Rejewvenate!

I recently attended a lecture by Dr. James Kugel, who was recently in New York for a series of speaking engagements, along with other members of my weekly Kugel with Kugel learning group. The lecture itself focused on letters sent to Dr. Kugel in response to his recent book How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture Then and Now. I was a bit disappointed; though the content was good, Dr. Kugle spent his time on a letter from a reader that Dr. Kugel had already published on his website.

Many readers have hoped that Dr. Kugel would have some new answers to the questions posed by Biblical scholarship to traditional modes of thought. To date, those readers have been disappointed. Like many Jews of his generation, be they scholars, rabbis, or laypeople, Dr. Kugel is basically a compartmentalist. Though he has some non-traditional ideas about the origins of the Biblical text - ideas that are largely consonant with modern scholarship - he does subscribe to the historicity of the Torah, and especially the Exodus. For many Jews of my generation, compartmentalizing the teachings of our faith separately from the results of scientific study is no longer satisfactory.

One question that must come up whenever Dr. Kugel speaks is the challenge posed by an evolving Biblical text to the assumptions of a static, perfect text that undergird the entire tradition of the Oral Torah, from  the Mishnah to the Talmud to the latest works by contemporary Orthodox rabbis. It is disturbing to think that the great Jewish sages produced Rabbinical Judaism on the basis of a false assumption! For many, this is a fatal flaw that collapses the entire edifice of Rabbinical Judaism.

But why is that so? The rabbis of the first half of the first millennium BCE had many basic misconceptions about the nature of the world around them. These included a belief in geocentricism, spontaneous generation, and the many ahistorical stories of the Bible. Modern Orthodoxy has already chipped away at some of these notions by finding or originating interpretations that allow its adherents to affirm their scientific beliefs that evolution occurred, that the Earth is billions of years old, and so forth. One might argue that this simply adds a new challenge to belief - why accept that these rabbis had any special access to Divine knowledge if they were mistaken on so many things?

The Torah itself contains the answer:

הַנִּסְתָּרֹת–לַיהוָה, אֱלֹהֵינוּ; וְהַנִּגְלֹת לָנוּ וּלְבָנֵינוּ, עַד-עוֹלָם–לַעֲשׂוֹת, אֶת-כָּל-דִּבְרֵי הַתּוֹרָה הַזֹּאת.

The secret things belong unto the LORD our God; but the things that are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.

Explicitly, the Torah tells us that not everything is revealed to us, and that we are only responsible for that which we know. The implication, too often ignored, is that as more is revealed to us, our responsibilities change. Ignoring knowledge, no matter how disturbing to our traditional beliefs that knowledge may be, is ultimately a repudiation of our responsibilities to God, to ourselves, and to our children.

Scientific knowledge has enormous impact on our moral choices. Advances in communicating with the deaf, have changed the halachic status of deaf people from a non-obligated non-entity into full members of religious society. Insights into economics have brought innovations that allow Jews to lend money with interest. Revolutions in medicine have redefined the borders between life and death, and with that, the responsibilities due to those at that threshold.

I propose that the knowledge we have gained about the Biblical text in particular, but about the world and its inhabitants in general must inform our religious philosophy and our moral choices. The sages of our Mesorah certainly did, and we can do no less. We are in no way impugning their spiritual stature or relationship with God, nor are we repudiating their mission and goals. But we must accommodate our newfound knowledge, because all knowledge is ultimately a gift from God, and any new insight into the world is a new insight into Creation, and ultimately is itself a form of revelation that lets us better understand the mind of God.

XGH can’t get enough of the science vs. faith issue, and I suppose neither can I. Unlike XGH, I’ve always taken the not-at-all-original position that science and faith have two different roles and asking if they contradict is sort of like asking whether the Declaration of Independence contradicts a grapefruit.

A fundamental truth and feature of human existence is the presence of uncertainty in our lives. Whether it’s choosing an investment, a school to attend, a candidate to vote for or a movie to go to, we must constantly make choices based on insufficient information about the past, present, and future.

Science is one kind of response to uncertainty. Logically, if the problem we face is uncertainty, better information will improve our decisions and capabilities. Thought we often think about science as a pathway to inventions and innovative products, those things are the result of engineering, not science. At heart, science is a quest for knowledge, and the knowledge gained impacts every area of human endeavor.

