Ketuvot 60b ~ Everything is Bad For You

On this page of Talmud we read of a number of things that, if done by a pregnant mother, may injure (or rarely, improve) her unborn child.

תלמוד בבלי כתובות דף ס עמוד ב - סא עמוד א

דמשמשא בי ריחיא - הוו לה בני נכפי, דמשמשא על ארעא - הוו לה בני שמוטי, דדרכא על רמא דחמרא - הוו לה בני גירדני, דאכלה חרדלא - הוו לה בני זלזלני, דאכלה תחלי - הוו לה בני דולפני, דאכלה מניני - הוו לה בני מציצי עינא, דאכלה גרגושתא - הוו לה בני מכוערי, דשתיא שיכרא - הוו לה בני אוכמי, דאכלה בישרא ושתיא חמרא - הוו לה בני בריי, דאכלה ביעי - הוו לה בני עינני, דאכלה כוורי - הוו לה בני חינני, דאכלה כרפסא - הוו לה בני זיותני, דאכלה כוסברתא - הוו לה בני בישרני, דאכלה אתרוגא - הוו לה בני ריחני. ברתיה דשבור מלכא אכלה בה אמה אתרוגא, והוו מסקי לה לקמיה אבוה בריש ריח

A woman who copulates in a mill will have epileptic children. [A woman] who copulates on the ground will have children with long necks. [A woman] who treads on the excrement of a donkey will have children who lose their hair.  [A woman] who eats mustard will have children who are gluttons. [A woman] who eats cress will have children with teary eyes.  [A woman] who eats small fish will have children with fluttering eyes.  [A woman] who eats clay will have ugly children.  [A woman] who drinks beer will have dark children.  [A woman] who eats meat and drinks beer will have children who are healthy.   [A woman] who eats eggs will have children with large eyes.  [A woman] who eats fish will have charming children.   [A woman] who eats celery will have radiant children.  [A woman] who eats coriander will have fat children.  [A woman] who eats an esrog will have fragrant children...

Everything is Bad For You. Or Good For You.

In their highly entertaining 2013 paper, Schoenfeld and Ioannidis looked at 50 common ingredients from random recipes found in The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book.   Then they searched for any recent scientific studies that evaluated the relation of each ingredient to the risk of cancer. And what did they find?

Eighty percent of ingredients from these randomly selected recipes had been studied in relation to malignancy.  (Those ingredients that had not been studied tended to be more obscure, like hickory or terrapin.)

Thirty-nine percent of studies concluded that the studied ingredient conferred an increased risk of malignancy; 33% concluded that there was a decreased risk, 5% concluded that there was a borderline statistically significant effect, and 23% concluded that there was no evidence of a clearly increased or decreased risk. In most (80%) of the studies, the statistical effect was weak.  As you can see in the table, the same ingredient (like tomatoes, tea, carrots and coffee) was found in different studies to both increase and decrease the risk of cancer. 

Effect estimates by ingredient. From Schoenfeld and Ioannides. Is everything we eat associated with cancer? Am J. Clin. Nutrition 2013:97;127-34. 

The authors concluded that:

“Nutritional epidemiology is a valuable field that can identify potentially modifiable risk factors related to diet. However, the credibility of studies in this and other fields is subject to publication and other selective outcome and analysis reporting biases, whenever the pressure to publish fosters a climate in which “negative” results are undervalued and not reported. Ingredients viewed as “unhealthy” may be demonized, leading to subsequent biases in the design, execution and reporting of studies.”

So that's the lesson: Be really careful when ascribing risk or benefit to commonly found ingredients. And with that warning, let’s analyze the passage in today’s daf:

THE RISK OF EPILEPSY

According to the Talmud, copulating in a mill is a risk factor for epilepsy.  Although there has not been a significant attempt to categorize the causes of epilepsy, one recent paper suggested that the etiology of this condition be broken down into four types:

Idiopathic (predominantly genetic or inherited in a complex way)

Symptomatic (acquired or genetic, together with gross anatomical or clinical features)

Provoked (the predominant cause is environmental)

Cryptogenic (cause has not been identified)

The Talmud is describing the mill as one of the environmental causes of epilepsy. While no such link has ever been suggested outside of the Talmud, the claim that epilepsy has an environmental cause is certainly plausible.

