although this
title was very common for Jews in many Jewish inscriptions from the Diaspora, in Rome, it is only
recorded on two inscriptions, both from the catacomb of Monteverde, once for a man and once
for a woman. More interesting, however, are those two instances in which the title is used to
describe somebody not mentioned in the Bible. One of them is a clear parallel to rabbinic literature:
Pseudo-Philo 9:14 is a retelling of Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael (Be-shalah, de- shirah 10).
In this text, Amram, Moses' father, is described as the leader of the Jews in Egypt. What he does,
they do. In the Pseudo-Philo parallel, we find the leaders of the Jews in Egypt arguing with him.
These leaders are designated "presbiteri," perhaps imagined by the author as members of a council
13
Rutgers, Jews in Late Ancient
25
of elders running the Jewish community, of whom Amram was the head (gerusiarch). In another
rabbinic parallel to this midrash, Amram is described as the leader of his generation ( bSotah 12a).
However, the most interesting text that uses this term in Pseudo-Philo is 11:8. This is part of a
paraphrase on the Ten Commandments. It describes the Sabbath as follows: "Keep the Sabbath
day to sanctify it. For six days do work, but on the seventh day is the Lord's Sabbath. You shall not
do any work on it, you and all your servants [until here a fairly faithful rendition of the biblical
text], except to praise the Lord in the congregation of elders (ecclesia presbiterorum), and to
glorify the mighty one in the assembly of the aged (cathedra seniorum)." The Greek termini
"ecclesia presbiterorum" (and "cathedra") are probably a reference to the author's understanding
of the Jewish leadership, as being primarily that of elders, sitting in council. This last example
indicates that Pseudo- Philo knows also of the Latin term for elder, "seniores."
All in all, we can see how the mixture of Greek and Latin terms in Pseudo-Philo coincides with
the evidence from the inscriptions from Rome and Italy, and inter- sects also with a mishnaic text
about Jewish leadership in Rome. The mishnah under discussion here (mAvodah Zarah 4:7). From
the formulation of their title, it is not clear whether it should be translated (as I have above) "The
elders of Rome" or "the elders in Rome." The difference is, however, meaningful. If these are the
"elders of Rome," this indicates that a convocation of elders existed in Rome, and its traditions
were reported in, and preserved by, the rabbinic academies in the Land of Israel. If, however, they
are not "of Rome," but rather "in Rome," they could be sages coming from the Land of Israel for
a visit, but not staying. At least two traditions (tBesah 2:12 Vienna ms.; Genesis Rabbah 20:4),
and one modern scholar89 expli-citly say so. This brings us to the second tannaitic tradition about
rabbis in Rome.
b. Rabban Gamliel in Rome:
In an early, tannaitic tradition we are in- formed that a delegation of important rabbis from the
Land of Israel visited Rome early in the second century. This delegation included Rab- ban
Gamaliel, the Patriarch, Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah, Rabbi Joshua and Rabbi Aqiva (Sifre
Deuteronomy 43). In this early tradition, it is not at all clear why they visited Rome, and their
presence there is only related in order to tragically compare Rome's thriving vitality with Jer-
usalem's ruin. How historical it is, is very doubtful. However, stories about this legendary
delegation abound in later sources. They buy and release prisoners (yHorayot 3:4, 48b), they visit
the Jewish community of Rome (y Sanhédrin 7:13, 25d), they engage in diplomacy (bShabbat
127b; Deuteronomy Rabbah 2:24), they teach Torah (b Yoma 86a; Exodus Rab- bah 30:9), and
they engage in philosophical discourse with Roman philosophers, and with the emperor Hadrian
{Genesis Kabbah 13:9, 20:4). Yet all these late traditions seem to be elaborations and speculations
by later rabbis about what the founders of the Yavneh academy were doing in Rome.
c. Todos of Rome:
Further rabbinic evidence for a congregation of elders in Rome is not easy to deduce, but the early
rabbis also tell the following story: A certain Todos (or Theudas - Oimn in the Yerushal- mi) is
reputed to have induced the Jews of Rome to eat roasted lambs (or kids) during Pesah, in imitation
of the Pesah sacrifice in the Temple. (tBesah 2:15).
26
This person is not called "rabbi," and it is not clear at what date he would have introduced this
practice. Alon thinks that this was a reaction to the destruction of the Temple,14 but the text does
