Nazir 28 ~ The Not So Dead Sea

Over the last several pages the Talmud has ruled on the fate of various offerings (or money set aside to buy these offerings) that were designated to be brought to the Temple in Jerusalem, but which for one reason or another, could not in the end be donated.  Consider for example a father who declared that his son would be a nazarite, and set aside money to bring the associated Temple offerings. However, the son decided he did not want the ascetic life thank you very much, and declined to become a nazarite. What then should become of the money set aside? If the father had set aside the money specifically for the purchase of a chatas - חטאת - a sin offering - he is rather out of luck.  The Mishnah states that the money must be cast into the Dead Sea - that is, it cannot be used for any purpose. (This is because the הטאת can never be offered as a voluntary sacrifice, and since the son will not become a nazir, the money cannot be used for a voluntary sacrifice- or any other purpose.)

משנה נזיר כח, ב

היו לו מעות סתומין יפלו לנדבה מעות מפורשים דמי חטאת ילכו לים המלח

If he had set aside unspecified funds [for his son to bring as a nazir, and the son declined to follow through], they may be used for voluntary offerings. If he had set aside specified money [for a chatas sacrifice], the money is thrown into the Dead Sea...   

The Formation of the Dead Sea

The Dead Sea lies on a boundary between the Arabian tectonic plate and the Sinai sub-plate, which is part of the larger African tectonic plate. In 1996 Garfunkel and Ben-Avraham published a paper on The Structure of the Dead Sea basin. They note that the Dead Sea rift was formed when the two tectonic plates moved apart from each other, creating a hole in the middle.  The Dead Sea is one of the most saline lakes in the world, containing more than 30% of dissolved salts, mostly sodium, calcium and magnesium, potassium and bromine; it is almost ten times more saline than the oceans. The lake lies about 400m below sea level, and in  some places the lake is as deep as 300m (for those of you in the US, that is almost 1,000 feet). It is these salts that make the lake so seemingly inhospitable to life, and explain why the rabbis chose the Dead Sea as an example (perhaps the example) of the place to throw the money set aside for a sacrifice that could not be brought. Once the coins were thrown into the murky depths of the lake, they would sink into the silt, rust, and never be found. The Dead Sea is a metaphor for a place without life, which is probably why the Mishnah also rules that into it should be thrown any vessel on which there is an idolatrous images. They will simply never be found again. 

 עבודה זרה מב, ב 

המוצא כלים ועליהם צורת חמה, צורת לבנה, צורת דרקון - יוליכם לים המלח

If one finds vessels on which is the likeness of the sun, the moon or a dragon [all of which were used for idolatry], the vessels should be thrown into the Dead Sea...

“The name “Dead Sea” is of relatively recent vintage. It was first introduced by Greek and Latin writers such as Pausanias (160-180 AD.) Galen (2nd century AD) and Trogus Pompeius 2nd century AD.)”

— Arie Nissenbaum. Life in a Dead Sea: Fables, Allegories, and Scientific Search. BioScience 1979: 29 (3). p153.

Life in the Dead Sea

It is fascinating to note that while we refer to the lake as the Dead Sea, it is not called this in the Hebrew Bible or the Talmud. Rather, it is the Salt Sea - ים המלח - with no reference to anything about it being dead.  This choice turns out to have been a good one, for although the lake seems to be devoid of any life, there is life within it.  

“The increased salinity and the elevated concentration of divalent ions make the Dead Sea an extreme environment that is not tolerated by most organisms. This is reflected in a generally low diversity and very low abundance of microorganisms.”

— Ionescu D, Siebert C, Polerecky L, Munwes YY, Lott C, et al. (2012) Microbial and Chemical Characterization of Underwater Fresh Water Springs in the Dead Sea. PLoS ONE 7(6): e38319.

Microorganisms were first discovered in the Dead Sea in the 1930s, and since then bacteria have been isolated in both the sediment and the water, albeit at low concentrations.  However a series of dives in June 2010 revealed a complex system of freshwater springs that feed the lake, and surrounding these springs are bacterial communities with much higher densities, and much greater cell diversity, than was previously known. (You can watch a two-minute video of divers at the bottom of the Dead Sea here. It is amazing to realize that they are the first humans to see the depths of the Dead Sea).  An international team of researchers described the findings from these dives in a paper titled Microbial and Chemical Characterization of Underwater Freshwater Springs in the Dead Sea, that was published in 2012.  The colonies of cells that surround the freshwater springs are up to 100 times more dense than those found in the ambient water of the Dead Sea, and include bacteria that consume sulfides, and those that metabolize iron and nitrates. The authors conclude that the underwater system of springs that feed the Dead Sea are an "unknown source of diversity and metabolic potential."  

