2019 End of the Year Talmudology Numbers

It’s been a bumper year for Talmudology. The website grew its readership by almost 30% and hosted almost 30,000 unique visitors. It had 55,000 page views, an increase of almost 50% from the previous calendar year.

The Most Popular Posts of 2019

Here are the ten most popular posts of the year:

1. Bava Basra 126b ~ The Healing Power of Saliva. Saliva, wound healing, and the magic of a firstborn’s spit.

2. Chullin 22b ~ Yellow Pigeons, Folk Medicine and Hepatitis. Why pigeons are still used to cure hepatitis.

3. Avodah Zarah 28b ~ Ear Candling. On a silly way to clean your ears.

4. Kiddushin 29a ~ Swimming and Drowning. The Jewish requirement to teach a child to swim.

5. Avodah Zarah 39a ~ Do Swordfish have Scales? Actually they do. So they are kosher.

6. Bava Basra 25b ~ The Sun's Orbit Around the Earth. The rabbis of the Talmud vs. Copernicus.

7. Kiddushin 30a ~ How Many Letters are in a Sefer Torah? 304, 801. Or 304, 805. And why the rabbis miscounted.

8. Kiddushin 82a ~ The Best Doctors Go to Hell. Doctors were at best useless, and at their worst, agents of death.  To hell with them.

9. Bava Basra 27b ~ The Roots of a Palm Tree. How the United Nations supported Abayye’s botanical opinions.

10. Ketuvot 36a ~ The Aylonit Syndrome and Turner's Syndrome. How genetics sheds light on a Talmudic category.

Where are the Talmudology readers FROM?

Here are the top five Talmudology reading countries:

1. USA - 61% (24,200 visitors)

2. Israel 12% (4,700 visitors)

3. United Kingdom 5% (1,900 visitors)

4. Canada 3% (1,200 visitors)

5. Australia 2% (1,000 visitors)

But let’s not forget our loyal readers from other parts of the world. A special shout out to the 350 visitors from Pakistan, 73 visitors from Saudi Arabia, the 39 visitors from Iran, the 14 from Bahrain, and the 6 visitors from Zimbabwe. We value your readership, and don’t worry, we cannot identify you in any more detail, even if we wanted to.

We thank you for your readership and the encouraging emails you have kindly sent. Thanks as well to each of you who diligently alert us to any typos.

What’s Next for Talmudology?

We started this project in November 2104, which was about two years into the one-page-a-day Daf Yomi cycle of seven-and-a half years. That cycle will be completed in just four more days, (and Talmudology will be celebrating in Jerusalem here and here). We will then continue with new posts as we follow the brand new Daf Yomi cycle.

Sign up here for email alerts, or follow us on Twitter (@Talmudology) as we study the science in the Talmud.

Niddah 61b ~ Saliva as a Detergent, and the Ig Nobel Award in Chemistry

נדה סא, ב

שבעה סמנין מעבירין על הכתם רוק תפל ומי גריסין ומי רגלים ונתר ובורית

There are seven substances that one applies to the stain on a garment to ascertain whether it is a blood stain or a dye, as these seven substances remove the blood. They are: raw saliva…

If you want to know if a stain is caused by blood, rub some saliva on. If the stain disappears, it was indeed blood. That is the claim made in the Mishnah on today’s page of Talmud, and the detergent powers of saliva are discussed in more detail on the next few pages.

נדה סג, א

איזהו רוק תפל תנא כל שלא טעם כלום מבערב…אמר רבה בר בר חנה אמר רבי יוחנן איזהו רוק תפל כל שעבר עליו חצות לילה ובשינה…תנא השכים ושנה פרקו אין זה רוק תפל

What is the definition of raw saliva? Any saliva where the person had not tasted anything since the evening... Rabba bar bar Chana says that Rabbi Yochanan says: What is raw saliva? Any saliva where the person did not eat any food and he passed the middle of the night and he was in a state of sleep…A tanna taught in a baraita: If one rose early in the morning and learned aloud his chapter of the Torah, that saliva in his mouth is not raw saliva, as speech weakens the strength of the saliva…

Saliva as a Detergent

Each of us has used saliva as a detergent countless times. When we lick our lips after a meal, when we lick our finger and rub it onto a stain on our clothes or a smudge of our mascara we are taking advantage of this wondrous substance. Saliva does a number of things: it moistens and lubricate the mouth, clears food particles and bacteria, forms a coating on all the oral surfaces, buffers the acids produced by bacteria, protects the oral tissues and starts the process of digestion. But the Talmud is focused on its properties as a great detergent.

