Nazir 59 ~ Hair Removal and the Influence of Society on Halakha

Specially drawn for Talmudology by the incredibly talented Yosef Iskowitz.

At the end of the period of being a Nazir, a series of actions and sacrifices must be brought. One of these involves shaving the head, which allows the Talmud to digress into a lengthy discursus on men shaving the hair on the rest of the body:

נזיר נט, א

אָמַר רַבִּי חִיָּיא בַּר אַבָּא אָמַר רַבִּי יוֹחָנָן: הַמַּעֲבִיר בֵּית הַשֶּׁחִי וּבֵית הָעֶרְוָה לוֹקָה מִשּׁוּם ״לֹא יִלְבַּשׁ גֶּבֶר שִׂמְלַת אִשָּׁה״. מֵיתִיבִי: הַעֲבָרַת שֵׂיעָר אֵינָהּ מִדִּבְרֵי תוֹרָה אֶלָּא מִדִּבְרֵי סוֹפְרִים. הוּא דְּאָמַר כִּי הַאי תַּנָּא, דְּתַנְיָא: הַמַּעֲבִיר בֵּית הַשֶּׁחִי וּבֵית הָעֶרְוָה הֲרֵי זֶה עוֹבֵר מִשּׁוּם ״לֹא יִלְבַּשׁ גֶּבֶר שִׂמְלַת אִשָּׁה״

Rabbi Chiyyah bar Abba said that Rabbi Yochanan said: A man who removes the hair of the armpit or the pubic hair is flogged, due to the prohibition: “A man shall not put on a woman’s garment” (Deuteronomy 22:5). The Gemara raises an objection from a baraita: The removal of hair is not prohibited by Torah law but by rabbinic law. How then does Rabbi Yochanan say that he is flogged, which by definition is a punishment for individuals who have transgressed a Torah law? The Gemara answers: It was he who said this halakha in accordance with the opinion of that tanna, as it is taught in a baraita: A man who removes the hair of the armpit or the pubic hair violates the prohibition of: “A man shall not put on a woman’s garment.”

Commenting on the pasuk in the Torah which is the source for the prohibition (“A man shall not put on a woman’s garment”) Rashi cited today’s page of Talmud:

ולא ילבש גבר שמלת אשה. לֵילֵךְ לֵישֵׁב בֵּין הַנָּשִׁים. דָּ"אַ — שֶׁלֹּא יַשִּׁיר שְׂעַר הָעֶרְוָה וְשֵׂעָר שֶׁל בֵּית הַשֶּׁחִי (נזיר נ"ט)

NEITHER SHALL A MAN PUT ON A WOMAN’S GARMENT in order to go and stay unnoticed amongst women. Another explanation of the second part of the text is: it implies that a man should not remove the hair of the genitals and the hair beneath the armpit (Nazir 59a).

As we will see, Rashi was addressing a European audience in which the male depilation of body hair was indeed uncommon. But it turns out that now, many men, along with many women do shave their body hair. Here, for example are the findings of a paper published just a few years ago in the American Journal of Men’s Health:

“Pubic hair grooming is a growing phenomenon and is associated with body image and sexual activity. A nationally representative survey of noninstitutionalized adults aged 18 to 65 years residing in the United States was conducted. Differences in demographic and sexual characteristics between groomers and non-groomers were explored. Four thousand one hundred and ninety-eight men completed the survey. Of these men, 2,120 (50.5%) reported regular pubic hair grooming. The prevalence of grooming decreases with age, odds ratio = 0.95 (95% confidence interval [0.94, 0.96]), p < .001. ... The majority of men report grooming in preparation for sexual activity with a peak prevalence of 73% among men aged 25 to 34 years, followed by hygiene (61%).

So today, Talmudology will take you on a tour of the history of Jewish male body hair shaving. It’s a bit of a niche, I know, but an interesting one, made all the easier by reading a detailed article (34 pages plus a 10 page appendix!) on the topic by Steven (Tzvi) Adams and published in Hakirah (which you can find here). What follows is all taken from Adams, with thanks to him.