not say so. Some scholars considered this story an indication that the rabbis had authority over the
ritual behavior of Jews in Rome, because in some versions of the story the rabbis threaten Todos
with excommunication for acting against their dicta. However, as Bokser has shown, this aspect is
only present in the later, talmudic versions of this story (yPesahim 7:1, 34a; bPesahim 53a), and is
obviously an intentional alteration, ideologically motivated.15 If the story of Todos teaches us
anything at all about the Jews of Rome and the rabbis at the time of Yavneh, it is that they knew
about a curious incident that had taken place in the Jewish community there, and had used it as a
precedent in their legal discussions. It also suggests that the Jews of Rome at the time of Yavneh
did not follow rabbinic dicta, but that apparently later rabbinic authorities viewed their standing in
Rome as strong enough to think that threatening Todos might produce the required result of
bringing the Roman Jews to heel.
d. Rabbi Eleazar bar Rabbi Yosi in Rome:
Rabbi Eleazar bar Rabbi Yosi is mentioned in Rome in three traditions, all in the Tosefta. In the
first, he is described as having seen the Temple curtain there (tYoma 3:8). In two others, he relates
how he taught (apparently the sages) in Rome two purity regulations connected with menstruating
women (tNiddah 7:1; tMiqvaot 4:7). The genres of these traditions are not the same. The first one
(much like the Todos incident) is used as a rabbinic precedent. The rabbis wish to know if the
priests, when sacrificing, used to throw the blood of the sacrifice randomly. Rabbi Eleazar bar
Rabbi Yosi volunteers his evidence that he had seen the curtain in Rome, and that it was sprinkled
with blood. That the Temple curtain was taken to Rome is found in an independent tradition
recorded by Josephus.
This Tosefta tradition initiates the literary topos of Jerusalem's spoils, carried off after the
destruction of the Temple and deposited in Rome. In the Yerushalmi it is added that Rabbi Eleazar
bar Rabbi Yosi had also seen the headdress of the high priest there (yYoma 3:1, 41c). This tradition
is modeled on the Toseftan baraita about the curtain, but we have no supporting evidence from
Josephus that the high-priestly vestments were also carried away to Rome. Such traditions are
further elaborated in later sources. Obviously the Bavli knows of them (bShabbat 63b; b Y- oma
57a). Midrash Esther Kabbah knows of the same Rabbi Eleazar bar Rabbi Yosi having observed
the shattered remains of Solomon's throne in Rome (1:12). Avot de Rabbi Nathan catalogues the
items taken as booty by Rome that can still be observed there - the grinding utensil of the House
of Avtinus (in which the incense for the temple was prepared), and the golden table, and the
candelabrum and the curtain and the headdress of the high priest (version A, 41). In the late
Midrash Hagadol, Rabbi Shimeon is reported to have seen the Temple candelabrum itself (to
Numbers 8:1). Obviously, as time went by, these traditions became more elaborate.
14
G. Alon, The Jews in their Land in the Talmudic Age (70-640 C.E.) 1 (Jerusalem 1984) 26
15
B. M. Bokser, "Todos and Rabbinic Authority in Rome," New Perspective on Ancient Judaism 1 (1987) 11
27
In conclusion, early tannaitic sources offer a suggestive picture of the relationship between the
rabbis of the second century in the Land of Israel and the Jewish community in Rome. These
references at least imply that a certain relationship between the two locations actually existed.
They also imply that the rabbis may have known something of the internal organization of the
Jews of Rome under the guidance of a council of elders. Much more is not forthcoming.
At this point it may be wise to dispel the impression that another body of tannaitic sources exists
which describes a rabbinic yeshiva (study house) functioning in Rome. The Babylonian Talmud,
supposedly quoting tannaitic sources, claims that Rabbi Mathya ben Harash was a rabbi who
resided in Rome (bYoma 53b, 86a; bSanhedrin 32a; bMeila 17a-b). Some scholars have taken
these traditions at face value. However, this seems to be a complete Babylonian invention. Maty a
ben Harash is sometimes mentioned in tannaitic sources (e.g. mYoma 8:6; mAvot 4:15). None of
these appearances even hint that he was not a resident of the Land of Israel. One of the Babylonian
traditions that mentions Matya's sojourn in Rome {bYoma 86a) has a tannaitic parallel in which
the same rabbi is reported as going to Lydda instead (in the Land of Israel? in Asia Minor? -
