Nedarim, Vows and Curses

Today we reach the end of the tractate Nedarim, which featured many in-depth discussions on the meaning of words and how they are to be taken seriously. So seriously do we take the concern of inadvertently vowing to do something and then failing do follow through, that the very first words of the Yom Kippur service, Kol Nidre, are a nullification of any and all future vows that may be uttered over the coming year. It has become part of Jewish tradition that on the days leading up to Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur, a ceremonial “release from vows” - hatarat nedarim - is performed.This much is familiar to most readers of Talmudology. But how many are familiar with another ceremony, this one called hatarat klallot - the nullification not of vows, but of curses?

The Old Jewish Cemetery in Marrakesh.

Hatarat Klallot in Marrakesh

A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to accompany a group of students from Yeshiva University’s Sacks-Herenstein Center for Values and Leadership on a trip to Morocco. It was while we were volunteering to help restore the Jewish Cemetery that one of the students found several printed leaves titled “Hatarat Klallot” in the community geniza, With the permission of the authorities, the student and I took several of these texts as souvenirs of a sort. But they are much more than that.

As you can see form the text above, the ceremony closely follows the language and style of the much more familiar hatarot nedarim that is performed to this day. But instead of announcing our regret at having vowed and then failing to follow through, hatarot klallot asks us to be released from any curses that others may have placed on us, or that we placed on others.

The text appears to have been composed by Rabbi Chaim Yossef David Azulai, better known by his acronym as the Chida (1724-1806) and may be found in his Tziporen Shamir. The Chida was born in Jerusalem from Moroccan ancestors, and while he was a noted talmudist, his world view was profoundly shaped by the Jewish mystical tradition, known as Kabbalah. Here are the opening words of his Hatarat Klallot (there are various versions), which is recited in front of three others who serve as a makeshift court:

We ask your honors to release us from any curses or rebukes, or forbidden things, or bad dreams and their bad interpretations, and any judgements against us, or any opportunity for bad things to occur, and any harsh or evil decrees, and all evil eyes that may have been cast against us or against any members of our households…

And the acting judges reply:

In the name of the heavenly court and in the name of the earthly court we hereby release you…from the effect of any curse or ill will or evil or any vow or any promise [made against you]…There is no longer any rebuke or any harmful phrase or witchcraft or nightmare or an evil interpretation of dreams. There is to be no trial [of you], there is no opportunity for evil, there are no bad strange thoughts or evil daydreams [against you]. There are no evil decrees, there is no evil eye cast by a man and none cast by a woman. There is no evil eye cast by those who hate you or those who love you. They are all annulled and decreed to be ineffective, as useless as a piece of broken pottery, a thing of no material substance. All types of evil eye are hereby removed from you and from your homes and are cast into the depths of the ocean…

The Chida wrote that this was to be recited before Rosh Hashanah, but if you look carefully at the small print at the top of the image you will read:

It is the custom to say this in the Jerusalem synagogues of Bet El… and in those from the west [i.e. Morocco] every Friday before Shabbat

Presumably this was also a widespread custom in Morocco itself, or at least in Marrakech, where we found a dozen or so of these printed sheets in the geniza.

As we close Nedarim let us pause to remember the power of words to commit, their power to release, their power to curse, and their power to reassure that the future will be bright.

Nedarim 65a ~ Bad Dog. Very Bad Dog.

נדרים סה, א

קונם לבית זה שאני נכנס שהכלב רע בתוכו או שהנחש בתוכו, אמרו לו מת הכלב או שנהרג הנחש הרי הן כנולד ואינו כנולד

If a person [takes a vow and] says : It is forbidden for me to enter this house because there is an evil dog inside, or a snake inside, and they said to him that the dog died, or that the snake was killed, these circumstances are like new developments [and so the vow is rendered void]. (Nedarim 65a)

JEWS AND DOGS

From this Mishnah in today's daf yomi, we learn a couple of things about dogs in the period of the Mishnah (that is, in Israel in the decades around 200CE). First, we learn that Jews, or those who interacted with Jews, kept them. And second, that some of them were very bad dogs.  So bad, that you'd literally swear not to visit a house that housed one of these mutts.   

Jews and dogs don't traditionally get along. In Bava Kamma 93a, Rabbi Eliezer does not mince his words: רבי אליעזר הגדול אומר: המגדל כלבים כמגדל חזירים .למאי נפקא מינה? למיקם עליה בארור

“Rabbi Eliezer the Great said: Someone who breeds dogs is like someone who breeds pigs. What is the practical outcome of this comparison? To teach that those who breed dogs are cursed...”

