Bava Basra 12b ~ Prophecy and Mental Illness

בבא בתרא יב, ב 

א"ר יוחנן מיום שחרב בית המקדש ניטלה נבואה מן הנביאים וניתנה לשוטים ולתינוקות

Rabbi Yochanan said: "After the destruction of the Holy Temple the power of prophecy was taken from the prophets and given to the mentally ill and to children. 

A long time ago I saw a patient in the emergency department who was brought in by ambulance after a worried relative called about his odd behavior. The patient had long been hearing voices. In his apartment the medics had found a little clay model of Jerusalem which the voices had told him to besiege. He told the medics that the voices had told him to lay on his right side for exactly three hundred and ninety days, which he had done.  He survived by eating through a store of barley, beans and lentils which those same voices had told him to prepare. The voices also told him to bake bread over a fire that burned human excrement, but the patient had protested, and the voices agreed to let him burn animal dung instead.  

In The Madhouse — Plate 8. From A Rake's Progress, William Hogarth, 1734.

Actually I made that up. Although I've treated hundreds of acutely schizophrenic, delusional or manic patients as an ER doctor, I have never treated a person like the one I just described.  But there was a person who did follow the voice in his head that told him to do all these things -the clay models, the laying on one side for over a year, the animal dung to bake bread.  All of it. His name was Ezekiel, and he was a prophet in our Bible.

“You also, son of man, take a brick and lay it before you and inscribe a city on it, even Jerusalem. Then lay siege against it, and build a fort against it, and build a mound against it; set camps and place battering rams against it all around. Moreover take for yourself an iron plate and set it up for a wall of iron between you and the city. And set your face against it so that it is besieged, and lay siege against it. This shall be a sign to the house of Israel. As for you, lie down on your left side and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel upon it. According to the number of the days that you lie on it, you shall bear their iniquity. For I have laid upon you the years of their iniquity according to the number of the days, three hundred and ninety days. So you shall bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. When you have accomplished them, lie again on your right side, and you shall bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days. I have appointed you each day for a year. Therefore you shall set your face toward the siege of Jerusalem, and your arm shall be uncovered, and you shall prophesy against it. I will lay bands upon you, and you shall not turn yourself from one side to another until you have ended the days of your siege. Also take for yourself wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentils, and millet, and spelt, and put them in one vessel and make bread. According to the number of the days that you lie on your side, three hundred and ninety days, you shall eat it. ...You shall eat it as barley cake, having baked it in their sight with dung that comes out of man.... Then I said, “Ah, Lord God! My soul has not been defiled. For from my youth up even until now I have not eaten of that which dies of itself, or is torn in pieces, nor has abominable meat come into my mouth. Then He said to me, “I have given you cow dung instead of man’s dung over which you shall prepare your bread.””

— Ezekiel 4:1-15

In today's page of Talmud, Rabbi Yochanan declares not that prophecy is dead, but that the kind of things once said by the prophets of the Bible will henceforth be said by those with mental illness (שוטים) and children.  Rabbi Yochanan may have been the first to see the overlap of mental illness and the kinds of things once said by prophets of the Bible, but today psychiatrists and others involved in the care of the mentally ill have noted this overlap too.

Abraham and Moses on the Psychiatrist's Couch

In 2012, three psychiatrists from the Harvard  Medical School asked a simple question: How does a psychiatrist today help a patient to understand that their psychotic symptoms are not caused by supernatural visitations, "when our civilization recognizes similar phenomena in revered religious figures?" So the psychiatrists set off to examine the way in which revelation of the divine was described in the Bible, "with the intent of promoting scholarly dialogue about the rational limits of human experience." All this was to "educate persons living with mental illness, healthcare providers, and the general public that persons with psychotic symptoms may have had a considerable influence on the development of Western civilization."

They analyzed four religious figures, including two from our tradition, from a behavioral, neurologic, and neuropsychiatric perspective. They found that, based on the text of the Bible, Abraham had no affective, neurological or medical conditions, and since he showed no evidence of disorganization, they doubted that Abraham had classic schizophrenia too.  But they raised the possibility of his having paranoid schizophrenia. This is a subtype of schizophrenia "that tends to manifest little or no disorganization, has preserved functional affect, and is associated with better occupational and social functioning." The psychiatrists based this diagnosis on the voices Abraham kept hearing, and "a very Abraham-centered worldview of dispensing universal blessings and curses based on one’s interactions with Abraham." Moses had "auditory and visual hallucinations of a grandiose nature with delusional thought content." He also exhibited "hyperreligiosity, grandiosity, delusions, paranoia, referential thinking, and phobia (about people viewing his face)." They were not certain though, if Moses displayed symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia, or if instead, he may have had a bipolar disorder.  Jesus also displayed auditory and visual hallucinations, "delusions, referential thinking, paranoid-type thought content, and hyperreligiosity"(!) The Harvard psychiatrists also note that the lifetime risk of suicide in schizophrenia is 5-10%, and that Jesus "appears to have deliberately placed himself in circumstances wherein he anticipated his execution." Finally Paul is analyzed. He seems to have had a large number of  auditory and visual perceptual experiences "that resemble grandiose hallucinations with delusional thought content." They reject the suggestion that he suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy, and they note that Paul wrote a great deal. This kind of productive writing, they claim, "tends to be more strongly associated with mood disorders than psychosis or epilepsy. This is persuasive toward Paul having a mood disorder, rather than schizophrenia or epilepsy."

Murray, E. Cunningham M. Price B . The Role of Psychotic Disorders in Religious History Considered. Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences 2012; 24:410–426

The point of all this analysis was not to test the the faith of those who believe in the prophetic abilities of Abraham, Moses, Jesus or Paul. Rather, it was to emphasize how those with what we today would describe as the florid symptoms of mental illness are revered as religious teachers. And one more thing.  They claimed not to have any disrespect for those with religious beliefs towards any of these four figures.

