Sanbatyon River

I’m so confused by the OP.

I remember as a school child being told a story (repeated by different teachers year-to-year) of an individual who crossed the Sanbatyon over Shabbos (since that is the only day it doesn’t shoot rocks up) due to some pikuach nefesh situation that allowed chillul Shabbos.

I was told this about the author of Akdamus — and that he was not allowed to re-cross, since there was no longer a pickuach-nefesh issue, effectively stranding him on the other side for life.

Of course, we know who penned Akdamus, so that’s not true.

For what it’s worth, it’s obviously either (a) allegorical or (b) historically true, but not so today (for whatever reason).

There is no river in the inhabited world that exhibits this behavior. Furthermore, it is highly unlikely that such a river exists that is (a) undiscovered and (b) large enough to create an impediment against going around.

The Wolf

By the way, I forgot to mention this before, the reference to the Sambatyon is in the Friday night zemer that begins “Yom Shabbos Kodesh hu”. It is towards the end.

Rebbe Akiva used it to prove to an Apikores that shabbos has significance. There are wells that have predictable cycles. Perhaps there was such a well upstream that stayed high all week and created strong rapids.

Anyhow, this is what the Zemer, Yom Shabbos Kodesh Hu, refers to: Sambatyon Hanahar, Shebechol Yom Ratz Venimhar, Yochi’ach Bo Manoch, Tashiv Lemin Asher Sho’el.

WIY: I read that article (or most of it). I don’t know who R’ Hochman is, but what he did to the T’shuvah of R’ Tzemach Gaon is just, well, I’ll let you re-read it and decide for yourself. It’s not P’shat.

That being said, I don’t think anyone (aside from R’ Tzemach Gaon) ever took Eldad Hadani seriously. He was respected as an Aggadic authority and Talmid Chacham (and therefore quoted by the Rishonim), but I don’t think the vast majority of them actually believed that the travels were real. They were all a Mashal for couching his Aggadah and Halachah.

Wolf: Just because they can’t find it today does not mean it doesn’t exist. They are constantly finding the existence of people that they did not previously know existed.

Not really. True, there are uncontacted peoples (such as those on the Andaman Islands of India) who are left alone, but for the most part, there aren’t really any undiscovered people left.

But my argument wasn’t on the people, but on the river. In order to prevent the Ten Tribes from returning, the river has to be of a certain size (otherwise, you could just go around it). The odds of finding a river of that size (and with such unusual properties) being undiscovered today (with satellite imagery) is exceedingly unlikely.

Obviously the 10 shevotim exist somewhere too.

As a group? Why is that so obvious? I think it’s just as obvious to say that they eventually intermarried and were lost, just as were the ancient Edomites, Ammonites, Elamites and all the nations of old. Do you have some theological reason for stating that all twelve tribes must exist? If so, you could just as easily posit that representatives of the other tribes lived in Judah and their descendants still exist today (mixed in with the rest of the modern-day Jewish people).

The Wolf

This is the way I heard the story – there was a Jewish village somewhere in central Asia I believe and there was an anti-semetic christian priest who was trying to turn the local king against the Jews. He was a ba’al kishuf and was able to kill people by just looking at them so everyone was afraid to confront him. The Jews knew that on the other side of the river were remnants from the lost 10 tribes and figured there would be somebody there who knew how to overcome the black magic so they had to send somebody there to contact them and they gave a psak that he could cross the river on Shabbat as it was pikuach nefesh but he wouldn’t be able to cross back again since it was no longer pikuach nefesh. Since he would permanently be on the other side he gave a get to his wife before leaving.

Story in its modern rendition in Miriam’s Tambourine by Schwartz, Seth Press 1984, listed as “The Black Monk and the Master of the Name.

You can listen to Rebee Hill’s cd about THE STORY OF AKDAMOS.

Why isn’t the sefer referred to above reliable?

DY: The story is called a “maaseh” given with no source, almost no names, no dates, no geographic location besides a vague “somewhere in Asia” (while R Meir Sha”tz lived in the Rhineland)… and by the looks of it it long postdates the time when the story reportedly took place. (Looking at the title page, apparently by some 800+ years.)

The problem with these sorts of stories is that when they deal with real people they have to stand up to real historical scrutiny. Just being printed in a sefer isn’t enough. It’s reliable if it cites a reliable source, historically speaking. Dunno who wrote the sefer, so I’m not going to start on questioning whether you can think it’s reliable because this guy wrote it- just looking at it from a historical perspective, it doesn’t wash.

(Though it was interesting reading- the version I remember from elementary school had a lot less detail.)

Okay, I did not say that he is unreliable or that he was telling a lie. I was saying why historically speaking, the story as written in the sefer is not historically considered a valid source. You are correct- I should have searched his name to find out more about him. I don’t think he invented anything. I also don’t see him as having portrayed the story as history- having started from the beginning of the intro to Akdamus (page 21), he mentions many actual historical details about R Meir Sha”tz, in a very historically thorough way, to the extent that the addition of the story seems very much like a nice story he heard, not an essential part of his biography. He never makes a claim of the historicity of the story, which is all I was talking about.

(I’m either getting a minor or second major in Jewish history, which is why I have hangups about things like this. Yes, that only makes it worse that I didn’t look up the mechaber of this sefer.)

writersoul

and what do you call ‘historical’ correct, if barrons and nobel printed it ?

shimen: huh? I’d judge it by the same standards (among others) mentioned above.

Joe: why do you say that? It’s a fact that more and more information is always discovered, and that new historical theories are always advanced, but they don’t always (or even usually) contradict the previous. A large amount of historical narrative is indeed conjecture and theory. This isn’t narrative- this is directly evidence-based. And, for the record, with people like this, as mentioned in the beginning of the cited book, much of the historical evidence used by scholars does indeed come from CONTEMPORARY sefarim, like Rashi. The mechaber discusses how Rashi mentioned R Meir several times, and uses different details to try to deduce when he lived- historians do the same thing.

But saying that a story cited in an apocryphal way (as is very obvious when one reads the ENTIRE introduction, or at least pages 21, 22, 25-27) in a sefer 800+ years post-story, based upon a real historical figure in completely ahistorical context, is more accurate than the historical information the very mechaber of the sefer also lists in context which completely contradicts it just because it’s written in a sefer?

TO TIAWD: Why is it so important to find a “reliable source” ? Nothing is going to change as far as Halacha or hashkafa is concerned, so why is it important to you?

Secondly proving or disproving something that may have existed hundreds of years ago is virtually impossible. The truth is that we will never be able to go to a court of law and provide evidence that would stand up there to prove or to disprove – until Eliyahu Hanavi comes and tells us.

Let us suppose that I can prove to you that the Sambatyon was part of the Volga in the area of the Caspian depression. Let us suppose that the phenomenon existed during the time of the Khazars and ended some time after they were conquered. The city of Astrakhan could probably be reached in 50 days from Aden on riding camels (80 miles/day). Suppose further that instead of a supernatural phenomenon, this was an irrigation method for creating a barrier that had the purpose of defending from marauding armies for the 6 days when the men were in the fields, but inviting an attack on Shabbos when the men were assembled at home. Then what ? What good would that do you?

Travel diary of R. Ovadia Bartenura has current info on them. The Chida’s diary too.