Pesach starts next Saturday night.
In preparation, we are happy to share the 2025 Talmudology Pesach reader.
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The 2025 Talmudology Passover Reader
Sanhedrin 94 ~ For the Increase of the Realm
On today’s daf, we read this:
סנהדרין צד, א
״לְםַרְבֵּה הַמִּשְׂרָה וּלְשָׁלוֹם אֵין קֵץ וְגוֹ׳״. אָמַר רַבִּי תַּנְחוּם: דָּרַשׁ בַּר קַפָּרָא בְּצִיפּוֹרִי, מִפְּנֵי מָה כל מֵם שֶׁבְּאֶמְצַע תֵּיבָה פָּתוּחַ, וְזֶה סָתוּם? בִּיקֵּשׁ הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא לַעֲשׂוֹת חִזְקִיָּהוּ מָשִׁיחַ, וְסַנְחֵרִיב גּוֹג וּמָגוֹג
“For the increase of the realm and for peace without end there be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to establish it and uphold it through justice and through righteousness, from now and forever; the zeal of the Lord of hosts does perform this” (Isaiah 9:6). Rabbi Tanchum says that bar Kappara taught in Tzippori: Why is it that every letter mem in the middle of a word is open and this mem, of the word lemarbe, is closed? It is because the Holy One, Blessed be He, sought to designate King Hezekiah as the Messiah and to designate Sennacherib and Assyria, respectively, as Gog and Magog, all from the prophecy of Ezekiel with regard to the end of days (Ezekiel, chapter 38), and the confrontation between them would culminate in the final redemption.
This verse comes right after the far more well-known one (at least in translation): “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government is upon his shoulder: and his name is called Wonderful…” These of course are the words to Handel’s most famous composition: the Hallelujah chorus in The Messiah, only in context they apply to King Hezekiah, (b. 741 CE), the thirteenth King of Judah.
It is not immediately clear how putting a final ם in the middle of the word achieves the meaning that Bar Kappara attributed to it. Here, as usual, Rashi is helpful, and he gives three ways of understanding the homily:
מ"ם שבתיבת למרבה המשרה סתום לכך נסתם לומר נסתמו הדברים שעלו במחשבה ולא נעשה ל"א שביקש הקב"ה לסתום צרותיהן של ישראל שבקש לעשותו משיח ומורי רבי פירש לפי שנסתם פיו של חזקיה ולא אמר שירה
The ם is closed as if to say, this matter is over - that which he thought of doing [making King Hezekiah the Messiah] was never actually done. Another explanation that God wished to to close the claims of Israel who wanted to make King Hezekiah the Messiah [and this is hinted to by the closed form of the letter ם]. And my teacher taught me that it means that the mouth of Hezekiah was closed and he could no-longer sing words of praise [as he should have done when he was delivered from the threat to him by the Assyrians.
Today on Talmudology we will explore the question posed by Rabbi Tanchum, who was a third century rabbi who lived in Israel, in the name of his reacher Bar Kappara, who was active in Caesarea around 180-220 CE. Without resorting to eschatology, why is there is the word spelled לםרבה, and not how we would write it today - למרבה?
The leningrad codex
The Leningrad Codex is the oldest known complete Hebrew manuscript of the Hebrew Bible. (because the The כֶּתֶר אֲרָם צוֹבָא - or in English the Aleppo Codex, is not complete). It was completed in 1008 in Cairo. Here is a picture of verse from Isaiah:
Leningrad Codex Isaiah 9:6
As you can see, the word appears with the final ם, as we find in the Talmud, although it is not clear from the positioning of the letters if this is one word or two. In the margin is a note that tells the reader to read it as one word: למרבה ק׳, but it still looks like one word in the body of the text: לםרבה.
Can we go back in time even further? Why yes, we can.
The Aleppo Codex
The Aleppo Codex was written in Tiberius around 920 CE and it is the oldest extant Hebrew copy of our Bible. Sadly, it is missing 40% its original pages (mostly from the Torah section), which were either burned during the anti-Jewish riots in Aleppo in 1947 or were pilfered and kept likely as good luck charms. In it, the word is written as two, with a final ם in the first word (remember that).