“The new male hair removal trend of secular society raises the
possibility that halakhah should no longer consider such grooming a
distinctly feminine behavior and men should therefore be permitted to
remove this hair. A survey of the halakhic literature shows that this is
hardly the first time in post-Talmudic history that halakhah confronted a
reality in which it was normal for men to shave their private body hair.”

— Steven Adams. Male Body Hair Depilation in Jewish Law. Hakirah 29 (Winter 2021): 197-231.

Let’s start, as we should, with the Torah. As we have noted, there is a general injunction against a man wearing a woman’s clothing, stated in Devarim 22:5:

לֹא־יִהְיֶ֤ה כְלִי־גֶ֙בֶר֙ עַל־אִשָּׁ֔ה וְלֹא־יִלְבַּ֥שׁ גֶּ֖בֶר שִׂמְלַ֣ת אִשָּׁ֑ה כִּ֧י תוֹעֲבַ֛ת יְהֹוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֶ֖יךָ כל־עֹ֥שֵׂה אֵֽלֶּה׃ 

A woman must not put on man’s apparel, nor shall a man wear women’s clothing; for whoever does these things is abhorrent to your God.

The rabbis of the Talmud expanded this prohibition to include a man shaving his body hair, which was seen as an activity primarily associated with women. Things start to get interesting when, in societies outside of the Jewish community, body shaving is performed by both men and women. Then such shaving is no longer a “womanly activity” or at least not solely one, and perhaps it should be permitted in Jewish law.

Islamic Hygiene Regulations and their influence on HALACHA

Jewish society is strongly influenced by the norms of the larger cultures in which it flourishes. And so, in the 9th 10th centuries, when Islamic hygiene regulations required that Muslim men shave their body hair, it wasn’t long before the Edut Hamizrach Jews living amongst them adopted this practice too. Meantime, the Ashkenazi Jews of Europe lived alongside their Christian neighbours who had no such requirement. In fact, Christian society by and large associated body hear with virility. And so, at least early on (by which I mean the 11th and 12 centuries) the question was never raised there.

“We were given a time limit with regard to trimming the moustache, shaving pubic hairs, plucking the armpit hairs and clipping the nails. We were not to leave that for more than forty days.… the Prophet said: “The fitra are five: Circumcision, shaving the pubes, plucking the armpit hairs, clipping the nails and taking from the mustache.””

— Hadith of Sunan An-Nasai (8th century), Book 48,Hadith 1.

It is therefore not surprising that the tenth century father and son leaders of the Jews of Iraq, the Gaonim Sherira and Hai, allowed the men of their community to shave their body hair. Here is how they justified their ruling:

ובאותם השנים לא היה מנהג הגברים להעביר בית השחי ובית הערוה שלהם והיו רואים מי שעושה כן כנשים שהם מתקשטות אלא היו מגדלים שער גופן עד שמניעין לגדלן מאליו על כן היה אסור להם

…

אבל אנשי מקומות הללו בזמן הזה אין בין הנשים והאנשים הפרש בזה אלא כששומעים כי יש הפרש במקומות תמהים מזאת ואומרים הללו בעלי גבורה וכלנו בעיניהם כנשים לפיכך מותר הדבר עכשיו באלו המקומות וכיוצא בהם התר גמור אין בו חשש כל עיקר

…Men [in times of the Talmud] would allow their body hair to grow out, and therefore depilation of body hair was forbidden for them... However, men in our countries in modern times are no different than women in this regard. Rather, when they hear that in other countries men do [not share their depilating practice] they are surprised. [Our men] exclaim [in jest] and say, “[those men] think they are so masculine and we are in their eyes as women!” Therefore, the matter [of male body depilation] is permitted entirely nowadays in these countries and other countries [where the practice is similar], it contains no possibility of prohibition at all…

That which you asked whether [a man] may remove hair from his pubes and armpit, you should know that when the Merciful One wrote, “the garment of a man shall not be put on a woman” (Deut. 22:5), and [now the Diaspora] is scattered to the four corners of the world, and every corner has unique clothing styles, behavior, and adornments – therefore, any practice engaged in by local [non- Jewish] men is permissible for the Jewish men who reside amongst them, even though such is the conduct of women of a different country...

