Berachot 10b ~ The Snake as a Symbol of Healing

In much of the Talmud snakes are associated with coma, convulsions and death.  But occasionally - and paradoxically -  they are sometimes associated with those healing, and those who heal. Let’s begin with today’s page of Talmud.

ברכות י, א

תָּנוּ רַבָּנַן: שִׁשָּׁה דְבָרִים עָשָׂה חִזְקִיָּהוּ הַמֶּלֶךְ, עַל שְׁלֹשָׁה הוֹדוּ לוֹ, וְעַל שְׁלֹשָׁה לֹא הוֹדוּ לוֹ 

עַל שְׁלֹשָׁה הוֹדוּ לוֹ: גָּנַז סֵפֶר רְפוּאוֹת — וְהוֹדוּ לוֹ. כִּתֵּת נְחַשׁ הַנְּחשֶׁת — וְהוֹדוּ לוֹ. גֵּירַר עַצְמוֹת אָבִיו עַל מִטָּה שֶׁל חֲבָלִים — וְהוֹדוּ לוֹ

The Sages taught: King Hezekiah performed six innovative actions. With regard to three the Sages agreed with him, and with regard to three they did not agree with him.

With regard to three actions the Sages agreed with him:  He suppressed the Book of Remedies, and they agreed with him.  He ground the copper snake through which miracles were performed for Israel (Numbers 21:9), destroying it because it had been used in idol worship (II Kings 18:4), and they agreed with him…

You might have heard that the symbol for healing, that snake (or is it two snakes?) wrapped around a central pole, came from the episode to which today’s page of Talmud is referring. In Numbers 21 the Children of Israel complain that “there is no bread and no water, and we have come to loathe this miserable food.” So God sends fiery snakes “that bit the people and many of the Israelites died.” Let’s let the Good Book tell the rest:

7-10 :במדבר כא

וַיָּבֹא הָעָם אֶל־מֹשֶׁה וַיֹּאמְרוּ חָטָאנוּ כִּי־דִבַּרְנוּ בַיהוָה וָבָךְ הִתְפַּלֵּל אֶל־יְהוָה וְיָסֵר מֵעָלֵינוּ אֶת־הַנָּחָשׁ וַיִּתְפַּלֵּל מֹשֶׁה בְּעַד הָעָם׃

וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָה אֶל־מֹשֶׁה עֲשֵׂה לְךָ שָׂרָף וְשִׂים אֹתוֹ עַל־נֵס וְהָיָה כָּל־הַנָּשׁוּךְ וְרָאָה אֹתוֹ וָחָי׃

וַיַּעַשׂ מֹשֶׁה נְחַשׁ נְחֹשֶׁת וַיְשִׂמֵהוּ עַל־הַנֵּס וְהָיָה אִם־נָשַׁךְ הַנָּחָשׁ אֶת־אִישׁ וְהִבִּיט אֶל־נְחַשׁ הַנְּחֹשֶׁת וָחָי׃

וַיִּסְעוּ בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וַיַּחֲנוּ בְּאֹבֹת׃ 

The people came to Moses and said, “We sinned by speaking against the LORD and against you. Intercede with the LORD to take away the serpents from us!” And Moses interceded for the people.

Then the LORD said to Moses, “Make a seraph figure and mount it on a standard. And if anyone who is bitten looks at it, he shall recover.” 

Moses made a copper serpent and mounted it on a standard; and when anyone was bitten by a serpent, he would look at the copper serpent and recover.

The Israelites marched on and encamped at Oboth.

But you’d be wrong. In fact the episode in the Bible and the fiery snakes that cured has nothing to do with this medical symbol of healing.

“From the beginning of the 17th century, the figure of Asklepios began appearing on medical medals and calling cards. The same pattern seen in antiquity emerged: The symbol was used only in a medical context, whereas the caduceus, although used by some medical organizations, was associated with other fields, especially commerce, communications, chemistry, and pharmacy”

— Robert A. Wilcox. Emma M. Whitham. The Symbol of Modern Medicine: Why One Snake Is More Than Two. Ann Intern Med. 2003;138:673-677.