The Aleppo Codex, Isaiah 9:1b-8a
Can we go back even earlier? Yes we can, to the oldest extant copy of the Book of Isaiah.
The (Great) Isaiah scroll
The Isaiah Scroll, also known as the Great Isaiah Scroll, is one of the seven original Dead Sea Scrolls found by Bedouin shepherds in 1946. It is designated 1QIsaa as a kind of scientific identification, and has been carbon-dated (four times!) and dated using paleography. The former suggest that the scroll was written between 335-324 BC and 202-107 BC, while the latter method dates the scroll’s birthday to 150-100 BC. And in thus scroll, the word למרבה definitely appears as two - למ רבה, but no final ם is involved. Take a look:
The Great Isaiah Scroll, 1QIsaa, Isaiah 9:6
To be clear, there are no notes or textual variations written into the Isaiah Scroll (like there are in the Leningrad Codex) so although the final letter of the first word is a regular מ they would be read as two separate words.
summary of the Different Versions
Two words, final לם רבה :ם – Aleppo Codex
Probably one word, final ם in the middle: לֹםרבה- Leningrad Codex
Two words, regular למ רבה - Isaiah Dead Sea Scroll
The Mesorat Hamesorot of Eliyahu Ashkenazi
Eliyahu ben Asher Ahskenazi (1469-1549) was one of the great grammarians of the early modern period (or late Middle Ages, you choose) and in his work on grammar, Mesorat Hamesoret - he wrote this (starting at the little pointing hand in both the Hebrew and English translation):
Mesorat Hamesoret, ed. Ginzburg, London 1867, 193.
With no qualms, Rabbi Eliyahu Ashkenazi took on a passage of Talmud that we study today, and thought that Ben Kappara’s homily was based on a simple error. The text is read (and that’s the important factor) as לם רבה and it means “to them is great.” No need for homiletic eschatology. I don’t know what he would have made of Leningrad or Aleppo Codices or of the Dead Sea Scroll, but at least two of them support his thesis. And what of Bar Kappar’s sermon? Why, that is for you to decide.
Sanhedrin 91 ~ Spontaneous Generation
A dead Deer
Several years ago (it was the morning of Rosh Hashanah and I was walking to shul) I came across the carcass of a deer that had been killed by a car. Its ribs had already been picked clean by vultures (yes, we have vultures here in Maryland) and there was a mass of maggots covering the rear of the carcass. And by a mass I mean that it was not possible to see anything other than this swarm. The deer had been killed just a short time ago. The maggots appeared to have generated spontaneously.
The spontaneous generation of the half-mouse
In today's page of Talmud, we read about the mysterious mud mouse, a creature that is half flesh and half mud, that also appeared spontaneously.
צא לבקעה וראה עכבר שהיום חציו בשר וחציו אדמה למחר השריץ ונעשה כלו בשר
Consider the mouse which today is half flesh and half earth, and tomorrow it has become a creeping thing made entirely of flesh.
Elsewhere, Rashi provides us with a detailed explanation about the creature that seems to raise more questions than answers:
רשי, חולין קכו, ב
יש מין עכבר שאינו פרה ורבה אלא מעצמו נוצר מאדמה כאשפה המשרצת תולעים
There is a species of mouse that does not reproduce sexually but is spontaneously generated from the earth, just as maggots appear at a garbage site.
Apparently, Rashi and the rabbis of the Talmud believed in spontaneous generation. Here is the opening of the Wiki article on the subject:
Spontaneous generation or anomalous generation is an obsolete body of thought on the ordinary formation of living organisms without descent from similar organisms. Typically, the idea was that certain forms such as fleas could arise from inanimate matter such as dust, or that maggots could arise from dead flesh.
