Gittin 60a ~ Queen Helena and Her Gift to the Temple

All or Nothing?

In this page of Talmud, there is an interesting (and most welcome) digression from the laws of divorce and the ownership of slaves. The Talmud asks whether just a part of the Torah may be committed to writing, or if the text must be produced as a whole. Here's the original question:

בעא מיניה אביי מרבה מהו לכתוב מגילה לתינוק להתלמד?...  א"ל אין כותבין 

Abaye asked Rabbah: "May a scroll containing only a portion of the Torah text be written for a young child to be taught from?" Rabbah answered: "We may not write portions of the Torah." 

The Talmud then questions Rabbah's ruling: 

איתיביה אף היא עשתה טבלא של זהב שפרשת סוטה כתובה עליה

They asked a question on this: She also made a golden tablet on which the Sotah passage was inscribed.

Someone, some she, had presented to the Temple a copy of a portion of the text of the Torah carved out on a golden tablet. It was the text of the rite of the Sotah, which was then copied from this golden tablet onto a scroll and later dissolved in water. From the story of this golden tablet, the Talmud challenges Rabbah's ruling, because it shows that it is indeed permitted to reproduce only part of the text of the Torah. 

We won't dwell on how this issue is finally resolved. Instead, let's find out more about the woman who made the donation.  Her identity is revealed in a Mishnah in the third chapter of Yoma:

King Monobaz had all the handles of all the vessels used on Yom Kippur made of gold. His mother Helena had a golden candlestick made over the door of the Hechal.  She also had a golden tablet made, on which the portion about the Sotah was inscribed. 

So that's who it was. Queen Helena. 

QUEEN HELENA, PATRON OF THE SECOND TEMPLE

We first met the Queen when we studied Nazir, of all places, where it turns out she was a Jew-by-choice:

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

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

In this passage Queen Helena, who died around 50 C.E.,  is one of the few people in the Talmud identified as having become a nazarite, and quite possibly the only one who became a nazarite three times over.  But there is a lot more to her story.  Elsewhere in the Talmud (בבא בתרא יא, א) her son is credited with saving Jerusalem from famine (at least according to Rashi there). And in the Mishnah in Yoma (37a), from where the brief quote in today's Daf Yomi comes from, the Queen dedicated to the Temple both a golden candelabra and a tablet on which the section of the Sotah was written.   

THE QUEEN IN THE WRITINGS OF JOSEPHUS

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

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

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

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

THE QUEEN IN THE WRITINGS OF NEUSNER

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

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

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

QUEEN HELENA'S FINAL RESTING PLACE

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

Gittin 58 ~ Maternal Imprinting

From today’s rather sad page of Talmud comes this weird historical claim:

גיטין נח, א

מֵעִיקָּרָא, חֲשִׁיבִי דְרוֹמָאֵי הֲווֹ נָקְטִי בִּלְיוֹנָא דְגוּשְׁפַּנְקָא, וּמְשַׁמְּשִׁי עַרְסַיְיהוּ; מִכָּאן וְאֵילָךְ, מַיְיתוּ בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וְאָסְרִי בְּכַרְעֵי דְּפוּרַיְיהוּ, וּמְשַׁמְּשִׁי

Initially the noblemen of Rome would keep an image imprinted on a seal by their beds and engage in sexual intercourse opposite that image, so that they would beget children of similar beauty. From this point forward, from the time of the Great Revolt, they would bring Jewish children, tie them to the foot of their beds, and engage in sexual intercourse across from them, because they were so handsome.

According to Rashi, these rings had images of beautiful people on them, and the hope was that the mother would become pregnant while looking at them:

בליוני דגושפנקי - צורות נאות שבחותמיהן כדי שתתעברנה כנגדן

All this is rather, strange, but not to a person who believed in maternal imprinting. Neither you nor I might not believe in such things, but pretty much everyone in the ancient and pre-modern world did. So today on Talmudology let’s take a deep look at the topic. And we begin with a red cow.

From here.

How to make a Red Heifer

The Parah Adumah, the red heifer, was used in several ceremonies in the Temple. It was, however, a rare animal. In today's page of Talmud there is a detailed 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. The belief that what a mother sees during conception and gestation will affect her offspring is called maternal imprinting or psychic maternal impressions, or mental influence, or maternal imagination, or (my favorite) maternal fancy. 

“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

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).  As wages, Yaakov asked for all the speckled goats, 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.  

The Midrash and Talmud are replete with the belief in maternal imprinting. Perhaps the most famous story is that of Rabbi Yochanan (~180-279 CE) who would regularly sit in front of the mikveh (ritual bath). He did this so that women leaving there would see him, and be blessed with sons as handsome as he was.

