Massage, known to have been used since
pre-historic times by many civilisations has a long and virtually unknown Jewish tradition, having been practiced
by Jewish physicians and endorsed by the highest rabbinical authorities over thousands of years.
In Biblical times humans and
objects intended for sacred purposes were anointed with oil. Anointing was also a ceremony of initiation into royal or priestly
office. For people it consisted of pouring oil from a vessel over the head or making a shape on the forehead with a finger
using oil. Anointing ceased to play a part in Jewish ritual on the destruction of the First Temple in 70 a.d. Singer in his Jewish Encyclopaedia makes the point that alongside this ritual there existed the practise
of anointing as part of the private toilet for a feast, and that the primary meaning of the word used for both
in the Old Testament, ( a word which transliterates as ‘mashach’),
was to daub or smear...an activity which is likely to have been an early form of massage. Most massage texts refer to the
word massage as being derived from Arabic
‘mas’h’ which means to press softly, or a similar Greek word meaning to knead
or handle, or even the French ‘masser’. None refer to the obvious similarity between the Hebrew ‘mashach’
,the Arabic ‘mas’h’ and the modern word ‘massage’...
When the Jews of ancient Israel came into contact with Greek civilisation (around 300 BC) public baths were instituted where massage was a routine treatment-- these Hellenic influences being discernible
in later legalistic writings known
as The Talmud, begun around the end of the 2nd century a.d. and completed mid way through the 5th century.
The Talmud, which encapsulates Jewish law and is the most important book of the Jewish religious tradition refers to ‘bathing-master’
and ‘bathing attendant’, the people who actually carried out the massage in the Greek style baths. The Talmud
gives precise rules for Jews about the use of massage, stating for example that
as a rule anointing with oils and perfumes (i.e. massage) followed the bath and that on the Sabbath, anointing, whether for
pleasure or health, is allowed. But on Yom Kipur ( the Day of Atonement), anointing is forbidden, whereas on other fast days it is permitted for health only. The Talmud recommends rubbing the head, i.e.
massage, with wine, vinegar or oil to treat a headache. Among treatments mentioned in the Talmud are diets, warm and cold
compresses, sweating cures, rest cures, sun baths, change of climate, hydrotherapy, psychotherapy, exercises, and of course
massage.....a menu which would not be unusual in a health spa of today and in which massage figures as a normal Jewish activity
which clearly requires laws on when it can and cannot be done and for whom.
The Talmud is not the only authoritative
Jewish source on massage.
One of the greatest historical authorities
on Jewish law was Moses Maimonides (1138-1204), a doctor, rabbi and philosopher who was born in Spain and became physician to the Egyptian court.
In his ‘Treatise on Asthma’ Maimonides advocates 7 hygienic principles:
Clean air
Correct eating and drinking
Regulating one’s emotions
Exercise and rest
Excretion or retention of wastes
Bathing
Massage
Maimonides also makes clear that massaging
the body on awakening and before going to bed at night is highly recommended. Several types of massage are described in his
writings, as are exercises for the young and elderly.
In his ‘Medical Aphorisms’
for example Maimonides quotes Galen (131-200 approx. a.d.), the Graeco-Roman physician whose medicine dominated the medical
stage for 1500 years, who said that palpation and light massage of the abdomen can help diagnose the cause of abdominal spasm.
Maimonides notes that moderate massaging as a general therapeutic measure for a variety of illnesses is most helpful if applied
during periods of quiessence of illness, and that massaging with oil is beneficial after bathing and is recommended to bring
on sleep. In his ‘Mishneh Torah’ Maimonides rules that the abdomen may be anointed and massaged on the Sabbath,
provided that both actions are performed simultaneously so as to constitute a departure from normal weekday procedure.
Thus the tradition of massage whose
origins can be traced to the Old Testament continues in the Talmud and in the definitive writings of Maimonides, one of the
greatest ever authorities on Jewish law,.....a good pedigree for the Jewishness
of massage as a therapeutic and medical procedure.
Jewish medicine in the period up to
and after Maimonides was characteristically the medicine of the ‘host’ country, often at a sophisticated level
due to the method of education and the enrichment available because of the international
nature of Jewish life and scholarship. Medicine in Europe and the Mediterranean countries continued, in some places up to
the 16th century, to be dominated by the writings of Galen and of Avicenna (980-1037 a.d), the Persian ‘prince of physicians’...both of whose medical writings are replete with the use of
massage, which of course meant that Jewish physicians as a normal procedure would use massage for a variety of conditions.
Avicenna’s definitive medical text, the Canon, with its many references to massage was still being translated and published
in Hebrew upto the 15th century.
The evidence continues as we move forward
in time to the next and final definitive codification of all Jewish law, which
still operates today, the Shulchan Aruch published in Venice in 1565 a.d. With reference to the Laws of Sabbath it is stated in the
Shulchan Aruch that one may not have a strenuous massage on the Sabbath to become tired and sweat. The Shulchan Aruch explains
that a patient who has lost the use of a limb may have ‘physiotherapy’ administered by a Jew on the Sabbath in
the usual way to prevent this loss becoming permanent. ‘Physiotherapy’ is explained as massage and exercise. Neither
has the intention to work up heat or sweat. As the patient progresses to walking, simple exercises are still permitted on
the Sabbath, so massage is allowed. [It would not be allowed if the patient were not “ill”]. If the patient has
pain, massage is permitted on the Sabbath. For the healthy youth, it is still forbidden on the Sabbath to do heavy exercise,
heavy massage and sweating.
Thus what has been demonstrated is that
the major religious, legal and medical writings to emerge from and which govern Judaism all clearly recognise the place of
massage in the business of life.
Moving closer to modern times, Jewish clients
are no strangers to massage at their local beauty salon or health club. There are clear recent antecedents for this. For example
in England in the early 20th century the dominant area of settlement in London for the new immigrant eastern European Jews was Whitechapel , an intensely Jewish area, at the centre of which was, and is, the
London Hospital. From the 1880s in England and the USA there was a resurgence of the medical use of massage and doctors and
nurses increasingly used massage as an orthodox medical treatment. The most important centre for this development in England was the London Hospital which had at the time of the immigration a massage department and massage
school which, simply because of its location, must have ministered to the local Jewish community, because massage was so frequently
prescribed for so many conditions, both surgical and medical.
It is interesting to note that as late
as the 1930s the Vienna Jewish Hospital in Austria, at the centre of a major and sophisticated Jewish community, also
had a massage department and school and trained Jewish masseuses for normal medical work. And in provincial English cities
Jewish masseurs in the 1940s. 1950s and early 1960s lived and worked in the heart
of the Jewish community where they received an almost entirely Jewish clientele
of referrals from an almost wholly Jewish constituency of doctors.
With the Second World War and the development
in England of the profession of physiotherapy, many new treatments became available involving less physical labour than massage.
And with the introduction of new ‘wonder’ drugs to replace old massage treatments, massage in England declined and virtually fell into oblivion
until its revival, mainly as a vehicle for the application of aromatherapy essential oils, in the final years of the 20th
century. Society’s amnesia in relation to the earlier popularity of massage has meant that it is seen today as somewhat
‘new age’.
Massage is probably as old as mankind,
and Jews have used it for thousands of years, integrated it into their medical and social practice, legislated about it and
possibly even given the very word itself to modern language from the Old Testament.
So today’s masseur or massage
client enjoying the renaissance of this ancient therapy can look back on a tradition endorsed by the highest Jewish ecclesiastical
authorities over thousands of years.
Len Goldstone
Leeds, England
Jan 2002
