Nazir 39 ~ Lice, and the Oldest Canaanite Sentence in the World

In today’s page of Talmud, we read of an important dispute: does hair grow from its roots, or its tips?

איבעיא להו האי מזיא מלתחת רבי או מלעיל למאי?... ת"ש מהא אינבא חיה דקאים בעיקבא דבינתא ואי סלקא דעתך מלתחת רבי ברישא דבינתא בעי למיקם. לעולם מלתחת רבי ואגב חיותא נחית ואזיל אינבא

ת"ש אינבא מתה ברישא דבינתא ואי סלקא דעתך מלעיל רבי בעיקבא דבינתא בעי למיקם התם נמי משום דלית בה חילא שרוגי שריגא ואזיל...

A question was asked: Does hair grow from the roots or the tips?...Let us suggest an answer from the live nit [or louse - meaning is not certain] which is found at the root of a strand [of hair]. Now if the hair grew from the root, shouldn't the nit be found at the tip? [The Talmud rejects this suggestion:] The growth may well be from the tip, but the nit, being alive, continually moves down [towards the root].

Let us suggest an answer from the case of a dead nit [or louse, that is found] at the end of a strand [of hair].  If the hair grows from the end, shouldn't the dead nit be found near the root? [The Talmud rejects this suggestion too:]  Perhaps the dead nit has no power [to grasp the hair] and so as the hair grows from the root, the nit slides.

The louse nit (egg) with its adherent cylindrical sheath cemented to the hair shaft.  The free distal end (arrow) would be directed towards the hair tip.  The egg has a domed operculum (arrow) that contains air holes, allowing the maturing larvae to breath.From Burkhat el al.  The adherent cylindrical nit structure and its chemical denaturation in vitro. Arch. Pediatric Adolescent Medicine 1988. 152; 711.

Pediculosis Humanus Capitas

Pediculosis Humanus capitas is the long scientific name of the tiny head louse.  The female, less than 3mm long, lives for about a month, and in that time lays over three hundred eggs.  The eggs are laid on a shaft of hair close to the scalp, where, warmed by the skin of their itchy host, they incubate for two weeks before hatching.  The new lice emerge, grow for about 12 days, mate, and lay their eggs, and the cycle continues. Humans are the only known host of these lice, and somewhere in this cycle you as a parent may get a call to come and take your child out of school because they have been found to have head lice, or nits, the name given to their eggs.  About 15% of school age children in the UK have head lice, while in the US estimates range from 6-12 million infestations per year. In the US, the cost to treat those millions of infestations is more than $350 million.

True story: Many years ago while working in an emergency department in Boston, I received a call from the (warm and loving Jewish) preschool my children then attended.  My daughter had head lice, and so she could not attend class. I gently explained that I could not leave my shift in the ED to come and get her for as trivial a reason as head lice, but the school was adamant. She remained outside the classroom until arrangements to pick here up were made.  I do hope the psychological damage was minimal.

Updated true story: That daughter, now herself a mother and a pediatrician, and living far from Boston, recently received a letter from a Jewish preschool informing parents that children in whom hair lice had been found would be sent home. She wrote a gentle email to the preschool director, pointing out that both the American Academy of Pediatrics and the National Association of School Nurses have produced clear, evidence based guidance that states the following:

Both the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the CDC advocate for the following practices to be discontinued:

- whole classroom screening,

- exclusion for nits or live lice,

- notification to others except for parents/guardians of students with head lice infestations

But her concerns fell on deaf early childhood learning ears. The preschool declined to change their policy. I suppose we should be happy that our preschools are following their mesorah, evidence be damned.

“The AAP states that head lice screening programs in schools have not been proven to have a significant effect over time on the incidence of head lice in the school setting, are not cost-effective, and may stigmatize children suspected of having head lice. ”

— American Academy of Pediatrics Updates Report on Controlling and Treating Head Lice in Children & Adolescents. September 2022

Head Lice in Antiquity

Head lice have been with us for a long, long time, as evidenced by the Talmud's clear acquaintance with them.  Amazingly though, remains of a head louse have been identified on a louse comb from the Roman period that was discovered near the Dead Sea. (Even older remains have been found on the hair from Egyptian mummies, and nine-thousand year old lice eggs were found on human remains in Nahal Hemar near the Dead Sea.) "The comb was most probably used by inhabitants of the village of En Gedi, who were preparing a place of refuge in the cave, which would have been well equipped with food in baskets, storage jars and a large water pool before the end of the Bar Kokba Revolt in 135 CE." 

