From the Passover Archives: How the Sarajevo Haggadah was Saved. Twice.

But First, a Note From Talmudology:

Since this post was first published in 2018, Talmudology received additional information from Zvonimir Snagic, who identified himself as the great-nephew of Dr. Jozo Petrovic. Petrovic was director of the State Museum when the Sarajevo Haggadah housed there was hidden from the Nazis. Mr. Snagic supplied Talmudology with both testimony from his family and evidence that Dr. Petrovic played at least as large a role in the story as did Devis Korut. We have amended the post in light of this new information, and are grateful to Mr. Snagic.

Of all the medieval illuminated Haggadot that exist, the Sarajevo Haggadah is perhaps the most famous.  It is thought to have been created in Barcelona around 1350, and today it is on display at the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina. If you are thinking of visiting it at the museum, plan ahead. The Haggadah is on display Tuesdays and Thursdays, and first Saturday of the month from noon to 1pm.  You may visit at other times, if you pony up more money and let them know in advance. According to the Museum, the Haggadah is "its most valuable holding," and for good reason. It has three sections: the first has 34 full page small biblical illuminations from the creation of the world to the death of Moses. The next is the text of the traditional Haggadah, and the last section contains poems and readings to be read on each of the seven days of Passover.  The illustrations are masterpieces in miniature; deep indigo and red across a golden background, with elegantly elongated Hebrew letters that seem to drip down the page. It is in every way, the gold standard of Haggadot.

The remarkable History of the Sarajevo Haggadah

We know little of the first five-hundred years of the Haggadah. The name of the original owner is not known, and it appears to have been taken out of Spain in 1492, when Jews were expelled by the Alhambra Decree. There is a note written by a Catholic priest, Giovanni Domenico Vistorini, who inspected the Haggadah in 1609 for any anti-Christian content. Vistorini, who was most likely a converted Jew, found nothing objectionable in the Haggadah. "His Latin inscription, Revisto per mi (“Surveyed by me”)" wrote the Pulitzer Prize winning author Geraldine Brooks "runs with a casual fluidity beneath the last, painstakingly calligraphed lines of the Hebrew text." The Haggadah then disappeared for almost three centuries, until it was sold to the National Museum by a Joseph Kohen in 1894. 

“The Haggada rescue story could, therefore, be placed in the category of verbal communication of a narrow circle of people that share a common past, and in their repeated remembrances of the event, the story becomes rich with new forms and meanings. Such a tale has not yet become a fully formed historical story (legend) as it is known in the theory and history of literature, with the strong likelihood that in the future such a tale may become a standardized verbal communication pattern of past events.
”

— Kemal Bakaršić. The Story of the Sarajevo Haggada. Judaica Librarianship 1995: 9(1–2); 135-143.

Jozo Petrovic & Dervis Korut save the Haggadah

That the Sarajevo Haggadah had survived that long was highly improbable, but a series of even more unlikely events were to come.  On April 16, 1942 the Nazis invaded Sarajevo and immediately destroyed the city's eight synagogues. The director of the State Museum at that time was an archaeologist, Dr. Jozo Petrovic (1892-1967), a Croat from Bosnia. It was Petrovic who was charged with giving a tour to a group of high-ranking Nazis that included the much feared General Johann Fortner. They were looking for the Haggadah to add to their proposed "Museum of an Extinct Race," and during this whole episode, it was in Dr. Petrovic's briefcase. The visit lasted about one hour, and before his departure General Fortner turned to Dr. Petrovic. “Und jetz, bitte, Qbergeben Sie mir die Haggadah!" (And now, please, hand me the Haggadah!) Geraldine Brooks picks up the story:

The museum director feigned dismay. “But, General, one of your officers came here already and demanded the Haggadah,” he said. “Of course, I gave it to him.."...

“What officer?” Fortner barked. “Name the man!”

The reply was deft: “Sir, I did not think it was my place to require a name.”

Petrovic had come from Belgrade to run the museum, and he was not familiar with local villages and populations. He therefore asked another librarian, Dervis M. Korkut, to move the Haggadah out of Sarajevo. Korut agreed, and (according to one version) he hid it in the mosque of a small nearby village. There an Imam kept an eye on it and returned it at the end of the war.  The Haggadah had been saved by brave Muslims.

Whoever saves one human life...

“The man so determined to protect a Jewish book was the scion of a prosperous, highly regarded family of Muslim alims, or intellectuals, famous for producing judges of Islamic law.”

— Geraldine Brooks. The Book of Exodus. The New Yorker, Dec 3, 2007.

While the Koruts are best remembered for the role of Dervis in saving the Sarajevo Haggadah, it is not this achievement of which the family is most proud. “In our family, the Haggadah is a detail,” his son said.“What my father did for Jewish people—that is the biggest thing that we, in our family, have to be proud of.”

In 1942, shortly after hiding the Haggadah, a sixteen-year-old girl named Mira Papo came to Korut and asked to be hidden. The family took her in, dressed her as a Muslim, and passed her off as their maid. Four months later they arranged for Mira to join her aunt at an area on the Dalmatian coast where there was no Nazi presence. She survived the war and later moved to Israel. And then, in 1994, Mira wrote a testimony of her rescue and submitted it Yad Vashem.  Korut Dervis, who had died in 1969, and his wife Servet were added to the names of the Righteous Among the Nations. Servet received a certificate, a pension, and the right to Israeli citizenship.  

Just when the story seemed to have reached its conclusion, another dramatic episode began.  In 1999, at the height of the atrocities of the civil war in Kosovo, the Korut’s youngest daughter Lamija, and her Muslim husband were forced from their home by Serbian militiamen. They were sent to a refugee camp in which the conditions were so appalling that they were forced to flee. The couple were refused asylum by France and Sweden, and in desperation they turned to the small Jewish community of Skopje in Macedonia.  Somehow, Lamija still had with her the certificate that Yad Vashem had given to her mother. She showed it to Victor Mizrahi, the president of the community, and four days later, Lamija and her husband landed in Tel Aviv. The Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was at the airport to welcome them. “Today, we are closing a great circle in that the state of Israel, which emerged from the ashes, gives refuge to the daughter of those who saved Jews,” he said. And then, in the chaos of the media frenzy at the airport Lamija heard someone calling her in Serbo-Croation.

“It was a good feeling, to have someone speaking your language,” she said. But she had no idea who it could be, greeting her so warmly. Pushing through the crowd was a slender, wiry man she had never seen before, with a shock of dark hair and a mustache. Opening his arms, he introduced himself, and Lamija fell into the embrace of Davor Bakovic, the son of Mira Papo.

The Haggadah is restored

It's a remarkable story, which I hope you will share at your Pesach Seder when you reach the passage שפיך חמתך על הגוים - "pour out Your wrath on the Gentiles who do not know You..." But having taken a deep breath and dried our eyes, let's return to the Haggadah itself. In her 2008 novel The People of the Book, Geraldine Brooks opens in Sarajevo, where, under the watch of staff from the United Nations and security officers from the State Museum, an Australian conservator works on the Sarajevo Haggadah.

Pataki at work repairing the Sarajevo Haggadah. Photo courtesy of Andrea Pataki.

In fact the real Hagaddah did undergo conservation, but it was carried out by Andrea Pataki, from Stuttgart, Jean-Marie Arnolt of Paris, and the late Prof. Bezalel Narkiss, Professor Emeritus of Art History at the Hebrew University. These three experts wrote of their experience in conserving the Haggadah in a paper published in The Paper Conservator in 2005. For those of you who let your subscription lapse, you can find a copy here.

Andrea Pataki is a book conservator of world renown. For almost a decade she led the Studiengang für Papierrestaurierung, the Book and Paper Conservation Program at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart, before taking up her present position as a professor at the Technical University of Cologne. Pataki is not Jewish, but had lost Jewish relatives in the Holocaust. Recalling her own role in the project, she never considered it significant that she was a Gentile born in Vienna now repairing a manuscript once pursued by the Nazis. Instead, she noted that she was hired because of her expertise and experience. Her own background was of little consequence. And that is how it should be.

