Gittin 28a ~ Longevity I: How Long Do We Live?

גיטין כח, א

מתני' המביא גט והניחו זקן או חולה נותן לה בחזקת שהוא קיים

גמ' אמר רבא לא שנו אלא זקן שלא הגיע לגבורות וחולה שרוב חולים לחיים אבל זקן שהגיע לגבורות וגוסס שרוב גוססין למיתה לא

 איתיביה אביי המביא גט והניחו זקן אפי' בן מאה שנה נותן לה בחזקת שהוא קיים תיובתא ואי בעית אימא כיון דאיפליג איפליג

MISHNAH: If an agent brought a Get and the husband was an old man or was sick, he should still give it to the wife on the assumption that the husband is still alive...

GEMARA: Rava said: [this Mishnah] speaks only of a husband who is not yet eighty years old and of a husband who is ill [but not dying], because most ill people recover. But if the husband is an old man who has already reached the age of eighty, or was in the process of dying, then the Get should not be given to the wife, because most people who are dying do actually die. 

Abaye raised the following objection [to Rava from a Baraisa]: 'If an agent was bringing a Get and he left when the husband was old, even a hundred years old, he should give it to the wife on the assumption that the husband is still alive. 

This is indeed a refutation [to Rava]. But it is still possible to accept Rava’s position, because [in the case of the Baraisa] if a man reaches such an exceptional age, he is altogether exceptional and unlike other elderly men [and so it may be assumed that the elderly husband is still alive when his appointed agent reaches the wife to give her the Get.]

This is the first of a two part examination of statements of longevity in the Talmud, and how they measure up against data from the sciences today.  Was Rava correct in assuming the outer limit of longevity to be around 80 years, and do those who make it into their golden years have good odds of making it even further? Let's take a look.

Nasty, Brutish and Short

It's quite a challenge to estimate how long most people lived way, way back. But there are some data to suggest that life was, as Thomas Hobbs wrote in his Leviathan "nasty brutish and short". For example, in the Bronze Age - that would be the time in which the Patriarch Abraham, Isaac and Jacob lived lived - life expectancy was about 20-30 years.  So yes, Abraham's death at the age of 175, or Sarah's at the age of 127, are both examples of ultra-extreme-turbo-charged longevity.   

Life Expectancy: From the Epipalaeolithic Period to the Iron Age. From Oded Galor and Omer Moav.Life Expectancy: From the Epipalaeolithic Period to the Iron Age. Unpublished paper 2005.

Longevity of Human and Other Primates

Among all the primates, humans have the greatest life expectancy at birth.  Before the industrial era, human life expectancy at puberty was about 30 years, about twice that of chimpanzees.  Based on evidence from tooth eruption found in skulls it has been possible to estimate the life expectancy of the earliest common ancestor of humans and the great apes. But all this was long ago and far away, and, let's be honest, we really don't know very much about what happened back then. However we do have better data about more recent societies, so let's jump to life under the Romans...

Evolution of the human life expectancy (LE). The LE at birth of the shared great ape ancestor is hypothesized to approximate that of chimpanzees, which are the closest species to humans by DNA sequence data. The LE of chimpanzees at puberty is about 15 years, whereas pre-industrial humans had LE at puberty of about 30 years Since 1800 during industrialization, LE at birth as well as at later ages has more than doubled. LE estimates for ancestral Homo species are hypothesized to be intermediate based on allometric relationships . Ages of adult bones cannot be known accurately after age 30 even in present skeletons .The proportion of adults to juveniles does, however, suggest a shift toward greater LE at birth. The few samples in any case cannot give statistically reliable estimates at a population level. The number of generations is estimated at 25 years for humans.From Finch, C.  Evolution of the Human Lifespan, Past, Present, and Future: Phases in the Evolution of Human Life Expectancy in Relation to the Inflammatory Load. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 2012:156 (1). 9-44

Life Expectancy in the Roman Empire

Life Table for the Roman Empire, adapted from Parkin, TG. Demography and Roman Society. John Hopkins University Press 1992.

