Avodah Zarah 48

Today’s daf continues to focus on halakhic concerns about an ashera, a tree used for worship.

Asherah was the name of the mother goddess in the Canaanite pantheon of gods. According to Dr. Susah Ackerman, archeological artifacts from Canaan “associate Asherah with lions (indicating power), serpents (representing immortality or healing), and sacred trees (signifying fertility).” Objects used in her worship — usually trees or poles — are mentioned over 30 times in the Hebrew Bible, usually but not only in the context of Israelite kings tearing them down.

But by the early rabbinic period, the Canaanites were gone, as was regular worship of Ashera. So the questions surrounding this prohibition were more theoretical — and, in some cases, much more elementary. For example:

The Mishnah asks:  Which tree is an ashera? Any that has an object of idol worship beneath it. Rabbi Shimon says: Any that people worship. And there was an incident in Tzaidan involving a tree that people would worship, and they found beneath it a heap of stones. Rabbi Shimon said to them: Examine this heap. And they examined it and found in it an idolatrous image. Rabbi Shimon said to them: Since it is the image that they worship, we can permit use of the tree to them.

The first opinion presented in the mishnah suggests that trees themselves are not objects of avodah zarah, idolatrous worship, but are merely places where idols are set up. Rabbi Shimon disagrees, and insists that in some cases, the tree is the actual object of worship as opposed to merely homes for idols. But in other cases, the tree simply houses an object of worship and is not itself an idol, so it can be used and benefited from. While the worship of Asherah was no longer active in Roman Palestine, the rabbis of the Mishnah nonetheless lived in a region that had been the historical home of Asherah worship. The Babylonian Talmud, however, was written hundreds of years later, and much further from anywhere Asherah would have been worshipped — at that point a millennium earlier. So it’s not altogether surprising that the Babylonian rabbis’ discussion of this mishnah reflects an even less certain notion of what Asherah worship actually entailed. 

Which tree is a generic ashera? Rav says: Any tree that priests sit beneath and do not taste of its fruits.

And Shmuel says: Even if they say: These dates are for the house of Natzrefei, it is forbidden, because they throw the dates into beer and drink it on their festival day. 

Rav suggests that priests of any religion might dedicate a tree and all its fruit directly to their god, and doing so would make that tree an asherah. Shmuel adds that even if they dedicate the dates to the “house of Natzrefei” it is forbidden. What is Natzrefei? Marcus Jastrow, author of one of the most significant dictionaries of the Talmud, translates the word as Christians.

Medieval Jewish scholars would later debate whether Christians indeed worship the Jewish God and whether Christianity, with its embrace of a triune God, is inherently idolatrous. But for Shmuel it seems uncomplicated: If the tree’s dates are reserved for use by Christians, who might then use it in their festivals, , that implicates the tree in idolatry and therefore makes it an asherah. 

This short discussion offers us a condensed glimpse of a thousand years of cultural change. The term “Asherah” started out as the proper name of a specific Canaanite goddess and came to also apply to the trees which symbolized her attributes. The word then became associated with trees used largely as homes for idols, until finally the Babylonian rabbis — who are very distant from the ancient goddess — associate her trees with Christianity. But while the actual object being discussed might change, throughout the ashera remains a key marker of difference and of the challenges of living in the world with people whose religious beliefs are quite different from our own.

Read all of Avodah Zarah 40 on Sefaria.

This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on August 5, 2025. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.