Chullin 47b ~ Red Babies, Green Babies, and other Neonatal Colors

חולין מז, ב

רבי נתן אומר פעם אחת הלכתי לכרכי הים באתה אשה אחת לפני שמלה בנה ראשון ומת שני ומת שלישי הביאתו לפני ראיתיו שהיה אדום אמרתי לה בתי המתיני לו עד שיבלע בו דמו המתינה לו ומלה אותו וחיה והיו קורין אותו נתן הבבלי על שמי

ושוב פעם אחת הלכתי למדינת קפוטקיא באתה אשה לפני שמלה בנה ראשון ומת שני ומת שלישי הביאתו לפני ראיתיו שהיה ירוק הצצתי בו ולא היה בו דם ברית אמרתי לה בתי המתיני לו עד שיפול בו דמו המתינה לו ומלה אותו וחיה והיו קורין אותו נתן הבבלי על שמי

 Rabbi Natan says: Once I went to the cities overseas, where one woman came before me who circumcised her first son and he died, and she circumcised her second son and he died, and out of concern that circumcising her third son might cause him to die as well, she brought him before me. I saw that he was red, so I said to her: My daughter, wait for him until his blood is absorbed into him. She waited for him until his blood was absorbed into him and then circumcised him, and he survived. And they would call him Natan the Babylonian after my name. 

Rabbi Natan further related: And on another occasion I went to the state of Cappadocia, and a woman came before me who circumcised her first son and he died, and she circumcised her second son and he died. Out of concern that circumcising her thirds on might cause him to die as well, she brought him before me. I saw that he was green. I looked at him and saw that he did not have the blood of circumcision in him, [i.e., he had a deficiency of blood such that no blood would emerge from the circumcision]. I said to her: My daughter, wait until his blood enters him. She waited for his blood to increase and then circumcised him, and he survived. And they would call his name Natan the Babylonian after my name.

Hemophilia A

We have had several occasions in the past to review cases similar of baby boys and the dangers of circumcision, most recently when we studied Chullin 4a and its relation to Hemophilia A. But this is the first time there is a discussion of skin color. Rabbi Natan describes a red looking baby boy and a green looking baby boy. Since in each case there were siblings who had died under similar conditions, it is reasonable to assume that these cases too were caused by hemophilia A. Rabbi Natan’s babies survived because they did not have two copies of the gene for hemophilia. Instead they carried only one copy of the gene which is the cause of this disease. It is a mutation in the F8 gene,which controls the manufacture of Factor VIII, a key component of the clotting cycle. You can see this in the diagram (showing a normal father and carrier mother.) Only half the boys will (on average) become hemophiliacs.

However, there are alternative suggestions, which do not ascribe these colors to hemophilia alone. Let’s start with…

The Red baby boy

In his classic work התלמוד וחכמת הרפואה -The Talmud and Medicine (Berlin 1928, p231-2), I.L Katzenelsohn claimed that the red baby disease is erythema neonatorum. His family also carried hemophilia (because his two brothers had bled to death after their circumcisions), but this third baby was also red. Erythema (toxicum) neonatorum is a common finding in newborns and is thought to be due to an immune reaction (though to what remains unknown). It is a benign condition, and needs no treatment. Rabbi Natan believes that a presumption of what we call hemophilia can only be made once it has been seen three times. This had not yet happened (two previous brothers had died, not three) and so he ordered that the brit can go ahead once the redness cleared up. Luckily, the boy was only a carrier of hemophilia (he was heterozygous for the F8 gene), and so he survived the circumcision.

Others are not so sure what this redness indicated. “I have no idea to what the rabbis are referring to" wrote Dr. Abraham Abraham (that’s his real name, not a typo,) in his work on medical halacha נשמת אברהם, The Soul of Avraham (יורה דעה 263:3). He was a Professor of Medicine at Hebrew University and Hadassah Medical School, so if he is stumped I guess we all are. So now let’s turn to…

The Green Baby Boy

This one is really hard to figure out, because there isn’t agreement on precisely what is meant by the description that the baby is ירוק, green. Rashi describes it as “the color of grass” which is - at least in the summer - a nice green color. Tosafot, being Tosafot, disagrees, and suggests that it is a sky blue color. And even more colors appear in later halachic works.