We all acknowledge that science as practiced in the last few hundred years has been an astonishing success. But science is a relatively slow process, and its task - the understanding of the universe - is immense. No matter how fantastic science is, we remain with a tremendous amount of uncertainty.

Religion is at heart a response to that uncertainty. At its best, it is a tool for navigating uncertainty. We would all agree that even as science circles closer and closer to satisfying and complete answers to some very difficult and important questions, it remains incomplete. There are very many questions that science cannot answer, and very many answers that science has provided over time which have proven to be incorrect by varying degrees. Therefor, for the person trying to establish a method for making decisions, science is an imperfect tool. Relying on its findings absolutely, to the exclusion of all other means of evaluation, is irrational. It is true that one cannot do science effectively except by submitting fully to the scientific method, but doing science and living life are two different pursuits, with very different goals.

Religion is many things: a tool for making decisions when faced with uncertainty, a means for protecting and conveying important information across generations, and a source of comfort and strength in times when doubt and fear overwhelm our rationality.

We attribute truth even to non-rational aspects of religion. I can’t scientifically test for Tumah v’Tahara. No neurologist or cardiologist has ever identified the soul. But if we are to put any stock into the intelligence of our forebears, and the value of human cultural experience, we must agree that these constructs, whether physically real or not, are just as true as gravity or magnetism. We can see and feel their impacts, even if we cannot test or measure them scientifically.

When I need to make a decision, I evaluate that decision not only based on  ‘rational’ modes. I ask myself, and I’m sure I’m not alone in this, whether God would approve of my decision. Surely, the answer I receive depends on my specific conception of God - after all, many suicide bombers have asked themselves this same question, and came up with an answer I find evil and abhorrent. But how can I live without asking that question? Science can’t give me certainties, and as it turns out, neither can religion. But religion allows to tap into generations of human knowledge about relationships, right and wrong, community, and insight into how to live a meaningful life, and I just can’t get that from science.

All around Jewish blogland, skeptics battle true believers in what is practically a formal dance for its predictability. That’s not to say that they’re not fun to engage in, or that you don’t learn something new every once in a while.

Among the claims made by skeptics is that science has proven itself to be the only reliable tool for discovering truths about the universe. This claim is most commonly rebutted by the argument that science is constantly changing and revising its opinions, and that much of what we accept today will be overturned tomorrow. Thus, there is no point in rejecting received knowledge (i.e. the Mesorah), for science, since science is unreliable. whereas the Mesorah must be true. (Of course, if you believe the latter, you don’t really need to make arguments, yuo simply have an axiom, albeit one that few others are willing to live by.)

Skeptics counter that science is refining its knowledge, but that on the whole, scientific knowledge in many areas is settled. We are not, for example, going to discover that light moves at a different speed, that gravity actually has no relation to mass or distance, or that the earth is only a few thousand years old.

I’m not so certain. Try this one for size: We have yet to understand the mechanism by which gravity works, even though we can predict its effect precisely. We know that the earth pulls on the moon, but how does it pull on the moon? The answers presented by physics today give such a mysterious picture of the universe as to be a radical departure from our current understanding of what the universe is and how it operates. While our measurements may not change much, and will continue to allow us to engage in scientific feats like space travel, computers, and all the other miracles of our age, our understanding will be radically different.

For all the controversy and exciting potential for discovery in the physical world, the more fluid world, the one from which the arguments of the true believers may yet find nourishment, is in the world of perception and cognition. Not to sound too much like a post-modernist, but facts do depend upon perception, and if we do not understand how we perceive and understand things, then how can we truly understand those things?

Here’s a list of ten amazing puzzles involving our brain, as discussed by Discover Magazine:

1. How is information coded in neural activity?
2. How are memories stored and retrieved?
3. What does the baseline activity in the brain represent?
4. How do brains simulate the future?
5. What are emotions?
6. What is intelligence?
7. How is time represented in the brain?
8. Why do brains sleep and dream?
9. How do the specialized systems of the brain integrate with one another?
10. What is consciousness?

