Niddah 18a ~ Talmudic Probability Theory

נדה יח, א 

  א"ר זירא: כל קבוע כמחצה על מחצה דמי ..מנא ליה לר' זירא הא? ...מתשע חנויות, כולן מוכרות בשר שחוטה ואחת בשר נבלה, ולקח מאחת מהן ואינו יודע מאיזה מהן לקח - ספיקו אסור, ובנמצא - הלך אחר הרוב, 

R. Zera said: Any doubt about something that is fixed in its place is considered be a fify-fifty chance... Where does he learn this from ? [From a Baraisa which teaches the following. Consider a town in which] there are nine shops, all of which sell kosher meat, and one store that sells sells meat that is not kosher. If a person bought meat from one of these [ten] stores but he cannot recall from which, his doubt means that the meat is forbidden. But if he found a piece of meat [in the street and he cannot tell from which store it came] he may follow the majority [and assume the meat is kosher]...

As Dov Gabbay and Moshe Koppel noted in their 2011 paper, there is something odd about talmudic probability. If we find some meat in an area where there are p kosher stores and q non-kosher stores, then all other things being equal, the meat is kosher if and only if p > q.This is clear from the parallel text in Hullin (11a) where the underlying principal is described as זיל בתר רובא – follow the majority. Or as Gabbay and Koppel explain it:

“Given a set of objects the majority of which have the property P and the rest of which have the property not-P, we may, under certain circumstances, regard the set itself and/or any object in the set as having property P.
”

— Gabbay and Koppel 2010

In other words, what happens is that if there are more kosher stores than there are trief, the meat is considered to have become kosher. It's not that the meat is most likely to be kosher and may therefore be eaten.  Rather it takes on the property of being kosher. 

We encountered another example of talmudic probability theory way back in February 2015 on page 9a of Ketuvot. There, a newly-wed husband claims that his wife was not a virgin on her wedding night. The Talmud argues that his claim needs to be set into a context of probabilities:

1. She was raped before her betrothal.

2. She was raped after her betrothal.

3. She had intercourse of her own free will before her betrothal.

4. She had intercourse of her own free will after her betrothal.

Since it is only the last of these that renders her forbidden to her husband (stay focussed and don't raise the question of a husband who is a Cohen), the husband's claim is not supported, based on the probabilities. Here is how Gubbay and Koppel explain the case - using formal logic:

Oh, and the reference to Bertrand's paradox? That is the paradox in which some questions about probability - even ones that seem to be entirely mathematical, have more than one correct solution; it all depends on how you think about the answer. One if its formulations goes like this: Given a circle, find the probability that a chord chosen at random will be longer than the side of an inscribed equilateral triangle. Turns out there are three correct solutions. Gubbay and Koppel claim that just like that paradox, the solution to many talmudic questions of probability will have more than one correct answer, depending on how you think about that answer.

Rabbi Nahum Eliezer Rabinovitch (b.1928) is the Rosh Yeshiva of the hesder Yeshivah Birkat Moshe in Ma'ale Adumim.  (He also has a PhD. in the Philosophy of Science from the University of Toronto, published in 1973 as Probability and Statistical Inference in Ancient and Medieval Jewish Literature.)  Rabbi Rabinovitch seems to have been the first to point out the relationship between Bertrand's paradox and talmudic probability theory in his 1970 Biometrika paper Combinations and Probability in Rabbinic Literature. There, the Rosh Yeshiva wrote that "the rabbis had some awareness of the different conceptions of probability as a measure of relative frequencies or a state of general ignorance."

James Franklin, in his book on the history of probability theory, notes that codes like the Talmud (and the Roman Digest that was developed under Justine c.533) "provide examples of how to evaluate evidence in cases of doubt and conflict.  By and large, they do so reasonably. But they are almost entirely devoid of discussion on the principles on which they are operating." But it is unfair to expect the Talmud to have developed a notion of probability theory as we have it today. That wasn't its interest or focus. Others have picked up this task, and have explained the statistics that is the foundation of  talmudic probability. For this, we have many to thank, including the Rosh Yeshiva, Rabbi Rabinovitch שליט׳א.

“(The [Roman] Digest and) the Talmud are huge storehouses of concepts, and to be required to have an even sketchy idea of them is a powerful stimulus to learning abstractions.”

— James Franklin. The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability Before Pascal, 349.

[Repost from here.]

Niddah 17a ~ Overnight Eggs and the Danger of Breast Cancer

THIS IS THE SECOND OF TWO POSTS FOR NIDDAH 17,

WHICH WILL STUDIED TOMORROW, SHABBAT.

*****

For a longer analysis of the evolution of the stringency of overnight eggs, see the essay published today on The Lehrhaus here.

Notice the OU kosher approval on the lower right.

In today’s page of Talmud we read a list of actions that according to the great second century sage Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai are liable to kill you. Here they are:

נדה יז, א

אמר ר"ש בן יוחי ה' דברים הן שהעושה אותן מתחייב בנפשו ודמו בראשו האוכל שום קלוף ובצל קלוף וביצה קלופה והשותה משקין מזוגין שעבר עליהן הלילה והלן בבית הקברות והנוטל צפרניו וזורקן לרה"ר והמקיז דם ומשמש מטתו

Rabbi Shimon ben Yoḥai further says: There are five actions with regard to which one who performs them is held liable for his own life, and his blood is upon his own head, i.e., he bears responsibility for his own demise. They are as follows: One who eats peeled garlic or a peeled onion or a peeled egg, and one who drinks diluted drinks; all these are referring to items only when they were left overnight. And one who sleeps at night in a cemetery, and one who removes his nails and throws them into a public area, and one who lets blood and immediately afterward engages in intercourse.