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 sons learned in Torah like me. 

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.

Let's jump 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."

It's not the red cup after all

Let’s return to the red heifer. It would seem that all you needed to produce a Parah Adumah was to place a red cup next to the mating cattle.  So why didn't every farmer use the red cup protocol to breed a red heifer? After all, these animals commanded fantastic prices because of their rarity. The answer offered by the Talmud is that the red cup protocol only worked with a herd of cattle that were known (במוחזקת) to produce red heifers.  Without that breeding history, the red cup protocol was useless. So this really wasn't about the red cup. It was about the genes, and that's the kind of parental imprinting that really does work.

“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

---

[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.]

Gittin 52a ~Why Do We Dream?

גיטין נב, א

אמר, דברי חלומות לא מעלין ולא מורידין

Rabbi Meir used to say: The content of dreams is inconsequential (Gittin 52a)

The Talmud contains many theories about the content of dreams.  In Berachot (10b) Rabbi Hanan taught that even if a dream appears to predict one's imminent death, the one who dreamed should pray for mercy. R. Hanan believed that dreams may contain a glimpse of the future, but that prayer is powerful enough to changes one's fate. Later in Berachot (55b), R. Yohanan suggested a different response to a distressing dream: let the dreamer find three people who will suggest that in fact the dream was a good one (a suggestion that is codified in שולחן ערוך יורה דעה 220:1).

He should say to them "I saw a good dream" and they should say to him "it is good and let it be good, and may God make it good. May heaven decree on you seven times that it will be good, and it will be good.

Shmuel, the Babylonian physician who died around 250 CE, had a unique approach to addressing the content of his own dreams. "When he had a bad dream, he would cite the verse 'And dreams speak falsely' [Zech. 10:2]. When he had a good dream he would say "are dreams false? Isn't it stated in the Torah [Numbers 12:6] 'I speak with him in a dream'?" (Berachot 55b).  In contrast, Rabbi Yonatan suggests that dreams do not predict the future: rather they reflect the subconscious (Freud would have been proud). "R. Yonatan said: a person is only shown in his dreams what he is thinking about in his heart..." (Berachot 55b).  And from today's page of Talmud, we learn that Rabbi Meir believed dreams were of no consequence whatsoever.  

“It is of interest that two millennia separated the first detailed description of the major peripheral characteristics of dreaming from the first contemporary experimental results of brain research in this field, while only about 60 years were necessary to establish relatively solid knowledge of the basic and higher integrated neurobiological processes underlying REM sleep.”

— Gottesmann, C. The development of the science of dreaming. International Review of Neurobiology 2010. 92: 16

What does Science have to Say?

Dreaming takes place during the REM (Rapid Eye Movement) stage of sleep, when there is brain activation similar to that found in waking, but muscle tone is inhibited and the eyes move rapidly. This type of sleep was only discovered in the 1950s, and since then it has been demonstrated in mammals and birds (but not yet in robots). Most adults have four or five periods of REM sleep per night, which mostly occur in 90 minute cycles. Individual REM periods may last from a few minutes to over an hour, with REM periods becoming longer the later it is in the night. 

Here are some theories about why we dream, all taken from this paper. (The author, J. Allan Hobson, directed the Laboratory of Neurophysiology at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center from 1968 to 2003. He also published more than 200 peer-reviewed articles and 10 books on sleep and dreaming. So he knows something about the physiology of sleep.) 

1. Sleep and dreaming are needed to regulate energy

Deprive a lab rat of all sleep and it will die. Deprive a lab rat of REM sleep so that it does not dream, and it too will die.  These sleep-and-dream deprived rats lost weight and showed heat seeking behavior. This suggests for animals which regulate their body temperature, sleep is needed to control both body temperature and weight. Importantly, only mammals and birds are homeothermic, and they are also the only animals which are known to have REM sleep.

2. Sleep deprivation and psychological equilibrium

Based on a number of experiments in healthy human volunteers, it has been shown that sleep and dreaming are essential to mental health. "The fact that sleep deprivation invariably causes psychological dysfunction" wrote Prof. Hobson in his review,  "supports the functional theory that the integrity of waking consciousness depends on the integrity of dream consciousness and that of the brain mechanisms of REM sleep." (When we studied Nedarim 15 we noted however, that eleven days of sleep deprivation seemed to have no ill effects in one man.) The relationship between dreaming and psychological health is rather more complicated though: monamine-oxidase inhibitors completely repress REM sleep, and yet are an effective class of anti-depressants.  There appears to be a relationship between dreaming and psychological well being, but its parameters require much more study.   