Mekhilta de Rabbi Ishmael yitro, ba-hodesh 7). In another parallel to this tradition, in the
Yerushalmi, the story takes place simply in a yeshiva (yYoma 8:7, 45b). Why the Babylonians
deemed it important to place Matya ben Harash in Rome is anyone's guess, but the assertion clearly
has no strong historical, or even literary, foundation.
The most illuminating text on the rabbinic presence and concerns in Rome is from the
Yerushalmi:
This tradition presents a contradiction that the rabbinic establishment perceived between its
commitment to the Land of Israel and its desire to spread out among Jews in the Diaspora. Its
purpose is to problematize appointments, which the rabbinic academies conferred on their
members abroad. These appointments probably meant that people who under- went them were
awarded a title and allowed to teach in the name of the rabbinic establishment. Terminology,
however, is important. It may be noted that the ordination (or appointment mentioned above) is
not for the title "rabbi" but rather for that of "elder" (zakein). The connection with the Roman
environment is suggestive. The rabbis inquire whether such appointments are valid when
performed abroad. A rabbinic assembly in Caesarea (in the Land of Israel) rules that they are, if
the appointed rabbi intends to eventually come and reside in the Land of Israel. It is followed by
the mention of a number of rabbis who were appointed in various locations abroad, one of them
being in Rome.
28
Conclusion
I have argued that epigraphical material in Rome, and rabbinic literature, consistently portray the
Roman Jewish community as led by elders in council. I suggested that rabbinic literature and
epigraphy in Rome portray the Jews of Rome as literate, patronizing many scribes, and
occasionally as a Torah learning community, counting among its numbers, scholars of the sages. I
suggested that this study of Torah, influenced by rabbinic traditions and teachings, induced the
production of Pseudo-Philo in Latin. It is an aggadic composition, showing little interest in the
law, but displaying a deep acquaintance with extra-biblical rabbinic interpretations, which could
be defined as midrash - expounding. I argue that the portrayal of the sages from Rome in rabbinic
literature as expounders (darshnim) complies with this picture. I thus suggest that Pseudo- Philo
is a representative of the Torah of the Jews.
Shalom Goldman writes:16
Israel Zolli (R) walking with Padre Gosselino Birola, who hid him from the
Nazis on the grounds of the Gregorian Institute, 1945.
The Apostasy of Rabbi Zolli
16
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/the-apostasy-of-rabbi-zolli
29
Right after World War II, the chief rabbi of Rome scandalized fellow Jews by
becoming a Christian
Do you think I love the Jews less because I have become a Catholic? … No, I shall never stop
loving the Jews. I did not compare the Jewish religion to Catholicism and abandon one for the
other. This is the greatest tragedy of my life. I slowly, almost imperceptibly became a Christian
and could no longer be a Jew.
—Israel Zolli
On Feb. 13, 1945, in a private ceremony conducted in the chapel of Santa Maria degli Angeli,
prominent members of the Jesuit order officiated at the baptism of Israel Zolli and his wife Emma
Majonica into the Catholic Church. At the time, the 64-year-old Zolli—who died 60 years ago this
week—had been the chief rabbi of Rome for seven years. In honor of Pope Pius XII, he took the
first name Eugenio. He and his wife, who was several years younger, had two adult daughters.
Miriam, the younger daughter, would join the Church a year later.
Neither his rabbinical colleagues, nor his congregants, had any idea that Zolli was planning to
convert to Catholicism. Nine months before his baptism, in June 1944, Zolli had officiated at a
Sabbath ceremony held at Rome’s central synagogue, the Tempio Maggiore, to commemorate the
war dead and celebrate the liberation of Rome from German occupation. Several thousand people
attended this ceremony, including many of Rome’s surviving Jews. In his remarks, Zolli offered a
message of hope and rejuvenation: “Everywhere Abel’s blood comes from the earth, blood of
innocent Abel slain by Cain. Nevertheless, we shall rebuild the ruins and reconstruct upon the
ruins.” The rabbi’s words that day moved many to tears. Nine months later, news of the rabbi’s
apostasy would again move many members of the congregation to tears, but these would be tears
of sorrow.
Following their rabbi’s apostasy, the congregants of Tempio Maggiore gathered to sit shiva,
