Talmudology on the Parsha, Shmini: ~ How Many Letters are in a Sefer Torah?

ויקרא 10:16

אֵ֣ת ׀ שְׂעִ֣יר הַֽחַטָּ֗את דָּרֹ֥שׁ דָּרַ֛שׁ מֹשֶׁ֖ה וְהִנֵּ֣ה שֹׂרָ֑ף וַ֠יִּקְצֹ֠ף עַל־אֶלְעָזָ֤ר וְעַל־אִֽיתָמָר֙ בְּנֵ֣י אַהֲרֹ֔ן הַנּוֹתָרִ֖ם לֵאמֹֽר׃

Then Moses carefully inquired about the goat of sin offering, and it had already been burned! He was angry with Eleazar and Ithamar, Aaron’s remaining sons, and said,

In this week’s parsha, Moses gets angry with Eleazar and Ithamar, two of the sons of Aaron. What is of interest to us this week is not why Moses was angry. Instead we will focus on two short words in the verse above “דרש דרש” meaning “he carefully inquired.” Most of the classic commentaries interpret this to mean that Moses asked two questions, rather than just one. But the Talmud occupies itself not with the meaning of these words, but their location in a Sefer Torah. They are, according to talmudic tradition, the halfway point in the number of words in the Torah.

קידושין ל, א

לפיכך נקראו ראשונים סופרים, שהיו סופרים כל האותיות שבתורה, שהיו אומרים: וא"ו דגחון חציין של אותיות של ספר תורה, דרש דרש  חציין  של תיבות, והתגלח של פסוקים

Therefore the early sages were called "counters" - soferim - because they counted all the letters of the Torah. They used to say: the letter vav of the word Gachon (Lev.11:42) is the half-way point of the letter of a Torah. The words "darosh darash" (Lev. 10:16) represent the half way point of the number of words in the Torah. The verse that begins with the word "Vehitgalach" (Lev.13:33) is the half way point of the number of verses in the Torah...

The business of counting the letters in the Torah was apparently taken very seriously - so much so that one of the names by which the rabbis of the Talmud were known  - soferim - means "those who count."  To this day, the person who handwrites a Sefer Torah is called a counter (סופר), and not a writer (כותב). The Talmud emphasizes that this counting exercise was taken so seriously that the letters, words and verses were counted, and counted again. 

קידושין ל, א

בעי רב יוסף וא"ו דגחון מהאי גיסא או מהאי גיסא א"ל ניתי ס"ת ואימנינהו מי לא אמר רבה בר בר חנה לא זזו משם עד שהביאו ספר תורה ומנאום

Rav Yosef asked a question: This letter vav of the word Gachon, is it part of the first half or part of the second half of the letters of the Torah? They said to him, "let us bring a Torah scroll and count! For didn't Rabbah bar bar Channah say in a similar context: "They did not move from there until they brought a Torah scroll and counted all its letters"...

 The View of Tradition, And OF the Journal Tradition

Writing in Tradition in 1964, the late scholar Louis Rabinowitz (d. 1984) asked how Orthodox Jews should regard the text of the Torah , "...upon which depends the whole enduring magnificent structure of the Oral Law and the Halakhah, in comparison with those texts which show variants from it?"  Here is his reply:

“The answer is surely simple and logical. “The early scholars were called Soferim,” declares the Talmud (Kid. 30a) “because they were wont to count (soferim) all the letters of the Torah.” The meticulous manner in which they carried out this task is sufficiently indicated in the same passage by the information which it elicited to the effect, for instance, that the vav of gachon (Lev. 9:42 - [sic]) marks the half-way mark of the letters of the Torah, the words darosh darash of Lev. 10:16 the dividing line between the words...


With what loving care and sacred devotion, then, did they jealously guard every letter of the text! What exhaustive and detailed regulations they laid down in order to ensure that the copying of the scrolls should be completely free from human error! There has been nothing like it in the history of literature or religion, and in this respect the Massoretic text stands indisputably in a class by itself.”

— Louis Rabinowitz. Torah Min Ha-Shamayim.Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought, 1964-5: 7;1: 34-45

Leaving aside the ironic typographic error that mis-references the location of the vav of Gachon, was the late rabbi Rabinowitz correct in remarking on the "loving care and sacred devotion," with which "they jealously guard every letter of the text"?

So how many letters are there in a Torah?

There are varied counts given for the number of letters in the Torah, but a couple of results seem to be most popular.

• 304, 805 From here, and here and here, and from Even-Shoshan (see below).

• 304,801 From here.

One website shares the source code used to count the words and letters in Torah; its results are shown below, and are off by four when compared to others who claim to have counted.

