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What is disgrace? A new interpretation of Pesahim 116:a

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מתנ’ … ולפי דעתו של בן אביו מלמדו מתחיל בגנות ומסיים בשבח ודורש מארמי אובד אבי עד שיגמור כל הפרשה כולה:

גמ’ … מאי בגנות רב אמר מתחלה עובדי עבודת גלולים היו אבתינו [ושמואל] אמר עבדים היינו אמר ליה רב נחמן לדרו עבדיה עבדא דמפיק ליה רביה לחירות ויהיב ליה כספא ודהבא מאי בעי למימר ליה אמר ליה בעי לאודויי ולשבוחי א”ל פטרתן מלומר מה נשתנה פתח ואמר עבדים היינו

Mishnah … And according to the understanding of the son, his father teaches him. He begins with disgrace and ends with praise and he expounds from ‘My father was a wandering Aramean…’ until he finishes the entire section.

Gemara … What is ‘with disgrace’? Rav said at first our fathers were idol worshippers. [Shmuel] said we were slaves. Rav Nahman said to Daro his slave, ‘a slave whose master released him to freedom and gave him silver and gold, what does he have to say to him?’ He said to him, ‘he has to thank him and praise him’. He said, ‘you have exempted us from saying mah nishtanah’. He opened and said, ‘we were slaves’

This is the sugya as it appears in the Vilna Shas. The standard understanding of the sugya is that Rav and his interlocutor are discussing what should come between mah nishtanah and the exposition of parshat habikkurim (Devarim 26:5-8) at the Seder. The Mishnah specifies that this intermediate section should begin with ‘disgrace’ and end with ‘praise’, but does not specify what these are. The gemara asks only about the ‘disgrace’. Rav states that it refers to the fact that our earliest ancestors worshipped idols. A second opinion, either anonymous of that of Shmuel, claims that our disgrace consisted of having been slaves in Egypt. Commentators from the era of the Geonim and Rishonim add little except to state that we rule according to both opinions.1 This is what we find in our Haggadah. Immediately after mah nishtanah we state that we were slaves in Egypt. A little later we follow Rav in declaring that our ancestors worshipped idols. The second opinion quoted in the gemara comes first based on the story brought by the gemara immediately following the debate. In this story, R. Nahman asked his servant a question, declared that the answer was sufficient to exempt the assembled from mah nishtanah, and ‘opened’ with ‘we were slaves’.

In this essay, I wish to advance an entirely different interpretation of this sugya. First, however, we shall review the present state of knowledge. In so doing, I am heavily reliant on Joshua Kulp’s synthesis of scholarship in the Schechter Haggadah.2

Who are the participants in the dispute?

The first opinion is almost certainly that of Rav. This is how it appears in most manuscripts and printed editions and is corroborated by the presence of a very similar statement in his name in the Yerushalmi, which we shall look at shortly. The weight of the manuscript evidence, as well as citations among the Rishonim, however, indicates that the second opinion was stated not by Shmuel, but Rava.3 Since the gemara here has the formal appearance of a mahloqet, it is likely that a scribe mistakenly edited it to include Rav’s normal sparring partner, Shmuel. The gemara, properly understood, is, however, not really describing a mahloqet in the strict sense. Rav and Rava did not disagree with each other; one stated his opinion and the other stated his a century afterwards.4

Knowing which personality to attach to these two opinions is highly relevant. Rav was born in Babylonia, but made ’aliya and studied under Yehuda haNasi. On his return to Baylonia he made it his mission to bring with him the Rabbinical scholarship he had learnt in the holy land. Under his influence, discussion of the Mishnah became the default form of Jewish study in Babylon. Rava, by contrast, was responsible more than any other figure for developing an independent and distinctively Babylonian form of Judaism. When people talk – with admiration or derision – about ‘talmudic reasoning’ they are essentially talking about the form of scholarship he pioneered, characterized by abstruse discussion of small details, intensive questioning, and willingness to reinterpret the Mishnah in creative ways. It is in the light of the profound differences between these two Amoraim that we should read their respective opinions on what constitutes ‘disgrace’.