ritually mourn, for Zolli. More people attended this meeting than had attended the earlier service
commemorating the liberation of Rome from the Nazis. Zolli’s Jewish critics saw his apostasy as
sudden and unexpected. They portrayed Zolli as a coward and an opportunist who left Rome’s
Jewish community at the moment of its greatest need. In the words of American Rabbi Louis I.
Newman, “Conceived, as we shall see, chiefly in spitefulness and spleen against his own flock,
Zolli desired his apostasy to be given the greatest publicity. Only thus could he feed his revenge.”
According to Newman’s theory, which was shared by others, this spitefulness and desire for
revenge stemmed from Zolli’s frustration with the way he was treated by the leaders of Rome’s
Jewish community during the war. Italian Jews had faced official discrimination beginning in
1938, but they were not threatened with extermination until German forces moved into Italy after
Mussolini’s fall in 1943. When the Nazis took over Rome, Zolli and his family went into hiding
with a Catholic family. The presidents of the synagogue and the community, however, expected
Zolli to remain in public view, and they criticized the rabbi for shirking his leadership role. Zolli
responded with the assertion that the Germans certainly would have killed him as soon as they
found him, just as they had systematically killed the chief rabbis of other Italian cities. Regardless
of the dangers Zolli and his family may have faced during the war, Zolli’s postwar critics
30
considered his apostasy to be an act of retribution against a community that had criticized his
behavior during the German occupation.
Zolli’s decision to convert to Catholicism, however, was not sudden. It was the culmination of a
process that had begun decades earlier. In 1917, when he was 36 years old, Zolli had the first in a
series of mystical visions of Jesus. Thus began his fascination with Jesus, but it did not lead him
to contemplate leaving Judaism. It would be another 28 years before he would consider converting
to Catholicism. It was his misfortune to convert right after the near-destruction of European Jewry,
at a time when his personal journey would seem most calculated to affront his fellow Jews.
A week after Zolli and his wife were baptized, T. S. Mathews, the Rome correspondent for Time,
interviewed Zolli. Mathews asked about Zolli’s renunciation of Judaism, and Zolli replied, “Do
you think I love the Jews less because I have become a Catholic? … No, I shall never stop loving
the Jews. I did not compare the Jewish religion to Catholicism and abandon one for the other. This
is the greatest tragedy of my life. I slowly, almost imperceptibly became a Christian and could no
longer be a Jew.” Mathews concluded that Zolli was “happy about his conversion, miserable about
his apostasy.”
Israel Zolli was born Israel Anton Zoller in 1881, in the town of Brody, in Polish Galicia, which
was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire but now is part of Ukraine. When Zolli was young, his
father owned a small textile mill, and his parents were well to do. The youngest of five siblings,
he lived in a comfortable, middle-class home in which Orthodox Jewish ritual ruled daily life. His
mother, who was descended from a long line of rabbinic scholars, insisted that her youngest son
study for the rabbinate, and he was accepted at the Italian Rabbinical College in Florence. In
addition to his rabbinic studies at the seminary, Zolli attended the University of Florence, where
he received a Ph.D. in philosophy.
In 1918, Zolli became rabbi of Trieste. With the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the
end of World War I, the city of Trieste had become Italian territory. Enthusiastic about the city’s
new Italian identity, Zoller Italianized his surname and became an Italian citizen. He would spend
the next 20 years, from 1918 to 1938, in Trieste. During that time, Zolli would become an
important and recognized cultural figure in the city. He participated in numerous debates and
conversations that engaged topics from politics and culture to psychoanalysis and literature.
The Jewish community of Trieste included many influential businessmen and assimilated
intellectuals. As Zolli came into contact with these cosmopolitan Jewish leaders, they became
sources of new political and cultural ideas. We get a sense of Jewish life in early-20th-century
Trieste from the journals of James Joyce and his brother Stanislaus. James Joyce taught at the
Berlitz School in the city off and on from 1905 to 1915. He was surprised to find that many of the
