Berachot 29b ~ “Why are Sunsets Red?” asked the Rabbi and the Scientist

Photo by the Talmudology. Sunset from Clearwater Florida, Jan 29, 2020.

ברכות כט, ב

דְּאָמַר רַבִּי חִיָּיא בַּר אַבָּא אָמַר רַבִּי יוֹחָנָן: מִצְוָה לְהִתְפַּלֵּל עִם דִּמְדּוּמֵי חַמָּה. וְאָמַר רַבִּי זֵירָא: מַאי קְרָאָה — ״יִירָאוּךָ עִם שָׁמֶשׁ וְלִפְנֵי יָרֵחַ דּוֹר דּוֹרִים״

Rabbi Chiyya bar Abba said that Rabbi Yochanan said: It is a mitzva to pray with the reddening of the sun. And Rabbi Zeira said: What is the verse that alludes to this? “Let them fear You with the sun and before the moon, generation after generation” (Psalms 72:5)…

According to Rabbi Chiyya, the best time to pray is at sunrise and sunset. But why is the sun red around the time that it rises and sets? Elsewhere, the Talmud has an answer for that.

בבא בתרא פד,א

בצפרא דחלפא אבי וורדי דגן עדן בפניא דחלפא אפתחא דגיהנם – ואיכא דאמרי איפכא

In the morning it becomes red as it passes over the site of the roses of the Garden of Eden, [whose reflections give the light a red hue]. In the evening the sun turns red because it passes over the entrance of Gehenna, whose fires redden the light. And there are those who say the opposite [in explaining why the sun is red in the morning and the evening, i.e., in the morning it passes over the entrance of Gehenna, while in the evening it passes over the site of the roses of the Garden of Eden.]

The sequence above shows the setting Sun dipping toward the western horizon. As the Sun sinks lower, its color becomes more reddened. From here.

Why sunrise & sunset are red - the science

Here is the scientific explanation. At sunrise and sunset the light from the sun is not directly overhead, but from its position on the horizon it must pass through more of the atmosphere to reach our eyes, as you can see here.

From here.

You may recall that ever since Newton and his prism we have known that white light is made up of many different wavelengths, or colors of light (Figure 1 below). As the sun’s white light passes through our atmosphere, the shorter wavelengths of light are scattered (Figure 2). And the longer the path through our atmosphere, the more the shorter wavelengths of light are scattered away from the original white sun beam. All of that scattered light (Figure 3) is from the shorter, blue end of the spectrum, which is what colors the sky blue. The remaining unscattered light is at the red end of the spectrum, and that’s why the sun appears red at sunrise and sunset, and why the clouds that reflect it are colored red.

From here.

The Poet and the Scientist

Science is not the only way of understanding the world. Artists, poets, philosophers and religions all add different kinds of knowledge about the very same physical world that science explains. Science explains that a red sunrise is a result of physics. Rabbi Chiyya explained that it is because the sun reflects the red roses of the Garden of Eden. Which explanation most satisfies your mind. And which most satisfies your heart?

“In philosophy [i.e.science] one must proceed from wonder to no wonder, that is, one should continue one’s investigation until that which we thought strange no longer seems strange to us; but in theology, one must proceed from no wonder to wonder, that is…[until] that which does not seem strange to us does seem strange, and that all is wonderful.”

— Isaac Beekman. Journal tenu par Isaac Beekman de 1604 a 1634. Ed C de Waard. The Hague: M Nijhoff, 1939-53. vol 2, p375.

Berachot 28b ~ How Many Vertebrae Do We Have?

In this page of Talmud the rabbis want to know why there were originally eighteen blessings recited in the silent prayer known as the Amidah. One rabbi suggested they correspond to the eighteen mentions of God in Psalm 29. Another thought they correspond to the number of times God’s name appeared in the Shema. But a third opinion was that they do not correspond to God’s name, but to something else entirely. A feature of human anatomy:

ברכות כח, ב

אָמַר רַבִּי תַּנְחוּם אָמַר רַבִּי יְהוֹשֻׁעַ בֶּן לֵוִי: כְּנֶגֶד שְׁמוֹנֶה עֶשְׂרֵה חוּלְיוֹת שֶׁבַּשִּׁדְרָה

…Rabbi Tanchum in the name of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said: They correspond to the eighteen vertebrae in the spine

Now this is all well and good, but didn’t Rabbi Tanchum know there are actually many more than eighteen vertebrae in the spine?

