Q&A: A Living Person Carries Himself
A Living Person Carries Himself
Question
There is a well-known halakhic rule that a living person carries himself (Shabbat 94a and elsewhere), and in the Talmud in Gittin, in the destruction narratives, it is explained that in reality too a dead person is heavier / harder to carry (Gittin 56a). And that also seems true in practice: lifting a person feels easier than lifting 80 kilograms. I always understood this to mean that since a person is alive, the blood circulates through his body by means of the heart, and therefore he weighs less (and I later saw this as well in the latest edition of Brit Olam). But if so, that is difficult, because of the well-known parable of the Dubno Maggid about the villager who got a ride from the wagon driver and kept holding his load on his shoulder; when the driver told him he could put the load down, the villager said he wanted to spare some burden from the horses that were carrying the wagon. The driver then told him that even when the load was on his shoulder, the horses were still carrying him. So here too, even though the blood is being carried by the living person, there still should be no savings in weight. However, a friend who rides bicycles a lot told me that if he puts a bag on his back it is much easier to carry than if he puts it on the bicycle itself (on the rear rack), and seemingly according to that the parable is not correct.
Is there a physical explanation for this, or is it all just an illusion?
Answer
First of all, I would not recommend raising objections from the parables of the Dubno Maggid.
On the face of it, there does not seem to be any significant difference in weight, and the difference is mainly psychological: when carrying a dead person, it is perceived as heavier. There may also be a difference in that the living person being carried helps you by holding himself in a better posture. One should remember that the difficulty is not only because of the weight but also because of the way it is carried. In that sense, the bicycle example works well. However, in the destruction narratives the case is Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai in a coffin, and there the Romans did not know that he was not dead, so it is not clear why there would be concern that they would feel his weight was lighter. Moreover, from there too it is clear that the difference in weight is very significant. It seems that the Talmud really assumed that a dead person is substantially heavier.
I once heard that Rabbi Gedaliah Nadel did an experiment and put a person on a scale so that he would die there and they could see whether the weight changed. I do not remember what the result was.
As I understand it, there should not be any real difference in weight.
Discussion on Answer
Rabbi Gedaliah Nadel really wanted to ask: how much does the soul weigh? 🙂
The difference is 21 grams: https://news.walla.co.il/item/514231. P.S. A living person carries himself in that he clings to the neck of the one lifting him and distributes his weight across many muscle systems in the carrier's body. But when he is dead, you lift him only with your hands. It's like the difference at the gym between a dumbbell and a press or lift. Completely different weights. Presumably that is where the myth came from, which people in the ancient world simply believed in—that the spirit has a vital force that lifts the person; compare “And Jacob lifted his feet,” and Rashi there. And the Romans thought so too. Therefore, when they lifted ben Zakkai's coffin, they sensed its great heaviness relative to the size of the coffin, and so assumed he was dead. And so it seems.
It's the opposite of asking how much the soul weighs. The claim is that its weight is negative—that is, a dead body weighs more.
By the way, the article Gil linked is instructive, because once again it begs the question and scolds people who are willing to test it seriously and systematically (as in the case of the prayer experiments discussed in the appendix to my book God Plays with Dice). What exactly was wrong with MacDougall's experiment? They slam him as if he were bringing science into disrepute, whereas what he did was exactly what is expected of a scientist: to test his hypothesis empirically and systematically. The writer and the interviewee assume some premise, and on that basis reject the experiment and even speculate that there must have been inaccuracies and various abuses there. Typical.
MacDougall has the same numerical value as Gedaliah Nadel in gematria (and if not, add the kolel). Somehow I doubt Rabbi Nadel had the tools to carry out such an experiment.
I have two children who are exactly the same weight. The older one (age 6) has muscular dystrophy, and the younger one (4) is healthy.
I feel a very large and significant difference in the difficulty of carrying them. I need to lift the older one often, and it is physically hard for me, much more than lifting the younger one.
The reason is of course that he does not help with his posture, because of the muscle weakness, and there is no good distribution of the weight across the whole body.
Many times I have thought that the help a living person gives in being lifted is what is meant by “a living person carries himself.”
And I wondered: if I carry my son out by hand on the Sabbath, would I be liable on the Torah level?
But I was troubled by the Mishnah (Shabbat 10:5): “One who carries out a living person on a bed is exempt.” Seemingly, when a person is carried by means of a bed, he cannot assist in the carrying the way he can when he is carried in one's arms.
What is the explanation?
Yes, that is the accepted explanation nowadays, but it seems to me that it does not stand up to the test of the sources. The Sages probably really thought that a living person is lighter than a dead one—and significantly so, as is proven from the case of Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai.
Therefore, the whole leniency of carrying a child on the Sabbath because “a living person carries himself” is questionable. To be sure, that is only if one adopts the position of Tosafot Rosh that the living person participates in carrying himself—and he speaks about a bed, which is very difficult. But according to what seems to me to be the view of the other medieval authorities, this has nothing to do with it. Tosafot, for example, write that it is because in the Tabernacle they did not carry living beings.
However, in Shabbat 94a a distinction is brought between animals and a human being, and there it does somewhat seem that the issue is the help that the living one gives those carrying him—the claim is that an animal does not help.
In particular, this should be discussed in light of the dispute among the medieval authorities (Shabbat 141b) regarding a small child—whether we say of him that a living person carries himself. From there too it somewhat seems that we are talking about assistance that is received.
Bottom line: this topic requires clarification.
You are conflating “a living person is lighter than a dead one” and “a living person carries himself” as though that were obvious.
But from the Talmud's wording it would seem these are different matters.
As for “a living person carries himself” — is there really anything in the rabbinic sources that refutes the idea that assistance is the criterion? Seemingly, the scapegoat that became ill, which is considered as if bound and does not carry itself even according to Rabbi Natan, דווקא actually strengthens the idea of assistance.
Indeed. I noted that in my remarks (that some of the medieval authorities see a connection and others do not). In any case, their assumption was that the living person is lighter than the dead one.
It seems to me that regarding the Sabbath, some explain why one who carries a living person is exempt: because a living person truly does not need the help of the one carrying him, since he carries himself—for example, by jumping, he actually acts to carry himself through the air by his own power—and the one carrying him is merely assisting, and mere assistance has no real substance. From this one could say that if the living person cannot carry himself on his own, such as a small infant or a sick person, then one who carries him would be liable, because the living person cannot carry himself at all.
However, it should be added that in order to investigate the matter of actual weight—whether there is a difference in reality between the living and the dead, and whether the soul causes the body to bear itself simply by being within it—this may be hard to test. For when a person is weighed consciously, the power of the soul's thought may lighten the burden or make the body heavy like a dead person. Perhaps there is some secret here connected to what righteous individuals did, like Phinehas, to fly in the air by means of holy names that increase the soul's power and nullify the force of gravity in the world of action.
Clearly there is no difference. The law of conservation of matter: matter does not disappear at the moment of death.
But the story of Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai is also difficult: how would those hooligans know what he weighed while he was alive?
I saw an explanation that a living person instinctively resists sudden jolts, and they would feel that changes in weight came with a certain delay. So if one of the coffin-bearers stepped down onto a sloped place, he would not immediately feel the expected increase in burden on his shoulder.