students in his English classes were Jews. Among Joyce’s Jewish students and friends was the
writer Aron Ettore Schmitz, who wrote under the name Italo Svevo and is known today as the
author of the novel Confessions of Zeno and as a model for Leopold Bloom in Joyce’s Ulysses.
In addition to his rabbinic service in Trieste, Zolli was also an Italian academician with an
extensive publishing record, which culminated in the 1938 publication of his book The Nazarene:
Studies in New Testament Exegesis. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s Zolli taught at the University
31
of Padua. As one of his synagogue congregants noted, “It was understood at Trieste that Zolli
wished to be considered, first and foremost, as a scientist and a professor.” Between 1920 and
1940 Zolli published many scholarly articles, ranging over diverse topics, from modern Hebrew
literature to Italian Jewish history, even articles comparing Jewish and Christian ritual.
Zolli yearned to be a full-time professor, but his primary job was in the rabbinate. During the 20
years Zolli spent in the Trieste synagogue, the demands of his congregation grew in intensity.
Congregants in the large Italian communities of Trieste, Venice, Florence, and Rome expected
their rabbis to be both interlocutors with the Catholic authorities and defenders of the Jewish faith.
These congregations called on their rabbis not only to articulate Judaism’s positive qualities, but
also to shepherd and strengthen the Jewish community’s resolve to preserve its integrity within the
larger Catholic culture and to resist the Church’s constant pressure to convert.
In the history of Italian Jewry, the Church had played an aggressive and pronounced role in forced
conversions, often coercing Jews into apostasy. In Italy, more than in Germany, France, and the
Low Countries, the specter of forced conversion hovered over Jewish communities through the
late-19th century and into the early 20th. Past experiences of mass forced conversions, such as in
the town of Brescia in the 14th century, haunted the Italian Jewish collective memory. Under papal
order, Church officials continued through the middle of the 19th century to preach sermons in
Italian synagogues that emphasized conversion. At times, social pressure easily spilled over into
brute force, for example in the notorious Mortara case of 1858, when a Jewish boy was taken
forcibly from his home in Bologna after being secretly baptized by a family servant.
Thus, Jewish communities expected their rabbis to protect their congregants from the Church’s
attempts to bring them to the baptismal font. The idea that a rabbi would himself become a
Christian was inconceivable. And if a Christian inquired about the possibility of converting to
Judaism—not that many Italian Catholics did—the community rabbi’s job was to discourage him
or her politely but firmly.
But that situation began to change in the 1930s, when a group of peasants in Apulia sought to
convert to Judaism. Led by their charismatic “Prophet,” Donato Manduzio, these villagers from
southern Italy had consulted with Zolli about the many details of the conversion process. From
1938 to 1945, Zolli was one of the primary rabbis who advised Manduzio’s followers in their
conversion efforts. Thus, as he was slowly moving closer to the Catholic Church, Zolli was in the
difficult if not impossible situation of advising Catholics on how to become Jews. We can only
imagine the response of these villagers, who had placed their trust in Rabbi Zolli as a Jewish
authority, when they discovered that he had in fact decided to join the Catholic faith that they so
recently had chosen to abandon. In 1946, the year after Zolli’s apostasy, many in Manduzio’s
community became Jews.
32
And yet according to Zolli’s account in his autobiography Before the Dawn17, they were crossing
paths—as the new Jews entered the faith, he was exiting. In an interview conducted soon after his
conversion Zolli said, “I was a Catholic at heart before war broke out; and I promised God in 1943
that I should become a Christian if I survived the war. No one in the world ever tried to convert
me. My conversion was a slow evolution, altogether internal. I am beginning to understand that
for many years I was a natural Christian.” As an explanation for why he delayed his conversion
for so many years, Zolli cited the example of a prominent European Jewish intellectual, French
philosopher Henri Bergson. Zolli quotes Bergson, who wrote in 1937, “My thinking has always
brought me nearer to Catholicism, in which I saw the perfect complement of Judaism.” But unlike
