Talmudology on the Parsha, Emor ~ The Cohen Gene

ויקרא 21:1

וַיֹּאמֶר ה׳ אֶל־מֹשֶׁה אֱמֹר אֶל־הַכֹּהֲנִים בְּנֵי אַהֲרֹן וְאָמַרְתָּ אֲלֵהֶם לְנֶפֶשׁ לֹא־יִטַּמָּא בְּעַמָּיו׃

And the Lord said to Moshe, Speak to the priests the sons of Aharon, and say to them, There shall none be defiled for the dead among his people:

The great medieval Spanish commentator Abraham Ibn Ezra (1092-1167) wrote that the Cohanim play an important part in the chain of transmission:

אחר שהזהיר ישראל ובני אהרן בכללם להיותם קדושים הזהיר בני אהרן שהם חייבים להשמר מדברים אחרים בעבור שהם משרתי השם ויתכן להיות פירוש אמור אל הכהנים כל הפרשה הנזכרת כי התורה בידם

After charging the Israelites, and the sons of Aaron who are included among them, to be holy, the Lord told the sons of Aaron that they are commanded to keep themselves from other things, for they are the ministers of God. … for the Torah is in the hands of the kohanim.

For the Torah is in the hands of the kohanim. That’s quite a responsibility. Being a Cohen comes with rights and duties.  When the Temple stood, they got lots and lots of food, but had to serve in order to earn that right. Today they get called to the Torah first, and are given preference to lead Birkat Hamazon.  But how do you prove you are a Cohen, and entitled to these privileges? After all, we can’t have just anyone claiming this mantle.

HEllo, I'm Your New Cohen

According to the Mishnah in Ketuvot  if you claim to be a Cohen you need witnesses to attest to your status.

משנה כתובות דף כג עמוד ב 

וכן שני אנשים, זה אומר כהן אני וזה אומר כהן אני - אינן נאמנין, ובזמן שהן מעידין זה את זה - הרי אלו נאמנין; רבי יהודה אומר: אין מעלין לכהונה על פי עד אחד

Likewise in the case of two men; one says, "I am a Cohen", and the other says "I am a Cohen", they are not believed. If however they testify about one another they are believed. R. Yehuda said: we do not elevate [a person] to the status of Cohen based on the testimony of only one witness....

But what if the Cohen was mistaken about his ancestors? What if the witnesses were being paid to dupe the locals into believing the Cohen was legitimate? Is there an alternative to the methods mentioned in this Mishnah? Perhaps.

The Saturday Night Live Cohen 

My friend Misha Galperin, (the former CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington and  CEO of International Development at The Jewish Agency) is a Cohen. Only he didn't know it when he arrived in America from the Soviet Union.  Here's what happened, as told to me in a recent email  that he kindly allowed me to share:

Five months after arriving in the US, I am sitting in the lounge of Yeshiva University's dorm watching SNL with my tutor who was teaching me Alef Bet is so I can start classes on Monday.
A skit starts with guest host Leonard Nimoy dressed as Mr. Spock - with ears - and at the end he raises his right palm in the symbolic gesture and says: "Live long and prosper!"
I turn to the tutor and ask him what this gesture means. Why?--he asks. "Because my father taught me this, and his father taught it to him before being murdered by Nazis in 1941. My father did not know what it meant, but he taught me..."

And so Misha learned that he was a Cohen from Saturday Night Live. But not all Cohanim are so lucky. (Fun fact: Leonard Nimoy ז’ל wrote about his decision to give Mr. Spock this priestly hand salute in his 1997 autobiography I Am Not Spock.)  With neither witnesses nor TV to help, is there another way to establish one's genealogy as a member of the priestly class? That's where the Cohen Gene comes in.  