Discussion about a potential role for the supernatural is outside the scope of our article and is reserved for the communities of faithful, religious scholars, and theologians, with one exception. It is our opinion that a neuropsychiatric accounting of behavior need not be viewed as excluding a role for the supernatural. Herein, neuropsychiatric mechanisms have been proposed through which behaviors and actions might be understood. For those who believe in omnipotent and omniscient supernatural forces, this should pose no obstacle, but might rather serve as a mechanistic explanation of how events may have happened. No disrespect is intended toward anyone’s beliefs or these venerable figures.

Nocturnal Hallucinations in Israeli Ultra-Orthodox Jews

Since Rabbi Yochanan described prophecy as being given to those with mental illness, it might be worth looking at the content of some hallucinations in the Jewish mentally ill.  Is there anything in their hallucinations that we could perhaps interpret as prophecy? Let's turn to a helpful paper published in 2001, which described the nocturnal hallucinations in 122 ultra-orthodox Jewish Israeli men. The authors were two psychiatrists who noted that this symptom of nocturnal hallucinations only seemed to affect male members of the ultra-orthodox population.  The group who experienced these nocturnal hallucinations were younger than other patients with symptoms of mental illness, "and their visit was more often associated with a request for a psychiatric evaluation before receiving an exemption from compulsory army service." But let's put that rather disquieting fact aside, and move on. The majority of the hallucinations were frightening, and included figures of the sort that "may appear among the fears of ultra-orthodox men," including (and I'm not making this up) "policemen, soldiers [and] Sephardi men." 

From Greenberg D. Brome, D.  Nocturnal Hallucinations in Ultra-orthodox Jewish Israeli Men. Psychiatry 2001. 64 (1); 81-90.

Now you might be thinking that this group included a fair number of malingerers who were keen to avoid military service. The psychiatrists considered that possibility too, but noted that about 45% of the men came for more than one visit, and about 11% did not not request a recommendation letter for the army.  So they concluded that "the night hallucinations are a real clinical and culturally determined phenomenon, which in a minority of cases may have been misused and presented for purposes of gaining exemption from army service."  In any event, most ended up with a diagnosis of "subnormality and/or psychosis," with a generally good prognosis. But there is nothing that appears to be particularly prophetic in the thoughts of this group of mentally ill Jewish men.

“We suggest that some of civilization’s most significant religious figures may have had psychotic symptoms that contributed inspiration for their revelations. It is hoped that this analysis will engender scholarly dialogue about the rational limits of human experience and serve to educate the general public, persons living with mental illness, and healthcare providers about the possibility that persons with primary and mood disorder-associated psychotic-spectrum disorders have had a monumental influence on civilization.”

— Murray, E. Cunningham M. Price B . The Role of Psychotic Disorders in Religious History Considered.Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences 2012; 24:410–426

On the origin of prophecy today

In his seventeenth century commentary on the Talmud, R. Samuel Eliezer ben R. Judah HaLevi Edels, better known as the Maharsha, suggests that there are different kinds of prophecy.

מהרש"א חידושי אגדות מסכת בבא בתרא דף יב עמוד ב 

וענין שנטלה מן הנביאים ונתנה לשוטים אין הנבואות שוות דנבואת נביאים ע"י הש"י או ע"י מלאכיו אבל נבואת השוטים ותינוקות אינו אלא ע"י שד דהכי מחלק בפרק הרואה בין החלומות שיש מהן ע"י המלאך ויש מהן ע"י שד

"Not all prophecy is the same. For the prophecy of the prophets was endowed by God, Blessed be He, or one of His angels, whereas the prophecy of the mentally ill and children is endowed by a demon..."

Which may only serve to scare the mentally ill even more. R. Yochanan's statement reminds us that the line between mental disease and religiously inspired hallucinations (or delusions) is very blurred, and that, whatever the source of their visions and hallucinations, the mentally ill deserve more than our pity or support. They deserve our respect. 

“If you hear a car backfire and you believe that it may be a pistol shot, that is an illusion. If you hear a pistol shot when there has been no sound (either of a pistol or a car backfiring), that is a hallucination. If you hear a pistol shot and believe that it is God firing a pistol at you because you [as a physician] have ordered inappropriate lab tests, that is a delusion. If [a physician] decides he is ordering too many laboratory tests in the absence of an external sensory stimulus, that is called enlightenment.”

— Joseph Sapira. The Art and Science of Bedside Diagnosis. Williams & Wilkins 1990. p518.

Talmudology on the Parsha, Korach: Pittum Haketoret and Plagues

במדבר יז: 11-14

וַיֹּאמֶר מֹשֶׁה אֶל־אַהֲרֹן קַח אֶת־הַמַּחְתָּה וְתֶן־עָלֶיהָ אֵשׁ מֵעַל הַמִּזְבֵּחַ וְשִׂים קְטֹרֶת וְהוֹלֵךְ מְהֵרָה אֶל־הָעֵדָה וְכַפֵּר עֲלֵיהֶם כִּי־יָצָא הַקֶּצֶף מִלִּפְנֵי יְהֹוָה הֵחֵל הַנָּגֶף: וַיִּקַּח אַהֲרֹן כַּאֲשֶׁר  דִּבֶּר מֹשֶׁה וַיָּרץ אֶל־תּוֹךְ הַקָּהָל וְהִנֵּה הֵחֵל הַנֶּגֶף בָּעָם וַיִּתֵּן אֶת־הַקְּטֹרֶת וַיְכַפֵּר עַל־הָעָם: וַיַּעֲמֹד בֵּין־הַמֵּתִים וּבֵין הַחַיִּים וַתֵּעָצַר הַמַּגֵּפָה׃ וַיִּהְיוּ הַמֵּתִים בַּמַּגֵּפָה אַרְבָּעָה עָשָׂר אֶלֶף וּשְׁבַע מֵאוֹת מִלְּבַד הַמֵּתִים עַל־דְּבַר־קֹרַח׃

Then Moses said to Aaron, “Take the fire pan, and put on it fire from the altar. Add incense and take it quickly to the community and make expiation for them. For wrath has gone forth from the Lord: the plague has begun!”

Aaron took it, as Moses had ordered, and ran to the midst of the congregation, where the plague had begun among the people. He put on the incense and made expiation for the people; he stood between the dead and the living until the plague was checked. Those who died of the plague came to fourteen thousand and seven hundred, aside from those who died on account of Korah.

