Shabbat 23a ~ Rashi and Why Women Light the Menorah

Don't Share This With Your Young Children

Ask a well-educated Jewish child about the origins of Chanukah, and they will likely tell you about the wicked Greeks who defiled the Temple, about the brave Maccabees who fought them, and about the miracle of the oil.  But in Rashi's commentary to today’s page of Talmud where this story is told, there is another part of the story. Here it is:

שבת כג, א

דאמר רבי יהושע בן לוי: נשים חייבות בנר חנוכה, שאף הן היו באותו הנס

 רש"י שם: שגזרו יוונים על כל בתולות הנשואות להיבעל לטפסר תחלה  

Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said: Women are obligated to take part in the lighting, for they were included in that miracle...

Rashi: For the Greeks made an edict that all virgins who were about to marry must first have intercourse with the Prefect...

The great French exegete Rashi (d.1105) is referencing the Law of the First Night - Jus Primae Noctis, also known more graphically as The Right to the Thigh - Droit du Cuissage. This also appears in the tractate Ketuvot (3a). So let's take a look at that daf.  

MAZAL TOV; WHEN'S THE WEDDING?

Today, when a bride and groom wish to secure a wedding day, it will depend on their budget and the availability of the caterer. My, how things have changed. In the times of the Mishnah, the wedding day was decided by the availability of the local rabbinic court, the Bet Din. Then, a wedding (of a virgin) could only take place on the night before the Bet Din convened.  This would ensure that if, after their magical first night, the groom suspected that his bride had not been a virgin, he could take his claim to court the very next day.  

“מפני מה אמרו בתולה נשאת ליום הרביעי שאם היה לו טענת בתולים היה משכים לב”ד

Why did they teach that a virgin must only marry on a Wednesday? So that if the groom questioned her virginity, he could hurry to the Bet Din...
”

— Ketuvot 3a

The Talmud (Ketuvot 3a) explains that this happy custom changed during a period of persecution. Rabbah, a forth century Babylonian sage, explained what this is all about: "[The authorities] said, "a virgin who gets married on Wednesday will first have intercourse with the governor" (הגמון). In order to avoid this awful legal rape, the wedding was moved a day early, to fly, so to speak, under the radar of the local governor. 

JUS PRIMAE NOCTIS IN THE TALMUD & MIDRASH

The law that Rabbah referenced is the same one that Rashi claims was imposed on Jewish brides by the Greeks. Its origins are further explained in the Talmud Yerushalmi, which dates it to the time of the Bar Kochba revolution:

 תלמוד ירושלמי כתובות פרק א הלכה ה  

בראשונה גזרו שמד ביהודה שכן מסורת להם מאבותם שיהודה הרג את עשו...  והיו הולכין ומשעבדין בהן ואונסין את בנותיהן וגזרו שיהא איסטרטיוס בועל תחילה התקינו שיהא בעלה בא עליה עודה בבית אביה 

In the beginning, they [the Romans] decreed destruction in Judea (for they had a tradition that Yehuda killed Esau) ... and they enslaved them and raped their daughters, and decreed that a soldier would have intercourse [with a bride] first. It was then enacted that her husband would cohabit with her while she was still in her father's house. 

A reference to Primae Noctis also appears in the Midrash Rabbah, a collection of rabbinic homilies edited sometime in the forth or fifth century. As told in Genesis 6, “the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were beautiful (tovot), and they took wives from whoever they chose.” The Midrash focuses on that word beautiful, and explains:

בראשית רבה (וילנא) פרשת בראשית פרשה כו 

אמר רבי יודן טבת כתיב, משהיו מטיבין אשה לבעלה היה גדול נכנס ובועלה תחלה, הדא הוא דכתיב כי טבת הנה, אלו הבתולות ויקחו להם נשים מכל אשר בחרו, אלו נשי אנשים, 

“Rabbi Judan said the word tovot (טבת) – beautiful – is written in the singular, [but read as a plural]. Meaning that the bride was made beautiful for her husband, but the lord of the nobles had intercourse with her first...”

JUS PRIMAE NOCTIS...IN THE MOVIES

There are numerous references to Primae Noctis in ancient and modern literature, from the Epic of Gilgamesh to The Marriage of Figaro. One recent example can be seen in the movie Braveheart, when the evil King Edward gallops into a village, to interrupt a wedding celebration. “I’ve come to claim the right of Primae Noctis. As lord of these lands, I will bless this marriage by taking the bride into my bed on the first night of her union.”  And as the groom is restrained by Edward's henchmen, Edward reminds the peasants “it is my noble right.”  

Jus Primae Noctis. Is there a more fearsome example of feudal barbarism? Of what one scholar called “a male power display…coercive sexual dominance…and male desire for sexual variety”?  But the legend, despite its appearance in many guises, is, fortunately, likely to be nothing more than just that: a legend.  

JUS PRIMAE NOCTIS...IS A LEGEND

Perhaps the most comprehensive investigation of the legend of Primae Noctis is The Lord's First Night: the Myth of the Droit de Cuissage, by the French social scientist Alain Boureau. His careful analysis is particularly important since, as we have seen, Rashi, our favorite French commentator, cites this legend twice. After a meticulous two-hundred page review of every alleged appearance of the legend, Boureau is clear:

“[T]he droit de cuissage never existed in medieval France. Not one of the arguments, none of the events insinuated, alleged or brandished, holds up under analysis.
”

— Alain Boureau, The Lord's First Night.

Others scholars agree with Boureau. In 1881, the German historian Karl Schmidt concluded that the right never existed.  In 1973, the historian J.Q.C. Mackrell noted that there is "no reliable evidence" that it existed. And Prof. Tal Ilan, now at the Free University of Berlin, addressed the myth of Primae Noctis in a magnificently titled 1993 paper: Premarital Cohabitation in Ancient Judea. Prof. Ilan noted that that “all medieval literature that evokes the custom of Jus Primae Noctis has been proven to be folkloristic and has no historical basis.” But what about the evidence from the Talmuds, and the Midrashim? Don’t they provide evidence that Primae Noctis was indeed practiced in the time of the Talmud? Not so, claims the professor:

If a motif of this sort could have appeared in a sixteenth-century document and upset the entire history of medieval Europe for the next two centuries, the same motif likewise could have cropped up in the fourth -or fifth-century Palestinian Talmud, falsely describing events of the second century.

