Looks Like We Made It!

As astute readers who have followed Talmudology since its inception will have already noted, last week we reached an incredible milestone. The last post, on Yevamot 42, was not just another day in the life of Talmudology. Because, seven and a half years ago, on November 15, 2014, an earlier version of that post was the very first one published on Talmudology. That’s right. It means that we have now completed Talmudology on the entire Babylonian Talmud.

Over the last seven and a half years Talmudology has published about 320 original essays, several of which were re-posted when the Talmud repeated itself. Over those years, this website has had over 221,000 unique visitors, and over 390,000 page views. That’s a lot of Talmudology.

What’s Next for Talmduology?

We will continue to re-publish our posts following the one-page-a-day Daf Yomi cycle. If you teach Daf Yomi, you can navigate to our Topics by Tractate section, and see what is available for each page before it comes up.

In addition, we will put out new material whenever the occasion calls for it. For example we never addressed the topic of weird and outlandish cases in the Talmud, so that will be remedied with a brand-new post on Yevamot 54. In addition to adding material we managed to skip the first time, the existing posts will be updated whenever necessary, because while the Talmud doesn’t change, science sometimes does.

We also hope to publish Talmudology in a two (to perhaps three) volume work, making it accessible on Shabbat, and available as a gift for your favorite Bar or Bat Mitzvah. This is an exciting (if daunting) project, and we are in discussion with a major publisher, so stay tuned…

Over the last seven and a half years, a lot has happened. I danced at the weddings of three of my children, and celebrated the birth of four grandchildren. I travelled widely, mourned the loss of a parent, underwent heart surgery, and watched with great pride as my wife took on a new position at Yeshiva University. In other words, life. Throughout it all I had Talmudology to keep me out of mischief; it was, and still is, a joy to produce.

Thank you to the many readers who pointed out errors of fact or grammar, and who made suggestions to improve the posts and sent fascinating material to help me do so. You have made Talmudology better, and your letters of support have brought many a smile to my face.

חזק ונתחזק

Jeremy

Yevamot 42a~ The Baby Born After Eight Months, and Getting Pregnant While Nursing

There is general agreement that a widow must wait a period of time after the death of her husband before re-marrying, to ensure that should she see signs of  pregnancy soon after the death of her first husband, the paternity of the child will not be in doubt.  The Talmud assumes that all pregnancies become obvious within three months of conception, and so a woman can remarry after she waits three months from the death of her first husband. Shmuel explains the importance of uncontested paternity: 

יבמות מד, א

אָמַר רַב נַחְמָן אָמַר שְׁמוּאֵל, מִשּׁוּם דְּאָמַר קְרָא: ״לִהְיוֹת לְךָ לֵאלֹהִים וּלְזַרְעֲךָ אַחֲרֶיךָ״, לְהַבְחִין בֵּין זַרְעוֹ שֶׁל רִאשׁוֹן לְזַרְעוֹ שֶׁל שֵׁנִי

The verse states with regard to Abraham: “To be a God to you and your seed after you” (Genesis 17:7), which indicates that the Divine Presence rests with someone only when his seed can be identified as being descended from him, i.e., there are no uncertainties with regard to their lineage. Therefore, to prevent any uncertainties concerning the lineage of her child, the woman must wait so that it will be possible to distinguish between the seed of the first husband and the seed of the second husband. After three months, if she has conceived from her previous husband, the pregnancy will already be noticeable.

So far so good. But then the Talmud analyses the viability of a child born prematurely in which the father may be either the first husband who subsequently died, or a second man, to whom the mother re-married very son after the death of her first husband. The Talmud suggests that the women need wait two and a half months after the death of her first husband. If a child is born seven months later, it must have been fathered by the second husband, since (i) if it was fathered by the first husband the gestational period would be nine and a half months, which is assumed to be impossible, and (ii) if it was  fathered by the first husband but was born prematurely, the gestational period would have to have been eight months - and as Rashi explains - an eight month fetus is not viable.

“בר תמניא לא חיי Yevamot 42~...an eight month fetus cannot survive”

— Rashi, Yevamot 42a

Elsewhere, the Talmud specifically notes that an eight month fetus is not viable. In Bava Basra, a child born after eight months is declared to be mukzteh, that is, it is in a category of objects that must not be moved on Shabbat: 

דתניא בן שמנה הרי הוא כאבן ואסור לטלטלו בשבת

For it was taught in a Braisa. A baby born at eight months of gestation is treated like a stone [on Shabbat, because it is muktzeh.]

