Talmudology on the Parsha, Ki Tetze ~ The Mamzer

This week’s parsha is full of interesting material, for it contains no fewer than 74 mitzvot. That is more than any other parashah, and a whopping 12% of all of the 613 mitzvot in the Torah (though Maimonides counted only 72. Whatever). We had to narrow down our discussion to just one of these, and so, at random, we chose the commandment about the mamzer.

Who is a MaMzer?

A mamzer is a child born of a certain union that is forbidden in the Torah. Examples would be a child born from an adulterous relationship (where the woman is married to another person) or an incestuous one. A mamzer is not a child born out of wedlock, and who was once known as a bastard. In this week’s parsha The Torah prohibits a mamzer from entering into marriage with an ordinary Jew:

דברים כג, ג

לֹא־יָבֹ֥א מַמְזֵ֖ר בִּקְהַ֣ל יְהֹוָ֑ה גַּ֚ם דּ֣וֹר עֲשִׂירִ֔י לֹא־יָ֥בֹא ל֖וֹ בִּקְהַ֥ל יְהֹוָֽה׃

The mamzer shall be admitted into the congregation of God; no descendant of such, even in the tenth generation, shall be admitted into the congregation of God

According to Rabbi Abahu in the Talmud Yerushalmi (Kiddushin 3:12) the word mamzer comes from the Hebrew מום זר - mum zar - “a strange defect.” It is on the basis of this etymology that many have tried to find defects in the anatomy or the personality of a mamzer. This week on Talmudology on the Parsha we will examine rabbinic attitudes towards the mamzer.

The Mamzer is infertile, and more likely to die early

According to the famous medieval scholar Rabbi Jacob ben Asher (c. 1269 - c. 1343), who was also known as the Ba’al Haturim, a mamzer is infertile:

בעל הטורים דברים כג, ג

לא יבא ממזר בקהל ה' סמך ממזר לפצוע דכה שממזר אינו מוליד כפצוע דכא

The verse about the mamzer is written close to the verse about the person with crushed genitalia to teach that just like that person, a mamzer cannot reproduce.

In a variation on this theme, the medieval Sefer Hasidim wrote that a mamzer can indeed reproduce, but his or her children will be infertile:

מכאן יש לומר למוליד ממזר לא מבעיא דלא קיים מצות פריה ורביה אלא שמעכב את המשיח דקאמר ממזר לא חי אותו ממזר שמוליד לא יוליד בנים דלא חיי כטרפה

Both of these assertions are at odds with the Torah itself, in which the verse stated that no descendants of the mamzer were to be admitted into the congregation, which surely implies that a mamzer can indeed reproduce. And while I know of no clinical study looking at the fertility of the children of prohibited unions, there is, prima facie, no reason whatsoever to believe that children born, say, of an adulterous relationship, are infertile.

Of course, this is not true of children born of incestuous unions. In these cases, there is indeed a higher likelihood of all manner of genetic problems, of which infertility may be one expression. A paper published in 1979 titled A Study of Chidren of Incestuous Matings noted that in a group of 161 children from incestuous matings, prenatal, neonatal and infant mortality was higher than among half-siblings who were offspring of unrelated parents, and this group also had a higher rate of congenital malformations. Thus, the observation of Rav Huna in the Talmud Yerushalmi (קידושין ד, א) that “a mamzer does not live for more than thirty days” (אֵין מַמְזֵר חַיי יוֹתֵר מִשְּׁלֹשִׁים יוֹם) might actually have some factual basis, at least for a subset of mamzerim.

Congenital malformations and other abnormalities. From E. Seemanova. A study of children of incestuous matings. Human Heredity 1971: 21: 108-128.