3. Sleep, Dreams and Learning

In 1966, it was first suggested that REM sleep is related to the brain organizing itself.  This suggestion was later supported by studies which showed that the ability of an animal to learn a new task is diminished their REM sleep is interrupted.  Other studies show that REM sleep in humans is increased following an intensive learning period. 

“...dreaming could represent a set of foreordained scripts or scenarios for the organization of our waking experience. According to this hypothesis, our brains are as much creative artists as they are copy editors.”

— Hobson, JA. REM sleep and dreaming: towards a theory of protoconsciousness. Nature Reviews 2009.807.

Nightmares and Fasting

We've all had dreams that frighten or upset us. The major code of Jewish law take bad dreams seriously. While fasting is absolutely forbidden on Shabbat, it is permitted in two instances: when Yom Kippur falls on Shabbat and when you've had a bad dream and need to undertake a fast "to tear up the heavenly decree." Here is the ruling:

שולחן ערוך אורח חיים הלכות שבת סימן רפח 

סעיף ד
 מותר להתענות בו תענית חלום כדי שיקרע גזר דינו. וצריך להתענות ביום ראשון, כדי שיתכפר לו מה שביטל עונג שבת 

It is permitted to fast on Shabbat because of a bad dream, in order for the bad ruling to be torn up. However he must then also fast on Sunday, in order to atone for the fact that he ruined his Shabbat enjoyment by fasting...  

There are several psychological definitions of a nightmare. One describes nightmares, as "characterized by awakenings primarily from REM sleep with clear recall of disturbing mentation." These bad dreams are common, occurring in 2-6% of the population at least once a week. They seem to be more prevalent in children and less prevalent in the elderly, but in all age groups women report having nightmares more often than men. Nightmares are also more frequent in patients with psychiatric disorders such as anxiety, neuroticism, schizophrenia, sociality and post traumatic stress disorder. And in all populations they are more frequently reported during episodes of stress.  

There are a number of psycho-analytical models of nightmare formation, but little empirical evidence to support any of them.  They are shown in the table below.

Psychoanalytic and neo-psychoanalytic models of nightmare formation
Authors	Core mechanism producing nightmares
Freud 1900	Transformation of libidinal urges into anxiety that punishes the self (masochism); analogous to the neurotic anxiety underlying phobias
Jones 1951	Expression of repressed, exclusively incestuous, impulses
Jung 1909-1945	Residues of unresolved psychological conflicts.Individuation or development of the personality
Fisher et al. 1970	Attempts to assimilate or control repressed anxiety stemming from past or present conflicts
Greenberg 1972	Failure in dream function of mastering traumatic experience
Lansky 1995	Transformation of shame into fear (post-traumatic nightmares only)
Solms 1997	Epileptiform (seizure) activity in the limbic system (recurring nightmares only). Activation of dopaminergic appetitive circuits in mediobasal forebrain and hallucinatory representation by occipito-temporal-parietal mechanisms (nonrecurring nightmares and normal dreaming)
From Nielsen T and Levin, R. Nightmares: A new neurocognitive mode. Sleep Medicine Reviews 2007:11 (4); 295-310.

A review paper from researchers in Montreal and Yeshiva University summarizes the research in this way:

In sum, although clinical and, to some extent, empirical evidence supports different psychoanalytic models of nightmare formation, for the most part such models have not been subjected to rigorous empirical scrutiny. Rather, their central tenets have been integrated with more recent nightmare models, where empirical evidence is less scarce.

These same researchers suggest that nightmares "result from dysfunction in a network of affective processes that, during normal dreaming, serves the adaptive function of fear memory extinction." Fear memory occurs when an innocuous stimulus (like a door bell ringing) is paired with an unpleasant experience (like an electric shock).  Fear memory may be useful if it saves the individual from repeating a dangerous error. Extinction memories override the original fear memories and allow the individual to hear that ringing door bell without fearing an electric shock. The suggestion is that nightmares occur when the brain does not properly process fear extinction memories, For this reason nightmares are more prevalent in those with stress or psychiatric disorders. It's an interesting theory, but one that has not yet gathered much empirical evidence for its support.  But there is no doubting the relationship between psychiatric disorders, stress, and nightmares, and we noted earlier that  R. Yonatan claimed "a person is only shown in his dreams what he is thinking about in his heart..." (Berachot 55b). Perhaps this is why it is permitted to fast on Shabbat after a nightmare.  