OTHER PRE-CONCEPTION ENVIRONMENTAL ASSOCIATIONS WITH CHILDHOOD OUTCOMES

It is increasingly clear that some major diseases in later life – like diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease- have a basis in the impaired growth of the fetus. For example, a long-term British study showed that those infants who had low birth weights had relatively high death rates from coronary heart disease in adult life. Low birth rate has also been associated with the later development of diabetes, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure. In today’s daf, the Talmud claims an association between some foods ingested by a woman and certain characteristics or health traits in the later development of children she may carry. Again, there is no evidence that the details here are correct, but there is no reason to exclude such an association ab initio.

PICA – clay makes you ugly

Pica is the medical term for the craving and ingestion of foods or substances that have no nutritious value. Pregnant women engage in pica behavior all over the world. One study found that three-quarters of pregnant women in Kenya ate soil on a regular basis, and that this practice had a strong relationship to fertility and reproduction. In a study of 128 pregnant women conducted in a rural America, about a third practiced pica and clay was sometimes eaten together with other substances –a practice called polypica. Although women reporting daily pica practice were significantly more likely to have lower prenatal hematocrits than women who did not practice pica, no specific pregnancy complication was associated with the practice of pica. Although the authors did not report on whether the children were more likely to be ugly, the evidence suggests this is not related to pica, and so this claim of Talmud is unlikely to be true.

Pica Frequency. From Corbett et al. Pica in Pregnancy. Does it affect pregnancy outcomes? American Journal of Maternal Child Nursing. 2003: 28 (3); 183-189.

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome

The relationship between the ingestion of a pregnant woman’s ingestion of alcohol and the growth of the fetus is clear. It is a terrible idea to drink when you are pregnant. If you drink while pregnant, the fetus will be born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, which includes facial abnormalities, growth delays, abnormal development of organs, and reduced immunity.  The Talmud suggests that drinking beer before (or during?) pregnancy leads to “dark children” while drinking beer and eating meat will lead to healthy children. Do not follow this advice.  Drinking beer while pregnant is a  really bad idea, at pretty much any dose.

“Despite the many gains in knowledge, we still do not know if there is a “safe” dose of alcohol that can be consumed by pregnant women without risking damage to their unborn children. Until such a safe dose, if it exists, can be determined, the only responsible advice to women who wish to become pregnant and to those who are pregnant is to avoid alcohol use entirely. ”

— Enorch Gordis MD, Then Director of The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Alcohol Alert #50, 2000

Eggs and Etrogs

The final intriguing association that is made is between eggs and large eyed children, and etrogs and fragrant children. Here the assumed mechanism is clear. You are what you eat – literally. Eggs have big yellow yolks, so if a woman eats them, her children’s eyes will mimic the egg – and appear to have large pupils surrounded by the white of the conjunctiva. Similarly, by eating a fragrant etrog, the body literally becomes fragrant. It’s a lovely theory really, but totally without of any basis in fact. “Like causes like” is as unlikely as “that which causes the same symptoms leads to a cure.” The latter is called homeopathy, and there is no scientific basis to it whatsoever. (Before you send me that angry email, read the sentence again. I did not say that it is not effective. It is indeed effective; as effective as placebo – and no more. But there is no scientific evidence that homeopathy is any better than sham treatment, that is, a placebo). The latest evidence to show that there is no benefit of homeopathy comes from a lengthy report (actually a series of reports) from the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council. We’ve wasted enough money on chasing the scientific study of homeopathy; let’s not waste still more seeing if eggs make your kids eyes larger because “like causes like”…

The Talmud's list of possible environmental causes is a joy to read, but is it true? Without a doubt yes. And certainly no.

Yevamot 98b ~ On the Formation of Twins

Buried in a discussion of paternity, Rava states that the mechanism of the development of twin brothers is as follows:  "דטפה אחת היה ונחלקה לשתים"  - "there was one drop of semen that split into two".

Aristotle (384-322 BC) believed that twins were caused by too much seed (which does make a certain intuitive sense I suppose). In the thirteenth century the German theologian Albertus Magnus updated this theory, and suggested that twins were generated when the woman experienced too much sexual pleasure during intercourse. This redistributed the seed throughout the uterus, resulting in twins. 