With such bedrock questions about our own nature still open before us, how much confidence can we have in our scientific achievements? We’ve onyl been engaged in really effective systematic science for a couple of hundred years. Is the universe, and are we, so simple as to yield all secrets in so short a span? Perhaps believers need to respect what science has discovered and achieved more than they do, but skeptics most certainly need to learn some humility in the face of the fundamental ignorance that we still toil in.

For a list of scientific theories that have been superceded, see Wikipedia.

From the ‘Scientists scale the mountain of knowledge of the universe to find a bunch of rabbis already at the summit’ department (we’re going to have to rename that department) comes an odd article from John Tierney. The article talks about an Oxford professor who considers the possibility (in his mind, about a 20% chance) that we humans are actually denizens of a computer program designed to simulate history. I think that for many of us, the question of who or what God is, and what His desires and intentions are in relation to the universe, are as captivating as an odd sore in your mouth. On the one hand, not much good can come from constantly poking and prodding at it, but on the other, your tongue can’t seem to help itself.

Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy’s Couch - New York Times

I keep tabs on the XGH blog, which, despite it’s massive popularity, still strikes me as being pretty, well, adolescent. Here’s a blogger who set out to reconcile faith and reason, and basically hatch a bulletproof philosophy for Modern Orthodoxy - to get a sense of his ambition, his old URL was godolhador.blogspot.com (now closed). Unsurprisingly, he failed, and turned over his blog. His new initials stand for ex-Gadol Hador, and his blog changes name every now and again, but was recently named Existential Angst and now carries the title והמשכילים יזהירו - “And the Enlightened Ones Shall Shine” - a reference to the Haskala, the Jewish Enlightenment.

Like every other Jewish blogger out there, the last few weeks, XGH has been dealing with Noah Feldman, with whom he sympathizes. I’ve got no problems with that, but I do have trouble with statements like this:

You can’t teach people to think critically, rationally and objectively, and then simultaneously drill into them 13 dogmas of faith which they must believe ‘no matter what the evidence’.

There are two related problems. We’ll start with the definitional one first. It’s not really possible to think critically, rationally and objectively. We don’t fully understand our own sensory and analytical equipment - our sense and our mind. Relying on these organs without knowing what biases they project on data, and without understanding their capabilites and limitations is an act of faith, pure and simple. It is perhaps and easy leap and certainly an unavoidable one. It may thus be a rational leap, given the alternatives. But it is certainly not an objective position. Objectivity is the most elusive of all goals, and as far as I can subjectively tell, it may not even exist within the physical framework. In a sense, the identification of perfect justice with divinity may be understood as the position that objectivity is only possible for God.

It’s also not clear that thinking critically and rationally (or attempting to, anyway) is particularly beneficial most of the time. Sure, critical thinking is important when evaluating information, like is the merchant trying to cheat me, but instinct plays an extremly important role in these calculations as well. Even at the scientist’s workbench, where rationality and critical thinking are practiced formally, they serve only a destructive role, not a creative role. A scientist uses critical thinking to evaluate theories, but not to create them, except inasmuch as knowing what won’t work, in Edisonian fashion, gets you one step closer to what will work. A phenomenon may have an infinite number of hypotheses to explain it; testing of which would take an infinite amount of time. Scientifsts use an almost opaque process beyond current understanding to somehow select from this morass the most viable ideas - a precognitive sense of some kind - to choose which avenues to pursue, and which theories to test first. It’s not clear whether scientists are particularly good at this, or whether we celebrate those who were lucky enough to test those ideas which happened to be most useful to understanding the world. We have made very little sense, so far, of where we get ideas from (I suppose all we need to do to solve that problem is get some more ideas).

I personally don’t believe in the Thirteen Principles in the manner that most Orthodox Jews do, but I do believe in the concept of religious knowledge. I do believe that over thousands of years, our people (and other people as well) have discovered, embraced, and cherished certain ideas and concepts that a person might never reach or uncover through attempts at rationality and critical thinking. Many of these ideas remain untestable, unprovable, unfalsifiable. Yet in accepting them, I do something  unexceptional.

Rabbi Dr. Shalom Carmy’s response to Noah Feldman has been widely praised (and widely anticiapted) perhaps because Carmy is today what Noah Feldman might have become had he stayed frum. Personally, I was a little disappointed by it, because of the straw-man syndrome that it too falls prey to, like many other responses from the Orthodox movement:

In settling his scores with his alma mater, Feldman ascribes to his high school rebbi the claim that a doctor who treats a Gentile on Shabbat violates the day unless his explicit intention is to do so only in order to avoid animus. Though this sounds like nonsense, I am informed that a high school teacher actually said it.

