Talmudology on the Parsha, Ki Tavo~ Kri, Ketiv and Hemorrhoids

In this week’s parsha, we read about the rewards for following the word of God. And then we read about the punishments for not doing so. Here is one of the latter:

דברים כח: 15,27

וְהָיָה אִם־לֹא תִשְׁמַע בְּקוֹל יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ לִשְׁמֹר לַעֲשׂוֹת אֶת־כל־מִצְותָיו וְחֻקֹּתָיו אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי מְצַוְּךָ הַיּוֹם וּבָאוּ עָלֶיךָ כל־הַקְּלָלוֹת הָאֵלֶּה וְהִשִּׂיגוּךָ׃

…יַכְּכָה יְהֹוָה בִּשְׁחִין מִצְרַיִם ובעפלים [וּבַטְּחֹרִים] וּבַגָּרָב וּבֶחָרֶס אֲשֶׁר לֹא־תוּכַל לְהֵרָפֵא…

But if you do not obey the Lord your God to observe faithfully all His commandments and laws which I enjoin upon you this day, all these curses shall come upon you and take effect…The Lord will strike you with the Egyptian inflammation, with hemorrhoids, boil-scars, and itch, from which you shall never recover.

The word translated as hemorrhoids is written “עפלים,” but that is not what you will hear being chanted. Instead, you will hear the word “טְּחֹרִים.” If you have you wondered why, you are in luck, because this week in Talmudology on the Parsha we will discuss the kri and the ketiv. Oh, and also hemorrhoids.

A Quick Introduction to Kri & Ketiv

There are two traditions that we have about the written Torah, also known as the Five Books of Moses. There is the way the word is written - known as the ketiv, from the Hebrew k-t-v (כ–ת–ב), meaning, well, written, And there is the way that the word is actually pronounced, known as the kri, from the Hebrew k-r-i (ק–ר–י), meaning read.

If Jewish services are familiar to you, then so too is the kri-ketiv. There is one that is said often, and certainly each time we read it in the Torah. It is the name of God, spelled in the Torah in Hebrew as י–ה–ו–ה. It is pronounced something like Yehowah, from where we get the word Jehovah, (as in Witnesses). But whenever we encounter that word in the Torah, or as part of Jewish prayer, we pronounce it Adonai (lit. my Lord). See. It’s a kri-ketiv.

Emanuel Tov, Professor Emeritus of Bible at the Hebrew University (and the editor-in-chief of the Dead Sea Scrolls publication project) is probably the world's leading authority on the textual criticism of the Hebrew. In his classic work Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (I have the second edition, but a third is now available,) he noted that there are anywhere from 848 to 1566 instances of kri-ketiv, depending on which text you consult. (He and other academics rather annoyingly calls them Ketib-Qere, but I suppose if you are the world expert you get to do that kind of thing.)

The notion of the Ketib and Qere in the manuscripts of [the masoretic text] derives from a relatively late period, but the practice was already mentioned in the rabbinic literature…For example, b. Erub. 26 a motes that in 2 Kgs 20:4 “it is written ‘the city,’ but we read ‘court.’ Manuscripts and editions likewise indicate: Ketib העיר, “the city,” Qere חצר, “court.” (p59.)

The Aleppo Codex, (c. 920 CE) Ki Tavo. The subject matter of this post is found in the black box, and the note on the keri is found in the marginalia to its right.

The Origins of the Keri-Ketiv

Summarizing the scholarship, Emanuel Tov suggested four possible origins of the kri-ketiv:

1. They are corrections

2. They are variant spellings

3. They are marginal corrections that later became variant spellings

4. They are reading traditions

Most scholars adhere to the third reason. “If that view is correct,” he wrote, “most of the Ketib-Qere interchanges should be understood as an ancient collection of variants. Indeed, for many categories of Ketib-Qere interchanges similar differences are known between ancient witnesses [i.e. very old manuscripts].

Sometimes the keri-ketiv avoids profanation, such as the perpetual reading of God’s four-letter name as Adonai. And sometimes they serve “as the replacement of possibly offensive words with euphemistic expressions.” This is what is going on in this week’s parsha, where ובעפלים (and with hemorrhoids) is replaced with וּבַטְּחֹרִים (and with tumors). The Talmud makes this cleaning up of the text explicit:

מגילה כה, ב

תָּנוּ רַבָּנַן: כל הַמִּקְרָאוֹת הַכְּתוּבִין בַּתּוֹרָה לִגְנַאי — קוֹרִין אוֹתָן לְשֶׁבַח, כְּגוֹן: ״יִשְׁגָּלֶנָּה״ — יִשְׁכָּבֶנָּה, ״בַּעֲפוֹלִים״ — בַּטְּחוֹרִים, ״חִרְיוֹנִים״ — דִּבְיוֹנִים, ״לֶאֱכוֹל אֶת חוֹרֵיהֶם וְלִשְׁתּוֹת אֶת מֵימֵי שִׁינֵּיהֶם״ — לֶאֱכוֹל אֶת צוֹאָתָם וְלִשְׁתּוֹת אֶת מֵימֵי רַגְלֵיהֶם

The Sages taught in a baraita: All of the verses that are written in the Torah in a coarse manner are read in a refined manner. For example, the term “shall lie with her [yishgalena]” (Deuteronomy 28:30) is read as though it said yishkavena, which is a more refined term. The term “with hemorrhoids [bafolim]” (Deuteronomy 28:27) is read bateḥorim. The term “doves’ dung [chiryonim]” (II Kings 6:25) is read divyonim. The phrase “to eat their own excrement [choreihem] and drink their own urine [meimei shineihem]” (II Kings 18:27) is read with more delicate terms: To eat their own excrement [tzo’atam] and drink their own urine [meimei ragleihem].

