Stet in the Beit Yosef: Fish and Milk, from Typographical Error to Typological Exemplar
Aton M. Holzer

Rabbi Dr. Holzer is Director of the Mohs Surgery Clinic in the Department of Dermatology, Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, and is an assistant editor of the recent RCA Siddur Avodat HaLev. ORCID ID: 0000-0001-9852-3958/ 28 Binyamin, Beit Shemesh, Israel 9952200/ Aton.holzer@gmail.com

A passage in the magnum opus of R. Joseph Karo (Maran, or the Mehaber, 1488-1575), the Beit Yosef (YD 87:5) tends to be reckoned among the more consequential scribal errors in Jewish legal texts.

[ה] ”דגים וחגבים מותר לאכלן בחלב“. ריש פרק כל הבשר (קג:) ”(כל הבשר) אסור לבשל בחלב, חוץ מבשר דגים וחגבים“. וכתב הר”ן דכיון דלבשלן שרי משמע דלאכלן בחלב נמי שרי, דאיסור בשר בחלב בלשון בישול אפקיה רחמנא, וכן כתב הרמב”ם והרשב”א דלאכלן בחלב נמי שרי. ומכל מקום אין לאכול דגים בחלב מפני הסכנה, כמו שנתבאר בספר אורח חיים סימן קע”ג.

“Fish and locusts, it is permitted to eat them in milk.” In the beginning of the chapter kol basar (bHullin 103b) [it is written]: “(all flesh) it is prohibited to cook in milk, except for the flesh of fish and locusts.” And R. Nissim wrote that since cooking them is permitted, it implies that to eat them in milk is also permitted, for the prohibition of meat in milk was set out by the Torah in the semantics of cooking, and likewise did Maimonides and R. Shlomo ibn Adret write, that to eat them in milk is also permitted. And in any event, one should not eat fish in milk because of the danger, similar to what was elucidated in Orah Hayyim 173.

In his 2014 “A Guide to the Complex,”[1] Shlomo Brody highlights this passage – which invokes a heretofore ostensibly unknown ‘danger’ regarding consumption of fish in milk, and which makes reference to a chapter that deals with measures that must be taken with regard to the ‘dangerous mixture’ of fish and meat[2] – as a banner example of the ‘impact of inaccurate texts on Jewish law.’ He adds that ‘Ancient manuscripts regularly suffered from poor penmanship, slipping of the eyes, and misunderstandings by unlearned or confused copyists.’ The first to make this sort of observation regarding this passage was none other than R. Karo’s younger contemporary and interlocutory commentator R. Moses Isserles (Rama, 1530-1572), who puts it humorously (Darkei Moshe, Tur YD 87:4):

.ולא ראיתי מימי נזהרין בזה וגם בא”ח סימן קע”ג אינו אלא שלא לאכלו בבשר משום סכנה אבל בחלב שרי ועי”ל סימן קי”ו ולכן נראה שנתערב להרב בשר בחלב

And in all my days I have never seen [anyone] take care with regard to this, and also in Orah Hayyim 173 there is not but not to eat [fish cooked] in meat because of danger, but in milk it is permitted, and see earlier in chapter 116, and therefore it appears that the Rabbi has confused (mixed) meat and milk.

As neat as this solution appears, there remain some problems. For one thing, in context, the Beit Yosef discusses the consumption of various forms of flesh – fish and locust – in milk, not meat; replacing the word ‘milk’ for ‘meat’ would render the ultimate sentence a nonsequitur with regard to the full passage.

For another, the idea of danger attendant to mixtures of fish and dairy is not entirely unprecedented. R. Bahye b. Asher (1255-1340), who hailed from R. Karo’s native Christian Spain two centuries earlier (but from Zaragoza, quite a ways from Toledo), seems to make reference to such a practice in his commentary to Exodus 23:19:

.וכן דעת הרופאים בתערובת דג וגבינה שנתבשלו כאחד שמוליד תכונה רעה וחולי הצרעת

And so is the view of the physicians regarding the mixture of fish and cheese that were cooked together, that they beget a bad character and the illness of tsara’at (biblical ‘leprosy’).

To be sure, this is a lone statement, found in a decidedly non-Halakhic work, at a distance of two centuries and one continent from R. Karo’s work, which was completed in Ottoman Safed.

A third is that it is difficult to ascribe scribal error to the Mehaber’s project, if only because Beit Yosef was not transmitted in manuscript, and does not exist in manuscript – at least not beyond the author’s autograph. The four volumes of Tur with Beit Yosef were printed in different Italian publishing houses over the course of the 1550’s, in the author’s own lifetime, and he lived to see several printings of the Beit Yosef and Shulhan Arukh, the precis of the conclusions of halakhic discussions in the Beit Yosef. In fact, printing, and particularly choosing to do so in Renaissance Italy – where there was a Christian censor but superior presses to what was available in Ottoman Turkey, but more importantly, where (Jewish exile) cultures met and wide dissemination was guaranteed[3] – was central to R. Karo’s stated mission, a messianic objective of a piece with his participation in reconstituting the Sanhedrin to administer corporal punishment.[4] Taking a page from the messianic project of Sultan Suleiman, Kanuni or “the lawgiver,”[5] his project would complete Maimonides’ project[6] to unify the Jewish people under a uniform system of law in anticipation of redemption. And indeed, in his own lifetime, Beit Yosef and Shulhan Arukh enjoyed wide dissemination and readership, if not universal acceptance.[7] 