(And by the way, this is not the only example of the influence of Islamic law on Jewish custom. Adams notes that although the rabbis of the Talmud abolished the requirement for a man to immerse in a mikvah (ritual birth) after a seminal emission, it was reinstated for the Jews of Iraq, when the ge’onim noted that a ritual bathing was required by an Islamic law known as ghusl jinabat.)

“The 9th century transformation in Jewish male practice from the Talmudic to geonic era coincides with the spread of Islamic hadith which required of adherents pubic and axillary hair shaving. ”

— Stephen H. Adams. Male Body Hair Depilation in Jewish Law. Hakirah, Winter 2021: 197-231.

This depilation-is-ok ruling was accepted by the Rif (Rabbi Isaac al-Fasi, d. 1103), and followed during the middle ages, and by the Jews of Turkey in the eighteenth century. Indeed “there are rabbinic testimonies to the continuation of this Egyptian custom in the 19th century, and again in the 20th century.”

Meanwhile, In Ashkenaz

All this is in stark contrast to the practice of the Jews of Ashkenaz, where the prevailing custom among the Gentile population was not to shave the body hair. “European painting and sculptures from the 13th through 16th centuries” wrote Adams “include body hair in male but generally not female art.” The rabbis of Ashkenaz wrote nothing on the topic, which “can surely be attributed to a lack of relevance;” When they did write on the topic, they noted that manly men had body hair, which was the source of their strength (דע כי השערות יוצאים מהחום של הגוף, והוא סוד הגבורה). Only three early rishonim (the Rashba, Avigdor Cohen of Vienna and the Meiri) prohibited the practice.

Here are Adams’ conclusions, in case you are too busy preparing for Pesach to read the entire paper:

• The geonim describe the cross-dressing (lo yilbash) laws as they apply to male body hair removal as being subjective; they change and adapt to custom according to place and time.

• In contrast, when confronted with shifting male grooming customs, several European rishonim (Rashba, Avigdor of Vienna, and Meiri) viewed body hair removal with objectivity and saw no room for adaptation in application of the laws of crossdressing.

• Jewish men in Muslim countries shaved their body hair because their society considered this to be a hygienic practice. The society in which they lived had a positive understanding of depilation (as part of body cleanliness) and to the ge’onim were inclined to interpret the prohibition of lo yilbash subjectively.

• Jewish men in Christian countries refrained from removing their body hair in continuation of the tradition from Talmudic times and because their contemporary culture equated male body hair with virility.

• Because European society had a negative view of male depilation, several European rishonim were disposed to rigid objectivity in applying the lo yilbash laws.

• From a historical perspective, during most of the past approximately 1,200 years, the majority of global Jewish men have practiced body hair removal. Only in recent centuries as demographics shifted to increased Jewish populations in Europe did this change.

All of which goes to show that the despite claims that the Jewish people remained apart from the societies in which they lived, they were indeed influenced by those same societies. It doesn’t matter if that society wore fur hats, or removed their body hair. Just not at the same time.

Public Lecture at the Library of Congress - The Eleventh Plague

I am delighted to share that on Wednesday March 29th at noon I will be giving a public lecture at the Library of Congress. It will include several treasures from the Library’s collection that illustrate the hidden story of the Jewish People and Pandemics. If you are in the area come and say hello!

