Sukkah 53 ~ Juggling Records

In a discussion of the joyous celebration that would take place in the Temple on the festival of Sukkot, we read this charming passage:

סוכה נג, א

תַּנְיָא: אָמְרוּ עָלָיו עַל רַבָּן שִׁמְעוֹן בֶּן גַּמְלִיאֵל, כְּשֶׁהָיָה שָׂמֵחַ שִׂמְחַת בֵּית הַשּׁוֹאֵבָה, הָיָה נוֹטֵל שְׁמֹנֶה אֲבוּקוֹת שֶׁל אוֹר, וְזוֹרֵק אַחַת וְנוֹטֵל אַחַת וְאֵין נוֹגְעוֹת זוֹ בָּזוֹ

They said about Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel that when he would rejoice at the Celebration of the Place of the Drawing of the Water, he would take eight flaming torches and toss one and catch another, juggling them, and, though all were in the air at the same time, they would not touch each other.

This might sound like a just another neat trick, but as a very amateur juggler, I can assure you that it is much more that that. It is almost impossibly difficult. Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel must have spent hours and hours perfecting this juggling ability, but difficult as it most certainly is, it is entirely achievable.

world records for juggling clubs

To get a sense of how difficult this sort of thing is, let’s start with juggling “only” seven clubs. Here is American juggler Anthony Gatto juggling them for a world record four minutes (and 24 seconds). No need to watch the whole thing, though it is very magical.

Now here is Gatto juggling with eight clubs and setting a then world record in 2006. Watch the twelve second clip, and then imagine doing that with clubs that were on fire.

Finally, here is the current world record for juggling clubs. It was set by the Norwegian Eivind Dragsjø in 2016. He managed to juggle nine clubs for eleven catches.

Now, with knives

Today’s page of Talmud tells us of another rabbinic juggler by the name of Levi, actually out-juggled Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel:

לֵוִי הֲוָה מְטַיֵּיל קַמֵּיהּ דְּרַבִּי בְּתַמְנֵי סַכִּינֵי

Levi would walk before Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi juggling with eight knives.

Juggling knives is much harder than juggling balls or clubs, because, well, they are knives and have a sharp end. The current world record for juggling knives appears to be six. No-one today has yet juggled eight knives, or even seven for that matter. Oh, and by the way, if you are thinking of attempting to set this record, here is the small print:

WARNING: This record can be extremely dangerous. Please do not attempt this record unless you are above the age of 18 and trained as a professional juggler. We will not accept submissions in this category from minors.

A More Gentle Approach

Elsewhere in the Talmud we read of another sage who juggled, though he was criticized for his skill:

כתובות יז, א

אמרו עליו על רבי יהודה בר אילעאי שהיה נוטל בד של הדס ומרקד לפני הכלה ואומר כלה נאה וחסודה רב שמואל בר רב יצחק מרקד אתלת א"ר זירא קא מכסיף לן סבא כי נח נפשיה איפסיק עמודא דנורא בין דידיה לכולי עלמא וגמירי דלא אפסיק עמודא דנורא אלא אי לחד בדרא אי לתרי בדרא

The Sages said about Rabbi Yehuda bar Elai that he would take a myrtle branch and dance before the bride, and say: A fair and attractive bride. Rav Shmuel bar Rav Yitzchak would base his dance on three myrtle branches that he would juggle. Rabbi Zeira said: The old man is humiliating us, as through his conduct he is demeaning the Torah and the Torah scholars…

רש׳י שם

אתלת - שלש בדין זורק אחת ומקבל אחת

Three - he would take three branches, and toss them in the air and catch them

Another Sage WHo Juggled

So although Rabbi Yehudah juggled with myrtle branches, which are far safer than knives, he was criticized for conduct unbecoming a Talmudic sage. But that seems a bit harsh. In any event, we may no longer have juggling sages, but we do have juggling mathematicians, who are sages of a different order. The foremost of these was the late Ronald Graham (1935-2020) who was a quite brilliant mathematician; in 2003, he was awarded the American Mathematical Society's annual Leroy P. Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement. Graham wrote six books and some 400 mathematical papers, many with the famous Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdos. But Graham was also a juggler; he began when he was 15, and was able to juggle six balls. In 1973 he was elected President of the International Jugglers’ Association. It should come as no surprise that he also wrote an important paper on the mathematics behind juggling drops and descents.

The acclaimed mathematician Ronald Graham juggling a four-ball fountain (1986).

Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel, Levi, and Rabbi Yehudah demonstrate that the rabbis of the Talmud had hobbies, that they worked to perfect them, at they became rather good at them. Ronald Graham was not a trailblazer; instead, and unbeknown to him, he was following an esteemed Talmudic tradition.

Sukkah 48b ~ The Uses of Human Skin

BUT FIRST, A WARNING

Over the past six years of Talmudology, we have had occasion to discuss many weird things. There was Herod’s proclivity for necrophilia (Bava Basra 3a); there was prosecuting animals for their criminal acts (Berachot 27a); and there was a unicorn that survived Noah’s Flood and ended up on a prehistoric cave painting (Zevachim 113b). But today’s topic gets an extreme R rating. For REALLY weird. So, as they say at the auction, this is “fair warning.” Read on at your own discretion.

It’s never a good thing to be a heretic and get into an argument with a sage of the Talmud. On today’s page of Talmud, Rabbi Abbahu, who lived in Caesarea around the year 300 C.E., took on a “heretic” by the name of Sasson, whose name, literally, means “joy.”