Instead, Prof Ilan suggests that the Talmud used the myth of Primae Noctis to excuse the behavior of some prospective couples, who would engage in sexual relations before they married.  “the jus primae noctis was conveniently drawn in order to explain and justify a custom that seemed to the rabbis to undermine their view of proper conduct in Jewish society.”

“Some events do take place but are not true; others are—although they never occurred.”

— Elie Wiesel, Legends of Our Time

There is some further support to the claim that primae noctis never existed, and it is not one I have seen suggested before.  It is a claim from silence.  I've checked over 100,000 responsa, and there is not one on this topic. Not a single one.  If primae noctis really was a law of the Greek and Roman empires, and a feudal right across medieval Europe, then why were its implications for the Jewish community never discussed in the responsa literature?  This silence supports the conclusions of work done by Boureau, Ilan and others: it never existed. In fact Boureau wonders what muddled thinking would lead anyone to believe it existed in the first place: 

It has been clear from the start that no matter what social restrictions were put on conduct and the management of wealth, and no matter how violent mores became, the principle of free choice of an unfettered matrimonial life was the most sacred area of individual liberty in medieval Europe. The Church, European society's principal normative center, very early removed all restrictions on the marriage of dependents, and it imposed consent as a sacramental value. No juridicial form, no custom, could attack that principal...sanctified in the twelfth century by the establishment of the sacrament of matrimony.

HISTORY AND HERITAGE

The historian David Lowenthal has explained the differences between history and heritage. While history "seeks to convince by truth," heritage "passes on exclusive myths of origin and endurance, endowing us alone with prestige and purpose." Heritage, continues Lowenthal, commonly alters the past: sometimes it selectively forgets past evils, and sometimes it updates the past to fit in with our modern sensibilities. Sometimes it upgrades the past, making it better than it was, and sometimes it downgrades the past, to attract sympathy.  And so, how we read the Talmud will depend on whether we see it as a work of history or as a book of our heritage.  

“There you have it...some of it fact, and some of it fiction, but all of it true, in the true meaning of the word”

— Miles Orvel, The Real Thing: Imitiation and Authenticity in America

There are stories both wonderful and terrible from our Jewish past. Some are factual, and some are not, and a measured approach to how we might approach these stories has been suggested by Judith Baumel and Jacob J. Schacter. They explored the claim (published in The New York Times) that in 1942, ninety-three Beis Yaakov schoolgirls in Cracow committed suicide rather than face rape by their German captors. They concluded that the evidence to support the truth of the story is not conclusive one way or the other. 

Whether or not it actually happened as described is difficult to determine, but there is certainly no question that it could have happened...in response to those claiming that the incident was "unlikely" to have occurred, let us remind the reader that the period in question was one during which the most unlikely events did occur, when entire communities were wiped out without leaving a single survivor...Maybe it did happen. But maybe again it didn't. Could it have happened? Of course.

So Why Should Women Light the Menorah?

It seems very unlikely that Rashi's explanation for why women should light the Menorah has any factual basis; the legend of Primae Noctis is not likely to have been true. But some stories are true, even though they never happened. Ask yourself, from what you know about Jewish history, could it have been true? Yes. And that's what makes it all the more terrifying. Sadly, we have plenty of tragic stories from our Jewish history, and there is no need to create one that probably never happened. 

But if Rashi's reasoning was based on a myth, why should women - who according to traditional teaching are exempt from a positive time bound command - why should they light?  For an answer that should satisfy moderns, we need look no further than the Code of Jewish Law - the Shulchan Aruch (written about 460 years after Rashi's death).   

שולחן ערוך אורח חיים הלכות חנוכה סימן תרעה סעיף ג 

 אשה מדלקת נר חנוכה, שאף היא חייבת בה

 A women should light a light on Chanunkah, for she is obligated to do so...

So there you have it. Women should light...because they should light. We need no more of a reason than that.

[A repost from last Chanukah.]

Shabbat 21b ~ Was there a Chanukah Miracle?

שבת כא, ב

מַאי חֲנוּכָּה? דְּתָנוּ רַבָּנַן: בְּכ״ה בְּכִסְלֵיו יוֹמֵי דַחֲנוּכָּה תְּמָנְיָא אִינּוּן דְּלָא לְמִסְפַּד בְּהוֹן וּדְלָא לְהִתְעַנּוֹת בְּהוֹן. שֶׁכְּשֶׁנִּכְנְסוּ יְווֹנִים לַהֵיכָל טִמְּאוּ כׇּל הַשְּׁמָנִים שֶׁבַּהֵיכָל. וּכְשֶׁגָּבְרָה מַלְכוּת בֵּית חַשְׁמוֹנַאי וְנִצְּחוּם, בָּדְקוּ וְלֹא מָצְאוּ אֶלָּא פַּךְ אֶחָד שֶׁל שֶׁמֶן שֶׁהָיָה מוּנָּח בְּחוֹתָמוֹ שֶׁל כֹּהֵן גָּדוֹל, וְלֹא הָיָה בּוֹ אֶלָּא לְהַדְלִיק יוֹם אֶחָד. נַעֲשָׂה בּוֹ נֵס וְהִדְלִיקוּ מִמֶּנּוּ שְׁמוֹנָה יָמִים. לְשָׁנָה אַחֶרֶת קְבָעוּם וַעֲשָׂאוּם יָמִים טוֹבִים בְּהַלֵּל וְהוֹדָאָה. 

What is Chanukah, and why are lights kindled on Chanukah? The Gemara answers: The Sages taught in Megillat Ta’anit: On the twenty-fifth of Kislev, the days of Chanukah are eight. One may not eulogize on them and one may not fast on them. What is the reason? When the Greeks entered the Sanctuary they defiled all the oils that were in the Sanctuary by touching them. And when the Hasmonean monarchy overcame them and emerged victorious over them, they searched and found only one cruse of oil that was placed with the seal of the High Priest,undisturbed by the Greeks. And there was sufficient oil there to light the candelabrum for only one day. A miracle occurred and they lit the candelabrum from it eight days. The next year the Sages instituted those days and made them holidays with recitation of hallel and special thanksgiving in prayer and blessings.

