SCIENCE, MEDICINE, AND THE TALMUD
Pesach (Passover) begins this Wednesday evening, April 5th, 2023.
For your delight we present The 2023 Talmudology Passover Reader. It may be downloaded at the links below.
The 2023 edition includes a new essay on the Ten Plagues in Science and History, and material for discussion at the Seder.
Read, share, and enjoy.
The new tractate that we will be studying for the next 49 days is Sotah, which outlines the ordeal of a married woman who is suspected of adultery. The ordeal outlined in במדבר (the Book of Numbers) involves her public humiliation as she is forcibly undressed, and forced to drink a potion containing the dissolved words that describe the ceremony in the Torah. If she is guilty, she later undergoes a rather gruesome death; if she is innocent, she returns to her husband and is promised to conceive a child with him.
There is no such ceremony for a married man suspected of adultery. In fact there is no biblical prohibition for a married man to have a sexual relationship outside of his marriage. But insights from contemporary research in biology and the social sciences, together with a scandal from the sewers of the internet, have revealed (as if you needed proof for this) that married men are in fact far more likely to be the ones doing the cheating.
Although monogamous marriage is the norm for over 90% of humanity (with 10% practicing polygyny), up to 40% or married men and 25% of married women report having had an extramarital affair during their lifetime. Religiosity is however, negatively associated with infidelity, although there is no evidence that the religious denomination plays any role in the tendency towards philandering. Study after study have revealed that married men are more likely to be the ones doing the cheating. Here is how one recent review of the topic summed it up:
A large body of research with American samples indicated that men have a stronger desire to engage in sexual infidelity, are more likely to engage in sexual infidelity, have more extra-dyadic sexual partners, have more episodes of infidelity, including short or long term affairs and one-night stands, have more physical contact with an extra-dyadic partner (including intercourse), cite more sexual motivations for infidelity, and are less likely to fall in love with an extra-dyadic partner.
“Gender is arguably one of the most commonly studied predictors of infidelity. Expected gender differences in infidelity are often rooted in evolutionary theory... According to this theory, women, due to internal fertilization and gestation, are more likely to benefit from long-term partner commitment and affluent partners who can provide resources that are necessary for survival; males, on the other hand, can impregnate multiple females and the desire to achieve genetic success leads men, more so than women to engage in infidelity...the literature to date suggests that men have a stronger desire to engage in infidelity… and are more likely to be unfaithful.”
New research is also suggesting that genes play a role in the complex story of infidelity. In a study of 7,400 Finnish twins published last year in Evolution and Human Behavior, researchers found that about 10% of men and 6% of women had two or more sexual partners in the last year. They also found a significant association with a gene for vasopressin and the likelihood of infidelity – but they only found this association in women. This hardly makes for a compelling case that infidelity is genetically determined, but it does fit in with a body of animal evidence that supports a relationship between our genes and our ability to be monogamous.
Some of this work comes from studies of two kinds of vole: the montane vole, which is sexually promiscuous, and the prairie vole, which is monogamous. Each of these species has vasopressin receptors that are located in different regions of the brain, and injecting the hormone vasopressin into the little vole brain causes two distinct kinds of behavioral response. When the monogamous prairie vole brain is injected with vasopressin it triggers pair bonding. Blocking of the receptors has an opposite effect – prairie voles still want vole sex, but are no longer monogamous.
Now here’s the crucial anatomical piece: The vasopressin receptors in the monogamous prairie voles lies near the brain’s reward center, so when vasopressin is released, it activates neurons in that reward center. However, the vasopressin receptors in the promiscuous montane voles is found in the amygdla, which is thought to process anxiety and fear. So releases of vasopressin in the promiscuous vole does not stimulate the reward center, and does not lead to pair bonding.