The insinuation that religious Jewish doctors cannot be entrusted with the care of non-Jewish patients was, as we all know, part of the arsenal of 19th century European anti-Semitism. It was not meant in earnest: as an Orthodox deputy once remarked, during a debate on the licensing of physicians in the Austrian Parliament, several of the most outspoken leaders of the anti-Semitic party used Jewish doctors.

[...]

In any event Feldman presumably knows very well that his high school teacher’s remark is not representative of grown-up halakhic thought, and he knows even better that it is not a guide to the practice of Orthodox Jewish doctors. Nonetheless, in his desire to satisfy himself against those who failed to properly esteem his choices and flatter his vanity, he has resorted to one of the most potent weapons of 19th-20th century anti-Semitism. He has made it easier for individuals or groups in medical schools to sideline or bar Orthodox Jews, in the name of high-sounding universalistic moral ideals, from positions in the medical profession. Whether he intends these consequences or not, and whether or not he envisions, in his wise shrewdness and genteel outrage, further punitive consequences to his classmates and their children, he has employed his power and prestige to those ends. He, and we, must live with the consequences of his decision.

Was Noah Feldman really suggesting that Jewish doctors can’t be trusted on Saturdays? I think that the common denominator to far too many of the Feldman responses is that they all seek to rebut arguments and contentions that are far simpler than those Feldman actually brought up. And to me, Carmy’s attempt to elide the point by saying that we must deal even with Feldman’s unintended consequences is not convincing.

We all agree that saving the life of a non-Jew on Shabbat is ok. Does it matter what your mindset is? According to Rabbi Carmy, it does not, but I am not convinced that his view is the only or final view on the matter. Still, I couldn’t find a single Orthodox doctor who embraced the mindset that he was working to prevent Antisemitism when treating non-Jews on Shabbat. In fact, many of the doctors I spoke to said that they keep their minds on their work, and to do otherwise would diminish their effectiveness. Perhaps this gap between theoretical and practical halacha could be addressed.

Over the last twenty or so years, we’ve seen a rise in shomer-shabbas residencies. Most Orthodox Jews consider these residencies a boon whose primary virtue is freeing observant doctors from grappling with the difficulties of working in a hospital on Shabbat. But it feels to me like there is a disconnect between this idea and the notion that l’maaseh, there is no difference between saving the life of a Jew and a non-Jew on Shabbat.

Moreover, non-Jewish doctors are often quite resentful of the Shomer Shabbas residency programs because they are forced to cover the Shabbat shifts. No doubt, the Jewish residents cover the Sunday shifts, but for doctors who live in a world where Friday night is the primary night for social engagements, having to work many more Friday night and Saturday shifts is a real burden. I’ve been told by some residents that these Shomer Shabbas residencies are often only available at lower-ranked programs, where foreign medical students (who cannot afford to be so demanding) make up the bulk of the non-Jewish staff. Here then is a living, breathing example of animosity directed at Jews for their unwillingness to practice medicine on Shabbat, not just some theoretical meanderings. Yet never have I heard that Jewish residents should avoid Shomer Shabbas residencies ‘mishum evah‘ (i.e. to prevent Antisemitism). That too is a disconnect.

On a personal note, a very close friend of mine declined a prestigious anesthesia residency at Mass General in favor of a ho-hum program that was willing to offer him a Shomer Shabbas residency. This gifted medical student turned down the opportunity to study anesthesia at the very institution where the discipline was founded some 160 years ago, and which remains among the finest places for a young clinician to learn his trade. Did this Jew correctly prioritize Shabbat over saving lives?

These are the types of issues that Feldman raises in my mind, and I would rather discuss them than waste time debating Feldman’s character, intentions or integrity, or those of his respondents.

That’s what I’d title the book I would write if I wasn’t so busy with making up excuses about how I’m too busy to write this blog, much less a book that’s probably 8th or 9th on my list of books I’d like to write “someday”.

