Salvation -- nothing to sneeze at!

Summary: Why the sudden interjection in Yaakov's blessings?

Post: In the midst of Yaakov's blessings / predictions to his children, he exclaims:

18. For Your salvation, I hope, O Lord!

יח. לִישׁוּעָתְךָ קִוִּיתִי ה:

The Mishna Brurah (Orach Chaim, siman 230, seif katan 7) records a practice of saying this pasuk in the aftermath of a sneeze. My explanation of this is that לִישׁוּעָתְךָ  is onomatopoetic. :)

"One who sneezes, and his fellow tells him Asusa {= Gesundheit}, he should say to him 'Baruch Tihyeh'. And afterwards he should say לִישׁוּעָתְךָ קִוִּיתִי ה. [For Chazal said that initially no one was sick at all but rather he would travel in the marketplace, sneeze, and die, until Yaakov Avinu came and beseeched mercy on the matter.]"

This is a reference to Sanhedrin 107b:

Our Rabbis taught: Elisha was ill on three occasions: once when he incited the bears against the children, once when he repulsed Gehazi with both hands, and the third [was the illness] of which he died; as it is written, Now Elisha was fallen sick of his sickness where of he died.²¹  Until Abraham there was no old age:²²  whoever saw Abraham said, 'This is Isaac;' and whoever saw Isaac said, 'This is Abraham.' Therefore Abraham prayed that there should be old age, as it is written, And Abraham was old, and well stricken in age.²³  Until Jacob there was no illness,²⁴  so he prayed and illness came into existence, as it is written, And one told Joseph, Behold, thy father is sick.²⁵  Until Elisha no sick man ever recovered, but Elisha came and prayed, and he recovered, as it is written, Now Elisha was fallen sick of sickness whereof he died.²⁶

And it is connected to your typical everyday sneezing and asusa, marpeh, or what have you, only in a post-Talmudic source, in Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer, perek 52, in a listing of seven wonders:

"The fourth wonder is that, from the day the Heavens and Earth were created, no made became ill. Instead, if he was on the road or in the marketplace, he would sneeze and his soul would exit from his nostrils, until Yaakov Avinu came and requested mercy on the matter, and he said before Him, 'Master of the Universe, do not take my soul from me until I can command my sons and the members of my household, and he was answered in this, as it is stated {Bereishit 48}

1. Now it came to pass after these incidents that [someone] said to Joseph, "Behold, your father is ill." So he took his two sons with him, Manasseh and Ephraim.

א. וַיְהִי אַחֲרֵי הַדְּבָרִים הָאֵלֶּה וַיֹּאמֶר לְיוֹסֵף הִנֵּה אָבִיךָ חֹלֶה וַיִּקַּח אֶת שְׁנֵי בָנָיו עִמּוֹ אֶת מְנַשֶּׁה וְאֶת אֶפְרָיִם:

And all the nations of the world heard these matters and were astounded, for they had not experienced the like from the day that he Heavens and the Earth had been created. Therefore a person is obligated to say, with his sneeze 'Chaim', for death has turned to light, for it is written {Iyyov 41:10}:

י  עֲטִישֹׁתָיו, תָּהֶל אוֹר;    וְעֵינָיו, כְּעַפְעַפֵּי-שָׁחַר.

10 His sneezings flash forth light, and his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning.

This does not bring in the idea of saying לִישׁוּעָתְךָ קִוִּיתִי ה, just 'Chaim'.


So, what should you do? Either your own minhag, or else consult your local Orthodox rabbi. I suppose that if you want, rely on the Mishnah Brurah. But really, consult your own halachic decisor, particularly before changing your own existing practice.

As for myself, my minhag is not to make such an elaborate ceremony every time someone sneezes. Oh, I'll say Gezundheit or the equivalent. But I won't even consider it as obligatory, every single time. And I am a bit bothered by this whole elaborate ceremony, such that I would not readily adopt it.