Wooden comb found in the Cave of the Pool, near Nahal David in the Dead Sea region. It was discovered in 1961.  From Mumcouglu and Hadas. Head Louse (Pediculus humanus capitis) Remains in a Louse Comb from the Roman Period Excavated in the Dead Sea Region. Israel Exploration Journal, Vol. 61, No. 2 (2011), pp. 223-229 

“May this [ivory] tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard”

— Engraving on ivory lice comb c1700 BCE.

In 2022 the Jerusalem Journal of Archeology published a paper that described the discovery in Lachish of an ivory comb with an inscription in early Canaanite script. It contains seventeen letters, in early pictographic style, which form seven words expressing a plea against lice. This makes it “by far the oldest alphabetic inscription that contains a full sentence.” It dates to around 1700 BCE - only a century after most scholars believe the alphabet was invented.

Here is how it was reported by the Biblical Archeology Society just four months ago:

So what does the oldest Canaanite sentence say? “May this [ivory] tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard,” a fitting inscription to grace a comb. Remarkably, analysis of the comb provided evidence that this inscription, possibly termed a spell, was effective, as the remains of a louse were discovered on one of the comb’s teeth.

Crafted of elephant ivory, likely imported from Egypt, the comb would have been a prestige object, owned by a wealthy family. “It would have been like a diamond today, a crème de la crème luxury item. Others likely had lice combs too, but made of wood that would have decayed,” Yosef Garfinkel, Lachish excavator and a co-author of the study, told Haaretz. The tiny size of the comb (it measures just over an inch long) left little room for the 17 Proto-Canaanite letters written on it, which together make up seven words.

According to epigrapher Christopher Rollston of George Washington University, “Of course, this is also an object that was commissioned by, and owned by, a very wealthy family. After all, who else would have the money to commission a scribe to write an inscription on a hairbrush! The high caliber of the script and orthography, the fact that it is written on a prestige object, and the fact that it was found at a strategic military site, combine to make the most convincing conclusion that it was written by a trained, professional scribe.”

Although the teeth of the comb were broken off in antiquity, their bases remain. One side of the comb featured six thick teeth, used to untangle knots. The other side had 14 finer teeth, used to remove lice.

The ivory comb was uncovered during excavations of the famous site of Lachish in the Shephelah region of southern Israel. However, the comb itself was found in a secondary deposit. Because of this, it was not possible to date the comb according to other finds in the area. Instead, the comb’s date was determined through paleography (the form of the comb’s letters). According to the team, analysis of the script showed that it was very archaic, with several features that do not show up in later versions of the Canaanite script.

Remains of a head louse nymph between the teeth of the Lachish comb. From here.

chimen abramsky, IsAac Bashevis SINGER & Head Lice

In 2015, Sasha Abramsky published The House of Twenty Thousand Books, about the life and library of his grandfather Chimen Abramsky (1916-2010). Chimen (pronounced Shimon) was the son of the great Dayan Yechezkiel Abramsky, (1886-1976) who was head of the London Beth Din. Chimen, who eventually became a professor of Jewish Studies at University College London, was an expert on Jewish books and built a significant collection of his own, which is detailed in the book. Chimen also served as an advisor to Sotheby's and to the late Jack Lunzer, who built the greatest privately owned Jewish library in the world. Anyway, I came across this passage in the book, reminding us that presence of head lice was not just an annoyance - it was a way of life: 

Infant and childhood mortality soared in these years [of the First World War] in part because of the prevalence of diseases such as typhus - which  presumably explains why, in early photographs, the heads of Chimen and his brothers are shorn, to counter the typhus-carrying lice.[Ed. note: head lice do not carry typhus, but are certainly a nuisance.]  Isaac Bashevis Singer, who was a few years older than Chimen, and like Chimen was brought up in a devout household...recalled having his sidelocks and head hair shaved off for this reason during the First World War...he wrote in his essay "The Book"..."I saw my red sidelocks fall and I knew this was the end of them. I wanted to get rid of them for a long time." (Sasha Abramsky. The House of Twenty Thousand Books. NYRB 2015. 57-58.)

For the Nazir, hair is a central part of his religious identity, and once that identity is no-longer needed, the hair is shaved off.  Which is exactly what Isaac Bashevis Singer felt too. 

Beitzah 32b ~ Lice

In this page of Talmud there is a pithy comment about three kinds of lives '“that are less than living.”

