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frogs
Somebody said today is World Frog Day (who knew? not I!), and with Pesach coming up soon that led to some discussion of the second plague, and somebody linked to a passage in the talmud about it and I have questions:
Rabbi Akiva says: It was one frog, and it spawned and filled the entire land of Egypt with frogs. Rabbi Elazar ben Azarya said to him: Akiva, what are you doing occupying yourself with the study of aggada (stories)? This is not your field of expertise. [...] Rather, the verse is to be understood as follows: It was one frog; it whistled to the other frogs, and they all came after it. (Sanhedrin 67b)
(Convention: the parts in bold are in the original text; the rest is editorial elucidation. The talmud's discussions are often quite compact.)
If I'm reading this correctly, Rabbi Elazar's objection to Rabbi Akiva's statement isn't the claim that there was one frog that then produced more. Rabbi Elazar is fine with the "one original frog" idea. No, he's disputing how the other frogs got there; Akiva says the first frog spawned them, while Elazar says it summoned them.
Rashi elaborates Elazar's complaint: Akiva should refrain from stories about frogs and focus on more serious stuff, like laws of plagues and afflictions, that Akiva actually knows something about. Which makes me wonder what any of them are saying about Elazar's knowledge, since it's apparently ok for Elazar to talk about this stuff. This is Elazar ben Azariah, who at the age of 18 was miraculously given white hair overnight so that the other sages would take him seriously as (briefly) the head of the Sanhedrin. It's not like he's some nobody who doesn't know more "serious" stuff and is only equipped for stories.
What a peculiar passage.
And also: world frog day? Really? (Search engines produce hits. And I found it on a list on Wikipedia, for what that's worth.)
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In the biblical passage (Exodus 8:1-2), there's some strange stuff with frogs. In verse 8:1, the word for frogs is plural (tsfardeim). "God said to Moses, say to Aaron [...] and bring up the frogs upon the land of Egypt." However, in 8:2, the word is "frog" (tsfardayah), so it literally says "Aaron extended his hand over the waters of Egypt, and the frog emerged..." That's frog, singular.
Rashi (biblical commentator who knew his talmud) comments on this verse: "There was one frog and [when] they struck at it it would split apart into various teeming swarms. That is its midrashic explanation. But as to its plain meaning, it may be said the swarming of the frogs is referred to in the singular [...]" (Rashi notes that the same thing happens with the lice that plague, and gives some examples of similar usage in Old French (which was the (a) secular language which he spoke.))
I suspect that Akiva and Elezar just liked playing with silly ideas about frogs. I could be wrong, of course. :-)
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