סוכה מח, ב

אֲמַר לֵיהּ הָהוּא מִינָא דִּשְׁמֵיהּ שָׂשׂוֹן לְרַבִּי אֲבָהוּ עֲתִידִיתוּ דִּתְמַלּוֹ לִי מַיִם לְעָלְמָא דְּאָתֵי דִּכְתִיב וּשְׁאַבְתֶּם מַיִם בְּשָׂשׂוֹן אֲמַר לֵיהּ אִי הֲוָה כְּתִיב לְשָׂשׂוֹן כִּדְקָאָמְרַתְּ הַשְׁתָּא דִּכְתִיב בִּשְׂשׂוֹן מַשְׁכֵּיהּ דְּהָהוּא גַּבְרָא מְשַׁוֵּינַן לֵיהּ גּוֹדָא וּמָלֵינַן בֵּיהּ מַיָּא

A certain heretic named Sasson [lit. joy] said to Rabbi Abbahu: You are all destined to draw water for me in the World-to-Come, as it is written: “With sasson you shall draw water.” Rabbi Abbahu said to him: If it had been written: “For sasson”, it would have been as you say. But now that it is written: “With sasson,” it means that your very skin will be rendered a wineskin, and we will draw water with it.

In his commentary on the aggadic sections of the Talmud, the Polish rabbi Shmuel Eliezer Edels, known as the Maharsha (1555 – 1631), thought it important to essentially repeat Rabbi Abbahu’s threat:

אבל משכא דידך יקחו במותך ומשוינן ליה לעתיד נוד ומלינן ליה מיא

After your death your skin will be used to make a canteen, and it will be used to draw water

Another use for human skin - as a saddle

This is not the only place in the Talmud in which human skin becomes a utensil. Here is the Talmud in tractate Niddah:

נדה נה, א

הא איתמר עלה אמר עולא דבר תורה עור אדם טהור ומאי טעמא אמרו טמא גזרה שמא יעשה אדם עורות אביו ואמו שטיחין לחמור

It was stated that Ulla said: By Torah law, the skin of a dead person is ritually pure. And what is the reason the Sages said that it is impure? It is a rabbinic decree lest a person should fashion rugs for a donkey out of the skins of his deceased father and mother.

Please read that last paragraph again to be sure you have grasped it. The sages of the Talmud declared that human skin is ritually impure to prevent people from turning the skins of their deceased parents into donkey saddles.

can this possiblY be true?

The French scholar Yom Tov ben Avraham Assevilli (c. 1260 – 1320), commonly known by the Hebrew acronym as the Ritva, questions why this ruling about ritual impurity was necessary in the first place. “Even the most wicked Gentile,” he wrote, “would not behave in this way. And certainly not a Jew!”

ריטב"א שם

שמא יעשה עורות אביו ואמו שטיחין …ומיהו עדין קשה והלא רשע שבגוים אינו עושה כן וכ״ש ישראל לכך הנכון כמו שפי׳ מורי הרב הר״א הלוי בשם רבו הרמב״ן ז״ל דשטיחין היינו שעשה מהן דבר חשוב ומעובד יפה לשטחן על גבי הכותל להתאבל עליהם ימים רבים או שיזכור מעשיהם הטובים והיינו דנקט לשון שטיחין ולשון אביו ואמו

Ritva’s explanation does not settle his question. “It means that people would make something of value to put on the wall in order to mourn over them for a long period of time, or as a reminder of their [parents’] good deeds.” So not skin. Except that is not what the Talmud says. It says people would take the skins of their deceased parents and turn them into donkey saddles.

The great leader of the Jewish communities of Poland Rabbi Moses Sofer (d. 1839) known as Chatam Sofer makes it clear to his own satisfaction that we are indeed talking about human skin. “We must conclude that we are discussing a case in which removing the skins is done to honor one’s parent, by preserving it and keeping it as a kind of memorial, on which to focus the mourning.” So yes. Skin.

נדה נה, א : חידושי חתם סופר

.. וצ"ל דמיירי באופן שהפשטת עור הוא לכבוד אביו [כגון] לחנוט אותו ולשמור העור לזכרון להרבות האבל וכ"כ הרמב"ן ור"ן בחידושיו כאן ע"ש

Now it may be argued that this form of mourning was extremely uncommon, but there are two pieces of evidence that make this unlikely. First, the Talmud is clear that the rabbis did not enact legislation for uncommon events. Thus we read for example in the next tractate, Beitzah (18a) that the rabbis did not make a certain vessel impure on Yom Tov, because it was an unusual occurrence.

טוּמְאָה בְּיוֹם טוֹב מִלְּתָא דְּלָא שְׁכִיחָא הִיא וּמִלְּתָא דְלָא שְׁכִיחָא לָא גְּזַרוּ בַּהּ רַבָּנַן

Secondly, the Mishnah (Yadayim 4:6) describes another rabbinic enactment that was made to prevent people fro using the body parts of their deceased parents. This time, it was turning bones into spoons. The rabbis decreed that human bones were ritually unclean, “so that nobody should make spoons out of the bones of his father or mother” (לְפִי חִבָּתָן הִיא טֻמְאָתָן, שֶׁלֹּא יַעֲשֶׂה אָדָם עַצְמוֹת אָבִיו וְאִמּוֹ תַּרְוָדוֹת).

Human skin as medicine

Rabbi Judah Rosanes (1657-1727) lived in Constantinople and wrote a lengthy work on Maimonides׳ Mishneh Torah called Mishneh Lemelekh which he published there in 1731. In a very lengthy section he discussed the use of the flesh of mummies as a medicine and whether a Cohen may use the skin for healing.

