BUT FIRST, A WARNING
Over the past six years of Talmudology, we have had occasion to discuss many weird things. There was Herod’s proclivity for necrophilia (Bava Basra 3a); there was prosecuting animals for their criminal acts (Berachot 27a); and there was a unicorn that survived Noah’s Flood and ended up on a prehistoric cave painting (Zevachim 113b). But today’s topic gets an extreme R rating. For REALLY weird. So, as they say at the auction, this is “fair warning.” Read on at your own discretion.
It’s never a good thing to be a heretic and get into an argument with a sage of the Talmud. On today’s page of Talmud, Rabbi Abbahu, who lived in Caesarea around the year 300 C.E., took on a “heretic” by the name of Sasson, whose name, literally, means “joy.”
סוכה מח, ב
אֲמַר לֵיהּ הָהוּא מִינָא דִּשְׁמֵיהּ שָׂשׂוֹן לְרַבִּי אֲבָהוּ עֲתִידִיתוּ דִּתְמַלּוֹ לִי מַיִם לְעָלְמָא דְּאָתֵי דִּכְתִיב וּשְׁאַבְתֶּם מַיִם בְּשָׂשׂוֹן אֲמַר לֵיהּ אִי הֲוָה כְּתִיב לְשָׂשׂוֹן כִּדְקָאָמְרַתְּ הַשְׁתָּא דִּכְתִיב בִּשְׂשׂוֹן מַשְׁכֵּיהּ דְּהָהוּא גַּבְרָא מְשַׁוֵּינַן לֵיהּ גּוֹדָא וּמָלֵינַן בֵּיהּ מַיָּא
A certain heretic named Sasson [lit. joy] said to Rabbi Abbahu: You are all destined to draw water for me in the World-to-Come, as it is written: “With sasson you shall draw water.” Rabbi Abbahu said to him: If it had been written: “For sasson”, it would have been as you say. But now that it is written: “With sasson,” it means that your very skin will be rendered a wineskin, and we will draw water with it.
In his commentary on the aggadic sections of the Talmud, the Polish rabbi Shmuel Eliezer Edels, known as the Maharsha (1555 – 1631), thought it important to essentially repeat Rabbi Abbahu’s threat:
אבל משכא דידך יקחו במותך ומשוינן ליה לעתיד נוד ומלינן ליה מיא
After your death your skin will be used to make a canteen, and it will be used to draw water
Another use for human skin - as a saddle
This is not the only place in the Talmud in which human skin becomes a utensil. Here is the Talmud in tractate Niddah:
נדה נה, א
הא איתמר עלה אמר עולא דבר תורה עור אדם טהור ומאי טעמא אמרו טמא גזרה שמא יעשה אדם עורות אביו ואמו שטיחין לחמור
It was stated that Ulla said: By Torah law, the skin of a dead person is ritually pure. And what is the reason the Sages said that it is impure? It is a rabbinic decree lest a person should fashion rugs for a donkey out of the skins of his deceased father and mother.
Please read that last paragraph again to be sure you have grasped it. The sages of the Talmud declared that human skin is ritually impure to prevent people from turning the skins of their deceased parents into donkey saddles.
can this possiblY be true?
The French scholar Yom Tov ben Avraham Assevilli (c. 1260 – 1320), commonly known by the Hebrew acronym as the Ritva, questions why this ruling about ritual impurity was necessary in the first place. “Even the most wicked Gentile,” he wrote, “would not behave in this way. And certainly not a Jew!”
ריטב"א שם
שמא יעשה עורות אביו ואמו שטיחין …ומיהו עדין קשה והלא רשע שבגוים אינו עושה כן וכ״ש ישראל לכך הנכון כמו שפי׳ מורי הרב הר״א הלוי בשם רבו הרמב״ן ז״ל דשטיחין היינו שעשה מהן דבר חשוב ומעובד יפה לשטחן על גבי הכותל להתאבל עליהם ימים רבים או שיזכור מעשיהם הטובים והיינו דנקט לשון שטיחין ולשון אביו ואמו
Ritva’s explanation does not settle his question. “It means that people would make something of value to put on the wall in order to mourn over them for a long period of time, or as a reminder of their [parents’] good deeds.” So not skin. Except that is not what the Talmud says. It says people would take the skins of their deceased parents and turn them into donkey saddles.