My theory is that for all that developments in science have made it less reasonable, desirable, or practical to believe in a God whose existence accounts for the inexplicable, it was not science, but democracy, which have truly empowered the atheism of the Western world. Though the US remains a notable holdout, in general, Western democracies are atheistic. In the past religion offered both the cultural glue of shared experiences, beliefs, and expectations about world, as well as the rules and norms for interacting within society. Democracy largely supplanted these roles fro religion, leaving to priests and rabbis the role of cheerleading for morality rather than enforcing it.

It turns out that religion did a fine job of exercising power and exerting control, but it did a pretty lousy job of governing societies justly or providing opportunities for individuals. Turns out that democracies do a far better job at ensuring the rights of individuals, lifting up the downtrodden, protecting the powerless, and governing disputes. With democracy providing an effective moral code, many people are simply shrugging their shoulders at God and moving on.

Maybe later I’ll talk about why I think this is a mistake, but I’d love to hear from some of you guys first.

Years ago, the National Football League used to run commercials featuring obscure football situations and a challenge to the audience: “You make the call!” After a few more commercials ran, the second part of the “You make the call” ad would come on and explain the correct call in the given situation.

In that same spirit, I offer you this. A while back I posted on Hashkafah.com and referenced the possibility that improved prosthetic limbs might one day be real enough that Halacha decides that it is appropriate to put teffilin on a prosthetic arm.

Turns out that the issue may not be that far off in the future - a woman has already received a bionic arm that is hooked into her nervous system!

According to what I read, she can control the arm naturally, and she has some limited feeling in the arm, though there’s a lot of room for improvement there. So  does a Jewish male with this kind of prosthesis have a chiyuv to put teffilin on that arm? What if it’s his only arm? If there is no chiyuv, is it permitted at all? You make the call!

Last week, I wrote about scientists who believe in the idea of a young Earth. This week, the New York Times is covering what in my mind is a similar topic - the beliefs that a teacher may express in the classroom (Patrick McGeehan, February 20, 2007).

Matthew LeClair, a 16-year old high school student in Kearny, NJ is threatening to sue the Kearny Board of Education over religious views expressed by his history teacher, David Paszkiewicz. Evidently, Mr. Paszkiewicz had been recording (without his knowledge or permission, and against explicit school policy) espousing religious views including that people who did not believe in Jesus would go to Hell, that dinosaurs were on Noah’s Ark (out of curiosity, is the problem that there were dinosaurs on board, or is talking about Noah’s Ark itself a religious conversation?), and that the Big Bang and the theory of evolution have no scientific basis.

I’m not all that interested in the details of this case, not least because after carefully reading the article it appears to be about how the school handled its student whistleblower, not the larger question of how the separation of Church and State plays out in the classroom of the most densely-populated state in the Union. I guess we’re not in Kansas anymore.

In some ways I’m the last person who should be commenting on this issue, or at least the last person you should be listening to. I never attended a public school in any US state, I never taught a day of class in a public school - heck, the only time I ever see the inside of a public school is on Election Day! I don’t really understand and have never personally experienced a separation between religion and education. I attended only religious schools while growing up, and professionally I teach in Jewish environments for Jewish institutions.

In a way though, the idea of verboten topics in the classroom is not foreign to my experiences at all. In a Modern Orthodox high school, for example, you will most certainly learn about the Big Bang and evolution in science class. In the ninth grade I even remembering hearing a disclaimer from my science teacher that I need not believe these things, but that I would certainly be tested on my knowledge of them. While these topics were openly taught, discussed and even sometimes addressed by our rabbis, some topics were beyond the pale, like the idea of three Isaiahs, or the Documentary Hypothesis. Beyond the realm of Biblical criticism, topics like intermarriage or interdenominational relations not to be discussed, even as intermarried teachers taught a largely-Orthodox student population fringed by Conservatives.

Maybe it’s strange, given the above, that it was in this environment that I was exposed on the one hand to the non-observant, intermarried math teacher’s view that a sect which would consider his wife a donkey has some serious moral failings¹, and on the other hand to the Israeli, observant, owner of both a doctorate in Tanach and rabbinical ordination (though he preferred, or perhaps even insisted, on the title ‘Mister’) and his heterodox views on the authorship of the Tanach. These conversations, and others like them, were often preceded by a quick peek outside the door and down the hall, and were conducted in hushed voices with conspiratorial overtones. Out teachers would swear us to secrecy, explaining that their jobs were on the line and that they would be disciplined and even fired if it was revealed that they were sharing these views.