On the Characteristics of a Mamzer

Some rabbis believed that the mamzer was endowed with certain talents, while others wrote that he (or she) was physically different to other people. According Abba Shaul in the Talmud Yerushalmi (Kiddushin 4:11), “most mamzerim are intelligent - רוֹב מַמְזֵירִין פִּקְחִין. (Abba Shaul may also have been behind the famous aphorism that “the best physicians should go to hell”, and we have dealt with that elsewhere.) Still, Abba Shaul’s sweeping statement was not seen as a compliment. Here is the standard commentary on the Yerushalmi, called Korban Ha’edah. It was written by the German rabbi David ben Naphtali Frankel (~1704-1762):

רוב ממזרים פקחי. שדומין לאביהן שהם בעלי ערמה לפתות הנשים ולהסתיר מעשיהם מבני האדם ונ"מ להזהר מהם

Most mamzerim are intelligent: Because they are like their fathers, who are crafty in their ability to seduce women and hide their actions from others. It is important to be aware of this characteristic, so that we can beware of them.

The other standard commentary on the Yerushalmi, Moshe Margolies’ Pnei Moshe, makes exactly the same point:

רוב ממזרים פקחין. שהן דומין לאביהן בעלי ערמה ומתנכלים בתחבולות לפתות הנשים ולהסתיר מעשיהם מבני אדם

So a better translation of the original Yerushalmi, according to these two commentaries, would be: “Most mamzerim are crafty, and therefore they should not be trusted.” It was this belief that led the authors of the early medieval Hebrew work Toldot Yeshu - “A History of Jesus,” to claim that Jesus was himself a mamzer, because he had acted in a brazen manner in front of the Sanhedrin.

A similar observation is made in the minor tractate Kallah:

עז פנים רבי אליעזר אומר ממזר רבי יהושע אומר בן הנדה רבי עקיבא אומר ממזר ובן הנדה

The bold-faced, Rabbi Eliezer said, is the mamzer; the son of a niddah, said Rabbi Joshua; Rabbi Akivah said: Both a mamzer and the son of a niddah.

Given the long tradition of ascribing personality characteristics to the mamzer, it is not surprising that some went one step further and claimed that the mamzer has certain specific physical characteristics. Rabbi Elijah ben Solomon Abraham Hacohen, of Smyrna (~1650-1729) was a mystic who produced over thirty books. Like many of his time, Rabbi Elijah was a strong believer in palm reading, the belief that lines on the palm reflect the personality and future fate of a person. He also believed in a version of phrenology, in which bumps on the skull indicate a person’s intelligence and other qualities. In his work Midrash Talpiot, which was a collection of rabbinic sayings mixed with his own observations, Rabbi Elijah wrote that “the shape of the ear will reflect if there is any degree of mamzerut” - “באזן ניכר מי שיש בו צד ממזרות.” Alas, the rabbi did not give any more details, fearing that they might be misused.

Elijah Hacohen. Midrash Talpiot, Lemberg 1875, 30.

The mamzer cannot enter Jerusalem

Avot de’Rabbi Natan is companion text to the Mishnaic Pirkei Avot, and is usually printed along with the minor tractates of the Talmud. It was composed sometime in the era of the Gaonim, between 650-900 CE. In its eighth chapter we read the following:

אבות דרנבי נתן יב, ח

וכן מי שעובר עבירה והוליד ממזר אומרים לו ריקה חבלת בעצמך חבלת בו [שאותו ממזר היה רוצה ללמוד תורה עם אותן התלמידים] שהיו יושבין ושונין בירושלים והיה הממזר הולך עמהן עד שהגיע לאשדוד עומד שם ואומר אוי לי אילו לא הייתי ממזר כבר הייתי יושב ושונה בין התלמידים שלמדתי עד עכשיו ולפי שאני ממזר איני יושב ושונה בין התלמידים לפי שאין ממזר נכנס לירושלים כל עיקר שנאמר (זכריה ט) וישב ממזר באשדוד (והכרתי גאון פלשתים

So, too, with someone whose sexual transgression produces a mamzer. They say to him: Empty one! You have ruined yourself and you have ruined him as well! [For this mamzer would have wanted to study Torah with the rest of the students] who sit and study in Jerusalem. But this mamzer would go with them only up to Ashdod, and then would stop there and say: Woe is me! If I were not a mamzer, I would have gone to sit and study among the students whom I have been studying with until now. But because I am a mamzer, I cannot sit and study among these students. For a mamzer cannot enter Jerusalem at all, as it says (Zechariah 9:6), “The mamzer will stay in Ashdod, (and I will cut off the pride of the Philistines.”

