Temurah 16a ~ Transient National Amnesia

תמורה טז, א

אמר רב יהודה אמר שמואל שלשת אלפים הלכות נשתכחו בימי אבלו של משה

Rav Yehuda says that Shmuel says: Three thousand halakhot were forgotten during the days of mourning for Moses.

Three thousand laws were forgotten when Moses died. Gone. Or maybe it was only seventeen hundred:

אלף ושבע מאות קלין וחמורין וגזירות שוות ודקדוקי סופרים נשתכחו בימי אבלו של משה 

One thousand and seven hundred a fortiori inferences, and verbal analogies, and minutiae of the scribes were forgotten during the days of mourning for Moses.

Or maybe it was only a thousand:

תשש כחו של יהושע ונשתכחו ממנו שלש מאות הלכות ונולדו לו שבע מאות ספיקות

Joshua’s strength weakened, and three hundred halakhot were forgotten by him, and seven hundred cases of uncertainty needed to be resolved.

Whatever the number, the rabbis of the Talmud identified the death of Moses with a period of transient national amnesia. And the rabbis were correct. Psychological trauma and memory are intricately linked.

Psychological Trauma and Memory

As Professor Kristin Samuelson points out in her review of the relationship between memory and psychological trauma, patients with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) “often complain of experiencing everyday memory problems with emotionally neutral material.” In other words stress can make you forget things that have little or nothing to do with the stressful event itself. However, “PTSD most significantly impacts the initial acquisition and learning phases of memory, as opposed to the retention phase.” Two psychologists from the University of Bergen in Norway analyzed no fewer than 28 clinical studies and concluded there was marked verbal memory impairment in the PTSD groups compared to healthy controls. And while we commonly associate PTSD with combat, child abuse, rape and political violence, the everyday grief of losing a loved one can also mess with your mind. Here is Helen Macdonald, in her New York Times bestseller H is for Hawk describing what happened to her after her father’s sudden and unexpected death.

I started crashing my father’s car. I didn’t mean to do it: it just happened. I backed up against bollards, scraped wings against walls, heard the sound of metal squealing in agony over and over again…I couldn’t keep the dimensions of the car in my head. Or my own, for I kept having accidents. I cracked cups. I dropped plates. Fell over. Broke a toe on a door-jamb. I was as clumsy as I had been as a child…

The effect of stress on brain chemistry

Although as many as 8% of Americans will have PTSD at some point in their lives, we are only just beginning to understand the ways in which that stress interferes with the functioning of the brain. The hippocampus, which is involved in verbal declarative memory, is very sensitive to the effects of stress. For example, Vietnam veterans with PTSD have a smaller right hippocampal volume based relative to controls, and combat severity is correlated with volume reduction. Interestingly, hippocampal atrophy and hippocampal-based memory deficits might be reversed with treatment with anti-depressants such as the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) paroxetine, which has been shown to promote the growth of neurons in the hippocampus. Stress also interferes with the release of brain transmitters such as norepinephrine. It will take many more decades of research to figure it all out, but there is no doubt that stress causes very real changes in both the anatomy and the function of the brain.

Lasting effects of trauma on the brain, showing long-term dysregulation of norepinephrine and cortisol systems, and vulnerable areas of hippocampus, amygdala, and medial prefrontal cortex that are affected by trauma. GC, glucocorticoid; CRF, corticotropin-releasing factor; ACTH, adrenocorticotropin hormone; NE, norepinephrine; HR, heart rate; BP, blood pressure; DA, dopamine; BZ, benzodiazapine; GC, glucocorticoid. From Bremner J.D.Traumatic stress: effects on the brain. Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience 2006; 8 (4): 445-461.