The miracle of the oil that was meant to burn for only one day yet stretched out for eight is a deeply beloved story whose origin in found in today’s page of Talmud. It is fascinating therefore to learn that the great Russian maskil Chaim Zelig Slonimski, (a Talmudology hero to be sure) unleashed a storm when he published an essay questioning the authenticity of the miracle.

Some Background

Hayyim Zelig Slonimski aged seventy-five. From The Jewish Encyclopedia, New York, Funk and Wagnalls, 1912.

We have discussed Slonimski before. To coincide with the appearance of Halley's Comet in 1835, he published Kokhava Deshavit (The Comet) in Vilna. It described where and when the comet would be visible with precise coordinates for the inhabitants of Bialystok, as well as an explanation of the nature of comets and their orbits. Hayyim Zelig Slonimski, (1810-1904), was also the founding editor of Hazefirah (The Dawn), a weekly Hebrew-language newspaper first published in Warsaw in 1862. He also wrote Mosdei Hokhmah (The Foundation of Wisdom), a work on algebra, and struck up a friendship with the famed German naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859). Not content with all this, Slonimski invented a method to send two telegraphs simultaneously over one wire (which was a very big deal at the time,) and developed a calculating machine that he later presented to the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. It was so successful that in 1845 the Russian minister of education made Slonimski an honorary citizen, a remarkable honor given the general oppression faced by the Jews at the time. So yes, Slonimski is a Talmudology hero.

The Chanukah Polemic of 1891

In December 1891 Slonimski published a short essay in the Hebrew language journal Hazefirah, which he happened to edit. In the piece he claimed that the Chanukah miracle of the oil discussed on today’s page of Talmud may not have happened, and that furthermore Maimonides himself did not appear to believe in the historicity of the story. There was indeed a miracle at Chanukah, he claimed: it was the victory of the Hasmoneans over the Greeks. But the miracle of the oil was witnessed only by a handful of the Cohanim who entered the Temple. “Who else besides them” he wrote “saw anything?”

In support of his skepticism Slonimski cited Maimonides himself. Here is how Maimonides described the events surrounding the oil:

רמב׳ם משנה תורה הלכית מגילה וחנוכה ג, ב

וּכְשֶׁגָּבְרוּ יִשְׂרָאֵל עַל אוֹיְבֵיהֶם וְאִבְּדוּם בְּכ''ה בְּחֹדֶשׁ כִּסְלֵו הָיָה וְנִכְנְסוּ לַהֵיכָל וְלֹא מָצְאוּ שֶׁמֶן טָהוֹר בַּמִּקְדָּשׁ אֶלָּא פַּךְ אֶחָד וְלֹא הָיָה בּוֹ לְהַדְלִיק אֶלָּא יוֹם אֶחָד בִּלְבַד וְהִדְלִיקוּ מִמֶּנּוּ נֵרוֹת הַמַּעֲרָכָה שְׁמוֹנָה יָמִים עַד שֶׁכָּתְשׁוּ זֵיתִים וְהוֹצִיאוּ שֶׁמֶן טָהוֹר 

When, on the twenty-fifth of Kislev, the Jews had emerged victorious over their foes and destroyed them, they re-entered the Temple where they found only one jar of pure oil, enough to be lit for only a single day; yet they used it for lighting the required set of lamps for eight days, until they managed to press olives and produce pure oil.

Do you see what is missing? Slonimski did. There is no mention of any miracle. Instead Maimonides seems to hedge, and notes instead that “they used it for lighting the required set of lamps for eight days.” Slonimski suggested that the Menorah was lit for a short time each evening, and then the lamps were extinguished, instead of burning through the rest of the night. That is how the oil managed to last eight days. Nothing miraculous to see here.

The Response, and THE response to THE response…

Dozens of books and essays were written in response to Slonimski’s one page essay (you can find them here, together with a helpful Hebrew language post about the episode.) For example in 1892 in Warsaw, Shmuel Alexandrov published Agadat Pach HaShemen (The Story of the Flask of Oil). The book was dedicated to Chaim Slonimski, and explained the miracle of the oil allegorically. Conservative reaction to the book was swift and strong. So much so that Alexandrov later wrote this retraction:

והנני אומר גם מפורש כי כל מה שכתבתי בקונטרסי אגדת פך השמן… הוא רק בתור בירור וביאור האגדות האלה ע”ד הביקורת, אולם בנוגע לגוף הקבלות והמסורות העתיקות המסתעפות מהאגדות האלו, הנני אומר מפורש אם קבלה היא נקבל, ואם אולי נמצאו ביטויים בספרי אגדת פך השמן שפלטה קולמוסי, הנוגעים בגוף הקבלה, הנני מתחרט ע”ז חרטה גמורה. מטרתו בכל מאמרינו השונים היא רק לבנות ולנטוע ולא לסתור ולעקור חלילה

I wish to explicitly clarify that everything I wrote in by book Agadat Pach HaShemen was written only to clarify the stories, but regarding the received tradition about theses actual events, I want to state explicitly…that I completely regret certain expressions that slipped from my pen regarding these events. My purpose throughout was to build and to plant, and not to destroy or uproot…

(You can find Agadat Pach HaShemen at the Jewish National Library here. But you won’t find it on HebrewBook.org. I wonder why).

As Marc Shapiro has pointed out, there are examples of several other orthodox authors who appeared to ignore or deny the reality of the miracle of Chanukah. He notes that “ It could be that Isidore Epstein should be added to the list, as in his classic work Judaism he describes Hanukkah and the kindling of lights, but mentions nothing about the miracle….Yet I think it is telling that he does not even say something like, “according to tradition a cruse of oil with enough for one day burnt for eight.”” Another traditional author who ignores the miracle was Rabbi Zev Yavetz, a founder of the Mizrachi movement. The miracle of the oil is simply not mentioned in his fourteen volume Toldot Yisrael. Marc also points out that the miracle of the oil is omitted in R. Joseph Hertz’s  Authorized Daily Prayer Book, (or, as it is known by its short title, The Authorised Daily Prayer Book of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Empire,) used by orthodox Jews in Britain for generations.