The Cohen Gene

If all Cohanim are descended from Aaron, and the privilege is only transmitted from father to son, then perhaps being a Cohen can be genetically linked to a chromosome that is only passed from father to son. And there is such a chromosome. It's the Y chromosome, and all (fertile) men carry a copy that comes only from their biological father. (Quick recap: girls are XX and boys are XY. So all girls carry one X chromosome from mum and one X chromosome from dad. Boys, on the other hand, only get their X chromosome from mum, and their Y chromosome from dad. This can lead to other problems like hemophilia, which we've talked about elsewhere.) That's exactly what prompted  Karl Skorecki from the Technion, and colleagues from University College London, to analyze the Y chromosome in Cohanim and compare it to the rest of the Jewish population.  In 1997 they published a paper in Nature that looked at a special bit of the Y chromosome called YAP. Actually, they looked at 6 kinds of the YAP haplotype, (a haplotype being what geneticists call bunches of DNA sequences), and compared their frequency in Cohanim and non-Cohanim.    

Skorecki K, et al. Y Chromosomes of Jewish Priests. Nature 1997. 385:32.

As you can see highlighted, the YAP+ haplotype was found in only 1.5% of those who self-identified as Cohanim, but in over 18% of non-Cohanim.  The different frequency was found in both Ashkenazi and Sephardi Cohanim,  a result that the authors claimed was "consistent with an origin for the Jewish priesthood antedating the division of world Jewry into Ashkenazic and Sephardic communities."

“These Y-chromosome haplotype differences confirm a distinct paternal geneology for Jewish priests.”

— Skorecki et al. Nature 1997. 385: 32.

David Goldstein, who now directs a genetics lab at Columbia University, also published a study on the Y-chromosome of Cohanim, using a sample that included the DNA swabbed "from the mouths of sunbathers on the beaches of Tel Aviv." Here is what Goldstein concluded:

Despite the high levels of variation, we could see a clear difference between Cohen and Israelite chromosomes. The most common chromosomes observed in the Israelites (that is, non-Cohen and non-Levite Jews) were found in only 12% of the Israelite individuals sampled. By contrast, more that half of the Cohen Y chromosomes were identical at the sites considered - that is, the majority of the self-identified Cohanim had the same type of Y chromosome. Even more remarkable, this same type of Y was found at high frequencies in both Ashkenazi (45%) and Sephardi (56%) Cohanim. (Goldstein, p.31)

Goldstein named this chromosome type the Cohen Modal Haplotype, and claimed that it showed "definitively" that Cohen status was not adopted (i.e. made up by some, eager for the benefits) but inherited.  And now things started to get really interesting. 

Further research over the last two decades has demonstrated that about half of all male Cohanim have the chromosomal J1 M267 haplogroup, and that other Cohanim share a different ancestry, such as haplogroup J2a (J-M410).

Dating the Original Aaron

So all, (OK, not all, but certainly most) of the approximately 500,000 Cohanim alive today seem to have originated from a common ancestor - a primordial Cohen. And just when did he live? Well, by analyzing small differences in the Cohen Modal Haplotype, and assuming that a generation time is 25 years, Goldstein et al. stated (with a confidence interval of 95%) that the origin of the priestly Y chromosome was "sometime during or shortly before the Temple period in Jewish history."

Not So Fast...

OK, a couple of things need to be noted here, before anyone claims that "genetics proves the Bible." First- as Goldstein himself notes in his book, his numbers may be off, by quite a bit:

Permit me here, after what was for me the first - and still one of the few - real thrills of discovery that punctuate the tedium and detail of science, the necessary reality check. Our results appeared to be a striking confirmation of the oral tradition. It even led to repeated claims in the press that my colleagues and I "found Aaron's Y chromosome." But although three thousand years is our best guess [as to when Primordial Cohen may have lived] the range of possible dates was and is very broad. Given our uncertainty about the ways mutations happen and how fast, we may be off by several hundred years or more in either direction. (Goldstein p.38).

Second, some later work done by Skorecki (he of the Technion 1997 Nature paper) suggests that the class of Cohanim may have had more than one common ancestor.  This work posits that there was not one primordial Cohen, but a few clans of Cohanim, from whom all later Cohanim are descended. (Or more technically stated:"...lineages characterized by the 6 Y-STRs used to define the original Cohen Modal Haplotype are associated with two divergent sub-clades...and thus cannot be assumed to represent a single recently expanding paternal lineage.")