Rav’s opinion

According to the Bavli, Rav’s opinion is that the ‘disgrace’ with which the father should begin the story of yetziat mitzaryim is the fact that our earliest ancestors were idolaters. The Yerushalmi presents a similar, but more complex, picture.

רב אמר (ב)תחילהת (צריך להזכיר) בעבר הנהר ישבו אבתיכם וג’ ואקח את אביכם את אברהם מעבר הנהר וגו’ וארבה. 5

Rav said (in the) beginning (he has to mention), ‘Across the river dwelled your fathers….’ ‘And I took your father Avraham from over the river…. and I increased….’
(Y. Pesahim 10:5)

Here, Rav instructs us to begin the Maggid by reciting Joshua 24:2-4. The connection with his opinion as described in the Bavli is obvious, since the first of these verses states that the ancestors of Avraham ‘served other gods’. However, there seems more to it than that. If Rav had only wished to emphasize this feature, he could have mandated only the recitation of 24:2. Moreover, since the passage ends with Ya’aqov going down to Egypt, it seems unlikely that the passage represents the transition from ‘disgrace’ to ‘praise’.

Instead, argues Kulp, it seems that Rav’s true opinion is that the ‘disgrace’ referred to in the Mishnah includes our entire history as nomads living mostly outside the land of Israel. Such a conception of how the exodus story should begin ‘has a certain thematic affinity’ with the plain meaning of Arami oved avi, a point of some significance which we shall return to later. The Bavli sanitizes this opinion for a Babylonian audience who would not have been happy to hear, and perhaps would not have comprehended, that living in exile and not having a fixed geographical abode is a form of disgrace. It does this by taking one aspect of Rav’s conception of ‘disgrace’ and amplifying it into the entire story.

Rava’s opinion

Looking only at the Bavli, it is hard to see why Rava considered Rav’s definition of ‘disgrace’ to be inadequate and offered a different one. Wouldn’t he, and any other rabbi, agree that it is disgraceful to worship false deities? By looking at the Yerushalmi, though, we can understand better why he felt compelled to offer an alternative. From his point of view there was nothing particularly disgraceful in living outside the land of Israel or moving from one locale to another as economic opportunities dictated. Instead, Rava suggested, the ‘disgrace’ with which the father should begin his story is one that any Babylonian Jew would understand: being slaves to foreign people. 6

However, this does not entirely explain the matter. If Rava thought it unacceptable, or incomprehensible, to describe living outside of the land of Israel as a ‘disgrace’, he had another alternative available: the opinion of Rav as described in the Bavli. Kulp argues that Rava also wanted a story that was ‘more limited in historical scope, focusing on the immediate topic of the evening’. However, this doesn’t really explain anything, because after the father starts with ‘we were slaves’ he then has to expound the passage from Arami oved avi. Starting the story in the middle then going back to the beginning doesn’t make it more focused; it makes it more confusing. Others have suggested that this opinion represents a more corporeally oriented, or perhaps ‘nationalist’, alternative to Rav’s spiritual approach. The exodus, on such a view, is primarily a story about how we left Egypt and became a free people, not how we came to be servants of G-d. This interpretation is premised on the attribution of the view to Shmuel, based his famous opinion that the only difference between our world and the messianic age is the national liberation of the Jewish people.7 However, there is no reason to think that Rava should have had any such motivation.

The correct interpretation of the Mishnah

So far, we have taken it as a given that the Mishnah is instructing the father to do two separate things: first to ‘begin with disgrace and end with praise’ and, secondly, to ‘expound from Arami oved avi until he finishes the section’. There is however, another interpretation, which has most recently been argued with some force by Mitchell First. If we look at the Mishnah on its own, the second clause seems to be an explanation, or restatement, of the first. How does the father ‘begin with disgrace and end with praise’? He ‘expounds from Arami oved avi until he finishes the section’.

