Berakhot 33

I have a simple question: where were men praying 2,000 years ago that there were so many dangerous animals around– lions, snakes, scorpions and oxen? Lots of dangers encountered in today’s text while praying. The background text in the Koren Talmud Bavli says that an innocuous ox is not known to gore a human being. Oddly, if the animal is known to cause damage on specific days as the Shabbat, then one is forewarned on those days alone that the animal is dangerous. This made me wonder if animals were considered to have enough awareness that they can become dangerous only on specially chosen days. I have the image of a huge gorgeous black ox saying to himself “it’s Shabbat and too quiet around here, so I think I am going to cause some trouble and try to ram the first person I see in order to create some excitement.”

And what are we to make of the suggestion to go “up on a roof and kick the ladder out from underneath you,” but only in regard to a black ox, who has Satan dancing between his horns. So, one goes up the roof when he sees a black ox, and kicks the ladder out from under him, and then what? How does he get down?

And then there is the story about the Rabbi and the snake. The story about Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa who brought a poisonous snake to a study hall to demonstrate that it cannot harm someone who is free from transgression reminded me of a tradition of snake handling that is outlawed everywhere except in West Virgina. There is a Pentecostal tradition of worshiping snakes in order to test one’s faith. Articles on the topic describe congregants who are covered in wounds and have withered fingers from snake bites. I have a friend who once witnessed such a ceremony for an article she was writing and said it was terrifying when one of the snakes bit someone. She ran for her life when the room started chanting that someone present was a non-believer. What did the Yeshiva students think when the Rabbi showed up with a snake?