We now know that there are actually only two ways that twins are formed, and neither depends on sperm splitting, too much seed, or an abundance of sexual pleasure. In monozygotic or identical twins (though they are not always literally identical), one sperm fertilizes one egg, and the resulting zygote then divides into two. Since the two offspring zygotes originated from the same "mother" zygote, they are genetically identical - and hence the twins (or triplets, if the zygote splits three ways) are identical and of course of the same sex.

Formation of identical (monozygotic) twins. Courtesy Womenshealth.gov

In dizygotic or fraternal twins, two sperm fertilize two eggs and the two resulting zygotes grow together in the same womb at the same time. They are not genetically identical, and are really two siblings who just happen to be sharing a womb at the same time. 

Formation of fraternal (dizygotic) twins. Courtesy Womenshealth.gov

That's it. No sperm splits.  Sorry.

Fun facts about twins, Israeli and others

• For reasons that are not clear, the rate of dizygotic twins varies across the world, (highest in sub-Saharan Africa, lowest in Asia) and varies across women by body habitus (taller women are more likely to have twins - who knew?) and age (older women are four times more likely to have twins) and varies across time (possibly highest when conception is in the summer and fall).

Twinning Rates in the USA, Europe, Australia and Asia. From Hoekstra et al. Dizygotic Twinning. Human Reproduction Update 2007.14; 37-47.

• From 1915, when records were first started, through the 1970s, the rate of twin births in the US was a constant 2% of all births. But in the early 1980s the number of twin births in the US more than doubled, and today that rate is over 3%. The cause, as you may have guessed, is the increased use of reproductive technologies.

“One in every 30 infants born in 2009 was a twin”

— US Dept of Health and Human Services. NCHS Data Brief Jan 2012

• The states that saw the greatest increase in twin birth rates were Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island. In these states, the twin birth rate more than doubled!

Percentage Increase in Twin Birth Rates 1980-2009. From NCHS Data Brief #80. Jan 2012.

• Finally, although the rate of twin births has increased for women of all ages over the last three decades, in women older than 40 the rate of twin births increased by 200%. There are at least two causes for this dramatic rise. First, as more women postpone childbirth, more are having children later in life, and older women, as we have already seen, are more likely to have (dizygotic) twins. And secondly, more older women are using assisted reproduction techniques, which also increases the rate of twin conceptions.

• In Israel, the incidence of twin births increased three fold in the three decades before 2001, a rate even higher than the increase in the US. The authors of a 2004 study on multiple births in Israel concluded that the "increased incidence of multiple births is explained by the special significance attributed to motherhood in Israeli society, which is met by the socio-political milieu and the availability of assisted reproductive technologies". Indeed.

• The incidence of twin births in higher in Jewish than it is in Arab Israelis.  This is likely explained by their greater use of assisted reproductive technologies (like in-vitro fertilization).  

Incidence of twin births in Jewish and Arab populations of Israel, 1994-2001. From Blickstein I, Baor L. Trends in multiple births in Israel. Harefuah 2004; 143 (11): 794-798.

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The Talmud wasn't exactly accurate about how twins are formed, but elsewhere it does capture the sense of wonder that so many of us feel as we hold a newborn baby (or two). It's a transcendent moment in which we may, for a fleeting moment, feel the divine.   

“תנו רבנן שלשה שותפין יש באדם הקב”ה ואביו ואמו. אביו מזריע הלובן...אמו מזרעת אודם ... והקב”ה נותן בו רוח ונשמה וקלסתר פנים...

Our Rabbis taught: There are three partners in the creation of a person, the Holy One, blessed be He, the father and the mother. The father supplies the white...the mother supplies the red...and the Holy One, blessed be He, supplies the spirit and the breath and the beauty...”