This interpretation explains why the Mishnah does not specify what the ‘disgrace’ and ‘praise’ are. It also works perfectly with the passage, Arami oved avi as understood on a literal level. The first clause, ‘My father was a wandering Aramean,’ is the ‘disgrace’ and the conclusion of the passage is the praise.8 It is also supported by at least one tanaitic source where the opening of parshat habikkurim is connected with disgrace (גנות).9 Most importantly, it removes the need to insert a preface before the exposition of parshat habikkurim, which is, on its own, a comprehensive retelling of the exodus story. There is only one problem, however. Rav was a student of Yehudah haNasi himself. It is simply not plausible that the correct reading of the Mishnah was forgotten and a first generation Amora should answer a non-existent question predicated on a basic misreading of a famous Mishnah with great practical relevance.10

Reinterpreting Rav’s opinion

If we step back, however, it is apparent that there is nothing in Rav’s statement that is incompatible with this reading of the Mishnah. Let us assume that it is understood that Arami oved avi is identical to ‘he begins with disgrace’. The gemara asks what is disgraceful about this phrase and Rav provides an answer. True, he explains, the fact that our fathers were nomads who lived much of their lives outside the land of Israel is not disgraceful, however, their fathers were idolaters, which certainly is. As well as reconciling Rav’s statement with the plain meaning of the Mishnah, it also removes the need to claim that the Bavli is sugar-coating Rav’s interpretation for a galut audience. It is more reasonable to suppose that Rav himself offered such an explanation to students who were perplexed about what was so disgraceful about the avot. Finally, we can dispose of the question of why the gemara only asks about the ‘disgrace’, but is silent on the ‘praise’. The question was why Arami oved avi constitutes ‘disgrace’; there was no doubt as to why the conclusion of parshat habikkurim constitutes ‘praise’.

We also need to look once again at Rav’s statement in the Yerushalmi. As a rule, scholars have interpreted this in the light of his better-known statement in the Bavli. This is a reflection of deeply rooted habits in rabbinic scholarship, as well as the fact that the the Haggadah that we use combines the two statements. Just as Rav in the Bavli is answering the question ‘What is “with disgrace”?’, they assume, so is Rav in the Yerushalmi. Since the answers are subtly different, this creates a tension between Rav’s opinion as reported by the two Talmuds. There is, however, no reason to think that Rav in the Yerushalmi is answering this question, or any question at all. Rather, he should be read as doing no more than what he says: telling us how we should begin the recitation of the exodus story at the Seder.

The recitation of Maggid at the Seder is quite unique. A short exemplary passage is chosen as vehicle to tell the exodus story. The main way this is facilitated is by linking phrases to passages in which the story is expounded in a fuller form.11 Rav is doing nothing more than telling us what the first part of the Maggid should look like:12

ארמי אבד אבי (כמה שנאמר:)13 … בעבר הנהר ישבו אבותיכם מעולם תרח אבי אברם ואבי נחור ויעבדו אלהים אחרים. ואקח את אביכם את אברהם מעבר הנהר ואולך אתו בכל ארץ כנען וארבה את זרעו ואתן לו את יצחק. ואתן ליצחק את יעקב ואת לעשב ואתן לעשב את הר שעיר לרשת אותו ויעקב ובניו ירדו מצרים.

My father was a wandering Aramean (Like that which says,) ‘… Across the river dwelt your fathers from of old, Terah father of Avraham and father of Nahor, and they served other gods. And I took your father, Avraham, from across the river and I brought him in all the land of Canaan, and I increased his seed and I gave him Yitzhak. And I gave to Yitzchak Ya’aqov and Esav, and to Esav I gave Mt. Seir to possess it and Ya’aqov and his sons went down to Egypt. 14

There would have been two good reasons for Rav to mandate that the recitation of the Maggid should begin with these verses. First, the story of the avot is extremely long and there is a chance that a father might simply get lost and perhaps not leave himself enough time for the main part of the story. Rav therefore points to a short epitome of the book of Bereishit as a way of effectively starting the Maggid. Secondly, as we have already seen, Rav taught that ‘disgrace’ was nothing to do with the avot themselves, but with their avot (our ‘pre-forefathers’). The Torah, however, nowhere explicitly mentions that Avraham’s ancestors worshipped idols. Therefore, Rav requires us to begin with a passage from the book of Joshua which does.

