Talmudology Bonus ~ Plagues and the Census

In the Torah portion (כִּי תִשָּׂא) to be read this Shabbat, we will read about the first census that was to be taken after the Exodus from Egypt:

שמות 30:11-16

וַיְדַבֵּר יְהֹוָה אֶל־מֹשֶׁה לֵּאמֹר׃

כִּי תִשָּׂא אֶת־רֹאשׁ בְּנֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵל לִפְקֻדֵיהֶם וְנָתְנוּ אִישׁ כֹּפֶר נַפְשׁוֹ לַיהֹוָה בִּפְקֹד אֹתָם וְלֹא־יִהְיֶה בָהֶם נֶגֶף בִּפְקֹד אֹת זֶה  יִתְּנוּ כל־הָעֹבֵר עַל־הַפְּקֻדִים מַחֲצִית הַשֶּׁקֶל בְּשֶׁקֶל הַקֹּדֶשׁ עֶשְׂרִים גֵּרָה הַשֶּׁקֶל מַחֲצִית הַשֶּׁקֶל תְּרוּמָה לַיהֹוָה׃ כֹּל הָעֹבֵר עַל־הַפְּקֻדִים מִבֶּן עֶשְׂרִים שָׁנָה וָמָעְלָה יִתֵּן תְּרוּמַת יְהֹוָה׃ הֶעָשִׁיר לֹא־יַרְבֶּה וְהַדַּל לֹא יַמְעִיט מִמַּחֲצִית הַשָּׁקֶל לָתֵת אֶת־תְּרוּמַת יְהֹוָה לְכַפֵּר עַל־נַפְשֹׁתֵיכֶם׃ וְלָקַחְתָּ אֶת־כֶּסֶף הַכִּפֻּרִים מֵאֵת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וְנָתַתָּ אֹתוֹ עַל־עֲבֹדַת אֹהֶל מוֹעֵד וְהָיָה לִבְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל לְזִכָּרוֹן לִפְנֵי יְהֹוָה לְכַפֵּר עַל־נַפְשֹׁתֵיכֶם׃

God spoke to Moses, saying: 

When you take a census of the Israelite men according to their army enrollment, each shall pay God a ransom for himself on being enrolled, that no plague may come upon them through their being enrolled. This is what everyone who is entered in the records shall pay: a half-shekel by the sanctuary weight—twenty gerah to the shekel—a half-shekel as an offering to God. Everyone who is entered in the records, from the age of twenty years up, shall give God’s offering: the rich shall not pay more and the poor shall not pay less than half a shekel when giving God’s offering as expiation for your persons. You shall take the expiation money from the Israelites and assign it to the service of the Tent of Meeting; it shall serve the Israelites as a reminder before God, as expiation for your persons. 

In this passage, the undertaking of a census is viewed as an inherently hazardous undertaking. It would result in a pandemic outbreak, but this would be prevented by the giving of the half-shekel.

Three further censuses were carried out when the Children of Israel were in the wilderness, and they are mentioned in the Book of Numbers (1-2, 26 [which follows a pandemic] and 31). Later censuses were commanded by Joshua, King Saul, and King David and these all passed without incident.

The Dangerous Census Taken by King David

It is this obvious danger that King David was warned about when he commanded his military advisor Joab to “make the rounds of all the tribes of Israel, from Dan to Be’er-Sheva, and take a census of the people, so that I may know the size of the population.” But Joab was reluctant. “May the Lord your God increase the number of the people a hundredfold, while your own eyes see it” he told his king. “But” Joab asked, “why should my lord king want this?” 

David was not persuaded, and the census was taken, but something – we are not told what – convinced David that he had made a mistake. “But afterward David reproached himself for having numbered the people. And David said to the Lord, “I have sinned grievously in what I have done. Please, Lord, remit the guilt of Your servant, for I have acted foolishly” (v. 10). God refuses to absolve David, and the prophet Gad gives the king a choice of punishment: “Shall a seven-year famine come upon you in the land, or shall you be in flight from your adversaries for three months while they pursue you, or shall there be three days of pestilence in your land? Now consider carefully what reply I shall take back to He who sent me.” David asks that he not fall into the hands of men, and here the Greek translation known as the Septuagint adds a line not found in the original Hebrew: “So David chose the pestilence. It was the time of the wheat harvest.” As a result of this choice, “God sent a pestilence upon Israel from morning until the set time, and 70,000 of the people died, from Dan to Be’er-Sheva.”

A different account of this story is found in the Book of Chronicles. In one of its versions it is Satan who entices King David to count the population. Joab then decides to count those under the age of twenty, in clear defiance of the orders for the census found in the Book of Exodus. “Joab son of Zeruiah did begin to count them, but he did not finish; wrath struck Israel on account of this, and the census was not entered into the account of the chronicles of King David” (1 Chronicles 27:24). In addition, there is no mention – in either version - of the giving of the required half-shekel. This is the basis for several medieval biblical commentaries who explained that the pandemic that followed was because the expiation (kopher) had not been given. Rashi believed that the counting invoked the Ayin Harah, the Evil Eye, and this was the cause of the pandemic that followed, though he doesn’t elaborate.

ולא יהיה בהם נגף. שֶׁהַמִּנְיָן שׁוֹלֵט בּוֹ עַיִן הָרָע, וְהַדֶּבֶר בָּא עֲלֵיהֶם, כְּמוֹ שֶׁמָּצִינוּ בִימֵי דָּוִד

for numbers (i.e. things that have been numbered) are subject to the influence of the “evil eye”, and therefore if you count them by their polls pestilence may befall them, as we find happened, in the days of David (II Samuel 24:10 and 15).

As a consequence of King David’s refusal to take a personal punishment for his crime of counting the people, a pandemic killed 70,000 of his subjects. This belief remained prevalent among the Jews of eastern Europe, who had a saying in Yiddish “When you don’t count, a blessing comes” [Az me tseylt nisht, kumt arayn di brokhe], and Jewish children would protect themselves when being counted while in Polish public schools by whispering “oyf di tseyn” - “on my teeth.”

