Social Conflict over Traditions of Water Impurity in the Fin-de-Siècle Jewish Mediterranean

• In Event: Jews around the Mediterranean and Arabian Seas

Abstract

This paper will investigate social conflict over Jewish cultural traditions regarding water impurity in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Middle East and North Africa. It will investigate widespread debate over a practice (known in Judeo-Spanish as la dulsé) which called on the Jewish community to empty all containers of water at appointed moments during the passage of the seasons (tekufot). Tradition held that it was this precise moment at which the angels charged with watching over humanity underwent a “shift change,” so to speak. In the interim, the Angel of Death was said to use the opportunity to drip blood from his sword into containers of water, thereby rendering the water undrinkable per Jewish law. Consequently, the Jewish community would be called upon by local rabbinic leadership to dispose of any containers of water which they possessed. While this paper will devote particular attention to a case study of social conflict over la dulsé in early twentieth century Izmir, I will also examine the matter as it manifested across the Jewish Mediterranean and will seek to characterize the contours of corresponding debates. To this end, I will draw on both Rabbinic print material as well as sources from the fin-de-siècle Hebrew, French, and Judeo-Spanish press. Conflict over traditions of water impurity was, I contend, a deeply significant issue in Jewish communal affairs across Ottoman lands, French North Africa, and the Moroccan Kingdom over the immediate pre-WWI era. In order to investigate this phenomenon and elaborate broader implications for the study of Jewish life in the modern Middle East and North Africa, this paper will draw insights from the intersections of environmental, religious, and social history.

Author

• Ilan Benattar