Over the many centuries that Jews have recited prayers for protection against plagues and pandemics, the content of these prayers varied depending on the location, local custom, and the whims of the person compiling them. The one feature that remained fairly constant was that they often contained a section known as Pittum Haketoret [The Mixture of the Incense]. If you think back just a couple of years to the COVID pandemic, you yourself may have recited this passage to ward off the virus. But did you ever wonder why it was this passage that was chosen as a central part of our pandemic liturgy?

As we will learn, the origin of the custom to recite Pittum Haketoret to ward off a pandemic is found in this week’s parsha.

What is Pittum Haketoret?

Pittum Haketoret are the opening words of a list of ingredients that were used to make the incense for the Temple in Jerusalem, as recorded in the Talmud: 

How is the blending of the incense [Pittum Haketoret]) performed? Balm, and onycha, and galbanum, and frankincense, each of these by a weight of seventy maneh, Myrrh, and cassia, and spikenard, and saffron, each of these by a weight of sixteen maneh. Costus by a weight of twelve maneh; three maneh of aromatic bark; and nine maneh of cinnamon. Kersannah lye of the volume of nine kav; Cyprus wine of the volume of three se’a and three more kav, a half-se’a. If one does not have Cyprus wine he brings old white wine. Sodomite salt is brought by the volume of a quarter-kav. Lastly, a minimal amount of the smoke raiser, [a plant that causes the smoke of the incense to rise properly]. Rabbi Natan says: Also a minimal amount of Jordan amber…

There is nothing in this talmudic recipe to suggest any role for the incense as either a prophylactic or a cure for diseases. But there is a cryptic passage elsewhere in the Talmud that indicates just such a role.

The Ketoret as a Cure for Pandemics

In a fanciful discussion that takes place immediately before the Torah is to be given at Mount Sinai, the angels object. Human beings, they claim, are not worthy of such a sublime document; it should stay with them. Moses, who had ascended to heaven to receive the Torah, provided a series of clever answers. He asks God to give an example of something written in the Torah. Perhaps sensing an opportunity here, God replies with the very first of the Ten Commandments: “I am the Lord your God who took you out from Egypt, from the house of bondage (Ex. 20:2).” Moses then asks the angels: “Did you descend to Egypt? Were you enslaved to Pharaoh? Why then should the Torah be yours?”  Moses asks for other examples. God mentions the fourth commandment, “to remember the Sabbath day,” but the angels do not work and so they have no need for a day of rest. The fifth commandment is to “honor your father and mother.” But the angels have neither a father nor a mother. How then, Moses asks rhetorically, could they be commanded to honor their parents? The angels quickly cede the case, “and they agreed with the Holy One, blessed be he” that the Jewish people deserved to be given the Torah. In fact, they were so impressed with Moses’ powers of persuasion that “immediately, each and every one of the angels became an admirer of Moses and passed something to him” as a gift. The Talmud only records one of those gifts, along with its donor.

שבת פט, א

 מִיָּד כל אֶחָד וְאֶחָד נַעֲשָׂה לוֹ אוֹהֵב וּמָסַר לוֹ דָּבָר… אַף מַלְאַךְ הַמָּוֶת מָסַר לוֹ דָּבָר, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: ״וַיִּתֵּן אֶת הַקְּטֹרֶת וַיְכַפֵּר עַל הָעָם״, וְאוֹמֵר: ״וַיַּעֲמֹד בֵּין הַמֵּתִים וּבֵין הַחַיִּים וְגוֹ׳״ — אִי לָאו דַּאֲמַר לֵיהּ מִי הֲוָה יָדַע?

Even the Angel of Death gave him something, as Moses told Aaron how to stop the plague, as it is stated: “And he placed the incense, and he atoned for the people” (Numbers 17:12). And the verse says: “And he stood between the dead and the living, and the plague was stopped” (Numbers 17:13). If it were not that the Angel of Death told him this remedy, would he have known it?

And so according to the Talmud, the secret that the holy incense, the ketoret, can cure a plague was delivered to Moses by none other than the Angel of Death, who surrendered the means to thwart mortality itself. This is the earliest Jewish reference connecting the incense with pandemics.

 Pittum Haketoret in the Siddur of Amram Gaon

It was Amram Gaon (d. 875), the ninth century leader of the Jewish community of Sura in Babylon who first formally arranged the prayers that became the standard Jewish liturgy who included Pittum Haketoret. It was to be recited towards the end of the daily morning and evening prayers “because this was the commanded time” to make the incense. But he made no mention of reciting this passage to prevent plagues.

Ramban on the Ketoret

That connection was made later, and among the earliest rabbis to ascribe magical healing powers to the incense was the Spanish exegete Nachmanides, Rabbi Moses ben Nachman, (c.1194–c.1270), known best by his acronym Ramban. He noted that in the description of the construction of the Mishkan, (the Tabernacle) and its many vessels found in the Book of Exodus, the command to build an Altar of Incense was not written with the commandments to build the other objects. Commenting on the verse in the Torah (Exod. 30:1) that reads “You shall make an altar for burning incense; make it of acacia wood,” Ramban wrote that this altar had an additional task, beyond that of burning the incense. It was somehow to sanctify the glory of God, and in so doing it was endowed with special power:

  רמב’ן על התורה שמות 30:1 

אמר כי עוד יתחייב להם שיעשו מזבח מקטר קטרת להקטיר לכבוד השם. וזהו רז שנמסר למשה רבינו שהקטרת עוצרת המגפה (שבת פט.), כי הקטרת במדת הדין (זוה''ק ויקרא יח), שנאמר ישימו קטורה באפך (דברים לג י), 

Therefore, he now said that they will yet be obliged to make an altar for the burning of incense, to burn it for the glory of God. This was a secret which was transmitted to Moses our Teacher, that the incense stops the plague…

In support of this claim, Ramban cited another passage from the Torah - the one in this week’s parsha. In the aftermath of the Korach-led rebellion against Moses, “the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up with their households, all Korah’s people and all their possessions.” But while this destroyed the rebel leadership, it did nothing to quell the uprising, and so God next brought a plague [nagef] against the rebels. And then comes the passage with which we opened:

Then Moses said to Aaron, “Take the fire pan, and put on it fire from the altar. Add incense and take it quickly to the community and make expiation for them. For wrath has gone forth from the Lord: the plague has begun!”