The premature baby is given the status of a stone because it was not considered to be viable. As a result, even though all the rules of Shabbat may usually be ignored in order to save a life, in this instance, there is no such provision. The baby will die regardless, so the usual Shabbat rules cannot be violated.

but what about the facts?

But what happens when this rabbinic belief ran up against the facts? Which is to say, how could the rabbis explain the cases in which a woman gave birth to an eight-month fetus, and it did indeed survive? There were surely many examples of this kind of premature birth. How did the rabbis square it with their understanding of things?

To answer this we turn to the parallel text in the Talmud Yerushalmi (Yevamot 4:2:5). In explaining why the word וַיִיצֶר - “he created” (Gen. 2:7) is written with two yods instead of the expected spelling “וַיִצֶר”, Rabbi Zeira explained (in the name of Rav Huna) that the verse teaches that there are two kinds of gestations:

מְנַיִין שְׁתֵּי יְצִירוֹת. רִבִי זְעִירָא בְשֵׁם רִבִּי הוּנָא. וַיִיצֶר. יְצִירָה לְשִׁבְעָה וִיצִירָה לְתִשְׁעָה. נוֹצָר לְשִׁבְעָה וְנוֹלָד לִשְׁמוֹנָה חַיי. כָּל־שֶׁכֵּן לְתִשְׁעָה. נוֹצָר לְתִשְׁעָה וְנוֹלָד לִשְׁמוֹנָה אֵינוֹ חַייָה. נוֹצָר לְתִשְׁעָה וְנוֹלָד לְשִׁבְעָה

From where the two creations? Rebbi Ze‘ira in the name of Rebbi Huna: “He created”, a creation for seven and a creation for eight. If he was created for seven but born at eight, he lives; so much more if [born] by nine. If he was created for nine and born at eight, he does not live.

Did you follow that? There are really two kinds of fetus, one that will be viable at seven months and another at nine. If a seven month fetus is born at eight months, it can live, because it was really a fully formed seven month fetus. But if a nine month fetus is born after only eight months, it will not survive, because it was never fully formed. In this way, Rabbi Huna was able to explain the observation that there are in fact some babies born after eight months that are viable. It’s clever. But hardly persuasive. Rather than abandon the whole eight-month-fetus-is-not-viable thing, Rabbi Huna came up with a new theory , and even found a source for it in the Torah itself.

This belief - that a fetus of seven months gestation may survive, but one born in the eighth month of gestation cannot do so - is very odd. But it wasn't a uniquely Jewish belief.

“...it is the women who make the judgments and ... insist that the eighth-month babies do not survive, but the others do. ”

— Hippocrates, On the Seventh-Month Child

The Eight Month Fetus in the Ancient World

Homer's Iliad, written around the 8th century BCE,  records that a seven month fetus could survive. But it is not until Hippocrates (c. 460-370 BCE, or some 500 years before Shmuel), that we find a record of the  belief that a fetus of eight months' gestation cannot survive, while a seventh month fetus (and certainly one of nine month gestation) can. His Peri Eptamenou (On the Seventh Month Embryo) and Peri Oktamenou (On the Eight-Month Embryo) date from the end of the fifth century BCE, but this belief is viewed with skepticism by Aristotle.

In Egypt, and in some other places where the women are fruitful and are wont to bear and bring forth many children without difficulty, and where the children when born are capable of living even if they be born subject to deformity, in these places the eight-months' children live and are brought up, but in Greece it is only a few of them that survive while most perish. And this being the general experience, when such a child does happen to survive the mother is apt to think that it was not an eight months' child after all, but that she had conceived at an earlier period without being aware of it.

The belief that an eight month fetus cannot survive has a halakhic reification: Maimonides ruled that if a boy was born prematurely in the eighth month of his gestation and the day of his circumcision (8 days after his birth) fell out on shabbat, the circumcision - which otherwise would indeed occur on shabbat, is postponed until Sunday, the ninth day after his birth. 