“Dirt doesn’t stand much of a chance against the power of human saliva, apparently.”

— Salivating over history: Manitoba Museum gives artifacts the old spit shine. CBC News Feb 20, 2017.

Carolyn Sirett is a conservator at the Manitoba Museum in Canada, who used her own saliva to clean a one-hundred and forty year-old painting. Sirett, who is responsible for the long-term preservation of nearly three million specimens in the museum's collection is keen to point out that she was not “actually spitting on or licking mould off the paintings.” Instead, she lightly dampens a cotton swab in her mouth, “preferably before lunch.” She then rolls the saliva swab over the area to be clean, discards it when dirty and repeats the process. Here is what she achieved, cleaning an oil painting from 1869. She must have really good saliva.

“it was noticed that some conservators preferred their own saliva for cleaning fragile painted layers”

— Romao P. Alarco A. Viana C. Human saliva as a cleaning agent for dirt surfaces. Studies in Conservation 1990; 35: 153-155.

the 2018 Ignoble Awards

Every year since 1991 the Annals of Improbable Research sponsors the Ig Nobel awards, given for “research that makes people laugh and then think." There have been some worthy winners, and last year the Ig Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Paula Romão, Adília Alarcão and the late César Viana, for measuring the degree to which human saliva is a good cleaning agent for dirty surfaces. The trio, from the Instituto Jose de Figueiredo in Lisbon, Portugal, had published a paper back in 1990 titled Human saliva as a cleaning agent for dirty surfaces in which they undertook “qualitative tests and chromatographic techniques on human saliva.” They reported that alpha-amylase was the main constituent responsible for the cleaning power of saliva. Alpha-amylase is the enzyme we use to break down starch, into simple sugars, but it is also used in laundry detergents. Mary Roach, in her laugh-out-loud book Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal noted that “higher-end detergents contain at least three digestive enzymes: amylase to break down the starchy stains, protease for proteins, and lipase for greasy stains. Laundry detergent is essentially a digestive tract in a box.”

Mary Roach. Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal. New York, W. W. Norton & Company 2013. p111.

These features of saliva were actually first noted in the Mishnah. And so perhaps that 2018 Ig Nobel award should have been shared between the researchers from Lisbon and the rabbis from Israel.

From the Talmudology Chanukah Archives: Rashi and Why Women Light the Menorah

Don't Share This With Your Young Children

The festival of Chanukah begins this evening. Ask a well-educated Jewish child about the origins of Chanukah, and she will likely tell you about the wicked Greeks who defiled the Temple, about the brave Maccabees who fought them, and about the miracle of the oil.  But in Rashi's commentary to the Talmud there is another part of the story. Here it is:

דאמר רבי יהושע בן לוי: נשים חייבות בנר חנוכה, שאף הן היו באותו הנס

 רש"י שם:  שגזרו יוונים על כל בתולות הנשואות להיבעל לטפסר תחלה  

Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said: Women are obligated to take part in the lighting, for they were included in that miracle...

Rashi: For the Greeks made an edict that all virgins who were about to marry must first have intercourse with the Prefect...

The great French exegete Rashi (d.1105) is referencing the Law of the First Night - Jus Primae Noctis, also known more graphically as The Right to the Thigh - Droit du Cuissage. We first encountered this when studying Ketuvot 3a. So let's go back to that daf.  

MAZAL TOV; WHEN'S THE WEDDING?

Today, when a bride and groom wish to secure a wedding day, it will depend on their budget and the availability of the caterer. My, how things have changed. In the times of the Mishnah, the wedding day was decided by the availability of the local rabbinic court, the Bet Din. Then, a wedding (of a virgin) could only take place on the night before the Bet Din convened.  This would ensure that if, after their magical first night, the groom suspected that his bride had not been a virgin, he could take his claim to court the very next day.  