So that explains why the word ובעפלים is read as וּבַטְּחֹרִים. But why are these kinds of swellings mentioned among the curses that await the Israelites if they fail to heed the word of God? Is that the best punishment that God can come up with? Well, it turns out that ophalim likely referenced a truly awful punishment, one that would instill dread and fear. I am talking about bubonic plague.

More than You ever wanted to know about Biblical Hemorrhoids

Let’s fast forward to the Book of Samuel. Having entered the Promised Land, the people of Israel began a long military campaign against its inhabitants, the foremost of which were the Philistines. But they lost not only their battles, but also their Ark, which had been brought to the battlefield in a last-ditch attempt at victory. The captured Ark was taken to Ashdod and placed in a temple to Dagon. God then directed his anger against the Philistines in a most unusual way. He destroyed the idols in the temple and then “struck Ashdod and its territory with swellings” (I Sam 5:6). When the Ark was moved to Gath, another outbreak of “swellings” followed: “The hand of the Lord came against the city, causing great panic; He struck the people of the city, young and old, so that swellings broke out among them” (I Sam 5:9).”

Having understood the terrible danger of keeping the Ark captive, the Philistines sent it back to Israel, but were counseled by their priests not to “send it away without anything; you must also pay an indemnity to Him.” This reparation took a most unusual form: “five golden swellings and five golden mice” (I Sam 6:4). Just what these swellings were is not clear, but there are two possibilities. The first is they were lymph glands in the groin, swollen from infection from bubonic plague. The second is they were hemorrhoids. Both possibilities are hinted to in the Hebrew text and its many translations.

Plague and Bubos

These two quite distinctive words in our parsha - עפלים and טְּחֹרִים have led to the differing explanations of the epidemic. The identification of the Philistine epidemic as bubonic plague privileges the written text, עפלים ophalim. Bubonic plague got its name from the buboes, which are swellings in the axillae and groin. These are the lymph nodes that swell with bacteria and the body’s own dead cells white cells. Bubonic plague is caused by a bacterium called Yersinia Pestis, which is found in fleas that primarily feed on mice and rats, though they can also leap to humans. It swept through Europe as the Black Death in a series of deadly waves that began around 1347, killing a third of the population. But it was also around long before then; fragments from an ancestor of Yersina Pestis have been detected in samples over 3,000 years old.

The Hebrew Bible doesn’t mention the role of rodents in spreading the epidemic, but the Greek translation known as the Septuagint does. This translation was composed around the third century B.C.E. for the Jews of Alexandria, and it adds a detail not found in the Hebrew original: “And the Ark was seven months in the country of the Philistines, and their land brought forth swarms of mice.” These “swarms of mice,” missing from the Hebrew text, are a key to identifying the epidemic. Rodents play a key role in the transmission of bubonic plague. It was these swarms of mice (or really rats, which are the primary host for the rat flea that carries the plague bacteria Yersinia) that were responsible for spreading the plague among the Philistines, causing the lymphatic swellings that characterize the bubonic plague.

One of the first people to identify the outbreak as bubonic plague was the Swiss naturalist Johan Jakob Scheuchzer, who died in 1733. Scheuchzer’s many works included the four-volume Latin Physica Sacra, where he noted that ophalim were buboes. “I therefore come to the conclusion,” he wrote, “that the disease which cased so many deaths among the Philistines was real plague.” But Sheuchzer’s written works were predated by the artist Nicolas Poussin (1594– 1665), whose painting The Plague of Ashdod became “the most imitated and celebrated plague painting of the seventeenth century.”

Nicolas Poussin, The Plague of Ashdod, 1630. From here.

Poussin’s painting shocks. At the foot of the painting lie a dead woman and child, their skin already a pallid green. Another child tries in vain to suckle from the breast of her dead mother. From there we are drawn to the onlookers and those in the throes of death, while in the background bodies are carried away. All around are the rodents, fearless as they come out of their lairs into the daylight. Several figures are pinching their noses to keep out the awful odor from the buboes that had ruptured, while a group looks in dismay at the broken idols in what had been the temple of Dogon. Poussin knew of what he painted for in 1630, the same year in which he began this work, Italy suffered a terrible outbreak of the plague.