Everyone Believed it
How could our esteemed rabbis believe in spontaneous generation? The answer is that everyone believed it, from the time of Aristotle until Louis Pasteur. Here is Aristotle (d. 322 BCE):
So with animals, some spring from parent animals according to their kind, whilst others grow spontaneously and not from kindred stock; and of these instances of spontaneous generation some come from putrefying earth or vegetable matter. [History of Animals 539a, 18-26.]
“Aristotle’s theory of spontaneous generation was as influential as his other teachings in philosophy and natural history; it was accepted with reverence, not only among his contemporaries but well into modern times”
Spontaneous generation was an accepted theory throughout the middle ages and was found in the writings of Arab naturalists, such as Averroes. Sir Francis Bacon, (d.1626) the English "philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, orator, and author" accepted the theory. And so did Willam Harvey, who discovered the circulation of the blood, - at least under certain circumstances. And why not believe is spontaneous generation? Before the invention of the microscope, it certainly explained how worms, fleas and insects could appear out of no-where.
Pasteur's Experiments
Then came the microscope. Using one, in October 1676, Leeuwenhoek reported finding tiny micro-organisms in lake water. Now perhaps there was another explanation for how things were created, although not much progress was made for a couple of hundred more years. It was Louis Pasteur (d.1895) who finally disproved the theory of spontaneous generation with some elegant experiments. He boiled a meat broth in a flask like this, with its neck pointed downwards.
Boiling sterilized the mixture, and with the neck pointing down, no organisms could contaminate the broth. As a result, there was no growth of bacteria or could inside the flask. He did the same using a flask with a neck that was upturned. This allowed the broth to become contaminated with organisms in the outside air, and the mixture soon became cloudy. Spontaneous generation had been disproven.
Where did those maggots come from?
After I had seen that deer carcass, I looked into the question of how those maggots could have appeared so quickly on the flesh of the dead deer. It turns out that the blowfly eggs are laid within minutes and hatch in a matter of hours. They did not appear spontaneously after all.
The history of science reminds us how to read the Talmud. Spontaneous generation was the way everyone assumed that some things were created. Whether you were a rabbi in the Talmud, a Greek philosopher, or an English scientist.
Sanhedrin 89 ~ Prophecy and Mental Illness
On today’s page of Talmud we read a Mishnah that outlines the death penalty for a false prophet.
סנהדרין פט, א
נְבִיא הַשֶּׁקֶר הַמִּתְנַבֵּא מַה שֶּׁלֹּא שָׁמַע, וּמַה שֶּׁלֹּא נֶאֱמַר לוֹ – מִיתָתוֹ בִּידֵי אָדָם. אֲבָל הַכּוֹבֵשׁ אֶת נְבוּאָתוֹ, וְהַמְוַותֵּר עַל דִּבְרֵי נָבִיא, וְנָבִיא שֶׁעָבַר עַל דִּבְרֵי עַצְמוֹ – מִיתָתוֹ בִּידֵי שָׁמַיִם, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: ״אָנֹכִי אֶדְרֹשׁ מֵעִמּוֹ״. הַמִּתְנַבֵּא בְּשֵׁם עֲבוֹדָה זָרָה, וְאוֹמֵר: ״כָּךְ אָמְרָה עֲבוֹדָה זָרָה״, אֲפִילּוּ כִּוֵּון אֶת הַהֲלָכָה לְטַמֵּא אֶת הַטָּמֵא וּלְטַהֵר אֶת הַטָּהוֹר
The false prophet mentioned in the Torah includes one who prophesies that which he did not hear from God and one who prophesies that which was not said to him, even if it was said to another prophet. In those cases, his execution is at the hand of man, through strangulation imposed by the court. But with regard to one who suppresses his prophecy because he does not want to share it with the public, and one who contemptuously forgoes the statement of a prophet and refuses to heed it, and a prophet who violated his own statement and failed to perform that which he was commanded to do, his death is at the hand of Heaven, as it is stated: “And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall not hearken unto My words that he shall speak in My name, I will exact it of him” (Deuteronomy 18:19). One who prophesies in the name of idol worship and says: This is what the idol said, even if he approximated the correct halakha in the name of the idol to deem ritually impure that which is ritually impure and to deem ritually pure that which is ritually pure, is executed by strangulation…
And over the next couple of days we will continue to learn about the kinds of prophecies that are true (and should therefore be spoken about in public by the prophet) and those which are false. Here is a taste:
הַכּוֹבֵשׁ אֶת נְבוּאָתוֹ, וְהַמְוַותֵּר עַל דִּבְרֵי נָבִיא, וְנָבִיא שֶׁעָבַר עַל דִּבְרֵי עַצְמוֹ – מִיתָתָן בִּידֵי שָׁמַיִם....