How many vertebraE are there in the spine?

As you can see in the colored image, there are seven cervical vertebrae, and they end at the shoulders. Below these are twelve thoracic vertebrae, that end at the hips. Then come five lumbar vertebrae, which end at the sacrum, which itself consists of five fused vertebrae. And right at the bottom of your bottom is the coccyx, also known as the tail bone, which consists of three or five fused vertebrae, depending on how you count. That’s a total of 24 individual vertebrae and at least eight more that are fused. One thing is for sure: it’s not eighteen.

So How do we get to Eighteen?

The Koren English Talmud is sensitive to this anatomical conundrum, and explains that it is the number of vertebrae “in the spine beneath the ribs.” But the twelve ribs are attached to the twelve thoracic vertebrae, which would leave either seven vertebrae (five lumbar plus a sarcrum and coccyx) or thirteen to fifteen vertebra in various degrees of fusion. But not eighteen.

Here is the explanation of the Schottenstein (ArtScroll) English Talmud:“In stating the number of vertebrae in the spine the Rabbis apparently referred only to those below the neck. This accounts for seventeen vertebrae. The identity of the eighteenth vertebra mentioned here is unclear.” But that’s not quite right either. There are nineteen (12 thoracic and 7 lumber) spine below the neck. Not eighteen. So that doesn’t work.

We get closer to a plausible explanation when we read the commentary of the ArtScroll Hebrew Talmud. Here it is, in free translation:

In the language of the Rabbis, the word “spine” (שדרה) does not include the entire vertebral column, because the vertebrae in the neck are counted separately in the Mishnah (Ohalot 1:8). The Rabbis count of eighteen vertebrae apparently includes the back [thorax], the hips [lumbar] and one additional vertebra, either in the neck or in the base of the spine…

In other words, perhaps the rabbis of the Talmud saw the division of the spine in a different way than we do today. Just because we count seven cervical vertebrae this does not mean that is the number that others before us counted. Just ask Leonardo DaVinci.

“We can see a clear progression in terms of the accuracy with which da Vinci’s anatomical drawings were developed and how his drawings were influenced by his mindset, not just as an anatomist but also as an engineer and scientist; and to some extent, by the prevailing scholastic views at that time. His anatomical depictions were clearly far ahead of their era and have served to improve our understanding of the true anatomy and function of the vertebral column and spinal cord.”

— Bowen G. Gonazales J. Iwnaga J et al. Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) and his depictions of the human spine. Childs Nerv Syst (2017) 33: 2067–2070.

The Spine in Leonardo’s Drawings

The way that the great anatomist Leonardo da Vinci (d. 1519) drew the spine evolved over time. In a 2017 paper on da Vinci’s depictions of the human spine, the authors note that in an early sketch “he may have used his knowledge of engineering to devise a concept that would functionally fit the movements of which the cervical spine is capable rather than trying to illustrate the exact anatomical detail.” They continue:

The vertebrae are portrayed in a rudimentary manner, many lacking a foramen to convey the neurovascular supply, an intervertebral disc, or the spinous process necessary for muscular insertion and rib articulation in the thoracic spine. It may be better to view this depiction as a conceptual illustration of how the structure accommodates its function. 

Just take a moment to count the number of vertebrae in the neck that Leonardo drew below.

That’s right. There are thirteen! That can’t be right! Because of these clear inaccuracies the authors wrote that this drawing was made prior to Leonardo’s any dissection of the anatomical region in question. (By the end of his life Leonardo claimed to have dissected thirty human bodies, as well as those of countless sheep and oxen.)

Now take a look at the drawing below, made later in Leonardo’s career, which is much more anatomically accurate. But as you can see, there is no obvious place to end the cervical vertebrae and start the thoracic. Or end the thoracic and start the lumbar. It’s just one one long beautiful anatomical structure.

Leonardo da Vinci. The vertebral column c.1510-1. Detail of the first accurate depiction of the spine in history, with its distinct sections and curvatures all correctly shown. From the Royal Collection Trust.

Leonardo suggested a division of sorts which are shown by the thin lines, one of which is labeled with the shape of a “d.” Take a look at the same Leonardo image, with the count of the number of vertebrae in between each division added.

