Ketuvot 58b ~ Rabbi Meir on Maximizing Meaning

תלמוד בבלי כתובות דף נח עמוד ב

אין אדם מוציא דבריו לבטלה

“A person does not say things without reason ”

— Ketuvot 58b

This teaching of Rabbi Meir (c.~2nd century CE) is directed towards a specific legal question: can a person's declaration containing two contradictory clauses have any legal meaning? The details of the case need not concern us, but Rabbi Meir established a hermeneutic principal that was to be widely discussed, most notably by three American philosophers Willard Quine (d. 2000),  Ronald Dworkin (d. 2013) and Donald Davidson (d. 2003).

The Principle of Charity 

The Principle of Charity asks the reader (or listener) to interpret the text they are reading (or words they are hearing) in a way that would make them optimally successful.  Here's how Moshe Halbertal from the Hebrew University explained it:

“[A]lthough a person’s words might be read as self-contradictory and thus meaningless, they should not be interpreted in that way. If someone tells us he feels good and bad, we should not take his statement as meaningless but rather understand by this that sometimes he feels good and sometimes bad, or that his feelings are mixed.
”

— Moshe Halbertal. People of the Book. Harvard University Press 1997, p27.

Other philosophers of language, like the late American analytical philosopher Donald Davidson developed this Principle of Charity. “We make maximum sense of the words of others,” wrote Davidson, “when we interpret in a way that optimizes agreement.” But sometimes The Principle of Charity requires that the reader change the meaning of the text in order to maximize the likelihood of agreement with the author’s words, as long as such a rational or coherent interpretation is available to the reader. It is the attempt to read the text in the “best” possible light.

We could include in this discussion Ludwig Wittgenstein (d. 1951). In his Philosophical Investigations he claimed that there is no single correct way that language works. Instead, there are "language games" - with the rules of the game changing as the needs of the speaker change. Or the American philosopher John Searle's important work Speech Acts, in which speech follows certain rules, and it is the context of the words that determine which rules are in force.  Or the father of deconstruction, the French Sephardi philosopher Jacques Derrida (d. 2004) who believed that once they are cut off from their author, words can mean something other than what they meant in their original context. Or J.L Austin or Paul Ricoeur or....

But it's Pesach this week. You've got kitchens to scrub or cases to pack (or sometimes both).  So let's stop here. Just remember that it was Rabbi Meir who introduced us to the hermeneutic Principle of Charity. Now can you please fix that Wiki article so that Rabbi Meir gets his just recognition?

Ketuvot 52b ~ Blood Letting

[Re-posted (with a few minor changes) for חזרה from Yevamot 72a]

Today's Daf - Who Pays for Mom's Blood Letting?

“Rabbi Yochanan said: the sages made blood letting in Israel like a healing that has no limit.”

— Talmud Ketuvot 52b

Should you undergo therapeutic venesection - blood-letting - regularly (like using the gym) or save it for special occasions (like a birthday or anniversary)? That's a question which is addressed in today's Daf Yomi.  The question of who should pay for a widow's blood-letting session depended on the resolution of this conundrum. If blood-letting is considered a rare or one-off intervention, then the costs of the procedure should be borne from the fixed proceeds from the widow's Ketuvah. But if the procedure needs to performed chronically, it is considered to be more like the ongoing expense of food; in that case the costs must be borne by the heirs of the deceased husband and not by the woman herself using up the proceeds of her Kutuvah.  It's at this point in the discussion that Rabbi Yochanan speaks up, to let us know that in Israel blood-letting was performed on a regular basis, and so - at least there - the heirs were required to pay for it.  

Blood Letting Elsewhere in the Talmud

Blood-letting was a simple enough and rather brutal procedure. You went to the blood letter and he sliced into your vein. After a while, when the blood-letter had determined that you'd lost just the right amount of blood, the wound was bandaged, and off you went, looking forward to being cured of whatever had led you to the blood-letter in the the first place. The procedure was thought to be the way to cure any number of illnesses, including fever and  asphyxia (Yoma 84a). It dates back at least to the 5th century BCE, and is mentioned in the writings of Erasistratus (300-260 BCE) who opposed the procedure, and Galen (c. 130-200 CE) who used it and taught that it was an important tool that could heal the sick.

