Last week’s column ended with the question of where the Hebrew-Yiddish expression Lamed-Vavnik — literally, a “thirty-sixer” — comes from. Why is it that, in Jewish legend, the number of hidden tsadikim — or just men on whom the world depends for its existence — is, in every generation, 36?
The idea that a small number of just or righteous men can save the rest of mankind from destruction is itself as old as the first book of the Bible: We find it in the story of Sodom, in which after bargaining down God, Abraham gets Him to agree that he will not destroy the evil city if 10 righteous men are found in it. They aren’t, of course, but the principle has been established.
And it is to this principle that the second-century Palestinian rabbi Shimon ben Yohai, considered by Jewish tradition to be the author of the seminal kabbalistic text of the Zohar, appeals when he is quoted by the talmudic tractate of Sukkah as declaring: “I [alone] could exonerate the world of [God’s] judgment from the day I was born to the present — and if my son Eliezer were with me, from the day the world was created to the present — and if Yotam the son of Uziahu [a king of Judah who, according to the Bible, “did what is pleasing to the Lord”] were with us, from the day the world was created to the day it ends.” Shimon ben Yohai certainly did not have the modesty attributed by later Jewish legend to a Lamed-Vavnik, but his boast caused the talmudic sage Abbaye, who lived slightly more than 100 years after him, to add to it (Abbaye’s remark is found in the same passage in Sukkah):
“There are never less than 36 just men in the world who greet the Shekhinah [God’s worldly presence] every day, for it is written [in the book of Isaiah 30:18], “Blessed are all who wait for Him” [ashrei kol h.okhei lo], and [the word] lo [“for Him,” spelled Lamed-Vav] is numerically equal to 36.”
Abbaye’s interpretation is in the nature of a numerical pun, since by reading the verse from Isaiah as if there were a comma between “wait” and “for Him,” he gives it the meaning of “Blessed are all who wait, [the] 36.” Although he does not explicitly say that these 36 men keep the world from destruction, his statement, read in the context of Shimon ben Yohai’s declaration, implies that they have the power to ward off the harshness of God’s judgment. This, then, would appear to be the source of the Jewish legend of the Lamed-Vavnik.
But what, in turn, is the source of Abbaye’s statement? It seems highly unlikely that he would have hit on such an interpretation of Isaiah 30:18 had he read it without preconceptions. Rather, he must have been looking to begin with for a biblical verse that could be construed in such a fashion. Why?
This question was addressed by Gershom Scholem, the great scholar of Jewish mysticism, in a short essay published in German in 1962 and in English in 1971, under the title “The Tradition of the Thirty-Six Hidden Just Men.” In this essay, Scholem speculates that the number 36 “originates in ancient astrology, where the 360 degrees of the heavenly circle are divided into thirty-six units of ten, the so-called ‘deans.’” (In astrological literature, these units are more commonly known as “decans.”) And, Scholem continued:
“A dean-divinity ruled over each segment of the thus divided circle of the zodiac, holding sway over ten days of the year…. [In Egyptian Hellenistic sources] the deans were regarded also as watchmen and custodians of the universe, and it is quite conceivable that [in Hellenistic astrology] the number thirty-six, which Abbaye read into Scripture, no longer represented these cosmological powers or forces but rather human figures.”
Abbaye, in other words, either on his own initiative or else on the basis of an older rabbinic tradition, was Judaizing a pagan concept by turning its 36 personified astrological powers that determined thwwe world’s fate into 36 righteous Jews on which the world’s fate depended. In their talmudic version, Scholem observes, these Jews were conceived of as leading rabbis, not as the hidden saints that they were to become in later Jewish legend. This subsequent feature, he speculates, may have accrued under the influence of medieval Islamic mysticism, in which there is a belief that there are in the world 40 (or alternately, 4,000) saints who “live unrecognized by their fellow men while contributing to the continued maintenance of the world through their good deeds.” Yet since the figure of the hidden Lamev-Vavnik is not found in the folklore of Jews living in Islamic lands, and first appears in late medieval times in Eastern Europe, it is also possible, in Scholem’s opinion, that it reflects an independent Jewish development.