Interestingly the Shulchan Aruch records an opinion that such Shabbat fasting is not permitted for a nightmare that appears only once; rather it is only allowed if it appears three times or more ( י"א שאין להתענות תענית חלום בשבת אלא על חלום שראהו תלת זימני). This is now more readily understood in light of the relationships we have noted between nightmares and psychological wellbeing; a recurrent nightmare may be associated with a more deeply felt stressful situation, and so it is only these recurrent bad dreams that allow for a Shabbat fast. One-off nightmares are not reflective of this stress, and so fasting  on their account is not permitted on Shabbat.    

The Realism and Bizarreness of 365 Dreams
Category	Frequency (%)
Possible in waking life, everyday experiences	29
Possible in waking life, uncommon elements	50
One or two bizarre or impossible elements	27
Several bizarre elements	4
From M. Schredl, et al. Dream content and personality. Dreaming 1999. (9): 257–263

In Summary

At best, we can say that contemporary science has a poor understanding of why we dream.  Hobson concludes his review stating that dreaming is "the subjective experience of a brain state with phenomenological similarities to - and differences from - waking consciousness, which is itself associated with a distinctive brain state." Well thanks for that Professor.  But not very helpful.

Dreams are very important to how we function as humans but we seem to have no idea how dreams serve to keep us from dying or getting very sick. That we must dream in order to function seems to be certain; but why we dream about what we do is far less known. And don't trust every scientific paper you read on the subject. Publication and peer review is no guarantee of veracity. Let's end with a good example of scientific nonsense from this paper published in the journal Sleep and Hypnosis, which seeks to explain why some dreams portend the future. (Well, um, actually they don't. But do go on.)  Just its title alone should make you run for the hills: Dreams, Time Distortion and the Experience of Future Events: A Relativistic, Neuroquantal Perspective. And it only gets better:

“If dreams and related altered states are actually the experiences of biophotons within the brain...then the temporal discrepancies between precognitive experiences and subsequent verified events may reflect the relativistic and quantum properties of minute differential velocities in electromagnetic phenomena. The average discrepancy of about two to three days between the experience and the event in actual cases supported this hypothesis.
The moderately strong correlation between the global geomagnetic activity at the time of precognitive experiences, primarily during dreams, and the geomagnetic activity during the two days before the event in those cases where the discrepancy is more than 6 days suggests a variant of entanglement between photons emitted during the event and those experienced before the event. The marked congruence of gravitational waves, geomagnetic activity, the Schumann resonance and the peak power of brain activity during different states, particularly when the sensitivity of the right hemisphere is considered, indicates a physical substrate by which prescience could occur.”

— Dotta BT. Persinger MA. Dreams, Time Distortion and the Experience of Future Events: A Relativistic, Neuroquantal Perspective. Sleep and Hypnosis 2009;11(2):29-39)

Rabbi Meir, the great sage of the Talmud, believed that the content of dreams was of no consequence whatsoever.  He may well said that same about some of the contemporary scientific explanations of dreaming.  

“אמרו לו בחלום מעשר שני של אביך שאתה מבקש הרי הוא במקום פלוני, אף ע”פ שמצא שם מה שנאמר לו אינו מעשר, דברי חלומות לא מעלין ולא מורידין

If a man was told in a dream that Ma’aser Sheni [a tithe on produce] belonging to his father was to be found in a certain location, even if he found some produce in that same location, it is not to be considered set aside for this tithe. For the content of dreams is of no consequence.”

— רמב"ם הלכות מעשר שני ונטע רבעי פרק ו הלכה ו

Gittin 49b ~ Who Wants to Marry More?

גיטין מט, ב

יותר ממה שהאיש רוצה לישא אשה רוצה להנשא

More than a man desires to wed, a woman desires to be wed.(Gittin 49b).

When a couple marries under traditional Jewish law, the husband undertakes several financial obligations which are outlined in the ketuvah. Among these, he agrees to provide money for his wife in the event that the couple divorce or that he dies.  In today's daf, the Talmud discusses what kind of land the husband may provide for this payment to his wife. Rabbi Yehuda opined that the land may be of inferior (rather than average or superior) quality.  The reason is that a woman is so eager to marry, that she will do so even if her right to collect her ketuvah payment was limited to inferior land.  Or as the Talmud puts it, יותר ממה שהאיש רוצה לישא אשה רוצה להנשא: "More than a man desires to wed, a woman desires to be wed" (Gittin 49b).  Since she will agree to marry even if she will only receive inferior quality land in the event of divorce or her becoming a widow, there was simply no need to demand the husband provide any better land.  