The Pandemic Gods of the Ancient Near East

The fear of taking a census is actually far older than the Torah itself. It can be found in the writings found at Mari, an ancient city in what is now northwestern Syria. The royal archives there contained thousands of letters which were first excavated in the 1930s, and include detailed written records of how the census was to be taken. Some of the words that appear on the Mari cuneiform letters are like the Hebrew constructs used in the Bible. For example, “to record” (paqadum) has the same root as the Hebrew root word p-k-d meaning “to count.” And the famous Jewish Assyriologist Ephraim Avigdor Speiser (1902-1965) noted that in Mesopotamian lore “the writing down of names could on certain occasions be a very ominous process…on periodic occasions, the higher powers made lists which determined who among the mortals was to live and who was to die.” 

There must thus have been a time when the ancient Near Easterner shrank from the thought of having his name recorded in lists that might be put to unpredictable uses. Military conscription was an ominous process because it might place the life of the enrolled in jeopardy. The connection with the cosmic " books " of life and death must have been much too close for one's peace of mind. It would be natural in these circumstances to propitiate the unknown powers, or seek expiation as a general precaution. In due time, such a process would be normalized as a tebibtum in Mesopotamia, and as a form of kippurim among the Israelites… And such fears would be kept alive by plagues, which must have decimated crowded camps more than once.  

Nergal. Fragment of impression of seal from Larsa. 2nd millenium BCE, Baghdadi Museum. From here.

In ancient Mesopotamia, there were several deities associated with plagues and pandemics.  Nergal, the king of the underworld, was a god of war who was also responsible for plagues. Around the second century B.C.E his role was merged with another god, Erra, and the combined Nergal/Erra god-complex became responsible for both war and pestilence.  Namtar (literally, “fate”) was another Mesopotamian deity associated with disease, whose role, wrote to John Betz, “was more similar to the that of the grim reaper of modern folklore” (A Tale of Two Plague Gods,” Biblical Archeology Review 47, no. Winter 2021). He is described in Sumerian texts as having “no hands, has no feet, [and] who takes away/goes about by night.” Nergal acted as a sort of judge to whom an appeal for clemency could be made, while Namtar had the role of judicial executioner, who could not be reasoned with. “In some ways” Betz noted, “this dynamic is not unlike that between YHWH and personified pestilence. As in Habakkuk 3, plague and pestilence are sometimes YHWH’s instruments, but elsewhere we find prayers to YHWH against plague and disease. Returning to 2 Samuel 24:10-25 and 1 Chronicles 21:1-30, we can see this distinction. The angel bringing the plague cannot be reasoned with, but YHWH can be. When YHWH is moved to compassion by his people’s suffering, he is the one who tells the angel to halt the plague.”

As the centuries passed, the census remained unwelcome, but less than it had been before. In biblical times it was still ominous to be counted, but it became possible to prevent any harm by paying a half-shekel to the Temple. Which is why we read in this week’s Torah portion:

so that no plague may come upon them through their being counted

וְלֹא־יִהְיֶה בָהֶם נֶגֶף בִּפְקֹד

[Excerpted from Jeremy Brown. The Eleventh Plague. Jews and Pandemics from the Bible to COVID-19. Oxford University Press, Fall 2022.]

Happy Birthday Galileo

Galileo Galilei in a 1636 portrait by Justus Sustermans.

Today, February 15th, is a special day. It is the birthday of Galileo Galilei, who was born in Pisa on that day in 1564. Among his many achievements were his careful observations of the Earth’s moon, the identification of four of Jupiter’s moons, and the discovery that Venus, when observed through a telescope, has phases, just like that of our own moon. The only reasonable explanation of this was that Venus orbited the Sun, and not the Earth. And just like that, the geocentric model of the universe in which everything revolved around the Earth, came to a grinding halt.

Galileo’s Jewish Connection

Galileo taught astronomy to anyone who would listen, including Jews, and his most important Jewish student was Joseph Solomon Delmedigo who was born in Candia on the Island of Crete in 1591. At the age of fifteen Delmedigo left for Italy, where he enrolled in the University of Padua. For seven years there he studied astronomy, mathematics, natural science and medicine, and was taught by none other than Galileo Galilei, who was soon to become famous for both his observations of the planets and his clash with the Church.

When Delmedigo graduated he traveled to Lublin, Vilna, and Livona, where he spent much of his time working as a physician. He ultimately settled in Amsterdam where he published his Sefer Elim, a long book (it runs over four hundred pages) that deals with philosophy, science, mathematics, and astronomy.

“Galileo my Teacher” from Delmedigo, Sefer Elim, Amsterdam 1629. 148.

In this book Delmedigo outlined the reasons he accepted the Copernican model of the universe. In addition to explaining all of the theoretical support for the heliocentric model, he cited experimental evidence. If the planets revolved about the Sun and were illuminated by it, the amount of light that they reflect would depend on their location and distance from the Earth. And this is precisely what Delmedigo and his famous teacher had observed through the telescope. 

My teacher Galileo observed Mars when it lay close to the Earth. At this time its light was much brighter than that of Jupiter, even though Mars is much smaller. Indeed it appeared too bright to view through the telescope. I requested to look through the telescope, and Mars appeared to me to be elongated rather than round. (This is a result of its clarity and the movement of its rays of light.) In contrast, I found Jupiter to be round and Saturn to be egg-shaped.

This glorious passage reminds us that religiously observant Jews were sometimes at the very cutting edge of the new astronomy. How many could claim to have been instructed by the great Galileo himself?

