Strange Discussions in the Gemara

Originally published: May 12, 2026

This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.

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Strange Discussions in the Gemara

By Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham

At times the question arises why the Talmud deals with bizarre cases. Why is this important? Did the Sages really think such cases could actually occur? And even if they could, what relevance do they have for us? These strange discussions raise questions mainly on two planes: the connection of the Sages to the world of everyday practice (what were they occupied with? what world of imagery and experience shaped them? what sort of people are we dealing with?), and the importance of Talmudic discussion (what is the point of dealing with such nonsense and deviations, especially when in practice they never, or almost never, materialize?). In this short essay I would like to touch on this point in order to clarify the principles by which such cases and discussions should be approached.

First, a few examples. The Sages discuss the possibility that a person flew on a flying camel (Makkot 5a and Yevamot 116a), a dream about intercourse with a goose (Rav Ashi’s dream, Berakhot 57a), or concern over intercourse with a dog (Bava Metzia 71a, and this is even ruled as Jewish law by Maimonides, Laws of Forbidden Intercourse 22:16); the possibility of bringing a meal offering or the Two Loaves in the Temple from wheat that descended in the clouds (Menachot 69a—Rashi explains that a strong wind blew a ship into the clouds and the wheat it carried fell to the ground); a man who has intercourse with a woman without rupturing her hymen (the Amora Shmuel, Hagigah 15a); someone who fell from a roof and became lodged in his deceased brother’s widow (Yevamot 54a); a person who has intercourse with himself (Sanhedrin 55a); and many other cases and dreams of strange and fantastical content. In other places the Sages discuss giving a bill of divorce to a woman by placing it in the hand of her slave when he is bound and asleep (Gittin 21a), or leaven that was scorched but not completely burned before Passover or during it—may it be eaten on Passover? (Pesachim 21b)—and many other strange and rare cases, if they ever happen at all.

How do such cases portray the Sages and the decisors, and really all of us? Who among us dreams of intercourse with a goose—and comes away happy about it, as is told there about Rav Ashi? Who goes to have intercourse with a dog? Whose leaven has ever been partially scorched before Passover and not destroyed? Why give a woman a bill of divorce in such an odd way—especially since divorce generally proceeds in a court? Are these discussions connected to our world? What practical or theoretical importance do they have? Who devotes his life to dealing with such “vanities”? Why not focus on the truly important questions, such as morality, worldviews, science, society, and the like?

To understand these cases, I will present several possible directions here. In each strange case that we encounter in our study, it is worth asking which of these directions is relevant—perhaps more than one.

Many of the strange cases arise in the Talmud as “okimtot”—restrictive constructions. The Mishnah states some law, the Gemara struggles to understand it, and then proposes that it is really speaking about a strange and exceptional case, usually one not even hinted at in the language of the Mishnah. The very mechanism of the okimta itself requires explanation, even when the case under discussion is not bizarre. Seemingly, the Gemara interprets the Mishnah against its original intention. The basic Talmudic assumption is that the Amoraim are not authorized to dispute the Tannaim of the Mishnah. So instead of disagreeing with them directly, they disagree “politely”: they limit the Mishnah’s statement to a special case בלבד. The result is that in all the ordinary cases the law of the Mishnah does not apply—that is, in effect, the words of the Tannaim in the Mishnah are rejected in this way.

These difficulties accompany every student from the beginning of his studies. In my article on okimtot[1], which was later expanded into an entire book presenting the Platonic character of the Talmud and dealing with all the topics mentioned here,[2] I explained this at length. Here I will give only the essence.

To get a feel for the matter, let me bring an urban legend—though later I learned that something of the sort really happened, but in exactly the opposite way—about mechanical engineering students at the Technion who were given, on an exam, the question of designing a blood pipeline from Eilat to Tel Aviv. This case aroused endless questions and polemics: had the lecturer gone mad? What kind of education was he giving his students? There was sharp criticism of the inhuman technocracy to which students of science and engineering were supposedly being trained, and so on. Naturally, tempers also flared regarding the students, who simply sat down and solved the problem instead of crying out and protesting to the lecturer about his inhumanity.

These criticisms are groundless and stem from misunderstanding. The lecturer obviously did not mean to encourage his students to design blood pipelines and carry out mass slaughter of some group. This was an anecdotal question whose purpose was to set them a technical challenge that would reveal the design abilities they had acquired. If they are used to designing pipelines for water or ordinary liquids, it is worthwhile to see whether they know how to use the tools they have received in order to handle an unusual problem as well. Anyone who lives in that reality does not even wonder about it.