משנה למלך הל׳ אבל 3:1

נשאלתי על המומיי"א שמוכרין הכהנים אי שפיר למיעבד או לא. (א"ה עיין בספר גנת ורדים חי"ד כלל א' סימן ד'). והנה לפי מה ששמעתי מומי"א הלזו אין בה בשר כלל אלא עצמות ועור החופה אותם והם יבשים מאד ולא נשאר בהם לחלוחית של בשר כלל ושאלתי אם היו עצמות אלו נפרכים מאליהם או לא ואמרו לי שאינם נפרכים ובקושי הם משתברים ולפי זה נראה דאין כאן מקום לספק כלל דפשיטא דמטמא במגע ובמשא דהא קי"ל דעצם כשעורה מטמא במגע ובמשא וטומאתו מדין תורה וכמ"ש רבינו בפ"ב מהל' טומאת מת ומצד היותו יבש אין לטהרו שהרי כתב בפ"ג בשר המת שנפרך ונעשה כקמח טהור משמע מפשט דבריו דכל שלא נעשה כקמח אף במונח שאילו יפרך יעשה כקמח מטמא ואף לפי מ"ש מרן שם שכוונת רבינו היא לומר שיבש כל כך עד שאילו יפרך יעשה קמח ואף שעדיין לא נפרך טהור מ"מ אף לפי דברי מרן בעינן שאילו יפרך יעשה קמח אבל כל שאינו נעשה קמח עדיין בטומאתו עומד ולפי מה שכתבנו מומי"א זו שאנו דנין עליה מלבד שאינה נעשית קמח לא איפרוכי מיפרך ואדרבה בקושי היא משתברת באופן דאליבא דכ"ע מטמאה היא במגע ובמשא. ואף שיש להסתפק ולומר דמומי"א זו מעכו"ם נינהו ומלבד דכיון דרובא דעלמא עכו"ם נינהו איכא למימר דניזל בתר רובא זאת ועוד כי הגד הוגד לי שבמקומות אלו שנעשית המומי"א מעולם לא עבר שם רגל ישראל ולפי זה היה נראה להקל דהא קי"ל דעכו"ם אינם מטמאים,

…

הכלל העולה דלדידן פשיטא לן מלתא דאסור ליגע במומי"א הלזו וכל כהן המחמיר עליו תבא ברכת טוב

According to what I have heard these mummies have no flesh but are made of bones and the skin that covers them…certainly there is no doubt that they impart ritual impurity…even though there is a question because the majority of mummies were Gentiles [whose remains do not impart the same degree of ritual impurity]…and I have been told that in places where mummies originated there had never been any Jews at all…but the legal conclusion is that it is forbidden to touch these mummies, and any Cohen who is strict on himself will be blessed for good.

So bad luck if you are a Cohen in need of mummified medicine. But what about a non-Cohen? May she use mummified flesh? Rabbi David ben Solomon ibn Zimra (1479–1589?) known as the Radvaz considered the question and concluded that yes, it was permitted for a Jew to use the desiccated skin of a mummy as medicine. Here is a sample:

III :978 תשובות הרדב׳ז

שאלת ממני אודיעך דעתי על מה סמכו העולם להתרפאות בבשר המת הנקרא מומ"יא ושלא במקום סכנה ובדרך הנאתו ולא עוד אלא שמסתחרין בו ונושאין ונותנין בו והוא מאיסורי הנאה דקייל"ן דבשר המת אסור בהנאה דכתיב ותמת שם מרים

You have asked me, and I will inform you of my opinion: Upon what does everyone rely to ingest the flesh of a corpse, called “mummy,” as a remedy, when there is no danger, and in the normal way of ingestion? Moreover, they trade it, engaging in its commerce, yet it is forbidden to derive benefit from it, for we maintain that it is forbidden to benefit from the flesh of a corpse, as Scripture states: “There died Miriam….”

הא למדת דמותר להתרפאות במומיא אפילו בדרך אכילה אפילו בחולי שאין בו סכנה ומותר לישא וליתן בו לעשות בו סחורה ומותר ליהנות בקברי העכו"ם ובתכריכיו ומיהו מטמאין במגע ובמשא ובטומאת אהל איכא פלוגתא והרמב"ם ז"ל ס"ל דאין מטמאין באהל

We have thus learned that one may use mummy as a remedy, even by eating it normally, even for a malady that is not dangerous. It is permitted to trade it and do business with it, and it is permitted to derive benefit from the graves and shrouds of gentiles…or it is permissible to derive benefit from mummy, since these are the corpses of idolaters from the times of the Egyptians.

Human skin as Book Covers

While the Talmud describes using human skin for water flasks and donkey saddles, there is another use to which these skins have been put. According to the author Megan Rosenbloom in her new book Dark Archives, there are about fifty books in public and private hands to date which are alleged to be covered in human skin. Rosenbloom (whose book is absolutely riveting) is also involved with The Anthropodermic Book Project which is “creating a census for the alleged anthropodermic books of the world and testing as many as possible to learn the historical truths behind the innuendo.”