Whether you believe that the miracle was an improbable military victory or long-lasting oil, Chanukah remains a beloved holiday for the Jewish people. On that, at least, we can all agree.

Shabbat 13a ~ The Original Social Distancing: Menstruation Taboos

Blessed Be God Who Killed that Man

Social distancing to prevent coronavirus infection is now part and parcel of our daily vocabulary. But in today’s page of Talmud there is a terrifying story of a different sort of social distancing. It is the distancing that must take place between a Jewish husband and wife during menstruation and for some of the days that follow.

שבת יג, א–ב

תָּנֵי דְּבֵי אֵלִיָּהוּ: מַעֲשֶׂה בְּתַלְמִיד אֶחָד שֶׁשָּׁנָה הַרְבֵּה, וְקָרָא הַרְבֵּה, וְשִׁימֵּשׁ תַּלְמִידֵי חֲכָמִים הַרְבֵּה, וּמֵת בַּחֲצִי יָמָיו. וְהָיְתָה אִשְׁתּוֹ נוֹטֶלֶת תְּפִילָּיו וּמְחַזַּרְתָּם בְּבָתֵּי כְנֵסִיּוֹת וּבְבָתֵּי מִדְרָשׁוֹת, וְאָמְרָה לָהֶם: כָּתוּב בַּתּוֹרָה ״כִּי הוּא חַיֶּיךָ וְאוֹרֶךְ יָמֶיךָ״, בַּעֲלִי שֶׁשָּׁנָה הַרְבֵּה וְקָרָא הַרְבֵּה וְשִׁימֵּשׁ תַּלְמִידֵי חֲכָמִים הַרְבֵּה, מִפְּנֵי מָה מֵת בַּחֲצִי יָמָיו? וְלֹא הָיָה אָדָם מַחְזִירָהּ דָּבָר

. פַּעַם אַחַת נִתְאָרַחְתִּי אֶצְלָהּ וְהָיְתָה מְסִיחָה כׇּל אוֹתוֹ מְאוֹרָע. וְאָמַרְתִּי לָהּ: בִּתִּי, בִּימֵי נִדּוּתֵךְ מַה הוּא אֶצְלֵךְ? אָמְרָה לִי: חַס וְשָׁלוֹם, אֲפִילּוּ בְּאֶצְבַּע קְטַנָּה לֹא נָגַע [בִּי]. בִּימֵי לִבּוּנִיךָ מַהוּ אֶצְלֵךְ? אָכַל עִמִּי וְשָׁתָה עִמִּי וְיָשַׁן עִמִּי בְּקֵירוּב בָּשָׂר, וְלֹא עָלְתָה דַּעְתּוֹ עַל דָּבָר אַחֵר. וְאָמַרְתִּי לָהּ: בָּרוּךְ הַמָּקוֹם שֶׁהֲרָגוֹ, שֶׁלֹּא נָשָׂא פָּנִים לַתּוֹרָה. שֶׁהֲרֵי אָמְרָה תּוֹרָה: ״וְאֶל אִשָּׁה בְּנִדַּת טוּמְאָתָהּ לֹא תִקְרַב״

The Sage in the school of Eliyahu taught a baraita that deals with this halakha: There was an incident involving one student who studied much Mishnah and read much Bible, and served Torah scholars extensively, studying Torah from them, and, nevertheless, died at half his days, half his life expectancy. His wife in her bitterness would take his phylacteries and go around with them to synagogues and study halls, and she said to the Sages: It is written in the Torah: “For it is your life and the length of your days” (Deuteronomy 30:20). If so, my husband who studied much Mishnah, and read much Bible, and served Torah scholars extensively, why did he die at half his days? Where is the length of days promised him in the verse? No one would respond to her astonishment at all. 

Eliyahu said: One time I was a guest in her house, and she was relating that entire event with regard to the death of her husband. And I said to her: My daughter, during the period of your menstruation, how did he act toward you? She said to me: Heaven forbid, he did not touch me even with his little finger. And I asked her: In the days of your white garments, after the menstrual flow ended, and you were just counting clean days, how did he act toward you then? She said to me: He ate with me, and drank with me, and slept with me with bodily contact and, however, it did not enter his mind about something else, i.e., conjugal relations. And I said to her: Blessed is the Omnipresent who killed him for this sin, as your husband did not show respect to the Torah. The Torah said: “And to a woman in the separation of her impurity you should not approach” (Leviticus 18:19), even mere affectionate contact is prohibited. 

How the uterus lining builds up and breaks down during the menstrual cycle.

In this sad story, God is praised for taking the life of an otherwise pious individual who allowed himself to sleep in proximity to his wife during some of the rabbinically required prohibited days of contact that follow menstruation. These laws make up the very last tractate of the Babylonian Talmud, called Niddah. It addresses the laws of a woman who is menstruating: how she becomes ritually impure, what she ritually contaminates, how she is forbidden to have sexual relations with her husband, and how she may leave her status and become ritually pure. To this day many of these laws are carefully followed by religious Jewish couples who observe periods of sexual abstinence during and following the menstrual period. It is fascinating to learn just how widespread these menstrual taboos are in all manner of human society.

It’s Not Just Judaism

It is not just the Jewish tradition that identifies menstruation with ritual impurity (and physical danger). Mary Douglas in her now classic work Purity and Danger noted that this connection was found among many disparate cultures. For example (and there are many) the Mae Enga from the Central Highland of New Guinea also have strong beliefs about sexual pollution. “They believe that contact with it or with a menstruating women will, in the absence of appropriate counter-magic, sicken a man and cause persistent vomiting, “kill” his blood so that it turns black, corrupt his vital juices so that his skin darkens and hangs in folds as his flesh wastes, permanently dull his wits, and eventually lead to a slow decline and death.” And then there are the Lele, a group that lives in the Kinshasa region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Here is Douglas (P&D 152):

… a menstruating [Lele] woman could not cook for her husband or poke the fire, lest he fall ill. She could prepare the food, but when it came to approaching the fire she had to call a friend in to help. These dangers were only risked by men, not by other women or children. Finally, a menstruating woman was a danger to the whole community if she entered the forest. Not only was her menstruation certain to wreck any enterprise in the forest that she might undertake, but it was thought to produce unfavourable conditions for men.