It is fitting that this column, which I said last week would be dedicated to the memory of Howard Marblestone, Charles Elliot Professor of Greek and Latin at Lafayette College, should have led us back from the Lamev-Vavnik of popular Yiddish culture to the esoterica of Graeco-Roman astrology. Howard would no doubt have liked that. Ave atque vale!
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According to this, Abbaye didn't say "there are 36 just men"; he said "there are **never less than 36** just men." Thirty-six is a minimum.
In islamic inspired sufism, there is a similar conception: "Rical-ül gayb" which means "hidden rulers". It is believed that these are pure hearted saints which have joined a divine council to run the affairs of the world and universe. They have a hierarchy among themselves. In folk Turkish the phrase "üçler, yediler, kırklar" points to numbers of these saints.
to most or all pious people, projected or a priori 'knowledge' is more valuable (or the only one that matters) than the empirical knowledge. then their rabid priests speak trillions of words- nearly all spouting wishfulness, commands, condemnations, discord, etc.) and wind up turning hindus against muslims; muslims against judaists and christians; catholicls against protestants; judaists against all others; judaists against judaists, etc. and they all run to doctors or hospitals when sick and thus avail selves of empirical knowledge and not of god's 'knowledge'. and they may fight one another by words and deeds forever or until a meteor strikes us all dead. thank u
Dear Philologos: Lamed Vav, taken as two words could be interpreted as learning connection.Lamed is the root of the word Talmud. The dean or decan connection is interesting since dean or DIN is Justice. Forgive the ignorant conjecture. DL
To Evren İşbilen: What does "[i]üçler, yediler, kırklar[/i]" mean? They all appear to be plural [there, I've just spent about a third of my knowledge of Turkish]. Something about 36?
fight over fight, no stop, headache, excuse over excuse confused, only people who have no family burden be tsadi if you were trapped you have to fight for vanity
As someone once said, Nonesense is nonsense but the study of nonesense is an academic pursuit. This is silly in the extreme.
This seems highly speculative. Obviously, it is difficult to say that Abyee derived his principle from the verse in Psalms. However, why is it impossible to say that this was a long standing Rabbinic tradition that Abyee found a mnemonic for in the verse in Psalms? This explanation avoids one of the main pitfalls of this argument. Namely, it is assuming, that Abyee had what seems to be, an intimate knowledge of Greek Astrology. Now, while that could be true, some empirical evidence would have to be mustered to support such a claim.
To Jack: "üçler" means the threes, "yediler" means the sevens, "kırklar" means the forties...It is an often repeated phrase in folk islam and sufism to denote the spritual hierarchy which is believed mysteriously to rule the universe. :)
who were the 36 righteous men? Might some of those 36 have been women disguised as men?
Abbaye's expression "lo pachot ['alma] m..." does mean "not less than", but the late tradition, as it developed, apparently settled on an exact 36, which is the number that "activates" the process. By the way, the number varied in tannaitic and amoraic times.
In some manuscripts of Midrash Genesis Rabbah, R. Shimon ben Yochai says that the world cannot stand without thirty righteous men. Issachar ben Naphtali Katz, in his late 17th-early 18th century commentary on Midrash Rabbah says that the number 30 derives from the statement in Genesis 18:18 "Abraham will surely become a great and mighty nation..." In gematria, "become" in Hebrew (yhyh) adds up to thirty!
As for Scholem's "dean", the word actually does translate to "Dekan" in German.
Actually, the derivation of "30" is present already in chapter 49:2 of Genesis Rabbah.
The strict enumeration of 36 tzadikim is perhaps unimportant save as an abstruse point of pedantry or the mark of a good author, attention to detail. Its significance has more to do with the fact that compared with the population of the globe thirty-six is a mighty small minority, and yet this tiny glimmer of good -- be it contained in 36 men or whether we as the human race have only enough pure good split amongst us as to equal about 36 blameless beings -- is enough to keep mankind from f***ing eating each other alive for one more day. There must be more than 36 and we must be them.