Reinterpreting Rava’s opinion

This explanation of Rav’s opinion has many advantages. It reconciles his statements with the plain meaning of the Mishnah and abolishes the alleged discrepancy between what he says in the two Talmuds. However, Rava’s opinion cannot be explained in a similar way. ‘We were slaves’ cannot possibly be an explanation of what is disgraceful about Arami oved avi. One could argue that the correct explanation of the Mishnah was lost between the era of Rav and Rava. This is possible, unlike the claim that it was lost between the Mishnah and Rav, but it is still unlikely and there exists a much neater explanation.

On daf 116b, immediately following the next Mishnah, we find the following statement of Rava:

אמר רבא צריך שיאמר ואתנו הוציא משם

Rava said, one must say ‘And he brought us out from there’.

This statement is quoted verbatim in the halakhot of Rif. However, despite the fact that Rava is apparently making a halakhic statement, it has received very little attention from commentators and poskim. In the Seder of Rav Amram Gaon, followed by subsequent haggadot, we find something apparently based on Rava’s statement immediately before Hallel:

בכל דר ודר חייב אדם לראת את עצמו כאלו הוא יצא ממצרים שנאמר בעבור זה עשה יי לי בצאתי ממצרים. שלא את אבתינו גאל הקב”ה בלבד אלא אף אותנו גאל שנאמר ואותנו הוציא משם למען הביא אתנו לתת לנו את ארץ אשר נשבע לאבותינו.

In every generation a man is obligated to see himself as if he went out from Egypt, as it says, ‘Because of this which HASHEM did for me when I went out of Egypt.’ (Shemot 13:8). For not only did the Holy One Blessed be He redeem our fathers, but he also redeemed us, as it says, ‘And he brought us out from there in order to bring us, to give to us the land he swore to our fathers.’ (Devarim 6:23) 15

The first part of this passage was probably taken by the author from the Mishnah, where it appears in many versions, though it was apparently absent from the original one. It states that each Jew must see himself as having left Egypt and uses Shemot 13:8 as a prooftext. The second part seems to do little more than reiterate the first in different words and with a different prooftext. In fact, it has been removed from its proper place. At the beginning of Rav Sa’adya Gaon’s version of the Haggadah we find the following passage:

עבדים היינו לפרעה במצרים ויוציאנו יי א-להינו משם ביד חזקה ובזרוע נטויה ואלו לא גאל המקב”ה את אבותינו ממצרים כבר אנו ובננו ובני בננו משועבדון היינו לפרעה במצרים ולא את אבתינו בלבד גאל המקב”ה אלא אף אתנו גאל שנאמר ואתנו הוציא משם.

We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt and HASHEM our G-d brought us out from there with a strong hand and an outstretched arm. And if the Omnipresent Holy and Blessed be He had not brought our fathers out of Egypt, we and our sons and the sons of our sons would be subservient to Pharaoh in Egypt. And not only our fathers did the Omnipresent Holy and Blessed be He redeem, but also us he redeemed, as it says ‘And he brought us out from there’. (Devarim 6:23) 16

This passage creates obvious exegetical difficulties since the last of the pharaohs had perished the better part of a millennium before Sa’adya Gaon was born. Nevertheless, two things are clear enough. The first is that Rava’s statement is actually an injunction to say Devarim 6:23. The second is that, in earlier versions of the Haggadah, this verse is stated as a conclusion to the section starting ‘we were slaves’. It would appear that Rava’s statements on 116a and 116b are connected. This has been hidden from most commentators by the incorrect attribution of his first statement to Shmuel, and the fact that his second statement was moved from its original place in the Haggadah.

We may further observe that ‘we were slaves’ is actually a quote from Devarim 6:21. If we read Rava’s two statements together it looks very likely that he instructing us to read verses 21-3:

…עבדים היינו לפרעה במצרים ויציאנו יי ממצרים ביד חזקה. ויתן יי אותת ומפתים גדלים ורעים במצרים בפרעה ובכל ביתו לעינינו. ואותנו הוציא משם (למען הביא אתנו לתת לנו את הארץ אשר נשבע לאבתינו):

… we were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and HASHEM took us out from Egypt with a strong hand. And HASHEM placed great and bad signs and wonders on Egypt, on Pharaoh, and on all his house before our eyes. And he took us out from there (in order to bring us, to give us the land which he swore to our fathers). 17

As Kulp argues, reading such a passage would take us through both the ‘disgrace’ and the ‘praise’ required by the Mishnah.18 Rava’s opinion, properly understood, is that we should read Devarim 6:21-23, which constitutes a coherent epitome of the story of the exodus, starting with our slavery.