According to the South Sudan News Agency, (which claims to be “South Sudan’s Leading Independent News Source”) the Nuer (the second largest tribe in South Sudan) also have their own version of the laws of Niddah:

Many aspects of the Nuer culture are sometimes similar to the cultural aspects of the Bible’s Old Testament people which include feature of their social structure, the kinship reckoning and the extended family aspects of marriage, divorce, rite of passage and even religious concepts of God, spirits, sin and sacrifice. In the spiritual beliefs of Nuer culture, “women who are having their menstrual period cannot drink milk, visit the cattle area or eat food that had been cooked in kettle used for boiling milk because doing so would be harmful to the cattle.”

The Koran (not the Koren) also records a warning against intimacy with a menstruating woman:

And they ask you about menstruation; Say It is harm, so keep away from women during menstruation; And do not approach them until they become pure And when they have purified themselves, then come to them from where Allah has ordained for you; Indeed, Allah loves those who are constantly repentant and loves those who purify themselves. (Al-Quran 2:222-223)

And what about Hindus? In 2011, two Indian researchers published an analysis of the social and cultural practices regarding menstruation. They studied a group of Indian adolescent girls and their mothers from various communities and classes in Ranchi in eastern India, and found that both Hindu (and Moslem) women practiced varying menstrual taboos:

Hindu girls reported restricting themselves from religious practices during menstruation whereas Muslim (follower of Islam) girls reported that they do not touch religious books or read ‘‘Namaz’’ or even do not go to the ‘‘Mazaar (shrine).’’ Even the Sarna tribe girls do not go to the ‘‘Sarnasthal (Worship place of Sarna people)’’ during menstruation however, Christian girls reported that they worship and attend church during menses and can even touch and read the holy Bible.

If you want to get a sense of prevailing attitudes about menstruation at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, try this, written by Pliny the Elder written around 79 CE in his famous work Natural History (7:15):

But it would be difficult to find anything more bizarre than a woman's menstrual flow. Proximity to it turns new wine sour; crops tainted with it are barren, grafts die, garden seedlings shrivel, fruit falls from the tree on which it is growing, mirrors are clouded by its very reflection, knife blades are blunted, the gleam of ivory dulled, hives of bees die, even bronze and iron are instantly corroded by rust and a dreadful smell contaminates the air.

Ritual impurity as disorder

One of Mary Douglas’ many contributions to the ethnographic study of purity is her analysis of the concept of “dirt”:

If we can abstract pathogenicity and hygiene from our notion of dirt, we are left with the old definition of dirt as matter out of place. This is a very suggestive approach. It implies two conditions: a set of ordered relations and a contravention of that order. Dirt then, is never a unique, isolated event. Where there is dirt there is system. Dirt is the by-product of a systematic ordering and classification of matter, in so far as ordering involves rejecting inappropriate elements…. It is a relative idea. Shoes are not dirty in themselves, but it is dirty to place them on the dining-table; food is not dirty in itself, but it is dirty to leave cooking utensils in the bedroom, or food bespattered on clothing…(P&D 36-37)

Perhaps then, rabbinic hierarchies of ritual purity and impurity were an attempt to identify "matter out of place.” Douglas wrote that “if uncleanness is matter out of place, we must approach it through order.” Which is precisely what the complicated laws found in this tractate attempt to do.

“...the binary, pure/impure structure at the base of nidah also imposed order on the chaos.”

— Shai Secunda. The Talmud's Red Fence. Oxford University Press, forthcoming.

Shai Secunda and the Iranian Talmud

Shai Secunda is Associate Professor of Judaism at Bard College and the Persian language consultant for Koren’s Steinsaltz Talmud. He is a scholar of the historic Iran in which the Babylonian Talmud was produced, and he has written a new and invaluable book when it comes to the history of the Jewish laws of Niddah: The Talmud's Red Fence: Menstruation and Difference in Babylonian Judaism and its Sasanian Contex. Alas you will need to wait until September 2020 for Oxford University Press to publish it. What makes his book really interesting is that it he reads talmudic passages alongside texts composed by the neighboring religious communities in the Sasanian Empire, which was comprised of “an impressively diverse spectrum of religious communities including, among others, Christians, Manichaeans, Mandaeans, Jews, and Zoroastrians.” The empire lasted from 224-651 CE and was the last Persian kingdom before the rise of Islam. It was inside of this empire that the Babylonian Talmud was composed. Secunda noted for example, that in Zoroastrian tradition there was a myth about the dangerous powers of the gaze of menstruating women. (You can find more examples in his 2014 paper The Fractious Eye: On the Evil Eye of Menstruants in Zoroastrian Tradition.)

And she should not look at the sun nor at the other luminaries. And she should not look at cattle and plants. And she should not engage in conversation with a righteous man, for a demon of such violence is the demon of menstruation that, [where] the other demons do not strike things with the evil eye, this one strikes [them] with the evil eye.

The Zoroastrian Parallels of Niddah

Secunda notes some important parallels between this Zoroastrian tradition and some of the laws of Niddah that were formulated in the Babylonian Talmud. Take for example the Middle Persian compilation known as Sayist ne Sayist. Here is an excerpt, translated by Secunda:

A menstruant woman who becomes clean within a three-night period, should not wash until the fifth day. And from the fifth day to the ninth day, whenever she becomes clean, she is to keep sitting in cleanness for one day for the waiting period. Afterwards, she should wash in the usual way. And after the nine-day waiting period, the waiting period is not an issue...

[Regarding] the menstruant woman, if she has sat in [a state of] menstruation for one month and she [still] is not clean on the thirtieth day, even if she at that time did become clean, and afterwards again became a menstruant, then the [requirement of] the waiting period goes back to the beginning, and it is not authorized for her to wash until the fifth day.