— Niddah, 31a

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

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

יבמות מד, א

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

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

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

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

— Rashi, Yevamot 42a

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

דתניא בן שמנה הרי הוא כאבן ואסור לטלטלו בשבת

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

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

but what about the facts?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Hippocrates, On the Seventh-Month Child

The Eight Month Fetus in the Ancient World

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

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

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

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

(הלכות מילה 1:11)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Pregnancy as a contraceptive

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

יבמות מד, ב

סתם מעוברת למניקה קיימא דלמא איעברה ומעכר חלבה וקטלה ליה 

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

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

— Whattoexpect.com

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

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

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

Berachot 20a ~ Rabbi Yochanan, Maternal Imprinting, And The Woman Who Gave Birth To Rabbits

In today’s page of Talmud we meet the great Rabbi Yochanan where you would have least expected him: sitting outside the mikveh (ritual bathhouse), waiting for the married women who used it to pass him by. And notice him.

ברכות כ,ב

רַבִּי יוֹחָנָן הֲוָה רְגִיל דַּהֲוָה קָא אָזֵיל וְיָתֵיב אַשַּׁעֲרֵי דִטְבִילָה. אֲמַר: כִּי סָלְקָן בְּנוֹת יִשְׂרָאֵל וְאָתְיָין מִטְּבִילָה, מִסְתַּכְּלָן בִּי, וְנֶהֱוֵי לְהוּ זַרְעָא דְּשַׁפִּירֵי כְּווֹתִי

Rabbi Yochanan would go and sit by the entrance to the ritual bath. He said to himself: When Jewish women come up from their immersion [after their menstruation,] they should see me first so that they have beautiful children like me

Rabbi Yochanan’s actions were not really as bizarre as it might first seem. He believed that what a mother sees around the time she conceives will affect her offspring. This belief is called maternal imprinting or psychic maternal impressions, or mental influence, or maternal imagination, or (my favorite) maternal fancy. It was widespread in the ancient world, and not uncommon in the early modern one. (Maternal imprinting also has a very modern use, when it refers to the way in which an individual phenotype is determined by the environment and genotype of its mother. But that’s most certainly not the phenomena alluded to in the Talmud.)

“A surprising large number of people, in different cultures and over many centuries, have believed that a woman who imagines or sees someone other than her sexual partner at the moment of conception may imprint that image upon her child- thus predetermining its appearance, character or both.”

— Doniger W. Spinner G. Female Imaginations and Male Fantasies in Parental Imprinting. Daedalus 127 (1), No. 1, Science in Culture (Winter, 1998). 97-129

OTHER Maternal Imprinting in jewish sources

The earliest mention of maternal imprinting is the story of Yaakov and his division of the goats he watched for his uncle Lavan (Gen 30:25-43, 31:1-12).  Yaakov asked for all the speckled goats as wages, while Lavan would get to keep the plain ones.  Yaakov then took several wooden rods from which he peeled the bark, and left these now speckled rods in front of a water trough.   The female goats stared at the rods while they are drinking and mating, and this in turn caused them to give birth to speckled kids, all of which Yaakov got to keep. That's how maternal imprinting works. And that's what Rav Yochanan was doing.  

The Midrash and Talmud are replete with examples of maternal imprinting. Here is another example, this one to do with cows.

The Parah Adumah

The Parah Adumah, the red heifer, was used in several ceremonies in the Temple. It was, however, a rare animal. In the Talmud (Avodah Zarah 24a) there is a discussion as to whether a red heifer born to an idol-worshipper could be used. The concern was that the heifer, or one of its ancestors, might have been used by the idol-worshipper for beastiality. Should this have happened, it was forbidden to use the red heifer as a sacrifice. The Talmud relates that in fact an idol-worshipper called Daba ben Natina had sold a red heifer to his Jewish neighbors. To insure that the heifer's mother had not been the object of beastiality, the pregnant cow had been watched "משעה שנוצרה" – from the moment it was impregnated. Then comes an obvious question: how could anyone be sure that the cow was indeed pregnant with a red calf which would warrant safeguarding her? Perhaps the calf would be born another color? 

Here is the answer: "כוס אדום מעבירין לפניה בשעה שעולה עליה זכר" -"while the mother was copulating, the farmer would show her a red cup." That would insure that she would give birth to a little red calf that would grow into a bigger red heifer. 