In Roman society, lifespan remained pretty short, and it was still rather brutish. One-third of all new-borns died within their first year of life.  This high infant death rate put the average life expectancy at birth to 20-30 years. But if an infant made it beyond that stormy first year, her projected life expectancy was 33 years. Indeed as you got older, your projected life expectancy increased: if you made it to the age of 45 (and only 6% of the population did) then your projected life expectancy was whopping 61 years, as you can see in the chart. However, very few reached the age of 60, and it is estimated that fewer that 1 in 1,000 (0.001%) lived to age 80.  (By comparison, today in Israel over 3% of the population is over 80. In the US its almost 4%.) Based on a number of sources, the historian John Barclay wrote "that people who died in their 60s would be considered to have lived a full life."

Life Expectancy in the Middle Ages and Beyond

Life Expectancy (at birth) in England 1540 -1870. From Wrigley, E.A., and R.S. Schofield. The Population History of England 1541-1871: A Reconstruction Harvard University Press,1981.

Life in the middle ages was not much better. Life expectancy at birth was around 35 years. As urbanization increased and people began to live in closer proximity  to one another, the mortality risk increased.  Two Israeli scholars estimate that "...life expectancy at birth fell from about 40 at the end of the 16th century to about 33 in the beginning of the 17th century while mortality rates increased by nearly 50%."  Life expectancy continued to remain low by modern standards over the next few centuries, although there was an upward trend.

Life Expectancy in the Modern World

Things have gotten much better, very quickly. In the US the average length of life was about 47 years in 1900. Today it is almost double that. This is true for all of the economically developed countries, thought if you want to maximize your chances for a long life, you should live in Monaco; the life expectancy is almost 90 years. But unfortunately only about 30,000 people live there. (This data comes from the CIA, so it must be true.) Although there remains a large disparity in life expectancy between the developed world and Africa, life expectancy is increasing across the globe as a whole.

By Rcragun (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Back to the Talmud

In the passage from the Talmud with which we opened, Rava suggests that a man who has reached eighty is at the very limit of his natural life-span, and may die at any time. If such a person sent an agent to end his marriage - and presuming the trip was relatively long - we cannot assume the elderly husband will still be alive by the time the agent reaches his destination.  Rava's assumption is supported by the evidence we have reviewed here. Today, life expectancy in the economically advanced nations hovers right around 80 years, and so Rava's 80 year suggestion seems particularly fitting. But will it remain so in the future? Over the last century the average length of life doubled: could this happen again over the span of the present century?  There is no end to "experts" predicting a huge increase in longevity, but for the foreseeable future a slow increase to around 100 years (at least in the developed nations) is certainly possible. This is not to suggest that Rava's estimates were only correct for us today. It would seem in that in many earlier societies, eighty years was a reasonable guess for the outer limit of how long it is possible to live.  

There's one other point. Abaye objected to Rava by citing a Baraisa:  "If an agent was bringing a Get and he left when the husband was old, even a hundred years old, he should give it to the wife on the assumption that the husband is still alive."  To reconcile this with Rava, the Talmud suggests that once a person has reached an old age, he has shown himself to be "exceptional" (איפליג). Actuarial studies today show that this is indeed the case - and it is certainly likely to have been true in Rava's time. (He died around the age of 70 in 352 CE in Babylonia). In Roman times, although chances were against you living to 50 - if you did make it to that birthday you could expect to live a further eleven years. And take a careful look at the chart below, which shows life expectancy today once you make it to 65 years of age or better.

Estimates of life expectancy at selected ages, in two longitudinally followed US populations for persons who remain fully functional. Values in parentheses represent the average lifespan (mean age at death). From Manton KG, Stallard E, Tolley HD. Limits to human life expectancy: evidence, prospects and implications. Population and Development Review 1991. 17 (4): 603-637.

Today, if you make it to 85, you might expect another 20 years of life (or only 11 if you are man). So the Talmud is spot on - once you prove yourself to have exceptional longevity, the future looks pretty good. Until it doesn't.

Next time on Talmudology, Longevity II:

"If  you hear that your friend died, believe it. If you hear that he became wealthy, don't believe it."

“Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures;”

— Psalm 90.

Nedarim 41b ~ Fever

נדרים  מא, א–ב

אמר רבא האי אישתא אי לאו דפרוונקא דמלאכא דמותא מעלי כחיזרא לדיקלי חד לתלתין יומין

Rava said about a fever: "Were it not for the fact that it is an agent of the Angel of Death, it would be beneficial for a person as a prickly foliage is for palm trees, if it is experienced once every thirty days...(Nedarim 41a-b).

