Syncretism in Judaism

 I was taught as a kid that Yiddishkeit and the mesorah were pure reflections of God’s will as expressed in the Torah, with no adulterations from outside influences. In cases where it seemed like we did the same thing as “the goyim,” we were told that they got it from us. To suggest that we got it from them was more-or-less heresy.

I now understand that this belief is a product of Orthodoxy's struggle against modernity, and the consequent need to put up high walls between “us” and “them.” It’s only natural that a movement whose raison d’etre is resisting influences from outside itself would promote the narrative that everything it does arose strictly from Torah sources, with no influence from the unholy outside world.

I’ve also learned that, far from being pure and uninfluenced, Judaism has always been a syncretistic religion. Huge swaths of Jewish beliefs and practices had their origins in other cultures. From where I now stand, I don’t see that as problematic. There’s no reason for us to have to reinvent the wheel, and syncretism has allowed Judaism to benefit from the good ideas not just of Jewish people, but of everyone. Judaism has picked up bits and pieces of other cultures it’s come in contact with and adapted them to Jewish purposes, and Jewish culture is richer for it. But I remember a time when I would have found it shocking.

I discovered a perfect example of how syncretism is viewed in (at least some parts) of the frum world several years ago when I learned that the sefer “Cheshbon HaNefesh,” a classic of the mussar movement, was written by a maskil and was adapted from a system for self-improvement invented by Benjamin Franklin and detailed in his autobiography. I wrote a post about it, and someone in the comments told me that there is a 73 page pamphlet called "Bo'u Cheshbon" whose purpose is to argue that the ideas in Cheshbon HaNefesh didn’t originate with Franklin and that its author wasn’t a maskil. This is a perfect example of why I think this list is meaningful.

Writing such a pamphlet is something that would only have occurred to someone with the point of view of the community I grew up in. It's only a community concerned about the purity of its ideas, a community which needs its ideas to come from "pure'' authentic Jewish sources untainted by outside ideas or by heresies, that needs to defend the purity of those works and ideas it has accepted as authoritative. It's only in such a community that the pamphlet would be necessary. Otherwise, if Cheshbon HaNefesh describes a useful, productive method for self improvement, what does it matter if the method comes from an American intellectual or from classic Jewish sources? If the author demonstrates in his work that he's a talmid chacham, and his methods work, what does it matter if he was also a maskil?

The following is a non-exhaustive, “bullet-point” (that is, mostly quickly listed without going into details or sources) list of things that younger-me and the community I come from assume are pure Jewish ideas, learned out from the Torah or instituted by rabbonim with ruach hakodesh, but which in fact are adaptations from other cultures. They range from the relatively unimportant to the crucial. In every case, the thing on the right precedes the thing on the left, often by centuries.

Syncretism in Judaism

This is a work in progress. It needs expansion with details and citations and needs work on the aesthetics. It’s not meant as a direct challenge to frum people, and no one should feel they have to “answer” any of the points, let alone all of them.

Contemporary influences
Popular frum music	Adapted From	Contemporary musical styles, mostly pop. A sizable minority of songs on albums by Orthodox artists are note-for-note the same melodies as pop songs, with lyrics taken from a pasuk swapped in for their original words. (The most popular post I’ve ever written discussed this phenomenon and has quite a few examples. See http://2nd-son.blogspot.com/2010/07/jewish-music.html)
Orthodox self-help books	Adapted From	Parrot pop-psychology and teach people how to be themselves, express themselves, and find personal happiness, values drawn from American individualism, while claiming to be texts on self-improvement in the mold of the mussar seforim. Yet traditional Jewish works of self-improvement emphasize the flawed nature of humanity and the conflict between desires and the will.
frum books on healthy eating	Adapted From	claim to flow from the writing of rishonim while citing contemporary medical (and often, the pseudo-science of "alternative medicine") methods.
frum parenting guides	Adapted From	Pass off as "ancient wisdom" parenting advice that parrots contemporary secular experts and sometimes contradicts the bits of parenting advice scattered through traditional Jewish sources.
frum books on marriage advice	Adapted From	detail ways to achieve an optimal companionate marriage, promoting the kind of marital relationship that became the accepted norm in much of the world during the twentieth century, despite the traditional Jewish marriage (like most marriages in the past) being about socio-economic advantage, not love. These books write about shared values, expectations, and emotional compatibility as the foundations of a marriage. Yet in the not-so-distant past when young people would occasionally marry for love, the Jewish community saw this as a rebellion, not a fulfillment of communal expectations for what marriage should be.
White bridal dresses	Adapted From	The custom of white wedding dresses started when Queen Victoria wore a white dress at her wedding to Prince Albert in 1840. A photograph of the couple was widely published, and brides around the world imitated the young queen. By 1849 white wedding dresses had become ubiquitous
Rebbe pictures	Adapted From	icons of saints
(more congruent evolution than a borrowing) In 2012, I stumbled across a blog by a former Baptist Fundamentalist. So many of the social quirks he discussed about his former community could have been about the frum community. My favorite was a picture of a skirt with a slit in it and a pile of safety pins. The caption was, "If you know how these two things go together, you might be a Fundamentalist Baptist." Or a Bais Yaakov girl.