One who suppresses his prophecy, and one who contemptuously forgoes the statement of a prophet, and a prophet who violated his own statement, their death is at the hand of Heaven…
הַמִּתְנַבֵּא מַה שֶּׁלֹּא שָׁמַע
One who prophesies that which he did not hear [is a false prophet]…
דְּאָמַר רַבִּי יִצְחָק: סִיגְנוֹן אֶחָד עוֹלֶה לְכַמָּה נְבִיאִים, וְאֵין שְׁנֵי נְבִיאִים מִתְנַבְּאִין בְּסִיגְנוֹן אֶחָד
Rabbi Yitzḥak says: A prophetic vision relating to one and the same subject matter [sigenon] may appear to several prophets, but two prophets do not prophesy employing one and the same style of expression…
וְנָבִיא שֶׁעָבַר עַל דִּבְרֵי עַצְמוֹ: כְּגוֹן עִדּוֹ הַנָּבִיא, דִּכְתִיב…
And a prophet who violated his own statement [is liable to the death penalty, but from Heaven]…
הַכּוֹבֵשׁ אֶת נְבוּאָתוֹ לוֹקֶה
One who suppresses his prophecy is flogged
So today on Talmudology we will talk about prophecy…and mental illness. Why mental illness? because the Rabbi Yochanan said this:
בבא בתרא יב, ב
א"ר יוחנן מיום שחרב בית המקדש ניטלה נבואה מן הנביאים וניתנה לשוטים ולתינוקות
Rabbi Yochanan said: "After the destruction of the Holy Temple the power of prophecy was taken from the prophets and given to the mentally ill and to children.
A long time ago I saw a patient in the emergency department who was brought in by ambulance after a worried relative called about his odd behavior. The patient had long been hearing voices. In his apartment the medics had found a little clay model of Jerusalem which the voices had told him to besiege. He told the medics that the voices had told him to lay on his right side for exactly three hundred and ninety days, which he had done. He survived by eating through a store of barley, beans and lentils which those same voices had told him to prepare. The voices also told him to bake bread over a fire that burned human excrement, but the patient had protested, and the voices agreed to let him burn animal dung instead.
In The Madhouse — Plate 8. From A Rake's Progress, William Hogarth, 1734.
Actually I made that up. Although I've treated hundreds of acutely schizophrenic, delusional or manic patients as an ER doctor, I have never treated a person like the one I just described. But there was a person who did follow the voice in his head that told him to do all these things -the clay models, the laying on one side for over a year, the animal dung to bake bread. All of it. His name was Ezekiel, and he was a prophet in our Bible.
“You also, son of man, take a brick and lay it before you and inscribe a city on it, even Jerusalem. Then lay siege against it, and build a fort against it, and build a mound against it; set camps and place battering rams against it all around. Moreover take for yourself an iron plate and set it up for a wall of iron between you and the city. And set your face against it so that it is besieged, and lay siege against it. This shall be a sign to the house of Israel. As for you, lie down on your left side and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it. According to the number of the days that you lie on it, you shall bear their iniquity. For I have laid upon you the years of their iniquity according to the number of the days, three hundred and ninety days. So you shall bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. When you have accomplished them, lie again on your right side, and you shall bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days. I have appointed you each day for a year. Therefore you shall set your face toward the siege of Jerusalem, and your arm shall be uncovered, and you shall prophesy against it. I will lay bands upon you, and you shall not turn yourself from one side to another until you have ended the days of your siege. Also take for yourself wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentils, and millet, and spelt, and put them in one vessel and make bread. According to the number of the days that you lie on your side, three hundred and ninety days, you shall eat it. ...You shall eat it as barley cake, having baked it in their sight with dung that comes out of man.... Then I said, “Ah, Lord God! My soul has not been defiled. For from my youth up even until now I have not eaten of that which dies of itself, or is torn in pieces, nor has abominable meat come into my mouth. Then He said to me, “I have given you cow dung instead of man’s dung over which you shall prepare your bread.””