Mi Sheberach for a Mamzer

In one of his volumes of responsa, Rabbi Chezkiah Fivel Plaut (1818-1894) was asked whether it was permissible to call a mamzer up to the Torah. Rabbi Plaut, who was a student of the Chatam Sofer, concluded that it is indeed permitted, but did not know if it was permitted to say the general prayer for the well-being of the person called to the Torah, known as the Mi Sheberach (מי שברך). “I am uncertain whether to say the Mi Shebarch, because the focus of this blessing is on his children, and God forbid that there would be more mamzerim among the Jewish people.”

Chezkiah Feival Plaut. Likutei Chaver ben Chaim. Munkach 1883. 104b.

Tattooing the Forehead of a mamzer with a warning

Rabbi Yishmael Hacohen (1723-1811), came from a distinguished rabbinic family and took over the mantle of leadership in the Italian city of Modena from his older brother who died in 1781. In 1881 he was asked by Rabbi Avraham Yona of Venice whether it was permitted to tattoo the forehead of a mamzer with the word “mamzer,” which would serve as a warning sign not to allow this person to marry into the Jewish community. The halakhic concerns revolve around the question of tattooing, and not, as we might think today, as to whether this was a reasonable thing to do.

Rabbi Yona was an enthusiastic supporter of the idea, but Rabbi Yishmael was, at least initially, not sure. But at the end of his lengthy responsa he concluded that it was indeed permitted, since although tattooing was forbidden, if it was performed by a Gentile it was allowed in this case, for it prevented “a greater transgression.” This opinion is cited in דרכי תשובה יורה דעה קפ, סק’א.

It is permitted to tattoo the forehead of a mamzer. From Yishmael ben Avraham Hacohen. Zera Emet. Vol 3, 140b.

Modern Efforts to Ignore Mamzerut

There are certain caterogical rulings in the Torah that the rabbis did their best to ignore. The Torah demand “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” (Exodus 21:23–27), but the rabbis ignored this and interpreted the verse as requiring monetary compensation (Bava Kamma 83b–84a). The Torah demanded that loans be forgiven every seven years during the shmitta year (Deuteronomy 15:1–6), but the rabbis found this law to be unworkable. So Hillel Hazaken created the prozbul which protected the investment of the lenders. Despite the severity of the prohibition of mamzer, and not withstanding some of the later rabbinic statements that we have seen, talmudic and contemporary rabbis were often very sympathetic to the plight of the mamzer, and went to extreme legal lengths to remove the label. So for example in tractate Yevamot (80b) Rava ruled that a child born twelve months after a married woman’s husband left her and travelled abroad was not a mamzer. Perhaps, he argued, the pregnancy had just been unusually long.

יבמות פ, ב

אֶלָּא הָא דַּעֲבַד רָבָא תּוֹסְפָאָה עוֹבָדָא בְּאִשָּׁה שֶׁהָלַךְ בַּעְלָהּ לִמְדִינַת הַיָּם וְאִישְׁתַּהִי עַד תְּרֵיסַר יַרְחֵי שַׁתָּא וְאַכְשְׁרֵיהּ כְּמַאן כְּרַבִּי דְּאָמַר מִשְׁתַּהֵא

With regard to the action taken by Rava Tosfa’a concerning a woman whose husband went overseas and her baby was delayed in her womb for the twelve months of the year following her husband’s departure, and Rava Tosfa’a rendered the child fit, arguing that the husband is presumed to be the father and the child is not a mamzer…

Perhaps the best example recent example of this effort comes from the late Rabbi Ovadia Yosef (1920-2013) who was the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel from 1973-1983. He was asked about the case of a young woman who believed that she was a mamzeret. Her mother had been married by a haredi rabbi to a man who subsequently left her, converted to Christianity, married another woman, and refused to give his first a Jewish divorce. This wife later obtained a civil (but not a Jewish) divorce, remarried civilly and had the daughter. This daughter was indisputably the result the union of a woman who is married (under Jewish law) and a man who was not her husband, that making her children mamzerim.