It is the first on the list, the eating of eggs or garlic that has been left peeled overnight, on which we will focus. At first blush you might think that this concern need not be taken seriously today. Imagine my surprise then, when I found it on the kashrut certification while flying from Israel.

From my airline meal insert….

“The eggs are not “beitsim shelau” - no “overnight” eggs.” This caused a wave of relief as a realized I had one less safety issue to worry about on the flight, but raised a series of other questions, not the least of which was what on earth were “overnight eggs” and why was I not familiar with this requirement? Well, mostly because it was not a kashrut requirement, until recently.

Overnight Eggs and the Jewish codes of Law

Although Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai considered the eating of overnight eggs to be life-threatening, his concern was a unique opinion in the Talmud. It was not codified as law by either Maimonides in his twelfth-century Mishneh Torah, nor the sixteenth century authoritative Shulchan Aruch, the Code of Jewish Law. It was mentioned here and there in a few rabbinic responsa, but they essentially ruled there was no need for concern. In fact it was all but ignored until it appeared in a work called Shulchan Aruch Harav that was first published in 1816. It was written by the first hasidic leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch dynasty, R. Shneur Zalman of Liadi (1745-1812) who is also known as the Ba’al ha-Tanya or the Alter Rebbe. “A person should not put cooked or other food or drinks under the bed because an evil spirit rests on them,” he wrote. “This applies even if they are placed in a metal container. Nor should he eat peeled garlic nor peeled onions nor peeled eggs that have been left overnight, because an evil spirit rests on them – even if they are kept in a sealed cloth. But if he left some of the root… or some of the shell they are permitted.”

The Shulchan Aruch Harav is of course of great importance to Lubavitch hasidim, but is perhaps less so to those outside of this community. The next step in the emergence of overnight eggs as a contemporary kashrut concern was a responsa by R. Yekutiel Halberstam (1905-1994). R Halberstam lost his family in the Holocaust, and rebuilt a new life in Natanya in northern Israel, where he led the Klausenberg hasidim (and built Laniado Hospital). In 1975 he wrote a long responsa (later published in his work Divrei Yatziv,) in which he could not be clearer:

The practice of being punctilious about not eating peeled eggs left overnight was widespread among our fathers and mothers. And when I set my heart to explain the issue, I noted that there are those among the later rabbis who issued a number of lenient rulings on the matter. But I will stand to defend the practice and to strengthen the customs of our ancestors, who were not lenient in any way about this.

The details are of course important, and R. Halberstam cites many works. If you take the time to read them, most actually demonstrate the very opposite of his conclusion. But what is of interest today is not the history of this belief. It is the claim made by R. Halberstam that eating overnight eggs causes cancer. Let me say that again. R. Halberstam claimed that there is a direct link between eating these dangerous products and cancer (specifically breast cancer, which is of course very prevalent in among Ashkenazi Jews, in large part due to the high prevalence of three breast cancer genetic mutations). Here is the editor’s note to Rabbi Halberstam’s responsa. The original Hebrew text is also shown below, for those who don’t believe me…

Overnight eggs cause cancer. From Divrei Yatziv, Yoreh Deah 1:31.

It is right to reproduce here what our teacher and author amplified in his holy talk given at a festive meal on Lag Ba’Omer 5736 [1976]:

I have sat and considered the cause of a number of terrible cases, which we learn about to our sadness, in which people fall ill to the well-known disease [i.e. cancer] God forbid, for which there is no cure… And after pondering the matter I have reached a conclusion, which my heart tells me is as clear as the day. It is because people are no longer cautious about not eating peeled eggs that have been left overnight in the way that they once were…It is known that the nature of this disease [cancer] is because of growths within that spread and undermine the basis of human life and its continuation. And the rule of causation [that like causes like] explains the spread of this disease: since they are lax about this prohibition for various reasons. Similarly, other incurable malignant diseases are due to the evil spirit in these things. Perhaps this is what is hinted at in the Talmud when it uses the language “the fault is his...” [lit. “his blood is upon his own head.”] Immediately after eating [these eggs] it is already a certainty, and he is like a condemned man, God forbid. After eating they immediately cause damage to his organs. They may lay dormant for weeks or years, but they will ultimately strike him. Hence, from the first time he ingests them “the fault is his” It matters not whether they are eaten accidentally or deliberately, for in this respect they are like one who consumes a poison. It is therefore incumbent on everyone to be especially careful about this matter.

OVERNIGHT EGGS AND CONTEMPORARY US KASHRUT

Overnight eggs are addressed by both the Orthodox Union (OU) and the Kof-K, which provide kosher supervision for thousands of products in the US. Their conclusions are at best confusing. For example, the OU notes a permissive ruling from R. Moshe Feinstein, the author of Igrot Moshe. “This would provide a basis for certification of all commercial egg, garlic and onion products but would not permit a caterer to crack eggs for the next day’s breakfast or to cut onions and garlic for the next day’s salad. Others do not accept this approach.” The OU doesn’t explicitly declare its position, but it sort of does. You can buy overnight eggs that are OU certified (and parve). I did. They were delicious.

the Two magesteria of Science and Religion

In his Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life, the late paleontologist Stephen J. Gould wrote of two magesteria or domains where one form of teaching holds the appropriate tools for meaningful discourse and resolution.