Beyond that, in science too, in order to clarify some principle or law of nature, one must examine it in an exceptional and special state, one that cannot actually be realized. For example, has any of you ever seen a body on which no force acts, and which therefore continues for a long time in uniform motion in a straight line (Newton’s first law)? No one has seen this, and no one ever will. To see it, we would have to speak about a body that exists in a completely empty space, with no stars and no air, with no electromagnetic forces—a universe of vacuum. Has there ever been, or will there ever be, such a universe? Probably not. Yet Newton’s first law is still true of our world. It is just that in our world forces act on bodies, so we never see that law in its pure form, except perhaps approximately.

The same is true in the social sciences. There is a well-known law that links frustration to aggression: frustration leads to aggression. Does this really hold? Does every one of us, when in a state of frustration, respond with aggression? Certainly not. But the law is entirely correct. To see it in its pure form, we must clear the field of other forces that act on us—education, environment, self-restraint, shame, politeness, genetics—and of course our own choice as well. In the real world these laws never appear in their pure form, because alongside them there are always additional forces that also affect the situation.

So too in philosophy. In order to sharpen some principle, people discuss strange and impractical cases, because there the discussion can be purified of elements that interfere with it. After this clarification, one returns to our everyday world and applies the principle that has been learned. In philosophy there are no laboratories. These pure states are created through what are called “thought experiments.” For that purpose one constructs an imagined situation and asks what we would do if we were in such a case.

For example, there is a series of thought experiments known as “trolley problems,” in which a person faces a dilemma between two bad options. Thus people speak about a man standing at a railroad junction with the switching lever in his hand. He sees a train approaching, and farther down the track five workers are lying asleep on the rails. He can divert the track so that the train will go onto another line, but on that line one person is lying there. What should he do?

Has any of you ever seen such a situation? I assume not. But this discussion allows us to examine our moral principles. Afterward we can also apply them to everyday situations, but it is דווקא exceptional situations from outside our normal world that allow us to discuss the issue before us in a clean and sharp way.

I should note that sometimes such a discussion serves as a test case for clarifying and deciding between two possibilities. For example, if there is a dispute between a consequentialist conception of morality and a conception that sees the act itself as the focus of moral discussion. On the teleological view, in the trolley case we would likely have to divert the track in order to save human lives, because that yields the least bad outcome. On the act-centered view, by contrast, the instruction would be not to do so, because such an act is an act of murder, even if of one person and for worthy ends—an instance of “better to sit and do nothing.” In light of this analysis, we can suggest two meanings for philosophical discussion of the trolley case: 1. It is a test case that allows us to see the implications of our moral outlook and sharpen the dispute. 2. It is a case intended to decide, by way of reductio, in favor of one of the conceptions. Thus many people, such as Dawkins in his book Is There a God?, use such a case to show the folly of the opposing conception. In their view, clearly the outcome is what matters, since the outcome that says not to divert the track is patently unreasonable.

So what does one do in the scientific world? One builds a laboratory “universe” in which experiments are conducted that test the law or theory under discussion. Thus one creates laboratories in which the temperature is 0, there are no other bodies and no forces other than the one being measured, there is no friction, and the influence of the rest of the universe is screened out. Why is this important? Who will ever encounter such a situation in life? Probably no one. But a law of nature can be seen in its pure form only there. That is what a research laboratory is: its results help us understand the real world. After we understand each force in its own imaginary and strange universe, we can gather the insights we have acquired and try to apply them to the real world, in which all these forces operate together. That is how scientific thinking works, and that is how research is done. Yet for some reason, in the scientific world no one asks what sense there is in dealing with these strange cases that no one will ever encounter.

The laboratory is a world different and remote from our own, but astonishingly it is only there that one can examine the laws of nature of our world. It is a Platonic world, and the questions with which we are occupied concern Platonic states and abstract questions: how does a point-particle move when no force acts on it, without friction, and at absolute zero? None of these conditions has ever existed or ever will, and yet it is very important to clarify the physics of such bizarre states in order to understand our world.