So far argues Kulp, but I believe it is possible to go further. These verses are such an effective epitome of the exodus story that Tabory asks why they were not chosen in preference to parshat habikkurim as the basis of the Maggid. Kulp suggests the answer is technical: there is no material on Devarim 6:21-3 in Sifrei, whilst there are some comments on Devarim 26:5-8/9.19 This is not convincing, since the comments in Sifrei on 26:5-9 are extremely sparse and, anyway, it’s far from clear that the material in Sifrei predates the Mishnah. In any case, this assumes that the compilers of the Mishnah wanted the father at the Seder to recite a midrashic commentary on the verses rather than tell the story. The correct answer seems to me obvious: Devarim 26:5-8 starts at an earlier stage in the exodus story than 6:21-23. The compilers of the Mishnah had to choose whether to begin the recitation of yetziat mitzrayim with the children of Israel already in Egypt or include the story of how they got there. They chose the latter.

However, for someone who did want to start the story at a later stage, Devarim 6:21-23 would be perfect. I propose that this is precisely the meaning of Rava’s statement: the father should begin with ‘disgrace’ and end with ‘praise’ and he should do this, not by using the verses specified in the Mishnah, but Devarim 6:21-3. Such a ruling might seem to us enormously radical, but it would not have been so much so at the time. Many elements of the Seder ceremony as we know it are not much older than the Mishnah itself.20 Some parts of the Seder may go back two or three centuries further, but only among minorities within the Land of Israel. In Babylon, at least, the Seder would widely have been seen as something of a novelty and adherence to it was certainly far from universal. Rava would likely have faced an annual struggle to get the Jewish inhabitants of his city, Mehoza, to have any kind of halakhic Seder at all. It would not be so surprising if he modified the Maggid somewhat to make it more acceptable to Babylonian sensibilities.21

To sum up, the correct interpretation of the sugya on Bavli 116b is this. The Mishnah specifies that the father should begin reciting the exodus story at the Seder by describing the disgraceful fact that ‘my father was a wandering Aramean’. Rav explained that the disgrace described is that our earliest ancestors worshipped idols. Rava later suggested using a different passage, which began with a form of disgrace that was more comprehensible to Jews of his place and era. The only question that remains is why the meaning of the sugya was lost and replaced by the interpretation in which Rav and his interlocutor were arguing about what should preface Arami oved avi. This must have happened before the 8th century CE, since both Israeli and Babylonian haggadot from that era include Rav’s statement as a preface to the exposition of parshat bikkurim. This presents fewer problems, however, than any existing interpretations of the sugya. The list of cases in which the meaning of a passage in the gemara became obscure and was only rediscovered in the era of the Rishonim or by modern academic scholarship is long indeed. It is quite possible that it was already obscure to the compilers of the gemara itself.

Two reinterpretations of disgrace

It is possible to argue that Rav was simply maintaining the halakha as specified by the Mishnah whilst Rava was trying to create a new exilic version of the Seder. However, I believe the case is slightly more complicated than that. It is dubious whether Avraham’s ancestors can accurately be described as ‘wandering Arameans’22 and pushing the exodus story back to Terah seems excessive. It is more reasonable to suppose that the ‘wandering Aramean’ as understood by the Mishnah is Ya’aqov, who lived for twenty-one years in Aram and spent much of his life on the move. The recitation of parshat habikkurim at the Seder proceeds naturally from discussing Ya’aqov (‘my father was a wandering Aramean’) to the descent to Egypt (‘and he went down to Egypt’). Rav’s identification of the ‘disgrace’ as referring to Terah’s idolatry appears to be an attempt to defuse the zionist overtones in the Mishnah’s specification of how to tell the story of the exodus, whilst preserving its essential content. Rava, who perhaps considered Rav’s interpretation to be implausible, took the next step and suggested changing the core text to an alternative through which ‘disgrace’ could be explained in a way that was not offensive to Babylonian Jews. The recorded incident at Rav Nahman’s Seder indicates that Rava’s ruling was taken up and the haggadah of Rav Sa’adya Gaon preserves a trace of this practice. However, in the long term, Rav’s approach won out. The text Arami oved avi retained its place at the centre of the Seder, but the Mishnah’s implication that living outside the land of Israel is disgraceful was forgotten. Ironically, it was the misinterpretation of an imaginary debate between Rav and Shmuel that did most to obscure the meaning of the Mishnah and thus achieve Rav’s goal.