ביצה לב, ב

תָּנוּ רַבָּנַן: שְׁלֹשָׁה חַיֵּיהֶן אֵינָם חַיִּים, וְאֵלּוּ הֵן: הַמְצַפֶּה לְשֻׁלְחַן חֲבֵירוֹ, וּמִי שֶׁאִשְׁתּוֹ מוֹשֶׁלֶת עָלָיו, וּמִי שֶׁיִּסּוּרִין מוֹשְׁלִין בְּגוּפוֹ

The Sages taught: There are three whose lives are not lives, and they are as follows: One who looks to the table of others for his sustenance; and one whose wife rules over him; and one whose body is ruled by suffering.

Then the Talmud adds a fourth category. Lice.

וְיֵשׁ אוֹמְרִים: אַף מִי שֶׁאֵין לוֹ אֶלָּא חָלוּק אֶחָד. וְתַנָּא קַמָּא: אֶפְשָׁר דִּמְעַיֵּין בְּמָנֵיהּ

And some say: Even one who has only one robe [since he cannot wash it properly, he suffers from lice and dirt]. And why was this last category not included in the original list? Because it is possible for him to examine his clothes and remove the lice, which would alleviate his suffering.

Today on Talmudology we will focus on the last category: lice

Head lice, Body Lice and pubIC LICE

There are three kinds of lice which infect humans: the tiny head louse Pediculosis humanus capitas, the larger body louse Pediculus humanus humanus, and the crab or pubic louse, Pthirus pubis. There is a discussion of lice in the tractate Nazir, as an aside to a question about how our hair grows:

נזיר לט, א

איבעיא להו האי מזיא מלתחת רבי או מלעיל למאי?... ת"ש מהא אינבא חיה דקאים בעיקבא דבינתא ואי סלקא דעתך מלתחת רבי ברישא דבינתא בעי למיקם. לעולם מלתחת רבי ואגב חיותא נחית ואזיל אינבא

ת"ש אינבא מתה ברישא דבינתא ואי סלקא דעתך מלעיל רבי בעיקבא דבינתא בעי למיקם התם נמי משום דלית בה חילא שרוגי שריגא ואזיל...

A question was asked: Does hair grow from the roots or the tips?...Let us suggest an answer from the live nit [or louse - meaning is not certain] which is found at the root of a strand [of hair]. Now if the hair grew from the root, shouldn't the nit be found at the tip? [The Talmud rejects this suggestion:] The growth may well be from the tip, but the nit, being alive, continually moves down [towards the root].

Let us suggest an answer from the case of a dead nit [or louse, that is found] at the end of a strand [of hair].  If the hair grows from the end, shouldn't the dead nit be found near the root? [The Talmud rejects this suggestion too:]  Perhaps the dead nit has no power [to grasp the hair] and so as the hair grows from the root, the nit slides.

The louse nit (egg) with its adherent cylindrical sheath cemented to the hair shaft.  The free distal end (arrow) would be directed towards the hair tip.  The egg has a domed operculum (arrow) that contains air holes, allowing the maturing larvae to breath.From Burkhat el al.  The adherent cylindrical nit structure and its chemical denaturation in vitro. Arch. Pediatric Adolescent Medicine 1988. 152; 711.

Pediculosis Humanus Capitas

Pediculosis Humanus capitas is the long scientific name of the tiny head louse.  The female, less than 3mm long, lives for about a month, and in that time lays over three hundred eggs.  The eggs are laid on a shaft of hair close to the scalp, where, warmed by the skin of their itchy host, they incubate for two weeks before hatching.  The new lice emerge, grow for about 12 days, mate, and lay their eggs, and the cycle continues. Humans are the only known host of these lice, and somewhere in this cycle you as a parent may get a call to come and take your child out of school because they have been found to have head lice, or nits, the name given to their eggs.  About 15% of school age children in the UK have head lice, while in the US estimates range from 6-12 million infestations per year. In the US, the cost to treat those millions of infestations is more than $350 million.

True story: Many years ago while working in an emergency department in Boston, I received a call from the (warm and loving Jewish) preschool my children then attended.  My daughter had nits, and could not attend class. Despite my explaining that I could not leave my shift in the ED to come and get her for as trivial a reason as head lice, the school was adamant. She remained outside the classroom until arrangements to pick here up were made.  I do hope the psychological damage was minimal.

“No healthy child should be excluded from or allowed to miss school time because of head lice. “No nit” policies for return to school should be discouraged.”