Katzenelsohn believed the “green” color is more of a yellow one, which is common in neonatal jaundice. (“Where is the best place to kook for neonatal jaundice?” I was asked as a medical student. “Um, the sclera?” I offered in reply. “Nope said the doctor, happily pimping me, “in the parking lot, - where the sun provides the best illumination.” But I digress). Neonatal jaundice is an almost universal finding in newborns, and results from a breakdown of the fetal hemoglobin that is no-longer needed now that the baby is ex-utero. Julius Preuss (Biblical-Talmudic Medicine, Jason Aronson 1978 p167) believes the green color does not mean green, but instead it means pale. In this reading the baby was anemic, meaning that it lacked hemoglobin.

And what would the green-is-really blue suggestion of Tosafot indicate? Well, blue skin is called cyanosis, and results from too-little oxygen reaching the tissues. The feet and toes of newborns are often blue for a couple of days, as they develop their own oxygen carrying capacity (having spent nine happy months relying on mom’s). Some of the things that cause peripheral cyanosis include the cold (that’s when your arteries no-longer want to shunt warm blood to your freezing fingers), heart failure (the heart is too tired to pump oxygenated blood to the peripheries) or chronic lung disease (the lungs just can’t get enough oxygen through them and into the bloodstream). Central cyanosis is usually much more serious. It can be caused by infections like pneumonia (and did I mention that it was a defining feature of impending death during the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918?) In the context of a newborn, it may indicate congenital heart disease. Some forms of congenital heart disease are fatal, but today there are a number of operations (or sometimes several) that can save the neonate’s life.

The Overarching Principle of Brit Milah

Whatever the color of the little baby boy or the number of brothers who may have died as a result of circumcision, Jewish law has evolved from these descriptions in the Talmud to a position that is clear and absolute.

שולחן ערוך יורה דעה רס’ג, א

באלו הדברים שאין מלין ולד שיש בו חשש חולי דסכנת נפשות דוחה את הכל שאפשר לו למול לאחר זמן ואי אפשר להחזיר נפש אחת מישראל לעולם

In all of these conditions in which we do not circumcise the baby because of the risk of a fatal outcome, the circumcision is postponed to a later date [when the child is now healthy]. For it is possible to postpone the day of circumcision, but it is impossible ever to replace the soul of a Jewish baby.

Chullin 42a ~ Halachic Reality and Anatomic Reality: the Case of the Treif Animal

With the start of the third chapter of Chullin we take a deep dive into animal anatomy.

אלו טרפות בבהמה נקובת הוושט ופסוקת הגרגרת ניקב קרום של מוח ניקב הלב לבית חללו נשברה השדרה ונפסק החוט שלה ניטל הכבד ולא נשתייר הימנו כלום הריאה שניקבה או שחסרה ר"ש אומר עד שתינקב לבית הסמפונות ניקבה הקבה ניקבה המרה ניקבו הדקין הכרס הפנימית שניקבה או שנקרע רוב החיצונה רבי יהודה אומר הגדולה טפח והקטנה ברובה המסס ובית הכוסות שניקבו לחוץ נפלה מן הגג נשתברו רוב צלעותיה ודרוסת הזאב רבי יהודה אומר דרוסת הזאב בדקה ודרוסת ארי בגסה דרוסת הנץ בעוף הדק ודרוסת הגס בעוף הגס זה הכלל כל שאין כמוה חיה טרפה

These wounds constitute tereifot in an animal,rendering them prohibited for consumption:

1. A perforated esophagus, where the perforation goes through the wall,

2. or a cut trachea,

3. If the membrane of the brain was perforated, 

4. or if the heart was perforated to its chamber,

5. if the spinal column was broken and its cord was cut,

6. if the liver was removed and nothing remained of it…

7. a lung that was perforated,

8. or a lung missing a piece….