Rabbi Akiva and the King of Arabia

Here is another example, in which Rabbi Akiva used maternal imprinting to save a king from a rather embarrassing situation:

מדרש תנחומא נשה, ז

מַעֲשֶׂה בְּמֶלֶךְ הָעַרְבִים שֶׁשָּׁאַל אֶת רַבִּי עֲקִיבָא, אֲנִי כּוּשִׁי וְאִשְׁתִּי כּוּשִׁית וְיָלְדָה לִי בֵּן לָבָן, הוֹרְגָהּ אֲנִי, שֶׁזָּנְתָה תַּחְתַּי. אָמַר לוֹ: צוּרוֹת בֵּיתְךָ שְׁחֹרוֹת אוֹ לְבָנוֹת. אָמַר לוֹ: לְבָנוֹת. אָמַר לוֹ: כְּשֶׁהָיִיתָ עוֹסֵק עִמָּהּ, עֵינֶיהָ נָתְנָה בְּצוּרוֹת לְבָנוֹת וְיָלְדָה כַּיּוֹצֵא בָּהֶם. וְאִם תָּמֵהַּ אַתָּה בַּדָּבָר, לְמַד מִן צֹאנוֹ שֶׁל יַעֲקֹב, שֶׁמִּן הַמַּקְלוֹת הָיוּ מִתְיַחֲמוֹת, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: וְיִחֲמוּ הַצֹּאן אֶל הַמַּקְלוֹת (בראשית ל, לט). וְהוֹדָה מֶלֶךְ הָעַרְבִים וְשִׁבַּח לְרַבִּי עֲקִיבָא

A king of Arabia once asked Rabbi Akiva, “I am black and my wife is black, yet she gave birth to a white child. Shall I have her executed for infidelity?” Rabbi Akiva responded by inquiring if the statues in his house where white or black. He said to Rabbi Akiva that they were white.  Rabbi Akiva explained to the king that during conception his wife's eyes were fixed on the white statues and so she bore a white child...the king agreed and praised Rabbi Akiva

Maternal Imprinting in Greek Thought, and Beyond

In 1998 Professors Wendy Doniger and Gregory Spinner published perhaps the most comprehensive review of imprinting, in a paper titled Misconceptions: Female Imaginations and Male Fantasies in Parental Imprinting. They noted Empedocles, who lived in the fifth century BCE, wrote that 

the fetuses are shaped by the imagination of the women around the time of conception. For often women have fallen in love with statues of men, and with images, and have produced offspring which resemble them.

Soranus of Ephesus, another Greek physician who lived in Rome and Alexandria (and who was a contemporary of Rabbi Yochanan) firmly believed in imprinting, both for animal husbandry and in humans:

Some women, seeing monkeys during intercourse, have borne children resembling monkeys. The tyrant of the Cyprians, who was misshapen, compelled his wife to look at beautiful statues during intercourse and became the father of well-shaped children; and horse-breeders, during covering, place noble horses in front of the mares.

Jumping forward a millennium, in 1282 it was reported that an infant was born with hair and claws like a bear. The Pope at the time "straightway ordered the destruction of all pictures of bears in Rome." This story is from John Ballantyne, a Scottish physician who in 1897 published Teratogenesis: an Inquiry into the Causes of Monstrosities. According to Ballantyne, in the seventeenth century, the belief in maternal impressions "reigned supreme."  Here is another example of the kind of thing it led to:

And then things get even weirder:

In 1726 the matter of maternal impressions was brought still more prominently before the profession and the public in England in connexion [sic] with the notorious case of an "Extraordinary Delivery of Rabbets" which was alleged to have occurred in the case of Maria Tofts of Godlyman in Surrey; she had a great longing for 'Rabbets"in early pregnancy.

Pregnancy and the fetus

Maternal imprinting is a rather extreme form of what we all know to be true; that what happens to a pregnant mother affects the fetus she is carrying. Here are two of the countless examples of this.  If a mother drinks enough alcohol while pregnant, the fetus will be born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. This syndrome includes facial abnormalities, growth delays, abnormal development of organs, and reduced immunity.  If a mother is infected with measles (rubella) early in pregnancy, the baby will likely be born with congenital rubella syndrome, which includes cataracts, congenital heart disease and brain damage.  But these examples do not imply that a woman who eats eggs will have children with large eyes or that a woman who eats an esrog will have fragrant children, as the Talmud (Ketuvot 60b) declares. Some things a pregnant mother does will have a huge effect on the fetus she carries. Some won't have any affect at all.  