Blood-letting is frequently mentioned in the Talmud. Most famously, in Shabbat 129a, there is an extensive discussion of some of the do's and dont's of blood letting:

Rab Judah said in Rab's name: One should always sell [even] the beams of his house and buy shoes for his feet. If one has let blood and has nothing to eat, let him sell the shoes from off his feet and provide the requirements of a meal therewith. What are the requirements of a meal? — Rab said: Meat; while Samuel said: Wine. Rab said meat: life for life. While Samuel said, Wine: red [wine] to replace red [blood]. ..For Samuel on the day he was bled  a dish of pieces of meat was prepared; R. Johanan drank until the smell [of the wine] issued from his ears; R. Nahman drank until his milt swam [in wine]; R. Joseph drank until it [the smell] issued from the puncture of bleeding. Raba sought Wine of a [vine] that had had three [changes of] foliage.

…Rab and Samuel both Say: If one makes light of the meal after bleeding his food will be made light of by Heaven, for they say; He has no compassion for his own life, shall I have compassion upon him! 

Rab and Samuel both say: He who is bled, let him, not sit where a wind can enfold [him], lest the cupper drained him [of blood] and reduced it to [just] a revi’it,  and the wind come and drain him [still further], and thus he is in danger. 

Samuel was accustomed to be bled in a house [whose wall consisted] of seven whole bricks,  and a half brick [in thickness]. One day he bled and felt himself [weak]; he examined [the wall] and found a half-brick missing.

Rab and Samuel both say: He who is bled must [first] partake of something and then go out; for if he does not eat anything, if he meets a corpse his face will turn green; if he meets a homicide he will die; and if he meets swine, it [the meeting] is harmful in respect of something else.

Rab and Samuel both say: One who is bled should tarry awhile and then rise, for a Master said: In five cases one is nearer to death than to life. And these are they: When one eats and [immediately] rises, drinks and rises, sleeps and rises, lets blood and rises, and cohabits and rises.

Samuel said: The correct interval for blood-letting is every thirty days. Samuel also said: The correct time for bloodletting is on a Sunday Wednesday and Friday, but not on Monday or Thursday…

Modern Medicine and the Practice of Blood-Letting

There is absolutely no place for this intervention today, other than for a couple of rare disorders. One is polycythemia vera.  In this illness, the body makes too many red blood cells (hence its name, poly=many, kytos=cells, hamia=blood), and one way to keep the illness in check is to remove those excess blood cells at a regular intervals.  Another rare disorder that is sometimes treated with therapeutic blood-letting is hemochromatosis, in which there is a build up of iron in the body.  But other than for these rare diseases, blood-letting, (called today phlebotomy or venepuncture, which do sound a whole lot more palatable but describe the same procedure) is harmful. Do not try this at home.  

Having made this very clear, let's introduce some nuance. Palliative blood-letting may be useless, but from this is does not follow that it is a good idea to restore the hematocrit (the concentration of red blood cells in the blood) to normal in every disease state. For example, virtually all patients on  dialysis (due to chronic kidney disease) become anemic, but in these patients, trying to restore the hemoglobin concentration to a higher level (~13g/dL for those interested) seems to be associatedwith increased risk, when compared with those in whom the hemoglobin level was lower. And when tiny premature babies get anemic, there does not seem to be an advantage to keeping the hemoglobin in a higher range (though to be fair, more research needs to be done). But these two examples do not in any way lend support to the notion that blood-letting is anything other than a really bad idea.  

Photo of bloodletting in 1860. Yes, that's right, 1860. From the Burns Archive

The procedure, which had been in use for at least 2,000 years, only stopped being part of standard medical practice in the late 19th century.  Writing in 1875, one Englishman could not bring himself to believe that the era of blood-letting was really  over. "Is the relinquishment of bleeding final?" he wrote, 

or shall we see by and by, or will our successors see, a resumption of the practice? This, I take it, is a very difficult question to answer; and he would be a very bold man who, after looking carefully through the history of the past, would venture to assert that bleeding will not be profitably employed any more.