“מפני מה אמרו בתולה נשאת ליום הרביעי שאם היה לו טענת בתולים היה משכים לב”ד

Why did they teach that a virgin must only marry on a Wednesday? So that if the groom questioned her virginity, he could hurry to the Bet Din...
”

— Ketuvot 3a

The Talmud (Ketuvot 3a) explains that this happy custom changed during a period of persecution. Rabbah, a forth century Babylonian sage, explained what this is all about: "[The authorities] said, "a virgin who gets married on Wednesday will first have intercourse with the governor" (הגמון). In order to avoid this awful legal rape, the wedding was moved a day early, to fly, so to speak, under the radar of the local governor. 

JUS PRIMAE NOCTIS IN THE TALMUD & MIDRASH

The law that Rabbah referenced is the same one that Rashi claims was imposed on Jewish brides by the Greeks. Its origins are further explained in the Talmud Yerushalmi, which dates it to the time of the Bar Kochba revolution:

 תלמוד ירושלמי כתובות פרק א הלכה ה  

בראשונה גזרו שמד ביהודה שכן מסורת להם מאבותם שיהודה הרג את עשו...  והיו הולכין ומשעבדין בהן ואונסין את בנותיהן וגזרו שיהא איסטרטיוס בועל תחילה התקינו שיהא בעלה בא עליה עודה בבית אביה 

In the beginning, they [the Romans] decreed destruction in Judea (for they had a tradition that Yehuda killed Esau) ... and they enslaved them and raped their daughters, and decreed that a soldier would have intercourse [with a bride] first. It was then enacted that her husband would cohabit with her while she was still in her father's house. 

A reference to Primae Noctis also appears in the Midrash Rabbah, a collection of rabbinic homilies edited sometime in the forth or fifth century. As told in Genesis 6, “the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were beautiful (tovot), and they took wives from whoever they chose.” The Midrash focuses on that word beautiful, and explains:

בראשית רבה (וילנא) פרשת בראשית פרשה כו 

אמר רבי יודן טבת כתיב, משהיו מטיבין אשה לבעלה היה גדול נכנס ובועלה תחלה, הדא הוא דכתיב כי טבת הנה, אלו הבתולות ויקחו להם נשים מכל אשר בחרו, אלו נשי אנשים, 

“Rabbi Judan said the word tovot (טבת) – beautiful – is written in the singular, [but read as a plural]. Meaning that the bride was made beautiful for her husband, but the lord of the nobles had intercourse with her first...”

JUS PRIMAE NOCTIS...IN THE MOVIES

There are numerous references to Primae Noctis in ancient and modern literature, from the Epic of Gilgamesh to The Marriage of Figaro. One recent example can be seen in the movie Braveheart, when the evil King Edward gallops into a village, to interrupt a wedding celebration. “I’ve come to claim the right of Primae Noctis. As lord of these lands, I will bless this marriage by taking the bride into my bed on the first night of her union.”  And as the groom is restrained by Edward's henchmen, Edward reminds the peasants “it is my noble right.”  

Jus Primae Noctis. Is there a more fearsome example of feudal barbarism? Of what one scholar called “a male power display…coercive sexual dominance…and male desire for sexual variety”?  But the legend, despite its appearance in many guises, is, fortunately, likely to be nothing more than just that: a legend.  

JUS PRIMAE NOCTIS...IS A LEGEND

Perhaps the most comprehensive investigation of the legend of Primae Noctis is The Lord's First Night: the Myth of the Droit de Cuissage, by the French social scientist Alain Boureau. His careful analysis is particularly important since, as we have seen, Rashi, our favorite French commentator, cites this legend twice. After a meticulous two-hundred page review of every alleged appearance of the legend, Boureau is clear:

“[T]he droit de cuissage never existed in medieval France. Not one of the arguments, none of the events insinuated, alleged or brandished, holds up under analysis.
”

— Alain Boureau, The Lord's First Night.

Others scholars agree with Boureau. In 1881, the German historian Karl Schmidt concluded that the right never existed.  In 1973, the historian J.Q.C. Mackrell noted that there is "no reliable evidence" that it existed. And Prof. Tal Ilan, now at the Free University of Berlin, addressed the myth of Primae Noctis in a magnificently titled 1993 paper: Premarital Cohabitation in Ancient Judea. Prof. Ilan noted that that “all medieval literature that evokes the custom of Jus Primae Noctis has been proven to be folkloristic and has no historical basis.” But what about the evidence from the Talmuds, and the Midrashim? Don’t they provide evidence that Primae Noctis was indeed practiced in the time of the Talmud? Not so, claims the professor:

If a motif of this sort could have appeared in a sixteenth-century document and upset the entire history of medieval Europe for the next two centuries, the same motif likewise could have cropped up in the fourth -or fifth-century Palestinian Talmud, falsely describing events of the second century.