But Rabbi Yosef found a way to demonstrate that the daughter was not technically a mamzeret, although he never explicitly stated any discomfort with the notion of mamzer. In his work Yabiah Omer (volume 7, Even Ha’ezer 6) he refused to allow any testimony from the mother, since she was an interested party. He also refused to allow any testimony from the haredi rabbi who performed the marriage, since he was but a single witness, and two witnesses are required to establish proof in Jewish law. He continued along this vein until he concluded that there was enough uncertainty in the case to remove the label of mamzerut from the daughter, and allow her to marry into the Jewish people.

שו׳ת יביע אומר, חלק ז, אה׳ע סימן ו

The rabbinic attitude towards mamzerut demonstrates that there really has never been a single rabbinic attitude towards the problem. Some made the life of the mamzer extraordinarily difficult, and even suggested that the mamzer had physical or character flaws. One even suggested that the mamzer be tattooed as a warning to others. But others went to great efforts to remove the need to categorize any person as a mamzer. Let’s end with a reminder that in classic Jewish teaching, the mamzer can rise to great religious heights, regardless of the actions of his or her parents.

משנה הוריות ג, ח

מַמְזֵר תַּלְמִיד חָכָם קוֹדֵם לְכֹהֵן גָּדוֹל עַם הָאָרֶץ

But if there were a mamzer who is a Torah scholar and a High Priest who is an ignoramus, a mamzer who is a Torah scholar is rescued before a High Priest who is an ignoramus, as Torah wisdom surpasses all else.

Bava Basra 74a ~ Where Heaven and Earth Touch

In honor of the birthday of my dear wife, Erica, who has taught me how to see the heavens and focus on the earth.

While discussing the legal technicalities involved in buying a boat, the Talmud digresses with a series of fantastic stories about boats, told by Rabbah bar bar Chanah.  And then it digresses again with a series of  fantastic stories about all kinds of things, also told by Rabbah bar bar Channah. In total he told fifteen stories. Here is the last one:

בבא בתרא עד, א

אמר לי תא אחוי לך היכא דנשקי ארעא ורקיעא אהדדי שקלתא לסילתאי אתנחתא בכוותא דרקיעא אדמצלינא בעיתיה ולא אשכחיתה אמינא ליה איכא גנבי הכא אמר לי האי גלגלא דרקיעא הוא דהדר נטר עד למחר הכא ומשכחת לה

An Arab also said to me: Come, I will show you the place where the earth and the heavens touch each other. I took my basket and placed it in a window of the heavens. After I finished praying, I searched for it but did not find it. I said to him: Are there thieves here? He said to me: This is the heavenly sphere that is turning around; wait here until tomorrow and you will find it again.

What should we make of this?  We should begin by considering its context, noting that it is part of a series of fantastic fables.  These include a man who pursued a demon on horseback, antelope the size of mountains, giant frogs ("the size of sixty houses") that are eaten by even more giant birds, a fish so large it took three days to sail between its fins, and scorpions the size of donkeys. You get the idea. Given this context, perhaps the tale of a place where heaven and earth touch as a description of reality should be taken with as much seriousness as the other stories. Which is to say, not very seriously at all. 

Other Talmudic descriptions of the Cosmos

Not so fast. There are other rabbis in Talmud who address the structure of the earth and the cosmos. Rabbi Natan noted that the stars do not seem to change in their positions overhead when walking far distances.  The assumption underlying his explanation for this observation was that the earth is flat. Covering the earth was an opaque cap referred to as the rakia, which is most commonly translated as the sky or firmament. Rava, a fourth-century Babylonian sage who lived on the banks of the river Tigris, determined this cap to be 1,000 parsa in width, while Rabbi Yehudah thought that he had over-estimated this thickness. There were others who added to the picture of the sky; Resh Lakish announced that it actually was made up of seven distinct layers. Given this model, there would have to be a place where the opaque cap touched the earth, a place that Rabbah bar Bar Channah claimed to have touched.  So even allowing for a degree of talmudic fantasy, this fable was clearly built on the model that was shared by other rabbis in the Talmud.