As an emergency physician I've treated hundreds and hundreds of patients who came to the ER with a fever.  In fact fever is the third most common reason in the US for which people visit the ER - accounting for over 5 million visits each year. At virtually every visit they'd be given a medicine to reduce their fever, as if by doing so we were achieving something medically important. But in this page of Talmud, we read that according to Rava, fever is actually beneficial to a person (at least when it does not kill...).  How does this claim made by Rava, a Babylonian sage who died around the year 352 CE, stand up to today's medical science? Remarkably well, it turns out. Here's why.

Fever 101

Here are some basic things to know about fever. First, it is usually defined as a core temperature in humans above 38.3 C, or 101 F.  Second, there are lots of reasons why people get a fever, of which bacterial and viral infections are the most common, but not the only causes.  Third, and this is really important, not all fevers mean the same thing in terms of their seriousness.  Fever in a baby less than a month old requires an urgent and extensive evaluation. The same fever in a healthy toddler does not.  Fever in a healthy teenager is not the same as fever in an elderly patient on chemotherapy.  Finally, fever is not caused by the infection, at least not in the way you might think. It is the body's response to that infection that produces a fever.  Here's how.

The Biochemical Pathway to Fever

When bacteria infect the body, their foreign structure is recognized by white cells in the blood called macrophages. These macrophages then release a prostaglandin E2, interleukin-1, interleukin-6, and tumor necrosis factor. These act on a region deep in the brain called the hypothalamus, which acts as a thermostat for the body. Under the influence of interleukin-1 the hypothalamus releases a hormone called cyclooxygenase 2 (COX-2) which resets the body's thermostat, causing the temperature of the body to rise by a few degrees.  

How a fever is caused by a bacterial infection. From Evans, Repasky and Fisher. Fever and the thermal regulation of immunity: the immune system feels the heat. Nature Reviews Immunology June 2015: 15: 337.

It's not just people who get fevers. Dogs and cats do too, as do mice (and all mammals), reptiles, and even goldfish. Why would so many animals respond to an infection by developing a fever?

The Benefits of Fever

The reason is simple. The immune system fights infections better when the body is hotter. The way it does this is now well-understood but very complicated; here are just the highlights. 

Under what immunologists call "thermal stress" (and the rest of us call "a fever",) neutrophils, the white cells that are needed to fight infection, are released in greater numbers from the bone marrow.  These neutrophils also do a better job of fighting bacteria at the site of the infection when the body is warmer.  Fever also improves the killing ability of another group of blood cells called natural killer cells, and it increases the ability of the macrophages to ingest and destroy the invading bacteria. As last month's excellent review of fever and the thermal regulation of immunity in Nature Reviews concluded, "[t]he picture that emerges is one in which febrile temperatures serve as a systemic alert system that broadly promotes immune surveillance during challenge by invading pathogens."  

So your body does a better job of fighting bacteria when it is hotter.  Why then, do doctors give medicines that reduce a fever?  Good question. The truth is, they really shouldn't.

Don't Reach for That Tylenol/Paracetomol/AcAmol 

If you are the parent of a child with a fever, you are likely to give your sick offspring a medicine that interferes with the immune system, like Tylenol if you are in the US, Paracetamol if you are in the UK or South Africa, or Acamol in Israel (though they are different words for the same medicine.)  But if, as we have seen, the body does a better job of fighting infection when it is a few degrees hotter, might reducing the fever lead to a worse outcome for the child?

This question was recently examined by a group from McMaster University in Canada. They looked at the side effects of reducing a fever in those who are sick from a population level . What happens in a large group of people when some of them - infected with, say, influenza - take medicines to reduce their fever? The answer is that more of them transmit the virus and so more of them fall ill.  On a population level the effect is rather drastic:

Putting together our estimates of the treatment probability p and the individual transmission enhancement factor fi ...we conclude that the current practice of frequently treating fevers with antipyretic medication has the population-level effect of enhancing the transmission of influenza by at least 1% (95% CI: 0.04–3%)...This estimate does not take into account the known effect that the infectious period of influenza is also increased by antipyresis, nor does it take into account the potentially large effect of increasing the rate of contact among infectious and susceptible individuals because antipyresis makes infectious individuals feel better...To put our lower bound...into perspective, consider that approximately 41,400 ...deaths per year are attributed to seasonal influenza epidemics in the United States (and an order of magnitude more worldwide). Taken at face value, our results indicate, for example, that...at least 700 deaths per year ... could be prevented in the US alone by avoiding antipyretic medication for the treatment of influenza...