9. If the abomasum was perforated,

10. or the gallbladder was perforated, 

11. or the small intestines were perforated, it is a tereifa…

This is the principle: Any animal that was injured such that an animal in a similar condition could not live for an extended period is a treifa, the consumption of which is forbidden by Torah law. 

The meaning of the term treif in the Torah is torn, and originally it described a domestic animal that was attacked by a wild animal and suffered an injury that led to its death.

“וְאַנְשֵׁי־קֹ֖דֶשׁ תִּהְי֣וּן לִ֑י וּבָשָׂ֨ר בַּשָּׂדֶ֤ה טְרֵפָה֙ לֹ֣א תֹאכֵ֔לוּ לַכֶּ֖לֶב תַּשְׁלִכ֥וּן אֹתֽוֹ׃
You will be holy people to Me: you must not eat flesh torn by beasts in the field; you shall cast it to the dogs.”

— Exodus 22:30

But the rabbis of the Talmud greatly expanded this category - hence the list in the Mishnah that we are studying today. Later in Chullin (57b) there is a dispute as to the prognosis of a living animal were it to be declared treif. According to Rav Hunna, if an animal is treif, by definition it cannot live for longer than a year (אמר רב הונא סימן לטרפה י"ב חדש). But there are other opinions (this is, after all, the Talmud): the great editor of the Mishnah, Rabbi Yehudah HaNassi opined that a treifa is destined to die within 30 days, while a beriasa states that a treif animal cannot give birth (leaving open the question about male animals).

““Jason Marcus, chef and owner of the new Traif restaurant on S. Fourth Street in Williamsburg, says the name is just cheeky, not a slap at his mostly Kosher eaters.”

“But [the name] really represents our philosophical view of how restaurants should be free of rules. We’re just people who live for good food.””

It is generally agreed upon that the list in today’s Mishnah details the kinds of lesions that would be fatal within a year. And that’s when the problems begin. Some of them are certainly likely to be fatal. For example a perforated esophagus (נקובת הוושט) leads to mediastinitis, an inflammation of the chest cavity. And that is commonly fatal. If the animal swallows something sharp it can pierce not only the esophagus, but the membranes that surround the heart, called the pericardium. Way back in 1955 - at the start of the era of antibiotics - The Australian Veterinary Journal published a case series of twenty-one dairy cows that developed traumatic pericarditis. “Fifteen cases were treated with sulphonamide [an antibiotic] and six were not. ” The six untreated cows all died, and even among the cows treated with antibiotics, almost half died. So yes, some lesions recorded in the Mishnah (and later refined in the talmudic discussion which follows) are indeed fatal.

The Case of Serachot

But other lesions that render an animal treif are certainly not fatal. Take for example lung adhesions, called סרחות (serachot, or sircha in the singular), which are discussed in detail later (46b et. seq). These adhesions are fibrous tissues that may run between different lung lobes, or between the lungs and the rib cage. They are common and are caused by a number of conditions, including trauma or a previous infection. Many kinds of serichot render an animal treif. But lung adhesions are certainly not lethal. Animals and humans live quite happily with them. In fact this doctor recently told me that the presence of lung adhesions does not prevent lungs from being donated and used for a lung transplant. Now, if they are used in that delicate situation, they most certainly do not have a fatal defect, or anything even close.

the case of the missing liver (and the missing heart)

Opening paragraph of the famous responsa on “the chicken that had no heart”. From שו׳ת חכם צבי, Amsterdam 1712.

Equally puzzling to the modern reader is the sixth category in the Mishna’s list: ניטל הכבד ולא נשתייר הימנו כלום - if the slaughtered animal was found to have no liver. Here’s the thing: an animal cannot live without a liver. If a healthy looking cow - or indeed any cow -was well enough to be slaughtered, it must have had a liver. So this is not an example of a treif animal - it’s an example of one that could not possibly have existed. But don’t just take my word for it.