(In fact, blood letting was even suggested as a therapy during a severe influenza outbreak at a British Army camp in northern France in the winter of 1916-17.  Amazing.)  we no-longer practice this all but useless intervention, the prayer associated with it is worth recalling. Maimonides ruled (Berakhot 10:21) that before undergoing blood-letting, the patient pray the procedure be effective,and this ruling is found as part of normative Jewish practice, recorded in the (שולחן ערוך (אורח חיים רל ס׳ק ד:

הנכנס להקיז דם אומר "יהי רצון מלפניך ה' אלהי שיהא עסק זה לי לרפואה כי רופא חנם אתה". ולאחר שהקיז אומר "ברוך רופא חולים

Before undergoing blood letting say: May it be your will Lord my God, that this procedure will heal me, for you are an unconditional healer. And when it is finished he says: Blessed are you God, healer of the sick.

The procedures have changed, but the prayers have stayed the same.

Ketuvot 50a ~ The Economic Costs of Raising Children

Kids Today

Deep inside a recent study of the use of electronic media by children in the US was this remarkable finding: almost as many children now have their own tablets (7%) as parents did two years ago. Here's another gem from the same report: Two years ago, about half (52%) of all children ages 8 and under lived in a home where they had access to a smartphone or tablet; today, three-quarters (75%) do. Some children have quite comfortable lives, it would seem.  But it wasn't always that way.

Kids Back Then 

Today's page of Talmud (Ketuvot 50a) reminds us of another kind of reality that children once faced. Back then, it was a much more harsh world. And not just because the kids were not given their own iPhone.  In fact, according to the Talmud, they were lucky just to get food and shelter. 

תלמוד בבלי כתובות דף נ עמוד א

אשרי שומרי משפט עושה צדקה בכל עת - וכי אפשר לעשות צדקה בכל עת? דרשו רבותינו שביבנה ... זה הזן בניו ובנותיו כשהן קטנים

““Happy are those who keep justice, who perform charity at all times” (Psalms 106:3). But is it possible to perform charity at all times? This, explained our Rabbis in Yavneh...refers to one who sustains his sons and daughters when they are minors.”

— Talmud Bavli, Ketuvot 50a.

In yesterday's Daf, we learned that a person's legal obligation to support their children ends when those children reach the age of six. From that age, the parents' obligations to give their children water, food and clothing is not a legal one, but a moral one. If a parent refuses to support a child older than six, the courts can impose pressure to do so. But there is no legal obligation to support your child once they reach the ripe old age of six.  Because of this ruling, the Talmud considers the support of minor children to be an act of charity.  (Try bringing that argument up the next time your child asks for a cellphone upgrade.)  Here is how this law is codified.  

שולחן ערוך אבן העזר הלכות כתובות סימן עא סעיף א

 חייב אדם לזון בניו ובנותיו עד שיהיו בני שש ...ומשם ואילך, זנן כתקנת חכמים עד שיגדלו. ואם לא רצה, גוערין בו ומכלימין אותו ופוצרין בו. ואם לא רצה, מכריזין עליו בצבור ואומרים: פלוני אכזרי הוא ואינו רוצה לזון בניו, והרי הוא פחות מעוף טמא שהוא זן אפרוחיו; ואין כופין אותו לזונן...במה דברים אמורים, בשאינו אמוד, אבל אם היה אמוד שיש לו ממון הראוי ליתן צדקה המספקת להם, מוציאים ממנו בעל כרחו, משום צדקה, וזנין אותם עד שיגדלו 

A person is obligated to support his sons and daughters until they reach the age of six...From that age, he is required by rabbinic decree to support them until they grow up. If he does not wish to support them, we admonish him until he complies.  If he still refuses, we announce to the public: "So-and-so is a cruel person, and does not wish to support his children. He is worse than an unclean  bird - even that bird cares for its chicks." But we cannot force him to support his children.  

But this only applies when we have assessed that indeed he cannot support them financially.  But if we assessed him, and found that he has the money to give to charity and this would allow the children to live, we take the money from him by force, in the name of charity, and support the children until they grow up. (Shulchan Aruch Even Ha'Ezer 71:1)

The Economic Costs of Raising Children

Raising children is an expensive undertaking.  It requires parents to put in years and years of emotional, material and psychological effort. Those material costs can be calculated, and here they are:

Expenditures of Children by Families, 2012. US. Dept of Agriculture, Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion. Miscellaneous Publication No. 1528-2012. August 2013.

So according to the USDA, it costs - on average - about $241,000 to raise a child in the US. That sounds like a bargain to me.  It cost that just to put one of my children through through twelve years of their Jewish school. And that's before I'd bought them a slice of bread. Or an iPhone.

“For someone making $60,000 a year, in America, that’s middle class...But in this Orthodox community, $60,000 means you aren’t going to make it.”