Rabbi Yochanan declares not that prophecy is dead, but that the kind of things once said by the prophets of the Bible will henceforth be said by those with mental illness (שוטים) and children. Rabbi Yochanan may have been the first to see the overlap of mental illness and the kinds of things once said by prophets of the Bible, but today psychiatrists and others involved in the care of the mentally ill have noted this overlap too.
Abraham and Moses on the Psychiatrist's Couch
In 2012, three psychiatrists from the Harvard Medical School asked a simple question: How does a psychiatrist today help a patient to understand that their psychotic symptoms are not caused by supernatural visitations, "when our civilization recognizes similar phenomena in revered religious figures?" So the psychiatrists set off to examine the way in which revelation of the divine was described in the Bible, "with the intent of promoting scholarly dialogue about the rational limits of human experience." All this was to "educate persons living with mental illness, healthcare providers, and the general public that persons with psychotic symptoms may have had a considerable influence on the development of Western civilization."
They analyzed four religious figures, including two from our tradition, from a behavioral, neurologic, and neuropsychiatric perspective. They found that, based on the text of the Bible, Abraham had no affective, neurological or medical conditions, and since he showed no evidence of disorganization, they doubted that Abraham had classic schizophrenia too. But they raised the possibility of his having paranoid schizophrenia. This is a subtype of schizophrenia "that tends to manifest little or no disorganization, has preserved functional affect, and is associated with better occupational and social functioning." The psychiatrists based this diagnosis on the voices Abraham kept hearing, and "a very Abraham-centered worldview of dispensing universal blessings and curses based on one’s interactions with Abraham." Moses had "auditory and visual hallucinations of a grandiose nature with delusional thought content." He also exhibited "hyperreligiosity, grandiosity, delusions, paranoia, referential thinking, and phobia (about people viewing his face)." They were not certain though, if Moses displayed symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia, or if instead, he may have had a bipolar disorder. Jesus also displayed auditory and visual hallucinations, "delusions, referential thinking, paranoid-type thought content, and hyperreligiosity"(!) The Harvard psychiatrists also note that the lifetime risk of suicide in schizophrenia is 5-10%, and that Jesus "appears to have deliberately placed himself in circumstances wherein he anticipated his execution." Finally Paul is analyzed. He seems to have had a large number of auditory and visual perceptual experiences "that resemble grandiose hallucinations with delusional thought content." They reject the suggestion that he suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy, and they note that Paul wrote a great deal. This kind of productive writing, they claim, "tends to be more strongly associated with mood disorders than psychosis or epilepsy. This is persuasive toward Paul having a mood disorder, rather than schizophrenia or epilepsy."
Murray, E. Cunningham M. Price B . The Role of Psychotic Disorders in Religious History Considered. Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences 2012; 24:410–426
The point of all this analysis was not to test the the faith of those who believe in the prophetic abilities of Abraham, Moses, Jesus or Paul. Rather, it was to emphasize how those with what we today would describe as the florid symptoms of mental illness are revered as religious teachers. And one more thing. They claimed not to have any disrespect for those with religious beliefs towards any of these four figures.