In the two sources mentioned above I explained that the Talmud has a Platonic character. It makes use of strange and exceptional cases as touchstones for examining principles. If we were to say that a person’s slave is regarded like his courtyard, that would sound strange. So the Talmud says that a slave is like a courtyard for the purpose of acquiring things through him. But acquisition by means of a courtyard requires more than merely having a courtyard. The courtyard must be “guarded with the owner’s knowledge” and “immobile.” A slave satisfies neither of those requirements. So what does one do? One speaks about a Platonic slave—that is, one imagines a slave who is bound, so he cannot move, and asleep, so that at the moment he has no awareness of his own. The purpose of the discussion is not to examine the laws of a bound and sleeping slave, but the status of a slave in general. It is simply done through a laboratory case.

The same is true of the flying camel. Probably none of the Amoraim thought that there were camels flying in the air. There may have been legends of that sort, but they likely used them in order to illustrate a principled point: if someone were to move from place to place in some way unknown to us, at great speed, what would the law be in such a case? Do we take such possibilities into account or not? So too with wheat that descended in the clouds: there is no necessity to think that the Sages assumed this was a possible reality.[3] They use this strange case in order to examine principled questions: is what characterizes wheat the fact that it is produce of the soil, or is it enough that it is wheat? What would the law be regarding wheat grown on a detached medium, or in some way different from the norm? Could one bring from it a meal offering to the Temple? So, in short, they speak about wheat that did not grow in the ground. Incidentally, after many years, in our own time this is no longer science fiction. Today one can grow wheat in test tubes in a laboratory, and the theoretical question even becomes practical. If a man becomes lodged in his deceased brother’s widow—that is, he has intercourse with her unintentionally—is that considered intercourse in Jewish law? This is a Platonic way of clarifying whether intercourse requires intention, or whether the physical act alone is enough.

In short, many of the strange cases are nothing more than Platonic laboratory cases intended to clear the field of elements irrelevant to the discussion. That is how scientific and philosophical clarification is done, and that is also how the Talmud operates when clarifying its principles. This clarification has intrinsic theoretical value, but in the end it is also the way to clarify practical Jewish law. Exceptional and strange cases, and sometimes even impossible ones, are the cases in which it is easiest to think about the situation and understand the laws that govern it. After that, those laws are applied to the situations of our everyday lives.

To conclude this part, let me take another example. Commentators discuss the case of a person who threw a vessel from the top of a roof, then ran quickly downstairs and broke it with a sword. Is he liable to pay for it? At first glance this is a totally absurd case, since someone who damages another person’s property is obviously liable. The background is a dispute in the Gemara about what happens when two different people are involved: one throws the vessel from above, and the other breaks it with a sword just רגע before it reaches the ground. One opinion holds that both are exempt: the first because in fact he did not break the vessel, and the second because the vessel is already considered broken from the moment it was set on its path—even had he done nothing, the vessel would have broken, so his act had no consequence. The discussion I mentioned deals with the hypothetical case in which those two people are the same person. What is the point of this discussion? After all, such a case can hardly occur in practice.

Exactly as we saw above regarding the trolley case, such discussions have one of two explanations: 1. The goal is to clarify a legal principle. Does the very fact of the split exempt each of the two sides even when it is the same person, or is the exemption only because the act is split between two people? If the same person performs both parts, then he has performed a complete act of damage and should be held liable. 2. This is a thought experiment meant to show the implausibility of the view that the split itself exempts one from payment. Someone who recoils from that conclusion can see this sugya as a thought experiment that demonstrates its implications and thereby offers an argument against it.

It is interesting to note that a similar discussion appears regarding setting a dog upon someone. There too there is an opinion in the Gemara that if one person sets another person’s dog upon a third person’s property, both are exempt: one, the inciter, because he is not the owner, and the other, the owner, because it was not his act. And there too the commentators discuss what the law is when a person sets on his own dog. Here the case becomes truly bizarre, for even if my dog damages another person’s property I am liable to pay. So how could one even entertain the possibility of exemption when I actively incited the dog to do it?

Again, in the background there is a clarification of a principled legal issue. The question is whether, when my animal causes damage, the liability really rests on the animal itself, but since it has no money and no legal capacity the duty of payment is transferred to me as owner—or whether the debt is imposed on the owner from the outset. This reflects a broader question about the very nature of tort liability in general: is its basis the fact that my property caused damage, or is it my negligence in failing to guard it that makes me liable to pay?

Now the different sides of the test case of a person who sets on his own dog become understandable. If we adopt the view that liability for damages rests on the animal and is transferred from it to its owner, then when someone incites it there is no liability on the animal at all, and therefore there is nothing to transfer to its master. Hence there is room to exempt the owner from payment here. Again, I am not saying that this opinion is the one accepted in Jewish law, but this is a test case that illustrates the meaning of the conception that the animal itself bears liability for damage.

