A History of Jewish Juggling

Biblical and Talmudic Times

By Rabbi Boris Dolin

While you might think that the only connection between Jews and juggling is the party entertainment at your cousin’s Bat Mitzvah, jugglers actually have a long and storied history in Judaism.  

Unfortunately, there is no official mention of juggling and circus arts in the Torah, unless you count Moses balancing the Ten Commandments on his way down Mount Sinai. The first description we have of a Jewish juggler is Rabbi Shimon Bar Gamliel, one of the most well known rabbis of the Talmud. Rabbi Bar Gamliel was quite a scholar, and a well known leader with famous ancestry. He was a descendant of King David, and the great grandson of Rabbi Hillel. (You know Hillel, he’s the one who said when asked to tell the whole Torah while standing on one foot, “That which is hateful to you, do not do unto your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the commentary, now go and study.”  Perhaps Bar Gamliel was inspired by the story of this balancing act to learn how to juggle.) Bar Gamliel was the head of the Great Sanhedrin, where he was known as Nasi, “prince.”  

During the festival of Sukkot, it was the custom for the inhabitants of Jerusalem to hold a festival called “Simchat Beit HaShoeva,” or “The Water Drawing Celebration,” which referred to the water which was taken from a spring outside the walls of Jerusalem to be used in the Temple service. This celebration was a party of the highest caliber, with plenty of food, special fires and lights, and endless music. It was a celebration not to be missed. In fact we are told in the Mishnah that, “One who did not see the Celebration of the Place of the Drawing of the Water never saw celebration in his days (Mishnah Sukkah 51a).”

One of the highlights of the Simchat Beit HaShoeva was the juggling, and it was Shimon Bar Gamliel, who took the main stage. According to the Talmud, he entertained all of the revelers with his juggling skills, which were far more advanced than a three ball cascade:

The pious and the men of action would dance before the people who attended the celebration, with flaming torches that they would juggle in their hands, and they would say before them passages of song and praise to God…

It is taught in a baraita: They said about Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel that when he would rejoice at the Celebration of the Place of the Drawing of the Water, he would take eight flaming torches and toss one and catch another, juggling them, and, though all were in the air at the same time, they would not touch each other. And when he would prostrate himself, he would insert his two thumbs into the ground, and bow, and kiss the floor of the courtyard and straighten, and there was not any other creature that could do that due to the extreme difficulty involved.
-Talmud Sukkot 53

Eight flaming torches!  While this might seem impossible, the current world record is nine clubs, and for a skilled juggler, lighting them on fire only makes juggling them slightly more difficult. And just in case you weren’t sure that a text about juggling rabbis was important enough to hold onto, Rashi, the great Torah commentator himself has a few words of reflection on the feat:

With flaming torches – They would throw them upward and catch them. And there were experts who could do this with four torches or with eight; they threw one and caught one and threw one and caught one.
-Rashi on Sukkah 51b:1:1

And just a few lines later in the Talmud we are introduced to our next Rabbinic jugglers, not one, but three!

Apropos the rejoicing of Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel at the Celebration of the Place of the Drawing of the Water, the Gemara recounts: Levi would walk before Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi juggling with eight knives. Shmuel would juggle before King Shapur with eight glasses of wine without spilling. Abaye would juggle before Rabba with eight eggs. Some say he did so with four eggs. All these were cited.
-Sukkot 53a

All of this juggling was a key part of the celebration of the Simchat Beit HaShoeva, and it was very clearly what we would call today “street performance”.  Done in the courtyard of the Temple, the jugglers were surrounded by the thousands of people who made pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the holiday. As they watched the performers and enjoyed the music and the food, they reveled in the blessings of God, the power of the life-giving water, and the joy of community. The Talmud does not, however, tell us whether the rabbis had their hat out for tips.

Unfortunately, while the Beit HaShoeva celebration lasted for many generations, it ended when the Romans conquered Jerusalem in 70 CE, destroyed the Temple, and drove the Jews into exile. But even in exile, the Jews continued to juggle…

(A bit of important controversy: Many scholars have pointed out the possibility that the descriptions of all of these rabbis juggling was most likely not meant to be taken seriously. Not only did the amount of time needed to practice take away from their Torah study, it also was not necessarily the way that people wanted to see their wise leaders. The descriptions instead could be primarily symbolic, signifying everything from the joy of Torah learning, to the mystic meaning of the number eight. Yet, even with the symbolism alone, it is clear that the power of juggling, if not the rabbis themselves, was meant to be an inspiration to us all. Like so much else in Jewish tradition, historical accuracy does not need to take away from its importance. For more information on this, see “Juggling or Torah?“.)

Explore Jewish juggling history beyond the Bible: Juggling in Exile