The great leader of the Jewish communities of Poland Rabbi Moses Sofer (d. 1839) known as Chatam Sofer makes it clear to his own satisfaction that we are indeed talking about human skin. “We must conclude that we are discussing a case in which removing the skins is done to honor one’s parent, by preserving it and keeping it as a kind of memorial, on which to focus the mourning.” So yes. Skin.
נדה נה, א : חידושי חתם סופר
.. וצ"ל דמיירי באופן שהפשטת עור הוא לכבוד אביו [כגון] לחנוט אותו ולשמור העור לזכרון להרבות האבל וכ"כ הרמב"ן ור"ן בחידושיו כאן ע"ש
Now it may be argued that this form of mourning was extremely uncommon, but there are two pieces of evidence that make this unlikely. First, the Talmud is clear that the rabbis did not enact legislation for uncommon events. Thus we read for example in the next tractate, Beitzah (18a) that the rabbis did not make a certain vessel impure on Yom Tov, because it was an unusual occurrence.
טוּמְאָה בְּיוֹם טוֹב מִלְּתָא דְּלָא שְׁכִיחָא הִיא וּמִלְּתָא דְלָא שְׁכִיחָא לָא גְּזַרוּ בַּהּ רַבָּנַן
Secondly, the Mishnah (Yadayim 4:6) describes another rabbinic enactment that was made to prevent people fro using the body parts of their deceased parents. This time, it was turning bones into spoons. The rabbis decreed that human bones were ritually unclean, “so that nobody should make spoons out of the bones of his father or mother” (לְפִי חִבָּתָן הִיא טֻמְאָתָן, שֶׁלֹּא יַעֲשֶׂה אָדָם עַצְמוֹת אָבִיו וְאִמּוֹ תַּרְוָדוֹת).
Human skin as medicine
Rabbi Judah Rosanes (1657-1727) lived in Constantinople and wrote a lengthy work on Maimonides׳ Mishneh Torah called Mishneh Lemelekh which he published there in 1731. In a very lengthy section he discussed the use of the flesh of mummies as a medicine and whether a Cohen may use the skin for healing.
משנה למלך הל׳ אבל 3:1
נשאלתי על המומיי"א שמוכרין הכהנים אי שפיר למיעבד או לא. (א"ה עיין בספר גנת ורדים חי"ד כלל א' סימן ד'). והנה לפי מה ששמעתי מומי"א הלזו אין בה בשר כלל אלא עצמות ועור החופה אותם והם יבשים מאד ולא נשאר בהם לחלוחית של בשר כלל ושאלתי אם היו עצמות אלו נפרכים מאליהם או לא ואמרו לי שאינם נפרכים ובקושי הם משתברים ולפי זה נראה דאין כאן מקום לספק כלל דפשיטא דמטמא במגע ובמשא דהא קי"ל דעצם כשעורה מטמא במגע ובמשא וטומאתו מדין תורה וכמ"ש רבינו בפ"ב מהל' טומאת מת ומצד היותו יבש אין לטהרו שהרי כתב בפ"ג בשר המת שנפרך ונעשה כקמח טהור משמע מפשט דבריו דכל שלא נעשה כקמח אף במונח שאילו יפרך יעשה כקמח מטמא ואף לפי מ"ש מרן שם שכוונת רבינו היא לומר שיבש כל כך עד שאילו יפרך יעשה קמח ואף שעדיין לא נפרך טהור מ"מ אף לפי דברי מרן בעינן שאילו יפרך יעשה קמח אבל כל שאינו נעשה קמח עדיין בטומאתו עומד ולפי מה שכתבנו מומי"א זו שאנו דנין עליה מלבד שאינה נעשית קמח לא איפרוכי מיפרך ואדרבה בקושי היא משתברת באופן דאליבא דכ"ע מטמאה היא במגע ובמשא. ואף שיש להסתפק ולומר דמומי"א זו מעכו"ם נינהו ומלבד דכיון דרובא דעלמא עכו"ם נינהו איכא למימר דניזל בתר רובא זאת ועוד כי הגד הוגד לי שבמקומות אלו שנעשית המומי"א מעולם לא עבר שם רגל ישראל ולפי זה היה נראה להקל דהא קי"ל דעכו"ם אינם מטמאים,
…
הכלל העולה דלדידן פשיטא לן מלתא דאסור ליגע במומי"א הלזו וכל כהן המחמיר עליו תבא ברכת טוב
According to what I have heard these mummies have no flesh but are made of bones and the skin that covers them…certainly there is no doubt that they impart ritual impurity…even though there is a question because the majority of mummies were Gentiles [whose remains do not impart the same degree of ritual impurity]…and I have been told that in places where mummies originated there had never been any Jews at all…but the legal conclusion is that it is forbidden to touch these mummies, and any Cohen who is strict on himself will be blessed for good.