“In the absence of meaningful evidence for the beneficial effects of fever reduction, the commonplace reduction of fever in critically ill patients must be called into question.”

— Ryan and Levy. Clinical Review: Fever in intensive care patients. Critical Care 2003, 7:224.

The Canadian investigators concluded that "...the use of antipyretics can have subtle and potentially important negative effects at the population level. Any medical intervention that aims to relieve the symptoms of an infectious disease in an individual should also be evaluated in light of potentially harmful effects at the population level..." And it's not just populations that can suffer; individual patients are at risk too. In a 2011 paper looking at the treatment of fever in very ill patients with sepsis in the ICU,  a French team looked at the beneficial and detrimental effects of fever, and concluded that "...the widespread use of antipyretic methods in ICU patients is not supported by clinical data and fever control may be harmful, particularly when an infectious disease is progressing..."

From Lainey Y. et al. Clinical review: Fever in septic ICU patients - friend or foe? Critical Care 2011:15:222

The Death of Rav Assi - from Fever

So Rava's teaching in tomorrow's daf, Nedarim 41b appears to be spot on.  Fever is indeed beneficial for the body, though it is a sign that something bad is going on.  Elsewhere in the Talmud (Niddah 36b, which we will learn on November 28, 2019, הבא עלינו לטובה) we read that another Babylonian Amora, Rav Assi, died from a fever accompanied with chills - the classic description of sepsis (and a lot else besides, too). It is interesting to note that Rav Assi's attendants tried to reduce his fever.  Perhaps they not aware of the tradition that Rava - who was born two generations later - would later teach.

R. Assi fell ill and they had to put him in hot [blankets] to relieve him from chills, and in cold [compresses] to relieve him from heat,[but] his soul departed to its eternal rest. (Niddah 36b.)

Fever may be beneficial, but the underlying infection of which it is a sign never is.  Which is why,in the next daf  (Nedaraim 42,) Rava's teaching was not accepted by by Rav Nachman bar Yitzchak who retorted: לא היא ולא תירייקה:  "Give me neither fever, nor its antidote!"

Gittin 19a ~ Mishnaic Inks

משנה גיטין יט, א

בכל כותבים בדיו בסם בסיקרא ובקומוס ובקנקנתום ובכל דבר שהוא של קיימא אין כותבין לא במשקין ולא במי פירות ולא בכל דבר שאינו מתקיים 

A get may be written with any material, with ink, with paint, with red pigment, with gum, or with shoe blackening, or with anything which lasts. It may not be written with liquids or with fruit-juice or with anything that is not lasting...

Which international best-seller was set in the middle ages and featured a poisonous ink used to illuminate manuscripts? Click here for the answer.

It is a challenge to identify each of the materials mentioned in this Mishnah, but that hasn't stopped people from trying. In a 1964 paper published in Chymia (that would be the International Journal for Chemistry), Martin Levey from Yale University suggested that דיו – diyo is a black ink whose color is due to soot particles.  Based on prior work (by Low and others) he wrote that that the best soot came from olive oil, which was then mixed with balsam. קנקנתום -Kankantum is translated in the Schottenstein Talmud as copper sulfate. How the editors arrived at this translation is not clear. Perhaps they are basing it on אורח חיים הלכות תפילין לב, ג where the משנה ברורה suggests that it is "קופער וואסער" - "copper water".  Levey claims that in Babylonia, kankantum was green and contained not copper but ferrous sulfate. In a more recent paper on the ink content of middle Persian documents, the author found that they too contained lamp soot which was gathered from inside a chimney that burned linseed oil. The soot was then sieved to produce a fine powder that was bound with Gum Arabic, made from the sap of the acacia tree.

“...He dictated all these words to me, and I wrote them with ink in the book.”