In the magisterium of science is "the empirical realm: what the Universe is made of (fact) and why does it work in this way (theory). The magisterium of religion extends over questions of ultimate meaning and moral value.These two magisteria do not overlap, nor do they encompass all inquiry…

We should ask scientific questions to the scientist, and meaning or moral questions to religious thinkers. That’s a pretty good way to stay out of trouble, and in fact is fully recognized in the Talmud itself. In a few days we will read the following:

נדה כ, ב

?אמר רבי זירא … דאמינא בטבעא לא ידענא, בדמא ידענא

Rabbi Zeira said … If I am not acquainted with the science of things, how can I possibly know about examining blood?

In other words, for Rabbi Zeira to opine about the religious status of a physiological process, he knew that he must fully understand it from a scientific perspective.

Here is another example of the same idea.In an unrelated incident later in the Talmud (Niddah 22b) there is a question about the origin of a uterine discharge. Notice the order in which things were asked:

ובאה ושאלה את אבא ואבא שאל לחכמים וחכמים לרופאים

- she came and asked my father whether she was impure. And my father asked the other Sages, and the Sages asked the doctors, and the doctors said to them.”

In fact this stepwise progression is mentioned twice -with the ultimate medical authority resting not with the rabbis, but with the doctors of the day.

Everything gives you cancer

In 2013 Jonathan Schoenfeld and John Ioannidis published one of my all-time favorite scientific papers: “Is everything we eat associated with cancer? A systematic cookbook review.” They noted the that dozens of foods or nutrients are associated with an increased risk of cancers. Did any of these published associations make any scientific sense? How solid were the conclusions, statistical significance and reproducibility of the literature that made these claims?

“We selected ingredients from random recipes included in The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book...PubMed queries identified recent studies that evaluated the relation of each ingredient to cancer risk...

Associations with cancer risk or benefits have been claimed for most food ingredients. Many single studies highlight implausibly large effects, even though evidence is weak...”

— Schoenfeld J and Ioannidis J. Is everything we eat associated with cancer? A systematic cookbook review. Am J Clin Nutr 2013;97:127–34.

In the chart below each dot represents a research paper that examined a food and its association with cancer. If the dot is to the left of the vertical line it reduces the risk of cancer. If it is to the right it increases it. Just look at wine on the first line as an example of the problem. There were nine studies; six suggested it decreased the risk of cancer (though they disagreed on the amount of that risk reduction) and three suggested it increased the risk. Coffee is even more muddling; the studies were evenly split, other than the one that found no relationship at all. It’s an embarrassing mess.

Effect estimates reported in the literature by ingredients. Only ingredients with >10 studies are shown. From Schoenfeld J and Ioannidis J. Is everything we eat associated with cancer? A systematic cookbook review. Am J Clin Nutr 2013;97:127–34.

Be skeptical

Overall, “the vast majority of these claims were based on weak statistical evidence.” Individual studies reported larger effect sizes than did the meta-analyses, meaning that when the studies on a particular food were grouped together and reviewed as a whole, the was no effect on the rates of cancer. “Our findings support previous evidence” wrote Schoenfeld and Ioannidis “suggesting that effect sizes are likely to trend closer to the null as more data are accumulated.” The more research is done, the less there appears to be any effect at all between these foods and cancer.

“I’ve worked in many different fields, and it’s hard to find another field that seems to be performing so poorly. It does draw amazing attention in the news, but nothing seems to be validated. I can’t think of any other field that has that constellation of failure.”

— John Ioannidis. How Washington keeps America sick and fat. Politico 11/4/2019

This paper is a good reminder that not everything that is published in a peer-reviewed journal is certain (even if the authors think it is). As a reader it is best to maintain a stance of respectful skepticism. That is especially true about claims that a food causes cancer, whether those claims are made by a researcher or a rabbi.

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For a longer analysis of the evolution of the stringency of overnight eggs, see the essay published today on The Lehrhaus here.

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NEXT TIME ON TALMUDOLOGY: TALMUDIC PROBABILITY THEORY

Niddah 17b ~The Chatam Sofer, Rationalism, and Anatomy That Isn't There

This is the first of two posts for Niddah 17, which will studied on Shabbat. The second post will be published tomorrow, Friday.

Print them up and enjoy.

In August 2013 a paper published in the otherwise sleepy Journal of Anatomy caused quite a sensation. Although doctors have been dissecting the human body for centuries, it seems that they missed a bit. A team from Belgium announced that they had discovered a new knee ligament, which they called the anterolateral ligament. On today’s page of Talmud the rabbis describe the opposite phenomena. They identify an anatomical part that in reality does not exist at all.  This part is called the aliyah, which usually refers to an attic or the upper chamber of a house.

נדה יז, ב

משל משלו חכמים באשה החדר והפרוזדור והעלייה דם החדר טמא דם העלייה טהור נמצא בפרוזדור ספקו טמא לפי שחזקתו מן המקור

The Sages had a parable with regard to the structure of the sexual organs of a woman [based on the structure of a house]: The inner room represents the uterus, and the corridor [perozdor] leading to the inner room represents the vaginal canal, and the upper story represents the bladder. 

