Camels And Cactus

We Jews celebrate Thanksgiving multiple times every day, but sometimes we can come up with new reasons to Thank G-d, and sometimes the Daf Yomi triggers insights we had not thought of.

The section we will discuss now in the page of Bava Batra studied around the world last week on Thanksgiving this year (156b) begins not just inauspiciously enough, but seemingly headed in the opposite direction; the passage we will discuss begins with two curses.

In discussing, the prohibition of combining two plants (kilayim), Rabbi Eliezer cursed the sons of a woman named Rocheil. Why? Rav Yehuda quotes Shmuel who says they were maintaining thorns in a vineyard and did not uproot them. After all, we have learned in a Mishna (Kilayim 5:8), with regard to one who maintains thorns in a vineyard, that Rabbi Eliezer rules that the vineyard becomes forbidden. While the rabbis say that only a plant the likes of which people usually maintain proscribes a vineyard and renders it forbidden.

The Gemara then asks: Granted if it were saffron that grew in the vineyard, it is useful for seasoning and other uses, and therefore it proscribes the vineyard. But what of the thorns? For what are they useful? (We know what thorns do to protect roses, but do Jews really clamor for a cactus bouquet on Shavuot?)  Rabbi Chanina explains: What is the reasoning of Rabbi Eliezer? It is because in Arabia they maintain thorns in the fields for their camels. (Rabbi Eliezer holds that since thorns are maintained in one place, they are considered useful everywhere.)

The thorns in Arabia – and elsewhere – serve a purpose, but to appreciate them we really have to look at the anatomy of a camel.

Camels are designed to survive in harsh desert environments and have tough mouths that can handle thorny plants like cactus. Cacti are a good source of water and nutrients for camels in arid regions. Their thick lips and tough palate allow them to avoid getting hurt by the spines, and they can eat the flesh of the cactus for hydration and sustenance, thorns and all!

I’m guessing that most of us never gave too much thought to how camels get hydrated other than at wells, as described with Eliezer and Rebecca. Most of the few of us who ever thought of what use the liquid in cactus serves probably never really associated cacti with camels, by and large, and probably those of us who thought of how camels get some hydration from cacti never thought about how the camels penetrate the cacti without bloodying themselves and without having helpful humans around to cut through the plants. Nor have most of us in all probability considered that camels uniquely have this ability to eat – and drink – cacti, that other animals do not have, perhaps in order to eliminate the competition from other animals that don’t need this advantage as much as camels do for their cross-desert travels. This discussion in the Talmud seems to imply that human intervention can help and enhance the provision of cacti for camels, though it may not be absolutely necessary.

So because the Talmud pointed out that thorns are not necessarily destructive but may even be worth maintaining with human intervention, like pre-Industrial Revolution gas stations, we now have two additional reasons to be thankful on Thanksgiving and on every other day of the year – for the cacti and for the camels. Without the camels and the cacti that may have helped Eliezer’s camels reach the well where he met Rebecca, Eliezer might not have been able to fulfill Avraham’s command of not taking a wife for Yitzchak from among the local girls, in which case Jewish history might have been quite different.

Applying the lesson of the camel to today’s world of shidduchim, without the shidduch resume and the ability of people to circulate it on the Internet, there might be far fewer satisfactory shidduchim in the world.

At the same time, the “old fashioned” way worked very well as well, even without a well approached by future matriarchs. In fairness to the millions of Jews happily and successfully married without a shidduch resume and a computer, we must keep in mind the Gemara elsewhere that states, “Arba’im yom kodem l’yitzras havlad bas kol yotzais v’omeress bas ploni lploni – Forty days before the embryo is created, a Heavenly voice emanates and decrees who is for whom” (Sotah 2a). The bottom line is that shidduchim are all from G-d.

So let’s all take this opportunity to thank G-d, retroactive to Thanksgiving Day and every day, for the camel of antiquity, the Internet of the present, and the unlimited potential of the future.