Aaron took it, as Moses had ordered, and ran to the midst of the congregation, where the plague had begun among the people. He put on the incense and made expiation for the people; he stood between the dead and the living until the plague was checked. Those who died of the plague came to fourteen thousand and seven hundred, aside from those who died on account of Korah.

 What Happens when there are no more Ketoret?

But just knowing that the incense could cure a plague was not helpful, for two reasons. First, the precise identification of its ingredients had long since been lost, and second, even had they been known, it was strictly forbidden for outsiders to create the incense used in the Temple. The solution came with the creation of a brand-new approach in which merely reciting the section of the Talmud called Pittum Haketoret would end a pandemic.

This next step was made by the Zohar [Book of Splendor], the central work of Jewish mysticism. It was written by the Spanish rabbi and kabbalist Moses de Leon (c.1240-1305) who himself attributed it to the second century talmudic sage Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai. Despite its murky origins, it quickly became widely read in Europe and beyond. And it is in the Zohar (Midrash Hane’elam, 200) that we find the following passage about the power of Pittum Haketoret to halt a plague.

Rabbi Pinhas said. I was once walking when I met the prophet Elijah. I said to him “could my master tell me something that will be good for people’s health [ma’aley leberiasah]?” He replied…“when there is a pandemic, a decree is made to the heavens that if everyone enters the House of Prayer or the House of Study and recites the passage about the Making of the Spices [Ketoret Hasamim] with great concentration and intention, the plague among Israel will end.

One who is being pursued by Justice needs this incense…for it helps to remove the claims of Justice against him, and in this way he rids himself of it. Other passages from the Zohar suggests a similar power:

זוהר פנחס 224א

מַאן דְּיֵימָּא פִּטּוּם הַקְּטֹרֶת, בָּתַר תְּהִלָּה לְדָוִד, בָּטִיל מוֹתָנָא מִבֵּיתָא

No harm will befall one who recites Pittum Haketoret after [Psalm 145 that begins with the words] “A Psalm of David” [in the morning service], neither to him nor his family.

Hayyim Vital, The Safed Circle, and Pittum Haketoret

These passages from the Zohar played a central role in the later adoption of the custom to recite Pittum Haketoret during a pandemic. They were popularized by the kabbalist Hayyim Vital (1542-1620) who lived in Safed in northern Israel. He was the most important and influential student of the mystic Isaac Luria, who himself died during a plague in 1572 at the age of only thirty-eight. Vital recorded Luria’s teachings in many manuscripts. These were later edited by Vital’s son Shmuel, who organized them thematically into a work known today as Shemonah She’arim [The Eight Gates]. Shemonah She’arim remained unpublished until it was eventually brought to the printing press in Jerusalem between 1850 and 1898.

In Vital’s mystical universe there were layers of interposing kellipot or shells of evil that prevented God’s divine light from properly illuminating the word.These shells also played a role in pandemics and plagues.

 These kellipot...are responsible for infecting and attacking a person during a plague. And they do not leave a person after attacking him, but remain attached to him and surround him in every direction. Furthermore, they remain in the neighborhood where there are sick people, and are even found in pots and pans and clothes. Anyone who ventures there can be contaminated through these very same kellipot…

But there was hope; Pittum Haketoret had the mystical ability to intervene:

 The eleven ingredients of the ketoret are that which remains inside the kellipot…they correspond to the eleven lights of holiness which animate the kellipot. And when they [the ingredients] rise up [to the celestial heights] they remove the lights from the kellipot which are left without any life. They die, and can no longer do any damage…

Hayyim Vital made the recitation of Pittum Haketoret part of his innovative nightly ritual of prayer and study called Tikkun Hatzot [The Midnight Order]. He encouraged it to be recited in a minyan [quorum] of ten Godfearing men, because that is when “it will make the greatest impact above.”

There were others in the Safed circle who also adopted the custom of Pittum Haketoret. Moses di Trani (known by his acronym Mabit,1505-1585) was appointed as a rabbi in Safed in 1525 and was a contemporary of and knew Hayyim Vital. In his Bet Elohim [House of God] published in 1576, Mabit wrote that Pittum Haketoret was to be recited twice a day “for it has a special power [mesugal] over plagues.” In a demonstration of his exegetical skills he focused on one of the eleven ingredients called helbona, (usually translated as galbanum,) which was the only one to have an unpleasant taste and smell.

The foul smell of the helbona is mixed with the other ingredients until it smells as agreeable as they do. This is an allusion to the Angel of Death who resembles the helbona and who hides among people…when the people are good and honest in their hearts, and when they truly repent, the Angel of Death cannot overpower them. In fact, it is they who can overpower the Angel of Death…just like the helbona whose foul smell cannot be detected when it is mixed with the other ten ingredients…

The Italian Jewish physician Abraham ben Hananiah Yagel (1553-c.1624) also emphasized the importance of Pittum Haketoret, in his work on the etiology and treatment of plagues called Moshia Hosim [The Savior of Those Who Seek Refuge]:

I heard from the mouth of the great sage our teacher and rabbi, Rabbi Judah Moscato, (may his Rock protect him), that when our eyes are opened to the incense offering [ma‘aseh ketoret], and when we see all the elements in it one by one, we will see that all of them are beautiful and treasured [and work] by natural means to stop a plague or devastation, for by their strength the air will be purified.

The Pivotal Role of Ma’avar Yabok

About forty years after Yagel’s book was published, another work highlighted the importance of Pittum Haketoret. It was called Ma’avar Yabbok [Crossing the Yabbok], and was written by another Italian Jew named Aaron Berahia Modena. The book contained all the rituals, prayers, customs and practices that surrounded the process of dying, death, burial and mourning. It is a lengthy but extremely popular book that has been republished in more than forty editions over the last three hundred years. The author began a section dedicated to the mystical properties of reciting Pittum Haketoret by reminding his readers that while it was no-longer possible to offer the incense in Jerusalem, by the study of the ingredients and the words of the recipe “the light of the Upper World is revealed.” He continued with what is perhaps the strongest exposition of the power of Pittum Haketoret to heal found in all of early modern Jewish literature.  