As in the previous example, and as in the trolley case, even if someone recoils from this conception and thinks it unreasonable, he must understand that in the study hall indignation is not enough. A legal discussion requires arguments and reasons. Such a test case is a kind of argument against the position. In effect, we are being told that if we assume the conception that liability rests on the animal, an absurdity follows: a person who sets on his own dog would be exempt from payment.

So much, then, for the Platonic character of Talmudic discussion. Its purpose is to conduct a thought experiment that sharpens a dispute or decides between conflicting theses regarding some legal issue. For that purpose it deals with laboratory cases that may look strange, but through them the question under discussion can be clarified in a purer and better way, and perhaps even decided. As I noted, in many cases the conclusions of such clarification also have implications for practical cases that really can occur. We have seen this illustrated in financial cases in civil law. But this principle also explains several of the other examples mentioned above, and many others as well. These strange cases—such as a person who has intercourse with himself, or with a woman without damaging the hymen, or who becomes lodged in his deceased brother’s widow—are simply laboratory cases intended to clarify a legal principle, for example: does intercourse require two people? Must intercourse be intentional? Is intercourse that does not penetrate the hymen considered intercourse? This is exactly like the examples we have already seen.

At the margins of the discussion I would note that such discussions are also common in legal literature more generally. There too one sometimes deals with strange laboratory cases that are not expected to occur and probably never will. And there too the purpose is to conduct a thought experiment that can serve as a reason or argument for one thesis and against another, or as a sharpening and clarification of legal principles—which, as noted, is easier and more proper to do through hypothetical Platonic test cases.

Some of the cases mentioned above are not thought experiments but strange assumptions about reality or references to exceptional and bizarre possibilities. For example, the concern that there might be intercourse with a dog, or a dream of intercourse with a dog. It is possible that in these cases too the material expresses some conceptual idea—the question of what a dog and intercourse with it represent in the literature of the Sages and more generally. One should remember that these Talmudic texts, the aggadot, are literary texts that seek to convey a message in a complex and indirect way, not necessarily literally.

Beyond that, in those cases where the issue is dream content, we should remember that dream analysis as practiced by Freud and his successors deals with cases far stranger than these, and finds in them meanings that certainly do touch our lives. If, from the psychoanalytic standpoint, a pencil symbolizes the male sexual organ, why is that any different from a dream about intercourse with a dog or a goose?

In addition, it is important to remember that in such cases we must beware of anachronism. The world in which our Sages lived and worked was at times very different from our own. It is entirely possible that they expressed themselves in a way that spoke to their surroundings and to the world of imagery current there. First, it may be that in their time there was a real concern about intercourse with a dog, something that for us is perceived as a highly unusual deviation, though it still exists. Thus, for example, the Gemara describes such a reality (Avodah Zarah 22b):

And R. Yirmiyah of Difti said: I myself saw an Arab who took a thigh from the market, hollowed it out sufficiently for intercourse, had intercourse with it, roasted it, and ate it.

That Arab took a piece of poultry or meat, made an opening in it, had sexual relations with it, and afterward roasted and ate it. I am not entirely sure that this is not a literary fiction meant to illustrate an idea—even though the wording is cast as testimony, “I saw”—or whether such a case really did occur there. Either way, both of these possibilities should make us cautious in interpreting such cases: either because in their time such things really did happen, in which case we must beware of anachronism, or because we are dealing with a Platonic discussion or a parable.[4]

One should remember that the Gemara itself says about sexual relations with animals, zoophilia, that “Jews are not suspected of this.” So it is clear that it does not view this positively or as a morally neutral act. The open way in which it discusses these topics hints that another message is being conveyed there, perhaps a literary one. Especially if the surrounding non-Jews engaged in unusual sexual acts of this kind, it should not surprise us that the Sages also used such images as a medium through which to illustrate various conceptual principles.

In this connection it is worth mentioning that the example of self-intercourse that appears in the sugya in Sanhedrin receives only a very brief and terse reference at the very beginning of the Gemara’s discussion: “You have made it repulsive.” That is, the Gemara itself rejects it forcefully and decisively, and only afterward moves on to the legal discussion. So this is really not a good example of insensitivity or distorted moral norms.