Transient Global Amnesia

One of the most fascinating clinical conditions I have encountered working as a physician in the emergency room is called transient global amnesia, or TGA. It is uncommon, but once you’ve seen it it is hard to forget. In its classic presentation, the syndrome consists of the abrupt onset of a temporary, severe inability to form new memories (called in medicalese an anterograde amnesia), usually accompanied by repetitive questioning, in the absence of any focal neurologic features that would suggest other problems like a stroke. Behavior is otherwise normal; the patient remains alert and cognition is not impaired, but he or she is often disoriented to time and place. The vast majority of attacks last between 1 and 8 hours and after the attack the patient's the ability to form new memories gradually returns, although she remains amnestic to events that took place during the episode. Patients may feel "something is wrong," but in many cases there is a profound lack of insight and the patient may have had to be coaxed by a worried observer into coming to the ED. That’s what happened with one particularly memorable (sorry) case I saw: a man who raced his sail boat around the island on Nantucket while being observed to have what turned out to be TGA. His daughters finally got him to agree to go to the ER, where I diagnosed, reassured and discharged the patient. I am still waiting for the boat trip he promised me.

Detailed neuropsychologic examination of patients during an attack of TGA shows that personality, complex cognition, problem-solving, semantic knowledge, language, and visuospatial function are all normal. Patients can learn a list of words and retain them when they are able to rehearse but rapidly forget when distracted. Although distant memories tend to be preserved, semantic memory (long-term memory responsible for the storage and integrity of knowledge about the world, including the meaning of words and objects) and "metamemory" (the awareness of what one should know) are usually preserved.

Bad news wipes out memory

No one knows why it occurs, but as one brilliant physician explained in a paper on the Emergency Department treatment of TGA “in approximately one third of cases TGA is precipitated by an emotional experience, intense pain or cold, or strenuous physical activity. Well-described precipitating factors include…emotionally taxing episodes such as being robbed, hearing bad news, or experiencing painful medical procedures.” Transient global amnesia is often caused by emotionally taxing episodes, including hearing bad news, like, presumably, the death of a loved one. And in today’s page of Talmud, it is as if transient global amnesia followed the death of Moses on a national level. Thousands of rulings in Jewish law were forgotten, only to be restored some time later:

אמר רבי אבהו אעפ"כ החזירן עתניאל בן קנז מתוך פלפולו

Rabbi Abbahu says: Even so, Othniel, son of Kenaz, restored them through his sharp mind

Never Forget

In his seminal work on Jewish Memory Zachor, Yosef Chaim Yerushalmi (d. 2009) noted that the command to remember -zachor - is repeated one-hundred and sixty-nine times in the Bible. Remember the Sabbath day, remember what Amalek did to you; remember what God did to Miriam; remember the exodus from Egypt, and on and on. “And as Israel is enjoined to remember” he wrote, “so it is adjured not to forget. Both imperatives have resounded with enduring effect among the Jews since biblical times.” We are one week from Tisha Be’Av the Fast of the Ninth of Av, the day on which Jewish calamities are re-membered, the day on which Jews are reminded: Never Forget. But if grief can cause us to forget parts of our national heritage, it can also spurn us to recall them too. The laws that were forgotten when Moses died were restored through hard work. The amnesia was transient. The rebuilding began once the period of mourning was over. And that is the story of the Jews writ large.

Temurah 9a ~ Cucumbers, Gourds and the Marshmallow Test

Small Gourds vs Big Gourds, or Cucumbers vs Gourds?

In the middle of a long discussion of the regulations allowing one sacrificial animal to be substituted by another we find this gem:

בוצינא טב מקרא

A small gourd now is better than a large gourd later (Temurah 9a).

Elsewhere Rashi (Ketuvot 83b) explains the meaning of this phrase:

 בוצינא דלעת קטנה קרא דלעת גדולה והאומר לחבירו קח לך דלעת קטנה בגינתי או המתן עד שיגדילו וקח גדולה טוב לו ליקח הקטנה מיד כי לא ידע מה יולד יום

...When a person says to his friend "you may take this small gourd in my garden now or you can wait until it grows larger and then take it" it is better to take the small gourd immediately, because you cannot know what the future may bring.

