month’meals), which are frequently referred to in early rabbinic sources,
could involve in practice, at least in some cases, a decision-making procedure
of determination and declaration of the beginning of the month, which was
distinct from (but functionally similar to) the procedure ascribed to the
rabbinic court.^141 The context of these communal meals appears, in some
passages, to have been synagogues,^142 and in a few places there are references
to city councilors, although rabbis also sometimes appear.^143 The practice of
using new month meals as the occasion for formally deciding the beginning of
the month may have been widespread. In our passage it was presumably the
bouleof Tiberias, R. Yoh:anan’s home city, that gathered for the new month
meal and‘sanctified the month’. But the same could have been occurring
simultaneously in other large Jewish cities in Palestine, e.g. Sepphoris and Lod,
where bouleutic common meals could equally have been held to determine the
beginning of the new month. In this manner, the city councils would have
combined the Hellenistic traditions of archontic calendar control and bouleu-
tic common dining^144 together with the Jewish tradition of festive new month
meals.
(^141) SeetMegillah4: 15 (ed. Zuckermandel 226),pMegillah1: 6 (70b),pBerakhot6: 1 (10a), 6:
4 (10c),pPesah:im1: 1 (27b), 2. 5 (29c),pMoed Qatan3: 8 (83d), andbSanh.70b), and next n.; the
practice of new month meals may have had ancient biblical origins, as evident in 1 Sam. 20:
24 – 34. The dominant traditional interpretation has been that the purpose of these communal
meals was only to celebrate and publicize the date of the new month that had been determined
beforehand by the rabbinic court (so Lieberman 1934: 102–4; but medieval commentaries on
bSanh.70b express different views); however, this interpretationflows from the traditional
assumption that the calendar was under exclusive rabbinic control. Liturgy for these new
month meals is found in later Palestinian sources from the Cairo Geniza and in tractateSoferim
19: 7–8; see Fleischer 1973, who rightly senses (pp. 346–8) that theSoferimtext suggests a
procedure of sanctification of the month—not least because it includes the declaration‘sanctified
is the month!’as found inmRH2: 7—but refrains from this interpretation because of his
traditional assumption that sanctification of the month could only take place in the rabbinic
court. Another type of public meal, laid on for the witnesses that presented themselves to the
rabbinic calendrical court, is mentioned inmRH2: 5 but probably not relevant to the present
context.
(^142) Thus the same R. Yoh
:anan instructed the‘synagogue of Kifra’(or Kufra) to begin the new
month meal while it was still daylight and to declare whether the new month was on time (i.e. on
the 30th of the old month) or postponed (to the 31st):pTa
(
anit4: 5 (68b),pRH4: 4 (59c) (see
Lieberman 1934: 104). In this case, the synagogue is unlikely to have taken any calendrical
decision itself: Kifra was a small village outside Tiberias (seepMegillah1: 1 (70a), where Kifra is
identified as the ancient site of Tiberias; see alsoSongRabbah1: 27), presumably under the
jurisdiction of both thebouleof Tiberias and the rabbinic court of R. Yoh:anan—whichever of the
two, on this occasion, controlled the calendar.
(^143) The main players in theSoferimtext (above, n. 141) are not rabbis but‘assemblies of elders
andbouleutai(city councillors)’and the‘twelve magistrates of the city’(Fleischer 1973: 339). But
in some other passages (e.g.pBerakhot6: 1 (10a), 6: 4 (10c)), the new month meal is said to be
attended by‘rabbis’.
(^144) On calendar control by thebouleor archons in Hellenistic cities, see Ch. 1. On bouleutic
common dining, i.e. the well-established Hellenistic tradition ofbouleutaior select members of
theboule(archons, gerontes, prytaneis,etc.) holding common meals at festivals or on other
Dissidence and Subversion 345