SNAKES THAT HEAL

Here is the cover of Fred Rosner's book; notice what looks like two snakes wrapped around a winged pole.  Compare that image with the insignia of the US Army Medical Corps below.

The image you see is the caduceus, the rod carried by the Greek god Hermes (known as Mercury when he was in Rome). But in fact this double-snake flying-rod has nothing to do with healing, and is erroneously -though very widely- used as a medical emblem.  As an article in the Annals of Internal Medicine points out, the adoption of the double-snaked caduceus of Hermes - at least in the US - is likely due to its having been used as a watermark by the prolific medical publisher John Churchill.   

The correct mythological association is with the Staff  of Asklepios, the ancient Greco-Roman god of medicine. The opening lines of the Hippocratic Oath clearly reveal the central role occupied by Asklepios (and his mythologic daughters, Hygieia and Panakeia,) in the hearts and minds of the ancients: “I swear by Apollo Physician and Asklepios and Hygieia and Panakeia and all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will fulfill according to my ability and judgement this oath and this covenant . . .”

In one legend, a snake placed some herbs into the mouth of another serpent that Asklepios had killed, and the dead snake was restored to life.  As a mark of respect, Asklepios adopted as his emblem a snake coiled around his staff.  While the US Army Medical Corps uses the caducues as its badge, on its regimental flag the US Army Medical Command uses the more appropriate single snaked staff. Oh, and a rooster.  

U.S. Army Medical Command Regimental Flag. Don't ask about the rooster...

Fortunately, the Israel Defense Forces clearly know a caduceus from an Asklepios. They adopted the correct Greco-Roman mythological symbol for the medical unit of the first Jewish army in 2,000 years.

The Greeks may have had their tradition, but we have ours. And as the Midrash notes, in ours, it is never the snake that heals.

“עשה לך שרף ושים אותו על נס, והיה כל הנשוך וראה אותו וחי. וכי נחש ממית או נחש מחיה? אלא בזמן שישראל מסתכלין כלפי מעלה ומשעבדין את לבם לאביהן שבשמים היו מתרפאים, ואם לאו היו נימוקים...

”Make a fiery snake and place it on a pole, and it will be that anyone who is bitten will look at it and live” [Numbers 21:8] But is a snake the source of life and death? Rather, the verse means that when Israel looked up and submitted their heart to their Father in Heaven, they were healed, but if they did not do so, they perished.”

— Mishnah Rosh Hashanah 3:8

[A repost from here.]

Berachot 8a ~ What is Askera (And Did It Kill Rabbi Meir Shapiro of Lublin?)

In this page of Talmud there is a discussion of ways in which death can come. Which form of death is the most painful?

ברכות ח,א

Roz Chast. The New Yorker, August 6, 2001

תַּנְיָא נָמֵי הָכִי: תְּשַׁע מֵאוֹת וּשְׁלֹשָׁה מִינֵי מִיתָה נִבְרְאוּ בָּעוֹלָם, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: ״לַמָּוֶת תּוֹצָאוֹת״, ״תּוֹצָאוֹת״ בְּגִימַטְרִיָּא הָכִי הָווּ. קָשָׁה שֶׁבְּכֻלָּן — אַסְכָּרָא, נִיחָא שֶׁבְּכֻלָּן — נְשִׁיקָה. אַסְכָּרָא דָּמְיָא כְּחִיזְרָא בִּגְבָבָא דְעַמְרָא דִּלְאַחוֹרֵי נַשְׁרָא, וְאִיכָּא דְאָמְרִי כְּפִיטּוּרֵי בְּפִי וֶשֶׁט, נְשִׁיקָה דָּמְיָא כְּמִשְׁחַל בִּנִיתָא מֵחֲלָבָא

It was also taught in a baraita: Nine hundred and three types of death were created in the world, as it is stated: “Issues [totzaot] of death,” and that, 903, is the numerical value [gimatriya] of totzaot. The most difficult of all these types of death is croup [askara], while the easiest is the kiss of death. Croup is like a thorn entangled in a wool fleece, which, when pulled out backwards, tears the wool. Some say that croup is like ropes at the entrance to the esophagus, which would be nearly impossible to insert and excruciating to remove. The kiss of death is like drawing a hair from milk. One should pray that he does not die a painful death.