Modern influences
the sefer “Cheshbon HaNefesh” by Menachem Mendel Levin, an Eastern-European rabbi and early maskil, which was enthusiastically adopted by R' Yisroel Salanter and the mussar movement.	Adapted From	A system for self-improvement invented by Benjamin Franklin and detailed in his autobiography.

Islamic Influences
Rationalist Jewish philosophy and metaphysics, such as that of Saadia Gaon	Adapted From	Kalam and Falsafah, Islamic metaphysics and philosophy
This chassidishe story: "The story is told of Rabbi Aaron of Karlin, a favorite disciple of the Maggid of Mezritch, who died young. A fellow disciple on his way home from Mezritch came to Karlin about midnight and desired to greet his friend. He went at once to his house and knocked on the lighted window. "Who are you?" asked a voice from within, and, certain that Aaron would recognize him by his voice, he answered, "I." No reply came, and the door did not open even though he knocked again and again. Finally he cried, "Aaron, why do you not open to me?" Then he heard from within, "Who is it who presumes to say 'I,' as it is fitting for God alone to do!" He said in his heart, "I see then that I have not yet finished learning," and returned immediately to the Maggid.”	Adapted From	The Islamic collection of mystical parables "Masnawi" of the Persian poet Jalal-ud-din Rumi.
The concept for the Rambam’s ikkarim	Adapted From	Lists of required beliefs composed by Islamic theologians

Christian / European Influences
Cherem Rabbeinu Gershom	Adapted From	the then-new norm for monogamous marriages in the Christian West.
The concept of the Shulchan Aruch, to provide an easy-to-reference authoritative code for halacha	Adapted From	“Jus Novissimum,” the first Catholic law code to compile all of the extent codes in an easy-to-reference authoritative work.
Dreidel	Adapted From	Teetotum, a popular Christmas game.
Reconciliation of the belief in an afterlife with reward and punishment with the belief in the resurrection of the dead in the yimai hamoshiach	Adapted From	Christian theology, by way of Augustine and Aquinas, based on the New Testament story of Lazarus
Chassidus - a deliberately mystical, populist movement that revolves around charismatic holy men	Adapted From	17th century Pietism
Chassidic practices such as dressing in white, whirling dances, feasting on the anniversary of a parent's death, and allegiance to a deeply spiritual leader	Adapted From	Raskol Chrsitianity (a splinter of the Orthodox church) which was popular in the regions of Poland where chassidus first started and spread.
The idea that you have to be a slave to something, so you might as well be a slave to God	Adapted From	Paul, in Romans 6:16-18
Heard in a drasha: "R' Yisroel Salanter, the great mussar teacher, taught that 'What comes out of your mouth is more important than what goes in' "  A "Ma'amar Chazal" that 'Ein Navi b'Iro'	Adapted From	These quotations are from the New Testament: Matthew 15:11 and Luke 4:24, respectively
Shabbos morning drashos	Adapted From	Homiletic Sunday-morning church sermons in the 1800s. As late as 1865, Hungarian orthodox rabbis proscribed entry into any synagogue that adopted this custom
braided challah	Adapted From	In the 1400s Austrian and southern German Jews began braiding their Shabbat loaves in the style of “berchisbrod,” a German bread named after the berches (braids) of a malevolent demon, the witch Holle. They twisted and braided the dough to resemble a sacrifice of braided hair to ward off her wrath. (As well as other braided breads used on special occasions, such as French brioche.)
Chassidic courts	Adapted From	Explicitly emulated royal or noble households, including elaborate furnishings, servants, and carriages.
The methods of the tosafists	Adapted From	Scholasticism
yeridos hadoros	Adapted From	The scholastic view that reconciled the honor due to earlier generations with the greater knowledge of their own time; later scholars did not consider themselves as great as their predecessors but believed they could see further because, in the words of a Christian scholastic proverb , they were “dwarves standing on the shoulders of giants.”
rote recitation of tehillim as a way to earn Heavenly points and change God's mind	Adapted From	Benedictine monks
Chassidish music	Adapted From	“Hasidic music is an excellent venue for observing the relationship between Jewish culture and its non-Jewish surroundings. Many of the melodies that emerged from Hasidic courts were deeply influenced by the local musical environment. These influences can even be discerned by the untrained ear, since one can easily detect Slavic, Balkan, and even Middle Eastern styles that form the background of Hasidic melodies. At times, songs and melodies were adapted in their entirety from the non-Jewish environment and became an integral part of the Hasidic musical repertoire. In some cases they were stripped of their former words and given new ones, or left as now-wordless niggunim. Some songs, however, were incorporated into the Hasidic canon "as is" and their words were interpreted metaphorically or allegorically.”