— Barbara L. Frankowski, Leonard B. Weiner, Committee on School Health and Committee on Infectious Diseases. Head Lice. Pediatrics 2002: 110 (3); 642.

Fortunately, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a report on head lice in 2002, and though it came too late for me, their advice supported my decision. Here's what they suggested:

Because a child with an active head lice infestation has likely had the infestation for a month or more by the time it is discovered, poses little risk to others, and does not have a resulting health problem, he or she should remain in class but be discouraged from close direct head contact with others. If a child is assessed as having head lice, confidentiality must be maintained so the child is not embarrassed. The child’s parent or guardian should be notified that day by telephone or a note sent home with the child at the end of the school day stating that prompt, proper treatment of this condition is in the best interest of the child and his or her classmates. 

Head Lice in Antiquity

Head lice have been with us for a long, long time, as evidenced by the Talmud's clear acquaintance with them.  Amazingly though, remains of a head louse have been identified on a louse comb from the Roman period that was discovered near the Dead Sea. (Even older remains have been found on the hair from Egyptian mummies, and nine-thousand year old lice eggs were found on human remains in Nahal Hemar near the Dead Sea.) "The comb was most probably used by inhabitants of the village of En Gedi, who were preparing a place of refuge in the cave, which would have been well equipped with food in baskets, storage jars and a large water pool before the end of the Bar Kokba Revolt in 135 CE." 

Wooden comb found in the Cave of the Pool, near Nahal David in the Dead Sea region. It was discovered in 1961.  From Mumcouglu and Hadas. Head Louse (Pediculus humanus capitis) Remains in a Louse Comb from the Roman Period Excavated in the Dead Sea Region. Israel Exploration Journal, Vol. 61, No. 2 (2011), pp. 223-229 

Head Lice More Recently

The House of Twenty Thousand Books, by Sasha Abramsky is wonderful read about the life, and library, of Chimen Abramsky (1916-2010) who was the son of the great Dayan Yechezkiel Abramsky, (1886-1976) head of the London Bet Din. Chimen (pronounced Shimon) who eventually became a professor of Jewish Studies at University College London, was an expert on Jewish books and built a significant collection of his own, which is detailed in the book. He also served as an advisor to Sotheby's and to Jack Lunzer, who built the greatest privately owned Jewish library in the world. Anyway, I came across this passage in the book, reminding us that presence of head lice was not just an annoyance - it was a way of life: 

Infant and childhood mortality soared in these years [of the First World War] in part because of the prevalence of diseases such as typhus - which  presumably explains why, in early photographs, the heads of Chimen and his brothers are shorn, to county the typhus-carrying lice.  Isaac Bashevis Singer, who was a few years older than Chimen, and like Chimen was brought up in a devout household...recalled having his sidelocks and head hair shaved off for this reason during the First World War...he wrote in his essay "The Book"..."I saw my red sidelocks fall and I knew this was the end of them. I wanted to get rid of them for a long time." (Sasha Abramsky. The House of Twenty Thousand Books. NYRB 2015. 57-58.)

For the Nazir, hair is a central part of his religious identity, and once that identity is no-longer needed, the hair is shaved off.  Which is exactly what Isaac Bashevis Singer felt too. 

The Body Louse and Typhus

Isaac Bashevis Singer (and his younger brother Moishe) caught lice during the occupation of Warsaw by the German army that began in late 1915. The lice certainly made life uncomfortable, as this page of Talmud describes. But the lice brought another more terrible and life-threatening condition. Typhus.

In his classic 1935 book Rats, Lice and History, Karl Zinsser wrote that “swords and lances, arrows, machine guns and even high explosives have had far less power over the fates of the nations than the typhus louse…”It is little wonder therefore that of the many diseases that were associated with Jews and Jewish immigrants to the New World, typhus was among the most feared.  

Typhus (from the Greek word typhos, meaning confused) is caused by a bacterium called Rickettsia prowazeki, but it cannot spread without the body louse. Once inside the louse it causes internal bleeding, and the lice takes on a reddish color as its blood leaks into its tissues. Eventually the carrier louse dies, and if it is on the skin, clothing or bedding of a person the bacterium passes through the skin and into the cells where it reproduces during the incubation period of about two weeks. It then causes a rash, fevers, headaches, confusion, hallucinations, and abdominal pain; it may spread to the lungs where it causes pneumonia. Before the antibiotic era, about 60% of all cases were fatal.