In 1709 the great rabbi of Hamburg, Zevi Ashkenazi, (better known as the Chacham Zevi, after the name of his responsa) was presented with the following case. A young woman had opened a slaughtered chicken to remove the unwanted entrails, while her cat sat at her feet “waiting patiently for anything that may fall to the ground.” To her great surprise, the young woman found that the chicken did not have a heart, and so assumed the bird was treif. Not so, claimed her mother, who apparently owned the chicken. The cat must have eaten it, when it was thrown to the ground together with the entrails. The young women was however quite adamant, and insisted she had never fed anything that resembled a heart to the cat. The bird had been perfectly healthy before it was slaughtered, eating and drinking like any other healthy chicken, (וגם בעודנה בחיים חיותה היתה חזקה ובריאה ובכל כחה לאכול ולשתות). The question of the kashrut of the bird was brought to the local rabbis, who declared it to be treif, on the basis that while alive, it had no heart.

The Chacham Zevi was asked to weigh in on the matter. “It is absolutely clear to any person who has a wise heart” he wrote, apparently enjoying the play on words, “or who has a brain in his skull, that it is impossible for any creature to live for even a moment without a heart…Clearly, the heart fell out when the bird was opened, and the cat ate it…It is obvious that the chicken is permitted.” Strike one for common sense, you would think. But not so fast. This answer of the Chacham Zevi engendered one of the great halachic disputes of the eighteenth century. In one corner, the Chacham, and in the other at least four leading rabbinic figures who vehemently opposed this ruling: Naphtali Katz of Frankfurt, Moses Rothenburg, David Oppenheim (who was the Chief Rabbi of Prague, no less) and Jonathan Eyebeschuetz (who spent much of his later life fighting halachic battles against Rabbi Yaakov Emden, who was the son of the Chacham Zevi). It got nasty, but that’s a story for another day.

Halachic Reality

No bird or animal can live without a heart or a liver. So there can be no case, like the one in the Mishnah, in which a healthy living animal was slaughtered and found to be without a liver.

Some of the categories of treifot overlap with conditions that are indeed incompatible with life. Others are perfectly innocuous and compatible with a long and healthy life. And a few make no sense given what we know about animal physiology. But none should be thought of as describing an anatomical reality. They describe instead a halachic reality, a reality that reflected a world some 1,500 years ago. And while our understanding of physiology has changed, these halachic classes remain a fixed part of Jewish tradition. Here is the great Maimonides, who was obviously troubled by the chasm that sometimes exists between halacha and facts.

רמב’ם משנה תורה הלכות שחיטה י, יג

וְכֵן אֵלּוּ שֶׁמָּנוּ וְאָמְרוּ שֶׁהֵן טְרֵפָה אַף עַל פִּי שֶׁיֵּרָאֶה בְּדַרְכֵי הָרְפוּאָה שֶׁבְּיָדֵינוּ שֶׁמִּקְצָתָן אֵינָן מְמִיתִין וְאֶפְשָׁר שֶׁתִּחְיֶה מֵהֶן אֵין לְךָ אֶלָּא מַה שֶּׁמָּנוּ חֲכָמִים שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר (דברים יז יא)"עַל פִּי הַתּוֹרָה אֲשֶׁר יוֹרוּךָ

Each one of these lesions that were declared treif remain so even if modern medicine can demonstrate that some of them are not actually fatal, and that it is indeed possible to live despite them. Rather we must follow these rabbinic categories, as the Torah states“ You shall act in accordance with the instructions given you and the ruling handed down to you; [you must not deviate from the verdict that they announce to you either to the right or to the left.]