As you can see they add up to 18 if you count the spines of the vertebrae. But there is one missing vertebrae, the very first one at the top of the neck. Take another look. See it? It is called the atlas, and its unique feature is that it has no spinous process, as you can see below:

The first vertebra, known as the atlas.

The atlas is the first of what we count as the seven cervical vertebrae. But it looks very different from the other six below it.

So if you don’t count the vertebrae without a spinous process - and it is very different from all the other (unfused) vertebrae - then you don’t need to look for the missing vertebra. It never got lost. We just started our numbering based on a different criteria. Why on earth would the rabbis have counted seven cervical vertebrae as we do, rather than six or even eight? (And yes, I know there is this Mishnah that states there are eighteen vertebrae, eight of which are in the neck: “וּשְׁמֹנֶה עֶשְׂרֵה חֻלְיוֹת בַּשִּׁדְרָה…שְׁמֹנָה בַצַּוָּאר.” But read it agin. It does not appear to be actually counting only bones.)

Leonardo’s anatomical drawings is a reminder that the human body has been seen and dissected in different ways, and Rabbi Tanchum’s count is as precise as our own. Different, but precise.

Berachot 27a ~ The Prosecution & Punishment of Animals

ברכות כז, א

רַבִּי יְהוּדָה בֶּן בָּבָא הֵעִיד חֲמִשָּׁה דְּבָרִים: …וְעַל תַּרְנְגוֹל שֶׁנִּסְקַל בִּירוּשָׁלַיִם עַל שֶׁהָרַג אֶת הַנֶּפֶשׁ

Rabbi Yehudah testified about five things… about a rooster that was stoned to death in Jerusalem for killing a person… 

This is a strange story, and Rashi adds some background. He explains that the rooster pecked at the soft part of the infant’s skull (what we call the anterior fontanelle) and that Rabbi Yehudah was teaching that the Torah law (Exodus 21:28) which requires the stoning of an ox that killed a person, applies to other animals as well. In another tractate, Bava Kammah we read about the ways in which an ox may be put on trial:

בבא קמא צ, א 
תנו רבנן שור תם שהמית והזיק דנין אותו דיני נפשות ואין דנין אותו דיני ממונות מועד שהמית והזיק דנין אותו דיני ממונות וחוזרין ודנין אותו דיני נפשות קדמו ודנוהו דיני נפשות אין חוזרין ודנין אותו דיני ממונות 

The rabbis taught: a tam ox that killed a person and inflicted damages, is tried first for the capital case and is not tried for the damages. A muad ox that killed a person and inflicted damages is tried first for the damages and is then tried for the capital case.

The notion that an animal should be tried for a crime is a completely foreign one to our modern sensibilities. Animals do not commit crimes; they act on instinct. When those instincts lead to a conflict with human society animals might be removed, or killed. But tried for a crime? Isn’t that an odd notion? Not so much, it turns out.

On the prosecution of animlas

In her review article The historical and contemporary prosecution of animals, Professor Jen Girgen noted that the formal prosecution of animals existed for centuries. Aristotle (d.322 BCE) mentioned animal trials in Athens, although there is no direct evidence of them having taken place in ancient Greece. The earliest known records of animal trials are from the mid-13th century. For example, in France in 1386, a pig was put on trial for the death of a child:

The defendant was brought before the local tribunal, and after a formal trial she was declared guilty of the crime. True to lex talionis, or "eye-for-an- eye" justice, the court sentenced the infanticidal malefactor first to be maimed in her head and upper limbs and then to be hanged. A professional hangman carried out the punishment in the public square near the city hall. The executioner, officially decreed to be a "master of high works," was issued a new pair of gloves for the occasion in order that he might come from the discharge of his duty, metaphorically at least, with clean hands, thus indicating that, as a minister of justice, he incurred no guilt in shedding blood.

In medieval times, animals were tried in two different court systems. The Church handled cases in which animals were a public nuisance (usually because they ate a farmer’s crops) while secular courts judged cases involving the physical injury or death of person.  Apparently these trials were taken seriously: “The community, at its own expense, provided the accused animals with defense counsel, and these lawyers raised complex legal arguments on behalf of the animal defendants. In criminal trials, animal defendants were sometimes detained in jail alongside human prisoners. Evidence was weighed and judgment decreed as though the defendant were human.”  Animals that faced these trials included swans, rodents, dolphins (dolphins!) grasshoppers, and, in 1713, a nest of termites, which was I suppose fair enough. The termites were munching their way through a monastery, devouring the friars' food, destroying their furniture, and even threatening to topple the walls of the monastery. 