Graphical representation of the sequence frequency in the studied Dead Sea samples, showing major detected phyla and families of different functional groups of Bacteria. From Ionescu D, Siebert C, Polerecky L, Munwes YY, Lott C, et al. (2012) Microbial and Chemical Characterization of Underwater Fresh Water Springs in the Dead Sea. PLoS ONE 7(6): e38319.

Despite these findings of life, the Dead Sea is still in trouble. Its level is dropping at the rate of about three feet per year, and its surface area is now only 600 Km2, down from over 1,000 Km2 in the 1930s.  The prophecy of Ezekiel (47:8-9) that the water of the Dead Sea would be replaced with fresh water in which great numbers of fish will live is still a long, long way off.  

יחזקאל פרק מז, ח-ט 

ויאמר אלי המים האלה יוצאים אל הגלילה הקדמונה וירדו על הערבה ובאו הימה אל הימה המוצאים ונרפאו ונרפו המים:  והיה כל נפש חיה אשר ישרץ אל כל אשר יבוא שם נחלים יחיה והיה הדגה רבה מאד כי באו שמה המים האלה וירפאו וחי כל אשר יבוא שמה הנחל

He said to me, "This water flows toward the eastern region and goes down into the Arabah, where it enters the [Dead] Sea. When it empties into the sea, the salty water there becomes fresh.Swarms of living creatures will live wherever the river flows. There will be large numbers of fish, because this water flows there and makes the salt water fresh; so where the river flows everything will live...(Ez. 47:8-9)

Nazir 23a ~ Lot and Father-Daughter Incest

Today’s page of Talmud focuses on the acts of incest committed by Lot and his two daughters:

נזיר כג, א

אמר רבה בר בר חנה אמר רבי יוחנן מאי דכתיב כי ישרים דרכי ה' וצדיקים ילכו בם ופושעים יכשלו בם... משל ללוט ושתי בנותיו עמו הן שנתכוונו לשם מצוה וצדיקים ילכו בם הוא שנתכוין לשם עבירה ופושעים יכשלו בם

ודלמא הוא נמי לשום מצוה איכווין? אמר רבי יוחנן כל הפסוק הזה על שם עבירה נאמר וישא לוט ותשא אשת אדוניו את עיניה [את עיניו] כי היא ישרה בעיני וירא וירא אותה שכם בן חמור את כל ככר הירדן כי בעד אשה זונה עד ככר לחם כי כלה משקה אלכה אחרי מאהבי נותני לחמי ומימי צמרי ופשתי שמני ושיקויי והא מינס אניס תנא משום רבי יוסי בר רב חוני למה נקוד על וי"ו ובקומה של בכירה לומר שבשכבה לא ידע אבל בקומה ידע ומאי הוה ליה למיעבד מאי דהוה הוה נפקא מינה דלפניא אחרינא לא איבעי למישתי חמרא

Rabbah b. Bar Hana, quoting R. Johanan, said:  The verse, "For the ways of the Lord are right, and the righteous shall walk in them,' but transgressors do stumble therein,"  may be illustrated by the following example...of Lot and his two daughters.  To these [the daughters], whose intention it was to do right,  [applies], 'the righteous shall walk in them', whereas to him [Lot] whose intention it was to commit the transgression [applies], 'but transgressors do stumble therein'.

But perhaps [Lot too had] intention also to do right? — Rabbi Yochanan said [this is not the case]: The entire following verse indicates [Lot's] lustful character....But [Lot] was the victim of compulsion [because the Torah states that he was drunk]?...it was her lying down that he did not notice [in the evening, when he was drunk] but he did notice when she arose [the next morning]. But what could he have done, since it was all over? — The difference is that he should not have drunk wine the next evening [when he had sexual relations with his second daughter]....

Artemisia Gentileschi. Lot and His Daughters, 1636-1638, Toledo Museum of Art.

It's difficult to write about incest, but the Talmud detailed a discussion about father-daughter incest as an example of  the importance of motivation. In this case, the Talmud suggests that Lot's nameless daughters were not to blame for seducing their father, since having witnessed the destruction of Sodom, they believed that the three of them were the last surviving members of humantiy. Lot, on the other hand is given no such pass, and Rabbi Yochanan creatively expounds a series of verses to prove that Lot was immoral to the core.  Hence, Lot's drunken incest could not have been for any noble reason. He was, simply put, and evil person.