Typhus should not be confused with typhoid fever, which is caused by the Salmonella bacterium in contaminated food. In both conditions there is confusion, and hence the common root of their names. Modern outbreaks of typhoid fever have been prevented by the chlorination of drinking water, but the World Health Organization estimates that there are at least eleven million cases of typhoid fever worldwide, and about 130,000 deaths.

Typhus was described in eleventh-century Spain, sixteenth-century Italy and nineteenth-century France. In the catastrophic French invasion of Russia in 1812, only 3,000 soldiers of Napoleon’s original army of more than half a million men returned home. Most died of the cold and of typhus. Throughout its history, epidemic typhus was most associated with wars and large population upheavals. Some three million Russians died of typhus between 1917 and 1925. 

Because it was a disease of the those who were malnourished, and who lived in crowded conditions with poor sanitation, typhus was common among the poor Jews of eastern Europe. It is therefore not surprising that it featured some of the stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer (1903-1991), who grew up in the Polish village twenty-five miles north-west of Warsaw. The only child of Reb Mordecai Meir, the central character in his short story Grandather and Grandson, died of typhus. In a poorhouse in Poland we meet Mottke, a failed beadle who had reached America but was deported when he was found to have trachoma in his eye. Singer was not content with giving Mottke just one misfortune; Mottke’s father had died of typhus. And as we have noted, as a young boy Bashevis Singer had himself caught typhus, as had his brother Moishe. Still, Bashevis Singer managed to joke about the awful disease. In the short story Errors one of the characters cleverly notes that “an author doesn’t die of typhus but of typos.” Typhus was also found among the poor who had managed to emigrate, and who faced new living conditions that were not always much better than those they had left behind.  

The Jewish Fight against Typhus

In 1912 a group of Russian physicians and lawyers established the Obshchestvo Zdravookhraneniia Evreev (OSE), The Society for the Protection of the Health of the Jews. Its mission was to battle typhus, cholera and other epidemics among the Jews, and to improve their standards of sanitation. The effort quickly grew and by 1917 there were more than 45 OZE branches that operated in 102 cities in the former Russian Empire; later, offices opened in Berlin, Paris and London. They ran nineteen hospitals and ninety out-patient clinics, two sanatoria for patients with tuberculosis, and one-hundred and twenty-five nurseries that served over twelve-thousand children. A branch opened in Warsaw in 1921, called Towarzystwo Ochrony Zdrowia Ludności Żydowskiej w Polsce (TOZ)– The Society for the Protection of Jewish Health in Poland. The two organizations worked together. They produced a Yiddish health journal for the public called Folks-Gezunt, as well as a Polish-Yiddish scientific journal issued in Warsaw called Medycyna Społeczna (Social Medicine). Before the outbreak of World War II, the TOZ employed more than a thousand doctors, nurses, dentists and teachers.

Among the many public health campaigns that the OSE ran were a series of posters. One of these is especially poignant. It is a poster that uses the motif of the biblical plagues as a warning to prevent the body lice that transmit typhus. “Blood, Frogs, LICE [kinim]: the third plague is the worst. Stop the lice! Lice cause typhus.

Yiddish health poster warning against lice which carried typhus. By Joseph Tchaikov, printed by OSE London/Berlin 1923. Reproduced from Murderous Medicine by Naomi Baumslag, p6

The TOZ was shut down by the Nazis in 1942. Its property and assets were confiscated and most of the staff and patients were murdered. And of course under the deceit of “delousing,” the Nazis killed over a million Jews, along with Gypsies and other “undesirables” using Zyklon B, which had originally been developed as a pesticide and was used to fumigate and delouse clothing, trains and buildings. This page of Talmud is a reminder of the darkest period of Jewish history, when lice really did turn Jewish lives into lives that were not lived, חַיֵּיהֶן אֵינָם חַיִּים.

Shabbat 12a ~ Killing Lice and Spontaneous Generation

שבת יב, א

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other Talmudic Discussions of Spontaneous Generation

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

חולין קכז,א

עכבר שחציו בשר וחציו אדמה שאין פרה ורבה

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

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

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

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

And here is Rashi from Chullin127b:

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

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

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

סנהדרין צא, א

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

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

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

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

EVERYONE BELIEVED IT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WELL, NOT QUITE EVERYONE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PASTEUR'S EXPERIMENTS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well no. Not so fast.

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

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

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

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

Isaac Lampronti - Bringing the talmud Up to Date

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

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

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

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

WRONG, BUT FOR THE RIGHT REASONS

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

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

Niddah 58b ~ Bed Bugs

The adult bed beg. They are about the size of an apple seed, 5mm or so, but may be larger if they have recently fed. From here.