But don’t get carried away

The historian Andre Neher (d. 1988) viewed Joseph Delmedigo as a fearless trailblazer whose goal was not only to influence his own community, but also the Catholic Church itself. In a paper published in 1977 he wrote:

When Delmedigo published Elim in 1629, he used the term “Rabbi” in speaking of his teacher Galileo. Rabbi Galileo! Was this not something of a challenge directed to the inquisitors in Rome who were then preoccupied with Galileo and who were not to let him go until his death in 1642? Free Galileo, Delmedigo seems to be saying, or release him to us; in the midst of our Jewish community, he will not be subjected to any trial, we shall not require him to make any retraction, we shall welcome him and honor him like a Rabbi in Israel!

Well, not quite. As I have written elsewhere, this account is linguistically, historically, and conjecturally incorrect. In the first place, although the term used by Delmedigo to describe Galileo was indeed the word rebbi, in this context, it means “my teacher,” and not “my rabbi.” By translating it in this way Neher was able to support his claim that the Jews were open, receptive, and respectful to new ideas emerging in astronomy; but the linguistic reality (and much else besides) does not bear this out.

Secondly, in the years prior to the publication of Sefer Elim in 1629, Galileo had not become the “preoccupation” of the Inquisition. The work that led to the trial by the Inquisition, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Systems of the World, was not published until 1632. And so Neher’s claim that Delmedigo was writing a message to release Galileo is chronologically incorrect. Finally, the notion that the Jewish community would not punish one of their own for expressing antinomian views is inaccurate. It was, after all, in Amsterdam itself, the city in which Delmedigo’s books were published, that the Jewish community excommunicated Spinoza in 1656 on account of “the horrible heresies which he practiced and taught.” Although Neher’s assessment of Delmedigo as challenging the Inquisition on behalf of Galileo was not accurate, it he was certainly correct in noting the important role that Galileo must surely have played in the education of the young Jew Joseph Delmedigo from Crete, who grew up and became the first Jewish Copernican.

A selection from the Talmudology Library Galileo Collection

Want more Galileo-related Talmudology posts? Try Jews and their Telescopes, available here.

[A repost, obviously, because it was also his birthday last year.]

Chagigah 4b ~ Pandemic Theodicy

On today’s page of Talmud Rav Yosef makes a radical suggestion. Sometimes death comes to those who do not deserve it.

חגיגה ד, ב

רַב יוֹסֵף כִּי מָטֵי לְהַאי קְרָא, בָּכֵי: ״וְיֵשׁ נִסְפֶּה בְּלֹא מִשְׁפָּט״, אָמַר: מִי אִיכָּא דְּאָזֵיל בְּלָא זִמְנֵיהּ? אִין, כִּי הָא דְּרַב בִּיבִי בַּר אַבָּיֵי הֲוָה שְׁכִיחַ גַּבֵּיהּ מַלְאַךְ הַמָּוֶת. אֲמַר לֵיהּ לִשְׁלוּחֵיהּ: זִיל אַיְיתִי לִי מִרְיָם מְגַדְּלָא שְׂיעַר נַשְׁיָיא. אֲזַל, אַיְיתִי לֵיהּ מִרְיָם מְגַדְּלָא דַּרְדְּקֵי

When Rav Yosef reached this verse, he cried: “But there are those swept away without justice” (Proverbs 13:23). He said: Is there one who goes before his time and dies for no reason?

Yes, like this incident of Rav Beivai bar Abaye, who would be frequented by the company of the Angel of Death and would see how people died at the hands of this angel. The Angel of Death said to his agent: Go and bring me, i.e., kill, Miriam the raiser, i.e., braider, of women’s hair. He went, but instead brought him Miriam, the raiser of babies.

Rav Yosef, a Babylonian sage who died in 323, developed this observation into a theological tenet: “Once permission is given to the Destroyer to kill, he does not distinguish between the righteous and the wicked. And not only that, but he begins with the righteous first, as it is stated in the verse (Ezekiel 21:8): “And will cut off from you the righteous and the wicked.” In Bava Kamma (60a) Rav Yosef applied his suggestion to include deaths that occur during a pandemic:

בבא קמא ס,א

תאני רב יוסף מאי דכתיב (שמות יב, כב) ואתם לא תצאו איש מפתח ביתו עד בקר כיון שניתן רשות למשחית אינו מבחין בין צדיקים לרשעים ולא עוד אלא שמתחיל מן הצדיקים תחלה שנאמר (יחזקאל כא, ח) והכרתי ממך צדיק ורשע

Rav Yosef taught a baraita: What is the meaning of that which is written with regard to the plague of the firstborn: “And none of you shall go out of the opening of his house until the morning” (Exodus 12:22)? If the plague was not decreed upon the Jewish people, why were they not permitted to leave their homes? Once permission is granted to the destroyer to kill, it does not distinguish between the righteous and the wicked. And not only that, but it begins with the righteous first, as it is stated in the verse: “And will cut off from you the righteous and the wicked” (Ezekiel 21:8), where mention of the righteous precedes the wicked.

Pandemic Deaths and The Problem of Theodicy

Death does indeed come randomly during a pandemic, and this teaching of Rav Yosef has been cited countless times in rabbinic literature.

Infectious diseases in the Talmudic world were often capricious, just as they are in our own. They might strike children or the elderly, or bypass them entirely and claim the lives of young, healthy adults. While those who were already sick and ailing from other causes were, and are, at an increased risk of death or disability during a pandemic, those who are perfectly healthy might die in a matter of a few hours. If there was no pattern or predictability, how was the talmudic mind to explain it all? “Be assured,” the Book of Proverbs taught, “that the wicked will not go unpunished, but those who are righteous will escape.” (Proverbs 11:21.) Pandemics tested the very notion of God’s divine justice.

The sages explained that natural disasters were not random events (for how could they be?) but were just chastisement for any number of sins. According to the Mishnah in Avot (5:8, 9) famine was the result of failing to tithe properly, attacks from wild animals were a punishment for swearing in vain or profaning God’s holy name, and plagues were the result of sins otherwise punishable by death, but which had not, or could not, be referred to a Jewish court for adjudication. They were the natural result of sin, even if the sin was unknown to others or mysterious even to the sinner. Plagues and pandemics might also be the result of a sin for which there was no court sanction at all; instead, it was left to God to exact the punishment (Yoma 66b). 