This is a fairly unremarkable observation, and it finds a similar expression in the adage "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." The meaning is clear: it's better to have a small but certain gain rather than risk a larger one that is less certain (though see here for an interesting alternative origin of the expression). This is Rashi's explanation. But there is another way to explain the phrase (and this is followed by the Koren-Steinsaltz Talmud).  According to Tosafot (Ketuvot 83b)  cited in the name of Rabbenu Tam (d.1171), the proverb means the following:

ומשל הדיוט כך הוא שאדם אוהב הקישות יותר שיהנה בה מהרה ממה שהוא אוהב דלעת ולהמתינה אע"פ שהיא טובה יותר

This common saying means that a person would prefer [fast growing] cucumbers because he can enjoy them sooner, rather than gourds [which grow slowly and] which require waiting, even though they [taste] better. (Tosafot, בוצינא טב מקרא, Ketuvot 83b).

So according to the great Rabbenu Tam, this saying does not address any element of risk. Instead it is addressing the ability to have self-control and to plan for the future.  The larger reward is certain, but is only available if you can wait. In fact, Rabbenu Tam is describing the famous Marshmallow Test.

The Marshmallow Test

The man behind the Marshmallow Test is the psychologist Walter Mischel, who was born in Vienna and fled to the US in 1938. Last September he died at the age of 88. Mischel was the emeritus chair of the Department of Psychology at Columbia University, and as his obituary in The New York Times noted, “his studies of delayed gratification in young children clarified the importance of self-control in human development, and…led to a broad reconsideration of how personality is understood.”

The Marshmallow Test is simple: give kindergarten children an option -one reward now (in the original experiments the children could choose any reward, not just a marshmallow) or two if you can sit and not touch the reward for fifteen minutes. The studies were performed at Stanford between 1968 and 1974 and involved some 550 children.  If you haven't already seen what the test looks like, grab a coffee and watch the video. It's quite wonderful.

There have been dozens and dozens of academic papers written on the Marshmallow test, since Mischel first published his findings in 1969.  But perhaps most surprisingly, the findings of the Marshmallow experiment on pre-schoolers seems to predict the future behaviors of the test subjects when they are adults. Here is Mischel summarizing his findings in his recent book called (predictably enough,) The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control.

“What the preschoolers did as they tried to keep waiting, and how they did or didn’t manage to delay gratification, unexpectedly turned out to predict much about their future lives. The more seconds they waited at age four or five, the higher their SAT sores and the better their rated social and cognitive functioning in adolescence. At age 27-32, those who had waited longer during the Marshmallow Test in preschool had a lower body mass index and better sense of self-worth, pursued their goals more effectively, and coped more adaptively with frustration and stress. At midlife, those who could consistently wait (“high delay”), versus those who couldn’t consistently wait (“low delay”), were characterized by distinctively different brain scans in areas linked to addictions and obesity.”

— Walter Mischel, The Marshmallow Test 2014, p5.

Wow. That's some test. But before you run out and test your preschool aged children (or grandchildren), remember that according to Tosafot, most people prefer a smaller instant reward to a larger but delayed reward. The classic Marshmallow Test measured how long young children could control their desires for an instant reward, but gives a new insight into  this daf. If you can hold out for slow growing gourds rather than go for the faster growing cucumbers, you might just do very well in later life.

 

Arachin 22a ~ The Psychological Impact of Corporal Punishment

ערכין כב, א

הכי אמר רב חסדא מאבימי קולפי טאבי בלעי עלה דהא שמעתא

Rav Chisda said “I was hit a lot by Avimi because of this halacha”

During a rather minor dispute (over how long before the sale of an orphan’s property must public notice be given,) the Babylonian sage Rav Chisda (died ~ 320CE) let slip a painful memory. His teacher Avimi had severely beaten him in a warped attempt to teach him the correct answer. (In case you are wondering, it is thirty consecutive days or sixty days if the announcement is made only on Mondays and Thursdays). Chisda the student was, in a way, lucky. His teacher might have killed him. In the tractate Makkot, a Mishna teaches that a parent or a teacher who kills a child in the process of administering corporal punishment is not liable to any punishment:

מכות ח,א

אבא שאול אומר מה חטבת עצים רשות אף כל רשות יצא האב המכה את בנו והרב הרודה את תלמידו

Abba Shaul taught…[there is no penalty for] a father who killed his son while hitting him or for a teacher who strikes his student…

Cartoon from 1888 depicting J.S.Kerr, an Australian proponent of corporal punishment.