In December 2001 Pataki spent nine days repairing the Haggadah at the Union Bank in Sarajevo. Each day, she recalled later in in an academic paper,

... the manuscript was brought to the 'conservation lab' in its metal box which was opened by representatives of the Museum. Working hours were from 8:00 am to 4:00 pm, after which the manuscript was locked in its box and promptly returned to the vault of the Union Bank. As a consequence, it was necessary to stop treatment each day at a stage at which the manuscript could be closed and put away safely.This meant making sure that all repairs would have adequate time to dry during the day, which required a great deal of planning and foresight.

Pataki found that the original covers of the Haggadah, which had certainly been made of vellum, were lost. In their place were cheap cardboard covers in a Turkish floral design, which were entirely orthogonal to the style of the Haggadah. Several sections, called quires, were detached from the rest of the book and needed to be carefully sewn back into place.  The book joints, where the outer boards of the cover meet the spine, had broken. This allowed Pataki access to the binding underneath. She repaired one of the four cords that ran vertically down the spine and around which the quires are sewn. The joints were reattached. Finally, she repaired the head a tail caps at the top and bottom of the spine with new calf leather that had been specially dyed for this restoration.

Of all the damage that the Haggadah had suffered, none was more important than the wine stains, just like those found on the pages of family Haggadot to this day.  Here is Pataki’s assessment:

The ritual of washing the hands twice during the ceremony had resulted in water stains on the parchment and smudges and smearing of pigments. The ceremony also calls for the drinking of four cups of wine and consumption of different foods dipped in salt water, before and during the festive meal. This activity resulted in many stains and discoloured areas on the pages which call for ritual drinking and eating…

What was to a conservator a sign of damage and discoloration was to the Jewish community a symbol of continuity. The stains were a testament that the Sarajevo Haggadah had not been left on a shelf, but had been used at the table, guiding the Seder night for hundreds of years.

“Due to the use of the manuscript on the Passover table for many generations, the main damage to the text-block had been caused by liquid. ”

— Pataki A., Narkiss, B., Arnoult, J. The conservation of the Sarajevo Haggadah, The Paper Conservator, 2005: 29:1, 63-66.

The Sarajevo Haggadah as a symbol of  Tolerance and Hope

Neal Kritz, a lawyer at the United States Institute for Peace, was in Sarajevo in the late 1990s. He was part of a delegation that focused on the restoration of the justice system and the atrocities that had occurred during the Bosnian civil war. Kritz recalled how the Bosnian Serbs had demanded the Sarajevo Haggadah be displayed in Banja Luka, the de facto capital of the newly created Serb republic.  It was their treasure too, they claimed; it did not just belong to the people of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Their demands were rejected, and the Haggadah remained in Sarajevo, where a new display of it opened there only last month. Kritz received a token of gratitude from the Chief Prosecutor of the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovnia. It was, of course, a facsimile edition of the Sarajevo Haggadah, which had now come to symbolize efforts to make peace between Bosnians and Serbs. And in November 2017, UNESCO added the Sarajevo Haggadah to their Memory of the World Register to mark, naturally, the International Day for Tolerance.

Over the last seventy years the Sarajevo Haggadah has twice been saved. First, three Muslims risked their lives to rescue it from those who sought to annihilate the Jewish people. And then it was saved from the ruins of time by an expert from the very country from which so much hate had originated.  The last word goes to Mirsad Sijarić, the Director of the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina: "The Sarajevo Haggadah is physical proof of the openness of a society in which fear of the Other has never been an incurable disease."

Chullin 140b ~ Ornithology, Emotions, and the Reasons for the Commandments

We are just two days away from finishing the long tractate called Chullin, which dealt with all manner of questions about kosher meat and poultry. In the final chapter we are studying the details of a rather different issue: the command to frighten away the mother bird if you wish to eat the eggs she is incubating. This commandment is called שילוח הקן – shiluach haken, (lit. “sending away the nest”). We will discuss some ornithological issues and see how they might impact our understanding of the command.

Here are the details in the Torah:

דברים כב,ו–ז

כִּ֣י יִקָּרֵ֣א קַן־צִפּ֣וֹר ׀ לְפָנֶ֡יךָ בַּדֶּ֜רֶךְ בְּכָל־עֵ֣ץ ׀ א֣וֹ עַל־הָאָ֗רֶץ אֶפְרֹחִים֙ א֣וֹ בֵיצִ֔ים וְהָאֵ֤ם רֹבֶ֙צֶת֙ עַל־הָֽאֶפְרֹחִ֔ים א֖וֹ עַל־הַבֵּיצִ֑ים לֹא־תִקַּ֥ח הָאֵ֖ם עַל־הַבָּנִֽים׃ שַׁלֵּ֤חַ תְּשַׁלַּח֙ אֶת־הָאֵ֔ם וְאֶת־הַבָּנִ֖ים תִּֽקַּֽח־לָ֑ךְ לְמַ֙עַן֙ יִ֣יטַב לָ֔ךְ וְהַאֲרַכְתָּ֖ יָמִֽים׃

If, along the road, you chance upon a bird’s nest, in any tree or on the ground, with fledglings or eggs and the mother sitting over the fledglings or on the eggs, do not take the mother together with her young. Let the mother go, and take only the young, in order that you may fare well and have a long life.

That’s it. Two sentences. But have no fear - there are at least twelve pages of discussion about this in the Talmud, which raises all sorts of questions. Like this one, asked by Rabbi Zeira:

חולין קמ,ב

בעי ר' זירא יונה על ביצי תסיל מהו תסיל על ביצי יונה מהו

If a yonah (pigeon) is resting upon the eggs of a tasil, [a kosher bird resembling a pigeon,] what is the halakha with regard to sending away the mother bird from the nest? Likewise, if a tasil is resting upon the eggs of a yonah (pigeon), what is the halakha?

אמר אביי ת"ש עוף טמא רובץ על ביצי עוף טהור וטהור רובץ על ביצי עוף טמא פטור משילוח הא טהור וטהור חייב דלמא בקורא

Abaye said: Come and hear that which is taught in the Mishna (on 138b): In a case where a non-kosher bird is resting upon the eggs of a kosher bird, or a kosher bird is resting upon the eggs of a non-kosher bird, one is exempt from sending away the bird. One may infer from the mishna that in a case involving a kosher bird and kosher eggs, [e.g., a tasil resting on the eggs of a pigeon, one is obligated to send away the mother bird. The Gemara rejects this:] Perhaps this inference applies only to the case of a koreh, (? female pheasant) , which normally rests upon the eggs of other birds. Since this is its normal behavior, one is obligated to send it away even if it rests upon the eggs of another kosher bird. This may not be the case with regard to a tasil or pigeon.

Let’s try and figure all this out. First, what are the identities of these three birds mentioned: the yonah, the tasil and the koreh?

Male and Female Bird Plumage

The Yonah is fairly easy to identify; there is unanimous agreement that it a dove. Or a pigeon. Confused? They are both members of the species Columbida: The common (or domestic) pigeon is Columba livia domestica, and the mourning dove is Columbidae Zenaida macroura. Moving right along.

The Tasil is a bit more challenging. Rashi declares that it is “a tahor [ie kosher] bird, similar to the yona.” And that’s how it is translated in the Schottenstein Talmud. Marcus Jastrow wrote in his dictionary that is “a species of small dove.” The Koren notes that the tasil might be “a bird similar to a pigeon, or to a laughing dove, a small dove native to Eretz Yisrael.” So a bit of a mystery.

The identity of the Koreh seems to be easy. At least that what it seems from the translations. The Soncino translates it as a partridge, as is does the Schottenstein. The Koren English translation is even more specific: “This bird is identified as the sand partridge, a desert bird of the genus Ammoperdix in the pheasant family Phasiandae.” Wow. That’s some impressive ornithology.

Actually that specific identification is very important, because there is a debate as to whether this whole business of sending away the bird brooding over some eggs applies only to the female bird, and not to a male that is incubating. Here is a photo of a male sand partridge. It is grey with wavy flanks and beautiful white markings over the beak and behind the eyes. The female is a drab sandy brown color.

