daf bit: Zevachim 113

[cellio]

On today's daf the rabbis expound upon the Flood. Did all creatures on earth die? Some say no, the fish were spared, for it says "all that were on dry land died". Some disagree but hold that Noach brought fish into the ark. Even the re'em, a giant sea animal? Its head was in the ark. No, its head was too big; its nose was in the ark. (Questions of ark integrity are not addressed.) Others say no, its horns were tied to the ark and that was sufficient to spare it.

There is a dispute about whether the flood happened in Eretz Yisrael. Reish Lakish says that even if it did, none of the dead were deposited there. Reish Lakish says the dead destined for Eretz Yisrael were deposited in Babylon, while R. Yochanan says in Shinar. Either way, both agree that Eretz Yisrael was not defiled with the corpses from the flood. (113b)

(We got here from the ritual impurity caused by contact with a corpse, in case you're wondering.)

Comments

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

One of the things I love about the rabbis of the Talmudic era is their fearlessness in tackling the theological questions which nobody else would even . . . um . . .THINK of. Any theological debate which ends with a sea monster with its horns leashed to a boat is a good one.

[dagonell.livejournal.com]

"(We got here from the ritual impurity caused by contact with a corpse, in case you're wondering.) "

So what do Jewish police officers have to do?

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Go to the mikveh fairly often.

[cellio]

There are a few layers to this.

If you are a kohein (priest, passed through male descendants), then the rabbis would counsel you to not go into that line of work so long as there are non-kohanim available to do so. The public good would trump that, if that situation were to arise.

Otherwise, you would become ritually impure and have to go to the mikvah and wait a period of time. (Kohanim too; it's just that they are especially enjoined against this kind of ritual impurity.)

I am not sure how the red heifer factors into all this. Only ashes from a pure red heifer, offered on the altar in Jerusalem, can fully remove ritual impurity, so at some level we're all ritually impure anyway. However, the distinctions still seem to matter; kohanim today do not enter cemeteries except to bury close relatives, for example. I don't know how this works exactly; perhaps the reasoning is that you should still do what you can to not make it worse. I'm not sure.

[zevabe.livejournal.com]

Mikveh never helps for removing ritual impurity from encountering a corpse. Only the red heifer ashes help.

Kohanim, despite already being ritually impure are barred from activities which would make them impure again.

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

ObFilk:

("What's obligatory about filk in this thread, Boss?"
"Nothing. It's just my way of changing the direction."
"But--"
"Shut up, Loiosh.")

Here's (http://filk.cracksandshards.com/Hedgehog.html) a song from the Discworld that seems to have attached itself to our Flood legend by way of making itself at home here.

[cellio]

Heh. Why am I not surprised? :-) (Either I stopped reading before they introduced that or I've forgotten -- been a while.)

[dragonazure.livejournal.com]

OK. Now you've got me curious. What is (or was) the "re'em"? It has a nose and horns. The closest thing I can think of is a narwhal, but it has a single horn....

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

A monster of some kind. In this case, it's being treated as a sea monster, but I'm wondering if that's a mistake in the reading, because it's usually a land monster.

It's been translated as/speculated to be a "unicorn", "rhinoceros", "aurochs", "Arabian Oryx", "triceratops", and various other things. But in this context, it's just being used as an example of some sort of mythological monster.

[cellio]

Ah, I missed a distinction. From Soncino's translation:

Said R. Jannai: They took the young [of the re'em] into the Ark. But surely Rabbah b. Bar Hanah said: I saw a sea re'em, one day old, which was as big as Mount Tabor. And how big is Mount Tabor? Forty parasangs.

So re'em seem to be land or sea, not just sea, but the case under discussion here was the sea creature.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Forty parasangs is somewhere around 100 to 150 miles or so, depending on what definition of parasang you're using. That's a pretty big baby.

[cellio]

Makes you wonder what day two would bring. :-)

[fauxklore]

Personally, I'm wondering where Rabbah b. Bar Hannah saw the sea re'em. And how he knew it was just a day old.

[cellio]

Soncino says: "a huge animal, too large to enter the ark". Sefer ha-Aggadah says "a fabulous creature of enormous size". Sefer ha-Aggadah has more of a way with description. :-)