Punishing by physical humiliation

In describing the procedure for administering corporal punishment, the Mishnah (Makkot 22b) teaches the following: 

If the criminal soiled himself [because of his fear of being lashed] with his own urine or feces, he is exempt from lashing. Rabbi Yehudah, a man is only exempted if he soils himself with his own excrement; and a woman is exempt even if she only soils herself with urine.

The Talmud makes it clear that in using corporal punishment, the goal is humiliation. That objective may be realized when the criminal is flogged; there the humiliation is the flogging itself. But it may also be realized if the criminal soils himself out of fear, immediately before being flogged.  That too is humiliating, and so no flogging is required. Humiliation is not something we usually associate with the goals of punishment: they are most commonly thought of as 

1. Deterrence - the threat of punishment will deter people from committing the act.

2. Retribution - the criminal inflicted harm on others. So we may now inflict harm on him.

3. Rehabilitation - through punishment (typically, but not only prison,) the criminal learns how to become a better citizen

4. Incapacitation - the criminal is removed from society, and which is made safer as a result.

5. Restitution - the criminal repays the victim for his crime

Humiliation does not feature as a goal of punishment in any theory of justice I could find. Of course there is shame and humiliation that results from being caught and punishment, but this is a secondary outcome. The Talmud understands that the primary goal of corporal punishment is humiliation.  

where is the corporal punishment of children still legal?

Some believe that there is a distinction to be made between corporal punishment and child abuse. For example, Murray A. Straus, a professor of sociology at the University of New Hampshire, suggests that  corporal punishment is the use of physical force with the intention of causing a child to experience pain but not injury for the purposes of correction or control of the child’s behavior. In the US, most states have banned the corporal punishment of children. However it is still legal in 19 states including, Florida and Texas. Since 1998  corporal punishment of children has been  banned in England. In Israel, it has been banned since 2000.

Elizabeth Thompson Gershoff has studied how corporal punishment affects children. In a paper published in 2002, she identified all the articles that examined the associations between parental corporal punishment and child behaviors and experiences. This exhaustive review included over 300 relevant works, as well as 63 dissertations and 88 studies. She concluded that:

Parental corporal punishment is associated significantly with a range of child behaviors and experiences, including both short- and long-term, individual- and relationship-level, and direct (physical abuse) and indirect (e.g., delinquency and antisocial behavior) constructs...parental corporal punishment is associated with the following undesirable behaviors and experiences: decreased moral internalization, increased child aggression, increased child delinquent and antisocial behavior, decreased quality of relationship between parent and child, decreased child mental health, increased risk of being a victim of physical abuse, increased adult aggression, increased adult criminal and antisocial behavior, decreased adult mental health, and increased risk of abusing own child or spouse. Corporal punishment was associated with only one desirable behavior, namely, increased immediate compliance...

In another paper Gershoff notes that corporal punishment persists because it is a practice with strong ties to religion, particularly to Christianity.

Religious leaders and religiously inspired parenting experts in our twenty-first century, like their eighteenth-century compatriots, make connections between firm discipline and a child's spiritual well-being, and encourage parents to use corporal punishment as an important part of their discipline repertoire. Parents with conservative Protestant affiliations in particular are more supportive of corporal punishment and use it more frequently than do parents of other Christian and non-Christian religious affiliations.

Judicial corporal punishment is still legal in over thirty countries, including Afghanistan, Indonesia, Pakistan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Fortunately, most urban Israeli Jews do not endorse corporal punishment for children.

Whatever became of Rav Chisda?

As a child, Rav Chisda quite literally had Jewish law beaten into him. In some respects perhaps he managed to overcome this child abuse; he rose to become the head of the Yeshiva at Sura and lived to the ripe old age of 92. His many statements are found all over the Talmud. Despite this, it is clear that his abuse had a profound effect on his teachings, many of which address issues of the respect owed to a teacher. For example:

• As a result of a dispute over precisely this issue, Rav Chisda and Rav Huna ignored each other for forty years.