Understanding Incest Taboos

Incest taboos are not unique to western society or the Judeo-Chrsitian tradition. They have been identified in at least 250 societies across the world, "including fifth century Iran, the Inca and Mixtec empires, Korea during the Koryo period, pre-conquest Hawaii, the Calusa chiefdom in South Florida, Ponape in the South Pacific, lele and Bushanga in equitorial Africa, and, most famously, Ptolemaic Egypt." But why these taboos are so widespread - and felt so strongly - is a puzzling question.

Some have suggested that the taboo exists because incestuous unions produce genetically inferior offspring. "The taboo was a kind of public health measure" wrote Arthur Wolf in his work Incest Avoidance and the Incest Taboos "enacted for the sake of the minority of people who failed to recognize the danger or lacked the will to take precautionary measures." This explanation is called the hygiene hypothesis, but there are others.  Sigmund Freud  (in Totem and Taboo) suggested it was all about group harmony, while others claimed it was all about group alliances: if you can't procreate with your father or brothers, you must look to another family unit  - or remain celibate.  

“If erotic passion were allowed to invade the precincts of the home it would not merely establish jealousies and competitive elements and disorganize the family but it would subvert the most fundamental bonds of kinship on which the further development of all social relations is based...A society which allowed incest could not develop a stable family; it would therefore be deprived of the strongest foundations of kinship, and this in a primitive community would mean absence of social order.”

— Bronislaw Malinowski. "Culture". Encyclopedia of Social Sciences (4) 1937, 629-630.

The Westermarck Hypothesis and the Kibbutzim

In 1891 the Finnish sociologist Edward Westermark hypothesized that the key to understanding incest taboos was to look at how the young were raised.  Kin raised apart might in fact be interested in each other if they met as adults, while non-kin raised togther would not form sexual bonds, despite being free to do so.  Westermarck's hypothesis soon fell out of favor, but was later re-evaluated on the basis of some natural experiments, one of which occurred on Israeli kibbutzim of the 1930s and 1940s.  In many (or perhaps most?) of these kibbutzim, children were not raised with their parents, but in communal nurseries and houses, where they would live until they graduated from high school.  Despite there being no incest based prohibition among the children, the Israeli sociologist Yonina Talmon found that they rarely married each other.  Talmon's 1964 paper  was followed by a much larger study of over 2,700 marriages; in only thirteen cases had the husband and wife belonged to the same peer group. But there was not a single case of marriage between children who had been brought together before the age of three and reared together.

Incestuous Origins

The Talmud (Nazir 23b) continues the discussion of Lot's incest and contrasts it with the incestuous act of Tamar, who seduced her father-in-law Yehudah:

Tamar engaged in immoral relations [with her father-in-law Yehudah, but because her intentions were noble] kings and prophets descended from her...

Among the descendants of Tamar and Yehudah were King David, and the prophet Isaiah (see Tosafot to Nazir 23b). Arthur Wolf points out that many societies have a legend of incestuous ancestors, and asks why they would trace their descent to an abnormal event predicting evil? There  are a number of possibilities, but here's one that seems especially plausible: 

...myth-makers attribute incest to the ancestors they create to emphasize that they are not ordinary human beings. that they are a special kind of being, more like gods than men. The source of mythical incest would then be the awe inspired by incest rather than a desire to commit incest. (Wolf. Incest Avoidance and the Incest Taboos. Stanford University Press 2014. 116.)

Father-Daughter Incest in American History

The story of Lot and his daughters, told in Bereshit 19:29-38, is not as horribly remote a possibility as we could like to believe.  In her 2009 book Unspeakable: Father-Daughter Incest in American History, Lynn Sacco notes that Marilyn Atler, who was crowned Miss America 1958, was abused by her father for thirteen years.  Sacco found more than “five hundred reports of father-daughter incest, published in more than nine hundred newspaper articles across the country, mostly between 1817 and 1899.” And then something weird happened.  The number of newspaper reports of father-daughter incest dropped off – there were fewer than 140 between 1900 and 1940. Sacco has a fascinating explanation for this: she claims that at the turn of the nineteenth century doctors were able to diagnose (though not yet treat) sexually transmitted diseases with much greater accuracy than ever before. With this came the realization that gonorrhea was “epidemic among girls, including the daughters of the white middle and upper classes.”