From the Talmudology Purim Archives ~ Gender Fluidity, Male Lactation and Mordechai

Editor’s note: Unless you live in Australia, or New Zealand, or Jerusalem, today is the Jewish Festival of Purim, on which there is a tradition to create and recite spoofs called Purim Torah. These spoofs are usually very clever and witty, and may require a deep knowledge of rabbinic texts. But this post is not Purim Torah, although it may read as such if you have drunk a little too much alcohol. And drinking too much alcohol is definitely a Purim tradition. So drink up and read on…and I promise I am not making this stuff up.

Milk Producing Male Goats of The Talmud (MPMGOTT)

In the Talmud in tractate Chullin there is a discussion of about the prohibition of cooking meat and milk together. There are several teachings that are derived from the three places in the Torah where we read “You shall not cook a kid in its mother’s milk” (לא תְבַשֵּׁל גְּדִיח בַּחֲלֵב אִמּוֹ) Here is one of them, attributed to Shmuel:

חולין קיג, ב

בחלב אמו” ולא בחלב זכר”

“…In its mother’s milk” indicates that one is not liable for cooking meat in the milk of a male goat

A male goat that grows udders and produces milk? Here is how the great exegete Rashi (1040-1105) explains the Talmud:

ולא בחלב זכר - שהיה לו חלב מועט מן הדדים כגון אם נשתנה והיו לו דדים

“And not in the milk of a male goat”: This means that there was a small amount of milk from the udder. For example if the male goat changed and grew udders.

To understand what on earth is going on here, we need to take a detour into the strange world of biologic gender fluidity. So strap in and here we go.

Fish

In their helpful 2003 paper Group Sex, Sex Change, and Parasitic Males: Sexual Strategies Among the Fishes and Their Neurobiological Correlates (published, obviously, in the Annual Review of Sex Research) the authors note that there is “tremendous sexual diversity exhibited by fishes” Consider for example the clownfish, also known as the anemonefish. They are sequential hermaphrodites, and first develop into males. These colorful fish thrive unharmed in the poisonous tentacles of the sea anemone, and while several fish may live within the same anemone, there is only one pair that mate. Should the dominant egg-laying female die, one of the largest males steps up and does what needs to be done. He changes into a female. This male-to-female change is called protandry. Other fish, like the sea wrasse, are all born female, and as the need arises change into a male. This trick is carried out in at least 500 species of fish, and is called protogyny.

Birds

The male Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) is a bright red color with a black mask over its beak and eyes. The female is a drab olive color, with a grey mask. In 2008 the ornithological world was rocked when a bird was sighted that was half-red and half-olive. Meaning it was half-male and half-female. The bird, sighted in the Black Hawk Forest Nature Preserve in northwestern Illinois, “was perched in a cockspur hawthorn tree.” Its right side was male, and its left, female. The cardinal evaded capture so it was not possible to analyze its genetic makeup. To be clear, this was not a bird that changed sex; it was one that appeared to be both sexes.

Humans

We all should have been taught in school that our gender is determined by which sex chromosomes we receive. If we get two female chromosomes -XX- (one from mom and one from dad) we are female, and if we get one X from mom and a Y from dad -XY- we are male. But like all things, it’s a little more complicated than that. In the 1980s, British researchers discovered the sex-determining gene on a tiny bit of the male Y chromosome and named it the sry gene. That gene tells the body to develop into a male or female appearing body. Sometimes the sry gene sneaks off of the Y gene and makes its way into the DNA of an XX female. As a result, she will develop male anatomy while genetically remaining an XX female. (Please read that sentence again, just to be sure you have understood it.) And sometimes the sry gene on an XY genetic male can mutate and not work. In that case, the genetic male appears to have the organs of a female, which is what occurs in Swyer syndrome. (You can hear more about the amazing sex-changing effects of sry in this fascinating podcast.)

Ready for more? In a small community in the Dominican Republic there have been a number of cases in which little girls grow a penis and turn into little boys. (Again, please re-read that sentence.) These observations were first reported to the scientific community in 1974, and are caused by a deficiency of the steroid 5a-Reductase. Here is how the BBC explained what is going on when they reported about it in 2015.