Aaron Berachia Modena, Ma’avar Yabbok. Mantua: Yehudah Shmuel Maphrosha and Sons, 1626: 117b.

When a person studies the regulations about the sacrifices [torat korbanot] with the intention to leave the impure qualities that caused his [sinful] actions, there is no doubt that these very letters [of the words that he is studying] will intervene above and cause wonderous things. And through repentance he can expel the Destroyer, and in the place of a spirit of distortion,[iv] a pure spirit will enter his soul. Through the power of these letters Divine Providence will be stirred to lighten the places darkened by his sins…Therefore some of these passages about the sacrifices are said early in the morning and in the evening, in order that a person will be purified by them.

In this passage in Ma’avar Yabbok we find articulation of the paradigm shift regarding Pittum Haketoret that began with the Zohar. It was no longer the now unobtainable incense that could cure. Instead, reciting their ingredients could do so. For moderns, it is as if penicillin was no longer needed to fight infection; it was now enough to read the ingredients on the side of the bottle.

This then is the lengthy evolution of the ability of Pittum Haketoret to fight pandemics. It began in this week’s parsha with the miraculous story Aaron running through the Israelite camp with a pan of incense to end the plague caused by the rebellion of Korach. It ended with another miraculous story: that just by reading the ingredients of the incense, their power to cure end pandemics could be triggered.

The Best Segulah - listen to the Health Authorities

In his book published in response to the COVID pandemic, Rabbi Asher Weiss addressed the question using special remedies (segulot) to prevent illness.  Rav Weiss, who was born in the US in 1953 and lives in Israel, is the author of several works and responsa, is now the posek  for Shaarei Zedek hospital in Jerusalem.

His answer was brief but unequivocal. The first response during a pandemic was “to obey all of the instructions issued by the [Israeli] Ministry of Health: to be careful with social distancing and the like.”

Next, Rabbi Weiss recommended the increased study of the Torah accompanied with prayers and the recitation of psalms which would arouse “Heavenly mercy.” This should be accompanied with more acts of interpersonal kindness, “because being kind is an especially important remedy [segulah] to end a plague. Despite the ease with which these additional measures may be carried out, Rabbi Weiss noted with regret that “people continue to ask for special remedies (segulot meyuhadot) during the pandemic.”  

In truth, we are a generation that runs after these remedies. Innocent and honest people seek out all kinds of mystics [mekubalim leminehem] asking for remedies for everything. To our great sadness, the more bizarre the remedy, the more people want it. 

Bava Basra 3b ~ How to Mellify a Corpse

Herod the Weird

Today's page of Talmud contains a bizarre account of the sexual proclivities of Herod the Great, the Jewish Roman King who died in 4 BCE. Herod took a fancy to one of the women in the House of the Hasmoneans, where he was a slave. He led a rebellion, killing all members of the Hasmonean house but the one woman of his desires. Then comes this:  

בבא בתרא ג, ב

 כי חזת ההיא ינוקתא דקא בעי למינסבה סליקא לאיגרא ורמא קלא אמרה כל מאן דאתי ואמר מבית חשמונאי קאתינא עבדא הוא דלא אישתיירא מינייהו אלא ההיא ינוקתא וההיא ינוקתא נפלה מאיגרא לארעא טמנה שבע שנין בדובשא איכא דאמרי בא עליה איכא דאמרי לא בא עליה

When she saw that he [Herod] wanted to marry her, she went up on to a roof and cried out "...I am throwing myself down from this roof." He preserved her body in honey for seven years. Some say that he practiced necrophilia with her, others that he did not...

While studying Bava Kamma we discussed the medicinal properties of honey. We noted that although the Talmud described honey as being harmful to your health, it is in fact very good for you. It has antibiotic and antiviral properties, helps with a cough, and has been claimed as a therapy for dozens of medical conditions.  In today's page of Talmud we can add another use for honey: to preserve body parts. Or even whole bodies.

Honey as a MEDICAL Preservative

Dr. Shankargouda Patil is a senior lecturer at the Ramaiah Dental College in Bangalore, India, and has published two papers on honey as a preservative. In one experiment Dr. Patil took "commercially available fresh goat meat" and placed each bit into containers containing either formalin, water, honey or jaggery syrup. (Jaggery syrup being a coarse brown Indian sugar made by evaporating the sap of palm trees.) After waiting all of twenty-four hours he then processed the tissues and stained them as you would any medical specimen.  He noted that although formalin is routinely used to preserve medical specimens, it is highly toxic. And as I recall from my days in the lab, highly smelly. So it makes sense to see if there are alternative preservatives.  Like honey. 

Photomicrograph of the tissues fixed in: A. Formalin, B. Honey, C. Sugar syrup, D. Molasses syrup, E. Distilled water (H & E, 40X). From Patil S, Premalatha B R, Rao R S, Ganavi B S. Revelation in the Field of Tissue Preservation – A Preliminary Study on Natural Formalin Substitutes. J Int Oral Health 2013; 5(1):31-38.

Patil notes that honey's high osmolarity, low pH and the presence of components such as hydrogen peroxide and phenol inhibine in it all contribute to its anti-oxidative and antibacterial effect. Here is how he thinks honey works as a fixative:

From Patil S, Premalatha B R, Rao R S, Ganavi B S. Revelation in the Field of Tissue Preservation – A Preliminary Study on Natural Formalin Substitutes. J Int Oral Health 2013; 5(1):31-38.

Ever keen to push the boundaries of honey as a medical preservative, Dr Patil published a second paper titled Natural sweeteners as fixatives in histopathology: A longitudinal study. This time he studied the fixative property of jaggery and honey over a six-month period and compared them with formalin as a control.

From Patil S, et al. Natural sweeteners as fixatives in histopathology: A longitudinal study. Journal of Natural Science, Biology and Medicine 2015, 6 (1); 67-70  

Macroscopic appearance of tissues after 6 months of fixation with: (a) Formalin, (b) jaggery, and (c) honey. From Patil S, et al. 2015. 