“A book on the human soul merits that it be given human clothing”

— Ludovic Bouland, owner of a copy of Des Destiness de l'ame, on a handwritten note at the front of the book, held at the Houghton Library of Harvard University

Using the modern technique of peptide mass fingerprinting, about half of the books so far tested turn out to be made of real human skin. The largest collection of what are known as anthropodermic books is in the Historical Medical Society of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. They own at least five books that have been confirmed to be covered in human skin. There are others in the collections of the Boston Athenaeum, Brown University (four!), the Grolier Club and the Cincinnati Public Library. Most of the books were commissioned by physicians, who may also have helped find the material used. Here is one of the books whose cover from human skin has been confirmed. It is Hans Holbein’s Dance of Death (1898), from Brown University’s John Hay Library.

And it was not only the Victorians who were binding books in human skin. According to Rosenbloom (p108) an invoice “proves human skin bookbinding was taking place as late as 1934.”

The Lampshade made from Human Skin

In 2005 a lampshade purported to have been made out of human skin was sold at a yard sale in New Orleans. The lampshade was later sent to Mark Jacobson, then a contributing editor at New York magazine, who spent the next several years (and many thousands of dollars) trying to determine the origin of the lampshade and whether it was truly made of human skin. It was rumored to have come from the Buchenwald Concentration Camp and when a DNA test confirmed it was made of human skin, Jacobson tried to donate it to the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. His offer was firmly rejected. Diane Saltzman, the former head of collections at the Museum, believed the story to be a myth. “This is a museum dealing with the Holocaust” she told him. “This object cannot be proved to legitimately be part of the Holocaust, so we cannot treat it as such. Sixty-odd years of research and it has never been proved that a thing like this was Nazi policy or practice.”

In his book The Lampshade, Jacobson wrote that at one time the working plan was to bury it in a Jewish cemetery in New Orleans in a service led by orthodox Rabbi Uri Topolosky “the energetic thirtysomething installed as the spiritual leader of the Beth Israel Temple in 2007.” But it never happened and since the publication of Jacobson’s book, a lab retested the shade and found it to have been made of cowhide. The sample that had been tested by the first lab had been contaminated with human DNA.

HUMAN SKIN TRANSPLANTS

We have come a long way since Rabbi Abbahu’s threat to the heretic Sasson. We can now use the skin of the recently dead not to make water bottles but to save the lives and appearance of the still living. In 1881 the first cadaver skin transplant was performed when skin from a suicide victim was used to treat a burn victim. But it is only in the last few decades that we have had fully functional skin banks that store and distribute the skin taken from deceased donors. The majority of transplants are used in wound management when they provide a temporary biologic cover for patients with extensive burns. They work as biologic dressings, reducing pain and adherence to the wound bed. This temporarily closes the wound and decreases water, electrolyte, and protein loss which is incredibly important since without an intact skin covering, burn patients quickly dehydrate. The temporary skin graft also prevents wound breakdown and provides a dermal matrix, which improves the outcomes of the final graft which is usually taken from another part of the patient’s own unburned skin.

Jewish Norms, Then and now

There are many, many pages of the Talmud to which modern practicing Jews can relate. Who cannot be proud of the discussions about the return of lost property, the rights of person to privacy, and the special place that Shabbat has in our hectic modern world. Then there are talmudic positions that we rightly reject today, like the ownership of others as chattel, the suggestion that the earth is the center of the universe, or the inability of women to be legal witnesses. But there is a third group of talmudic declarations which are not only pre-modern, but which are utterly foreign to us to the degree that we simply cannot imagine a Jewish world in which these descriptions reflected reality. Like using the skin of a deceased parent to make a donkey saddle in their honor. It makes us uncomfortable. But as the facts of anthropodermic books demonstrate, even in recent times people have been doing very ‘odd’ things with human skin. In addition, other cultures, like the Maori people of New Zealand, venerated their ancestors in ways not dissimilar to that described in tractate Niddah. “The tattooed heads of the deceased were dried and smoked in order to preserve them from decay,” wrote Christian Palmer and Mervyn Tano from the International Institute for Indigenous Resource Management in Denver, Colorado.

This honor was usually reserved for persons of importance and their loved ones, including women and children. The heads remained with the families of the deceased, who kept them in ornately carved boxes. They were protected by strict taboos and brought out only during sacred ceremonies…The children and widows of the deceased used the head to remind them of the deceased, but also to signify that to some extent the presence of the departed chief was still a part of tribal and family affairs. This kind of close kinship and identification with ancestors is an important part of Polynesian society.

Today, the ways in which Jews honor their dead reflect modern, predominantly western sentiments. They should not be confused with the way it was always done.

Sukkah 29a ~ The Causes of a Solar Eclipse - and a Special Talmudology Event

On today’s page of Talmud we read that rain on Sukkkot is a bad omen. Continuing along with this theme, the Talmud describes another bad omen: a solar eclipse:

סוכה כט, א

תָּנוּ רַבָּנַן: סִימָן רַע לְכל הָעוֹלָם כּוּלּוֹ. מָשָׁל לְמָה הַדָּבָר דּוֹמֶה? לְמֶלֶךְ בָּשָׂר וְדָם שֶׁעָשָׂה סְעוּדָה לַעֲבָדָיו וְהִנִּיחַ פָּנָס לִפְנֵיהֶם, כָּעַס עֲלֵיהֶם וְאָמַר לְעַבְדּוֹ: טוֹל פָּנָס מִפְּנֵיהֶם וְהוֹשִׁיבֵם בַּחוֹשֶׁךְ

The Sages taught: When the sun is eclipsed it is a bad omen for the entire world. The Gemara tells a parable. To what is this matter comparable? It is comparable to a king of flesh and blood who prepared a feast for his servants and placed a lantern [panas] before them to illuminate the hall. He became angry at them and said to his servant: Take the lantern from before them and seat them in darkness.

