Where Have All the Flowers Gone? The Fate of a Jewish “Culture of Flowers” in Two Early Medieval Diasporas

Abstract

Abstract Flowers and traditions involving flowers tend to be conspicuously absent from early and late medieval Rabbinic literature, with one well-known but controversial exception. In contrast, literature and archaeological motifs beginning from the biblical period and reaching a climax in the late Second Temple period are replete with floral themes. The Madonna lily – lilium candidum – is especially celebrated as a symbol of ancient Israel, and particularly the Temple in Jerusalem, which may have been adorned with them in the late spring. In this essay, we analyze the Jewish culture of flowers in its Greco-Roman context and suggest possibilities to account for its ulti- mate disappearance – in particular, the translocation of Rabbinic scholarship to a Zoroastrian milieu, in which flowers played a central role in worship.