Another team working with twins was not been able to find an association between human infidelity and the vasopressin receptor gene implicated in the sexual behavior of other mammals. However, even that team concluded that "...infidelity and number of sexual partners are both under moderate genetic influence (41% and 38% heritable, respectively) and the genetic correlation between these two traits is strong (47%)." We are certainly very far from identifying a gene for infidelity, but there is evidence that genetics and neuroendocrine release plays some role in the expression of this behavior.
There is new data to support the assertion that married men are more likely to cheat than are married women, and that data came from the Ashley Madison breach. (Now for those of you who did not read about this from the sewers of the Internet, here’s what you need to know. Ashley Madison is a website that offers to pair up married people – men and women – who want to cheat on their spouse and have an affair. In August of 2015 it was revealed that the website had been hacked and some of the data of the subscribers to the service was leaked. OK, that’s the background. No read on to the more important part of the story.)
In a report published in Gizmodo, it was revealed that out of a database of 37 million Ashley Madison users, only about 5.5 million were marked as female. While acknowledging that some of these users are not real, the raw numbers show that for every married woman looking to have an affair, there were more than five married men. The report goes on to note that
...out of 5.5 million female accounts, roughly zero percent had ever shown any kind of activity at all, after the day they were created...The men’s accounts tell a story of lively engagement with the site, with over 20 million men hopefully looking at their inboxes, and over 10 million of them initiating chats. The women’s accounts show so little activity that they might as well not be there….we’re left with data that suggests Ashley Madison is a site where tens of millions of men write mail, chat, and spend money for women who aren’t there.
In his essay on rabbinic attitudes towards nonobservance, Ephriam Kanarfogel pointed out that "[s]exual promiscuity and even adultery were never absent from any region on the medieval Jewish world." These adulterous relationships were "widespread", but, continues Kanerfogel, "...the presence of even more objectionable possibilities (i.e., relations with married Jewish women) also had to be considered…" As evidence of just how widespread was the practice of married Jewish men having affairs, Kanarfogel cites R. Moses of Coucy of Spain who preached "at length" in 1236 about the sins of sexual relations outside of marriage. The issue of sexual promiscuity was so widespread that in Toledo a herem (communal ban) was issued against it in 1281. Remarkably, "many who had vowed to honor the ban could not retain themselves and either openly flouted the ban or attempted to circumvent it." It was the widespread promiscuity of married Jewish men that, according to Kanarfogel, led the Ramban to accept the institution of pilagshut (concubines) as an alternative. Married Jewish men have been cheating for rather a long time.
“In the second half of the fifteenth century, R. Judah Mintz of Padua acknowledged that there were those in the Jewish community who approved the presence of prostitutes as a means of preventing men from committing adultery with married women...R. Judah Mintz did not himself condone this policy, but could do nothing to dislodge it.”
The fact is that while the Torah only mandated the Sotah ordeal for a married woman suspected of adultery but not for a married man, it is married men who are far more likely to be the ones doing the cheating. This bias represents another way in which women are objectified – and we have observed this while studying Ketuvot. Indeed, as several scholars have noted, the Talmud speaks to men, but it speaks about women. And nearly always the statements about women represent nothing more than the faulty perspectives of the men who uttered them. A final example of the way in which adultery is only of concern when it is committed by a woman will be encoutntered in tomorrow’s daf, Sotah 3b. Here's a sneak preview:
Rav Hisda said: Adultery in a house is like a karya worm to sesame. [Just as the worm eats and destroys the sesame, adultery destroys the family structure.] And Rav Hisda said: Anger in a house is like a karya worm to sesame. [Just as the worm eats and destroys the sesame, so anger destroys the family structure.] Both of these statements were said with respect to the behavior of the woman; however with respect to the man, we have no concern about it.
The ordeal of the Sotah was abolished sometime during the Second Temple period, although there are three separate Tannaitic sources that describe why this occurred. The most well known is in the Mishnah in Sotah (9:9):
משרבו המנאפין, פסקו המים המאררים; רבן יוחנן הפסיקן, שנאמר לא אפקוד על בנותיכם כי תזנינה, ועל כלותיכם כי תנאפנה
When adulterers increased the waters of bitterness ceased. Raban Yohanan ben Zakkai discontinued them. For it is written (Hos.4:14): I shall not punish your daughters wine they fornication nor tour daughters-in-law when they commit adulery..."