The Flammarion Engraving

In 1872, Camille Flammarion published L'atmosphère: météorologie populaire (The Atmosphere: Popular Meteorology). In the 1888 edition this engraving  appeared on page 163:

As you can see from the caption, the engraving is "A missionary of the Middle Ages tells that he had found the point where the sky and the Earth touch." The engraving appears to have been specially created for Flammarion's book. The text that precedes it reads as follows:

Whether the sky be clear or cloudy, it always seems to us to have the shape of an elliptic arch; far from having the form of a circular arch, it always seems flattened and depressed above our heads, and gradually to become farther removed toward the horizon. Our ancestors imagined that this blue vault was really what the eye would lead them to believe it to be; but, as Voltaire remarks, this is about as reasonable as if a silk-worm took his web for the limits of the universe. The Greek astronomers represented it as formed of a solid crystal substance; and so recently as Copernicus, a large number of astronomers thought it was as solid as plate-glass. The Latin poets placed the divinities of Olympus and the stately mythological court upon this vault, above the planets and the fixed stars. Previous to the knowledge that the earth was moving in space, and that space is everywhere, theologians had installed the Trinity in the empyrean, the glorified body of Jesus, that of the Virgin Mary, the angelic hierarchy, the saints, and all the heavenly host.... A naïve missionary of the Middle Ages even tells us that, in one of his voyages in search of the terrestrial paradise, he reached the horizon where the earth and the heavens met, and that he discovered a certain point where they were not joined together, and where, by stooping his shoulders, he passed under the roof of the heavens.

Flammarion does not reference his source for the missionary of the Middle Ages who, like Rabbah bar bar Channah, claimed to have found the place were the heavens and earth meet.  Despite this, his engraving has become very popular. A version of it appears on the cover of Daniel J. Boorstin's best selling work The Discoverers, and inside William Vollmann's Uncentering the Universe. And those are just the ones I know about from my own library. You can buy a color poster of it (where it is incorrectly described as a "medieval artwork") but if you are really dedicated you could always travel to San Fransisco where a tattoo parlor will create the image on your arm. 

We know that Rabbah bar bar Channah's model of the universe is not correct, but his suggestion of a place where heaven and earth touch is both endearing and enchanting.  (It is also the perfect name for an anthology of Midrash which was published back in 1983).  With Rosh Hashanah approaching, you may already be thinking about your wine list.  Perhaps you should consider a kosher wine whose label shows part of the Flammarion etching, and drink to the memory of Rabbah bar bar Channah. 

Bava Basra 73b ~ The Re'em

This post is for the page of Talmud to be studied tomorrow, Thursday.

The enormous Re'em

We are currently reading some fantastic stories (tangentially related to boats,) that were told by Rabbah bar bar Chanah.  The forth story is about the רימא, the re'em, an animal of enormous size. 

בבא בתרא עג, ב

אָמַר רַבָּה: לְדִידִי חֲזֵי לִי אוּרְזִילָא בַּר יוֹמֵיהּ, דַּהֲוָה כְּהַר תָּבוֹר. וְהַר תָּבוֹר כַּמָּה הָוֵי? אַרְבַּע פַּרְסֵי. וּמְשָׁאכָא דְצַוְּארֵיהּ תְּלָתָא פַּרְסֵי, וּבֵי מַרְבַּעְתָּא דְרֵישֵׁיהּ פַּרְסָא וּפַלְגָא. רְמָא כּוּפְתָּא, וּסְכַר לֵיהּ לְיַרְדְּנָא.

Rabba said: I have seen a day-old urzila that was as large as Mount Tabor. And how large is Mount Tabor? It is four parasangs. And the length of its neck was three parasangs, and the place where his head rests was a parasang and a half. It cast feces [kufta] and thereby dammed up the Jordan.