So bad luck if you are a Cohen in need of mummified medicine. But what about a non-Cohen? May she use mummified flesh? Rabbi David ben Solomon ibn Zimra (1479–1589?) known as the Radvaz considered the question and concluded that yes, it was permitted for a Jew to use the desiccated skin of a mummy as medicine. Here is a sample:
שאלת ממני אודיעך דעתי על מה סמכו העולם להתרפאות בבשר המת הנקרא מומ"יא ושלא במקום סכנה ובדרך הנאתו ולא עוד אלא שמסתחרין בו ונושאין ונותנין בו והוא מאיסורי הנאה דקייל"ן דבשר המת אסור בהנאה דכתיב ותמת שם מרים
You have asked me, and I will inform you of my opinion: Upon what does everyone rely to ingest the flesh of a corpse, called “mummy,” as a remedy, when there is no danger, and in the normal way of ingestion? Moreover, they trade it, engaging in its commerce, yet it is forbidden to derive benefit from it, for we maintain that it is forbidden to benefit from the flesh of a corpse, as Scripture states: “There died Miriam….”
הא למדת דמותר להתרפאות במומיא אפילו בדרך אכילה אפילו בחולי שאין בו סכנה ומותר לישא וליתן בו לעשות בו סחורה ומותר ליהנות בקברי העכו"ם ובתכריכיו ומיהו מטמאין במגע ובמשא ובטומאת אהל איכא פלוגתא והרמב"ם ז"ל ס"ל דאין מטמאין באהל
We have thus learned that one may use mummy as a remedy, even by eating it normally, even for a malady that is not dangerous. It is permitted to trade it and do business with it, and it is permitted to derive benefit from the graves and shrouds of gentiles…or it is permissible to derive benefit from mummy, since these are the corpses of idolaters from the times of the Egyptians.
Human skin as Book Covers
While the Talmud describes using human skin for water flasks and donkey saddles, there is another use to which these skins have been put. According to the author Megan Rosenbloom in her new book Dark Archives, there are about fifty books in public and private hands to date which are alleged to be covered in human skin. Rosenbloom (whose book is absolutely riveting) is also involved with The Anthropodermic Book Project which is “creating a census for the alleged anthropodermic books of the world and testing as many as possible to learn the historical truths behind the innuendo.”
“A book on the human soul merits that it be given human clothing”
Using the modern technique of peptide mass fingerprinting, about half of the books so far tested turn out to be made of real human skin. The largest collection of what are known as anthropodermic books is in the Historical Medical Society of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. They own at least five books that have been confirmed to be covered in human skin. There are others in the collections of the Boston Athenaeum, Brown University (four!), the Grolier Club and the Cincinnati Public Library. Most of the books were commissioned by physicians, who may also have helped find the material used. Here is one of the books whose cover from human skin has been confirmed. It is Hans Holbein’s Dance of Death (1898), from Brown University’s John Hay Library.