Male sand partridge. Note the beautiful white markings behind the eyes.

A lady sand partridge. No white facial markings.

According to the Talmud there is agreement that the command of shiluach haken does not apply to male birds. But there is a dispute about this specific bird, the koreh - our sand partridge. Rabbi Eliezer ruled that when it comes to this particular species, the male bird that is brooding must be frightened away before taking the eggs, just like the female.

תניא נמי הכי זכר דעלמא פטור קורא זכר ר"א מחייב וחכמים פוטרין

With regard to a male bird in general, one is exempt from the mitzva of sending it away, but with regard to a male koreh, Rabbi Eliezer deems one obligated to send it away from the nest, and the Rabbis deem one exempt from sending it away.

This requirement only makes sense if the two are readily distinguishable at a distance, and thanks to these nice photos, we now know they are.

By the way, have you wondered why this bird is called the קורא - koreh, which from the hebrew root ק–ר–א, k-r-h which means to call out? Apparently the bird has a prominent call which is heard long before it can be seen. Which perhaps gave its name: “the one that calls out.” (If you want to hear that call, click here. To be honest, to me it sounds like a slower version of the swish of a baby’s heartbeat heard with ultrasound. But that’s just me.)

Who is sitting on the eggs? Mom or dad?

As we noted, the Talmud rules that the commandment of shiluah haken applies only to the female of the species. Should the father be incubating, no such command applies (except for the sand partridge, as we just discussed). Here, for example, is what the great Maimonides wrote in his code, the Mishneh Torah:

רמב’ם משנה תורה הל׳ שחיטה. יג:י

זָכָר שֶׁמְּצָאוֹ רוֹבֵץ עַל הַקֵּן פָּטוּר מִלְּשַׁלֵּחַ

If a male was found incubating in the nest, there is no obligation to send him away [before taking the eggs or chicks].

This is also the ruling of the Shulchan Aruch, the Code of Jewish Law. Which raises the question - just how common is it for the male of the species to incubate the eggs? This is, of course a very challenging question to answer, because it all depends: which birds (European, American, African)? Birds of prey? Backyard birds? But given that, can we make a generalization?

Yale’s Ornithologist-in-Chief to the rescue

For an answer, Talmudology turned to Richard Prum, who is both the William Robertson Coe Professor of Ornithology in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at Yale University, and the Curator of Ornithology, (and Head Curator of Vertebrate Zoology,) at Yale’s Peabody Museum of Natural History, in New Haven, Connecticut. And here is what he told us:

“The brooding behavior of birds has evolved extensively among birds of the world. About 38% of bird species have female only incubation. About 50% of bird species have male and female incubation, and 6% of bird species have male only incubation.”

This certainly came as a bit of a surprise. It turns out then that you will find a male brooding in the nest a lot of the time! Prof. Prum also noted that these behaviors are not randomly distributed among birds. Closely related species of birds tend to have similar incubation behavior, but higher groups may differ extensively. 

In addition, most of the species with substantial eggs have female only incubation. These groups include most game birds and waterfowl like chickens, quail, francolins, guineafowl, ducks, geese, etc. In most of these species, the male takes no part in parental care.  That last bit is really important, because it is just these kinds of kosher wild birds that are subject to the law of sending the mother-bird away. In most of these species the male takes no part. So the Talmud was spot on, so to speak, in limiting the commandment to these kinds of fowl. But there is another complication. Prof. Prum also wrote that “in many species with shared incubation, it is impossible to distinguish the male from the female by plumage.”

reasons For the Commandments

There is a well-known philosophical debate about whether it is appropriate to give reasons behind the 613 mitzvot (commandments) found in the Torah. Much has been written and many fine minds were engaged with this question as it pertains to the commandment of shiluach haken. Perhaps it is an example of imitatio dei:God is kind, so you should be kind to his creatures. Therefore send the mother bird away so she cannot get upset when you remove her eggs. As an example of this train of thought (and there are many) here is the commentary of the famous Moshe ben Nachman, (1194-1270), better known as the Ramban:

הטעם לבלתי היות לנו לב אכזרי ולא נרחם, או שלא יתיר הכתוב לעשות השחתה לעקור  המין, אע"פ שהתיר השחיטה במין ההוא. והנה ההורג האם והבנים ביום אחד, או לוקח אותם בהיות להם דרור לעוף, כאלו יכרית המין ההוא

If the nest of a bird chances to be in front of you: Also this commandment is explained by "it and its son do not slaughter on one day" (Leviticus 22:28); since the reason in both of them is that we should not have a cruel heart and [then] not have mercy, or that the verse should not permit us to be destructive to destroy the species, even though it allowed slaughter within that species. And behold, one who kills the mother and the children on one day or takes them when they are 'free to fly' is as if he cuts off that species.

A similar reason is cited by the French French commentator Rashbam Samuel ben Meir (1085 – c. 1158). It it prevents cruelty (שדומה לאכזריות ורעבתנות). So too the Spanish commentator R. Bechayei (1255-1340):

שלח תשלח את האם, טעם המצוה ללמדנו על מדת הרחמנות, ושנתרחק מן האכזריות שהיא תכונה רעה בנפש, וכעניין שאסרה תורה (ויקרא כב) לשחוט אותו ואת בנו ביום אחד, וכעניין שנצטוינו בתורה שבעל פה דרך רחמנות לא דרך אכזריות בשחיטה בצואר ולא מן העורף, והוא דעת הרב בספר המורה, וכבר הזכרתיו למעלה" 

The reason for the command is to teach us the quality of mercy, and to distance us from cruelty…just as the Torah prohibited the slaughter of a mother and its calf on the same day…

Maimonides, in his Guide for the Perpexled, also weighed in on the reason for this command, and decided it was all about kindness:

Guide to the Perplexed, Vol. 3 chap 48:

The same reason applies to the law which enjoins that we should let the mother fly away when we take the young. The eggs over which the bird sits, and the young that are in need of their mother, are generally unfit for food, and when the mother is sent away she does not see the taking of her young ones, and does not feel any pain. In most cases, however, this commandment will cause man to leave the whole nest untouched, because [the young or the eggs], which he is allowed to take, are, as a rule, unfit for food. If the Law provides that such grief should not be caused to cattle or birds, how much more careful must we be that we should not cause grief to our fellowmen.

On the other hand…

There are a few sources that criticize the entire enterprise of ascribing reasons for any of the commandments in general, and of shiluach haken in particular. Like this one in the Mishnah itself:

ברכות לג,ב

משנה :האומר על קן ציפור יגיעו רחמיך …משתקין אותו

If a person adds in his prayers: “Your mercy is extended to a bird’s nest, so too extend Your mercy to us…he is silenced

Why such drastic action for reciting such a nice prayer? Here is the talmudic discussion:

פליגי בה תרי אמוראי במערבא רבי יוסי בר אבין ורבי יוסי בר זבידא חד אמר מפני שמטיל קנאה במעשה בראשית וחד אמר מפני שעושה מדותיו של הקדוש ברוך הוא רחמים ואינן אלא גזרות

Two amora’im in Eretz Yisrael disputed this question; Rabbi Yosei bar Avin and Rabbi Yosei bar Zevida; one said that this was because he engenders jealousy among God’s creations, [as it appears as though he is protesting the fact that the Lord favored one creature over all others]. And one said that this was because he transforms the attributes of the Holy One, Blessed be He, into expressions of mercy, when they are nothing but decrees of the King that must be fulfilled without inquiring into the reasons behind them.

So there are two opinions as to why this prayer is forbidden: the first, because it is inherently unfair to single out the incubating bird for a dose of extra divine mercy. What about the rest of the animal kingdom? And the second, because in general, the commands have nothing to do with mercy. They are just the commandments of God. And if they are kind, well that’s an added benefit; but even if they were cruel they are there to be obeyed.

Ornithology and today’s daf

Now back to the observations of Prof. Prum, and today’s page of Talmud. If it is indeed the case that:

1) male and female birds are often equally likely to be incubating and

2) in many species with shared incubation, it is impossible to distinguish the male from the female and

3) that male incubators are exempt from commandment of shiluach haken,

then what becomes of the school of thought that ascribes mercy to the reason for it in the first place? Don’t male incubators, who have built the nest and are just as invested in the project as are the females, don’t they deserve some mercy too? And why exempt male birds when male and females are so often indistinguishable?