Work from Brigham Young University (and boy, those guys are really into ancestry) also reminds anyone looking to do a quick Cohen DNA test to be careful.

The Cohen Modal Haplotype is observed in high frequency within the Cohanim, but also presents with significant incidence in other non-Jewish populations. The occurrence of the CMH in deeply divergent SNP haplogroups also indicates a lack of specificity of the CMH to the ancient Hebrew population. As such, inference of relation to Jewish populations for individuals or groups should be performed with caution when using the original CMH definition, as a false-positive result is likely.

 "A false positive is likely" - in other words, the test may show you are a Cohen, but really...you aren't. 

Finally, in their 2014 paper, a group from Italy inserted a note of caution into the whole Cohen gene thing:

In conclusion, while the observed distribution of sub-clades of haplotypes at mitochondrial and Y chromosome non-recombinant genomes might be compatible with founder events in recent times at the origin of Jewish groups as Cohenite, Levite, Ashkenazite, the overall substantial polyphyletism as well as their systematic occurrence in non-Jewish groups highlights the lack of support for using them either as markers of Jewish ancestry or Biblical tales.

Genetic Testing - It's Not Just for Cohanim

And now that a Cohen "Gene" may have been identified, what about the rest of us non-Cohanim? Some have used genetic testing to discover a forgotten heritage or find long-lost cousins.  One rather keen family member of Polonsky rabbinic lineage (claiming in passing to be descended from King David, the Kalonymos family, and Rashi) used the presence of a "relatively rare R-M124 haplotype" on the Y chromosome to confirm a common ancestor and find a new marker that represents "Polonsky rabbinic lineage." (I confess I am jealous. My grandfather drove a black London taxi, and last time I checked, Rashi was not one of my known ancestors.) 

It's Not About Your Ancestors, It's About You

Maimonides, in his Mishnah Torah,  reminds us about what is really important. It's not bringing a witness into town and telling everyone who your ancestors are. And it's not getting a DNA test to prove your stock. It's about searching for religious meaning in a world of materialism.  And that search is open to anyone, woman or man, Jew or not, Cohen, Levi, or even a plain old Yisrael.  

רמב"ם הלכות שמיטה ויובל פרק יג הלכות יב –יג 

ולמה לא זכה לוי בנחלת ארץ ישראל ובביזתה עם אחיו? מפני שהובדל לעבוד את יי לשרתו ולהורות דרכיו הישרים ומשפטיו הצדיקים לרבים שנאמר יורו משפטיך ליעקב ותורתך לישראל, לפיכך הובדלו מדרכי העולם לא עורכין מלחמה כשאר ישראל ולא נוחלין ולא זוכין לעצמן בכח גופן, אלא הם חיל השם שנאמר ברך יי חילו, והוא ברוך הוא זוכה להם, שנאמר: אני חלקך ונחלתך

ולא שבט לוי בלבד אלא כל איש ואיש מכל באי העולם אשר נדבה רוחו אותו והבינו מדע להבדל לעמוד לפני יי לשרתו ולעובדו לדעה את יי והלך ישר כמו שעשהו האלהים ופרק מעל צוארו עול החשבונות הרבים אשר בקשו בני האדם הרי זה נתקדש קדש קדשים. ויהיה יי חלקו ונחלתו לעולם ולעולמי עולמים ויזכה לו בעה"ז דבר המספיק לו כמו שזכה לכהנים ללוים, הרי דוד עליו השלום אומר: יי מנת חלקי וכוסי אתה תומיך גורלי

Why did the Levi'im not receive a portion in the inheritance in Israel and in the spoils of war like their brethren? Because they were set aside to serve God, to minister to Him and to instruct the masses about His just paths and righteous judgments... Therefore they were set apart from the mundane matters of the world. They do not wage war like the remainder of the Jewish people, nor do they receive an inheritance, nor do they acquire for themselves through their physical power. Instead, they are God's legion...and He provides for them...