Blood from the inner room is ritually impure. Blood from the upper story is ritually pure. If blood was found in the corridor, there is uncertainty whether it came from the uterus and is impure, or from the bladder and is pure. Despite its state of uncertainty ,it is deemed definitely impure, due to the fact that its presumptive status is of blood that came from the source ,i.e., the uterus, and not from the bladder. 

What anatomy is being discussed here? In particular, what is the aliyah, the “attic” of female genital anatomy? It turns out to be complicated.

the Aliyah surrounds the ovaries

From the Mishanh in Niddah, it is clear that the aliyah sometimes bleeds, and that this blood becomes visible when it passes into the vagina. Maimonides identifies the aliyah with the space that contains the ovaries and the fallopian tubes. In modern medicine the ovaries and the Fallopian tubes and tissues that support them are called the adenxa. They are further from the vagina that the uterus, and so this identification does not fit in with Abaye's anatomy in which the aliyah is closer to the vagina than is the uterus.

רמב׳ם הל׳ איסורי ביאה ה, ד

ולמעלה מן החדר ומן הפרוזדוד, בין חדר לפרוזדוד, והוא המקום שיש בו שתי ביצים של אישה, והשבילים שבהן מתבשלת שכבת זרע שלה--מקום זה הוא הנקרא עלייה.  וכמו נקב פתוח מן העלייה לגג הפרוזדוד, ונקב זה קוראין אותו לול; והאבר נכנס לפנים מן הלול, בשעת גמר ביאה

Above the uterus and the vagina, between the uterus and the vagina, is the place in which the two ovaries are found, and the tubes along which the sperm from intercourse matures, this place is called the aliyah. (Maimonides, Mishneh Torah Issurie Bi'ah 5:4)

As we said, the problem is that the space which contains the ovaries is inside the abdomen, and this space does not connect with the vagina. It connects via the Fallopian tubes with the uterus.  Although Maimonides does not identify the aliyah as the ovaries themselves, some have done so. But the problem with this is that the ovaries don't bleed unless they develop a large cyst which then ruptures. But even in this case they bleed into the abdomen, or into the uterus, again via the Fallopian tubes, and not directly into the vagina.

Menachem ben Shalom (1249-1306) known as the Meiri, wrote an important commentary on the Talmud call Bet Habechirah - בית הבחירה and in it he too identifies the aliyah as the space between the uterus and the vagina in which the ovaries are found. He notes that in this space there are many blood vessels which may rupture and bleed directly into the vagina (עורקים שמתבקעים לפעמים), but as we have noted this is not biologically correct. Any bleeding from the adnexa is via the Fallopian tubes into the uterus itself, and certainly not directly into the vagina.

The Aliyah is the vagina

In his classic Biblisch-Talmudische Medezin published in 1911, Jacob Preuss identified the aliyah as the vagina. "It can be assumed with reasonable certainty" he wrote "that the cheder refers to the uterus, that the prosdor is the vulva, and that the aliyah is the vagina." However certain he may have been, Preuss is the only one to make this identification, which does not fit in with the text of the Mishanh. So let's try another suggestion.

The Aliyah is the Bladder

Sefer Ha'Arukh, Venice 1552.

Natan ben Yechiel of Rome, who died in 1106, wrote an influential lexicon of talmudic terms called the Sefer Ha'Arukh (ספר הערוך) which was first published around 1470. In that work the aliyah is identified as the urinary bladder. This identification also cannot be correct, because the bladder does not empty into the vagina, and because it does not lie between the uterus and the vagina but anterior to them. The commentary in the Schottenstein Talmud to Niddah 17b notes that a connection between the urethra and the vagina (known as a urethero-vaginal fistula) might account for bleeding from the bladder into the vagina. This is possible - though it is of course not normal anatomy.  

From here.

The AliyaH is a completely new structure

Meir ben Gedaliah of Lublin (d.1616) also considered the location of the aliyah in his modestly titled book Meir Einei Hakhamim - מאיר עיני חכמים - (Enlightening the Eyes of the Sages) first published in Venice in 1618.  He locates it between the uterus and the bladder, and provides two helpful schematics. The problem is that there is no such organ. You won't find it if you dissect a cadaver, and you won't find it in any textbook of anatomy (like this one). And as one astute radiologist and reader of Talmudology recently told me, you won't find it on an MRI either. Here is the text. 

Maharam Lublin. Meir Einei Hakhamim. Venice 1618. p255b.

This non-existent anatomy is also pictured in the Schottenstein Talmud (Niddah 17b), based on the difficult Mishanah.  

From Schottenstein Talmud Niddah 17b. Note that this does NOT correspond to the known female anatomy, but is a schematic based on Rashi's understanding.

The CHatam Sofer on the Aliyah

Moses Schreiber known as Chatam Sofer, (d. 1839) was a leader of Hungarian Jewry and he too weighed in on the issue in his talmudic commentary to Niddah (18a).

What is the "corridor" or the "room" or the "roof" or the "ground" or the "aliyah" ? After some investigation using books and authors experts and books about autopsies it is impossible to deny the facts that do not accord with the statements of Rashi or Tosafot or the diagrams of the Maharam of Lublin...but you will find the correct diagram in the book called Ma'asei Tuviah and in book Shvilei Emunah...therefore I have made no effort to explain the words of Rashi or Tosafot for they are incompatible with the facts...