There is increasing evidence that all kinds of animals experience emotions just like we do. And it’s not only playful chimps and depressed dogs. Elephants mourn. Pigs kept in boring pens show behavior that in humans we would call depression. Rats enjoy being tickled.

And birds? Well, some birds like to surf at the beach, a behaviour that does not “seem to provide any obvious function apart from enjoyment — they look like they are having fun.” And birds have self-control. Really. Remember the Marshmallow test? (We reviewed it back in April 2015 when we learned Ketuvot 83. If you’ve forgotten, read this and then come back….) Well it turns out that when a (particularly smart and cooperative) parrot was given the bird equivalent of the test, he was successful 90% of the time, enduring delays of up to 15 minutes. The researchers noted that to do this “the parrot had to postpone the immediate available reward to gain more desirable future rewards, maintaining the choice to delay, and tolerate the frustration of this self-inflicted delay.” So, yeah, birds have self control. The more we study, the more we realize that animals too, have emotions. So if sending away the mother bird might reduce her grieving, let’s do it.

“Pairs of bluebirds in my backyard, getting ready to build their nest, visit every empty nestbox, hoping in and out multiple times, the male alternating with the female...After weeks of scouting, the male puts a few branches or grass sems into one of the boxes, then lets the female guard the actual nest, while he guards the site. The drawn out decision process has reached its conclusion. Do bluebirds have free will?”

— Frans de Waal. Mama's Last Hug: Animal emotions and what they tell us about ourselves. W.H. Norton 2019. p222

Vaccines, Hysteria and Rabbinic Responsibility: A Plea Before Passover

From yesterday’s New York Times, these two headlines:

Five days ago, The Baltimore Sun reported another measles outbreak in Pikesville, just outside Baltimore, where many thousands of (orthodox) Jews live. In Israel, there have been multiple reports of the spread of measles. The Israeli Ministry of Health has now prohibited any unvaccinated child from entering kindergarten, and there is a report of an El-Al flight attendant who is critically ill after she caught measles on a flight from Israel to New York. Perhaps measles was brought to Israel from Uman in the Ukraine by Breslov Chassidim. Who knows? It goes on and on….

Two months ago we published an essay on vaccines and rabbinic responsibility in Lehrhaus. Sadly, it seems the right time to put it out again. Here it is.

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Vaccines, Hysteria and Rabbinic Responsibility:

A Plea from the Trenches

Jeremy Brown MD

Anti-vaccination hysteria

We are living in the midst of a wave of hysteria in which the need for childhood vaccinations is questioned or denied.[1]  This is not the first such wave. There have been cases of mass hysteria in virtually every country and every society, from Malaysia to Kosovo and London to Mexico City.[2] In 1962 in Tanzania it was an outbreak of laughing;[3] in 1983 in the West Bank it was an outbreak of fainting.[4] In the late seventeenth century in colonial Massachusetts there were the Salem witch hunts; two-hundred people – the vast majority women - were accused of serving the devil. Before it was over, nineteen were hanged, and one was stoned to death.[5] In the mid twentieth century a wave on anti-communist hysteria swept this country, culminating in the McCarthy Senate hearings.[6]                       

Like any complex sociological phenomenon, there are many factors that created what has become a de facto anti-vaccine movement.[7] These include a perceived lack of the severity of the illness, fear of needles or the pain of vaccination, a distrust of the information produced by governments and a belief that vaccines are not effective or have dangerous side effects.[8] Since it first began in the 1990s, it has swept across the US, Europe, and the Middle East. In France over 40% of the population believe that vaccines are not safe.[9] A quarter of Greeks and Ukrainians are hostile. And characteristics of the deniers vary between countries: women in Hungary are more likely than males to believe that vaccines are effective, but in the Czech Republic, Germany, and Italy the reverse is true.[10]

 Anti-vaccination hysteria is also present among a small but vocal number of orthodox Jews.[11] Among the most widely reported anti-vaccination declarations is that of Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetzky, Rosh Yeshiva of the Talmudical Academy of Philadelphia. “I see vaccinations as the problem” said Rabbi Kamenetzky, who is a member of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah,[12] the rabbinical board of Agudat Yisrael. “It’s a hoax. Even the Salk vaccine [against polio] is a hoax. It is just big business.”[13] In November 2018 the Rosh Yeshiva’s wife, Temi, led a teleconference in which she compared the German company that produces the MMR vaccine to Amalek, the ancient foe of the Jewish people.[14]  An anonymous group in Lakewood has distributed an eighteen-page color brochure encouraging parents to refrain from vaccinating their children.[15]  More recently, and in a far more subtle and nuanced way, the Orthodox Union issued a hesitant statement about the importance of childhood vaccinations. We will return to that later.

As a first step to combating this hysteria, rabbis of every synagogue and heads of every Jewish school must issue an unambiguous and unequivocal statement, declaring that only children who are vaccinated will be allowed to attend.[16] These should be published immediately, since many families with young children travel to celebrate Passover. Lives depend on it.

 The death rates from common infectious diseases

At the beginning of this century measles killed over 550,000 children worldwide. That number has dropped by 84%. In the US there were about 500 measles deaths each year before the introduction of the vaccine. There hasn’t been a reported death from the disease since 2015.[17] But in 2018 almost every region in the world experienced an increase in cases of measles. In Europe the number of confirmed cases rose by over 60% compared with the previous year.[18] In the US this year, the number of confirmed cases almost doubled; so far there have been 15 measles outbreaks. Parts of Seattle now have lower vaccination rates than Rwanda.[19] In Europe measles killed at least 37 people in the first six month of this year. And in Israel the incidence of measles (per million population) increased from 1.3 to over 62, and the number of actual cases increased from 15 last year to at least 526 this year.[20] This year in Jerusalem an unvaccinated toddler died of measles. Hers was the first measles death there in 15 years.

 Anti-vaccination and conspiratorial thinking

Why is this happening? One clue is from a recently published paper from an Australian group which examined the psychological roots of anti-vaccination attitudes among over 5,000 respondents in twenty-four countries.[21] Its results highlight the correlation between (among other things) conspiratorial thinking and holding an anti-vaccination position. Perhaps that is no surprise, but most alarming is the finding that levels of education had no such correlation. “The particularly strong role of conspiratorial beliefs” conclude the authors, “helps contextualize why corrective information and myth-busting about vaccinations has tended to be either ineffective or counterproductive.” It doesn’t matter what you say, what evidence you provide. Paradoxically, presenting facts to those who are anti-vaccine is actually counterproductive.  Because it was never about the facts.[22]

As the statements of Rabbi Kamenetzky and her wife demonstrate, conspiratorial thinking also plays a significant role within the ultra-orthodox community. But research in Israel has shown that there are other factors at play. These include having more than six children, the mother’s level of education, a belief that Judaism forbids vaccination, a perception that the risk of vaccine preventable diseases is low, and mistrust of the health authorities.[23]

How are we to frame our thinking about this wave of anti-vaccine hysteria? How might we learn about a response from our rich Jewish intellectual heritage? Perhaps by turning to a small sefer written by a long-forgotten rabbi and published in London over two-hundred and thirty years ago.