Poussin was one of several artists who depicted the Philistine plague. Mice can be seen scurrying over the bodies of four dead Philistines in the lavishly illustrated Crusader Bible created in the mid- thirteenth century. “The victims here lie heaped,” wrote the art historian Otto Neustatter, “but otherwise show no specific signs of the plague, the great ravages of which swept over Europe a century later. Rats, however, swarm from every nook and cranny of the crowded city buildings and attack the bodies and faces of the victims.” And in a woodcut in the Lutheran Lubeck Bible, printed in 1491, “the mice play an especially prominent part.” Although the bacterium that caused bubonic plague was not identified until the mid- nineteenth century, the association of rodents in spreading the disease had long been acknowledged, starting perhaps with the Hebrew Bible itself.

So what were Tehorim?

While modern germ hunters gave primacy to the written text ophalim, rabbinic interpretations of the story focused on the word that was read in its place, tehorim, and first, they had to establish its precise meaning. However, over the centuries there has been little agreement. For Josephus, a first- century Roman Jew, the plague was “dysentery or flux; a sore distemper, that brought death upon them very suddenly.” A millennium later, the medieval French commentator Rabbi Shlomo ben Yitzhak (d.1105) had a different idea. Rashi, as he was known by his acronym, was certain that tehorim affect the rectum, but he then needed to explain how this condition was associated with rodents. So he came up with this: “mice enter through rectum, disembowel the innards, and leave.” Two centuries later, another French exegete Levi ben Gershon (Gersonides) focused on the reason for this choice of divine retribution: “Hemorrhoids are very painful, and they bleed a great deal. And how much more so these, that were sent by God to cause them agony. As a result, they would be forced to send the Ark of God away.” In contrast, David Altschuler of Prague (d. 1769) thought that tehorim was the name of a kind of vermin, while the nineteenth-century philologist Marcus Jastrow wrote that the word is derived from the root ט–ח–ר (t-h-r,) meaning to strain.

Later scholars added their own take on the plague of hemorrhoids. Chaim Yosef Azulai (d. 1806), a prominent rabbi and author was born in Jerusalem, but traveled extensively throughout Europe. In his commentary, he wrote that the Philistines had erred, believing in “their own power and the might of their hands.” They were therefore punished with hemorrhoids “that made them appear like women, since they were in pain and were bleeding as women did.”

חומת אנך שמואל א, 5:6

ויך אותם בטחורים. לפי שטעו לומר שכחם ועוצם ידם עשתה זאת הוכו בטחורים שנדמו לנשים בהיותם כואבים ויוצא הדם כי דרך נשים להם

Some contemporary commentaries have tried to combine the two possibilities into a single narrative. The multivolume Olam Hatanach [The World of the Bible] noted that hemorrhoids may be caused by constipation, and that among the causes of this “the medical literature has identified the buboes found in bubonic plague. Thus, the difference between the keri [what is read] and the ketiv [what is written] is the difference between the ophalim [swellings] as a cause of the illness, and tehorim [hemorrhoids] which were its result.” However, this attempt at reconciliation is forced. Bubonic plague may cause constipation, and just as often it may result in diarrhea. To suggest that hemorrhoids are so identified with bubonic plague that they would be specifically mentioned as a feature of the outbreak seems mistaken.

And what of the odd gifts that the Philistines sent, those “five golden hemorrhoids and five golden mice”? This too has its origin not in the original Hebrew but in the Septuagint translation. In Hebrew there were five ophalim or swellings, meaning perhaps five orbs or balls. But in the Greek translation we read, “According to the number of the lords of the Philistines, five buttocks of gold, for the plague was on you, and on your rulers.” From this Greek version of the Hebrew we move to the Latin. In the late fourth century, Jerome produced a Latin translation of the Hebrew Bible known as the Vulgate, which is still used by the Catholic Church. This translation gave us the quinque anos aureos, “five golden behinds,” which was then translated in the King James Bible as “five golden emerods.” The Revised Version of the Bible, first published in 1884, replaced the word emerods with tumors.

In this week’s parsha, God warns his people about the consequences of not obeying his commands. Earlier in the Torah we read of God bringing rivers of blood, darkness, lightening and the parting of the sea as displays of his limitless power. Now, for a change, God threatens to punish in a most intimate and private way, perhaps known only to the unfortunate subject of his anger. Reader beware.

{Want even more on this topic? Try this post. You are welcome.]

Bava Basra 84a ~ “Why are Sunsets Red?” asked the Rabbi and the Scientist

Sunset from Clearwater Florida, Jan 29, 2020. Photo from the Talmudology archive.

We are studying the tractate Bava Basrsa (The Last Gate), which is currently dealing with the circumstances under which the sale of goods may be voided.  The Mishnah (83b) ruled that if there is agreement to sell red wheat (שחמתית) and it was found to be white (לבנה), both the seller and the buyer have legal grounds to retract. The Talmud then discusses the names for these colors: what we call red and white are called "like the sun" and "like the moon." Rav Pappa (the Babylonian sage who died in 375CE) took this a step further:

בבא בתרא פד,א

בצפרא דחלפא אבי וורדי דגן עדן בפניא דחלפא אפתחא דגיהנם – ואיכא דאמרי איפכא

In the morning it becomes red as it passes over the site of the roses of the Garden of Eden, [whose reflections give the light a red hue]. In the evening the sun turns red because it passes over the entrance of Gehenna, whose fires redden the light. And there are those who say the opposite [in explaining why the sun is red in the morning and the evening, i.e., in the morning it passes over the entrance of Gehenna, while in the evening it passes over the site of the roses of the Garden of Eden.]