Not only the tribe of Levi, but any human whose spirit moves him and who understands with his wisdom to set himself aside and stand before God - to serve Him and minister to Him and to know Him, proceeding justly as God made him, removing from his neck the yoke of the many mundane things which people seek - that person is sanctified like the Holy of Holies [in the Temple]. God will be his portion and heritage forever and will provide what is sufficient for him in this world, just as He provides for the Cohanim and the Levi'im...

Talmudology on the Parsha, Kedoshim: The Drowning of Prince Leopold and Love of The Other

In this week’s parsha we read one of the Torah’s most quotable quotes.

19:18 ויקרא

לֹֽא־תִקֹּ֤ם וְלֹֽא־תִטֹּר֙ אֶת־בְּנֵ֣י עַמֶּ֔ךָ וְאָֽהַבְתָּ֥ לְרֵעֲךָ֖ כָּמ֑וֹךָ אֲנִ֖י יְהֹוָֽה׃

You shall not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but you should love your neighbour as yourself: I am the Lord.

According to the great Rabbi Akiva “זֶה כְּלָל גָּדוֹל בַּתּוֹרָה- this is a fundamental principle of the Torah,” and if Rabbi Akiva said that, it must be a principal of incredible importance. So this week we will focus on this great principle, and specifically on how it was understood in a work called Sefer Haberit. Let’s start with some backgrtound.

Pinchas Hurewitz and his Sefer HaBerit

In 1797 a new Hebrew encyclopedia was published anonymously in Brno, which is now in the Czech Republic. It was called Sefer Haberit (The Book of the Covenant). It has a simple structure and is divided in two parts.  The first part, consisting of some two hundred and fifty pages, is a scientific encyclopedia, addressing what the author calls human wisdom (chochmat adam) and focuses on the material world. It deals with topics like geography, astronomy, biology and medicine. The second part, shorter than the first at only one hundred and thirty pages, is an analysis of divine wisdom (hochmat elohim), and focuses on the spiritual.  This part was written to explain a kabbalistic work called שערי קדושה (The Gates of Holiness) a mystical book written by the famous kabbalist Chaim Vital, who was himself a student of the even more famous Isaac Luria, known as the Ari.  

As we mentioned, the book was published anonymously, but in later editions the author revealed his name, though not much else. It was Pinchas Hurwitz, about whom few details are known. He appears to have been born in Vilna, Poland in 1765, and received a traditional Jewish education, but was forced to leave his studies at an early age as a result of both the dire economic situation and the physical threats then facing Polish Jewry.  He probably arrived in Frankfurt before his twentieth birthday and while there he met a number of maskilim and picked up a working knowledge of German. He then moved to Holland, where he must have endeared himself to many rabbinic leaders, before crossing to England, where again he met the leading Jewish religious intellectuals of the day. The most prominent of these was Eliakim Gottchalk Hart, an important Jewish intellectual and a wealthy jeweler, who provided financial support for Hurwitz during his time in England. Despite what appears to have been a comfortable time both physically and intellectually in London, for reasons that are not known Hurwitz returned to Poland, all the time working on his magnum opus.  In 1797 he finally published Sefer Haberit anonymously, and spent many years peddling his work from town to town.  It had taken a decade of travel and research, but Hurwitz understood the need of the hour and produced a work that was, and would remain, in great demand.

The Popularity of Sefer Haberit

In 1934, while studying at the famous yeshiva of the  Chofetz Chaim in Radon, Poland, a yeshiva bochur whose name is only known to us as Henech entered a competition in which he wrote an essay about his life. Here is part of what this twenty one year old student had to say:

I obtained a copy of the Book of the Covenant [Sefer Haberit]…and virtually committed it to memory, reading it in the bathroom for fear of being caught and confronted with a whole new series of accusations.  The Book of the Covenant gave me a sound foundation in anatomy, physics, geography and the like.  I had a weakness, however, for showing off my scientific learning to my friends (without telling them about its source). This led to my becoming known as a person of wide-ranging knowledge, and I was sought after by those who were drawn to the Haskalah.