On the Openness of Talmudic Discussion

The openness of Talmudic discussion in all these strange and repellent cases points to the greatness of the text, not to its inferiority. Everything is placed on the table and everything can be openly discussed. Every matter, however strange, has deeper significance, and it is worth probing it in order to learn something from it. The Talmud deals with life itself, even if at times it does so through edge cases and strange situations. Sometimes these cases are indeed part of life, and the shame that prevents us from discussing them is not really helpful. This Talmudic openness deserves appreciation, not condemnation. And sometimes the cases are not drawn from life, but they are laboratory cases that illuminate everyday situations more clearly and sharply.

Still, one cannot deny that there are sugyot in which it is harder to find an explanation of the kinds I have suggested here. Not everything in Talmudic literature is clear to me. It is not that there are no puzzling matters there, or even oddities. Even those of us who study the Talmud מתוך respect and appreciation for its sages feel no small number of discomforts, and I think there is no point in denying or suppressing that.

Even so, proportion is needed. The Talmud is a collection of many opinions, sayings, and associations, and one has to see things in context and think through the subtext. There are indeed strange things among them, but they are a negligible minority, and as I have tried to demonstrate here, even within that minority most cases have explanations that can be reached. The openness of Talmudic discussion invites us to read and study it critically. There is certainly room to criticize ideas and images, but we should try to interpret them honestly rather than looking for defects; and when the time comes to formulate a general judgment, it is important to weigh how many such cases exist within this vast and varied corpus.

Without question, we are speaking about people who devoted their lives to the life of the spirit, to clarifying issues of the highest significance, and it is clear that they were very far from being fools or morally corrupt. Therefore, when we encounter strange situations or sugyot in the Talmud, the reasonable assumption is that there is something substantial behind them. We are not dealing with a band of wild ravers and fantasists.

In the end, one’s approach to these Talmudic sayings is shaped by one’s point of departure. Those inclined to disparage the words of the Sages interpret them literally and mock them. Others, who value the Talmud and its authors, find various ways—many of them entirely reasonable—to see that in most cases these are important and meaningful discussions.

Maimonides, in his introduction to Perek Helek, divides people into three groups in their attitude toward the aggadic sayings of the Sages, and it seems to me that his words are apt for the whole subject discussed here:

The first group—and it is the majority of those I have encountered, whose writings I have seen, and about whom I have heard—understand these sayings according to their plain sense and do not explain them at all. In their eyes, all impossibilities become necessary realities. They do this only because of their ignorance of the sciences and their distance from the disciplines of knowledge. They do not possess enough intellectual perfection to be awakened to this by themselves, nor have they found anyone to awaken them. Therefore they think that in all their profound sayings the Sages intended only what these people themselves understood from them, namely their literal meaning. Yet the literal sense of some of these sayings is so strange that if you were to recount it literally to the masses—and all the more so to their distinguished members—they would be astonished and say: how can there be in the world a person who imagines such things and thinks they are true, let alone finds them pleasing?

This wretched group deserves pity for its ignorance, because they elevate the Sages in their own imagination, but in truth they debase them to the lowest depths and do not even realize it. By the life of God, this group destroys the splendor of the Torah and darkens its radiance, making the Torah of God the opposite of what was intended by it. For God said of the wisdom of His Torah, “Surely when they hear all these statutes…”—and this group expounds the literal sense of the Sages’ words in such a way that if the nations were to hear them they would say, “This little nation is surely a foolish and contemptible people.” Many preachers do this, explaining to the people what they themselves do not understand. Would that they had remained silent, since they do not understand; “Would that you were utterly silent, and it would be your wisdom.” Or they should have said: we do not know what the Sages intended in these matters, nor how they are to be interpreted. Instead they think they understand, and set themselves up to explain to the people what they themselves have understood, not what the Sages actually said, preaching before the masses on Berakhot, Perek Helek, and the like in a purely literal, word-for-word manner.

The second group, and they too are רבים, are those who saw the words of the Sages or heard them, understood them literally, and thought that the Sages intended nothing more than the plain sense of the words. Therefore they belittled them and denigrated them, and regarded as strange what is not strange. They frequently mock the words of the Sages, thinking that they themselves are more intelligent and clearer-minded, while the Sages, peace be upon them, were naïve simpletons lacking understanding in all of reality. Most of those who fall into this way of thinking are those who claim to be physicians, and those who rave about astrological judgments, because in their own imagination they are clever, wise philosophers—how far they are from humanity in the eyes of true philosophers. They are more ignorant than the first group and more foolish. They are a cursed group, for they have broken out against men of great stature whose wisdom is already known among the wise. Had these people prepared themselves in the sciences until they knew how one writes on divine matters and similar subjects for the masses and for the wise, and had they acquired for themselves the practical part of philosophy, then they would understand whether the Sages were wise or not, and the matters of their words would be understood by them.