In more recent times, Rabbi Avrohom Yeshaya Karelitz, better known as the Chazon Ish, also addressed this question. “We see today” he wrote, “that very often surgeons operate on the abdomen of a person [with an injury like one found in a treif animal], and he is completely cured, and lives a long life.” But this does nothing to change the way we view the categories of treif. These depend solely on what was decided by the rabbis of the Talmud, and no modern findings can change them. It is not about accuracy; it is about tradition.

Shavuot Redux~ How Many Letters are in a Sefer Torah?

In honor of shavuot that celebrates the giving of the torah, a repost from the talmudology archives.

Shavuot begins on Thursday evening, so we are publishing this early.

Enjoy the cheesecake.

קידושין ל, א

לפיכך נקראו ראשונים סופרים, שהיו סופרים כל האותיות שבתורה, שהיו אומרים: וא"ו דגחון חציין של אותיות של ספר תורה, דרש דרש  חציין  של תיבות, והתגלח של פסוקים

Therefore the early sages were called "counters" - soferim - because they counted all the letters of the Torah. They used to say: the letter vav of the word Gachon (Lev.11:42) is the half-way point of the letter of a Torah. The words "darosh darash" (Lev. 10:16) represent the half way point of the number of words in the Torah. The verse that begins with the word "Vehitgalach" (Lev.13:33) is the half way point of the number of verses in the Torah...

This page of Talmud covers some important material for those interested in the way in which Judaism and science interact.   The business of counting the letters in the Torah was apparently taken very seriously - so much so that one of the names by which the rabbis of the Talmud were known  - soferim - means "those who count."  To this day, the person who handwrites a Sefer Torah is called a counter (סופר), and not a writer (כותב). The Talmud emphasizes that this counting exercise was taken so seriously that the letters, words and verses were counted, and counted again. 

קידושין ל, א

בעי רב יוסף וא"ו דגחון מהאי גיסא או מהאי גיסא א"ל ניתי ס"ת ואימנינהו מי לא אמר רבה בר בר חנה לא זזו משם עד שהביאו ספר תורה ומנאום

Rav Yosef asked a question: This letter vav of the word Gachon, is it part of the first half or part of the second half of the letters of the Torah? They said to him, "let us bring a Torah scroll and count! For didn't Rabbah bar bar Channah say in a similar context: "They did not move from there until they brought a Torah scroll and counted all its letters"...

The View of Tradition, And OF the Journal Tradition

Writing in Tradition in 1964, the late scholar Louis Rabinowitz (d. 1984) asked how Orthodox Jews should regard the text of the Torah , "...upon which depends the whole enduring magnificent structure of the Oral Law and the Halakhah, in comparison with those texts which show variants from it?"  Here is his reply:

“The answer is surely simple and logical. “The early scholars were called Soferim,” declares the Talmud (Kid. 30a) “because they were wont to count (soferim) all the letters of the Torah.” The meticulous manner in which they carried out this task is sufficiently indicated in the same passage by the information which it elicited to the effect, for instance, that the vav of gachon (Lev. 9:42 - [sic]) marks the half-way mark of the letters of the Torah, the words darosh darash of Lev. 10:16 the dividing line between the words...


With what loving care and sacred devotion, then, did they jealously guard every letter of the text! What exhaustive and detailed regulations they laid down in order to ensure that the copying of the scrolls should be completely free from human error! There has been nothing like it in the history of literature or religion, and in this respect the Massoretic text stands indisputably in a class by itself.”

— Louis Rabinowitz. Torah Min Ha-Shamayim.Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought, 1964-5: 7;1: 34-45

Leaving aside the ironic typographic error that mis-references the location of the vav of Gachon, was the late rabbi Rabinowitz correct in remarking on the "loving care and sacred devotion," with which "they jealously guard every letter of the text"?

So how many letters are there in a Torah?

There are varied counts given for the number of letters in the Torah, but a couple of results seem to be most popular.

• 304, 805 From here, and here and here, and from Even-Shoshan (see below).

• 304,801 From here.

One website shares the source code used to count the words and letters in Torah; its results are shown below, and are off by four when compared to others who claim to have counted.