But this strain of thought in which only the wicked perish in a pandemic was not the only approach taken by the rabbis of the Mishnah and Talmud. Indeed, as soon as this solution to the challenge of theodicy – that all deaths are deserved – had been suggested, it was challenged by everyday observation: bad things do happen to perfectly good people. The sages of Talmud took note of the innocents that lay buried around them and connected their deaths to a verse from Proverbs 13:23. “Some are swept away without justice.” This gave rise to a different approach in which it was no-longer assumed that all those who died in a pandemic were sinners deserving of their punishment. This is the teaching of Rav Yosef on today’s page of Talmud. In this new paradigm, perfectly innocent victims could be “swept away,” because once permission had been granted for the Angel of Death to go about his grim duty, everyone became a legitimate target.

Pandemic Exceptionalism

This statement of Rav Yosef in today’s page of Talmud is the focus of an essay by Rabbi Rabbi Shaul Magid, a professor of Jewish studies who received several orthodox rabbinic ordinations, although he has since moved away from these roots towards a more egalitarian practice of Judaism. His essay appears in an important recent book called Torah in a Time of Plague: Historical and Contemporary Jewish Responses, edited by Erin Leib Smokler, which was awarded the 2021 National Jewish Book Award for Modern Jewish Thought and Experience. Rabbi Magid noted that this passage “resists the notion of collapsing plagues into covenantal categories, whereby we can see them as acts of divine intervention to punish evildoers, Jews or non-Jews. Rather…plagues seem to be arbitrary occurrences.” Magid argues that plagues and pandemics are cases of what he calls a “covenantal exception.” This exception is a crucial theological category, for “without the notion of the arbitrary as extra-covenantal, Judaism becomes vulnerable to making all disasters, even those that equally affect non-Jews, the fault of the Jews, which could easily, and understandably, evoke negative reactions. Plague as the exception thus enables Jews to understand natural disasters outside the paradigm of reward and punishment.”

To support this suggestion, Magid cites the talmudic passage from today’s page of Talmud. In it, the Angel of Death was given permission to kill “Miriam the braider of women’s hair” but instead killed “Miriam the raiser of babies.” Rav Yosef, observes that pandemics do not distinguish between sinners and saints and developed it into a theological tenet: “Once permission is given to the Destroyer to kill, he does not distinguish between the righteous and the wicked.” Pandemic deaths are arbitrary. Magid notes that unlike the response to famine which includes penance, personal reflection is not mentioned in the Talmud as a reaction to pandemic deaths. The Talmud could have offered “a predictable response that would include both physical avoidance and acts geared towards nullification.” But it was silent.

The Problem with Covanental Exception

Magid’s theory of covenantal exception might illuminate the passage in Bava Kamma, but it does not explain numerous other Talmudic references which teach that pandemics are the consequence of community sin or personal religious laxity. And there were other Talmudic sages who remained convinced that there could be no innocent victims before God. According to Rabbi Hanina (Hullin 7b) “a person injures his finger on earth only if they declare about him on high that he should be injured.” Neither does it explain the many rabbis who, over the fifteen hundred years since the closing of the Talmud, have continued to emphasize the same message: pandemics are caused by sin and may be extinguished by repentance. There was no covenantal exception when the Torah described the deaths of twenty-four thousand people in a plague that punished immorality. There was no covenantal exception in the Mishnah (Avot 5:8) when it taught that plagues were the result of sins punishable by death. And there was no covenantal exception made for the epidemic waves of diphtheria, called askara in the Talmud , that was described as the most painful of all deaths and was the punishment for eating foods that are not kosher and for speaking ill of others.

Magid’s approach is lacking because it does not account for these other cases. However, it uncovers a much larger theme. There has never been a single Jewish response to the problem of theodicy. In some locales, in some books and in some eras, a pandemic was understood to be divine retribution for religious offenses of one sort or another. And in other locales, eras, and books, pandemics were understood to be natural disasters that killed those who were entirely innocent of sin. Magid’s theory of covenantal exception can only explain the latter, and even then, it leaves unanswered the question of why pandemics kill the just and the innocent in a world that is supposed to exist under the watchful protection of a benevolent God.

To read more about pandemic theodicy see my recent essay “Why Pandemics Happen to Good People” published last month on The Lehrhaus, and available here.

Chagigah 3b ~ Werewolves, Lycanthropy, and Mental Illness

In this post:

The Three Signs of Mental Illness

What is Gandrifus? Koren vs Artscroll (and Jastrow)

The Parallel Discussion in the Yerushalmi: “Man-dog”

Lycanthropy in the Ancient World

Lycanthropy and Mental Illness

Lycanthropy and Porphyria. Or Not

Lycanthropy and Melancholy

Binyamin the Werewolf

Rashi also believed in Werewolves

Summary

---

The three Signs of Mental Illness

This page of Talmud contains a fascinating discussion of what features a person must demonstrate to be declared a shoteh, or what today we might call mentally ill or insane. First, the rabbis give a description of three behaviors that might lead to this diagnosis:

חגיגה ג, ב

תָּנוּ רַבָּנַן אֵיזֶהוּ שׁוֹטֶה הַיּוֹצֵא יְחִידִי בַּלַּיְלָה וְהַלָּן בְּבֵית הַקְּבָרוֹת וְהַמְקָרֵעַ אֶת כְּסוּתוֹ אִיתְּמַר רַב הוּנָא אָמַר עַד שֶׁיְּהוּ כּוּלָּן בְּבַת אַחַת רַבִּי יוֹחָנָן אָמַר אֲפִילּוּ בְּאַחַת מֵהֶן

The Sages taught: Who is considered an insane? (1) One who goes out alone at night, (2) and one who sleeps in a cemetery, (3) and one who rends his garment. It was stated that Rav Huna said: A person does not have the halakhic status insanity until all of these signs are present at the same time. Rabbi Yochanan said: He is considered insane even due to the appearance of only one of these signs.