Oleh Haterufah – the first halakhic work on vaccination

In 1785 Abraham ben Solomon of Hamburg published Oleh Terufah (Leaf of Healing).[24]  It was a short book which discussed the urgent need to inoculate people against smallpox. We know very little of Abraham’s biography, and what we do know comes from the book’s introduction. He was born in Nancy in north-eastern France, spent some sixteen years in the Hague under the patronage of a Jewish banker there, and later moved to London where he was again supported by member of the Jewish community. There is no evidence that he obtained rabbinic ordination, nor that he had undergone an apprenticeship in medicine. “Abraham was clearly not a prominent figure in either the rabbinic or medical word” wrote the historian David Ruderman, “so… his publication is all the more unusual, and the book’s contents were  “a rich mixture of rabbinical opinion, medical information and common sense.”[25]

Oleh Terufah was written in the most tragic of circumstances. Abraham had lost two children to smallpox and was determined to inform other Jews that it was possible to inoculate against the disease. Some medical history is needed to put this book into context. Smallpox was a highly contagious disease with a fatality rate of 30%. In 1980, after an intense international vaccination campaign, it was completely eliminated. For centuries it had been known that a degree of protection from the disease could be obtained through what later became known as inoculation. In this process, a pustule from the skin of a person infected with smallpox would be opened. Some material was then extracted and placed into a small incision made in the forearm of the recipients, usually a child. There was inevitably a local reaction, accompanied perhaps with fever and malaise, but these symptoms soon resolved, and the child would then become immune to smallpox.  The method was widely practiced and had been brought to England at the start of the eighteenth century (though with little enthusiasm from physicians, who found the idea too unconventional for their liking). Although it was Edward Jenner who was credited with introducing the process, it had in fact been used for decades. In 1798 he published a now classic paper on a variation of the vaccination process, but as we learn from the publication of Oleh Haterufah thirteen years earlier, he neither discovered nor was the only champion of the procedure.[26, 27]

 As Abraham ben Solomon noted, there were many physicians opposed to the procedure. It’s not hard to understand why. Neither Jenner nor anyone else had any idea what caused smallpox or why the vaccine worked. Parents were being asked to allow their healthy child to be deliberately inoculated with the pus of smallpox victim. It was a leap of faith that I imagine many of us would have refused to take. And among Jews there was the question of whether Jewish law permitted it at all.

Abraham did not include a rabbinic approbation to his work, so often published in similar books of Jewish law. As he explained in the introduction, he had chosen to do so for two reasons. First, he considered himself “as a student who teaches in the presence of his rabbi.” He claimed that he was engaged only in a theoretical discussion and never intended his book to provide a definitive ruling about the permissibility of the smallpox vaccine. Despite this commitment, Oleh Haterufah is far from a work of theoretical halakha. This is most evident with Abraham’s instruction to the reader that should he wish to avoid excessive pilpul, he should skip certain pages. Evidently Abraham wanted his readers to read his conclusions, rather than join him on a journey of exegesis. But he knew exactly what he was really doing. Despite his proclaimed modesty, “sometimes” he wrote “there is a slip of the pen” and writes: “it appears to me to rule leniently, or something similar.”

 The second reason for publishing without an approbation was this: Abraham was not interested in making money from his book. He believed that rabbinic haskamot usually served only to remind others of the issues of copyright. But Abraham never intended for his book to be a commercial success. “I give full permission” he wrote, “to whomever wishes, to publish this book at the end of the year 5545 [1785]” – the very year in which the book was published. The goal was not sales: it was saving lives.

Abraham’s book was meant to persuade his readers that although inoculation carried a small risk, it was a far better option than opening up the possibility of catching smallpox.[28]

Writing before an understanding of the germ theory of disease, he cited the opinion of a Jewish physician by the name of Jacob Zahalon of Rome who identified impure menstrual blood as the cause of smallpox. Zahalon was of course wrong – but no more wrong that anyone else, writing some two centuries before Pasteur’s experiments which demonstrated the correctness of the germ theory.[29] But it didn’t much matter what caused smallpox; what mattered was the success of the vaccination program. Abraham focused on the issue of doubt and certainty and cases where there may be an element of tiny risk (ספק ספקה). He cited the Talmud (Chullin 9), the Shulchan Aruch and its commentaries, (Yoreh De’ah 110), and examples from Torah, Nevi’im and Ketuvim. He was working, he acknowledged, in uncharted territory; inoculation had not previously been discussed anywhere in the responsa literature.[30] There was no precedent to be found in the Talmud or the Gaonim, but basing himself on what sources might have been germane, he ruled that any healthy child who had not yet caught smallpox was to be considered already sick. Halakha therefore required that the vaccine be given, even if it carried, as it did, a risk of serious complications and even death.

Abraham branched out into a discussion of the effectiveness of the vaccination compared with blood-letting or laxatives.[31] Both of these well-established procedures had complications that included death. “Should we” he asked rhetorically “prohibit bloodletting or laxatives because of this?” And then this prescient sentence: “there is no medical intervention that is entirely free of risk”. The question was never about being certain that an intervention is completely safe, because there is no such thing as a completely safe medical intervention. After a further discussion on the irrelevance of relying on God to heal the sick, Abraham concludes with this poetic declaration:

After considering all of this, I sit in judgement before my teachers and rabbis who are expert adjudicators. In my humble opinion this medical intervention has been proved effective and is now widely used.

There were four arguments in support of vaccination in Oleh Terufah, First, experience had already demonstrated that the vaccine worked. Second, it was important to act quickly to save the lives of children. Third, any medical procedure carries risk, but the risk specific to vaccination was no greater than that associated with other widely accepted therapies of the time. Vaccines today pose nothing of the risk that Abraham was discussing of course. They are medicines, so of course they have side effects. The most common of these are allergic reactions, and there is no link whatsoever between vaccination and autism. Finally, Abraham wrote of the deaths of two of his four children from smallpox to emphasize the risks of not vaccinating. He made his story personal. But it was the fact that he took a position at all that makes Abraham’s book so worthy of study. It was an example of leadership at a time of crisis. Which brings us to the Orthodox Union.[32] 

The OU-RCA statement on vaccinations

In November 2018 the Orthodox Union and the Rabbinical Council of America issued a “Joint Statement on Vaccinations.” They “strongly urge[d] all parents to vaccinate their healthy children on the timetable recommended by their pediatrician.” “Jewish law” they wrote, “defers to the consensus of medical experts in determining and prescribing appropriate medical responses to illness and prevention.” And then this: “…the consensus of major poskim (halachic decisors) supports the vaccination of children to protect them from disease, to eradicate illness from the larger community through so-called herd immunity, and thus to protect others who may be vulnerable.”

What sounds like laudable support for a critical and life-saving program raises several questions on a second read. “The consensus” of course, means that there are those who disagree. And that term “so-called” is laden with meaning. What would you mean if you called someone a “so-called rabbi”? What would you be trying to communicate if you called someone a “so called expert”? You would mean of course, they are anything but rabbis, and nothing like real experts. That’s at least how we use the term – and how the Merriam-Webster Dictionary helpfully defines the term: falsely or improperly so named. Or better yet the Oxford Dictionary, which informs us that the phrase is used “to express one's view that such a name or term is inappropriate.”

 Anyone with a modicum of scientific background would know that herd immunity is as real as innate immunity or acquired immunity. It is not an object but a concept, and one that carries a great deal of importance in our fight against devastating infectious diseases. Herd (or group) immunity occurs when a sufficiently large number of members develop immunity to an infectious disease, due either to vaccinations or the development of natural immunity after an infection. In this setting, a bacteria or virus has so few hosts that it fails to penetrate the group that its ability to infect non-immune members is drastically reduced. The presence of immune individuals provides indirect protection to the non-immune. [33] But the OU-RCA statement questions the very existence of herd immunity. 

 If indeed, as the OU-RCA statement claims, “Jewish law defers to the consensus of medical experts” why does it suggest a paragraph later that “everyone should consult with his or her religious, medical and legal advisors in determining what actions to take”? What role might these religious leaders have, if we were just told that Jewish law should defer to medical opinion? Why the need to include this disclaimer at all? Abraham argued in his book that Jewish law required every parent to vaccinate their child. The OU could have looked to earlier works – like Oleh Terufah  - for a model of rabbinic responsibility. The OU statement prevaricated when it should have been crystal clear.[34] 

Prayer and action

The Talmud relates that Resh Lakish, the great amora of the third century, and his secretary Yehuda bar Nachmeni went to comfort Rav Chiyyah bar Abba, who was mourning the death of his child.[35] Yehudah bar Nachmeni offered some intended words of comfort, but they were nothing of the sort; they were words of rebuke. “In a generation in which fathers abhor the Holy One, Blessed be He, He gets angry at their sons and their daughters, and they die when they are young.” Resh Lakish, hearing Yehuda’s insensitivity told him to change track. Here is the last of the four blessings with which Yehuda replied.

