[Avodah] Do gentiles have more teeth than Jews? Do they have less?

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

R' Micha Berger wrote:
> They don't see the need for a correspondane between reality and
> halakhah that you're taking for granted.
> IOW, it's more relevent that Chazal said they have more (or
> fewer) teeth than whether or not they actually do.

Alternatively, perhaps they do need that correspondence, but they define it differently than we might presume. I remember a discussion here, perhaps it was about spontaneous generation, or maybe about killing kinim on Shabbos, or maybe it was the same discussion. Anyway, IIRC, Chazal said something wasn't alive, but we feel that it obviously IS alive, and the "davar hashlishi hamachria" was that things which are too small to see are alive biologically, but their life has no halachic significance.

Maybe something similar is going on here. Perhaps Chazal knew that men and women are born with the same number of teeth, but that wasn't significant. Perhaps the point which Chazal cared about is how many teeth men and women *have* -- in the present tense -- in practical reality, after losing some teeth for whatever reasons. Or some other explanation which jives with reality, but not that they didn't care about reality.

Akiva Miller

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