We cannot turn to Rashi to identify the word אוּרְזִילָא, because this tractate is one of the few on which Rashi did not write. (The others are Nedarim, Nazir, Mo’ed Kattan and the end of Makkos.) Instead we can turn to Rabbi Shmuel Ben Meir (the Rashbam, c. 1085 – c. 1158) who was Rashi’s grandson, and who provided this identification:

אורזילא בר יומא - ראם בן יום אחד דאותו היום נולד

- This is a one-day old re’em, for it was born on that day

The Re’em and Noah’s Flood

Elsewhere, the Talmud wonders, how did the re’em survive the Great Flood of Noah? (I know, weird question, but let’s keep going.) One possibility is that it fled to Israel, where, according to some, the waters of the flood did not reach. But there were other opinions that the Flood even reached Israel. In that case, how did the re'em survive? It could not have hid in Israel, and it would have been too big to fit inside the Ark. Rabbi Yochanan had an answer:

זבחים קיג, ב

 א"ר יוחנן ראשו הכניסו לתיבה והאמר מר מרבעתא דרישא פרסא ופלגא אלא ראש חוטמו הכניסו לתיבה

 Rabbi Yochanan says: They brought only the head of the cub into the ark, while its body remained outside. The Gemara asks: But didn't Rabba bar bar Chana say that the size of the place where its head rests was a parasang and a half? [Consequently, even its head alone would not fit into the ark.] Rather, they brought the edge, of its nose into the ark, so that it might breathe. 

OK, but what exactly is a re’em? Today on Talmudology we will answer this vexing question. First, some background.

The re'em in the Bible

The word ראם, re'em appears several times in the Hebrew Bible. Here, for example, is a verse from Deuteronomy (33:17) which describes the offspring of Joseph.

דברים לג: יז

בְּכ֨וֹר שׁוֹר֜וֹ הָדָ֣ר ל֗וֹ וְקַרְנֵ֤י רְאֵם֙ קַרְנָ֔יו בָּהֶ֗ם עַמִּ֛ים יְנַגַּ֥ח יַחְדָּ֖ו אַפְסֵי־אָ֑רֶץ וְהֵם֙ רִבְב֣וֹת אֶפְרַ֔יִם וְהֵ֖ם אַלְפֵ֥י מְנַשֶּֽׁה׃

Like a firstling bull in his majesty, He has horns like the horns of the re'em; With them he gores the peoples, The ends of the earth one and all. These are the myriads of Ephraim, Those are the thousands of Manasseh. 

The re'em is specifically identified by the great translator of the Bible Oneklos (~35-120 CE) as one of the species singled out in the Torah as being kosher:

דברים יד: ד–ה

 זֹ֥את הַבְּהֵמָ֖ה אֲשֶׁ֣ר תֹּאכֵ֑לוּ שׁ֕וֹר שֵׂ֥ה כְשָׂבִ֖ים וְשֵׂ֥ה עִזִּֽים׃ אַיָּ֥ל וּצְבִ֖י וְיַחְמ֑וּר וְאַקּ֥וֹ וְדִישֹׁ֖ן וּתְא֥וֹ וָזָֽמֶר׃

These are the animals that you may eat; the deer, the gazelle, the roebuck, the wild goat, the dishon, the antelope, the mountain sheep.

Onkelos translates that word דִישֹׁ֖ן into Aramaic as רֵימָא - the re'em. And then there is this passage from the Book of Job (39:9-12):

איוב לט:ט–יב

הֲיֹ֣אבֶה רֵּ֣ים עָבְדֶ֑ךָ אִם־יָ֝לִ֗ין עַל־אֲבוּסֶֽךָ׃ הֲ‍ֽתִקְשָׁר־רֵ֭ים בְּתֶ֣לֶם עֲבֹת֑וֹ אִם־יְשַׂדֵּ֖ד עֲמָקִ֣ים אַחֲרֶֽיךָ׃

Most English versions of this passage translate the word re'em as "wild ox"and so read: 

Would the wild ox agree to serve you? Would he spend the night at your crib?  Can you hold the wild ox by ropes to the furrow? Would he plow up the valleys behind you?

But not the King James Bible. It goes in an entirely different direction: 

Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib? Cans’t thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? or will he harrow the valleys after thee?

So according to the King James Bible, the re'em is a unicorn. Why on earth would the translators have chosen, of all creatures, the mythical unicorn as the re'em?