תַּנְיָא רַבִּי מֵאִיר אוֹמֵר: כל זְמַן שֶׁמְּאוֹרוֹת לוֹקִין — סִימָן רַע לְשׂוֹנְאֵיהֶם שֶׁל יִשְׂרָאֵל, מִפְּנֵי שֶׁמְּלוּמָּדִין בְּמַכּוֹתֵיהֶן. מָשָׁל לְסוֹפֵר שֶׁבָּא לְבֵית הַסֵּפֶר וּרְצוּעָה בְּיָדוֹ, מִי דּוֹאֵג — מִי שֶׁרָגִיל לִלְקוֹת בְּכל יוֹם וָיוֹם הוּא דּוֹאֵג

It is taught in a baraita that Rabbi Meir says: When the heavenly lights, i.e., the sun and the moon, are eclipsed, it is a bad omen for the enemies of the Jewish people, which is a euphemism for the Jewish people, because they are experienced in their beatings. Based on past experience, they assume that any calamity that afflicts the world is directed at them. The Gemara suggests a parable: This is similar to a teacher who comes to the school with a strap in his hand. Who worries? The child who is accustomed to be beaten each and every day is the one who worries.

The Last total Solar Eclipse over America

On Monday August 21st 2017, almost exactly three years ago, my family and I witnessed a total solar eclipse over Charleston South Carolina. It was an unforgettable event. There is another total solar eclipse coming up in a couple of years, and you won’t want to miss it. We will have more to say about that below. But first let’s focus on the science and the superstition of a solar eclipse.

What causes a solar ecplipse according to The talmud?

The classic Talmudic source on the origins of a solar eclipse is found on today’s page of Talmud, in Succah 29a:

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

Our Rabbis taught: A solar eclipse occurs on account of four things: Because the Av Beis Din died and was not properly eulogized, because a betrothed woman was raped in a city and none came to rescue her, because of homosexuality, and because of two brothers who were murdered together.

It is challenging to find a common thread to these four events that would satisfactorily relate them to a solar eclipse, and Rashi despaired of doing so: לא שמעתי טעם בדבר—“I do not know of an explanation for this” he write. Neither do we.

What actually causes a solar eclipse?

As we now understand the phenomenon, a solar eclipse occurs when the moon gets in-between the sun and the earth. When it does, it blocks some of the sunlight and casts a shadow on the earth. A person standing in that shadow (called the umbra) will see an eclipse. The time at which the moon is directly between the sun and the earth is also the start of every Jewish month (or close to it, as we will see below). And so it is clear that a solar eclipse can only occur on (or very close to) Rosh Chodesh, the start of the new Jewish month. However, we certainly do not witness a solar eclipse on every Rosh Chodesh. The reason is that the moon’s orbit is inclined at 5 degrees from the sun-earth plane, so that each month the moon may be slightly above, or slightly below that plane. An eclipse will occur only when the three bodies line up on the same plane, which only occurs infrequently.

If we know that a solar eclipse is a regular celestial event whose timing is predictable and precise, how are we to understand this page of Talmud which suggests that it is a divine response to bad Jewish conduct? We have already noted that Rashi was unable to explain the passage, but this did not prevent others from trying to do so.

1. The Maharal’s unhelpful suggestion

The Maharal of Prague (d. 1609) has a lengthy explanation in his work Be’er Hagolah which, for the sake of clarity, we shall summarize. The Maharal acknowledged that an eclipse is a mechanical and predictable event but he further suggested that if there was no sin, there would indeed never be a solar eclipse. G-d would have designed the universe differently, and in this hypothetical sin-free universe our solar system would have been created without the possibility for a solar eclipse. The conclusion from the Maharal’s writings is that in a sin- free universe, the moon would not orbit as it does now, at a 5-degree angle to the sun-earth plane. But we now need to ask where, precisely, in a sin- free universe, would the moon be? It couldn’t be in the same plane as the sun and the earth, since then there would be a solar eclipse every month. If the moon were, say, 20° above the earth-sun plane, there would still be solar eclipses, though they would be rarer than they are today. The only way for there to be no solar eclipses in the Maharal’s imaginary sin-free universe would be for the moon to orbit the earth at 90° to the sun-earth axis. Then it would never come between the sun and the earth, and there could never be a solar eclipse. But this would lead to another problem. In such an orbit, the moon would always be visible, and so there could never be a Rosh Chodesh. The Maharal’s thought experiment seems to provide more complications than it does solutions.

2. Rabbi Yonason Eibeschutz (d.1764) and his sunspots

Another attempt to explain the Talmud was offered by R. Yonason Eibeschutz (d. 1764). In 1751, Rabbi Eibeschutz was elected as Chief Rabbi of the Three Communities (Altona, Hamburg and Wandsbek), although he was later accused of being a secret follower of the false messiah Shabtai Tzvi. In January of that year Rabbi Eibeschutz gave a sermon in Hamburg in which he addressed the very same problem that Maharal had noted: If a solar eclipse is a predictable event, how can it be in response to human conduct? His answer was quite different.