Bed bugs have been an increasing presence in our lives since the 1980s. While outbreaks in New York city hotels left everyone itching, the bugs are an international menace. They have been reported in Canada, Germany, Australia and Israel. In a 2014 interview, Dr. Kosta Mumcuoglu, a parasitologist from the Hebrew University told The Jerusalem Post that the incidence of bed bugs had increased by 150% over a five-year period, and that they were developing resistance to insecticides. Bed bugs, it seems, have become a feature of modern living. Just like they were during Talmudic times, as discussed in today’s page of Talmud.

The Talmud spends some time discussing this pest because of its ability to leave blood stains that are similar in appearance to those that might render a woman ritually impure.

נדה נח, ב

שאין לך כל מטה ומטה שאין בה כמה טיפי דם מאכולת

There is no bed of any kind on which there are not several drops of blood of a louse.

“Bed bug infestations have been reported increasingly in homes, apartments, hotel rooms, hospitals, and dormitories in the United States since 1980”

— Goddard J. deShazo R. Bed Bugs (Cimex lectularius) and Clinical Consequences of Their Bites. JAMA 2009: 301 (13): 1358-1366.

A series of bites in a line is characteristic of bedbug bites. From Delaunay P. et al. Bedbugs and Infectious Diseases. Clinical Infectious Diseases 2011; 52(2):200–210.

From here.

Bed bugs are insects from the Cimicidae family. All species are obligate hematophages (meaning that they can only ingest and live on blood) but only two species, Cimex lectularius and Cimex hemipterus, readily feed on humans (though others may rarely do so as well). They are about 5mm long, the size of an apple seed, and are easily visible to the untrained eye, resembling small cockroaches. But you are more likely to see them after they have feasted in blood, when they may increase in length by 50% and weigh twice as much as a unsated bug. According to a thorough review of the subject in the Journal of the American Medical Association, bedbugs “generally avoid light, hide during the day, and feed at night. Hiding places are usually within 1 to 2 meters of suitable hosts and include seams in mattresses, crevices in box springs, backsides of headboards, spaces under baseboards or loose wall-paper, and even behind hanging pictures. Adult bed bugs have an average life span of 6 to 12 months and can survive up to a year without feeding.” I am itching already…

Over my years in the ER I saw many rashes that were from bed bugs, mostly, but not exclusively, in the homeless. Only about 30% of people bitten have a reaction to the bug bite, but in those who do the rash can be very uncomfortable. There are usually several raised red lesions in a line. Scratching can lead to bleeding, and in some cases to a local infection.

“ Cimicid infestations result in multimillion dollar damage in the hospitality industry, poultry industry, and private and communal households. Costs arise from payment for pest control, damage to social reputation, replacement of infested infrastructure, and claims for monetary reparation. ”

— Reinhardt K. Siva-Jothy M. T. Biology of the Bed Bugs (Cimicidae). An. Rev. Entomol. 2007: 52:351–74

Areas and localities in Israel, in which there were treatments against bedbug infestations. Based on a survey of 143 “pest management professionals” in 2009. From Mumcuoglu K. Shalom U. Questionnaire survey of common bedbug (Cimex lectularius) infestations in Israel. Israel Journal of Entomology 2010:40; 1-10.

The Smell (and Taste) of a Bed bug

Today’s page of Talmud continues with these fun facts:

ת"ר פשפש זה ארכו כרחבו וטעמו כריחו ברית כרותה לו שכל המוללו מריח בו ארכו כרחבו לענין כתמים

This bedbug, its length is equal to its width, and its taste is like its foul smell. A covenant is made with it, i.e., it is a law of nature, that anyone who squeezes it will smell its foul odor.

Apparently, the foul odor which the Talmud describes resembles “rotting raspberries.” Most people cannot detect this smell - perhaps the Talmudic nose was more sensitive than our modern one, but today bed bugs are detected using a canine rather than a human nose. Dogs are widely employed by pest management companies, and from rigorous studies we know that dogs can detect even a single adult bed bug. Dogs can also discriminate live bed bugs from dead ones and in one controlled experiment in hotel rooms, “dogs were 98% accurate in locating live bed bugs.”  The dogs could also differentiate the live bed bugs from other general household pests, such as cockroaches, termites, and carpenter ants. And so thankfully, there is no-longer a need to smell or taste a bed bug in order to identify it. It’s too bad that canine detection was not available in Babylon a couple of thousand years ago.