— BT Bava Kama 93a.

The American Veterinary Medical Association estimates that in the US there are about 43 million households that own almost 70 million dogs; that means over one-third of the households in the US own a dog.  (Fun Fact: Cats are owned by fewer households in the US, but are more often owned in twos or more. That means that there are more household cats - some 74 million - than there are dogs.) In the UK, a 2007 study estimated that 31% of all households owned a dog. In Israel, over 10% of all families own a dog. 

BAD DOGS

There are some really bad dogs. In a 10 year period from 2000-2009, one paper identified 256 dog-bite related fatalities in the US. Of course that's a tiny number compared to the overall number of dogs owned, but that's still 256 too many; the tragedy is compounded when you read that over half the victims were less than ten years old. 

Partaken, GJ. et al. Co-occurrence of potentially preventable factors in 256 dog bite–related fatalities in the United States (2000–2009). Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association 2013. 243:12: 1726-1736.

“Az a yid hot a hunt, iz oder der hunt keyn hunt nit, oder der yid iz keyn yid nit

If a Jew has a dog, either the dog is no dog, or the Jew is no Jew”

— Sholem Aleichem. Rabtshik. Mayses far Yidishe Kinder. Ale Verk. Warsaw 1903

Fatalities from dog bites are rare. Dog bites are not. Over my career as an emergency physician I must have treated hundreds of patients with dog bites. And my experience is pretty typical. One recent study estimated that more than half the population in the US will be bitten by an animal at some time, and that dogs are responsible for 80-90% of these injuries. 

GOOD DOGS

Although Jews are thought not to have a historical affinity for dogs, one theologian has reassessed the evidence. In his 2008 paper Attitudes toward Dogs in Ancient Israel: A Reassessment, Geoffrey Miller  suggests that in fact dogs were not shunned in Israelite society. He notes that the remains of over a thousand dogs were discovered in a dog cemetery near Ashkelon dating from about the 5th century BC. It was described as "by far the largest animal cemetery known in the ancient world" by Lawrence Stager who also pointed out that during this period, Ashkelon was a Phoenician city - not a Jewish one. Miller surveys several mentions of dogs in the Bible and the Book of Tobit, and concludes that at least some Israelites "valued dogs and did not view them as vile, contemptible creatures." Joshua Schwartz from Bar-Ilan University surveyed Dogs in Jewish Society in the Second Temple Period and in the Time of the Mishnah and Talmud (a study that marked "...the culmination of several years of study of the subject of dogs...").  He found that while "most of the Jewish sources from the Second Temple period and the time of the Mishnah and Talmud continue to maintain the negative attitude toward dogs expressed in the Biblical tradition" there were some important exceptions. There were sheep dogs (Gen. Rabbah 73:11) and hunting dogs (Josephus, Antiquities 4.206) and guard dogs (Pesahim 113a), and yes, even pet dogs (Tobit, 6:2), though Schwartz concedes that "it is improbable that dogs in Jewish society were the objects of the same degree of affection as they received in the Graeco-Roman world or the Persian world."  

“A certain person invited a sage to his home, and [the householder] sat his dog next to him. [The sage] asked him, ‘How did I merit this insult?’ [The house-holder] responded, ‘My master, I am repaying him for his goodness. Kidnappers came to the town, one of them came and wanted to take my wife, and the dog ate his testicles.”

— PT Terumot 8:7

Very Good Dogs

Whatever your feeling about dogs, lets's be sure to remember that they serve alongside soldiers in the IDF, where they save lives. In 1969, Motta Gur (yes, the same Mordechai "Motta" Gur who commanded the unit that liberated the Temple Mount in the Six Day War, and who uttered those immortal words "The Temple Mount is in our hands!" הר הבית בידינו‎,) wrote what was to become a series of children's books called Azit, the Canine Paratrooper (later turned into a popular feature film with the same title. And was once available on Netflix. But IDF dogs don't just feature in fiction. They are a fact, and an amazing addition to the IDF, where they make up the Oketz unit.  Here's a news report (in Hebrew) about the amazing work these dogs - and their handlers - perform. These are very good dogs indeed.

[Mostly a repost from Ketuvot 41.]

Nedarim 15a ~ How Long Can You Go Without Sleep?