He suggested that the Talmud in Succah is not actually addressing the phenomenon that we call a solar eclipse. According to R. Eibeschutz, the phrase in Succah "בזמן שהחמה לוקה" (“when there is a solar eclipse”) actually means “when there are sunspots.” Inventive though this is, there are two problems with this suggestion. In the first place, sunspots were almost impossible to see before the invention of the telescope. The first published description of sunspots in Western literature was in 1611 by the largely overlooked Johanness Fabricius and later by a contemporary of Galileo named Christopher Scheiner (though Galileo quickly claimed that he, not Scheiner, was the first to correctly interpret what they were). Because sunspots are so difficult to see with the naked eye, it seems very unlikely (though not impossible) that this is what the rabbis in the Talmud were describing. Second, according to Eibeschutz, sunspots “have no known cause, and have no fixed period to their appearance.” However, and even by the science of his day, this claim is not correct. In fact, both Scheiner and Galileo knew—and wrote—that sunspots were permanent (at least for a while) and moved slowly across the face of the sun in a predictable way. The suggestion that these spots are a response to human activity is therefore difficult to sustain. Furthermore, while a total solar eclipse is strikingly visible to those who are in its shadow, sunspots are, as we have noted, incredibly difficult to see with the naked eye. It would therefore make little sense to declare that these invisible sunspots serve as a warning (סימן רע)to humanity. Finally, the Talmud describes the phenomenon of an eclipse (ליקוי) as being visible in only some places on the earth. While this is a perfect description of a solar eclipse, sunspot activity would be visible from any place on earth, a situation that is clearly not the one described in the Talmud.

3. Rabbi David Pardo (1718–1790)

A different suggestion was offered by R. David Pardo (1718–1790) in his work Chasdei David, published in 1796. R. Pardo acknowledged that most solar eclipses are indeed predictable events, but suggested that there are other kinds of eclipses that cannot in fact be predicted, and it is these kinds of eclipses to which the Talmud is referring. Unfortunately, this suggestion has no factual basis. There are no such phenomena as an unpredictable lunar or solar eclipse, and R. Pardo’s suggestion is untenable.

4. The explanation of the Lubavitcher Rebbe- it’s all about the weather

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, also addressed the Talmudic passage, and in a 1957 responsum he wrote that while a solar eclipse was predictable, the local weather was most certainly not. It could not be predicted whether or not a solar or lunar eclipse would be visible through the clouds, and since it was this aspect that was under Divine control, it presumably could change in response to the local actions of people.

Elegant as this might be, this suggestion, too, has considerable problems. In the first place, the weather is indeed predictable, although of course the ability to predict the weather is relatively limited. But more problematic is the fact that a total solar eclipse will be completely visible whether or not there are clouds. A cloudy day will prevent a viewer on the ground from witnessing the moment of conjunction as the moon covers the disc of the sun (which, I can tell you, is pretty cool), and also prevent him from seeing the stars. However, the other effect of a total solar eclipse— darkness as though it were night—will be just as visible.

On the Molad and Astronomical Conjunction

The last solar eclipse brought to our attention another issue. It occurred on August 21, 2017, when the moon is directly between the sun and the earth (or, more technically, when the sun and the moon have the same elliptical longitude). This started at sunrise over the Pacific Ocean northeast of Hawaii, at 4:48 p.m. UTC, or 6:48 p.m. in Jerusalem. And yet the announced time for the molad of Rosh Chodesh Elul, however, was Tuesday, August 22, at 10:44 a.m. and 15 chalakim—about 16 hours later. That is odd since the molad (lit the birth of the moon) is supposed to be the exact time at which the sun, the earth and the moon all line up, at time called the astronomical conjunction.

“...the molad we announce on the Shabbat preceding Rosh Chodesh represents a theoretical time only, and has no relationship to an astronomical phenomenon. ”

The solar eclipse is therefore a visible reminder that the time of molad we announce on the Shabbat preceding Rosh Chodesh represents a theoretical time only, and has no relationship to an astronomical phenomenon. The announced molad is calculated by using the length between one new moon and the next. This figure assumes that every lunar month is of equal length, 29 days, 12 hours 44 minutes and 3 1/3 seconds. The Jewish calendar is based on the axiom that all future times of the molad are based on the theoretical time for the first molad, which was in Tishrei of the first year of Creation. This is assumed to have occurred on a Monday night, at five hours and 204 chalakim—a time that occurred only in theory since, according to Jewish tradition, the sun and the moon had not been created at that time. To determine the time of any molad since then, we simply add 29 days, 5 hours and 204 chalakim for each month from the primordial Tishrei. But this calculated time differs from the actual length of time between one new month and the next, which is not constant. For this reason, the times announced for the molad are not astronomically accurate—and, as we have seen, this can result in a discrepancy of more than 16 hours between the astronomical conjunction and the calculated Jewish conjunction. (To read more about this problem see our post here.]

HalaKhic Aspects of a Solar Eclipse

There are two categories of questions surrounding a solar eclipse. The first focuses on the technical aspects of the eclipse as a natural phenomenon, and the second on the eclipse as an omen of tragedy.

1. Publicizing the date of a forthcoming eclipse

The Mishnah Berurah rules that it is forbidden to tell another person that a rainbow is visible, because this violates the prohibition of slander (מוציא דבה), since the primordial rainbow appeared after the sins of humanity that caused Noah’s Flood.

And since a solar eclipse is, according to today’s page of Talmud, a sign of human sin, it might be suggested that it would also be forbidden to announce the time of a future solar eclipse. However, unlike a rainbow, a solar eclipse may be entirely predicted, and on the basis of this, Rabbi Avigdor Nebenzahl (b. 1935) ruled that it is permitted to publicize the dates and times of a future eclipse. (See R. Avigdor Nebenzahl, Teshuvos Avigdor HaLevi (Sifrei Kedumim: 2012), p. 249 #105.)