“As the text makes clear,” he writes, “according to Zoroastrian law a woman cannot simply purify herself as soon as her menstrual flow ceases, rather she must wait additional time before purification is allowed. The technical Middle Persian term for the additional day is tayag – “(waiting) period,” while the practice of observing it is known as “sitting in cleanness.”  This stringency reminds us of another (Niddah 66a), this one enacted by the Jews in Babylon (and still practiced today):

R. Zeira said: The daughters of Israel were stringent on themselves that even if they see a drop of [vaginal] blood like [the size of] a mustard-seed, they sit [and wait] seven clean [days] on account of it.

Secunda notes that “as it is introduced here, the origin of the described custom is not located in Biblical law, nor is it a legacy of rabbinic legislation, rather, it is attributed to Jewish women who are said to have taken up the stringency on their own.” Thus there is

evidence that two religious communities living alongside Babylonian Jewry deliberately extended ritual impurity even beyond the actual menstrual period. Mandaean authorities strenuously maintained that a couple must wait for a final, post-menstrual baptism before reuniting sexually. Sasanian Zoroastrian priests put considerable effort into establishing, delineating, and debating a one-day ritual waiting period, which was exegetically linked to a section of their scriptures. In short, all three religious communities tried, in their own way, to extend ritual impurity beyond the menstrual flow.

Then Secunda suggests this, which he acknowledges is “entirely within the realm of speculation.”

How might we envisage the role that the Sasanian religious context may potentially have played in the invention of the Jewish “clean day” stringency? In light of our above focus on the attribution of the stringency to the “Daughters of Israel,” perhaps it was specifically Jewish women who acted as a conduit for outside religious influence. It could be argued that female piety draws more easily on neighboring female practices – even ones initiated by male religious authorities, like Zoroastrian priests. Unlike rigorously policed rabbinic discourse, Jewish women could have conceivably “traded notes” with their gentile neighbors with far greater ease than their male compatriots, allowing for a more seamless adoption of new customs and approaches…

In some of his early work on the relationship between Babylonian Jewry and Sasanian Zoroastrianism, Yaakov Elman posited a kind of one- upmanship – in his formulation, a “holier than thou syndrome” – between Jewish and Zoroastrian women. One dynamic of this competition would be that Jewish women could argue that their approach of waiting a full seven days following their period was more stringent, purer, and thus more efficacious, than both the Mandaean and Zoroastrian systems.

There is a great deal more of interest in Secunda’s book, which finishes with these wise words:

Not only do observant Jews still practice the strictures of nidah, difference and differentiation remain an important part of the calculus. To this day, one of the measures by which religious Jews identify themselves as religious is based on the observance of “family purity” – as the laws of nidah are commonly known…. 

Whether we like it or not, difference continues to form the bedrock of meaning and with it, human culture and society. …systems of purity and impurity, with their differences and distinctions, are here to stay. We might as well try to make sense of them.

Social distancing has been a profound part of many human cultures for millennia. Today, we experience it at the supermarket or walking down the street, but for many it is still practiced in the most private of spaces, in the bedroom, between a wife and her husband.

Shabbat 12a ~ Killing Lice and Spontaneous Generation

שבת יב, א

 רַבָּה מְקַטַּע לְהוּ. וְרַב שֵׁשֶׁת מְקַטַּע לְהוּ. רָבָא שָׁדֵי לְהוּ לְלָקָנָא דְמַיָּא. אֲמַר לְהוּ רַב נַחְמָן לִבְנָתֵיהּ: קִטְלָן וְאַשְׁמְעִינַן לִי קָלָא דְסָנְווֹתִי

תַּנְיָא, רַבִּי שִׁמְעוֹן בֶּן אֶלְעָזָר אוֹמֵר: אֵין הוֹרְגִין אֶת הַמַּאֲכוֹלֶת בְּשַׁבָּת, דִּבְרֵי בֵּית שַׁמַּאי. וּבֵית הִלֵּל מַתִּירִין

Rabba would kill the lice. And Rav Sheshet would also kill them. Rava would throw them into a cup [lekna] of water and he would not kill them directly with his hands. The Gemara relates that Rav Naḥman would say to his daughters: Kill them, and let me hear the sound of the combs, meaning, you may kill the lice in the usual manner on the comb.

As far as the basic halakha is concerned, it was taught in a baraita that Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar says that Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel disagreed with regard to killing a louse on Shabbat: One may not kill a louse on Shabbat, this is the statement of Beit Shammai; and Beit Hillel permit doing so. In their opinion, a louse is unlike the other creatures for which one is liable for killing them on Shabbat.

Later in this tractate (107b), the Talmud derives the prohibition against killing an animal on Shabbat. It is learned from the fact that during the construction of the Tabernacle in the desert, rams were killed and their hides were used for its coverings. Rashi picks up the details:

מתירין - כדמפרש טעמא בפרק שמונה שרצים (לקמן שבת דף קז:) מאילים מאדמים דמשכן מה אילים פרים ורבים אף כל שפרה ורבה וכינה אינה פרה ורבה אלא מבשר אדם היא שורצת

…just as rams reproduce and may not be killed on Shabbat, so too any animal that reproduces may not be killed on Shabbat. However a louse does not reproduce, but grows directly from human flesh.

Other Talmudic Discussions of Spontaneous Generation

Here is another example of an animal that does not reproduce. It is a mysterious mouse, from the Talmud in Chullin.

חולין קכז,א

עכבר שחציו בשר וחציו אדמה שאין פרה ורבה

There is a mouse that is hard made from flesh and half from dirt, and does not procreate

And what exactly is this strange creature, which has come to be called the mud-mouse? Here is the explanation of Rashi:

אין פרה ורבה - כלומר שלא היה מפריה ורביה של עכבר לפי שנוצר מאליו  

It does not procreate: This means it does not sexually reproduce, but instead it spontaneously appears.

And here is Rashi from Chullin127b:

 יש מין עכבר שאינו פרה ורבה  אלא מעצמו נוצר מאדמה כאשפה המשרצת תולעים 

There is a species of mouse that does not reproduce sexually but is spontaneously generated from the earth, just as maggots appear at a garbage site.

The mud-mouse is also mentioned in Sanhedrin (91):

סנהדרין צא, א

צא לבקעה וראה עכבר שהיום חציו בשר וחציו אדמה למחר השריץ ונעשה כלו בשר

Consider the mouse which today is half flesh and half earth, and tomorrow it has become a creeping thing made entirely of flesh.  

