Ben Hur the novel, pt. 7

So Lew Wallace has gotten everything wrong about Jews so far and has even thrown in some racial slurs. What sin is left for him to commit? From this point I’ll keep focusing on his ignorance of Jewish culture.

And in chapter 9 he shows his ignorance of kashrut. Mishnah Chullin 8:2 tells how a hostess at an inn or fundak behaves or how to deal with customers. Joseph and Mary are not going to stop where they can’t get kosher food, and somebody who knows what they’re doing has to run the kitchen instead of leaving it up to ignorant slaves.

Of course, the most frum Jews would bring food with them, probably non-perishables like bread and dried fruit. But if two different people are eating at one table, and one ordered chicken and the other cheese, can you serve each of them separately?

There’s no question in the Mishnah that the one who ordered the chicken won’t eat the cheese, and vice versa, which is treif; you can’t eat both meat and milk at one meal. You have to eat one and then let hours go by before you eat the other. The issue is, all right, you can’t put them on the same plate because the guests won’t share plates, but can you put each on a separate plate on the same table. Rabbi Shammai (the strict one) said it’s OK; Rabbi Hillel (the lenient one) said no.

But there’s a more subtle issue. Jews are prohibited from eating untithed plant food. To avoid transgression, Mishnah Demai 3:5 says if you give your hoteliere food to cook for you, you have to take tithes before you give it and again when you get it back, because she might mix it up with her own produce which, if she was ignorant, might not be tithed.

It even affects family relationships. Demai 3:6 asks whether a mother-in-law can be trusted if her daughter’s husband gives her tithed produce. The answer is yes, even if the daughter’s family is not as frum as the husband’s.

This is another barrier between Jews and Samaritans. Samaritans cannot tithe properly. When the kingdoms split, the Levites who were still in the north went south to Judea. The kohanim cannot get their tithes except for what is taken from the tithe belonging to the Levites. The inability of the Samaritans to tithe properly means Jews should not eat their produce.

On the other hand, Demai 3:4 says if you give tithed grain to a Samaritan miller to grind for you, you don’t have to worry that he’ll give untithed grain back.

And then there’s something even more subtle. Leviticus 11:38 says if you intentionally put water on produce of any kind that is intended for eating, and later find an insect carcass on it, you have to dispose of it. It’s not tahor. It can’t be modified for another use so that you don’t have to worry about its status. The preceding verse says if you have seed that you already intended to sow, and this happens, don’t worry about it, go ahead and sow it. But you can’t prepare food and repurpose it for sowing in the case of verse 38, a situation called v’ki yutan.

The verb form refers to the purposeful putting of fluid on the produce, such as grain. The problem is that wetted grain is easier to mill. Do you have to mistrust a Samaritan miller that he will put water on the grain? You only mill grain so that you can eat it; you can’t sow it after that.

There’s nothing in Talmud about this. The Mishnah is Machshirin 1:1, from a division of Mishnah called Taharot, and there is no gemara on it; what you get in Mishnah is all there is. Talmud only has commentary on one tractate out of Taharot, which is Niddah.

And don’t forget, Mishnah is a Jewish product, not a Samaritan one. Samaritan observance of v’ki yutan went according to their own Mishnah. But Machshirin never questions whether Samaritans are untrustworthy. Perhaps it was standard practice not to put water on grain for milling, all the more so at Passover when water must not touch grain or flour until 18 minutes or less before baking, or the matso will be unuseable.

So Joseph and Mary had to have food with them, or put up with relatives or at an inn run by a trustworthy hoteliere. They would not stop at some random place. Wallace has another chapter with a similar situation and I’ll talk about it when we get there.