Letters and Words in the Torah
	Words	Lettlers
בראשית	20,614	78,063
שמות	16,714	63,527
ויקרא	11,950	44,790
במדבר	16,408	63,529
דברים	14,295	54,892
TOTAL	79,981	304,801

And How Many Verses Are There?

The same website gives a count of 5,844 verses in the Torah.  Rabbi Yair Chaim ben Moses Bachrach (d. 1702), author of the Chavot Ya'ir, notes that there are 5,845 verses in the chumashim he used. But today's daf of Talmud records that there are 5,888 verses. And here is the count from Even-Shoshan's קונקורדנציה חדשה (New Concordance of the Bible):

From Even-Shoshan (ed.) A New Concordance of the Bible. Kiryat Sefer, Jerusalem 1987.

Side-Bar: From Where did Even-SHoshan Get his word count?

Even-Shoshan lists his reference as Rabbi Chaim Mordechai Brecher, who published a Yiddish translation of the entire Hebrew Bible. (Brecher was born in what is now the Ukraine in 1880 and died in New York in 1965.  His Yiddish translation was published in New York in 1941, and was republished six times, the last in 1957.)  At the end of the second volume of his translation (p. נא), R. Brecher addressed the thorny question of the letter and word counts in our Torahs, and had this to say:

The truth is, this [question of how many words there are in a Sefer Torah] is astonishing, and I couldn't rest because of it. So I decided to count them, and I, myself, counted all the words in the entire Torah. In order to make it clear to the reader that I didn't make a mistake in my count, I am here providing a list of all the verses in all the chapters as they are currently divided...My count is correct. As the ancient wise men say: Love Plato, love Aristotle, and love the truth most of all.

R. Brecher's total word count is 79,976 (although this count actually comes from here) - and so his half way point in the Torah is word #39,988. 

The Misplaced Middle of the Torah

Now back to today's page of Talmud. According to it, the middle letter of the Torah is the Vav of the word Gachon, (גחון) found in פרשת שמיני. However this claim is way off. Since there are about 304,805 letters in the Torah scrolls in use today, (I say about because of what we have just noted regarding the precise count,) the middle letter would be letter # 152,403, the first word of this verse (Lev 8.29):

ויקרא פרק ח פסוק כט 

ויקח משה את החזה ויניפהו תנופה לפני יקוק מאיל המלאים למשה היה למנה כאשר צוה יהו–ה את משה 

However the Vav of the word Gichon, is letter #157,236 - off by 4,833 letters. Oy.

It's no better regarding the words. If we go with the actual word count as being 79,980, then the middle words are # 39,990 and #39,991. These are the words יצק אל in verse below (Lev. 8:18):

ויקרא פרק ח פסוק טו 

וישחט ויקח משה את הדם ויתן על קרנות המזבח סביב באצבעו ויחטא את המזבח ואת הדם יצק אל יסוד המזבח ויקדשהו לכפר עליו

But the middle words of the Torah, according to Today's daf, are דרש דרש found over 900 words later (Lev.10:16):

ויקרא פרק י פסוק טז 

ואת שעיר החטאת דרש דרש משה והנה שרף ויקצף על אלעזר ועל איתמר בני אהרן הנותרם לאמר

That's a lot of letters to miscount, especially if your name is "the counter." Several suggestions have been made to address these discrepancies:

1.  The text of the Torah that the rabbis of the Talmud were using was significantly different to the one we use today.  This is possible, but then why does the Talmud never cite of any of these extra words and verses? The discrepant count is about 3% - that's a lot of missing text.

2.  The rabbis in the Talmud were not good at math. Again, possible, but the Talmud claims that they took the counting so seriously that they were called COUNTERS. It also claims that they undertook the counting exercise on several different occasions.  Were they really that bad at math?

3. The rabbis in the Talmud didn't mean this count to be taken literally. While many apologists like this answer, it is at total odds with the text. The Talmud states: they counted.