— Rabbi Ilan Feldman, leader of Congregation Beth Jacob, interviewed in Tablet, July 11, 2014.

Research by the sociologists Sabino Kornrich and Frank Furstenberg has demonstrated that the way Americans spend money on their children has changed over the last several decades.  It turns out that before the the 1990s, parents spent most on children in their teen years. However, after the 1990s, spending patterns shifted, and was greatest when children were under the age of 6 and in their mid-twenties. We've also changed the where we spend on our children - and education now accounts for more than half of what US parents spend on their children. 

Average spending per child by year and percentage of expenditures in each area for all households with children age 0 to 24. From Kornrich and Furstenburg.  Investing in Children. Demography 2013. 50:1-23.

There's some good news too, for girls. In the 1970s, parents in households with only male children spent significantly more than parents in households with only female children - and nearly all of that extra money was spent on education. But by the early 2000s, the data showed a reversal: households with only female children spent more than households with only male children. 

Kronrich and Fursetnberg concluded that parents are investing more heavily in their children now than in the past. "While scholars debate exactly which resources matter most for children’s development... parents are demonstrating a substantial willingness to spend in order to better their children’s circumstances. These results mirror other shifts in parental behavior: parents are having fewer children and, through a range of activities like spending time with their children and choosing activities that impart cultural capital, are investing more intensively in the children they do have." 

Treat Your Children Well

Jewish law considers the support of a child to be an act of charity rather than a legal obligation. There is a similar ruling that shows an interesting symmetry at the other end of the spectrum. The Shulchan Aruch (הלכות צדקה סימן רנא) writes

 וכן הנותן מתנות לאביו והם צריכים להם, הרי זה בכלל צדקה

... a child who gives a gift to his parent who needs it, can include this as an act of charity

Just as you are not legally obligated to support your children when they are young, your children have no legal obligation to support you in your old age.  If they choose to do so, their act is one of charity. So treat your children well; they'll be the ones who will choose your nursing home.

“Spending on children is one of the most direct ways that parents can invest in children. Parental spending can buy children experiences that build human and cultural capital: high-quality education, residence in better neighborhoods, and potentially high-quality child care while children are young and parents are at work.”

— Kornrich and Furstenburg. Investing in Children. Demography 2013. 50:3.

The Solar Eclipse

Friday March 20 - An Astronomic Trifecta, +1

Tomorrow, Friday March 20, 2015, is a very important day for astronomers. That's because three events will coincide: the Spring (Vernal) equinox, a super-moon (in which either a full moon or a new moon occurs during the moon's closest approach to Earth) and...a solar eclipse. (And then of course on Friday night it is ראש הודש ניסן – the start of the month of Nissan.) We will discuss the eclipse, which unfortunately will only be visible over north Africa, Israel and most of Europe, as you can see in the animation. (For those in North America, there will be nothing to see, since the eclipse will occur during the night.  If you live there, the next solar eclipse will be on August 21, 2017.  You may stop reading this, and return to this page in two and-a-half years.)

In Israel, and over most of Europe, this solar eclipse will be partial, with the moon taking only a little bite out of the sun's disc. (To experience a full solar eclipse you'll need to be somewhere in the north Atlantic or on Denmarks's Faroe Islands, which are about 200 miles northwest of Scotland.) In Jerusalem the eclipse will begin at 11:16am.  At its maximum (11:58am)  there won't be any noticeable darkening, but if the sky is clear, you'll see something like this:

The Talmud on Eclipses

תלמוד בבלי סוכה דף כט עמוד א 

תנו רבנן: בזמן שהחמה לוקה - סימן רע לעובדי כוכבים, לבנה לוקה - סימן רע לשונאיהם של ישראל, מפני שישראל מונין ללבנה ועובדי כוכבים לחמה...

תנו רבנן: בשביל ארבעה דברים חמה לוקה: על אב בית דין שמת ואינו נספד כהלכה, ועל נערה המאורסה שצעקה בעיר ואין מושיע לה, ועל משכב זכור, ועל שני אחין שנשפך דמן כאחד

“Our Rabbis taught, A solar eclipse is a bad omen for idolaters; a lunar eclipse is a bad omen for Israel, because Israel reckons [its calendar] by the moon, and idolaters by the sun...