“The ox is to be executed, not because it had committed a crime, but rather because the very act of killing a human being- voluntarily or involuntarily-had rendered it an object of public horror.
”

— JJ Finkelstein. The ox that gored. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 71, No. 2 (1981), pp. 1-89

The animals that faced prosecution would rarely appear in court on their trial day (because, I suppose, they had other things on their mind) so they usually lost the case by default.  Here’s a fairly typical example. In 1575 weevils were helping themselves to the vineyards in a picturesque hamlet in France, and were brought to trial:

The plaintiff and the two lawyers appointed as counsel for the beetle defendants presented their respective sides of the case…Pierre Rembaud, the beetles' newly appointed defense counsel, made a motion to dismiss the case. Rembaud argued that, according to the Book of Genesis, God had created animals before human beings and had blessed all the animals upon the earth, giving to them every green herb for food. Therefore, the weevils had a prior right to the vineyards, a right conferred upon them at the time of Creation… While the legal wrangling continued, the townspeople organized a public meeting in the town square to consider setting aside a section of land outside of the Saint Julien vineyards where the insects could obtain their needed sustenance without devouring and destroying the town's precious vineyards. They selected a site named "La Grand Feisse" and described the plot "with the exactness of a topographical survey."…However, the weevils' attorney declared that he could not accept, on behalf of his clients, the offer made by the plaintiffs. The land…was sterile and not suitable to support the needs of the weevils. The plaintiff’s attorney insisted that the land was, in fact, suitable and insisted upon adjudication in favor of the complainants. The judge decided to reserve his decision and appointed experts to examine the site and submit a written report upon the suitability of the proposed asylum.

How did this case end? We have no idea.  The last pages of the court records were (I kid you not) eaten by insects.  

The Source- our Hebrew Bible

The impetus for all this, according to historians, was our own Hebrew Bible, or more precisely, the passage from Exodus 21:28.

וְכִי-יִגַּח שׁוֹר אֶת-אִישׁ אוֹ אֶת-אִשָּׁה, וָמֵת סָקוֹל יִסָּקֵל הַשּׁוֹר, וְלֹא יֵאָכֵל אֶת-בְּשָׂרוֹ, וּבַעַל הַשּׁוֹר, נָקִי

"If a bull gores a man or woman to death, the bull is to be stoned to death, and its meat must not be eaten. But the owner of the bull will not be held responsible.

The Jewish scholar Bernard Jackson, (who seems to have spent his entire career studying the legal history of the goring ox,) noted this connection.  “The stoning of the goring ox”, he wrote, 

… may well have been the parent, rather than the child, of the idea of divine punishment of animals .... [O]nce the concept of divine punishment of animals became established, it could then be transferred back to the legal sphere as a primarily penal notion.

What sense can we make of these medieval trials – and what sense can be made of the earlier Talmudic law that also placed animals on trial for their actions? Girgen suggests a number of possible ways to explain these trials, which seem to have become increasingly popular in the middle ages. 

1. Rehabilitation of the offending animal. This is not a satisfying explanation, since “these proceedings usually ended with the execution of the animal.” That left little opportunity for rehabilitation.

2. Retribution, which is another word for revenge. Indeed, this is precisely the notion reflected in the biblical law of “an eye for an eye”- although of course that was not the way the rabbis of the Talmud interpreted the verse. Under Roman law, the Torah law of עין תחת עין was called lex talionis – the law of retaliation. This need to retaliate was, according to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, a key feature of early legal systems, which were “…grounded in vengeance.”

3. Revenue for the king. This would only explain cases in which the animal was impounded or confiscated from the owner and given over to the king or local lord. But this did not happen when the animal was executed – which apparently was a frequent outcome of these trials.

4. The elimination of a social danger. Now, this begins to sound familiar. In the US and other western countries, vicious dogs are, after all, put down, and when this happens we breathe a collective sigh of relief. So by sentencing a dangerous animal to death, the courts were making life safer for everyone else.