The conclusion from all this was that at the end of six months, honey was as good a fixative as formalin. In addition, the tissues preserved in honey had no significant odor, while the formalin preserved tissues were "pungent."  On the down side though, honey left the tissues a light-brown color, while formalin caused no color change.  But all this is small potatoes compared to Herod's efforts to preserve an entire human corpse. And it turns out that Herod wasn't the only one who carried out this rather peculiar exercise. 

“הדבש נראה שיש לו שתי סגולות האחת למהר למחות ולכלות הדברים הנחתכים הנופלים לתוכו. והשניה להעמיד ולקיים הדברים הנחתכים הנטמנים בתוכו”

— שו"ת הרשב"א חלק א סימן פ

IT JUST GOT WEIRDER

Human female fetus (a) 20 weeks gestational age before and, (b) after embalming for one month in honey. From Sharquie K.E. Najim R.A. Embalming with honey. Saudi Med J 2004; 25 (11). 1755-1756.

In a paper published in 2004 in the Saudi Medical Journal, researchers from the medical college of Baghdad took these experiments to a whole new level. They preserved mice, rabbits and then ... two human fetuses in honey, to evaluate the embalming qualities of honey.

After embalming the 2 human fetuses in honey for one month and leaving them to dry at room temperature, they were mummified and shrunken. The weight of the first fetus changed from 500gm to 115gm while the second fetus weight changed from 400g to 95g. Both fetuses were darker in color. Both fetuses were observed for a period of one year without any change in their shape despite being kept at room temperature.

In case you were wondering, the authors note that "the protocol for the research project was approved by the ethical committee at the College of Medicine, University of Baghdad, Iraq. For human fetuses embalming, the nature of the experiment was explained to the parents and their approval was taken, to use the fetus for the experiments." Well that makes me feel a whole lot better.

Preserving Human Corpses in Honey

In her entertaining book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Mary Roach wrote that "in twelfth-century Arabia, it was possible to procure an item known as a mellified man. The verb to mellify" she continues, "comes from the Latin for honey, mel. Mellified man was dead human remains steeped in honey." Vicki Leon picks up the story in her equally entertaining book How to Mellify a Corpse: And Other Human Stories of Ancient Science and Superstition.

It had long been common knowledge that the Babylonians embalmed with wax and honey. But the big news began when Alexander the Great died at age thirty-three. Always organized, Alex had left pre-need instructions to mellify his remains. The high sugar content of honey draws water from cells and gradually dehydrates tissues. Thus, if honey happens to surround a corpse, under the right conditions it produces a drying action while also preserving.  It seemed to work for Alex. His body survived a 1,000-mile road trip, a corpse-napping and decades-long display u a glass coffin in Memphis, Egypt - and he was still being called 'lifelike' when last seen centuries later by Roman Emperor Carcalla.

The story of Herod's sexual proclivities with a dead body recounted in today's page of Talmud are, I hope, wildly exaggerated.  But the ability of honey to preserve a dead body are, it turns out, quite likely to be true.  Just try to forget all this by next Rosh Hashanah. 

Talmudology on the Parsha, Shelach: How Do You Make Techelet?

במדבר 15: 27–28

וַיֹּאמֶר יְהֹוָה אֶל־מֹשֶׁה לֵּאמֹר׃

דַּבֵּר אֶל־בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וְאָמַרְתָּ אֲלֵהֶם וְעָשׂוּ לָהֶם צִיצִת עַל־כַּנְפֵי בִגְדֵיהֶם לְדֹרֹתָם וְנָתְנוּ עַל־צִיצִת הַכָּנָף פְּתִיל תְּכֵלֶת׃

The LORD said to Moses as follows: Speak to the Israelite people and instruct them to make for themselves fringes on the corners of their garments throughout the ages; let them attach a cord of blue to the fringe at each corner.

The Blood of the Chilazon

The Torah teaches that the fringes of some garments must have a blue cord running through them. But it leaves out the details of how to make this color, which was a lot more difficult than you may have thought. The rabbis of the Talmud stepped in and identified the ingredients:

מנחות מב, ב

אמר ליה אביי לרב שמואל בר רב יהודה הא תכילתא היכי צבעיתו לה אמר ליה מייתינן דם חלזון וסמנין ורמינן להו ביורה [ומרתחינן ליה] ושקלינא פורתא בביעתא וטעמינן להו באודרא ושדינן ליה לההוא ביעתא וקלינן ליה לאודרא

From here.

Abaye said to Rav Shmuel bar Rav Yehuda: How do you dye this sky-blue wool to be used for ritual fringes? Rav Shmuel bar Rav Yehuda said to Abaye: We bring blood of a chilazon and various herbs and put them in a pot and boil them. And then we take a bit of the resulting dye in an egg shell and test it by using it to dye a wad of wool to see if it has attained the desired hue. And then we throw away that egg shell and its contents and burn the wad of wool.

It is clear from Rav Shmuel's detailed instructions that the entire process depends on one ingredient - "the blood of the chilazon" - which was used to make the dye that produced techelet and color the ritual fringes known as tzitzit. But what exactly is the chilazon? It turns out to be a rather common snail found in the Mediterranean, but for centuries the identity of the chilazon was lost. Here is the story of how it was re-discovered.

Pliny the Elder and his recipe

It wasn't just the Jews that were boiling up blue dye. Pliny the Elder (23-79 CE.) lived at least two  centuries before Abaye and Rav Shmuel, and left us his own version of the process outlined in the Talmud:

The most favourable season for taking these fish is after the rising of the Dog-star, or else before spring... After it is taken, the vein is extracted...to which it is requisite to add salt, a sextarius [~20oz] to every hundred pounds of juice...leave them to steep for a period of three days...then set to boil in vessels of tin... About the tenth day, generally, the whole contents of the cauldron are in a liquified state, upon which a fleece...is plunged into it by way of making trial...The wool is left to lie in soak for five hours, and then, after carding it, it is thrown in again, until it has fully imbibed the colour... To produce the Tyrian hue the wool is soaked in the juice of the pelagiæ while the mixture is in an uncooked and raw state; after which its tint is changed by being dipped in the juice of the buccinum [a sea snail]. It is considered of the best quality when it has exactly the colour of clotted blood, and is of a blackish hue to the sight, but of a shining appearance when held up to the light; hence it is that we find Homer speaking of "purple blood".

