This essay examines Maoz Kahana’s A Heartless Chicken: Religion and Science in Early Modern Rabbinic Culture. Against familiar narratives that explain change in early modern Judaism primarily through rupture, conflict, and defensive retrenchment, it argues that Kahana uncovers a more expansive intellectual world in which halakhic writing became a site for negotiating science, natural philosophy, and supernatural phenomena. It follows Kahana’s treatment of the “heartless chicken” controversy, bodily anomalies and medical testimony, and discussions of demons, spirits, and other wondrous beings, while advancing several new interpretations. Particular attention is devoted to R. Jonathan Eybeschütz’s consultations with the universities of Prague and Halle. Rather than subordinating Halakhah to external scientific expertise, Eybeschütz enlisted institutional science to confirm established halakhic norms. Yet in cases involving individual suffering or urgent social consequences, he set aside general scientific claims and employed halakhic mechanisms that enabled exceptional rulings. More broadly, the essay emphasizes that theoretical positions expressed in halakhic form should not automatically be read as operative legal rulings or straightforward evidence of a rabbi’s attitude toward science. At a moment when forms of wonder seem to be re-emerging in the age of artificial intelligence, Kahana’s book serves not only as a historical study of eighteenth-century rabbinic culture but also as a suggestive guide to thinking anew about the relation between nature and magic, science and religion.
This study examines the historical circumstances surrounding the addition of Ezekiel 16:6 (“Through your blood[s], live! Through your blood[s], live!”) to the medieval Franco-German circumcision liturgy, as first attested in Maḥzor Vitry. It traces the midrashic interpretation of this verse from tannaitic sources through post-talmudic texts, demonstrating how the “bloods” evolved from metonyms for commandments into a symbol of salvific power. The ritual innovation of dripping wine into the baby’s mouth while reciting the verse is analyzed within the context of evolving Jewish-Christian relations in medieval northern Europe, as more virulent forms of anti-Judaism emerged in the twelfth century to take their place alongside the well-developed adversus Judaeos tradition of earlier centuries. This liturgical development, together with the introduction of the liturgy’s closing verses, represents a subtle appropriation and rejection of Christian eucharistic symbolism, affirming Jewish covenant theology against Christian supersessionist claims. Through examination of Jacob haGozer’s thirteenth-century Rules of Circumcision, the study reveals how the meaning of these ritual elements intensified as Jewish-Christian relations worsened.