When you are conceived you normally have a pair of X chromosomes if you are to become a girl and a set of XY chromosomes if you are destined to be male. For the first weeks of life in womb you are neither…Then, around eight weeks after conception, the sex hormones kick in. If you're genetically male the Y chromosome instructs your gonads to become testicles and sends testosterone to a structure called the tubercle, where it is converted into a more potent hormone called dihydro-testosterone. This in turn transforms the tubercle into a penis. If you're female and you don't make dihydro-testosterone then your tubercle becomes a clitoris…the reason [some genetic males] don't have male genitalia when they are born is because they are deficient in an enzyme called 5-alpha-reductase, which normally converts testosterone into dihydro-testosterone.

So the boys, despite having an XY chromosome, appear female when they are born. At puberty, like other boys, they get a second surge of testosterone. This time the body does respond and they sprout muscles, testes and a penis.

So there you have it. Little girls, brought up as little girls, turn into boys, who develop male genitalia, and live as men. You see, they were never really girls in the XX sense. They were XY boys whose lack of sex hormones caused them to look like girls. Which brings us back to that page in the Talmud and the strange case of…

That male goat that produced milk

We have seen that there is great deal of natural gender fluidity in the animal world (and if for no other reason, this should make us more sensitive and understanding of those people who want to change their birth gender). But what about that milk-producing male goat? Well according to the website dedicated to “Goat Milk Stuff,” as bizarre as it seems, “there have even been bucks that have been known to give milk (yes, all bucks have teats, and no, a milking buck is not normal).” This was not a case of a male-to-female transformation. It was a case of male lactation.

Writing in the 13th century in his classic commentary on the Talmud called Bet Habechirah, Menachem ben Solomon Meiri, known as the Meiri(1249–1306) wrote that he had seen examples of male milk-producing goats:

בית הבחירה. מכון התלמוד הישראלי השלם.ירושלים, תשל׳ד 432

“There are a few male [goats] in whom the works of creation are slightly changed and whose nipples become larger such that they produce a little milk. And we have seen them with our own eyes...”

— Meiri, Bet Habechirah Chullin, 432

So too, did Khalifa al Nuaimi, a shepherd in the United Arab Emirates: Here is the 2009 report from The National, a newspaper in the United Arab Emirates.

As one of his prized male goats trotted up for some feed, he noticed the animal had seemingly developed a large udder. While he could not quite believe his eyes, the luckless creature proceeded to produce milk on demand, much like his female companions in the pen.

The local farmer made the discovery four days ago at his goat pen in Masakin, a suburb of Al Ain, the government news agency, WAM, reported yesterday. The animal's male organs are said to have been pushed back by the udder, described as "big and bulky". Mr al Nuaimi got a half-litre of good-quality milk from the goat. Dr Martin Wyness, of the British Veterinary Centre in Abu Dhabi, said it was unusual but not unheard of for male mammals to produce milk. "It's absolutely possible," he said.

what may be happening

The structure of the cells involved in producing milk in the male goat has been studied using immunofluorescence and electron microscopy techniques. It turns out they are smaller but higher in number than those found in normal males, which suggests that the anterior pituitary gland, which controls their function is probably acting in a weird way.

Another explanation of the milk-producing male goats of the Talmud (MPMGOTT) is that it is linked to estrogen-like compounds in the plants upon which they were feeding.

“It is now known that more than 50 plant species contain estrogen mimics known as phytoestrogens. Although the mechanisms are not completely understood, several plant secondary metabolites…can mimic the effects of steroidal estrogens. These non-steroidal compounds have similar overall structures or active sites as natural steroidal estrogen and can compete for binding sites on estrogen receptor proteins. Thus, plant compounds can have effects similar to endogenous estrogens”

This comes from an intriguing 2008 paper, Male lactation: why, why not and is it care? published in Trends in Ecology and Evolution. It points out that there are other mammalian species in which the male has been known to lactate, including sheep, rats, free-ranging Dayak fruit bats in Malaysia and the masked flying fox bats of Papua New Guinea. Male lactation was also recorded “in World War II prisoner of war camps when malnourished detainees were later liberated and provided with adequate nutrition. During the period of limited food supply, the prisoners suffered liver, testicular and pituitary atrophy” which messed things up. Once fully nourished, the lactation quickly ended.