נדרים טו א

והא"ר יוחנן שבועה שלא אישן שלשה ימים מלקין אותו וישן לאלתר

...Rabbi Yochanan said "An oath that I will not sleep for three days" - we lash him [since he took an oath in vain] and he may sleep immediately...(Nedarim 15a)

How long can you go without sleep? If you are like me, staying awake for just one night can be very challenging.  I worked my share of night shifts in the emergency department for over fifteen years (amounting to hundreds of overnight shifts) but it never got any easier with time. We all push ourselves when we need to, but is there a physiological limit to the amount of time that you can stay awake?

The World Record for Staying Awake

The world record for staying awake is an amazing eleven days. Eleven days – that’s 264 hours (and 24 minutes to be precise) without sleep. It was set in 1965 by Randy Gardner, who was then seventeen years old. Gardner seems to have suffered little if any harm by his marathon period of sleep deprivation. But don’t try and beat the record. The Guinness Book of Records no longer has an entry for staying awake – because it is considered too dangerous an ordeal to undertake. (You can hear a review of sleep deprivation stunts in general and a wonderful interview with Gardner himself here.)

The Health Risks of Sleep Deprivation

A 1970 study of four volunteers who stayed awake for 205 hours (that’s eight and a half days!) noted some differences in how the subjects slept once they were allowed to do so, but follow-up testing of the group conducted 6-9 months after the sleep deprivation showed that their sleep patterns were similar to the pre-deprivation recordings.

Although Randy Gardner and these four volunteers seem to have suffered no long-term health consequences of staying awake for over a week, scientists have long noted that sleep deprivation is rather bad for the body. Or to be more precise, the bodies of unfortunate laboratory rats who are not allowed to sleep. In these animals, prolonged sleep deprivation causes the immune system to malfunction. This results in infection and eventual lethal septicemia. The physiologist who kept these rats awake noted that there are “far-reaching physical implications resulting from alterations in immune status [which] may explain why sleep deprivation effects are risk factors for disease and yet are not well defined or specifically localized.” In other words, sleep deprivation makes rats really sick, but we don’t know how, or why…

One possible explanation was suggested in a 2013 by a group from the University of Rochester Medical Center. They demonstrated that during sleep, the space between the cells of the brain (the interstitial space) increased by up to 60%, allowing toxic metabolites to be cleared. This raises the question of whether the brain sleeps in order to expel these toxic chemicals, or rather it is the chemicals themselves that drive the brain to switch into a sleep state.

The extracellular (interstitial) space in the cortex of the mouse brain, through which cerebral spinal fluid moves, increases from 14% in the awake animal to 23% in the sleeping animal, an increase that allows the faster clearance of metabolic waste products and toxins. From Suzana Herculano-Houzel. Sleep it out. Science 2013: 342; 316

Not having any sleep is bad for your health - but so too is going without enough sleep. Chronic restriction of sleep to six hours or less per night can produce cognitive performance deficits equivalent to up to two nights of total sleep deprivation. So be sure to get a full night's rest.

How long did the Vilna Gaon stay awake?

In his recent book on the Vilna Gaon, Eli Stern reviewed an episode in which the Gaon (d. 1797) was jailed on charges of kidnapping. (It’s a long story, but the Vilna Gaon was involved in the kidnapping of a young Jewish man who had converted to Christianity.) This episode occurred in January 1788, after which the Gaon was arrested and held for over a month.  The case was later tried, and on September 15, 1789 (sic) the Gaon of Vilna (together with others involved in the kidnapping) was sentenced to twelve weeks in jail.  Although it is unclear how long he was imprisoned, he was there over Sukkot, and the Lithuanian authorities were hardly in the practice of providing imprisoned Jews with a sukkah.  But since one is not permitted to sleep outside of the sukkah, what was the Gaon to do?  Simple.  He’d stay awake, and by doing so he would not transgress the prohibition of sleeping outside the sukkah.  Here’s how the episode is described in the work Tosefet Ma’aseh Rav published in 1892. 

Our Leader, teacher and Rabbi may he rest in peace, when he was imprisoned on Sukkot, tried with all his strength, and walked from one place to another, and held his eyelids open, and made an extraordinary effort not to sleep outside the sukkah – not even a brief nap – until the authorities released him to a sukkah.

We don’t know for how long the sixty-nine year-old Elijah stayed awake, but any suggestion that he was awake for the entire holiday of Sukkot seems to be far fetched (though as we have seen, not entirely impossible).

Hard, But Not Impossible

In today’s daf, Rabbi Yochanan ruled that since it impossible to stay awake for more than three days, any vow to do so is considered to have been a vow made in vain – and punishment follows swiftly.  Here is how the ArtScroll Talmud explains this ruling, (based on the explanation of the Ran).