The question we will address is what, precisely, is the condition known as askera?

The Koren Talmud cited above, translates askera as croup. So does the Soncino Talmud, both presumably following Marcus Jastrow’s dictionary which translates it as “choking or croup.” Jastrow cites Psalm 63:12, where another form of the work (yisoker) is used:

וְהַמֶּלֶךְ יִשְׂמַח בֵּאלֹהִים יִתְהַלֵּל כָּל־הַנִּשְׁבָּע בּוֹ כִּי יִסָּכֵר פִּי דוֹבְרֵי־שָׁקֶר׃ 

But the king shall rejoice in God; all who swear by Him shall exult, when the mouth of liars is stopped.

However the Schottenstein English (and Hebrew) Talmud leave the term untranslated, and note in a footnote that “Askera is identified with diphtheria, a disease that primarily infects the throat. In the days of the Talmud, it was feared as one of the most horrible of maladies, a disease that often leads to a ghastly death.”

There are three diseases that might fit the description of askera: diphtheria, epiglottitis and quinsy. They also fit the description of another talmudic condition called sironechi (סרונכי). The great scholar of talmudic medicine Julius Preuss wrote that “it is likely that the illness known as serunke or sirvanke is similar to the sickness askara.” We have discussed sironechi elsewhere, and Preuss was correct; from their descriptions it is simply not possible to distinguish askera from sironechi. So what are the possibilities?

Diphtheria

Child infected with diphtheria. Photo from the CDC.

Diphtheria is caused by Corynebacterium diphtheriae. Infection leads to weakness and fever, followed by swelling in the throat which gradually becomes covered in a thick grey membrane.  If the choking doesn't kill the victim, toxins released by the bacteria may finish him off.  According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 1921 there were over 200,000 cases of diphtheria in the US, and over 15,000 deaths. Diphtheria is still found in the developing world, especially in parts of Africa and India, and the World Health Organization estimates that there were over 7,000 cases worldwide in 2014.

Like most physicians in the US, I've never seen a case (or met someone who has seen a case, or met someone who has met someone...) because, thanks to widespread vaccination, the disease here has been almost completely eradicated.  Diphtheria may certainly kill its victim by suffocation, so it is a reasonable choice to identify this with askera.

EPIGLOTTITIS

Although none of the English translations suggest epiglottis as a possible translation for askera, it is an infection that certainly may fit.  The disease is most commonly caused by Haemophilus influenzae type b, and results in swelling of the epiglottis, which is a flap of tissue that covers the larynx (also known to non-medically trained personnel as the voice box). It is your epiglottis that moves over the voice box every time you swallow, preventing food from entering your trachea and lungs. In acute epiglottitis, that flap of skin and the surrounding tissues may become swollen to such a degree that breathing becomes impossible, and the victim suffocates.  Thankfully, this disease is now extremely unusual in developed countries since there is an effective vaccine against it. In fact I can't recall having seen a single case of it. Because of the way in which the disease causes the airway to become occluded, epiglottis is also a good candidate for the condition described as askera.

QUINSY

Quinsy is an uncommonly used word that refers to an inflammation of the tonsils.  It is a complication of what Americans tend to call Strep throat, and what I grew up in London calling tonsillitis. It is most commonly caused by a bacteria known as Group A beta-hemolytic Streptococcus, and most of you reading this will have had “strep throat” or seen it in a family member. Today it is easily treated with antibiotics, but one of its rare complications  is a peri-tonsillar abscess, sometimes called quinsy.  In this condition an abscess forms at the back of the mouth in the tonsils, which bulge forward.  When this occurs, the treatment is to lance the abscess.  I've treated hundreds of cases of strep throat and many cases of peri-tonsillar abscess, and the condition never causes suffocation - though it could in theory.  So this makes it a possible but unlikely candidate as the condition known as askara (or sinonechi for that matter).