2. Reciting a blessing on seeing a solar eclipse

There is halachic precedent for reciting a blessing on seeing an awe-inspiring vista or event. We make a berachah on seeing the Mediterranean Sea, or a rainbow, on hearing thunder and seeing lightening, and even on seeing a person of exceptional beauty. It is perfectly understandable, therefore, for a person witnessing one of the greatest of nature’s spectacles, to wish to mark the event with a blessing. However, there appear to be no halakhic authorities who would allow a berachah to be recited. Perhaps the first to write about this was R. Menachem Mendel Schneerson. In 1957, he was asked if it was permitted to say a berachah on seeing a solar or lunar eclipse, and his reply was unequivocal:

ידוע הכלל אשר אין לחדש ברכה שלא הוזכרה בש"ס (ב"י או"ח סמ"ו). וי"ל הטעם דאין מברכין ע"ז מפני שהוא סימן לפורעניות הבאה )סוכה כט, א(. ואדרבה צריכה תפלה לבטלה וצעקה ולא ברכה

There is a well-established principle that it is forbidden to institute a blessing that is not mentioned in the Talmud. And some say that the reason that no blessing was instituted is because the eclipse is a bad omen. To the contrary, it is important to pray for the omen to be annulled, and to cry out without a berachah. (Iggerot Kodesh 15:1079.)

R. Schneerson combines a halakhic justification for not reciting a berachah with the classic Talmudic teaching from our page today that a solar eclipse occurs as a result of human sin. However, there are two problems with R. Schneerson’s ruling. First, it is normative Jewish practice to recite a berachah on hearing bad news such as the death of a person, and second, the Talmud does not describe a solar eclipse as an omen of forthcoming disaster. It is a sign of sin, not of punishment.

R. Chaim Dovid HaLevi, Av Bet Din (Chief of the Rabbinic Court) of Tel Aviv and Yaffo, also ruled that we are forbidden to create new berachos, (Aseh Lecha Rav [Tel Aviv, 5749], 150) although he understood the urge to do so:

Our Rabbis instituted blessings over acts of creation and powerful natural events, like lightning and thunder and so on. However, they did not do so for a lunar or solar eclipse. And if only today we could institute a blessing when we are aware that an eclipse is indeed an incredible natural event. But we cannot, for a person is forbidden to make up a blessing. If a person still wants to make some form of a blessing, he should recite the verses “And David blessed...blessed are you, God, the Lord of our father Israel, who performs acts of creation.”

Finally, we should note the opinion of R. David Lau, then the Chief Rabbi of Modi’in, and currently the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel. A certain David Eisen wrote to R. Lau about his experiences of observing the (partial) solar eclipse of 2001 that could be seen in Israel. He had been left wishing to make a blessing for what was, for him, an awe-inspiring cosmic occurrence. R. Lau empathized with Eisen’s feelings, but noted that since the Rabbis of the Talmud had not prescribed a blessing over an eclipse, it was not possible to institute such a blessing today. Rabbi Lau noted that his own religious response to witnessing the eclipse had been to say Psalm 19, “The Heavens tell of G-d’s glory,” and Psalm 104, “My soul will bless G-d.”

3. Marriage and fasting on the day of a solar eclipse

The Chasidic leader R. Zvi Elimelech Shapira of Dinov (b. 1785), wrote in his classic work Bnei Yissaschar that a man should not marry when the moon is waning, “and particularly not during a lunar eclipse, G- d forbid.”(Bnei Yissaschar, Ma’amarei Rosh Chodesh, #2.) He does not mention whether this would apply to a solar eclipse. The Mishnah Berurah also notes the opinion of the Sefer Chasidim that one should fast on the day of a lunar eclipse, although he does not rule on the matter further (Mishnah Berurah #580:2). The matter was more recently addressed by R. Menachem Lang, who notes that it might be forbidden to marry on the day of any kind of eclipse, but ultimately ruled that there is no such prohibition. When a solar eclipse occurs on the same day as Rosh Chodesh, any fast would be forbidden under the general prohibition of fasting on Rosh Chodesh (Mishnah Berurah #580:1).

[Most of this post comes from an essay published in Hakirah in 2017. You can read the entire essay here.]

A SPECIAL ECLIPSE ANNOUNCEMENT FROM TALMUDOLOGY

Here is the great news: there is another total solar eclipse coming soon to North America!

On Monday April 8, 2024 another total solar eclipse will be visible over North America. If the weather cooperates, it will be seen along a narrow path that starts from Mexico's Pacific coast, passes through several American states, and ends on the Atlantic coast of Canada. The rest of mainland United States and Canada, and parts of the Caribbean, Central America, and Europe will see a partial solar eclipse, which is nowhere nearly as spectacular and is often not even noticeable. The next time you will get to see a total solar eclipse in the US after that will not be until August 2045. So plan now!

Image from here

Join Talmudology for the Great American Solar Eclipse II

The Talmudology Excursions Division is in the early stages of planning a special weekend of events in preparation of this amazing experience. As you can see from the map above, Cleveland Ohio will be in the center of the path of the totality, and that is likely where the Talmudology Eclipse Gathering will be.

Sign up below to receive updates about this unique event. We hope to see you in April 2024. (It will be here sooner than you think.)

Sukkah 26b ~ How do Horses Sleep?