Tuviah HaCohen, the Doctor from Padua

I couldn't find the diagram in any edition of the Shvilei Emunah to which the Chatam Sofer refers, so let's look at the diagram from Ma'asei Tuviah, (“the best illustrated Hebrew medical work of the pre-modern era”) which I happen to have in my own library.

Detail from Tuviah HaCohen, Ma'aseh Tuviah, Venice 1708. p132b.

A careful reading of the annotation (זז) reveals that Tuviah HaCohen (1652-1729) identifies the aliyah as that area containing the ovaries and the Fallopian tubes. In doing so he followed the opinion of Maimonides that we cited earlier, even though that does not in any way fit in with the understanding of Abaye and his ruling that blood found in the vagina that comes from the aliyah is not impure because it does not come from the uterus. Any gynecologist (or first year medical student completing their anatomy dissections) will tell you that blood from the adnexa (the ovaries and Fallopian tubes) can only get into the vagina via the uterus. But the most interesting part of this diagram is the very first line of text, at the top of the image. 

פירוש המחבר כפי ידיעת הנתוח  

The author's explanation according to knowledge gained from an autopsy

Anatomical Theatre, Palazzo del Bo, at the University of Padua. It was built in 1594 by the anatomist who helped found modern embryology, Girolamo Fabricius. From here.

Here, perhaps for the first time, anatomical knowledge from an autopsy is being shared in Hebrew. At the medical school in Padua, two bodies (one of each sex) had to be dissected each year, and all the students attended- Tuviah included.  As a medical student, Tuviah would have stood in the famous anatomical theater and watched the dissection, perhaps following along in one of the textbooks based on those dissections. 

Facts Matter

As the Chatam Sofer noted, facts matter. The illustration in the work of the Maharam of Lublin was an example of trying to get the facts to fit the text of the Mishnah (or more precisely, the explanations of Rashi and Tosafot) but in doing so the Maharam created a fictitious anatomical part.

It is very unlikely that the rabbis of the Talmud witnessed human dissections. In the ancient world two Greeks, Herophilus of Chalcedon and  Erasistratus of Ceos (who lived in the first half of the third century BCE) were "the first and last ancient scientists to perform dissections of human cadavers." Facts about human anatomy became clear once human dissection began in the fourteenth century, but as is demonstrated by the Maharam of Lublin, these lessons did not always diffuse into the Jewish community.  The Chatam Sofer is often - and rightly  - cited as a force for tradition against the challenges from the outside world. But the Hatam Sofer, at least in so far as gynecology was concerned, had no time for a theory when the facts show otherwise. In an age of "alternative facts" the Chatam Sofer is a model of rationalism.

[Mostly a repost from here.]

Niddah 13 ~ Onanism, Self-Pollution and Potential People

From Emery C. Abbey. The Sexual System and its Derangements. Buffalo NY 1875.

תורה היא, וללמדה אני צריך

Today we start an excursus into the sin of masturbation (or at least male masturbation), which will occupy the Talmud for the next couple of pages. Since the rabbis took this seriously enough to share their opinions of this intimate subject, the least we can do is study what they have to say.

After we familiarize ourselves with the Talmud and the epidemiology of masturbation, we will introduce the eighteenth-century anonymous book Onanaia. More than than any other text in the English speaking world, it made the practice both a moral sin and a medical danger, and we will consider whether its medical claims were correct. Finally, we will discuss the moral status of potential people, and see how, although perhaps at odds with some liberal moral intuitions, the worldview of the Talmud was internally consistent.

Let’s start with some of those talmudic texts.

נדה יג, א

מ"ש נשים ומאי שנא אנשים נשים לאו בנות הרגשה נינהו משובחות אנשים דבני הרגשה נינהו תקצץ

What is different about women and what is different about men [that women are praised for examining for bodily emissions while men are castigated for the same? The Talmud answers:] Women are not susceptible to sexual arousal by this action, and therefore when a woman is diligent to examine herself she is considered praiseworthy; whereas men, who are susceptible to sexual arousal [and may experience a seminal emission as a result of this contact, may not do so,] and the hand of a man who conducts frequent examinations for emissions should be severed…

רבי אליעזר אומר כל האוחז באמתו ומשתין כאילו מביא מבול לעולם…

Rabbi Eliezer says:With regard to a man who holds his penis and urinates,it is considered as though he is bringing a flood to the world, [as masturbation was one of the sins that led to the flood]…

דא"ר יוחנן כל המוציא שכבת זרע לבטלה חייב מיתה…

As Rabbi Yochanan says: Anyone who emits semen for naught is liable to receive the punishment of death at the hand of Heaven

רבי יצחק ורבי אמי אמרי כאילו שופך דמים...רב אסי אמר כאילו עובד עבודת כוכבים...…

Rabbi Yitzchak and Rabbi Ami say: One who emits semen for naught is considered as though he is a murderer…Rav Avi says he is considered to have worshipped idols…

נדה יג, ב

אמר רב המקשה עצמו לדעת יהא בנדוי..איכא דאמרי אמר רבי אמי כל המביא עצמו לידי הרהור אין מכניסין אותו במחיצתו של הקב"ה

...אמר ר' אלעזר מאי דכתיב (ישעיהו א, טו) ידיכם דמים מלאו אלו המנאפים ביד...ת"ש דתניא רבי טרפון אומר יד לאמה תקצץ ידו על טבורו

Rav says: One who intentionally causes himself an erection shall be ostracized...Some say that Rabbi Ami says: With regard to anyone who brings himself into a state of arousal, they do not bring him within the boundary of the Holy One, Blessed be He....