Master of the worlds, redeem and save, deliver and help your nation Israel from pestilence, and from the sword, and from plundering, from the plagues of wind blast and mildew [that destroy the crops], and from all types of misfortunes that may break out and come into the world. Before we call, you answer. Blessed are You, who ends the plague.

Blessed are You who ends the plague. All that could be done when little children died was to pray for God to intervene and end the plague. It’s an understandable response to the tragedy caused by infectious disease, when all you can do is watch the children die. 

A quite different blessing is made before undergoing a medical procedure. It was originally said prior to bloodletting (now mercifully a thing of the past). But it should be said by any patient before and after undergoing any medical intervention, and it is (or should be) part of normative Jewish practice to this day, as ruled by the Shulchan Aruch.[36]

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.

In the fight against infectious diseases, we now have more than just the option of praying for a plague to end. We can vaccinate our children and offer a prayer to God asking that that the vaccine perform its job. That is the message we need to tell, in every shul, in every Jewish day school, and in every religious organization in the country.

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[1] I use the term hysteria, as do others, fully aware of its connotations. Not all hysteria is somatic. See for example, F. Pandolfi et al. "The Importance of Complying with Vaccination Protocols in Developed Countries: "Anti-Vax" Hysteria and the Spread of Severe Preventable Diseases,"  Curr Med Chem (2018)

[2] Robert Batholomew and Bob Rickard Mass Hysteria in Schools. Jefferson, North Carolina, McFarland & Company 2014.

[3] A. M. Rankin and P. J. Philip "An Epidemic of Laughing in the Bukoba District of Tanganyika," Cent Afr J Med 9(1963)

[4] NYT reference, p25.Anon., "Editors’ Notes," The New York Times 1983. The New York Times had reported the cause was mass poisoning later. It wasn’t, and The Times issued an apology. See also Raphael Israeli Poison: Modern Manifestations of a Blood Libel. Lanham, MD, Lexington Books 2002

[5]Jess Blumberg, "A Brief History of the Salem Witch Trials." 

[6] Richard M. Fried Nightmare in Red: The Mccarthy Era in Perspective. New York ; Oxford, Oxford University Press 1990.

[7] For some preliminary results see S. Blume "Anti-Vaccination Movements and Their Interpretations,"  Social Science & Medicine 2006; 62: 628–642.

[8] O. Yaqub et al. "Attitudes to Vaccination: A Critical Review,"  Social Science & Medicine 2014;112; 1-11.

[9] Anti-vax fears drive a measles outbreak in Europe. The Economist, August 25, 2018.

[10] H Larson et al., "State of Vaccine Confidence in the EU 2018," (Luxembourg: European Commission, Directorate General for Health and Food Safety, 2018).

[11] See, for example K. Muhsen et al. "Risk Factors of Underutilization of Childhood Immunizations in Ultraorthodox Jewish Communities in Israel Despite High Access to Health Care Services," Vaccine 30, no. 12 (2012)

[12] For example, see here.

[13]  Simone Ellen. A Healthy Dose? Baltimore Jewish Times August 28, 2014. Ellen’s article appears to have been the source for this quote which was widely circulated on websites for religious Jews.

[14] A recording is available here. “Is this being recorded?” asks one of the women on the phone. “I hope not, replied” the rebbetzin. Among the many other baseless claims she makes there is this one: a pharmaceutical company was behind the murder of a doctor who had developed a cure for cancer.

[15] The publication is hard to find online, but was available here:

[16] The only exception is when vaccinations is the rare instance in which they may be medically contraindicated. In some of these are: a history of anaphylaxis on prior immunization, and immune suppression. Pregnant women should not receive the following vaccines:  HPV, MMR varicella and zoster. For a full list of contraindications see the CDC here.

[17] Centers for Disease Control, Measles Data and Statistics.

[18] WHO Reported Measles. World Health Organization, "Reported Measles Cases by Who Region, 2017, 2018." World Health Organization, 2018.

[19] James Bao et al "Near Universal Childhood Vaccination Rates in Rwanda: How Was This Achieved and Can It Be Duplicated?,"  The Lancet Global Health 6, no. 2 (2018). Washington State Dept of Health. Public Health Measures. [Accessed Dec 3 2018.]

[20] World Health Organization, "Epidata," (2018); ibid.

[21] M. J. Hornsey, E. A. Harris, and K. S. Fielding "The Psychological Roots of Anti-Vaccination Attitudes: A 24-Nation Investigation,"  Health Psychol 37, no. 4 (2018)

[22] Z. Horne et al. "Countering Antivaccination Attitudes,"  Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 112, no. 33 (2015) ; Muhsen et al., "Risk Factors of Underutilization of Childhood Immunizations in Ultra-orthodox Jewish Communities in Israel Despite High Access to Health Care Services," But showing them examples of how the disease looks in children, preferentially with pictures does more.

[23] Muhsen et al., "Risk Factors of Underutilization of Childhood Immunizations in Ultraorthodox Jewish Communities in Israel Despite High Access to Health Care Services." Vaccine, 30 (12); 2109-2115.   

[24] Abraham ben Solomon Oleh Terufah. London, Alexander bar Yehudah 1785.

[25] David B. Ruderman "Some Jewish Responses to Smallpox Prevention in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries: A New Perspective on the Modernization of European Jewry,"  Aleph 2 (2002).  Ruderman provides the background and social context of Oleh Terufah.

[26] C. P. Gross and K. A. Sepkowitz "The Myth of the Medical Breakthrough: Smallpox, Vaccination, and Jenner Reconsidered,"  Int J Infect Dis 3, no. 1 (1998).

[27] Edward Jenner. An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae, a Disease Discovered in Some of the Western Counties of England, Particularly Gloucestershire, and Known by the Name the Cow Pox. London, Sampson Low 1798.

[28] Abraham put the mortality risk from inoculation at one in one thousand.  This was certainly a guess, meant to describe an extremely low risk rather than an actual complication rate.  Abraham had published an essay on Ha-Meassef a year earlier in which he covered much the same ground. There he estimated the mortality rate at 5/60,000. See Ha-Meassef Tishrei 5545 (1784) section Letters section II 5-15.

[29] Because Jenner also had no idea why inoculation worked, his discovery did not really advance the science. See David Wootton Bad Medicine: Doctors Doing Harm since Hippocrates. Oxford; New York, Oxford University Press 2006.

[30] Among the earliest teshuvot are Teshuva Me’Ahava (Rabbi Eleazar ben David Fleckeles) vol 1, #135 dated 1805. He permitted a child to be inoculated on Shabbat itself, if there was no alternative day available.

[31] See Talmudology. Bloodletting and laxatives were among the only interventions the physicians could offer, and they did so for a huge number of conditions. Remarkably, both were used as late as 1918 to treat influenza. See Jeremy Brown Influenza: The Hundred Year Hunt to Cure the Deadliest Disease in History. New York, Touchstone 2018.

[32] Agudas Yisrael issued a statement on vaccinations that can be found here.

[33] The term appears to have been first used in 1923 to describe “immunity as an attribute of a herd…closely related to, but in many ways distinct from, the problem of the immunity of an individual host.” See Topley, W. W. C.; Wilson, G. S. "The Spread of Bacterial Infection. The Problem of Herd-Immunity". The Journal of Hygiene 1923: 21 (3); 243–249. The term had been used in a slightly different context as early as 1918.

[34] It’s not as if the OU is afraid to take a stand on controversial issues. Last year it published its position on whether a woman may be employed in a clergy function. It did so because the OU leadership felt that orthodox community “would benefit greatly by receiving comprehensive, fully elucidated responses regarding women’s professional roles that would inform and educate our increasingly sophisticated community membership.” It was a tightly worded and heavily referenced paper of almost 7,000 words, and concluded that there was “a legal preclusion to the appointment of women clergy.” There was no such prevarication or disclaimer on the clergy issue. On that there appeared to be no room for religious dissent. The OU statement on vaccinations was twenty times shorter, with not a single reference or declarative statement. Instead it ended with another prevarication, reminding the reader that before deciding in a course of action they should “consult with …religious, medical, and legal advisors.” Somehow, the anti-vaccine hysteria managed to enter a statement that called for more parents to vaccinate. For a review of vaccination in halacha see Asher Bush, “Vaccination in Halakhah and in Practice in the Orthodox Jewish Community” Hakirah 2012 (13):185-212.