In a discussion about various aspects of sleep, the Talmud today discusses equine sleeping patterns:

סוכה כו, ב

אָמַר רַב: אָסוּר לָאָדָם לִישַׁן בַּיּוֹם יוֹתֵר מִשֵּׁינַת הַסּוּס. וְכַמָּה שֵׁינַת הַסּוּס — שִׁיתִּין נִשְׁמֵי

Rav said: It is prohibited for a person to sleep during the day longer than the duration of the sleep of a horse. [One who sleeps for longer is derelict in the study of Torah.] And how long is the duration of the sleep of a horse? It is sixty breaths long.

Elsewhere, Rabbi Zeira extols the virtues of sleeping like a horse at night. It is what King David did.

ברכות ג, ב

רַבִּי זֵירָא אָמַר: עַד חֲצוֹת לַיְלָה הָיָה מִתְנַמְנֵם כְּסוּס, מִכָּאן וְאֵילָךְ הָיָה מִתְגַּבֵּר כַּאֲרִי. רַב אָשֵׁי אָמַר: עַד חֲצוֹת לַיְלָה הָיָה עוֹסֵק בְּדִבְרֵי תוֹרָה, מִכָּאן וְאֵילָךְ בְּשִׁירוֹת וְתִשְׁבָּחוֹת

Rabbi Zeira said: Until midnight, David would doze like a horse, [as a horse dozes, but never sleeps deeply]. From midnight on, he would gain the strength of a lion. Rav Ashi said: Until midnight, he would study Torah, as it is written: “I rose with the neshef and cried, I hoped for Your word,” and from midnight on, he would engage in songs and praise, as it is written: “At midnight I rise to give thanks.”

To which the medieval French commentator Rashi add this observation

רשי שם

מתנמנם כסוס – עוסק בתורה כשהוא מתנמנם. כסוס הזה שאינו נרדם לעולם אלא מתנמנם ונעור תמיד

The horse never sleeps. Instead it naps and then always wakes

Most of us don’t keep horses, and so cannot judge what exactly is going on. So today, for all you non-horse owning folk, Talmudology asks: How do horses sleep?

An Introduction to Equine Sleep

The thing is, for a long time the way horses sleep has been a bit of a mystery. Then we developed all kinds of clever recording devices like EEGs that allowed us a harmless peek inside the brain of the sleeping horse. In his review of sleep patterns in the horse published in the September 1990 edition of Equine Practice, the veterinarian Theodore Belling wrote that “usually a horse falls asleep while standing and is in a drowsing state. The lids are partially open and the head hangs down at a medium level.” As the horse slips into a deep sleep known by its electric patterns as Slow Wave Sleep its head gradually gets lower and lower until the horse decides all is good, and while remaining asleep, actually lies down. Like this:

Once in this position, known technically as lateral recumbency, “the horse sleeps in short cycles or episodes, rather than one continuous interval, as it does in humans.” There is a short period of slow wave or deep sleep, usually lasting about five minutes, followed by a five minute paradoxical sleep, a stage also known as the rapid eye movement (REM) period. (When we enter the REM period, that’s when we dream.) The horse then enters another five minute slow wave cycle, and then wakes up. It slept for a total of about 15 minutes and will stay awake for another 45 minutes or so, before doing the whole thing again. The total sleep time of the horse is somewhere between 2.5-5 hours per night. Oh, and if you drive past a field with a horse sleeping in the day, there is nothing wrong. Some horses like to do that.

“Horses are neither diurnal nor nocturnal but have intermittent periods of rest and sleep during the day with most of their sleep happening at night, particularly when confined in a stall. Certain relaxing situations, such as grooming may even lead to episodes of sleep in normal horses. This is, perhaps, the equine equivalent of sleeping in class.”

— Aleman M. et al. Sleep and Sleep Disorders in Horses. AAEP Proceedings 2008. 54: 180-185.

EEG recordings from a pony. From From Andre Dellaire. Rest Behavior. Veterinary Clinics of North America Equine Practice 1986:2 595.

This basic outline has been confirmed in a number of other studies. A 2008 paper in Proceedings of the American Association of Equine Practitioners noted that “horses require far less sleep than most humans, averaging a total of only 3–5 h/day” though foals, being baby horses, sleep more per day than do the adults.

And so it turns out that the horse sleeps a lot less than might be expected. Here for example are the times spend awake or asleep in a few different species. The horse is the most wakeful of them all.

Time Spent (Hours) in Wakefulness and Sleep States per Day in Domesticated Species
Animal	Awake	Drowsy	Deep Sleep	Dreaming	Total Sleep Time
Cat	10	2	8.5	3.5	12
Dog	11	4	6.5	2.5	9
Swine	11	4	6.5	2.5	8
Sheep	16	4	3	<1	4
Horse	18	2	3	<1	4
From Andre Dellaire. Rest Behavior. Veterinary Clinics of North America Equine Practice 1986:2 592.

The Rav and Rabbi Zeira clearly knew about horses. The horse does indeed only take short naps, and these rabbis extol us to do the same. These are examples of a careful observation the natural world, from where many talmudic statements are derived. This might seem obvious, but it is not. As we have noted in the past, the rabbis didn’t always demonstrate an accurate understanding of the animal kingdom. Abayye thought that wild geese have a scrotum. But they don’t. And Rabbi Shimon ben Chalfta thought that ant colonies have kings. But they don’t. At the same time the rabbis knew much about the world that we had to rediscover. Like sound traveling further at night, or the periodicity of ‘Halley’s’ Comet.

So the next time you see horses lying in a field, or even dozing while standing, don’t disturb them. They are doing what comes naturally. Instead, do what the rabbis did. Observe, and ask: what can I learn from this moment?

NEXT TIME ON TALMUDOLOGY:

SOLAR ECLIPSES