Letters and Words in the Torah
	Words	Letters
בראשית	20,614	78,063
שמות	16,714	63,527
ויקרא	11,950	44,790
במדבר	16,408	63,529
דברים	14,295	54,892
TOTAL	79,981	304,801

And How Many Verses Are There?

The same website gives a count of 5,844 verses in the Torah.  Rabbi Yair Chaim ben Moses Bachrach (d. 1702), author of the Chavot Ya'ir, notes that there are 5,845 verses in the chumashim he used. But today's daf of Talmud records that there are 5,888 verses. And here is the count from Even-Shoshan's קונקורדנציה חדשה (New Concordance of the Bible):

From Even-Shoshan (ed.) A New Concordance of the Bible. Kiryat Sefer, Jerusalem 1987.

Side-Bar: From Where did Even-SHoshan Get his word count?

Even-Shoshan lists his reference as Rabbi Chaim Mordechai Brecher, who published a Yiddish translation of the entire Hebrew Bible. (Brecher was born in what is now the Ukraine in 1880 and died in New York in 1965.  His Yiddish translation was published in New York in 1941, and was republished six times, the last in 1957.)  At the end of the second volume of his translation (p. נא), R. Brecher addressed the thorny question of the letter and word counts in our Torahs, and had this to say:

The truth is, this [question of how many words there are in a Sefer Torah] is astonishing, and I couldn't rest because of it. So I decided to count them, and I, myself, counted all the words in the entire Torah. In order to make it clear to the reader that I didn't make a mistake in my count, I am here providing a list of all the verses in all the chapters as they are currently divided...My count is correct. As the ancient wise men say: Love Plato, love Aristotle, and love the truth most of all.

R. Brecher's total word count is 79,976 (although this count actually comes from here) - and so his half way point in the Torah is word #39,988. 

The Misplaced Middle of the Torah

According to the Talmud, the middle letter of the Torah is the Vav of the word Gachon, (גחון) found in פרשת שמיני. However this claim is way off. Since there are about 304,805 letters in the Torah scrolls in use today, (I say about because of what we have just noted regarding the precise count,) the middle letter would be letter # 152,403, the first word of this verse (Lev 8.29):

ויקרא פרק ח פסוק כט 

ויקח משה את החזה ויניפהו תנופה לפני יקוק מאיל המלאים למשה היה למנה כאשר צוה יהו–ה את משה 

However the Vav of the word Gichon, is letter #157,236 - off by 4,833 letters. Oy.

It's no better regarding the words. If we go with the actual word count as being 79,980, then the middle words are # 39,990 and #39,991. These are the words יצק אל in verse below (Lev. 8:18):

ויקרא פרק ח פסוק טו 

וישחט ויקח משה את הדם ויתן על קרנות המזבח סביב באצבעו ויחטא את המזבח ואת הדם יצק אל יסוד המזבח ויקדשהו לכפר עליו

But the middle words of the Torah, according to Today's daf, are דרש דרש found over 900 words later (Lev.10:16):

ויקרא פרק י פסוק טז 

ואת שעיר החטאת דרש דרש משה והנה שרף ויקצף על אלעזר ועל איתמר בני אהרן הנותרם לאמר

That's a lot of letters to miscount, especially if your name is "the counter." Several suggestions have been made to address these discrepancies:

1.  The text of the Torah that the rabbis of the Talmud were using was significantly different to the one we use today.  This is possible, but then why does the Talmud never cite of any of these extra words and verses? The discrepant count is about 3% - that's a lot of missing text.

2.  The rabbis in the Talmud were not good at math. Again, possible, but the Talmud claims that they took the counting so seriously that they were called COUNTERS. It also claims that they undertook the counting exercise on several different occasions.  Were they really that bad at math?

3. The rabbis in the Talmud didn't mean this count to be taken literally. While many apologists like this answer, it is at total odds with the text. The Talmud states: they counted.

4.  The rabbis guesstimated the count. Perhaps the rabbis never really counted, but guessed at where the middle of the Torah lay: somewhere in the middle of the middle of the Five Books. After that, the letter vav of the word Gachon became the official midpoint, even though it was not accurate.  The problem with this suggestion is again, that the Talmud states that the soferim actually counted, and counted again. Not that they guessed, and guessed again.  