But whatever the cause, Shmuel was neither drunk nor hallucinating when he claimed that male goats can produce milk. Because sometimes they do.

mordechai lactating on demand

Male lactation. It’s not just for goats and bats. Human males might do it too. Here is a story told in the Talmud (Shabbat 53b) and knowing what we now do, perhaps it not as fanciful as it might seem.

שבת נג,ב

מעשה באחד שמתה אשתו והניחה בן לינק ולא היה לו שכר מניקה ליתן ונעשה לו נס ונפתחו לו דדין כשני דדי אשה והניק את בנו

There was an incident where a man’s wife died, and she left him a son to nurse, and he did not have money to pay for a wet-nurse. And a miracle was performed on his behalf, and he developed breasts like the two breasts of a woman, and he nursed his son.

That’s a pretty impressive miracle, although it may seem a little less miraculous now that we understand so much about the role of the anterior pituitary gland. This father is not identified in the Talmud, but another lactating male is. And his name was Mordechai, the hero of the Purim story we read today. In the Book of Esther (2:7) we read וַיְהִ֨י אֹמֵ֜ן אֶת־הֲדַסָּ֗ה - that Mordechai “raised” or “sustained” Esther. Let’s pickup the story in Beresheet Rabbah (30:8), compiled between 300 and 500 CE.

מָרְדְּכַי זָן וּפִרְנֵס, אָמַר רַבִּי יוּדָן פַּעַם אַחַת חִזֵּר עַל כָּל הַמֵּנִיקוֹת וְלֹא מָצָא לְאֶסְתֵּר לְאַלְתָּר מֵינִיקָה, וְהָיָה מֵינִיקָהּ הוּא, רַבִּי בֶּרֶכְיָה וְרַבִּי אַבָּהוּ בְּשֵׁם רַבִּי אֱלִיעֶזֶר בָּא לוֹ חָלָב וְהָיָה מֵינִיקָהּ. כַּד דָּרַשׁ רַבִּי אַבָּהוּ בְּצִבּוּרָא גָּחוֹךְ צִבּוּרָא לְקָלֵיהּ,

But did Mordecai really feed and sustain Esther? R. Yudan said: On one occasion he went round to all the wet nurses but could not find one for Esther, so he himself suckled her. R. Berekiah and R. Abbahu said in the name of R. Eleazar: Milk came to him and he suckled her [and he never even tried to find a wet nurse]. When R. Abbahu taught this publicly, the congregation laughed…

They laughed. Of course they did. It sounded like Purim Torah. But it can happen. Just ask those lactating goats. Now that’s some real Purim Torah.

happy purim from Talmudology

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Nazir 39 ~ Lice, and the Oldest Canaanite Sentence in the World

In today’s page of Talmud, we read of an important dispute: does hair grow from its roots, or its tips?

איבעיא להו האי מזיא מלתחת רבי או מלעיל למאי?... ת"ש מהא אינבא חיה דקאים בעיקבא דבינתא ואי סלקא דעתך מלתחת רבי ברישא דבינתא בעי למיקם. לעולם מלתחת רבי ואגב חיותא נחית ואזיל אינבא

ת"ש אינבא מתה ברישא דבינתא ואי סלקא דעתך מלעיל רבי בעיקבא דבינתא בעי למיקם התם נמי משום דלית בה חילא שרוגי שריגא ואזיל...

A question was asked: Does hair grow from the roots or the tips?...Let us suggest an answer from the live nit [or louse - meaning is not certain] which is found at the root of a strand [of hair]. Now if the hair grew from the root, shouldn't the nit be found at the tip? [The Talmud rejects this suggestion:] The growth may well be from the tip, but the nit, being alive, continually moves down [towards the root].

