EARTHQUAKES

QUESTION:

What is there in Jewish tradition, Biblical and post-Biblical, dealing with the phenomenon and human experience of earthquakes? (Asked by Rabbi Philip Bernstein, Rochester, New York.)

ANSWER:

CONSIDERING the fact that Palestine and the whole Asia Minor area are in an active earthquake zone, it is remarkable how little study has been made of the reverberation in Hebrew literature of this shocking experience. For example, the encyclopedias have only one article, namely in the Jewish Encyclopedia. Even the larger and thorough German encyclopedia ( Judaica) has not a single article on the subject. Yet the subject deserves study because it is evident that the deeply disturbing experience of having lived through an earthquake has left a definite mark on Biblical literature.

First of all, great earthquakes were remembered for a long time. The Prophet Amos’s sermons begin with the dating: “In the reign of King Uzziah two years be fore the earthquake.” This must have been a tremendous earthquake because the Prophet Zachariah, two hundred years after Amos, still recalls that event and Zachariah (14:5) says: “As ye fled in the days of King Uzziah before the earthquake.” The experience is so deeply moving that the Bible associated earthquakes with the manifestation of God Himself. Psalm 18:8, speaking of God’s coming, says: “And the earth shook and trembled and the foundations of the mountains were moved.” And at the manifestation of God to Elijah, there was an earthquake (I Kings 19:11). In the description of God’s destruction of Nineveh, the earth is described as “quaking” (Nahum 1:5). In fact, in many of the prophetic descriptions of coming catastrophe, the image of earthquake is used as a metaphor for an irresistible invading army.

Isaiah 5:25: “And He stretched forth His hand and the hills did tremble.”

Jeremiah 4:24: “I beheld the mountains and lo they trembled and all the hills moved to and fro.”

As a matter of fact when Isaiah describes the manifestation of God in the Temple in Isaiah’s consecration vision, he says: “And the posts of the door were shaken at the Voice of them that called.” Surely he had an earthquake experience in mind.

The experience with earthquakes continued as a living experience in the literature. The Mishnah in Taanis, Chapter 3:4, speaking of the various calamities for which the shofar must be blown and a public fast proclaimed at once, mentions the falling of houses. The Talmud ad loc. explains this to mean: Not weak houses, nor houses built at the bank of a river, but strong houses when they unexpectedly fall, that is a reason for the proclamation of a public fast. Also the Rambam in Chapter 2 of his “Laws of Taanis” also explains it must be strong houses that fall. And on the basis of the Rambam’s and the Talmud’s statement the well-known commentator, Lipschitz (Tiferes Yiswel) says that the Mishnah means houses which collapse because of the shaking of the earth; and he uses also the German word for earthquake, “Erdbebung.”

As a matter of fact, it is definitely recorded as a law in the Shulchan Aruch, Orah Hayyim 576:4, that for earthquakes and tornadoes that crush houses, a public fast must be called at once. I have also seen a reference to the famous systemizer of Halachic rules, Malachi Cohen (17th century) in Livorno, who, after a destructive earthquake in Italy wrote a book entitled Shifche Toda (Grateful Thanks to God) which contained a ritual of thanks that the community of Livorno was unhurt by the earthquake.

The Mishnah in Berachoth 9:2 has a special blessing to be recited when an earthquake comes. It is the blessing “Whose power fills the world.”

The word used in this Mishnah for “earthquake” is not the usual word Ra’ash, but the word Z’vo-os which means “shaking,” and the Talmud (Berachoth 59a) discussing this, uses the word Giha which means “rumbling of the earth.”

This is an interesting subject although references to it in the literature are scattered. The people of Israel taught all of nature to speak the language of faith: the passing seasons, the trees, the flowers and the rain. Surely, then, the searing experience of an earthquake must have moved them deeply and expressed itself in religious moods and ideas. It would be a valuable study to collate all the Biblical uses of the verb and noun, Ra’ash, and clarify the subject of the Biblical reaction to the experience of a massive earthquake, how it affected the concept of God’s manifestations on earth and expressed itself in the Biblical literature.