BUT NOT CROUP 

One thing is certain. Askera is not croup, which is good news for those of you with young children, since it is a common disease during these winter months. Croup is a viral infection of the trachea and bronchi, and leads to a horrible barking cough and some asthma-like symptoms. It is a self-resolving condition, and the symptoms are easily treated by taking the child out into the cold air, or into the bathroom where a shower is giving off steam. Either way it is very, very, very, unlikely to lead to a life threatening condition. So askera is not croup.

“No case of diphtheria is unattended by danger. However mild the case may seem at the commencement, death may end it. Never be off your guard.”

— William Jenner. Diphtheria: Its symptoms and treatment. London: Walton & Maberly 1861. p62.

Pity the Poor Children

Whatever it is might be called today, askera was a terrible disease that was especially deadly in children. So much so that according to the Talmud, the danger from this disease is hinted at in the very opening words of the Torah that describes creation.

בראשית א, יד

וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים יְהִי מְאֹרֹת בִּרְקִיעַ הַשָּׁמַיִם לְהַבְדִּיל בֵּין הַיּוֹם וּבֵין הַלָּיְלָה וְהָיוּ לְאֹתֹת וּלְמוֹעֲדִים וּלְיָמִים וְשָׁנִים׃ 

God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate day from night; they shall serve as signs for the set times—the days and the years.”

Rashi makes the following comment on this verse:

יהי מארת. חָסֵר וָי"ו כְּתִיב, עַל שֶׁהוּא יוֹם מְאֵרָה לִפֹּל אַסְכָּרָה בַּתִּינוֹקוֹת, הוּא שֶׁשָּׁנִינוּ בְּד' הָיוּ מִתְעַנִּים עַל אַסְכָּרָה שֶׁלֹּא תִפֹּל בַּתִּינוֹקוֹת

The word is written without the ו after the א (so that it may be read מארת, cursed), because it is a cursed day when children are liable to suffer from askera. In reference to this we read (in Taanit 27b): On the fourth day of the week they used to fast to avert askera from the children

Rashi here is referencing the Talmud in Taanit (27b), which describes the tasks of the townspeople who remained behind when their local Cohanim went to serve in the Temple in Jerusalem. These non-priests had a very specific askera-oriented task:

ואנשי מעמד מתכנסין לבית הכנסת ויושבין ד' תעניות בשני בשבת בשלישי ברביעי ובחמישי בשני על יורדי הים בשלישי על הולכי מדברות ברביעי על אסכרא שלא תיפול על התינוקות 

And meanwhile, the members of the non-priestly watch remained in their towns and would assemble in the synagogue and observe four fasts: On Monday of that week, on Tuesday, on Wednesday, and on Thursday. On Monday they would fast for seafarers, that they should be rescued from danger, as the sea was created on Monday. On Tuesday they would fast for those who walk in the desert, as the dry land was created on Tuesday. On Wednesday they would fast over askera, that it should not befall the children…

Yes, children are at greater risk

Whatever the precise agent, it is interesting to note that there is good reason to especially fear these diseases in children. This is because, proportionally, the trachea of a child is of much lower diameter than it is in an adult. As a consequence, the same amount of soft tissue swelling around the trachea will threaten the airway of a child far more rapidly.  So, for example, “1 mm of swelling in the normally 4-5mm diameter of the trachea of the newborn will reduce the cross sectional area by 75% and will increase the resistance to airflow sixteen-fold. In comparison, the same 1mm of swelling in am adult would decrease the cross-sectional area of the trachea by only 44% and would increase the resistance to airflow by only threefold.” Askera was a child killer.