— Jeremiah 36:18

Dead Sea Ink

A group of German scientists recently analyzed the ink on one of the Dead Sea Scrolls and reported their findings in Dead Sea Discoveries. They used x-ray spectroscopy, in which an electron beam is bounced over the sample, and the spectrum of radiation that is given off is measured. As you can see in the figure below, the spectrum of the Dead Sea Scroll ink is similar to Gum Arabic, but it contains peaks that suggest other compounds, including a gum produced by the Acacia Raddiana, known in Hebrew as שיטה סלילנית. Not surprisingly this tree is only found in very dry or desert climates.   

Spectroscopy results of the ink from a Dead Sea Scroll (1QHa) marked as TG ink, compared with Gum Arabic, Gum Rasdsiana and ink prepared according to Maimonides' recipe.  From Ira Rabin, Oliver Hahn, Timo Wolff, Admir Masic and Gisela Weinberg. On the Origin of the Ink of the Thanksgiving Scroll (1QHodayot). Dead Sea Discoveries, 2009: 16 (1)97-106.

But the German team made an amazing discovery. No, really, it was amazing.  They compared the spectrum given off by the Dead Sea Scroll ink to a recipe for ink that Maimonides details in his Mishneh Torah,  and which is shown in the lowermost line in the Figure above.  You can see how it resembles TG sample that is the scroll ink. Here is what they wrote:  

To our astonishment the best correspondence was found when comparing the spectra of the ink from the scroll with a sample of ours prepared according to Maimonides' recipe, dating from the 12th century.

Analysis of the spectrum of the scroll ink also suggests the presence of tannins -a group of chemicals naturally found in many trees and plants. The authors note that Maimonides' recipe uses gall-nuts, which contain tannins.  

Maimonides' prescription could indicate the survival of an ancient use, whose actual reason had been forgotten. In this case the tannins would chemically bind the ink to the parchment collagen, explaining the surprising durability of the scroll inks as compared to the usual, physisorbed, carbon-based ink.   

Let's conclude with that recipe from the Rambam's Mishneh Torah, which is almost identical to the ink used on a Dead Sea Scroll that was written around 100 CE. Today there are several recipes for ink, but for those who use the Rambam's, they are following a recipe that has been in continuous use for at least 1,900 years. That what the science in this daf tells us.   

רמב"ם הלכות תפילין ומזוזה וספר תורה פרק א 

כיצד מעשה הדיו, מקבצין העשן של שמנים או של זפת ושל שעוה וכיוצא בהן וגובלין אותן בשרף האילן ובמעט דבש ולותתין אותו הרבה ודכין אותו עד שיעשה רקיקין ומיבשין אותו ומצניעין אותו, ובשעת כתיבה שורהו במי עפצים וכיוצא בו וכותב בו, שאם תמחקנו יהיה נמחק, וזהו הדיו שמצוה מן המובחר לכתוב בו ספרים תפילין ומזוזות

How is the ink made? One collects lamp-black obtained from oil or from pitch, wax  or similar substances; one binds them with wood resin and a little honey, and they are kneaded well and flattened into cakes.  Then they are dried and put away. When they are used to write, they are soaked in gall-nut water or something similar and he writes with it.  And if the writing needs to be erased, it may be erased.  This is the finest ink used for writing a Sefer Torah, Tefillin, and Mezuzot. (Hil. Tefillin 1:4).

Gittin 2a ~ A Very Determined Envoy

המביא גט ממדינת הים צריך שיאמר בפני נכתב ובפני נחתם

If an envoy brings a Get to Israel from abroad, he must declare "it was written in my presence and signed in my presence" (Gittin 2a)

In the first chapter of Gittin, we address the laws that apply to an envoy (שליח) who is charged with bringing a Get, a Jewish Bill of Divorce, to a woman living overseas.  Such cases were clearly prevalent, so much so that they open this tractate, devoted to the rules of divorce.

For many hundreds of years, these messengers carried out their religious duties and delivered the Get, but did so without much recognition in our literature.  Today, one such envoy will be recognized for perhaps the most arduous trip ever undertaken to deliver a Get. That trip, which began in 1830, was from London to Sydney, Australia, and back again. It covered over 27,000 nautical miles and took close to thirteen months. The trip is detailed in Jeremy Pfeffer's book From One End of the Earth to the Other, from where the following information is taken. 