“Doctors were not naïve to the fact that men sexually assaulted girls, including their own daughters. But doctors and reformers could not believe that incest occurred frequently enough among white middle- and upper-class Americans to account for the incidence of infection”

— Lynn Stacco. Unspeakable: Father-Daughter Incest in American History. pp.8-9.

But how could so many of these young girl, some as young as five, have become infected? Rather than consider the possibility of a father as the source, “doctors swiftly revised their views about the etiology of gonorrhea, not their assumptions about the sexual behavior of white Americans.” In so doing, they claimed that girls –and girls alone, were susceptible to infection with gonorrhea from “everyday nonsexual objects, including their mothers’ hands, bed linens, other girls, and toilet seats.”

These theories found their way into the non-medical community. For example, the Chicago Society of Social Hygiene issued a pamphlet in 1907 titled For the Protection of Wives and Children from Venereal Disease. It warned about the dangers of disease in girls, but did not suggest that men infected their daughters. Other reformers emphasized the role of “seats of water closets, bath tubs, towels and sponges…” and some blamed class. A Committee of the American Pediatric Society stated that “true gonorrhea affected only indigent and low income patients”and the great lawyer Clarence Darrow wrote in his work Crime; Its Cause and Treatment that that incest “is peculiarly a crime of the weak, the wretched and the poor.” In truth, incest knows no such class boundaries, and the refusal of the medical establishment early last century to face the true scope of father-daughter incest caused tremendous damage to the victims.  The story of Lot and his daughters is unusual - the daughters, do after all, initiate the incest - but at its essence, it is the story of alcohol, eschatology, and family dysfunction. And those factors are with us to this day.  

Nazir 19 ~ The Convert Queen

נזיר יט, ב

 מעשה בהילני המלכה שהלך בנה למלחמה ואמרה אם יבוא בני מן המלחמה בשלום אהא נזירה שבע שנים ובא בנה מן המלחמה והיתה נזירה שבע שנים ובסוף שבע שנים עלתה לארץ והורוה ב"ה שתהא נזירה עוד שבע שנים אחרות ובסוף שבע שנים נטמאת ונמצאת נזירה עשרים ואחת שנה 

A story happened with Queen Helena. Her son went to war and she declared "If my son returns in peace from the war I will be a nezirah for seven years." Her son returned from the war and she was a nezirah for seven years. At the end of these seven years she went up to live in the Land of Israel, and Bet Hillel ruled for her that she must be a nezirah for another seven years [because Bet Hillel ruled that the time period of nezirut observed outside of Israel does not count.] At the end of the [second] period of seven years she became impure [which meant she needed to serve the entire period again], and so she was a nezirah for a total of twenty-one years...(Nazir 19b)

Queen Helena, Patron of the Second Temple

In this passage Queen Helena (died. c. 50 CE) becomes one of the few people identified by name in the Talmud as having become a nazarite. In fact she became a nazarite three times over.  But there is a lot more to her story.  Elsewhere in the Talmud (בבא בתרא יא, א) her son is credited with saving Jerusalem from famine (at least according to Rashi there). The Mishnah in Yoma (37a) records that the Queen dedicated a golden candelabra to the Temple, that was placed over the door which led into its the main courtyard. In addition she donated a tablet on which the section of the sotah (a woman suspected of adultery) was written. 

The Queen in the Writings of Josephus

While the Talmud records a number of stories about Queen Helena, the great Jewish historian Josephus provided some additional information about her life, which corroborates some of the stories told about her in the Talmud.

About this time it was that Helena, Queen of Adiabene, and her son Izates, changed their course of life, and embraced the Jewish customs, and this on the occasion following: Monobazus, the king of Adiabene, who had also the name of Bazeus, fell in love with his sister Helena, and took her to be his wife, and begat her with child. But as he was in bed with her one night, he laid his hand upon his wife's belly, and fell asleep, and seemed to hear a voice, which bid him take his hand off his wife's belly, and not hurt the infant that was therein, which, by God's providence, would be safely born, and have a happy end. This voice put him into disorder; so he awaked immediately, and told the story to his wife; and when his son was born, he called him Izates...

A certain Jewish merchant, whose name was Ananias, got among the women that belonged to the king, and taught them to worship God according to the Jewish religion. He, moreover, by their means, became known to Izates, and persuaded him, in like manner, to embrace that religion; he also, at the earnest entreaty of Izates, accompanied him when he was sent for by his father to come to Adiabene; it also happened that Helena, about the same time, was instructed by a certain other Jew and went over to them...

