For those who aren't so sure they might want to look at Slifkin's article on the matter (in PDF). The machlokes basically comes down to this:
One side- The ba'alei Tosafos were extremely great, but they lived in France and never saw Elephants. The tosafist assumed they had legs like other animals (that's even how they look in an old drawing) and so he explains the gemara as saying you try to get the elephant to jump. Nowadays we know elephants can't jump since they're too big and their legs are designed differently so we should explain the gemara like Rashi. ___
Other side- Chas V'Shalom to say Tosafos doesn't know about Indian Elephants! The Tosafos were infallible and all-knowing! Elephants can jump!
There are 2 main problems with the second opinion:
- Elephants can't jump. (and even if you deny facts, there's no way you could claim it would be easy to get an elephant to jump, which would be necessary to explain the gemara)
- Christians believe in (limited) Papal infallibility, but Jews don't believe their Leaders are infallible or All-Knowing, only G-d is. So there's no reason to say Tosafos had to have known about Elephants.
Having recently observed the baby elephant at the Biblical Zoo in Y'em, my wife and I both had the impression that the baby elephant was leaping. Based upon our unscientific observations, it seemed to us that Slifkin's rationale concerning the elephant's body mass physically preventing an elephant from jumping may be limited in application to adult elephants, and may not apply to baby elephants.
ReplyDeleteanonymous,
ReplyDeletethe gemara is clearly talking about an adult elephant since a baby elephant could be picked up to aquire it.
" ... baby elephant could be picked up to aquire it."
ReplyDeleteI believe the baby elephant weighed 200 lbs at birth.
R' Slifkin explicitly stated in his essay that it might be possible for baby elephants to jump, and he explained why this was not relevant to Tosafos. It's amazing how many people criticize him without actually reading his stuff.
ReplyDelete