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HHF: Hebrew History Federation, LTD

The History of the Jews is Interwoven With That of the Arts

A non-profit organization 
dedicated to research in and education about
the technological and artistic contributions 
Jews have made to civilization

Submission by Giuseppe Matarese:

The history of the Jews is interwoven with that of the arts of glassmaking, silk-making, and dyeing.

Babylonian Jews acquired the art of sericulture from the Chinese soon after they pioneered the “Silk Route” between Persia and China in the fifth century BCE. The Jews acquired the art of glassmaking from their Mesopotamian progenitors, practiced it in the Land of Israel and then carried the art to Alexandria and Europe. Dye-making secrets were likewise learned by the Jews from their Mesopotamian antecedents, as well as a most valuable secret from the Canaanites. The Canaanites, the so-called “Phoenicians,” obtained purple dyes from certain molluscs, gathered on the coast above present-day Haifa.

The coast was made famous for glassmaking by Pliny the Elder, Strabo, and Tacitus, The Judaic association with both dyeing and glassmaking are recorded in the Talmud. In performing a benediction over that region, assigned to the tribe of Zebulun, Moses predicted that tribe members “shall profit from the abundance of the sea and from the treasures hidden in the sand.” A Talmudic commentary explains that the passage refers to the production of dyes and glass: “for they partake of the fishing and of the purple for the dyeing of their cloth, and of the sand for the making of mirrors and vessels of glass.”

A Midrashic explication of the passage states that after Zebulun complained to the Holy One, “Lord of the Universe, to my brethren you gave beautiful land, and to me you gave the sea”,: the Holy One replied, ‘Yes, but did I not give you the snail [molluscs]_ Did I not give you glass_”
Outstanding among unique products introduced into the West from China were gunpowder, paper and silk. Silk is a wondrous filament with which the most elegant fabrics can be woven. Sericulture, the farming of silk-worms, the technique of reeling off from cocoons strands of silk hundreds of meters long, and of weaving the incredibly strong filaments into exotic fabrics, dates back to the earliest Chinese civilization. A silk fabric found in Zhejiang Province was produced at the astoundingly early date of 2700 BCE. According to archaeologists, China was yet in the process of emerging from its Neolithic Period.1

The invention of the drawloom revolutionized Chinese silk manufacture. By the time of the Han period (206 BCE – 220 CE), Jewish caravans were regularly traversing Asia from Persia to China’s capitol, Kaifeng.2

“Silk, the finest of all natural fibers, has three crucial qualities: strength, elasticity and extremely long fibers. A silk thread made of seven filaments has the tensile strength of 65,000 pounds per square inch… As the wealth and power of the aristocracy increased, beginning in the latter part of the Warring States period (475-221 B.C.), preceding the Han, the market for luxury goods led to the production of embroidered cloth and fabrics woven in complex patterns. The drawloom, a special type of horizontal hand loom, was designed for this purpose.”3

The weaving of complex embroidered patterns with as many as 400 to 600 threads per square inch was made possible by the drawloom; the embroiderers were enabled to reproduce freehand any design they could imagine. Consummately skilled Chinese embroiderers took advantage of the drawloom’s potential by executing intricate designs in shimmering silk. The fenghuang bird, the dragon, and other stylized renditions of mythical creatures, as well as magnificent faunal and floral patterns were woven into garments worn by wealthy Chinese. Emperors clad themselves luxuriously in silken masterpieces while alive, and were buried in them after death. Little wonder that western aristocrats avidly sought the sumptuous silken fabrics being flaunted by their counterparts in the East.

Dyeing. An early 18th century dye vat. Dyeing and other malodorous or difficult trades were disdained by the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and other conquering peoples. The practice of such disciplines was confined to slaves or “foreigners.” Through the ages the Jews were noteworthy among the trades that required high skills or secret processes, notably dyeing, silk-making and glassmaking. They were also prominent in the metal trades, and were particularly skillful gold- and silver-smiths.

Diderot’s Encyclopedia of trades and industry, p. 352
 
By the advent of the Sassanian period (224-226 CE), the Persian Jews had established their own sericulture industry in Babylonia. This was the period in which many of Babylonia’s great cities, Pumbadita, Nehardea, Nisibis, Mahosa, Sura and others were entirely populated, maintained and garrisoned by Jews.4 Thousands of Judaic students were attending the great Judaic universities, the Babylonian Talmud was written, and the Jewish population burgeoned to perhaps as much as 2,000,000 persons.