Science, Math and Judaism

Of all the scientific disciplines, it is mathematics that is first introduced to us. We teach toddlers to count, sometimes before they can even walk, and we all pursue some kind of mathematical training through high school.  Unlike medicine or physics or biology or astronomy, mathematics is something we all do, to some degree.  And we all understand what counting means.  This passage in the Talmud is the most readily understandable example of a conflict between science and Judaism. It is a conflict in which the basic text of rabbinic Judaism declares a fact that is, well, just not a fact.  Some find this conflict to be so intellectually troubling that their only path is to reject Jewish practice. Others, equally aware of the conflict, are comfortable with their intellectual position in which the scientific inaccuracies of the Talmud require no wholesale rejection of Jewish practice. Where do you fit on this spectrum, and, perhaps more importantly, what can you do to engage in a respectful dialogue with those whose opinions on these matters are not your own?

Bava Metzia 30b ~ Visiting the Sick

 בבא מציעא ל ,ב 

דתני רב יוסף והודעת להם זה בית חייהם את הדרך זו גמילות חסדים (אשר) ילכו זה ביקור חולים בה זו קבורה ואת המעשה זה הדין אשר יעשון זו לפנים משורת הדין

Rav Yosef taught: The verse states (Ex. 18:20):

"You shall make known to them" -this refers to their livelihood

"The way" - this refers to good deeds

"That they may walk"  - this refers to visiting the sick...

According to Rav Yosef, Moses was instructed to let the people know that they must pursue a livelihood, perform kind acts and visit the sick.  Let's remind ourselves of the importance of that last one, with a repost from Nedarim 39. There, we read the following:

נדרים לט, ב - מ, א

תניא ביקור חולים אין לה שיעור ... אמר אביי: אפי' גדול אצל קטן רבא אמר אפי' מאה פעמים ביום אמר רבי אחא בר חנינא כל המבקר חולה נוטל אחד מששים בצערו

יצא ר' עקיבא ודרש: כל מי שאין מבקר חולים כאילו שופך דמים. כי אתא רב דימי אמר: כל המבקר את החולה גורם לו שיחיה וכל שאינו מבקר את החולה גורם לו שימות

Visiting the sick is a mitzvah that has no limit... Abaye said that even an important person must visit a lesser person who is ill...Rava said: [you must visit a sick person] even one hundred times a day...Rabbi Acha bar China said: "Whoever visits a sick person takes away one-sixtieth of his suffering...

Rabbi Akiva expounded and said: "Whoever does not visit the sick, it is as if he sheds blood." When Rav Dimi came [from Israel to Babylon] he said: "Whoever visits the sick causes the person to live, and whoever does not visit the sick, causes the person to die." (Nedarim 39b-40a)

Some time ago I visited the famous Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, and was privileged to be given a tour of their new Neurocritical Care Unit, part of the Marcus Stroke and Neuroscience Center (and thank you, Bernie "Home Depot" Marcus).   While the unit has all the fancy equipment you'd expect, what impressed me the most was a feature I had not seen in any other intensive care unit (ICU): every patient room has an adjoining suite where a family member can eat, sleep, shower and wait (and there is a lot of waiting in ICUs). There are no visiting hours; the family member literally lives in the ICU with their loved one.  My tour guide explained that the unit sees the presence of  visitors as a way of offering the best care to the patient. It is a wonderful approach to the care of the sick - but it wasn't always like that.

A HISTORY OF VISITING THE SICK - IN HOSPITALS

Visiting times in hospitals still vary greatly, and many have an open door policy. But not too long ago, you might only be able to visit a patient in a hospital for a couple of hours each week. In the 1870s, Doncaster Royal Infirmary in Britain limited visiting to three afternoons a week - which was a more generous policy than that of the Royal Berkshire Hospital, which allowed only one 15 minute visits twice a week. In a survey of over 400 British hospitals conducted in 1988, over a quarter of those which replied allowed visiting for no more than two hours a day. Perhaps these restrictive policies were in response to some visitors who abused the generosity of Britain's glorious National Health Service. 

““[A more open visiting policy] proved to be a disaster, primarily because of abuse of the system by visitors. Many would arrive promptly at 8 am and stay all day. They would bring sandwiches and flasks . . . and camp out by their relative’s bed . . . Others would eat patients’ food, [and] ask for extra cups of tea...there was even a threat of violence from a visitor asked to leave temporarily...”

— Alderman B. Hospital visiting hours. BMJ 1988;296:1798-9.

HELP PATIENTS GET WELL SOONER - BY VISITING THEM

In 2006 an Italian group reported the results of a study on the effects of hospital visitors on patient outcomes in its small intensive care unit.  The ICU changed its visiting policy from a restricted one (one visitor twice a day for thirty minutes) to an unrestricted one every two months.  After two years of this alternating policy, the authors compared the outcomes of their 226 patients. Despite significantly higher environmental microbial contamination during the unrestricted visiting periods, septic complications were similar. But the risk of cardiocirculatory complications was twice as high in the restricted visiting periods, which were also associated with a (non-significantly) higher mortality rate. The unrestricted group was associated with a greater reduction in anxiety score and a significantly lower increase in thyroid stimulating hormone from admission to discharge. The authors concluded that "liberalizing the visiting hours seems to be more protective because it is associated with a reduction in severe cardiovascular complications."