So far so good. This is an argument whether you need just one behavior (Rabbi Yochanan) or all three (Rav Huna). Next, there is a discussion as to whether, if there is a rational explanation for these behaviors, they could still contribute to a diagnosis of insanity. Well, says the Talmud, it depends:

יכִי דָמֵי אִי דְּעָבֵיד לְהוּ דֶּרֶךְ שְׁטוּת אֲפִילּוּ בַּחֲדָא נָמֵי אִי דְּלָא עָבֵיד לְהוּ דֶּרֶךְ שְׁטוּת אֲפִילּוּ כּוּלְּהוּ נָמֵי לָא 

לְעוֹלָם דְּקָא עָבֵיד לְהוּ דֶּרֶךְ שְׁטוּת וְהַלָּן בְּבֵית הַקְּבָרוֹת אֵימוֹר כְּדֵי שֶׁתִּשְׁרֶה עָלָיו רוּחַ טוּמְאָה הוּא דְּקָא עָבֵיד וְהַיּוֹצֵא יְחִידִי בַּלַּיְלָה אֵימוֹר גַּנְדְּרִיפַס אַחְדֵּיהּ וְהַמְקָרֵעַ אֶת כְּסוּתוֹ אֵימוֹר בַּעַל מַחְשָׁבוֹת הוּא כֵּיוָן דְּעַבְדִינְהוּ לְכוּלְּהוּ הָוֵה לְהוּ

The case is about a person who performs these actions in a deranged manner, but each action on its own could be explained rationally. With regard to one who sleeps in the cemetery, one could say that he is doing so in order that an impure spirit should settle upon him. [Although it is inappropriate to do this, as there is a reason for this behavior it is not a sign of madness.] And with regard to one who goes out alone at night, one could say that gandrifus took hold of him and he is trying to cool himself down. And as for one who tears his garments, one could say that he is a man engaged in thought, and out of anxiety he tears his clothing unintentionally.

What is Gandrifus? Koren vs Artscroll (and jastrow)

Today, Talmudology will focus on the behavior described as gandrifus - (גַּנְדְּרִיפַס). The Koren Talmud, whose online translation at Sefaria is the one that we usually cite, translates this word as a “fever that took hold of a person,” following the second explanation of Rashi:

דהיוצא יחידי בלילה אימור גנדריפס אחדיה אני שמעתי חולי האוחז מתוך דאגה ולי נראה שנתחמם גופו ויוצא למקום האויר…

“I have heard” Rashi says, “that gandrifus is a fever, and the person, goes outside to cool down.” But Rashi’s first explanation is more in keeping with a mental illness: “I have heard this is when a person is gripped by depression [da’agah, also worry]. But the Artscroll (Schottenstein) English Talmud has a completely different translation. Here it is:

אֵימוֹר גַּנְדְּרִיפַס אַחְדֵּיהּ- one could say that a fit of lycanthropy seized him.

In a footnote, the translators explain that “Lycanthropy is a type of melancholy, which comes from worry.” The Soncino English Talmud also translates the gandrifus as lycanthropy, though it leaves out the melancholy part. (Goldschmidt’s 1929 German translation makes no mention of wolves: “nachts allein ausgegangen sein, weil er von der Melancholie befallen wurde.” But the Hebrew ArtScroll skips this explanation entirely, and translates gandrifus according to Rashi’s second explanation, though it expands on it in a footnote.)

But hang on, surely something is amiss here. Lycanthropy, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, means either “a delusion that one has become a wolf” or “the assumption of the form and characteristics of a wolf held to be possible by witchcraft or magic.” What does that have to do with depression?

But in fact, and as we shall see in some detail, the Artscroll translation appears to be the one that is most appropriate. Let’s begin with Marcus Jastrow and his famous dictionary, which has an entry for this strange word gandrifus. Here it is in the original:

So according to Jastrow, a person with gandrofus (there are variant spellings of the word in Hebrew) believes himself to be a wolf. But not just any wolf. A sad wolf. The word is a corrupt version of the Greek word λυκαθρωπία, lykthropia, meaning “wolf-like.” And you can even hear the similarity between the two words gan-dro-fus and (ly)kan-tro-py.

The Parallel Discussion in the Yerushalmi: “MAn-dog”

There is a similar passage in the Talmud Yerushalmi that lists the signs of insanity, and it uses a slightly different word, kunitrofus (קֻנִיטְרוֹפּוֹס), which is why Jastrow lists the two versions under the same entry. The English translation of this passage, also from Sefaria, is by Heinrich Guggenheimer, “a renowned mathematician who also published works on Judaism,” and who died last year at the age of 97.

ירושלמי תרומות א, א

סֵימָנֵי שׁוֹטֶה הַיּוֹצֵא בַלָּיְלָה וְהַלָּן בְּבֵית הַקְּבָרוֹת וְהַמְּקַרֵעַ אֶת כְּסוּתוֹ וְהַמְּאַבֵּד מַה שֶׁנּוֹתְנִין לוֹ. אָמַר רִבִּי הוּנָא וְהוּא שֶׁיְּהֵא כוּלְּהֶן בּוֹ דִּלָא כֵן אֲנִי אוֹמֵר הַיּוֹצֵא בַלָּיְלָה קֻנִיטְרוֹפּוֹס