I don’t want to make too much of these moments. They didn’t inspire me to great intellectual heights, nor did they plant a seed of cross-denominational tolerance in my breast. I do remember them though, and there are not many educational moments from my high school years that I can now remember, some fifteen years later. But I don’t remember them for their content as much as for the personalities of the teachers themselves.

I’m a teacher myself, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years it’s that you can’t be an effective teacher if you don’t make personal connections with your students. That means bringing your personality to your work in every phase, from formal exams to informal chit-chat with students. Kids don’t have a great respect for knowledge, but they do have a great respect for teachers who are genuine. In order to really connect with students you must share yourself, including your values and your beliefs.

Maybe I’m the crazy one here, but does it strike anyone else as absurd that in this country we have decided to entrust our children’s educations into the hands of teachers whose world-views are potentially so different from our own? That we created an education system that strives to inculcate only the broadest of societal values (even as some of those values, e.g. egalitarianism, run contrary to the beliefs of many)?

So back to Mr. Paszkiewicz. I confess that when I first read his name, I braced myself for a Jewish-flavored controversy, and breathed some small sigh of relief at the Christian nature of his beliefs. Unlike in the past though, this time my small sigh did not carry with it my indignation over the issue. What did Mr. Paszkiewicz say? That he’s a Christian? And that by extension he believes that non-Christians will go to hell? Isn’t this standard Christian dogma? It is Evangelical dogma that the Earth is young, that the Bible is literal, and that by implication, dinosaurs were on Noah’s Ark! Whatever his claims on the science behind the Big Bang and evolution might have been, Mr. Paszkiewicz is a history teacher, not a science teacher, and his statements should not be considered ex cathedra.

What’s a teacher to do? I’m sure, like most teachers, Mr. Paszkiewicz is asked about his faith by students. Is he supposed to lie, or to sugarcoat his answers? Is he meant to recuse himself from such questions? I know that I wear my Jewish identity on my sleeve, and it would be impossible for me to shunt if to non-school hours only. It’s a part of who I am and how I experience and relate to the world.

I’m not trying to teach students or test them on my religious beliefs, and I got no sense that Mr. Paszkiewicz was trying to do that either. From the facts reported, it does not appear that his opinions were expressed as part of his history curriculum, but as past of the year-long relationship that teachers and students evolve together. Is this unconstitutional?

In my opinion teachers must be allowed to share their beliefs with students. Sure, some lines must be drawn, and I’m not advocating for Jerry Falwell to do a nationwide elementary school tour. Nevertheless, teachers cannot be expected to be effective as teachers, role-models, and meaningful influences on their students if they cannot honestly live their beliefs and wear them proudly in a school. My best teachers never backed away from their beliefs, and more than any fact I learned from them, I learned how to be true to yourself even in an environment that was not welcoming to your values and closely-held truths. It may be that Mr. Paszkiewicz has already taught Matthew LeClair that lesson, and I suspect that it’s a living lesson he will remember far longer than Mr. Paszkiewicz’s by-the-numbers Evangelical dogma.

So what do you folks think? What is and is not appropriate for a teacher to discuss in class?

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1.See Gil Student for a traditional view on the status of Gentiles in Jewish marital law, and a refutation of the claim made by my math teacher. The straight-faced title of the linked article is Gentiles Are Human, and it’s the second of a two-part series on this question. Here’s Part I.

The Gemara below is a relatively famous one that play a key role in the long-running debate throughout the Talmud about the theological value of miracles. The dispute arises in many places and inflects the views of our greatest scholars on many key events in Jewish history, including the seminal moment of Exodus:

 

מסכת שבת פרק ה

דף נג

(link)

ת”ר מעשה באחד שמתה אשתו והניחה בן לינק ולא היה לו שכר מניקה ליתן ונעשה לו נס ונפתחו לו דדין כשני דדי אשה והניק את בנו אמר רב יוסף בא וראה כמה גדול אדם זה שנעשה לו נס כזה א”ל אביי אדרבה כמה גרוע אדם זה שנשתנו לו סדרי בראשית אמר רב יהודה בא וראה כמה קשים מזונותיו של אדם שנשתנו עליו סדרי בראשית אמר רב נחמן תדע דמתרחיש ניסא ולא אברו מזוני

