Page:Jewish Encyclopedia Volume 2.pdf/664

614 Beard

THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA

Beautiful

chemical agents, which left the face smooth, as if shaven. This was strenuously, though no doubt vainly, opposed

by two distinguished Talmuclists of

614

intended it to apply only to priests. In Poland and in the Slavonic countries, attempts were made, toward the end of the eighteenth century, to evade the Biblical prohibition of shaving, much to the vexation of the leading Talmuclists (Ezekiel Landau, "Nodi' bi- Yehuda," ii. Yoreh De'ah, 80). Hasidism, which just then sprang up in those countries, restored the Beard to its former dignity so that today, in all eastern Europe, the complete removal of the Beard is considered an evidence of a formal break with rabbinical Judaism (compare Smolensk! "Simhat Hanef," ed. 1890, p. 46, and the Yiddish satire " Die Bord " in Michael Gordon, " Ytidische Lieder, p. 15). Special stress is laid upon the propriety of the hazan's wearing a Beard (Joel Sirkes, "Bet Hadash," on Tur Orah Hayyim, 53; Shabbethai Begr, "Bettr Sheba'," p. 107), with reference to an old Talmudical prescription dating from a period when the absence of a Beard was a sign of juvenility (Hul. The fourth council at Carthage (398) similarly 245). decided "clericus nee comam nutriat, nee barbam radat " (the clergyman shall not let his hair grow, neither shall he remove his Beard) and even many centuries later, when the Church found it vain to oppose the removal of the Beard by the laity, it still insisted that the clerics should wear a Beard (Bingham, "Antiquities of the Christian Church,"



,



15, 16).

I. ii.

Popular imagination also has occupied the Beard.

itself

with

The following

saying, attributed to Ben " Sirach, was current in Talmudical times thinbearded man is cunning, a thick-bearded one is a

fool



but nobody can do any harm to a

parted beard

"

(Sanh.

160ft).

A

man with

The Talmud says

a

of

Beard as Worn by a Russian Jew. (From a photofrrapb taken

at

Jerusalem by Boafils.)

the time, the Polish rabbi Ilillel b. Naphtali (" Bet Hillel," on Yoreh De'ah, 187) and the Italian Joseph b. Solomon Fiametta (quoted in his son-in-law's ReOne sponsa, "Shemesh Zedakah," No. 61, p. 102d). of the questions constantly recurring in the responsa literature of the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries concerns the clipping of the Beard on the "middle days" of the festivals ("Hoi lm-Mo'ed"), because Talmudical law forbids the cutting of the hair on these days (see the responsa of the Amsterdam and Venetian rabbis in Moses Hages, "Leket ha-Kemah," on Yoreh De'ah, 138). Trivial as all this question appears, it was important in the history of the Jewish Reform movement in Italy. Isaac Samuel Reggio published (Vienna, 1839) a pamphlet entitled "Ma'amar ha-Tiglahat, " in which he attempted to prove casuistically that the regulations of the Talmud concerning the cutting of the Beard on the " middle days " no longer had application, on account of the changed circumstances. " This called forth the replies, " Tiglahat haMa'amar " (Leghorn, 1839) by Abraham Hay Reggio, and "Tisporet Lulyanit," by Jacob Ezekiel Levi In Italy the influence (Berlin, 1839). Modern of the non-Jewish population was so Views. strong that even so zealous a representative

of

rabbinical

Samuel David Luzzatto remarked

Judaism

Beard-Trimming. (From Leusden, " Phflologus Hebrfeo Mixtus,"

1657.)

as

in a private letter

that he no longer concerned himself with the prohibition of shaving, because he thought the Bible

the Pharaoh of the Exodus, that his Beard was an ell in length (M. K. 18r<). An oath upon the Beard and pe'ot is customary