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Where is the mekoir that pregnant women shouldn’t look at monkeys and why not and does it apply to just monkeys or all animals?
I thought that its Zoo animals in general. So that her child shouldn’t come out looking like one?
I think it’s all animals. Halachacally Speaking by R’ Moishe Dovid Lebovitz brings down a machlokes. I’ll try to copy and paste it, or if you want you can google halachically speaking and find it in the archives on the website so you could see it yourself.
Visiting a Zoo
Shlita).
However, others are lenient with this. Bunei Beischa page 332, Opinion of Harav Felder Shlita, see Ashrei Yiladito page 31:footnote 25 who is lenient
Its brought in the Kabbalistic work Sefer Habris 1 mamaar 17.The reason brought is one might see scary things and it might have influence on the baby.Nothing to do with impure or not.Nowadays,when people see animals more frequently many say one should not to be worried.
Going to a zoo with a 2 year old is far more dangerous than with an embryo, as this past October some 2 year old at Pittsburgh Zoo insisted on being lifted up to see some wild dogs, and then tipped over & fell in and was mauled to death by the pack of dogs.
An embryo is not going to cry to be lifted up to see animals.
147- going to the zoo with a stupid parent or caretaker is the danger
Does the opposite apply? If one is pregnant, should one make an effort to look at handsome talmidei chachamim?
Check out Yaakov Aveinu and what he did with the sheep, when the sheep looked at the sticks while they ate. You don’t want your child to be born looking like other Brios.
Torah613- Like R’ Yochanan? (B”M 84a)
Chaimy, I always thought that what happened by Yaakov Avinu was a nes, his “magic trick” with the sticks was his hishtadlus needed in order for Hashem to perform the nes .
abba_murray_bar_popa: Thank you. I didn’t want to quote it in case I mixed it up with something else. 🙂
pople with older children DO go to the zoo with them, are you saying that no pregnant women should go to the zoo?
Superstition, plain and simple
There is an obvious solution: Every time you see a monkey, look at a handsome talmid chacham (preferably your husband) twice.
Lesschumras, do you think R’ Tuvia Goldstein zt”l was misquoted?
DY:
No, he thinks he’s a superstitious fool. Heck, he probably thinks the Gemora that mentions this concept is just being backwardly superstitious. ‘Cause he knows better than all of them.
Certainly Chazal knew what monkeys were, they are mentioned in quite a few sugyas.
However, the concept of watching the monkeys in the zoo is thoroughly modern and didn’t exist more than 60 years ago,more or less. And so the issue of pregnant women seeing monkeys is a new circumstance and requires shikul hada’as.
Be that as it may, it is comforting that we have taken old superstitions and applied them to new circumstances. Old superstitions don’t die, it seems, they just modernize themselves.
Is the source in Maseches Bubba Maise? If you want to believe in it, that’s your choice. Not every non-halachic statement in the Gemora is correct. Given the knowledge base at that time, it wathe best explanation they could come up with to explain deformed babies. They didn’t take 100 hundred pregnant women and ask them to look at monkeys and then noted the results. They probably observed a mother had a deformed baby and worked bsckwards.
By your reasoning, no married woman able to have children can ever look at an animal since in the first 4 weeks she wouldn’t be aware she was pregnant. In the shetls animals were everywhere. how could a woman avoid seeing them
So you agree with TKND’s assessment of your position?
old man:
“Old superstitions don’t die, it seems, they just modernize themselves.”
I believe the technical term is “Halacha”. And you’re absolutely correct.
Did you know that there is a Gemora (no, I don’t remember exactly where) that says that there is a province/tribe within Amalek called “Germanya” (which the Vilna Gaon says is Germany), and that if that if they put their mind to to it they could “go out and destroy the world”. And until oh, about the 1930s there were probably plenty of arrogant, new-age “smarter-than-the-Gemora”s who thought the Gemora was backwards, superstitious, foolish, and just plain wrong. But who ended up being wrong?
The world does not exist.
The concept of existence does not exist.
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