Shmuel ben Meir, known as Rashbam (d. ~1158) explained that "our eyes are not able to discern the colors very well because in the middle of the day the light is blinding. But in the morning and the evening, when the sun is less bright, we can see the redness of the sun."

 מאור עינינו אינו ברור כל כך מתוך אור היום שמכהה עינינו אבל צפרא ופניא שהיום חשוך ניכר אדמומית החמה ורב פפא לפרש משנתנו בא אמאי מקרי שחמתית

According to Rav Pappa, the true color of the sun is red - but this true color can be seen only when the sun is at its least intense - in the evening and the morning. We have all experienced Rav Pappa's description: who cannot be moved by the sight of a blazing red sunrise or sunset? But what is the scientific explanation of these colors?

“דְּאָמַר רַבִּי חִיָּיא בַּר אַבָּא אָמַר רַבִּי יוֹחָנָן: מִצְוָה לְהִתְפַּלֵּל עִם דִּמְדּוּמֵי חַמָּה. וְאָמַר רַבִּי זֵירָא: מַאי קְרָאָה — ״יִירָאוּךָ עִם שָׁמֶשׁ וְלִפְנֵי יָרֵחַ דּוֹר דּוֹרִים״

Rabbi Chiyya bar Abba said that Rabbi Yochanan said: It is a mitzva to pray with the reddening of the sun. And Rabbi Zeira said: What is the verse that alludes to this? “Let them fear You with the sun and before the moon, generation after generation” (Psalms 72:5)…”

— Berachot 29b

The sequence above shows the setting Sun dipping toward the western horizon. As the Sun sinks lower, its color becomes more reddened. From here.

Why sunrise & sunset are red - the science

Here is the scientific explanation. At sunrise and sunset the light from the sun is not directly overhead, but from its position on the horizon it must pass through more of the atmosphere to reach our eyes, as you can see here.

From here.

You may recall that ever since Newton and his prism we have known that white light is made up of many different wavelengths, or colors of light (Figure 1 below). As the sun’s white light passes through our atmosphere, the shorter wavelengths of light are scattered (Figure 2). And the longer the path through our atmosphere, the more the shorter wavelengths of light are scattered away from the original white sun beam. All of that scattered light (Figure 3) is from the shorter, blue end of the spectrum, which is what colors the sky blue (whatever else your dad may have told you). The remaining unscattered light is at the red end of the spectrum, and that’s why the sun appears red at sunrise and sunset, and why the clouds that reflect it are colored red.

From here.

The Color of the Sun in Space, and on Earth

According to NASA experts (who really are rocket scientists, among other things), the sun emits all colors of the visible light spectrum. And when you mix all these colors together you get...white. If you were to look at the sun from high in space, (perhaps aboard the International Space Station), it would indeed appear to be a pure white.  Like this:

It was in the seventeenth century that Isaac Newton used a prism to split the sun's light into its constituent colors. Before then it was raindrops that did the same thing, forming a rainbow as a result.

Isaac Newton divided  a ray of sunlight with a prism in a series of experiments published in 1672.  Lego recreation is from here.

“Here on Earth, the atmosphere plays a role in the color of the sun. Since shorter wavelength blue light is scattered more efficiently than longer wavelength red light, we lose some of the blue tint of the sun as sunlight passes through the atmosphere. In addition, all wavelengths of visible light passing through our atmosphere are attenuated so that the light that reaches our eyes does not immediately saturate the cone receptors. This allows the brain to perceive color from the image with a little less blue – yellow. ”

— NASA

The Cultural determinants of the Sun's Color

On their website, the NASA scientists claim that "sometimes the display color of the Sun is culturally determined. If a kindergartener in the USA colors a picture of the Sun, they will usually make it yellow. However, a kindergartener in Japan would normally color it red!"  The rabbis of the Talmud had their own cultural explanation of the colors of the sun.  As we have seen, after suggesting that the color of the sun may actually be white (because that is the color of a patch of skin with zora'at, usually identified as a kind of leprosy), the Talmud then explains the cause of the red sunrises and sunsets:  

ולמאי דסליק דעתין מעיקרא הא קא סמקא צפרא ופניא בצפרא דחלפא אבי וורדי דגן עדן בפניא דחלפא אפתחא דגיהנם

In the morning it becomes red as it passes over the site of the roses of the Garden of Eden, whose reflections give the light a red hue. In the evening the sun turns red because it passes over the entrance of Gehenna, whose fires redden the light...

Without the scientific understanding we have today, the Talmud claimed that the red color of sunrise and sunset was due to the light filtering though the red roses of the Garden of Eden, and fires of Hell.

is the Garden of Eden real or metaphorical?

