The thing I love about being a halakhic Jew is that it offers so many thoughts on living a holy and more consecrated life in ways that I wouldn’t necessarily intuit. (I’ve translated the 3rd person impersonal into 2nd person command because it reads better.)
Be careful not to put coins in your mouth, in case there’s dried spit on them that will give you boils. And don’t put the palm of your hand under your armpit, in case you touch leprosy or the poison in your sweat. And do not put a loaf of bread under your armpit, because it is sweaty there. And don’t put food or drink under the bed, because demons live there and will get into them. And don’t put a knife into a citron (etrog) or a radish, because someone could fall onto the blade and die.
Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh Deah 116:5
I’m not going to translate the next halakha, (since some of you might be eating while you read this), but in part it suggests that eating food that has poo in it or out of a bowl into which there has been a bloodletting is not a spectacular idea. Thanks for the tip, Rabbi Caro!
Oh, leprosy schmeprosy… I bet someone just got fed up with yeshiva students making disruptive armpit-fart noises during class.
😉
~ks