Here then is testimony about the popularity Sefer Haberit as a work of science in pre-war Poland, over one hundred and thirty years after it was first published.  This book is still readily available modern Jerusalem. I bought my own modern edition of Sefer Haberit in a small bookshop in Meah Shearim in Jerusalem.  I had asked the owner if he might perhaps have a copy of the work.  Without moving from his position behind the counter he reached behind his shoulder and handed me a copy that had been published in Jerusalem in 1990. I not only appreciated the clear type and crisp pages of this modern edition, but was struck by the ease with which it had been obtained. 

In fact since it first appeared in 1797 Sefer Haberit has been published in over thirty editions. It was published in 1797, 1801 (twice, as bootlegged printings), 1807, and thirteen more times before the end of that century. It was published in 1900, 1904, 1911, 1913 (by three different publishers), 1920, 1960 and 1990. In addition it was published in Yiddish in 1898, 1929 and 1969, and in Ladino in 1847. This remarkable print run would be the envy of any modern author.

Isaac Bashevis Singer recalled that not only did he read Sefer Haberit as a child, but that his mother also was an avid reader of the work.

There were a number of holy books in my father’s bookcase in which I soulght answers to my questions.  One was The Book of the Covenant [Sefer Haberis] which I believe was already at that time a hundred years old and full of scientific facts.  It described the theories of Copernicus and Newton, and, it seems, the experiments of Benjamin Franklin as well.  There were accounts of savage tribes, strange animals, and explanations of what made a train run and a balloon fly.  In the special section dealing with religion were mentioned a number of philosophers. I recall that Kant already figured in there too.  The author, Reb Elijah of Vilna, a pious Jew, proved how inadequate the philosophers were in explaining the mystery of the world.  No research or inquiry, he wrote, could reveal the truth.  The author of The Book of the Covenant  spoke of nature too, but with the constant reminder that nature was something God had created, not a thing that existed of its own power.  I never tired of reading this book.

Sefer Haberit and LOve of the Other

Which brings us to perhaps the most important section of this entire book, and its connection with this week’s parsha. It is a long chapter – some 50 pages in all - called אהבת רעים – Ahavat Reim - The Love of Others.   In it, Horowitz set out to re-teach a command that is, in his words עיקר דרך הקדוש ושורש כל התורה הקדושה - the entire point of attaining holiness and the foundation of the entire holy Torah.  In fact this section follows another called דרך הקדוש- The Way of Holiness, and was seen as the key to attaining religious heights that Horowitz had previously described. In this chapter he described a number of ways in which love of the other impacts our daily lives: in loving our families and in respecting the government, in being a model citizen and not cheating on our taxes, in treating our workers with the appreciation they deserve and by condemning domestic abuse, whether physical or verbal. 

The nature of loving others is for a person to love every kind of person, irrespective of their nationality or  language, but simply because the person is a human, formed in the image of God, and is someone involved in the development of humanity.  This involvement can be as a builder or farmer or businessman or merchant or or other kinds of job, like one who is an intellectual and investigate the world…for through these paths the world exists as it should, and is completed as God created it to be done, and as he made the Earth as “he saw that it was very good” for all of humanity…

 The Drowning Death of Prince Leopold

As any good teacher knows, stories have a far greater teaching impact than bland statements or impersonal statistics. So Horowtiz now gave an example of the importance of brotherly love. It was in fact the outstanding story of love of the other of his time, and it concerned the drowning death of Prince Leopold that had occurred in 1785. Here it is. Read it slowly. There is a lot to appreciate.

The question is whether we are naturally inclined to help others.  In answer to this, if we consider the nature of a person we will find that it is naturally inclined and desires to do good in the eyes of others, and tries to influence others to do so too; to have compassion on the poor, to rescue the oppressed, to release those who are imprisoned, to bandage the wounded , to heal the sick, to save those who are dying, share his knowledge with others, to teach students and instruct people in the correct way to behave and so on…

Experience has already demonstrated that on many occasions, even royalty and nobility have put themselves into mortal danger, battling fire and water in order to save others…as happened in Frankfurt on the Eder on the 17th of Iyyar 5545 (1785).

