[Avodah] More on Yaakov, sheep and the rods

[Alexander Seinfeld]

Why not just interpret this as an example of  phenotypic plasticity, meaning the genetic potential is there in every generation, and the environmental factors stimulate its expression?

 

As everyone who had genetics 101 will realize, if you eliminate 100% of the phenotype, and breed the remainder you will still get some of that phenotype in the next generation with recessive genes. So it always bothered me why was all the hokus pokus by Yaakov necessary. Even more so the pasook itself seems to ascribe the results as caused by the sticks even though a simple natural explanation for the reappearance of the phenotype in the next generation is quite simple. The only explanation I could come up with is that the percentages were much higher than one would expect as a result of genetic calculations thus the nes (and Yaakov?s efforts [hishtadlus] to produce it) is described at great length.




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