“The men who [produced the King James Bible], who pored over the Greek and Hebrew texts, comparing the accuracy and felicity of previous translations, arguing with each other over the finest details of chapter and verse, were many of them obscure at the time and are generally forgotten now, a gaggle of fifty or so black-gowned divines whose names are almost unknown but whose words continue to resonate with us.”

— Adam Nicoloson. God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible. Harper Collins 2005. xi

The re'em is a unicorn. Or maybe not.

Well, they didn't. They merely followed the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the third century BCE. And the Septuagint translated the Hebrew re'em as μονόκερως - monokeros, or "one horned". Which is why the King James Bible translated it as a unicorn, from the Latin uni meaning "single" and cornu meaning "horn". And since, according to the Talmud, the Septuagint was created at the command of Ptolemy II by seventy-two Jewish sages, you could claim that the King James translation was following a long Jewish tradition.

“King Ptolemy once gathered 72 Elders. He placed them in 72 chambers, each of them in a separate one, without revealing to them why they were summoned. He entered each one’s room and said: “Write for me the Torah of Moshe, your teacher”. God put it in the heart of each one to translate identically as all the others did.”

— TB Megillah 9a-b

This translation made its way into later rabbinic commentary. For example, R. Dovid Kimche (1160-1235), in his dictionary of the Hebrew language called Sefer Hashorashim, wrote that the re'em has only one horn. And Abraham Yagel, (1553 – 1623), the Italian rabbi and exegete, mentioned a one-horned re'em that had been captured and brought to Portugal:

Book IV, ch. 45: 108a בית יער הלבנון 

ובימנו הובא בארץ פורטוגאלי מן האי האינדי׳ ראם אחד במצודה צדו אותו ומראה צורתו הביאו אח׳כ עוברי אורחות ימים והוא גדול מהפיל ומזרין בקסקשיו בכל עורו וקרן חזות עב על חוטמו אשר בו לחם מלחמות עם הפיל ועם שאר החיות

And in our days a re'em was brought to Portugal from India having been ambushed and trapped, and afterwards sea travellers reported how it looked. It is larger than an elephant and its scales cover all its skin. It has a thick horn on its nose which it uses in fights with the elephant and with other creatures...

As Natan Slifkin points out, what Yagel what was actually describing was a rhinoceros: "It was given to King Manuel of Portugal by Alfonso de Albuquerque, governor of Portuguese India. This was the first rhinoceros to be brought to Europe since Roman times, and it caused quite a sensation." Quite so.

But before we conclude that the re'em was a rhinoceros, there are a couple of problems. First, although it was once found in the Land of Israel, the rhinoceros remains so far discovered only go back to the Mousterian era, which ended about 35,000 years ago. That's quite a few years before the biblical period. Thus it is very unlikely that there were rhinoceri in Israel in the biblical period. And second, the re'em in the Bible is described as having two horns.  Two. "וְקַרְנֵ֤י רְאֵם֙ קַרְנָ֔יו" His horns are like the horns of the re'em" (Deut.33:17). So much for the rhinoceros or unicorn.

Artist's rendering of the aurochs. Is this the re'em mentioned in the Torah? From here.

A better candidate: The Aurochs

There is a better candidate for the mysterious re'em, but it is an animal neither you, nor I, nor anyone we know has ever seen. It is the aurochs, Bos primigenius, an enormous species of cattle that became extinct in 1627. The aurochs (pronounced oar-ox) weighed in somewhere around 1,500lb - or 700kg. That's certainly a big animal, though not as big as the Mount Tabor-sized beast described by Rabba bar bar Chana. It also has the added bonus of having two horns, just like the re'em described in the Torah. The suggestion that the re'em is the aurochs seems to have become popular with late nineteenth-century Christian scholars, as you can see here:

Sunday-School Teacher's Bible. Philadelphia, A.J Holman & Co. 1895. p115.

Matthew George Easton Illustrated Bible Dictionary. London, T. Nelson & Sons 1894. p678.