I'll explain a little bit of my reasoning. The Tosefta Shabbos, 8th perek, states:

ח,ב  האומר מרפא הרי זה מדרכי האמורי ר' אלעזר ברבי צדוק אומר [אין אומרים מרפא מפני ביטול תורה של בית ר"ג] לא היו אומרים מרפא [מפני דרכי האמורי].נ

Marpei or Asusa is what they said when someone sneezed. The Tanna Kamma lists it as darkei Emori, the ways of the Emorites, and forbidden as a superstitious practice. R' Eleazer beRabbi Tzaddok, assuming we can trust this girsa, says that in the Torah study hall we do not say it (only, presumably), because the interruption is bittul Torah. In the academy of Rabban Gamliel they would not say Marpei because they considered it darkei Emori.

Yet a good number of Talmudic sources do show that saying Asuta was a common practice. And the Rambam paskened like Eleazer beRabbi Tzaddok. And we see what the Mishna Brura paskens. There are surely other sources all along the way, and I am not going to pretend to present all of them.

When I say Gezundheit, it is not to fulfill some halacha of what one is required to say in response to a sneeze. It it because I consider it an element of being a mentch. It is not darkei Emori. Rather, it is derech eretz. First of all, because it is common custom and courtesy, and one is supposed to live in the world and act in a respectable manner; and if you don't generally do this, people might think you rude, which would be a chillul Hashem. Secondly, because the way that it is derech eretz makes sense. You are going about your business and another human being is ill, or under the weather, in a noticeable enough way that your attention is called to it. Rather than disregarding it, you pause what you are doing and acknowledge that other human being, empathize with his / her suffering, and express a wish that he / she feels better. This is an appropriate course of action. Were it not social custom and courtesy, I don't know that we would regularly do it, but once it is, it is certainly a good thing.

However, once there is an elaborate ritual, with a back and forth and recitation of pesukim, it transcends mere common courtesy. Saying a pasuk due to the illness, or perhaps (in some people's minds) to prevent the soul from flying out the nostrils has the feel of lochesh al hamaka. This might be technically allowed, as long as one does not spit and there is no explicit shem Hashem, but it is not one of the things smiled upon. And regardless, ritualize it too much and put too many religious beliefs about past or possible harm, and this might well rise to the level of darkei Emori (perhaps even according to those Tannaim for whom mere Marpei or Asusa was not).

For example, we see this:

i was reading a book and as a young girl the grandma would tell her that if no one says bless you, when you sneeze your soul flies out of your nose and the devil can steal it.

Or the following superstition:

Place a hand in front of your mouth when sneezing. Your soul may escape otherwise.

Even if all that Mishna Berura writes is theologically sound, it is a short trip to this sort of mistaken belief by the hamon am.

In terms of whether that gemara Sanhedrin is historically correct, I would doubt it. It is an aggada within perek Chelek in Sanhedrin, and we know what Rambam wrote about people who took all the midrashim in perek Chelek literally. (I could posit an allegorical purpose to this, of fostering an appreciation even illness, for the chance it gives us to settle our affairs.) And if we do take it literally, it would seem that no one became ill before Yaakov, at which point all diseases were fatal; and that only in the time of Elisha did someone recover from an illness of this sort. I don't believe that this is the way the world works, or rather, the way that it was initially constructed. And such a tremendous nishtaneh hateva is an exceptional claim, which I would not accept without stronger evidence. Meanwhile, I am pretty sure that one can find a document or two from the Ancient Near East speaking of plagues or people distributing their inheritance on their deathbed.

And here are some Akkadian incantations against illness. Why would they have such incantations if there were no such thing as illness?

Plus, Yosef is told הִנֵּה אָבִיךָ חֹלֶה. Whoever the maggid is who told Yosef this, how did this person know the word for illness? And how did Yosef understand this person. Yosef should have responded with, "what does this word 'ill' mean"?

Alexander the Great, the Ball on the Plate, and the Snake around the Threshing Floor

Summary: The Greek Alexander Romance, by Pseudo-Callisthenes, sheds light on a famous Yerushalmi, about Alexander ascending to the heavens and seeing the world like a ball and the sea like a plate. (See previous posts one and two.)

Post: There is a famous Yerushalmi which has been interpreted in different ways. This Yerushalmi is a source for Chazal knowing that the earth is a sphere.