It would seem that the Talmud's description of the locations of the Garden of Eden and the Gates of Hell is to be taken literally, for it is given as an explanation for physical phenomena.  But here is where things can get tricky. The famous rabbi Joseph Hayyim of Baghdad (1834–1909) wrote a work that is widely read by Sephardic Jews to this day called Ben Ish Hai. He also  published three volumes of responsa between 1901 and 1905 called Rav Pe’alim. (A fourth volume was posthumously published in 1912.) In an undated question, R. Hayyim was asked about the location of the Garden of Eden. In one tradition, the garden was located “on the other side of the world,” somewhere below the equator in the southern hemisphere. However, the questioner continued, the world has been circumnavigated, and the Garden of Eden has not been identified. Where then is it located?

In his answer, R. Hayyim digressed into the truth claims of science, and then returned to the location of the Garden of Eden. He noted that although it may be located on the Earth itself, it existed on a different spiritual plane and would therefore not be perceived by the human senses. I suppose many moderns would agree with the suggestion that the Garden of Eden is not to be found in a geographic location. But today's page of Talmud reminds us that at least in talmudic Babylon, the Garden of Eden was not just a metaphor.  It determined the very colors of the sun.

The Poet and the Scientist

Science is not the only way of understanding the world. Artists, poets, philosophers and religions all add different kinds of knowledge about the very same physical world that science explains. Science explains that a red sunrise is a result of physics. Rabbi Chiyya explained that it is because the sun reflects the red roses of the Garden of Eden. Which explanation most satisfies your mind? And which most satisfies your heart?

“In philosophy [i.e.science] one must proceed from wonder to no wonder, that is, one should continue one’s investigation until that which we thought strange no longer seems strange to us; but in theology, one must proceed from no wonder to wonder, that is…[until] that which does not seem strange to us does seem strange, and that all is wonderful.”

— Isaac Beekman. Journal tenu par Isaac Beekman de 1604 a 1634. Ed C de Waard. The Hague: M Nijhoff, 1939-53. vol 2, p375.

Talmudology on the Parsha, Ki Tetze ~ The Mamzer

This week’s parsha is full of interesting material, for it contains no fewer than 74 mitzvot. That is more than any other parashah, and a whopping 12% of all of the 613 mitzvot in the Torah (though Maimonides counted only 72. Whatever). We had to narrow down our discussion to just one of these, and so, at random, we chose the commandment about the mamzer.

Who is a MaMzer?

A mamzer is a child born of a certain union that is forbidden in the Torah. Examples would be a child born from an adulterous relationship (where the woman is married to another person) or an incestuous one. A mamzer is not a child born out of wedlock, and who was once known as a bastard. In this week’s parsha The Torah prohibits a mamzer from entering into marriage with an ordinary Jew:

דברים כג, ג

לֹא־יָבֹ֥א מַמְזֵ֖ר בִּקְהַ֣ל יְהֹוָ֑ה גַּ֚ם דּ֣וֹר עֲשִׂירִ֔י לֹא־יָ֥בֹא ל֖וֹ בִּקְהַ֥ל יְהֹוָֽה׃

The mamzer shall be admitted into the congregation of God; no descendant of such, even in the tenth generation, shall be admitted into the congregation of God

According to Rabbi Abahu in the Talmud Yerushalmi (Kiddushin 3:12) the word mamzer comes from the Hebrew מום זר - mum zar - “a strange defect.” It is on the basis of this etymology that many have tried to find defects in the anatomy or the personality of a mamzer. This week on Talmudology on the Parsha we will examine rabbinic attitudes towards the mamzer.

The Mamzer is infertile, and more likely to die early

According to the famous medieval scholar Rabbi Jacob ben Asher (c. 1269 - c. 1343), who was also known as the Ba’al Haturim, a mamzer is infertile:

בעל הטורים דברים כג, ג

לא יבא ממזר בקהל ה' סמך ממזר לפצוע דכה שממזר אינו מוליד כפצוע דכא

The verse about the mamzer is written close to the verse about the person with crushed genitalia to teach that just like that person, a mamzer cannot reproduce.

In a variation on this theme, the medieval Sefer Hasidim wrote that a mamzer can indeed reproduce, but his or her children will be infertile:

מכאן יש לומר למוליד ממזר לא מבעיא דלא קיים מצות פריה ורביה אלא שמעכב את המשיח דקאמר ממזר לא חי אותו ממזר שמוליד לא יוליד בנים דלא חיי כטרפה

Both of these assertions are at odds with the Torah itself, in which the verse stated that no descendants of the mamzer were to be admitted into the congregation, which surely implies that a mamzer can indeed reproduce. And while I know of no clinical study looking at the fertility of the children of prohibited unions, there is, prima facie, no reason whatsoever to believe that children born, say, of an adulterous relationship, are infertile.

Of course, this is not true of children born of incestuous unions. In these cases, there is indeed a higher likelihood of all manner of genetic problems, of which infertility may be one expression. A paper published in 1979 titled A Study of Chidren of Incestuous Matings noted that in a group of 161 children from incestuous matings, prenatal, neonatal and infant mortality was higher than among half-siblings who were offspring of unrelated parents, and this group also had a higher rate of congenital malformations. Thus, the observation of Rav Huna in the Talmud Yerushalmi (קידושין ד, א) that “a mamzer does not live for more than thirty days” (אֵין מַמְזֵר חַיי יוֹתֵר מִשְּׁלֹשִׁים יוֹם) might actually have some factual basis, at least for a subset of mamzerim.

