For Halloween, I have been sharing a number of eerie stories from Jewish midrash in my “spooky midrash” series. So far we’ve encountered Torah zombies and Judah the Patriarch’s rattling bones. In this post I will introduce you to the desert dead.
Baba Batra-Discussions about Property Damages are Boring, So Let’s Tell Tall Tales
The story of the desert dead is found in the Babylonian Talmud, in a Tractate called Baba Batra, the “Last Gate” from the order of Nezikin, “Damages.” This is a section of the Talmud dedicated to questions of rights and responsibilities in regards to property. The Mishnah on which the Talmud is based has a lot to say about these things, so it divides them into three “gates.” Baba Batra is the last of these sections.
The property under discussion in BT Baba Batra 73B is technically ships and their tackle. The Mishnah is specifying here what equipment is included and what is not in the purchase of a ship. The Babylonian Talmud says, “Ships. Did someone say ships? Speaking of ships, I was on a ship once …” and then cuts loose with one tall tale after another about amazing things that this rabbi and that have seen at sea. The conversation continues to follow various rabbi rabbit trails until on page 73B, we hear all sorts of wonder stories that don’t have anything at all to do with ships at sea. Rabbah bar bar Hannah takes the opportunity to tell us a spooky story about the desert dead.
Rabbah bar bar Hannah’s Adventures in the Desert
But he starts off with a quite different kind of story. It seems that he was traveling through the Sinai desert, and they had an amazing guide to help them on their way. This guide had a very helpful olfactory talent.
BT Baba Batra 73B (Jacob Neusner’s translation)
A. And said Rabbah bar bar Hannah, “Once we were traveling in the desert, and a Tai-Arab joined us, who could pick up sand and smell it and tell us which was the road to one place and which to another. We said to him, ‘How far are we from water?’ He said to us, ‘Give me sand.’ We gave him some, and he said to us, ‘Eight parasangs.’ When we gave him some sand later, he told us that we were three parasangs off. I had changed the sand, but I was not able to confuse him.
That’s some trick! It reminds me of the old Western films I would watch as a boy, where the hero might be assisted by an intrepid Native American guide who could sniff the wind, look at the way the grass was crumpled, and tell him what direction the enemy had gone and how long ago.
The Desert Dead
It’s at this point that the guide offers to show Rabbah bar bar Hannah an amazing sight, the desert dead.
B. “He said to me, ‘Come on, and I’ll show you the dead of the wilderness’ (Num. 14:32ff).
They are in the wilderness of Sinai, and the guide wants to show Rabbah bar bar Hannah the corpses of those children of Israel who died in the wilderness due to their rebellion. Numbers 14 tells us that God cursed this generation. “32 But as for you, your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness. 33 And your children shall be shepherds in the wilderness forty years, and shall suffer for your faithlessness, until the last of your dead bodies lies in the wilderness.” Evidently, because the text in Numbers does not specifically mention burial, a midrash developed that they were not buried, but lay where they fell. And the Babylonian Talmud develops this tradition further. God has preserved their bodies as a testimony to their rebellion. They are the desert dead.
I went with him and saw them. They looked as though they were exhilarated.
I’m not sure why Neusner translated the second sentence the way he did. The Aramaic pretty clearly says “drunk” for the word he translates “exhilarated.” I would translate it this way: “They looked as though they were in a drunken stupor.” I.e., they look more like people who have passed out than people who have died.
The Desert Dead Are Giants
[74A] They slept on their backs and the knee of one of them was raised. The Arab merchant passed under the knee, riding on a camel with a spear on high and did not touch it.
The “[74A]” tells us that we have gotten to the next page of the Babylonian Talmud. Ever since the Catholic printer Daniel Bomberg first printed the Talmud in the sixteenth century, folks have used the layout of his edition of the Talmud to find their way around this massive piece of literature.
Now we hear that the desert dead are actually giants. They are literally sleeping giants. They are so huge that the Arab guide can ride under one of their knees on his camel.
Dang. The Babylonian Talmud has some weird stuff in it. I really do not know what to make of this strange tradition.
Things really get spooky in the next bit.
I cut off one corner of the purple-blue cloak of one of them, but we could not move away. He said to me, ‘If you’ve taken something from them, return it, for we have a tradition that if anybody takes something from them, he cannot move away.’ I went and returned it and then we could move away.
So, that’s the chilling story of the desert dead.
The Prayer Shawls of the Desert Dead
Before we leave the tale entirely, the Talmud reminds us that this is a legal text, after all, and provides one last midrash concerning Rabbah bar bar Hannah’s motivations for taking the bit of fabric from the desert dead. Amazingly, he himself tells us about how the other rabbis ridiculed him when he shared this story with them.
C. “When I came before rabbis, they said to me, ‘Every Abba is an ass, and every son of Bar Hana is an idiot. What did you do that for? Was it to find out whether the law accords with the House of Shammai or the House of Hillel? You could have counted the threads and the joints [to find out the answer to your question].’”
So, it turns out that the cloak was actually a tallit, a prayer shawl. Rabbah bar bar Hannah had specifically cut off one of its fringes. There was a famous dispute between the two major pharisaical schools, that of Shammai, and that of Hillel, regarding the proper way to knot fringes. Rabbah bar bar Hannah happens to be in the vicinity of corpses wearing prayer shawls from the very generation that had originally received this commandment. (It appears in Numbers 15, the chapter directly following the one upon which this story is based). He decides to take advantage of this and settle the debate once and for all.
Unfortunately, he discovers that he can’t bring the fringe he has cut off back to the other rabbis after all. He tells them about the near opportunity that he had, and they ridicule him: “You big dope. You didn’t have to actually bring a fringe to us. Why didn’t you just count the threads and joints so you could describe them to us?”
Not Just a Ghost Story
There is something charming about this story in the end. The thought of the rebellious Israelites clutching their prayer shawls in repentance until resurrection day is deeply moving to me. God did not give them the grace to enter into the Land of Promise. But He did give the desert dead a lesser grace that is beautiful, nonetheless. No one can deprive them of their millennia long prayer session, as they lie dead but incorrupt in the wilderness of their wandering.