Askera as the punishment for Lashon Hara- and a lot else besides

Elsewhere in the Talmud, askera is described as the result of the sin of speaking gossip, known as lashon hara. But it also occurs because of many other sins:

שבת לג, א–ב

תנו רבנן אסכרה באה לעולם על המעשר רבי אלעזר ברבי יוסי אומר על לשון הרע אמר רבא ואיתימא רבי יהושע בן לוי מאי קראה והמלך ישמח באלהים יתהלל כל הנשבע בו כי יסכר פי דוברי שקר

כשנכנסו רבותינו לכרם ביבנה היה שם רבי יהודה ורבי אלעזר ברבי יוסי ורבי שמעון נשאלה שאלה זו בפניהם מכה זו מפני מה מתחלת בבני מעיים וגומרת בפה נענה רבי יהודה ברבי אלעאי ראש המדברים בכל מקום ואמר אף על פי שכליות יועצות ולב מבין ולשון מחתך פה גומר נענה רבי אלעזר ברבי יוסי ואמר מפני שאוכלין בה דברים טמאין דברים טמאים סלקא דעתך אלא שאוכלין בה דברים שאינן מתוקנים נענה רבי שמעון ואמר בעון ביטול תורה

The Sages taught: Askara comes to the world as punishment for neglecting to separate tithes. Rabbi Elazar, son of Rabbi Yosei, says: Askara comes as punishment for slander…

Rabbi Elazar, son of Rabbi Yosei, responded and said: This disease ends in the mouth because one eats non-kosher things. They immediately wondered about this: Does it enter your mind to say that askara is caused by eating non-kosher food? Are those who eat non-kosher food so numerous? Rather, it comes as a punishment for eating foods that were not ritually prepared, i.e., were not tithed. Rabbi Shimon responded and said: This disease comes as a punishment for the sin of dereliction in the study of Torah.

According to the Rav Nachman (Yevamot 62b), the 24,000 students of Rabbi Akiva who died in plague died from askera, as did the spies who brought back a bad report about the Land of Israel (Sotah 35a).

The Death of Rabbi Meir Shapiro, Founder of the daF Yomi Program

In 1994, Professor Prof. Yeshayahu Nitzan from the Faculty of Life Sciences at Bar Ilan University wrote about the death of the founder of the Daf Yomi cycle, Rabbi Meir Shapiro of Lublin.

כדאי להזכיר, כי הרב מאיר שפירא ז'ל מלובלין, חמייסד וראש ישיבת ’חכמי לובלין’ המפורסמת, והוגה רעיון לימוד ’הדף היומי’, נפטר לפתע בגיל 47 מדיפתריה

We should note that Rabbi Meir Shapiro of Lublin, of blessed memory, who founded and led the famous Yeshivah “Chachmei Lublin,” and who established the “daf hayomi” cycle of study, died suddenly, at the age of 47, from diphtheria.

Although Professor Nitzan is an expert in infectious diseases, he did not cite any supporting evidence, and other sources (also without citing supporting evidence) claim that Rabbi Shapiro died from typhus. There is an apparent eyewitness account of the death of Rabbi Shapiro, which was written by his student, Yehoshua Baumol. Baumol, who was murdered in the Holocaust, wrote his account in Yiddish in 1934, a year after the episode. The manuscript was translated into English by Charles Wengrow and published by Feldheim in 1994 as A Blaze in the Darkening Gloom: The Life of Rav Meir Shapiro. Here is an excerpt.

The hour of night grew later and later. On a piece of paper he asked that he be shown all the prescriptions which the doctors had written. When they were handed him, he went through them and selected the one for a preparation to cleanse the throat and the respiratory organs and he asked that a new supply be gotten for him. Every few minutes he kept washing his hands while his mind was obviously immersed in distant thoughts. The evident struggle that he had to make to draw breath was heartbreaking. One could feel the frightful, racking agony that he had to undergo to try to get a bit of air into his lungs, and try as he would, he kept failing, because the channels were blocked.

The respiratory distress that Rabbi Shapiro experienced could have been due to any number of conditions and there is nothing in this account that points to any specific etiology. It could have been pneumonia, or typhus, of diphtheria, or even influenza. If it were diphtheria, that would mean that the founder of the Daf Yomi movement died from a disease that the Talmud associates with a punishment for lashon hara or eating non-tithed foods, or, most inappropriately of all, a dereliction in the study of Torah.

There is a lesson here. Ascribing a spiritual meaning to personal difficulties is a long Jewish tradition. But one should never ascribe such meaning to explain tragedies that may befall others. Rabbi Shapiro might have agreed.

