A Humbling Metaphor

This week’s Gemara brings one such account from Rabba bar bar Channa (Rabba, the grandson of Channa). Rabba bar bar Channa relates:

I once stood at the edge of the horizon and saw something astonishing—a newborn Re’em, only one day old.

Even at that age, it was no ordinary animal. Its body itself was like a landscape, stretching across the earth, vast and immovable like Mount Tabor. To walk from one end to the other would take 136 miles.

Most striking of all was its neck, a massive column of muscle rising ten miles into the sky, piercing the lower clouds. When the creature lay down to rest, the place where its neck met the ground covered an area five miles wide.

The force of such a creature was enough to reshape nature itself. When the Re’em relieved itself, the sheer volume fell like a landslide, crashing into the Jordan River and forming a massive barrier that stopped the flow entirely, leaving the riverbed below dry and silent.

Taken at face value, this sounds like a wild story meant to stretch the imagination. But the Vilna Gaon and others teach that beneath the surface lies a carefully constructed metaphor. The Ben Ish Chai explains that this passage appears on our daf (Zevachim 113b), even amid a largely literal discussion of the Mabul, in order to sharpen the minds of students. No halachic or factual difficulty can be raised from the fantastical account of Rabba bar bar Channa.

So what is the story really telling us?

The Vilna Gaon explains that the Re’em is not an animal at all but a symbol. It represents a student who takes a flawed approach to Torah learning. The Re’em being “born” already enormous reflects a beginner who jumps straight into complex analysis before laying proper foundations. The creature being only one day old points to someone with very little experience who already believes he has reached intellectual maturity.

Its towering height, compared to Mount Tabor, reflects an inflated sense of self and a hunger for recognition. Real Torah growth takes years, decades, of steady, disciplined effort. But this student imagines he has skipped every step.

Because his foundations are weak, his advanced reasoning lacks depth. When he encounters true talmidei chachamim, he cannot prevail through clarity or truth. Frustration and jealousy follow, and these give rise to the “waste” described in the story, a stand-in for insults, mockery, and personal attacks.

This behavior “dams the Jordan.” Instead of Torah flowing cleanly and peacefully, it becomes blocked and polluted. The atmosphere of the beis midrash suffers, clarity disappears, and ego takes the place of truth.

The Vilna Gaon’s warning is sharp: without humility and an orderly path of learning, even great intellectual ability can turn destructive, becoming a source of spiritual damage rather than illumination.

Instead of focusing on the creature’s nature, Tosafos approaches the issue from a practical perspective, inquiring: what animal is the Re’em? While it is clearly not meant to be taken literally as a 136-mile creature, it is still described as exceptionally large. In Tosafos’ time, some suggested that the Re’em might be the buffalo. Tosafos rejects this idea, noting that buffalo were not unusually large and were commonly used for farm work. The Re’em, however, is explicitly described as unfit for labor, as Iyov (39:10) asks: “Can you bind the Re’em to the furrow with a rope, or will it harrow the valleys after you?”

Why does this matter? Because the Re’em is classified as a chaya, while a buffalo would likely be a beheimah. That distinction carries real halachic consequences. The blood of a chaya requires kisui hadam; the blood of a beheima does not. The cheilev of a beheima is forbidden under penalty of kares, while the cheilev of a chaya is permitted.

For example, the cut of meat known as top rib must have its cheilev removed to be eaten. If the buffalo were a chaya, this would not be an issue. Consequently, Tosafos holds that one cannot consider the buffalo to be the Re’em and thus treat it as a chaya.

In the end, the lesson is the same. The humble student does not rush to conclusions about the Re’em or the buffalo, nor does he assume understanding before proper study. He moves carefully and deliberately, allowing patience and humility to guide him toward a more accurate understanding.