Clearly, Rashi and the rabbis of the Talmud believed in spontaneous generation. That is clear from the example of today’s page of Talmud (Shabbat 12), Sanhedrin, and Chullin. Here is the opening of the Wiki article on the subject:

Spontaneous generation or anomalous generation is an obsolete body of thought on the ordinary formation of living organisms without descent from similar organisms. Typically, the idea was that certain forms such as fleas could arise from inanimate matter such as dust, or that maggots could arise from dead flesh.

EVERYONE BELIEVED IT

How could the esteemed rabbis of the Talmud believed in this crazy idea of spontaneous generation? The answer is simple. Everyone believed it. Everyone, from the time of Aristotle until Louis Pasteur. Here is Aristotle (d. 322 BCE):

So with animals, some spring from parent animals according to their kind, whilst others grow spontaneously and not from kindred stock; and of these instances of spontaneous generation some come from putrefying earth or vegetable matter. [History of Animals 539a, 18-26.]

““Aristotle’s theory of spontaneous generation was as influential as his other teachings in philosophy and natural history; it was accepted with reverence, not only among his contemporaries but well into modern times.
”

— Jan Bondeson. The Feejee Mermaid and other Essays in Natural and Unnatural History. Cornell University Press 1999. p194

The great Roman poet Ovid (43 BCE-17/18 CE) is best known for his work Metamorphosis. It’s a bit of a long read (almost 12,000 lines contained in 15 books), and in it he mentions spontaneous generation three times. Actually, given its length, he probably mentions everything at least three times. Here is an example, from Metamorphosis I, 416-437.

So, when the seven-mouthed Nile retreats from the drowned fields and returns to its former bed, and the fresh mud boils in the sun, farmers find many creatures as they turn the lumps of earth. Amongst them they see some just spawned, on the edge of life, some with incomplete bodies and number of limbs, and often in the same matter one part is alive and the other is raw earth. In fact when heat and moisture are mixed they conceive, and from these two things the whole of life originates. And though fire and water fight each other, heat and moisture create everything, and this discordant union is suitable for growth. So when the earth muddied from the recent flood glowed again heated by the deep heaven-sent light of the sun she produced innumerable species, partly remaking previous forms, partly creating new monsters.

Spontaneous generation was an accepted theory throughout the middle ages and was found in the writings of Arab naturalists, such as Averroes. Sir Francis Bacon, (d.1626) the English "philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, orator, and author" accepted the theory. And so did Willam Harvey, who discovered the circulation of the blood,  - at least under certain circumstances.  And why not believe is spontaneous generation? Before the invention of the microscope, it certainly explained how worms, fleas, bees and other insects could appear out of nowhere.

WELL, NOT QUITE EVERYONE

In his commentary to the Mishnah on about the mud mouse (Chullin 127), Maimonides has this to say:

והויות העכבר בלבד מן האדמה עד שימצא קצתו בשר וקצתו עפר וטיט והוא ענין מפורסם מאד אין מספר לרוב המגידין לי שראו זה אע"פ שמציאות בעל חיים כזה דבר מתמיה ולא נודעת בו טענה בשום פנים

The case of the mouse which uniquely grows from the earth so that it is half-flesh and half dust and mud is very well known. There is no end to the countless numbers of those who have told me that they have seen it, even though the existence of this creature is astonishing, and there is no known explanation for it.

Maimonides did not reject the idea that the mouse grows directly from the earth, but he seems very sceptical of the idea. Still, it was a widely accepted explanation for centuries before, and centuries after Maimonides. For example, let’s consider…

JAN BAPTISTA VAN HELMONT AND THE RECIPE TO GROW A MUD-MOUSE

Jan Baptista van Helmont (1580-1644) knew a thing or two about science. Although still deeply embedded in alchemy, his many observations led the way to the scientific revolution. He was the first to suggest that the stomach contained somethings to aid in digestion (what we call today enzymes and acids). And according to the Science History Institute, “he discovered that chemical reactions could produce substances that were neither solids nor liquids and coined the term gas to describe them.” “I call this spirit,” he wrote, “hitherto unknown, by the new name of gas…"(Hunc spiritum, incognitum hactenus, nero heroine Gas voco). This laid the groundwork for Robert Boyle’s later research on gases.

Spontaneous generation also occupied Van Helmont’s scientific worldview. Like everyone else, he believed in it, because it explained observations like fleas appearing around rotting meat or mice appearing in a farmer’s barn of grain. He was so certain of the reality of spontaneous generation that he provided a recipe to grow mice de novo.

“If a dirty shirt is stuffed into the mouth of a vessel containing wheat, within a few days, say 21, the ferment produced by the shirt, modified by the smell of the grain, transforms the wheat itself, encased its husk into mice.

PASTEUR'S EXPERIMENTS

Then came the microscope. Using one, in October 1676, Leeuwenhoek reported finding tiny micro-organisms in lake water. Now perhaps there was another explanation for how things were created, although not much progress was made for a couple of hundred more years.  It was Louis Pasteur (d.1895) who finally disproved the theory of spontaneous generation with some elegant experiments. He boiled a meat broth in a flask like this, with its neck pointed downwards.

Boiling sterilized the mixture, and with the neck pointing down, no organisms could contaminate the broth. As a result, there was no growth of bacteria or could inside the flask. He did the same using a flask with a neck that was upturned. This allowed the broth to become contaminated with organisms in the outside air, and the mixture soon became cloudy. Spontaneous generation had been disproven.