Incidence, with Odds Ratio and 95% Confidence Intervals, of septic and major cardiovascular complications in patients enrolled during the restricted (RVP) and unrestricted visiting periods (UVP) adjusted for age, gender, and time of enrollment. RR indicates relative risk; UT, urinary tract; pul., pulmonary; and CV compl., cardiovascular complication. From Fumagalli et al. Reduced Cardiocirculatory Complications With Unrestrictive Visiting Policy in an Intensive Care Unit Results From a Pilot, Randomized Trial. Circulation. 2006;113:946-952.

Writing in The Journal of the American Medical Association in 2004, Donald Berwick and Meeta Kotogal called for a change in the policy of restricted visiting hours in intensive care units.  They noted three areas which are often of concern to ICU staff when considering the question of visiting hours.  They also noted that although these concerns seem reasonable, the scientific literature tells "quite a different story."

Physiologic Stress for the Patient: "The concern that the patient should be left alone to rest incorrectly assumes that family presence at the bedside causes stress. The empirical literature suggests that the presence of family and friends tends to reassure and soothe the patient, providing sensory organization in an overstimulated environment and familiarity in unfamiliar surroundings. Visits of family and friends do not usually increase patients’ stress levels, as measured by blood pressure, heart rate, and intracranial pressure, but may in fact lower them. Nursing visits, on the other hand, often increase stress." 

Barriers to the Provision of Care: "The second concern is that the unrestricted presence of loved ones at the bedside will make it more difficult for nurses and physicians to do their jobs and may interfere with the delivery of care. The evidence suggests, however, that the family more often serves as a helpful support structure, increasing opportunities for patient and family education, and facilitating communication between the patient and clinicians." 

Exhaustion of Family and Friends: "The third concern is that constant visiting with the patient may prove exhausting for family and friends who fail to recognize the need to pace themselves. While that does sometimes happen, it is also true that open visiting hours help alleviate the anxiety of family and friends, allowing them to spend time with the patient when they want and to feel more secure and relaxed during the time they are not with the patient. One study found that open visitation had a beneficial effect on 88% of families and decreased anxiety in 65% of families."

A review of visitation policies in ICUs produced by the American College of Critical Care Medicine Task Force went one step further and found "no evidence that pets that are clean and properly immunized should be restricted from the ICU environment." So don't forget to bring the dog next time you visit a family member or friend in the ICU (or anywhere else for that matter). 

“...the preponderance of the literature supports greater flexibility in ICU visitation policies. Descriptive studies of the physiologic effects of visiting on mental status, intracranial pressure, heart rate, and ectopy demonstrated no physiologic rationale for restricting visiting. In fact, in seven of 24 patients with neurologic injuries, family visits produced a significant positive effect, measured by decrease in intracranial pressure.”

— Davidson et al. Clinical practice guidelines for support of the family in the patient-centered intensive care unit: American College of Critical Care Medicine Task Force 2004–2005. Critical Care Medicine 2007; 35 (2): 612.

HOW TO VISIT A FRIEND WHO'S SICK - THEN, AND NOW

Most of the evidence about the benefits of visiting the sick that we've been discussing have centered on the ICU- because that's where most of the research has been done. But for most of the time, an ill friend will not be in the ICU, or even in the hospital. Instead they will be at home, and so that is where the visit will occur.  Sadly, the ability to be a friend to a friend who is sick does not come easy to all of us.  Here's what Letty Pogrebin noted, in her recent book How to be a Friend to a Friend Who's Sick:

It's not uncommon for people to freeze or panic in the company of misery, botch gestures that were meant to ease, attempt to problem-solve when we have no idea what we're talking about, say the wrong thing, talk too much, fidget in the sick room, sit too close to the patient or stand too far away. Some of us don't visit our sick friends at all...

The Talmud sensed that visitors need some guidelines as to how to behave, and so in the daf that we will learn tomorrow, Rav Shisha suggested the following rule: "One should not visit a sick person in the first three hours of the day or in the last three hours of the day." In addition, the Talmud notes that "one who goes to visit the sick should not sit on the bed nor on a bench or a chair, but instead should wrap himself up in his cloak and sit on the ground, because the divine presence rests above the bed of a sick person." While we may no-longer follow this advice, the suggestion that we take our visits to the sick seriously is one that we should heed. Let's close with some more advice, updated for the modern era, from Pogrebin's 2013 handbook (p86-86):

1. Ask the patient to be honest with you and all their friends.

2. Be honest with yourself about your attitude toward the visit.

3. Think through your role in the visit.

4. Don't visit if you can't abide silence.

5. Be prepared to respond without flinching to whatever scene or circumstances greet you during your visit.

6. Be sensitive to your friend's losses.

7. Talk honestly with your children about the demands illness makes on friendship and how important it is to visit people who want company.