Greco-Roman Influences
Format of the codification of the mishnah	Adapted From	The Twelve Tables of Roman Law, the first recording of procedural law
Purim’s Costumes/Drinking/Vinahapachu	Adapted From	Roman and medieval Carnival
fox fables in the gemara	Adapted From	fox fable genre popular in Greco-Roman culture
The format of the Seder, including things like dipping vegetables, reclining, cups of wine, singing songs, discussion, and ending the discussion with mnemonics.	Adapted From	The Roman symposium
Matrilineal descent	Adapted From	Roman law concerning who is a citizen
Midrash that visitors to Sodom would be shown to an inn and made to lay down in a bed. Those that were too tall to fit in the bed would have their legs cut off, and those that were too short would be stretched to make them fit.	Adapted From	Greek legend of Procrustes, a bandit who had a bed in which he made his victims lie. If the victim was too short, Procrustes stretched him until he fit. If he was too tall, Procrustes cut off his legs.
Midrash that man was created as an “androgynous” (it uses this word) two-sided creature, one side male and the other female.	Adapted From	Plato's Symposium, in which the Greek comedic playwright Aristophanes says that the gods first created people as round, “androgynous” creatures that were essentially two people stuck together back-to-back.
The gemara’s story of Yosef moker Shabbos	Adapted From	A story recorded by Herodotus about King Polycrates of Samos
The story of R’ Yochanan ben Zakai sneaking out of Yerushalyim in a coffin, predicting Vespasian would become Emperor, and being granted favors.	Adapted From	Josephus’s “War of the Jews,” in which he records an identical story about himself.
The analogy in the gemra in Sanhedrin about the body and soul working together like a blind and a lame man	Adapted From	Epigrams in the Greek Anthology concerning cooperation between a blind man and a lame man
Mishnah which says, "His father brought him into this world, while his rabbi, who taught him wisdom, brings him to the world to come,” and therefore the rebbi is more important than the father.	Adapted From	Aristotle: "Teachers who educated children deserve more honor than parents who merely gave them birth.”
Pointing at the Torah in shul and saying “This is the Torah that…”	Adapted From	Pointing at the Roman emperor as he passed and saying, “This one is the good one!"
Various admonitions in Pirkei Avos	Adapted From	Stoic aphorisms
The concept of a mesorah, as recorded in Pirkei Avos with it’s 14 links of passings-on	Adapted From	Greek philosophical schools’ legitimization of a new head of a school by establishing a lineage from the founder of the school to the new head with 14 links of passings-on
Story of R' Akiva seeing water dripping on stone	Adapted From	A widespread idiom, the earliest recorded instance of which is attributed to Choerilus of Samos.
The gemara’s discussion of the viability of 7, 8, and 9 month old babies (which we now know to be incorrect)	Adapted From	An identical belief recorded by Hippocrates
The concept of a moshiach that that cures the world’s ills	Adapted From	Plato’s Republic
God looked into the Torah to create the world	Adapted From	The Gnostic belief that Sophia, the Greek personification of Wisdom, aided in the creation of the world, by way of the identification of the Torah with Wisdom.
The idea that this world is a shadow of the “true” world	Adapted From	Neoplatonism
the practice of sending teshuvot	Adapted From	the Roman practice of official jurists who had the right to issue responsa on behalf of the Emperor.