Congenital malformations and other abnormalities. From E. Seemanova. A study of children of incestuous matings. Human Heredity 1971: 21: 108-128.

On the Characteristics of a Mamzer

Some rabbis believed that the mamzer was endowed with certain talents, while others wrote that he (or she) was physically different to other people. According Abba Shaul in the Talmud Yerushalmi (Kiddushin 4:11), “most mamzerim are intelligent - רוֹב מַמְזֵירִין פִּקְחִין. (Abba Shaul may also have been behind the famous aphorism that “the best physicians should go to hell”, and we have dealt with that elsewhere.) Still, Abba Shaul’s sweeping statement was not seen as a compliment. Here is the standard commentary on the Yerushalmi, called Korban Ha’edah. It was written by the German rabbi David ben Naphtali Frankel (~1704-1762):

רוב ממזרים פקחי. שדומין לאביהן שהם בעלי ערמה לפתות הנשים ולהסתיר מעשיהם מבני האדם ונ"מ להזהר מהם

Most mamzerim are intelligent: Because they are like their fathers, who are crafty in their ability to seduce women and hide their actions from others. It is important to be aware of this characteristic, so that we can beware of them.

The other standard commentary on the Yerushalmi, Moshe Margolies’ Pnei Moshe, makes exactly the same point:

רוב ממזרים פקחין. שהן דומין לאביהן בעלי ערמה ומתנכלים בתחבולות לפתות הנשים ולהסתיר מעשיהם מבני אדם

So a better translation of the original Yerushalmi, according to these two commentaries, would be: “Most mamzerim are crafty, and therefore they should not be trusted.” It was this belief that led the authors of the early medieval Hebrew work Toldot Yeshu - “A History of Jesus,” to claim that Jesus was himself a mamzer, because he had acted in a brazen manner in front of the Sanhedrin.

A similar observation is made in the minor tractate Kallah:

עז פנים רבי אליעזר אומר ממזר רבי יהושע אומר בן הנדה רבי עקיבא אומר ממזר ובן הנדה

The bold-faced, Rabbi Eliezer said, is the mamzer; the son of a niddah, said Rabbi Joshua; Rabbi Akivah said: Both a mamzer and the son of a niddah.

Given the long tradition of ascribing personality characteristics to the mamzer, it is not surprising that some went one step further and claimed that the mamzer has certain specific physical characteristics. Rabbi Elijah ben Solomon Abraham Hacohen, of Smyrna (~1650-1729) was a mystic who produced over thirty books. Like many of his time, Rabbi Elijah was a strong believer in palm reading, the belief that lines on the palm reflect the personality and future fate of a person. He also believed in a version of phrenology, in which bumps on the skull indicate a person’s intelligence and other qualities. In his work Midrash Talpiot, which was a collection of rabbinic sayings mixed with his own observations, Rabbi Elijah wrote that “the shape of the ear will reflect if there is any degree of mamzerut” - “באזן ניכר מי שיש בו צד ממזרות.” Alas, the rabbi did not give any more details, fearing that they might be misused.

Elijah Hacohen. Midrash Talpiot, Lemberg 1875, 30.

The mamzer cannot enter Jerusalem

Avot de’Rabbi Natan is companion text to the Mishnaic Pirkei Avot, and is usually printed along with the minor tractates of the Talmud. It was composed sometime in the era of the Gaonim, between 650-900 CE. In its eighth chapter we read the following:

אבות דרנבי נתן יב, ח

וכן מי שעובר עבירה והוליד ממזר אומרים לו ריקה חבלת בעצמך חבלת בו [שאותו ממזר היה רוצה ללמוד תורה עם אותן התלמידים] שהיו יושבין ושונין בירושלים והיה הממזר הולך עמהן עד שהגיע לאשדוד עומד שם ואומר אוי לי אילו לא הייתי ממזר כבר הייתי יושב ושונה בין התלמידים שלמדתי עד עכשיו ולפי שאני ממזר איני יושב ושונה בין התלמידים לפי שאין ממזר נכנס לירושלים כל עיקר שנאמר (זכריה ט) וישב ממזר באשדוד (והכרתי גאון פלשתים

So, too, with someone whose sexual transgression produces a mamzer. They say to him: Empty one! You have ruined yourself and you have ruined him as well! [For this mamzer would have wanted to study Torah with the rest of the students] who sit and study in Jerusalem. But this mamzer would go with them only up to Ashdod, and then would stop there and say: Woe is me! If I were not a mamzer, I would have gone to sit and study among the students whom I have been studying with until now. But because I am a mamzer, I cannot sit and study among these students. For a mamzer cannot enter Jerusalem at all, as it says (Zechariah 9:6), “The mamzer will stay in Ashdod, (and I will cut off the pride of the Philistines.”

Mi Sheberach for a Mamzer

In one of his volumes of responsa, Rabbi Chezkiah Fivel Plaut (1818-1894) was asked whether it was permissible to call a mamzer up to the Torah. Rabbi Plaut, who was a student of the Chatam Sofer, concluded that it is indeed permitted, but did not know if it was permitted to say the general prayer for the well-being of the person called to the Torah, known as the Mi Sheberach (מי שברך). “I am uncertain whether to say the Mi Shebarch, because the focus of this blessing is on his children, and God forbid that there would be more mamzerim among the Jewish people.”

