"He Did What He Did" - Rav, the Evil Eye, and a Textual Variant

Yesterday's daf was Bava Metzia 107, and there is a very interesting discussion of the "evil eye" on 107b. Rav interprets a verse:

והסיר ה' ממך כל חולי אמר רב זו עין רב לטעמיה דרב סליק לבי קברי עבד מאי דעבד אמר תשעין ותשעה בעין רעה ואחד בדרך ארץ

(Deuteronomy 7:15) "And God will remove all sickness from you..." Rav said: This is the Ayin (hara). Rav is going according to his reasoning, for Rav entered a cemetery, did what he did. He said 99 [died] by the evil eye, and one normally.

I came across this, and was mystified by a few things. First and foremost, what did Rav do? Secondly, why did Rav not simply think that the sickness referred to was, well, sickness? Why did it have to be supernatural? And thirdly, how does the cemetery visit relate to his interpretation of the verse?

Micha Berger commented on R. Josh Yuter's post summarizing this piece saying that it's all metaphorical:

Since "evil eye" means looking at others with jealousy or begrudging what they have.... An "ayin hara", minus all the segulah-talk and going back to the mishnaic idioms, would be the punishment for conspicuous consumption and intentionally causing jealousy. If someone it trying not just to enjoy their wealth, but to put it in others' faces, the measure-for-measure punishment is to take it away. "Ayin hara" doesn't actually refer to the gaze of the "green eyed monster", but it might as well. Rav is also the amora whose arrival in Bavel marks the beginning of the talmudic age there. (Unless you are a fan of Shemu'el, but same generation.) So the people in the cemetery are primarily those living in Bavel before it became a Torah center. And who lived quite better than what Rav saw back in the old country, Israel. Rav is bemoaning the prevalence of this attitude to wealth. Saying that the wealthy need to learn a little tzeni'us in how they enjoy their wealth, or it'll kill them.

I'm not sure this meaning is meant, but it is important that Rav as a Babylonian is significant. The Yerushalmi Shabbat 14:3 says that the Ayin Hara descended to Babylonia. So there is some power to the statement that Babylonia and Ayin Hara, and Rav as its start of the Talmudic age, are connected.

But let's start with Rashi. He is clearly also concerned with my questions above. He writes that:

כל חלי. דבר שכל החלאים תלוין בו. וזו העין עין רעה:

This means that Rav's connection is that he thinks all disease originates through the ayin hara. If God promises to take away all sickness, He is promising to take away its root cause, which is supernatural.

(This goes deeper. This is a source I have not yet encountered in my collection of Rashi's opinion about medicine. In this sourcesheet, I show that Rashi's view of disease is that it has a positive benefit of keeping people religious and full of prayer. It is indeed possible to argue that Rashi sees disease as directly from supernatural or divine causes, and the role of the doctor is an illicit meddling with the divine plan. If so, the supernatural element here is the evil eye.)

And so what did Rav do? According to Rashi, he said incantations on the graves to find out how they died:

עבד מה דעבד. יודע היה ללחוש על הקברות ולהבין על כל קבר וקבר באיזו מיתה מת אם מת בזמנו אם בעין רעה

Rashi believes he did magic, and implicitly answers the question why the Talmud doesn't tell us what happened: it’s the dark arts.

However, I was still puzzled by the enigmatic aspects of this passage. And so I went to the manuscripts. What I found was a single manuscript that has something. The Escorial G-I-3 manuscript describes what Rav did:

דרב סליק לבי קברי עבד מה דעבד נטל בדי הדס ונעצן בבית הקברות ומצאן לתשעים ותשעה שנכמשו ואחד יבש אותן שנכמשו מתו מעין רעה והיבש מת כדרכו אמ' תשעים ותשעה בעין הרע מתו ואחד בדרך ארץ

Rav entered a cemetery. He did what he did - he took myrtle branches, and implanted them into the cemetery. He found that 99 withered, and one dried. Those that withered died of the evil eye, and the dried one died naturally. He said: 99 with the evil eye and one normally.

What we see is that he took branches of myrtle (why myrtle is unclear), and apparently planted 100 of them. Presumably, he planted them on top of 100 graves and watched what would happen, but it is also possible he did it in one bunch somewhere in the cemetery.