The third group—and by the life of God they are very few, so few that one can scarcely call them a group, just as one can speak of the sun as a species—are those to whom the greatness of the Sages and the excellence of their understanding has become clear from the fact that among their statements there are things indicating very profound truths. Although these are few and scattered throughout their writings, they show the Sages’ perfection and their grasp of truth. It has also become clear to such people that impossibilities are impossible and that the Necessary Existent exists, and they know that the Sages, peace be upon them, did not speak nonsense. It is clear to them that the Sages’ words have a plain meaning and a hidden meaning, and that everything they said that concerns impossible things was said only in the manner of riddle and parable—and that is the way of the great sages. Therefore the greatest of the wise opened his book and said that its purpose is “to understand proverb and figure, the words of the wise and their riddles.” It is already known among masters of language that a riddle is speech whose meaning lies in its secret, not in its plain sense, as it says, “I will now put forth a riddle to you…” For all possessors of wisdom, when speaking about lofty matters that are the ultimate end, speak only by way of riddle and parable. So why should it surprise us that they composed wisdom by way of parable and compared it to lowly, commonplace things? You see that the wisest of all men did so under divine inspiration—namely Solomon in Proverbs, Song of Songs, and part of Ecclesiastes. So why should it be strange in our eyes to interpret their words and draw them away from their literal sense so that they accord with reason, fit the truth, and harmonize with Scripture? After all, they themselves interpret verses of Scripture and draw them away from their plain sense, turning them into parable—and that is the truth—as we find when they said that the verse “he struck the two mighty men of Moab” is entirely a parable, and likewise what is said, “he struck the lion in the pit,” is a parable, and “Who will give me water to drink,” and the rest of that whole episode—all of it is parable. Likewise, regarding the entire Book of Job, one of them said that it was a parable, though he did not explain what matter that parable was intended to teach. So too with Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones: one of them said it was a parable. There are many such examples.

And on this Maimonides writes:

If you, the reader, belong to one of the first two groups, then do not examine any of my words on this matter, for nothing in it will suit you; more than that, it will harm you and you will hate it. For how could foods that are light in quantity and moderate in quality suit a man already accustomed to bad and heavy foods? They would only harm him and make him hate them. You see the case of those who were accustomed to eating onions, garlic, and fish, and what they said about the manna: “Our soul loathes this insubstantial bread.” But if you are one of the people of the third group, so that whenever some saying of the Sages comes before you that reason finds remote, you pause over it and know that it is riddle and parable, and your heart remains troubled and your thought strenuous in trying to understand it, anxious to find the path of truth and the idea of justice, as it says, “to find words of delight and uprightly written words of truth”—then contemplate my words and you will derive benefit, if God, exalted be He, so wills.

Those with a mocking and literalistic approach would be better off not studying the Talmud at all. It is like feeding fine food to a person whose stomach is unsuited to it. Those who study Talmud should come from the point of departure of the third group—that is, they should think and search for the deeper meanings, truth and justice, on the assumption that such meanings are there.

[1] “A Platonic Perspective on Okimtot,” in: Akdamot, 2013.

[2] The Talmudic Logic series, vol. 11.

[3] Site team note: it should be noted that a phenomenon of wheat falling from the sky was described in England in 1661, so it is possible that the legal discussion in this case is not entirely theoretical.

[4] It is interesting to note that exactly such a case is brought in a contemporary book by the psychologist Jonathan Haidt (see an excellent review here). He brings cases there, fictional ones, that really do look like perversions. For example, a person has intercourse with a chicken and then eats it, or takes the neighbors’ dog that was run over and killed, cooks it, and eats it. There it is obvious to any sensible reader that the author’s aim is to clarify a psychological and moral question. No one thinks of accusing the author of resorting to pathological cases because of some mental distortion. The subject of the discussion is the nature of our morality, between emotion and intellect. See my discussion of this in column 86 on my website.

[5] On this matter see my article in Bedad, 2012, further on Ockham’s razor, regarding the solid logic behind the duty to judge favorably.

Notes

Source (knowingfaith): https://www.knowingfaith.co.il/%D7%AA%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%94-%D7%A9%D7%91%D7%A2%D7%9C-%D7%A4%D7%94/%D7%93%D7%99%D7%95%D7%A0%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%9E%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%A0%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%91%D7%92%D7%9E%D7%A8%D7%90

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