The Yerushalmi (Avodah Zarah 18b) reads: 

   וחכמים אומרים אינו אסור אלא כל שיש בידו מקל או ציפור או כדור.  מקל שהיה רודה בו את העולם.  ציפור ותמצא בקן ידי לחיל העמים.  כדור שהעולם עשוי ככדור. א"ר יונה אלכסנדרוס מוקדון כד בעא מיסק לעיל והוה סלק וסלק סלק עד שראה  את העולם ככדור ואת הים כקערה בגין כן ציירין לה בכדורא בידה. ויצורינה קערה בידה

This, modifying the Mishna on the previous amud that:

דף יח, א פרק ג הלכה א משנה  כל הצלמים אסורין מפני שהן נעבדין פעם אחת בשנה דברי רבי מאיר וחכמים אומרים אין אסור אלא כל שיש בידו מקל או צפור או כדור רבן שמעון בן גמליאל אומר כל שיש בידו כל דבר:

Thus, this is being used to illustrate the idea that the World is round like a ball, and thus if you see a statue with a ball in hand, it is a sign of dominion of the World. Alexander the Macedonian, when he ascended on high, saw the World like a ball and the Sea like a plate.

Already, Pnei Moshe (the Vilna Gaon's teacher) recognizes that there is an explicit parallel in Greek books of history or legend, and so he expands the Yerushalmi to add that Alexander ascended via griffin

I've been trying to trace down this Greek legend in the original in order to see what sorts of insights it might lend in terms of understanding the Yerushalmi. In the previous post, I found it in "The Wars of Alexander, An Alliterative Romance", written in Middle English and translated from Historia Alexandi Magni.

But that was a late version of it. Better would be to see it in the earliest known version, in the Greek Alexander Romance, by Pseudo-Callisthenes. I found a copy of this on Amazon, in translation by Richard Stoneman. And indeed, this work may well give us some great insights into the Yerushalmi.

Here is the relevant passage, from a first-person perspective by Alexander the Great:

Thus, he uses this mechanism of harnessing birds to lift himself high into the air. An angel tells him that he has not yet secured the whole earth, such that he should explore the heavens. Alexander, at the angel's direction, looks down and sees the World -- meaning Middle Earth, meaning the land where people live -- as a tiny circle like a threshing floor. (This was what in the later accounting, in Middle English, in The Wars of Alexander, An Alliterative Romance, became a mill-stone.) Around that land was the Sea, entirely surrounding it. Thus, the Sea looked like a snake coiled around the land.

Furthermore, Alexander is commanded to point his spear at the land in the center. This clearly, and explicitly, represents Alexander's dominion of the world.

Comparing to the Yerushalmi, we don't really need to say that "the world is round like a ball" necessarily means that it is a sphere. Both a ball and a plate (or discus) are round. Imagine you have a ball sitting on a plate, and you look at it from above. It will look like a smaller circle inscribed inside a slightly bigger circle.

Maybe the blue, representing the Sea, would be much thinner, but this is the general gist, if we really want to make the two stories accord with one another. And we should want to make them accord, given all the parallels. (Though I will suggest another reading at the end.)

Note also that Chazal did not make up this idea of this representing dominion, and aren't just randomly bringing in a Greek legend for support. This idea of dominion is stated in the Yerushalmi to explain the position of the Chachamim but, as I noted above, the idea of dominion over the entire earth is explicit within the original Greek legend.

Now, aside from this, we might be tempted to view a statue holding a ball (or a plate-discus) as showing sport, as a plaything rather than as anything representing dominion. However, it is Pseudo-Callisthenes to the rescue once again!

There is an exchange, by letter, between King Daryavesh (Darius) and Alexander. Darius sends Alexander a whip, a ball, and a chest of gold, in order to mock him. The whip and ball, in order to show that he should still be at play and that he can play with his contemporaries, and the chest of gold to feed his fellow bandits so that they can all return to their own countries:

Alexander takes offense, but reinterprets each of these these as positive omens for himself:

He will flay the barbarians with the whip. The ball represents that he will be ruler of the world, for the world is spherical like a ball, and the chest of gold is a sign that Darius will pay him tribute.