 . הַלָּן בְּבֵית הַקְּבָרוֹת מַקְטִיר לַשֵּׁדִים. הַמְּקַרֵעַ אֶת כְּסוּתוֹ כוֹלִיקוֹס. וְהַמְּאַבֵּד מַה שֶׁנּוֹתְנִין לוֹ קִינִיקוֹס. רִבִּי יוֹחָנָן אָמַר אֲפִילוּ אַחַת מֵהֶן. אָמַר רִבִּי בּוּן מִסְתַּבְּרָה מַה דְּאָמַר רִבִּי יוֹחָנָן אֲפִילוּ אַחַת מֵהֶן בִּלְבַד בִּמְאַבֵּד מַה שֶׁנּוֹתְנִין לֹו אֲפִילוּ שׁוֹטֶה שֶׁבְּשׁוֹטִים אֵין מְאַבֵּד כָּל־מַה שֶׁנּוֹתֵן לוֹ

The signs of an insane: One who goes out in the night, stays overnight in a graveyard, tears his clothing, and destroys what one gives to him. Rebbi Huna said, only if all of that is in him since otherwise I say that one who goes out in the night is a man-dog;

One who stays overnight in a graveyard burns incense to spirits, he who tears up his clothing is a choleric person; Rebbi Jochanan said, even only one of these is proof. Rebbi Abun said, what Rebbi Jochanan said, even only one of these is reasonable only for him who destroys what one gives to him; even the greatest idiot does not destroy all one gives to him.

So according to the late Heinrich Guggenheimer, a kunitrofus is a “man-dog.” He certainly did his homework, because this is how it is translated in Lidell’s classic Greek-English lexicon, first published in 1843, (and, fun bonus fact, Lewis Carroll wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland for Henry Liddell's daughter Alice).

Now would also be a good time to explain the etymology of the word werewolf, which according to Daniel Ogden’s very recent book The Werewolf in the Ancient World, probably comes from the Anglo-Saxon w(e)arg meaning outsider, “in which case werewulf is to have signified ‘outsider-wolf’ in origin” (p8).

Lycanthropy in the Ancient World

Perhaps the earliest legend of a human turning into a wolf comes from the Greek myth of Lycaon, which dates back to the sixth century BCE. Lycaon gave Zeus a human sacrifice, which made Zeus very angry. So angry, that he turned Lycaon into a wolf.

Another legend is the story of Petronius and the werewolf, which Ogden attested to around 66CE, in which a traveller is turned into a werewolf and secures the safety of the clothes he will need to transform himself back into a human by urinating on them as they lay in a graveyard. He is later identified as a werewolf when a wound on his neck is identified as the one inflicted on him while in lupine form. (There is a terrific animated video of the simplified story in Latin (!) with subtitles, and very much worth the four minute watch, available here.) There are many more versions, including the tale of Damarchus from around the same time, in which Damarchus is tricked into eating human flesh, and is transformed into a wolf. All of which is enough to show that the rabbis of the Talmud may have heard of these legends too.

Lycanthropy and Mental Illness

Lycanthropy, as the term is used today, does not mean the ability to transform oneself into a wolf (because, well, there is no such ability). Instead, it is the belief that one has been transformed into an animal, or the display of animal-like behavior suggesting such a belief. And there are case reports of this mental illness. Here is one, from a paper published in 1999 in the British journal Psychopathology: 

Mrs T. is a 53-year-old Caucasian lady.  She is divorced and lives in a residential home for recovered mentally ill. She has been diagnosed as epileptic since the age of 11. She is prone to suffer complex partial seizures in the form of epigastric aura, followed by turning the head to the left side, with loss of consciousness... She has been treated with several antiepileptics…At the age of 27 she went to Singapore with her husband who was working in the navy. She started to develop severe depression and suicidal ideas. So she came back to the UK and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Since then she has had 4 admissions mainly due to depression and suicidal attempts. She had one admission due to a manic attack. During this attack she had accelerated thoughts, disinhibited behaviour and speech, talking to strangers about having had oral sex.

At all her admissions she manifested delusions in the form of beliefs that her heart was not working or that she was dead or part of her body had died. After each discharge she returned to her normal level of functioning.

During her last admission, in 1996, she took an overdose of temazepam. She said that she did not intend to kill herself at that time. However, she was escaping from the belief that claws were growing in her feet. She found a support for her belief when the chiropodist could not cut her nails. When she was asked about the meaning of having claws she said that she was going to be ‘lunatic’. She could not give an explanation of the word lunatic more than changing into a helpless person. ... Her psychotic symptoms were treated with anti-psychotic medication. However, the frequency of fits was high during this time. Although she was stabilised in her mood after the last discharge, her husband found the whole situation very difficult.

In the last follow-up in the out-patient clinic she still had the belief that claws grew in her feet mainly at night when she was not wearing shoes and socks.

But lycanthropy is not limited to the British. The American Journal of Psychiatry also reported a case of lycanthropy, in which the patient, a forty-nine-year-old married woman, “presented on an urgent basis for psychiatric evaluation because of delusions of being a wolf” and “feeling like an animal with claws.” She suffered from extreme apprehension and felt that she was no longer in control of her own fate; she said, “A voice was coming out of me.”  The report continues:

The patient chronically ruminated and dreamed about wolves. One week before her admission, she acted on these ruminations for the first time. At a family gathering, she disrobed, assumed the female sexual posture of a wolf, and offered herself to her mother.

This episode lasted for approximately 20 minutes. The following night, after coitus with her husband she growled, scratched, and gnawed at the bed. She stated that the devil came into her body and she became an animal. Simultaneously, she experienced auditory hallucinations. There was no drug involvement or alcoholic intoxication. 

The patient was treated in a structured inpatient program…and placed on neuroleptic medication. During the first 3 weeks, she suffered relapses when she said such things as “I am a wolf of the night; I am a wolf of the day…I have claws, teeth, fangs, hair…and anguish is my prey at night…the gnashing and snarling of teeth…powerless is my cause, I am what I am and will always roam the earth long after death….”

She exhibited strong homosexual urges almost irresistible zoophilic drives, and masturbatory compulsions – culminating in the delusion of a wolflike metamorphosis...