Discussion about a potential role for the supernatural is outside the scope of our article and is reserved for the communities of faithful, religious scholars, and theologians, with one exception. It is our opinion that a neuropsychiatric accounting of behavior need not be viewed as excluding a role for the supernatural. Herein, neuropsychiatric mechanisms have been proposed through which behaviors and actions might be understood. For those who believe in omnipotent and omniscient supernatural forces, this should pose no obstacle, but might rather serve as a mechanistic explanation of how events may have happened. No disrespect is intended toward anyone’s beliefs or these venerable figures.
Nocturnal Hallucinations in Israeli Ultra-Orthodox Jews
Since Rabbi Yochanan described prophecy as being given to those with mental illness, it might be worth looking at the content of some hallucinations in the Jewish mentally ill. Is there anything in their hallucinations that we could perhaps interpret as prophecy? Let's turn to a helpful paper published in 2001, which described the nocturnal hallucinations in 122 ultra-orthodox Jewish Israeli men. The authors were two psychiatrists who noted that this symptom of nocturnal hallucinations only seemed to affect male members of the ultra-orthodox population. The group who experienced these nocturnal hallucinations were younger than other patients with symptoms of mental illness, "and their visit was more often associated with a request for a psychiatric evaluation before receiving an exemption from compulsory army service." But let's put that rather disquieting fact aside, and move on. The majority of the hallucinations were frightening, and included figures of the sort that "may appear among the fears of ultra-orthodox men," including (and I'm not making this up) "policemen, soldiers [and] Sephardi men."
From Greenberg D. Brome, D. Nocturnal Hallucinations in Ultra-orthodox Jewish Israeli Men. Psychiatry 2001. 64 (1); 81-90.
Now you might be thinking that this group included a fair number of malingerers who were keen to avoid military service. The psychiatrists considered that possibility too, but noted that about 45% of the men came for more than one visit, and about 11% did not not request a recommendation letter for the army. So they concluded that "the night hallucinations are a real clinical and culturally determined phenomenon, which in a minority of cases may have been misused and presented for purposes of gaining exemption from army service." In any event, most ended up with a diagnosis of "subnormality and/or psychosis," with a generally good prognosis. But there is nothing that appears to be particularly prophetic in the thoughts of this group of mentally ill Jewish men.
“We suggest that some of civilization’s most significant religious figures may have had psychotic symptoms that contributed inspiration for their revelations. It is hoped that this analysis will engender scholarly dialogue about the rational limits of human experience and serve to educate the general public, persons living with mental illness, and healthcare providers about the possibility that persons with primary and mood disorder-associated psychotic-spectrum disorders have had a monumental influence on civilization.”
On the origin of prophecy today
In his seventeenth century commentary on the Talmud, R. Samuel Eliezer ben R. Judah HaLevi Edels, better known as the Maharsha, suggests that there are different kinds of prophecy.
מהרש"א חידושי אגדות מסכת בבא בתרא דף יב עמוד ב
וענין שנטלה מן הנביאים ונתנה לשוטים אין הנבואות שוות דנבואת נביאים ע"י הש"י או ע"י מלאכיו אבל נבואת השוטים ותינוקות אינו אלא ע"י שד דהכי מחלק בפרק הרואה בין החלומות שיש מהן ע"י המלאך ויש מהן ע"י שד
"Not all prophecy is the same. For the prophecy of the prophets was endowed by God, Blessed be He, or one of His angels, whereas the prophecy of the mentally ill and children is endowed by a demon..."
Which may only serve to scare the mentally ill even more. R. Yochanan's statement reminds us that the line between mental disease and religiously inspired hallucinations (or delusions) is very blurred, and that, whatever the source of their visions and hallucinations, the mentally ill deserve more than our pity or support. They deserve our respect.
“If you hear a car backfire and you believe that it may be a pistol shot, that is an illusion. If you hear a pistol shot when there has been no sound (either of a pistol or a car backfiring), that is a hallucination. If you hear a pistol shot and believe that it is God firing a pistol at you because you [as a physician] have ordered inappropriate lab tests, that is a delusion. If [a physician] decides he is ordering too many laboratory tests in the absence of an external sensory stimulus, that is called enlightenment.”