So Pliny described a “fish” as the source of the dye. Was this the sea creature called the chilazon? Later in the same tractate (44a) we have another description of the mysterious chilazon.

ת"ר חלזון זהו גופו דומה לים וברייתו דומה לדג ועולה אחד לשבעים שנה ובדמו צובעין תכלת לפיכך דמיו יקרים

The Sages taught: This chilazon, [which is the source of the sky-blue dye used in ritual fringes, has the following characteristics:] Its body resembles the sea, its form resembles that of a fish, it emerges once in seventy years, and with its blood one dyes wool sky-blue for ritual fringes. It is scarce, and therefore it is expensive.

It is sea-like and fish-like and is rare ("once in seventy years"), and it is hard to find. OK, but not terribly helpful in figuring out its identity.

As early as 2,000 BCE the Phoenicians had been producing a blue-purple dye from shellfish. The identity of this chilazon creature was clear to the Romans and to sages of the Talmud, but it was lost over the centuries. Or almost lost. It was a point of scholarly and religious debate in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and then some neighbors of mine when I lived in Eftat figured it out. 

“As early as 2,000BCE purple dye was associated with the Phoenicians, who traded in purple-dyed fabrics...The word “Canaan” may derive from the Akkadian kinahhu, “red-purple,” while “phoenicia” probably comes from the Greek phoinos, “dark-red”...the shellfish utilized for these dyes are the Murex trunculus and the Murex brandaris. The shellfish were crushed, boiled in salt, and placed in the sun; afterwards the secretions turned purple. Eight thousand mollusks yielded one gram of purple dye.”

— Philip King & Lawrence Stager. Life in Biblical Israel. Wstminster John Knox Press 2001. 161

Identifying the Chilazon

1. The Rebbe of Radzyn

The tradition of using a sea creature to dye clothing was never entirely lost. In 1685, for example, a Mr William Cole of Bristol reported that a "purple-fish" (by which he meant a sea snail or mollusk) was being used to dye "fine linens of ladies and gentlemen" on the coast of Ireland. But it wasn't until the nineteenth century that the search was taken seriously by the Jewish community.

“...there was a certain person living by the Sea-side in some Port or Creek in Ireland, who made considerable gain by marking with a delicate durable Crimson Color, fine Linnen of Ladies, Gent &c...made by some liquid substance taken out of a Shell-fish...”

— A Letter from Mr William Cole of Bristol, to the Phil. Society of Oxford; Containing His Observations on the Purple Fish. Philosophical Transactions 1685. 15;1278-1286

The common cuttlefish - the source of the Radzyn techelet. Courtesy of the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

It was R. Gershon Henoch Leiner, the Rebbe of Radzyn(1839-1890) who began the modern search for the clilazon. Once the creature had been identified he argued, it would be used dye the strings of the otherwise white tzitzit, and return to a more authentic observance of the mitzvah. The search brought the rebbe to Naples, Italy, where he concluded that the cuttlefish (sepia officinalis), a kind of squid, was the long-lost chilazon. The cuttlefish produced a dark ink when threatened, and after some help from local chemists, he hit on a method to turn that ink into a blue dye. 

However, there were three problems with the Radzyn techelet. First, Maimonides in his Mishnah Torah ruled that techelet must resist fading, but the Radzyn dye could be easily washed out.

“וְהַתְּכֵלֶת הָאֲמוּרָה בַּצִּיצִית צָרִיךְ שֶׁתִּהְיֶה צְבִיעָתָהּ צְבִיעָה יְדוּעָה שֶׁעוֹמֶדֶת בְּיָפְיָהּ וְלֹא תִּשְׁתַּנֶּה
The blue thread mentioned in connection with fringes must be dyed with a special dye which retains its color and does not change...”

— Maimonides. Laws of Tzitzit 2:1

Second, in order to produce Radzyn techelet, the cuttlefish needed to be killed to extract its ink.  But the Talmud (Shabbat 75a) notes that the longer the chilazon is alive, the better its dye (דכמה דאית ביה נשמה טפי ניחא ליה כי היכי דליציל ציבעיה).  And the third problem with the Radzyn-cuttlefish-is-techelt theory was Rabbi Isaac Halevi Herzog.

2. Rabbi Isaac Halevi Herzog

The Banded Dye-Murex, Murex trunculus. From here.

Rabbi Isaac Halevi Herzog (1888-1959) was born in Poland and at the age of ten emigrated with his family to Leeds in the north of England. There he was educated in talmudic studies mostly by his father, and he later attended the University of London There, the topic of his PhD thesis was "The Dying of Purple in Ancient Israel" and focused on the identity of the chilazon. R. Herzog went on to succeeded Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook as the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Palestine, a position he held from 1936-1948. His grandson in the current President of Israel.

R. Herzog was critical of the conclusion of the Rebbe of Radzyn that identified the common cuttlefish as the chilazon.  In 1909 he had the Radzyn dye sent to the accomplished German chemist Paul Friedlander, who had earlier identified (or re-identified) the murex trunculus as the source of the dye called Tyrian purple (a discovery for which Friedlander was awarded the Lieben Prize in Chemistry). Friedlander tested the Radzyn dye and concluded it was itself unable to produce the blue color of techelet. Others chemists concluded that the Radzyn dye was in fact a synthetic compound known as Prussian blue, produced by the oxidation of ferrous ferrocyanide salts. This was confirmed when R. Herzog obtained the recipe for the dye from Radzyn hasidim. It called for the cuttlefish dye to be heated with iron filings and potash, and these hasidic dyers were actually making Prussian blue.  In fact the color of the Radzyn dye was nothing to do with the cuttlefish - it all came from the added chemicals. This left R. Herzog with a problem: if the cuttlefish was not in fact the chilazon, well then what was?   