Zolli, Bergson ultimately chose not to convert, as he wrote, “I would have embraced it if I had not
witnessed the frightful wave of anti-Semitism which for some years deluged the world. I prefer to
remain with those who would be persecuted tomorrow.” Bergson did not want to abandon his
coreligionists in their darkest hour.
For some time, Zolli, like Henri Bergson in France, was constrained by concern for his fellow
Jews. Following years of increasing anti-Semitism beginning in the mid-1930s, Italian Jews now
faced new and greater dangers. With the fall of the Mussolini government in 1943, the German
17
Before the Dawn: Autobiographical Reflections by Eugenio Zolli, Former Chief Rabbi of Rome Paperback – October 30, 2008
33
army moved into Northern Italy and soon after into Rome. During the German occupation, the
Nazis attempted to extend the “final solution” to Italy. The Gestapo, under Himmler’s direct
orders—and contrary to the orders of Gen. Reiner Stahel, the German military commander for the
city of Rome—rounded up thousands of Jews and sent them to their deaths.
The key event for Zolli was a vision he had on Yom Kippur of 1944. While “presiding over the
religious services in the temple,” he would later write, he found himself “devoid of thought and
feeling.” Then he had in his mind’s eye an image of Jesus in a meadow. “I experienced the greatest
interior peace.” He thus situated this crucial experience between the June 1944 synagogue
ceremony celebrating the liberation of Rome and the February 1945 church ceremony in which he
and his wife Emma were baptized. When the Allied Forces drove the Germans out of Rome in
early 1945, Zolli seems to have felt freed from his reservations about conversion. He no longer
needed to stand with the persecuted, for they had been liberated from persecution.
Immediately upon Zolli’s conversion, American Jewish leaders mounted a vigorous campaign to
discredit him. The New York Board of Jewish Ministers (later the New York Board of Rabbis)
sent a letter to its membership before Passover of 1945.
It read in part, “The apostasy of the ‘rabbi’ of Rome must be made known to our people as an act
of desertion and apostasy.” Rabbi Louis Newman’s 1945 book A ‘Chief Rabbi’ of Rome Becomes
a Catholic: A Study in Fright and Spite further extended the campaign. The seeds of the book were
planted in a sermon that Newman preached in his synagogue, New York City’s Temple Rodeph
34
Sholom, in the spring of 1945. It is one of the many ironies of Newman’s involvement in the
orchestrated critique of Zolli that, as far as Zolli was concerned, Newman was not a fellow rabbi
at all. Zolli, like his European Orthodox Jewish colleagues, did not consider American Reform
rabbis such as Newman to be true rabbis, but merely pretenders to the title.
After his apostasy, Zolli was free to lead a life of seclusion and scholarship, devoting all of his
time to teaching and research. He would teach at the University of Rome and at the Gregorian
University’s Pontifical Biblical Institute—as a full professor at a Catholic university. In 1953,
Zolli, now known as Professor Eugenio Zolli, organized a conference in Rome on “The Messiah
in the Old Testament.” It was a return to a topic he had first addressed in his 1938 book The
Nazarene: Studies in New Testament Exegesis. As a rabbi, Zolli had written about Jesus, but he
had done so in an objective, scholarly fashion. Writing as a Catholic scholar, he now could
emphasize the doctrine of the “harmony of the Old and New Testaments.” According to this
Christian concept, all references to the messiah in the Old Testament prefigure the coming of Jesus
in the New Testament.
In 1953 Zolli visited the United States, where he delivered a series of lectures at Notre Dame
University. As a recipient of one of the first fellowships awarded by the Fulbright Visiting Scholars
Program, Zolli taught a summer course for adults on “The Hebrew and Rabbinic Background of
Christian Liturgy.” Twenty-six students enrolled. Among them were nine priests, eight nuns, and
eight lay persons. An equal number of students enrolled as auditors.
But Zolli’s summer course at Notre Dame, while a great success, was not free of controversy.
Some in the American Jewish community, who remembered Zolli’s apostasy some seven years
earlier, were troubled that the State Department was making Zolli a Fulbright Fellow and that he
would be teaching at Notre Dame. In a syndicated newspaper column that appeared in many local
Jewish newspapers, the well-known journalist H. Ziprin penned an attack on Zolli. In an article
