Holy Water

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Recognizing its lack of relevance for non-Kohanim in his time, Reish Lakish suggested an alternate meaning: only one who ‘dies in the tent’ – who toils in Torah study – can become a true Torah scholar.

This interpretation, born of Diaspora necessity, encouraged sacrifice of comfort and ease of life for the sake of Torah study. However, in our contemporary reality as a sovereign nation in Israel, this explanation is no longer pertinent and continues to be misapplied by some voices of fellow observant Jews who abuse this teaching to justify refusing IDF enlistment – even during a milchemet mitzva (obligatory war) like the one we face today.

See: Parshat Chukat: The Time Has Come to Leave the Tent, Rabbi Dr. Kenneth Brander is President and Rosh HaYeshiva of Ohr Torah Stone

A Jew has converted to Christianity. Very shortly after his conversion, the priest comes around on a Friday to check on him to see how he is doing. He is appalled to see that the man is eating meat. He says, “You have just been converted. You did so, knowing the rules of the church, and here you are so soon after your conversion, already eating meat on a Friday against Catholic law.” And the Jew says, “Oh Father, don’t worry about it. I did exactly what you did! I sprinkled water over it, and I said, ‘Turkey, turkey, you’re a fish!’”

This joke does not work for contemporary audiences, because even Christians might not know that Catholics were not allowed to eat meat on Friday. But everyone of a certain generation would have gotten that.

The joke for me always starts with the punch line—“Turkey, turkey, you’re a fish!” This was less anti-Catholic than it sounds. It actually made fun of those who took conversion seriously. The joke belittled, ridiculed and played down the importance of formal conversion. In the late-19th and early-20th centuries, thousands of Jews were converting to Christianity in order to be able to enter the university, to be allowed to live in major cities like Kiev and St. Petersburg. There were so many restrictions against Jews that were lifted if you converted that for many it was just, as [the German poet and literary critic Heinrich] Heine said, “the ticket of entry to Western civilization.” The numbers were quite staggering, so there were many such jokes about the inauthenticity of the act.

This joke serves me a little differently. I use it within Jewish life, within modern life. It’s about the ease with which people are willing to rationalize the fact that they are abandoning principle, articles of faith, leaving important markers of identity. They just substitute one set of values for another! And they say, “Oh, this is Jewish!” For example, what is Judaism? It’s social justice! Tikkun olam! Nowadays people too casually trade in one marker of identity for another. This joke originally was composed to justify deceptions of convenience, in a time of repression and threat. But I use it more to question facile rationalization, justification for the abandonment of what should be preserved.

When I am trying to point out that someone has falsified the rules but pretends innocence, as if nothing serious were at stake, I say, “Oh really, ‘Turkey, turkey, you’re a fish!’” And then the person looks at me, and says, “What is this about?” Aha! Then I have my chance to tell the whole joke, and, if necessary, to explain, which real humor never does. Everybody knows that if you have to explain a joke, the joke is dead. To have to explain that Catholics have to eat fish on Fridays, that would ruin everything. But for my purposes, making my point, it doesn’t really matter if I annihilate the humor. What matters to me is the power of this joke, of this folk creation. If you can use a joke in this way, it diffuses whatever tension there was, and very often it can seal the point you are making, because it is funny. It allows the conversation to continue.

Ruth R. Wisse is professor emerita of Yiddish and comparative literature at Harvard University

See: What Is Your Favorite Jewish Joke—And Why? Moment Magazine

Most of the halakhot and statements relating to the am ha-aretz are concerned with the subject of ritual purity and impurity. Ritual impurity is not viewed by Judaism as something perilous and
frightening, but may rather be defined as a condition of negative taboo, transferable from one object to another. During the existence of the Second Temple and even after its destruction, the Sages made the laws of ritual purity a central principle within the totality of the commandments, heaped prohibitions on them, and dealt with them in innumerable halakhot. But it was particularly among sects that arose in Jewry in the days of the Second Temple, such as the Essenes and the Dead Sea sect, as well as among the associations of haverim, that the ideal of ritual purity was made the dominant factor. The great strictness
characterizing matters of ritual purity and impurity, the difficulty of complying with it, the danger of transferring ritual impurity from one person or object to another, all this led to a situation whereby ritual
purity became the guiding principle in the division of Jewish society into classes. For the extremist sects, the stringent, scrupulous observance of ritual purity was one, if not the, reason for quitting the normative
community. But also sects on its fringes, such as haverim, as well as Pharisees who were a part of society, ascribed supreme value to the observance of ritual purity. Accordingly, whoever was not scrupulously
observant of these commandments was defined as an "am ha-aretz and assigned to the lowest social class, while anyone more scrupulous in observing ritual purity was enjoined to exercise care not to come into
contact with him.

Another area which defines the 'am ha-aretz le-mitzvot - and it is the essential and central area in defining him - is his disregard of the essential laws and restrictions relating to purity. אֵיזֶהוּ עַם הָאָרֶץ? — כֹּל שֶׁאֵינוֹ אוֹכֵל חוּלָּיו בְּטָהֳרָה It has been taught, Who is an 'am ha-aretz? Anyone who does not eat his secular food in ritual purity. This is the opinion of R. Meir.'"It has been pointed out [see above] that in the days of the Second Temple and in the first generations after its destruction there was an increasing concern with ritual purity and impurity as these came to occupy a progressively central place in the Jewish religious consciousness.

A scrupulous regard for matters relating to purity led to a social differentiation based on the various degrees with which the laws and restrictions of purity were observed. The lowest position in the social
scale scale was occupied by the 'ammei ha-aretz, with whom any contact likely to cause impurity was to be avoided.

A social distinction between an element which was faithful and observant of the commandments and one which was unfaithful and lax in its observance of the commandments occurs in the biblical books
dating from the early days of the Second Temple period. Mentioned in connection with the making of the firm covenant are the rest of the people, the priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the singers, the temple servants, and all who have separated themselves from the 'ammei ha-aratzot [the peoples of the lands] to the law of God, their wives, their sons, their daughters, all who have knowledge and understanding. "
The term 'am ha-aretz, signifying here one who was unfaithful, was still far from having the meaning which it acquired towards the end of the Second Temple period.

The view current among scholars is that at the beginning of the Second Temple perind the term ‘am ha-aretz denoted the local population that had remained in the country and had not gone into exile. Between this ancient Israelite population and the returning exiles there was a profound religious contrast. As against the latter, the ‘am ha-aretz represented an element that was racially mixed and that had reli- giously a syncretistic faith. This produced a conflict between the exiles who, purged in the furnace of repentance, had abandoned idolatry, and the ‘am ha-aretz who had not undergone this process.

The 'Am ha-Aretz: A Study in the Social History of the Jewish People in the Hellenistic-Roman Period (Arbeiten zur Literatur und Geschichte des hellenistischen Judentums, Vol.8)

by Aharon Oppenheimer (Author), I.H. Levine (Translator) pp 17 and 83

The Monumental and Archaeological Complex of SS. Giovanni and Reparata houses some of the most important testimonies of the history of Lucca, from the Roman era to the present day, the result of a major excavation and restoration campaign that began in the late Seventies and concluded with the museumization of the entire complex in the early Nineties.

The visit to the archaeological area below, entirely accessible thanks to metal walkways, reveals the structures of the ancient city cathedral, formerly dedicated to Santa Reparata . The adjacent Baptistery , always connected to the church and enriched with modern furnishings and surviving frescoes, documents an evolution parallel to the church, which ended with the construction of the monumental late-14th century vault.