A Medical Look at the Haggadah
By: Leonard J. Hoenig, MD

The cornerstone of the Passover Seder is the Haggadah, whose pages are filled with a wealth of knowledge that can be enjoyed on many levels. This D’Var Torah focusses on a few medical highlights found in the Haggadah in the hope that readers will gain a deeper appreciation of the Haggadah’s richness and beauty.

And on This Night We all Recline…to the Left! On Passover we symbolically celebrate our freedom from slavery by reclining during the Seder observance. The Gemara (Pesachim 108a) teaches that the mitzvah to recline is only fulfilled when one reclines on one’s left side. The Gemara notes that it is dangerous to eat while reclining to the right, as this creates a choking hazard. The reason for this is that the right lung bronchus is shorter, straighter, and larger than the left bronchus, and being the more direct continuation of the trachea, foreign bodies are more apt to lodge in it. The Rabbis if the Talmud were concerned that everyone enjoy the Passover meal in safety and in good health.

Who Knows Six?
A traditional delightful song sung on Passover is “Who Knows One?” which enumerates Jewish motifs for the numbers one through thirteen. Thus, the number six represents the six sections of the Mishnah. The Haggadah, citing Shemot 1:7, notes that the Children of Israel were 1) fruitful, 2) increased, 3) multiplied, 4) became mighty, 5) very, and 6) very much so. The Midrash Rabbah, commenting on this verse, notes that each Jewish woman bore six babies at one birth. So, now, when we sing “Who Knows Six?” you can also answer: “Six are the sextuplets that the women bore!” The odds of having sextuplets today are estimated to be 1 in 4.7 billion pregnancies.

The Rabbi Who Turned Gray Overnight
In the Haggadah we read that Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah (1 st Century CE) said: “Behold, I am like a seventy year-old man.” He was not, however, seventy but only 18 years-old when he turned suddenly and prematurely gray. According to the Gemara (Berachos 28a), Rabbi Elazar Ben Azaryah was chosen to head the Mesivta (Academy) at Yavneh, but his wife objected, noting that he had no white hairs in his beard to achieve the respect he deserved. A miracle occurred for Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah and eighteen rows of hair in his beard turned white. Maimonides explains that Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah spent day and night toiling over his Torah studies, weakening him and causing him to age. Anecdotal evidence suggests that stress can be associated with premature aging. Accelerated hair graying can be seen in cases of alopecia areata, an autoimmune condition that causes patches of hair loss, due to the preferential loss of pigmented hair, leaving behind the white ones. Although concealing and dyeing of gray hair is considered desirable by many today, the opposite seems to have been true with respect to Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah and his Rabbinical colleagues.

Boils: The Sixth Plague Against Egypt
In the Haggadah we recite the ten plagues against Egypt, of which the Sixth was “boils” or “shechin” in Hebrew. Rashi (Shemot 9:9) notes that shechin is an expression of “heat” implying that the skin became inflamed resulting in blisters (“ababuoth” in Hebrew). According to the Torah narrative, Aharon and Moses collected soot from a furnace, which Moses then threw heavenward, resulting in the miraculous plague. The Me’am Lo’ez, an 18th Century commentary on the Torah, writes that the soot, in its travels through space, picked up some type of power from the sun, perhaps ionizing radiation, and it was this toxic soot that caused the inflammation and blisters upon the Egyptians and their animals as it landed upon them. Could the Sixth plague against Egypt have been caused by the first case of radioactive fallout?

The Haggadah teaches that on Passover it is a mitzvah to discuss the story of the Exodus and whoever tells it at length is praiseworthy. Hopefully this medical D’Var Torah will enhance our appreciation of all the miracles that the Almighty has done for our people both in Ancient Egypt and around the world today.

Happy Pesach!

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