Rava and the Queen Mother
Ifra Hormiz, the mother of King Shapur, sent blood before Rava. Rav Ovadiah was sitting in front of him. [Rava] smelled it. He said to her, “This is blood of desire.”1 She said to her son, “See how wise the Jews are!” He said to her: “Maybe [Rava] is like a blind person [who chanced] upon a window?” She then sent [Rava] sixty kinds of blood. He diagnosed them all. The last one was lice blood, and he did not know it. [Nevertheless,] the matter was aided [by heaven], and he sent her a lice-exterminating comb [as a gift]. She exclaimed, “O Jews, you dwell in the chambers of the heart!”
Translated by Shai Secunda.
Notes
[This refers to the discharge that the rabbis conjectured was sometimes emitted when a woman felt sexual desire.—Ed.]
Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 2: Emerging Judaism.
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Later talmudic anecdotes refer to good relations between rabbis and other Sasanian figures, including stories about a leading fourth-century rabbi from Maḥoza named Rava and the Sasanian queen mother Ifra Hormiz. This strange tale imagines Rava diagnosing the purity status of the queen mother’s bloodstains. This story is very difficult to treat as historical and instead probably reflects a desire that the Sasanians recognize rabbinic ritual expertise. Another anecdote can be found in “Rava Accepts Money from Ifra Hormiz, the Mother of Shapur II.”