“In Persia, the silk-weaving industry apppears to have been in a flourishing state in the fourth century,” wrote C. B. Seligman, noting that the art did not arrive further west for another two centuries. “Once silk became common, fabrics bearing typical Sassanian designs were exported eastward [!] in considerable bulk.”5 The demand for this genre of goods was so great that the Chinese likewise produced figured silks in typical Persian styles. “The most striking evidence of this is the celebrated ‘hunter’ silk of the seventh-eight century from the treasury of the Horiuji Monastery at Nara in Japan.”6

Thus, the most famous of ancient silks is evidently of Persian/Judaic design. Such silk fabrics were found along the Silk Route in Chinese Turkestan by Aural Stein, who simultaneously found many fragments of glass in sites posted all along that section of the route. Significantly, Stein also found a number of documents written on wood and paper in various scripts, including Aramaic.7

Western civilizations were ignorant of the remarkable attributes of silk fibers until the Hellenic period, when silk produced from wild Asia Minor silkworms first appeared among the Near Eastern civilizations. Sericulture, however, was uniquely a Chinese industry until the raising of silkworms and the production of silk textiles were added to the roster of Judaic arts.

The quality of Chinese silk made from the cocoons of cultivated silkworms was so superior that it displaced the use of locally produced silk. Damascus was one of the important centers of this East-West trade. The import of silk into Damascus and the production and export from that city of silk products appropriately became famed as damasks.

Glassware made by the Jews in Judah and Babylonia, and linens produced in Judah were the basic goods exchanged in the East for silk and spices. L. Boulnois came to the conclusion that the Jewish merchants: “were celebrated for their work in glass, byssus [linen] and silk, as well as for their dyeing… From its arrival on Roman territory to its purchase by the consumer, silk passed through relatively few hands; often it was one family that bought the silk from the Persian [that is: Judaic] middle-man, wove it, dyed it and re-exported it to other parts of the Mediterranean. And that family was as likely to be Jewish as it was to be Tyrian or Greek. As expert glass workers, the Jews had on one hand one of the means of exchange used as payment for silk – especially the famous glass beads.”8

The Bible informs us about the house of Ashbea, “who wove fine linen.”9 It is well documented that the finest linens were, in fact, anciently produced in the region where “The House of Ashbea” was located, particularly in Tiberius and Beth Shean (“Scythopolis”). The linen weavers of Beth Shean achieved world-wide recognition for the superiority of their textiles and garments. These flaxen products commanded the highest prices in a price-fixing edict imposed at the end of the third century by the Roman emperor Diocletian. Only the linens of Tarsus, likewise produced by Jews, were deemed in the same first category of linens.10 The Jerusalem Bible attests to the “fine vestments that come from Beth Shean.”11

The art of glassmaking at that time was exclusively Judaic, and was being practiced in such centers as Beth Shearim., where much of the Mishnah was redacted. The great sage Judah Ha-nasi moved to Beth Shearim, where he was joined by Rabbi Chiyya bar Abba, a scholar who is among those mentioned as traveling widely in the conduct of his business. Rabbi Chiyya dealt with all four of the basic goods being traded along the route into China: spices, glassware, silk and linen. Rabbi Chiyya was not only a trader, but was also one of the growers of flax.12

“So long as Christian intolerance permitted,” wrote Cecil Roth, “it was as artisans rather than as capitalists that [the Jews] were distinguished. Various branches of manufacture were associated with them almost exclusively. In the early centuries of the Christian era – and for long after – the Jews were recognized as the most skilled workers in glass… In the tenth century we find references to vitrum plumbum, Judaecum sclicet {‘leaden glass, that is, of the Jews’)… Throughout the Middle Ages – particularly in south Italy and Greece – the Jewish communities had almost a monopoly of dyeing and silk-weaving…. There was one yellow, indeed, of which they alone had the secret, and it was known by their name”

” A remarkable contrast this, to the other shade of the same colour called Isabella, to commemorate (it is said) the dingy shift of that arch-persecutor of the Jews, who vowed never to change it until Granada had been captured from the infidel!”