And it was not only the Victorians who were binding books in human skin. According to Rosenbloom (p108) an invoice “proves human skin bookbinding was taking place as late as 1934.”
The Lampshade made from Human Skin
In 2005 a lampshade purported to have been made out of human skin was sold at a yard sale in New Orleans. The lampshade was later sent to Mark Jacobson, then a contributing editor at New York magazine, who spent the next several years (and many thousands of dollars) trying to determine the origin of the lampshade and whether it was truly made of human skin. It was rumored to have come from the Buchenwald Concentration Camp and when a DNA test confirmed it was made of human skin, Jacobson tried to donate it to the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. His offer was firmly rejected. Diane Saltzman, the former head of collections at the Museum, believed the story to be a myth. “This is a museum dealing with the Holocaust” she told him. “This object cannot be proved to legitimately be part of the Holocaust, so we cannot treat it as such. Sixty-odd years of research and it has never been proved that a thing like this was Nazi policy or practice.”
In his book The Lampshade, Jacobson wrote that at one time the working plan was to bury it in a Jewish cemetery in New Orleans in a service led by orthodox Rabbi Uri Topolosky “the energetic thirtysomething installed as the spiritual leader of the Beth Israel Temple in 2007.” But it never happened and since the publication of Jacobson’s book, a lab retested the shade and found it to have been made of cowhide. The sample that had been tested by the first lab had been contaminated with human DNA.
HUMAN SKIN TRANSPLANTS
We have come a long way since Rabbi Abbahu’s threat to the heretic Sasson. We can now use the skin of the recently dead not to make water bottles but to save the lives and appearance of the still living. In 1881 the first cadaver skin transplant was performed when skin from a suicide victim was used to treat a burn victim. But it is only in the last few decades that we have had fully functional skin banks that store and distribute the skin taken from deceased donors. The majority of transplants are used in wound management when they provide a temporary biologic cover for patients with extensive burns. They work as biologic dressings, reducing pain and adherence to the wound bed. This temporarily closes the wound and decreases water, electrolyte, and protein loss which is incredibly important since without an intact skin covering, burn patients quickly dehydrate. The temporary skin graft also prevents wound breakdown and provides a dermal matrix, which improves the outcomes of the final graft which is usually taken from another part of the patient’s own unburned skin.
Jewish Norms, Then and now
There are many, many pages of the Talmud to which modern practicing Jews can relate. Who cannot be proud of the discussions about the return of lost property, the rights of person to privacy, and the special place that Shabbat has in our hectic modern world. Then there are talmudic positions that we rightly reject today, like the ownership of others as chattel, the suggestion that the earth is the center of the universe, or the inability of women to be legal witnesses. But there is a third group of talmudic declarations which are not only pre-modern, but which are utterly foreign to us to the degree that we simply cannot imagine a Jewish world in which these descriptions reflected reality. Like using the skin of a deceased parent to make a donkey saddle in their honor. It makes us uncomfortable. But as the facts of anthropodermic books demonstrate, even in recent times people have been doing very ‘odd’ things with human skin. In addition, other cultures, like the Maori people of New Zealand, venerated their ancestors in ways not dissimilar to that described in tractate Niddah. “The tattooed heads of the deceased were dried and smoked in order to preserve them from decay,” wrote Christian Palmer and Mervyn Tano from the International Institute for Indigenous Resource Management in Denver, Colorado.
This honor was usually reserved for persons of importance and their loved ones, including women and children. The heads remained with the families of the deceased, who kept them in ornately carved boxes. They were protected by strict taboos and brought out only during sacred ceremonies…The children and widows of the deceased used the head to remind them of the deceased, but also to signify that to some extent the presence of the departed chief was still a part of tribal and family affairs. This kind of close kinship and identification with ancestors is an important part of Polynesian society.
Today, the ways in which Jews honor their dead reflect modern, predominantly western sentiments. They should not be confused with the way it was always done.
