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The significance to our story here is that the “Tree of Jesse” is metaphorically rooted in Isaiah, i.e., his prophecies. So a cutting down of Isaiah (via a saw made of wood) or a cutting down of a living tree giving the prophet sanctuary, must signify some sort of inherent problem with the lineage of authority from Isaiah. The rabbinic rejoinder to the “Tree of Jesse” literalizes the tree and connects the profound and hideous suffering of Isaiah to early Christianity’s misappropriation of his prophetic lineage.

The resonance of the corrupt nature of the Christian appropriation of Isaiah is amplified in the parallel (or obliquely referenced tale) of Manasseh introducing some sort of Asherah into the Holy of Holies. I take it that this is another way of the rabbis referencing the corruption of the tradition of Moses as already being presaged or even in a sense counter-prophesied by the example of Manasseh.

I’m also struck here by the vision of Torah as a Tree of Life to all who cleave to her (Proverbs 3:18). In our story here, the tree that gives sanctuary to Isaiah shares his fate, literally bleeding his blood. It’s an evocative image which I want to reflect on more on Tu biShavat, when “the sap is rising.” Is the tree here an entity with agency to conceal the hunted righteous, as so many righteous-gentiles throughout history? While Isaiah’s suffering is foregrounded, we are obligated as moral readers to how this tree has endangered itself in providing sanctuary to the desperate. Or perhaps the miracle of this tree is rather an expression of the natural world extending itself into human affairs in its own profound resistance against injustice? Or it merely the fantastic consequence of an uttering of the ineffable shem hameforash? Even if it is the latter, I think it behooves us as readers, or listeners of legends, to be careful not to be passive recipients of the weird and uncanny, but to listen these tales wholly and with our hearts.

To this, I also want to make a note here how this tale of Isaiah reminds me of another story, the tale of Honi haMeagel’s time dilation — disappearing from his own time after slipping into a deep sleep behind a boulder, waking into another age altogether. There is no sheltering tree for Honi. The boulder is just an inanimate prop in the story… or is it? Both tales involve wonder-working heroes with tragic fates in a time of profound schisms. Some wonder how and whether the figures of Honi and Jesus may be related, whether the former presages the latter.

While preparing this work for publication, I began thinking how the Martyrdom of Isaiah fits within the martyrdom tradition in Judaism and our Ḥanukkah stories, especially among the tales of resistance against forced assimilation and cultural genocide in Ⅰ and Ⅱ Maccabees, Megilat Antiochus, and Megillat Yehudit. Through the desperate lens of the Bar Kochba revolt, these earlier stories of martyrdom must have been deeply resonant and appealing for framing rabbinic Judaism’s existential and cultural foes. Reflecting on this, I realized that the rabbinic response here connects just as strongly to Toldot Yeshu (and Nittel Nacht) in presenting a counter-Christian narrative as an inoculant against cultural infiltration and profound heresy.

One final thought. Reading the Martyrdom of Isaiah, it is hard for me to understand how or why infamous enemies of the Torah are employed to martyr and torture the righteous for the sake of some cosmic rectification. What a perplexing motif! Presenting tragedies befalling Israel, especially compounding tragedies, as a means by which errors of cosmic proportion are resolved must be rooted in the example presented in Sefer Iyov (the Book of Job) — one which explains the problem of the suffering of Israel evil at large in a world ostensibly ruled by the blessed Holy One. That these resolutions are enacted by enemies of Israel and Torah, also helps to explain how the existence of such antagonists is permitted in the first place. Everyone has their place and wickedness is ultimately utilized in the service of sustaining the existence of the world itself — a “good” compared against the possibility of the blessed Holy One simply ending the world altogether as a lost cause. While bitter, I think this perspective is ultimately world-affirming, and for that reason alone, an improvement on ways of apprehending reality that are either “positively” self-deceptive or else entirely self-serving in the face of cosmic uncertainty.

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Thank you for sharing this Dr. Scult!

Thanks for this clarification Shoshana. We’ve updated the description.

Thank you — fixed!

<3

Fixed — thank you for reporting this.

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Can you say more? Help us understand the relevance of your question to this adaptation of Ḥad Gadya. Thank you.

I’m glad we have the earlier version to see the ways in which the prayer is slowly changing over the years.