 But as to Helena, the king's mother, when she saw that the affairs of Izates's kingdom were in peace, and that her son was a happy man, and admired among all men, and even among foreigners, by the means of God's providence over him, she had a mind to go to the city of Jerusalem, in order to worship at that temple of God which was so very famous among all men, and to offer her thank-offerings there. So she desired her son to give her leave to go there; upon which he gave his consent to what she desired very willingly, and made great preparations for her journey, and gave her a great deal of money, and she went down to the city Jerusalem, her son conducting her on her journey a great way. Now her coming was of very great advantage to the people of Jerusalem; for whereas a famine did oppress them at that time, and many people died for want of what was necessary to procure food withal, Queen Helena sent some of her servants to Alexandria with money to buy a great quantity of corn, and others of them to Cyprus, to bring a cargo of dried figs. And as soon as they were come back, and had brought those provisions, which was done very quickly, she distributed food to those that were in want of it, and left a most excellent memorial behind her of this gift, which she bestowed on our whole nation. And when her son Izates was informed of this famine, he sent great sums of money to the men in Jerusalem...(Josephus, Antiquities, XX, 2.)

The Queen in the Writings of Jacob Neusner

In 1964 the (then young) historian Jacob Neusner published a paper in the Journal of Biblical Literature titled The Conversion of Adiaben to Judaism: A New Perspective.  Neusner claimed that the account of Josephus about the conversion of Queen Helena and the Adiabene's ruling family to Judaism "cannot reasonably be rejected,"  and he located Adiabene in ancient Assyria, in what is today called Armenia.  He reminded his readers that the Queen was married to her brother Monobazus (which is apparently what royalty did in that part of the world) and that it was Monobazus who was first converted to Judaism.  But he goes one step further, and asks what political motivation lay behind this conversion.

His answer is this: the Jews of the Near and Middle East in the first century were "a numerous and politically important group" and "in Armenia, as well as in other areas, Jewish dynasts held power, if briefly..."  In addition, "Palestinian Jewry was a powerful and militarily significant group. It was by no means out of the question for Palestine to regain its independence from Rome, perhaps in concert with the petty kings of the Roman orient." By converting to Judaism, the House of Adiabene might position itself as a powerful player should the Roman empire fall. In this way, noted Neusner, Queen Helena and her royal house were repeating a maneuver made half a century earlier by Herod, who, while remaining loyal to Rome, had "tried to win friends in other Roman dependencies, as well as Babylonian Jewry." In fact the Adiabenes went a step further than had Herod, and encouraged the revolution against Rome in 66 CE. They may have done so, suggested Neusner, in order to gain the throne in Jerusalem itself.

 If the Jews had won the war against Rome, who might expect to inherit the Jewish throne? It was not likely that Agrippa II could return to the throne, for he and his family were discredited by their association with Rome and opposition to the war. Some Jews probably expected that the Messiah would rule Judea, but this could not seriously have affected the calculations of the Adiabenians. Indeed, from their viewpoint, they might reasonably hope to come to power. They were, after all, a ruling family; their conversion could not matter to the Palestinian Jews any more than Agrippa I's irregular lineage had prevented him from winning popular support. Their active support of the war, their earlier benefactions to the city and people in time of famine, their royal status, and the support they could muster from across the Euphrates, would have made them the leading, if not the only, candidates for the throne of Jerusalem.

Queen Helena's Final Resting Place

Neusner concedes that the conversion of Helene and Izates was not only a political act. Rather, he suggests that it is important to take note of the political consequences of their religious action.  It would seem, though, that Queen Helena's family recognized the deeply religious consequences of her decision to embrace Judaism.  Josephus later records that when, having returned to Adiabene, the Queen died, her son "sent her bones...to Jerusalem, and gave order that they be buried at the pyramids their mother had erected" (Josephus, Antiquities, XX, 4). This suggests that, whatever else it was, Queen Helena's conversion was also recognized by her family as a religious act; her son recognized her connection to Jerusalem, and arranged for her to be interred there, near what is now the American Colony Hotel. Today, we remember the Queen with a street named after her in downtown Jerusalem. We also remember her as a woman who donated much to the Second Temple, and perhaps too, as the convert Queen who became a nazarite.