THE RABBI WHO TRIED TO GET IT RIGHT, BUT GOT IT WRONG

Israel Lipschutz of Danzig (1782-1860) wrote a very important two-part commentary on the Mishnah called Tiferet Yisrael. In it, R. Lipschutz got very excited about this whole mouse thing:

ואני שמעתי אפיקורסים מלגלגין על בריה זו שנזכרת כאן ובסנהדרין [דצ"א א']. ומכחישים ואומרים שאינה במציאות כלל לכן ראיתי להזכיר כאן מה שמ"כ בספר אשכנזי שחיבר חכם אחד מפורסם בחכמי האומות. ושמו. לינק. בספרו הנקרא אורוועלט חלק א' עמוד 327. שנמצא בריה כזאת בארץ מצרים במחוז טחעבאיס. ונקראת העכבר ההיא בלשון מצרים דיפוס יאקולוס . ובל"א שפרינגמויז. אשר החלק שלפניה ראש וחזה וידיה מתוארים יפה. ואחוריה עדיין מגולמים ברגבי ארץ. עד אחר איזה ימים תתהפך כולה לבשר. ואומר מה רבו מעשיך ה

I have heard heretics mocking the existence of this creature, mentioned here and in the Talmud Sanhedrin. They deny its existence and claim it is not in any way real. So I have found it appropriate to mention here what is published in a German book written by one of the wisest and most well-known of any nationality, named Link. In his book Urwelt (Part I p327) he states that such a creature was indeed found in the district of Thebais in Egypt. In Egyptian this mouse is called Dipus Jaculus, and in German it is called the spring-mouse. Its head, chest and front paws are well-formed, but its rear is still unformed and is just bits of earth. But after a few days, the mouse becomes made entirely of flesh. And I said “Lord, how great are your works!” (Ps.104:24)

So according to R. Lipschutz all the scoffers were wrong, and as proof he cites his contemporary, the well respected naturalist Johan Heinrich Link (1738–1783), whose Die Urwelt und das Altertum, erläutert durch die Naturkunde (Prehistoric times and antiquity, explained by natural history) was first published in Berlin between 1820 and 1822. Great. A mid-19th century rabbi and scholar quoting a German naturalist in support of a statement made by the rabbis of the Talmud. Science and Judaism at their best!

Well no. Not so fast.

In a paper devoted to this topic, Dr. Sid Leiman noted that the passage cited by R. Lipschutz only appeared in the first edition of Link’s book, and was removed from later ones. But more importantly, R. Lipschutz misread the context of the passage he was citing. Rather than attesting to the reality of the mud-mouse, Link was quoting from a passage in the book Bibliotheca historica by Diodorus Siculas, a Greek historian of the first century. It was Diodorus who was describing what his contemporaries believed. But what about that reference to the Latin and German names for the mouse? Diodorus wrote in Greek and could not not have thought that Dipus Jaculus (Latin) is an Egyptian phrase. Let’s have Prof. Leiman explain:

What happened is that Link added a footnote to the Diodorus passage, in an attempt to account for the belief in the existence of this strange creature in antiquity. Link’s note reads (in translation): “The Springmaus (Dipus Jaculus), which dwells in Upper Egypt and is characterized by very short forelegs, doubtless could lead one to conclude that it is a not yet fully developed creature.” Link was suggesting that the very existence of the Springmaus, or jerboa, a small, leaping kangaroo-like rodent found to this day in the arid parts of North Africa, and characterized by long hindfeet and short forelegs, may have misled the ancients into thinking that the different parts of the body of some mice fully matured at different times…The upshot of this was that Lipschutz was persuaded, quite mistakenly, that the mouse described by the rabbis as being half flesh and half earth was alive and well in nineteenth-century Egypt, as attested by no less a scholar than Professor Link!…

One would like to think that Rabbi Israel Lipschutz, whose seminal work is everywhere characterized by intellectual honesty, would have retracted his garbled reading of Link if only the error had been brought to his attention.

However, an earlier Italian rabbi, Isaac Lampronti, tried to bring the whole spontaneous generation thing up to date.

Isaac Lampronti - Bringing the talmud Up to Date

Issac Lampronti (1679– 1756) was an Italian Jew who studied medicine at Padua. He completed his studies at the age of twenty-two and returned to his home town of Ferrara in northern Italy. There he became a rabbi and eventually rose to become the head of the yeshivah in the city, all while continuing to practice medicine. Lampronti introduced a curriculum of dual learning in his yeshivah, but he is best known for his lengthy alphabetical encyclopedia of Jewish law, Pahad Yizhak (The Fear of Isaac), in which each entry contained material from the Mishnah, Talmud, later commentaries, and the responsa literature, in addition to updates from contemporary science. (The first two volumes, published in 1750 and 1753, covered the first four letters of the Hebrew alphabet. These were the only parts published during Lampronti’s lifetime, and publication of the remaining volumes was not completed until 1888.)

“Lampronti brought this discussion up to date by declaring that this talmudic rule was based on faulty science. ”

Lampronti discussed the talmudic rule that lice could be killed on the Sabbath, an act normally forbidden under the general prohibition of hunting on the day of rest. As we have seen, the Talmud had reached this conclusion based on a belief that lice are spontaneously created from dust and therefore did not have the usual status of other creatures that reproduce sexually. As a result, the usual prohibition against killing them on the Sabbath did not apply. Lampronti brought this discussion up to date by declaring that this talmudic rule was based on faulty science. Because naturalists had now concluded that every living creature must come from an egg, the legal status of lice must be changed, and Lampronti ruled therefore that they may not be killed on the Sabbath. “Every careful person who cares for his life will stay far from these creatures, and not kill either a flea or a louse, and will not place himself in a situation in which he may have to bring a sin offering [for violating the Sabbath]. In this matter I believe that if the sages of Israel understood the proofs offered by the Gentiles, they would revisit their ruling and accept the [Gentile] opinions, as they did regarding the dispute about whether the heavenly sphere is fixed and the constellations revolve.”

Lampronti here referenced the talmudic passage (Pesachim 94b) about the structure of the universe, which we have discussed elsewhere on Talmudology. “The Jewish sages say, the galgal is fixed and the mazzalot revolve, and the Gentile sages say the galgal revolves and the mazzalot are fixed.” The Talmud concluded that “their words appear more reasonable than our words,” and Lampronti understood this conclusion to be an example of the intellectual honesty of the sages, who were open to changing their opinions when faced with new evidence.

WRONG, BUT FOR THE RIGHT REASONS

The rabbis of the Talmud were not fools for believing in spontaneous generation. They would have been fools had they not. If was an explanation for many natural phenomena and was believed by heroes of the scientific revolution, along with everyone else, until Pasteur proved them all wrong.

[Partial repost from Chullin 127, and from this book.]