ומי שנולד בחדש השמיני לעבורו קודם שתגמר ברייתו שהוא כנפל מפני שאינו חי... אין דוחין  השבת אלא נימולין באחד בשבת שהוא   יום תשיעי שלהן     

(הלכות מילה 1:11)

This belief persisted well into the early modern era. Here is a state of the art medical text published in 1636  by John Sadler.  Read what he has to say on the reasons that an eight month fetus cannot survive (and note the name of the publisher at the bottom of the title page-surely somewhat of a rarity then) : 

John Sadler. The Sicke Womans Private Looking Glasse. London 1636. From the Collection of the National Library of Medicine, Bethesda MD

Saturn predominates in the eighth month of pregnancy, and since that planet is "cold and dry"," it destroys the nature of the childe". That, or some odd yearning of the child to be born in the seventh but not the eight month (according to Hippocrates) is the reason that a child born at seven and nine months' gestation may survive, but not one born at after only eight months.

Today, gestational length is of course critical, and, all things being equal, the closer the gestational length is to full term, the greater the likelihood of survival.   We can say with great certainty, that an infant born at 32 weeks or later (that's about eight months) is in fact more likely to survive than one born at 28 weeks (a seven month gestation.) In fact, a seven month fetus has a survival rate of 38-90% (depending on its birthweight), while an eight month fetus has a survival rate of 50-98%. Here is the data, taken from a British study.

Draper Elizabeth S, Manktelow Bradley, Field David J, James David. Prediction of survival for preterm births by weight and gestational age: retrospective population based study  BMJ 1999; 319:1093

More recently, a study from the Technion in Haifa showed that even the last six weeks of pregnancy play a critical role in the development of the fetus. This study found a threefold increase in the infant death rate in those born between  34 and 37 weeks when compared full term babies.  

You can read more on the history of the eight month fetus in a 1988 paper by  Rosemary Reiss and Avner Ash.  From what we have reviewed, the talmudic belief in the unusually low survival rate of an eight month fetus (compared to a seven month one) is one that was widely shared in the ancient world. And one that is not supported by any of the evidence we now have.

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Pregnancy as a contraceptive

We now turn to the second pregnancy related topic on today’s daf. According to the Talmud, if a mother becomes pregnant while nursing, her milk supply will become turbid and (unless an alternative is found) her nursing child may die.

יבמות מד, ב

סתם מעוברת למניקה קיימא דלמא איעברה ומעכר חלבה וקטלה ליה 

Many of us will have heard that it is not possible for a mother to become pregnant while she is breast-feeding, and many mothering websites address this question. So how can the Talmud suggest that a breast-feeding mother can conceive?

“You may have heard from a friend that nursing can serve as a form of birth control — and while that’s not entirely untrue, it’s not the whole story either.”

— Whattoexpect.com

The question we have to answer is, how good a contraceptive is nursing? In a word (well, actually two words) it depends. In the first 3-6 months after birth, and if the baby is fed only on breast milk, some claim that breast feeding is a pretty good contraceptive, and is effective about 98% of time. But if mum skips a feed here or there, or if mum's periods have restarted, all bets are off.  Here's data from an old paper on the topic. Take a close look at the last column- the failure rates per 100 women.

Those are high failure rates -as high as one in five - which makes it a pretty unreliable contraceptive. A review of breastfeeding as a contraceptive was published in 2003 in the widely respected Cochrane Reviews; it concluded that "[f]ully breastfeeding women who remain amenorrheic have a very small risk of becoming pregnant in the first 6 months after delivery when relying on lactational sub fertility". However, - and this is really important - it is not possible to know when amenorrhea is likely to end, and so an IUD is suggested as additional contraception wherever possible.

Overall, the talmudic suggestion that conception is possible while a mother is breastfeeding her child is, scientifically speaking, spot on.

Torah for Pesach

Each year at the Pesach seder, many of us share the same stories we have been telling for years. That midrash that the Israelite mothers gave birth to six children at a time in Egypt, or Rabbi Yonatan’s assertion in Sotah that to break their spirits, the Egyptians made the men do the women’s work, and the women perform the men’s. In an effort to encourage something new, we present some unusual material for you to share at your seder. They come from Rabbi Zeev Zuckerman’s אוצר פלאות התורה, שמות, a work that can best be described as a sort of Ripley’s Believe It or Not on the Torah. We hope they add to your special night.

1. Rashi forgot to eat the Afikoman

The Machzor Vitry is one of the oldest liturgical texts in Judaism. It contains prayers for the entire year, as well as the customs of the Jews of France, a commentary on the Ten Commandments and Pirkei Avot, liturgical poems, and a whole lot more. It was composed in the eleventh century by Rabbi Simcha of Vitry, a French scholar and student of the great Rashi. Buried deep in the Laws of eating the Afikoman is this:

הלכות פסח, ע״ד. שכח מלאכול אפיקומן

From here.

פעם אחת שכח ר' ולא אכל מצה אפיקומן אחר סעודה קודם ברכת המזון. ולאחר ברכת המזון הוזכר. ולא רצה לאכול ממנה. לפי שהיה צריך לברך אחריה ברכת המזון ולשתות מכוס של ברכה. ואי איפשר לשתות בין כוס של מזון לכוס של הלל. דאמור רבנן בין [הכוסות] הללו אם רצה לשתות ישתה בין שלישי לרביעי לא ישתה. ולא רצה לברך עליה ברכת המזון בלא יין לפי שתקנו חכמים כוס שלישי עליה ונראה שהיא צריכה כוס. ואפילו אחר כוס רביעי של הלל לא רצה לאכל מצה ולברך ברכת המזון. מפני שהן לא התקינו אלא ד' כוסות בלבד. אבל חמשה לא התקינו. ועל כן נמנע מלאכול מצה אחר ברכת המזון: והחזיק טעם בדבר זה שאין צריך לחזור ולאכל מצה. מפני שסתם רוב מצות שלנו עשויות כתיקון חכמים ויש בהן שימר לשם מצה. ומצה שאוכל בגמר סעודתו עולה לו לשם מצה של מצוה הואיל ונעשית בה שימור לשם מצה: וכן (נוהג) [נהג] רבינו שלמה מ"כ

Once, R. forgot to eat the Afikoman after the meal, before saying Birkat Hamazon. And after benching he remembered, but didn’t want to go back and eat it.

Who might this mysterious person “R” be? According to Rabbi Zeev Zuckerman, the author of the four volume set Otzar Pilaos Hatorah, R is none other than Rashi. This makes sense, since Rabbi Simcha ben Shmuel of Vitry (d. 1105) was a student of Rashi. And so we have an eyewitness account that the great Rashi himself once forgot to eat the Afikoman!

Machzor Vitry, Golschmidt edition. Vol II page 430, footnote 2.

But not everyone agrees that R was Rashi. Aryeh Goldschmidt published a critical edition of the Machzor Vitry between 2003-2009, and in his commentary he identified R as Rabbi Kalonymous the Elder. This would most likely have been Kalonymus ben Isaac who died in 1126. He was the father of Samuel he-Hasid, and the grandfather of the Judah he-Hasid. Judah was the author of the famous Sefer Hasidim (or at least most of it).

A similar observation was made by Rabbi Mordechai ben Hillel Ashkenazi, known simply as The Mordechai, who was the author of an important legal commentary on the Talmud, and who was murdered in the Rintfleisch pogrom of 1298. Here is his commentary on the Seder, in which he retold the story of Kalonymus forgetting to eat the afikomon:

From Sefer Hamordechai. Vienna 1812. 96a.

For discussion: Have you ever forgotten a critical part of a Jewish ceremony? How did you feel?

• There are lots of rules to remember and it is easy to mess up. So forgive yourself if you forget something - you are in good company.

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2. When the Chatam Sofer was banished from his Library. by his wife. Twice

The famous Moses Sofer, known as Chatam Sofer, was asked a question by Dayan Yosef Yoel of Ternopil in the Ukraine. The Chatam Sofer gave his answer, but then added this rider:

I have no access to my study, for I have been exiled from it by the pious women who are cleaning for Peseach. Therefore, I could not go into further detail, as would have been expected…

Then it happened again. This time the question was from Rabbi Meir of the Hungarian town of Balassagyarmat (Yarmat in Yiddish). And again, Chatam Sofer gave his answer, but once more he was thwarted by the cleaning efforts going on around him.