[35] Ketuvot 8b.

[36] Shulchan Aruch Orach Chayyim 230:4

Chullin 134b ~ The Right. Always to the Right

חולין קלד, ב

ת"ר (דברים יח, ג) הזרוע זה זרוע ימין אתה אומר זה זרוע ימין או אינו אלא זרוע שמאל ת"ל הזרוע

The rabbis taught in a baraita: The verse states with regard to the gifts of the priesthood: “That they shall give to the priest the foreleg…” (Deuteronomy 18:3)…is this the right foreleg, or is it only the left foreleg? The verse states: “The foreleg.” The definite article indicates that the verse is referring to the right foreleg.

מאי תלמודא? כדאמר רבא ’הירך’ - המיומנת שבירך. הכא נמי הזרוע - המיומן שבזרוע

But how is it understood from the definite article that the verse is referring to the right foreleg? It is derived like that which Rava said with regard to the verse: [“Therefore the children of Israel do not eat the sciatic nerve which is upon the hollow of the thigh”(Genesis 32:33). The definite article indicates that this is referring to the most important thigh. Here too, the definite article in the term “the foreleg” indicates that the verse is referring to the most important foreleg, i.e., the right foreleg.

But why did the rabbis derive that “the most important” thigh is the right one? Why not the left one?

Let’s take a trip into the worlds of comparative religion, chirality, astronomy, and neuroscience to find out.

The importance of the right side in Judaism

In the Talmud and in normative Jewish practice, the preference to favor the right over the left is everywhere. Here are just a few. (How many more can you think of?)

• When walking up the ramp to the top of the Altar in the Temple, the Cohen must make a right turn at the top. Following that, every turn he makes must be a right turn. (זבחים נד,ב)

• Actually, the entire service in the Temple in Jerusalem must be performed with the right hand. (ביאת המקדש 5:18 )

• Rav Ashi rules that Tefillin must placed it on the left arm, because it is weaker than the right and the action of placing them should be performed with the stronger right hand (מנחות לז, א).

• The Talmud teaches that a right-handed person who writes with her left hand on Shabbat has not violated the prohibition against writing. It doesn't count. Maimonides (הלכות שבת 11:14) agrees:

הַכּוֹתֵב בִּשְׂמֹאלוֹ אוֹ לְאַחַר יָדוֹ בְּרַגְלוֹ בְּפִיו וּבְמַרְפֵּקוֹ פָּטוּר

• According to Rava, walking should start with the right leg, and not the left (יומא יא, ב)

• The rite of חליצה must be performed with the right leg and a right shoe (יבמות קד, א).

• The mezuzah can only be placed on the right side of the door (רמבם הל׳ מזוזה 6:12).

• The best student of a rabbi should walk on the rabbi's right side, relegating the second best to the left (יומא לז, א).

• After observing his teacher Rabbi Yehoshua, Rabbi Akiva taught that the left hand should be used after using the bathroom, out of respect to the right hand (ברכות סב,ב). When challenged as to why Rabbi Akiva was impertinent enough to report on which hand his teacher wiped himself he replied תורה היא וללמוד אני צריך - "this too is Torah, and I must study it".

“לֵ֤ב חָכָם֙ לִֽימִינ֔וֹ וְלֵ֥ב כְּסִ֖יל לִשְׂמֹאלֽוֹ׃

A wise man’s mind tends toward the right hand, a fool’s toward the left.

”

— Kohelet 10:2

It's not Just Judaism

1. Islam

The importance of all things right handed is found in other religions. For example, when Muslims perform any of the following, it is mustahabb [مستحبّ‎, - "recommended"] to start on the right or use the right hand.

• putting on one's garment and pants and shoes

• entering the mosque, using the siwaak [ a kind of toothpick]

• putting on kohl [an ancient blue eye cosmetic]

• clipping the nails

• trimming the mustache

• combing the hair plucking the armpit hair

• shaving the head

• saying salaam at the end of prayer

• washing the limbs when purifying oneself

• exiting the toilet, eating and drinking

• shaking hands

• touching the Black Stone [ٱلْحَجَرُ ٱلْأَسْوَد‎, al-Ḥajaru al-Aswad, a rock set into the eastern corner of the Kaaba, the ancient building located in the center of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Legend has it that the rock dates back to Adam and Eve.]

• Conversely, the Bukhari Sharif , one of the six major hadith collections of Sunni Islam rules along the lines of Rabbi Akiva:

"... when you urinate, do not touch your penis with your right hand. And when you cleanse yourself after defecation, do not use your right hand."

“The right hand of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) was for his purification and food, and his left hand was for using the toilet and anything that was dirty... ”

— Sunan Abi Dawood (33)

2. Christianity

• In the New Testament, Jesus sits at the right hand of God. The Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas who worked to synthesize Aristotelian philosophy with the principles of Christianity (and in that respect was a kind of Maimonides of the Church,) explained at some length how the notion of the right or left hand of God can have any meaning since God is incorporeal. (Spoiler alert: it is all metaphorical.)

• Those at prayer make the sign of the cross with their right hand.

• When Jesus is depicted in sacred images giving out blessings, he does so with his right hand raised.

• When genuflecting, it is the right knee that is bent while the left hip is extended, "because genuflecting on the right knee is a sign of worship and is reserved for God alone."

3. Hinduism

• Offerings, such as flowers or garlands, are carried with both hands on the right side of the body.

• "Pointing with the forefinger of the right hand or shaking the forefinger in emphasis while talking is never done. This is because the right hand possesses a powerful, aggressive pranic force, and an energy that moves the forces of the world."

• Vāmācāra ( वामाचार, meaning "left-handed attainment" in Sanskrit) describes the "Left-Hand Path" or "Left-path" It is used to describe a particular mode of worship that is heterodox to standard Vedic teachings.

• In Benares, the holiest of the seven sacred cities and sitting on the Ganges, "pilgrims circumambulate with their right hands towards the center, as Krishna is alleged to have done at the sacred mountain."

Well, you get the point.  Judaism, along with all the major religions (and some you've never heard of) emphasize the dominance of the right hand in all things holy. Or mundane.

“The Ngaga of southern Borneo believe everything in the after-world is reversed, “sweet” becoming “bitter”, “straight” becoming “crooked”, and “right” becoming “left”. Likewise the Toraja of Celebes (Sulawesi) believed the dead do everything backwards, even pronouncing words backwards... the dead therefore use their left hand...”

— I. C. Mcmanus. Right Hand, Left Hand: The Origins of Asymmetry in Brains, Bodies, Atoms and Cultures. Phoenix 2003, p27.

 and It's not just religions

There are lots of things that have chirality - meaning they have a mirror image but cannot be mapped onto that mirror image by rotations and translations. They exist in left or right-handed versions. Let's start with in easy example. Um, your hands. Although your right hand mirrors your left, your right hand cannot (comfortably) fit into a handed-glove.

From here.

Here's another example. Bend your fingers and extend your thumb as in the figure. You've made two mirror images that cannot be mapped onto each other. (Go on. Give it a try. See what I mean?) That's chirality.

If we extend this to molecules, they are left or right-handed, meaning they are mirror images but they cannot be superimposed on each other. These are isomers. Like this:

From here.

And here is where things start to get really weird. Nearly everything in the universe - from chemicals and medications to fundamental particles and even galaxies themselves have a right-handed or left-handed preference. No, really. 

Let's start with the essential building blocks of life: amino acids and sugars. Almost all amino acids (not you, glycine) used by life on earth (but not necessarily elsewhere in the universe) are left-handed.  Right-handed amino acids exist of course. They're just not utilized by any life form on earth. Any.  If you sit in a lab and cook up an amino acid from its ingredients, you will make an equal amount of the left and right handed variates. That's just good old chemistry at work. But life on earth can only use half the mixture: the L form. Some bacteria can actually convert right-handed amino acids into the left-handed version, but they can’t use the right-handed ones as is.