Our Rabbis taught, A solar eclipse happens because of four things:
1. When an Av Bet Din [head of the Rabbinic Court] died and was not properly eulogized;
2. If a betrothed girl cried out aloud in the city and there was no-one to save her [from being raped];
3. Because of homosexuality; and
4 If two brothers were killed at the same time.”

— Sukkah 29a

That's what we have - four causes of a solar eclipse.  And how does Rashi explain this passage?       לא שמעתי טעם בדבר  - "I have not heard any explanation for this." 

The Real Cause of a Solar Eclipse

יערות דבש, דרוש י’ב

Another attempt to explain the Talmud was offered by Jonatan Eybeschutz (d. 1764). In 1751 Eybeschutz was elected as chief rabbi of the Three Communities (Altona, Hamburg, and Wandsbek), and was later accused of being a secret follower of the false messiah Shabtai Zevi. In January 1751, Eybeschutz gave a drasha Hamburg in Hamburg in which he addressed the very same problem that the Maharal had noted: if a solar eclipse is a predictable event, how can it be related to human conduct? His answer was quite different: The Talmud in Sukkah is not actually addressing the phenomenon that we call a solar eclipse. According to Eybeschutz, the phrase in Sukkah "בזמן שהחמה לוקה" actually means - "when there are sunspots."

Inventive though this is, it is as implausible as the suggestion of the Maharal. In the first place, sunspots were almost (but not quite impossible) to see prior to the invention of the telescope. They were described in March 1611 by a contemporary of Galileo named Christopher Scheiner (though Galileo lost no-time in claiming that he, not Scheiner was the first to correctly interpret what they were.) Because sunspots were so difficult to see with the naked eye, it seems unlikely that this is what the rabbis in Gemara Sukkah were describing.

Courtesy of NASA

Christopher Scheiner, Rosa Ursina sive Sol (Bracciai 1626-1630)

Second, according to Eybeschutz, sunspots "have no known cause, and have no fixed period to their appearance".  We can't fault Eybeschutz  for his first claim, but - even by the science of his day - his second was not correct. In fact both Scheiner and Galileo knew  - and wrote - that sunspots were permanent (at least for a while) and moved slowly across the face of the sun.

Sidebar: Eybeschutz, Sunspots and Copernicus

It's interesting to note that Galileo got very excited about the discovery that the spots moved across the face of the sun. This suggested (though it did not prove) that the sun itself was spinning. Galileo had also discovered that Jupiter was orbited by moons. Both of these discoveries now added further support to the Copernican model in which the Earth was spinning on its own axis, and was not the center of all the movement of objects in the sky. But Eybeschutz did not believe Copernicus was correct: "Copernicus and his supporters have made fools of themselves when they declare that the Earth orbits [the Sun]. They have left us with a lie, and the truth will bear itself witness that the Earth stands still for ever."  Eybeschutz wanted to have sunspots explain away a talmudic mystery, but he dismissed the evidence that they provided in other matters - namely, that the earth moves.  

Was the Plague of Darkness a Solar Eclipse? 

Since we are only a couple of weeks before פסח, we will end with another look at an old theory, in which the Plague of Darkness was caused not by a miracle, but rather by a (conveniently timed) solar eclipse.  In 1916 Eduard Mahler (d. 1945)  suggested this explanation in his Handbuch der Jüdischen Chronologie, (Vienna 1887).  According to Mahler, there was a solar eclipse visible in Egypt on Thursday March 13, 1335 BC. Since this was the only such eclipse, it would date the Exodus as occurring on March 27th, 1335 BC.

However, there's an obvious problem: the Torah describes the darkness lasting for three days. But a solar eclipse is over in a matter of minutes.  Mahler has in interesting answer: instead of reading the verses (in Exod. 10) like this:

(22) there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt for three days. (23) They did not see each other, or get up from their places for three days.

read them like this:

(22)  there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt. (23) For three days they did not see each other, or get up from their places for three days.

The eclipse lasted only a few minutes, but its effect on the Egyptians lasted three days. And what about the Jews in Goshen -why was there no Plague of Darkness there? Because they lived outside of the totality -  the area in which the complete eclipse occurred -  and would not have noted any significant darkening. Now there are some problems with this theory - like the fact that according to NASA, the solar eclipse to which Mahler referred seems to have been only a partial eclipse throughout Egypt. Still, it makes for a good discussion. Try that at your Seder Table.