Instead, Prof Ilan suggests that the Talmud used the myth of Primae Noctis to excuse the behavior of some prospective couples, who would engage in sexual relations before they married.  “the jus primae noctis was conveniently drawn in order to explain and justify a custom that seemed to the rabbis to undermine their view of proper conduct in Jewish society.”

“Some events do take place but are not true; others are—although they never occurred.”

— Elie Wiesel, Legends of Our Time

There is some further support to the claim that primae noctis never existed, and it is not one I have seen suggested before.  It is a claim from silence.  I've checked over 100,000 responsa, and there is not one on this topic. Not a single one.  If primae noctis really was a law of the Greek and Roman empires, and a feudal right across medieval Europe, then why were its implications for the Jewish community never discussed in the responsa literature?  This silence supports the conclusions of work done by Boureau, Ilan and others: it never existed. In fact Boureau wonders what muddled thinking would lead anyone to believe it existed in the first place: 

It has been clear from the start that no matter what social restrictions were put on conduct and the management of wealth, and no matter how violent mores became, the principle of free choice of an unfettered matrimonial life was the most sacred area of individual liberty in medieval Europe. The Church, European society's principal normative center, very early removed all restrictions on the marriage of dependents, and it imposed consent as a sacramental value. No juridicial form, no custom, could attack that principal...sanctified in the twelfth century by the establishment of the sacrament of matrimony.

HISTORY AND HERITAGE

The historian David Lowenthal has explained the differences between history and heritage. While history "seeks to convince by truth," heritage "passes on exclusive myths of origin and endurance, endowing us alone with prestige and purpose." Heritage, continues Lowenthal, commonly alters the past: sometimes it selectively forgets past evils, and sometimes it updates the past to fit in with our modern sensibilities. Sometimes it upgrades the past, making it better than it was, and sometimes it downgrades the past, to attract sympathy.  And so, how we read the Talmud will depend on whether we see it as a work of history or as a book of our heritage.  

“There you have it...some of it fact, and some of it fiction, but all of it true, in the true meaning of the word”

— Miles Orvel, The Real Thing: Imitiation and Authenticity in America

There are stories both wonderful and terrible from our Jewish past. Some are factual, and some are not, and a measured approach to how we might approach these stories has been suggested by Judith Baumel and Jacob J. Schacter. They explored the claim (published in The New York Times) that in 1942, ninety-three Beis Yaakov schoolgirls in Cracow committed suicide rather than face rape by their German captors. They concluded that the evidence to support the truth of the story is not conclusive one way or the other. 

Whether or not it actually happened as described is difficult to determine, but there is certainly no question that it could have happened...in response to those claiming that the incident was "unlikely" to have occurred, let us remind the reader that the period in question was one during which the most unlikely events did occur, when entire communities were wiped out without leaving a single survivor...Maybe it did happen. But maybe again it didn't. Could it have happened? Of course.

So Why Should Women Light the Menorah?

It seems very unlikely that Rashi's explanation for why women should light the Menorah has any factual basis; the legend of Primae Noctis is not likely to have been true. But some stories are true, even though they never happened. Ask yourself, from what you know about Jewish history, could it have been true? Yes. And that's what makes it all the more terrifying. Sadly, we have plenty of tragic stories from our Jewish history, and there is no need to create one that probably never happened. 

But if Rashi's reasoning was based on a myth, why should women - who according to traditional teaching are exempt from a positive time bound command - why should they light?  For an answer that should satisfy moderns, we need look no further than the Code of Jewish Law - the Sulchan Aruch (written about 460 years after Rashi's death).   

שולחן ערוך אורח חיים הלכות חנוכה סימן תרעה סעיף ג 

 אשה מדלקת נר חנוכה, שאף היא חייבת בה

 A women should light a light on Chanunkah, for she is obligated to do so...

So there you have it. Women should light...because they should light. We need no more of a reason than that.

Happy Chanukah.

[A repost from December 2017.]

Niddah 58b ~ Bed Bugs

The adult bed beg. They are about the size of an apple seed, 5mm or so, but may be larger if they have recently fed. From here.