Since it is impossible for a person to go without sleep for three days, the man has uttered a vain oath. Hence, he receives lashes for violating the prohibition (Exodus 20:7): לא תשא את שם ה׳ אלוקיך לשוה, You shall not take the Name of Hashem, your God, in vain. And since the oath -being impossible to fulfill -has no validity, he is not bound by it at all and may sleep immediately.

We have seen however, that while it’s not a good idea to do so on any kind of regular basis, it is certainly possible to stay up for longer than three days. (Back in the 1970s, some volunteers would even do so for as little as $100). Maimonides codified this law and also assume that it is impossible to stay awake for three consecutive days. 

רמב"ם הלכות שבועות פרק ה הלכה כ

נשבע שלא יישן שלשת ימים, או שלא יאכל כלום שבעת ימים וכיוצא בזה שהיא שבועת שוא, אין אומרין יעור זה עד שיצטער ויצום עד שיצטער ולא יהיה בו כח לסבול ואח"כ יאכל או יישן אלא מלקין אותו מיד משום שבועת שוא ויישן ויאכל בכל עת שירצה

Based on what we've reviewed, Rabbi Yochanan was incorrect when he stated that it was impossible to stay awake for three days. It's certainly not impossible, but that hardly means it's a good idea to try. 

“Sleep deprivation reduces learning, impairs performance in cognitive tests, prolongs reaction time, and is a common cause of seizures. In the most extreme case, continuous sleep deprivation kills rodents and flies within a period of days to weeks. In humans, fatal familial or sporadic insomnia is a progressively worsening state of sleeplessness that leads to dementia and death within months or years. ”

— Lulu Xie et al. Sleep Drives Metabolite Clearance from the Adult Brain. Science 2013. 342.317

This may explain the teaching of Rabbi Chaninah ben Chachina'i in Masechet Avot  (3:4) who taught that one who stays awake at night "will forfeit with his life."  Now that's a warning to heed.

רבי חנינא בן חכינאי אומר הנעור בלילה ... הרי זה מתחייב בנפשו 

Talmudology Redux ~ Could the Vilna Gaon Have Stayed Awake Over Sukkot?

The Vilna Gaon, (lit. The Genius of Vilna) lived from 1720-1797, and next week, the 19th of Tishrei, is the Hebrew anniversary of his death. He was one of the leading talmudic and halakhic authorities of his time. His works are widely studied to this day, and his legal opinions are often cited. Today’s question is: did the Vilna Gaon stay awake for several consecutive days one Sukkot? Here is the background:

The Vilna Gaon.

In January 1788 the Vilna Gaon was involved in the kidnapping of a young Jewish man who had converted to Christianity. For his role in the kidnapping Rabbi Eliyahu (the given name of the Gaon) was arrested and held for over a month.  The case was later tried, and on September 15, 1789 (sic) the Gaon of Vilna, together with others involved in the kidnapping, was sentenced to twelve weeks in jail.  Although it is unclear how long he was imprisoned, he was there over Sukkot, and the Lithuanian authorities were hardly in the practice of providing imprisoned Jews with a sukkah.  But since one is not permitted to sleep outside of the sukkah, what was the Gaon to do?  Simple.  He’d stay awake, and by doing so he would not transgress the prohibition of sleeping outside the sukkah.  Here’s how the episode is described in the work Tosefet Ma’aseh Rav published in 1892. 

Our Leader, teacher and Rabbi may he rest in peace, when he was imprisoned on Sukkot, tried with all his strength, and walked from one place to another, and held his eyelids open, and made an extraordinary effort not to sleep outside the sukkah – not even a brief nap – until the authorities released him to a sukkah.

We don’t know for how many nights the sixty-nine year-old Rabbi Eliyahu stayed awake, but is such a claim even plausible? As it turns out, it is.

The World Record for Staying Awake

The world record for staying awake is an amazing eleven days. Eleven days – that’s 264 hours (and 24 minutes to be precise) without sleep. It was set in 1965 by Randy Gardner, who was then seventeen years old. Gardner seems to have suffered little if any harm by his marathon period of sleep deprivation. But don’t try and beat the record. The Guinness Book of Records no longer has an entry for staying awake – because it is considered too dangerous an ordeal to undertake. (You can hear a review of sleep deprivation stunts in general and a wonderful interview with Gardner himself here.)

The Health Risks of Sleep Deprivation

What are the health risks of prolonged sleep deprivation? A 1970 study of four volunteers who stayed awake for 205 hours (that’s eight and a half days!) noted some differences in how the subjects slept once they were allowed to do so, but follow-up testing of the group conducted 6-9 months after the sleep deprivation showed that their sleep patterns were similar to the pre-deprivation recordings.