At that time the river bust its banks and swept away a number of villages and the houses in them.  In one village there were a number of wooden branches and window frames that were floating here and there, and a number of bodies of those who had drowned. Floating there was a tree trunk and on it was a person shouting to those on the shore to save him, but it was not possible to do so because of the strong current. 

When the nobleman Duke Leopold, Commandant of the city, noted this he immediately commanded any one who could do so to sail over to save the person. No one was able to reach the person, and they told the Duke it was not possible to reach him because of the strength of the current and the size of the waves.

And when the Duke heard this, he took it upon himself “I will sail over.” He put his life in his hands, and went over to save the life of that person. He had not reached half way across the river when his boat capsized and was swept away by the huge waves.  The righteous Duke was lost and could not be saved.  So we see that there is a natural inclination to help others.

The death of Prince Leopold gripped the imagination of Horowitz. It was the sine qua non of the love that one human being could and indeed should have for another.  Its importance was not only noticed by this Jewish author from Vilna. The great German poet Goethe wrote a poem about the incident:

Thou wert forcibly seized by the hoary lord of the river

Holding thee, even he shares with thee his streaming domain

Calmly sleepest thou near his urn as it silently trickles

Till thou to action art aroused, waked by the swift-rolling flood

Kindly to be to the people, as when thou still were a mortal

Perfecting that as a god, which thou didst fail in, as a man

And in the British Museum is this wonderful print called La Mort du Prince Leopold de Brunswick.

Remember we are talking about eighteenth century Europe, which was not exactly a paradise for the peasants.  The constitutional monarchy that had ruled France for three centuries had not yet just been challenged by the French Revolution, and the American War of Independence had ended barely two years earlier.   And yet here was a nobleman who, without hesitation, gave his life to save an unknown commoners. It was this example that led Horowitz to conclude that not only was Love of the Other a commandment from the Torah; it was also a חוב מצד הטבע, a natural law.

Horowitz not only learned from the action of this righteous Gentile.  He extended Love of the Other to include non-Jews in a radical re-interpretation of the word רעיך -the other.   Normally translated as your fellow, Horowitz took it to mean that all contemporary Gentiles were included in this description.  He ruled that Gentiles were not idol worshippers, and also reinterpreted the verse that we read from the book of Jeremiah towards the end of the Passover Seder: :  שפוך חמתך על הגוים אשר לא ידעוך -“Pour out your wrath on the nations who do not know you.”  On whom should God pour out his anger? Only on those “אשר לא ידעוך” - who do not know Him. 

Yes, all are created equal. or not

Having established this inclusivity, Horowitz wrote about the way in which we should behave:

     על כן איש מחוייב להתנהג עם כל אדם וכל משפחות האדמה בטוב וביושר ובאחוה 

And so every person is obligated to act towards every person and every group on earth with goodness, with honesty, and with friendship

Note this language-we are required – מחוייב – to extend our love to all of humanity, irrespective of their race or ethnicity. To see how different this approach is, let’s compare it to a Jewish text that was published in the USA, where the Declaration of Independence states as a self evident truth that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  The contemporary Jewish book I am referring to is volume two of the Rennert edition of The Encyclopedia of Taryag Mitzvoth. This Encyclopedia has excluded anyone who is not Jewish from love of the other.

In doing so, the Rennert Encyclopedia was following one school of halakhic thought in which the phrase “your fellow” is interpreted as “your fellow - in observing the commandments.” But there are lots of Jewish texts available to explain the details of the biblical command to love the other. Why not choose one with a maximalist reading? Surely we would want that from other religious traditions? If so, we must demand it from our own.

