The Eleventh Plague

In the nineteenth century, Rabbi Yehoshua Shlomo Ardit (1789-1876) noted how daily life in the towns and villages around Izmir in western Turkey, where he lived, was controlled by a predictable cycle of plagues and pandemics. Most business, he observed,was conducted during the winter months, while marriages were arranged around the Spring festival of Passover. But after Passover it was not possible to do so, because then the overwhelming majority of people became ill with the plague (may we be spared). Sometimes the epidemic would last until the end of the Spring, which is why most of the inhabitants would have left for the villages and other hamlets." It is easy to overlook this eyewitness account, for it is not found in a diary or journal, but in a commentary on a talmudic tractate about the laws of Jewish marriage contracts. And yet, the reality of life in nineteenth century Turkey was that plagues and pandemics were so common that you could set your Jewish calendar by them"--