“Sleep deprivation reduces learning, impairs performance in cognitive tests, prolongs reaction time, and is a common cause of seizures. In the most extreme case, continuous sleep deprivation kills rodents and flies within a period of days to weeks. In humans, fatal familial or sporadic insomnia is a progressively worsening state of sleeplessness that leads to dementia and death within months or years. ”

— Lulu Xie et al. Sleep Drives Metabolite Clearance from the Adult Brain. Science 2013. 342.317

Although Randy Gardner and these four volunteers seem to have suffered no long-term health consequences of staying awake for over a week, scientists have long noted that sleep deprivation is rather bad for the body. Or to be more precise, the bodies of unfortunate laboratory rats who are not allowed to sleep. In these animals, prolonged sleep deprivation causes the immune system to malfunction. This results in infection and eventual lethal septicemia. The physiologist who kept these rats awake noted that there are “far-reaching physical implications resulting from alterations in immune status [which] may explain why sleep deprivation effects are risk factors for disease and yet are not well defined or specifically localized.” In other words, sleep deprivation makes rats really sick, but we don’t know how, or why…

One possible explanation was suggested in 2013 by a group from the University of Rochester Medical Center. They demonstrated that during sleep, the space between the cells of the brain (the interstitial space) increased by up to 60%, allowing toxic metabolites to be cleared. This raises the question of whether the brain sleeps in order to expel these toxic chemicals, or rather it is the chemicals themselves that drive the brain to switch into a sleep state.

The extracellular (interstitial) space in the cortex of the mouse brain, through which cerebral spinal fluid moves, increases from 14% in the awake animal to 23% in the sleeping animal, an increase that allows the faster clearance of metabolic waste products and toxins. From Suzana Herculano-Houzel. Sleep it out. Science 2013: 342; 316

Not having any sleep is bad for your health - but so too is going without enough sleep. Chronic restriction of sleep to six hours or less per night can produce cognitive performance deficits equivalent to up to two nights of total sleep deprivation. So be sure to get a full night's rest.

Hard, But Not Impossible

The world record set by Randy Gardner has implications for a talmudic decision. In the tractate Shavuot (26b) Rabbi Yochanan ruled that since it was impossible to stay awake for more than three days, any vow to do so is considered to have been a vow made in vain – and punishment follows swiftly.  Here is how the ArtScroll Talmud explains this ruling, (based on the explanation of the Ran).

Since it is impossible for a person to go without sleep for three days, the man has uttered a vain oath. Hence, he receives lashes for violating the prohibition (Exodus 20:7): לא תשא את שם ה׳ אלוקיך לשוה, You shall not take the Name of Hashem, your God, in vain. And since the oath -being impossible to fulfill -has no validity, he is not bound by it at all and may sleep immediately.

Maimonides codified this law and also assumed that it is impossible to stay awake for three consecutive days. 

רמב"ם הלכות שבועות פרק ה הלכה כ

נשבע שלא יישן שלשת ימים, או שלא יאכל כלום שבעת ימים וכיוצא בזה שהיא שבועת שוא, אין אומרין יעור זה עד שיצטער ויצום עד שיצטער ולא יהיה בו כח לסבול ואח"כ יאכל או יישן אלא מלקין אותו מיד משום שבועת שוא ויישן ויאכל בכל עת שירצה

If a person swore that he would not sleep for three days, or would not eat anything for seven days, or something similar, this is considered a false oath. We do not tell the person to stay awake until it is impossible to do so, or fast for as long as possible until the discomfort is too great to bear, and then allow him to eat or sleep. Rather he is punished with lashes immediately for making a false oath, and is then allowed to sleep or eat as much as he wants…

Based on Randy Gardner’s feat, Rabbi Yochanan was incorrect when he ruled that it was impossible to stay awake for three days. It's certainly not impossible, but that hardly means it's a good idea to try. 

It also means that the story of the Gaon of Vilna’s sleepless nights in that cold prison might indeed have occurred. Still it is best not to disrupt your usual sleep patterns. Perhaps that is why Rabbi Chaninah ben Chachina'i in Masechet Avot  (3:4) taught that one who stays awake at night "will forfeit with his life."  Now that's a warning to heed.

רבי חנינא בן חכינאי אומר הנעור בלילה ... הרי זה מתחייב בנפשו

HAPPY SUKKOT FROM TALMUDOLOGY