“What is the reward given for visiting the sick in this world? “God will guard him and restore him to life and he will be fortunate on earth, and You will not give him over to the desire of his foes.” [Ps 41:3.]:
”God will guard him” - from the evil inclination.
”And restore him to life” - from his suffering.
”And he will be fortunate on earth”- in that everyone will take pride in him.
”And You will not give him over to the desire of his foes”- for he will have good friends... ”

— Nedarim 40b

Talmudology on the Parsha, Tzav ~ To the Right. Always to the Right

In this week’s parsha, the Torah describes a chiral sacrificial ceremony:

ויקרא 7:32-33

וְאֵת֙ שׁ֣וֹק הַיָּמִ֔ין תִּתְּנ֥וּ תְרוּמָ֖ה לַכֹּהֵ֑ן מִזִּבְחֵ֖י שַׁלְמֵיכֶֽם׃

הַמַּקְרִ֞יב אֶת־דַּ֧ם הַשְּׁלָמִ֛ים וְאֶת־הַחֵ֖לֶב מִבְּנֵ֣י אַהֲרֹ֑ן ל֧וֹ תִהְיֶ֛ה שׁ֥וֹק הַיָּמִ֖ין לְמָנָֽה׃

…

ויקרא 8:24

וַיַּקְרֵ֞ב אֶת־בְּנֵ֣י אַהֲרֹ֗ן וַיִּתֵּ֨ן מֹשֶׁ֤ה מִן־הַדָּם֙ עַל־תְּנ֤וּךְ אזְנָם֙ הַיְמָנִ֔ית וְעַל־בֹּ֤הֶן יָדָם֙ הַיְמָנִ֔ית וְעַל־בֹּ֥הֶן רַגְלָ֖ם הַיְמָנִ֑ית וַיִּזְרֹ֨ק מֹשֶׁ֧ה אֶת־הַדָּ֛ם עַל־הַֽמִּזְבֵּ֖חַ סָבִֽיב׃

And the right thigh from your sacrifices of well-being you shall present to the priest as a gift. he from among Aaron’s sons who offers the blood and the fat of the offering of well-being shall get the right thigh as his portion.

Moses then brought forward the sons of Aaron, and put some of the blood on the ridges of their right ears, and on the thumbs of their right hands, and on the big toes of their right feet; and the rest of the blood Moses dashed against every side of the altar.

Why does the Torah emphasise the giving of the right sides of the animal, and the placing of blood on the right ear and the right toe of the Cohen? That’s the question we will address on this week’s Talmudology on the Parsha.

The importance of the right side in Judaism

The Talmud in Yoma teaches that when walking up the ramp to the top of the Altar in the Temple, the Cohen must make a right turn at the top. Following that, every turn he makes must be a right turn.

יומא טו, ב

כל פינות שאתה פונה לא יהו אלא דרך ימין...

All turns that you make must be towards the right

In fact in the Talmud and in normative Jewish practice, the preference to favor the right over the left is everywhere. Here are just a few. (How many more can you think of?)

• Rav Ashi rules that Tefillin must placed it on the left arm, because it is weaker than the right and the action of placing them should be performed with the stronger right hand (מנחות לז, א).

• The Talmud teaches that a right-handed person who writes with her left hand on Shabbat has not violated the prohibition against writing. It doesn't count. Maimonides (הלכות שבת 11:14) agrees:

הַכּוֹתֵב בִּשְׂמֹאלוֹ אוֹ לְאַחַר יָדוֹ בְּרַגְלוֹ בְּפִיו וּבְמַרְפֵּקוֹ פָּטוּר

• According to Rava, walking should start with the right leg, and not the left (יומא יא, ב)

• As we know from studying Zevachim, the entire service in the Temple in Jerusalem must be performed with the right hand (ביאת המקדש 5:18 )

• The rite of חליצה must be performed with the right leg and a right shoe (יבמות קד, א).

• The mezuzah can only be placed on the right side of the door (רמבם הל׳ מזוזה 6:12).

• The best student of a rabbi should walk on the rabbi's right side, relegating the second best to the left (יומא לז, א).