with the acid title, “They can have him,” Ziprin writes, “It will be remembered that Zolli did not
embrace Catholicism while in Vatican hiding but after returning to his rabbinic post in Rome after
the liberation of Italy, and it would therefore be within his character to make or contemplate the
change now that he is away from Vatican surveillance, though for our part they can have him for
the rest of his life.”
In 1954, in The Catholic World, Zolli published an article titled “The Status of the State of Israel.”
He presents the State of Israel in a thoroughly Christian context, but his assessment is infused with
a Jewish Zionist understanding of the state. The essay opens with a survey of ancient Israelite
history and an examination of the “fulfillment” of Israel’s purpose in the life and death of Jesus.
Zolli writes, “Jesus saw and forewarned the Jews of the approaching fall of the national State of
Israel, and approximately 40 years after his prophecy, a terrible page of history was written by
Titus in letters of blood and fire.” This was at the time the Catholic view of Jewish destiny.
But Zolli adds a Jewish perspective: “The countless victims of Nazism preceded the heroes who
died to create the modern State of Israel. Now, after indescribable martyrdom under Nazism, after
the terrible night of nameless misfortunes, the rosy outlines of dawn for the Hebrew state are
taking shape.” Zolli’s reference to the Israel of Jesus’s time as “the national State of Israel”
implicitly establishes the connection between the ancient and the modern that is at the core of
35
Zionist thought. In 1949, these ideas were antithetical to most Catholics. In Catholic theology,
“Israel” was the church, not the descendants of biblical Israel. Zolli concludes his essay by
exhorting modern Israelis to embrace Jesus: “But let not Israel’s pilgrimage end now. Let not the
State of Israel become the last and only objective of a suffering people, but may it go on to a more
glorious destination. May Israel become God’s pilgrim again.”
In 1956, three years after he returned from his sojourn to the United States, Zolli fell ill with
pneumonia. He died in Rome in 1956 at the age of 75, having spent his last decade as an active
Catholic thinker, writer, and teacher.
In the past decade, a body of Italian scholarship has emerged that focuses on Zolli’s life and
scholarly work. In 2004, Zolli’s 1954 autobiography, Before the Dawn, was at last published in
Italy, where it became a best-seller. In 2009, scholars from Padua, Milan, and Rome published an
edited volume that examined Zolli and his work. Then in 2010, Zolli’s 1935 book The Nazarene:
Studies in New Testament Exegesis was republished in Italy to critical acclaim. As historian Ana
Foa wrote in her review of the book, “Zolli was … a liminal figure whom the Jews, understandably
hurt by his defection, did not understand, and whom the Church in the postwar period, at a time
still light years away from Jewish-Christian openness, preferred to leave to the side.” In the 21st
century, Zolli and his work had at last emerged from obscurity.
In 1998 Stefano Zurio, a journalist for Il Giornale, interviewed Zolli’s daughter Miriam, a
practicing psychoanalyst in Rome who had for decades deflected questions about her parents’
conversion. Now, at age 76, she wanted to make clear that she did not consider her parents’
conversion an act of apostasy. During the interview, Miriam told Zurio, “It is important that you
make clear that my father never abandoned his Judaism. He felt he was a Jew who had come to
believe in the Jewish Messiah. But there was no rejection of his Jewish roots or of the Jewish
people. So many find that impossible to understand.”
36
Richard Pennington writes:18
18
https://richardpennington.com/2020/01/conversion-or-apostasy-the-chief-rabbi-of-rome-becomes-a-christian/
37
The present story, set during the fiery days of World War II, took place in Rome as well. The
central figure is Israel Anton Zoller, a.k.a. Eugenio Maria Zolli.
He was born in 1885 in the city of Brody, then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. There were
numerous rabbis on his mother’s side of the family, and Zoller, a serious scholar, became one
himself. Shortly after his appointment as Chief Rabbi of Trieste, Italy in 1918, he changed his
surname to Zolli—less “Jewish” and more “Italian.” He did so because soon after World War I,
Italian fascists had begun to make life uncomfortable for Jewish citizens. Twenty years later,
Mussolini and his supporters conducted a vicious press campaign against the Chief Rabbi of