And Rabbi Elazar says, with regard to the severity of this transgression: What is the meaning of that which is written: “And when you spread forth your hands, I will hide My eyes from you; even when you make many prayers, I will not hear; your hands are full of blood” (Isaiah 1:15)? These are those men who commit adultery with the hand [by masturbating]...Come and hear, as it is taught in a baraita that Rabbi Tarfon says: If one’s hand goes to his penis, his hand should be severed upon his navel....

נדה טו, ב

אמר רבי שמעון בן יוחאי ארבעה דברים הקב"ה שונאן ואני איני אוהבן… והאוחז באמה ומשתין מים

…Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai says: Four matters the Holy One, Blessed be He, hates, and I do not love them, and they are…one who holds his penis and urinates…

It is clear that not all these rabbis had the same set of concerns. Some equated masturbation with adultery, perhaps assuming it had a deleterious effect on the relationship between husband and wife. Others felt it prevented religious growth (“they do not bring him within the boundary of the Holy One,”) perhaps by prioritizing the physical over the spiritual. And some thought it to be in some way as morally heinous as the worst sin of all - murder. There is not space to consider what modern research has revealed about each of these, but it is the last category - masturbation as murder - that we will consider in some detail later.

Everyone Has Soup

The great Jewish comedian Jackie Mason had a line in his routine which went something like this: “Why do they show so much sex in movies? Because everyone is having sex. So what? Everyone has soup, and they never show that in movies.” He could have said the same thing about the topic of today’s page of Talmud.

Way back in 1974 the Journal of Sex Research reported that over 75% of male and female college students reported that they presently masturbated, although way more men (89%) than women (61%) did so. A 2008 paper from a much larger British general population found that

ninety-five percent of men and 71.2% of women reported that they had masturbated at some point in their lives. Seventy-three percent of men and 36.8% of women reported masturbating in the four weeks before their interview, while approximately half of the men (51.7%) and one in six women (17.8%) reported masturbating in the previous seven days. This gender difference in prevalence was highly statistically significant…

A 2010 paper (Sexual behaviors, relationships, and perceived health among adult men in the United States; Results from a National Probability Sample) asked over 2,500 men of all ages about the topic. It reported that

Masturbation was a significant component of the sexual repertoire for men across all age groups, with rates of solo masturbation in the past 90 days being consistently above 60% among men through age 59 years, and with rates at approximately 50% through age 69. Masturbation rates were highest among those in the 25–39 year age groups, peaking at 95.5% of men who described themselves as single and dating and being above 80% for all unmarried men in this age category. The lowest rate of masturbation was observed among married men over 70 years of age (26.89%)

“The result of self-abuse is always—mind you always—that the boy after a time becomes weak and nervous and shy, he gets headaches and probably palpitations of the heart, and if he still carries on too far he very often goes out of his mind and becomes an idiot. A very large proportion of our lunatics have made themselves mad by indulging in this vice although at one time they were sensible cheery boys like you and me.”

— Loed Baden Powell, cited in Rosenthal, M. The Character Factory, Baden Powell and Origins of the Boy Scout Movement. London 1986.

“ היינו דאמרי אינשי איהו בקרי ואתתי בבוציני
There is a popular folk saying: He uses pumpkins and his wife uses cucumbers...”

— Talmud Bavli, Megillah 12b

“האיתתיה בביציני פ’ האיש אם לא ימצא אשה לזנותה נוקב בקרא נקב קטן לזנות בו וכך האשה אם לא תמצא זכר נעשה מיקשואין מקים זכרות לזנות בו
”

— ספר הערוך לרבי נתן ב׳ר יחיאל מרומא, פריז 1597

“Man is not the only mammal to masturbate, it is common to most primates, dogs, cats, bulls, horses, shrews, rats, hamster, deer and even whales.”

— Levin, Roy J. Sexual activity, health and well-being – the beneficial roles of coitus and masturbation, Sexual and Relationship Therapy 2007: 22:1, 135-148,

Onanism and “Onania: The Heinous sin of self pollution”

As a proof text for its disapproval of the practice, the Talmud cites the story of Onan (Gen 38) the son of Judah. He refused to impregnate Tamar, his dead-brother’s widow in fulfillment of levirite marriage, choosing instead another option.

וַיֵּדַע אוֹנָן כִּי לֹּא לוֹ יִהְיֶה הַזָּרַע וְהָיָה אִם־בָּא אֶל־אֵשֶׁת אָחִיו וְשִׁחֵת אַרְצָה לְבִלְתִּי נְתָן־זֶרַע לְאָחִיו׃ 

But Onan, knowing that the seed would not count as his, let it go to waste whenever he joined with his brother’s wife, so as not to provide offspring for his brother. 

וַיֵּרַע בְּעֵינֵי ה’ אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה וַיָּמֶת גַּם־אֹתוֹ׃ 

What he did was displeasing to God, and He took his life also.

Frontispiece of the sixth edition, London 1722.