Figure 1: 87:5 in its first printing (Venice, 1551)

Given this, if “milk” is an error, it is much more likely typographical than scribal, and not the best example of the phenomenon R. Brody describes. But more importantly: given that the printed versions were available to the author, and were widely read and used, in his presence, for more than twenty years, the possibility that a typographical error of such consequence would go unnoticed by the author or his immediate milieu is at least somewhat diminished. The author himself issued a work called Bedek ha-Bayit with corrigenda and addenda, and there is a gloss on siman 86, but not 87.

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Muhammad ‘Abd al-Ra’ūf al-Munāwī (1545-1621), a renowned scholar in Ottoman Cairo whose hadith commentary is still popular in Sunni Islam, also composed a compendium of fundamental, practical scholarly-spiritual knowledge related to a number of everyday issues[8] – a sort of Islamic Orah Hayyim, as it were – known as Tadhkirat ūlī al-albāb bi-maʻrifat al-ādāb. This work is significant as a snapshot of the cultural climate in Early Ottoman Cairo, and has traces of persistent Mamluk attitudes, reconfigured in light of Ottoman sensibilities and cutting-edge intellectual trends in his time in Cairo, which, under the Mamluks, had long been a hub of science and the occult (which, at the time, were also deemed ‘sciences’) in the Islamicate world.[9]

In his compendium,[10] there is a fascinating discussion of food mixtures, launching off a discussion of Galenic medicine and the inadvisability of combining food that relate to different humors/elements (moisture/water, dryness/air, coldness/earth and hotness/fire). In pertinent part:

يعسر علينا اثبات كثير من ذلك بالقياس فمن ذالك انه لا يجمع بين سمك و لبن فإنه يولد أمراضا مزمنة كالجدام والبرص والفالج

It is difficult for us to prove much of this by (syllogistic) reason. For example, that combining fish and milk causes chronic diseases such as leprosy, vitiligo, and paralysis.

Figure 2: Tadhkirat ūlī al-albāb bi-maʻrifat al-ādāb,folio 14a (Yale, Landberg MSS 163)

Paulina Lewicka, a Polish scholar who studied foodways in Mamluk and Ottoman Cairo,[11] highlights this passage and notes that it represents a novelty on the Egyptian scene.

In fact, there seems to be no evidence that avoidance of mixing fish and milk products had been observed in Egypt of the Mamluk period, or in the medieval Middle East in general. This combination, which is considered unhealthy today, appeared in a number of old Arabic-Islamic recipes where fish and yoghurt were put together. Al-Munāwī’s remarks may have reflected, then, a new trend in medico-culinary thinking.[12]

Lewicka also notes in al-Munāwī’s treatment of Galenic medicine an interesting development: even though Galen’s theory of humors had formed the basis of Islamicate medicine for centuries, in the Muslim-Sufi environment of early Ottoman Cairo there was discomfort with use of pagan theories and concepts. Instead, al-Munāwī traces the theory of humors to Kitāb al-Tawrāt, the Torah,[13]  where, according to him, Adam was created with dry soil, wet water, heat (nefesh/nafs) and cold (ru’ah/rūḥ).

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R. Yosef Karo, living in the same territorial-ideological expanse as al-Munāwī – with frequent interchange between Safed and Cairo by figures no less than R. David abi ibn Zimra, R. Bezalel Ashkenazi, and R. Isaac Luria – had ample access to the developments in Cairene medicine that inspired the Tadhkirat passage.

His relationship with classical philosophy – the ostensible basis for Galenic (as opposed to prophetic) Cairene medicine – is complicated. In his mystical diary Maggid Meisharim (80a-b), he cites his angelic guide who allows that, pace the view of other Kabbalists of his day, Maimonides was not condemned to reincarnate as a worm because of his philosophical views – but only because he was saved from this fate by his Torah and good deeds, and thus was allowed to reincarnate in a usual way before ascending to join the souls of the righteous. However, there is evidence that he himself was more accepting and even dabbled in philosophy – but assigned it a decidedly secondary or tertiary position to the study of Talmud and Halakhah, either behind or on par with Kabbalah, which also took a backseat to Halakhic sources in terms of study and Halakhic decision/pesak.[14]

The case of milk and fish may serve as something of an acid test for medical science. R. Karo includes it in his Beit Yosef, but as an ayn le-ekhol – it should not be eaten – rather than ‘it is forbidden.’ Clearly R. Karo prohibits it, as perhaps a contemporary posek (if not for the Igrot Moshe) might prohibit smoking, but does not share al-Munāwī’s view that humoral medicine is a de’orayta. And while cutting edge Galenic knowledge merits mention in Beit Yosef, the Mehaber omits it from the Shulhan Arukh (87:3), the repository of pesak, regarding which, just as for Kabbalah,[15] the Talmudic sources – which explicitly permit such a mixture (kutah, e.g. Pesahim 76b) – trump all.