Chezkiah Feival Plaut. Likutei Chaver ben Chaim. Munkach 1883. 104b.

Tattooing the Forehead of a mamzer with a warning

Rabbi Yishmael Hacohen (1723-1811), came from a distinguished rabbinic family and took over the mantle of leadership in the Italian city of Modena from his older brother who died in 1781. In 1881 he was asked by Rabbi Avraham Yona of Venice whether it was permitted to tattoo the forehead of a mamzer with the word “mamzer,” which would serve as a warning sign not to allow this person to marry into the Jewish community. The halakhic concerns revolve around the question of tattooing, and not, as we might think today, as to whether this was a reasonable thing to do.

Rabbi Yona was an enthusiastic supporter of the idea, but Rabbi Yishmael was, at least initially, not sure. But at the end of his lengthy responsa he concluded that it was indeed permitted, since although tattooing was forbidden, if it was performed by a Gentile it was allowed in this case, for it prevented “a greater transgression.” This opinion is cited in דרכי תשובה יורה דעה קפ, סק’א.

It is permitted to tattoo the forehead of a mamzer. From Yishmael ben Avraham Hacohen. Zera Emet. Vol 3, 140b.

Modern Efforts to Ignore Mamzerut

There are certain caterogical rulings in the Torah that the rabbis did their best to ignore. The Torah demand “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” (Exodus 21:23–27), but the rabbis ignored this and interpreted the verse as requiring monetary compensation (Bava Kamma 83b–84a). The Torah demanded that loans be forgiven every seven years during the shmitta year (Deuteronomy 15:1–6), but the rabbis found this law to be unworkable. So Hillel Hazaken created the prozbul which protected the investment of the lenders. Despite the severity of the prohibition of mamzer, and not withstanding some of the later rabbinic statements that we have seen, talmudic and contemporary rabbis were often very sympathetic to the plight of the mamzer, and went to extreme legal lengths to remove the label. So for example in tractate Yevamot (80b) Rava ruled that a child born twelve months after a married woman’s husband left her and travelled abroad was not a mamzer. Perhaps, he argued, the pregnancy had just been unusually long.

יבמות פ, ב

אֶלָּא הָא דַּעֲבַד רָבָא תּוֹסְפָאָה עוֹבָדָא בְּאִשָּׁה שֶׁהָלַךְ בַּעְלָהּ לִמְדִינַת הַיָּם וְאִישְׁתַּהִי עַד תְּרֵיסַר יַרְחֵי שַׁתָּא וְאַכְשְׁרֵיהּ כְּמַאן כְּרַבִּי דְּאָמַר מִשְׁתַּהֵא

With regard to the action taken by Rava Tosfa’a concerning a woman whose husband went overseas and her baby was delayed in her womb for the twelve months of the year following her husband’s departure, and Rava Tosfa’a rendered the child fit, arguing that the husband is presumed to be the father and the child is not a mamzer…

Perhaps the best example recent example of this effort comes from the late Rabbi Ovadia Yosef (1920-2013) who was the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel from 1973-1983. He was asked about the case of a young woman who believed that she was a mamzeret. Her mother had been married by a haredi rabbi to a man who subsequently left her, converted to Christianity, married another woman, and refused to give his first a Jewish divorce. This wife later obtained a civil (but not a Jewish) divorce, remarried civilly and had the daughter. This daughter was indisputably the result the union of a woman who is married (under Jewish law) and a man who was not her husband, that making her children mamzerim.

But Rabbi Yosef found a way to demonstrate that the daughter was not technically a mamzeret, although he never explicitly stated any discomfort with the notion of mamzer. In his work Yabiah Omer (volume 7, Even Ha’ezer 6) he refused to allow any testimony from the mother, since she was an interested party. He also refused to allow any testimony from the haredi rabbi who performed the marriage, since he was but a single witness, and two witnesses are required to establish proof in Jewish law. He continued along this vein until he concluded that there was enough uncertainty in the case to remove the label of mamzerut from the daughter, and allow her to marry into the Jewish people.

שו׳ת יביע אומר, חלק ז, אה׳ע סימן ו

The rabbinic attitude towards mamzerut demonstrates that there really has never been a single rabbinic attitude towards the problem. Some made the life of the mamzer extraordinarily difficult, and even suggested that the mamzer had physical or character flaws. One even suggested that the mamzer be tattooed as a warning to others. But others went to great efforts to remove the need to categorize any person as a mamzer. Let’s end with a reminder that in classic Jewish teaching, the mamzer can rise to great religious heights, regardless of the actions of his or her parents.

משנה הוריות ג, ח

מַמְזֵר תַּלְמִיד חָכָם קוֹדֵם לְכֹהֵן גָּדוֹל עַם הָאָרֶץ

But if there were a mamzer who is a Torah scholar and a High Priest who is an ignoramus, a mamzer who is a Torah scholar is rescued before a High Priest who is an ignoramus, as Torah wisdom surpasses all else.