Although it was known that the murex could produce a purple-blue dye, R. Herzog rejected this for the following reasons:

1. The snail does not appear "once every seventy years" yet this description appears in the Talmud (on 44a).  

2. The dye is not color fast. Or at least that is what he thought.  

3. The dye is a purple-blue color. But techelet is sky blue, as the great Rabbi Meir reminds us:

סוטה יז, א

היה ר"מ אומר מה נשתנה תכלת מכל מיני צבעונין מפני שהתכלת דומה לים וים דומה לרקיע ורקיע דומה לכסא הכבוד

R. Meir used to explain how techelt is different from all other colors: The color of techelet is similar to the color of the ocean; and the color of the ocean is similar to the color of the sky; and the color of the sky is similar to God's Glorious Throne.

Poor Rabbi Herzog never did reach a conclusion about the identity of the chilazon. But he was certain of two things. The Radzyn dye was not techelet, and the Radzyn cuttlefish was not the chilazon. Something was missing. And that something was sunlight.

It is all about the sunlight. From Ptil Tekhelet.

The dye produced from the murex snails is indeed dark purple and not permanent, but (and this is super important) if it was exposed to bright sunshine it turned a magnificent sky-blue color, and it didn't fade or wash out.  This was discovered quite by accident in the early 1980s by Dr. Otto Elsner of the Shenkar Institute in Tel Aviv. Chemists who had produced the purple dye from the murex snail had done so in their labs, far away from natural sunshine.  But the dye extracted from the gland of the murex snail, when exposed to sunlight, turns blue in color. Bingo. Sky-blue techelet. 

“Elsner researched the chemical process taking place in his sun-drenched dye mixture and discovered that while in solution the dye molecules are less stable than in their natural condition. Ultraviolet energy - such as found in the rays of bright sunlight - can break the bonds that attach some of the atoms to each other within the dye molecule. These photochemical processes alter the purple and red constituents of the murex extract and leave primarily indigo, which is of course, pure sky blue.”

— Baruch Sterman and Judy Taubes Sterman. The Rarest Blue. Efrat, Ptil Techelet 2012. 127.

3. my neighbors in efrat.

In the late 1990s I lived in Efrat, part of the Gush Etzion Block, and was a neighbor of Baruch and Judy Sterman.  It was their hard work, together with Ari Greenspan, Joel Guberman, and many others, who helped restore the ancient tradition of techelet. While the ability of the murex to produce the dye was already known, and the need for ultraviolet light to fix the dye had been fortuitously discovered, this group perfected the harvesting of the snails, (which involved, I kid you not, Greek and later Croatian fishermen) and set about manufacturing techelt-dyed tzitzit on a large scale. To date their organization Ptil Tekhelet have produced some 200,000 pairs, as well as this excellent guide to the process. For a deep dive into all things techelet, I also recommend their fascinating book “The Rarest Blue.”

The ABSORPTION Spectrum of Murex Techelet

In 1991, Wouters and Verhecken published High-performance liquid chromatography of blue and purple indigoid natural dyes in the rather niche Journal of the Society of Dyers and Colourists. The two Belgium chemists measured the absorption spectra of various indigo containing dyes including “silk fabric, stained with the contents of the hypobranchial gland of Murex trunculus.” The absorption spectrum measures the wavelength of radiation (or light) absorbed by an object, and it is this absorption that gives objects their color. Here is the absorption spectrum of indigotin, the color-giving component of techelet:

Absorption spectrum in the u.v. and visible light region of Indigotin. From JWouters and A Verhecken. High-performance liquid chromatography of blue and purple indigoid natural dyes. JSDC 1991: 107; 266-269.

As you can see there is a peak around 613nm. A similar finding was reported in 2015 by a researchers from the Israel Antiquities Authority and Bar-Ilan University, when they examined textiles found in a cave in Wadi Murabba'at, the Judean desert. The textiles date to the Roman period, were identified as having been dyed with using the murex sea snail Hexaplex trunculus. Here is the absorption spectrum they published:

UV–visible spectra of the compounds found in Murex species: indigotin (IND) and its derivatives, monobromoindigotin (MBI) and dibromoindigotin (DBI), with absorbance maxima between 601 nm and 613 nm; indirubin (INR), monobromoindirubin (MBIR), and dibromoindirubin (DBIR) with absorbance maxima between 536 nm and 544 nm. From Sukenik et al. Chemical analysis of Murex-dyed textiles from wadi Murabba'at, Israel. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports. 2015; 3:565–570.

It too reports that indigotin (and its derivatives) have absorbance maxima between 601nm and 613 nm.” The number 613 of course has a special significance in Judaism; it is the traditional number of commandments that Jews must observe. This coincidence was noted by the Ptil Tekhelet organization who note it in their guide to Menachot chapter 4:

Now in fact, as you can tell from the figures above, the peak absorption spectrum of indigotin is not 613nm, but in the 200-300nm range. However this peak lies in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum, and so is not visible to us (though bees are able to see it). Make of this finding what you will.

A do-it-yourself guide to making techelet

This week I carried out a very unscientific survey of the number of techelt colored tzitizit worn in my shul. Out of a total of 58 talesim, 7 (12%) had techelet fringes (and I saw no techelet fringes in the women’s section). So if you want to get a set for yourself, you can either buy a ready-made pair, or do-it-yourself and follow this recipe (courtesy of Baruach Sterman).

1. Find the snails, break them open and extract the glands

2. Mush those glands in a food processor (they take on a dark purple hue), and then dry them out (at this point they are very stable and can be stored for a long time - even years - without refrigeration).

3. When ready to dye, put the dye into solution and produce a chemical process called reduction. To do that add water and a base and a reducing agent (Baruch uses sodium dithionite) and heat moderately. (In ancient times this was done by a two-week fermentation process which has been replicated).

4. Once the dye is in solution it takes on a green-yellow color (this is called leuco-indigo) and at that point expose to sunlight. Then immerse the wool/threads.

5. When the wool is removed and exposed to air, the dye undergoes oxidation and takes on its final color - and becomes insoluble again which keeps it fixed in the wool matrix.

That’s all there is to it. So what are you waiting for?