Talmud Bavli Tractate Shabbat 53b (link)

Our Rabbis taught: It once happened that a man’s wife died and left a child to be suckled, and he could not afford to pay a wet-nurse, whereupon a miracle was performed for him and his teats opened like the two teats of a woman and he suckled his son. R. Joseph observed, Come and see how great was this man, that such a miracle was performed on his account! Said Abaye to him, On the contrary: how lowly was this man, that the order of the Creation was changed on his account! Rab Judah observed, Come and see how difficult are men’s wants [of being satisfied], that the order of the Creation had to be altered for him! R. Nahman said: The proof is that miracles do [frequently] occur, whereas food is [rarely] created miraculously.

Let’s start by dealing with this story on its face. Last week, Scientific American published an article reporting that human males can lactate! Turns out that this is not such an unknown phenomenon, having been reliably observed by both scientists and laymen in humans and other mammals. A brief Internet search yielded plenty of corroborating stories, (this one not work safe/not tzniusdik).

Most of the articles talk about some combination of taking the hormone prolactin, which spurs lactation, and stimulating the nipple in order to induce male lactation. Historically speaking, male Nazi concentration camp survivors were observed to lactate during their recovery - evidently, the glands that produce hormones, including prolactin, healed faster than the liver, which breaks down excess hormones in the body. These recovering survivors were generating lots of hormones, which their livers were not yet capable of absorbing. Still, other reports suggest that lactation can be achieved only through stimulation of the nipple, or in one case, through the power of positve thinking alone!

Though some might dispute this point, I would think it churlish to claim that these examples, even if undeniably true, indicate that male lactation is part of the ‘order of Creation.’ Whatever the innate physiological possibilities of the male body, the ability to lactate has gone unactualized in all but the smallest scintilla of the human population. For some it may be comforting to have found a rational basis for the miracle reported in the Talmud, while others may view it as another ax-blow to the roots of faith in God and miracles. That’s not my issue, or at least, not today’s issue.

Abaye and Rabbi Yosef are simply continuing a long line of debate regarding the role of miracles. This debate goes back at least as far as the Tana’im who lived through the destruction, and was an issue particularly for Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah, who miraculously aged prematurely after being appointed to replace Rabban Gamliel as head of the yeshiva at Yavneh. Though he was only eighteen years of age when he took the job, he miraculously assumed the appearance of a 70-year old man overnight. See Haggadat Beit Halevy for an interesting connection between this topic and the section of the Haggadah that begins “Amar R. Elazar ben Azaryah”.

But what of the responses of R. Yehuda and R. Nachman? Rashi comments that they are responding to the fact that God specifically enacted a miracle to enable this man to feed his child, rather than simply “opening the gates of earnings for him.” In other words, God could have arranged that the man be matzliach in his business, which would have allowed him to hire a nursemaid. R. Yehuda is suggesting that it is in some way more difficult for a man to earn a living than it is for God to change the orders of Creation. R. Nachman points out that miracles occur all the time, but only rarely do miracles create food of themselves.

I’m sure that there’s a lot that can be said on these last two points, especially with regards to the Man that fell in the desert, and I wish I had the time to explore them more fully. Maybe we’ll get some good comments on this aspect of the story. Go on, don’t be shy now.

Today, it seems like we are able to manipulate the orders of Creation with ever-greater ease. In the Western world, we have unprecedented control over how we and our favorite species of animals and plants live, die, and reproduce, and with each passing day we extend our natural order, sometimes blithely ignoring the moral responsibilities that are inseparable from these awesome powers.

Yet even in a society with such power, we find that the statement of R. Yehudah remains true. As a species, mankind still fails to feed himself. Starvation is a problem in even some of the wealthiest countries in the world, and is epidemic among the less fortunate countries. Though rarely, a miracle, a change in the orders of Creation can solve the problems of one man, the greater problems of the world are not often unsolved for lack of tools, but for lack of want. The human orders of Creation - fear, greed, envy and hatred - these lie at the roots of the difficulties that Man faces in meeting his wants, in earning his daily bread. Technological solutions are tools that must be wielded wisely, justly, and most importantly, kindly.