Footnotes

  1. See Rif, Rosh, and Rabeinu Hananel ad loc.
    Among the early commentators on the Haggadah there is somewhat more diversity of opinion. Ra’avan and Ba’al Shibolei haLeqet echo Rabeinu Hananel. However, Ritva argues that the mahloqet in the gemara is only about which form of ‘disgrace’ to say first and argues that the halakha therefore follows the second opinion. Both Avudraham and Ri ben Yakar agree that the halakha follows the second opinion and elaborate a somewhat cumbersome theory in which the Haggadah from ‘we were slaves’ until ‘matzah and maror laid out before you’ is actually the Haggadah of the second opinion, and from then onwards is the Haggadah of Rav. See Haggadah Shel Pesah ‘im Peirushei haRishonim: Torat Hayyim (ed. Ketznelenbogen, Jerusalem, 1998), pp. 30-33, 60.
  2. See pp. 201-3, 211-3
  3. The opinion is also attributed to Rabah, Rabin, Rav Yosef, and Rav himself. All of these attributions could have originated as copyist errors from Rava. In particular, the attributions to Rav are clearly the result of dropping a letter. Furthermore, the arguments in this essay are also compatible with the attribution of the opinion to either Rabah or Rav Yosef.
  4. This explains why the second opinion is not mentioned in the Yerushalmi, which we would expect had it belonged to Shmuel.
  5. Y. Pesahim 10:5. I have followed Kulp’s emendations based upon Lieberman, which render the passage more sensible, but do not change the meaning.
  6. Modern Jews, if they were to reflect on it, would probably be as troubled by the assumption that being a slave (as opposed to owning a slave) is disgraceful as much, if not more, than the assumption that living outside your homeland is disgraceful. Rava was presumably untroubled by such sentiments.
  7. See B Sanhedrin 99a, Shabbat 63a, B’rachot 34b.
  8. This is even more the case if the recitation was originally supposed to continue until Devarim 26:9. This seems to me to be a very reasonable assumption. Nevertheless, it is not actually necessary. Verse 8 can easily be considered a form of praise
  9. B Sotah32b. There is an equivalent statement also in the name of Rabi Shimon in Midrash Tanaim, which is a rediscovered midrash, not all of which can be relied on with perfect confidence. See First, ‘Arami Oved Avi’, p. 135 f. 22. See also footnote 23 for a list of Rabbinic and academic commentators who have interpreted the Mishnah in this way.
  10. See Kulp, Schechter Haggadah, p. 214. Two explanations have been offered for this problem. Rav David Tzvi Hoffman argued that the change in understanding the Mishnah happened as a result of dropping Devarim 26:9 from the exposition of parshat habikkurim after the temple was destroyed. The shevah of the Mishnah originally referred to ‘and He brought us to this place’ and when these words were dropped it became unclear what shevah referred to. Therefore, the Amoraim were forced into a different explanation of the Mishnah according to which the transition from g’nut to shevah was something different from the exposition of arami oved avi. Both the assumption that the exposition of arami oved avi went back to the temple era and the assumption that Devarim 26:9 was originally part of the exposition are dubious and this theory doesn’t really explain how the correct meaning of the Mishnah was lost so quickly unless we resort to the claim that even the compilers of the Mishnah were unaware of its meaning. More recently, David Henshke has argued that the identification of g’nut with arami oved avi was premised on understanding the verse to be referring to the nomadic status of the avot, but that by the time of the Amoraim this understanding had been pushed out by the interpretation ‘An Aramean tried to kill my father’. Again, this explanation can’t really account for the speed with which the correct interpretation of the Mishnah was supposedly forgotten. Moreover, the correct understanding of arami oved avi can hardly have been completely forgotten, since it is present in Sifrei, which may not even have been written down yet. See D. Henshke, מדרש ארמי אבד אבי, Sidra (4, 1998), pp. 34-9.
