How Jews throughout history communicated in code
The time: the early 1960s. The place: Barney Goodman Camp, a day camp for Jewish kids living in the Kansas City metro area. Or to be more specific, the bus that took us from the camp’s rural grounds to the horseback riding stables or the lake with the rowboats. While the bus driver maneuvered past potholes and the occasional squirrel dashing across the road, dozens of excited girls sang at the top of their lungs a song that was also inspiring refuseniks in Soviet Russia: Dovid Melech Yisrael chai v’kayam!
I can’t speak for the refuseniks, but I’m pretty sure none of us “camperniks” knew the source of this easy-to-remember lyric. In fact, if someone had told us the song’s five words were once a secret code used during the time when the Roman Empire ruled over Eretz Yisrael, we probably would have answered with a collective “Huh?”
Our ignorance can be explained by the fact that none of us were Talmudic scholars, and the story is found in Rosh Hashanah 25a: “Rebbi said to Rabi Chiya, ‘Go to Ein Tav and sanctify the moon — and send me a sign: Dovid Melech Yisrael chai v’kayam [Dovid, king of Israel, lives and endures].’ ”
Why was a coded message necessary and why those words? Why couldn’t Rabi Chiya have simply reported that he sanctified the moon?
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