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December 3, 2004
Judith: a Jewish heroine
She saved Judea when the men wanted to surrender.
ANNE LAPIDUS LERNER
Chanukah is generally considered a ready source of heroes, male
heroes that is. The combination of physical and spiritual courage
we find in the stories recorded in the apocryphal Books of Maccabees
have served to inspire millennia of Jewish boys and men, who found
in these texts models of Jewish military might. At Chanukah, women
seem to wield the frying pan rather than the sword.
But there are women linked to Chanukah whose stories are often forgotten
in the clang of shields and the movement of guerilla fighters. One
of these women is Judith, a remarkable figure of intelligence and
courage, faith and beauty. Judith's story, like Maccabees I and
II, is found in the Apocrypha, a collection of Jewish post-biblical
writings of Second Temple provenance. Although generally considered
fiction, the Book of Judith provides an inspiring role model of
leadership for Jewish women.
In this book, we read of the inexorable advance of the Assyrian
army toward Egypt. The Assyrian ruler, King Nebuchadnezzar, whom
history knows to be the Babylonian ruler who destroyed the First
Temple, orders Holofernes, his second-in-command, to assemble an
enormous army and subdue any people who refuse to surrender. Judea
would not submit, so the Assyrian focused on besieging Bethulia,
where the superior strength of the Assyrians compelled the Israelites
to hole themselves up within the city walls, shut off from their
source of water.
After 34 days, the siege began to have its desired effect on the
Israelites whose buckets and cisterns were dry. Feeling abandoned
by God, they urged the town elders to surrender before they died
of thirst. But Uzziah, speaking for the city officials, decrees
that they should give God five more days in which to send rain or
otherwise provide relief before they surrender.
News of what has transpired reaches the pious and beautiful widow
Judith, who had not so much as left her home in the more than three
years since her husband's death. Imperiously, she summons the town
elders. Eloquently, she takes them to task for setting conditions
for God: Judith avers that the Judeans have no right to challenge
the Almighty's plan. We are stunned by the image of this woman into
whose mouth someone has dared put a speech rebuking the elders and
rulers and challenging their theology.
Despite her piety, Judith declares that she will not only pray,
as they have suggested, but also "will do something that will
go down ... for endless generations." (8:32) Judith has a strategy
that she does not divulge to the male leadership. Before embarking
on her perilous journey, she asks God to "put in the hands
of a widow" the strength to carry out her daring plan. Then
she changes the sackcloth of widowhood for festive clothing and
anoints her body with oil before leaving town, accompanied by her
handmaid bearing wine, grain and figs. The Assyrian sentries, persuaded
by her dazzling beauty and her claim that she has important information
to share with Holofernes, allow her into the camp.
The general is entranced by her beauty and by her willingness to
help him conquer Bethulia and Jerusalem. After three days, Holofernes
invites Judith to a banquet in his tent. When he falls into a drunken
sleep, she takes his scimitar and beheads him. The fearful flight
of the leaderless Assyrians left Bethulia intact and saved Judea.
The pious widow Judith foiled a mighty foe through her willingness
to challenge the vacillating leaders, develop a daring plan and
display incredible courage in seeing her mission to its successful
conclusion. Unlike the men who perceived their choices as surrender
or death through thirst, she thought outside of the box and beyond
the walls.
The traditions linking the Book of Judith to Chanukah may have developed
because of the way her story parallels the Maccabees' exploits or
because the name Judith was linked with that of Judah Maccabee,
leading some to suggest that she was his sister. The church father
Jerome attests to a Jewish holiday in her honor, without, unfortunately,
indicating its date.
The time has come to renew the holiday and make Rosh Chodesh Tevet,
the New Moon of the month of Tevet, which always falls during Chanukah
(this year on Dec. 12), a time for celebrating Judith and recounting
the tales of other women who have done so much to inspire Jewish
faith and commitment throughout the ages.
Dr. Anne Lapidus Lerner is director of the program in
Jewish women's studies and a member of the department of Jewish
literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary.
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