• Again in this tractate, Rabbi Yehudah stated that “the right hand of the deputy high priest (סגן כהן גדול) is superior to the left hand of the high priest (כהן גדול) (יומא לט,א)

• After observing his teacher Rabbi Yehoshua, Rabbi Akiva taught that the left hand should be used after using the bathroom, out of respect to the right hand (ברכות סב,ב). When challenged as to why Rabbi Akiva was impertinent enough to report on which hand his teacher wiped himself he replied תורה היא וללמוד אני צריך - "this too is Torah, and I must study it".

“לֵ֤ב חָכָם֙ לִֽימִינ֔וֹ וְלֵ֥ב כְּסִ֖יל לִשְׂמֹאלֽוֹ׃

A wise man’s mind tends toward the right hand, a fool’s toward the left.

”

— Kohelet 10:2

It's not Just Judaism

In Islam

The importance of all things right handed is found in other religions. For example, when Muslims perform any of the following, it is mustahabb [مستحبّ‎, - "recommended"] to start on the right or use the right hand.

• putting on one's garment and pants and shoes

• entering the mosque, using the siwaak [ a kind of toothpick]

• putting on kohl [an ancient blue eye cosmetic]

• clipping the nails

• trimming the mustache

• combing the hair plucking the armpit hair

• shaving the head

• saying salaam at the end of prayer

• washing the limbs when purifying oneself

• exiting the toilet, eating and drinking

• shaking hands

• touching the Black Stone [ٱلْحَجَرُ ٱلْأَسْوَد‎, al-Ḥajaru al-Aswad, a rock set into the eastern corner of the Kaaba, the ancient building located in the center of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Legend has it that the rock dates back to Adam and Eve.]

• The Bukhari Sharif , one of the six major hadith collections of Sunni Islam rules along the lines of Rabbi Akiva:

"... when you urinate, do not touch your penis with your right hand. And when you cleanse yourself after defecation, do not use your right hand."

“The right hand of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) was for his purification and food, and his left hand was for using the toilet and anything that was dirty... ”

— Sunan Abi Dawood (33)

in christianity

• In the New Testament, Jesus sits at the right hand of God. The Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas who worked to synthesize Aristotelian philosophy with the principles of Christianity (and in that respect was a kind of Maimonides of the Church,) explained at some length how the notion of the right or left hand of God can have any meaning since God is incorporeal. (Spoiler alert: it is all metaphorical.)

• Those at prayer make the sign of the cross with their right hand.

• When Jesus is depicted in sacred images giving out blessings, he does so with his right hand raised.

• When genuflecting, it is the right knee that is bent while the left hip is extended, "because genuflecting on the right knee is a sign of worship and is reserved for God alone."

in hinduism

• Offerings, such as flowers or garlands, are carried with both hands on the right side of the body.

• "Pointing with the forefinger of the right hand or shaking the forefinger in emphasis while talking is never done. This is because the right hand possesses a powerful, aggressive pranic force, and an energy that moves the forces of the world."

• Vāmācāra ( वामाचार, meaning "left-handed attainment" in Sanskrit) describes the "Left-Hand Path" or "Left-path" It is used to describe a particular mode of worship that is heterodox to standard Vedic teachings.

• In Benares, the holiest of the seven sacred cities and sitting on the Ganges, "pilgrims circumambulate with their right hands towards the center, as Krishna is alleged to have done at the sacred mountain."

Well, you get the point.  Judaism, along with all the major religions (and some you've never heard of) emphasize the dominance of the right hand in all things holy. Or mundane.

“The Ngaga of southern Borneo believe everything in the after-world is reversed, “sweet” becoming “bitter”, “straight” becoming “crooked”, and “right” becoming “left”. Likewise the Toraja of Celebes (Sulawesi) believed the dead do everything backwards, even pronouncing words backwards... the dead therefore use their left hand...”

— I. C. Mcmanus. Right Hand, Left Hand: The Origins of Asymmetry in Brains, Bodies, Atoms and Cultures. Phoenix 2003, p27.

 and It's not just religions

There are lots of things that have chirality - meaning they have a mirror image but cannot be mapped onto that mirror image by rotations and translations. They exist in left or right-handed versions. Let's start with in easy example. Um, your hands. Although your right hand mirrors your left, your right hand cannot (comfortably) fit into a handed-glove.

From here.

Here's another example. Bend your fingers and extend your thumb as below. You've made two mirror images that cannot be mapped onto each other. (Go on. Give it a try. See what I mean?) That's chirality.

If we extend this to molecules, they are left or right-handed, meaning they are mirror images but they cannot be superimposed on each other. These are isomers. Like this:

From here.

And here is where things start to get really weird. Nearly everything in the universe - from chemicals and medications to fundamental particles and even galaxies themselves have a right-handed or left-handed preference. No, really. 