If so, we see that the Greeks themselves regarded the ball as having this dual significance -- one, as a plaything, and two, as a sign of dominion, as representing the world. The Chachamim, then, in seeing this as a sign of dominion and representing the world, have their fingers on the pulse of the beliefs of the Greeks, and perhaps of the idolaters in general.

But also see that even in Pseudo-Callisthenes, they state that the world is spherical like a ball, and that a ball is a sign of dominion. We could then return to the Yerushalmi and consider it in another way -- that Rabbi Yona is rewriting the Greek legend (or maybe relying on a different, earlier version?) in which the ball, rather than a mill-stone or round-threshing floor, is chosen deliberately. This because of the spherical nature of the world, which the Greeks clearly knew, combined with the view of the Chachomim that a statue holding a ball is problematic.

If so, the World like a Ball does not necessarily mean that it is round like circle, as above, but that it is round like a sphere. This messes up the imagery we find in the Greek legend, for there is now no snake coiled around it. What is the plate supposed to represent? How do we superimpose the ball on the plate, or the plate on the ball? Where is the sea within this world?

On a previous post, Hillel suggested the following:

R' Waxman,
Are you certain the Yerushalmi says Alexander saw the world as a ball, rather than the universe (or, technically, the firmament)? I don't really understand how one could visualize the world as a ball floating in the sea. However, the firmament idea would work well the the "solid dome" idea of Babylonian cosmology that R' Slifkin writes about. That is, the seas are a flat plate (which Hashem covers in part with land) in the center of a solid sphere (or hemisphere) containing the heavens, sun moon, stars, etc.

But if this is the case (and that's a big if), the Yerushalmi would appear to be suggesting that Alexander raised himself "me'al laraki'a" - a position traditionally reserved only for Hashem and ministering angels! So perhaps the Yerushalmi is not just saying Alexander had magic pets, but rather that he had special skills and/or favor from Hashem.

Whaddaya think?

It is an interesting idea, and has more merit than I thought initially. It would explain how this plate and ball work together. And in terms of me'al larakia, we can point out that in the original, by Pseudo-Callisthenes, he actually did ascend there, such that he met an angel! Yet, I don't like the use of Yam to mean both Sea and Land within the Sea. And there is no indication that this was past the firmament, which would presumably be solid and impenetrable. I would rather revert entirely to the meaning as in the Greek legend, and consider it circle (plate) and inscribed smaller circle (ball). Or, that the legend as related by Rabbi Yona meant that (inscribed smaller circle), while the application of that legend by the gemara took the ball to mean sphere.

There are other possibilities I haven't even dreamed of yet. For example, Rabbi Slifkin (in private correspondence) suggested something akin to Hillel's suggestion, namely that it is an image of a hemisphere on top of a larger flat ocean. To expand upon this, this would account for the third dimension of the ball, the sphere in the middle of the plate.

I would also caution against taking this gemara as absolute confirmation that Chazal were Round-Earthers. Firstly, this Yerushalmi might well be simply speaking of the Greek conception of the world, which would have an impact on the sort of statues the Greeks and others would make. Meanwhile, Chazal's conception of the Universe might be something else entirely (as Rabbi Slifkin has pointed out).

Furthermore, I think it is a mistake to simply assume that Chazal were monolithic in their views. On a number of other occasions, I have seen that this is simply not the case. In this particular instance, there is the gemara in Chagiga which seems pretty clearly to indicate a Flat-Earth model. I understand the temptation to point to this particular gemara -- with one particular interpretation -- to "vindicate" Chazal, and demonstrate that they were right. And then, to preserve Chazal's state of vindication, declare any contrary gemara, such as the one in Chagiga, allegorical. But in pursuit of the truth, I would take a more conservative approach and say that at most, it indicates what the Amoraim of Eretz Yisrael, with their own particular intellectual and cultural inputs, believed about the Universe. Then, take other gemaras on their own terms, and consider that they very well might represent a contrary position.

Update: See this image of the World as Conceived by the Babylonians, and compare to the ball on the plate idea.