Berachot 5b~ The Infant Mortality Rate

ברכות ה, ב

תָּנֵי תַּנָּא קַמֵּיהּ דְּרַבִּי יוֹחָנָן: כׇּל הָעוֹסֵק בְּתוֹרָה וּבִגְמִילוּת חֲסָדִים וְקוֹבֵר אֶת בָּנָיו — מוֹחֲלִין לוֹ עַל כׇּל עֲוֹנוֹתָיו

וְהָא אָמַר רַבִּי יוֹחָנָן, דֵּין גַּרְמָא דַּעֲשִׂירָאָה בִּיר

A tanna taught the following baraita before Rabbi Yochanan: If one engages in Torah and acts of charity and buries his sons, all his transgressions are forgiven…

Rabbi Yochanan himself said, This is the bone of my tenth son…

Rabbi Yochanan bar Napcha (c.180–279 CE) is cited many hundreds of times in the Talmud. But it was his tragic family story that perhaps most defined who he was. He was a father who had lost ten children.

Childhood mortality in rabbinic sources

Rabbi Yochanan’s tragedy might have been extreme in its severity, but his was not a unique situation. In fact the Talmud and the Midrash are replete with stories that reflect the high rate of both infant and child mortality at the time. Rabbi Yishmael lost at least two sons, (Moed Katan 28b) as did Rabbi Akiva (Moed Katan 21b). Rabban Gamiel cried in sympathy with a neighbor who lost her child (Sanhedrin 104b), whereas when Rav Yossi of Zippori lost a son, he chose not to cry, but to expound all day long in the Bet Midrash (Moed Katan 21a). The Midrash recounts that both sons of Rabbi Meir died on a Shabbat (Midrash Mishlei 31:10), and when the sons of Rabbi Yossi ben Chaninah died, he refused to wash with warm water (Taanit 13b). Children were eaten by wolves (Taanit 22b) murdered by brigands (Semahoth 12:13) and buried in earthquakes (Semachot 11:4). In some hemophiliac families, infants bled to death after being circumcised (Yevamot 64b), while other children committed suicide rather than face either physical abuse from their father (Semahoth 2:4-5), or an unwanted arranged marriage (Seder Eliyyahu Rabbah 19).

Professor Meir Bar Ilan (from the university that bears his family name) identified over two dozen other cases. Professor Bar Ilan adds that an additional factor should not be overlooked.

…almost all the cases indicate deaths of sons, not daughters. Apparently it reflects the nature of a patriarchal society, where one's importance depends merely on his sex (as in more than few societies even today). Furthermore, since there is no reason to believe that boys were prone to death more than girls (except in the case of circumcision), it reveals that, actually, the cases are all 'males' while ignoring the females. Because of this 'male' factor, one that wishes to know the exact number of deaths in the above sources, should multiply his data with (almost) 2.25 That is to say, that usually the deaths of girls were ignored, though they, apparently, happened at the same rate.

Calculating the infant mortality rate in THE TaLmudic era

Professor Bar Ilan counted about nine cases of infant or child death among the fifety or so tannaim mentioned by name in the Talmud. After taking into account the “ignored” factor of deaths of girls, he suggested that infant mortality rate among the families of the tannaim approached 30%.

To put this number into context, the infant mortality rate in Great Britain around 1880 was about 135 per thousand live births, or about 13%.  Among the Jews of Italy,  about 40% of children under the age of three died. It is harder to calculate the mortality rate in ancient Rome, but other scholars have estimated it to be 25-30%.

Life Expectancy and Infant Mortality Rates in 16th Century Europe
	Village in Devon England, 1538-1599	Village in Essex England, 1550-1624	Bourgeoisie of Geneva, 1550-1599	English High Aristocracy, 1550-1599
Average age of women at marriage	26	24.5	21.4	22.8
Infant mortality per 1000 (0-1 years)	120-140	128	-	190
Infant mortality per 1000 (1-14 years)	124	149	-	94
Infant mortality per 1000 (1-19 years)	-	-	519	-
Average life expectancy	40-46	-	28-29	37
Data from Meir Bar Ilan, Infant Mortality in The Land of Israel in Late Antiquity

The Shameful infant Mortality Rate in the US

In 2017 the infant mortality rate in the US was 579 per 100,000 or just under 0.6%.  That rate is fifty times lower than the rate during the centuries over which the Talmud was compiled.  The leading cause of death is congenital malformations, but accidental injury remains a major cause of mortality in children. Just like it did in ancient Israel.