4.  The rabbis guesstimated the count. Perhaps the rabbis never really counted, but guessed at where the middle of the Torah lay: somewhere in the middle of the middle of the Five Books. After that, the letter vav of the word Gachon became the official midpoint, even though it was not accurate.  The problem with this suggestion is again, that the Talmud states that the soferim actually counted, and counted again. Not that they guessed, and guessed again.  

Science, Math and Judaism

Of all the scientific disciplines, it is mathematics that is first introduced to us. We teach toddlers to count, sometimes before they can even walk, and we all pursue some kind of mathematical training through high school.  Unlike medicine or physics or biology or astronomy, mathematics is something we all do, to some degree.  And we all understand what counting means.  This passage in the Talmud is the most readily understandable example of a conflict between science and Judaism. It is a conflict in which the basic text of rabbinic Judaism declares a fact that is, well, just not a fact. Some  find this conflict to be so intellectually troubling that their only path is to reject Jewish practice. Others, equally aware of the conflict, are comfortable with their intellectual position in which the scientific inaccuracies of the Talmud require no wholesale rejection of Jewish practice. Where do you fit on this spectrum, and, perhaps more importantly, what can you do to engage in a respectful dialogue with those whose opinions on these matters are not your own?

May you be blessed with a meaningful Shavuot.

Chullin 22b ~ Yellow Pigeons, Folk Medicine and Hepatitis

It was while working as a physician in Jerusalem in the 1990s that I first heard of a bizarre remedy to treat jaundice. A pigeon is placed on the belly of the yellow patient. After a few minutes, the jaundice is drawn out of the patient and enters the bird, which promptly dies. I never got to see the miracle in person, but people swore by it. I was reminded of this folk remedy by a passage in today’s page of Talmud, about which more below.

Pigeons for jaundice, Really?

At this point, a few of you are nodding and saying “sure, I’ve heard of that.” One or two of you might be saying “hey, I’ve seen that work/not work with my own eyes.” But most of you will be saying “what on earth is this all about?” So before we go on, let’s talk about the myth of using pigeons to cure jaundice.

We will never know how, where or when the myth began. It is mentioned in a book called Ta’ami Haminhagim טעמי המנהגים (Reasons for the Customs) by Abraham Isaac Sperling, first published in Poland in 1896. It is still in print today. At the back of the book is a small section called “Remedies” ( סגולות) where you will read this gem (based, apparently on this source):

אברהם יצחק שפרלינג טעמי המנהגים, ירושלים הוצאת אשכול 1957

“A remedy for yellowness:
Take a male pigeon for a man and a female pigeon for a woman. Place it on the umbilicus, and the pigeon will draw out all of the yellowness until there is none left, and the pigeon dies. This has been tested (בדוק).”

— אברהם יצחק שפרלינג טעמי המנהגים, ירושלים הוצאת אשכול 1957

APPARENTLY It’s not just PIGEONS

In 1801 Frances Barrett (“Professor of chemistry, natural and occult Philosophy, the Cabala, &c. &c.”) published The Magus, or Celestial Intelligencer; being a Complete System of Occult Philosophy. The illustrious professor had come across the pigeon-cures-jaundice myth in a slightly different form: it was the duck-cures-colic. “It is expedient for us to know” he helpfully informs us on page 37,“that there are some things which retain virtue only while they are living, others even after death. So in the colic, if a live duck is applied to the belly, it takes away pain, and the duck dies.”

Suffocation and a Ruptured Spleen

People still do this; you can find it discussed at sites like The Yeshiva World, (“A close relative of mine did this procedure for his father and it worked”) Ohr Somayach (“strong hearsay evidence”) and on the Hebrew site Ynet (אני מכיר רופא מכובד ומוכר …לאחר פרק זמן של חודשים הסכים לתת לביתו את הטיפול ביונים הוא עשה זאת ) And in case you want to see it in action, here is a video of the process. Watch through to the end and count how many pigeons were crushed to death by the charlatan performing the procedure. Warning: for anyone with a modicum of sensitivity, it’s hard to watch.

