Kosher doses

Say that you are very ill. A doctor gives you a prescription for a strong antibiotic. The prescription says the name of the antibiotic, nothing more. Just its name. You go to the pharmacy, almost desperate for the medicine. Still, the pharmacist will not fill your prescription. What’s the dose? How many times per day? The prescription doesn’t say. It says only the name.

Call this malpractice, call it sloppiness, call it what you want, but this name-only prescription highlights a critical point in the care of the human body: numbers are critical. Without them, no matter how sick you are, and no matter how clear it is that you need this particular antibiotic, you’re helpless without the numbers.

It is the same for the care of the human spirit. Numbers are critical.

For example, Passover is coming up. We all know that it is prescribed to drink four cups of wine. What’s the “dosage”? That is, what qualifies as a cup? Is a thimble’s worth of wine a “cup”? I doubt anyone would say that.

What if one has a huge goblet that holds a pint of liquid? Is it necessary to drink four of these goblets — four pints of wine — at the seder? I doubt anyone would say that.

I hope I have illustrated the point. A definition of a cup is needed in order to fulfill the spiritual obligations to drink four cups.

How many fluid ounces constitutes a cup? What’s the number? What’s its dose?

The issue of doses, or measures, in Jewish practice has recently been illuminated in some extremely surprising and fascinating ways, archaeological and agricultural. It becomes clear — even astonishing, I think you might agree, once you learn the details — how consistent the Jewish calculation of “spiritual doses” has been over the . . . years? No, not even over the centuries — rather, over the millennia, literally.

I. Archaeology

Let’s do archaeology first. As recently reported in Ami magazine, Rabbi Shaul Simon Deutsch is an historian and a collector of ancient artifacts. One of his favorite research locales is shipwrecks, in which only certain types of material — pottery and metal — will survive in water.

Often, coins are found on shipwrecks. This helps date the vessel. So do weapons. Writes Deutsch:

“To those who know where to look, [shipwrecks] can spin a tale of how civilizations before us lived, how they conducted trade, and what tools and implements they used in daily life.”

An unexpected artifact of ancient Jewish civilization was recently discovered as divers found a 2,200-year-old weight inscribed in Greek with the word “litra.” Now, a litra is an Talmudic weight, a “dose” that has many uses in determining various Jewish practices.

For example, Maimonides writes that the measure of vegetables given to a poor person as part of the “poor man’s tithe” (ma’aser sheni) is a litra’s worth of vegetables.

What is the weight of these vegetables? That depends on how much a litra weighs. And surely that is important, for is one obligated to give the poor $10 worth of vegetables? One-thousand dollars worth? It depends on how much a litra weighs.

As in every instance of Jewish practice that depends on a measure — and there are almost an immeasurable number of such instances — the valuation of a litra has been scrutinized by the learned Talmudic scholars over the generations.

For example, Maimonides wrote that a litra weighs 148.7 grams. Rashi said 354 grams. Rif and Geonim said 420 grams.

What did the bottom of the sea say?

Rabbi Deutsch acquired the 2,200-year-old litra from under the sea.

What would it say about the calculations of these Talmudic scholars? Were they just pre-scientific guessers, benighted dilletantes arguing, by analogy, how many angels dance on a pinhead?

The ancient Greek litra was weighed. Result: 354 grams. Precisely, exactly, as Rashi said.

That, I find astonishing. With no empiric evidence to work from, using only his encyclopedic knowledge of Jewish law and lore, Rashi was able to recover the precise weight of the ancient Jewish “dosage,” which has implications not only for how much charity to give, but for how much compensation is required in a case of slander, and matters pertaining to the eruv.

Rabbi Deutsch says that when he showed the ancient litra to Rabbi Yosef Sholom Eliashiv, the venerable halachic authority said that an artifact can be used to decide a Jewish law or halachah.

Rashi is smiling.

II. Agriculture

Move over, scuba-divers. Enter botanists. Here, nothing was discovered by accident. Quite the contrary. A group of botanists, rabbis and date-growers had to wait 10 years for the moment.

Did you ever hear of a volumento-meter, an electronic device that measures the volume of solids? I didn’t. That’s the “dosage” in this case — volume.

To be precise, the case of the oversized date — rare? extinct? revived?

As reported in Hamodia magazine, the “koseves gasah,” the oversized date referred in Jewish law, has not been seen for some 1,950 years. The skeptical would ask: Did it ever exist?

The religious practice to which this date is relevant is Yom Kippur. We all know that it is forbidden to eat on Yom Kippur. Less well known is the law that if one eats only very little on Yom Kippur, while that remains wrong, it does not incur Judaism’s worst penalty, “karet” (being “cut off”).

The idea is this: On Yom Kippur one is supposed to feel “afflicted” by not eating. However, it is possible to eat very little and still feel afflicted. So, how much is “very little”? How much beyond that must one consume on Yom Kippur to incur karet? You guessed it: a very large date’s volume of food.

When Jews returned to the land of Israel 130 years ago, they not only revived the Hebrew language, Jewish farming and ultimately Jewish independence, they also began to revive the observance of Jewish agricultural laws, such as the sabbatical year.

All this had the effect of making Jews wonder what life was like in the land of Israel when Jews last had their independence — some 1,950 years earlier. The religious among the Zionists included in this sphere of curiosity such questions as: Can we grow the very large date, the koseves gasah?

Can we verify the talmudic measure, or dose, for violating Yom Kippur?

“How does a species of fruit that’s indigenous to a certain country suddenly vanish?” is the way the question was put in the Hamodia article.

“Botanists explain that the life- span of the date palm is relatively short — fewer than 100 years. The only way a tree can naturally transfer its DNA to the next generation is by having new saplings taken from it planted every 10 years. Naturally, this necessitates continuous settlement, without wars or other signs of instability.

“The end of Jewish life in the land of Israel after the destruction of the second Holy Temple also signaled the end of agricultural life.”

This was noted by Jewish travelers to Israel throughout the centuries: There were no date palms there (although olives trees could survive).

To cut to the chase, it turns out that these very large dates were being grown in Saudi Arabia (price: $10 per date). Saudi Arabia, however, would not send seedlings or cuttings to Israel.

Somehow, via British botanists, Israeli botanists procured a tissue culture of this rare date palm. Saplings were also procured — and were planted.

It’s taken 10 years. The trees growing the oversized dates were recently ready for harvest — and for the volumento-meter. Did these dates have the prescribed measure (“dosage”) of the very large date, the koseves gasah?

The dates checked in at 33 cubic centimeters, again verifying the precision of the Talmudic scholars of the generations.

Also verifying the report of Pliny the Elder that he received very large dates from the land of Israel, four of which, end to end, measured one Roman cubit. Again, the measurement fit.

Healers of the spirit, like healers of the body, are careful with their measurements.

Copyright © 2012 by the Intermountain Jewish News