Let us suggest an answer from the case of a dead nit [or louse, that is found] at the end of a strand [of hair].  If the hair grows from the end, shouldn't the dead nit be found near the root? [The Talmud rejects this suggestion too:]  Perhaps the dead nit has no power [to grasp the hair] and so as the hair grows from the root, the nit slides.

The louse nit (egg) with its adherent cylindrical sheath cemented to the hair shaft.  The free distal end (arrow) would be directed towards the hair tip.  The egg has a domed operculum (arrow) that contains air holes, allowing the maturing larvae to breath.From Burkhat el al.  The adherent cylindrical nit structure and its chemical denaturation in vitro. Arch. Pediatric Adolescent Medicine 1988. 152; 711.

Pediculosis Humanus Capitas

Pediculosis Humanus capitas is the long scientific name of the tiny head louse.  The female, less than 3mm long, lives for about a month, and in that time lays over three hundred eggs.  The eggs are laid on a shaft of hair close to the scalp, where, warmed by the skin of their itchy host, they incubate for two weeks before hatching.  The new lice emerge, grow for about 12 days, mate, and lay their eggs, and the cycle continues. Humans are the only known host of these lice, and somewhere in this cycle you as a parent may get a call to come and take your child out of school because they have been found to have head lice, or nits, the name given to their eggs.  About 15% of school age children in the UK have head lice, while in the US estimates range from 6-12 million infestations per year. In the US, the cost to treat those millions of infestations is more than $350 million.

True story: Many years ago while working in an emergency department in Boston, I received a call from the (warm and loving Jewish) preschool my children then attended.  My daughter had head lice, and so she could not attend class. I gently explained that I could not leave my shift in the ED to come and get her for as trivial a reason as head lice, but the school was adamant. She remained outside the classroom until arrangements to pick here up were made.  I do hope the psychological damage was minimal.

Updated true story: That daughter, now herself a mother and a pediatrician, and living far from Boston, recently received a letter from a Jewish preschool informing parents that children in whom hair lice had been found would be sent home. She wrote a gentle email to the preschool director, pointing out that both the American Academy of Pediatrics and the National Association of School Nurses have produced clear, evidence based guidance that states the following:

Both the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the CDC advocate for the following practices to be discontinued:

- whole classroom screening,

- exclusion for nits or live lice,

- notification to others except for parents/guardians of students with head lice infestations

But her concerns fell on deaf early childhood learning ears. The preschool declined to change their policy. I suppose we should be happy that our preschools are following their mesorah, evidence be damned.

“The AAP states that head lice screening programs in schools have not been proven to have a significant effect over time on the incidence of head lice in the school setting, are not cost-effective, and may stigmatize children suspected of having head lice. ”

— American Academy of Pediatrics Updates Report on Controlling and Treating Head Lice in Children & Adolescents. September 2022

Head Lice in Antiquity

Head lice have been with us for a long, long time, as evidenced by the Talmud's clear acquaintance with them.  Amazingly though, remains of a head louse have been identified on a louse comb from the Roman period that was discovered near the Dead Sea. (Even older remains have been found on the hair from Egyptian mummies, and nine-thousand year old lice eggs were found on human remains in Nahal Hemar near the Dead Sea.) "The comb was most probably used by inhabitants of the village of En Gedi, who were preparing a place of refuge in the cave, which would have been well equipped with food in baskets, storage jars and a large water pool before the end of the Bar Kokba Revolt in 135 CE." 

Wooden comb found in the Cave of the Pool, near Nahal David in the Dead Sea region. It was discovered in 1961.  From Mumcouglu and Hadas. Head Louse (Pediculus humanus capitis) Remains in a Louse Comb from the Roman Period Excavated in the Dead Sea Region. Israel Exploration Journal, Vol. 61, No. 2 (2011), pp. 223-229 

“May this [ivory] tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard”

— Engraving on ivory lice comb c1700 BCE.

