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EIN YAAKOV

Ein Yaakov — Shabbos 107b

What the Gemara Gets Right (and Wrong) About Lice

Part of Ein Yaakov · 5:09

A short piece dividing the day into three-hour segments and examining the Gemara's statements on lice reproduction against modern science.

Audio Transcript
Introduction and the Gemara Quote on Feeding

ומרבנן. A Kohen? Kohen. Kohen Gadol. הא? דושן. דושן? Okay. זאגט די Gemara: אמר מר: יושב הקדוש ברוך הוא וזן מקרני ראמים עד ביצי כינים. The Eibershter sits and he feeds, he gives life, he feeds, supports every, all the creatures, everything in the world, from the horns of the ראם, the ראם is like a big animal, to the eggs of the כינים. ביצי כינים, the eggs are, which are tinier, know how small, right, a כינה is a license, a louse is, so this is the egg. How can a thing like, I mean, you sit on a long time. So he says, עיקר זה המאמר בפרק א' me'Avodah Zarah, he says, mainly this is in Gemara Avodah Zarah, he says, אבל פירוש האמיתי בזה הסוגיא, but the real peshat is here, וראוי שיכתבו שניהם ביחד. Okay, see, this just this is not from the Gemara, this the person that make the Ein Yaakov writes that I'm going to bring from the other Gemara into this Gemara. וזה לשון הכתוב שם בעבודה זרה, this is quoting from Avodah Zarah, you're not going to find it there, because he quotes it from Avodah Zarah: אמר רב יהודה אמר רב, we're still in the name of רב, י\"ב שעות הוי היום, the

Dividing the Day into Three-Hour Periods

day is made up of 12 hours. ג' שעות ראשונות, the first three hours, יושב הקדוש ברוך הוא ועוסק בתורה, השם sits and learns תורה. שניות, the second three hours, יושב ודן את כל העולם כולו, he sits and he judges the whole world. שלישיות, the third three hours, יושב הקדוש ברוך הוא וזן את כל העולם כולו מקרני ראמים עד ביצי כינים, from he feeds the whole world from the top, the greatest creatures to the small ביצי כינים. ובמקום הזה, what does the Gemara bring it in עפעס Maseches Shabbos? Where does it fit? בעניין דינא דהורג כינה בשבת. It's connected to someone kills a louse on Shabbos. Are you chayav? Because if you kill a living thing on Shabbos, it's a melachah. It's one of the, it's a, one of the ל\"ט, thirty-nine melachot. Shochet. So if you kill, even if Capture, you're chayav for capture. Yes, it's different. It's a different melachah. But even though it's tiny, it's nothing, but if you kill it, you're over. But so you're saying here that

Gemara on Lice Reproduction and Halacha

אמר רב יוסף, Rav Yosef said, ואינה פרה ורבה. All depends. If the type of of כינים that come from פריה ורביה, which means come from a male and a female, that is a regular living creature and if you kill it, as tiny as it is, you're chayav misah, you're chayav Shabbos. If it's one that doesn't happen from פריה ורביה, there are those that happen from Rashi says from dirt or different, this is create from dirt, then you're not chayav. That's what a whole, huh? Sweat. Sweat, from this, all kinds of. Now, this is what a whole commotion comes with nowadays when the scientists figured out there is no such thing, all the כינים, everything comes from, it might it's not from direct, it's left over from before, there's no such thing they say as a כינה that, fruit flies. But nothing happens because there is no say fertilization that's of of an egg, there is no question about it, all of them like that. So, mimela you have a kushya on the din. First of all, did the din change now that we've found out? Second of all, does it mean that the Gemara was wrong? So, this is the big thing. The the modern people, like the frume modern, Is that a theory? You sure it's, It's proof, it's proof. So the

Critique of Gemara Based on Contemporary Science

modern people, like the YU people, they say clearly the Gemara made a mistake. Oh no. Yeah, they say the Gemara the חכמים of the Gemara were the smartest. They knew science to the best of their ability of any scientists in their time. Makes sense. But according to their times. Science figured it out later, different so it's different. How about the other day? Did it knock it? Does that knock it? Yeah, he's full YU. Huh? I said YU type of people. Huh? I don't know himself, I don't know, but the the style, there's some different He's talking about Rabbi Tzvi? Yeah, yeah, sure they did. Huh? I don't know if their their leaders this I don't know how they believe, but the this is the common understanding that all the גשמיותדיקע things that the Gemara talks about, all the scientific things are all because of, according to the science that they knew at that time. At that time, and they were among the scientists, they were the biggest. They knew the best. But they only knew according Certain things that were found out later that they didn't know. So, huh? And therefore, the medicine, the nature changed, something else. We're saying that the Rambam, the Gemara writes different medicines, we can't follow it. Not because they were wrong, because it was only the way the nature of a human being was at at that time. Now the nature changed. But we're not, here he's saying he thinks not a nature change. He's saying that there's, it's all based on science then, and therefore certain facts that the Gemara says are not true.

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