Bed bugs have been an increasing presence in our lives since the 1980s. While outbreaks in New York city hotels left everyone itching, the bugs are an international menace. They have been reported in Canada, Germany, Australia and Israel. In a 2014 interview, Dr. Kosta Mumcuoglu, a parasitologist from the Hebrew University told The Jerusalem Post that the incidence of bed bugs had increased by 150% over a five-year period, and that they were developing resistance to insecticides. Bed bugs, it seems, have become a feature of modern living. Just like they were during Talmudic times, as discussed in today’s page of Talmud.

The Talmud spends some time discussing this pest because of its ability to leave blood stains that are similar in appearance to those that might render a woman ritually impure.

נדה נח, ב

שאין לך כל מטה ומטה שאין בה כמה טיפי דם מאכולת

There is no bed of any kind on which there are not several drops of blood of a louse.

“Bed bug infestations have been reported increasingly in homes, apartments, hotel rooms, hospitals, and dormitories in the United States since 1980”

— Goddard J. deShazo R. Bed Bugs (Cimex lectularius) and Clinical Consequences of Their Bites. JAMA 2009: 301 (13): 1358-1366.

A series of bites in a line is characteristic of bedbug bites. From Delaunay P. et al. Bedbugs and Infectious Diseases. Clinical Infectious Diseases 2011; 52(2):200–210.

From here.

Bed bugs are insects from the Cimicidae family. All species are obligate hematophages (meaning that they can only ingest and live on blood) but only two species, Cimex lectularius and Cimex hemipterus, readily feed on humans (though others may rarely do so as well). They are about 5mm long, the size of an apple seed, and are easily visible to the untrained eye, resembling small cockroaches. But you are more likely to see them after they have feasted in blood, when they may increase in length by 50% and weigh twice as much as a unsated bug. According to a thorough review of the subject in the Journal of the American Medical Association, bedbugs “generally avoid light, hide during the day, and feed at night. Hiding places are usually within 1 to 2 meters of suitable hosts and include seams in mattresses, crevices in box springs, backsides of headboards, spaces under baseboards or loose wall-paper, and even behind hanging pictures. Adult bed bugs have an average life span of 6 to 12 months and can survive up to a year without feeding.” I am itching already…

Over my years in the ER I saw many rashes that were from bed bugs, mostly, but not exclusively, in the homeless. Only about 30% of people bitten have a reaction to the bug bite, but in those who do the rash can be very uncomfortable. There are usually several raised red lesions in a line. Scratching can lead to bleeding, and in some cases to a local infection.

“ Cimicid infestations result in multimillion dollar damage in the hospitality industry, poultry industry, and private and communal households. Costs arise from payment for pest control, damage to social reputation, replacement of infested infrastructure, and claims for monetary reparation. ”

— Reinhardt K. Siva-Jothy M. T. Biology of the Bed Bugs (Cimicidae). An. Rev. Entomol. 2007: 52:351–74

Areas and localities in Israel, in which there were treatments against bedbug infestations. Based on a survey of 143 “pest management professionals” in 2009. From Mumcuoglu K. Shalom U. Questionnaire survey of common bedbug (Cimex lectularius) infestations in Israel. Israel Journal of Entomology 2010:40; 1-10.

The Smell (and Taste) of a Bed bug

Today’s page of Talmud continues with these fun facts:

ת"ר פשפש זה ארכו כרחבו וטעמו כריחו ברית כרותה לו שכל המוללו מריח בו ארכו כרחבו לענין כתמים

This bedbug, its length is equal to its width, and its taste is like its foul smell. A covenant is made with it, i.e., it is a law of nature, that anyone who squeezes it will smell its foul odor.

Apparently, the foul odor which the Talmud describes resembles “rotting raspberries.” Most people cannot detect this smell - perhaps the Talmudic nose was more sensitive than our modern one, but today bed bugs are detected using a canine rather than a human nose. Dogs are widely employed by pest management companies, and from rigorous studies we know that dogs can detect even a single adult bed bug. Dogs can also discriminate live bed bugs from dead ones and in one controlled experiment in hotel rooms, “dogs were 98% accurate in locating live bed bugs.”  The dogs could also differentiate the live bed bugs from other general household pests, such as cockroaches, termites, and carpenter ants. And so thankfully, there is no-longer a need to smell or taste a bed bug in order to identify it. It’s too bad that canine detection was not available in Babylon a couple of thousand years ago.