“The US ranks 30th of 193 countries in infant mortality rate, the ratio of babies that die before turning one year old. In the US, there are more than three times as many infant deaths for every 1,000 births as there are in the countries leading the list.”

— More infants are dying in US states that rejected expanded Medicaid. Quartz, Feb 1, 2018.

But take a look at the chart below and you will see that the rate in the US is over two or three times higher than it is in other western countries. It is shameful that the country with the highest per capita rate of health care spending finds itself so low down on this list.

Infant mortality per 1,000 births, 2010-2015. Date from the United Nations. From here.

“Comparative studies show different data from various cultures and times, and together with the texts themselves, suggest that some 30% of all children born in the Land of Israel at the beginning of this era would not reach their maturity.”

— Meir Bar Ilan. Infant Mortality in The Land of Israel in Late Antiquity.

“Neither the suffering nor the reward”

Because infant and childhood deaths were so common it is not surprising that the rabbis of the Talmud tried to inject a glimmer of metaphysical hope into this most tragic of tragedies. Rabbi Yochanan had lost no fewer than ten children, and his colleagues attempted to console him with the promise of a reward to come: “If one engages in Torah and acts of charity and buries his sons, all his transgressions are forgiven.” That might have consoled Yochanan the Rabbi, but it did not console Yochanan the grieving father. Rabbi Yochanan rejected the very notion that suffering -of any sort-was worth a reward. “I want neither this suffering nor its reward - לֹא הֵן וְלֹא שְׂכָרָן.”

Berachot 3a ~ Which Text Are You Using?

As we start at the very beginning of Talmud, it is worth pausing to ask this very simple question: which version of the Talmud are you reading?

Over the centuries, those editions of the Talmud that escaped physical destruction faced another challenge: censorship. The text that survived and is found in nearly all editions today is based on the so-called "Vilna Shas" edition, first published by The Widow and Brothers Romm in 1886.  It is also the basis for the text used in the Schottenstien Talmud. But it is a text that was in some places heavily censored by Christian authorities, and using this censored text can lead to some silly outcomes. One example is found in today’s page of Talmud that describes God sitting through the night, mourning the loss of his Temple. The original uncensored text reads:

ברכות ג,ב

 אוי לי שהחרבתי את ביתי ושרפתי את היכלי והגליתים לבין אומות העולם

Woe is me, for I destroyed my Temple, and I burned my Sanctuary, and I exiled them among the nations of the world.

However, the text of the English Schottenstein (and the Soncino) edition reads as follows: 

אוי לבנים שבעונותיהם החרבתי את ביתי ושרפתי את היכלי והגליתים לבין אומות העולם

Woe to the children, because of whose sins I destroyed my Temple, and I burned my Sanctuary, and I exiled them among the nations of the world.

The additional words  לבנים שבעונותיהם were added by Christian censors to make a theological statement about the fallen state of the Jews.  The corrupted text was noted in Dikdukei Soferim, but none of this seems to have been evident to the editors of the English Schottenstein Talmud, who compounded the error by adding the following homiletic note to the corrupted text.

Detail from Schottenstein English Talmud Berachot 3a.

In its effort to comment on (nearly) everything, the Schottenstein edition added a homiletic explanation of a corrupt text written (almost certainly) by a Jewish apostate serving as Christian censor. Fortunately, the Hebrew and English editions of the Koren, together with the Hebrew edition of the Schottenstein (ArtScroll) Talmud returned the text to its original and uncensored form. No homiletic gymnastics needed.

So now, as we embark on a new cycle of study of the Babylonian Talmud which edition will you be using? And which edition should you be using?

[Partial repost from here.]