5. Deterrence – that is, “to dissuade would-be criminals - both animal and human-from engaging in similar offensive acts”. As the legal scholar Nicholas Humphrey noted, "if word got around about what happened to the last pig that ate a human child, might not other pigs have been persuaded to think twice?” That implies endowing animals with an agency that we would consider today to be quite fanciful. So perhaps the deterrent effect was not aimed at other animals, but rather at other humans – deterring them from committing these kinds of horrible crimes.

6. Establishing control in a disorderly world. Perhaps these trials were a search for order in a world of chaos. “Just as today,” wrote Professor Humphries “when things are unexplained, we expect the institutions of science to put the facts on trial ... the whole purpose of the legal actions was to establish cognitive control.". The good professor continues:

What the Greeks and mediaeval Europeans had in common was a deep fear of lawlessness: not so much fear of laws being contravened, as the much worse fear that the world they lived in might not be a lawful place at all. A statue fell on a man out of the blue; a pig killed a baby while its mother was at Mass; swarms of locusts appeared from nowhere and devastated the crops .... To an extent that we today cannot find easy to conceive, these people of the pre-scientific era lived every day at the edge of explanatory darkness.

By defining events as crimes rather than as natural occurrences, they could be placed within a legal context – and controlled. The late JJ Finkelstein of Yale University (d. 1974) wrote one of the most detailed studies of the ox that gored (called, rather unimaginatively, The Ox that Gored). On page 24 of his 86-page essay he addressed this aspect:

[T]he "crime" of the ox that gored a person to death is not just to be found in the fact that it had "committed homicide.". . .The real crime of the ox is that by killing a human being-whether out of viciousness or by an involuntary motion, it has objectively committed a de facto insurrection against the hierarchic order established by Creation.

Trials of animals in more recent Times

Animal trials continued well into the twentieth century. In 1906 in Switzerland a dog was sentenced to death for killing a man, while his masters – who had used the dog to help them rob the man - were sentenced to life in prison. In 1924, Pep, a Labrador retriever, was accused of killing Pennsylvania Governor Gifford Pinchot's cat. 

The dog was tried (without the assistance of counsel) in a proceeding led by the Governor himself. Governor Pinchot found Pep responsible for the cat's death and sentenced the dog to life imprisonment in the Philadelphia State Penitentiary. Pep died of old age, still incarcerated, six years later… And in 1927, a dog was reportedly tried and incarcerated by a Connecticut justice of the peace for "worrying the cat of a neighbor lady.”

In fact, “trials” of dangerous animals continue to this day. Depending on where you live, a judge may rule an animal to be dangerous if it has attacked others, and may order it destroyed.  This is what happened in New Jersey in 1991, when Taro, a 110 lb Japanese Akita dog was sentenced to death by a judge in Bergen County, after it had apparently attacked its owner’s niece. Taro’s owner appealed the verdict and the dog remained on death row for three years, until the order to execute the dog was upheld.  That’s when newly elected Governor Christin Todd Whitman issued an executive order and reprieved the dog, which by now had been imprisoned for more than one thousand days at a cost to the state of more than $100,000. Taro was exiled from New Jersey, and died in her sleep five years later. 

What do we talk about when we talk about punishment?

What is it that we want to see happen when we call for a criminal to be “punished”?  This simple question has been answered by legal scholars and judges who have written about theories of punishment, but we knew little about what the average citizen wants to see happen when a punishment is imposed. 

In a series of experiments published in 2002, psychologists from Princeton and Northwestern University studied the motivation underlying use of punishment in a group of students; that is to say, in people with no special legal training or background. What are the motives of ordinary people when they wish to punish a criminal? (Ok, they weren’t exactly “ordinary people, since they were Princeton University students, but still…)The two specific motives they contrasted were just deserts and deterrence. The “just desserts” theory is the belief that when punishing a criminal, our concerns should not be about future outcomes like rehabilitation, but rather about providing a punishment appropriate for the given crime. “Although it is certainly preferable that the punishment serve a secondary function of inhibiting future harmdoing, its justification lies in righting a wrong, not in achieving some future benefit. The central precept of just deserts theory is that the punishment be proportionate to the harm.”  So what motivates the theory of punishment in ordinary people? Does it come from a deservingness perspective, in which the focus is on atoning for the harm committed, or from a utilitarian, deterrence perspective, in which the focus is on preventing future harms against society? 