Another version is found in the Tosefta (Sotah 14:1-2):
תוספתא מסכת סוטה פרק יד הלכה ב
משרבו המנאפין פסקו מי מרים לפי שאין מי מרים באין אלא על הספק עכשיו כבר רבו הרואין בגלוי
When adulterers increased the water of bitterness ceased, for the waters of bitterness functions only to clarify a doubt, but now many see adultery in the open...
A third version is found in the Sifrei 21 (25):
ספרי במדבר פרשת נשא פיסקא כא
כשהאיש מנוקה מעון האשה ההיא תשא את עונה... (הושע ד יד) אמר להם הואיל ואתם רודפים אחר הזנות אף המים לא יבדקו את נשיכם
...Only when the man is free of that sin will "the woman bear her iniquity" [ie. be punished by the ritual of the Sotah]...(Hos.4:14): I shall not punish your daughters when they fornicate nor your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery..." [Hosea] said to them: since you keep the company of whores, the water will not examine your wives...
As the scholar Ishay Rosen-Zvi notes, the Sifrei attributes the end of the ritual "to the failure to apply its moral standard to both men and women equally." Evidence from the social sciences, genetics, and even from Jewish history have demonstrated that (Jewish) men were, and are, far more likely to be the ones cheating. We know this today, but perhaps the Sifrei, (a work of halakhic midrash likely composed in Israel some time after the end of the fourth century CE.) understood this long ago.
“Sotah stands out in its description of particularly extreme and violent gestures:intentional defacement of the female body; its exposure before an audience; and finally its mutilation to the point of death. These gestures have no trace in the biblical ritual or in sources from the Second Temple period, and they appear to be an innovation of Tannaitic discourse. Furthermore, rabbnic literature itself hardly contains parallels of these gestures, which in fact contravene this literatures’s ethos of punishment and modesty, according to which the body, especially the female body, should be protected from physical damage or the public gaze as much as possible. Thus, in any scholarly analysis of rabbininic attitudes towards questions of modesty, punishment and gender, Tractate Sotah is an anomaly that doesn’t quite fit into the overall picture.”
In Leviticus chapter 15 the laws of the זב – Zov - a man who experiences a discharge from his penis - are outlined. If a man experiences this discharge on two days he becomes impure (טמאי), and must undergo a process of spiritual recovery that includes isolation from others and immersion in running water. If he has a third day of penile discharge he is required to bring an offering to the Temple. (The laws differ in their application to a woman who is infected, but the basic idea is the same. To keep it simple, we'll just focus on the male Zov.)
The rabbis of the Mishnah thought that if the discharge was due to an external factor, then the person so afflicted did not become a Zov. Here is the list of those external causes of genital discharge, as outlined in today’s daf, (Nazir 65b):
נזיר סה, ב
בשבעה דרכים בודקין את הזב עד שלא נזקק לזיבה במאכל ובמשתה במשא ובקפיצה ובחולי ובמראה ובהירהור
A Zov is examined in seven ways…about food and drink [certain foods such as cheese and wine could have caused the discharge], about carrying a load, jumping and illness [strenuous physical activity could also do so], sight and thought [he is asked whether he has been thinking about or looking at women, which could have caused his discharge]…
In modern Hebrew, zivah (זיבה) is the term for gonorrhea, a sexually transmitted disease caused by the bacterial species Neisseria gonorrhoeae. Preuss, in his famous Biblical and Talmudic Medicine has this to say about the Zov:
“It is clear forthwith that the only illness we know that can be referred to here is gonorrhea” (354).