Bava Basra 74a ~ Where Heaven and Earth Touch

In honor of the birthday of my dear wife, Erica, who has taught me how to see the heavens and focus on the earth.

While discussing the legal technicalities involved in buying a boat, the Talmud digresses with a series of fantastic stories about boats, told by Rabbah bar bar Chanah.  And then it digresses again with a series of  fantastic stories about all kinds of things, also told by Rabbah bar bar Channah. In total he told fifteen stories. Here is the last one:

בבא בתרא עד, א

אמר לי תא אחוי לך היכא דנשקי ארעא ורקיעא אהדדי שקלתא לסילתאי אתנחתא בכוותא דרקיעא אדמצלינא בעיתיה ולא אשכחיתה אמינא ליה איכא גנבי הכא אמר לי האי גלגלא דרקיעא הוא דהדר נטר עד למחר הכא ומשכחת לה

An Arab also said to me: Come, I will show you the place where the earth and the heavens touch each other. I took my basket and placed it in a window of the heavens. After I finished praying, I searched for it but did not find it. I said to him: Are there thieves here? He said to me: This is the heavenly sphere that is turning around; wait here until tomorrow and you will find it again.

What should we make of this?  We should begin by considering its context, noting that it is part of a series of fantastic fables.  These include a man who pursued a demon on horseback, antelope the size of mountains, giant frogs ("the size of sixty houses") that are eaten by even more giant birds, a fish so large it took three days to sail between its fins, and scorpions the size of donkeys. You get the idea. Given this context, perhaps the tale of a place where heaven and earth touch as a description of reality should be taken with as much seriousness as the other stories. Which is to say, not very seriously at all. 

Other Talmudic descriptions of the Cosmos

Not so fast. There are other rabbis in Talmud who address the structure of the earth and the cosmos. Rabbi Natan noted that the stars do not seem to change in their positions overhead when walking far distances.  The assumption underlying his explanation for this observation was that the earth is flat. Covering the earth was an opaque cap referred to as the rakia, which is most commonly translated as the sky or firmament. Rava, a fourth-century Babylonian sage who lived on the banks of the river Tigris, determined this cap to be 1,000 parsa in width, while Rabbi Yehudah thought that he had over-estimated this thickness. There were others who added to the picture of the sky; Resh Lakish announced that it actually was made up of seven distinct layers. Given this model, there would have to be a place where the opaque cap touched the earth, a place that Rabbah bar Bar Channah claimed to have touched.  So even allowing for a degree of talmudic fantasy, this fable was clearly built on the model that was shared by other rabbis in the Talmud.

The Flammarion Engraving

In 1872, Camille Flammarion published L'atmosphère: météorologie populaire (The Atmosphere: Popular Meteorology). In the 1888 edition this engraving  appeared on page 163:

As you can see from the caption, the engraving is "A missionary of the Middle Ages tells that he had found the point where the sky and the Earth touch." The engraving appears to have been specially created for Flammarion's book. The text that precedes it reads as follows:

Whether the sky be clear or cloudy, it always seems to us to have the shape of an elliptic arch; far from having the form of a circular arch, it always seems flattened and depressed above our heads, and gradually to become farther removed toward the horizon. Our ancestors imagined that this blue vault was really what the eye would lead them to believe it to be; but, as Voltaire remarks, this is about as reasonable as if a silk-worm took his web for the limits of the universe. The Greek astronomers represented it as formed of a solid crystal substance; and so recently as Copernicus, a large number of astronomers thought it was as solid as plate-glass. The Latin poets placed the divinities of Olympus and the stately mythological court upon this vault, above the planets and the fixed stars. Previous to the knowledge that the earth was moving in space, and that space is everywhere, theologians had installed the Trinity in the empyrean, the glorified body of Jesus, that of the Virgin Mary, the angelic hierarchy, the saints, and all the heavenly host.... A naïve missionary of the Middle Ages even tells us that, in one of his voyages in search of the terrestrial paradise, he reached the horizon where the earth and the heavens met, and that he discovered a certain point where they were not joined together, and where, by stooping his shoulders, he passed under the roof of the heavens.

Flammarion does not reference his source for the missionary of the Middle Ages who, like Rabbah bar bar Channah, claimed to have found the place were the heavens and earth meet.  Despite this, his engraving has become very popular. A version of it appears on the cover of Daniel J. Boorstin's best selling work The Discoverers, and inside William Vollmann's Uncentering the Universe. And those are just the ones I know about from my own library. You can buy a color poster of it (where it is incorrectly described as a "medieval artwork") but if you are really dedicated you could always travel to San Fransisco where a tattoo parlor will create the image on your arm. 

We know that Rabbah bar bar Channah's model of the universe is not correct, but his suggestion of a place where heaven and earth touch is both endearing and enchanting.  (It is also the perfect name for an anthology of Midrash which was published back in 1983).  With Rosh Hashanah approaching, you may already be thinking about your wine list.  Perhaps you should consider a kosher wine whose label shows part of the Flammarion etching, and drink to the memory of Rabbah bar bar Channah.