We began with a story from the Talmud in which Rabbi Pinchas believed it was inconceivable that God could act in a way that was cruel or unjust. Today we know that cruelty and injustice are part and parcel of our fractured society. Racial and ethnic bias and discrimination are still all too common in a country in which all are supposed to have been created equal. We need more thinkers like Pinchas Hurwitz who read the command to love the other in a maximalist way. What better way to memorialize the death of Prince Leopold is there than follow this dictum:

     על כן איש מחוייב להתנהג עם כל אדם וכל משפחות האדמה בטוב וביושר ובאחוה 

And so every person is obligated to act towards every person and every group on earth with goodness, with honesty, and with friendship

Talmudology on the Parsha, Acharei Mot: Yom Kippur & Sound Propagation at Night

ויקרא 16:3

…בְּזֹ֛את יָבֹ֥א אַהֲרֹ֖ן אֶל־הַקֹּ֑דֶשׁ

This is how Aharon will come into the Holy Place…

In this week’s parsha we read about the Yom Kippur service. There is much that the Rabbis added to the ceremony that is described, and in a discussion of the service on the holiest day of the Jewish Year, the Talmud notes that the voice of the Cohen Gadol, the High Priest, could be heard from a distance of ten parsangs. A parsang is an old Persian measure, and is about 3 miles or almost 5km. This means that the voice of the High Priest could be heard over 30 miles away! The Talmud notes that it could be heard at this distance even during the day, when sound does not travel as far as it does at night. Here it is, in the original:

שקלים כ,א

דְּאָמַר מָר: וּכְבָר אָמַר ״אָנָא הַשֵּׁם״ וְנִשְׁמַע קוֹלוֹ בִּירִיחוֹ. וְאָמַר רַבָּה בַּר בַּר חָנָה אָמַר רַבִּי יוֹחָנָן: מִירוּשָׁלַיִם לִירִיחוֹ עֲשַׂר פַּרְסֵי

וְאַף עַל גַּב דְּהָכָא אִיכָּא חוּלְשָׁא, וְהָכָא לֵיכָּא חוּלְשָׁא. וְהָכָא יְמָמָא, וְהָתָם לֵילְיָא

דְּאָמַר רַבִּי לֵוִי: מִפְּנֵי מָה אֵין קוֹלוֹ שֶׁל אָדָם נִשְׁמָע בַּיּוֹם כְּדֶרֶךְ שֶׁנִּשְׁמָע בַּלַּיְלָה? מִפְּנֵי גַּלְגַּל חַמָּה שֶׁמְּנַסֵּר בָּרָקִיעַ כְּחָרָשׁ הַמְנַסֵּר בַּאֲרָזִים

There already was an incident where the High Priest recited, in his confession that accompanied the placing of hands on his bull on Yom Kippur: Please God, and his voice was heard in Jericho. And Rabba bar bar Chana said that Rabbi Yochanan said: The distance from Jerusalem to Jericho is ten parasangs.

…here it was during the day, when sound does not travel as well, that the High Priest recited his confession… As Rabbi Levi said: Why is a person’s voice not heard during the day in the manner that it is during the night? It is due to the fact that the sound of the sphere of the sun traversing the sky generates noise like the noise generated by a carpenter sawing cedars, and that noise drowns out other sounds…

Is this true? Does sound really travel further at night? And if so, why?

No! It must be a miracle….

In his commentary on Masechet Tamid (30b), the great Rishon Abraham ben David (c. 1125-1198), known as the Ra’avad, makes this comment:

ומורי הרב החסיד ז"ל, דכל הנה דקתני שהיו נשמעין מיריחו מעשה ניסים היה ודווקא ביריחו נשמע ולא בשאר הצדדים, מפני שיריחו היתה קצת קדושה כירושלים מפני שהיא היתה תחלת כיבוש א"י

The fact that in Jericho the sound of the Cohen Gadol (and others) could be heard from Jerusalem was a miracle, and stemmed from the fact that Jericho, like Jerusalem, was among the first cities captured by Joshua. A similar explanation was given by the Ritva, Rabbi Yom Tov ben Abraham of Seville (c. 1260 – 1320):

ריטב’א יומא לט,ב ד’ה וכבר

שלא היה זה אלא בזמן הנס שהיו ישראל עושין רצונו של מקום

The voice of the Cohen Gadol in Jerusalem was only heard in Jericho if the Jewish People were worthy of the miracle. So both the Ra’avad and Ritva thought that the this was some kind of supernatural event. But there were others who disagreed about the miraculous nature of the sound that carried some thirty miles.