Tu Bishvat ~ The Oldest Palm Tree and its Roots

According to the Hebrew calendar, this Sunday night is the fifteenth day of Shevat, and is celebrated as the New Year for Trees. In honor of this we present a re-post about the roots of the date palm tree, with a terrific new ending.

בבא בתרא כז ,ב

אמר עולא אילן הסמוך למצר בתוך שש עשרה אמה גזלן הוא ואין מביאין ממנו בכורים עשרה אמה... ותו לא והא תנן מרחיקין את האילן מן הבור כ"ה אמה אמר אביי מיזל טובא אזלי אכחושי לא מכחשי אלא עד שש עשרה אמה טפי לא מכחשי

Ulla said: An individual who owns a tree that is within sixteen cubits of a boundary is a robber, [since it draws nourishment from the neighbor’s land,] and one does not bring first fruits from it, [since that would be a mitzva that is fulfilled by means of a transgression]... But do roots extend sixteen cubits and no more? Didn’t we learn in a Mishnah (25b): One must distance a tree twenty-five cubits from a cistern? [This indicates that tree roots reach more than sixteen cubits.] Abaye said: The roots extend farther, but they drain the earth of nutrients within sixteen cubits; with regard to an area any more distant than that, they do not drain the earth.

The Root Systems of the Date Palm Tree

While the Talmud doesn't specify the kind of tree that must be distanced from others, in Mesepotamia the most likely candidate was the Date Palm, Phoenix dactylifera. These trees grow to a height of 75 feet, and you've seen plenty of them if you've driven south towards Eilat.  Here is their root system:

USDA image from Chao. C, Krueger R. The Date Palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.): Overview of Biology, Uses, and Cultivation. Hort. Science 2007 42(5); 1077-1082.

To whom shall we turn to get information about the size of that root system? The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, of course.  According to a helpful document by a member of their Date Production Support Programme, "Roots are found as far as 25m from the palm and deeper than 6m, but 85 percent of the roots are distributed in the zone of 2 m deep and 2m on both lateral sides in a deep loamy soil." But the 25m (82 foot) roots are an extreme. Most of the roots extend about 10m (about 32 feet).

Table from here.

It would appear that Abaye was referring to the average reach of the zone II roots. Assuming that a talmudic amah is between 48-57cm, Abaye's figure would put the zone II distance of at 7.6-9.1 m. That's right in keeping with the 10m average figure from the UN document. It is good to know that on these important matters, the UN and the Jewish People are in agreement.

“צַ֭דִּיק כַּתָּמָ֣ר יִפְרָ֑ח כְּאֶ֖רֶז בַּלְּבָנ֣וֹן יִשְׂגֶּֽה׃

The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree”

— (Psalm 92:12).

Now, about that oldest palm tree

In recent post, the Hebrew University published a fascinating piece called The Magical Reincarnation of the Ancient Date Tree. In 1963, Professor Yigal Yadin found some seeds from a palm in the ruins of Herod’s palace on Masada. After some radiocarbon testing, they were dated to around 155 BCE and 64 CE, making them around two thousand years old. These ancient seeds were held at Bar-Ilan University, waiting for a clever person to see if they could be re-animated into baby palm trees.

In 2005, that person turned up. She was Dr Elaine Solowey of the Arava Institute in the Negev. To get the seeds into a suitable state to germinate, Dr Solowey, an expert in endangered medical herbs, incubated them in a baby’s bottle warmer, and slowly hydrated them. Then some growth hormones and fertilizers were added, and… a baby sapling sprouted. Dr Solowey named the sapling Methusalah, after the person who had the longest lifespan recorded in the Bible: 969 years. A male sapling later grown from the same batch of seeds was named “Adam”, and a female sapling was named Hannah. The trees flourished and produced dates, which were later harvested.

(These old-new palm trees were once listed by the Guiness Book of Records, but they are not the oldest trees in the world. This title went to to a bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva) known as Prometheus. In 1963 it was cut down (!) from Mt Wheeler in Nevada. After counting its 4,867 yearly rings, and adjusting for slower growth rate due to the harsh environment in which it grew, the tree was estimated to have been an incredible 5,200 years old.)

So next time you are near Ketura just north of Eilat, take a detour and go visit Methusalah and his siblings. Actually, it is a wonderful activity for this Monday, Tu Bishvat. Say hi from me.

Dr. Elaine Solowey (left), Methuselah (center) and Dr. Sarah Sallon, (right), circa 2008. Courtesy of the Arava Institute. Image from here.