Let's start with the essential building blocks of life: amino acids and sugars. Almost all amino acids (not you, glycine) used by life on earth (but not necessarily elsewhere in the universe) are left-handed.  Right-handed amino acids exist of course. They're just not utilized by any life form on earth. Any.  If you sit in a lab and cook up an amino acid from its ingredients, you will make an equal amount of the left and right handed variates. That's just good old chemistry at work. But life on earth can only use half the mixture: the L form. Some bacteria can actually convert right-handed amino acids into the left-handed version, but they can’t use the right-handed ones as is.

Like amino acids, sugars also come in two isomers, but those that are used by life forms on earth are the right-handed variety. All the enzymes that living things use to manipulate amino acids and sugars only work on left-handed amino acids and right-handed sugars. They simply can't use the opposites. Why did life turn out this way? Truth is, nobody knows.  

Medications also exhibit chirality. For example, propranolol is commonly used to help control high blood pressure. Some of you reading this may be taking it. The left form (L-propranolol) is the one that helps. The right form (known as D-propranolol) is inactive. (The Latin for left and right is laevus and dexter, respectively.)

Quinine is an antimalarial drug. It has an isomer called quinidine, and quinidine has no anti-malarial action. But it's a great drug to reduce arrhythmias of the heart. One compound, with two isomers, each with their own remarkable and very different healing properties.

Now consider muons, a fundamental particle in our universe. It is kind of like an electron, but about 200 times heavier. Muons have an average life-expectancy of 2.2 microseconds (so don't expect any kind of long-term relationship) after which time they decay into an electron, a neutrino, and an anitneutirno. The direction that the electron will come out depends on the direction in which the muon spins. Now you would expect there to be equal amounts of electrons that are ejected spinning one way or another. But there aren't.  What happens is that 99.9% of muons decay in a right-handed fashion.

And while we are on the subject of decaying muons, let's talk about those neutrinos, which are a weird fundamental particle with the smallest mass of any known thing. They too, have a preference for the right or left. All neutrinos are left handed, while all anti-neutrinos (whatever that means) are right handed.

Left and right handed galaxies. From here.

Ready for more? Statistically speaking our universe should contain an equal amount of left and right handed galaxies (as noted in how they spin). But this should not occur. In an analysis of over 2,600 nearby spiral galaxies and a later analysis of 15,000 more, Michael Longo demonstrated that that left-handed spirals are more common in the northern hemisphere, above the northern galactic pole. And although the signal is less strong, right-handed spirals appear more frequently in the south.

It's good to be a leftie

About 10-13% of humans are left-handed. (Captive chimpanzees are more left-handed than us, with an approximate 2:1 ratio of righties to lefties. In us it's more like 8:1) But aside from the problem of not finding scissors that work for you, being a leftie gives you some pretty good advantages.

“...not only left-handers are over-represented in confrontational sports, but the closer the physical interaction of the opponents such as in boxing, fencing, judo, or karate, the greater the prevalence of left-handers. In basketball, football, handball, table tennis, tennis, and volleyball, for instance, competitors stand some distance apart and do not confront directly. But even in these sports, there are more than the expected number of left-handers...”

— Grouios G. et al. Do left-handed competitors have an innate superiority in sports? Perception and Motor Skills, 2000:90;1273-1282

At the undergraduate level they are more likely to take part in a whole range of events, from judo and fencing and soccer and volleyball. But when it comes to non-confrontational sports like cycle racing, running or swimming, the proportion of left handers fall back to that of the general population. Lefties make up about 10% of the population, but 23% of all Wimbledon tennis champions were lefties.

There is a lot more evidence that lefties have many advantages over (us) righties. In a complicated test of spatial skills which you can read about here, 47 lefties demonstrated faster and more accurate spatial skills than the 50 righties, along with strong executive control and mental flexibility. And in this study of 100 lefties and 100 righties, the left-handed demonstrated greater creativity than the right-handed on all 4 scales of the Torrance test which examines creative thinking.

And lefties appear to be smarter that righties.  In a study of some 300 gifted children, left (-or mixed-handedness) occurred more frequently in those who were mathematically or verbally precocious (for our readers in the US, this meant an SAT-M score of more than 700 and an SAT-L score of more than 630). Of the last 15 US presidents, seven (about 47%) have been left-handed.  That's almost 1 in 2! Oh, and compared with righties, college-educated left-handers in the US earn 10-15% more.

“Leonardo da Vinci was a lefty, as were Michelangelo, Isaac Newton, and Albert Einstein.”