John Ballantyne, the Scottish physician concluded his book noting, as we have, that of course there are some things a mother does that will affect fetal outcome. "To this extent" he wrote, "I believe in the old doctrine of maternal impressions; this is, I think, one grain of truth in an immense mass of fiction and accidental coincidence."

“The history of the belief in maternal impressions is one of great antiquity...it is also one of practically world-wide distribution. [It can be found in] such far apart lands as India, China, South America, Western Asia and East Africa..the Esquimaux, the Loango negros, and the old Japanese.”

— John William Ballantyne. Teratogenesis: an Inquiry into the Causes of Monstrosities. Edinburgh, Oliver & Boyd 1897. 24

More on Rabbi Yochanan’s Beauty

In tractate Bava Metziah (84a) the Talmud notes that Rabbi Yochanan was indeed a very handsome man - both by his own account, and that of others:

אמר רבי יוחנן אנא אישתיירי משפירי ירושלים האי מאן דבעי מחזי שופריה דרבי יוחנן נייתי כסא דכספא מבי סלקי ונמלייה פרצידיא דרומנא סומקא ונהדר ליה כלילא דוורדא סומקא לפומיה ונותביה בין שמשא לטולא ההוא זהרורי מעין שופריה דר' יוחנן 

Rabbi Yochanan said: I alone remain of the beautiful people of Jerusalem. 

The Gemara continues: One who wishes to see something resembling the beauty of Rabbi Yochanan should bring a new, shiny silver goblet from the smithy and fill it with red pomegranate seeds and place a diadem of red roses upon the lip of the goblet, and position it between the sunlight and shade. That luster is a semblance of Rabbi Yochanan’s beauty.

And never shying away from calling things as he saw them, Rav Pappa had this to say about another beautiful feature of Rav Yochanan

אמר רב פפא איבריה דרבי יוחנן כחמת בת חמשת קבין ואמרי לה בת שלשת קבין

The organ of Rabbi Yochanan was the size of a jug of five kav, and some say it was the size of a jug of three kav.

Well thanks for that. Rabbi Yochanan’s beauty was so great that it attracted Reish Lakish, then a highwayman, to abandon his ways and turn to the study of Torah.

יומא חד הוה קא סחי ר' יוחנן בירדנא חזייה ריש לקיש ושוור לירדנא אבתריה אמר ליה חילך לאורייתא אמר ליה שופרך לנשי א"ל אי הדרת בך יהיבנא לך אחותי דשפירא מינאי קביל עליה בעי למיהדר לאתויי מאניה ולא מצי הדר 

The Gemara relates: One day, Rabbi Yochanan was bathing in the Jordan River. Reish Lakish saw him and jumped into the Jordan, pursuing him. At that time, Reish Lakish was the leader of a band of marauders. Rabbi Yochanan said to Reish Lakish: “Your strength is fit for Torah study.” Reish Lakish said to him: “Your beauty is fit for women.” Rabbi Yochanan said to him: “If you return to the pursuit of Torah, I will give you my sister in marriage, who is more beautiful than I am.”

Passing on what is really important

The story of Rabbi Yochanan sitting outside the mikveh doing some maternal imprinting is told twice in the Babylonian Talmud: once in today’s page of Talmud and a second time in Bava Metziah. In that second telling the Talmud adds an additional phrase, one not found in today’s passage.

בבא מציעא פד, א

ר' יוחנן הוה אזיל ויתיב אשערי טבילה אמר כי סלקן בנות ישראל מטבילת מצוה לפגעו בי כי היכי דלהוו להו בני שפירי כוותי גמירי אורייתא כוותי

Rabbi Yochanan would go and sit by the entrance to the ritual bath. He said to himself: When Jewish women come up from their immersion [after their menstruation,] they should see me first so that they have beautiful children like me, and as learned of the Torah as I am…

In this other version of the story, Rav Yochanan was not only interested in passing on his physical beauty. He was just as interested in passing on the Torah wisdom that he had accumulated. And despite what he and others believed, passing that on takes a lot more than a glancing look at a rabbi. However attractive he might have been.

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[Special thanks to Rabbi Dr. Eddie Reichman, medical historian and Talmudology reader who has been researching maternal imprinting for years, and was kind enough to share his material. Mostly a repost from here.]