Do you see how, when compared to the left, that right main bronchus comes off at a more gentle angle? Now, if you were a piece of bread, or better yet, a piece of matzah that had snuck past the epiglottis and you were making your way down into the lungs, which direction would you be more likely to go, all things being equal, when you reached that junction with the right and left main bronchi? You would be more likely to continue in a straight line, rather than take a sharp left turn. And so you would be more likely to end up in the right main bronchus. Which is exactly what happens when people aspirate food into their lungs: it generally ends up in the right lung rather than the left. And, by the way you now know the answer to a common question thrown at medical students on the first day of their pulmonary rotations. You are welcome.
But what does this have to do with leaning to the right, as noted in the ArtScroll commentary? In a word, nothing. In two words, absolutely nothing. Leaning to one side or another might theoretically change the side into which the food might lodge of you are unlucky enough to aspirate it, but food in the right lung is as undesirable as food aspirated on the left. Neither is good for you, and if left untreated will lead to aspiration pneumonia and its complications, none of which are good. It’s an easy fix for ArtScroll to make to its excellent product. Could you please let them know?
What about a left-handed person?
When the Talmud addresses issues to do with sides, it assumes that the person is right-handed, since this is true of the majority. But there are differences for left-handed people. For example, a left-handed person puts tefillin on the right arm, while right-handers do so on the left. Might there be a difference for left-handers when it comes to this business of leaning on the Seder night?
Rabbi David ben Solomon ibn Zimra (1479-1573, known by his acronym Radbaz, was one of the leading rabbinic leaders of his generation. In one of his three thousand (!) responsa he addressed the question of whether a person who is left-handed should recline on his right side. In his answer he wrote that he too failed to understand the anatomy described by the Rashbam.
תשובות רדב׳ז ג: 1012
ועוד ראיתי כי הסימנים שוכבין זה על זה ולא ידעתי אם סימני אדם נשתנה
Furthermore, I have seen that the trachea and the esophagus lie one behind the other (although I do not know if this is the same as in people)
Radvaz wrote that for a left-handed person, leaning to the left would be uncomfortable, and since the entire point of the act of leaning is to replicate a feeling of freedom, for a left-handed person this cannot be the correct thing to do:
ועוד הרי תקנו הסיבה זכר לחירות ואם הוא מסב על ימינו ואוכל בשמאלו מצטער הוא ואין זה דרך חירות
Therefore, he concluded that a left-handed person should lean rightwards, though not because of anything to do with a danger of choking, which, as we have seen, does not depend on leaning one way or the other. (Bonus content - for more on left-handedness in the Talmud see here.)
A Yiddish Bonus
Dr Avi Rockoff of Newton, Massachusetts is a longtime friend and Talmudology reader. He noted a fascinating linguistic twist to today’s daf. “When I was a kid and choked on something,” he told me via email, “my mother would clap me on the back, commiserate, and tell me that I had to take care so food wouldn't enter die linke keyli [lit. the left vessel].” And then he added this:
Yiddish has its fair share of Talmudic references, part of traditional cultural knowledge of even unlearned Jews. This one is more than a quotation--it's a bit of lomdus [learning], referring to a dispute between Rashbam, whose view prevailed over even that of his famous zeyde, and seems to have made it into Yiddish anatomical folklore.
How to save a choking person
According to the National Safety Council, about 5,000 people die in the US each year from choking. About half are over 74, and food is often responsible. This is why each of us should know how to perform abdominal thrusts, also known as the Heimlich maneuver:
