argumentum ex silentio. The essential point is that it is definitely within medical reason that such a person who was considered a congenital eunuch was most likely fertile and could have fathered the offspring in question.
4. We may, therefore, conclude that the statement of Rabbi Eliezer , who lived about 1900 years ago, that a seris hamah may be healed has been verified by modern medical research. The symptoms of a man considered by his community to be a congenital eunuch in view of having been born with a minuscule membrum and bearing the typical secondary characteristics in his childhood may indeed be changed at puberty and afterwards. As we have seen, both in the research of the phenomenon of Testosterone 5 alpha-reductase deficiency and observing the case of Abraham Nahum, a micro phallus at birth may be sufficiently enlarged at puberty to enable him to engage in sexual intercourse and to father children. He was not only able to engage in sexual intercourse, as noted in the Talmud , but appears to have been capable of procreation, which was considered halakhically impossible.” If the pre-pubescent condition is considered sick and abnormal, then indeed after puberty one may declare that the seris hamah has been healed!
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We have attempted to-understand the ancient halakhic phenomenon of seris hamah in light of modern medical research. Studies such as this have certain limitations. Among them is the difficulty in relating scientific significance to non-medical terminology in an ancient literature. Furthermore, there may be insufficient empirical evidence to diagnose fully the illness and its progress.
Nevertheless, it would appear that we have isolated the medical syndrome that fits the Talmudic description of the congenital eunuch. Furthermore, the combined efforts of research in halakhah and medicine have discovered a viable solution to the difficult problem of a congenital eunuch in the responsa literature of the last century.
Finally, we have shown that the astute observation of a rabbinic scholar, who lived in the late first and early second centuries C.E., about the
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