By the fourth week she had stabilized considerably, reporting, “I went and looked into a mirror and the wolf eye was gone.” There was only one other short-lived relapse, which responded to reassurance by experienced personnel. With the termination of that episode, which occurred on the night of a full moon, she wrote what she experienced: “I don’t intend to give up my search for [what] I lack…in my present marriage…my search for such a hairy creature. I will haunt the graveyards…” She was discharged during the night week of hospitalization on neuroleptic medication.

This very ill woman was diagnosed with “pseudoneurotic schizophrenia.” Her symptoms, wrote the psychiatrists who authored this case report, “were organized about a lycanthropic matrix,” and included the following classic symptoms: 

1. Delusions of werewolf transformation under extreme stress.

2. Preoccupation with religious phenomenology, including feeling victimized by the evil eye.

3. Reference to obsessive need to frequent graveyards and woods.

 The causes of this terrible mental affliction include schizophrenia, manic-depressive psychosis, and psychomotor epilepsy. But there is also porphyria.

“Common to all the ‘scientific’ attempts at explanation mentioned here is the desire to make the actions of historical protagonists comprehensible in terms of modern categories. Even in the twentieth century, the sinister figure of the werewolf seems to spark the need for rationalization.”

— Nadine Metzger. Battling demons with medical authority: werewolves, physicians and rationalization. Hist Psychiatry 2013; 24(3): 341–355.

 Lycanthropy and Porphyria. Or not

Another possible cause of lycanthropy is the rare metabolic disease called porphyria, made famous as the cause of the madness of King George III. As a result missing enzymes (and there are several varieties of the illness) there is a build up of porphyrins in the body, which eventually become toxic. The condition is characterized by:

1.  Severe photosensitivity in which a vesicular erythema is produced by the action of light. This may be especially noticeable in the summer months or in a mountainous region.

2. The urine is often reddish-brown as a result of the presence of large quantities of porphyrins.

3. Over the years the skin lesions ulcerate, and attack the cartilage and bone. Over a period of years structures such as the nose, ears, eyelids and fingers undergo progressive mutilation.

4. The teeth may turn red or reddish brown due to the deposition of porphyrins.

There are a few suggestions in the medical literature that lycanthropy might be explained by porphyria (like this paper, and this one). In his frequently cited 1964 paper, the British physician Leon Illis wrote that “the red teeth, the passage of red urine, the nocturnal wanderings, the mutilation of face and hands,the deranged behaviour: what could these suggest to a primitive, fear-ridden,and relatively isolated community? Fig 2 gives an obvious answer.” And the figure is shown below.

Image of a victim of porphyria. Could this be a case mistaken for a werewolf? From L. Illis. On porphyria and the aetiology of werewolves. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 1964: 57; 23-26.

But others are not so sure. In his excellent review paper “Werewolves and the Abuse of History,” the Dutch anthropologist Willem de Blécourt wrote that we need to be careful of a special group of amateur werewolf authors. The doctors.

Not having been trained in either history of folklore (or cultural studies), they have used selective texts to diagnose “the werewolf.” One of the results is that werewolf publications are now saddled with what is confusingly called “the werewolf syndrome,” namely hypertrichosis, a rare somatic condition that leaves its sufferers with hair either all over their body or in places where it usually does not grow….they are also connected to another very rare condition,“congenital erythropoietic porphyria” (or CEP). Further, within psychiatry there is now a recognized affliction called “lycanthropy,” denoting humans who are under the delusion that they have changed into a number of animals, among them, a wolf.

The problem, according to Blecourt, begins with the belief that the werewolf legend must have something tangible behind it. As Illis wrote in 1964, “a belief as widespread both in time and place as that of the werwolf [Illis’s spelling] must have some basis in fact. Either werwolves exist or some phenomenon must exist or have existed on which, by the play of fear, superstition and chance, a legend was built and grew.” But Illis based himself on only one late nineteenth century Dutch report, which was “was not even a wolf, but only a translation of a local term, denoting someone who can change into a cat, boar, monkey, deer, water buffalo, crocodile, or ant heap.” This author, according to Blecourt, “appears not to have been too concerned with European werewolves, but to have specifically drawn his werewolf picture to fit porphyria symptoms.” The problem is that many of the modern explanations are based on film depictions of werewolves, which themselves reinvented the legend, rather than being based on archival sources. “What stands out in the flood of recent popular werewolf publications” Blecourt lamented, “is that their authors, apart from occasionally branching out to people who are shifting into other animals, pay abundant attention to fiction, especially as expressed on television and in the cinema, and to “scientific” theories about the beast’s origin.”

 Lycanthropy and melancholy

Is there a connection between lycanthropy and depression? In his very helpful paper Medical and Neuropsychiatric Aspects of Lycanthropy, Miles Drake explained thar melancholy, one of the four humors that were thought to control our health and character, “came also to represent the pathological state of mood aberration. Lycanthropy was widely held to represent an excess of melancholy.” While we read this connection in the ArtScroll translation of this page of Talmud, it can also be found in other texts. In 1586, the Italian Tomaso Garzoni published L’Hospedale de’ pazzi incurabilim, which was translated into English in 1600 as “The hospital for incurable fooles." In it, the author reported that

Among the humours of melancholy, the physicians place a kind of madness by the Greeks called Lycanthropia, termed by the latins insania lupina, or wolves furie: which bringeth a man to this point . . . that in Februarie he will goe out of the house in the night like a wolf, hunting about the graves of the dead with great howling, and pluck the dead mens bones out of the sepulchers, carrying them about the streets to the great fear and astonishment of all them that meet him ... melancholike persons of this kinde, have pale faces, soaked and hollow eyes, with a weak sight, never shedding one tear to the view of the world, a dry tongue, extreme thirst, and they want spittle and moisture exceedingly.

The connection between lycanthropy and melancholy (or what today we would call depression) was explicitly made by the English writer Robert Burton (1577-1640) in his massive work, The Anatomy of Melancholy, first published in 1621. Burton, who himself seems to have suffered from melancholy, wrote that the affliction can cause terrible physical suffering.