Yes. It is true

One of those who thought the whole things was perfectly natural was the Baghadadi Chacham Yosef Hayim (1835 – 1909) known as the Ben Yehoyada.He believed that just as our ancestors had incredible strength, so too they had incredible voices. And incredible hearing. This meant that they were able to hear things that today, the rest of us, might not.

ּבן יהוידע יומא,כ, ב ד׳ה ונשמע קולו

וְנִשְׁמַע קוֹלוֹ בִּירִיחוֹ. אל תתמה על הדבר הזה לפי ראות עיניך בדורות אלו, כי הראשונים כמו שהיה להם גבורה נפלאה בגופם כן היה להם כח גדול בהרמת קולם, ועוד גם כח חוש השמע שלהם היה חזק מאה ידות על חוש השמע של דורות אלו. ואם כן בצירוף זה וזה אין רחוק דבר זה להיות ועוד כיון דדברים אלו היו נעשים בבית המקדש היה מסייע בזה מעשה נסים.

And in fact, Chacham Yosef was onto something. We don’t need to explain this with a miracle because Rabbi Levi of the Talmud was correct and sound does indeed travel further at night, as you can see below in this helpful graphic. (For the man with the trumpet, think Cohen Gadol. For the dog, think Jericho.)

From here.

The first thing to know is that the speed of sound is dependent on the temperature of the air. Sound moves quicker in warm air and slower in cold air. During the day the sun heats up the earth’s surface, and in particular it heats up the air that is closest to the ground, which is where the sound travels the fastest. But a heat gradient bends the sound waves upwards, much in the same way that a lens bends light rays. (The gradient in which atmospheric temperature decreases with elevation by an amount known as the adiabatic lapse rate.) As a result, the sound waves travels up and away from the listener, and the sounds are quieter.

The reverse happens at night. At night the ground cools quickly. The higher air is warmer than the air close to the ground. The sound further from the ground travels faster at night causing the sound wave to refract back towards the earth. The listener now hears them as louder than they were during the day. It’s physics! (Though it should be noted that some physicists dispute this explanation.)

It’s not just sound waves

Why radio waves travel further at night. From here.

Here’s a fact that Rabbi Levi did not know. It’s not just sound that is heard better at night. Radio waves are heard better at night too, though for an entirely different reason. To be precise, this does not happen with all radio waves, but just those on the AM and short wave frequencies. Because radio waves only travel in straight lines, they do not follow the curvature of the earth’s surface, and so have a natural range of only 30-40 miles. But they can be transmitted up to the ionosphere, where they bounce off of it and down, back to earth. At night, that ionosphere is protected from the electromagnetic radiation that streams from the sun and tends to distort it. And so the radio waves are reflected back down with less interference, which means they travel further and are easier to detect. As a result, some distant AM radio stations (remember those?) can only be heard at night, though the whole thing becomes rather a moot point since nearly everything broadcast can now be found on the internet, for which the ionosphere is not needed.

Noise pollution

We have demonstrated that sound travels further at night, using our knowledge of the properties of sound waves and the phenomenon of refraction. Rabbi Levi knew none of this, but he had something that very few of us today have: a quiet natural environment. What many of us never experience thanks to noise pollution, he experienced each and every night. He, together with the other sages of the Talmud lived in a world that had no noise other than the sound of human voices around a crackling fire and the background music of the natural world. It was an utterly different experience. Our modern world has given us many things to be grateful for, but noise is not one of them.

The 2024 Talmudology Passover Reader

Pesach (Passover) begins tomorrow, Monday evening, April 22, 2024.

For your delight we present The 2024Talmudology Passover Reader. It may be downloaded at the links below.

This edition includes an essay on the Ten Plagues in Science and History, and material for discussion at the Seder.

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