New York – How Much Wine And Matzah?

New York – It was a scientific experiment conducted in the 1700s that would shake the world. It had to do with eggs. It had to do with average thumb widths. And its ramifications reverberated at Passover Seders across the world.

Thumb sizes are significant in numerous ways. A recent study from the University of Malaysia states that one of the biggest factors in phone texting satisfaction is based upon the size of the thumb. But we digress.

Let us go back to a previous time, when things were clearer and less confused. The Gemara (Eiruvin 83a) tells us that the volume of a revi’is is equivalent to that displaced by one and a half eggs. The amount of wine we must drink from the cup at the Passover table is this volume.

There is another Gemara, however (Pesachim 109a), that provides us with a different method of measuring a revi’is. There it says that the volume of a revi’is is equivalent to a thumb-box, or rather a cube with the measurements of 2 thumb widths, by 2 thumb widths, by 2.7 thumb widths. A contradiction? No. For both views are presented by the great Amora Rav Chisda.

The Shulchan Aruch, in siman 472:9, rules that each of the four cups of wine on Pesach must be at least a revi’is. Three simanim later, in 475:1, we are told that we need a kezayis of matzah to fulfill the mitzvah. How much is a kezayis? Rashi says that it is the volume of half an egg, and that is how the Shulchan Aruch rules in Orech Chaim 486. The Rambam held that a kezayis is a third of an egg, and the Mishnah Berurah there rules that sick people may rely on the Rambam’s opinion.

In the Yoreh Deah section (324:1), in the laws of challah, the Shulchan Aruch rules that either the thumb method or the egg method may be used to determine sizes, as they are equivalent. Or perhaps it can better be said that they were once equivalent. After the Talmud was closed, normative halachic practice seemed to revolve around the Gemara in Eiruvin. The reason was practical—it was much easier to estimate egg displacement than to construct boxes with thumb measurements. For centuries, Jews followed the measurement of the eggs.

But then, sometime in the mid 1700s, Rabbi Yechezkel Landau—known as the Noda BiYehudah and the chief rabbi of Prague, Czechoslovakia—conducted the experiment that would eventually change the world. He constructed the thumb box and he measured the eggs. He discovered a huge discrepancy. The thumb box was no less than twice the volume of the egg. Rabbi Landau surmised that there were only two possibilities: either the average thumb width had widened in the 1,300 years since the era of the Talmud, or the eggs had gotten smaller. (We find Rabbi Landau’s experiment in his writings on the Gemara in Pesachim. His book is called the Tzlach.)

Rabbi Landau issued a ruling. He ruled that from that point onward, the sizes used for the revi’is must be doubled. Now a full egg’s worth of matzah must be eaten. Now challah may be taken only for the volume of 86.4 eggs, not 43.2 eggs. Now three eggs’ volume of wine must be drunk on Pesach. Soon the Chasam Sofer issued a similar ruling. For Eastern European Jews, life began to change. Western European Jews, however, were unconvinced; how could you say that our parents and grandparents were wrong?

A century elapsed with the issue still not resolved. Finally, the Chofetz Chaim, author of the Mishnah Berurah, entered the fray. He ruled that in regard to Biblical matters, the more stringent volume should be used; for rabbinic requirements, the smaller shiur could still be used. Slowly but surely, the p’sharah (compromise) of the Mishnah Berurah entered into common practice.

The Aruch HaShulchan (O.C. 168:13, 372:12; Y.D. 324:5–10) was not as quick to accept the new view of Rabbi Landau. He notes that the Gemara in Yuma 80a states that the regular human mouth can hold an amount of food up to an egg. If Rav Landau’s view is correct, the human mouth should be able to hold two eggs’ worth of food comfortably. But what size egg should be used? The Mishnah in Keilim 17:6 states that Chazal are dealing with an average size egg. A group of young men recently volunteered to test the Gemara in Yuma in light of Rabbi Landau’s view. The results indicated that two eggs could not comfortably fit in the average male mouth.

There are, however, other ways to resolve the conflict discovered by Rabbi Landau in the 1700s. We must first keep in mind that although the Noda BiYehudah discovered a volume twice that of the egg method, currently, the thumb box method is only some 40 percent more than the egg-and-a-half method. Average thumb widths are about 0.88 inches.

Possibility number one is that perhaps the eggs around Prague were smaller than the average size of the egg in Eretz Yisrael and Bavel (and now in the United States).

Possibility number two is that perhaps human beings did grow bigger. And since we are dealing with a three-dimensional object (the thumb box), any increase in volume would be proportional to the cube of the increase in thumb width. Thus the growth in thumb width to resolve the current state of the contradiction would only have to be about 10 percent (11.87%) to cause a 40 percent increase in volume. We are certainly 10 percent taller than the people in the time of the Gemara and in fact in the time of the Middle Ages. Our thumb width could certainly be 10 percent greater as well.

Finally, a third possibility is one that was advanced by a college professor in Israel. Perhaps the thumb width is measured sideways and not frontally. Using a sideways thumb is certainly a faster way of measuring something, because it takes fewer thumbs to span the object. Maybe this is the true meaning of the thumb width.

Nonetheless, the practice of K’lal Yisrael is to be stringent on Biblical requirements. The Piskei HaRosh in Pesachim 10:34 and the Rashbam in Pesachim 119b rule that both the first kezayis of matzah and the afikoman are d’Oraisa. The matzah should be 6.25 inches by 7 inches, according to Rav Moshe Feinstein, zt’l. Korech is d’Rabbanan, so 4 by 7 inches is enough. The shiur for wine, according to Rav Moshe Feinstein, zt’l, is 3.3 ounces. However, when the Pesach Seder falls out on Shabbos, the Kiddush is d’Oraisa, so the shiur would be 4.4 ounces.