Persian era Influences
Ksav Ashuri, (the Hebrew alphabet we’re familiar with)	Adapted From	The  Assyrian alphabet in which the Aramaic used by imperial Babylon and Persia was written. The script is named for the city of Assur, the capital of the Assyrian kingdom.
The Purim Story	Adapted From	Likely a Persian myth about the defeat of the Elamite god Humman by the Babylonian gods Marduk and Ishtar, symbolic of the Persian supersession of the Elamite empire.
Mishloach manos	Adapted From	A Zoroastrian (Persian) spring solstice holiday during which children would visit their neighbors to give and receive candy
The belief that cut fingernails must be carefully disposed of, because they are dangerous to pregnant women	Adapted From	an identical Zoroastrian belief
Lighting a pair of candles before Shabbos and Yom Tovim	Adapted From	Zoroastrian custom to light a pair of candles on the eve of a festival
Belief in reward and punishment in the afterlife, as opposed to the bleak nothingness of Sheol	Adapted From	The Zoroastrian belief that one would be judged for his actions after death and rewarded or punished accordingly

Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) Influences
In the beginning of creation, there is the tehom, the chaotic water	Adapted From	The Enuma Elish, in which the god Marduk creates the world from the body of Tiamat, a water goddess/chaos monster
Splitting the water at Krias Yam Suf	Adapted From	The legend of the Pharaoh Namor’s magicians splitting the Nile
Seven days of creation, with Man created on the sixth day, and rest on the seventh	Adapted From	The Enuma Elish, in which seven generations of gods create various things. The sixth generation of gods created man, completing creation, so that the seventh generation of gods could rest.
The idea that God uses foreign nations as His tools to punish the Bnei Yisroel, and this is how the Babylonians were able to destroy the Beis HaMikdash	Adapted From	The explanation given by the priests of Marduk in the Cyrus Cylinder for why a foreign power was able to conquer the city protected by their god
Gan Eden/Etz HaDass/creating woman from Adam’s rib	Adapted From	A Sumerian myth in which the god Enki eats sacred fruit from the goddess Ninhursag’s garden. When she discovered him, she cursed him, and he became deathly ill. She took pity on him, and created goddesses to heal his failing body, including Ninti, the lady of the rib. The myth of Enki and Ninhursag explains why Chava, who is called the mother of all living things, was made from a rib and not some other body part. The goddess who healed Enki's rib is named Ninti. In Sumerian, "ti" can mean, "rib," or it can mean, "to make live." It's a pun in Sumerian. This pun was carried over to the story of Chava's creation, even though the Hebrew words for "rib" and "to make live" are not homonyms. That the pun works in Sumerian but not in Hebrew strongly suggests that the latter borrowed from the former.
The mabul	Adapted From	ANE flood myths such as Gilgamesh and Atrahasis. Flood myths from the ANE share many points of similarity, while flood myths from other parts of the world share at most two or three points of similarity with Noach’s story.
Circumcision	Adapted From	The practice of Egyptian priests
Several laws of the Covenant Code in parshas mishpatim	Adapted From	The Code of Hammurabi, in some instances almost word-for-word
The klalos	Adapted From	ANE suzerainty treaties, right down to the consequences described for breaking the treaty.
Moshe being placed in a basket sealed with tar on the Nile by his mother	Adapted From	The Legend of Sargon, who was placed in a basket sealed with tar on the Euphrates by his mother
The idea of malachim that are attached to / represent specific nations, people, natural phenomena, etc.	Adapted From	Pagan deities that were attached to / represent specific nations, people, natural phenomena, etc. (We kept the concept, and demoted the heavenly beings involved from gods to angels.)
Creation begins with light, which exists before day, and which God speaks into existence	Adapted From	The Theban creation myth, in which the god Atum, a sun-god, is spoken into existence, and which says, “ [The one (i.e., Amen)] that came into being in the first time when no god was [yet] created, when you [Amen-Re] opened your eyes to see with them and everybody became illuminated by means of the glances of your eyes, when the day had not yet come into being.“