Rome, David Prato. Zolli replaced him, only to find more trouble. War and repression were
brewing, and Zolli thought it prudent to temporarily shutter all public Jewish functions and for the
8,000-member Jewish community to disperse or go underground. Some or perhaps many of his
congregants accused him of cowardice, refusing to believe their lives were in such peril. By 1943,
with Il Duce deposed and imprisoned (and soon to be shot by firing squad and ignominiously hung
upside down at a gas station with four other unfortunates), the Nazis were in charge in Rome and
throughout the country.
Zolli, whose three brothers died in the Holocaust, had been in hiding in a series of Catholic homes,
arranged by Pope Pius XII. (Controversy has swirled around him for decades because he did little
to save Jewish lives in this dark time, and yet—as may be seen in the case of Eugenio Zolli—he
did not completely sit on his hands.)
He finally emerged in 1944 when American forces took possession of the city. Zolli would later
write in his autobiography, Before the Dawn, about a vision of Jesus he’d had while presiding over
a Yom Kippur service. On February 13, 1945, he, his wife and one of his daughters received the
sacrament of baptism in the basilica of St. Mary of the Angels and Martyrs and were incorporated
into the mystical body of Jesus Christ. But this was no sudden decision. Zolli had in fact been
studying and writing about what might be called Christian issues for at least 15 years. His book Il
38
Nazareno, came out in 1938; try to imagine the shock among Jews when a promiment rabbi wrote
a volume about Jesus Christ or “Rabbi Yeshua.” He would emphasize that nobody had proselytized
to him or tried to convert him. It was a slow, evolutionary and wholly internal process by which
he embraced Christianity.
Out as the Chief Rabbi, he taught at a local college and the Pontifical Biblical Institute. Zolli had
ample opportunity to state just what he had done and why. Yes, he had made a momentous break,
one that caused the Roman Jewish community to turn bitterly against him and call him an apostate,
a heretic and a traitor. Prato, whose place he had taken in 1939, was back. He proclaimed a fast of
several days to atone for Zolli’s defection, and local Jews mourned him as though he were dead.
“Members of the tribe” were forbidden to speak his name, a Jewish weekly was published with a
black cover, and insults and threats became the norm for his family.
Some critics claimed he had done it to make an easier life for himself or to appease his Christian
friends; more than an apostate, he was cynical and opportunistic. After all, Christians had been
trying to convert Jews for centuries. Might he be like one of those crypto-Jews who had faked
conversion after Ferdinand and Isabella sought to reconstitute Spain as a fully Christian country
in 1492?
In response to those who accused him of abjuring the Hebrew nation, Zolli said, “I have not given
it up. Christianity is the completion of the synagogue. The synagogue was a promise, and
Christianity is the fulfillment of that promise…. What I converted to was the living Christianity.”
Zolli, whose life abounded with both tragedy and heroism, contracted pneumonia, was hospitalized
and died in Rome on March 2, 1956.
He was buried in the Cimitero Comunale Monumentale Campo Verano; a cross adorns his marker.
With Pius XII dead two years later, he had few defenders outside of his family. Zolli dropped into
obscurity, and his writings were neglected until a new edition of Before the Dawn—full of insights
(some of them humorous) about ecumenical matters, mysticism, the law, the gospel and what it
meant to be a “completed Jew”—was published in 2004. It sold well, leading to his rediscovery
by scholars and the general public.
39

Daf Ditty Pesachim 53:: Theodosius of Rome "Todos Ish Romi"

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Daf Ditty Pesachim 53: THEODOSIUS OF ROME "Todos Ish Romi"1

Lapin convincingly argues that the rabbis must be understood as firmly

Eating Roasted Meat on Pesaḥ Following the Destruction of the Temple

In response, the Gemara offers two stories about him.

THEODOSIUS OF ROME "Todos Ish Romi"6

Not surprisingly, the rabbis were not pleased:

Yakov Z. Meyer writes:8

Learning Responsibility from the Frogs

Rabbi Yehonasan Gefen writes:9

Rome and its Jews

The Torah of Rome

Tal Ilan writes:12

a. The Elders of Rome:

b. Rabban Gamliel in Rome:

d. Rabbi Eleazar bar Rabbi Yosi in Rome:

Shalom Goldman writes:16

The Apostasy of Rabbi Zolli

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