Melancholie abounding in their head, and occupieing their brane, hath deprived or rather depraved their judgements, and all their senses.., the force which melancholic hath, and the effects that it worketh in the bodie are almost incredible. For as some of these melancholike persons imagine, they are . . brute beasts .... Through melancholie they were alienated from themselves . . they may imagine, that they can transforme their owne bodies, which nevertheless remaineth in the former shape.

Burton noted that madness and melancholy are often conflated, and that the two can combine to produce religious visions and revelations, as well as lycanthropy:

There are other case reports about werewolves in the early modern period. Here is one from the French writer Simon Goulart’s Admirable and Memorable Histories, which was translated into English in 1607.

in the yeare 1541 who thought himselfe to bee a Wolfe, setting vpon diuers men in the fields, and slew some. In the end being with great difficultie taken, hee did constantlye affirme that hee was a Wolfe, and that there was no other difference, but that Wolues were commonlie hayrie without, and hee was betwixt the skinne and the flesh. Some (too barbarous and cruell Wolues in effect) desiring to trie the truth thereof, gaue him manie wounds vpon the armes and legges: but knowing their owne error, and the innocencie of the poore melancholic man, they committed him to the Surgions to cure, in whose hands hee dyed within fewe days after. ( page 387.)

“Lycanthropy is a rare phenomenon, but it does exist. It should be regarded as a complex and not a diagnostic entity. Furthermore, although it may generally be an expression of an underlying schizophrenic condition, at least five other differential diagnostic entities must be considered. ”

— Rosenstock H.A, Vincent K.R. A Case of Lycanthropy. Am J Psychiatry. 1977; 134:10; 1147-1149.

binyamin the werewolf

Since there was a widespread belief that people can turn into wolves, we should not be surprised that it can also be found in rabbinic literature. The most famous example is that of the twelfth century French scholar Rabbeinu Ephraim ben Shimshon in his commentary on the Torah. In a discussion about a verse that describes Binyamin, one of the sons of Jacob, as a “predatory wolf” (Genesis 44:29), Rabbenu Ephraim explained that this means Binyamin was a werewolf.

Image from here.

Another explanation: Binyamin was a “predatory wolf,” sometimes preying upon people. When it was time for him to change into a wolf, as it says, “Binyamin is a predatory wolf,” as long as he was with his father, he could rely upon a physician, and in that merit he did not change into a wolf. For thus it says, “And he shall leave his father and die” (Gen. 44:22)—namely, that when he separates from his father, and turns into a wolf with travelers, whoever finds him will kill him.

Rabbeinu Ephraim has more to say about werewolves in general, and how they relate to Binyamin. This can be found in his commentary to Genesis 35:27. It turns out that Binyamin the werewolf ate his mother, the matriarch Rachel:

Image from here.

There is a type of wolf that is called loup-garou (werewolf), which is a person that changes into a wolf. When it changes into a wolf, his feet emerge from between his shoulders. So too with Binyamin - “he dwells between the shoulders” (Deuteronomy 33:12). The solution for [dealing with] this wolf is that when it enters a house, and a person is frightened by it, he should take a firebrand and thrust it around, and he will not be harmed. So they would do in the Temple; each day, they would throw the ashes by the altar, as it is written, “and you shall place it by the altar” (Leviticus 6:3); and so is the norm with this person whose offspring turn into wolves, for a werewolf is born with teeth, which indicates that it is out to consume the world. Another explanation: a werewolf is born with teeth, to show that just as this is unusual, so too he will be different from other people. And likewise, Binyamin ate his mother, who died on his accord, as it is written, “And it was as her soul left her, for she was dying, and she called his name ‘the son of my affliction’ ” (Genesis 35:18).

Rashi also believed in Werewolves

Another medieval commentator, this one much better known, also believed in werewolves. He is known as Rashi. Here is his commentary on Job 5:23:

איוב 5:23

כִּ֤י עִם־אַבְנֵ֣י הַשָּׂדֶ֣ה בְרִיתֶ֑ךָ וְחַיַּ֥ת הַ֝שָּׂדֶ֗ה השְׁלְמָה־לָּֽךְ׃

For you will have a pact with the rocks in the field, And the beasts of the field will be your allies.

וחית השדה. הוא שנקרא גרוש"ה בלע"ז וזו היא חית השדה ממש ובלשון משנה תורת כהנים נקראים אדני השדה

and the beasts of the field That is what is known as grouse(?) in Old French, and this is actually a beast of the field. In the language of the Mishnah in Torath Kohanim, they are called “adnei hasadeh.”

In order to translate the old French word גרוש"ה (which should be read as garove), we turn to Otzar halo’azim, a dictionary of Rashi’s old French. Under entry #4208 we read the following:

Moshe Catano, the author of this dictionary, tells us that the Rashi was using the old French word for a “man-wolf, which is refers to the legends of a man that turns into a wolf.” So yes, Rashi seems to have believed in werewolves.

Summary

We have covered a lot of material, all of which was needed to explain not only the meaning of the talmudic word gandrofus, but also its use in the context of ancient nosology. Here is a summary:

1. The Talmud lists gandrofus as a kind of illness which while serious, is not enough to provide an exemption from the mitzvah to appear in the Temple.

2. ArtScroll, Soncino and Jastrow (but not Rashi) explain it to mean lycanthropy and (per ArtScroll,) melancholy.

3. Lycanthropy, the belief that a person could turn into a wolf, was a widespread belief in the ancient world, the medieval world, and the early modern world too. Rashi cites the legend.

4. Lycanthropy was associated with melancholy, an early term for depression.

5. And so gandrofus is the affliction of lycanthropy and depression.

6. Despite this, a person suffering from gandrofus is not exempt from the mitzvah of appearing in the Temple.

7. ArtScroll’s translation is the preferred one.

8. QED.