Rabbi Aaron Levy of Lissa

The envoy who undertook this daunting trip was Aaron Levy, born in 1795 in western Poland. He arrived in London in 1811, where he taught in cheder and worked as a calligrapher and sofer. At the time, many convicted of crimes were sentenced to exile in Australia. Of the Jewish population of Australia, which numbered about 1,550, about 44%  - some 684 (!) - were convicts. Rabbi Levy was to find one of those convicts - a serial counterfeiter who used many aliases - by the name (or rather a name) of  Samuel Levi. Levi had been sentenced to death in London for repeated crimes of  counterfeiting, but the sentence had been commuted to transportation for life in 1808.  Samuel had left behind his wife in London, and now, after some 29 years of marriage, she wanted to obtain a Get and divorce him. Here is the charge to Levy, as recorded in the notes of the London Bet Din:

On 23rd Mencachem Av 5590 [August 12, 1830] there appeared before us...a woman Mindela who is commonly known as Minka bat Yehuda Leib, and she appointed R. Aaron ben R. Yehuda of Lissa to be her agent to receive a Get from her husband Samuel who is commonly known as Long Zanvil ben Mordechai ben Meir who lives in Sydney on the sea coast in the State of South Wales...And let it be known that after discussing the matter the Gaon, Head of the Bet Din, and the Bet Din determined that the above R. Aaron, who is the agent for receipt (שליח לקבלה) of the above woman, will first effect the Get as an agent of accept acceptance before a Bet Din and witness to the handing over [of the Get].  And after he has received the Get from him with the intent of receiving, he will instruct the man to appoint him as his agent of delivery (שליח להולכה) and execute the Get as is required for an agent for transmission.

The kind of agency that Rabbi Levy used was not common. Usually the envoy was acting on the husband's behalf to deliver a Get to his wife. Here however, Levy was acting on the wife's behalf to receive the Get from her husband. Once Levy received the Get, it would immediately take effect, even if the good rabbi never made it back to London. In addition Rabbi Levy would have to act as a Sofer and write the Get, and convene a Bet Din in Australia to verify the procedure.  But first he would have to find Long Zanvil.

R. Levy left for Australia on August 17, 1830 and arrived some three months later, on December 21, 1830.  While there, he managed to track down Long Zanvil and convinced him to give a Get to his estranged wife. He then wrote the Get, and found five Jewish laymen: three to to act as a Bet Din and two to witness the handing over of the Get from the husband to the Rabbi. Rabbi Levy stayed in Sydney for five months, during which time his skills as a Sofer were put to good use. He sold a new Sefer Torah to the community, which he likely wrote himself, and repaired mistakes in several others.  

In early May 1831, Levy set sail to London, with a cow, a gift from the Jewish community of Sydney, which would provide him with fresh milk during his long voyage.  He arrived home after four months at sea, and a couple of weeks later the London Bet Din convened a session to formally hand over the Get to Minka. Here is what happened, as recorded in the notes of the London Bet Din: 

On the 27th of Tishrei 5592 [October 4, 1831], further to what is written above, the Gaon, Head of the Bet Din, executed the Get in accordance with the law of an agent for transmission...And when the agent gave the Get to the woman Mindela, who is commonly known as Minka bat Yehuda Leib, he declared "I wrote the Get with intent (לשמה) and the witnesses also signed it before me with the intent for the purpose of divorce.

Some Questions about the Voyage

A number of questions remain about the trip.  Here are a few of them:

1. Why did Mindela wait for over twenty years before asking for a Get?

2. Who financed the voyage, which cost about 100 pounds, which is over $15,000 today?

3. Why did Rabbi Levy undertake the voyage without knowing where Long Zanvil was living, and whether he was prepared to give a Get? 

Jeremy Pfeffer, the author of the book that details the trip, believes that there had to have been some communication between the couple, and that the voyage was likely financed by Rabbi Levy himself. Pfeffer writes:

To the best of our knowledge, he was not related to any of the parties involved nor did he receive any great monetary renumeration for the mission. Putting our contemporary cynicism aside, we may believe that his motives were simply altruistic; there was a wrong that needed to be corrected and he alone could do so. And so we may fairly conclude that he undertook the mission to Australia simply for its own sake and for the sake of Heaven, לשמה ולשם שמים.

Two years after his return from Australia, Rabbi Levy was appointed to the London Bet Din where he served as Dayan and Secretary. His mission, now all but forgotten, is a wonderful example of a rabbi doing the right thing to help a women obtain a Get. יהי זכרו ברוך.