• In Kiddushin (32a) he taught that while a father may forgo the honor due to him from his son, a teacher may never do so (האב שמחל על כבודו כבודו מחול הרב שמחל על כבודו אין כבודו מחול).

• And in Sanhedrin (110a) he made this startling comparison: “Anyone who disagrees with his teacher is like one who disagrees with the Divine Presence.” 

From today’s page of Talmud, it becomes clear why issues of authority were of such importance to Rav Chisda. How fortunate we are to be able to teach our children to respect their teachers without resorting to violence.

“The results from these meta-analyses do not imply that all children who experience corporal punishment turn out to be aggressive or delinquent; a variety of parent, child, and situational factors not examined here have the potential to moderate the associations between corporal punishment and child behaviors. ... The presence of corporal punishment may make certain behaviors more likely but clearly not inevitable.”

— Gershoff E.T. Corporal Punishment by Parents and Associated Child Behaviors and Experiences: A Meta-Analytic and Theoretical Review. Psychological Review 2002. 128 ( 4); 539–579.

Arachin 19a ~ The Mechanical Engineering of a Pledge

ערכין יט, א

אמר רב יהודה: האומר קומתי עלי נותן שרביט שאינו נכפף, מלא קומתי עלי נותן שרביט הנכפף.

Rav Yehuda says that one who says: It is incumbent upon me to donate my height, gives a thick rod that cannot be bent equivalent to his height. One who says: It is incumbent upon me to donate my full height, may give even a thin rod that can be bent, provided it is equivalent to his height.

What are we to do with a person who pledges to donate to the Temple the “amount of his height “?Rav Yehuda comes up with an ingenious idea. Find a rod of the same height as the person, and the value of the rod would be donated to the Temple.

Rashi explains the passage along these lines:

קומתי - משמע כקומתו ונותן שרביט עב שלא יוכל לכופפו אם פירש כסף כסף ואם זהב זהב

My height: He means the same height as his own. He donates a thick rod which cannot be bent: if he agreed that it be made of silver, then it is the value of that silver rod; and if he agreed that it be made of gold, it is the value of that gold rod.

Last year, three mechanical engineers published a paper in the journal Hakirah which described some of the features of this '“rod that does not bend.” They noted that “technically speaking, “unable to bend” cannot be an exact term, as even the most brittle material has a Modulus of Elasticity (Young’s Modulus) and will bend under a load.” Good point; everything bends eventually. It’s gravity. To demonstrate this the authors consider a cantilever beam, one end of which is free (A), and the other is fixed (B) allowing for no translation or rotation. They continue:

The uniformly applied weight loading w is the result of the Earth’s gravitational pull exerted on the cantilever of length L and radius r, with the cantilever consisting of a homogeneous material of an isotropic Young’s Modulus E.

But wait. There’s more:

And so things always bend. Gravity is a cruel mistress. In fact if you pledged to give your height in gold and you were say 1.7m tall (that’s 5 feet 7 inches for those of you in the US), a gold rod with a 10cm diameter would deflect a full 3.5 mm at its tip.

Deflection of a 1.7m cylindrical rod of Gold, Silver and Copper for a given radius. From Ehrenberg I. Siegel J. Erb B. The Tallest Column: On Monetary Value of Stature in Jewish Law. Hakirah 2018:(25); 161-173

Anyway the engineers continue to analyze the physics behind the various statements in today’s day of Talmud, but to follow their reasoning, I recommend you have a strong background in mathematics, Hooke’s law and “the moment-curvature relationship (𝑀 􏰁=𝐸𝐼𝜅).” Depending on the precise dimensions of the rod, they conclude that at today’s prices its value would range from $64 for a copper rod with a radius of 4.3mm to $112,710 for a gold rod with a radius of 5.3mm. So next time you donate the value of your height to the charity of your choice, be very explicit about what precisely, you mean, or it could cost you a great deal of money.