The rakia	Adapted From	Mesopotamian cosmology, which conceived of the world as a snowglobe in a fishtank. The Earth is the flat floor of the snowglobe, and the firmament is the glass globe.
Mankind was created b’tzelem elohim, and God breathed life into Adam’s nostrils.	Adapted From	Egyptian mythology, as recorded in The Instruction Book for Merikare: “Well tended is mankind—gods cattle. He made sky and earth for their sake He subdued the water monster, He made breath for their noses to live. They are his images, who came from his body. “
Cain and Hevel	Adapted From	The Mesopotamina myth of Dumuzi and Enkimdu. A shepherd (Dumuzi) and a farmer (Enkimdu) sought the favor of the goddess Innana, and she made her decision based on the importance of the respective produce. Innana chooses Dumuzi as her husband.
Yaakov gets the birthright and the brachos from Eisav	Adapted From	The Egyptian myth of Horus and Set, as recorded in The Contendings of Horus and Set. Horus gets the birthright from Set by way of a bowl of porridge, and it is orchestrated by his mother Isis, just as Yaakov getting the brachos is orchestrated by his mother Rivkah.
Yosef and Potiphar's wife	Adapted From	The story of a young hero rejecting the wiles of a jealous woman was a frequent theme in ancient myths. The Egyptian “Tale of the Two Brothers” tells of two brothers, Anubis, the older one, and Bata, the younger. The younger lived with his brother and brother's wife. The story describes Bata as “a perfect man" who performed most of the household and field chores. One day, Anubis's wife came upon him and confessed her desire for carnal knowledge. He rejected her advances, saying she and the brother were like parents to him. He promised to say nothing of her actions. The wife, afraid of being found out, arranged to look as if she had been assaulted and accused her brother-in-law of the act.
Shimshon	Adapted From	Hercules. Both have divine super-strength, kill a lion and wear its skin, use unusual weapons, are betrayed by their wives which leads to voluntary death, were extremely thirsty and drunk water which poured out from a rock, tore down the gates of a city
The Beis HaMikdash’s design as a tripartite temple	Adapted From	Temples to Canaanite gods
The aron with the keruvim	Adapted From	ANE winged god-thrones
The kiyar	Adapted From	Bronze water basins that represented the Canaanite god Yam
Two forty-foot free-standing pillars in the Beis HaMikdash	Adapted From	The fertility cult of the Canaanite goddess Asherah
The scapegoat “l’Azazel”	Adapted From	A Babylonian New-Years ritual
Tzitzis	Adapted From	The ANE custom of wearing tassels on one’s clothes which had great spiritual significance
Hebrew calendar of the months.	Adapted From	The Babylonian calendar. The Babylonians were the first people to figure out how to sync a lunar calendar with the solar year, and was adopted from them in its entirety, even retaining the Babylonian names of the months.
Large parts of davening are devoted to praising God	Adapted From	Priests in ANE temples would sing songs of praise and flattery to the divine beings in order to win them over
The idea that the aron didn’t take up any space in the kadosh kadashim	Adapted From	The belief that the giant gods of the pagan pantheons could at will inhabit small statues (idols) made in their likeness because the gods don’t take up physical space
Neviim who speak on God’s behalf and entreat the people to return to piety	Adapted From	The ubiquity of such figures among many cultures in the ANE
Devarim 25:11-12 - When men strive together one with another, and the wife of the one draweth near to deliver her husband out of the hand of him that smiteth him, and putteth forth her hand, and taketh him by the testicles; then thou shalt cut off her hand, thine eye shall have no pity. Adapted From	Adapted From	An Assyrian law: "If a woman should crush a man's testicle during a quarrel, they shall cut off her fingers.” 11 5MAL A 1 4
Tehillim, Psalm 29 Adapted From	Adapted From	A Canaanite hymn to Baal
Tehillim, Psalm 104	Adapted From	An Egyptian hymn to Aton
Mishlei 22:17-23:11	Adapted From	The Wisdom of Amenemope
Sukkah	Adapted From	A custom to erect huts on the (flat) roofs of houses to honor the gods during the harvest