Abraham Steinberg, in his more recent three volume Encyclopedia of Jewish Medical Ethics, also identifies the disease described in Leviticus as gonorrhea, (though he notes that some rabbis identified the discharge as being sperm, rather than pus. More on that below). If a Zov is indeed a man suffering from gonorrhea, that would explain “the laws of isolation and impurity in regard to people with flux [=discharge] as being hygienic rules to prevent the spread of the disease” (Vol II, p452).
Neisseria gonorrhea - a Gram-negative, oxidase positive, aerobic, nutritionally fastidious, bacterium, which appears as pairs under the microscope. From here.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are about 330,000 new cases of gonorrhea in the US. That makes it the second most common sexually transmitted disease, with first place going to chlamydia- and the two are frequently found together. The World Health Organization estimated a global total of 106 million cases in 2008 (and that’s an increase of 21% compared to 2005). Gonorrhea is most common in women age 15-19, and infections in women are usually asymptomatic. In contrast, gonorrheal infection in men is nearly always symptomatic, with the most common symptoms being pain on urination (dysuria) and purulent penile discharge. (Think of what comes out of your nose when you get a bad cold. Now think of that coming out of another orifice.) But gonorrhea is not just a disease of the genital tract. It may involve the eyes, pharynx and anus, and if it is not treated it may (rarely) progress to disseminated disease that includes endocarditis and meningitis. In women, untreated gonorrhea can cause pelvic inflammatory disease and sterility.
While the Zov in Temple times had to remove himself society and hope for an end to the symptoms, in the era of antibiotics things are different. Gonorrhea is generally easy to treat – a single shot of ceftriaxone in the muscle and a swig of oral azithromycin and you are on the mend. The problem is that drug resistant gonorrhea is now emerging worldwide, and consequently some infections are difficult to treat.
As outlined in the Torah, the Zov imparts ritual impurity to the bed on which he lies and the chair on which he sits. Preuss wrote that “the hygienic value of these regulations… is obvious.” If the disease that is described in the Torah is indeed gonorrhea, well, then today we understand enough to say that the hygienic value of these regulations is, contra Preuss, really not that obvious at all. We now know that you cannot catch gonorrhea from sitting on a chair or lying on a bed that an infected person had touched. But in fairness, such beliefs were not uncommon even a century age. We’ve had occasion to review the theories prevalent in early twentieth century America about the transmission of gonorrhea. Back then, doctors claimed girls were susceptible to infection from gonorrhea “from everyday nonsexual objects, including their mothers’ hands, bed linens…and toilet seats.” It is hardly surprising, therefore, to read in the Torah, that the Zov contaminates all he touches. But it is not so. You need sexual or oral contact to transmit the disease, (which can also be caught by the innocent new-born baby passing through its mother's infected genital tract).
In his Mishneh Torah, Maimonides identified the Zov as suffering from a physical disease – and not a spiritual one [הלכות מחוסרי כפרה 2:1]:
The Zov that is described in the Torah, is a form of semen that results from an infection in the tubes [of the genital tract]. When the discharge of the Zov flows, it does not do forcefully like ejaculate, and there is no pleasure associated with it. Rather it flows passively like dough…
(Maimonides was following the best medicine of his time when he described the discharge as a form of semen. The word gonorrhea is from the Greek roots gone meaning seed and rhein, meaning flow.)
In an era that did not have antibiotics, removing the infected person and isolating him was really all that could be done. Today, we have alternatives: antibiotics to treat the infection, and condoms to prevent its spread. But we lack the self-reckoning that the infection might encourage. I’ve treated many, many cases of gonorrhea, and every patient encounter was centered on diagnosing and treating the infection. I do not recall any discussions about changing the behaviors that allowed infection. Perhaps I bear responsibility for not having had that conversation, and perhaps I should have followed the example of the biblical text. That text was mistaken in some of the details of how the disease is spread, but possibly accurate in requiring the Zov to leave his social network, and perhaps reflect on the kind of behaviors that led to his infection in the first place.
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.”
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.
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.””
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. ”
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.”
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.