The psychologists found that in sentencing hypothetical criminal perpetrators, their student subjects responded to factors associated with the “just deserts theory” and ignored those associated with deterrence. This desire to see a criminal get his just desserts is also found when animals are put on trial.  More recent work by the psychologists Geoffrey Goodwin and Adam Benforado also addressed the way in which we view punishment as retribution.  They asked volunteers (found on-line using something called Amazon's Mechanical Turk interface) about a number of different scenarios in which animals had killed or injured people. In five different studies the results demonstrated "...clear evidence for the existence of retributive motives and for a broader conception of the viable targets of retribution."

Back to the goring ox

In the view of J.J. Finkelstein, the Yale scholar, “the system of categorization reflected in the biblical statement of the laws of the goring ox is essentially the same as our own… the cosmic apprehension of the biblical authors, the way in which the Bible perceives and classifies the world of experience, is in every fundamental respect identical with ours, that is, with that of the civilization we usually describe as "Western.” Once we understand that animal trials were not just an interesting quirk mentioned in today’s page of Talmud, but were – and still are - a common part of the judicial process, Finkelstein’s claim view is entirely plausible.  This, together with the insights from the field of psychology about what motivates people to punish others, leads us to a remarkable conclusion.  Moderns, like those before us, seek to punish, not to rehabilitate the criminal or deter others from committing a crime, but because the criminal “deserves to be punished”. It matters not one bit if that criminal is a human, a dog, or an insect. Or even a chicken. 

[A repost from here.]

Berachot 24a ~ Flatulence

Today’s page of Talmud continues with a scatological theme.

ברכות כב,ב

מֵיתִיבִי: הַמַּשְׁמִיעַ קוֹלוֹ בִּתְפִלָּתוֹ — הֲרֵי זֶה מִקְּטַנֵּי אֲמָנָה. הַמַּגְבִּיהַּ קוֹלוֹ בִּתְפִלָּתוֹ הֲרֵי זֶה מִנְּבִיאֵי הַשֶּׁקֶר מְגַהֵק וּמְפַהֵק — הֲרֵי זֶה מִגַּסֵּי הָרוּחַ. הַמִּתְעַטֵּשׁ בִּתְפִלָּתוֹ — סִימָן רַע לוֹ. וְיֵשׁ אוֹמְרִים: נִיכָּר שֶׁהוּא מְכוֹעָר. הָרָק בִּתְפִלָּתוֹ — כְּאִילּוּ רָק בִּפְנֵי הַמֶּלֶךְ

כָּאן מִלְּמַטָּה...

דְּאָמַר רַב זֵירָא: הָא מִילְּתָא אִבַּלְעָא לִי בֵּי רַב הַמְנוּנָא וּתְקִילָא לִי כִּי כּוּלֵּי תַּלְמוּדַאי: הַמִּתְעַטֵּשׁ בִּתְפִלָּתוֹ סִימָן יָפֶה לוֹ, כְּשֵׁם שֶׁעוֹשִׂים לוֹ נַחַת רוּחַ מִלְּמַטָּה, כָּךְ עוֹשִׂים לוֹ נַחַת רוּחַ מִלְּמַעְלָה

One who prays loudly during his Amida prayer is among those of little faith, (as he seems to believe that the Lord cannot hear his prayer when it is uttered silently). One who raises his voice during prayer is considered to be among the false prophets (as they too were wont to cry out and shout to their gods). One who belches and yawns while praying is surely among the uncouth. One who sneezes during his prayer, for him it is a bad omen. And some say: It is clear that he is repulsive. Also, one who spits during prayer, it is tantamount to spitting in the face of the king. 

…here it is referring to sneezing from below, ie. flatulence.

And so today Talmudology will review flatulence.

Research into Flatulence

Here is Mary Roach, describing the origin of the scientific study of flatulence from her jolly book Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal. (WW Norton & Company 2013, 239-240.)

“One of the earliest flatus studies on record was carried out by the Parisian physician Francois Magendie. In 1816, Magendie published a paper entitled “Note on the Intestinal Gas of a Healthy Man.” The title is misleading, for although the man in question suffered no illness, he was dead and missing his head. “In Paris” Magendie wrote in Annales de Chime et de Physique, “the condemned ordinarily, one hour or two before their execution, have a light meal.” With red wine. So French! “Digestion is thus fully active at the moment of their death.” From 1814 to 1815, the city fathers of Paris, seeming also to have lost their heads, agreed to release the bodies of four guillotined men to Magendie’s lab for a study on the chemical makeup of flatus. One to four hours after the blade had dropped, Magendie extracted gas from four points along the digestive tract and measured what he could.