We have come across a similar concept when we studied Ketuvot (86b). There the Talmud asks: What would happen if a man owes money to both a debtor and to his ex-wife to pay for her ketuvah? The answer given is that if this unlucky person can only repay one of the debts, he should repay the creditor and not his ex-wife. Although this ruling might discourage women from getting married in the first place, the Talmud was not be concerned, because "more than a man desires to wed, a woman desires to be wed."  

We've had other occasions to look at sweeping statements made by the rabbis of the Talmud about ways women view marriage. Resh Lakish famously stated (יבמות 118) that "it was better for a woman to live with a husband than to live alone" (though you may recall that there were at least four ways to understand this statement of Resh Lakish). We also noted that the late Rabbi J.B. ("the Rav") Soloveitchik believed that this statement reflected "an existential fact." (It also turned out that he was wrong.) While the Talmud does not seem to suggest that its psychological insight is an "existential fact," does it have any validity to it in today's society? Do women really want to be married more than men?

SOCIETAL NORMS CHANGE VERY FAST

In June 2015, the US Supreme Court ruled that same sex marriage was guaranteed by the Constitution. The lesson here is that societal norms of about all aspects of marriage are changing very quickly. It may indeed have been true in talmudic times that women wanted to marry more than did men, but our society is vastly different. And with that note of caution, we may proceed.

“The history of marriage is one of both continuity and change.
Changes, such as the decline of arranged marriages and the abandonment of the law of coverture, have worked deep transformations in the structure of marriage, affecting aspects of marriage once viewed as essential. These new insights have strengthened, not weakened, the institution. Changed understandings of marriage are characteristic of a Nation where new dimensions of freedom become apparent to new generations.”

— US Supreme Court Opinion 14-556 decided June 25, 2015.

WHO WANTS TO BE MARRIED?

In 2011 the anthropologist Helen Fisher and two colleagues released the "largest and most comprehensive nationally-representative study of single men and women ever done." Fisher is a biological anthropologist, and a Senior Research Fellow at The Kinsey Institute. She is also the Chief Science Advisor to the Internet dating site Match.com Anyway, she surveyed 5,200 single people in the US aged 21 to over 65, and found "a new picture of single Americans emerges that is radically different than it was 50 years ago..." And what of the talmudic claim that women are more eager to marry?

This national survey clearly shows that men are just as eager to marry as women are; 33% of both sexes want to say “I do. (Helen Fisher 2011. The Forgotten Sex: Men.)

So today in the US (at least according to Fisher's survey,) it is not correct to say that women want to be married more than men. Some of Fisher's other findings about the attitudes of single men might surprise you too:

Men in every age group are more eager than women to have children.  Even young men. Among those between ages 21 and 34, 51% of men want kids, while 46% of women yearn for young.  Men are less picky too.  Fewer men say it is important to find a partner of their own ethnic background (20% of men vs 29%  of women said this is a “must have” or “very important”); and fewer say they want someone of their own religion (17% of men vs 28% of women said this is a “must have” or “very important”).   Men are also more likely to have experienced love at first sight...

It’s also true for the Japanese

The results from survey-type studies must always be interpreted with caution. Who was asked? What age were they? What gender? Where did they live? What was their socio-economic status? And so on. So, does Fisher’s 2011 survey reflect more than just the views of those who were surveyed? There is some evidence that its results are indeed more generalizable, and it comes from a survey of marriage intentions in Japan, published in 2021. Specifically, the survey looked at “positive, negative, and passive marriage intentions and desires among men and women who have never been married.” (The study used such famous databases as the Japanese National Fertility Survey and the Japanese Life Course Panel Survey). It found that Japanese men and woman had almost identical desires to get married, as you can see on the figure below:

Trends in marriage intentions by sex and age, 1982–2015. From Raymo JM, Uchikoshi F, Yoda S. Marriage intentions, desires, and pathways to later and less marriage in Japan. Demogr Res. 2021; 44: 67-98.

Let's give the last word to Dr Fisher, and remember the danger of assuming that human nature does not change.  

My colleagues and I have put over 60 men and women ages 18-57 into a brain scanner to study the brain circuitry of romantic passion.  We found no gender differences.  This..study supports what I have long suspected: that men are just as eager to find a partner, fall in love, commit long term and raise a family.

It’s an illuminating, indeed myth-shattering, new set of scientific data.  And the sooner we embrace these findings, and fling off our outmoded and unproductive beliefs about both sexes, the faster we will find—and keep–the love we want.

Next Time, on Talmudology:

Why do we Dream?