Despite these, and many other advantages, our cultures have stigmatized those who are left-handed. We all know that the word sinister (meaning something harmful or evil is going to happen) comes from the Latin sinister meaning left.  But there are more examples of anti-left associations in other languages too. Adroit, meaning clever or skillful comes from the French word for right droite, meaning dextrous. In German, linkisch means awkward, and it comes from the German links, meaning left. And so it goes on.

Back to the Jewish Bible

Left-handed people are mentioned only three times in Tanach, and all come from the tribe of Benjamin:

• There were the 700 men from the tribe of Benjamin who could use a sling with deadly accuracy (שופתים 20:16):

מִכֹּ֣ל ׀ הָעָ֣ם הַזֶּ֗ה שְׁבַ֤ע מֵאוֹת֙ אִ֣ישׁ בָּח֔וּר אִטֵּ֖ר יַד־יְמִינ֑וֹ כָּל־זֶ֗ה קֹלֵ֧עַ בָּאֶ֛בֶן אֶל־הַֽשַּׂעֲרָ֖ה וְלֹ֥א יַחֲטִֽא׃

• There were the ambidextrous men who came to fight for King David at Ziklag, who were from the tribe of Benjamin (דברי הימים א, 12:2)

נֹ֣שְׁקֵי קֶ֗שֶׁת מַיְמִינִ֤ים וּמַשְׂמִאלִים֙ בָּֽאֲבָנִ֔ים וּבַחִצִּ֖ים בַּקָּ֑שֶׁת מֵאֲחֵ֥י שָׁא֖וּל מִבִּנְיָמִֽן׃

• And perhaps most famously there was the left-handed Ehud ( אֶת־אֵה֤וּד בֶּן־גֵּרָא֙ בֶּן־הַיְמִינִ֔י אִ֥ישׁ אִטֵּ֖ר יַד־יְמִינ֑וֹ) who assassinated the Moabite king Eglon (שופתים 3:12-30). Because Ehud was left-handed he hid his dagger on his right side. In this way he got past the body search outside the throne room, where the guards looked for a weapon on the left. As for the rest, well, read on:וַיִּשְׁלַ֤ח אֵהוּד֙ אֶת־יַ֣ד שְׂמֹאל֔וֹ וַיִּקַּח֙ אֶת־הַחֶ֔רֶב מֵעַ֖ל יֶ֣רֶךְ יְמִינ֑וֹ וַיִּתְקָעֶ֖הָ בְּבִטְנֽוֹ׃ וַיָּבֹ֨א גַֽם־הַנִּצָּ֜ב אַחַ֣ר הַלַּ֗הַב וַיִּסְגֹּ֤ר הַחֵ֙לֶב֙ בְּעַ֣ד הַלַּ֔הַב כִּ֣י לֹ֥א שָׁלַ֛ף הַחֶ֖רֶב מִבִּטְנ֑וֹ וַיֵּצֵ֖א הַֽפַּרְשְׁדֹֽנָה׃ Reaching with his left hand, Ehud drew the dagger from his right side and drove it into [Eglon’s] belly. The fat closed over the blade and the hilt went in after the blade—for he did not pull the dagger out of his belly—and the filth came out.

All of this is really strange because of course the name of this tribe  - Benjamin - literally means "the son of the right" בן ימין.  

Back to the Talmud

The Talmud in Yoma has a very short instruction:"All turns that you make must be towards the right." But this phrase reveals a profound truth about who we are as humans, and of the very stuff from which we are made.  In culture after culture, in religions after religion, and in the very structure of our universe, there are left or right-handed preferences and predilections, many of which we simply cannot currently explain. Our religious and cultural preferences for the right likely stems from the simple fact that left-handedness is eight times less common. Unfortunately, a suspicion of the other, of those who are not like the majority, is a common trait that in one way or another we all share. But it needn't be so. The other, those in the minority, teach us and enrich our lives. Heck, they are often even smarter and quicker than the majority.  We are all better off with them.

National Jewish Book Award ~ The Eleventh Plague

I am delighted to share the news that The Eleventh Plague: Jews and Pandemics from the Bible to COVID-19 has been awarded the 2024 National Jewish Book Award for Modern Jewish Thought and Experience.

The award ceremony will take place in New York City tomorrow evening. I am humbled by this award, and hope that it will allow new readers to learn of the fascinating - and until now the untold story - of the Jewish encounter with pandemics.

“...pandemics have interfered with the intellectual life of Jews for many centuries. However, their response was never to end their educational pursuits or to close the House of Study, the Bet Midrash, although they may have had to temporarily move it into the family home or a vacant field. Instead, their reaction was to use whatever was at hand in the struggle to continue Jewish life and Jewish study. Often they used a pandemic to push them to greater intellectual or religious productivity.”

— Introduction, The Eleventh Plague.