The Aurochs and the prehistoric cave paintings of Lasaux

Of all the animals that have intrigued human beings, perhaps none goes further back in time than the aurochs. Among the cave paintings of animals found in the Lasaux cave, are aurochs. And these paintings (there are nearly 6,000 of them) are from the Paleolithic period, 17,000 years ago.  The largest of the aurochs depicted there is over 15 feet long. There are similar paintings of the aurochs  in another cave system called La-Tete-Du-Lion in southern France, which has been dated to 26,000 BCE. We will, of course, never know with certainty whether the long-extinct aurochs was the re'em. But we have been fascinated with the aurochs for as long as we have walked the earth.  What better candidate could there be for the mysterious creature that somehow survived Noah's flood. 

Detail from the Lascaux cave drawing, about 17,000 years old.

Talmudology on the Parsha, Shoftim ~ Prophecy and Mental Illness

This week’s Torah reading warns us not to be persuaded by a person who claims to be a prophet, which is to say, they claim to predict the future. There is, apparently a simple test: did the prediction come true? If it did, then that person is a real prophet.

דברים 18: 9-22

כִּי אַתָּה בָּא אֶל־הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר־יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ נֹתֵן לָךְ לֹא־תִלְמַד לַעֲשׂוֹת כְּתוֹעֲבֹת הַגּוֹיִם הָהֵם… וַיֹּאמֶר יְהֹוָה אֵלָי הֵיטִיבוּ אֲשֶׁר דִּבֵּרוּ׃ נָבִיא אָקִים לָהֶם מִקֶּרֶב אֲחֵיהֶם כָּמוֹךָ וְנָתַתִּי דְבָרַי בְּפִיו וְדִבֶּר אֲלֵיהֶם אֵת כל־אֲשֶׁר אֲצַוֶּנּוּ׃ וְהָיָה הָאִישׁ אֲשֶׁר לֹא־יִשְׁמַע אֶל־דְּבָרַי אֲשֶׁר יְדַבֵּר בִּשְׁמִי אָנֹכִי אֶדְרֹשׁ מֵעִמּוֹ׃ אַךְ הַנָּבִיא אֲשֶׁר יָזִיד לְדַבֵּר דָּבָר בִּשְׁמִי אֵת אֲשֶׁר לֹא־צִוִּיתִיו לְדַבֵּר וַאֲשֶׁר יְדַבֵּר בְּשֵׁם אֱלֹהִים אֲחֵרִים וּמֵת הַנָּבִיא הַהוּא׃ וְכִי תֹאמַר בִּלְבָבֶךָ אֵיכָה נֵדַע אֶת־הַדָּבָר אֲשֶׁר לֹא־דִבְּרוֹ יְהֹוָה׃ אֲשֶׁר יְדַבֵּר הַנָּבִיא בְּשֵׁם יְהֹוָה וְלֹא־יִהְיֶה הַדָּבָר וְלֹא יָבֹא הוּא הַדָּבָר אֲשֶׁר לֹא־דִבְּרוֹ יְהֹוָה בְּזָדוֹן דִּבְּרוֹ הַנָּבִיא לֹא תָגוּר מִמֶּנּוּ׃

When you enter the land that the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not learn to imitate the abhorrent practices of those nations…I will raise up a prophet for them from among their own people, like yourself: I will put My words in his mouth and he will speak to them all that I command him; and if anybody fails to heed the words he speaks in My name, I Myself will call him to account. But any prophet who presumes to speak in My name an oracle that I did not command him to utter, or who speaks in the name of other gods—that prophet shall die.” And should you ask yourselves, “How can we know that the oracle was not spoken by the LORD?” if the prophet speaks in the name of the LORD and the oracle does not come true, that oracle was not spoken by the LORD; the prophet has uttered it presumptuously: do not stand in dread of him.

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

In my professional career as an emergency physician in Washington DC, I met many prophets. Most were on their way to the White House with an urgent message for the President. Most ended up being committed to an in-patient psychiatric hospital where they could get help for their psychosis. Today, we often - and correctly - associate a claim of prophecy as being associated with a mental health disorder. And so this week on Talmudology on the Parsha we will examine the relationship between 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. 

In the tractate Bava Basra in the Babylonian 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.