  11. Rovner argues convincingly that the comments beginning כמה שנאמר were among the last parts to be added the Haggadah text and that the ‘Midrash Arami Oved Avi’ section, in both the Babylonian and Israeli tradition, was far shorter until the 9th century. I do not believe this undermines my thesis. As I have argued elsewhere, it is quite impossible that the stub-like texts we find in early haggadot were ever intended to be read as they were written. Rovner correctly notes that ‘the original intent [i.e. of the Mishnah] was probably that the leader of the Seder supply ad hoc explanations’. It is highly probable that this was still the case for those who used the early haggadot, and that the scant material added to parshat bikkurim was intended just as a help. Further, the method of expounding parshat bikkurim was, I believe, must have always been to refer back to sections from the primary account of the exodus in Shemot. Thus, the Haggadah we know, if understood according to my theory, is a formalization of earlier practice.See J. Rovner, ‘Two Early Witnesses to the Formation of the “Miqra Bikkurim Midrash” and Their Implications for the Evolution of the Haggadah Text’, Hebrew Union College Annual (75:2004), pp. 77-8 and passim.I should emphasize, though, that all the Geonic-era haggadot we have are unanimous in interpreting Rav’s statement as preface to the exposition of parshat bikkurim.
  12. This has already been suggested byHenshke, מדרש ארמי אבד אבי, p. 50.
  13. See footnote 14. I believe the כמה שנאמר formula used to link elements of parshat bikkurim to sections of Bereishit or Shemot is earlier than its appearance in written haggadot, but it is probably anachronistic to include it in the Seder of Rav. Since, however, we have no idea what sort of formula was used, I include it so as to make Rav’s purpose clearer to the modern reader.
  14. I have included Joshua 22:4 because it is included in all extant haggadot. It seems to me that Rav, or whoever quoted his opinion, intended all three verses to be included and he thought that a verse break came in between ארץ כנען and וארבה את זרעו.
  15. Seder Rav Amram Gaon (ed. Goldschmidt, Jerusalem, 2004), p. 115.
  16. Siddur Rav Sa’adya Gaon (eds. Davidson, Assaf & Joel, Jerusalem, 1963), p. 137.
  17. Kulp, Schechter Haggadah, p. 202 argues that Rava intended the recitation to end before the parentheses, based upon Rava’s words in the gemara and how it is quoted in the Siddur of Rav Sa’adya Gaon.
  18. Schechter Haggadah, pp. 201-2.
  19. Schechter Haggadah, p. 215, f. 85.
  20. J. Kulp,‘The Origins of the Seder and the Haggadah’, Currents in Biblical Research (4.1, 2005), pp. 112-113, 125-128.
  21. Contemporary historical research leans to the view that, not only can we say very little about how Jews practised Judaism between the destruction of the second temple and the mid-4th century, but that we are not likely to ever be in a position to say much more. My arguments are compatible with a maximalist view of the role of Rabbinic Judaism in the Jewish world and I have phrased certain parts of this essay in accordance with that view. My arguments are, however, equally compatible with a minimalist view in which adherents of Mishnaic law were a tiny minority well into the Talmudic period. See S. Schwarz, The Ancient Jews from Alexander to Muhammad (Cambridge, 2014), pp. 98- 123.
  22. Ramban (Bereishit 11:28 and 12:1) argues that Avraham’s ancestors were originally from Aram. According to this view, one could plausibly claim that Terah was a ‘wandering Aramean’ who first travelled to Ur and then travelled to Aram. I personally find Ramban’s view convincing, but his proofs that Hazal shared this view rather less so.

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