Somewhat less cruelly, in 1991 two British researchers somehow convinced ten “normal volunteers” to allow them to insert a tube into their rectums in order to collect twenty-four hours’ worth of intestinal gas, (though perhaps participating in such a study indicates anything but being considered normal). The study confirmed “the variability of flatus production; the total volumes of gas expelled by the volunteers are similar to values reported by other workers, which on normal or unspecified diets range from 200 to 2460ml/24h.”

If you think that was a weird study, there is more. In 1996 two gastroenterologists published a study with what is surely one of the all-time best titles for a medical paper: Factors Influencing Frequency of Flatus Emission by Healthy Subjects. Its purpose was “to measure the frequency of flatus emission by 25 healthy subjects and to determine if factors commonly thought to influence flatulence actually correlate with the frequency of gas passage.” They found 13 healthy women and 12 healthy men who apparently had a dedicated interest in this subject and asked them to monitor their flatulence. “Subjects scrupulously recorded the time of each passage of flatus by making a check mark at the appropriate time on a 24-hr scale.” The average number of episodes was 10, but it increased to 19 when 10g/day of lactulose was added. And despite what you may have experienced, men and women were equally gassy.

“
Flatulence generally has been the province of lay conjecture and scatological humor rather than serious scientific investigation. As a result, there is a paucity of simple, basic information concerning what constitutes normal with regard to flatulence”

— Furne J.K and Levitt M.D. Factors Influencing Frequency of Flatus Emission by Healthy Subjects. Digestive Diseases and Sciences, 1996: 41 (8). 1631-1635

The Origin of Flatulence

Gas gets into our intestines either by being swallowed, diffusing from the bloodstream or as a result of bacterial metabolism. It is removed either through the mouth by (burping, or eructation as doctors like to call it) the anus (as flatus) or by our gut bacteria that metabolize it. “The net of these processes proximal to a given site in the gut” wrote two gastroenterologists in a paper titled An Understanding of Excessive Intestinal Gas “determines the volume and composition of gas passing that site; the net of these processes throughout the entire gut determines the volume and mean composition of the entire gastrointestinal gas volume.”

Most of the gasses produced in the bowel from the breakdown of food have no odor. These are nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide and methane. Nitrogen is the predominant gas when air swallowing is the major source, whereas hydrogen, carbon dioxide and methane are predominant when most of the gas is derived from bacterial metabolism.The unpleasant smell is from trace gases that contain sulfur, such as hydrogen sulfide, methanethiol (CH3SH) and dimethylsulfide. And most of the gas is actually eructed away “even though many patients deny knowledge of even a single belch a day.” Only a minority escapes as flatulence.

Correlation between age of subject and flatus frequency. From Furne J.K and Levitt M.D. Factors Influencing Frequency of Flatus Emission by Healthy Subjects. Digestive Diseases and Sciences, 1996: 41 (8). 1631-1635

Can you Pray inside a military tank?

Rav Yosef Zvi Rimon is the rabbi of Alon Shvut South in Israel and a lot else besides. He is the Rosh Yeshiva of the Jerusalem College of Technology, and has written several books on Jewish law, which are published through Sulamot, an educational non-profit organization that he spearheads. He also serves as a someone who rules in areas of Jewish law, known Hebrew as a posek. It was in this role that he was asked by a soldier serving in the tank corps of the Israel Defense Forces whether he could pray will inside his tank. It turns out that while cooped up inside a tank during a military operation, the crew must urinate (and more) inside a plastic bag, which is then set off to one side, until such time that the crew can safely leave. Given the smell, is it permissible for a soldier to pray in this setting?

