Page:A Jewish Interpretation of the Book of Genesis (Morgenstern, 1919, jewishinterpreta00morg).pdf/219

 The Unity of unscathed.

contest

the

Therefore

Hniped.

He was wounded

who

in

201 the

hip

descendants, the children of

eat the sinew of the thigh.

do not tribes,

his

the Jacob Story

and

Israel,

Quite a number of Arab

are of the same Semitic race as Israel, and have

many

similar customs, still today do not eat the chief muscle of the hindquarter out of superstitious fear that it The same custom was practiced by will make them ill/ certain North American Indian tribes, who accounted for There the origin of this rite by a very interesting story. ^

can be no doubt that

this

same

practice

existed

in

Israel

real origin and purpose

from antiquity so remote that its were forgotten at a comparatively early

date,

and that

this

tradition of Jacob limping after his bout with the evil spirit

of the night arose in time to account for 1

Musil, Arabia Petraea, III, 150.

2

The

story

Spirits of the

upon a time a

it.

as recorded by Frazer (The Golden Bough; The Corn and the JVild, II, 265), is as follows: "Once man found a burrow of porcupines, and going down

into it after the porcupines he lost his way in the darkness, till a kind giant, called 'He who sees before and behind', released him by cleaving open the earth. So the man, whose name was Tireless and Homeless', lived with the kind giant, and the giant hunted elans and beavers for him, and carried him about in the sheath of his flint

'But know, my son,' said the giant, 'that he who uses the sky as his head is angry with me and has sworn my destruction. If he slays me the clouds will be tinged with my blood: they will

knife.

be red with

it,

probably.'

Then he gave

the

man an axe made

of

But from under the ice the man heard a dull mufiled sound. It was a whale which was making this noise because it was naked and cold. Warned by the man, the giant went toward the whale, which took human shape, and rushed upon the giant. It was the wicked giant, The two struggled together for a long the kind giant's enemy.

the tooth of a gigantic beaver, and went forth to meet his foe.

time,

till

the kind giant cried, 'Oh.

The man

my

son

!

cut, cut the

sinew of the

and the wicked giant fell down and was slain. That is why the Indians do not eat the sinew of the leg. Afterwards, one day the sky suddenly flushed a ifiery red, so Fireless and Homeless knew that the kind giant was no more, and he wept". Cf. ibid. 264-267 for further instances of the same custom. leg.'

cut the sinew,