In 2022 the Jerusalem Journal of Archeology published a paper that described the discovery in Lachish of an ivory comb with an inscription in early Canaanite script. It contains seventeen letters, in early pictographic style, which form seven words expressing a plea against lice. This makes it “by far the oldest alphabetic inscription that contains a full sentence.” It dates to around 1700 BCE - only a century after most scholars believe the alphabet was invented.

Here is how it was reported by the Biblical Archeology Society just four months ago:

So what does the oldest Canaanite sentence say? “May this [ivory] tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard,” a fitting inscription to grace a comb. Remarkably, analysis of the comb provided evidence that this inscription, possibly termed a spell, was effective, as the remains of a louse were discovered on one of the comb’s teeth.

Crafted of elephant ivory, likely imported from Egypt, the comb would have been a prestige object, owned by a wealthy family. “It would have been like a diamond today, a crème de la crème luxury item. Others likely had lice combs too, but made of wood that would have decayed,” Yosef Garfinkel, Lachish excavator and a co-author of the study, told Haaretz. The tiny size of the comb (it measures just over an inch long) left little room for the 17 Proto-Canaanite letters written on it, which together make up seven words.

According to epigrapher Christopher Rollston of George Washington University, “Of course, this is also an object that was commissioned by, and owned by, a very wealthy family. After all, who else would have the money to commission a scribe to write an inscription on a hairbrush! The high caliber of the script and orthography, the fact that it is written on a prestige object, and the fact that it was found at a strategic military site, combine to make the most convincing conclusion that it was written by a trained, professional scribe.”

Although the teeth of the comb were broken off in antiquity, their bases remain. One side of the comb featured six thick teeth, used to untangle knots. The other side had 14 finer teeth, used to remove lice.

The ivory comb was uncovered during excavations of the famous site of Lachish in the Shephelah region of southern Israel. However, the comb itself was found in a secondary deposit. Because of this, it was not possible to date the comb according to other finds in the area. Instead, the comb’s date was determined through paleography (the form of the comb’s letters). According to the team, analysis of the script showed that it was very archaic, with several features that do not show up in later versions of the Canaanite script.

Remains of a head louse nymph between the teeth of the Lachish comb. From here.

chimen abramsky, IsAac Bashevis SINGER & Head Lice

In 2015, Sasha Abramsky published The House of Twenty Thousand Books, about the life and library of his grandfather Chimen Abramsky (1916-2010). Chimen (pronounced Shimon) was the son of the great Dayan Yechezkiel Abramsky, (1886-1976) who was head of the London Beth Din. Chimen, who eventually became a professor of Jewish Studies at University College London, was an expert on Jewish books and built a significant collection of his own, which is detailed in the book. Chimen also served as an advisor to Sotheby's and to the late Jack Lunzer, who built the greatest privately owned Jewish library in the world. Anyway, I came across this passage in the book, reminding us that presence of head lice was not just an annoyance - it was a way of life: 

Infant and childhood mortality soared in these years [of the First World War] in part because of the prevalence of diseases such as typhus - which  presumably explains why, in early photographs, the heads of Chimen and his brothers are shorn, to counter the typhus-carrying lice.[Ed. note: head lice do not carry typhus, but are certainly a nuisance.]  Isaac Bashevis Singer, who was a few years older than Chimen, and like Chimen was brought up in a devout household...recalled having his sidelocks and head hair shaved off for this reason during the First World War...he wrote in his essay "The Book"..."I saw my red sidelocks fall and I knew this was the end of them. I wanted to get rid of them for a long time." (Sasha Abramsky. The House of Twenty Thousand Books. NYRB 2015. 57-58.)

For the Nazir, hair is a central part of his religious identity, and once that identity is no-longer needed, the hair is shaved off.  Which is exactly what Isaac Bashevis Singer felt too.