Most of the rabbinic commentaries interpret this act as coitus interruptus rather than masturbation, though there is some overlap of meaning in later rabbinic sources. But over the last couple of centuries onanism and masturbation have been used as synonyms. One of the reasons for that is a little book published anonymously in London around 1712. It had the meandering title Onania; or, the Heinous Sin of Self Pollution, and all its Frightful Consequences in both SEXES Considered, with Spiritual Pollution and Physical Advice to those who have already injured themselves by this abominable practice. As Thomas Laquer points out in his Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation, this book “actually invented a new disease and a new highly specific, thoroughly modern and nearly universal engine for generating guilt, shame and anxiety.” The book went through dozens of editions, and was “the first work to bring masturbation to the world’s attention.” But as Laquaer notes, that attention came with a legacy:

a medical tradition that held that excess of any kind was harmful; a link to the abject, the silly, the derisive from classical culture; an association with Christianity’s and Judaism’s revulsion towards birth control; a family tie, in some Jewish and many Christian texts, to sodomy and natural vice, a solid foundation in the long Christian tradition of suspicion of the flesh and its pleasure from which the Protestants and liberal Catholics who created modern masturbation wanted to distance themselves.

The book warned of both the physical and religious “afflictions” that “fall on those who are or have been guilty of the sinful practice of self-pollution.” Here are just a couple of sentences on the former:

In the first place, it manifestly hinders the growth, both in boys and girls, and few of either sex, that in in their youth commit this sin to excess for any considerable time, come ever to that robustness or strength, which they would have arrived to without it. In men as well as boys, the very first attempt of it has often occasioned a phimosis in some, and a paraphymosis in others; I shall not explain these terms any further, let it suffice the they are accidents which are very painful and troublesome, and may continue to be tormenting for some time, if not bring on ulcers and other worse symptoms…whoever wants to know the signification [sic] of those words, a surgeon will inform him…

It won’t come as a surprise that the book was full of what we recognize as quackery mixed with the hope of making some easy money. It encouraged readers to buy various potions and medicaments that “are to be had only at the said bookseller, at his shop…near Cheapside.” (To avoid counterfeits, we are told that the real stuff is “sealed up with a same coat of arms” as found in the book.) The wonderfully named Strengthening Tincture (also known, and I’m not making this up, as the Prolific Powder) not only corrected the “acrimony of the humors” but

prevented the falling of them down upon the glanduls [sic] in the urethera and parts contiguous, which cause Gonorrheas’ Gleetings, emissions of seed upon stool or in making water nocturnal pollutions, external redness outings of mucus or a moisture and the like in men…and in women on the glans in the vagina, causing the whites, bearing down, or relaxation of the womb, pain or weakness in the back and the like….

But wait…there’s more. The last paragraph of the book is so wonderful that I just have to share it with you in the original. Enjoy.

The popularity and influence of Onania cannot be overstated. By its tenth edition it had sold over 15,000 copies and was reprinted in 1724 in the American colonies, to be read by the Puritans who had settled there. “Just over two decades after its initial notice in a humble tract, the new sin and its neologism made their way into the first of the great eighteenth-century encyclopedias. “Onania” and “onanism” had become nouns worthy of the definition of so intellectually ambitious a work as Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopedia.” It was not until 1900 that germs replaced self-pollution as the cause of consumption and spinal tuberculosis. “Modern biological science did not give up on the sexual vice of modernity until well into the twentieth century, and even then, it maintained a foothold through the social sciences.”

The medical effects of Masturbation

The rabbis of the Talmud declared masturbation to be sinful. But is it medically harmful? In a 2007 review on the topic, Roy Levin of the University of Sheffield in England noted that

Human sexual activity has often been negatively promoted as causing disease, dysfunction and disruption. The literature is awash with articles on the pathologies of sex. However, in the last few years a number of studies have been published that reveal the effects of sexual arousal and orgasm induced either by coitus or masturbation on the health and well-being of both males and females in terms of their having maintenance functions and preventative (prophylactic) functions. There is evidence that coital orgasms give greater sexual satisfaction and more benefits than those from masturbation although the actual physical intensity of the orgasm may be greater in the latter. There are still many unknowns – how much influence has sexual activity in the better mortality statistics for married as opposed to single individuals, how important is the influence of diet on cancer of the reproductive tract especially the prostate, how does orgasm in males increase their white cell numbers and does it also occur in women, does exposure to pathogen-free normal ejaculates influence cervical cancer, is the stimulation of the periurethral glans crucial to obtain vaginally induced coital orgasms, does sexual abstinence strengthen or weaken relationships, and how does coitus influence the regularity and ovulatory menstrual cycles – these being just some of the questions waiting to be answered.

In other words, it’s complicated. But here are some of his conclusions:

(i) The magnitude of the prolactin released following coital orgasm appears to be greater than that released by masturbatory orgasms in both males and females, but it’s not certain if this is this case, and even if it is, the physiological significance is not yet clear.

(ii) Masturbation (and nocturnal emissions) might be mechanisms to ensure the maintenance of a fertile ejaculate independent of the proclivities of female acceptance for coitus, since there is evidence that if ejaculation is not experienced for a period as short as 5 – 18 days both the quality and quantity of the spermatozoa decrease.

(iii) Masturbation-induced arousal increases the absolute number of leukocytes, especially natural killer cells  involved in attacking infected cells, but the T-cell (involved in cell-mediated immune responses) and B-cell (involved in humoral mediated responses) populations remained unaffected. Sexual arousal and orgasm appears to enhance some functions of the immune system rather than depressing it. (As yet a similar study has not been undertaken in females.)