Rav Rimon discussed this with an American colleague who suggested that since the soldier was engaged in the mitzvah of the preservation of life (פיקוח נפש), he was automatically exempt from the requirement to pray. Rav Rimon took an entirely different approach, one that reflects a sensitivity to the spiritual needs of a soldier on the front lines, and that was entirely missed by the American’s response:

מעולם לא פנה אלי חייל בבקשה שאפטור אותו מתפילה. להיפך, חיילים רוצים להתפלל, חיילים רוצים קשר נוסף ומיוחד עם הקב”ה. גם חיילים שאינם דתיים חיפשו דרכים להרבות בתפילה ובקיום מצוות במציאות זו

I have never told a soldier that he is exempt from the obligation to pray. On the contrary, soldiers want to pray, and desire an additional and unique connection to the Holy One, Blessed Be He. Even soldiers who are generally not religious look for opportunities to pray…

Yes, replied the rabbi, it was permitted to pray inside the tank so long as the excreta were covered properly. And if the smells in the tank were those that the soldiers eventually became accustomed to bearing, there would be no prohibition for them to pray - although an air freshener might be a preferable intervention.

“במקרה שלנו, כיוון שהחיילים התרגלו לריח, הרי שעבורם אין זה ריח רע, ויש מקום לדון האם היה ניתן להקל באופן זה אף ללא מטהר אוויר, וייתכן שבדוחק יש מקום להקל בכך, אם כי ייתכן שעדיף במקרה זה להתפלל בהרהור
:לסיכום
חיילים הנמצאים בטנק סגור, ובתוך הטנק יש צואה, ישימו את הצואה בתוך כלי סגור, וכך יוכלו להתפלל כאשר אין ריח רע. כיוון שהצואה נחשבת באופן זה כ”רשות אחרת” הרי שניתן לבטל את הריח על ידי מטהר אוויר (ובדוחק יש מקום אולי להקל, אם כל הנמצאים שם התרגלו לריח, ועבורם הוא לא משפיע).”

— רב יוסף צבי רימון. תפילה בטנק שיש בו טינופת וריח רע .סולמית

A Prayer after Flatulence

The great mathematician Paul Erdos who died in 1996 described mathematicians as “machines that turn coffee into theorems.” In a similar vein we could describe the sages of the Talmud as machines that turn everyday natural occurrences into moments of metaphysical meaning, and a perfect demonstration can be found in today’s page of Talmud. While most of us consider flatulence to be a target of boyish jokes or an occurrence best ignored, the rabbis took an entirely different tack. They used it as an opportunity to praise God, and left us with what is perhaps the only example in any religion of a prayer to be recited after passing wind.

אַשְׁכְּחֵיהּ לְתַנָּא דְּקָתָנֵי קַמֵּיהּ דְּרַב יְהוּדָה: הָיָה עוֹמֵד בִּתְפִלָּה וְנִתְעַטֵּשׁ — מַמְתִּין עַד שֶׁיִּכְלֶה הָרוּחַ וְחוֹזֵר וּמִתְפַּלֵּל. אִיכָּא דְאָמְרִי: הָיָה עוֹמֵד בִּתְפִלָּה וּבִיקֵּשׁ לְהִתְעַטֵּשׁ — מַרְחִיק לְאַחֲרָיו אַרְבַּע אַמּוֹת, וּמִתְעַטֵּשׁ, וּמַמְתִּין עַד שֶׁיִּכְלֶה הָרוּחַ, וְחוֹזֵר וּמִתְפַּלֵּל, וְאוֹמֵר:

״רִבּוֹנוֹ שֶׁל עוֹלָם, יְצַרְתָּנוּ נְקָבִים נְקָבִים חֲלוּלִים חֲלוּלִים, גָּלוּי וְיָדוּעַ לְפָנֶיךָ חֶרְפָּתֵנוּ וּכְלִימָּתֵנוּ בְּחַיֵּינוּ וּבְאַחֲרִיתֵנוּ רִמָּה וְתוֹלֵעָה״

אֲמַר לֵיהּ: אִילּוּ לֹא בָּאתִי אֶלָּא לִשְׁמוֹעַ דָּבָר זֶה — דַּיִּי

One who was standing in prayer and passed wind waits until the odor dissipates and resumes praying. Some say: One who was standing in prayer when he felt the need to pass wind, steps back four cubits, passes wind, waits until the odor dissipates and resumes praying. And before resuming his prayer, he says:

“Master of the universe, You have formed us with many orifices and cavities; our disgrace and shame in life are clear and evident before You, as is our destiny with maggots and worms, and so we should not be judged harshly.”

…Rabbi Abba said to him: Had I only come to the assembly of the Sages to hear this teaching, it would have been sufficient for me.