Your dear letter recently reached me, but it is a time of lots of moving, because our women have moved things from here and there, and they don’t even allow me access to my books…

It wasn’t just the Chatam Sofer who complained. Rabbi Yaakov Schorr (1852-1923) who lived in Galicia had similar troubles around the Pesach preparations. In his responsa Divrei Yaakov, published in 1881, he seemed to be losing patience:

I received your query on these days leading to Pesach, which required you to ask an appropriate question. But I am overworked, as things pile up around my neck, and I am forced to move from place to place. For to be a man is harder than to be a woman (!), for I have been forced out of my home and the Torah of God, by the pious women who are preparing the house for Pesach. But I secretly stole a few hours to answer you…

The great Rabbi Yechezkel Landa of Prague, known as the Nodah Beyehuda was also a victim of Pesach cleaning. His son asked him whether fish brine was chametz. And here is how he began his answer:

During these days of Nissan I am very busy with the problems of the community, who turn to me with the burden of showing them the proper path forward and how they should follow the many laws of Pesach. One comes with his flask and another with his barrel, and on top of this I have no free place of my own. I wander from room to room and from one corner to another while they scrape the walls and clean the house for Yom Tov. So I must be brief…

Oh, by the way, he ruled that fish brine was indeed chametz. Good to know.

For discussion: There are lots of changes we undertake on Pesach. Do you enjoy them, or find them challenging?

• Just go with it. That’s what the Chatam Sofer did.

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3. SPARE A THOUGHT FOR THOSE WHO SERVE

As we sit down for our seder, we should spare a thought for those whose own seder must be curtailed because they serve others. There are countless nurses and doctors, soldiers and police, ambulance crews and public servants, (and if you are off to a hotel, lots of wait staff, chefs and servers) who continue to work so that we may recline. Sometimes, even rabbis have to give up their seder to serve others. Shmuel Salant (1816-1909) who served as the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem for seventy years apparently cut his own seder short, so that he could be ready to help others with their halakhic questions on the first night of Pesach.

From Rimon Y. and Wasserman Y. Shmuel Bedoro. Tel Aviv. Maslul, 1961. 107.

Rabbi Salant was concerned that if he was to drink the four cups of wine, he would not be able to answer any halakhic question that might occur on the Seder night, for a person who has drank wine is forbidden to rule until he sobers up. Consequently, he would have the custom to finish his seder quickly, take a quick nap to sleep off the alcohol, and then wake up ready to answer any questions that might come his way. It’s a charming insight into the life of a public servant, and should remind us to thank all those who toil so that we may enjoy Pesach.

For discussion: There are lots of people who work hard to get us to this night. Spend a moment going around the table to thank them.

• And if you are one of those public servants, thank you.

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4. MAY a Husband sell Chametz to his non-Jewish wife?

Rabbi Yaakov Jacob ben Joseph Reischer (c.1661–1733) served as a dayyan in Prague, and later served in Worms and Metz. Among his three volumes of responsa is this gem:

In the state where I live there is a Jew who married a Gentile. She follows her own customs in every aspect, while he follows the customs of Israel. What happens to the chametz that is found in the house after Pesach? Is it permissible to be used, since it was the chametz that belonged to a Gentile, or is it forbidden, since a wife’s property also belongs to her husband?

Rabbi Zeev Zuckerman, (from whose work אוצר פלאות התורה, שמות these examples are taken) drew from this responsum an example of the sensitivity with which we should reply to any question, and not disparage the one who asked. I suppose it would have been a better question to ask if a Jewish husband may sell his chametz to his non-Jewish wife, but that wasn’t exactly the question asked of Rabbi Reischer, who ruled that in this case, the chametz was indeed permitted after Pesach.

For discussion: Is there something special about Pesach that resonates with us, even if we are less careful to follow other parts of Jewish practice?

• Always be kind to those with a question about Jewish law.

Happy Passover from Talmudology!

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New Essay: When Shemitta and a Pandemic Coincide

This year we are living through both a shemitta year and a pandemic in Israel, and exactly 120 years ago these same conditions were also present as the Jewish inhabitants of Ottoman Palestine faced the threats of a shemitta year and a terrible wave of pandemic cholera.

To read a new essay published at TraditionOnline about how the Jews of the First Aliyah faced that terrible year, and how it differs from the present shmitta-pandemic conjunction, click here.