Like amino acids, sugars also come in two isomers, but those that are used by life forms on earth are the right-handed variety. All the enzymes that living things use to manipulate amino acids and sugars only work on left-handed amino acids and right-handed sugars. They simply can't use the opposites. Why did life turn out this way? Truth is, nobody knows.  

Medications also exhibit chirality. For example, propranolol is commonly used to help control high blood pressure. Some of you reading this may be taking it. The left form (L-propranolol) is the one that helps. The right form (known as D-propranolol) is inactive. (The Latin for left and right is laevus and dexter, respectively.)

Quinine is an antimalarial drug. It has an isomer called quinidine, and quinidine has no anti-malarial action. But it's a great drug to reduce arrhythmias of the heart. One compound, with two isomers, each with their own remarkable and very different healing properties.

Now consider muons, a fundamental particle in our universe. It is kind of like an electron, but about 200 times heavier. Muons have an average life-expectancy of 2.2 microseconds (so don't expect any kind of long-term relationship) after which time they decay into an electron, a neutrino, and an antineutrino. The direction that the electron will come out depends on the direction in which the muon spins. Now you would expect there to be equal amounts of electrons that are ejected spinning one way or another. But there aren't.  What happens is that 99.9% of muons decay in a right-handed fashion.

And while we are on the subject of decaying muons, let's talk about those neutrinos, which are a weird fundamental particle with the smallest mass of any known thing. They too, have a preference for the right or left. All neutrinos are left handed, while all anti-neutrinos (whatever that means) are right handed.

Left and right handed galaxies. From here.

Ready for more? Statistically speaking our universe should contain an equal amount of left and right handed galaxies (as noted in how they spin). But this does not occur. In an analysis of over 2,600 nearby spiral galaxies and a later analysis of 15,000 more, Michael Longo demonstrated that that left-handed spirals are more common in the northern hemisphere, above the northern galactic pole. And although the signal is less strong, right-handed spirals appear more frequently in the south.

It's good to be a leftie

About 10-13% of humans are left-handed. (Captive chimpanzees are more left-handed than us, with an approximate 2:1 ratio of righties to lefties. In us it's more like 8:1) But aside from the problem of not finding scissors that work for you, being a leftie gives you some pretty good advantages.

“...not only left-handers are over-represented in confrontational sports, but the closer the physical interaction of the opponents such as in boxing, fencing, judo, or karate, the greater the prevalence of left-handers. In basketball, football, handball, table tennis, tennis, and volleyball, for instance, competitors stand some distance apart and do not confront directly. But even in these sports, there are more than the expected number of left-handers...”

— Grouios G. et al. Do left-handed competitors have an innate superiority in sports? Perception and Motor Skills, 2000:90;1273-1282

At the undergraduate level they are more likely to take part in a whole range of events, from judo and fencing and soccer and volleyball. But when it comes to non-confrontational sports like cycle racing, running or swimming, the proportion of left handers fall back to that of the general population. Lefties make up about 10% of the population, but 23% of all Wimbledon tennis champions were lefties.

There is a lot more evidence that lefties have many advantages over (us) righties. In a complicated test of spatial skills which you can read about here, 47 lefties demonstrated faster and more accurate spatial skills than the 50 righties, along with strong executive control and mental flexibility. And in this study of 100 lefties and 100 righties, the left-handed demonstrated greater creativity than the right-handed on all 4 scales of the Torrance test which examines creative thinking.

And lefties appear to be smarter that righties.  In a study of some 300 gifted children, left (-or mixed-handedness) occurred more frequently in those who were mathematically or verbally precocious (for our readers in the US, this meant an SAT-M score of more than 700 and an SAT-L score of more than 630). Of the last 15 US presidents, seven (about 47%) have been left-handed.  That's almost 1 in 2! Oh, and compared with righties, college-educated left-handers in the US earn 10-15% more.

“Leonardo da Vinci was a lefty, as were Michelangelo, Isaac Newton, and Albert Einstein.”

Despite these, and many other advantages, our cultures have stigmatized those who are left-handed. We all know that the word sinister (meaning something harmful or evil is going to happen) comes from the Latin sinister meaning left.  But there are more examples of anti-left associations in other languages too. Adroit, meaning clever or skillful comes from the French word for right droite, meaning dextrous. In German, linkisch means awkward, and it comes from the German links, meaning left. And so it goes on.

Back to the Jewish Bible

Left-handed people are mentioned only three times in Tanach, and all come from the tribe of Benjamin:

• There were the 700 men from the tribe of Benjamin who could use a sling with deadly accuracy (שופתים 20:16):

מִכֹּ֣ל ׀ הָעָ֣ם הַזֶּ֗ה שְׁבַ֤ע מֵאוֹת֙ אִ֣ישׁ בָּח֔וּר אִטֵּ֖ר יַד־יְמִינ֑וֹ כָּל־זֶ֗ה קֹלֵ֧עַ בָּאֶ֛בֶן אֶל־הַֽשַּׂעֲרָ֖ה וְלֹ֥א יַחֲטִֽא׃

• There were the ambidextrous men who came to fight for King David at Ziklag, who were from the tribe of Benjamin (דברי הימים א, 12:2)

נֹ֣שְׁקֵי קֶ֗שֶׁת מַיְמִינִ֤ים וּמַשְׂמִאלִים֙ בָּֽאֲבָנִ֔ים וּבַחִצִּ֖ים בַּקָּ֑שֶׁת מֵאֲחֵ֥י שָׁא֖וּל מִבִּנְיָמִֽן׃

• And perhaps most famously there was the left-handed Ehud ( אֶת־אֵה֤וּד בֶּן־גֵּרָא֙ בֶּן־הַיְמִינִ֔י אִ֥ישׁ אִטֵּ֖ר יַד־יְמִינ֑וֹ) who assassinated the Moabite king Eglon (שופתים 3:12-30). Because Ehud was left-handed he hid his dagger on his right side. In this way he got past the body search outside the throne room, where the guards looked for a weapon on the left. As for the rest, well, read on:

• וַיִּשְׁלַ֤ח אֵהוּד֙ אֶת־יַ֣ד שְׂמֹאל֔וֹ וַיִּקַּח֙ אֶת־הַחֶ֔רֶב מֵעַ֖ל יֶ֣רֶךְ יְמִינ֑וֹ וַיִּתְקָעֶ֖הָ בְּבִטְנֽוֹ׃ וַיָּבֹ֨א גַֽם־הַנִּצָּ֜ב אַחַ֣ר הַלַּ֗הַב וַיִּסְגֹּ֤ר הַחֵ֙לֶב֙ בְּעַ֣ד הַלַּ֔הַב כִּ֣י לֹ֥א שָׁלַ֛ף הַחֶ֖רֶב מִבִּטְנ֑וֹ וַיֵּצֵ֖א הַֽפַּרְשְׁדֹֽנָה׃

  Reaching with his left hand, Ehud drew the dagger from his right side and drove it into [Eglon’s] belly. The fat closed over the blade and the hilt went in after the blade—for he did not pull the dagger out of his belly—and the filth came out.

All of this is really strange because of course the name of this tribe  - Benjamin - literally means "the son of the right" בן ימין.  

Back to Chhulin

Today's daf yomi page of Talmud has a very short instruction. Give to the priests the most choice of meat cuts: those from the right leg of the animal. But this phrase reveals a profound truth about who we are as humans, and of the very stuff from which we are made.  In culture after culture, in religion after religion, and in the very structure of our universe, there are left or right-handed preferences and predilections, many of which we simply cannot currently explain. Our religious and cultural preferences for the right likely stems from the simple fact that left-handedness is eight times less common. Unfortunately, a suspicion of the other, of those who are not like the majority, is a common trait that in one way or another we all share. But it needn't be so. The other, those in the minority, teach us and enrich our lives. Heck, they are often even smarter and quicker than the majority.  We are all better off with them.

[An oldie but a goodie originally posted here.]