I know what you are thinking. The guy in the white coat simply crushed the pigeons to death. And you are correct. In fact a post mortem on the bodies of some of these poor birds revealed the cause of death as was a ruptured spleen.

A primer on Jaundice

Jaundice is a yellowing of the skin, though it is even more noticeable in the sclera. It is not a disease, but a symptom. Jaundice becomes apparent when when there is a buildup of bilirubin in the blood. Bilirubin is a breakdown product of heme, which is produced when red blood cells are broken down. It is then excreted via the liver.

There are several causes of jaundice, the most common of which is hepatitis (literally, an inflammation of the liver). Hepatitis itself has many different causes. Viral hepatitis is most often caused by hepatitis A - that’s the one you see when people in close contact don’t wash their hands enough. It is a self limiting disease lasting a few days or so. Hepatitis B, C and D are far more serious, and can lead to liver failure and chronic jaundice. Alcohol is another leading cause of hepatitis, and causes cirrhosis of the liver. But not all jaundice is caused by a liver problem. Newborn babies are very often jaundiced. This happens because they are busy breaking down their fetal hemoglobin, releasing heme in the process, which is then turned into bilirubin. Their livers are working just fine.

So now you understand why crushing a pigeon to death on a person with hepatitis A might appear to work. It is because hepatitis A is a self-limiting disease; it goes away after a few days, as does the jaundice. The pigeon had nothing to do with it. You could clap your hands three times and the hepatitis would also go away. The other causes of hepatitis are chronic, and sometimes fatal. In these cases, no amount of chicanery would be associated with a cure, because there wouldn’t be one (unless you have hepatitis C, in which case a new and very expensive drug will actually cure you, no pigeons needed).

Yellow Pigeons in today’s Daf

In this page of Talmud there is a discussion about sacrificing pigeons and doves. And the color yellow features prominently:

חולין כב, ב

ת"ר יכול יהו כל התורים וכל בני היונה כשרים תלמוד לומר מן התורים ולא כל התורים מן בני היונה ולא כל בני יונה פרט לתחילת הציהוב שבזה ושבזה שפסול מאימתי התורים כשרים משיזהיבו מאימתי בני יונה פסולין משיצהיבו

The Sages taught in a baraita: I might have thought all  old doves or all young pigeons would be fit for sacrifice; therefore, the verse states: “Of doves,” and not all doves; “of young pigeons,” and not all young pigeons.This serves to exclude birds at the beginning of the yellowing of their neck plumage, which is a marker of both doves and pigeons. They are unfit as doves because they are not sufficiently old and as pigeons because they are no longer young. The tanna elaborates: From when are the doves fit? It is from when the color of their feathers turns a glistening gold. From when are the pigeons unfit? It is from when their feathers turn yellow.

The Sages here describe how the color of both doves and pigeons changes from or to a yellow. (But I have not been able to find a description of this actually happening in any of the ornithology texts I consulted. )

Transference

So now we can understand why these birds were associated with jaundice - because they were once described as changing from being yellow or becoming yellow themselves. By the act of transference, the pigeons were able to draw out the jaundice. There are many examples of transference in Judaism, where an animal symbolically absorbs and removes sin. There was the Temple ritual in Jerusalem, in which the owner lay his hands on the head of the animal brought as a sacrifice to expiated for sin. There is the ritual of Tashlich on Rosh Hashanah, in which our sins are symbolically cast away as we throw bread into a stream. And there is the controversial ritual of Kaparrot, in which a chicken (or, more kindly, money) is swung over the head while reciting “this is my exchange, this is my substitute, this is my atonement. This rooster will go to its death, while I will enter and proceed to a good long life and to peace.” It doesn’t end well for the chicken, but at least it is slaughtered for food and given to the poor. If only those pigeons had it so lucky.