Our Gemara on Amud Aleph refers to the kidneys as the part of the body that provide advice and planning. The ancients had a different view of medicine than we do and the ideas that emerge are fascinating.

First let’s start with this shocker: In Biblical Hebrew there is no word for brain! Such a seemingly vital organ simply is not identified. In rabbinic Mishnaic Hebrew the word moach is used to connote brain, but it really is a borrowed term. Moach more correctly translates as marrow, and looking at it that way, the brain is just the marrow of the bone called the skull. The Biblical Hebrew moach is used exclusively as marrow, as in Iyov (21:24.)

The ancients, wisely and appropriately, derived their knowledge of the body based on what they felt occurred. When you get anxious, you feel it in your gut, stomach and sides, and when you are excited you feel it in your heart. This is an intelligent assumption. Indeed, there is new recognition in current medical research regarding the role the gut plays in emotions regulation as well as the hormonal adrenal function of the kidneys. (See https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/the-brain-gut-connection and https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/21824-kidney)

The Gemara (Shabbos 33b) describes the process of thoughts and emotions:

“The kidneys advise, and the heart understands, and the tongue shapes the voice that emerges from the mouth; still, the mouth completes the formation of the voice.”

What this corresponds to in our understanding of thought, emotions and speech is worthy of study and analysis, but I won’t focus on that now. The most surprising and significant point here is that the brain is given no role. Zero. 

At some time in history, the brain begins to be recognized as an organ of thought and also becomes incorporated into rabbinic literature. (We do find the brain, as a thought organ, referened by the Talmudic insult, “it seems to me that this Sage has no brain in his head.” (Yevamos 9a). However, that might be the bare minimum of thought organs so the insult is, along the lines of, “even the brain.” In any case, the prior Gemara excludes the brain from any part of the thought process. For example, Pri Tzaddik (Succos 42) acknowledges the brain as the repository of wisdom but the kidneys as the part that employs analysis and planning in order to use the knowledge properly. (A similar relationship between the brain and kidneys is described in Likkutei Halachos, laws of shaving 4:10.)

In the end, the brain receives no attention in Biblical Hebrew, minimal attention in Rabbinic literature, and in later chassidic thought finally gets some mention but only as a memory bank. What is the lesson and what kind of outlook does this represent? I think this is thoroughly non-western and refreshing perspective. Do we consider a 500 GB memory drive as intelligent? Obviously not! Even if the brain is granted some respect as holding knowledge, it seems the ancients saw it as knowledge without any applied wisdom. To them the brain, if it had any role, held data in the same way the bladder held urine. The key is not the knowledge itself but the process of emotions (heart), analysis and intuition (kidneys) and the ultimate formulation and verbalization of the ideas that comprises human intelligence.

In a sense, brains are overrated because knowledge is only facts. What counts is the personality and the system and process by which the knowledge is applied. This is a combination of emotional, social and computational intelligence, but apparently none of that was believed to occur within the brain itself. Even if we now have an understanding that the brain is responsible for certain forms of analysis and thought and not simply a data storage center, the lesson and the concept is still meaningful. Knowing things and facts are the least important part of intelligence from an ethical and religious point of view. You may need to have a functioning brain in order to become a moral, ethical person, no less than you need to have blood in your arteries and a functioning liver and lungs. However, as important as those organs are, and as important as the brain may be, it is not what makes intellect from a rabbinic point of view. Intellect is the sum of appropriate character and judgment, and not brains nor IQ.

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Translations Courtesy of Sefaria, except when, sometimes, I disagree with the translation

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Rabbi Simcha Feuerman, Rabbi Simcha Feuerman, LCSW-R, LMFT, DHL is a psychotherapist who works with high conflict couples and families. He can be reached via email at simchafeuerman@gmail.com