Our Gemara on Amud Beis discussed a practice of Rav Huna. If roasted, unsalted meat was cut on a loaf of bread, he would give the bread to his assistant. The Gemara wonders: “If the loaf is permitted, it is permitted for everyone, including Rav Huna himself. And if it is prohibited, then it is prohibited for everyone, and he should not give it to his attendant.” The Gemara answers that in truth, he held it was permitted. However, he was of a more delicate nature and found the food to be repulsive.

Rashi and Rabbenu Bechaye (Bereishis 18:8), quoting the Gemara Bava Metzia (87a), note the discrepancy in the story of the meal Avraham and Sarah provided for the visiting angels. Avraham states that he will offer them bread (18:6), then the verse only relates him as providing butter and meat. The answer is, in the meantime, Sarah became a niddah, and since Avraham was careful to consume his chulin bread with the same purity as kodesh (chulin al taharas hakodesh), he could not serve the bread.

One can ask, even so, that was an extraordinary chumrah, and why should that apply to his guests? (Earlier in Blogpost Psychology of the Daf, Chulin 99, we discussed various halachic opinions of whether it is lifnei iver to serve someone a food which you hold is forbidden, but the other person holds it permitted.) Sefer Baiy Chaye on Rabbenu Bechaye answers that we must say that it is considered improper to offer somebody to eat something that, according to your custom, even an extra stringent custom, is not something you would eat. He brings a proof from our Gemara. Why did they have to come up with an unusual scenario that Rav Huna was of a delicate nature, when they could have simply said that he only considered this a stringency and actually held it was permitted, therefore he gave it to his assistant? Rather, we must conclude that he did not want to serve something that he personally held was halachically preferable to abstain from.

The Shalah (Torah Shebikhsav, Vayera, Torah Ohr) offers a different, clever answer. The food offered to the angels had a status of sacrificial bread, and therefore needed to follow the rules of ritual purity.

While on this topic, Sifsei Chachamim raises a powerful question. If Sarah became a niddah, why was she so surprised at the miracle of her returning to fertility (ibid 18:12)? She already saw something was changing in her body. Sifsei Chachamim answers that she considered it an irregular period and not a full-fledged return to youth. However, this itself is interesting. Granted, if a typical menopausal woman experiences menstrual staining, she will not necessarily think she is miraculously returning to her youth, but if someone gave you a prophecy - and your menstrual blood returned, that would feel different. So it is still difficult to understand why she was skeptical. It’s a lesson in how we become fixed in our interpretation of reality. Once we have a certain mindset, even when we get data that shows us something else, we tend to dismiss it and minimize it. Confirmation bias is powerful, and what that means is that we filter information. Data that supports our opinion is overemphasized, and data that confuses and overturns our current opinion is minimized. Apparently this is human nature, and it explains Sarah’s reaction.