“These are the sons of Tzivon: Ayah, and Anah. It was Anah who found mules in the wilderness, when he was tending the donkeys for his father Tzivon.”
About Achashverosh, the Bible states, “Achashverosh, he is Acheshverosh” (ׁשֹרוֵוְׁשַחֲא אּ הוׁשֹרוֵוְׁשַחֲא), which according to one opinion comes to identify him as a certain Achashverosh, as opposed to someone else with the same name. In our reading we find a similar formula (though it translates a little differently into English): “Anah. It was Anah” (הָנֲא עּה הוָנֲעַו), indicating that he too is he himself. We need to understand what this means.
Anah was a Horite, the people that were indigenous to Mt. Seir, where Esau and his family settled after Esau had left the Land of Canaan because of Jacob. The seventh reading begins with the identification of Anah’s family: “There are the sons of Seir the Horite... Lotan, Shoval, Tzivon, Anah.” Anah was the father of a woman named Ohalivamah, who eventually married Esau, thus he is Esau’s father-in-law. Apart from his family ties, Anah has another claim to fame.
The Torah tells us that Anah was the person who found the Yeimim (םִמֵּי), or mules, while shepherding donkeys for his father Tzivon. Normally, people shepherd sheep and goats and flocks are made up of these animals. But he was shepherding donkeys. Now, how could Tzivon both be his father and his brother? Rashi solves our question about why the Torah would say that Anah is Anah by stating that actually his brother Tzivon was also his father, because he committed incest with his mother and gave birth to Anah. Likewise, it gets more convoluted when we learn that Tzivon fathered Ohalivamah from Anah’s wife (who was also his daughter-in-law); thus, Anah was only her stepfather.
The question is now, why does the Torah tell us that Anah found the Yeimim or mules in the wilderness. The most common explanation is that here “to find” means “to discover” or “to invent.” Anah took a female horse and a donkey, bred them, and got a mule. The mules are called by this word because it resembles and sounds similar to the word for “fear-inspiring” (אימים). These creatures fear was cast upon all creatures. Anah is thus the person who first cross-bred these two species, creating the mule. It is not surprising that someone who himself was born from an incestuous relationship was the one who discovered how to breed mules, sterile creatures that are the product of a cross-species breeding.
Scientific Wisdom
The Ramban and others explain that Anah was a great student of nature. A great scientist is someone who finds an exception in nature, an exception to the known laws of nature, and then from this exception creates a whole new theory. This is for the most part how science has advanced in the past few generations. An anomaly is identified—a piece of data that stands out and does not fit the current understanding—and that anomaly is then used as the basis for a new theory that seeks to explain the anomaly together with other out of place data.
In fact, the Hebrew word for “mule” (דֶרֶּפ) is phonetically similar to “particular” (טָרְּפ), alluding to the anomalous, particular case, from which the new theory emerged. Why is the anomaly “fear-inspiring?” Because it threatens the well-established theory that already exists with obsoletion. What was the law that Anah worked with? The established rule stated that inter-breeding two species cannot be done, and even if somehow it could be done, the offspring would be sterile. In fact, this is the definition of species used today: if two animals are from two different species, they cannot be bred. But Anah found is an exception. If in science, which is an establishment, you find an exception to the rule, that is an affront to the establishment and a threat. This is especially true today in medicine where a lot of money is involved.
The Biblical Anah is thus the archetypal individual who threatens science by finding an exception to a law. What happened to the rule? It was passed on to the offspring and mules are indeed sterile—they cannot be bred with one another or with other species. The parents broke the rule, but then the rule was passed on to their offspring.
(from a class given on 19th Adar 5773)