(iv) A 2004 study examined the relationship between the number of ejaculations and prostate cancer in 29,342 U.S. men aged 46 to 81 years. Most categories of ejaculation frequency were unrelated to the risk of prostate cancer but high ejaculation frequency was related to a decreased risk of total prostate cancer. The mechanism of the possible protection that ejaculations may have is unknown, but one suggestion was that chronic contact of the glandular cells with their luminal secretions may be conducive to carcinogenesis. A 1988 study concluded that men who developed prostate cancer had lower rates of penile vaginal coitus at age less than 50 years than age-matched controls and also had a greater frequency of masturbation.

A more recent review of a possible link between masturbation and prostate cancer identified sixteen studies on the topic. Seven reported a protective effect linked to masturbation or higher incidence of ejaculation per month and the risk of prostate cancer. Three articles suggested a causal effect by reporting a moderate or higher correlation between masturbation and cancer. Six articles reported no significant relations (protective or causal) between masturbation and prostate cancer risk. No significant trends with respect to population location or study methodology were found. So for now, the data is all over the place. No one knows.

From Aboul-Enein B, Bernstein J, Ross M. Evidence for masturbation and prostate cancer risk. Do we have a verdict? Sex. Med. Rev 2016: 4;229-234.

We now turn to the last topic. The rabbis equated masturbation with other pretty bad sins. To the modern mind it may seem a bit much, but their worldview considered the loss of potential people to be morally (if not legally) criminal in a way that we usually don’t.

Potential People and the Abortion Debate

Way back in 1984 I read Michael Tooley’s Abortion and Infanticide, which examines the philosophical issues on the morality of these two practices. It had a powerful impact on me, not so much because of its topic, but rather because of the rigor with which the author addressed the issue. In terms of a book that teaches the importance of clear thought and logical reason, it remains hard to beat.

Anyway there are two long chapters in the book that address the arguments from potential persons and possible persons. These are sometimes invoked as reasons to prohibit abortion. One argument (and there are many versions) goes like this:

Abortion is wrong not because it kills an innocent human being or a person. It is wrong because it kills a potential person. It prevents a bunch of cells from developing into an actual person and we can all agree that it is wrong to kill an actual person.

But hold on, says Tooley. The developing embryo will only develop into an actual person if all the conditions are correct.

If a human embryo is only, or at most, something that will develop into a person if not interfered with, it is difficult to see how it can be wrong to destroy it for that reason, unless it is also wrong to disrupt a system of objects so interrelated that the system will, if not interfered with give rise to a human. (p329).

But when (and where) do we believe the potential to be of moral significance? Consider a separate egg and sperm in two petri dishes side by side. The contents of those two dishes is a potential person too - only they must be mixed together and implanted in a woman. Most people would say that it is not morally wrong to fail to unite the zygotes and implant the egg. But why is that “potential” morally different from a growing implanted embryo? At most it is a difference of degree, not of kind.

If it is seriously wrong to destroy a human zygote inside a woman, and is so because one is thereby destroying an ‘almost active’ potentiality for giving rise to a person, then it must be almost as seriously wrong to destroy the ‘almost active’ potentiality associated either with an isolated human zygote, or with a system consisting of a normal woman and a collection of spermatozoa. The potentiality associated with the latter could, however, be destroyed by means of spermicide. The question, then, is whether the anti-abortionist is prepared to maintain that the destruction of the sperm, given the presence of willing and able women, is seriously wrong. If not, it seems that he cannot be justified in holding that it is seriously wrong to destroy the “almost active’ potentiality inherent in biologically unified potential persons. (p183-184.)

There are of course many arguments to be made as to why abortion might be morally wrong, but Tooley is certainly onto something here. This particular argument only takes us as far as showing that all potential people, including sperm and eggs that are not yet fertilized, are to be actualized. And today, that’s not what, when asked, people really believe. But the rabbis of the Talmud did.

The Talmudic View on Potential People

Here then, is where the Talmud - and the rabbinic tradition - would come to a quite different conclusion from Tooley and others who believe that there is nothing morally wrong with failing to unite an egg and sperm to get the whole potential person thing going. And it is recognized in the Talmud’s discussion today on the sin of self-pollution. Indeed, every potential person is one that should be actualized, and failure to do so is seen as the moral equivalent of murder, for there is no difference in moral standing between a potential person and an actual one. (True, the abortion debate in Judaism is way more complicated than that, and it recognizes that in many cases the rights of the fetus do not override the rights of its mother. But as a rule, abortion is a procedure undertaken only with reluctance and in a limited set of circumstances. It’s certainly not available on demand. Because the fetus is a potential person.)

Thomas Laqueur (p123) sums it up perfectly: the “spilling of seed to prevent conception or for pure pleasure is almost irrelevant in the light of the cosmic harm such an act perpetrates.” That’s precisely the point, and the place in the discussion where traditional Jewish thought and the kind of arguments made by Tooley diverge. Whether that is enough to condemn almost the entire population of men and women as murders and idle-worshippers (כאילו שופך דמים...כאילו עובד עבודת כוכבים) is another question. But there is indeed an internal consistency in a rabbinic outlook that considered all human seed as potential people.

Coming up Next on Talmudology: Anatomy that Isn’t There.