This girsa creates a whole new story. What he did was not magic, at least not incantations. He used natural branches to demonstrate seemingly supernatural results.

But I am tempted to interpret this in a new way. This can answer our questions. What if Rav was saying by interpreting "all sickness" as the ayin hara, was that ayin hara refers to a type of disease? Why I see this is that he planted myrtle branches in the cemetery, and it says that ayin hara attacked the plants and caused them to wither. How does ayin hara affect inanimate objects? It could be that I just don't understand how ayin hara works in the gemara. After all, it is possible that these people in the cemetery died of ayin hara, and therefore anything that attaches to them would also be affected supernaturally by the association. But I am tempted to say this it really sounds like ayin hara is an actual physical disease...

No other manuscript I have found has this story. Cambridge manuscript (T-S NS 329.143) says shortly that Rav "did what he did כההוא מעשה" but is not specific what Rav did.

However, the Aruch actually does not have this girsa, but has an interpretation that fits into the general genre of this. This is the page of the Aruch HaShalem:

The Aruch lists two possibilities: he performed a she'elat chalom to get the answer in a dream, or he planted trees! This kind of sounds like our variant girsa! If you look at the Aruch, he gives more details on the second possibility, that he planted trees and made vows upon them to grow, and then judged that only one grew, that the rest were affected by ayin hara.

The Aruch quotes another gemara, one where someone "עבד מאי דעבד" and it’s also in a cemetery! In the Aruch's girsa of Shabbat 34a, it says "עבד מה דעבד" for Ben Zakkai, that he made marks in a cemetery to show where it was tahor and no dead bodies were. Our girsa says, though עבד איהו נמי הכי, כל היכא דהוה קשי - טהריה, וכל היכא דהוה רפי צייניה.

There are more interesting things about this Aruch's entry, but I find it interesting that in our gemaras on Bava Metzia, we don't have the version from the manuscript. And apparently we have such a concept elsewhere, in Shabbat. So why was it left out here? It's possible that our variant scribe inserted an explanation that it knew from the Aruch or from this similar gemara in Shabbat, and therefore the more difficult text is often the correct one.

Tosafot haRosh actually agrees with this position of the Aruch: עבד מאי דעבד. פירש בערוך שנטע אילנות על הקברים והשביעם שלא יוציאו פרח אלא אותם שנטועים על אותם שמתו בזמנם.

While we are on the topic of Tosafot, I have an answer for the Meharsha's question on Tosafot that is indubitably correct, in my opinion. Tosafot asks on this:

וא"ת א"כ בני יוסף שלא שלטה בהן עין הרע היה להן לחיות הרבה מכל השבטים וי"ל שמתו בדרך ארץ יותר מאחרים כשהקב"ה היה רוצה להמיתן היה שולח להם חלאים אחרים:

Question: If so, the descendants of Yosef, who do not have the Evil Eye having power over them, they should have had more lives (or: lived longer) than all the other tribes? Answer: They died naturally more than others. When God wanted to make them die, he sent them other diseases.

The Meharsha asks a question:

ק"ק לפ"ז דהאי בי קברי וכי לא היו ביניהם מבני יוסף וי"ל דלא גלוי מבני יוסף לבבל שבכלל עשרת השבטים היו שגלו ללחלח וחבור וכו' וק"ל:

A small question according to this: This is a cemetery, were there no descendants of Yosef in it? And the answer: The descendants of Yosef were never exiled to Babylonia, who were part of the ten tribes who were exiled to Halah, and Habor (I Chronicles 5:26), and k"l.

I think a simpler answer to Meharsha, and this is probably why he called it a "ktzat kasha", which is that yes, there happened not to be any descendants of Yosef in this cemetery. In fact, Tosafot Rabbeinu Peretz was apparently concerned for this question, because he says, “That’s how it happened to be.”

וא"ת בני יוסף שלא שלטה בהם עין הרע אמאי לא חיו הרבה מכל השבטים וי"ל דכשהקב"ה רצה להמיתם שולח להם חלאים אחרים אבל הני מתו כולן בעין הרע כך אירע הדבר

Another answer is that the one who survived was the descendant of Yosef.

Some things to tie up.

Is there any connection between this and Aaron's budding staff in Numbers 17? I'm not sure.

What if the myrtle branches are significant? Is there significance to planting in a cemetery?